Anything you can hate, I can hate better, I can hate anything better than you.....

( Kyle is on his soap box this morning, you might want to 

get another cup of coffee or a  light snack before wading into this one 
read it now, don't read it now. Come back to it when you have the time, etc
Even if this sort of things bores the pants off of you, at least read 
THE CANDIDATE VOW 
or just skip to the end and watch MSNBC's take)

"Is this Heaven ?" 

"No, it's Iowa."

We are going to take a tiny tiny time out from out wall to wall Cambridgepalooza to dip a toe into the pool of big time rubber room crazy that the 2012 GOP primaries are fast becoming. We here at the k+b hear you loud and clear America, or at least down in NYC at the Fox News studios! You demand less Government intrusion into your life. Just keep your money from going to any Mexicans  and stay out of the rest. I heard TimPa is getting this tattooed on his forehead.
All 87 of the mini Reagan's are in and out of Iowa these days, the site of the first full on talent and evening wear contest of the coming election. So standing out can be an issue.

Iowa is a most interesting place, especially from our prospective. A swing state (ish ) , the heart of the heart of the heartland, salt of the earth. The place where hot dogs and apple pie come from. They also have, since April 3erd, 2009 full on marriage equality. With ZERO effect to anyone other than the lovely American citizens in the great state of Iowa, who choose to show their love and fidelity to one another with a marriage. Nothing makes the Christianist more crazy than fire and brimstone NOT falling from the sky anytime two men are pronounced husband and husband. " But, but, but.. .God HIMself said that Gay Marriage is wrong, and yet here these two nice guys are with all these lovely gifts from Pottery Barn, and they seem so happy....."


Like I said earlier in the week, as time goes on and the crazies either age themselves out or EDUCATE themselves out, their ranks get smaller and smaller, concentrating the bat-shitness of the whole pot. Welcome to the GOP Iowa Caucuses of 2012, and enter Michelle " God-hates-fags-except-for-the-one-I-married-Bachmann and that FROTHY MIX dude.

A little back story, there is this slug slime of a " man " in Iowa, named Bob Vander Plaats , from here on out just called just slime. Slime. A former candidate for Governor who now reigns as a conservative kingmaker in the Hawkeye State. He heads the Iowa-based FAMILY LEADER, an ultra right wing, Christian "Sharia" law based conservative group that has come up with a pledge that anyone wanting to get his cults approval has to sign : The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family. Bachmann and Frothy tripped all over their own little cloven feet rushing to grab the pen to sign this Faustian screed.

Breaking it down, 

So you wont have too...

(We love yall , this much.)

The darn thing has footnotes, and LOTS of them!

I am WAY pro marriage! I agree with the nuttiest of the nutty that the very VERY best way to insure family cohesiveness is through MARRIAGE. I fully believe that those darling little rug rats of yours are best brought up in a two adult, two income , healthy happy home. I just think that the gays should have equal access to this institution. With everything  I am about to write, I just did not want to come off , in any way, as anti marriage. I mean , Neil and I were on the QEW the VERY first chance we got....better or worse... 


THE MARRIAGE VOW.HERE is the entire thing in pdf form, if  you want for any reason to read the whole thing ( a full Silkwood will be required post reading ) I am just going to break it down to it's talking points. The parts they the Family Leader points out are the highlights, and then we will take on each point and it's footnotes.

