On his blog Root and Source, Oversoul writes:
Will the Rt. Rev. explain to his Maker why he used his position and influence to enforce ancient Semitic prejudices instead of say, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, taking care of the “stranger” or visiting the sick?
would love to see a break-away group of radical Anglicans who were fundamentalist about Jesus’ calls to ethical living; imagine if they focused their money and time on imitating the Good Samaritan and not a cross between a school marm and the Pharisees...
Anyway, the full post is here. To be fair, my former Christian church did a great deal for the poor. So it's possible that these folks do too, and I suppose it would make sense that controversies like this one would be the ones to make the news.
But Oversoul's idea of "Jesus' Requirements fundamentalists" really speaks to me.
CC
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Suspicious Dog photo
the best I could manage was this picture of my very skeptical pup.
Thinking about "White Privilege"
It's been a little under a year since people started to say that the fact that Obama was merely leading in the polls rather than utterly wiping the floor with John McCain was a matter of white privilege. I never believed that a young candidate with little experience of any color only barely beating an older candidate who was a war hero of any color was all that surprising, to say nothing of the unquestionably obvious example of white privilege that some people treated it as*. Especially in a nation where old people are the most reliable voters.
I was surprised (and grateful) that issues of Laurel Hallman being white or at least whiter than Peter Morales didn't come up or at least didn't come up where I could see then in the UUA election. The Sinkford administration has shown us clearly enough that electing minority leaders does not in itself attract minority members, so I'm kinda hoping we can leave identity politics out of things as much as possible henceforth or at least not treat them as reasons to vote in themselves. (Am I always going to wonder when people say that Peter Morales was "enthusiastic" but Laurel Hallman was "aggressive"? Probably.)
Anyway, I've been thinking about privilege since that point and I think we would benefit from distinguishing two types of privilege that I see as different but are often talked of interchangably: The type that everyone should have (type 1), and the type that nobody should have but that some people have anyway (type 2). Let's look at examples:
Type 1 privileges (privileges that theoretically everyone should have):
Chris Rock has a really wonderful skit called How to NOT get your ass kicked by the police. My brother has massive issues with authority and violates every tip the skit contains on a pretty constant basis. If he is pulled over, he will swear and scream and generally make the officer's life as difficult as possible. At this point the cops watch for him because, as annoying as he is, ticketing him is a great pleasure. As far as I've ever personally observed, the police officers he deals with are quite reasonable to him and take his abuse with nonchalance and mild annoyance.
A friend of mine at one point observed that if he were black, the cops wouldn't just ticket him, they'd arrest him or, well, kick his ass.
I am not saying that police officers' lives should suck more. I am saying that my brother should be, sigh, the model for how people who treat the police badly are treated. The police are public servants, and they should treat everyone decently, even people who don't particularly deserve it. If the police do get revenge, it should be in the form of watching troublemakers more carefully and giving dramatic descriptions when the judge asks how the defendant behaved at the traffic stop.
Ideally, no officer should ever go over the line, but in reality some of them do. If some asses must be kicked by officers who decide that someone is being "threatening," my brother's should be every once in awhile because the determination of who is a threat shouldn't be made on the basis of color.
TYPE II privileges (privileges that theoretically no one should have):
My husband and I know a very beautiful woman who was a plain and awkward teenager. Because she was used to thinking of herself as awkward even after she became beautiful, it took her several years to understand that she was beautiful and that she was being treated differently because of it.
Once, she said, and this is more or less a direct quote "First, the guy at the chicken place gave me a free dessert. Then I realized I'd forgotten my wallet and he said not to worry about it and to just enjoy my lunch. People are SO nice!"
Soup kitchens notwithstanding, it seems pretty clear that restaurants shouldn't make a habit of giving away lunches to the public at large. I like restaurants, after all, and I want them to continue to exist. A fast food worker giving a pretty girl a free lunch is going to happen every now and again, but generalizing that privilege to the population at large is not a desirable thing.
