WW2 v. WOT -- ONE MONTH TO GO

1,347: Number of days from the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to VJ Day (Victory in Japan) on August 15, 1945.

1,317: Number of days from the airplane-bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, to today.

If Osama makes it to May 21, he will have survived the self-declared world's only superpower in a presidentially-declared war longer than Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini combined.

On February 1, two Microsoft employees testified before a House Committee in support of the bill. These employees were speaking as private citizens, not as representatives of the corporate position, but there was considerable confusion about whether they were speaking on behalf of Microsoft.

Following this hearing, a local religious leader named Rev. Ken Hutcherson, who has a number of Microsoft employees in his congregation, approached the company, seeking clarification of whether the two employees were representing Microsoft's official position. He also sought a variety of other things, such as firing of the two employees and a public statement by Microsoft that the bill was not
necessary.

After careful review, Brad Smith informed Rev. Hutcherson that there was no basis for firing the two employees over the misunderstanding over their testimony, but did agree that we should clarify the ambiguity over the employee testimony. Brad also made it clear that while the company was not taking a position on HB 1515, the company remains strongly committed to its internal policies supporting anti-discrimination and industry-leading benefits for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees.

I understand that many employees may disagree with the company's decision to tighten the focus of our agenda for this year's legislative session in Olympia. But I want every employee to understand that the decision to take a neutral stance on this bill was taken before the Session began based on a desire to focus our legislative efforts, not in reaction to any outside pressure.

I have done a lot of thinking and soul-searching over the past 24 hours on this subject, and I want to share with you my thoughts on how a company like Microsoft should deal with these kinds of issues.

This is a very difficult issue for many people, with strong emotions on all sides. And that makes it a very difficult issue for me, as the CEO of this company.

In this particular matter, both Bill and I actually both personally support this legislation that would outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But that is my personal view, and I also know that many employees and shareholders would not agree with me.

We are thinking hard about what is the right balance to strike – when should a public company take a position on a broader social issue, and when should it not? What message does the company taking a position send to its employees who have strongly-held beliefs on the opposite side of the issue?

The bottom line is that I am adamant that Microsoft will always be a
place that values diversity, that has the strongest possible internal policies for non-discrimination and fairness, and provides the best policies and benefits to all of our employees.

I am also adamant that I want Microsoft to be a place where every employee feels respected, and where every employee feels like they belong. I don't want the company to be in the position of appearing to dismiss the deeply-held beliefs of any employee, by picking sides in social policy issues.

I know that some employees will still feel frustrated by the position
the company has taken, but I wanted you to hear directly from me on this. We will continue to wrestle with how and when the company should engage on these kinds of political issues. And above all, I want you to know that as long as I am CEO, Microsoft will always be committed to diversity and non-discrimination in all of our internal policies.

Authorities at a Christian university near Chicago moved dozens of black and Hispanic students to a hotel for their own safety and police stepped up patrols on campus Friday after three people received threatening, racist letters.

Authorities at a Christian university near Chicago moved dozens of black and Hispanic students to a hotel for their own safety and police stepped up patrols on campus Friday after three people received threatening, racist letters.

...on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'

Republican Congressman Henry Hyde made some surprising comments Thursday on the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton. He now says Republicans may have gone after Clinton to retaliate for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

[snip]

In an exclusive interview, Hyde delivered a big dose of candor and some reflective second guessing. He said, among other things, he might not try to impeach President Clinton if he had it to do all over again.

[snip]

When asked if he would go through with the Clinton impeachment process again, Hyde said he wasn't sure. It turned into a personal and political embarrassment for Hyde when an extra-marital affair he had in the 1960's became public amid accusations of hypocrisy. He called the affair a youthful indiscretion.

"Accusations hurled at me to intimidate me were misplaced, and I regret having to deal with them, but they didn't intimidate me," Hyde said.

The veteran DuPage County congressman acknowledged that Republicans went after Clinton in part to enact revenge against the Democrats for impeaching President Richard Nixon 25 years earlier.

