6 posts tagged “politics”

I watched Washington Post's Sally Quinn compare Silda Spitzer to a Muslim woman in a burka.

I'm going to put aside the fact that many Muslim women wear burkas of their own free will and there is nothing wrong with that, so I can focus on the fact that Sally Quinn just doesn't understand the situation.

Quick review: Eliot Spitzer, then-governor of New York, had sex with a prostitute and got caught. His wife stands next to him at the resulting press conferences. Sally Quinn went on NBC's Morning Joe and basically said Mrs. Spitzer is a total wuss and she should not have stood with her husband. She asked why the wives of unfaithful male politicians always stand by their husbands when this comes out.

I'll tell you why, lady. I'll tell you why Hillary Clinton and Mrs. McGreevey did it too. Because intelligent women tend to make intelligent choices. Why is it intelligent to make a show of solidarity after being publicly humiliated by one's spouse? First off, when a guy cheats on his wife, that should be a private family issue, and I'm sure she's giving him hell for it - in private, which is the appropriate place to give the idiot hell. Second, and more importantly, the Spitzers have three kids. Did Eliot Spitzer harm the people of New York by extra-marital sex? Of course not. (See: Rudy Giuliani) The people he hurt are his wife and his kids. And the man's kids don't deserve further damage from a messy, very public separation.

(If Mrs. Spitzer chooses to divorce her husband at a later date when the media stops paying attention, I support her one hundred percent.)

Furthermore, Sally Quinn went on to say Mrs. McGreevey - who made a kind statement of sympathy towards Mrs. Spitzer - had a different situation because her husband turned out to be a homosexual.

Listen, Sally? Shut up. Cheating is cheating. Shame is shame. And you are almost as much of an idiot as Eliot Spitzer.

Romney is dropping out? Crap. I was actually rooting for him.

Despite what Warren Ellis thinks, I'm reasonably certain Huckabee just won't get enough votes. McCain is the threat. Make no mistake, John McCain is a threat. And I felt Romney was just slimy enough to smear the guy.

Crap. Now what? MD-VA-DC seems to be the Big Prize for the Democrats. You and I both know DC is Obama's. Now I have to wonder - what's in the hearts of my fellow Maryland Dems and our Virginian brothers and sisters? I'm pulling for Barack - he may not have the level of experience some would prefer, but I honestly think he A) gives a damn what happens to this country and B) might just be smart enough to get the USA out of this quagmire we're in.

Hillary Clinton just doesn't do it for me. Bill's a great guy, don't get me wrong, but... he's still a politician. I seem to recall him saying a few nice things about Shrub, and that's way more than I have to say about him. The only thing I can possibly say in favor of our idiot President is that he might, just might have a bit of a clue about immigration. But I'll never trust him. Hunter S. Thompson, that fantastic madman, said he'd vote for Richard Nixon rather than George W. Bush. That means something to me.

Getting back on point, I just don't like Mrs. Clinton. Too much Hawk. Too much doublespeak. Maybe too long in the saddle, too many hands to grease with baksheesh. I need something fresher in the White House. I need a guy who thinks about nonproliferation and genetic testing lab regulation. I need a Black American in the Oval Office to prove to the rest of the world that the United States of America is not a country completely comprised of neo-Puritan racist bumpkin fanatic Intelligent Design-espousing jackasses. We've got those, sure. But they are not the majority. They're just loud, stupid, and devoid of ethics.

I'm voting for Barack Obama. I hope my home does the same. But I'd also like it if the actual majority - the apathetic - get out, do a bit of research, and vote their consciences.

Source: HardOCP (I gotta remember to source these damn things.)

Link: http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2403/070920taxban/

So here's the thing. You know how there aren't any taxes on Internet stuff? Unless it's an in-state delivery, of course. BustedTees is in Maryland so I get a little extra tacked on (but it's very much worth it.) Getting back to my point, the Internet is virtually tax free. This is because the government said 'net taxes are a no-no - at least, temporarily. But that tax ban ends at the beginning of November, so various Congressfolk are talking about what to do afterwards. There are three Senators who've publicly voiced the opinion that the tax ban should be permanent.

