When Liberals Lose…

The first course of action is to threaten those that oppose them, physically attack anyone identified specifically as supporting the opposing winning side. Simultaneously they head to the courts to declare that people, that is the voters, have no right to amend the constitution.
Well, hush ma mouf! All these years I labored under the misconception that was how constitutions were amended. Whadda know!

Here’s the definitive word from the California Supreme Court of Clowns:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California’s highest court has agreed to hear legal challenges to a new ban on gay marriage, but is refusing to allow gay couples to resume marrying until it rules.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted three lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8. The amendment passed this month with 52 percent of the vote. The court did not elaborate on its decision.

All three cases claim the ban abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change. (emphasis mine)

Governor Patrick and his Beacon Hill cronies were all grins last week.  They repealed the 1913 law that kept out-of-state gay couples from marrying here.  The governor says it’s a blow for equality, but this Globe editorial quickly points out that our solons are looking for some gay marriage “windfall” profits too.

The combination of the 1913 law and recent California decision enabling gay marriage were going to cost the state economically.  But happy days are here again because now the state can look forward to an estimated $111 million over the next 3 years.

Nothing gets Beacon Hill moving like a new opportunity to fleece the people.

The other sins of marital bliss now visited on the other three genders.

Some gay couples are having trouble obtaining divorces

[snip]
Massachusetts, at least early on, let out-of-state gay couples get married there practically for the asking. But the rules governing divorce are stricter. Out-of-state couples could go back to Massachusetts to get divorced, but they would have to live there for a year to establish residency first.
“I find that an unbelievably unfair burden. I own a home here, my friends are here, my life is here,” said Ormiston, who is resigned to moving to Massachusetts for a year. [snip]

The old adage concerning care in what one asks for, lest one gets it is quite true.
The most progressive states never bring up full faith and credit reciprocity statutes for that would open the dreaded concealed carry permit recognition among other choice bits like legalized prostitution.
God, I love these dilemmas.

The Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that British adoption of Sharia law was “unavoidable”.  His comments caused quite a stir with some calling for his resignation.  However, it was more observation than suggestion.  British courts are already considering whether they should “surrender” to Sharia or not:

Last week, as Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared it was ‘inevitable’ that certain parts of Islamic law would be introduced into Britain, the Court of Appeal was told how a 26-year-old British Muslim with learning difficulties was married over the telephone to a woman in Bangladesh. It was arranged by the man’s father and deemed lawful under sharia law. 

How can arranged marriages be acceptable under any circumstances in a Western society?  It cuts against our most basic notions of freedom.  And where are the outraged liberals?  Perhaps they think “arranged” is just another quaint modifier like “gay” for marriage.

Wake up, England!  The Archbishop did you a huge favor by calling your attention to a battle you’re already losing.

The only thing worse than moonbats who don’t understand the difference between discipline and child abuse is the political weasel who puts the spanking ban forward, but is too cowardly to take a stand:

Rep. Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, submitted the 61-year-old Wolf’s petition at her request, but is not taking a position for or against corporal punishment.

Show a little backbone, Mr. Kaufman. If you don’t support the bill’s intent, save the rest of us some trouble and tell Ms. Wolf NO. But nobody on Beacon Hill wants to stand for or lead anything. It’s no different than when most of you were cowering in fear lest you have to vote on the gay marriage amendment. Heaven forbid that you take clear, unambiguous positions on today’s difficult issues. After all, Mass. politicians are in the reelection business, not the leadership one.

Or “hypocracy” which is the preferred spelling for Republican-haters I’ve encountered in the blogosphere.  The word is “hypocrisy”, and its joyous discovery in Larry Craig was the newest golden strand woven  into the vestments of pulpiteering leftists everywhere.  Craig was more proof for their contempt and curtain-twitching scorn for an entire social class: Republicans.  It’s the same confirmation error and simplification underlying all stigmatizing prejudices, but this one is clean because the opinion-makers and liberal elites hold it to be true.

For leftists Craig narrowed the probability that all Republicans are swine.  Think of the yokel who flips a coin 99 times, and having found heads 99 times, thinks the probability of having tails has changed from 50 -50, to 100 to 1,  and bets his house on the outcome.  With millions of adherents, one Republican or Democrat scoundrel, or a thousand, proves nothing about either party, but that’s an idea too complex and knotty for some to unwind.  Even one as bright as the one who parried with us recently about Chris Dodd.   We’ll call him Genius.   He told us he had an IQ of 135  possessed a Master degree and had graduated magna cum laude.

