Friday, May 30, 2008

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Lurking in the Bushes Edition

But the social intercourse between the races in the South, which was so helpful to the blacks, has now practically ceased. The children of this generation no longer play and frolic together. White ladies no longer visit Negro cabins. The familiar salutation of "Uncle" or "Auntie" is no longer heard. The lady's maid sleeps no more by the bedside of her mistress. The Southern woman with her helpless little children in solitary farm house no longer sleeps secure in the absence of her husband with doors unlocked but safely guarded by black men whose lives would be freely given in her defence. Bat now, when a knock is heard at the door, she shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or a tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is now frenzied with horror, with blind and furious rage for vengeance. A stake is driven; the wretched brute, covered with oil, bruised and gashed, beaten and hacked and maimed, amid the jeers and shouts and curses, the tears of anger and of joy, the prayers and the maledictions of thousands of civilized people, in the sight of school-houses, court-houses and churches is burned to death. Since the abolition of slavery and the growing up of a new generation of Negroes, crimes that are too hideous to describe have been committed every month, every week, frequently every day, against the helpless women and children of the white race, crimes that were unknown in slavery. And, in turn, cruelties have been inflicted upon Negroes by whole communities of whites, which, if attempted during slavery, would have been prevented at any sacrifice. I do not hesitate to say that more horrible crimes have been committed by the generation of Negroes that have grown up in the South since slavery than by the six preceding generations in slavery. And also that the worst cruelties of slavery all combined for two centuries were not equal to the savage barbarities inflicted in retaliation upon the Negroes by the whites during the last twenty years.

--George T. Winston, "The Relation of the Whites to the Negroes", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 18, July 1901, pp. 108-09. Originally an address at the fifth annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Gee. Why on earth would white women be afraid of blacks after being told that they lurk in the darkness in order to snatch up and devour rape women? Blacks just served as a bogeyman for grown-ups.
Read more...

Friday, May 23, 2008

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: They All Look Alike Edition

Londo: I don't know how they see out of them anyway. Tiny, beady, squinty little things aren't they?
Drazi Ambassador: Ambassador...
Londo: No the Maker has not been kind to you. Must be terrible trying to fly at night without running into entire planets.
DA: Are you saying the Centauri do not know what ships are patrolling their borders.
Londo: No, of course we know. The Maker has gifted us with great big eyes, and great big scanners, and great big, ah ... well that is no concern of yours.

Babylon 5, "Rumors, Bargains and Lies"

White people must have terrible eyesight. That's because they can't seem to tell apart people of any other race. Not Chinese:
The Chinese seem to be incapable of understanding our religion; but still less are they capable of understanding our political institutions. To confer the franchise upon them would be to put the balance of power on the Pacific into the hands of a people who have no conception of the trust involved, and who would have no wish to use it rightly if they had--would be to give so many additional votes to the employers of Chinese, or put them up for sale by the Chinese head centers in San Francisco. At least one Chinaman has already been naturalized, and though none of them have any intention of remaining here permanently, if it would pay them to acquire votes and they could be protected in voting, there are none of them who would object to being naturalized every hour in the day. The swearing required is nothing to them, and as for identification, all Chinamen look alike to the unpracticed eye.

Not Puerto Ricans:
For voting, the law requires one year in the state, four months in the county, one month in the district. But it is impossible to check, even if the holdover handout officials would want to. The Puerto Ricans all look alike, their names all sound alike and if an inspector calls in one of the swarming flats in the teeming tenements, nobody speaks English.

And not blacks:
The features reflect the inner nature, and they are more or less distinctly developed as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. The features of the white reflect all the higher and nobler as well as baser qualities of the mind. The negro has more or less of a dead conformity. On visiting a plantation of them at the South, it is difficult to tell one from another. The flat nose, enormous lips, and protuberent jaws, together with his flat, indistinct and shapeless features, strikingly approximate to the lower animals, and they are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain emotions as so much flesh and blood in any other part of the body. If the Creator, therefore, gave the negro the higher capacities that the Abolitionists claim, it is very evident that He denied him all opportunity to reflect them in his countenance.

It's a wonder that whites managed to do much of anything when they apparently can't see a damn thing.
Read more...

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Good job, England

The British government made some changes yesterday to their Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill which will improve gay rights in the country:
BRITAIN has forged landmark new rights for homosexual parents after the House of Commons unexpectedly threw out proposals that would have required fertility clinics to consider a child's "need for a father" before providing treatment.

