DOMA Arrigato Mr. Obam-o

That is a horrible post headline! Meh.

The Obama administration just announced it will stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court. Cool!

DOMA was one of those fairly odious pieces of law Bill Clinton supported during his reelection campaign in 1996. It defined marriage as a union between a male and female and denied the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. What?! Bill Clinton signed that you say? Yeah he did! People should stop thinking he was the man so much -- name one piece of legislation Obama has signed that is so obviously both morally wrong and a sell-out of his core constituency. (Note: this is an unfair question. Obama hasn't had to do this yet because he had unified Democratic control of both houses of Congress. But still!) Clinton had a bunch. Don't Ask Don't Tell. DOMA. Uhh...NAFTA to some people I guess but I like that one. The point is he compromised his values a lot for the sake of winning elections, and I don't think there's much of an argument you can make that Obama has or will do that.

Anyway, this is really good. It's one more step toward gay marriage, which is really one of the most no-brainer civil rights issues of our time. I generally credit whoever disagrees with me with having at least a legitimate argument. Pro-life? I disagree, but I can see why you would want to err on the side of protecting a life if you can't really determine when "life" begins. Tea Party? Bunch of nuts, generally, but concerns about spending and the deficit need to be taken seriously for our long-term stability. Etc. etc. But I really have never heard any kind of cogent, fact-based (not theological) argument against gay marriage. I've heard a lot! They're all ridiculous.

UPDATE: 8 gay rights victories since Obama took office.

What Americans Think of Inequality in One Graph

Blatant rip-off of Ezra Klein. I <3 that guy. I even ripped off his title! Can I be sued for that? Someone call a lawyer!

Gaddifisms

This Gaddafi guy is a legitimate supervillian. These are actual, real quotes from the speech he gave today. He sounds like Lex Luthor!

"Today, when you say Libya—yes, Libya, Qaddafi, Qaddafi, the revolution! All the African people now consider Libya the leader, even Asia—the world leaders, now—all of them, everyone, with their power, are against Libya…. They defame your image in, unfortunately, now, the Arab media, who are serving the devil. Now it’s the time to respond with action on the ground, in the square…. The revolution means always sacrifice until the end of the age.

 Muammar Qaddafi is the history, the resistance, freedom, honor, revolution…. When the bombs were bombing this area and killed my kids, where were you at the time, where were you people? Now they’re talking in the dark about me!… This is Muammar Qaddafi. This is the house of Muammar Qaddafi."

"PS I wear white togas embroidered with rhinestones to the funerals. BECAUSE I AM EVIL."

"I will die as a martyr"

This guy sucks. Here's what he had to say today, annotated:

"I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents [that's why i don't know how to dress]... I will die as a martyr at the end." [that would be cool! let's make it happen]

"I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired [this is a lie]... when I do, everything will burn [that is scary]."

"You men and women who love Gaddafi [no one knows Qaddafi's name is spelled with a G or a Q. obviously Q's are cooler, so from now on I'll use the G spelling] ...get out of your homes and fill the streets. Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs [lairs always sounds insidious but i think he means "public squares and parks"]... Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them."

Shouting in the rambling speech, Gaddafi declared himself "a warrior" and proclaimed: "Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world" [blah blah i love africa and wearing window drapes]

Seriously, this is exactly the worry for these protesters in the rest of the Middle East: most regimes are REALLY OPPRESSIVE AND MURDEROUS. I think the best hope now is that the military turns on him and, yes, kills his brains out. There's not much the U.S. can do. Diplomatic pressure won't mean monkey crap to this loser-dictator.

Also, Libya is the world's 3rd largest oil-producing nation. This could REALLY cause a disruption in the world's oil-flow and lead to massive gas price shocks. Watch out summer, gas could easily hit $5/gallon for a sustained period. Honestly, I think something like that could really hurt Obama. People HATE high gas prices, and there is very little he can do about it. Damn!

Fashion Icon

Guess which one is Qaddafi.

"Michelle has the same dress!"

Call me Davy Crocketerrorist!

I am wearing designer 3-d glasses

I love Africa so much that I wear it. It is not tacky, I promise.

I picked out this dress in Blinds-To-Go! 20% off!

Eagle Scout

Libya

Looks like Libya is teetering on the brink of revolution itself now. Cool! Qaddafi is way worse of a dictator than Mubarak or whoever was in charge in Tunisia (both in terms of human rights abuses to his own people and his impact on American interests abroad). Plus he's really weird looking and has a bad fashion sense.

BUT. I was reading a conversation with Gail Collins (liberal NYT columnish) and David Brooks (moderate conservative NYT columnish) where Collins stupidly said something like "who knows, maybe if we hadn't invaded Iraq, the Iraqis themselves would be throwing out Saddam now, just like the Egyptians did." I think we can all agree that that would be nice. However, as Brooks astuteley countered "Saddam would shoot!" Meaning that, unlike Mubarak who lost control of the military, Saddam would've just slaughtered all the protesters. How do we know? He did! He gassed the Kurds in the mid-90s. "He gassed his own people" - George W. Bush. I quote a lot of people who were terrible at their jobs in this blog, apparently. Anyway, the question now to me is -- will Qaddafi shoot his own people in order to retain power? I don't know. I mean, he's already killed some of them, but the real question is will he just unleash the army on the protesters with absolute license to kill. I don't think he will, but he might. He's pretty crazyevil.

UPDATE: This is exactly what I was talking about. Some Libyan colonels are fleeing the country so they don't have to bomb the civilians, but others are bombing indiscriminately...

Let them eat cheese or something

So this business up in the cheese state with the public sector unions maybe losing the right to collectively bargain and the Democrats leaving the state. Really weird! But not weird in the sense that it's unheard of - weird in that this is actually a pretty old form of political protest, dating back to the founding of the country! As my sister can probably tell you more about (happy birthday Emily!), when the Founding Fathers were debating whether to ratify the Constitution back in 1787, the Pennsylvania Antifederalists refused to show up for the vote so that the pro-Constitution folk wouldn't get a quorum. (I think that's right, correct me if I'm wrong, 3 readers). Anyway, it's basically identical to what the Democrats are doing in Wisconsin today, and what they did in Texas in 2002 when they protested Tom Delay's redistricting plan, and what I'm sure Republicans have done in the past too -- denying quorum to slow things down.

More big picture -- is this a good thing for democracy? Sort of. It seems filibustery to me, in the sense that it just slows down the process. That's ok to a degree. The problem in Congress, which I'll probably talk about more later, is that the filibuster is no longer a tool to slow things down and force more negotiation/compromise/consensus - it's a pure tool of obstruction. That is bad and anti-democratic. This stunt is more in line with the traditional filibuster, which blocked the majority from ramming legislation through. I'm more ok with that. Clearly, SOMETHING will happen with the public sector unions - maybe Democrats will get a slightly better deal than they would've before.

Closing thought: What the governor of Wisconsin is trying to do isn't unprecedented. Lots of states have weak collective bargaining rights for their unions.

Chart!