WhiteyFest 2004 and My Dinner With Dianne

Day one of the WhiteyFest 2004 Convention ("Now With More Hate™") is done, and the Republicans have now taken to the streets of Manhattan for the night in their devoted quest for cheap booze and hookers. They'll all be humming selections from John Ashcroft Sings as they search for any facility that allows for remedial line dancing. New Yorkers be on notice — for the next four nights, your city will be almost criminally uncool.

There are two stories that were ignored at the convention tonight, and it's a real shame nobody brought them up. The first story is the resignation of two-term Congressman Ed Schrock, a right-winged gay hater from Virginia. Schrock has at least one famous constituent living in his district — famed zealot Pat Robertson. Not surprisingly, Schrock's voting record is one that would make Crazy Pat proud. Why, Schrock was even one of the big poobahs behind what the Republicans call the Federal Marriage Amendment. (The rest of us simply refer to it as the Screw the Gays Amendment; it's much clearer that way.)

There's just one problem with Ed Schrock's anti-gay sentiments. It turns out that Eddie might be at least a little gay himself. Gay enough, at least, to post an audio personal ad on a gay singles site where he announces the following:

I'd just like to get together with a guy from time to time just to -- just to play. I'd like him to be, uh, in very good shape, flat stomach, good chest, good arms, well hung, cut, uh, just get naked, play, and see what happens, nothing real heavy duty, but just a fun time, go down on him, he can go down on me, and just, uh, take it from there. Hope to hear from you. Bye.

Bye indeed, Ed.

Once again, I wind up feeling like a total prude. To me, "nothing real heavy duty" doesn't mesh with "go down on him, he can go down on me." I guess what Gay Eddie Schrock is really getting at is he'd like there to be no congressional probe, if you know what I mean.

Just for the record, it makes me sad to see someone get outed against his or her will, and I don't think Schrock had any intention of stepping out of the closet anytime soon. But it does make me a little less sad when it happens to someone who uses his power to influence legislation that hurts the plight of gays. It also makes for one hell of a movie of the week.

David Ashe, a Gulf War veteran, is the Democrat who was running against Schrock in the upcoming election. Word out of Virginia is that a current Virginia state legislator — either state senator Ken Stolle and state delegate Thelma Drake — will likely become the Republican candidate. Postings on many of the more popular neocon hate sites are calling for a Draft Ollie North movement, confirming suspicions that inbreeding still remains a serious issue among the Republican faithful.

Let's take a peek, shall we, at the types of bills Mr. Stolle has introduced during his tenure in the Virginia state senate. Let's see ... how about this one:

SB 319 Feticide; penalty
Killing a fetus. Provides that any person who maliciously, willfully, deliberately, and unlawfully kills the fetus of another is guilty of a felony punishable by five to 40 years in prison and that if the act is done with premeditation it is punishable as a Class 2 felony.

Ouch. So Kenny apparently isn't one of those pro-choice Republicans that I hear about every now and then. How else has Ken helped the Commonwealth of Virginia?

SB 175 Hunting; allowed during certain hours on Sunday.
Sunday hunting. Allows persons to hunt on Sunday between noon and one-half hour after sunset.

It's about damn time. Why should Sunday be about rest, church, and football when I could go kill me some vermin instead? I couldn't find any mention of what happens to hunters who kill a deer fetus on Sunday afternoons. I think that might be OK, but I'm not entirely sure.

As far as Drake goes, she doesn't necessarily have all that impressive of a body of legislative work to call her own, but ... wait for it ... she was a co-patron of the house version of Stolle's feticide bill. Between these two, there doesn't appear to be a lesser of two evils. They're both just evil.

The other big story you didn't hear at the convention tonight was how Chicken George went on the Today Show this morning and told Matt Lauer that he doesn't think America can win his precious war on terror. So for the 1,100 or so of you who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past year and a half fighting the war on terror, the joke's on you.

White House damage-control specialist Scott McClellan, whose chats these days always seem to begin with the words, "what the president meant to say," attempted to clarify Chicken George's remarks. "He was talking about winning it in the conventional sense," said McClellan.

Yeah, nobody thought that made any sense either.

I guess the goal is now to win the war on terror in the unconventional sense. Maybe we can pull that off by making their lives far more annoying. Next up: Operation Screw Up Their Television Reception. That'll show those bastards. Just wait until Operation A Bee Somehow Got In The House. Then they'll really pay.

"After months of listening to the Republicans base their campaign on their singular ability to win the war on terror, the president now says we can't win the war on terrorism," pointed out John Edwards, the one known vice presidential candidate who has had fewer than six heart attacks. "This is no time to declare defeat." Unless you're Chicken George, of course.

