Good morning, all you happy not lovers!

Illinois Bishop: Catholics backing gay marriage are destroying the family

In a special speech to honor Valentine’s Day and discuss the meaning of love, the Bishop also said that being gay is a ‘condition’ that can be dealt with through a ‘life of chastity’.

“This Valentine’s Day we would also do well to focus on a more authentic understanding of the word ‘love’”, says Bishop Paprocki.  Love is never having to say you’re sorry for destroying other people’s hopes and dreams of love and happiness.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day, all you lonely gay singles living out your righteous lives of celibacy. The Bishop of Springfield says, “You’re Welcome!”

I began these Valentine’s Day reminiscences to shine a light on how love is systematically taken from this poor angry world, denied not just to gay people, but to everyone, lover, friend, family, they might have also loved.  I began it with a quote from a vicious screed published in Harper’s Magazine back in 1971, by one Joseph Epstein, who said homosexuals were “condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men”…

His howl against the homosexual in that Harper’s article almost certainly became a dagger in the the hopes and dreams of young gay men and women back then, reassuring parents, teachers, clergy that it was no sin to put a knife in the hearts of teenagers in love, that if they were condemned to live their one life in loneliness and heartache that was merely the Curse Of Homosexuality, not their own bar stool arrogance and cheapshit prejudices that did it to them.  Bobby and Johnny are getting just a little too friendly aren’t they…let’s pack them off to the psychiatrist quickly now…or to some nice church camp somewhere far away, where they can pray their unspeakable sin away…

Ah…Valentine’s Day…when all the lonely hearts ponder writing new songs about the one that did them wrong.  I have a different thing in mind.  How about stories of that which might have been, but for the cheapshit prejudices of the world we were thrown into.  I have a few stories of my own to tell.  Pull up a chair.  Sit a spell.  Love is in the air.  Let me pour you a drink.  There is a box of Valentine’s Day candy over there on the table, pieces of the moon rattling hollowly inside…angry, angry candy…

Let us pause in our (my) reminiscences to acknowledge that however better it has become for gay kids just discovering what all that love and desire stuff is all about, many of them still get the knife in the heart, with LOVE engraved on its blade…

Local Students And Staff Want Gays Banned From Prom

Several parents, students, and others who believe gays should be banned from the Sullivan High School prom met Sunday at the Sullivan First Christian Church.”We don’t agree with it and it’s offensive to us,” said Diana Medley.

So now they’re organizing their own Gay Kids Not Allowed prom…

“If we can get a good prom then we can convince more people to come and follow what they believe,” said student Kynon Johnson.

“We want to make the public see that we love the homosexuals, but we don’t think it’s right nor should it be accepted,” said a local student.

Feel the love, as Dan Savage says, because nothing says love like “you’re not wanted and God hates you.”  The people organizing this “traditional prom” had a Facebook page up about it, but took it promptly down when their efforts suddenly became an Internet news item.  Here’s what a couple of them had to say for themselves…

An issue has been raised in the Southwest School Corporation where a same sex couple or couples have requested acceptance of their marching together in the Grand March for the High School Prom. There have been a number of students, along with their parents, that have expressed their dislike over this venue for demonstrating this kind of behavior, which is offensive to many in Sullivan County.

Our first suggestion would be that the school administration ask the same sex couple or couples not use this venue (the Grand March) to demonstrate their sexuality because it is offensive to many and would be demonstrating before minors. So our wish is that the school officials and board return to the traditional couple stance in the same way Indiana only accepts traditional (man and wife) marriages.

We encourage you to show support for the teens in our community that are standing up for what they believe is right. Their position is based on the Bible’s stance against homosexuality and its acceptance in society and in our schools. It is very difficult for many of our high schoolers to stand up against peer pressure, our permissive culture and main stream media and yet many teens are standing up concerning this blatant demonstration that is not in accordance with God’s Word.

Please keep in mind that we love those who participate in homosexuality but that does not mean that we love homosexuality. Just as it has become their civil right (according to our society today) to attend the Grand March as a homosexual couple, it is our teens right to speak out against such a public demonstration. Many believe, as our teens do, this is not the venue to demonstrate a homosexual lifestyle.

A meeting for those in support of these efforts will be on Sunday, February 10, 2013 at the Sullivan First Christian Church at 1:30pm. This event and these efforts are not being organized by the Sullivan First Christian Church but the building is the gathering location for the meeting. Students and parents who support this effort are encouraged to attend. May God bless you as you pray over these efforts.

