DIE, Suckers!

punkboi via photobucket

The Republican Health Plan

Savannah, GA. Finally a member of the House of Representatives tells it like it is:

But, we knew this already.

via Towleroad

Making a Fetish of Democracy, Cont'd

Let's vote, shall we?

Savannah, GA. The god-fearing followers of the evil god of Abraham may have to confront their 'majority-rules and I deserve a vote on everything' dogma in ways they never considered.

It's a pretty sure bet at the voter's craps table that many of the opponents of gay marriage are still smarting over the fact the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the wishes of the majority in 1967. In that year--in fact, up until the early '90's--a majority of Americans were opposed to interracial marriage. Right up to the SCOTUS decision majority-vote-holding Americans supported varying miscegenation statutes in locales around the country.

And wouldn't you know it--they used scripture to justify the bigotry:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with this arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. -- Virginia trial judge Leon Bazile, January 6, 1959, sentencing the Lovings to a one year prison term.

Loving vs. Virginia put an end to all of that democratic chauvinism.

But people in CA, and now in WA and ME, are demanding votes on the rights of a minority vs. the greater number.

Since we're making a fetish of majority rule, let's vote on a few more topics, eh?

How about: Is Scientology a religion? (Or just bad science fiction with 501c3 tax-exempt status?)

How about the great cult of the 19th Century: The Latter-Day Saints? Is Mormonism for real? You just know a majority of Americans--deep down--don't really believe it's a legitimate branch of Christianity. Let's put it up for a vote--but not in Utah--and find out, shall we?

Heck, the First Amendment only guarantees Freedom of Religion; it says absolutely nothing about that freedom extending to taxes on the generation of income. We'll even be magnanimous: Houses of Worship--tax exempt. Everything else, to every property, every strip mall, and to every apartment complex owned by these religions--well--meet your friendly I.R.S. auditor. Let's vote on it!

Follow CA's lead (again) with their recently filed, "2010 California Marriage Protection Act" which would outlaw nearly all divorces. "Every divorce is the death of a traditional marriage." Vote. Vote. Vote.

Making a Fetish of Democracy

Erik S. Lesser for the New York Times

The Majority is Always Right

Savannah, GA. Let us be perfectly clear: The rights--the civil rights--of the minority should never be subjected to the tyranny of the majority. Full stop.

No tax-paying, law-abiding, American should be forced to ask permission of another if they may have equality under the law. See Proposition 8 in California, Referendum 71 in Washington, Question 1 in Maine, for example. Another example:

Yet this is exactly what is occurring within our Republic, today. An entitled majority is demanding and being allowed to vote on the rights of a disenfranchised minority, all in the name of democracy. This is wrong, this is perverse, this is evil.

It is time for America to accept civil marriages between two gay women, or two gay men.

Religious arguments against civil marriage for homosexuals absent a theocracy are irrelevant. Religious leaders and their followers have no place writing State or Federal law. Their freedom to believe in deities of their choosing is guaranteed by Amendment I, of The Bill of Rights, of the United States Constitution. That freedom does not allow forcing nonbelievers to have to live by the same.

Democracy has limits; it is not absolute. Majority dominion without restraint is nothing but rabble, gangs, mob rule.

We're better than that.

via gayrights.change.org

Senator Inhofe Loses It

Okey Dopey

Savannah, GA. One of the most humorous comments made by Independent presidential candidate John Anderson in the 1980 election was the charge Ronald Reagan's ideas were so old, so out-of-touch, the actor surely must have worked for 19th Century Fox.

Cue Senator James Mountain ("Senior Moments") Inhofe R-Oklahoma. This paleolithic reactionary relic hasn't quite made it into the Holocene. A former real estate developer and failed insurance company president, this man lives in the past and legislates by hyperbole.

Inhofe's purple prose and pufferies include:

[There is] compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists.

[Global warming is] the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state.

Still battling the Axis Powers in his head, Inhofe has compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo and Clinton-era EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose. He probably tries to buy Slim Jim's at his local 7-11 with WW II food ration stamps. Jim must toss and turn at night knowing President Obama appointed Browner Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change last January.

No friend of college-bound students, he was one of 12 Senators who voted to oppose lowering interest rates for student loans. He lost: 72-12.

In June of 2006, on the Senate floor, pointing to a large photograph of his family he trumpeted, ...As you see here, and I think this is maybe the most important prop we’ll have during the entire debate, my wife and I have been married 47 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. I'm really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we've never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship. (Nothing cheerful about the Inhofes.) The Senate was debating the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States. He lost: 49-48 on a cloture motion.

The Idiot from Oklahoma wants to drill for oil EVERYWHERE, (the contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars); he wants to make English the Official Language, complete with an English Proficiency Test for immigrants, and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, he was outraged by the outrage over the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. You get the picture.

But it's his recent comments at a town hall meeting, reported by the Tulsa World that garners him several advanced dementia points:

Gitmo: There has never been a case of torture there. The people there are treated better than in the federal prisons.

I don’t know why President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America.

Despite the fact the President has requested more military spending: Barack Obama is disarming America. (A pet pork project of Inhofe's--a cannon to be built in OK was scrapped.)

I never dreamed I would see an administration try to disavow all the things that have made this country different from all others...

I have never seen so many things happening at one time so disheartening to America.

Every institution that has made this country the greatest nation in the world is under attack.

Those of you who think like I do hope this country can hang on another 16 months.

Will someone wipe the drool from Inhofe's chin and give the poor man another pudding cup?