Alan Keyes and his "selfish hedonist" daughter

Incredible. The 19-year-old daughter of Alan Keyes is an out lesbian.

The story was first reported here and is summarized here.

She is 19 years old. And she has her own blog where she writes about her horrible parents. The poor thing. You can see her in a photo with her dad, and in a photo with her girlfriend. From the blog of Maya Keyes: "...My aunt said something about him being the "voice of America" re: gay rights and he has been one of gay marriage's most outspoken critics, campaigning round-the-clock to make sure that people like yours truly will never be able to enjoy the same benefits he already has. Sometimes I cannot believe I am related to this man. Haha though I'm sure he feels the same way about me."

What a fucking incredible story.

Get your free condoms or..."abstinence packs"?

I recently happened to be at the Student Care Center on campus while they were having an "open house" for incoming U of C students. At this event, you could get cookies and juice, condoms and lube, or something called an "abstinence pack." I must say I did not take one of these bags, but they appeared to contain bubble bath and other small items deemed to represent attractive alternative activities to sex - together with text explaining that 35% of U of C (undergraduate?) students chose to practice abstinence in any given year.

My initial reaction was that this was a complete waste of money. Condoms are "rationed" by the Student Care Center; instead of being able to take them free from a display, you must request them from a staff member every time you want them. Packets of lube are not included in these condom packets, so you have to ask for those, too - and, actually, until this visit I didn't realize lube was available at all. Anyway, it seemed to me that, since there is absolutely no health-based reason for distributing "abstinence packs" and since condoms and lube are in limited supply, the expenditure of any Center funds on the "abstinence" items is inexcusable. Surely there is a legitimate reason to educate people about the abstinence option, and I guess to convey that "it's "OK to be abstinent," through the provision of textual materials and counseling. But free giveaway bags, just so kids with conservative values won't feel slighted when their sexually active classmates receive free goodies?

Of course, it is possible that the abstinence pack contents are supplied by some creepy right-wing campus outreach project, which would in theory absolve the university of having wasted our student health fee on these items. And I'm not planning to ask, because I think the place has changed for the better and I very much like and trust my doctor, who runs the place. But I still think the abstinence packs are, at the very least, questionable. Just because only some students need to make use of a provided resource does not mean that an equivalent must be provided for other students; in fact, it's just that kind of logic that gives multiculturalism a bad reputation.

What do you think?

Fahrenheit 9/2: Reasons to believe

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed truly significant gay rights legislation in California today, "requiring insurance companies doing business in California to offer the same health coverage to registered same-sex partners as they do to married couples" (NYT).

2. Arnold also "courageously signed an important needle-access bill this week, similar to one that was vetoed twice by his predecessor."

3. Check out the reviews of Kitty Kelley's book on Amazon.com. People by and large like the book and think the Bushes are scary and horrifying. They find the anti-Bush reviews "helpful" but not the smaller number of pro-Bush ones. As someone posted just yesterday in a review, "Seems like the anti-bush reviews are in the majority, just like it's gonna be come November 2nd!!"

4. I also learned from reading these reviews that lots of American military personnel in Iraq are seeing Fahrenheit 9/11. Woohoo!

What if 3,300 Americans had died in bombings in the last week?

Professor Juan Cole on Iraq:

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll....

Thanks to Electoral-vote.com for flagging this.

"I fault this president for not knowing what death is"

Everyone should watch John Kerry's September 20th speech on Iraq at NYU. You probably heard, saw, or read about this portion:

The President claims [the Iraq war] is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

I breathed a real sigh of relief when I heard about Kerry's speech. According to the media, this is because I'm a former supporter of Howard Dean (which I am), a twentysomething who watches campaign TV spots on the Internet (which I am), and someone with a pasionate and abiding opposition to the Iraq war (which I am). But that doesn't explain why I felt the way I did when I hear Kerry speak on this issue. Even more than about that hard-hitting attack, I cared more about these passages of his speech:

It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it’s essential if we want to correct our course and do what’s right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

I know this dilemma first-hand. After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power. We still do....

