Month: July 2008

This is worth doing:

I think a great way for all LGBT people to “honor” Jesse Helms at this moment is to make sure that this law is repealed. We cannot allow a pause due to reflection or “respect.” So call your Congressmen and Senators and tell them that the HIV ban must go and you support the PEPFAR legislation which removes the HIV travel and immigration ban. We need to make sure that Helms’ death accelerates this repeal rather than slows it down.

Email your senator if you agree. The vote is coming up. Details on the bipartisan bill here. Here’s a directory to Senate email addresses.

Yes, the little ones tend to be the most aggressive, with dachshunds at the top of the list, according to a new study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Chihuahua were next, followed by Jack Russells. Pitbulls are near the middle of the range. This is a classic quote:

Tony Fitt-Savage, president of the British Chihuahua Club, added: "I have had Chihuahuas for 30-odd years, and they’ve never put anybody into hospital. They can be a little bit stroppy."

Mr Fitt-Savage is, of course, a human oasis of calm. I couldn’t find the original article so I have no data for beagles. Bassets are very sweet. My beagle-basset is sweetness personified; my pure-bred beagle has some mouthy attitude. My husband notes they each take after one of us.

"Letting Rush define who is and is not a conservative, or what the national GOP can and cannot stand for, is the equivalent of the Democratic Party inviting the writers of the Daily Show to hammer out their party’s platform – or the Roman Catholic Church turning the next edition of the Catechism over to Oprah," – Ross Douthat.

Break it to K-Lo gently, Ross.

Hilzoy rounds-up conservative fawning over Helms.

Fatness by state:

It’s a tangled distinction but this reader makes an interesting point:

What distinguishes American hegemony from Empire is that we have never forced a sovereign government to give our army the right to arrest its nation’s citizens; a distinction that we are very close to breaking in Iraq.

Would it be unprecedented?

There are a few juicy nuggets in Gail Sheehy’s Clinton wrap-up in Vanity Fair. Here’s one that reminded me of how former president Clinton regarded his wife’s candidacy – as an extension of his presidency:

He didn’t make his first pitch to one Pennsylvania super-delegate, Jason Altmire, until the afternoon of the Ohio/Texas votes. He sounded giddy, recalls Congressman Altmire. “ ’We’re going to win Ohio for sure, and Texas looks good, and we’re coming to Pennsylvania,’ he said. ‘Keep your powder dry. Don’t endorse anybody—just wait it out.’ ” The flattered first-term congressman said he was concerned that Senator Clinton might not play well on the top of the ticket. “President Bush won my district twice … ”

Clinton interrupted him. “How well did I do in your district?”

“You won it twice.”

“Well, there you go,” Clinton said, gloating.

There was silence for a while, and Clinton assumed he had won his case.

“With all due respect,” Altmire finally said, “you’re not on the ballot this year.”

But Bill felt as if he was. For him it was always about his restoration and his entitlement to it. Raw nepotism and abuse of marital power would have continued in any Hillary Clinton administration – unaccountable, unknowable and uncontrollable. It was a bullet dodged.

It’s funny to watch the partisan right out-do each other to declare Obama a cynic while Charlie Crist gets engaged to a woman at the height of McCain’s veep search. For the record, from the Broward-Palm Beach New Times:

The rumors about Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and the Green Iguana just wouldn’t go away. The story goes that the Florida governor frequented the Green Iguana, a bar in Tampa, back in the early 1990s when he was just starting his political career. He was less careful back then, people say, and during his partying at the Green Iguana, he was openly gay.

When I got Rick Calderoni, the bar’s well-known owner, on the phone, I expected him to stonewall me about it.

He didn’t.

Calderoni, who is gay, confirmed that Crist came into his bar quite often and that the two of them became friends.

Getting to the point, I asked him if he knew Crist to be gay.

"Yes," he answered bluntly. "I just wish he would come out and admit it. That would be a great thing if he did."

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)

Tigerhawk writes:

If we are, as Andrew says, to judge the judgment of the two candidates, then the answer is clear. Eighteen months ago John McCain argued that the safest way out of Iraq was to win, then withdraw. Barack Obama, parroting the received wisdom of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, said that victory in any meaningful sense was not only unlikely, but that the presence of large numbers of American soldiers actually fed the insurgency and decreased the prospects for stability. On that crucially important decision, at least, it is becoming ever more obvious that McCain was right and Obama was wrong.

I think McCain was probably right on the surge (although we’ll never know for certain what might have happened if we had begun to withdraw last year), but wrong on the initial invasion. Obama was wrong on the surge but right about the invasion (although we’ll never know for certain how the world would look if we’d continued (or been able) to contain rather than depose Saddam). So we’re left with long-term strategy and medium term diplomacy. And there’s the rub. McCain doesn’t talk about "winning", then leaving. He talks about "winning", then staying.

"All kidding aside, I find my fellow gays’ love for Hillary incredibly shallow. Identifying with her hopelessness has become a manifestation of self-pity. The diva worship that she commands amongst legions of gay men confirms every negative stereotype about us: that we’re petty, superficial and worshippers of femininity.

Her status as a gay icon would trouble me less if she did anything to justify it, that is, if she actually went out of her way to stand up for gay causes (like Cyndi Lauper, who’s actually deserving of the title).

But Clinton’s record on gay issues is unremarkable and she was nowhere to be found while her husband was throwing us over the bridge. It¹s OK to worship Olivia Newton-John for her star turn in "Xanadu" or Jennifer Holliday for telling you she’s not going (heaven knows I do).

But we’re electing a president, not a diva-in-chief, which leads us to the question of whether Hillary Clinton should become Barack Obama’s running mate. Do we really want to spend the next four years listening to a tired rendering of "I Will Survive" on repeat?," – Jamie Kirchick, Washington Blade. Yay!