Sunday, July 25, 2004
Let's Play Moral Equivalency...
So, little Mattie Drudge has his panties in a wad over this story, here presented in its entirity:
Of course, notice that Matt doesn't happen to tell us what comment the reporter made that prompted Ms. Heinz-Kerry's alleged "shove it." What do you think it could have been? Something inappropriate about the Kerrys' daughter at Cannes? Something about botox and whether she's had it as well? Something else?
Fuck this crap. I refuse to let the bar be lowered for Democrats just because the Republicans are playing in the muck. Teresa Heinz-Kerry told a reporter to shove it? Big fucking deal. Dick Cheney told a Senator -- an elected representative of the people and, ergo, the people themselves -- to go fuck themselves.
In other words, Ms. Heinz-Kerry spoke for all of us against the whores of the fifth estate, while Dick Cheney spoke to us by insulting the Senate. She stood up for us, while he told us to fuck ourselves.
Remember this from now to November. Frankly, we need more politicians who will tell the press exactly what they can do, as long as they aren't doing their job, which is reporting on the lies and bullshit of the politicians.
(0) comments
Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic nominee John Kerry, told a reporter to 'shove it' on Sunday evening -- immediately after giving a speech calling for a more civil tone in politics.And this is worse than Dick Cheney, President of the Senate, publicly telling a Senator to go fuck himself... how?
Of course, notice that Matt doesn't happen to tell us what comment the reporter made that prompted Ms. Heinz-Kerry's alleged "shove it." What do you think it could have been? Something inappropriate about the Kerrys' daughter at Cannes? Something about botox and whether she's had it as well? Something else?
Fuck this crap. I refuse to let the bar be lowered for Democrats just because the Republicans are playing in the muck. Teresa Heinz-Kerry told a reporter to shove it? Big fucking deal. Dick Cheney told a Senator -- an elected representative of the people and, ergo, the people themselves -- to go fuck themselves.
In other words, Ms. Heinz-Kerry spoke for all of us against the whores of the fifth estate, while Dick Cheney spoke to us by insulting the Senate. She stood up for us, while he told us to fuck ourselves.
Remember this from now to November. Frankly, we need more politicians who will tell the press exactly what they can do, as long as they aren't doing their job, which is reporting on the lies and bullshit of the politicians.
(0) comments
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
The Old Grey Lady Gets One Right
From the New York Times, reprinted here in its entirety so you don't have to go through their asinine registration:
(0) comments
DesperadoesI'd also like to point out that the management was being particularly chickenshit, since they ejected Ronstadt after the encore of her one and only show for their establishment. In other words, a lot of sound and fury, spoken by an idiot, signifying nothing.
Something went awry at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas last Saturday night.
Linda Ronstadt did what she has done at several concerts across the country this summer. She dedicated the song "Desperado"- an encore - to Michael Moore and urged members of the audience to go see his new movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Elsewhere, audiences have reacted to the mention of Mr. Moore by cheering, booing, walking out and sometimes glaring at one another in parking lots. At the Aladdin, a few audience members tore down posters, threw drinks and demanded their money back. According to one person who was present - William Timmins, the Aladdin's president - it was "a very ugly scene." Mr. Timmins promptly made it even uglier. He had Ms. Ronstadt ejected from the premises.
This behavior assumes that Ms. Ronstadt had no right to express a political opinion from the stage. It implies - for some members of the audience at least - that there is a philosophical contract that says an artist must entertain an audience only in the ways that audience sees fit. It argues, in fact, that an artist like Ms. Ronstadt does not have the same rights as everyone else.
Perhaps her praise for Mr. Moore, even at the very end of her show, did ruin the performance for some people. They have a right to voice their disapproval - to express their opinion as Ms. Ronstadt expressed hers and to ask for a refund. But if their intemperate behavior began to worry the management, then they were the ones who should have been thrown out and told never to return, not Ms. Ronstadt, who threatened, after all, only to sing.
