Why Republicans Suck (#2)

The Republican National Congressional Committee is running ads here in the great, progressive, cosmopolitan, evolved, free-thinking, tolerant*, state of Indiana saying that Baron Hill is “too liberal for Indiana” because he voted against the gay marriage ban (which he was correct to do) and because he voted against some bill or other that protected the American flag.

I’m sorry the details here a little bit sketchy at the moment - I only just woke up this morning, and have only seen the ad once. Once I see it again, I’ll write down exactly what the phrasing is and revise the post. I just had to get something down right away because it was so ridiculous. The soul of Indiana is rotting from its conservative innards, and absurd, misleading ads like this - and that the ham-fisted troglodytes who populate this vast intellectual wasteland actually fall for such garbage - are just a couple of the reasons why that is.
UPDATE #1: I saw the sleazy ad a couple more times tonight, but was not fast enough with the pen and dry-erase board to get all of the details. Hill's vote against the gay marriage ban is noted as having come from 2004, and one of the votes "against protecting the American flag" was a House Roll Call Vote in 1999. There were two other votes noted under this heading, and I think they were in 2001 and 2002. Both were House Roll Call Votes, though I did not get the numbers on either one. More to come...
UPDATE #2: House Roll Call Vote 484 on 9/30/04 was the gay marriage vote. One of the three flag votes was House Roll Call Vote 252 on 6/24/99. The other two were later. I can never get all of it written down because these details are, of course, in the small print, and they go by too quickly. Also, the only time I really ever watch TV is when I'm just hanging out with Amy on the handful of night we get together during the week, and that's usually after dinner, during what the TV people think of as "primetime." This particular ad never runs during primetime, apparently because the RNCC cares about keeping Baron Hill's opponent (they won't use his name, so why should I?) in Congress, but not quite enough to pay the primetime ad rates.

By the way, to research House Roll Call Votes, go to:

http://clerk.house.gov/histHigh/Congressional_History/index.html

I suspect that the issue about the American flag has to do with burning that flag, and there is, of course, nothing wrong with doing that. Zero. The only way an American flag can be burned is if it is a physical object made out of materials that are combustible; this is convenient, because most flags that people think to burn are made out of cloth. So go ahead. Burn them. The problem that some people have with this is that they have metaphysically altered the flag - purely in their minds - into being something more than just a combustible piece of cloth. It’s not just a “flag,” oh no; it’s the heart and soul of the greatest country in the world (and the only industrialized one whose people still sit back and accept the fact that their very own profiteering drug manufacturers and doctors refuse to allow their government to provide for the health care of ALL of its citizens in an affordable way), almost a living, breathing thing that they will only allow their feeble minds to understand in one particular, rigid way.

How is that people’s minds come to work this way? Have they so little respect for how much their minds can do, if only those minds are opened and these people apply their existence-granted reason to things like this?

And where did this nonsense come from, in the first place? That something physical could be made more than that just because someone thinks it should be. Oh, that’s right. It came from the Bible, it’s called transubstantiation, and regardless of the name you put on it or where you get the idea from, it boils down to this.

Male bovine fecal matter.

A flag is just a flag. Freedom is an ideal, something everyone has by virtue of being alive. Sometimes it must be fought for. Anyone who opposes freedom, or has taken the freedom of another (of even just one person), has abdicated his or her right to live on earth. None of us can make or do anything correctly without freedom.

I don’t even know if I want to get into the whole gay marriage debate in this post. There are so many things to say about it that it might wind up justifying a whole post of its own. For now, I will simply suffice it to say that there is, of course, nothing wrong with gay marriage. The only argument against it is a biblical one, and it is yet another in a long line of biblical arguments that are no longer relevant in modern society, and which should be discarded posthaste.

You have to get past these things. Take a look at a map of the United States some time, and then try to picture in your head which states are red and which ones are blue. Next, take a moment to figure out which states are the most populous, with the largest economies, and then take a look at what color they are. Get the picture? The smartest, richest (other than the oil-drilling hilljacks), and best-educated people in this country are fleeing middle America and the south, and going out toward the coasts, where the thinking is freer and the minds are more open. What chance does any state in between have to be great if it cannot keep its own liberal free-thinkers within its borders once they have reached the age of reason?

“Too liberal for Indiana?” That is not a valid concept, and it’s a damn shame that far too many people in this state will refuse to use their brains to figure out why it is not a valid concept, and why it could never be.

*I’m kidding, of course. Indiana is none of these things. I think Indiana probably could be great, but what we need are a lot more liberal people to stay in Indiana, and it's just not a place where the enlightened, educated, and liberal want to stay. I suppose that could change one day, but I'm not going to hold my breath.