The Fightin' Hermaphrodites

The title comes from the online edition of Britian's Spectator Magazine, which has a rather humorous story excoriating some of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" silliness coming from the right side of the U.S. Senate.

Blog author Alex Massie muses about John McCain's (R-AZ) shameful flip-flopping as he attempts to justify continuing the ban on homosexuals in the U.S. military, and the profound ignorance of Duncan Hunter (R-CA) raising the spectre of a scorge of hermaphrodites potentially wearing those honored uniforms.

That might be bad for morale.

Massie also quotes Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) as warning that allowing gays to openly serve in the military could lead to other dispicable behavior, such as "Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art." Hmmm. I guess that would mean fewer soldiers and sailors singing in the church choir, too.

There were other Republicans lining up to make patently stupid assertions in this partisan attempt to override the rational good sense of repealing DADT.

My opinion: The current crop of Senate and House Republicans are of pack of clowns and ignoramuses. Reason and moderation haven't the chance of a fart in a windstorm in this atmosphere.

So long as the whacky wingnuttery (on both sides of the aisle) remains. this country will remain in deep doo doo, swinging madly about as if some crazy pendulum in a Salvador Dali clock.

Other good articles on the topic may be found HERE and HERE, and more from Politico's Ben Smith as well. But don't stop there. The sphere is alive with this topic.

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31-17

Finally the aint's.... are!

Congrats to the Saints, the city of New Orleans, state of Louisiana, and the entire Gulf coast. You finally got you a WIN!!!

Whooo Daaattttttt!!!

The Week in Comics

We the People

Isn’t it interesting what our kids don’t learn in school?

Even many educated people seem never to have learned that some of the earliest British colonies were corporations chartered by the King of England. Take for instance the 1628 creation of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, granted to a group of Puritans. The result was a theocratic Massachusetts with political power held by staunch Puritanical believers.

In 1636 we see the chartering of the Rhode Island colony by a group of disaffected Massachusetts Bay folk, then the Connecticut colony followed in 1662. These early American corporations were forced under terms of their charter to deal strictly with the British East India Company, and under some very disadvantageous terms.

That was the way it was until the American Revolution, which began as a rebellion more against the East India Company than of the Crown.

Our founders held a deep distrust of corporations. So much so that Thomas Jefferson offered freedom from monopolies as part of our Bill of Rights. The proposal failed to gain acceptance, and later Jefferson wrote, "I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." [1]

But corporations survived, and in 1886 SCOTUS inadvertently decided that a private corporation is the same as a person, and entitled to the same Constitutional protections as any other person.

The Controversy

The case that did it was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), and according to the records, Associate Justice Morrison Remick Waite, before the opening of argument, stated aloud that “[t]he court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

The court reporter, former judge and lawyer J.C. Bancroft Davis, later entered into the summary record of the Court's findings that, “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Thus Davis took Waite’s words, twisted them and granted something to corporations which was never even discussed. It was never the intent of SCOTUS to make that statement, and the full text of the opinion says no such thing. The case was brought as a complaint by the railroad about the taxing of fences bordering rail lines, and the railroad won. There were no arguments relating to corporate personhood or corporate rights under the First Amendment. The whole corporate personhood thing is a sham.

Corporate personhood came to be simply because of an off the cuff statement of a single justice, and the brief summary written by Court Reporter Davis. Davis himself becomes suspect in a fraud, and it has been alleged that he was bribed. After 150 years we shall never know for certain, but it is perhaps relevant that Davis was the former president of Newburgh and New York Railway Company.

The concept of corporate personhood generates some interesting questions. If the corporation enjoys the same rights as a person under the First Amendment, would it not also enjoy equally the rights protected by the full Constitution and all the amendments? Should a corporation have the right to vote? Join the military? Marry your daughter? Be called for jury duty? If a corporation is suspected of a crime, can it be remanded for trial?

I think probably not, and I further think that allowing corporations shelter under the First Amendment is a disastrous idea. Since the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it seems clear that the law that has been promulgated under this “decision” is an attempt at rewriting the Constitution to suit the needs of the corporation, and nothing more. The fears of our founders have been realized.

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln wrote these words[2] in 1864, twelve years before Bancroft Davis took it upon himself to grant the protections of our Constitution to the very entity Lincoln, and our founders, despised.

[1] The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, Goodwyn, L.

[2] Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, Hertz, E.

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Will the abuse never stop?

A while back I made a post in which I jokingly promoted The Green Alternative, and pointed out that certain vegetables had offered a green alternative for years, and for far less cost.

