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 September 5th from 13:17 to 13:24:

• Mike Lux: Different Than My Small-Town Values - Many of my family and friends in small-town America are Republicans, but they're generally not this kind of mean Republican. The modern Republican party likes to call itself the party of Reagan, and Reagan did remind me of a lot of those small-town folks I know and liked- I disagreed with their politics, but they had a friendliness and warmth that I appreciated. Palin and the modern Republican party reminds me a lot more of Nixon, with that dark, resentful streak, more likely to stick a knife in their neighbor's back than give them a helping hand.
• t r u t h o u t | Angry Amateurs - There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God."
• What World Does The Republican Party Live In? | NDN Blog - I have watched the coverage of the Republican Convention for three days now and I have two main observations: 1) they have not presented a single proposal, just snide remarks (clever ones, but merely snide remarks all the same) and 2) the crowd is older and all white. Such a homogenous crowd is simply not reflective of the reality of the United States of America - watching and listening to the Convention makes one thing abundantly clear: the Republican Party is so very, very out of touch with the country they claim to put first.
• Open Left:: McCain’s America - When Sarah Palin speaks in bitter tones of mockery towards those who disagree with what the American government has done over the last eight years, this is the kind of America she wants to create. This is the story of the election, right here. Fences, barbed wire, and national guard troops in a progressive city, a story ignored by the press.
• The Anti-Republican Republican Who Is Really a Republican - Never in recent American history has the candidate of a party seeking to maintain its hold on the presidency seen its candidate so aggressively dismiss the legacy of the incumbent commander-in-chief and his allies.
• Truthdig - Reports - Memoir Politics - Talk about role reversal. The Republican Party, which scoffs at the nonsense of “identity politics,” has staked everything on the compelling life stories of its presidential and vice presidential candidates. The Democratic Party, ever conscious of the diversity of modern America, is doing everything it can to blur the lines of race, class and gender.
• Truthdig - Arts and Culture - Robert Christgau on America’s Secret Fundamentalists - Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” examines a group of politically engaged Christians far more secretive than Robertson or Falwell. Sharlet establishes that since the end of World War II, the Family, aka the Fellowship, has exerted its influence in an impressive and frightening array of mostly dire events.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 4th from 15:09 to 16:06:

• Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community - After last night we now know what the major and minor themes of this campaign will be. Not that it was totally unexpected but the Republican trump cards will be the same ones they've employed throughout their last 8 years of power: fear and hate.
• Box Turtle Bulletin » “A Personal Attack on Myself and My Family” - What a telling example of the mindset that the anti-gay Culture Warriors have created in our country. The existence of my family is considered a personal attack on theirs. Even suggesting that they not put funds towards harming my family is a threat to their family.
• A Post-Rational Society? — In These Times - After a slow start because of Hurricane Gustav, the convention in St. Paul, Minn., has turned into an anti-Obama hate-fest with a nearly all-white gathering laughing at and mocking the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee of a major party. However, beyond the pulsating contempt visible on the faces of the GOP delegates, many of the nasty attacks on Obama – as well as the effusive praise for the Republican ticket – were blatantly false, as if testing the depths of American gullibility and bigotry.
• Pharyngula: This is how we will lose - Palin is a stalking horse for failed social and economic and military policies. We don't want to get drawn away from the important message of defeating those bad policies by the temptation of cheap shots at her appearance and sex, especially because those cheap shots make her look like a sympathetic victim and help advance the Republican agenda.
• AP: Attacks, Praise Stretch Truth At GOP Convention - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.
• Feministe » “Officer’s sexuality no longer confusing”–Atlanta Journal-Constitution article - Back to the old argument Second-Wave feminists wrestled with, that sometimes prompted purges and other ideological slugfests (and I was there, so I know): How much of gender is biologically determined?

