Scanning headlines over at Yahoo! News, I saw this headline:

Conservatives will go ape-shit over the high unemployment rate under the Obama administration and ignore that St. Ronnie had the same high unemployment on his watch.

“But that was because of Carter, not St. Ronnie!” they’ll inevitably scream.

Indeed. 3 years into his term of office, no less.

And then they’ll blame Bush for the current unemployment numbers … oh wait, no they won’t. They’ll blame Obama.

The stupid is so loud, you can hear it.

The U.S. Senate voted on an amendment which was proposed to the recent Defense Appropriations Act which would prohibit awarding of funds to any contractor which requires employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses for specific claims.

This amendment was offered specifically in response to an arbitration requirement of KBR-Halliburton employees which prohibited bringing claims of sexual assault. That requirement prevented a woman who was sexually assaulted by KBR-Halliburton employees while stationed in Iraq from bringing suit against the company.

And the roll call vote? 30 Republicans voted against it.

And let’s make it clear—this is not a case of someone mistaking the nature of this legislation for something else. It was not a procedural vote. It was not an interim vote, or any other dodge. This legislation was offered in response to the actions of KBR-Halliburton:

Here’s the list of the GOP who opposed the amendment.

• Alexander (R-TN)
• Barrasso (R-WY)
• Bond (R-MO)
• Brownback (R-KS)
• Bunning (R-KY)
• Burr (R-NC)
• Chambliss (R-GA)
• Coburn (R-OK)
• Cochran (R-MS)
• Corker (R-TN)
• Cornyn (R-TX)
• Crapo (R-ID)
• DeMint (R-SC)
• Ensign (R-NV)
• Enzi (R-WY)
• Graham (R-SC)
• Gregg (R-NH)
• Inhofe (R-OK)
• Isakson (R-GA)
• Johanns (R-NE)
• Kyl (R-AZ)
• McCain (R-AZ)
• McConnell (R-KY)
• Risch (R-ID)
• Roberts (R-KS)
• Sessions (R-AL)
• Shelby (R-AL)
• Thune (R-SD)
• Vitter (R-LA)
• Wicker (R-MS)

Names in bold are up for reelection in 2010.

Among those voting “no” were the standard-bearers for the GOP “family values” bullshit, Jim DeMint (R-NC) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). I wonder how they square their position with their so-called Christian values? This issue needs to be front and center in opposing the campaign of the degenerate human beings. Every time they mention “family,” “morality,” “American values,” or some other such tripe, there needs to be a loud rejoinder where someone screams, “Except sexual assault!”

Seriously.

In New York (NY-20), a 30-year veteran of the New York legislature will lose an election to a newcomer … and this is in a district with a voter registration that leans in the GOP’s favor.

I guess it beats losing to a dead guy.

If someone wants to “go Galt” then let them. It’s a case of “I’m mad, so I’m taking my toys and going home.” As I’ve heard others note, “graveyards are full of indispensable people.”

If you want to engage in the ultimate expression of individuality and disengage with society, or “go Galt,” then do it. Go Galt. But go all the way. Don’t take any half-measures. If you’re going to go Galt, then you’ll need to solve your own problems and get your own fuel for your vehicles, generate your own energy, grow your own food, and stop using the Internet. Because these are all luxuries created by collective effort, not a single individual. They were created for the purpose of collective/social benefit, to be enjoyed by society and enabled by the collective will of society, i.e., government.

Government, not individual ideas built the roads that allow for interstate commerce and the distribution of grain and produce from the heartland out across the country. Government money–taxpayer money–subsidized the construction of the power grid which distributes fuel and electricity to our cities and towns. And the creation of the Internet was funded by scientists intentionally working for the common good, funded by government research grants.

And even our constitution enshrines our collectivist goals by declaring that “We the People,” have engaged in this society with the explicit purpose of promoting the “general Welfare.” It says nothing about “We the People” forming our constitution to make more profits, to start a business, or maximize individual wealth.

