Category: Politics

I just watched the December 9th episode of “The Daily Show”, which ended with Jon Stewart’s interview with Governor Mike Huckabee on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Stewart did a good job with the interview, making his point forcefully without being disrespectful to his guest. He raised almost all of the relevant points, he explained them well, and he called Huckabee on his weaker points.

But it’s just infuriating to see this left as a simple disagreement between two passionate but mutually respectful sides, when it’s not. Huckabee brings nothing to the table, and every single one of his arguments is easily refuted:

• Earlier in the interview, Huckabee talked about being against “intrusive government.” He then proceeded to argue that banning same-sex marriage is justified, which is the very definition of intrusive government.
• “The only way that we can create the next generation is through a male/female relationship.” Which means that marriage is solely about procreation. But to the best of my knowledge, heterosexual couples are still allowed to marry even if one or both of them is infertile. Even more alarming, heterosexual couples can be married even if they don’t plan to have children! If Huckabee is concerned about the definition of marriage, then the definition of marriage should be “two adults who can and will produce a child.” But that’s not what he says, he says “a man and a woman.”
• “30 states have had it on the ballot, and in all 30 states, it’s passed.” Might doesn’t make right. We have a judicial system specifically to guarantee that the rights of a minority are not overwhelmed by the will of a majority. But when the judicial system does its job, people scream that they’re “legislating from the bench.”
• “…even in states like California, which no one would say is socially conservative.” Except for San Diego, the majority Catholic Latino or Baptist African American populations of LA, and most of the rural areas in central California. Which everyone understands are socially conservative, and are exactly the demographic that voted in favor of Proposition 8.
• “It’s not that they’re saying they’re going to ban something, as much as they’re going to affirm that it’s how it’s always been.” As Stewart points out, Prop 8 in California does ban same-sex marriage. Claiming that it’s not a ban is completely disingenuous and cowardly.
• “If we change the definition, then we really do have to change it to accommodate all lifestyles.” The slippery-slope non-argument is nothing but bullshit. It’s the second-oldest argument against same-sex marriage, and the most easily refuted. Huckabee’s ridiculous example of “the guy in West Texas who has 27 wives” is nonsense: that is a fundamentally different construct than two consenting adults entering into an exclusive contract of marriage. To equate same-sex marriage with polygamy is nothing more than a lie.
• “There’s a difference between the equality of each individual and the equality of what we do, and the sameness of what we do.” and later “There’s a big difference between a person being black and a person practicing a lifestyle.” Hot on the heels of the slippery-slope lie, is this, the oldest argument against same-sex marriage, which is that being gay is a choice or a lifestyle. While there are millions of people who would be able to patiently explain to Gov. Huckabee that it isn’t a choice, and that the word “sexual orientation” instead of “sexual preference” is more than just PC name-wrangling, the fact that being gay isn’t a choice is actually irrelevant to this discussion. Because the choice that people are making is choosing to enter into a stable and loving relationship with another adult. If you can rationally and logically prove that that “lifestyle choice” is detrimental to society, then you are welcome to ban same-sex marriage, but you’ll have to ban heterosexual marriage as well.
• “Religious people don’t have the right to burn others at the stake, they don’t have the right to do anything they wish to do.” Except, apparently, violate laws regarding the tax-exempt status of religious institutions and use their finances to campaign for political issues that affect people who don’t subscribe to their religion.
• “Those who support the idea of same sex marriage have a lot of work to do to convince the rest of us.” No, you arrogant bastard, those who support same-sex marriage don’t have any obligation to ask for your permission before entering into the same types of relationships that millions of heterosexual couples are granted by default. Actually, Stewart put this one a lot better than I did. It’s a fucking travesty that people can be subjected to the demand, “You say you’re not a pervert? Prove it.”
• “If a person does not necessarily support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not mean that they’re a homophobe.” No, if a person’s a homophobe, it means that he either doesn’t understand (or care to understand) homosexuality enough to know that it’s not a “lifestyle choice,” or that he believes that homosexual relationships are detrimental enough to society that they should be relegated to a lesser legal and social status. If a person supports the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it means that he wants to write it into law that marriage is about sex and procreation and not the loving relationship of two consenting adults. So apparently, Huckabee is both.
• “Words do matter. Definitions matter.” And just as Huckabee doesn’t like being called the word “homophobe,” I suspect that thousands of married couples don’t like having their relationships called “civil unions” or “lifestyle choices.”

