Should gay folks be able to get married?

Sure. Why not? They certainly can’t mess it up any worse than straight folks have.

If the only reasoning someone can offer me that they shouldn’t have this right is based on The Bible and/or a personal gag reflex, I can’t give their argument much credit.

On the other hand, I think that gays are dumb-asses for having the battle now, when Bush and the religious right will be able to maximize the effect the issue will have in the next election. Believe me, Karl Rove is freakin’ elated that San Francisco is doing this mass wedding stuff. It’s scaring the rubes, making ’em worry about looking West lest they turn to pillars of salt, and it will get them out in force to vote against whichever Democrat faces Bush in November.

It’s another Nader-esque thing. Ralph Nader is a smart man, and most of what he says is at least close to correct. He wants to be a force against corporate corruption, and gods know we need some more forces like that. So what does he do? He helps derail Gore and hands the freaking country to the corporate interests (not to mention anti-civil rights and pro-religious fascism interests) in a shiny gilt gift bag.

So some gays get to publicly show their commitment, even though it’s gonna be legally moot because the system’s not changing, and their marriages won’t be recognized. HURRAY!

Karl Rove strokes his little kitty, chuckling his evil laugh, and sees that though things aren’t going well for his boy overall at the moment, they’re starting to look up, oh yes indeed…

Then he falls asleep and dreams about that time he fellated Dick Chaney in the Oval Office…

Well, I knew Gov. Bush was in trouble with the libertarian and fiscal responsibility conservatives, but apparently his problems are deeper than that. This is from the Washington Times (itself a far-right rag, owned by Republican power-broker Sun Myung-Moon):

“It’s not just economic conservatives upset by runaway federal spending that he’s having trouble with. I think his biggest problem will be social conservatives who are not motivated to work for the ticket and to ensure their fellow Christians get to the polling booth,” said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute.

The rest of the article is here. It’s quite interesting.

From here, it looks as if Bush is willing to sacrifice some of his less fundie base in order to kowtow more effectively to the Halliburtons and Enrons of the world (knowing how much money that’ll net his campaign, currently more than half a million bucks a day), but he is taking the Christian conservatives for granted, because, hey, he’s their boy, right? And where else are they gonna go?

Possibly no further than the kitchen for another can o’ Buttwiper, it seems.

There are even rumours floating about that ex-Judge Roy Moore of Ally-bammy is considering a third party run, and a lot of these folks would swarm to a man like Moore because he’s 100% as bat-shit-bozo as they are, and they (like many a Naderite) lack the common sense to see that their man can’t win.

I’m sure we’ll see quite a bit of Rovian pandering in the months ahead to try to buff these folks up.

Over the past few years, there have been a few pieces of reportage that have stuck in my mind as masterworks, so I thought I’d share them here as they drift back into mind.

The first is from right after George W. Bush “won” the election in 2001, and is from Salon:

Dan Quayle redux

As we prepare for a second President Bush, the deja vu isn’t caused by memories of the father.

By Lawrence Weschler

December 16, 2000 At the time of his sudden ascension to prominence, back in 1988, when the entire world seemed to be stammering, as if in one voice, “Him? Why him?” Dan Quayle, we were assured, had struck a resonant chord in the patrician sponsor who had selected him to serve as his vice presidential running mate. George Bush saw something in the boyish young (though actually not that young) man; indeed we were told, he recognized in him something of a son.

Little did we know.

There were countless other fresh young politicians from whom to choose that strange summer morn, some of them quite competent, but Bush pere chose that one. Just as this time around, bent on revenge for their defeat four years later, the Bush clan could have rallied behind the competent son but instead chose to marshal its forces around (behind, in front of, above, beneath) its hapless dauphin.

People have been speaking of George W. as a latter-day liter version of his father, and there is indeed a strong sense of deja vu in all of this, but the comparison to Bush the elder misses the essential point: This is not so much a case of deja vu as of repetition compulsion, a bizarre family psychodrama writ large. With George W. (the pervading vacuousness, the deer-in-the-headlights stare, the cavalcade of late-night TV jokes, the burgeoning compilations of tortured syntax and uproarious gaffes, the nervous edgy glances of the surrounding adult handlers, the defiantly clueless Alfred E. Neuman gaze, the utter lack of curiosity regarding the cluefulness of the world), what we are witnessing isn’t so much the return of George the elder as the triumphant apotheosis of Quayle!