The father's role will now be replaced by the "need for supportive parenting" and both partners recognised as parents on birth certificates when lesbian couples conceive with donated sperm, or gay men use surrogacy. At present, as in Australia, only the natural mother or father is automatically considered to be a parent when homosexual couples have fertility treatment.

...

Fertility clinics will now be banned from refusing lesbian or single women treatment if they cannot provide a male paternal model. This reason has often been used by clinics that choose to refuse treatment to lesbian or single women.

The article mentions how the vote was rather unexpected, and that the large margins by which it passed "surprised the Labour Government, which had been prepared for a big defeat on the issue."

Clearly my presence in the country had a profound impact on them.
Read more...

Friday, May 16, 2008

More on the California ruling

If you want to read more on the California ruling, the Legal Pad has several posts up already.

Panning for gold in the gay marriage ruling
Nuggets from the concurrences & dissents

And apparently CNN was completely mistaken and was reporting for several minutes that the court had upheld the marriage ban.
Read more...

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Tom Brady is a Racist! Edition

I chose that title just to see how many hits I'd get from people Googling Tom Brady of the New England Patriots to see if he's a racist. So for those of you who do find this page because of that search, you can stop reading now--I wouldn't even know that Tom Brady existed were it not for Family Guy. The person I'm actually going to discuss is Tom P. Brady, and his pamphlet Black Monday: Segregation or Amalgamation ...America Has Its Choice. This was originally an address before the Sons of the American Revolution in Greenwood, Mississippi, the author informs us in a prefatory note, and later transcribed and published by the Association of Citizens' Councils.

But what is "Black Monday"? Well, in this pamphlet at least, it refers to Monday, May 17, 1954--the date the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in Brown v. Board of Education. Since tomorrow is the 54th anniversary of the decision, I felt it would be worthwhile to look back at what certain people thought of it at the time. Let's start with the appellation, Black Monday. In the foreword, Brady writes:
"Black Monday" is the name coined by Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi to designate Monday, May 17th, 1954, a date long to be remembered throughout this nation. This is the date upon which the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its socialistic decision in the Segregation cases on appeal from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

"Black Monday" is indeed symbolic of the date. Black denoting darkness and terror. Black signifying the absence of light and wisdom. Black embodying grief, destruction and death. Should Representative Williams accomplish nothing more during his membership in Congress he has more than justified his years in office by the creating of this epithet, the originating of this watchword, the shouting of this battle cry.

Black Monday ranks in importance with July 4th, 1776, the date upon which our Declaration of Independence was signed. May 17th, 1954, is the date upon which the declaration of socialistic doctrine was officially proclaimed throughout this nation. It was on Black Monday that the judicial branch of our government usurped the sacred privilege and right of the respective states of this union to educate their youth. This usurpation constitutes the greatest travesty of the American Constitution and jurisprudence in the history of this nation.

Not much for hyperbole, is he? Yes, the Supreme Court "usurped the sacred privilege and right of the ... states ... to educate their youth" by commanding that they actually educate all their youths, and not just the white ones. Strange, that. You'll notice also that he keeps calling the decision "socialistic"--this is because he was rather unabashedly trying to tie it to Communism and say "See? This is what Stalin would have wanted, so it must be bad. Because Stalin was evil, because he was an atheist and evil."

No, really. The inside cover bears this bit of text underneath portraits of Jefferson and Stalin:
Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Stalin were both instrumental in the establishing of secular governments. Both men made mistakes and both men are dead. Their respective governments survive them.

Jefferson's government is founded on a firm belief in God, the dignity of the individual and on the institution of capital. Stalin's government is based on atheism, the absolute sovereignty of the State, and collectivism. Jefferson's government is the father of freedom and liberty. Stalin's government is the master of regimentation and slavery. Jefferson's government symbolizes light, truth, peace and life. Stalin's government represents darkness, deceit, war and death.

The principles upon which these two governments are founded are irreconcilable. They cannot be fused any more than can day exist in night. The twilight of the martyrdom of man will result. They are now engaged in a mortal conflict, and only one can survive. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve."

The United States of America had nothing at all to do with slavery, no sir! That's what commies do.

There's that much insanity, and we haven't even actually started the speech yet.

The pamphlet's main portion starts with a section labeled "The Three Species of Man". I can't be sure if he was a polygenist or just was stupidly using the word 'species' in place of 'race', but I'm kinda leaning towards the former given this passage:
So, at some time in the distant past, we need not be concerned about the exact date, during the earth's eternal pilgrimage about our sun, the insurgence of vertebrates and mammals took place. Man was created last, and it was then that the origin of all our problems occurred. This creation, as detailed in "The Conquest," by Dr. Breasted, took place in the "Great Northwest Quadrant." This territory embraced "All of Europe, all of Africa north of the Sahara. Its eastern boundary extended to the Ural M1ountains, which divide Europe and Asia, and a line parallel to the 60th Meridian east of Greenwich, extended from the Ural southward into the Indian Ocean. In addition, it includes the Near East, which embraces Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia and Arabia. This is the original home of the Great White Race, Homo Caucasius."

