If you earn less than $75,000 per year, you are in line to get a tax break of about $8 a week.  Let me get out of your way as you grab the car keys to take your $8 and go on a spending binge that will have the economy humming in no time at all.

There are No Earmarks in this Bill

Do you long for the days of Bill Clinton when he waxed philosophical about the meaning of the word “is”?  President Obama said:

“We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert projects without review,” he told reporters on the Hill Tuesday as he tried to build support for the measure.

So, if no Congressional member specifically inserts language about a specific spending request in a particular district, it doesn’t meet the definition of an “earmark.”  So cut out some of the specifics and voila, an earmark is no longer an earmark!  A pet project of Nancy Pelosi, preserving the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mouse, has $30 million, earmarked, er, included in the stimulus bill.

Republican lawmakers said they learned of the marsh money when asking about how various agencies plan to spend stimulus money. The vitality of the mouse has been an issue for Mrs. Pelosi and other California Democrats since the early 1990s.

While the Republicans are raising questions about how American’s tax dollars are being squandered in the name of stimulus, Democrats are responding by calling Republicans unpatriotic, obstructionists, against the will of the American people.  When Speaker Pelosi’s office was asked about the $30 million a spokesman had this response:

“The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. “Restoration is key to economic activity, including farming, fisheries, recreation and clean water.”

Does anyone with a room temperature IQ actually believe that statement?  The spending is in San Francisco which is where Nancy Pelosi’s district it located.  Are we supposed to believe she had nothing to do with $30 million of spending in her district?  Was it a Valentine’s Day gift from Steny Hoyer?  If she knows nothing about it, TAKE IT OUT! Those evil Republican partisans had the temerity to ask this question:

“This certainly doesn’t sound like it will create or save American jobs,” Mr. Steel said. “So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little” critter?

The American People Weigh In

Maybe Pelosi can explain it, but she’s not going to.  Perhaps that is why a recent Rasmussen poll had that 67% of Americans think that they could do a better job on the economy than Congress.  Do you think Nancy’s mouse is one of the reasons for that?  Even more embarrassing:

Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%)are undecided.

Selected at random from the phone book! We pay these people $167,000 a year and we think names drawn at random from the phone book could do a better job!  Is it only me, or does someone else see a problem here?  These clowns are going to bankrupt us and our children and grandchildren, so they can push through this porka-palooza as fast as possible so no one gets a chance to look at it.  Spending didn’t fix the Great Depression.  Spending didn’t end the lost decade in Japan.  Why do we think it will work now?  Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

Tax cuts were proven by JFK, and Reagan, but let’s not try anything that has actually worked before.  The Democrats say that the reason spending didn’t work in Japan is that the spending wasn’t high enough or fast enough!  So, if this “stimulus” fails to work, as many are predicting, we can expect Congress to come back and say, well it’s those Republicans.  They didn’t let us spend as much as we wanted, so now we have to go back and spend $2 trillion.

So while you ponder that, enjoy your $8.  Don’t spend it all in one place.  But when you put your head on the pillow tonight, rest easy, the salt marsh harvest mouse got $30 mill.  But remember, the Democrats are looking out for you.  And don’t forget to start saving $2,500 for each member of your family, because that’s the size of the tax bill the Demcrates will be leaving you and your children.

The scene was rather startling, an elderly woman holding a cross in her hand peacefully demonstrating for Proposition 8 in Palm Springs, California and some miscreant viciously slaps it out of her hand.

At another venue in the Castro district of San Francisco a group of evangelicals were peacefully gathered on the street praying and making themselves available to anyone who wanted speak to him.  One young lady’s bible was stolen and when she asked that it be returned, her request was met with kicking and punching. Nice. So much for the city of tolerance.

So what we are hearing now, which is a formula we have seen before, is if you lose at the ballot box pick up your marbles and head off to find a activist judge who will discover within an evolved Constitution, the fundamental right that everyone missed for the last two hundred plus years and declare the will of the people null and void.

What’s This Really All About?

Here is the actual text of Proposition 8 (leaving out the legalese regarding where it fits in the California Constitution to just get to the meat of it):

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

That’s it.  If you landed here from another planet you would probably wonder what’s going on?  If you are a foreign visitor and see this on the news you would probably think we had lost our minds.  Who would propose a constitutional amendment to define what any idiot knows to be true?  What should we look for next?  A constitutional amendment that defines the world as round?  The sky blue?  The grass green?

