Oh goddammit I need to put a different channel on in the morning
The Today Show isn’t even *trying* to appear to be non-partisan anymore–they just had Newt Gingrich on this morning to talk about how much Obama sucks in his opinion, and that was the whole damn piece. No figure head for the other side, nothing. I guess they’ve done this with Laura “who the fuck?” Ingrahrharhm before, I just wasn’t compelled to write about it.
Not that I feel the “hey we need to represent both SIDES!” thing actually acheives some sort of non-bias or is anything but gimmicky bullshit, but since when is the Today show anything but gimmicky bullshit? I guess what chapped my hide was that they didn’t even challenge the ridiculous shit he was saying–he was like, “dude North Korea shot a MISSLE and Obama did NOTHING! Iran is building a bomb and we’re sitting on our Laurels! We’re all doomsauced! Oh we have to be coldly indifferent to people in other countries we don’t like we totally can’t be nice to them.”
Ok I kinda get the reasoning for the latter part of that, but why the fuck didn’t Meredith Lauer (I can’t damn well remember who did the interview) ask, “well, what would YOU have done about North Korea and Iran?” ‘Cause to me it sounded like he was gung ho about getting us embroiled in a whole new mess o’ never-ending wars.
Shit I guess it’s about time we expanded this paltry empire. Gingrich for President, 2012! We’ll either be able to fly to get some seriously authentic khoresht without passports, or we will be fighting for roadkill in the streets. Exciting, either way, right??
You must read this
It’s seriously one great smack after another. I was dying laughing. I am going to remember the last “story” in this and use it every day. EVERY DAY I TELL YOU.
I think I’m going to make facebook friends or twitter friends with Roger Ebert, if I can! Haha!
Edit: I can’t. Apparently he’s too cool for social networking sites.
This is too long, egads
I was reading a summary of the Iowa supreme court opinion (I swear to tacos I will read the whole thing when I have the time/patience/etc.), and it is a pretty sweet opinion if I do say so myself.
I feel like in most of these cases where the court goes along with the state’s purpose of “endorsing traditional marriage” and “encouraging procreation,” the court is being completely disingenuous, for reasons slapped around forthrightly by the Iowa court. The court noted that even if the traditional family is optimal, how the fuck does excluding gay people from marrying in any way encourage more families like that? How the hell does keeping gay people from marrying “encourage” procreation? How does excluding gay people from marrying make heterosexual marriage more stable?
Recognizing the sincere religious belief held by some that the “sanctity of
marriage” would be undermined by the inclusion of gay and lesbian couples, the
court nevertheless noted that such views are not the only religious views of
marriage.
Fucking DUH.
I seriously don’t see how even under the most lenient rational basis tests this shit can fly. The only one I can see making sense under the rational basis standard is the government resources one.
The tiers of scrutiny used by courts in order to determine whether laws are Constitutional under equal protection sort of make my head spin–the tiers are highest for race issues, intermediate for gender, and rational basis for everything else. State courts have the power to do stuff like this Iowa court did–make sexual orientation an “intermediate” category under their state’s Constitution. Under rational basis, a court must uphold a state law even if it’s stupid and unwise even if there’s the smallest bit of rationality to it. It’s a little more complicated than that when you consider the Romer case and such, but just for the sake of argument, how do these things pass rational basis muster? The state’s arguments are, essentially:
Maintaining traditional marriage. As the Iowa court noted, this is a circular argument to say “the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification” when no underlying reason is given. I’m pretty sure after reading the bible that “tradition” included dudes who had a harem of 1000 wives. Totally disingenuous.
“Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children.” This is where I stick my finger down my throat and vomit everywhere. I think the lack of ability to discern “how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents” is what makes this not even pass rational basis muster. The court talks about how the law doesn’t target horrifically abusive heterosexual parents, and hurts the already-alive and breathing children of gay parents (I wonder sometimes if “gay marriage hurts children!” honks think that gay people won’t start having kids until they’re married or something?), so it obviously isn’t designed with the optimal interests of children in mind. True, true. It’s just that banning gay marriage doesn’t even have a tangenital benefit to the children of heterosexual parents, unless you count “the government is complicit in my telling my kids that homos are making a choice and are going to go to hell for it and no one should feel bad when they are mercilessly bullied at school” a benefit. I guess some people do, considering that was the very argument I heard when I got into this with a friend of mine. That and “I don’t want my little boy to think it’s okay to marry a little boy!” I find it hard to believe “if my kids see gay people marrying and stop hating them they will turn gay” can be a rational argument, though.
Promotion of Procreation. This makes me laugh, and cry. It makes me sad that, holy shit the government fancies itself to be the AKC association for human beings. We want people to breed as much as possible! “The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.” No shit. I’m pretty sure straight people aren’t going to go galt from humping if teh gayz are allowed to marry. Is there a worse argument than this in existence? It also seems weird to me that this is the place of the government. I mean, if everyone in the U.S. decided to join the voluntary human extinction movement, which involves being purposely childless to allow the human race to just fizzle out, I think that’s their goddamned business. I think it’s just nasty and dehumanizing–like the silly uteri of the world need to do their duties as future soldier factories.
Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships. Once again, yeah marriage probably convinces straight people who hate each other to stick it out despite the misery it inflicts on their lives makes opposite-sex relationships more stable, but how the fuck does excluding gay people make opposite-sex relationships more stable? I feel sad for the relationship founded at pointing at gay people and going “neener neener,” I really do.
