Save the Earth ~ It's the Only Planet with Chocolate! <3
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Monday, April 22, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
80 GOP Leaders Favor Gay Marriage
Amazing developments as groups rush to file Amicus (friend-of-the-court) briefs in favor of Gay Marriage before the Supreme Court meets to decide whether such laws are constitutional, specifically California's widely despised Prop 8, which states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
ABC News
The issue of same sex marriage is dividing the Republican Party as a group of more than 80 prominent members of the GOP ranging from Dick Cheney's daughter to four former governors have signed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court advocating for the legalization of gay marriage.
One of the signers confirmed for ABC News the existence of the brief signed by the Republicans and said it would be submitted to the United States Supreme Court this week. The deadline to submit briefs is Thursday.
. . . Signers included former congresswoman Mary Bono Mack of California, former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and Meg Whitman, who supported Prop 8 when she ran for governor of California in 2010. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Richard Hanna of New York and former GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman also signed. In addition, three former Massachusetts governors -- William Weld, Jane Swift, and Paul Cellucci -- along with former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman are signers. The list also includes Republican attorney and Romney senior adviser Ben Ginsberg and other high profile GOP leaders, strategists, consultants, and staffers.
Some big name supporters of same sex marriage who have not signed the brief include former vice president Dick Cheney, former first lady Laura Bush, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
That's amazing enough, but look at this:
CNN
On Thursday, dozens of American corporations, including Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, and Morgan Stanley will submit an amicus brief in the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry case broadly arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that laws banning same-sex marriages, like California's ballot initiative Proposition 8, are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
According to a draft copy obtained by Fortune, the companies argue that such laws "send an unmistakeable signal that same-sex couples are in some way inferior to opposite-sex couples, a proposition that is anathema to amici's commitment to equality and fair treatment to all."
At least 60 companies had committed to signing the brief as of Tuesday evening, according to Joshua Rosenkranz, who is counsel of record on the brief and head of the Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. That number is expected to rise by Thursday, however, according to Rosenkranz. Others who have already committed to sign include AIG, Becton Dickinson, Cisco, Cummins, Kimpton, Levi Strauss, McGraw Hill, NCR, Nike, Office Depot, Oracle, Panasonic, Qualcomm, and Xerox.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Strange First Night at the RNC
I watched as many of the speeches as I could stomach from the Republican National Convention and to me there were several problems. The worst was Mitt Romney's unhappy expression the whole night. He stumbled onto the stage after being introduced by his wife, and he looked like a sad clown that has been sprayed with seltzer water too many times. He was NOT having a good time!
There was no cohesion between speeches. Mrs. Romney gave a rather shrill and squeaky speech about how much she loved Mitt and how much he loves everyone - love, love, love. Then Chris Christie from new New Jersey gave a more rabble-rousing speech about how love was just okay, but respect was so much better! Then he forced everyone to get to their feet and clap for him, and since most of the evening had been so boring, people complied. It just seems strange that the two speeches that were meant to introduce Mitt Romney to the country instead cancelled each other out and left people scratching their heads. I found them equally repulsive.
The camera panned onto Condileeza Rice a few times and she seemed to be crying, but I don't think it was for happiness. Her Party is going down the crapper.
John Boehner gave a really stupid speech about drunks in a bar, which suited his big red nose. I'm not sure how all the bar jokes went over with the Evangelical dry-county teetotal Tea Partiers from the heartland. Doh! Maybe he should have thought of that in between cocktails.
And then there were the really nasty hate-filled speeches ~ Reince Priebus and Janine Turner from Northern Exposure, especially. Ugh. Next time, just wear your sheets and hoods, folks. I found them both creepy to the max. This is totally Godwin, but either one could have started clicking their boots and shrieking "Sieg Heil!" and it would have seemed perfectly in keeping with their tone.
Rick Santorum's speech was another embarrassing homage to his grandfather's "big meaty hands" - people on twitter were counting and said he mentioned hands 24 times, and even said "hand America jobs," which sounds faintly obscene. I honestly don't know what he is thinking anymore, but then I never did.
The strangest thing of all was that each speaker from Nikki Haley to Chris Christie talked about their immigrant ancestors and family success stories. But wait . . . this is the party which wants to cut out all immigration, build a wall, put barbed wire on it, shoot people at the border, and force Grandma to deport herself. WTF? Why would any of them glowingly gush about their own successful families who came here with nothing and captured the American Dream if all they want to do is deny that dream to everyone else in the world? I'm stumped on that one. I think every time they said "my great-grandfather immigrated here" the audience squirmed, both in the hall and at home.
Just a few hours earlier they had given ugly Jan Brewer of Arizona, the queen of anti-immigration and Hispanic/Latino hate, a thunderous ovation just for announcing that Arizona was nominating Mitt. Total mixed message.
Finally, the piece de resistance was an incident that happened off-camera, but happened to a camera woman for CNN. You can't make this stuff up. I wonder what will happen tonight?
GOP attendee ejected for throwing nuts at African American CNN camera woman + saying "This is how we feed animals."@takeactionnews#TAN
— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) August 29, 2012
,@cnn statement on GOP attendee removed for incident with African American camera woman. 2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/cnn-re… via@tpm_dk
— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) August 29, 2012
Talking Points Memo
The CNN official declined to confirm specific details of the incident to TPM but generally confirmed an account posted on Twitter by former MSNBC and Current anchor David Shuster: “GOP attendee ejected for throwing nuts at African American CNN camera woman + saying ‘This is how we feed animals.’”