I'm also going to assume that the mainstream media will neglect to report the degree to which Sen. John McCain mailed it in during his convention speech this evening. Apparently, it took four years for Sen. McCain to start hating himself for defending, praising, and campaigning for Chicken George, America's most powerful coward. It looks like the realization finally hit him about 30 seconds before it was time to deliver the speech. Poor John McCain is popping some extra sleeping pills tonight to numb the pain.

AND THE SENATOR WILL HAVE THE PORK CHOP. Yesterday, Tiersa and I took Tiersa's mom out for a birthday dinner. We went to a restaurant in Sausalito that specializes in Northern Italian cuisine called Poggio. The head chef at Poggio used to be the lead food dude at a restaurant we once enjoyed in Redwood City, so Tiersa and I were confident the food would be first-rate. Sure enough, this chef did not disappoint.

What made the evening more notable was the presence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was seated one table away from us. She seemed to be enjoying a friendly, quiet meal with a small group of friends or family members. At no point did Sen. Feinstein stand up and complain loudly about her salad or anything. It was rather uneventful, as she was the model restaurant patron.

The main reason I bring this up is that I have a serious star-sighting deficiency. I almost never see anyone famous anywhere. Sen. Feinstein jumped right to the top of my list, but my list really isn't all that impressive. She moves ahead of John Madden, who I saw once at a Mexican restaurant; Jeff Hostetler, a former Raiders quarterback whom my friend Jerry and I once saw wandering through a Las Vegas casino; and Joe Barry Carroll, a seven-foot-tall basketball player whom I once peed next to at a hotel urinal.

Several months back, a friend of mine who reads this blog went to New York on vacation and, in one evening at the same restaurant, saw Bill and Hillary Clinton and Robert Downey, Jr. Me, I peed next to a guy who was on the bum end of perhaps the worst trade in Bay Area sports history. Perhaps you can understand why "dining near Sen. Feinstein" has moved to the toppermost of my personal poppermost.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN NEW YORK, Republicans still continue to express a bizarre and unjustified hatred towards the men and women serving in our military and risking their lives for Chicken George's private war against whatever-the-hell-he-thinks-he's-fighting.

Several delegates wore bandages on their faces and in other visible spots during the convention tonight, openly mocking soldiers like Kerry who were wounded in the heat of battle. What this has to do with anything relevant is anybody's guess, but it certainly shines a light on the lack of intelligence and surplus of selfishness on display in New York tonight.

Somewhere tonight, it's dark in Iraq, and one of our boys is going to take a bullet to the chest. His body armor won't protect him, because Chicken George sent him overseas with improper protection and equipment. In less than 12 hours, his mother will be crying and screaming, demanding to know why this happened to her son. She'll want to know why she'll never see her son alive again, and she'll want to know exactly what cause was worth his sacrificing his life.

Those Band Aids aren't going to bring him back to life, you worthless guttersnipes. I can only guess how you'll manage to mock his injuries someday as well. It's a shame that fellow citizens have died just so you can have the right to express your almost unimaginable level of stupidity.

FINALLY TONIGHT, the San Francisco Chronicle showed me a little bit of love last week, as they finally decided to publish one of my letters. Frequent readers of this blog will recall that I faxed a letter to former Sen. Bob Dole last week, condemning him for his ugly attack on John Kerry's war injury. Fossil Bob said, among other things, that Kerry "never bled" as a result of his injuries. I guess those Purple Hearts were for afflictions like dandruff and chapped lips.

Anyway, I sent an abridged version of the letter to the Chronicle, and they called me the next morning to let me know they'd run it. So there you go.

By the way, several readers of the DailyKos also sent letters to Dole. (You can find my DailyKos postings here.) Although I have my doubts that Bob Dole read my letter or any of the others he may have received, one Kossite wrote today that he received a message from the law firm that currently employs Dole. Dole may not be reading the letters, but they sure are making the rounds at that law firm.

Sometimes, the smallest victories are the sweetest.

Comments

[Laura]

One of the interesting comments made about Kerry were that if he was so seriously wounded, why was he not getting disability pay. Who cares? My nephew left the military without being in war, with a disability for - PSORIASIS and SLEEP APNEA! Give me a break! No sharpnel or war wounds in those!

[Jerry Torres]

I believe Orwell said it best:

"War is peace."

I never thought I would live to see the day that "newspeak" would become the official language of the country. I guess we should get ready for Vol 1.0.

JT

PS--You forgot Dimaggio :-)

[Todd]

Thlema Drake is a light weight on policy issues and a guaranteed vote for Tom Delay and George Bush. Regardless where you live David Ashe needs a contribution - $25, $250 or $2,000 - he has a great chance to be elected and the Republicans are pouring money because they know it. The latest outrage is Drake sent a mailer calling Ashe unpatriotic.

A Marine who is a Gulf War veteran, drove to Ground Zero right after September 11th to search for survivors and just this year as a Marine Reservist was in Iraq helping to establish a judicial system. That's what I call patriotic.

Please help David win this one.

[Air Jordans]

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them