Conservative Principles Support Marriage Equality

So I wonder why so many conservatives are against marriage equality?  The single most common thing I hear from conservatives, particularly Tea Party conservatives, is that they are the defenders of liberty, freedom and the constitution.  Given those criteria the freedom of someone to have the liberty to marry the person of their choice should be right in their wheel house.  Conservatives love to quote the founding fathers, so let’s start there.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,  that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

A quote I’m sure you recognize from the Declaration of Independence, written and signed by the aforementioned founding fathers of our country.  Of course, it can easily be said these men were being hypocrites, the idea is nice but the practice that followed was that all white men were created equal, women and non-whites to the back of the bus please.  However I like to think that maybe the founding fathers were idealist who hoped that someday our country would rise to the level of these lofty ideals.

In fact, in many ways we have, we’ve come very far from the 1700’s, women and non-whites can vote, they enjoy generally equal rights in our society.  This is not to say sexism and racism don’t exist or have an impact, but certainly we have progressed in the last two hundred plus years.

The Constitution itself is silent on any discussion of marriage, but the document, particularly through the first ten amendments, seems to lay down a pretty consistent idea with the Declaration of Independence and that idea is that people are equal and should be treated fairly.  As such they should be free to express their ideas and religion they follow, be free from an oppressive government, excessive punishments and bailments.  My favorite amendment has always been the ninth amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” 

So as defenders of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the principles of the founding fathers, conservatives should support an issue that at its heart is an expression of freedom and equality!

I could stop this piece here but I know inevitably I will hear the argument, disingenuous as it is that conservatism and Christian religious belief are tied together as America is a Christian nation.  Even though the documents referenced above clearly state you are free to practice any religion you would like, hardly a Christian ideal as doing so would condemn you to hell.   Here is an interesting piece on the subject, Why the US is not and has never been a Christian Nation.

The reason I can so easily dismiss this remark on the issue of marriage equality is simply that conservatives have never viewed marriage as a Christian or even a religious idea for that matter.  Oh sure it’s been great rhetoric in recent years and Bush the second even tried to get a one man, one woman amendment supported, but in fact the actions of both Christians and Conservatives clearly show marriage is not the Christian religious issue they pretend it is.  How can I say this, well if they thought it was a Christian issue then why haven’t they opposed Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim marriage? Ok, so maybe it’s just a religious issue, not a Christian thing.  If so, why haven’t conservatives and Christians been out there fighting vehemently against the right for Atheists to be married?  Have you ever heard of a single state where there was significant political opposition to Atheists getting married?  Of course you haven’t, because at the end of the day marriage equality is not a political or religious issue, its bigotry.

It completely parallels the opposition to interracial marriage also an issue of bigotry.  I have heard since I was a child that God is love, almost always from highly religious Christians, yet I don’t see a whole lot of Christian love on this issue.  So given that the idea of marriage equality follows conservative principles and is so clearly not a Christian or religious issue, I have to ask the following question.

Where are my conservative brothers and sisters, why isn’t the Tea Party out in full defense of the idea of marriage equality waving rainbow-colored flags of support?  Hey you can even paint the background of your Obama is a Socialist signs in rainbow colors and kill two birds with one stone! ~ ZD Blue

Let’s recall the current Miss America

Apparently it wasn’t too cold on stage!!

 

The current Miss AMERICA, Molly Hagan recently told newspapers that she’s probably going to decline on attending the inauguration of the President of the United States of AMERICA because it will be too cold.   The really amazing thing here is that she’s Miss New York, you know that tropical zone where in winter it is so much warmer than it is in Washington, DC.  Oh wait, that’s right, no it’s not!!!!  The temperatures are expected to be cold, in the 30’s a pretty typical temperature for New York this time of year.

What I want to know is where are all of my conservative friends on this issue?  Why isn’t Fox News screaming from the high heavens about Miss AMERICA not willing to attend the inauguration because it will be cold out?  I wonder, were this a Republican administration would they all be so quiet or would she be branded a liberal socialist?  No matter what your political persuasion, how is this anything but insulting and quite frankly un-American.  Don’t get me wrong, she’s a beauty queen, few of the former Miss Americas have been all that impressive, but come on, your title is Miss America, what else don’t we know about her, does Miss New York not like cheesecake, bagels, pizza?  Seriously, if she doesn’t like pizza her and I are going to have a serious problem.

