FURY

As I drove home, all peaceful and stuff looking forward to Halloween... I spied them on the corner... PROP 8 supporters - with signs waving - saying lies like:
Prop 8 = religious freedom
Prop 8 = free speech

I was so incensed that I took the dog on a walk to go and talk to the peppy liars.

One of them insisted that her husband who teaches at Carlmont high school was REQUIRED to teach that mommies and daddies were no longer required, that gay marriage sent a message that children don't need a mommy, and that her husband NEEDED that job to support their five children.

The others calmly tried to get me to believe that somehow, civil unions were EQUAL to marriage, and that people being denied normal family rights was a thing of the past!

I am deeply afraid that will all the lies, all the money from outside the state, and with all the smokescreen about "saving marriage" by denying it to a class of "unworthy" people, that PROPOSITION 8 MAY PASS.

If the proposition 8 forces win, they will win by two means - convincing neutral voters that proposition 8 will ensure religious freedom and free speech (and other LIES), and through the failure to vote on the part of people who are only weakly committed to the defeat of prop 8.

Polls are showing that Obama and Biden are likely to win California by 22 percentage points 55-33. If this handsome lead causes lots of voters with common cause to fail to vote, WE COULD LOSE. www.mercurynews.com/localnew..._10849251

So FOCUS people - find the people in the middle, the ones that can go either way on prop 8, and make sure they understand the lies they are being fed are FALSE. Proposition 8 says NOTHING about free speech, and NOTHING about religious freedom.

The free speech religious freedom angle is that somehow, because the state recognizes that its adult citizens are not all heterosexual and the state fulfills its legal obligation not to discriminate against several hundred thousand of its citizens, that churches will (somehow) be prevented, by law, from opposing homosexuality or homosexual marriage. Bullshit. Since when are churches sanctioned for taking moral positions?

Find the people who are so confident that Obama will win that their vote "doesn't matter". Remind them that it indeed DOES matter and it is their civic duty to participate in the democratic process and VOTE. Remind them that proposition 8 could win or lose by ONE VOTE - THEIR VOTE. Ask them on election day whether they voted yet - if they haven't give them a helping hand.

WEDNESDAY WILL BE TOO LATE.

Do YOU matter?

Or more accurately, does your vote matter in this election? If you are like me, you don't support the GOP, nor do you agree with their platform on Gay Marriage. But maybe you don't think that your vote matters since McCain and Palin trail in the California polls and that Prop 8, the proposition to constitutionally ban gay marriage in California, is also "losing" in the polls.
online.wsj.com/article/SB...661835.html

Don't let complacency keep you from voting. ONE VOTE - maybe yours, could decide Prop 8. That's right, a simple majority writes good old fashioned separate but equal discrimination into the state constitution. Turnout is key. From the article:

"...the measure's fate likely will depend on turnout among Republicans – who favor Proposition 8 – and Democrats – who oppose it. "This is a case where partisan turnout will make a big difference".

Tell your friends, and your co-workers if you can. Here are some points to make:
Regardless of how you feel about same-sex marriage, itʼs wrong to treat people differently under the law.

Separate is not equal. Domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage.

State and federal laws have hundreds (if not thousands) of references to marriage, not civil unions, regarding inheritance, property ownership, health care decisions, etc., that are pretty much taken for granted. It's not the same for civil unions.

Fiction vs. Fact: rebuts the scare tactics used in the yes on 8 ads. www.noonprop8.com/about/fact-vs-fiction

Tell them the story of any same-sex couples you know. Make it personal. That's very compelling.

Ask: Have the many hundreds of marriages performed so far affected YOUR marriage?


VOTE

Life During Wartime

Sometimes I feel a bit under siege. There is the ever present War On [specified evil] and "we the people" AKA The Government of The United States seem to be at "war" with a lot of stuff.

War on Drugs - great big success so far. Almost nobody takes drugs and the harsh penalties have essentially prevented any further "drug crimes" through deterrence. Yeah, right. More like billions of dollars wasted trying to prevent people from getting high. The prohibition drives up the street price of the illicit goods to the maximum that will be borne by the users, and almost all of that money is spent on other, more harmful illegal activities. Meanwhile, we have one in 100 citizens behind bars, and one in NINE are black men. About half of these people are non-violent offenders, many of them incarcerated for drugs. We spend about 55 BILLION dollars a year on prisons. Nice work. Think this will change any time soon? Me neither.

War on "piracy". It used to be the case that copyright lasted for 14 years, with one 14 year renewal. Period.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" was the first stated purpose of U.S. copyright. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1788 proposed to do that "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The first U.S. copyright law, passed in 1790, protected books, maps, and charts if they were created by residents or citizens of the United States. The term of their exclusive right was a mere 14 years, with the right of renewal for 14 more.

Now Big MEdia interests have perverted this into essentially PERMANENT OWNERSHIP rights (life of the original author plus 70 - 90 years) and have waged a years long war against their potential (and actual) customers to get them to PAY UP and pay restitution for their crimes of piracy and theft of property. Then they got lawmakers to take away rights from the public to unconstitutionally enrich private individuals. That's fucked up.

In my view, if it was created more than 28 years ago - it should be public domain. Period. Content creators, if they want to make a living, should continue to create valuable things and sell them under copyright. I certainly don't continue to get paid for work I did more than 28 years ago. Do you?

War on Terror
No end in sight for this one, thanks to Bush and Company's work. We'll continue to have invasive body and bag screening by low IQ TSA goons FOREVER as far as I can tell. It makes me ill how much effort is wasted and how much fear is generated by this one insane reaction. JUST LOCK THE DAMN COCKPIT like a timed safe. (Actually, I think it would be better if we were to place a bulkhead there instead of a door and make the cockpit accessible only from OUTSIDE the plane.) If some suicide bomber blows up a plane with explosives hidden in the bottle of the baby he is strolling aboard, that will be a huge tragedy but it will still be only a fraction of the 576 people killed that week in car crashes. Spend the rest of the money finding and killing actual terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they are hiding.

Don't even get me started on all the domestic surveillance crap. (We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that aint allowed.)