Tuesday Open Thread [3.26.13]
It will be a historic day at the Supreme Court over the next two days as the Court hears arguments in two cases affecting marriage equality in this country. Today, the Court will consider whether California’s ban on same-sex marriage, a law known as Prop 8 or Prop Hate, which was passed by referendum in 2008, is unconstitutional. Tomorrow, the Court will consider whether the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
A new Pew Research survey shows that the rise in support for same-sex marriage over the past decade is among the largest changes in opinion on any policy issue over this time period. The survey finds that “much of the shift is attributable to the arrival of a large cohort of young adults – the Millennial generation – who are far more open to gay rights than previous generations. Equally important, however, is that 14% of all Americans – and 28% of gay marriage supporters – say they have changed their minds on this issue, often because they have a family member or friend who is gay.”
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=12-144
audio is up!
And here is the transcript.
Having read through it, based on the questions, I think the Court is going to punt here and declare that the appellants (the Prop 8 ballot initiative team) have no standing. The affect of that will be to keep in place the District Court’s ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional and invalid, and the affect of that is that gay marriage would again be legal in California.
However, I must point out that during the oral arguments on Obamacare this time last year, it appeared from the questioning that the whole law was doomed to be struck down. Often questions from the Court are not a good barimeter on how it is going to rule.
With such an obvious rise in the support of homosexual marriage, maybe we should have a national referendum in the next election.
Other news from California includes stupid people with stupid dogs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/mark-kelly-pulls-dog-off-sea-lion_n_2952911.html?ir=Los+Angeles
“With such an obvious rise in the support of homosexual marriage, maybe we should have a national referendum in the next election.”
We have no mechanism for national referendums. Unless you mean the presidential contest itself, which I assume will feature a pro-equality Democrat and an anti-equality Republican.
OK, then state, but if it’s a civil right then a state referendum wouldn’t mean anything.
The guy in the video yelling ” drown the dog”, is funny.
Delaware has no provision for referendums, either.
http://gawker.com/5992413/cowardice-as-a-political-philosophy
TRUTH
i dont want anyone’s rights up for a vote. even if the majority is on my side.
So, you would rather it be up to nine judges, who may, or may not, have political bias? I’m not sure about that either.
it’s a worthy point, but it worked in the 60s when a referendum surely wouldnt.
That Gawker post doesn’t allow for the movement of public opinion and the position of each person within that group.
Sure the Clintons SHOULD have supported same-sex marriage, but the rest of society wasn’t at all ready for that (see the charts above). Likewise, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams should have been in favor of universal suffrage, full civil rights and freedom for slaves in addition to same-sex marriage (freedom for all, right), but they weren’t.
The article ignores the society in which each of these Presidents lived.
Here’s a mental game to play: let’s assume that same-sex marriage is permitted in every state in the union in the next 5 years. Tell me what the civil rights struggle will be in the year 2040 and what side you expect President Obama to be on it in 2013.
Agreed it’s not perfect, but i think there have been numerous examples of politicians who privately supported marriage but wouldn’t do so publicly for their careers. Obama’s “evolution” comes to mind. There’s documentation (surveys etc.) he supported it in his state senate career, but that disappeared the higher the office he pursued.
plus society changes when people embrace something society as a whole isnt’ ready for. I understand the strategy, but if EVERYONE is playing safe we aren’t moving anywhere.
I don’t blame Bill Clinton for being against gay marriage during his presidency, because I wasn’t for gay marriage either back then. I was for civil unions and no more. I changed my mind, or evolved.
I will never understand the purist notion that we must punish people who see the light, change their mind and now agree with the purist.
And yet we are…
I think the point is that as politicians move up the ladder, they represent a MUCH more diverse group of voters. Sure there are people that are in front of such changes, but they are rare. Even Lincoln wanted to deport all of the slaves once they were free.
I dont want to punish anyone who changes their mind on an issue. They’re totally allowed to do that.
I’m just not sure all of these “evolutions” are genuine. The ones that are calculated are the ones that annoy me.