Genius was infuriated by a rude post about Chris Dodd.  Genius detested Republicans, and disgorged a list of Republican types linked to Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff; a few convicted but most indicted, linked, charged, suspected, probed or investigated for wrongdoing, and therefore to the hanging-judge mentality of a pious lefty, guilty.  Then Genius moved on to Larry Craig.

Pertinent to the suspicions about Craig, Genius referred to the Republican Party as The Gay Old Party, and continued to some very suspect comments of his own about homosexuality.  He then ignored being exposed for indelicate comments about gayness.  But later in the thread, a Dodd volunteer and friend of Genius posted that Genius wasn’t homophobic; but that Republican “bible-thumpers” are the chief foil to gay respectability and their right to marriage.  Well, Craig opposes gay marriage, but so does Chris Dodd, along with 67% of Americans (Gallup 2005), but never mind.  She said:

My take on his “Gay Old Party” remark is that so many Republicans deny gay people the right to marriage, bash their lifestyle as immoral and a sin, yet behind closed doors they’re trolling men’s rooms and hitting on Congressional pages.  Are Dems doing this too?  Safe to say - yes but we’re not the one’s (sic) standing up and thumping our bibles about our superior morals and family values.  It’s the hypocracy (sic) - not the homosexuality that is maddening.

What does this paragraph mean?  Its logic is sub-rational, its ethics risible,  it simply isn’t true in any of its disconnected, anecdotal parts, especially about “so many Republicans” OR so many Democrats.  It’s just a literary delivery system for an idea that requires ventilation over and over, no matter how non the sequiturs and fictitious the evidence.  Republicans are homophobic, hypocritical trash.   Our gaze had to be drawn from the planks in their eyes to the motes in our own.  It always does.  It’s called lefty logic.

All ideas have a lineage, a provenance.  Leftism devolved from liberalism, which itself devolved from the great but conflicted Progressivism of the last century, and the decline continues.   Along the way, leftism picked up attitudes, theories and assumptions from its predecessors which today make up the foul slurry that passes for leftist political thinking.   Some of them are as follows: 

First,  elites in all ages have regarded their social inferiors as reservoirs of bad taste, ignorance, carnality and bizarre religiosity.  (This exists alongside their romanticization of the Rousseauean  brute who services the pool.)  To the arbiters of everything important, hypocrisy in the lower classes is a natural outcome of the contradictions in their behavior, and even sometimes reponsible for their diminished  status.  The people whom I believe to be inferior to me will always confirm my opinion.  The left will always think of Republicans in this way. 

Second, among the intellectual staples of atheism, which clings even today to many believers, is that religion is the cause of more carnage, injustice and suffering than the purest godlessness.   The bad behavior of the religious nullifies the validity of  Belief, and confirms a broad potential hypocrisy in all believers.  Absolute moral spotlessness, and total silence about it is, the only remedy for the crime of believing in God.

Third, if postmodernism is “about” anything, it’s about personal sovereignty, and the assumption that morals are a social construct.  Objective morality can’t be disclosed by Reason, so the individual is the fairest judge of his conduct, as long as he keeps it to himself.  Along with this, moral variation is the validation of personal choice, and solipsism is authenticity.

We could add a fourth, although it isn’t about what leftists think. It’s about what they overlook.  Their implicit claim that violations of moral codes discredit not only the offender, but the code itself and all those who hold to it, is particularly wicked.  Codes exist as maps to conduct; we have them because the road is unknown and hard to follow; not natural to us, and the map springs from a host of human needs and self-expectations.   Without them, we are nothing.

From Ba’hais to Stoics, to Epicureans to low cults, to Christianity, to Islam and all the ascetic Green guides to good living, there’s a code that is imperfectly followed.  Lapses are normal, expected.  Leftist pseudo-morality reminds us of Adam Smith’s pithy comment…”Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience”.

Vermont’s economy would be a basket case if the State could afford a basket. Liberals and Progs believe social engineering is more important than the state’s economy. Revenues in the state are not as projected; the housing fiasco and the planned healthcare disaster looms like a monster in 1950’s movie. Attack this problem with Social engineering first.

Vt. Marriage Commission Begins Work

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont’s new commission charged with studying whether residents would accept same-sex marriage held its first meeting Thursday at the Statehouse where it was immediately derided by conservative activists as “a farce.” [snip]

“This is a divisive issue,” Little (Former Rep. Tom Little of Shelburne) acknowledged as he opened the session. “But that is no reason to avoid it, because constitutional rights are in play here.”

(Little was the architect of the Civil Union law)

Rep. Tom Little, please show me in the State Constitution where the word marriage is used in relation to any of the four known and one indeterminate sexes wishing to form a union. Failing to so do, kindly remove the term “constitutional rights” from use. Let us use the term “rights because the libs like them.”

