Thomas Beatie, the transgender man who made headlines as the so-called “pregnant man,” gave birth Sunday to a healthy baby girl, ABC News has learned.
Whooptie friggin’ doo. Pregnant TRANSGENDER man. And the one word makes all the difference in the world. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about a person with XX chromosomes and a uterus giving birth. But sensationalism sells more ad space.
Keith Olbermann normally does a good job, but he appears to have drunk enough of the Obama koolaid that he’s incapable of being objective, as seen by his fawning coverage of Obama’s FISA retrenchment.
Olbermann makes the mistake of going head to head with Greenwald. Here’s an excerpt of Greenwald’s response.
What is most disturbing here is that people (including Olbermann) who for so long have vehemently criticized Democratic leaders for capitulating to Bush and trampling on the Constitution out of fear of looking “Weak” are now invoking that very excuse to justify what Obama is doing here (that’s what Olbermann explicitly did in his Kos reply). To excuse Obama’s conduct on that basis is to perpetuate Democratic complicity. Obama had — and will continue to have — a critical opportunity to reject and debunk that rancid framework, and it is his embrace of that framework here (”I’m going to give Bush what he wants and trample on the Constitution in order to avoid being ‘weak’”) that makes what Obama has done here so harmful and worthy of criticism.
Beyond that, there’s just no getting around the fact that the bill Obama is supporting is another nail in the coffin of Fourth Amendment protections and privacy rights, and — just as bad, if not worse — will almost certainly put an end to any opportunity to find out what Bush’s illegal spying entailed and to obtain a judicial ruling as to its illegality. This isn’t just another bad bill. It marks a disgraceful end — a cover-up — of one of the most extreme Bush lawbreaking scandals (combined with legalization of many of the criminal acts), and it is a disgraceful conclusion for which Democrats are largely responsible. It’s possible that Obama couldn’t have stopped it even with vigorous opposition — though it’s also possible that, as the leader of the Party, he could have — but either way, he is supporting not just a bad bill, but one that stomps on core constitutional liberties and which conceals and protects rampant lawbreaking.
I’ve written endlessly on all of the reasons why a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for this country. The entire last chapter of my book is devoted exclusively to documenting that fact. I have no doubt I will write much more on that topic between now and November. I still think that just as strongly. But basic honesty and adherence to one’s core political values compels criticism for what Obama is doing here, and it’s just distasteful and destructive — not to mention dangerous — for people to invoke patently false rationalizations in order to excuse or support what he’s doing.
It’s wonderful that McClellan is finally viewing the world from beyond the sphincter, but there’s something about the blatant opportunism of his current gig that grates at me.
“In an encounter last night in the lobby of a New York Hotel, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan apologized for denouncing a former White House colleague, Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism advisor, after Clarke wrote a book highly critical of the Bush administration in 2004.
Curious. Hilzoy nails precisely what’s so grating about the whole thing.
I have mixed feelings about McClellan. As best I can tell, what changed his mind about the Bush administration was having Rove and Libby completely destroy his credibility (what there was of it) by lying to his face so that he could repeat their lies in public. That was, in fact, a terrible thing to do. But, as this encounter makes clear, it’s not as though McClellan didn’t know that people were having their good name savaged by the White House. It’s not even as though he had not willingly participated in that savaging. But he never seems to have thought that it could happen to him.
That’s a hard thing, and part of me sympathizes. But another part thinks: you should figure out what’s wrong with trashing someone and destroying his credibility when you do it to someone else. You shouldn’t have to wait until it happens to you.
Does Forbes really have nothing better to do than this?
They’re young, fabulously wealthy and have blue blood coursing through their veins. Meet the “20 Hottest Young Royals” in the world, compiled by influential fortune tracker, Forbes magazine.
Mindy Greiling is brilliant. She is my representative to the state legislature and lives just down the block from me. Minnesota Monitor highlights her recent correspondence with the Star Tribune over a hit piece their resident right wingnut, Katherine Kersten, did against a local charter school.
In response to questions prompted by Katherine Kersen’s recent columns on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), I decided to visit the school myself.
What I learned during a tour late last month is that none of Kersten’s concerns that the charter school is promoting religion in violation of a state law that prohibits public schools from doing so is valid.
What I did see was excellent teachers hard at work in the classroom focused on improving student achievement. I saw engaged students of different religious and cultural backgrounds learning reading, math, government and science. I spoke with parents, teachers and administrators who all stressed their high standards for TIZA students.
While an outsider, or someone like Kersten who is trying to validate a predetermined conclusion, might be tempted to brand Tarek ibn Ziyad as an “Islamic School” because it leases space from the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, the school, like other charter schools in Minnesota that lease space from churches, is a separate entity. It does comply with federal law that requires all schools to accommodate a student’s right to practice his or her religion. And unlike other charter schools that have faced financial and other administrative challenges, the school was recognized with a 2008 School Finance Award from the Minnesota Department of Education for its “sound fiscal health and financial management policies.”
Kersten’s reckless journalistic standards have diminished this paper’s credibility. Worse, they have threatened the safety of the children and staff at the school, which has been forced to take extra security measures in the wake of recent death threats. While I value a broad range of opinions from a variety of perspectives, I value the facts even more. Kersten’s gross distortion of the facts in this case should compel Star Tribune management to ask for her resignation.
A great piece at DKos highlights Charles Krauthammer’s selective outrage at Obama.
It’s amazing really. In an attempt to make the case that Barack Obama’s “character and cultural attitudes” somehow disqualify him from the presidency, Krauthammer distorts (Jeremiah Wright as an inciter of racial hatred), uses code words (jihad and tribal), lies (political career “launched” in William Ayers home), and projects (”self-congratulatory fatuousness”), which of course says quite a lot about Krauthammer’s own character and cultural attitudes, not to mention his journalistic ethics.
But if Krauthammer wants to pretend that he’s concerned about “the character and beliefs of a man who would be president,” perhaps he can use his national platform to delve into the character and beliefs of John McCain. A few potential areas of concern:
Women can be sexual or politically powerful, but not both.
Women can be politically powerful, as long as they “act like men.”
#2 means they must pretend like they don’t have a body. Wait, that they don’t have a female body, which is of course redundant in our culture where men have the luxury to be people first and bodies second (or never).
Female sexuality is unable to be tolerated when it’s not for someone else. (I can’t hook up with her/masturbate to her/marry her so why does she think she can demonstrate that she has breasts?)
Looks like Fox News thought they were going to embarass Obama supporter Father Michael Pfleger, by sending out one of their henchmen to ambush him over his ties to and support of Barack Obama. Instead they got their tiny, little bigoted and ignorant heads handed to them.
Read up on the boycott here