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.

The speech is actually incredibly carefully crafted, accurate, and delivered well. And it's important. It's the most important political speech he's given this year by far. It was widely perceived (for instance, by Bob Herbert in that very morning's New York Times) that Kerry needed to develop a new and powerful line of attack, that he needed to invigorate his campaign and attack Bush on national security in order to win in November, and that's true.

Under present conditions, however, I even feel it's important to realize that here, political advantage is happily joined to moral advantage. The fact that Bush lied about the reason why 1,000 Americans my age, disproportionately working-class and people of color and so many of them eager to get access to an education, have died in Iraq, has been deeply disturbing to me for a year and a half now. That it was not even substantially an issue in the presidential campaign struck me as obscene, that Kerry was being told he had to focus on the economy, struck me as disastrous, the very definition of "out of touch."

E. L. Doctorow has written a powerful account of these feelings more eloquent than anything I could have written:

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

I responded today to the email in my inbox from Hillary Clinton asking me to send another $25 to support the Democrats. I haven't gotten my fall stipend check yet, and I don't have the money at the moment, but I went online and charged a contribution because I wanted to show my support for this new tactic.

And let's bring back not only the White House, but the Senate, too.

Democrats and the 24-hour news cycle: Notes on waking up early in the morning

Published six hours ago, according to Google News, on the Washington Times website:

A veterans group opposed to Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid is initiating one of its largest ad campaigns to date with a TV spot portraying Mr. Kerry as an enemy sympathizer during the Vietnam War.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — which first raised questions about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record — says it's spending $1.3 million in targeted battleground states with an ad focusing on what it said was an unauthorized meeting Mr. Kerry had in 1970 with North Vietnamese communists even while American soldiers were still fighting in Vietnam.

What this story doesn't tell you is that the new Swift Boat ad flips back and forth between 1970s news photos of Kerry and Jane Fonda, and declares that while even Fonda eventually apologized for her betrayal, Kerry still hasn't. Then it asks if we can afford such a betrayer-president when our country's at war (the ad ends with images of fighter planes, the grotesquely expensive, high-tech kind that have proven so useless against a growing insurgency). The ad is being run in swing states only, and it's a bigger ad buy than before.

Calling all Democrats who can spin: move it. Get your fucking asses in gear. Your website, Moveon's website, the major networks and Google News show no signs of any response on your part, let alone a counterattack. You have about an hour and a half to come up with a devastating response that will nip this story in the bud by completely demolishing it. Find a crushing, harsh response that makes Bush look bad. Talk about your work with John McCain to recover the bodies of American soldiers, and how some of them were men you'd known, and so it makes you angry. Whatever you say, make sure you get very stern and pissed-off about the fact that this is a a total lie - that part is absolutely critical. That's what Bush would do, and he'd get away with it. Try it, and you'll find you can get away with it too. I don't know - it's your job, not mine, to get this response on the air.

But you're running a teensy bit late. You have about 90 minutes before it will be "drive time" in middle America, that block of time during morning rush hour when radio listenership is at its peak. On the east coast, it's already seven o'clock. Get it together now.

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the epublicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the
planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy.

The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied.

There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people.

Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as
Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the ainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off
the TV!
(Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a
sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the
fear
of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing
in
Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed,
has
descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There
is
no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags
will
sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original
war
vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr.
and
Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was
in
the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize
an
immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that
plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental
proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need
you
to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy
chair
and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four
years of
George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't
windsurf
and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about
WMD
and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you --
"Kerry
voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted
fooooor
theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss...He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I
need
is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are
pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault
weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong.
YOU
DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO
GIVE
THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU
DO
THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands.
Not
another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want
about
how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the
courage
to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside
him.
Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a
hand
to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the
forces
of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

The soul-searching of the so-called liberal media

"Who would have thought that we would hit the lottery with CBS News?" So said a Republican strategist on ABC's Nightline this evening. In short, a network that apparently (this was news to me) has a liberal reputation has blundered badly, with the upshot that the Republicans now look better than ever.

