Stop Rape! BREAKING!!!!
 

It bothers me on a fairly deep level too, and I'm the one who said it and (I think) believe it.

I am not pleased by the lowering of standards for our political leaders and the cynicism and hypocrisy that is such a part of our political lives on both sides of the aisle. I used to be far more idealistic than I am today -- and had planned as a kid on a life of public service (prosecutor/politician). I now know that I could never stomach a politician's life.

I think part of the problem may be that everything is all out war now. In the past decade, the country has realigned so that the two major political parties more nearly mirror the socioeconomic and cultural divides in this country than ever before. (Witness the not-so-gradual demise of Conservative Dems and Liberal Repubs.)

This makes one more likely (on a party level) to demonize the opposition and defend your leaders just because of who is against them. Also, so long as your leaders are effective, makes you willing to lower your standards. Desparate times, etc.

I'm not happy about it. Like I've said on here (I think) I was such a damn fool that Gary Hart was one of my heros -- until it all fell apart. I saw the movie Primary Colors as a wrenching indictment of our win at all costs political system.

I could easily vote for John McCain or Colin Powell (maybe even Giuliani), in part because I want to believe again. What are the chances that they could be nominated? Not good.

Al Gore was a decent, honorable man with a fine record of service to his country (as was Bob Dole for that matter). What happened to them? That stuff doesn't matter much anymore.

S_A_M

Thought I'd Seen it All
 

Kay Hutchinson floated the "I hope Fitzgerald has more than perjury or obstruction, because those don't really count" defence yesterday. Makes me fucking ill.

Proposition 2
 

Sweet pea, that's different than outlawing housing arrangements.

Are you trying to stand in for Ty?

ETA and currently 247 of the Fortune 500 have domestic partner benefits, per Human Rights Campaign Foundation: http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Sect...rchSubTypeID=1

Stop Rape! BREAKING!!!!
 

You don't listen well when it interferes with your ability to rant, do you?

I told you that I did not vote for Clinton in 1996. I also did not vote for Bob Dole, though -- despite the fact that I admire him greatly on a personal level, and as a competent pragmatist who could govern effectively. I just could not stomach or support the GOP of the mid to late 1990s.

(I've also told you that my opinion of Clinton was low enough that hearing credible rape allegations did not lower it.)

Nothing I have done or said has any bearing on your status as a tasteless asshole. Try not to confuse the issues.


Tell me where or when I ever mounted such a defense.

However, I can see you're offended by the realization that I would rather have such a man run the government than someone who believes as your board persona purports to do. Its true.

My moral compass is awry in part because I sold my soul and mortaged my dreams to provide a very comfortable life for my family, and because I don't have the balls to risk changing that.

How about you?

S_A_M

Thought I'd Seen it All
 

Now this is a principled man.

S_A_M

Proposition 2
 

My question wasn't about the analysis. My question was about the language that we're voting for. I do not think that the following language is any clearer than the language on the ballot, and I think, reading the language on its face, that a reasonable person could determine that the legislature is asking us to eliminate marriage all together.

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Speaking of Clinton . . .
 

If that is the case, then I would agree with you. However, if it turns out that either Scooter Libby or Karl Rove actually did out a covert agent in service of a political agenda, then that would be a different story.

After all, it's not really in tune with our system of criminal justice to condemn people for crimes which are alleged but cannot be proven

Achtung!
 

He's Cheney's hatchet man. Do you really need to ask the question?

Proposition 2
 

Bilmore is right, the actual language is clearer, but clearer in a way the drafter(s) should not have intended. Setion 32 defines marriage and then provides:

"This state [] may not [] recognize any legal status identical [] to marriage,"

which, unless you torture the meaning of identical*, means that Texas may not recognize any legal status of marriage. Doesn't mean you can't get married w/r/t your church.

I don't know how that can be interpreted any differently, unless recognition of marriage as a legal status in Terxas is also provided for in the constitution. Then you'd have to read to two provisions together to give both some reasonable meaning.


