Celebration: Thursday Photo Challenge

Seahorse in San Francisco
Originally uploaded by JoeWorldTraveler.

What Books Should Bush Be Reading?

Shakespeare's Sister

He is reading When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After The White House and Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground. The first is obvious; the second focuses on the current military deployments.

SS suggested Leadership for Dummies. Heehee.

I'd suggest the Constitution. Or perhaps Willard Sterne Randall's Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor, just as a more fitting guide to his post-presidential years than Teddy Roosevelt.

Fish In A Barrel - The American Family Association

AFAJournal.org

These are the guys that tried to flip Ford into the antigay category, only to be...DENIED!

Well, Ford isn't the only one in their sights:

On another front, we learned in November that Walgreens has made a $100,000 donation to support the 2006 Gay Games to be held in Chicago in July. If you don’t already know, the Gay Games are basically a mockery of the Olympic Games with homosexual and lesbian participants.

Whooohooo! No homosexuals in the original Olympic Games!

What Bush Was Up To

Think Progress

It's becoming clearer what Bush was doing post-9/11.

Think Progress reminds us that contrary to Bush claims, FISA was easily amended after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act loosened requirements for obtaining surveillance in one of its more controversial provision.

Congress is being used as misdirection in the GWOT. It doesn't matter what Congress does - in fact, for Bush policies to work, it's best if Congress doesn't have any real connect to what's going on at all. It's best for Bush if Congress debates things just as if we had a democracy, as if Congressional acts mattered.

Because the truth is, right now, Congress doesn't matter. Congress is offline as far as power is concerned.

Remember this quote?

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

Silly me - I just thought the Bushes meant the media. But no, they meant the Congress as well.

The Bush Administration has been one long exercise in dismantling the American government. They have allowed our enemies to attack us, sunk us into debt, tried time after time to disable successful policies like Social Security, lied us into war, and exacerbated the partisan gridlock of Congress in order to flank its Constitutional authority under the guise of national security.

This crap must end. These people must go.

FISA Was Modifying Warrant Requests

San Francisco Gate:

Government records show that the Bush administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to begin secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an authority on the security agency that intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.

Let's look at the numbers. FISA has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance since 1979 (records are available only up until 2004). 13,102 were approved over the first 22 years, and only two warrant applications were ever modified.

13,102 divided by 22 is an average of 596 a year.

"Since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5645 requests...by the Bush Administration."

5645 divided by 4 is 1411 a year. That's quite a spike in requests.

And according to the article, 173 of those were in 2003 and 2004. Only six were modified before.

And six requests were also rejected or deferred during those two years - "the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history".

When did the avoidance of FISA begin? Right after September 11, 2001. However, the reticience of the FISA court to approve warrants without modification began much later, as the numbers show. These number cannot be used to exonerate Bush. The difficulties with the court begin after his bypass. They can't be the cause of the bypass.

By the way, the modification rate from 2001 to 2004 is 3% of submitted and approved requests. Wow, that's such a burden on law enforcement.

But you can begin to see why the Bushies felt that the application process was "too cumbersome". They were submitting two and a third more requests than previous administrations. But rather than going to Congress to deal with the situation, they decided to flank the system and screw anyone who second-guessed them or complained about civil liberties.

Froomkin on Froomkin - Index of WaPo Columns

White House Briefing

A whole year worth of Dan Froomkin's take on the White House. Good stuff.

Eric Crafton Responds Again!!

While I was busy composing and sending out the response below, Eric found he had one more thing to say to my original email. Understand that. He fired off the first one, and then fired off the second one before I even had a chance to respond. Here it is:

From: Eric Crafton [mailto:craftonfamily@comcast.net]
Sent: Monday, December 26, 2005 12:21 PM
To: Joseph
Subject: RE: Christmas - From Your Constituent

By the way, don't ever question my motives again. That's between me and the Lord. "judge not lest ye be judged." If you had any courage at all, you would stand up for your "so called" beliefs as well. Merry Christmas and Happy new year.

Still sending those from his family address, I see.

Well, I went out shopping, so I didn't get to see this until I got home. And sadly for Mr. Crafton, I had a chance to think about what I could have said. So when I got home, and found that little jewel in my inbox, well, I cut loose.

