Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

I've said this on many blogs and still stand by it: the fact that they are going with this means they are desparate. One doesn't make this a big point in a campaign unless one is, well, not doing so well. And if they are still harping on this in the coming week, we know that they are even more desparate then we could have ever imagined.

It's disgusting what you sex crazed liberals have done to our discourse. There is mounting and hard evidence that the values you have thrust upon our children are destroying their virtue. But you will not win. We will pound your twisted values Six Ways from Sunday. You'll be on your hands and knees. Only then will you see God, Good, and Evil. You and your Jean Claude Pierre LeKerri amen corner are weaklings and hypocrites. Submit and accept it.

Thought criminal indeed :)

not only, brian, is it a sign of desperation, but also it was the only thing they had available to keep discussion of bush's OBL gaffe from becoming the all-consuming media topic of the day.

As the Daily Howler states, the lesbian reference was a mistake because it gave a free kick to the self-righteous pricks on Fox and its ilk. Without it, the Osama bin Laden gaffe would have been the "all-consuming media topic" as Howard so aptly puts it, and the media would have distilled that into a clear win for Kerry. Will it matter in the end? Whatever the outcome, by and large the American media has failed miserably in its obligation to inform the American people.

I can think of very few parents who would not be at least disappointed if their daughter turned out to be a lesbian. Like it or not, the standard model for a family is the one most people hope to have for themselves and their children. Most parents look forward to the day when they will be grandparents. Having homosexual children certainly complicates matters, and often precludes the possibility of grandchildren. While good parents certainly will continue to love, nurture and support their homosexual children, I can see that many would rather not be reminded of it in the most public of arenas.

The Cheney and Bush families chose to be in the "most public of arenas", and to offer sympathy to a head-kicker like Dick Cheney is ludicrous.

While Cheney choose to enter the arena of politics and appear in public debate, this act of participation does not constitute an invitation to shine the spotlight on his daughter’s sexuality.

It seems clear to me that they are not trying to change the votes of any of Kerry's constituents or undecideds. They're just reassuring their own constituents. Among our people, lesbian is no more shameful than left-handed. It would have been rude not to mention Mary Cheney in that context. But they want to reassure their people that they still hate queers as much as always, and would never use that word in mixed company, and would prefer that Mary just go hide in the closet, and it was just mean of Sen. Kerry to mention her name at all.

Am I too shrill? I mean, am I on the wrong side of Hanlon's Razor here?

But it's the Lesburka part at the end that is still cracking me up. Medium Lobster is never constrained by political correctness. Love it!

What is a Lesburka :)

Yo, Zarkov, Mary Cheney is a senior official in the campaign and has personally undertaken outreach to the LGBT community. And she's done the same thing for the Coors company. She's a public figure and has leveraged her sexual orientation for her poilitcal and financial gain.

Also, I'd like to think that most parents care more about their children's happiness than hypothetical grandkids. Besides, if your a healthy woman of the right age, grandkids are but a sperm donor away.

What is a Lesburka :)

What is a Lesburka :)

Sorry about the multiple post. I was not that anxious to learn :)

Interesting article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/business/16drug.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Importing Less Expensive Drugs Not Seen as Cure for U.S. Woes
By EDUARDO PORTER

A customer at the Concourse Drugs pharmacy in the Bronx will pay about $118 to get a month's supply of 20-milligram Lipitor pills. At PharmacyinCanada.com, a Canadian online outlet, the same quantity of the drug, Pfizer's cholesterol-lowering medication, costs $79.

The difference has become a tempting political target. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, has made a campaign pledge to help cut Americans' prescription drug costs by allowing them to import drugs from Canada. President Bush has conceded that the idea is worth a try 'if there's a safe way to do it.' Bipartisan legislation in Congress would allow the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized countries.

It may make political sense to point to Canada as a solution to high prescription drug prices in the United States. But many economists and health care experts say that importing drugs from countries that control their prices would do little to solve the problem of expensive drugs in the United States, where companies are free to set their own prices. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that allowing Canadian drug imports would have a 'negligible' impact on drug spending.

