Cindy Sheehan was invited to attend Bush’s State of the Union speech tonight.

Bay Area Congresswoman Lynn Woosley gave the anti-war activist a gallery pass late Tuesday, just hours before the planned State of the Union speech. Sheehan was in Washington to protest the president during his national address, but then came word she was invited to see the speech live.

A spokesman for Sheehan says she decided to accept the invitation two hours prior to the speech. The spokesman also said that Sheehan will be respectful and listen to the address because she is a guest of a member of congress.

That could be problematic for Bush—imagine if the cameras cut away to Sheehan, or if—God forbid—she made a scene during his speech. So Bush had Sheehan arrested. No Sheehan, no problem.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was arrested and removed from the House gallery Tuesday night just before President Bush’s State of the Union address, a police spokeswoman said.

Her crime? She wore a t-shirt with an anti-war slogan. Can’t have that.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Goddamn I love this.

As all who’ve watched it know, the big pleasure—aside from seeing rhythm-free honkies rap about Brer Rabbit syrup and Fleishmann’s margarine—is listening for all the rhymes concocted to scan with “super-broker shuffle.”

My favorite: “I didn’t come here to drop my duffle, I came here to do the super-broker shuffle.”

Runner-up: “I didn’t come here to feather my ruffle.”

Now I must go somewhere to drop my duffle…

And you thought the local coffee concern (remember “We Built this Starbucks on Heart and Soul” anybody?) had a lock on magical inspirational corporate videos.

Woodinville businessman Michael Dunmire’s contributions to Tim Eyman’s last initiative campaign accounted for about 70% of the money Eyman raised. Dunmire, an executive with the investment firm Benchmark Plus Partners, which manages investment funds for institutional and individual wealthy investors, kicked in $490,000 directly to Eyman’s I-900, the audit initiative. Dunmire dropped another $100,000 to the political committee, Help Us Help Taxpayers, which contributed handsomely to the campaign as well. That’s $590,000.

Early in the I-900 campaign, when Dunmire had “only” given about 200K, but was clearly emerging as Eyman’s sugar daddy, Dunmire told David Ammons of the AP:

“I’m 60 years old and have been very successful in business and wanted to do something to give back to the community.”

Hopefully, Dunmire doesn’t think Eyman’s new initiative—which would allow discrimination against gays in housing, employment, insurance and credit—is a way to give back to the community. Take back from the community, would be more like it.

The Score columnist Christopher DeLaurenti notes the passing of an avant-garde legend:

Pioneering video artist Nam June Paik passed on. CNN has an obituary and you can see his work here as well as read a good summary of his work here.

Famed among musicians for cutting John Cage’s necktie in concert, Paik transformed television screens into orbs of hallucinatory disorder. He was a key member of the 1960s Fluxus movement. Paik’s “Danger Music No. 5” instructs the performer to crawl into the vagina of a living female whale; in “Opera Sextronique,” performed in 1967, Paik’s body served as a fingerboard for the bare-breasted cellist Charlotte Moorman; photos of Paik’s “TV Bra for Living Sculpture” (1969) remain standard illustrations in music history textbooks.

Is anyone going to watch tonight’s State of the Union address? I can’t stomach even a minute of smirky Gee-Dub these days. I hope someone will slog it in real time so I can get the filtered gist none the less.

What, is there no love in your life? Why don’t you send a valentine to your mom or your best friend’s mom or to me?

Karl Rove, driven into the shadows after Plamegate, has recently slithered back into the light. And while it’s nice to see The New York Times welcome him with the domestic spying scandal, I would like to propose a more salacious scandal — one that would obliterate Rove’s God-fearing, gay-fearing base. In short, I think Rove has a monster man-crush on George W. Bush.

You may have noticed how when Bush stands at a podium Rove always stands behind, eyes moving up and down the commander in chief’s posterior portions. Rove’s hands are always folded discreetly over his groin. He is always half-smiling, like this:

That is such a porn-watching face.

