good cheer

The elegant Ms. Place offers a diagnostic test to determine what brand of liberal you might be. Lest any noses are rising at the term "liberal," remember that liberal means, among other things, "of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies" and, I might add, dictatorships. Liberals are also "free from prejudice or bigotry," and "favorable to progress and reform."

I took it twice, once before lunch, for which I was diagnosed a Peace Patroller, and the second after a fine meal and a brief review of the day's news, which apparently turned me into a NewLeft Hipster.

So how about it? What brand are you? Check out Ms. Place's test and come back and tell.

who needs a fat president?

Maybe we do. The WaPo's Richard Cohen writes of the current crop of candidates, their weighty issues, and how fat is increasingly viewed as a moral issue. Who would you prefer: Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt or George Bush? One of two fat boys? Or a trim, athletic monomaniacal conscienceless dictator?

The sum total of pounds lost in the great cause of democracy has now clearly exceeded 150. Mike Huckabee's down about 110, Bill Richardson's down more than 30, Rudy's looking trim and, as pundits galore have told us, if Al Gore sheds more than a pound and a half, it will be universally taken as a declaration of candidacy.

What Winston Churchill would make of this I cannot say. He might reach for yet another drink.The great American pastime is not baseball, but moral crusades. This accounts for why we once made booze illegal, why we continue to make war on all drugs, and why now we have turned to obesity – morbid obesity, as it is sometimes morbidly called. . . .

This explains why a presidential candidate must be trim. To be overweight, even pleasantly so, suggests a lack of self-discipline. That, of course, is utter nonsense, the previous president being an example of all such. Bill Clinton went on his daily jog, more or less maintained his weight, and yet strayed morally in ways that two entire congressional committees and a special prosecutor documented for no really good reason. Maybe Mr. Clinton should have stayed fat. . . .

But the aforementioned Churchill smoked, drank and was overweight. Teddy Roosevelt, a remarkable president, was a wee 5-feet-8 and weighed about 200 pounds. Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor who presided over the peaceful reunification of his country, favored a dish called saumagen – pig's stomach stuffed with lard. His tenure was the longest of any chancellor since Otto von Bismarck, hardly a skinny himself.

I recognize, of course, that for most of us willpower is what we sadly lack, and nothing in our genes commands pasta instead of veggies. But I would still choose a TR or a Churchill over the trim President Bush any day. And I would point out that Mr. Gore, overweight though he may be, was right about Iraq and global warming.

AIDS and bill clinton and crixi

In response to Joe's post on Bill Clinton's success in raising funds to provide low cost AIDS drugs to 3d world countries, one of my favorite JMG commenters, Crixi van Cheek, responded with this:

It was the Thursday before Election Day 1992. I had dragged my tired wasting ass onto a PATH train to go over to Jersey City Hall. Bill Clinton, it was rumored, was going to give a speach specifically on AIDS! No other candidate, and in fact, no President had even said the word AIDS. Except for GHW Bush and that lizard in pearls, who referred to "AIDS Babies, the truly innocent victims" as if to infer the rest of us were somehow guilty. Anyhoo...there I was, anxious for some hope, any hope. I wore a long borrowed trench coat, cuz the damn IV I had came with a horrendous over the shoulder pump. I chunky, happy girl of the kind that naturally can identify a queer in need such as I was, befriended me and moved me to the front of the rope line.

Turns out the chunky girl was some sort of State Assemby person. But there we stood, the both of us, tears running down our eyes dumbfounded that this man stood there for a good long time and spoke about his personal losses to the disease and his commitment to stopping AIDS. Not only did he actually SAY the word AIDS, he had personal experience. His friends had died too. He had made deathbed promises to them. He had some of the same experiences I had.

At the end of the speach, there was a rope line of handshakes and thank you's....the cameras were turned away at his request, since he recognized that the stigma of AIDS was still a threat to those of us in the audience struggling with HIV. As he was shaking the hand of a woman to my right he looked at the campaign pins I put on the lapel of that borrowed trench coat.

One said "Lesbians and Gays for Clinton/Gore" the other "Veterans for Clinton" . Clinton, eying them both, said "I am counting on your Votes" plural addressing both issues. I responded with " Governor, you have my vote, but I am afraid it might be the last vote I cast for a president, I have AIDS." He stopped directly in front of me, he gently nudged and intrusive camera away, he held my hand in both of his massive mits and looked me directly in the eyes and said " Let me make myself clear, if you give me your vote on Tuesday I will do everything in my power to make sure you are here for my second term and beyond. You have my word."

