Straight as an Arrow

Let's talk about gay marriage. Let's talk about the fact that 11 states voted on whether or not to ban it. And they said, "Yeah! I want to take away other people's rights because of my religious principals!". Because that's what this country's really all about, denying people the right to secure the blessings of liberty, for themselves and their posterity. Or something like that, eighth grade was such a long time ago, who remembers?

And I'm quite sure that America's founded on the idea that if you don't worship the same way as your neighbor, then there ought to be something done about you. No, I'm not talking about Lutherans turning in Baptists - it's those other people, you know, the ones who don't go to church at all or even temple or something! How can someone be moral when they don't go somewhere to show us that they mean it?

Marriage, in my opinion, is a traditionally religious institution, but here in the U.S. we have established the institution of civil marriage. A civil marriage is recognized from state to state, carries all of the things you think of when you think "marriage", like inheritance rights, and the right to file as married on your taxes, etc. All in all, it's a positive thing for those who wish to marry but don't wish to involve religion in it. Maybe they're not the same religion, or maybe they're divorced Catholics, and their church doesn't recognize that they have the right to marry anyone else (funny, you don't' see many people in the news making a fuss about that). Either way, you can be married in a civil ceremony, and the whole country - nay - the whole world recognizes that you are a couple, a family. A legal kinship is established. We're in a very small club with this option, many countries that don't have this kind of separation of church and state do not allow this. It's the kind of thing that people emigrate to America for. Funny, huh?

Civil union, on the other hand, isn't recognized anywhere except for the state that it's performed in. You can't, for example, establish a domestic partnership in NJ and then move to Ohio and expect to still be allowed to make medical decisions for your partner. Notice I say "partner", and not "spouse". Because in a civil union, you don't get to really be a spouse. You get some of the benefits, and don't think I'm knocking them, because progress is progress, but you don't get the thing I'm striving to emphasize, here, legal kinship. A civil union isn't a marriage, and you're not classified as a family. So, by that definition, it's not eroding these so-called "family values" that so many people seem to be spouting off about these days.

I'm stunned that so many people are afraid of homosexuality. And I don't see how if two people who aren't your family want to be declared a family of their own, HOW does it harm anyone? How does it "degrade" anyone else's institutions? Is mom-dad-son-daughter somehow less valid if it's dad-dad-daughter? Or mom-mom-son-daughter? Or even just wife-wife? It's not in your house, people, it's not your business.

It all comes down to this: our country is founded on the principals that you should be allowed to live differently from your neighbor without fear of persecution because of your beliefs. No, we cannot take each other's property, or do each other bodily harm. But why is it even an issue that person A loves person B and wants them to be their family? Why?

Blinders On

There's a quote over at TBogg that reminded me of a story. The quote:

Four more years of scientific decisions being made by people who believe in a
ghost in the clouds.

The story:
One day I was at lunch with a group of coworkers. One of them, I'll call him "John", and the rest of the group and I were discussing the TV show "Mythbusters". Somehow or other, we got to talking about consipracy theories. John informed us that he didn't believe that Man had ever made it into space, that it was all a government hoax. Well, we had a fine laugh over that one, and then... I realized John was serious.

T: You don't believe that man has ever made it in to space?
J: No, I don't.
T: But, there's proof. I mean, you can go to the Smithsonian, you can see - you can touch space ships. You know that we can fly in airplanes, but you don't believe that we can break through the atmosphere?
J: No, I don't.
T: John, you believe in God!

Analysis

OK, I was trying to take the high road, but I'm getting more and more upset.

Butler and Montgomery County, Ohio, I blame you.
What were you thinking?

*Note from the editor - now that all the numbers are officially in, it seems that Montgomery County went to Kerry in the end. Montgomery County, I apologize.

An Earnest Request

Well, congratulations, people of America. It seems that the majority of you have decided that another four years of the same president would actually be a good thing. Another four years of frightening proposals for "security acts" that remove our personal freedoms, another four years of being called a "Christian Nation" when we're specifically not supposed to be about religion. The people have spoken that they want more tax cuts despite unchecked war spending that puts us further and further into debt. America has chosen to be led by a man that most other nations of the world no longer respect or admire. We've chosen a Commander in chief who changed his stance from "war only as a last resort" to "we have to strike out at them before they strike out at us", yet never experienced combat personally.

