There are so many Democratic candidates for president in 2008 because Democrats are flighty and disorganized and usually out of left field. In fact, trying to get them to move together is like herding cats.
At least, that’s the sentiment that underscores the punch lines of the recent jokes on late night T.V. on the subject.
But according to my count, there are at least as many contenders on the Republican side. Why aren’t we yukking it up over how many and varied they are?
Democrats Declared or Expected to Run for President in 2008:
1. Sen. Joe Biden
2. Sen. Hillary Clinton
3. Former Sen. John Edwards
4. Sen. Barack Obama
5. Gov. Tom Vilsack
6. Sen. Chris Dodd
7. Rep. Dennis Kucinich
8. Gov. Bill Richardson
Republicans Declared or Expected to Run for President in 2008:
1. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani
2. Gov. Mike Huckabee
3. Rep. Duncan Hunter
4. Sen. John McCain
5. Gov. George Pataki
6. Gov. Mitt Romney
7. Rep. Tom Tancredo
8. Sen. Chuck Hagel
9. Rep. Mike Pence
Then there are the nightmare wild card candidates: Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Condo Rice. And once that pesky constitution gets amended (or — more likely by the time Bush leaves office — just plain trashed), Arnold Schwarzenegger. The only comparable wishful thinking maybe on the Democratic side is Al Gore.
So enough with the jokes about the sea of Democratic candidates. From where I sit, there are about a dozen too many Republicans on the way.
In response to the article I posted today describing a couple of innovative and important proposals for saving the institution of marriage — criminalizing adultery and de-licensing marriages that do not produce children — a Christian conservative wrote a rather lengthy response that caught my attention.
If you have mowed the lawn, stopped by the office or baked a cake on Sunday, you are as big an abominator as the gayest person on the planet. Your earthly punishment is death and your cosmic penalty is eternal damnation.
It would have been interesting to hear what a right-wing Christian thought about a tight clampdown on the rules related to marriage. Instead, as is typical of the Limbaugh-Hannity-O’Reilly-trained mind, this writer focused on the style of my article (my questionable wordsmithing), railed fantastical charges against “the Left” and offered wild suppositions about what I don’t know — but never got around to addressing the substance: locking up adulterers and annulling non-procreative marriages.
But this bit of Dittohead bombast made me chuckle:
The piece is also filled with fallacies, and I give the writer (and most activists) the benefit of the doubt in that they don’t read the Bible, and that they have been spoonfed the lies about what it contains and base it off of stereotypes instead of lying themselves. “In fact, there is nothing of any consequence about gay sex in either Testament.” Oh really? Ever read Leviticus? Probably not.
Leaving aside the fact that I am not an “activist” (and calling me one insults those who are), as it happens, I am extremely familiar with the contents of the Bible, especially Leviticus, and especially the part of Leviticus that says being gay is an abomination unto the Lord:
Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
Yup, and since “lying with” is Bible code for “having sex,” I’m in deep shit. But as bad as this is, a couple of lines down it gets worse — much worse:
Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”
What? No boiling in oil?
Yes, the biblical sentence for being gay is the death penalty. It is unambiguously clear. Gay people must be killed on sight, and their corpses are to be drenched in their own blood.
It says so in the Bible.
Which brings us to the tricky part. If you believe the Bible, and you believe that gay people are doomed to hell because of this edict in Leviticus, then you also have to believe gay people should be executed on the public square. If you don’t believe all those things, then why bother believing any of them?
The experience of human spirituality might well remain constant from millennium to millennium, but it is impossible to take seriously today judgments made by desert nomads 5,000 years ago about food storage, apparel, animal sacrifices, women’s rights and human sexuality. Our understanding of these things has changed radically — is still changing. What we know now renders the attitude of nomads in 3,000 BCE to be, well, inconsequential.
But Enough about Me
So let’s talk about you for a moment, dear reader. You may be thinking, “He’s just tap dancing around the issue to excuse his immoral lifestyle choice. I’m not gay so I’m going to be fine.”
Sorry. Even if you are as “completely heterosexual” as Rev. Ted Haggard, you are not off the hook, abominations-wise.
Sadly, dear reader, you have undoubtedly committed abomination-class sins in your life — maybe as recently as at lunchtime. Maybe even at this very moment. In fact, you could be committing an abomination-class sin as you are reading these words — without even knowing it.
Worse news: ignorance is no excuse. You have committed sins that are equally as bad, equivalently as offensive to the Lord, as anything any gay person has ever done. And you are going to hell in the very same handbasket.
So before you judge me and deny me the right to marry the man I love and have lived with for 28 years, let’s examine your sins more closely.
