Gay Marriage - Let's Skip To The End, Shall We?

So Iowa legalized gay marriage, and the California Supreme Court upheld California's right to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

Cue the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It seems, at best, ironic that supposedly forward-thinking California, Land of Fruits and Nuts, would take this colossal step backwards in the pursuits of equality while Iowa, the very embodiment of all things Midwestern, would take such an unexpected step forward. The other way around would have been business as usual in the Old Reality. Now the New Reality is letting us know not to take anything for granted.

But with New York on the verge of voting to legalize same-sex marriage, we now find the ball officially in motion, as state after state emerges from its puritanical trance and awakens to this New Day of Equality. All that's left now is to sit back and watch the dominoes fall one by one.

I don't think we can expect to see all fifty states ratify same-sex marriage anytime soon. As evidenced in California, the wheels of progress can grind very slowly indeed. But just to recap, let's spell out the facts:

• The argument over gay marriage is not a religious one. This is because marriage licenses are issued by state governments. No religion, no religious facility, and no clergy are needed to legitimize a marriage in the eyes of the law. Every single religion could take a hard line stand against gay marriage, and gay people could still go to their local courthouses and be married by a judge. Therefore, religion is a moot point.
• Just because one state issues you a marriage license does not guarantee the state you live in will recognize it. If a gay couple, denied their opportunity to wed in California thanks to Prop 8 passing decides to jet off to Des Moines and tie the knot, they may not necessarily have their marriage recognized back home. This is going to be a fun one to watch when it hits the United States Supreme Court (and it will).
• There will still be (and ought to be) restrictions on who can marry. I'm a big believer in True Love, and I tend to believe that true love conquers all. But let's be reasonable. At the risk of sounding conservative (shudder!) I must stipulate that I don't believe that just anyone should be allowed to marry. Opponents of gay marriage like to paint a picture of an "anything goes" society, where brothers and sisters get hitched, pet owners marry their dogs, and group marriages abound. So for the purposes of these debates, let's be clear: marriage ought to be defined as a union of two consenting adult human beings, unrelated. (Sorry, England.)

In all of the hoopla surrounding this very divisive subject, I have yet to hear one lucid argument as to why two men or two women ought not to get married. I have still not heard how, precisely, society at large would suffer as a result. There are currently 18,000 gay and lesbian married couples in California. With the court’s decision to allow Prop 8 into law, it begs the obvious question: why should couple #18,000 have a right that couple #18,001 should not? It’s one thing to talk about unfair when discerning between the gay couples vs. the straight ones. But with the Court’s decision, we now have some gay couples enjoying a legal and legitimate marriage in the state of California, while another gay couple is summarily denied the same right. This, Gentle Reader, is the textbook definition of unfair. This leaves us to decide whether to annul the 18,000 existing gay marriages, or allow the right to marry to couple #18,001. Given that Prop 8 passed and was upheld in court, I don’t want to assume that this time fair play will win the day.

I must reiterate that the topic has very little to do with me personally. My marriage is lucky enough to be recognized in all fifty states. No decision on the issue of gay marriage will undo that. So why do I care? I care because I don’t want to live in a country that practices what amounts to apartheid against a minority group. I care because even though I’m in the majority today, tomorrow they may decide that people with blue eyes aren’t as good as people with brown eyes. They may decide that left-handed people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, or drive, or have children. They may decide here in California that people from other states have to pay a higher income tax than natives. Sound bizarre? I agree. But it only sounds bizarre because we’ve been conditioned to believe that in this country, all men are created equal. We’ve been told from our earliest schoolings that all people in this country are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But in light of the Court’s decision to uphold Prop 8, I am forced to ask: what happened to America? What happened to the land of liberty? When did we decide that certain people aren’t as equal as others? Throughout our history, we as a nation have grown to understand more deeply and thoroughly what it means to live in a free country. When we became a nation, only white male land owners were allowed to vote. In the beginning, we practiced slavery. We ended slavery, gave women the right to vote, created laws to protect workers’ rights, gave the right to vote to anyone over 18. We bled on foreign shores for the freedoms of people we don’t even know. We’ve waged war on behalf of the oppressed in countries most of us couldn’t find on a map. And with the passing of Prop 8, we shame our forefathers. The decision to deny rights to a minority group for no good reason is a slap in the face to all the brave men and women who served this country and bled and died for the cause of freedom. We have betrayed our very foundations. America is supposed to be the Land of Opportunity. It still can be, if we are willing to face this issue bravely, overcome our own personal phobias and recognize, once and for all, that we cannot claim the mantle of liberty while denying it to some.

