Tom Cotton Cares

I saw the movie, "The Imitation Game," recently and was thinking of mentioning it here. I had heard of Alan Turing, but knew nothing about him. I'm going by the movie in all that I write here. He was instrumental in the construction of what was an impressive computer used to break Germany's coded messages during WWII. After the war, he was arrested for homosexual acts and given a choice between imprisonment for 2 years or "chemical castration." He chose the latter and committed suicide subsequently.

It was not until 1967 that homosexuality became decriminalized in England. And it was likely because of caring pols like Tom Cotton.

 Be grateful, gays of America. Instead of being potentially denied services at your local restaurant, you could be living in Iran, where they execute gays.

That warm comparison comes from freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the defense hawk who set off a firestorm of criticism last month when he authored a letter to the leaders of Iran warning them that any deal struck over its nuclear program could be revoked by future U.S. presidents or members of Congress.  

Yes, Cotton is being hard-ass on the nuclear deal because he cares about homosexuals in Iran. Of course. No statement from Rick Santorum on horse marriage in Indiana yet.

Dusty Dionne, High Priest and High Summoner of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Washington State told The Daily Beast that, while he is horrified by the notion of RFRA being used against the LGBT community, he supports RFRA’s power to free Wiccans from religious oppression.

“Many of us believe that love is the law. Though it is not a quote-unquote Wiccan tenet to have polyamorous marriages, it is under Wiccan law that love is the law,” Dionne told The Daily Beast. “Whatever we want to do with marriage we can do. Carte Blanche. If I want to marry a horse, I can marry a horse.”

The Last Sane Republican

Yes, I realize there are a few others who have come out on the side of the angels in the mosque Islamic community center debate. But Ron Paul is higher profile. He seems to be the most principled politician on either side of the divide. I know there have been charges of racism and that libertarianism deep down is crazy, but moments like this are likely the reason he inspires the devotion that he does.

Ron ripped into opponents of the Cordoba House project, saying that the rhetoric taking on the plan is clearly "all about hate and Islamaphobia."

And:

"The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims," Ron wrote in a statement to RonPaul.com "This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservative's aggressive wars."

And no, I don’t give a rat’s ass about his unprincipled kid.

Classic Ron Paul:

 

Althouse Says No to Piss Off a Muslim Day

It seems that maybe the female contingent are breaking away from the Borg continuum. First it was Debbie Schlussel telling us  all that Great American Sean Hannity screwed the troops over. And yes, I’m grateful for an excuse to remind everyone that Sean Hannity screwed the troops over.

And now Ann Althouse has broken with Reynolds and most of the rest of the right wing blogosphere:

I have endless contempt for the threats/warnings against various cartoonists who draw Muhammad (or a man in a bear suit who might be Muhammad, but is actually Santa Claus). But depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats. In pushing back some people, you also hurt a lot of people who aren't doing anything (other than protecting their own interests by declining to pressure the extremists who are hurting the reputation of their religion).

Needless to say, most of her commenters are not so sensitive toward the feelings of the followers of any religion other than Christianity (and Judaism when it leads to killing Muslims).

Good on ya, Ann. Stand firm.

Grand Old Party’s Over

Chris Currey writes today as another member of the GOP who no longer feels at home there. I’ve said before at this blog that I welcome a Republican Party that comes back to sanity and back to Conservative principles. May they soon shed the Neo-cons and the Cheney-ites and all the other Bush League players.

I know that without a strong opposition party, the Dems will soon become as stupid and venal as the GOP has. No good to try to have a yin without a yang.

I grew up with -– in fact voted for the first time for –- Eisenhower. In 1956, he ran a campaign of dignity. A campaign that acknowledged that there are certain projects better suited to be handled by the government. See, business thinks in the short term, as he said. That’s the imperative of the marketplace. I invest and I expect that in a few quarters, I garner the fruits of my investment. Government, on the other hand, has the luxury to wait a few years, maybe decades, for a return on a given investment. As a former businessman, I know that first hand. Am I a Marxist for thinking that?

Yes, I’m afraid that you are now an official DFH.

I did not like Medicaid and Medicare when they were passed. I was opposed to them. Maybe I was too young, too strong, and too ideologically confined. Yet, over the years, I saw how Medicare helped millions of elderly Americans. I saw how Medicare helped my mom in her final years battling emphysema caused by years of smoking. You have to be blind to oppose those programs. You have to be blind to wish for the suffering of millions of Americans just because you believe in personal responsibility.

This contains much of what I don’t understand about the opposition to, basically, all government by the right wing yahoos today. Are they just so confident that they will never need help? Are they confident that the government will always be there to give them that hand up despite their opposition? Medical bills are a very quick route to bankruptcy. Has there been a call on the right to bring back debtor’s prisons? Only a matter of time.

During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.

It started with minorities: they left the party. Then women; they divorced the GOP and sent it to sleep on the couch. Then, the young folks; they left and are leaving the Republican Party in droves. Then, someone stood up and told my niece and my grandchild that they are not fully Americans — just second class Americans because they are homosexual.

Turn out the lights, the Party’s over:

We shrank it by kicking out those who believe that an $11 trillion economy, like ours, needs a strong government, not a government that can be drowned in a bathtub. We shrank it when we sanctified Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, and canonized Sarah Palin. These are the leaders of my party nowadays. How did we go from William F. Buckley to Glenn Beck? How did we go from Eisenhower and Nixon to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann? I do not know. What I do know, however, is that these leaders remind of me of the leaders of the Whig Party. And if they continue on their nonsense, they will bring the collapse of the GOP.

Not that he’s going to see it, but I want to wish Mr. Currey the best of luck in any and all efforts to bring sanity back to his party. It needs to be there as a counterbalance, not a laughingstock.

Castaway Conservatives

David Frum joins Bruce Bartlett as one of the Conservatives whose name must no longer be mentioned.

As some readers of this blog may know, I was fired by a right wing think tank called the National Center for Policy Analysis in 2005 for writing a book critical of George W. Bush's policies, especially his support for Medicare Part D. In the years since, I have lost a great many friends and been shunned by conservative society in Washington, DC.

Now the same thing has happened to David Frum, who has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute.

The real money quote is:

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.