We must not depend on any sort of Divine Providence to put a stop to war. Providence says, Kill one another, my children. Kill one another to your hearts’ content. There are plenty more where you came from. Consequently, if we want war to stop we must all become conscientious objectors.
There have been two exciting developments recently in the campaign to protect marriage. In Ohio and Michigan wingnuts are pushing adultery laws with life-sentence penalties. In Washington state, liberals have proposed a law that prohibits infertile couples from marrying and annuls marriages that have not produced children after three years.
Count me in. I’m strongly in favor of both these efforts, and believe they warrant serious debate.
Criminalizing Adultery
Rightwing anti-marriage activists say that allowing same-sex couples to wed would destroy the institution of marriage.
But any rational observer would say that it isn’t homos who are wrecking marriage, it’s adulterers who cause most marriages to fail. And since about half of marriages end in divorce, we can surmise that there is a whole lot of adultery going on.
If conservatives feel as strongly as they say they do, why not make adultery punishable by death?
I have long been an advocate of taking the anti-marriage right at its word and criminalizing adultery — after all, it’s in the Bible. One of the Big Ten: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.
Conversely, nowhere in the Ten Commandments does it say Thou shalt not be gay. In fact, there is nothing of any consequence about gay sex in either Testament.
I was surprised to learn last week that several states already (or, rather, still) have laws on the books against adultery. In Michigan, the penalty for sexual misconduct is a life sentence.
To hear Trump talk, he’s the only one
Who’s ever stood trial for crimes he’s done.
But instead of courtroom drama,
We get Trump in his pajamas,
That’s how he earned his new nickname: Don Snoreleone.
“Some of the 49 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard by the state of Florida are now able to legally work in the United States and have temporary protections from deportation — because they are considered victims of a potential crime. … The migrants are eligible for these protections because they applied for a special kind of visa meant for crime victims who are helping law enforcement, after they said they were tricked into taking charter flights from San Antonio to Massachusetts with false promises of jobs and other aid.”
“We care more about the safety of our staff than a name attached to an article.”
In its panning of Taylor Swift’s new album (3.6/10 rating), Paste Magazine chose to put “Paste Staff” as the piece’s author instead of the individual who wrote it. That’s because following Paste’s negative review of Swift’s Lover album in 2019, the reviewer received threats of violence from fans who disagreed. As for its critique of The Tortured Poets Department, Paste Staff said its “mid-ness” was the result of “when the artist making it no longer feels challenged, where she strikes out looking.”
“The House is a rough and rowdy place, but Mike Johnson is gonna be just fine. I served 20 years in the military, it’s my absolute honor to be in Congress. But I serve with some real scumbags. Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”
“This week has been a howling vortex of suck for the MAGA movement and Donald Trump. Imagine a black hole in the profound interstellar vacuum in the cold emptiness of space, drawing all matter and energy into its brutal singularity, an ineluctable and final journey into nothingness. … That’s the GOP this week. It’s been bad and will get worse.”
“I am not resigning. And it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause, it is not helpful to the country, it does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here — a secure border, sound governance – and it’s not helpful to the unity that we have in the body.”
— Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on the “resign or be fired” ultimatum from the GOP’s Freedom Caucus just 174 days into his tenure as sp[eaker, reported by Punchbowl News.
A new Siena poll finds that by a 54% to 30% margin, New Yorkers say Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial is “legitimate” — the view of 77% of Democrats and 44% of independents — rather than a “witch hunt,” the view of 66% of Republicans.
A new Marist poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally among registered voters, 51% to 48%. In a multi-candidate field, Biden is up by five percentage points against Trump, 43% to 38% among registered voters, followed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 14%, Cornel West at 2%, and Jill Stein at 2%.Among those who definitely plan to vote, Biden leads Trump 46% to 39% in this same multi-candidate field.
NBC News poll: “‘Protecting democracy’ is a salient issue for voters. There’s a difference between what voters identify as the ‘most important issue facing the country’ (on that, “inflation and the cost of living’ registers 23%, followed by immigration/the border, at 22%) and what they identify as the issue most important in determining their own vote (on that, ‘protecting democracy or constitutional rights’ was on top with 28%, followed by immigration/the border at 20% and abortion at 19%).”
NBC poll: “RFK Jr.’s support draws more from Trump than Biden. Though the CW is that Kennedy is a bigger threat to Biden than to Trump, the numbers here tell a different story: 15% of Trump supporters and 7% of Biden supporters in the head-to-head matchup break for RFK Jr. when the field expands to include third-party candidates.”