"On the east of and adjoining the Northwest Quadrant, in the secluded plateaus of high Asia, there arose and developed a man with straight and wiry hair, round head, almost beardless face, and a yellow skin, Homo Mongoloideus."

"South of the Northwest Quadrant, separated from the Great White Race by an impassable desert barrier and to the west by unconquered seas, lay the teeming black world of Africa, the home of Homo Africanus. Isolated to themselves, their evolutionary development was very homogeneous. They are wooly-haired, long-headed, dark-skinned Negroids."

He seems to be quoting someone (Charles Wallace Collins and his book Whither Solid South to be precise) to say that people sprung up fully-formed in their respective habitats, and hence are members of different species with different taxonomies. Or he could just be butchering biology, or both. He certainly thoroughly butchers biology and evolution in the following paragraphs, where he discusses how far the white and Asian "species" had progressed in history, describing it as an "evolutionary march" and a "marvelous and complex evolutionary development." Then he goes on to discuss blacks in his made-up evolutionary context, spouting nonsense like "the negroid man ... evolved not", and "he did not evolve simply because of his inherent limitations."

Brady then spent several pages trying to show that amalgamation with blacks had destroyed Egypt, India, the Mayans, and he does so by quoting James Densons Sayers' Can the White Race Survive? solely and repeatedly. Nothing shows your mastery of history like quoting a man who thinks that only blacks and whites exist and everyone else is just a product of black-white couplings.

Brady's abhorrence of miscegenation and its supposed consequences is hard to overstate. He refers to it as "the white man [drinking] the cup of black hemlock", and countries which he believes are in a dilapidated state because of such miscegenation as having "the mark of the beast":
The mark of the beast is apparent today, even to the most casual observer, in the various types in Mexico, the Yucatan Indians, the Hondurans, the North Central Americans and Caribs. The Proto-Negro sign withs its accompanying destruction cannot be disputed.

This might also be Sayers' influence, as in the following section ("Purity of Jewish Blood", where he continues quoting Sayers), he writes
The word negro does not occur in the religious writing, but the word Ethiopian (negroid Egyptians) is present and later came to mean negro. Frequently "the beast" is referred to. To lie before the beast was prohibited and punishable. The beast too was required to sit in sack cloth and ashes and repent. (Jonah, 3rd Chapter; Exodus, 22:19; Leviticus, 18:23; 20:15, 16.)

And we already know that Sayers thought 'the beast' meant 'Negro'.

Much later he returns to the topic of miscegenation in a seemingly-random two paragraphs, which have no relation to the preceding or following paragraphs:
The loveliest and the purest of God's creatures, the nearest thing to an angelic being that treads this terrestrial ball is a well-bred, cultured Southern white woman or her blue-eyed, golden-haired little girl.

The maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relationship, which have been conducive to the well-being of both the white and negro races in the South, has been possible because of the inviolability of Southern Womanhood. Cases of moral leprosy and degeneracy have produced sporadic instances of amalgamation of whites with negroes. It is such instances as these which produced the negro hybrids of America.

This of course explains the whole real reason behind his, and many others', resistance to Brown--they didn't want whites and blacks mingling, or at least not white women and black men. Their supposed peace and harmony was based on white women not having sex with black men... however that works. So by providing black schoolboys access to white schoolgirls, the Supreme Court threatened the peace and harmony of the South. Generally because the white men would then kill the black men.

Of course, Brady had to include a masturbatory, self-congratulatory paean to whites in the midst of his nonsense (separate from the above paragraph on white women), so he talks about Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Milton, Galileo, and so on, and gives a special nod to the biologists whose works he so thoroughly and unabashedly mangles to support his preconceived notions of how the world works. "The true miracles," he says, were not the discovery of the New World by Columbus but were those which "were to be discovered by Darwin, Huxley, Hall, Mendel, and their contemporaries." Maybe if he actually read Darwin, though, he wouldn't have been talking about "three different species of man" in the next paragraph, since Darwin was a monogenist. Or maybe he did read Darwin and just dismissed him when he felt like it, since he had a higher authority to rely on for his racism--God!
The Supreme Architect of the Universe saw fit that there should be, and are today, on this planet, three distinct species of man. If God had deemed it wise and just that there should be only one specie of man on this earth, the laws of heredity and the stimuli of environment would have produced this uniform man. There are those today who would improve upon the handiwork of the Divine Architect and would cause the amalgamation of all races if they had the power to do so. If the Omnipotent Creator had willed it, this single specie of man would have been located over all the face of the earth. The three species of man would not have been placed in different locales.

