One Last Political Post of ’09 …

… may the coming year/decade bring with it more sanity. OK, so I doubt the coming year but possibly the coming decade. You know, hope and change I can believe in.

I want to sincerely thank Mary Matalin and Dana Perino for finally freeing me entirely from giving any credence to anything coming out of Republicans. These two people are not pundits, talking heads, or politi-tainers in any way. They are policy advisors and former members of presidential administrations. They are the people Republicans hire to help run government during Republican administrations. And they are the worst sort of liars in a sea of horrible liars:

Mary Matalin: "… we inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history." [emphasis mine]

Did I fucking hear that right? Inherited 9/11? James my ragin' Cajun, I realize you and your wife don't talk politics at home but please tell me you at least raised an eyebrow at her over that one.

But wait, there's more:

Dana Perino: "But we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

Blink. Blink. I have no sane words for this. Terrorists flying planes into buildings aren't terrorist attacks on our country? Shoe bomber? Um, if we haven't had a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term, then why do I have to take my shoes off at the airport and have my underwire screened before I get on a plane?

Media Matters, Thing Progress, and Salon (sort of) all point out the obvious. These are bald-faced lies and distortions that don't have so much as a grain of sand grounded in reality.

But I'm grateful because it's the kind of bald-faced lie by actual Republican operatives and government policy advisors that shows how low these people are willing to go in an attempt to rewrite history and proves they have no interest in anything other than regaining power. And we have 8 years of evidence as to what happens when a Republican President is in power and 12 years of evidence as to what happens when Congress is in Republican hands. They'll do nothing about the issues they then bitch about when Democrats (who clearly campaigned on and were elected based those issues) try to address those issues. I don't care if you don't like what the Dems are doing, disagreements are fine, but in one of my favorite quotes right now, please stop telling us how to hold the mop when we're wiping up the mess you made. You had the mop, and you just made the mess bigger.

Anyway, I do sincerely hope that this is the last political post I make this year, because if it isn't, that means something so astronomically more stupid happens in the next ~35 hours.

Happy New Year!

Rudolph the Green-Eyed Reindeer

This is going to be another STFU post.

Note to everyone, get out of everyone else's holiday bidness. Believe it or not, this is meant to be a message of peace on earth/good will towards men (and women, thank you Batman). Can everyone please just back off and let the holidays flow? Are you really so insecure in your own holiday spirit you have to spit on someone else's? Or are you so jealous that you think someone is getting something out of the holidays that you aren't?

The following types of people need to STFU.

• Faux News kicking off the annual war against the so-called war on Christmas. Actually anyone saying "war on Christmas." There were actual wars on Christmas (where people died) as well as wars to force Christmas (where people died). We need a Christmas version of Godwin's Law.
  
• Ann Coulter screeching about how Kwanza's a fake holiday. Ok, Ann Coulter screeching about anything. Please, please, please STFU!
  
• Christians howling how it's Jesus's birthday (it's not, but whatever) and we're all going to hell if we don't embrace Christmas their way.
  
• The anti-consumerists' shrill smugness about the materialism and consumerism of the holiday.
  
• Anyone attacking anyone for wearing a Christmas sweater. They're ugly, I assume you know it, I assume you choose it anyway for your own reasons. In the spirit of the live-and-let-live holiday spirit I embrace, I take a leave of absence from the Fashion Police Brigade during the holidays.
  
• Anyone attacking anyone for wearing a Santa hat.
  
• Any Salvation Army collector who gives me a guilt trip for not donating when I've literally passed 10 Santa-wearing bell ringers in a five block radius (how the hell do you know I haven't donated yet!)
  
• Anyone who cringingly defends their Santa hat/Christmas sweater/candy-cane earrings. Wear it loud and proud folks if you're going to wear it at all!
  
• People insisting if you're not spending the day with family, you're screwing up the holiday somehow.
  

Here's what I think really goes on during this holiday season:

• There is no war on Christmas. There is a battle to celebrate any way we damn well please. This probably started with Catholic kids sick of going to midnight mass and then having to wait for their parents to drag their tired butts out of bed and have coffee before we could get to the presents. So mass slipped to 4 or 5 PM until that interfered with Christmas Eve dinner and was given up all together. Or something like that. Not that I have personal experience with that.
  
• Christmas morning can be absolutely magical for a kid, done right. And that means lots of presents arranged in a magically artful manner by parents who learn to love their bratty kids all over again when they see that light in their eyes when they really believe they've been good enough for Santa to shower such largess upon them. Which makes them actually be less bratty for a little bit. If consumerism can accomplish that, go team!
  
• Most people who are Christian, really Christian, don't give a shit about how others celebrate their holidays. They do their advent calendars, Christmas mass, nativity scenes, and are perfectly happy incorporating Jesus and the pagan tree into their holiday. As well as inviting the neighborhood Jews over for Christmas dinner (as long as they bring the ziti!) Stop giving them a bad name with your phony outrage.
  
• 2000 years ago Catholics made up a holiday. If someone wants to make up another one in the 60's, why does this bother anyone? For those it does bother, don't you believe you will never see them in the after life anyway? Can't your self-righteousness be enough or do you have to rain on everyone's parade? I don't know much about Kwanzaa, but I bet my Barbie dream house it's better than midnight mass.
  
• Don't let the fashion police ruin your holiday season. Yes, most Christmas sweaters are dorky. But also let the fat old guy have his one shining fashion moment where no one looks as good as he does in red and white. And stop cringing when you do embrace the fashion faux pas that is Christmas. If you love it, flaunt it! I have a fringed coat and I don't care how tacky it is. I love it. At least you fit in once a year. My fringed coat never does (except at the musical Hair).
  
• There are millions of us who love our families but don't necessarily want to be around them at all at the same time in a forced tradition that we abandoned long ago for very good reasons. Or we don't want to spend our few free days off of work traveling to everyone else's house. How someone defines family is up to them. Also, it's two free days off of work, let us figure out how we want to spend it.
  
• And I am not forgetting the smug anti-materialists here either. You piss me off just as much as anyone else. You're just as preachy about how people choose to spend their holidays. Spend it however you want, spend as much or as little as you want, just get out of everyone else's business about it. I have a lovely time picking out gifts for people based on things I've discovered that I really want to share with others. That's my thing, not yours. So what? Why cannot I do my thing and you do yours and we're all happy? You people are as pushy and condescending as the bad Christians in trying to define what a holiday should be for me or anyone else.
  

Seems like the only people who are live-and-let-live during the holidays are the Jews. Damn, if it weren't for bacon maybe I'd just join them for the peace during the holidays (and the incredibly awesome Xanadu/Hanukah song at last night's Seattle Women's Chorus).

Happy Holidays and if you don't like the way someone else celebrates it, STFU and figure out how you want to celebrate your own.

 

 

It’s Friday Night: Short Posts Filled with Cliches

I'm sitting at home this evening drinking a glass of wine, cat on lap, listening to music I cannot stand. That's because the fiancé is listening to music, it's not my choice. And normally he wouldn't make me listen to something I can't stand, but it's his (and my) good friend's music and the friend asked the fiancé to listen and let him know what he thought and he needed the feedback fairly quickly. So I sit here listening to music I cannot stand. It is by no means the quality of the music that makes me not like it. It's just not up my alley. There's nothing inherently bad about the music. And despite that it's not my cup of tea, I really want our friend to do well with his music.

So I listened to something I don't like for the greater good of my friend's success.

Today I listened to a radio talk show I cannot stand. Not Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, but the show of a very good friend of mine. I cannot stand her show not because she is bad at her show. She is very very good at her show. I just cannot stand that type of show. But I heard about something that happened on it and then saw a comment about it that I thought was probably unfair and I was interested to know the context so I listened to it. Because regardless of what I feel about her type of show, I want my friend to succeed in her chosen career.

So I listened to something I don't like for the greater good of my friend's success.

These are very individual choices and I don't advocate that everyone has to make constant sacrifices for the good of someone else. If that were the case you'd all be playing Club Penguin these days. While I won't ask anyone to go through that if you're over 10, I do thank everyone for the decade of supporting a certain travel company; you still have to, the fiancé still works there. It's that everyone makes these types of choices all the time. They do something they'd rather not in order to support someone they care about and to support that person's hopeful success.