Stewart put it well: like the issue of abortion, the issue of same-sex marriage has passionate people arguing on either side. But this is not like that argument, because there aren’t two valid sides. There is just right and wrong — wrong both in the moral sense that it’s a gross inequity and is fundamentally unfair, but in the more relevant logical sense. There’s simply no rational or logical justification for banning same-sex marriage. People have tried over and over to present the issue as if it were a rational difference of opinion, and over and over again they’re proven wrong. That’s why they toss the hot potato to state amendments, where the people can vote on the issue without having to provide a rational justification.

Whenever this issue pops up, you always see someone trying to smooth over the situation by saying “we’re making progress” or “people will see the light eventually” or “fighting bigotry always takes time.” The question is why does it take time, every time? How come every time you want to teach people to treat each other fairly, you have to start over from scratch? That’s not the sign of the inexorable progress of time; that’s the sign of a severe learning disability.

Hey, did you guys hear? Sarah Palin said something dumb that was picked up by the “gotcha” media again!

I can remember hoping for more substance than sound bites and petty insults in this election, more talking about actual issues instead of transparent attempts at media manipulation. And I keep trying to rein in my under-informed liberal rage, reminding myself that these people are not idiots to be dismissed, but merely sometimes fallible adults with differing political views than mine. I genuinely, sincerely want there to be intelligent debate again, instead of increasingly polarized name-calling.

But the issues come down to one candidate whose economic, domestic, and foreign policies have been proven failures over the past eight years, and one candidate whose policies may or may not work but at least he’s genuinely committed to improving the country. And as much as it dismays me to fall in the “Economy and wars are boring! Let’s point and laugh at the funny pretty lady!” camp, I’ve got to acknowledge that it’s a pretty serious issue when your candidate for the second-highest office in the country doesn’t understand the United States Constitution.

I mean, come on:

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

That’s right: she said that freedom of the press violates the First Amendment.

It was alarming enough when she revealed a basic misunderstanding of the role of vice president — not at that Q&A session that was quickly dismissed as “gotcha journalism,” but during the vice-presidential debate, where she ominously hinted at giving the role even more power than Cheney has given it.

But explaining how the First Amendment works is something that you have to do for stupid excitable people on internet message boards. You shouldn’t have to explain it to a candidate for Vice President of the United States.

Should the unthinkable happen, and she gets elected, are we going to have to explain everything to our VP? That the freedom of speech does not mean freedom from people pointing out that you’re saying stupid things? That the freedom of religion also guaranteed by the First Amendment means that even if the GOP weren’t blatantly manipulating suspicions about Obama’s religious faith, that that still wouldn’t bar him from office? That when she types MAVERICK in all caps it comes across as shouting? That it’s improper to mix up your official and personal e-mails — oh, wait. I’m sure she’d have no problem recognizing the 😉 smiley, but will we have to explain that ad hominem attacks are lousy for debates, and that RTFC stands for Read the Fucking Constitution?

I can’t imagine what other basic internet truths the conservatives could manage to screw up, maybe Godwin’s L… wait, hang on, what’s this article in the New York Times all about:

On one, polls that are “tightening” are emphasized over those that are not, and the rest of the news media is portrayed as papering over questions about Mr. Obama’s past associations with people who have purportedly anti-American tendencies that he has not answered. (“I feel like we are talking to the Germans after Hitler comes to power, saying, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t know,’ ” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, told Mr. Hannity on Thursday.)

Ah, there we go. Don’t ever change, Ms. Coulter.

On the one hand, I want to believe that this country is founded on cooperation and the fair and just resolution of conflicts, and that only by working together as mutually respectful adults can we accomplish anything. But on the other hand, I think that after all this, anyone who would vote for a McCain/Palin ticket has to be a fucking moron. I’m having trouble reconciling these disparate philosophies.

