politics Archives | Page 1 of 2
| 1 2 | next ten entries
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Why do I even bother....
...when Rachel Lucas and Bill Whittle say everything I think only five million times better? I am feeling more cheerful this morning. Life goes on. Time for school.
ah well. can't win 'em all.
I had a rather incoherent trying-not-to-whine-and-failing post written and posted but I think I unpublished it before it hit the feed. (If I didn't and you read it, lucky you, right? or not.) I'm not depressed, and I'm not scared, and I'm certainly not surprised. And come on, it's not like the alternative was Ronald Reagan, right? (moment of respectful silence.) Or John Wayne. (Another.) I'm just weary, I think, and maybe a bit apprehensive about the possible dismantling of what I see as some defining American freedoms and ideals. Mostly, though, I'm very much reinforced in my realization that my happiness, my family life, my joys and pleasures and sorrows, my faith, that most of what really matters to me, has nothing to do with who's in charge in Washington*. (Also that worrying and whining never solved anything.)
*Let's just hope it stays that way. Sigh. I couldn't help it. Sorry.
And now I'm going to go add wood to my nice quieted-down fire and go to sleep. My usual unflappable cheery optimism has been ordered to return by morning.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Oh happy day!
As if the opening of the county fair didn't make it festive enough, now I get a gun-toting, pro-life, BS-cutting 42-year-old mother of five (including one son who enlisted in the military on 9/11/07 and a newborn with Down Syndrome whom she describes as "perfection") for a vice-presidential nominee? Is this my birthday or something?
I haven't been this excited about something political in a long, long time. Since... probably 1994. You'll excuse my gushing, won't you? I promise it won't happen... too often.
Back later with the news I know you're all waiting for with bated breath: How did the baked goods place? P.S. Jenn, watch your mail.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
politics (no need to flee)
The Internet is chock-full of candidate-matching quizzes this time of year, but none has satisfied me as much as glassbooth.org. Most of the ones I've tried just give you a list of candidates in order, but this one goes into detail, complete with quotes from candidates on issues, and does a very good job of assigning weight to the issues that matter to you.
(I wound up with pretty nearly a four-way tie among four candidates, one of whom surprised me. The one who'll get my vote might surprise you. Any guesses?)
(waves at Kat, who has been so diligently supplying the knitting-and-literary blogworld with politics links. Hi Kat!)
Sunday, November 04, 2007
warning: politics. RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!
In response to yesterday's post, Karen (hi Karen! nice to meet you) asked me the following question:
Maybe you've addressed this before and I've forgotten, but what is it about those two books that's annoying you so much? I've read the second one, and I'm curious to hear what you're thinking.
The books, to save you going back and clicking on the links, are The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. They annoyed me for mostly different reasons, although some of the overarching Big Deal reasons were the same.
Karen specifically mentioned Nickel and Dimed, which details the results of an experiment the author conducted wherein she shed her upper-class lifestyle for three separate one-month periods to see if she could make ends meet at the minimum wage. She treated this as if it was a Giant And Very Important Journalistic Endeavor. (Think Nelly Bly doing Ten Days In A Madhouse, only with more angst and less creativity.) The main problem I have with the book, aside from the author's obvious political slant (not as obvious as Shipler's in The Working Poor, though) was the fact that there is absolutely no way she could learn anything significant about the lives of the working poor in ninety-divided-by-three days spent pretending she was one of them.
Also, the little she did learn, she managed to learn in spite of the fact that while she had resources most poor people lack (namely, start-up costs), she didn't take advantage of the resources that they do have. Most working poor people have friends and families and significant others, or at least churches or social workers, or, for crying out loud, roommates to help them; she did not even attempt to take advantage of any such assistance, and so her results were skewed. In virtually any field of endeavour, there's room to move up from the entry level for those who make enough of an effort at it; of course this could not be a factor in such a brief experiment. The poor have loves and grumbles and joys and sorrows just like she does in her upscale condominium in Key West; she wrote about the poor in a manner that claimed to be empowering (see! they are real live people! They have real needs and wants!), and which might have been so on the surface, but which in actual fact was almost unbearably condescending (how can they possibly think they are happy living like this? omg, look at me aspiring to be trailer trash!). In doing her Dian-Fossey-among-the-gorillas bit, she learned about the habits and activities of minimum-wage earners, to an extent, but there is no way she learned what it is like to actually be poor any more than Fossey learned what it was like to actually be a gorilla, or Nelly Bly learned what it was like to be insane. Ehrenreich admits this, but then she spends the rest of the book acting like she's telling us what it's like to actually be poor. Ehrenreich purported to tell people about life at the minimum wage, but as a person who has lived the lifestyle at which she was only pretending, I can authoritatively state that she had only the very faintest idea what she was talking about.