Of course, by this logic, if God had intended to prevent people of different races from having kids, he would have made it so that they couldn't, so clearly God's plan is for everyone to go out and have a multiracial baby, and Brady was being blasphemous for trying to stop that. Right?

The next bit is your typical racist claptrap. Blacks are incompetent savages who are unable to do anything; slavery was good for them but I don't support it but really the abolitionists were the evil ones and hey the South wasn't responsible for slavery anyways because all we did was keep buy and keep slaves, we didn't sell them; whites like me are so awesome, just look at how many accomplished whites I can list off the top of my head, and the fact that I don't know of any accomplished blacks means that they must not exist; Reconstruction was hell brought to earth because Negroes had civil rights and we hadn't taken them away yet. And finally, he gets to the court case in question, starting his discussion of it by essentially accusing the court of being 'judicial activists':
The Supreme Court does not possess the legislative power. When a case comes before the Court, as does a case before any court, the issue is joined, arguments are made and a decision rendered. That decision binds the parties to that particular case. The legislative power of the Federal Government is vested in the Congress of the United States. The Supreme Court has no power to make a decree which could have the effect of an Act of Congress. The Supreme Court can, of course, exceed its powers and violate the Constitution and invade the province of Congress and that of the state legislatures--as has frequently been the case. Has the Supreme Court the power to establish by decree a national segregation policy which would bind all of the forty-eight states--a power which Congress itself does not possess?

This is the true question which "Black Monday" actually decided.

Yes, there's nothing in the case itself about constitutionality of state's actions at all.

He starts out by quoting some from the Attorney General's brief, mocking most of what he quoted, and then turns to the opposing briefs and several other sources for "warnings" of what would follow the decision:
In addition to giving the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the
amendment, and the enactment of the constitutional provisions and statutes of South Carolina, they also point out the grave dangers which are attendant upon the abolition of segregation in the schools of that State. These warnings the Supreme Court completely ignored.

These warnings basically consisted of the fact that whites would riot in the streets if blacks were allowed in their schools, so if you want peace and safety you'd better not rule against us. Brady quotes one of the briefs describing the testimony of a superintendent, putting in bold the conclusions
that there would not be community acceptance of mixed schools at this time; that there would be a probability of violent emotional reaction in the communities; that it would be impossible to have peaceable association of the races in the public schools; and that it would eliminate the public schools in most, if not all, of the communities in the State

I wonder how people think this is a compelling argument before the Supreme Court? "This law must be constitutional because we really, really, really wouldn't like it if you found it wasn't." Yet Brady laments that "The Supreme Court's mind was impervious to the pathos of this appeal and these arguments."

Later he says that while the Supreme Court should be respected, you shouldn't actually abide by what it says. In fact, if you do think that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law and hence its decisions should be followed, then you're unpatriotic.
The Supreme Court should be accorded all the deference and respect possible because of the nature of the office. It should be given at least the esteem accorded Pontius Pilate. It should, however, be borne in mind that it is not infallible, and it is not clothed with "the divinity which doth hedge a king." To blindly submit to an erroneous decision which breaks all long established rules of law, violates the principles of stare decisis, and adopts sociological assertions instead of laws as its guide is not loyalty or patriotism. It is simple folly or ignorance. Since when has a fallacious opinion of the Supreme Court been above review or censure? There are those who confuse freedom of thought and criticism with subversiveness. Each decision stands on its own legs and if it is unsound, is not based on solid rules of law which have been in force and effect it should be so classified. If the result of the decision will be harmful to the bulk of the people of this country, will be calculated to foster those forces which seek this country's destruction, then to fail to resist the decision is morally wrong and the man who fails to condemn it and do all that he can to see that it is reversed is not a patriotic American.

Hm. If "each decision stands on its own legs and if it is unsound, is not based on solid rules of law which have been in force and effect it should be so classified", then why are you making such a big deal about stare decisis? Maybe he's saying that he can decide if a decision is unsound and thus should be ignored, but the court itself cannot. He later repeats the sentiment that the decision should be resisted because it's un-American, it's communistic.
Communism disguised as "new democracy" is still communism, and tyranny masquerading as liberalism is still tyranny. The resistance of communism and tyranny, irrespective of whatever guise they may adopt, is not treason. It is the prerequisite
of freedom, the very essence of liberty.


