Common Sense

I have set the appointment to visit my doctor next Thursday to deal with my persistant knee and thigh pain.

This more an observation than commentary. The Taepodong-2 long-range missile fired by North Korea this week failed 40 seconds into its flight. That’s good, because the interceptor missiles we had ready to go on the west coast should it get too close have never been able to actually hit their targets.

Is it just me, or is it a wonder we ever reached the moon considering the state of missile technology. I guess those are rockets and require rocket scientists and that makes all the difference.

Apparently same-sex marriage advocates are now convinced that decades of work have been all for naught since yesterday’s ruling in New York’s high court keeps them from getting married… still.

Thursday’s 4-2 ruling against same-sex marriage by New York’s highest court was more than a legal rebuke. The New York Court of Appeals sidestepped the question of whether same-sex marriage is worthwhile. “It is not for us to say whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong,” the court wrote, saying that persuasive arguments exist on both sides.

Instead, the court focused on whether the state Legislature had a rational, nondiscriminatory basis for limiting marriage to a man and a woman. The judges concluded that legislators could reasonably believe that such marriages benefited children. Unlike racism, the judges concluded, “the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice.”

Now, I’m not a cultural anthropologist, but if I were I might say that there are absolutely no studies that show two straight parents are better than two gay parents. Kids do well as long as there are two parents. I would refer you to the episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit that deals with this particular subject.

That same episode reminds us that a marriage with one man and one woman is not “traditional” at all. The norm for a very long time was one man and many women, the former coming about in the last few centuries. But women weren’t happy with that arrangement, since they weren’t allowed to choose anything (an injustice, one might say) and they demanded monagamy, which they still haven’t gotten. Then they wanted the right to vote, and to own land and yada yada. The point is, they wanted rights and we kept giving them what they wanted.

So now, we all tired of giving rights away apparently, because when gay people wanted some, we said no. If only gay men were women, then they could marry whatever man they wanted. This quote from Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson, not Congressman William Jefferson) about religion works just as well for the gay marriage debate.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Unless you are secretly gay and you wanted to marry Adam (or Steve). But then we could just bring back polygamy then everyone’s happy. Except the women.

My vain attempt at making a joke headline aside, there is important news this morning. The New York Daily News reports this morning that there was a plot to attack New York’s tunnels by flooding them and killing lots of innocent people.

The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels.

Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the “lone wolf” terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told The News.

I guess it is a good thing we killed him then.

The FBI discovered the plot by monitoring Internet chat rooms, where the aspiring terrorists discussed striking the U.S. economy, rather than causing mass casualties, a source said.

A ha! Oh, wait, we want them to do that to the terrorists. False alarm. As long as they don’t monitor my chats with Mistress Staci, we’re cool.

If I can be serious for a minute, kudos to the FBI for doing its job. It’s not always the case that they do, so its nice to see them capture at least one person and to be on the hunt for others. This looks to be a bit more along than those yahoos from Florida.

The Emmy nominations list came out today. They apparently revamped the nominations rules so that new shows would get a chance to win. Cheaters!

This year, a blue-ribbon panel was added to the nominating system, choosing five nominees each for top comedy and drama series by reviewing the videotapes of 10 finalists selected by the academy members at large in an initial round of voting.

A similar process was used to cull five nominees from the top 15 vote-getters in the categories for best lead actor and actress in a comedy and drama series.

In past years, nominees were determined on the basis of a single vote that often favored shows most familiar to academy members who cast ballots for them without actually judging their work.

The way God intended.

Actually, with the new system, two hospital shows joined the staid cast of nominated dramas. The West Wing, 24 and The Sopranos were joined by Grey’s Anatomy and House, MD.

You all know that I am a West Wing fanatic, but I have been bowled over by Hugh Laurie and I’ll be pulling for him next month.

I already called President Bush a “complete moron” and intimated that his entire presidency has been nothing but shams and decietful conduct. I’ve felt bad about that all day because it is el presidente’s 60th birthday. So, I’ve decided to sing him a birthday song (not the birthday song, that costs money!).

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
You live in a zoo

You look like a monkey

And you smell like one, too!

Happy birthday, Mr. President. More proof of evolution (or devolution, depending on how you look at it).

Federal Judge Sam Sparks decided today that Tom DeLay must remain on the ballot for TX-22 in November, despite the fact that he “moved” to Virginia or Northern California or somewhere else. Sparks wasn’t hearing any of this ineligible business.

“The Court suspects that the only reason DeLay did not simply withdraw from the race is that the Texas Election Code prohibits the substitution of a replacement nominee in a withdrawal based on these facts.”

He wasn’t buying Tina Benkiser’s argument, either, since she’s the one who certified that he would be ineligible. the judge ruled that since she cannot say for certain where he would be in November, ruling him ineligible now “would amount to a de facto in-state residency requirement in violation of the United States Constitution.” It’s all there, in black and white, in the US Constitution.

I can’t imagine what DeLay’s thinking now. If he thought it was a longshot to win in May, now it is all but certain he cannot win. He resigned his office, he’s not longer the incumbent, and he moved out of state. I don’t care what the residents of Sugar Land thought of him before, those three things are unforgiveable, especially that last one. Texans have a certain amount of pride about living here, and moving away just isn’t something voters will just get over.

The other thing to get over is he isn’t campaigning. I haven’t seen a reference in any story yet, but I’m sure part of the reason he bailed out of the election in the first place was to use his campaign kitty to pay his legal fees. Has he already moved those accounts? If so, then he probably has no money to run with and little prospect of raising any more. If not, then he’s still got to be focused on raising money for his legal defense fund.

