Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I’ve been watching with much interest as a HRC Federal Club member as you have taken on the financial transparency of the organization. Thank you for leading the way because I’ve had a wary eye as this organization has wrapped itself in a cloak of info-tainment as the work of gay civil rights has marched on, particularly with marriage.

I write, however, to give you pause. I live in a moderate Pennsylvania suburb of Philadelphia where we elected our first Democrat in a long time named Rep Patrick Murphy. It was an upset over a solid Republican Mike Fitzpatrick – a good guy with a good record. Murphy the Iraq war veteran, however, won here with nearly two years of wearing down his shoe leather – a remarkable campaign in a county filled with discontent about the war. Nonetheless, Murphy embraced the gay community here. He came regularly to The Raven, the only gay gathering place in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County area. And he also sought me out at Pride Events in Philadelphia. Consistently, he has verbally supported civil unions and gay marriage.

HRC has supported him and he has attended HRC events along the way. What I’m saying, Andrew, is that HRC has given a political forum and source of fundraising to a very gay-friendly congressman. The man won in November, and that’s a very good thing thanks to his hard fought campaign, and support from people like me and my spouse, as well as HRC’s financial and grass-roots supoort.

Really, the support of candidates can work. And yes, HRC needs more transparency. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Agreed. The question is simply how effective the support is, how focused it is, and whether the group is as ethical, transparent and accountable as it should be. In the last election cycle, Tim Gill’s group did exactly the same thing – to greater effect and with far less overhead.

If you’re an economic and fiscal conservative, Clinton’s record beats Bush handily. Daniel Mitchell has a good piece making the case here. Money quote:

If Clinton and Bush were graded solely on the basis of fiscal policy, one could argue that their tax and spending records offset each other. But there are other important issues, and Clinton clearly wins the tiebreaker.

Take trade, for example. At best, Bush has a mixed record. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is a step in the right direction, but his steel tariffs and agricultural subsidies are examples of anti-trade initiatives. Clinton policy was unambiguously pro-trade, however, largely because of the approval and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that also launched the World Trade Organization.

Clinton gets a better grade on regulatory policy, as well. Bush signed into law the prohibitively expensive Sarbanes-Oxley law, as well as a market-distorting energy bill. The Clinton years, by contrast, saw the burden of regulation reduced on numerous sectors of the economy, including agriculture, financial services and telecommunications.

Clinton also beats Bush on federalism. He signed a welfare reform legislation that ended an entitlement program and reduced the central government’s power and authority. On education, Bush went the other direction. His No Child Left Behind Act increased federal control over an area that properly belongs under the purview of state and local governments.

It takes us into the thickets of Republican politics in Utah.

He’s getting more candid about it by the day – and it’s frustrating not to see this covered more in the U.S. media. McCain wants to put torture behind us, and to reach out again to allies. Money quote from the Sunday Telegraph:

In a sign that he wants to distance himself from the president – to whom he lost in an ugly campaign in 2000 – Sen McCain outlined a series of measures to roll back Bush policies and counter the "ugly American" image.

"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth (an army base in Kansas) and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases," he said. "I would reaffirm my commitment to address the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. I know how important this is in Europe in particular."

A future McCain-Cameron alliance across the Atlantic is an appealing one.

Resources for investigating what they’re up to in Iraq and Afghanistan can be found here.

I recommend reading the actual report on which my paper, the Sunday Times, based its story on Iraqis feeling more confident about the future. The sectarian differences in perspective are much more striking than headlines about "Iraqis". From the press release:

Despite the horrendous personal security problems only 26 percent of the country preferred life under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein, with 49 percent preferring life under the current political regime of Noori al-Maliki. As one may expect, it is the Sunnis who are most likely to back the previous regime (51 percent) with the Shias (66 percent) preferring the current administration.

Carried out amongst a nationally representative sample of 5,019 Iraqi adults aged 18yrs+ and coming just days before the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the poll reveals that despite the rising number of civilian deaths each month as a result of militia activity, only 27% would concede that their country is actually in a state of civil war. Opinion here is clearly divided, as 22% feel “we are close to a state of civil war but not yet in one” while 18% argue that the country is “still some way from civil war”.

So, in fact, almost half of Iraqis currently say that their country is either in or close to a state of civil war. The numbers are very different in the Shia-dominated South from the more Sunni north:

Regionally, 43% of those in the Shia dominated South of the country claim ‘Iraq will never get as far as civil war’. This figure in the Sunni dominated north plummets to 5 percent where most (42 percent) feel the country is already in a state of civil war.

It’s worth downloading and reading the whole PDF file. What I learn from it is that Saddam truly was a hideous monster, but that Iraq is still a terribly divided country that still wants to remain a single country. That means soft partition may be hard; and it means civil war could be long and intense and also regional. Much of the action will not take place in the South but in the north and Baghdad. We could be fighting this for a very, very long time if we decide to stay enmeshed.

Two contrary blogposts discussing the story can be read here (pro-surge) and here (anti-surge).

Could we please stop calling "private military contractors" anything but mercenaries? I know some aren’t in combat (although many more are). But they are military forces and support in the private sector working in a war-zone for one side (or other) for pay. They’re mercenaries. And what they have been up to in Iraq is one of the great under-covered stories of the war. I have a feeling that the public will one day be shocked at what has been going on in front of our noses.

They served him croissants that were not fresh enough.

Another longtime gay activist/blogger takes on the Human Rights Campaign. You want to know the future of gay rights? Here’s where the vision is. You want to know the future of gay culture? Try Kansas City.