And then he continues quoting people who chastised the court for not realizing that the decision was wrong because it pissed off a lot of white people. One was an editorial from the Jackson Daily News in Mississippi:
"Human blood may stain Southern soil in many places because of this decision, but the dark red stains of that blood will be on the marble steps of the United States Supreme Court building.

"The Supreme Court is responsible for our being bloodthirsty savages, because surely we're not responsible for our own actions."

Brady also quotes Senator James Eastland, who seems as confused as he is:
"Let me make this clear, Mr. President: There is no racial hatred in the South. The negro race is not an oppressed race.

If it weren't so tragic that he actually believed that, that statement would be hilarious.
Free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference and to build up their own culture, free from governmental interference.

Gee, if Eastland actually believed that, he would probably have approved of Brown v. Board because, well, it just concluded that yes, "free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference." But of course Eastland doesn't believe that black people are free, or have rights, or that it's governmental interference when the state governments interfere with the right of black kids to go to school, or however the fuck he rationalized this in his own mind.

And he goes on and on about Communism, ranting about how "Marxian Christianity" and "Marxian Education" (the headings of two sections) are to blame for people thinking that blacks actually have rights. And they're to blame for miscegenation, which blacks go along with because they all recognize that they're stupid, inferior trash, and want to improve themselves by fucking whites. So some of his suggested solutions are "I. We must stop the influx of Communists in our country", "II. We must teach our children the truth about Communism, its infiltration of our country, and the facts of ethnology", "III. The Neo-Socialist and Marxian Christians should be exposed".

Read more...

Thursday, May 15, 2008

YES!!

The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriages!!

I'm so excited I'm nearly shrieking with joy, but one of my colleagues is on the phone, the bastard. According to a notice from CalLaw.com,
The California Supreme Court has cleared the way for same-sex marriages. In a 121-page ruling, Chief Justice Ronald George wrote that the state laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples violate the California constitution.

The court applied strict scrutiny to the laws, finding gays and lesbians a suspect class. "We conclude that to the extent the current statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional," George wrote.

Justices Joyce Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno concurred. Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan dissented.

This is fantastic! Not only did they overturn the law, but they found gays to be a suspect class, which most courts have said they aren't, and used that to justify denying them equal rights. I am giddy.

You can check out the decision itself here, if you're into reading 172-page court cases.
Read more...

I know I said probably no posting, but...

How could I resist posting about this?
The publishing company that owns the Curious George image says it is considering legal action to stop the sale of a T-shirt depicting Barack Obama as the monkey from children's books.

The T-shirts are being peddled by Marietta bar owner Mike Norman at his Mulligan's Bar and Grill in Cobb County. They show a picture of Curious Georgie peeling a banana, with the words "Obama '08" underneath.

...

Norman has said he got the T-shirts from someone in Arkansas. He started selling them at his bar -- known for the provocative, ultra-conservative political slogans often posted on signs out front -- in April but said he has no plans to mass market them.

The sales came to light this week when a loose coalition of local groups called a protest of the T-shirts.

About a dozen protestors rallied against the shirts Tuesday afternoon, condemning them as racist and asking Norman to stop selling them.

Norman acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey.

"We're not living in the (19)40's," he said. "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears -- he looks just like Curious George."

Of course! We're not in '40s, therefore racist imagery isn't racist anymore! Because everyone knows that all racism ended in the '40s!

And a picture of the shirt:

Read more...

Monday, May 12, 2008

By the time you read this I will already be dead on my plane

I'm being banished to England for a week, so there probably won't be any posting.

There will, however, be a Dead Racist Blogging post up on Friday as always. I have already blogged it into the future.
Read more...

Sunday, May 11, 2008

"Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens"

That's an actual headline from the Washington Post:
It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."

By voting against it?

Via LG&M.
Read more...

Friday, May 9, 2008

Defending marriage, Republican style

That means having an affair and, in this case, another child as a result of it.
Representative Vito J. Fossella, a Staten Island Republican who was arrested on May 1 in Alexandria, Va., and charged with drunken driving, issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that he had had an extramarital affair with Laura Fay, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and that the two of them had a 3-year-old daughter together.

It should surprise no-one that Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment twice:
Rep. Fossella voted for the Federal Marriage Amendment in both 2004 and 2006. It's always so important to protect marriage from the horrid threats posed by Teh Gay, which are much, much scarier than the threats posed by drunken husbands who have entire second families.

