The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Conservatives for Gay Marriage

Oh, not here. Heavens. We don't have a lot of real conservatives; they're all in the U.K. Like the Prime Minister, for example:

I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn't matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we're consulting on legalising gay marriage.

And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it's about equality, but it's also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.

Of course, he spouts nonsense about how to fix the economic mess we're in (blaming debt qua debt, rather than the Wild West banking environment that cause a lot of it):

Dealing with our debts is line one, clause one of our plan for growth. But it is just the start. We need jobs - and we won't get jobs by growing government, we need to grow our businesses. So here's our growth plan: doing everything we can to help businesses start, grow, thrive, succeed. Where that means backing off, cutting regulation - back off, cut regulation. Where that means intervention, investment - intervene, invest. Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world - we'll do it.

Perhaps if he did something to spur demand, it would help more than reducing regulations. Businesses may want lower taxes, but they'd rather have more customers.

But at least Her Majesty's Government will stay the hell out of people's bedrooms.

Jean-Paul Gaultier at MBAM

Owing to the unceasing rain over the weekend, we visited a couple of museums while in Montréal, including the Musée des Beaux Arts:

My friend particularly wanted to see the exhibit on Jean-Paul Gaultier, the clothing designer whose work I only knew from The Fifth Element. I confess, I did not understand much of the work. This, for example, completely eluded me, though it looks kind of cool:

(That one comes with webbed pumps.)

That's the point of a museum, though: to get exposure to things you wouldn't normally encounter. Still, next time I visit Montréal, I hope to see the sun at least once.

The Rogue

The router at my remote office appears to have a cold, poor thing, which means only my phone and not my laptop can connect to the Intertubes right now. So after finishing this post (in Notepad), I'll go back to reading Joe McGinniss's The Rogue.

Now, I never thought Sarah Palin qualified for any office, let alone U.S. vice president, but even I'm stunned. So, I imagine, is John McCain, who has made unexpectedly reasoned and clear statements that make me think he was abducted by aliens from 2007 to 2009.

Confining myself only to the bits about her incompetence, and skipping all her other objectionable qualities (religious extremism, pettiness, meanness, and general display of narcissistic personality disorder), here's an excerpt from pages 129-130:

In April [2002] the city council had to approve a $14.7 million bond issue to pay for [the new sports complex]. Unfortunately, in her eagerness, Sarah [Palin] authorized construction of the facility on land the city did not own. ...

Her handpicked city attorney, Ken Jacobus, adviced the council to approve construction despite an ongoing court fight over title to the land. ... A parcel of land Wasilla could have bought for $125,000 eventually cost the city more than $1.5 million in judgments and legal fees. ...

Sarah took a city that had no debt and $4 million in cash reserves and in six years turned it into one that had piled up almost $20 million in long-term debt. During her tenure, the cost of debt service increased by 69 percent. She increased the sales tax from 2 to 2.5 percent to pay for the sports arena. While Wasilla's population grew by 37 percent during her tenure, total government expenditures rose by 63 percent, spending on salaries for city employees by 67 percent, money spent on office furniture and equipment by 117 percent, and administration spending on outside professional services by 932 percent.

I can't wait for the movie...