But here’s the smoking gun, buried inside a May 2003 New Yorker profile. The writer, Nicholas Lemann, had asked Rove about his first memory of George H.W. Bush, to which Rove responded blandly: “Great character. Very thoughtful. Really generous in his openness and attitude.”

Then Lemann asked about Rove’s first memory of George W. Bush, which led to this:

I can literally remember what he was wearing: an Air National Guard flight jacket, cowboy boots, bluejeans, complete with the—in Texas you see it a lot—one of the back pockets will have a circle worn in the pocket from where you carry your tin of snuff, your tin of tobacco. He was exuding more charisma than any one individual should be allowed to have.â€�

Seriously, does that leave any doubt?

These items aren’t related in any way, and I’m not sure they’re the least bit important—I mean, if I wanted to write up something important I might Slog about the fact that Samuel Alito is going to be sitting on the Supreme Court for, gee, the next forty years. Or, as I like to think of it, until I’m 73 years-old.

And I suppose I could try to make George W. Bush’s impending State of the Union speech bearable by inventing or swiping a SOTU drinking game. (Every time the Republicans all jump to their feet to applaud their Dear Leader, take a drink! Every time Bush puts the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LAH-ble, take a drink! Every time you remember that this fucktard is going to be your president for three more fucking years, hit yourself in the face with a brick!â€�) But I’m not up to it. I’m feeling down—succumbing, I think, to a bad case of S.A.D., a case compounded by political news that just keeps getting worse. (Hey, didja hear? Alberto Gonzeles, our torture-lovin’ Attorney General, perjured himself before Congress! Gee, remember when perjury about blowjobs could get a guy impeached?)

But fiddle-dee-fucking-dee, let’s think about the collapse of our democracy tomorrow. Right now let’s pause and ask Scott C. Liao, a resident of Mill Creek, Washington, to stand. Scott was named to the Dean’s List for the fall 2005 semester at Alfred University in upstate New York. I just got a press release from Alfred’s Office of Communications about young Scott’s singular achievement—”students must maintain at least a 3.3 grade point average to qualify for the Dean’s Listâ€�—and so I wanted to point Scott out. He’s sitting up there in the balcony right next to Laura Bush.

Also, apropos of nothing, a flyer for a new dance night at Re-bar has the best DJ name I’ve heard since DJ Fucking In The Streets blew into town: DJ Ate My Baby. I haven’t heard DJ Ate My Baby do his baby-eating thing, but with a name like that he’s got to be good. DJ Ate My Baby—along with DJ Jack—will be performing at Re-bar on Thursday, Feb. 9. $3. If I survive the many, many blows to the head I will be administering to myself during Bush’s SOTU speech tonight, I will swing down to Re-bar on Feb. 9th.

Now that the city council has settled on Sally Clark to replace Jim Compton, who resigned last month, the unanswered question is: Who will run against her in November? Clark, whom I talked to at her Lifelong AIDS Alliance office yesterday, was already filing her campaign paperwork with the state Public Disclosure Commission; so far, only one of the 103 candidates for this year’s open council position - Michael X. Ford, who didn’t receive a single vote from the council - has filed, but others are certain to do so as November’s election approaches. Sharon Maeda has said she’ll wait until 2007 to run again, but others - Joann Francis? Venus Velazquez? - have not made their intentions known. Four of the nine current council members ran for election after failing to win appointments to open seats, so there’s plenty of precedent for a resilient and politically savvy candidate to take on Clark or another council member, either this year or in 2007.

Does anyone out there know what kind of tree this is?

It had to do with a pair of Chewbacca slippers and the nickname lasted a long time, only to die completely (how strange that I lost a name entirely). But that is not why we are here. This photo, for reasons unknown to me, is on Chewbacca’s blog, which also includes puppies.

Earlier today I posted the beginnings of an email exchange I’m having with Tim Eyman about his efforts to repeal the gay civil rights bill. (After nearly three decades of defeats, the bill was finally passed by the legislature last week and signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire just hours ago.)

You can catch up on our exchange so far here.

