Unitarian Universalists in San Diego County (and I suspect throughout California) rallied today to celebrate Equal Marriage being a reality.  We gathered at the county administration offices where marriage licenses are issued and marriages performed to support and celebrate those getting licenses today.

I couldn't get there this morning; my wife had a hell of a schedule and I had to take one son to a dentist appointment.  I'm told there was a rush at and shortly after 8 am at the San Marcos office.  I got there at 1 pm.

There were no protesters.  None.  There weren't any at any time during the day.  There were a couple sheriffs (and cars) there, but they had nothing to do (other than to gently and politely point out that we were blocking one sidewalk at a time when we were with three couples at the same time and in the process sort of spilled out over the whole walk).

Five years ago, I wasn't a member of the Democratic Party.

My earliest overtly political memory is walking a precinct with my parents for Bobby Kennedy.  My father ran for Congress in the next election, an aerospace engineer whose living came from the defense industry... running against the Vietnam War, and in what today we'd call a red district--a gerrymandered district that more or less ensured a Republican would win.

And that's what happened.  Though dad did well--better than any Democrat had in that district--the district ensured a GOP win.  Still, I learned a lot, traveling with my father and listening to politics being talked at home.

I never lost those values.  But sometime around 1990, the Democratic Party no longer really represented them, as far as I could tell.  I left.

Not much of a diary. I admit it.

Sue me.

But this was simply too good to just drop into an open thread.

Cross-posted at Street Prophets.

You just knew... with the insane fulminations of Radio Rwanda and the rest about the horrible War on Christmas, that sooner or later, real people were going to get hurt.

You know--some shop clerk, forced to say "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings," would snap and gun down a store full of frazzled secular humanists, screaming "Jesus is the reason for the season!" (actually, it's axial tilt, but... never mind)  Or some schlub would wish someone he was holding the door open for a "Merry Christmas" and be brutally assaulted, beaten within an inch of his life, and abandoned--only to be shoved into the gutter by some hard-hearted Jesus-hating Jew or Muslim.

But no.

The injury and injustice that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of the military (imposed on it by Congress) has done is pretty well recognized.  It ranges from good patriotic gays and lesbians who seek to serve their nation being hounded from the service to the illegal harassment of straight folk who are falsely accused, to gays and lesbians who would be--and would like to be--good soldiers, sailors, aviators and Marines being steered away from military service.

The vast majority of progressives would like that policy to be done away with, and for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to be permitted to serve in the Armed Forces in exactly the same way, under the same rules, as the rest of us.

The truth is that time is on our side.  Society's views are changing (with frustrating slowness, but steadily). Because of Bush's War, the military is so desperate to make its recruitment numbers that it is dropping standards on who it will let in (both in terms of education and criminal past), and also dropping its standards for keeping people in--behavior which would have resulted in discharge a decade ago is being effectively ignored now.

You may have gone and helped clear and rebuild.

You may have sent what money you could.

You may have railed at politicians about what happened (and what hasn't).

Here's something you can do, and it'll take you just over a minute.

Watch this.

In fact, Sen. Feinstein, don't ask me for money, or time, or a vote, because you'll be getting none of them.

(Oh, don't get a knot in your shorts, my friends.  I'll vote for the Democrat when it comes to the general election, because we need a majority--a supermajority--in the Senate.  Though I'll have to admit with Vichy Dems like Dianne, one has to wonder how supermajority we'll have to elect before our elected officials stop enabling the neocons.)

Those of us who remember Watergate and the fall of Nixon might do the larger community a service, and share the experience and insights.

They're relevant.

I watched it all as a teen, in a family that took politics seriously (my father had run for Congress).  I'm sure others here have different perspectives, and I hope they'll share.

Nod and hat tip to pullbackthecurtain for the diary seeking support in NOLA. And to Wes Clark Jr for the initial idea.

So I'm seeking the same, here in San Diego's North County.

It's Sunday, it's noon to 1 p.m. and it's the local courthouse.  We need not gather at the Federal Building -- though I encourage San Diego folks to do so.  But this needs to be more than something happening in large urban centers.  It needs to happen at every courthouse in America.