In the meantime, my advice for Governor Palin: lurk more.

Over the past couple of days, there’s been a good bit of attention towards the change in tone of the presidential campaign, more specifically, the McCain campaign. “McCain Denounces Pitchfork-Wavers”, announces the Time Magazine blog. And “Obama Thanks McCain for Admonishing Reporters”.

The incident in question is a campaign rally in which McCain told his supporters to “be respectful” of Obama, reassuring one man that Obama is nothing to be “afraid” of, and correcting one woman who described Obama as an “Arab.” The shift is being described as the McCain campaign’s backing off from fear-mongering and personal attacks; even Palin has been reined in and is now just calling Obama a baby-killer. Even the most cynical sources are describing it as a good gesture, but performed too late; “McCain Tries to Tame Flames He Earlier Fanned.” My reaction was the same, “thank God; maybe we’re pulling back from the brink, although they shouldn’t have taken it that far in the first place.” (Once again: this is the campaign that compared their opponent to the Antichrist).

So I was surprised that of all the reports on the rally I’ve seen, only one article, in the New York Times mentions this:

But moments later, Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers and told the crowd, “Mr. Obama’s political career was launched in Mr. Ayers’ living room.”

Which is odd, because the supposed “connection” to Ayers was already beaten out and invalidated long ago, and the only value it had to the Republican side of the campaign was that they could call Ayers a “terrorist.” Take advantage of the fact that people don’t read past headlines, and you can link “terrorist” and “Muslim” with your “Country First!” slogan, and plant the idea that the first step of Obama’s administration would be to bomb the Pentagon.

I want to believe that McCain’s admonishing the crowd was sincere, if only for this reason: when a woman said “He’s an Arab,” McCain replied with, “No, no ma’am, he’s a good man. A family man.” A gaffe like that would never be pre-scripted. That would indicate it was a case of the old McCain — excuse me, the earlier McCain, the one who said he wouldn’t allow a smear campaign — reasserting himself after seeing first-hand the depths his campaign had reached.

That’s the best case scenario, and it’s still not good. Because it indicates it’s not his campaign, assuming it ever was. He’s trying the underhanded guilt-by-association tactics of Joseph McCarthy, and the say-whatever-I’m-told-to-say tactics of Charlie McCarthy. When Palin goes on the offensive with whatever crap she’s expected to dredge up, you have to feel a little bit of sympathy for her, because she’s an idiot. (I so wanted to believe that she was more than the vapid moron the press was making her out to be, and she repeatedly proved me wrong). A senator with McCain’s experience shouldn’t be parroting back whatever the party tells him to say.

The worse case would be that it’s completely insincere, just another tactic to convince undecided voters that they’re not evil, even as they’ve got their hand in the Big Cookie Jar of Evil, grabbing another Evil Cookie after we’ve already told them not to spoil their Evil Dinner.

I suppose the only thing worse than that would be that they’re completely sincere, and they really believe there’s something to the Ayers connection, and it’s not just code language for “Guys, he’s black and his middle name is Hussein! Are you blind?!?”

Holy crap, that’s the scariest thing of all. What if they really do believe everything that they’re saying? Their catch phrase is “Who is Barack Obama?” What if that’s not just an attempt at McCarthy-esque fear-mongering, but they really don’t know?

I’d feel better if they were just plain evil, than that stupid. “Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.” Luckily, there’s a lot more evidence of evil: in that New York Times article, McCain’s campaign manager and aides once again reveal themselves to be The Worst Living Americans. John McCain is at his core an honorable man, and it’d be hypocrisy to demonize him just as the GOP has tried to demonize all opposition for years. But seriously, I want to do everything I can to make this an internet meme: Rick Davis and Nicolle Wallace are The Worst Living Americans. They are irredeemably evil, and they should never be allowed to work on anything ever again.

Great video from The Jed Report blog, where Obama predicts the McCain/Palin smear campaign.

It’s downright calming if you’re like me, and you’ve been watching both the far-left and far-right get increasingly hysterical, and getting worried that we’ll never be able to climb our way out of this nonsense.