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 4th from 12:44 to 14:59:

• Citizen Crain: Last night’s lies - The bottom line is that the Republicans believe that the road to victory this November is a continuation of lying to the American people. I just hope that enough Americans have wised up by now.
• Sex Education as Liberation | The American Prospect - We've been inculcating young people into America's hypocritical, schizophrenic "present system." We ask them to conform to either one of two views — that their sexual desires are sinful outside of the context of marriage and must be tamed, saved, and resisted, or that they are helpless to resist them, sex being natural and they being hormonal teenagers, so they must be responsible and protect themselves. In either case, sexuality is not a joy, not a means through which human beings actualize their unique desires and relationships, not a potential site of transformation. It is a landmine.
• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | The Unbearable Whiteness of the RNC - Now I know it's a bit of a cliché to suggest that Republican conventions are largely white affairs, but the contrast between the extraordinary diversity of Invesco Field and the veritable sameness of the demographic make-up at the Xcel Center in St. Paul is perhaps the most striking feature of the two conventions.
• The Elephant in the Room | The American Prospect - The truth is, conservatives are more familiar with teen parenthood than are secular liberals. On the whole, red states have higher teen pregnancy and birth rates than blue states. In Texas, the state with the highest teen birth rate, 63 out of every 1,000 young women aged 15 to 19 has had a baby. California has the lowest teen birth rate; only 39 of every 1,000 15- to 19-year-old girls there have carried a pregnancy to term. Alaska, where Bristol Palin grew up, has a typical teen birth rate of about 42.
• TPMCafe | Talking Points Memo | What Palin Offers — and What It Would Cost - Yet if you didn't sense last night how deeply Sarah Palin channeled some of the country's deepest, most powerful currents of pent-up indignation and yearning, you don't sense the trouble we Democrats are in. Rhetorically, she was the anti-Obama,. She was stirring precisely because she was so artless, matter-of fact, and "American" — with no cadences or grand, historic resonances, but with plenty of mother wit and shrewdness. Credit her as much as the speechwriters..
• Open Left:: Would YOU Vote Against a Baby? - Davis says the McCain strategy is to avoid the issues because: "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." What comprises that composite view? Part of it must be babies. Yes, this year they will be wrapping themselves not only in flags but in babies. This is an astute political move I suppose: who opposes cute little babies? And so we got shot after shot tonight of the Palin's newest addition being held by, I think, every family member at one point or another. I think the strategy is something like: I dare you NOT to vote for this baby.
• A Post-Rational Society? — In These Times - After a slow start because of Hurricane Gustav, the convention in St. Paul, Minn., has turned into an anti-Obama hate-fest with a nearly all-white gathering laughing at and mocking the nation’s first African-American presidential nominee of a major party. However, beyond the pulsating contempt visible on the faces of the GOP delegates, many of the nasty attacks on Obama – as well as the effusive praise for the Republican ticket – were blatantly false, as if testing the depths of American gullibility and bigotry.
• Truthdig - Reports - Why Bristol’s Pregnancy Matters - With all due respect to this young woman, her future husband and the rest of the family—and best wishes to all of them for a successful birth—let us first stop pretending that this is good news. There are excellent reasons why we discourage teenage pregnancy and motherhood, and none of them have disappeared simply because the Republicans are about to put Sarah Palin on their ticket.
• Truthdig - Reports - A Private Matter—for Everyone - The decision on what to do about such matters should be left to a woman, her doctor, her family and her God. No one—absolutely no one—who supports keeping abortion legal would interfere in any way with Bristol Palin’s decision to carry her pregnancy to term. In fact, organizations such as Planned Parenthood would provide her with proper prenatal care if she needed it.
• Steven Pearlstein - The Road to a Bailout They Don’t Deserve - washingtonpost.com - Not only are the Big Three not deserving, but to help them out of their current predicament would also set a lousy precedent in a market-driven economy where the possibility of earning great wealth is supposed to be balanced against the possibility of failure. For the government to step in and put up $50 billion in loans to try to save the Big Three auto companies, after having done little or nothing to save the jobs of steelworkers and shoemakers and furniture craftsmen, would be patently unfair.
• The Fading Attraction of Teenage Marriage - NYTimes.com - Studies show that today teenage marriages are two to three times more likely to end in divorce than are marriages between people 25 years of age and older. The most comprehensive study on marriage and age that sociologists cite was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2001, from 1995 data, and it found that 48 percent of those who marry before 18 are likely to divorce within 10 years, compared with 24 percent of those who marry after age 25.
• Addiction doesn’t discriminate - except when it does - International Herald Tribune - So while anyone can theoretically become an addict, it is more likely the fate of some, among them women sexually abused as children; truant and aggressive young men; children of addicts; people with diagnosed depression and bipolar illness; and groups including American Indians and poor people.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 3rd from 09:09 to 09:52:

