Welcome to my blog! I have created my own blog for the express purpose of posting my views and articles on politics, LGBT politics, the nation, the world, local stuff, and my life.
I have been soooo busy since the last time I blogged anything. Life has a way of doing that you know.
posted by Judy @ 10:01 AM
0 comments
I have been so busy this summer. Whew! Been busy working and busy with drama from my ex-husband concerning our wonderful 17 yr. old daughter. Daughter, her father and wicked step-mom were having problems getting along. LONG story. Apparently the ex and his wife are having marital problems and taking their frustrations out on daughter. Not good. I became aware of the problems and told them that if they all couldn't get along then I would take my daughter for the rest of the summer and let everybody cool down a bit from all the angry rhetoric and all. It was getting real bad for daughter there. They were heaping a lot of verbal and emotional abuse upon daughter. Not good.
posted by Judy @ 10:04 PM
0 comments
What the hell is going on in Washington? Have you seen this morning's NY Times editorial........Security Loses; Pork Wins?
posted by Judy @ 8:50 AM
0 comments
It seems the Bush administration has quite a quandry on it's hands, wouldn't you say? The administration is unusually quiet right now, quite a change from the arrogance that they usually exude. I love it!! Can't you just hear those little spinmeister wheels spinning right now? They are trying DESPARATELY to figure a way out of this one. They'll come out with something I'm sure....they always do. Will it be believable? Nah, I doubt it. This could be the scandal that derails the gravy train for so many Republicans and Big Business like Halliburton, AND let's not forget the always faithful and pious Religious Right. This administration's arrogance and evil ways have finally caught up with them........it's about time. They fucked themselves BIG TIME here!
July 13, 2005
A Few Thoughts on Karl Rove
Far be it for us to denounce leaks. Newspapers have relied on countless government officials to divulge vital information that their bosses want to be kept secret. There is even value in the sanctioned leak, such as when the White House, say, lets out information that it wants known but does not want to announce.
But it is something else entirely when officials peddle disinformation for propaganda purposes or to harm a political adversary. And Karl Rove seems to have been playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, a career diplomat who ran afoul of President Bush's efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq. An e-mail note provided by Time magazine to the federal prosecutor investigating the case shows that Mr. Rove's aim in talking about Ms. Wilson to Matthew Cooper, a Time reporter, was to discredit Mr. Wilson, perhaps to punish him.
Mr. Wilson had published an Op-Ed article in The Times about being assigned to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger - a claim that was popular among the White House and Pentagon officials eager to make the case for war with Iraq. Mr. Wilson said the allegation was unsupported by evidence, and it was later withdrawn, to Mr. Bush's embarrassment.
Before that happened, Mr. Rove gave Mr. Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Mr. Rove said the origins of Mr. Wilson's mission were "flawed and suspect" because, according to Mr. Rove, Mr. Wilson had been sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency. To understand why Mr. Rove thought that was a black mark, remember that the White House considers dissenters enemies and that the C.I.A. had cast doubt on the administration's apocalyptic vision of Iraq's weapons programs.
Mr. Cooper's e-mail note does not say that Mr. Rove mentioned the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, which later appeared in a column by Robert Novak. White House supporters are emphasizing that fact in an effort to argue that Mr. Rove did not illegally unmask a covert officer. We don't need to judge that here. But there remains the issue of whether the White House used Mr. Wilson's wife for political reasons, and it's obvious that Mr. Rove did.
The White House has painted itself into a corner. More than a year ago, Mr. Bush vowed to fire the leaker. Then Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, repeatedly assured everyone that the leaker was not Mr. Rove, on whom the president is so dependent intellectually that he calls Mr. Rove "the architect."
Until this week, the administration had deflected attention onto journalists by producing documents that officials had been compelled to sign to supposedly waive any promise of confidentiality. Our colleague Judith Miller, unjustly jailed for protecting the identity of confidential sources, was right to view these so-called waivers as meaningless.
Mr. Rove could clear all this up quickly. All he has to do is call a press conference and tell everyone what conversations he had and with whom. While we like government officials who are willing to whisper vital information, we like even more government officials who tell the truth in public.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
posted by Judy @ 7:23 AM
1 comments
I just read an Op-Ed piece from the July 5, 2005 issue of the NY Times that I found very interesting.
July 5, 2005
The Heterosexual Revolution
By STEPHANIE COONTZ
Olympia, Wash.
