There was a good side to my arguments yesterday. I used the “why do you care?” argument in the Prop. 8 case, and it seemed to work. They agreed that, in fact, whether or not there were same-sex unions made no difference to them. This is the thing about Republicans: most of the time they don’t realize that what they care about really has no relevance to their lives. If we could get them to realize this all the time, you know what they would be? Democrats.

1. The Washington Post has done an investigation of Top Secret America. It is a long (each article is about 5,000 words) three-part series. The highlights? The system is comprised of almost 1,300 government organizations and 2,000 private companies located at 10,000 places throughout the US; upwards of a million people have top-secret security; there is a great deal of redundancy and waste—for example, over fifty organizations track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks; and 50,000 intelligence reports are produced each year—so many that a lot are simply ignored. And still they can’t stop the Jihadists from opening a culinary school.
2. Those Mexicans are so backward! According to Bay Windows, “Same-sex couples who get married in Mexico City, the only place in the nation where they can do so, are validly married everywhere in Mexico, in all 31 states, the Supreme Court ruled Aug. 10 in a 9-2 vote.” That means the US is the only North American country to not recognize same-sex unions. Gooo team!
3. The flooding in Pakistan has not received much news coverage. Millions of dark skinned people suffering? Yawn. It is not surprising, however, that a former cricket player—Imran Khan—has launched a fund-raising drive to help out Pakistani flood victims. Cricketers have to stick together.
4. As I long suspected, getting hit in the head is a bad thing. It seem that Lou Gehrig may not have died from Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
5. Paul Ryan continues his disingenuous claims about balancing the budget. Ezra Klein takes on his claim that he doesn’t want to destroy Medicare (he does). Ryan wants to replace it with a voucher system. Sound familiar? It’s amazing: even when Republicans have “new” ideas they are old.
6. See, my faith in Rod Blagojevich has paid off: he was only convicted of lying to the FBI. Just kidding (about my faith, not the verdict). As far as I can tell, he’s guilty as sin—and I say this as one who tried very hard to believe him. The prosecution will retry him on the other 24 counts. Even with the one count he was convicted on, he could get up to five years.

Now go spread the word to them’s that need it.