The very fact that I am typing this comment in 2007 with a couple a hundred T-Cells compliments of a government subsidized medical program that restored my health during his administration is testiment to the fact that he kept his word. He will forever have my gratitude, not only for the treatments that would never have come to be had he not been elected, but for the simple kindness he expressed in under 30 seconds. He may be flawed, but he is a great man nonetheless.

Crixi Van Cheek | 05.25.07 - 11:16 am | #

Crixi's words broke the gloomy cloud I've been under with tears that haven't stopped yet. I will always love Bill Clinton for his humanity and for his compassion; he is a decent human being, flawed like the rest of us, but at the core, a good man. And I love my mysterious Crixi to pieces.

okay

From DailyKos . . .

Buck up. We still haven't completely lost this Iraq supplemental battle. And if we do, instead of crying and taking your ball home, resolve to fight even harder. We owe it to our troops in Iraq, to our families, to our neighbors, to ourselves.

We have a lot of deadwood to get rid of in DC -- both Democratic and Republican. We have to combat the lies of the right wing noise machine and its allies in the traditional media. We have to build an electoral machine that can go toe-to-toe against the GOP's machine and win -- even when Republicans aren't shooting themselves in the foot.

This movement is about fighting for what we believe in, doing the hard work to transform both our party and our nation. It won't happen at once. We'll have to do this incrementally one issue fight and one election cycle at a time.

Deep breath, shoulder shake, whap on the head. Okay. Onward.

no hope at all

To say that I am heartbroken and disappointed doesn't even come close to what I am feeling about the selling out of our soldiers and the American people. I will not, however, sit out the next election, as I am hearing so many discussing this morning. That is not the way to reclaim our country, we must continue to make our voices heard.

support our troops

David Michael Green's excellent analysis of patriotism and this administration's bogus support of the troops at Common Dreams.

". . . Of course, that could never happen here. Not now. Surely our young (and, in this war, not so young) soldiers are never called upon to fight in the interests of elites, interests so nefarious that they would have to be hidden under stacks of lies concerning national security threats, and behind a barrage of patriotic platitudes. Surely America’s bravest are never treated as expendable cannon fodder by leaders who could care less about their welfare. Surely they’re not trotted off the war like so many Iranian children, clutching a plastic key to heaven in one hand, and a fairytale of how much they’re truly valued in the other. . . .

"Major General Smedley Butler (who knew firsthand whereof he spoke, having served, by his own assessment, as a high-ranked military lackey doing the dirty work for corporate robber-barons in Latin America) nailed it when he said, 'War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.'"

Bringing them home is the best support we can give the troops. It is the greatest act of patriotism to get them out of this disaster.

what's that stiff thing there in your back

Mr. Reporter Man? I think it is ~ surely not ~ a spine? Tony Snow confronted on the shameful conditions at Walter Reed.

Which is it?

These people have bushel basket sized balls. He knew, of course he knew!

(Insert public outcry, much negative publicity, many articles condemning the outrage at Walter Reed.)

Oh no, he did not know! A belle just wants to smack somebody. Hard.

guthrie boy walks away from madness

Guthrie, Oklahoma is just a short scoot down I-44 over to the red dirt buffalo wallow side of my state. Here in lush Green Country, we've got more in common with Georgia than we do with the wrong side of Oklahoma.

But here comes young Joshua Key, a Guthrie boy who joined the Army to try to lift his family out of poverty. His experiences in Iraq are freshly detailed in a book called The Deserter's Tale, published as Key is actively seeking refuge in Canada. "I ... tried not to think about which was worse: beating up and killing the civilians of Iraq or refusing to do it any more and becoming a criminal."

The terrible story of his duty in Iraq and his growing certainty that he could not morally participate in the war are detailed at Daily Kos. The book's available at even our Red State library as well as bookstores everywhere.

media whores

Nance Gregg's latest rant, a subject dear to my heart: "Having grown up during the Cold War, I remember well the tales of how the Russian people were unaware of their government’s activities due to ‘news’ that was simply propaganda meant to mislead the masses. I remember the ads asking for contributions to Radio Free Europe, “so we can get the truth to people behind the Iron Curtain.”

"Little did I know that someday I, an American citizen, would need a source of real information, because the integrity of the TV news I had grown up with – being the integrity of the Cronkites and the Murrows – would die in the wake of endless, insipid chatter, or outright lies being passed off as fact."

