Re:Generator National, Politics
December 20th, 2008
Robert Starvation
1. The capricious fates have a cruel streak. Having finished This Year in “Duh” fairly late in the year, they nevertheless sought to make my annual summation something less than whole. And so, additions:
While not mentioned by name, it was hopefully implicit that no Democratic politician, including president-elect Barack Obama, is impervious to their own humanity, and thus, at the very least occasional stupidity. Obama overplayed his hand by inviting Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his swearing in ceremony. Obama and his team were clearly aware of how the move would be interpreted by gay and gay-friendly supporters, but decided triangulation – a centrist Democrat’s best friend – superseded how the community would interpret it. Triangulation in and of itself isn’t always stupid, but giving observers an unmistakable purview of the cynical machinations driving at least some of his decisions before he’s even officially president is. C’mon, Obama! That’s the kind of thing you spring on the electorate three to six months into your term!
It appeared Senate Republicans had put quite the (if you’ll excuse the wordplay) Corker on the Big Three automakers, but just in time for the Christmas holiday, president George W. Bush, a man we don’t praise enough (with good reason, but who in this case actually deserves the Kudos we picked up for him at the store) announced that Chrysler and General Motors have been allocated $17.4 billion in emergency funds, punting the federal governments next move to March 2009, an arrangement only his predecessor has to worry about. Like Bush, we agree (am I ever going to get used to writing that?) that bailing out American industries isn’t desirable, but in dire circumstances such as these, necessary to the survival of our bruised and bloodied economy.
2. Enough is never enough for the proponents of California’s lamentable Proposition 8. They aren’t satisfied simply preventing future same-sex marriages – they’re now actively seeking to nullify the at-the-time legally recognized marriages performed in the halcyon days before Mormons started ranting about Jewish Hollywood sodomites or some such because gays were actually upset at the extreme level of involvement their church had in the passage of 8. The oncoming legal battle is shaping up to be a real clash of the titans: State Attorney Jerry Brown fighting for the gays, Ugh, that guy Kenneth Starr working to make sure that eventually no one, anywhere in America can do anything without his tacit approval, and 18,000 couples who only wanted their love to be legally recognized caught in the middle.
Full articleFeedback
