Thought Snax

Just last month I was being cynical about Republican efforts to prevent voting fraud by making sure that students and poor people don’t vote.  But thank goodness the Republicans are on the ball, so we could catch poor student Charlie White and punish him for his voting transgressions.

Oh.  Wait.

Jury finds Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White guilty on 6 of 7 felony charges

Do you love that his name is Charlie White as much as I do?   And it’s really a Republican hypocrisy two-fer, because it turned out that his vote fraud, er, “confusion” was, well, I’ll let IndyStar.com break it to you gently:

The charges stemmed from confusion over where White lived when he campaigned for secretary of state in late 2009 and 2010. White claimed that he lived at his ex-wife’s home on the east side of Fishers. But the jury convicted him based on allegations that he actually lived in a townhouse on the opposite side of town that he bought for him and his then-fiancé. The townhouse was outside his Fishers Town Council district.

Note that it’s “confusion” when a conservative politician bails on his wife, shacks up with his fiancé, and fails to notify the secretary of state so he can stay on the city council of the city in which he no longer lives, but potential “fraud” when an 84-year-old woman who has voted in every election since 1948 doesn’t have a birth certificate because she was born at home in 1927.

From a billboard in Boulder:

Right, because making fun of other people’s beliefs has done so much — throughout history — to promote peace and understanding.

How about “Choose Mutual Respect:  It Will Be Better for All of Us.”

Cynthia Nixon has spurred an interesting dialog by embracing the concept that being gay or lesbian can be a choice.  In the civil rights world,the it’s-not-a-choice-it’s-an-inborn-trait position is an attempt to connect being gay with other protected classes defined by immutable characteristics, such as race, gender, and disability.   It’s also embraced as a counter to the common homophobic position* that if you can choose to love people of your own gender, you can equally easily — like choosing a different flavor of ice cream — choose to love people of the other gender.   Or perhaps choose to live a celibate life.

But Nixon makes I think the precise right point:

I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not. . . .  It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.

It has always seemed bizarre to me that religious folks stress that this protected class — gays and lesbians — is based on choice, when the most mutable, chosen-not-born protected class is religion.  You don’t choose your race, disability, or national origin, and most people don’t choose their gender.  But if you can choose to be Christian, you can just as easily choose to be Jewish or Muslim, right?  Why on earth should we protect Christians against all that discrimination** they face when they could simply elect to be Jewish or Muslim and get away scot-free?***

Seriously, we shouldn’t be discussing choice vs. innate; we should be discussing respect.   And in the discrimination context, relevance.  What on earth relevance does it have to someone’s ability to do their job who they sleep with?  What faith they practice?  Their gender?  Their race?

***********

* Did you know there is something called Conservapedia?  Me neither.  It’s precisely as informative as the name suggests.  For example, this is the only substantive information it provides on the ADA:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a broad federal law that requires places of public accommodation to comply with numerous regulations relating to access by persons having disabilities. The Act encourages lawsuits against restaurants, schools, retail stores, hospitals and other small businesses by providing for the recovery of attorneys fees by successful plaintiffs.

Go forth and be informed, young conservatives with homework projects!

** Clearly Conservapedia is going to be my go-to source for links to straw-man conservative arguments.  They make it so easy!

*** Can I say that?  Does that discriminate against Scottish people?  Or is it OK because I’m a Jewish-Scottish-American?

Republicans spend a lot of time these days trying to protect the vote against nonexistent threats and potential non-Republican voters, like students and poor people.  But if you gave Michael Moore psychedelic drugs he couldn’t have parodied the GOP’s voting problems better than they have on their own.

For example, you thought Romney won Iowa, right? At least that’s what Fox News announced the next day.

Hold on!

The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney.

Oh, then Santorum won by 34 votes, right?   Um . . .

THE RESULTS: Santorum finished ahead by 34 votes
MISSING DATA: 8 precincts’ numbers will never be certified
PARTY VERDICT: GOP official says, ‘It’s a split decision’

Except the 8 precincts’ votes that the GOP regards as “missing” are online for non-Republicans with ordinary math skills to analyze.

If those results are added to the certified results, Santorum’s 29,839 votes would become 29,920, and Romney’ 29,805 would become 29,851 — for a “final” result of Santorum winning the caucuses, by a margin of 69 votes.

And then there’s the very democratic process by which a bunch of evangelicals got together and decided to endorse Santorum.

