Blogometer Extra

BLOGGERS VS. MSM: Condition Hypocritical

  On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that "Pentagon guidelines that classified homosexuality as a mental disorder now put it among a list of conditions..."  The "don't ask, don't tell" policy remains in place, unfortunately for the military's gay community.

  "Mental health professionals said ... they were not satisfied by the change," the article said, and neither was Pam at House Blend, who writes:

This "upgrade" is so asinine that I can hardly believe it.  The military is jumping through hoops to avoid releasing any guidelines that view homosexuality as normal.

  Among other conditions, [homosexuals] are compared to those suffering from stammering or stuttering, dyslexia, sleepwalking, motion sickness, obesity, and insect venom allergies.  It simply has to end.  Are any of the above-mentioned grounds to disqualify one from serving?  I hardly think that motion sickness precludes anyone from serving either.  This is BS.

  Remember, all branches of the military have resorted to lowering standards, including recruiting people with antisocial personality disorder, autism, as well as welcoming in folks convicted of aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats.

  Meanwhile, able and ready gay and lesbian servicemembers are stigmatized and marginalized in a time of need.

  John Aravosis, openly gay founder of AMERICAblog, isn't impressed by the "upgrade" either, but wonders why at such a critical time in the terror war that the Pentagon seemingly "has nothing better to do these days."

The great minds of the military have decided gays aren't suffering from mental disorders anymore.  But, they still think homosexuality is a defective condition... You can't make this stuff up.  Note to the military: All the branches are chock full of gays and lesbians.  They do the job.  You need them. Our country needs them.

  "And," he continues, "here's an idea: Spend less time obsessing about gays and try to figure out how to prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq."

BLOGGERS VS. BELTWAY: Ig And Nancy

  David Ignatius at The Washington Post sets a slew of bloggers off again with yet another provocative post.  While a lot of media attention has been focused on the Carville-Rahm Dem clique hammering away at Howard Dean, Ignatius targets Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi in his latest column:

Some Democratic initiatives are obvious after the November election: The public wants changes in Iraq policy that reduce the costs and dangers for America; reform of an arrogant and corrupt congressional leadership; and an end to partisan political bickering.  The new House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, had a disastrous post-election week in which her first priority seemed to be settling scores rather than solving these big problems.  Shame on her!  But let's assume for the moment that the new Democratic majority won't commit instant suicide with a continuation of Pelosi's payback politics, and that it will get serious about governing.

  Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos breathes fire first, in a post entitled "Why Hasn't Nancy Pelosi Fixed Everything Yet?":

Seriously, who gave that idiot David Ignatius a platform to say ridiculously stupid shit like this? ... Pelosi isn't speaker, Hastert is.  Nevermind that Republicans had their own tightly contested elections when, well, they still have control of Congress and could be fixing "these big problems".

  Memo to these morons -- elections are held now so that when Pelosi takes over in January, she can start solving "these big problems" with the leadership team in place.

  Atrios at Eschaton, referring to Ignatius as an example of "silly people no one should listen to," writes:

I know I'm just an idiot with a cable modem and David Ignatius gets to write for the Washington Post, but for the record the Speaker of the House is currently Dennis Hastert.  He's running the show.  The Democrats don't take control for another couple of months.  If big problems aren't being solved, it's because Dennis Hastert isn't trying to solve them.

  Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory looks at the larger picture, and sees a concerted, collective effort to belittle Pelosi:

The mindless group-think driving the media's caricatures of Nancy Pelosi is truly astounding to behold, even considering the source.  She's not even Speaker yet, and they've already pronounced her to be a bitchy, vindictive shrew incapable of leading because she's consumed by petty personal bickering rather than serious and substantive considerations.  And all of this is based on nothing.

  Unsurprisingly, all of this has been concocted by the herd of all-knowing Beltway analysts who fancy themselves to be such high-minded warriors against conventional wisdom even though they are its most obedient vessels.

  Greenwald rips a gaggle of righty bloggers, talking heads and molders of opinion who've attacked Pelosi in tandem, and ends his post with a damning dismissal of the media:

Americans just elected new leadership quite deliberately.  They are obviously fine with Nancy Pelosi.  Republicans tried to make the election be about her -- constantly reminding everyone that a vote for Democrats would mean installing super-liberal Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco values in power -- and the Democrats won.  So voters have no problem with Pelosi.  They want Congressional Democrats to take the lead in policy and governance because the Republicans have failed so miserably.  I have no idea whether Pelosi will be a good Speaker, but I'm going to withhold judgment until she actually at least starts, and Americans are obviously doing that as well.

