The Republic of T.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 10th through June 11th:

• America’s Toxic ‘Innocence’ –
• LATIN AMERICA: “Sexuality Is an Essential Part of Humanity” –
• Op-Ed Columnist: This Time, We Won’t Scare –
• Michael Rowe: Death at the Holocaust Museum and the Degradation of the American Dialogue –
• Shooting –
• Joseph A. Palermo: Glenn Beck Spins the Holocaust Museum Shooting –
• A Gunman at the Holocaust Museum –
• Terry Krepel: Keeping Up Appearances: Right-Wing Media Hides Facts in Tiller Shooting –
• Stu Kreisman: Fox Makes A Funny About The Shooting –
• Jonathan Richards: The Terrorists Win –
• How Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories and Fearmongering Led to the Holocaust Memorial Shooting –
• Guns & Gays. (God not included.) –
• von Brunn a 'Birther' –
• Gun (In)Sanity –
• O’Reilly and Fox News Will Have More Right-Wing Violence to Answer For –
• Suspect in Washington’s Holocaust Museum Shooting Is a White Supremacist –

The denial has already started on the right that this guy wasn’t one of theirs. My favorite is from the RedState comments.

I swear these guys are plants…I have never met a Republican who was a white supremecist….

Aaron Gardner Wednesday, June 10th at 2:34PM EDT (link)

not saying they don’t exist, but I have never seen one myself. Kinda like the Chupacabra.

Never met a Republican who was a white supremacist?

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If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I have a tendency to write long, deeply-linked, and researched posts from time to time. You also know that my quantity of my posts (though I hope not the quality) has gone down in the past couple of years.

In light of this, it occurred to me today that I probably only have it in me to do one of those types of posts — which I admit are my favorite to do — per week.

Case in point, I’ve been working on a post about the murder of George Tiller as it relates to the concept of the conscience clause and its use in recent years. I’ve been working on it for about a week, and it looks like I won’t post it today. Maybe tomorrow, if I’m lucky.

That got me wondering. Is there a good time, from the readers’ perspective, to publish a longer post? Is Monday a better time because it’s more likely to be read? Is Friday almost guaranteed to mean it disappears into oblivion? I guess this is really a question about your reading patterns, in an attempt to adjust my writing rhythm.

So, If you care to help me figure it out, take the poll.

Oh, and if you want the back-story, it’s after the jump.

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• 25 Years
  (tags: abortion activism)

This is what’s happening in my city right now.

I didn’t know about it until my husband called to tell me about it (and to make sure I’m wasn’t anywhere near the Holocaust Museum).

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 8th through June 10th:

• The Best Care Anywhere –
• Jennifer Brunner: What's there to "Get" about Marriage Equality? –
• An Army of Fun –
• Isobel White: Gay-Married At Last –
• How Wall Street Ruined The Reputation Of American-Style Capitalism –
• Sasha Abramsky: Breadline USA –
• Steve Parker: Limbaugh: GM and Obama Must Fail –
• The paradox of health reform. –
• Shannyn Moore: LEGISLATING HATE: The Real Anti-Christ –
• Being Obama Matters –
• Let’s Get It Straight, Hank Paulsen Is a Prick Who Took Down the Economy –
• We’re Screwed on Everything From Health Care to the Economy If the Dems Don’t Shape Up –
• Good God<br><br>by digby<br><br>Says the undisputed leader of the –
• Chris Weigant: A Question For Dick Cheney: Should We Now Waterboard Tiller's Murderer? –
• Sen. Bernie Sanders: Health Care is a Right, Not a Privilege –
• Honor Pledges on Reproductive Health –
• A boycott is a very bad idea –
• Back to the Future in Torture Policy –
• Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Terrible Price of Being Tagged a Reverse Racist –

With all due respect to Cleve Jones — who, in fact, is due a lot of respect for his years of activism — we do not need another LGBT march on Washington.

An activist who worked alongside slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk announced plans Sunday for a march on Washington this fall to demand that Congress establish equality and marriage rights for the lesbian, gay and transgender community.

