Let's Be Clear on "Hate"

POSTED BY JHW22

I keep seeing a Rick Warren quote popping up on Facebook. Hell, I don't know if he really said it but here it is:

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate." -Rick Warren

Days after all the Chik-Fil-A crap, and some people STILL don't understand that the left isn't mad about what the head of Chick-fil-a SAID. We're pissed at what he DID. He funded groups that take rights away from gay people -- preventing them from marrying, adopting, getting jobs and in parts of the world LIVING. Yes, the head of Chick-fil-a helps fund a group that supports the execution of gays in Africa.

You can SAY that doesn't mean he hates gay people if you want. But when you support people being executed for being gay, I guess you can say Hitler didn't hate gays when he sent them to the camps.

Semantics, I guess.

And really, when you use the "it doesn't mean I hate them" as a distraction from the real issue that you oppose civil rights, it's as if you're defensive about being called a hater. Gee, I think a gay person is probably MORE defensive about having their rights taken away.

What A Dick

Here's my governor (unfortunately) with full pomposity on display on Morning Joe clashing with Jonathan Capehart over the issue of gay marriage among other things. Good luck trying to stomach the 20 plus minutes of video.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Misinterpreting or Underestimating Obama

Posted by Desert Crone

I have been mulling over an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while, and that idea grew to fruition with two tweets by Lt. Dan Choi: “. . . .sad that Barack Obama would have voted no" and "Obama: ‘I have plenty of gay friends. Some of them work for me. I just feel they are inferior to me, and they don't deserve marriage.’" That set me off in an ugly old cranky rant on “Tweeter.” I called Lt. Choi a self-made martyr and a media whore. However, this wasn’t a spontaneous tweet; it was an opinion I’ve held about him since he came out. We drunks have a saying in AA, “Principles over personalities,” and Lt. Choi’s behavior and comments flew in the face of that belief.

His crusade became about himself and his rising star on MSNBC, not the greater good. In my opinion, President Obama became the target of “his” movement, and he lost sight of the LGBT movement. Of course, my criticism of Lt. Choi generated much support and criticism, some very harsh, which was of no surprise to me. However, I digress. In my mind Lt. Choi is hardly a martyr (which to my knowledge he has not claimed to be but acts like) because martyrs don’t throw others under the bus. Martyrs help people get on the bus and up on stools at Woolworth and into voting booths and into segregated public schools and universities. But my epiphany and the point of this post aren’t about Choi’s motive; they revolve around his criticism of President Obama.

As you know, Lt. Choi, Rachel Maddow, and Michael Moore all have the opinion that Obama would have voted against the gay marriage bill in NY. This is simply, unequivocally false. I am truly befuddled by this statement because I have read much of what Pres. Obama has said and written about gay marriage. Others are tweeting “evolve already” to the president, presumably assuming that Obama is struggling with moral or political issues around his view on gay marriage. I also disagree with that assumption.

I believe President Obama’s conundrum is whether or not gay marriage is a vehicle to achieving civil rights for LGBT’S, or whether gay marriage will come with the passing of more sweeping civil rights legislation and court rulings. If my observation does, in fact, define his conflicted feelings (or evolution), then his statements about gay marriage revolve around his search for the most pragmatic path to ensuring civil rights for LGBT’s.

 In this quote from Dec. 2008, Obama says:

‘Look, when my parents got married in 1961, it would have been illegal for them to be married in a number of states in the South. So obviously, this is something that I understand intimately, it’s something that I care about. But if I were advising the civil rights movement back in 1961 about its approach to civil rights, I would have probably said it’s less important that we focus on an anti-miscegenation law than we focus on a voting rights law and a non-discrimination and employment law and all the legal rights that are conferred by the state. Now, it’s not for me to suggest that you shouldn’t be troubled by these issues. But my job as president is going to be to make sure that the legal rights that have consequences on a day to day basis for loving same sex couples all across the country.’

Basically, but not wholly, I base my premise on the part of the quotation that is in bold. Also, I would like to reference articles by Greg Sargent and Andrew Sullivan. I reference these articles, not necessarily because they support my opinion, but because both “get” that this President understands nuance. The lack of understanding this about President Obama has created much of the Left’s vitriolic, unreasonable criticism.