• Box Turtle Bulletin » Palin’s Misunderstanding of History - In responding to a 2006 Gubernatorial questionnaire from socially conservative Eagle Forum Alaska, the GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (then running for governor) gave the following answer: 11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not? SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance. Palin seems a bit unfamiliar with the history of the Pledge of Allegiance.
• Pharyngula: We prefer our Jebus impotent, please - Somebody took offense again. An art museum in England is exhibiting some controversial statues, and of course some kook can't just stay away, they have to make sure no one else gets to see them.
• Box Turtle Bulletin » Republican Delegates Support Civil Unions - Republican voters support marriage with 11%, civil unions with 28%, and no recognition with 57%. Fewer delegates support marriage (4%), but many more support civil unions (43%). Astonishly, more Republican delegates support recognition of same sex couples (49%) than do not (46%).*
• Box Turtle Bulletin » Happy Birthday, Evelyn Hooker - Today is the 101st anniversary of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s birth. Dr. Hooker, the psychologist widely credited with helping to establish that homosexuality is not inherently linked to mental illness, was born September 2, 1907, in North Platte, Nebraska. She was the sixth of nine children
• Booman Tribune ~ Palin is Their McKinney - To scare the Establishment the way Palin in scaring the Establishment, we would have to nominate Dennis Kucinich or Cynthia McKinney. But neither of those candidates would fire up more than a tiny fraction of our elected delegates. Most Democrats would see their nomination as an act of irresponsible political suicide. In other words, our party delegates are a lot more practical.
• Conservatives: Candidates’ Children Off-Limits (Unless Their Parents Are Dems) | PEEK | AlterNet - With all the right-wing finger wagging about the inviolate right of children of candidates and officials to be above comment, I thought we might fire up the flux capacitor and travel back to that distant time in the past when Chelsea Clinton’s parents were in the White House and see what the right-wing was saying about Chelsea.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for September 1st through September 3rd:

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Texas Bible Courses Mandatory - There has been some confusion in Texas over whether the law passed by the legislature made it mandatory for school districts to offer a Bible course if enough students requested it or whether they could choose whether to offer one. The AG of Texas has now issued an order saying it is mandatory.
• Citizen Crain: Log Cabin’s big McCain mistake - Is political insanity running rampant among Republicans these days? First, John McCain threw good sense to the wind and tapped Sarah Palin as his running mate, even though she is untested and astonishingly unqualified to be one septuagenarian heartbeat away from the presidency. Now Log Cabin joins in the fall foolishness by going forward with an endorsement of the McCain-Palin ticket without even waiting to ask, much less get answers, about the Alaska governor’s unknown views on a range of issues important to gay Americans. We only learned today, for example, that she opposes hate crime laws.
• Feministe » Sarah Palin’s not-so-hidden extremism - This alone shows the degree to which the press pulls it’s punches with the Republicans. If Barack Obama were a member of the Nation of Islam, or had previously expressed support for black secessionism, he would still be a relatively obscure Illinois state senator, if that. Hell, the fact that he had a black pastor, and served on the same community board as an aging 60s radical has been enough to paint him as some sort of leftist radical. I can’t even the fathom the shitshow which would go down if it turned out that Obama was sympathetic to folks like Lewis Farrakhan. Obama (or any Democrat, for that matter) probably couldn’t read A People’s History of the United States without the media painting him as a “far-left ideologue.”
• Palin Has Chosen to Exploit Her Own Daughter’s Pregnancy | Election 2008 | AlterNet - Bristol Palin hasn't been the star of a major kids TV show like Jamie Lynn or Miley Cyrus. She has not chosen a life of celebrity. But now, thanks to her mother's decision to accept the Republican Vice Presidential candidacy, her private life — her sex life — is as exposed as if she had long been a cover regular on Star or US Weekly. She has unwittingly and literally become the poster child for her mother's anti-choice and abstinence-only education policies.
• Ode to an Internet Patrolman - Dear Comcast, I hear you’ll be instituting a bandwidth cap of 250GB per residential subscriber. Well, that’s totally your call. You take that prerogative, bad boy. Nip those crazy downloaders where it hurts most. “No more of that HD nonsense for you bandits, BitTorrent or no BitTorrent, iTunes or no iTunes,” you’ll say to them come October.

