Mary Matalin: Insane? Or Pathological Liar? Take Yer Pick…

From Media Matters:

On the December 27 edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Mary Matalin falsely claimed that President George W. Bush “inherited a recession from President Clinton, and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.”

It is pretty damn bad when being fact-checked doesn’t require a Lexis-Nexis search – or even a Google search – just a calendar.

 In fact the 9-11 attacks occurred eight months into Bush’s presidency and more than a month after he had received a Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and the recession began in March 2001.

Now, I’ll be fair.  Maybe she was driven batty by looking at James Carville every day.  I’m sure that would turn my brain to cheese after a while; and I’m pretty sure I’d be poking at my eyes with sharp objects too.  Still, there’s no excuse for saying something like that – and even less of one for CNN allowing  her to get away with it (by ‘getting away with it,’ I mean not having a 16-ton anvil drop down on her as soon as she said it.)

Stating the Obvious (But Necessarily So)

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune on The Paw That Would be Prez:

[W]hy would Pawlenty tell a national magazine during an interview about his presidential aspirations that he wants a law — a law that works and that he voted for — to be changed? Maybe he needs to bolster his name recognition with the intolerant wing of the religious right.

Ya think?

Pawlenty voted for that law in 1993 and it’s a vote he says he regrets. But one has to wonder: why is the law flawed? It has been on the books in Minnesota for 16 years — and a similar law has been in place in Minneapolis for more than 30 years. Neither law has caused much controversy and has likely helped protect the jobs of dedicated employees against ignorance and bias.

Ya think?

Yah…

Me definitely thinks.

Minnesota: Far more progressive than either NGLTF or HRC.

The Paw:  Far more opportunistic than either Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin.

New Year’s Eve Semi-Plagiarism

Joe. My. God. is running a poll:

Who Was The Most Detestable Anti-Gay Douchebag Bigot Of 2009?

The candidates are all worthy, though I think I’ll be stuffing the ballot box for Carrie ‘Miss Masturbation’ Prejean.

In the spirit of New Year’s Eve plagiarism, however – and to give people a chance to voice their opinion on a question that neither JMG nor any other gay blog will ask – here’s my End 0′ 2009 poll:

• Who was the most detestable gay/lesbian anti-trans douchebag of 2009?

The board is open.

Vote early.

Vote late.

Vote often.

Comment ’til yer ta-tas fall off.

Once Gays Get Marriage, We Become the Ever-Avoidable ‘Controversy’

More proof that ‘incremental progress’ is a lie: New Hampshire.

NH Democrats hope to avoid controversy in 2010

NH gays got their marriage – to go along with their long-held special right to discriminate against trans people – in 2009, so in 2010…?  Will there be any demand to do anything ‘controversial’ anyway?

In your heart – and head – you know what the answer is.

Reinvigorated Republicans hoping to win back New Hampshire’s Statehouse next year will be pushing something Democrats want to avoid in an election year: controversy.

Republicans plan to stick with the anti-tax, low government spending themes that made them New Hampshire’s party of power for decades. They want voters to blame Democrats for losing their jobs, their homes to foreclosure and their economic security in a lingering recession.

Former Republican House Speaker Donna Sytek says that’s how the game is played.

“The party out of power is going to try to blame the party in power for the miseries of the day,” she said.

Republican leaders aren’t focusing on repealing the Democrat-controlled Legislature’s approval of gay marriage this year — though some members of the GOP caucus have filed bills to do so. Nor are they bringing up Democrats’ failed effort to protect transgender residents from discrimination.

Well why should they?  They know that the Dems won’t – because they know that the gays-who-now-have-marriage-in-NH have other things on their mind…

like marriage in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, trans people continue to be excluded from the economy (and I won’t even mention gay rights organizations – not in this post anyway.)

And the Gay Male Hypocrisy-Mongering Trans-Exterminationists Complain, and they Complain, and they Complain…

Betcha can’t in a million years guess who pecked this in defense of opposition to the Slow-bama LGB(T) rights (non?)agenda?

What’s naive is thinking that the best way to win a negotiation is to make a major concession as your opening move.

If you said ‘the ghost of Quentin Crisp,’ you’d be wrong.

If you said ‘The John,’ you’d be mostly right – because, technically, The John was referring to healthcare reform with that precice line.  Of course, on plenty of occasions he’s voiced the same good-enough-for-the-tranny-freaks-but-don’t-you-dare-expect-us-to-wait hypocrisy about his gay purity agenda.

And what’s truly a scream is that the post in which The John typed the above quip is entitled:

Adam Nagourney of NYT falls for WH spin on HCR

Yes, that Adam Nagourney – the co-author of Out For Good, the prime text used in all classes in which gays and lesbians learn how to write trans-erasive gay history.

