A Week of Milestones

Man, I take a week 'off', and look at all that happens. Indictments are about to be handed out, Miers is pulled as the nominee to replace O'Connor, and the death toll of American troops in Iraq passes 2,000.

Speaking of which, I attended one of the many candlelight vigils held all over the country yesterday for the 2,000 Americans (not to mention the countless Iraqis) who have died in Bush's illegal war, and I have to say that it was a truly moving event. The thought of so many people, most of them already victims of this country's poverty epidemic and of what passes for an educational system here, losing their lives so that big business could get their hands on Iraq was devastating to all of us as we stood in the cold with our candles.

One woman standing near me was the mother of one of those lost soldiers, and her determination to see that this war is brought to an immediate end and that those who lied to us to force us into war are brought to justice was truly inspiring.

We're starting to see a glimmer at the end of that tunnel, I think. The Plame case is highlighting for everyone the lengths that this Administration went to get the all out war on Iraq that they wanted.

Now the Democrats need to wake up and realize that continuing to support this war will not do them any good. With so many now opposed to the war, I really wonder what it's going to take to wake them up to this reality. What are they waiting for, a time when the polls show 100% are against it?

It's yet another failure of the Democratic party to LEAD on anything. That's largely why we ended up in this mess in the first place, but they don't seem to have learned any lessons.

Which is why I was loudly cheering Cindy Sheehan this week when she called on us all to oppose Hillary Clinton in 2008 if she continues to support the war. That needs to be our stance with all candidates for high office, both next year in the Mid Term elections and in 2008. If they're not in support of bringing our troops home now, they don't get our votes. It's as simple as that.

John Kerry, meanwhile, is finally starting to get the idea, as he called for the withdrawl of 20,000 troops in December after Iraqi elections. Bit late, John, and way too short of the necessary total withdrawl. But at least you're starting down the right path, at long last.

It's sad that a Senator calling for a reduction is such a big new story, though. We should be hearing multiple Senators (and Members of the House, and Governors, and State officials), not just a precious few, joining in the chorus of the American people calling for immediate and total withdrawl. We need to make these people realize that they serve at our pleasure and we'll be holding them accountable on election day.

Well, Harriet Miers is no longer a Nominee for the Supreme Court. Clearly, the next step is for Bush to nominate a hardcore Conservative with a paper trail to prove it and please the people he really works for, the Religious Right. The upside is that the Democrats are pledged to filibuster any extreme nominees, so this could work in our favor. But anything that depends on Senate Democrats is a big if in my book.

Still, I firmly believe that Miers was just as much a hardcore conservative as John Roberts is and as whoever Bush nominates next will be. So we're not losing, as some are suggesting, a moderate nominee in favor of a Conservative one.

No matter how you look at this, it's a huge blow for the Bush White House. They're falling victim to the curse of the Second Term, and I couldn't be happier. By pulling this nomination, he's made himself look like the weak, lame duck President he's becoming, and he's also highlighting his indentured servitude to the Religious Right. After this, there can be no question in the minds of Americans who Bush's masters really are.

Call me optimistic, but I think all of this is going to work in our favor in a major way in 2006 and 2008. Even in the short term, it means we'll have O'Connor on the Court for the next few months at the very least, so the precarious balance there will be maintained.

And if you're still worried about what's going to happen with the Supreme Court (and who isn't?), you should read this Howard Zinn article in the new issue of The Progressive. Zinn reminds us that we shouldn't be looking to the Court (or Congress, or the White House) as the source of justice or for our basic rights.

Here's an excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing:

"The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

.................

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves."

Zinn is right, and we all need to be reminded that the real power for change comes from us and no one else. The people of the United States have forced every single change for the better that has occurred in this country's history. Nothing was handed to us by Courts or Congress, and nothing ever will be.

Zinn's faith in the people to stand up for what matters is one I share, especially after attending that vigil last night.

Certainly the death this week of Civil Rights pioneer Rosa Parks should be a striking reminder to us all of what one person can accomplish. But Rosa Parks wasn't alone in her determination to bring about change, and neither are we.

Harry & Harriet, Sittin' in a Tree.....

