The Dish

This doesn’t excuse some of his remarks, but it does give another view of the man:

As a leader, Wright defied convention at every turn. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune last year, he recalled a time during the 1970s when the UCC decided to ordain gay and lesbian clergy. At its annual meeting, sensitive to the historic discomfort some blacks have with homosexuality, gay leaders reached out to black pastors.

At that session, Wright heard the testimony of a gay Christian and, he said, he had a conversion experience on gay rights. He started one of the first AIDS ministries on the South Side and a singles group for Trinity gays and lesbians—a subject that still rankles some of the more conservative Trinity members, says Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a church member.

One thing I will always respect about Jeremiah Wright is that, alone among many black ministers, he saw and embraced the God-given dignity of gay men and women. He is a flawed man. He has said some angry things. But I do not believe he is an evil man, as some have claimed. And I also believe he has been a pioneer in one the great current civil rights movements, and done it in a place where it has been hardest.

(Hat tip: Chris Crain).

"God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place…[God will say:] And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

It was Martin Luther King Jr, someone whom the Sean Hannitys and Bill O’Reillys of the time called a communist, and an associate of moral degenerates (a gay man, Bayard Rustin, with a criminal record for public sex and one of the great heroes of twentieth century American history). E.J.’s column today is one of the best he has ever written.

There’s no solid evidence of foul play from any rival campaign in this Bill Gertz scoop; but count me skeptical about this being totally innocent. From the absurd rumors of his religion, the lies about the pledge of allegiance, the uproar over Wright, it’s quite clear that Obama’s historic candidacy has some people in a panic. Good. Some people should be.

Clinton supporter Joseph Wilson:

Claims of superior intuitive judgment by his campaign and by him are self-evidently disingenuous, especially in light of disclosures about his long associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko.

Joe Klein’s response:

If her campaign persists in peddling this sort of kamikaze stuff–and make no mistake, this sort of op-ed is usually vetted by the campaign–her judgment should be called into question.

It appears that only a majority of Republicans buy the notion that Obama shares Wright’s views as expressed in a tiny proportion of his sermons on YouTube. Eric Kleefeld has more:

The internals show only 17% of Democrats saying Obama shares Wright’s ideas, along with 20% of independents and 36% of Republicans.

Fox also asked respondents whether they had doubts about Obama because of his association with Wright. The results: 35% Yes, 54% No, with the numbers standing at 26%-66% for Democrats, 27%-61% among independents, and 56%-33% with Republicans.

The independents seem to me to be the critical block. Obama has clearly been wounded by the onslaught. But it is not fatal.

Live by YouTube; die by YouTube. A very white backlash:

The Clinton White House, that is.

Some black guy won’t shut up.

A transgender man experiences pregnancy:

This whole process, from trying to get pregnant to being pregnant, has been a challenge for us. The first doctor we approached was a reproductive endocrinologist. He was shocked by our situation and told me to shave my facial hair. After a $300 consultation, he reluctantly performed my initial checkups. He then required us to see the clinic’s psychologist to see if we were fit to bring a child into this world and consulted with the ethics board of his hospital. A few months and a couple thousand dollars later, he told us that he would no longer treat us, saying he and his staff felt uncomfortable working with “someone like me.”

In total, nine different doctors have been involved. This is why it took over one year to get access to a cryogenic sperm bank to purchase anonymous donor vials, and why Nancy and I eventually resorted to home insemination. 

Hilzoy marks the Iraq anniversary:

The first Gulf War had a purely military objective: kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. This was popular with Kuwaitis, for obvious reasons. More to the point, however, Kuwait had not been occupied for long. There was an existing social and political structure that just needed to be put back in place. So we had no complicated political tasks to achieve within Kuwait itself. Everything we needed to do could be done with military force, and we have the best military force in the world.

Invading Iraq was, obviously, completely different. Iraqis needed to set up a society virtually from scratch. They badly needed our help: help like ensuring basic law and order after the regime fell, and protecting infrastructure from looting. Even if we had not failed utterly to do those things, though, their task would have been immensely difficult.

Imagine how much is presupposed by the fact that I can walk down a street in Baltimore and assume that no one will rob me, or bundle me into a car and hold me for ransom; or by the fact that people who own warehouses or equipment yards need to protect their property against small groups of people, but not against trained private armies. There are, after all, a lot of people who need money, and yet, oddly enough, very few of them do these things. A whole lot goes into making that true: culture, policing, a whole network of shared understandings and assumptions and social mores. In a country like Iraq, when you excise a tyrannical government, all of that is gone.