Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Hoo boy, this Irene thing looks to be a doozie, eh? Fill your tubs and charge your phones and make sure you’ve got some candles, all that stuff. Be safe out there, friends. Except for the son of a bitch that tore down the “No Parking on August 29″ sign I taped to the pole outside my apartment. Feel free to not be safe, asshole.

But anyway, listen to a little Something Corporate.

Massachusetts Military Heroes flag garden, Boston Common, May 30, 2011

I struggled with the title of this post. I wanted to just say something along the lines of “Happy Memorial Day,” but that seemed a little ghoulish. You see things like that around, on TV and in newspapers and in conversation, probably because Memorial Day marks the “unofficial” start to summer, and most folks spend the long weekend going to the beach, attending barbecues, or taking trips. Which, great! The weather is usually excellent this time of year, and there’s no sense in not taking advantage of a three-day weekend. But I don’t think there’s anything inherently “happy” about Memorial Day.

Just writing this makes me feel like the worst kind of scold, and that’s not really something I’m interested in, so I’ll keep it short. I would never propose curbing Memorial Day weekend festivities, and I would never begrudge anyone a good time on a holiday weekend. That’s what holiday weekends exist for. But I would advise that we all think about the meaning of Memorial Day, and not in that reflexive, uncritical, lapel-pin-Support-the-Troops way. (Of course, I would never accuse you of being uncritical, precious readers!) Because, after all, Memorial Day isn’t about our troops; it’s about service men and women who have died in our wars. And when I talk about thinking critically, I mean thinking about how needless many of those deaths were. I mean thinking for ourselves about how justifiable our wars are, instead of depending on the word of our leaders. And I mean keeping in mind the families of those who have been killed, and whether the cost of them losing their sons and daughters and brothers and sisters is worth whatever goals our wars have. If you haven’t already today, think about these things. It’s our collective tendency to forget or ignore the real costs of war, to both us and our enemies, that makes war a possibility in the first place.

So my friend, we’ll call her the Official Fighting Robot Consultant of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun (until she chimes in in comments and suggests a new moniker) invited me to a Cinco de Mayo shindig at the Boston College Club, which is on the 36th floor of a building on Federal Street in Boston’s financial district. That means spectacular views of the waterfront! So I was gazing out the window, and lo and behold, what do I see?

How about that?!

How cool! That’s a big rainbow! Right outside the window! And I actually took that picture a little early, because it got even brighter a few minutes later. Aren’t rainbows cool? Also, this photograph gives me an excellent excuse to re-post this delightful video of Les Paul playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that Patriots’ Day is the best day of the year, by far. The Boston Marathon, partying in the streets, great weather, and a celebration of the start of our revolution against the hated British: it can’t be beat! Patriots’ Day is one of the best things about living in Boston. In celebration of this fact, listen to the Standells sing the anthem.

Wild turkeys roaming the streets is one of my favorite parts of springtime in the Hub of the Universe.

Don’t be a woman.

Don’t drink poison.

Don’t forget how to read.

But what? Harvard could fill three whole classes from its pile of rejected applications. And, Yale and Stanford notwithstanding, it had two big competitors following its lead. So what gives? I wonder . . .

Under the measure, taxpayers could choose to have whatever portion of their state taxes pays for abortions or abortion counseling for low-income women directed instead to a public information campaign for the Baby Safe Haven Law, which allows parents to drop off unwanted newborns at police or fire stations and hospitals.

Massachusetts Citizens for Life President Anne Fox said the bill would give residents who oppose abortion a way of exercising their conscience. She said the group was still working out details of how such a law might be implemented.

Go ahead and read this story. The funniest part is the bit that talks about the gains Republicans have made in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. They now hold 31 whole seats! That’s almost 20 percent!

I won’t go into all of the blazingly obvious reasons why allowing people to earmark their taxes for pet purposes is a dreadful idea. Instead, I’ll list a few ways that people who oppose abortion rights can exercise their consciences. These tactics have the added bonus of actually existing, and don’t require silly, pointless little legislative antics:

- Don’t have an abortion.
- Vote for anti-abortion-rights political candidates.
- Donate money to anti-abortion-rights political candidates.
- Donate money to anti-abortion-rights causes.
- Protest abortion providers.