So we get gay marriage instead of solutions to a worsening economy. The reason why is simple, liberals cannot solve a failing economy

The following was posted on 8/5/07

Vermont’s financial future tentative

Projected tax revenues are “…a lot more vulnerable than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Tom Kavet, an economist hired by the Legislature…. Over the last year, housing starts are down 44%. The splatter effect from this reaches into many other markets, all which affect sales and income taxes. That drop represented a “$300 million economic downdraft,” he said, noting it could have broad impacts. [snip]

For Vermont’s financial future go here.

Vermont’s financial future tentative

Projected tax revenues are “…a lot more vulnerable than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Tom Kavet, an economist hired by the Legislature…. Over the last year, housing starts are down 44%.

The splatter effect from this reaches into many other markets, all which affect sales and income taxes.

That drop represented a “$300 million economic downdraft,” he said, noting it could have broad impacts.

Meanwhile, Peter Shumlin (Senate Pro Tem) and Gaye Symington (Speaker of the House) announce their unassailable study group on gay marriage. This will be the big item on the agenda in January.

If the revenue picture seemed shaky, lawmakers also heard about some of the spending pressures they face. There’s enough money to cover Medicaid expenses this year, but administration and legislative fiscal experts predicted a $40 million gap the following year…. Reardon also noted there wasn’t enough money in the budget to cover salaries for state workers…. The shortfall could be about $5 million.

Rep. Michael Obuchowski, D-Bellows Falls, heads the Ways and Means Committee and serves with three other legislators and the governor on the Emergency Board. He asked, “Are there things we could be doing to get ahead of the curve and cover the risk?” A lengthy silence followed….

These leaders, Shumlin and Symington, fiddled over global warming, Bush’s impeachment, and universal healthcare while the state’s economy filled a toe tag.

The Catamount Health Care program is a disaster. Because of the caps placed of premiums at $191, the state is $32/person in the red before the first person enrolls, about $20,800,000/year.

Starting an underfunded program with diminishing tax returns over the next two years in depraved. The only options available for a shortfall in revenues are benefit cuts, reductions in payments to medical providers, tossing people off the program or raising taxes to avert the program’s demise. By 2010, the cost current structuring incurs an excess cost of $25 million more than targeted. (See prior post on Wisc. Plan)

Hillary wants this wonderful program for the entire country, how thoughtful.

The only way the Democrats ever ran a business is into the ground.

Governor Patrick nominated Superior Court Judge Margot G. Botsford for the vacant Supreme Judicial Court position.  Given Patrick’s words of support and Mrs. Botsford’s Dukakis links, we are in for quite a ride:

Patrick said he was looking for someone with a respect for precedent, and an understanding that the constitution is a “living document.” 

Talk about wanting to have it both ways.  Precedent means respect for and application of previously established law to ensure the legal system’s stability.  A living document means the courts are free to overturn precedent as judges’ interpretations of societal norms changes.  All judges make choices between evolving the law and respecting precedent, but that’s not what the governor was really trying to say.

Let’s be honest and say that our governor needed an adjective to accurately describe what Mrs. Botsford is heading to the SJC to accomplish.  When he says she’ll respect “precedent”, he means “liberal precedent” that judges, like Mrs. Botsford, fabricate with the “living document” theory.  That is she’ll protect “liberal precedents”, like gay marriage”, while moving us further left with the “living document” theory. 

Mandatory retirement age at 70 within the judicial system is looking better and better all the time.

MA gay marriage advocates have big plans to export gay marriage to the rest of the country:

Proponents said they will also eventually look to open the door to couples from other states to marry in Massachusetts. Solomon said there is overwhelming support in the Legislature to repeal the 1913 law that prohibits couples from out of state from marrying in Massachusetts if the union would not be legal in their own state.

Once out-of-state gay marriages are allowed, the Federal lawsuits forcing those states to recognize them won’t be far behind. State constitutional bans won’t hold up against the Federal courts. It won’t happen until 2009:

“The next step is to sit down with legislative leaders and the governor’s people and talk about when it makes sense to advance that piece of legislation,” said Solomon, adding that there are no immediate plans for such a meeting.

You bet there are no immediate plans to kick off nationwide gay marriage recognition with the presidential election just around the corner. Such a move might energize the wrong base and threaten Hillary’s presidential run.

Governor Patrick continues lobbying to kill the anti-gay marriage amendment:

Patrick, who said he wants a vote on the merits of the amendment, said he didn’t underestimate the strength of the supporters of the question.

