Havin’ a Drink on Friday Night: Open Thread

Well, we know the Obot Trendier-Than-Thous drink this:

PBR

And we know that Chatblu, La-t-da and MadamaB drink this:

The Balvenie

And you?

OPEN THREAD

“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

Can someone please explain to me what the hell that question is supposed to imply? I have heard that posed so many times in so many different venues but I am still uncertain of the proper response. Intimidation, reverence, awestruck, what is the correct answer to this inanity? Just hearing those words sends a shaft up my spine as I seriously could care less about who you are, or who you think you are, when it comes filling in the blank. In a word: unimpressed.

Too much has been made of the “incident in Cambridge” that required the president to the U.S. to invite a couple of men over to the WH for a beer. From where I sit, race had very little to do with what happened. I will even go further to suggest that the arrest was stupid. It was a “throw down” attended by two alpha males who each in turn asked of the other “do you know who I am?” One represented the elite culture of academics, the other the full force of the law. Two creatures intent on showing the other how important they are in their own little worlds while the rest of us weigh in with different versions of stereotyping and grievances. Two weeks of nonstop coverage of an event that should have never escalated to the heights that it did while asking the Commander in Chief to weigh in as well. Nonsense.

I have seen enough of that same behavior exhibited on playgrounds and the workplace to remind me that there are people who regard themselves in the same light. It has nothing to do with race. It is a common phenomenon from those who see themselves as above the ordinary. The same group who wish to go to the head of the line and chafe at being put on hold. A group that in their own minds have risen from the average to the ranks of the above average often by their own admission. And if you are unable to recognize that fact they are only too happy to point it out for you! We have seen it with athletes, celebrities, politicians and yes, those whom we work with. Insufferable assholes who wish to be treated with deference simply because they can throw a ball, work a crowd, or sign your paycheck. They come in all sizes, shapes, age, gender, and ethnicity. They demand respect even if they have yet to actually earn it. They have outgrown “humble” and prefer “special” to be added to their ranking in life. And for those of us to blind to see it, they are only too willing to bring us to heel by asking that very question that has no immediate answer other than a bile inducing response.

Had the professor not been as quick to insist on homage, and the officer not as quick to issue an overwrought response, we would not be witnessing the president acting as a schoolyard referee with two alpha males demanding “respect” from the other. “Do you know who I am?” tells me immediately who you are and all I need to know from that point on.

It is sometimes just as wise to consider that the planet is made up of people who just cannot get over themselves. White, black, brown, yellow, male, female, white collar, blue collar, there are no boundaries. They live in their own world. We mere mortals only inhabit it.

Hallmark should consider producing a card that reads: “apologies for being a schmuck”. Guaranteed to make millions of dollars with this one.

I REALLY DO NOT LIKE THIS MAN

If you don’t know why, check this and this and this and this out!

And this man:

Is to busy trying to sell a public option to the public, when 70% of us are already sold on it. While Washington burns this idiot has no leadership skills to get the democratic caucus on the same page. For the failure that GWB was, he, atleast, could get his conservative agenda passed, with less of a majority. The time is ripe now for true reform, America needs and expects it. Obama is willing to screw it up for lobbyist $$. Sit your ass down behind the desk in the oval office, Obama, call Baucus in and tell him to start over, include single payer and a robust public option, or threaten his chairmanship. I won’t hold my breath. We are being played. We are getting the old okey doke!

Video Tidbits:

Franken on the SCOTUS

Waters – Public Option was a compromise

Former Cigna Exec on Michael Moore

Hillary

Racism

In my opinion, racism, many times is not a word or words, but a feeling, an outcome of an encounter that you believe race played a part in. It is not something easily proved. The same goes for sexism and homophobia. That is why it is so difficult for victims of the isms to verbalize and therefore prove what has happened to them. To not understand that many times the isms are not always words or a particular action, is not being open to the reality. Sometimes we have to understand that it just IS. The unprovability is the reason racism, sexism, homophobia exists in this country to this very day. Because if you could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, no one would partake in it. Yes, there is race baiting that goes on as well, but that does not negate the fact that racism exists. As a white women, I can take my own life experiences of the treatment I have received because I am a woman and extrapolate to any other discriminated group. I can’t prove sexism all the time. It is a feeling, but you know when it happens to you. Does that make me crazy? Am I reading into things? I don’t think so.

