Category Archives: politics

just not the gays

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I want to give money to the Salvation Army’s ‘Red Kettle’ bell-ringers. I really want to support them as a group. But I won’t.

Don’t misunderstand me. I like and respect the Salvation Army. They do a lot of good work. They provide disaster relief when communities are ravaged by floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Their charity shops and thrift stores help a lot of poor people get decent clothing as well as inexpensive household goods and appliances. They offer a family tracing service that helps families restore contact with loved ones who’ve run away or become homeless for one reason or another. They do a LOT of good work, and they deserve a lot of credit and praise for it.

bell ringerBut this year, like last year and the year before, I’m not dropping so much as a dime in their red kettles. Why?

Because in 2001 the Salvation Army Western Territory made the courageous decision to offer domestic-partnership benefits to gay employees. I admired them for that. It wasn’t an easy thing for a Methodist-based church to do — but it was the right thing to do. And they took a lot of heat for it from other Christian groups. Among other things, the Salvation Army was accused of a “monstrous … appeasement of sin.” For two months the group was soundly chastised, scolded, castigated, and upbraided.

And hey, it worked. Two months after granting those benefits, the Salvation Army rescinded them.

As a church, the Salvation Army has an affirmative obligation to follow their moral code. They believe homosexual activity is a sin. “A relationship between same-sex individuals is a personal choice that people have the right to make,” according to the Salvation Army’s Maj. George Hood, the national community relations secretary. “But from a church viewpoint, we see that going against the will of God.” I think that’s monumentally stupid, but they have the absolute right to believe what they want

But by giving those benefits to same-sex couples, the Salvation Army essentially admitted it was the right thing to do. By taking back those benefits, the Salvation Army proved themselves to be cowardly and hypocritical. Had they not given benefits to same sex couples and then rescinded them I would have continued to give my wee bit of financial support to the Salvation Army for the good work they do. Despite the fact that I disagree with them about gay rights. I would have continued to drop cash in their kettles — if they had not shown themselves to be moral cowards.

just not the gaysWe help people the sign says. Just not the gays. Okay, that’s their right. Me? I give money to charities. Just not the Salvation Army.

statistically verifiable facts

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A few days ago, Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs football team, shot his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, multiple times, killing her. He later drove to his team’s home stadium where he used a second handgun to shoot himself in the head. According to news reports, Belcher owned about eight firearms — all purchased legally. Belcher was 25 years old; Perkins was 22. They had a three month old daughter, Zoey.

jovan belcher

Last Sunday sports commentator Bob Costas made a brief (about 90 seconds) statement in which he quoted from a newspaper column written by Jason Whitlock. He said,

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.

In the coming days, Belcher’s actions will be analyzed through the lens of concussions and head injuries. Who knows? Maybe brain damage triggered his violent overreaction to a fight with his girlfriend. What I believe is, if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

Predictably, that 90 second statement sparked an oversized reaction from gun nuts (and yes, if you get angry and alarmed because a sports commentator expresses a 90 second opinion suggesting there’s something wrong with American gun culture, then you’re a gun nut). Costas said nothing about gun control, he said nothing about the Second Amendment. He simply reiterated the point made by Whitlock: the easy availability of handguns does NOT make us safer; it only increases the probability of gun violence. But by expressing an opinion, Costas has been accused of treason, of attacking the Second Amendment, of insulting the American Way of Life.

Much of the criticism of Costas has included a litany of various ways people have been murdered in the US — baseball bats, crossbows, knives, ball peen hammers, spoons, cars, cast iron skillets,  etc. This is always followed by the inevitable and profoundly stupid question “Why don’t we outlaw cast iron skillets?” That notion is repeated in this YouTube rejoinder to Costas. The speaker repeats one of the most common and ridiculous arguments against sensible gun control. He says: “To blame a gun for man’s decision is to foolishly attribute free will to an inanimate object.”