He also voted to ban gay adoptions in DC. And that makes sense: the damage caused to a child by being adopted by two loving people of the same gender vastly exceeds the damage caused to a three year old by having a father who can only drop by now and again, when his real family isn't paying attention, or to his three other children by growing up in a home where there are secrets no one can talk about.

Via LG&M.
Read more...

Go Pennsylvania! Preferrably to Michigan, to teach them a thing or two

A proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania is likely dead:
A bill that would amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage is in a deep coma and is probably dead, at least for the rest of this session.

Faced with staunch opposition to the measure in the Democrat-controlled House, the main sponsor, Sen. Michael Brubaker, R-Lancaster, asked the Senate last evening to table the bill indefinitely, and it agreed.

That almost certainly means it won't be acted on in the 2007-08 session, which ends Nov. 30. Mr. Brubaker said he's not giving up on the bill, though he didn't say when he might push for it again.

The bill would have amended the constitution to define a legal marriage in Pennsylvania as a union only of one man and one woman. Pennsylvania already has a law doing that, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, but some religious groups and social conservatives want to put the one man-one woman definition into the constitution, to make it stronger and prevent "liberal judges" from allowing gays or lesbians to try to get married or to join in "civil unions," as they can in several other states.

...

He said the bill isn't bigoted, as some critics have charged.

"Marriage between one man and one woman is what we've had for the history of our commonwealth," he said.

The history of Pennsylvania started in 1996 with the Defense of Marriage Act? That can't be right.... Well, maybe their law said one man & one woman before that, and the article just didn't think it worth mentioning.

But anyways. While Pennsylvania won't be enshrining bigotry against gays into its constitution right now, Michigan's courts have decided that its anti-gay amendment precludes giving partnership benefits to same-sex couples, despite the fact that the people pressing for the amendment promised that it wouldn't. But, hell, they were almost certainly lying, because it's not about marriage, it's about hurting gay people and their children.
Read more...

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Pearly Gates Edition

What if the pearly gates weren't so pearly? What if they were more... jet?
So intense is the aversion even of many humane and educated persons in this city [Philadelphia] to the colored race, that apparently they would shrink back from the gate of Heaven, if it were opened by a coloured man shewed coloured people within.

--George Combe, Notes on the United States of North America, 1841, vol. II, pp. 63-64. Cited in William Stanton, The Leopard's Spots, 1960, p. 36.

Not a terribly insightful look into the minds of dead racists, I just liked the quote.
Read more...

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Santorum says Christians hate freedom!

Rick 'man on dog' Santorum doesn't like Muslims. Figures:
Our government in this memo is teaching us a politically correct version of the truth. For example, it tells us that democracy and Islam are compatible. But Islam is less compatible with democracy than is Christianity.

I choose to read that as Santorum admitting that Christianity is incompatible with democracy, but saying that Islam is even less so.

He also apparently wants to "abandon the word terror and replace it with Islamic fascism." Because we know that all terrorists are Muslims.

[Edit] Also, Santorum brays "From Islam's inception there has been one realm. Islamic law (sharia) is the law of the government." (And we should trust him because he's an expert on Islam, its history, and its political influences, right? Right)

But what do actual Muslims think about that?
Experts in Islamic law and religion who are based in the U.S. said they agreed with the court's ruling. Abdullahi An-Na'im, a Muslim scholar and law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said "there can only be one law of the land."

An-Na'im, who wrote Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a, said that "if Muslims wish to influence what the law of the state says, they must do so through the normal political process and in accordance with civic discourse that is equally open for debate by all citizens, and not on the basis of religious beliefs."

Why, it's almost as if they abide by democratic rule after all! How can that possibly be??
Read more...

Go me!

I'm a member of the Culture of Death! Woot!

After deciding to create a campaign to tell people that birth control pills kill babies, the people who came up with this lunacy were shocked that people were getting angry at them and mocking their totally insane ideas! I mean, all they want to do is rob people of their civil liberties and maintain tight control of the sexuality and sexual actions of one-half of the population, and all they're doing to accomplish it is spreading lies and slandering their would-be victims as murderers. What on earth is everyone getting so upset about?
Just to give you a sampling of who is saying what, I am sending you a "short" list of Culture of Death bloggers talking about The Pill Kills website. I don't recommend wasting too much time reading their nonsense, but it is worth noting their overt hostility to anything that "just might" change their worldview of "promiscuity-made-safe."

And little old me made their list!

And it's rather telling that they object to "promiscuity-made-safe." See? They don't give a damn about safety--especially not for women who have sex. How much clearer could it be that they want nothing more than to punish people who dare to yield to natural impulses?
Read more...

