That’s the goal of the Christianists: to exclude gay couples from the dignity and responsibility of a civic institution that all our friends, family members and neighbors enjoy. This ad helps express how that can feel:
You can donate to the campaign to protect California’s marriages here. Please do. The Christianist right is spending a small fortune to demonize us in California.
This will get me grief, and I’m nervous about McCain’s foreign policy instincts given the past seven years, and I know he’s been running a sleazy campaign, but I like the guy, and I like him for his orneriness. Here’s a great summary of why:
If you want a lousy interview with McCain, ask about his wife—not for any lack of feeling, I suspect, but for lack of words about feelings. His old-school way of expressing affection? If he likes you, and you work for him, you’re an "incompetent jerk”; if he likes you, and you’re a bunch of reporters writing down his bons mots, it’s "What do you want, you little jerks?”; and if you’re a kid who’s just asked about his age, and he wants to show that sure, fine, he likes you anyway, it’s "Thanks for the question, you little jerk. You’re drafted.”
Maybe it’s my upbringing, in an all-boys British high school, where this kind of banter was quite normal. But there’s a great deal about McCain’s humor, sense of fun, emotional reticence – and not the dry drunk psychic shutdown of Bush – that appeals to people. Even his obvious emotionalism in a situation like Georgia – which may not make him the steadiest commander-in-chief. The coolness of Obama is hard to latch onto.
He whispers it in Steve Doocy’s ear. Don’t tell the Pope.
The Onion discovers Obama’s long-lost hillbilly cousin. The photo alone is priceless.
My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.
Not the invasion of Kuwait? Or the first Gulf War? Or the Afghan war? Or the second Iraq war? Or Darfur? Or Bosnia? Or 9/11? It’s this kind of emotional hyperbole that should worry people about McCain in the White House. He’s a drama queen on these issues. With a finger on the trigger.
Sanity from Yglesias:
The reality is that Russia has no actual ability to move from Tblisi to Kiev. Georgia is tiny, poor, and geographically located so as to make it difficult for the West to provide it with any practical support. Ukraine has 10 times Georgia’s population, 20 times its economic output, and extensive land borders with countries firmly in the Western orbit. The practical impossibility of conquering Ukraine, not American threats, is what will keep the Russians out of Kiev. Meanwhile, it turns out that, contrary to the fears of the hysterics, Russia isn’t even going to Tblisi today, much less Ukraine tomorrow or Estonia the day after that. Vladimir Putin, unlike the leader of the United States, is apparently shrewd enough to recognize that military occupations of foreign territories have high costs and scarce benefits.
An interesting insight into how McCain sees things:
"I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party. And I also feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together. You know, [former Pennsylvania Governor] Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out … I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a — albeit strong — but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues."
By what logic can gay rights be more significant an issue for a religious party like the GOP than abortion?
And why would pro-gay-equality Republicans be less welcome than pro-choice Republicans? There is no real comparison in any theology: abortion is arguably the taking of human life; the worst that can be said of gay couples is that refuse to make more human life. So placing the position on gay rights on a higher level than abortion rights can only be explained by bigotry, it seems to me. Or, in McCain’s case, a perceived need to cater to bigotry.
You see; plenty of straight people he knows differ on abortion. But the gays, and tolerating them, well our kind of people don’t do that. Of course, this may all be a tortuous way of asking if he can select Tom Ridge for his veep.
I keep imagining that one of one of the Kagans – perhaps one we haven’t yet even heard of – will soon be advocating actual – oh, wait:
Having pulled back from Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Georgians can now regroup and re-equip. They are in desperate need of two things: weapons to kill tanks, and weapons to kill or deter aircraft and helicopters. We can supply both. The Stinger missile, the bane of Russian Frontal Aviation in Afghanistan, is still the most potent shoulder-fired weapon around. It will cause Russian close support aircraft to keep their distance, or to attack from higher altitude. Providing Georgia with medium-range surface-to-air missiles which can be deployed from Georgian territory proper will further push back their high-altitude aircraft (e.g., Tu-22M Backfires )…
First, we need to give the Georgians anti-tank mines, and not just any kind, but our latest "smart" off-route mines like the XM93 Wide Area Mine (WAM). These don’t have to be placed directly on the roads, but can be put off to the side, where built-in sensors can detect armored vehicles and launch explosive formed penetrator (RFP) warheads at them. Second, we need to give them our best anti-tank guided missile, the FGM-148 Javelin . This is a "fire and forget" weapon: once the operator lines up the target in his sights and locks on, he can fire the missile and get away, while the missile will fly autonomously to the target.
Do the neocons understand that this means war with Russia? Do they really believe that it’s a sensible idea, given so many other commitments and the pressing need for unified pressure on Iran?
This is the best rebuttal to my own view that pushing NATO to the borders of the Black Sea and beyond is foolish over-reach. I don’t think offering Georgia NATO membership is a wise move; I do think the West should support democratic polities in Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states. There is a balance to be struck between the West’s obvious interest in getting Russian cooperation in the war on Jihadist terror and preventing Russian meddling in its near-abroad. There’s a trade-off here. And allowing Russia its traditional sphere of influence may be much less of a headache than trying to police its every move and losing cooperation on such vital matters as securing loose nukes.
What worries me is that McCain’s eagerness for more conflict in the world – pushing Russia and China into a corner – is not in the best interests of the United States. It may be moral; it may be exciting; it may provide the great national purpose McCain thinks we all need to feel. But it ignores the hard trade-offs involved, and perpetuates the whole with-us-or-against us bluster of the last eight years. We need more of that? More enemies? Less diplomacy? More conflict?
Count me out.
The Dish 