Is it Just Me
 

I vaguely recall Mary Cheney being pretty out front in the 2000 campaign, presumably in order to trigger the mass exodus of Gays for Bush vote.

Given subsequent events and the lack of enthusiasm for an administration with policies so hostile to the gay community, I am not entirely surprised that she has been less vocal this time 'round.

Beyond the senselessness of this argument generally, though, I am surprised to see the implicit presumption here that she's somehow immune to mention this year, when she was an emblem for BC'00 last time.

Is it Just Me
 

did you ever bring the toy box into show and tell?

Newsflash -- Bush runs Government like a Bankrupt Airline
 

From Bloomberg:

• The U.S. government reached the $7.384 trillion legal limit on how much it can borrow, forcing the Bush administration to shuffle funds among accounts and prompting fresh Democratic criticism of the president's economic policies.
  
  To avoid exceeding the cap, the Treasury said it would temporarily suspend contributions to a government pension program. The department's plan to announce new debt sales in early November won't be affected. Congress isn't expected to increase the amount of debt the Treasury can sell to fund approved government spending until sometime next month.

Well, OK, but if we soon see the feds cutting back ion the free peanuts and pretzels, Bush is definitely losing my vote next month. After all, some minimum standards of decency must be upheld.

Is it Just Me
 

I had to go back and read that column again, and it didn't disappoint on second reading. I had never even heard of Santorum until I read about it here (the person, not the, uh... other stuff). This one was a real hoot:

• To simplify my life as a med student in taking sexual histories of patients, "santorum" could stand for discharge. Instead of having to ask people, "Any burning sensation during urination? Any penile/vaginal discharge or foul smell?" It would simply be, "Any burning sensation during urination? Any santorum?" That's much tidier. Plus, "santorum" sounds vaguely medical.
  
  Leave My Name Out

Is it Just Me
 

This debate is ridiculous. It was a classless move, but not out of bounds.

For those of you that don't understand the uproar (warranted or not), the children (even if they are in their 30s) are generally off limits unless they are actually a candidate.

Is it Just Me
 

Fischer had been in the group years before, and briefly. Cheney is out, and is the (a?) top aide to the vice president in his re-election campaign. So those are entirely different. And Welch had a deal with Cohn to leave Fischer out of it, which McCarthy was breaking. A second big difference. Last, you are (implicitly) equating Communism and lesbianism. If there's no shame in the latter, what's the problem?

Kerry's point -- which didn't strike me as being particularly well articulated or useful, FWIW -- was to humanize the issue by putting a face on it. Schieffer did this when he wanted to talk about what the candidates would say to a single jobless worker (Bush: You're dumb -- educate yourself). Kerry was doing the same thing by changing the terms of the question from an abstract one about homosexuality to a specific one about particular people. McCarthy, OTOH, was just fucking Fischer over for the hell of it.

I think the horse is dead now.

Is it Just Me
 

I saw a documentary on getting out the vote recently, and there was a segment on the gay vote. I was shocked to hear that in 2000, Bush got a million gay people to vote for him (confirmation at http://www.logcabincolumbus.org/VOTE%20ANALYSIS.htm). I imagine that Mary Cheney's participation, though fairly low key, was a factor there. I'm pretty sure that this time around, Bush can't count on those votes. I imagine most of them are in urban areas in non-swing states, but Bush has lost the Log Cabin Republican endorsement (and there was a segment in the documentary of a group of Log Cabin Republicans in Colorado who said they weren't going to vote for him).

I'm also reminded that Ann Richards lost the governorship in 1994 partially due to a nasty whisper campaign in East Texas suggesting that she was gay friendly at best and a closet lesbian at worst.

Is it Just Me
 

Yep. Bring up white supremacists and Nazis in a conversation on Kerry's anti-gay-marriage stance . That's a bright move, Sparky.


__________________

Is it Just Me
 

What's the ruling on siblings? Spouses?

Is it Just Me
 

Siblings are typcially fair game, unless they are retarded or something. Spouses are fair game.

Is it Just Me
 

According to DearMary.com,

• She already has a history of publicly working on gay rights issues, from her time as a paid gay liaison for Coors and serving on the board of the Republican Unity Coalition (a gay Republican group devoted to stamping out anti-gay prejudice in the Republican Party).... She is a public figure who has chosen to put herself in the public eye as a professional gay rights activist, first at Coors and then at the Republican Unity Coalition. She has also put herself in the public eye by accepting a $100,000 a year salary to run the vice president's re-election campaign.... The Bush Administration also has had no problem using Mary Cheney as the gay poster child for compassionate conservatism, first during the 2000 election and later as a board member of a top gay Republican advocacy group, in order to win gay and lesbian money and votes.... Mary chose to put herself out there as the Republican party's gay poster child during the 2000 presidential campaign, and more recently as a board member of the gay rights group Republican Unity Coalition. She chose to publicly use her 'celebrity' status as the lesbian daughter of Vice President Cheney to convince gay Americans that the Bush-Cheney ticket was one of compassionate conservatism in order to woo gay money and gay votes for her father's party. When Mary joined the pro-gay Republican Unity Coalition in April 2002, she issued a statement saying "We can make sexual orientation a nonissue for the Republican Party, and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans.'"

link (internal links omitted)

Is it Just Me
 

Interesting. Is there a play-book or something where all this is articulated?

Is it Just Me
 

Say, Karl Rove wasn't involved with that campaign, was he?

Is it Just Me
 

Not for nothing, but I'm fairly certain there are a lot of gay men and women out there for which their sexual identity is not the first and foremost issue on which they vote.

Is it Just Me
 

Doubtless.

Yet I suspect it was easier for gays to make that distinction in years past than it is today.