Baby, baby, please let me hold him

24 11 2013

This makes no damned sense.

No, I’m not talking about ACA/Obamacare criticism—there are legitimate political questions about the size and role of government in the provision of the general welfare—but the notion that maternity care only benefits fertile women:

A “single male, age 32, does not need maternity coverage,” [Representative Renee] Ellmers said. […]

[…] Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, a former Mitt Romney adviser, asserted: “Having children is more a choice than a random act of nature. People who drive a new Porsche pay more for car insurance than those who drive an old Chevy …. Why isn’t having children viewed in the same way?”

[…] “My [Nicole Hopkins, writing in the Wall Street Journal] asked ‘Do I need maternity care at 52?'”

No, men don’t get pregnant, yes, having children is a choice, and no, most 52-year-old women do not need maternity care.

That is all irrelevant, however.

Garance Franke-Ruta concentrates on the empirical realities facing mothers in the US in her analysis of the anti-maternity care argument, but even that analysis is beside the point.

What is the point? Every single goddamned person who is and was ever on the planet was born to a woman, and was cared for by someone else—almost always the woman who gave birth. It is a basic condition of our existence.

There is no human life, no society, no politics, no world, without children being born and raised.

We do not exist without care.

Which is precisely fucking why maternity care affects us all, and ought to matter to us all.  Goddammit all.


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Give peace a chance

24 11 2013

A preliminary deal to pause, and eventually reverse, Iran’s nuclear weapons program: good.

Good for the US, good for Iran, good for the world—and yes, when I write “good for the world”, I include Israel in that calculation.

Benjamin Netanyahu, and his various supporters in the US, would disagree. They consider this a “disaster” and, generally, bad for Israel. Former UN Ambassador Wilford Brimley John Bolton goes so far as to urge Israel to bomb away anyway, but as he’d likely suggest bombing someone who cut in front of him at Starbucks, I don’t how seriously anyone should take his analysis.

If the Israelis do bomb Iran (for presumably their own reasons), I don’t know how much cover they could expect from the US. There are many members of Congress who are, as the phrase goes, “staunch allies of Irael”, but I don’t know how staunch the rest of the American populace is. Yes, polls regularly show high levels of support for Israel, but it’s not at all clear that that support would hold if Israel were seen to be drawing the US into yet another Mideast war.

Would such a backlash be driven by anti-semitism? Some of it, yeah—there’s a fair amount of anti-Jewish sentiment in the US—but mostly by a sense of ENOUGH, the same sense of ENOUGH that lead to a backlash against a possible US strike on Syria.

Not going to war is a good thing. Kerry isn’t Chamberlain, Rouhani isn’t Hitler, and the P5+1 group and the UN aren’t the League of Nations. It’s possible this could all go sideways, but it’s also possible that this might, just might, lead us away from war and toward peace.

A good thing, yes?


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It was sad, so sad

21 11 2013

Don’t do it, Harry! Don’t do it! You’ll regret it! Why, we might turn around and cram the courts full of Scalias and Thomases and. . .

Wait, what’s that you say? That that’s what we did, anyway? Weelllll, we’ll just. . .