Yes, it seems that this is what America has chosen. Now, personally, I felt that if Bush was reelected that more Americans would die in a war that has no clear end, that taxes would be raised to begin to pay for all the things that we've spent so many billions of dollars on, that health care prices would continue to spiral upwards, beyond the reach of most of us, and that freedom of individual expression would be degraded in matters of sexual preference and faith, should you dare to wish to be a homosexual or a non-Christian.

This is what I have feared is the future of our nation. Please, please, Mr. Bush, prove me wrong.

Biting My Nails

To do - vote first thing in the morning, before work: check.

I'm spending masses of time popping over to http://www.electoral-vote.com, even though the numbers aren't updated frequently. They were really favorable for Kerry this morning, but the latest update shows an almost even split. What happens again if neither candidate gets 270 electoral votes? The House decides? Sweet mother of mercy, grant me patience. And luck.

I'm planning on serenely accepting whatever the outcome is, but good gravy, the waiting is KILLING ME!

Twenty (OK, Seven) Questions

Read at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20041101/pl_nm/election_kerry_dc:

One of the longest days of Kerry's general election campaign began at St. John's church in Orlando -- where the practicing Roman Catholic marked All Saints Day -- and was to wind up about 21 hours later in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the upper Midwest.

Also, from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=2&u=/nm/20041101/pl_nm/election_bush_dc:

It was the first stop on a 16-hour sweep through the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico. He was ending up late on Monday in Dallas.

Holy cow, would a schedule like that make me tired! Are people really going to make up their minds based on a visit the day before the election? Really? The way people behave stuns me.

I still plan on voting for Kerry. I personally feel that the country is worse off than it was 4 years ago, and that a great deal of it is because of the policies and actions of our current administration. OK, that's my position. And I see people who don't agree, and I'm stymied. Are we more peaceful? More popular amongst other countries of the world? More economically stable? More tolerant? Does government interfere less in our lives, so that we can put the money we would have spent there to a better use? Does the country have more money, in general? Is the USA a better place to live today than it was in 1999?

So, those of you who were planning on making up your minds based on what color tie the candidates wore today, maybe you should ask yourselves these questions, instead.

Hate Makes Me Sad

Reference: The Washington Post's story about the latest terror threat tape

There's a new terror tape out there, and all the media seems to be worried about is if airing it affects the election. Is it fair to air it, is it unfair to wait. Um, hello? People? Anyone thinking perhaps that instead of showing this stuff to the general public that we should just show it to the CIA and let them investigate it? Does the public need to see it for them to do that?

Personally, I'm not worried that the tape may cause Kerry supporters to change their minds and switch their votes to Bush because he's proven to be so "tough on terror". Nor am I thinking that because this individual claims that Americans will suffer for our audacity in electing Bush in the first place will steer his supporters away from *him*. We're Americans, and whole bunches of us are stubborn as Donkeys.

No, what I'm worried about is that there are so many people in the world who hate the USA right now, and a lot of them have weapons or explosives. I'm worried about the fact that someone made this tape to upset us, and that this person (and I assume, his cohorts) are most likely plotting acts of violence designed to kill Americans. I'd like them caught, please. Of course, I'd also like them to stop hating us, but I have no optimism on that front.

Anti-American sentiment doesn't bother me as much as the violent mind set does. You don't like the US? Fine, don't live here. You're upset because the world has become so "Westernized"? Well guess what - it's not our "fault" that we have an attractive lifestyle. We're not to "blame" if people want to buy American things. OK, it's our fault if we send troops and install a puppet dictator. But the popularity of rap music amongst Muslim teens? That's just kids rebelling. If it wasn't for American pop stars, it would be something else.

Cooking the Numbers

I'm still very tired of the campaign stuff; the election can not come fast enough for me. I'm nervous about the outcome, but in a desperate attempt to calm myself, I've been focusing on the fact that it's an election, and if the majority of the votes go to the guy that I didn't choose, it's because the majority of the people in the country don't agree with me. We go with whoever gets the most electoral votes, in theory doing the will of the populace, and that's worked fairly well so far, overall. If it's not my personal will, I just have to wait until another election and hope that things go my way next time.

