Presidential trivia:

Assuming George W. Bush completes his second term as president, we will have had two presidents in a row serving two four-year terms each. When was the last time this happened? The answer is below.

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Oh my god, why have I not seen this video until now? Max Blumenthal lets certain members of the College Republicans hang themselves with their own words when he asks them why they support the war in Iraq but won’t serve there personally.

My favorite is the “officially not gay” guy.

As of today, my outstanding student loans have fallen below $20,000. Hooray!

An article in yesterday’s New York Times magazine contained a great quote from Louisiana’s then-Senator John Breaux in 2000, ostensibly in support of Al Gore’s choice of Joe Lieberman, the first Jew on a major national party ticket, as his running mate:

“I don’t think American voters care where a man goes to church on Sunday.”

What a knob.

I got back from Vancouver this morning. I flew home via San Francisco. I was supposed to have a 70-minute window between landing in SF and taking off for Newark, but the first flight took off an hour late. Fortunately, 17 passengers were making that transfer (or 1 out of 8 passengers! wow), so they held the Newark plane at the gate for us, and when the first flight landed, the flight attendant asked all the passengers to let the Newark-bound passengers off the plane first. That was kinda cool.

Number of copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows spotted:

– 2 being read by children at the gate at Vancouver.
– 1 being read by a young woman sitting two seats away from me on the first flight.
– 4 being read by people as I walked down the aisle of the second plane to get to my seat in the back.

And oh yeah, the copy that Matt started and finished yesterday.

Here’s a first-person account from the guy standing next to the mud-caked woman in yesterday’s already-famous photo.

As I’ve told all the journalists who have called, I don’t know the name of the woman. It just didn’t seem important at the time. What seemed important was staying close to her, letting her know that somebody cared and getting her help. Like everybody else, I certainly hope she is okay.

Gonna rock your body ’til Canada Day!

I’m in Canada. For the second time in a year. Weird! My sister-in-law is Canadian, and her and my brother’s wedding was in Montreal last summer. And now I’m in Vancouver on business for a few days.

I’ve never been to Vancouver. I arrived this afternoon and haven’t had a chance to see anything yet (I don’t even know if I’ll get to see much). But it’s weird how big Canada is. Of course, the U.S. is huge, with such a long distance between the east and west coasts; but when a country isn’t your own, it’s weird to think that that country itself can have two places so different from each other.

Granted, I haven’t gotten to take in the flavor of Vancouver yet. But I was reading that the city has experienced a heavy infux of immigration from Asia in the past few years, and I can definitely tell: lots of Asians on the rainy streets as I rode by in the cab. I don’t remember that being the case in Montreal.

Also, I get the sense that Vancouver is crunchier than eastern Canada. But that’s from reading a guidebook – I haven’t actually experienced it yet.

As for the first line of this post – I got to watch two episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” on the plane, so it seemed appropriate.

Found randomly on YouTube: Al Gore’s 2000 concession speech. He’s so thin!

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter, says:

I suspect people pick up with Mr. Bush the sense that part of his drama, part of the story of his presidency, is that he gets to be the romantic about history, and the American people get to be the realists. Of the two, the latter is not the more enjoyable role.

Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities.

With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He’s the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it’s weird.

When I got home from work yesterday, Matt wasn’t there, so before I went back out again, I stuck a Post-It note on his computer with the following message to tell him where I’d be:

therapy then gym

Then it struck me that those are both names of Manhattan gay bars.

They would be, wouldn’t they.

I’m going to be in Vancouver (the one in Canada) on business next week from Wednesday through Saturday.

Any ideas, suggestions, or recommendations of what to do there?

You know – I honestly don’t know whether we need to:

(a) get all of our troops out of Iraq,

(b) increase the number of troops in Iraq beyond the pissant surge so that we can make a real difference, or

(c) follow a third way, i.e. the Iraq Study Group recommendations or something else.

All I know is that we need someone else to make the decisions. If we had a completely different president, someone thoughtful and responsible and open-minded, and that president said that we need to stay in Iraq for the longer term, I might be more inclined to believe it.

Because the main issue is really a meta-issue. It’s no longer about what needs to be done — it’s about having the right person in place to make those decisions. This administration is completely through; it hasn’t an ounce of credibility left; we have a president who doesn’t even understand the war HE HIMSELF started, a president who spouts nonsense every time he opens his mouth.

And we still have 557 days of this crap to go.

It’s times like this that a parliamentary system looks really good.