Remember how we used to cringe through the better part of Daddy Bush’s term in office, mortified that something might befall him and we’d all get stuck with Quayle? Well, guess what? I’m reminded, in turn, of the joke that was going around in March 1969, about the accident victim who’d spent the entirety of the previous decade in a coma. Coming to, his first frantic query had concerned the health of President Eisenhower. Informed that Ike had in fact died just a few days earlier, the poor fellow wailed, “My God, that means Nixon must be president!”

From Salon:

The Washington Post reports that even as the Bush administration is caught up in the debate on gay marriage, a Republican appointee at the independent agency Office of Special Counsel, whose mission is to protect whistleblowers and other federal employees from retribution, pulled references to sexual orientation discrimination off the Web site where government employees can learn about their rights in the workplace.

“The Web pages at the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency, has removed references to sexual orientation from a discrimination complaint form, training slides, a brochure titled ‘Your Rights as a Federal Employee’ and other documents. Scott J. Bloch, the agency head, said he ordered the material removed because of uncertainty over whether a provision of civil service law applies to federal workers who claim unfair treatment because they are gay, bisexual or heterosexual.” More Post: “The provision usually has been interpreted to mean that a worker’s off-duty behavior cannot be used as a justification for dismissal, demotion or discipline unless it hampers job performance or interferes with the work of others. That has been the stance at the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the government’s workplace policies, for at least two decades. The OPM Web site continues to advise employees that bias based on sexual orientation is unlawful and informs them that complaints may be filed at the Office of Special Counsel.”

Reports are that Howard Dean will announce the end of his campaign this afternoon.

UPDATE: Dean will apparently still keep his name on the ballots, just in case the electorate trips and accidentally votes for him.

A letter to Media Whores Online regarding Ralph Nader’s thick-headed refusal to see how much damage he’s done to, really, all that he values:

I once rode on a small elevator with 7 others in San Francisco with a sign that said “no more that 8 persons allowed.” Just as the door closed, two more crammed into the elevator which moved, then stopped between floors. The anxiety was palpable. The last guy on, in his own defense, said, “Don’t blame me, I wasn’t the ninth person!”

To me, that’s Nader’s logic. Uh oh.

Steven Brown
Palm Springs, CA

“The Vent” in the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation is an anonymous vehicle for the great unwashed to throw their cheap shots at whatever’s bugging them. Occasionally, there’s actually a spot of cleverness to be found in it, and today is blessed with two:

And people are asking why Bush’s National Guard records are just now appearing? Duh! They had to wait till the ink dried!

and

I am scared of anyone who says they were once an ape. But then, I am also afraid of werewolves.

The latest attack on Kerry comes through the graces of Matt Drudge, who’s trying to get a meme going that Kerry has a looming “intern problem.” So far, it doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction:

Late Thursday morning — with George W. Bush’s credibility damaged on several fronts as reporters demanded answers to questions about his National Guard service that should have been asked years ago — the Drudge Report defamed his leading Democratic challenger with a “world exclusive” smudge of personal dirt.

Vague and unsourced but hyped to the maximum by Drudge, the brief item sounded disturbingly familiar. The Internet gossip accused John Kerry of “recent alleged infidelity” with “a woman who recently fled the country,” adding that a “close friend of the woman recently approached a reporter with fantastic stories.” The same item ran an “off the record” comment attributed to retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who was quoted as saying, “Kerry will implode over an intern issue.” Major news organizations from ABC News to the Associated Press, warned Drudge, were all over the story.

By evening, however, no major news organization had run with it, though many were chasing it. Perhaps frustrated, Drudge put up an additional item eight hours later, with a few more details about the alleged relationship. “Unlike the Monica Lewinsky drama, which first played out publicly in this space, with audio tapes, cigar and a dress, the Kerry situation has posed a challenge to reporters investigating the claims,” his later item explained. Drudge also quoted a “top source” as saying: “There is no lawsuit testimony this time [like Clinton with Paula Jones]. It is hard to prove.”