I find it incredulous that many of Obama’s liberal/progressive critics appear to forget that Obama is a brilliant Constitutional lawyer with a powerful intellect. Even a frequent critic of the President, Keith Olbermann admits “it was really one of those moments where you thought, well, maybe we do have one of say the 1,000 smartest people in the country is [sic] the President of the United States. Maybe he`s 999. Maybe number 83 - we don`t know.” 

Yet, still Olbermann and other critics frequently go to great lengths to give President Obama advice on how to do this or that. The fact that Obama is a pragmatist and a Constitutional scholar with a brilliant mind leads me to believe that his positions on issues are not based on his religious beliefs or political scheming but the most pragmatic, quickest way to do the right thing for people of the United States. Thus, he has used and is using his executive powers to make it easier for unions to organize, to implement parts of the DREAM Act, and to obtain civil rights for LGBT’s. If Congress won’t get the job done, then Obama looks for other avenues.

My point is that the criticism that Obama would have voted no on gay marriage or that he doesn’t support gay marriage is so simplistic to be laughable if it weren’t so tragically absurd. It might be true if he were a black and white thinker (no pun so don’t even go there), but he is not. He is a complex man. And don’t you ever forget it.

43 Years Ago Today

A New Wave of Crazy

I understand the calculations in the current political climate that cause some to tack to the right simply in an attempt to save their jobs. But in cases like this, the pushback after President Obama took office has given the excuse for current office holders to display their full wingnuttia and expose what most likely have been their true feelings all along with the added arrogance of thinking they have nothing to fear in showing their true colors.

In addition to reiterating anti-choice talking points on abortion and backing "traditional marriage," according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, [Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C.] went further and "said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

So now DeMint's expanding his discrimination to single pregnant women as well as gays. ...Nice.

Al Franken on DADT

Here's the full speech that Senator Al Franken made on the Senate floor. An impassioned speech and a must see.

47 Years Ago Today

Indistinguishable From Aristocracy

posted by Armadillo Joe

Mrs. Joe and I are fans of the show House Hunters on HGTV, including its offspring House Hunters International. Last night, we watched an episode called Londoners Seek a More Leisurely Life in France. A synopsis:

Stephanie and Charlie May have lived in the fast lane in London for four years. Now, they yearn to slow down and spend more time with their two-year-old son Finn. They've begun a search for a home in the Jarnac region of France, which has everything they are looking for: good schools, beautiful landscapes, great food and a relaxed pace of life.

And as much as we were both ready to hate them, we actually had quite the opposite reaction. She works as a defense barrister and he works as a carpenter/joiner/cabinet-maker. The rather modest home they showed the two owning in South London was nothing spectacular and overall, my impression was of a more or less straight-up middle class couple who married for love, she from the bourgois-merchant class on down and he from the working class on up. We liked both of them and they seemed like the sort of people who we would count among our friends if we knew them.

They were moving to a rural part of western France to open a bed-and-breakfast, their plan being to find and spruce-up an old French farmhouse, retro-fitting the unused portions of the house and the out-buildings into gîtes for Brits on extended holiday in the late spring through early fall. The price range of the homes they were looking at in France were actually rather comparable to what me and Mrs. Joe would be seeking were we ever in a similar position and, if you've ever seen the show or plan to watch this specific episode (spoiler alert!) they choose House #2. That made us happy because it needed the most work but also had the most potential.

It's funny, though. Note that I said "were we ever in a similar position." It occurred to me as I watched the show last night that we could never, ever be in a similar position. Ever. Not just because in the epilogue we found out that the two of them after the fact wound up splitting time between London and rural France in order to continue to draw income while they made the transition -- much easier across the Channel than from across The Pond, though my actual point isn't about distance -- but because even if Mrs. Joe and I decided to flee this crazy New York City lifestyle and raise goats to make artisanal cheeses in Vermont, we couldn't because we'd have no health-care.

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Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The only way Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) will be able to stop saying idiotic things is just to keep her mouth shut.



What. A. Moron.

Douchebag of the Week: Jennifer Fermino

From Jennifer Fermino of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, "Bling Time For Prez": President Obama was awarded Saudi Arabia's highest honor yesterday -- an elaborate gold necklace and medallion fit for a king or a rap mogul.

