'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
video 'podcast'
screencaps
Special Comment:
Same-Sex Marriage
Video:
via Current
via YouTube, h/t cathyferkleheimer
ShowPlug1: Cantor, Kyl bolt out of "Near Collapse" Debt Ceiling talks. Guests: Rep. Jim Clyburn D-SC, and @AndrewKroll of Mother Jones
ShowPlug2: POTUS blamed for everything from 'Mission Accomplished' to defeatism after Afghanistan speech. Unique view from @MatthewHoh..
ShowPlug3: Ex-Marine and State Dept official there who quit over our Afghan policy. POTUS in NY as same-sex marriage debate crests
ShowPlug4: He won't take a decisive stand, but I will tonight in a Comment about the inevitability and necessity of Same-Sex Marriage
ShowPlug5: Worsts - what happens when you throw all the undocumented workers out? Nobody harvests the food.
ShowPlugLast: And Barney Frank & Ron Paul cosponsor bill to leave marijuana laws tostates. Janeane Garofalo guests. Smoke 'em if you got 'em
Segments:
'Budget Busters', Rep. James Clyburn, Andy Kroll
YouTube: part 1, part 2
'Obama's War Effort', Matthew Hoh
YouTube
Tweet of the Day: @Crutnacker and Time Marches On!
YouTube
Special Comment: Same-Sex Marriage
Current.com, YouTube
Worst Persons: Stephen Kirkbride, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Ramsey
Current.com
'Just Say Yes?', Janeane Garofalo
YouTube
Current.com: excerpt 1, excerpt 2
Web Extra: Janeane Garofalo on Tea Party Racism
Current.com, podcast
Web Extra: Contradictionary: "Newt-ly-wed"
Current.com, podcast
Comment: unofficial transcript
As promised on this, a brief Comment tonight about the continuing fight over same-sex marriage and the tipping point for or against, represented by events here in New York State. The tipping point of course is temporary; every year the margin by which this country supports this grows, and within a decade or perhaps less it will be universal in this nation. Period.
Ironically, this is not because there is great advocacy for it, but simply out of an inability of younger people in this country to do what older ones still can: to pretend that this matters any more. It just doesn't. It won't destroy the democracy, it doesn't destroy the family, it strengthens the institution of marriage and its principal premise of fidelity and it increases the number of people living in stable and loving homes. And the more that modern life allows us to interact with others of different faiths, and professions, and interests, and origins, the more we understand that people are fundamentally the same all over. Good and bad. And if you want to categorize people, you should categorize them on their honesty, their sincerity, their generosity.
But a curious thing is happening to the forces still opposed to same-sex marriage. They are getting desperate. There was a protester in the New York capital Albany this week who explained this was all about the children; that these same-sex families had kids who were exposed to things they should never face anywhere, let alone at home.
Oops. If you wanna open up the Pandora's Box of judging whether people should be permitted to marry based on their qualifications to be parents, I'm afraid there are only going to be about forty-three weddings per year in this country because the list of risks to children created by their parents is nightmarishly long and 'standing there being all gay around them' is probably no higher than number 206.
If the opponents of same-sex marriage want to take this perilous route, then they are likely only to hasten same-sex marriage in all fifty states, and to merely bloody themselves in the process. Because sooner rather than later the euphemisms and the facades, especially this one about raising children, will fall away and the opponents will be revealed to be carrying water for a larger kind of orthodoxy. Their church is opposed to same-sex marriage because same-sex marriage means diversity, and diversity means peaceful interaction between members of different groups and religions, and peaceful interaction means fears and prejudices are diminished, and the diminishing means that those churches' cartel in the religion business is jeopardized.
I'm not talking belief or faith here. Your belief and your faith, providing you do not hurt anybody else with it, is your business and I defend you. But if you think big league religions are only about faith and not at all about business, or about keeping people scared, then you have not been paying attention in church or out.
And there is an even bigger issue. There is an ever-growing acceptance of what I said about this nearly three years ago after the hateful Prop 8 was passed in California. This is, corny as it seems, not about politics or religions or power or lobbying. It is about love. In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is already yours. They don't want to deny you yours, they don't want to take anything away from you, they want what you want: a chance to be a little less alone in the world. And your acceptance of their love turns out to be your own expression of love to your fellow human being.
As in 2008, the poetry of the 11th-century Persian Omar Khayyam tells this story best. I recommend it to anybody still holding out on this, whether they be pedestrian or President. "So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."
Worst Persons:
Here are Countdown's top three nominees for Today's Worst Person In The World.
The bronze to Stephen Kirkbride from the South Lakeland region of England.
He was accused of shoplifting a waterproof coat from a Sporting Goods store.
Police had witnesses and security camera evidence - but as the trial date neared this week, they didn't have... the actual coat.
Until Mr. Kirkbride wore it to the trial.
The store manager recognized it, and sure enough, it proved to have tare marks where somebody had removed all the security tags.
Mr. Kirkbride has been convicted of theft.
And of extry-special stupidity.
Runner-up: Comedian Rush Limbaugh.
His analyze of the President's Afghanistan speech?
Well, who cares?
I wouldn't trust Limbaugh to analyze the instructions on a prescription bottle. But he did claim the President was acting against the advice of the Generals on the ground. Quoting:
"Only Obama knew how to go out and get Bin Laden. Only Obama understood all the pratfalls. Only Obama was able to see all the things that could go wrong..."
"You know, Hitler's Generals tried to argue with him, too."
Good thing Limbaugh has kept his record intact of never once having compared President Obama to Hitler or the Nazis.
But the winner: Matt Ramsey.
He is the Representative to the State General Assembly from Georgia's 72nd district, and he got his way. His anti-immigrant bill, H-B 87, passed into law and was signed by moron Governor Nathan Deal.
It is technically called "The Illegal Immigration Reform And Enforcement Act"...
And it worked like a charm.
Nearly all the undocumented workers were chased from Georgia just the way Representative Matt Ramsey wanted.
And now Georgia's farmers are in crisis, because millions of dollars of blueberries and onions and melons and other crops are going to go un-harvested and will rot in the fields... Because nearly all the undocumented workers were chased from Georgia just the way Representative Matt Ramsey wanted.
Georgia farmers are at least 11-thousand workers short of a harvest, and for some reason, legal Georgians are not rushing to take nine bucks an hour for back-breaking manual labor and no benefits.
I got an idea: take the Republican rocket scientists who just bankrupted Georgia's farming economy -- and have them harvest the blueberries.
Then we'll stop calling Representative Matt Ramsey, Sooooper Genius, today's Worst Person In The World.