Just finished the latest additions to the Lexicon, section I – P. I think we need more quotes being mean to Liberals. Also, I didn’t include Lucky Duckies, or John Stewart’s brilliant Leave It There (We’re Gonna Have to… ), or McNaughton, It’s A … the first because I’m not sure it’s necessary, and the latter two because I don’t have good links for them. Any assistance or opinions greatly appreciated.

Have at it.

Two questions/statements that get tossed around whenever I vent about one of these hot button issues were in a thread from yesterday, and I think they are worth talking about. The first:

OK, don’t have time to read all 289 comments but just wanted to ask why John is so obsessed with what gay people think of Obama? I mean, seriously, lately every third or fourth post is knocking some gay blogger or gays in general for being critical of Obama.

The second:

This post is representative of a weird mindset. As someone who was on the BushCo train, and only ditched out on them when it was obvious to everyone with a brain that they were failing us miserably, it seems that some who then in turn embraced Obama want to apply that kind of hero-worshiping that they did with Bush to Obama. That’s not how any of this stuff (stuff meaning how citizens observe and interact with presidential politics) was ever supposed to work.

I’ll answer them together because I think they are related. In response to the second statement, I think it is a very valid question/assertion to wonder if I am just shilling for Obama the way I did for Bush. I do at times seem to have an odd authoritarian streak, and I was completely and totally uncritical of Bush until I finally couldn’t take it anymore, so I think it is fair to think maybe I am just resorting to type.

The thing is, I don’t think I am just in the tank and think Obama can do no wrong. And this is where the first question/comment comes into play. If I’m obsessed with anything, I’m obsessed with people saying what I think are crazy and irrational and stupid things and then making fun of them. It just seems recently, a lot of that stuff has been coming from gay bloggers over gay rights issues. I also think that there is a certain mindset among some people that if you are not spending every day dramatically freaking out that Obama sucks, you aren’t doing your duty as a citizen and aren’t thinking critically and are “just in the bag” for the President. There honestly seems to be a group of people out there who think that when the President tells them to “make him do something,” they don’t understand that he wants them to apply constructive pressure on him and on Congress, they think it is a license to scream and flail and yell “just words” and adopt Republican messaging frames. They think it is permission to have a hissy fit. And I don’t think it is being “in the bag” for Obama to point out those hissy fits.

Where I have made mistakes on this issue is assuming or seeming to assume that I think certain bloggers speak for all gay people. I’ve also been flippant and given the appearance that I just think all gay people are just whiny drama queens. And, something I thought about while watching Milk the other night was that this has been going on for a long, long time, and I might not truly understand the anger and frustration of a lot of people in the gay community.

Lemme give you some examples. I have no problem with people being mad that Obama has not issued a statement about the marriage equality issue in the state of Maine. I think he could and should do more, and won’t say a peep about people flaming the WH for not doing more.

On the other hand, I think you are an insane crazy person if you flip out like Steve Clemons because Obama’s HRC speech was not up fast enough on the White House web site on a Saturday night. I think you have lost your shit when you insist that the WH house release a list identifying all the gay people who came to a ceremony (maybe the WH can also demand they wear pink triangles on their jackets!). I think you have lost your ability to reason if you spend an entire day hyperventilating because the President did not use the word “gay” at a ceremony for hate crimes legislation that covers EVERYONE. I think you have serious issues if you point to an unsourced anonymous quote from John Harwood and then boldly announce to the world that the WH hates gays. And I don’t think I’m obsessed with gays to point at these things and laugh. And I don’t think it is wrong to note that a good bit of this anger is based on the turf war between certain online gay bloggers and the HRC.

Likewise- you will never see me attack Marci Wheeler or Glenn Greenwald for their accurate chronicling of the administrations backpedaling on certain civil liberties issues, because I think they document their arguments and are right. Hell, as much as I love having flame wars with Armando, I think he is more right than wrong on many of these issues.

I will, on the other hand, mock you repeatedly if you tell the world that Obama is worse than Bush because Gitmo is not closed yet and because he hasn’t completely altered the overall outlook of the national security machinery. I will mock you endlessly if you scream that Obama sucks because Gitmo still has prisoners, when the Senate has repeatedly screwed Obama. Hell- remember the 96 to nothing vote a couple months ago about “freeing terrorists on domestic soil.”

I’m not going to say a peep to folks who argue the administration has not done enough to reign in the banksters or the credit ratings agencies or the insurance boys. I think it is ridiculous we have not started a new regulatory regime by now. I’m kind of shocked we have not broken up the boys who are “too big to fail” and have sat by while they taking bigger and bigger risks and leverage themselves more than they were before they almost killed the country. I think the Goldman Sachs presence in our government is to the point that it is blatantly criminal.

But I am going to mock you if you tell me Obama is the worst president ever because of daily fluctuations in the DOW or the value of a dollar. I am going to give you a rhetorical punch to the neck if you bitch that Obama has not “turned the economy around” when just a few months ago we were on the verge of global armageddon. I am going to point and laugh if you kvetch about the deficit and the national debt when it would still be disastrously out of control from the previous administration if Obama had spent not one penny.