The CBS document scandal, in which the type specifications of 1970s typewriters play such a stunningly critical role, has taken a deeply disturbing turn. Somehow, the underlying story - that the President has continually denied the plainly obvious fact that he did not complete his Texas Air National Guard service - has been totally buried.

I just spent an hour of my life watching ABC's Nightline; maybe this is not news to those of you who routinely watch network news programs, but it turns out that the US media's incredible, insatiable need to promote the fantasy of its own liberal bias.

Here is the sequence of stories that Nightline ran tonight, each in capsule summary form:

1) The CBS scandal has raised very serious questions about whether CBS - and all of us in the media - have a deep and abiding liberal bias.

2) John Kerry has "taken off the gloves" on Iraq, even though he's "taken off the gloves" many times before; will it work on the voters this time?

3) The Bush campaign has discovered that it's far more effective for the President to attack Kerry directly than for his surrogates to do so - just check out the following extensive array of clips of the President attacking Kerry!

The CBS document scandal feels like yet another story that should work in Kerry's favor, but that the Dems have totally lost control of. Meanwhile, we progressives seemingly can't shut up about what a fuckup our candidate is. This Salon commentator really made me stop and think:

What would really be a story is a Republican behaving with the same lack of discipline endemic among Democrats just now....The liberal tendency to assume the fetal position upon hearing any bad news not only creates a damaging psychological environment for those who indulge it, but also repels undecided and independent voters who are seeking strong, confident leadership. Nobody wants to join a team that obsesses more about losing than winning.

So let's remember: John Kerry is one of the Senate's most distinguished members, he is a talented campaigner, he has chosen a great vice presidential candidate, and George W. Bush is highly vulnerable - especially since things in Iraq are going so fucking badly.

There are three debates ahead. And in the strange, strange war of expectations, let's repeat this mantra every day: George W. Bush has never lost a debate.

Candidates in drag

I have my friend Scott to thank for these gems.


Bush


Cheney


Kerry


Edwards

(If anyone knows where these come from or objects to their being posted on my blog, please feel more than free to get in touch.)

Sneaky sneaky

I thought I'd check out some of the other liberal 527s besides Moveon.org. However, I mistakenly typed in www.americacomingtogether.org instead of www.americacomingtogether.com...and discovered that the former address redirects your browser to georgewbush.com.

Meanwhile the Washington Post is calling Bush's silence on the worsening situation in Iraq "deeply irresponsible and potentially dangerous".

California has finally begun to treat the porn industry's failure to use condoms as an occupational health issue.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has frozen funding for the Ryan White Act and other AIDS programs.

Louisiana has decided to amend its constitution to ban not only gay marriage but any recognition of domestic partnerships. Fuckers. Gays are taking the state to court, since this patently forbids a group of people from entering into certain contracts. Canada just looks better and better.

Drag outlawed at pride parade

1, Restlessgeist has some excellent comments on the Kerry campaign.

2. The story on polling has gone from unanimous support for Bush to a divergence between one poll showing Bush substantially ahead and three others, also conducted this week, showing the race is once again a dead heat.

3. The DNC's new ad nicely packages together Bush's sunny, wildly out-of-touch pronouncements on Iraq and on the economy. This is an excellent tactic. In a certain way, it actually tries to draw out Americans' perception that Bush doesn't understand their economic problems, and use it to reframe their perception of him as commander-in-chief.

4. Meanwhile, the controversial new MoveOn ad has drawn the ire of the Bush administration, but as Kerry's people have said, they really can't have it both ways on the 527 issue. The ad hits hard, and it genuinely does raise the possibility of generating backlash if it is perceived as "unpatriotic." That said, the liberal 527s need to take those kinds of risks. They seem to have learned something from Swiftgate. And, in all honesty, controversy means free headlines.

