Tag: John Kerry

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Cape Buffalo Taser

There is a famous video on Youtube of an amazing encounter between a herd of cape buffalo and a group of lions in Kruger National Park in South Africa. You’ve probably seen it. A herd of unaware cape buffalo are strolling along a river bank towards several lions lying in the grass snoozing. The lions wake up, smell lunch coming, and approach the buffalo. The buffalo become a little tentative, pawing and snorting, until the lions make their move. The buffalo turn to flee but the lions pick out a juvenile and tackle him on the fly and roll him into the river. While five lions try to drag the wailing buffalo onto dry land, two crocodiles suddenly emerge from the surface of the water and a ridiculous, horrifying tug-of-war ensues. The lions eventually prevail, but just as they are getting ready to dine, lo and behold, the herd of buffalo return, shyly, teasingly. Individuals charge forward, change their minds, and return to the herd. Finally a bold one or two take a run at the lions. One of them actually flips a lioness into the air. She flees, and as the adult buffalo close in, one by one, the other lions abandon their meal. Miraculously, the juvenile has survived and runs back to the protection of the herd.

There is another video on youtube of a herd of students listening to John Kerry speak. Some security guards are nearby, dozing. One student boldly asks a difficult question. You can hear that he has become emotional– bad move. The security guards move in and try to remove him from the herd. And the rest of the herd sits on their hands and does nothing, except for one young woman who screams at the guards. The crocodiles join in and hold the boy down while the security guards taser him several times. The herd does nothing. The herd sits on their hands. That’s nature. Survival of the strong. Fortunately, some tourists were there at the time to capture this exciting moment of American democracy in action.

 

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The Bipartisan Ugly

The ugly side of the issue: Well the issue is plain ugly, like race and gender politics. Bush knows it, and Kerry knows it, but that won’t prevent either of them from playing politics with it.

Watch for the classic Rove-Bush strategy of allowing the president to take the high-road– proclaiming himself a reasonable moderate who respects diversity– while unleashing proxy spokespersons to really sling the mud. Rove knows that if Bush caters too much to the right, he risks losing moderate voters. At the same time, he needs to slyly clue the extreme right in: he doesn’t mean what he says to a national audience– it’s all code

Does the right continue to believe that Bush can actually do something about abortion? Yes. Well, he can. He can appoint sympathetic judges to appeals courts and to the Supreme Court. Will the Supreme Court, then, ever outlaw abortion? In your dreams. .

Kerry will also have to speak in code. Publicly, he will probably oppose same-sex marriage. Privately, he will want his hard-core supporters to know he will be much kinder to gays than Bush.

It’s like a bunch of big, tough school kids standing around. And they see a little thug picking on an even smaller, unpopular kid mercilessly. The Democrat says, they shouldn’t pick on him. The Republican says, “oh– you a friend of his?” The Democrat says, “Who? Me? Are you kidding?”

Both these guys know that America would be much better served by a frank discussion of taxes, military policies, security, and energy, and the environment. But that doesn’t score many votes for Bush, so watch for the gay bashing to enter a fever pitch as the election campaigns reach their strides.

Check here for more information about Bush science.

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Same Sex Marriage

I don’t believe that even George Bush really supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Believe it or not– in spite of what I have said about George W. previously– he isn’t that stupid. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that his top advisor, Karl Rove, isn’t really that stupid.

Why? Good question.

It’s not hard to figure out why trying to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a stupid idea, even if you do believe in the bible. The definition of marriage as a life-long union between one man and one woman is so clearly bound up with a religious doctrine and is so culturally and historically specific that large numbers of lawyers, judges, editorialists, and even some law-makers will eventually come to realize that it simply isn’t viable to enshrine the idea in the constitution. You have to start discussing the origins of that definition of marriage, it’s foundation in religious law (or do you want to try to argue that it is the product of “natural” law?), it’s claims of normativity (when more than 50% of heterosexual marriages fail in the U.S.) and what, exactly, it is that is so valuable about it. Is the purpose of marriage to have children? Explain that to childless couples.

You have to explain why divorce is permitted for trivial reasons, and why couples are allowed to live together common-law, if marriage is so sacred.

You have to explain the difference between common-law marriage and legal marriage. You have to start thinking about how the state tries to treat children from single-parent homes, and why.

