Home stretch?

Look, I'm a sports fan.  Ain't nothing over til it's over.  You don't do things like buy a plane ticket to Indy for Super Bowl weekend and get a hotel on the Circle so you can celebrate with your people when your team wins because your team might not win.  (Yes, that game - and Reggie Wayne phoning it in on that awful, awful pick late in the 4th, and that inexplicable drop by Garcon in the 1st half - that's all on me.)

Ain't no one at BLC sayin' anything is over.  There are the debates.  There are many, many millionaires out there who have become millionaires by having deregulated industries, dirty air, and no tax burden to speak of who are giddily taking advantage of the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision and who are spending whatever the heck they want to drive down the President's numbers.  There is the Middle East. 

But trends are heading in the right direction.  Despite the deeply racist nature of the American electorate (more on that later), a sluggish economy and foreign policy being, uh, interesting, trends are headed in the right direction.  Mr. Romney seems to be short on cash (say it with me "Awwww..."), Mr. Obama seems to be doing okay in that regard, and it's looking like, with the modelling I've seen and played with and done myself (and in my context "modelling" means playing with interactive election maps, just to be clear), if - IF - the election were held today, then the President would win from 247 Electoral Votes if everything breaks against him to 347 Electoral Votes if everything breaks his way.   (You don't really need me to tell you the battleground states.  Early on election night look for how quickly they call Indiana, and how big the margin is in New Hampshire.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Whether we do or we don't re-elect the black guy (and again, I'm not saying we will, I'm just saying that things are trending in the right direction), here are some other races and issues to watch.

1. The queers are here, finally? In 2004, GOP'ers put gay marriage on a number of state ballots in swing states to help deliver the vote to President Bush, the thinking being that anti-gay animus would get those most likely to be the President's supporters (Evangelical Christian white voters) off their couches and into the polling booths.  Well... this time, it's looking like, in three of the four states with gay marriage on the ballot statewide - Maryland, Maine, and Washington, but not Minnesota - that the gay marriage issue is driving Democratic and younger turnout.  Let's be clear - there might still be some Bradley effect going on with voters telling pollsters what they think is the socially acceptable response and thinking that they will get in the voting booth and prevent the damn queers from getting their nuptials - but the numbers look good.  To this point in our history on state wide ballots, gay marriage is a 1993-Colts-esque 0-32 loser.  No statewide electorate has ever chosen to affirm that separate isn't equal in favor of their gay and lesbian neighbors.  So it ain't over by any stretch.  But - in a great, thoughtful, analytical piece (like the kind you read and think "wish I could do that" and then you think "hold on, wish I could get paid to do that") by Harry Enten in the Guardian, here - things are looking good.

2.  The Senate just might stay blue - for this Congress, anyway.  Six months ago it was looking grim for the home team, but thanks to, well, incompetence, Romney's hoof-in-mouth disease, Missouri's challenger showing that he was from the 17th Century (though that race is distressingly competitive right now), and generally good economic news, it's looking like the Democrats will hold on to their majority, which is surprising considering that 23 of the 33 seats being contested are currently Democratic (we'll worry about 2014 later...).  The seven Senate races that are going to be most competitive are Massachusetts and Nevada (GOP held by incumbents Scott Brown and Dean Heller, respectively), and those held by Democratic incumbents in Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Montana (Jon Tester), Florida (Bill Nelson), Virginia (for the retiring Jim Webb), Wisconsin (for the retiring Herb Kohl) - and let's add Connecticut (surprisingly competitive, for the retiring Joe Lieberman). According to Richard Dunham in the Houston Chronicle blog here, Romney's drop in Virginia is helping Tim Kaine, the Democratic former governor, pull ahead.  Best case scenario for the Democrats?  The wheels really fall off the Romney Range Rover and candidates in striking distance but stuck behind in the polls in Nebraska and Indiana eke out a win.  For the Republicans, pickups that seemed safe in the summer - North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana - come through and they win control of the Senate.

3. Despite Rep. Pelosi's assertions to the contrary, the Dems do not win control of the House this election.  Roll Call lists 27 competitive races - watch NH-2 to see if the Democratic challenger, Ann McLane Custer, can unseat GOP incumbent Charlie Bass, and that will come in relatively early in the night.  Also, Indiana 2, where departing Democrat Joe Donnelly is running for Senate, is "Likely Republican" at this point but polls close early in Indiana and we if this one is tight that may be a good sign for Democrats nationally.  (If West Point alumnus Brendan Mullen gets the upset here over former Indiana House member Jackie Walorski, it could be a long night for the GOP.)  Of the 27 contested seats, 10 are in the Eastern Time Zone, so we'll know a lot pretty early this year.

4. If you wanted to make a donation to an election beyond that of our president, may I recommend a few (click on the link to be taken to the campaign page):

1. Tammy Baldwin for Senate in Wisconsin vs former Governor Tommy Thompson.  Tammy is an out and proud lesbian from Madison who is the hardest working woman in Washington and who will finally give Wisconsin the representation they deserve after Herb Kohl (D-WI)'s lackluster years of service. 
2. Mazie Hirono for Senate in Hawai`i vs. former GOP Governor Linda Lingle.  I gotta be honest, I don't love me some Mazie.  She's not a great candidate, she's not an intellectual power, but she's steady and reliable and she's likely to be a good Democratic vote for the next 20 years in the US Senate.  Voters in Hawai`i do not throw out incumbents.  She will be Hawai`i's Herb Kohl, but better that than voting in Hawai`i's Olympia Snowe and giving the GOP another Senate vote. 
3. Claire McCaskill for Senate vs. GOP State Representative Todd Akin.  Because no one should serve in the US Senate who uses the term "Legitimate Rape." 
4. Minnesotans for all Families, the group leading the way against the proposed ban of same sex marriage in that state and who are running ads like this featuring former Governor Jesse "the Body" Ventura and like this featuring "John and Kim. Catholics. Republicans." And because this is looking like the closest of the gay marriage votes.  And because Vikings Punter Chris Kluwe is freakin' awesome. 
5. Feel like a longshot?  Take a flier on unseating Jon Kyl (R-AZ) by donating to Richard Carmona's campaign; or keep another another Tea Party nutbar out of the Senate (because if Rand Paul isn't the worst thing to happen to that August body since they approved Clarence Thomas to the Court than I'll move to OH-8 and run against Boehner next time) and give a little to Joe Donnelly's campaign for Senate in his race against Mourdock.  (And I've never linked to the Kokomo newspaper before - red letter day for BLC.)