How you talk to your employer! I am correct about that, yes? You are the public servant and I am the taxpaying member of your constituency? Yes? I don’t know where you learned to address your boss like that, but you need a quick lesson in humility.

Which I am here to provide. In case you aren’t familiar with being an elected official, judging your motives is my primary right. I look at you and I decide whether or not you are in this for your own gain or for the gain of us, your electors. If I decide against you, then I get to talk about it all the live long day, in every venue I see fit. If this is something you’re not willing to put up with, then I suggest you not run for public office ever again. Try to intimidate me out of my First Amendment rights again, sir, and you will be sorry.

Now. How is it that I judge your motives, Mr. Crafton? What evidence do I have? Your actions. And right now, your actions are severely wanting. First of all, you tie into this War on Christmas nonsense. In this, you are guilty by association with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson, panderers and hypocrites to the man. The company you keep, sir, is poor.

This is why I wrote you in the first place. It can’t be, said I to myself, that I voted – that I actually voted – for someone silly enough to fall for an obvious ploy for money. Gibson has his book to hawk, and both O’Reilly and Gibson have a news channel to promote. You are familiar with November sweeps? What better way for a news channel to boost their ratings than begin shilling for a wedge issue that appeals to their base, and antagonizes their political opponents? The War on Christmas is nothing but a cynical ploy for ratings and cash, and you have brought the ill will and tension that it engenders to Nashville.

And I voted for you!

So I wrote you, explaining a few facts, hoping that you and I could speak reasonably about this. The very first thing you do is switch email addresses on me. Instead of the governmental email address that I use, you answer me from a family email address, as if I took this discussion into your home. How saddening it is to see you play the victim here – because that means, far from falling for the cynical words of evil men, you do mean to play this to your political advantage, and that may be your only motive.

Furthermore, I asked you to provide some evidence in that first email. You declined to provide any Scriptural motivation for your actions, seeing that the celebration of Christmas isn’t contained in Scripture anywhere. So your proposition before the Metro Council, having no Christian well to spring from, again returns to the banal ones of a political operative manipulating the people for some cheap publicity.

So, sir, what evidence - what fruit from the tree of your heart – do I have, as a person who helped put you into office, to fully judge you? Only your actions in this matter, and from this angle, Mr. Crafton, you have been found severely wanting.

Happy Holidays,

Joseph

PS: Whatever could you mean about my lacking courage to stand up for my beliefs?

Whatever could he mean? He's not asking me to get in his face physically about this, is he? He's not challenging me to a fight?

Nah. He'll explain himself, if he writes back.

And yes, as I considered it, I'm fairly certain I voted for the man. Nashville Metro elections don't have a Democrat-Republican designation. I can't find anywhere online that gives him a certain designation as a Republican, but I did find a few references to his doing the bidding of the local Republican party, and this War on Christmas stand clinches it.

"Don't ever question my motives again..." - the very idea! The nerve of this guy!

Eric Crafton Responds

I emailed my Metro representative right before Christmas about his Bill O'Reilly inspired stand against the forces of darkness that threaten to engulf Christmas. The letter I posted here.

Well, lo and behold, he responded. I emailed him at his governmental address, but the sly fox responded from a home address: craftonfamily@comcast.net . What a snarky little thing to do - now I'm attacking his family, in his mind.

Here's his response:

You missed the whole point. I didn't agree with government's saying that individuals working in government could not say Merry Christmas or Christmas, even in the proper context. As a I Christian, I have the right to say Merry Christmas, regardless what day we agree to celebrate it, just as much as people have the right to mention other holidays. Christmas is a nationally recognized holiday. If you want to let yourself be restricted in what you can say, that's fine. I am not. You are wrong on this issue.

Eric Crafton

I didn't even get a Merry Christmas from him. Of course, it was yesterday. But how he thinks I let myself be restricted in what I can say, when I wished him a Merry Christmas, I don't know. Perhaps we're not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Here's my reply:

When has anyone in the Nashville government said that individuals working in government could not say Christmas?

Your proposal stated that the use of Christmas was “affirmed and supported”, not that it had been banned in any way and that it was being reinstated. No one has ever limited your right to say whatever you feel. You’re just looking for some free coattail publicity.

Anyone that’s offended by the phrase “Happy Holidays” certainly doesn’t possess the meek spirit of Christ.

