The Watering Hole: Saturday September 8, 2012 – Wherein I Salute Chris Kluwe

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Our story, at least the part that immediately pertains to us, begins in February of this year when the state of Maryland passed a marriage equality law. In order to gain passage in the House of Delegates, the bill’s authors had to agree to allow for someone to try to get a ballot referendum vote in November. At the time, polls were evenly split on the issue among the people of Maryland. But that was before President Obama came out in support of marriage equality, after a little prodding by Vice President Joe Biden. (How can you not love Joe?) Between those two events, opponents of the new law managed to get the issue onto a ballot referendum. After Obama announced his support for marriage equality, polls among African American voters showed increasing support.

Enter Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo. A long time supporter of marriage equality, his support only recently came to the attention of long time marriage equality opponent, Delegate Emmett C. Burns, Jr., who voted against the bill when it came up for a vote. (And, yes, he is a Democrat, and a Baptist Minister.) Delegate Burns let out a sound like a startled chicken squawking and, using his official Delegate letterhead paper, fired off a letter to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, demanding that he “take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions.” One has to wonder how someone who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States (similar in wording to the one I took nearly thirty years ago) could advocate the suppression of anyone’s First Amendment Rights. One of those who wondered was Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe.

And this is where Mr. Kluwe earns my salute. In a series of posts on the Twitter, Mr. Kluwe, in no uncertain terms, expresses his distaste for what the Delegate has done.

Holy crap. I leave Twitter for a couple hours and I come back to find this garbage? This guy is literally an asshole.The only way I can fathom spewing that type of shit out of your mouth is if your colon reversed flow and you vomited actual fecal matter. And yes, I’m referring to the politician, though to call him that denigrates the few politicians that still deserve the name. It honestly baffles me that in this day and age, someone can think stifling another’s right to free speech is somehow ok. There’s not a lot that gets me seriously angry, but that’s one of the few things on the list. Demand better from your government. Demand better from yourself.

And just to make sure there’s even less chance of uncertainty as to where Mr. Kluwe stands, he posted an open letter on Deadspin.com, laced with profanities, essentially telling Delegate Burns off.

Mr. Kluwe, I salute you. It is people like you who make me proud to have worn the uniform in service to this country, defending the very rights you so freely exercised. I thank you for writing the letter, and I thank you for being on the right side of history.

This is our open thread. Feel free to discuss any topic you want.

[Cross-posted at Pick Wayne's Brain.]

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115 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: Saturday September 8, 2012 – Wherein I Salute Chris Kluwe”

  1. Romney is on Meet the Press this Sunday. Ryan is doing This Week and Face the Nation.

    Four years ago, candidate Barack Obama appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox. O’Reilly interviewed Obama again in the White House in Feb. 2011. I wonder if he will do it again this year?
    Also, when is Mitt Romney going to appear on Rachel Maddow?

  2. Kluwe has written like that before, maybe not all at once, and probably under an anonymous screenname on a blog, but he’s had practice. Only an experienced blogger can meld blue language into a political commentary so eloquently. :D

  4. Good point by Bernstein and Nadler on UP. In Republican Bizarro World, Keynesian stimulus only works when applied to the Defense Industry. McCain was spouting that about a week ago.

  5. Chris Hayes on UP: “Before you can talk about the jobs crisis, there’s got to be a theory about why we have a jobs crisis, which is, I think, a massive financial crisis, followed by a recession, a lack of demand.”
    Then they play a clip of Clinton bemoaning that the skillset of the unemployed doesn’t match the 3.5 million available jobs.

    Why aren’t employers willing to hire smart but untrained people and train them?

    • Sports recruiters travel to the smallest schools to give free rides to athletes but who goes looking for the smartest kids. The counselors at my daughter’s high school got an autistic girl from Africa a free ride to Harvard because she is that smart.
      People don’t want to pay more taxes to improve their schools, teacher & support staff get cut and the best and brightest end up working at McDonald’s.

    • Because it costs money. They want ready-made drones, but don’t want to pay for our education system or job training.

      We’re at a standstill.

  7. “take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions.”

    I particularly like that line. Owners telling their workers how to behave and talk. I once applied for work as a manager with a company that had a large operation here. During the interview I was informed part of my duties would be to insure the employees I supervised would get a haircut every two weeks. (They even had a barbershop in the plant). I was also supposed to periodically drive past their residences to make sure they kept them looking nice and check to see they attended some sort of church every Sunday. (At least they didn’t specify what church).

