Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

In North Carolina, Democratic candidate for the United States Senate Jim Neal has acknowledged that he is gay. Actually, he has never hidden that he is gay, so it’s kind of like Liza Minelli acknowledging that she has short hair.

The major point of communication from the Jim Neal for Senate campaign is that Neal’s sexual orientation is no big deal. My reaction to the news so far is in line with that. I read the news with a “hmm” and not much more.

What would be a big deal is if the North Carolina Democratic Party now rushes to find another candidate to challenge Senator Elizabeth Dole, because the Democratic Party isn’t willing to support an openly non-heterosexual candidate. That would be a big deal. It would be a sign of craven cowardice.

Monster storms have nothing on scantily clad women.

I’m trapped in the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport because we’re under a tornado warning. Apparently, someone has seen a tornado moving very close by, and we have just been ordered away from all windows and doors. The airport emergency plan has been activated

Nonetheless, across the hall from me, at the Northshore News stand, a man has just bought an issue of Maxim magazine, which this month features a woman named Erica Durance wearing an outfit made out of black, translucent material.

T&A beats a twister. Smackdown.

GOP members of the United States Senate left the Senate chamber in a near stampede yesterday, when Senator Larry Craig returned to caucus with them. “Call my wife and let her know I didn’t let him touch me,” one GOP senator was overheard to say into his cell phone.

“It is outrageous,” said another Republican senator to PNN news service, “that Harry Reid refused to allow us to hold a vote on whether to take a special emergency cootie recess. The American people deserve an up or down vote on immoral sexuality in the Senate. Up or down!”

Mitt Romney’s campaign issues a press release explaining that, in protest of the return of Romney’s former ally to the Senate, the Romney for President campaign would refuse to even mention the word “Senate” for as long as Craig was in the Senate.

“Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?” asked Romney’s campaign manager.

Democratic candidate for President Mike Gravel has called for an end to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy instituted by President Bill Clinton, which confirmed that the military has the right to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation, but suggested that people try to look the other way and pretend that nothing was going on. Mike Gravel can see what other politicians refuse to see see – that it is hypocritical to say that our soldiers are fighting for freedom when we won’t even allow them to have basic freedoms themselves.

Support our troops but discriminate against them? That’s the policy the Republicans follow… and some Democrats too. I wonder how Hillary Clinton justifies her support for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell discrimination against gays and lesbians. And how about Al Gore? Let’s not forget that, as Vice President, Al Gore was complicit in the crafting of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Thanks to this discrimination, American soldiers are being sent to serve tour after tour after tour, and it’s driving them crazy. All this, in the name of a right wing sexual obsession.

This issue will be one that shows which Democrats are truly fit to lead as President come 2009.

I have just seen the most arcane, twisted, political hit job I could have imagined. Republicans are working to smear Democratic candidate Michael Arcuri by saying that he’s hired Zogby International to uncover the secret that Ray Meier is gay.

Their line of reasoning is particularly idiotic. They say that at a campaign web site for another race, in Minnesota of all places, was found through the Google search “ray meier is gay”, and that the IP address of the search could be traced back to Zogby.

Well, wait a minute while I fill up my lungs to let out a big loud, BIG FUCKING WHOOOP!

Who cares? This looks like the kind of warped double bash that only a Republican could think up. Who cares if a politician is gay? Republicans, that’s who.

In the minds of a Republican, it’s okay if a politician breaks the law, lies to the people and kicks the Constitution in the teeth. What they can’t tolerate is if that politician is gay. So, they don’t care if Democrats nail them on substance. All they care about is that the sexual politics gets kept under the covers.

When will America grow up enough to forget the sex and look at the substance? It doesn’t matter if Ray Meier is gay. What does matter is that he is a Republican creep.

This is the most perverted sense of priorities that I can imagine. It makes me want to puke.

Here’s what The Nation has to say about the sudden resignation of Porter Goss and the rapidly expanding sex scandal known as Hookergate:

“Goss may be the first casualty of the expanding investigation into Duke Cunningham, otherwise known as Hookergate. Cunningham’s indicted co-conspirators, defense contractors Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, provided suites at the Westin and Watergate (sound familiar?) to entertain Congressman and other DC players. According to Ken Silverstein of Harper’s, “party nights began early with poker games and degenerated into what the source described as a “frat party” scene–real bacchanals.” The FBI is investigating whether prostitutes were involved. The Watergate has received multiple subpoenas.

Goss’s #3 man at the CIA, Dusty Foggo, has already admitted to attending “poker parties.” Silverstein, one of the best investigative reporters in Washington, revealed last week that “those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees–including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.”

