Dear Conservatives opposed to Gay Marriage,

If you really believe in Jesus Christ, you would know that he never said a single thing against LGBT people. If you actually read his opinions on how to treat the poor, the sick, the hungry, the foreign and the outcast from society YOU should be the ones leading this fight (as you did against slavery and for Civil Rights). Stop being Pharisees and start being Jesus

If you really believe in personal liberty, you should be front and center demanding the freedom of everyone to live their life as they please in a free society. The government shouldn't be telling anyone who they can or cannot spend their life with. The government shouldn't prejudicially say one class of citizens gets legal protections that another one doesn't.  Stop being for big government when it hurts people and live your principles.

Love is Love.
No matter what form it takes.

Thursday Thumbs vol. II

Happy Pi Day/Steak and Blow-Job Day internet!

Thumbs Down to Google for killing off my internet heroin, Google Reader.  I was an early adopter of Google Reader and loved it from the beginning.  It was a easy to use, clean RSS that revolutionized my internet habits.  The geniuses at Mountain View have been trying to create a social network to rival Facebook by forcing first Buzz and then Google+ down everyone's throat.  While these are fine programs they took Google's trademark simplicity and threw it out the window.  In an effort to get Google+ going they killed of an organic community that had sprung up around Reader's Share function.  Despite numerous protests from around the community and its use by Iranian Opposition movements (The Iranian government blocks many other networking programs but seemed to miss Reader).  Yesterday they announced the final nail in the coffin, that Google Reader would cease to work July 1.  No hope of Google's notorious April Fools jokes.  Boo on you google

(As an aside, I'm fairly sure blogspot will be the next thing to go as they try and push everything onto one platform)

Thumbs Up to New York State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling for overturning Mayor Michael Bloomberg's large sugary drinks ban.  I believe we should not have these drinks, that they are a public health menace. However, I also believe, and more fundamentally, in liberal freedoms.  People should be discouraged from purchasing these drinks (maybe an additional tax?) but an outright ban is a terrible policy. 

Thumbs Down to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for not realizing they lost.  Romney and Ryan have come out swinging in the last 2 weeks with the same arguments that lost them the election 5 months ago.  Paul Ryan tried to jump into the Sequestration morass with a new budget predicated on repealing Obamacare...It's not going to happen.  Fait accompli.  Move on.  Please stop trying.

Thumbs Sarcastically Up to President Obama and Senate Democrats for FINALLY figuring out that the GOP is full of liars who will say anything to get what they want.  I was furious at the Gentleman's Agreement that was made on Filibuster reform.  What on earth would make you think that they would be any less obstructionist and destructive than before they lost the election?  These people live in their own world with their own facts and their own physics.  They just played you AGAIN and managed to win back part of the narrative and kill Obama's momentum coming off the election.

Thumbs Down to Democrats who thought Sequestration was a good idea.  You gave them what they wanted, austerity and starving social programs.  Sure, they will bear the brunt of the political cost at first, but the longer this drags on the more you will be blamed for not reaching a compromise.  They know there will be little to no change in the House thanks to the success of their gerrymandering efforts and are wagering the public will forget it/be tired of Democratic Rule by 2016.  Way to paint yourselves into the corner again guys.

Tentative Thumbs Up to Pope Francis.  You still seem really reactionary and terrible on homosexuals and women but at least you seem to have a strong care for the poor and a humility that was sorely lacking from Mr. Prada Shoes.  It's nice to see the Jesuits get a chance, and someone who is not from Europe (though the fact that most Argentinians consider themselves European, not Latin makes this kind of a half-measure).

Thumbs Up to the Miami Dolphins.  My football team went out and slightly overpaid for the number one available receiver, someone who fits their offense nicely.  Refused to overpay for Reggie Bush (because I'm super excited to see what 3rd round steal Lamar Miller can do).  They significantly upgraded their Linebacking core, while making it cheaper, faster and younger.  The Ravens cut noted Patriot Killer Safety Bernard Pollard.  We need help at Safety.  Could we please strike some fear into Tom Brady about having to play him twice a year.  That would make me very happy (enough to overlook letting Jake Long, and maybe Sean Smith get away)

Thursday Thumbs vol. I

This is a feature from my old blog where I give thumbs up and down to various short items in the news that made me happy or sad every Thursday

Thumbs Up to Sen. Rand Paul.  Now, THIS is what a filibuster should look like.  Opposition to something that is bad for the Republic (as drone warfare, and its use on Americans in particular is) when you stand up and get public attention for the issue.  Not the abuse of the filibuster that has become the norm and is being destroying the system.

Thumbs Up to Dr. Hannah Gay for the second ever cure for AIDS.  Truly noble work and a great hope in the fight against this horrible disease.