All for now.  Lots could change.  Six weeks until the election - register if you haven't and vote like you mean it!
.
 

One of "those people"

First, two quotes:

All right, there are 47 percent who are with (the President), who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. ... My job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
Governor Mitt Romney, GOP Candidate for President of the United States

And in response:

When you express an attitude that half the country considers itself victims, that somehow they want to be dependent on government, my thinking is, maybe you haven’t gotten around a lot.
President Obama

I have to agree with the President's assessment here. This week I did get around a lot, on the train in Los Angeles.  I saw a lot of people on the Blue Line and Green Line in LA and Long Beach and Compton and Willowbrook, including some LA County communities where likely (based on US Census data) more than "47%" do not pay Federal Income tax and certainly far more than 47% are "with the President" (as evidenced by the mural on Compton City Hall, right, found here).  And I saw a lot of people who sure looked like they were taking great personal responsibility and care for their lives. 

Including, from when I boarded at 5:50 AM:

1. African American male, mid twenties, bright orange vest, back weight belt open at the front, work gloves
2. African American female, pharmacy tech student, holder of two part time jobs (I know this because we talked a little.  She told me how to save 50 cents on the bus/ train fare combination)
3. Latino male, 50's; wheeled his bike into the corner and promptly fell asleep with his head on his cooler
4. Asian American male, over 60, sitting across from me, poring over a textbook
5. Cambodian woman (I recognized the script in the flyer in her hands that she started to read), mid 70's, walking with a pronounced roll to her gait
6. (It's now just after 6 AM) Outside the train, three 20-something Latino males squatting in a semi-circle near the carwash, waiting for it to open so they could go to work
7. The 50'ish African American woman walking in her maid uniform into the Long Beach Best Western on Long Beach Boulevard
8. Outside the train, the young Latino man with a tool box standing near a locked metal gate just north of the Iglesia Evangelica Rosa de Sharona (spelling? The Blue Line moves fast and they're not on the web)
9. The junior high and high school students of every shade in their uniforms, carrying their art projects, with their creatively gelled and coiffed hair
10. The parents walking with their children on the way to school

Unlike my usual head-down-headphones-in approach to mass transit, I really observed my fellow passengers yesterday and today. I cannot know what's going on in their lives without asking them, of course, and I didn't conduct rolling interviews during the morning commute.  But the demographics of the neighborhoods we rolled through are knowable. And what I saw were many, many people who struck me as incredibly hard working - people who work harder than I have ever worked my whole life with very brief exceptions. I would posit that they have worked a hell of a lot harder than Mr. Romney over the last twelve years, though that's not provable.  I would argue that they are taking great "personal responsibility and care" for their lives, though that is not provable. 

What is provable is that many, many working folks - including, inevitably, some of those around me - pay MORE in taxes than Mr. Romney. 

Ezra Klein in the Washington Post does the math. 

Among the Americans who paid no federal income taxes in 2011, 61 percent paid payroll taxes — which means they have jobs and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid.

It's outrageous that Mr. Romney riffs off of the odious (but "Christian") Governor Perry (R-TX) who talks of a making class and a taking class when Romney himself is contributing less to the common good through his taxes than someone in that train car with me whom he is vilifying for "not paying Federal Income Tax." 

And what's more, if you look at who the "takers" are and how they vote, Mr. Romney will carry the "taker states."  As pointed out by Dylan Matthews in the Washington Post, here, "All told, Obama gets 50 electoral votes from the 'maker' states to Romney’s 9 — 17 are tossups — while Romney gets 96 electoral votes from the 'taker' states to Obama’s 5, with 29 as tossups."

Mr. Romney told a group of millionaires that he'll never be able to convince the 61% of the working poor, among others, that "They should take personal responsibility for their lives."  I'm sure they'd love to hear about it - maybe just after they get up in the 4:00's to get their kids ready for a before-school program and before they go work two jobs, they'd love to hear Mr. Romney talk about personal responsibility. Even though he pays less in taxes than they do, I'm sure they'd love to hear how they are "takers". 

Except Mr. Romney told the same group of millionaires that "my job is not to worry about those people." 

Perhaps Mr. Romney would like to read some of what's written on all of that money he's squirreled away in the Caymans - you know, the part where it reads "E Pluribus Unum." 

How dare he?  How can he get away with such dismissive, corrosive posturing?  How can he so brazenly lie about who contributes to the wealth in this country?   

I have some ideas, but that's for another post.
.
 

Cairo, Benghazi, lies and disgrace

In addition to the tragic loss of our ambassador in Libya, J. Christopher Stevens - who has been remembered as a good man and a great representative of the United States to the Libyan people and one who led a life of service to his country - and three other Americans who served with him in Benghazi, there was another tragic loss this week: the truth. 

That has seemed to happen a lot in this presidential campaign cycle.  It happens in every cycle, but they seem particularly egregious in this one, with Representative Ryan leading the way. 

Surrounding the events in the Mideast this week there were some shocking missteps and some decidedly un-presidential statements.  Here are the facts, as I understand them - and as inconvenient as they are. 

1. Someone made a very amateurish (think high school - fake beards and all) film that bashes Islam. We don't yet know who made it, but the LA Times is leading the investigation. From their article in this morning's print edition:

A man who identified himself as an Israeli American filmmaker claimed in telephone calls to news outlets Tuesday that he made the movie with backing from wealthy Jewish donors, but there were indications Wednesday that the name and story he gave were false and that the movie was tied to a group of Middle Eastern Christians who live in the U.S. and hold extreme anti-Islamic views.

Okay, a couple of things.  If true, that is disturbing - a Christian person or group posing as Jews to provoke and inflame Muslim sentiment even more than if they acted on their own behalf (though Christians blaming Jews for things for which they aren't responsible isn't exactly new [remember the Bubonic Plague?]).  Also, actors and crew members involved in making the movie were lied to - they were told it was a film called "Desert Warrior," and after a week of shooting was wrapped whole stretches of it were re-dubbed to give it its inflammatory narrative.  
*Update - 13-Sep-2012, 19:45 PT: " Christian Charity, ex-convict linked to film ".

