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well, he deserved it

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In the Grand Scheme of Things:
People really should be able to walk across the crosswalk, regardless of the color of the light. Since that will never happen, try to at least swerve around them.

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In a fashion that is quite unlike me, I am going to do a news item here today, I am then going to comment on it, and it is also political. I hope I don't sound like the uneducated oaf that I really am.

The article can be found Here. The center of it appears to be about gay marriage, but the actuality of that I think may be far different.

Bush's call for a gay-marriage amendment came as the president sought to regain his footing after he was thrown on the defensive about issues ranging from his Vietnam-era military record to missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news - web sites ).

"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization," the president said.

Answering Bush, Kerry said, "All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the United States at the start of his re-election campaign."

"I believe the best way to protect gays and lesbians is through civil unions," Kerry said. "I believe the issue of marriage should be left to the states"

What Bush said is just absolute crap. I mean honestly, if one must 'Ammend' the constitution to say that it is illegal for gay people to marry, that means that the constitution must be 'changed' to make that into a law. As for the part about "after more than two centuries of American jurisprudence" (which is a word he obviusly had to look up), exactly what 'jurisprudence' is he talking about? To my knowledge there have not been a lot of cases in court over the last two-hundred years that involved gay marriages. Even if there had been, I don't really see how he could be trying to use that as a point today. I mean if you want to go back over the 'jurisprudence' of this country, you must also keep in mind that the people in Salem killed a lot of innocent people based on the testimony of three children who were being spoken to by spirits. Had the courts used that as a precedent, I think that the 'Son of Sam' would not have gone to prison for his killings, since he was being spoken to by the spirits also.

The judicial system, much like religion, place way to much on what has happened before, regardless of the validity of it. After all, it did take an 'ammendment' to abolish slavery. If they had just gone by what was written in the constitution we would all still either own, or work on a plantation in the South. Were they correct in adding this 'ammendment'? Hell yes. Should there have been a need to? It seems so. The problem is that humans are keenly aware of now, but not so aware of the future. When those guys were hanging out drinking ale and talking about how the nation would be when they were in charge I am sure that they missed a few details along the way. But, homosexuality is as old as the constitution for sure, and probably goes back to the beginning of human history -to the time long before man actually understood how to conceive, and as such were likely just looking for any warm spot to put it.- And yes, that means that homosexuality pre-dates the bible, and that being the case I am not sure how one could use any biblical or judicial means to try to battle the sanctity or legality of it.

What comes into mind now is the religious nuts who will say that GOD made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. As per my previous statement, that is utter bullshit. Without going into an atheist lecture, I will just say that human life pre-dates the bible's EDEN by at least 50,000 years. So if GOD did make adam and eve and put them there, he was putting them onto a happily populated planet that likely already had rampant homosexuality and did not see a thing wrong with it. Fast-Forward to the time of the Greeks, there was a lot of homosexuality there, though no marriage, just like a teacher/student relationship with benefits (for the teacher at least), and this was still the status quo. In fact, the more I think about it the HOMOPHOBIA (I mean sanctity of marriage) didn't really come into being until well after the founding of the United States. If it was that big an issue when they wrote the constitution, don't you think they would have thrown something in there about it? We are talking about the same people who said that the control of the militia over land, water and sky would be in their control(two hundred years before flight was even thought about). Yet, butt bashing somehow didn't make it on there.

I have gone way off topic here. My point is that you should not try to use ancient documents to try to validate your point of view (I used to enjoy mentioning to christians that the bible states that in order to atone for your sins you must spill the blood of a sheep on an altar unto god. - they are quick to point out that when the blood of Jesus was spilled it was for all of our sins- but what if I was taking that book as literal, and I hadn't gotten that far in the book yet? Boy, I would have been embarassed.

