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Tag: Conservatives
Why is the right wing so threatened by AOC?
On: March 12, 2019 By: Mark
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Newly minted congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been making quite a name for herself. This is amazing considering she's been in Congress less than three months. It could be that she is only 29 (also my daughter's age), making her the youngest person in a congress full of old folk. Nah, it's not that. Maybe it's because she's of Puerto Rican ancestry, but it's not that either and besides, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. It could be that she is a woman, and you are getting a bit warm there, but with roughly a quarter of Congress now comprised of women, she's hardly a groundbreaker there. So what is it about her that has the press and the right wing so agog?
I've been analyzing AOC (she's so well known that she is more often known by her initials) trying to figure it out. For whatever reason, she got the attention of the right wing when she handily unseated incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for her district that covers the west Bronx and northern Queens burroughs. At this point, even Donald Trump must be getting jealous because it seems Fox News can't stop talking about her, in a disparaging way of course, which means less attention on him. Based on their attention on her, the right wing judges her as a spectacular threat. She quickly went from being ignored before her primary, to laughed at shortly thereafter, to the "fight you" stage. The right wing sees in AOC something unique and chilling that they don't fear from the many other liberal women who joined Congress in January.
My take is that she is breaking gender stereotypes right and left. Women are socialized to be nice, so some part of them must always project that stereotype. You can see it in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with her perpetual fake smile. It's like she's had surgery to permanent keep a smile on her face. That smile was key to how she managed to gain and retain power in Congress over many decades. She wielded her femininity quite adroitly by exploiting a number of female stereotypes (like always smiling) through her mostly male colleagues.
It's not that AOC doesn't smile, but she quite clearly rejects gender stereotypes. With AOC you see a person first, instead of a women first. More importantly, the right wing sees her as a person first, and that's totally scary to them. Right-wingers by definition don't like change, and while they don't like liberal women, they tolerate them more when they act like they act like think women are supposed to act.
AOC though acts as herself. She really doesn't give a crap what other people think about her, which is in contrast to other women like, say, Nancy Pelosi who carefully stage manages herself. AOC is so much her own person that I don't doubt that even Nancy Pelosi is a bit irritated and jealous. AOC is changing the rules for how women "should" behave, and criticism just can't seem to stick. It's like water off a duck's back.
Of course, if she looked butch or mannish, then perhaps their attacks would sting. But she also happens to be a beautiful woman. They can't hate her for being a lesbian, as she is happily heterosexual with a boyfriend while using the newer term "cisgender woman" with unnatural ease. Frankly, they don't understand a lot of what she's saying, because she has mastered the code words of her generation. Right-wingers hate terms like cisgender. That's in part because they don't believe in gender; they believe that the sex you are born with is your gender, despite the vast mountains of evidence around them that say just the opposite.
So basically she makes them squirm, and this makes their level of vitriol grow. The real threat is hard for them to articulate, but I can. They can't acknowledge that she is the generation that's coming at them, and this generation is far more tolerant and far less likely to engage in stereotypes than their generation. She represents not just potential change, but actual change. This is why they are pulling out all guns (hopefully just metaphorically) to stop her, or at least undercut her. It's just that nothing seems to work. And when she does deign to respond to criticism, she cuts to the chase with a tweet or a statement that underlies the real problem that they cannot even acknowledge to themselves.
The threat they perceive but can't acknowledge is that AOC is a model. Lots of others in her generation, and even aging geezers like me, can see how she works and realize, Hey, I don't have to play that game either. I can just be me, and it's okay! With AOC you don't see a man or a woman, you see a person: a person very much in touch with who she is who is not afraid to be herself and tell you what she thinks. She oozes self-confidence.
It's possible she will screw this up somehow. She hopefully has a long career ahead of her and she is bound to make mistakes. When she does, her critics will be merciless. But as long as she projects confidence in herself, none of it should stick. Needless to say her critics will be doing everything possible to trip her up. Let's hope AOC always stays one step ahead of them because she is truly inspiring in a way that few people ever actually attain.
Category: Politics 2019 Tagged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, Conservatives, Republicans, Right-wing Leave a comment/
We are living in Future Shock
On: October 28, 2018 By: Mark
Americans lived through a frightening week last week. Bombs were sent to prominent Democratic politicians and supporters. Thankfully, none of these exploded. The FBI apprehended a suspect, 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc. Yesterday something far worse happened: eleven people were killed and six injured in an obvious hate crime at a synagogue near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Robert Bowers was quickly arrested for these crimes.
Both Sayoc and Bowers fit the usual pattern for these criminals today: right wing domestic terrorists and big Trump supporters, although Bowers had some criticisms of Trump. Sayoc's van was famously festooned with right wing invectives and pictures on almost every window (which restricted visibility so much it was probably illegal). Both Sayoc and Bowers used social media, in Bowers case to basically announce his attack on Jews was imminent. Bowers' crime might have been prevented if someone had bothered to notice it or if we did not allow people like him to have guns in the first place.
It's not surprising that most of these incidents are by right-wing domestic terrorists. Statistically these people cause 71% of these domestic terrorism incidents, with just 25% domestically by actual Muslim terrorists. This Anti-Defamation League (ADL) heat map makes abundantly clear who's most likely to trigger these incidents and they tend to be male, white, Republican, conservative and loners. With yesterday's latest incident in Pittsburgh, the right wing can now claim 74% of the victims of these incidents. From their social media postings, it's clear that Trump inspired both Sayoc and Bowers. Trump of course with his advanced case of malignant narcissism disclaims any association with these perpetrators. With a case as bad as his, of course you are going to praise a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who body slammed a reporter as "my kind of guy" and feel no remorse. His narcissism would not be malignant if he felt remorse.
What's harder for most people to see is that horrendous incidents like these are entirely predictable. What's new is that we have Donald Trump as a prominent catalyst; no president has ever incited people to violence before. This gives these incidents explicit sanction. To an extent we are all players of this game because we are awash in a world undergoing great change. Certain personality types though are more likely to "go postal" than others: those groups who feel the most threatened. Conservatives at least in theory like things the way they were (and in most cases they weren't actually the way they were) so are more likely to engage in these crimes, as borne out by the ADL's heat map.
Trump of course is a master bully. My own personal theory is that he is empowering other former bullies to be bullies again. Curiously, many of these actions actually amount to cowardice of some form. Sayoc's alleged actions mailing pipe bombs allow him to hurt other people without necessarily being discovered. (He was a particularly inept criminal, leaving fingerprints on his explosives. His crazy van was certainly a red flag and doubtless helped authorities track him down.) Bowers showed up in person with a number of armaments including an assault rifle. When Trump tells people at his rallies that it's okay to beat up reporters at the rally and he'll pay their legal expenses, he's obviously giving explicit sanction to others to act as his proxies. A legal case could be made that Trump is guilty of inciting terrorism.
Change is an inevitable consequence of living. We've been plunging headlong into the future at rates that obviously make a lot of people uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable with it too. Ironically, conservatives are causing much of the change they are fighting against. For example, if you say that businesses should be able to create any product they want because they are innovators and capitalism is great but not consider the consequences, you end up with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter that show us only content that meets our own biases. To deal with their cognitive dissonance, Trump has labeled anything he doesn't agree with as "fake news" and it's clear that the supporters at his rallies largely agree.
They are obviously wrong. My mother-in-law, a lifelong smoker, never agreed that smoking causes lung cancer, even though the research was overwhelming and she died a painful and somewhat premature death from lung cancer. Climate deniers, principally right-wingers, are doing the same thing. It's like the lobster getting out of the pot and turning up the heat then jumping back into the pot. It's counterproductive and makes no sense. And we know it's only a matter of time, should we live so long, when they will be proven wrong. Our species might die off as a result, but to them this is just more fake news.
Liberals are not entirely blame free either. How much freedom can we promote when many of the consequences of freedom also contribute to these problems? For example, if we want a higher standard of living for everyone without figuring out a way to do it in a sustainable way, we contribute to the destruction of our planet. We can't always be sure our proposals will actually solve the problem, or fit the circumstances.
I believe that there are larger forces at work. Most of us will carry the values we learn from our parents and pass them on to our children, so it takes generations to change most of these values if they change at all. We also unconsciously carry many of our parents' issues and anxieties. Unfortunately, we don't have generations to get it right. Anxiety is actually a rational reaction to a rapidly changing world, but paralysis is not. Unfortunately for conservatives, we can't go back to the way things were. And unfortunately for liberals, we don't have the luxury of trying many approaches until we find the right combination. We have only the fierce urgency of now that none of us can escape, with many of us lacking the wisdom for making an informed choice. I hope November 6 proves me wrong.