If we accept that John McCain got more than a negligible number of votes simply because his opponent was black, then I would think that would fall into this second category. An argument can be made that a person of one race or another would make a better public servant for a variety of reasons, though the Sotomayor hubbub over this issue suggests to me that no politician better make it too directly. But politicians from minority or poor backgrounds have been vaguely hinting at the disadvantages they've overcome and how they understand people who are struggling for a long time and everybody knows what they mean. But no one should ever get votes because of their opponent's color.
Anyway, getting back to my two categories above, to my thinking, calling one of these things "white privilege" and one of these things something else would be advantageous to the clarity of what we're talking about and minimize confusion. As the term is used today, I think it's very easy to slip into a miscommunication where white listeners feel that they are being accused of having type two privileges rather than type one privileges. In effect, the white privilege concern isn't that white people never get speeding tickets**, it's that they usually don't have to worry about getting an asskicking when they get one.
Does this make sense?
CC
*I thought that John Edwards, who was a young, compelling, speaker with new ideas who came in 3rd in the Democratic primary was a reasonable response to "How would things be different if Obama were white?"
**Which leads to white people saying that they aren't getting speeding tickets because they aren't speeding, and thus dismissing the concern entirely.
I was surprised (and grateful) that issues of Laurel Hallman being white or at least whiter than Peter Morales didn't come up or at least didn't come up where I could see then in the UUA election. The Sinkford administration has shown us clearly enough that electing minority leaders does not in itself attract minority members, so I'm kinda hoping we can leave identity politics out of things as much as possible henceforth or at least not treat them as reasons to vote in themselves. (Am I always going to wonder when people say that Peter Morales was "enthusiastic" but Laurel Hallman was "aggressive"? Probably.)
Anyway, I've been thinking about privilege since that point and I think we would benefit from distinguishing two types of privilege that I see as different but are often talked of interchangably: The type that everyone should have (type 1), and the type that nobody should have but that some people have anyway (type 2). Let's look at examples:
Type 1 privileges (privileges that theoretically everyone should have):
Chris Rock has a really wonderful skit called How to NOT get your ass kicked by the police. My brother has massive issues with authority and violates every tip the skit contains on a pretty constant basis. If he is pulled over, he will swear and scream and generally make the officer's life as difficult as possible. At this point the cops watch for him because, as annoying as he is, ticketing him is a great pleasure. As far as I've ever personally observed, the police officers he deals with are quite reasonable to him and take his abuse with nonchalance and mild annoyance.
A friend of mine at one point observed that if he were black, the cops wouldn't just ticket him, they'd arrest him or, well, kick his ass.
I am not saying that police officers' lives should suck more. I am saying that my brother should be, sigh, the model for how people who treat the police badly are treated. The police are public servants, and they should treat everyone decently, even people who don't particularly deserve it. If the police do get revenge, it should be in the form of watching troublemakers more carefully and giving dramatic descriptions when the judge asks how the defendant behaved at the traffic stop.
Ideally, no officer should ever go over the line, but in reality some of them do. If some asses must be kicked by officers who decide that someone is being "threatening," my brother's should be every once in awhile because the determination of who is a threat shouldn't be made on the basis of color.
TYPE II privileges (privileges that theoretically no one should have):
My husband and I know a very beautiful woman who was a plain and awkward teenager. Because she was used to thinking of herself as awkward even after she became beautiful, it took her several years to understand that she was beautiful and that she was being treated differently because of it.
Once, she said, and this is more or less a direct quote "First, the guy at the chicken place gave me a free dessert. Then I realized I'd forgotten my wallet and he said not to worry about it and to just enjoy my lunch. People are SO nice!"
Soup kitchens notwithstanding, it seems pretty clear that restaurants shouldn't make a habit of giving away lunches to the public at large. I like restaurants, after all, and I want them to continue to exist. A fast food worker giving a pretty girl a free lunch is going to happen every now and again, but generalizing that privilege to the population at large is not a desirable thing.
If we accept that John McCain got more than a negligible number of votes simply because his opponent was black, then I would think that would fall into this second category. An argument can be made that a person of one race or another would make a better public servant for a variety of reasons, though the Sotomayor hubbub over this issue suggests to me that no politician better make it too directly. But politicians from minority or poor backgrounds have been vaguely hinting at the disadvantages they've overcome and how they understand people who are struggling for a long time and everybody knows what they mean. But no one should ever get votes because of their opponent's color.
