Month: October 2007

Here’s a sign that Obama’s attack on Clinton’s support for a resolution chracterizing Iran’s Revolutinoary Guards as a terrorist entity may be worrying the Clinton campaign: she has now decided to adopt Obama’s position on being open to negotiations with Iran. The key phrase is "without conditions."

This quote from a Family Research dude takes the biscuit:

We just want to reiterate that Giuliani is a disaster … He will destroy the coalition among conservatives. Asking us to accept him as the nominees, is like asking fiscal conservatives to accept a candidate who wants to return to the tax rates of the pre-Reagan era.

How about asking fiscal conservatives to support a president who increased government spending at a faster rate than any Democrat since FDR?

One aspect is revealed in a paragraph like this in Salon. It’s directed at John Aravosis because he dared to question whether a Congressional bill on workplace discrimination should be postponed because it doesn’t include transgendered rights:

This coming from an ex-Republican, former congressional aide, Georgetown-educated, inside-the-Beltway lawyer who studied under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and who has spent the past decade working his political connections in order to hold corporate America’s feet to the fire on gay rights? Puh. Leeze. John Aravosis is in the nosebleed section of the social hierarchy; if he gets any higher up the food chain he should be issued an oxygen mask.

This ad hominem attack on anyone’s views who veers from far left orthodoxy is routine among the professional GBLTXYZers who mau-mau the rest of us. John Aravosis is an almost pathologically partisan Democrat, a gleeful outer of insufficiently correct closeted public figures, a blogger in the mold of Atrios … but he still can’t be oppressed enough to be valid for the gay left. Hey, John. It’s wake-up time. They hate you too. Welcome to the club.

As for the matter at hand, the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, I was told two decades ago that this was the non-negotiable number one priority for gay Americans, that gay people couldn’t afford to fight for marriage equality or military service or anything else until this vital law passed.

I was told to shut up about everything else in order to support this central goal. The Human Rights Campaign raked in tens of millions of dollars over twenty years with this message (while the private sector, with HRC’s help, actually enacted many legal protections for gay employees, and while the debates about marriage and military service transformed the movement, in the face of HRC’s opposition). But now … not so much. The transgendered movement is so important that it’s worth subjecting gay people to many more years of employment insecurity. Not so urgent, after all, is it? Gay people in red states without employment protection have to wait while pomo lefty activists in cushy gay lobby jobs preen about p.c. purity.

I’m no big supporter of ENDA and don’t truly believe it will make much of a difference. Nonetheless, holding it up for transgendered inclusion after two decades of waiting seems bizarre even for the p.c. hell that is the gay rights establishment. I can’t believe I’m with Barney Frank on this one. But I am.

Still blind, after all these years:

You gotta hand it to [Robert] Scheer: "Restless" is a pretty good euphemism for "killing people with whom you disagree."

Science-blogger Razib dissects the latest study on the genetic heritability of fussy eating.

H.R. 3687. Makes Cartman look demure.

A reader writes:

I completely agree with your recent emailer. I am black, well educated (with three degrees in economics, political science about to graduate from law school). I take politics seriously, and I don’t know many serious black people who support Obama. We are not impressed by his credentials – because we also have similar credentials. Will you and the media support David Vitter just because he went to Harvard Law School? Or Elaine Chao because she has an MBA from Harvard. The racism – I fear is on the foot of those knee-jerk liberals and ex-Neo cons who are flocking to Obamamania. Obama is simply NOT a serious person. Ron Paul, yes. But not Obama. Obama is no Colin Powell. Does he even qualify to be CEO of a major American corporation, let alone President of these United States.

By the way what major policy reform has Obama proposed anyway? If he is really incensed about Iraq, why doesn’t he stage a filibuster? Has he not watched "Mr Smith Goes to Washington." Hillary might be a closet conservative, but at least she is not pretending that she is the only Ivy leagued educated woman in America.

It’s only fair to point out that Obama has presented serious, complex initiatives on healthcare, energy, the environment, taxes and the war. But I am struck by the hostility toward him from some African-Americans. The reasons for it may be as fascinating as they are poorly understood.

Reihan goes there. Well someone has to. Anderson adds whole universes of meaning to the word "precious."

Over to Mickey … He’s been all over it, of course. Just don’t ask about his private life or he’ll have a conniption. Ann who? (Just one more Jew to perfect – ed.)

The authorization of torture and abuse of prisoners by the CIA is a serious issue. And the more we know, the worse it looks. One sign of how serious it is is the response of the CIA director, Michael Hayden, to the work of the CIA inspector general to investigate possible law-breaking in the agency – he’s investigating the investigator. The reason is pretty obvious:

A report by Mr. Helgerson’s office completed in the spring of 2004 warned that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture.

Some of the inspector general’s work on detention issues was conducted by Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired from the agency last year after being accused of leaking classified information. Officials said Mr. Helgerson’s office was nearing completion on a number of inquiries into C.I.A. detention, interrogation, and “renditions” — the practice of seizing suspects and delivering them to the authorities in other nations.

And so the Bushies dig in deeper.