Take for example the articles comments about the Iraq war. I was smart enough (and many of you were too) to see it was totally bullshit. I told anyone who would listen that i thought so. How come so few people in office did? So few people in the media? Because they were afraid they’d lose their jobs.
V – Did you ever change anyone’s mind about the Iraq war? I did pretty much the same thing that you did. I told anyone that would listen, that the evidence was flimsy and unsupported. I told people that the society needs to see real evidence if we are going to go to war. I was literally told that we, as a society, had been told TOO MUCH already…
But in all of my 100+ hours of passionate argumentation, I don’t think that I ever convinced anyone, and I certainly didn’t expect that we were going to avoid the war. I suspect some people just laid back and thought of England. Yes, it is cowardice, but history is littered with people who never shook the label of coward, traitor, communist, socialist, etc. for taking their principled stand. There are precious few that have withstood the slings and arrows of their stance.
It’s worth noting that one of the people that I failed to convince was at the time the chairman of The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, now VPOTUS. He was convinced as of September 2002 that the Iraq War would pay for itself in oil revenue.
Sigh.
There’s a Henry Rollins quote that has been circulating for the past few weeks in various places:
The Clintons are not especially brave people, but they are good politicians. Meaning that they are very good at knowing their audiences and very good at meeting them there. You can say the same for Biden and (to a lesser extent, I would argue) Obama. Leadership is that brave person defending freedom for others and we can’t even get leadership that will make sure that Social Security survives intact.
Link via AmericaBlog
http://americablog.com/2013/03/huffpo-slams-the-10-dem-senators-who-refuse-to-back-gay-marriage.html
Huff Po lists Carper as one of the ten.
Currently it is the front page item on Huff Po, but is reproduced in full on the AmericaBlog site. Currently second item but if need be just scroll down to find it.
I’ve sent an e-mail via Carper’s required site link. Civil rights are apparently not a topic of importance since there is no allowable topic that comes close to my inquiry. http://www.carper.senate.gov/
Does that make Tom Carper the ONLY prominent Delaware official to refuse to support gay marriage? Yo, Tom, even your banking friends support it. (It’s even possible that some of them are in committed relationships with companions of the same sex. Make that certain.)
You don’t need a poll on this one, Tom. By the time you’re up for (God forbid) reelection, likely over 80% of the American people will support it.
For once, could you just do something because it’s right? Just once? Please?
At this point, I only have one question left: Just what is wrong with you?
El Som, Your post leads to some confusion. Are you referring to Tom CARPER or Tom HAWK. Hawk is a gay man in his 8th decade, hopefully a Progressive Democrat. But thank you for being able to support what I consider to be a natural right.
Take for example the articles comments about the Iraq war. I was smart enough (and many of you were too) to see it was totally bullshit.
But you weren’t smart enough to see that a steel frame building cannot collapse into its own footprint at free fall speeds due to office fires, etc. Not to mention the bigger forms of media manipulation trickling down on you from the mainstream media (inc.), e.g.: “…we might conclude that the premature announcement of the collapse http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C7SwOT29gbc by the news media adds nothing to what we have already established, namely, that Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management had spread the word several hours in advance that WTC 7 was going to collapse.
Even with that interpretation, however, the premature announcements were not insignificant, because they revealed in a dramatic and memorable fashion the fact that someone knew in advance that Building 7 was going to collapse. This is important because, given the salient facts—that WTC 7 had not been hit by a plane, that no steel-framed high-rise building had ever collapsed because of fire alone, that WTC 7 had fires on only a few floors, and that some of the other still-standing WTC buildings had suffered far worse damage—there should have been no reason to expect WTC 7 to collapse.” (The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False by David Ray Griffin: 114-116)
There again, I wasn’t even smart (knowledgeable?) enough at the time to know that the war in Iraq had little to do with WMDs. (I blame youth.)
So… kudos to you guys, etc.
Obama wasn’t really the change you’ve been waiting for though, otherwise he might be executing Cheney and Bush and a few Zionist banksters without trial instead of 16 year old Muslim kids.
So you are in favor of trying and possibly (depending on the findings) executing Cheney and Bush for war crimes?
