This is hilarious…  (Link takes you to Mark Fiore’s page since he apparently doesn’t allow his videos to be embedded…)

Click image to play

Some are calling this an admission…

Attorney challenges Monegan firing inquiry

The state has hired a private lawyer to represent Gov. Sarah Palin’s office in the Legislature’s investigation into the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The lawyer already has challenged whether lawmakers even have authority to oversee the inquiry.

The attorney hired to represent Palin, Thomas Van Flein, is challenging the authority of state Sen. Hollis French, a Democrat and former state prosecutor, who is project director for the legislative investigation.  Here’s his take on the matter…

"Our concern is that Hollis French turns into Ken Starr and uses public money to pursue a political vendetta rather than truly pursue an honest inquiry into an alleged ethics issue," Van Flein said in an interview.

Oh really?   While the sight of a republican spokesdroid for Sarah Palin saying publicly what everyone who was paying back then already knows about the Ken Starr investigations, it’s a mistake to take that as an admission. 

This is not your father’s republican party.  It’s the party of president junior, the most miserable failure of a man you ever met who can see himself as a glorious president and war leader.  It’s the party of James Dobson Gary Bauer and other religious right leaders who can thunder about sexual morality and family values and come rushing to the defence of Palin’s pregnant and unmarried teenage daughter.  It’s the party of CEOs that champion free markets and capitalism one moment and then bribe congress into locking down markets, stifling emergent technologies and handing out fat no-bid government contracts.  Republican doublethink would make Orwell’s jaw drop, let alone Goldwater’s. 

They knew Starr was engaging in a political vendetta.  They have always known that.  But Starr was conducting an honest inquiry into an alleged ethics issue.  They have always known that too.  They have always known both those things.  If you think that’s a contradiction, you’re still living in the reality based community, for which they no longer have any use…

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

-Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush

That wasn’t just the heart of the Bush Presidency, it was a glimpse into the heart and soul of the movement conservatives who now dominate the republican party, both secular and Christianist.  Reality is whatever they wish it to be, at the moment they need it to be that.  When they need it to be something else, then it becomes that thing too.  Never mind facts, never mind science, never mind God Almighty Himself.  They create reality.  And when it comes crashing down on their thick heads, they’ll keep right on creating new realities that deny everything they hate because they cannot cope with it, just like every other tinpot tyrant who ever spent his list furtive moments alone in a bunker somewhere, while the world burned all around him.

This is why we need to pry their hands off the levers of power come November.  It’s not the economy.  It’s not the Supreme Court.  It’s not the war.  It’s the reality stupid.  The ship of state needs pilots who don’t simply wish away the iceburgs.

It takes work.  You have to be patient, and you have to have a lot of resolve.  Nerves of steel actually.  When he says he’s going to have some free time in two weeks to chat with you, what you need to understand is that’s a sign of affection. 

There’s a humorous list going around the web here and there titled, You Know You’re German If…   What’s interesting about this list is that it’s been written, passed around and added to, by Germans.  There are various versions of it floating around, and I would highly recommend anyone aspiring to be friends with a German to study them carefully.  Let it be said they know how to laugh at themselves.  Here’s a few items that absolutely apply to a certain someone I know…

-You feel like a fish out of water in unstructured organizations and foreign countries.

-Being spontaneous is at 3 weeks notice.

-The concept of small talk still puzzles you.

So…two years ago, after almost thirty-five years of searching for him, I finally found my old high school crush again.  This is the guy who is the object of my affections in my comic series A Coming Out Story.  And because I’m still in the middle of telling that story, there are a few major plot points I don’t want to give away (although I guess I just now did give one away…the fact that we haven’t seen each other since my high school days…).  So I have to be vague about some of this.  And also, I don’t want to embarrass him by naming him here.  But just so you know, we’ve been chatting ever since, on the phone, and via email and post cards. 

Post cards, largely because it took me over a year to get him to give me an email address.  And that was because, as he said, he is "more into nature then technology".  Or…according to the list…

-You separate your trash into more than five different bins.

-You have gotten splinters from environmentally friendly toilet paper.

-You’re the only one recycling not just bottles and cans but also light bulbs, water filters, batteries, printer cartridges 

-You complain about people that just sit in their car with the engine running

But most American kids of my baby boomer generation actually don’t use personal computers all that much as adults now either.  A Pew Foundation study some time ago put the figure at somewhat less then fifty percent of my generation who use computers on a regular basis.  His job doesn’t require him to sit down to one everyday, and apparently he hasn’t much use for them in his home life either.  I get the sense he doesn’t much touch one other then for the occasional emails he sends my way.

