AFP and Associated Press photos

Quick! Is that a woman or a man in drag?

Looks more like a man than a woman to me. But it’s U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, said to be a possible nominee to replace the retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Yahoo! News reports today that “yesterday the [Obama] administration blasted CBS News for a blog post on its website claiming that [Kagan] is a lesbian, eventually getting the news organization to retract the claim and take down the post.”

I’m pissed.

What the Obama administration essentially is saying is that being non-heterosexual and/or non-gender-conforming is a bad thing.

Otherwise, why would the White House — which, it seems to me, has a lot better things to be doing for the nation – work to squelch a probably-true rumor that the U.S. solicitor general is a lesbian?

This action on the part of the Obama administration is not that promised leadership on achieving equality for non-heterosexuals and the non-gender-conforming. This action basically affirms the destructive myth that there’s something wrong with being gay or lesbian or otherwise non-gender-conforming – otherwise, you wouldn’t have a fit about it.

Fuck the White House.

Apparently the CBS News blogger is a right-winger with a dubious background that includes allegations of having plagiarized others’ work. But regardless of the source, Kagan either is or is not heterosexual, and my money is on the latter.

White House mouthpiece Anita Dunn called the allegation that Kagan is a lesbian an application of an “old [stereotype] to single women with successful careers.”

Oh, please.

Yeah, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno –

Associated Press photo

– who on “Saturday Night Live” was portrayed by Will Ferrell, for fuck’s sake, is/was just a “single career woman,” as is former Arizona attorney general and current U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:

Gee, I wonder if the White House will try to get me to take this blog post down for “outing” the obviously lesbian Napolitano…

(Napolitano, by the way, also is said to be a possible nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.)

I’m fine with a lesbian on the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m fine with lesbians period. 

So why isn’t the White House? 

Why does the White House treat an allegation of non-heterosexuality as though being non-heterosexual were a bad thing?

That’s not fucking leadership.

That is cowardice and ignorance and a lazy pandering to bigotry and fear.

Keep on hoping for that promised change.

You — we — were punked. Big time.

P.S. I nominate current “Saturday Night Live” player Bobby Moynihan (pictured in drag below) to play Elena Kagan.

NBC image

Why is it that some issues that widely were considered to be no-brainers when George W. Bush was “president” now widely are considered to be question marks, gray area, under President Barack Obama?

Case in point: The Associated Press reports that a 24-year-old sergeant in the Marine Corps took down but then put back up his Facebook page, titled “Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots”* – which, as its title indicates, contains views opposing President Barack Obama. And that he apparently did so as the result of pressure from his military superior or superiors.

The American Civil Liberties Union has asserted that the sergeant has his right to free speech, the AP reports. I tend to agree with the ACLU on most matters — even the ACLU’s defense of the Ku Klux Klan’s free-speech rights — but it seems to me that if any member of the U.S. military had publicly identified himself or herself with a “movement” that existed primarily to oppose “President” George W. Bush**, he or she would have been disciplined — perhaps even discharged. And that virtually no one (except, perhaps, the KKK-defending ACLU…) would have defended his “free-speech right” to be openly, publicly defiant against his commander in chief.

Talking Points Memo reports that the young-dumb-and-full-of-cum sergeant put out a press release misspelling Barack Obama’s name (why am I not surprised?), and that in the press release, the sergeant stated:

Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots in no way supports a military uprising or anything to that subject, further more we recognize Barak [sic] Obama as the Command-in-Chief and we do not support disobeying orders that are lawful with Constitution, and will continue to follow orders given to us…. We do understand that there is a time and place for expression and the military work place is not one of them.

and

[J]ust because we have volunteered to serve our country in a camouflage uniform we do not strip away our rights as Americans to express our opinion on the polices of the current or future administrations.

Hmmm. Except that the “tea party” “movement” is vehemently and virulently against President Barack Obama and that President Obama is the commander in chief.

We are to trust the word of the “tea party” “patriots” in the U.S. military that they won’t commit treason? Especially when, apparently, whether or not they commit treason depends upon whether they view an order given to them by their commander in chief as constitutional or unconstitutional?

Who, exactly, is going to determine such constitutionality for them? Constitutional law expert Glenn Beck or someone else from FOX “News”? Constitutional law expert Sarah Palin-Quayle? Or some other “tea party” leader?

Homosexuals in the military are a threat?

No, it’s dipshits like the “Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots” that are the largest internal threat to the U.S. military right now. And they’re not just a Facebook page — they’re listed on teapartypatriots.org as well as being a branch of the “tea party” “movement.”

Yes, members of the U.S. military are allowed to hold whatever opinions they wish to hold. But strong opinions often lead to strong actions.

I, for one, do not feel safe with right-wing members of the U.S. military being active members of a “movement” whose primary goal is to oppose the “tyranny” of President Obama.

Obama is not a “tyrant” because one disagrees with his policies. Obama is the democratically elected president of the United States of America — and he was elected by 53 percent of the American voters, a higher percentage than George W. Bush received in the 2000 or the 2004 presidential election. (The 50.7 percent that Bush received in 2004 was even higher than the less than 50 percent that he received in 2000.)

I just don’t take these armed-and-dangerous wingnuts on their word that they won’t instigate a “military uprising.” And why is the founder of the group even bringing up the possibility of a “military uprising”?

This is scary — I hope that these Benedict Arnolds who call themselves “patriots” are rooted out before they commit treason. We’re fools if we just wait for their “military uprising” to happen.