In short, I don’t think I’m in the tank for Obama, I think I’m just applying common sense. Maybe I am too sarcastic and snide, and we all know I can be a real jerk, especially to people I like. And if you disagree with me, or think I am wrong, well, you get to go ahead and call me an asshole in the comments and tell me why I am wrong. Try it. You might find it very liberating, and I know that when enough of you start to point out I am wrong about something, I probably am. I’m hard-headed, but I am capable of learning.

Fuck the fucking Yankees. If they win tonight, I’ll have to re-run “Prince of Darkness”.

P.S. If Steve Gilliard were still blogging, I think he would say Sullivan hates Sarah Palin ‘cuz Levi Johnston never brung Andy a taco…

Sully:

John Cole is upset. The bill does add gender identity to the roster of victims, and I should have noted that as well. But the inference that if you oppose the logic behind this bill, you support violence or discrimination against transgender people is repulsive. Here’s Cole’s moronic gibe:

What does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?

Of course I don’t. What conceivable evidence do you have for saying so?

Andrew, I’m just applying your standard. You’re the one who spent the last 36 hours complaining that Obama really doesn’t care about gay rights because he didn’t use the word “gay” at the signing ceremony. Using your standard, what are we supposed to do but assume you do not care about lesbians and transgendered since you failed to mention them all day in your rants.

Additionally, Andrew completely ignores the points brought up by the commenters here about why Obama’s language was appropriate at the ceremonies. Andrew likewise ignores all of the comments from those of you who chimed in about why this was a good and necessary bill and why it should be supported. At least he has now acknowledged that the bill he claimed does nothing actually does something new. That is progress, I guess.

I’m seeing more and more of this meme, from Bobo for example:

The Democrats have their problems too. And if anything, their problems are deeper because they are intellectual, not merely partisan. The Obama administration has sent the country off to the right. The president is creating a counter-realignment.

Voters don’t identify with the G.O.P. but the number of people who call themselves conservative is now near an all-time high.

What could be more than conservative than 60+% approval for a public option, right?

Meanwhile, Rove is pushing the “conservatives win even if they lose in NY-23” thing—the idea being that if the conservative candidate total plus the Republican candidate total exceeds 50%, then it means conservatives really won.

You know what, how about this? The teabaggers form a real third party that runs in all the elections. Their total plus the Republican total will be over 50% in a lot of races, we can all agree this means we’re a conservative country, and Democrats can actually run the country in peace.

There is nothing, nada, zilch, zero, nothing, that is bad news for conservatives. When they win elections, it proves we’re a conservative country. When they lose, it proves it. When we pass health care bills, it proves it. When we lower taxes, it proves it. When we raise taxes, it proves it. Everything proves it always.

Update. I can accept that in this particular universe, the sentence “everything is always good for conservatives” is true. What I’d like to know is if that sentence is true in any model where certain weaker statements about conservatives hold. Here’s what I’m driving at: is there a formal proof of the sentence “everything is always good for conservatives” using only the statement “Reagan is good” along with the usual first-order logical axioms and the “no true Scotsman” fallacy?

Update. Bob Somerby has more on Kristol’s similar claims about the conservative renaissance we are living in.

I guess it makes sense that Evan Bayh is vociferously opposed to the public option:

His wife, Susan Bayh, sits on the board of WellPoint(WLP Quote) in her hometown of Indianapolis. Over the last six years, Susan Bayh has received at least $2 million in compensation from WellPoint alone for serving on its board.

Evan Bayh, bought and paid for in full for the price of two million bucks. What a country.

Thanks to the emailer who sent this in.

Looks like the members of the Iowa GOP are a little dimwitted:

A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

Umm, guys? SHE’S. A. GRIFTER. She quit her damned job to go on the wingnut welfare circuit. Seven in ten people think she is unqualified to be President. She’s just in this for the money, and she is currently having a public feud with the father of her teenage daughter’s child who is himself cashing in by posing for Playgirl.

This isn’t a credible politician. It’s a Jerry Springer episode.

Obama’s remarks at the signing yesterday:

In the most recent year for which we have data, the FBI reported roughly 7,600 hate crimes in this country. Over the past 10 years, there were more than 12,000 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone. And we will never know how many incidents were never reported at all.

And that’s why, through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (Applause.) And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability.

At root, this isn’t just about our laws; this is about who we are as a people. This is about whether we value one another—whether we embrace our differences, rather than allowing them to become a source of animus. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died.

But we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity—the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.

Just words, right Sully? And he won’t even say Gay!

Sorry, but I just stopped reading those guys. Was not worth it. And I refuse to watch that video.

Besides- libertarians are just irrelevant, and when you realize that Republican economic policies are simply glibertarian bullshit + tax cuts + jesus, why bother with the glibertarians?

The economy grew in the third quarter:

For the first time in a year, the United States economy grew, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. But even if a recovery is technically in the offing, job seekers likely will not begin to feel the benefits for months to come.

Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent and 6.4 percent in the second and first quarters of this year, respectively.

