That's your comeback?

The McCain response to a new Obama ad that points out McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time:

In the Senate, Barack Obama has voted in lockstep with President George W. Bush nearly half the time, including the Bush-Cheney Energy bill which gave close to 3 billion dollars in new giveaways to Big Oil -- a terrible policy that John McCain opposed. The truth is Barack Obama’s plan is a job killing machine that ignores the struggling economy and raises taxes on family savings, social security and small businesses.

Woah - Obama voted with Bush 50% of the time - so he must be as bad as McCain!

And - Obama's plan is a "job killing machine." Anyone else getting a mental image of the Terminator?

We're taking our ball and going home, gay boy!

When I lived in Utah, some kids decided to make a "Gay and Lesbian Alliance Club" or something like that. The idea - through my dim memory - was for gay teenagers to have a place to share common experiences, common problems with being a gay teen in a very conservative state. My personal bet is they didn't plan on just having crazy sex orgies all the time.

Based on the way the school distract acted, though, you'd think that was exactly what was going on. The club was banned from the school. The kids took the school to court - and won. Courts basically said "You can't not let these kids have a club just because you don't like the subject matter. As long as they don't violate decency policies - aka, have orgies or go into graphic descriptions of sexual stuff - you really can't stop them from having a club, if you offer students a chance to have their own clubs."

State of Utah's decision? Ban *all* clubs. Chess club, drama club, every single one of them. Gone. Their reasoning was "Well, if we have to offer equal rights to the gay kids, then we'll deny clubs to *all* kids, and then we're being equal!"

Yeah, a pretty childish (pun intended) decision, but that's how it goes. I'm not sure what ever happened - I've since moved, but I'd like to think that someplace, somewhere, some kid can get his buddies together at school to play some fracking chess.

It's funny how this seems to be the default response now to things homosexual by conservatives. Three counties in California, now faced with the knowledge that they have to issue marriage licenses to consenting adults even if they're the same gender, have opted to not offer marriage licenses at all.

Yeah, that'll show you, gay people! We're going to honor marriage by not allowing *anybody* to get married - so people will just have to either live together and have kids and families without getting married, or we'll die as a species because everyone knows if you have sex without getting married your kids turn into mutants - or worse, Democrats!

(Sigh.)

The difference between "Tough" and "Stupid"

I caught a little Tim Russert today, and heard this gem from one of the guests David Gregory. His theory was that ABC, before the Worst Debate Evah, decided that the Super Delegates would want to hear the kind of crap that the Republicans would dish out, so they thought it was a good idea to ask about Wright and Ayers and flag pins and stuff like that.

Then he tells Mr. Russert that hey, they were just asking tough questions, and every politician should expect that. What's the problem?

I don't mind tough questions - I mind dumb ones. "Hey, this guy in your neighborhood and works on a charity board by you who gave you $200 for your campaign - did you know he was tied to a terrorist group 40 years ago?" That's - a dumb question. May as well say "Hey, we noticed that there's a pedophile warning list about these two guys in your neighborhood. Why haven't you shown up to drive them out of town?"

Flag pin? Seriously? When McCain, Clinton, both of the moderators, and 99.9% of the country doesn't wear a flag pin - you're going to ask why don't you wear a flag pin? Or if your paster - a Vietnam war *volunteer* soldier - in a time when black men couldn't fucking eat at certain restaurants or use the same toilet as a white man - loves his country?

These are not tough questions. Tough questions are "Explain exactly what your beef is with NAFTA and how you're going to fix it." "What will you do to get the Isreal/Palestinian on track, and how will you deal with Jewish voters who think you may be too critical of Isreal?"

So on and so forth. But "Why don't you wear a flag pin made in China to show that you really, really, really love our country - instead of working in the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago instead of getting rich?" - that's a stupid question. And Gregory is stupid for suggesting it's anything but.

Caught torturing people? Blame the media!

Oh, Lynndie England. It wasn't enough you sicced dogs on naked men, or had pictures of naked guys in pyramids. Nope - you had to blame the media for your misfortunes.

Dang - don't you hate getting caught and exposed for torturing people?