In a very real way, Ronald Reagan saved the world.

I know, I know, the left and even many on the right won’t like that reality. This is an age where courage is not a virtue but cowardice is. The only leaders with any courage these days seem to be the insane ones. Those charged with the protection of freedom cloak cowardice and appeasement in the mien of “compromise” and “discussion”. Discussion and negotiation are fine tools that well meaning men can use to co-exist… but it has no place in the dealings between men and animals.

[Achilles to Hector] There are no pacts between lions and men. – Troy

The Berlin wall was not torn down by Reagan, or indeed by any single man. The wall came down for the same reasons the jail keepers of the Soviet Union finally were forced to face their failure – because many, many regular people finally said “we will not be your slaves any more”.  This defiance was the only possible because those people were given a stark choice, and they knew that someone somewhere had their backs. That someone was Reagan, and that choice was simple – freedom and progress or slavery and stagnation.

There are many who will downplay the contribution that Reagan made to the destruction of the Soviets. They will tell you he was just one man, and that no one man matters that much. They are lying to you.

The Soviet Union foundered on the million rocks of their citizens, but the keel was snapped on the rock hard will of an actor turned president who had the balls to look all their might dead in the face and flat out declare that he would not be moved or ignored.

As time has gone on we see that the parallels are deepening. When called to account he reacted in a way that is amazingly similar to the way Obama’s advisers and sycophants’ react…

• Deny Everything
• Counter-Attack and hope it goes away
• Enlist the media to spread a defense, any defense

When that doesn’t work, and you are absolutely positively caught go to phase two…

• Fabricate and destroy evidence as necessary so that you can…
• Claim it was a mistake
• Quickly state that the mistake doesn’t change the core issues

We can simplify…

• Deny
• Lie
• ???
• Profit

So there we have it – the perfect Obama supporter creating the perfect symbol of this administration. It was at best a bad copy of the actions of socialist dictators, and even then it was a cheap fake. All that backed up with a willingness to lie, cheat and destroy facts as needed to keep right on going.

Welcome to the Obama administration – finally allowing the American Presidency to take it’s place as a first class propaganda mill.

Recently Keith Bardwell, a Justice of the Peace in someplace called Tangipahoa Parish refused to perform a marriage ceremony for an inter-racial couple. He denies charges of racism, but rather says he feels that the children of such a couple are at a disadvantage and as such he cannot perform the ceremony in good conscience.

Of course he must be racist – because it is crazy in 2009 that anyone would feel that the race of a parent has anything to do with whether they will be able to properly raise their child… right? So there is a big collective gasp of horror and a lot of finger pointing and oh-my-gosh’ing about how this proves the backward thinking of those redneck racist Republicans…

“No matter how loving or supporting, there will always be a loss of connection with their culture.  Even if the family engages with people of the same race, there will always be a loss.  Culture is something one must be immersed in and not dabbled in on the weekends.” – from White People Raising Black Babies

The above quote isn’t from a redneck Republican. It is from a radical feminist named “Renee” who leans so far left it is a wonder they don’t fall over. So where is the American Civil Liberties Union? Is the Local NAACP going to peep? Hell are any of the left leaning bloggers who are having a collective victim-gasm over “catching” a racist going to take Renee on?

Of course not. Because in the skewed world of racism as political football the issue isn’t really the attitudes, its how much you can extract from someone with the threat or perception of racism. Racism is what they say it is, and they get to move the goal posts any time it strikes them.

Do I think Keith Bardwell is wrong? Of course. I absolutely think he should have performed that ceremony. I have no idea if he is a racist or just honestly misguided. Hell, his wife even provided the couple with information of a Justice of the Peace who would happily do it for them, and he did not object to her doing so. What I find interesting is all the screaming and hand-wringing about how insane it is that anyone could think like that “in this day and age” coming from a group of folks (the left) who cheerfully spout idiocy that they woudl instantly condemn if it came from the right.

Let’s look at this – a clear indication of racism in action.

