Congressman Maintains It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay

The crux of his argument is that being gay is a choice - and something a person can change - and that therefore that person should not be protected from workplace discrimination.

Now, despite the fact that “being gay is a choice” is a ridiculously stupid and untrue statement, I’m going to go with that point for argument’s sake and ask the logical follow-ups to that question:

Congressman, why do you think it should be legal to discriminate or fire someone from their workplace for what they choose to do in their private sex life? Should employers be able to discriminate or fire someone for engaging in premarital sex? What about for non-engagement, aka chastity? How far should an employer go to gather evidence for these accusations of personal sexual activity?

The non-argument of the choice of personal sexuality aside, why do you think it’s a viable argument that your employer should be able to have any say or control of your personal life outside of the workplace? Does this extend to all aspects of someone’s relationship? Can you be fired because your boss thinks your dating the wrong person? Or dating a black guy? What about religion - that’s a choice too. Can you be fired for being - oh, I don’t know - Christian?

If anything, I think you’re making an even dumber and less sensical argument to try and cover up your own biases.

I’m serious though; I’d like answers to the above, because they’re the only logical extensions of his argument, and if he’s actually being honest here, it’s perhaps even more disturbing than him just being a homophobic jackass.

Eduardo Saverin renounces his citizenship for $67 Million in tax savings and people can’t wait to heave vitriol at him.

Mitt Romney moves several hundred million dollars overseas for the exact same reason and people can’t wait to vote him President.

How some people in this country can be so blinded by ideology that it affects their ability to do even the most basic math, I will never know.

kenyatta: U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.” The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. The officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military. Well fuck. via Danger Room | Wired.com It’s a good thing Christianity is a religion of peace, otherwise this whole “wiping whole cities off the map and declaring ‘total warfare’ against one-and-a-half billion people” thing might sound like the crazy that happens when ideology trumps humanity. The saddest part? I’ve heard the same end-goal (the complete destruction of a billion-and-a-half people over an ideological disagreement) from people who weren’t in positions of power but who were just as “Christian” as this fellow. Just ordinary folks whose faith “requires” them to have a zero-sum outlook on the world where opposing viewpoints are mutually exclusive and require extinction. Sure there’s the argument that “it’s only a few bad apples” or “it’s only the more fringe, extreme adherents” - which exactly the same as the argument made when viewing the more violent products of Islam - but it’s hard not to keep seeing the single common identifying factor of “religion” in the mix. Here’s my advice to the world, whether you’re a Christian or Muslim or any other religious affiliation: if your self-identification requires the same thing from the entire rest of the planet, you’ve gone insane. Time to put down the scripture and realize that you’ve been brainwashed into trading your humanity for your ideology, and if you don’t walk back from that edge immediately, you’ll fall off. Let’s review what falling off looks like, for the kids in the back: You’ve been told that the entire rest of the world needs to bend to the whims of your personal worldview, either by voice, by sword, or by the death of the outliers. Doesn’t that sound fucking crazy? Doesn’t that sound laughably irrational to the point where no one would think that any person with the critical thinking skills of a third grader would ever allow themselves to get to that point? Doesn’t a Lt. Colonel (under the supervision and therefore, assumed approval of a two-star General) in the world’s largest and most well-funded military who feels that way teaching other officers the step-by-step process towards reaching that genocidal end goal sound like the scariest fucking thing you can think of? And lest you think that I’m just adding a personal anti-religious bias to the mix, feel free to click through the link and download the PDFs yourself to see “Action Items For Military Officers” like this example, downloadable here that suggest going to mosques to “share the Gospel.” There’s only one cause of this particular type of insanity, and this is its natural effect.
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kenyatta:

U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light.

The officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.

Well fuck.

via Danger Room | Wired.com

It’s a good thing Christianity is a religion of peace, otherwise this whole “wiping whole cities off the map and declaring ‘total warfare’ against one-and-a-half billion people” thing might sound like the crazy that happens when ideology trumps humanity.