On MSNBC after the debate, Pat Buchanan said about Kerry mentioning Cheney's gay daughter: (paraphrasing)

It's like if Bush had brought up that Kerry is divorced. You just don't do that. It was out of line.

So, being gay is like being divorced to Pat Buchanan. Don't we all agree that being divorced is generally bad, unavoidable perhaps, but a negative, a failure, a mistake, something no one is proud of? So, Pat thinks being gay is the same way.

I don't think many gay folks would like to think of themselves as bad or failures.

It's so funny because if you say it was wrong of Kerry to say it, then you are at the same time saying that being gay is bad, and everyone who is gay is bad.

Also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/business/worldbusiness/16yuan.html?pagewanted=all&position=

China's Industrial Boom Is Inflating Commodity Prices
By KEITH BRADSHER

GUANGZHOU, China - A throng of foreign buyers trampled security barriers and pushed guards aside in their haste to enter the Canton Trade Fair as it opened here Friday, another sign of how companies all over the world are still rushing to do business in China.

But the downside of this torrent of money pouring into China was also apparent at the trade fair: it has fed inflation here in recent months on a scale not seen since the early 1990's, especially inflation in commodity prices.

Businesspeople from a wide range of industries all over China said in interviews at the fair that rising raw material prices in particular had been seriously crimping their profit margins. They painted a complex picture of commodities demand in particular, saying that their country's economy was still running very briskly, but that buyers were becoming resistant to paying steeply rising prices for some products and were deferring purchases.

Emerging signs that Chinese companies are balking at high commodities prices prompted near panic in the metals markets this week. On Wednesday, copper and nickel prices suffered their biggest one-day drop in London trading in more than a decade.

David Chen, the export department manager of Ningbo Jiekelong Valves Manufacturing near Shanghai, a large producer of copper valves and tubing, said that long order backlogs had disappeared in recent months. Some orders have been canceled, others have been filled and few new orders are coming in.

'The price is very high, so they're not buying, they're waiting,' he said.

An executive at a manufacturer of rubber timing belts for car engines said that the price she paid for specially processed rubber had risen by nearly half in the last year, while she has not been able to raise belt prices by more than 10 percent. The executive, Fen Chen, general manager of the Fuwei Rubber Belt Manufacturing Company in southeastern Zhejiang Province, said that the company planned very little expansion in the months ahead and was turning down some belt orders because they were not profitable. But not all commodities appear to be affected equally, nor is there even a consensus that copper and rubber demand are moderating. Tao Dong, a Credit Suisse First Boston economist in Hong Kong, said this week's slump in metals prices mostly appeared to reflect selling by speculators.

The overall Chinese economy is recovering from Beijing's efforts last spring to control overheating, and is now growing so robustly that the government is increasingly likely to hit the brakes again later this year, he said. 'We still have another two or three months to go for commodities before things get ugly,' he added.

It's very simple, folks.
George Bush, Jr. has said:

"Read my lips. No new draft."

Any questions?
Good. Now pass it on.

LarryB:

Don’t kid yourself, when parents reach a certain age (usually >55) they care a lot about having grandchildren. Most parents want their grandchildren raised by a mother and a father because they know children get more from the standard family than from alternative arrangements. We also know from the work of Stephen Pinker that genetics matters a lot in the way children turn out. Choose your mate carefully. A lesbian might know something about a potential sperm donor, but not as much as a wife knows about her husband. Ditto for a man using a surrogate mother. As for Mary Cheney specifically, you are quoting the Democrat talking points on this matter. I don’t know the details, but even taking them as accurate, I can still see her parents being somewhat uncomfortable. Yes it’s not a big deal, but then it’s not a little deal either.

Zarkov, it's not a *talking point* that Mary Cheney is a BC'04 campaign official. It's a fact. It's not a talking point that she was specifically in charge of LGBT outreach for Coors. It's a fact.

