I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not.  On one hand, it seems so smug that you'd pick a patriotic holiday to kick the bucket, but on the other hand it's annoying that I had to stomach hearing your name while enjoying a perfectly grilled burger.  I'm sure the media narrative will be to paint you as a southern hero who did lots of things in the Senate.

Last month, California gave its stamp of approval to same-sex marriage, becoming only the second state after Massachusetts to do so.  Fear of gay marriage has long been exploited by right-wingers as the ultimate homophobic weapon to scare up bigotry and votes. Predictably, a parade of anti-gay idiots came out of the woodwork, howling in protest.

But they're on the wrong side of history. And to fully understand recent events, it's important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago, and how much things have changed for gay Americans since then.

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States.

More below the fold.

Call this one a misadventure in framing.

If you're like me, a little piece of you dies every time a Republican or even a self-styled Independent Democrat engages in a framing device such as substituting "Democrat Congress" for the correct "Democratic Congress." The goal of this wordplay is to both emphasize the "rat" in Democrat in the hopes of tarnishing a political party as untrustworthy and, more sinisterly, to try to lessen the usage of the word "democratic" in political discourse.

But sometimes framing has some unexpected results.

copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.
Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.
Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."
~ Thomas Jefferson  (Autobiography, 1821)

It was a Saturday morning, late in June.  The year was 2008.  In the background, radio broadcaster, Scott Simon could be heard.  The host of Weekend Edition offered his Reflections on Race and the Presidential Election. Alexander listened halfheartedly.  It was not that he was not interested in the topic; he is and he was.  Alex was distracted.  

While the McCain campaign blasts Obama for not taking public financing, his 527s and PACs are raising unlimited money to trash Obama with bigoted lies.  The latest, an ad from the National Campaign Fund, calls Obama a liar for not "admitting" that he was a Muslim and features pictures of him in Somali garb:

more after jump

Yesterday, at 5:01 p.m. PST, lesbian rights pioneers Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin became the first same sex couple to be legally wed in San Francisco following the May 2008 ruling by the California State Supreme Court.  Lyon and Martin have been together for 55 years.  

Lyon and Martin were also the first same sex couple to be married in San Francisco four years ago when Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the County Clerks Office to accept fees from and issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Yesterday outside of City Hall, crowds gathered, in some part, to witness history being made.  Not all the crowd, however, was happy with history being made.  Not by a long shot.

I took some photos.  Here they are (that is, after the fold):

If there's any problem with DKos, it's that some of the diarists are so young! (That's snark...really) But when I read the constant complaining about the perennial pundit Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, I realize that the audience in general doesn't know who he is.

Genial grandfather? Not! I'm going to put a few quotes from this guy into context below, then ask that you demand that MSNBC stop throwing this guy in our faces.

This is going to be sort of long, and might not seem at first to be a "poliical" diary. It gets there eventually though, so I ask for your forgiveness if you keep reading.

Two of my interests in life are psychology and politics. As has been pointed out on here before I am an experimental psychologist. This is not a clinical psychologist, basically as a profession we are defined by use of the scientific method to study/modify human (in my case) or animal behavior. That being said I read many article summaries/news summaries of various studies. The study below comes from one. I bring it up for a few reasons.

1. Obama and McCain should ONLY be judged on their policy differences not due to their age or skin color.

2. The fact that, to some degree HRC was gone after by some for being a woman.

I am not equating Ageism and racism. Nor do I offer my own opinion as to how much sexism played a role in HRC's loosing. I think all are interesting topics and all have had many posts here. My point though is to bring up the article, comment on it, and then to discuss the article.

What started out to be a glorious week of anticipation regarding the final closure of this long and brutal campaign season turned into a week of non-stop media coverage about Hillary Clinton.  I know several believe that we should focus on gaining the support of disappointed Clinton supporters but this was supposed to be our moment.  We deserved this.  The winner is entitled to a certain amount of celebration.  The country could point to Obama's elevation as the beginning of racial healing in this country but alas, this week has been about the needs and wants of Hillary Clinton.

My wife's grandparents, a pair of Okies from Muskogee, said they plan to vote for Barack Obama in the general.

When my wife asked them how they came to this conclusion, they said they had originally backed Hillary Clinton, but they added that they were turned off by some of the campaign tactics she had used.

There is no doubt that sexism hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign and that without such a sexist culture she could have beaten Barack Obama for the nomination.  But that argument is only valid in a vacuum, since Obama had to overcome racial and religious bigotry in his own quest for the nomination.

But Obama did not play the gender card against Hillary, while the Clinton campaign regularly spoke of Obama's issues with white, hard-working voters.

Just saying, I hope that Clinton supporters -- and I was one -- who are angry at sexism realize that the white woman and the black man each had their own bigots to overcome, and they both beat a field of white men.