How trans-erasive is Out For Good, a 1999 book purporting to chronicle the gay rights movement from the days immediately prior to Stonewall up until 1988?

Well, not surprisingly, it includes the events in Minnesota leading up to the 1975 Carlson Amendment.

Also not surprisingly, Nagourney and his co-conspirator, Dudley Clendenin, paint the 1970s Minnesota trans activists as evil interlopers with no real goal other than to make nice straight-acting gays – such as the vignette’s hero, future HRC founder Steve Endean – cry and have to wait for their right to be free (and free to discriminate against trans people in Minnesota.)

Nagourney and Clendenin also point out (here I don’t say ‘also not surprisingly’, because it is something that is objectively accurate) that all of the state-level gay rights efforts in Minnesota in 1975 failed.

Also not surprisingly for a trans-erasure tome, Nagourney and Clendenin do not point out that, only a few months after the debacle in St. Paul, the city of Minneapolis added the trans-inclusive Carlson Amendment language to its 1974, Endean-manufactured gay-only rights ordinance – making it the first city in the nation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation without also giving gays and lesbians the special right to discriminate against trans people.

Also not surprisingly for a trans-erasure tome, Nagourney and Clendenin for all practical purposes do not point out that that Carlson Amendment language – that their hero Steve Endean fought tooth-and-nail to keep out of the 1975 statewide bill – did become part of Minnesota state law when the state finally did pass a gay rights law in 1993.

But Kat, I thought the book only covered up to 1988?

Officially, yes.  But, of course, it wasn’t written and published for a decade after that.  It does contain mention of certain things that happened after 1988 – notably the deaths of people interviewed for the book, including Endean, who died in 1993, just months after Minnesota passed that law.

However, the only mention of that law’s trans-inclusivity comes not in reference to Endean’s passing or anywhere in the main text of the book.

Where then?

As an afterthought in the bio-blurb of Susan Kimberly (among bio-blurbs of all people interviewed for the book), interviewed for the book but, so far as I’ve been able to tell, not actually quoted therein.

Never be fooled: It terms of presenting ‘gay’ history, The John and The Nag are trans-exterminationists of a feather.

Oh…But There are no White-Supremacy-Based Domestic Terrorists – and if You Say Otherwise, You’re a Racist

Uh huh…

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

From the Houston Chronk:

Police are searching for a man they believe is responsible for fatally shooting a convenience store owner during a robbery in Liberty County Friday night.

Officers were called about 10:10 p.m. to the Ridgewood Grocery store in the 4300 block of North Main near Texas 146 after a customer found the store’s owner in a pool of blood behind the counter, said Liberty Police Department spokesman officer Hugh Bishop.

From surveillance video, investigators learned that the store’s owner, 50-year-old Naushad Virani, was fatally shot in the head during a robbery.

The suspect was identified by police as Stevie R. Walder Jr., 31, who also goes by “Bubba.”

Bishop said Walder, who has a lengthy criminal history in Liberty County, is believed to be a member of white supremacist group.

Oh – but even that isn’t the money shot.

He has many tattoos, including a skull on the left side of his neck, a Nazi SS symbol on the right side of his neck and tear drop under his right eye.

He is known to drive a green Chevy truck with Texas plate AB1-7183. He also drives a 1998 dark green Dodge pickup with an extended cab, Texas plate 92L-RW3 and has a Republican Party sticker on the back window.

Michael Steele?  Here’s your homey du jour! 

Party down!

A Good Reason to Visit St. Louis

Hint: It ain’t the Rams.

And we all know that WBC doesn’t stand for World Basketball Conference.

Now, based solely on musicalness, I can take or leave Lady Gaga – but, just as having the BBC ban a song was once the quickest way to cause said song to go to number one on the British charts, knowing that the rotting KryptKeeper of Kansas can’t stand Lady Gaga makes me want to go snag a few of her songs off of iTunes.

Why Not Just Burn $50 Million and Then Flush the Ashes Down the Toilet?

Nice to know that the Bush Junta lives on:

Proponents of sex education classes that focus on encouraging teenagers to remain virgins until marriage are hoping that the rescue plan for the nation’s health care system will also save their programs, which are facing extinction because of a cutoff of federal funding.

The health care reform legislation pending in the Senate includes $50 million for programs that states could use.

Under the federal budget signed by President Barack Obama, such programs would no longer have funds targeted for them.

“We’re optimistic,” said Valerie Huber, of the National Abstinence Education Association, which is lobbying to maintain funding for the programs. “Nothing is certain, but we’re hopeful.”

The fact that there is any hope for these con artists to get their paws on any more of real people’s tax money shows just how far “hope” went.