And now I bring you the latest from Tim Eyman, along with my new response and questions.

From: Tim Eyman

Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:46:42 -0800

To: Eli Sanders

You’re entitled to your opinion and you’re entitled to express your views on this issue as you see it, and I don’t think that you’re a bad person or “wrong” because you view this issue differently than we do. But realize the obvious: not everyone thinks like you or believes what you do. Every voter comes at this issue with their own experiences, values, and beliefs. Just because they believe differently than you do doesn’t make them bad, doesn’t make them wrong, it just makes them different.

To which I have responded….

From: Eli Sanders

Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:23:48 -0800

To: Tim Eyman

Yes, as you say, everyone is entitled to his or her own beliefs. But there is also the issue of what is true, and what is not true. And as you well know, people can be led to believe things that have no relation to the truth — particularly when pre-existing prejudices are involved.

In a democracy, the results of this kind of manipulation can be quite serious (see Iraq, War in). And on this issue, they will be quite serious as well. You want voters in Washington State to decide whether or not to repeal a new law that protects gays and lesbians against discrimination in housing, employment, and financial transactions. But you seem to want voters to believe that the law in question has something to do with “preferential treatment” based on sexual orientation. It doesn’t, and you know it. Why the sophistry? You still haven’t answered my question.

Eyman also wrote:

We simply believe that the voters, and not the politicians, need to make the final decision on this issue. And regardless of how the vote turns out, voters on either side of the vote will at least feel they had some say on the matter. They didn’t get that with the rush-to-judgment vote in Olympia over the past several days.

Public debate is a release valve for people’s passions. Squelching public debate causes many more problems than allowing the voters a chance to participate.

To which I have responded…

Tim, we’re talking about a debate that had been going on in the state legislature for nearly 30 years before last week’s vote. A vote that, you neglect to mention, was conducted by “the people’s” elected representatives. How exactly does what happened in Olympia last week constitute a “rush to judgment” or a “squelching” of public debate?

Eyman also wrote:

The only poll that counts is the one on election day. But it is certainly true that voters overwhelmingly approved Initiative 200, an initiative I co-sponsored, in 1998 which prohibited government from granting preferential treatment to anyone based on race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin. This measure simply gives voters the opportunity to reaffirm that same principle with regard to sexual orientation or sexual preference.

To which I have responded…

I asked whether you had any data to back up your claim that people in Washington want a state-wide vote on gay civil rights.

You’re telling me that you won’t have the data to prove this claim until election day? And that in the meantime, you’re acting based on the results of a seven-year-old initiative that had nothing to do with repealing discrimination protections for gays and lesbians?

Really?

I was pretty shitty until I read this. It is an honor of the highest order.

With Alito’s cakewalk onto the Supreme Court complete, and pro-lifers already lining up in a number of states to take on Roe, I’m curious if other liberals agree with this piece from the Atlantic Monthly.

Is everyone doing heroin except for me? Is heroin the new coke? Now it’s that poor girl from American Pie, living on the street, lining her arms with bloody dots, threatening to molest her neighbor’s dog…

After several decades of distinguishing himself as a Bible-wielding fag basher of unprecedented malevolence, this month Westboro Baptist Church’s Fred Phelps sank to a new low, somehow finding a way to make January 2’s West Virginia mining disaster even more upsetting for survivors.

Phelps’ money quote (excerpted from a Westboro Baptist Church press release and published by The Advocate):

“They died in shame and disgrace, citizens of a cursed nation of…unholy perverts who have departed from the living God to worship on ‘Brokeback Mountain.’”

Speaking of Brokeback: Hurrah for the slew of Oscar nominations bestowed upon the imperfect but gorgeous film. Here’s hoping March 5’s Oscar ceremony is the greatest night for gay visibility since last Friday.

Truthout.org has a chilling editorial on a military cover-up concerning the deaths of several women serving in Iraq.

