Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

YouTube – John McCain’s ads are LIES. Here’s the video proof..

If you think we’re not headed toward a police state with no constitutional rights… you NEED to watch this:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

“And I can see Russia from my house!” (I <3 Tina Fey) Listen to that tone in his voice. "I don't know how to answer this question without looking like an idiot for picking her, so I'm just going to whiiiiiine about Obama and hope I get away with it." And then, petulantly, he answers when pressed - with a supremely idiotic answer.

YouTube – John McCain stumbles on Palin’s National Security Experience.

“Hurricane Gustav came and went without a hitch. What a difference a Republican governor makes!”

Yeah… he huffed and he puffed and blew that storm away… he just blew and blew and somehow that the storm just magically downgraded itself and floated off into the sunset. Golly. What a difference a Republican governor makes. Maybe next time we have massive fires because Ahnold refuses to clear hazardous brush, we can just ask him to blow the fires out.

As for her remark about Michael Moore saying a Category 3 hurricane hitting the United States is proof that there is a god in heaven? Well, I didn’t see the interview so I don’t know what the context was, but I’d be willing to bet it had something to do with Focus on the Family’s urging its membership to pray for rain of “biblical proportions.” They asked, God answered. Proof, right? How was God to know that that Republican governor was SOOO full of hot air that he was able to purse his lips and blow that storm right back into God’s face?

He was, you know, for it, before he was against it… yeah.

Everybody regurgitating the Republican-fed sheep-talk needs to see this video. EVERYBODY.

Sarah Palin Gender Card | The Daily Show | Comedy Central.

In a world without Don LaFontaine… RIP.

At long last, it has arrived! After 22 years, the made-for-TV celebrity extravaganza has FINALLY been released on DVD! Yes, you heard me correctly – the 1985 TV movie Alice in Wonderland is now available on DVD for your viewing pleasure! This movie is PACKED with celebrities – some of them in their prime, some of them past their prime, and some of them not quite ready for prime time (hello, young John Stamos! hahaha). Natalie Gregory plays Alice, and throughout her adventures she runs into… let’s see… Sammy Davis Jr., Carol Channing, Sally Struthers, Ann Jillian, Lloyd Bridges, Red Buttons, Sherman Hemsley, Sheila Allen, Shelley Winters, Scott Baio, John Stamos, Imogene Coca, Telly Savalas, Roddy McDowall, Sid Caesar, Ringo Starr, Steve Allen, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick Duffy, Harvey Korman, Eydie Gorme, Pat Morita, and others! I think these days you can pretty much only see such a star-studded list of names if you go down to Hollywood and take a stroll along the Walk of Fame. What more can I say? It’s a fabulous movie and is my very favorite remake, and one of my favorite movies from my youth. Share it with YOUR children! You can find it for $7.99 at Amazon.com.

*squeals* No, seriously. I’m so excited.

Well, he did it. He’s the man of the hour! Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal earlier this week, meaning he has won more gold medals than any other athlete at a single Olympiad. The record was previously held by Mark Spitz.

In other news, does anybody else think that Nastia Liukin was robbed of that gold medal on the uneven bars? What was up with that tie-breaking method? I still want to know how China expects us to believe that tiny kid who won is really sixteen. I don’t believe it for a minute. Ah well. At least Liukin got her all-around gold.

Another great video, this one from TheRealMcCain.com – more specifically, from Robert Greenwald at Brave New Films, creators of the amazing film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

This great “Commander In Chief Test” video is definitely worth watching. I particularly like the bit about getting Bush re-elected. I think that little clip should be played on every network television station across America. Multiple times.

There are a few entertaining bits in this Daily Show clip – but the most entertaining for me is that FAUX News has resorted to showing 8-year old clips of McCain’s Election 2000 press conferences so they can get a shot of him looking younger.

This awesome story is making the rounds on the Internet and in the news lately.

In 1969, Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall rescued a lion cub from the “exotic animals” department at Harrod’s Department Store in London. They named him “Christian” and raised him in their apartment, exercising the cub on the grounds of the local church. After a year, though, Christian the lion became too large to keep in their home.

