Oh Jonah, And You A Married Man Too.

Given the general pulchritude of the onboard entertainment, we may be seeing even more posts like this one from Cruise Critic folllowing the National Review’s 2007 Arctic cruise:

Pinkly Smooth
Cool Cruiser
Join Date: Oct 2006

Hmm, when was that NRO 2006 Rhine cruise exactly?

Posts: 94
My first onboard romance.

Hello everyone. I’m new here and I just got back from my first cruise and was lucky enough to engage in an onboard romance with an amazing crew member.

It was pretty much love at first sight and we spent the better part of the cruise hanging out with eachother at every available opportunity. Luckily for both of us, he was part of the entertainment staff and hanging out with the passengers was a huge part of his job. When he’d get his schedule the night before, he’s show it to me and ask me to show up at all of the activities he was hosting for the day. On top of that, I spent an hour with him everyday while he did his library duty and he met up with me after he was off at the bar every night.

It was amazing and wonderful, and at the end he gave me his email to keep in touch with him. I’m not exactly sure what to expect out of it, but he made several mentions of visiting me when his contract ends and even asked me to wait for him. I suppose now it’s time to play the “waiting game” and see what happens.

Anyone who can offer some friendly/not so friendly advice or words of wisdom?

I got off the ship on October 13th and sent him an email on Tuesday, still no response. I understand that he’s very busy.

Of course he’s busy, DUH. Those Corner posts and magnum opuses about liberal fascism don’t just write themselves, you know.

“Friends” of Israel Court Its Destruction

Heads may be rolling in Washington and it’s certainly way past time. But meanwhile, unnoticed because drowned out by media misdirection, the money and power business is going on as usual.

Real politicking happens safely away from the public gaze, at various conferences, private dinners, seminars and annual meetings, at discreetly-funded thinktanks and euphemistically-named political action committees; what we see in the mainstream media is only barely a quarter of a butt-cheek of the vast, wiggling, high-maintenance rump of the right.

So far there’s always been at least a little cosmetic distance between the big campaign money donors and America’s overabundance of absolutely-gaga, blood & thunder, fundie megalomaniac ‘clerics’. One of the reasons the religious right’ve come so far as fast as they have is that there’ve been buffer zones, like Focus On The Family and the Christian Coalition, to smooth out the hick edges and put an acceptable gloss on the more outre ejaculations of the biblical literalists.

But now one fundie nutjob, John Hagee, has bypassed those usual gatekeepers and power-brokers and gone straight to the big money – of all people, The America Israel Public Affairs Committee.

AIPAC’s recent rapturous reception of this fundamentalist Christian demagogue (whose ultimate aim is to bring about Armageddon, Christian dominionism and the ultimate destruction of Israel itself) is raising eyebrows, to say the least.

The America Israel Public Affairs Committee is a respectable organisation, whatver you may think of its politics. It describes itself as America’s pro-Israel lobby. No shilly-shallying there, no mystery about it: all perfectly above-board. I mean, look who’s big friends with them:

Dick Cheney at AIPAC

This Year’s AIPAC Policy Conference is the Largest Ever

Featured speakers will include Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader John Boehner – as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

So far, so respectable.

AIPAC have shedloads of money, which they distribute to candidates who’ll urge the US to act in what AIPAC see as Israel’s interests. Because of their cash and big supporter base they have massive clout in US politics. I wrote about them a few weeks ago when both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards made unashamedly martial pro-Israel speeches at AIPAC meetings in the hope of getting campaign funding . (If you’re looking for a change of US policy re Palestine, Edwards or Clinton are not your go-to guys.) AIPAC money’s been behind the most hawkish, neocon Republicans in Congress and the White House and its power is such that it’s received wisdom that a Democratic presidential candidate can’t and won’t win without it. That’s why Clinton and Edwards’re both bending over backwards to prove to AIPAC they can outhawk anyone.

