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July 1st, 2008
03:50 pm - just like i told y'all
So, I've been maintaining a constant low-level chortle at the efforts of certain Ron Paul supporters to establish 'Paulville' in the West Texas Flats. Now, as I find out, they have (drum roll) a WEB SITE. The subtitle is 'Like minded people, coming together!'
What I want to know:
1.) So they're similar to people with minds?
2.) In what sense does a coop that holds land in the shareholders' stead qualify as a libertarian paradise? Sounds like some collectivist poppycock to me.
In other news, life continues apace. Nick, bless him, got me a hose for the garden and it's literally the best labor-saving device I've gotten in the last year and some. I always felt like a pioneer lugging the watering can up and down, up and down the hill to water the vegetable garden- but no longer! I've joined the (20th?) century at last!
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June 10th, 2008
11:20 am - history is with us
I just read this powerful post by Rick Perlstein about open housing in late '60s Chicago. The rhetoric used then, by whites who desperately argued for their right to remain free of black 'infiltration' of their neighborhoods, sounds all too familiar. Many mention an editorial by Barry Goldwater that stated, 'rights, and respect, are earned.'
Um, no. They're not. Read your Constitution and try again, please. There are many, many people who still argue this line, and they all deserve to be addressed the same way. Rights are not earned; rights inhere. We have those rights, not because of how we act, but because of who and what we are. Rights are not created by wealth; they are not mere reflections of societal norms.
Which, ironically enough, is why I'm so very down on libertarianism. Libertarianism invariably hews to a traditionalist view of rights that may no longer be relevant to our society; libertarians might recognize a right of companies to pollute groundwater, but not a right of residents to have water free of pollution; a right to discriminate racially, but not a right to be judged on the merits instead of on one's race. This recognition only of affirmative rights creates a sort of race to the bottom, a moral hazard by which she who behaves worst and creates the greatest externalities is rewarded economically, and ignored by the state, as long as she doesn't go around punching nuns in the face. Libertarians, especially the anarcho-capitalist variety, generally do not think to change societal norms or remake the social order, no matter how unjust it may be. They think of society in Econ 101 terms: equal distribution of resources and rational actors, and assume that society mirrors this understanding. As we know, it does not.
Anyway. Read the post, please. It's historical, not ideological (for the most part), and it puts the lie to anyone who argues that civil rights legislation was unnecessary because race relations would have naturalized eventually.
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June 5th, 2008
01:48 pm - so damn glad
Life is good. School is double-dutch-done. I'm working on really interesting things at my internship. There are tomatoes and squash and peas in the garden (well, the plants, anyway) and the little Carolina jasmine in the front yard is slowly winding its way up towards the sun.
Oh, and the Democratic primary is effectively over. Thank all possible deities. Everyone vote Obama, because the only thing older than John McCain is his agenda. I know there's a lot of noise being made about women voters taking their ball and going home or going to play with the Republicans instead, but I suspect that there'll be very few of those, at least among my friend group. To those that are considering it, please consider that yours is not the only agenda; a McCain presidency will be worse for many, many people who are not well-off white males. Think of the wars he'll start, the benefits he'll cut, the Supreme Court justices he'll appoint (and the rights that he'll thereby constrict) and every other disastrous policy position of his that you desperately disagree with. Obama is preferable to that in any number of ways.
We'll have our day, we women. We will. There will be a woman vice president, and a woman president, some day. In the meantime, everyone reading this remembers 2000, where a few thousand votes could have made all the difference. Don't be the person who has to apologize for their vote this time around. A year from now, don't be ashamed of the decision you made in November.
Current Music: FYR
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May 18th, 2008
10:27 pm - i am that shrill harpy
Just saw Iron Man. On one level, it was hilarious and fun.
On another level, it was so goddamn tired. Summer movies are this universe where men, hot men, schlubby men, smart men, stupid men, walk around surrounded by beautiful women in ludicrous heels who tumble into bed at a moment's notice; I mean, here's Gwyneth Paltrow, for god's sake, an actress in her own right, walking around in 5" ankle-strap heels and a skin-tight pencil skirt taking Robert Downey Jr.'s dictation.
Women are an afterthought in this world. They're a momentary distraction, something pleasant for the eyes to wander across between explosions. There will never be a summer movie about women who are leaders, women who are technical visionaries, women who make hard decisions and fight other women for the fate of the world. There will never be a female Iron Man.
And I hate to be shrill. Because god knows, no one ever listened to some shrill feminist harpy going on about summer blockbusters.
But there's still so much to do.
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May 5th, 2008
10:10 am - looking back on Loving
Mildred Loving, of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, passed on today. I can only hope that forty years from now, we'll look back at the various DOMAs the way we look back today on the anti-miscegenation laws: to ask, how did that take so long? There is no rational reason not to allow gay people to marry, just as there was no rational reason not to allow members of different races to marry.