Thumbs Down to Dennis Rodman for being a Useful Idiot

Thumbs Down to Attorney General Eric Holder for not saying outright that we won't kill Americans but engaging the type of legalistic BS that we (I) abhorred so much in the Bush Administration.  Certainly he's a better AG than Alberto Gonzales (a favorite whipping boy of my old blog) but still, I wish he had left in the Second Term changeover

Thumbs Down to Sec of State John Kerry for making up new countries

Thumbs Down to Pres. Obama for his Jedi Mind-Meld.  You're supposed to be hip and cool with the nerds....oh, and this

Thumbs Up to the Bradford Batman, for sheer hilarity

Thumbs Up to Carly Rae Jespen for not going to the Boy Scouts Jamboree over their Anti-Gay policies

Thumbs Down to Cardinal Keith O'Brien for being a self-loathing homophobe (but really this could apply to most of the Catholic Hierarchy)

Thumbs Up to Joss Whedon for announcing that he is filming Dr. Horrible II starting this summer. (Now work on the guys at Netflix to get a second season of Firefly)

Tunesday Specials vol. I

Scroobius Pip - Let 'em Come (ft. Sage Francis & P.O.S)

Jim Croce - You Don't Mess Around With Jim

Ben L'Oncle Soul - Seven Nation Army (White Stripes Cover)

What-the-What?

At the risk of jumping into something that well might be a hoax I have to say I'm very intrigued by the news that The Pirate Bay is abandoning it's Norwegian home and seeking refuge in...North Korea?

Coming days after a visit from Self-Marrying/Cross-dressing/Madonna-dating/Worm Dennis Rodman one has to wonder if North Korea has developed a new form of Nuclear Centrifuge powered by how fast the Eternal President and Dear Leader are spinning in their respective graves.

While we know that North Korea has no problems with counterfeiting, this is a whole new territory for them.  I can see this being borne of necessity for The Pirate Bay, but I have to say the optics on it are terrible.  How can you argue for a post-national, post-capitalist freedom of speech from one of the world's most repressive and isolated countries?  How can you encourage people to download and share music, movies and media in a country whose citizens don't even have access to it.  You've just fed the MPAA and IRAA the best possible talking point they could imagine.  This is a great publicity coup for North Korea and only further complicates the possibility of restarting the six party talks. I can only imagine how crazy the happy hour at the Vice offices will be this afternoon.

To play with correctness and skill the ends of games, is an important but a very rare accomplishment, expect among the magnates of the game.

The Sequester is a cluster-funk (the worst kind of funk) of epic proportions for the country but in some ways it is absolutely necessary for the Presidency of Barack Obama. 

In his first term, Mr. Obama tried to live up to the rhetoric he ran on of changing the tone in Washington.  He began negotiations at the point he thought should be the final compromise, and bent over backwards to get even one Republican to sign on (though he certainly can be criticized for not doing enough of the negotiating or selling of his policies himself).  Of course, the Republicans being (occasionally) smart politicians realized that if they said NO! to everything, and painted Mr. Obama as an extreme Socialist the public and media would think the truth lay somewhere between them and destroy the President.  Second-term Obama has, thusfar, given up on that failed strategy and started to fight for what he thought was right.

In 1995 and 1996, President Clinton was faced with an intransigent Republican minority that refused to deal with him on budgetary issues the result was a shut down of the government that was mostly blamed on Republicans.  In 2013 we find ourselves in a similar situation.  The Sequester was agreed on so that neither side would be willing to let it happen.  Instead, the Republicans have fallen into the same trap as 95-96 and Mr. Obama is letting them dig deeper and deeper.

Mr. Obama is playing a long-con in this case.  The Republicans get blamed for the disaster occurring in Washington (hence the furious spin from Bob Woodward and John Boehner about who is responsible) and, if the nascent economic recovery falters people will blame Republicans (and their Randian-Hayekian ideology) for the problems.  If 8 years of the Bush Economy weren't enough to make the association in people's minds, I doubt this will be the tipping point, but who knows.  People have begun to turn on the Republicans and their ideas.  The problem is the House of Representatives.  Barring a landslide mid-term turnout for the President's Party (virtually unheard of in American political history) the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves a safe House Majority and need only run-out the clock on the Obama Administration.  In reality, Obama has one year of his Presidency left.  The best thing he can do is help the Republicans continue down their road to irrelevancy so that the next Democratic President can learn to fight first and get things done in 2016.

The one thing they say about Catholics is: They'll take you as soon as you're warm

Religion, and my own personal belief history, are not something that will come up often on this blog (except when it interferes in politics) but the final impetus for me to get back into blogging was wanting to say something about the Resignation d'Ratzinger.