P.S. Personally, I like the Facebook group called “Tea Parties Are for Little Girls.” It uses this as its avatar:

*I have found a Facebook group of this name, but it apparently was established by another individual, not by the sergeant.

**The so-called “birthers” question the legitimacy of President Barack Obama on completely erroneous grounds. However, there were very good grounds to assert that George W. Bush’s presidency was wholly illegitimate — and unconstitutional. What if a contingent of the U.S. military believed that his illegitimacy as president meant that Bush was not their legitimate commander in chief? What if they thus refused to, say, participate in the unelected Bush regime’s illegal, immoral, unprovoked and unjust — and, one might argue, unconstitutional — invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq in March 2003?

Trifecta! Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle delivering the keynote address at a “tea party” convention covered by Fox “News” in February. If this isn’t a sign of the end times, I don’t know what is.

In my last post I invented the “Unholy Trinity of Wingnuttery” — FOX “News” and other right-wing propaganda outlets, the Repugnican Party and the “tea party.”

Timely, because today CREDO Action announced today that “After tens of thousands of votes, FOX News has earned the title of champion of the Bracket of Evil.”

Yes, Fox “News” beat out Sarah Palin-Quayle, the “tea party” dipshits, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, among others, as the most evil person or group of persons in CREDO Action’s rounds of voting in its “Bracket of Evil” over the past month or so.

And speaking of FOX “News,” FOX “News” head honcho Rupert Murdoch recently had the hypocritical gall at the National Press Club to bash the New York Times as biased. (Non-fucktarded media, you see, have a “liberal bias.” Intelligence = socialism. Fucktardation = patriotism. God bless America!)

Murdoch even said this: “We have both sides in our news shows, our politics or whatever. We have Democrats and Republicans and whatever.”

Yeah, whatever. (Great public speaking skills there, Mr. Murdoch!)

Let’s see — FOX “News” has Repugnican Sarah Palin-Quayle on its payroll and covers the very same “tea party” gatherings that it promotes. But the New York Times is biased!

FOX “News” is a textbook example of how concentrated wealth and power in the mass media can subvert democracy into serving the interests of the wealthy.

The mass media, the “fourth estate,” are a critical part of the workings of politics, power and democracy, which is why the plutocratic elite control so much of the mass media and furiously are consolidating media outlets so that common Americans have fewer and fewer options and get their information from fewer and fewer (corporate, of course) sources.

It’s funny that it’s FOX “News,” because it’s the fox guarding the henhouse. Oh, yeah, the chickens can trust the fox to give them reliable, fair and balanced information that is in the chickens’ best interest.

Also in the news is one of the other branches of the Unholy Trinity of Wingnuttery, the “tea party” “movement.” Reports The Associated Press today:

St. Paul, Minn. – Several tea party leaders announced plans [today] to form a national federation to promote the movement’s conservative message and to counter the idea that the tea parties are politically unsophisticated and disorganized.

Tea party leaders from Memphis, Tenn., Richmond, Va., and Orlando, Fla., along with representatives of several other groups announced the new National Tea Party Federation during a rally outside the Minnesota Capitol. They said 21 tea party groups around the nation had joined the federation.

Memphis Tea Party founder Mark Skoda said recent media coverage had questioned whether the conservative tea parties, which number in the thousands nationwide, were too loosely organized to be politically effective in the national midterm election.

He said the federation intends to convey a unified message about the tea party’s brand of fiscal conservatism, which emphasizes limited government, less public spending and free markets….

Um, “federation” or “confederacy”?

Looks to me like the election of the nation’s first black president has many Americans (a minority, but still a sizeable minority, and certainly a vocal one) wanting to form a separate nation again…

As far as the third branch of the unholy trinity — the Repugnican Party — goes, it’s hard to say how much FOX “News” harms vs. helps the party. It seems to me that having a network dedicated to your “cause” could only be more helpful than harmful. Sure, FOX “News” solidifies those of us on the left, but FOX “News” also misinforms millions who believe everything that they see and hear on the tay-vay.

If the “tea party” splits the Repugnican vote, however, that could spell real trouble for the Repugnican Party. And the “tea party” also is driving Repugnican candidates even further to the right. Notes Yahoo! News:

… [The] popular anger stirred up under the [FOX  “News”] network’s auspices may not be an unqualified boon to a GOP facing a tough primary season that pits many “tea party”-style insurgents against candidates aligned with the national [Repugnican Party] organization.

Two of the most prominent such races are the [U.S.] Senate contests in Florida and Arizona, where two more compromise-minded mainstream candidates, Charlie Crist and John McCain, are fending off challenges from candidates backed by the “tea party” — and running strongly to the right of their usual positions as a result.

Beyond the primaries, the GOP is looking to make significant headway against the Democratic majorities in Congress — hoping even to return the House to Republican control. But to do that, Republicans will have to overcome their disadvantage in voter registration in many districts by appealing to independent voters — and those are the very sorts of voters most likely to be repelled by an angry ideological message….

I would think that the “tea party’s” influence on elections would cause more overall long-term harm than benefit to the Repugnican Party. The more right-wing candidates can win the Repugnican primaries, but they struggle in general elections except in the redder regions of the nation.

White supremacism and racism, misogyny and patriarchy, homophobia, “Christo”fascism, xenophobia, jingoism and militarism — to name just a few of the “values” that the “tea party” stands for, whether it will admit it or not — do not appeal to those demographic segments of the nation that are growing, but appeal only to certain demographic segments of the nation that are shrinking.

The “tea party,” aided and abetted by FOX “News,” it seems to me, very well might end up speeding up the demise of the Repugnican Party.