The reason that I quoted four paragraphs from that initial article is that I am now scared for the direction of our country. We all know that Bush is so right-wing that he has to have some tether to keep him from falling off, but when the leading Democrats are opposing same sex marriages what the hell are you supposed to do? This year will be the third time I have cast a vote for the President, and the first one didn't really count. The last two elections I did a sort of "lesser of two evils" approach to my selection, and it worked wonderfully, except the elected president is still living on a ranch somewhere while we have a Kook in the white house.

The Gay Marriage issue just hit at the wrong time. I am sure that if this was not an election year the republicans would have gotten something slipped through congres to make it just go away. Now, the Democrats have to not want gay marriage also, and that is unfortunate. I try to believe that an elected leader would be more likely to do what is right for the majority of the country, the sad fact is that the majority of the country does not vote. The people who do vote are the very rich, very right- wing conservatives that I would as soon kill as look at. Thus we end up with tax breaks for the very, very rich, while at the same time raising taxes for the 'rich but not quite as rich', then giving a tax break to the welfare families...and tripling the deficit. As much as I hate Clinton, and also keeping in mind that he was in office during the technology boom, we had a budget surplus while he was in office, but we weren't just running around the world looking for countries to declare war on while he was in office either. -countries that the U.S. could destroy, then give huge contracts to Bush's oil field buddies to repair at a 500% inflated cost- 'Hiel Bush'

I mentioned in yesterday's update that these are people that I have not seen in at least fourteen years, and one of them could not even remember me from my father's/her brother's funeral. It was not icy at all though. We, my family, seem to be blessed with a really great sense of humor, so after it had all been silent for a minute or so someone just started to speak. It was an anecdote from long in the past, and involving my father, and happened long before I was born, but after that, it was like it was just yesterday that we had all done this last.

The dinner really went quite well, I even ended up with like three magazines about the London Bridge (the original one that they moved to Lake Havasu), and as it turns out the guy who moved that bridge over here is a Great Uncle of mine. So where is my paycheck?...

At any rate, I have spoken to these Aunts of mine only on rare occasions since my dad died. I had not seen either of them since 1990, but it was like we had never been apart (with the possible exception of the fact that the last time I saw them I barely had pubic hair, now I have gray hair, one gained a lot of weight, one lost a lot of weight, okay so you could tell by appearances that it had been that long, but the minds still work the same.)

What really surprised me was how well my mother was getting along with them. These are my Father's siblings, yet they still had the stories to tell -which no one else at the table got- and they laughed like teen-agers. I found that surprising only because it had been more like 20 years (not counting dad's funeral) since they had seen each other.

My wife was able to get involved by poking a bit of fun at me, which I don't mind, and it got her into a conversation where it would have been her around damn near a dozen people that she didn't know. I have long said you have to pick one that has both the mind and the wit - I actually believe that what I said was that you have to make sure she has the mind at the top and the elevator to get it there- at any rate, my relatives were hugging her at the end of the night.

If I had the kind of charisma that I could walk into a room and people would just gather around me, I might use that power to an evil end. Actually, I would definitely use that power to an evil end, I would just have to go on-line and see what ends are available for that particular power. If the powers don't have x-ray vision I might not even care.

As it turns out, one of the relatives lives in Mesa (which is only about 45 minutes from here) and we were getting along quite well, to the point that he was setting up jokes and I was knocking them down. If he is this close, I am sure that we could -combined- sucker some of the other 5 aunts/uncles down here to at least say hello. I guess I will find out on the 6th of May, as yet another Uncle will be in the area and he wants to spend a day with me and the other guy in question. I want to get my brother (who is a year older and another 45 minutes away) to come up for what is turning into a boy's day out kind of thing. The Uncle (who is really only a few years older than I am) is trying to make us go play golf, which I have never done and who knows I might like it.

The dinner went well for all involved. Unless my wife is just lying to make me happy, but, as previously stated, she knows how to get into a conversation, then take it over, then start issuing sub-conversations for you to work on as a group. Well, she didn't do that, but if it had gone on longer, she likely would have started assigning tasks. That's my woman.