Cleve Jones, whose character in last year’s award-winning movie Milk was played by Emile Hirsch, said the march planned for Oct. 11 will coincide with National Coming Out Day and launch a new chapter in the gay rights movement. He made the announcement during a rally at the annual Utah Pride Festival.

In an interview Friday, Jones said a confluence of events — a new president, the success of Milk which earned Sean Penn an Oscar, and Proposition 8 — makes this the right time to intensify the fight for equality.

“All of this working together has opened this new chapter,” Jones said. “I intend to make the most of it.”

As usual, I’m late to this story. I read it late last night, but at this point in my life, writing/blogging is near the bottom of my list. It comes after everything and everyone else. So by the time I get around to blogging a story like this one, it’s already been beat to death and much of what I’m going to say has been said already.

Nonetheless, I’ll say now what I said last night. We don’t need another march on Washington. Not now. Maybe when we have a victory to celebrate, but not when we have so much work to do.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 5th through June 8th:

• Hold Your Applause –
• Harry and Louise Need Health Reform –
• 119 Million Americans Want a Public Health Option — Why Aren’t Politicians Listening? –
• Blacks Should Fight Budget Cuts, Not Gay Marriage –
• Amy Goodman: Dr. George Tiller Didn't Have to Die –
• How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option –
• Home-Grown Terror –
• The Devil Is in the Health Care Reform Details –
• George Tiller, Rush Limbaugh and the Consequences of Hateful Words –
• Uighur Detainees Deserve Justice –
• War on empathy coming up short –

Good grief. First the New York Post and now this?

Some Hispanics and advocates for women are criticizing an editorial cartoon that depicts Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a strung-up pinata that President Barack Obama is inviting Republicans to whack.

The cartoon by Chip Bok of Creators Syndicate ran in The Oklahoman on Tuesday. It shows Obama wearing a sombrero and saying “Now, who wants to be first?” to a group of elephants in suits holding sticks. The underline says, “Fiesta Time At The Confirmation Hearing.”

Jean Warner, chair of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, said there was nothing funny about the image.

“Here’s a woman wearing a judge’s robes and she’s about to get the crap beaten out of her because she has the audacity to think she can sit on the Supreme Court,” Warner said. “But most young girls who look at the cartoon, don’t even understand that. They just see guys with sticks about to hit a woman.”

I mean…are you kidding me with this? It’s going to be a long eight years, folks. Very long.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 4th through June 5th:

• Understanding for Both Sides –
• I Am Dr. Tiller –
• David Brooks complains about people recognizing the truth –
• Op-Ed Columnist: Keeping Them Honest –
• The Cairo Speech: 2 –
• The Cairo Speech –
• Joseph A. Palermo: President Obama Hits All the Right Notes in Cairo –
• Chomsky: What Obama Didn’t Say in His Cairo Address Speaks Volumes About His Mideast Policy –
• Wrongly Convicted ‘Central Park 5' Seek Compensation –
• Dick (Uncut): Jon Stewart Destroys Cheney (and the National Press Club for Good Measure) –
• 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protest –
• Obama’s Nine Hard Truths –

I’m a woman.

I can make love to a crocodile…

~ Koko Taylor, “I’m a Woman”

That’s my favorite line from my favorite Koko Taylor song — “I’m a Woman,” which sounds like an answer to the Muddy Waters/Bo Diddley number “I’m a Man.” I started listening to the blues while I was growing up. It started with a fascination with Billie Holiday, which led me to listen to Bessie Smith, and Ma Rainey.

But I didn’t find those in my dad’s collection. That took a trip to the library. It wasn’t until I went to college and starting deejaying at the campus student-run radio station that I discovered Koko Taylor, who passed away yesterday at the age of 80.

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This series is overdue for an update. I’ve been meaning to get to it for a while now. But every time a relevant news story reminds me of it, there’s always something more pressing.

The entire time the “Octomom” saga played out in headlines and newscasts, I thought about continuing this series. Only, every time I’d get started, there’d be another revelation. At some point, I got tired of trying to keep up. I kept it in the back of my mind, though.

