Fussballfieber

Germany made it into the semifinals…

Rush Limbaugh Under New Investigation

Something funny to brighten the day:

Investigators were trying to determine Tuesday whether conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh violated a deal with prosecutors in a long-running prescription fraud case, after authorities found a bottle of Viagra that was apparently prescribed to someone else.

Limbaugh, 55, was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after he returned on his private plane from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. Customs officials found Viagra in his bag, but his name wasn’t on the prescription, Palm Beach County sheriff’s spokesman Paul Miller said. cbs4.com

Iran

General Casey demontrates how close we are to go to war with Iran:

The BBC has more saber rattling here.

Thom Yorke interview

The Guardian has a pretty sweet article on Radiohead, featuring an interview with Thom Yorke:

Radiohead had just completed the first of six indoor UK dates, in Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom. It was a sunny Friday night by the seaside, and the atmosphere was spicy with sweat, lager and marijuana smoke. The Guardian

Not-so-bright house

Note to the cable operator Bright House: It’s a tad tasteless to tease the movie Munich during a opening game of the World Soccer Championship in Munich.

Oh and how cool is starting a World Cup with a clean 42?

Saving Frogs

These guys are heroes.

President’s Radio Address calls for gay marriage amendment

The old wedge issue, is the new wedge issue. In the 2004 election Karl “The Architect” Rove employed a strategy of tabling certain topics that would push the voter’s buttons and get their blood boiling just long enough for them to cast a vote for Bush in the presidential election.

So nobody should be surprised that President Bush called for a national Constitutional (!) Ban on gay marriage in this morning’s Presidential Radio Address. It is an election year after all:

(…) Today, I want to explain why I support the Marriage Protection Amendment, and why I’m urging Congress to pass it and send it to the states for ratification.

Marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and a wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.

In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives.

And in a free society, decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people — not by the courts. (…) White House transcript

There’s the Orwellian “War is Peace”-style name, but what bothers me more is the notion that marriage can be “protected” by not allowing gay people the same standards and rights that heterosexual couples have.

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Some may have a problem with two guys kissing in the street (While at the same time downloading lesbian porn at home) but the downfall of Enron destroyed more marriages than any “gay” influence.

There is also the tiny problem involving a president who has repeatedly shown the tendency to simply ignore laws whenever he felt necessary (FISA, Geneva Convention, ABM treaties, etc) pointing at ANY organization and saying they are not acting in the “will of the people.” (And remind me, who spend the past 5 years stacking the benches in their favor?)

But the most beautiful example of circular logic remains that the people deserve freedom and the best way to ensure that is to put the first Constitutional Amendment into the nation’’s most treasured legal document that would actually limit freedoms since the passing of a national ban on alcohol in 1919. And we all know how well that worked out.