“According to the data, not all races are considered equal in the college admissions game. Of students applying to private colleges in 1997, _________ applicants with SAT scores of 1150 had the same chances of being accepted as ______  applicants with 1460s and __________ applicants with perfect 1600s.” – source article (race names removed)

The races in question are “White”, “Asian” and “African-American”. Just for fun, imagine the same statistic with the races in different positions. Imagine if a white student could get into school by admission policy with a score of 1150 while a black student would need a 1600. Such a system would rightly cause you to get upset at how unfair it was. Of course to object to racial quotas is to be called a racist these days.

Yup – if you advocate a system that is “race blind” you are a filthy racist. Only by stringently working to elevate one group of people solely based on their race can one truly show yourself to be someone who cares about equality. Total stupidity. Remember children, if your on the left racial profiling is good – if your on the right, it means your a dirty evil racist.

You just can’t play around with racism… it’s too important for that. In fact often racism is so important you just have to invent it to make sure you get the right things done. Reality is already out the window (Political Correctness teaches us that perception is everything) so why not go with flat out fabrication?

Once your fine with hypocrisy it’s only a tiny little jump after all.

It is no surprise to readers of this blog that there are a lot of folks out there who are temperamentally incapable of not seeing the world through the eyes of victimhood politics. Not because they are victims, in whom a certain trauma induced bias might make  sense, but because they love the moral high ground they get from buying into it all.

When Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize (it really cannot be said that he won it) anyone with any objectivity knew how silly it was. The words “Cracker Jack” were common. I know, I know the word “Cracker” is a dangerous one these days but we must brave the peril. Why “Cracker Jack”? Because of the silly, worthless prize inside by tradition.

The other factor that contributed to this tale of silliness is that Tammy Bruce has a pet raccoon. The actual animal. Said raccoon is cute (most are) and opens things a lot (most do) and Tammy has posted pictures of this. Tammy is an openly gay Republican who worked to elect President Clinton at one time. Anyway, she posted a picture of her raccoon another raccoon opening a box of “Cracker Jacks” as a comment on the Obama choice.

It’s perfect, frankly. Unless you have race as the only answer in your mind to every question. Then you routinely look for the most offensive way to read every sentence and you get … raccoon… must be a racial thing, it’s about Obama… raccoon… coon! coon! He’s black! She called him a coon!

Ands that’s exactly what at least one idiot did. Enter D. Aristophanes, blogger at Sadly, No to fire up the shrill machine and start meeting their outrage quota for the day.

To be fair, one commenter at the hand waiving victim-fest that is Sadly, No was willing to give Tammy a little wiggle room…

“Mebbe. Just mebbe. But I would also say that Tammy may have been reading too little into the image. “Insensitivity” (or cluelessness) is the best defense she has to this, and that is asking for a huge benefit of the doubt. What kind of national dialogue exists that would allow her to post this without thinking twice?” – link to comment

How horrible for them that they are losing control of the national dialogue. It must just kill them that after decades of political correctness being shoved down the throats of schoolchildren and students that some people will still say something without worrying what the insane victim culture fringe will be able to twist it into.

My heart f_ing bleeds for them. Really.

Note: Tammy followed up, but interestingly has changed the image.

“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

…

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.” – source

In short, Obama is bummed that the Supreme Court felled bummed in by that pesky Constitution and didn’t decide to go ahead and use both hands to confiscate your money to give to someone else.

This is our president, and now he has the power to make good the dreams he shares with ACORN, William Ayers and countless left leaning extremists… the redistribution of wealth by force.

* note – image is from here

The B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ invited Charisse Carney-Nunes to waste the time of their students and run an indoctrination session assembly based around here propaganda children’s book “I am Barack Obama”. Of course if you’re really going to get the little ones all involved you need a catchy tune.

What’s that you say? You can’t really make it all out? Ok… here are the lyrics thanks to Gateway Pundit.

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

segue to

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say "hooray!"
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

- h/t Gateway Pundit

Of course, we can’t really act surprised. This sort of silliness was happening even before he was elevated to the post of Dear Leader . Witness the idiocy that is “Sing for Change”.

But hey, nothing to be concerned about right?