Andy Shaw asked Hyde if the Clinton proceedings were payback for Nixon's impeachment.

"I can't say it wasn't, but I also thought that the Republican party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty, our responsibility," said Hyde.

Hyde's comments reflect what Democrats have been saying for years about the Clinton impeachment. It will be interesting to see what happens when Hyde's comments hit the national media.

Microsoft officials denied any connection between their decision not to endorse the bill and the church's opposition, although they acknowledged meeting twice with the church minister, Ken Hutcherson.

Dr. Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church, who has organized several rallies opposing same-sex marriage here and in Washington, D.C., said he threatened in those meetings to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products.

After that, "they backed off," the pastor said Thursday in a telephone interview. "I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about," he said.

[snip]

The bill, which had passed in the State House, would have extended protections against discrimination in employment, housing and other fields to gay men and lesbians. It was supported by other high-tech companies and multinational corporations including Nike, Boeing, Coors and Hewlett-Packard.

Microsoft officials said that the recent meetings with the minister did not persuade them to back away from supporting the bill, because they had already decided to take a "neutral" position on it. They said they had examined their legislative priorities and decided that because they already offer extensive benefits to gay employees and that King County, where Microsoft is based, already has an anti-discrimination law broader than what the state bill proposed, they should focus on other legislative matters.

But State Representative Ed Murray, an openly gay Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said that in a conversation last month with Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, Mr. Smith made it clear to him that the company was under pressure from the church and the pastor and that he was also concerned about the reaction to company support of the bill among its Christian employees, the lawmaker said.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

In a move that angered many of the company's gay employees, the Microsoft Corporation, publicly perceived as the vanguard institution of the new economy, has taken a major political stand in favor of age-old discrimination.

The Stranger has learned that last month the $37-billion Redmond-based software behemoth quietly withdrew its support for House bill 1515, the anti-gay-discrimination bill currently under consideration by the Washington State legislature, after being pressured by the Evangelical Christian pastor of a suburban megachurch. The pastor, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, met with a senior Microsoft executive in February and threatened to organize a national boycott of the company's products if it did not change its stance on the legislation, according to gay rights activists and a Microsoft employee who attended a subsequent April 4 meeting where Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told a group of gay staffers about Hutcherson's threat. Hutcherson also unsuccessfully demanded that the company fire two employees who had testified in favor of the bill.

Dear Microsoft,

You messed with the wrong faggots.

You thought you were avoiding a religious right boycott by suddenly going anti-gay. And you may have thought "hell, the evangelicals boycott us, the gays boycott us - we've got to choose one, and the evangelicals are in power, so let's screw the gays."

But here's something you didn't count on. You messed with the wrong faggots.

We have no intent of launching a boycott. Boycotts are hard to enforce, especially when dealing with a monopoly. And in any case, we're smarter than that. We're the country's top lobbyists, and grassroots activists, and lawyers, and politicos, and bloggers working in both Washingtons (state and DC).

When we fuck back, we don't launch boycotts. When we fuck back, we go for the jugular.

Changing the subject, we understand congratulations is in order. You're planning a 2.2 million square foot expansion of the Microsoft campus in Redmond over the next ten to twenty years. The expansion, we hear, would allow you to hire 10,000 to 20,000 new employees.

Well bully for you. You must be quite excited about that.

We also hear that you're going to need a lot of help - a LOT of help - from the state legislature and the Redmond city council to actually make that expansion work, for highway and road improvements and the like, and that not everybody is real happy about it.

Well, wouldn't it be funny if some really smart faggots decided to use their political expertise to kill any possibility of you getting the legislation and city council approval you need to make that expansion happen? And wouldn't it be even funnier if those same faggots went to your competitors and asked them to finance the entire campaign to kill your expansion?

It'd be pretty hard to hire those extra employees without your expansion, wouldn't it? I'm not saying anyone is going to do that to you. I'm just saying it would be really funny.

Best of luck to you with the legislative session over the next 24 hours.

Yours truly,

One of the faggots you just screwed

The gay rights bill just lost in the Washington state Senate by a 24-25 vote, i.e., by one vote.

