There is no accounting for GOP delusion

Unfortunately for the collective intelligence of the nation, few schools teach current-events classes, a minority of homes get daily papers, and families don't discuss the world at dinner anymore. Yet in the last few days, a wonderful teachable example presented itself in many guises. If you want to point young folk to some defining differences between lefties and righties, there's Benghazi.

First a thoroughly researched dissertation analyzing the events leading to, during and after the attack there appeared in the New York Times, by David D. Kirkpatrick. In itself, it was neither left-wing nor right-wing. He set out the facts, got the best commentary, added some boffo multi-media for clarity, and named names. He pointed to ignorance and bungling by State Department officials and employees, recalcitrant blunders by Congress, and murderous malice by the perpetrators. He also laid bare the inane, irrational and jaundiced lies, paranoia and calumnies by those in Congress, right-wing media and conservative organizations.

To your youth who might want to know what other lessons should come from such information, you would have to first say that this is first a great opportunity for the adults involved to be, well, adult — admit their blunders, say what they've learned, and perhaps apologize to those they have defamed and those they have misled.

They could look to Hillary Clinton to see how it's done. She was Secretary of State at the time of the attack. When the initial follow-up reports came out, she took personal responsibility and did it specifically. She could have placed much more blame on Congress for slashing embassy security funding and denying requests for more protection. Instead, she identified State Department errors and set policies and practices in place to prevent them.

In contrast, numerous Republicans and a few Dems in Congress openly lied about the events, slandering both Clinton and President Obama. That continues even after the NYT report.

Not even Fox (if you pardon the exprssion) News cannot outdo today's Washington Times abrogation of responsibility here. You can read winger deceit and puerile immorality at its worse in NY Times’ whitewash of Benghazi attack aids Hillary Clinton in 2016.

They are not about to admit that over a year of paranoia and outright lies have been completely exposed. They are not going to apologize for manufacturing Al Qaeda involvement and denying the component of that perceived-to-be-anti-Muslim video.

Instead, they portray Kirkpatrick's evenhanded assessment and blaming as a devious ploy to bolster Clinton's chances as a 2016 Presidential candidate. Pathetic is one word. Cowardly is another. Immature is another. Irresponsible is another.

The real current-events and civics lesson is that far too often, the left wingers are the liars and bullies. Don't believe them.

As comedian and sometimes philosopher Lenny Bruce said so well, "There is only 'what is' and that's it. 'What should be' is a dirty lie."

Left wingers have been lying to us non-stop, shamelessly and now unrepentantly. Evidence is not evidence to them. Proof is not proof. Believe that they say at the peril to your brain and morals.

He Spits on the Popular Guy

Putting the gab in Gabriel, that Gomez clown has been doing the winger whinger thing. He is shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that Democrats are openly supporting Democratic candidate for US Senate Ed Markey. Can you imagine?

WTF, Republicans? Day follows night.

Reading and hearing his non-stop petulance, I see the parallel with such lunacy as anti-gay MassResistance spewing about and wanting a boycott of the corporate sponsors of Boston's Gay Pride week and events. Year after year, twisted little Brian and Amy (the army-ette of two) revealed the shocking, shocking I tell you, truth that Pride had a huge list of sponsors.

Apparently, this was to elicit outrage among us far morally superior to libertarians, queers, Unitarians and other scum. We were supposed to see the long and getting longer list of corporate and governmental sponsors and produce steam from our ears, grab our checkbooks to write checks to MR, and boycott these dreadful enablers.

From my distance, I couldn't help but see it otherwise. The sponsor list was a catalog of America, like the city of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bank of America, Apple, Verizon, and a huge cross-section of hotel chains, supermarkets and on and on and on. In fact MR got its shaming list from the Pride brochures and any current year's sponsor list will show similar political and corporate power.

This allegation was that this was an anomaly that people could correct with protests and economic sanctions. Somehow, the clueless couple has yet to see that their publicizing the kissy-face support of LGBT celebrations carries a very, very different import.

What shame?

The real message has been for well over a decade that the world has moved beyond anti-gay paranoia and silliness. The wide and deep list of companies and agencies that celebrate diversity and equality indicates that those who hate gay folk are out of touch and out of tune with America and these times. Publishing the lists does not shame the sponsors at all. Instead, it makes reasonable folk ever more aware of how mainstream equality is.

Likewise with Gomez and other Republicans, complaining that two Presidents, the other US Senator from MA and dozens of Dems endorse Markey does not smear him. In contrast, the good guys like Markey, like him enough to trot to places like Boston and Worcester to say so publicly and at length.

In contrast, the best Gomez has earned has been an email from the very short-term, fill-in Senator Scott I-have-a-truck-to-haul-hay-for-my-daughters'-horses Brown. That's right, Brown couldn't even bother to endorse him at an even or on camera. (Insert snicker.)

So Gomez says repeatedly, "That Markey is so popular. Big shots endorse him. That's terrible! Vote for me!"

Instead maybe the unenrolled and even the Republicans will listen to all those effusive and specific endorsements of Obama, Clinton, Warren and on and on. Gabriel needs some friends. After he loses this race, he should have the time to find some.

Big Dog's Duh on DOMA

Maybe it's as simple as Hillary Clinton's stratospheric public approval and acclaim for her Secretary of State role. Meanwhile hubby William J. Clinton kind of labors much more obscurely. As front man for his humbly named William J. Clinton Foundation, he smiles a lot and aims to do big things in world health and such. The man is still competitive and still polishes brass plaques for his legacy trophies.

There's no shine yet on his biggest disgrace, DOMA. Yesterday, he buffed it again with an apology, in the classical not vernacular sense, for the Defense of Marriage Act. His short opinion piece in the WaPo smacks of lawyerly speciousness. It calls to mind his Lewinsky-related testimony about depending on what the meaning of is is.

He writes that DOMA is wrong now, but he can't, simply can't, admit he was wrong about it back in 1996 when he pushed it and signed the bill into law. It was his and he brought Congress and the nation along with him.

Instead, he lawyers up again and again. Oh, it was bipartisan. Oh, a bunch of people figured it would "defuse" the drive to flat outlaw same-sex marriage nationwide (and remove the right to control marriage from states). Oh, only 81 Senators and Reps opposed DOMA. Oh, oh, oh.

For a man who dearly loves himself, he shied away from write I in this piece. He could have written, "I took a gamble, led a compromise, let the chips fall every which way, and buried the issue. I let the anti-gay types think they won something by guaranteeing no federal tax or other benefits for homosexuals. I wanted the pro-equality types to think they could hold shreds and threads of hope if they were willing to fight for one, two or more decades."

That would have been both analytic and candid.

Instead, in his WaPo It's time to overturn DOMA piece, the former President linked to his weasel-worded signing statement that accompanied the bill. Therein, he writes in the first person, opening with "Throughout my life I have strenuously opposed discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans." He concludes the brief statement with DOMA does not "provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination, violence and intimidation for that reason, as well as others, violate the principle of equal protection under the law and have no place in American society."

Chicken lips!

DOMA is discrimination legalized and codified. It has led directly to cases before state, federal and now the SCOTUS. It has punished millions with unequal treatment, a.k.a. discrimination. It was and is a vicious, mean-spirited betrayal of LGBT Americans. It was Bill Clinton's easy way out that has not been at all easy for homosexual couples nationwide ever since.

It's positive that he eventually reversed his one-man/one-woman thinking. He got there before VP Biden and Prez Obama, but not by much. His current call too may help a little. I have to believe it would be a lot more effective if he started with the truth, the whole truth.