Facts are *not* talking points. Talking points are spin.

If Dick and Lynne are really as upset about this thing as they are claiming, I feel very sorry for Mary, as her parents don't really accept her as she is. What a shame.

Zarkov, Kerry wasn't shining a spotlight Cheney didn't already shine himself - he's mentioned his daughter's lesbianism in at least one campaign speech I know of (to shine a light on his own loyalty to Bush over his feelings towards his family). So Kerry didn't mention a fact Cheney didn't mention himself already before. More importantly, his mention of it was completely defensible in light of the question - if Kerry had a daughter with MS, and Bush was asked a question about stem cells, mentioning it as a way of underlining the complexity of setting policy would be perfectly legitimate. The only way this is a "bad" thing to do is if being a lesbian is something to be embarrassed about, like being a pedophile or making a sex tape. Mary Cheney isn't embarrassed of being a lesbian. And Dick Cheney isn't embarrassed of his daughter being a lesbian, until someone mentions it in a context that might hurt his electoral prospects.

Thus there are two explanations of Lynne and Dick Cheney's behavior. Either they are deeply ashamed of their daughter for having a harmless sexual preference which she did not choose; or else they're pretending to be ashamed of their daughter to pander to homophobes and help themselves win an election. Either they are ignorant, hateful homophobes or else the cheap and tawdry campaign stunt is being pulled by the Cheneys. Seeing as Dick Cheney's already cited his support for his daughter, and the fact that he just seems like a good dad, I suspect the answer is #2. Which, ironically, reflects worse on him.

Has Mary Cheney commented on any of this? Said it was inappropriate or irrelevant?
Maybe deep down she just really doesen't like Dick.

"you are quoting the Democrat talking points on this matter. I don’t know the details, but even taking them as accurate, I can still see her parents being somewhat uncomfortable. "

Dick and Lynne can cry me a river of tears. You can take your bigoted defense of an obviously pre-planned, highly orchestrated, strategy of phony outrage and Heinz it.

Zarkov is a Lesburka? and here I thought he was Flash Gordon's enabler....

Reall, Tim Noah spells this out. Lynne Chaney doesn't like to acknowledge she has a lesbian daughter. This is nothing new. Dick Cheney has talked about it openly, but Lynne always avoids the topic and tries to shut it down. Probably because IWF friends disapprove.

A. Zarkov, when you can show me that dick and lynne were upset that alan keyes referred to mary as a "selfish hedonist" for being gay, then we can talk about their anguish or whatever as parents.

Meanwhile, yes, most parents do want to become grandparents, but loving parents accept their children as they are, not as the parents would have them be. And in many states, single women (lesbian or not) and lesbian couples can either adopt or become pregnant through in-vitro methods.

I'm not familiar with Pinker's work, but as the parent of an adopted child, i do not allow genetic narcissism to stand in the way of having a loving family relationship.

I don’t know if there is a standard definition of the phrase “talking points.” When I use that term, I mean an orchestrated response which could be either factual or spin or a combination of both. The Cheney’s outrage could be phony, or it could be a genuine outrage to a phony condescending complement. In their place, I would be miffed, but only slightly. But perhaps I have a high threshold, you need it in this environment.

Ye3 dinna understand. For > 80% of the registered voters, this is the first time they ever heard that Mary Cheney is a lesbian. They think, vaguely, that Kerry blurted out an unpleasant family secret, and of course most people do think it is unpleasant.

Kerry probably lost two points out of it. It'll fade though - while Iraq won't.

Zarkov, shut up while you still have some credibility left.

Mary Cheney was a goddamn professional lesbian, doing outreach to the lesbian community. She's something like thirty years old. She has an official position in the Cheney campaign. She's been in the public arena for years.

Perhaps I missed something, but however conservative you may be, this is the first time I've seen you relay the worthless prepackaged Republican talking point of the moment.

Perhaps I was wrong before, but certainly you have now shown yourself to be a partisan tool, none of whose statements can ever be taken seriously.

