Feeling grumpy these days

My friend Raven pointed us to this quote via Facebook:

In addition to these five new rules, the experience of having been courted and thwarted has brought me to a grave conclusion. The fight for our rights is now going to get messy. The dialect of respectability has not worked to our benefit. I would advise you to fasten your seatbelts because the youngest, the oldest and the most impatient among us are about to rumble. This will not be pretty. “No More Mr. Nice Gay” is about to become an understatement. President Obama seems to be forgetting the wise advice “Dance with the one that brung ya,” and like Carrie at the prom, some of us are about to rage.
--Tony Adams in the South Florida Blade

For me the sour mood is about a lot more than the Obama administration tossing a crumb toward the LGBT community while treating us like scum in the legal proceedings.

Here is what you might call a mood ring for this week.


The graphic above is for the Obama administration for doing ANYTHING with DOMA other than vigorously working for its elimination.

And for not ending DADT with a stroke of the pen, no discussion needed. It's already been talked to death.

It is definitely for every last person who voted for or supported Proposition 8 in California. If you did it out of fear and ignorance, then I hold you culpable for a willful ignorance. The Knights of Columbus, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Mormon Church are all hereby saluted most roundly (and I know that list is too short).

And for Bishop Parsley's cloak of secrecy. Who does he think he is: Siegfried or Harry Potter? Or Dick Cheney planning energy policy? Nope, it's the emperor with no clothes. Inexcusably shameful, the whole sorry mess.

And for each and every person in Congress of either house responsible individually or collectively for not putting a public option front and center in health care reform and explaining why this, which is supported by 83% of Americans, is a GOOD idea and not the first step toward the downfall of civilization. (If it's the first step toward the downfall of the insurance companies that have labored hard to deny healthcare to people who need it while reaping obscene profits, I shall stand by and applaud.) Single payer would be better but at least have a public option. If you are doing neither of those then leave the whole damn thing alone; you're not going to help the situation.

Today it is for the Attorney General for wussing on immunity for telcoms and thereby enabling the disappearance of Bush administration criminality down the memory hole. For shame!

For Faux News for everything about their evil, lying propaganda machine pushing fear and falsehoods into the collective American psyche, fostering stupidity, hatred, and violence in our society.

I don't even need to mention Cheney, Rove, et al.

For bookburning wannabe asshats of whatever age. Shame upon shame!

For Norm Coleman doing all he can to prevent Al Franken from being seated after being elected.

For the Washington Post for having dumped Dan Froomkin, one of the few who has shined a bright light on White House activities. Amongst other things, he was one of the few in traditional media to speak up about torture.

For the fucking hypocrites on the Republican side of the aisle in Congress who want to whine about fiscal responsibility after they stood by tax cuts for the very wealthy and poured money into an illegal, unnecessary, immoral, counterproductive (and therefore very STUPID) war, much of the money totally unaccounted for - so the corporate war machine could thrive and the American people pay the price tag for generations. It's too damned late to pretend you give a shit so shut the fuck up!

Ditto the blue dog Democrats. Y'all really chap my butt.

The bird is for the whole blasted insurance industry.

Many are angry, but I’m not seeing anyone else state the obvious — the CEO’s insistence that they can’t stop recissions and make a profit; the implicit acknowledgment that they can’t insure people with preexisting conditions and make a profit; amounts to a confession that the private health insurance industry cannot solve the health care crisis. The “free market” is inadequate to the task of paying for modern health care.
--Maha

Congress as a totality for doing sod all about illegal spying.

Every time new revelations of illegal government spying arise, the same exact pattern repeats itself: (1) euphemisms are invented to obscure its illegality ("overcollection"; "circumvented legal guidelines"; "overstepped its authority"; "improperly obtained"); (2) assurances are issued that it was all strictly unintentional and caused by innocent procedural errors that are now being fixed; (3) the very same members of Congress who abdicate their oversight responsibilities and endlessly endorse expanded surveillance powers in the face of warnings of inevitable abuses (Jay Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein, "Kit" Bond, Jane Harman) righteously announce how "troubled" they are and vow to hold hearings and take steps to end the abuses, none of which ever materialize; (4) nobody is ever held accountable in any way and no new oversight mechanisms are implemented; (5) Congress endorses new, expanded domestic surveillance powers; and then: (6) new revelations of illegal government spying emerge and the process repeats itself, beginning with step (1)
--Glenn Greenwald

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And back to Obama for not being as transparent as he claimed he was going to be. In the courts they sound a lot like the Bushies and I don't like it one little bit.



This falls under the category of Thursday Constitution Blogging, something I have not done often enough of late.

--the BB