In the meantime, I remember when “President” George W. Bush named, in his 2002 State of the Union Address, Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of evil.”

Funny, because Iraq certainly never posed a threat to the United States, and thus far Iran and North Korea haven’t harmed the United States, but FOX “News,” the “tea party” and the Repugnican Party eat away at the fabric of our democracy every fucking day, bringing us closer to ruination of our nation than the members of the unelected Bush regime’s “axis of evil” ever could hope to – without their having to launch a single missile, or, indeed, having to lift a single fucking finger.

Associated Press photo

So this 48-year-old virgin (well, if I had to bet on it, I’d put my money on his still being a virgin) was arrested by the FBI yesterday for allegedly having harassed and threatened Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi via telephone.

The Associated Press reports that

Several federal officials said [the man] made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband’s business office. They said he recited her home address and said if she wanted to see [her home] again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that since has been enacted.

The wingnut, Gregory Lee Giusti, of San Francisco, at least actually resides in or around the district that Pelosi represents…

The AP gives some interesting tidbits about Giusti, such as that he apparently managed to speak directly to Pelosi via telephone at least once, but I found this one to be the most interesting:

Sister Lorna Walsh, community operations manager of the Mercy Housing complex where Giusti lives, said he had lived in the subsidized housing for almost 10 years.

Subsidized housing?

Um, isn’t that socialism?

What kind of follower of Ayn Rand is this guy?

But seriously, this guy seems to have significant emotional and social issues, and he’s just the kind to be riled up by the right wing, with its talk of “reloading” and fighting the “tyranny” (um, democratically elected lawmakers and leaders democratically passing legislation is democracy, not “tyranny,” just because you disagree with them ideologically).

Of course, when one of these wingnuts really goes off the deep end and kills someone, or maybe blows some shit up, killing many, the right-wing noise machine will claim no responsibility whatsofuckingever.

Yet all you have to do is go over to the Repugnican National Committee’s website and see things such as a PhotoShop job of Nancy Pelosi engulfed in flames, reminiscent of the good old days of witch burning, or see her on the RNC’s home page (as I type this sentence, anyway) portrayed as a wicked puppet master.

Pelosi isn’t the democratically elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, you see.

No! She’s an uber-villainess who must be destroyed!

Hey, I’m all for free speech, but if anything serious happens to Pelosi or to President Barack Obama or to one of the other favorite targets* of the Trinity of Wingnuttery — the Repugnican Party, the “tea party” and FOX “News” (I’ll include Rush Limbaugh and all of the other wingnut commentators with FOX) – then we have that unholy trinity to blame. Squarely.

I don’t peruse the wingnut blogosphere — I find that idea as palatable as taking a trip to the bowels of hell — but my guess is that the wingnuts already are making a martyr out of Giusti, ignoring the fact that threatening the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is a federal offense, and are asserting that she-tyrant Nancy Pelosi will have the FBI come get you next!

Pelosi and Obama are the two Democrats the wingnuts hate the most; Pelosi’s main crime is that she presides while possessing ovaries, and Obama’s, of course, is that he presides while black.

I’m not sure which one of them the right-wingers hate more, and perhaps it’s a quandary for them as to whom they should hate more: the liberated woman or the black guy. (The RNC, at least, seems to use hatred of Pelosi more than it uses hatred of Obama in order to raise money. I mean, isn’t “Pelosi” Italian for “Satan”?)

What this nation really needs is a black lesbian president.

Then, the wingnuts will just spontaneously combust.

*Speaking of targets, I just can’t post this graphic from Repugnican and “tea party” queen Sarah Palin-Quayle’s Facebook page often enough:

And I find it interesting that Palin-Quayle has been involved with all three branches of the Trinity of Wingnuttery, the “tea party,” FOX “News” and the Repugnican Party.

Associated Press photo

Elián Gonzalez, now 16, is shown in Havana, Cuba, two days ago.

I remember when the right-wing, mostly Repugnican, anti-Fidel-Castro Cuban-Americans and their supporters made Elián Gonzalez, then only 6 years old, a pawn in their feud with Cuban President Fidel Castro a decade ago. (And I remember how ironic I found it that his name sounded an awful lot like the word “alien,” which he was…)

Gonzalez’ mother had tried to get Elián into the United States illegally in order to join her relatives in Miami. In November 1999, she left Cuba in a boat with Elián, who at that time was 5 years old (he turned 6 the next month), and several others without having first informed Elián’s father. She and most of the others drowned during their attempt to make it to Florida, and Elián was one of three survivors found holding onto an inner tube off of the coast of Florida. (Since 1995, U.S. law has stated that Cubans intercepted in the water attempting to reach U.S. soil may not remain on U.S. soil, but must be returned to Cuba or to a third country.)

After a protracted political and legal battle, Elián finally was returned to his father in in April 2000 – per the international law that mandated that the child, a citizen of another nation, be returned to his father, who still was residing in that nation. If you were Elián’s father, you would have wanted his return, too.

The relatives of Elián’s mother in Miami absolutely refused to release him to the rightful custody of his father in Cuba, so federal authorities, under order of then-Attorney General Janet Reno, had to force their way into Elián’s relatives’ house and take him forcibly.

While they wanted to appear to be martyrs, Elián’s relatives were simply lawbreakers, and it is reported that they tried to brainwash Elián against returning to his father in Cuba; notes Wikipedia:

On April 14, [2000,] a video was released [by Elián's mother's relatives] in which Elián tells [his father] that he wants to stay in the United States. However, many considered that he had been coached, as a male voice was heard off-camera directing the young boy.

