Staying above the fray

The White House and their advocates are sad.  They’re puzzled.  They just don’t know what happened to the Scott that they all knew and loved.  That’s the official story anyway.  But according to MSNBC:

The White House of course is trying to stay as much above the fray as possible, but I have heard on background that they are upset.  And I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word that they used and it’s not the word that I can say on TV.  Another person said they are flat-out angry about what has transpired here.  I heard the word "traitor," I heard the word "Benedict," and I think another person said to me in fact, not very far from here, said it was like a shot to the gut when you’re not looking.

Which, on the bright side, is better than getting shot in the face when you are looking.  

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are ybruti, watercarrier4diogenes, Got a Grip, smokeymonkey, YatPundit and joyful with Avila as editor.

Please take a moment to read and help if you can as jlms qkw expresses her displeasure with Commander Codpiece and offers us all a way to support our troops that won't cost us a dime in W's horsehockey & Something Positive To Do. (Got a Grip)

• Beware The Ides of Human Rights: Of Mice and Militants is RL Donovan's fine contribution on the need to protect basic Human Rights while engaged in The War on Terrorism. (joyful)
• Can wheat help reduce carbon in the atmosphere? A Siegel makes that argument in Agricultural Geogineering: Planting wheat for carbon sequestration? (YatPundit)
• iampunha remembers the life of someone that most of us would have never recognized on the street but whose voice touched us all in May 30, 1908: the date that launched a thousand voices. (Got a Grip)
• While fighting his own battle, Redneck Liberal has thought about how battles shape us, in War and Woodchucks. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• dopper0189 examines the disconnect between voter preferences of policy and what they wrongly believe about the political parties they favor in GOP policies more unpopular than their "brand" to republicans! (Got a Grip)
• JohnnyCougar introduces us to a Democratic candidate who is fighting the good fight to take a seat from an unpleasant Republican in Newest Fighting Dem: Doug Tudor (FL-12). (Got a Grip)
• Mikebert offers a wonky economic look at The Conservative Legacy that helps put the lie to the notion that Republicans are better at managing the economy. (YatPundit)
• In an excellent essay entitled Present Tense ommzms writes about recent revelations and the historical spin being applied to them. (smokeymonkey)
• It's hard to disagree with Payne that What We Need More of is Science: kids, education, and women in the working/blogging-place (part 1). (YatPundit)
• DrSteveB offers us hope for the future of tomorrow's healthcare and the young doctors who'll be delivering that care in Medical Students Organized for Public Good & Single Payer. (Got a Grip)
• Tomtech describes a long, relentless and ultimately successful battle in Victory! Tomtech wins Healthcare for the poor. (ybruti)
• With colorful maps showing early polls and final election results, Stroszek declares COVER UP: Kerry won the 2004 general election! (ybruti)
• unlawflcombatnt provides a scholarly take on the latest GDP report in GDP: Another fake Increase. (smokeymonkey)
• Dave Donelson, in Africom Tragicomedy In The Making, shines a light on yet another Cheney/Rumsfeld circus lumbering toward its first performance. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Richieville demonstrates that the natural drive of all creatures to 'obtain funding' can solve our most puzzling problems, in the snarkalicious NASA Finds Osama bin Laden On Mars. (watercarrier4diogenes)

Yesterday's High Impact Diaries are brought to you by jotter.

Enjoy these diaries and please promote your own favorites in the open thread.

Yes, Let's All Talk More About Iraq

As the week draws towards a close, I would just like to take a quick moment to congratulate John McCain and the Republican Party for doing everything they could this week to focus the public's attention on the Iraq War. I think they are doing wonderfully, and will no doubt win in November if they simply keep doing what they are doing. We are very frightened of this new strategy, which is very clever and working out perfectly.

Let's run down the stories just from the last few days, shall we?

McCain used a picture of himself with a uniformed Gen. David Petraeus in a fundraising drive -- a rather gauche move, and a strict no-no -- and had to apologize for it.