Apparently, female soldiers are dying from dehydration. They stop drinking water in the afternoons— despite the hundred-degree desert climate—because they don’t want to go pee at night. Why? Because these women are afraid of getting raped on the way to the bathroom. So they’ve been dying in their sleep instead, while the military continues to ignore and hide the problem.

Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez’s top deputy in Iraq, saw “dehydration” listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, stated [Col. Janis Karpinski who has testified before a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration]. The official explanation for this was to protect the women’s privacy rights.

…There was an 800 number women could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, Karpinski said. And no one answered that number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave a message.

Bastards. If the military isn’t going to protect its female soldiers, it should at the very least pay for cosmetic surgery for women, so they can have (detachable) rows of jagged teeth or a few sharp, angry pincers guarding their vaginas. Sound horrible? No more so than getting raped when you’re trying to pee, or dying to prevent it. Jesus.

If you’ve got tickets to tonight’s sold out Of Montreal show, consider yourself either incredibly smart, or LUCKY AS BALLS. As I sit here, twitching with excitement, it is clear that I fall into the latter category.

What the hell is up with the Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song this year? There are only three nominees - from Hustle & Flow, Crash, and Transamerica. But the sublime “A Love That Will Never Grow Old,” sung by Emmylou Harris and composed for Brokeback Mountain? Absent. The critics seemed to nominate Bareback in every other eligible category, and the song won a Golden Globe just a few weeks ago. WTF, Hollywood?

More Super Bowl insight from my brother Bill.—Dan Savage

At a certain point, you have to let the oddsmakers have their way, and consider various other methods to worry about the Super Bowl and your Seahawks’ chances. Getting away from reality is part of the appeal of sports, so how’s this for some unreal analysis, something that occurred to me while drinking some real ale and chatting with a barman regarding American sports:

The Seahawks are up against it because no bird-named team has ever won the Super Bowl. And don’t tell me about the Baltimore Ravens: despite their logo, they are NOT named for a bird: they’re named for a poem about a bird, which makes them about the gayest team in the NFL, hence all the macho posturing and murder charges their players get tangled up in as they try to salvage the tattered fragments of their masculine heterosexual self-image.

But back to nicknames: If you divide up the previous 39 Super Bowl winners by what sort of nickname they have, an ominous pattern appears: teams named after Industrial Workers (broadly defined to include ranch-hands) do very well. The Packers, Cowboys, Steelers, and 49ers have a combined 17-5 record in the Super Bowl, and 3 of those losses came at the hands of another Industrial Worker. The other Super Bowl winners can be sorted as follows: Thieves (Raiders, Bucanneers); Marine Mammals (Dolphins); Politically Incorrect Dehumanizing Racist Labels (Chiefs, Redskins); Hoofed Mammals (Colts, Rams, Broncos); Ursin Omnivores (Bears); and Abstracted Humanoids (Giants, Patriots).

Now, this isn’t a hard-and-fast analysis; some Thieves (Vikings) have done very badly in the Super Bowl, for instance. But note: no Super Bowl Champions have been named for birds. The Eagles have lost two, the Falcons one. So, the Seahawks should perhaps be 4 point underdogs, since they’re up against the Industrial Workers of the World, united as the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I have nothing to say about this, except awesome.

I want it on my wall.

Today’s New York Times article on the mass media’s effect on teen sexual behavior (in the four-alarm “health” section) starts like so:

In last summer’s prize-winning R-rated film “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” a barely pubescent boy is seduced into oral sex by two girls perhaps a year older, and his 6-year-old brother logs on to a pornographic chat room and solicits a grown woman with instant messages about “poop.”

Is this what your teenage children are watching? If so, what message are they getting about sexual mores, and what effect will it have on their behavior?

Are you kidding me? What kind of article on mass media would chose a movie that grossed less that 4 million bucks in the U.S.? Or one that’s rated R? Or one that’s stylized to the point that it seems to take place in some sort of parallel universe?

But if you insist, here are the lessons Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know has to teach about sexuality:

1) Little kids are more interested in their own bowel movements than pretty ladies.

