So according to the Guardian a psychiatrist in Canada is accused of sexually assaulting patients. Sad but unremarkable until you find out that the psychiatrist was nicknamed “Doctor Shock” for using electroshock therapy to try to cure gay soldiers in South Africa. Furthermore he had ties to the apartheid regime and fled the country after the fall of the government to Canada, the home of the Canucks and land of the weird. Between Roy Ashburn, Larry Craig and all the other vehemently anti-gay people who are later outed I’m beginning to see a trend…
Archive for March, 2010
I’m always somewhat loathe to talk about Sarah Palin, like doing so only contributes to the side-show nature that pervades a lot of conservative politics. Sometimes though that side-show is just too interesting to pass up. To whit, this picture taken from a stump speech by Sarah Palin for her old running mate last week wherein the former governor shows that even ‘small town gals’ can rather convincingly pull off the dominatrix look:
Also, does anyone else think McCain’s logo has a eerily tasty resemblance to bacon?
There must be a source of crazy somewhere, I just haven’t found it yet.
- First the Affordable Care Act passes then Russia agrees to the terms of a new arms control treaty. Obama’s on a roll.
- Republican Congressman tries to claim he was a victim of an attack. Police say it was “an act of random gunfire”. Unlike the acts of vandalism that have been occurring against Democratic congressman across the country.
- Defense Secretary Gates decides to make Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell less intrusive until Congress takes action.
- Couple got married in Massachusetts, can’t get divorced in Pennsylvania… or Massachusetts.
- Must-read: Open letter to conservatives.
Speaking crazy I can’t decide who is worse. This guy:
Or… her:
So yesterday I posted a blog on Queer Oakland about the spat of gay teens insisting that their high school’s allow them to bring same-sex dates to their proms. In Constance McMillen’s case the school board decided to cancel the prom altogether rather than let her bring her girlfriend in order to avoid any ‘distractions’. So let’s parse that for a moment, the Itawamba County school district board had their sensibilities troubled by the fact that a girl wanted to attend a school dance with another girl on her arm while wearing a tux. Oh noes! That would violate all convention and threaten their peachy worldview, so they canceled it. I mean, did they really think that following in the footsteps of their racist forbears who close public pools rather than share them with black people wouldn’t cause a whole shit ton of media attention and ‘distraction’.
In short: Stupid rationalizations are stupid.
This all gave Derrick Martin, a young gay man in Georgia, the idea to petition his school to let him take his boyfriend to his prom. Wisely his principle realized that since their school didn’t have any policies against it that he should be allowed to do so. Unfortunately, the article claims that “because of the media attention, Martin’s parents have kicked him out and the teen is staying with a friend”.
First of all that’s disingenuous. His parents didn’t kick him out because of the ‘media attention’ – they did so cause their son’s a fag and they don’t like that. So rather than love and support their son for standing up for himself they threw him out of their house. The ‘media attention’ had nothing to do with.
Secondly: man that must suck.
So as you’ve no doubt heard, the Democrats finally pulled their heads out of their collective asses last night and passed the damn bill. However it wasn’t without its own particular hysterics. In particular several protesters yelled racial and homophobic epithets and Democratic members of Congress. I think it’s rather self-evident that bigotry plays a rather large role in the Conservative movement as does a general lack of empathy for human suffering, however it’s been interesting in a rather depressing way to watch those two forces interplay in the health care reform debate. A lot of this sentiment rises from the Tea Party elements of conservativism, which for better or worse has been driving a lot of the grassroots energy to the Republican party over the past six months. So of course Republican politicians have no desire to alienate these people, which leads to some rather repugnant justifications for this language.
First Devin Nunes (R-CA), who represents the 21st district which includes eastern Fresno and Tulare counties, said this:
Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy. I think, you know, there’s people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it.
Now we have Steve King (R-IA) saying this:
“I just don’t think it’s anything,” King said, emphasizing that the incidents were isolated. “There are a lot of places in this country that I couldn’t walk through. I wouldn’t live to get to the other end of it.”
So apparently totalitarian tactics (by which he actually means majority rule) and the fact that an old white guy is afraid to walk through black neighborhoods makes it okay for protesters to use hate speech. It’s things like this that make prognostications of the coming Great Republican Takeover seem a little… myopic.
It’s always struck me as odd that Eisenhower is one of the least referenced Presidents of the 20th century. Theodore Roosevelt is romanticized, Wilson got World War 1 and the failure of the League of Nations, Hoover got sacked with the Depression, FDR is well.. FDR, Truman dropped the Bomb, JFK went to the moon and got shot, LBJ launched the Great Society and granted Civil Rights, Nixon had Watergate, Ford pardoned Nixon, Carter had malaise, stagflation and Iranian hostages, Reagan had Reaganomics and Iran-Contra, Bush 41 had the Gulf War, Clinton had the most prosperous and peaceful era in US history and Bush 43 shot everything to hell.
Yet Eisenhower kind gets looked over and after reading this speech by him I find that somewhat disappointing as, propaganda and rhetoric aside, he seems to have had a profoundly global and moral understanding of the United States’ role in the world:
The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.
First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.
Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing isinalienable.
Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
He also seemed to understand the opportunity costs involved in the Cold War and how much prosperity and economic development the people of the world were missing out on due to the arms race:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron
Unfortunately it seems that even with the end of the Cold War it’s now the United State’s that is intent on hanging humanity on that cross of iron:
