Calling Shenanigans

So much has happened since my last post, and so many people have spoken about it all more eloquently than I could. But I have to respond to this.

Via Time.com, a quote by Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Yes on 8:

"No matter what you think of Proposition 8, we ought to respect people's right to participate in the political process. It strikes me as quite ironic that a group of people who demand tolerance and who claim to be for civil rights are so willing to be intolerant and trample on other people's civil rights."

This is total bullshit, and somebody needs to say so to this douchebag's face. Intolerance of intolerance is a virtue.

Needlessly trampling the civil rights of others is not itself a civil right. If you want to treat people badly because you're insecure, fine, do it. But you'd better be willing to face the consequences when people point out that you're being an asshole and stop patronizing your business.

The Tears of a Clown

So, apparently CNN.com's Ruben Navarrette Jr. is trying out for a job at Town Hall or some similar bastion of right-wing pseudojournalism. It's the only explanation I can come up with to explain his latest column.

It's just poorly written from top to bottom, jumping between subjects and mixing metaphors so that keeping track of his train of thought becomes nearly impossible. But beyond an overall writing style reminiscent of a barely-passing high school sophomore, he also manages to throw out some nuggets of stunning ignorance.

As Palin herself pointed out in a recent CNN interview, imagine if she had been the one to imply that electing Obama would invite calamity. Biden does it, and the media shrug.

Yeah, imagine. Or don't bother, since trying to find video of Palin implying that Obama cavorts with terrorists is about as difficult as finding furniture in an Ikea showroom. And McCain himself, just the other day, said that foreign enemies would "test" Obama, but would not dare to test him. So, yeah, no real reason to stretch your imagination, is there? You can just look at the stories run by the news network you work for.

I also thought the Democratic Party was supposed to go to bat for the little guy, the everyday Joe the Plumber.

Tell that to Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio resident who got his 15 minutes -- and 40 lashes -- because he dared question Obama about his tax plan.

Because a plumber making more than $250,000 a year? Totally normal. Hell, all the other plumbers at the country club probably make fun of him for driving a standard Corvette instead of a custom Porche. It takes about 2 minutes of listening to Joe Wurzelbacher to figure out he's about as genuine as a e-mail penis enlargement offer. This is not a guy who was ever wavering on who to vote for in this election. He's just another selfish douchebag who makes more than I ever will but doesn't want to pay his fair share. Fulfilling the "American Dream"™, in the mind of people like ol' Joe, means one should be exempted from contributing back to the system that allowed them to succeed. Fuck Joe Wurzelbacher and fuck people like him who think that their success should mean everyone else pays to keep them afloat. I should want my tax policy determined by greedy, entitled assholes like Joe Wurzelbacher? Fuck that.

Obama supporters like to talk about how the Democratic presidential nominee has lived the American Dream. So why is it to so hard for them to conceive of a situation where someone dreams of earning more money a few years from now than they earn today. Has Barack Obama consumed all the social mobility this country has to offer, so there isn't any left for the rest of us?

There's nothing wrong with dreaming of earning more money, Ruben, you self-righteous ass. If money motivates you, by all means, set some goals and try to climb that ladder. Where I start having a problem is with the idea that earning more money should lessen a person's monetary obligations to the society that allowed him to succeed. Taxing the rich does not make the rich poor. It makes the rich slightly less rich. That's it. The concept that taxes dissuade financial success is ludicrous. Being wealthy offers privileges and opportunities unavailable to anyone else, whether they pay their share of taxes or not. If those privileges and opportunities are important to an individual, that individual will work toward them, whether they'll gain bonus tax advantages or not.

And, frankly, taxation is a zero-sum game. You can cut spending, but at the end of the day, there's a budget that has to be met. If the rich get tax breaks, one of two things happens. The vast majority of Americans pick up the slack, so that the middle class is paying for the excesses of the wealthy, or we borrow more money, driving up the national debt and letting our children pay for the excesses of the wealthy. I don't like those options. I don't begrudge the wealthy the excesses their success affords them. But I think they can pay for them on their own.

