Who knew?

Who knew? 10 September 2009

Posted by marisacat in DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Moscow.
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I never would have assumed Putin had a poodle (he’s on the record ridiculing Barney, the Bush era WH dog). Apparently he does. Tosya. (This means nothing, just for fun.)

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Via The Page… sigh.

Obama to speak again on health care Thursday morning from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Carry on… we’ll get something out of this, then see what the hell it is.

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1. marisacat - 10 September 2009: 😎

They stand til they fall. Gavin Newsom was in the Speaker’s box last night…

“I don’t think she wants to see this thing blow up,” Newsom told ABC News. “In the ideal world, we wouldn’t be talking about a trigger. But in the pragmatic world we are living in, you see the House passing a bill with a strong public option, the Senate passing a bill without a public option. It goes to conference and you get a trigger.”

“You almost feel like it’s a playbook that’s been written,” he added. . . . .

Because it IS!

Now think, had they started with EVERYONE at the table.. Medicare for All, Single Payer… the “move” might have been to a halfway well constructed so called “Public Option”.

“If there is going to be a trigger, it better be a very strong and precise trigger that’s real and not just window dressing,” said Newsom.

The San Francisco mayor thinks it is necessary for Pelosi to get behind a public option with a trigger because not doing so could be a disaster for her party and the country. . . . . .

Think we are gonna get tattered and old, shredded and limp lace curtains.

have to love “pragmatism” in the Age of Terror we live in. It all makes so much sense!

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CSTAR - 10 September 2009: We do have Single Prayer…

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: touche!

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2. marisacat - 10 September 2009: oh FFS. We are behind URUGUAY, they ve legalised gay adoption.

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3. catnip - 10 September 2009: Wall Street sees few surprises in Obama speech

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no “game changers” from President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated speech on health reform.

Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: Yup, just heard a local report…..health care stocks are up… anticipating no meaningful change.

I also heard (or read, forget which) yesterday that Baucus went to the media and NOT to the WH with his news making releases yesterday.

Undercut messiah.

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4. marisacat - 10 September 2009: hahahah…the Mayor of San Jose says Cali is ungovernable.

Guess that is official!

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CSTAR - 10 September 2009: But not as many cheeses as France…

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: our loss.

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5. catnip - 10 September 2009: haha…

Assemblyman Duvall Denies Reports that he Had Affair

“I want to make it clear that my decision to resign is in no way an admission that I had an affair or affairs. My offense was engaging in inappropriate story-telling and I regret my language and choice of words. The resulting media coverage was proving to be an unneeded distraction to my colleagues and I resigned in the hope that my decision would allow them to return to the business of the state.”

He added, “Seriously, do I look like I could get laid??”

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: HA! Lynn Woolsey denies Ob is dropping “public option”… she heard him in her heart.

Sounds like Catholic nursery school lullabies. Mary understood Jesus “in her heart”.

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6. catnip - 10 September 2009: Campaign launched to make Stephen Colbert premier of Alberta and rename province “Colberta”

I’ll vote for that.

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CSTAR - 10 September 2009: Wouldn’t “Colberto” be more appropriate, genderwise?

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catnip - 10 September 2009: He’ll have to sacrifice for the public good. 🙂

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7. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: Interview with John Marcotte, Author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act

Rob Cockerham: John Marcotte. You’ve filed a petition with the Secretary of State, in an effort to get a voter’s initative on the California 2010 ballot.

John Marcotte: Yes. Filed the paperwork on September 1. It’s the “2010 California Marriage Protection Act.” I am trying to ban divorce in the state of California.

RC: Ok. So your act, if it became law, would make marriage undissolvable.

John: Exactly. The only exception would be if the marriage was “voidable” — if you married an 8-year-old, you don’t get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can’t marry the mentally incapacitated, etc.

RC: Ah, ok, so most normal marriages would be irreversable.

John: 99.99% of all marriages would be set in stone. It’s a return to traditional values.

RC: Wow, that is amazing. Could it really happen? What steps remain to make this initiative into a valid, enforced law?

John: I am trying to extend the good work done with Proposition 8 last year. It could really happen. The United States has not always had divorce as an institution the way we do now. As a ballot initiative it bypasses the legislature and the governor. It’s the will of the people made law.

RC: How long has divorce been around?