But the kind of proof usually required by national news organizations isn’t what Drudge needs in order to put innuendo into circulation.

Somewhat conveniently, Drudge had earlier posted an item that blamed the sudden smudging on a disgruntled Democratic consultant named Chris Lehane, who had been fired by Kerry before going to work as a communications aide to Clark. That second item was later taken down without explanation. By then, of course, this Drudge-drama was already “rocking” Democrats — and delighting Republicans — across the nation, at least according to Drudge.

The template was pure Monica: Intern has affair with married politician, is betrayed by a “close friend,” and finally exposed by the pliant Drudge.

So far, however, the mainstream media has yet to touch the Drudge item, despite heavy promotion by Rush Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal Web site. Whoever lit this match must have been disappointed when the story that smoldered in newsrooms during the afternoon failed to blaze into a firestorm by early evening. The only exception, so far, is a daily newspaper in Scotland. (Joe Conason, Salon)

The best thing about Drudge’s site is you can visit every day and easily see who’s the current biggest threat to the GOP power structure: it’s the person Drudge is attacking the most.

He’s a journalist.

Heh.

Joe Conason writes political commentary for Salon and The New York Observer. Here’s his take on the sudden flood of attacks aimed at slandering John Kerry’s authentic military hero status…

Feb. 10, 2004  |  Many months before the dormant controversy over George W. Bush’s military career resurfaced, conservatives and Republicans were raking over yellowed clippings as they sought to revive dim memories of the Vietnam War. Their target was not the errant National Guard Lt. Bush, of course, but the decorated Navy Lt. John F. Kerry.

Last year, when Kerry was considered the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, he began to take flak from the far right over his antiwar activism and his war record. Those attacks slowed when his candidacy stalled and temporarily sank.

But now, as he claims primary victories and climbs past Bush in the polls, Kerry is again the prime target of conservative invective that depicts his peace activism as unpatriotic, anti-military, and somehow hostile to his brothers in arms. With scrutiny focused on Bush’s alleged failure to fulfill his Guard obligations, the destruction of Kerry’s character has reached red-alert urgency on the right. And a key purveyor of this anti-Kerry propaganda is a former Green Beret named Ted Sampley, who has run a profitable business as a “POW/MIA advocate” from his home in North Carolina for most of the past two decades. Few remember that Sampley was critical to efforts to similarly smear Sen. John McCain, another war hero, when he ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000. Now Sampley has started an organization pointedly calling itself “Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry,” which proclaims its determination to ruin Kerry’s campaign.

Republicans are understandably rattled by Kerry’s political appeal to Vietnam-era veterans — and, by extension, to veterans of more recent conflicts as well. From the beginning, the Massachusetts senator has been accompanied by a contingent of vets; but their presence was dramatized last month in Iowa by the sudden appearance of James Rassmann, a veteran who described how Kerry had pulled him out of a river, while machine-gun fire raked their boat, and saved his life. That was why he had traveled from Oregon to join the campaign, Rassmann explained — even though he is a registered Republican.

The Democratic vet offensive inspired a pair of contradictory responding salvos from the Republicans. Versions of both have appeared recently on the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. In a brief essay published on Feb. 7, World War II hero Bob Dole warned that “we do not need to divide America over who served and how,” and pointed out that Kerry himself had issued a similar plea in 1992 regarding the issue of Bill Clinton’s Vietnam draft history. Dole forgot to note that his fellow Republicans, ignoring Kerry’s plea, incessantly excoriated Clinton as a draft dodger and worse.

