Monthly Archives: June 2013

Wasting our time

Posted on by
1

A couple of items leaped out from my Twitter feed this morning.

Here’s one:

Here’s the other:

They’re intertwined. We’ve had 37 votes in the House to repeal Obamacare, and everyone knows they’re going nowhere. So what’s the point, Mr. Speaker? Are you there to score points with Republicans? Or are you there to legislate?

Isn’t it time to stop fighting this pointless war over Obamacare? It’s the law. It’s a done deal. And you can host a vote to repeal it every day of the year and it still won’t pass in the Senate. And even if it does, it will be vetoed by the president of the United States.

Why not move on to some other things — like affordable loans for college students — that actually might do some good?

There has to be more to being a congressman than launching your reelection drive the moment you take your oath of office. How about trying to accomplish something while you’re there?

Want to cite a poll, Mr. Boehner? Cite the one that shows public approval of Congress.

And now a word from the other side

Posted on by
1

Supreme Court issues two illegitimate decisions on same-sex marriage (Brian S. Brown, FOXNews.com)

In the interests of fairness and balance, we offer this opinion from the president of the National Organization for Marriage.

I don’t agree with any of it, but it’s a reasonable opinion . . . or it was until I got to this:

First, a homosexual judge in a long-term gay relationship was assigned the case, and refused to disclose his relationship before declaring that marriage is unconstitutional. 

And that is just plain offensive. By Brown’s logic, a homosexual judge is incapable of making a fair and just decision on a case involving homosexuality. Would he say that black judges shouldn’t be assigned to racial cases? That religious judges shouldn’t be assigned to cases involving religion? Wouldn’t the same supposed bias be attributed to a heterosexual judge in this case?

Implying that the judge who ruled on this case was incapable of doing his job responsibly is an affront to the judge, the judiciary, the citizens of California and pretty much every other decent-thinking American.

That comment is a disgrace. Shame on the writer.

Must read

Posted on by
Reply

Wendy and the boys (Gail Collins, New York Times)

The Texas filibuster rules are suitable for a place that regards steer wrestling and bronco busting as the official state sport. We made a big fuss when Rand Paul stayed on his feet for 13 hours in the U.S. Senate to filibuster over drones. But that was a walk in the park compared with what [State Sen. Wendy] Davis went through. Paul got help from his friends, who orated while he rested his voice. And U.S. senators can speak about anything when they filibuster. (Paul read from Alice in Wonderland.) Davis was supposed to stick to her subject.

The crowd was reasonably quiet until Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst ruled that Davis had to sit down because she had gone off topic by referencing a state law requiring that women who want abortions must show up a day earlier for an ultrasound.

A wonderful read today by Gail Collins. Of course. Don’t miss this.

Game over

Posted on by
1

Image

The old joke used to go, “I have no problem with gay marriage unless they make it mandatory.”

The old joke stands.

I’m straight. Can’t help it, I was born that way. But some people aren’t, and they were born that way, too. And whom they choose to love, and whom they choose to be their sex partners, is none of my damn business. And it most definitely is not my government’s business.

Opponents of gay marriage are adamant that their god intended marriage to be between a man and a woman. But that argument makes marriage a religious ceremony, and that has to be decided within their religion. Those opponents don’t have to morally accept  a marriage between two men or two women. But now they have to accept it legally. It’s the law.

As long as the government chooses to sanction marriage — and as long as it authorizes government employees such as judges and mayors and justices of the peace to engage in the act of marrying people — then it has to be fair. Same-sex couples are entitled to the same civil rights as opposite-sex couples.

Years ago, an editor at my workplace ordered that these unions be referred to as “same-sex marriages,” and not “gay marriages,” because he said it wasn’t about sex, it was about marriage. I disagreed. It was all about sex, I said. Opponents of gay marriage  wouldn’t give a damn if those married gays weren’t having sex.

I doubt you’ll find a single opponent of gay-marriage who is fine with gay sex outside of marriage. It is homosexuality that sets their hair on fire, not the notion of homosexuals getting married.

So today was a good day. The Supreme Court got it right. I would have preferred something more sweeping, something on the lines of Loving v. Virginia, but today’s rulings forbid the United States of America to discriminate against gay couples, and they make it much easier for gays to get married.

Thirteen states allow gay marriages now, and California’s addition to the club means 30 percent of Americans live in those states. And gays who don’t live in one of those states can travel out-of-state, get married, and be entitled to all federal benefits.

A majority of Americans now support gay marriage. Most polls show that young Americans overwhelmingly support gay marriage.

That sound you hear is the sound of dominoes falling. Another pillar of bigotry is crumbling at our feet.

Good.

This isn’t atheism

Posted on by
5

Image

Some nonbelievers still find solace in prayer (Washington Post)

My friend Mark sent me this piece because he knew I’d find it interesting. Boy did I ever.

The caption on the photo above reads:

(Linda Davidson/ The Washington Post) – Atheist Sigfried Gold, his wife Galia Siegel, and children Beatrice Gold, 2, and Solomon Gold, 8, say a serenity prayer at dinner at home Tuesday in Takoma Park, Md. Gold launched a regular prayer schedule to comply with a 12-step program for food addiction.