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Return of Soon gamers won't even have to give their thumbs a workout!

Awesome!
An Australian company is gearing up to release a computer headset that allows people to control video games using only the power of their minds.

Emotiv Systems, founded by four Australian scientists in 2003, will release the $US299 ($315) EPOC headset on the US market this year. Australians will be able to order it online.

Featuring 14 sensors that measure electrical impulses from the brain, the headset - which plugs into the PC's USB port - will enable games to register facial expressions, emotions and even cognitive thoughts, allowing players to perform in-game actions just by visualising them.

The headset works in a similar way to voice recognition, in that it must first be calibrated using Emotiv's software to recognise patterns in the user's electrical brain impulses, which are used to perform 30 preset actions.

When the player performs those same thoughts in the game the software knows to associate them with the correct action, such as rotate object or push object.

The ability to control what your character is doing just by thinking about it is interesting. But perhaps the coolest part of the article discusses the possibility of the mood-reading part of the hardware:
The headset could also detect the players' emotions - whether they're bored, angry, engaged, happy, stressed, etc - and adjust difficulty levels, in-game music and the game environment accordingly.

Characters could also react to a player's emotional cues.

In horror-themed games, enemies could intelligently select the perfect time to startle a player based on how they feel, rather than having opponents in the same positions every time a mission is reloaded.

Wouldn't that be awesome?? Tell me it would not be, and I will ban you for being a filthy liar!
Read more...

Election results

So Clinton won Indiana, but only barely: 51%-49%. She got either three or four more delegates than Obama, depending on which source you ask. It was interesting to watch--the early results had Clinton in a rather commanding lead, 57-43 the first time I checked. But it kept dropping over time.

But Obama won North Carolina much more handily, 56%-42%, and got either eleven or sixteen more delegates than Clinton in that state.

All in all, a net gain for Obama.

Can't wait to see how the Clinton camp will try to spin this as a win for themselves.

And, of course, we had some 1.2 million people vote in the Democratic primary here in Indiana... nearly four times as many people as in 2004. Heck, that's nearly 300,000 more people than voted for Kerry in the November election. I think that's a good thing either way.
Read more...

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

But at least he's got a magnetic yellow ribbon on his car, right?

You can just feel the love for the troops, can't you?
At the top of the list of no-brainers in Washington should be Senator Jim Webb's proposed expansion of education benefits for the men and women who have served in the armed forces since Sept. 11, 2001.

It's awfully hard to make the case that these young people who have sacrificed so much don't deserve a shot at a better future once their wartime service has ended.

...

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on board, as are Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House.

Who wouldn't support an effort to pay for college for G.I.'s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in combat zones and in some cases have been wounded?

We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?

Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Senator John McCain.

...

Senator McCain's office said on Monday that it was following the Pentagon's lead on this matter, getting guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under pressure because of his unwillingness to support Senator Webb's effort, Senator McCain introduced legislation with substantially fewer co-sponsors last week that expands some educational benefits for G.I.'s, but far less robustly than Senator Webb's bill.

That's almost as cute as Bush pretending to worry about how much it would cost. He'll throw trillions of dollars away in a war that has killed over four thousand of our troops, but can't find the money to spend on improving the lives of the soldiers that live through it.
Read more...

Monday, May 5, 2008

Life imitates art


A scene from Simpsons is particularly relevant:
Moe: *spray-painting a sign that reads UNITED STATES FOR UNITED STATESIANS* You know what really aggravateses me? It's dem immigants. Dey want all the benefits of livin' in Springfield, but they ain't even bothered to learn themselves the language.

Homer: *painting a sign that says HOMER SAY "GET OUT!"* Yeah! Those are exactly my sentimonies!

Barney: *incoherent, drunken vocalizations*

Moe: Ah, you said it, Barn.

Via Orcinus.
Read more...

Who's more progressive than the U.S. this week?

I dunno, but it doesn't seem to be Australia--or at least not Kevin Rudd.

The Australian Capital Commonwealth--kinda like the District of Columbia for the U.S.--was going to pass a bill that would bestow legal recognition of same-sex couples. Since the ACT was granted autonomy in 1988, they're able to do this... but the federal government can override any legislation they want, and threatened to do so in this case. So the ACT had to scrap the idea.
ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell announced yesterday the Territory had abandoned its civil partnerships legislation and would instead settle for a system of relationship registers virtually identical to the ones operating in Tasmania and Victoria.

...

The legislation, which was quashed by the Howard government in 2006, would have allowed gay couples to have their relationships recognised in a legally binding ceremony.

