Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. The other two are targeting GOP incumbents in the attorney general’s office and in the state House of Representatives.
Anyone think this might be the work of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
First in a decade. Do you all remember how hard it was to get the last minimum wage hike passed? I don’t either- it was a fuck of a long time though.
So at least they are getting the issue going in the House, but it will be stripped faster than Jeff Gannon on a porn site.
Happy mid-term election year- let’s see how many more doomed to fail populist proposals get brought up and squashed.
and does that question even have an answer? But more importantly- is it necessary to know when debating abortion? My answers are – we’ll never know, probably not and no.
I told Jovial in comments that when is a zygote a person is a moot question. I should have explained it in more detail. So here goes.
When a zygote is no longer just a clump of cells doesn’t matter at all in the abortion argument. It is a red herring thrown out as a distraction.
In any situation except for pregnancy, we allow people the freedom to choose to risk their own health, happiness and life in order to save the life of another. We do not force people to donate blood, or tissue, or kidneys. We do not require people to risk their lives to save another or face legal ramifications. We do not jail people who don’ step in front of a bullet for someone else, or throw themselves into traffic to push someone out of the way of a speeding bus. We don’t have a draft for the military (yet), or for the police force or fire department either. They are people who have chosen to risk risk their life for the benefit of others. We don’t even force parents to donate blood or tissue or kidney or bone marrow to their own dying child- the parents get to choose if that is a risk they want to take.
It is up to each individual to decide if risking their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth saving another person.
But not when it comes to pregnancy, though the situation is not any different than forcing someone to give a kidney to someone else. It doesn’t matter if you think that it is a clump of cells or a baby from the moment the sperm hits the egg, because it is up to the person who is risking their life, liberty and happiness who gets to decide to take the risk to save a life (or carry a life in this case).
I know, this is a modern country and the risk of dying from pregnancy has been drastically reduced. But there is still a risk. There is also a risk in having an abortion. The only person who can make that choice, who can choose which risk they want to take, is the person who will suffer the effects of that choice.
Everyday a large number of women choose to take that risk and others don’t. Some women have easy pregnancies. Some (me included) do not. Some women want children so badly that there is no risk they wouldn’t take. Some don’t want children (or more children- me included) and would rather risk the consequences of an abortion than a pregnancy and motherhood. That so many women choose to take that risk everyday does not negate the risk.
Now I know what some of you are thinking- a woman decides to have sex, if she didn’t want to get pregnant she shouldn’t have sex. Except that sex is a biological drive, and if women weren’t meant to have sex except to reproduce, then women would only have orgasms when they are ovulating. We also have a biological urge to eat, yet when someone gets food poisoning we don’t blame them for having a failure of discipline. If we eat so many times a day over the course of our lives, the likelihood of getting food poisoning at some point is pretty high. Same thing is true of sex and pregnancy, though only very lucky people get sex three times a day.
So the chances are that even with birth control, most women will get pregnant at some time in their lives. When that happens it is up to the woman to decide if risking her life, her health, her economic status and her liberty are worth the risk of having a child. When that clump of cells becomes a child is not the real issue, who gets the choice to take the risk is.
Well, i was browsing craigslist today in the tentative beginnings of a search for gainful employment (i clicked on the nonprofit section in the hopes that I might find something more interesting than the usual boring office jobs – or at least a boring office job for the common good) andI found this ad. Yes, I know this probably shows how incredibly ignorant i really am in all things progressive (or political for that matter – what can I say, i’m still more opinionated than informed- help me!)
Anyway what do y’all know about these folks? are they legitimate? effective?
What kind of justice do people who sell arms to embargoed places deserve? A lot less than they actually get says this article.
Last Christmas I had an argument with a right wing, conservative, white, male veteran who was bemoaning that “no one represents people like me anymore, that’s the problem with affirmative action” to which I responded ” I think people like you have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. What more representation do you need?”
Today there is an article in the NY Times called The Ascent of a Woman about the possibility of having a female president in the United States. The news doesn’t look good and it sums up a few things that any feminist poly sci student could tell you.
1) A lot of female leaders in other countries are part of a dynasty. Their family’s recognition helps voters get past the whole voting for a woman thing. Examples include Indira Gandhi and Corazon Aquino and Benazir Bhutto.
2) While we think that a female leader would be more liberal, the ones that actually get elected are considered unusually tough. Angela Merkel’s father was part of the East German Stazi and Michelle Bachelet of Chile was Defense Minister. Hillary Clinton’s pro-war stance may be an effort to prove she can be just as hawkish as the boys .
3) It is so much easier to get elected in a parliamentary system than a presidential one because it is the entire party that gets voted into office and then the party picks a leader. Once your party is in power passing legislation is a piece of cake compared to the American system.
4) A good pool of women with political experience just doesn’t exist in this country. We are still massively under-represented in the House, Senate and Governors offices.
So Hillary may have some of these credentials- she is a Clinton and she is tough and she is a Senator who has White House experience (as First Lady) But her own party (me included) isn’t really fond of her. Her run to the center appears much more like political pandering than her husband’s centrist acts.