Happy New Year,

Joseph

Maybe he's just miffed that he didn't get the Gummy Bear Award first. He's making a fine case for this week's.

Gummy Bear of the Week: TN State Senator Jeff Miller!

I think I want to have my very own award. Atrios has the Wanker of the Day/Week, and other names I'd like to use might get a little descriptive - and I have to remember, my mama is the only one reading this thing! So I thought to myself - Cog - Monkey Wrench - Gumming up the Works - oh, yeah - Gum - Gummy - Gummy Bears!

The Gummy Bear - a chewy little gelatinous blob. What better symbol for some tireless devoted servant of public attention that manages to show off how idiotic we can get as monkeys let loose with language?

And who better for this inaugeral award than Jeff Miller, the anti-gay Tennessee State Senator? You might think, there's only one anti-gay Tennessee State Senator? You would be wrong. But Jeffie's an exception. He's got a gay brother, and he campaigns relentlessly against gay rights. He's very adamant about marriage being between one man and one woman. But it turns out he's not too picky about the one woman being the same woman.

Jeff's been having an affair. His wife filed for divorce. He decided to not contest the divorce, but showed up in town to sign the papers with the girl he was cheating on his wife with.

When the local paper exposed his hypocrisy and nerve, Jeff threatened to retaliate against its advertisers. When the local paper showed up at his public office to ask him about this threat, he sent them a letter promising to arrest them for trespassing if they ever showed up there again!!

What a gummy bear! So icky sweet while you chew.

Oh, yeah, Jeffrey. Nice beard.

My Letter To My Metro Council Representative

Mr. Crafton:

You’re my representative. I live in Bellevue in the Post Ridge apartment complex. So I hope that you will take what I say to heart.

I find myself extremely embarrassed by your recent actions concerning the holiday of Christmas. Can you be that uninformed as to the origins of Christmas?

I enjoin you, as a Bible-believing Baptist, to produce any Scriptural requirement for the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Where in the Bible is there any mention of such a ceremony celebrated by the first-century church? It isn’t there. They didn’t do it. It is nowhere on the lists of feasts of church fathers, for centuries.

It was only in the fourth century that Christian officials began celebrating the birth of Christ as a religious holiday. (Only then did they have any kind of political authority to do such a thing.) They chose to co-opt the birthday of Mithra, a celebration long observed in the Roman world. It occurred on December 25th. This date also allowed them to redirect the emotions of the Saturnalia festival into the birth festival of Christ. Because of this, many of the traditions of these other holidays attached themselves to Christmas.

Before then, the birth of Jesus was commonly held to be January 6th, the date also believed to be that of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. There were many heated debates about moving it, but finally a compromise was reached. You may have heard of it: the Twelve Days of Christmas. Count them. The 25th to the 5th are twelve days, culminating in Epiphany.

This isn’t something I expect you to be familiar with. Your Metro page identifies you as a Baptist, and like my native Church of Christ, you don’t follow the traditional church calendar. This is because your recent religious ancestors, as mine, viewed any such thing as an innovation of the Roman Catholic Church, as it most certainly was. Luckily, today, we both know that there’s nothing wrong with being a Catholic, or even celebrating the birth of Christ however we see fit. But should we lash out in ignorance at our enemies, either religiously or politically?

Ask yourself: what in the world does a decorated tree have to do with Christ’s birth? Did they even have pine trees in Palestine? This is a holdover from a pagan ceremony, Mr. Crafton, where a phallic idol was raised, decorated, and worshipped. The evergreen tree became an obvious symbol of fertility, and thus became a great phallic substitute. That’s what you have in your home right now, Mr. Crafton: a pagan phallic symbol promising the incredible bounteous gifts of crop fertility soon to be enjoyed once again now that the winter solstice is passed and the days are growing longer. It was knowledge like this that led the early Pilgrims to ban the celebration of Christmas. They felt the revelry (inherited from the Saturnalia) interfered with any true religious devotion, and since they could not determine the date of Jesus’ birth from the Bible, they banned and fined any public celebration.

Might I direct your attention to a final passage of Scripture?

“Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

If standing up in the middle of a town council meeting and proclaiming a defense of the completely-not-under-attack holiday of Christmas isn’t what Jesus is talking about here, then the Bible doesn’t mean anything. You may yet reap the reward of further political gain in your posturing, but the Father who sees in secret won’t feel the need to further your reward in the afterlife.

