http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/06/20070620-7.html

Tony Snow: "The President is the first person to make embryonic stem cell lines anywhere."

And here I thought he was spending his vacations goofing off. Didn't realize he was doing advanced molecular biology!

It's interesting that he continues to insist a particular sentence: "I am not gay."

I've heard that some HIV clinics don't use the word "gay" at all anymore, because of people who insist "I am not gay" but have a lot of sex with men, and instead just ask if they have sex with other men.

My partner does a lot of work with the queer Arab community in San Francisco, and sent me this very moving post from the MAHA (an underground Iranian LGBT E-magazine).

Their article is reposted here:

http://www.ilga.org/news_results.asp?LanguageID=1&FileCategory=9&ZoneID=3&FileID=879

Here's a key quote:

"LGBT rights are part of human rights and they will be achieved in Iran by a joint effort from all Iranians for a democratic and modern Iran. International support for the democracy struggle inside Iran, at every level, is laudable and helpful.

We express our strongest opposition to any military intervention or military action against our beloved county Iran."

The folks involved in the group really, really don't approve of Iran's policies toward sexual minorities, but they urge social pressure instead of military action. Military action leads to crackdowns and reduced rights for queers, not improvement. (For another example, Helem had to shut down its Beirut office during war in Lebanon.)

You're not settling for "half a loaf." You're settling for "a full loaf for me and none for someone else." That's not a compromise, it's a grab at the expense of people who would want to be your allies.

As a bisexual man (who is bisexual all the time, not a "part-time gay") who is living with a transgendered man, I'm not very impressed with your willingness to drop any portion of a bill that doesn't benefit you personally.

Would you call a law that gives rights to transgendered people but leaves gay men behind a good first step, too? I wouldn't.

You say that there's something that conservatives know that liberals don't - how to make incremental changes. There's something else the conservatives do better right now, sadly - how to form a coalition with allies.

What exactly do you plan to tell those gays and lesbians if and when the bill is killed because you were wrong and Barney was right? Sorry?

Here's what I plan:

"Thank you. You could have ditched us for your own advantage and you didn't. I know it was close. We will continue to fight by your side."

And two years later?

"Congratulations. We did it."

If dropping transgender issues from this is a stepping stone to later inclusion, why is the title of this piece "How did the T get in LGBT?"

It seems like a complete abandonment, rather than a strategic postponement.

Slim-Fast.

An idea about the Iraq War occurred to me a few weeks ago and I can't shake it.

Here it is:

The Democratic Congress should declare victory in Iraq. Well done W, Mission Accomplished, here's our timetable for withdrawal now that we've defeated the Terrorists and America is Safe. Declare that anyone who opposes the bill is just nay-saying victory. "I say we won! Are you trying to remove America's victory? Why don't you support our troops?"

How could a Republican argue against victory in Iraq?

It would be a cynical, disingenuous rhetorical maneuver, and it would involve giving up the symbolic and moral upper hand, but maybe it could save lives and end a terrible, costly war.

I'd be curious to hear about how Lubbock is doing in terms of electricity prices. (Lubbock is unique in that it has competing electrical companies that seem generally to work very well.)

I really should look things up before posting. Lubbock is also going up in price, but not as much as expected.

However, they haven't had prices deregulated yet.

Why not just leave it on a server you can access on the other side? Something like Google Docs, for instance?

If you're going to have internet access on the other side of the border, it's probably best just to bring an empty laptop across and use it as a dumb terminal.

Whenever I see a correlation, I try to play the "reverse the direction of causality" game to look for other explanations.

Sometimes this gets nonsensical results ("people fated to get cancer crave cigarettes more than people who aren't fated to get cancer") but sometimes it opens up new explanations.

So maybe it works the other way around?

Perhaps people who make a lot more money are more likely to have traditional views of gender? They're rich enough that they can scoff at justice, and, in fact, ideas of equality and parity are threatening to them.

Patriarchs benefit from sexism.

I'm not exactly sympathetic to the cause of conservatives who came to start a fight at a town hall, and then got injured when they succeeded in starting a fight, but I do want to speak up on one thing:

Being able to walk is not mutually exclusive with needing a wheelchair.

Or, more accurately:

Being able to walk (on one occasion) is not mutually exclusive with needing a wheelchair (at other times.)

That is to say, I've known folks who can walk without a wheelchair for short durations, and seem fine, but who sometimes (or most of the time) need that wheelchair.

I don't mean to comment on the rest of the case, but if someone in a wheelchair stands up, that doesn't mean they were faking it.