Let Them Secede, But Let Us Leave First

So, since any group of idiots can create a petition, I made my own. Basically, I think it would be great to get rid of a bunch of wingnuts and led them drown in their own Objectivism. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in states where petitions for secession have been filed (including yours truly) who love their country and would like to remain American citizens. My petition attempts to allow the best of both worlds. You can sign it here: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/take-steps-insure-orderly-peaceful-secession-states-and-repatriation-american-citizens/VY8X2Lpc

Unfortunately, the whitehouse.gov site has a word limit, so I had to slightly edit my original petition, which appears in full below: 

This petition requests that the federal government take steps to insure the orderly, peaceful secession of any state that ratifies, through legislative process or referendum, the decision to withdraw from the Union. These states are entitled to the right of self-determination and besides nearly all of them are states that receive more federal money than they pay in taxes, so allowing them to succeed would reduce federal expenditures by cutting non-productive “dead weight” out of our nation.

Because simple secession would result in involuntary expatriation of the 30-45% of citizens who voted for President Obama in states where secession petitions have been filed, not to mention the Romney and third party voters who believe that calls for secession are an extreme reaction to losing an election, this petition also requests that the federal government enact legislation to assist in the relocation of those in soon-to-be former U.S. states who wish to remain United States Citizens. The steps below outline a very rough plan for allowing for orderly secession and repatriation.

1. Congress shall set a deadline by which all fifty states must decide, by methods of their own choosing, whether to remain members of the Union.
2. Once it is determined which states will be seceding, citizens of secessionist states who wish to relocate to non-secessionist states may file a petition declaring their desire to remain American citizens. Likewise, any citizen in a non-secessionist state who wishes to become a citizen of one of the newly formed states should declare their intent to give up their American citizenship.
3. The federal government will institute programs to assist refugees from secessionist states in finding jobs (perhaps by matching job skills to jobs that will be vacated by those who plan to relocate to a former U.S. state.) and relocating to U.S. states. This program should include government assistance for low-income families and individuals who would otherwise by unable to remain U.S. citizens. Similar programs will not be necessary for those revoking their U.S. citizenship, as they don’t want any help from the government.
4. Once everyone has been relocated to a state of their choosing, the federal government may begin disentangling itself financially and politically from the former U.S. states.
5. As soon as all formal ties are dissolved, the U.S. should erect secure borders to prevent foreigners from stealing our jobs and government benefits. 

Since this is our country's chance for a "reboot," we should enact corporate reform concurrent with the above actions. This should include breaking up "to big to fail" banks, ending commodities speculation and off-shoring of profits, and enacting an Workers Bill of Rights that mandates health care, vacation time, and all the other perks that people in Europe consider essential. The legislation should also set a cap on the ratio of CEO pay to employee pay for any company that wishes to receive government subsidies of any kind. Corporations who do not wish to play by these rules will be allowed to relocate to newly-independent former states and their infrastructure will be converted for use by employee-owned startups. 

Halloween Costumes Ripped From The Headlines

Not sure of the status of the issue of Bazooka Magazine that this article was originally meant for, so I'm going to go ahead and post it before Halloween's completely over with just in case it gets cut for no longer being relevant.. And yes, I realize it would have made even more sense to post it before all the weekend Halloween parties, but sometimes I'm don't brain good.

As an adventure game industry professional (aka someone who makes up stories about magical hobos), I go to a lot of conventions throughout the year. Since most of them have at least some costuming events, by the time Halloween rolls around, I’ve already seen the year’s new geek and pop culture-related costumes--Katniss Everdeens, assorted Avengers, assorted slutty Avengers, Girls With Dragon Tattoos, and all the rest. What I don’t get a sneak peek of are the more political/topical costumes, because most geeks know more about The United Federation of Planets than our own system of government. Therefore, the Halloween costumes that I find most entertaining are the ones that come from the world of politics and current events. Since I have no doubt that our readers put my personal amusement high on their list of priorities when coming up with a costume, I’ve put together a few costume suggestions.

The KONY 2012 Guy
For a few weeks, Kony himself was in the running as a 2012 Halloween costume, but all the slacktivists who were just so fucking concerned about the plight of child soldiers in Africa predictably forgot all about it after a week or so. Some found out that the people behind the video supported warlords and regimes every bit as bad as Kony and decided to just pretend that they’d never shared the video. Others forgot about the poor little guys as soon as it stopped being a “thing” on the internet. Not long after the Kony video dropped off the radar, one of the fine upstanding Christian missionaries behind the video got totally fucked up and ran naked through the streets of San Diego furiously masturbating. That shit got its own South Park song, which makes it fully costume-worthy.
Pros: It’s a really simple costume. You just have to get all hopped up on goofballs, get nekkid, and wander around beating your dick like it owes you money.
Cons: You’re going to get arrested.

