Championable | Love, parenting, politics.

I recently had a somewhat strange conversation.

Ostensibly, it was about the 1st amendment and the concept of Separation of church and state (which, although not stated in the amendment, is derived therefrom).  After a while, though, I realized that this person was somehow arguing for a separation between state and morality, which is a whole different kettle of fish.  It’s also absurd.

Here’s how I think things should work:  The people (or their representatives) vote.  They establish laws within the framework of the Constitution.  These laws are then applied equally to all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.  If they screw up and make a law that’s outside the framework of the Constitution, it gets struck down by the courts.

Here’s three examples:

The people (or their representatives) decide that two-person marriage is good, and should be supported through tax breaks, credits, whatever.  Now, they can’t apply this pairing to specific genders, races, etc., so if marriage is legal, gay marriage is legal. End of issue.

The people vote.  They say that the age of “adulthood” is 18 or 21 or whatever.  All laws for adults must now apply to all people of that age.  I mean, this whole “Have fun fighting in Iraq, but don’t have a beer, kid!” thing is kind of absurd.

The people vote.  They say “Life begins at viability.”  Or a heartbeat.  Or brainwaves. All laws protecting human life must now apply to all living people. This makes abortion illegal unless there’s a threat to the mother’s life, in which case, honestly, I have no idea.

Uh oh.  I just outlawed abortion.  Now what?

See, gay marriage is a no-brainer.  Hell, it’s an ANTI-brainer. If you don’t support it, then you’re not applying the law equally, and you are wrong.  It’s really the easiest issue there is, and one of the few about which I am completely dismissive of arguments “against.”

Personally, I don’t want to legalize drinking for 18 year olds.  So I’d reinstate the draft and have it start at 21.  (Yeah, I just combined two issues. Sue me.)  Put it to a vote, I say:  should there be a draft or not?  At what age?

Abortion. Oh, lord. This is where I become a hypocrite.  I believe that abortion should be a choice.  I really do.  At the same time, I think it’s painful and sad and much worse. The thing is, though, the playing field isn’t even.  Take my church, for instance.  The Roman Catholic Church  is, obviously, completely pro-life.  But they’re also anti-birth control.  We’re not talking RU-486/Plan B here… the Roman Catholic Church is dead set against pre-conception birth control (except for abstinence).

Oh, there’s workarounds.  The Catholic Church teaches all about fertility tracking, which, wink-wink, is a birth control method too, but it’s not birth control to prevent birth, right?  Wink.

The question for me is:  do I want to put this to a vote?  Let the people decide where “protected life” begins?

Roe v. Wade, which is based on a Right to Privacy derived from the Fourteenth Amendments,  would clearly be superceded by a legal declaration of citizenship for the unborn.

I’ve now written myself into a corner.  It’s like I’m the most pro-life pro-choice person ever.  Conflict, conflict.

I can’t end this with a solution.  Not everything is black and white. I’m pro-choice with a guilty conscience.

Love to all. Even you, Justice Blackmun.

Dammit, this sort of thing makes me mad.

Those fucktards who said that Marine recruiters are unwelcome intruders need to wake up and smell the Bill of Rights. You can protest ‘em, if that’s your inclination. You can ignore ‘em, if that’s what you want to do… but choosing the USMC as the group you’re going to call “unwelcome and uninvited?” and trying to kick them out of town?

Fuck you.

My take?  Even if the WAR is wrong, the MARINES are right.  That’s all I’ll say.

I’ve still got a fever.  Sorry if I’m a little cranky.

Love to all. Even you, Code Pink.

There was a moment in the debate, when Obama started quoting things Bill Clinton said in order to use them against Hillary, when the whole thing changed for me.

Paraphrasing:

Hillary:  “I didn’t say that!”
Obama:  “Well, you’re husband did.”
Hillary:  “But I’M right here!”
Obama:  “Well, I sometimes can’t tell who I’m running against!”