But it matters not how much Democrats declare everlasting loyalty to Israel and swear to take no option off the table in it’s protection – because it’ll never be enough. They’re just insufficiently apocalyptic.

No, Hagee’s the kind of man AIPAC can really get behind:

The Goy Who Cried Wolf
The Israel lobby gives America’s leading Christian right warmonger a warm welcome.
By Sarah Posner

Delegates at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference were treated to an air-brushed John Hagee last night, primed with his most innocuous talking points and stripped of his most outlandish Armageddon rhetoric. Hagee, the founder of the America’s leading Christian Zionist lobby, Christians United for Israel, left his clumsy exegeses of Biblical prophecy back home in San Antonio. He is well-versed in bringing an audience of several thousand people to its feet, and he knew he didn’t need his slide show of mushroom clouds and world-ending wars to work this crowd.

[…]

n anticipation of Hagee’s appearance at AIPAC’s conference, there has been much discussion about whether Hagee is actually an anti-Semite who blames Jews for the Holocaust yet anticipates their conversion at the Second Coming — and another debate over whether it’s actually good for Israel or the world’s Jews when groups like AIPAC ally themselves with him. But judging from the crowd’s reaction, and that of delegates I spoke with afterwards, none of that mattered. Like other Jewish leaders I’ve talked to about Hagee, the attitude is simply that Israel has very few friends, and it needs all the friends it can get. If Hagee is willing to mobilize hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of conservative Christians to the cause, then they’re willing to overlook his eagerness for the Second Coming (when we’ll all become Christians), because it’s just a silly fantasy that won’t come to pass, anyway.

[…]

At a time when the Middle East faces seemingly intractable conflicts with dire geopolitical consequences, the notion that Hagee — whose status is only elevated by invitations like AIPAC’s — is leading a political movement based on nothing more than a supposedly literal reading of his Bible only reinforces the view that the United States is being led by messianic forces at odds with world peace and stability.

[…]

When he does speak to actual Middle East politics, it’s only to encourage the further destabilization of the region. Hagee has been agitating for a war with Iran for well over a year now, certainly not a single-handed effort on his part, nor one for which he would deserve sole blame should it happen. But if it does happen (and some think it already has begun), Hagee most certainly should be blamed for something else: convincing his minions that war is not only palatable, but required by God.

Hagee’s speech, laced with charged comparisons of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to men like Pharaoh, Haman, and Hilter [sic], as well as countless Churchillian references, brought the crowd to its feet. “He’s A-OK,” said one AIPAC delegate who had never heard of Hagee before, adding that he wanted to get one of Hagee’s DVDs for his grandchildren to watch.

Should whichever candidate is successful in the Democratic nomination then go on to win the Presidency this weird and worrying coalition of dominionists and zionists is likely to be their new opposition and that’ll make the whole Clinton perjury flap look like a child’s tea party.

One of the unfortunate blowback effects of this very welcome exposure of Republican party corruption is the hollowing out of the slightly-less-insane rightwing leadership. When a void arises, the loony apocalyptic right is only too ready to step up and fill it.

And we all know how that kind of thing turns out.

Self-Loathing Power Junkies R Us

In terms of sheer bang for the buck, however little or however much it cost The Nation to send Max Blumenthal to the wingnut fundraising conference CPAC, it’s been repaid a thousandfold in entertainment value alone.

The latest tale to emerge from Blumenthal’s CPAC visit is curiously reminiscent of the story of our old friend Jimmy Jeff Gannon:

CPAC’s Gay Porn Star Honoree and the Politics of Personal Crisis

I don’t know if David Horowitz knew Cpl. Matt Sanchez was once a gay porn star and male prostitute when he introduced him to me at last weekend’s CPAC. But he did know that Sanchez was an eager yes-man, and a supposed victim of the campus PC thuggery Horowitz has made a career out of decrying.