Seventy percent of the wealth in this country is owned by ten percent of the population. Think about that. So if we cut taxes for the top ten percent, as has been done by the current administration, we're losing revenue on seventy percent of the circulating wealth. This is not a system that punishes the rich. We are paying for the rich to become richer, and they're convincing us that they're doing us a favor. Anyone who earns more than $250,000 is in that top 10%. Pretending that they are middle-class is a lie that is meant to evoke sympathy from people who hope desperately that they may one day be part of that elite 10%. 90% of them never will, and their children will pay for their short-sightedness.

Still, we're told, this tempest in a Gucci bag has some Republicans worrying that shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue might undermine Palin's everywoman image. To think, just last month, the criticism was that Sarah the Moose Hunter wasn't sufficiently sophisticated or glamorous. Now her wardrobe signals the hockey mom is high-maintenance.

No, you stupid, stupid fuck. You don't get to misrepresent what happened a month ago to make your idiotic point. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, was concerned that Sarah Palin wasn't "sophisticated or glamorous" enough to be vice-president. You're making that up out of whole cloth because it's the only way to lend any crumb of credibility to your argument. The argument was that she was too UNINTELLIGENT and INEXPERIENCED to be vice-president, and nothing has happened to change that. Now, frankly, if the Republicans want to spend $150,000 for their expensive wind-up talking Barbie doll, that's up to them. But they shouldn't be surprised when people who earn less than that in a year start to question the party's priorities.

I know I haven't been blogging a lot lately, and there are many reasons for that. But mostly, it's that this election has turned into a steaming pile of horseshit, and I can't wait for it to be over. Whiny bullshit like this commentary just mirror the whiny bullshit coming out of the Republican party. The McCain campaign is calling Obama a terrorist, and then crying foul over Liberals pointing out that Joe Wurzelbacher is a lying, rich douchebag. There's no sense of perspective anymore. Barak Obama is a good candidate, John McCain is a crappy candidate who has built a campaign designed solely for the purpose of convincing people not to vote for Barak Obama, and yet conservatives want me to believe that the discrepancy in the message is the fault of the media. The problem with the media is the same problem that allows someone like Sarah Palin to run on a major party presidential ticket: a dangerous percentage of Americans respect ignorance more than intelligence. And it looks like Ruben Navarette Jr. just figured out he can make money by pandering to them.

Colin Powell

"I'm also troubled by... not with what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said... Such things as, 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is that he's not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop this suggestion, that he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

You know what? I forgive him. He just exonerated himself in my eyes. I'm not saying what he did at the beginning of the Iraq conflict was okay. But this is something too many liberals don't have the balls to say right now. Colin Powell is going to be run off the field for this endorsement. Not only does he not care, but he's willing to carry that ball right into the end zone. He didn't have to go this far. He did. Bravo.

Donald Trump Got The Memo

... and he's happily joining in on the McCain Lie-athon to the White House!

On Larry king, via CNN.com:

Trump: Well, I know John McCain, and John McCain's a great guy, a tremendous guy. I've known him for a long time. And I'm with him, and I'm with him based on the fact that I have great knowledge of John McCain. Also, this is not the right time for tax increases and Obama wants to increase your taxes drastically. So this is not ...

King: In all fairness, he says he doesn't.

Trump: This is not the right time.

King: Obama said 95 percent would be reduced under his plan.

Trump: Well, I'll tell you, the people that create the jobs and the people that really create a lot of things in the country, they're going to be taxed into oblivion. And I'm not even sure when you look really at his tax, I think everybody's going to be taxed a lot more. So I like the fact that taxes won't be raised under McCain.

Notice how quickly "your taxes" became Donald Trump's taxes. And while one could, I suppose, argue that he was referring to Larry King's taxes, it would have made more sense in that context to say "our taxes." No, The Donald was just taking an opportunity to spread The John's bullshit talking point.