Occupy Protester
Just when the T.E.A. Party’s tri-cornered hats and badly spelled signs had run their course, along came the Occupy movement. Since it didn’t have corporate sponsorship and advocated real systemic change, the image of the Occupy protester didn’t fare as well as that of his astroturfed, low-information, gun toting counterpart. By the time the pundits and politicians from our two not-at-all-exactly-the-same political parties were done, the Occupy protester had become a filthy, violent, almost feral anarchist and/or socialist vagrant who was simultaneously an over-educated, bourgeois hippie with an iPhone and a trust fund. Because we Americans don’t know the meaning of the words “cognitive dissonance.”
Pros: This is another easy costume. All you really need is a snarky “I am the 99%” sign and a complete lack of understanding of what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. Congo drums, Communist Manifesto, and poop are totally optional.
Cons: This costume is only good for house parties, because just about every single person who will be handling your food and drinks if you go out is a member of the 99%, so the chances are good that at least one of them will be pissed off by your costume. If you don’t understand why this is a bad thing, you should probably watch Waiting.

Vladimir Fucking Putin
If somebody submitted a Bond script with Vladimir Putin as the villain, the studio would send it back with a note that the bad guy is too unbelievably over-the-top. I mean, the guy flies supersonic jets as a hobby, hunts whales with a crossbow, and probably punches bears just because he can. Most recently, he dressed up in a bird costume and flew a hang-glider to get a bunch of endangered cranes to migrate, because even guys who punch bears have a heart.
Pros: This is one of those costumes that most people won’t get (even if you go the crane route), but those who do will really appreciate.
Cons: Vladimir Putin might find out about it, kill you, and drink your blood from your own skull.

Romney Administration-Era Big Bird
The Big Bird meme came out of the first debate between Romney and Obama, and is in many ways a perfect snapshot of everything that’s wrong with the American political system. Those on the right were willing to blindly accept that cutting PBS funding, which is .000014% of the federal budget, was a meaningful example of fiscal responsibility. Those on the left were more outraged by the idea of losing a giant puppet than by indefinite detention, erosion of Constitutional rights, and the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens. While a lot of political cartoons and memes have gone with the “Big Bird as Thanksgiving turkey” concept, that probably won’t be easy to make work as a costume. Instead, you’ll probably want to go with “Big Bird as a homeless person,” complete with ratty old coat, fingerless gloves, and bottle of Thunderbird.
Pros: Everybody likes Big Bird, even Mitt Romney.
Cons: To be honest, the whole Big Bird thing has kind of run its course. The sheer number of memes about it made it get old pretty fast.

A Drone
As I hinted in the previous entry, one of the (many) Obama deal-breakers for me that Democratic party loyalists are willing to blissfully ignore is the fact that Obama has been very liberal in his use of drones, especially in foreign countries we’re not actually at war with. Worse still, he’s used drones to carry out the summary assassination of American citizens without the slightest hint of due process, which I’m pretty sure used to be frowned up by most Americans. If you also feel this is kind of a big deal, a drone costume will double nicely as a soapbox.
Pros: If you get drunk and kill somebody while driving home, you can retroactively declare them terrorists so that nobody will label you a criminal.
Cons: This is going to be a bulky costume, and most people only have a vague idea of what drones look like.

A Binder Full of Women
One of Mitt Romney’s biggest obstacles with the Republican base is the fact that he’s a Mormon. A lot of Christians, especially evangelicals, believe that the Church of Latter Day Saints is at best a misguided interpretation of the Christian religion, and some believe it’s part of a vast Satanic conspiracy. Voters whose social compasses point a little more to the left have problems with the church because of its history of polygamy and underage marriage. As a result, Romney has been quiet about the details of his religious beliefs. Here’s a little hint, Mitt: If you want to downplay your involvement in a religious sect vilified for treating women as property, it’s probably not a good idea to use a phrase that suggests you collect them like goddamn Pokemons.
Pros: The phrase “binder full of women” is inherently funny, even without Romney’s political baggage being attached to it.
Cons: This is one of those high-concept costumes that you’re going to have to make yourself. It will be hard to come up with something that gets the point across without being a huge pain in the ass to actually wear.

If you don’t like these costume ideas, you can always fall back on something in the “slutty Black Widow” genre, assuming you can pull it off. I’ve seen them before, but I won’t complain about seeing it again.

Kentuckians: Your Vote Is Already Symbolic

This November, a lot of people will vote for a candidate they don't really support. Some will do it because they buy into one party's lesser of two evils narrative in which a win for the opposing party means apocalyptic changes to the American way of life--40 days of darkness, dogs and cats living together, you know the drill. Others will vote either Democrat or Republican because they see a vote for a third party candidate as a meaningless symbolic gesture since third party candidates have no chance of ever winning an election in the current political climate.

