'I'm not sitting at the back of the bus anymore"

I phoned my daughter tonight to celebrate with her about the gay marriage vote. She said "Mom, I feel like I'm not sitting at the back of the bus anymore."
Exactly. Yes, exactly.
Not that gay marriage was actually banned anymore in eight provinces anyway, because of the court cases.
But its one thing for a judge to declare that gay marriage is constitutional, and its another thing entirely for the elected leadership of the country to demonstrate in such a concrete way their support for gay rights, their recognition that gay people are fully Canadian.
The Globe story, Same-sex marriage bill passes says:

It was [Pierre Trudeau] the late Liberal prime minister who decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, and whose Charter of Rights and Freedoms became the legal cudgel that smashed the traditional definition of marriage. Barely two years ago the Liberal government was still fighting same-sex couples in courts across the land. It changed its tune amid an onslaught of legal verdicts in eight provinces that found traditional marriage laws violated the charter's guarantee of equality for all Canadians. "(This) is about the Charter of Rights," Prime Minister Paul Martin said earlier Tuesday. "We are a nation of minorities. And in a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights. A right is a right and that is what this vote tonight is all about.

Open mouth. Change feet.

Harper under fire for same-sex comment: Harper does it again -- he just cannot seem to squelch his 'inner Reeeformmm'.
This time Harper said "Because [gay marriage] is being passed with the support of the Bloc, I think it will lack legitimacy with most Canadians. The truth is most federalist MPs oppose this. It's only a deal with the Bloc that's allowing it to pass."
So who did he think he was going to win over with this line? Quebecers? The majority of the country that supports gay marriage? Former Progressive Conservative voters? He derides the Bloc, yet he himself was quite willing to defeat the Liberal/NDP budget bill with a Conservative/Bloc alliance.
This remark sounds like the Conservatives are experiencing a resurgence of the get-French-off-the-cornflakes-box crap which doomed the old-line Reform supporters in central Canada.
Needless to say, Quebec will not be forgetting this one quickly. Here's the Commons reaction:
Giles Duceppe: "We're elected. Our mandate is every bit as legitimate as any member who sits in this chamber. That's what they call democracy." The Conservatives could help end the Bloc's influence by supporting Quebec independence, Duceppe wryly suggested.
Jack Layton: "Mr. Harper is essentially saying that Quebecers' votes don't matter - aren't on an equal par with the rest of Canadians. So he wants to deny equality to same-sex partners, and he wants to deny equality to Quebec voters. Maybe Mr. Harper should think about why people aren't listening to him by just simply looking at what he says.' "
Scott Brison: "This is another case of Stephen Harper trying to divide Canadians and pit one group against another. For him to imply that federalists are not as supportive of human rights and equality as separatists is truly offensive."
And Joe Clark, who was Grand Marshall of Calgary's 2001 Gay Pride Parade , might well be heard muttering "I told you we shouldn't have done it. I told you".
UPDATE: I realized today, hearing Harper still harping on this, that he is actually saying this just so that he can tell his Reform/Christian right/Focus on the Family supporters that he "won" because gay marriage wasn't supported by a majority of what he terms "federalist" MPs. Its just a pathetic political spin game so his fundraising won't suffer. What he and the rest of the conservative party don't seem to realize (likely because they have no Quebec members) is how seriously angry Quebecers are about his remarks -- take a look at Scott of Montreal's comments in the "Comments" to this post.

Gay Pride Worldwide

Thirty five years of Gay Pride:

Toronto


Los Angeles


Calgary

The Unitarian Church banner

Rio de Janerio


San Salvador


Berlin


Paris


Phuket, Thailand


San Francisco

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

Hmmm -- I hadn't realized that the US Department of Agriculture was now being run by the same people who used to manage the drug testing for the US Olympic Team.
AP is reporting that that US cow first tested positive for Mad Cow LAST NOVEMBER. But a second test was negative and the USDA for seven months refused the demands of consumer groups and scientists that a third test be done to settle the case. Finally, the USDA's inspector general, an official whom AP describes as the department's "internal watchdog," ordered the third test -- and the Secretary of Agriculture was pissed. The test was underway before he knew about it -- and, presumably, before he could stop it. The third test was positive. And now, to put a better spin on it, the USDA has announced it will do the third test on any other conflicting results it finds in the future.
But I think the Inspector General should watch her back.
The AP story describes the chain of events: "Troubled by the conflicting test results, the department's inspector general, Phyllis Fong, ordered the Western blot test this month. By the time an aide notified Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, the testing was under way . . . Johanns, amid an uproar from the cattle industry, was irked that she did so without his knowledge or consent. 'From my standpoint, I believe I was put there to operate the department and was very disappointed,' he told reporters Friday morning. By that afternoon, the verdict from Britain was in: The cow had mad cow disease . . . Johanns, who took over the department in January, said the government will use both the IHC and Western blot tests from now on when initial screening indicates an animal may have the disease."
The whole story still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, methaphorically speaking.

Take it to Karl

Here's a new blog, started on Friday and has already had 16,000 visitors: Taking the Fight to Karl: American Service Men and Women Mad at Karl Rove
Oh poor Karl, what tiger have you unleashed?
And here's what the New York Times had to say, too.
UPDATE: Q makes a point in Comments that needs to be posted:

As Basil Fawlty would say, "thank you N.Y.Times, thank you so bloody much".
When Richard Clarke (ex. terrorism czar) walked out of the mad house saying 'I told the president invading Iraq made as much sense as invading Mexico, as neither had anything to do with 911 or terrorism'... no concern to the N.Y.Times.
They chose to side with the nut house while hundreds of blogs were reporting the truth and countries like Canada and the anti war movement and the democrats etc. and the professionals on the ground, the U.N weapons inspectors were all cautioning that something was very wrong here....The N.Y.T and other corporate media chose to fan the flames of a war with unnamed source reporting and all of the the white house bullshit they bought into.
They could write a thousand of these honest op-ed pieces now and not make up for their blame in the greateast con in American history. One that has caused untold suffering and distraction from the real culprits behind 911, who are dead or are recuperating in Pakistan( where sovereign borders are mysteriously respected while the C.I.A steals "suspects" throughout Europe without permission or invades Iraq, a sovereign nation etc.......but it was a nice article anyway.

And Roger Ailes makes the same point, though not as well, in his post: "Number Four - We share moral responsibility for the deaths of Americans and Iraqis in Iraq by publishing the lies of William Safire and Judith Miller."

More straws in the wind

Well, about once a week now I see another news story that convinces me the US is trying to surrender in Iraq so they can get their military bases built in peace.
Here is this week's version -- today's AP story Report: US Secretly Met with Insurgents
This report quotes the Times of London saying that a Pentagon representative met with Anwar al-Sunnah Army, Mohammed's Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq "and declared himself ready to find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances" . The paper goes on to say "The U.S. officials tried to gather information about the structure, leadership and operations of the insurgent groups, which irritated some members, who had been told the talks would consider their main demand, a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq . . . During the June 13 talks, the U.S. officials demanded that two other insurgent groups, the 1920 Revolution and the Majhadeen Shoura Council, cut ties with the country's most-feared insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, according to the report."
That the US is negotiating with four or five insurgent groups sounds perhaps more promising than it is. In a column at the end of May, Gwynne Dyer noted some of the problems that would arise with any negotiation, like for instance that there are 75 insurgent groups in Iraq:

