One of the proposed ways it wants to do that is to lessen it’s power in NATO, among other things. Apparently, our attempts to control and manipulate sovereign nations that have their own governments doesn’t just extend to the Middle East. Are we invading France, next? Seriously, the words “Drunk With Power” don’t even begin to describe the arrogance of this. I’m buying a French flag. When are we impeaching this dumbass?
I just remembered that over Easter one of my brothers said something about me always reading “liberal websites” when we were talking about where I read the news. Google News is what I generally read. It’s a news aggregate that pulls stories from various sources, and will post numerous links to the same story in different publications. This isn’t Mother Jones, kids. Not that I don’t read Mother Jones, but that’s not where I get all my news.
And he needs to be removed from a leadership role in the GOP, just like Lott was. Here’s why:
Santorum says homosexual acts are threat to American family
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rick Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranked Republican who is under fire from gay-rights groups and Democrats, says he has “no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts.”In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press two weeks ago, Santorum, R-Pa., said he believes homosexual acts are a threat to the American family. He drew criticism from gays and Democrats after parts of the interview — during which he compared homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery — were published Monday.
“I have no problem with homosexuality — I have a problem with homosexual acts, as I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships,” Santorum said during an interview taped April 7 in his Senate office.
“And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual,” he said. “I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.”
Note that this means he says that it’s okay to be gay, but you should never fall in love and have a romantic relationship with some one of the same sex if you are. You should be celibate and single all of your life, or you should do something terribly destructive like have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, which would be based on a lie and harm both parties. But if you have a romantic relationship with someone of your own sex, you should do so under fear of being arrested.
Given a chance to clarify his comments before the story was published, Santorum said: “I can’t deny that I said it, and I can’t deny that’s how I feel.”
During Santorum’s interview with the AP, he brought up a pending Supreme Court case over a Texas sodomy law within the context of his discussion on homosexual acts.
“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”
First of all, note that he said “consensual sex” not “gay consensual sex” — so he’s asserting that the government has the ability to come into the bedrooms of heterosexuals as well as gay people. That should scare everyone. Lots of news services are mis-quoting this by adding the word gay in parentheses, but that’s not what he said, and he’s clarified that’s not what he meant. Second, how does it follow that gay people’s right to consensual sex would somehow lead to societal approval of incest? The vast majority of incest occurs under non-consensual conditions. Also, this is based on the “slippery slope” argument, read here why this argument is completely invalid (this is Logic 101, folks.)
On Tuesday, Santorum’s office released a statement to underscore that those comments were made in the context of the court case.
“My discussion with The Associated Press was about the Supreme Court privacy case, the constitutional right to privacy in general, and in context of the impact on the family,” Santorum said in the statement. “I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution. My comments should not be misconstrued in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles.”
No? You’re condemning an entire group of people to celibacy under fear of arrest, and somehow suggesting that is equal protection under the Constitution? How do you figure that?
Santorum also criticized, during the April 7 interview, what he called “a whole feminist movement that’s built around the fact that fathers are unnecessary.” He answered “absolutely” when asked if liberalism takes power away from the family.
There has never been any part of the feminist movement that says that fathers are unnecessary. This is nothing but bull-shit rhetoric. It’s true that many lesbians have children. Most of them have some type of father figure. Some don’t. There are many single women in this country, either divorced or widowed, that don’t have father figures for their children. Should they be forced to get married to “provide a father” for their children? Scores of studies prove that children raised without a father or without a mother are not harmed in any way by the lack of a “role model.” Does this mean that fathers are “unnecessary”? No. But they aren’t mandatory, either.
“The basic liberal philosophy is materialistic, is relativistic, to the point of, you’ve got candidates for president saying we should condone different types of marriage,” Santorum said. “That is, to me, the death knell of the American family.”
How? How How How? I’ve never heard a real answer to this one. How does my falling in love with women have any effect on the “American Family”? If a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman want to get married and have a bunch of kids, how is my love life interfering with their decision? I’m certainly not standing in front of the church door tripping them as they go in. If I get married to my female partner in a church, that has no effect on the “traditional American Family.”
And what does he mean by “materialistic, is relativistic”? I’m sorry, but the whole “moral relativism” critique is again, a simple-minded repeating of the slippery-slope argument. Ethics hasn’t ever been that simple, and shouldn’t be dumbed down because the Republicans have cut their own school budgets so far that their own Stepford children are too ignorant to understand the world around them, and thus feel they should force everyone into their own tunnel-vision of the world.
Despite what the entire planet told them, the White House has insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction… until now; they’re finally acknowleding there are no weapons at all. Since this was their first reason for invading Iraq, are we now going to apologize to the Iraqi people for invading their sovereign nation? Oh, wait, our goal changed to capturing Saddam Hussein. But we haven’t done that. But we did liberate those Iraqi people, so that’s great.
“The proper personal and societal response to war should involve remorse and reflection. Remorse involves being accountable and acting responsibly. Denial, in contrast, insulates us from the pain and suffering of others. But denial has characterized America’s response to this war. There are certain things our culture just does not want to see, hear or feel.”
Interesting article on how Congress (specifically Republicans in Congress) is having trouble getting the Bush Administration to give information on how it’s using the PATRIOT Act. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin, R) told Ashcroft, “If you want to play, ‘I’ve got a secret,’ good luck getting the PATRIOT Act extended. Because if you’ve got bipartisan anger in the Congress, the sunset will come and go and the PATRIOT Act disappears.”
However, the new draft of the PATRIOT Act proposes deleting the sunset clause and making the act permanent.
May primaries are coming up in states where the Republicans aren’t trying to prevent them. Don’t forget to register to vote. In many states you can register online.
Although repeatedly warned of it’s importance to world history, the military failed to prevent looting at the Iraqi National Museum, leaving 5,000 years of written records, irreplaceable cultural history, to be destroyed. The oldest examples of human writing, clay tablets containing cuneiform are gone.
“It’s extraordinary,” says Joan Aruz, curator in charge of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s of the utmost significance, not only for the cultural heritage of Iraq, but also for the rest of the world. The museum contained the greatest work of art created in the first cities. The loss is just outstanding. I haven’t gotten over the shock.”
Rumsfeld’s response:”The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over,” he said, “and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'”
Of course, this is overlooking the fact that that vase is probably the oldest object created by man and worth over a billion dollars.
Apparently, the military is stationed to defend Iraq’s oil wells, leaving it’s people, hospitals and civic infrastructure to be looted and destroyed. “Protecting people should be a primary responsibility of any power that expects to enter a country and justifies its intervention on the basis of liberating the people or protecting their rights.”
Tim Robbins gives an excellent speech to the National Press Corp on the war, civil liberties, and the current media climate. Excerpt:
A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. ‘If you oppose this administration there can and will be ramifications.’ Every day the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and in fear.
It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice. The journalists in this country can battle back at those who would re-write our Constitution in the Patriot Act II (or Patriot, the sequel, as we would call it in Hollywood). We are counting on you to star in that movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as publicists by this administration.
It’s easy to tell how demented and irrational the country is right now regarding the war in Iraq… check out the urban legends that have sprung up lately on Snopes.com, the site that investigates and determines the truth about the e-mails you get forwarded to you by your not-too-internet-savvy friends and family members.
There are a bunch of apocryphal legends about military service members getting “denied service” or otherwise treated badly by “anti-war protesters.” It’s all a load of crap, folks. Ask any anti-war protester (hell, ask me, I’m one) and they’ll tell you they support the service people but hate the war they’re fighting in.