I was in attendance at the Choire / Bazima gathering on Saturday night at Dick’s Bar, so go look at some … of the … photos. I finally got to meet Sam, one of the drivers of traffic to my site and a very sweet (and tall!) boy. He was part of the Texas contingent that included the delicious and charming Glenn (aka Dan‘s roommate – another new acquaintance), who makes me remember the things I do like about that part of the country, and the adorable Dan’l. I like a boy who can mention the Radical Faeries and a book on The Origins of the Avant Garde in France on his info page.

I can’t remember Scott wearing a tiara, but he’s wearing it in all of the pictures. Andy and I didn’t get much of a chance to talk in the chaos.

I also met Chris — a fellow Arkansan! She and I shall have to meet and discuss this further.

What was with the smoke in that place? Even the smokers were complaining about it!

Professional stand-up comedians know that Sept. 11 jokes are radioactive. Not even the bravest have tried to turn the deaths of some 3,000 people into a laughing matter. But President Bush has forged ahead anyway. Bush has now been telling the same, spectacularly tasteless joke to a variety of mostly Republican audiences as part of his stock stump speech for the better part of four months now.

This is its basic telling:

“You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we’d get the trifecta.”

According to the transcripts, this joke usually elicits laughter from the mostly GOP crowds to whom Bush tells it.

Not only is the joke tasteless — lucky me we got 3,000 Americans killed — it’s not even true. The president never mentioned those conditions in his campaign, or while pushing his huge tax cuts.

Bush was already facing the certainty of deficit spending at the end of the summer of 2001, well before the attacks of Sept. 11. Some $4 trillion worth of budget surplus vanished over the spring and summer that year, and budget experts sounded the alarm about looming deficits then. The Congressional Budget Office warned Bush on Aug. 29 that Social Security funds would be needed to balance the books, forcing him to abandon a campaign promise not to use the retirement fund for other government spending.

Inspired by Sam, I located the video of Paul Lombardi in his sleeveless t-shirt covering the “Opening of the Pools” in NYC.

As I was getting ready to purchase a few gifts for my Mother’s birthday, such as this recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, I see the usual Amazon thing of “Customers who bought this also bought”… which gives me

Blinded by the Right by David Brock (No, don’t go buy it!)

Weird.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he would uproot 10 rogue Jewish outposts in the West Bank Sunday, setting the stage for possible confrontations with militant settlers.

I see sites like these: Media Whores Online, or (on a smaller scale) leftyblog; which seem to think of themselves as the left side of the political spectrum, but what they really stand for is the Democratic party. By the standards of any real politics, the Democrats are a centrist party. In most western countries, many of their positions are center-right:

• lack of support for universal healthcare
• support of the death penalty
• feeble support of gay rights and reproductive rights
• problematic on church/state separation
• supportive of massive military spending

I see Richard Gephardt saying that, with the new threat of global terrorism, the United States must be “ready to strike, not just deter.”

I see the USA Patriot Act pass 356-66 in the House, and 98-1 in the Senate.

I see the Senate unanimously approve a resolution sponsored by its Democratic and Republican leaders that expressed support for the reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance. The statement by the DNC chairman says: “Today’s decision by the Federal Appeals Court is unfortunate. The pledge of allegiance is a reflection of the values of America and have been an important, patriotic tradition for more than a century. I trust that the judicial process will ultimately overturn this wrong-headed decision.”

I see the Democratic party support the failure that is the War on Drugs.

I see the Democratic party support abortion, but not public funding. They believe the “right to choose” is for those who can afford such a right. They don’t seem to have a problem with my tax dollars going for plenty of things I don’t approve of.

As a gay man, I find it laughable that anyone could vote for the Republican party, but “they’re not as bad as the GOP” is not a good enough reason for me to vote for the Democrats. They must earn my vote — they do not have a “right” to it. Given the ways the party has acquiesced as the Bush administration has shredded the Bill of Rights since 9/11, I will not vote for a Democratic candidate again unless I see a fundamental change in their behavior.

The fabulous Kate Clinton has a column on marriage — Veiled Threats. Homos as weapons of destruction?

On May 15, 2002, six members of the House of Representatives introduced a proposed constitutional amendment that says, “marriage shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” Don’t throw your rice pudding at me until I finish telling you why I’m all for this prenuptial agreement. Hint: my “We Don’t Want Your Stinkin’ Marriage” campaign never caught on.

…

As if heterosexuals all by themselves were not completely capable of degrading marriage through divorce, pricey annulments, child abuse, domestic violence. Straight people have been doing the aerial bombing of marriage for quite some time. Now gay people are the robot drones sent in to do the hand-to-hand combat and mop up operations in the Canna caves?

As if homosexuals were that powerful. Although, come to think of it, we have been recently credited with the destruction of the US Catholic Church through bouts of “ecclesiastic flamboyance.” Sidebar: you just wish sometimes that the Church protected children as much as they protect fetuses.

Add to our degradation of same-old-sex marriage, our devastation of the military and it should become clear to someone – hullo, Donald Rumsfeld – that we are an underused weapon of capital M and small m, mass destruction. We’re a veritable Triple Crown: The Priestness, The Breeder’s Cup, The Kandahar Derby.

How depressing! I’ve been relying on the English version of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for news of Germany, and in general, a view from “the continent” of world news. They’ve decided it no longer makes economic sense to publish it, so yesterday was the last day.

Courtesy of The Guardian, a guide to Sigmund Freud on the web. This one’s for Gabriella, daughter of a psychoanalyst.

My friends Charles and Ray (not to be confused with Charles Ray) took some rather interesting pictures (scroll down to the bottom) of riot police in Vienna preparing for a rightist march.