(Link from David Eggers, no, not that one).

The worst thing about you liberals (if I have to pick just one) is the way you’re commandeering our language. With your political correctness, you appropriate words to suit your own political purpose, instead of just saying what they really mean. What happened to using words as they’re supposed to be used, instead of trying to redefine them? Good, solid, American words: Patriot. Maverick. Eltist. Liberal. Madrassa. Folks. Nuclear. Pakistan.

Now there’s all this hullaballoo about John McCain calling Barack Obama “that one” during the presidential debate. What is with you people, thinking that there was something dismissive or disrespectful about that? McCain was just straight-talking, telling it like it is. There were like a million people in that room, and he had to make sure you knew he was talking about Senator Obama, and not one of the other candidates for President.

This is yet another example of the Democrat party running “the fussiest campaign in American history”. In a moment of national crisis, where the economy is on the minds [sic] of every single person, the liberals are trying to make this a campaign about race.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are focused on one thing and one thing only: making this the most specific presidential race possible.

Instead of tackling the issues, the liberals are taking quotes out of context, mocking people’s religious beliefs, and trying to manipulate language.

The Republican Party is having none of that. No vague fear, no uncertainty, no mistrust; just hard, straight, and brutally specific talk. They’re not campaigning against any Barack Obama, it’s Barack Hussein Obama. That’s the kind of honesty, integrity, and specificity I can believe in.

So what if John McCain called a three-million dollar planetarium projector an “overhead projector.” The man’s 72 years old! He’s still getting used to not calling the TV remote a “clicker” and CDs “tapes.” If you liberals are mocking him for his age, your hearts must be as cold as my icebox. How dishonorable. Everybody knew what he was really saying.

(P.S. Sometimes I look back on stuff I’ve written on this blog and just laugh at how naive I was. “Finally an American presidential race that isn’t racist or sexist!” What a dumb-ass!)

According to a report from Reuters (bolding mine):

“There is a time when it’s necessary to take the gloves off and that time is right now,” Palin told thousands of supporters at a rally in a sports arena in Carson, California.

Earlier at a fundraiser in Englewood, Colorado, she departed from her usual speech to question Obama’s character.

“Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Palin said of Obama, also calling him an embarrassment.

Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam War-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

I’m now deeply regretting what I said earlier about Palin’s not being an idiot.

She should’ve stuck with the stereotype of the backwoods former newscaster who got in way over her head. Since the GOP is betraying its own supporters, rotting out the core of its platform in favor of Fox News-worthy talking points, you could feel some small degree of sympathy for her getting swept into that betrayal. And getting turned into a hot by horny conservative standards* mannequin parroting back the inflammatory nonsense the party orders her to.

But you have to be a special kind of idiot to be spreading crap like that. If she is actually “departing” from her usual speech, then she’s an idiot for believing that will fly. And if she’s not, but merely tossing in another attempt at muckraking her GOP handlers have given her to say, then she’s an idiot for not saying “I’m enough of a maverick to rattle off your prepared statements when they’re vague meaningless sound bites and empty promises, but not when it’s perpetuating a baseless smear, bless your hearts.”

This is the material of cowardly forwarded e-mails filled with the kind of stuff the GOP wants you to think, but they’re not allowed to say out loud. (“Hasn’t everyone noticed how he’s black? And his middle name is Hussein? How can we possibly be losing?!? Put our redneck uncertainty staff on full alert: give us everything you can to link him with Muslim extremists, stat!”) When somebody forwards you one of those e-mails, it’s kind of hard to get too angry, because they’re just gullible saps who’ve been horribly manipulated. But the person who writes the e-mail in the first place deserves your full scorn.

I think Governor Palin was better off just being an embarrassment.

* When considering the concept of “hot by horny conservative standards,” you have to remember that the desiccated husk that is Ann Coulter got all the attention she has by marketing herself as a “hot conservative,” and mysteriously, it worked.

I had to watch the repeat of the Vice-Presidential debate tonight, which means I got to see all the people a-twittering about it first. Based on what I was reading, I expected something very different from what I saw.

