The Marriage Trap
Mitt Romney at a 2004 state constitutional convention where he promoted an amendment to prohibit gay marriage
Photograph by Michael Springer/Getty Images.
Eight years ago, the U.S. economy was languishing. We were bogged down in two wars, and the national debt was rising. President Bush was up for re-election, and Republicans needed a wedge issue. They found it in Massachusetts Windows 7 Product Key, whose Supreme Judicial Court in 2003 had asserted a statewide right to gay marriage. Seizing the opportunity, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ran around the country declaring a national moral crisis. Republicans, urged on by Bush, introduced a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage.
On June 18, 2004, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex. Windows 7 64 bit key, the subcommittee chairman entrusted with the amendment, joined two colleagues at a press conference to promote it. Cornyn declared gay marriage an economic issue:
We know from some of the social experimentation that’s occurred in Scandinavia and elsewhere that when same-sex couples can legally marry, that essentially what happens is people quit getting married across the board, and more people raise children outside of marriage at higher risk for a whole host of social ills, placing additional burdens on the government and the taxpayers that support that government.
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A reporter asked the senators about Democratic complaints that the GOP was “playing divisive election-year politics.” Cornyn brushed off the idea. “I don’t think it is a particularly divisive issue,” he replied. “I think, when the American people get a chance to have their voice heard, that they will overwhelmingly reaffirm their commitment to traditional marriage.”
Four days later, Cornyn and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the marriage amendment. Romney flew down to be the lead witness. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc, called it “a politically motivated exercise” and pointed out that the country was “struggling every day with so many more pressing issues.” Romney disagreed:
I want to spend my time devoted to working in our schools and helping our kids, finding ways to provide more prescription benefits for our senior citizens, doing a better job to provide a stronger economy and more jobs to our citizens. Those are our highest priority. But when our Supreme Judicial Court acted, they brought forward a change in a definition of an institution which is fundamental to my state, fundamental to our nation. And in order to preserve the rights of respective states to set their own policies with regards to marriage, I believe this amendment, or one of a similar nature, is necessary.
A month later, when Democratic senators condemned the amendment as “divisive” and “the politics of mass distraction,” Romney insisted in a CNBC interview that politicians must be put on the record:
A lot of big things are going on. But for some people Windows Anytime Upgrade, myself included, how children are going to be raised in the next generation and the one after that is also important, and it’s worth discussing and having politicians have to vote on. Most politicians don’t want to you know where they stand on that issue. And I think it’s appropriate for us to know where people stand.
That was 2004. Eight years later, Cornyn is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Romney is the party’s de facto presidential nominee, and both men are singing a very different tune. Last Thursday, after President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, Romney ducked an invitation on Fox News to challenge the president. “Even within my party, there are people who have differing views on this point,” Romney cautioned. “The Republican Party does not consist of people who all have the same views on all the issues.” The next day, Romney dodged another reporter’s bait: “I just don’t think this becomes a hot political issue dividing our nation. Instead, I believe that we should respect the viewpoints of various people and move on.”
On Sunday, CNN anchor Candy Crowley asked Cornyn, “Is this something that you think Mitt Romney ought to bring up frequently?” Cornyn deflected the question: “President Obama brought this issue up because … he’s trying to raise divisive issues up to solidify his base and to divide the country, and that isn’t what we should be focusing on now. We should be focusing on jobs and the economy.”
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Napster Founders’ Airtime to Debut June 5
Airtime, the long-awaited new start-up from Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, finally plans to show its face to the public. Today the company invited media to a launch event in New York City on June 5.
Airtime is to be a live video platform built around meeting new people. The site is currently accepting signups via Facebook Connect.
Parker and Fanning had previously tried to work with and even buy Chatroulette — the anonymous webcam pairing site built by a Russian teenager that sparked a zeitgeisty desire for online serendipity in 2010, and then was overrun by naked dudes — but that deal fell apart.