Rumors are flying around, and my favorite one so far I read at Vince’s Capitol Annex: A Republican write-in campaign to elect their successor. I don’t see that really getting a lot of traction or them getting a lot of votes.

No, that seat is all but Nick Lampson’s now, and Tom DeLay has practically given it to him because of his inability to simply follow the letter and intent of the law. Talk about karma being a bitch. He got so slick, that he slipped right off his throne and out the door.

Whatever the 5th Circuit decides, it probably will be appealed to the SCOTUS. I don’t see them overturning Sparks, however. It is pretty cut and dry, the ineligible reuirements in the Constitution are to replace members who have died in office or for other reasons. Finding for DeLay would mean that candidates are allowed to solicit money from voters, win a primary, then take the money and run to just over the state line with every intention to come back and vote for whomever is picked to replace them on the ballot.

Lone Star Project has everything up online, Kuff has some analysis and you can download the PDFs of the Decision and the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

Not since this morning. Hey I was tired and the only thing Miles O’Brien wanted to talk about on CNN was the stupid space shuttle. Woohoo, things can flip in space. God he’s a choade.

So I went to sleep and woke up to discover all hell had broken loose. DeLay’s still on the ballot and two states’ courts decided gay marriage bans are all right. Well, I’ll get to all that later tonight. For now, just know I’m alive and feeling totally vindicated in my dislike of German people.

(Ed. note: Moved up because the comments are funny)

The thing that has shocked and amazed the sports world… alright, nobody in the sports world really cares. But, we’re coming up on the All-Star break and there is practically no other news to talk about.

So it’s news that riots have not broken out all over Germany. As you may or may not know, the fatherland is hosting the World Cup soccer tournament this time around. It’s a lot like the Quidditch Cup from Harry Potter, only it’s nothing like and soccer has absolutely nothing to do with Harry pussy-butthole Potter.

Anyway, the host country made it all the way to the semis before a devastating loss (2-0) to Italy yesterday. Instead of just accepting the fact that they lost at a game which is by its nature stupid and pointless, things in Germany just stopped. No riots but no return to normalcy, either.

Germany’s leaders are pleading with the populace not to lose sight of all the nationalism and patriotism that led to them making the semis.

We’ve seen this before. The Germans were all hyped about the Olympics being in Berlin and to celebrate, they elected Nazis to power. Then Jesse Owens kicked some ass and made them look like fools and, a few years later, World War II erupted. They keep this stuff bottled up inside then whammo! And Italy’s always right there beside them. So, we’re just a few years away from World War III, which I predict will be the end of the world with the rise of the antichrist, Suri Cruise (the reason there are no pictures of her is because she has horns and a tail).

All this can be avoided if we just keep the Germans from getting all nationalistic. Nationalistic Germans are fine at first, but then they start drinking. They can’t handle their liquor like we Scots can, so they start getting all crazy, screaming ‘Sieg heil, Cornelius Drebbel!’ at the top of their lungs and firing their gay little pistols into the air and commanding their dinky little submarines. We need to nip this in the bud and pronto people.

That’s a horrible headline and I apologize.

It was reported this week that the CIA’s Alec Unit, the one set up in 1996 to hunt and capture Osama bin Laden, was shut down recently. That’s right, the CIA’s special unit for tracking the guy behind 9/11 is no longer operating. Democrats are angry because one of the most odious people on the planet is practically getting a free ride and conservatives are angry because, well, one of the most odious people on the planet is getting a free ride. We are united in our outrage.

This throws into stark reality what many of us on the left have been saying for a while: That the Bush administration didn’t really care about 9/11, they were just using it for their political convenience. Sure we had the documents from Judicial Watch that proved that Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force was discussing ways to divy up Iraq’s oil fields after the coming war with Iraq months before 9/11. We had Paul O’Neill’s recollections from February 2001 of NSC meetings discussing possible war with Iraq. We have new information that the secret NSA domestic warrantless wiretapping was being contemplated and implented in February 2001. We even have the fact that we practically abandoned Afghanistan to go to war in Iraq.

But, there isn’t even the pretense that OBL is actually a major concern anymore. Having one’s cynicism vindicated isn’t a fun feeling.

No matter how I feel, conservatives have to be livid. Not only is this a bonehead poltical move, but they’re naivete is now being dashed on the rocks. For five years now, conservatives have been supporting the Republican party, despite the fact that many of things the GOP was doing and many of the candidates were acting in the exact antithesis of what conservative values are. They did it because they felt that at least the Republicans were hunting down the terrorists. The last presidential election was about terrorism and Osama bin Laden. Who was going to keep us safer? I thought that was kind of stupid since a) George W. Bush is obviously a complete moron and b) between him and John Kerry, only one of them had let a major terrorist attack happen on US soil. We picked the former, I guess on the theory that lightning doesn’t strike the same person twice.

Now it’s pretty obvious that he was just praying on your trusting and your fear so that he can intrude into your private life, give his corporate buddies huge tax breaks and preferential treatment and generally leave American worse off than he found it. Hey red states, you voted for George W. Bush and all you got was a terrorist mastermind on the loose, a protracted land war in Asia that has cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, 3,000 dead Americans from a terrorist attack, crude oil is $70 a barrell, huge foreign debt to communist China, a job that doesn’t even pay a living wage and an economy teetering on the brink because of inflation worries. You can’t even afford the lousy t-shirt.