Only two weeks earlier, the Journal editors had published a harsh attack on Kerry’s war record titled “Conduct Unbecoming: Kerry Doesn’t Deserve Vietnam Vets’ Support.” Written by a former Special Forces lieutenant, the essay complains that Kerry’s antiwar activism was “financed by Jane Fonda,” whose 1972 solidarity visit to Hanoi made her a permanent symbol of betrayal to many Vietnam vets. “Many veterans believe these protests led to more American deaths,” wrote the author, Stephen Sherman, “and to the enslavement of the people on whose behalf the protests were ostensibly being undertaken.” Significantly, he also berates Kerry for suppressing a “revealing inquiry” into the POW/MIA issue, another matter of deep sensitivity for vets, as co-chairman of a Senate investigating committee. Even for the Journal, that was a remarkably irresponsible accusation.

But for the Republicans, cutting off Kerry’s potential base among veterans is as vital as deflecting questions about Bush’s military record. From obscure Web sites to Rush Limbaugh to the Weekly Standard, the right-wing media are eagerly popularizing the same attacks featured in Sherman’s essay. The Web site for Ted Sampley’s Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry offers a pungent example of the right’s rhetorical style: The Viet Cong’s National Liberation Front flag is the background to a shot of a young, fatigue-clad Kerry. That picture is pure computer magic — in other words, a fake.

According to author Susan Katz Keating, who has written extensively on Vietnam veterans and the POW/MIA movement for the Washington Times and Soldier of Fortune magazine, deception is what Sampley does for a living. Her book “Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America,” published in 1994 by Random House, exposes how Sampley and his allies abused the hopes of grieving families for fun and profit. Their best-known victim, until now, was Sen. John McCain. He first drew Sampley’s poisonous attention when, along with Kerry, he debunked the idea that Americans were still being held by Vietnam, and endorsed the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Communist government.

Keating describes in detail how, in 1992, Sampley commenced a “scurrilous” crusade to punish McCain:

“Sampley … accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.

“To those who know McCain and are familiar with his behavior in captivity, the charge is ludicrous. McCain resisted his captors to such a degree that he was isolated in a special prison for troublemakers. He repeatedly refused special favors, including early release, and emerged as a spiritual and religious leader for other prisoners. Nonetheless, Sampley was persistent enough in his claims that the press in McCain’s home state of Arizona picked up on the KGB story.”

In 1992, Sampley wrote a long article that portrayed McCain as a “Manchurian candidate,” who had betrayed America to the North Vietnamese and then enlisted as a secret Communist agent. But it wasn’t until seven years later that the celebrated Navy pilot and ex-POW found out how much damage such smears could inflict. After McCain declared his presidential candidacy in 1999, Sampley revived the “Manchurian candidate” smear as a convenient weapon for the Senator’s political enemies. Some of them, including the prominent conservative Paul Weyrich and Richard Mellon Scaife’s Newsmax Web site, didn’t hesitate to pick up the slimy stuff generated by Sampley. The fringe assault on McCain, amplified by the likes of Weyrich and talk radio, caused grave injury to his campaign during the pivotal South Carolina primary.

Insinuations of treason are being revived for deployment against Kerry, who happens to be a close friend of McCain (Kerry defended McCain against Sampley, denouncing him as a “stupid ass” in print). The simplest way to tar Kerry as an antiwar extremist — and indict him for unpatriotic betrayal in the eyes of many vets — is to pair him with “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. On Monday, Rush Limbaugh published a photograph of Fonda at what appears to be an antiwar rally, under the headline “John Kerry With Hanoi Jane in September, 1970.” And indeed, a blurry face about two rows behind her does resemble the young Kerry.

But Limbaugh, like so many who attack Kerry for working with Fonda against the war, distorts reality. Fonda didn’t travel to Hanoi until August 1972. Obviously that was two years after the September 1970 rally and, more important, a year after she joined demonstrations led by Kerry and his fellow vets in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. By the time Fonda visited Hanoi, Kerry was running for Congress in Boston. There’s no evidence that he worked with Fonda after her notorious trip. (If Monday’s rant indicates Limbaugh’s state of mind, he is absolutely unhinged by the prospect of renewed debate over Vietnam. Might his hysteria have anything to do with his own embarrassing escape from the draft?)