Merry Christmas,

Joseph Nobles
Bellevue AL

The Democratic Plan for A Stronger America (If They'll Just Listen)

Thomas P.M. Barnett

Ever since I saw a remarkable C-Span presentation of Thomas Barnett's brief called The Pentagon's New Map, I've been hooked. I bought his book, and I've read it cover to cover. This is a Democratic thinker with a fantastic idea to confront the threats to a connected and stable world today (read: the GWOT).

He sees the world divided into what he calls the Core and the Gap. Core nations are connected and trade partners. They cooperate for maximum economic benefit to all. The Gap is threatened by this cooperation and connection and returns the threat in the form of terrorism and disconnectedness. America's problem thus far has been to be only the firefighters of the world - but when we act as empowering agents of reconstruction as well, we expand economic and social opportunities for all (read: the Marshall Plan). By reshaping the US military into both firefighting function (the Leviathan force) and reconstruction function (the System Administration force), we could keep a world peace, shrink the Gap, and have everyone enjoy the prosperity.

My explanation is far too simplified. The book or the talk is where to get the best explanation. Everything I read confirms Barnett's conclusion and gets me all anxious to have his plan become a reality.

Take for example, the blog post I linked to above. It's about how the military-industrial complex is resisting the increasing need to focus away from China as a dire threat and toward the kind of weaponry we need to develop in the threats of today's world. Why do they resist? Because they make their money selling the US weapons to fight China. We fall more and more into the threats of asymetrical opponents while the Pentagon concentrates on fighting the Next Big One. It's how 9/11 happened, and still they cut brigade after brigade to pay for the next big war platform.

If you're going to be serious about a global war on terrorism, you're going to have larger numbers of ground troops, both active and reserve. There is no way to get around that. That will mean less money for acquisitions, not just asking more money from Congress for supplementals for actual operations. The reason why the cost of manpower has gone up so much is that the Defense Department has recently sought to correct a lot of low compensation and quality of life issues for the troops, fearing unacceptable losses in enlistment and reenlistment rates. This is proper and good and shouldn't then be used as an argument against keeping those troops.

The only reason why our force structure ages and gets worn out is that we insist on buying only the highest of high tech, or weapons systems and platforms whose high-end use can only be justified by very high-end warfare against high-end opponents, i.e., the Big War rationale, which isn't just alive and kicking...

The lack of a SysAdmin force is vitally illustrated in Iraq. The US took Iraq in the palm of its hand. But without a mobile coordinating force to organize a global act of reconstruction (not just a coalition of the willing deed - everyone), Iraq has reeled headlong from disaster to disaster. We still don't have electricity running all day long in the country! SysAdmin takes care of that - they rebuild the bridges, they paint the schools. They're subject to the ICC in Barnett's view. They actualize the American Dream.

I'm rambling. But I find I share Barnett's frustration with yet another round of defense spending being approved that slices the men on the ground and funds another year of pork barrel spending on a war with China that might never happen. Especially when there's a historic opportunity right here, waiting for the right leader to pick it up and march into history.

Here's hoping Wesley Clark gets a copy or two of Barnett's book.

The Noble Lie

James Wolcott

Big fan of Mr. Wolcott, and he needs to get himself on the blogroll over there. He will, someday. But for now, here's a link to his blogging of John Derbyshire's savaging of IDists among us. Here's Derbyshire, who begins by quoting another article:

"A year ago, I asked Kristol after a lecture whether he believed in God or not. He got a twinkle in his eye and responded, 'I don't believe in God, I have faith in God.' Well, faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:1, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But at the recent AEI lecture, journalist Ben Wattenberg asked him the same thing. Kristol responded that 'that is a stupid question,' and crisply restated his belief that religion is essential for maintaining social discipline. A much younger (and perhaps less circumspect) Kristol asserted in a 1949 essay that in order to prevent the social disarray that would occur if ordinary people lost their religious faith, 'it would indeed become the duty of the wise publicly to defend and support religion.'"