All the Republicans voted against the bill, and at least one Democrat. Apparently the forces of good did win a procedural vote to force the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor, but then it was killed by the 24-25 vote. As an interesting aside, if you can call it that, one of the moderate Republicans voting against the bill was the guy representing Redmond, Microsoft's district.

In response to my comments on his admiring profile of Ann Coulter in which he pronounced her work to be “mostly accurate” based on a casual Google search, available here, Cloud says I am:

the left-wing equivalent of [] Ann Coulter
trying to out-Coulter Coulter
simply insult[ing] him
hid[ing] the fact that it also quotes James Wolcott, Andrew Sullivan, Salon, Ronald Radosh, and even Jerry Falwell criticizing Ann Coulter. She is called everything from an "ideological huckster of hate" in my story to a "skank." I myself say she can be "callous and mouthy," that I want to "shut her up occasionally," that her writing can be "highly amateurish." She is called a "fascist," a "polemicist," and--by Radosh--a virtual McCarthyite.
wants [...] people to ignore Coulter, to pretend as though she doesn't exist and isn't one of the most loved--and hated--figures on the public scene
Made a mistake about a quote of hers in What Liberal Media?
seems most annoyed that we did not use more of his personal "sources" on Ann Coulter
doesn't seem to have done any reporting for his item on me whatsoever
In his interview with CJR Daily interview available here, he adds:

"I think Eric Alterman and Ann Coulter engage in the same kind of debate. They don't often make actual arguments. Instead, they throw names around. This is the point of my article.”

And...

"I think maybe Eric and Ann are in the same bunch. They also, by the way, use the same language."

To take these one by one may appear a bit tiresome and self-serving, but there are larger issues involved, including, admittedly, defending my reputation, but more importantly, having to do with defending the tenets of honest journalism and fair-minded media criticism. So I will, as briefly as I can, engage Cloud on the facts:

Cloud insists that Coulter and I are peas in a pod, guilty of the same sins, up to the same shenanigans. OK, let’s compare me with Ann Coulter. True, we both have B.A.s from Cornell, where we both attended many Dead concerts, (though I don’t pretend I refused to partake in the local customs). More to the point, I went on to earn an M.A. in international relations from Yale and a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford. I’ve written six books, two published by university presses, containing many thousands of footnotes. None of these books have been substantially challenged on the basis of the evidence they employ, even by those who strongly disagree with my arguments. This is not true of Coulter.

I am also a professor of journalism at the City University of New York, a senior fellow of two think tanks, a professional blogger for the most trafficked Internet news site in the world and the media columnist for oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. I am pretty sure none of the above is true of Coulter, either.

What’s more, Coulter has twice either wished for, or joked about the mass murder of American journalists. She has called for, or joked about, the assassination of a sitting American president. She has called for, or joked about, the mass murder of entire populations of Moslem nations. She has referred to the president of the United States and his wife as “pond scum,” among many other things. She has called Christie Todd Whitman a "birdbrain" and a "dimwit"; Jim Jeffords a "half-wit"; and Gloria Steinem a "deeply ridiculous figure" who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. magazine--all of which makes her "a termagant." I have never called publicly for the death of any one, nor joked about anyone’s murder, nor called any president or any senator any names like those listed above, though I admit, not all of them—including the current president--are among my favorite people.

Organizations headed by two of the best-known figures in conservative political circles, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, have been subpoenaed by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in its long-running probe of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the paid-restricted Roll Call reveals Thursday. Excerpts from John Bresnahan and Paul Kane's article appear below.

#
The committee is planning to hold its next hearing in the investigation in late June. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one of Abramoff’s former clients, is expected to be the focus of that hearing, according to sources close to the investigation.

Americans for Tax Reform, for which Norquist serves as president, is refusing to disclose its donor list to the Senate committee, said two officials with the group. Reed’s firm, Century Strategies, is complying with the subpoena. Senate investigators are seeking four years’ worth of records detailing Century Strategies’ business dealings with Abramoff and GOP political consultant Michael Scanlon and entities under their control, said several sources familiar with the issue.