And that's my problem with the vitriol around health care. The ultra-right wingnuts and the ultra-left nuts swing so far to the extremes for the purposes of attention, ratings, or advancing their real agenda (which is attention and ratings) that they forget that there are some really core basics about even basic healthcare for all that will benefit everyone in increased productivity and longer term healthier population which is cheaper for everyone.

But the ultra right wingers would oppose a recommendation to brush your teeth twice a day if it came from the Obama White House. And these days the ultra left wing would freak out if Obama ripped a fart, claiming he was contributing to global warming.

The rest of us of course, try to sift through all the bullshit while actually trying to live our lives. And for many, trying to live their lives is in hoping and praying that nothing bad happens that taps out whatever meager health coverage they have.

So maybe the extreme right and left could just listen to what the majority is saying, even if they don't like it, for the greater good of getting something worthwhile passed?

Yeah, didn't think so. Back to your regularly scheduled programming. At least the fiancé is done listening to the music I can't stand.

Purity Tests Never Turn Out Well

Some time recently the GOP—or some faction of it—decided on a purity test for all candidates. Some Republicans have come out against that ten-point bulletin list and Mike Huckabee has recently come out somewhat in favor of it.

Now, I don't really care what a political party does. After all, I vote for the candidate not the party. Even though of late my votes have gone all Democrat that's because I'm so scared of the Republican party, not necessarily because of love for the actual candidates. But Huckabee's and the purists' attitude disturbs me because they are absolutely resisting anything resembling a big tent. Shit, they don't even want a small tent. They want a minimum of adherence of three out of ten points and any deviance from them will kill funding for the candidate.

But I'm not purist and I don't care about adherence to party principles. I care about nuance and pragmatism. So even though I share quite a few conservative viewpoints, the Republican party and conservative movement doesn't care about me because I don't meet their seven out of ten criteria? Seriously?

Let me give you a few examples of my non-purist but still conservative viewpoints that will still make me persona non grata in this particular movement (and will subsequently cause me to continue to vote Democrat):

Guns:

I love guns. I love shooting guns. I don't want anyone other than people I personally know and respect owning guns. I support gun rights for every qualifying American citizen because it's in the Constitution. I would love to change the second amendment. I will only support real gun control by changing the second amendment. I am a card carrying member of the NRA because of the second amendment. I don't love gun rights because I love gun rights. I love gun rights because it's in the Constitution and until that changes, I won't change my stance there. I love the Constitution more than I love gun rights. Squishy and weird to some, sure. Clear to me.

Fiscal Responsibility:

I'm all about fiscal responsibility. I'm also all about government stepping in where it makes sense, particularly when we have situations that affect all Americans whether they like it or not. For example, I'm a big supporter of private enterprise except when it's proven to fail. I'm a complete pragmatist in this area. I do believe in small government and limited spending, until such time that everything completely goes to shit (see healthcare). You are not going to get me on ideology. You are going to get me on specifics. Stop your ideological rhetoric when the private sector has so obviously failed.

Freedom of Religion:

I completely support religious institutions to run their institutions any way they see fit. I'm not so cool when they take tax dollars to do what counters federal law. I'm ridiculously pissed off at religions getting tax breaks. I'm ridiculously supportive of religion not being forced to perform gay marriage or gay couple adoptions. Until tax dollars are involved. Then I'm ridiculously opposed to religions avoiding civil liberties. But none of my positions should be considered ridiculous.

See, nothing that either really counters what a true conservative wants, but completely counters what fake wannabe conservatives say. But as long as you subscribe to purity tests, you will never get my vote. I'm a pragmatist/ideologue who while subscribing to some of your core beliefs, refuses to adhere to your ideological purity test.

You and I will continue to lose in coming elections as you continue to insist that there is no room for maneuvering. The only thing I have to say to you about that, in the immortal words of Grayson, STFU.

Correlate This

So I listen to Glenn Beck for about 10 minutes once a week. That's the one day a week I drive to work and the drive takes five minutes. So actually I listen to about three minutes because that's how much actual content there is between the commercials. And that three minutes is puh-lenty for me!

The three minutes I caught today had him citing Super Freakonomics. Of couse it was taken completely out of context to support some other point that had nothing to do with the point that Levitt and Dubner were making in the book, but that's Beck and I expect nothing less. And when I write I don't care much to focus on Glenn Beck. Beck can be handled with a simple Media Matters or Jon Stewart link on Facebook. What I'd rather talk about is Levitt and Dubner and what they're actually trying to accomplish with Freakonomics, Super Freakonomics, and their ongoing blog. Because that's actually intelligent.

If you haven't read them yet, run—do not walk—to your nearest bookstore or type—fast as you can with expedited shipping—on Amazon or other to order both of these books.

This is not about liberal vs. conservative, right vs. left, or politics at all. These books are about thinking. How to stretch your brain to think about every day topics such as crime, the environment, abortion, terrorism, names, and on and on and on in a way where the data is actually applied to prove causation, not just correlation. Religious and social conservatives might be outraged by the data showing legalized abortion reduced crime (Freakonomics). And liberal environmentalists go insane at the environmental proposals raised in Super Freakonomics. Which should prove that data is not, and can never be, political at its heart.

Now, one of the points in Super Freakonomics is that we are not entirely rational beings. We all know this. But that doesn't mean we can't, particularly when we go crazy on emotion, ground ourselves in realizing that the data exists. The biggest issue in this context that we have to remember is that correlation does not equal causation. We may not like what causation actually means, but Know Thyself also means Know Thy Data and analyze it according to causation. Correlation can be meaningful in pointing the way, but it still does not equal CAUSATION.

Read the books. Learn to think in a new and mind-stretching way. It won't fit into easily digestible bits, but it really is interesting and a hell of a lot more interesting conversation at cocktail parties.

If you really support the Constitution clap your hands!

I think I don't write as much of late because while I like to write about politics, I don't like the way politics are talked about these days. And by these days I mean since about 1994. Yeah, that includes even when I do it.

But I'll continue to give it a go:

If you are fit to be tied over 9/11 terrorists being tried in our civil courts, imagine how fit to be tied we all would be if or when those military tribunals were proven to be unconstitutional. Listen, we have a complicated system. Sometimes it doesn't all fit within a 30-second sound bite, 5-minute segment of puerile punditry, or even an hour program. And we all know that anything longer than an hour is far too much a strain on the public's attention span, so all news/information/opinion/infotainment must be chopped into bite-sized pieces of meat and fed very carefully to people since no one knows the mental equivalent of the Heimlich maneuver.

From the above-linked op-ed:

The casual use of the word "war" has lead to a mentality among the public and even in the government that the rules of war could apply to those held at Guantanamo. But the rules of war apply only to those involved in a lawfully declared war, and not to something that the government merely calls a war. Only Congress can declare war — and thus trigger the panoply of the government's military powers that come with that declaration. Among those powers is the ability to use military tribunals to try those who have caused us harm by violating the rules of war.

Now, the question that I haven't seen answered by supporters, critics, commentators, or government officials, is why some in federal courts and not others? It appears that the ones to be tried in military tribunals are ones who attacked military targets (USS Cole) while the ones attacking civilian or non-military government targets get the federal trial. That seems like a fair divide to me, as long as it holds up under Constitutional scrutiny. The author of the op-ed disagrees, but I disagree. Point by point (my comments in brackets) from his paragraph detailing this:

That the target of the Cole attackers was military property manned by the Navy offers no constitutional reason for a military trial. [I don't know about this, is there precedent either way?] In the 1960s, when Army draft offices and college ROTC facilities were attacked and bombed, those charged were quite properly tried in federal courts. [Those charged were also American citizens, were they not? There is no legal precedent to deny an American citizen their rights under the Constitution regardless of their crime. And if you bring up Lincoln's repeal of habeas corpus during the Civil War, please go back to history class. That was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court] And when Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal courthouse in Oklahoma City [also an American citizen]; and Omar Abdel Rahman attempted in 1993 to blow up the World Trade Center, which housed many federal offices [not a military target]; and when Zacarias Moussaoui was accused in the 9/11 attacks, [also an American citizen] all were tried in federal courts. The "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh, [also an American citizen] and the notorious would-be shoe bomber, Richard Reid, [also an American citizen] were tried in federal courts. Even the "Ft. Dix Six," five of whom were convicted in a plot to invade a U.S. Army post in New Jersey, were tried in federal court [at least one of these men was an American citizen and the charges were conspiring and plotting. Might be difficult to retain the American citizen's rights while dealing with a military tribunal]. And the sun still rose on the mornings after their convictions. 