2. Eventually a fourteen minute trailer was made of this dreck, translated into Arabic and uploaded onto YouTube. 

3. The trailer slowly gets disseminated, word spreads, tensions rise.  In what he surely must have known was a vain attempt to diffuse the tension that was growing on the streets of Cairo, Senior Public Affairs Officer Larry Schwartz in the US Embassy drafted a statement, got local approval from a supervisor in Cairo to release it and then sent it to DC for final approval.  That approval was explicitly denied.  Schwartz "...ignored explicit State Department instructions not to issue the statement," according to Josh Rogan in a must read article on this affair in Foreign Policy, and yet Schwartz released it anyway early Tuesday (06:16 ET / 12:18 Cairo local time). It read in part:

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions."

Officials in the US State Department in DC immediately - and Secretary Clinton and President Obama subsequently - strenuously disavowed the statement for, among other things, not carrying a full throated defense of freedom of speech and denunciation of violence. 

4. As the day passed, people in Cairo and the rest of the Arab world grew more agitated by this "film" and its offensive stereotyping of their religion and its founding prophet. Many were inspired to - or used this as cover to - riot in the streets and burn American flags.  (To be clear, I am a free speech absolutist, and have written about this before on BLC, here. Religious extremism is always disgusting, and violence incited by "blasphemy" is simply baffling.  Never excusable or warranted.)

5. Throughout the afternoon the Cairo embassy re-releases part of its statement on its Twitter feed.

6. Late in the evening the US Embassy in Benghazi is attacked, and overnight and into the early morning four people are killed. 

7. It's now 20:00 ET / 02:00 Cairo local time, and Governor Romney's camp learns about the attach in Benghazi and about the first casualties in Libya.  There is no word yet as to who the casualties are, or what exactly has happened as the situation is still unfolding. At that moment, the US Embassy in Benghazi was still under attack. Governor Romney's advisers press him to make a statement - while the US Embassy in Benghazi was still under attack. Top Policy Advisor Mr. Lanhee Chen released a statement - while the US Embassy was still under attack - saying "It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks" in response to the Cairo embassy statement.

You know what's disgraceful? It's disgraceful that while people who have dedicated their lives in service to our nation were under attack Governor Romney elected to politicize it. 

If you've been paying attention here, you'll note that a.) the statement issued by the Cairo embassy PRECEDED the attack on both the embassy in Benghazi that resulted in American casualties and the  attack on the Cairo embassy itself, so calling it "the Obama Administration's first response is factually wrong, and b.) that the Cairo statement was NOT approved of by the administration and was in fact denied approval by supervisors in Washington, so again, factually wrong. 

Or again from Foreign Affairs:

Romney has said, wrongly, that the statement was the administration's first response to the protests, but the official said that the demonstrations did not begin until 4 p.m. Cairo time and protesters breached the wall about 2 hours later. 

How did this happen?  According Greg Sargent in a Washington Post piece, here, Mr Romney's senior advisor, Mr. Chen, said: "We've had this consistent critique and narrative on Obama's foreign policy, and we felt this was a situation that met our critique."

Never mind that our sovereignty was under attack or that Americans were being killed, this fits our narrative and therefore we should make political hay.  Never mind that we don't know all the facts.  Never mind that the "consistent critique and narrative" of President Obama as an apologist gets "Four Pinnochios" for being factually incorrect to start with - the Romney campaign will do anything to score political points regardless of the dictates of the national interest, regardless of facts, regardless of common human decency. 

When the facts became apparent later, what did Mr. Romney do?  Did he walk back his statement, or apologize?  No.  He repeated the statement and lied some more. 

That a presidential challenger should inject himself into an unfolding international crisis in which Americans are underfire is unprecedented.  As pointed out in an article in the Atlantic online, Ronald Reagan showed sober restraint in 1980 when the mission directed by President Carter to free our hostages in Iran failed, saying: "This is the time for us as a nation and a people to stand united." Compare that to:

I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.

(Full statement here.) That is Mr Romney speaking the morning AFTER, when the facts of the timeline outlined above was more or less known.  He repeated the lie, and went further.

Disgusting.  Deceitful.  Designed to reinforce the "Big Lie" - President Obama apologizes for America - and repeat it over and over and over, so that people who want to believe it will believe it.
It's also un-American to use a national loss to try and score political points.

Mr. Chen asserted that Mr. Obama has had a "feckless" foreign policy.  Mr. Romney's campaign released a false statement saying that Mr. Obama's "first response" was "disgraceful". 

There are disgraceful acts and words in this episode, but they are not Mr. Obama's. 
. 

So Who's Next?

It's election and campaign season (though season isn't really accurate, anymore, is it, for a Bataan Death March-like two years of campaigning) and I've said nothing about the race.  I've been thinking about it, though, and I read something today that got me thinking even more: "Clinton's 1992 victory in Illinois [was] the first time that a Democratic Presidential nominee had won the state since 1964."

Wait, was that possible?  Could it really be that reliably blue Illinois was once reliably (or at least regularly) red?  I read it in the New Yorker, one of the most rigorously fact-checked publications going today, so I knew it was true, and my own curiosity was sated at www.270towin.com.

Bush (père) - '88; Reagan - '80 and '84; Ford - '76; Nixon - '68 and '72. 

Since President Clinton won the Land of Lincoln in 1992, no Democratic nominee has failed to carry it: Clinton again in 1996; Gore - 2000; Kerry - 2004; President Obama in 2008.  I remember as a kid that "Big Jim" Thompson was the unassailably popular Republican governor of Illinois for four terms and Illinois still occasionally sends GOPers to the Senate (though, really, Mark Kirk should thank Rod Blagojevich for so badly bungling the appointment to President Obama's seat that he was able to win it in 2010.  My money is on him either retiring or being defeated in 2016), but Illinois is a reliably Democratic haul of 20 Electoral Votes.

Which all got me thinking.  Who's next?  Which state, if any, went Republican in six or more consecutive presidential elections that is likely to become reliably Democratic? 

After the devastating Supreme Court election of 2000, when Vice President Gore "lost" to President Bush (fils), I stared at the electoral results and realized that Democrats had to change the map. They could not rely on the west coast, upper midwest, and northeast and hope to get one other state to cobble together 270 - if they tried that, they would be outspent by the GOP in their base states as the Republicans would need to peel off only one - Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Mexico - to win.  If the Democrats had to spend money to defend Minnesota's 10 Electoral Votes, for example, there would be no way for them to win a general election.  They had to put other states in play so that the Republicans had to play defense somewhere else - anywhere else! - so the Republicans did not bank on winning all but 15 or so states.  Republicans looked at the Traitor States - really they looked at everything between DC and California, including all of the Great Plains and Mountain states, and they knew they didn't have to spend money in ANY of it except Florida. 