Conservation of Resources. This might be the only one I think passes the flimsy rational basis test. Marriage does result in tax breaks rather than penalties a majority of the time. So basically the gov’t would be like “wah we get more tax revenues from single gay people!” and since the government doesn’t have to treat you equally if it has a “rational” reason for doing so–although I wonder if there was a detailed analysis even this would turn out to be bogus. However, the court can’t do a detailed analysis of this sort of thing, it’s supposed to take the legislature’s word for it as long as this basis, if true, is “rational,” even if it’s dumb as shit. Anyway, since Iowa determined sexual orientation to be totally mid-tier, this bullshit did not fly.
Religious Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage – I’m not even sure why this is worth considering, or why the government thought this was worthy of bringing up. The court of course was like, “there are plenty of religions that embrace gay marriage?” but come on. There was religious opposition to interracial marriage too, people who are stupid fucking morons shouldn’t dictate the rights of people in this country even the majority is stupid fucking poop-smoking shitbrains.
Anyway, this has gone on far too long. I cynically await this to be overturned, but I do have some hope for the law being passed in Vermont to stay, though.
Iowa: land of, I don’t know, and gay marriage
So Iowa became the fourth state where the Supreme Court ruled that precluding marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional. Being the bleeding heart hippy I am, this makes me happy, but being the cynical misanthrope I am, I figure it’s only a matter of time before the idiots people of that state change the Constitution. Right? I mean, if it happened in CA, surely it will happen in Iowa? If it doesn’t I think Californians should feel deep, deep shame, but I bitterly don’t think these good things last for long.
Gay marriage is one of those things where I cannot even possibly see the point of the other side. As pro-choice as I am I can at least understand where someone pro-life is coming from, if he or she has at least a modicum of intellectual consistency and isn’t also anti-contraception, but this is basically “omg my religion should RULE THE WORLD” or “I vote without even looking to see if those ads on TV are telling the truth because I’m fucking ignorant.”
I can’t even argue about this with my friends and family who are against gay marriage because their arguments are illogical, they start talking about “god’s law” (as if an atheist gives a rat’s fuckin’ ass what “god’s law” is), or talk about how being gay is a choice they shouldn’t have to support, or that if gay marriage is legal it will make your kids think being gay is okay and therefore will become gay. This is why no sheltered home-schooled kids* who are taught there is no evolution and they will be smote in their beds for masturbating ever become gay, and why there are no creepy fucking bible camps to try and convince these kids to pretend not to be gay stop making that “choice.”
Speaking of not exposing your kids to the world in fear that they might go along with it–isn’t that, you know, proof that your position is inherently weak? If I had kids I’d tell them what I believed but I’d also tell them about various religions and let them choose on their own. I guess when you seriously think there’s a little, red, cloven-hoofed dude in your brain trying to convince you to be bad you just see “logic” as “the debbul” and there is just no goddamned reason to continue a conversation with you.
I’m going to read the decision, but it’s 69 pages long and that gives me heart palpitations. 69 pages isn’t long if I’m reading The Hobbit, but it sure as fuck is if I’m reading convoluted legalese.
*For the record, I think homeschooling is great if the purpose isn’t to brainwash your kids out of ever having a single thought of their own.
Baby Jesus Christ on a flaming pogo stick on a derailing rollercoaster
And I bet these are the same people who refuse to believe humans evolved from a primate ancestor. Well, and they’re so stupid they think evolution means “if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys.”
Sometimes I think we probably devolved from monkeys.
I can’t even really form a commentary on this horse shit because the stupidity just speaks for itself, and, well, the Canadians in the comments sum it up pretty well.
I guess the only thing I can add really that’s a side point–these fuckin dingleberries said something like, “Andrew Leslie, an unusual name for a man–”
Errr, even assuming their bullshit machismo emasculating ideas regarding first names which can be both male and female were true, it sounded like it was the dude’s last name. I didn’t realize even last names had to be totally manly macho to pass the muster of fascist conservative gender-role enforcers. I guess any man with a last name that isn’t “Danger” or “Killmaster” needs to go change it RIGHT NOW!
There really was so much “lol Canadians aren’t MACHO enough” in this it was nauseating. I wish these fuckfaces would start their own Theocracy on a deserted island somewhere already.
Funn
Ok, this is the funniest shit shirt I’ve seen all day–
I was walking to class and I saw a dude with a shirt that said “I Survived the Bush Administration” on top, a photo which I assume was Bush-Administration-Related but was too fuzzy and gray for me to discern its contents, and on the bottom the years 2000-2008.
I wonder if the back said “and all I got was this lousy t-shirt?”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHA
What the hell man. Is this a joke? Is this for real? This cannot be fucking serious. HuffPo is pulling my leg and I do not appreciate it.
Tucker Carlson. . .calling Jon Stewart a partisan hack.
I don’t care if Jon Stewart is a “partisan hack” (whatever the fuck that means, I’m pretty sure Jon Stewart never pretended to be fair and balanced, and I didn’t realize there was a law against being partisan). . .
I don’t care how big of a “partisan hack” he is.
Even assuming Jon Stewart IS a partisan hack, Tucker Carlson calling ANYONE a partisan hack is like. . .
It’s like Barry Bonds calling A-Rod a ‘roid head
It’s like Dick Cheney calling a bear a godless killing machine.
It’s like Eminem calling Weird Al “whitey.”
It’s like Budweiser calling Coors urine-like swill.
It’s like The Star calling The National Enquirer a trashy rag.
It’s like an undead calling an orc stinky.
I think you get the picture.
It’s the quintessential “hey there pot, meet kettle!”
Is this man seriously that delusional, or does the entire aggregate of republican pundits consist of bizarre, highly coordinated, Kaufman-esque performance artists? It’s either one. There is no other option. I’ve seriously thought that about Ann Coulter for a long time, I really think she’s the most elaborate instance of satire ever, but apparently EVERYONE is getting in on the act.