And the sun will still rise after the terrorist suspects are tried in federal courts.

So in short, it looks like it breaks down this way, for as long as we are not officially at Constitutionally defined war:

• Foreigners attacking non-military targets will get federal trials
  
• American citizens get American citizen trials no matter what
  
• Foreigners attacking military targets will get military trials
  

I think that's pretty fair way to break it down, get the bad guys, and make sure it all stands up to Constitutional scrutiny.

We cannot risk having a trial of these people be ruled unconstitutional. We have enough constitutional problems already with how they are going to be tried after being tortured. These trials will be kangaroo courts anyway, completely rigged to ensure convictions. We wouldn't be bringing them to trial if they weren't. But as long as they are rigged in a fashion that upholds the Constitution, I'm kind of fine with that.

We do not need military tribunals to be kangaroo courts. We might need them again if we have to officially declare war again. We don't need them tainted by the perception that they are nothing more than an end run around the Constitution when we don't feel like following our own laws and precedents. We can't shout from the roof tops that we are a nation of laws, rights, and freedoms, and then discard them when we don't like it.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics (healthcare)

First check out this claim that Medicare denies more claims than any other insurance company. When you're done playing in your spreadsheet (those of you who are data geeks) figuring out why these numbers don't add up to any sort of reality and why the chart means absolutely nothing, then check out this story about the insurance company that appears--on the chart--to have the lowest denial rate.

Hmmm, paying $1.35 on a $208 claim adds up to effectively denying the claim. And that's just the most minor of United Healthcare's sins in this instance.

Six? Seriously? Six?

No wonder I'm disdainful of the general population if the average person has only read six of these books:

Where do you fall in the list? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an X after those you have read. Tag other book nerds including myself.

X 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
X 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
X 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
X 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X 6 The Bible
X 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
X 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
X 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 9

X 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
X 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
X 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not all of them)
X 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
X 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
X 19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eli

Total: 7
Total so far: 16

X 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
X 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
X 25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
X 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
X 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
X 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
X 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 7
Total so far: 21

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
X 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
X 34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
X 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
X 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 6
Total so far: 27

X 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
X 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
X 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
X 48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
X 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
X 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 6
Total so far: 33

X 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
X 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
X 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
X 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
X 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
X 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 6
Total so far: 39

X 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
X 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
X 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
X 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
X 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
X 68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 6
Total so Far: 45

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
X 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
X 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
X 76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
X 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 5
Total so far: 50

X 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
X 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr
X 87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
X 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 4
Total so far: 54

X 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
X 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
X 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
X 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
X 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
X 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 8
Grand Total: 62

The STFU Entry

In between getting and adapting to the radical change from mostly solitary lady o' leisure to cube monkey cat herder, I haven't written much. But I'm in a STFU mood about the Republicans so figured I'd at least get something out there.

For six years the Republicans were in total control of the government. During that time they did absolutely nothing to reform healthcare. As a result, private insurance companies rationed health care. People at insurance companies decided who should live and who should die. The latter were most likely the elderly and poor children. During these six years (and all while Republicans were in control of Congress since '94) Republicans couldn't have given two shiny shits about people dying. Now they accuse Obama of death panels that will kill the elderly and Sarah Palin's baby boy? Under their control of government, they already were. So STFU.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Leaving health insurance to the private insurers as we have for so long is insanity. But then again, we always knew they were nuts. That's why we call them right wingnuts. So STFU about private enterprise solving every problem. We know it doesn't, 'cause we're not insane. We see and learn and change.

Oh, and STFU about comparing Obama to Hitler for trying to solve the healthcare problem and STFU about what Rahm Emanual said about not letting a crisis go to waste. He was only borrowing from the Republican playbook about not letting 9/11 go to waste and trying to implement a really totalitarian regime in this country (you know, where presidential power includes stripping citizens of habeas corpus, holding citizens indefinitely, and spying on citizens without a warrant). Particularly STFU when we got the word of what we've known all along, now from the former head of Homeland Security that Bush used terror alerts for political gain.

An Elitist, a Pragmatist, and an Ideologue Walk Into a Bar …

The seismic shifts in our society have rendered right vs. left thinking as archaic as a flat earth map. It's time for those in the media using it to navigate this revolutionary era to catch up with the public -- and the new realities.

From Arianna's keyboard to Rupert Murdoch's ears, though I doubt that's going to happen.

When are we going to realize that complex societies cannot be reduced to simply two extreme ideologies? Maybe that sells on drive time radio shows (and obviously it does, for now), but it's not how people live their lives. The majority of people have a contradictory, complex set of beliefs and ideas that rarely fit into a 30-second sound bite.

Of late, on errand days, I've been listening to right wing radio. I'm done with that. It's so idiotic in how the hosts control the argument so completely to package an outrageous viewpoint to enrage their audiences. I realized I was completely done when I heard one of them (Hannity or Ingram, can't recall) criticizing Obama because he didn't take ketchup on his burger. Seriously? Really? This is worthy of conversation?

He was called an elitist and once again, I ask, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with enjoying the finer things in life when you can? The finer things don't always mean more expensive. Anyone who has had spectacular Southern greens can attest to that. But to like wine, better condiments, tastier natural foods, and actual literature and art is to be a more evolved human being. That doesn't mean you have to live in New York or Paris, it just means that Wonder Bread sucks.

And you know what else sucks? A man getting assassinated for performing a legal service and a bunch of people not caring because of their ideology. What else sucks is a group of people who said absolutely nothing against the economic policies of the last eight years and offering absolutely nothing realistic about fixing it now that they're out of power. What else sucks is that the profits of McDonalds and Wal Mart are up because of this recession and its effect on the rise of the organic food movement that was finally getting traction.

What doesn't suck is that despite the recession, something like Pet Airways is launching. Call us crazy cat ladies, I don't care, but it just isn't cool to not treat your pets well anymore. I am absolutely elated that despite hard economic times, something like this can launch. It also doesn't suck that our own Emperor Palpatine is advocating for gay marriage. I also firmly believe that everything that has happened with same sex marriage in the last ten years has been to angle it to the Supreme Court to be struck down as separate but equal is unconstituational.

Which begs the question, why is it so horrible when the Supreme Court does its job? Its job is to be an independent body ruling on the constitutionality of legislations. The Supreme Court is designed to be independent of the will of the people. Because the will of the people isn't always constitutional, even when it's popular. Separate but equal was highly popular in its day, but it wasn't constitutional. Wanting to legislate how two adults have sex may have been the will of the people in Texas, but that doesn't make it constitutional.

That doesn't mean I like Sotomoyer. I don't, for two reasons. One is that she ruled against a family member in an appeal. Bitch ;-). The other is that I don't want another Catholic on the bench. There are too many. But she'll get confirmed and maybe she should. That's the prerogative of the president as long as the Senate doesn't find something to block confirmation. God knows after Scalia my bar for opposing justices is pretty damn low.

All in all, I believe in pragmatism not ideology when it comes to governing. I as an individual can afford to have an ideology. But I'm not trying to govern 50 states and 300 million people. Someone in that position—particularly with the economy tanking all around us and two wars to fight and quite potentially who knows what else coming with Iran, North Korea, and Israel/Palestine—cannot afford to be tied to a pure ideology no matter how much money can be made trying to sell one.

Philosophy, I Need It

This recent Ayn Rand obsession amonst the teabagging conservatives is really getting my goat. Have they ever actually read her works? All of them, not just Atlas Shrugged? Do they really understand her philosophy and how badly they are cherry picking it to meet their goals of the moment? I am sorry to say I do not respect the conservative movement at all right now. Maybe if they stay consistent and actually build a real movement, I might. But the hypocrisy of staying silent while billions are wasted over the last eight years and only creating a hullabaloo when it's a Democrat doing it makes them ridiculous, not serious. And what makes them even less serious is this sudden interest in an author of a philosophy they don't even embrace whole heartedly and don't even really understand.

