The Republic of T.

At least he didn’t say “That boy,” but he was just one word off. I heard it, and I saw it. I saw it first, actually, during the first debate when McCain refused to look Obama in the eye.

Read the rest of this entry »

Want to blame someone for the financial mess we’re in? Well, join the club and get in line. Folks on the right are hell bent on blaming blacks. And if that doesn’t work, they can always blame gays for our economic downturn. (Okay, okay! I confess already. it’s all my fault. I’m not sure how I did it, and I don’t know what I did with the $1 trillion that’s likely to be the total we’re in the hole.)

Christian fundamentalists are suggesting gays and lesbians are to blame for Wall Street’s woes, a frequently made charge in the wake of national calamities.

In a September 25th blog post titled ‘The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex’, Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.

“Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause,” writes Michael Heath. “I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God’s judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively.”

Heath goes on to list policy changes that would make God “crack a smile,” including: End abortion rights and defund non-profit groups supporting it, amend state constitutions to ban gay marriage and eliminate domestic partnerships and civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, and end discrimination against private religious schools and homeschools.

A related post by Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian at the National Review’s website pushes a similar theme, this time focusing on Friday’s failure of WaMu.

Krikorian suggests the big bank failed because it was too accommodating to minorities, including gays, African-Americans and Hispanics.

In his September 26th post titled ‘Cause and Effect?’, Krikorian writes, “I really thought this was a joke, but it’s not. WaMu’s final press release, before it sank beneath the waves.”

I’ve heard some people suggest — in response to the above — that if Jesus did have something to say about this mess, he’d probably take a swipe at the “moneychangers” again, and repeat the parable about the rich man, the camel, and the eye of the needle. Jesus would run the moneychangers out of the temple, and denounce the worship of wealth, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. I’m a little overwhelmed by the response to the Meltdown 2008 timeline. It’s gotten more than 22,000 views since I created it. I hope that means people find it interesting and/or informative. Anyway, it means a little added pressure to keep it updated. So here’s the latest.

Ed.Note: I’m at home with Dylan today, ’cause he has a case of the “scoots” (as I call them), and I haven’t looked at the news today. So this post, which has been sitting in draft format since last night, may be

The murmuring started shortly after McCain announced that he wanted to postpone the first presidential debate. But, at least in my office, the references were made jokingly. Because we were certain that after pulling one fairly obvious stunt, the McCain campaign wouldn’t pull another blatantly obvious stunt, like canceling the V.P. debate. We were wrong.

McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

Or, maybe I was the only one who was joking about it. Surely the McCain campaign doesn’t think they can get away with it. But, all things considered, I guess I can’t blame them for trying.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry. Thanks to my husband, I got a laugh out of this.

I read him his headline: “Palin Open to War with Russia.” His response: “Then she should go.”

In her first sit-down with a national news media outlet since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin responded to a series of specific questions about foreign policy and national security with a series of general answers that put her firmly on the side of doing “whatever it takes” to protect the nation. And she left open the option of waging war with Russia if it were to again invade neighboring Georgia and the former Soviet republic were a NATO ally.

“We will not repeat a Cold War,” Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate two weeks ago.

Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t wait to hear how LCR explains this away. Via Queerty comes more specifics on the story about Sarah Palin inquiring about banning books from the public library while mayor of Wasillia.

In her first public statement since Palin was named the GOP vice-presidential candidate, Mary Ellen Baker said today, “I simply do not recall a conversation with specific titles,” Baker told ABCNews.com.

Palin has acknowledged she twice raised the issue in 1996 of how books could be removed from the shelves, but said it was only a “rhetorical question” and that she did not ask for any books to be banned.

Palin’s church at the time, the Assembly of God, had been pushing for the removal a book called “Pastor, I Am Gay” from local bookstores, according to the book’s author Pastor Howard Bess, of the Church of the Covenant in nearby Palmer, Alaska.

“And she was one of them,” said Bess, “this whole thing of controlling information, censorship, that’s part of the scene,” said Bess.

Here’s where I’m confused. How does This add up to being “inclusive”? OK, she has “gay friends” but doesn’t want “gay books” in the library? And did she have “gay friends” when she was mayor? Did they say anything to her about this? Do Republicans’ “gay friends” ever say anything to them about stuff like this?

If so, it apparently doesn’t do any good. (That the books weren’t banned says more about the character librarian and the integrity of the process than about how much of either quality Palin possesses.) And if not, why not?

Let me start by saying that I’m going to give the Log Cabin Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they choose their party and their candidate based on their political philosophy and not just their positions on LGBT issues. I said as much in a comment on a post at Independent Gay Forum that, to me, didn’t seem to extend the same courtesy to those of us at the other side of the political spectrum.