Bullshit, bucko. That was stupid, cheap, and beneath who you claim to be. I think you need a couple of years to get a little Clinton-style seasoning before you’re ready to take over the country. I was 75% for Hillary anyway, but now I’m 100%.

Love to all.  Even you, Michelle.

Stupid, stupid headline. Stupid, stupid people make writing such a headline necessary.

At the Quaker church near my house, there’s a huge black banner with simple white lettering “Torture is wrong.”

James wrote a quick entry explaining how and why waterboarding is torture. I started to comment on his entry, but then my comment got too long, so I’m writing it here. My comment started with:

See! See!

You’re still a Republican, I’m still a Liberal, and we both agree waterboarding is torture! Agreeing me doesn’t make you a Jimmy Carter wannabee, and my agreeing with you doesn’t make me jump on the Romney Express. Yay!

At my office, I like to joke that it’s really important to be nice to everyone, so that when the time comes when someone does us wrong, we can be self-righteously angry.

Although said in humor, there’s some truth to this. After all, it’s kind of hard to get angry at someone for screwing you over if you’ve been nailing everyone else for years, you know?

The same logic holds true here in the U.S. By holding ourselves to higher standards, by accepting that there is real risk associated with freedom, we used to be in a place where, if we ever needed to kick the shit out of another country, we could do so with something akin to a purity of motive, and the understanding that even when we won, we would treat our enemies fairly and according to international agreement.

Now, we’ve completely lost any moral standing in the world, and rightly so.

Now, I’m no fool. I realize that Gulf War I was largely about American interests, but our politics dovetailed with the region’s, and we didn’t try to effect “regime change.” Heck, we didn’t steamroll in to Baghdad because, as Dick Cheney pointed out, the result of trying to do so would have resulted in a quagmire exactly like the one in which we’re mired right now.

After our Anti-American, Anti-Constitution, Anti-Due Process, Anti-Speech, Pro-oil, inarticulate, murderous President was properly elected (for the first time, in 2004), one of my first thoughts was:

“Oh, boy. Now we really deserve whatever we get.”

But I no longer feel this way. George Bush isn’t a Republican. I don’t know what the fuck he is, beyond being a criminal who should be impeached, convicted, and jailed. The Republicans got snookered, man. They should revolt against this high-spending, pseudo-moralist, war-for-the-family felon.

When Bush was elected the price of oil was what, $26, $28 a barrell? Now it’s hovering in the low-mid 90’s. Oh, he’s done a FANTASTIC job. For his friends.

America? Not so much.

Love to all. Even you, Michael Mukasey.

“Maggie, there’s another plane. Why would they let another plane into this airspace?”

September 11, 2001. New York City. My office.

I’m still unable to fully process that day. When the second plane flew downtown and hit the towers, it was a visual impossibility. Even though I described to Maggie what I was seeing, what I was seeing live and with my own eyes, it didn’t seem quite real.

Later that night, drunk off my ass and watching an F-15 make tight circles over Manhattan, the world seemed almost comically skewed.

I realize that this is a strange word to use. But the Twin Towers were THERE. And then they WEREN’T. What the fuck is that? The fucking skyline changed. That’s absurd.

In the time since, my country has launched itself into a war that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, but did so in the name of 9/11. The logical disconnects are massive, and get more so daily.

Have the terrorists won? No. But they’ve scored major indirect victories: they’ve weakened the US Constitution, killed thousands of US Soldiers in a country where they had little foothold on 9/11/2001, and turned us into a country most of the world generally dislikes.

They’ve had help, of course. Thanks for that, President Bush.

This wasn’t supposed to be a political entry. Thousands of people died on 9/11. And apparently, tens-to-hundreds-of-thousands more are going to contend with the after effects of the dust and debris. Who needs a “dirty bomb” when you have a massive cloud of asbestos covering downtown?

I’m just sad for this country. The day the Bush administration designated people who disagreed with him as people who provide “comfort to the enemy,” I felt the change in atmosphere.

Spiral, spiral.