So when we look to the Gates issue, we must keep in mind that our experiences filter how we view the situation. But more importantly we must keep in mind how the experiences of the actual participants have played into the situation. To ask Professor Gates to prove that he was not discriminated against because of the color of his skin is a very unfair thing to do. We do not know what was in Crowley’s heart and mind, but we do know that Professor Gates felt he was a victim of racism. But he can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. There were no racial epithets slurred, but that is not and cannot be the only pre requisite to feel racism, can it?

So now comes along a Boston Police Officer, who thought he was anonymous, who sent an extremely racist letter about the Gates incident to the Boston Globe and his friends. Here is a local news report:

You can find the text of the entire email here. I have it posted, but you can enlarge at the link if you are having a hard time reading it.

I am curious to know, what if it was Police Officer Justin Barret who responded to that call at the Gates residence? What if things went down exactly the same way? How would the conversation look?

When I answer these questions I find the reasons why I can’t criticize Professor Gates. Racism exists, it’s not always in your face, but it is there just the same and sometimes the outcomes are life changing and/or devastating, for real.

Morning Widdershins: Lez Me be Straight with You

I stumbled upon this gem of a picture today-posted to the right. It is a caricature of then Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano shortly after she had voiced her opposition to DADT. This homophobic burlesque was prefaced by an equally homophobic and misogynistic headline: Governor Janet Napolitano (a.k.a., “Manet”) Criticizes Don’t Ask, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. And then the triple whammy comes right after the caricature: “Damnit, Manet, won’t you ever come out?” This is of course a reference to the line “Damnit, Janet” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Napolitano said the problem with the 14-year-old “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy is it focuses all the attention on someone’s fitness to serve on sexual orientation. But the governor, who also is commander of the Arizona National Guard, said that misses the point.

“To me, you ought to be focused on are the people there and are they doing their job,” she said. “And Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, to me, that doesn’t tell you that.” Instead, she said the focus should be on ensuring that solders can do their jobs.

Napolitano said the Arizona Guard is being called on to do many things. She said there are about 1,500 soldiers serving in Iraq, with close to 500 more stationed along the U.S-Mexican border. “And so we’re really calling on our Guard, men and women, to do a lot of different functions,” she said.

Napolitano’s comments come just a day after the Human Rights Campaign brought several former members of the military to Phoenix to tell how the policy forced them out. The organization, which lobbies on behalf of civil rights for gays, is hoping to build pressure for repeal through a city-by-city tour.

That’s right. You read that last portion correctly. Napolitano’s comments came days after the Human Rights Campaign brought several members of the military to….” Old the good old days when the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) didn’t have their heads so far up Obama’s ass that they actually organized campaigns. This is not the HRC I knew!

I bring all this up to remind HRC that they have abandoned one of their biggest allies as well as one of the biggest players in the fight against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It may be time that you stop focusing your energy on Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama and remember Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. Her position plays a prominent role in H.R. 1283. She is the counterweight between both the aforementioned dicks.

“Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2009 – Repeals current Department of Defense (DOD) policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces. Prohibits the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation against any member of the Armed Forces or any person seeking to become a member. Authorizes the re-accession into the Armed Forces of otherwise qualified individuals previously separated for homosexuality, bisexuality, or homosexual conduct. Requires such Secretaries to ensure that regulations governing the personal conduct of members of the Armed Forces are written and enforced without regard to sexual orientation.”

Step away from those cocktails at the White House, HRC, and write a letter to reintroduce yourselves to your long lost friend. And while you’re at it, let Janet know that if the press comes after her like they did when she spoke out against DADT in AZ that you will have her back and condemn any and all misogynistic assaults against her. Surely you must know that the MSM and Far Right will come after her for speaking out against DADT on the national scene as well. (If you have been paying attention to sexism that is.)

You know what? Scratch that. I think Anuradha Bhagwati, executive director of Service Women’s Action Network should have the privilege instead. Maybe it will be Anuradha that gets to join Napolitano at any or all hearings that the House Armed Services Committee will hold when the fight to repeal DADT really hits the fan. After all former Marine officer Bhagwati has a few details to share that I don’t hear HRC bring out too often.

Women make up just 15 percent of the military, she said, but about 50 percent of the servicemembers discharged under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” are women and black women are discharged at three times the rate of others.

UPDATE: I’m going to eat a little crow, but not too much, about HRC not working with women to help get DADT overturned. They did join with SWAN (Service Women’s Action Network) on July 27th to start a national campaign.

