hatepalin.com

In his Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, Frank Rich states that the ridiculous “Gathering Storm” anti-gay marriage ad, which was made and aired in response to Vermont’s legislature over-riding the Governor’s veto and passing a gay marriage law, marks a turning point. He also argues that because the Republican Iowa caucuses are controlled by the Evangelical Right, even moderate Republican candidates are forced to veer far to the right on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”

Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.

…

In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That’s the hurdle facing the party’s contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. Palin even broke with John McCain on the issue during their campaign, supporting the federal marriage amendment that he rejects. This month, even as the father of Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people “degenerates.” Such homophobia didn’t even play in Alaska — the State Legislature voted the nominee down — and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.

…

As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.

Please read the full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19Rich.html?em&exprod=myyaho

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Last week Katie Couric won the coveted Walter Cronkite award for excellence in journalism for her election coverage last year.

The increasingly wacky-looking right (did you get a load of the Fox-orchestrated “grass roots” tax protests on April 15th, complete with wig-wearing Revolutionary War re-enacters and posters of President Obama as Hitler, and lots of comments about tea-bagging?  Weird) was not content to let this award pass without taking advantage of the opportunity to try to draw attention to themselves.  “Documentarian” and fringe character John Ziegler was on hand, uninvited, blocking access and interfering with the entrance of attendees.  When asked to move he refused and had to be arrested and escorted away.  That’s probably exactly what he wanted so that he can now claim victim-hood.

It’s a sign of how unpracticed at being out of power the Right Wing has become that they have completely fallen apart in the few short months since the election.  Not being able to always get their way, they have been behaving like spoiled infants, whining, crying and throwing temper tantrums.  I’m not sure if it’s actually to their benefit or not, but Fox News has been more than willing to broadcast these temper tantrums regardless of how ridiculous they make the infants and Fox News.

That’s not the way out of the wilderness, guys and girls.  Come up with some principled solutions.  Stand FOR something, not just against something.  And pick better smarter leaders than Rush Limbaugh or Michael Steele, or your days of wandering in the wilderness will be long and lonely.

Arthur P. Culvahouse was one of the vetters of those on the short list of consideration to be the Vice Presidential running mate of John McCain.

On Friday he talked about the advice he had given McCain, and the mistake he made in how he couched that advice, which helped result in McCain’s damaging choice of Sarah Palin.

He said that he told McCain in no uncertain terms that:

“I told John, she wouldn’t have been ready on January 20th .”

But his other comments may have played right into McCain’s love of risk and impetuous decision making, saying:

“The mistake I made — and we’ve laughed about it since — after giving him that advice, he said, ‘Well, what’s your bottom line?’ I said, ‘John. High risk. High reward.’ And his response, ‘You shouldn’t have told me that, I’ve been a risk-taker all of my life.’”

Does a football coach leave the game with the score tied in the final two minutes of the game so that he can beat the rush out of the parking lot?

Does a General leave his position of command in the final moments of a battle so he can catch a little R&R?

Heck, No!

But Alaska Governor Sarah Palin saw fit to leave Alaska for the final two days of the legislative session so that she could be the keynote speaker at a county anti-abortion fund raiser in Indiana.  She said their persistence in inviting her, and promising her chocolate and all good things that Vanderburgh County Right To Life has to offer made her accept this request from the big pile of ones she’s received.  In fact, she said “You had me at ‘chocolate’.”

She seems to be oblivious or indifferent to the growing frustration with Alaskans that she is more concerned about her national profile and aspirations than she is about the great state of Alaska.

While she was gone, her ultra-conservative and homophobic (who wrote that gays and lesbians were “degenerates” to the state bar) pick for Attorney General went down in flames as 9 Republicans crossed the aisle to join Democrats to defeat the nomination?

Leadership?  I think not.

Ambition to stay in the national eye?  You betcha.

In a significant rebuff, Palin’s nominee for Alaska’s Attorney General, the controversial Wayne A. Ross (known as WAR, according to the vanity license plate on his Hummer, with his wife answering to “Mrs. War”), was defeated by the legislature.  Nine Republicans, including the House Speaker and Senate President, crossed party lines and voted with the Democrats to defeat the nomination 35 to 23.

Ross is an ultra-conservative board member of the National Rifle Association, whose earlier writings calling gays and lesbians “degenerates” in a letter to the state bar association, gained particular scrutiny and coverage in the progressive press.  When asked about this during the AG confirmation hearings, he failed to provide a direct answer, but instead attempted to hide behind the weak defense that his personal views should have no bearing on his fitness for the position.  Perhaps finally the independent spirit of populist Alaskan Republicans is overwhelming the small-mindedness of the evangelical right wing of the party.

Palin was away at an anti-abortion fund raiser in Indiana during this stunning and surprising defeat.

With sky-high oil prices a thing of the past, Palin is now fighting her political fights in Alaska without the benefit of huge tax windfalls, and against local politicians resentful of what they see as a Governor more concerned about her national standing and future positioning than about dealing with the issues facing Alaska.

A few more embarrassments like the one Palin suffered today, and suddenly McCain’s short list of promising Republican Governors, which excluded Palin, seems all too on-the-money.