The saddest part? I’ve heard the same end-goal (the complete destruction of a billion-and-a-half people over an ideological disagreement) from people who weren’t in positions of power but who were just as “Christian” as this fellow. Just ordinary folks whose faith “requires” them to have a zero-sum outlook on the world where opposing viewpoints are mutually exclusive and require extinction. Sure there’s the argument that “it’s only a few bad apples” or “it’s only the more fringe, extreme adherents” - which exactly the same as the argument made when viewing the more violent products of Islam - but it’s hard not to keep seeing the single common identifying factor of “religion” in the mix.

Here’s my advice to the world, whether you’re a Christian or Muslim or any other religious affiliation: if your self-identification requires the same thing from the entire rest of the planet, you’ve gone insane. Time to put down the scripture and realize that you’ve been brainwashed into trading your humanity for your ideology, and if you don’t walk back from that edge immediately, you’ll fall off.

Let’s review what falling off looks like, for the kids in the back: You’ve been told that the entire rest of the world needs to bend to the whims of your personal worldview, either by voice, by sword, or by the death of the outliers. Doesn’t that sound fucking crazy? Doesn’t that sound laughably irrational to the point where no one would think that any person with the critical thinking skills of a third grader would ever allow themselves to get to that point?

Doesn’t a Lt. Colonel (under the supervision and therefore, assumed approval of a two-star General) in the world’s largest and most well-funded military who feels that way teaching other officers the step-by-step process towards reaching that genocidal end goal sound like the scariest fucking thing you can think of?

And lest you think that I’m just adding a personal anti-religious bias to the mix, feel free to click through the link and download the PDFs yourself to see “Action Items For Military Officers” like this example, downloadable here that suggest going to mosques to “share the Gospel.”

There’s only one cause of this particular type of insanity, and this is its natural effect.

Remember when a “viable” candidate for one of the two major political parties of the most powerful country on the planet officially declared that he believes not all men are created equal?

The disregarding of, or disbelief in the basic premise of The Declaration of Independence sounds like one of those factors that would preclude someone from holding the highest office in the country that was founded upon that document.

BREAKING: Obama embraces marriage equality

OBAMA: I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

I don’t mean to be a killjoy here, but there’s a big difference between personally believing something, and putting the weight of the office of President of the United States behind that belief. One means something, the other…well, to be totally frank, the other means almost nothing at all.

think-progress: The anti-science think tank Heartland Institute has billboards comparing climate science believers and reporters to “mass murderers and madmen” like bin Laden, and the Unabomber. Seriously! Ted Kaczyski and I are both very affected by gravity.
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think-progress:

The anti-science think tank Heartland Institute has billboards comparing climate science believers and reporters to “mass murderers and madmen” like bin Laden, and the Unabomber.

Seriously!

Ted Kaczyski and I are both very affected by gravity.

The GOP is literally marching backwards through history in an attempt to find something to be afraid of.

It’s been happening over the past year, and in each case, they’re making big fear-based cases against groups no longer considered scary or threatening to the majority of the American public. It just goes to prove that the Republican party requires an enemy to exist, as they can’t float on ideas alone.

  1. Gay people!
  2. Women!
  3. Immigrants! (More specifically, Mexican and other Latin American immigrants.)
  4. Black people!
  5. Communists! (Seriously, just happened this morning.)

Are they just trying to show that the only thing they’ve got to push is fear? Honestly, and I mean this as someone who’s voted Republican a number of times in the past, it’s just really…pathetic.

Yes, there will always be a handful of people who vote based on racism, sexism, homophobia, or lingering anti-communist fervor. But unless your plan is to gather together every single one of these disparate groups into one big voting bloc, all you’re doing is making the rest of the country (to say nothing of the rest of the world) shake their heads at the senility of grandfathers tilting at windmills.

It’ll be okay GrandpOP - you’re safe, but the world’s different now. We’ll make sure you’re comfortable and continue to endure your nonsensical rants; sadly watching the slow creep of insanity as you waste away before our eyes.

Marco Rubio’s war on disco

markcoatney:

univisionnews:

By UNIVISION NEWS
Channel: Politics, Entertainment

Marco Rubio has found something he dislikes more than President Obama and questions about the vice presidential nomination: disco.

Read More

Oh, come on. How are you not going to click on that link?

