Things I overheard while talking to myself

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

"We need some gender equity here," she told HuffPost. "The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we're going to do that to women, why not do that to men?"

Janet Howell, Virginia State Senator, Attaches Rectal Exam Amendment To Anti-Abortion Bill

Nicely done, Senator! The Amendment didn't pass, but it wasn't supposed to, it was supposed to show the double standard here and provide a bit of quid pro quo about having some legislator meddle in what should be a personal medical decision.

It is quite funny to see all the people flipping their shit about "invasion of privacy" and whatnot, since, you know, that was kind of the point.

Santorum blames Social Security's troubles on abortion, to fix it we need more people

...

Bwuh?

I'm sorry, Mr. Santorum, but that makes no sense under any sort of logic. Now the population pyramid he's referring to is a real thing in the wake of the 1950s baby boom, but that would not have changed even if every abortion in the last 50 years had never happened. The proof? The countries where it's most extreme are where abortion is not legal or readily available and the stratification is significantly more extreme. And do you know why those countries have such an extreme pyramid? AIDS, which has killed off over half of the adult working population in some of those countries. You supported an increase in funding for AIDS research in those countries, so you should know that.

In short, there are far more things that go into that besides abortions. Furthermore, the birth rate started dropping significantly ten years before Roe v. Wade, and the birth rate did not significantly decine after it (in fact, it went up even when the rate of abortion was at the all time highest in 1980-1983) so there really is not a correlation.*

You fail social science forever. It took me all of five minutes to find enough data to show that you're full of shit.

* In the interest of full disclosure, there is evidence that abortion has affected one thing: the crime rate. Which is to say that about 20 years after Roe v. Wade there was a significant drop and the rate has never recovered, and the evidence points to it being because the number of people who would have been entering the criminal justice system dropped because they were not being born. This is an uncomfortable thing for sociologists to talk about, but the evidence speaks for itself.

So this DOMA ruling isn't even 24 hours old and people are already whining that if it gets appealed to a higher court gay people have been "thrown under the bus" by the Obama administration.

I disagree wholeheartedly with both that notion and the idea that we have been thrown under the bus in general. When you're caught up in two wars, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and you have to drag Congress kicking and screaming to the table to get anything done the amount that he has done for us is pretty extraordinary and tops all the stuff done by any president ever (really, look it up!). And since Congress isn't cooperating using executive orders like he has is actually extremely crafty and doing a lot of good, not, as one person commented, "table scraps."

And as for appealing DOMA, there's something in law called due process, and though it usually applies only to individual rights it also applies to state and federal entities. That means that he has to defend the Federal Government and its existing statutes even if he thinks they're a pile of horseshit, which he does on this particular issue and has said repeatedly.

And here's the thing, if this were a law in our favor that was being appealed he'd have to stick up for that too, and people would whine if he didn't. With very few exceptions you can't selectively decide which bits of the law you do and don't want to defend, otherwise the entire system is compromised. He, through Holder, has a certain amount of discretion about whether or not this will go to appeal, but appealing it does not constitute "throwing under the bus." It's just making sure that it's sound legally, which is what we want if we want it to stick.

In other words, haters, pick up a law book or shut up.

And I thought Massachusetts and its politics were strange! 2:25 literally made me laugh out loud.

Go Martha Coakley! She's one step closer to being our senator. Looks like she pretty thoroughly won, though apparently not too many people turned out for this primary, which is a shame just in terms of the electoral process, and I'm the only person in my immediate circle of friends here in Boston that I know voted today. The Globe actually interviewed several Bostonians about why they didn't vote, and though the rest are understandable the first girl (linked here) really irritates me. A lot of people my age seem to be like that, and I get a bit slap-happy when I hear that reasoning. Half of life is just showing up and it took me longer to get to the polling place than to actually vote!

I saw speculation earlier today that the gay vote might make a difference in this election, and I wonder if that's the case. Over the next few days we'll probably hear more, but I know that her suing the federal government over DOMA on behalf of the Commonwealth as the Attorney General certainly helped win me over to her side. That wasn't all of it, but it got me to pay attention to her and find out more about her, and the other guys just failed to convince me to jump ship for them. In reality all of the Democrats in this race were very similar with only a few differences, but knowing her record on doing concrete things towards gay rights was one of the deciding factors for me. A lot of people seem to agree!