I pray that we, as a country, live up to our own standards. That we gain strength through dissention, perspective through argument, and respect through challenge.

Love to all. Even you, George.

Love to all. Even you, Dick.

When George Bush said that he would not allow the justice department to prosecute administration officials, the political situation changed forever. This is no longer a matter of opinion, of an idiot in charge, of a subpar halfwit getting our soliders killed for fallacious reasons… this is no longer about someone simply breaking the law.

This is about the death of America. The end of the Constitution. The destruction of the Union.

When the White House calls “pathetic” the contempt charges brought against Harriet Meiers for NOT SHOWING UP when subpoenaed by Congress. When the White House ORDERED Meiers to DEFY these subpoenas…

…I kid you not. This is the end of the America that I know and love.

We impeached a President because he lied about a blowjob.

If we don’t impeach Bush and Cheney for shredding the Constitution, then America is dead.

I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that George Bush and Dick Cheney are enemies of the state. Enemy combatants, if you will, against everything it means to be have a Constitutional Republic like we used to have.

Maggie pointed out to me that the Nazi tactic of incremental removal of rights is starting to become frighteningly similar to what Bush is doing to America. In some cases, the Nazis took away the rights of the local Jewry a little at a time. And almost nobody said a word, until they were prisoners. And then they were dead, and couldn’t say anything.

It has started here. Warrantless surveillance. Disagreement-as-treason. Destruction of checks and balances. The beginnings of totalitarianism.

You think I’m overreacting? Leave me a comment explaining how Bush can order people to ignore Congressional subpoenas, how Cheney could claim that his office isn’t part of the Executive Branch, how Bush could order prosecutors NOT TO PROSECUTE when Congress asks them to do so.

America is dying, and it may be too late to save her.

Love to all. Even you, Harriet.

Whether homosexuality is innate or whether it is acquired — the age-old nature versus nurture debate — has long shaped the political and social discussion over gay rights.
- CNN, 6/30/2007

DAMMIT. It’s like the fucktards leading the jackasses. If we played in CNN’s severely underpowered logical arena, the question would be: Why the hell would nature vs. nurture have anything to do with the rights granted to US citizens? That’s like saying that if homosexuality is a choice, gays shouldn’t be protected under the Bill of Rights? Huh? What? EXACTLY.

But the discussion is actually the problem. The very idea that there are and aren’t circumstances under which gays shouldn’t be granted precisely the same rights and privileges as every other US citizen is just a poor attempt at justifying a despicable set of ideas.

Pro-choice vs. Pro-life? Let’s debate, because I can see your point even if you disagree with me. Conservative vs. Liberal? Let’s have at it, because there are gray areas.

But if you think gay is “wrong…” Fuck you, and get the hell out of my house.

Love to all. Even you, Taylor Gandossy.

You scored as Old School Democrat, Old school Democrats emphasize economic justice and opportunity. The Democratic ideal is best summarized by the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Old School Democrat 75% New Democrat 55% Foreign Policy Hawk 50% Green 40% Libertarian 25% Pro Biz Republican 20% Socially Conservative Repub 20% What’s Your Political Philosophy? created with QuizFarm.com

Thanks for the link, James!

Love to all. Even you, you Socially Conservative Republicans.

In case you don’t scan Fark, I really don’t want you to miss this article on Dick Cheney. In order to circumvent the law, Cheney claimed that his office wasn’t part of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.

So that make it… Judicial, Legislative, Executive, and Arrogant, Lying Dickhead.

Who knew? I’m so glad there are a lot of Republicans who are coming around to the idea that maybe you don’t have to stand behind lying sack of shit, all because they claim to belong to the same party as you. Republicans need to take back their party. Fiscal Conservatism. Smaller government. Where did these concepts go? I want to argue with people I disagree with who make a POINT. Bush is a lying murderer. Cheney has clearly gone to logical Outer Space. Where are the Doles of the 00’s?

Love to all. Even you, leaky.