Funny, I didn't hear these voices of outrage when a Vice Presidential candidate mentioned the fact that Mary Cheney was gay during the VP debate a couple of weeks ago.

Oops. That VP candidate was Dick Cheney. My bad :-).

Why is it evil when John Kerry mentions that the VP's daughter is gay during a nationally-broadcast debate, but not evil when Dick Cheney mentions that the VP's daughter is gay during a nationally-broadcast debate? Oh yeah, that's right, it's because Dick is a REPUBLICAN, and thus can do no wrong (at least as far as the Zarkovs of the world are concerned). Remember, boys and girls, all you have to do is accept George W. Bush as your personal Lord and Savior, swear allegiance to the Republican Party, and all your sins are washed away in the Blood of the Lamb! Halleuleujah, AMEN!

Yours in Snark,
Badtux the Southern Baptist Penguin

1090 dead troops in Iraq, and we're talking about pundits talking about Lynne Cheney talking about Kerry talking about someone being gay?

As someone who likes to prioritize, I feel lonely.

The shameful politicizing is on Cheney's part.

What's been most interesting to me is how few media outlets are talking about what the gay community thinks. By and large, even the conservative gay community (e.g., the Log Cabin Republicans, Andrew Sullivan, etc.) are unanimous that Dick and Lynne were out of line and that there was not one thing wrong with Kerry's comment.

The easy way to think about this is to substitute "blue eyes" for "lesbian" in Kerry's original comments:

"We're all God's children. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who has blue eyes, she would tell you that she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice."

There is not one offensive line in that statement above, is there? Can you really imagine Lynne Cheney saying: "This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick." to that statement? She'd be laughed off the airwaves.

There are only two explanations for the outrage displayed by the Cheneys:

1. It's a cheap and tawdry political trick.

2. They are ashamed of their daughter.

Neither explanation displays the Cheneys in a good light and gay men and women on all sides of the political spectrum are justifiably outraged at their behavior.

What's been most interesting to me is how few media outlets are talking about what the gay community thinks. By and large, even the conservative gay community (e.g., the Log Cabin Republicans, Andrew Sullivan, etc.) are unanimous that Dick and Lynne were out of line and that there was not one thing wrong with Kerry's comment.

The easy way to think about this is to substitute "blue eyes" for "lesbian" in Kerry's original comments:

"We're all God's children. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who has blue eyes, she would tell you that she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice."

There is not one offensive line in that statement above, is there? Can you really imagine Lynne Cheney saying: "This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick." to that statement? She'd be laughed off the airwaves.

There are only two explanations for the outrage displayed by the Cheneys:

1. It's a cheap and tawdry political trick.

2. They are ashamed of their daughter.

Neither explanation displays the Cheneys in a good light and gay men and women on all sides of the political spectrum are justifiably outraged at their behavior.

howard:

Steven Pinker is professor of psychology at MIT who has written a number of books and papers in the area of cognitive science. His recent (2002) book, “the blank slate” deals with the nature-versus-nurture controversy. Briefly, according Pinker, children tend resemble their parents (in non-physical ways) because of shared genetics. Child rearing practices matter as well, but not as much as most parents think. Here is an example. Pinker asks, what the best predictor of schizophrenia? Answer: having an identical twin that is also schizophrenic. More so than having a fraternal twin who shares the same environment, but only half the genes. Thus we can readily see the value of courtship. If (say) you don’t want a child who will grow up to become an alcoholic, you should choose a non-alcoholic as a mate. While this provides no guarantee, you do affect the odds according to Pinker. Thus when a woman uses an anonymous sperm donor to conceive, she is playing a kind of genetic roulette. And as Pinker shows us, genes matter, not a 100%, but a lot. BTW the sperm donor will usually be anonymous because a non-anonymous donor runs the risk of a later paternity suit and 21 years of child support payments. Moreover no written or oral agreement to the contrary is enforceable. Similarly you are also playing genetic roulette with an adopted child, unless you know a lot about the parents. Most people a risk averse, if they can help it, they would rather not play genetic roulette. I have a young adult daughter who is heterosexual. I would love her every bit as much if she were a lesbian, but I think she is better off not being a lesbian for all the reasons discussed above.

