31 posts tagged “news”

Most people by now have heard of the justice of the peace in Louisiana who recently refused to marry an interracial couple.  When I first heard the news, it boggled my mind, as I could not imagine such a thing happening anywhere in the United States in 2009.  I'm not at all surprised that such racism still exists now, but it was a shock to see such an overt expression of it.  One would think that he would be well aware of the Supreme Court decision of 1967 which made interracial marriage legal in all fifty states.

The judge, Keith Bardwell, said, "I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves.  In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."  Yeah, they might grow up to be, oh, President of the United States or something.

He added that he came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, Bardwell is also of the opinion that that most interracial marriages do not last long.

My disgust for his racist attitudes aside, what business of his is it to speculate on how long any individual marriage will last, regardless of race or any other characteristics, or to predict how any children born of that union will fare?  He's a justice of the peace, not a social critic or a psychiatrist/psychologist, and it's his job to conduct marriage ceremonies for anyone who requests it who meet the legal requirements, regardless of his personal opinions.   If he will not perform a legal function of his office, then he needs to find another line of work.

Thoughts?

I woke up this morning to find that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Prize, which left me scratching my head.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for the guy and think he shows a lot of promise.   But I think it's premature, to say the least, to award him such a prize so early in his administration.   I am sure there are others who deserve it more at this particular point in time.   I'd been under the impression that the prize was awarded on the basis of actual accomplishments, rather than on the hope of promise.

It's quite possible that in a few years, Obama would rightly deserve the prize on the basis of accomplishment, but awarding it now makes me wonder if he's being given the award mainly because he's not George Bush.

Nevertheless, it's going to be amusing watching the indignant reactions from the far right wingnuts, as they get their collective boxers/panties in a wad while they froth at the mouth.

This morning while idly surfing the net, I read one woman's rant about the latest sexual brouhaha du jour; that of David Letterman being blackmailed over the many sexual dalliances he's had over the years with women he'd worked with.  In complete indignation, she ripped Letterman up one side and down the other.

She reviled him for his inability to be monogamous; that he'd been repeatedly unfaithful to his partner of 23 years.  Calling him a "creepy, perverted old man", she jeered at him for his apparent inability to "keep in in his pants".  And then she wrapped up with hand-wringing about the increasingly so-called "dying breed" of men who remain absolutely sexually faithful to their female partners who, unlike Letterman, in her opinion, were "upright, righteous, strong, moral men with integrity".

I won't take the time to address all her points here, because that isn't the main point of this post, save to say that infidelity wasn't something invented in the 1960s.   People have been struggling to adhere to monogamy ever since it was imposed on us by religion countless generations ago.

What mainly struck me as absurd and short sighted about her post was the fact that the Letterman "sextortion" news has followed directly on the heels of the latest news about Roman Polanski's arrest.

If she wanted to vent her spleen on a "creepy, perverted old man", then she need not have looked any further than Polanski, who drugged and forcibly raped a 13 year old kid, then evaded justice for over thirty years.  Polanski is the real deal when it comes to creepy, perverted old men and it's completely ludicrous to even attempt to put Letterman into the same category.

Unlike Polanski and his misguided defenders, (such as Whoopi Goldberg, who has said that Polanski did not commit "rape-rape", but "something else"), who have tried to minimize the seriousness of what he did,  Letterman has stepped up to the plate like a man and openly admitted the dalliances without trying to explain them away.  Unlike many other celebrity men who have been outed for adultery in recent years, was honest about his behavior. 

Letterman was also involved with adult women in consensual encounters; hardly the crime of the century that will lead to the end of civilization as we know it.  Polanski and his defenders, who somehow think he's special and not subject to the same laws as the rest of us, on the other hand, say something very sad about our society.

Thoughts?

While talking with a coworker recently, he stated that he was against health care reform because Nazi Germany had a nationalized, or "socialized", health care system.

Oh, where to begin with this blockheaded black and white thinking?

First of all, Hitler made the trains run on time in Nazi Germany and it was his idea to invent a cheap, well-made car so that all German workers could have their own automobile.  That car survives today by the name he gave it -- Volkswagen -- which translates from German as "People's car".

So -- should we abolish punctual public transportation and scrap every VW beetle on the planet because these good ideas happened to come from an evil man?  Will the retention of such things inevitably lead us to fascism?  Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Another point to make is that the Nazi party was not "socialist" in the way that modern Scandinavian states are.  Yes, the Nazis called themselves "socialists", as the word "Nazi" is a derivative of the acronym NSDAP (National Sozialistische Arbeiter's Partei -- National Socialist Worker's Party).  Make no mistake about it, Nazi Germany was not socialist but, rather, it was a far right fascist totalitarian regime.  And like all dictatorships, the Nazis were masters of misleading euphemism; for example, a number of concentration camps had signs at their entrances with the slogan "Arbeit Macht FreI' on them, which translates as "work brings freedom".