    I declined the job, This was over 20 years ago but we are seeing this corporate attitude rear its ugly head again.

    • That’s amazing, hooda, because even 20-30n years ago, that kind of requirement of employees was illegal. Did they expect you to drive to every church in the area and count how many of that company’s employees were in attendance? And what business of the company’s is it what their lawns look like? Unless all the employees are salaried (and, therefore, being paid for their time 24/7), what they do at home is their own business.

      • It was very odd, Wayne but they paid well with good benefits. I would say that salaried people are not paid for their time 24/7 though many companies like to think it is so. Salaried types are supposedly management and it is a nasty trick to avoid paying overtime.

  8. The boss wants to know the schedule/habits of his workers so he can visit the Mrs. at an appropriate time to discuss improving her family situation. He’s looking for mothers as committed to their family as Forest Gump’s mother was to his education!

  9. We know if this were done by the Repugnant party Fux would be reporting it every 15 minutes, since it was the DNC…

    From BJ (Balloon Juice):

    Food For The Heart And Soul
    By Zandar September 8th, 2012

    Republicans, complain all you want to about the President moving his acceptance speech Friday Thursday indoors due to storms, what the Democrats did afterwards for Charlotte is outstanding. The logistics for the event move included deciding what to do with all the food for the 65,000 people expected to be on hand, and when the event was moved, the DNC absolutely did the right thing.

    All the fancy catered food intended for the VIP suites and club rooms at the stadium – and perhaps even for the president himself – was redistributed Friday to local soup kitchens and shelters, via Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina.

  10. I’m test-driving the new keyboard that Wayne just installed. A bit different in shape from my previous ‘ergonomic’ ‘board, and the keys are a little closer together, but, hey, the T works!

    We are due for thunderstorms throughout the afternoon, and right now, just across the CT border from our office, in Danbury CT, they’ve been under a tornado warning.

    • That’s the same front moving through down here. It raised a fuss in Birmingham and Nashville, but didn’t do more than drizzle here in between. It sure has cooled off things, yesterday the high was 92, and today may get to 76.

      Glad you have the new keyboard. You’ll get accustomed to the variation.

      • We just had a tremendous downpour, lots of leaves blown down, too, but the sun is trying to come out for a few minutes until the next round hits. Poor Wayne just left to go pick up a prescription–it’s one of those that you have to physically get a real paper script at the doctor’s, what a freaking painintheass–then he has to hang out at the pharmacy while it’s being filled. The Severe Thunderstorm Warning on TWC tells me that Wayne’s gonna be driving right into it shortly. :(

        Back to the new keyboard – I wish they’d make a keyboard without the number pad on the side, takes up too much space. I don’t need it, I was taught ‘typing’, which included using the numbers at the top. If I need a calculator, the computer already has that function.

        • I’ve seen keyboards like that, Jane. Like the Caps Lock key, that pad is a holdover from the Olden Days and entirely irrelevant. For that matter, most of the Function keys are pointless. Very few of us do data entry on our computers and losing the vestigial keys would allow for larger keys.

          While I recognize the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard, I’ve been typing on one of these so long I doubt I could retrain myself.

          • I use the function keys quite a bit, and I prefer the number pad on the side too. That may be because I enter a lot more numbers in CNC programming.
            I also use ‘sticky keys’, so I don’t have to hold down shift, control and alt when I use them. Then I have to remember to hold them at work. But I don’t type like a trained typist either.

        • I kinda like the numbers on the side because in my part-time second job (my first “professional” job didn’t pay all that much- esp. after Reagan raised FICA taxes in the 80′s) – I learned to 10 key and it’s a little easier to type the numbers that way.

    • Just saw an Obama ad on ESPN, done by Bill Clinton, during the Auburn-Mississippi State game. That crashing sound you may have heard was the rot-wingers throwing things at their screens.

  14. If the US is God’s favorite country, why did it take him over 1700 years to tell anyone about it?

      • If it took him 1,700 years to decide we were his favorite I would imagine he would have his opinion on the Civil War somewhere around 3560. Evidently God thinks in geologic numbers. ;)

        • Yeah, you’d think that Jesus would have been born to a Native-American mother and father if we were his favorite country.