Funding could be restored as part of the health reform package. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, won inclusion of an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee bill that would provide $50 million to states to use for abstinence programs, and the funding survived the version of the legislation that emerged from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“I was as surprised as anyone to see abstinence-only education programs funded in the final Reid health care bill. There must have been some Democrats who wanted to see the abstinence-only language included,” Hatch said in a statement.

Or who get some skim.

Huber and other defenders disputed that studies had shown abstinence programs were ineffective.

Is that a surprise?  They also doubtlessly dispute the indisputable proof that that their book of fairy tales is, well, a bunch of fairy tales.

Dodd the Clod

The decaying members of the House of Lords Senate are whining about its members who still have warm flesh and a mesurable bloodflow:

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Wednesday ripped the Senate’s “newest members” for the lack of comity in the upper chamber.

In a floor speech Wednesday night, Dodd said there is “nothing wrong” with partisanship, but added he has “been deeply disturbed by some of the [healthcare] debate I have heard, usually from newer members, usually those who have been here one, two, three years, who do not have an appreciation of what this chamber means and how we work together.”

Dodd did not name names, and spokesmen for the Connecticut senator did not respond to requests for comment.

…

During his speech on Wednesday, Dodd repeatedly revisited his disappointment with the newest members of the Senate: “It is always the newest members who fail to understand how the Senate has worked for more than two centuries. We need to get back to that sense of civility once again … Even though we have had very strong disagreements, I never once in my life in this chamber ever questioned the patriotic intentions of any member … the idea you challenge another’s patriotism, honesty, their integrity, does a great disservice to this institution, in my view.”

Crooks and Liars is even more indelicate…

toward Dodd:

Yes, Sen. Dodd, the same Founders who were so angry over their treatment by the crown that they started a violent revolution were certainly much more concerned about manners. Tarring and feathering was simply an elaborate social ritual!

Sen. Dodd is upset about this, and rightfully so. It seems that Sen. Al Franken has this upsetting habit of demanding information from Republicans, and even mocking them when they evade him. One of them apparently went whining to Sen. Dodd and asked him to chastise the horrid Franken.

Dodd, for those who can’t remember – and, lucky for him, that’s most people – for all practical purposes inherited his Senate seat (though his daddy actually held the other one – the one now held by St. Joe LIEberman; Dodd himself occupies the one once held by Prescott Bush.)  Dodd is a member of Da Club – and questioning the veracity of a senator – even one from a party to whom ‘truth’ is deadlier than kryptonite is to Superman – is, is, is, is…………

well, its juuuuuuuust not done!

The lesson?

Scummy freshman senators who give a damn about not just their own constituents but the rest of the country, should just be good little drones and sit on their tuchuses for four terms until they can start getting billions of dollars in sweetheart deals for their states to build useless shit that no one wants and to give tax cuts to corporations that, were they doing during WWII what they’re doing now, would have long ago been charged with – and convicted of – treason.

How History Gets Perverted

The corporate media is willingly propagating the Tim Pawlenty re-creation interview.

Now, its the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Pawlenty was lauded by gay rights activists in 1993, when as a freshman Republican legislator, he supported adding sexual orientation to categories of employment, housing and other discrimination prohibited by state law. He has since said he regrets that vote, a position he reiterated to Newsweek’s Howard Fineman.

He went on to spell out a change he wants made in the statute: It should not outlaw discrimination against “things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren’t based on sexual orientation, just a preference for the way they dressed and behaved.” He continued: “If you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday as Mr. Johnson and you show up on Tuesday as Mrs. Johnson, that is a little confusing to the kids. So I don’t like that.”

In fact, there’s no mention of cross-dressing in the definition of sexual orientation as it pertains to the state’s Human Rights Act. But Pawlenty’s utterances on the topic are bound to encourage gay rights opponents to mount an effort to make that 16-year-old anti-discrimination law less sweeping. With DFLers in charge at the Legislature, they won’t get far — but they could get far enough to force DFLers to cast politically sensitive election-year votes.

And just to save you the trouble of going over to the State of Minnesota’s website:

“Sexual orientation” means having or being perceived as having an emotional, physical, or sexual attachment to another person without regard to the sex of that person or having or being perceived as having an orientation for such attachment, or having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness. “Sexual orientation” does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.

Well, that highlighted portion is always referred to as the transgender clause – and transgender includes crossdressing, right?

Well…

That is where the language first entered the legal lexicon: as an amendment to a gay-only rights bill in the Minnesota House of Representatives on May 8, 1975.

The amendment failed – as did the entire bill.

But the language was added to the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance later that year – and that modified definition became part of Minnesota state law in 1993…

and now The Paw is trying to squirm out from under the vote he cast for it…

…by using the gay transphobe game plan of demonizing all trans people by ignoring what more than a few gay men still do and coverting all known cases involving people who were transitioning into cases involving gender flip-flopping.

Interesting, though…

given that flip-flopping is exactly what The Paw is now doing.