THE last week has been tough for opponents of same-sex marriage. First Canadian and then Spanish legislators voted to legalize the practice, prompting American social conservatives to renew their call for a constitutional amendment banning such marriages here. James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family has warned that without that ban, marriage as we have known it for 5,000 years will be overturned.
My research on marriage and family life seldom leads me to agree with Dr. Dobson, much less to accuse him of understatement. But in this case, Dr. Dobson's warnings come 30 years too late. Traditional marriage, with its 5,000-year history, has already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however, didn't spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.
Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.
The first step down the road to gay and lesbian marriage took place 200 years ago, when Enlightenment thinkers raised the radical idea that parents and the state should not dictate who married whom, and when the American Revolution encouraged people to engage in "the pursuit of happiness," including marrying for love. Almost immediately, some thinkers, including Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Condorcet, began to argue that same-sex love should not be a crime.
Same-sex marriage, however, remained unimaginable because marriage had two traditional functions that were inapplicable to gays and lesbians. First, marriage allowed families to increase their household labor force by having children. Throughout much of history, upper-class men divorced their wives if their marriage did not produce children, while peasants often wouldn't marry until a premarital pregnancy confirmed the woman's fertility. But the advent of birth control in the 19th century permitted married couples to decide not to have children, while assisted reproduction in the 20th century allowed infertile couples to have them. This eroded the traditional argument that marriage must be between a man and a woman who were able to procreate.
In addition, traditional marriage imposed a strict division of labor by gender and mandated unequal power relations between men and women. "Husband and wife are one," said the law in both England and America, from early medieval days until the late 19th century, "and that one is the husband."
This law of "coverture" was supposed to reflect the command of God and the essential nature of humans. It stipulated that a wife could not enter into legal contracts or own property on her own. In 1863, a New York court warned that giving wives independent property rights would "sow the seeds of perpetual discord," potentially dooming marriage.
Even after coverture had lost its legal force, courts, legislators and the public still cleaved to the belief that marriage required husbands and wives to play totally different domestic roles. In 1958, the New York Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the traditional legal view that wives (unlike husbands) couldn't sue for loss of the personal services, including housekeeping and the sexual attentions, of their spouses. The judges reasoned that only wives were expected to provide such personal services anyway.
As late as the 1970's, many American states retained "head and master" laws, giving the husband final say over where the family lived and other household decisions. According to the legal definition of marriage, the man was required to support the family, while the woman was obligated to keep house, nurture children, and provide sex. Not until the 1980's did most states criminalize marital rape. Prevailing opinion held that when a bride said, "I do," she was legally committed to say, "I will" for the rest of her married life.
I am old enough to remember the howls of protest with which some defenders of traditional marriage greeted the gradual dismantling of these traditions. At the time, I thought that the far-right opponents of marital equality were wrong to predict that this would lead to the unraveling of marriage. As it turned out, they had a point.
Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around reciprocal duties and negotiated roles - where a wife can choose to be the main breadwinner and a husband can stay home with the children- was an immense boon to many couples. But these changes in the definition and practice of marriage opened the door for gay and lesbian couples to argue that they were now equally qualified to participate in it.
Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age. In the process it has become more flexible, but also more optional. Many people may not like the direction these changes have taken in recent years. But it is simply magical thinking to believe that by banning gay and lesbian marriage, we will turn back the clock.
Stephanie Coontz, the director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage."
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
posted by Judy @ 4:43 PM
0 comments
I'm baaaaaccckkk! I got distracted by the major blogs for a couple days. Truly great blogs........DailyKos, AmericaBlog, Atrios, MyDD, and some others. One of the blogs recommended checking out a blog called AngryBlackBitch, also on BlogSpot Network. ABB is really terrific! And....she is right on the money about everything.
June 30, 2005
Dangerous Incompetence
By BOB HERBERT
The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but can't figure out how to win.
The Bush crowd bristles at the use of the "Q-word" - quagmire - to describe American involvement in Iraq. But with our soldiers fighting and dying with no end in sight, who can deny that Mr. Bush has gotten us into "a situation from which extrication is very difficult," which is a standard definition of quagmire?
More than 1,730 American troops have already died in Iraq. Some were little more than children when they signed up for the armed forces, like Ramona Valdez, who grew up in the Bronx and was just 17 when she joined the Marines. She was one of six service members, including four women, who were killed when a suicide bomber struck their convoy in Falluja last week.