The obvious flaw in that argument is the assumption that people are blaming the weapon for the violence. That’s nonsense. The gun isn’t responsible for the violence; the gun does, however, amplify the lethality of the violence. That’s the entire purpose of a gun — to inflict considerable damage and to do it from a distance. If they ever invent a cast iron skillet intentionally designed to inflict lethal damage from a distance, I’ll argue that skillet ought to be regulated too.

It astonishes me that there’s even a debate about this. Handguns facilitate lethal violence. It’s just that simple. Handguns make it easier to kill people spontaneously, to kill more people, to kill them more quickly. To say that isn’t an act of treason. To say that isn’t an assault on the Second Amendment. To say that isn’t an insult to the American Way of Life.

To say that handguns facilitate lethal violence is merely to state a statistically verifiable fact.

kasandra perkins & zoey belcher

Of course, nobody can say with any degree of certainty whether Kasandra Perkins and Jovan Belcher would be alive today if they didn’t live in a house full of guns. What we can say and what we need to say — and we need to say it much more often — is this: having a house full of guns significantly increased the odds that Belcher and Perkins and baby Zoey would die by violence. And that’s a fact.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the majority of the discussion about this case — in the media and on the internet — is about guns or about football. Almost nobody is talking about the fact that Kasandra Perkins was murdered.

Here are some more facts: Every day, three women are killed by their husbands, boyfriends, and lovers. More than 90% of the domestic murders in the US are committed by men against women, and 88% of those murders involve a firearm.

Yes, it’s important to examine America’s gun culture, and yes it’s important to investigate the damage (social, emotional and physical) football players suffer. But this was also a crime against a woman, and it’s shameful for us to ignore that.

cause of death

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There’s a very good chance you’ve never heard of Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif. Wait…make that the late Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif. He died in September. He died in his cell in a Guantanamo Bay detention center. A couple days after he died, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said “There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted.” No apparent cause of death. He just died, they said. End of story. Go on home, nothing to see here.

Except, of course, it really isn’t the end of the story and there really is something to see, although we might not want to look at it.

Immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, the U.S. cast an exceedingly wide net to catch anybody who might be even remotely connected to the plot. That response was extreme, to be sure, but mostly understandable under the circumstances. What is not understandable and what is indefensible is what the U.S. has done since then.

Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif

Latif, a citizen of Yemen, was one of the people caught in that wide net. In December of 2001 he was (according to his testimony) traveling to Pakistan to obtain treatment for ongoing neurological issues stemming from an auto accident seven years earlier. He was seized by Pakistani police, who turned him over to U.S. authorities. It’s been widely documented that the CIA offered bounties of between US$7,000 to $25,000 to Afghan tribesmen and Pakistani police for capture of suspected al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. The Pakistanis routinely arrested foreigners and sold them to the U.S.

Latif was shipped to Guantanamo on Jan. 17, 2002 — one of the first people to be detained in Gitmo.The Bush administration claimed that the 779 people detained in Gitmo during the “war on terror” weren’t covered by the Geneva Conventions and therefore could be held without charge, without any due process, and without any sort of judicial review — and they could be held indefinitely. Forever.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, and in 2004 they ordered that Guantanamo detainees were entitled to minimal due process. At the very least they had to be informed of the allegations made to justify their detention and given the right to try to refute them.

Latif was given a hearing in which no evidence was offered to support his detention. He was cleared to be released from custody. That was in 2005. He was cleared for release again in 2007, and once again in 2009. Each time, the release was blocked or delayed. In 2010 Federal District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. ordered Latif’s release, saying his ongoing detention was unlawful. That ruling was also blocked.

After the first time his release was denied, Latif tried to commit suicide. He tried several times, in fact. He went on hunger strikes, during which he was forcibly fed through a tube inserted in his nose. He spent most of the last five years in solitary confinement, often with his hands in cuffs and his arms pinned to his sides by a body cuff in order to prevent him from more suicide attempts. In September, Latif apparently found a way to finally succeed.

Of the 779 men detained over the years at Guantanamo, only 167 remain there. Most of the detainees were found not to be a threat and were released without charge. About 70 were transferred to detention centers in their native countries. Eight to ten inmates died, several of them by suicide. Of the 167 men who remain, about half have been cleared for release. But they’re still in Gitmo.