How do you change that?

It reminds me of Peyton Manning talking about coming to the Colts, and saying that "players look at the schedule at the start of the season, and players on other teams would see Indy on there and think 'Well, that's a win.'  We had to change that culture and be competitive."  That's what the Dems had to do, and what Howard Dean recognized that when he implemented his "50 State Strategy" - the much maligned but foresighted plan to make the Democrats competitive again.

My argument for voting for then Senator Obama over then Senator Clinton was that Obama could change the map - he could bring states into play that Senator Clinton was, in my estimation, too polarizing to win. I thought Obama was a transformative candidate; at the time I was thinking particularly of Missouri (which President Obama lost by 0.4%), Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Virginia and if things went right, Georgia. 

I was dead wrong about Georgia - even with the growth of the Hispanic vote there, it's difficult to see it flipping to a Democratic candidate in the near future. 

I have since argued in this space that Arizona was a likely candidate even though it has only gone Democratic once since 1948 - when Clinton carried it in 1996 (thank you H Ross Perot) - but that is probably one election away from being really competitive and Governor Romney can count on those 11 Electoral Votes. (I still think in 2016 it will be interesting, especially if the GOP continues its immigrant bashing.)

For a state that could make the kind of permanent flip from the GOP to the Democrats similar to Illinois, I think the best candidate is Virginia. Before President Obama carried it in 2008, Virginia had voted Republican in the previous ten elections, even resisting the charms of Democratic fellow southerners President Clinton and President Carter. Virginia had last voted for a Democrat in President Johnson's landslide in 1964 until they chose the black guy in 2008. 

So what's changed?  Take a look at the Census Data: the counties that have population loss are in the most Republican in the state, and those experiencing growth are the most Democratic.  What's intersting is who is moving to those growing counties, and it's not old, high school educated white folks, the GOPs most reliable demographic.  It's college educated white folks, who together with a more diverse electorate that includes 630,000 Hispanics and a million and half blacks who are reliably Democratic (even more so for President Obama, of course - in this election, Governor Romney is polling at 0% among African American likely voters.  Really.), well, Virginia is looking like it could be in play for a while, and perhaps even premanently break the GOPs hold on the former Traitor States that Nixon created with his racist Southern Strategy - at last.

If that happens, that could be a huge legacy that Obama leaves to his party (not the only one, of course, but we're talking electoral politics here).  If the GOP can no longer assume that they have those 13 electoral votes then, worst case scenario, they have to spend some of the Koch brothers' money there; best case, Democrats are far more likely to be able to build a combination that gets them to 270.

Virginia isn't the only one.  I'm keeping an eye on Colorado and Montana, too. 

.
 

Liberty

One July morning in 1987, I was seated at a kitchen table in Niedersachsen, Germany, listening to rapid Plattdeutsch.

I was used to not understanding speech in the house, or only snippets, as I was staying with a German host family and my one summer of German was wholly inadequate to the task, but there was something urgent being discussed.

"Hast du diene backpack?" I was asked.

"Ja, eine moment bitte," and I got it.

My very kind host father with the ready smile went into his office and emerged with four plain white envelopes, his smile strained. His wife eased from my bulging bag the lunch they had packed me, took out the hard boiled eggs she had kindly prepared for me that morning, unwrapped them from the morning's newspaper, and handed them to her husband who re-wrapped them in the plain white envelopes.

They saw me looking at them, and in response to what must have been a quizzical expression Frau H. said simply. "Morgenzeitung (morning paper). You go Berlin. Verboten." And she shook her head.

I was stunned. I was leaving that day for Berlin, the first stop on my solo, eight day train trek, and I of course had to go through East Germany to get there. I would see East German soldiers. I would be in a communist country. There was no freedom of the press, and thus the morning Oldenburg newspaper was contraband. I sat up and started to pay closer attention, and to think about what I was doing - what had been a lark was now serious; what I had learned about totalitarianism through books and news media an ocean away I was now going to see through the glass of a train window, up close and personal.

My host father had business in Hanover that day, or so he said - I suspect it was drummed up so he could point me in the right direction and make sure my ticket was all sorted - and he rode with me and we spoke, as much as we could, about politics and weather and crops and history, and I was very glad for his company. My mind was reeling, though, and I wasn't real focused. What else was contraband? I was a very religious adolescent but I didn't carry a Bible or prayer book or even a rosary, so I was okay there. My journal? I wrote a ton, and scribbling in English could be anything to an East German guard. What about cash? I had deutschmark and dollars, but barely enough for my own purposes, not enough to foment revolution. But how much was too much?

I bid "tschuss" to Herr H. in Hanover and boarded my train east. I saw on the timetable that this particular train started in Paris and ended in Warsaw, which I felt bound it, and me, to history. Just east of Braunschweig we slowed to a crawl as we crossed the border into East Germany through barbed wire, yards of precisely groomed sand and open space, and square towers three stories tall with 360' of reflective glass on top. (When years later I read about a panopticon, I recalled those towers.)

I stared so hard my eyes hurt for the next few hours, watching the grey countryside, the unknown car makes, the small fields, the belching industrial megaliths and the occasional pock-marked building - pock marked by gunfire from WWII 42 years earlier, I realized with a shock - roll by. I looked in particular for people but saw very few, and certainly none very close to the tracks. In Magdeburg, East German soldiers boarded the stopped train and three went to each compartment, checking passports, while others stood at arms, backs to the train, coiled muscle and nerve.

I had my new passport at the ready, and after what seemed like 10 minutes of staring at my one entrance stamp, the soldier handed it back to me, unsmiling, and moved to the next car. No one searched my bag. I wasn't going to be pulled off the train and into a small room and asked questions. But everything radiated control, and a lack of liberty, of movement, of behavior, of speech.

There is a difference between knowing that not everyone in the world could get in a car and drive across a continent, and seeing the barbed wire and minefields and guard towers to prevent them from trying. Between knowing that not everyone could read whatever the hell they wanted, and wrapping hard boiled eggs in envelopes instead of newsprint so as not to appear to be smuggling illicit media. Between knowing that not everyone could board a passenger train that stopped in their city, and seeing, ten feet away out of a train window, soldiers with guns drawn who had orders to shoot them if they tried.