So why even bother? Well, I will admit that maybe to other people like herself -- people who have maybe never considered that the person who waits on their tables or cleans their houses has actual feelings -- this book has value. Also, I have to confess that the woman can write well and she's very, very funny when she wants to be. Still and all, the Economist's Bible it's not, and you can perhaps see why it made me a wee bit angry.
As for the Shipler book, in some ways it was much better than Ehrenreich's; in others it was much worse. His research was far and away more complete and compelling than hers; while she was playing waitress and dashing back to her trailer to taptaptap away about it on her laptop, he was interviewing dozens of "the working poor" (I am so, so tired of this phrase), some of whom had succeeded in moving beyond minimum wage, and some of whom had not. The result was actually quite interesting to read overall, although there were more than a few times when I wanted to throw the book against the wall. For much of the book (with some substantial exceptions), his obvious socialist slant was restrained to some purposeful decision-making in the way the research was presented, and pepperings of commentary here and there; there were times when I would actually have deemed it politically balanced.
However, he opens and closes with two of the most thinly veiled socialist rants I have seen since my own writings as a soulful, oh-so-compassionate, completely misguided teenager. His solutions to the problem of working poverty are: raise the minimum wage really high (of course), pay higher-paid employees less to compensate (that'd do wonders for people's motivation to excel, no?), "restructure the hierarchy of wealth to alleviate the hardship down below" (p. 286), socialize healthcare (another of course), subsidize housing, mobilize poor voters (because, of course, the point of voting is to help better your own situation, as everyone knows), and, oh yeah, develop job-skills training and vocational education (the only two of his solutions with which I agree). To many people, obviously, this list presents no problem at all (after all, look who's running away with the Democratic presidential race). To me, however -- well, you asked why I found the book annoying, and that's the answer. I just don't agree with the guy's solutions, or his priorities, or his conception of the role of government in American life contrasted with the importance of individual responsibility, or even his overall values as far as I can tell. And yet I have had to eat, sleep, and breathe his book (me exaggerate?) for weeks on end. Picture your average Prius-driving, Clinton-voting neohippie in a class built around the essays of George Will.
And now that I've alienated/bored/shocked you all with my utter and complete lack of soulful compassion, I'm going to bed to read. This much-beloved time change is working its usual unreasonable havoc on my sense of time, and I feel like it must be at least 1:00 AM by now.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Reply to a post at Maria's place
Well, you know, it's been a long time since I had a lot of activity here; might as well stir up some controversy, no?
Maria wrote a post about firearms ownership as it relates to the terribly tragic Virginia Tech shootings yesterday:
Warning: Unpopular opinions ahead. Proceed with caution.
I'd heard rumors of the VT shooting before I left for work this morning, but didn't have time to really look into what had happened until I was at work and was able to read the different news stories that you linked to. Thank you for the links. What a horrible, horrible tragedy. I felt like crying when reading what had happened. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to sit in one of those classrooms and see your classmates be shot down around you.
I think the worst thing was that he didn't just shoot to shoot - he shot to kill. He locked the doors so people couldn't escape, and made sure to shoot people not just once, but two or three times each. For some reason he'd just clicked.
Horrible!
And this is one of the reasons why I am SO glad that Denmark doesn't have as liberal a weapon law as the US does. In Denmark you can only buy firearms if you can prove that you have a reason for needing it - e.g. if you're a hunter, member of a shooting club or something similar. I know people who own riffles for hunting, but nobody who owns a gun. Not even police officers are allowed to carry guns when not on duty.
The US weapon law is one of the reasons why I would never move there.
I know that "Guns don't kill people. People kill people!" All very true, but 'people who kill people' might have a harder time doing so, if they didn't have a gun readily available. There would be fewer passion crimes if the murderer didn't already have the weapon in his/her house, ready for use. It wouldn't stop shootings - obviously not, as some people will ALWAYS know how to get hold of firearms illegally - but my opinion is that it would limit them.
In Denmark there hasn't been a single shooting at schools. Not. A. Single. One. Metal detectors at schools? Unheard of.
In the US 30,000 people are killed by gun wounds every year.
I think those numbers say it all really.
(If this post came across as horribly condescending then I'm really sorry. It wasn't my intention to sound all "Nya-nya, Denmark rules and US sucks", because I KNOW we have our problems as well. I just wish more people would realize what a bad idea such an unrestricted weapon law is, and act accordingly. *sigh*)
I wrote a comment, but then I discovered that LiveJournal has a 4360-character limit for its comments space. Who'd have thought? ;-) So I'm posting my comment here. Never say I'm not a brave individual.