The big problem with the mindset that a symbolic vote is a wasted vote is that in most states, your vote is already symbolic barring a major swing in voting patterns. If you don't believe me, check out the electoral vote map tool at http://www.270towin.com. Since I live in Kentucky, I'll use it as an example.

To begin my little experiment, I'm going to award states to a party if that party has won the state in the last five elections, which gives us a map where the Democratic party is ahead 242 votes to the GOP's 102. Things are not looking good for Romney, so let's try to help him out by awarding any state that has been red in three of the last five elections to the Republicans UNLESS that state went to Obama in 2008. Kentucky stays undecided even though it meets the criteria because I'm trying to set up a situation in which my vote matters. After doing that, Obama is still at 242, but Romney is in slightly better shape with 181 electoral votes. If Obama wins Florida, Romney can't win, so let's go ahead and turn it red.

Now we've got 10 states left in play: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hapshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. None of these states is big enough to give Obama the win on its own, so since Romney's still behind 41 electoral votes, let's see if we can even up the score. Most of the remaining states are fairly evenly split or tend to vote Democrat, but there are 3 states that went to Obama in 2008 where a GOP victory is the norm (at least back to 1972--the earliest election shown on the site): Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. We'll let them plead temporary insanity for 2008 and give them to Romney as well, bringing him up to 240 votes.

Now that things are reasonably close, let's turn any state that the Democrats have won in 4 out of the last 5 elections blue. That brings Obama up to 257 electoral votes.That means if he wins Ohio, he wins the election, and my vote in Kentucky doesn't matter. Other than Kentucky (8 electoral votes) and Ohio (18 electoral votes), there are two other states remaining on the map: Colorado (9 votes) and Nevada (6 votes). With only 240 votes, Romney can't win without Ohio, so let's give him a fighting chance and assume all the voter suppression tricks they're playing there work out in the GOP's favor.

That puts us in a dead heat with Obama at 257 votes and Romney at 258. For either candidate to win, he'll need to win 2 out of 3 states. If Colorado and Nevada go to the same party (as they have in the past 3 elections), my vote once again doesn't matter. If they split, Kentucky's electoral votes will decide the race, so if the race in Kentucky is extremely close (unlikely, since Kentucky has gone to the GOP in 7 of the past 10 elections), my individual vote for one of the two major party candidates might determine who wins the presidency.

Long story short: Unless you live in Florida or Ohio, your vote is probably symbolic anyway, so why not cast your symbolic vote for someone you can actually believe in. It's not going to allow them to win, but if enough people do it, it will send a clear message that you're tired of choosing between the same two bad options every 4 years. If enough people send that message, it might actually be heard.

Why Obama Is Wrong About Gay Marriage

From the July 2012 issue of Bazooka Magazine: 

Recently, Democratic tribalists everywhere went on the hopium addict’s equivalent of a three-day coke binge over the fact that President Obama made a statement in support of gay marriage. They applauded Obama’s brave position and treated the statement as a huge victory for equal rights. One small problem: There was absolutely no bravery in Obama’s statement. It was wishy-washy, pussified political hedging at its best.

Don’t get me wrong; A sitting president openly admitting that he supports marriage equality, especially in an election year, is a good thing. At the very least, it indicates that most Americans are comfortable enough with the idea that it’s no longer political Kryptonite. Unfortunately, Obama’s support of gay marriage is expressed purely in terms of his personal beliefs. When it comes to the government’s role in handling marriage equality, he says that he believes each state should decide.  

Aside from the jaw-dropping irony of a bi-racial president advocating a states’ rights argument, Obama’s position has implications that are actually harmful the cause of gay rights. By saying that the legality of gay marriage should be decided by the states, Obama is essentially saying that sexual orientation is not protected under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. While it is true that the Supreme Court has so far refused to extend “Suspect Class” status--which entitles cases involving members of the class a higher level of judicial scrutiny--to homosexuals, laws that restrict rights based on sexual orientation are still unconstitutional unless it can be shown that said laws represent a legitimate government interest.