Dagny Taggert didn't sit idly by while bubbles formed and popped and call it capitalism. She screamed and fought while stupid non-capitalist decisions were being made. Francisco destroyed his fortune rather than allow it to be used for anything that violated his principles. John Galt didn't check out after the bubble popped, he foresaw it coming and got out so he wouldn't be any part of it. Where were all the Ayn Rand enthusiasts when the oh-so-obvious bubble was forming? A bubble that no real adherent of Ayn Rand would have had anything to do with and in fact would have been screaming from the rooftops wasn't real industry, real capitalism, or in any way shape or form objectivism. But they didn't. As long as the going was good, they stayed silent. Trading worthless pieces of paper is not capitalism and Dagny, Hank, Francisco, and John wouldn't have stood for it for two seconds. So anyone who stayed silent for the last eight years can take themselves off to Galt's Gulch as soon as they find that oh-so-not-a-capitalist Francisco to finance it for them.

A true Ayn Rand aficionado would have stood up for rights of privacy and habeas corpus and would have been wholeheartedly opposed to invading a country that never attacked us. "Let them fail" would have been their credo and they wouldn't have cared a whit for the human rights of the oppressed Iraqis. Afghanistan in an objectivist viewpoint would have been annihilated.

If it's not obvious, I've actually read quite a bit of Ayn Rand. Not just her badly written fiction, but her very well thought out treatises of non-fiction. And one thing is perfectly clear when you read all of her work. There is no cherry picking. Her philosophy is one that you adhere to totally or not at all. And I don't think your "conservative" base really understands what embracing Ayn Rand really means. Here's a primer:

• Atheist. Completely. And not just free-to-be-you-and-me atheism. Complete hatred and utter contempt for religion of any kind. No favorites, no lesser of two evils. All religion is evil in objectivism.
  
• Complete and total libertarian attitude on all social issues: Drugs, sex, abortion, homosexuality, pornography, etc. are all A-OK.
  
• No government intervention in anything but what is absolutely necessary to physically defend the country. That means no Iraq, no private consulting firms to outsource defense to (you know, those same ones who have lost billions of our tax dollars that only we liberals seemed to be upset about); no real reverence for veterans (she so conveniently omits them from her writings); no bridges, roads, disaster recovery, nothing. Tell me how much you hate government on your morning commute. Tell me how much you ate government when you have to call 911 to protect your personal property. You don't, nor should you. Because it is quintessentially American to cherry pick our philosophies.
  

In regards to the tea parties, I hear a lot about the Founding Fathers. But no group has been more cherry picked then these men. Regardless of our ideology, we take from them what we want and conveniently ignore what is inconvenient to our ideology. As a nation, we pick and choose holistically: we already decide that their decisions on slavery, voting rights, women, and property are outdated and unconstitutional. We've passed several amendments deciding that the Founding Fathers were wrong. But some ideologues conveniently forget that when citing them. Isn't it time we started deciding for ourselves and acknowledging that the Founding Fathers might be good to cite in part, but not revered? How much cherry picking is OK or not OK?

The unspoken truth about American ideology is this: We are ideologues until our emotions come into play. Once those pesky heart strings are plucked, anything—anything at all—can be rationalized. I don't care which side of the ideological divide you purport to be on. For example:

• Your upset about the 9/11 terrorist attacks so all of a sudden you're in favor of nation building.
  
• You believe drugs are OK until it causes a friend of yours to die or worse kill others. Then it's a nationwide drug treatment program.
  
• States rights rule supreme until a state decides to legalize gay marriage (Vermont); then a federal statute is required.
  
• Individual rights reign until Terry Shiavo dies.
  
• Laissez faire in everything outside the bedroom, but dictatorial tyranny inside.
  
• Individual rights in everything inside the bedroom, but collective rights in everything outside it.
  

No matter which side you're on, the majority of Americans decide issues emotionally not rationally. Philosophies demand rational thought, not emotional.

I can't decide for you what you want. I can only point out that emotional decisions are not philosophical by their very definition. I can only ask, beg, plead, that before you start cherry picking philosophers, you know that you are doing so and own up to it. Do not claim Ayn Rand when you refuse the full force of her philosophy. Do not claim economic libertarianism and eschew the necessary social aspects of it at that same time. Do not claim collective good of the all and demand individual rights for all. Most importantly, do not believe that America is divided between left and right. There is no such thing. We are all a confusing chaos of conflicting ideas and beliefs that we can only defend about 50% of. The rest are emotion and feelings that we don't spend much time analyzing. Very few of us spend any time reconciling these beliefs, only using our lizard brains to decide which is right and wrong without any rational thought going into it.

Can we be done with hard line adherence sometime soon? Can we truly embrace both a Virtue of Selfishness and a sustainable society and figure out how it all works? Can we all determine at some point that we all need a philosophy and that philosophy doesn't have to adhere to a published standard, only a rational one? Can we please stop opposing for the sake of opposing and stop ignoring the fact that we cherry pick every day from those we both revere and despise?

Can we, in short, create an American philosophy?

Do They Not Know What Teabagging Means?

I'm all in support of protests. I'm a liberal, protests are our bread and butter whether they work or not. But anyone giving up their free time to go do something is to be commended. Even when it's worthy of ridicule. Again, I'm a liberal, we eat ridicule for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a midnight snack. But conservatives aren't so used to this type of protest and its accompanying ridicule.

So I say good luck with your tea parties, but don't expect much. Not because you aren't sincere or because you're a small minority, but because protests in general don't garner much attention until they are constant and sustained. You're new at this, take a lesson. Just because you decided to start screaming when a Dem goes on a spending spree while staying silent when a Repub does the same thing, don't start crying when the world doesn't stop and stare at you.

Andrew Sullivan sums it up best, in my opinion:

As a fiscal conservative who actually believed in those principles when the Republicans were in power, I guess I should be happy at this phenomenon. And I would be if it had any intellectual honesty, any positive proposals, and any recognizable point. What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.

And on the same note of "rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't" I encourage you to watch the great Jon Stewart's take on the conservative "rage." It's not tyranny, it's called losing. Hey, I do sympathize (sort of). I know rage and being discounted by the majority of the country. And like I've said before, you may be right in some ways in the end, but it doesn't matter. It won't make you feel better. This country will swing right and left and back and forth as we take our halting steps towards constantly trying to evolve and perfect our country. No ideology is 100% right, but all are often right for certain moments. The right wing's ideology failed us and maybe if they showed the slightest bit of intellectual honesty in admitting how and where it failed, there might be an opportunity for discourse about how to tailor plans between the liberal and conservatives to right it. But lacking that, we're going to move ahead.

At least you're in good wingnut company; the far left is none too happy with Obama either, albeit for different reasons (national security, war spending). When did anyone think this guy was an ideologue? He's not. He's a pragmatist and you're never going to be totally happy with a pragmatist's decisions because they won't adhere to one fixed ideology. Yes, Obama leans liberal on several issues, so did Bill Clinton. But they are also both people who will switch that position—particularly on the economy—depending on the situation at hand. Cutting government made sense in Clinton's era, expanding it makes sense now. That's the history of this country. But for conservatives, it seems history began on Reagan's inauguration day and nothing before matters and nothing but the resurrection of his body like Jesus Christ (hey, had to get an Easter reference in somewhere) will satisfy them for the future. Again,pace your rage or you will have a very long 4-8 years. Don't burn out too early.

Oh, and happy zombie weekend!

Entertainment, Who Needs It?

One thing I don’t want the media doing, any of the media, is yapping about whether or not the president’s speech, news conference, whatever is or is not entertaining enough. It’s a press conference to convey information and take questions about policy, not a variety show (and Cramer, for the record, The Daily Show isn’t a variety show either). The economy is a big, boring, complex, and scary thing and I don’t need to be entertained when I’m hearing what the guy is doing to fix it. Isn’t that what got CNBC in Stewart’s cross hairs to begin with? Focusing more on entertaining than informing their audience? I need information so I can go to the White House web site and ask my own questions that address my concerns.