If so that’s at least a little common ground.
“But you weren’t smart enough to see that a steel frame building cannot collapse into its own footprint at free fall speeds due to office fires, etc.”
This has been debunked by actual structural engineers. So unless you are one, try again.
What I find puzzling about you is that you question every authority except for the invisible man in the sky. In other words, the one authority that has no supporting evidence is the only one you don’t question.
But they might need to be water boarded before their executions in order to figure out who was really in charge when Bush was left to read about pet goats, symbolically speaking. Just kidding… as fitting as it would be to have their own standards applied to them.
Why did you drop it when you wrote about how they needed a new Pearl Harbor in the past?
If the same people keep on getting away with the same old shit, they’re going to keep on suggesting it or carry it out again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpuYuMMIuig But notice how it’s never their family member on the submarines or in buildings?
This has been debunked by actual structural engineers.
B$.
In other words, the one authority that has no supporting evidence is the only one you don’t question.
Evidence is a matter of experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv7BImVvEyk and it’s not as if everything necessarily fits in a test tube or is subject to repetition or repeated testing. But that which does fit in a test tube or is subject to repeated testing (e.g. the laws of physics that govern objects in free fall, etc.) is a good rule of thumb.
Sorry, I don’t watch videos. If you have something to say, say it.
This might be simpler. If 9/11 was a false flag attack then what would supposedly convince you that the official story is false?
It took me a long time to admit it, so I understand some of the epistemic inertia involved. Something along the lines of: “Wait a second… what the hell? No. That can’t be. Maybe this or that, what’s the evidence again?” Repeat.
So maybe you can convince me of the “mainstream” stories of perfectly preserved passports http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja9IVgKIroc&feature=player_detailpage#t=27s flying out of planes, the hijackers found alive later, etc.
Maybe there is a way of putting some sort of an official story all back together and avoiding all the evidence that is more consistent with means, motive and opportunity… supposedly. But that seems unlikely. Last time I checked 84% of Americans don’t fully believe the official stories: “Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%”
It’s just that they can’t really do anything about anything, like most things in their “democracy” or so-called “democratic” Republic. Do you believe that the Bush administration didn’t hide anything?
Maybe this will help understand the minds of “investigative” journalists with respect to official stories these days:
There’s something weird about the way they think about credibility. It reminds me of how you think, Geezer. I can’t quite specify it. It probably has something to do with mistaking passivity (i.e. being a passive channel for information to trickle down on from “official sources”) for something closer to objective and logical investigative reporting.
What is fun about the 9/11 Truthers is that they pick and choose the evidence they want to use and ignore all of the rest. It has been more than 10 years since the collapse of all of those towers and the truthers have had all of that time to conduct their own interviews, re-examine the design/construction/maintenance of the building, re-examine the response operations, run models and simulations on materials and structures and do all of the genuine engineering and scientific work that might be able to speak for itself. But they can’t. All they have are various You Tube videos and impossible narratives based on cherry-picked (and made up) information, bullshit deflection (seem Exhibit A as mynym’s response to Geezer’s request for non-video answers) and lots of yelling.
This is just more bullshit from the usual bullshitters who have no respect for good data or information or the real work that it takes to get either of them.
Skepticism isn’t a bad thing, I wish we had more of it prior to the invasion of Iraq. However, I don’t think it is very helpful mmnynynmynyn to try and compensate for his (her?) pre-war skeptical deficit by indulging in 9/11 truther lunacy.
There are actual things to be concerned about. The apparent attack on our country from within through budget sequester – for example.
“logical investigative reporting.”
I, too, am skeptical about 9/11, but not the actual attacks on the buildings. The part that has not been adequately explained involves the training exercise that supposedly was going on that morning, and how it may have impeded with normal reaction to what was going on.
As for the rest, it’s preposterous. You consider it logical that with all the conspiratorial activity that would have had to occur, nobody has ever come forward to corroborate any of the Truthers’ theories? Please, don’t lecture anyone else about logic until you have applied it to your own theories.
