The Republic of T.

In a previous post last week I alluded to the news that right now Iraq has something we haven’t had in a while: a budget surplus. Apparently, oil revenues are so good that Iraq is rolling in oil money.

But even though that surplus isn’t going to pay for the basic needs of Iraq citizen — like clean drinking water — someone making use of it: the insurgents.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know I said I would not comment on the Eliot Spitzer affair. And I’m not, per se. But it does appear to have made prostitution — and whether or not it should be legalized — the subject of public debate again.

I wrote about the subject last year, focusing on three different cases that raised questions on both sides of of the debate, and I tended to come down on the side of legalization, but lately I’ve heard some arguments that make a convincing case, if not in favor of legalization, then not in favor of full decriminalization.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK. So, only one of these dances is the “forbidden” dance. But, a handful of the probably should be forbidden. If you’re old enough, you’ve probably done at least half of them. I’ll confess to 8, 3, 2, and — I’m almost embarrassed to admit — 1.

I hadn’t really thought about it — in fact, I had to login to see when my I posted my last diary — but it’s been almost a year since I posted over at Daily Kos.

I didn’t make an announcement about it at the time. It was more of personal decision. After the Kathy Sierra saga. I didn’t particularly care for Kos’ response, but beyond that I didn’t particularly care for the general nastiness and callousness that seemed to have crept into progressive bogging. (Or perhaps it was already there and I finally had enough of it.)

Maybe I was still smarting from the Clinton blogger lunch debacle, and recovering from unwittingly resurrecting the great blogroll purge. But I’d become disillusioned with the much hyped “netroots.”

I was reminded of all that when I read this post about a writers’ strike at Dail Kos.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the films that probably influenced me the most as a burgeoning gay boy back in the 80s was Bad Boys. I’m not sure how I saw it. I think I may have been changing channels, and came across it. I don’t remember whether I was at home or somewhere else, but I remember I stopped changing channels the minute Sean Penn appeared on the screen.

I was around 14 when it came out in 1983, and by then I’d already figured out that I liked other boys. I’d already come out to some of my high school classmates. So, when I saw Sean Penn swagger onto the screen, I was mesmerized. It didn’t hurt that he bore a strong resemblance to a (straight) classmate I was madly in love with. At the time, I was sure I wouldn’t mind at all being locked up with Sean Penn. I wouldn’t mind locking lips with him either.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if this counts as a trend or not, but I didn’t expect to see something like this so soon after the previous post. This time is the Lutheran Church, which still opposes marriage equality but expresses regret that "church teachings have been used to hurt gays and lesbians."

A task force drafting a statement on sexuality for the nation’s largest Lutheran group said Thursday that the church should continue defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

However, the panel did not condemn same-gender relationships. The committee expressed regret that historic Lutheran teachings have been used to hurt gays and lesbians, and acknowledged that some congregations already accept same-sex couples.

From there, it actually gets more interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

When free market fundamentalists like those in the Bush administration start at federal government action, after two interest rate cuts didn’t do much to stall stop the economy sliding into recession, you know things have reached a crisis point. By the time they start taking baby steps towards a bailout, you can bet that — as with another disaster — many people are well underwater, some have drowned, and some aren’t so much saving themselves as letting the tide carry them.

In the past week, the Bush administration and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke have been making vague gestures that open the possibility an increased government intervention in the aftermath of the subprime debacle. That may be due to a trend which suggests some people caught in the crises spawned by the subprime disaster have found a outlet for their anger that, if number of those who chose that option reaches critical mass, could have consequences beyond what most of us could ever imagine.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been so focused on other issues lately that I haven’t done much blogging about religionand politics. (With one exception.) But I’ve been filing away stories I thought I’d blog about at the time they happened. I didn’t the, but a couple of recent stories jogged my memory.

It’s something, I think, when Southern Baptists shift positions on global warming, considering how many objections to the idea of global warming are based on literal readings of the Bible. (Basically, global warming isn’t in the Bible, so it can’t be real.)

Read the rest of this entry »

So, say you’re the Bush administration. If you’ve invaded a country and launched an occupation that’s cost thousands of American lives, untold Iraqi lives, and shattered others, and left some damaged beyond repair, what do you do if — after pouring over 600,000 documents — you get a report saying there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? One (more) of your reasons for going to war didn’t exist? If you’re the Bush administration, you just “lose” the report.

The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.

Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won’t be posted on the Internet.

In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam’s regime had ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.

But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.

It’s a “no brainer”. Right?

Read the rest of this entry »

I have not and will not comment on the Eliot Spitzer story, most likely. However, of all that I’ve heard Bill Maher has the best take on the “why” of it all.

Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone ~ “Mississippi Goddam”

I’ve been so wrapped up in another series that I’d totally forgotten about this one. But then I heard about Mississippi. Goddam.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s an old cliché, but nonetheless true: even a broken watch is right twice a day. The same can be said for even the most bigoted organizations of the religious right. (Maybe it’s just that if you keep moving to the right, you eventually meet up with the left?) The American Family Association is that broken watch right about now.

I don’t remember the last time I thought the AFA was right about anything, and I don’t ever remember saying the AFA was right about anything. Ninety-nine and nine tenths of the time, they’re not. But their response to the Day of Silence this year, actually had me nodding my head and thinking they might have gotten a couple of things right this time.

Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t commented on the biggest meat recall ever, but this caught my eye. The USDA wants to put cameras in slaughterhouses.

Cameras could be placed in about 800 U.S. slaughterhouses to watch for improper procedures and inhumane handling of cattle, a federal official said Thursday.

A Senate committee recommended installing the cameras three years ago, but the proposal is getting new consideration in the wake of a massive recall of beef last month, Agriculture Undersecretary Richard Raymond told a House committee Thursday.

“It is really the inhumane handling issue,” Raymond told CNN. “I can’t see putting these in a plant that makes jerky, in a processing plant.”

Raymond said that logistical issues still exist, including figuring out who would watch the cameras and how they would be controlled.

“Those are the considerations we would have to take under advisement before we make a decision up or down on the camera issue,” he said.

Oh boy. Wasn’t it video that made this whole story explode?

Read the rest of this entry »