At the moment, the Sunni Arabs do not have a credible collective leadership with whom the government could negotiate even if it wanted to, and there's not much point in trying to negotiate with the insurgents, either: some 38 different groups have claimed attacks against US troops. Nor will sealing the frontiers help, as the great majority of the insurgents are Iraqis moved by some combination of nationalism, Islamism, and/or Baathism. (The International Institute for Strategic Studies recently estimated that there are between 20,000 and 50,000 insurgents, organised in some 75 separate units.) Another election might ease some of the strains if substantial numbers of Sunni Arabs chose to participate next time, but it is far from clear that they would, and in any case the timetable is slipping fast. Current deadlines foresee completion of the new constitution by 15 August, a referendum on it in October, and new elections in December (assuming that the referendum says 'yes'), but three months were lost in haggling between Kurds and Shias over government jobs and now that schedule is most unlikely to be met. In fact, it will be surprising if they can even agree on a new constitution by the end of the year -- and Sunni Arab views will scarcely be represented at all. So the violence will probably continue at around the current level for the next six to nine months at least, and beyond that the future is simply unforeseeable. Whether you choose to call this a civil war or not, the fact is that almost all of the insurgents are Sunni Arabs, while the new Iraqi army and police forces are overwhelmingly Shias and Kurds. So long as the insurgency continues, the Shia leadership is unlikely to demand the immediate departure of American troops -- and so far, the US still seems determined to stay.

The 400-lb gorilla is this: no matter what is negotiated and with whom and how many elections are held and what constitution is adopted, the insurgency will not end until the US army leaves. And if those 16 'enduring'bases are an indication, the US is not intending to leave.
At what point will the world step up to the plate, and tell the US and Britain that they have no right to continue to occupy Iraq?

The lost boys

The General doesn't do this very often, but yesterday he spoke out in his own voice:

When you're the father of two beautiful daughters, your house becomes a gathering place for young men. That was certainly the case when my daughters were in high school. We were lucky, most of them were good kids. I spent quite a bit of time with them and got to know them very well.
Now they're coming home from war. The all American boy with a heart of gold talks of his hate for 'hajis' and wishes we could nuke the place. The class clown sits in his room all day staring at the Cartoon Channel while self medicating with pot and booze. The nice liberal Jewish boy who melted my wife's yenta heart tells us in a dispassionate, far-away monotone that 'killing those animals was like stepping on ants.' Our 'son' screams at night. My heart breaks for these boys we adopted in their teenage years. They've lost their souls. And for what?
War does this to people. That's why it should never be entered into unless there is no other alternative. That wasn't the case for this war. As far as I can tell, we invaded Iraq because Bush and the necons wanted to be remembered as great men like Roosevelt or Lincoln, or perhaps more accurately, Augustus. It's there in the subtext of PNAC papers for all to see. The oil is just gravy. That's evil.

And people wonder why parents won't let their boys enlist.
I disagree with the General in one respect. I don't think that it is war itself which does this to young soldiers, it is killing civilians.
And American soldiers have been killing civilians in Iraq for the last two years.
These young men are shooting up cars full of women and children at checkpoints. They're breaking into homes and manhandling screaming grandmothers. They're arresting thousands of prisoners and they have no way to tell which ones are actually enemies, because they have to think of every man they see as their enemy. Whenever they walk along a street, they have to be ready to kill. These soldiers have to develop a brutal, callous disrespect for every single person they see who isn't American. Soldiers also targeted civilians in Vietnam -- and that war brutalized soldiers to the point that ordinary American boys committed the My Lai massacre and how many others.
In a righteous war these soldiers and their families can find some solace and healing in the belief that the sacrifice of their basic humanity was worthwhile. But Iraq is not a righteous war and the soldiers know it.

Best.

Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen


Patrick Corrigan, The Toronto Star


Brian Gable, The Globe & Mail


Brian Gable, The Globe & Mail


Steve Benson, United Media

Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

Bush, Bush, bring 'em back. They're not your bitches in Iraq!

What Wolcott says:

Historical parallels have lost their spine-stiffening efficacy. We're all Churchilled out, this isn't 1939 or 1865 or 1776, the disaster is unfolding here and now and in front of our eyes and if Republican conservates want to perservere despite eroding support then they should pull all those future lobbyists and leeches out of the Heritage Foundation dorm and march them over to a recruiting station, where they can learn how to shoot off something besides their Rush-quoting mouths.
Here's what I'm wondering. Bush is making a major national address on Tuesday about Iraq. With each speech he masticated about Social Security 'reform,' approval for his non-existent program sagged. His sixty-day sales tour was a Willy Loman flop. Suppose he makes a rallying call on Tuesday and his poll numbers subsequently drop even more? I recall when LBJ would go before the nation with a televised address to shore up support on Vietnam, and it was too late, the nation had had enough. I'm not saying that will happen next week--Bush's speechwriter may whip enough eloquence for a temporary boost in the polls--but suppose it does? If Bush comes forward, and the American people recoil, I suspect a line of perspiration will begin to form even along Bill Kristol's thin upper lip.

