It is apparently only okay to talk about how bad things used to be if you contrast it with how great things are now.
Things used to be overwhelmingly terrible and are now just ordinarily terrible! Progress!
And if it’s progress, then maybe it’s not so terrible, hmmm? So maybe you should just turn that frown upside down, Mr. Coates and go back to talking about stuff that makes us feel good.
Oh, this caught my ears.
Nothing earthshaking or odd—the sound is a bit a throwback (The Band? Van Morrison?), really—but that snatch of lyric: No one comes to take me home.
A lament. A recognition. A sigh. A shrug.
A night.
h/t: Jian Ghomeshi, at Q
Finished my taxes early.
Yeah, early: the last couple of years I’ve completed them on or just before April 15, so finishing them 3 weeks out counts as early for me.
When I first started doing taxes—paper forms, natch—-I almost always completed them in early February. Of course, it helped that I knew I’d be getting a return, so why not file early; given how rarely I’ve ever had to pay in, however, I don’t know why I started lagging.
Actually, last year might have been the first year I had to pay federal (I had that terrible independent contractor job, so got socked when I reported that income), but since moving to New York I’ve paid state taxes a couple of years.
Anyway, my income was lower in 2013 (boo!), which means I get decent returns from both the feds and the state (yay!).
Oh, and what prompted me to take care of all of this now? Welllll, I’m bumping up against a deadline on student loan paperwork which requires tax info. . . .
Yeah, there had to be a reason.
I cannot fucking believe that the Supreme Court might rule in favor of Hobby Lobby.
It just. . . it’s. . . it makes no fucking sense what.so.ever.
One law. One fucking law for all. Is that so hard to understand?
You’d think Scalia would get this, he of the Smith decision who wrote that
We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs [494 U.S. 872, 879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594 -595 (1940): “Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities (footnote omitted).” We first had occasion to assert that principle in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. “Laws,” we said, “are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” Id., at 166-167.
[. . .]
[re US v. Lee] . . . There would be no way, we observed, to distinguish the Amish believer’s objection to Social Security taxes from the religious objections that others might have to the collection or use of other taxes. “If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax. The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
[ . . .]
Precisely because “we are a cosmopolitan nation made up of people of almost every conceivable religious preference,” Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S., at 606 , and precisely because we value and protect that religious divergence, we cannot afford the luxury of deeming presumptively invalid, as applied to the religious objector, every regulation of conduct that does not protect an interest of the highest order. The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind. . .
[. . .]
It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs. [emph added]
Now, yes, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed to counter the Smith decision, but when individuals tried to use RFRA to argue against paying taxes, the Court say, in effect, “nuh-uh”, that the requirement of tax payment met the “compelling government interest” test.
Ensuring that women have access to a full range of medical care, including that of counseling and advice regarding our birth control options, may not, however, be sufficiently “compelling”.
Taxes: yes! Control over one’s body and health? Nah.
The rights of millions of women to preventive health care and workplace equality elicit almost no sign of sympathy or solicitude from the right wing of the bench today. Nor does the possibility that religious conscience objections may soon swallow up the civil rights laws protecting gay workers, women, and other minorities. Religious freedom trumps because we’re “only” talking about birth control.
I’ve been circling around and around this post by TNC; still not thinking in straight lines.
Scattered bits: the bad faith of American triumphalism, of progressivism (as Whig history); the shock of my students when I speak plainly about white supremacy; how it is harder for me to speak plainly of male supremacy (/patriarchy?); how white supremacy doesn’t just hurt black people; how male supremacy doesn’t just hurt female people.
And then the posts on waning Christendom in the US, on the erosion of religious structures, what it all means. More circling.
But this: to look to God is to look away, that religious belief seems to me a form of alienation, a scrim between oneself and the world.
Of course, to the believer, it is I who am alienated.
How any of this relates to kenosis, I don’t know.
And through a side door: we carry our troubles with us. If I have a morality, it is that we should carry our troubles with us. We have to learn how to carry them, so they trouble us less, and when memory is enough.
This is one way to find out who we are.
The troubles are ours; they can’t be given up to God without giving up ourselves.
But then, that might be the point. To some.
I’ll try to think better, to gather these flyaway threads.
Trickster doesn’t care that I have work to do.
She doesn’t care that I’m eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
She doesn’t care that I just want to sit where I want, how I want, or how comfortable I am.
Trickster wants in my lap.
Now.
So here’s my take on Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia: Read folks who, unlike me, actually know something about Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia.
What should the US do about C/U/R? Criminy. I’ll go with what has evolved into my default position on all matters in which the US is urged (often, but not always, by mouth-foamers) to do something: Ask four questions.
(*As in, what actually could be accomplished and what are the odds of success.)
There are other considerations, of course, including prior commitments and reputation management and allied relations, but it seems that amidst those other considerations, these four questions have gotta be answered.
I don’t know what those answers are in this situation, tho’ I do know I’m skeptical of aggressive action. As for those who think Putin is pwning our president, well, I’m skeptical that aggression is a sign of strength.
And if Putin does end up getting his way and keeping Crimea? I guess he wins, whatever that means. A bad outcome, but probably not the worst.
Now, on to something about which I can know with 100 percent absolute super confidence: What happened to that Malaysian jet?
The Rapture, of course!
Duh.
I think I’ve established that I have no plans to live forever.
Still, I’d like to hang out for awhile longer and, while so hanging, to be in relatively decent health.
I’d been using these old pedialyte-type plastic bottles as water bottles for both me and my cats—separate bottles, people! And what, you don’t refrigerate your critters’ water?—but have been thinking for awhile that maybe I should make the switch to glass. Or at least newer plastic bottles.
Then I listened to this Leonard Lopate segment on WNYC on plastics and, well, while I’m not chuckin’ my Tupperware—and yes, I have actual Tupperware from an actual Tupperware party—I thought that yeah, maybe cutting down my use of plastic would be. . . prudent.
So out went the pedialyte bottles!
And the new water bottle?
Knew I kept that around for a reason.
As for the cats? Well, they get an old marinara sauce jar—at least until I finish my bottle of Talisker.
AbsurdBeats 