“There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted,” says the Department of Defense of Adnan Farhan Abd-al Latif. He was 32 years old. He’d been held without charge at Guantanamo for 10 years, 7 months and 25 days — a third of his life. He’d been cleared for release for more than six years.

There’s a cause of death, right there.

dumbass business owners

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Spoiled children. All those CEOs of restaurants who are whining about Obamacare, who are promising to punish their employees by cutting their working hours, who are promising to raise the prices of their products — they’re all spoiled children. They’re like those kids at Christmas who wanted a US$1200 mountain bike but only got a $700 urban bike, and so throw a tantrum and hurl the bike to the ground.

It doesn’t help that the news media report their temper tantrums, giving them some legitimacy. John Metz owns a buttload of Denny’s outlets and a handful of Dairy Queens, so hey let’s report his dumbass outburst. Zane Tankel owns a bunch of Applebees restaurants, let’s report his idiotic babbling. John Schnatter owns Papa Johns, maker of astonishingly shitty pizzas, surely the people need to hear this douchebag’s blatherings. I mean, these guys are rich and we’re supposed to listen to what rich guys say. Right?

john metz, dumbass business owner

Hey news media guys — remember Mitt Romney? Rich Guy Supremo? You reported all the crap he had to say and never bothered to tell the public that so much of it was bullshit and lies. News media guys? You’re doing it again. You’re reporting the whines and lies of rich guys and not bothering to mention the utter bullshit factor. Seriously, y’all need to get a handle on that. Maybe try reporting facts for a change, along with the rich guy bullshit.

zane tankel, another dumbass business owner

For example, Obamacare is really really good for small businesses that employ fewer than 25 people — which is something like 90% of small businesses. They’ll get subsidies that will help make insurance coverage for their workers affordable. And if you’re a responsible business owner who already provides health care coverage for your employees, then Obamacare won’t affect you at all.

Who gets hurt by Obamacare? The five percent of ‘small’ businesses that employ more than 50 low-wage, uninsured workers. Those businesses will get popped US$2000 per worker every year. Now, that sounds like a lot of coin. But when compared to the sales those companies make and the profits those companies earn — no, not so much.

john schnatter, all-meat dumbass business owner

The Papa John Pizza guy, he’s claiming he’ll have to charge an extra ten to fourteen cents per pizza to cover the estimated five to eight million dollars it would cost him to pay for his hourly-wage workers (by the way, Schnatter takes home about $2.7 million annually). Two things. First, so what? An extra dime and a nickel? Pffft. If you were loopy enough to buy just one of this guy’s shitty pizzas every week for a year, the extra fifteen cents per pizza would cost you less than eight bucks a year. Second, don’t forget that the pizza guy is bullshitting and lying. Even if his five to eight million dollars estimate is accurate (and it probably isn’t), it would only raise the cost of his shitty pizza by about three to five cents.

That’s right, by raising the cost of shitty pizza less than a nickel, Papa John could give his employees health care. He’d have healthier workers, happier workers, workers who are less likely to quit, workers less likely to take a sick day, and workers who feel some sense of loyalty to the company. I’m willing to bet Papa John could actually attract customers if he advertised that he was raising his prices a nickel in order to be sure his valued employees would get health care coverage. But to make a political point against President Obama, this dickwad is willing to further alienate his low-wage employees and his customers (well, those customers other than other angry Obama-hating dickwads).

Spoiled children, these rich guys. Nothing but spoiled, pampered children who are used to getting their own way. So I’ve got one piece of advice for these dumbass business owners:

rogue politics

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There were SO many critically important national election races to watch Tuesday night that we can, I think, be forgiven for overlooking the contest between Democrat Colleen Lachowicz and Republican Tom Martin. They were both seeking to represent the 25th District in the Maine State Senate.

