Fearless Leader: Obama and Gay Marriage

Either Barack Obama is a lot smarter than I am or he really does not want to be re elected. 
Not that I disagree with him about gay marriage, but you have to say, "What was he thinking?"
I suppose you might think, well, he was never going to get the vote of any ardent bible thumper anyway.  But he was never going to lose the gay vote, because they have nowhere else to go, if a gay is voting on gay issues.
How many truly "independent" voters there are out there? I do not know.  But there must be some who would have maybe voted for Obama, but now will not because they are offended by the idea of gay marriage. They are offended by the two men, who are standing on the sidelines of the soccer game watching their eight year old daughter playing soccer. They are embarrassed when their own eight year old daughter ask them, "Who are those two men?" And they have to say, "Those are Jennifer's fathers." They do not want to have to accept that family as having any right to exist. It's not actually a problem for the children, who can accept whatever they are told, who are not locked into beliefs yet. The problem is with the squirmy parents.
This is one of those emotional-all-thinking-stops-and-just-emotions-reign things.
When you get people relaxed, in a bar, talking about marriage, the average person is more reasonable about the whole idea of marriage. But when you put people in a group, like at church, they lose all rationality.
For my part, that word marriage is nothing sacred. It is applied to relationships which are so varied and so different from one another the only thing you can say is it has only legal meaning.
How many people really believe a man and woman are chosen for each other by God?
How many people really believe in those vows to be sexually faithful, to stand by your spouse in sickness and in health? Some people do both, but probably the majority do not and that word marriage is an empty promise. 
Men shuck their aging wives for trophy wives. Women have babies and lie about who the father really is. Divorce ends most marriages. 
Really, that sacred institution is anything but.
But humankind cannot stand too much reality.
We get very nasty when you force us to face the fact that a cherished illusion is bunk.
There are magazines about weddings and brides and girls still dream about finding "Mr. Right."
For my money, I'd get the government out of the business of gay marriage because I'd get it out of the business of all marriage. You want a church wedding? Fine. Have a beautiful day. But don't ask the government to sanctify it and don't allow those words,  "By the power invested in me by the state of New Hampshire, I now pronounce you man and wife." 
Yuck!
Marriage ought to be what it is: A contract. Go to city hall and get officially registered and married, heterosexual, homosexual, intra species, whatever.  If you want to marry a frog, fine. But the practical, financial, health insurance, visiting rights aspects can be spelled out in law for any couple who wants to sign on for that contract.
Problem is, I'm unelectable for saying such things. So is President Obama.

Taking Out Osama Bin Laden 

"Oh, I could have hit that one out. That was easy. Anyone could have hit that one out."

Strip Searches and the Republican Soul

E.L. Doctorow, writing in today's Sunday New York Times traces the decline of America,  the slide of this great country from something unique to a nation like so many others. 

But the coup de grace , as he tells the tale, is the decision by the US Supreme Court to protect the nation's jailers from the threat of weapons being smuggled into jails by all those girl jay walkers, those ladies who rolled through stop signs, or the men who were simply arrested for  DWB (Driving While Black) or even RWB (Riding While Black.)

From this day forward, there ought to be no public appearance by any candidate for office, or by any office holder, without that person being asked, directly and immediately: "Do you agree with the strip search decision?"  and then, if the answer is no, or if the answer is a dodge, "Will you work to pass legislation to limit strip searches?"

You might also ask, "What evidence are you aware of which suggests that strip searches protect jailers from hidden weapons? What are the statistics of how many weapons have ever been found by this procedure over the past 10 years?"

The fact is, the heart and soul of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, has dismissed even the Abu Ghraib stripping of prisoner as just "the boys letting off steam," and "no worse than a Skull and Bones" initiation rite. But that's just Mr. Limbaugh's fetid imagination at work again.

The fact is, this is what the Republican heart and soul is all about: The case was about a powerless man who was wronged by those in power, the police and the prison authorities, and the Republicans on the court, and all the Republicans across the land are determined to protect those poor, sensitive, vulnerable jailers, who have guns, from the sixteen year old girl who has just been dragged in in plastic handcuffs.

We have to ask everyone who wants to hold office, Republican and Democrat alike, where they stand on this.

Finally, The Democrats Throw a Punch

Osama is dead and General Motors is alive. If Romney had been President, exactly the opposite would be true.
  --Joe Biden


Okay, finally, a little ditty short enough and punchy enough to appeal to Joe Sixpack.
Now if we can just get one or two a week until November, the Democrats may stand half a chance.

Romney: The Ultimate Empty Suit

Listening to Mitt Romney on the radio this morning I could not help thinking: Is this a real human being I'm listening to, or some radio creation?
He was giving a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire and he sounded as if he were trying out lines on a focus group:
1. Are you better off now than you were 3 years ago when Obama took office?
2. President Obama has done the best he can, but that's not good enough.
3. Let's let somebody try to be President who has some experience in the business world. Obama has none.
4. President Obama may not have caused the financial meltdown crisis but what he did made it worse.
5. My parents never told me we could make our family more successful by taking away something from some other family.
6. Tax the rich? That's class warfare.