Interestingly, I don't recall seeing too many ads of hers on the air while the others guys (or more accurately, mostly Capuano) had a lot, though it might just have been the stations I watch.

So yay for Irish ladies! When we're around, ass gets kicked.

Remind me not to wait 3 weeks to do my laundry again. The basket was overflowing and it took forever, and I think I got several days' worth of exercise going up and down the stairs. I changed the sheets on my bed too and washed the old ones since I'm probably getting up to the point where I'd have to do that.

In comparison, was talking to Krys last week and he admitted that he hasn't changed his sheets in a while (and he sweats a long more than I do) but then again his room is a certified disaster area. I was there last week and he told me that he'd been wondering what the nasty smell hanging around was until he found the milk that he'd meant to throw out because it had gone sour but instead had forgotten about and left on the counter. Yeah. I'm not the tidiest person but I'm nowhere near his level.

I also did the bi-weekly cleaning of the apartment. Seeing as I have allergies I have to be especially careful about the dust, so I made sure to get into places like that. Also, I kept thinking that in Western Mass the cats have a lot of hair that gets everywhere, but here I keep finding clumps of Jen and Nadia's hair. Their hair is a lot longer than mine so I know it's not me, but it was amusing when I kept finding bits of it.

I also rearranged some things in my room, but only slightly. I was mainly trying to move the desk over a bit and get the printer off the desk since it's a space hog. Both worked, I'm glad to say.

I also sent off my voter registration information today so I can vote in the December 8th election. At this point I'm leaning towards our current Attorney General Martha Coakley for Sen. Kennedy's former seat, and she's the candidate I know the most about (not to mention that she's the one trying to get rid of DOMA by suing the Fed on behalf of the Commonwealth, so she gets major major brownie points in my book). I'm not above being swayed, but the other two guys haven't given me any good reasons to change my position as of yet.

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I was no fan of President Bush, but even I never played the Hitler card. Free speech is one thing, being an idiot is quite another, and that comparison falls squarely into the latter.

This comes from what is usually a humor site but this one made such a good argument that they made an exception.

Rep. Barney Frank lashes out at protester for Nazi remark

Rep. Barney Frank lashed out at protester who held a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting on federal health care reform.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to the podium at a southeastern Massachusetts senior center to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy.

"Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it," Frank replied.

Barney Frank, by the way, is gay and Jewish, so the Nazi accusation is 10 times stupider. I pretty much agree with him that that woman was not there to have a conversation, and he seems to have my policy of a conversation being worth one's time while a yelling match is not.

Barney also aptly demonstrates why I probably wouldn't do too well in politics since I'm far too likely to speak my mind and call people on their shit. Barney Frank can get away with it because he's Barney Frank, everyone else, not so much.

Nevada overrides governor's Domestic Partnership veto

The assembly voted 28-14 on Sunday to override the veto by Gov. Jim Gibbons, following a 14-7 vote by the senate on Saturday after an emotional debate. Legislators faced intense lobbying by the tourism industry, which feared a potential boycott by LGBT visitors if the veto was upheld.

Just shows that money talks, and that it works just as well as political leverage. Of course, now there are people suggesting that gays stop giving money to states like Florida because they have some extremely homophobic laws on the books, which I'd be all for. I think I'm under no obligation to give money to people who don't want to treat me like an equal citizen of this country, and there are plenty of other places to spend money. Like Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, or Iowa.

We'll also probably see people "voting with their feet" now that more states have gay marriage laws. Something tells me that when these states see the economic benefit of having us there and throwing fabulous gay weddings the whole "moral dilemma" thing will take a backseat.

Marriage Equality has boosted Mass economy, created 100 Million in revenue and increased number of "creative class" residents

Data show that same-sex couples in the “creative class” were 2.5 more times likely to move to Massachusetts after 2004 than before, while local businesses have benefited from more than 12,000 same-sex couples who typically spent $7,400 on their weddings in the state.

My dad actually knows people at the institute that gathered this data, and they do important work since once we have this we can turn around and say "See?" when people ask what benefits it has on the economy. 100 Million is nothing to sneeze at, plus you've got all the wedding planners and hotels taking in money and jobs to put on gay weddings. My Gay Economic Stimulus Plan is looking better with each passing day, and now six states can take advantage of it.

Also, good for the Terrible Trio (Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis) for saying that the census should count married gay couples. Sure, it doesn't actually do anything legally, but it's an important step and it gets concrete numbers.