It's Torture. How Is This Even a Discussion?

Did the Bush Administration torture people? Of course they did. Even they don't bother denying it. Of course, they call it "enhanced interrogation techniques". Right...

What I want to know is, who cares who knew? I mean, we can figure that out eventually. This is the Information Age, after all, and the days of secrets are pretty much dead. Try being a Congressman and having an affair if you don't believe me. Did Nancy Pelosi know? Yeah, probably. Was she in a position to do anything to stop it? Probably not, other than go to the press. And in Washington, you want to be very careful before you start whistle blowing on your fellow politicians. Odds are if you have some dirt on someone, then someone else probably has some dirt on you. That's my theory: Pelosi knew, and was somehow leveraged into silence. I could be wrong.

But apart from the whole "who knew what and when did they know it" sideshow is the heart of the matter. We have people who ordered torture, and that order filtered down through a succession of lawyers. The wording cleansed in such a way as to make it all nice and legal, and then it was passed to the people who actually had to carry it out. The government employees, the CIA, the military, all got their hands dirty. At any point, someone could have gotten an attack of acute decency. They could have refused to participate, they could have gone to the press, any number of things could have happened to stop the process.

But no one succeeded in stopping it, and it happened. We tortured. Us, the good guys, we tortured people. Against every instinct of decency, against all the logic that suggests information obtained during torture is unreliable at best, against every international treaty we ever signed, we tortured. Whether you call it "enhanced interrogation" or some other abuse of the English language, it matters little to the guy on the receiving end.

And now that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have left office, it falls on the new administration to decide what to do. First and most obvious, we stop the torturing. Not only is it illegal, it is pointless. We could round up every member of the Taliban and al Qaeda and torture them until the cows come home and it won't bring back the people who died on 9/11. It won't bring back the Twin Towers. It won't guarantee we'll be safe from future attacks. Quite the opposite: if anything, it's more likely to foment hostility towards the United States.

So what to do? I'm sorry; maybe the answer is obvious to me because I'm not in politics. We round up every person involved, from the people who made the decision to torture, through all the buffer levels of people who cleaned up the wording, to the people who actually performed the torturing. We round them all up, regardless of political affiliation, and we charge them with war crimes. We charge them with crimes against humanity. We charge them with violations of the Geneva Convention. If necessary we turn them over to the World Court in The Hague, where politics cease to matter. We try them in the courts. And if we find them guilty, we punish them. We incarcerate them. We have them executed if need be.

This isn't about the war on terror. As I've said before, there IS no war on terror. This is about something much simpler and at the same time much more profound. It is about right and wrong. We cannot strut the world's stage in the guise of "the good guys" without stopping periodically to look around and ask ourselves what the right thing is. We have a choice here, whether to hold those people accountable for embarrassing our nation as they have. We have the opportunity to claim the mantle of "hero" on the world's stage and take a stand for what is right, even if we end up throwing people from both parties under the bus in the process.

And make no mistake, the world is watching. The decisions we make will go a long way towards forming opinions abroad. And if we fail to do the right thing here, if we fail to hold those people accountable, then the next time we are attacked, we dare not ask "why do people hate Americans?" This is why. Because we commit atrocities and then we fail to hold those people to the rule of law. It is simple.

The Nutty Irishman Solves Everything! (Part One)

That's right folks, yours truly is going to give you the solutions to all the ills that plague us, and I'm going to do it simply, effectively, and cost-efficiently. Then, I'll tell you why my practical solutions will never see the light of day. Ready?