It was a lesson in liberty; the liberties that I had - liberties I scarcely understood and had taken completely for granted, at 18 - and those that others, even in Europe, did not.

When I got to West Berlin I checked in to my hostel and immediately went to the Wall. It ran through neighborhoods and was copiously graffitied, colorful, ugly, and omnipresent like a whine in your ear that you can't quite shut out: less or more intrusive, but always there. I developed an entirely unoriginal theory during my two days in Berlin: Berliners were all a little bit mad. More than anyone else in the world in those Cold War days, they lived in the mouth of a gun; their tomorrow might never come, so why not eat, drink and be merry?

I watched West Berliners in the parks and neighborhoods that abut the Wall ignore it, uniformly, and literally turn their backs to it. When I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie, I walked from a color film into one that was black and white. Buildings were pocked by Nazi and Soviet bullets from 45 years earlier and nothing was new or colorful. After the anarchy and madness and vibrancy of West Berlin, it was disorienting. I walked miles around the city, getting as close to the wall as I could in residential neighborhoods, and here in the East it was just ugly: monochromatic, menacing, ugly. I saw it for what it was - not as a symbol of the Cold War, not as metaphor, but as an instrument of state power, and state control. If I ran towards it, I could get arrested. If I tried to climb it, I would get shot.

The grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate, with its fascistic fronting lines and spaces, the better through which to see, with its adorning statue's back to Bonn, Europe, and the West, and face to the east, to Poland and Moscow.

Two years after that trip, when the Berlin Wall fell and totalitarian regimes across Eastern Europe collapsed, and I saw people my age dancing on the ruins of it, I knew I was witnessing history. I couldn't get enough of the shots on the news: East Berlin, and then Prague and Warsaw and Budapest and Bratislava and Sofia and Bucharest, became free. Totalitarian regimes collapsed. Fascism, under whatever name it took, was faltering. Millions of people across Eastern Europe could read whatever the hell they wanted, and go where they wanted. If people in Magdeburg now wanted to board a train, they would no longer be shot.

Many people have been making comparisons this week between Cairo, 2011, and Berlin, 1989; or speculating how far the comparisons should go. I was reminded of seeing what liberty was and wasn't. How what a state said - East Berlin was capital of the Deutsche Democratische Republik, after all - and what it did could be so blatantly at odds. How the will of the governed could be subverted by force, overt and opaque.

Watching the events in Tunis and Cairo come to their joyous conclusions, I was thrilled again. I have no ties to Egypt like I had to a sundered Germany, no ethnic bonds or study, and the tyranny under which Egyptians lived was perhaps not the same as that of the East Germans in 1987, but the truth of the matter speaks in eloquence beyond words. I was deeply moved as courageous people came together in Tahrir Square and demanded their liberty. There are not too many times in human history when the world has seen such a thing, and I've seen it twice now.

It's a long road ahead for the Egyptians and Tunisians and Iranians and Bahrainis (and, and, and...) And while the Belarussians might have some thoughts on that, so do the Poles, and the Latvians, and the Czechs. More liberty is better, more people living under more liberty is better.
I am proud to have been reminded of the freedoms I have by the people in Cairo. I'd love to learn the lesson again from Tripoli or Tehran.
.

Dateline, Tokyo - THAT didn't last long

Japan's new coalition government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan ("DPJ"), is struggling, and before this summer's elections to the upper house of the Diet, Mr. Yukio Hatoyama has fallen on his sword, figuratively, and tendered his resignation. (Interestingly, he has also tendered the resignation of the DPJ's #2, Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, who was embroiled in a fundraising scandal.)

I felt that the DPJ's win was healthy for Japan as it provided a break from the decades-long rule of the Liberal Democratic Party ("LDP"). It was a chance for Japan to break out of the doldrums of its "lost decade" of recession, stagnation, deflation - c'mon, you remember it, stagflation - and also to move beyond the cronyism of LDP party leadership and the countryside's hold on domestic politics.

I still think those things, but the future for the DPJ led coalition looks grim? Why? Because the Prime Minister of Japan had made a campaign promise to move the U.S. Marine base out of Okinawa, and he found, once in office, that he couldn't do it. President Obama said that we were going to keep the base there, and the conversation ended. Public opinion, teetering anyway due to the scandals of Mr. Ozawa, turned, a coalition partner bolted, and Mr. Hatoyama had to do the honorable thing and resign.

American military requirements and priorities helped to cashier an elected Prime Minister of a close and long-standing ally.

There's more to it than that - the finance scandals didn't help, and many Japanese didn't want the base moved, and with its departure, a more equal relationship between Japan and the United States - but there is no question that his inability to get the deal done was the crux.

Probably, North Korea sinking a South Korean ship reawakened Japanese fears of living in an unstable neighborhood; and it certainly didn't help Mr. Hatoyama's efforts to wean the Japanese off American military support. Leftists were outraged by the backtrack, the Social Democrats walked out of his coalition, and those on the right never wanted the base to be moved in the first place. His coaltion's approval ratings went from 70% down to the high teens, and Mr. Hatoyama was left isolated and without support. He had no choice.

This is a win for South Korea, who hosts a large US contingent on its soil but will be reassured by the close proximity of the Futenma base to the Korean peninsula (other proposals included Guam, which would be an additional three hours away), and therefore this is a loss for North Korea. China also likely sees this as a loss, since Mr. Hatoyama had pledged to strengthen Japan's ties with its Asian neighbors (a/k/a "China").

Domestically, it remains to be seen if the DPJ can right itself and recover enough political goodwill to lead the nation through some difficult choices, including tax increases, decreases in spending, and currency negotiations with the Chinese.

The world's second largest economy, the United States' close ally, and Asia's most stable and developed democracy is going to have it's fourth Prime Minister in four years. And President Obama doesn't have to worry about domestic political fallout from losing a base lease in a sensitive region; we get to keep our base on Okinawa.

We are still an Imperial power even though the man wielding that power on our behalf isn't as mendacious as callow as the last one.

.

Stories in the news

I tried - diligently - to find some good news stories this week, but there's more crappy news than in a whole Billy Joel song. These stories prolly won't help if you're in a news-funk, but here are some things less covered this past week:

1. On the topic of the Closet, a forcefully written piece saying some of the things I was trying to get across in my post yesterday. Worth a read.