I had a very good argument with a conservative friend of mine the other weekend and the one thing we could agree on totally was that it was time for the American people to sit up and pay attention. Now she and I definitely have different ideas about what conclusions should be drawn by this newfound attention, but in all, I think most people can agree is that the majority hasn’t been paying attention to the overall economy for a long time. As long as the Dow kept going up and people had their latest bling, no one cared how the country overall was getting their. That our supposed wealth was based on unsustainable bubbles, speculation, and financial trading, not on actual durable goods and services. I’m no economist, but I do recall when I was buying a house six years ago how hard everyone tried to get us to do exotic crazy mortgages even when we were demanding a 30 year fixed. That I even had to argue with anyone about the sensibility of doing a 20% down 30-year fixed mortgage made me sit up and take notice of what was going on. And if I could sit back on my arrogant laurels and be justifiably proud that I didn’t play in that mess and be confident that rest of the country crashing down around me wasn’t going to affect me, I would. But I can’t. Because despite making all the sensible decisions, I still will have a hard time getting credit, finding a job, selling my home (if I wished to), or paying for a medical catastrophe if my fiancé were to (gods forbid) lose his job.

See, the way capitalism is supposed to work is that only those who fail pay the price. All those new devotees to Ayn Rand that I’m hearing about should read her very carefully. In her idealized capitalistic good vs. evil world, no one pays the price without conscience choice and the good guys get to fly off to Galt’s Gulch and let all the bad and weak people (even those ideologically loyal to Dagny herself) to a world destroyed. Well, if I could book a ticket to Galt’s Gulch maybe I would. Even if the whole idea is undermined by the fact that every last one of them in some way was subsidized by Franisco D’Ancona’s fortune.

I’ve been studying Ayn Rand since I first picked up her books in 1986. I’ve read every book she’s ever written and while I love them the way I love a fairy tale, I don’t turn a blind eye to what she conveniently ignores. But now I hear conservatives all over (including a conservative guest on Bill Maher) touting gleefully that Ayn Rand is “flying off the shelves” and is the biggest seller on Amazon. When I hear those same people argue to continue her entire philosophy throughout all aspects of culture, maybe I’ll take them seriously. But I doubt they’ve read The Virtue of Selfishness and have only highlighted those sentences in Atlas Shrugged they can roll out at cocktail parties and in blog comments. If anyone tries to quote Ayn Rand to me, they’d better get the reference of this post’s title first (without Googling).

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s been a few years since I pulled her off the shelves. Maybe I’ll reread one, just so I can keep up at cocktail parties.

Fair’s Fair and Random Comments

I have absolutely no problem with Obama taking his licks over his very un-P.C. joke about the Special Olympics on the Jay Leno show the other night. It was thoughtless and crass and it's absolutely something my side would have eviscerated George W. Bush over. Any Obama supporter or liberal who is defending or minimizing the joke is a bloody hypocrite. For punishment, find a blackboard, whiteboard, or loose leaf sheet of paper and write 150 times "Obama's joke was insensitive and stupid and he needs to watch his mouth and I'm being a hypocrite by defending him."

On a somewhat related note, I got an anonymous comment on my last blog post. It was in reference to this phrase: "Make this Joe the Plumber 'tard GO AWAY!!!!" and the comment, titled 'tard, was: "It would be great if this word or its full form (retard) could be dropped from the vernacular … Thanks for thinking about this."

What precisely is wrong with the word retarded? I would understand if the commenter had objected to my slang use of 'tard in not referring to someone who is by definition retarded, but I saw another argument against the word retarded in a different post. Where the poster specifically meant to use the term in reference to a mentally/developmentally disabled individual. But of all the words that have fallen to the PC police (and in many cases thank gods for the PC police), why is retarded one of them when it is used in a dictionary sense (from Merriam-Webster: slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress). So my use of it was improper and insensitive, but this person wants to not use the word at all and that I don't understand.

That doesn't mean Obama wasn't insensitive by his joke. Bad bad Obama! It's just a semantic argument that's always kind of bothered me. Though I certainly think that Joe the Plumber announcing to the conservative glitterati that they make him horny will certainly retard his upward mobility in the movement. Oh and apparently I also misspelled turgidity. I'm leaving the misspelling in there, along with my un-P.C. use of the word 'tard because that's what I wrote and I'll take my licks.

 

 

 

My Eyes! My Eyes!

My conservative friends, I have a favor to ask of you. No, it's not a favor, I'll pay for it somehow. I'll write a nasty critical something or other about Obama. I will vote for a Republican in the next Congressional election. I will listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity for a week without puking. I will do some or all of these things plus many more if you can do one thing in return for me.

Make this Joe the Plumber 'tard GO AWAY!!!!

"God, all this love and everything in the room -- I'm horny," declared Joe.

Please, please please! I had a hard time taking it initially. It's really unfair to keep foisting him on us. Yes, we make you endure Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann, but at least they don't announce their turgiditity to continue their 15 minutes of fame. This is way too much and has been from the day he entered the scene. Bad enough you all have to cow tow to Rush Limbaugh, but I can't believe you are keeping this guy in the tent.

At this point I'm reduced to shameful bribery. What do I have to do to convince you all to take this guy behind the woodshed and pants him!

I shudder to think how that would make him react. Just get rid of him, I beg of you.

Sincerely,

Me

Where do I sign on the dotted line?

UPDATE: See WTFWJD post on this subject. As a follow up to my latest post, even a Christian agrees with me!! Of course I don't know how many Christians agree with her, but at least she loves Jesus! (of course maybe she drinks a little*).

*For those who don't get that last bit, go here.

For my excommunication that is. Because any church that would do this isn't one I want to be counted as part of. As far as I know, because I was baptized Catholic and am therefore counted when the Church says there are X million Catholics in America. So how do I go about getting excommunicated? I don't want to be counted as part of this flock in any way.

The story:

A senior Vatican cleric on Saturday defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a 9-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped … He also excommunicated the doctors, who carried out the operation for fear that the 80-pound girl would not survive a full-term pregnancy.

And from here:

"He did not excommunicate the step-father, saying the crime he is alleged to have committed, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending a fetus's life."

Seriously? Really? Are these people for real? Oh, I get it. If you excommunicate child rape where are you going to find more priests? I realize that's nasty and there are supposedly wonderful priests out there and all that. But when this kind of thing goes down, what am I supposed to think of the church I heartily abandoned over 20 years ago?

I think I'm relieved and validated that I left it. And this isn't some edge case, the Vatican backs it. Welcome an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier back into the fold, but god forbid a child be spared abject horror and a potentially life threatening pregnancy in favor of a fetus. Which frankly proves what I've always thought about the church. The life of a woman (and now obviously a child) is worth nothing. We are just baby machines no matter how young or old. And child rapists are more welcome in their kingdom of heaven than a woman caring for her child.

This is exactly an illustrative example of why we who are so derided cling to a certain degree of moral relativism. Since we cannot empirically know God's law (or even that there is a God) how can there be no subjectivity? Certainly the Catholic Church for years showed such subjective judgment regarding their own. But far be it from showing it to a mother caring for her child, or the child herself. Who is this subjectivity reserved for? The so-called princes of the Church and no one else.

Moral relativism is also why I support overturning the federal ban on funding embryonic stem cell research. This guy claims it's a distraction and is going to lead to embryo harvesting. There are many ways to prevent that, but in the end, I don't think there should be anything illegal about me choosing to create an embryo of my own body to harvest stem cells to save or better my life. I can't say that I would or wouldn't do that, but in the end, it's again about my body, my family, my decision.

Moral relativism gets sneered at and derided by those who claim it means an anything goes attitude. It doesn't. It means questions of morality should be decided within human societal and cultural contexts and there isn't a one size fits all policy for every moral decision. It does not mean a degraded morality, it means we are rational humans who can assess a situation within a context and make informed decisions about it. The people who think that any "moral" freedom will automatically lead to deprivation are cynics or fearful. Either they are cynics about humanity in general, or they are fearful of what they themselves don't like and therefore don't want others to do.

But within the light of the above story, I will take moral relativism any day of the week. Including Sundays.

Reprieve

Update to previous post is that my sabbatical is not yet coming to a screeching halt. Deal fell through. Not going to go into the boring details because they really don't matter in the long run. There are a million myriad reasons and factors that go into any decision about anything. Whether you are consciously aware of or able to influence or even know all those factors is irrelevant. They are there. You influence and control what is within your sphere of impact, past that, there's not a damn thing you can do.

Now I'm in the midst of taking the GRE course I signed up for last year. My first class left me equal parts terrified (I couldn't even remember 2πr!) and confident that it's ¼ what you know and ¾ knowing how to beat the test. Which pisses me off in that there's this monopolistic company with its sycophantic colleges and test preparation companies colluding to create a test that doesn't in any meaningful way predict whether you will be a good graduate student or not. But as I told one of the other class members, I'm giving myself a few days to be pissed off at that before getting over it in time for the next class.