“Life, Liberty, and Property” are held by everyone, but they are not absolute guarantees without conditions. Through due process, the government can take your life, liberty, or property if you commit a crime against another citizen or against society as a whole (e.g., prison, fines, or the death penalty). Through due process, the government can take your liberty or property when necessary and the interests of society outweigh your individual rights (e.g., taxes, public speech to incite riots or chaos).

It is the goal of our government to preserve individual liberty insofar as it is viable within the context of our social contract. And it is understanding the balance between the rights of the individual and the interests of government that we have long sought to resolve.

Attention whores feed on attention. If you want to make the attention whore a bigger whore, then keep giving attention.

Give attention to Limbaugh and you feed the whore. Give attention to Limbaugh and you give his ideas the tacit approval that they are worthy of discussion.

Limbaugh isn’t worth the attention, because his ideas aren’t worth considering. He doesn’t engage in honest debate because he doesn’t debate. He spews ideology. He’s an ideologue. Ideologues are driven by ideology, not by reason. The idea must survive, regardless of whether or not it’s reasonable or logical.

Limbaugh’s 20+ years on the radio are built around his ideology. He can’t change that ideology without risking his fan base. This is why Limbaugh is immune to the reality of self-contradiction.

This is why Limbaugh wants Obama to fail—because Limbaugh can’t accept the idea that he might be proven wrong in the most empirical manner.

Now we have Michael Steele, chairman of the GOP, insisting that his recent dust-up with Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than a “sideshow distraction.”

But Mr. Steele, why is this a sideshow distraction? You’re paying fealty to Rush Limbaugh—a known criminal guilty of drug offenses—as he dictates GOP “conservative” ideals and party positions. The script is well-known … you contradict Rush, he gets all pissy and bitchy about it and sics his minions on you, and you roll over like a lap dog.

The GOP, the party of Rush Limbaugh, “Joe” the “Plumber,” Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal.

Better stated, the GOP is the party of irrelevance for years to come.

But that was then.

As the economic merry-go-round has continued to turn the last 10-20 years, I’ve constantly been in the process of re-evaluating and reassessing my beliefs on these matters. Today, I can look back on myself from 10 years ago and think, “you’re a fucking idiot.”

One of the things that really made me sit up and take notice was a thought that crossed my mind about a month or two ago. I was sitting and reading the news of what was occurring with the economic collapse and how we intended to cope with the future given the current circumstances. Two questions kept coming back to me:

1. What could we have done to prevent this?

2. How can we prevent this from happening again?

But capitalism has a fundamental flaw. There are some things that are just inherently rooted as part of society—things that are so essential that were we to suddenly find ourselves without them, life as we know it would cease to exist.

Today, we hear constantly that the banks like AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America are “too big to fail.” Is that so? If they are too big to fail; if their failure would have such a disastrous effect on the American economy, then it is in our national interest to ensure that these banks are heavily regulated to protect them from engaging in any undue risk, or nationalized to such a degree that the guarantees of the American people to protect against failure are equally recognized in those banks’ successes.

And then there are others that we don’t really see until things get dire. On the verge of collapse, auto manufacturers have suddenly become “too big to fail” since their bankruptcy would put hundreds of thousands of workers on the streets with no job. Financial institutions are considered “too big to fail,” not just because of the hundreds of thousands of people who would be out of work, but because their failure would cause financial markets and the economy to seize up completely.

Private ownership of these kinds of business—driven by capitalistic profit-seeking—can actually prevent them from serving their functional purpose. Capitalism isn’t some sort of Ayn Rand economic masturbatory fantasy. None of these businesses—the banks, the manufacturers, or any other private interest found on the stock exchange—are the province of a single individual or the singular idea of one person. They are collectives of hangers-on to the exclusion of the rest of society. They are occupants of the lifeboats from the Titanic stealing away from the disaster, while the rest of us go down with the ship.

Capitalism is as dead as communism.

We’ll ignore for a moment the fact that Mr. Breeden does his own part in undermining the English language through his use of run-on sentences and utter lack of cause/effect reasoning. That,in fact, is part of the problem, Mr. Breeden.