Colleen Lachowicz, social worker

Martin, the incumbent who won the seat in the last election, is the owner of an excavation and construction business. Lachowicz is a social worker who works for a non-profit mental health agency, treating adults with mental illnesses. She has a Master of Social Work degree and is a licensed foster parent. And she’s a level 85 orc rogue called Santiaga in World of Warcraft.

During the campaign the Republican Party of Maine suggested that her participation in the online gaming community made her unqualified to serve in the state senate. They even created a website called Colleen’s World in order to alert Maine citizens about her “disturbing alter-ego” and  her “time-consuming double life.” The site includes comments Colleen made in WoW discussion groups.

To his credit, Martin said he was unaware of the attacks on Lachowicz (which were promoted by the Maine Republican Party rather than by Martin’s campaign) and he didn’t condone them. Still, the attack brought international attention to the state campaign and Lachowicz garnered the support of gamers from all over the world.

It pleases me enormously to be able to say Colleen Lachowicz is the new respresentative for Maine’s 25th District. Come January, an orc rogue will be sitting in the Maine State Senate.

Santiaga, Senator from Maine 25th District

There are two lessons Republicans can learn from this. First, if you embrace diversity, you win elections. Second, DO NOT FUCK WITH GAMERS.

in which i say something crazy about republicans

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I spent part of this morning reading some of the more extreme conservative political blogs. Two things stand out. One, of course, is that the United States is doomed because President Obama is going to steal everybody’s guns and deny them the right to buy gold and he’s going to give Mexicans and black folks free houses and hi-def satellite television. But they’re also saying with some consistency that Gov. Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough.

Gov. Romney concedes the election

On the surface, that sounds sort of logical. But it also suggests that voters went to the polls and said to themselves “That Mitt, he’s just too liberal…so I guess I’ll vote for Obama.” Or maybe it suggests conservatives just decided not to vote for anybody and sat on their patriotic asses all night. In the conservative blogs I saw lots of accusations of fraud, lots of paranoia, lots of anger, and lots of blaming.

What I didn’t see was a recognition that this is no longer the United States of Angry White Men. The harsh Ayn Rand “I’ve got mine, go fuck yourself” approach to conservatism just doesn’t resonate with the population of the U.S. as it now exists. Four years ago we elected a black man named Barack to the presidency of the United States. Last night we re-elected him. Think about that. A black man. Named Barack Hussein Obama. That right there is evidence that the American demographic has shifted toward inclusiveness and away from resentful exclusivity. But we still continue to see Republicans strive to restrict and reduce individual civil rights and liberties in everything from marriage to voting to immigration to a woman’s right to exercise her own decisions over the integrity of her body.

For more and more Americans, that shit just don’t play anymore.

Last night Maine and Maryland voted to expand marriage rights to same-sex couples, and it seems likely the State of Washington is about to do the same. Minnesota rejected a proposal to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles. Last night two states expanded the use of medical marijuana, and two others voted to legalize and tax the use of marijuana. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles. Last night two states supported ballot measures to restrict the power of corporations to donate monies to campaigns. That’s NOT the action of an electorate longing for more conservative social principles.

And yet despite all the evidence, a lot of conservatives continue to believe that the reason Mitt Romney lost was because he wasn’t conservative enough. Of course, a lot of them also believe the earth is only a few thousand years old, that climate change is a hoax, and the President of the United States is a not-so-secret Muslim Socialist who is deliberately trying to ruin the American economy in order to…in order to…shut up, that’s why. Right now the Republican party is more concerned with making the nation ungovernable than in pressing forward any agenda at all. That’s the approach of a spoiled, angry child.

President Obama teary-eyed in final campaign speech in Des Moines

Four years ago the last day of October was unseasonably warm. I was part of a large crowd that watched as then-Senator Barack Obama gave one of his last campaign speeches before the 2008 election. A couple nights ago it was much colder and I watched on television as President Obama gave an emotional speech — the last of his political career. He’s gotten older. So have we all. His appeal now is a more mature appeal. We know — and he knows — he’ll never be able to do all the things he wants to do. But we also know he’s going to try to do as many of them as he can. You can sense the president has an adult’s thin-stretched irritation with the behavior of Republicans in Congress, but you can also see an adult’s patience. It’s as if he believes and hopes that someday they’ll grow out of it.