John McCain is getting a lot of flak from the hard right evangelical backers of Sarah Palin for leaving the Alaska Governor off of the list of strong gubernatorial Republican candidates for the Presidency in 2012.

Who made the list?

• Bobby Jindahl (Governor, LA)
• Tim Pawlenty (Governor, MN)
• Jim Huntsman (Governor, UT)
• Mitt Romney (Former Governor, MA)
• Charlie Crist (Governor, FL)

Recognizing his omission, McCain said “I’ve left out somebody’s name, and I’m going to hear about it.”

This follows his comments last December where he refused to outright back Palin’s presumed future bid by saying:

“I can’t say something like that,”  adding “We’ve got some great other young governors. I think you’re going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party.”

Bristol Palin is a teenager who now finds herself in a difficult unplanned situation. She’s a single teenage mom. She doesn’t deserve to be getting as much press attention as she is. She needs to have safe space with loving supportive family and friends as she navigates the difficult path to growing up while raising a baby. We wish her the best.

Here’s why it’s relevant – and fair – to talk about her situation at all.  Because her mother Sarah Palin brought it up.  Sarah of the abstinence only sex education.   Sarah of the “real America” has “real American” rural white heartland God-lovin’ gun-shootin’ Bush-votin’ values.  Sarah who shouts for all to hear “look at my superior family values.”  Sarah who thinks that gays are “destroying the very foundations of society.”

“Values politics” was created by the Republican party as a way to try to keep fundamentalist, evangelical and pentecostal Christians happy and in the party tent.  It was and is a codeword for those to whom it was meant to appeal without being so transparently divisive and off-putting to the majority of those whom it was meant to exclude or condemn.

The “values” arguments usually go something like this:

America was founded as a God-fearing Christian nation.  Our rich wonderful beautiful history and culture was that of thrift, hard-work, monogamy, church-attendance, strong morality which resulted in people of superior character.  But then all these weird people either (a) got their freedom (blacks), (b) moved here – sometimes “illegally”, (c) came out of the clost – and these new influences have simply ruined the Garden of Eden.  These people with their other languages, their different beliefs, their sexual freedom, their irresponsibility.  That’s the source of all of our problems.  If only we could keep our borders closed, force the gays back into the closet, legislate morality – we could return to that once idyllic promised land.  And God in heaven would smile, prosperity would return, and all things wrong in the world would be good again.

The unstated appeal to those who cling to it is that this patently false mythological past is also primarily white.   Certainly the appeal of such a vision, even though based on a multitude of falsehoods about the past and the present, can be understood for those whose self-righteousness is exceeded only by their own self-delusion.  But it’s simply false.

And that’s why Bristol Palin is relevant.  The “Values Politics” of Sarah Palin are stripped naked in the face of the realities of a young girl living life under the roof of someone espousing such rhetoric.

Leave the girl alone, but reject with prejudice (irony fully intended) the false and harmful Values Politics of her mother, Sarah Palin.

Why do so many who claim to be Christian behave in ways that contradict traditional Christian teachings?

In this latest example, Governor Sarah Palin together with evangelist Franklin Graham (of Samaritan's Purse) showed up in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta complete with full press retinue to make sure that their very public act of giving to people in distress would be recorded and broadcast. True giving or PR stunt?

Here are some words from Matthew against which to judge her actions:

“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.” – Matthew

Others chose the more noble route, and did their giving more discreetly.

This latest partnership was prompted by a letter from Nicholas Tucker of Emmonak, who alerted Alaska that some folks in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta faced the prospect of choosing between food and fuel this winter. Many Alaskans rose to the occasion. Donations came anonymously, without fanfare, from individuals and tribal, political, nonprofit and religious organizations to regional authorities like the Bethel-based Association of Village Council Presidents, who saw that aid got to the right people. At the request of Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, the BIA has discreetly provided a huge amount of assistance.

But Samaritan’s Purse chose a different path.   (Alan Boraas, Anchorage Daily News)

I’d encourage you to read this full coment here.

By all means do good deeds.  Give to those in need.  But do it for its own sake, not to feed your own ego, or improve your public image, or to make some cockamamie political point about state-faith partnerships in ill-conceived “faith-based initiatives.”

Sarah Palin announced recently that she would file suit against the federal government to try to overturn the recent addition of the Cook Inlet Beluga Whale to the endangered species list.

In the 1980′s around 1,300 beluga whales lived in Cook Inlet, while today the population has plummeted to around 375. The species is genetically distinct from four other beluga species found in Alaska.

Her opposition to the inclusion on the endangered species list is driven by opposition by the oil industry who sees the inclusion as limiting their flexibility in creating new oil extraction facilities.

Sarah Palin added her good wishes to President Barack Obama, whose judgment and associations she savaged during the campaign as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

“I’m proud of where our country is today, and I look forward to the optimism and to the promise that … his administration will help to usher in,” the Alaska governor said on Fox News Channel’s “Glenn Beck” program before the inauguration.

“I’m very optimistic as to what he is going to provide our nation, but at the same time, I don’t want to put all the pressure on one individual,” she adds, according to excerpts released by Fox.