It was not until the third ballot, after some of Gingrich’s supporters left, that Santorum cleared the three-quarters threshold, receiving 85 votes, to Gingrich’s 29.   . . . [A]ll the participants had been bound by an agreement not to speak for 24 hours.  . . . “It wasn’t a consensus and it wasn’t an endorsement,” added former representative J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who was also at the session and also expressed concern at how the outcome was being portrayed.

And these guys are asking us to trust them to run the country?

For the past few days, I’ve been a bystander in a ridiculous email discussion about airport security and decided that, once I’d spent the entire drive up University Boulevard from County Line to Evans composing a rant in my head, that rant needed to be freed from my head and posted on the blog.

Airport security is a pain in the ass.  But that’s all it is.  Buck up, folks.  I always choose the pat-down because the nude photo thingy creeps me out.  It’s not fun, but it’s not, say, dental surgery.  Hell, it’s not even flossing.  Yup, I’d rather go through airport security than floss.  Life is full of annoying things.  Get over it.

And the thought that — to avoid this mild pain in the ass — we would sacrifice core American values is just beyond me.  I am constantly baffled by what it is conservatives love when they say they love America. It was the question addressed at fabulous verbose length by this guy.

What I really wanted to ask is this: Proud American? Really? What is it exactly that you’re proud of?  You say you love your country? You say you love the United States? Really? Which part? What is it that you love about it? Specifically, what exactly do you love about America?

Because, see, so far as I can tell, people like you seem to hate just about everything that makes the United States what it is.

And so on for like 45 paragraphs or so.  It really is hilarious, but I recommend skimming.

I’ll tell you what I love:  I love the Constitution.  I love the 14th Amendment, the one that promises equal protection of the laws.  Do we really want to violate one of the most fundamental American principles to save 15 minutes at the airport?  Really?

Oh and another thing:  it doesn’t work.  If we start profiling, we would be sacrificing our values for nothing.

[P]rofiling creates two paths through security: one with less scrutiny and one with more. And once you do that, you invite the terrorists to take the path with less scrutiny. That is, a terrorist group can safely probe any profiling system and figure out how to beat the profile. And once they do, they’re going to get through airport security with the minimum level of screening every time.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, we’re all more secure when we randomly select people for secondary screening — even if it means occasionally screening wheelchair-bound grandmothers and innocent looking children. And, as an added bonus, it doesn’t needlessly anger the ethnic groups we need on our side if we’re going to be more secure against terrorism.

But more than that, how would it work?  As another security expert noted,

But what do we go by? Name? Appearance? The vast majority of Arab Americans, for instance, are not only innocent of sympathy for terrorism, they’re actually Christian. To profile Muslims you’d have to target blacks, Asians, whites and Hispanics (remember Jose Padilla?). How could that work, and would it really help identify those who are intending harm or would it simply divert resources that could be better used on investigations?

So we set out to profile Muslims, but we can’t use name or appearance. What then?  Seriously, profiling advocates, if you want to target Muslims, you have to figure out a way to do it.  Religious identity cards?  A quick religious catechism with the TSA dudes?  I’m loving the idea of small-government conservatives authorizing the Federales to investigate individual religious beliefs to determine whether you get groped in the security line.

But ultimately, of course, it’s not just Muslims who commit terrorism:

The biggest terrorist attack in U.S. history prior to 9/11—the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing—was carried out by a white ex-Marine with a crew cut. The only major WMD attack of the “war on terror” era—the 2001 anthrax mailings—was apparently the handiwork of a white, Christian microbiologist angry that prominent Catholic politicians were pro-choice. And who stormed the Holocaust Museum last year, killing a security guard? Ayman-al Zawahiri? No, neo-Nazi octogenarian nutcase James Wenneker von Brunn.

I have to wait in line to take off my shoes, start up my computer, and step through a metal detector every time I go to court because Christians like to shoot at, blow up, and threaten federal buildings and officials.  That’s right, Christians.  Oh, right, of course, not Christians like you.  Bad Christians.  Maybe people calling themselves Christians who do not remotely have the values you would call Christian.

Exactly my point.

A really smart friend of mine asked, “For my liberal friends only: when we’re objecting to cross-hairs, should we maybe feel a little bit bad about ‘somewhere in Texas, a village….’?”   The question made me think, as all of her questions do.  So here are my thoughts on four kinds of political rhetoric.

