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April 30, 2007
Possibly the best bit of writing ever
Lawyers, Guns and Money: Birthday Girl
Although I'm pretty familiar with the kinds of books and toys and foods Audrey prefers, there's quite a bit I don't know about my daughter after a full year. As near as I can tell, her political and social views are rather unformulated. I've apologized to her many times for helping bring her into the world during a Bush presidency, but I can't tell if any of that matters to her. She did, however, emit a strange and almost joyful noise today when I was describing the results of the 1980 election. One of my students speculated that she might be a "future Republican," and I explained that since she has a grossly uncomplicated view of the world and spends most of her time thinking about her own needs, she probably already is a Republican -- but that once she acquires basic literacy, she'll grow out of it.
Posted by Andrew at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2007
Would we storm the soldiers keeping us from the ballot box?
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".
[...]
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.
The average Human being of any year is psychologically and biologically identical to the average German, Italian, or Japanese citizen of 1925. In this regard, America is not special or unique; we even have our own home grown fascists. These are, unfortunately, dangerous times for our democracy. We've seen a slow hissing slide great freedom to grave peril. An entire political party measures "progress" in the number of rights they can strip from Ordinary Americans...
Indeed, one of the current crop of candidates for president "threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected New York City officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to permit the extension of his mayoralty" (post 9/11 via)
When the next crisis hits, will we meekly sit by? Or will we do our duty as citizens to keep our nation free? History will judge us either way. It is up to us how that judgment is written...
Posted by Andrew at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2007
The Republican Party is not the party of Morality
Or, perhaps they mean something different by it...
At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education.
(via)
Now, no matter what you think of public schools, to deliberately undermine them-- to, with malice aforethought, shortchange the students in them-- for a political agenda is immoral. And, of course, if public schools fail after such ideology comes to the fore, it proves not that public schools are bad, but that when they are deprived of support, they fall down...
The fact that such ideologies are put into practice whenever Republicans take office is why I cannot, in good conscience, vote Republican...
Posted by Andrew at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
Why Liberals are Angry
I've gotten some flack at Dean's for my assertion that conservatives are hateful people. Some of them are pointing to people on the Left and saying "they do it too!" as if that mattered. The thing is, we liberals do have good reason to be more than slightly angry at the conservatives. Let's put Katrina aside. Let's ignore the gaping running sore in American Foreign Policy that is Iraq. Let's look at Abortion.
President Bush has said:
"I am pleased that the Supreme Court upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial-birth abortion. Today's decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America. The partial-birth abortion ban, which an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed and I signed into law, represents a commitment to building a culture of life in America.
Had the President said "gruesome", he would have been correct: major surgery involves blood and pain, and is therefore always horrific. What makes liberals angry about this decision is somewhat technical: Previously a woman and her doctor considered the risks to her life and health before making a decision on whether she was able to carry a child to term. Now, a doctor may only consider a woman's life before deciding whether or not she is legally allowed to have this procedure.
The difference is dramatic. Pregnancy is one of the wildest things biology can do. It's radical, weird, and half of them end in miscarriage. Sometimes a woman is simply unable to maintain both her longterm health and her potential child. Allowing a life exemption without also allowing a health exemption means that we don't care if a woman goes blind, as long as the baby is born...
So, why are we angry? Because congress has substituted, in a situation that is dynamic and life-threatening, it's own judgment static for that of a doctor. Congress has now said that if a woman is bleeding, a doctor must be certain-- absolutely certain-- that she will die unless the pregnancy is aborted. And so we have this:
We were watching TV on the bed at home. Then she felt some pain. But she wasn't bleeding. She was cramping. It was very painful, but again, we checked, and there wasn't that much blood. So we did not go to the ER right then, they said one pad per hour. I called my sister, who suggested a hot bath to ease the cramp pain. And that did the trick. Then she started bleeding more. She panicked. She took off to the ER without even waiting for me to get dressed to go with her. By the time I've joined her there, she is bleeding enough to go through one pad every 10 minutes. Then every five minutes. Her blood pressure is steadily dropping. The machine shows the numbers in orange. Then they are both in red. But all the ER people can do is basically watch her bleed. They don't want to do anything more because of the baby.
[...]
The doctors did not say at this point that it was absolutely necessary. Maybe more blood could be transfused in. Maybe she wasn't dilated - they hadn't figured it out yet. Still too much blood. So then there I was, facing the sort of choice that you usually see only in hypotheticals in ethics and philosophy classes. Only it was real. It was my wife. And I didn't have exactly a lot of time to think about it. It was just me and the clipboard. An empty line there, marked for my signature. My wife bleeding right next to me. The ultrasound of my baby, and its heartbeat, fresh in my mind from minutes before.
Congress has said, and the courts have agreed, that there are certain medical options that are off the table. People are going to die because of this, because congress has said that a fetus has more worth than a living, breathing, human. And so we liberals are angry...
Posted by Andrew at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2007
Nun joke: (not at all blasphemous)
A nun walks into Mother Superior's office and plunks down into a
chair. She lets out a sigh heavy with frustration.
"What troubles you, Sister?" asks the Mother Superior. "I thought
this was the day you spent with your family."
"It was," sighed the Sister. "And I went to play golf with my
brother. We try to play golf as often as we can. You know I was quite
a talented golfer before I devoted my life to Christ."
"I seem to recall that," the Mother Superior agreed. "So I take it
your day of recreation was not relaxing?"