“There are still great passions and great fear and great intolerance on the other side,” he said.

The governor is attempting to block the legislation until the “bigots” come around, which would be never in my case because my real problem isn’t so much with gay marriage as how it was implemented. It was a judicial overreach infringing on the legislative branch’s responsibilities. Ironically, Governor Patrick is more than happy with the judicial overreach that mandated gay marriage, but refuses to heed their instructions that the state constitution requires the legislature to vote on the anit-gay marriage amendment. This has a lot less to do with equality and the law than it does with pandering to one of the governor’s favorite special interests.

Governor Patrick is big on vision, but short-sighted when it comes to basic math. So let’s help the governor with his homework. His administration advertised a $1.3 billion dollar defecit this year, which he and the legislature plugged by dipping into the “rainy day fund”. On top of this shortfall, he proposes $1 billion to attract and retain biotech companies, $120 million for full-day kindergarten, $600 million for universal preschool, $1.3 billion for a longer school day and year, and $180 million for free community colleges. Now I’m not a Harvard Law graduate, but that comes to $4.5 billion dollars in new programs and existing shortfalls against his proposal to close “tax loopholes” that will generate $500 million.

But the governor doesn’t want people raining on his parade by asking where he’ll get $4 billion dollars. He’s appointing a commission to study his plan and recommend ways to meet his goals. Commissions are wonderous things for politicians because of the top cover they provide. If the plan fails, the commission takes a nice chunk of the blame. On the flip side, success ultimately means massive tax increases where the commission can also conveniently take the brunt of taxpayer displeasure. No matter how it works out, establishing the commission is a win-win for Deval.

So far, the governor hasn’t shown any leadership at all. Higher taxes? Yes, we can! Lower taxes? Yes, we can! Subsidies to buisness? Yes, we can! Higher taxes for business? Yes, we can! More educational spending? Yes, we can! The only thing he isn’t for is the rule of law by following the state constitution and voting on the gay marriage ban. I guess the upside to his unrealistic vision is that’ll he’ll cause less damage in the long run.

Patrick continues to fight the constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.  His reasoning is a bit suspect though: 

“If this does get to a popular ballot, there is very little other business that will get done in Massachusetts politics and policy making while that is pending,” Patrick told reporters

The only reason this continues to be an issue for Beacon Hill is because the legislature refuses to vote and Patrick continues to work backroom deals trying to kill it.  Once the vote is taken the issue is on the people’s agenda, and Beacon Hill can return to driving residents out of the state. 

“Rather than turn Massachusetts into a political circus for a national debate over something which is largely settled here, my own view is that we ought to resolve this on the merits so that it stays off the ballot, and to do so at the constitutional convention,” the governor said.

The people who elected you don’t think it’s settled, and they’re the ones who count.  This whole thing is really simple—the legislature should do its constitutional duty.  The Supreme Judicial Court, the judges who overstepped their bounds in the first place, say the legislature has a constitutional duty to vote.  Patrick simply doesn’t have a leg to stand on here and was apparently missing the day they taught law at Harvard Law School.

(Note) For what it’s worth, Patrick denies bribing legislators with plum jobs:

Asked by a reporter about a news report saying he had offered plum jobs to get some of those supporting the amendment, Patrick replied “No.”

Deval Patrick might be getting more input than he bargained for on his new website. Here are the top five issues posted by visitors to his site:

Votes
356     Equal Marriage Rights in Massachusetts
289     Coalition: Vote on Marriage
252     The people’s right to redress the SJC’s marriage ruling
203     Making Renewable Energy Work in the Commonwealth
150     Roll Back the Income Tax to 5%

The second and third issue are basically the same thing (support for a vote on gay marriage) and added together they out poll the the first issue in support of gay marriage. Take the fifth issue of rolling back the income tax and you have a pretty conservative issue list for Massachusetts though I wont hold my breath waiting for Deval to get to work on them!

Don’t worry the moon bats got their issues listed too. This is #10 on the list with 88 votes:

Only a moonbat could think the Governor of Massachusetts has a role to play here, and only a liberal would leave the issue up long enough to be voted on 88 times.

Governor Patrick will make his first judicial appointment with the death of Supreme Judicial Court Justice Martha Sosman, but the prospect of Deval Patrick appointing judges is scary.  Even with Republican governors, we were getting too many liberal judges.  What kind of judges do you suppose a liberal Democrat who lobbied the legislature to ignore the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling on the gay marriage amendment vote is going to appoint?  My suspicion is a Patrick appointee will be focused on desirable outcomes (read liberal agenda) when this state clearly needs a few more law and order types.