As luck would have it, the two men coincidentally ran into actors Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, who had recently starred in Born Free, the 1966 film about another domesticated lion who had been reintroduced into the wild by the couple whom the actors had portrayed, George and Joy Adamson (author of Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds). They suggested that the two men contact George Adamson in Kenya.

Bourke and Rendall eventually brought the lion to Kenya, and after a few years, they returned to visit him. They were informed at that point that Christian was the leader of his own pride and was fully wild now, and that he would not remember them. See for yourself what really happened when the lion and the men met again.

You can purchase the DVD made about Christian the lion at the Born Free Foundation website.

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Have you come across the “5 computers” error in iTunes? You know the one – it tells you that you have already authorized five computers and can no authorize new machines to play your iTunes-purchased songs and videos? If you’re like me, you’ve probably got a few “authorized” machines that died long ago, or maybe you forgot to deauthorize your work computer before you left your last job. How are you supposed to clear them now?

Well, it turns out that you CAN deauthorize your computers within iTunes without going to each computer that’s authorized to play your songs. The catch? 1) You can only do it once a year, and only if all five slots are already filled, and 2) doing it will deauthorize all five computers. If that’s fine with you, then here’s how to do it – it’s super-easy.

1) Log into the iTunes store in the iTunes application.
2) Click on your email address in the top right corner to bring you to your account page.
3) Enter your password when prompted.
4) You’ll be taken to your account page. In the top box, the last option in that section is “Computer Authorizations.” If all five computers are authorized, you will see a button labeled, “Deauthorize All.” Click it, and you’re all set. Just remember that you’ll have to reauthorize the computers you do want to use with the files.

That’s all!

The Onion is celebrating San Francisco Pride weekend with a front page laden with gay-themed stories. Here are a few gems from over the years:

• New Dad Thinks Baby Might Be Gay
• Gay Couple Feels Pressured To Marry
• Transgendered Sea Anemone Denounced As ‘Abomination’ By Clergy
• Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years
• Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry
• Area Man Accidentally Responds To Own ‘M4M’ Ad
  
• Newly Out Gay Man Overdoing It
• Church Group Offers Homosexual New Life In Closet
• Area Homosexual Thinks He’s Still In The Closet
• New Bill Would Defend Marriage From Sharks
• Lesbian Couple Enjoys Hot Lesbian Action
• Community Bands Together To Get Through Lesbian-Gym-Teacher Crisis
• Bush Urges Iraqis To Pass Amendment Banning Gay Marriage
• Small Town Holds Annual Gay Shame Parade
• Closeted Father Lives Vicariously Through Gay Son

Happy Pride, everybody!

I published this article over at Hubpages, and thought you might like to read it. I’ve included the text for archive posterity.

Five Myths About Same-Sex Marriage

Over the past several weeks I have seen a huge number of articles spring up in protest of last month’s CA Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriages. I want to address some of the arguments and claims that I’ve seen in those articles.

Myth #1: Four liberal activist judges overruled the will of the people.

What You Should Know: The California Supreme Court, a conservative court, struggled with the issue, looked to the CA Constitution, and concluded that equality means equality for ALL – and that includes those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Many have argued that legislatures, not judges, should be responsible for making marriage law. The CA legislature has twice passed the Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Act, which equalized civil marriage rights among couples but explicitly stated that no religious institution shall be compelled to preside over a same-sex marriage. The bill was passed by two different assemblies of the legislature, since one passage was prior to a major election and once occurred after. The bill was twice vetoed by the Governor specifically because he believed it WAS an issue for the courts, not for the legislature.

Of the seven CA Supreme Court Justices, six were appointed by Republicans. The CA Supreme Court is traditionally known for being fairly conservative. If you think “CA” and think “liberal judges,” you might be mistaking the CA Supreme Court for the United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit. They are two very different courts. Incidentally, one of the dissenters is personally in favor of allowing same-sex marriage. Judges can and do go against their own personally-held beliefs in favor of upholding the CA Constitution.

