Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Today, the US Senate failed to repealthe militray’s “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy.
Why did they fail? Well, it turns out they needed 60 votes to get rid of this policy, but they were four short. Surprisingly, every Republican voted against the bill, which has got to be the first time (in a long time, at least), that Republicans have stopped a defense appropriations bill. See, every year, congress authorizes millitary spending for the next year but, oddly, Repulbicans suddenly didn’t feel like giving the armed forces $726 billion. That’s funny. I thought most Republicans supported the military. Oh well, I guess they figure it’s better to withhold $726 billion to the men and women serving in our military than to allow gays to serve openly.
Most disappointing is Senator John McCain. He claims that the Democrats were just slipping in the repeal of this policy to cater to their base. Oh man, that’s so terrible that elected officials were acting in the way they thought their constituents would want them to act. Shame on you, Democrats!
If you want to see an elected official who doesn’t care what the American thinks, check out McCain’s gentle slide into craziness:
In this interview, me thinks McCain doth protest too much.
How could you vote against this, McCain? I thought you were a level headed, fair-handed politician (at least, as far as politicians go). After all, you picked a female running mate during your bid for the presidency. And, back in 2004, you voted for a college dropout.
McCain, according to this article, said that it would be premature to vote to repeal the policy until the results of a study (studying the effects of ending the policy) is completed. Oh man, that’s so reasonable. Where was McCain back in the ’60s? You know, the 1860s…it sure would’ve been nice to have his logic around when congresswas thinking of ending slavery: “I don’t think we should end ownership of humans until a study regarding the effects of ending slavery is completed.” Makes perfect sense to me.
So then I got to thinking, what kind of rude, insensitive, homophobic people in the military could possibly want gays to keep quiet? Christians!
Yes, Christians.
I therefore propose a solution, in the interests of fairness: Congress should initiate a “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy regarding Christianity. Because, see, if you want to believe that someone you’ve never seen or heard is all-powerful, created humans 6,000 years ago, loves foreskins, produced a crazy book full of contradictions, absurdities and appalling acts of violence and that he then got a chick named Mary pregnant with his son who was already alive, and that that guy came back, zombie-style, and now heads up heaven and wants us all to worship him…that’s fine with me.
Just don’t tell me about it.
What, couldn’t find a way to include Hitler’s antisemitism into your McCain analogy? 😛
Brilliant! Well said James!
Mike-Thanks! Glad you liked it.
David- I refrain from using Hitler analogies when making arguments, lest I fall for Godwin’s Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law). It’s a stupid law that I wish was expressed better because, after all, if any discussion goes on long enough, even the chances of mentioning the mating habits of baboons approaches 1.
Besides that, Hitler analogies generally are of three types :
1 – The connection is solid, and so is the correlation (e.g., Hitler was evil and he killed many of his own citizens. Stalin killed many of his own citizens, too, therefore Stalin was also evil).
2 – The connection is solid, but not the correlation (e.g., Hitler was evil and he was lef-handed. Obama is left-handed, too, therefore Obama is evil.)
3 – The connection is not even solid (e.g. Hilter was evil and was Muslim…)
Oh, wait – you concluded your comment with a happy faced emoticon. Nevermind.
Great post. I was going to wait until the conversation got a bit deeper before I mentioned this but baboon mating behavior varies greatly depending on the social structure of the troop. In the mixed groups of savanna baboons, each male can mate with any female. The mating order among the males depends partially on their social ranking, and fights between males are not unusual. There are however more subtle possibilities; in mixed groups males sometimes try to win the friendship of females. To garner this friendship, they may help groom the female, help care for her young, or supply them with food. The probability is high that those young are their offspring. Some females clearly prefer such friendly males as mates. 😉
Crystal:
That’s hilarious – I just mentioned baboon mating habits because it sounded totally off-topic. But I should’ve known that the mating habits of primates could figure in quite nicely to this discussion. Thanks for the info!