I want to make clear that I have no intention of making light of the shootings at Virginia Tech AT ALL. What a terrible, sad day. Also, I may as well copy Maria's disclaimer: Unpopular opinions follow. Proceed with caution.
A few points to consider:
EDITED TO ADD point zero, after some research:
0) That 30,000 figure is not precisely accurate for the purpose intended, in that fewer than half of those deaths were homicides. In 2001, for example, there were in fact around 30,000 gun deaths, but nearly 17,000 of those were suicides (the vast majority of which, in all likelihood, would have happened regardless of the availability of firearms). Only 11,348 were homicides, and that figure likely includes gang violence.
1) The population of the US absolutely dwarfs the population of Denmark (or pretty much any European country, or Canada. The population of Canada, for example, lives in California. The population of Denmark lives in Maryland. The population of the U.S. is roughly sixty times that of Denmark. Those 30,000 gun deaths (see point zero above) represent less than one hundredth of one percent of the US population; a similar extrapolation on the population of Denmark would be 500 deaths. Not that you have 500 gun deaths, necessarily, just to show the difference in scale. According to a San Diego State University study on comparative criminology, the murder rate in 2000 was 4.03 for Denmark and 5.51 for USA. Yes, the US is higher, but it's not exactly the huge difference you might expect.
2) That population is a mish-mash of people from around the world, with widely different ideas about life and what is important and what is OK. This makes for more conflict than you see in more homogenized (yes, I realize European countries are becoming less so, but not to the degree that the US has been basically since its inception) nations, where (in Denmark, for example) 84% of people share not only the same religion but even the same denomination.
3) The U.S. has a gang problem. Not saying that this guy was from a gang; it's likely he was just a guy who cracked and decided to take a bunch of people with him when he went. But the gang problem elevates our gun crime numbers, and these are people who would have guns no matter what laws you made against them.
3) Law-abiding people who own firearms (btw, you have a rare language mistake there. Rifles are guns, although firearms is a more general term; I think you mean 'handguns' when you say guns) use them to prevent crime at a rate higher than that at which guns are used to commit crime. But those stories don't even make the local news in large cities, let alone the international news. If, for example, my husband or a person like him, with his legally-possessed handgun and his frequent and careful firearms training, had been legally carrying it in that school building (unless the school has a specific anti-firearms policy, which, um, really worked, didn't it), the shooting spree would have likely ended a lot sooner. And that's just this example. The number of home invasions, rapes, assaults, etc that are prevented by trained citizens owning and carrying their own firearms is not quantified in gun crime statistics (especially in the most frequent cases, in which the defensive weapon is not even fired), but it should be, to present a more balanced view. No, I do not want legislation to take away my right to be able to protect myself and my family by a means that can, if properly used, equal the force that may be used against us.
4) In nations like Australia, where there have been relatively recent laws banning ownership of firearms, the crime rate (gun crime rate included) has gone up. The guesswork is taken out of it for the criminals; there's much less fear on the criminals' part of encountering a person on the other side of that door who can defend himself and his possessions. In states where gun laws are made less restrictive, the crime rate goes down (Arizona, for example, is still experiencing a very interesting downward spike in violent crime rates beginning in the mid-90's when their carrying regulations were made drastically less restrictive).
5) Out of curiosity, what's the crime rate like in Switzerland, where every male of legal age owns a firearm and is trained to use it, and everyone knows it? (edited to add: I just found a very interesting article on this very subject.)
6) You make light of "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but 'like all bromides, it's absolutely true' (never thought I'd quote LMM in a firearms-rights debate). A firearm is a tool. Sometimes that tool is used in crimes. Crimes are already banned, so the point of banning the tool that is sometimes used in them is a bit lost, especially when it's only the law-abiding who would turn in their guns, leaving a HUGE number of firearms still at large and in the hands of, well, the non-law-abiding, by definition.
7) Furthermore, to get into the Constitutional aspect of 'banning' guns: the Constitution of the US, written by men whose personally-owned firearms had, less than a generation previously, won them their independence, contains explicit protection for ownership of arms by "the people" (not "the states" or "the militia"). Reading the founders' writings, you see that they included this protection not for hunting or even for self-protection, but as a protection against tyranny. Not that the American public has the fortitude to use them in such a way nowadays, and not that the anti-gun lobby cares about what the founders intended, but it's an important point.
