UPDATE: A Jenene points out, it failed. Steve Benson at Washington Monthly notes, "At the rate they're going, supporters might be able to get the two-thirds they need sometime around 2026. Good luck with that." Yeah, especially considering by 2026, gay panic will be about as politically viable as racism (still powerful for some, but pretty marginalized).

So the US Senate has decided that the best possible use of its time this week -- what with everything else that's going on -- is debating a G-D Constitutional Amendment (with no chance of becoming law) which would prohibit homosexual couples from any sort of marriage. It's pure symbolism, meant to excite the fundimentalist wing of the party base, a Rovian scheme to put some zing back in the Republican base for this November's congressional elections.

I'm thinking it's gonna backfire, on a number of levels.

Fundimentalists may believe the rapture is nigh, but they're not fucking stupid. They're aware that the Federal Hate Marraige Amendment -- unlike the series of state ballot measures which were part of the GOP mobilization in 2004 -- has zero chance of becoming law, and their growing ire over Bush's lack of leadership on their brand of "Moral Issues" is unlikely to be assuaged by week-long meaningless gesture of a debate. I don't think this will get the evangelical legions back to rooting for Republicans. It may in fact turn many of them (who really believe this is important) off from the process.

Furthermore, this conclusively brands the GOP as the party that hates teh gay, which is a long-term loser. If you look at attitudes about homosexuality, there's a clear generation gap. People in my generation are overwhelmingly ok with queers. People over the age of 50 are overwhelmingly not. People inbetween are split pretty evenly, though trending towards "ok" as more and more homosexuals are exposed as -- egad! -- normal human beings with feelings and thoughts and hopes and dreams (some of marriage) just like anyone else.

Now, if we can get the fucking Democrats to shut up about video games, and slap some sense into whatever consultant is telling Hillary to act like a crochety old man, there might be a chance for building a future progressive majority that's invested in the political process, rather than apathetic or antagonistic towards it.

This is something I'm interested in working on, so I'd like to say thanks to Bush, Rove and Frist for serving up me and my generation a big fat softball.

And to all my gay friends, just hang on. It's going to take a decade or so, but pretty soon most of the hardcore resistance to marriage equality will be dead of natural causes and our peers will be coming into power. Keep reaching for that rainbow. It's getting closer.

Reclaiming the Common Good:

71% of voters strongly agree that "Americans are becoming too materialistic," including 71% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, and 72% of Republicans. (92% total agree.)

68% of voters strongly agree that the "government should be committed to the common good and put the public’s interest above the privileges of the few." (85% total agree.)

73% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 67% of Republicans strongly agree with a common good focus for government. A similar percentage of voters (68%) strongly agree that "government should uphold the basic decency and dignity of all and take greater steps to help the poor and disadvantaged in America." (89% total agree.)

This should be the bedrock of what Public institutions are all about, and instead Bush is pushing a MF constitutional amendment (chance of happening: null) to ban gay marriage.

You know, it annoys me how Republicans get to be the family values people. What's better for a family? Not having the dudes who love eachother and live down the block get legal recognition, or having some fucking health care? Is it learning about "intelligent design" or having one parent with a job that can support the family financial so that both don't have to work full-time? Sheesh.

Wes uncovers final proof that we must fear (fear) the menace of Persian Plutonium.

And, on a more serious note, scuttlebutt from the military types says there's a pretty good-sized arms buildup around Iran, though maybe all it really is is a way to gin up the price of oil. Hmm...

From Slashdot:

"According to CNET, Congress has set its sights on 'the purported problem of violent and sexually explicit video games.... A U.S. House of Representatives committee on consumer protection says it will hold a hearing on the topic later this month, with a focus on 'informing parents and protecting children' from the alleged dangers of those types of games.' " The article goes on to describe seven bills under consideration that either attach fines to the sales of Mature titles to children, or study "the effect of electronic media on youths." Five of them are sponsored by Democrats.

I wish they would wise up and stop. There's no political gain to be had here; quite a lot to lose actually. More importantly, there no real positive outcome in terms of increased social wellfare either. Leave it alone, you suckers.

Meanwhile, your kids can kill the heathens and insufficient believers in a Left Behind-themed shooter. No, seriously.

So, uhh... any guess who's got the better strategy here?

Digby:

What we do about Islamic fundamentalism is a topic we must deal with. I suspect that it will take a global effort and a willingness to deal intelligently with the impending global oil crisis. There will be other challenges as well, including potential wars and regional strife and any of the other things that have marked civilization from the beginning. All peoples must deal with such things.