Seriously, though – here’s the thing. I’m not a foreign affairs expert. None of my friends who blog are foreign affairs experts, either. None of us knows what to do about Iraq. We’ve all got opinions and emotions, and we express them, which is our right. But none of us really knows what to do. That’s why we elect a president to make those decisions for us.

If you’re a good president, or jeez, even a halfway decent president, you make those decisions by starting without preconceived notions, without hubris, without thinking that you’re a messenger of God and therefore better than other people; you gather all the top experts you can, and you listen to them all, and then you listen to them again; you realize that the world is a complicated place and it’s not us vs. them.

There used to be a lot more monarchs in the world. Rulerships passed down by heredity. You could never be sure who you might get stuck with; a great king might have a dolt of an eldest son and then you’d be stuck with him for the next 30 years. So I bet there used to be a lot more stupid wars then there are now.

But we live under a constitution that was supposed to prevent things like that from happening anymore.

Granted, we’ve had some lame presidents in the past, presidents who were incapable or parochial. It’s not just the modern media’s fault; in fact, people are (one hopes) much better informed today than they were in the days where you could buy votes by handing out whiskey and pretending that your candidate grew up in a log cabin.

Still, Bush was elected not once but twice (okay, maybe legitimately just once; because Theresa LePore designed a stupid ballot, almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and the Middle East is the biggest hellhole it’s been in years; if a butterfly ballot flaps its wings…). There are still tons of people who still think Saddam had something to do with 9/11.

People are still people, and lots of them either aren’t smart enough, just don’t know how to think, or are too busy to pay attention. Unfortunately they’re not too busy to vote.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I’m just ranting.

But God I hope things get better.

This cracks me up. It totally appeals to my sense of humor. I particularly like the second one.

Andrew Sullivan scathingly describes Bush’s press conference this morning:

Worse, the president conflated every single radical element in the Middle East into one amorphous anti-American entity. It appears that he sees Shiite militias, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Hamas and the Sunni insurgents as indistinguishable. He has even said baldly that the people bombing and murdering in Iraq are the same people who attacked us on 9/11. The Shiite militias? The Baathist dead-enders? Is he serious? He seems to be still operating under the premise that the fundamental dynamic is one between democracy and radicalism. At some very broad and general level, that’s not wrong. But in terms of forming policy, it’s close to useless. Actually, it’s worse than useless. We have a president who seems unable to understand the critical dynamics of the war he is allegedly waging. Is he capable of understanding the complexity? Does he really think we need another lecture on the evil of al Qaeda? Does he really think that’s what we’re arguing about at this point? …

[W]hen the president speaks spontaneously about the war, he reveals vast amounts of ignorance, denial and deception, self and otherwise. The patronizing soundbites stick in the craw at this point. His formulation that we do not know whether the war can succeed but that it nonetheless must succeed is about as disorienting a leadership call as I have heard. The rank condescension toward the American people is also staggering. Look, Mr President, most Americans aren’t as dim as you seem to be. Maybe it’s time you realized that.

Some people, particularly some gays, still seem to have a visceral hatred of Sullivan, but I like him. His online search for poz-on-poz sex a few years ago is none of my business (and anyway, it takes two people to have unprotected sex). More importantly, I’ve forgiven him for his earlier rah-rahs in favor of Bush – he changed his mind and saw the light sometime in 2004. Even though that was much later than some other people, he’s shown a great capacity for critical self-examination, and I think he’s a brilliant writer. I don’t always agree with him, but I wish I could write as well or as often.

On Tuesday, the New York Times printed an editorial opposing President Bush’s nominee for attorney surgeon general, Dr. James Holsinger, for possible prejudice against gays. It said, in part:

Dr. Holsinger has high-level experience as a health administrator, but there are disturbing indications that he is prejudiced against homosexuals…

What’s troubling is the view he once expressed — and may still hold — on homosexuality, through his activities as a lay leader in the United Methodist Church. On the church’s judicial council, he supported a minister who refused to allow a gay man to join his congregation and argued that a lesbian minister should be removed because church doctrine deems the practice of homosexuality to be “incompatible with Christian teaching.” His supporters say these rulings should not be read as his personal views because the council can’t change church doctrine. However, some council members opposed his views, and the bishops later rejected one decision.

His strongest statement on homosexuality can be found in a murky, loosely reasoned paper that he wrote for a church committee in 1991. Titled “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” the paper purported to be a scientific and medical review. It argued that gay sex was abnormal on anatomical and physiological grounds and unhealthy, in that anal sex can lead to rectal injuries and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Holsinger did not brand the large number of heterosexual women who engage in anal sex as abnormal, failed to acknowledge the huge burden of disease spread heterosexually and implied that women are more likely than men to avoid injuries with generous lubrication.

