I’m going to ask a rhetorical question.  I also want you to realize that I’m referencing Mickey Kaus as I ask the question, meaning that the obvious answer is that he’s wrong.  You may reflect that answer choice on your sheets in the blank provided.

Is someone who advocates for the necessity of learning a skill they don’t have a hypocrite?

Obama’s lecture to parents about how “you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish”? Also condescending! Especially since, as Abe Greenwald points out, Obama doesn’t speak Spanish.

Is it condescending and hypocritical that Newt Gingrich (Ph.D., Modern European History) has spent the past decade or so declaring our dire need for more math and science students?  Of course not, because a Republican can propose that we cure world hunger by importing third-world refugees to lick out grease traps at our finest Long John Silvers nationwide, and they’ll get credit for attacking a serious problem with level-headed resolve and the steely testicles of American manhood. 

It is not hypocrisy to say that, in response to the world around us, we must focus on giving our children a set of skills that the person recommending such a thing might not have - unless, as in the case of John McCain, you’re recommending a set of skills you steadfastly refuse to get and seem proud of not having.  You know, like Michael Bay teaching a directing class. 

If it is, in fact, hypocrisy, then I look forward to our next President, a multilingual farmer physicist parent reverend atheist author chemist doctor lawyer astronaut firefighter acrobat chef. 

Things like this are part of the reason that many of us didn’t vote for Clinton - she assembled a political team with the worst instincts this side of Bob Shrum.

Howard Wolfson, who was a top strategist for the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is going where some Democrats were unwilling to go during the early days of the election season: the Fox News Channel.

The network is expected to announce as early as Tuesday that it has signed Mr. Wolfson as a contributor who will appear regularly on its programs.

Conveniently, the Times just published a story yesterday on how dealing with Fox News is like dealing with a less fun version of the mafia. 

This is an upsetting bit of pandering—-Barack Obama has come out and opposed 3rd trimester abortions for “mental distress”.  My initial thought was not to get too bunched up about it, because pandering actually ranks above food and water as necessities for a politician’s continued existence, and this is a classic example of someone speaking out of both sides of his mouth.  Condemning late term abortions for “mental distress”—-a term that conjures up images of women aborting at 7 months because their boyfriends left without a forwarding address, because they didn’t realize that being pregnant meant you got fat, etc.—-is like condemning purple stoplights.  It’s great that you have that opinion and all, but you do know the thing that bothers you doesn’t exist, right?  As Dr. B lays out, there’s only two clinics in the entire country that do 3rd trimester abortions, and they have a long list of indicators you have to satisfy to get on the list, mostly direct threats to the mother’s health or fetal abnormalities incompatible with life.  There are 3rd trimester abortions performed because of psychiatric indicators, but that’s a much different thing than “mental distress”.  At bare minimum, I’m guessing the women (or more likely girls in many cases) that have really late abortions because of mental distress have to have mental health problems so severe that they outstrip the trauma of having a 3rd trimester abortion, which is pretty serious in and of itself.  I don’t think that it takes much work to imagine some of the horror stories that land women (or more commonly, girls) in Kansas or Colorado to get an abortion—-being raped by relatives, suicide attempts, strenuous attempts at self-aborting that put them in danger of killing themselves.  Considering that Dr. George Tiller of Kansas has an extensive counseling program attached to his services, including support groups with other people who find themselves in the tragic situation of having to get later term abortions, I’m guessing that the mental status of his patients is well understood by the staff at the clinic. 

Read All...

Wesley Clark keeps not insulting John McCain’s military service. 

With this lack of assault on McCain’s service to our country, one wonders what Clark won’t do next.  What’s not going through that mind of his?  What could he be not plotting, not scheming?

I dread what isn’t coming next, my friends.

While many of us out there have been bickering, arguing, debating and shedding tears about which Democratic candidate should or shouldn’t be the presidential nominee, remember that without Lawrence v. Texas, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that came down five years ago today, that the rights we have won because of that landmark ruling marked the legal foundation upon which we’ve built progress.