* note – credit for the image heading this post goes to Bad Paintings of Barack Obama

During the election we saw the beginnings of this strategy tested, and it worked. If you disagree with Barack Obama, you must be a racist. This attack was used against Hillary Clinton and these days it is turned against everyone from average citizens who dare protest against our Dear Leader to elected representatives who make the same mistake.

To disagree with Barack Obama is to be called a racist.

I have mentioned before that the constant mewling of the victim culture leads to this inevitable end.  We see the same arguments, the same delusions and the same pattern of attack whatever the victim group – be it sexism or racism that is the vehicle. The simple reality is that like the charges of sexism the race card simply won’t ever go away.

Fear of Racism is profitable, both politically and financially. Ask Obama. Ask ACORN. Ask Kanye West.

The problem for the folks tossing the race card around with wild abandon is that at some point if you keep pretending you care about being “post racial” and stopping “racially motivated” violence someone will wonder why you only seem concerned with one race. Then you have to dance around and deflect attention as hard as you can. Or you can double down, and blame your chosen oppressor for that too.

I could spend this whole post (and many more) discussing the insane double standards used int he current debate / discussion on race but I’ll just give you one that is representative and easy to understand. Remember the Kanye West stupidity? If not, go check out the post and then come back… I’ll wait.

Now, imagine that incident with flipped races…

“It’s the Country Music Awards. A black female performer is accepting her first-ever award. She’s happy and a bit surprised; her style of music doesn’t usually win Country Music Awards. Halfway through her emotional acceptance speech, a white male country music singer runs up on stage, grabs the microphone from her, and announces that another woman should have won, a white woman–a “real” country singer–instead of the underdog black woman.” – quote from biggovernment.com

Do you really think we wouldn’t be hearing screaming about racism? Of course we would. Because that suits the narrative pivotal to keeping huge sections of the government in power – that they need to be elected and re-elected to save us all from our innate evil.

All they need to do is convince us to accept the mantle of guilt and toil under the yoke of earning their blessing.

Screw that. Screw them.

If you oppose Obama (or Dear Leader as he likes to be called) you obviously must do so because he is black. There can be no other reason. It is no secret that Kanye is fully on board with this. In the case of the Democratic party it is simply a political tactic to silence all opposition. In Kanye’s case, however, he is simply a racist.

Herein lies the core reality behind the political correctness movement. These people have no intention of moving beyond the politics of race. They have no interest in recognizing progress in our society. They cling to their victimization as a source of power. They will do everything possible to maintain the moral high ground they feel is theirs by right of their skin color, gender or orientation.

Without the power to attack their critics as racist, or homophobic or small minded they have no power at all. Without this insulation from honest judgment they would have to survive and thrive on their own merits… and that they will never allow.

In the meantime, pity Kanye as the petulant child he is and realize that deep down in his heart he knows that his power over you depends only on your own willingness to accept his judgments of you. The moment you realize that you don’t need to feel guilty or accept his blame he withers and dies like the parasite he is.

Enter our hero, Van Jones.

I am sure Van is a man who passionately believes the craziness he believes. He probably means well. In a way, that’s sadder. He is a self described communist, author of the deeply crazy “The Green Collar Economy” and a key figure in the more fringe areas of the “eco” movement. As with other close allies Obama as thrown under a bus Van Jones was sacrificed as soon as it became clear what kind of fool he actually is.

Van Jones is the perfect Obama hanger on. The concept of signing stuff because it sounds good without actually reading is a core virtue for this administration.

Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.* – Van Jones statment

Before Van Jones was a “I didn’t mean it” truther signing petitions wondering if President Bush was a 9/1 conspirator, he was firmly in the camp of “we deserved what we got”. On September 12th, 2001 – just one day after the 9/11 attacks Van Jones stood in front of a rally of far left activists and had this to say…

"The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City," said Van Jones, director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, who also warned against forthcoming violence by the Bush Administration. "The US cannot bomb its way out of this one. Safety at home requires justice abroad." – Obama “Czar” Van Jones

In a way, he was being fairly circumspect in his comments. Many of those who were at the rally were much more open with their feelings and hatred.