Geraldine Ferraro's "black obsession" is on display again.  This time on the op-ed page of the Boston Globe.  Half the column is devoted to the claim that Clinton was the victim of sexism.  I'm not concerned with that claim right now.  More revealing is Ferraro's renewed claim that, in effect, whites, specifically "Reagan Democrats," were the victims of the Obama campaign's utilization of the "race card."

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening.

http://www.boston.com/...

Right wing nutjobs like Michelle Malkin have been campaigning to get Dunkin Donuts to remove a keffiyeh in an ad.

You see, there is no way that piece of clothing can be seen in America. Donuts taste bad when that piece of cltohing is there. But, you propably don't know what this is all about, right?

Here is what she wrote:

Sigh. You all know I’ve been a fan of Dunkin Donuts for quite some time–and have touted their strong position in favor of immigration enforcement.

Charles Johnson notes, and many readers have e-mailed about, Dunkin Donuts’ spokeswoman Rachel Ray’s clueless sporting of a jihadi chic keffiyeh in a recent DD ad campaign. I’m hoping her hate couture choice was spurred more by ignorance than ideology.

Is Ray’s blunder worth boycotting DD over?

More after the flip

From some of the same group that couldn't vote straight in 2000, comes folks who can't think straight in 2008.  Many in the Jewish community in the southeast counties of Broward, Dade and Palm Beach, who nearly always vote Democratic, are planning to vote for John McCain this November.  Not because of McCain, although Zell Lieberman's support is a factor.  But rather because of Barack Obama.  And though they cite his perceived failure to toe the Zionist line as a factor, dig a little deeper and you'll find the real reason.  Plain and simple bigotry.  His race, his ancestors' religion, his name.  Whatever.  Those are the real reasons.  

In the political arena, there seems to be no shortage of sleaze merchants who happen to have magical regenerative powers. Part of their DNA appears to be a propensity for getting publicly taken to task by those who they work for. It's a win-win situation. The sleaze merchant puts out false and/or irresponsible info then willingly takes the fall as a "loose cannon" while those who they work for get to pretend that they've taken the high road by issuing public condemnations, even calls for the loose cannon's resignation.

Of course the lack of name recognition that the loose cannon has makes it easy for them to show up with a repeat performance months later, while the average soundbite consumer's mind doesn't pick up on the fact that they've just watched a re-run. But the most ambitious members of the GOP’s designated fall guy battalion set their sites on breathing the rarified air of the unaccountable celeb shill (- see Malkin, Coulter, Rush, et al).

I now introduce you to one of the fully bought and paid for hopefuls trying to make that leap; Bill Hobbs, Communications Director for the Tennessee State Republican Party.

Unless you've been living in a hole the last ten days you know by know that the California Supreme Court legalized Gay Marriage on Thursday. You should also know that the Religious Right is gearing up to pass a Constitutional Amendment that will permanently enshrine discrimination against gay couples into the California Constitution.

The Ballot Initiative that will put this Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in November has not been certified by the California Secretary of State yet.  Unless something remarkable happens there is every expectation that this ballot initiative will be certified and the Christian Culture Terrorists led by James Dobson will flood into California to spread their vile bigotry across the state and pass this amendment.

And we will all forget to pose the simple process questions: How where all those signatures collected?

As I walked out my door to bring my daughter to the bus stop today, I chatted for a few minutes with my African American neighbor.  Nearly every day, we discuss "the latest" in the primary campaign -- how many superdelegates Obama got, what the latest polls mean, what outrageous thing the Clinton campaign has done now, and so forth.  But today, my friend had a story I hadn't heard about:  a racist incident that had happened not that far away in Marietta, Georgia.  Some ignorant yahoo thought it would be funny to sell T-shirts from his bar with a picture of Curious George and Obama '08 underneath.  As my friend told the story I could see how painful it was to her.  This wasn't under the heading of "silly primary season" or "just politics".  This was personal.  Not only was this an example of hateful cruelty and an embarrassment to the city of Marietta (the district Newt Gingrich represented), it represents the anathema of what America is about.  I felt helpless in what to do against such hate.  Well, I have good news to share:  the publisher of Curious George has stepped in to stop it, with legal action if necessary.

West Virginia is not soccer moms and NASCAR dads. West Virginia (and parts of Kentucky) are Hatfields and McCoys. Until well into the 1960s, West Virginia had the highest murder rate in the country. West Virginia is populated by Scots borderers.  Their customs include that if you are elected Clan leader you begin by killing all rivals within your own clan before going out to murder others. My brother was a social worker there in the 60s. He got used to facing a shotgun any time he made a home visit.  He got used to his clients showing up with loaded guns and a jug of corn. He persuaded some that some vitamins for pellagra ridden kids was not a government plot