The importance of electing a Democratic president, given the age of some of the members of the high court, is critical to moving the ball forward. Please read an excellent HuffPost piece by Judith E. Schaeffer, legal director of People For the American Way Foundation and People For the American Way:

June 26, 2003 is a day that I remember quite well. But as significant as the Lawrence ruling was, I am mindful that four justices did not join Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was part of the majority in Bowers (truly a low point in her judicial career as well), declined to join the majority in overruling that decision. She agreed, however, that the Texas “sodomy” law was unconstitutional, but only because it treated same-sex and opposite-sex couples differently.

Three justices dissented outright from the ruling in Lawrence: then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia and Thomas are still on the bench today. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist has been replaced by the equally ultraconservative John Roberts, while Justice O’Connor has been replaced by the extreme right-wing Samuel Alito.

Counting the numbers, then, it’s very clear that the constitutional protection of the essential human dignity of gay men and lesbians is hanging by a slender thread on the Supreme Court. John McCain has praised Justice Scalia and has also promised to put more justices like Roberts and Alito on the Court, which should be a consideration for any voter who cares about gay rights and the future of the Supreme Court.

***

I also want to point you to another HuffPost piece by Steve Ralls, “An End to Our Mourning,” which discusses the disheartening poll that shows a lot of still-disgruntled Clinton supporters out there who share their resistance to moving forward using reasoning akin to that showed by the woman from Medina, OH who believes Obama is a baby-killing Arab. Steve:

A poll released this afternoon, examining the seemingly ever-shifting loyalties of Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential supporters (of which I have been an enthusiastic one), finds that, while 53% of Clinton’s backers are now firmly on-board with Senator Barack Obama’s White House bid, there are some who are simply incorrigible… and, increasingly, intolerable to the ears.

...While it would be admirable for any voter to decide their campaign allegiance, and their vote, on honest ideological differences with a particular candidate, the resistance among some Clinton supporters to Obama’s campaign is rooted, instead, in half-truths, no-truths and flat-out ignorance about who Senator Obama is and what his campaign stands fo

Barack Obama “sounds to me like a Middle Eastern type of name and whether or not he’s born here in the United States, he doesn’t seem like, to me, somebody who is trustworthy,” Kristie Hartle told the AP pollsters. “You can’t trust anybody these days, so who’s to say he’s not a terrorist and we just don’t realize it yet?”

Apparently, you can’t trust somebody with a name like Kristie Hartle to make a rational, informed decision before she goes to the polls, either. Has Ms. Hartle talked to the soldiers in Iraq? Would they rather continue the quagmire in the desert under a commander named John than come home under one named Barack?

My reaction below the fold.

Read All...

Why do we need GOP elected fundnuts when we have the likes of Dave Obey (D-WI), who is promoting bogus, dangerous abstinence-only ed programs in schools by upping funding to the garbage?! What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi—why is she enabling Obey, who is House Appropriations Committee. Firedoglake‘s Blue Texan:

Progressives and health care advocates had hoped that when the Democrats took control of the House, one of the first things to get scrapped would be the disastrous abstinence-only education [sic] programs, which blossomed under the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. Their hopes were misplaced. Obey actually increased the funding to the programs, and Nancy Pelosi did nothing to stop him.

...Abstinence-only has been denounced by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association. No studies have ever shown it works, and it’s inherently anti-gay. And Henry Waxman’s 2004 study exposed fundie talking points embedded in the programs.

The proof is in the pudding. Teen pregnancy is up. STDs among teens are up.

The bible-beating moralists of Bushworld have had their heads in the sand, choosing to believe that virginity pledges, Jesus-head chastity rings and scare seminars on the evils of sex will stop teens from knocking boots. Now we have Obey and Pelosi ready to fund it yet again. Abstinence-only education deprives young people of facts they need to know about contraception and sexual health. The ACLU is all over this BS.

“There is no question that all programs offering young people education or guidance about human sexuality should urge them to delay sexual activity. However, federally-funded programs focusing exclusively on abstinence are at odds with good public health policy and raise serious civil liberties concerns. Congress should not support programs that censor medically accurate information, reinforce gender stereotypes, provide inaccurate or misleading information, promote religion, serve a narrow ideological agenda, and jeopardize the well-being of young people. But despite the overwhelming evidence that abstinence-only programs don’t work, Congress remains in the grip of proponents of this failed policy and seems unable or unwilling to disengage itself.