“A young Filipino human rights activist said that "when we found out what kind of place got hit, we were kind of glad to see the Pentagon burning. But we also know that thousands of Puerto Ricans, Haitians and other workers were in those buildings.” – source

In a larger sense the Van Jones incident is a summary of the entire media treatment of Obama and his administration. The damaging information has been available for months on the internet, the subject of much discussion on political blogs and eventually the voting public. However even as the furor got so loud that Obama had to put Van Jones down like an ailing farm animal in most of the “main stream” media you heard and read not one single peep about it all. As soon as it became clear that the problem wouldn’t go away they turned their attention to the common Obama apologist checklist.

1. Those evil right wing bloggers, they made a mountain out of a molehill
2. ___________ (insert name of victim under bus here) didn’t mean what they said
3. Obama had no idea that ____________ said anything of the type
4. While Obama totally supports ___________ and thanks them for their service, they have decided to resign
5. Poor Obama, how could he be expected to be responsible for the views of the people who appoints to positions of power?
6. Republicans are mean
7. Anyone who speaks against Obama or _____________ is clearly a racist

Watch for the checklist in the weeks ahead! In the meantime, bye bye to Van Jones!

The last thing I would want is some D.C. bureaucrat with a spreadsheet deciding if this woman’s life was worth fighting for.

I look at the faces of the people (and my own) who care about this woman, all the lives that depend on her for joy, guidance and love thinking that like all of us she deserves every possible chance to survive. She isn’t a number in a massive database. She is a human being, and her life is precious. How horrible it would have been if she had to wait for a long time to receive the best care, or if she would have been denied outright simply because a provision tacked onto some miserable energy bill or pork allocation had quietly made her ineligible for expensive support treatments.

One only needs to look to the North and the national health system in Canada to see the horrifying effects of leaving health care decisions to politicians. In England just recently we see a firestorm of controversy raging as some doctors say out loud what the folks paying the bills for their massive and inefficient health system wont say – that they don’t want to treat the elderly, obese or smokers. While certainly the private system has it’s flaws… competition does what it always does and drives the quality up and prices down. Competition a government system simply will not have.

Clearly the creation of a national health system is a step that a nation should only take after the most careful consideration. The examples of how badly wrong it can go are all around us. In fact there is not a single government run system that isn’t plagued with wait times, rationed care, denied procedures and massive waste. Ever single place it has been tried, it is a failure.

Why then is the current administration rushing through a bill that has more that 1,500 pages under constant revision (often within hours of votes) that the vast majority of it’s supporters admit they have never even read? Why have they used administrative procedure to shut out debate on the floor of the House and Senate? Why have they suppressed reports about the cost and medical implications? Why do they want to force on us a system they themselves will not have to suffer under?

With all our lives in the balance and the quality of care for an entire nation at stake is there such a a rush to pass anything at all, and damn the details? Because six months into his presidency Barack Obama is in real trouble.

1. His foreign policy skills have proven to be inadequate.
2. The government take over of the automobile industry has been a disaster.
3. His massive tax increases and bailouts have trashed the economic recovery and his much touted popularity is crashing fast.
4. The massive money being funneled into the embattle ACORN has brought about scrutiny that his wife’s involvement with and meddling in that organization cannot survive.

What Obama needs now is a victory he can point to in an effort to regain some momentum. All his hopes now are pinned on his attempt to reform the health care industry the only way people like him know how – by advocating a government take over.

There are real reasons why the Democratic party wants a government run healthcare system in the USA. Traditionally the Democratic party line to get votes is to scream loud and long about how the evil greedy Republicans want to “take away” the benefits the government grants you. They alternate between blackmail (if we don’t get elected, you will lose your house!) and bribery (elect us and we will take money away from people doing better than you and give it to you!) at the best of times… but health care is the ultimate level in the Democratic parties wish list.

With national health care, the Democrats can actually put you in fear of your life, and the lives of your family. Once you are on the government teat for your very life blood, they gain a huge power over you.

With lives in the balance, essentially with ALL OUR LIVES in the balance I deeply resent that this administration is in such a hurry to save its own political ass that it will push for support of a bill almost no one has read, that has had no public review and almost no debate.