In other ramblings:

• For all those people ranting about honey bee money and the like in the stimulus package and other things that keep you up at night, please note these things are not in the actual stimulus bill, they are what the states are going to use the stimulus money for. Be mad at your governors and state legislators and get your facts straight.
  
• Rush Limbaugh has been and always will be a big fat idiot. Right now he's the natural leader of the Republican Party even if that does mean I have to see his fat face on magazine covers.
  
• There is such a thing as being too true to the original. After watching The Watchmen (which I did enjoy) I have a new appreciation for the Oscar category Best Adapted Screenplay. This screenplay (no offense to original author Alan Moore) could have used a bit more adaptation.
  
• And speaking of comics, no female superhero should wear her hair that long while suited up. It's only a weapon to be used against you. I don't care about the high heels, those can be used as weapons, but all that hair flying around and no one's grabbing it to pull her off balance?
  
• I'm actually looking forward to my math class on Wednesday. I'd like to remember what I actually used to be kind of good at before four years of craptastic math teachers drummed the understanding out of me. My last good math teacher was in my junior year of high school.
  
• I have forgotten how much I really like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Because of the movie, his Jazz Age short stories are back in vogue (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories) and highly enjoyable. Didn't see the movie, but might depending on how I like the short story.
  

Fingers crossed on a new job lead I found Friday. This time I won't jinx it until it's signed, sealed, delivered and I actually start!

Time Flies

My sabbatical is coming to a screeching halt and I'm coming full circle. 9 ½ years ago I was dying to go from contractor to full time at my company and now I'm returning to that company—after 9 years of salaried employment—as a contractor. It's been a fabulous 8 ½ months off. I did some of the things I wanted to, didn't get around to some of the things I did, but overall got a good mental rest and restart.

Why am I returning to work? Technically speaking, I don't have to. But to not work would require certain sacrifices I'm not ready to make. I don't care how inane or vain those reasons sound, they still exist. Despite cutting back significantly in spending and being OK with that, there are things I'm not quite ready to give up unless I have to. Such as:

• I hate yard work. To be able to hire someone to do what I hate is the ultimate luxury and a reason—at least right now—to return to work.
  
• Despite its many wonders (and more of that to come), Costco cannot supply a good body wash to save its life. I want my Kiehl's body wash and I will not do without!
  
• Over five hundred channels and there's nothing to watch? There's always Law & Order and there's always a rerun of Big Love. I will not give up my massive cable or Tivo.
  
• Organic food. Yes, today I spent $3.99 today for a yellow bell pepper vs. $1.49 for a conventionally grown one. But I'd rather not poison myself with god knows what when I don't have to. I may choose to poison myself with cigarettes, but food should never be poison and I'm bound and determined to support the organic food movement regardless. Again, more on Costco later as I love rewarding them by buying whatever new organic product they stock.
  
• In Vino Veritas: Not that I ever gave up wine, but I'd like the occasional splurge on a bottle over $10, something I've denied myself these past eight months. There are great bargains for under $10 and I intend to continue to patronize those, but there are amazing wines out there for more that I want to treat myself with now and again.
  
• Not caring about the dry cleaning bill! There's no point in dry cleaning when you aren't working to justify wearing those types of clothes. But when fashion is something that makes your mornings creative, having to care about how much it costs to clean vs. the value of wearing said item becomes annoying. I want to wear what I want!
  

But in addition to gaining these little luxuries back when I return to work, I'll have to give up some things as well:

• Privacy: For eight months I've seen who I want, when I want and have been able to spend as much time alone as I want. In going back not only do I have to interact with many people on a daily basis, I have to carpool. Yes, I realize I'm a liberal and I'm supposed to embrace such green living, but I hate carpooling. I adore the privacy of my car and my NPR or CD and singing badly at the top of my lungs. Because of the location of the office and new parking costs, we all have to carpool which puts restrictions I'm not used to on my time and privacy. Plus the new office has open space rather than offices. I'm OK with that, but will take adjustment given I've spent eight months spending the majority of my time alone. Time to finally invest in an iPod I guess.
  
• Freedom to spend my days as I like. Regardless of what anyone thinks I've done or not done well during my time off, it was still all MY time. Now my time during the work day belongs to someone else (though they are paying me well for that). I don't see a problem in transitioning to that, but it is a loss of something I've enjoyed quite a lot.
  
• Managing my household: I don't care how Desperate Housewives it sounds, or how much you might want to make fun of me for it, I've enjoyed being a "housewife." I've enjoyed having the chores get done and not pile up into mountainous problems; I've enjoyed cooking every night; I've enjoyed doing little household projects like painting a wall or installing new switch plates or putting in a new kitchen floor. I like channeling my inner Bree (except for the aforementioned yard work). There simply won't be time—despite how well I've set up the systems—to do it all as well as I did while not working.
  
• Make up free: I love make up, I really do. But it's been wonderful to go days, even weeks, without any on my face because there simply was no reason to. I've grown used to a face without makeup. You might say then why start putting it on just because you're returning to work? Don't you work in an uber casual environment anyway? You would be right, but it still isn't going to happen. I go to work, I wear makeup. It's just my way.
  
• Spending hours in a day delving into a single issue in the world (economic, political, social, etc.). Not just reading one story, but reading ten or twenty to figure out exactly what happened and what it really means. That takes a lot of time and the average person's inability to do so is a detriment to society.
  

Don't judge my sabbatical on the above (or do, I don't care). I've had plenty of deeper philosophical insights than the relative merits of body wash or dry cleaning. But those are going to take time to internalize and articulate and in many ways, I need to return to the structure of a working world in order to do so. At least for a time. In the meantime, I relish not feeling guilty about buying skin care products and I relish that I don't really care so much about shopping anymore.

More to come …

Pork It’s the Meat of Kings …

If you watch this, it will stick in your head for hours, even weeks to come. You have been warned.

I'm sick of the term "pork." It has no definition and its use in political discourse is the last bastion of the unintelligent mind. One man's pork is another man's energy grid. One woman's pork is another woman's pro-life propaganda. It's an all encompassing term to deride what you don't like ideologically. It means nothing real or relative.

"Pork barrel spending" is not the same thing as earmarks. An earmark is a more tightly defined concept whereby Congress overwrites the executive branch authority on allocating funds without ever having to identify who authored it:

Earmarking differs from the broader appropriations process, defined in the Constitution, in which Congress grants a yearly lump sum of money to a Federal agency. These monies are allocated by the agency according to its legal authority and internal budgeting process. With an earmark, Congress has given itself the ability to direct a specified amount of money from an agency's budget to be spent on a particular project, without the Members of the Congress having to identify themselves or the project.

The stimulus package is neither perfect nor laden with pork. And it's here. And it's here to stay. And yes there will be problems arising from the execution of it and yes there will be sterling successes. But the current debate about it reminds me of the intellectual capabilities of ideological teenagers who know absolutely nothing about what they argue about yet they do it so passionately.

I get that conservatives hate it on ideological grounds. You've been heard, it didn't work. No, that doesn't mean you should just shut up, but you are not contributing to the current situation. Pitch in and ensure that the money your state gets (and don't you love the Republicans who wouldn't vote for the bill clamoring for the money) is spent wisely, according to your constituents values and wishes. Do something constructive, please, because constantly referring to the laissez-faire capitalism that got us into the current situation is as annoying as living near the constant noise of an airport.

I'm currently reading a compilation of an advice columnist and I'm thinking I really should be an advice columnist. This isn't hard, at least not based on the letters that get sent in. Does anyone actually know someone who sent a letter to an advice columnist? I've never heard of such a person and wonder if they're like Oompa Loompas? Anyway, I love giving advice and have some for the people who have decided that they HATE President Obama. Not just disagree, but hate hate hate. My advice is based on experience so I know what I'm talking about. I HATED George W. Bush so I have direct experience in hating a president.