(For those of you wondering, this blog is not completely dead. I'm feeling the need to continue at least through post 2000, as it seems a good closure point. Ideally I'll get there on our before December 12, 2018, the end of sixteen years of blogging.)
Category: Politics 2018 Tagged Anti-Defamation League, Cesar Sayoc, Conservatives, Domestic Terrorism, Donald Trump, Facebook, Fake news, Future shock, Liberals, Malignant narcissism, Narcissism, Right-wing, Robert Bowers, Terrorism, Twitter, Values Leave a comment/
The DACA reaction: push comes to shove
On: September 15, 2017 September 15, 2017 By: Mark
Hawkeye: How do you feel?
Private Peterson: All ready to go out and kill me some more "gooks", sir.
Hawkeye: Wendell, another word for "gooks" is "people."
M*A*S*H, Season 1, Episode 15
Conservatives are having a call to conscience. For more than a decade Congress has kicked the immigration can down the road, unable to figure out what to do about the millions of undocumented immigrants in our country with a set of immigration laws that clearly weren't working.
Less obvious, at least to conservatives, is just how much these immigrants contributed to their standard of living. They kept much of our economy alive by doing backbreaking and mundane things like picking our crops, mowing our lawns and cleaning our houses. These "illegal immigrants" have been a boon to our economy, keeping our cost of living low and allowing the same people who are complaining about their presence to live way beyond their means through low inflation and cheap goods and labor. In addition they contributed payroll, Social Security and Medicare taxes, helping to keep these systems solvent although it's unlikely they will ever collect from them. In short much of their true wealth was siphoned off to the very people most upset by their presence. Many of these people though were happy to look the other way if it meant their crops would get picked or their lawns mowed at bargain rates.
This unofficial system was actually a good deal for America, but not such a good deal for those who crossed the border illegally. In most cases it was a scary deal but a better deal than not crossing the border. Included among those crossing with Mom and Dad were their children, who were too young to give consent to their relocation. Born in another country they have become trapped in something of a no man's land. Knowing little or nothing of the country where they were born they became in effect Americans. Now they face the very real risk of deportation.
Trying to act where Congress chose not to, the Obama administration created DACA: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It was a pragmatic way to deal with the problem on an interim basis, given that Congress never gives enough money to fully enforce its laws and wasn't interested in tackling immigration reform legislatively. While each of the 800,000 DACA recipients have no path to citizenship under DACA they at least have had some certainty of not being deported for some period of time. In addition they could get jobs legally and attend college.
Now of course Trump wants to end DACA, or did. That at least is his threat if Congress does not figure out what to do with these "dreamers" in six months time. Trump being Trump, he's been all over the map on the issue, sometimes expressing sympathy for DACA recipients and sometimes lumping them into the "rapists and thieves" category he used to win election. A couple of days ago he met House and Senate minority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for dinner. Nancy and Chuck were of the impression that they had struck a deal on DACA that Trump would support.
That lasted until the next morning when Trump discovered the blowback from conservatives. Suddenly it became no deal, or rather maybe a deal if there could be massive funding for his border wall. In any event, any DACA fix was completely anathema to his conservative base. Sensing that he could not further shrink his dwindling base of support, Trump quickly back-peddled.
Just fifteen percent of Americans support deporting these "dreamers." In fact most Americans would welcome immigration reform, but it seems to be politically impossible. There is some hope that Congress might at least legislate a DACA fix. It's unlikely though that such a fix would lead to permanent residency or citizenship for DACA recipients. Most likely it would simply allow the current policy to continue, allowing legal work status but with little possibility of full enfranchisement.
To these conservatives though none of inhumane aspects of ending DACA matters. They don't care how distraught these DACA recipients are. Laws were broken and they cannot be excused even when those who pay the price are innocent by not having given consent. Trapped in their ideological prison, these conservatives appear beyond conscience. They would have 800,000 innocent people deported to countries they do not know (and where in many cases they cannot even speak the language) for crimes of their parents. In the process they reveal the soulless and inhumane people they actually are. Like Private Wendell Peterson (played by Ron Howard) they see only "illegals", not humans. For them when the law is broken the prison of ideology requires them to put compassion aside, even if these DACA recipients had no say in their situation.
It's crazy, it's inhumane and it speaks to the worst of Americans. It's like that scene from the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. Who are you going to believe, conservatives: your ideology or your own eyes? For conservatives, their answer is horrendously cruel and sadly obvious.
Category: Politics 2017 Tagged "Dreamers", Conservatives, DACA, Trump Leave a comment/
The LGBT recoil
On: April 14, 2016 June 4, 2016 By: Mark
It looks like North Carolina is the latest state to discover the pitfalls of trying to govern from the extreme. HB2, passed in a special one-day session, specifically overwrote a Charlotte, North Carolina ordinance that allowed people to use the restroom that aligned with their gender identity. The hastily signed law by now-chagrinned Governor Pat McCrory requires North Carolina citizens to use the restroom aligned with the sex assigned to them by birth on their birth certificate or face the penalty of law.
The ink was hardly dry before the ACLU was filing a suit. And then the real recoil began. PayPal canceled plans to build offices in the state, at a cost of some four hundred jobs. The Boss (Bruce Springsteen) canceled plans for a concert in the state. North Carolinians can perhaps take some comfort in knowing that they are not the only state dumb enough to pass laws like these. Georgia's governor vetoed a bill with similar intentions. Mississippi looks primed to follow North Carolina's example with a "religious liberty" bill that gives permission to businesses to discriminate against people they don't like because of God or something. It's not even law and it's promoting a backlash, causing Sharon Stone to move the location of her new film out of the state and the governor of Oregon to move the christening of the USS Oregon's sister ship to his state. Of course Indiana got bitch slapped on similar issues last year, and even Arizona saw that light when convention bookings slowed down.
Why do these states do this? It's like they have a death wish. In most cases there is no groundswell of constituents demanding these laws, but there are often fundamentalist groups who have the ears of legislators instead. The answer in part is because legislators in these states have their ears keenly tuned to hear messages from these groups who sustain their hold on power. But the only reason they have so much power is because states like North Carolina are gerrymandered to provide extremely disproportionate representation for conservatives. The nature of gerrymandering is that it is an artificial construct that cannot survive for long because it is unfair. A backlash was inevitable. Worse, these laws were entirely preventable and there were plenty examples of states who had already suffered the consequences. That would have at least suggested some caution, perhaps the governor shelving the bill for a few weeks to let tempers cool.
So much stupidity but perhaps the stupidest thing is that these laws try to solve problems that don't even exist. Let me ask you what would be more disruptive: a trans man using a ladies restroom because his birth certificate says he is a woman, or a trans woman using a men's restroom for a similar reason. The latter sounds the more dangerous to me; if I were a trans woman I'd literally prefer to pee in my pants before going into a men's room. Of course that's part of the problem. It's hugely challenging when your gender misaligns with your sex and particularly during and after the transition process. It's only now after a couple of decades that the trans community is starting to get some sympathy from the general public, mainly because most of us haven't tuned into it. It's a complex issue as I discovered some years back.
But the religious freedom arguments really sound shallow. Religious freedom in this case is basically government-approved bigotry. Doubtless there are passages in the Bible that suggest black people are evil (curious as most Jews are Semites and if not quite black have dark-hued skins.) Under the guise of religious freedom then anyone can assert they have a right to run a business that caters only to non-blacks. If it's not in the Bible, it's still no big deal. Create your own religion where only white people are holy and there you go. You can assert it's your sincere religious belief and who can doubt you? These laws protect not the richest 1% but allow the most bigoted 1% to selectively shame people they don't like with impunity.
The good news for bigots is that they have every right to be a bigot in their private lives. However, a business cannot be called public if it does not accept all comers. If I own a bakery and don't want to bake wedding cakes for gay couples, I can get out of the bakery business. Or I can decide that I understand that being public means everyone can ask for my services and baking one doesn't mean I support gay marriage but it does mean I have sanction to profit from anyone who walks in my shop door.
There is some concern that these laws will require ministers to marry gay couples or face the penalty of law. I'm not sure where this comes from but it's a specious concern. You might as well worry that a Catholic priest will be required to perform a Jewish wedding. Religious marriage ceremonies require parties to agree to the marriage rules of the religion. I suppose it is possible that a state law might require any legal "celebrant" to perform a civil marriage, and that celebrant could also be a minister. In this case though the ceremony would be purely civil, does not have to be performed in their church and would have no religious connotation.
One thing that is clear is that these laws are toxic. Generations X and Y have made it clear that everyone must be treated equally under the law, so at best these laws will prove to be short-lived. Perhaps it's possible these legislators don't understand how hurtful and shaming these laws are, but more likely they do understand and that's part of their animus in voting them in. They will get their comeuppance in time. In North Carolina, a recent poll puts Governor McCrory four points behind his LGBT-friendlier challenger.