Mark my words: Rubio will be the pick for Romney’s VP candidate. I don’t particularly like him, but he’s the only choice they can make. If he says no, they’ll just keep asking until he says yes.

Rachel Maddow: Individual mandate, Republican idea turned Republican scorn

Rachel Maddow on how a federal “Individual Mandate” for health insurance was a policy invented by Republicans, supported by nearly the entire Republican party, pushed by nearly the entire Republican party, and then - once Obama supported it - attacked by nearly the entire Republican party as “tyrannical” and unconstitutional.

Say what you will about the mandate - as I’ve said, I’m not the biggest fan - but there’s a tremendous amount of hypocrisy coming from one side of this argument.

Again.

the consumer is given the option of participating in a private “due process” proceeding, provided they have $35 to spare. In the proceeding, the content owner is presumed to have both identified the copyrighted work correctly and correctly identified the alleged infringer. The burden of proof is on the consumer to prove them wrong. And the alleged infringer is even limited in the ways they can attempt to do that. In essence, the Copyright Alert System is an effort to privately rewrite copyright law to make an accused liable for infringement until proven innocent.

Op-ed: Imminent “six strikes” Copyright Alert System needs antitrust scrutiny

Or

How the entertainment lobby and ISPs are going to charge you a lot more money to really fuck you over.

maxistentialist:

Rick Santorum on Dan Savage:

I would tell him that I’m praying for him. He obviously has some serious issues. You look at someone like that who can say and do the things that he’s doing and you just pray for him and hopefully he can find peace.

Dan Savage on Rick Santorum:

Rick Santorum thinks that women who have been raped should be compelled—by force of law—to carry the babies of their rapists to term, he thinks birth control should be illegal, he wants to prosecute pornographers, etc., etc., basically the guy wants to be president so that he can micromanage the sex lives of all Americans…and I’m the one with issues? Because I made a dirty joke at his expense eight or nine years ago and it stuck? I’m the one with issues?

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Rick can pray for me. I’ll gay for him. And we can call it even.

Nicely played, Mr. Savage.

GOP Presidential hopefuls call President’s speech “inexcusable,” “unacceptable” - demand an apology.

Responding to President Obama’s public remarks earlier today, GOP candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich have each called on the President to apologize.

“It is inexcusable,” Gingrich said while calling into the Mike Carr show earlier today, “He should know better, and the American people deserve an apology.”

Santorum was willing to go further, in a town hall meeting in Shrieveport, IL, where he told a crowd, “This President believes that he can just say anything he wants! Anything! And that you have to listen!”

Romney, as has been his campaign strategy, had a somewhat softer response, “I understand that the President feels he should be able to speak to the American people, but the American people simply don’t want to hear it. It just shows how out of touch he is with the average American.”

President Obama has made it a habit to speak to the American public on a regular basis, a tactic the GOP has continually lambasted as “offensive” and “harmful to the moral fiber of America.” Earlier this year, former Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann even sponsored a bill to prevent the President from speaking publicly, calling it the “Silencing Satan Bill of 2012.”

Obama, for his part, has steadfastly refused to apologize for his speech, calling for more tolerance for the ideas of non GOP party members, and increased bipartisan communication.

“We all should have a voice in America’s future,” he said, addressing college graduates in Tennessee last year, “All ideas should be welcome and debated on their own merits and considerations.”

As expected though, GOP chairman Reince Priebus balked at the idea, stating on the Fox News program Fox’s Friends, “We’ll not stop until we’ve completely eliminated even the possibility of President Obama’s speech reaching public ears. It’s inexcusable, unacceptable, and immoral, to do anything otherwise, and it’s our party’s mission to make sure we never have to hear Obama’s speech again.”

(Inspired by this)

Natural Born Drillers - NYTimes

More drilling: the energy solution for people who can’t do basic math.

ricksantorum-2012:

Liberals: Idiots who think that we should focus more on gay marriage and the environment than getting people back to work, creating jobs and protecting our country.

Conservatives: Idiots who think that pie charts should add up to 130%.

Playing politics.

So the Republican Party heavily pushes a war on Iran, which obviously raises oil speculation prices, which in-turn raises the price of gas at the pump, and then blames Obama for high gas prices?

Man that’s evil.