Corporal Valdez wasn't even old enough to legally drink in New York. She died four days shy of her 21st birthday.
On July 2, 2003, with evidence mounting that U.S. troop strength in Iraq was inadequate, Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House, "There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, Bring 'em on."
It was an immature display of street-corner machismo that appalled people familiar with the agonizing ordeals of combat. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: "I am shaking my head in disbelief. When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander - let alone the commander in chief - invite enemies to attack U.S. troops."
The American death toll in Iraq at that point was about 200, but it was clear that a vicious opposition was developing. Mr. Bush had no coherent strategy for defeating the insurgency then, and now - more than 1,500 additional deaths later - he still doesn't.
The incompetence at the highest levels of government in Washington has undermined the U.S. troops who have fought honorably and bravely in Iraq, which is why the troops are now stuck in a murderous quagmire. If a Democratic administration had conducted a war this incompetently, the Republicans in Congress would be dusting off their impeachment manuals.
The administration seems to have learned nothing in the past two years. Dick Cheney, who told us the troops would be "greeted as liberators," now assures us that the insurgency is in its last throes. And the president, who never listened to warnings that he was going to war with too few troops, still refuses to acknowledge that there are not enough U.S. forces deployed to pacify Iraq.
The Times's Richard A. Oppel Jr. wrote an article recently about a tragically common occurrence in Iraq: U.S. forces fight to free cities and towns from the grip of insurgents, and then leave. With insufficient forces left behind to secure the liberated areas, the insurgents return.
"We have a finite number of troops," said Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. "But if you pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country."
The latest fantasy out of Washington is that American-trained Iraqi forces will ultimately be able to do what the American forces have not: defeat the insurgency and pacify Iraq.
"We've learned that Iraqis are courageous and that they need additional skills," said Mr. Bush in his television address. "And that is why a major part of our mission is to train them so they can do the fighting, and then our troops can come home."
Don't hold your breath. This is another example of the administration's inability to distinguish between a strategy and a wish.
Whether one agreed with the launch of this war or not - and I did not - the troops doing the fighting deserve to be guided by leaders in Washington who are at least minimally competent at waging war. That has not been the case, which is why we can expect to remain stuck in this tragic quagmire for the foreseeable future.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
David Brooks is on vacation.
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
posted by Judy @ 6:55 AM
2 comments
I don't believe that for a minute. Rep. Hostetler is a buffoon, and a troublemaker with a capital "T". What an asshole! This anti-Christian rhetoric is getting rather old, don't you think? I'm going to write to this yahoo and tell him just how big a fool he is. We have to let these people know that they can't keep getting away with this shit.
GOP Congressman Calls Democrats Anti-Christian
Remarks in Floor Debate Stir Protest
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 21, 2005; A04
Business on the floor of the House was halted for 45 minutes yesterday after Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.) accused Democrats of "denigrating and demonizing Christians," prompting a furious protest from across the aisle.
The House was debating a Democratic amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill that would have required the Air Force Academy to develop a plan for preventing "coercive and abusive religious proselytizing."
Hostettler, speaking against the amendment, asserted that "the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives" and "continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats."
"Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians," he said.
Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, protested the statement, saying: "I move that the gentleman's words be taken down."
The incident followed dust-ups between the two parties over the conduct of the war on terrorism. Over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) to apologize and withdraw his comments made on the Senate floor comparing U.S. soldiers' handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the actions taken years ago by "Nazis and Soviets in their gulags."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) repeated an assertion yesterday that had drawn heavy Republican criticism, calling the war in Iraq "a grotesque mistake."
Yesterday, Hostettler had a choice: to agree to withdraw his words, or to stick by them and face a ruling from the chair that he had violated rules against disparaging another member on the floor. If the member's words are taken down, it is considered a serious offense and the lawmaker would not be able to speak for the rest of the day.
Eventually, Hostettler rose and read a sentence that had been written out for him in large block letters by a young Republican floor aide: "Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the last sentence I spoke."
Later, the Democratic amendment was defeated, 210 to 198, and on a voice vote the Air Force was required to say how it is promoting religious tolerance before the overall appropriations bill passed, 398 to 19.
Hostettler was in the news last year when he took a registered Glock 9mm semiautomatic handgun to Louisville International Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Washington. The congressman, who said he had forgotten he had placed the gun in the briefcase, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and received a suspended sentence.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
posted by Judy @ 5:51 AM
0 comments
