Things I do--and don't--understand

[scarlettina]

I do understand why the Supreme Court struck down the current law that bans videos of animal cruelty. The majority position is that the law was too broad and threatened First Amendment rights. But the law also went after a specific form of barbarism called crush videos (I can't even link to the Wikipedia entry about this subject; that's how repellent it is), and now such videos are no longer unlawful. The court left open a way for Congress to enact a narrower law that would again outlaw such monstrousness. I hope such a bill is introduced immediately. The creatures who perpetrate and promote such . . . awfulness shouldn't be given a moment's freedom to indulge their sadistic fetish, and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I understand the Tea Party's concerns about the national deficit. What I don't understand is where they were during the last presidential administration when that deficit began and under which it exploded.

Actually, there's nothing I understand about yesterday's rally in Virginia, where ralliers complained about the government's revoking their right to bear arms when, in fact, the Obama administration's broadening of rules in national parks allowed them to hold their rally in a national park in the first place. I also don't understand Rep. Paul Broun, R-Georgia, who spoke at said rally, charging up the crowd to "take this government back from the socialists...declare war against oppression and against socialism, and you are the people to do that." What does he think is going on here, exactly?

I don't understand why it's laudable on the one hand for Tea Partiers to disassociate themselves from the KKK and yet it's okay for the Tea Partiers to use rhetoric that espouses violent imagery.

I don't understand why, when Washington D.C. was finally just about to get the representation it so rightfully deserves in national government, gun activist representatives in the House would choose that self-same bill to attach a poison-pill amendment that would doom said bill. The citizens of D.C. deserve representation. I hope that Rep. Norton finds another way to get the voting legislation passed later this year without unrelated nonsense attached to it.

Comments

[bedii.livejournal.com]

I understand why the representation thing went south. It requires a bit of background. Did you ever wonder why it took until 1959 for Alaska and Hawaii to become a state? There had been attempts to bring in Alaska before but they were blocked by southern senators who were sure if they allowed Alaska in they'd have to allow Hawaii in, and if Hawaii came in then Miscegenation would follow surer than hell. This kept on until Lyndon Johnson decided that if he wanted to run for the Presidency in 1960 he should pass a lot of legislation so that the nation would see him as the steady hand at the tiller of the State rather than running all over campaigning like Kennedy, and as a Senator that wasn't fixated on race, so he ramrodded Alaska's statehood through in 1959. (Say what you want about LBJ as a SOB, but he surely understood how to make the Senate work.) Puerto Rico and DC have been going through a similar dance for the past 40 years based on the conviction that their votes will go Democratic: unfortunately neither has had anyone like LBJ willing to pull every trick in the book to get them representation. It's profoundly sad.

[irrationalrobot.livejournal.com]

I understand the Tea Party's concerns about the national deficit. What I don't understand is where they were during the last presidential administration when that deficit began and under which it exploded.

I've been asking this question a lot, and I get a range of answers:
1. We were there, we just couldn't get traction with Republicans at the time.
2. We weren't happy about it, but it (the spending) wasn't nearly as bad then as it is now.

I think there is a combination of the following:
1. They thought Bush was really on their team (a lot of Republicans still don't know how dramatically the all-republican Washington ballooned domestic spending, because their media sources weren't talking about it)
2. The president wasn't a Democrat
3. A refusal to acknowledge that conservatives could do non-conservative things without being "forced" to (by the media, "Washington Insiders," etc)
4. A lot of them felt that they related to the (white) Texas Cowboy more than the (black) Chicago Democrat, so they had an easier time writing off his big-spendiness

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Yes, I fully agree with your comments on the video issue.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Fans of the crush stuff ought to be permitted to indulge their fetish in full - on the receiving end. There's a limit to tolerance.