September 17, 2004
A FALLEN SOLDIER IN THE WAR AGAINST THE MAN
Ginandtacos feels compelled to note the passing of Aaron Hawkins, the 34 year-old U of I graduate who was the mind behind Uppity-Negro.com.
Better writers and closer friends have said more than we could say, so we will content ourselves with stating the obvious: Hawkins and his website will be missed.
A lot.
September 16, 2004
GINANDTACOS CLARIFIES ITS STANCE ON THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Loyal readers of ginandtacos.com may be thinking "The election is nearly upon us, yet your recent articles have not made clear how you feel about the electoral college....it's a good thing, right?"
Bitch, I will disabuse you of that misinformed notion.
How many Americans realize that the way in which we elect the President is largely a matter of custom and not law? The Constitution lays the framework for the electoral college in a minimalist manner. Each state has electors equal to its number of Congressmen and Senators. The manner of selecting electors is left to the Legislatures of each respective state. There is no emoticon or HTML tag of which I am aware that allows me to emphasize that enough.
That's it. It's up to the states, period. South Carolina, for example, selected electors in its legislature until 1840. If states want to appoint electors by order of the Governor, majority vote of the Legislature, or proportional representation they have every right to do so. If they feel like appointing electors by cock size, random selection, or ability to play Slayer's "Angel of Death" while riding a gay horse through a trench filled with pudding, they may also do so.
Here's a little-known (actually, just "little-reported") gem from 2000. When Florida was in the midst of its recount crisis, the state legislature (Republican-controlled) convened a special session for the purpose of altering the state's method of selecting electors. The popular vote was just too inconclusive and controversial, they said. We need to go ahead and make that decision for you, good citizens.
Florida: The state that brought you Hooters Airlines
See, most people have absolutely no idea that there is nothing in the Constitution that says we get to vote for the President. And this, my friends, is what some in the field of Political Science call "the electoral time bomb". If a state decides that it will no longer pick electors based on popular vote, they have every right to do so. If Kerry wins 55% of the vote in Florida but the Legislature convenes (even after the election, as no timeframe for settling the selection process is specified) and decides that it will choose electors itself, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Short of, of course, rioting in the streets, which I heartily endorse.
Before you write it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, they were very willing to do this in 2000 under the pretext of the election being "inconclusive". And it's not a "republicans vs democrats" issue. The real horror of it is that whichever party were to strike first, the other would return the favor in a different state. And pretty soon we'd have a large number of states - maybe all of them - in which the rabidly partisan legislatures selected the electors, and we'd have one less thing to (not) vote for as a nation.
Congratulations, America! I hope you enjoy the next phase of the end-justifies-the-means, illiterate, corrupt politics you've rubber-stamped into existence. With partisanship in government empirically at an all-time high, I hope you're prepared for the final ludicrous chapter in the 1994 Republican Revolution's brand of "Fuck you" vs. "Oh yeah? Well fuck you" politics.
September 13, 2004
WHEN YOU FAILED LOGIC, I BET YOU SHOT THE TEACHER.
OK. Grab a pen and paper, assault weapon fans, it's time for some logic games.
The fact that some people can drive perfectly fine when drunk does not mean drunk driving should be legal.
The fact that most people who would carry a pocketknife onto an airplane would not use it to hijack the airplane does not mean that knives should be allowed on airplanes.
The fact that some people who buy fake passports really would use them "for novelty purposes only" does not mean that fake passports should be legal, ignoring the fact that most people who buy one would use it for a decidedly non-novelty purpose.
The fact that the NRA population (totalling 3 million people out of the 280,000,000 in this great land) can manage to own an Uzi with a 30-round magazine without using it to out-firepower the police in the commission of a crime does not allow us to logically deduce that assault weapons should be legal (and thereby subject to market forces which will bring their prices down). It furthermore does not allow us to appropriately conclude that the other 277,000,000 people in this great land will similarly use the weapons in a legitimate, safe manner or that the freedom of 3 million responsible gun owners to own submachine guns is worth the consequences to the rest of the society.
Yes, gun ownership is a right. But for varities of reasons, varities of rights - ranging from the right to blare music at 150 dB at all hours of the night to the right to purchase Uranium-235 (which has thousands of positive uses) - are curtailed when one lives in a civil society.
The same individuals who will use assault weapons only in a safe, legitimate manner would no doubt use shoulder-launched SAMs, hand grenades, and M1 Abrams tanks in a safe, legitimate manner (imagine how much fun a weekend at the gun club would be with all that firepower - the clay discs wouldn't know what hit'em). If, then, you are willing to make the claim that assault weapons (as defined by the expiring statute) can be used legitimately and therefore should be legal, the same logic would apply to the three aforementioned weapons. And if you're willing to argue that shoulder-launched missiles should be legalized, you are simply a dolt, utterly beyond reason, who lives in his or her own fantasy world, and you may step forward and put your tongue up my ass.
Dismissed.