The American Virgin

Earlier in the week, I posted three short clips of a documentary created by Therese Shechter called, “I Was a Teenage Feminist”. As it turns out, Therese Shechter, a documentary filmmaker, is in the midst of creating another documentary, called “The American Virgin”. Therese visited The Widdershins to thank us for linking to her previous film, and to clue us into her latest work!

I have checked out the link to her new documentary website “Trixie Films” and her companion blog, “The American Virgin” . I must say that I absolutely love her blog. I find it to be funny, witty and insightful. I liked it so much that I have added her blog to the blogroll. Please check it out often!

Here is the trailer for her new film:

And here is a conversation about virginity for the new documentary:

Now, after watching the videos here is the hard part! Therese Shechter has posted a rhetorical virginity quiz on her movie website to get the conversation going!

---

1. Virginity plays its most vital role as:

a) the cornerstone of modern civilization
b) a marketing tool for pop stars
c) the only thing you can discuss in abstinence-only sex-ed class
d) ideology, myth and tradition
e) something to restore with plastic surgery
f) a staple of teen sex comedies
g) a time-tested way to keep the gals in line

---

2. Over the last 10 years, the US government has spent a billion dollars telling kids not to have sex.

How’s that working for you?

---

3. Slut vs Stud.

Discuss.

---

Please give your thoughts and comments!

Well Duh!

Was over at The Advocate this morning and they have a great article about a new report issued by the Palm Center regarding DADT and how LGBT leaders have basically handed the White House it’s talking points and given them excuses to turn it’s back on the LGBT community in this fight:

The Palm Center blasts LGBT groups, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, for not pressing President Obama to issue an executive order to stop enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The report claims the gay community has “taken its foot off the gas pedal” by focusing solely on the legislature to overturn the ban.

Here are some of the corrections the working group on DADT for the Palm Center have come up with the help get things back on the right track:

The DADT Working Group addressed the following statements:

President Barack Obama: we cannot ignore the will of Congress

“I also want to make sure that (a) we are not simply ignoring a congressional law. If Congress passes a law that is constitutionally valid, then it’s not appropriate for the executive branch simply to say, we will not enforce a law.”

Why this needs to be corrected: Congress has authorized the President, via statute, to suspend any law regarding military separations during national security emergencies. Hence, an executive order would not be a matter of the President choosing to “not enforce a law” but an appropriate exercise of executive authority granted directly by Congressional statute.

Representative Patrick Murphy (D-PA): an executive order would ignore standing law

“[The president] — to his credit — seems not to want to ignore standing law that was passed by the Congress. It shows why Congress needs to change it.”

Why this needs to be corrected: Congress has authorized the President, via statute, to suspend any law regarding military separations during national security emergencies. Hence, an executive order would be consistent with, not ignore, standing law.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: the military is bound by legislation in its enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell”

“The key is to remember it’s not a policy, it’s a law. And so before we can change what we do, the Congress has to change the law. And once the law is changed, then we will do what the law says and what the president tells us to do.”

Why this needs to be corrected: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as codified by Congress, grants significant authority to the Secretary of Defense to devise and implement the procedures under which investigations, separation proceedings, and other personnel actions will be carried out.6 In fact, Secretary Gates has said he is looking for ways to relax enforcement of the law without approval from Congress.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen: the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” would affect military families

“…what I feel most obligated about is to make sure I tell the president, you know, to give the president my best advice, should this law change, on the impact on our people and their families at these very challenging times. ”

Why this needs to be corrected: No research shows that allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly would impact heterosexual military families.

Wow! Sounds familiar, huh?!?

What the hell took them so long and will they be able to keep themselves off the kool-aid!?!?

The Missing 18 1/2 Minutes….

According to Mother Jones, an amateur historian may have found a way to determine what might have been discussed during the 18 1/2 minute gap on the Nixon Watergate tapes. Most people have focused on electronically retrieving the lost minutes on the tape, but this amateur historian, Mellinger has figured out another way to hopefully determine what was discussed. It looks like this technique is going to move forward and hopefully a little bit of history will be discovered using a technique that can lift hidden words off of paper.