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

• Transphobic Words and Deeds « Questioning Transphobia - Part of privilege is that the pain we cause is either invisible to us, or we believe that the target of that pain somehow brought it upon herself or deserved it. Another part of privilege is interpreting events in our favor whenever possible, and expecting the dominant social forces to support that interpretation.
• Rod 2.0:Beta: Some Thoughts on Sarah Palin - Sarah Palin has just as much “experience” as Virginia’s gay-baiting first term Gov. Tim Kaine or the clueless Republican lite first term Sen. Claire McCaskill. Both were promoted as serious vice presidential options by the Obama campaign and the media. Oh, and championed by numerous “progressives” and readers of this blog. (Check comments.) If you want to criticize the Republican vice presidential nominee, go after her wingnut positions or her this-close relationship with the evangelicals and social conservatives. Criticizing Sarah Palin’s perceived lack of experience will not be a winning argument.
• Respectful Insolence: The best Chick tract ever? - Jack Chick is old. After many years of turning out the most hilariously over-the-top Christian fundamentalist cartoons, you may think he’s lost his edge, but if anything he seems to be getting even loonier. For example, check out his latest tract First Bite:
• Is The US Becoming A Part Of The Internet Backwater? - For most of the life of the Internet the United States has played the biggest role in the development and managing of it. At one point all the data that flowed on the Internet went through the US and US companies. I don’t there are very many companies involved with the Internet infrastructure ever imagined a day would come where this wasn’t the case. That day however may very soon be upon us; if it already hasn’t started happening.
• The Bilerico Project | Open Letter to Log Cabin Republicans - As Governor of Alaska for the past 20 months, and prior as a mayor and council member of a small Alaskan town, Sarah Palin does not have many public statements regarding equality for gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans. We have created a comparison of Palin’s known positions on LGBT equality with those of Senators McCain, Obama, and Biden, and we have also listed the specifics about Palin positions on gay rights. From this we know three things about her regarding equality:
• Gays, Others Lead To Earth’s Doom! / Queerty - Director Rick Stout brings the right-wing movement into uncharted territory with his new flick, Demographic Winter, which firmly points a finger at gays, feminists and lefties for the declining population rates. Because, you know, we threaten marriage and there can be no babies without marriage.
• Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics | 43 Folders - On the off chance that you care or find it useful in developing your own filtering, here’s my insanely reductive, mean-busy-guy way to make a 90-second decision on whether to read a new non-fiction book from an author I’m not familiar with. It does not matter whether you agree with these; that’s how you know they’re personal heuristics. Also, they are almost uniformly unfair and unkind. So.
• Daily Kos: Sarah Palin Is NOT The Mother [Photos+Video] - Sarah Palin was not pregnant with child. Her sixteen year-old daughter was.
• The Truest Graffiti Message You’ll See All Day view! | The Best Article Every day - “go to work, send your kids to school follow fashion, act normal walk on the pavements, watch T.V. save for your old age, obey the law Repeat after me: I am free”
• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Katrina Remembered - The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the most shameful episodes from one of the worst administrations ever to lead our nation. Whoever wins the election in November will have plenty of work to do along our Gulf Coast, which will be particularly urgent now that they are facing a looming affordable housing crisis.
• Citizen Crain: Log Cabin’s big decision - Log Cabin’s leaders no doubt worries that open door will slam shut if they decline to endorse, but still they should consider the very real cost of going along to get along. It sends the message that whatever their opposition on the issues, Republican politicians need only answer their phone calls to win their support.
• Citizen Crain: What was he thinking? - My hat’s off to my friend Kevin and others for trying to put lipstick on a pig, but McCain has just punted on the single issue that was most likely to beat Barack Obama. Sarah Palin is completely unprepared to be vice president, much less president — and far, far less experienced than Obama.
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Michael Moore: Shut the Hell Up - You know, I watched this show live and cringed when he said it. Michael Moore on with Keith Olbermann said on Friday night that if Hurricane Gustav hits New Orleans during the RNC, that would prove there is a god. Seriously. Of course he laughed it off as a joke and said he hopes no one dies, but so what? That’s what the Republicans say when they make jokes like that and we don’t accept that excuse then. I’m not accepting it now either.
• Sarah Palin, Wrong Woman for the Job - Here’s the reality: Palin is a rightwing-Christian anti-choice extremist who opposes abortion for any reason whasoever, except to save the life of the girl or woman. No exception even for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. No exception for a ten-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide– let alone the woman who is not ready to be a parent, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single mother. She wants to force over one million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment. She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women’s movement has won for her at tremendous cost and struggle–the movement that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska — to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country.
• Feministe » Sarah Palin and the Drink America’s Milkshake Party - In short, Palin’s relationship to the GOP’s traditional platform — less government, less taxes — is slippery at best, certainly making her a gamble for the fiscally-concerned wing of the Republican party. But many are saying that Palin is really meant to galvanize the socially-concerned wing of the Republican party, the “babies, guns, and Jesus” wing, as Limbaugh puts it.
• GayPatriot » Why the GOP should avoid gay issues in St. Paul - The issue, as I’ve said then and repeated ad nauseum since I first founded a Log Cabin chapter in the late 1990s, is that most Americans are neither pro-gay nor anti-gay, but they are by and large, anti-anti-gay. They may not like what we do in the bedroom, may find it “icky,” may even disapprove of my public smooch this afternoon, but they pretty much want to leave people like us alone. And would wonder at politicians who dwell on the issue.
• Michelle Obama’s story | csmonitor.com - In many ways, Michelle Obama’s story is the American dream, a classic tale of a supportive family, a working-class background, and success in school and career.
• A president, not a savior | csmonitor.com - Hard as it may be to imagine in the midst of a modern campaign season, the Framers wholly rejected the notion of the “bully pulpit.” Presidents were to be seen more than heard, which is why our first seven presidents averaged a little over three public speeches a year. Nor did early presidents follow the modern practice of referring to themselves as the “commander in chief,” as if all America was a vast army directed by a supreme military leader. When George Washington referred to the office he held, most often it was with the humble term “chief magistrate.”