(0) comments
Monday, July 12, 2004
The Heights of Stupidity
Let me make this real simple for the asshats in Washington (including the Chief Asshat himself) who would ammend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And I'm not calling it gay marriage, 'cause that's what it ain't -- there's nothing to say, and no reason at all, that two straight men or two straight women shouldn't be able to marry, either.
But... the lesson in Constitutional Law for y'all. Why does the Constitution exist? One very, very simple reason, and no more -- the Constitution exists to tell the Government what it can or cannot do to its employers (and owners), the People of the United States of America. It's pretty evident just on reading the Bill of Rights. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "Every man between eighteen and fifty shall own a gun." It says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (Incidentally, at the time of the framing, "well regulated Milita" meant men between eighteen and fifty. Well, technically, white men who owned land.) Okay, the Constitution may be a little comma-happy at times, but the point is clear. It is the law by which the State, not the People, must abide.
Even the Thirteenth Amendment, which established the income tax, did not say, "All income earners must pay tax." Instead, it allowed Congress to determine the method and means of collecting said tax. Prior to that, Congress and the Executive were not allowed to tax income, because the Constitution did not reserve that power to them.
There has been exactly one experiment in using the Constitution to control the behavior of people, and it went down in crashing flames thirteen years after its passage. I'm speaking, of course, about the Eighteenth Amendment, that ill-advised experiment that created Prohibition. It was a stupid, stupid idea that only accomplished one thing -- it created the organized crime mobs in this country and made famous the many petty gangsters of the 20s and 30s, thereby giving Martin Scorsese a film career decades later. (Okay, maybe that last bit isn't such a bad thing, although I still hate GoodFellas. And ask yourself, if Spike Lee only made movies depicting African Americans as gang-bangers, don't you think he'd be crucified? But I do digress...)
The point is this: Prohibition turned out to be such a bad idea that it became the only amendment ever repealed by another amendment, less than a generation later. It was a bad idea because it tried to warp the Constitution into something it was not and shall never be.
Ultimately, the CW is that this amendment won't pass for two reasons. First, the issue of same-sex marriage is really only important to raving fundies who are Onanistically fascinated with everyone else's sex lives. (If you don't think that Fred Phelps doesn't secretly whack it to gay porn every night, you're way too naive.) Second, to most other people, the subject is a non-issue. They just don't care whether same-sex couples can get married or not. Rightly, they look at the question, wonder, "How does it affect me?" and then realize it doesn't.
And it doesn't. Because, despite all the shibboleths put up by jackasses like Rick ("Foamy, post anal-sex mattress stain") Santorum, same-sex marriage has absolutely no impact on "traditional" marriage, nor on familes, nor on anything else. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkiss. This isn't about taking rights away from male-female marriage. It's about giving the same rights to everyone, regardless of which gender they chose to love -- the right to jointly own property, merge incomes and assets, parent step-children, visit in the hospital, assume power of attorney, inherit real proprty, etc., etc., etc. That's really what it's all about. It's not about telling the straight people what they cannot do. It's not about "destroying family", as Santorum woul have you believe. Quite the contrary. It's extending the definition to family to legally include families that have been excluded for far too long. Contraray to what the asshats in Washington would tell you, any loving, committed relationship is a family.
Quick comparison -- J-Lo has been married how many times now, and for how briefly? Britney was married for, what, four hours? Fine, upstanding examples of male-female, asshat-sanctioned ceremonies that somehow buttress the whole concept of family. (COUGH. Yeah, right.)
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon -- activists, lesbians, and partners for fifty-one years. Fifty-one years that they had to wait until, last February 12th, they became the first same-sex couple to have a legal, government-sanctioned marriage.
Hm. You think they'll get divorced in a few months? Not likely. Because they demonstrated the true value of marriage for five decades. Love and committment, no matter what. At any point during that time, either one of them could have walked, without penalty or red tape. Neither one of them did, despite neither one of them being legally bound to the other.
And a handful of fundamentalist wingnuts in Washington want to say that that kind of commitment, that kind of love, the strength of that bond, is somehow so dangerous that it must be banned.
I have one word for that...
Bullshit.
