Fuck the fucking Yankees. In loving memory of Steve Gilliard.
Archives for 2009
Parsing Obama’s Critics
Sullivan doubles down:
This simply doesn’t make sense. Hate crime laws for most categories, including federal measures, have been around for a long time. The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation. So the president had a chance to defend gays from being excluded from the usual roster of victims, in front of military leaders, and he had to walk backwards into this strange circumlocution.
He’s lost his damned mind. As several of you have pointed out, nowhere in the bill do the words lesbian or gay appear:
The word “gay” never appears in the bill. Neither does the word “lesbian,” “homosexual,” or “bisexual.”
It protects people from being targeted because of their sexual orientation. Which of course applies to everybody.
So Obama was absolutely correct in describing it as a bill that “protects people based on … who they love.”
And what does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?
It really does take big brass balls for Sullivan to complain about the legislation, then to complain about the way the legislation is signed, and then to do so disingenuously, because the line preceding the quote that gives Andrew the vapors so much states that there will be another signing ceremony specifically for the hate crimes legislation.
I seriously am to the point that every time I open memeorandum or check the progressive blogs, I’m beginning to see the same kind of batshit crazy I see on right wing blogs. Has every one just lost their damned minds? Did everyone go insane?
*** Update ***
And no, I am not claiming Sully is a progressive, I was just thinking that everyone has gone nuts.
*** Update #2 ***
From the comments:
I would like to note something from Sullivan’s writeup:
The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation.
This is false on two levels. First off, the bill adds not just sexual orientation, but gender identity. This may not effect Andrew Sullivan, it sure as hell effects me. It’s also a pretty big deal historically speaking. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality this is the very first transgender rights bill to ever pass at the Federal level.
Second off, even if Sullivan had said “sexual orientation and gender identity”, it would still be simply wrong that adding these new categories is the only thing the bill does. The bill also strengthens the existing hate crimes law in several ways, including expanding the cases in which Federal authorities may step in to investigate a hate crime when local law enforcement falls down, and giving grants to local law enforcement agencies who find they do not have sufficient funds to properly investigate hate crimes. If you will notice the bill’s official title “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”, James Byrd Jr. being a heterosexual black man who was tortured and killed by white supremacists in 1998.
Sullivan opposes this bill, but apparently never bothered to learn a single thing about it.
But he didn’t say “gay.”
It’s only a paper, Moon
I knew that not many people read the Washington Times, but I didn’t know its numbers were this bad (via GOS):
down 17 percent to 67,148
That’s amazing pathetic. Pick a random second-tier city and google their newspaper. You’ll generally find the circulation to be around 100K or higher (I just did this with Syracuse and Tacoma).
By 2002, Moonies had spent $1.7 billion subsidizing the paper. And that was when papers were doing well. So God only knows how much money it is losing today.
I don’t see how Sun Myung Moon is getting his money’s worth from this ridiculous little venture, even granting that its “reporters” show up on the tube a lot more than reporters from any other paper with such shitty circulation numbers.
Update. Yes, I know it is a propaganda front. But, to put it in perspective, the paper was losing $85 million a year for 20 years and certainly much more than that now. The operating expenses of the Heritage Foundation — also a propaganda front, of course — is about $49 million. And that’s 2007 dollars. It’s a good bet that the Moonie Times loses three to four times the operating budget of the Heritage Foundation now.
That’s just not a good way to spend your propaganda dollars.
Piss Christ
Oh no. The American Taliban is all upset about… a tv show:
HBO’s hit series “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has pushed the comedic envelope for many years, but what happened in Sunday’s episode was so disgraceful it’s already received comment from the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue.
The set-up is the show’s star and producer Larry David is taking some medication that is making him urinate quite forcefully.
It’s so powerful that while urinating in his assistant’s bathroom, he accidentally splashed some of it on a picture of Jesus Christ hanging on a nearby wall.
Stone him!
Barack Obama Also Hates Gays
Shorter Andrew Sullivan– “Fuck you, Barack Obama, for signing the hate crimes legislation. How dare you? Just words. Asshole.”
And no, I am not kidding.
I also love that the GOLD STANDARD for some bloggers is the speed with which POTUS has remarks up on the website. Remember a couple weeks ago when that idiot freaked out because the HRC speech was not up fast enough on a Saturday night, and that was perceived as a grievous insult and demonstrated Obama’s “true feelings” about gay people.
*** Update ***
Some people might want to know- Has Barack Obama ever played basketball with a gay person? Can anyone get in touch with Savannah Guthrie?
Lincoln Bedroom 2, Electric Boogaloo
Remember how the Clintons used to rent the Lincoln Bedroom out to fat cat donors? And then how Bush came in and cleaned the place up and kicked out all the lobbyists and made us all proud again? Well, Obama’s turning out to be even worse than Clinton.
I can’t wait til Tim Pawlenty gets in and restores some dignity to the place.
Barack Obama Hates Women
This is just asinine:
Jesse Taylor deals with this nonsense, but I think it is important to single out Savannah Guthrie for starting all this crap:
NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie asked him that earlier this week. She asked him if his preference for all-male hoops sends the wrong signal. Or as she put it, “Some people might look at it and say, ‘Gosh, there’s the old boys club again.’”
Well done, Savannah. Next to the #dickwhisper’s question about Obama’s bathing suit, this is the biggest waste of time by a reporter with access that I’ve seen. And, with an assist from the insiders like Tapper who want to stir things up even when there is no there there, all of a sudden we have PUMA’s and wingnuts running around screaming that Obama is a sexist. Because he plays basketball with Reggie Love instead of Anita Dunn.
The endgame of this is so obvious. This isn’t about sexism. This isn’t about Barack Obama. This is another beltway game where the press sees how much they can make the administration jump. Are they really proposing that Janet Napolitano come out and do some half court with Obama, the UNC guys, and secret service agents? Do they want Lisa Leslie on retainer?
No. This is about power and control, and this is about driving traffic to their respective website/network. They want to make the WH squirm and if they get really lucky over-react, and what better way to do it than pointless allegations of sexism? They’re just asking questions that matter, you see. “Some say it’s an all boys club,” or “Some say this looks bad” or “some say you have a problem with women.” And then what they want is for Obama to stage an all women’s game or a mixed game for the cameras, and they can say “See, there was a problem, and our focus on this issue corrected it!” Who says investigative journalism is dead! And they will pretend they have accomplished something, while ignoring the Republicans blocking everything on health care and the robber barons on Wall Street continue to rape main street and the taxpayers and so on.
There’s your liberal media. Assholes, all of them. Seriously- go read David Brock’s
*** Update ***
I should probably add that what makes Guthrie’s effort so awesome is that she took Candy Crowley’s “some people say” to a whole new level. She didn’t just use the hoary old “some people say,” she kicked it up a notch and used “Some people might look at it and say.” I mean, how f-ing awesome is that? Some people might say just about anything, so if you want to stir shit up as a reporter, you can just make up any old bullshit, because SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SAY IT! Somewhere, Savannah Guthrie’s j-school professors just hanged themselves.