And this…from another member…

We would like to stress to everyone that this is not a hate group. We do not hate anyone, we are not judging anyone. We are choosing to stand on the word of God. The bible says the truth will set you free. All we can do is stand for what we believe and let God do the rest. We will not judge or hate anyone for their choice. We simply choose the entire word of God. The unchanging living word of God. God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

[emphasis mine]  Those who participate in homosexuality.  Those who participate in homosexuality.  Those who participate in homosexuality.  Do these people ever listen to themselves yapping?  Oh…and there’s Homosexual Lifestyle, right on cue.  And the ostentatious avowals of love for those who participate in homosexuality.  We are not a hate group, we only want those who participate in homosexuality to know they are not welcome at the prom.  Because homosexuals don’t love, they participate in homosexuality.

Feel the love, because the gay kids who go to that school sure are.

Worse though than a bunch of bigot parents, are the bigot teachers.  And especially bad if their job is caring for the kids who are among the most vulnerable among them…

Teacher Says Gays Have No Purpose In Life, Wants LGBT Kids Banned From Prom

A teacher of special needs children in Indiana is speaking out with other Christian parents and students by demanding LGBT kids be banned from a Sullivan High School prom.

Here’s a direct quote from that interview, courtesy of Dan Savage…

PAIGE PREUSSE: A gay person, um, do you consider them, maybe, do [you believe] they have some sort of purpose in life?

DIANA MEDLEY: I don’t. I personally don’t. I’m sorry.

Imagine you are a gay kid and you are hearing your teacher, or someone else’s teacher, say that your life has no purpose.

I notice this morning that the headline on that Wabash Valley Channel 2 page has changed from “Local Students And Staff Want Gays Banned From Prom” to “Local Students Want ‘Traditional Prom’, Gays Banned”, and I strongly suspect that’s at the request of the school that doesn’t want any of its knuckle dragging staff caught in the backwash of all this, let alone the school facing a lawsuit when a gay student takes Ms. Medley’s opinion their life has no purpose to heart and kills themselves.  And of course you just know that at the end of all this, the homophobes will be bellyaching that they were the bullied ones.  Certainly not the gay kids who wanted to bring their dates to the prom, just like any other kid does, and were told they weren’t wanted, that God hates them, and that their lives have no purpose, condemned as Joseph Epstein would have said, to a state of permanent niggerdom among men.

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day.  We love you.  Can’t you tell by the knife we’ve stuck in your heart?

[Edited a tad...  Edited some more to correct a name...]

…and probably never will.  Mother Jones tweeted just now (as I am typing this…):

In 2010, nearly 6x more women were killed by husbands, boyfriends, and exes w/ guns than by armed male strangers.

Yes.  And what do you think this means?

My silence here lately is because I’m spending what free time I have to blog working on a redesign of my photo galleries here.  A big part of why I bought my domain back in 2001 and put this web site up, was for it to be a showcase for my cartoons and photography, and both those galleries need some refurbishing.  Over the years Facebook made it easy for me to neglect my own web site, but thankfully their policies lately, and Timeline which I absolutely despise, have brought my attention back to it.

Here at least, I have some control over how my artwork is displayed.  Also, by putting my artwork up on my own web site I am not agreeing to anyone else’s business model for their use.  Artists take note: Those Terms Of Service can change at a moment’s notice and next thing you know your artwork might be selling toothpaste.

Or worse…

NJ gay couple sues, condemns use of their picture in Colorado ads

Photographer Kristina Hill…and married couple Brian Edwards and Thomas Privitere…are suing an organization that used the engagement photos of Edwards and Priviterein in a smear political attack mailer against Colorado State Senator Jean White…

This is that case of the same sex couple whose engagement photos were appropriated for use in some anti-gay republican attack ads.  They’d posted the photo in a blog they started to celebrate their upcoming marriage.  Two years later it was snatched by “Public Advocate of the United States”, nutcase Eugene Delgaudio’s SPLC listed hate group, for use in anti-gay republican attack ads.  Additionally the photograph was altered to show different a background, to make it seem as if it were taken locally for a given race.  Always protect your copyright…

…next time, schedule Gun Safety Day Before Gun Appreciation Day.

There ought to be some big national organization out there that provides firearm safety courses.  Give them a call if you need help with it.