(0) comments
But... the lesson in Constitutional Law for y'all. Why does the Constitution exist? One very, very simple reason, and no more -- the Constitution exists to tell the Government what it can or cannot do to its employers (and owners), the People of the United States of America. It's pretty evident just on reading the Bill of Rights. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "Every man between eighteen and fifty shall own a gun." It says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (Incidentally, at the time of the framing, "well regulated Milita" meant men between eighteen and fifty. Well, technically, white men who owned land.) Okay, the Constitution may be a little comma-happy at times, but the point is clear. It is the law by which the State, not the People, must abide.
Even the Thirteenth Amendment, which established the income tax, did not say, "All income earners must pay tax." Instead, it allowed Congress to determine the method and means of collecting said tax. Prior to that, Congress and the Executive were not allowed to tax income, because the Constitution did not reserve that power to them.
There has been exactly one experiment in using the Constitution to control the behavior of people, and it went down in crashing flames thirteen years after its passage. I'm speaking, of course, about the Eighteenth Amendment, that ill-advised experiment that created Prohibition. It was a stupid, stupid idea that only accomplished one thing -- it created the organized crime mobs in this country and made famous the many petty gangsters of the 20s and 30s, thereby giving Martin Scorsese a film career decades later. (Okay, maybe that last bit isn't such a bad thing, although I still hate GoodFellas. And ask yourself, if Spike Lee only made movies depicting African Americans as gang-bangers, don't you think he'd be crucified? But I do digress...)
The point is this: Prohibition turned out to be such a bad idea that it became the only amendment ever repealed by another amendment, less than a generation later. It was a bad idea because it tried to warp the Constitution into something it was not and shall never be.
Ultimately, the CW is that this amendment won't pass for two reasons. First, the issue of same-sex marriage is really only important to raving fundies who are Onanistically fascinated with everyone else's sex lives. (If you don't think that Fred Phelps doesn't secretly whack it to gay porn every night, you're way too naive.) Second, to most other people, the subject is a non-issue. They just don't care whether same-sex couples can get married or not. Rightly, they look at the question, wonder, "How does it affect me?" and then realize it doesn't.
And it doesn't. Because, despite all the shibboleths put up by jackasses like Rick ("Foamy, post anal-sex mattress stain") Santorum, same-sex marriage has absolutely no impact on "traditional" marriage, nor on familes, nor on anything else. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkiss. This isn't about taking rights away from male-female marriage. It's about giving the same rights to everyone, regardless of which gender they chose to love -- the right to jointly own property, merge incomes and assets, parent step-children, visit in the hospital, assume power of attorney, inherit real proprty, etc., etc., etc. That's really what it's all about. It's not about telling the straight people what they cannot do. It's not about "destroying family", as Santorum woul have you believe. Quite the contrary. It's extending the definition to family to legally include families that have been excluded for far too long. Contraray to what the asshats in Washington would tell you, any loving, committed relationship is a family.
Quick comparison -- J-Lo has been married how many times now, and for how briefly? Britney was married for, what, four hours? Fine, upstanding examples of male-female, asshat-sanctioned ceremonies that somehow buttress the whole concept of family. (COUGH. Yeah, right.)
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon -- activists, lesbians, and partners for fifty-one years. Fifty-one years that they had to wait until, last February 12th, they became the first same-sex couple to have a legal, government-sanctioned marriage.
Hm. You think they'll get divorced in a few months? Not likely. Because they demonstrated the true value of marriage for five decades. Love and committment, no matter what. At any point during that time, either one of them could have walked, without penalty or red tape. Neither one of them did, despite neither one of them being legally bound to the other.
And a handful of fundamentalist wingnuts in Washington want to say that that kind of commitment, that kind of love, the strength of that bond, is somehow so dangerous that it must be banned.
I have one word for that...
Bullshit.
