Poll: Rice Would Help Romney

Washington Post:

The former secretary of state is the clear choice of Republican voters to be Romney’s vice president, according to a new Fox News poll that shows her garnering the support of 30 percent of them. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is second with 19 percent. The more interesting number, though, is what Rice could do for Romney on the ballot. While President Obama leads Romney overall 45 percent to 41 percent, adding Rice to Romney’s ticket shifts many of the remaining undecided voters to the Republican side, creating a 46 percent to 46 percent tie. That shift, as it happens, is statistically significant. In other words, the poll shows that Rice would move votes into Romney’s column.

Gay Rumors Continue To Dog Condi

London's Sunday Times on the gay rumors that continue to swirl around Condoleezza Rice:

It should have been Condoleezza Rice’s finest hour as US secretary of state: at last President George W Bush was hosting a Middle East peace conference that she had been struggling to organise for months.

Yet when Rice’s photograph appeared on the front page of America’s bestselling weekly newspaper last week, it had nothing to do with her peacemaking efforts. She had been dragged into a National Enquirer article headlined “Who’s Gay and Who’s Not”.

The article revived long-standing Washington gossip about Rice’s sexuality and sparked off the usual flurry of internet chatter about her high-profile role in a Republican administration widely regarded as hostile to gays.

It also underlined the increasing friction in American politics between a high-minded media establishment disdainful of bedroom gossip and the no-holds-barred, consumer-driven world of instant internet scandal. A Google search of the words “Condoleezza” and “lesbian” last week yielded 146,000 hits.

Rice was not alone in falling victim to what the US media elite invariably decries as corrupted journalistic standards but what the rest of America seems to regard as the real story in Washington: who is sleeping with whom?

"Internet scandal" versus "high-minded media". In this case, at least, I think the internet has it right.

In Yer Face, Condi

Code Pink rocks. Heroes, every one of them.

Rice & Bean

Via Michelangelo Signorile, I've been following the unfolding story about the latest revelations regarding the personal life of Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice. On Thursday's SiriusOutQ show, Signorile hosted Glenn Kessler, author of The Confidante: Condoleeza Rice And The Creation Of The Bush Legacy, in which Kessler uncovers some heretofore unknown details of Rice's closely guarded private life.

According to Kessler, Rice's closest male friend is Coit D. Blacker, an openly gay political science professor at Stanford (where Rice served as provost for six year on the '90s) and a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration. To paraphrase Signorile, them there's some strange bedfellows, considering Blacker's "best friend" works for a man who's trying to write his second-class citizenship in the Constitution.

But even more intriguing is the revelation that Rice owns a house and shares a line of credit with a woman named Randy Bean (pictured), an unmarried liberal filmmaker who also works at Stanford and once worked for Bill Moyers. Kessler found the house ownership information by researching real estate records. In the book, Bean explains that Blacker and Rice helped her buy the house because Bean had suffered financial setbacks due to medical bills. Blacker later sold his share of the house to the two women with Rice later helping establish the credit line to fund renovations of the home.

Signorile:

Where to begin? For the record, in the book Kessler goes into the long-discussed rumors about Rice and the few times her sexual orientation has been gossiped about or discussed in the media, but he also talks about how single, older (heterosexual) women often "unfairly" have their sexual orientation questioned, and says in the book that Rice has been the target of "nasty attacks" in this regard. He mentions that she was linked to a man once -- back in college. Even if Rice is heterosexual, however, it is fascinating and mind-boggling that this woman whose best male friend is an openly gay liberal and whose best female "friend" is a "liberal progressive," would work for a president who has opposed every gay rights initiative and tried to enshrine religious hatred in the Constitution. What does it say about them as well?

It will be very interesting to see if the mainstream media touches this story. So far, I've only seen it on gay and leftist blogs, all of whom reference the Signorile piece.

Baldwin & Barney: Stop Killing Of LGBT Iraqis

Openly gay reps Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank have written to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, demanding an inquiry into the abuse and murder of LGBT people in Iraq. The full text of the letter is here.

Islamic militias continue to abuct Iraqis suspected of being gay, often leaving their battered corpses for their families to find. In April, the Iraqi government spokesman softened his government's previous position that the murder of gays should not be included in UN death tolls, as they were "less than human".

The problem continues unabated in Iran as well. In July last year, I covered a protest of these murders at the Iran Mission in NYC. A website exists to accept donations to assist LGBT people attempting to escape Iraq.