And the story goes on to say . . .

Each morning and night, Sigfried Gold drops to his knees on the beige carpeting of his bedroom, lowers his forehead to the floor and prays to God.

An atheist, Gold took up prayer out of desperation. Overweight by 110 pounds and depressed, the 45-year-old software designer saw himself drifting from his wife and young son. He joined a 12-step program for food addiction that required — as many 12-step programs do — a recognition of God and prayer.

Four years later, Gold is trim, far happier in his relationships and free of a lifelong ennui. He credits a rigorous prayer routine — morning, night and before each meal — to a very vivid goddess he created with a name, a detailed appearance and a key feature for an atheist: She doesn’t exist.

While Gold doesn’t believe there is some supernatural being out there attending to his prayers, he calls his creation “God” and describes himself as having had a “conversion” that can be characterized only as a “miracle.” His life has been mysteriously transformed, he says, by the power of asking.

And then the story goes on to talk about all these atheists who pray.

It’s a fascinating piece . . . and I’m really happy for this guy Gold, who apparently has found a successful way to lose weight.

But he should stop calling himself an atheist.

If you want to believe in a big invisible man in the sky or a “vivid goddess” whom you’ve actually created with a name — fine with me. Knock yourself out. Whatever floats your boat.

Just don’t go calling yourself an atheist.

Among other things, it’s insulting. And more than a little condescending. It’s like calling yourself a Christian and telling everyone that you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe Jesus ever existed, but they should nonetheless consider you a Christian because you say you are. It belittles what true Christians believe.

Same as saying you pray every day and you’re an atheist. That’s baloney, which this guy Gold must know is fattening.

I welcome your thoughts.

How is this murder?

Posted on by
1

Image

Mom Charged with Murder After Daughter, 5, Shoots Self (ABC News)

A New Orleans mother has been charged with murder after her 5-year-old daughter shot herself in the head while home alone in a locked bedroom.

Laderika Smith, 28, was booked Sunday on charges of second-degree murder, after the girl was taken off life support hours after her mother returned home to find the girl dead, police said.

“[Smith] locked her daughter inside the residence for a short period of time while she went to the store,” New Orleans Police spokeswoman Hilal Williams said in a statement.

While her mother was out, the girl discovered a loaded .38-caliber revolver and shot herself.

This is horrible beyond belief, but . . . Murder?

American Heritage Dictionary:

noun
the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

Merriam-Webster:

the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.

AP:

Murder is malicious, premeditated homicide. Some states define certain homicides as murder if the killing occurs in the course of armed robbery, rape, etc.

I’m hardly defending a woman who leaves her kid alone with a .38, but . . . Murder???

Do they have some sort of unique definition in Louisiana that I’m not aware of?

Sam needs a time out

Posted on by
1

Justice Samuel Alito’s middle-school antics (by Dana Milbank, Washington Post)

The most remarkable thing about the Supreme Court’s opinions announced Monday was not what the justices wrote or said. It was what Samuel Alito did.

The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague.

Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur in the workplace when Alito, seated immediately to Ginsburg’s left, shook his head from side to side in disagreement, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his elder and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament or, more accurately, judicial intemperance. Typically, justices state their differences in words — and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But he frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.

This guy needs to go to the principal’s office. Sam is a big boy now and really should know better.

Shame.

R.I.P. Bobby (Blue) Bland

Posted on by
Reply

Bobby (Blue) Bland, Soul and Blues Balladeer, Dies at 83 (New York Times)

Bobby (Blue) Bland, the debonair balladeer whose sophisticated, emotionally fraught performances helped modernize the blues, died on Sunday in Memphis. He was 83….

Exhibiting a delicacy of phrasing and command of dynamics akin to those of the most urbane pop and jazz crooners, his intimate pleading left its mark on everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and the Band. The rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”

Heaven done called another blues singer back home.

The old bluesmen were such a treasure, and one by one they are vanishing.

The New York Times posted this photo of Bobby Blue with B.B. King, taken in 1992.

Image

B.B. is 87 now, and we can only hope he lasts forever.

R.I.P., Bobby Blue.

And why are we here, exactly?

Posted on by
1

Image

In the Bible Belt, Offering Atheists a Spiritual Home (New York Times)

BATON ROUGE, La. — It would have been easy to mistake what was happening in a hotel ballroom here for a religious service. All the things that might be associated with one were present Sunday: 80 people drawn by a common conviction. Exhortations to service. Singing and light swaying. An impassioned sermon.

There was just no mention of God.

Billed as Louisiana’s first atheist service and titled “Joie de Vivre: To Delight in Being Alive,” it was presided over by Jerry DeWitt, a small, charismatic man dressed all in black with slick, shiny hair.

I’m always happy to see people who are happy, but this just seems ridiculous to me.

“Atheist church” is an oxymoron. And congregating with other like-minded people to sing songs and celebrate your communal disbelief in an imaginary man in the sky is just . . .

Well . . . silly.

I’d much rather go to the ballpark.