When you make it your business to shame others, you will inevitably find that it will shame you instead. Give it a few months as more businesses leave the state and I think North Carolina legislators will find a reason to quietly repeal HB 2. Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and other states in this boat will too in time but sadly are likely to look for less overt ways to discriminate instead. There are always those Voter ID laws.
Category: Politics 2016 Tagged Bigots, Conservatives, Discrimination, HB2, LGBT, LGBT Discrimination, North Carolina, Transgenders Leave a comment/
On: March 28, 2014 March 28, 2014 By: Mark
What would you do if you knew that your life, as you have known it, was going to change fundamentally? Great traumatic events happen to us in our lives, but none of us welcome them. When they happen, we tend to seek out the comfort of the known rather than confront the discomfort of the unknown.
Many Japanese warriors at the end of World War II preferred what they saw as suicide with dignity – crashing their aircraft into enemy aircraft carriers or self-immolation – to defeat and living in a world that was ordered fundamentally differently than the way they were raised. Others will instead find ways to resist. They think that change can be stopped somehow, and they will simply resist it to the last fiber of their being. And so they turn their houses into fortresses, buy arsenals of guns and create a fallout shelter stocked with years of food, water, medicines and other perishables.
Something like this is happening right now across much of Red America. They smell the winds of change. For years they have ignored it by expressing the opinion that while things may be changing out there it won't happen here. At some point though the smell becomes too pervasive. Up go defenses and the barricades. For many in power though it means that they feel compelled to use it to their utmost advantage. It means highly gerrymandered districts allowing ever more extreme people to get elected to Congress. It also means creating laws that are clearly unconstitutional (like Missouri granting its citizens exemption from certain federal gun laws) to intrusive for people you don't like (unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds for women prior to an abortion). It means that their values must be promoted with no exceptions. So out go textbooks that say evolution is established science and in come textbooks that promote creationism instead. You tighten the screws even more on the poor by reducing food stamps and making it harder to get on Medicaid. You sign laws that do away with early voting on weekends because you don't want that kind to vote anyhow. You are running scared.
It's quite an ordeal. In fact, the late Eric Hoffer wrote a book about it, The Ordeal of Change, which is an interesting read if you have the time. If you looked at our changing demographics and have read Hoffer's book, what's happening today should not be a surprise. In fact, it is entirely predictable. What's going on in Red America has happened lots of times before and will keep happening in the future. We are now in the "no compromises to encroaching reality" phase of this ordeal of change.
Civilized people of course recognize that change can mean that long established social systems can be reordered. When it appears inevitable, we will seek to make change as easy as possible, to minimize anger and hurt. It's not always possible, however. The denial phase seems to be in Red America's rear view mirror, but the anger phase certainly isn't. They feel terribly hurt because their society is fundamentally changing, and fear it will leave them in a less privileged place when complete.
So the anger gets expressed in laws that even ten years ago they would not have considered, such as transvaginal ultrasounds for pregnant women who want an abortion. They feel they must dish out in pain at least as much as they perceive they are receiving in pain. Why do they do this? Part of it is reflexive meanness toward those not like them, but part of it is also because when anger is served out, its recipients tend to hurt too. Most people give wide berth to bullies. By acting like bullies, they are ultimately hoping we will leave them alone.
In this context, a lot of what is going on in Red America and by Republicans in Congress begins to make sense. If you accept that the Affordable Care Act is the institutionalized law of the land then you realize that you can really only amend it, not repeal it. However, if your lines are drawn and your barricades are in place then you are left with a no surrender mentality. At least so far, there is no sign of surrendering to the rule of law. Republicans will accept nothing less than the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. They cannot even come up with a coherent replacement for it, in part because they reject the premise that our old system was not perfect. If they reject what was, then in some way they must also agree that their values were either incorrect or unworkable in the modern context. That creates cognitive dissonance, so it is repressed through the mechanism that tells them, like it told Commander Taggert, to "Never give up, never surrender."
It is increasingly clear that marriage will soon be available to anyone regardless of their sexual orientation. The Supreme Court has pretty much declared at the federal level that doing otherwise is unconstitutional, because it gives privileges to one sort of citizen unavailable to another. Moreover, because of the Supremacy Clause in the constitution, federal law trumps state law when the two conflict. Consequently, entirely reasonable federal judges are invalidating state marriage laws across the country, even in deeply red states like Oklahoma and Utah. While good for gays and lesbians, it is not so good for those whose values are invalidated through the process of law. To some extent, their anger is counterproductive, because it stokes more anger, and adds to feelings of oppression and righteousness.
It's unclear how this will all end. Change driven by demographics and social trends can be temporarily stymied but is rarely thwarted. It would help if Red America could look at the larger picture and take comfort from it. Our worship of capitalism will likely keep a large and poor working class for them to look down on. Also, anti-abortion laws will ensure a large population of poor people. Their churches will still be around when this is over, but the demographics will probably mean fewer of us will be in church. The people around us will be more multihued, but they already are: Red America simply isn't looking close enough. For the most part, people will continue to cloister by combinations of race and class, as they have always done. In short, a lot of the angst from Red America, while predictable, is perhaps too much ado about much less change than they thought.
This should be a source of some comfort. Ultimately though few will understand what all the fuss was about. Only cranks complain about mixed race marriages today. In twenty years the same will be true with those complaining about gay marriage. Getting to the tranquil future from the enraged present though is likely to continue to be trying.
Category: Politics 2014, Sociology Tagged Conservatives, demographics, Eric Hoffer, Republicans Leave a comment/
Hurricane Sandy reminds us why we need government
On: October 30, 2012 November 1, 2012 By: Mark
With the arrival of Hurricane Sandy here on the east coast yesterday, you got a timely reminder of why we need government. Yesterday was a day when you wanted to batten down the hatches and if you lived in certain areas also pray like hell. Unless you own a boat or ship you probably didn't have to literally batten down any hatches, although I have to wonder if failure to do so lead to the sinking of the HMS Bounty during the storm.
For most of us storm preparation meant cleaning out gutters, removing chairs from our decks, testing the sump pump, stocking up on batteries, toilet paper and bottled water, and finding places for our automobiles away from trees. It worked for us here in Oak Hill, Virginia. Sandy dumped more rain than wind on us. Nearby Washington Dulles International Airport reported 5.4 inches of rain during the event, with peak sustained winds of 39 miles an hour, with gusts to 54 miles an hour. We also had a day of record low pressure, something I attribute to climate change. As hurricanes go this was a bizarre one. No tropical air and foggy windows this time, but cold air fed by a cold front on the other side of the Appalachians, driving rain for more than a day, and blustery winds yesterday afternoon and evening. Our house, windows and floorboards rattled from time to time, but the power and heat stayed on and we never lost Internet.
News reports indicated that millions of others are still without power. Sandy left much of New Jersey and lower Manhattan destroyed and/or underwater. I am monitoring my hometown of Binghamton, which likely has not seen the worst of Sandy yet. The area suffered two devastating floods in 2005 and 2010. This may be yet another one for that suffering area to endure. But its impact will be softened, thanks to local, state and federal emergency managers. Thanks should also be given to President Obama, who declared areas disaster areas before the storm hit, to speed aid and supplies.
The list of people and organizations to thank are immense. There is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which coordinates disaster relief and works intimately with the states to stage disaster relief supplies. There is the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, which effectively tracked the storm and issued the correct warnings. There is the Coast Guard, various governors, state and local emergency responders, power crews, ambulance drivers and cops on the beat.
Some of the best results were things that did not happen. My roof did not blow off or collapse. This did not happen by magic, but was the result of building codes and building inspections. In 1985 when my house was constructed, Fairfax County sent out inspectors to make sure my house was constructed to a code that would allow it to endure major storms like Sandy. In 1999 we replaced our deck and enclosed it. "Big government" building inspectors took a look at the roof of our new deck and told the contractors it was not up to code. They were forced to add additional beams to support the roof.
There is more evidence of big government across the street from my house. There a large dry pond sits awaiting events like Hurricane Sandy. It safely collects backwater then funnels it into the nearby creek in a measured manner, minimizing flood damage. Even in the event that it overfilled the dry pond, the codes required the road to be graded in a certain way to keep the water flowing gently downhill, never leaving a spot on the road for water to accumulate. Before the community was even constructed, an engineering study was ordered to make sure no part of our community was in a flood zone. Had these safeguards not been in place, it is likely that we would have experienced some storm damage last night. Possibly me and some of my neighbors would be dislocated, injured or dead. Big government could not eliminate these risks, but through a planning and an impartial inspection process it minimized these risks. One of the reasons our power never went out is because power lines are underground in our neighborhood, another outcome of big government. Doubtless it would have been cheaper to plant telephone polls instead.