But then, I’m about as politically ignorant as you can get. (Without using the word “repug” or spitting out complaints about “liberals” like it were a dirty word, of course). My vote in the 2008 election was already decided back in 2000, so the only reason I’ve been following the election at all is to make sure neither Obama or Biden is exposed as a baby cannibal (and even then, I’d want to get more details on the baby and its tastiness before I rush to judgement). I’m ignorant partly out of laziness; partly out of a misplaced optimism about the “representative” part of “representative democracy;” and partly because whenever I watch unprocessed “news” I get the urge to punch, kick, and stab things, and it doesn’t go away until I change the channel to cartoons.

So I was surprised to see anything other than the images the headlines and pundits have been creating for me over the past month: Palin didn’t trip over herself or start babbling completely incoherently or pull out a gun and shoot a moose, skin it, and make a rape kit out of it. And Biden didn’t plagiarize someone else’s speech (I’ve still got residual punditry from the last few campaigns running around in my brain), yell at her for being an idiot, or pull out his gun and threaten to shoot Obama if he tried to take it away. Instead what we got were two reasonably well-spoken adults going on television in front of millions of people and delivering their parties’ talking points.

That’s not to say that it was “close.” There was only one person in the debate who proved himself qualified to be Vice President, much less President. If I were Biden, I’d have been insulted at even the implication it was a contest — my estimation of the man went up 100 times, if only because he never stopped and said, “Seriously? I’m supposed to be responding to that?” But he wisely chose to take the situation for what it was: simply another opportunity to campaign for Obama. The only ones who could consider it “close” are those who’ve become so cynical and numb to the political process that they’re simply analyzing the analysis with their responsometers, abandoning any pretense of actual government and simply paying attention to marketability and watchability, like the crassest of TV executives.
Continue reading “St. Louis Vice, or MONSTER NO HAVE BEAUTY MONSTER KILL BEAUTY!”

We’re now two and a half months into the End Times, and of course here I am, still writing “Living in a Righteous and Just Society” on my checks. As I’m sure you’re all aware, what’s brought about Imminent Rapture is the California Supreme Court ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

Of course, San Francisco made a big hoo-ha about it, trotting out their first married “couple” in an act of political showboating and promoting the gay agenda — nothing epitomizes the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle like two women in their late 80s.

But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of a ballot initiative that will allow California residents to vote on the legality of these so-called “marriages.” And I say November can’t come soon enough. It’s not that I’ve got anything personal against these “couples;” I just think that the Supreme Court overstepped their bounds. If we have judges taking it upon themselves to interpret laws, what’s next? People having sex on the streets with dogs and shoe trees, that’s what. Last I checked, we live in a democracy. And who better to make life-altering decisions about individual couples than thousands of strangers living hundreds of miles away?

As a concerned citizen, I’m doing my part to get ready for the November vote. I’ve already decided on a bunch of “marriages” I’m going to vote against:

1. First is the Coens, who live in the condo behind my building. Nice enough people, but you know, Jewish. Marriage is a religious institution, after all, and that means Christian ceremonies where we have enough sense not to waste a perfectly good glass by stepping on it.
2. Then there’s that couple who just moved in down the street. They’re Pakistani or Iraqi or Indian or something with some name I can’t pronounce, and of course you know what that means. “One Nation Under Allah?” I don’t think so.
3. The McAllisters are a tough call, since they’re a really nice couple. Unfortunately, one or the other of them is infertile — I never could find out which. Marriage is about procreation and raising children, and it has been for millennia. We can’t go changing the basic definitions of words just because a couple of people claim to be “in love.”
4. Jessica Alba and that dude she married, because we all know she can do better, am I right, guys?
5. Then there’s the Brown “family.” Peter, Sarah, and their daughter Julie, but there’s a problem: it’s their first marriage. And we all know it wasn’t “Adam and Eve,” it was “Adam and Lillith, then Eve.” I just feel sorry for the children.

And that’s just to start. It’s not going to be easy to make decisions for millions of people, but it’s our duty as Americans to decide these things. Not to leave it up to the couples themselves, and definitely not to put it in the hands of some “judges” who were “trained” to “interpret” the “law” on a “rational basis.”