In a September 2005 interview with “60 Minutes” after [having been] sent back to Cuba, Elián stated that during his stay in the U.S., his family members were “telling [him] bad things about [his father]” and “were also telling [him] to tell [his father] that [he] did not want to go back to Cuba, [when he] always told them [he] wanted to.”

I tend to believe Elián’s account that he wanted to return to his father in his familiar Cuba instead of remain with relatives in a strange land whom he didn’t even know, relatives who essentially were keeping him as their political/ideological prisoner — and who had the support of the right wing.

Now, had Elián been Mexican and his mother died while trying to get him across the southern border, and had he been found wandering in the desert, it would have been an entirely different story. Then, he would have been an “illegal Elián” – er, “illegal alien,” no question about it. No right-wingers would have taken up his “cause.”

But because Miami’s embittered Cuban-American community and its supporters wanted to turn Elián into a political football in their ideological war with Fidel Castro, the law was supposed to be bent to their political will, and Janet Reno and then-President Bill Clinton were demonized for only having followed the law (and common decency, which dictates that a child whose mother has died be returned to his father unless there is a very compelling reason not to do so, and a difference in political ideology is not such a compelling reason).

The Cuban government has been accused of propaganda for having recently released some images of an apparently happy and healthy teenaged Elián, but it wasn’t Cuba that turned Elián into a symbol of the decades-long cold war between Cuba and the United States – it was his mother’s relatives in Florida and their supporters who did that.

And to this day the American right wing asserts that Elián should not have been returned to his father. Yahoo! News quotes a wingnut blogger as having proclaimed:

If Elián had been granted asylum, today he would be a teenager preparing to go to college with every opportunity for success ahead of him. Instead, on the cusp of adulthood, Elián poses for propaganda photos sandwiched between Cuban army soldiers attending the Union of Young Communists congress in Havana…

The youthful Gonzalez should have been wrapped in the America flag. Instead, a boy who once represented the quest for the God-given right to be free, waves a Cuban flag symbolizing poverty, oppression, authoritarianism and misinformation.

Oh, Jesus fuck. Where to begin?

“Wrapped in the American flag”? That blogger must be a fucking virgin to use ridiculously jingoistic rhetoric like that. I mean, fuck — cue the screeching bald eagle!

Look, if Elián were an American teenager, he’d be lucky to be able to even get into a good university, and if he did, he’d probably graduate with a mountain of debt, because instead of being seen as valuable individuals inherently worthy of educating, our young are seen only as cash cows, such as for the student-loan sharks and the textbook-industry rectal rapists.

Maybe, not being able to afford college and not wishing to take on major student-loan debt, Elián would have joined the crusade in Iraq or Afghanistan for the war profiteers and the oil profiteers — er, I mean, for freeeedom — and he’d have been maimed or killed.

Or maybe he’d just have an exciting career as a wage slave for his capitalist masters ahead of him.

Oh, yeah, it’s sooooo much better here in the United States of Amurica, with our robust economy and freedom in such abundance that it’s oozing out of our asses.

As for the “If Elián had been granted asylum” bullshit, Wikpedia notes that

After Elián was returned to his father’s custody, he remained in the United States while the Miami relatives exhausted their legal options. A three-judge federal panel had ruled that he could not go back to Cuba until he was granted an asylum hearing, but the case turned on the right of the relatives to request that hearing on behalf of the boy.

On June 1, 2000, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Elián was too young to file for asylum; only his father could speak for him, and the relatives lacked legal standing. On June 28, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Later the same day, Elián González and his family returned home to Cuba.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. That’s good enough for me that what was done in Elián’s case was legally proper.

And it’s interesting that a wingnut would trash Cuba as “symbolizing poverty, oppression, authoritarianism and misinformation.”

First of all, since the anti-capitalist Cuban Revolution, the capitalist U.S. government has done everything in its power to cripple Cuba. To try to cripple a much smaller, much weaker nation, and then to criticize it for not being stronger than it is is insane – but of course the wingnuts are, by definition, insane.

Secondly, we have plenty of poverty here at home, and capitalist oppression and exploitation and authoritarianism, too (oppression and exploitation are OK with the wingnuts as long as it’s making someone money), and misinformation?

Oh, please, how about the ominous warnings of the members of the unelected Bush regime about “mushroom clouds” here in the United States if we didn’t nip Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” in the bud?

No, the U.S. government never is guilty of misinforming its citizens. Never.

Oh. And Hurricane Katrina.

And the Abu Ghraib House of Horrors.

And speaking of Cuba – how about that Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp?

I certainly don’t assert that Cuba is perfect. Elián is closely guarded by the Cuban government, the media report, and I find that at least moderately disconcerting, even while, from the Cuban government’s standpoint, it’s understandable.

What I do assert is that Cuba surely isn’t as bad as all of the wingnuts paint it to be, that Cuba would be much worse off than it is now if it were opened up to capitalist exploitation as the American wingnuts want it to be, and that Cuba would be an awful lot better if it hadn’t had to endure the wingnuts’ decades-long effort to make it fail because they disagree with its government’s ideology.

All in all, I tend to believe that Elián Gonzalez is better off where he is.

P.S. I read the above-referenced wingnut’s entire nauseating piece on Elián Gonzalez. The wingnut, who, I was surprised to learn, apparently is a female, a she-wingnut, also wrote these gems:

As Elian was placed into [his father's] arms, [his mother's] death was officially for naught.  Hope for Elian growing up liberated disappeared beneath the cold, murky waters between Cuba and the U.S. like a mother failing to find safe haven for an only child.

