The Phelps family in action
I think the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a fine thing.
Really.
But sometimes, late at night, I really really wish there were better-defined moral limits to it.
Cowardly cowardly custard!/Stick Rupert’s head in the mustard!
Poor Rupert Murdoch. He threatens to prevent Google from aggregating news items from sites he owns, and at the same time threatens to put his news sites behind pay-to-view portals.
And with typical California cool, Google threatens, “Cool. Do what you have to do.”
UPDATE: Murdoch adds that Glenn Beck was right back in July to say that President Obama is a racist–”though he shouldn’t have said so”. Better get a wider shovel, Rupert; that hole you’re digging is getting deeper.
One step forward, one step back
Yesterday Maine voters chose to discriminate against an estimated 10% of the state’s citizens by repealing the law giving gay people the right to marry each other. Imagine having to get the permission of half of 536,000 people in order to marry the person you love.
Maine voters also chose to allow the sale of marijuana for medical purposes. Imagine how long racial desegregation of schools in Alabama and Mississippi would have taken in the 1960s if it had been put to a popular vote.
There’s a reason why the U.S. employs representative government instead of a pure democracy.
I’ve always been a big believer in social change by evolution rather than by revolution. You cannot healthily force social change; attempts to do so often lead to totalitarianism. In the latter case above, we’ve evolved one small step toward legalizing the use of a substance with no known toxicity effects and proven medical benefits. In the former, evolution still has a long way to go.
That being said, I begin to understand why revolutionaries tire of waiting.
Fickle credit card companies
Bank of America dumps a credit card customer one day (apparently as a result of griping about having her limit cut in half without notice), and then asks her to come back two days later at the original credit limit…
and NOT because of a reporter’s inquiry about the issue, per BoA.
Riiiiight.
I don’t normally post twice a day…
…but this one’s too good to let go by unnoticed.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would have voted against Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark legal case that paved the way for racial desegregation of school systems across America.
So, homosexual acts, abortion upon demand, same-sex marriage, equal pay for equal work, and racial desegration of school systems are all “new constitutional rights that were never intended by the drafters”.
This man is evil. (And Justice Clarence Thomas is his sock puppet.)
Meet 30 senators who approve of rape
A recent defense spending bill (FY2010 Defense Appropriations Bill) contains an amendment, sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken, that requires companies with government contracts to allow employees to seek redress in a court of law rather than be forced into private arbitration. The penalty for violating companies would be loss of all government contracts.
Minnesota junior senator Al Franken
The amendment was prompted by the plight of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former Halliburton contractor who was gang-raped by co-workers while she was on assignment in Iraq. Her contract forbade her to seek legal redress; it also required her to not disclose what happened. She ignored that requirement, and was fired.
The Senate passed the amendment 68-30. 30 senators, all Republican, voted against this particular amendment.
I’ll say it again: 30 United States senators decided that staying on Halliburton’s good list was more important than allowing Americans to seek redress in our legal system.
And, they gave tacit approval to rape.
Here are the names of those distinguished white middle-aged (or older) gentlemen:
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS).
Here’s a lovely list of these gentlemen, with pictures and contact phone numbers.
(Note that from 11 states both senators voted against the amendment, including the last Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency.)
In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against it, and the U.S. Department of Defense conspired to stop it.
The House is now considering the appropriations bill, and Hawaii Representative Dan Inouye (of congressional Watergate investigative committee fame) is being heavily lobbied to remove or water down the amendment. Let’s see how he and the rest of the House votes.
Sometimes there is no justice
Bill Caudle, at the age of 39, joined the U.S. Army this month.
Why? It was the only solution he could see. He was laid off in March from a position he’d held for 20 years, and he got inducted so he would have coverage for his wife’s chemotherapy.
He will be gone for four years.
He will miss his youngest child’s entire high school career.
His wife’s ovarian cancer may well kill her before he musters out.
R. Crumb and the Bible
Mr. Crumb, of underground comic fame, has released an illustrated Book of Genesis. (I should have bought it at the local comic con earlier this month.)
Lot, post-Sodom and Gomorrah
I must have dozed off in Sunday School when they covered the above-illustrated story about Lot’s daughters having sex with him (“to maintain his line”) (Genesis 19). This was after Lot had offered the samesaid daughters to a gang of rowdies for a group shagging, just so the gang would leave Lot and his guests (the pair of angels that had come to warn him of Sodom and Gomorrah’s imminent destruction) alone.
I must have been on vacation when they discussed the business of Elijah asking God to send she-bears to rip apart the children that had made fun of Elijah’s bald head (2 Kings 2).
And we’re not going to get anywhere near that psilocybin trip that is Revelations.
Calvin Trillin is my hero of the day!
Mr. Trillin’s verse comment about Roman Polanski, from The Nation:
A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he’s been punished for this lapse–
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He’s suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.
Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that’s for sure–
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too–
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.
Take back your birth methods, goddamnit!