*from m-w.com: identical
1 : being the same : SELFSAME <the identical place we stopped before>
2 : having such close resemblance as to be essentially the same

Speaking of Clinton . . .
 

Agreed, with the caveat that they knew she was covert, and that she satisfied that within-five-years requirement.

(In other words, that the statute was violated.)

Proposition 2
 

Ah, I gotcha.

Yeah, I think you're right.

If this passes as it is, there's gonna be a real estate boom all over Texas.

Common and not so common ground
 

2.



PoPD. These attacks are beneath, you are better than this.


How about neither of the above? In 2000, irl, I frequently despaired over Bush as a candidate. Unlike you I didn't think Gore was so hot, in part because of the taint of Clinton, but I still find it troubling to think any educated person in this country could assert that it's better to have a man who is a serial sexual criminal as President as opposed to someone who is just of a more extreme ideological position than them. Checks and balances takes care of the latter, it does nothing to mitigate the degradation of the office and the system of the former.



The same. Merde!

Achtung!
 

I bet he never raped anyone.

Proposition 2
 

Good. We should. Marriage should a private contractual right. The religious aspect should be wholly exclusive of that. If employers want to extend benefits to your private contract joint venture partner (aka [contractual] lover) then so be it, another private commercial arrangement.

State sanctioned marriage is an anachronism.

Achtung!
 

I bet if the Ds were willing to stoop as low as the Rs, they could find evidence that he raped someone as credible as the rape allegations against Clinton.

Proposition 2
 

I don't think so. Something is "identical" necessarily to something else.

Proposition 2
 

Had they included the words "other than marriage" or something to that effect, yeah. But I think her point is that they've left at least a colorable argument that marriage is gone, and I think she's correct.

Proposition 2
 

Yes, but marriage exists outside of Texas -- it's a generic concept. So "marriage" could be used as a reference point in outlawing marriage. They should have added ", with the exception of a marriage between a man and a woman as currently defined under Texas law" or something.

It's crap drafting.

Achtung!
 

So, if the D's were willing to listen to four women - was it four or five? - as they gave very detailed, corroborated testimony about being raped or abused, that would be "stooping low"?

Well, that explains a lot. Youz guyz were simply too principled to listen to those women!

They probably wore short skirts, and makeup. Sluts.

the truth is out there.
 

Good comeback. Yes, I'm sure you are right. Just waiting in the shadows, begging to come out, is a 25 year history of predatory sexually abusive behaviour. Unlike with Clinton there has not been a 25 year history of consistent allegations of sexual abuse and/or assault from women with whom Scooter Libby has worked against him, but certainly you are right, those allegations and the underlying acts which prompted them must be out there.

If only there was a liberal media establishment which had resources to devote to this story. Instead we are cursed with a media of record overrun by conservatively apologistic hacks like Mo Dowd.

Sad.

Proposition 2
 

Well, I certainly agree the time to remove ambiguities is now, and not after the thing passes (which hopefully it will not do). My point, though, on the construction is that use of "identical" implies something other than marriage, so you don't need that additional language. I know we like to draft everything with belt and suspenders, but to make the reverse argument, if they had meant to eliminate marriage they should have said (I paraphrase) "will not recognize marriage or anything similar"; you would not need "identical" at all.

Proposition 2
 

As I noted before, from Merriam-Webster:

identical
1 : being the same : SELFSAME <the identical place we stopped before>


Does not require reference to something else. Ignore newish people much? Sheesh.

Achtung!
 

It was at least 7, i.e. there were 7 Jane Does, plus who knows how many others, including but not limited to Kathleen Willey, who was not a Jane Doe.

If this is a PoPD shot at me, ftr, fwiw, fyi, I don't wear makeup and my skirt hits me at the knees.

Proposition 2
 

Quiet. I'm closing on a San Antonio house right now. And I don't think it's ambiguous at all . . . .

Proposition 2
 

Mercy. If you believe in marriage as a benefit to society, you should want the government to sanction it and reward it. There are few things, perhaps, you might want the government to weigh in on, but don't you want it to be the essential, fundamental things? Or the opposite?