Characterize it as you will, the effort to pull tight the purse-strings and defund the war is, for now, a dead issue.  It can and will be talked about endlessly between now and September, when we'll find out if the jellyfish want another FU (no, not the one we're giving them now, that's "Friedman Unit") or a demi-FU....

But there is at least another option. And it's time to work on something else.

A number of my friends and family are practitioners of the art of filking; altering lyrics--either lightly or heavily--to create something new and entertaining.  Mongol Raider Christmas Carols or... well, you get the idea.

I've seen nothing here of the sort in some time.

So with apologies to Crystal Gayle, and malice towards some, follow me over the break, and enjoy.  This one just sort of popped into my head, between the news of the last 48 hours and the wailing over on some... other... blogs.

And feel free to post your own.

Update -- for people who want to know more about filk.

Today, I had to go pick up some food for the kids' pets--and medication for the aging dog.  Those were the only purchases I had to make, all day.

So you can imagine my puzzlement when the ATM/debit card was rejected.  And my annoyance; I've gotten our credit card debt zeroed out, and I studiously keep it that way--in part by just not using the damned things.  So having to charge those items torqued me.

What's this got to do with Netzero, an ISP?  Read on....

I wrote a stern note to Verizon yesterday, regarding their advertising on Coulter's web site, and telling them I'd look elsewhere (well, I also mentioned the NSA issue).  I got a response--but not to both issues.

Thank you for expressing your concern regarding Verizon advertising on
the Ann Coulter Web site.

Verizon Communications purchases Internet advertising using an online
advertising agency.  Although our online agency has been instructed not
to place ads on sites where extreme positions are expressed, the Ann
Coulter site was erroneously selected.  The erroneously placed ad
promoted broadband services, not Verizon Wireless service or products.

Vote... here.

Vote in the poll below for the one candidate you would be most unwilling to vote for (either would not, or would have the gravest reservations and second and third thoughts about voting for).

The link above is to a poll that seeks to allow us to measure hostility and favorability to candidates.  In short, it allows you to rank the listed (and even to add to the list... I think) candidates in by preference.

nyceve and others have already said it better, or at least with more details.

The nation's health care system is broken and dysfunctional, and is not serving the needs of the people. It's time to change it.

What's triggered this?  I'm unspeakably angry.  I've moved on from outraged, and pissed-off, and offended and even furious.  I'm now in that coldly angry state... that doesn't thaw.

Why?

Class, custom and myth proclaims, does not exist here in the American Republic.

It's patent bullshit, and nearly everyone actually knows that.  Attempt to bolster the economic conditions of the majority (everyone from lower-upper class on down) and you hear shrieks of accusing you of committing "Class Warfare."

Watch what happens if someone gets engaged to someone of a significantly different economic class; there will be chatter at both ends.  "Marrying up" (up?  Up?  Up what?  Well, upper class--oop, wait, there's no class in America) and "Marrying beneath one's status" or the like.  Someone's "too good" for someone else.  Too good...

But wait.  We don't talk about class--but we do have a favored euphemism.

Just to keep tabs on what torture is--and isn't--in the view of the wingnuts.

First, a reminder about what the law
says about torture and suffering:

Article 32. A protected person/s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination ... the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment' While popular debate remains on what constitutes a legal definition of torture (see discussion on the Torture page), the ban on corporal punishment simplifies the matter; even the most mundane physical abuse is thereby forbidden by Article 32, as a precaution against alternate definitions of torture. (See Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.)

The late Senator McCarthy is remembered for, among other villainies, waving a sheaf of papers and claiming that he had a list of Communists in the US Government.  Curiously, he never revealed that list--one has to wonder why a man so eagerly beavering away in the vinyards of sour grape politics, helping blacklist so many, would protect hundreds of known, identified Communists who'd deeply infiltrated the federal government.

Yes, one must wonder.

But never let it be said that the GOP forgets a useful lesson in slimy, gutter politics.  No, like a dog returning to its vomit, this particular stunt was reprised just the other evening, in Southern California.