Searching for proof of Kerry’s alleged anti-American radicalism has frustrated his more intelligent adversaries. The current issue of the Weekly Standard carries a windy account of this ongoing quest by David Skinner, who dug up a copy of the New Soldier, a 1971 antiwar volume that carried Kerry’s byline. Skinner offers a long, dull account of his effort to find a copy of this minor, somewhat moldy period piece — and when he does, the results are anticlimactic. “Anti-Kerry oppo researchers will be disappointed to learn that Kerry wrote very little of the book,” he reveals at long last. “It reprints his [1971] Senate testimony and includes a brief afterword from him.” Skinner can’t manage to work up much righteous anger. At the end, he complains that in the midst of the movement’s turmoil, Kerry “was able to have his cake and eat it, too, becoming the establishment, patriotic face of a radical, anti-patriotic movement.”

Please allow me to translate: The Weekly Standard found nothing because there was nothing to find. But that won’t stop the desperate, screaming smears, escalating in volume as Kerry stumps toward his party’s nomination.

Today’s column by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald is brilliant:

Let me tell you how President George W. Bush ruined my weekend.

But first, a little background.

I write two columns a week, one of which has a Friday deadline for publication the following week. It’s a tricky proposition; you’re tasked with writing something that will still be relevant days later. So you look for subjects that are timely but not likely to change over the weekend.

I figured I’d found such a subject Friday before last when I wrote about former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay’s testimony before a congressional panel. Kay said that he and the Bush administration “were all wrong” in believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Kay thought there should be an independent investigation into whatever intelligence failures led our government to believe there were weapons. Aides to the president promptly dismissed the suggestion and as late as that Friday, the president himself was refusing to support it. So I wrote a column sharply critical of his position.

Change of plans

Sunday comes. And with it, news that the president, under pressure from political foes and allies alike, has reluctantly changed his mind and will now support an investigation.

This is where the weekend turns sour, because I know what’s going to happen Monday. And it does. Most newspapers, including the Detroit Free Press, kill the column, but a few run it. So on one page, I’m blasting the president for not supporting the investigation and on another, he is supporting the investigation.

This leads to nasty notes. Some make reference to an affirmative action columnist. Some suggest that I now owe the president an apology.

Which is a real jaw-dropper. He had to be dragged into this like a toddler to a doctor’s office, but I. Owe him. An apology?

Very well, then. Here it is.

Mr. President, I apologize for writing that column. I should have realized that even the most mulish obstructionism has its limits.

And furthermore

While I’m at it, allow me to express contrition for a few other things that are probably somehow my fault.

I apologize that some of your supporters are so ignorant as to think criticism of your war has to do with affirmative action. I should have done a better job educating them.

I apologize that more than 500 Americans have died defending a cause that is apparently not what they were told. I should have protested more vigorously.

I apologize that much of the world hates us. I should have warned you more insistently.

I apologize that a minority of voters, some hanging chads and the Supreme Court got you into this mess. I should have voted twice.

Finally, Mr. President, I apologize that you rammed through laws making it possible to lock up American citizens indefinitely without trial, charges or access to attorneys. I should have fought you harder. But I was scared.

Unfortunately for me, this is another column written on a Friday. I run the risk that by the time it is read, the world will no longer hate us, your supporters will have stopped questioning the patriotism or credentials of dissenters, the Patriot Act will have been repealed, and all those people will no longer be dead.

I apologize in advance.

Interesting.

Remember me earlier citing the incomparable David Brooks of the New York Times (you know, the flagship of the liberal media)?

A piece in today’s Salon is all about Brooks, and his latest apologia for Gov. George W. Bush…

Deconstructing David Brooks
The New York Times columnist translated Bush’s “Meet the Press” debacle for those who missed its hidden wisdom. Now let’s translate Brooks.

By James Pinkerton

Feb. 11, 2004  |  “Like most of us, President Bush doesn’t have the facility for perfectly expressing his situation in conversation. But if he did, he might have said something like this to Tim Russert in the interview broadcast Sunday …” So David Brooks began a remarkable column in Tuesday’s New York Times.