[Derb continues:] Here we have a guy who plainly doesn't believe in God, but who thinks that well-padded intellectual elitists like himself ought to evade the issue in public for fear of demoralizing the proles and perhaps jeopardizing some padding thereby. I can't think of anything nice to say about that; and in fact, the only things I CAN think of to say would not be suitable for a family website...

These are the people who are pushing 'intelligent design' in the conservative movement. Not only am I glad and proud to have spoken out against this preposterous hoax, I wish I had done so more forthrightly. These are people filled up to their meritocratic nose-holes with contempt for ordinary people. That's conservatism? Ptui, I spit.

That strikes me in a most peculiar way, because I have always been Pauline enough to hold back the things I believe, in order to not offend or shake someone's world view.

It happened to me, you see, and it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

But I'm also glad I made it through to this side. To consider my current withholding of opinion a noble lie is sobering. Derbyshire's right: it is elitist of me to be that way. I abhor elitism.

I think I've figured something out about myself. A basic confusion, if you will. I'll ruminate on it and perhaps blog on it as well. It's not a subject to approach or blog lightly or spontaneously.

So anyway, back to ID. I don't think that the people pushing ID are intellectual elites keeping the proles ignorant, not most of them, anyway. I think it's more about people intentionally keeping themselves blind. ID is a way to get creationism into the science class, where it doesn't belong. It's an innoculation against the evolution meme. That's why they don't come up with any research possibilities when offered money - it's not about science. It's about clouding the clear path that science is showing, because their overly rigid approach to the holy texts of monotheism is threatened by scientific scrutiny of the physical world.

Parents don't want to think their kids are going to hell. A belief in evolution is something that's going to set their kids down a path of eternal damnation, and who can bear to think of their child being eternally damned? So of course, they're going to look for some way to counter evolution. That's so much easier than confronting the harder questions - after all, who's got time for that? Most people work all day, take care of the kids, and try to get a little sleep. Confronting the deeper questions of reality is something that shakes all that up.

And trying to reconcile a literal belief in Genesis 1-3 and evolution is far too much cognitive dissonance for anybody. You can present a model of God as a fellow playing pool, who strikes the cue ball in such a way that it flies around the table, sinking every single ball on the first shot. What a remarkable shot! It's much more impressive than someone who sinks shot after shot, one by one, until the table is cleared - which is like God spliting up his creative work into days. But if the Bible says days, then by gummy, it means days. And any statement of science that contradicts that is undermining the authority of the Bible. And if the authority of the Bible is undermined, then somebody's kids are going to hell, pool player or no.

ID is a Trojan horse. It has no place in a science class. Innoculate your kids yourself if you have to. But it's the duty of teachers to teach their students he best they can, with the best and most up-to-date knowledge they can. They don't need people throwing stumbling block in front of everyone, just because some irate misguided parent can't be bothered to listen to reason.

Test of Blogger Email Posting

Just to see how it works. When I go on the trip, I want to keep posting, and
the easiest way may be to email the site. It may be a question of speed,
too, so by composing my blogs first, and then cutting and pasting to email,
I will probably escape the worst of the draconian Internet charges on the
ship.

How does this look? I don't know; Blogger appears to be down at the moment,
although I can access the Dashboard. Even status.blogger.com is down - wow!
That's supposed to be a different server all together!

Maybe I should think about one of the other blogging tools...one that I can
load the interface onto my computer...hmmm.

Well, I guess this is long enough. Oh, yes, a link. <a
href="http://www.truthdig.com">TruthDig.com</a> is a great new e-zine. I'll
get it into the blogroll soon. Bye for now!

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

On edit: wow! First off, my link is rewritten into code so it doesn't appear as a link. Second, the unremovable footer from Hotmail gets printed as well. This isn't going to work at all...not with Hotmail. Yahoo mail gets those ads in as well.

Well, that gives me something to ponder...

President Carter on Daily Show

Love the ad - I believe the copy goes something like this:

Pictures of Carter and Bush

"Which president is coming to the Daily Show tonight? He's from a Southern state..."

Green checkmarks by both pictures - DING!

"He's got an embarassing brother..."

A picture of Carter with Billy appears beside one of George with Jeb - green checkmarks, DING!

"...and he's won an Nobel Peace Prize!"

Carter gets a checkmark, Bush gets a red x - HONK!

Sad picture of Bush...

"Well, he's got three more years."

Me laugh long time. Daily Show's tonight, followed by Colbert.