BTW, there's an article at NR today outlining some common points that conservatives may have re marriage. In th econtext of finding common ground re gay marriage.

Achtung!
 

FWIW, FYI, your skirt hits me right at the knees, too. Hard.

Proposition 2
 

Be glad you did not get the Thurgreed welcome I got. :-)

Proposition 2
 

What! Of course it is ambiguous. That is why we can argue about it so easily. This is classic.

Proposition 2
 

I'm sorry. I should have used one of those cutsie winking avatars at the end of that statement.

Achtung!
 

As the Ds (in toto) are absolutely willing to stoop as low as the Rs (in toto) -- the issue is more whether anyone cares to spend the time and resources to do it to Scooter.

In other words . . is the target worth it? In the absence of a run for high political office, the answer is generally "No."

S_A_M

Proposition 2
 

I believe a private right to contract for a marriage partnership, based on the terms and conditions of the contract are a benefit to society, and would look forward with approval to the state upholding the private right to contract for the same, much as they uphold the right to contract for other private endeavours. Outside of that, I don't think the state needs to sanction marriage as some sort of greater institution.

eta: cite on the article, please?

Proposition 2
 

Oh, smartass, eh? <deleted emoticon>

Proposition 2
 

Thurgreed was retroactively banned from this board. His ability to engage in cooperative, compassionate political discourse of a bi-partisanal nature is severely handicapped by his ideological myopicality. No offence.

Also he called me fat, when, in fact, I'm phat.

Proposition 2
 

Is that sort of like Hank calling me a boy, when, in fact, I'm a girl?

Achtung!
 

The thought that any Republican or any politician of an opposite stripe has a history of sexual criminality is absurd and as usual (from the liberals) dilutes the concept that Clinton really did anything wrong. "Sure Clinton raped someone, but if the Ds looked really hard, we would find out all the bad Rs really raped women too", i.e. rape by political leaders in America is commonplace, i.e. not really that bad.

I can't stand Biden, but I would be willing to bet that given all the resources in the world, a history of serial sexual abuse could not be uncovered to pin on Biden (as a perpetrator of the same). Kennedy, otoh, uhm, maybe.

Achtung!
 

Scooter Libby raped me.

Achtung!
 

Dick Cheney, whose daughter, Mary Cheney, is a lesbian, raped me.

Stop Rape! BREAKING!!!!
 

Its our own fault. We're so fucking childish that we can't even discuss sex. A decent candidate with a divorce or an affair is dead in the water because thousands of hyprocrites will call him immoral and band together against him.

In that vacuum of talent, we see things like W, Clinton and Bush I elected. None of them are worthy of the title they held. And what did they run against? John Fucking Kerry? Al Gore?

DAN QUAYLE???

Until we grow the fuck up in this counttry and act like adults about sex and personal mores, we're going to get more and more shit in the Oval Office. Decent, intelligent people tend to experiment a bit in life, and they make mistakes, and they have moral shortcomings. Until we address those shortcoming as a normal, excusable human foibles, we'll only get the idiots the religious right will tolerate.

I don't want to sound like some Berkeley douchebag, but WTF is wrong with this nation? We just excused gunmakers from lawsuits. We tolerate insane violence in our media. We have scumbags stealing our tax money for polictical gain (I hope Ted Stevens loses his sight for that goddamned bridge to nowhere). Yet we're debating whether abortion should be legal, and whther there's moral deficit on the Left?

There's a huge deficit in this country we ought to deal with before our economic or moral deficits, and thats the deficit of fucking brains in the political arena. Until we have some honest discourse, instead of sumbags who play to their idiot constituents, we'll never get anywhere. I hate to say it, but a temporary monarchy run by practical, sensible thinkers would be a very nice thing right now.

Off with the heads of all the idiots (about half the country).

Proposition 2
 

Word! I would ban Hank too, but what little is left of his mental stability depends on his having access to the boards, plus it distracts him from the heartbreak of my affair with his wife, which I feel some small responsibility for.

Achtung!
 

Your expulsion from the Insurgency has really pushed you off the deep end, no?