Fuck the Fucking Yankees.
That is all.
Late Night OT (Steve Gilliard Memorial Ed.)Post + Comments (157)
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Message parlor
TPM catches Kaplan pimping paid-for insurance company “research” on the front page.
The article is by Ceci Connelly, who was at the center of the health care salon debacle.
There’s a pretty strong prima facie case for pay-to-play here.
Church Watch
This kind of thing makes me want to puke:
It has also been three and a half months since the White House insisted that the First Family continues to look for a church in Washington to join. Few people would blame them if they decided it would be too disruptive to upend a local congregation–Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all chose to largely avoid Washington churches for similar reasons, and conservatives defended their decisions to do so. It’s all the more surprising then that the White House has chosen to dig in on this point and continue to maintain that the Obamas will choose a local church as their main place of worship. It only becomes a Church Watch if they make it one
It’s a Church Watch because you just made it one, Amy Sullivan.
We live in a country where “journalists” spend a lot of time tracking the church-going habits of our president. Sometimes I think I’d be happier living in Spain under Franco. The food would probably be better and otherwise the general atmosphere would be about the same.
Post nukes ergo propter nukes
I like to joke about Slate running articles with titles like “Why Genocide Is Good For Real Estate Values”, but this is from a real article from Time Magazine:
Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we’ll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you’ll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.
During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. The world wars were the hideous expression of what happens when the human tendency toward conflict hooks up with the violent possibilities of the industrial age. The version of this story we are most familiar with today is the Nazi death machinery, and so we are often tempted to think that if Hitler had not happened, we would never have encountered assembly line murder.
The truth is that industrial killing was practiced by many nations in the old world without nuclear weapons. Soldiers were gassed and machine-gunned by the hundreds of thousands in the trenches of World War I, when Hitler was just another corporal in the Kaiser’s army. By World War II, countries on both sides of the war used airplanes and artillery to rain death on battlefields as well as cities, until the number killed around the world was so huge the best estimates of the total number lost diverge by some 16 million souls. The dead numbered 62 million, or 78 million — somewhere in there.
Look, a huge number of the people who died in wars in the 31 years prior to the invention of the nuclear bomb died in wars that originated in western Europe. Is he really claiming that he can say with a high degree of certainty that German would invaded France again if not for the nuclear bomb? What about the Marshall Plan? What about the European Union?
And, obviously, tell the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki what a lifesaver nuclear bombs have been.
Continuing the HRC Discussion
I used to think the most annoying people to argue with were Clinton supporters during the primary last year. I may have to re-eavulate that assessment. At any rate, back to my earlier post on the bizarre freak-out from the online gay activists to Obama’s speech at the HRC. Some times I don’t think people read what I say at all. For example:
I love this blog but I have a genuine problem with someone who is straight telling gay people to relax regarding DADT and DOM. We just don’t have the luxury of waiting. Sully is a self-righteous tool sometimes and definitely does not speak for the gay community, but honestly John. What we are asking for is so simple and quite small. I would rather not be lectured.
Precisely where did I say to be patient? To state it again, since you all apparently did not read it the first time:
Yes, you have every right to be pissed at the current state of affairs, because I sure would be pissed at being treated as a second class citizen if I were gay, and yes, if I had my way these things would already have been taken care of, and yes, you may have heard parts of his speech a year ago.
If I were gay and being treated like a second-class citizen, denied the rights straight people have, I would be blowing shit up, so I am not telling you to shut up or be patient. What I am telling you, however, is that the response from last night is completely and totally unproductive. In fact, it could actually be destructive to the cause.
The past eight years the Bush administration declared open war on the gay community. Now, you have a President who has openly declared his support for the causes, and not only that, campaigned in support of those issues, and then just took to the microphone and gave a long speech in support of those issues. And the response? This is typical:
He has not even remotely tried to use the bully pulpit. He has not expended one iota of his capital to move anything through Congress…and DADT is rejected by something like 60% plus of the American people!
As I noted in the comments, what exactly do you think the bully pulpit is? When the President takes to the podium at the HRC dinner, and openly, publicly, and I think, passionately supports your cause, that is using the bully pulpit. There isn’t some magic podium with a sign that says “Bully” on it from which a speech can be given and all the wrongs in the world are righted.
And despite the fact that Obama’s position is a 180 degree turn from the previous administration, which declared open war with the FMA, he is greeted with catcalls of “what have you done for me lately” or “just words,” feeding the right-wing narrative that Obama is all talk. Well played.
Nothing constructive is ever built with negativity. Period. So instead of blowing up at the first President in my lifetime to openly advocate for gay rights, why don’t you do something constructive? Why don’t you embrace his message? How about an ad campaign that has Obama speaking from the HRC declaring support for your goals, and asking Congress whether they want to join you and the President in achieving those goals? How about going to Harry Reid, who is in a tight election as it is, and asking him whether or not he will join with the President and the gay community to end DADT and DOMA? How about stating that you stand in unison with the President, that you intend to work with him to achieve those goals.
I understand that may not be as cathartic as knee-capping your own guy while chanting “just words,” but it might be more productive. And it isn’t settling. It isn’t telling you to shut up or relax or be patient. It is telling you that working to change the status quo is more productive than hurting your own team, even though throwing eggs and making farty sounds with your armpit is more fun.
And by the way, while you all are weakening your own team, Maggie Gallagher and Focus on the Family are all raising money to turn things back to the way they were on January 19th 2009. While you may not realize things are a lot different now, trust me, those guys do.
The Next Scheduled Freakout
You can already see it coming.
The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.
This, of course, is precisely how the Bush administration fostered the Anbar Awakening. If we had an adopt-a-moron program going, I would volunteer to watch Ace of Spades for the most historically ignorant shit-losing, but obviously the field is wide open.
Have a little respect
What really bothers me about the Hiatt/Sully Nobel for Neda campaign, beyond the fact that Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, is that it seems disrespectful of Neda’s humanity. This courageous young Iranian woman was a human being, who can no longer speak for herself. Sully and Hiatt don’t know anything about Neda, and they certainly don’t know exactly what she would say, what she would she advocate for, if she were still alive. To use her dead body as a symbol for their own political beliefs is deeply wrong.
I’ve always had the same problem with Christianity. You would like to think that if you spent your life preaching a message of peace and tolerance and were eventually executed for doing so, that people wouldn’t spend the next 2000 years waging wars and torturing people in your name.
I understand the impulse to use the dead bodies of people who died for their beliefs as tools to advance your own agenda. But it’s a temptation that should be resisted, out of respect. It’s one thing to be inspired, it’s quite another to put words in the mouths of the dead.