Did you know that electronic fetal monitoring (EFM), lauded in the 1970s as an inroad to prevent cerebral palsy and other birth injuries, has only resulted in an increase in the percentage of C-section births–up to 33% (double what it was 10 years ago). (Cerebral palsy occurrence hasn’t changed since 1945.)
Do one-third of all women need major abdominal surgery in order to bear a child? Really?
Did you know that in the last 20 years the incidence of induced labor has doubled to 22% of all births in the U.S.?
Do women really need to be injected with a drug in order to have a baby?
Did you know that the incidence of maternal death is actually three times what is reported, because the U.S. is the only country that shortens the tracking time for such deaths to six weeks post-natal. (All other countries track it for a year.)
Why?
Did you know the number of maternal deaths in the U.S. has jumped from 7.5 per 100,000 births to 15.5 in the last 23 years?
Doesn’t that appall you?
Did you know that midwife-moderated home deliveries for low-risk births result in:
- a 2.1% rate of episiotomies (33% for doctors and a hospital)
- a 9.6% rate of induced labor (21% for hospitals)
- similarly-reduced rates of C-sections, forceps and vacuum deliveries, and epidurals
Consider the option of a midwife. What would you rather have?
a hospital, unnecessary drugs and medical procedures, and unconsciousness during one of the most important events in your life (and the most important of your baby’s)?
or
the comfort of your home, the loving assistance of your partner, and a midwife who knows what you’re going through and has any required medical assistance available at a moment’s notice?
Talk to your OB doctor, and don’t take that “Doctor knows best” condescension and the warm pat on the shoulder. Take charge of your births, just like you take charge of your life.
An arson suspect, a governor, and a fire expert walk into a bar…
Cameron Todd Willingham, who refused to plead guilty for a lighter sentence
So, you take an apparent case of arson and resultant deaths, you convict someone of it, and you execute the guilty party.
Years later, arson experts (including Craig Beyler, one of the most respected in the field) bring up strong evidence that indicates that the fire was accidental. This comes up before a review board, which is rightly concerned that the wrong person was sentenced and executed, and an investigation of the issue is planned.
As governor of that state, what do you do? You could:
a) support the discovery of the facts in the case (if any were missed), discover any missteps in the pursuit of justice, and humbly apologize (and possibly offer some sort of recompense) to the family of the executed man on behalf of the state if facts dictate that he was not guilty;
or
b) ignore the whole thing;
or
(c) dismiss three members of the review board (causing cancellation of the scheduled inquiry), proclaim that the executed man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was “a monster”, tell the review board to “look forward, not backward”, and then run scared that he won’t get the GOP’s nod to run for re-election in 2010.
Guess which one Texas Governor Rick Perry chose?
…and speaking of pronouncing moral judgment…
Gotta love the ginchy vintage web design!
The congregation of the Amazing Grace Baptist of Canton, North Carolina, is planning to put to the bonfire all English-language versions of the Bible except the KJV (King James Version), as well as books written by such heretics as Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, the Pope (those dirty Cath-o-licks!), and other heathens. Recorded music will also see the torch–everything from rap to country to contemporary Christian. These folks don’t miss a thing, do they? There are also promises of “great preaching and singing”, as the site says.
Oh, and they’re serving BBQ and fried chicken, and all the fixin’s. If they offer decent peach cobbler, I might show up.
Pronouncing moral judgment
Q: When should you openly disagree with someone who makes a statement concerning morality when you disagree with it?
A: Always
To quote Ms. Rand:
“Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.”
Do it. Every time the situation occurs.
Having said that, two things should be kept in mind:
#1 Remember the context of your disagreement. If you don’t like biker gangs, it’s not the best idea to walk into a hangout bar, climb a table, and yell “Bikers are assholes!”. Your level of disagreement may be as mild as a quietly uttered “I disagree”, or as strong as daily campaigning for a moral cause. The degree of disagreement is not of paramount importance, as long as the disagreement is openly stated.
#2 Remember that pronouncing such judgments requires that you yourself maintain a proper moral life. You may be wrong (and you will be sometimes), but you must be honest enough with yourself to be rationally certain.
(Note: I am not an objectivist. I agree with a good deal that Ayn Rand said and wrote, but I vehemently disagree on many of the real-world applications of her philosophy that she and many of her followers have espoused.)
The poor pay for it
The poor in America pay the highest rates for:
1) loans (The poor are a “bad risk”, so banks won’t loan, and other loans–from paycheck cashing places and other less formal means–are at usury rates.)
2) transportation (Buses and taxis cost far more per mile than using a car.)
3) food (Since transportion is dear, and most poor don’t live within walking distance of discount grocery stores, they eat fast food and grocery shop at expensive convenience stores.)
4) medical services (ER is usually the best they can do, and most don’t have insurance)
5) birth (These costs are less obvious and more insidious–very little pre-natal care, no post-natal care, poor nutrition, minimal or no education, etc. In many ways, this one is more costly than the other 5 combined.)