As far as Alan Keynes goes, shame on him. But he did not make that remark in front of an audience of 50 million people.

PaulB:

Having blue eyes is not the same as being a lesbian. The former has virtually no consequences for the person or the family, while the latter has significant consequences. Perhaps you believe that the trait of being homosexual is no different than the trait of eye color, but most everyone else would disagree.

zizka:

On this matter of their daughter, I look at the Cheneys as parents and not Republicans. In their shoes I would feel somewhat uncomfortable as well. It’s partly generational. People in their sixties tend to view homosexuality in quite a different light than people in their twenties. Now if Cheney has tried to exploit his daughter’s lesbianism for his own political purposes that would be a different matter. As far as I know, he has not, besides the debates, I heard reference to his daughter’s sexuality only once, but perhaps I have not paid enough attention. And BTW my thoughts (for better or worse) are my own, as an independent, I use no one’s talking points. On this matter I speak as a parent.

This blog line should be purged as Obama-ist
drivel. It's not cogent to the debate at hand.

So. ?Do we want a paranoid Soviet-style centrist socialist government under King George, or the New Centrist Socialist® Party under Lord Kerry?

Vote. Good cop, bad cop.
I want my mommy!

I think, Dragon Child, the point is to de-rail the topic rather than give us the latest body-count.
Or is that my cue? Surely we can get that body count down by getting rid of Bush. [the transition] Surely by pointing out how this cheap topic got inserted over the relevant OBL gaffe would be a start. If we had a responsible media, Bush would never have been elected in the first place. More of us are listening to international media now because obviously we are not getting the information we need. Only the entertainment.

Gospodin Zarkov:
1: This did not prevent David Crosby from assisting a certain lesbian chanteuse and her partner. Alas, he has for many years had one foot in the grave and the other planted on a banana peel.
2: Having blue eyes was enough to prevent some "Aryanized Jews" from going to the camps. For such an arbitrary set of traits to be the deciding factor in an individuals worth to the greater community is at least as irrational and petty as eye color or scrambling your eggs.
3: The Cheneys are Republican parents. They put their daughter into the mix knowing that there were pros and cons. They are merely attempting to make lemonade out of her at this point, and she them to some extent. Now that it has been revealed that the irrational Republicans no longer feel compelled to pay lip service to "reality" her symbolic meaning is beyond fluid to the point that Lewis Carroll would find it difficult to unravel. She represents a failure in genetics, a failure in parenting, and a failure in family values, to those who cling to a certain construction of reality. The people who would value her as an individual are the Coors family, who found someone to get them out of hot water and sell their pinkelwasser beer during the boycott yet pay lip service to their quaint Reichischer values.

bigfoot:

1. Well David Crosby proves my point. How much more of an unsuitable sperm donor would you want? A woman who seeks a sperm donor, or a man who seeks a surrogate mother, suffer limited choices. They both need a good measure of luck. Let’s face it, any man, especially a young man, would be foolish to offer a sperm donation to a lesbian couple. If they break up, then the mother out of economic necessity might seek child support. What a rotten deal for the guy. He forgoes the pleasures of being a father, but gets all the liabilities. He might get some limited visitation, but don’t bet on it. The female partner of the lesbian mother might also have problems. After all she is not the parent of the child and enjoys virtually no parental rights under the law. Any visitation would be an uphill battle.

2. I’m not sure I understand your point here. Your message is either cryptic or beyond my comprehension. In contemporary times blue eyes, while nice are hardly a life-altering trait. I suppose we could imagine some sort of world where being lesbian was truly without consequence. But we don’t live in utopia.