Goss certainly fits that bill.”

This is a story I wrote not too long ago for another website. I had made a flippant remark that, when it comes to abortion, this one member of that site had said that he’s against it because a fertilized embryo will become a fully-formed human and therefor to him humans are alive from the time of conception. I has responded with “Saplings will become trees, but that doesn’t stop me from mowing over them. He asked if I were equating trees with humans and I corrected him by saying “No, I’m equating sapplings with a fetus.” He responded by saying “Okay, well, that’s the same thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

The story that follows expands on that line of reasoning.

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Bob Smith and the Tree Huggers

One bright and sunny weekend Bob Smith was getting some much needed yardwork done. As he was pushing his mower across the grass, a blond man with a beard and wearing a tie-dye T-shirt stopped in front of Bob Smith’s house.
“STOP!” the blond man yelled; “Turn off that mower!”
Bob was curious, so he did as the man said. Now that he could hear over the engine, he inquired; “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see it?” the man asked and pointed to a patch of ground a few feet in front of the mower.
“See what?” All that he could see was grass.
“That tree you’re about to murder!”
Bob Smith peers long and hard at the patch of ground, but he can not see a tree. He is starting to become convinced that this fellow is a loon; “Buddy, there is no tree there.”
The blond man walked over to the patch of earth, pointing as he went and leaned down until his finger was touching a plant barely a half inch high but visible through the grass; “This tree!” he shouted.
Bob Smith, now looking on in disbelief, turned and glanced at his cherry tree. The plant this man (who Bob was now thinking of as a “Hippie”) was an offshoot of the main cherry tree. He had mowed over many of those saplings before because if he didn’t they would take over his yard and kill off his flower beds.
“That’s not a tree,” he says, “It’s just a sapling. That’s a tree,” He jerked his thumb towards the cherry tree a few feet away.
“It makes no difference,” the hippie said sternly, “A tree is a tree from the moment it sprouts.”
Bob Smith was now tired of this conversation and started up the lawnmower once again, “It’s not a tree, it’s a sapling and I don’t have the time or money required to tend to another tree,” and proceeded to run the lawnmower over the sapling, chopping it in half. The hippie gaped at Bob and said “You wait, we’ll put a stop to this!”

The weekend after next, Bob Smith was pulling his lawnmower out of the garage when he saw a group of people sitting on his lawn and holding signs with sayings like “Lawn Care is MURDER!” and “What about the saplings?!” on them.
“What’s going on here?” Bob Smith asked as he approached the group.
“We’re going to stop you from killing this tree,” the blond hippie from two weeks ago told him. He was wearing a handcuff around his wrist and the other end was laying over another cherry tree sapling.
“This is ridiculous,” Bob said and went back inside to call the police and have this group of people dispersed.
“No, this is serious,” A woman wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of a sprout and a leaf and with ‘Let Me Live’ written across her chest; “We’re stopping a murder!”
An hour later, the police arrived and the crowd was forced off Bob Smith’s lawn. The next day, a Sunday, there was a knock on Bob Smith’s door. When he opened it to see who was there, a television camera and a microphone were forced into his face and cameras started flashing so much he was nearly blinded.
“Mr. Smith!” a female voice called out, “How does it feel to commit a murder?”
“Are you going to kill any more trees today?” a male voice called as a second camera was shoved through the doorway. Bob forced the door shut as more and more cameras and microphones were thrust at him. After another call to the police, and another hour of yelling, the reporters were made to leave. That night as he was watching the 6:00 news, Bob was shocked to see his face featured on Weasel News (We Lie, You Believe) with the words ‘Lawncare or Murder?’ under his picture.
“This crime must end!” the Hippie was yelling into a microphone from what looked to be in Bob’s own neighborhood. “How many more trees will cut down before they even have a chance to grow up and know life?”
After the story gained mass attention, more and more hippies started writing their congressmen demanding something be done. There was such a flood of letters that, even though it was being done by only a minority of people, that small group was so vocal that finally a ban on lawncare was enacted to stop the murder of innocent trees.

Five years later, Bob Smith’s lawnmower was rusting in his garage and his yard was now over run by cherry trees. They had choked out his other flowers and turned his once presentable lawn into a grove so thick it was difficult to get to his car. Because the law passed required him to not only allow the trees to grow, he was made to care for them and was now running into debt from the cost of water and fertilizer. Other people were in the same boat as Bob Smith, trees, weeds, and vines choked yards and the roots were destroying roads and sidewalks. Baseball, football, golf, and soccer games were soon abandoned because it was against the law to cut down trees.

But at least the hippies were happy.