In this view, the world is a dangerous and difficult place, there is tangible evil in the world and children have to be made good. To stand up to evil, one must be morally strong – disciplined.

The father's job is to protect and support the family. His moral duty is to teach his children right from wrong. Physical discipline in childhood will develop the internal discipline adults need to be moral people and to succeed. The child's duty is to obey. Punishment is required to balance the moral books. If you do wrong, there must be a consequence.

The strict father, as moral authority, is responsible for controlling the women of the family, especially in matters of sexuality and reproduction.

Children are to become self-reliant through discipline and the pursuit of self-interest. Pursuit of self-interest is moral: If everybody pursues his own self-interest, the self-interest of all will be maximized.

Without competition, people would not have to develop discipline and so would not become moral beings. Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Those who are not successful should not be coddled; they should be forced to acquire self-discipline.

When this view is translated into politics, the government becomes the strict father whose job for the country is to support (maximize overall wealth) and protect (maximize military and political strength). The citizens are children of two kinds: the mature, disciplined, self-reliant ones who should not be meddled with and the whining, undisciplined, dependent ones who should never be coddled.

It is assumed that the world should be a nurturant place. The job of parents is to nurture their children and raise their children to be nurturers. To be a nurturer you have to be empathic and responsible (for yourself and others). Empathy and responsibility have many implications: Responsibility implies protection, competence, education, hard work and social connectedness; empathy requires freedom, fairness and honesty, two-way communication, a fulfilled life (unhappy, unfulfilled people are less likely to want others to be happy) and restitution rather than retribution to balance the moral books. Social responsibility requires cooperation and community building over competition. In the place of specific strict rules, there is a general "ethics of care" that says, "Help, don't harm." To be of good character is to be empathic and responsible, in all of the above ways. Empathy and responsibility are the central values, implying other values: freedom, protection, fairness, cooperation, open communication, competence, happiness, mutual respect and restitution as opposed to retribution.

In this view, the job of government is to care for, serve and protect the population (especially those who are helpless), to guarantee democracy (the equal sharing of political power), to promote the well-being of all and to ensure fairness for all.

Ron Insana: Mr. President, thanks for talking to us today upon your return from Columbia, S.C., still on the Social Security program, reform program down there. What's the reception among the people when you go out in the towns and talks to them about it?

President Bush: You know, good where I go, but the most important group of people look at it, kinda the people at large. Do they understand we have a problem? In other words, my strategy has been to say there is a problem and now I'm gonna go explain the problem to the American people, and the problem is pretty easy.

Insana: Now the Washington Post reported, though, that some of the working poor are afraid of making these investment choices in the personal savings accounts that you're offering, and that they would rather have the government just do what it's been doing for the last 70 years, and kind of take that burden away from them.

What do you tell them? How do you explain the program to them?

President Bush: Well, I would explain that if -- you know, personal accounts would be a voluntary plan. In other words, if a worker's nervous about managing his or her own money, and that's what we're talking about, his or her own money, in a conservative mix of bonds and stocks, if that makes somebody nervous, then just stay in the system, however it looks, after there's a permanent fix.

[Bush]The other thing I say to the person who expresses concern is that I think the government has an obligation to explain to the working person that he or she can earn a better rate of return on her money on a conservative mix of instruments as opposed to what the government has earned.

Insana: But let me ask you about that. Last week, the stock market suffered its worst week in two years.

President Bush: Yeah.

Insana: It's been five years since we hit the all-time highs for the Dow-Jones Industrial Average or the NASDAQ. Someone joked earlier that, you know, the bad news is the stock market's going down. The good news is that my Social Security money isn't in there. Is this the wrong time to be talking about putting Social Security money into the stock market?

President Bush: No. Listen, now's the right time to talk about permanently fixing Social Security because every year we wait it costs $600 billion more for the next generation. In other words, it's going to cost that much more money a year by -- if there's political delay.