Maria, I used to hold your position. I used to say that if banning guns would save ONE LIFE, wouldn't that ONE LIFE be worth it? But this position doesn't make logical sense, because of the lives that are saved by firearms.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
in which Rachel gets political
I usually don't. But the very idea that people are upset about this has me scratching my head and going, "wha..?" in a very ANGRY sort of way. I mean, come on, there shouldn't even have to be such a law in the first place. For crying out loud, if someone is going to provide my child with a candy bar, let alone an invasive and hazardous medical procedure which ends the life of my unborn grandchild, I want to be involved in the decision. They aren't "the village's" children and never will be.
Honestly, it's refreshing to me, after having to stand by and futilely watch things roar downhill for nearly the entire duration of the 90's, to have some (a few) things go the way common sense would dictate in the past five years.
[/rant]
--------
Monday, March 21, 2005
Thinking about Terri Schiavo
There have been a lot of really good posts about Terri Schiavo in the past few days, and I don't have a lot to add to them, but I just went and watched some of the videos of Terri interacting with her family and her doctors, and I read this article written by one of the lawyers involved in the case (thanks Kristen for the link), and all I have to say is this.
If Terri Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state", then this:
is just a blob of tissue.
--------
Thursday, November 04, 2004
three things I'm sick of
I've been kind of lying low online for the last few days, because I figure it would be impolite to gloat about Tuesday, and I figure that people need a chance to lick their wounds and rant a bit. However, I do have to say that I'm tired of three things:
1. People assuming that life and freedom have now come to an end. Excuse me, but we conservatives lived through eight years of Clinton and didn't kill ourselves. Most of us didn't even kill anyone else, as much as we may have been tempted to at times. And we weren't exactly pleased with the way things went, but we survived. Life goes on; quit panicking and live it. If you're so inclined, start planning something constructive to do for the next election, or run for Congress, or put a "Run Hillary Run" sticker on your car. Knock yourself out, it's a free country. But everyone knows that whining doesn't solve anything.
2. People denigrating the people who voted for Bush, or acting shocked and horrified that we can even exist. We do exist (in fact, there are more of us than there are of you, not that you would believe this if all you ever pay attention to are your like-thinking friends and the mainstream media), we are just as likely to be intelligent people as you are, and we have reasons for voting the way we did. We don't go around screeching about how unfathomable and evil it is that 48% of Americans could vote for Kerry; all we ask from you is the same courtesy. Erica at Peyton's Place has a great post about this today. Go read it; she said it well and saved me the effort of writing it.
3. The phrase "reach across party lines". Doesn't mean I don't think it should happen. I'm just already sick to death of hearing it.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
I cannot believe how viciously I can hate a place I love so much.
Not just because of the presidential uselessness of conservative votes, but also because of the way our ballot propositions are going, T and I are now looking up job listings outside the state of California. Only thing is, we'd have to find a place where my parents would live with/near us, because it would be unfathomable for us to leave them with my dad's health the way it is.
I am just sickened to be living in this state right now. It's a shame such a beautiful place has to be ruined for people like me.
Fantasizing about a state called "Inland California"...
OK, deep breath. I'm a bit calmer. Not everything is bad here. The two things that make me the most upset:
Stem-cell research. I really think the focus for stem-cell research should be on adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells -- which is the field of study that has actually seen results, whereas embryonic stem cell has had zero. I think the idea of creating new individuals simply to destroy them for their cells is absolutely abominable, and it's really not a great idea even if you aren't a staunch pro-lifer, IMO. It's a manifestation of our extraordinary hubris as human beings, creating life and then destroying it for what we think is a good purpose. And this is before you even bring up the taxpayer cost of 3 billion dollars -- which is almost inconsequential in comparison to the other arguments for me.
The DNA registry. This had the potential to be a really helpful concept, except that they made it an enormous violation of the privacy of innocent people, because you only need to be arrested, not convicted, to have your DNA added to the database. That's a system that is wide open for misuse, if you ask me. And it's another enormous taxpayer expense.
But there are some decent things too. California decided to spend some money in a good place, on children's hospitals. I have a soft spot in my heart for those and they do a lot of good, and need the chance to have the best equipment and personnel and facilities they can, in my opinion. And my beloved Fresno Zoo, which, hello, my grandmother used to go to as a young person, has been saved by a sales tax measure. As has our local hospital.
And federally things look good, although I'm afraid to breathe quite yet. ;-) Overall, I think the stress probably took a few months off my life tonight, but I feel less ill than I did a few hours ago. Not that I don't still think the Inland California (Western California -- whatever, I'll take it) thing is a good idea.
politics Archives | Page 1 of 2
| 1 2 | next ten entries