  Yet the Beltway media mavens know better, and so they are already out in force attacking Pelosi's character with petty and baseless chattering.  This country has extremely serious issues facing it, and yet these self-styled "serious" journalists are already trying to cripple Pelosi's ability to do anything before she has even begun, all based on giggly chit-chat and gossipy garbage that has no legitimacy other than the fact that they all repeat it in unison on television and in print.

  It's what these pundits and journalists do.  They have pre-conceived, vapid notions about everything and everyone -- all driven by deep self-love for their own superior wisdom -- and they distort reality and crowd out sober analysis of everything that matters.  Nancy Pelosi, and really everyone, would be well-advised not to listen to them and, above all, never adopt as a goal trying to please or satisfy them.  They are frivolous and out of touch with everything that matters and should be treated as such.

  Then Taylor Marsh at Firedoglake blasts away, in even more caustic fashion, grouping all the anti-Pelosis as "corporate hacks":

You can get caught with your fly open and diddling a teenage page and elicit sympathy, while a drug hoarding radio host gets a pass for using his housekeeper as a pusher.  That same host can then get caught with sex drugs in a bogus bottle at an airport, coming back from an all male weekend in one of the child sex capitals of the world, but his radio show doesn't miss a beat.  ... A compulsive gambler is not only kept on radio, but given a spot on CNN, while telling the world about morals.  Newt Gingrich, the disgraced speaker of the House and multiple marriage man, is still the go-to guy for Hannity on Fox.  A man who reportedly married his third cousin (then divorced her), one of 2 (or is it 3?) marriages, just announced his presidential bid; the other GOP bidder a self-proclaimed philanderer, as well.  But God help you if you're a woman against a war with a champion you want to promote to leadership; a person who helped raise the war debate to a campaign issue that carried your party to power, but loses that race.  Let the corporate clucking begin.

  Make no mistake about it, Murtha falling short of majority leader was a loss for Pelosi.  So what?  She stood by the man who brought the Iraq war into the debate and changed the subject from "stay the course" to "change course and redeploy."  Steny Hoyer was gracious in his overwhelming win, as was speaker-elect Pelosi, making it clear that Murtha's power lives on to fight the fight in his subcommittee, where he holds the defense purse strings for the war.

  "I smell something rotten and it's the mass of collected hubris the clucking pundits are sitting upon," Marsh writes, "which they now feel the need to release like the wind escaping from Karl Rove's bubble.

  "Who died and elected these people to anything?  It certainly wasn't the American people.

LABOR: Houston, We Have A Problem

  Matt Stoller at MyDD has an extraordinary pair of photographs and a video (viewable here) of the janitors' strike in Houston ending in a violent confrontation:

Houston police trampled on striking janitors with horses last night.  The janitors make on average $20 a day with no health insurance.  The companies responsible?  Chevron.  And Hines Interest, the city's largest hometown building owner.

  These people make on average $5.35 an hour.  With no health insurance.  That is frakking ridiculous.  It is wrong.  And when these workers protested peacefully, the Houston police department rode into a crowd with horses to intimidate and injure the workers.  It worked, as they arrested 44 workers and hurt 4 of them, including an 83 year old janitor.

  I don't care if you don't like unions.  This is insane.  And if you are a politician reading this site, or a 2008 candidate, now's your chance to stand up and issue a strong statement condemning these actions and demanding that Chevron and Hines Interest pay these people responsibly.

  Mainstream media reports about the crackdown were sparse, but one press release reported that "bail for the striking janitors was set at $888,888," as Perry Dorrell writes at Brains and Eggs:

This is the justice you get when all of the law officials in the nation's third most populous county are Republicans.

  People arraigned on murder charges have had bail set as low as $30,000, but if you're making $5.00 an hour and sit down in the middle of a Houston intersection, you get intimidated -- at best -- by a mounted Houston Police officer, arrested, charged with a Class B misdemeanor, and thrown into jail with your bail set at "send-a-message" level.

  Houston and Harris County truly feels like the belly of the Neo-Fascist beast today.

  Sean-Paul Kelley at The Agonist has the latest, writing, "Great news, the bond rate was reduced to $1,000 per person by a magistrate."