Jackie Curtiss and the Generational Divide, Michael D. Higgins vs. Michael Graham, The Big Lie, Brown Vs. Savage, Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand cosplay, the ferret in the dishwasher, Mitt’s Medicare Time Bomb, McCaskill leads by 10, Twentysomethings skipping cars and houses, and Oxy Addicts in WV and the War on Drugs.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, we have Jackie Curtiss. Jackie Curtis is a delegate for Rick Santorum at the Republican National convention. She’s staunchly pro-life. She objected to the amendment to the GOP party platform banning medication that terminates human life after conception. She also voted against abstinence-only education.
Jackie Curtis is 22 years old, and was the youngest person on the platform committee by a decade.
When we look at the Republican party today, three adjectives come to mind: old, white, and Christian. The next generation in America is young, multiracial, and multi-religious. If the GOP is going to survive, they need to start listening to Jackie Curtis. I might disagree with her vehemently on abortion, but she’s at least realistic when it comes to sex ed, and rightfully so: proper sexual education conclusively decreases unintended teen and young adult pregnancies that often end in abortion.
This is the generational divide. An old and tired plurality vainly holding on to the reigns of power to forestall a new majority that will rewrite the history books the same way they once did.
Next up, from our dear departed Newsbunny, we have an interview from May 2010 with Tea Party radio personality Michael Graham and President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins.
My favorite quote:
Be proud to be a decent American, rather than a wanker whipping up fear.
Amen, President Higgins.
One thing we’ve touched on is the fact that the Romney/Ryan campaign literally can’t go a day without lying. Whether is repeating an old one, or making up a new one, they are habitual, chronic liars. The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky explains why:
These guys may not be able to count, but they can read polls, and so they know very well that if they gave the county the honest debate we were told we were going to have about Medicare, and for that matter about taxation, they’d wake up Nov. 7 with about 120 electoral votes in their pockets and conservatism in tatters.
Bingo. The Romney/Ryan plan is DEEPLY unpopular. I think even 120 electoral votes would be a stretch. It would almost assuredly cost the GOP the Senate, and potentially the House as well.
A few months ago, The Stranger‘s Dan Savage gave a speech at a high school comparing the Bible’s views on slavery and shellfish to homosexuality, noting that we as a society would get over it, and several students walked out in protest. The National Organization for Marriage’s President, Brian Brown, challenged him to a debate, which was to take place at Savage’s home after dinner.
Here’s the debate. It’s about an hour long, and Brown jumps through more rhetorical hoops than Flipper on meth to justify his position.
Here’s the aftermath from the New York Times’ Mark Oppenheimer, in which he acknowledges that there really isn’t middle ground here. If you’re basing your opposition to gay marriage on a strict reading of the Bible and a reliance on “natural law”, you’re not going to magically decide that it’s okay just because you had dinner with a gay person and their partner.
Most people have read Ayn Rand, either in the form of The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a big fan, particularly of copper magnate Francisco d’Anconia from Atlas Shrugged.
Everyone remembers John Galt’s 40-odd page radio address towards the end of Atlas Shrugged, which continues to hold the record for “Place In A Book Where Normal People Go “Fuck this shit.” And Stop Reading”.
What people don’t remember is d’Anconia’s speech, also from Atlas Shrugged, which goes on for 23 paragraphs.
I think Objectivism, Ayn Rand’s philosophy, would be more approachable if the explanations weren’t quite so long-winded.
Worth noting: like ferrets, the Tea Party also smells pretty bad.
Speaking of Mitt Romney, he’s created Medicare Time Bomb in the form of a policy that repeals Obamacare with nothing to replace it. Don’t worry everyone, all we have to do is elect him President and he’ll tell us his secret plan to fix Medicare. Here’s a hint: there will be a special guest appearance by Future Mitt Romney.
In other news, Rasmussen polling is saying that Claire McCaskill is up ten points on Todd Akin. On average, she’s up 6. In other news, Claire McCaskill will be going home and not coming out until Election Day.
Well, let’s see here. There;s a decent chance you have five, perhaps six, figures in student loan debt before you ever get your first job. That first job, by the way, pays comparatively less in terms of wages versus productivity than every entry level job since about 1970. That, of course, assumes you can get a job, which is by no means a guarantee. Maybe you’re using that fancy college degree to wait tables or deliver sandwiches for $7.25 an hour. Maybe you had to take an unpaid internship. Long story short: you probably have no money.
Assuming you have money, you probably work in an urban area. That means higher housing costs. However, it also means a lot of rental properties and apartments as well. On the car front, there’s probably public transit, especially in major cities.
So you see, it’s not that we don’t want cars or houses, it’s that we can’t afford them and/or don’t need them.
Conor Freidersdorf has a great article on what OxyContin addicts in West Virginia can teach us about the War on Drugs.
The best good that can come from a dramatic shift on the War On Drugs is beating our proverbial swords into plowshares and using those billions of federal dollars to help treat addicts and rebuild broken communities.