Josh Marshall posts a letter from, as he puts it, the Non-Gun People…

Speaking for My Tribe

I’ve been thinking of writing some version of this post since the days immediately after the Newtown shootings. It overlaps with but is distinct from the division between people who are pro-gun or anti-gun or pro-gun control or anti-gun control. Before you even get to these political positions, you start with a more basic difference of identity and experience: gun people and non-gun people.

So let me introduce myself. I’m a non-gun person. And I think I’m speaking for a lot of people.

It’s customary and very understandable that people often introduce themselves in the gun debate by saying, ‘Let me be clear: I’m a gun owner.’

Well, I want to be part of this debate too. I’m not a gun owner and, as I think as is the case for the more than half the people in the country who also aren’t gun owners, that means that for me guns are alien. And I have my own set of rights not to have gun culture run roughshod over me…

Go read the whole thing.  This is the kind of conversation I have been wanting this country to have about guns. Marshall recognizes there is a cultural element…a Tribal element…to it, that makes communication among the factions hard. He’s reaching in to examine how that tribalism is making it hard both for him, and for those he lumps into the Gun Culture, to talk to each other.  This is good.  Before you can fix a problem, you need to understand it.  You can’t make policy in a democracy when people can’t talk to each other.  Well…you can…but not good policy.

And here I would like to put down my first marker sign: For all the same reasons I cannot speak for Gay People, though I am a gay man myself, I cannot speak for this Gun Culture he speaks of, though I own guns, though I take pleasure in shooting them, though I believe the second amendment confers a right to the people, not just to well regulated militias.  I suspect he’s talking about a stereotype.  I actually can speak to how that works; there are gay males who outwardly seem to fit perfectly the Hollywood/FRC/NOM flaming swishy limp-wristed lisping girly boy club haunting faggot. But a stereotype like a shade of skin or a religious belief does not tell you anything about the person within, nor does knowing that a person is gay, or Asian, or Muslim, necessarily tell you anything about the person within.  People look to stereotypes for justification, not clarity.  I don’t have a gay lifestyle simply because I am gay any more than I have a gun culture because I own a gun.  I have a life.  But try to tell that to someone who can’t see the people for the homosexuals.  And if by gun culture Marshall means he doesn’t want the lunatic right running roughshod over him…hello…I don’t want them running roughshod over me either.

This is good:

More than this, I come from a culture where guns are not so much feared as alien, as I said. I don’t own one. I don’t think many people I know have one. It would scare me to have one in my home for a lot of reasons…

He goes on to say that in the current climate people seem reluctant to say they think guns are scary and they don’t want to be around them.  That’s one big part of the problem we have talking to each other about guns.  Not the guns are scary part so much though.  Guns are dangerous.  They have to be.  They’re weapons.  It is not completely irrational to be afraid of them.  Point of fact, I would say it’s irrational to be absolutely unafraid.  Some degree of fear that isn’t immobilizing is a good thing if it reminds you to pay attention.  I am afraid of my table saw, I’ve witnessed a table saw nearly slice someone’s hand off.  Every time I step up to mine to do some work I pause and reflect on what can happen if I am not careful.  Will this be the time it happens…? Same thing with my guns.  Every time I lay a hand on one of mine I pause and think.  This thing could kill someone.  And even more so than the table saw…Much more so…the gun is a weapon; it is supposed to be dangerous.  The table saw is dangerous, but that is not its purpose.  The gun’s purpose Is to be dangerous.

There is a completely logical connection between Gun and Dangerous.  They are weapons.  It is not naive to be afraid of guns.  People should not be reluctant to say so in this conversation.  It isn’t naive and it isn’t simplistic.  It’s a completely normal reflex to have about weapons.  If anything it is naive to expect people’s fears not to be a part of this conversation.  Where fear mucks it up is when it gets in the way of knowledge and understanding.  This is the sort of thing that really irritates the hell out of me, and I suppose most people who have experience with firearms:

But remember, handguns especially are designed to kill people. You may want to use it to threaten or deter. You may use it to kill people who should be killed (i.e., in self-defense). But handguns are designed to kill people. They’re not designed to hunt. You may use it to shoot at the range. But they’re designed to kill people quickly and efficiently.