...He smiled and posed for pics in his new bling, but took it off after a few minutes for "safekeeping."

So President Obama represents the post racial divide has been crossed in these great United States and now African-Americans can't fall back on that tried and true racial discrimination excuse anymore, huh? Or at least that's what Whitey's been saying since the election.

November 4, 2008 truly was a turning point. While it brought to the forefront the incredible strides we've made as a nation, it simultaneously awakened dormant racism that's been laying just under the surface of this country's skin, causing ugly, racist boils to erupt through scars that almost fifty years of fighting for civil rights have not yet healed.

And the New York Post's Jennifer Fermino exemplifies how "tolerant" we've become as a nation equating King Abdullah's gift, the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit, as bling fit for a rap mogul.

Bob Cesca: I don't recall any "bling" headlines or rap mogul jokes when this happened:



Jennifer Fermino: Douchebag of the Week

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Douche Quote of the Day, Part 3

"We have made progress in civil rights, but now with this? How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people, or even saying you do, or that their not good, or whatever. Make white people the new oppressed minority and they are going right along with it, because their shutting up. They’re moving to the back of the bus. They’re saying I can’t use that drinking fountain, okay. I can’t use that restroom, okay. That’s the modern day Republican Party, the equivalent of the Old South, the new oppressed minority.”

- Rush Limbaugh, May 29, 2009

His very next line was, "Whatever happened to the content of one's character as the basis of judging people?" I don't know, Rush. Why don't you ask the white hating Obama administration? This quote, by the way, was just about a minute before the David Duke comparison.

Un. Hinged.

Maine Supports Gay Marriage

Maine becomes the fifth state to support marriage equality.

Gov. John Baldacci: "In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Governor Baldacci said. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

Baldacci also noted that “does not force any religion to recognize a marriage that falls outside of its beliefs,” nor does it require churches to perform gay weddings.

And really, isn't this the entire point? Civil marriage has absolutely nothing to do with a religious, ceremonial marriage and that's how it should be. Those opposed to gay marriage always seem to bring up the religious aspect in their arguments when it has nothing to do with religion. It's all about equal rights, civil rights and states rights.

(H/T Think Progress)

The Audacity of Erraticism

How is it that someone can demand respect for one's opponent and then say they're going to kick their opponent's ass in the same breath? And yet, that is exactly what John McCain did this past Sunday.

"After I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7... I want to emphasize again, I respect Senator Obama. We will conduct a respectful race, and we will make sure that everybody else does, too."

What the fuck is going on? The post traumatic stress disorder has finally gotten the better of ol' Johnny Maverick. I'm not even going to attempt to call his comment veiled racism because he used the word, "whip." That's neither here nor there because what I found appalling was the response from the McCain campaign regarding the John Lewis "controversy."

After a few days of intense negativity from McCain and Palin to the point of inciting hate-filled ourbursts from audience member in their rallies, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia said the following:

McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." He noted that Wallace also ran for president. "George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights... As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

Of course the McCain campaign was outraged at such statements, and challenged Barack Obama to repudiate Lewis' statements. as if Obama had anything to do with it.

"Congressman John Lewis' comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale. The notion that legitimate criticism of Senator Obama's record and positions could be compared to Governor George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.
I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America."

Now, call me cynical, but taking John Lewis' history as a civil rghts leader into account, I'm going to have to side with him on this one over the objections of McErratic.

It was obvious that Lewis was not comparing McCain to Wallace directly, but rather in the way he was raising the hackles of his audience with fear mongering, guilt by association and tone. And although McCain tried to tone down the nasty nature of his followers, the smear ads and surrogates continue to fan the flames, attempting to keep McCain above the fray, but failing.

Lewis later added this statement to avoid any confusion:

"My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior," he said. "I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation."

But McCain wanted a statement from the Obama campaign, and he got one.

"John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists,"' Burton said in a statement.

And just as a side note, McCain was touting John Lewis during the Saddleback Forum of a few weeks ago as one of three "wise men" that he consults on a regular basis. Another lie.

So on the one hand, McCain considers Lewis a "wise man" he would look to for advice, but when confronted by Lewis with a dangerous situation of his own making, he's another Obama surrogate just slinging mud. Just sayin'.