Secondly, I mean, I think most people will tell you that if you hold money over a long term, the rate of return on a conservative mix of bonds and stocks clearly is greater than that which the government earns on your behalf.

And finally, there are ways to design plans that take risk out of a plan. In other words, you switch your mix of bonds and stocks to an instrument that allow, that will take care of any market swings toward the end of your retirement, and so there's a -- look, I mean, I cannot believe that people aren't willing, andaren't willing to say to a younger worker, if you so choose, if it's your desire, you should be allowed to manage some of your own money in a personal savings account, just like congressmen and senators get to do.

[Bush]And I think most people are wise to what it means to manage money. One of the things I said in my speech [Monday] is that we're dealing with a different culture now, Ron, than when you and I grew up.

I mean, a lotta young workers are used to 401(k)s or IRAs. They're used to managing their own money and it makes sense to make sure that the Social Security system allows the younger worker that option, so that the system is a better deal for younger workers.

Insana: Now let me ask you a little bit about the stock market, though, because it's had such a bad week. Is it causing you any worry, at all, with respect to what it means to the economy or, you know, what it means to your Social Security reform plan, for instance?

Well, I think the -- you know, the stock market is an indicator of people looking at value. I believe [in] this economy and I believe like most economists believe, that this economy is steady and strong. But people are constantly adjusting and I suspect some of the stock market has to do with the price of gasoline. You know, the price of crude oil tends to go up and the stock market tends to go down.

But, nevertheless, I think long term, the stock market is, will reflect the long-term strength of America.

[snip]

There's more to do. I mean, we need an energy bill. We need tort reform. I think we may get an asbestos reform piece of litig -- asbestos litigation reform.

Insana: ...Would you, for instance, trade the personal savings accounts if you were promised a permanent fix for Social Security solvency problems?

President Bush: Well, I think any plan has got to have -- give younger workers an option of investing some of their own money in, in personal savings accounts. First of all, it's not going to pass [inaudible] personal savings accounts; secondly, a plan with personal savings accounts would bring the Social Security system into the modern era.

Let me say something. Social Security worked for a long time. The problem is there's fewer people paying in the system now. And a lot of us are getting ready to retire, so we have to think about modernizing the system. I want Social Security to exist and continue to exist; I just want it to reflect the 21st century. And one important ingredient is to allow younger workers to take some of their own money, set it aside in a conservative mix of bonds and stocks.

Insana: Would you accept those personal savings accounts as add-ons, as some Democrats are suggesting, and then work through some of the solvency issues that we're also talking about?

President Bush: Well, first of all, there needs to be a permanent fix. You keep talking about solvency issues. I agree. I mean, look, personal accounts will make the system better for younger workers. The solvency issue needs to be addressed. And, and you've heard ideas as to how to address solvency. And the Democrats have put out ideas, Republicans have put out ideas. And my job is to keep the process moving forward.

One thing I'm not going to do on your show, in all due respect, is negotiate with myself.

Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.


There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

[snip]

More than 90 percent of the cadets identify themselves as Christian. A cadet survey in 2003 found that half had heard religious slurs and jokes, and that many non-Christians believed Christians get special treatment.

"There were people walking up to someone and basically they would get in a conversation and it would end with, `If you don't believe what I believe you are going to hell,'" Vice Commandant Col. Debra Gray said.

[snip]

"They are deliberately trivializing the problem so that we don't have another situation the magnitude of the sex assault scandal. It is inextricably intertwined in every aspect of the academy," said Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, N.M., a 1977 graduate who has sent two sons to the school. He said the younger, Curtis, has been called a "filthy Jew" many times.

[snip]

The official academy newspaper runs a Christmas ad every year praising Jesus and declaring him the only savior.

[snip]

Two of the nation's most influential evangelical Christian groups, Focus on the Family and New Life Church, are headquartered in nearby Colorado Springs. Tom Minnery, an official at Focus on the Family, disputed claims that evangelical Christians are pushing an agenda at the academy, and complained that "there is an anti-Christian bigotry developing" at the school.