Things are a bit less hectic now, so hopefully I should be posting more regularly than I did this past week.

Where to start? With Miers, of course.

Seems that back in 1989, Harriet Miers supported a ban on all abortions except when the mother's life was in danger.

No one should really be surprised at this news. Bush was never going to nominate a moderate or anyone willing to put their personal beliefs aside in favor of the rule of law.

So now the far righters can breathe a sigh of relief and rush to confirm. And what of the Democrats? We've got a Minority Leader in the Senate who praised Miers the moment she was nominated and in fact bragged that he recommended her to Bush. How much of a fight are they going to put up now?

I say we should flood the Minority Leader's office with calls, letters and e-mails demanding his resignation as the leader of the Senate Democrats for his support of Miers. Reid himself is anti-choice and he seems to have made sure he recommended someone to Bush who held the same beliefs.

The danger with Miers is that all we really have to go on are her personal views. She hasn't ever been a Judge, so we have no way of knowing how she'll let those personal views affect her rulings. But given the views she has and the crowd she hangs around with, we can assume the worst.

We can assume that she'll help set back the clock on a woman's right to choose, on gay rights, and on civil rights in general. We can assume that she'll be a great friend to big business over individual citizens, and a supporter of the tyranny of the Administration she's served over all of our civil liberties.

And we can assume she'll do all this not based on a fair assessment of the law, but on political and ideological reasoning. That sort of Judicial activism has no place on any of our courts, let alone the highest one.

I'd have no problem with Miers or anyone who is personally anti-choice being appointed to the Supreme Court if they had a record that demonstrated that they put the law above personal ideology. No one should be blocked from any job based on personal views. But they should be blocked when they're going to make all decisions based on those views and nothing else.

These aren't abstract issues. These are people's very lives at stake. How many women will die from botched back alley abortions if these neo cons get their way?

This is my very life at stake. Forget for just a moment about the rights I should have but don't yet like the right to marry the person I love someday, or adopt a child anywhere in the country. My very right to have sex with another guy in my own bedroom could be taken away. It was only just officially guaranteed a couple of years ago, remember. My right not to be fired from a job (or to be hired at all) because of my sexuality could be taken away.

These are issues that matter to millions of real people in this country, and the Senate Democrats seem to be doing nothing about it. They need to oppose and filibuster Miers and any other nominee who either can't demonstrate they won't be an extremist on the court of has already demonstrated they will be.

I know how we got stuck with this gang of incompetent thugs in the White House. Some old fashioned electoral fraud (not once, but twice!) took care of that. But how did a putz like Harry Reid end up as the leader of the left in the Senate?

Oh, yeah! Duh. I forgot. The 'left' is more than just the minority in the Senate (and the House, for that matter). They're in the minority of the minority!

Most of the Democrats in Congress are Centrists like Hillary Clinton. Many aren't even really of the left at all. Look at Joe Lieberman. Look at that old homophobe, Robert Byrd!

With Democrats like them serving, it's no wonder they chose a guy like Harry Reid to be their leader.

They're are probably about 15 Democrats in the Senate who can be relied upon most of the time to be reasonably liberal, maybe 20 if we really stretch our definition. Even those 15-20 disappoint more often than not. In the House, there are probably 30-40.

This is a sorry state of affairs. Why do we let these men & women get elected time and again? We need to send a message next year and send some truly progressive people to Washington to start kicking some ass!

Look, the current Supreme Court is a very aged group. Chances are, Bush could nominated 1 or 2 more Justices. Hopefully, if that happens, it'll be AFTER the mid term elections. We'll have had another chance to change the make up of the Senate and put people in there who will really oppose far right nominees, to the point of stopping them from being confirmed.

Let's take a serious look at the 2006 Senate races and see what we can do. And that doesn't mean supporting Democrats and opposing Republicans. It means supporting progressive candidates and opposing Center/Right candidates, no matter their party.

Kick Joe Lieberman out of office in Connecticut. Kick Bill Nelson out of office in Florida and Ben Nelson out of office in Nebraska. And for God's sake, let's not give Robert Byrd another term! I don't oppose any candidate based on their age or the amount of time they've already served. If they're doing a good job, let them keep doing it. But Byrd, though he may have scored some points by speaking out against the Iraq war, is a homophobic relic. So let's kick him out.