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 29th from 15:42 to 15:48:

• Obama’s Soaring, Savaging Speech - "The idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation," Obama said, is "the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." That promise, that mutual responsibility, anchored the alternative that Obama detailed on Thursday.
• Open Left:: Obama Challenges Conservative Economics, Compassion; A Narrative Opening - This is a narrative line I would like to see: John McCain doesn't care.
• Truthdig - Reports - A Moment in History - When Clinton came to the convention floor during Wednesday’s roll call and asked that Obama be nominated “by acclamation,” I got a lump in my throat. I knew that it wouldn’t be official until Obama had given his acceptance speech, according to party rules, but there was something about the word “acclamation” that hit me. It implied an acceptance of leadership, a recognition of merit. African-Americans have been an integral part of this nation since its birth and certainly don’t need anyone’s validation. Still, it feels as if this obvious historical fact has finally been acknowledged in a way that many of us felt we’d never witness in our lifetimes.
• Open Left:: Manhunt, LGBT Politics, and John McCain - President McCain isn't going to the House GOP Caucus and talking to them about the need for ending Don't Ask Don't Tell. He's not publicly advocating ENDA, ending abstience until marriage policies, supporting hate crimes laws, marriage equality, or same-sex adoption (which is my favorite of his LGBT positions, for both policy and political pandering reasons). He's not using his influence as President to raise money for LGBT civil rights organizations. I'm not even holding my breath for any calls for tolerance in Minneapolis, the most basic thing he could do.
• Fighting Jackie Robinson Syndrome | The American Prospect - Michelle Obama's convention speech was inspired, but it was also a testament to the extra burden she's asked to bear as a black woman in America.
• Marty Kaplan: Peggy Noonan and the Two-Headed Bowling Ball Child - I'm paraphrasing here, writing while she's still on the air, but this is the gist: At least the speech wasn't all about all those miserable unemployed people that Democrats always talk about. It wasn't full of whining about all those unhappy sick people they only seem to see. It wasn't about a woman who had a two-headed child who was used as a bowling ball. More like this, Peggy. Please.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 22nd from 13:00 to 13:18:

• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Sex Change Causes Loss of Government Job - The Library of Congress is being sued because it offered a key job as terrorism research analyst to Diane Schroer, then rescinded the offer, because Schroer is transgender. On last night’s Countdown on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann exposed the high price of transgender discrimination.
• Jillian York: The Ignored Atheist Vote - As the presidential candidates come together to discuss faith and issues of morality — at Saddleback last week and at the Democratic National Convention this week, there's a large contingent feeling excluded. American atheist and agnostic voters are increasingly feeling left out of the debate or flat out ignored and taken for granted as politicians scramble to better woo the "faithful" .
• Op-Ed Columnist - Now That’s Rich - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com - Last weekend, Pastor Rick Warren asked both presidential candidates to define the income at which “you move from middle class to rich.” The trouble with Mr. Warren’s question was that it seemed to imply that everyone except the poor belongs to one of these two categories: either you’re clearly rich, or you’re an ordinary member of the middle class. And that’s just wrong.
• Kerry Trueman: The Fast Track To Slow Food - The Internet has proved to be extremely fertile ground for the good food movement, nurturing a virtual community of sustainably minded farmers, foodies, and activists. Websites championing the agrarian agenda are sprouting up everywhere, like Roundup-resistant super weeds, ready to take on the unsustainable status quo. The challenge, now, is how to keep track of them all. And that's where the Eat Well Guide's new booklet Cultivating The Web: High Tech Tools For The Sustainable Food Movement comes in handy.
• Our Toppling House of Cards — In These Times - Deregulation — and the shadow banking system it created — shredded the financial safety net that the Great Depression had produced.
• Black Republicans Jumping GOP Ship - NAM - High profile black Republicans like former congressman J.C. Watts said he might vote for Obama. Rumors flew last week that former Secretary of State Colin Powell would endorse Obama publicly. All across the country now, there are many black Republicans who may not be as well known as Watts or Powell but may indeed be supporting Obama.
• The underprivileged are united across racial boundaries - Don’t be alarmed that minorities in America will constitute a majority in less than two generations. Instead, follow the money. What should really concern us in this country is not how fair our complexion is but how fair our society is.
• Make houses of worship truly inclusive - The doors to our houses of worship ought to be open to all. That includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, who often feel that religion has been used to divide and conquer their families and their rights.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 19th through August 20th:

• What Makes for a Good Blog? | 43 Folders - As I think about the blogs I’ve returned to over the years — and the increasingly few new ones that really grab my attention — I want to start with, ironically enough, a list. Here’s what I think helps make for a good blog.
• Open Left:: The Dead Zone Diet - Steak or salmon? Millions of menu-mulling diners ask themselves this question every day. Enjoy your dithering while you can, folks, because the day is coming when you may not have the luxury of choosing the lobster over the London broil. For those with a more populist palate, I've got some bad news, too; a future with no more fried clam strips or canned tuna, for you.
• In Brief: Young Evangelicals Increasingly Accepting of Homosexuality | Ex-Gay Watch - Young evangelicals are far more accepting of gay and lesbian lifestyles than their parents are: 34 percent of evangelicals between 18 and 29 think homosexuality “should be accepted,” compared with 24 percent of those from 50 to 64…
• The Bilerico Project | The Killer, Not The Killed - I think I'm going to scream. Lawrence King wore feminine attire to school. He wore what all the girls were wearing. He was a kid with serious issues, often out of control, and in need of help. No one is questioning that. But when is anyone going to ask questions about the killer? When the kids were killed in the Columbine High School shooting, no one asked what they did to get themselves killed. Every moment of the press coverage was dedicated to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
• Buddhist Channel | Buddhism News, Headlines | Dharma Dew | Fast Five: Tibetan Lama Tharchin Rinpoche offers five ways to reconnect with your peaceful inner self - The reality is that we already know the way - we have just forgotten the path that winds down ancient roads, says Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher and yogi who will teach at a Buddhist retreat Aug. 29-Sept. 3. He also will give a public class Wednesday, Aug. 27, titled "Creating Peace in Ourselves and Our World."
• Open Left:: The End Of Bubba Dominance - This identity-based backlash narrative runs through the heart of American politics, and has done so ever since the late 1960's. If Obama wins, it will signal the final failure of that narrative, and the dawn of a new era. No longer can conservatives bank on victory by demonizing immigrants, homosexuals, minorities, liberals, and whoever else. Considering that Barack Obama is an African-American former college professor from Hyde Park, and considering the disgusting, identity-based campaign that McCain is running against him, there could not be a greater test of my thesis that the conservative backlash politics can no longer forge a winning, national coalition.
• The Bilerico Project | The Church Got it Wrong, Not God - "Gay people have been abused, really, by the church, and just mindlessly suggesting that they go back is like telling an abused spouse to go back to her husband. But what I say is that God and the church aren't the same thing. The church has gotten this and many other things wrong. God hasn't gotten it wrong. Moreover, the church that you left may not be the church that's there now. There has been a lot of change. It doesn't mean that every church is safe, but there are enough safe places that gay and lesbian people can find a place that will really welcome them." — Bishop Gene Robinson.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 19th from 11:53 to 13:05:

• Rod 2.0:Beta: More and More Faith Events Planned at Democratic National Convention - For those of you who are looking forward to even more pandering to evangelicals and so-called "values voters" Barack Obama and the "new" "Democratic" Party, you'll be happy to hear a "Unity-Faith Breakfast" and Interfaith event will open the Convention. This, of course, would be in addition to the daily invocation and benediction. It's all in this press release from the DNCC.
• Blog Search is Broken - As you can see, a lot of people think that blogs contain some useful information. Even mainstream media is starting to see the power of blogs. However, blog directories have not really done much to help bloggers or readers. “News style” sites like Blogs.com, Wikio and BlogRunner also list various blogs but are more focused on presenting information as opposed to generating exposure for specific blogs. These sites also do not have a functional differentiator that would cause people to choose one site over another. What problem are these sites trying to solve? Even after a quick review of the sites, there is not an obvious problem except the implied “giving blogs more exposure.” Exposure is really only needed by the smaller blogs that do not get highlighted by these types of sites. Most of these sites suffer from having a solution in search of a problem.
• Orcinus - Part of the problem is that we actually have seen this happen time after time after time: A mentally unstable person is inspired by hateful right-wing rhetoric to act out violently — and yet because of that mental state, the matter is dismissed as idiosyncratic, just another "isolated incident." And over the months and years, these "isolated incidents" mount one after another. But simply ascribing these acts to mental illness is a cop-out. It fails to account for the gross irresponsibility of the people who employed the rhetoric that inspired the violent action in the first place, and their resulting moral culpability.
• Victim blaming article of the year? - Feministing - Peter Hitchens (yes, they're related) writes that a rape victim that was drunk "deserves less sympathy."
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Those Anti-Family “Family Values” - To bigots like LaBarbera, real families can't be led by homosexuals. But in the real world, there are millions of families that are led by gays and lesbians. By what possible reasoning - yes, I say that as though this was a reasoned position knowing full well that it's not - could this argument be justified?

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 18th from 12:01 to 13:19:

• Feministe » Individualism - Bigotry relies on classification. People who are sexist, racist, ablist, homophobic, transphobic, what have you, have convinced themselves that women, people of color, etc. are X or are not Y. That they are able to feel a particular way about an entire group because the group is homogenous in some way.
• Max Blumenthal: Feelin’ The Hate With Toby Keith Nation - When Fox News picked up Keith's comments, Big Dog Daddy's loyal fans bombarded my in-box with a deluge of indignant rants. While insisting to me that "Beer For My Horses" contained not even a hint of coded racial animus, Keith's fans simultaneously revealed their simmering resentment of Jews, blacks, and "faggy liberals."
• Why Soldiers Rape — In These Times - The answer appears to lie in a confluence of military culture, the psychology of the assailants and the nature of war.
• Independent Gay Forum - Stossel on the ‘Sex Police’ - It's unknown how many innocents get swooped up in these actions, but there's little question that even for those who arguably are violating public propriety, the government's "sting" (a cheap and easy way to meet arrest quotas) is often devastating, and sometimes deadly.
• How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America | | AlterNet - That's really the American paradox. For example, there is no country that has had more faith in education as an instrument of social mobility. No country in the West democratized education earlier, but no country has been more suspicious of too much education. We've always thought of education as good if it gets you a better job, but bad if it makes you think too much.
• What Have We Become? - NAM - On the eve of the Beijing Olympics, while Bush was preparing to express his "deep concerns" over China's human rights record, Chinese immigrant Hiu Lui Ng was dying in the custody of our great nation's own U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. For months, according to the New York Times, 33-year-old Mr. Ng had complained of excruciating back pain. Officials accused him of faking it. When a judge finally ordered that Mr. Ng be brought to a hospital, it was discovered that he had a fractured spine, cancer all over his body, and very little time to live. He died five days later, leaving behind a wife and two young sons.
• Kate Clinton: The Rodney Dangerfield of Nations - George has enough accumulated sick days to go on vacation, call the home office from the ranch and say he is not coming back. But no.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 13th from 11:38 to 14:18:

• Kids of Queers: More Gay Men are Embracing Fatherhood - One of the commenters stated that it is fine for the young kids who have two dads but when they get older they will get teased horribly. Funny, I don't remember being teased as a kid or teen. And saying that children will be harmed because of the teasing is another attempt to blame the victim. Maybe if these concerned folks taught their kids that it isn't okay to tease anyone and that gay men and women have just as much right to marry and have children as the rest of us then maybe their kids wouldn't tease kids of gay parents. Maybe.
• Behind the gay-marriage talk : Opinion L.A. : Los Angeles Times - In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children's rights, and it's obvious that same-sex couples who married would "recruit" their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments. Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word "homophobia" came from — this made no logical sense at all. Same-sex couples. whether married or not, already have children. Marriage wouldn't change a thing about this picture except, perhaps, to model for children that parents tend to be married.
• What’s Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It’s the Gay Part) - All of this suggests to me that the real problem opponents have with gay marriage is not that it will extend benefits or threaten marriage. The objection is that it will end the socially acceptable discrimination against lesbian and gay people.
• Feministe » John Edwards - In late December 2006, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Edwards said, “Do I believe they should have the right to marry? I’m just not there yet…” (This was during the same time period as his affair with Rielle Hunter). This seems more reminiscent of Ted Haggard or Larry Craig, taking positions on family values and then specifically contradicting those. It’s important, in my opinion, for a representative to actually represent her
• Box Turtle Bulletin » Today In History: A Bugger Was Hung - “Buggery” — the quaint British legal term for homosexual activity — was a capital offense until 1861, when the laws were finally relaxed to allow for life imprisonment. But that change came almost thirty years too late for Captain Henry Nicholas Nicholls, who was hanged 175 years ago today for the “abominable vice.”
• Jayne Lyn Stahl: John Edwards And Our Rovian Politics - When asked whether John Edwards can forget about his future in politics, even his former campaign manager, David Bonior, turned against him: "You can't lie in politics and expect to have people's confidence." Excuse me, but what do you call it when, a president lies to Congress, and the American people, about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, takes us to war without a formal declaration of war; and one that has cost the lives of many thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians?

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for August 11th through August 12th:

• Why We Should Stop Demonizing John Edwards | Sex and Relationships | AlterNet - If we're going to make the private lives of our politicians grist for the media mill, then we ought to at least correctly understand them. We don't. Instead, we reduce behavior to simple good/bad dichotomies, infer only the most superficial of motives to the culprits, and make sweeping judgments about their basic characters without a shred of evidence.
• The Day Lincoln’s Hometown Erupted In Racial Hate : NPR - A century ago this week, the normally placid town of Springfield, Ill., the hometown of President Abraham Lincoln, erupted in a two-day spasm of racial violence and mayhem that still has the power to shock today.
• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » “Abstinence-only” Education Not a Free Pass for Anti-Gay Discrimination - A recent Florida federal court decision in an ACLU case did a lot more than simply make advocates for both reproductive freedom and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights very happy: It signaled that the days when folks could get away with making outlandish anti-LGBT arguments are going, going, and almost gone.
• The 5 Most Chill-Inducing Olympic Moments | The Best Article Every day - The Olympics seem to have lost their luster. In an age where NASA is designing swimsuits, there seems little hope for the upset victory or the unexpected burst of brilliance. But like these videos prove, the truth is that something exceptional can happen at any given moment.
• Steven Weber: Playing to the Muddle - What is the lethal disconnect in our judgement which permits the ascension of dickheads to positions of power, rather than the arguably less charismatic but genuinely effective personalities capable of shrewdness and insight?
• The Becker-Posner Blog - The gay-marriage movement raises a number of interesting questions, which I approach from an economic perspective: why do homosexuals want to marry? What are the consequences of gay marriage likely to be? Why is there opposition to gay marriage?
• The Becker-Posner Blog: Should Gay Marriages be Allowed? Becker - For the reasons just stated, one can understand why many gay couples want to be allowed to marry. What I find difficult to understand is why there is so much opposition; for example, I doubt if a referendum legalizing gay marriage would pass in many states. As Posner indicates, allowing gay couples to marry will have little effect on either the attraction or stability of marriages between heterosexuals. I believe this opposition reflects hostility to gays and their unions that can no longer be expressed in other more traditional forms, such as calling them names or harassing them. As a result, the marriage issue has become a rallying point that allows hostility to gays to be hidden behind other reasons.