In other words, if the president faltered, or failed to convince, or otherwise deviated from the neocon line, surely it was but a trip of the tongue, not a rebellion of the mind. So like a frustrated Cyrano de Bergerac shoving his blundering frontman aside, Brooks proceeds to voice the heartfelt thoughts that tantalizingly didn’t come out of the president’s mouth, although they so obviously should have. For the right words are words to move the hearts of patriots to love and to conquest.

Since Brooks has no qualms about lip-syncing for the inarticulate, I’m happy to provide a similar service for Brooks, subtitling for the all-too-articulate. Indeed, so smooth is Brooks’ gloss on what Bush should have said that I feel I must spell it out for the American people, most of whom don’t read the Times. So here follows a translation of David Brooks’ vision of George W. Bush’s vision, in 10 straight-up simple talking points for the noncognoscenti. And by the way, Mr. President, I hope you’re paying attention this time.

I, David Brooks, say that Bush meant to say:

1. You, the American people, must be afraid. Your level of fear is the measure of your grasp of reality. Absolute Fear is Absolute Truth, and must be the driver of all your deeds.

2. Optional wars of aggression make countries safer. Strike first, then repeat indefinitely. Going on the attack diminishes the number, motivation and activity of your enemies.

3. Occupation, and imposing different values by force, is freedom. Success in neocolonialist enterprises is probable. And triumph is inevitable, if we have enough Will.

4. Sins of commission are better than sins of omission: This means America, a big rich country with a lot to lose, must act like a poor desperate country with nothing to lose. This is known as “national greatness.”

5. We are fighting pure evil and the hate in men’s souls — the human condition. This will take a “generational commitment,” and then some. So hurry up, Mrs. Gomez, and bear more sons.

6. Of course, the adversarial elites oppose the Iraq war. Therefore, I have had to put my faith in The People — only to realize that the masses are more interested in their private fleshly pursuits than in their public martial duties. In fact, I slept through that Janet Jackson halftime show, because I’ve been laboring so long at my lonely Churchillian duties. Fortunately, I’ve still got the military ready to join me in this world-historical crusade.

7. Oh wait: Much of the military is critical of this open-ended, no-exit-strategy war. Good thing they don’t have free speech. I will put on another quasi-military costume to convince them I’m one of them.

8. Got God? Check. And if God’s on my side, where does that leave you?

9. I never said I was against Big Government.

10. Finally, if you disagree with any of this, you may be an anti-Semite. Oops, that was just me again, David Brooks. Couldn’t help myself.*

– – – – – – – – – – – –

About the writer
James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

*Brooks was the git who recently wrote a column implying that disagreeing with the neo-conservatives running Bush was anti-semitic.

Astonishingly, we have yet another veteran chiming in with an opinion column in the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation today about the whole military experience and politics thing.

Retired General Zeb Bradford Jr. of Duluth doesn’t attack John Kerry directly, as the other two bozos did, and even states that Kerry and Wes Clark “earned their country’s gratitude.” But the main point of his piece is that military service is not “something to be marketed for political gain.” He says nothing about Bush, but then, Bush isn’t trying to use his AWOL status to gain props from the voters. Go figure.

Gen. Bradford’s piece is pretty mild, and as I said earlier, I don’t see military service as a primary requisite for political office. He seems to think, though, that a veteran like Kerry shouldn’t play up his military service to strengthen his image in the public mind. I disagree.

We’re at war, led there by a man without any solid grounding in the agonies or realities of warfare. His own service record points not only to a rather shallow patriotic impulse, but to a lack of character (especially in the fact that he himself has played up his military service over the years to make him look better than he is. John Kerry’s military record shows courage and strength of character, as does the record of his fight to end the war once he came home.

That’s just a single criterion, and the differences between these two men are far more vast. But with military matters of central import in our daily lives, it’s certainly legitimate to dwell on the qualifications, experiences, and mindset of the candidates to face up to those matters.

Still, the sudden slew of what are basically attacks on Kerry for his military record in order to distract us from the stark diminishment of Bush an honest appraisal of the men’s service would lead to is troubling. Why has the AJC opted to print each of these so soon after the other? Has Jim “the GOP could kill my dog and I’d find a way to say it was good for America” Wooten taken over the entire decision process?

Ah, that ol’ big bad liberal media.