I'm getting extremely tired of reading bogus claims that Obama canceled a trip to see wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn't take cameras with him. It's flat-out wrong and even the dirty McCain campaign has tried to distance themselves from it, but I still see idiots posting it on various message boards and other social networking sites. First off, Obama visited troops in Kuwait without any major media - any video you see of that visit is from the military folk who were there. Secondly, there is no evidence whatsoever that supports the idea that Obama wanted to take the press with him. The reason why the event was canceled is because Obama feared that visiting wounded troops alone (which he is allowed to do as a sitting senator) would be seen as using those brave men and women as props for political gain.
Oh but that's so far-fetched, who would think of that? The McCain Campaign:
What the McCain campaign doesn't want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch.
Pretty disgusting if true, and based off this week's attack ads, I'm inclined to believe it. Have you seen the latest from team McCain - an ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, saying he's the biggest celebrity in the world, but unfit to lead. Yes, this is how they attack Barack Obama after a crowd of 250,000 Germans are chanting his name and waving American flags. Sorry John, but the world wants Obama to be president not because he's a movie star, they want him to be president because they know he's not a continuation of the last eight years of the worst president in American history. He's young, he's a new kind of politics, he actually cares about the rest of the world and doesn't think the world revolves around America. How are these bad things again? God forbid citizens of other countries look to America to lead the world again rather than continue being the laughingstock of it.
It's just another in the long line of embarrassingly lame attacks from the McCain campaign and his "supporters." I put supporters in quotes because I don't think anyone actually supports McCain, I just think they're supporting whoever is against Obama. The other big story today is that Obama is playing the "race card from the bottom of the deck." Really? The elderly white man is going to even attempt that one? Seems like a dangerous tightrope to walk. All this because Obama is claiming that the right-wingers are going to try to paint him as "different," "has a funny name," or "arrogant."
All of which is completely true - "different" can be any time FOX News tries to report on pretty much anything he does. Remember the time he and his wife did the now infamous "fist bump?" FOX called it a "terrorist fist-jab," proving that they are the whitest network on television.
"Funny name" - Again last week, FOX News mixed up Osama/Obama. While displaying footage of Osama bin Laden on screen, the text below read "Obama's TV aim." This being at least a dozen times they've done it with about twenty days between the previous "mix-up." Still, no one has been fired for it.
"Arrogant" - Another fun attack to use against Obama is that he is "presumptuous," acting like he's already the president. This while John McCain releases ads with the text "PRESIDENT McCAIN" running along the screen, yeah... not presumptuous at all. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow made an extremely good point about this today, mentioning the racial undertones of such an attack. Claiming Obama is "presumptuous" is almost like saying he's not "knowing his place," which of course really opens the doors to the race card that the right-wing claims they're not playing. This is also equally hilarious because while saying he's acting like he's the president, the McCain campaign says Obama is not "presidential." Well, he's either one or the other, can't be both, can he?
Well, now that I think about it, if you want to find someone who is acting like he's president but isn't very presidential, you can find him in the Oval Office anytime he's not on vacation in Crawford, Texas.
Barack Obama is making his first trip overseas this week since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee and everywhere I turn, the media is talking about Obama making "gaffes." Gaffe this, gaffe that, they're all speculating on whether or not Obama will say or do something wrong and humiliate himself on the world stage.
Um... have you people forgotten who the president has been for the last seven years?
George W. Bush is the biggest embarrassment in American history. Every time I turn on the TV, this nimrod is doing something humiliating: running around grabbing the (female) German Chancellor's shoulders, eloquently saying things like "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this [shit]," and that was just in one day. The guy openly admitted to never being out of the country before becoming president, he says things like "awesome speech" to the Pope, and pile that on to the mountain of borderline retarded things we've all heard fall out of his mouth.
