Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has upped his already harsh rhetoric against outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claiming that she "got away with murder" in the Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. "I haven't forgotten about Benghazi. Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view," Graham said on Fox News Monday evening, speaking to Greta Van Susteren. "She said they had a clear-eyed view of the threats. How could you have a clear-eyed view of the threats in Benghazi when you didn't know about the ambassador's cable coming back from Libya?"

Labels: assholes, closet cases, double standards, hypocrisy, It's OK if You're a Republican

Even a man who thought that women want to have sex with their fathers, and that women spend much of their lives distraught over their lack of a penis, is right sometimes. This person, the legend that is Sigmund Freud, theorized that people often have the most hateful and negative attitudes towards things they secretly crave, but feel that they shouldn't have.

If Freud is right, then perhaps men who are the most opposed to male homosexuality have particularly strong homosexual urges for other men.

One study asked heterosexal men how comfortable and anxious they are around gay men. Based on these scores, they then divided these men into two groups: men that are homophobic, and men who are not. These men were then shown three, four-minute videos. One video depicted straight sex, one depicted lesbian sex and one depicted gay male sex. While this was happening, a device was attached to each participant's penis. This device has been found to be triggered by sexual arousal, but not other types of arousal (such as nervousness, or fear - arousal often has a very different meaning in psychology than in popular usage).

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

Heterosexual men with the most anti-gay attitudes, when asked, reported not being sexually aroused by gay male sex videos. But, their penises reported otherwise.

Homophobic men were the most sexually aroused by gay male sex acts.

Labels: belaboring the obvious, closet cases, homophobia

Labels: 2012 election, batshit crazies, Christofascist Zombie Brigade, closet cases, Republican clown car

Labels: closet cases, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

When trying to figure out where presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) gets her stringent, anti-gay views, you only have to look as far as her husband. Dr. Marcus Bachmann, who has described himself as his wife’s “strategist,” runs a Christian-based counseling center in Minnesota that has been rumored to offer reparative treatment for those looking to “ungay” themselves.

Just last summer, Dr. Bachmann explained his position on homosexuality while offering theoretical advice to parents concerned that one of their children was gay.

BACHMANN: We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps…

And let’s face it: what is our culture, what is our public education system doing today? They are giving full, wide-open doors to children, not only giving encouragement to think it but to encourage action steps. That’s why when we understand what truly is the percentage of homosexuals in this country, it is small. But by these open doors, I can see and we are experiencing, that it is starting to increase.

Labels: closet cases, Michele Bachmann

Since 1993, the Center for Military Readiness has been fighting to keep gay men and lesbians from infiltrating the United States military. So now that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been repealed, what's next for the group that fought so hard to prevent the open service of gay and lesbian members of the armed forces?

They have no big plans yet, Elaine Donnelly, founder and President of the Center for Military Readiness, told TPM in an interview Monday.

"I'm not prepared to say yet, it's too soon to say because the new Congress has not yet come in," Donnelly told me. "The options before the Congress have yet to be sorted out. One thing I will say -- CMR will continue to support the troops, and our mission has always been to advocate high standards on a variety of issues, and that will not change."

But she's not ready to give up on the DADT battle either.

[snip]

Showers are "huge issue," Donnelly said. "To pretend that throwing up a few shower curtains solves the problem is tantamount, again, to saying, well women should share close quarters with men, we'll throw up a few shower curtains and that will take care of it."

"I don't know about the gyms where you go or most people go, but the gyms that I've seen have a sign inside the door, and the door says inside the women's locker room 'no boys of any age are allowed.' Now there's a reason for that," Donnelley said. "It in no way is a negative reflection on anybody, it is just a sign of respect for modesty in sexual manners."

"Knowingly, you don't expose yourself to somebody who might be sexually attracted to you. Does it happen unknowingly? Sure," Donnelly said. "It's something that again, when you introduce an element of sexuality in an environment that previously did not have that, that is problematic. There will be consequences from that, because people are normal, they're humans, they're sensitive to that."

Labels: closet cases, gay rights

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter's questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."

Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush "was no homophobe." He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called "the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now."

Labels: assholes, chickenshit weasel Republicans, closet cases

Labels: closet cases, hypocrisy, Republican lies

Labels: bloggers, closet cases, humor

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

[snip]

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Where is the masculine Jesus of the Bible in the life of today’s church? The Jesus who threw down the tables of the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple with a whip? The Jesus who faced down and tamed the Gerasene demoniac? The Jesus who, to their faces, excoriated the cultural and political leaders of the day as a “brood of vipers ” and “whitewashed sepulchers full of dead men ‘ s bones?” This masculine Jesus has been ejected from the American church. In His place is a false and emasculated Christ, as submissive and fearful of controversy as the men who now lead His flock.

The church and this nation cry out for a revival of masculine Christianity, which is to say that we church leaders need to stop being such, for lack of a better word, sissies when it comes to social and political issues. We need to spend as much time confronting perpetrators as we do comforting victims. We need to do less fretting and more fighting for righteousness. For every motherly, feminine ministry of the church such as a Crisis Pregnancy Center or ex-gay support group, we need a battle-hardened, take-it-to-the-enemy masculine ministry like Operation Rescue (questions of civil disobedience aside). For every God-hating radical in government, academia and media we need a bold, no-nonsense, truth-telling Christian counterpart: trained, equipped and endorsed by the local church.