I was raised Catholic, but probably not in the way you think.  The church I attended was exceedingly liberal, openly welcoming LGBT members, it was light on guilt and heavy on social justice.  We learned about the Jesus who despised and pitied the rich, the Pharisees and Hypocrites for their temporal power/reward.  The Jesus I was taught cared for the poor, the outcast, the sick and the different.  To this day I can't understand those Christians who thump the Bible without seeming to have read it (well the New Testament anyway, the Old Testament is chock-full of their brand of small-minded hate).

In my waning years of the last Millennium, when I was young, I felt the same way about the Church as I did about the Democratic Party, if all the good people (people like me of course) left, then these institutions wouldn't change and become what they should be.  So, I stayed for long after I knew the Church wasn't for me.  I stayed because of Cardinal Newman and Helder Camara.   I stayed because I wanted the whole Church to be like that Community I had.

The Pedophilia scandals were the last straw for my mother.  A life-long Catholic who had been front and center in our community helping run the church and giving homilies.  For me, the last step was Cardinal Joesph Ratzinger, the embodiment of all I hated about the Church becoming Pope.  Now, he is leaving and all the worst criticisms and complaints about the Church have only been reinforced.

I have grown immeasurably in my own spirituality since I left the church, but seeing how far it's fallen is sad.  It's like returning to your hometown and finding your first love to be a complete mess.  The Catholic Church has become that trailer-park-meth-addict-ex.  You can't believe they've fallen so far and you feel saddened by the transformation.  Now, in the blush of first romance I missed many of the warning signs of what was to come and even seeing her break up with that abusive dealer boyfriend isn't enough to staunch the pity of what might have been.  I've moved on and you've moved back, become twisted and bitter about a world that is leaving you behind.  I'm glad I dodged that bullet, but I'll always have feelings for you.  It's not me, it's you.

All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth

The immense ignorance (I don't mean this as necessarily pejorative) of the American Public in regards to basic facts is nothing new (see Iraq was behind 9/11).  But even by the jaded standards of willfull disbelief we've come to expect, this week's Gallup polling numbers on the public perception of the military is unusual.  50% of Americans think that the United States does NOT have the world's number one military.  The United States spends more on its military than EVERY other nation on the planet combined.  So, either our military spending is as wasteful as our health care spending, or something is seriously amiss in the public's perception of the military's power.

Certainly, the amount of money spent on anything is not inherently a guarantor of quality, but by every reasonable measure of military effectiveness, competence, technology, capability and strength the United States is at or near the top.  Russia is a shell of its "Evil Empire" days and China is still decades away from challenging the United States in terms of physical capabilities (cyber-warfare is another question). Is the US Military perfect?  No.  Is it tired and somewhat demoralized by 12 years of the War on Terror? Certainly.  Is it the number one fighting force in the world right now, without question.

As recently as January 2010, 73% of Republicans said the US military was the strongest in the world.  That this number now stands at 53% is a testament to their mistrust of President Obama. The last time the perception of the US military was this low was in 1999 in the wake of the frustratingly  prolonged bombing of Serbia over Kosovo and 8 years of ineffectively maintaining a no-fly zone over Iraq.  It would seem then, that the withdrawal of US combat troops from Afghanistan and Iraq with little to show for either decade-long adventure has affected perception of the military's overall competence.  Relative decline or (at best) half-successes that have more to do with poor political decision making by civilians does not, in any way, lead to the United States not being top of the heap when it comes to its armed forces.  Because the military cannot do everything doesn't mean it can't do anything.

It is a recurring theme in American politics.  Democratic Politicians study facts and create policy based on facts while ignoring the emotion and understanding of Americans.  Republican Politicians are excellent at forming narratives which invalidate facts in the minds of the public allowing them to take positions that seem, to many outside observers, to be completely at odds with reality.  Given the new battle over the budget these numbers have to be heartening to Republicans (and Democrats with large amounts of military pork directed to their districts).  So when (some) Democrats say there has to be massive cuts to the military and Republicans (and some Democrats) complain that doing so endangers the nation, it becomes something that has become increasingly rare, an issue on which the Republicans have the more popular opinion. 

Proceed with caution Mr. Obama, going after the truly wasteful spending in the Defense Department (and there is a lot of it) is a minefield.  One of the perceived benefits of selecting Chuck Hegel was supposed to be his ability to deal with his former Republican colleagues in the Senate.  Instead, their personal grudge against him for turning on the Iraq War has negated that potential advantage.  In order to seriously address the United States' huge budget problem we will need cuts to the military as well as revenue increases and cuts to social programs.  Today's numbers from Gallup only make that even more difficult