A death in the family

This weekend AKSARBENT attended a memorial in the Omaha area for a friend claimed by cancer. At the right you see his bereft daughter and son consoling the man's companion, a stroke victim who will now have to depend on others for assistance.
     Along with our sadness, we felt an unexpected measure of anger and contempt for politicians who repeatedly raid the public purse to pursue an agenda of making life difficult in ingeniously nasty ways for whomever they happen to feel morally superior to — and collaterally, their relatives, like the ones pictured here.
     One of these types is the current attorney general of Nebraska, Donald Peterson, who we have excoriated in this blog before.

     The same Donald Peterson who filed a motion putting the State of Nebraska on record urging serious judicial consideration of the junk social science research of Mark Regnerus, author of a widely discredited study funded and/or publicized by several right-wing organizations lobbying against marriage equality.
     The same Donald Peterson who is spending Nebraska tax revenue to help the attorney general of Texas block (for as long as he can get away with it) Family and Medical Leave for gay Texas couples legally married elsewhere.
     We left the memorial more determined than ever never to caste a vote for someone who is making a career out of using his staff to kick the stool out from under people who have enough to contend with already and then cynically and laughably complaining about the alleged intolerance and incivility of people repulsed by the calculating animus of himself and his ilk.