Robust government spending, exports, consumer spending — buoyed by auto purchases Congress’s now-expired cash-for-clunkers program — and housing helped finally push the measure into positive territory. Spending on consumer durable goods like cars shot up an astounding 22.3 percent at an annual rate, compared to a decrease of 23.3 percent the previous quarter.

Obviously, this proves what a failure Obama is. Had he only listened to bloggers, the economy would have grown twice as fast.

Michael Scherer tries to get literary:

The great American poet and prose-mangler William Burroughs once offered some words of advice for young people, words that work just as well for inhabitants of Washington D.C.: “An old junk pusher told me,” he wrote, “ ‘Watch whose money you pick up.’ ”

[.....]

This is the same problem that Barack Obama faces today, after a terrific bit of reporting in the Washington Times by Matthew Mosk. The story examines the many ways in which Obama has rewarded his top fundraisers since arriving at the White House—through ambassadorships, a golf game on Martha’s Vineyard, events at the White House, bowling at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, private briefings with senior officials like Jim Messina and Austan Goolsbee, etc.

I guess it beats being compared to Hitler….

I’m beginning to wonder if I was right that the Moonies to get their money’s worth from the Times. A paper with a subscription of under 70K writes a fairly nondescript piece about the way that Obama offers donors the same perks that all recent presidents have, and suddenly he’s a drug pusher, it’s Lincoln Bedroom 2, where’s the post-partisanship, he said he’d be different! No disrespect to Mosk, it sounds like solid reporting. The underlying story just isn’t that big a deal. But, now that media elites have declared that they need to follow every story that comes out of Fox/Drudge/Moonie, it demands oodles of mainstream news coverage.

Maybe that kind of thing is worth a $100 million a year.

Fuck the fucking Yankees. In loving memory of Steve Gilliard.

Sullivan doubles down:

This simply doesn’t make sense. Hate crime laws for most categories, including federal measures, have been around for a long time. The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation. So the president had a chance to defend gays from being excluded from the usual roster of victims, in front of military leaders, and he had to walk backwards into this strange circumlocution.

He’s lost his damned mind. As several of you have pointed out, nowhere in the bill do the words lesbian or gay appear:

The word “gay” never appears in the bill. Neither does the word “lesbian,” “homosexual,” or “bisexual.”

It protects people from being targeted because of their sexual orientation. Which of course applies to everybody.

So Obama was absolutely correct in describing it as a bill that “protects people based on … who they love.”

And what does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?

It really does take big brass balls for Sullivan to complain about the legislation, then to complain about the way the legislation is signed, and then to do so disingenuously, because the line preceding the quote that gives Andrew the vapors so much states that there will be another signing ceremony specifically for the hate crimes legislation.

I seriously am to the point that every time I open memeorandum or check the progressive blogs, I’m beginning to see the same kind of batshit crazy I see on right wing blogs. Has every one just lost their damned minds? Did everyone go insane?

*** Update ***

And no, I am not claiming Sully is a progressive, I was just thinking that everyone has gone nuts.

*** Update #2 ***

From the comments:

I would like to note something from Sullivan’s writeup:

The only new thing here – the only thing that has fostered “a decade of opposition and delay” – is the addition of sexual orientation.

This is false on two levels. First off, the bill adds not just sexual orientation, but gender identity. This may not effect Andrew Sullivan, it sure as hell effects me. It’s also a pretty big deal historically speaking. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality this is the very first transgender rights bill to ever pass at the Federal level.

Second off, even if Sullivan had said “sexual orientation and gender identity”, it would still be simply wrong that adding these new categories is the only thing the bill does. The bill also strengthens the existing hate crimes law in several ways, including expanding the cases in which Federal authorities may step in to investigate a hate crime when local law enforcement falls down, and giving grants to local law enforcement agencies who find they do not have sufficient funds to properly investigate hate crimes. If you will notice the bill’s official title “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act”, James Byrd Jr. being a heterosexual black man who was tortured and killed by white supremacists in 1998.

Sullivan opposes this bill, but apparently never bothered to learn a single thing about it.

But he didn’t say “gay.”

I knew that not many people read the Washington Times, but I didn’t know its numbers were this bad (via GOS):

down 17 percent to 67,148

That’s amazing pathetic. Pick a random second-tier city and google their newspaper. You’ll generally find the circulation to be around 100K or higher (I just did this with Syracuse and Tacoma).

By 2002, Moonies had spent $1.7 billion subsidizing the paper. And that was when papers were doing well. So God only knows how much money it is losing today.

I don’t see how Sun Myung Moon is getting his money’s worth from this ridiculous little venture, even granting that its “reporters” show up on the tube a lot more than reporters from any other paper with such shitty circulation numbers.

Update. Yes, I know it is a propaganda front. But, to put it in perspective, the paper was losing $85 million a year for 20 years and certainly much more than that now. The operating expenses of the Heritage Foundation—also a propaganda front, of course—is about $49 million. And that’s 2007 dollars. It’s a good bet that the Moonie Times loses three to four times the operating budget of the Heritage Foundation now.

That’s just not a good way to spend your propaganda dollars.