Project Pterosaur

From the minds of those that brought you anti-triclavianism:

The goal of Project Pterosaur is to mount an expedition to locate and bring back to the United States living specimens of pterosaurs or their fertile eggs, which will be displayed in a Pterosaur Rookery that will be the center piece of the planned Fellowship Creation Science Museum and Research Institute (FCSMRI). Furthermore, the rookery facility will establish a breeding colony of pterosaurs in order to produce specimens that could then be put on display by other regional institutions or church groups.

The link is here. Objective: Christian Ministries is also working to reclaim Hallowe'en. They have t-shirts available (LOL! Love Our Lord!) as well. Have fun...

Welcome to the Blogroll.

In Political Sites: The Booman Tribune

In Political Blogs: AmericaBlog and the Wandering Hillbilly (both are must-reads)

In Memetic: DilbertBlog (Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, blogs about nutty things and important in his own little Dilbert/Dogbert way)

Enjoy!

Ford's Institutionalized Homophobia

Advocate.com

The antigay American Family Association claimed a cultural victory on Thursday and called off its threatened boycott of Ford Motor Co. On Friday, Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that the company will stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications but insisted it was strictly a business decision.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker came under fire from the AFA in May for its longtime efforts to increase LGBT workplace diversity and support gay rights causes. Ford has long been a regular advertiser within gay media, including The Advocate, and has donated significant sums to LGBT causes and nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.

Threatened with a boycott by the Mississippi-based AFA, Ford and some of its dealers agreed to negotiate, and the AFA announced in June that it would hold off on its planned action. On Thursday, AFA announced the boycott would be canceled altogether.

"They've heard our concerns; they are acting on our concerns. We are pleased with where we are," said Donald Wildmon, AFA’s chairman, in a statement. "Obviously there are still some small matters of difference, as people will always have, but generally speaking, we are pleased with the results—and therefore the boycott that had been suspended [is] now officially ended."

One of these days, separations between people for stupid reasons like sexual preference or race or religion will be one of those small matters of difference, Mr. Wildmon. But as long as your merry band of wingnuts feel the need to blame someone for their children being gay, we're going to have to deal with it.

How they pulled it off: Ford has dialogues with every interest group they feel they need to. They've been talking to AFA off and on for some time.

These talks weren't going anywhere. So AFA started a boycott and a website. They documented contributions and support of gay pride events. They even got documentation of managers having to attend diversity training.

But suddenly a group of dealers contacted them and became go-betweens in the discussions:

The AFA founder says in a press release that those dealers played a key role in the process. "The dealers were very helpful in bridging a gap and opening up a line of communication between AFA and Ford," he states. "The dealers are basically our kind of people who share many of our concerns."

Which is exactly where all of AFA's documentation had to come from - some disgruntled employees who were hacked off at having to put up with gay people.

Not all divisions and brands of Ford's line advertise in gay media. According to the article, Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury never used gay media. Of the three that did, only Volvo will continue their ads, because they remain "effective". Jaguar and Land Rover will cease ads. We have only Ford's word that it was the ineffectiveness of those ads that led to their becoming a sop to the fundies.

Another demand of Wildmon's group is that Ford stop contributions to gay pride events, etc. Ford has declined comment on whether that's going to happen.

So that's where it ends, right? The gay-hating employees are happy. The gay-hating AFA is happy enough. And now Ford's doing damage control on the gay market.

Not if John Aravosis has anything to do with it. He blogs AmericaBlog.com, and he's up in arms. He just posted the history of Henry Ford's enormity of anti-Semitism on the main page there, and he's taking names and telephone numbers. He's already organized successful campaigns against Dr. Laura and Microsoft. Somewhere there's going to be a gay employee of Ford Motor Company that lets the corporate directory slip to John, and then all hell's going to break loose.

Meanwhile, buy Volvo.

51 Years Ago Today: McCarthy Censured By Congress

Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954)

Now Bill O'Reilly making a list and checking it twice. Ann Coulter's idolizing him. And George Clooney made a picture about him. Clooney can't help all the modern day parallels. If only he could find one in the media of today...

PhotoFriday: Experimental

Marc and Angela Bungee Jump
Originally uploaded by JoeWorldTraveler.