Anyway, getting back to my two categories above, to my thinking, calling one of these things "white privilege" and one of these things something else would be advantageous to the clarity of what we're talking about and minimize confusion. As the term is used today, I think it's very easy to slip into a miscommunication where white listeners feel that they are being accused of having type two privileges rather than type one privileges. In effect, the white privilege concern isn't that white people never get speeding tickets**, it's that they usually don't have to worry about getting an asskicking when they get one.
Does this make sense?
CC
*I thought that John Edwards, who was a young, compelling, speaker with new ideas who came in 3rd in the Democratic primary was a reasonable response to "How would things be different if Obama were white?"
**Which leads to white people saying that they aren't getting speeding tickets because they aren't speeding, and thus dismissing the concern entirely.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
What about dogfighting?
A reader says in the comments:
(((So the logic is that if we make it illegal for people to own pits, we make it hard for dogfighting to exist. Groups like PETA are strongly opposed to dogfighting so they support the pit bans. If dogfighters can't have pits , they can't have fights. They will have to just shoot craps instead. PETA thinks that is much better)))
The comment later suggests that I might not have considered the issues relating to dogfighting. I have, I just think a breed specific ban won't solve them.
Let's take a slightly different example of the same logic. Child molesters, kidnappers and scumbags of all varieties love plain white vans. You can carry a lot of illegal stuff in them and nobody ever notices them since there are so many of them. So why don't we ban white vans? Three reasons spring to mind:
1. The scumbags who use them for illegal purposes are, pretty much by definition not law abiding people in the first place, so it is unlikely that more laws are going to solve the problem. Since they are already breaking the law to do what they do, at best they will probably just get a white van and put out-of-state plates on it.
2. The scumbags who don't live next to the state line will just buy a tan van, or a white SUV with tinted windows, and go back to what they were doing before.
3. The law puts a lot of innocent white van owners through a lot of aggravation for no reason.
The logic for pit bulls is the same. If someone is already fighting their dogs illegally, then they are usually doing it in a shack in the woods anyway and it is doubtful than a ban on their breed will make much difference.
Even if the pit bull ban were to work and all pit bulls were to magically vanish from this earth, I think it is WILDLY optimistic to assume that dogfighting would just stop and the fighters would content themselves with playing craps. I think, like the criminal who buys the white SUV with tinted windows, the dogfighters would accept that a different breed would be slightly less optimal for their purpose, shrug their shoulders and start training the next-most-optimal-breed for fighting. Presumably PETA will then want THAT breed banned, fighters will move on again, the cycle will continue and someday the only available dog will be the basset hound. (I'm being a bit facetious there.)
And yes, it puts innocent pit bull owners, to say nothing of innocent pit bulls, through varying degrees of aggravation and heartbreak depending on how the law treats current ownership and dogs that already exist.
Also, on a fairly regular basis in this world, a group of people will decide that another group of people is evil and is nothing but trouble and will do their level best to extinguish them because surely there would be far less crime and evil around if that pesky "breed" of people didn't exist.
There are a lot of words for the extinguishing group's behavior.
"Ethical" is not typically one of them.
I think that if you're going to run around calling yourself "ethical" you need to come up with better solutions than laws like this or change your name to "People for the Ruthlessly Pragmatic Treatment of Animals," which has a much less catchy acronym.
CC
(((So the logic is that if we make it illegal for people to own pits, we make it hard for dogfighting to exist. Groups like PETA are strongly opposed to dogfighting so they support the pit bans. If dogfighters can't have pits , they can't have fights. They will have to just shoot craps instead. PETA thinks that is much better)))
The comment later suggests that I might not have considered the issues relating to dogfighting. I have, I just think a breed specific ban won't solve them.
Let's take a slightly different example of the same logic. Child molesters, kidnappers and scumbags of all varieties love plain white vans. You can carry a lot of illegal stuff in them and nobody ever notices them since there are so many of them. So why don't we ban white vans? Three reasons spring to mind:
1. The scumbags who use them for illegal purposes are, pretty much by definition not law abiding people in the first place, so it is unlikely that more laws are going to solve the problem. Since they are already breaking the law to do what they do, at best they will probably just get a white van and put out-of-state plates on it.