Also, another use of the phrase "taxed into oblivion." Which is apparently how the selfish wealthy (as opposed to the wealthy who gladly pay their fair share) see being taxed into being only slightly less wealthy. If going from ultra-mega-rich to super-mega-rich is oblivion, what must those people think of earning less than $250,000 a year? These people want you to vote for their economic interests, because they're afraid of the hellish existence that earning only ten times your income would impose on them.

Highest Common Denominator

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. This is what a campaign should look like. Notice the lack of flashy graphics and dramatic music. There are no clips of celebrities, no unflattering pictures of the opponent. Just a candidate spelling out his position instead of marketing an image. There is, of course, an image being presented: that of a statesman. A statesman, of all things. In this day and age. Speaking as an adult to adults, no less. This is what we would have expected from John McCain, if John McCain were still the John McCain of 2000 election. But he sold his pride and integrity to the soulless marketers of the conservative political machine.

I'm not saying I think this will work. I'm not at all sure that it will. But if there's any hope for democracy in this country, then this is what people really want. This should resonate, even if you don't like the ideas, because it lets us respect a candidate as a statesman, not as a product to be consumed.

Semantics

Okay, this one is nuts.

Via Pharyngula, this wonderful story from the Sacramento Bee.

Last month, Rachel Bird exchanged vows with Gideon Codding in a church wedding in front of family and friends. As far as Bird is concerned, she is a bride.

To the state of California, however, she is either "Party A" or "Party B."

Those are the terms that have replaced "bride" and "groom" on the state's new gender-neutral marriage licenses. And to Bird and Codding, that is unacceptable.

"We are traditionalists – we just want to be called bride and groom," said Bird, 25, who works part time for her father's church. "Those words have been used for generations and now they just changed them."

In May, after the California State Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage legal, the courts mandated state officials to provide gender-neutral licenses and other marriage forms. "Bride" and "groom" became "Party A" and "Party B."

Bird and Codding have refused to complete the new forms, a stand that has already cost them. Because their marriage is not registered with the state, Bird cannot sign up for Codding's medical benefits or legally take his name. They are now exploring their options, she said.

You know what? You little dipshits have fun doing your little dipshit protest over a couple of words on a piece of paper that will be tossed in a drawer somewhere and forgotten until a few years from now, when Gideon panics about forgetting the date of your anniversary and scrambles wildly to find it. You had your church wedding. That's where you can inject all the meaning you want into your marriage. A marriage license isn't about making you feel special. It's a legal document meant to afford you the status of married couple, with all the rights and responsibilities that go with it. The wording changes nothing, except for tweaking your confused notion of what is sacred and what is legal, and giving your privileged, pompous pseudo-Christian pride a big, raw purple nurple.

Where you cross the line from being jackasses to raging assholes, though, is when you and your little pals try to equate your invented persecution with denying other people the right you're getting to opt out of.

"We just feel that our rights have been violated," [Bird] said.

To some, the couple's stand may seem frivolous. But others believe "bride" and "groom" are terms that are too important for the state to set aside.

"Those who support (same-sex marriage) say it has no impact on heterosexuals," said Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute. "This debunks that argument."

What fucking right has been violated? What difference, other than hurting your tender little feelings, do the terms "Party A" and "Party B" make? What is this important civil liberty that will be denied to you as "Party B" that you would have enjoyed as "Bride"? You're just being brats. And as bad as a couple of twenty-something brats are, what makes your petty tantrum a hundred times worse is that you're arrogant enough to use your pretend persecution in justifying your desire to continue persecuting people who actually have had their rights denied.

Bird and Codding say they are trying to figure out what to do next. Bird said she does not know what she will do if she should become ill and need insurance. "I really don't know," she said.

Fuck you. I don't feel sorry for you. Do you know why? Because you are choosing to stay legally unmarried. That's a choice you don't only want to make for yourself... you want to make it for thousands of same-sex couples as well. Gay people aren't keeping you unmarried. You are. But in almost every state in this country except yours, people like you most certainly are keeping gay people from getting married. They don't enjoy the right to make the choice you are making. You want to risk your health over some ridiculous argument about semantics on a legal document? Go nuts. But don't pretend your right to choose is being infringed upon. It isn't.