BOOM!

~~~

Dave Weigel has some really nice observations at Slate, noting in particular that

They didn’t demand the change because they’re ignorant about the 2014 polls. If they lose that election, they’ll have given themselves a year to confirm judges and executive nominees. If they lose the presidency in 2016, they’ll have empowered a Republican to put judicial robes on whichever Federalist Society member he wants. But they expected Republicans to break the filibuster anyway. “I know that if there is a Republican president and a Republican majority,” Sen. Merkley said this month, “they will force up-and-down votes, because they demonstrated their commitment to that principle in 2005.”

Merkley’s opponents never really reckoned with his logic. Progressives did not consider filibuster reform a “risk.” They saw a way to kick over an impediment to majority rule, before Republicans took power and kicked it over themselves. They’re trading something that might have brought “consensus” for something that empowers the party that wins elections. And they’re fine with that.

Just so.

And now we see what happens next.


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I would not run from the bomb

21 11 2013

Nuke ’em, Harry! Nuke ’em!

I’m referring to the change in Senate rules in which presidential nominees and sub-Supreme Court federal court nominees could be confirmed with a majority vote, i.e., could no longer be filibustered, but it sounds so much more fun to say “NUUUUUKE THEMMMM!”

Even Jonathan Bernstein, who is generally a fan of (kinda) the filibuster, agrees that the Republicans aggressive use of the filibuster has gone out of whack. His tolerance of the filibuster is based in his wariness of majoritarianism, and his belief in the necessity of keeping the minority in the game.

These are important considerations, and I appreciate Bernstein’s tempered historical approach to Senate history. Given that power shifts from Democrats to Republicans and back again with some regularity, not treating the losing party as, well, losers, makes sense: they need to keep a hand in governance.

If that losing party holds no interest in governance, however, and refuses to take any responsibility for the actions of the US government as a whole, then, Bernstein concedes, nuking the minority’s ability to stifle action makes more sense than deferring to it.

I come at this from a different direction, from the necessity of accountability rather than deference. Even when the Republicans were in control of the Senate I supported filibuster reform: if the electorate voted for Republicans, then they (we) ought to deal with the consequences of those elections. If we don’t like those consequences, we should vote differently.

There are problems with this position, of course: this is a policy-first approach, and most people don’t care about policy. As such, my whole notion of weakening or removing the brakes on majority action  might not lead to any greater accountability: if you don’t connect policy to party, then passage of a hated/loved policy won’t necessarily lead to lessened/greater attachment to party.

Still, it’s possible that among the reasons for weak linkage between policy and party attachment (esp. in terms of voting) is that Congressmembers have been able to shrug off responsibility for policy (in)action amidst the thicket of Senate rules. Maybe if we Americans could no longer count on a minority to stifle the majority we would actually have to come to terms with the consequences of our votes.

Maybe not. Maybe Bernstein’s caution is correct. But maybe the best way to figure this out is to  NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE the Senate filibuster rule.


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5 am, looking for food for her kids

19 11 2013

I haven’t said much about the OBAMA-DOOM-CARE APOCALYPSE because, well, I don’t have much to say.

Yeah, I believe the reports that the launch of the website was a huge cock-up, and that Obama has taken hits on both the cock-up and the you-can-keep-it mantra, but I don’t know how much any of this matters, at least at this point. I’m with Bernstein on this: the much-ado is much too soon.

(And honestly, who was surprised by the problems? Romneycare had issues in its roll-out in Massachusetts, but anyone who’s ever worked for an institution of substantial size knows exactly what’s involved in introducing a “new! improved!” software program, and it ain’t pretty. This is not an excuse, but it does mean the ACA’s site problems should also not be a surprise.)

I’m a single-payer kinda gal for simplicity’s & justice’s sake; the kludge necessitated by the ACA is a turn-off. But I also don’t think a single-payer plan could have made it through Congress (tho’ it would have been nice had there been a bigger push for a public option), and generally believe that the ACA is better, much better, than nothing.

The problems need to be fixed, but as important as those fixes are for the president’s legacy and for Democratic electoral success, even more important is that millions and millions and millions of Americans will soon have access to health care.

That’s who those fixes are really for: those millions and millions and millions of Americans who’ve gone without.

A crappy website for a program is an embarrassment; that program will only become a failure if its site’s crappiness keeps millions and millions and millions of people from seeing doctors, nurses, therapists, and getting the help they need.


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Some like it hot

18 11 2013

Apparently Jasper thinks the capsaicin spray with which I doused the houseplant he liked to graze upon is akin to sriracha: it spices the plant up nicely.


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So much for that whole ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ excuse. . .

16 11 2013

Nothing Puts an Exclamation Point on a Second Amendment Conversation Like a Bullet!

Posted by on Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 2:07 PM

Today in patriot news:

WILKESBORO, N.C., Nov. 14 (UPI) — Police in North Carolina said they are searching for a man whose gun accidentally fired during a conversation about the Second Amendment at a store.

Wilkesboro police said the unidentified man was engaged in a discussion about the Second Amendment and gun rights at the GNC store Tuesday evening when he took out his gun to show an employee and accidentally fired off a round into a printer, WFMY-TV, Greensboro, reported Thursday.

The employee told police the man said he “could not go down for this” and fled the store.

Notice how the “gun accidentally fired,” rather than the man who accidentally fired the gun. No harm done, then.
~~~

Total complete blog theft from The Stranger


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The feline paradox

13 11 2013

A good cat is a bad cat; a bad cat is a good cat.

Disambiguated: A “good cat” in the first sense refers to the goodness of its behavior in the view of the human in whose home it dwells. A cat who is good, i.e., who does not misbehave, is not acting like a cat; ergo, a “good cat”55 is a bad cat.

A bad cat, that is, one which misbehaves or acts in a manner otherwise indifferent to its human, is behaving as cats do; thus, a bad cat is a good cat.

Possible objections:

What about old cats? Cats of a certain age, who have put in their share of misbehavior over the courses of their lives, are emeritus bad good cats.

Isn’t this a no-true-Scotsman  argument? No.

What about cats which please their humans? If a cat’s pleasing of its  human is in pursuit of its own pleasure, then this is acceptable cat behavior.

For example, many humans enjoy it when their cats jump into their laps, purr and/or knead. The cat does not do so because it wants to make the human smile; the cat jumps into the lap in order to get its ears scritched, which is to say, for its own pleasure.

It should further be noted that master-cats are those which can engage in behavior about which their humans will complain, do nothing to discourage, and may even encourage.

An example: a cat may climb on to its human’s chest in the middle of the night, waking her, and push its head into half-awake human’s face in an effort to prompt the human to pet it, all the while purring so loudly that the human’s grumpiness at having her sleep interrupted will dissipate into a sense of awwwww, how sweeeeet. Human will then almost certainly commence petting.

Does this mean cats are evil? No. Cats are beyond good and evil.

Why would anyone want a cat, if the only good cat is a bad cat? Have you been paying any attention?


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Workin’ in the coal mine

12 11 2013

Ha ha ha, right: teaching and freelancing offer a plenitude of opportunities to bitch, but the most I have to worry about is a sore throat, maybe a sore back, not black lung and cave-ins.

Anyway, I’m jammed up with work, which, on the one (lazy) hand is bad, but on the other (money-grubbin’) hand is good. Mostly it’s good.

I should be able to catch up by this weekend, but in the meantime, this is my excuse for no/scrawny posts.

At least, that’s my story, and all that.


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What about me?

11 11 2013

Paying attention to me is good; paying attention to someone else is bad:

“It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in prolife, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.”

Also, if you agree with me you are right and good, if you disagree you are wrong and bad:

Steve Skojec, vice president of a real estate firm in Virginia and a blogger who has written for several conservative Catholic websites, wrote of Francis’ statements, “Are they explicitly heretical? No. Are they dangerously close? Absolutely. What kind of a Christian tells an atheist he has no intention to convert him? That alone should disturb Catholics everywhere.”

[…]

“There have been bad popes in the history of the Church,” said Skojec, “Popes that murdered, popes that had mistresses. I’m not saying Pope Francis is terrible, but there’s no divine protection that keeps him from being the type of guy who with subtlety undermines the teachings of the Church to bring about a different vision.”

That old phrase “more Catholic than the Pope” seems relevant, here.

~~~

Bonus whining, Obamacare version. (h/t Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns &Money)


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