A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY1

Faithful monogamy is at the very heart of a designed and purposeful order – as conveyed by Jewish and Christian Scripture, by Classical Philosophers, by Natural Law, and by the American Founders – upon which our concepts of Creator-endowed human rights, racial justice and gender equality all depend.2


Enduring marital fidelity between one man and one woman protects innocent children, vulnerable women, the rights of fathers, the stability of families, and the liberties of all American citizens under our republican form of government. Our exceptional and free society simply cannot endure without the transmission of personal virtue, from one generation to the next, by means of nurturing, nuclear families comprised of sexually-faithful husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We acknowledge and regret the widespread hypocrisy of many who defend marriage yet turn a blind eye toward the epidemic of infidelity and the anemic condition of marriages in their own communities. Unmistakably, the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis:


Ok, this part, is what I am taking as their "IF" or " Since" statement ( if x then y )


 Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African- American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.3

 About one million U.S. children suffer through divorce each year – the outcome of about half of all first marriages and about 60 percent of remarriages, disproportionately affecting economically-vulnerable families.6
 The taxpayer-borne social costs of family fragmentation exceeds $112 billion per year, especially when all costs to the justice system are recognized.7
 Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non-committal co-habitation; pervasive infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health. 8


This is a whole lot to take in on a Sunny Saturday morning, so we are just going to deal with points ONE and FIVE. The others are DIVORCE is bad, which I think everyone out side of The Newt and The Donald agree with.

In what will have too be the biggest headline maker of this whole shooting match:

• a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African- American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.
• A two parent home is what is best for a child
• ergo : A black child born into pre Civil War SLAVERY was better off than a child born to a single mother today.
• WTF ??

The footnote on this bad boy is :3 Lorraine Blackman, Obie Clayton, Norval Glenn, Linda Malone-Colon, and Alex Roberts, “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans: A Comprehensive Literature Review,” Institute for American Values, 2005 (www.americanvalues.org/pdfs/consequences_of_marriage.pdf).


Ok, let me dig into what ever The Institute for American Values is.

A whole lot of blah, blah, blah and then the ubiquitous SEND MONEY
This is a group, headed by some guy named David Blankenhorn - who is like the most famous guy you have never heard of, I guess, because he is all over the google. From a 3/14/07 USA TODAY puff piece: "The Harvard-educated Mississippi native is a former VISTA volunteer and community organizer who has made a career of thinking about big issues and telling others what he believes. He's written scores of op-ed pieces and essays, co-edited eight books and written two: the 1995 Fatherless America, which attributes many of society's ills to the lack of involvement of fathers in children's lives, and now, The Future of Marriage. In it, he argues kids need both a mother and a father, and because same-sex marriage can't provide that, it's bad for society and kids."


This Mr. Blankenhorn was an expert witness in Perry v Schwarzenegger, and I am going to take this right from Wikipedia, "Blankenhorn was presented to the court as an expert witness in Perry v. Schwarzenegger by the proponents of California Proposition 8 (2008), a constitutional amendment stripping same-sex couples of the right to marry.On cross-examination by David Boies, Blankenhorn stated that marriage's "rule of two people" is not violated by polygamy, because "Even in instances of a man engaging in polygamous marriage, each marriage is separate. He — one man marries one woman. During questioning, Blankenhorn stated "I believe that adopting same-sex marriage would be likely to improve the well-being of gay and lesbian households and their children."[9] In his decision filed on August 4, 2010, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Blankenhorn was not qualified as an expert witness, and that his testimony was unreliable and should be given "essentially no weight."

I don't think ANYWAY disagrees withe fact that the marriage " crisis " in Urban America is not a bad thing, I am just going to boil this down to : Why on Earth would any serious politician in 2011 get anywhere NEAR language like this. Even if they in no way mean to say, what they just said in print.
Bachmann and Frothy will come back with " they just want strong African American families", but what they signed their name to states that slave baby is better off that single mom baby, bottom line.

Number Five is WAY more complex.

"We are a wicked wicked society and I chose to be gay" That is my take on #5. It has the biggest footnote, ever. Give me a sec here.....I was gone a while on this one, and it is a road that you do not want to go down. The legalese statement along with the footnotes is  just made up science. Just the last sentence, if you dig into it, says that all gay men will die by the time they are 56 but not before spreading horrible diseases to your children. Seriously. Very very hard not to invoke Godwin's law on this one. Again, pretty words, pretty thought, until you kick that rock over and see all the gross bugs under it.