Yeah, I saw the attacks with my own eyes on TV, and my college friends working in NYC saw the attacks in person. They were not fake.
You consider it logical that with all the conspiratorial activity that would have had to occur, nobody has ever come forward to corroborate any of the Truthers’ theories?
They have come forward, many examples could be cited. (Sort of like the guy with the underwear bomber: “Say, he was escorted on the plane or somethin’!”) Here’s an interesting example within the framework of politics, remember the janitor who went back into the building and saved people? He was all set to be marketed as a Hispanic hero by Rove Inc. but then he disappeared from the “mainstream” media. Why do you think that is?
Need more examples?
R.I.P BARRY JENNING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbbZE7c3a8Q
Yeah, I saw the attacks with my own eyes on TV, and my college friends working in NYC saw the attacks in person. They were not fake.
I didn’t say that they were fake, at all. But I like the way your mind is working through or contrasting the mainstream media and the decentralized media. A satire: “You mean that main streams of media could be manipulated or somethin’?” But anyway… did you once write that all Republicans “should be lined up and shot” during the last theatrical production of a financial crisis or was that someone else here? If it was you, exactly which Republicans did you mean? When it’s all hazy imagery, it doesn’t amount to anything. But the banksters that you might be able to make a case for executing without trial (just kidding, due process and all that…) control and finance both the Republicans and the Democrats.
There are actual things to be concerned about.
The apparent attack on our country from within through budget sequester – for example.
That’s not going to matter if there’s another false flag attack, same as with the 2.3 trillion that Donald Duck Rumsfeld reported unaccounted for in the Pentagon the day before 9/11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU
Too bad, Zionists probably could have financed the war in Iraq with that.
Here’s the janitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MuqcERfdwrc#t=1910s
Versus: …nobody has ever come forward to corroborate any of the… theories?
What?
Anyway, too bad Geezer doesn’t watch videos in the multiple stream media… still watching the old main stream “Boob Tube” even as its market share continues to fragment and fall apart, I guess?
Didn’t see this: What is fun about the 9/11 Truthers is that they pick and choose the evidence they want to use and ignore all of the rest.
It’s not even clear what you meant. It looked vaguely like something along the lines of having the best garbage in, garbage out computer simulations that epistemic inertia and money can buy vs. the laws of physics and all of human experience with steel frame buildings? They don’t just enter into symmetrical free fall on their own. It is what it is.
And it would be one thing if this was just some old false flag attack mixed in with all the others or some type of similar manipulation of the sort that people in the government tend to admit to 50 years down the road. But it’s another thing when they’re still in the government and still want to complete their checklist of nation’s destined for war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7NsXFnzJGw (Another day, another nation, another gray hair for Obama…)
Yeah, that’s yet another Youtube video of someone who was actually there or involved in something and not the theatrical production of your “mainstream” evening news with Brian Jennings (or some other ignorant entertainer reading a teleprompter). Are you still waiting for the “mainstream” media to do their jobs and report on something significant with respect to geopolitics in reality? (You’d be better off spending that time on Youtube. It’s usually less corrupt and therefore more informative.)
Here’s the janitor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MuqcERfdwrc#t=1910s
Versus: …nobody has ever come forward to corroborate any of the… theories?”
I’m talking about the people who supposedly engaged in the conspiracy.
You really are a pathetic case. Skeptical of everything except the one thing they made up wholesale.
“still watching the old main stream “Boob Tube” even as its market share continues to fragment and fall apart, I guess?”
Nope. I read. I certainly don’t listen to a bunch of paranoid, god-bothering auto-didacts. Have fun with your “life,” though.
“You’d be better off spending that time on Youtube. It’s usually less corrupt and therefore more informative.”
And you’d be better off painting with your own poo than doing what you do online every day. The only other place I’ve seen creatures masturbate so frantically as you is the monkey house at the zoo.
Here in Sweden, the talk of the town today is the fact that Google wants to prevent Swedes from developing and using their own language.
We are not quite sure whether Google are concerned that their brand would become generic, or if they are simply deeply offended by the notion that something could be ungoogleable.
http://delawarereferendum.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/ungoogleable-an-illegal-word/
You really are a pathetic case. Skeptical of everything except the one thing they made up wholesale.