But there is no war on terrorism. The nation is less secure because of this false construct. We are spending money we need not spend, making enemies we need not make and wasting lives we need not waste in the name of something that doesn't exist. That is as politically incorrect a statement as can be made in America today. But it's true.

It's a lie and a scam and a sham and a show, but it's a meal-ticket a lot of lazy fatbacks are riding, and which a lot of paranoid juicers are drawing power from. It'll be right hard to get rid of.

Our national leadership class is remarkably small and entrenched. They resist change and it's much easier to stop things than to start them. Yeah, the Democratic party is getting an infusion of new blood, and that's all good, but the revolution isn't really happening in any meaningful way.

Maybe we'll get healthcare though. That'd be nice.

Memorial Day Truth from FireDogLake.

I've said about the same before, and I feel it just a little bit personally as a New Yorker. The "War on Terror" is a scam, implicit in it's naming and explicit in how it's been carried out (where's Osama, bitch?) since day one.

Until we move past this -- not gonna happen soon given the number of people who are riding this meal-ticket -- we're going to have a very difficult time dealing with many of our national problems.

I can only hope in the mean time that more people continue to wake up from the vestigital grip of fear, and that these folk eventually recognize the potential power of their own agency in the world, and decide to do something about it.

Interesting.

A Kos reader is on G-dubs mailing list. This is the "dark matter" of politics: direct mail communications that are generally off the radar. Interesting reading:

Those far-left "527" groups that came out of nowhere in 2004 are back, raising money at an incredible rate from the usual suspects - big labor bosses, Hollywood elitists, and billionaire foreign investor George Soros.

They sure do know how to push those buttons.

Young Americans "have no idea what's going on" because they "get their news from Jon Stewart", although, as this Media Matters post points out, viewers of The Daily Show are consistantly better-informed than viewers of the Factor.

And there's always this hoary old chestnut:

A new study based on a series of seven US polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war in Iraq....

Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

The poll didn't include TDS, but it should have.

Bill, the truth is, my generation is too media savvy to be suckered in by your brand of cheap political grandstanding. But by all means, keep alienating us, please. It'll be fun watching your ratings deflate as your audience tunes out (or keels over from old age).

Maybe I should stop reading Glenn Greenwald. He's so damn efficient at rendering the insanity. It's a hard time to be an American. I wrote a post a while back called "In it for the Country?" in which I sort of outlined why I still expend the psychic energy to pay attention to politics:

[C]ommunity is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics.

Basically, you can't get away from politics without going off the grid -- either as a hermit or in some kind of Pirate Utopia -- and I don't think that's really a feasible way to live for me (or for anyone, but God bless you if you try).

So I'm in, but it gets harder and harder to see how we're going to pull this stuff out, how we can set it right. I find myself so amazingly turned off -- not even angry anymore, just limp and tired and sad -- at how the Bush administration comports itself, at how cheap, petty greed runs the congress, at how what passes for "debate" is almost pure, uncut psychobabble. None of these are things I want to be a part of.

I feel like I'm back in high school a lot of the time, watching people vie for popularity and unfluence under terms that are barely comprehensible. Why do they do it? How did they become so powerful? Why do so many play along?

I want to make a break; not to drop out, but to go forward on my own terms. I think a lot of people feel that way. In the end it comes down to voting and deciding how to use power, but the process for determining how and why this is done seems deeply and (I'm sad to say) irrevokably fucked to me. I don't believe that the late-20th/early-21st century combine of big media and big money politics will ever right itself. We need another way.

They take away our freedom
In the name of liberty
Why don't they all just clear off
Why won't they let us be
They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell

Don't believe them
Don't believe them
Question everything you're told
Just take a look around you
At the bitterness and spite
Why can't we take over and try to put it right

This is what I hope to accomplish with the summer's writing, video and book stuff.

You know my politics, and my reactions to 9/11 and whatnot. Those on the other side of the divide rarely pass on the opportunity to make hay out of it, the fear, the sense of mission, danger, the role of the righteous victim. It's not unusual to see people justify all sorts of crackpot politics and authoritarian excess by bleating about how that day "changed everything."

It did, in a lot of ways, but for some reason only the Right has the right to talk about how they were affected. That's crap. It's on all of us. Like the other day taking the F train up over Smith and 9th, I looked into Manhattan and there was a thick low cloud obscuring the Empire State building, looked like the billowing smoke of yesteryear. So of course I wondered if something terrible had happened, what shape the next wave of awful would take.

90 seconds later the wind moved the clouds along and the moment passed, but that's the reality we all live in. Even those of us without paranoid authoritarian fantasies.