5. Disturbingly, Johannesburg police are outlawing drag at this year's gay pride parade.

"McGreevy...should un-resign"

1. Food for thought from HRC's (wholly laudable, in my view) effort to turn this year's National Coming Out Day into a DNC promotion:

In December 2003, the HRC Foundation conducted a public opinion poll that found while 77 percent of respondents consider themselves “out” as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, only 32 percent talk to their parents about public policy issues, and only 46 percent talk to their brothers and sisters about such topics. In contrast, respondents were much more likely to speak frankly on these topics with casual acquaintances (57 percent) or co-workers (54 percent).

2. From Rex Wockner's column in the Sept. 15 Windy City Times (the issue is not yet online):

Golan Cipel, the self-described straight guy who says NJ Gov. James McGreevy repeatedly put unwelcome moves on him, will not sue for sexual harassment after all.

All that's left of this story, then, is that McGreevy came out as gay and admitted he had an adulterous affair with a man.

In post-Clinton 2004, that's no reason to resign.

McGreevy should tell us the full story of why he's resigning, or, if the affair is the whole story, he should un-resign.

One possibility: McGreevy and Cipel were actually boyfriends (and Cipel isn't straight) at the time McGreevy hired Cipel to work for him in a job that Cipel reportedly was unqualified for. That could provoke a resignation.

Of course, McGreevy has not told us who his affair was with and Cipel claims to be a molested straight guy, so I could be connecting dots that aren't even on the same page. Talk to us, James.

3. A phoned-in comment to the lgbt Houston Voice: "Gays supporting George W. Bush is like chickens supporting Colonel Sanders."

As ever, it's too close to call.

Electoral-vote.com now projects Kerry as likely to win more electoral votes than Bush - but, significantly, Florida is one of three states in which the candidates are polling as exactly tied (the others are Maine and Nevada), which means that the projection does not give its votes to either candidate. In any case, if Bush takes Ohio and Kerry Pennsylvania,m then neither candidate can win without Florida. Put another way, whoever takes two of these three states will be the next President. Using a somewhat more problematic methodology in which no state is interpreted as exactly tied, and in which Bush wins Florida and Pennsylvania but not Ohio, Electionprojection.com is predicting a Bush win.

It appears that Kerry must continue to work very hard to win Ohio and Florida - not exactly news - and that he must also hold on to a very teensy lead in Pennsylvania. Protecting the rights of voters of color in places like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Miami is going to be absolutely critical. In addition, it would also be good for him to pull ahead in Maine, a state he once expected to win easily but where Bush has pulled even. In addition, there's evidence that far more overseas ballots will be cast this year than ever before, and this largely unknown group could actually decide the election.

All of the above is, of course, barring election fraud.

I'm mulling over taking a trip to Ohio to help with canvassing and other Kerry activities sometime before I go to Oregon on October 26. Anyone who might be interested in joining, please get in touch!

Mark Morford has a cute column in the SF Chronicle headlined, Who The Hell Is "Undecided"? And why do so many election polls leave you angry and stupefied and drunk?

"Must" reading!

Today's blog entry is "must" reading.

1. Dr. Thomas Coates of the David Geffen School of Medicine and the UCLA AIDS Center (woohoo gay philanthropy!) has written an extremely important op-ed in the Baltimore Sun on Bush's domestic HIV/AIDS policy, an overlooked deadly Bush lie (full text is available without a login at Jimberly's blog):

Imagine that you have been diagnosed with brain cancer. Your neurosurgeon recommends several strategies. Because you have confidence in a doctor, you go forward, but your cancer gets worse. And then you discover that your surgeon treated you using techniques not backed by scientific evidence.

Worse, you learn that the scientific evidence for the interventions the doctor implemented have been proved ineffective or even harmful.

Public health malpractice is what the U.S. government is practicing. Public health requires the same adherence to scientific evidence as does clinical medicine.

The Bush administration proposes that $270 million, nearly one-third of its domestic HIV/AIDS prevention funding, focus on abstinence. Draft regulations published in the June 16 issue of the Federal Register require the censoring of any government-funded content that is even vaguely "sexually suggestive" and require that all materials include information on the lack of effectiveness of condoms.

