Whatever: A Small Plea to the Right: Vote Left in 2006
if you decide it might be important that your Republican leaders actually act like Republicans, and also treat the Constitution as something other than a nice absorbent blotter for their processed beer — you might consider doing what it appears so many others are going to do this year and give your vote to the Democrats.
If I could say it as well as he has, I wouldn’t need to link to his post.
Voter turnout looked good this morning. I was number 93 with a last name L-Z only an hour after the polls opened. It was the longest line I’ve ever seen to vote, which is encouraging.
So, you may be curious how I voted. First, I voted for Jim Webb and Jim Moran because I think it’s important that we get a Democratic majority. Then maybe we can start getting back some of our civil liberties that President Bush has taken in the name of terror. Unfortunately, it probably also means that we’ll continue to botch things in Iraq, since the Democrats plan of “let’s not stay the course” is just as bad as Bush’s “stay the course”.
I voted against the gay marriage ban. Even if I hated homosexuals, I would have voted against it. It goes way beyond “protecting the sanctity of marriage” and bans all sorts of things that might be sort of like marriage if you look at them kind of squinty-eyed. And, more importantly, I think we have to treat people of all sexual orientations as human beings. That means protecting their rights and allowing them to live, even if you don’t approve of their lifestyle.
I voted to remove the unconstitutional language that should have been removed automatically instead of requiring a vote.
I voted against extending the right to grant tax breaks to the local government. Although in general I think local government is better suited to grant tax breaks for real estate development, I don’t see why we need to help people build new houses in conservation areas. There’s too much building around here as it is, and the excess of housing is going to start hurting the local economy if we aren’t careful. I’m not really sure what the point of this amendment is supposed to be, but the potential adverse effects it could have outweigh the positive ones I can think of. So I voted no.
I voted to allow the issuance of bonds to build more parks, and to build more jails. Seems like a good idea to me.
So, I urge you all to get out and vote if you haven’t done so already. I’d be happy if you voted the way I did, but I’d rather you did a little research and voted against me than not vote at all.
Project Vote Smart – Virginia Election Ballot Measures
The proposed amendment would delete the provision found to be unconstitutional.
There are three measures on the Virginia ballot this year. One of them is the ridiculously far-reaching gay marriage ban that I’ve mentioned. I can’t imagine anyone who reads past the “ban gay marriage” part will vote for it. If your knee-jerk reaction is “I must vote against gay marriage”, you might support it, but you’d be making a mistake. I’m not going to argue why I support gay marriage, I will just say that this particular ban is similar to destroying a thirty story office building because you didn’t like the color of the eighth-floor bathroom. Measure two simply removes a section that has been found unconstitutional. It changes no law – the law has already been changed. Why we have to vote on this, I don’t know. Measure three would expand permissible tax relief for “new structures and improvements located in a conservation, redevelopment, or rehabilitation area”. I’m not sure I like that. On one hand, it seems to allow tax breaks for someone who might want to rehabilitate an old house, or perhaps put in a new retaining wall to protect a stream. These things seem fine with me. But wouldn’t this also open the door for tax breaks if someone wants to buy a little house in an old neighborhood and tear it down to put up a McMansion? It seems like it, again, is too broad. I might be missing the point, but my initial reaction is that the potential benefits are less than the potential abuse. If someone wants to correct me, please do.
Charlie’s Diary: A Short Hallowe’en Horror Story
Funny, funny, funny.
The Year Of Playing Dirtier – washingtonpost.com
It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout and fire up their conservative base.
It may be that, after a conversation about ‘the liberal media’ yesterday with a definitely conservative coworker, I’m just looking for the Post’s liberal bias, but this line jumped out at me. The article, up to then, had been close enough to balanced (It said that both parties are stooping to new lows in negative political ads, and the Republicans are worse about it. That’s sort of unbiased) that I could live with it. But if the Post honestly believes that the Democrats are completely blameless for the state of the country, I don’t even know what to say.