You get the idea

This interview transcript is titled Bartlett defends Rove's comments But it doesn't sound like it to me. White House press secretary assistant Bartlett sounds more like he is parsing and dicing Rove's remarks to imply now that they didn't actually mean what Rove clearly had meant. "Well Norah I must say I'm at a loss why some of these top Democrats in the Senate have made these accusations, in fact, if you look at Senators Clinton and Schumer and others, who responded after 9/11, did so in support of President Bush's pursuit of the war on terror. What Karl Rove was pointing out -- and he was quite specific I might add -- in his speech, was that MoveOn.org, a liberal organization, that put out a petition and a statement right after 9/11 saying don't respond militarily, show restraint, that's exactly what he was talking about."
Funny, that's not the way it came across at the time.
That said, no political party should miss the meta-narrative accusation, the overall frame for a specific attack. The Democrats miss this in the US and the Conservatives miss it here.
Democrats seem to feel they have to respond to an attack with some kind of detailed, academic statistical analysis -- like when Kerry's people said "How dare you say he voted to raise taxes 600 times; it was actually only 180, maybe 200 tops!" So now Rove says the Dems were wimps after 9/11, and the Dems sputter about how they all voted for some congressional resolution. Instead they should have a reply that shows their pride in being democrats and their willingness to lead. Try something like this: "We gathered outside on the steps of the Capital on that terrible day and we led the singing of God Bless America, even though we did not know whether Washington might continue to be attacked. We've been demonstrating ever since our commitment to make Americans safer by persuading President Bush to establish the Department of Homeland Security and the 911 Commission . . . ' You get the idea.
The Conservatives here fall into the same trap. After last night's vote, instead of wallowing in their own anger, they should have recognized and dealt with the meta-narrative accusation -- that Conservatives don't know how to run a government. Dealing with that narrative would have required a response 'more in sorrow than in anger' about such unseemly shennigans, and a focus on the future "Yes, the Liberals tricked everyone tonight to sneak their budget through, but in the long run this budget will be a bad deal for Canada . . . " You get the idea.

Just another pit bull EA

Over at The Blogging of the President, Glenn Smith, the founder of the Texas organization DriveDemocracy, puts Karl Rove in perspective:

Karl Rove's un-American attacks on those who disagree with him deserve the condemnation they're receiving. I've known him for 20 years, and I'm not surprised he said them. He's a socially inept but patient thug whose willingness to haunt the nation's dark political alleys for years, waiting for the right time and the right victims, is too often taken for unparalleled political intelligence. Being attacked by Rove is a little like being criticized by the Boston Strangler. At least you know you're alive . . . Rove's a hack. His strength comes from his immorality. . . . I've been on the road in America for much of the last two years. I'm asked all the time about the need for Democrats to find their own Karl Rove. If we ever find such a monster in our midst, we should exile him. . . . it troubles me that so many people believe he really is a political genius. He's just pathological. For years I've suspected that Rove is stuck in an adolescent rage, taking revenge upon the Civil Rights marchers (whose courage he couldn't match), the anti-war organizers (who beat him), and those who believe in and struggle for democracy (who drove off Nixon). I don't recommend therapy for Bin Laden. But Rove might give Dr. Laura a call.

I have worked in lots of offices over the years, and its a common phenomenon -- the bitchy executive assistant, constantly "on guard" to protect the boss, manipulative, fiercely partisan, who thinks that promoting the interests of the boss is an acceptable excuse to trample over everyone in their path.
I wonder why some people are like this. The only other place I have seen this type of person is when I was a zone commissioner for children's softball. Some of the parents acted like cheering for their own child gave them a license to be rude, offensive and abusive to the children on the opposing team.
So maybe these are both just examples of how some people will indulge their inner pit bull as long as they can justify their abysmal behaviour with the excuse that they aren't doing it for themselves, oh no -- its all for my boss, or my child - or my dear leader.