To tell the truth, I’ve never watched Jon & Kate Plus 8, except for a few minutes when I stopped in the middle of channel surfing and caught a few minutes of it. I didn’t know why, but something about the show creeped me out. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But when the allegations about his affair, then her alleged affair, then her alleged violent rages, his alleged lack of ambition, her tummy tuck and nose job, his hair plugs, and the difference between the reality of their marriage and the facade presented on television, I found myself asking “Why are these people famous?” All they did was have babies, and have more at one time than most people.

These people are famous for reproducing?

Then it hit me, what bothered me about the very idea of the show, let alone the show itself.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 4th from 03:00 to 09:48:

• Democracy or Not –
• Marriage equality reaches New Hampshire –
• Study Links Medical Costs and Personal Bankruptcy –
• What Rhetoric Won’t Cure –
• Gay groups grow impatient with Obama –
• Is Bill O’Reilly Spawning Killers? –

• also-ran: Definition from Answers.com
  A horse that does not win, place, or show in a race.
  (tags: mediocrity alsoran)
• With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity
  In 2008, U.S. society — from the very top (our political leaders) to the very bottom (our bankers) — came to embrace mediocrity.
  (tags: mediocrity business government)
• Alan Cumming: Why Is America So Content With Mediocrity?
  I truly think that Americans, some Americans, are comforted by mediocrity.
  (tags: mediocrity politics)
• Avoiding Mediocrity: Do You Dare to Be Different? – Stepcase Lifehack
  This is the first question you should ask yourself. I believe one of the main reasons people just follow the herd is they don’t have a dream. If there is nothing to pursue then why bother being different?
  (tags: creativity life mediocrity)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 2nd through June 4th:

• The GM “Precedent” –
• Sotomayor must dummy up –
• Judicial Abstraction –
• The Compassion of Dr. Tiller –
• Dr. George Tiller Didn’t Have to Die –
• Julie Menin: No Apology Necessary for Sotomayer –
• Phil Bronstein: I feel your pain, see your "empathy," and raise you a little EST –
• A Supreme Court Without Empathy Makes a Mockery of Justice –
• Movement Conservatism As Mental Disease: Bill O'Reilly & The Murder of Dr. George Tiller –
• A Brief History of the Radical Right –
• Cheney Backs Gay Marriage –
• Who is 'everybody else'? –
• The Tiller Effect –

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for June 1st through June 2nd:

• A Lemon of a Bailout –
• Commentary: Abortion opponents lost their moral stand with Tiller’s death –
• Why it is Critical that the African American Community Unite behind Sonia Sotomayor –
• Tiller Murder: It Wasn’t a Lone Killer’s Sick Plot; This Came Out of the Radical Anti-Abortion Movement and a Hate Speech Media –
• The Weirdest Conspiracy Theory of All Time: Republican Chrysler Dealers Targetted by Obama? –
• Goodbye, GM –
• The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers (Part III) –

iv

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama and other Democrats have not said as much to LGBT activists. In fact, their actions could be interpreted to say “Please, don’t make me do it now.” As my own exchange with Pelosi suggests, Democrats seem to be taking the “rising tide” approach. Fixing the economy can help same-sex households in the same way it can hep the rest of the country. Universal health care — if it includes the kind of public plan Obama ran on — helps same-sex couples and their families by divorcing health insurance from both employment status and marital status.

Health care reform could certainly remove obstacles to health insurance for gay couples.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for May 30th through June 1st:

• Who Gets to Shout "Identity Politics"? –
• Cenk Uygur: Should We Waterboard the Domestic Terrorist Who Shot Dr. Tiller? –
• The George Tiller I Knew –
• Cristina Page: The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing –
• Mary Mapes: No Mercy –
• Time to Mourn –
• Adele Stan: Tiller Murder: Ann Coulter's Happy Day? –
• Shannyn Moore: Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism –
• Ugly –
• Where’s the Equal Justice for Gays? –
• The Results Are In: Americans Are Now More Closely Aligned With Progressive Ideas Than at Any Time in Memory –

iii

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.

~

Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

~

The time is always right to do what’s right.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

During the presidential election, candidate Barack Obama had the following to say to LGBT voters, in an open letter posted at Obama Pride:

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