But more to the point, how are we “intent upon degrading and discouraging … learning English and [encouraging] people to not learn English”? Mr. Breeden argues that the act of diminishing the importance of English is to be found in the use of multi-lingual signage and forms—particularly those in Mexican. [Yes, I know he uses the term "Spanish," but the real target is the Spanish that is spoken in Mexico ("Mexican"), which is markedly different than the Spanish spoken in Spain.]

Perhaps Mr. Breeden has never left thr country—or more specifically, perhaps he has never traveled through Europe. But if he did, he would understand that his compliant holds no water.

Travel to the U.K., particularly the upper northwestern U.K. and one will see signage written simultaneously in English and Welsh. Go to Ireland, and you’ll see a combination of English and Gaelic. If you travel to the continent, you’ll see a mish-mash languages for signage near borders. Traveling from Paris towards Germany, one will begin to encounter signs in a mixture of German and French—in fact, the languages of the different countries have not just regional dialects, but regional languages. Thus, in southern Germany, the language will take on elements of Italian. In the west of Germany, the language takes on elements of French, and in the north, elements of Dutch and Norwegian. Switzerland has French, German, and Italian languages, depending upon which slope of the Alps one finds themselves.

For all of these encroachments of “other” languages, the importance or use of any of the “native” languages has not been diminished. Having multiple clients across Europe, I find it interesting that one of my clients commented recently, “we use either Dutch or French, but we use English when we can’t understand each other.”

Of course, Mr. Breeden’s plaintive bleating isn’t really about the integration of the Mexican language into English-speaking society. No. If it were, we should also have to hear about the influx of oriental languages in the northwestern U.S. and the ubiquitous use of other languages in ethnic pockets throughout the country—e.g., German in Vermont, Norwegian in Minnesota and North Dakota, Italian in New York/New Jersey, etc. Instead, we can see that xenophobia comes in many shapes and sizes.

Mr. Breeden’s complaints about language are merely pretext. His immediately subsequent paragraph tells us exactly what it is that he’s really kvetching about:

A little honesty here, Mr. Breeden. Please.

Accepting that other people are just as equal as all others means changing, Mr. Breeden. You obviously don’t like it. But you real complaint, quite simply, is racist.

No one is forcing you to learn Mexican, Mr. Breeden. No one is preventing you from speaking English. Nor is our government imposing the Mexican language over the English language. Vast swaths of this country are exclusively English-only.

Your alarm is a lie, and your call to action is gutter-bait.

Society wishes to limit who may, or may not be permitted to enter into “marriage” as … what? … a religious sacrament? No. Society’s restrictions target the civil component. So on one hand, society says its okay for us to choose who we live with, who we share our lives with, what arrangement of “family” we may wish to make. This can be done, gay or straight. Yet when one wants to look at the law to help untangle the legal issues associated with these familial bonds, society says “we’re only going to help out those who are straight” by restricting who may enter into “marriage.”

Defining marriage as “one man and one woman” may seem an appropriate boundary for society to define. But in the process, defining marriage serves to re-define family, or at least re-defining the legal protections available to a family. And for what reason? What tangible benefit is provided by permitting one familial arrangement to enjoy legal protections by default, while denying the same legal protections to another familial arrangement—on the sole basis of the sex of the two individuals involved? What end does it serve to society as a whole? What good does it do for those involved in these “unworthy” relationships?

The answer is that banning same-sex marriages is little more than a fig leaf to disguise religious bigotry and homophobia. “Tradition” and religious mores are nothing but window dressing. Banning same-sex marriage permits bigots the opportunity to give voice to their impotent hatred of LGBT citizens. It provides a “them” at which to strike out.

Or so I’ve been told, at least.

In all fairness, I really didn’t know I was miserable until I read Mr. Wallace’s letter.

All these years I’ve lived in ignorance and happiness without the undue burden of accommodating the unknown whims of some invisible person in the clouds. I suppose I must now stop reading, writing, hiking, running, mountain climbing, photography, and discard my significant other, because all of those things have been making me happy, and thereby ruining my misery.