I suppose if you think that the government does a fantastic job with, say your local DMV or you consider the IRS a well run and efficient organization then you will be happy to leave the critical decisions over your life and death to the folks in D.C. If you are living in the real world, however, you will realize these are the last people you want deciding whether your loved ones or yourself “deserve” some time in a ICU.

As or me? I am leaving in a hour or so to stay by the bedside of a woman who is only alive because she had fast access to incredibly high quality health care. This care is not an anomaly in the US, it is the norm. She has access to this care and we didn’t have to show up at some government office to beg for it, or fill out a special form or promise some low level bureaucrat that we would vote for him.

That is today, right now. The best care available. Made possible by competition and the profit incentive. Next year when these decisions lie in the hands of some D.C. functionary who is willing to trade access to these procedures away in exchange for a bigger kickback for his state on some highway bill who knows?

that should scare all of us.

With Al Franken now a Senator (by any means necessary) the picture of the 2008 elections is now complete. The issue, the only issue, was revenge. People voted for Franken simply because the idea was so ludicrous that they felt would really stick it to “the man”, whoever the imagined that to be.

I was prompted to write this by a comment from a acquaintance on twitter whose tweet is quoted below. I do not suggest that this is his motivation, only that his words reminded me of the issue as a whole.

“Oh, true! Hell, we can even have morons as Presidents! & I giggle when I think of O’Reilly having to say "Senator Franken". HA!” – twitter comment by Ropecast

Now, I am not immune. I personally would have been amused as all hell to see Jon Stewart kill himself on national TV if McCain / Palin had won that election but like Greydancer I also had other factors for my choices – this sort of amusement was just a bonus.

For many though revenge and anger was the primary and sometimes only issue. During the elections we saw this sort of thing commonly from Obama supporters. The glee they felt when they imagined the reactions of their straw man “Republicans” to the election of Obama. Their imagination conjured the specter of racism behind every criticism of the man, and they felt a visceral pleasure when they thought about how it would make us feel. Even after the election you can see this illusion played out. Take the idiocy of Janeane Garafalo as a case in point.

This should not really be a surprise… the Democratic party is, essentially, one driven and unified by hatred and the need for a common enemy. The only way to hide the reality of their policies ( confiscatory taxation, racially driven quotas and so on ) is to push the illusion that they are necessary to protect “the common man” from “those evil corporations / capitalists / white guys”.

What is becoming more and more clear to these folks as the confetti and hopium smoke drifts away is that in screwing “us” they also screwed themselves. They elected one of the most corrupt and transparently opportunistic presidents in the history of the nation and simultaneously handed the Senate to a group of slavoring lapdogs that finally see their chance to get their paws on an infinite amount of pork.

Unfortunately the damage done by the “stimulus” will already take us decades to fix and that’s before we see the results of the “cap and trade” boondoggle.If Obamas health care plan actually comes to pass then what started as dangerous greed will end in deaths and lots of them. Deaths that can be firmly laid at the feet of the urge to buy votes by making people dependant on the DNC for their very lives and the power of hate driving politics.

Hopefully these fools are paying attention and will learn something from this very costly lesson.

* As a side note, I dig the Ropecast and think Greydancer is a cool person as well as a fellow freak, so this isn’t a personal issue.

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -  Mahatma Gandhi

For the moment, lets ignore that anyone quoting Ghandi probably hasn’t got much of a clue to start with. The man was a manipulator of fools, fair weather pacifist and vicious racist. If we look only at the quote itself however, we see one of those chestnuts of seeming wisdom often repeated but rarely held to a reality check.

For instance, let’s look at one of the most obvious examples – Hitler’s Reich. For years Hitler was ignored, then ridiculed, then we fought him and he got his skinny ass handed to him. Similarly the Japanese empire at the time was ignored, and ridiculed and then destroyed. The Soviets and the threat of communism suffered in much the same way.

In fact, the list of times when being ignored was probably the best thing to be hoped for is fairly long. Ask Saddam Hussein who was ignored during the Clinton years and ridiculed as a threat before finally making such a pain in the ass of himself that he finally convinced us it was time to fight him.

