Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Iran planning to attack US forces

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If this is true, this could be very, very bad:

“The rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration has convinced Iran that military conflict is inevitable and rather than await an attack at a time and place of America’s choosing, the Iranians will try to inflict significant damage to U.S. forces on Iraqi soil by means of the Mahdi Army and other Shi’a groups,” an informed intelligence source told This Is Rumor Control. Senior officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would not comment on these reports, but a former senior intelligence officer said that the conclusion was “a no brainer.” As he noted: “If you had U.S. troops on your doorstep and George Bush calling you a part of the axis of evil you would take steps to protect yourself. And it would be better to protect yourself on Iraqi soil than to have to do so on Iranian soil. That is what they are doing. Are we surprised? We shouldn’t be.”

As if we weren’t in a bad enough position already, now Bush’s incessant sabre-rattling has gone and apparently stirred up another hornet’s nest. We could be in a world of hurt soon, if this comes to pass.

When this was all getting started, there were a few satirical articles floating around (that I don’t have time to search out links for right now) taking all of the US’s stated reasons for invading Iraq and turning them around as if it were the US that was going to be invaded due to our stockpiles of WMD’s, propensity for invading sovereign nations, and so on. Things like this sometimes make me wonder if we might not be that far away from that actually happening (realistically, probably not — we’re still perceived as far too much of a superpower to be on the receiving end of an invasion — but we’re certainly not making any friends in the world right now).

Scary stuff.

(via Dave, BOP and The Republic of T)

iTunes: “Your Eyes are Like a Cup of Tea (Al Yunic Sharbouni Ate)” by Master Musicians of Jajouka from the album Brian Jones pres. the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka (1995, 10:34).

California nullified 4,000 marriages

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Sad news today from California — their state Supreme Court has decided that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority, and declared nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages null and void.

The California Supreme Court on Thursday voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The court said the city illegally issued the certificates and performed the ceremonies, since state law defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.

The justices separately decided with a 5-2 vote to nullify the 3,995 marriages performed between February 12 and March 11, when the court halted the weddings. Their legality, Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, must wait until courts resolve the constitutionality of state laws that restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples.

There’s still hope that the California state constitution might be challenged and amended to remove the restrictive language and allow same-sex marriages again in the future, but that will probably be another long (and potentially fairly nasty) battle. We’ll just have to wait and see where it goes from here.

(via The Blogging of the President)

iTunes: “Trainspotting” by Primal Scream from the album Trainspotting (1996, 10:34).

New CDC anti-condom guidelines

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Somehow I’d missed hearing about this until just now (the article is a few weeks old), but new regulations from the CDC threaten to yank federal funding from any HIV-prevention organization that fail to limit their efforts to promoting abstinence and refraining from promoting the use of condoms.

Lethal new regulations from President Bush’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans’ goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Published on June 16 in the Federal Register, the censorious new CDC guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that does HIV-prevention work and also receives federal funds — whether or not any federal money is directly spent on their programs designed to fight the spread of the epidemic. (The CDC is the principal federal funder of prevention education about HIV and AIDS, and its head a Bush appointee). It’s all couched in arcane bureaucratese, but this is the Bush administration’s Big Stick — do exactly as we say, or lose your federal funding. And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they’d have to slash programs or even close their doors.

These new regs require the censoring of any “content” — including “pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula,” “audiovisual materials” and “pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings),” as well as “advertising” and Web-based info. They require all such “content” to eliminate anything even vaguely “sexually suggestive” or “obscene” — like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber. And they demand that all such materials include information on the “lack of effectiveness of condom use” in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs — in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body’s judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus.

Flat-out-ridiculous, and not at all helpful to anyone. Yes, abstinence is a wonderful and nearly foolproof way to avoid many diseases and other sex-related side effects. It’s also naïvely optimistic, and is never going to be effectively practiced by the majority of people on this planet.

iTunes: “Real Life” by Tones on Tail from the album Night Music (1991, 5:07).

Analogy

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Microsoft Windows : computer security :: George Bush : national security

(Yes, it’s probably extremely flawed. At quarter to two in the morning, it made me laugh when it popped into my head.)

iTunes: “Nocturnal Transmission” by BT from the album Ima (1996, 8:36).

National Preparedness Month: September 2004

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Coming this September, on the three-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: National Preparedness Month.

Because the prior 35 months were all about slacking off and letting the terrorists win, apparently?

This will be publicly announced to the world on September 9th, by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Why announce it nine days into the month?

Why September 9th? That’s awfully late, if it’s supposed to be the entire month. My guess, thinking like Karl Rove: this year’s 9/11 anniversary falls on a Saturday, so an announcement on the date or even Friday would only get a burst of free media on a weekend. But by timing it for the 6 pm news on Thursday, it’ll reach the Friday papers, and thus be fully-injected into all of the emotion-laden anniversary coverage, plus the Sunday morning talk shows.

The America Prepared Campaign has a downloadable calendar of events (PDF link).

There’s much more to all of this — check out This Modern World for more fun details.

Of course, keep in mind, that this isn’t politically motivated (the fact that they didn’t do something like this until election season, and that it all kicks off just after the GOP convention, is entirely coincidental).

Uh-huh.

Right.

iTunes: “Notorious” by Duran Duran from the album Decade (1988, 4:01).

Bizarre homophobic Fox News attack on Disney

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Disney Dream Desk

Earlier this week, Disney announced the “Disney Dream Desk”, a \$900 PC for kids. Honestly, it’s not that newsworthy of a deal: the computer is kind of ugly, and one of the selling points is that it comes pre-configured with oodles of site-blocking software to keep kids from looking at porn (and, as a side effect, a good number of in-depth informative resources on the ‘net, as Boing Boing points out in the link above).