As Horowitz played cardiologist, ranting to me about how each leftist “has hatred in his heart” and how members of the New Left to which he once belonged had “treason in their hearts,” Sanchez stood faithfully by his side, muttering encouragement. “That’s right. That’s right,” Sanchez would say, almost on cue. Whenever I spoke, Sanchez would mumble something under his breath like, “That’s such a lie! Omigod!” or “See! Liberals are hateful.”

Horowitz probably discovered Sanchez after the ex-Marine appeared on Hannity & Colmes alleging that while studying at Columbia University, he was called a “baby-killer” by members of that school’s International Socialist Organization. This alleged episode, which was investigated by Columbia but never confirmed, also earned Sanchez a spot on the O’Reilly Factor.

For his supposed courage in the face of liberal cruelty, Cpl. Sanchez was presented with the Jeanne Kirpatrick Academic Freedom Award at this year’s CPAC. Sanchez was the perfect vehicle for the conservative movement’s ongoing attempt to wrap itself in the uniform, and to heap resentment on liberals for their supposed anti-military bias.

Soon, Sanchez was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Malkin posted pictures of herself beside the corporal on her blog. Sanchez was clad in full military regalia and Malkin wore a big smile. But Malkin is not smiling anymore. Like so many of Sanchez’s boosters, she was mugged by reality.

As several gay blogs revealed late yesterday, Corporal Sanchez was known during his halcyon days as Rod Majors, a majorly well-endowed gay porn star. (Photos of Corp. Sanchez aka Rod Majors in action can be viewed here. I warn you, this link is NOT to be clicked on if you have minors around or if you’re in a crowded workplace). According to Tom Bacchus, Sanchez was also a $200-an-hour male prostitute who advertised himself (here) as an “excellent top.”

There is of course nothing inherently wrong with Sanchez being a gay porn star or a male escort. His past is only notable because he chose to join a movement that exploits anti-gay sentiment for political gain. Coulter’s now-famous “faggot” remark was not an aberration, but rather a symbol of the politics of resentment that propels the conservative movement and its elected Republican surrogates; a reflection of the bigotry conservatives have sought to write into the Constitution through the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment. The ascendant “family values” wing of the right is also responsible for sabotaging legislation allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces, a maneuver that may now spell the end of Sanchez’s career.

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What is it that attracts people whose natural interest would seem completely opposed to the Republican agenda, to that agenda? Why feel the need to become so slavishly adherent to a movement that hates you? How can anyone deal with the internal conflicts and stay sane?

Blumenthal has a theory that he uses Ann Coulter to illustrate:

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Political Video Roundup – First The Snitty, then The Nitty-Gritty

US humorist Lewis Black on being invited to host the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, via Avedon Carol

Then there’s CPAC: The Unauthorized Documentary, a tour of the US hairtrigger loony Right’s premier annual fundraising conference, from that very plucky and good-looking fella Max Blumenthal, of The Nation. Notable features are Michelle Malkin, unable to comprehend that if you have to issue an errata slip, it’s likely your work’s not exactly reliable, and David Horowitz, coming over in person as exactly as obnoxiously as one might expect.

All great fun, but it’s easy to forget when pointing and laughing at the ridiculousness of Washington and its voracious attendant suckerfish that the policies of the corporate right have real world consequences.

The last video is of Belgian firefighters in pitched street battles with the police last week: all over Europe, where the neoliberal economic policy of opening up public services to privatisation by multinational corporations like Group4, Wackenhut, Brown & Root, Serco…. the list goes on and on… is being vigorously resisted by normally peacable public servants. [Sorry about it being in German, it was the only embeddable clip I could find.]

If you’re a public servant and have ever wondered about the police’s loyalty to their fellow taxpayer-employed colleagues, wonder no longer. This is the purely market-driven world the US corporate right and their EU allies want for everyone and resistance will be met with force if necessary, as this video shows. Where public services like firefighting and justice are made subject to the rules of the free market the police will always act in their own interest and side with the highest bidder. Someone has to pay for all those nifty riot guns, paramilitary outfits, deadly anti-personnel toys and all that overtime.