We need to replace Republicans with liberals, but we also need to replace many Democrats with liberals. If we just keep sending back the same people, or their ideological clones, we're the ones who are enabling all this.

I wanted to talk about several things tonight, but I guess I climbed up on my soap box and now it's getting late.


Still Here

Hello again. I've done something incredibly foolish. I agreed to take on 'extra' hours at work several nights this week. The problem with that, of course, is that those hours aren't really 'extra' for me. I usually spend them doing my reading for classes and my blogging.

So why, then, did I agree to do this? I have this natural inability to say no when asked for a favor. It seriously gets me into all kinds of irritating situations. Example: last Spring Break, instead of enjoying the week off by doing something fun, I agreed to house & pet sit for some friends who were going out of state for the week.

Which lead to a truly miserable week of sitting around their house watching DVDs and staring out the windows at the rain, bored to tears.

But did I learn from that? Hell no. When my boss came up to me at work this weekend and asked if I had any 'extra' hours, my reply should have been "Other than those five or six I waste sleeping every night? No."

Instead, I found myself saying yes and giving up prime study hours.

All of which is by way of explanation for the lack of posts so far this week. I did write a lengthy post on Saturday, however. The reason you never read it was that it ceased to exist somehow or other before it was completely finished.

At any rate, tonight isn't one of the nights I'm working, so I'm sacrificing some study time to blog so no one thinks I've run off with some campus stud for a life of passionate sex that leaves no time for blogging.

I do have a few e-mails to answer. There were a few asking where I was, so that's been covered. I had a question from Book_Fanatic asking me if I'm reading anything good lately. Great question. I'm of course swamped right now in class reading, so that doesn't leave a lot of time for personal reading. And of course, I tend to be scattered between several books at once anyway. But, yeah, I'm reading a few interesting things. I tend to read more fiction for fun while classes are in session and more non-fiction during Summer break or times when I don't have a ton of non-fiction I'm already reading for classes.

I just picked up Senator Boxer's new novel, A Time to Run. I'm a fan of the Senator from California. I can't pretend that I'm discovering any great literary talent (she has a co-author, as many famous people tend to when they try their hand at writing), but the story is interesting and reveals a fascinating insider's look at politics. The basic outline of the plot is that a liberal female Senator from California is handed documents at the last minute that could derail the all but certain confirmation of a far right Latina law professor who has been nominated to the Supreme Court.

I'm also reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which is basically a reflection on the grieving process, written a year after the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. It's proving to be an interesting, if sad, read. Anyone who's ever suffered a personal loss will find a lot to relate to. Didion really impresses me with her amazing ability to take whatever is happening to her or in the world around her and relate to it through the written word.

I'm also about to start Barbara Ehrenreich's newest, Bait and Switch. Nickel & Dimed was incredible and I have high hopes for this one, which is actually more in line with my own situation, since I'm currently in college and in massive debt to pay for these classes I'm knocking myself out to pass!

What else? I swear there are at least ten more books I've started and am in the process of reading. Oh, one is In Maremma, by David Leavitt and his partner Mark Mitchell. Leavitt writes short stories and novels that I strongly recommend everyone read. They're among my favorite books overall, and certainly among my favorite when it comes to gay fiction. I love the short stories best, but the novels are very good, too.

Anyway, this one is non-fiction that the two wrote together about their experience buying a run down farm house in Italy (in the unfashionable part of Southern Tuscany) and making it into their home.

God, I'd love to do that! Not necessarily in Italy (thought not necessarily not in Italy!), but it would be really amazing to find some place in the world that you truly love and make a home there with the person you love.

Okay, you got me. I'm a romantic at heart, in spite of all the lusting after hot guys I constantly do.

Speaking of which, I also had an e-mail from Nigel wondering, since I'd joined Rebecca in expressing our mutual lust for Paul Walker, if there were any guys in politics I thought were hot. (By the way, Rebecca has several new picture posts up of other lustworthy celebs up, so check those out!)