Angie's birthday in Acapulco. She bungee jumped in tandem with Marc, a croupier from Boston. Later on in the evening, she bungeed alone.

It's Official: I'm Going On the World Cruise

Have I not blogged this yet? It's happening. Hate me now, I'm going to the fiery side of Hades, but yes, I'm going to be an actor for Crystal Cruises' 2006 World Cruise.

We will do a total of ten different shows (heading out with three ready to go, and coming up with the other seven while cruising). Also, acting workshops, lectures, and a rock-em, sock-em murder mystery event in April. We are going to be working a bit more on this contract than my last one (and Lord, it's about time). But the places we are going will stagger you.

I won't list them out. I've been doing that with friends, and by the time I get to Tahiti and New Zealand, they aren't my friends anymore. My special treat, of all the places we're going, is to a little Egyptian town called Safaga. We're overnighting there. Why? Because it's a three hour bus trip away from Karnak and Luxor. The Valley of the Kings. Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir-el-Bahri. The Hypostyle Hall of Raames II.

And then a stop at Alexandria, a bus ride to Cairo, and we're taking in the Egyptian museum and Giza. I am going to work very, very hard so that Egypt is mine, all mine.

No technicolor dreamcoat jokes, please.

Meet Hurricane #14: Epsilon

Reuters.com

It probably won't land, and probably won't be a hurricane for long, but this is the season that we learned what happens when they run out of the official names for a year. They start using Greek alphabet letters.

Welcome to global warming. Please check your hat and roof.

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal

Washington Post

Ka, meet Boom.

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded.

...But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress.

Watch Bush's world go into shambles all around him. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Rove To Cooper To V. Novak To Luskin To Rove To Fitzpatrick

firedoglake

This post regards the ongoing Plamegate-Fitzmas scandal. I'm going to assume that you know what's up, and say that recently Viveca Novak was called to testify about conversations she had with Luskin.

So this is the deal. Rove can't be charged with perjury if he recants his testimony upon recalling the actual story. So Rove tells Cooper (the "I've already said too much" interview). Cooper lets it slip in a conversation with Viveca that Rove's his source. Viveca tells her buddy Luskin, Rove's lawyer. Luskin heads to Rove, who searches his records and then recants his previous testimony to Fitzgerald.

Here's my question, and I hope Fitzgerald asks it: who initiated the conversation about Cooper's source - Viveca or Cooper? I doubt Cooper just brought it up. But if Viveca (an admitted friend of Luskin) was the one who grilled Cooper, maybe, just maybe, she did it because Luskin asked her to.

Was this an ingenious way of flanking a perjury charge? This way, Rove can commit perjury and lie about what he said. As Bush said in his news conference, the reporters have a way of protecting the sources, so who knows if we'll ever find out who the senior administration official was? If the reporters dig in and things cool down, life goes on. But Fitzgerald keeps pushing, and it becomes clear that he's getting the reporters to cooperate. Rove feels that draft around his backside. So he gets his lawyer to get his friend, Cooper's co-worker, to initiate "Operation Memory Jog."

Is there a way to prove this? Probably not. It's just speculation on my part. But it's definitely plausible.

Thursday Photo Challenge: Sweet

Catherine and My Ugly Smile
Originally uploaded by JoeWorldTraveler.

Acapulco. Just had a drink spilled on me. Good friend Catherine did it. Good friend Alexei taking the picture. Nice sunset. Great weather. Good times.

The Holiday Turkey Recipe Which Must Be Seen To Be Believed

The Poor Man

I think a quote of the ingredients alone demand you click over...

Basic Needs:
• 16-20 lb whole turkey
• 4-5 lb Tofurkey Holiday Roast
• 3-4 lb whole chicken
• corn bread dressing
• sausage stuffing

Yes, it all ends up in the same food mass. The writing's so spot-on, I can't tell whether they actually do this or not. It makes me laugh to think of several people (it takes at least two) making this monstrocity. Enjoy...

The Mosquito and the Bottle - On Sickle Cell Anemia and Malaria

The Loom

File this under Non-Intelligent Design. People with a single copy of the sickle cell anemia gene are less likely to contract malaria by a factor of ten. It's an evolutionary tradeoff. Over time, the population in a malaria-ridden area will grow because of the sickle cell trait, and that's what natural selection is all about.