John: As a concept, pretty much forever, but in the past, divorces were at the very least difficult to get and frowned upon by society. Now they pass them out like Tic-Tacs.

RC: Who is providing the bulk of funding for this initiative?

John: It began as a self-funded initiative, but we’ve been collecting donations and already recouped a fair percentage of the filing fees. We hope to collect more donations and maybe start selling t-shirts, etc. to raise more funds.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: RC: This initiative does seem like it would “Protect Marriage”, but if two people decide to not be married anymore, shouldn’t they be in charge of their own lives?

John: Sometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It’s just a fact of life. It’s not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it’s about what we value as a society. We live in a divorce-promiscuous society. It’s on the television, it’s in movies, the newspapers. It’s even in our kids textbooks.
I’m Catholic. In my religion, divorce is a sin — completely impermissable.

RC: Sounds like you’d like to shield kids from learning too much about divorce.

John: I don’t want the government teaching my child is “cool” or “legally permisable.” That’s a conversation that should happen in the family. It’s the parents’ role to teach the kids about reality — not the state’s.

RC: well, this is a bold step. Do you think you face a strong opposition?

John: The opposition will always be there. The secular progressives, gays and MSNBC hosts — but we beat them once with Prop 8 and we’ll beat them again. If people are thinking about getting a divorce, just remember “Hell is eternal, just like your marriage was supposed to be.” Jesus still loves you if you get divorced, just not as much as before.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: John: Sometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It’s just a fact of life. It’s not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it’s about what we value as a society. We live in a divorce-promiscuous society. It’s on the television, it’s in movies, the newspapers. It’s even in our kids textbooks.

Taht’s for real?

Not you taking [cough] liberties?

What a fucking extra nutter nut.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: He writes movie, comic and cartoon reviews mostly … I’m pretty sure it’s a stunt/satire.

Here’s his website

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catnip - 10 September 2009: “Hell is eternal, just like your marriage was supposed to be.”

lol

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CSTAR - 10 September 2009: Gah!

How about transferring the Vatican to Berkeley maybe?

That would be a relief to Italians. And maybe Ratz might get the urge to jump off the Campanile.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: John: Exactly. The only exception would be if the marriage was “voidable” — if you married an 8-year-old, you don’t get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can’t marry the mentally incapacitated, etc.

“she goes back on the shelf”…

California, “land of the fruits and the nuts”. We have religious nuts in high numbers. And sadly, over marriage, they have all found each other.

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catnip - 10 September 2009: Hollywood would implode. With film at 11.

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8. marisacat - 10 September 2009: hmm I caught most of the R moves last night.. BUT I am just hearing that a rep from Illinois walked out on the speech.

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9. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: I’ve always thought the way Turing was treated was a great crime. In so many ways, he helped the allies win WW2, and he was hounded afterwards for his trouble, because he was gay.

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: Never get that from Ob. Nor the utterly beautiful speech Zap______ (I forget hsi name) of Spain gave when they instituted SS Marriage. In utter defiance of the Catholic Church.

Tho there is a whiff of redemption in that Turing was so pivotal in, gah, fighting the Holocaust. Which of course no one did (of the big powers I mean)

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: oh, Zapatero’s oh-so-wonderful speech:

“We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.

“In the poem ‘The Family,’ our [gay] poet Luis Cernuda was sorry because, ‘How does man live in denial in vain/by giving rules that prohibit and condemn?’ Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.

“It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.

“Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in a profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to express that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.

“With the approval of this Bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government. Our children will look at us incredulously if we tell them that many years ago, our mothers had less rights than our fathers, or if we tell them that people had to stay married against their will even though they were unable to share their lives. Today we can offer them a beautiful lesson: every right gained, each access to liberty has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our recognition and praise.

“Today we demonstrate with this Bill that societies can better themselves and can cross barriers and create tolerance by putting a stop to the unhappiness and humiliation of some of our citizens. Today, for many of our countrymen, comes the day predicted by Kavafis [the great Greek gay poet] one century ago: ‘Later ’twas said of the most perfect society/someone else, made like me/certainly will come out and act freely.'”

I doubt we’ll see it happen here in my lifetime, or ever. We take too much joy in each others’ suffering.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: that’s it.. I’ve used it a couple of times but not saved the link. So wonderful.