One thing to watch for with Airtime is how the service negotiates between anonymity and real identity sharing. Here’s a hint from the site’s privacy policy:
Your name is not shared when you are paired with a stranger. However, your Airtime and Facebook friends will be able to directly call you and see when you are online. You may edit or delete your interest information on Airtime and modify your profile information to increase anonymity.
Airtime’s investors include Founders Fund, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz replica watches, Google Ventures, SV Angel replica watches, Yuri Milner, Ashton Kutcher, will.i.am replica watches, Scott Braun and Michael Arrington.
Damaged windows being replaced at U.S. Space & Roc
Enlarge Robin Conn Tattoo Kits Free Shipping, The Huntsville Times Quality Glass employees remove one of three 95-inch by 70-inch windows that were damaged the morning of May 3 when someone fired three shots from a high powered rifle into the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center Tuesday Tattoo Machines For Cheap, May 15, 2012. (The Huntsville Times/Robin Conn) Davidson Center windows replaced 05.15.12 gallery (6 photos) HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Workers with Quality Glass today removed three glass windows at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center that were damaged when gunshots were fired into the center on May 3.
A crane will be brought in Wednesday to hoist the new windows so they can be installed and secured Tattoo Tubes, said the center’s spokesman Tim Hall. Each window is 95 1/2 inches by 70 1/2 inches.
Two bullets struck and damaged the Saturn V rocket on display inside the building.
Premature to discuss Greek euro exit ECB’s Nowotn
VIENNA (Reuters) – It is too soon to discuss a potential exit of Greece from the euro zone but the country cannot expect more outside help if it does not press ahead with reforms Tattoos Kits, ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said on Thursday.
“I think this is a premature discussion Tattoo Gun Needles,” he told reporters when asked about prospects for a Greek exit.
“What we have to discuss now and what we have to concentrate on is to solve the situation that we see now and the key for solving this lies with the Greek government and political system.”
“We do not have an infinite amount of time. Time is flying because there are financing needs but the first steps have to be taken now from the Greek side.”
(Reporting by Michael Shields)
World
IOC picks successor to replace outgoing Medical an
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is pleased to announce that it has chosen a successor to replace Dr Patrick Schamasch as IOC Medical and Scientific Director. Buy DKNY Clothes
Dr Richard Budgett will join the organisation on 1 October following the completion of his work as Chief Medical Officer at the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG). Dr Schamasch will retire later this year after 27 years in the service of the IOC.
IOC President Jacques Rogge said: “Dr Schamasch will leave the IOC after many years of outstanding service. We are pleased to have found such a capable replacement in Dr Budgett, with whom we first became acquainted as an Olympian and later through his work with Team Great Britain and LOCOG”.
In his capacity as Chief Medical Officer for LOCOG, Dr Budgett attended both the Beijing and Vancouver Olympic Games as part of the IOC Medical Commission Games Group, where he saw first-hand how the IOC and its Medical Director work.
Dr Budgett will be attending his 12th Olympic Games this summer in London, having first participated as a rower at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, where he won gold in the four-oared shell with coxswain event. He was the team doctor of the British bobsleigh team in 1992 and 1994 before becoming Chief Medical Officer of Team Great Britain for the Games in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004. He trained in General Practice, has worked in sports medicine since 1989, and is a specialist consultant in sport and exercise medicine.
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Tel: +41 21 621 6000 e-mail: pressoffice@olympic.org, or visit our web site at www.olympic.org.
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To request archive photos and footage, please contact our Images team at: images@olympic.org.
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When Did Douche Become an Insult
Matt Taibbi referred to the late Andrew Breitbart as a douche in his obituary
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.
Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart died on Thursday. The firebrand rarely pulled punches, and some obituarists are following his lead. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, for example, titled his Breitbart post “Death of a Douche.” When did douche become an insult?
In the 1960s. The Historical Dictionary of American Slang traces the epithet douche to a 1968 collection of college slang compiled at Brown University Tattoo Supplies, which defined the word as “a person who always does the wrong thing.” The insult douchebag is somewhat older. The 1939 novel Ninety Times Guilty includes a pimp named Jimmy Douchebag, and the Historical Dictionary of American Slang traces the epithetical usage to a 1946 journal article about military slang, which offered the definition “a military misfit.”