When Disney president Robert Iger went on Fox News to do a brief promotional spot for the Dream Desk (news or commercial…who can tell?), he was suddenly blindsided by host Stuart Varney’s homophobic attack on the (not Disney-sponsored) “Gay Days” at Disney World.

IGER: It’s easy to set up, easy to use, compact, it doesn’t take much room, and most importantly it has what’s called ContentWatch built in.

VARNEY: Well, you know, I — exactly. I mean, in June you have “Gay Days” at your theme parks. You got any ‘Gay Days’ on the Mickey computer?

IGER: Well, this has built into it all kinds of protective devices that protects the kid, or the child from internet sites that a parent wouldn’t deem appropriate. Also, the fact —

VARNEY: Well, you don’t protect the kids from “Gay Days” at the theme parks, do you? Why do you have to protect them in the computer?

IGER: No, we don’t sponsor — we don’t sponsor “Gay Days.” You know, we are a company that lets anyone who is willing to pay through our gates.

Kudos to Iger for handling the sudden, unexpected (and entirely unreasonable and unprofessional) line of questioning as best as he could, that’s for sure.

Varney should, at minimum, be censured by Fox for derailing a promotional fluff piece with his bigoted hysteria. This was an absolutely ridiculous injection of far-right-wing hatred into a situation where it was far, far out of place, and really shouldn’t be tolerated, even by “fair and balanced” Fox News.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “Heaven Says Move (Heavenly Bliss)” by DJ H. Geek from the album Heaven Says Move (1999, 5:46).

They Knew

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Today’s must-read: They Knew…

Despite the whitewash, we now know that the Bush administration was warned before the war that its Iraq claims were weak.

If desperation is ugly, then Washington, D.C. today is downright hideous.

As the 9/11 Commission recently reported, there was “no credible evidence” of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Similarly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. With U.S. casualties mounting in an election year, the White House is grasping at straws to avoid being held accountable for its dishonesty.

The whitewash already has started: In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges.

But as author Flannery O’Conner noted, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” That means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

And they did not care.

The full article has many bits of information that have been known for a long time — at least to those of us who have been paying any amount of attention — but the authors do a wonderful job of summarizing it all in one neat package, extensively linked with source articles.

How anybody can continue to put any stock in the Bush administration is just mind boggling to me.

(via MeFi)

iTunes: “Stare and Stare” by MC 900 Ft Jesus from the album One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994, 6:59).

Missouri 0 — Seattle 1

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Gay Marriage in WA

Handily showing up Missouri’s ban on gay marriage, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing ruled this morning that banning gay marriage would violate the state constitution, clearing the way for gay marriage in Washington once the ruling is reviewed by the state Supreme Court.

Gay couples can marry in Washington state, a judge ruled Wednesday, saying that banning such marriages violates the state constitution.

“The denial to the plaintiffs of the right to marry constitutes a denial of substantive due process,” King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing said in his ruling.

[…]

Downing rejected arguments that a ban on same-sex marriage would protect children from harm that may be caused by being raised in a nontraditional family.

“Although many may hold strong opinions on the subject, the fact is that there are no scientifically valid studies tending to establish a negative impact on the adjustment of children raised by an intact same-sex couple as compared with those raised by an intact opposite-sex couple,” he wrote.

The judge concluded: “The exclusion of same-sex partners from civil marriage … is not rationally related to any legitimate or compelling state interest and is certainly not narrowly tailored toward such an interest.”

The ruling still needs to be reviewed by the state Supreme Court, but as they’ve ruled in favor of gay couples in two prior cases, the outlook is quite optimistic.

Hooray for Judge Downing, hooray for Washington — and hooray for all the prospective newlyweds-to-be!

(via DeAnna and the Seattle LiveJournal Community)

iTunes: “Tiptoe Through the Inferno” by MC 900 Ft Jesus from the album One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994, 4:50).

Photo Op? Or attempted murder?

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Pratridiot Watch takes Bush to task for using the recent security alerts as a photo op for Laura and the twins.

The day after Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced with great urgency an fanfare that they had specific information on terror targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC, the Bush campaign is using the targets for photo ops with Laura and the Twins.

First Lady Laura Bush and her twin daughters paid a surprise visit to the Citigroup Center yesterday, joining Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki to cheer on employees who ignored the terror threat and reported for work. The lunchtime crowd erupted in applause when Mrs. Bush and her daughters, Jenna and Barbara, stopped to chat over coffee at a table of Citigroup employees in the atrium.

“I wanted to thank people for coming to work and I’m really glad to be with them today,” the first lady said to a roar of approval from the crowd.

So the Bush administration took information that al Queda looked at these buildings three years ago, issued an urgent alert that the Citigroup building is a target of terrorists, then sent Bush’s wife and daughters in for a campaign photo op to rally the troops.

Actually, I think that’s entirely the wrong way to look at it. It wasn’t a photo op — Bush was actually just hoping the terrorists would attack, killing his wife and children in the process, so he could play upon the sympathies of the nation’s people to re-elect him next November.

Big honkin’ disclaimer: No, of course I’m not serious. I just have an occasionally very black sense of humor, and this popped into my head. I don’t wish Laura, the twins, or anyone else any harm — I don’t even wish George Bush any physical harm, merely the ego blow of losing the upcoming election, and maybe a few solid kicks to the shin for being a complete and total putz.

I do very strongly agree that using this alert as a photo op is rather disgusting.

(via Len)

iTunes: “Complacency” by Noxious Emotion from the album This Hallowed Ground (1995, 4:11).