Gay marriage in Maine

The state of Maine has legalized gay marriage and opponents are trying to pass a proposition 8-style ballot measure to stop it. Gay marriage supporters are framing the issue as a basic civil rights issue, an approach I agree with totally. There's their first commercial:

I love this photo

Great line of the day

From the great Dr. Dawg:

For Suaad Hagi Mohamud, it was her lips. For Abdihakim Mohamed, it was his ears. You get the feeling that facial recognition training for consular officials in Nairobi has something to do with Mr. Potato Head.

Emphasis mine.

Who da thunk it!

I hadn't realized wingnut republican congressperson Michelle Backman has become pro-choice

"That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress," said Bachmann, "and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions."

Face Plant

Well, I tripped and fell yesterday, over a speedbump in a parking lot when I was carrying groceries and not watching where I was going, and my nose got to the ashphalt first but my glasses broke the rest of my fall, so to speak. This morning I could get a job as a circus clown -- I don't need a fake red nose -- at least only one eye is blackened.
I now understand the term "face plant" better than I ever thought I would. It only hurts when I laugh...

Delusions of grandeur

Diaper-wearing Senator David Vittner thinks that he can destroy the Canadian health care system by permitting US citizens to buy drugs in Canada.
Commenter Maryl says

Canada points and laughs. And laughs some more. And falls down on the floor, gasping for breath.
Can we get back to you when we've regained the power of speech?

Great line of the day

Steve quotes Daniel Veniez:

“The Conservative party and its leader are permanently angry,” he goes on. “That’s an ingrained part of who they are and what they represent. On a visceral level, they remain a protest party and have turned themselves into a protest government. They manage by negatives and are genetically incapable of inspiring hope or thinking big. They attack, assassinate character, tell lies, lower the bar on public discourse, and engage in tactical and divisive wedge politics and governance. The tone, strategy, and culture for this government are established by Harper, a cheap-shot artist and cynic of the highest order.

A nut too far

So the world's bestest justice system (tm) would execute an innocent man because judicial privilege trumps actual truth? I think the Christian right wingnut Scalia supporters are going to have a hard time swallowing this one:

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

Great line of the day

Talking about the the assault rifles at Obama's meetings, Rev Paperboy comes up with a new twist:

Imagine the reaction of the teabaggers and town brawl activists and other Glenn Beck fans if a dozen shotgun-toting neo-Black Panthers came and stood outside the president's next town hall meeting to show support for Obama.

Some fun, eh?
Actually, of course, that would be the very last thing Obama would want to see happen.

Twix is off my chocolate list

Well, I guess I won't be buying Twix chocolate bars anymore.
If there is one feature in modern advertising that I do not understand, it is ads that portray the people who use the advertiser's product as asshats or idiots.
Maybe the people who work at ad agencies secretly hate the companies who have hired them to create advertising, so they come up with the stupidest and most offensive commercials they can.
Takes one to know one, I guess.

Bring on the spotlight

On Saturday, cabinet ministers Jason Kenny and Peter Van Loan overturned the deportation order for Burmese asylum-seeker Nay Myo Hein (shown here with his wife Haymar Zin).
And basically, they did it because of the news coverage:

The widely publicized case may have been noticed by Burmese officials, who might target him for criticizing the "totalitarian regime," Kenney said.
"Under normal circumstances I would not have intervened. We face a lot of cases like this, but this is extraordinary, quite exceptional. It's very rare," he said.
"We wouldn't want to return someone to face persecution or punishment. It is a chance we were not prepared to take."

So the more publicity cases like this receive, the better.

Let's focus

After months and months of flap about "single-payer" and "public options", not to mention the stupidity of "death panels" and "pulling the plug on grandma" and "socialist medicare", isn't everyone getting a little tired of talking about the United States health care system?
Particularly irrelevant now, I think, are people who are still wanting to discuss the overall shape of health care reform and how it really should be done differently yada yada yada.
Here's where its at: In 30 or 40 days, the members of Congress are going to be voting on something. Whether it will include a “public option” is the only real issue left, and whether enough Democrats will vote for it to pass it is the only real question.

All of the people in this video are getting seniors discounts now

Woodstock was 40 years ago this weekend.

Somewhere there's music

The great Les Paul died today:



Les Paul & Mary Ford How High the Moon

Secret stories

In comments to my previous post, Dr. Dawg points out that he doesn't believe the comforting little story that Paul Dewar was told about how Suaad Mohamud was really a liar and her problems in Kenya were actually all her own fault.
It sure served its purpose, didn't it?
It shut up everyone in official Ottawa for months. Even now, only Ontario premier McGinty and MP Joe Volpe have come forward.
After Chretien's experience with the Khadrs, no politician wants to go to bat anymore for someone who, embarrassingly, might turn out to be unworthy.
But funny how this is sounding more and more like what happened initially to Mahar Arar -- a "secret" story being passed around official Ottawa that the aggrieved citizen was actually really guilty as charged but of course we can't actually tell this to the media or the Canadian people because they might sue or something, but just trust us, would we lie to you?
UPDATE: And Dan MacTeague.