Juvenile name-calling.  Somewhere in Texas . . .; Bu$h; Busshit; Nobama.  Calling Bush or Palin stupid or Obama an elitist, or candidly using the words “socialist” or “fascist” as epithets these days has precisely the substantive content and rhetorical impact as calling someone a poopyhead.  Yes, it cheapens the dialog, but it wasn’t very expensive to start with.  The key effect of language like this — at least on me — is to make me turn the page or click away from the site, confident that I’m not missing anything enlightening or even funny.

Gun-related words.  I’m in favor of generally giving people credit for metaphor.  Crosshairs over congressional districts was at worst bad taste, and probably pretty banal.  I’ve described an opponent’s brief full of silly arguments as a “target-rich environment” and plaintiffs’ lawyers who make silly arguments as “friendly fire” without the remotest connection to an actual firearm.*  Indeed, when Rand Paul came out against the ADA and enthusiastically in favor of the Second Amendment, I joked that he might have arrived at a more efficient remedial process:  access at the point of a gun.  “My friend Glock and I would like you to install a ramp.  Now.”   Again, no intent to replace my Westlaw subscription with a semi-automatic, but I thoroughly enjoyed the mental image.

Of course, actually calling for someone’s death crosses a very important line, and calling for “second amendment remedies” or  explicitly for political violence comes damn close.

De-legitimizing language.  Now, this sort of rhetoric really bugs me.  Throughout the Bush years, there were liberal bloggers who insisted on calling Bush the “Resident” rather than “President,” and  asserting that “he’s not my president.”  These days we have “birthers” — folks who think Obama was not born in the US and therefore not legitimately qualified to hold the office.  Assertions that a president from either party is a tyrant or a dictator may fall into the juvenile category, but they also suggest that he is trying to change our political system, rather than simply implementing policies the speaker disagrees with.  The country thrives when the loyal opposition is both loyal and opposed.  We need people in every administration who believe in the country and its system, but disagree with the current guy’s policies.   Rationally, reasonably, preferably civilly.  Arguing that the president isn’t legitimate is completely unhelpful, whether from the left or right.

Knee-slapping hypocrisy.  People from Alaska criticizing federal spending.  Anyone who supported the Patriot Act complaining about over-regulation.  This type of discourse may be the most pernicious, because it doesn’t go away once we’ve all had a good laugh.  But damn, I love it!  It’s an excellent reminder that, as human beings, we’re all about 97% full of shit, with the differences at the margins.

***********************
* However, when I propose to engage in kitchen remodeling using a flame-thrower, I intend to be taken very, very seriously.  I will be exonerated by a jury of my peers.

I’m going try to do two possibly contradictory things in this post:  (1) urge everyone to wish each other merriness and/or happiness in a spirit of joy and celebration; and (2) unleash just a little bit of snark on the whole war-on-Christmas baloney.  Here goes.

New rule:  No one gets to be indignant when someone else expresses the wish that they be happy or merry.  Unless someone is wishing you something truly bizarre like Happy Dog Shit Day,* the proper response is “thanks!” and possibly, “you too!”  The following is an incorrect response:  “Dude, you just wished me to be happy and/or merry for the wrong reason.  You must have some sort of weird political agenda.  Let’s bail on this whole joy and celebration thing and really annoy each other!”

For the record, as a half[assed] Jew, I have no problem with being wished a Merry Christmas.  It’s not a holiday with religious meaning to me, so I feel the way I felt when my Chinese friends wished me Gong Xi Fa Cai on Chinese New Year.  And that feeling is:  Happy.  Instead of the human interactions that fill up my average day — bizarre italicized accusations from opposing counsel, middle fingers from other drivers,** depressing political commentary — someone is just telling me to be happy.  Or merry.  Or in the case of Gong Xi Fa Cai, congratulating me and wishing me to prosper.  This is all good.  All.  Good.  Did I mention good?

Let’s practice:

Jewish person:  Happy Chanukah!
Christian person:  Thanks!  That’s so nice of you!

Wasn’t that easy?  And fun!  How about this:

Christian person:  Merry Christmas!
Jewish person:  Thanks!  You too!

See!  Don’t you feel merrier and happier already?

Random person #1:  Happy Holidays!
Random person #2:  They’re not “holidays.”  There’s only one real holiday, that is, MY holiday.  Please don’t wish me happiness unless you’re doing it for the right reason.