It was the issue of the ceremony that prompted objections from the commonwealth, which said it would mimic marriage.

The ACT's amended scheme will allow for an "administrative ceremony", but Mr Corbell said it would have no legal weight.

He said the federal Government had not compromised at any point during negotiations, even when the ACT offered to remove licensed celebrants from the scheme.

Mr Corbell said representatives of Mr Rudd made it clear to him last Thursday the commonwealth was prepared to override the legislation if the ACT enacted it.

Via Evolving Thoughts.
Read more...

Unless contained inside each pill is a tiny embryo which is killed during consumption

Pro-forced pregnancy people are organizing a protest planned for June 7, the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut. What are they protesting? If you thought 'abortion', you'd be wrong! They're protesting birth control pills, claiming that "The Pill Kills Babies."

How this could happen when the pill prevents ovulation, and hence fertilization, is anyone's guess. But it hardly matters, since they're only concerned with controlling the sexual activity of women.
Read more...

Mildred Loving dies

Mildred Loving, of Loving v. Virginia, died today:
Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

It would be good to remember that she believed in love for everyone, too.

R.I.P., Mrs. Loving.
Read more...

Saturday, May 3, 2008

That straight-talking maverick!


My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will - that will then prevent us - that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

So John McCain is admitting that the Iraq war is all about oil? Is that why he wants us there for the next hundred years, then?

Via Atrios.
Read more...

Friday, May 2, 2008

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Biogenetic Edition

You may be wondering what the hell that title is about. Well, it's a reference to Ernst Haeckel and his (false) biogenetic law. You can read about it here.

I was just amused because I found a quote from someone who was arguing basically the same thing, and using the idea to rank the different races.
The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism. As yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various branches of the family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground, became marked by external features so peculiar. Why are the Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainly forms? Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white? Why the flat features of the Chinese, the small stature of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the lank features of their descendants, the Americans? All of these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground of development. We have already seen that various leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest--the human being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a reptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human. There is more than this, for, after completing the animal transformations, it passes through the characters in which it appears, in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian nations, and finally is Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. "One of the earliest points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone is consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in the Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the permanent shape of the Americans. At birth, the flattened face, and broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of the true Caucasian, become perfectly developed."* The leading characters, in short, of the various races of mankind are simply representations of particular stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs of a Caucasian child some considerable time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so forth. All this is as respects form; but whence colour? This might be supposed to have depended on climatal agencies only; but it has been shewn by overpowering evidence to be independent of these. In further considering the matter, we are met by the very remarkable fact that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in the American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in which the degrees of development are ranged. May not colour, then, depend upon development also? We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian fetus at the stage which the African represents is anything like black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian. There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of development which is predisposed to a particular colour when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being. Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization. It is favourable to this view, that Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time to the atmosphere. Another consideration in its favour is that there is a likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since they are so coincident, depending on one set of phenomena. If it be admitted as true, there can be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of mankind. They are simply the result of so many advances and retrogressions in the developing power of the human mothers, these advances and retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c., and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness of marriages, for it is found that parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type,--that is, persons who in maturity still are a kind of children. According to this view, the greater part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or declined from the original type. In the Caucasian or Indo-European family alone has the primitive organization been improved upon. The Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-sixths of mankind, are degenerate. Strange that the great plan should admit of failures and aberrations of such portentuous magnitude! But pause and reflect; take time into consideration: the past history of mankind may be, to what is to come, but as a day. Look at the progress even now making over the barbaric parts of the earth by the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not only to fill up the waste places, but to supersede the imperfect nations already existing. Who can tell what progress may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing the proportions of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but that the time during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears, may yet be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during which the best types will remain predominant?

--Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Mankind, 1844.

To wit: whites are the most advanced, perfect race, and so they progress in the womb from Negro to Malay to Indian forms, being born sort of Mongoloid, until finally they grow up to be white.

Of course, it's probably unfair to describe this as similar to Haeckel's idea, since Haeckel published thirty years after Vestiges' first edition.
Read more...

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Karl Rove must hate America. And freedom.

Just look:
Rove writes, "Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours." So, wait, now putting prisoners in stress positions is torture?

No, then it was torture. Just like how when Japanese waterboarded American soldiers in World War II, then it was torture. But not now. Now it's being done by Americans, not to Americans, and therefore it's not torture, because everyone knows Americans don't torture.

Either that or 9/11 changed everything, including what torture is. I expect either rationale will work for the sociopaths who support this stuff.

Via Matt Yglesias.
Read more...