Much of the wheels of government work this way. It's the things that you don't see and take for granted that minimize losses and deaths during these natural events. All these services cost money, but they cost less because their costs are borne generally through taxes. The cost per capita for the National Weather Service is a couple of dollars per year.
FEMA is an example of the services that Mitt Romney plans to drastically cut if he is elected president. And yet many of these services are already chronically underfunded and if anything need more funds. Moreover, the cost of funding these arguably essential areas of government are a pittance compared to the cost of entitlements and defense. At least now Romney claims says he won't cut FEMA. But clearly you cannot balance a budget and not raise taxes if you don't cut something. If you won't do much to cut entitlements and keep bloating the Defense Department's budget, these essential government services must be drastically cut.
You can say, as many conservatives do, it is better to leave it to the states to handle these things. But hurricanes do not respect state boundaries. It makes no sense for each state to have a redundant weather service when it can be done nationally. The whole point of having a United States is to ensure that if some states have to deal with disaster, we can pick up their slack by everyone contributing aid through federal taxes. We need these services because we are all in this together. These services are not nice to have; they are essential. We are bigger than the sum of our parts because we are united and federated.
Also essential is the infrastructure that makes all this possible. We need the National Science Foundation to stimulate research in national areas of interest. We need my agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, to do seismological research, biodiversity estimates and to monitor the nation's streams and groundwater, so the National Weather Service can make flood and drought forecasts. We need the FDA to make sure our drugs are safe, agricultural inspectors to make sure our food is safe, ICE to handle illegal and legal immigrants, and the FBI to investigate intrastate crimes. Maybe if push came to shove we can do without funding Big Bird or sending probes to Mars. These costs are mere pocket change in the federal budget.
As I have noted before, taxes are the price of civilization. If this is not clear to you, then elect Republicans and watch as our highways and bridges deteriorate, our children become unable to afford college, watch our food become impure, our drugs become adulterated and see legions of poor and starving people living on the streets because no one will house them or feed them. Expect that when some future Hurricane Sandy arrives, the size of the problem will needlessly mushroom simply because we as a society have decided we have stopped caring for anyone but ourselves.
It's your choice. I understand if your ideology tells you to vote Republican regardless, but the next Hurricane Sandy won't care about your philosophy and you and your family may be needless victims. God gave us brains. Let's use them.
Category: Politics 2012 Tagged Barack Obama, Conservatives, Disaster response, FEMA, Hurricane Sandy, Mitt Romney, Taxes, Weather 1 Comment/
We are not rocks, we are human beings
On: June 21, 2012 June 21, 2012 By: Mark
Psst! You are personally responsible for everything you do! Actually, in modern political discourse, this is not whispered so much as it is shouted. You hear it from Republicans and conservatives all the time. I can't shout on a blog, but I can do something worse: use caps. So just in case you don't get the message from the daily drumbeat of news, Republicans want you to know that YOU ARE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO.
And because you are personally responsible for everything you do, you can change your behaviors any time you want because you have this magic stuff called free will. You can do it, just like that! It's easy! By taking personal responsibility for your health, for example, you could eat little but nuts and berries, plus run twenty miles a day. And if you made the personally responsible choice to marry and have children you are personally responsible for raising your kids, their behavior (at least until they turn eighteen), and eating little but nuts and berries, plus running twenty miles a day after work. You can do all this plus sleep eight hours a day, have a satisfying (missionary only position) sex life!
It turns out that if you practice personal responsibility, you can do everything right, manage everything perfectly and intuitively solve every personal problem. The inconvenient fact that trying to maintain perfect health and doing everything right for your spouse, family, parents, siblings and the community will prove humanly impossible is irrelevant. It's far more important to know that you are personally responsible, and any deviation from the ideal of personal responsibility deserves nothing but contempt and scorn.
Yes, you are personally responsible even if you don't have the means. You could have been abandoned by your parents as a child, forced to live in the streets (since Republicans don't believe in a welfare state), end up selling your body to have food to eat, and you are still personally responsible for somehow getting an education on your own nickel, excelling in school, never breaking a law, living a healthy lifestyle, maintaining a roof over your head (a cardboard box will do in a pinch) and maintaining optimal health as well. When you are personally responsible you never, ever ask for a handout. The very idea! You are personally responsible and you are required to be completely self-sufficient. Got it?
Of course you do! You could not possibly miss the message these days, particularly since it is brought to you free of charge by overbearing, generally very well moneyed and often hypocritical Republicans, the vast majority of whom had parents who provided for all their needs, taught them they belonged to a privileged caste and now beneficently use some portion of their fortune to drum in the message continuously via the media. You know, like the Koch Brothers. You are contemptible if you fail to be one hundred percent personally responsible at all times. Actually, you are something close to toilet scum. We must all be the very model of a modern Major General, all the time. Just do it now and do it perfectly, for crying out loud!
There are all these additional temptations out there, just to truly test your mettle. Let's not, for example, do what New York Mayor Bloomberg is doing, and try to limit the size of these supersized sodas sold in the city. After all, New Yorkers might actually get healthier without overt action. Rather, you must be personally responsible enough to understand that these empty calories will make you fat at very little expense, or at least you will if you spend your days obsessively plugged into various health oriented web sites, and of course being personally responsible, it's something you must do. Armed with this knowledge that you will acquire from psychic vibrations coming through the ether if necessary, you will magically find the willpower to pass these endless temptations by. So don't try to regulate these liquid empty calorie behemoths just because some mortals are weak. It's anti-American. It's too Big Brotherish. Worst of all, it's anti-corporate.
However, the good part about personal responsibility is you also have freedom. So if you want, go ahead and indulge in a supersized Slurpee. And should you choose to get fat and develop Type II Diabetes, that's okay too, providing not one cent of the costs of your choices are borne by anyone else. That's the bottom line when it comes to personal responsibility. (Qualification: the above does not apply to the environment. Feel free to be personally reckless toward the environment. After all, God wants us to be.)
You would think though that with the ever-present mantra of personal responsibility many more of us would, well, actually behave in a personally responsible way. But for some reason most of us do not. In fact, consuming all those supersized Slurpees is evidence that most Americans, while they doubtless get the message, simply refuse to take it to heart. Because every year Americans on average gain more weight. At the same time, fewer of us have or can afford health insurance.
Naturally your environment has nothing to do with your problem. Even if it did, you can easily surmount it. You just aren't bothering to try. The fact that you can hardly travel anywhere without seeing billboards for pizzas and junk food, or turn on the TV without seeing ads that promote an unhealthy lifestyle, is wholly irrelevant. Nor is the fact that your friends are also eating too much of the wrong stuff and for the most part not exercising relevant. Because if you are personally responsible, then by extension you must also believe that you are completely autonomous. You must also believe that all those connections and relationships don't affect your behavior. Marines may have to go to Parris Island in order to get fit and learn to properly kill people. However, you can achieve personal responsibility all by yourself. Simply grab yourself by your bootstraps and pull. It's that easy!
But for some reason Americans aren't taking the message to heart! Every year we get fatter. Every year we exercise less. Every year we spend more time diddling with our smartphones rather than huffing on running the trails behind our house. Strangely, even most Republicans seem to be having problems with the personal responsibility thing. Or perhaps they are independently wealthy enough where they don't care. Morbidly obese but excessively preachy Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey comes to mind. That's the good thing about having wealth: you are exempt from the rules because you (probably) won't be foisting off the costs of your unhealthy lifestyle on anyone else.
As always there is the ideal and then there is reality. It is true that we are personally responsible for the choices that we make. But that doesn't mean we magically have happened to learn how to be personally responsible, or that they are innate skills inside us. Even if we do possess the skills, there is little likelihood that most of us, given the billions of possible choices available for any action, will always choose to behave at all times in a personally responsible way. Nor have most of us acquired the education and mentoring to learn how to make wise decisions. The skill has to come from somewhere. If we don't possess it then we have to glean it from someone. A friend. A teacher. A minister. Someone. Except to acknowledge this, we also have to acknowledge that we depend on other people. We have to acknowledge that our world is relational, instead of each of us being beacons of individuality and self-sufficiency. We have to acknowledge that we are all connected. No, it is better to live in a fantasy world instead.
That won't do, of course, so get with the program. A song will get you into the spirit. Find a guitar. And start belting out that 60's song by Simon and Garfunkel:
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
I'm betting while you are attempting to do so, you are suppressing a tear because you are just another human being with foibles like the rest of us and are grabbing another handful of Cheetos.
Category: Politics 2012, Sociology Tagged Conservatives, Personal Responsibility, Republicans Leave a comment/