But this is not about rights. It is not about tolerance. It is not about fairness.  It is about mainstreaming.  It is about a definition. It starts by tearing down a definition that has existed for several millennia, the definition of marriage.

Once that definition is altered, then terms like husband and wife lose their meaning.  After all, if you are talking about the marriage of Jim and Joe, who is the wife?  If you are talking about the marriage of Jane and Mary, who is the husband?  If husband and wife lose their meaning, then what will soon follow is that it will become politically incorrect to use those terms at all.  Any instance of husband and wife will have to be stricken first from any public documents then eventually from all documents.  In the end we will all just be spouses or significant others or some other bland descriptor.

The reason, in my humble opinion, why the battle lines have been so starkly drawn and the fighting is getting so fierce and will continue to do so, is because this is not about adding to the rights of gays.  It is about taking away how the majority of Americans define themselves.  They just don’t see it as an equivalency.

If you took three islands and put all the heterosexuals on one island, all the gay men on another and all the gay women on the third and came back in 100 years, only one of those three islands would be populated.  So how does A=B=C?

What Was the Point of Marriage in the First Place?

Marriage and the laws that eventually gave it protection and encouraged it were for the purpose of bringing children into the world.  A man and a woman would come together, make a commitment to be bound to each other, to be responsible for each other and in that family unit bring children into the world and provide for their protection, care, and upbringing.  It was survival, not only for that family, but for the community as a whole.

Are there exceptions to the rule?  Yes.  There are couples who for biological or other reasons cannot have children and there are couples who do not want children.  For the former group adoption has been an alternative.  In the case of homosexuals, the rule is the exception.  They cannot have children without adoption or by involving a third party.  So again, how is that the equivalent of marriage?

It’s Not About Rights

Prior to 1920, women were not allowed to vote.  But with courageous leaders like Susan B. Anthony they fought for those rights and won them through the legislative process and by amendment to the Constitution.  They didn’t seek out an activist judge to redefine the term “male” to mean both men and women.

In the 1947 movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the character portrayed by Gregory Peck poses as a Jew to write about the discrimination against Jews in America.  What was the solution?  Did Jews find an activist judge who would redefine them as Episcopalians?  Can you imagine them making that case?

“So, Mr. Levine,” the judge asked, “you want to become an Episcopalian?  Then why don’t you just become one?  Why are you here?”

“No, your honor, I’m perfectly happy being a Jew. I don’t want to become an Episcopalian; I just want to be called an Episcopalian.”

“Let me get this straight.  You want to continue to be a Jew, worship like a Jew and live the life of a Jew, you just want to be called an Episcopalian?”

“Right.”

” Why?”

“Life would be so much easier.”

The battle surrounding Proposition 8 is a similar one, gays don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex in the traditional definition marriage, they just want to be defined the same way.

What Does Sex Have To Do With It?

I think that most Americans are open to the idea that the rights that gays are seeking, such as the right to share and inherit property, the right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, the right to make decisions on the part of a partner that currently go to the next of kin, should be allowed.  But taking it a step further, why should it be limited to those who have sexual relations?

Let’s take a hypothetical case of Felix and Oscar.  Felix and Oscar are heterosexual men.  They are getting on in years, both in their early eighties.  They fought together in WWII.  Their wives are both deceased.  They are not physically attracted to each other.  However, they both feel that at this stage in their lives they would like to look out for each other like they did on the beaches of Normandy and the Ardennes forest.  They want to buy and share a house together, pooling their resources, and look after each others health, and leave whatever financial assets they have to the surviving partner.  Their families, though distant, have no problem with this arrangement.  Why couldn’t these two gentlemen have the same rights that gays are seeking?  Do gays seek a special class that only includes those who are sexually intimate?  Why shouldn’t Felix and Oscar have the same rights?

Stick to the Rights Issue

If gay advocates stick to the rights issue and be inclusive such that any two people, who want to be legally bound and committed, can have the right to share, look after, and care for each other, these rights that gays are seeking would probably be granted quickly.  But if the objective is to tear down something that has existed for several thousand years in order to forcefully mainstream a way of life, then they had better be ready for a battle.  Time and again gays are asking straights to be understanding, to be fair and to be compassionate.  Perhaps it’s time to turn the tables where gays should be understanding, fair and considerate and leave marriage well enough alone.

Most fair minded Americans will support individual rights and oppose discrimination.  But if their way of life, which is not discriminatory, comes under attack you can expect them to battle back.  Marriage is not discriminatory.  It is a loving bound between a husband and a wife.