But obviously, if your vote is determined by gay issues, it’s going to go to Obama/Biden. If you think Obama is better for gays but worse (or even dangerously worse) for the country, than voting for McCain/Palin does not make you a self-loather (though Obama’s LGBT devotees will certainly tar you, endlessly, with that brush).

As I said in my comment, I’ll make a deal with the LCR and gay conservatives: I won’t characterize you guys as self-loathing if you don’t characterize LGBT Democrats and progressives as mindless, one-issue voters. After all, none of the people I know or talked to in Denver are supporting Obama/Biden soley on the basis of their positions on LGBT issues, but because we think that McCain/Palin is worse (or even dangerously worse) for the country on a whole range of issues from the economy to health care and foreign policy. It just happens that one candidate/party is better on LGBT issues than the other

Which brings me, belatedly, to LCR’s endorsement of the McCain/Palin ticket.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. Just…wow.

Rough Transcript after the Jump

Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t had time to write anything about McCain’s VP pick, because I’ve been at home with Dylan — who’s apparently cutting his top front teeth, which makes him really irritable — since yesterday (daycare is closed), and probably won’t have anything to post today for the same reason. I do have a couple of posts I’m working on which, with nay luck, will get posted before the end of the week.

In the meantime, I have a question.

Which is worse. That McCain’s choice of Palin was essentially a roll of the dice? Or that after a vetting process that started in May and encompassed 21 names (though the vetting team only arrived in Alaska one day before the announcement, and McCain met her only once before making the offer) and she really is the best they could do?

One. Heartbeat. Away.

I suppose it had to come to this eventually. John Edwards is the one who had the affair, but now people are angry with Elizabeth.

It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.

But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband — a former U.S. senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee — said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.

“I think she’s complicit,” said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. “Obviously, she knew. While she’s the victim, she clearly didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up.”

She didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up? Exactly what would people have her do? Denounce her husband on national television, and then have the cameras follow her to the courthouse to file divorce papers?

Read the rest of this entry »

After the last post, I thought I’d share one more celeb citing, as I was on my way out of Denver. This time, I was at the Denver airport, taking the shuttle from security to the departure gate. (Note: this couldn’t be posted from the Denver airport because — like most of my time at the convention — I was never able to get their wifi internet access to work. To add insult to injury, the 24-hour technical support number on the brochure that the woman at the information desk gave to me as dead. It never even rang when I called it. The call just disconnected. Did the same thing when she called it, after I informed her of it.)

I didn’t see her going through security, but I glimpsed a flash of red out of the corner of my eye, turned my head ever so slightly, and there she was, wheeling her carry-on to the shuttle.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s true, celebs abounded in Denver.

You can’t walk within shouting distance of the Pepsi Center here without sighting Ben Affleck, Eva Longoria, Stephen Spielberg or Melissa Etheridge.

After Hillary Clinton’s speech Tuesday, reporters lurched after passed canapés poolside at a posh Denver home where Sean Penn and directors J.J. Abrams and Cameron Crowe filled out a crowd that included Charlie Rose, Sony Pictures (SNE) Chairman Michael Lynton and Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei.

It’s no surprise that the mostly liberal cultural mavens of Hollywood cannot contain their enthusiasm for Barack Obama (if that looks like Oprah cheering tonight during his big moment, it probably is.) It’s also brilliantly perverse that while the Republican governor of California is an action movie star, John McCain’s campaign derisively labels Obama as “the biggest celebrity in the world.”

But from a business perspective, it’s hard to explain why so many media folks are here. Rarely has so much firepower come together in one place with so little specific purpose.

I had psuedo-celebrity citings all week. Pseudo, because they always turned out to be wrong, except for one. On Monday, I thought I saw one of my favorite actors. But it was only some guy who looked like Joaquin Phoenix, if he’d put on a little weight between movies. Wednesday, I thought I saw some guy who looked like an unshaven David Spade. I thought I saw George Lucas walk past me as one point, but I decided that if he was at Invesco field, he’d have a private box.

But then I hit the jackpot with my number one bona fide celeb encounter in Denver. I was leaving the press box and leaving Invesco field (to beat the rush), riding the elevator down to the first floor, when the elevator stopped on the third floor, and on to the elevator stepped…

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I flew into Denver yesterday, after not bothering to go to bed Saturday night, because my flight was at 6:06 a.m. and the shuttle to Dulles picked me up at 3:29 a.m. Besides, I wasn’t able to pack until after the kids went to bed. But then I wanted to help the hubby fold the laundry, and wanted to load and run the dishwasher, since I was leaving him on his own with the kids to go off and witness history. Oh yeah, and blog about it.

The problem is, my first day at the convention, I didn’t really see much to blog about. Actually, I sat in on about 15 minutes of the LGBT caucus, and saw Michelle Obama’s speech on a television screen with closed captioning and the volume turned down, and from a distance at that. But, at least I got a pretty good story out of it. So, maybe the day wasn’t a total loss.

Read the rest of this entry »