Full text here.

presidents' day

The worst president in US history compares himself to the other George. Washington. His hubris knows no bounds. And that is the last political post on this Presidents' Day 2007.

this is support for the troops?

A shameful story here about conditions at Walter Reed, and another here about the disgusting treatment of our war wounded. This is especially revolting in light of the record profits reported by war profiteers Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Bechtel et al, and the billions of dollars wasted through inefficiency, price inflation, and outright thievery.

funny?

Talking Points Memo has a timely post on what's funny v. what's not funny. I feel pretty hopeless about the media for the most part abandoning its responsibility to keep the people informed. Greg Sargent points out the enormous difference between the press of old and the lapdogs who masquerade as reporters these days.

This has a little age on it, but never hurts to see again how the White House correspondents ~ the people who are supposed to report the truth and investigate statements made by politicians ~ laugh merrily as George Bush makes jokes about weapons of mass destruction. It doesn't hurt to be reminded when we are running headlong into sending more young people to die in Iraq and fast building up toward attacking Iran.

Just in case you feel so led, you can call your representatives. Find their contact info here.

what's that definition of insanity?

doing the same thing and expecting a different result? bush, speaking from the white house this morning:

Q . . . I'd like to follow on Iran. Critics say that you are using the same quality of intelligence about Iran that you used to make the case for war in Iraq, specifically about WMD that turned out to be wrong, and that you are doing that to make a case for war against Iran. Is that the case?

THE PRESIDENT: I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.

The full text here just makes me want to give up.

Bang those pots and pans and get the mammogram now

The loss of Molly Ivins leaves a gaping hole in the world. I have loved her since I lived in Texas. She epitomized the smart, sassy, rowdy Texas kind of belle I adore. Amy Goodman has written as fine a farewell as I've read to date, noting that Molly "first questioned authority, then skewered it." It brought tears to my eyes and is a fine remembrance of a fine woman. What a loss.

I've borrowed this photo from the Texas Observer, Molly's home for many years.

I love this man!

I fell in love when he started hollering in the midst of this video from C-SPAN-2. Amendments worth $200 billion to corporations, small business, education, but not $2.15 for the poorest working people?

"What is the price that you want from these working men and women? . . . Seventy more amendments to add to the minimum wage bill before voting. . . . Do you have such disdain for hard working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? . . . What is it about this that drives you Republicans crazy. What is it?"

Really funny if it were not so sadly true

Not work safe . . .

My hero is a gay hooker

Mike Jones is my hero. I admire his courage, his strength of conviction, his honesty.

Mike Jones used to be a hooker. I don't hold that against him because the only difference between us is that he had the sense to charge. Having been single in the '70s, I was a very popular girl. I had a blast and I don't regret it, but it's not who I am today.

Mike may have had a problem with meth. I can't possibly hold that against him, as I used more than my share of that powerful drug in my misspent youth, and I know how seductive it can be.

I'm a 49 year old relatively proper (vastly reformed) married woman, owner of a successful small business in the upper south. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or whore around. I've had the support of my family throughout my life, even the times when I was so off the rails as to be unrecognizable to them.

So why is Mike Jones, the gay prostitute who outed the hypocritical homophobic Ted Haggard my hero? Mike is my hero because, at great personal risk he provided a distraction from the Republican machine that has derailed so many elections.

Mike's story of his ongoing relationship with Ted Haggard ~ the head of an enormous church and a monstrous evangelical association, who reviled gays while engaging in homosexual acts, who used drugs while preaching purity ~ prevented the American public from once more swallowing the pro-war propaganda we've been fed for the last four years.

It was a story so shocking, it could not have been derailed by even one of those terror alerts Karl Rove is always pulling out of his ass to scare us into submission. By telling his story, by standing up, Mike encouraged the rest of us to stand up and do what needed to be done in Congress.

Mike took a risk. He told his story in northern Colorado ~ not far from where Matthew Shepard was beaten nearly to death, then left to die alone on a fence in Wyoming. People think folks in the south are homophobic, but we've got nothing on some of those idiots out west. Mike knew he would be reviled for his past, for the drugs, and he spoke up anyway.

I am not sure I have that kind of courage: I hope so, would want to, but in the end? I don't know if I have the kind of courage it takes to put everything at risk for a principle. The principle is honesty and Mike spoke up. For that, he is my hero.