      • Anticipation…Mitt will have fits and starts, if not a complete melt down during the debate. The phony smile and complete insincerity will come though as he’s unable to even put forth a cogent thought.
        What’s the saying? “Bring it on.”

        • Mitt doesn’t have a prayer of a chance in the debates. I look for the Repubs to try and call them off.

          • I’m hoping President Obama uses all his chess and poker skills and gets Mittens to use the “N” word. If it happens I might just believe there is a god.

          • Shred-o-rama.
            Mitt’s total plasticity will melt under the stellar fire of Barack Obama’s intellect and aplomb.

  17. Yes, the ad blitz is coming; yes, the debates will be crucial, yes, turnout matters a huge amount too, anything can happen…. But there’s compelling data that in the first real skirmish of the campaign proper, the Romney-Republicans blew it.

    Gallup’s tracking poll of Obama’s job approval has shifted more dramatically than in a long time – and we won’t see the full impact of the DNC – especially Obama’s speech – for a while. But Gallup is noteworthy because it has tended to be more Republican-leaning than other polls, save for Rasmussen.

    Note the graph at right:
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/election.aspx

  18. Mitt campaigned in Virginia Beach today, with Pat Robertson sitting right behind him.

    • Here’s proof positive folks, that the evangelicals are a bunch of phoneys.
      They will abandon their trumpets and second comings
      (oh baby, oh…)
      in favor of earthly riches.

    • The truly weird thing is an evangelical Christian taking the podium with a Mormon. It makes the 60 election and the Catholic issue totally pale.

  19. At 19 part of my job was to screen Pat’s and Jerry Falwell’s radio shows for commercial content that had to be reported to the FCC. This was long before they were nationally known, the shows were on reel-to-reel. They always ran to about 40% “selling stuff” and many of the pitches were pure evil, like “Have faith and send your rent money. God will take care of you.” These folks chose earthly riches long ago.

    • I’m not voting above average until the nutjobs come up with new and interesting homoerotic fantasies…though giant-cocked Obama in a truck came close.

    • I will say that this weeks hate mail is shading a bit from gay sex to devil worship. Seems god’s chilluns are getting more concerned about general evil than big black cocks.

  25. I saw Ed interview him the other day. I thought he was poised and spoke well about the issue. I look forward to voting for him when he runs for office.

    BTW, he’s damned cute too…

    (hey, if you guys can haz Elizabeth, I can haz him, right?

  26. *cough cough*

    There must be another damn fire nearby. Damn, my throat is killing me, and I can barely see the other side of the valley.

  28. Rep. Todd Akin responds to illegitimate Science Guy quote: “Bill Nye said any place, any time. Well I’m naming the Creation Museum in Kentucky, September 15th at noon sharp. I’ll be there to debate real, legitimate science”

    “Paul Horner, the executive producer of NBC has agreed to televise the debate if Nye agrees to the terms, which he has yet to respond. One Portlander had this to say about seeing such an interesting debate televised:

    “This will be a beautiful disaster. I can’t wait to see Nye wipe the floor with Akin. Akin has no ground to stand on as Nye’s terms were to debate science– not god.” ‘

    http://www.examiner.com/article/todd-akin-accepts-bill-nye-the-science-guy-s-challenge

    • Akin won’t get through his first sentence without invoking God. At which point; Mr. Nye should simply say “you lose” and walk out without wasting any more of his time. These freaks can’t be debated because they can’t accept reality as the framework of a real debate.

    • This is real?
      There are lesbians on the Supreme Court?
      The Creation Museum?
      I’m getting in the hot tub, the world has gone crazy.

    • Funny. The last thing I heard from Chucky he was whining about Mittens shooting down his pet wind project. Perhaps the “certainty” that he speaks of is the certainty that no one will have to worry about green energy for at least 4 years?

    • Typical Doctor Who! One week it’s all scary and serious, and the next week, it’s chock full of comic relief!

    • It’s always interesting to me when victims get lectured like this… I mean seriously? If this former officer had hit and killed someone in their car while driving, would she lecture the victim’s family for them for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
      This judge was one step away from saying that if she hadn’t been wearing a dress, then this wouldn’t have happened to her. The judge might as well have blamed the victim
      for what she was wearing as well.

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