These days, it’s not entirely clear what it means to call someone a douche or a douchebag. The Oxford English Dictionary defines douchebag, in its epithetical sense, as a “general term of disparagement,” or more specifically as “an unattractive or boring person.” The specific definitions seem clearly out of step with modern usage. Rolling Stone’s Taibbi, for example, didn’t intend to call Breitbart a bore, because he honored the late pundit’s knack for conjuring a spectacle. Likewise Tattoo Supplies, Taibbi probably wasn’t referring to Breitbart’s looks (although he does comment on Breitbart’s “bloated Joey Buttafuoco cheeks and splendiforous silver half-mullet”).
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There’s some support for douche as simply a nonspecific term of disparagement, much like its fellow d-words dick, dillweed, and dipshit. In a 2009 New York Times article about the surging popularity of douche in sitcoms, a writer for the show Community said, “You’re always reaching for a more potent way to call somebody a jerk.”
The insults douche and douchebag, however, seem to have something to do with gender. Obviously, the physical item to which the word refers is associated with female genitalia. And many of the early epithetical uses refer either to women or to men who behave as women. In Plexus (1953), the second book in Henry Miller’s Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, the characters discuss a male transvestite named Minnie Douchebag, a “crazy fairy who sings and plays the piano” at a restaurant in Sheridan square. In Hubert Selby’s 1964 cult hit Last Exit to Brooklyn, the prostitute Tralala tells a man she’d “fuckim blind not like that fuckin douchebag he was with.” The journal American Speech defined douchebag in 1967 as “an unattractive coed,” or, “by extension, any individual whom the speaker desires to denigrate.”
Eventually, the epithets douche and douchebag came to apply to men. Lexicographer and Slate contributor Ben Zimmer points to a 1987 taping of The Morton Downey Jr. Show, during which an audience member taunted Lyndon Larouche with the phrase “Larouche is a douche.” The 1991 Anthrax song “Startin’ Up a Posse” includes the lyrics “You’re a douche, you’re a douche, you’re a douche,” in apparent reference to record executives and/or government censors. Brooklyn hipsters adopted the epithet to describe men with “gelled hair, fitted baseball cap, multiple pastel polo shirts with popped collars layered one atop another” (PDF). Eventually, the insult turned back on them, as outsiders proposed calling a collection of skinny-jeans-wearing Brooklynites “a douchebag of hipsters.” On modern TV shows, the word is almost never applied to women.
Douche and douchebag are hardly the first epithets to cross the gender barrier. Both bitch and faggot were first applied to women before becoming emasculating insults to men. Those examples suggest that douche once referred, in some way, to a failure to conform to gender stereotypes.
Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F Word, and Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus.
Watch an angry customer intentionally ram his vehi
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Long Buy Karen Millen Dresses, long ago Cheap Chloe Dresses, when we first put our grubby hands on a driver’s license Herve Leger sale, someone passed on a bit of sage wisdom: in the wrong hands, a car can be more dangerous than any gun. The video after the jump is a keen reminder of this fact. Autoblog reader Vasiliy tells us the individual in the kamikaze SUV seen here allegedly brought his new purchase back to the dealership to have a faulty shock replaced. When the dealer refused to do the work, the man decided to take the issue into his own hands by ramming his Suzuki through the front glass and into multiple Nissan vehicles parked in the showroom.
While we would never condone property damage or putting innocent bystanders in danger Discount BCBG Dresses, we suspect replacing the shock would have been significantly cheaper for all parties involved. There’s no word on any injuries or damage estimates – or what happened to our intrepid show room demolisher once the local law enforcement caught up with him Buy Karen Millen Dresses, but we’re guessing a poor-handling Grand Vitara is now the least of his concerns. Scroll down to watch the security camera footage for yourself.