Relatedly,

here's me at the RNC, with my sign about Bush's abstinence-only sex ed rules.
Posted by Hello)

2. Read this encouraging, if not entirely believable, propaganda just received from MoveOnPAC:

Though you'd never know it from the TV news, a close look at the polls shows that the Republican convention was actually a bust for the President. According to the Gallup polling agency, Bush's bounce was "one of the smallest registered in Gallup polling history, along with Hubert Humphrey's two-point bounce following the 1968 Democratic convention [and] George McGovern's zero-point bounce following the 1972 Democratic convention . . . Bush's bounce is the smallest an incumbent president has received."[1] Bush's speech received slightly worse ratings from voters than John Kerry's, and according to the same Gallup poll, a remarkable 38% of voters said the convention made them less likely to vote for Bush.[2]
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=12922
[2] http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=183679

3. Bob Herbert in today's Times:

...A lot of other Republicans have similar views about the vote in areas with large African-American populations. Most blacks vote Democratic. If those votes can be suppressed, Republicans benefit. And there is increasing evidence that a big effort to suppress the vote among blacks and some other heavily Democratic voting groups is under way, which is why it is important to keep the following phone number handy:

1-866-OUR VOTE.

5. If you can, please contribute to No on 36, the group working to defeat Oregon's antigay constitutional amendment this November. Read here about why gay donors nationwide are choosing to focus their energies on Oregon.

6. I was blogging in numbered-lists before Julie Russo was!

The dead.

1. Go look at their pictures.

2. Regarding the man who sent them to their deaths, my dad's written this letter:

Dear Editor:

By now it has been proved beyond all doubt, and not contradicted by the White House, that in 1972 George W. Bush avoided taking the physical exam normally required by his National Guard status. Surely a simple question is now in order, one which could be readily answered by consulting the appropriate records: as of that date, did National Guard physical exams include drug-testing?

--David Winter

1 percent tip on $4500 worth of free drinks? Tacky, tacky, tacky

"On this date I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination...as ordered"
--Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, 8/1/1972

"Since we've graduated from college, we're looking around for something to do for the next few years ... kind of like Dad."
--Barbara Bush, 22, speaking at the RNC, 8/31/2004

"If it was Bush's sons or daughters fighting that war over there, instead of standing at the Republican convention, I think it would have been different."
--Pam Lois (whose stepson, Private First Class Tim Brown, 21, died in Iraq in 2003), 9/3/2004

"They [and their entourage of about 25] drank $4,500 worth of drinks — bottles and bottles of vodka....Then, having been comped all the alcohol, they left a $48 tip. We thought 1 per cent was kind of outrageous, considering they are the president's daughters."
--An employee of New York City nightclub Avalon on Jenna and Barbara Bush, 9/4/2004

Iraq: No mission accomplished (or even explained), a thousand Americans dead, and no end in sight

It's being reported that US military deaths in Iraq have just surpassed 1,000. As the Associated Press nicely put it, "US military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 mark yesterday, with more than 800 of them during the stubborn insurgency that flared after the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein and President Bush declared major combat over." The LA Times brings us the latest night-is-day, 1984-style pronouncement from the Pentagon: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cast the death toll as evidence that the United States was aggressively engaging terrorists around the world."

Two pieces of gay news deserve to be circulated. In ruling that state's "defense of marriage" law violates that state's constitution, a Washington Judge has ruled that "homosexuals are a suspect class," meaning that discrimination against them requires a high level of legal scrutiny. He also confirmed that marriage is "a fundamental right." This case will probably be combined with another recent case when it is sent to the state's high court.

The Log Cabin Republicans, pathetically, have finally decided not to endorse President Bush's re-election. One does wonder what was holding them up. Amazingly, they have denounced John Kerry's "flip-flops" on marriage - "referring to statements that Mr. Kerry opposed same-sex marriage but also opposed amending the federal Constitution to ban it." This confirms my view that "flip-flop," in this campaign, is a term used by people who can't grasp complex ideas to describe the cognitions of those who can.