Thing was…back in high school, when I learned that both his parents were German, I wasn’t sure if that was how he identified himself.  He was born in Brazil actually, and came here to the U.S. when he was still very young.  He spent both his middle school and high school years here, attending the same high school I did.  Back then, he seemed to identify more as Brazilian then German.  For the longest time I thought he was your usual light skinned Brazilian, with a family tree that maybe went back to Portugal or maybe Spain.  In high school he spoke English very well, with only the very slightest hint of an accent that I could never quite place.  I figured his native language was probably Portuguese.  He was also in the Spanish Honor Society back then.  When I found out from one of the other kids about his German heritage I was surprised.  He never told me.  But there may have been a reason for that. 

When I finally located him again, I still wasn’t sure how he identified.  He’s spent most of his life now here in the U.S.  But he still goes by this Brazilian nickname he always did back in high school.  So as he and I began to chat once more after all these years, I kept wondering.  I wasn’t sure how to go about asking him.  The thing about cross-cultural relationships is they’re so damn full of landmines.  The last thing I wanted to do was offend him in some way, or perhaps bring up old memories he didn’t want to revisit.  I knew next to nothing about his family life, because he always politely deflected my attempts to ask him about any of it back when we were kids…which I respected back then despite my intense curiosity, because I was completely twitterpated and if he didn’t want to talk about it I wasn’t going there.

Back when I was a kid, I had this very fragmented view of Germans and Germany.  There was all the World War II history I grew up learning.  The rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe.  When I first saw newsreel footage of a Nazi book burning, it completely shocked me.  I was such a little bookworm back then.  The sight of piles of books burning struck me as an attack on the human identity.  Then came the newsreel footage of the death camps. 

On TV and in the movies, Germans were either cold, calculating, weaselly Nazis who loved to torture people or big fat buffoons with a stereotypical Hollywood German accent.  It was either…

…or…

So that was what my history classes and Hollywood were teaching me about Germans.  But in my day to day world there was all the good stuff that came from Germany.  When I was a teenager one of my uncles came down for a visit driving his new Mercedes-Benz 220D.  I’ve written about that before, and how that car completely blew away everything I thought I understood about what a good car was.  Mercedes-Benz instantly became my new dream car then.  And when I got the camera bug, I quickly learned that some of the best photography equipment came from Germany.  Carl Zeiss lenses…Leica cameras…  When I was 17 I splurged a month’s pay from the burger joint I was working at to buy a lovely Rodenstock lens for my enlarger.  I was both overjoyed and appalled at the results.  Overjoyed because my prints took on an absolutely razor edged sharpness under that lens.  It was magnificent.  Appalled because that damn lens revealed every tiny flaw in my negatives.  That lens told me I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was.  But that was okay…it meant I could grow.  And I did.

Back before high school, mom bought an absolutely lovely German made cabinet hi-fi.  It was built from solid mahogany and not only did it sound as good as it looked, it had a radio with FM stations and Shortwave too!  I became utterly fascinated back then with that short wave radio and would listen to it for hours, tuning in BBC, Radio Netherlands, Radio Johannesburg and so on…  This was before there was an Internet…before cell phones…before 24 hour cable news…back in the days when my world effectively ended at the horizon.  With that shortwave radio I could hear the world speaking beyond the horizon.  I never found any English language German broadcasts, but because of that short wave radio I grew up with the knowledge that there was a world out there beyond our boarders, and that it was fun to listen to.

So on the one hand, there was Hollywood’s German, and the German of my history class lessons…and on the other there was the Germany that made the best cars and radios and hi-fi and camera equipment.  I’d heard they drink their beer warm, but I never liked beer to begin with.  I heard they were obsessive about organization and record keeping.  I heard there was this really neat highway over in Germany where there were no speed limits.  But I never really thought about or questioned any of what I knew, or thought I knew, about Germans.  It was all just floating there in the background.  And then there was the guy I massively crushed on back in high school.  He was so damn beautiful.  But also hard working, decent, good-hearted.  But he always accentuated his Brazilian birthplace.  So maybe he really wasn’t all that much German.  For years I wondered about it, never really thinking about what I actually did and did not know about Germans.

So I found him again, and annoyingly, the completely twitterpated high school boy came rushing back out of me, like I was still 17, and I found I Still couldn’t ask him so many things I’d wished I had over the years.  But we talked and talked over the months, and as we did I began to get the sense that his German heritage had come more to the foreground over the intervening years.  Then last Christmas he sent me a card with a lovely handwritten Christmas greeting…first in German and then in English. 

You have to picture this: There I am, sitting down reading this lovely little Christmas card he sent me, and suddenly every stupid, ignorant German stereotype I ever grew up with came rushing back to me and laughed in my face.  All the stupid Nazi jokes…all the cardboard Hollywood Germans I ever saw on TV…  I felt so embarrassed. 

And I had an idea then why he presented more as Brazilian then German back in school.  He probably got teased a lot for being German back then.  The more I pictured it, the more I heard myself as a kid laughing and re-telling all the German jokes I learned from the other kids and I just felt so ashamed.

