Accommodatingly

The complete list here.

He really dug the White Stripes.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

He knows Batman.

If you, like me, lack a law degree, and you, like me, expect to follow the Alito nomination rather closely, I recommend ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society, an the group for centrist and liberal lawyers, law students and legal scholars. It’s sorta our side’s answer to the Federalist Society.

Lawyers who read us: where else would you advise a layperson to follow the fight?

You knew the preposterous offset of weekday afternoons
that were your Saturday nights,
the new cufflinks you dared not use,
the birthday cakes you only had one slice of, the whole catastrophe
of stolen temporalities from the gaps of your life.

–John Stammers, from “Flower Market Street,” in Stolen Love Behaviour, a new-ish UK collection I’m reviewing soon and very much recommend. If you like August Kleinzahler, Mark Ford, Paul Farley, or (not and, but or) John Tranter, check this guy out.

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Re-post this if you believe love makes a marriage.

(link)

Did you know that gay culture is ending because things are so good for gay kids nowadays?

So goodbye Siegfried and Roy! We need you no more, Dykes to Watch Out For! See ya later, Gloria Gaynor!

The arrogance of Andrew Sullivan’s hypothesis lies in the fact that he a) assumed that there is something definitive you could call “gay culture” (with little variation from person to person and place to place in America), and that because the world he lives in is so much better than it used to be–which it is, I don’t deny–that the world everyone else inhabits must be just as great. I do agree with him that the religious right does more to maintain gay culture than anyone else–if it weren’t for homophobic Christians (or members of other equally homophobic religions, such as orthodox Judaism or Islam), who would be there to make gay people feel ashamed as children, angry as teens, and flamboyant in their twenties?

St Paul’s incumbent mayor Randy Kelly appears to be a competent manager, but he’s secretly a Republican. In today’s St Paul paper, Jessie explains why he won’t be reelected.

Kelly’s opponent Chris Coleman (no relation to the sock puppet Senator) is a centrist former City Council member who promises pleasant, city-that-works sorts of things like better hours for rec centers, and seems to understand that there are worthwhile unions other than the police union. He’ll do fine.

He’s also an example of a dynamic we started to see in 2004: as a business-friendly Dem, Coleman actually endorsed Kelly in 2001, against a more traditionally liberal opponent (city council member Jay Benanav). Back then, centrist Dems and liberals had trouble working together and disputed the direction of the party to the extent of campaigning against one another. Now we understand that if we don’t stick together, the bad guys will tear us apart. Better late than never, no?

excellent, cool, neato interview with Kamau Brathwaite here.

disclosure: although i didn’t conduct it, i was responsible for posting it online.

“Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.”

Paul Wellstone, July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002

A blogging soldier’s story. Few surprises, much respect: scroll down a few entries to get the whole picture, or check out the context explained here. Why are we in Vietnam Iraq?