In other words, the Nazis were no more "socialist" any more than the former East Germany was "democratic" or that modern China is run by "the people".

Many right wingers also confuse socialism with statism (control by workers vs control by state) and believe that anything other than laissez-faire capitalism is "socialist".  If this were actually true, then every government would be "socialist" under such a definition.

Thoughts?

Recently, I read about a pre-op transsexual prisoner in the UK, convicted of murder and attempted rape, who has won the right to be transferred from a male prison to a female one.  The prisoner, who still has a penis, scrotum, and testicles, had not yet, at the time of incarceration, had surgery to remove male organs and construct a simulated vulva/vagina.  This prisoner has had breast implants, laser hair removal, and is taking female hormones to maintain a believable female appearance when clothed.

The decision to move this prisoner was based largely on the fact that in 2006  the prisoner was granted a certificate under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act which required that this person be recognized as a woman "for all purposes".  In simpler terms, this prisoner is considered "legally female", despite the presence of a penis, scrotum, and testicles.  In other words, it's a legal fiction.

I'm sorry, but no "female" of my acquaintance has a dick, nutsack, and balls.  My dictionary calls such an individual a "man", regardless of the fake boobs and electrolysis.  Socially, this person can call themselves whatever they want, but biologically, this individual is a male.  And there is the matter that this prisoner has been convicted of attempted rape -- to let loose such a predator into a prison full of genuine women, while still having the "tools" to rape again, is completely ludicrous in my opinion.

This absurd legal fiction reminded me of another common legal fiction; that a woman's husband is legally considered to be the father of her children, even when there is DNA evidence to the contrary.  Some time ago, I posted an entry about a man who'd fathered a child during an affair with a married woman, who was denied visitation rights with his child.  The woman was still married and the husband was upheld as the legal father, rather than the step/adoptive father, thus the biological father was considered an "unrelated" person with no valid interest in the child.

I'm also reminded of men who are legally forced to pay child support for children that aren't theirs and whom they've never raised or had any sort of relationship with.

I don't know about you, but I take a dim view of such legal fictions that try to mandate what some people think "should" be, rather than acknowledging the truth of what really is.  The law should deal objectively with facts, not contrived social engineering.

Thoughts?

Listening to the Neal Boortz show the other night, I heard him ragging on liberals who have decided to boycott Whole Foods because of an editorial Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote in the Wall Street Journal where he stated that "universal healthcare is no more a right than food or shelter."

Boortz believes the boycott is misguided because Whole Foods pays 100% of employees' premiums, but no deductibles, for everyone who clocks in 30 hours or more per week. Then it gives these workers $1,800 a year in "health care dollars" to use for health and wellness expenses.

Whether or not the boycott is justified isn't the point of this blog entry.  My point is to call attention to Boortz' hypocrisy in light of a broadcast he'd made about a week earlier than this one.

In the earlier broadcast, Boortz talked about a stationery shop he'd patronized for several years.  One day while shopping at this store, he noticed the owner leaving his car, which has pro-Obama stickers on them.  At that moment, Boortz decided to never shop there again, despite the fact that he'd always been given good service there and had nothing to complain about.  He chose to boycott this store only because the owner had voted for Barack Obama.

He went on to say that voting with one's wallet is a time-honored way of expressing one's opinion in a free market society, blah, blah, blah.

Pot, meet kettle.

I'm guessing Boortz won't be trotting out that old voting with one's wallet theme when it comes to the 36 sponsors who have chosen to withdraw their sponsorship from Glenn Beck's show, either..

I normally don’t repost articles written by other people in their entirety, but the following article so precisely sums up my sentiments that I am making an exception.   All bolded passages are my emphasis.

The Real US Healthcare Issue: Compassion Deficiency

By Gordon Marino

Recently the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, aka "conspiracy theorists", have added a new facet to their arsenal of idiocy.

What I'm referring to are the "Birthers"; those who believe that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, thus making him ineligible to be President.

Do these morons not know that Obama had to have had his background thoroughly checked out before he was allowed to take the Oath of Office?

I understand that they're not happy that Obama won the election, but is probably one of the most extreme cases of sour grapes that I've ever seen.   These folks need to give it up, accept reality, and to get a life already. 

Obama won.  Their guy didn't.   Deal with it and move on.

I do have to admit, however, that I laughed when even Neal Boortz called them "moonbats", then whined that they were making conservatives look bad.  Well, Boortz and others of his ilk do a pretty good job of that all by themselves, but I suppose a some contributions from the Looney Tunes section of the Republican Party can't hurt, either.