And we're worried about Barack Obama? A multicultural, Harvard-educated lawyer who has actually traveled the world before? We're seriously talking about Barack Obama embarassing himself in front the world while we've been living under The Blue Collar Comedy Presidency? Are you fucking kidding me?
On top of all this, our good friend John McCain has been running around talking about Czechoslovakia and the "Iraq/Pakistan border" - neither of those two things exist. Czechoslovakia stopped being a country fifteen years ago and the Iraq/Pakistan "border," as the Daily Show humorously pointed out last night, is Iran. Like most things surrounding this election, it would be hilarious if it weren't so infuriating. Here we are, talking about whether or not Obama is going to make mistakes while McCain can't remember a major event like Czechoslovakia becoming two countries and drawing his own version of the world map - it would be hilarious if he didn't have a good possibility of becoming President of the United States by running on his "foreign policy experience."
I feel like I'm in Bizarro World - guys like Bush and McCain appear "tough on terror" and the average voter sees them as the ones who know how to handle foreign policy, but they can't even point out countries on a map! Are you really ready to once again trust your safety and our nation's nuclear weapons to clowns like these? George W. Bush is arguably the worst president of all-time and undoubtedly the most embarrassing - I would be ashamed to go to another country with this assclown representing America. John McCain, while I appreciate what he's done through the years up until about 2006, he just doesn't have it anymore. He's completely thrown his principles and beliefs out the window in exchange for neocon support in his quest for the White House. Now he doesn't even know what countries exist and can't figure out the border situation in the most important regions in the Middle East. And we're seriously giving credence to Obama not being ready? Now that's a gaffe.
If you haven't heard yet, some right-wing assclown in Florida has put up a billboard featuring the burning Twin Towers with the message "Please Don't Vote for a Democrat" over it. I don't want to give this sickening pile of shit any free press, but here's the article about it at CNN: 9/11 billboard draws flak. Pretty disgusting, isn't it?
Has this moron forgotten the fact that 9/11 happened under a Republican president and a Republican-controlled congress? Has he forgotten the fact that for months leading up to the attacks, the administration had been receiving memos titled "Osama bin Laden determined to attack within the United States," and the information about suspicious men in flight schools who claim they did not need to know how to land a plane? No, he's probably just another fear-mongering Republican lapdog that thinks if Al Gore were president, we'd all be bowing our heads to Emperor bin Laden.
I could go down the list and show us all how we've become less safe under the Bush administration, but why even bother? People that buy into a billboard like the one in question aren't exactly going to be the type to wrap their feeble little brains around those pesky little things called facts, so I figure I'll speak to them in a language they can understand. Here are my campaign billboards - Please don't vote for a Republican:
Last week, I brought up the subject of the latest attempt to federally ban gay marriage and the hypocrisy of many Republicans who call it "Defense of Marriage." It's hard to take these people seriously when they're involved in all these seedy sex scandals of their own, but what about regular folk? According to polls, the majority of this country opposes gay marriage and not all of them are a bunch of crooked, hypocritical politicians, so maybe we should ban it? That's one way to look at it... that way being the wrong one.
To this day, with all of the controversy and all of the back and forth arguments between gay marriage, civil unions, constitutional amendments and all that, I have still never heard a single logical argument against gay marriages. Please, I'm begging you, if you have a logical argument against gay marriage, leave it in a comment below because I'd love to hear it and then tell you why you're so horribly wrong. There is no reason for this to be an issue and it's just absurd that it even has to enter the public discourse. One, if you're not gay, who cares? This doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form so shut the fuck up. But since "shut the fuck up" doesn't enter the public policy dialogue very often, I'm going to run down the list of common arguments against gay marriage and then rip them to shreds:
-The Bible says it's wrong!
