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.