Category: Old Dish

A sea-change? Dan Drezner, who actually criticized this administration when it could have made a difference (yes, he even endorsed Kerry in frustration at the incompetence of it all), notices a change in right-wing blogs. Check out the comment section. Money quote there:

Funny, these are the same guys who idolized him for the first five years of his presidency. What changed, all of a sudden? Certainly not Bush, he is still acting the same way he has his entire career.
What’s changed is that after five years of presidency, the elections are finally over. It is now safe to criticise Bush, because such criticism can’t possibly matter any more – it can’t affect his reelection chances.
Forgive me if I don’t perceive this as responsible conservatism. Responsibility would have been criticising him before it’s too late to do anything about his weaknesses.

Ahem.

“Q: Let me change gears here for a moment, if you don’t mind. I’m curious if you, Governor Schwarzenegger or private citizen Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you’ve have ever attended a gay marriage or a gay commitment ceremony — a gay or lesbian marriage or commitment ceremony?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I can’t remember.”

– San Jose Mercury News. You mean to say you could forget going to a same-sex marriage or commitment ceremony? Who is he, Bill Clinton? Later in the interview, he says: “I don’t work like a politician.” Uh-huh.

The bird-flu situation in Indonesia appears close to panic. Money quote:

Maybe the most ominous sign here in Europe is that even CNN International devoted a full 10 seconds to the Indonesian situation before returning to the more important business of supermodel Kate Moss’s alleged cocaine use.

Alleged? Meanwhile, the CDC is acting like FEMA in some respects.

Flickr has an idea. Who said fiscal sanity is dead?

NOW, THE FAMILIES: The impact of the new baldly bigoted policy of the Vatican toward gays is not just restricted to gay priests or gay Catholics, but affects their families as well. I know my own family has been torn up by the new anti-gay stance. Others are as well. Here’s an email that speaks to the widespread pain wrought by the proposed ban on gay priests and apparent papal assertion that homosexuality represents a “serious personality disorder”:

I, too have felt the complete and utter devastation of the Catholic church’s new and most hateful policies designed (in my opinion) to push out every last gay Catholic. But let me point out that this is not just affecting the Catholic gay community, but everyone who loves them. As a cradle Catholic and married mother of 3 children, one of them gay, I have found it utterly impossible to pass through the doors of a Catholic church for some time now. I have three children in different stages of their education in three different schools – two in Jesuit Universities and one in a Catholic high school. And though our experience with the Jesuits has been most wonderful, the conclusion reached by this family of five is that we can no longer be a part of a church that has deemed one of our beloved family “evil”. I am all cried out, heartbroken, a bit lost, but at peace with our decision.

Gut-wrenching.

The NYT is preventing syndicated TimesSelect columns from appearing elsewhere online for free. An obvious move – but, again, it might mean fewer papers run the columns; and certainly means fewer people will read them. Meanwhile, WaPo is running a stream of independent blog posts. One way of expressing your opinion is to let the WaPo know that you appreciate their experiment; and look forward to other bloggers’ participation in the future. The email address is opinions@washingtonpost.com.

WAPO SUCK-UP CONTINUES: Meanwhile, they have an excellent new blog on national security. Check it out.

Movies too. Their extinction is now inevitable. An interesting take here.

Marty Lederman reviews the record of Gonzales’ proposed deputy on the matter of abusing detainees in the war on terror. It isn’t reassuring.

LET THE MILITARY IN: I was a campaigner against the military’s ban on gays earlier than many and I still am. But I’m also a supporter of having the best military we can, and at a time of war, that means letting them recruit on campus, despite their vile discrimination policies. I’m glad my alma mater has allowed them back in. Now let’s renew the campaign against this terrible and self-defeating policy. This website is a good place to start.

KATRINA AND GOD: Don Feder, a respected figure on the religious right and a former columnist for the Boston Herald, says that the hurricane was God’s punishment for California’s legislature approving marriage rights for gays, the vandalizing of Gaza’s synagogues, and the recent Pledge of Allegiance court ruling.

An arresting analysis of the Bush administration’s governing “philosophy.” More like Spain and Italy in the 1930s than anything resembling Anglo-American conservatism.

Some sources are saying so. If that’s true, then it suggests that Romney really is Rove’s pick to prevent a Giuliani or McCain from winning the nomination in 2008.

What on earth is this website doing? U.S. soldiers can post pics of the corpses of Iraqis killed in war on a website devoted mainly to amateur porn. I clicked through and saw just a couple of pics which are beyond appalling and distressing. The section for corpses – and it’s not clear whether they are of insurgents or just civilians – has this introduction:

Pictures in this forum are submitted by U.S. Soldiers from over in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably be a little gory. So if you get sick easy or have a problem with dead terrorists please don’t look here.

If you send in pics of dead insurgents or Iraqis, you get free access to the porn part of the site. The pics that are appended have names such as “What every Iraqi should look like,” “DIE, HAJI, DIE,” and “Cooked Iraqi.” I would think this violates the Geneva Conventions, not that the U.S. under this president cares about those very much any more. But it’s also beyond depraved. Eric Muller sounded the alarm. Like the pictures from Abu Ghraib, these images are also a propaganda coup for Zarqawi and his monsters – a consequence of war in the Internet age. Have we really sunk to this?

GRACE AND GAYS: An email that speaks to the spiritual distress many of us are in right now:

I’ve been especially torn the last year with what has transpired in the church with regard to gays. I attend mass but can’t bring myself to go to communion. I’m in a small diocese (Helena, Montana) and know the bishop, who was taught by my father, and recently suggested to him that the not so sotto voce message I and many gays are getting is that of all God’s people, gays are one group the Catholic church no longer pretends to want in the fold. His silent stare confirmed that conclusion. While my personal family has always accepted me, I’m still stunned at the feeling of devastation I have experienced as a once beautiful and open church has so dramatically turned, and turned with such force against gays, both in the laity and the clergy.

I studied under a great Belgian Jesuit at the Catholic University of Louvain, Piet Fransen, who took two years to expound upon Grace, “the living, loving presence of God in the world, the church, and us.” I have thought of those days, and the lessons I learned. I have told my gay friends that leaving the Church is for me impossible, for it would be to abandon grace which I have found in every turn of my life, in family, friends, lovers; in the communities I have known, including parishes and dioceses. It was not merely a “church” we are asked to leave, but the belief that we and our lives are part of that loving presence. I’ve come to realize that it is the Church which now has come to declare our lives and our existence as gay Catholics to be grace-free zones. Perhaps that is why my bishop was able to stand quiet, his silence confirming that neither he nor the Church saw anything in our lives worthy of being part of his church.

To feel, as I do, unable to attend communion any more because of the new hierarchy is one thing. The loss is enormous. But to be informed that you are somehow inherently morally sick is quite another.