Check out. Tune out. Find a hobby other than what's going on at the national level. Seriously, it's the only way you're going to get through the next four, possibly eight years. Hating everything you see and hear the nation's president doing is exhausting. You should check back in around election times, but otherwise, you're going to be perpetually miserable. Stop reading your bubble blogs, tune out of FOX, take up knitting. Watch back episodes of Lost to remember to confuse you. Focus locally rather than nationally. Unless you are in a position to actually impact what's going on at the national stage, you are only setting yourself up for pain if you spend four years railing about Obama. I know. I've been there with Bush. I had to check out.

I-told-you-so's are hollow. They don't make you feel better. Being prescient makes you feel worse, not better. So if you're right, and everything Obama does is a spectacular failure, you won't feel better. I don't feel better that I knew the execution of the Iraq war would be a disaster; that the deregulation of the financial industry and the subprime mortgage debacle would blow up; that ridiculous credit debt would crash us all. Knowing all that years ago and being right doesn't feel better. In many ways, it feels worse because it makes you believe that the nation is stupid and who the hell wants to live in a stupid nation? So if, in your rush of hatred, you are banking on being "right" and relishing the prospect of saying I Told You So, it won't live up to your expectations. It might drive up Rush's ratings, but it do anything for your blood pressure. Just some friendly advice from someone who's been there.

Pragmatic Morality

Conservatives are all up in arms over what they perceive as the return of the "nanny state" because of the stimulus package. They fear near permanent status of many of the spending programs in the ARRA. Whether they are right or wrong remains to be seen.

A lot remains to be seen over the coming years. Severe economic downturns produce sea changes in mentalities and I am fascinated (both from a positive and a negative viewpoint) to watch and participate it.

On the negative front, I'm worried that the drop in fast food prices will force lower income people to make horrible dietary choices because organics are too expensive. Fundamentally changing our agricultural business model to enable better food might not rise to the top of the priority list and in a generation we'll have even worse problems with yet another round of kids being raised on the poison that inhabits the average American diet. I also worry that many states (as well as the federal government) will raise the "vice" taxes to increase revenue. I actually don't have a personal problem with increased taxes on cigarettes and alcohol (and I consume both), but tying critical projects to consumption of substances that states are also trying to decrease will be problematic.

But on a positive note, I'm already starting to see some of my pet issues get looked at in the name of pragmatic budgeting. Five states are considering repealing the death penalty due to its cost. I am ideologically opposed to the death penalty, but if budget cutting that gets it off the books, I'll take what I can get. Connecticut is looking to repeal its Sunday ban on alcohol sales to increase tax revenues. This puritanical holdover should go the way of the dodo as it always seemed to encourage drunk driving since the dawn of the Sunday football game. And Washington is considering privatizing liquor stores so as not to have to take the cost on the state budget. Why a state would want to run a liquor store rather than just set the regulations has always been confusing to me.

How far behind can the legalization—or at least decriminalization—of marijuana be? The cost of prosecuting pot simply doesn't seem to be pragmatic in these times. For the record, I don't really enjoy pot and wouldn't even if it was legalized. I just think it's a ridiculous substance to prohibit to adults. The only reason I can see to keep it illegal is that it's not currently possible to test whether someone (a driver, an airline pilot, a doctor) is impaired at this moment in time, the way you can with alcohol. But once that can be established, what is the remaining argument against legalization? I'll be very surprised if we don't start seeing this debated seriously as a cost-cutting/revenue-raising issue.

Of course all of these types of issues will give rise to a huge outcry from the social conservatives that bad economic times shouldn't degrade our "moral fiber." And the responsibility of constraining the social conservatives will fall to the fiscal conservatives who claim that Republicans aren't really representative of conservatives. Because all of these small examples are as illustrative of a "nanny state" as are the programs liberals pushed for in the stimulus package. If conservatives want to seriously take back their party, they need to be consistent on all aspects of the limited government they claim to want so much.

Blank Check Good? Investment Bad? What Do These Republicans Want?

I don't believe that Republicans should just file in lockstep behind Obama and the Congressional Democrats. I believe that all representatives should vote according to the convictions they stated to their constituents that got them elected. If they and those they represent fundamentally disagree with the stimulus package, they should not support it and state why. After 9/11 there was this attitude that everyone had to rally around President Bush and give him what he wanted (except it was couched in terms of need, not want) because that's what needed to happen. I don't advocate that—then or now—because we know what happened. We need to rely upon Congress to rally around what their constituencies want. And in districts and states that went Obama for President and Republican for Congress, Republicans in Congress particularly need to weigh how much their constituents want Obama's agenda vs. their own.

But I don't understand Republicans—such as McCain and Baehner—who voted for the previous bailouts (by far so much worse than anything being proposed in this stimulus) but then nitpick this one. What are they saying? Blank checks to banks good, investment in infrastructure bad? I simply don't get it. Well, actually I do. It was political expediency at a time of crisis and this is exactly why I don't trust McCain and the like. You cannot claim to be a small government supporter than write a blank check for Treasury to disperse willy nilly.

There are those conservatives who just want the government spending to stop, hang the consequences. There's a certain Darwinist aspect to that view that I can appreciate. I'm even reasonably sure that we share the same beliefs on the end state. I just disagree with how to get there. I'm a progressive liberal who believes that government can and should do what it can to level the playing field in this country so that we can reach that desired end state where everyone has the same opportunity and succeeds or fails on their own merits. That state simply doesn't exist yet.

I don't believe in the tyranny of the majority or the minority, but this isn't either. This election made it very clear which direction the majority of the country wants to go. As long as that stays within the confine of the Constitution, then that's the direction we're going per the will of the people. Obama has been consistent throughout his campaign and while willing to compromise here and there, is going to ensure that the spirit of what he promises is what's going to go out there. The tax cut only strategy failed. We need cuts, investments, and regulation.

If Republicans really want to rebuild their party they should take a cue from the Democrats' problems. The Democrats, starting in '94, were all over the map. Picking one day to strongly stand by their convictions and oppose the Republicans and taking another day to cave to political expediency. The American people don't reward that and didn't for many years. Republicans whose constituents voted for Obama need to take that into account. And Republicans whose constituents did not vote for Obama and who are opposed to bailouts and stimulus packages of any kind should feel free to take that position. They'll lose this battle, but they'll be the better politician for it.

Just spare me the Republicans who deregulated the financial sector, bailed it out, and are now whining about the stimulus package.

Conspiracy to Prosecute

Yet another one of my crackpot conspiracy theories has to do with President Obama's stated commitment to transparency.

The short version (via the New York Times) is this:

Mr. Obama directed federal agencies to err on the side of transparency, not the Bush-era default of secrecy and delay, in releasing records to the public. He also undid the executive order signed by President George Bush that lets past presidents and vice presidents sit indefinitely on potentially embarrassing records that belong in the public domain.

But since it's now so easy to get the exact version, I'll extract that here, from WhiteHouse.gov:

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

My theory is simple: Obama will prosecute the Bush Administration (minus Bush himself*) if and only if the public forces him to. I read his message as: if you ask for it , you'll get more than you could have in 8 years, and if you can put it together into a case that forces him to act, he will. He won't waste time going after the past unless the public demands it and he's just given the public the means to do so.

Obama believes in an informed and active citizenry. Therefore informed citizenry will need to determine whether the criminality of the Bush Administration should be investigated. I love this theory. I want the Bush Administration held accountable for what it's done, but I don't want Obama and his staff and cabinet wasting his time looking backward with all that needs to be done so quickly. So if the evidence is there, it's up to the American people to find it, put it together, and make a case. After all, the majority of the American people kept those people in office four years ago, the American people should have to do a little work to prosecute them. Unfortunately, the people who will most likely be doing the investigating won't be the people who voted for them back then, but then that's life when you're a liberal. Always having to clean up the conservatives' messes ;-). We're used to it.

*It is my understanding that a President cannot be charged or prosecuted for acts while in office unless he is first impeached and tried by the Senate to remove him from office. With regards to the Vice President, I don't believe a clear cut protection exists, but I also believe that the current Supreme Court is so afraid of any type of constitutional crisis (this is based on the 2000 election decision and the court is more right-leaning since then) that they would not allow a prosecution of Dick Cheney to move forward. However, given that the Supreme Court cleared the way for civil cases to move forward against sitting presidents (the sexual harassment charge leveled against Bill Clinton), I do expect a flurry of annoying and potentially financially devastating cases to be brought against both Bush and Cheney.

Do the Numbers

"How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives; how does that stimulate the economy?" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the Obama meeting.