Is this how straight folks feel when someone close to them comes out as gay?  Now I can’t even watch my all time favorite movie, Casablanca, without cringing the moment Major Strasser comes on screen. 

So I’ve been making an effort to learn more about the German folk and their culture.  But mostly their ways.  I pay attention to what English language German newspapers and magazines there are online.  Spiegel ran a series a couple years back, The Germans Explained, for Americans and other foreigners visiting Germany for the 2006 winter Olympics.  It’s an interesting read.  This from the article titled, Brutally Honest, Have You Gained Weight?

Personal invitations of all kinds are to be taken at face value. "We’re having a party, please do come," means "We’re having a party, please do come," and not "We feel rude not inviting you in front of these other people, but surely you’ll have the grace not to show up." Similarly, "Come over to my house and we’ll have tea," means that you should start planning a date and time for that pleasant event. It is not to be confused with the Anglo-American "We should get together sometime," which means "I hope I never see you again."

Yes means yes and no means no. If you ask whether you can share someone’s table (or borrow a pen, or get a ride) and that person says yes, that’s the end of it. Even if the person does not smile or tell you to go right ahead, you do not have to ask again. Germans will be perplexed when you insist: "Are you sure? I won’t be bothering you, will I? I’ll just take this little corner and be done in a minute." For heavens sakes, they said yes already, and it’s not like you’re asking them to donate a kidney. Just sit down. 

And this from German Men: Hunky, Handsome, Wimpy and Weak…

“I never, ever got involved in sport,” said Winston Churchill wisely. Not so, Sporty German Male. Oh no, he loves it. Running around Hamburg’s Alster when you fancy going shoe shopping, or forcing you to go Nordic Walking on a Sunday morning when you’d still rather be under your duvet stuffing yourself with scrambled eggs, Sporty German Male laughs in the face of blubber, Wiener Schnitzel and chips.

My one brief encounter with Sporty German Male included a doomed mini-break to Mallorca. Stretched out by the swimming pool in my bikini, I asked: “Do I look fat in this?” Sporty German Male looked confused. “Of course not, Liebling,” he said. “If you were fat, my sweetness, you would not be here!"

I browse the online forums here and there where they gather, and at least a little English is spoken.  And I’m finding that I’m actually coming to like them.  I’m making a few tentative steps at learning German…mostly so I can read it.  I doubt I’ll ever be in a place where I hear it spoken a lot, and without that there’s just about no possibility of me really learning the language very well.  If I can just learn it a bit I’ll be satisfied.  Then I can hear them speaking in their own voices.

-You call an afternoon stroll "Nordic Walking".

-You always fold your Tetra Pak before you throw it in the appropriate bin.

-You eat a cold dinner at 6pm.

-You can tell at least one Manta joke.

-Your childhood diet consisted of Alete and Zwieback. Your college diet consisted of Miracoli and Döner.

-You have your ‘feierabend’ at 1730hrs – the world can burn down.

-You expect chocolate in your shoes on December 6th.

In the meantime I am trying hard to be the friend to him I was too shy to be back when we were both kids (there goes another plot point…).  If he was another American kid, and he told me that in two weeks he’d have time for a chat, I’d think what he was really telling me was to bug off.  But he’s German, he has always called when he said he would, and what you have to see in that isn’t that he’s pushing me off for two weeks but that he’s making time for me.  Over and over again in the past two years I’ve run smack into his "time management", and no kidding, that’s exactly how he refers to it.  I’ve found in conversation with him that he’s got his life organized in a way I would find absolutely suffocating.  But that seems to be a German thing, it’s where his comfort zone is, and if I want to be his friend I have to adjust to it.  It’s work.  I have to be patient.  But I have a lot of resolve.  And the signs look good.  Very good actually.  Here I am after three and a half decades crashing back into his well organized world and he makes time for me. 

[Edited a bit since this morning…]

So I just now put up a new gallery of shots I took at Ocean City, New Jersey yesterday.  Labor Day weekend kind of snuck up on me this year, and I hadn’t made any plans at all.  I had a lot of housework I could do, but I could just let the weekend slid by without doing Something. So I thought of going to Ocean City. 

Ocean City is where I went with mom on her summer vacations, back when I was a young teen.  I’d been taken to a variety of east coast beach towns when I was small, but in my early adolescence we settled on Ocean City, and went back year after year.  And OC is where most of my best memories of vacationing by the seashore are.  You can see some of the shots I took way back in the 1970s in Gallery Three – The Shadows and Light Sessions. 

It was probably too late to reserve a room at the beach…and anyway I am saving for a couple trips I want to take later this year…One to Key West on New Year’s Eve, and the other to Disneyworld…maybe…during the week the Hubble servicing mission launches.  Disneyworld could end up costing a lot, and for sure Key West will as the rates just go through the roof there that week (as I found out last year!).  So I have to save for all that.  But Ocean City New Jersey is only about a three and a half hour drive from Casa del Garrett.  So yesterday morning I basically just jumped in the car with only my Canon digital SLR and a zoom lens and drove to Ocean City for a day trip. 