Congressmen want to de-fund behavioral research on HIV/AIDS

These people are stunning. Congress's inaction in the '80s wasn't enough - we must continue to make sure nobody finds out how to stop the HIV/AIDS pandemic...?


TAKE ACTION TO PROTECT SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

On Wednesday, September 8, Congress is expected to begin debate on the FY 2005 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill, which funds the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Last year, an amendment by Patrick Toomey (R-PA) offered to the bill would have rescinded funds from five specific grants that had been reviewed for their scientific merit and approved for funding by the NIH. The majority of these grants examined different aspects of sexual development and behavior and sought to inform public health interventions for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The amendment failed by only two votes.

While the amendment was defeated, some in Congress continue to express interest in eliminating federal funding for individual NIH grants they find objectionable, even though the projects are within NIH's mission and have gone through the established system of scientific review. During this week's debate on the bill, an amendment may target sexual behavior research or other areas of scientific inquiry, including basic behavioral research on identity, motivation, and personality. We hope that you will take a moment to call your member of Congress to express your support for NIH.

Condoms unavailable in 95% of America's prisons.

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What's today's reason to dispatch Bush?

Oh my God this is amazing. Daily reasons to dispatch Bush. They are so well-researched, well-written, hard-hitting. Probably not hard-hitting enough for the imaginary "swing voters," but they could be compressed into sound bites.

Kerry gets the best advice in the world

Former President Bill Clinton, in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy, as Mr. Kerry enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign. (NYT)

I'm glad John Kerry is getting advice from the #1 magician in American politics. I was, in fact, totally dumbfounded in the closing couple weeks of Al Gore's 2000 campaign that he was too proud to let Clinton campaign with him.

But beyond the question of whatever advice Clinton might give him, this story is the absolute best possible lead campaign item for today's Monday morning paper. The Times was the first to break the story, but its structure indicates that its basic contours were shaped by Kerry staffers. It's a great story for a number of reasons:

- it makes Kerry, not Bush, the lead story on the Monday following the RNC

- it links Kerry very strongly to America's most popular Democratic politician

- it changes the story from "the Kerry campaign is in trouble and searching for a new direction" to "John Kerry is getting the best advice in the whole wide world" (and Kerry managed to change the story in a quick, decisive way that bodes well for the coming weeks)

- it's got the added drama of Clinton being in his hospital bed (some have mused that Clinton's going into the hospital for bypass surgery and perhaps pushing Bush's convention off the front page is a very, very nice turn of events for the Dems)

- most importantly, it sets up future media coverage detailing "John Kerry's sharper attack on Bush" and discursively creates a break between Kerry's unfortunate August and the remainder of the campaign

- the story also repeats several variations on "Mr. Kerry's aides emphasized that this was an expansion of the staff for the fall campaign and did not represent another upheaval of the Kerry campaign" - which is obviously just window-dressing, but saying it over and over is still a good idea.

I also love that today's Washington Post quoted a retired math teacher in Norristown, Pennsylvania, as saying that "jobs, health care, the environment and not lying are the important issues" in the presidential race. I just love the idea that "not lying" has become an issue. Maybe the Kerry campaign should take it up. As in, "John Kerry and John Edwards - stronger on jobs, health care, the environment, and not lying."

In other news, unfortunately my home state of Michigan is going to to have an antigay state constitutional amendment on November's ballot. The hastily formed Coalition for a Fair Michigan is going to do its damnedest, but we have less of an organizing base in Michigan than in many states. Please contribute! Also, check out the website of Citizens for the Protection of Marriage and note that the country coordinators' phone numbers are listed on the website. As a private citizen, please call up these volunteers who have chosen to make their names and numbers public, and have a conversation with them about what gay people's rights mean to you.

Finally: check out some wonderful lines from Big Whicker Ventriloquist about the prospect of waking up and realizing that "George W. Bush is still in your bed...."