And, finally, for the morally bankrupt anti-abortion-rights zealot for whom the usual avenues of activism won’t suffice and for whom the thought of even a penny of hard-earned money going toward financing abortions:

- Grow a fucking spine and just don’t pay your fucking taxes.

Christ on a bike, these ghouls need to get a life.

We live in uncertain times. Our leaders can’t seem to make new promises fast enough to fill the void left by the ones they’ve already broken, while the natural cynicism that should overtake even the most dimwitted of casual observers hasn’t yet managed to rid us of the naive and foolish optimism that keeps us believing in a system that a child could tell you is irreparably fractured. Once sturdy cultural, political, and social institutions that even a generation ago served as sources of strength and certitude have today been revealed to be empty husks, flimsier than the paper on which our now seemingly irrelevant founding documents were printed on. Our discourse has been reduced to the sloganeering of a cadre of entitled, self-important blowhards spouting talking points over each other’s stentorian blarings, each side claiming to speak for a populace whose values they couldn’t come close to sharing even if they had the inclination to step down from their ivory towers long enough to observe the abject squalor in which the majority of their countrymen live. Even the nature of authenticity itself seems ephemeral, at best. As bleak as our world might seem, though, there’s one rock in a maelstrom of meaninglessness and despair that we can cling to, one thing that we can be certain of: it will always, ALWAYS suck to BU.

There’s always going to be reasons to complain about Congress. Even today, there are. Senate Democrats rolled over on the omnibus spending bill the other day, and the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents, was shot down this afternoon. We’ll see what happens with the ratification of the New Start Treaty next week.

However, comma.

Folks like me who are fans of justice, equality, empathy, fairness, having a fully functional and prepared military, and not being a backwards country can’t help but be pleased today. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed today. Whenever President Obama signs the bill, he’ll be fulfilling a campaign promise that most liberals considered to be a slam-dunk, no-brainer, but actually turned into a long, hard slog. Considering all of the campaign promises BHO has broken or just completely ignored, this is a big deal.

And of course, generally, it’s a huge deal. We never should have been discriminating against homosexuals serving in the military in the first place. One of these days, gay people will be full and equal citizens of our country. This is a big step in the right direction. Some notes on this historic occasion.

# Since cloture votes are all we seem to have nowadays, it’s interesting to see how an actual bipartisan vote plays out compared to a vote to end debate. They always say that cloture votes don’t necessarily tie the voter to a yay or nay vote. So to see Richard Burr of North Carolina and John Ensign of Nevada vote against cloture but then vote for repeal, it makes you wonder what’s up. These guys weren’t the high profile swing votes in the run-up to the vote (Scott Brown was, for one example). What’s going on here?

# Good for Ron Wyden, who’s undergoing prostate cancer surgery this coming week, but still showed up to cast his vote. Hopefully everything works out for him.

# Here’s a gem from that Times story: “‘In the middle of a military conflict, is not the time to do it,’ said Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia.” Which is precious for two reasons. Firstly, military conflict is America’s business nowadays. When’s the last time you couldn’t say “we’re in the middle of a military conflict”? And whenever we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s always Iran, North Korea, and hell, even Mexico, for us to get duplicitously war-mongered into invading. It’s a bullshit excuse.

Secondly, I’d like Senator Chambliss to explain why allowing gay servicemen and servicewomen to openly fight while we’re in the middle of a military conflict is very bad, but allowing perfectly viable troops to be dismissed from the military simply for being homosexuals during a military conflict is perfectly fine. Actually, I wouldn’t like to hear him explain that. It’d probably make my head hurt. Fortunately, that’s no longer something we have to worry about. Saxby Chambliss and his ilk are wrong, and they always have been. The dustbin of history is too good for guys like him.

# Speaking of the dustbin of history, prepare to be swept into it, John McCain. Here’s a ruthless war cheerleader who somehow came to be the voice of reasonable opposition to DADT repeal, and who consistently moved the goalposts of his own opposition to such ridiculous lengths that he was eventually forced to whimper “well, ONE of the Joint Chiefs agrees with me.” And indeed, the Marine Corps commandant, General James Amos, did. But not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, nor the Secretary of Defense, nor a wide-ranging survey of the military, nor most of the American people. John McCain is a villain.