I have heard all the arguments in support of Proposition 8 but what they really boil down to fear and bigotry. One of the chief supporters of Proposition 8, Bill May, even said on Forum that he does not want to legally be considered a bigot by saying that gay marriage is wrong so he wants to amend the California constitution to agree with his position. I have news for you Bill, codified discrimination is still discrimination and that means you’re still a bigot. Furthermore, history shows us clearly that separate but equal is inherently not equal and civil unions functionally are not equal to marriage as well as being socially not equal to marriage.

Another thing history does well is judge and I am confident it will not judge us, as Californians, well for the passage of Proposition 8. This proposition puts a deep stain on a day where many of the stains of past inequality have seemingly washed away. Those of you out there who voted in support of limiting the rights of your fellow citizens, fellow Americans, have a deep stain on your hands.

No amendment, bill, law, or ordinance limiting the rights of a select and defined group should ever pass in today’s America but one has and for that I cannot rest easy.

This concept of a finite number of marriages being continuously transferred through time would explain the language used by those in support of the current anti-gay marriage proposition (Proposition 8) on the ballet. This language includes terms like “protect marriage” and “restore marriage” as if it is in limited supply.

My problems with this particular rhetoric are as follows:

• Marriage is an abstract concept and not finite so it does not need to be dolled out in limited supplies rendering the Law of Conservation of Marriage obsolete. So any couple wanting to be recognized as married should be able to do so
• In fact marriage, as far as the state is concerned, is just a contract and there is a limitless supply of those
• The same people that argue against gay marriage are often doing a fine job of screwing up their own marriages so why not let the gay community have the same opportunity to screw up their marriages
• If those opposed feel that gay marriages somehow devalues their own marriage then they have much bigger problems with their own marriage and shouldn’t worry about others
• Separate but equal is not an argument
• Like I noted above, the whole argument is semantic because marriage in the eyes of the state is a contract between consenting adults. Anything beyond that is mostly an issue for religion or the couple in question to sort out apart from the government. And, again, since separate is not equal then any consenting adults should be allowed to marry
• Most people do not support gay marriage also do not support the government putting regulations in place that affect their lives but they are more then willing to put a regulation in place that affects other peoples’ lives, which I find painfully hypocritical

As someone who is on my way to the altar, I personally find the institution lacking in that it is not all inclusive and in so much as it is used as a tool of repression it is, in fact, diminished. I hope that one day the stain of repression will be washed away from the institution of marriage not only for those seeking to enter into it but also so that through my own marriage I will no longer feel divided from a group of my fellow citizens.

I would find the whole dynamic between the many sides of this economic crisis hilarious in its irony if the situation wasn’t so dire.

The die-hard free market capitalistas clamoring and pleading for one of the, if not the, biggest socialistic moves into their holiest of holy free market are probably the most amusing group in this whole debacle. Here we have people who will decry and bemoan the slightest regulation on nearly any aspect of business as inferring with the free market and infringing on their right to conduct business in the way that they see fit. This is a group of people who will swear up and down that the market is guided by an invisible hand (essentially meaning the consumer) that guides a completely self correcting system so long as that system is left to its own devices. And, yet, it is these very people who are all but demanding that the government step in to “artificially” correct the mess that their unregulated market has become. Granted there are some ideologs from this group in Congress who, despite the apparent need, will not sign off on the bailout but these make up a minority when compared to the calls from Wall Street.

I do not understand how we have not grasped the fact the fact that an unbridled free market does not work and never did. If this is not proof that some regulation is good then I do not know what kind of catastrophe will solidify that point. Bottom line; it should not get to this point. There would be no need for a massive injection of the government into the economy if those responsible for regulating the market would do so responsibly. To borrow an idea from the medical field, preventative measures are always better and cheaper in the long run. Over the last eight or so years our economy was like a four-hundred pound fat kid with diabetes cramming down sugar while his mom sat by and watched because her baby knows when to quit. And, now that the fat kid has slipped into a coma mom finally decided to take him to the doctor who is ready to try anything to save the kid. But, I guarantee that once the kid looses some weight and wakes up, mom is just going to take him home and let him start back on the sugar because her baby knows when to quit. When really what that kid needs is a good set of dietary rules to follow and a mom that is going to enforce those rules and even come up with new ones if some new, exciting candy bar hits the market.

Put another way, the market is a just a very big and complex game and like any game with any complexity it needs well thought out and well enforced rules and when someone releases an expansion to the game it better come with some new rules as well.

One major difference you will notice with the real life conflict is the lack of U.S. and/or NATO forces doing anything about it. Here is a prime example of a prolonged war in Iraq preventing the U.S. from acting with NATO forces toward nearly the exact mission that NATO was designed to carry out. The U.N. and other international bodies and leaders can call for Russia to cease fire all they want but the Russians know that there is no one to stop them from rolling over Georgia and securing the highly strategic Caucus region, which provides plenty of access to oil reserves in the Black Sea.

Honestly, with how things have been going, I can see this being the (or at least laying the groundwork for the) death knell for NATO.

Now, at the risk of actually sounding elitist, who the hell buys into this line of reasoning? These accusations hold no bearing on any of the important issues, of which there are many to discuss, in a presidential election. This form of name calling (and that is what this amounts to) takes away from a much needed serious debate over real and valid policy differences between the candidates, but who wants to talk about policy when you can simply paint your opponent with a broad brush that dismisses he/her ideas out of hand? These tactics simply take advantage of the lowest form of sensationalism and play to fears of a people desperate for some stability and control over their lives. I hesitate to define what I mean by stability and control but suffice to say I believe the government exists to serve and protect the people and that service is not limited to simply providing infrastructure for business and protection from foreign enemies.

