Holiday

I’m off till after New Year’s. . .be good, be smart, and pay attention!
Happy Holidays!

VS – 12.26.08

LGBT: Let’s Give Barack Trouble

I know I said I’d try more to stay away from mainstream media-dominating news, but I had to say something about this issue.

Leaders of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (what LGBT really stands for) community are outraged at President-elect Barack Obama already, and he hasn’t even taken office yet.  Why the outrage?  Because he dared invite prominent conservative pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at next year’s can’t-come-soon-enough inauguration.  Why the outrage?  Because Rick Warren opposes gay marriage and supported California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in that state (again).  Never mind that Warren has been trying to shift the church’s focus to the causes of international poverty and disease, especially AIDS; he opposes gay marriage, which President-elect Obama also opposes, and thus the LGBT community feels that Warren should be persona non grata, does not deserve the honor of delivering the invocation, and that Barack Obama has made a huge mistake, possibly even a betrayal of their support, in selecting Warren.

Dear LGBT community, shut up.

Instead of being pissed and bitchy that Obama picked Warren for the invocation, where’s some praise for Obama for inviting Joseph Lowery, a Methodist minister, civil rights leader, and staunch supporter of gay marriage, to deliver the benediction?  I’ve heard and seen none of that so far.

Barack Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do in his campaign:  he’s being inclusive and reaching out to everyone, including conservatives, to work together productively with them, whether he agrees with their positions or not.  He’s not going to make everybody happy with every single decision that he makes, which is impossible to do anyway, and he warned his supporters of that.  He’s focusing on the things people have in common rather than their differences, and despite their differences, Warren and Obama do agree on climate change, foreign assistance, and many other issues.  They can work together, and, to build the inclusive nation moving towards change that he wants to build, Obama will need to include conservatives.  He’s doing fine, he’s doing right.

And for those who say that Warren’s invitation means that Obama is pandering to conservatives and not moving towards change at all?

To those people, I say again, shut up.  And think, before you say anything again.

The man delivering the invocation, the opening prayer,  at the inauguration is a staunch conservative (i.e., the anti-civil rights party) that opposes gay marriage.

The man delivering the benediction, the closing prayer, at the inauguration is an old-school, worked-with-MLK, was-in-the-Selma-To-Mongomery-Marches civil rights hero who supports gay marriage.

With his selection of these two men, and their places in the inauguration ceremonies, Barack Obama has made a statement that is apparently far too subtle for the mainstream media and Obama’s detractors to see:  with his inauguration, America is moving forward from the conservatism and oppression of the past to a future with freedom and opportunity for all.  The inauguration, from beginning to end, is about moving from what has been to what will be.  It is, in essence, about change, which is what Barack Obama has been about from day one of his campaign.

It’s amazing what the larger picture reveals when one doesn’t stay stuck on small perspectives.

VS – 12.21.08

My Letter To My Congresspeople

This is the actual letter that I sent to my Congresspeople, regarding the auto industry bailout.  Since it failed, I guess the fault is mine, though my reasons for opposing it are different than what the GOP gave as theirs.  The first paragraph is what Fuse had in their form; the rest of it is all mine.  Anyway, presented for your approval:

I have serious concerns about Congress passing a bailout of Detroit even while Detroit continues to push lawsuits against the States that are trying to strike down state greenhouse gas laws. My position is simple: NO BAILOUT MONEY UNLESS THE LEGISLATION ENDS DETROIT’S LAWSUITS AGAINST THE CLEAN CARS PROGRAM!
It’s utterly stupefying that the same companies that are taking actions against the concerns of states have the gall to come ask the Federal Government for money.  At the very least, they should drop these lawsuits before they receive a dime of federal money.  Washington is only one of the 13 states that, in acting to clean up the environment, found it self the target of legal actions by these car companies that want taxpayers’ money so badly.  I do not want a dime of my money going towards these companies that are busy fighting these lawsuits in court, and they definitely should not receive any money without first dropping these suits.  If that is not made part of any bailout agreement, then the federal government has just given money to the car companies that will be used to finance their lawsuits against state governments!
It’s time for the Big 3 to learn that Americans are so serious about protecting the environment, we’d rather watch at least one of them fall than give them money to keep fight change, poisoning our environment, and hold tight to our dependence on foreign oil.  It’s way past time that change came to Detroit.

*******************************

So was I right?  Only Representative Adam Smith responded, with a form letter stating he was out of the office.  Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell have not replied, as of yet.  Senate votes on the bailout were not available as of press time.

VS – 12.14.08

Idiocy On Parade

How funny is it that, in the wake of the smartest decision Americans have made collectively since spurning New Coke, there’s been an endless parade of idiots through the media?

Cases in point:

• Mike Huckabee

Former Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee gets to lead off the parade of idiots, with his comments against the struggle for gay rights.  Last month on The View, Mike made the argument that gays and lesbians aren’t really having a civil rights struggle, because there hasn’t been enough violence against them to merit the “civil rights” appellation.  (Hear that, gay bashers?  Huckabee says you guys aren’t working hard enough!  Get your bats and two-by-fours and suppression of your own homoerotic tendencies ready and get to work!)  I guess the murders of Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepherd, and Lawrence King don’t count to Huckabee; after all, that’s only three guys over four different decades. . .and people live through beatings, so those don’t really count either.