Ok, so before one of you knuckle-heads chimes in with, but she grew up in Alabama let me warn you against that argument.  You see we might draw another conclusion about her reasons should we start exploring her Alabama roots, but then again, suggesting she might be racist, WOULD actually bring out the ire of all of my conservative friends and FOX News would be all over that idea.

Miss AMERICA, go to the damn inauguration and post a picture of you eating a slice!

Why we should let Texas Secede

So in case you haven’t heard there have been over 100,000 people who have signed a petition in Texas asking to secede from the United States of America.  http://www.hilltopviewsonline.com/viewpoints/article_4309f016-3b10-11e2-800d-001a4bcf6878.html

Photo courtesy of TransGriot

I realize at one point we did in fact fight a war in order to keep the union together, this of course is viewed by secessionists then and now as the federal government overextending its authority and trampling on state’s rights.  Never mind that the only right they were really concerned with in the 19th century was keeping slavery legal to fuel a faulty economic system.

During this time I think however that if Texas would like to leave the United States maybe we should let them, however we all know that nothing is for free.  So let’s be clear, there will be a set of conditions that Texas should have to meet before it can leave the union.

1.  Texas has to pony up their share of the US debt equivalent to the remaining population in Texas after secession.

2.  Anyone wanting to enter or leave Texas pre-secession will be allowed to, however after secession anyone remaining in Texas will have to apply for a visa to re-enter the United States and will have forfeited their US Citizenship.

3.  All US military, US Border Patrol and other federal agency assets will be removed prior to secession.  Any physical assets such as buildings will be paid for at the equivalent of 75% of fair market value to the US government by Texas.

4.  Texas will not be part of NAFTA unless it negotiates with all partner nations for access.

5.  The United States retains all natural resource rights in our sovereign waters to fully include the Gulf of Mexico, outside of the 12 mile limit.

6.  No trade will be allowed with Texas until Texas negotiates the appropriate trade treaties and tariff agreements with the United States.

7.  All illegal aliens crossing the border from Texas will be deported back to Texas and the state of Texas will be billed for immigration services since Texas will have voluntarily left the US.

Finally, I’ve always been a fan of even numbers and so hell, once we lose Texas let’s add Puerto Rico, we need more resort locations in the United States and besides, they actually want to be a state.

Let me save some time: No need to watch the debates

So let me save you some time by telling you in advance exactly what is going to happen and even what most of you will think about it.

Obama vs Romney

If you’re a Republican or Conservative you will be upset that Obama lied so much, you will interpret any statement he makes as evidence of his further plan to socialize America, redesign the flag, take away all of our guns and ruin our economy, regardless of what the facts are.

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal you will be feeling very smug as Romney once again showed himself to be stiff and disconnected from the common man, confused on the facts and generally unpresidential.  You’ll be thrilled at how smooth the president comes off.

Biden vs Ryan

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal DO NOT WATCH THIS DEBATE!  Paul Ryan is going to slaughter Biden, he’ll seem confident, self-assured, he’ll lie and people will clap and Biden, as Biden always does, will demonstrate his extreme flexibility by inserting his foot deeply in his mouth while still standing at the podium and smiling all at the same time.

If you’re a Republican or Conservative, ITS PARTY TIME!!!  Invite your friends over, bring out the Ann Coulter posters, run the split screen Fox News Commentary, play let’s drill in Alaska Boardgames, and thoroughly enjoy yourselves.  If the poll numbers are accurate and the trend continues this may be your last happy night this election season.

Just another public service message in hopes of simplifying your life.  ~ ZD Blue

Why the United States is Doomed

The American experiment has failed, or more precisely is on the precipice of failing.  The sad part of this prognosis is that it’s not the American people who have failed directly, but make no mistake we all share some level of culpability.  We have failed through the poor choices we and our parents have made.  You see we’ve bought into some things and let some things happen that have brought our country to the edge of failure.  We have allowed our government to be about two things, re-electing incumbents and the influence of money.  It has all become solely about power and we have allowed for a system of governance where the determining factor for most elections is how much media can you buy, how many special interests can fund you and through that process how well can you distort reality to make your opponent out to be un-American, a Socialist, out to get senior citizens, planning to ruin our economy, planning to tax the rich, or not planning to tax the rich, not being born in this country, or being of the wrong religion, socio-economic class, or color.

The reason America is doomed is because what we have truly lost in the process of selling out our government is the truth.  You see the truth doesn’t matter any more, science is abhorred, unless of course it is being used to find a new way to get people high, or make your I-phone better, faster, stronger, able to masturbate you while you surf the web with unlimited battery capacity on a 4G network.