Just a thought.

“In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.” – link

Many radical feminists believe this stuff because it goes a long way to giving them their much needed victimization feelings. Why not? They believe lots of other inconvenient realities must be social constructs, so why not this one? We can just add it to the list of things about human nature they find upsetting.

it is amazing to me that as science shows us more and how personality including gender is intertwined with our physical selves (hormonally, genetically and more) they want to ignore it all. This sort of silliness has been tried before, with horrible results.

“Both Nordenström and Pinker refer to a controversial case from 1967 when a circumcision left one of two twin brothers without a penis. Dr. John Money, who asserted that gender was learned rather than innate, convinced the parents to raise ‘David’ as ‘Brenda’ and the child had cosmetic genitalia reconstruction surgery.

She was raised as a female, with girls’ clothes, games and codes of behaviour. The parents never told Brenda the secret until she was a teenager and rebelled against femininity. She then started receiving testosterone injections and underwent another genetic reconstruction process to become David again. David Reimer denounced the experiment as a crushing failure before committing suicide at the age of 38.” – link

It is hard to underestimate the degree to which many of these people have to deny the world around them and deny human nature to keep their illusions alive. The more we see of the level of cognitive dissonance required however the clearer it gets.

You are idiots.

Overall, maybe this is just one more good thing that can come out of the unmitigated disaster that will the be legacy of the Obama presidency. It is just possible that after electing this empty suit the left will realize that gosh darn it maybe character does matter after all, huh?

You don’t get off that easily though. I hear you crying and whining about “how were we supposed to know!”. I’ll tell you how.

• You knew Obama had almost no experience in government, had never balanced a budget or run a company.
• You knew Obama would say anything necessary to make an audience love him – even during the election cycle he often flip-flopped on issues depending on who he was talking to.
• You knew Obama was no great thinker – his academic record is not nearly as special as you think it is. This is no “constitutional scholar”. This is a man whose much vaunted tenure at “The Harvard Law Review” was substandard and weak.
• You knew this was a man who was afraid to let you know what he really thought about anything, if he thinks about it, because his voting record as a senator tells you everything you need to know about this guy. Namely that he is merely “present”.
• You knew he was corrupt – his time in Chicago politics is a trail of kick backs, bribes and special deals for himself and his family.
• You knew he was in the pocket of the Democratic Party top echelon – they re-wrote or broke many of their own rules to make sure he got the nomination.
• You knew he didn’t wholeheartedly support gay marriage – he said so, out loud. It’s one of the few things he actually DID say.
• You knew he was going to be a national security disaster because he has based his whole foreign policy on personal popularity.
• You knew that he was more than willing to through any supporter under a bus the moment it suited his needs. he did it with long time confidants and associates.

In short whatever part of you thought Obama would be a useful ally simply wasn’t paying any attention. With any luck, this multi-trillion dollar lesson ( not to mention the decades to repair the economic and systemic damage ) might teach you to look beyond a pretty speech and a checkbox in the “why yes, I am a minority” box.

Just a thought.

cc: The image for this post is “Shepard Fairey’s Portrait of Barack Obama” and was used under creative commons as listed on this Flickr post.

The freak out in some communities is in full swing. There were calls for protests in more than 100 cities for example. I am not sure what, if anything, these folks think that will accomplish but why let reality stand in the way of a good march? No doubt they fully believe that if they just scream loud enough the legal issues at hand will go away. Then again, the defining factor of so many activists worldview is the belief that as a society we are supposed to make decisions based on who screams loud enough. Emotion defines reality for these people.

Case in point? This blog post by Jerry Kolber…

God only knows what those California judges were picturing in their minds as they shuddered in disgust and handed down their decision.  Pigs in a blanket? Oil rigs drilling mercilessly into soft mounds of earth? Two pink coin purses locked together in a dark handbag? Double meat sausage platters?    Regardless of what lustful imagery they (and all the folks who voted for Prop 8) used to enable their decision, there’s only three explanations for creating  and supporting laws that deny others their happiness, and none of them have anything to do with whether  your taste includes oysters, snails or both. – Prop 8: Sexual Positions for Gay Married Couples

Let’s skip for now the deeply amusing irony of someone getting all worked up about intolerance while declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree with him is a brainwashed, screaming homophobe. Instead look at that post because it is a perfect example of someone absolutely failing to grasp the issue before the court, or what the ruling presented actually means.