Wow. So it wasn’t a child rightfully being returned to his father. It was the child’s mother’s death being “for naught.” And when Cubans (especially the light-skinned, Repugnican-supporting variety) try to get into the nation illegally, it’s for freedom, you see, but when Mexicans and other undesirables (Democratic-supporting, most likely) try to get into the nation illegally, it’s only to freeload. (Please try to keep up!)

Fast-forward 10 years and take a glimpse into Elian’s life as a teenager. Instead of a Miami Dolphins Jersey, “Cuba released photos of one-time exile cause celeb Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform.” Elian Gonzalez is what youthful subjugation looks like when a boy, a heartbeat from freedom, is deprived [of] liberty…

So all of those graves at Arlington National Cemetery — they died for our freedom to wear football jerseys. And apparently the U.S. military is full of “subjugated,” liberty-deprived youths, since they have to wear those anti-freedom olive-green military uniforms.

Really, everyone in the U.S. military should be wearing football jerseys — which we now should call freedom jerseys.

In Cuba, Elian is a hero. Yearly, Fidel approved celebrations marking Gonzalez’s birthday because Elian epitomizes the height of Cuban triumph over America. Lest we forget, America willingly acquiesced in the battle to grant a defenseless child freedom, choosing instead to don riot gear and send a terrified child back under Castro-inflicted bondage.

Really? Elián says he wanted to go back to his father in Cuba. And the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene… And again, it wasn’t about reuniting a child with his father — no, it was a big, bad-ass “battle to grant a defenseless child freedom” (even though the child wanted to go back home to Cuba…).

There was a “Cuban triumph” over the United States back in 2000? Really? I missed that in the news… I’d thought that Cuba was a rather small, rather defenseless nation…

And the “riot gear” — well, as the family of Elián’s mother refused to release him to the custody of his father, and as the officials who came to get Elián (only because his mother’s relatives were illegally holding him) had been threatened with violence by the family spokeswoman should they attempt to enter the home, and indeed they were pelted with rocks and bottles, it seems to me that the “riot gear” was appropriate protection and not some sign of “liberal” “fascism.”

Also, from what I can tell, contributing to the fact that the feds went to get Elián is that the local law enforcement officials, apparently in a gross dereliction of duty, had refused to do so. (Of course, as Elián was not in the United States legally and was a citizen of another nation, it became an immigration, and thus a federal, matter, and maybe it would have been illegal for local officials to get involved in taking him from his kidnappers.)

Sure Elián was scared when they came to get him — but it was his stupid fucking relatives (and those who aided and abetted them) who made that scene necessary, and I blame them, not the federal authorities who had to resort to what they had to resort to.

As Barack Obama emulates Fidel Castro’s health care system and ferries a reluctant nation toward socialism, the scenario is reminiscent of a frightened Elian Gonzalez being wrested from the arms of liberty by an out of control federal government dictated to by a liberal American president.

Free people should take a good, long look at Elian Gonzalez and observe what our nation has the potential to become 10 years down the line if, instead of moving in the opposite direction, America’s rowboat continues to inch closer to Cuba’s shores.

Actually, “Obamacare” is much, much closer to Repugnican Mitt Romney’s health care for Massachusetts than it is anything like Castro’s health care, and how in the hell do we go from Elián Gonzalez to Obama and health care and “Obamacare”? (And hasn’t the fucktarded charge of  “socialism” been so overused to the point that it’s rather meaningless now?)

The bottom line: The Elián Gonzalez case was just another example of Repugnican meddling in a private family matter in Florida for perverse political gain – just like the Terri Schiavo case was in 2005. Just as the Repugnicans in Washington passed legislation specific to Terri Schiavo (in order to get her case kicked up to the U.S. Supreme Court — which promptly refused to hear it!), the Repugnicans in D.C. tried to pass legislation specific to Elián Gonzalez to make him a U.S. citizen – because, after all, Florida is a swing state and Florida has a lot of Cuban-American voters, and the majority of them vote Repugnican because the Repugnicans hate Fidel Castro, too.

(Passing legislation for just one person is illegal, by the way. It’s called a “bill of attainder.” Check it. Not that the Repugnicans give a flying fuck about what’s legal and what’s illegal.)

And again, it wasn’t an  “out-of-control-federal government dictated to by a liberal American president” that returned Elián Gonzalez to his father — it essentially was the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to intervene on behalf of Elián’s mother’s family, just as it would later refuse to intervene in the Schiavo case — because the U.S. Supreme Court, while it picked our “president” for us in late 2000, generally refuses to get involved in family law, leaving it to the courts below it that handle family law.

But the wingnuts are No. 1 in cheesy rhetoric — to the wingnuts, Elián wasn’t returned to his father, whom he wanted to be with, but was “wrested from the arms of liberty” (try not to choke on your own vomit there), and surely it’s clear from just reading my blog that “America’s rowboat continues to inch closer to Cuba’s shores.”

I mean, shit! To paraphrase Sarah Palin-Quayle, I can see Havana from my house!

I’ve had problems posting here for several days now, dear reader. My experience has been that this sometimes happens with AlterNet’s blogging system, and that up to almost a week can pass before I am able to post.

I usually post something new at least every two or three days, so if don’t see any new content here for a few days, it probably means that I’m having a problem posting here.

You always can read me at my other mirror blogs, at WordPress and at Open Salon. I never have any problems posting to those two sites.

Check either one of them out. I’ve posted some (pretty good, I think) things in the past week that I wasn’t able to post here.

Thanks.