The Supreme Court decision did not create a “new right” – rather, it acknowledged prior decisions stating that every person has a right to choose his or her life partner, and determined that this right cannot be abridged based solely on sexual orientation, which the Court views as akin to race and religion as far as discrimination practices are concerned. The judges did not come to their decision easily; they struggled with it, and that struggle is documented in the extremely lengthy opinion released last month (most court decisions are NOT this long – the Massachusetts marriage decision was less than a third of this length). If you think all it took was a stroke of a pen, I challenge you to read the 172-page opinion. I did.

Myth #2: The people of CA already spoke on the issue of gay marriage by passing Proposition 22

What You Should Know: Only 29% of registered California voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22. Is that an overwhelming majority?

While Proposition 22 was a statewide ballot initiative, it was not an accurate reflection of all of CA, for two major reasons:

First, contrary to popular belief, Prop 22 was not approved by an overwhelming majority of CA voters. Prop 22 was passed by an overwhelming majority of the voters who came out in March of 2000 to pick between John McCain and George Bush, since there was no true competition in the Democratic race, with Vice President Al Gore being the assumed winner. True, more Democrats than Republicans voted in the election, but if you count by who they voted for instead of their party identification, you get 2,654,114 voting Democratic and 3,702,487 voting Republican. In a consistently blue state, these statistics are not representative of the true population (about 30 million people). Overall, the election had a pretty low turnout rate. That primary election had around 7 million voters out of about 15 million registered voters. This past February primary (2008) had about the same number of registered voters, but more than 9 million actually turned out – and THAT was with closed primaries, which we didn’t have before, and no real contest in the Republican race.

In a state of more than 30 million people, only 4,618,673 voted in favor of Prop 22, and 2,909,370 voted against it. With only about a third of eligible voters, and barely half of registered voters, having voted on Prop 22 (that’s overall, not just in favor), it’s hard to use the word “overwhelming” to describe the outcome. Basically, 29% of registered voters (21.5% of eligible voters) voted in favor of Prop 22 – and that was eight years ago. The world has changed since then. People have changed since then. I know a LOT of people who voted for Prop 22 and are, in retrospect, utterly ashamed of themselves for it.

Second, Proposition 22, while appearing simple, was actually quite misleading. It came as a response to DOMA, which allowed states to refuse to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, and the entire campaign was centered around the notion that CA should not be forced to recognize other states’ marriages. The argument was framed in such a way that many people who had no particular opinion on same-sex marriage voted for Prop 22 because they believed CA should be allowed to make the decision for itself and not be forced into it by another state. While this same Supreme Court ruling ultimately determined that Prop 22 did apply to all marriages and not just those performed out of state, the “yes” campaign intimated otherwise, and countless voters were duped in the process.

Even if Proposition 22 HAD passed with the approval of most Californians (which it didn’t), the CA Supreme Court had the responsibility to ensure that it complied with the CA Constitution (which it didn’t). The Court here didn’t ignore Proposition 22; it attacked it head on and found it to violate the spirit of the California Constitution. Courts have declared other initiatives unconstitutional as well, and in the 1960’s the US Supreme Court even invalidated a voter-approved CA constitutional amendment which sought to overturn a recently-passed legislative act banning housing discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status. Propositions don’t just glide into law just because the voters approved them. They still have to meet the rigorous standards of our great state and federal constitutions, and Proposition 22 violated what both the CA and US Supreme Courts have called a basic human right, the right to marry and create a family with your chosen spouse.

Myth #3: Marriage is a sacrament and has always been between one man and one woman.

What You Should Know: Read Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz. You’ll learn things you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

I could go on for pages about the ways in which marriage has changed over the years. One man can no longer have eight wives. Women are no longer subsumed by their husband’s identity and viewed as property. Couples are no longer barred from marriage based on their racial makeup. Most importantly, however, couples do not have to have their marriage blessed or sanctified by a religious institution, and they do not have to be married by a member of the clergy. This is the key to the constitutionality argument for same-sex marriage. The court cannot, and must not, and WILL not force religious institutions to officiate marriage for same-gender couples. Religions have the right to dictate their requirements for marriage, and the government may not interfere.