Rendered SpeculationVolvo’s Vs could get new roofl
One of the last bastions of contentment for wagon lovers may be over as reports indicate that Volvo is considering abandoning the classic long and low shape for something a bit more modern. Of course, that means a higher roof-line Buy Hale Bob Dresses, ground clearance and seating position Cheap Marc Jacobs Dresses, along with a slightly trimmed footprint. In fact Buy Herve Leger gown, the Swedish automaker seriously considered making a change to its current V70 model before it was released to the public. The true test will come when the new XC60 crossover hits the market Discount Herve Leger v neck, as its sales figures will determine how Volvo designs its next V50 and V70.
Ford’s Flex might offer a preview of the shape of things to come from the Swedish automaker Herve Leger sale, as its design is similar to what may be on offer from Volvo if it scraps the traditional wagon. We wouldn’t expect anything too ‘trucky’ though, as sales of traditional SUVs have fallen off dramatically in the last two years.
Redesigns of the mid-sized S60 and XC90 have also reportedly been pushed a bit further into the future as the automaker struggles to reign in its recent lack of profits. The latest timetable puts the new sedan’s appearance in 2010 while the ‘ute’s redesign isn’t expected until 2012 Cheap DKNY Clothes, though a refresh could spice things up a bit in 2010 with a possible hybrid drivetrain.
[Source: Autocar]
Cadillac CUEs up improved 2013 SRX
Cadillac is updating its best-seller for the 2013 model year Herve Leger gown sale, with the SRX crossover getting several technology enhancements Replica DKNY Dresses, including CUE, the luxury brand’s new infotainment system.
The acronym stands for Cadillac User Experience, which uses a capacitive touchscreen for control of numerous functions Buy Herve Leger v neck, including interfacing with a driver’s smartphone. While other systems like CUE already exist, none offer proximity sensing and haptic feedback such that the display changes as a driver’s hand nears it and gives feedback to his selection. We’ve already posted a deep dive with CUE here.
The other big upgrade is the availability of new safety technology in conjunction with Cadillac’s Safety Alert Seat, which we wrote about here. Two packages will be offered, one called “Driver Awareness” and the other “Driver Assist.” The former is focused on crash prevention by way of providing driver alerts, while the latter will also include vehicle intervention.
Cadillac has also added active noise cancellation to the SRX for 2013 Cheap Hale Bob Dresses, along with redesigning the steering wheel and shifter and updating the instrument cluster to accommodate CUE. Some new USB and SD card ports, minor rear-seat entertainment upgrades, standard HD radio Herve Leger sale, and new interior color combinations round out the changes.
Click past the jump to read the full press release.
Bob King says UAW might negotiate with Detroit Thr
Traditionally Replica Corum Watches, the United Auto Workers will pick one automaker to negotiate a contract. Then, after that deal is struck Buy Cheap Replica Free Gift Watches, the UAW will shop the deal to the other automakers. It’s called “pattern bargaining Replica B R M Watches,” and it’s been happening for decades.
That may change during 2011 negotiations, as The Detroit Free Press reports that new UAW President Bob King might broker a deal with all three automakers simultaneously. King points out that the automakers and the UAW have a good relationship, adding, “we should be able to work together.” That decision won’t be made by King Wholesale Replica Hamilton Watches, though, as the UAW boss points out that the final bargaining tactics will be determined by the union’s top officers.
One area of struggle could be in reigning in expectations of workers looking to win back concessions granted during the auto industry recession of 2008 and 2009. King points to Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s 2010 pay of $26.5 million as a potential issue. “I think Alan Mulally is a good CEO… but he has a blind spot here Replica Emporio Armani Watches,” said King.
King’s non-adversarial approach to the upcoming contract negotiations comes as the UAW is making an effort to unionize transplant and supplier facilities. The UAW chief tells the Free Press that the union is making progress. The UAW is looking for fair elections at these facilities Fake Paul Picot Watches, and King is pleased that organizations are at least interested in sitting down for discussions.
[Source: The Detroit Free Press | Image: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images]