Likening the heat that it has been getting over the international child sex abuse scandal that surrounds it to the persecution that the Jews have endured didn’t work, so now the Vatican is blaming feminists and non-heterosexuals for its plight.

Reports The Associated Press today:

The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI [today], claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic “hate” campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining “the motive for these attacks” on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

“The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different” agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

Herranz didn’t identify the lobbies but “defense of life” is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.

Also arguing that Benedict’s promotion of conservative family models had provoked the so-called attacks was the Vatican’s dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

“By now, it’s a cultural contrast,” Sodano told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. “The pope embodies moral truths that aren’t accepted, and so, the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as weapons against the church.”

Also rallying to Benedict’s side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State’s governing apparatus.

The pope “has done all that he could have” against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on Vatican radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of “hatred against the Catholic church.”

Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican officials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany.

The mainland European scandals — in Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland — are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and other areas.

In Germany, nearly 2,700 people called the church’s sexual abuse hotline in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said [today]. A team of psychologists and other experts have spoken with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said.

“Most callers reported cases of sexual abuse,” he told The Associated Press.

Benedict has ignored victims’ demands that he accept responsibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swiftly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children.

But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prelates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics….

It’s not pro-choice women and non-heterosexuals and their allies who are after the Catholick church these days — it’s those who have been sexually abused by Catholick officials and their allies who are putting the Catholick officials’ feet to the hell fire, where their feet belong.

Indirectly blaming the historically oppressed liberated women and non-heterosexuals for its own serious crimes is incredibly intellectually dishonest, immoral and yes, anti-Christian, of the Catholick church.

Sure there is hatred of the corrupt, anti-Christian Catholick church, for its long oppression of women and of non-heterosexuals, and, of course, for its sexual abuse of children.

But justice demands that the members of the Catholick hierarchy don’t get to hide behind the red herring of “anti-Catholic hatred” and get off the hook for their crimes against children, be it their direct sexual abuse of children or their allowing the sexual abuse to continue to occur.

No one in the Vatican or the Catholick church’s hierarchy, including Pope Palpatine, should be immune from the criminal justice system.

There should be no hiding behind Jesus Christ and “Christian” “martyrdom” when it comes to the sexual abuse of children.

With its absolute refusal to take responsibility for the international child sex abuse scandal, what speck of credibility the Catholick church had now has completely vanished.

The silver lining, I surmise, is that history will credit Pope Palpatine with the long-overdue destruction of the corrupt, oppressive, patriarchal, backasswards — and yes, paradoxically satanic – Catholick church.

If regular zombies want braaaains! — braaaaaains! – then what do “Obama zombies” want?

“Chaaaaange! — chaaaaaaaange!”?*

Today I noted for the first time on amazon.com’s top-100-selling books list this wonderful little title:

Hey, at least the wingnuts are starting to get a little creative! All of these wingnut books that make references to the Founding fucking Fathers — who surely intended that we be the right-wing, white supremacist, fascist nation that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin-Quayle want us to be — have grown beyond stale. So now, albeit a little late, the wingnuts have hopped upon the zombie bandwagon.

I love the subtitle of the new wingnut book: “How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.” (The book, by the way, is endorsed by luminaries Ann Cunter and Michelle Malkin, so I think that you can consider the source…)

Hmmm. Let’s see. Apparently the “liberal machine” isn’t all that efficient if this member of Generation Y (the author, I mean) somehow wasn’t successfully brainwashed. (I mean, presumably, if his brainwashing were successful, he wouldn’t have written this book. [Presuming that he even actually wrote it...])

Further, I live in California, one of the bluest of the blue states, and I just haven’t seen any “Obama zombies.” I never saw any “Obama zombies.” Of course, I wasn’t looking for any, that’s true; after I put so much time, money and energy into trying to get John Kerry elected in 2004, only to watch Kerry concede even while Ohio was still looking awfully fishy, I decided that I wasn’t going to work nearly as hard for the Democratic Party in 2008.

(And I didn’t — my main goal for 2008 was to make sure that Barack Obama and not Billary Clinton got the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, calculating that Obama is the more liberal of the two and that he had a better shot at beating the Repugnican candidate. Once Obama got his party’s nomination, my donations to him dwindled.)

But if “Obama zombies” were so pervasive as to justify an entire book on the topic, wouldn’t I have spotted at least a few of them? (The person I recall being the most jazzed up about Obama actually is a baby boomer, not a member of Generation Y, the presumed “brainwashed” and “zombified” generation that this book discusses.)

Look, if you want to talk about zombies, the “Deaniacs” — the supporters of Howard Dean’s bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination — were fucking zombies. They even called themselves “Deaniacs.” Proudly.

And I saw them. Everywhere. While attendance at my monthly John Kerry Meetups was low — oh, maybe around a dozen or so people, before he finally won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination – hundreds of people would attend the local Howard Dean Meetups, I heard. And when Dean lost the nomination, the Deaniacs still wouldn’t let it go, but morphed their organization, Dean for America, into Democracy for America (whose meetings I’ve attended in the past, after Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election).

Now, these were fanatics. If memory serves, thousands of the Deaniacs descended upon the poor state of Iowa, at their own expense, to campaign on Dean’s behalf in that state’s caucuses, the first event of the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primary season, all of them wearing bright orange knit caps.