No we will never never never get that. And surely not from Mr Nervous Nellie.

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10. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: Show me the money, Mr. President, about Medicare

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: yeah on the mark.

Ob is undermining SS and Medicare (and thanks, GHW, Bill C and W… for all they did!). Medicaid is on such a long slow slide already…

He is such a fucking servant.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: I see “dblhelix” in that thread. Interesting comments from her, if it is the same person. Think she is right on about the payment system that is coming.

Talk about rationing.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: it’s plainly what all those rich bastards have in mind for the rest of us.

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11. marisacat - 10 September 2009: hmm some background on the Coakley entrance into the senate run in Mass. Moves she made at least as far back as Nov.

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: Andrew Card is making noises about running as the Republican.

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12. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: Treatment of intersexed African athlete appalling

South African athlete Caster Semenya (shown here holding a gold medal she’s just won) has been the subject of gender-related cheating allegations. She was forced to take a gender test (perhaps more accurately, a “sex test”), and the results have been released: Semenya is intersexed. Mainstream news coverage, within South Africa and worldwide, has reflected ignorance, and worse.

She says:

“God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I’m proud of myself,” she told [South Africa’s] You Magazine, which ran a photo spread. “I don’t want to talk about the tests. I’m not even thinking about them.”

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: well the whole thing has been handled badly from a ways back. Seems to be some indication that SA was asked to do this (or some of it) at the local level and blew it off. Then she has a coach, a real hang over frm the old East German days… (along the way I read a real horror story from that era, some one so pumped full of various drugs she ended up going for a sex change to try ot resolve it all)

One suggestion I read was test everyone. I bet some surprising things would turn up.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: the boing boing thread is interesting…

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Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: you never know with their threads. Sometimes they are appalling, then other days you find interesting discussions. I thought the post by Noctis was a good one:

#9 posted by Noctis, September 10, 2009 8:26 PM

Oh, my friends. So, speaking as an intersex person, testes are not a cancer risk in us any more than they are in other folks. That’s a scare tactic used to prod parents into surgically altering us.

It’s just depressing to me that intersex individuals are surgically altered without consent, told to keep their status a secret, required to live in a dyadic gender, and then accused of wrongdoing because the assignment suits poorly.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: yes that was… AND I too was surprised to find out that “hermaphrodite” was considered a pejorative…. I just htought it was the old word that works in a lot of languages.

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13. Madman in the Marketplace - 10 September 2009: Tom Tomorrow

Nite all!

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14. marisacat - 10 September 2009: hmm maybe another one down in the Beck vs Administration game.

DEA spokesman “reassigned”.

I dunno… maybe the Ob side needs to smarten up.

Sergant seemed to know he may have been treading shaky ground. In another portion of the call, he says, “This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally. We’re still trying to figure out the laws of putting government websites of Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are participating in history as it’s being made, so bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely. And we can really work together to move the needle to get stuff done.”

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15. catnip - 10 September 2009: Blowback’s a bitch, Beck.

(And yes, I stole the story link from dkos. Sue me.)

The linked blogs on the Beck site are hilarious.

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: I get the impression Fox is gearing up.

Glad I am jsut an observer and don’t worry much any more who “wins”… such as it is.

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16. catnip - 10 September 2009: News from the Department of It’s About Fucking Time: John Stossel Leaving ABC For Fox

Isn’t Giraldo on FAUX? Do they have room for 2 huge moustaches?

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marisacat - 10 September 2009: here’s his hat… etc.

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17. marisacat - 11 September 2009: Geesh.. Eugene Robinson is even calling the EYE ROLLING Wednesday night UN AMERICAN.

Throughout the speech, there was grumbling, mugging and eye-rolling on the Republican side that was not only undignified but frankly un-American. When I was a correspondent in London, I covered far more raucous sessions of the British House of Commons—that’s how Parliament treats the prime minister, who is the head of government. In the United States, that simply is not how Congress treats the president, who is the head of state. . . . .

What fucking authoritarian loons protecting the baby chick who can’t make it on his own. That’s how it looks.

Toward the end he grandly says he has not mentioned race… but then of course he did.

Baby bottle on aisle 5.

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18. marisacat - 11 September 2009: gnu thred…

LINK

…………………. 😯 ………………

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