Gore More Years

An excellent interview with Gore Vidal can be found here.

The Day before the Day before

Happy Festivus, one and all.

Statistic of the Day

A Harris poll finds 61 percent of Americans favored a federal law prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. Additionally, the survey found that 42 percent of adults surveyed believe that such a law currently exists.

I propose this: the queers agree to pause the Marriage Equality Debate until AFTER the 2008 election if the Christianist Right will back off on the same subject; instead homos push for BASIC civil rights protections in federal law? It sure sounds like the winnable battle.

I know there is much resistance to comparing the campaign for gay rights with the civil rights struggles by blacks in the Sixties, but consider this: what if African-American activists had told LBJ that while they wanted the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, they perferred to push for interracial marriage first?

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan who himself opposes ENDA but is resigned about it due to large public support, which even a democracy-loving Conservative has to love.)

Soys and Girls

And here I thought it was my overattentive mother (God rest her soul) that made me gay. This hysterical man has another possible culprit...

By Their Words, So Shall Ye Know Them

The level of Rummy's denial stretches beyond even the current civil war...

What They Don't Report Can Hurt US

Eric Alterman alerts us to what the MSM fails to report from the ISG.

Mel, Please, Get Some Therapy

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.” This grisly threat is delivered by one of the main bad guys in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” The promised flaying never takes place, but viewers who share this director’s apparently limitless appetite for gore will not be disappointed, since not much else in the way of bodily torment has been left to the imagination. There are plenty of disembowelings, impalings, clubbings and beheadings. Hearts are torn, still beating, from slashed-open chests. A man’s face is chewed off by a jaguar. Another’s neck is pierced by darts tipped with frog venom. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the sight of hundreds of corpses haphazardly layered in an open pit: a provocative and ill-advised excursion into Holocaust imagery on this director’s part.

--from A. O. Scott's review of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto in the New York Times

Statistic of the Day

FDR ---------- 49
Truman ------- 40
Eisenhower ---- 12
Kennedy ------- 4
Johnson ------- 21
Nixon ---------- 2
Ford ---------- 17
Carter ---------- 6
Reagan -------- 48
Bush ---------- 27
Clinton -------- 34
Bush ---------- 62

Guess the reference?

Feingold Brings the Common Sense

"The fact is the [Baker Commission] was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report. Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job."

For the video, go here.

Too bad he's ruled out running for president (like he has a chance in hell anyway?).

(Hat Tip, Eric Alterman.)

O Pioneers

A moving tribute to a pre-Stonewall Gay Pioneer can be found at http://nationaljournal.com/rauch.htm. (For some reason the Blogger interface isnt currently letting me insert HTML into posts.)

Keep on Giving

Wonkette offers her usual tart humor through her unusual holiday gift guide.