Well, the Bible says lots of things, like how you can not only own a slave, but beat them as badly as you'd like without killing them in the process. But I understand, your religion of choice opposes gay marriage and therefore they shouldn't have to perform a marriage between two men or two women, fair enough. Unfortunately, most people are too dense to realize that marriage isn't just a religious joining of two people before the eyes of God - it's a legal contract. I could go down to the courthouse on Monday morning and get married, but a gay person can't - that's wrong. A church has every right to deny something that goes against their beliefs, but the government has no religion and it's wrong to deny a group of citizens something that anyone else can get.-Marriage is sacred!
Says who? If you take a look around lately, you'll see that it's anything but. Our society has a 50% divorce rate, we have TV shows like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, and celebrities get married at lunch and are divorced by dinner, where's the sacred part come in?
-Gay Couples can't have children!
Well then straight people who are infertile or sterile aren't allowed to marry either. If they are already married and become sterile, they must divorce immediately. And of course, this argument is complete bullshit because of things like adoption and in vitro fertilization. Which leads us to...
-Children need a mother and father!
Then every single parent must have their children removed and placed into protective custody immediately. Don't give me that shit that gay couples can't raise children - they can, they do and in many instances, do it better than straight couples. You see, gay couples can't physically have children, so when they adopt or go through other methods, it's because they genuinely want children, unlike a lot of straight couples who forget to put a condom on. Who would you rather have raise children, two people who have to jump numerous hurdles from the government just so they can love their child or two people who weren't planning on having kids, but had an accident and now they have to?
-Gay marriage will lead to bestiality and pedophilia becoming acceptable lifestyles!Fuck you sideways with a rusty corkscrew. I've actually heard people say this and if you subscribe to this notion, then just do us all a favor and blow your fucking brains out. Homosexual marriage, like their hetero counterparts, occurs between two grown adults signing a contract. Anyone who says it's going to lead to "human-dog" marriage doesn't understand that animals can't sign contracts or give consent and neither can children. It's sad that this point even needs to be countered because it tries to lump homosexuality in with these two things when they're not even remotely comparable. Anyone who says anything like this does not belong in the public discourse and I'm ashamed to share a planet with them.
-But it's a state's right to ban gay marriage!
It shouldn't be. If you're straight and you get married in Utah, that marriage counts in New Mexico, Hawaii, Alabama and the other 46 states. If you're gay and you live in one of the very few places that allow gay marriage, it's null and void if you move out of that state. That's bullshit. Marriage is something guaranteed to every straight adult in this country regardless of race or religion - shit, in some states they let you marry your fucking cousin! But not if you're gay. How's that for a sacred institution - it's perfectly legal to marry your first cousin in Alabama or Georgia, but can't have any of those gays running around getting hitched!
-Okay... but can't we just call them "Civil Unions?"
No, fuck you. How would you like it if someone called what you did in your bedroom a "civil union?" Civil Union... we ended that kind of nonsense forty years ago when it was called "separate but equal." Let me guess, you want gays to drink from a different water fountain than you too?
Sorry kids, but outside of various religious dogma, there are no arguments against gay marriage. I hate to sound like a broken record, but we have that neat little separation of church and state so that the government can't make laws based on religious belief. This illogical intolerance of homosexuals is not unlike what we saw during the height of segregation and Jim Crow - the violence is toned down (slightly), but the attitude is still there. Is this really the kind of society you want to live in where it's okay to exclude others just because you're uncomfortable by the thought of boys kissing? Grow the fuck up.
Throughout this election season, despite my support for Barack Obama, I have been intrigued by the campaign of a man by the name of Ron Paul. Dr. Paul is an interesting character, full of many very good ideas, such as the elimination of the IRS, ending the bullshit War on Drugs, and putting an overall emphasis on personal responsibility and liberty - all very good ideas. One might think with values like those that are so closely related to my own, why am I supporting Obama over Paul? Well, because I, unlike Paul supporters, understand that he's not a cure-all for this country's woes and would likely do more harm than good.