2. The scumbags who don't live next to the state line will just buy a tan van, or a white SUV with tinted windows, and go back to what they were doing before.
3. The law puts a lot of innocent white van owners through a lot of aggravation for no reason.
The logic for pit bulls is the same. If someone is already fighting their dogs illegally, then they are usually doing it in a shack in the woods anyway and it is doubtful than a ban on their breed will make much difference.
Even if the pit bull ban were to work and all pit bulls were to magically vanish from this earth, I think it is WILDLY optimistic to assume that dogfighting would just stop and the fighters would content themselves with playing craps. I think, like the criminal who buys the white SUV with tinted windows, the dogfighters would accept that a different breed would be slightly less optimal for their purpose, shrug their shoulders and start training the next-most-optimal-breed for fighting. Presumably PETA will then want THAT breed banned, fighters will move on again, the cycle will continue and someday the only available dog will be the basset hound. (I'm being a bit facetious there.)
And yes, it puts innocent pit bull owners, to say nothing of innocent pit bulls, through varying degrees of aggravation and heartbreak depending on how the law treats current ownership and dogs that already exist.
Also, on a fairly regular basis in this world, a group of people will decide that another group of people is evil and is nothing but trouble and will do their level best to extinguish them because surely there would be far less crime and evil around if that pesky "breed" of people didn't exist.
There are a lot of words for the extinguishing group's behavior.
"Ethical" is not typically one of them.
I think that if you're going to run around calling yourself "ethical" you need to come up with better solutions than laws like this or change your name to "People for the Ruthlessly Pragmatic Treatment of Animals," which has a much less catchy acronym.
CC
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Pit bull mix owner has mixed feelings about this story
The city councilman who led the fight to get pit bulls banned from Sioux City might end up having his labrador retriever put down after the dog bit someone.
Pit Bulls get so much crap because they tend to be adopted and purchased by irresponsible people who fight them or train them as guard dogs. We adopted ours young, we're training her properly, and the biggest problem we have with her is that sometimes when we've been gone all day, she is so happy to see us that she follows us around jumping and licking. (We're working on that in training and we need to take her for longer walks more often to help her burn off some energy.)
Anyway, here's Malcom Gladwell's comparison of pit bull bans and racial profiling that points out the absurdity of each. I agree with Gladwell's ultimate conclusion that making arbitrary rules against breeds is bad legislation.
Of course, there are legislators who can make bad legislation worse. In Kansas City, the anti-pit bull laws included an "amnesty period" where pit bull owners could bring in their dogs for euthanization and not risk a fine. I'm assuming this means regular people like me sadly but dutifully gave their dogs away to residents of other places or even more sadly took their dogs in to be euthanized.
My guess is that the drug dealers who wanted pits for protection and raised their pits to be dangerous ignored the law. This pretty much insures that when you see a pit bull story in the news in Kansas City, it will be hurting someone rather than, say, giving its life to save its owner. (Warning, that story is really heartbreaking, as is the photo attached.)
So anyway, with only the worst pit bulls left in the city to do awful things and make the news, Kansans will be even more convinced that it's a great law.
No, it's a stupid law. And like most stupid laws regarding animals PETA supports it*, saying "Are some pit bulls loving companions? Absolutely. But it is important to bear in mind that nice families rarely come to a shelter seeking pit bulls. The vast majority of people who want pit bulls are attracted to the “macho” image of the breed as a living weapon"
Um, actually, PETA, I don't think most people who come to shelters are looking for a specific breed of dog. Because, frankly, finding a specific breed at a shelter is really, really hard because they are almost all mutts. I think people who get dogs from shelters are looking to help out a dog who needs a home and to get loving companionship for themselves and pick it on personality rather than breed. We didn't know Ginsburg was a pit mix until it was casually mentioned as we were signing the papers. We just knew she was a good dog who'd had a rough life so far.
Anyway, I do hope that Councilman Aaron Rochester's dog is allowed to live. Rochestere's wife calls the dog a "great watchdog." "Great watchdogs" should not be allowed to run around without leashes. Judging by the article, the dog was left outside with the family's two children and may have interpreted something the victim did as threatening to the kids. So the issue was more an irresponsible owner than anything particularly wrong with the dog.