ZZZZZT!  Wrong.  Remember the rule:  whatever merry or happy you are wished, the proper response is “Thanks!”  Seriously, try it.  My prediction is:  you might actually feel merry and/or happy.

But I do want to say a quick word about the “put the Christ back in Christmas”***/”Reason for the Season” crowd.  I’m perfectly fine with putting Christ back in Christmas if that means, on December 25, focusing on the religious meaning of the birth of Christ instead of acquisition of new and better electronic devices and fleece sweaters.  Indeed, I enjoy focusing on the Christian religious meaning of Christmas, and each year find myself learning and reflecting on important things from and with my Christian family and friends.  And, happily, acquiring cool electronics and fleeces.

But if “put the Christ back in Christmas” means the only merry or happy we all get to say starting after, say, Halloween or perhaps Labor Day is “Merry Christmas,” I’m afraid I have to (merrily and happily) dissent.  And because I’m a complete nerd, I have to point out that the “reason for the season” is not, in fact, the birth of Christ, but the need of early Christians to promote their new religion by attaching their observances to existing pagan solstice celebrations.****  So technically the reason for the season is the circuit of the earth around the sun, the beginning of the lengthening of days, and the need of people in the cold and dark to eat fun high-carb foods and drink enough to forget the cold and dark.

Still, snarkiness and nerdiness aside, I really think there should be more merries and happies rather than fewer, and that when someone wishes you a merry or happy that doesn’t line up with your particular views, just go with the merriness and happiness.  And feel free to wish others merriness and happiness for whatever reason strikes you.

Or if you want to try for more calendrical accuracy, here are some suggestions:*****

Dec. 1       Rosa Parks Day
Dec. 2       Chanukah
Dec. 3       International Day of People with Disabilities
Dec. 4       National Cookie Day
Dec. 5       First Sunday in Advent
Dec. 6       Finnish Independence Day
Dec. 7       Islamic New Year
Dec. 8       National Brownie Day
Dec. 9       Jeff’s Birthday
Dec. 10    Constitution Day
Dec. 11    International Mountain Day
Dec. 12    Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe
Dec. 13    National Cocoa Day
Dec. 14    National Bouillabaisse Day
Dec. 15    Bill of Rights Day
Dec. 16    South African Day of Reconciliation
Dec. 17    National Maple Syrup Day
Dec. 18    International Migrants Day
Dec. 19    National Oatmeal Muffin Day
Dec. 20    National Games Day
Dec. 21    Winter Solstice
Dec. 22    National Date Nut Bread Day
Dec. 23    Festivus
Dec. 24    Chinook’s Birthday
Dec. 25    Christmas
Dec. 26    Boxing Day; beginning of Kwanzaa
Dec. 27    St. Stephen’s Day
Dec. 28    Card Playing Day
Dec. 29    Pepper Pot Day
Dec. 30    Festival of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute******
Dec. 31     New Year’s Eve

* There have been circumstances in which that would have been an appropriate greeting in our house, but I’ll spare you the details.

** Unpleasant even when justified.

*** But do remember to “Keep the Han in Hanukkah.”  (h/t Laura R.)

**** There are a couple of other theories too.  http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

***** Recipients of our 2006 holiday card will recognize that I’m recycling material here.  And yes, Mom, I corrected the typo.

****** Not a lot of documentation for this one, but I really liked it.

One of my favorite characters in fiction  is Ramona Quimby.  And one of my favorite things that Ramona did was to announce “I”m going to throw up!” when she wanted to get out of a crowd and go home.  “Instantly everyone standing near her managed to move a few inches away.”*  I’ve often thought of that when I’m stuck in a crowded situation:  perhaps if I just announced that I was about to throw up, others would move away and give me the space my misanthropic, claustrophobic self needed.  But I think conservatives have given me even more effective and up-to-date tools:   I just have to wear a turban or invoke Sharia and I’ll have the place — any place — to myself.

I came up with this plan initially in response to an article I read about a passenger asking to be moved out of an airplane seat next to a guy in a turban.  Put aside the fact that,  if the turban-wearing dude is going to blow up the plane, being in a different row won’t really save your narrow-minded ass.  This is true but secondary.  Most important:  I now have an excellent device for getting an airplane row to myself.