The above is in reference to an item in the current iteration of the economic stimulus plan meant to slow the spread of STD's and provide contraceptives. That Boehner doesn't understand how that helps the economy is mind boggling. Actually, I'm sure he does understand it; he just doesn't want to acknowledge it because that means he'd have to acknowledge that people have sex just for fun and not for the duty of procreation.

Helping people have fewer children and helping them avoid unnecessary health problems definitely helps the economy. Right now, the fewer children people have the less money they need and the more they can invest in the children they do have thereby making the next generation a better one. But social conservatives seem to refuse to see the link between having or not having children and the future of the economy. The more children people have during troubled times, the less can be invested in them. The less we can spend on education, the worse off the next generation should be. Of course, given our society, no one can or should be forced to reduce the number of children they have. But by making family planning support available, individuals can make better, more informed, choices that will benefit the economy. Why is it so horrible to say that? Why is there any outrage at all over a very simple way to improve the future of the economy? I have to think that the only reason there is any controversy over contraceptives at all is because to use contraceptives means someone is have S-E-X which is apparently some huge scary thing to social conservatives (who I have to assume to perform the act but freak out if they have to know whether anyone else is).

In an attempt to balance out my love for Media Matters for America, I started reading News Busters as well. However, the two sites can barely be compared. The time and analysis simply isn't invested in News Busters, and a lot of their exposition of so-called bias is completely made up. For example, regarding the economic stimulus package (which isn't even finalized), they are outraged over the amount being spent on roads and bridges, claiming that the infrastructure spending was overpromised. That would be true, if infrastructure only meant roads and bridges. From this Jeff Poor guy:

In reality, little of the $850 billion American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 proposed by congressional Democrats will actually be spent on actual road and bridge projects - the sort of things most people think of when they hear infrastructure spending, according to the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Both Poor and the office of Sen. Sessions are being deliberately disingenuous, and exposing it in their own statements. If "most people" think only of roads when they think of infrastructure that only means that "most people" are ignorant. What President Obama has been saying throughout his campaign is that the infrastructure initiatives that he's been proposing include roads, bridges, electrical grids, expanding Internet access and upgrading the network systems throughout the country as well as improving rural communities, etc. Now I'm admittedly too lazy to go through the very detailed spreadsheet that the nice folks at Read the Stimulus created to break down the current iteration of the package, but even a quick glance shows how the folks at News Busters are trying to bias their readers against it. What a crystal clear example of skewing the data to fit a conclusion you've already drawn despite the evidence to the contrary (kind of like the intel used to justify invading Iraq). ReadtheStimulus.com is created by Kithbridge, a media solutions company whose founder is an obviously biased conservative (got to Kithbridge.com, click About, and read about the Founder). But if the information in the spreadsheet is correct and kept up to date as the bill progresses, it's incredibly useful. From what I can see of the construction of the site, ReadtheStimulus.com isn't trying to push any agenda other than organizing information for the citizenry, which is wonderful. It's the folks like News Busters who take this information and—by counting on the short attention span of their audience—attempts to skew it in a way to advance their agenda.

I'm prepared for the fact that some people are just going to balk at whatever the President and the Democratically controlled Congress does, no matter what. Issues like rolling back the international gag rule on abortion are going to blind them to anything else. I can even sympathize. I used to be that way on certain issues before I realized that bad decisions will have bad results and good decisions will have good results and to be blinded by ideology or party affiliation will not make a bad decision have a good outcome. Don't believe I can be that pragmatic? See my take on overturning abortion. Everything, big or small, icky or glorious, has an economic impact.

And that includes headlines. News outlets of all kinds have a pretty good sense of what headlines will get their readers/listeners/watchers to sit, read, click, buy. There's this outrage from the ultra-conservatives that certain "news" doesn't get covered. For example, the IMF reimbursements to Geithner. Of course it was covered. I read about it in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. What it wasn't was front page screaming headlines. That he had tax problems, yes, but not the details. Why? Because it's not interesting to the average person. Which means it won't generate a click, garner $.50, or get you glued to your television screens while you wait through the advertisements to get the story. It's economics, not bias. The news is there for those who are interested, but the headlines and top news is there to get you hooked. Why conservatives, who are all about the free market, expect the media to go bankrupt screaming headlines about something the majority of their customers aren't interested in is beyond me.

On a sad and scary note, apparently the fast food chains are in their equivalent of an airfare war. Supposedly Subway dropped their prices and so did Burger King, McDonald's, and other major fast food chains. This is bad bad bad. With the price of decent food rising and organic skyrocketing, actual food will be priced out of the lower socioeconomic classes forcing them into horrible fast food on a regular basis. This is not good for the future of the organics industry and nor is it good for the next generation. Yet another reason not to have more children than you can invest in. Note I said that you can invest in, not just whether you can afford them. Food, clothing, shelter, and medicine can be paid for and you're still not investing in your kid(s). Education, time spent parenting, offering enriching experiences, and the right kind of food, these are investing. If you can't afford on a regular basis to provide all of this to your kids, then sign up now for the contraceptive economic stimulus package. Please.

Zeitgeist

I spent a few days at my friend's cabin on an island just northwest of the city. I always love going up there, even in the middle of winter. Completely wired for internet, but my cell phone won't work. Rustic and functional. She just got a compost toilet which is a veritable luxury when compared to the pit toilet that used to be the only option. And wasn't something I was particularly looking forward to having to use in 36 degree weather.

We talked a lot about the economy. But in a way that I'm not particularly worried about. Yes, it is going to be tough and really tough for those who already had it rough before layoffs, cutbacks, and credit crises. But overall, I have believed since the crisis crested in September '08 that this recession is going to be good for the country. My friend lives very frugally, but well and in some cases—depending how you look at it—luxuriously (on a beautiful island overlooking your own beach? Who cares about hot water!) I've said this before I'm sure, I'm not a minimalist. No one who has ever seen my shoe collection could believe that. But that's when things are good. Not working and paring down what I want versus what I need (and good body wash falls into the what-I-need category still). Being cost conscious is a new interesting trend. What I sincerely hope is that people will not just go for the cheapest, but start prioritizing quality and worthiness. I'm looking to go back into travel tech, which is something I think is invaluable to life. Travel brings experiences, exposure, interests. I hope that even though it's terribly tough to make ends meet for the next 18 or so months, folks won't forsake experiences entirely.

While I was there I finally saw the Zeitgeist movie. Like most conspiracy theory/docudramas, it raises some interesting thoughts, but completely blows it in others; jumping to conclusions without adequate backing, not sourcing information correctly, etc. It's very easy to spot no matter what the goal is (actually reminds me of the amount of time/thought--NOT--that's put into the News Busters blog). Still, the first section on religion was fairly spot on. And Building 7 is very weird. As for FDR provoking Japan into Pearl Harbor to launch us into WWII … duh. Pretty much nothing I haven't heard from my fiancé's conspiracy theorist father, particularly about the international banking cabal.

I simply love conspiracy theories. I really do. I have one that the reason for the piss poor response to Hurricane Katrina was that the government was trying to see if they could impose martial law, as a test to determine how easy or difficult it would be after a disaster. Given how 9/11 was handled, I was shocked that they didn't try to declare it in New York. Maybe they just didn't think of it in time. But my whack job theory is that they intended to try in New Orleans but failed because of the sheer amount of press coverage and national attention. As for international banking/financier cabals, I totally believe in that. I just don't always believe they're in the wrong. As long as there are people who want to be sheep, there will be people who feel the need to herd them. I'm a big Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist and am starting to have questions about some aspects of 9/11.

But the people who produce the conspiracy theories always screw it up by including something so easily caught out that the entire point of what they're trying to do falls apart. One false fact can unravel the best of arguments. Just ask Dan Rather.

Happy anniversary! Obama reverses the international gag rule regarding abortions. Not surprising of course, but nice to see happen so quickly. You know, I could have much more productive fiscal conversations with conservatives if they would drop all the dictatorial social issues. I'm sure they would say the same thing about me, but what I've always said about the left vs. right social issues: my side takes nothing away from them; theirs takes something away from me. Therefore, my side should win. And with this economic crisis, I'm hoping people consider restricting individual rights is lower on the priority than preventing their own foreclosure. But to be honest, what Obama said back during the primaries is true. When times are tough, people do get insular and cling to what is familiar.