Nope, I just came to a different conclusion than you. No one really made up all those universal mythologies wholesale, even if they came to be merge with works of art and tradition later.
Nope. I read.
Good choice.
A book you might consider: (9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed by David Ray Griffin)
From a practical perspective same sex marriage makes more sense that different sex marriage. In a different sex marriage you are always around someone who is either colder or warmer than you are. In a same sex marriage there is at least the possibility that you and your partner could agree on a thermostat setting.
From the reviews: “Anyone who has actually studied Griffin’s writings on 9/11 knows that the evidence against the truth of the official account is overwhelming. It is not surprising that the mainstream response has been to ridicule and ignore rather than to engage in reasoned discussion. What is disappointing is that leading liberals and responsible journalists have joined in by affirming ideas that contradict basic science and condescendingly rejecting solid research without examining it. In this book, Griffin describes the behavior of these journalists and attempts, in a remarkably charitable spirit, to understand it.”
It is interesting, as far as the ridiculously high levels of epistemic inertia and belief in miraculous events go. What type of evidence would supposedly convince you that 9/11 was a false flag attack, again? Eye witness testimony of bombs in the buildings? Evidence of means, motive and opportunity? People sitting there in front of you saying, “We need some type of false flag attack.” and then saying later, “That attack was good for us.” as another hair on Obama’s head gets gray?
Seriously… what would the evidence that falsifies the official conspiracy theory* about Muslims and so on supposedly look like? Or what would evidence that would verify the unofficial false flag theory look like?
*(Such as it is, Zelikow should ask for a refund on his degree in public myth making… given that it was structured for main stream media and didn’t take into account the impact of instantaneous, decentralized forms of communication.)
Sheeple
“It is interesting, as far as the ridiculously high levels of epistemic inertia and belief in miraculous events go.”
Indeed it is. Also interesting is your willingness to believe all this stuff. I haven’t read up on it in about nine years now, given that all evidence Truthers pointed to struck me at the time as grasping at straws. Thanks for the link to the review; it reminded me what some of the more outlandish claims were.
I don’t know, nor do you, whether 9/11 was an “inside job.” I am applying Occam’s Razor: Which would be more likely, a true terrorist attack or a conspiracy to fake the whole thing? Note that I am not applying that standard to say what happened, only to determine whether I should spend any more time investigating. I decided no.
There’s a further reason I didn’t reach the same conclusion as you: If they were going to fake an attack, why didn’t they make it look as if that attack came from Iraq? Remember, Iraq was their preferred target for invasion all along, but they had to come up with a whole new set of lies to bring it about. If you were going to cook up a false flag attack, why link it to Afghanistan when your real invasion target is Iraq? It makes no sense.
I think you are interested in the possible, where I’m interested in the probable. I find it more likely that US government complicity, if any occurred, was in the form of failing to interdict an actual terrorist attack in a timely and efficient manner.
There certainly is actual evidence to support negligence. Whether that negligence was planned or accidental might be worth investigating.
Conspiracy enthusiasts usually take one or two details and build an entire narrative around them culminating in a grand conspiracy.
Things like finding an intact passport, when an easy perusal of the available information shows that an intact passport was not the only intact item found. The theory goes that everything should have been incinerated even though throughout history there are examples of wholly intact items that survived some of the most horrific catastrophes.
The ultimate culprit is not just an open mind or even a willingness to believe. It is the enthusiastic desire to believe such that so-called evidence that supports the belief is enthusiatically accepted and evidence that contradicts the belief is enthusiastically rejected.
The root of this is in each individuals mind. Most of us might enjoy the fatastical stories, whether it’s science fiction or mystical, or magical but are entertained by them without internally incorporating the stories in our belief system. Conspiracy enthusiasts lack the gatekeeping mechanism that keeps the stories compartmented from their beliefs and enthusiastically adopt and even promulgate nearly every conspiracy that conforms to their beliefs which is being continually reshaped by each new conspiracy.