The Bush administration says the white paper reflected the scientific understanding of the time, but it reads like a veneer of science cloaking an aversion to homosexuality. The committee should examine whether Dr. Holsinger cherry-picked the literature or represented it objectively. Most important, it must determine whether Dr. Holsinger holds these benighted views today. The Senate should not confirm a surgeon general who considers practicing homosexuals abnormal and diseased.

This editorial annoyed me for two reasons. One, it didn’t even mention that responsible gay men use condoms during anal sex or practice monogamy. Two, there was that phrase at the end – “practicing homosexuals.” I was surprised to see this phrase in the New York Times, of all places.

Today the paper prints a letter that at least addresses the latter point.

To the Editor:

I support your views and skepticism concerning President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. James Holsinger. I am questioning the appropriateness of your use of the words “practicing homosexuals.”

I, for one, never “practiced” homosexuality but am simply gay. I won’t burden you with my story of trying to be a practicing married homosexual and how that failed. In my case, I “practiced” heterosexuality, and the practice never worked.

The term “practicing” seems to try to be in opposition to celibate homosexuals. That does not make those individuals less gay, but it does mean that they are not sexually active with others. Is that what you meant? If so, what does celibacy have to do with it? Would you use also use the term “practicing heterosexuals” in an editorial? If so, what idea would that express?

Jerry Douglas, M.D.

Lafayette, Ind., July 10, 2007

Practice makes perfect!

I’ve given up on lifting weights.

I joined a gym a year and a half ago in a burst of energy and optimism. After a life of never having to worry about my weight no matter what I ate, I’d started to put on a little bit of mass around my middle. My old pants and shorts no longer fit me – I had to move up a size. And one day my brother one day noticed a little belly bulge underneath my shirt where there hadn’t been one before. So on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday last year, I wandered over to the local New York Sports Club, took a tour, and decided to join.

I threw myself into it enthusiastically. I went to the gym six days a week – three days of cardio, three days of weights. I worked with a trainer, who set me up on a plan. Every six weeks or so, he changed the plan to keep things interesting. I started buying protein powder and had two or three glasses of protein drink each day.

During the first few months I saw some improvement. My weight quickly returned to normal and I was able to fit into my old clothes again. And I put on a little bit of definition in my upper body. It felt good. And I’d probably get even more definition by summertime!

But at some point my upper body stopped growing. I could never seem to increase the amount of weight or number of reps as much as I wanted to. In fact, I’d often go through several sessions of not being able to increase it at all. I’d meet with my trainer and we’d switch the routine again, and sometimes I’d return to a machine or exercise that I’d used previously but at a lower weight than I’d been using the first time around. I’d inevitably get frustrated.

So two or three months ago I gave up. Screw it. Cost-benefit analysis: I was spending all this time trying to make gains and not getting anything out of it. What’s the point?

I’ve decided to just do cardio from now on. The weightlifting was really just for aesthetic reasons – I hoped to get a defined, muscly body, and it didn’t happen. But the cardio’s for health reasons – it’s good for the heart, circulation, and metabolism, plus it keeps me trim.

And I like how I look, to be honest. I’m not musclebound by any means, but I think I have a nice, trim shape.

So no more weights for me, and I’m happier for it.

Matt and I got stopped by the Cash Cab tonight!

We were walking home from dinner when Matt spotted a taxicab idling on the street. “I think that might be the Cash Cab,” he said. “Cash Cab” is a game show on the Discovery Channel that one of our friends was on recently. Passangers ride around Manhattan in a taxicab and the driver asks them trivia questions that win them money. Sometimes, if they need help, they can stop a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

Sure enough, as we walked past, a woman stuck her head out the window and asked us if we could help her answer a question. She was in there with two other female contestants and the driver. I peered in to look at the driver and saw that it was definitely Ben, the “Cash Cab” host.

The question was this: The Weather Channel gives a local weather forecast every ten minutes starting a certain number of minutes after the hour. What is the number?

First I said that they do the weather on the 8s. But then I thought to myself, no, that’s when WCBS News Radio 88 does their weather forecast. So I said maybe it was the 1s. Matt said he thought it was on the 10s. I disagreed. The women only had 15 seconds to answer the question. Finally we told them they should go with the 10s. They did.

Wrong! It was the 8s.

Oops.

We said goodbye and then a woman walked up to us with release forms to sign.

And then we continued walking home from dinner.

Just another night in Manhattan.

This is why British newspaper obituaries are the best.

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

[via Andrew Sullivan]

This is a waste of time. I like Anthony Weiner, but doesn’t Congress have more important things to do?