I’m not saying that there isn’t anything valuable about the old fashioned heterosexual definition of marriage. Just that it would be very hard to prove that keeping marriage exclusively hetero-sexual would provide something to our society that is indispensable or irreplaceable. Unless you are James Dobson.

But James Dobson might have to come clean in a campaign like this. No, he won’t. You see, if Dobson ran for office, he would actually have to try to persuade a majority of voters that his politics are reasonable and wise. He would actually be accountable for his views. But in his best-selling books and tapes, Dobson can pontificate about all of society’s ills without ever being challenged or disputed.

Will John Kerry ever have an opportunity to ask George Bush if, since he feels that marriage should be the union of one man and one woman for life, he approves of divorce? Get him on the record. Let him explain why being in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman doesn’t mean you don’t recognize that there are situations in which a divorce is desirable or allowable. See if his right-wing evangelical minions agree.

Still, you never know. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Texas legislature came out and declared that the earth was flat one of these days.

The problem is that the constitution is about the set of rules and principles that govern the way we, as individuals, associate with each other. It doesn’t tell you that the purpose of such associations is to seek salvation, or to experience sensual gratification, or some kind of higher consciousness. It leaves that to religion. The constitution wisely leaves to each of us the right to decide what the ultimate purpose of life is.

It is not for the state to define what the pursuit of happiness means. It is not for the state to define love or marriage or family or happiness. The purpose of the constitution is to keep you from being able to prevent me from seeking my own happiness according to my own beliefs, in so far as my pursuit of happiness does not impinge upon your pursuit of happiness.

We aren’t very big on the idea that the state should consciously promote moral virtue in it’s citizens. In other words, we want to promote orderliness and prosperity and justice, and any law that clearly advances those ideals will resonate with our existing laws and institutions. But any law that tries to tell us what happiness is, or should be, goes too far.

There is no constitutional logic that provides a rationale for banning gay marriage. It clearly is no skin off James Dobson’s, or anyone else’s, nose if a couple of guys or girls in New York want to share an apartment and sleep together and make each other beneficiaries of their life insurance policies. It really isn’t, no matter how many stupid things Dobson may say and how often he may say it.

I may not believe that people should be driving around in Hummers, but I can’t stop them. If they can pay for the gas, and if they abide by the rules of the road, they have the right to drive a Hummer. Some guy driving a Hummer does not infringe upon my right to drive a Toyota. (Let’s leave alone, for a moment, the argument that a Hummer uses up more resources belonging to everyone– like air– than most other vehicles.)

George Bush is going to have to try to argue that gay marriage somehow prevents me from driving my Toyota, in a manner of speaking. He’s going to have to argue that gay marriage somehow is going to prevent you from…. well, I can’t even imagine what they will argue gay marriage prevents you from do it. The truth is, he might as well blurt it out– he just doesn’t like it.

The truth is– and I think any in depth discussion of the issue will eventually elucidate it– that gay marriage doesn’t hurt anyone.

Unless. Unless you are going to argue that homosexuality is an unhealthy, abnormal lifestyle. But then, you don’t just need to ban gay marriage. You need to ban homosexuals.

And James Dobson and his cohorts might well say, well, what’s wrong with that idea? “When I grew up, we didn’t have homosexuals. Homosexual acts are still illegal in some states. It ought to stay that way.”

So, why not a constitutional amendment making it illegal to engage in homosexual acts?

Because then you would see how silly and unworkable it is.

Bush may be clueless about the implications of this issue, just as he seems clueless about the implications of just about every policy of this administration. (After Texas implemented an abstinence-only high school sex education system under then governor Bush, it’s rate of teen pregnancy slipped to the highest in the nation). But Karl Rove isn’t. He probably doesn’t care one whit whether the proposed amendment gets passed or not.

The truth is, that he is hoping to make use of some bigotry. He knows the Democrats would prefer not to oppose the amendment, because they know that Americans, by a ratio of 2 – 1 disapprove of gay marriage. And he knows that many Democrats are as ahead of the Republicans on this issue as Johnson, Kennedy, and the Supreme Court were ahead of the country on the issue of race in 1963.

How feeble does it sound, intellectually?  Try this:

“It should be an inalienable right, guaranteed by our Constitution, to live in a marriage-based society,” said Robert Knight, director of the Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute. “When you create counterfeit marriages and put them into the law, you’re undermining society’s most important safeguard against tyranny.

