Okay, here's a series of questions that come to mind after watching today's news coverage of the Edwards debacle, and keeping in mind all the crap that's come down the pike in politics in the last 20 years.  Maybe I'm just living in a fantasy world, but I'm getting tired of politicians in general.

Is it just me, or is Hillary aiming for civil war within the party?  CNN.com has a monstrous headline on their politics page, "PLEDGED DELEGATES UP FOR GRABS, CLINTON SAYS."  CNN is behind the times as usual, but this is the first time I've seen the MSM plaster her own statements on pledged delegates all over their website, as opposed to the sniping of one of her surrogates (Mark Penn, for example).  

Now that we're getting into primary season and candidates have begun to receive endorsements from newspapers and advocacy groups, the records of the front runners have received a close inspection from GLBT groups and voters.  Hillary, Obama and Edwards all receive large amounts of gay support, while others support the remaining candidates Dodd, Biden, Richardson, Kucinich and Gravel.  All of our candidates are great on core GLBT issues like the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," adoption, hate crime legislation, job discrimination protection, and all would make solid Presidents with regards to high court judge selection.  

The sticky issue that remains is gay marriage.

What with the Logo debates, sparring over the necessity/pragmatism of pushing for gay marriage, nurture vs. nature arguments, and the other gay topics that abound on DK, I thought it would be interesting - how many of us are GLBT people, what political concerns do we have at the moment, which candidates do we support in the race for Prez, and why?

Scrolling through CNN.com today, the front page caught my eye, and my jaw dropped.  There, as the lead-in to an article on the usual drooling "impending terror" piece, was this:

Al Qaeda will try to tap its resources and capabilities in Iraq in its efforts to exact another terrorist attack on U.S. soil...

WHAT?  I said, say WHAT?

As a gay man, I can say that for me, the most annoying, enraging, awful thing in the world is a gay person who plays straight while attacking the GLBT community.  The second most annoying thing for me is a self-righteous heterosexual Republican who would be happy if all gays were dead and buried, but think it's okay to screw around on their wives.

This week was a bad one for self-righteous theocrats; take a jump with me and look into a dark corner seething with self-hating cockroaches.

In his interesting diary on the less-than-savory musings of a shmuck named Mudcat, Psifighter37 quotes Mr. Mudcat as saying the following:

I have bitched and moaned for years about the lack of tolerance in the elitist wing of the Democratic Party, or what I refer to as the "Metropolitan Opera Wing". These are the people who talk of tolerance but the only true tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

In almost Ashcroftian fashion, Mr. Mudcat dismisses "pseudo-intellectual" elitists with a wave of his hand, sniffing about their lack of tolerance and branding them as belong to the "Metropolitan Opera Wing" of the Democratic Party.  

Here's my question: what is it about classical music that make asshats like Mr. Mudcat assume that only elitists and pseudo-intellectuals have an interest in an important segment of Western culture?

I saw this on CNN, and was somewhat surprised.

"I'm one person who will not vote for a Mormon," Al Michaud of Dover shouted at Romney when the former Massachusetts governor approached him inside Harvey's Bakery. Romney was kicking off the second of two day's worth of campaign visits in the lead primary state.

Romney kept smiling as he asked, "Can I shake your hand anyway?"

Michaud replied, "No."

Michaud later added that he was not a "right-winger," but a liberal who was going to be voting for Hillary Clinton, should she win the Dem nomination.  

Am I alone in smelling a rat?

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military has condemned the posting of video by Islamic Web sites purportedly showing the bodies of two U.S. soldiers kidnapped and killed last month south of Baghdad.

A statement by the U.S.-led coalition on Tuesday attacked "the release of the video in the strongest of terms; it demonstrates the barbaric and brutal nature of the terrorists and their complete disregard for human life." From CNN

Can someone explain to me why our government objects to the practice of displaying the corpses of US servicemembers as proof of death when CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc. continually post footage of Al Qaeda corpses?

This has been briefly noted on Crooks and Liars, but I don't think it would hurt to bring it up here.  In Meade, Kansas, a hotel is being boycotted due to the presence of...a RAINBOW FLAG!  (cue chorus of gasps).  Below is the scoop, and a call to action.  

This week in mindless bile:

Dobson got his very own commentary page on CNN, where he had the opportunity to blast the media for being pro-gay marriage and assaulting the righteous folks who just want to protect the sanctity of marriage.

The Vatican is afraid that they'll be sued some day in international courts, because "speaking in defense of life and the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state..."

More beneath the fold.

Today is Father's Day, and I just wanted to pay tribute to the most sensical, funny and loving Republican I've ever known, my dad.

I haven't seen a diary on this yet, and it may not even be diary-worthy, but I was somewhat annoyed to see this.  Congress has once again awarded itself a pay raise.  Sorry if this reads like a socialist screed, but I'm pretty damned annoyed.  Now, I'm no financial wizard, so if I'm off-base, please tell me.

I was reading andydoubtless' excellent diary on the topic of the most recent battle over gay marriage, and wrote a response that went a little too long to be properly considered a comment.  Below is the comment, now lengthened to diary length.  His diary suggests that Democrats who argue against the constitutional amendment come across as politicians parsing legal and moral hairs, arguing technicalities, while the Republicans come across to the masses as sane, highly moral individuals who are desperate to "save the children"  Basically, if we couch our arguments in non-human terms, without acknowledging the humanity of those who are actually affected by the laws, we'll win the battles (FMA went down last week), but could possibly lose the war, as long as the Republicans continue to claim that gay marriage will hurt YOUR marriage and YOUR children. (Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children??).  Please read his diary before continuing.

This is of course conjecture on my part, but I'm willing to bet that "Grandmother in Missouri" was a proud participant in the reelective effort of the Bozo-in-Chief.

In the spirit of the Republicans currently bringing the Federal Marriage Amendment to the country, I would like to present a dramatic tableau entitled, "The Gay Menace: Their Agenda and the Peril of Our Great Nation."  A caveat: this piece is parody, and presents stereotypes of gays as seen in comments by mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging wingnuts.  I don't believe these stereotypes to be accurate, although I do find them amusing, as a gay man.  

This will be a bit stream of consciousness, since I can only type so fast, so bear with me.