It's NOT the economy, stupid!

Note: Like John Kerry's campaign (or so I hope), this blog is being reorganized. Please note that my previous list of linked blogs is gone; if you have a blog and it's no longer listed, please do drop me a line and let me know its address.

Some thoughts.

1. The Kerry campaign has an uphill battle in the coming weeks. Kerry is up to the challenge; Iowa was only the latest demonstration that he is a true fighter (no pun intended), and is likely to adopt a new and better strategy soon.

2. They should run ads with Bush promises from the 2000 campaign. Especially about health care. Run these thousands of time in Ohio.

3. Or run ads about John Aschroft's lack of interest in pursuing terrorists in the summer of 2001.

4. The Swift Boat affair offers a lesson to the left-liberal 527 organizations: lie, lie, lie, and lie again. I personally would like to see TV ads aired of New Yorkers bitching about the air quality after 9/11 and the Bushies' lies about it and threats to their health, but there are so many ways that Bush can be attacked. We need massive blitz of truly vicious attack ads against the President, or we'll be stuck with him. Political scientists have shown time and time again that negative campaigns work.

5. When push comes to shove, Americans want someone who'll keep them safe from the terrorists. Why on earth so many of them think GWB is up to the task is truly beyond me, but clearly they do. Kerry needs to come up with an aggressive line of attack on this issue. And he needs to have some sort of "plan," not so elaborate as to make folks wonder why he didn't announce it earlier, yet significant enough to call into question whether Bush's performance is all it could be.

Bush's spotty record on terrorism

To the editor:

Dan Balz writes that although many Americans wonder whether Bush cares about domestic issues, "few doubt his willingness to act and act aggressively in the face of terrorist threats" ("Domestic Questions Remain," 9/3). This view is selective, at best.

No one doubts that Bush, as the author of a new doctrine of "pre-emptive" invasion, does not flinch from war-making - but aggression alone will not protect us. The administration showed no interest in fighting terrorism despite specific warnings in the summer of 2003, and the Iraq war and occupation have so overstretched American troops that we are left poorly prepared for further threats. Bush also caused offense worldwide by loosening the safeguards that could have prevented Abu Ghraib.

As I watch the Republicans exploit the anniversary of September 11, I recall my father's dismay that Bush didn't even visit New York until three days after September 11. President Clinton, he said at the time, would have found a way to get there by nightfall.

"letting 45 million americans go without health care"

From John Kerry's remarks at a midnight rally tonight in Ohio, according to an email from his campaign:

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit. That's the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it's not going to change. I believe it's time to move America in a new direction; I believe it's time to set a new course for America.

Finally.

on behalf of girlie men everywhere

**********************************************
NATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN TASK FORCE
MEDIA RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT:
Sheri A. Lunn - Director of Communications
202-641-5592
Roberta Sklar - Press Secretary
917-704-6358

http://www.TheTaskForce.org

**********************************************

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

On behalf of "girlie men" everywhere I'm perplexed. Last night
while you were speaking at the Republican National Convention,
you said, "To those critics who are so pessimistic about our
economy, I say: "Don't be girlie men.""

I've never known girlie men to be pessimistic about much of
anything. Think of our leading girlie men icons - Liberace, Paul
Lynde, Charles Nelson-Reilly, Freddy Mercury, Nathan Lane, and
Harvey Fierstein - all hopeless optimists, smiling and fighting
on in the face of adversity.

Oops. Now I get it. You simply misread the teleprompter. You
obviously meant to say, "To those critics who are so pessimistic
about our economy, I say: "BE girlie men." I look forward to
someone in your office setting the record straight, so to speak.


All the best,

Matt Foreman
Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

***************************************************************

UPDATED protest pix

pix are here
click on RNC protest pix

"very good chest, very good arms, well hung, cut"

Thanks to Matt P. and Ian: go listen to the audio personal ad of the Republican Virginia congressman and Federal Marriage Amendment backer who's just resigned after being "outed."