So, being tired of that subject that I just rambled on about, I decided to go another route today:

From Experts: Web searches for sex declining:

"Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997, now it's about 5 percent," said Amanda Spink, the University of Pittsburgh professor who co-authored "Web Search: Public Searching of the Web" with Penn State professor Bernard J. Jansen.

Silly people. The amount of searching for illicit material isn't declining, it's just that the amount of searches for non-illicit purposes is increasing. This causes a percentage shift.

Because, I promise you, people in the world today are *not* less interested in sex than they were a year ago.

TV Will Dull Your Mind

...and ruin your eyes, if my mother was right.

Today's Tami Reading choice

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6340638/

I'm in favor of private groups being able to make political ads. All political ads are more one-sided than a... damn I can't come up with a pithy comparison, they're just one-sided, OK? So, the one-sided nature of ads being accepted as a given, it doesn't matter to me if special interest groups throw their hats and money into the ring. Let them spend!

The fact is, a political ad is a political ad. In order to really know a candidate, you have to have either been following their record, or want to do a lot of independant research. Things like voting records, or bills authored, or moneys appropriated or accepted, this is all recorded somewhere, and finding out the facts is the only way to know the truth.

And yet, most people in the US do not have the time or inclination to go check and see if the people running the government are actually doing all the stuff they say they are. They rely on media to give them their information in spoon-fed doses. It leads us to things like large groups of people not knowing the facts, and not caring. It leads to emotional responses instead of intellectual ones.

What I'm saying here, is that I don't think that the public should actually believe ads as much as they do. It's sad, and it's scary, and it's one of the reasons that I claim that people are all idiots. I do include myself in that, by the way, this is despair, not a sense of superiority.

I think I've made my point, and you get where I'm coming from: blindly believing advertisements can hurt you. Since that's out of the way, let me finally get to the article quote that I wanted to include.

Others are targeted toward particular constituencies -- which, in a tight race, could make a difference. "John Kerry's not a hunter -- he just plays one on TV," says NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox says in a spot showing a rifle-toting Kerry in camouflage -- giving way to a picture of a French poodle in a Kerry sweater.

Man. A French Poodle. That's pretty damn funny. And it's because of precisely this type of humor that I'm in favor of privately funded ads. Go ahead, people, amuse me!

Internet Polls Are More Fun!

I may have mentioned that I don't think that the rest of the world wants Bush to be President again.
Other people think so, too.

Radical Change Often Looks Tame in Hindsight

Today, being sick to death of campaign speeches, and completely unable to tell who might win or lose the upcoming election, I turned my sights over to Arts and Letters Daily hoping that they'd have something for me to sink my mind into that wasn't about military mistakes, or Senatorial voting records, or lies coming from both sides of the fence.

What I found was this lovely, yet incredibly long article by Bruce Bawer in the Wilson Quarterly. It contains, amongst the 18 million other ideas that it encompasses, the following quote:

In The New Yorker for November 30, 1963, the first issue of that magazine to appear after the assassination, the memorial article ended with the observation that “when we think of him, he is without a hat.” Ever since, it has been difficult to picture any of our chief executives with a hat.

Men used to wear hats! Every day! And the concept of a man not wearing a hat in public used to be radical! I mean, I get that the concept of women having a job outside the home used to be radical*, but bearing your hair to the elements was a new idea? Wow.

This article goes on and on about many things that we now take for granted that, at the time, seemed like crazy departures from the norm, but in the context of the couple of years that happened right before all the upheaval happened. It makes me wonder what we're going to classify as "naive" when we look back at today, 40 years from now.

A Legend Speaks

Of course, Hunter S. Thompson is a legend for being an out-of-his-mind whack job, but one who makes a lot of sense. How messed up is that?

His Rolling Stone article is a little hard to get in to, since it starts out doing the kind of steamroller approach that I think of as "fooling yourself". It works by saying the thing that you want to be true out loud, over and over again, even if it's a blatant lie. Thompson's repeated statements are too vigorous, too repeated, to one-sided - not admitting that your opponent has scored any points can be a dangerous business. Eventually, though, he stops crowing about how much better he thought that Kerry did in the debates than Bush, and gets in to some stuff that I found very moving.