Since that time I’ve learned that the topic is not a joking matter. Vegetable abuse, it seems, is a serious problem. This was brought to my attention when I learned of a billboard in the Dallas area, which seems to have raised some conservative hackles... and then discovered this video...

So, boys and girls, do your part to stop the abuse. Belly up and pay for the proper toy.

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Assholes

As volunteer aid organizations, nurses, medics and even physicians cool their heels here in the states, told we cannot go to Haiti because there is insufficient support and security for additional resources, every media outlet has full teams, hollywood celebs with their attending hoards, and even this asshole...

...head over there and suck up precious resources...

Go figure.

[H/T]

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Musings on Obama's failures

EB Misfit has a post this morning in which she apologizes to Hillary for mean and nasty things said about her in the primaries. I started to comment, but got carried away, so I wrote a blog post.

Many of my friends suffer from some sort of delusion-inducing cerebral edema, causing them to think that far right conservatism or far left liberalism is good, and that anyone wearing the mantle of their choice is the person for whom to vote. Not so much so for me. We need a degree of conservatism in our leadership, but we need progressiveness, reason and pragmatism as well.

I’ve supported some of the so-called “fiscal conservatives” in the past because they were making more sense at the time than their election opponent. I wonder why the Republicans no longer field such candidates. The 2008 field of Republican hopefuls had nothing but wingers of one stripe or another, and although they nominated one of the least kooky, there was no way I could support McCain.

Picking a candidate these days seems to consist of choosing the one who stinks the least, so I supported Hillary in the primaries and accepted Obama by default. Harsh reality told me the country had to get away from government by corporations, and leadership by ideology. Barbarians had gained the Oval Office, and that had to change or our country would end up a pile of smoking ruins.

I watched all the debates, and the Republican field of hopefuls was a rogue's gallery of corporate pocket rats and family value bozos. There were none fitting any rational criteria, with each claiming either the mantle of Bush or of Reagan and all spouted the rightwing hemlock of “social conservatism.” That kind of political philosophy had led the country down the primrose path in the recent past, so there was no apparent help for the country coming from the right.

Of course there was Ron Paul...

So a Democrat was my alternative. Somehow we had to move away from the previous, disastrous eight years, but my fear was and remains that an Obama win would be a short-lived victory… that he would be a single-term President and the forces of evil would again, in 2012, gain the Oval Office.

Hillary, in my mind, had the better opportunity of maintaining the White House for eight years and perhaps sowing seed that could carry rational political thought beyond that time. But Hilary ran a faulty campaign and lost the primaries. Left with no other choice, I voted for Obama and I was glad he won.

He did so rather handily too. Hillary would have experienced a greater struggle to achieve a win in the general, but I have little doubt that she would have won. A large enough majority of the people were just sick of Bushism, and McCain was running on Bush coattails. Adding an extremist to the ticket, in an attempt to mollify the wingnuts, doomed that campaign.

Obama energized voters who had never before even registered to vote, creating a handy win. Hillary had women voters on her side, but couldn't have accomplished the landslide Obama did. A great many Obama voters would have stayed home if Hillary had won the nomination, but I think Hillary voters came out for Obama for the most part.

So she would have won regardless, but maybe with a lesser margin of victory, and not so much of a "mandate." A win of lesser magnitude may have even been in her favor, as expectations might not have been so lofty.

Although my friends on the right still cling to power as a means of maintaining American Exceptionalism, and the Shrub was playing their tune, I felt the country needed to establish our exceptionalism in the world by means of moral, not ideological leadership. Anybody, including Obama, would have done better at that than any of the Republicans.

Obama might have been okay under other circumstances. He got handed a mess bigger than he has been able to handle, and he keeps making mistakes, surrounding himself with advisors certain to create a fail (Think Geithner). Hillary as President, I think, would have done better, and in State is Obama’s greatest asset. But unfortunately, that is not enough. Obama is catching it from both sides. His former supporters are becoming discouraged and teabagger wingnuts are marching in the streets.

Hillary as President, with Obama perhaps as VP, would likely have ensured someone of reason in the Oval Office for more than a single term, but that is crying over spilled milk. I’m expecting the independents to abandon him and guessing those first-time voters of 2008 will stay home in 2012 too, so the corporations will regain the White House in 2012 and the country will resume business as usual.

Maybe some rational candidate will step up to the plate by then and capture the imaginations of the electorate, but more likely the pendulum will just make another swing and it will be generations in the future before reason has another chance.

The religious extremists and corporate rats are already gloating.

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