A lesbian couple applied for a marriage license today at the Rowan County clerk’s office in Morehead, Kentucky, the first same-sex couple to do so since clerk Kim Davis returned to work. CNN covered what happened before and when they went into the office.
In an earlier post, I wrote about the fact that although there is an essential similarity between a ‘foul tip’ in baseball and a ‘caught behind the wicket’ in cricket, they have very different consequences, with the batter being immediately given out in cricket.
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I have been going on and on about how the term ‘politically correct’ has been abused both pre-emptively (by people who then go on to say mean things about members of marginalized groups) and defensively (to deflect attention from the fact that they have said something offensive). I was wracking my brain trying to think of a succinct way to capture what people really mean when they haul out political correctness but succinctness is not the strong suit for a wordy person like me.
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One has to be wary of seeing trends based on a few data points but there does seem to be a glimmering of hope that people around the world are fed up with the severe austerity policies that have been strongly pushed by a coalition of the transnational oligarchy, conservative politicians, and neoliberal organizations like the IMF and World Bank in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. These austerity policies that have cut benefits and services while reducing taxes on the rich have created austerity for only the middle classes and the poor, while hugely enriching the already wealthy and the elites of the financial sector.
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Rowan County clerk Kim Davis has returned to work today and said that while she personally will not authorize the licenses, she will not block her deputies from issuing them, something that US district court judge David Bunning had sternly warned her from doing.
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I wrote about how when Republicans are accused of saying derogatory things about any group of people or proposing discriminatory ideas that adversely affect women or any minorities, they are quick to haul out the defense that they are being criticized because of ‘political correctness’.
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When I was in New Zealand recently, I watched a lot of World Cup cricket with my sons-in-law who were unfamiliar with the game. What impressed them was that the fielders in cricket, unlike in baseball, did not wear any gloves (except for the wicket keeper) and yet managed to stop and catch the ball with their bare hands, even though a cricket ball is roughly the same size and hardness as a baseball.
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It turns out that despite repeated defeats in the courts, Oklahoma has still not removed the Ten Commandments from the grounds of its capital building. The appeal by the state’s governor Mary Fallin to the state Supreme Court was rejected on July 27. Fallin then said that she had not received a direct order (from her god perhaps?) to remove the statue, clearly a stalling tactic to avoid taking any action.
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The glaring weakness in the early stages of the campaign of Bernie Sanders had been his inability to connect with and gain the support of a significant chunk of the black community. The early stages of his campaign was focused almost exclusively on economic issues, seemingly with the belief that people would understand that economic injustices were at the root of many of the difficulties faced by the African American community and that his long-standing record of strong support for civil rights would speak for itself.
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The hapless Rick Perry has pulled the plug on his second run for president when it turned out that his current campaign had even less hap than last time. At least in 2012 he was seen as a viable candidate until the wheels started coming off after his ‘Oops’ moment, the risible failure of memory in one of the debates. This year he was seen as hopeless from the start.
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