(0) comments
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
This Is Not America
The motherfuckers in the White House have got to go. Period. No question, no choice, no doubt. We don't have a president occupying 1600 Pennsylvania. We have a fucking Emperor, and now the thugs have violated the First Amendment to protect his precious sensibilities:
Well, fuck that. What is going on here? What the hell is going on? We need to impeach the whole lot of them, then try them for war crimes then dole out the legal punishments and start over. We need to rewind the clock back to November 2000. Control-alt-delete on history. Because, if these Fascist bastards manage to steal power again in November 2004, I'm afraid it will lead to nothing less than civil war. They have no respect for anything but their wealthy friends and are interested in nothing more than war profiteering and monopolizing the world's oil. They are scum. Lower than scum.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution when taking his oath of office. Hey, I guess when W did it, he was just lying. Again. Modus operandi.
Q: How can you tell when an alcoholic is lying?
A: His lips are moving.
Uh-huh...
(0) comments
Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn't be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president.Or, in other words, two people were not allowed to peaceably assemble, nor to petition the government for redress of grieveances, because their message was offensive to the dimwitted, moronic, alcholic, fratboy, big time major league asshole squatting in the people's house.
Well, fuck that. What is going on here? What the hell is going on? We need to impeach the whole lot of them, then try them for war crimes then dole out the legal punishments and start over. We need to rewind the clock back to November 2000. Control-alt-delete on history. Because, if these Fascist bastards manage to steal power again in November 2004, I'm afraid it will lead to nothing less than civil war. They have no respect for anything but their wealthy friends and are interested in nothing more than war profiteering and monopolizing the world's oil. They are scum. Lower than scum.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution when taking his oath of office. Hey, I guess when W did it, he was just lying. Again. Modus operandi.
Q: How can you tell when an alcoholic is lying?
A: His lips are moving.
Uh-huh...
(0) comments
Friday, July 02, 2004
Loser...
Ralph Nader can just go Dick Cheney himself. He accuses the Democrats of playing "dirty tricks" when he doesn't qualify for the Arizona ballot, but that's just sour grapes. The truth that Ralphie can't accept is that no one wants his sorry ass. The American public doesn't need him as a spoiler, the Greens have disowned him, and the only place in the universe where Nader is a viable candidate for anything is in his inflated ego.
If he had half a brain and wasn't just a self-agrandizing midget, he'd work with the Kerry campaign, in tacit agreement that he'd receive a cabinet nomination in return -- AG, perhaps, or maybe Secretary of Energy. That's the only way Nader is ever going to get close enough to be a Washington insider. He isn't going to do it on his own and, at his age, the clock is running out.
So, Ralph, piss off. We don't need you running in this race just so you can get your jollies. Go away, shut up and don't darken our political doorstep again, unless it's to work with those who would see W removed from office.
The entire article appears here.
Incidentally, I remember seeing footage on the news of a Nader press conference some time back. I don't remember the context, although it may have been when he announced his candidacy. Anyway, someone, either out of boredom, by mistake or deliberately, changed the camera angle at one point. We start with a close-up of Nader pontificating from the podium. Suddenly, we go to a wide shot to see that there are exactly three people in the room, all of them print journalists. That popping sound you hear was Nader's inflated ego meeting the pinprick of reality.
(0) comments
If he had half a brain and wasn't just a self-agrandizing midget, he'd work with the Kerry campaign, in tacit agreement that he'd receive a cabinet nomination in return -- AG, perhaps, or maybe Secretary of Energy. That's the only way Nader is ever going to get close enough to be a Washington insider. He isn't going to do it on his own and, at his age, the clock is running out.
So, Ralph, piss off. We don't need you running in this race just so you can get your jollies. Go away, shut up and don't darken our political doorstep again, unless it's to work with those who would see W removed from office.
The entire article appears here.
Incidentally, I remember seeing footage on the news of a Nader press conference some time back. I don't remember the context, although it may have been when he announced his candidacy. Anyway, someone, either out of boredom, by mistake or deliberately, changed the camera angle at one point. We start with a close-up of Nader pontificating from the podium. Suddenly, we go to a wide shot to see that there are exactly three people in the room, all of them print journalists. That popping sound you hear was Nader's inflated ego meeting the pinprick of reality.
(0) comments