The CA court really had only one decision to make – whether Prop 8 was an “Amendment” or a “Revision” if the CA constitution.

“The opinion further emphasizes that the principal legal issue in this case is entirely distinct from the issue that was presented in the court’s decision last year in In re Marriage Cases (2008) 43 Cal.4th 757.  There, the court was called upon to determine “the validity (or invalidity) of a statutory provision limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman under state constitutional provisions that do not expressly permit or prescribe such a limitation.”  In the present case, by contrast, the principal issue “concerns the scope of the right of the people, under the provisions of the California Constitution, to change or alter the state Constitution itself through the initiative process so as to incorporate such a limitation as an explicit section of the state Constitution. – NR29-09

In short, the California Constitution grants the citizenry there huge latitude to amend itself – one of the reasons CA is a Petri dish for stupid activism based legislation and facing a total financial meltdown.So the core question was whether excepting the term “marriage” to apply only to heterosexual couples was so large an issue that to adopt it would have counted as a Revision”.

The majority opinion then analyzes the quantitative and qualitative effect of Proposition 8 on the preexisting provisions  of the state Constitution.  Petitioners concede that the measure does not amount to a quantitative revision, but maintain that it constitutes a qualitative revision.  Addressing this contention, the opinion explains that the distinction between an amendment and a revision does not depend upon the relative importance of the measure in question, pointing out that “(1) the right of women to vote in California, (2) the initiative, referendum, and recall powers, (3) the reinstatement of the death penalty, (4) an explicit right of privacy, (5) a substantial modification of the statewide real property tax system, and (6) legislative term limits — to list only a very few examples — all became part of the California Constitution by constitutional amendment, not by constitutional revision. – NR29-09

The exception to this would have been if Prop 8 was going to result in the removal of the equal protection of law from homosexuals. In other words, a simple constitutional amendment in CA cannot remove the rights granted by that constitution. For that you would need to revise the document.

The thing is despite the screaming Prop 8 in no real way removes the equal protection in CA of homosexual couples.

Analyzing the scope of Proposition 8, the majority opinion explains that, contrary to petitioners’ assertions, the initiative measure does not “entirely repeal” or “abrogate” the aspect of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right of privacy and due process discussed in the majority opinion in the Marriage Cases – namely, the constitutional right to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage” — nor does it “fundamentally alter” the substance of state constitutional equal protection principles recognized in that opinion.   

Instead, it carves out a limited exception to these constitutional rights by reserving the official designation of the term “marriage” for the union of opposite-sex couples, but leaves undisturbed all of the other aspects of a same-sex couple’s constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and to the equal protection of the laws.- NR29-09 (emphasis added)

Essentially this re-enforces the reality of California state law that a homosexual couples domestic partnership is legally equivalent to a heterosexual couples marriage – the difference being entirely semantic. Some compromise and rationality on this would be a good idea since acting like militant assholes is much of what caused the political swing in favor of Prop 8 to start with.

More importantly, as a minority the last thing you should want is a supreme court system that is beholden to mob protests in the streets, rather than the law. Think about it. The folks who dislike you outnumber you, and they can breed.

What is needed is a cool, rational and intelligent political campaign. The fundamental rights of homosexual couples in CA are safe and secure (as they should be, of course).

Links of interest…

• GayPatriot » CA Supreme Court Upholds Prop 8
• GayPatriot » CA Supreme Court’s Prop 8 Decision & the Way Forward on Gay Marriage
• Anger, Leadership and Change « Law Dork, 2.0

note: NR29-09 is a summary published by the CA Court. The full ruling is here and a downloadable PDF is here.

note 2: the image for this post is Pamela Anderson and Lindsay Lohan kissing. Still totally legal in California.