Back to the point of the article, though. I’m pretty sick of smear ads. Being near DC, we get both Virginia and Maryland ads. George Allen and Jim Webb, running for Senate from VA, have been sniping at each other for a while. Allen doesn’t seem to be trying that hard – he’s still focusing on some comments Webb made in 1979-80. Allen also responded to my angry letter, which is nice. I’m still voting for Webb, though.
I wish we’d get to hear why I should vote for one guy rather than why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy. I’m tired of voting against the unacceptable canidate. I’d really like to vote for someone because I think he or she is going to do a good job. Is that too much to ask?
John Scalzi on gay marriage in NJ
Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose.
John Scalzi has a nice bit on the NJ Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. The above is my favorite line from the quote from the decision. It looks like the Jersey Supreme Court has sent a nice not-so-subtle message that the government is not in the business of spreading homophobia and discrimination. I think “no substantial relationship to legitimate governmental purpose” is a lovely turn of phrase, and I applaud the court.
I’m not so sure I’m happy with their failure to rule on whether you can call it marriage – this is an important issue for many, and not calling it marriage leaves them open to “separate but equal” challenges. But I suppose that leaving some of the decision to legislators is what the whole system is about. Hopefully New Jersey’s legislature will work something out that most people can live with.
Bush’s New Tack Steers Clear of ‘Stay the Course’ – washingtonpost.com
But the White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.”
Oh, how clever. Use the phrase that the Republicans use to attack Democrats and then the phrase the Republicans used before the Democrats used it to attack Republicans. Where does one go for neutral news reporting? I get Fox News at the gym. Fair and balanced, they say. Yes, fair to radical conservative nutjobs, and balanced between Republicans and other Republicans. I tried Daily Kos, because that’s one of the first names in political blogging news. If you take Daily Kos, and reverse the adjectives – that is, replace “bad” with “good” and all that, you have Fox News all over again. I tried the Wall Street Journal, but they hide behind a pay wall, and I don’t want to get a subscription. The Washington Post can’t possibly claim to be unbiased after allowing a line like the one above to be printed. Where do you get your news?
Beltway Toll Plan May Need Va. Funds – washingtonpost.com
“I think it demonstrates the risks involved in seeing privatization as a panacea,” said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “We can’t simply hope that the tooth fairy, in the form of the private sector, will make all of our problems go away.”
No, but you can hope that a plan that you agreed to doesn’t go $100 million over budget. The sequence of events seems to have gone like this:
My wife is going to be out of town for the election this year, so she dutifully applied for and received her absentee ballot. I was looking at the propaganda they send along with it (Apparently both the Democratic and the Republican parties are notified when you get an absentee ballot, because both sent her some literature). Have any of you read how far-reaching the proposed gay marriage ban in Virginia is? It doesn’t stop at banning gay marriage. It doesn’t even stop at banning civil unions. It bans anything that might resemble marriage, or carry some of the same benefits of marriage, for anyone who isn’t a married couple of opposite gender.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think a good lawyer could argue convincingly, based on the wording of this law, that I can’t enter into a verbal contract with a buddy to help him move some furniture in exchange for a case of beer. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
However, I think this may be a brilliant move on the part of those against a ban on gay marriage. They may have realized that there was no way they could avoid putting it on the ballot. Instead, they made it so far-reaching that even if it passes, it should be ruled unconstitutional. Of course, as shown by the second question on the ballot, that doesn’t mean much. The second question proposes removing something from the books that has, actually, been ruled unconstitutional. Shouldn’t that be automatic? I mean, as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I’m okay with allowing the VA government to remove unconstitutional laws from the books without asking my permission.
GOP terrorism ad sparks Democratic furor – CNN.com
I haven’t seen this ad. I don’t need to see it. I’m voting, and whatever the ad is, it won’t affect my vote. But I hope people are angry about it. I hope it pisses off hundreds of thousands of people and maybe some of them will actually get up and vote.
I would rather see 90% of the registered voters elect Bill Frist or Hillary Clinton President than 10% of the registered voters elect someone who isn’t a minion of Satan. If the vast majority of the country disagrees with me on who should run the country, fine. I’ll accept that. But if we don’t know who the vast majority of the country prefers because most of them don’t bother to exercise their Constitutional right to tell us, then I’m pissed off.