(Turns out Mrs. Loving thought the same, for what it's worth.)
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March 25th, 2008
06:26 pm - gimme everything you own, and then beg to get it back
We've been reading about the various methods by which the United States took land from the native tribes. It's not quite what you'd expect- long before the government came anywhere near putting the tribes on reservations, our nation's greatest minds were working on the assumption that as heirs to the discovering nations that came before them, the United States already had 'absolute title' to all of the land within their borders. They then forced each tribe onto smaller and smaller parcels of land, by treaty and forced treaty, by forced migration, by congressional legislation abrogating treaty. Native people weren't using the land productively, they reasoned, and so they weren't entitled to it. ( and so on, and so forth )
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March 23rd, 2008
07:50 am - i'm gonna go out and get absolutely drenched in mccain
So, um, there's this video, by McCain supporters (one presumes), which kind of filks 'It's Raining Men'.
As Dan Savage notes, this is a disrespectful and, more importantly, badly sung misappropriation of an early gay anthem. However. If this is how McCain supporters want to promote him, I say bravo. Please, pudgy off-tune ladies, misappropriate some other movement anthems. My boyfriend recommends 'In The Navy', for one. Why not '(You Spin Me) Right Round' or 'I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight'?
But why even limit yourselves to the gay movement? We've all been waiting for a conservative cover of 'I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar' or 'Rebel Girl' by Bikini Kill. How about 'War' by Edwin Starr, or 'Mosh' by Eminem? Lend your atrophied vocal cords to the cause. The results are bound to be hilarious and do nothing whatsoever for your candidate.
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February 6th, 2008
10:17 am - scary things I have read this morning:
1.) McCain / Huckabee '08
2.) McCain / Lieberman '08
3.) McCain / Gingrich '08
Seriously, can anyone explain to me why they hate Hillary so thoroughly that they would consider voting for McCain instead? Give me detailed policy reasons, not 'she's not for hope and change!' or 'her husband got a blow job in the Oval Office!'
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January 4th, 2008
03:26 pm - Gachnar for America
Verbatim Ron Paul ad: 'Repeal birthright citizenship!'
That's right, kids, Paul wants to repeal part (if not all) of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that says that '[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' This was, of course of course, the amendment that made slaves born in the United States US citizens, thus vacating the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott. Paul's objection to it no doubt is connected to what anti-immigration activists call 'anchor babies'- US citizen children born to illegal immigrants, who can then petition to have their parents become legal permanent residents and, eventually, US citizens. What those activists don't consider is that those parents are still deportable; in order to gain US citizenship they would have to leave the United States, usually for a 10 year period, then go through consular processing (usually taking 1-2 years) then wait another five years to apply for citizenship. That's IF they succeed in consular processing, which they sometimes won't. What this means is that 'anchor babies', as they are invoked by anti-immigrationists, are effectively a myth. If you enter the US illegally, you have to have a really exceptionally good reason not to be deported, and a young child usually isn't enough. (See, for example, Elvira Arellano.)
The 14th amendment continues to the Equal Protection Clause, which states that 'no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' The Equal Protection Clause has been the basis for countless progressive Supreme Court decisions - Strauder v. West Virginia (overturning a state law that prohibited blacks from serving on juries), Brown v. Board of Education (mandating racial integration of segregated school districts) and most recently, Lawrence v. Texas (overturning anti-sodomy laws). No doubt Paul doesn't approve of these decisions either, seeing as how they limit the power of the states.
The point is, eliminating the first clause of the 14th Amendment would eliminate a number of important humans rights advances made in the last 140 years and reestablish an underclass of persons not protected by the Constitution. Children born to immigrant parents; racial, ethnic or religious minorities; gay and transgendered persons; all would be at the mercy of the electorate in the state they lived in. Without the Equal Protection Clause, imagine how many more lynchings would be allowed under color of law; imagine how much worse the racial or economic divides in our nation would be. Ron Paul wants to take our country back in time, and the destination he has in mind is a darker, crueler era that most of us wouldn't recognize.
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January 3rd, 2008
07:15 pm - I'll take 'Iowa' for 2008, Alex.
Obama is fine. I'll take Obama. Maybe he'll flesh out his platform now. Still waiting for the next/first female president- Nick mentions some congresswoman from Kansas as a possibility. It sure as heck ain't Feinstein or Pelosi or Clinton, although I couldn't tell you why beyond that people seem to dislike elderly women in positions of power. Better run before menopause hits, ladies, and don't forget your injections.
As for Huckles... well, we'll see. I'm overjoyed that Giuliani polled below 10%, and that Paul did 10% barely. Ron Paul: he's like Gachnar for Republicans!
P.S. Well, Huckles has his message, and I believe it is: 'Eat the rich. Also, CHUCK NORRIS!!'
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