It’s a short drive…first up I-95 to the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and then basically follow US Route 40 almost to the coast.  At Harding Lakes you take road 559 to Great Egg Harbor Bay and across to Ocean City.  It’s one of those Jersey Shore barrier island beach towns.  From the north end of the island you can see the Atlantic City Casinos, which I’ve never had the slightest urge to visit.  Ocean City has a nice beach, a great boardwalk and a friendly atmosphere…in part I’m convinced because it is one of the few "dry" beach towns on the east coast.  Meaning they don’t serve alcohol there and you can’t buy it in any store.  I think that probably keeps the rowdiness factor down.  If you really want it, you can buy it at the huge liquor store right across the bridge on the mainland and bring it back, and drink to your heart’s content in your room.  Just don’t take it outside or go wandering around drunk because you Will get noticed by the police.

When I got there I drove to my OC point of reference…the Port O Call hotel, which is a really nice 60s design six floor hotel right on the boardwalk…the only high rise they ever allowed to be built there.  This time I wasn’t getting a room…my plan was to just find a parking space and stroll the boardwalk with my camera for the afternoon, and maybe take in a good boardwalk restaurant.  At first it looked like I might not be able to find any street parking at all.  Most of the streets near the beach are lined with individual guest houses, many of which have little to no parking of their own.  So everyone parks on the street.  When the guest houses are full, so are the streets.  I drove up and down for a while, and then went to where the all day lots are, and as it turned out, there were spaces available there after all.  It was twenty bucks for all day parking…but that was a lot less then the cost of a room and the boardwalk would provide all I needed for the day in terms of food and drink and clean restrooms.

Now I know I can have a good time at OC for an afternoon on the spur of the moment with just my camera and a few bucks.  The only drawback was that I didn’t want to go home and kept putting it off until late.  So consequently I didn’t get back until very late.  But for just the cost of gasoline and parking and beach food it was worth it.

I may go back on my birthday week.  I asked around and it turns out nowadays the boardwalk doesn’t start closing down until October.  The big Wonderland amusment park at the north end of the boardwalk doesn’t close for the season until October 15th.

More in the Ocean City photo gallery…Here.

The Log Cabin Republicans have launched a website highlighting prominent republicans who are against California’s Proposition 8 (the ballot initiative that will amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage)…

Website Features Republicans Against Gay Marriage Ban

A new Log Cabin Republicans website aims to highlight Republicans who are against Proposition 8 – California’s constitutional amendment which would once again ban gay marriage in the State.

The recently launced website features quotes, bios and interviews of prominent Republicans who oppose Proposition 8 including: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mary Cheney, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Redondo Beach Mayor Mike Gin, comedian Dennis Miller and Desperate Housewives Producer Marc Cherry. Councilpeople from various cities are also included.

More like this please…

I took a daytrip to Ocean City, New Jersey yesterday.  More about that later.  Anyway…I’m driving up I-95 to Delaware when I see a shiny silver Toyota SUV up ahead, with a bunch of soap lettering all over its windows.

Aha…thinks I…someone had a wedding.  Well…not exactly.  As got closer I was able to read some of it…the part that was on my side…

Wow…Just Wow!

You Jerks!

I Need Better Friends!

I was in the far left lane and the SUV was in the middle lane.  I tempted to slow down and get in the right hand lane to see what was written on the other side, but thought better of it, and just kept on going.

I’ve been trying to figure out that SUV’s story ever since.  I can see getting pissed off at your friends.  But covering your car with it too?  You don’t just drive up to a friends house, honk the horn and wait for them to come to the window and see I Need Better Friends.  Do you? 

Who are those messages for really?  Why on the car and not somewhere else?  Did he actually put those words on his car for his friends to see, or was it more like a scream at the whole wide world?  Or was the SUV owned by a friend he was pissed off at, and he scribbled his anger all over it? I tend to doubt that because it was being driven on the Interstate with all the other traffic going to Delaware and possibly the beach and it wasn’t paint it was soap which could easily come off in the wash.  I don’t think the driver was in any hurry to wash any of it off, which is why I think he was the one who put it there.  Another detail is that the words weren’t on the front windshield or driver’s or passenger’s side windows.  Only the back windows.  But…why make your own car bear that message? 

I reckon I’ll never know.  But I’ll be thinking about it for a while.  I know what it is to want to just want to shout at the top of my lungs I Need Better Friends!  I could have made that a bumper sticker after Bush weaseled out a second term with the help of a few (ex) friend’s votes.  Nobody breaks your heart the way friends can.