Little conservative about most conservatives
A couple of weeks ago I noted that many Christians are anything but Christian. In fact, it would be hard to find a group that looked more like the anti-Christ. So many modern Christians these days are obsessed with hating people. One of them was profiled on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. Bryan Fischer is a rather obscure radio host associated with the American Family Association with about a million listeners. He was largely responsible for getting Richard Grenell fired from Mitt Romney's team of advisors. Grenell was guilty of being gay, and that's pretty much all that mattered to Fischer.
Grenell of course is hardly alone. Closer to (my) home was the recent case of Tracey Thorne-Begland, nominated by our conservative governor for a Richmond judgeship. The Virginia General Assembly rejected him on May 14th, because he was guilty of being gay. I mean it stands to reason that if someone is gay, they are by definition sinful and thus unqualified for public office, let alone judgeship. Duh! What was Governor McDonnell smoking? Yet despite this, the Richmond General District Court gave him a temporary appointment, and is hoping that when the general assembly meets next year it will have a change of heart. That seems unlikely. And this is a judgment from legislators who are overwhelmingly Christian who presumably would take to heart Jesus's admonition not to judge others.
Today, I note something which should also not be too startling but which surprisingly gets little press. Most conservatives simply are not conservative. It's hard to say exactly what they are, but I suspect a psychiatrist would suggest they suffer from multiple personality disorder.
Conservatives in general want to retain things they way things were. Many of these conservatives are conservative, if you don't mind going back 500 years or so. The problem is that they frame themselves as constitutional conservatives. In doing so they assert that the original intent of those who wrote our constitution was quite a bit different than it actually was. Bryan Fischer, for example, can be fairly described as a Dominionist. Fischer asserts that what our founding fathers wanted was a Christian-only nation, and all our laws should have their basis in biblical law. The ultimate goal of Dominionists should look familiar to the religious conservatism also sweeping Islamic countries. The Muslim brotherhood hopes that this weekend Egyptians will elect their candidate as the new president. He is someone who wants to implement Sharia law in Egypt. Sharia law is religious law made secular law. It forces everyone to follow religious law. Dominionists want the United States to implement Christian law (whatever that is), and force everyone to abide by it as well, even if they are not Christian.
Never mind that "Christian law" is something of an oxymoron. Dominionists and many conservatives simply fail to recognize that this is the exact antithesis of the original intent of the constitution. It's quite clear in the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Our founders went out of their way to make it clear that someone's religion was irrelevant to their public office: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
How much more original intent could possibly be required? As if the plain text of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were not enough, there are also the Federalist Papers, which make it clear this was the exact intent of our founding fathers. Nor did they intend to limit freedom of religions to Christians only. Writing to a Hebrew congregation in Rhode Island in 1790, George Washington wrote:
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
This of course is but just one small example of where today's conservatives are completely against the conservatism they claim to champion. Here are some others.
Environmentalism. Conservatives should treasure the environment. Teddy Roosevelt, for example, was very pro-environment and spent much of his presidency expanding our national parks and promoting the value and enjoyment of nature. Today's conservatives think everyone has the right to trash the environment. Pretty soon the only use for guns will be to shoot your neighbor; there won't be any animals left to shoot. Moreover, the glaciers will be gone, much of our shorelines will be underwater and our climate will be forever transformed specifically due to our controllable, human interactions with the environment. This is the "conserve" in conservatism?
Freedom. The original intent of our founding fathers was clearly to allow all citizens to enjoy the maximum amount of freedom and to tightly control how much of your freedom governments could take away. They were pro civil liberties, not anti civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence declares all men have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Specifically we were granted freedoms of religion (including tight controls on the regulation of religion by the government), freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of petition. Citizens were specifically permitted Habeas Corpus, allowed trials by jury, could not be subjected to double jeopardy and were permitted not to incriminate themselves. All powers not specifically delegated to the federal or state governments were left to the people as a liberty by default.
Original intent. A true conservative who respects the constitution must also respect its amendment process, not assert that everything in it should be interpreted as it existed in 1790. Our founders specifically understood that circumstances change, but set a rather onerous bar for amending the constitution. The amendment process is clearly constitutional and because it is hard to do conservatives should respect it. They should be waiving flags of freedom that women and blacks got the right to vote, that eighteen year olds can vote and that citizens can now directly elect their senators.
Abortion. If personal freedom is the foundation of conservatism, why does a woman not have the freedom to choose what to do with her own pregnant body?
School vouchers. Public schools did not exist in 1790, with the possible exception of scattered public state universities. The government for the most part was not in the business of public education at all. Why should conservatives support giving government money to people so they can send their children to school? Why do the same with welfare, or health care? Isn't this more redistribution of wealth?
Euthanasia and assisted suicide. If a good conservative believes in maximum freedom, why should a person not be allowed to die with dignity at a time of his or her own choosing?
Gun control. If a state and the federal government declare it has no need for a militia, why cannot a state regulate guns when the text of the Second Amendment specifically says that freedom to own guns is predicated on the need for the state to have a militia?
Same sex marriage. Why shouldn't a citizen have the freedom to marry whoever they choose? Isn't this in accord with conservative principles to maximize individual freedom?
I suspect that I, a progressive, am far more of a traditional conservative than the vast majority of conservatives who claim that label. I don't know what these conservatives actually are, but they should stop soiling such a good term.
Category: Politics 2012 Tagged Conservatives 1 Comment/
Winter never really arrived this year. Typically we don't get much in the way of snowfall in a given winter, but the snowplows tend to come out at least a couple of times during the season. And they were out a couple of times this winter as well, but they were mostly sitting by the side of the road waiting for conditions to worsen, which they did not. Most of our snow this winter, to the extent we had it, was flurries. None of the snow that we received lasted a day or exceeded an inch. To the extent we saw snow, it was on the top of cars that had driven in from the Shenandoah Mountains or points further north and west.
Temperatures also were moderate. There was a cold day here and there. I only recall temperatures dipping into the teens once. I usually go through six to eight weeks of scraping the frost off my windshield most days. This year I performed the chore only a half dozen times. Technically it was winter, but in reality it was some new amorphous season for which we have no name. Neither fall nor spring but feeling not at all like winter, it was full of short days, with highs mostly in the fifties but sometimes in the seventies. March brought a couple of days with temperatures creeping into the low eighties. The grass in my yard started growing in early March. The wild onions were peaking up in January. The cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin bloomed over the weekend: a surreally early start to spring that was (and still is) winter.
Thanks to climate change, we are likely to have to come up for a new name for winter because it no longer fits. On the plus side, our heating bill was manageable. No need to worry about frozen pipes, or being stuck in a snow bank. Only twice did I put on the heavy winter coat. A light jacket and some gloves were all I needed.
My wife wants to move further north to some place like Boston where winter is still cruel and still bites, and where you spend most mornings relocating snow off your driveway and digging a path to your mailbox. I'm pretty sure Bostonians did a whole lot less of that this year as well. Ski resorts spent much of the winter hunting for snow and customers. They created ski slopes loosely packed with artificial snow, which mostly vanished shortly after application. Out west, the usual mountain snowfalls largely never appeared. Westerners are already anxious about the probable drought they will be facing this summer.
One year does not a trend make, but one trend that is unmistakable is the rise in average global temperatures. There is about a one in three chance that this summer will be the hottest on record, again. It clearly won't be much longer before the last of the Arctic sea ice melts during the summer. Much of it will reappear in the winter, but its gradual disappearance will lead to the extinction of many species that depend on the ice, like the polar bear. It is likely that extinction driven by climate change is already very much with us but we are simply not looking for it. Like a horse running a race with blinders, most of us simply choose to ignore the evidence all around us. The planet is fundamentally and rapidly changing, and not for the better.
You would think conservatives of all people would be alarmed. You cannot go back to those mythical good old days when the climate is so radically different. Instead, they are the ones aiding and abetting climate change. They do it through well-practiced and obnoxious denial of indisputable facts. Science is irrelevant because if you can acquire power you can legislate the science you want, such as they are doing in Texas where teaching "creationism" and a six thousand year old earth to public school students is considered on par with teaching evolution. Facts simply get in the way with the way you want things to be. Ignoring facts gives you the opportunity to not only keep climate change going, but to make it worse. Gas prices are approaching record levels and naturally it's all Obama's fault. It has nothing to do with demand worldwide by a wealthier and overpopulated planet that is taking off, as predicted, exceeding available capacity. $2.50 a gallon gas if you elect me, promises Newt Gingrich. Yet doing more to stimulate demand simply raises prices higher.