Remember, though, this is Hunter S. Thompson; he'll never lose his signature style:

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

I LOVE popular Internet Quizzes!

You preferred Kerry's statements 78% of the time You preferred Bush's statements 22% of the time Voting purely on the issues you should vote Kerry Who would you vote for if you voted on the issues? Find out now!

So there you go - I agree with 22% of Bush's policies! That's way higher than I expected!

How do you *really* feel?

When writing something in a public forum, sometimes it's important to remember that strangers are reading it, and that they don't know you, and they might not necessarily understand all the nuances behind what you're saying.

Yesterday Jazz over at Running Scared commented on a piece in yet another blog, Dean's World. Dean seemed to be saying that disagreeing with the current administration in a vocal and obnoxious manner was unpatriotic. Really, it seemed like he was saying that to me, too. Parts of it were really cheesing me off. Especially when he said the thing about people resenting the "piddling cost" of the Iraqi war. Hoo, that made me see red!

And yet the piddling cost and the incredible work of our people is now routinely viewed as a disaster.

OK, incredible work! Great patriotism! I really do admire people who will fight and die because they think that it makes America a better and safer place to live! But PIDDLING COST?! Too far!

Damn, digressing again. OK, back to where I was. There's a long list of comments and dialogue on Jazz's site about how he's misinterpreted what Dean has said, that he's not advocating the idea that dissenters should be silenced, and that he didn't mean "that everyone who won't toe a specific ideological line is to be considered unpatriotic" (quoting Dean from the comments, there), but rather that Jazz has not understood his point.

On his own site, in the comments, Dean states the following:

Where do you get off suggesting that because I've said this, I want any of them forcibly silenced? Or that I want any of their "heads on a platter? They're just vile, disgusting people who make me a little ashamed. But then, I'm also proud to live in a country that gives such evil assholes the right to spout their evil. It just means that people like me have to work extra hard to counter their hate-speech with more speech.

I'm bothered by the use of the phrase "spout their evil". To me, evil's too strong a word to use about every day behavior. Killing children in front of their parents for fun is evil. Dumping toxic waste in public drinking water is evil. Basically, causing others irreparable pain to further your own interests and enjoyment, that's evil. Prominently spouting your opinion in a public forum? Obnoxious, maybe, but not evil. But, it wasn't until I read those words that I realized that I was, in my mind, damning Dean the same way that he seemed to be damning me (unknowingly, of course, he doesn't know me from Adam) in his column. I suddenly saw that we all think that we're right.

Now I understand that Dean doesn't want all the liberals forcibly converted or arrested for their "unpatriotic behavior", and that's a relief. But buddy, I'm telling you, as a stranger, it really read that way.

Just a quick link

Saw this over at Running Scared. It's a bit jarring, a bit sad, but I think that the arguments are good ones.

Bush Relatives for Kerry

I think the main thing I'm hoping for in Kerry will be the return of the "shades of grey" style of thinking. The whole "black or white", "my way or the highway" thing we've got going now doesn't allow for dialogue, it has no checks and balances. We should always have someone on board who says, "Wait, look at it a *different* way, for a minute".

Yesterday, a friend of mine brought up in an email discussion that he wishes that the country could remember that it's possible to compromise. Here, here.

Yup, I'm still really liberal.

I admire this quote from Gore Vidal's interview over at Amazon.com immensely:

Amazon.com: What is the most important lesson from President Bush's term so far?

Vidal: That the American Republic has been discredited in favor of a
military state with curtailed civil rights for all. Now remove your shoes.

In fact, all the interviews are pretty interesting reading. And they've proven to me that Ann Coulter is really just crazy. I really wanted to swear, there, but I figure it would be in poor taste. Anyway, it's my opinion that Pat Buchanan comes off as sounding way more reasonable and less self-serving than she does, which has got to throw a flag up for somebody.

Completely on the lighter side

Compare this article: Hamster Health Warning
to
item number six on this page: The Sim Murder Page.

Coincidence? I think not!