NBC, suffering a torrent of bad publicity for closeting gold medalist Matthew Mitcham during its broadcast of the Olympic men’s diving events, has now issued an apology…

"We regret that we missed the opportunity to tell Matthew Mitcham’s story. We apologize for this unintentional omission.”

Well that certainly satisfies me…

Practically the minute Bush stole the 2000 election, our national news media have happily reduced themselves to stenographers, jotting down whatever comes out of the white house PR office.  They cheerfully swallowed all the lies that led to the Iraq war, looked the other way as his henchmen blew the cover of a CIA agent for political revenge, and ignored one republican corruption scandal after another.  The slow steady relentless erosion of our civil liberties is something the TV talking heads just can’t be bothered to pay attention too.  Here’s what’s going on during the Democratic convention, via a Dave Barry column that’s both funny and sad all at once…

7:48 – Through intense effort I manage to surge maybe eight feet, where the path is blocked by a TV network that has set up a platform on the floor so its reporters can report on the convention by talking to each other with their backs to the actual convention. There is huge excitement in the surge as people catch glimpses of both Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, who are, in this environment, the Beatles. The surgers all stop, whip out cell phones and take pictures of the backs of the heads of people who are taking pictures of the backs of the heads of people who might actually be getting direct visual shots of Anderson and Wolf. It is a lifetime convention memory.

So…reporting from the middle of the democratic convention, in the last days of one of the most destructive presidencies ever…a president who has all but publicity torn up and crapped on the bill of rights, the Geneva Convention, and Habeas Corpus among other things….most of the TV news media chatter is about…themselves.  Its like the process of electing a president is all about them.  Its like nothing Bush has done over the past eight years to destroy our constitution matters a whit to them.

So the following cheered me up…somewhat.  Of course they’ll never do this sort of thing during the republican convention…

ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. 

Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit. 

A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker’s neck, then twisted the producer’s arm behind him to put on handcuffs.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.

Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.

The sheriff’s officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later, he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.

adsonar_placementId=1280488;adsonar_pid=43749;adsonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=165;adsonar_zh=220;adsonar_jv=’ads.adsonar.com’;

It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.

During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, "You’re lucky I didn’t knock the f..k out of you."

Eslocker was released late today after posting $500 bond.

Schedenfraude.  It’s like German chocolate cake for the soul… 

"A Brabus Maybach," he said, as she turned her head in time to see him give the wheel a little pat. "The firm of Brabus extensively tweaks the product of Maybach, to produce one of these."
-From chapter 17 of Spook Country by William Gibson

I must go buy this book…

Via the New York Post…  Hey!  Everyone!!  Look At ME!!!  I’m A MEDIA KING!!!!

Paul Colichman, the William Randolph Hearst of the gay media, is not supporting Barack Obama for president. But that doesn’t mean he’s backing John McCain.

"I’m a die-hard Democrat," he tells Page Six. But Colichman was also a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter. He and Harry Thomason produced a documentary, "The Hunting of the President: The 10-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton."

Colichman, 46, who owns The Advocate and Out magazines, GayWired.com, and Here, the premium cable network for gays, said he finally dealt with his disappointment over Clinton’s defeat last week and came around to Obama.

"I thought, ‘Get over yourself!’ I had literally written out a check to the Obama campaign. And then I saw him in front of an evangelical group in Anaheim," he said.

Before Rick Warren at the Saddleback Civil Forum, both Obama and McCain defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"I thought, ‘Wow! He just threw the gay community under the bus,’ " Colichman said. "My partner looked over at me, and we tore up the check."

Hillary Clinton on same sex marriage (Pew Forum):

Gay Marriage
Clinton opposes same-sex marriage but favors civil unions in which gay couples receive full recognition and benefits. She says that "marriage has always been province of the states" and advocates repeal of a provision in the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage. In the U.S. Senate, she opposed amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. While she has solicited and received the support of gay and lesbian groups, many gay activists were alarmed over her March 2007 comment that the morality of homosexuality was up "to others to conclude." She later released a statement saying that she does not believe homosexuality is immoral. In an April 2008 interview, Clinton said she would change federal tax policies and immigration laws to eliminate disparities affecting same-sex couples.

Barack Obama on same sex marriage (Pew Forum):

Gay Marriage
Obama says that he personally believes that "marriage is between a man and a woman" but also says that "equality is a moral imperative" for gay and lesbian Americans. He advocates the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because "federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does." He supports granting civil unions for gay couples, and in 2006 he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In March 2007, Obama initially avoided answering questions about a controversial statement by a U.S. general that "homosexual acts" are "immoral," but Obama later told CNN’s Larry King, "I don’t think that homosexuals are immoral any more than I think heterosexuals are immoral."

They both oppose same sex marriage.  They both favor civil unions.  They both favor repeal of DOMA.  They both opposed the federal marriage amendment.  Well that sure puts Hillary way ahead of Obama on the same sex marriage issue doesn’t it?