Acknowledging what is happening at least lets you ponder what can be done about it. Natural gas is not a long-term solution, but it can be a bridge that can move us to a carbon free energy future. It is plentiful and cheap as well as clean, but with the exception of some city buses, it's hard to find any motor vehicles using it. No automaker that I am aware of is working to create cars powered by natural gas. Why should they when it's so hard to get a fill up? Presumably Republicans think the free market will solve the problem but no one in the free market seems to be stepping up to the plate. Those few Republicans that acknowledge the problem know what is really required: government regulation and the (horror!) spending that comes with it. We need to require carmakers to build cars powered by natural gas. We need natural gas filling stations along all our major interstates. In populated neighborhoods, there should be a requirement that you should not have to drive more than five miles to fill up your tank with natural gas. Require it and Americans will start to drive cars powered by natural gas. Why wouldn't they when natural gas will cost half as much, or less, than gasoline? Moreover, there are few things we cherish more than our mobility. If we can reliably fill up our cars with natural gas, we'll take to it like a duck to water. But to do so requires the hand of government, and that must be socialism or something.
We are saying in effect that we are okay with our extinction, in spite of our so-called reverence for human life. I'd say in retrospect we'd have to say we saw our extinction coming. However, there won't be any of us left to ponder these preventable mistakes. One thing is for sure: we cannot change the future until we acknowledge the present and let the facts instead of uninformed prejudices drive our policy.
The good news for the planet is that our extinction is likely to come sooner rather than later. Then maybe the planet can recover. We seem to be incapable of being stewards of our planet. Indeed, we believe it is our job to rape it. It's in the Book of Genesis, and we must let nothing like inconvenient facts contravene our sacred scripts.
Our sacred scripts are also destined to disappear into the dust with our extinction and will thus ultimately mean nothing, except that our species was a foolish accident of nature whose extinction, fortunately, we hastened. We will have painfully destroyed ourselves as well as much of the species we depend on. That which we claimed to conserve and cherish, we will ultimately squander on the altar of reckless human selfishness.
Unless, very improbably, we take to heart the lesson of The Lorax now in theaters. Unless. The hour is very, very late.
Category: Politics 2012 Tagged Climate Change, Conservatives, Environment, Global Warming, Natural gas, Republicans 2 Comments/
A sudden Rush to judgment
On: March 7, 2012 June 19, 2020 By: Mark
Thank goodness at least some people you would think would not bother continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh. The conservative radio host says so many outrageous things that it is hard to keep from being inured by his latest rants. At least one person in the progressive blogosphere must tune in, because otherwise his outrageous comments on Sandra Fluke, a 30-year old Georgetown University student might have gone wholly unnoticed.
Ms. Fluke, as you doubtlessly heard, was called a "slut" and a "prostitute" by Rush on his radio show last week. Once was apparently not enough for Limbaugh, who double downed his assertions the following day on his show, suggesting her every sexual encounter should be filmed for the benefit of her sponsors, the American taxpayer. Over the weekend he had a sudden change of heart, likely because his advertisers starting withdrawing their sponsorship of his show en masse. Limbaugh sort of apologized without really apologizing, and like the whiny liberal stereotype he likes to lampoon, blamed much of his behavior on liberals. At least forty of his sponsors have pulled the plug so far and more are likely to join the parade.
It's curious that these obviously false assertions should get him in trouble when so many others have gone, if not quite unnoticed, at least unchallenged. Limbaugh coined the term "Feminazi" to describe feminists. He's been using the term for decades but like so much other slander and filth out of his mouth, we tuned it out. You would think equating the tens of millions of peaceful but assertive American feminists with a group of fascists that were responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities might have triggered advertisers to bow out from supporting his show long ago. But almost all advertisers are glad to keep sponsoring a show to reach a target market unless it suddenly becomes politically expedient to drop them.
If only there were some tiny speck of truth in his allegations. Fluke "testified" before an unofficial panel of House Congressional Democrats, only because the six male members of the requisite House committee wouldn't let her or any woman testify on the need to have birth control covered in employer-based health insurance contracts. Fluke wasn't even talking about herself, but about a friend at Georgetown who needed birth control, not to sleep around, but to control PCOS. Lots of women need birth control for reasons other than to prevent pregnancy, such as for PCOS and to control periods that would be dangerously heavy or excessive. Even when women take birth control to prevent pregnancy, it doesn't mean that the government is subsidizing birth control. The issue is whether employers should be required to offer birth control as part of their health care coverage, as is required in a majority of states already. That's it. No government subsidies involved.
And clearly few of the 99% of women who use birth control at some point in their lives are sluts. Some have legitimate medical reasons why their periods need to be regulated. Others are happily or otherwise married women who just don't particularly want a bun in their oven but want the freedom to have a sex life with their husband. I am not sure how you define a woman as a "slut" but I do know that since Rush cheated on his wives he was putting his dipstick into places where people like him would argue it should never be. However, Rush can avoid the "slut" label because he is a guy. Guys can't be sluts. There's not quite an equivalent word for a guy, because it's okay for guys to sleep around. Granted I don't hang around men's locker rooms very often these days, but in my day those guys who bragged about their multiple exploits in locker rooms tended to be envied by the rest of us virgins, who would have been happy to get an opportunity to have sex with something other than our right hands. In any case, when Rush takes vacations alone in the Dominican Republic without his spouse, caught entering with illegal Viagra and is cited for the offense, this sounds like a guy who was aching to be a male slut.
Maybe it's just me, but I hate the "slut" word. Plenty of women have high sex drives, and I've been fortunate to have known a few of them in the biblical sense. Having a high sex drive means you really enjoy sex, which is entirely fine and natural. Having many sex partners at the same time is probably not a wise choice if you are trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. It is possible to be sexually active with multiple partners and be reasonably safe at the same time. Undoubtedly some women do put out for reasons other than having a high sex drive, but the same is true with men. Whether a woman chooses to live a life of celibacy, refrains from intercourse until marriage, sleeps around before marriage or has multiple sexual partners at the same time is a choice she must live with. The same is true with men, but for some reason we don't dwell on satyrs except possibly to envy them. It's something about being a woman that makes being sexually active with multiple men (or women) at the same time especially morally reprehensible. Maybe its because Mary the mother of Jesus never slept around, or so we assume. Apparently Mary Magdalene did, and Jesus considered her a close friend.
Insurance companies of course are glad, even eager, to provide free contraceptives to its insured women. Entities like the Catholic Church don't have to compromise any of their cash on principle, an accommodation that was recently granted by the Obama Administration. Fifty dollars a month in birth control pills and paying a couple of hundred dollars a year for the woman to see a gynecologist is infinitely cheaper than the costs of bringing up an unplanned child.
What really annoys the Limbaughs of the world is that many women won't choose to live the stereotypes they would prefer they live. At the root of Limbaugh's anger is a frustration that people like him cannot always control the intimate lives of women. They get angry when women choose to exercise their right to be free and liberated human beings. People like Limbaugh want to exert power over women, but really power over any person whose morals they object to. Democrats simply want to put freedom of choice into the individual's hands, particularly women who otherwise could not afford $50 a month for pills and hundreds of dollars a year in doctor and lab fees to ensure their reproductive health. Let women decide whether they want to use birth control or not, since it is safe and effective. Because it is almost universally used by women, simply make it available as a health choice for them like any other treatable health condition. Because health insurance is all about maintaining personal health and by extension happiness, the same happiness our founders talked about in our constitution that we are all supposed to crave. It appears that the Limbaughs of the world very much want to take away such freedoms from anyone they don't like while inconsistently and furtively giving themselves license to indulge.
Category: Politics 2012 Tagged Birth Control, Conservatives, Contraception, Rush Limbaugh, Sexuality, Sluts 2 Comments/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I'm new to the forum and I recently discovered one ancestor of mine was born in Italy. I'm Portuguese, and so far, all my family is from Portuguese origin, so I'm quite interested in finding out more about this particular ancestor of mine.
I don't have much information about him, and I'm don't really know where I can research more information about him and his ancestors. If anybody could help, I'd be very grateful. I'm mainly looking for his birth certificate or his parents wedding certificate.
In return, if any of you ever needs to research ancestors in Portugal, I might be of help.
At some point he moved to Lisbon before 1806 and he married for the first time in 1806 in Lisbon, to Victorina Rosa, living the rest of his life in Mafra, Portugal.
I don't know if his parents were Portuguese or Italian. His father name is a very typical Portuguese name, the mother name however, is not.
In that time frame where I believe he might have been born Genova was the capital of the Genoa Republic, if I'm not mistaken, just before it was annexed by France. Are there still records available of that time period and location?
The names are written in Portuguese, Sao Jacome I believe is San Giacomo, and Antonio Marques, Son of Domingos Marques & Angela Marqueza are also written in Portuguese, I can only try to guess what's the Italian version of them, but I'm no pro.