“Young people deserve the truth. At some point, everyone is faced with important decisions about their sexuality. We do young people no favors by censoring information and failing to give them all the tools they need to make well-informed decisions. More than anything, we want them to have all the facts, and we want them to be safe.”

Seriously—why do we bother putting Dems in when they cannot even shut down one of the most outlandish domestic giveaways by the Bush Admin to the religious right? This was a no-brainer to deep six. Perhaps someone should send Obey and Pelosi a copy of the documentary The Education of Shelby Knox. It reveals the ignorance perpetuated by these programs in the Texas schools (it’s set in Lubbock), and how that “education” has resulted in higher STD rates and teen pregnancies. Perhaps Obey is in favor of those infamous virginity rings as well.

Also:
*  That abstinence-only sex ed is really working, huh?
*  Newsflash: fundies are f*cking before marriage
*  Abstinence ed is really working: oral sex safe and not really sex, say teens
*  Texas teens increasingly knocking boots after abstinence program
*  Score one against abstinence-only ed

Amy Sullivan writes one of her two articles again.  This is the abortion one.

Because no matter what happens, the media always picks up on two narratives: can people trust the Democrat, and how does the Democrat stop people from trusting the Republican? 

With Gore, it was the NASCAR Dads and the beer test, with Kerry it was security moms and the national security gap, and with Obama it’ll be the trustworthiness gap, or whatever else the pundit class decides people don’t like about him. 

“McCain benefits from a long-established reputation as a man who says what he believes,” writes Broder. “His shifts in position that have occurred in this campaign seem not to have damaged that aura. Obama is much newer to most voters, less familiar and more dependent on the impressions he is only now creating.”

This is the case in point - the reason that McCain has the reputation is because of the pundit class.  The reason that he’ll maintain that reputation is because of the pundit class.  Once something is cemented in their heads, it’s never worth examining - or even rejecting - unless, of course, they’ve got permission to cattily leap in that direction.  McCain and Mickey Kaus could be fucking goats at the 11th Annual Keep Our Goats Free Of Human Penis Parade, and Howard Kurtz would show up the next Sunday solemnly asking his panel of reporters, including Mickey Kaus by satellite, whether or not the Obama campaign risks defiling the process he said he’d raise up from the sewer by discussing interspecies sex in public.

UPDATE:  The Jed Report points out that McCain, blessedly, has yet to make any major mistakes while Obama has virtually alienated all but the largest of cities and flamboyant of homosexuals.  Or something.

At the New Bern Convention Center, as the festivities and business begin. Ninety-four counties out of 100 were represented at the convention.

I was in New Bern, NC on Saturday for the North Carolina Democratic Party State Convention. Of course I know that most Pandagon readers won’t find this post scintillating, but I wanted to attend the state convention because 1) it is a landmark presidential election; 2) it’s a way to see democracy in action, as well as my state’s inner party workings; and 3) it’s a micro-version of what I will experience covering the national convention in Denver as a credentialed blog. The reason I’m posting here is to give you an idea of how fitting bloggers into the mix is clearly presents a learning curve for the state party. 

To start off, one bit of interesting business was that when I arrived, there wasn’t a clear way to obtain press credentials. Actually, there wasn’t any formal system at all to identify media that I could see. Thank goodness for blogmistress planning, as I had made up a “press badge” (L) before leaving home just in case.

When I entered the convention hall itself, there wasn’t any set up area for the press to work (no tables or chairs in a convenient location to cover the activities). I fortunately ran into Jerimee Richer (R), who is director of online communications for the North Carolina Democratic Party. He quickly found the facilities coordinator for the center while I went out into the public area to check out the candidate and merchandise tables in the hall. When I came back about 10 minutes later, there was a table set up on the left side of the hall, convenient to power and a great view. You can’t ask for better blogger accommodation than that. So far it’s still not clear the DNCC will be on the ball regarding blogger access or accommodations. (One alarm is already going off—we still haven’t heard about where we’ll be staying, and there isn’t clarity over whether a credential allows one person at a time on the floor of the convention or even in the entire hall—that’s a big difference in terms of access).

Anyway, you can read the rest of the post at my pad, but I wanted to share one

incredibly hysterical incident

that occurred during the resolutions debate—it’s below the fold.

Read All...