How do I know this to be true?  Because routinely when inaccuracies are pointed out by multiple fact checkers the political response is to misdirect or create confusion, to change the focus of the news as soon as possible.  BOTH parties do this, it is the standard operating procedure of today’s politics.  And people on both side of the aisle let pass because the other side does it to.

Also if you notice, both sides are always right, the other side is always wrong.  I would ask you simply, what ideology have you ever encountered that is right 100% of the time.  If that were possible, Fox News and MSNBC are never wrong and their stories, opinions and general bullshit are diametrically opposed, so they can’t both be right.  Poor CNN who actually tries to what FOX News claims to be, fair and balanced, has seen it’s ratings tank in comparison to MSNBC and FOX News, that’s our fault folks, we are the ones who watch the shows, we create the ratings.  We are telling the people who program our news that we are no longer interested in truth, or honest analysis.   We want to watch people argue, make fun of the people of the other view and find out what Marge in Omaha thinks via the anchor’s Twitter feed.

I constantly see television ads that are obvious lies.  If you believe what you see on TV, oil, gas and coal companies care more about local communities, economies and the environment than they do about profits.  Please comment on this piece if you actually believe that to be true, because I have ocean front property for sale in Utah and I want you to have the first crack at it.  This isn’t new folks, for decades people were told to smoke to soothe throat problems and that smoking isn’t bad for you and certainly not addictive.  Tobacco companies, like all big corporations will lie to maximize quarterly profits because they know at the end of the day, the lawsuits mean nothing compared to their profits.  You might think all of those smoking lawsuits destroyed the big tobacco companies, if you believe that, research a company named Altria.  You might know it better by it’s Tobacco company name, Philip Morris.

America may have at one time been truly exceptional, but it wasn’t exceptional by decree of God like most Conservatives seem to believe.  America was exceptional because we solved problems, we compromised when necessary to get things done, we put a priority on educating our children.  That is not a result of a decree from God instead those are the characteristics of a multicultural, evolving and concerned citizenry.   Not the petulant consumer children we have become.

There was a moment, shortly after the tragedy of 9/11 where America seemed like it found itself again.  We put away the partisan bickering, we felt compassion for our fellow Americans.  Except for a few incidents we didn’t go on a nationwide sweep of Muslims and close all of their mosques.  I was proud of America for the first time in my life during that small window of time. 

But that ended, we used the tragedy as a political tool to invade Iraq and it all slowly started to unravel again like a burning flag.  Since that time we have seen nothing but increasing divisiveness, fewer civil liberties, new laws against protest, an ever-increasing home security agency that reaches into every facet of our lives, there are even Homeland Security Documents as part of your loan package when you buy a house.

We have polarized our politics to the point where the minority party will cheer for our economy to fail for their political gain.  My God do you realize what that means?  As the economy tumbles more children go into poverty and therefore more children die due to reduced nutrition and medical care.  So in effect our governmental representatives would rather see children die than compromise 1% of their ideological beliefs.  Maybe we should rename those idiotlogical beliefs.  Now did any of them think that position through to that logical end, of course not, it’s just politics, a game that you win if you and your party get re-elected.

We’ve failed America, we’ve sold our truth, our country and our souls to special interests and corporations.  We did it so we wouldn’t have to think and so we can buy more things.  We abrogated our responsibility and in doing so have sold out our children’s future. 

Two men are running for President of the United States of America and both are probably decent individuals.  Both are the pictures of main stream America, family men, by all accounts good fathers and good husbands both are Christians as so many of you are and yet almost all of you hate one or the other and are willing to accuse them of horrible things.   But both have willingly been manipulated by the political process to put their chances of election, or re-election before their actual core values and it’s too bad. 

However neither of these men are worthy of your scorn or the names you choose to call them.  It is the process that we have condoned that created the polarization in this country.  Liberals are not interested in running this country into a Greek style debt crisis, Conservatives are not awful hateful people who don’t care about poor people.  In fact, I doubt there are many true liberals or conservatives out there.  Most of us have views that range across the spectrum, conservative on some things liberal on others.  If you don’t then you probably aren’t thinking, as I said earlier, no one ideology is right 100% of the time.

