Here We Go Again

Seattle will be raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour. It's nice to live somewhere in the US where the elected officials actually care about the people. Perhaps somebody should suggest it to Congress.

Elsewhere, I see that Pope Francis has jumped the shark. After working so hard to appeal to non-Catholics, and reasonable people in general, he said in a speech that married couples who choose not have kids will regret it, doomed to end up lonely and bitter in their old age. As lonely and bitter as all those childless priests that the Vatican forces to remain celibate, maybe?

So the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, as expected. Good news for the couples in states where gay marriage is legal - now the federal government can't pretend their marriages aren't real.

Something of a sneaky move by the Supreme Court on Prop 8 - they managed to leave the California court's ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional to stand, thereby killing off Prop 8, without setting a precedent that would mean no state can ban gay marriage. I find it a little odd that they even took the Prop 8 case in the first place - their conclusion that private citizens don't have the right to defend a law that the government won't support was equally valid months ago.

And then, of course, there was the dedicated Wendy Davis, with her nearly 11 hour filibuster in the Texas State Legislature yesterday, and the equally determined crowd of her supporters who managed to stop the bill when her filibuster was halted. The bill would effectively have made it impossible to get an abortion in Texas outside major urban areas - unreasonable demands placed on abortion clinics would have forced most of them to close. When Davis' filibuster was ended and it looked as if the bill might pass, the public gallery took over from her and created a fifteen minute wall of cheering and clapping that stopped the vote from being held. The live stream at that point was pretty awesome, with utter chaos in the Capitol.

After the midnight deadline, when the crowd went quiet, the Senate vote was held, and the timestamp on the official records was altered to make it look like the vote was held before midnight. At least the lieutenant governor, who personally supported the bill, was honest about it, and admitted that the bill was out of time.

So, democracy vs democracy - the elected representatives voted one way, and their constituents turned out in person to say, 'Hey, this isn't what we wanted you to legislate.' Good for them.

I understand that you have deeply heartfelt beliefs on the best way to fix the economy. I understand that you are reluctant to compromise your ideals on this point.

If only we had some way to ask the people what they think on the matter. We could call it 'voting'. You could choose a spokesperson who would stand up on TV and talk a lot about the need to cut welfare spending. The Democrats could have a guy who talks about the need to support the poorest in society and taxing rich people more to pay for it. Then each citizen could choose between the two, and we could count up all their choices.

If we did all that, the whole crazily involved, ridiculously expensive voting thing, and your guy lost by some reasonable margin - if that happened, perhaps you could go along with the people and actually agree to some of Obama's plans for at least a whole month afterwards, maybe?

Dear Americans, thank you so much for proving that you can still be sane.

Of course, he still won't be able to get anything done, because the Republicans in the House will be the same old obstructionist, filibustering gits, but at least we don't get Mitt in charge.

Following on from yesterday's post, the people of North Carolina voted for a law they didn't understand, which means the State now officially cannot recognise common-law marriage of any kind. So what's going to happen in those districts of North Carolina that had already chosen to give benefits to unmarried couples in long term relationships? Will they obey the new state law and cut them off? We await the screaming....

On February 1, the Washington State Senate voted to approve SB 6239, the marriage equality legislation, by a vote of 28-21.

Now the bill moves to Congress, where we know it has enough support to pass easily, and we also know the governor will be delighted to sign it into law. That will make Washington the seventh US state to approve same sex marriage. Yet another reason I like living here :-)

Of course, it will almost certainly then end up going to a referendum on the November ballot, but that's a whole 'nother fight entirely....

Originally posted by electricdruid at The fiasco continues

Lawmakers from Russia's ruling United Russia party have passed the first reading of a bill to criminalise "public acts" promoting homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender identity in St Petersburg. The bill gives no definition of 'public acts', but is certain to be used to ban gay pride events.

The bill's sponsor stated it was intended to "stop the flow of immoral information that pours over children and young people," in an official commentary. "Sometimes parents and schools are unable to stand up to the powerful showbusiness industry that promotes immorality and permissiveness." The strong implication is that the bill will be used to erase positive LGBT role models from public life and the entertainment industry.

Sign a petition to be delivered to Russian embassies around the world here at All Out.

Sources:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iN30TwwunCPBtqr3Pnt0fxHgrRaQ?docId=CNG.4a103f4c12c31f010418ccb1595560e0.371

http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20111118/168818571.html

I haven't often seen California quail up a tree, but that's where they ended up yesterday morning.

( Oh, no, the squirrels are after us! )

On a completely different subject, I find myself feeling surprisingly positive about the new Lib-Con coalition. There's a great deal of sense in the coalition document, and everyone's in tune about the important things (reducing the godawful debt, removing those nasty, intrusive spying laws, and we're going to get preferential voting, yay!). Europe is basically a non-issue for the next few years, with the euro in such a precarious state, and that's definitely something they can argue about later, once they've done the bigger deals. If they can both hold in check the eejits in their parties (and there are rather more Tory eejits, as an inevitable consequence of the fact that there are rather more Tories), I really think they can pull this off. I certainly hope so.

Whether they do or not, at least the political blogs and columns have been a source of a great deal more amusement over the last few days than they have in years XD Though I do wish they would stop slashing the politicians, my brain doesn't need it.

Not the first hung Parliament of my lifetime, but definitely the first one I can remember.

I thought Gordon Brown was a bloody awful Chancellor after Labour's first term, and a barely credible Prime Minister, but I've always regarded him as a basically honest guy, who actually believed in what he was doing. If he attempts to cling onto power now, after the public have effectively told him to FOAD with around 28% of the vote, he will lose that one piece of respect I had for him. The voters never have elected him, and apparently they never will elect him. The Lib Dems have a point on electoral reform, when it's even possible that Gordon can attempt to call himself PM after this.