Actually, that doesn’t just sound feeble.  It sounds downright stupid.   A “marriage-based” society?  Sounds almost like “creationism”.  But you can see how the right is groping for some rationale for why they think their rights are infringed by the idea of same-sex unions, when clearly they are not.

Quote from Salon

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The Incomprehensible Scabrous Viciousness of Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, bless her little heart, doesn’t want you to buy into a false patriotism.

You might be confused, you see. You might look at two men who are now fixed beside each other in the public mind– the two likely candidates for President of the United States– and you might sort of realize that one of them has actually served in war, and the other sends other young men to do the fighting, while giving the richest citizens of the United States of America a big fat pass on paying the costs of this war.

Well, look at him. Bush has the face of a pretty little frat boy who might have pulled a few strings to make sure he didn’t get sent into any danger over there in Viet Nam. John Kerry looks like Herman Munster. But he also looks like someone who has paid some dues.

It’s not a political thing. John McCain has obviously paid some dues. Clinton didn’t look like he paid any dues (but he was a pretty effective president). Bush Sr. paid dues. Reagan didn’t. Check out the chicken-hawks.

But Ann Coulter is concerned lest you actually think that a man who served in the air National Guard and probably had daddy pull strings to get him there so he never had to face enemy fire is somehow less courageous and heroic than someone who actually went to war for his country. This is the remarkable topsy-turvy world of Republican blonde bimbo columnists: Of course he is less courageous and heroic. Even a rational Republican should be able to admit that a man who actually served in war time has made a slightly greater sacrifice than someone who joined the weekend frolics of the Texas Air National Guard?

You might not like Kerry’s politics, but don’t be silly about the military record.

The only thing that is baffling to me is why the Republicans are missing a rather wonderful opportunity to show that they can occasionally rise above petty, vindictive, party politics and do something with class. Why not acknowledge Kerry’s honorable service? Why not praise him?

Instead, we have Ann Coulter actually trying to make it sound like George Bush wanted to serve in Viet Nam, but the war, unfortunately, ended before he could finish his National Guard duties. Ann– duh!– he was in the National Guard precisely so he could avoid Viet Nam. Hello!

And then, from the scurrilous, to the despicable:

Ann Coulter says, of Max Cleland:

Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place.

That’s pretty shameless. Max Cleland, unlike George Bush, went to Viet Nam to serve his country honorably. One day he picked up a grenade that he saw lying in the ground below a helicopter from which he had just disembarked. He thought it was his, and had fallen from his belt, and was therefore safe. It turned out to have belonged to someone else, and it was alive, and it blew up in his hands. He lost both arms and a leg.

Wow! Talk about hardball. All you can do is look at Ms. Coulter with astonishment, and wonder if the Democrats have the testicles to go up against people with such piercing, stiletto wits. Imagine that– attacking the war record of a paraplegic!

Will any patriotic Republicans have the character, courage, or integrity to stand up to Ann Coulter and put her in her place? (Ha ha.) She is attacking a war hero! She is dishonoring a veteran! Not bloody likely, of course, since most Republican leaders never served in any wars, and therefore don’t feel any real sense of obligation to those who did.

They are famously known as “chicken-hawks”.

Those who did– like John McCain and Chuck Hagel– have, in fact, made known their distaste for those who attack the patriotism of war veterans who happen to be political opponents.

And shouldn’t Ms. Coulter leave it to a few veterans to take up the issue of Max Cleland’s fitness for office, seeing as, obviously– I mean, as obvious as anything has ever been obvious– Ann Coulter never served and never will serve in any kind of military?

But then, Ann Coulter is a puff of air anyway, a blonde bimbo recruited by Republican fund-raisers to counter-act the image of the party as an old white boy’s club. See? It’s hip to be vindictive and scabrous.

I doubt we’ll soon see a Tom Delay talking action figure in a mini-skirt.

Order the Ann Coulter action figure doll! Now! Or else!

Well, hey, I thought it was a joke. There, at the bottom of her column, on www.townhall.com, is the ad for the Ann Coulter “Talking Action Figure”. You know it’s going to talk, of course.. What else does it do? Does it wear a uniform as Ann Coulter, obviously, never has and never will? Does it go out and visit people and interview them and research important issues? What? And confuse the issues?

This is classic. Ann Coulter, in a mini-skirt, attacking those racist liberals