Problem #1: Illegal Immigration. Conservative types love to spout off at illegal immigrants, and will miss no opportunity to hitch onto whatever is happening in the news and somehow contrive a way to make it the fault of illegal immigrants. The most recent example is this swine flu thing. Apparently, according to the fringe right wing hacks, Mexicans have deliberately and knowingly brought swine flu to the U.S. when they came here illegally. Bad enough they steal all our jobs, now they want to kill us. Not paranoid enough for you? Try this one: allegedly al Qaeda manufactured this latest epidemic of swine flu (in their super-secret chemical labs, hidden deep in the mountainside caves of Afghanistan). Then, instead of using one of a million possible ways to import it directly into the United States, they chose instead to infect Mexicans (with whom they have no quarrel, incidentally), knowing that they would, in turn, sneak into America and infect the lot of us.

Solution #1: Jail Time for Employers, Not Employees: Okay, so if we are going to address illegal immigration in this country, we need to go after the two things we know the immigrants do: work and sleep. Despite what you may have been told, they don't tunnel under our border fences and emerge, only to immediately give birth to babies, collect food stamps and welfare. We know they get jobs, and we know that without jobs available to them, they'd have very little reason to come here. In the drug trade, law enforcement is much more interested in nabbing the dealers than the buyers. We simply apply the same rationale here. So, we pass a law. Any company that is found to have illegal immigrants in their employ, they're the new targets of law enforcement. Any business, from your local restaurant all the way up to Wal-Mart, the owners, presidents, chairmen of the board, get sentenced to 30 days in a federal prison for each illegal immigrant they hire. No fines, no community service – go directly to jail. Imagine seeing the owner of Wal-Mart taken away in shackles, live on CNN. Watch how quickly employers would then start insisting on documentation for their employees.

Solution #2: Jail Time for Landlords Who Rent to Illegals: The second part of the solution has to do with where they stay. In most cases, they live in apartments, and those apartments are being rented out by landlords. So, we get law enforcement to go after the landlords. We make them responsible for who rents their apartments, pure and simple. If an illegal immigrant is found to be residing in an apartment (whether they're on the lease of not), the landlords or owners spend 30 days in federal prison for each illegal found there.

Why it will never happen: My solutions sidestep the notion of fining the companies. Most of the bigger companies keep tons of cash in reserve for such legal issues and would not be deterred by fines. Or if they are fined out of existence (like a restaurant), another similar business would just come along and take its place, likely hiring the same batch of illegal immigrants. No, fines are not the solution. Take some of the seven-figure salaried elites and put them in general population for a few weeks, see if that changes their perspective. But we all know even if such legislation passed, it would be rotted with loopholes that would allow their lawyers to get exceptions in almost every case, making the law moot. Besides, these business owners are known for making contributions to candidates at election time, and money talks. Even if they don't donate to the candidate directly, they can still pump lots of money into both major political parties, pretty much ensuring that whoever gets elected will remember who got them there. If I sound cynical, it’s because I am. I believe that when big business and government get together, the one thing you can count on is the average American getting screwed. Unless you own their stock, most companies will not do anything to acquiesce to your demands. Don’t like Wal-Mart’s policies? Shop somewhere else, it’s a free country. Don’t like the fact that Candidate “A” gets his ass kissed by big business? Okay then, vote for Candidate “B”. But don’t fool yourself for a second into thinking that it makes a difference to Big Business. They have both bases covered.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Next topic? Comment on this blog with your suggestions.

Throw The Bums Out

President Obama has asked for (and received) the resignation of GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner. Of course, the Anti-Anything-Obama crowd has wasted no time crying "Socialism" and lamenting the President's abuse of power. They fear for those poor unfortunate millionaires, and speculate as to who's going to be next.

For myself, I can't imagine why I'd feel too badly about what's happened. There is an axiom in the business world that whoever is paying the bills is the one in charge. "If you want to know who's in charge, follow the money." Think about it this way: if you go to a restaurant and order something, you have the right to request that the kitchen prepare it in a certain way for you. After all, they can assume you'll pay the bill when it comes due, and this entitles you to a little pampering. No ice in your drink? Steak well done? Dressing on the side? These are not foreign concepts to us. However if you found yourself in a line at a soup kitchem where the soup was free, you might think twice about being high maintenance.