"Far from it," snorted the Sister. "In fact, I even took the Lord's
name i n vain today!"
"Goodness, Sister!" gasped the Mother Superior, astonished. "You must
tell me all about it!"
"Well, we were on the fifth tee...and this hole is a monster, Mother
- 540 yard Par 5, with a nasty dogleg left and a hidden green...and I
hit the drive of my life. I creamed it. The sweetest swing I ever
made. And it's flying straight and true, right along the line I
wanted...and it hits a bird in mid-flight not 100 yards off the tee!"
"Oh my!" commiserated the Mother. "How unfortunate! But surely that
didn't make you blaspheme, Sister!"
"No, that wasn't it," admitted Sister. "While I was still trying to
fathom what had happened, this squirrel runs out of the woods, grabs
my ball and runs off down the fairway!"
"Oh, that would have made me blaspheme!" sympathized Mother.
"But I didn't, Mother Superior!" sobbed the Sister. "And I was so
proud of myself! And while I was ponderin g whether this was a sign
from God, this hawk swoops out of the sky and grabs the squirrel and
flies off, with my ball still clutched in his paws!"
"So that's when you cursed," said the Mother with a knowing smile.
"Nope, that wasn't it either," cried the Sister, anguished, "because
as the hawk started to fly out of sight, the squirrel started
struggling, and the hawk dropped him right there on the green, and
the ball popped out of his paws and rolled to about 18 inches from
the cup!"
Mother Superior sat back in her chair, folded her arms across her
chest, fixed the Sister with a baleful stare and said...
"You missed the fucking putt, didn't you?"
Posted by Andrew at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
China is still a dictatorship fact of the day*
One — and as far as I can tell, only one — journalist in the U.S. identified the killer publicly and quickly as a student from China who had recently been given his visa in Shanghai. [...]What the Chinese media did next was bad in a predictable way. Many web links to outside news of the shooting were blocked to limit subsequent details from reaching China. As reported in this blog from Beijing, parts of CCTV and the other official news outlets downplayed all announcements about the shooting until they could be sure what the “correct” Chinese angle would turn out to be. Meanwhile some other Chinese press web sites reported the news — and the suspicion, emanating from America, that the killer was Chinese.
*sigh *
Full story here
*Because around here we love Stitch in Haste
Posted by Andrew at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2007
Allowing Partisan Politics To Define America.
A buddy of mine sent this link. Here's my reply:
Scott,
The founding fathers were terrified of parties and partisanship. They hated the very idea that Free Citizens might vote for men over ideas. And yet... Thomas Jefferson founded the very first political party in America. His "Democratic-Republican, (later: "Democratic") Party championed a week central government. When he was VP, he did everything in his power to stifle President Adam's agenda. It did not begin personally, but it ended that way...
There are Roughly a dozen partisan offices that I vote for, and roughly that many more non-partisan offices that I vote for. There are probably a dozen more measures on each and every ballot. I'm a seriously political guy. I've had dates where we did nothing more than study what was on the ballot. Every year around election time, my family gets together and does even more studying of the issues and candidates. When I walk into a ballot booth, I still don't know all that I should about who and what I am voting for...
What a party does is create a world view, and then analyze issues in light of that world view. Knowing that the Republican Party are for a certain issue or candidate tells me a whole lot about that issue or candidate. A whole lot of my work is done for me...
The problem (as illustrated by your link) is that party politics doesn't seem to be about "ought" any longer, but rather "is". We are not fighting over whether or not church and state _ought_ to be separated, but rather over whether or not evolution _is_ true. We don't argue about if we _ought_ to be in Iraq, but whether or not Iraq _is_ improving. We aren't arguing about what the size of government _ought_ to be, but rather over whether cutting taxes _is_ allowing for the expansion of government...
The problem isn't that we have parties: Political parties are good and useful things to have. The problem isn't that partisanship is creating its own ideas about best ways of governing the country. Those are good useful debates. The problem is that at least one major party has lost it's grip on reality. That will kill us all...
Posted by Andrew at 10:09 AM | Comments (1)
April 09, 2007
The Ultimate Trojan Horse meme virus
Dear Soviets: We've just invented something that will increase our economy a bajillion fold. At the same time, if you try to implement it, it will destroy you. Surprise!
"DARPA's mission is ''to prevent technological surprise to the U.S., but also to create technological surprise for our enemies,' "
(Source: DARPA: Bridging the Gap; Powered by Ideas, Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, Feb. 2005, p. 1." found here on page 17)
Posted by Andrew at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2007
Dear Republicans
Please, oh please oh please, run Dick Cheney in 2008. Indeed, a Cheney candidacy may be the single greatest service the man could provide in his long and storied career.
Sincerely,
Andrew Cory
Posted by Andrew at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
April 02, 2007
Passover
After +10 years of having half my family being Jewish, I finally attended a Seder this weekend. Of course, it was with my GF's family, rather than my own...
The meal is about symbolically recalling the days when the Jews lived in Egyptian captivity, and the idea is to specifically feel the injustice of slavery as though it were a living presence in your own life. Through that, you are called to empathy for all people who currently injustice, and reminded that you, yourself, ought to be an agent of change...
This is exactly as depressing as Easter-- not at all. We are reminded that amidst suffering, there is life. Sweet food and sweet wine, frequent toasting and sharing of stories symbolically and actually tell us that life is a gift from G-D. Dayenu!
I have said before that if I were to go monotheistic, I'd go Jewish. Seder has reconfirmed that sentiment...
Posted by Andrew at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)