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text:
[@iobroker/js-controller-adapter](../README.md) / [Exports](../modules.md) / [<internal\>](../modules/internal_.md) / InternalGetSessionOptions

# Interface: InternalGetSessionOptions

[<internal>](../modules/internal_.md).InternalGetSessionOptions

## Table of contents

### Properties

- [callback](internal_.InternalGetSessionOptions.md#callback)
- [id](internal_.InternalGetSessionOptions.md#id)

## Properties

### callback

• **callback**: `GetSessionCallback`

#### Defined in

[packages/adapter/src/lib/_Types.ts:112](https://github.com/ioBroker/ioBroker.js-controller/blob/4be02248/packages/adapter/src/lib/_Types.ts#L112)

___

### id

• **id**: `string`

#### Defined in

[packages/adapter/src/lib/_Types.ts:111](https://github.com/ioBroker/ioBroker.js-controller/blob/4be02248/packages/adapter/src/lib/_Types.ts#L111)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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I made two dozen of these delicious morsels to donate to my sisters Harvest Festival at Three Rings Ranch Elementary in Beaumont. The filling is a pumpkin pie spice buttercream. I put the sprinkles on before the skins form before baking. I love how they turned out!
I also painted faces at the event. Many funky designs but the kids are always gracious. I snagged a shot with my sister and nephews.


text:
Looking for a map of one of our courses? Click on one of the images below.
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ABOUT MOLE VALLEY ORIENTEERING CLUB
Mole Valley Orienteering Club covers parts of South London and Surrey and the River Mole lies at its heart. Our members cluster around the towns of Reigate, Epsom, Dorking, Sutton, Leatherhead and their surroundings. However we also have members that live further afield.
Our official name is Mole Valley Map and Compass Foot Racing Society - we abbreviate to MV for easy reference!
We take the swallow as our symbol as it represents the swallow holes in the River Mole. These are holes in the river bed that mean the river disappears underground during dry periods. We also like to think that because swallows are fast and accurate navigators, they suit us well as an emblem.
18 January 2022 (Tuesday) Winter Street Series Event 4
Venue: Cheam
[Updated 03 January 2022]
13 February 2022 (Sunday) Park score event
Venue: Priory Park, Reigate
15 February 2022 (Tuesday) Winter Street Series Event 5
Venue: Chessington
15 March 2022 (Tuesday) Winter Street Series Event 6
Venue: Tattenham Corner
Details to follow
[Added 21 October 2021]
5 April 2022 (Tuesday) Winter Street Series Event 7
Venue: TBD
3 May 2022 (Tuesday) Winter Street Series Event 8
Venue: Dorking
Results from the 2021 Souther Championships held on the South Ashdown are now available here.
Results from the third in the 2021 Winter Series are now available here. The league results and further information on the series can be found here.
Results from the second in the 2021 Winter Series are now available here. The league results and further information on the series can be found here.
[Added 24 November 2021]
Results from the first in the 2021 Winter Series are now available here. The league results and further information on the series can be found here.
Results from the Park Race held in Morden Hall Park between the 14th and 31st August are available. Long Course - Short Course.
[Added 30 August 2021]
Results from the eigth event in the SEUOL 2021 held in Leatherhead town centre are now available here.
Results from the third in the 2021 Summer Series are now available here.
Results from the third event in the GLOSS 2021 series here.
[Added 20 July 2021]
Results from the last three events and the final league standings in the 2020 Winter Series are now available here.
[Added 27 June 2021]
Results from the second in the 2021 Summer Series are now available here.
Results from the first in the 2021 Summer Series are now available here.
Results from the fourth in the 2020 Winter Series are now available here. The league results and further information on the series can be found here.


Magic Planet is an adventure for you and your family to embark on together. When you enter the two floor entertainment venue, you are transported to a whole new world where anything is possible. This is never truer than on the multi-sensory XD Theatre Dark Ride. Here you are absorbed into a video game as you are given a laser gun and battle with eight others against monsters, bandits, zombies or pirates in glorious 3D. This experience is only made more realistic as the platform where you are seated moves to mimic the actions of the game while wind, smoke and water assault your senses. This 4D theatre is the first in the UAE and is a wildly popular attraction at Magic Planet.
If you are visiting with little ones and would like the chance to enjoy something a little calmer, worry not, Magic Planet has the perfect experience lined up for you. Your children can delight in the excitement of boarding their first Ferris wheel, or enjoying a carousel ride with a parent. There is even a soft adventure playground available for your children to run completely wild.
Teenagers have their own dedicated activities also; not only are there 180 amusement machines where playing is rewarded with points to spend on prizes, but there are also racing simulators and the two-person exhilarating RoboCoaster.
If you would rather the entire family come together and take part in activities as a group, there are a variety of options for you to choose from. You can take a wild ride in the bumper cars, or have a quick round of golf. You could even compete against one another in a game of pool or in some ten pin bowling.
Should the adults like some time alone, however, Magic Planet caters to you too. There is a professional child care service offered if you would like a chance to relax as well as many restaurants and cafes available to grab a bite to eat and something to drink while the kids play.
Open from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm from Sunday to Wednesday, and till midnight from Thursday through to Saturday, Magic Planet's fun only ends when you decide it is time for you to go home.