The truth is, our government has given billions to the auto industry for decades, and when we ask them to toughen up their emissions for the sake of the environment, they whine like little bitches. When we ask them to improve the gas mileage to help the average American, they whine like little bitches. When we pass legislation giving the cars more stringent safety requirement to protect the passengers, they whine like little bitches. And so it goes. They have forgotten the debt they owe to the government for all the money, all the tax breaks, all the preferential treatment. They act with an overblown sense of entitlement, pay their elite exhorbitant salaries, and whine like little bitches when the UAW members want to make enough money to do such uppity things as own their own homes or send their kids to college.

But now, and for the next four to eight years, there is a President who is calling their tab. We have a President who did not grow up rich. We have a leader who had to go and earn everything he has, and the mindsets of the corporate elite are unknown to him. For someone with a work ethic, the pampered elite do not elicit much sympathy. The worst possible thing that could have happened to Detroit's leaders has come to pass: a leader who understands the concept of paying one's dues and being held accountable.

I hope he fires the lot of them. I hope he appoints Al Gore as auto industry czar, and Michael Moore as assistant. I hope Executive orders fall on Detroit like snowflakes, demanding quality vehicles. I hope the Obama Administration grabs the Big Three by the short and curlies and twists, by God. I wish to see the end of Business As Usual in Detroit. I hope we can say goodbye to the Age of the Oversized Gas Guzzlers.

And I don't really care how much gas costs. Two dollars a gallon, four dollars a gallon, even twenty dollars - it shouldn't matter. What should matter is that we take significant steps to wean ourselves off of this oil addiction that has gripped us for years. What is important is that we pollute less. What is important is that Americans have the option of quality affordable cars that are safe and that last. For years, Detroit has plugged its fingers squarely in its ears and drowned out all the good ideas taken up by foreign car makers. America prides itself on inventing the car (we didn't actually, but you can look it up yourself). We pat ourselves on the back for our innovation and ingenuity, and as soon as someone suggests that American carmakers could be more competitive globally if they made smaller cars, more hybrid and alternative fuel cars, well we just can't shut them up fast enough, can we?

The point: For decades the government has doled out millions and billions to the American auto industry to keep it afloat. When given the options, the suggestions, the requests to innovate they have dragged their heels. In recent years we have seen companies like Honda and Toyota eclipse American companies. Now Fords, GM's and Chryslers are no longer the best-selling, or even the best made care in the world. In order to regain their competitive edge in the global marketplace, these companies will either have to kowtow to the Administration's demands or find another financial teat to suckle. It is fitting that President Obama has called their tab and fired Rick Wagoner. It should serve as a notice to other CEO fat cats: this is the dawning of a new day, and if you're not on board, there is no room for you here. As an American I am proud that this has happened.

AIG, blah blah blah

Oh so NOW we're upset? Suddenly the media is saturating us with news about how AIG gave nearly $200 million in bonuses to its elite, and now we're filled with righteous rage? Why now? Is it because they took all those billions in stimulus dollars and swore on a stack of Bibles that THIS TIME they'd stop with the bonuses? Are we storming the Bastille here because that stimulus money they're handing out like Monopoly money was essentially our taxpayer dollars? Or, is it because your average American family is facing the prospects of foreclosures on their homes and layoffs at work?

Now? NOW we're upset??

Good.

I say it's high time we all got good and pissed off. Sure, this is a lame pretext to go all torches-and-pitchforks: I mean, $200 million? Whoop de friggin do. In the grand scheme of things, this is a DROP in the bucket, people. Even though $200 million is more than most of us will ever see in our lifetime, it still pales in comparison to the big picture. If anything, it just illustrates that we are dealing with people who are completely detached from reality. They think the rules do not apply to them. These are people who wear $1000 suits to work. These people have not brown-bagged a lunch since the third grade. These people have never had to sit at the kitchen table and draw names out of a hat to see which bills got paid. These people exist on an altogether different plane than the rest of us paycheck-to-paycheck riffraff. They do not see the big deal in taking millions in dollars in bonus money in addition to their already lucrative salaries. These people do not see what the big deal is, taking rewards while the companies they control hemorrhage money. These people have no moral misgivings about sending jobs overseas for the tax dodge. Their patriotism is eclipsed by their need for profitability. And whenever we question these practices, they hide behind their imaginary obligation to their investors and stockholders.

