Month: July 2009

Quality beer nosedives. In a depression, what fucks you up for the least amount of money is what matters.

Partly Emanuel-Axelord Clintonism; partly, a belief that national security is not as important as sustaining military homophobia as a religious value; and partly … well you don't have to look very far to see who really doesn't want change:

Can you smell the Human Rights Campaign? It's that unique blend of cowardice, careerism and fantastic amounts of money that usually tips you off.

Yes, even Islamic theocratic republics have them:

Like many online scandals in the West, it involves a model. Not Paris Hilton, but a supposed model of virtue: a cleric.

In the video—for weeks voted the top story on Balatarin.com (an Iranian version of Digg.com)—a robed cleric is caught on a hidden camera in a private room. He walks to the door to let a chador-clad woman enter. “Nobody saw you come in, did they?” he asks her lightheartedly. As she removes her chador, he continues in the same tone: “Want to do some Nasnas?”

Iranians know Nasnas as a mythological monster. What the cleric means by “do some Nasnas” is clarified by what happens next in the clip. Americans have a similar expression: the beast with two backs.

For an even bigger sex-tape scandal from Iran, read this Wikipedia page.

DiA counters Jamie Kirchick's McCarthyite assertion that Jews who criticize Israel's actions have a "“visceral hatred of [their] Jewish heritage”:

If you don't agree with Jamie Kirchick, you're a self-hater if you're Jewish and an anti-Semite if you're not. I learned that a long time ago. If someone called Jamie a self-hating homo because he bravely takes on the gay left from time to time (and they do), he'd be right to be angry. Why can he not see the parallel? 

The NYT magazine has a heartrending article on a lesbian couple who take in foster children. The couple was challenged by the courts over adoption. The process isn't over, but it looks like the adoption will go through after a decision by the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision. Still, how many heterosexuals would put up with this?

I know how they feel. The survival of my own marriage is entirely in the hands of the federal government. I have no right to stay in my own home with my own husband – just the government's permission until they choose to revoke it. Gays do not have core constitutional rights in America. They have no right even to a secure home. And this president is in no hurry to do anything about it.

Yglesias compares health care innovation to cars and HDTV. He concludes:

I still fail to see why a simple reform – requiring patient co-pays to be a percentage of the actual cost of the drug – cannot be deployed.

It would unleash the market power of consumers to keep healthcare costs down in the pharmaceutical area, which is one of the most expensive. I just switched HIV meds because one of my previous ones had been shown to dramatically increase the rate of heart attacks. But the new ones are almost certainly more expensive – they're newer, a new type of drug, etc. But I had no incentive to weigh the risks of a heart attack against the costs of the new meds, which might, after a few years in use, show similar side-effect problems.

One key issue is taking power away from doctors and giving more to patients. As an aggressive HIV survivor, I long ago learned to treat doctors with respect but not deference. But the system prevents me from managing the costs of my own care in even the slightest way. I pay $20 co-pay each time. It's madness.

"She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of [blank] Ware Street," – James Crowley, in his police report.

“She didn’t speak to Sergeant Crowley at the scene except to say, ‘I’m the one who called,’ ” said the lawyer, Wendy J. Murphy. “And he said, ‘Wait right there,’ and walked into the house. She never used the word black and never said the word backpacks to anyone.” – from the NYT.

So where did the idea of two black men with backpacks come from? Instead of two men with suitcases who the caller said might well be in their own home? I think we know.

Mousavi spoke out against the regime "more strongly than ever before" yesterday:

“How can it be that the leaders of our country do not cry out and shed tears about these tragedies?” Mr. Moussavi said, in comments to a teachers’ association that were posted on his Web site. “Can they not see it, feel it? These things are blackening our country, blackening all our hearts. If we remain silent, it will destroy us all and take us to hell.”

As the NYT notes, Thursday will be a big day for the protest movement:

That day has great symbolic importance, because it is 40 days after the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death ignited widespread outrage in Iran and beyond. Commemorating the 40th day after a person’s death is an important mourning ritual in Shiite Islam; similar anniversaries for dead protesters were essential in the demonstrations that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

This is not over. It is just beginning.

Pareene compiled several clips from Palin's speaking career and concluded:

Twenty years ago she could competently describe a dog race, three years ago she could articulate a position on the abortion issue, and this weekend she composed a resignation speech by throwing culture war stock phrases into a hat and dumping it upside down on a copy of The Paranoid Style in American Politics. […] It's like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.

A YouTube that made the rounds a few years back made similar past-present comparisons with Bush. Whether it's panic at the prospect of saying something stupid in public or the stress of incessant condescension I cannot say. In Palin's case, she's clearly bonkers and always has been. If I were telling as many lies as she is, my speech might get a little mangled – it's remembering all the lies that's tough. You can blurt out the truth in public if you're not careful.