Charitably, this is the sort of rhetoric that comes from “…a culture where guns are not so much feared as alien.”  Uncharitably it is manipulative rhetoric, and the sort of thing that quickly destroys trust that the conversation is being held in good faith.  Handguns are not designed to kill people.  A soldier’s rifle is designed to kill people.  By nature and design a handgun is a defensive weapon.  It has not the range, the accuracy or firepower of a long gun.  It’s useful as a defensive weapon for the person holding it and that’s about it.  The only instance where a handgun can function as an aggressive weapon is where an attacker knows their victims are unarmed and unsuspecting.  But if the complaint about handguns is they’re more easily concealed, which makes it easier for an assailant to get close enough to be dangerous, I have a photograph I took back in the 1970s, a couple days after a period of unrest in Washington D.C., of a group of youths, one of whom was carrying a sawed off shotgun under a very lightweight jacket.  He was holding onto it through a hole in one pocket.  You would never have known he had it on him until he swung it up in your face.  All it takes to make a long gun easily concealable is a hacksaw, and then you have a weapon of much greater force than any handgun.  I own a 30-30 lever action rifle, the bullets it throws bear more force than the ones coming out of Dirty Harry’s 44 magnum, and it is an old cartridge design…the first meant for smokeless powder.  Long arms are aggressive weapons.  Handguns are defensive weapons.  That is their nature.

And here’s where tribalism and the stereotype of the Gun Nut and Gun Culture get in the way of communication.  Just my saying these things makes me a gun nut in some people’s regard and their eyes glaze over.  I know too much about guns to be a normal person.  I must be an NRA goon.  But no…I simply enjoy shooting.  I enjoy it enough that I have become familiar with guns.  I appreciate that some folks simply don’t want anything to do with guns, but a big part of the problem of having this conversation is people talking past each other and loosing trust.  You may not like guns, but when you say a handgun’s only purpose is killing people, those of us with experience with guns hear that as a backdoor argument for banning all guns.

We “gun people” should recognize that “non-gun people” have completely rational reasonable fears and issues with guns in the public spaces, and we should have those same issues actually.  Guns are dangerous.  “Non-gun people” need to get past their Gun Nut stereotypes.  I will admit that given the efforts of the NRA and Ted Nugent, that is very very difficult.  But we are not all of us unreachable on this issue.

I don’t hunt…did it long ago to get it out of my system, to see and understand those ancient passions within me, so they would never take me by surprise.  So…been there, done that.  I don’t shoot because I want to kill anything.  But I went to the range with my brother last month while I was visiting, and enjoyed myself thoroughly all the same.  It isn’t always about blood lust.  In fact, for a lot of us I would imagine, it’s about that eminently human joy in wielding fire.  I enjoy firecrackers and lightning storms and watching Myth Busters blow things up too.  I don’t go out to the range with those human silhouette targets you often see…I hate silhouette targets.  I am not about killing things.  I am precision hurling little slugs of lead at unreasonable velocities with the fire in my hands.  The targets my brother and I practiced on that day were round metallic bulls-eyes of various diameters, placed at various distances.  You could hear it when you hit them, and there were several sets with very small round metal dots you had to hit to flip up, and when you got them all flipped up there was one square one at the end you hit to drop them all back down again.  I was pleased to find that even with guns that were not my own but my brother’s, I was pretty good at hitting things squarely.

I think it’s fun.  Your mileage may vary and that’s fine.  But yes, there is another aspect to all this gun play that is serious and needs to be talked about among us Americans, and that is that guns are weapons, they are dangerous, and while I recognize an obligation to my neighbor’s safety and to the common welfare, I also believe I have a right to defend myself from violent attack, and that means I must also have the right to possess the tools to do that.  I don’t ever want to be put into that position, Atrios’ comment that all gun owners have vigilante dreams is ignorant.  When I think about what I might have to do with one of my guns I think about how to prevent it from getting that far.  I have a household alarm system, we have a neighborhood watch, and this kid who was bullied all through junior high stays alert when he’s out and about because keeping my eyes open for trouble was drilled into me long, long ago.  But there it is…that irreducible bottom line.  I have a life, I’d like to hold onto it a while longer thank you.  I have a right to bear a weapon in self defense.  But I completely agree that right is not unconditional.  There is always that little matter of the common welfare.  Public spaces, convey public obligations.