America is on the precipice of doom but we can prevent it.  The solution is to be compassionate, considerate of others views, the ability to compromise, a desire to operate off of facts, not opinions.  We need to remove the insane money that drives our politics and maybe even go to open elections instead of primaries and elections pitting one party always against the other.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost faith in this country, we are too selfish to do the things I suggest or to come to agreement on ways to improve things.  It makes me sad that both of my grandfathers fought in World War II for an America Dream that no longer exists.

Call me when the revolution starts

I recently spent three weeks in Ireland, one of the things I really didn’t miss about being out of the country was the constant reporting on the upcoming presidential election between Romney and Obama.  More than that it was incredibly nice not to have to listen to all of the hate speech spewed back and forth between US politicians and all of the idiotic talking heads on the cable news channels.  So I’ve made a decision, I’m only going to get my TV news from The Jon Stewart Show, seriously he seems on a nightly basis to be able to summarize all of the idiocy up in about 18 minutes and do it in a way that makes me laugh.  I’m an information junkie so I’ll still troll through the news websites but I’ve given up news coverage on TV.

The bigger issue in all of this is the fact that our politicians don’t give a shit about the people, not Romney, not Obama, not Democrats or the Republicans.  What’s worse is that now everyone seems to have to be labeled and those who label themselves basically filter the world through that lens, if you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.  So all the conservatives see socialism under every bush and liberals see cruelty and discrimination everywhere, get a grip folks.  If the world was so damn black and white all of the problems would already be solved.

So I wonder is it time to tear it all down and start over?  If the answer to that is yes call me when the revolution starts, it may be televised, but I won’t be watching.

Fun Friday: Rick Santorum quotes

Fun Friday: Rick Santorum quotes

So the psychobilly nutjob Olympics, also known as the GOP presidential primary is down to a two man race.  So I figured for fun Friday I’d give you a deeper look at one of the men at the top, former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.

 

First of course, if you haven’t before, check out the Urban Dictionary entry for Santorum

 

On contraception:

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” –Rick Santorum

 

The best part of this quote on education is that the speech made by Obama actually suggested the exact same thing Mr. Frothy suggested:

 ”President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob … Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.” –Rick Santorum, speaking to a Tea Party group in Michigan (February 2012)

 

On the speech JFK made to show why Catholic’s like Santorum should be considered for president:

“Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up.” –Rick Santorum, on JFK’s 1960 speech about the importance of separation of church and state (October 2011)

 

Uhhhh Whaaat??

“The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person — human life is not a person, then — I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’” —Rick Santorum, CNS News interview (January 2011)

 

Maybe Rick should take a history class from Professor Gingrich

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. … What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers. What we’re talking about are core American values.” –Rick Santorum, campaigning for president in South Carolina (February 2011)

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservatives in America are always screaming about how they are trying to stop the Obama administration from allowing Muslims to institute Shariah Law in the United States.  They claim it would be wrong to impose Islamic religious laws on the citizens of a secular nation.  However these very same conservatives are willing to support religious law as long as it’s their religion being imposed on everyone else.  They are willing to impose their religious views no matter how bigoted they are in regards to preventing gay marriage or the use of insurance to pay for contraceptives or by finding ways to strong-arm organizations like the Susan G Komen for the cure to hold up breast cancer screenings because they happen at Planned Parenthood.

So you might think this idea of Christian Shariah Law is hyperbole but Rick Santorum, recent winner of three Republican Party primaries for the President of the United States very much supports this idea.  Santorum is also ironically the chosen candidate of the religious right and one of the biggest supporters of this idea.

It never ceases to amaze me how little the conservative and religious right, who spend so much time screaming about American Exceptionalism, freedom and the constitution are the ones most often supporting bigotry, lack of freedom and the loss of civil rights.

 

 

 

My State of the Union Speech

My State of the Union Speech

So tonight the president made his state of the union speech, this morning I had a vision of what I might do in the same situation, it would go a little something like this.  The first thing I would do as I approached the podium would be to turn off the teleprompter, then:

Hell o everyone,

The reason I turned off the teleprompter is because although there was a very nice speech written for me tonight, a speech full of the normal platitudes of office, nice things to say about each party, bold statements about what we’ll do this year, lots of mentions about how amazing our country is, in fact that speech is a bunch of bullshit.  Why?  Well mostly because none of you in our government actually give a shit about the American people.  Let’s face it, you all have one allegiance and that is to the re-election party.  The only Americans that you care about are the ones who can finance your campaigns or get you re-elected.