Foremost, Paul also has a metric ton of ideas that I think are batshit insane. He's for the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, so that's strike one. He would eliminate every government agency that's not called for in the Constitution - so while getting rid of the IRS is a great idea, he would also eliminate organizations like the Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. But even through all that, I have a lot of respect for Ron Paul, he stands up for what he believes in and his voting record shows it - unlike current Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, who we'll get to in the future.
Paul is just a product of a different era, he reminds me of the nice old man that lives across the street, always out on the front porch. A genuinely kind human being, who is just out of touch with the modern world and doesn't seem to realize that it's 2008 rather than 1948. And that's fine, we form our world view through our younger years, I can't fault him for that. His message of personal liberty still resonates, so he's a good asset to have in our congress, but he would just never work as President of the United States - congress would never let him get anything done.
What bugs me about the Ron Paul campaign would be his supporters. Obama fans take a lot of shit for "drinking the Kool-Aid," or calling him the "Obamessiah," but when it comes to cult-like supporters, you have to stand in awe at Ron Paul's. Not since the hippies in the 1960s has there been a bigger group of starry-eyed children who think all the world's problems could be fixed. "Just vote for Ron Paul maaaan and everything will be groovy." Sorry kids, it doesn't work that way - he's not a jedi, he's not going to just wave his hands and say "this is the Constitution you were looking for" and restore balance to The Force.
If anything is going to up my traffic to this blog, it will be this post due to crazed, Ron Paul supporters spamming it and telling me how I hate liberty, I'm a fascist bootlicker and that I want to vote for Big Brother in '08. Seriously, check out Digg sometime and type in "Ron Paul" in the search bar... read the comments in those articles and see how crazy these people are. These are the kind of people that talk about seceding from the union or waging a full-scale revolution against the United States - I wish I was witty enough to make this shit up, but it's true, people like this exist.
Fortunately for us, the Civil War Part 2: Electric Boogaloo isn't coming anytime soon since the overwhelming majority of these people aren't capable of being in direct sunlight for more than an hour and their carpal tunnel syndrome is likely to hinder their ability of properly using a firearm. I have to laugh at it, because it is so childish - a group of people thinking one guy is all it would take for the revolution to come and then we'd finally be free from the corporate chains in our government. Hey, I liked "V For Vendetta" too, but I'm not the kind of guy that thinks it was a documentary, ya know? It amuses me that these are the folks talking about liberty and being a patriot. A true patriot wouldn't want to destroy his country or secede from it, he would stay and fight for it, not against it. These are like the jokers that claimed they wanted to move to Canada after Bush got re-elected, a real American doesn't run, no matter how bleak the future may seem.
Ron Paul supporters, if you were truly serious about reforming our government and bringing forth many of the admittedly good ideas that Dr. Paul represents, then you would realize that real change starts from the bottom up, not the other way around. You're not going to change the system by getting 2% of the vote on election day, learn about candidates in your local elections - city, county and state. If we get enough progressive thinkers in our local governments, then they're eventually going to move onto the federal level and who knows, maybe someday, the presidency.
Or you could just spam internet forums all day, that's what the Founding Fathers would have done.
So I get the feeling I may have offended some of my friends with my previous blog about how organized religion is brainwashing and how teaching Intelligent Design in schools is really, really stupid. I stand by both of those statements, but don't take it as me saying I'm some stone cold atheist - I'm not, I just think that if there is a god, it's something a bit more complicated than the fairy tale versions we've passed down from generation to generation. I also think Jesus Christ is a terrific role model and that brings us to today's topic: ignorant shit that gets carried out in his name. The whole point behind the previous entry was to emphasize why religion and government should never mix, because it always ends up with some horrible idea getting shoved down everyone's throat, like the issue of gay marriage.
Yes, once again the Federal Marriage Amendment has come up - idiotic politicians, legislating bigotry, are trying to get a constitutional amendment to ban all gay marriage. Of course, George W. Bush tried this '04 and it got laughed out of congress, which will happen this time around as well, but the funny part this time is who is sponsoring the bill - Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and David Vitter (R-LA)!