My guess is that Iowans were not impressed by, but were quite put off by, the sea of orange-headed zombies for Dean, and that that largely if not primarily accounts for why Dean came in at No. 3 in the caucuses, dealing a crushing blow to his campaign, which had wanted all of us to just coronate him already. (Kerry’s campaign had been on life support before he won the Iowa caucuses; in the few months right before he won the Iowa caucuses, I couldn’t even get 10 people to a Kerry Meeup. I tell you, Lazarus had nothing on Kerry.)

I’m sure that there were some fanatics for Obama, but they weren’t nearly as fanatical or as numerous as were the Dean lemmings. And I’m sure that they’re not that fanatic now, now that things haven’t been, as Sarah Palin-Quayle might put it, all that hope-y and change-y.

So this book by this Jason Mattera guy, whoever he is, about left-wing “zombies” is hardly timely. The true zombies were around for Howard Dean, not for Obama, and whatever little bit of zombiism might have existed for Obama faded months ago.

So it’s bullshit to assert that there is this entire “generation” that has been “brainwashed” by Team Obama.

There is a generation of young people for whom (in no certain order) racism, white supremacism, “Christo”fascism, xenophobia, sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia, militarism, jingoism, American exceptionalism, etc. — the platform of the Repugnican Party, whether it’s spoken or just understood — don’t appeal.

Call them “brainwashed” “zombies” if you like; I call them “enlightened” and “evolved.” They are the nation’s future, while the Repugnican Party now represents only the old dead hand of the past, the stupid white man’s death throes. (Really, a black man in the White House pretty much is the stake in the heart of the racist and white supremacist Repugnican Party and its “tea-partying” allies, is it not?)

As far as goes some national march into the abyss, which the Repugnicans and the “tea party” dipshits keep talking about, I just don’t see that, either.

Socialism? It took Obama more than a year to get health-care reform passed. And what finally got passed needs a lot more improvement.

Our stormtroopers remain in the Middle East, and speaking of our stormtroopers, we are told that letting the gay ones serve without discrimination still needs some “study.”

The economy remains in the shitter more than a year after “socialist” Obama took the reins. It might be status quo lite these days, but it’s still the status quo.

Socialism? If so, it’s creeping at narcoleptic snail’s pace.

The nation was much closer to the abyss when the members of the BushCheneyCorp stole office in 2000, allowed 9/11 to happen, and then, using 9/11 as their Reichstag fire, launched their Vietraq War and went about shitting and pissing all over the Constitution, using their “war on terror” as an excuse for doing what they’d wanted to do all along anyway. Um, we won’t be seeing another Abu Ghraib House of Horrors under Obama, yet it’s Obama whom the wingnuts call dangerous to human rights.

And if we do have zombies among us today, um, they would be members of the “tea party,” not Obama supporters. I don’t see Obama supporters all frenzied up and spewing forth spittle and epithets at Repugnican lawmakers. No, that would be the “tea party” dipshits doing so to Democratic lawmakers.

Indeed, the recent convergence of the “tea party” fucktards on Capitol Hill in an apparent attempt to intimidate lawmakers from voting for health-care reform: That was right out of a zombie movie, with the zombies attacking Capitol Hill.

Liberals are almost never that organized. Getting the “tea party” fascists whipped up and marching in lockstep is about as hard as getting a Repugnican to support a tax cut, but getting liberals to protest is like herding retarded, blind and deaf cats on crack.

If the wingnuts want to view their detractors as “brainwashed” “zombies,” I suppose that’s fine. We progressives see the wingnuts, perhaps especially the “tea party” dipshits, as even more so brainwashed and zombified. Because they are.

What else can you call it when someone fights against what actually would help him or her — like health care taken out of the greedy grubbies of the corporatocrats? Or combatting global warming? Or relative peace instead of perpetual war?

You have to be pretty fucking brainwashed to vote against your own best interests.

And when you start spitting on lawmakers, calling them offensive names and throwing bricks through their office windows, and doing so in mindless unison, you’re acting an awful lot like a zombie.

Hey, I feel a book coming on…

*Actually, that’s the little joke that I tell about the panhandlers in my neighborhood in Sacramento, whose numbers increased dramatically each year that the unelected, plutocratic BushCheneyCorp was in office, further enriching the already filthy rich and further impoverishing the already impoverished: I likened the panhandlers to zombies, demanding not “braaaaains!” but “chaaaange!”

Reuters photo

Is it safe to come out now? “I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man,” the gorgeous Ricky Martin (shown above in 2007) announced today. “I am very blessed to be who I am.”

I knew that pop star Ricky Martin, who now is 38, was gay when Barbara Walters, interviewing him years ago when he was hot property, asked him if the circulating rumors that he is gay are true, and he refused to answer.

To Ricky’s credit (Ricky, may I call you Ricky?), he didn’t lie and state that he is heterosexual. (And, thank Goddess, he didn’t come out under skanky circumstances, like George Michael did, if memory serves…) But virtually no straight man answers the question of his sexual orientation with a refusal to answer the question.

Reportedly, Barbara Walters recently stated that she regrets having pressed Ricky on his sexual orientation those years ago: “In 2000, I pushed Ricky Martin very hard to admit if he was gay or not, and the way he refused to do it made everyone decide that he was. A lot of people say that destroyed his career, and when I think back on it now, I feel it was an inappropriate question,” she reportedly stated.

No, it wasn’t an inappropriate question. It was a legitimate question. One’s sexual orientation is central to his or her life, having a huge impact on his or her close relations (or lack thereof). Ricky had twin sons born to him by a surrogate mother, another fact (when I heard it) that made it clear to me that he’s gay, as straight men very rarely do that when they want to become fathers. You just can’t say that Ricky’s sexual orientation hasn’t had a huge bearing on the kind of family that he has built for himself; it is an integral part of him.