However, the state does not “recognize” religious institutions’ marriages; it creates the official status itself, and it officiates marriages outside the religious sphere. We call this civil marriage. It is an entirely different institution from religious marriage; it just happens that the state grants clergymen the status to officiate civil marriages at the same time as religious ones, for convenience’s purpose, so that a couple can be married in a single ceremony. A couple that goes to church and exchanges vows before witnesses is NOT married unless they fill out the necessary paperwork for a civil marriage. Likewise, a couple can obtain a civil marriage license and be married by a judge, a marriage deputy, or other civil servants acting as agents for the state, and never even interact with a religious institution.

Religious institutions can discriminate against certain couples; for example, most rabbis will not officiate at a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, because Jewish law only recognizes as valid a marriage between two Jews. However, the STATE cannot discriminate in the same way and purport to be upholding the Constitution, state OR federal. If the STATE offers civil marriage, it must allow it to all adult couples, not just those who fit religious descriptions of propriety. After all, can you imagine the chaos if the state refused to issue a marriage license to a couple because one of them was Jewish and one was not? It is not the state’s business to uphold or enforce religious restrictions on marriage. (In fact, considering the VAST number of religious institutions and clergy who submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in support of same-gender marriage, I would argue that the state would have been in violation of the Establishment Clause had it NOT allowed the marriages to take place, since barring same-gender couples would have been equivalent to expressing a preference for some religions over others, at the expense of individual civil rights.)

If you want Biblical proof that it hasn’t always been about men and women, read I Samuel, not just the lines I have provided below, but the entire story – and read a translation that is as close to the original Hebrew as possible, as modern versions have diluted the story, often explicitly changing words entirely to tone down the relationship. Think about what it means to make a “covenant.” In nearly every other case in the Bible, the word “covenant” refers to the relationship between God and people, or to people promising to serve God. A covenant is an eternal promise – why else would some states institute “covenant marriages,” which are not as easy to dissolve?

1 Samuel 18

1. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

3. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 23

18. And they two made a covenant before the LORD: and David abode in the wood, and Jonathan went to his house.

Myth #4: Allowing same-sex marriage will lead to legalization of incest, pedophilia, and polygamy! Next thing you know, people will be marrying their dogs!

What You Need To Know: It’s far too late for that.

Let’s get this one over with: A dog is not and will never be a consenting adult. Nor will a goat. In addition to being morally and utterly repugnant, sex with animals is always rape, because an animal cannot consent. Likewise, a paw print does not suffice as a signature on a marriage license – and no matter how sure you are that your dog is trying to tell you something, absent a licensed dog-to-human translator, “Arf arf” cannot be properly construed to mean “I do.” Get your mind out of the gutter and stick to the issue at hand.

Incest is already legal in the 26 states where individuals can marry their first cousins. Cousins are the next degree of siblings; they are the children of your parents’ siblings. The great irony of today’s marriage laws is that I can marry my black cousin, the son of my aunt, but I can’t marry my wife. Or rather… I couldn’t. Now I can.

Pedophilia is already legal in the 1/3 of states that allow children under age 16 to marry, with some allowing marriage as early as age 13 with permission from the court. I’d be willing to bet that in most cases the men marrying adolescent girls are not also in their teens. If you want to protect children, you can start by lobbying states to prohibit children from getting married before they are old enough to see R-rated movies.

Polygamy is a separate issue because it doesn’t involve marital prohibition so much as it involves individuals trying to “double-dip” on the marital property and tax systems, among other things. A marriage is a union of two individuals into one economic unit. You can’t “become one” with one person if you’re already “one” with another person. There’s an argument to be made for allowing “threesomes” of people to marry, but I highly doubt anybody would take the economic risk, considering that one individual could wind up paying alimony to everybody else in the group if s/he decided to leave. I think the specter of alimony would be enough to prevent anybody from seriously raising this concern – not to mention that it’s an extremely rare arrangement in the first place.

Myth #5: Gay couples don’t need marriage in order to get their legal matters in order. Calling it “marriage” does nothing but devalue the sanctity of marriage.

What You Need To Know: Allowing committed couples to marry encourages and promotes monogamy and family responsibility, two crucial family values. As a result, federal and state governments have instituted a system of rights and responsibilities that have become necessary and irreplaceable for two people sharing their lives together. These rights are not replicable in private legal arrangements since most of them have to do with third-party or government recognition.

