Gay Penguin Marriage At Risk

Dang those heteros breaking up perfectly happy gay penguin couples in San Francisco and Central Park.

Since Silo took up with Scrappy, broken-hearted Roy spends all his time “staring at the wall.”

H/t Susana Cook.

Paris Wildlife

The fern that lives in the air shaft of my apartment.





A single mother duck and her children on the Seine.



A deer sighting on rue St. Marthe.



Another at Place St. Marthe. There are apparently lots more in the neighborhood.

Note: There were also tons of kids playing there, but too quick to shoot on their rollerblades.

(These photos are mine)

Merce Cunningham, 1919-2009

John Cage, Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham was an extraordinary choreographer and dancer, and the last of New York's enormously influential gay avant-garde including the musician John Cage, his partner, and painter Robert Rauschenberg.

On Gatesgate

An interesting comment from the blogger Digby.

this situation actually has far broader implications about all citizens' relationship to the police and the way we are expected to respond to authority, regardless of race. I've watched too many taser videos over the past few years featuring people of all races and both genders being put to the ground screaming in pain, not because they were dangerous or threatening and not because they were so out of control there was no other way to deal with them, but because they were arguing with police and the officer perceived a lack of respect for the badge.
...

* And by the way, if anyone wants to see some real incoherence on this subject, consult the right wingers who are defending the policeman today, but who also believe that anyone has the right to shoot first and ask questions later if they "feel" threatened in their own home. By their lights, Gates should have been arrested for behaving "tumultuously" but would have been within his rights to shoot Sgt Crowley. This is why conservatives have no standing to discuss anything more complicated than Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

It's time, once again, for that national discussion about the role of police, force, and authority.

More On Racism: Gates Gets It

Ummm, so the white neighbor calls cops because a black man is breaking into a house, so the black man, Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gets arrested for getting pissed off that the cops come and question his right to enter his own home. Uh huh.

Sounds like it should be a knock knock joke. The punchline an enormous civil suit?

Health Care

Ethicist Peter Singer's article Why We Must Ration Health Care is a little unwieldy but should be required reading for anyone who cares about the issue.

His primary argument about rationing is that despite what opponents say, we already have it.

Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.

After you acknowledge that you already have rationing, the question then becomes how to arrive at some kind of social consensus on how to do it more effectively and more ethically.

On Walter Cronkite and the Ends of Journalism

Just what are journalists supposed to be doing, anyway? Glenn Greenwald meditates on that question as he considers Walter Cronkite's life and career.

A taste:

Tellingly, his most celebrated and significant moment -- Greg Mitchell says "this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million" -- was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn't trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite's best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do -- directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won't even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.

Self-censorship is the worst kind of all.

On the Rainbow of Bigots

Kyle explains the conservative position on hate crime legislation:

So why has the Right been so vehemently opposed to this legislation? Mainly because, as Tony Perkins admitted last month, their real fear is that if protection for gays are added, it would make gays "equivalent to other categories of protection" and, if that happens, the Religious Right's anti-gays views will be seen as "equivalent to racial bigotry."

Just as I suspected...

And speaking of racial bigotry, Andés Duque reminds us that massive homophobe, NY State Senator Ruben Diaz, has a little race problem as well, giving as good as he gets.

...he called Democratic State Senator Jeff Klein a racist for criticizing the upheaval in Albany as being detrimental to public policy:

State Senator Rev. Ruben Diaz, President of the New York State Senate Puerto Rican/Latino Caucus, is demanding an apology from Senator Jeff Klein’s statement calling them “irrelevant” and “people like that”. By saying “people like that” does he mean Hispanic or what?

Klein actually replied and said that his statements had been taken out of context. If only he had checked up on what the Reverend had said recently to Spanish-language media!

On Wednesday - and before things in Albany had settled - El Diario La Prensa printed a Spanish-language article titled "Democratic cat-fight in the Senate". In it, they quoted Diaz as follows:

"If this is not resolved in good terms, it will be done on bad terms," he said, "If the little Republican whiteys [si los blanquitos republicanos] recognize this, why wouldn't we as well?"

In the bigotry Olympics, it's rare to find someone who just practices in one event. Homophobes are often misogynists are often racists...

Racism Alive and Well: Wait, That's not News...

And while the confirmation hearings turn up more stones in the Senate with squirmy mushy things underneath, the Republicans at large have embraced Audra Shay, the newly elected leader of the national Young Rethuglicans.

Shay’s candidacy, supported by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, hit a snag in recent weeks when she responded to a comment made by a friend on Facebook saying “need to take this country back from all of these mad coons” with “You tell em Eric! lol.”

Other Young Republicans chimed in, saying the comment was racist and questioning Shay's response. Shay issued a statement saying she "was not aware of the racial comments until sometime later" and was only responding to her friend's other remarks.

"I immediately deleted the derogatory and outright disgusting comments and subsequently posted a statement on my Facebook Status stating that in no way, shape or form are the comments posted by other individuals a reflection of me or my beliefs as an American, a Veteran, a Mother or a Candidate. I do not, nor would I ever, condone that type of language or behavior."

But more controversial comments from Shay were found by the Daily Beast. After an effigy of Sarah Palin was hung, she said "What no 'Obama in a noose? ... I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose." She's also written that President Obama "attacks white people" and posted a video claiming Obama believes he has to help African-Americans over whites to "ensure his own salvation."

h/t to Field Negro

Bitch Has a Crystal Ball

Even before the confirmation hearings started on Sotomayor, Angry Black Bitch described the players and the plays in her blog entry "Judge Sotomayor confirmation hearing preparedness…"

A taste...

Know the code
Unstable temperament = uppity woman who does not know her place is to do as conservatives would have her do when they want her to do it and with a smile while wearing a skirt.

Bully = woman judge who doesn’t suffer bullshit in her courtroom or back down from an argument 'cause Lawd knows straight talk from a man is refreshing while from a woman it threatens the very foundation of American blah, blah and another blah.

Strict constructionist = go forth and get your judicial activism on as long as it isn’t liberal judicial activism and as long as you don't admit that justice has been seeing 20/20 since the founders signed their names.

I have grave concerns = "I’ve decided not to support this nomination and go fuck yourself."

La Barbe Strikes Again, 14 juillet (Bastille Day)

If practically all the powerful figures in France are men, shouldn't the female statues representing the country be bearded as well? La Republique earns her beard from the feminist action group La Barbe.









After Republique, they bearded the muses in front of the Hotel de Ville, City Hall.

Safety Net Has Holes

The NY Times describes how the U.S. is screwing and humiliating the poor.

IF nothing else, the recession is serving as a stress test for the American safety net. How prepared have we been for sudden and violent economic dislocations of the kind that leave millions homeless and jobless? So far, despite some temporary expansions of food stamps and unemployment benefits by the Obama administration, the recession has done for the government safety net pretty much what Hurricane Katrina did for the Federal Emergency Management Agency: it’s demonstrated that you can be clinging to your roof with the water rising, and no one may come to helicopter you out.

Witch Hunt?

The NY Times reports U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

Saturday Night Fever

In The Dictator and the Disco King is a movie taking on Chile during the Pinochet era, in which "you have a Chilean actor who tries to look like John Travolta and ends up being said to look like Al Pacino...”

Interesting.

Thoughts On the Fourth of July

As ideas go, independence is still a very good idea, democracy even better. In the concrete world, hotdog, ketchup, & harissa rule supreme.