RNC chairman Michael Steele trots out the newest excuse to deny gays the right to marry: it would cost too much money. Yes, he’s arguing that it would cost too much to small businesses if they had one of their gay employees get married such that they had to put their new man-spouse on the company healthcare plan. Of course, this has great implications. While gays are only 5-7% percent of the population, straights make up significantly more. So, if the government can save small business owners so much money by denying gays the right to marry, why not save them more by abolishing marriage altogether? We’d save so much more in health insurance costs! Enough to get us out of this depression, maybe! BAN MARRIAGE NOW!
Also in the news were the report covers delivered to our former President on war related issues. Apparently, the Department of Defense liked to spruce them up with still images of military things and Bible quotes. This brings forth two reactions:
1. Well, looks like we got ourselves into a Holy War, boys!
2. Why the hell did the Secretary of Defense have to “spice up” reports to the president on the war that he had started? Could they not capture his interest in any other way? Did he start to float away during briefings unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made pew-pew sounds when illustrating the newest offensive in Iraq? The man in charge of a country should be able to concentrate on something as vital as a national security document without it being “spruced up.” No wonder the man had “handlers.” (”What is he, a BEAR?” — Lewis Black)
Glenn Greenwald pats Keith Olbermann on the back for calling Obama out on his dangerous continuation of Bush-era policies vis-a-vis secrecy, security(-theater), and military tribunals.
Yes, I know this is a good ways after 1-May, but I felt it appropriate to write an entry about it anyway. I became engrossed in the May Day Mystery when I was in my junior year of high school. I built my senior project around it. I planned on writing a book about it (which may or may not materialize). I still read the site and analyze clues, and I’ve been working on the clues for the past Mayday for over two weeks. This is an event I wait for religiously, and now I’m unable to muster the intellectual effort it takes to slog through the clues and provide a cogent analysis. I’m feeling lethargic and I don’t know why. I hope I can get over this slump and get to work before Hance actually updates the 1-May-2009 page with clues.
I began this on the 23rd of last month. It’s a little less current, but I still want to put in my two cents.
Everyone remembers when some conservative pundits went absolutely apeshit over the release of a memo detailing the growth of “right wing extremist activity”? How they howled that this new liberal administration was going to crack down and hunt them down? And how that memo was actually commisioned by the Bush Administration? And how there was a corresponding report about liberal extremists?
To be fair, there is some room for criticism all around. While it may be useful for the FBI to compile information on potential domestic terrorist groups, how to determine which groups are simply nuicences, and which are capable of violence can be hard to see. On the one hand, as the commander of the VFW says, “A government that does not assess internal and external security threats would be negligent of a critical public responsibility”; on the other, too broad of investigations can lead to government infiltation of “ groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty, and poverty relief.” The trick is drawing the line between being able to investigate potential terrorists, and engaging in a sort of Orwellian spying on all non-government organizations. Personally, I would err on the side of protecting our rights and not wasting resources by limiting surveilence.
An another note, I object to Greenwald’s tone in this article. He almost seems to be defending the spying on right-wing groups as their just deserts after the excesses and abuses of the Bush years. It is ironic that the same people who applauded, say, domestic wiretapping threw a shitstorm when they thought they were in the crosshairs. Nonetheless, it has been used as political cannon-fodder by the right, with talking heads claiming that they are being targeted, when any moron can see that they were not the intended target. They thrive on their persecution complexes, or so it seems. Nobody deserves to be spied on by their own government, by their representitives and guardians. Wishing it on someone as a kind of poetic justice is, in fact, unjust. While it may reveal the depths of the pimping out of truth to “spin” in politics, I hope that we can, in the course of the next four years, move out of this surveilence society we seem to be inching toward.
Right-wing Memo
Left-wing Memo
I’m a bit behind the curve when it comes to blogging about current events. I got out of school a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been suffering a difficult transition to living in this hell-hole again. Anyway, I saved this draft article on 17-April, after the peak of the media frenzy over that Tea Party nonsense. I mean, they absolutely have the right to protest (about whateverthehell they want); but these people seem to be either willfully ignorant of the true meaning of hte Boston Tea Party, or outright manipulating through dubious association (the truth is probably somewhat of a mixture, especially if hte astroturfing allegations are true). The only things these protests have in common with the Boston Tea Party are 1) anger and 2) the involvement of tea. The difference here being that there is no “taxation without representation” (unlesss you live in D.C., in which case I totally support you). It seems to me like it’s manufactured outrage; this guy and his fine suit say it all: “A 3% tax hike for 5% of the wealthiest is 100% TYRANNY!”
But this whole thing seems to have blown over, so I’ll just leave you with a list of links I found while researching this story a month ago*:
10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs (Huffington Post): I am particularly stuck by the children with signs.
Fox News Teabagging Bias Montage (Democratic Underground)
Freedom Works’ Long History of Teabagging (Talking Points Memo): The source of the astroturfing allegations.
Death and Taxes: A guide to where your tax dollars go
Nationwide Chicago Tea Party (Wikipedia)
Tea Party Protests (Wikipedia)
*Why does a month seem like a million years when you’re dealing with politics? A buzzword enters the lexicon and everyone raves about how this will be the next big thing or this is the current defining reality, and then a month later it’s dead. After the 2004 elections, the Democratic Party was “dead;” then they won the next midterm election and won the White House. Now the Republicans are “dead.” No one in the media seems to take much of a look at history, everything will always be defined by today’s talking points or hype.
I installed PmWiki this morning, and migrated The Small Island Nation Wiki over to it. You can find it here.
There isn’t much to it, but it may be expanded later.
[EDIT: This success is somewhat mitigated. While attempting to update the redirect page to the new wiki I inadvertently broke all of them.]
[EDIT2: I sort of fixed the problem.]
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