David Laws: Yet again, hiding in the closet proves a politician's undoing
It is hardly credible that in 2010, after all the progress that has been made, the gay liberation message still needs to be heard

(Graham McKerrow guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 May 2010 16.30 BST; full article here.)

2. And I can't believe that asshole McCain has threatened to filibuster the Senate to prevent a vote on Don't Ask, Don't Tell - in essence, demanding that our brave women and men who serve stay in the closet. It's disgusting, ands it's directly counter to his previous views. But he's lost all integrity in trying to win his GOP primary. By tacking so far to the right, will he be vulnerable to an energized push by the Democratic party in Arizona to vote him out? It'll be one race to watch in September and October.

3. The Green Party Australia has seen a surge in support, basically because voters on the left are fed up with Labor, according to the Australian. It's still only on 16%, but it's up 4% over the past month. Full story here.

4. According to a poll published in L’Actualité (mérci encore, Celeste!), Americans are among the most sceptical in the world when it comes to believing the science that human inputs are responsible for climate change. In the US, 59% don't believe it; Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the North Americans who come closest at 52%. I'm afraid the inference is clear: we're a nation of Prairie Provinces. Full results here (in French; scroll down for the full table).

5. In political news from Hawai'i, Ed Case has dropped out of the race for the HI-1 Congressional seat. Why is this noteworthy? A Republican, Charles Djou, won the seat held for the previous ten terms by Neil Abercrombie, a staunch old lefty who surrendered the seat to run for governor. It's Barack Obama's home district - well, of course, his home district outside of Kenya. The Dem vote was split in the special election by two strong candidates, and Djou won. It's fundamentally a liberal Democratic seat and Case dropping out gives Colleen Hanabusa, the remaining Democrat candidate, a great chance to win it back. It'll be another one to watch in November.

6. I can't say anything about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. What can be said? It's disgusting, disheartening and demoralizing. Longer post later. Let me just close with this:

BP's Safety record isn't great, have you heard? According to a story by ABC news and others,

According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)... OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation.

But that's okay - corporations are people, too, and have a constitutional right to spend as much as they want to support their candidates in elections. Just ask the 5/4ths of the Supreme Court.

And that's all I got. Here's to a better June.

Just come out, already (UK version)

The Liberal Democrat Chief Treasury secretary, David Laws, has resigned in the first scandal to buffet the UK's new coalition government.

Laws was meant to be the "hatchet man" of the coalition, cutting huge swaths of government spending. The Conservatives trusted him to do it, and the Lib Dems trusted him to do it as humanely and reasonably as possible. Some on both sides are saying that he's irreplaceable, and that this strikes a deep blow to the coalition.

What did he do that was so wrong?

From the Guardian story:

Laws, a former banker, felt obliged to quit on Saturday after it was revealed he claimed £40,000 in rent expenses from the Commons authorities to cohabit in a property owned by his secret partner, James Lundie. He is understood to have considered quitting as an MP as well.

That's a lot, forty thousand quid, and it sounds bad. BUT - had he come out and said that Mr. Lundie was his partner and/ or taken the mortgage out jointly, he'd've been entitled to MORE. It was £40,000 (~US$60,000) over eight years, or about £750 (US$1100)/ month.

Not nothing, of course, and rules are rules, and as the hatchet man who was likely going to have the single biggest role in new government in cutting money from the budget - to education, to health care, to the disabled, to seniors, to jobs programs - he had to be above reproach and couldn't have been seen to have been feeding at the public trough.

But he didn't need the money, and he wasn't lining his pockets - again, the amount over which he has resigned is less than if he and his partner had put their names jointly on the lease.

So why not come out, declare the relationship, and claim the money legitimately? The Liberal Democrats are the most progressive of the three parties in the UK, so he would have felt no pressure from that quarter. Again from Michael White's piece, "It's not a big deal at Westminster any more, nor in most constituencies, I'd wager, unless it's a big deal to the individual for a host of reasons – most of which are none of our business."

Do people have the right to remain in the closet? Yes.

Should they? Well, clearly they do, and without being in Mr. Laws' shoes I cannot speak for him or speculate as to the "host of reasons" he may have had.

But he was independently wealthy, he was a rising star in a rising party, he had access to nearly every lever of power that can protect a man from anti-gay animus, and he still chose not to come out. I hope he reads the case of the two gay men sentenced to hard labor for 14 years in Malawi for being gay and can draw some courage from them.

Come on, people - don't be afraid. In the west, in the UK, for people of power, wealth and position, it's far better to be out than in.

The government has been damaged - and there is unanimity on that point, from the Times to the Independent to the Sun - and it is damage that could have been avoided had one minister come out.

.

Portugal gets gay marriage

If I had asked you twenty years ago to name the first six European coutries to extend marriage rights to gays and lesbians, would you have put Portugal in the mix?

Me neither.

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and the Netherlands would have been my picks, and Catholic Portugal woulda been way down the list somewhere around Spain and Malta, but the whole Iberian Peninsula* now has gay marriage. Portugal is the sixth European nation to decide that "Separate but Equal" isn't and that all citizens should be extended all rights. (And in case you have travel plans, the other five are: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway and Sweden. I was close.)

The coolest thing? It became law over the signature of the center right president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, just three days after the Prada-wearing Papa Nazi, Pope Benedict XVI, paraded through in all his fancy robes and told them not to do it. President Silva, unlike Fr. Wild at Marquette, didn't cave to ecclesiastical pressure in a non-ecclesiastical issue and signed the bill that had been passed by the legislature in January.

Portugal is 90% (nominal) Catholic, and this current Pontiff has made maintaining Catholic Europe's orthodoxy and fidelity to Church teaching a key component of his papacy. And by orthodoxy, of course, the Church fathers mean on groinal issues. No women priests, no legalized abortion, restrictive laws on divorce, and certainly, beyond a doubt, no acceding to legal recognition of queer relationships.

Good luck with putting that cat back in the bag.

Of the nations at the bottom of the table for birth rates, for example, are 90%+ Catholic Italy (219 out of 221), Austria (215), Monaco (207) and Spain (197); the bottom quarter of countries and territories on the table is heavily Catholic. I don't think it's that hetero folks in these places are having less sex - I think it's that hetero folks in these countries are deciding that they can exercise some control over their own bodies; that women are deciding that they are not units of baby-making production; that it isn't AD 1636; that the Church is simply wrong on this issue, and intractable for no good reason.