Let's also remind ourselves that AIG is an insurance company. Since when do insurance companies do the right thing? Do we really expect them to have a conscience all of a sudden? Think about your own dealings with insurance companies: if they owe you money, how prompt are they to pay you, generally? If anything, they will refuse to pay out, even when the policies state their obligations clearly. Then when they do pay out, they make their customer fill out reams of useless paperwork, all in the hopes that you'll forget to sign somewhere, forget to initial, fold something that isn't supposed to be folded, anything to give them a flimsy pretext to deny your claim, since you didn't do it right. How many people every year have to sue their own insurance companies just to get their fair share? You can bet they keep a cabal of lawyers on tap to steamroller you if you try. Taking on an insurance company is either very brave or very stupid, but most often it just very pointless.

So the insurance company AIG, in order to keep itself solvent, agreed to a laundry list of conditions to get their hands on a government bailout package. They pinky-swore that THIS TIME they'd do the right thing and be responsible with our money. They wouldn't be greedy little pigs anymore. And now they're failing to observe the terms of the deal by using that money (or at least part of it) to pay millions of dollars in bonuses out to their elite. Are we supposed to be shocked here?

Add to all this, the idea that they are somehow "too big to fail", and we have to consider the stockholders in all this. First - too big to fail? I am ALL for testing that theory. Perhaps letting them fail is exactly the cautionary tale the insurance industry needs to get them to realize the gravity of our situation. "Too big to fail", my ass. How about "too pompous and corrupt to exist"? If they fail, they fail. And as to the stocker holders? Well, seeing as how OUR tax dollars went to bail them out, and seeing as how without that bailout they'd be out of business, I'd say that makes the American Taxpayer a stockholder. It's our money they're using to stay afloat, that gives us a say in their future. So as a stockholder vis a vis my tax dollars, I say: screw you, AIG.

Welcome to my world, bitches.

To: Dick Morris, RE: shut the hell up already

You guys remember Dick Morris? This was a Republican politico that Bill Clinton took on as an advisor. Shrewd move on Bubba's part: in 1994 after HillaryCare crashed and burned, Republicans were worried about the Liberals taking over, and the war machine cranked into high gear. Led by Newt Gingrich, the Republicans took over Congress for the first time in decades. This crystalized the concept of checks and balances, and forced Bill Clinton to take on Mr. Morris as an advisor, to coach him in how to work with the Right Wing and still be productive. In 1996, Morris was scandalized for having a toe-sucking fest with a hooker. Clinton "asked him to resign", which in Washington translates into "handed him his hat and told him 'don't let the door hit your ass on the way out'."

Pause.

Now I think Bill Clinton was a great President, for reasons I have outlined in the past on this blog. I think he was the perfect antedote for the damage inflicted by Reagan and H.W. Bush. That said, the man was a horndog. I mean this guy, despite all the good he did, had a libido that would rival most rock stars. And sadly, a lot of the good he accomplished was since overshadowed by his diddling of an intern. Now with that in mind, when Bill Clinton tells you that you're too much of a sexual freak to work with him, that's bad. It's like being called a tree hugger by Al Gore. I mean, it's extreme. You'd think Clinton, with his mojo, would appreciate a fellow ladies' man, but what Dick Morris was into went beyond the pale, so much so that Clinton publicly had to distance himself. There's stories of how Bill nearly took a swing at him more than once, and in the years since it's easy to understand why.

Resume.

So now Morris makes a living among other things on Fox News, as a predictably anti-Democratic pundit. He is like their own personal Oscar the Grouch. He pops out of his can from time to time and spews some predictably negative venom twoards whatever Democrat they're discussing. This is a guy with zero training as a journalist, but he has a job on a news channel. Go figure.