text:
Jimmy Lummis
Andrew Fyfe
Bryce Austin
TCE Strategy
Uday Deshpande
L&T Group of Companies
Daniel Sees Path to New Infosec Law
Obama Cybersecurity Adviser on Legislation, Jobs, Sequestration Eric Chabrow (GovInfoSecurity) • March 1, 2013 10 Minutes
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel sees IT security as a function that can no longer be ignored by the highest officials in federal agencies and departments within the government.
"You can see that pretty much steadily over the course of this administration, cybersecurity has become a more and more important issue," Daniel says in an interview with Information Security Media Group, conducted at this year's RSA Conference [transcript below].
Daniel says the issue of cybersecurity no longer belongs solely in the CISO or CIO realm. "It's moving ... into the senior-policymaker realm, into the deputy secretary/secretary level," he says.
It's that growing importance that has agencies within the government realizing they each have a cyber-mission. "All of those things show a very steady ramp [up] in the importance of cybersecurity for the federal government," Daniel says.
In the wide-ranging interview, Daniel addresses how:
Automatic, across-the-board budget cuts in the government, known a sequestration, will affect federal cybersecurity programs;
The federal government is identifying IT security experts it can hire;
New legislation should update the Federal Information Security Management Act, the law that governs IT security in the federal government.
Daniel came out of near obscurity - he was serving as intelligence branch chief in the White House Office of Management and Budget - when President Obama tapped him last May to secede Howard Schmidt as special assistant to the president for cybersecurity [see Who Is Michael Daniel?].
He holds a bachelor degree in public policy from Princeton University, master of public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a master in national resource planning from the National Defense University. After graduating from Princeton in 1992, Daniel took a job as a research assistant at the Southern Center for International Studies, a think tank in Atlanta. Upon receiving his master's degree from Harvard, he joined OMB as a program examiner in the operations and personnel branch, covering the Navy, Marine Corps and contingency operations programs.
ERIC CHABROW: We're days away from automatic, across-the-board budget cuts. How damaging will sequestration be on securing the government and nation's information systems?
MICHAEL DANIEL: I would say that it undoubtedly will have an impact on our ability to keep doing the programs that we've been doing, but I don't believe that overall it will actually prove to be catastrophic to our security programs, because we prioritize those fairly highly. But there's no doubt that it will have an impact and a negative one.
CHABROW: Can you characterize how that impact will take place?
DANIEL: I can't really at this point because agencies are still going through the process of figuring out exactly how they will implement the sequester, and so it's a little difficult. But given the way the sequester has to be implemented across different agencies, it's a little difficult to predict exactly how that will fall out at this point, but it will undoubtedly slow us down in implementing the programs that we want to implement.
CHABROW: Should people be concerned about the security?
DANIEL: I mean there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about the sequester, right? I don't think that the impacts on federal government's cybersecurity are the main driving factors to be worried about in the sequester, but there are plenty of other reasons to be worried about the sequester.
Cybersecurity a Priority
CHABROW: Sequester or not, how is cybersecurity seen as a priority? Obviously it's been a priority since the President took office, but with these recent attacks we've been having, has that elevated the situation?
DANIEL: I think that you can see that pretty much steadily over the course of this administration, cybersecurity has become a more and more important issue. I would say that it's moving out of purely the CISO or the CIO realm and into the senior policymaker realm, into the deputy secretary/secretary level, and I would say that you can see that reflected that more and more agencies across the government are realizing that they have a cyber-mission. All of those things show a very steady ramp in the importance of cybersecurity for the federal government.
Priorities of Cybersecurity Coordinator
CHABROW: You've been in office a little less than a year. How do you spend your time on the job? What are your priorities as cybersecurity coordinator?
DANIEL: I focus on five key efforts that we've got going. The first, which has gotten a lot of the press attention recently with the executive order and the discussion about legislation, is really the efforts to protect critical infrastructure in the United States. What is it that we're doing to make sure that we raise the baseline cybersecurity level of that part of our infrastructure that if something bad happened to it in cyberspace, something really bad happens in real space? I'm also focused on efforts to improve our ability to as a federal government respond to cyber-incidents and to respond effectively and efficiently in a timely manner.
CHABROW: How are we doing?
DANIEL: I think we're doing better, actually. If you look at where we were, say, three years ago and 18 months ago, even six months ago, we're clearly far, far better than we were. We have been able to work and make the interconnects between agencies much better. Our response time is better. Do we need to do a lot more? Obviously, yes. And I think if you talk to individual companies, you would still see a much wider variance in their experience with interacting with the federal government in this space than I would like. But I think the trend is in the right direction.
A third big priority for me is the international arena, working with our partners and allies to talk about what are the norms in cyberspace that we want to see come into being and how nation-states act and act with each other, and supporting that multi-stakeholder open Internet that we believe has driven so much of our growth. So [a priority is] all of the actions that we're carrying out in the international space.
I also am focused on efforts to improve federal network security. That's sort of the security of getting our own house in order, if you will. Then lastly, the fifth area is: what are we doing to shape the future? How do we move beyond just usernames and passwords? How do we have security by default in our systems? How do we make the Internet as a whole less favorable to the intruder but still protect the privacy and civil liberties that we hold dear?
CHABROW: I'm going to get to some of these other issues you mentioned. First, let's talk about diplomacy. The Mandiant report that came out a few weeks ago mentions China as an assailant. How delicate is that for the administration to address?
DANIEL: When you talk about anything that involves China, that's a very large, complex and important relationship to the United States, and so I think that from the White House's perspective, that's obviously something that we take very, very seriously. But as the President said in the State of the Union, we're obviously concerned about any actor, whether they're based here in the United States or whether they're based overseas, that's trying to intrude upon computer systems, steal intellectual property, and cause havoc. Whatever it is that they're doing, we're concerned about all those malicious actors.
CHABROW: Is a solution to a lot of that diplomacy rather than technology, or processes?
DANIEL: I think it has to involve all of those things. If you go and you look at the recent Verizon report on intrusions, you can see that a very, very large percentage of intrusions rely on vulnerabilities that been known for many years. I don't know if that's so much of a technology issue as it is a business-practice issue, but clearly when you talk about the international environment you have to bring all of the tools that we have to bear, particularly diplomacy and our interactions with both our allies and those that are not our allies overseas.
Shortage of IT Security Experts
CHABROW: There's a shortage of qualified IT security experts in government and business. Though there are programs aimed at getting young people interested in cybersecurity careers, we have a serious problem now. How much at risk are we because of the skills shortage and what can government do to get that expertise on board now?
DANIEL: Clearly that shortage is causing some problems and it's a worrisome thing for the government. We have several efforts ongoing to try to address that. One is the national initiative for cyber-education, which is really looking at how you update the personnel authorities across the government to enable us to hire the kinds of talent that we need. I think DHS has done some really impressive work in laying out a framework for the cybersecurity professionals that we need, looking at the pipeline issues. I think this is going to be an issue that we will need to work on for some time, questions like exactly how do you set up that pipeline. Can we work more with community colleges to have those kinds of programs that we need to have more of those professionals available to us?
But I also think that, from my perspective, we also have to be concerned about making sure that not only do we have the technical expertise within the government, but the policy expertise within the government to handle the questions that cybersecurity raises. It raises new and different issues. We need to have both more technically qualified people and people who can work at the policy level to address the issue.
CHABROW: Mark Weatherford, the Deputy Undersecretary for Cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, has recruited some top people from other agencies to a point where he has said that some of his agents have been told, "Keep Mark Weatherford away from us." [Watch the video DHS's Weatherford on Cybersecurity Workforce.] Is that a concern from you where one agency is taking IT security expertise from another?
DANIEL: Given where I sit, we want to make sure that we're attracting the talent that we can for the federal government as a whole. I certainly think we would want to work towards a goal where those kinds of concerns you don't hear them as much because the pool is so large that we have a lot more people to draw from.
CHABROW: Let's focus on the federal government. What's happening in updating the Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA?
DANIEL: Right now we're still continuing to make a couple of changes that we can under existing statutes to move away from a compliance-based, every-three-years checklist approach to much more of a continuous diagnostics approach to knowing what's on your network in real-time. Ultimately, we'd like to see legislation in this space to update FISMA to reflect this new framework that we're moving towards so that the statute is more in line with what the best practices are. I think ... a key part of any legislative effort that the administration makes going forward will be those updates to FISMA. You'll continue to see this evolve as we push for that continuous diagnostics effort within the government.
CHABROW: The administration will come up with a proposed bill as it did last year. What will be some of the elements of that bill?
DANIEL: At this point, we're not planning on submitting a full package of legislation like we did in May of 2011. We believe that the principles that were outlined in that package legislation we still support and we're still behind. But I would say that we're more focused on continuing to engage with Congress as they work through their normal process. You hear them talking a lot about the regular order, and we certainly want to work with the various congressional committees as they come up with their bills. I think you'll see us continue to support the principles that we're behind and that we've maintained for some time in terms of improving our ability to do information sharing and working on how to raise the baseline level of cybersecurity in the critical infrastructure. How do we deal with data breaches? How do we modernize FISMA? How do we update some of our criminal statutes in this area? All of those things will be part of the legislative principles that the administration pursues.
Compromising over Cybersec Legislation
CHABROW: Last year, President Obama or the administration threatened to veto over CISPA, which is an information-sharing legislation. The same legislation was introduced this year. The administration has yet to take a position on it. Is the situation changing where you could see CISPA getting passed? Is there room for compromise and if so where would that compromise be?
DANIEL: I think it's actually a little early for the administration to really take a position on a bill that hasn't even made it out of committee yet. Certainly, we're open to working with the House Intelligence Committee as they work on that bill. We have certainly seen some willingness on the part of multiple committees up on the Hill to have a good dialogue on this space. From the administration standpoint, we will continue to push for legislation that matches up with our principles that we think can pass both the House and the Senate and eventually be signed by the President. I'm hopeful that we can accomplish that, but of course this is always - as everybody knows - a difficult political environment. We'll keep working towards that and see what we can achieve.
CHABROW: Do you see anything different in 2013 where legislation could pass where it didn't in the past?
DANIEL: The one thing that I would say is that the legislative debate from the previous Congress and the ongoing cyber-incidents that have ended up in media have continued to raise awareness of the issue and I think that has changed some of the environment such that I think there's a greater awareness of the problem and a greater awareness that we do need to take action in this space. I do think that there are some changes since the previous Congress that do raise the likelihood that we'll get legislation.
CHABROW: Is this an issue where you can get citizen concerns expressed to their lawmakers? Because there has been a lot of publicity since the Mandiant report and all these DDoS attacks against banks and the media companies being hacked?
DANIEL: I do think that awareness across the spectrum is beginning to grow. Certainly more and more people are becoming aware that this could have a direct impact on them in their lives and what they do. All of that does contribute to the way that our system works, which means that there will be additional concerns raised and members of Congress will continue to feel pressured to take action. That's how the system is supposed to work.
Additional Summit Insight:
Hear from more industry influencers, earn CPE credits, and network with leaders of technology at our global events. Learn more at our Fraud & Breach Prevention Events site.
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https://www.inforisktoday.co.uk/interviews/daniel-sees-path-to-new-infosec-law-i-1806


Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer is the Tor.com eBook Club Pick for March 2018!
Ada Palmer Prize Pack Sweepstakes!
Seven Surrenders, the sequel to Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning, is available March 7th from Tor Books—and we want to send you a galley copy of it, along with a paperback copy of Too Like the Lightning!
Science Fiction || Book 2 in the Terra Ignotta series. In a future in which no one living can remember an actual war… a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end.