3. Well I don’t know much about the Cheney’s private life, and I don’t want to. If he is somehow exploiting his daughter, then shame on him. I heard Kerry’s debate remark and didn’t think much of it, speaking as a parent myself. No class. Both sides have no class.

online casino

Just being straight doesn't mean that you'll be a parent. Something like 20% of all women will never have a child, and a lot of us are making that decision willingly and joyfully (as are our partners).

On the other hand, if you do have kids and want them to really hate you, whine about how you want some grandchildren. It's almost as effective as making them follow a career they don't want or feign a sexual orientation they don't have.

The Edwards jab, was a "jab"- to point out the hypocrasy of the Republican party.
Edwards trial lwayer assertion that the VP's daughter is lesbian is an effective dirty trick to get the public watching the debate to be aware that this ultra-conservative, towel-head hating, gay-bashing vice president has a gay daughter. Be aware of it- and how embarrasing it is to the idealogical base.
The base says, I know, but I try to live in denial about it. Like the base lives in denial that we brewed up a tempest pot hurricane in the middle east. That we lost the Iraq war, and are afraid to admit it- just as it was a "deadly" accurate and good timing statement to bring in the daugter as fair game. It was one's'upsy to Cheney. The master of the jab and barb was left speechless and said " Thank you, can I have another"

Zarkov wrote: "Having blue eyes is not the same as being a lesbian. The former has virtually no consequences for the person or the family, while the latter has significant consequences."

No. The latter has no consequences at all for the Cheney family. Mary Cheney is out, is a public figure, is well-known as a lesbian, and is a major player in her father's re-election campaign. Her homosexuality is no more significant than is the color of her eyes.

This was a manufactured controversy, pure and simple.

"This was a manufactured controversy, pure and simple."

Well, maybe. Look at Lynne Cheney's novel . . . where is all the sexual excitement?

Yeah, that's right.

This is all about Lynne Cheney being a deeply closeted self-hating lesbian.

So, Keyes attacking her daughter is o.k., but Kerry being positive and supportive is despicable.

Can you not just hear her shouting "*I* AM NOT A LESBIAN!"

PaulB:

I should have said “a person or a family” instead of “the person or the family” as I was speaking in general and not specifically about the Cheney family. As a human trait having blue eyes is much less significant than being a lesbian in terms of the impact on the life of a woman. I tend to agree with you that this is a manufactured controversy because it seems to me that the Cheneys are over reacting. As I said before in their place I would be miffed, but only slightly. But then again I’m not Cheney and perhaps my skin is thicker. I think Kerry was not being complimentary, as politicians are generally not very nice people and Kerry is no exception. But that’s my own perception, and I expect others will differ.

prescriptions for women

drugs for women">drugs for women

drugs for women">drugs for women

Online Casino Games

Online Casino Games

Play Blackjack

a href="http://play-black-jack-with-me.com/blackjack/id.htm">Play Blackjack

mortgage leads

mortgage leads

refinance mortgage

7696 http://www.top-texas-hold-em.com

texas hold em

6633 Kona Coffee Starbucks Coffee Jamaica Blue Mountain
Coffee
coffee maker gourmet coffee green mountain coffee kenya coffee organic coffee specialty coffee folgers coffee coffee brewers costa rica coffee Tullys Coffee Millstone Coffee coffee grinder
http://www.coffee-delivered.com

You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new dental insurance
plan.
Get yours at: http://dental-insurance-plan.freeservers.com/

individual
dental
plans
You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new
dental insurance
plan.
Get yours at:
http://www.dental-plan-source.com
individual dental
plans
You only get one set of teeth. Take care of them with a good
dental plan.
Dental
insurance is
money well spent. I sleep better since I signed up for my new
dental insurance
plan. Get yours at:
http://www.e-dental-insurance-plans.com/
individual dental
plans

Thanks for that insightful comment! It makes interesting reading, especially when I need a payday loan .

Thanks for that insightful comment! It makes interesting reading, especially when I need a payday loan .

You ar the the one I love honey where are you now just come back we will live very happily

2518 Very well said chappy.

Some day soon I will be back.

cool page!