I’m sitting here trying to think of a female politician who I could vote for. My own two senators are out, Patty Murray is kinda inept and Maria Cantwell is also pro-war. Nancy Pelosi did the whole chicken-shit we won’t impeach thing. Madeline Albright is tough and funny, she certainly has the international chops. But she can’t run because she was born outside the US and there is that atrocious quote about the Iraq sanctions (that caused mass starvation in Iraq way before the war resulting in 500,000 Iraqi children dying) “Better 500,000 Iraqis than one American” or something to that effect.
Are there any female politicians you guys would be willing to vote into the White House? And why?
In a recent post last week, I started a line of thought about beliefs and political ideals, noting that I have long believed God planned humanity to have a diversity of views. I didn’t think I would ever finish it, thinking nobody would care, but the topic seems to have stimulated discussion, so I’ll plug along.
I’m having second thoughts about my beliefs based on the idea that there might not be any grand theme in the Bible, and if there is, it is wrong. Not just that the Bible is not inspired in the infallible sense that fundamentalists use it to justify clinging to ancient superstitions, or that there is some great mysterious truth behind the myths, as liberals like to say — just that it is a book created by well-meaning people trying to understand a confusing world.
I don’t want to bog down a blog billed as “cool” with theology, but it is clear reading the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) that a main theme is that God favored the Israelite people and planned to install them — led by a prophet with the office of Messiah (Christ) — as rulers of the earth. I imagine that thought would have comforted a people used to being attacked and forced into subservience by powerful empires.
Christianity teaches that the entire Bible was inspired, but it also teaches that the Jews were wrong because A) the Messiah is God and not a human and B) the real Kingdom is in “heaven” and not a political kingdom on earth. The problem is that the evidence inidicates that Jesus and his disciples clearly believed the Jewish ideas. Christian beliefs to the contrary can only be found by picking out odd verses from different books.
Taking the New Testament books as a whole, it is clear that Jesus and his disciples believed that they were going to be involved in the glorious return of God in their lifetime. In the beginning of the book of Acts, the resurrected Jesus teaches for 40 days about the coming kingdom, and the disciples only recorded question is “when?”
Peter said in his first book “the end is near” and Paul gave people practical tips for an ancient version of Y2K. In the books they wrote just before they died, they changed their tune. For example, in his second book, Peter said to ignore those who scoffed at the idea of the end of the world, even though such talk had been wrong. His famous explanation was that “a day with the Lord is like a thousand years,” evidence that spin is not a modern invention!
So does the Bible have any meaning today in political discourse? For all their faults, I believe fundamentalists do have a point — if the Bible is not inspired, it is just another book produced by a bunch of Middle Easterners who reflected the culture of a primitive time. I can’t agree with their ability to explain away — or ignore — the mixture of slavery, polygamy, blood sacrifice, genocide, the death penalty for a wide variety of offenses such as homosexuality, oddball dietary laws and worship rituals. However, the fundamentalist view makes just as much sense as that of liberal Christians, who speak of a mystic truth behind what they see as well-written fables, but fables nonetheless.
This post is philosophical and not political — that’s a topic for another day. Obviously, the history I provide here is very sketchy and my conclusion is thinking out loud. But maybe our task is to try and do justice and what is right for people and this planet without having to justify its adherence to the Bible.
For a long time I had a big crush on Henry Rollins. This little clip of a letter from Henry to Ann Coulter just renewed my crush.
I just got back from a meeting with my anthropology professor and we had a damn good talk that included my making fun of the economics professor. I said something about how the econ prof was so sexist that the way he talked about his wife in class was “like she is the shiny prize he gets for being an asshole”. It took the prof a good minute and a half to stop laughing, snorting really. It was great.
I also brought in a collage I made on fear as a part of American culture. He liked it enough that it is now proudly hanging on his office door. I may not be an artist who has sold anything- but at least I’m displayed somewhere.
Why the hell am I telling you all this. I have a favor to ask. Over the summer I am doing some writing for this proff on several books and a movie.. Because I am flat ass broke and saving every dollar i have so I don’t have to beg on the streets of Cancun- I need 2 books. If anybody local has them to let me borrow- I will gladly trade you some of my books. Ever wanted to learn about Italian Marxists? Cultural Hegemony? Activist priests like the Berrigan Brothers? I’ve got some stuff on the Religious Right, the Zapatistas, lots and lots of political theory from people like Samuel Huntington and Wallerstien. Much much more!
The books I am looking for are Cruddy by Linda Barry and Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski.
Anyone- anyone?
I’m posting this for Little Flower- he deserves all the credit.
The big debate in Democratic circles right now is focused on the best strategy for reclaiming Congress. If Dems get control of one branch of Congress, someone could stop the Bush empire from doing too much more damage to the country and possibly uncover some of the bodies, maybe literally.
So is it wise to move to the center or energize the base? Democratic Leadership Council clones, Republicans in sheep clothing and Beltway journalists unanimously advise the former. But that’s not the formula that took the GOP into power.
Here’s former Republican operative Allen Raymond, interviewed in the Boston Globe after a three-month stint in jail for jamming Democratic phone lines during the 2002 elections, helping John Sununu win a seat in the Senate:
“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who
unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate
who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always
want to polarize somebody.”
Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a “bad thing.” But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones “pushed the envelope” but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.
“Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are
treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you
get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business,”
he said. “It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being
monetized under Republican majorities.”