Arguments about the meaning of the second amendment are not trivial, but there is a point being missed when cardboard revolutionaries yap about private ownership of guns balancing the power of the state against the individual.  No.  The ballot box is our protection, our check against the power of the state. Those who advocate the gun over the ballot box betray the American Dream.  That is the old way of kings and armies and strongmen, not the way of democracy.  But there is another argument to be made here.  If I am not allowed the means to defend myself, if I must instead rely on the state, utterly, to defend me, then I am not so much a citizen, as a subject.  I don’t think you can get many people to buy into that notion, hence the effort to convince people that owning a gun makes them less safe.  Yes, yes…and owning an automobile makes you less safe too if you don’t bother learning to drive.

If you want to argue that police are trained in the use of firearms why shouldn’t anyone who wants to own a gun also have to go through training…I would agree with you.  If you want to argue that you need a license to drive a car, why not also license gun owners…I would agree to a point.  When you take your car onto the public roads, the public has every reasonable right to require you to demonstrate you know how to drive safely before you’re allowed on the highways so that you are not a danger to others.  Public spaces convey public obligations.  No man is an island on I-95.  The same can be said for bearing a gun in the public space.  First prove you know how to handle a gun safely.  First prove you understand the relevant laws.  I could be convinced that training on gun safety, and demonstrating an understanding of it before a purchase is allowed is reasonable.  I think licensing carrying a gun in public the same way we license automobile drivers is completely reasonable.  I agree there are public spaces where guns simply should not be allowed, period.  Like…oh…courthouses…hospitals…Schools.  I get that urban crime argues for carry permits, but I also get (and I think my fellow gun-people need to get) that densely populated zones aren’t swell places for firefights to break out.  It does not greatly bother me that I can’t carry a gun on the streets of New York City.  What I don’t find reasonable is the position that since guns are dangerous nobody should be allowed to have them.  And what I don’t get is why this became a left verses right argument.  The welfare of the common man and woman is not greatly improved by rendering them defenseless.

If Marshall wants to draw a distinction here, I would suggest a more useful one than between non-gun people and gun people, is that between democrats and oligarchs, between those of us who believe in that liberty and justice for all thing and those who think the world would be a fine place if the everyone knew their place.  Yes, yes…free people own guns…but not because they own guns but because they are free.  And free people cast ballots too.  Ask some of the people busy waving their guns around since Sandy Hook if they believe in the right to vote.  Then ask them what they think of all the voter suppression that went on in the last election. There’s your problem.  I saw it driving through Texas last month, on the way to California, in literally dozens and dozens of billboards advertising military style and SWAT firearms.  This business about “assault weapons” is mostly misdirected, but contains an element of common sense: the difference between a six or seven round clip and a hundred round clip is the difference between a weapon of self defense and an weapon of aggression.  In my opinion you can draw a line between them, on the basis that self defense is a right and aggression isn’t.  But there are those who do not accept that aggression is not a right.  Not all of those are criminals in the usual sense.

There’s the problem.  This argument isn’t about guns.  The violence racking our country isn’t about guns.  It’s about “Who is my neighbor?”  It’s about the culture war.  It’s about tribe.  Guns Don’t Matter.  Some nights I fear we are working ourselves up to another civil war.  What matters is that Americans can’t look into each other’s faces, and see a neighbor whose life is precious too. Guns Don’t Matter.

For a technologically advanced country as wealthy and capable as this one is, we are an astonishingly violent country. Whenever one of these mass killings happens I keep finding myself forlornly wishing we could have an honest national conversation about why. But we won’t. Already it’s instantly turning into yet another argument about guns and then it’s all just flag waving and static and nobody is listening anymore, except to themselves.

I wish we could have a conversation about violence. And in particular, about male violence. I honestly don’t think the image of the sex driven violence prone human male is accurate. I think it’s a careless stereotype. I think, like the way it can be with certain dogs, you beat it into males one way or another. You annihilate their capacity for sympathy, kill their ability to trust and love, and what is left, that all too human capacity for aggression and hate, well you just let it take root and grow, uninhibited. You beat the heart out of a boy, one way or another, and then you fill the void with hate…and it doesn’t matter who they hate, just that they hate, and that they are afraid not to hate.

From the bully culture in grade schools, to the pulpit thumpers who preach male supremacy over women, to the militaristic warrior culture that reaches from the pentagon to Wall Street, teaching a kind of human law of the jungle, dominate or be dominated, we systematically dehumanize our male citizens. Some days I look at what school kids have to go through, at the casual acceptance by our courts of male domestic violence, at the routine business-as-usual culture of predatory capitalism, at a conservative politics that claims letting working citizens to perish of sickness and disease is the highest kind of social morality, and I wonder that we aren’t even more violent than we already are.