Bring out the faba beans

The Globe and Mail: Liberals win surprise budget amendment vote
Well, I can't quite understand how the Liberals did it, but apparently they held a quickie budget vote at midnight, and forced through the NDP-Liberal budget amendments. And the Bloc supported them. And it was all in aid of getting the gay marriage vote done next week.
So the Bloc is on the side of the angels as far as I am concerned on this issue -- I'm still a tad pissed at the Liberals for their hesitancy last week.
Anyway, back to our story -- just this morning, it looked like we were heading for another one of those death-of-a-thousand-cuts budget showdown votes like last month's squeaker.
But wiser heads prevailed, I guess, proving that the ONLY people in the WHOLE COUNTRY who wanted a summer election were the 99 Conservative MPs.
For some reason, the Tories were just a tad pissed to lose this vote: The Globe says they "reacted with unfiltered rage."
First, they started in with the sexual metaphors "Conservative deputy leader Peter MacKay described his foes as a menage a trois between separatists, socialists and power-hungry Liberals." Of course, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that the Conservatives even know what a menage-a-trois IS.
Then they brought out the big guns -- they used the dreaded fictional serial killer comparison.
The Globe quoted MacKay as saying "We have to start thinking that Hannibal Lecter is running the government and they'll do anything they have to do to win."
Needless to say, "Liberals could barely contain their glee in response. 'Its not surprising that Hannibal Lecter should spring to mind for Mr. MacKay given the growing number of Conservatives who believe the party should soon eat its own leader,' said Scott Reid, the Prime Minister's spokesman."
With faba beans and a nice Chalbis.

The Paranoid View

Lots of posts today at Daily Kos and across the blogosphere about the Karl Rove's declaration of the White House's Great War on Liberals (catchy acronym GWOL). Particularly good was this one by Hunter -Daily Kos :: Karl Rove, Traitor - reminding us how happy Rove was when he or one of his boys traitorously outed a CIA agent.
Anyway, the speculation is that the White House is just attempting to distract everyone from what is going wrong in Iraq and Gitmo.
As Oliver Willis says:

What do you do if you’re the political group in charge of a nation during its worst terror attack ever, and still haven’t brought the main perpetrators to justice 4 years past? What do you do if you’re the party that has deceived a nation into war, causing the deaths of over 1700 men and women soldiers, and now have the opinion polls turning against you? What do you do? If you’re the Republican party in America, you attack your political opponents for being insufficiently patriotic. You appeal to the worst McCarthyite instincts that form the bedrock of your support in order to demonize the opposition and distract from your utter failure to provide even the most basic defense and protection of the people you represent.

And this may well explain it, of course.
But I wonder if the GWOL campaign is a little more forward-thinking than that.
Here's the Paranoid View --
Suppose America wakes up, round about July 4, say, to find out that Bush and Blair have launched an air attack on Syria, supposedly to stop their covert help to the Iraq insurgency. Or maybe the attack will be on Iran, to take out their nuclear facilities?
Having just been smeared as "cowards" all over the media, will Democrats object? And if they do object, will anyone listen?

Alternate alternate history

Here's the setup -- in an alternate history world, Al Gore won the 2000 election - so in this world the WTC attack was stopped, there was no war in Afghanistan, no war in Iraq, etc etc.
So now, Will Shetterly's It's All One Thing blog, which is also located in this alternate reality universe, speculates about an alternate alternate history What if George W. Bush had been elected president?
Get it? Well, anyway, read it and laugh or weep, your choice.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight . . .

Lions rescue beaten Ethiopian girl
Oh, sure.
You know, if one of the searchers who found the Utah boy scout today had announced that he found the boy living in a cave with some friendly bears, people might think that perhaps the rescuer was stretching the truth just a little.
But maybe because its Africa -- deep, dark, mysterious, etc etc -- news services all over are carrying this story today.
Did you hear the one about the choking doberman? Well, there was this guy, see . . .