Update: I’ve just been informed over e-mail that the November ballot initiative won’t let us vote against all marriages, just same-sex marriages. That doesn’t seem fair at all! How am I supposed to make decisions about the lives of people who don’t share all of my personal beliefs?

[Via John Scalzi’s blog]

I admit I’ve been out of the loop, politically, for the last 36 years or so, but were y’all aware that two of the three people most likely to be the next President are not white men?

Even with all the time since the Democratic primary to let it sink in, I’m still finding myself pleasantly surprised by that fact. For the most part, in the most mainstream media that I’ve been exposed to, it’s been treated as a non-issue. Sure, I’ve heard cracks about Clinton’s getting weepy at press conferences, and that’s not cool; and there’s the whole bit about Obama’s name, also not cool; and then the allegations that a vote for Hillary Clinton is really just a vote for Bill Clinton, which is insulting, but not much more insulting than the comparisons made between George W and George HW Bush. (And look how well that turned out!)

I’m sure there are pundits I don’t pay attention to who are getting lots of mileage out of people’s racial and gender insecurities. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the big news outlets have a full-time staff who tries to come up with tactful ways to discuss the “Holy crap are we really ready for this?!?” question. But for the most part, the election has concentrated on the issues and kept the surface stuff to a minimum. It’s not a non-issue, but I can still remember the Mondale/Ferraro ticket, and how people just would not shut up about how bizarre it was to have a woman running for vice-president.

So just as the country is having a moment, who should come in but Edward McClelland of Salon.com, to tell us that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not being liberal enough. Men are split between McCain and Obama. The only reason to oppose Clinton, apparently, is misogyny. We have such a deep-seated unease at the idea of having a woman in a position of authority, that we’re willing to do the unthinkable — vote for a black man, or worse, a Republican! — to avoid it.

One of the facts he uses to make his point:

Antonio Campbell, a 42-year-old political science professor at Towson University in Maryland, saw the gender gap in his own classroom: Most of his female students backed Clinton, while his male students split between Obama and McCain.

McClelland’s take-away from that is that guys are overly averse to voting for a woman. I have to wonder why the conclusion isn’t that women are overly inclined to vote for another woman. From the results of the Maryland primaries, I’d expect “most” of his female students to back Obama; he won 60% of the Democratic vote in a predominantly Democratic state, where a significant majority of the Democratic voters were female.

Are we supposed to be taking the Michael Moore approach to this election, and saying that anyone who’s not a Rich White Male is automatically a good candidate? Am I supposed to applaud, for instance, Tina Fey’s endorsement of Clinton, which as far as I can tell is based solely on how empowering it would be to have a woman President? Or are we really going for votes not based on race or gender, but on issues and facts?

Like, for instance, the fact that Hillary Clinton freaks my shit out. I can honestly say that it doesn’t matter one bit to me that Clinton is a woman, and it only matters slightly more that she’s married to my favorite President of my lifetime. What matters to me is that she strikes me as a vapid career politician. I don’t trust her to take a genuine stand on any of the issues, without caving to political pressure. And I don’t trust that her administration would be anything other than More of the Same, but this time pandering to the slightly-left-of-center instead of the far Right.

McClelland claims that the aversion to Clinton as President is as shallow as the “beer buddy” mentality that got Bush elected over Gore. I say that it’s a memory of the worst aspects of the previous Clinton administration, but without Bill Clinton’s charisma to smooth everything over and make everybody feel better about caving to an opposing Congress. Sure, it’s still politically ignorant, personality-based voting, but it’s not gender-based.

And although it gets muddled in the midst of Lethal Weapon references and calling Obama “your hip black friend,” McClelland’s main point boils down to this: don’t be so afraid of a woman President that you’d be willing to switch parties just to avoid it. Fair enough; as charming and personable as McCain is on “The Daily Show,” his ideology isn’t something I can support. Just don’t assume that the reason I’m tempted is fear of a woman President. It’s just a fear of that particular woman as President.