2) Adult men may talk sexy, but when it comes right down to it, they’d rather “sleep and sleep and sleep like little sleeping babies.”

3) If you, as a teenage girl, don’t want to do something sexual that a friend has dared you to do, you don’t have to do it. In fact, your friend probably doesn’t want to do it either. The two of you will exchange glances and run down the street gleefully while electronic indie pop swells in the background.

Also, parents and schools should monitor their kids’ internet use, because the internet is a potentially dangerous place.

So, Ms. New York Times: I think those kids you’re so worried about are probably okay. Maybe you should be looking at the teens who are watching, I don’t know, American Pie or something.

As promised, Tim Eyman yesterday filed two ballot measures seeking to repeal the gay civil rights bill. And as predicted, the reaction has been mainly: “Wow, what a jerk.”

This morning’s Seattle Times finds that while the Christian Coalition is (no surprise) supporting Eyman in his anti-gay crusade, others, like the Rev. Joseph Fuiten, who vehemently opposed the gay civil rights bill, aren’t so sure a repeal campaign is a good idea.

In other words, Eyman can’t even get the unanimous backing of religious extremists for this effort. Which is why Rep. Ed Murray (D-Seattle) sounds right on target when he tells The Times: “We can see [Eyman] for what he’s always been… A member of the extreme right who is out of touch with moderate voters in this state.”

And it only gets worse for Eyman in this morning’s P-I, which finds that it’s not just effete urban liberals who see Eyman’s new campaign as distasteful:

Yelm resident Tony Engler, 47, said his view of Eyman has changed because of Monday’s filing.

“I’m not gay or Christian, I’m not a right-wing whacko or a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging Evergreen liberal,” Engler said.

“I’m just a guy who’s partially disabled and who has laws set up out there to protect my rights to live as a human, not as some second-class citizen,” he said. “I’m glad the Disability Act was established before Tim Eyman came along or I’d still be fighting high curbs in crosswalks.

“I used to think Tim Eyman was an OK kind of guy, fighting the good fight; now I see his true colors.”

Yesterday, I noted on the Slog that Eyman had failed to answer a simple question that I emailed to him several days ago: Why are you doing this?

Well, this morning Eyman wrote me back and, just as he did with The Seattle Times (which this morning notes its own frustration in getting Eyman to talk about his motivations), stuck to his prepared talking points.

Eyman’s email is below, and my response to his email is below that. As you’ll see, I have more questions for Eyman. Hopefully he’ll write back and share his answers with me and all the Slog’s readers….

From: Tim Eyman

Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 06:13:14 -0800

To: Eli Sanders

Because:

(1) The issue has become hopelessly politicized in Olympia

(2) The voters want to have the final say on this issue

(3) The voters overwhelmingly rejected government-imposed preferential treatment based on what group you belong to (race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin) when they overwhelmingly approved Initiative 200 in 1998. This measure(s) simply gives them the opportunity to reaffirm that
same principle in 2006, adding to the list of groups not getting preferential treatment to include sexual orientation or sexual preference.

To which I responded..

From: Eli Sanders

Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 07:39:18 -0800

To: Tim Eyman

1. It seems to me you’ve only extended the amount of time in which this issue will be politicized. Do you really think you’ve de-politicized this debate by filing these ballot measures?

2. Do you have polling to back this claim up? Or are you just basing this claim on the “phone calls, faxes, and emails” you’ve said you are being “inundated” with?

3. This is, in my opinion, the greatest logical fallacy in your argument in favor of a ballot measure. The gay civil rights bill has nothing to do with “preferential treatment.” It’s about equal treatment. It doesn’t establish quotas for the hiring of gays and lesbians. It just says you can’t fire someone simply because he or she is gay.

Don’t you think it’s disingenuous for you to paint the gay civil rights bill as akin to “government-imposed preferential treatment” when it’s clearly no such thing?

And: If you believe so strongly in the wisdom of the people, why confuse them with this type of sophistry?

Today’s first word: “burst”

Not only is Lindsay Lohan stacked, she’s also slippery.