First, I have to point out that same-gender couples can’t possibly do more harm to the institution of marriage than that already inflicted by the heterosexuals who have held a monopoly on it for so long. (Hello Britney; hello “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?”) With more than half of all marriages ending in divorce, marriage needs all the good role models it can get. Many of the couples that are getting married in California this week have been together longer than most heterosexual marriages ever last. In fact, some social scientists believe that studying the way same-sex couples communicate and deal with conflict may actually help decrease the divorce rate among heterosexual couples by helping them overcome conflict.

Whether you like it or not, same-sex couples will have children. Children fare better in life when their parents are married. Why would you deny these children the right to be raised by married parents? Studies show that there is no substantial difference between children raised by gay parents and those raised by straight parents. They do, however, show that two parents are better than one. Marriage encourages two-parent childrearing, and provides economic safety-nets for situations where one parent abandons the family. Without marriage, the protections are substantially reduced. Marriage also encourages personal responsibility and shifts economic support responsibilities from the government to the individual and the private sector; with gay marriage legalized, many people will no longer have a need for state-provided benefits because they will be eligible for benefits through their spouse.

Children tend to thrive when they have one parent at home and one parent working to support the family; in an ideal world, families could afford to live on the salary of only one working parent (this is becoming less common as the cost of living skyrockets). Federal marriage recognition encourages parents to stay home with their children; spouses are entitled to their deceased spouses’ Social Security benefits if their own are insufficient. Gay couples do not receive this benefit, effectively removing this incentive to keep one parent at home. Additionally, federal marriage recognition keeps families from being uprooted in case of the death of a spouse; the property passes from one spouse to the other without tax repercussions, which means that in the tragic event of one spouse’s death, the other spouse and their children will not be forced to sell their home to pay estate taxes. Gay partners are taxed on bequests as though they were granted by any acquaintance; a partner of 55 years could be forced to sell her home to pay the taxes on property inherited from the deceased partner. Finally, the federal tax system actually penalizes gay couples who choose to have one partner remain at home to care for the children; the wage-earning partner is taxed on her income as a single person even though her salary is supporting both partners and their children. Stay-at-home moms should relate to this – imagine if your husband had to pay taxes as a single person!

I could go on forever, but I think it’s time to wrap up this article. However, I am happy to answer any questions you might have. As for me, my wife and I got married this past Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of our religious wedding. We were already married in the eyes of God – it was time for the state to catch up.

Did John McCain call his wife a cunt? Maybe, or maybe not. I still think it’s interesting that the question was asked flat out and he conveniently didn’t deny it. In fact he got on his high horse about “that kind of language.” Of course… whether he said it that particular time or not, it’d be hard for him to deny he’s ever used the word, considering this fabulous Freudian slip… because honestly, how often do we accidentally slip and say words that aren’t already in our general lexicon? Methinks the good senator had cunts on the brain.

If you seem to always guess correctly as to how sports games, current events, and other occurrences will turn out, perhaps you need to sign up for Predictify.

I am always a little bit too optimistic or a little bit too pessimistic, so I haven’t made a dime — but my wife has made a little under $15 already, just by predicting the outcome of such questions as “What will Sex and the City: The Movie gross in the box office on its opening weekend?” or “Who will be the Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election?”

Want to try your hand at predicting the future? Give it a shot!

Dan Savage – Wombs To Let:

A state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California – and forcibly divorce thousands of gay and lesbian couples that will have married between June 17 and November – isn’t the only problematic constitutional amendment being placed before voters this fall. Colorado voters are being asked to approve a constitutional amendment that will make a fertilized egg – not an implanted egg, just a fertilized egg -a “person” under the law.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just dying to read Scott McClellan’s tentative “expose” of the Bush White House, entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. I’m sure Mr. McClellan has lots to say – just be wary of how he says it; the man is still a conservative and he still lied to Americans on a daily basis for nearly three years. Whatever he says about his own lack of information, you KNOW there were countless times when he looked the White House press corps in its zoom-lens eye and flat-out lied.

More once I read the book!