ALL of that was just the Family Institute facts on how horrible we all are THIS is the pledge that they want all of the GOP to sign :

The Candidate Vow:

Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow* to do so through my:
 Personal fidelity to my spouse.9
 Respect for the marital bonds of others.10
 Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.11
 Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.12
 Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy. 13
 Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.” 14
 Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.15 
 Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States. 16 
 Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children –from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution,infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.17 
 Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel,especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.);plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.18
 Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.19
 Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security. 20 
 Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.21 
 Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech22, especially against theintolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

WHEW!!!

That is a whole lot of pledgin'!

Let's just hit the highlights of this 

crap-fest.

1. Here is the footnote to #1, and really, this is just priceless : As applicable if married now, wed in the future, or whenever interacting with another‟s spouse, a person of the opposite sex or of personal attraction. No signer herein claims to be without past wrongdoing, including that of adultery. Yet going forward, each hereby vows fidelity to his or her marital vows, to his or her spouse, to all strictures and commandments against adultery, and to resist the lure of pornography destructive to marital intimacy. Work with me here. The party that wants LESS Government in your life, will fight to the death to keep Washington out of your life, wants to dictate a) what you can look at, and b) the kind of sex you can and can not have ???? It is MOST indelicate, and yall know the VAST majority of the k+b is VERY Victorian, but ... according to the pledge" self pleasure " is cheating on your spouse. Bachmann and Frothy want to outlaw this...... Smaller Government!!!!!
2. #4. "Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc". Yes, your eyes glazed over. Purple Monkey Dishwasher. UNTIL you get to the footnotes on this one, and it is all ALL about Judge Scalia AND Lawrence v Texas. Again, you are a normal hetrocentric Americans going through your day, this too, means nothing to you. For me and my kind, it's is the Atom bomb. These smaller government types want me put in jail for what I chose to do with my husband behind closed doors. That is what Lawrence is all about.. RE-criminalization of sodomy, which is ANYTHING that is not  opposite sex,married, non porn started, missionary, every other Friday night.
3. #6 Divorce will be MUCH MUCH harder to come by, maybe outlawed all together. " The Government out of your personal life...."
4. Change the Constitution to save our Christian based nation from the gays and overthrow Roe v Wade..... zzzzzzzz.
5. #10... Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel,especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles. Insert confused Scooby-Doo sound here.... Intimate Commingling Among Attracteds ?? The footnote here is from the OFF THE CHARTS crazy group that I won't type, but two words : Elaine Donnelly. Seriously, the poster woman for MORE medication.
6. The last one we are going to look at , and AND the one that you would just read right over folks :#12 CONTRACEPTION OF ALL KINDS IS BAD!! Barefoot and pregnant people. You white women, out working and all' are NOT having enough babies. Michelle Bachmann has like 300, and the Frothy's have an entire softball team of living children ( the one THEY ABORTED is up on a shelf )

What does any of this matter?

. The election is over a year away, and really, no one is on the fence about this one. For the most part, if you voted for President Obama last time, you will do so again. All I want to do with this LONG post is let you GOP leaning folk understand just how FAR right your party has gone. Frothy is a non player (pulling an * in most polls ) and if anything is running to be Romney's VP , which would be a disaster for the party.

Bachmann is an all together different story.  She has surged to #2 in NH and is set to win in Iowa. They come on TV all pressed and shiny and say they are all about " the family" and the MSM just lets it go at that. Well, I have just shown you that being " pro family " breaks down into being pro gays in jail, and contraception harder to come by. Does anyone even understand that until 1965 ( 1965!! ) and Griswold v Connecticut that it was perfectly legal for the states to tell married couples that NOT having babies was illegal ??? 

Yes, less taxes for the rich and fine to pollute the water and air.. but also all this right wing social agenda. You hear these folks talking about TAKING AMERICA BACK... just know what this means