You have become caricatures of yourselves, pandering puppets to the most extreme wings of your parties because those elements are the ones that can get you past your primary elections.  Of course to do that you have to spout positions that appeal to no one but your base, this is a center-right country on most issues but you pretend that it is alternately a bastion of liberal morals, or a den of conservative closed mindedness.   You, all of you, who so consistently condemn Islamic extremists have become conservative or liberal extremists.

There is a lot of good with our country; in general people are good and kind, even if they don’t always want to think very deeply or very much.  The United States does a lot of good in this world, we support countries that are less fortunate than we are, we try to create peace and support democracy which as self-centered as that is seems to be a good thing.

But we are self-centered and much of what we do, regardless of what we say is in our own self-interest, you see, we are a narcissistic nation.  We believe we are better than everyone else; we have a great term for it, American Exceptionalism.  We believe that our form of government, our religion, our values, the way we see the world is right and unless you believe what we believe you are inherently wrong or evil.

We are not a peaceful nation, but we are not warlike either, not usually.  But recently Islamic extremists violated all that we hold sacred; they had the audacity to kill Americans in America.  We used the deaths of those nearly 3000 people to drive us to war in Afghanistan, we decided to drive out the Taliban, remove them from power and kill them because they gave shelter to our enemy.  Then Saddam Hussein outsmarted our president, no major achievement there, but he also outsmarted all of our so-called intelligence agencies as well.  So we decided to go to war in Iraq as well.  We avenged the deaths of Americans by driving the Taliban out of power, killing a lot of them, and a lot of innocents as well.  We got our former ally Saddam Hussein executed and killed a lot of Iraqis, a lot of terrorists, jihadists and children as well.  In the end we’ve changed nothing permanently in Afghanistan, no invading force ever has.  We’ve changed Iraq, maybe for the better and maybe we’ve unified Iraq and Iran in a way they never could have been before.  We killed Osama Bin Laden and have seriously disrupted Al Qaeda everywhere we could find them, no matter what their nationality including American citizens.  Those we haven’t killed we’ve locked up indefinitely in a foreign country, tortured some, and undoubtedly killed some others.

But what have we really gained from our wars?  As of September 30, 2012 we have spent 1.38 trillion dollars on the wars.  This debt, along with a lack of our government being responsible, or Wall Street remotely caring about anyone but their pocketbooks, has led us into the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.  Over this period of time more than 2.6 million Americans have slipped into poverty and my friends poverty kills.  How many lives have been lost here at home to finance our wars that we are fighting to avenge the deaths of people here in America?  To this point we have lost over 5,000 soldiers in combat in the wars, more disturbingly for the last two years we have lost more soldiers to suicide than combat.  Additionally we have over 47,000 American soldiers who have been wounded, many coming home without limbs, traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.  This is the sacrifice we made to avenge 3,000 kills by madmen and to find imaginary weapons of mass destruction.  What we’ve sacrificed in goodwill and how many new terrorists we’ve created due to the massive levels of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan remains to be seen.  According to Wikipedia there are as many as 150,000 civilian deaths between these two countries in our wars.

America, tonight, I suggest we make a change, that we try to be more civil, more peaceful, that we do some really radical things.  First, that we try to look at things from other people’s perspectives not just our own, or our own party’s or our political base, that we actually try to govern instead of just trying to get re-elected.  Let’s actually look at America with a long-term perspective, what do we need to do now, that will pay dividends over the next 20 years instead of what dividends we can pay by the next election.  I’m talking about leadership and vision, you know, the things people actually expect from their political leaders and so rarely get.  Maybe if we employ these two characteristics we might just solve some of the problems we have and actually become as great a nation as we claim to be on the radio and on the talk shows.

Obama assassin aressted for white house shooting charged with stupidity

A 21-year-old man from Idaho was arrested after a short little federal manhunt for trying to assassinate President Barack Obama.  The attempt was made Friday night, the man, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired two shots from a rifle at the White House, one hit a bullet-proof window and the other an exterior wall near the residential area of the White House.

Now although authorities would like to charge this young man with the attempted assassination attempt, they are instead forced to go with the more serious charge of rampant stupidity.  You see the President Obama was actually in San Diego at the time of the shooting.  How, might a murder minded young man know this, well, he could have turned on a freakin television or read any of the press for days before surrounding the college basketball game being played on the deck of a US Naval Aircraft Carrier that the president was attending.

So that left the authorities with no choice and the charge will be, rampant stupidity.  Here’s an image of the genius and a link below to an article detailing the event:

Wiley Coyote, Super Genius

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/17/justice/dc-white-house-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2