That's a tough question, Nigel, given that most of the guys in politics aren't exactly matinee idols. It may just be that I'm trying too hard at the moment to think of someone, but the truth is I could only come up with one person in politics that I'd actually want to go to bed with and that's San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

I can't think of anyone in the House off the top of my head that I'd find sexy. Over in the Senate, the pickings are mighty slim. Senator Kerry is a very attractive man, but I can't say I'd ever consider him to be sexy. Senator Obama is just too skinny for me, somehow. Senator Feingold isn't too bad.

But, really, I just don't see myself adding any of them to any top ten lists any time soon. Everyone feel free to share your own political pin ups, if you've got 'em, and I'll try and think of others.

Enter Miers, Stage Right

The master of low expectations has struck again. Today Bush nominated his close friend and confidant, White House Counsel Harriet Miers, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

What do I mean about the master of low expectations? Bush drove all our expectations down last July when he nominated yet another white male to replace the first female Justice ever to serve on the court, thereby cutting the number of women serving in half.

This time around, I'm sure many people are so relieved that it's at least a woman nominated to replace O'Connor that they already see this nomination in a more positive light than they did the Roberts nomination. Even I was relieved in the first moment of reaction to see that another woman had been nominated, regardless of her views. Two is certainly a bare minimum of female Justices, a number the court should never again go below.

But, truly, we're seeing the Bush team in action here again. Make sure the people expect nothing and then, when you give them the tiniest fraction more than nothing, they think it's a victory. They've been doing this since before the 2000 election and it's worked wonders for them most of the time, I'm sorry to say.

It already sounds like certain Senate Democrats are lining up to confirm Miers. It was reported today that Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, 'likes' Miers and in fact had recommended her to Bush as a candidate to replace O'Connor.

Of course, Harry Reid is hardly who I'd look to for advice on a good Supreme Court nominee. He's an anti-choice centrist.

John Roberts had a record that he deflected with personal charm while refusing to answer most questions. Harriet Miers has never served in a Judicial capacity and probably has a lot less of a paper trail to indicate her positions on crucial issues.

Stories have already come out saying the Conservatives are angry at Bush for picking Miers, saying her views are unknown and she could be pro-abortion or pro-any other of the right's bogeyman issues. Of course, Conservatives were going to be angry if Bush picked anyone even a fraction to the left of Justices Scalia and Thomas. But it's doubtful he did.

No one seems to know for sure what Miers' take on important issues like abortion, civil rights and gay rights are. But c'mon. This is a close personal friend and trusted adviser of George W. Bush. Is she likely to prove a moderate on the court?

So far we already know that when she was President of the Texas State Bar, she tried to get the American Bar Association to change its position endorsing the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision.

Does that mean she'll be anti-choice once she's on the Court? No one can say for sure. But it's not a good sign.

The Democrats need to take their time with this nomination, make sure they sound Miers out and go over all available documents. Just because she's a woman doesn't make her another O'Connor, and this is the crucial 'swing vote' we've all been talking about for the last three months.

With what Reid said today, though, I fear that Miers is all but confirmed in the minds of many Centrist Democrats, barring any surprises. I'm so sick of seeing them roll over so Bush can rub their tummies! But we shouldn't be surprised. They just stand for more toned down versions of what he stands for, after all.

We need some real liberals to come to Congress and start kicking ass, people!

Anyway, it was a busy day for me here. I've wanted to blog about Miers since this morning, and this was my first chance.

On a completely different note, I have to say that I really enjoyed Rebecca's picture post celebrating Paul Walker's nips! Truly, a woman after my own heart! Paul Walker was once just the sort of blond pretty boy I lusted after back in the She's All That/Varsity Blues days, but he's matured into a sort of rugged sex appeal, less pretty and blond, that still earns him a spot in the top ten on my Celebrities I'd Fuck list! Mr. Walker would look even better with a bit of chest hair, I might add. He's already got a sexy treasure trail that I'd LOVE to follow.

See, even when things are looking down, you can always take a moment to enjoy some healthy, old fashioned lust for some celebrity beefcake!