I wish we could have this conversation. But no. We will have another bitter pointless argument about guns, and wash, rinse, repeat, until the next time some walking time bomb goes off and kills. And then we’ll do it all over again. And the bullies will still rule the school hallways, young men will still be fed the idea that their manhood depends on dominating women, predators in business suits will still raid and loot the life savings of working people and be exalted as job creators, preachers will still preach that god hates atheists, liberals and homosexuals and that god made man to rule over women, and politicians will win votes by promising to take food out of the mouths of poor people and be regarded as statesmen in their hometown newspapers. And we will go to bed some nights when the news is horrifying, wondering why oh why can’t Americans look at one another and see a neighbor whose life is worth cherishing too.

Via Equality Matters…

NOM: Same-Sex Marriage, Feminism Are Part Of A Socialist Plot To Destroy Capitalism

NOM is proudly advertising the release of its newest educational pamphlet, titled “The Socialist Attack On The Family”:

In it, Ruth Institute President Jennifer Morse argues that those seeking to legalize same-sex marriage are actually hoping to undermine the institution of marriage altogether, in an attempt to disrupt capitalism and allow for a government takeover of the family unit…

Yes, yes…it’s very difficult for communists to hide under America’s beds when heterosexuals are busy making babies in them…therefore The Family Must Die!!!!

Can the news media stop pretending now that NOM is anything but a bunch of babbling crackpots?

This just came across my Twitter stream…

Joseph Weisenthal ‏@TheStalwart There’s no empirical evidence or theoretical basis for arguing that cutting taxes is a means towards smaller government.

After the recent revaluations from former Florida GOP members that all that talk about voter fraud was itself fraud, you’d think people would finally stop listening to the rhetoric, and pay more attention to the behavior.

Yes, yes…they yap about “smaller government all the firggin’ time, but you need to understand what is meant in the first place by “smaller government”. It was never about reducing its staffage or its costs. Size is a relative matter.

What they’re talking about isn’t size, it’s power…specifically the power of the federal, not state level government. They want it small enough it can’t enforce equal rights laws. They want it small enough it can’t stop Wall Street and big corporations from raping the middle class. They want it small enough it cannot defend the rights of women, minorities, the poor, and the powerless. That is all that was ever meant by the term, “small government”.

The fall out, or if you will, belly flop into the gutter for Social Science Research, just keeps getting better…

Social Science Research editor James Wright published the Regnerus study without benefit of valid peer review, for which reason many scholars are calling for the Regnerus study to be retracted and for James Wright to be removed from his position. (To read some of the calls for retraction of the Regnerus study, see here, here and here).In response to the criticism for having published Regnerus without valid peer review, editor James Wright published — in his November issue — a non-peer-reviewed defense of Regnerus by Walter Schumm, a Kansas State University sociologist who was a paid consultant on the Regnerus study…

And what credentials does Schumm bring to the table…?

Schumm has a long association with the discredited anti-gay pseudoscientist Paul Cameron. He is on the editorial board of Cameron’s fatuously-named Empirical Journal of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior.

Well there’s an authoritative voice if ever there was one!  I have a question.  How does a legitimate, self-respecting, peer reviewed journal of science look at the resumé of someone who sits on the editorial board of a Paul Cameron journal and conclude that person’s scientific judgement makes them fit to print in its pages?

Perhaps Social Science Research should ask Paul Cameron to sit on Its board…

So Romney is complaining that president Obama won because he promised the hoi polloi a lot of gifts.  But Romney was no slouch in that department either…promising even bigger tax cuts to the rich, less oversight of Wall Street and the finance industry.  So Obama promised gifts to the 47% and Romney promised gifts to the 1%.  So the reason Obama won is 47 is greater then 1.  Or in other less cynical words, you win elections by appealing to more voters then the other guy does.

I think the complaint here is that elections are still too fair to suit republicans.  Or maybe democracy.

Via Romenesko…

Hudson Register-Star reporter fired after refusing to allow byline on story

The Hudson (NY) Register-Star fired reporter Tom Casey after he refused to allow his byline on a budget meeting story that had two paragraphs inserted by an editor, who apparently wanted to create controversy for an editorial. Here are the inserted grafs:

At the start of the meeting some in the audience were upset over Third Ward Alderman John Friedman’s decision not to stand for the pledge of allegiance. While Hudson City Code does not require council members to stand for the pledge, Fifth Ward Alderman Robert Donahue, who had complained about the matter at a previous meeting and asked Friedman why he did not stand, was visibly upset.