More recently, we have the excellent spectacle of conservatives calling for a boycott of Campbells products because they are manufacturing a line of halal soups.  Now this is the type of political hypocrisy I just love:  free-enterprise-loving conservatives boycotting a company for making a rational cost-benefit decision to manufacture a product that people will buy.  But more than that, it suggests an excellent way to clear out the riff-raff.  And, as GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle has demonstrated, if it’s useful, you can assert that Sharia law governs almost anywhere without actually being — as a technical matter — correct.

In that spirit, conservatives, please note the following:

1. The Safeway will be selling only Halal foods this morning, and all other weekend mornings, as well as any time within two hours before and after Bronco games.
2. The DMV will be implementing Sharia during the month of November when I have to renew my driver’s license.
3. Our flights to and from San Francisco this week will be known as “turban days” on Frontier.
4. I-25 will be governed by Sharia, but only between the hours of 7 and 9 a.m. (northbound) and 4 and 6 p.m. (southbound).

Let this system work for you!  Don’t like the annoying fans in the opposing team’s stadium?  Make it know that the stadium is halal!  Find yourself in a slow-moving line?  Put on your turban and get served immediately!  And if the country ever drifts back toward rationality, you can always just announce that you’re going to throw up.

*********
* Note that I was able to recite these lines from memory but cannot remember the plot of the grown-up novel I read last week.

I’m not talking about things that are bad but widely acknowledged to be bad like, murder or the Dallas Cowboys.  And I’m not talking about things that I’m confident are bad but as to which I grudgingly acknowledge that marginally reasonable minds could differ, like mayonnaise or light beer.  I’m talking about things that allegedly smart people in allegedly polite company seem to have no problem with but that are completely morally indefensible.

Peter Singer.  This guy is a philosophy professor at Princeton who advocates killing infants with disabilities.  Seriously.  I’m not sure this guy is on anyone’s radar outside the black-turtleneck-and-tweed world and the disability rights world, but now you know:  Princeton has on its faculty a professor who favors infanticide for disabled kids, largely based on his utilitarian approach which is based, in turn, on the sound philosophical principle that upper class white guys with tenure can judge the quality of life experienced by the rest of the world and make life and death decisions based on that judgment. I’m all for academic freedom and the First Amendment, and I don’t advocate that this guy be fired or punished for these absurd views.  I’m just wondering why on earth he’s taken seriously.  It’s like Princeton deciding to hire a Holocaust denier or “intelligent design” advocate — or really someone who offered a principled, philosophical defense of slavery.  I would defend any of those hires in the name of academic freedom, but I really think that many more people would join me in puzzlement as to why the hell such a person has a chair at Princeton.

The Tomahawk Chop. Atlanta Braves fans spend a large part of each game making gestures designed to mimic a tomahawk and humming a tune designed to mimic what antediluvian Hollywood thought was Native American music.  This is just gross racial mockery.*  I have to confess (sorry, Bruce) that I feel the same way about “Redskins.”  I don’t have a problem in general with Native American team names — Braves, Indians, Seminoles — because there are plenty of other groups-of-people names:  Padres, Vikings, Patriots, Mariners, Royals, Twins, Pirates, Rangers, Canucks, Canadiens, Packers, Texans, Buccaneers, Cowboys, Raiders, Senators, Kings, Celtics, Cavaliers, Trail Blazers, Warriors.  And, um, Wizards?  But “Redskins” is an epithet, not a generic group-of-people name.  Sorry.**

Flying the Confederate flag. What part of treason is unclear to these folks?  Seriously.  I love the fact that throughout the south “United We Stand” bumper stickers are pasted side-by-side with the stars & bars.  Again, I have no problem, as a First Amendment matter, with flying whatever flag you want.  Just don’t asked to be taken seriously when you display the Confederate flag and question other people’s patriotism.

“Free Mumia.” Give the man a fair trial, but damn, it sure looks like he shot a cop.  Let’s not free him til we’ve tried him fairly and he’s been acquitted.

This is a very very partial list.  Feel free to share your contributions in the comments!  (Really!  I LOVE comments!)

******************
* I always loved that Jane Fonda, during her Ted Turner period, could regularly be found in the Braves’ audience chopping away.  For you conservatives who hate her for being a liberal, the joke’s on you:  she’s just another shallow celebrity looking for attention — and you give it to her!

** I predict that this will engender more brotherly ire than all my liberal political rantings put together.