And…so sitting down with Rick Warren is more offensive then…say…sitting down with Richard Mellon Scaife is it…?

I know…I know…  You’re both MEDIA KINGS!  And…bitter…

It must be an election year…the Log Cabin Republicans are cheerfully telling everyone they can what a bunch of happy quislings they are.  An AP news story on the upcoming republican party platform (which I’m not going to link to), says the platform will contain the usual call for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage.   Log Cabin spokesdroid Scott Tucker says he’s fine with that…

"This isn’t a hill we’re going to die on," said Scott Tucker, a spokesman for the gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans.

Log Cabin is a gay rights group like a white sheet flapping in the wind is an American flag.  But let it be said they’re working on building common ground between gay and straight within the republican party…

"Unlike previous years," said Gary Bauer, a social-conservative veteran of platform struggles, "I just don’t see deep divisions within the party."

See how easy it is for people of differing views on gay rights to get along in the republican party?  Really…all it takes is a little abject submission. 

I realize that you can’t pigeon hole gay people on the issues.  Gay folk range the entire political spectrum from left to right.  I grok this.  But if a conservative gay group will not take a simple basic principled stand for marriage then what the fuck good is it?  Oh yes…I hear them yap, yap, yapping all the time that their sexuality isn’t all there is to their lives and they have other issues too.  Fine.  Marriage, as it happens, is about more then sexuality too. 

I don’t ever want to see these pathetic quislings tut, tutting the sexual excesses of "gay culture" again, if they’re not willing to raise so much as a squeak in protest over a plank that calls for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage.  Better to die on the hill, then in the gutter.

This from Glenn Greenwald, who is on fire here.  Maybe you are aware, if not utterly disgusted, at how abjectly the democrats capitulated on telcom immunity for illegally spying on American citizens.  Maybe you’re aware of how the immunity bill not only gave the telcoms immunity for illegally spying on us, but made it even easier for Bush to keep spying on us without having to bother with all that getting a warrent and other forth amendment do-wah.  Maybe you’re wondering how democrats can be such absolute wusses when it comes to fighting Bush’s abuses of power.  Maybe your wondering why democrats don’t really seem to care much about protecting and preserving our precious democracy.  Maybe this will enlighten you…

Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station — next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night — AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program. Matt Stoller has one of the listings for the party here.

Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went — along with Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others — in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter — notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation’s largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.

Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party’s purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they’re part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of — or at least eager to conceal — their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.

It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions — those who dictate the nation’s laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of — let alone involvement in — what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation — AT&T — that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears — virtually attached to it — all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.

Sometimes I wonder if things really are getting more corrupt these days, or if we’re just seeing more of the corruption because of the grassroots media that has emerged during the Bush years.  In any case, the above isn’t to my mind so much an argument against voting for democrats too, as for paying more attention to local elections, because congress is an aggregate of many local elections.  I strongly doubt that the voters in the districts represented by the Blue Dogs approve of having their phones tapped, let alone giving the tappers a free pass in exchange for millions of dollars to run a convention. 

We need to break the republcan grip on power in Washington, so they can’t do any more damage then they’ve already done to the courts, to the economy, to civil liberties at home and America’s moral stature abroad.  But we also need a grassroots effort to get more people elected who want to serve the people, not the corporations.  Because the corporations don’t give a good goddamn about democracy, let alone about America.  All they see is their bottom line.  We need better democrats.

You may have heard that an Australian named Matthew Mitcham won the gold in the 10 meter diving event.  You may have heard that in doing so, he broke the Chinese sweep of the diving events.  You may have heard that a string of disappointments some years ago caused him to drop out of the sport briefly and that his comeback this year was the end result of a lot of very hard and determined work.  What you might not have heard, if your only exposure to the China Olympics was our mainstream news media, is that Mitcham is openly gay…

NBC Censors Sexual Orientation Of Openly Gay Gold Medalist Diver

According to OutSports.com, of the 10,708 athletes at the Olympics this year, just 10 have identified themselves publicly as being gay. Of the 10, Australian diver Matthew Mitcham is the only male gay athlete.

Yesterday, Mitcham won the gold in the in the 10m platform diving event, scoring an upset over the Chinese team, which was heavily favored to win. But as Maggie Hendricks at Yahoo’s Olympics blog notes, NBC never mentioned Mitcham’s orientation:

NBC did not mention Mitcham’s orientation, nor did they show his family and partner who were in the stands. NBC has made athletes’ significant others a part of the coverage in the past, choosing to spotlight track athlete Sanya Richards’ fiancee, a love triangle between French and Italian swimmers and Kerri Walsh’s wedding ring debacle.

As Atrios said the other day: love triangle okay…gay, not so much.