And the more the Church harps on groinal issues which go against what is rational and empirical in their daily lives, the more Western Europeans - and Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Québecois and millions of others - realize the Church is wrong about other things as well. Like, well, gay rights. And intractable about being wrong for no good reason.

So Portugal, Catholic Portugal, has marriage equality now. Along with Catholic Spain. And Catholic Belgium. This would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, but by refusing to learn the lessons of Europe's greatest gift to the world, the Enlightenment, and refusing to accept or accommodate them, the Church is in danger of making itself irrelvant in its historical heartland.

So maybe it's time for the Church to pack up and move back to the Mideast, from whence it came - less need for rationality there, and more zest for following superstition and persecuting others (women, queers, Jews, those who believe in different made up superstitions than you). It could feel right at home!

Just leave the billions worth of art and music made for you. And thanks for Chartres, anyway!

*Except, of course, for Britons on Gibraltar.

Karl Rove and I Agree

Here's something I'd never anticipated when I started writing BLC: Karl Rove and I are on the same side of an issue. We both agree that bashing illegal immigrants is bad for Republicans.

In a great piece by Frank Rich in the New York Times, Rich writes:

The one group of Republicans that has been forthright in criticizing the Arizona law is the Bush circle: Jeb Bush, the former speechwriter Michael Gerson, the Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, the adviser Mark McKinnon and, with somewhat more equivocal language, Karl Rove. McKinnon and Rove know well that Latino-bashing will ultimately prove political suicide in a century when Hispanic Americans are well on their way to becoming the largest minority in the country and are already the swing voters in many critical states.

As I wrote in a piece two days ago, Arizona's law could well lead to that state joining the more liberal Pacific states as bedrock democratic electoral votes - as "givens" in presidential elections.

For sure, Arizona will be in play, and the Hispanic bashing xenophobes of the Tea Party and the GOP could deliver other states as well.

Colorado went for Bill Clinton but not for Gore or Kerry - Hispanics helped deliver it to President Obama in 2008. In 1980 it was 12% Hispanic; in 1990, 13%; in 2000, 17%; in 2009 it was projected at 21% - more than enough in a state with strong environmental ethics and white, educated liberals for a strong coalition of Democratic voters to coalesce.

Nevada went to Clinton twice and then for President Bush; the Hispanic population there went from 7% in 1980 to 20% in 2000, and the Census has projected it to be 26% in 2009.

Florida, that bastion of electoral regularity, has moved from 9% Hispanic in 1980 to a projected 21% in 2008. From an analysis on President Obama's inroads with Hispanics, which noted that Mr. Obama won the Hispanic vote in Florida for a Democrat for the first time ever:

In Florida, Obama won 57 percent of the Hispanics on Tuesday, compared to 42 percent for McCain... By comparison, President Bush won 55 percent of the state's Hispanic vote to John Kerry's 44 percent in 2004. Polls indicate the state's Hispanic vote may now be divided. On one side are conservative older Cuban Americans, who vote reliably Republican. On the other are younger Cuban Americans coupled with an expanding number of non-Cuban Hispanics, who tend to lean Democratic.

"Younger Cuban Americans" are joining their younger Mexican American and Irish American and American American generational members in voting Democratic.

And eventually, states like North Carolina and Georgia, with 5%, and even Kansas, with 7%, may come to have Hispanic populations large enough that canny Democratic candidates could forge winning coalitions. It's not a given, of course, and President Obama and Democratic leaders need to show some courage and get some meaningful work done on immigration reform. But if the Tea Partiers continue to fight a hopeless rearguard action against the changing face of American demographics by vilifying immigrants, then maybe a Democratic President Rodriguez or Garcia or Martinez will be here sooner than we think.

Si, se puede!

¡Gracias, Arizona!

Oh, Arizona, gracias indeed for passing AB 1070, a/k/a the "Permanent Democratic Majority Bill." I don't mean to be glib - it's pretty bad. And on a personal, visceral level, I know exactly how it feels to wake up in this country with fewer civil rights than you had when you went to bed because a majority of your neighbors, or a majority of your elected officials, felt you didn't deserve them.

AB 1070, if you've been living under a rock (or, fair enough, outside of the US) for the last week, requires state cops to do racial profiling, mandates illegal arrests, puts thousands of Arizonans in fear of illegal arrests, and puts the state on the hook for future untold millions in legal costs. AB 1070 was passed by a craven and bilious state legislature and signed by a deeply unpopular governor who needed a lifeline.

Sound familiar, California?

And California has not until very recently been such a Democratic stronghold. From 1967 to 1999 we had sixteen consecutive years, and twenty four of thirty two years, of Republican governors. This was a purple state, and one in which Republicans consistently won statewide elections and had long had at least one of our two US Senators from the GOP.

Until Pete Wilson.

I was a frequent visitor to California in the early 1990's, and I remember the deeply unpopular Governor Wilson trying to survive. I remember reading that his approval rating at one point was in the low 20's, but I can't find that sourced now and I don't trust my memory enough to put that as a fact. I did find a reference here to Wilson being 20 points behind his Democratic opponent in 1993, a year before the general election. How did he come back? He ran on a platform of flogging anti-immigrant sentiment up and down the state to get Prop 187 passed.

Later overturned by the courts as being illegal, Prop 187 might sound familiar to anyone reading about the Arizona law. From the USC Libraries, Prop 187 required that:

1.All law enforcement agents who suspect that a person who has been arrested is in violation of immigration laws must investigate the detainee's immigration status, and if they find evidence of illegality they must report it to the attorney general of California, and to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

2.Local governments are prohibited from doing anything to impair the fulfillment of this requirement.

3.The attorney general must keep records on all such cases and make them available to any other government entity that wishes to inspect them.

4.No one may receive public benefits until they have proven their legal right to reside in the country.

5.If government agents suspected anyone applying for benefits of being illegal immigrants, the agents must report their suspicions in writing to the appropriate enforcement authorities.

6.Emergency medical care is exempted, as required by federal law, but all other medical benefits have the requirements stated above.

7.Primary and secondary education is explicitly included.

Sound familiar?