No comment could be reached from either party concerning the matter, and it did not interfere with the meeting.

Sam Pratt reports “Casey had been under pressure by higher-ups at the paper to make an issue of Friedman’s choice, which the Alderman had exercised at some but not all previous meetings. Getting the matter into the body of a news story would give the paper’s management a predicate for writing an editorial about it. The day after the dispute, Casey was reportedly fired by editor Theresa Hyland at the insistence of publisher Roger Coleman.”

So…dig it…Casey’s editor inserted two paragraphs into his story just so the paper could write an editorial, presumably attacking Friedman’s patriotism. The reporter then refused to allow his byline on the story and so the publisher had him fired.  Because not standing up for the pledge of allegiance is a greater crime against America then not standing up for honest journalism and freedom of the press.

Hey Roger…you’d be running a much more efficient operation if you just got rid of all that pesky news gathering fluff you really don’t care about anyway and make your paper just one big opinion section. All your opinions of course…

Not going to link to them, but Politico is repeating the babble of some republican nutcase in Maine who can’t figure out where all the darkies were coming from on Election day…

The head of Maine’s Republican Party is claiming unknown groups of black people showed up in the state’s towns and cast ballots on election day.

“In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day,” Charlie Webster told Portland, Me.’s NBC affiliate on Wednesday. “Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in town knows anyone who’s black. How did that happen? I don’t know. We’re going to find out.”

Psst…hey Charlie…one of these days why not take a wee stroll outside your little all-white Maine neighborhood over to the colored side of town? Wow…didn’t know all those people were there did ya?

Dan Savage this morning…

NYT:

“The die is cast on this issue,” said Steve Schmidt, who advised the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and George W. Bush and has for years urged Republicans to accept same-sex marriage. “Why should we sign a suicide pact with the National Organization for Marriage?” Mr. Schmidt asked, saying the party should instead endorse the principles of federalism and let the states decide the matter.

Depending on how you slice and dice the electorate, you can make the case that the gay vote was decisive in this election. So what NOM is asking the GOP to do—double, triple, quadruple down on anti-gay hate—really does amount to signing a political suicide pact.

The homophobic pundits and leaders of the anti-gay industrial complex who are saying now that this election does not represent a sudden shift in people’s attitudes about same-sex marriage are right.  There’s nothing sudden about the build up of pressure along a fault line either, just the release of it.  The trend toward acceptance and equality has been obvious for decades now, and the haters have always known it.  Witness the junk science industry they’ve been busy building since the Stonewall Riots and the removal of homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis.  You don’t wage a bitter scorched earth war on the facts if you know the facts are on your side.  The haters have always known that in the end all they had to win on was the passion of their own hate, and that eventually that would not be enough.  And they have always known that marriage was the final threshold, and that it would be crossed when more heterosexuals then not would say to each other, and then at the polls,  Actually, homosexuals do love.

And so it comes to this…

The Colorado Independent reports that officials from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have vowed to make Starbucks (along with other companies that support same-sex marriage) pay a “price” in Middle Eastern countries that are hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. The statements were made during a Nov. 8 conference call, scheduled as a discussion of the 2012 elections which saw sweeping marriage equality victories in Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, as well as Starbucks’ home state of Washington.

“So for example, in Qatar, in the Middle East, we’ve begun working to make sure that there’s some price to be paid for this,” Brian Brown says in audio recording of the conference call…

And that price will be paid not merely in lost sales, but in the blood of gay people all throughout the middle east, just as they have done in Africa and wherever else they could.  And Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher and Robert George will not shed a single tear over it.  Ours was always a struggle for the right to love and be loved, against an immovable need to hate the heart capable of it and all the wonder and joy of life and existence.  The fight isn’t over, the sweat and tears and bloodshed go on, but the Rhine has been crossed.  Actually, homosexuals do love.

Put the bottle down.  Please.  For everyone’s sake…

The polls were not skewed.  Nate Silver was not making things up.  Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.  He did not raise taxes.  The unemployment figures were not faked.  Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.  Climate Change is real.  Evolution is real.  FEMA is not building concentration camps.  Christians are not being treated like Jews were in Germany in the 1930s…