Labels: closet cases, gay rights, homophobia, just another outrage

Labels: closet cases, hypocrisy, Karl Rove

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

These people, who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan, have no idea if President Obama is committed to this effort. They have no idea if he is willing to stick by his decisions, explain the war to the American people and persevere through good times and bad.

Their first concerns are about Obama the man. They know he is intellectually sophisticated. They know he is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence.

But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

Baghdad's top government security official has announced the arrest of close to a dozen officers and around 50 members of Iraq's security forces for alleged involvement or negligence in Sunday's suicide bombings in the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi TV reported that Major General Qasim Atta, acting as a military spokesman for the Iraqi capital, announced the arrests of 11 officers and 50 members of the military and police for alleged responsibility or negligence in Sunday's attacks in Baghdad.

About 155 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded in the massive explosions that rocked the Iraqi capital, gutting two government ministries and blowing out windows across the entire center of the city.

The explosions, which killed dozens of children near the government-controlled Green Zone, provoked widespread outrage. Several opposition members of parliament called on top ministers to resign and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to testify to parliament about security lapses.

General Atta, who had spoken only recently of the improving security situation in Iraq, announced the crackdown to journalists. He said that both the military commander and the police chief of Baghdad's Salhiya district, site of Sunday's explosions, were under arrest, pending investigation.

Labels: Afghanistan, closet cases, clusterfuck, David Brooks, hack journalism

Here’s what I want to know: What is it going to take and how many women have to die from eating disorders until things like this Jessica Simpson cartoon and doctored Ralph Lauren ads end?

This is something obviously very close to my heart because I have been mocked for my weight as well. And I always hit back. My most infamous moment was telling Laura Ingraham to “kiss my fat ass” on The View a few months ago. But here is the reality—as my public profile has grown and people recognize me more and more, an unsettling anxiety has set in, something that has come as a surprise to me. Every time I am on television, give a talk, or have a picture taken, inevitably the weight comments follow. It’s a new part of my life and by far the most consistent. I have started speaking at colleges and was recently asked why the media is so obsessed with my weight. I didn’t have an answer but I did say that I could probably cure cancer and solve all the Republican Party’s problems, and people would still make fat jokes. I am strong and stay strong because I have to be. But I have seen too many of my friends suffer from eating disorders and have seen firsthand how it can quite literally ruin a young woman’s life.

[snip]

My weight is the great constant in my life, no matter where I am or what I am doing it is an issue that comes up. People approach me in public sometimes to talk about their own body-image issues and commiserate about the cruel treatment I receive. Whether or not the media wants to face this, I believe some women are less likely to speak out publicly about their political beliefs because they see the way I am talked about. Why would any woman want to speak out on television when the inevitable result will be a merciless critique of her physical appearance? God forbid she is larger than a size 4 or under 5 foot 10, because then the way she feels politically is irrelevant. I worry about the long-term damage this kind of weight obsession is doing. We are grooming a generation of women who are less likely to speak out about their beliefs because of the assault that comes on their physical appearance as a result.

Labels: closet cases, weight

Let me first say that Sgt Crowley is an obviously intelligent person who is very confident in front of the cameras and makes a strong impression in a press conference. He will go far if he chooses to pursue a career in public life. He is also an intimidating son of a gun, putting the reporters in their places with a steely look and a stern "hold on, let me finish" that was sort of startling.

But the dizzy, gushy adulation on the part of the gasbags is so over the top I'm feeling embarrassed in that "oh no, I walked in on my grandfather watching a porno" kind of way. Dear God.

Lou Dobbs is drooling and smirking, Chris Matthews is (without success) trying to keep that thrill up his leg under control and Roger Simon literally squealed in delight the second the press conference was over. This is the most manly, macho, guys guy they've had the pleasure to pleasure since Junior Bush insulted reporters on a daily basis, and you can tell they've been missing it big time.

I think it's pretty clear that if Obama wants to get the press back on his side he needs to start pushing them around. These boys just love a man who hurts so good.

Labels: bloggers, Chris Matthews, closet cases

GIBSON: Our John Gibson program fraud alert today focuses on the biggest fraud running for president, and that takes some doing. We're talking about the Breck Girl, Silky, the former senator from North Carolina, the baron of a 28,000-square-foot manse, the protector of the poor while ensconced on a pillow of 100 million dollars.

ANGRY RICH: A man who whored his wife's cancer as a fundraising gimmick.

GIBSON: John Edwards today was going after other Democratic candidates, and by other he meant Hillary Clinton, for taking money as political contributions from Rupert Murdoch or from certain employees or executives of either the Fox News Channel or News Corporation, which owns the Fox News Channel. Edwards has a real kind of problem about Fox. He just -- well, actually he doesn't have a problem about Fox. He realizes there are a whole bunch of really far-lefters who hate Fox and he's busy sucking up to them.

[snip]

GIBSON: -- bull, bull, bull. I mean, first of all, he won't come on Fox.

ANGRY RICH: Because he's a pansy.

Labels: assholes, closet cases, conservatives