There are two parts to the culture of violence toward gay people.  The first is the relentless demonization of gay people.  By churches, by religious leaders, by politicians and their parties, by bigots with a platform.  The public is told we are a threat to children, to families, to society, to the very existence of the human race.  We are portrayed as sexual predators, disease spreading sociopaths, self-centered narcissistic parasites on society.  We are said to be shallow, vain, self-centered and interested only in self gratification on the one hand, and self-hating, self-destructive and miserable on the other.  When we are not dangerous sociopaths we are contemptible faggots.  The other part is the silencing of gay voices.  Where we are not allowed to tell our own stories, in our own voices, where social invisibility is imposed upon us, as though we are a dirty secret best kept away from view, the only voices that are heard, are the voices of those who hate us.  The hatemongers go unanswered, and this is what happens…

Oh…and this…

I now feel very fortunate that I was able to spend some private time with Matt last summer during my vacation from Saudi Arabia. We sat and talked. I told Matt that he was my hero and that he was the toughest man that I had ever known. When I said that, I bowed down to him out of respect for his ability to continue to smile and keep a positive attitude during all the trials and tribulations that he had gone through. He just laughed. I also told him how proud I was because of what he had accomplished and what he was trying to accomplish. The last thing I said to Matt was that I loved him, and he said he loved me. That was the last private conversation that I ever had with him.

Impact on my life? My life will never be the same. I miss Matt terribly. I think about him all the time—at odd moments when some little thing reminds me of him; when I walk by the refrigerator and see the pictures of him and his brother that we’ve always kept on the door; at special times of the year, like the first day of classes at UW or opening day of sage chicken hunting. I keep wondering almost the same thing that I did when I first saw him in the hospital. What would we have become? How would he have changed his piece of the world to make it better?

Impact on my life? I feel a tremendous sense of guilt. Why wasn’t I there when he needed me most? Why didn’t I spend more time with him? Why didn’t I try to find another type of profession so that I could have been available to spend more time with him as he grew up? What could I have done to be a better father and friend? How do I get an answer to those questions now? The only one who can answer them is Matt. These questions will be with me for the rest of my life. What makes it worse for me is knowing that his mother and brother will have similar unanswered questions.

Impact on my life? In addition to losing my son, I lost my father on November 4, 1998. The stress of the entire affair was too much for him. Dad watched Matt grow up. He taught him how to hunt, fish, camp, ride horses, and love the state of Wyoming. Matt, Logan, dad, and I would spend two to three weeks camping in the mountains at different times of the year—to hunt, to fish, and to goof off. Matt learned to cook over an open fire, tell fishing stories about the one that got away, and to drive a truck from my father. Three weeks before Matt went to the Fireside Bar for the last time, my parents saw Matt in Laramie. In addition, my father tried calling Matt the night that he was beaten but received no answer. He never got over the guilt of not trying earlier. The additional strain of the hospital vigil, being in the hospital room with Matt when he died, the funeral services with all the media attention and the protesters, [and] helping Judy and me clean out Matt’s apartment in Laramie a few days later was too much. Three weeks after Matt’s death, dad died. Dad told me after the funeral that he never expected to outlive Matt. The stress and the grief were just too much for him. Impact on my life? How can my life ever be the same again?

Excerpt of Dennis Shepard’s Statements to the Court
November 4, 1999

  

There are two parts to the culture of violence toward gay people…and to all minorities.  The first is hate.  The second is that silencing of the voices of the hated, which allows hate to go unchallenged and unquestioned.  Last week a young Australian diver, after a difficult struggle to come back from burnout and defeat, won a gold medal for the 10 meter dive, beating out the best of the Chinese diving team.  You were allowed to know that.  He is openly gay, and his parents and his lover were there to support him in his quest for the gold.  He said his boyfriend was part of the support network that made his dream possible.  You weren’t allowed to know that.  Because then you might start wondering about all those things you were taught about homosexuals. 

And then you might start wondering why the news media doesn’t give a damn.

Next October will mark my first year with Traveler, my Mercedes-Benz C300.  And I’m here to tell you that driving down the road and seeing that cute little three pointed star standing up at the front of my hood is Still magic…

I went to my local camera store (there’s a really good one all too conveniently located just a few blocks down Falls Road from where I live) yesterday morning to buy some ink cartridges for my art room printer.  I really need to get going on those wedding photos I took for a relative last month.  I was driving Traveler because I also intended to go to the hardware stores out in Cockeysville to get some stuff for the yard work I intended to do this weekend.  When I got to the camera store I parked on the street, in front of what looked to my eye, bizarrely, like a Mercedes-Benz pickup truck. 

WTF…???

