There are some conservatives who claim they love the military and respect our veterans while cutting their benefits, sending them off to die in needless wars without proper equipment, and literally insulting them on their jobs. Primary among these hypocrites are the idiots at Fox News — who scream about how Obama’s coffee salute demeans the military while then, within a few minutes, making sexist and demeaning comments about the military.
Jon Stewart describes it better than I ever could (start around 4:00 in). Sorry, WordPress won’t let me embed the video: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/b7hxzd/the-way-we-war
Veterans aren’t standing for it either. In an open letter to Fox News, they write:
Thus the skill of women as fighter pilots is well established. And before you jump to the standby excuse that you were “just making a joke” or “having a laugh,” let the men amongst our number preemptively respond: You are not funny. You are not clever. And you are not excused. Perhaps the phrase “boys will be boys”—inevitably uttered wherever misogyny is present—is relevant. Men would never insult and demean a fellow servicemember; boys think saying the word ‘boobs’ is funny.
How many times do we have to say this? The First Amendment does not mean that you are free from the consequences of your speech.
Friend and scientist Yvette d’Entremont (read her guest blog here!) started a new Facebook page called “Science Babe” a month ago. Recently, she pointed out that “actor” Rob Schneider was doing insurance company commercials while arguing against vaccinations. 
Others picked up on this and soon Schnedier was fired as a spokesman, because insurance companies like vaccinations — they save lives and save insurance companies lots of money.
Of course, people who do not understand how the Constitution works are screaming that his rights were violated and blah blah blah. It happens every time some celebrity loses their endorsement or, as I blogged about recently, when a bank teller was fired for lecturing customers about her religion during worktime.
You have every right to say whatever the hell you want to about vaccines. You can spout nonsense about the world being flat if you want to. No one has the right to stop you from doing that. In fact, Schneider can continue to spout his idiocy forever if he so chooses.
What you don’t have is the right to a job or a platform for your speech. A newspaper doesn’t have to print your opinion. A TV show can fire you if you are saying things that they disagree with (especially if it hurts their ratings). A school can fire you as a science teacher if you’re trying to teach your students creationism. Your freedom of speech is not violated in any of those incidences. You can continue to say whatever you want, just not with an audience provided by your former employer.
By the way, I’m thrilled for Yvette. We first met at a convention where we were both guests on a panel about science and how it is used and abused in court cases. According to various anti-vaccination blogs, she’s now part of the “pro-vaccine lobby”. Not bad for a Science Babe.
I had court today in the northern part of the county, where for the past two weeks there has been a massive search for Eric Frein, our own home-bred American terrorist. I expected road blocks and car searches, having heard from friends (and lawyers) who have been subjected to them, but there wasn’t much of anything. 
I guess the search has narrowed.
The judge and DA wanted to talk about this lawyer in the area who put up ads telling people who had been inconvenienced by the police to contact him so he could bring a big class action lawsuit. We all agreed that this kind of ambulance-chasing was terrible and made all lawyers look bad.
I pointed out though that he had a point. Most of these police stops were done without a warrant of any kind. While searching for this killer, they were asking people to open their trunks, asking for IDs, and even preventing people from getting to their own homes. I haven’t heard of anyone who did not comply (after all, everyone wants the police to get this guy) but what if someone had? What if the police looked into the car and found marijuana or something?
You see the dilemma — the police do not have the right to stop every vehicle absent judicial approval, and only after justifying it with probable cause. The people who were stopped were not suspects in any way.
You can’t look at the severity of the crime investigation to justify ignoring Constitutional requirements. After all, we could really fight crime if we allowed the police to stop every car without cause or search through our homes without reason. Military Law works great in China were there is only a fraction of the crime we have here — but there’s also a fraction of our freedom.
We have to say “no” at the more serious violations before they start using the same tactics for the menial crimes.
Sure, Obama’s approval rating (currently 43%) is low. But geez, stop believing the lie that it’s any different than any other President. George W. Bush was at 42% at this same time in his Presidency.
Obama’s lowest score ever was 38% a few weeks ago. Let’s compare that with other Presidents’ lowest scores ever:
Does this man look worried?
Harry Truman (22%)
Dwight Eisenhower (48%)
John F. Kennedy (56%)
Lyndon Johnson (35%)
Richard Nixon (24%)
Gerald Ford (37%)
Jimmy Carter (28%)
Ronald Reagan (35%)
George H.W. Bush (29%)
Bill Clinton (37%)
George W. Bush (25%)
Hmm. Just using these numbers, it looks like Obama is the most popular President since John F. Kennedy. 😉
PS: After writing and posting this, I realized some people may not get the subtle point I was trying to make with my smiley face, which is this: You don’t look at one number to proclaim that a President is the “worst ever” or “most popular.” George W. Bush’s popularity was tremendously high after 9/11 (as would any President’s be), but if you average out his term, it’s very low.
Better is to compare based on similar periods. All Presidents start off strong and drop over time. Also, comparing poll numbers in the present day to those from Truman’s time where there was not 24 hour news coverage, lots of channels, the internet, and Fox News is probably not too enlightening.
Here’s a great link to a page where you can compare the Presidential ratings.
You’ll see lots of headlines like that in November. The Republicans will be taking over the Senate and if you thought this was a do-nothing Congress before, just wait until they’re in charge. They’ll pass bills outlawing abortion, abolishing medicare and Obamacare, allowing for discrimination against gays and women, and otherwise work to reverse many gains we have made in the past ten years.
No, I’m not exaggerating. These are all things they’ve either said they’d do or they’ve tried to do over the past six years but have been unable to because they weren’t in the majority. 
They can be stopped, you know. We Democrats outnumber them. Many of these races are very very close and winnable.
But we have to vote. We have to actually do the absolute minimum a democracy requests of you. And Democrats are terrible at that.
We vote in big numbers in presidential years and we win lots of House and Senate seats. Then in the off years we sit on our butts and watch while every gain we made is rolled back. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Whining and bitching about how things are when you have the ability to change them does not convince anyone. You want change? Do something about it.
Today is Register to Vote Day. So use the right. Register. Then vote.
Seriously, what do you have to do today that is more important?