Furthermore, when you look at the source of the accusations of elitism you really have to ask yourself, isn’t this a bit of the pot calling the kettle black? Those that benefit most from a supposedly “elitist” administration are those who cannot afford the very amenities the Right claims to be the hallmarks for liberalism while those that benefit most from the “conservative” position enjoy a far more elite lifestyle than 99% of the American people. For instance, McCain contributors, the Hilton family are the pinnacle American elite and yet somehow identify with the side of the political field that decries elites (although it is nice to see that even the Hiltons find this low form of political maneuvering insulting to the American people no matter the source). The nasty truth is, although both sides hold true elitists in their numbers, the Right is far more elitist, in the real sense of the word, and generally seeks to insure their status at the expense of those who, like me, are average.

It would be unfair of me to imply that all Republicans (note: I have deliberately used the party name here and not the term conservatives because both liberal and conservative have lost their true meaning to the point where neither accurately describes either party in the least) in some way seek to ensure the power of the elite because that simply is not true as much as it is not true that all Democrats are elitist that seek to govern from an ivory tower, but the party demographics do not lie and the base of the Republican party certainly fits the bill of “elite” far better than the base of the Democrats.

And, really, when we are talking about presidential candidates we are talking about the elite of the country in terms of education, wealth, and social standing, which in my assessment makes charges of elitism between any candidates meaningless. So, can we just get back to debating the issues where we have real and meaningful differences so that single-issue voters on both sides can piss me off too?

I have been away from reading comics for some time now (why read them when they make kick ass movies, right?) mostly because of the cost and my inability to keep up with getting each issue. All of this changed with the release of Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. This comic is based on the epic seven part novel series, Dark Tower, penned by Stephen King over the last thirty or so years. The novels have their ups and downs as far as quality goes and there are a few parts where I would say it jumps the shark only to scrape its way back to some semblance of its former greatness. But, one aspect of the series that remains interesting throughout are the flashbacks to Roland’s, the main character, younger days as a gunslinger in training and this is where the comic takes off.

Read the entire review at The Proper Scoundrels.

Which is why I am glad one of my favorite alternasports team is producing some wins. They aren’t taking the big win but Team Columbia has racked up the stage win in the Tour de France. Go home team!

I will continue to write on this blog as well but the subject matter may shift slightly although I can’t really articulate how exactly. Also, that posting schedule I had going is pretty much out the window and I know it so I should probably stop kidding myself. I will try to get stuff up here more often than I have been but with the way things have been going a schedule just isn’t in the cards.

For now, you can check out my first post as a scoundrel.

People seem to think that rent control is some sort of charity when really it is a limited market control that ensures some level of affordable housing for hard working individuals. No one seems to complain that air travel costs are regulated in a similar way except for those who own airlines. So why do so many people who don’t own houses oppose rent control? The answer is that Americans have a really bad habit of holding opinions based on a possible (although often unlikely) future condition for themselves. Basically, everyone thinks they are going to be rich someday, no matter how improbably that is, so they vote as if they are rich now. Everyone thinks they are going to one or more homes someday so they vote as if they own those homes now. These people think that rent control will hurt they future, mythical, income.

Without rent control I truly believe the city I live in, San Francisco, would not function because the working, lower middle class (that would be me), and probably the true middle class would slowly but surely be driven to the fringes of the city as they are forced to move out of their rent controlled apartments and homes because of any number of reasons (marriage, needing a larger place for children, roommates leaving, etc.) and eventually out of the city all together. And, with the poor job market coupled with food and gas prices quickly outstripping wages, those people will likely seek jobs closer to where they live to save where they can, which will essentially strip San Francisco of its labor force. If wages kept up with the cost of the living increase that will result from a completely free rental market then we would not have such a big problem but the fact of the matter is that wages do not keep up with cost of living these days.

Furthermore, for those of you who seem to think that you will own a home in San Francisco, killing rent control will only make that dream harder to attain because increased rent prices make for increased home prices and San Francisco proper home prices have not dropped to a more realistic level in the wake of the sub-prime debacle so removing rent control will only serve to buoy home prices at this artificially high level. If you make less than double median income say good bye to your San Francisco (or LA, or Oakland) dream home.

Finally, and I’ve heard this a lot, telling someone that if they can’t afford to live somewhere they should move is and age old and widely rejected argument against wage increases and rent control. The truth is that if large groups of people, and I am talking about a generally skilled and well educated workforce, can no longer afford to live in an area that have lived in for some then there is something wrong with the economy of that area and something, like rent control, should be done to fix that economy. The “just move” argument is as callous and elitist as it is stupid.

Having lived in two cities now with some level of rent control that I could not have lived in otherwise as new college graduate (putting me at an advantage over nearly 66% of the population) and now a mid-level white collar worker, even if I was a home owner I could not in good conscience or good sense vote for prop 98. Please vote no on Proposition 98.

Go to SmartVoter.org and find your polling place and vote on June 3rd.

On a side note, I am really looking forward to game 4 of the western conference finals tonight. Gonna be making some beer battered Cod and steak fries (maybe I will post something about the food), and wearing my new Lakers hat (delivered straight from LA thanks to my lovely girlfriend). I’m hoping the game goes better than the last one but I am thinking the Spurs just needed to make LA taste their own blood so that the Lakers can go into a berserker like rage.