“Legitimate government interest” is a legal term that no doubt has a very specific technical meaning derived from countless court decisions. However, since I’m not a lawyer and you’re probably not either, let’s assume that in layman’s terms it basically means that the law has to in some way prevent harm to society at large. So let’s consider whether gay marriage has the potential to affect those outside of the marriage in a negative way. There are a few major arguments about the harmful effects of gay marriage:

Gay marriage violates the First Amendment rights of Christians.
The argument relies on the idea that the legal institution of marriage and the religious institution of marriage are one and the same, and that marriage equality would somehow obligate churches to recognize gay marriage as legitimate in the eyes of the church. Since Christian churches are currently under no obligation to grant religious legitimacy to secular, Jewish, Pagan, or other non-Christian marriages, this seems unlikely. If a church is engaged in a non-religious activity for which it receives public funding (such as running an adoption agency or hospital), it may be required to recognize the legal rights of a married couple (gay or straight) married outside of the church, but that’s a requirement of the funding. If church-run institutions want discriminate under the guise of religion, they have to do it without taxpayer dollars. The other main argument--that the very existence of gay marriage in some way infringes on religious freedom--is a case of, as Jon Stewart put it, confusing “persecution” with “not getting your way.”

Gay marriage violates the sanctity of marriage.
This is basically the religious argument with a shroud of obfuscation around the religious stuff, kind of like dressing up Creationism as science and calling it “Intelligent Design.” The idea here is that there’s something culturally sacred (in a non-religious way), about marriage. Since something like half of all marriages end in divorce and people raffle their marital status off to midgets on reality TV, this argument doesn’t hold much water.

Even if marriage in this country did mean something, the idea that letting gays marry would somehow harm straight marriages just doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying  that allowing gay people to play tennis will somehow ruin tennis for straight people. The only way legalizing gay marriage is going to hurt a straight marriage is if one of the spouses is gay to begin with, in which case the marriage is probably destined to be short, unhappy, or both no matter what.

If we allow same-sex marriage, people will start marrying animals and inanimate objects.
This slippery slope argument ignores the fact that as far as the government is concerned marriage is a legal contract between two people. As soon as you acknowledge that animals and inanimate objects can’t enter into legal arrangements, this argument falls apart.  

Gay marriage will harm children.
When rational arguments are weak, people tend to fall back on emotional appeals, and one of the most effective is “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” This one is usually broken down into several sub-arguments:

• Same-sex marriage will lead to an increase in pedophilia: This one combines the turtle-fucking slippery slope argument aboves with the tendency of certain bigots to equate homosexuality with pedophilia (despite the lack of any statistical or scientific evidence to support such claims). It’s every bit as ridiculous as claiming that straight marriage legitimizes statutory rape.  
• Gay marriage will lead to gay adoption, which will harm the adopted children: Even if we accept that legalizing gay marriage will make it easier for gay couples to adopt, there is no evidence that growing up in a same-sex household harms a child in any way. So this argument is bullshit. Because science.
• I don’t want to explain buttsex to my kids: OK, I’ll admit that this argument usually isn’t phrased quite so bluntly, but when you strip it down, this is what you’re left with. The obvious flaw here, of course, is that explaining gay marriage to a child doesn’t require any more detail about fucking than explaining straight marriage does. In most case, something along the lines of “those two people are married because they love each other” does the trick just fine no matter what configuration of genitals is involved. I suspect that most people who use this argument are more worried that at some point they’ll have to admit that some people have sex for fun rather than procreation, which some religions look down upon. But that’s a religious issue and the government has absolutely no obligation to shield your child from ideas that might not conform to your chosen mythology.  

As I’ve already said, I’m no lawyer, but none of the above arguments against gay marriage seem to me to suggest a legitimate government interest in preventing gay people from entering into a legal contract. Therefore, gay marriage should be protected by the Constitution. Even if we pretend that Obama’s comments on gay marriage were sincere (which is kind of a stretch, given the context), his decision to invoke the states’ rights argument implies that homosexuals are second-class citizens who are not entitled to the same legal rights as the rest of us. Or, to paraphrase Winston Wolfe, maybe the gay community should “not start sucking Obama’s dick quite yet.”

Top Ten Important Lessons Of The Avengers Movie

1. Mark Ruffalo should work more. Those of you who’ve seen him in things like  The Brothers Bloom and The Kids Are Alright probably already knew this.
2. Aunt Robin is kind of a badass. Especially for a Canadian teen pop star.
3. Science doesn’t have to bore the shit out of the movie-going public. Pay attention, Ang Lee.
4. Even when Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t say “mother fucker,” you feel like he said “mother fucker.”
5. Every comic fan knows that when two or more Marvel Super-heroes first meet, it’s customary for them to fight. Including this scene in a Marvel movie lends authenticity.
6. It’s better to have Harry Dean Stanton and not need him than to need Harry Dean Stanton and not have him.
7. Joss Whedon sometimes does terrible things to beloved characters. Geeks really should have accepted this by now.
8. Captain America can be written as a guy from the 40s without coming across as hokey. Pay attention, nearly every Marvel comic writer.
9. If you want the villain to call the female lead a whiny cunt, have him do it in the Queen’s English and you can get away with it.  
10. There is nothing funnier than the Hulk swinging a god around like a rubber chicken.