Surprise, surprise, surprise. Obama's anti-gay religious right activist used the opportunity Obama gave him last night to preach his hate to thousands of African-Americans. That's just great. And the white preacher who Obama picked to help explain to the audience that gays aren't minions of Satan? CNN reports that he said nothing at all – just a short little prayer, then he left. As for Obama, he did a taped introduction in which he praised McClurkin, the religious right activist, as one of his favorites. That's nice, because the way to help combat homophobia in the black community is to make sure the gay-basher is first endorsed by someone as high-ranking as Obama, who then chooses to say nothing about the gay-bashing.
October 29, 2007 archive
Oct 29 2007
That Went Well
Oct 29 2007
Pony Party: Procrastinator’s Ball
Light Emitting Pickle here to bring you the most recent open thread. First, a few words about Pickle Pony Parties:
Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one. There will be another along in a few hours.
Oct 29 2007
If you like Bush, you’ll love Giuliani!
Rutgers University historian David Greenberg has an important column in today’s Washington Post:
You wouldn’t know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.
Rudy.
Greenberg points out that anyone who lived in New York while Giuliani was mayor- anyone who actually knows anything about Giuliani- knows that he’s neither liberal nor moderate. As mayor, he tried to crush liberalism. But everyone from James Dobson and Richard Viguerie, to ABC’s Jake Tapper, NPR’s Mara Liasson, washingtonpost.com’s Chris Cillizza has been playing along with the “liberal” framing. Greenberg says that framing always boils down to “three overblown issues — guns, gay rights and abortion — and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.”
But:
The “social” and “cultural” issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president’s right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration’s hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he’d like to succeed.
And here’s the money quote- the framing we will need make our number one talking point, should Giuliani be nominated:
If you’ve managed to keep liking President Bush, you’d have no trouble loving President Giuliani.
(more)
Oct 29 2007
Who Is More Terrifying?
No Terrorist recruiting in India!
Remember Bhopal?
A rising tide of India’s scientists and engineers in waiting are aiming to blockade US arms and chemical corporations from recruiting at the Indian Institutes of Technology.
Oct 29 2007
Torture…when will it end?
This is an essay that circulates in the Pagan community every year. It is one that helps us remember those that went before…and paid the ultimate price.
So, as I hand out candy and other treats to the little kidlets in my neighborhood, I’ll also hold this in my thoughts and heart.
Oct 29 2007
Docudharma Times Monday Oct. 29
This is an Open Thread: Let’s meet the neighbors.
Throughout the history of nations diplomacy has played a large role in bringing stability to conflicts and political tensions between adversaries. Diplomacy is not sexy, it isn’t instantaneous, in fact it requires the ability to deal with the all the inherent problems that comes with two competing ideologies seeking to gain advantage yet in the end nether side achieves all of their original goals. Hence the reason why it’s called diplomacy or just a fancy way of saying let’s talk.
History is replete with those who saw diplomacy not as a means to end conflict or reach agreement with one’s political adversaries but as a hindrance to conflict. Just such a person occupies the White House.
George W. Bush has never believed in diplomacy you just have to look to North Korea as a prime example. The Agreed Framework wasn’t perfect but it provided a way for the international community to monitor North Korea’s nuclear programs. All that fell apart on January 20 2002 when President Bush during his State of the Union address placed North Korea in an Axis of Evil. Doing so the Agreed Framework collapsed and North Korea walked away from the negotiating table and threw out the United Nations nuclear monitoring team. North Korea isn’t the only country George Bush has refused to deal with on a diplomatic level: Syria and Iran are the others. In doing this he removes any reasonable method or means for avoiding armed conflict.
While this administrations pronouncements concerning Iran and its nuclear program have never been subtle in their outright hostility towards it there has been a profound change in their rhetoric. President Bush recently made illusions towards the coming of World War III if Iran should develop the means to produce nuclear weapons.
Is America under the leadership of President George W. Bush who has 15 months left in office on the edge of the abyss hurtling towards war with Iran because President George W. Bush refuses to engage the Iranian government diplomatically over Americas concerns about Iran’s nuclear program?
George Bush can no longer afford to play the lone cowboy bent on protecting the world from evil. Its time for him to step-up and be a real world leader something that in these last six years he has failed to do.
Oct 29 2007
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Oct 29 2007
the canary
down by ‘lectric fields
where general burns left a mark or three
spit tubes of methane
they glow at night
burying grounds
land fills
burying land fill grounds
burying land fill grounds the town of dastardly west virginia
there was a scruff of a dog
and I remember blue angular designs
a star
but a giant star that surrounded with angles
no angels
just angles
and that trapeeze artist
Oct 29 2007
Bushido: The Way of the Warrior
Samurai no Kokorō-e: Precepts of the Samurai
From “Flashing Steel” by Masayuki Shimabukuro and Lenard J. Pellman
More ==>
Oct 29 2007
My Personal Take On Why The Netroots Are Becoming Irrelevant
I realize that is a heavy statement. Here’s the good news: it’s not too late to turn this ship around given the primary characteristics members of the activist netroots community share: bravery, commitment, follow-through. So what’s the problem? In a nutshell: both a lack of real leaders as well as a lack of willingness to explore what leadership is about. More below.
Oct 29 2007
NANCY PELOSI ARRESTED FOR LOITERING!!!
If Nancy Pelosi were poor and sleeping on my sidewalk, she’d be arrested for loitering. But because she has $125 million bucks in the bank, and a sign on the door of her office reading “Speaker of the House,” it’s called “government.”
–Compound F
Nancy Pelosi’s statement about war protestors being arrested for loitering exhibited frustration at her base’s desire to end the evil in Iraq and also struck a rather authoritarian chord. While she voted against funding, she is obviously deeply conflicted about her commitments to the Constitution, oversight, and basic ethics. The same can be said of Congress as a whole. I hope we can agree that lying one’s way into an aggressive war in which a million people have been killed for the purposes of resource theft can be easily categorized as “evil.”
Evil is a loaded concept, so let me pare it down. Evil is not “out there” as a mythic, religious, or supernatural force. While I insist on looking inward to find evil, I also don’t care for the “empirical” notion that Good and Evil can be adequately represented by a continuum of pleasure and pain. I prefer the more philosophical or moral version in which evil is related to the intent to do harm.