ON JUNE 20, 1972, President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, met in Nixon’s hideaway office at the Old Executive Office Building. Three days earlier, White House-connected dirty tricksters had been nabbed breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate offices, and the 79-minute-long conversation—with Nixon’s secret taping system running and Haldeman taking his typically meticulous notes on a tablet of yellow lined paper with a ballpoint pen—at one point turned toward the break-in and how to craft a counterattack. What exactly the two men said to one another would become one of the great political mysteries of the 20th century: Sometime during the Watergate scandal, 18 ½ minutes were suspiciously erased from the tape recording of this meeting.

As Mellinger shared his ideas with other Watergate researchers—a contentious and finicky lot—he was repeatedly asked what proof he had. He started thinking about physical evidence that might back up his theories. That led him to Haldeman’s notes from the June 20 meeting. Last October, he visited the National Archives repository in College Park, Maryland, near Washington. A white-gloved employee brought out a pair of handwritten pages. “Immediately I could see what had happened,” Mellinger says. The first page tracked with the first four minutes of the meeting, when Nixon and Haldeman didn’t discuss Watergate. The top of the second page referred to a “PR program,” and the notes seemed to correspond to a conversation about how the White House could attack political opponents looking to exploit the Watergate break-in. This, it seemed to Mellinger, must be the tail end of a longer discussion of Watergate. (A memo from the files of Rose Mary Woods, the Nixon secretary who claimed she had accidentally erased about five minutes of the tape while transcribing it, estimated that the PR portion of the conversation lasted only one or two minutes.) The rest of the second page related to non-Watergate matters.

“I went, ‘Holy cow!’” Mellinger recalls. There were only two possibilities: Either Haldeman had sat through a long stretch of discussion with Nixon and had written nothing down until the last minute or so, or he had taken notes for the rest of the time, and they had somehow gone missing. (Stanley Kutler, a prominent Watergate historian, says that a conversation of this length would normally have caused Haldeman to produce several pages of notes.) Mellinger took a close look at the two pages. There were four sets of staple marks at one corner—as if the pages had been taken apart and put back together several times.

I find it amazing that up until now, no one else has discovered that some of the notes that Haldeman meticulously transcribed during that conversation were missing. And to top that off, the missing pages more than likely corresponded to the missing 18 1/2 taped minutes.

Tidbits:

Senator wins review of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

A Senate panel, after prodding by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, will examine the future of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing gays in the military.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed to a hearing on the issue after Gillibrand dropped her push for an 18-month moratorium on discharging service members under the policy.

At a meeting with Hearst editors at Hearst Tower, Gillibrand said the hearing – the first Senate review of the policy since it took effect in 1993 – would take place in September.

---

Substance abuse expert regrets raising drinking age

One of the people who was instrumental in pushing for laws to increase the legal drinking age to 21 now calls his actions “the single most regrettable decision” of his career.

Dr. Morris Chafetz, a psychiatrist who was on the presidential commission in the 1980s that recommended raising the drinking age to 21, made his remarks in an editorial that he is shopping for publication and which he released to the advocacy group Choose Responsibility. Chafetz wrote the editorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the law that was signed by President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984.

“Legal Age 21 has not worked,” Chafetz said in the piece. “To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.”

Chafetz said the law instead has resulted in “collateral, off-road damage” such as binge drinking that occurs in underage youth and crimes like date rape, assaults and property damage.

---

Former coach sues Dearborn schools over religion

Detroit — A hall of fame wrestling coach filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing a Detroit suburban school district and its principal of firing him because of his Christian beliefs.

Gerald Marszalek, 64, said his troubles began in 2005 when a Protestant minister lost his job as a volunteer assistant coach after he introduced Muslim students to Christianity. The discussions took place during a private off-campus wrestling camp for the Fordson High School’s team.

Marszalek said he was ordered by principal Imad Fadlallah to keep the Rev. Trey Hancock away from the Dearborn school. The lawsuit said that was impossible: The minister’s son was a star wrestler at the school.

---

Obama’s meeting with professor, police officer to be Thursday

It’s official: The so-called “beer summit” between President Obama, African-American professor Henry Louis Gates and white police Sgt. James Crowley will be held 6 p.m. Thursday at the White House.

“Weather permitting, they’ll probably sit out at the picnic table behind the Oval Office,” said Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, confirming the time.

The meeting is “a chance to step back a bit” from the flap surrounding Crowley’s disorderly conduct arrest of Gates at the professor’s home near Harvard University. Gates called the charges — since dropped — racially motivated.

There is no formal agenda for the president’s meeting, Gibbs said, but rather “a chance to talk and a chance to have a dialogue.”