America (tm)

To quote a past acquaintence of mine, "Corporate Personhood is a ridiculous as Person Corporatehood."

The debate is ongoing and the history long; I will restrict myself to proposing a solution to the problem, obviously revealing myself as one of those that feels "corporate entities" are not entitled to the same rights as actual, individual, human citizens. My chief reasoning is identical to that of former Veep Al Gore; corporate money poisons the well of Democratic governance. For more information, I suggest starting with Wiki, as they have a pretty good summary of the matter. Suffice that the issue has been woven togetehr by a series of really piss-poor SCOTUS decisions.

I see two possible methods of resolving the issue, one of which is simple, the other complex and neither likely to be popular among among those with the power and interest in fighting them.

In both cases, we must adopt some specific words and definitions by way of Ammendment.

In the first (simplest) case, the word to be defined is "citizen". For our purposes, the deffinition must include laguage that specifies that only American citizens have the right to petition their Representatives (to included all elected officials) and that a citizen is an individual who is or has been at least potentially capable of holding an elected office.

The other potential soluation is identical, save for the route it must follow. In this case...we must make allies with the Pro-Life lobby in establishing the definitions of life, humanity and citizenship; by doing so we must likely give up Roe v. Wade...but that is a battle that can be fought again later if need be. What matters, first and formost in this case is establishing the difference between a human being, which can be a citizen, and a non-human entity, which cannot.

Trenchfoot-in-mouth

RNC Chairman Michael Steele

VS

President Barrack Obama

It has got to be so difficult trying to be "the other Black Guy". Brother Michael has managed not only to humiliate himself by demonstrating near genius-level incompetence (no, that is not an oxymoron) but now by apparently completely losing all sense of time and the laws of causality. This is the only explanation for his statement that Afghanistan is, "a war of Obama's choosing."

FACT: The Afghanistan War was initiated by persons under the protection of the then-government of Afghanistan, during the administration of G. W. Bush.

FACT: Michael Steele had nothing but good to say about the entire affair when it was under Dubbya's (and Steele's own party's) purview.

FACT: It is Michael Steele's job to get as many Republicans elected to office as possible, by any means he can.

THEORY: Michael Steele is saying anything he can think of to tear down Democratic opposition on the broadest possible level in anticipation of this year's elections, in the desperate hope of both remaining relevant in the wake of the nation's first black President and keeping his job in the wake of his own astounded failures.

Fourth and Down-trodden

In the history of political chutzpah yesterday's move by the Republican Governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, should go down as a doozy. Now I understand that general obstinacy and tantrum throwing are the preferred modus operandi of the homophobic cult, but this silliness in Hawaii is really becoming telling of the whole thing. First, a quick history lesson:

Hawaii has been wrestling with civil rights since the early 1990's. The issue came up to the state Supreme Court as an equality case and the court ruled that the state could not deny gay people the rights it granted straight people. Before they could rule directly on marriage equality however, a ballot issue was rammed through, reserving the right to decide the issue to the legislature. Speaking for myself, this is dirty pool, old man; I'll allow it however, on the grounds that bench legislation smacks powerfully of Kritarchy.

So the homophobes demanded the matter be legislated; very fine, this was done. The result, after many years, was that the State's legislature voted, in both House and Senate, to adopt the establishment of "civil unions", with the legal obligation that Hawaii would, in all matters under State jurisdiction, guarantee exactly the same rights to "civil union-ed couples" as they would married couples.

This state of affairs, however, was apparently not satisfactory to the good Governor who spewed the following gems:

"There has not been a bill I have contemplated more or an issue I have thought more deeply about during my eight years as governor than House Bill 444 and the institution of marriage; I have been open and consistent in my opposition to same-gender marriage, and find that House Bill 444 is essentially marriage by another name; The subject of this legislation has touched the hearts and minds of our citizens as no other social issue of our day; It would be a mistake to allow a decision of this magnitude to be made by one individual or a small group of elected officials."

So, let me make sure I understand this: The State Supreme Court said, "Equal treatment under the law," and so the homophobes changed the rules to give it to the legislature. The State Legislature said, "Equal Treatment under the law," and so now the homophobes are going to move the goal posts too? This is a great idea; instead of winning the debate on the merits of your argument, keep changing the rules until they give up and quit. Can you imagine the outrage if my team started tyring to pull that sort of crap? What the hell kind of message does this send our children? That anything is permissible as long as you get what you want?