I figured it had to be some guy’s old Mercedes sedan that had been converted into a pickup truck, because while Daimler is one of the world’s biggest truck manufacturers, as far as I know they don’t make small bed pickup trucks.  So this thing I was seeing in my rearview mirror had to be a conversion of some sort…

…Well…no.  It’s a Toyota Tacoma.  It’s owner stuck a Mercedes grill onto it.  If you look closely can see the bolts holding it over the Tacoma’s own grill.  It fools you though, because of the shape of the Tacoma’s hood.   If he’d put a little more work into it, it could be very convincing. 

But he’s not an enthusiast. (and I know its owner is a he because I saw him come out of the store shortly after I took these…)  He’s just being cute.  If he could afford that Tacoma he could afford a decent second hand Mercedes from around the timeframe that grill comes from.  And if he’s willing to flutz around with the truck to make it appear to be a Mercedes he could put some effort into working on an older one and getting it running.  He just wants the look.

I didn’t buy mine for its a status symbol value.  I don’t care about that.  I bought it because the way they’re designed and built just takes my breath away, and has ever since I was a teenager.  And now that I actually own one, I really regret not buying a used one when I could have afforded it.  It might have been more work to maintain, since Mercedes owners typically don’t get off of their cars until they’ve racked up tons of mileage.  But it would have been worth it because then I’d have had one to enjoy for more of my life then I have.

There are flashier cars.  I was browsing a car enthusiast blog the other day, reading a thread asking which cars had the best interiors.  Of course, there were plenty of photos of Bentleys and Rolls Royces in that thread.  But I was astonished to see how many people in there actually liked the look of the Cadillacs.   Huh??  There were tons of Cadillac photos in that thread.  One person posted a shot of the inside of a Maybach.  There were several Audi interiors posted.  A couple Maseratti.  The Maseratti were really nice looking.  I didn’t see anyone posting any Mercedes shots.  One idiot claimed the Maybach was just a glorified ‘S’ class.  Well it isn’t, but if I had the kind of money that buys a Bentley, I’d buy a Barabus tuned ‘S’ class instead. 

Yes…in my dreams…I know…  But that’s where my head is at with cars.  Style takes second place to engineering and craftsmanship.  At least British luxury car sumptuousness has real artisanship behind it.  The leather is all hand sewn in a Bentley.  It takes one skilled craftsman an entire day to do the leather work on just the steering wheel.  That’s what your money is buying.  Seeing people drooling over a Cadillac interior in the same breath seems grotesque.  If we actually put that much effort into the substance of our cars here in the U.S. I wouldn’t mind.  But we don’t.  That Toyota with the Mercedes grill tacked over its own isn’t all that much different from certain U.S. car models that essentially did the same thing back in the 1970s and 80s…

1975 Mercedes-Benz 240D

1979 Ford Granada

They even gave it a cute little hood ornament.  Of course, the Granada wasn’t as expensive as the Mercedes.  But even for the money you paid it wasn’t as well made as it could have been.  The irony here is that, particularly back in the 1970s, Mercedes styling was considered somewhat stogy…a bit boxy and drab.  But by then even your average Ford buyer knew they were solid as bricks.  What Ford was trying to there was copy that boxy stogy Mercedes styling a bit…but not too much…as a way of making its buyers think they were getting the engineering of a Mercedes too. 

An analogy I like to use is…think of a nice, simple Ikea desk.  Simple…basic…functional…not brazenly stylish, but beautiful in its own straightforward way.  Now think of that very same desk…but made out of solid mahogany, with mortise-and-tenon joints, and drawers on rails so perfectly fitted and balanced you can open and close them with your little finger and they don’t make a sound when you do.  That’s what it feels like driving Traveler.  That’s why driving it is still magic.  I didn’t buy it to impress anyone.  I love to drive.  I love exploring the highways.  Now I have a car that seems to love it as much as I do.  For all its creature comforts Traveler is a rock solid piece of engineering.  I have Never owned a car that was as able…and…eager…on the road as this one. 

Just yesterday I took a drive to York Pennsylvania and wandered around for a bit with one of my cameras and some black and white film.  I’m headed out the door now to go somewhere with that camera again.  The price of gasoline has been keeping me from behind the driver’s wheel for too damn long and the weather this weekend is great for photography so I’m out the door.  Household chores can wait.  And that little three pointed star on my hood leading the way down the road is as magic as the next horizon.

Via Fark.Com, via Wired.Com…  This is actually kinda creepy…

The skull of a…thing…that seems to be all mouth and teeth.  The  description is as follows…

The fleshless skull of a blind eating machine, its huge gnashing maw a surreal irony, for it has no stomach. It feeds voraciously… not out of hunger, but out of murderous instinct. Luckily, you can easily escape it, since it has no legs…

But it can roll.  If it really gets itself going you could be absolutely fucked.  Picture this thing rolling down a hill toward you, teeth flashing in the sunlight with each turn…

…this is the avatar of Death himself, also known as…

…Pac Man.  I used to love playing that game.  Now I’m going to get the creeps every time I see one of those things in an arcade…