I don’t blame Walters for Ricky’s career having fizzled out, at least here in the United States. Lots of young men and women burst onto the American music scene, have a successful album or two, and then fizzle. It happens.

In Ricky’s case it may or may not have been due, in small or in large part, to his widely (and correctly) perceived homosexuality. Hell, his career might even have done better if he had just boldly come out of the closet instead of dodged the question; his evasiveness may have hurt him more than did his non-heterosexuality. Who knows?

In any event, it’s always better late than never to come out of the closet, and I am happy that Ricky has come out of the closet.

I always hope that a celebrity would come out sooner rather than later, not when he or she perceives that it is “safe” for his or career to do so — this sort of thinking only perpetuates homophobia, from what I can tell (and come on, it’s not like any of us gay men or straight women who might have fantasized about getting with Ricky actually were going to do so) — but every out and proud celebrity to whom closeted non-heterosexuals can look to for inspiration helps, even if he or she comes out later in his or her career.

Thank you, Ricky, for doing the right thing. (You go, girl!)

Maybe your next album will be a surprising success — because you have embraced who and what you are.

AFP and Associated Press photos

The government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (pictured at bottom above) arrested and released Guillermo Zuloaga (pictured at top above), the head of Globovision, Venezuela’s equivalent of FOX, for violating the nation’s law against disseminating “false information through any medium” “that cause[s] public panic.” After the Venezuela right wing’s treasonous coup attempt of 2002, such a law is understandable, but most Americans don’t know what happened in even their own nation in 2002, which already is ancient fucking history to them, so they don’t have the context for Chavez’s handling of his critics, who are prone to committing treasonous acts.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in the news again, this time for his government’s having arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, the owner of Globovision, which, from what I can tell, is Venezuela’s equivalent of FOX.

Zuloaga was released but was ordered by a judge not to leave the country while he is being investigated. The Associated Press reports that

The [Venezuelan] Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that prosecutors are investigating Zuloaga for allegedly violating a law prohibiting Venezuelans from spreading “false information through any medium,” including newspapers, radio, television, e-mails or leaflets, “that cause[s] public panic.”

Zuloaga, Globovision’s majority shareholder, could face a five-year prison sentence if convicted, the statement said.

Fuck. If we had such a law here in Obamaland, then the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin-Quayle and Glenn Beck all would be behind bars. They routinely spread false information that causes public panic. Hell, doing so is their bread and fucking butter.

I mean, these traitors have turned health care — long considered to be a good thing — into a great evil in the eyes of their fucktarded followers. And they have done so to the point that Democratic lawmakers are being threatened. (Um, I don’t fucking believe any Repugnican claims that they also have been targeted, since not a single fucking Repugnican member of the U.S. House of Representatives has voted for health-care reform, not in the first vote of 219 or the second vote of 220.)

When unstable individuals are incited to threaten democratically elected members of a legislature, that is what you call treason. That is not free speech. That is subverting the will of the majority of the voters by disrupting the democratic process, and disrupting the democratic process is harming the nation — and again, there is a word for that, and again, that word is treason.

So when the likes of Sarah Palin-Quayle puts this on her Facebook page (and yes, “Saturday Night Live” had it right when they noted that a 14-year-old, not a presidential aspirant, has a fucking Facebook page) –

– and Tweets about how her supporters should not “retreat” but should “RELOAD!” — that easily could incite violence that disrupts the democratic process, which makes her speech, in my book, not free but treasonous.

But arresting the she-Nazi for her incendiary speech that easily could incite one of her gun-nut supporters to go out and shoot one of the Democratic lawmakers whom she has targeted with gun crosshairs — well, I don’t know…

I can see the argument in arresting the likes of professional liars Palin-Quayle and Limbaugh and Beck, as I do see them as a threat to the welfare of the nation, including its democracy, but it’s baaad precedent for a government to be arresting its detractors, as virulently anti-democratic as they might be.

You don’t want to wait until they have succeeded in bringing civil war to the nation, but at the same time, arresting people for what their speech and/or actions might lead to but have not yet led to — that’s a mighty slippery slope.

If you watch the documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” about the failed right-wing coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002 (which the unelected, anti-democratic, right-wing Bush regime fully supported, of course), you will understand better where Hugo Chavez is coming from.

The anti-democratic right-wingers in Venezuela do want to overthrow the democratically elected Chavez, as, um, evidenced by the fact than in 2002 they tried to do so, tried to replace Chavez with a plutocrat whom the people did not elect, but the people of Venezuela rose up and they returned Chavez to power within days.

There is no other word for what the 2002 coup ringleaders did than treason. And I have little doubt that Zuloaga is a traitor, that he puts his and his fellow plutocrats’ interests far above the interests of the common Venezuelan, to the point that he gladly would override the will of the majority of the people of Venezuela to see his and his fellow plutocrats’ interests advanced at the expense of the common Venezuelan.

But a memo to President Chavez: The whole world is watching, Mr. President, and the whole world does not understand the political realities of Venezuela.

Don’t make scumbags like Zuloaga into martyrs.

Don’t give any semblance of credibility to the right-wingers’ false assertion that you are a “murderous” “dictator,” even though you repeatedly have been democratically elected and even though you had not one of the treasonous ringleaders of the 2002 coup attempt executed, although here in the United States execution is considered appropriate punishment for treason.

Don’t let the right wing harm your revolution — our revolution, the world’s revolution — by successfully painting you, in the eyes of the world, as one of the tyrants that they are.

There’s too much at stake.