Applause, applause

To one of the first really readable news stories I've seen in a while. And by readable, I mean that there's some statements in there that I haven't heard dashed painfully against my head like a rock. Well, at least they're rephrased a bit. Nothing in the world is totally new, right?

The entire Steve Holland Reuters piece can be viewed here.

Quote one:

"Zarqawi is a terrorist. We are fighting Mr. Zarqawi in Iraq. My opponent seems to think that if we were not fighting in Iraq, he would become a peaceful citizen. Zarqawi would be plotting, planning, ready to strike. He must be defeated there, so we do not face him here," Bush said.

Whoa! This is an actual point! And I agree, that it's pretty much true - Zarqawi *wouldn't* be peaceful if we weren't fighting in Iraq! Here's the only problem, though, as I see it - the fact that we *are* fighting in Iraq isn't going to make him a peaceful citizen, either. Or even stop his violence. If this man goes away, there's a hundred nearby who will take his place. I'm personally of the opinion that security and diplomacy, more than aggression, is the way to go. And in my heart, I feel that unless we can keep people from teaching intolerant terrorist ways to their children, that we're not going to make any progress at all. Still, at least the above quote is comprehensible, and actually says something.

Quote two:

As for Treasury Secretary John Snow's recent remark that job losses were a "myth," a statement that prompted Democrats to run TV ads against Bush in Ohio, Bush said: "I haven't talked to Secretary Snow, but all of us in this administration fully understand that there have been job losses... but there's also been 1.9 million new jobs created over the last 13 months."

Well, there you go. "all of us in this administration fully understand that there have been job losses...". That part alone makes the tight part in the back of my neck relax just a little bit. The idea that these new jobs are mostly low-level, and not so likely to bring people above the poverty level keeps the rest of the tension nice and taut.

People, if you're on the fence, even a little, think about the fact that if we continue to do exactly as we have done, we will continue to get exactly the same results. If there are things that we want to change, we must change the people making the decisions, first.

New Definition for "PAYGO"

OK, according to an article I read over at MSNBC this morning, hundreds of thousands of dollars in change is being left behind at airports. The money that isn't claimed is then deposited into the U.S. Treasury's General Fund. So, I'm thinking that we can now define "pay/go"* as "You go somewhere, you inadvertently wind up paying off some of the national debt". It's practically transparent! I finally understand why airport security takes a hundred years with long lines; if you're cutting it close, you're less likely to remember the small change. What with the majority of American citizens who take airplanes not giving a damn whether or not they see that 44 cents again, it's deviously brilliant.


*(I'm trying *so* hard to find some sort of grammatically correct way to write that stupid sound-bite)

Fuzzy Math

Unlike fuzzy sweaters, fuzzy math is not in the list of my favorite things.
Sadly, I can't wear most fuzzy sweaters, since I'm allergic to both mohair and angora, but once again, I derail myself from the tracks of the point.

Realizing that I'm a big lefty reading and watching only people who give me the warm fuzzies (see a pattern here), I decided to brave new ground and go over to Fox News today. I read the piece about Kerry trying to explain away the Mary Cheney comment. He should have said what I said, it appeals to people on a really basic level. But he didn't. Oh, well, his loss.

After that, I headed to an article about the deficit, containing this quote

Citing data pointing to economic improvements, Treasury Secretary John Snow said, "All of this shows that the president's tax relief initiatives are having the intended effects."

Now, I'm no economic genius, but didn't we used to have a balanced budget? I understand that there was artificial economic inflation, and that the numbers were bound to come tumbling down, and that 9/11 caused a huge economic backlash, and that both these things happened in the past four years, so yeah, the numbers aren't going to look that good. And they're not going to look good no matter who's in charge. But that quote makes my brain feel twisty. When more money's going out, how in the world does it help the deficit to have less money coming in?

In the debate Thursday night, Bush said this:

BUSH: Well, his rhetoric doesn't match his record. He been a senator for 20years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally sound, but he voted over -- he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost the taxpayers $4. 2 trillion. He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator fromMassachusetts, when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.

No politician is ever going to win my vote by declaring that they will keep us out of the "tax and spend" mind set. There has to be money to run the government and if you don't get that money from "tax and spend", then the only alternative that I can really see to it is "borrow and spend". How's that better?