A speechwriter for the new administration is showing he is a member of the old boys club. Jon Favreau posted a photo..."where he's dancing with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of secretary of state-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and another where he's placed his hand on the cardboard former first lady's chest while a friend is offering her lips a beer." There are a lot of levels of hate speech and each level worse than the last indicates how much a person hates an oppressed group. You know a hater is filled with extreme, visceral hatred when they use sex to harm the oppressed group.

Click here to view the hate speech against women and girls:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-tra il/2008/12/04/one_more_question.html

Favreau portrayed an image of himself in sexual foreplay with the image of Clinton in a public place. He is lowering Hillary Clinton's status in a vicious, cruel, and extremely disrespectful way. Women and girls are the most oppressed group in the world. Men dominate women politically, economically, and socially. Women have a long way to go before we achieve political equality with men. Thus, harming women politicians by lowering their status in this way is morally heinous (http://journaloffeministinsight.blogspot .com/2008/11/women-and-girls-are-most-op pressed.html).

A person who has used hate speech to lessen the status of a protected group, be it women, blacks, jews, etc. has no place working in the government.

UPDATE: PA Dems Say Matthews Can Win Senate Race

Although Chris Matthews has not confirmed it, he reportedly is planning to run for the Senate seat from Pennsylvania in 2010. He apparently has been meeting with Democratic leaders and is shopping for a house in his old home town, Philadelphia.

Matthews has been advised to resign soon from his position as host of MSNBC's popular Hardball program. This seems wise since the longer he stays there, the more likely he is of making a statement that could jeopardize his campaign. In fact, odds are high that, during a campaign, he will say something that could derail his election chances.

However, I hope that he runs and that he wins. One thing for sure, a debate moderator will not have a problem, as Jim Lehrer did, in getting Matthews to engage directly with his opponent. Note also that his likely opponent, Senator Arlen Spector, is no shrinking violet.

Then if he wins, it will be a treat seeing Matthews in the Senate, continually interrupting senior Senate leaders as they speak. The interruption may well be in the form of a long question that Matthews will then proceed to answer.

homer   www.altara.blogspot.com

Over 100,000 American troops in the 1990-1991 Gulf War came back and suffered an array of debilitating ailments known collectively as "Gulf War illness."

Amputations, brain and central nervous damage are among the results.

Gulf War veterans are in a word: Pissed.

Has anyone else noticed that your local newspaper no longer keeps Iraq war dead "box scores"?

There's no longer a daily running total of "Americans killed in Iraq".

Why?

Is it because the media can't handle two big stories at one time (Iraq AND the economy?)

Or, because the fight in Iraq was always secondary to the political fight in America about Iraq?

"At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time," Frank said. "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He's got to remedy that situation."

Two days ago I made a case for current CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen to be Governor of CA.

Much interesting discussion came out of that, and a fair bit of support for Bowen.  However, I noticed that many folks assumed that Bowen planned on running for the US Senate (to replace Feinstein, perhaps) and not for Governor.

This diary makes the case for Debra Bowen to run for Governor, not for a Senate seat.  As part of that effort, please join the "Draft Debra Bowen for Governor" Facebook group.

I've been struggling for a few years now with health issues, it's been ever since I had my daughter in 2003 but I was always a frail girl, lots of allergies as a child, always hated to run, just wasn't tip top.  Damn, if I had been born just a couple of hundreds of years ago, I highly doubt I would have made it out of childhood, but alas, I did.

My struggle with myself is the idea that this thing I'm dealing with may just be all in my head.  I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia but I can't help but think that it might just be some figment of my imagination.  Maybe it's not as bad as it seems, maybe I've just wallowed a bit too long.

Though it's largely symbolic, the town of Carrboro, NC just voted to affirm civil marriage for same-sex couples, by a vote of 5-0.  The reason?  Well, according to town alderwomen Jackie Grist, they did so because they felt they needed to stand up for the rights of LGBT citizens in the wake of Proposition 8.

There's more on this over at http://gayrights.change.org.  But could this be a new strategy for marriage equality activists?  A strategy that engages activists in cities across the country to pass resolutions affirming civil marriage for gay and lesbian couples?

The Mayor of Carrboro, Mark Chilton, has a great quote on this.  "It was just a couple of college towns when we started in on the civil rights movement in the late `50s and early `60s, and it was just a couple of college towns when we started the process of ending the war in Vietnam."  Can small towns be the new epicenter in the debate over gay marriage?