Of course, maybe I'd be more willing to accept your argument if you actually represented the incredible sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

For now, they are busy with their family (she has two children from a previous marriage and he has three) and starting their new life.

This Should Be Popular

I think I may be the only person in the country who thinks it's really disturbing to see adults forcing kids as young as five or six to recognize moments of silence on September 11th. It's kind of becoming a weird traditional thing, and I really hope it doesn't last, because it's fucking creepy.

If you want to have a moment or two of silence every time the calendar reads 9/11, that's absolutely fine. Personally, I don't commemorate the dates of unpleasant events. Anniversaries should be a way of remembering what we want to remember, not an excuse to wallow in what we couldn't forget if we wanted to. But that's just me; if you find value in a day of mourning, by all means, have at it.

It's something else entirely, however, to force that kind of morbidity on children who weren't old enough or even alive to remember the day you're commemorating. To those kids, 9/11 is history that they don't really understand. They didn't experience the shock that the rest of us did, and they're not old enough to understand the implications. Making them observe moments of silence is like making them recognize the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Frankly, it comes across as adults looking to validate their own feelings by artificially instilling them in children.

Look, I realize that this is still a sensitive issue. I know a number of observers would argue that they aren't commemorating the date or the attacks, but honoring those who died. But after seven years, maybe it's time to have some perspective. To those who lost family members in the attacks, my heart truly does go out, but no more than it does to anyone who loses family in a tragedy. I respect the courage and determination of the rescue workers who risked, and in some cases, gave their lives to save others. But are, say, wildfire fighters in California, who risk and give the same, less worthy of my respect simply because wildfires aren't set by terrorists? Again, I don't have a problem with adults remembering things however they choose, but this shit is confusing to little kids. Why does little Tommy's uncle, who died in the World Trade Center, get a special day, but little Mikey's aunt, who died in a car accident, doesn't? Are Mikey's vague childhood memories of love for his aunt less valid than Tommy's recollections of his uncle? Why does Mikey observe silence for the day Tommy's uncle died, but the opposite isn't true? Neither Tommy nor Mikey were old enough to actually remember the events of September 11th, 2001. Their memories are their own, and we can't impose our own on them. All we can do is confuse them about death and the relative value of human life.

Represent

I understand the desire among moderate progressives to back off of the Bristol Palin story. Insomuch as I believe a pregnant teenager shouldn't be brought into the public sphere and offered up for scrutiny, I agree. But let us be clear. Her mother did that, not the press, not the Obama campaign, and not the progressive blogosphere. If there was any question in the mind of Sarah Palin that her daughter would become an issue in the campaign, then it is only evidence that her political savvy is even less sophisticated than it would appear. I have to believe she did know, and it was decided that the evangelical right, which she was brought on to court, would flock to her support while critics could be deflected with horrified shock that anyone would dare criticize a young girl as part of a presidential election.

The fact is, however, that Sarah Palin stands on a platform of family values and right-wing extremism. Part and parcel to that is the implied notion that Sarah Palin is better qualified to decide what decisions are available to you as a parent than you are. Sarah Palin believes she is qualified to be the National Parent. She should decide what books your children should not read. She should decide what your children should not be taught about procreation in school. She should decide whether or not your teenage daughter should have access to birth control and abortions. She should decide how your children should be molded into responsible, sexually healthy adults. This is at the very heart of evangelical politics, and Sarah Palin is neck deep. So it is very, very relevant that Sarah Palin's own parenting choices fall well within the scope of reasonable criticism. Because she has applied for the position of National Parent, we are entitled to see her resume, and question what appear to be gaps in her job performance to date. This is not fair to Bristol Palin. I would never argue that it is. But to simply ignore the facts of Sarah Palin's background would be a dereliction of duty, especially when those facts paint her to be unsuitable for the specific position for which she has applied.

McCain Fails His Charisma Check

John McCain's campaign considers "Dungeons and Dragons Player" to be an insult needing no further explanation.

