Thursday, May 04, 2006

Lost ads

I don’t watch Lost and didn’t read about last night’s episode until today. PVRblog calls it http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2006/05/tonights_lost_i.html” target="_blank">Tivo-proof:

Tonight’s episode of Lost—a show already so deeply embedded with secret signs and clues—will feature details about the episode sprinkled within ads themselves. This is both brilliant and frightening. I can’t recall wanting to watch commercials other than the annual Super Bowl but tonight I’ll actually refrain from hitting the FFWD button so I don’t miss anything.

More from the LA Times and canada.com,

Rumsfeld spars with critic in Atlanta

You’d expect he’d get a warmer welcome here in the South:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP)—Protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday, and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence in an unusually vociferous display of anti-war sentiment.

“Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?” asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst.

“I did not lie,” shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies. (McGovern talks to CNN about Rumsfeld)

Before Rumsfeld’s War in Irag I honestly supported his notions of transforming the military. They haven’t worked. But I give him some serious credit for facing his critics:

President Bush seldom faces such challenges. Demonstrators usually are kept far from him when he delivers public remarks.

Rumsfeld has been interrupted by anti-war demonstrators in congressional hearing rooms as he has delivered testimony to lawmakers in recent months. [...]

When security guards tried removing McGovern, the analyst, during his persistent questioning of Rumsfeld, the defense secretary told them to let him stay. The two continued to spar.

“You’re getting plenty of play,” Rumsfeld told McGovern, who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

Responding to another protester who also accused Rumsfeld of lying, the secretary said such accusations are “so wrong, so unfair and so destructive.”

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Mary Cheney: The book blitz is on

I’d cash in too; even though I know you can’t square a circle.

On GMA just now, when asked if her dad was not on the ticket in the 2004 campaign would she have supported President Bush? She answered, “You bet!”

But last night John pointed to this:

She says she considered quitting her role as campaign adviser over the issue of gay marriage, but Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary Cheney tells ABC News “Primetime” anchor Diane Sawyer her sexuality has never created problems within her family. Mary Cheney discussed the campaign, her feelings about President Bush, life with her partner of 14 years, and what it was like to come out as gay to her parents. Watch the full interview with Mary Cheney on “Primetime,” Thursday at 10 p.m. ET. “I struggled with my decision to stay on the 2004 campaign,” Cheney told “Primetime.” Her personal challenge came when President Bush said the nation must defend the sanctity of marriage. When Bush proclaimed it in the State of the Union, she refused to go. Mary Cheney, a senior campaign advisor, was finally taking her stand. “I didn’t want to be there. No one banned me from being there. But I didn’t want to stand up and cheer,” she said. She says the president offered to let her give a public statement in disagreement, and her father indicated publicly he disagreed with his boss on the issue. She declined but says she did talk with her family about quitting the campaign.

I don’t think the whole thing is timed to undercut Bill Frist on gay marriage, though I hope the religious right does. You can read it before you watch it here. And Raw Story has excerpts of Vanity Fair’s Mary Cheney article.

Anglican terrorists

The Diocese of California may well elect a gay Episcopal Bishop (three of the seven candidates are openly gay) which elicited this:

The Rev. Paul Zahl, dean of the conservative Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., likened the election of a gay bishop in California to “a terrorist bomb, which is timed to destroy a peace process.”

Speaking of terrorists:

Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, primate of the Church of Nigeria and leader of the conservative wing of the communion, recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law that criminalizes same-sex marriage in his country and denies gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government. The law also infringes upon press and religious freedom by authorizing Nigeria’s government to prosecute newspapers that publicize same-sex associations and religious organizations that permit same-sex unions. [...]

Surprisingly, few voices—Anglican or otherwise—have been raised in opposition to the archbishop. When I compare this silence with the cacophony that followed the Episcopal Church’s decision to consecrate the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man who lives openly with his partner, as the bishop of New Hampshire, I am compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings. Have we become so cowed by the periodic eruptions about the decadent West that Archbishop Akinola and his allies issue that we are no longer willing to name an injustice when we see one?

I also feel compelled to ask the archbishop’s many high-profile supporters in this country why they have not publicly dissociated themselves from his attack on the human rights of a vulnerable population. Is it because they support this sort of legislation, or because the rights of gay men and women are not worth the risk of tangling with an important alliance?

Follow the money:

Millions of dollars contributed by a handful of donors have allowed a small network of theologically conservative individuals and organizations to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church and may break up the Anglican Communion.

The donors include five secular foundations that have contributed heavily to politically conservative advocacy groups, publications and think tanks, and one individual, savings and loan heir Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., who has given millions of dollars to conservative causes and candidates.