And it worked! Wilson came roaring back on the backs of fed up white voters who felt that the "illegals" were the reason that their taxes were going up, and that if only we got them off the state's "very generous welfare system" then all would be right in the world. This was the period of "Falling Down" (1993), the angry white man movie with Michael Douglas. Wilson was going to be tough - tough on crime and tough on illegals. And he was. He won his second term for Governor, but he lost the state for a generation - and counting - for the Republican party.

I guess xenophobia and race baiting cloud one's ability to do math. Hispanics as a percentage of California's population in 2000 was 32%. In 1990 it was 26%. That is more growth both in real numbers and in percentage terms than any other demographic group in the state over the same period.

Arizona's population projections? From a 2000 population of 5.1 million it's projected to grow to 10.7 million by 2030. In 1990, Arizona was 18% Hispanic; in 2000 it was 25% Hispanic and 20% Mexican American alone. I'm not a demographer or a math genius, and even I can see where the train is heading.

Vilifying 20% and infuriating 25% of your state's population is not a great way to get elected as a party when you've got white liberals in the state as well. In the South, fine, you can get away with centuries-old patterns of disenfranchisement at a statewide level because there hasn't been enough migration and capital flow to counterbalance the entrenched old white voting blocks (though this has started to change in Virginia and North Carolina); in the West? It won't work.

Arizona will continue to have the same number of senators, of course, but they might in another cycle or two be two senators with D's behind their names, instead of the two R's they have now. How will Republicans look 40% of the state's voters in the eye and say "No, not you, we didn't mean you when we angrily paraded up and down our state saying that we needed to arrest people who had accents and were, um, browner than us and send them back, we meant those other folks with the accents who are browner than us."

And by 2030 there will be two, or possibly three, or possibly even four new US House districts in Arizona. Which direction do you think they will lean?

To vilify and attempt to criminalize large portions of your own population is not only mean spirited, anti-Christian, illegal and ineffective (if your real goal is to "protect the border"), it's the surest proven way to make your political party irrelevant at the statewide level. So, Arizona, by 2016 at the latest I would like to welcome you to the "West Coast automatic Democratic electoral votes" Club.

And Nevada, we have room for you, too.

I'll take "inure" for $200 please (Malaysia edition)

Malaysia.

What do you think of? Anything? Nice beaches, just south of Thailand and north of Singapore and Indonesia, destination for visa runs for farang in Thailand, briefly home of the world's tallest building, sodomy, moderate majority Muslim nation, one party rule, growing high tech economy, ...

Well, yes, one of those does seem somewhat out of place. But this is just fantastic, and too good not to report on - sodomy seems to be all the rage in Malaysia these days, and everyone is talking about it.

Malaysia is a former British colony that inherited former British laws, meaning sodomy is illegal, even between two consenting adults. Unbelievably intrusive for the state to have this kind of control over people's private lives, but much of the world is like this. It nearly always gives police and the state a powerful means of controlling personal behavior, and a way to shame and manipulate and intimidate anyone they don't like. In Malaysia's case, how often has the law been enforced? As reported in the LA Times,

Legal records suggest that sodomy charges under Section 377 [the anti-sodomy law] have been leveled only seven times in Malaysia in 70 years, according to thenutgraph.com, an independent Malaysian news website, with four of those charges being against Anwar.

Who is Anwar? A particularly randy and exhibitionistic practitioner? A gay rave promoter?

No, and no - he is a 62 year old deputy former deputy prime minister. Married, with six children.

Anwar Ibrahim was at one time considered to be one of those in line for the Prime Minister's post in Malaysia, but in 1997 he went too far in criticizing his own party during the Asian currency crisis, publicly spoke of paralysis, incompetence and nepotism in the ruling party (United Malays National Organization, or UNMO), called for more economic liberalisation, and ran afoul of the ruling party. The sitting prime minister, then as now Mahatir Mohamad, decided he had heard enough - and that the thing to do would be to charge Anwar with the foulest crime he could think of. So, of course, Anwar was charged with sodomy, convicted in 2000, and exonerated in 2004. The plan was to cause abhorrence in the electorate and to end the challenge to the ruling party.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

Anwar, who is a slight man (and who has been charged in both cases of sodomizing a much larger "strapping" man), far from becoming less popular, has become a leader of the nascent opposition movement in Malaysia (New Yorker, May 18, 2009, subscription required). And while I disagree with his politics, how can you not like a man who has gone from being, essentially, a party hack to someone who was harangued in public in a show trial in which he was luridly accused (with stained mattresses, et al.) for weeks on end, thrown into solitary confinement, and emerged to be a unifying force for a riven multi-ethnic nation ruled by an increasingly out of touch and ossified one party system. Again from the LA Times:

Although he was banned from running for political office for five years, he helped energize the opposition, which in 2008 won five of Malaysia's 13 states, its best-ever showing, denying the ruling coalition the two-thirds parliamentary majority it had in effect held since 1969.

Since then, the opposition has won seven of nine by-elections, including one that put Anwar back into parliament, challenging the dominance that Malaysia's main ruling party has enjoyed since independence.

So, he's a friend of Paul Wolfowitz. You gotta admire the guy.

He's back in court, again on sodomy charges, again lurid, and again the Malaysian nation is getting treated to a very frank discussion of male-on-male sex. And in the last ten years, the internet has made the details of the trial much more accessible to the average Malaysian.

The effect of all of this? Well, some in Malaysia are concerned that the once-taboo topic has become inescapable (think Monica's blue dress times a factor of 20 - Google "Malaysia Sodomy" and see for yourself!), and that by attempting to "tar" Anwar with the charge of sodomy, when he clearly is innocent, the power of the taboo has been broken.

By bringing false, politically motivated charges against Anwar, Mahatir has made sodomy a proxy for a trumped up charge. Further, by making it a topic of general conversation, nationwide, Mahatir has accomplished what may have taken a generation of gay rights activists to do: make sodomy mundane, and boring. Quotidian. The boogie man under the bed loses his power once you turn on the light.

And if you hear of UNMO losing its post-independence grip on Malaysian politics and power, you can think of the falsified case against Col. Dreyfus which backfired, and lead to the secularization of France; and of the calumny of "religious leaders" in Colorado who lied and lied to get people to vote for the anti-gay Prop 2 which backfired, and ultimately lead to overturning all sodomy laws in the U.S. And you can smile to yourself knowing that, one more time, the powerful liars didn't get it all their way.

Watch this space. Should it come to pass, I'll definitely write about it. And I'll definitely gloat.

.