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

I totally get this. McCain is polling way ahead of Obama with older voters, and older voters are more likely to actually vote than younger voters. And most older voters may agree that D&D players are generally shiftless, lazy, basement-dwelling sociopaths. Of course, statistics don't bear this out. A 2004 survey at GenCon found that 70% of roleplayers had college degrees, and less than 10% had no higher education at all. 62% reported an annual income of more than $50,000. (The median per capita income in 2005 was $25,857.) But the McCain campaign is apparently banking on the assumption that people who were raising teenagers in the 80's still think of roleplaying gamers as godless, lazy slackers. The kind of people who don't take as gospel anything that comes out of the mouth of a one-time prisoner of war. Even if it's obviously plagiarized.

Fantastic.

The Democratic nominee for president just said that he opposes gay marriage because it violates the tenets of Christianity.

Why should I bother to fucking vote this year?

Stop Reporting Facts, Dammit

I tend to think of a distaste for facts to be a conservative trait these days, so it kinda pisses me off when liberals get pissy about relevant news being released because it doesn't mesh with what they want to believe.

Jeff Fecke over at Alas! pulled one of these today, with this post in response to an article about an increase in drunk women being raped in San Diego. To be fair, he was echoing a post from Feministing, but the Feministing post made a more defensible argument about wording, while Fecke seems to just be railing against the journalists for reporting the story.

Could the article have been worded better? Absolutely, and the Feministing article gets it right. But to argue that simply running this story is somehow blaming victims is horseshit, and dangerous horseshit at that. Rapists are to blame for rape. They are criminals, and they are scum. But when women get shit-faced drunk in unsafe situations with men they don't or shouldn't trust, they are putting themselves at a higher risk. That should not be true, but it is. Drinking to excess in public is irresponsible behavior for anyone. Rape is not the only concern; both men and women put themselves at risk of theft, mugging, assault, and a bevy of other awful things. Unlike, say, wearing revealing clothing or talking suggestively, which I assume are the kind of things Fecke is equating the issue to, getting plastered is a voluntary act that leads to an inability to maintain control over one's self. A woman who chooses to wear a high-cut dress is taking control over her situation, but a woman who passes out drunk in a bar is voluntarily giving up control. She is at the mercy of those around her because she has chosen to do so, and while I would hope that those around her will take care of her instead of taking advantage of her, we all know that this will not always be the case. This is not an excuse for those who would commit rape, but a word of caution to those who might be raped. There is an important distinction here: the rape is completely the fault of the rapist, but in the case of giving up awareness and control to alcohol, a woman (or man, for that matter) can be at fault for putting themselves into a situation that left them unable to prevent a crime being committed against them.

It does not help anyone to pretend that drinking to excess is not irresponsible behavior. It is. It does not excuse a rapist. Nothing excuses a rapist. But if more young women are getting raped while drunk in my city, that's something I'd like to be aware of, and it's something I would like women I care about to be aware of. Blaming a news outlet for reporting the story is irresponsible, as is the assertion that "when we spend our time bemoaning how those girls today drink too much and put themselves in jeopardy, we ignore the fact that those women wouldn’t be in jeopardy if those boys today would take the extraordinarily easy step of not being rapists." Young people of both genders drink too much. I've seen the awful results first hand. Apologizing for the behavior does not help them. I assure Mr. Fecke that I am not ignoring the fact that rapists are responsible for rape, any more than I am ignoring the fact that thieves are responsible for theft when I lock my apartment when I leave it. I simply do not like seeing anyone put themselves at unnecessary risk because they're convinced the risk isn't real.

The Audacity of Doing One's Job

Sorry it's been slow here. Other projects going on, vacations, etc. So yeah. Kinda slow for a bit.

This cracked me up, though. Apparently, the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign thinks that some comments Barack Obama made to a meeting of Democratic congressional leaders was an obscene display of arrogance. Obama said that his campaign had "become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." The RNC circulated this comment under the heading "Barack Obama Audacity Watch."

So, according to the RNC and McCain campaigns, a politician actually trying to improve America and not being afraid to lay claim to that goal is just arrogant. Not, you know, doing what he was elected to do.