Of course, none of these rhetorical flourishes have any real substance. They are all applause lines. They are meant to stir up those who already hate Obama. And there are plenty of those. And some of those, who knows how many hate him because he is a Black man sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom. That's the deep down truth. There are a set of "they" out there who will never accept the stinging defeat this inoffensive Black man handed them in 2008.


But, just for the fun of it let's look at the six empty slogans emanating from that empty man, Mitt Romney:
1. Are you better off now than you were when President Obama was sworn in in January, 2009? Well, if that's the real question, then Obama gets re elected in a landslide. You will remember the economy was in free fall and the government and the nation was not far behind. But that would require a few neurons in the memory part of the brain and nobody from Rush to Mitt wants to have any of those functioning.
2. President Obama isn't good enough. Well, I've argued that at times, but compared to anybody the Republicans have put forward, most especially Mitt, oh, give me the O man.
3. Experience in the business world. Oh, there's a necessary qualification. You notice Mitt doesn't want to mention his own experience in government, which provided the model for Obamacare, and Mitt left as his own administration was presiding over a disintegration in government services in Massachusetts. He could not have got re election based on his performance in government so now he's saying, well, forget that. Elect me because I made vulture capitalism work for Bain Inc.
4. President Obama made the financial crisis worse. Oh, really. He might have done more and he might have done better but he wrested the steering wheel out of the icy grip of every Republican in Congress and in the land just in time to keep the nation from driving off the cliff.
5. No, your parents didn't  tell you not to take things from the rich to improve your lot because you were already rich. That's Rubio's line. It goes to the heart of the Republican problem. The GOP is the party of the haves and they live in fear of the day when Joe Sixpack realizes that some part of his own failure is directly connected to the success of the rich, who have controlled the rules and rigged the game so guys like him cannot succeed.
6. Taxing the rich. Class warfare. Oh, very bad. Well, give me a little class warfare that comes from the bottom 80% and is aimed at the upper 20% who have been reigning down bombs on the have nots for so long the have nots think getting screwed is normal.


But none of this analysis matters. People hate Obama and resent the Democrats because they have come to believe in fantasies about right and wrong. Until Joe Sixpack gets smart, he'll vote for Republicans, he'll love the NRA, and he'll tune into Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and he'll never know what hit him, but that's all right with Joe.

Detoxifying the Supreme Court

Mad Dog has been accused of aimless ranting about the Supreme Court for some years now.
Now, public opinion and informed opinion has caught up with his insights.
It turns out, lo and behold, the Supreme Court, despite the attempts at illusion with the black robes, is nothing more than one more political institution, no more rational than Congress or the executive, and just as captive to political philosophy. The strip search case brought this into bold relief, as did the clarifying experience of listening to the justices pick apart the Obamacare law, and play with it like so many ill bred adolescents, picking at and playing with their food.
It was clear, from a reading of the Constitution, which is, after all a short document, the only description of the Supreme Court is brief and vague. No number of justices is specified and no mechanism for removing justices is specified.Now, a professor of law at Duke, writing in the NY Times observes the Court has had various numbers of judges, from 7 in 1789 (a number set by Congress) to fewer in 1800 to 10 during the Civil War, a number determined by Congress which was worried the Court would sympathize with the Confederacy.
The idea of lifetime terms derived from the experience of the English king removing judges whenever he disagreed with their opinions. But the Constitution says only the justices can be serve as long as they display "good behavior."
A group of law school professors suggest a new law which would allow every President to appoint a new justice to the Court, every two year of his presidency, so by the end of his four years, he's appointed 2 justices. If he serves 8 years, he appoints 4. But only the 9 most recently appointed justices get to vote on cases. The other justices would meet with the newer justices to decide which cases get heard in the first place.
That would work for me. I'd like it even better if he got to appoint one a year.
It would mean if you win the election, you get a court, gradually, which agrees with your philosophy and politics, but the court would change with the changing political environment in the country.
Now, all we have to do is to get President Obama re elected with a large enough majority in House and Senate to pass this thing.

Presidential Politics and the Second Wife Syndrome

When Jimmy Carter emerged to capture the Presidency it happened after Richard M. Nixon had finally, after many years, managed to reveal himself enough to disgust a large enough portion of the electorate that they wanted someone who was not Richard M. Nixon or anything like him.

So, from the cynical, Machiavellian Nixon, we swung to Carter, who looked maybe a bit naive, but fresh and open and not at all a schemer.

After 8 years of George W. Bush, anyone who sounded as if he had two neurons synapsing would have been a breath of fresh air.

John McCain fell into the trap of choosing Sarah Palin, who reminded a lot of people of George W. in her easily apprehended stupidity. She was just dumb as a stick. Aggressive, cocky, self confident and really stupid. Remind you of anyone?

Yep, George W.

So, all Barack Obama had to do was to speak grammatical English and to not come off as a scary Black man.

Now, President Obama has to throw punches, but he has got by his whole life by being non confrontational, and it's just not in him. He just doesn't know how to trade punches with Mitt and Mitch and Rush.

So, his fate appears about as clear as that of the ACA, Obamacare.

Our electorate is just not all that bright.

Just look at the comments you see on the internet.

I'm just hoping what you see in cyberspace is not what goes to the polls in November, but like the fate of the ACA, it doesn't look good.