First, I want to make a point I wanted to include in last night's essay, but left out so it wouldn't take six months to read. I have a real bug up my ass about sitting office-holders, especially executives, running for one office while holding another. I'm not as aggravated when legislators do it because they're a dime a dozen. The United States Senate, for example, didn't run any better or worse without Barack Obama and John McCain there.
But executives, like governors, are different. They are the seat of power in their states. If you look at recent presidential elections with incumbent governors running, you learn something shocking. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush spent twelve and eighteen months out their respective states to campaign for their parties nomination and the presidency. That means that they spent upwards of half of their final terms not doing their fucking jobs. Sure, Clinton would go home to suffocate a retard,* which would be illegal today, so that a sex or draft scandal might go away, but more often than not, he was out of Arkansas. And that goes double for Bush.
If the Tea Party gets their much-sought after Constitutional Convention, they gain at least a little respect from me by passing an amendment specifically prohibiting sitting governors from running for president. You could theoretically take the Tenth Amendment position that the states could pass such a law, but can you think of a single governor that would sign it?
As you all know, my dream candidate this year was Mitch Daniels, the incumbent governor of Indiana. But I would have hoped that he would resign his office at the moment that he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, and I would have forcefully criticized him if he didn't. It seems to me to be intellectually inconsistent to piss and moan and Obama golfing - which Republicans never did about the second President Bush setting a record for vacation days - while supporting a governor that is out his state for months at a time.
Let's assume that Perry's candidacy is anything other than a painkiller-induced hallucination and he actually won the nomination. By election day, Governor Perry would have spent a full fifteen months out of Texas during a truly ruinous economic period. Sure, I hold Perry in special contempt because I think that he's a moron and a fucking murderer, but I also support the general principle. You can't run as an executive if you're busy not being an executive because you're running for another office. Two recent presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, seemed to do well as former governors. Mitt Romney will probably be nominated five years and a half years after leaving his only elected executive office with a 43% approval rating.
But that's not what I want to write about this morning, Rick Perry's stellar ignorance of almost everything is. Just looka this, teenagers.
How fucking great is that? It's abundantly clear that Perry has no idea that he knows what he's talking about, so he veers into talking points and accusations of "gotcha questions" toward a guy who sounds like he retired from the Albanian military in 1976 and is highly unlikely to be a mole from the hated New York Times.
For the unititaed Lawrence v. Texas, is an important test of just how "small government" you are. Most Republicans and busybody religious types fail the test in ways that only astronomers can properly measure. If, for example, you think that limited government should act as a butt-plug, you should probably see a psychiatrist.
Lawrence overturned the hilariously named 1986 ruling of Bowers v. Hardwick. In both Bowers and Lawrence, police entered a private domicile without a warrant and arrested homos for doing what homos do in their private domiciles, that being fucking (in Lawrence ) and sucking (in Bowers.) In the ironically nicknamed Whizzer White's majority ruling in Bowers, the right of sexual privacy extended only to procreative sex. That being the case, the state had the right to throw you in the can for ass or face fucking, be you gay or straight. I think it was wrong, but you can at least make a coherent argument in defense of Bowers.
By the time Lawrence came before the Court, the state laws had radically changed. 11 of the 13 states impacted by Bowers had changed their sodomy laws, specifically allowing for straight cocksucking and ass-fucking, but denying it to gays. That's a straight Fourteenth Amendment equal protection case that you can't argue against without being slack-jawed. The Lawrence minority specifically said that the states could pass a law allowing a given activity for one social group while criminalizing it for others, in direct defiance of both the spirit and the letter of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Do the facts in Lawrence fly in the face of the Fourteenth Amendment? It's almost legally and logically impossible to argue that they don't. The facts also make a pretty persuasive Fourth Amendment case, too. So what are you left with?
Look, I'd respect the opponents of the Lawrence decision if they just came out and said that they oppose it because God Hates Fags. But they won't. Perversely, they won't argue the legal or constitutional merits of their position either, mostly because they're silly. Instead, they argue on ridiculous grounds like "societal impact", "incest" and "bestiality" - what I like to call the "Santorum Default Position." They ignore the long-held conservative belief that the law and the Constitution mean what they say, or they don't.
Lawrence, unlike Bowers, wasn't about cocksucking or buttfucking as a general proposition. It was very narrowly about gay cocksucking and buttfucking, since the state in question had legalized it for straights, as had most others where the law was applicable. And you just can't do that, which is, in large part, where my support for gay marriage comes from.
If you take the Santorum Default Position, you pretty much deserve to have your name publicly associated with ass-lube and feces, This is because you aren't arguing the Tenth or Fourteenth Amendments, you're just saying that God Hates Fags without actually having the balls to say so. Fuck you because you're stupid and dishonest.
I wouldn't interfere with your silly little superstitions by saying that you have to like gays. I certainly wouldn't use an instrument as fearsome as the law to do any such thing. As a conservative, all I want is the government to leave people the fuck alone when it comes to private behaviour that doesn't hurt anybody else.
By the way, the terms "Family values" and "the 99%" can be pretty much be used interchangeably when it comes to government action. And "upholding family values" is mentioned as a function of the federal government in the Constitution exactly as often as "providing universal health care" is. Look at the United States Postal Service and the war in Iraq. Do you really want the folks who produced those defending your family values? Because I can pretty much assure you that it won't end well.
But Perry very clumsily just ignores that very question because he has no idea what Lawrence even is. Amd it's even more impressive when you consider that he was governor at the time the state went all the way to Supreme Court to argue and lose. Moreover, this wasn't a case about some obscure administrative law that was thrown out. Homosex tends to generate a certain amount of unavoidable attention in the U.S.
So Governor Perry did what Governor Perry always does, he gave an answer that was 100% fucking gibberish. But Christ, it's fun to watch. More candidates should run on an opiate rush and the pure, environmentally-friendly body wave of stupidity.
*Whenever I suppose that the 42nd president might be doing something good for mankind, I think of the last moments of Ricky Ray Rector to remember that Clinton is an irredeemable abomination of a human being. Rick Perry, who probably executed a factually innocent man and then knowingly covered it up, is even worse. Specifically because of the actions of craven motherfuckers like Clinton and Perry, I now oppose the death penalty, except in military cases in a volunteer army.
0 comments:
Post a Comment