That's great, right? I don't want taxes on my Internet. But the thing is, those three Senators are all Republicans. So I'm asking myself the obvious question: "What are these Republicans getting out of a ban on Internet taxes?"

Sure, Republicans typically tend to campaign on tax cuts. But that's because those tax cuts benefit large corporations and the ludicrously wealthy far more than the rest of us. So that leads me to my next question: "How much money are the big Internet players - Comcast, Verizon, and such - giving to these Republicans? While I don't like the idea of taxes, I despise the notion that every time my dad's Comcast bill got jacked up, Trent Lott cackled with malevolent glee as he gazed with unbridled lust at his offshore accounts.

(We're with Verizon now, which became cheaper after the last price-gouge, and so far seems to be a superior Internet and Mindmelt-o-vision provider.)

The Internet should be tax-free because it's almost as important as water, not because big corporations use the money I pay them to bribe politicians.

Ah well... it could be worse. We could be in China. Taxes are at worst a necessary nuisance, while internet censorship is truly evil.

Source: HardOCP (I gotta remember to source these damn things.)

Link: http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2403/070920taxban/

So here's the thing. You know how there aren't any taxes on Internet stuff? Unless it's an in-state delivery, of course. BustedTees is in Maryland so I get a little extra tacked on (but it's very much worth it.) Getting back to my point, the Internet is virtually tax free. This is because the government said 'net taxes are a no-no - at least, temporarily. But that tax ban ends at the beginning of November, so various Congressfolk are talking about what to do afterwards. There are three Senators who've publicly voiced the opinion that the tax ban should be permanent.

That's great, right? I don't want taxes on my Internet. But the thing is, those three Senators are all Republicans. So I'm asking myself the obvious question: "What are these Republicans getting out of a ban on Internet taxes?"

Sure, Republicans typically tend to campaign on tax cuts. But that's because those tax cuts benefit large corporations and the ludicrously wealthy far more than the rest of us. So that leads me to my next question: "How much money are the big Internet players - Comcast, Verizon, and such - giving to these Republicans? While I don't like the idea of taxes, I despise the notion that every time my dad's Comcast bill got jacked up, Trent Lott cackled with malevolent glee as he gazed with unbridled lust at his offshore accounts.

(We're with Verizon now, which became cheaper after the last price-gouge, and so far seems to be a superior Internet and Mindmelt-o-vision provider.)

The Internet should be tax-free because it's almost as important as water, not because big corporations use the money I pay them to bribe politicians.

Ah well... it could be worse. We could be in China. Taxes are at worst a necessary nuisance, while internet censorship is truly evil.

On Katrina:
How many American citizens will our government allow to suffer and die?

http://www.godhatesfags.com

http://www.thesignsofthetimes.com (The links seem to be broken)

http://www.godhatesamerica.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/noise/?id=louis_theroux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2007/04/video_the_surre.html

I think it’s easy to classify most people on a sort of number line of political philosophy.

I see it as going something like this:

Communist - Radical liberal – Liberal – Moderate liberal – Fed up with politics – Moderate conservative – Conservative – Radical conservative – Nazi

But some groups, like the Westboro Baptist Church, defy my system.

• Are they Commies? They sort of live communally with a shared back yard.
• Are they radical liberals? They’ve condemned the “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Are they fed up with politics? They hate Kerry and Bush.
• Are they radical conservatives? They can’t stop talking about hating fags.
• Are they Nazis? They sure seem to like to vilify Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Swedes, and every other group that isn’t them.

I can’t put them on my line, but I’m actually not too upset about that. I can see the justification behind the Nazis and the Communists, even though I don’t agree with them. These WBC people can have their own classification, way down in the footnotes.

These people are pure attention whores.

That’s it, folks. I think they just want face time. They aren’t particularly attractive or talented, so what else would get their faces and names out there in the public eye? Hating on everybody, that’s what.

Therefore, I believe the best course of action would be for us to ignore them.

What can they do? There aren’t that many of them and they’ve already intermarried. Their leader won’t allow marriages outside the church. WBC is its own destruction.

I think the only thing we as a people should do in response to the WBC is to make it a Federal offense to picket a funeral. I’m a huge proponent of the First Amendment, but I can’t for the life of see a decent reason to show up to a graveyard and annoy mourners.

Thoughts?