Not familiar with these two Republican assclowns? Well, Larry Craig was arrested last year for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom through the code of tapping your foot underneath the adjoining stall - his excuse was his "wide stance." David Vitter was linked to a New Orleans prostitution ring. You can't make this shit up folks, these are the guys who are going to "protect marriage?" They can't even protect their own and they're worried about what gay people do in the privacy of their own homes?
It's just another example in the long list of Republican hypocrisies when it comes to sex, it seems those who speak out on something so much are doing it themselves. Hey, you know what would be really fun? Let's go down the list (like Larry Craig goes down in airport... well you know the joke I'm getting at here). Here's a brief list of some hypocritical politicians caught with their pants down, I would list them all, but Blogger doesn't provide that much space:Dr. David HagerThe Man - Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist, was a Bush apointee to the FDA who strongly opposed abortion, emergency contraception and premarital sex. He was once considered one of America's finest Christian physicians and a leading authority on women's health.
The "Wide Stance" Moment - Hager's ex-wife from a 32 year marriage came out after their divorce and stated that between the years of 1995 and 2002, Hager would anally rape her in her sleep. Hager's response? "He missed," clearing up that it's perfectly okay to rape your wife in the traditional sense and that a leading authority of women's health couldn't find his own wife's vagina after 32 years of marriage.
Mark Foley
The Man - Florida congressman who fought against child molestation and exploitation. He introduced a bill titled the "Child Modeling Exploitation prevention Act of 2002" to combat child pornography and teamed up with America's Most Wanted to help strengthen the laws against child predators.
The "Wide Stance" Moment - Foley resigned from congress in 2006 after it was revealed that he was sending sexually explicit instant messages and e-mails to teenage boys working as congressional pages. Foley blamed the messages on his drinking problem, as I'm sure many of you have gotten wasted and solicited minors for gay sex.
Bill O'Reilly
The Man - C'mon, we all know this moral crusading asshole.
The "Wide Stance" Moment - O'Reilly, the self-professed "traditionalist," was accused of sexual harrassment by Andrea Mackris when she claimed O'Reilly would call her and suggest various things he would like to do with her - during one conversation she alleged he was using a vibrator on himself while talking to her.Strom ThurmondThe Man - The segregationist senator who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and yet remained in office until his death in 2003.
The "Wide Stance" Moment - Thurmond had an illegitimate black daughter in 1925 born to a 16 year old maid in the Thurmond household when he was 22. A black maid in 1920s South Carolina? Gee, I wonder what would have happened to her if she said no?
Jim West
The Man - The former mayor of Spokane, Washington who supported several anti-gay laws, many that would ban homosexuals from working in schools and day care centers.
The "Wide Stance" Moment - West was accused of sexually molesting two young boys while working as a sheriff's deputy and a boy scout leader and later admitted to seeking out gay sex via the internet.
And that's just the five that I thought were the most infuriating. And we're worried about what gay people are doing in their own private lives while corrupt scumbags like this are running our country, our health care and influencing voters via radio and television? We'll talk more about gay marriage in the future, but regardless of your feelings on it, how could you want to be on the same side as the people like those listed above? For these lunatics that use the Bible as their reason for persecuting against gays, maybe they should remember that the only person Jesus ever condemned was the hypocrite.
I'm getting extremely tired of reading bogus claims that Obama canceled a trip to see wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn't take cameras with him. It's flat-out wrong and even the dirty McCain campaign has tried to distance themselves from it, but I still see idiots posting it on various message boards and other social networking sites. First off, Obama visited troops in Kuwait without any major media - any video you see of that visit is from the military folk who were there. Secondly, there is no evidence whatsoever that supports the idea that Obama wanted to take the press with him. The reason why the event was canceled is because Obama feared that visiting wounded troops alone (which he is allowed to do as a sitting senator) would be seen as using those brave men and women as props for political gain.