My problem with Dick Morris is that he is so transparent. Of course he's anti-Democrat. He was outed as a whoremonger and humiliated when Clinton forced him to resign in disgrace. And rather than be apologetic, rather than seeking some obviously much-needed professional help, rather than showing any contrition whatsoever, he launched himself headlong into a career as an attack dog for whatever Right Wing outlet would cut him a check. He watched CSPAN and reads the papers and then opines on the news from a place of hurt feelings and kneecapped careers. He has made a career for himself by grinding his axe against the collective Left. The most pronounced item on Dick Morris' resume is the Herculian chip on his shoulder.

I'm less surprised at his mental state than I am at Fox's willingness to give him a soapbox. Fox (in vain) tries to promote itself as "fair and balanced", and then hands the microphone to this guy? I assume that to "balance" it out, they should give the microphone next to Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, or some other "republicans are no damn good" mouthpiece. Just to even things out, you understand.

Morris is one of these guys champing at the bit to see Obama fail. His tiresome columns lament the passing of the torch to this America-hating socialist, and consistently predicts doom and gloom insofar as any of Obama's plans come to fruition. Morris is so single-mindedly dedicated to the notion that no good could ever come from a Democrat, I'm amazed anyone can listen to him and claim to have an open mind. I would find him amusing for his willingness to caricature himself as he does if it weren't for the fact that he seems to mean it, and he seems to think you should feel this way too. His writings are the worst sort of propoganda, aimed at hamstringing support for the President's efforts to repair the economy and the nation. Funny to me, since we just had eight years of Republican "leadership", and suddenly Dick Morris knows what we should do?

The point: Since Dick Morris seems to be teetering on the farthest edges of the right wing, we should all pay close attention to all of his ideas, all of his suggestions, all of his advice, and then immediately proceed to do the exact opposite. His pearls of wisdon read like the Republican Playbook since Bush stole, I mean won the election in 2000. And we see now in 2009 the dire straits our nation finds itself in as the result of these philosophies. It has been suggested that to do the same things over and over and expect different results is the very textbook definition of insanity. So now it is time for us to make a much overdue lurch towards sanity. It is time to abandon all things Republican, both in idea and action. It is time to tell Dick Morris to shut the hell up already.

By the way, we could just as easily substitute the same point for Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, et al.

Time to Catch Up With Current Events!

Greetings, loyal minions! Sorry for yet another absence. It seems like ever since the politicial season of 2008, I've been suffering from Bloggers Burnout. It's not that I'm lacking opinions, or that I no longer wish to share them. I'm just as opinionated and just as much of an attention whore as ever, so let's catch up, shall we?

Michael Phelps: So this bah-zillion time Olympic medal winner was caught taking a bong hit. Well, he's a young man, and young men do dumb things. It's kind of a rule. Not to say that smoking pot is dumb - you can make up your own minds about that. What was stupid was the fact that he let someone take a picture of him doing it.

So now Kellogg's and probably others are pulling their endorsement deals. I think he should seek endorsement deals with Domino's: in my smoking days I probably put some of those delivery guys through college. I can see it now - Phelps goes off camera, we hear the gurgle of a bong hit, see a plume of smoke, and he re-enters the shot with squinty bloodshot eyes and says "God, I could really go for a pizza!" Fade to the Domino's logo, and a voiceover saying "Dominos - pizza of Champions".

All that aside, my biggest complaint with the whole Michael-Phelps-hitting-the-bong thing is the people whining about how he's supposed to be a "role model". Oh please - shut the hell up. Role model? For who? The guy won like 14 Olympic gold medal, shattered records all over the place, and you're disappointed? Talk about a tough crowd. I'm reminded of something George Carlin wrote in "Brain Droppings": "if your kid needs a role model, and you aren't it, you're both f*cked." There's a lot of truth there. If you look to sports stars, even Olympic ones, or religious leaders, or politicians, or any public figure and anoint them with the title of "role model", you are setting yourself up for a fall. Everyone disappoints. Parents, clergy, teachers, friends, they're all human. None can live up to a flawless and consistent ideal. We all have bad days, weak moments, character defects, and if someone is naive enough to hitch their wagon to you, thinking you're going to lead them down the Path, they're going to be let down. To the parents of the young people: why aren't YOU your kids' role models? Why did you abdicate that responsibility to a stranger? Take the lead, and be the role model your kid needs. Otherwise, please please PLEASE shut the hell up.

More to come, I promise.