Senator Obama in Des Moines, 2008

And here’s the crazy thing: I believe they will. I really do. As more Republicans come to recognize the change in the demographics of the electorate, they’ll begin to realize they can’t just rely on angry white men anymore — not if they want to actually shape policy instead of just oppose it. At some point they begin to understand that if they want to govern and not just obstruct governance, they’ll have to appeal to a broader range of voters.

When that happens, we’ll see the resurrection of moderate Republicans. And the nation will be the better for it.

Oh Canada

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Dear Canada,

It’s okay. We understand. You’re too polite to say anything, but we can tell you’re worried. You think there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to elect Mitt Romney as President of the United States.

Your anxiety is perfectly understandable, Canada. You’re concerned because Gov. Romney is what us folks south of the border like to call ‘a lying sack of shit.’ You’re nervous because you believe he’d be mind-bogglingly horrific as president. But most of all you’re also worried that if he gets elected, hordes of disgruntled Americans will flood across your border — that we’ll build tent cities in every Tim Hortons parking lot and we’ll turn the warmer less chilly parts of your great nation into an American ghetto.

Canada, you don’t need to fret. Think about it for a moment. When Barack Obama was seeking the nomination, he had to beat Hilary Clinton. Do you know how hard it is to beat Hilary Clinton at anything? Really really hard, is how hard. And Mitt Romney, who’d he have to beat? Rick Perry? Herman Cain? Michele Bachmann? That’s like beating the Three Stooges. Obama had to beat Hilary; Mitt Romney only had to beat Donald Fucking Trump.

Here’s the thing, Canada. You have to learn to ignore our news media. They have a vested interest in pretending the election is close. Americans are a great people, but we’re only capable of paying attention to stuff if there’s some drama involved. We’re like magpies in that regard; we make a lot of noise and we’re easily distracted by shiny objects. And yeah, sometimes we’ll shit all over everything. But here’s the truth: the popular vote is close, but President Obama has always maintained a significant lead in the Electoral College and he has something like a 70% chance to win.

Gov. Romney displaying his policy positions

So you can relax, Canada. Everything is going to be okay. Oh sure, we’ll still be sending out aerial robots to kill foreign folks we don’t like, and we’ll continue to elect people who think the world is 9000 years old to lower offices, but you won’t have to face a Romney presidency.

Probably. Just in case, I have my eye on a spot near the door in the parking lot of a Tim’s on Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

Love,

greg

ain’t nothing moderate about it

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So today I had a brief discussion with a friend who tried to convince me that Gov. Romney is a ‘moderate’ in regard to a woman’s right to choose to have a legal abortion. “He supports abortion in cases of rape and incest,” my friend said, “and if the mother’s life is in danger.”

Well, that’s just fucking great. To whom would a woman have to prove she’d been raped in order to end her pregnancy? A doctor? A court? An elected representative? What evidence would she have to present to prove she’d been raped? How long would it take for that person to decide whether or not the woman would be allowed to terminate her pregnancy? What if the accused rapist denies it was rape — would there have to be some sort of due process hearing before the woman would be given permission to end the pregnancy?

The very notion that a woman should have to request permission from a third party in order to terminate a pregnancy is insulting. For that woman to have to ask permission after having been sexually assaulted compounds the offense. To suggest that women have to be allowed to make a decision about their own bodies is to treat women as if they were children, incapable of making a rational decision about the state of their own bodies. Permission and allow aren’t words that should even enter into the discussion.

You want a moderate position on abortion? I’ll give you one: abortion should be rare, but legal and safe — a decision to be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor. There you go, that’s moderate. Anything that takes the decision away from the woman affected is NOT moderate. Anybody who tries to convince you that it IS moderate doesn’t understand the situation. And this guy? This guy doesn’t have the vaguest hint of a clue about the situation. Moderate, my ass.