If you want to help Mike, another of my heroes who writes so eloquently of the worst years of the "gay plague," Joe at Joe.My.God has a great post and complete details about a Paypal account that's been opened for Mike Jones. Mike is alone, without resources, but check out Joe's post. He says it better than I can. I sent $$ yesterday, along with my thanks. Mike's email for Paypal is massageandmuscle@aol.com. It felt great to be able to help, and anything does help ~ $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, anything at all.

But it's not all good . . .

So much emotion and tension and energy caught up in the reclamation of America. It's hard to come down, but as I'm coming in for a soft landing, I am reminded that despite sweeping changes in the House and Senate, my gay friends still cannot marry their lifetime loves. Straight woman that I am, I can only try to imagine how that must feel. I'm blanked out on words, so I'm repeating in honor of the GLBT community this bit I wrote last summer. It bears repeating and with it I am expressing my hope that one day, one day soon, love will win out.

I talked with my friend today and he told me he had recently suffered a bout of depression. It finally lifted, and he was again able to find pleasure in simple things, in the life he has made with a woman, in his new grandchild, his daughters.

When I talk to him, I can't help but feel sad that he had to give up an essential part of himself in order to have the things he wants. My friend is almost 60 years old. He grew up a southern boy in the wilds of Louisiana. He knew he was gay from a young age, yet he yearned to have children and surely felt a pressure to conform to the normalcy of a small southern town in the '50s.

He did all the right things, excelled at school, was a cheerleader in college, met an Indian princess and fell in love, as best he could, when he was longing in his secret heart to find his prince. He wanted children and he's a marvelous daddy. His daughters adore him and the new grandbaby is all he's ever wanted. Almost.

He adores his princess, too, and their relationship is filled with warmth and respect and a kind of love. But there's something to be said for being true to oneself. Maybe there's everything to be said for being true to oneself. Maybe without that, there really is no kind of life, even if it looks really wonderful.

In all respects, my friend's life is wonderful. He has everything anyone could want, and yet he finds himself depressed and I am saddened by something in his eyes, an unutterable sorrow, even on the best of days.

With the Cheney/Rove/Bush effort to once again rally the wingnuts on the right to vote by waving the red flag of gay marriage, I think of my friend and we talk about this choice he made, the only choice he really could make at that time and in that place.

Would he have made another marriage at such a tender age if he could have? Would he have married his prince? Would adopted children have satisfied the longing he has to be a parent? Would his eyes then sparkle and be filled with the same joy I see when we are laughing and being crazy and acting out and telling stories of southern life, when he seems to be most at ease, at peace, and before he remembers that he's someone else, not himself, not truly.

Almost sixty years of denying something as basic as his sexuality. I can't even imagine it. I don't even know how one finds that kind of strength and commitment. Maybe it's simply a transaction: I give up this to get that. But what if he could have had it all? What if he could have had his prince and his children, his beloved grandson and a life of being at home with himself, able to relax his vigilance and just let go. On his own, with me, with others who know, he's a different kind of man: fully alive, magical in his humor and liveliness and as charismatic as anyone I've ever met.

When I talked to my friend today, I found myself wishing, wishing that he had married his prince instead of his princess, that their children had two daddies and the new grandbaby two grandpas. What's wrong with that? How can anything really be wrong with that? It's just love, along with commitment and honor and the selflessness that's inherent in anyone who feels so strongly about kids. The greatest Commandments are to love God and to love one another (and yes, heathen that I am, I had to look that up just to be sure). Despite what we're told, it seems that even in Heaven's view, there is nothing wrong with that. Love is everything and in this life, wouldn't my friend's love for his prince have been just as worthy a thing as the love he has for his princess?

Cleaning house

Who'd have thought it possible there would be a clean sweep in the House and Senate? I am stunned and delighted and full of hope.

My housekeeper's coming today and it occurs to me that this afternoon my house will be gleaming and gorgeous and spotless top to bottom. Everything will be polished and plumped and fluffed, ready for another week. In a couple of days, some of the plump and fluff will be gone. Some of the polish dimmed a bit by fingerprints, dust. By the time she reappears in a week, it will be looking a little rough, a little messy, with clutter here and there and the occasional horror courtesy of some box-lot auction I couldn't resist.

We've swept congress and now it is up to us, the American people, to keep it polished and plumped and fluffed. Whether or not you've ever been involved in politics, please consider taking some kind of action now, even if it's just to get your name on the list of your local party headquarters.

An excellent bipartisan website for paying attention to our employees in congress is The Sunlight Foundation. Check it out and you may be as enchanted as I am with this grassroots effort to participate in effective action to make Congress transparent and accountable.

And I just have to say it one more time: Hallelujah!!