Yesterday, Huckabee expounded upon this idiotic point of view at a book signing by explaining that he sees hate crime legislation as “punishing people for their thoughts.”  As the idiot man himself puts it:

You know, if you penalize people for their thoughts, the question is — I mean, I’m not for violence against anybody; it doesn’t matter what the purpose is. If you had an 80-year-old woman who’s trying to get in her house with a bag full of groceries, that’s just as wrong as it is to hit somebody for a thought.

And the point is that you should punish and consequence the violence against another person. Why they did it is of less consequence than the fact they did it. So I don’t care if a person is homosexual, or they’re elderly, or they’re a child — if someone is violent toward them, they should be fully consequenced to the fullest extent of the law. But for their violence, not for their thought. When we start having the government determine what we can think, I think we’re moving in kind of a frightening area.

First of all, what does Mike Huckabee have against 80-year-old women trying to get into their houses?  Is Mike Huckabee showing support for making all 80-year-old women homeless?  Or just the ones carrying groceries?  “Sorry, Grandma, Mike Huckabee says you have to live on the streets now.  Try prostitution to support yourself – with the economy the way it is, it’s a booming season for low-priced sex services.  And Grandpa said to leave the groceries at the door.”  Second, “consequence” is not a fucking verb.  Third, and perhaps most important, the government can’t and doesn’t punish people for their thoughts, even thoughts of killing other people (thank God).  But when those thoughts turn into action, those thoughts stop being mere thought and become something else, something called, oh, what’s the legal term. . .oh yeah; it’s MOTIVE!  And motive is very important when proescuting a crime; it’s what determines whether a not a person is truly a threat to society at large or if that threat has passed now.  It’s the difference between killing out of self-defense and killing because one is a psychopath with no disregard for the lives of others.  Killing because you hate gays or blacks or midgets should matter because, if you do it, you obviously cannot be trusted around large elements of our society and you need to be locked away for a long, long time, and that’s the point of hate-crime legislation.

Mike Huckabee:  why isn’t he in the Dickipedia yet?

Oh wait. . .he is.

• Obama Birth Certificate Lawsuits

You know, for most people, the fact that Barack Obama won the election would be proof enough that he is Constitutionally eligible to be President.  Not so for the idiots tripping all over themselves to force the state of Hawaii to make Barack Obama’s birth certificate public, in attempts to challenge his American citizenship and, I would assume, get him out of office.  They’ve even gone so far as to appeal one case all the way to the Supreme Court (who I sincerely hope has better things to do) and take out ads in the Chicago Tribune.  Even more incredibly idiotic, it’s not just one idiot doing this, according to the Tribune:

“Cases challenging Obama’s citizenship have been tossed out of courts in several states, and Hawaiian officials have vouched for the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, which is locked in a state vault. The Obama campaign likewise has always dismissed the accusations.”

Election’s over.  You lost.  Let it go, idiotas.

• White Surpemacists Resurgence

Not just idiots, but idiots that are so afraid of change (it’s coming and you ain’t stoppin’ it) and losing relevance in today’s society (they have) that they’d rather sit around meeting halls and whine about how “white people have lost power in this country” and plan to kill people than go out and, oh, I don’t know, do something positive in their communities and try to understand and accept how race is coming to mean less and less in America than it did before. . .or, I don’t know, take responsibility for their lives instead of blaming other races for their own abysmal failures.  You didn’t lose your job because of Affirmative Action; you lost it because you’re a racist idiot.  You don’t have trouble finding a new job because of Mexicans; you can’t find a new job because you’re a racist idiot who mangles the English language worse than most immigrants and you dropped out of school in fifth grade because long division was kicking your ass.  Oh, and because (mostly) white people fucked up the economy.  Not hating; that’s just what happened.

• RNC Chairman Mike Duncan

Chief Idiot Mike Duncan had this to say about Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss (who should really be making smooth jazz albums with a name like that) winning a US Senate runoff election in Georgia and ostensibly denying the Democrats a Congressional supermajority: “any rhetoric about a liberal mandate is nothing but hot air.”

Really.

So let me get this straight:  a long-term entrenched Senator nearly loses an election in a state that fought the change of segregation so hard it accidentally kick-started the Civil Rights Movement and continues to fight against change, and the national mandate for change that even some of the Southern states embraced is a bunch of hot air?

Look, not that I’m personally against Georgia, but let’s face it:  it, like many other Southern states (talking to you, Mississippi and Arkansas, and I came from you, so I speak from personal knowledge here) is a little slow on the uptake, to put it kindly.  I’m not at all surprised that change is coming slowly in those places, places in which the white supremacist movement has more than a toehold, which tells us what kind of people occupy such areas (see above).  These are the states that will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the new millenium, and it looks like it’s time to start.  Somebody get me a chain and a pickup truck. . .should be plenty of those running around the South.

Ugh.  All this idiocy has given me a headache. . .

VS – 12.4.08