McCain launched a very odd and desperate-sounding initiative to try to somehow goad Obama into visiting Iraq with him as a sort of campaign field trip. But McCain's previous field trips to Iraq have badly damaged what little credibility he has on the subject, so it's not really a good topic for him to begin with. And when McCain, the RNC, and supposedly unaffiliated 527 groups all jumped aboard with the same message and suspiciously near-identical phrasing, it only served to draw attention to the McCain campaign's history of lobbyist and 527 ties -- and possibly illegal coordination between the campaign and outside groups.

Despite his constant assertions of his military expertise, when speaking this week McCain once again proved ignorant of the most basic facts of the war he so avidly supports. He said that we have "drawn down to pre-surge levels": we most pointedly have not, causing the McCain campaign to angrily talk about "nitpicking" the difference between "verb tenses" -- like, say, past, present, future, and imaginary pluperfect. Because McCain wasn't badly misinformed, they assert, he was just talking about the future as if it were the present, or something.

He also claimed places like Mosul are "quiet" -- wrong. The latest suicide bombing was a mere day beforehand.

So when McCain said, in the same breath as those two fabrications that the Iraq War is "succeeding", it only called more attention to the bizarre and misinformed assertions he was using to justify that claim.

To top it all off, he even got dragged into the McClellan story of pro-war administration propaganda efforts. That's an extra-special jackpot edition of Iraq Propaganda Theater, right there.

So please, Republican Party. Please keep talking about Iraq. With every waking breath, if you can manage it. Please fill the pages of our site with your assertions about the Iraq War, and your demands that the nation continue the Iraq War, and most of all your candidate's increasingly imaginary assertions about the basic facts of the Iraq War.

I'm sure it will work out to your favor, and gain you lots and lots of votes come November. Carry on.

Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY!

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Where were you on the night of May 30, 1993? I was in a Saginaw, Michigan bar called Bambi's, staring across the room at a tall, dark and handsome guy drinkin' a beer. Through luck of the draw Michael and I ended up as partners that night in a four-person card game (in Michigan it's more like a religion) called Euchre. A blink of an eye later and here we are celebrating 15 years of Wilde's "love that dare not speak its name" together.

We are, as I like to say, the religious right's worst nightmare: a same-sex couple in a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship. The state of Maine even recognizes us as domestic partners. Oh, how the fundies hate that. An ounce of legitimacy for us is worth a pound of discredit for them.

It's been weird watching the convulsions of the right as they scream and froth at the mouth---these days mostly via press releases from fringe groups like the Family [Most Poorly Conducted] Research [Ever] Council---over little old us. They say our relationships, if legally recognized, will destroy traditional marriage and disrupt the procreative process among heterosexual couples.

Yes, the 290 million straight people in this country will stop meeting, falling in love, gettin' hitched, humpin' like rabbits and birthin' babies (not necessarily in that order) because of gay marriage. I bet the obstetricians and wedding caterers in Massachusetts would be able to poke a few holes in that theory if they weren't so damn busy.

While the doomsayers spin in circles, the forces of equality inch forward like the proverbial tortoise. As more gay people come out, more straight people get to know them. The more gay people they get to know, the more they abandon their old prejudices. Funny how that works, huh.

As Kos wrote yesterday: "There are now two states that allow gay marriage -- Massachusetts and California. New York now legally recognizes those marriages. Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Connecticut all allow civil unions, giving same-sex couples most of the rights accorded to heterosexual marriages." Soon "Don't Ask, Don’t Tell" will be repealed, finally allowing gays to serve openly in the military. And federal law will soon prohibit job discrimination against us (this time-lapse animation shows how far we've come at the state level). That's an amazing amount of progress in a relatively short period of time.

Next month marks the 39th anniversary of the birth of the modern gay rights movement---the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. We owe a huge debt to those who stood up and came out before us, when it was much more dangerous and even deadly to do so. Their courage brought us to the current tipping point in our favor (though there's still a long way to go). Meanwhile, this was what "The new apostle of sanity in sex," David Reuben, M.D., wrote in his mega-best-seller, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, which swept the nation that same year, 1969, and was treated as gospel truth:

What about all the homosexuals who live together happily for years?
What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the "happy" part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.

But only when my sweetie leaves his dirty socks lying around. Then, yes, it's war.

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

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