It is not clear whether the alleged culprit was a delegate or attending the convention in some other capacity.
In a written statement, CNN addressed the matter but divulged few details: “CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon. CNN worked with convention officials to address this matter and will have no further comment.”
From Politico
The RNC referred POLITICO to GOP Convention spokesperson Kyle Downey for comment. . . .
UPDATE: GOP convention spokesman Kyle Downey tells POLITICO, "Two attendees tonight exhibited deplorable behavior. Their conduct was inexcusable and unacceptable. This kind of behavior will not be tolerated."
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Extremist Love Affair With Paul Ryan
I'm not sure how the Romney campaign thinks they can appeal to independents and centrists with the Paul Ryan pick. He is a candidate that mainly appeals to extremists and oddballs of the Republican Party.
While Romney can flip-flop because he has held less conservative positions in the past, Ryan has been too far-right to etch-a-sketch himself. And to make that worse, he has inspired starry-eyed man-crushes from conservatives who are hate-mongers and near-sociopaths. So he can't erase their statements either. Why would they love him if he wasn't a radical extremist?
"I worship the ground that Paul Ryan walks on. I think he's an enormously talented individual and he's trying to do the right thing, and he deserves all the support we can give him. And I hope he doesn’t run for president because that would ruin a good man who has a lot of work to do." (via Think Progress )
BECK: I don't follow the people day-to-day in Washington, but I hear -- when I hear names over and over again, I look into them. Paul Ryan is a name I keep hearing, just, you know, "He's a god among conservatives."
. . . Hello, Congressman. How are you, sir?
RYAN: Hey, nice to meet you.
BECK: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me -- tell me -- tell me your thoughts on progressivism.
RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in their Imprimis magazine -- you can get them on my Facebook page -- what I've been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism. Because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big-government problems that are plaguing us today. And so, to me, it's really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate --
BECK: I love you.
RYAN: -- so people can actually see what this ideology means, and where it's going to lead us, and how it attacks the American idea. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 4/12/10]
Transcript Via Media Matters
BECK: OK. Hang on just a second. I -- did you see my speech at CPAC?
RYAN: Yeah, I've read it. I didn't see it. I've read a transcript of it.
BECK: OK. I think we're saying the same thing. I call it --
RYAN: We are saying the same thing.
BECK: it's a cancer.
RYAN: Exactly. Look, I come from -- I'm calling you from Janesville, Wisconsin --
BECK: Holy cow.
RYAN: -- where I'm born and raised, where we raised our family, 35 miles from Madison. I grew up hearing about this stuff. This stuff came from these German intellectuals to Madison, University of Wisconsin, and then sort of out from there at the beginning of the last century. So, this is something we are familiar with where I come from.
It never sat right with me, and as I grew up, I learned more about the Founders and reading the Austrians and others, that this is really a cancer. Because it basically takes the notion that our rights come from God and nature, and turns it on its head and says, "No, no, no, no. They come from government. And we here in government are here to give you your rights and therefore ration, redistribute, and regulate your rights." It's a complete affront of the whole idea of this country. And that is, to me, what we as conservatives -- or classical liberals, if you want to get technical --
BECK: Thank you.
RYAN: -- ought to be doing to flush this out. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 4/12/10]
Ryan sounds just like Sarah Palin from backwater Alaska, or like any number of Glenn Beck's anti-intellectual cuckoo followers who believe they own American history somehow, unlike we scary Democrats who simply can't understand their "pure" vision of what the United States is supposed to be. Like the Harvard-educated Rick Santorum, Ryan is just a hypocrite who makes it sound as if he has never left his small town, even though he was thoroughly educated at public Miami university in Ohio - *where more scary intellectuals dwell* - and he is also a seven-term congressman who has lived in Washington DC for years, not in tiny Janesville, WI. Dare I mention that he received "progressive" help in the form of Social Security benefits that helped pay for his public education? Dare I mention he is paid a salary by the big-bad-government right now, and would again if he ever becomes VP ~ which is looking less-likely every day, but still... voters should look at the way Ryan has lived as a public servant with "progressive" health care and benefits for his family. Actually, just like Santorum and Palin, "cognitive dissonance" is the right term for Ryan's opinions - the contradiction between the way Ryan has actually lived his life and what he says to ultra-conservatives like Beck. Constantly running for office while slamming big-government.
Quotes via Politico:
“We now have somebody on the ticket who’s us,” Limbaugh said of the newly named Republican vice-presidential nomineee. “[Somebody] who can explain all of this, who believes all of this in his heart, in his soul, and he can do it with optimism and a smile on his face.”
. . . “The pick signals a decision was made somewhere that … we’re going to go head-first, going to take it straight to them and we’re going to win or we’re going to lose [but we are going to] articulate exactly what we believe,” Limbaugh said.
He added later, “The presence of Paul on stage with Romney has elevated Romney … Romney’s a new guy.”
As Ed Schultz put it last night:
Mitt Romney has picked the most radical Vice President in the history of the Republican Party.
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Friday, April 13, 2012
Happy Place Diversion ~ Lovely Day to Propose
A Surprise Wedding Proposal on a Train to the song "Lovely Day."
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