But I don't think he's very good at his job.
CC
* They want laws to have a "grandfather clause" allowing current dog owners to keep their animals, so they wouldn't support Kansas City's version.
Pit Bulls get so much crap because they tend to be adopted and purchased by irresponsible people who fight them or train them as guard dogs. We adopted ours young, we're training her properly, and the biggest problem we have with her is that sometimes when we've been gone all day, she is so happy to see us that she follows us around jumping and licking. (We're working on that in training and we need to take her for longer walks more often to help her burn off some energy.)
Anyway, here's Malcom Gladwell's comparison of pit bull bans and racial profiling that points out the absurdity of each. I agree with Gladwell's ultimate conclusion that making arbitrary rules against breeds is bad legislation.
Of course, there are legislators who can make bad legislation worse. In Kansas City, the anti-pit bull laws included an "amnesty period" where pit bull owners could bring in their dogs for euthanization and not risk a fine. I'm assuming this means regular people like me sadly but dutifully gave their dogs away to residents of other places or even more sadly took their dogs in to be euthanized.
My guess is that the drug dealers who wanted pits for protection and raised their pits to be dangerous ignored the law. This pretty much insures that when you see a pit bull story in the news in Kansas City, it will be hurting someone rather than, say, giving its life to save its owner. (Warning, that story is really heartbreaking, as is the photo attached.)
So anyway, with only the worst pit bulls left in the city to do awful things and make the news, Kansans will be even more convinced that it's a great law.
No, it's a stupid law. And like most stupid laws regarding animals PETA supports it*, saying "Are some pit bulls loving companions? Absolutely. But it is important to bear in mind that nice families rarely come to a shelter seeking pit bulls. The vast majority of people who want pit bulls are attracted to the “macho” image of the breed as a living weapon"
Um, actually, PETA, I don't think most people who come to shelters are looking for a specific breed of dog. Because, frankly, finding a specific breed at a shelter is really, really hard because they are almost all mutts. I think people who get dogs from shelters are looking to help out a dog who needs a home and to get loving companionship for themselves and pick it on personality rather than breed. We didn't know Ginsburg was a pit mix until it was casually mentioned as we were signing the papers. We just knew she was a good dog who'd had a rough life so far.
Anyway, I do hope that Councilman Aaron Rochester's dog is allowed to live. Rochestere's wife calls the dog a "great watchdog." "Great watchdogs" should not be allowed to run around without leashes. Judging by the article, the dog was left outside with the family's two children and may have interpreted something the victim did as threatening to the kids. So the issue was more an irresponsible owner than anything particularly wrong with the dog.
But I don't think he's very good at his job.
CC
* They want laws to have a "grandfather clause" allowing current dog owners to keep their animals, so they wouldn't support Kansas City's version.
Fred Phelps and the Angry God
The Rev. Fred Phelps and his group have put out a video called "God hates the world." I'm not linking to it, you can find it if you must, but I think you should trust me to say that it's pretty much exactly what you think it is*.
I try to be positive about people like the Reverend because being negative doesn't effect anything and just makes me depressed. I'm glad to have someone in the world showing hippies what protestors look like to people who disagree with them. (Do you give a damn what they yell or what goes on those people's signs? Do you even really think about it? Even if one or two people give them the thumbs-up, does that help their cause? Excepting the emotional damage done to mourners at the funerals they picket (which gets them nothing except the satisfaction of hurting people), do the institutions picketed suffer anything other than inconvenience? When there's media coverage of them standing there, waving their disagreeable signs, does it help them get what they want? No, No, No, No are my guesses on the first few questions, I know the answer to the forth is "No" because I know their legislative goals and they haven't even begin to have been met. Anyway, when you protest, assume people feel similarly and that the only real benefit is to your ego. Which is not to say I won't be going to the big Gay rights protest in DC this fall if only to keep the ChaliceRelative out of trouble.)
For another decent thing, maybe: these are loser rednecks from Kansas who feel like they are an army from God. I can't even imagine what that feels like.
Also, they've made "Hell's Angels" into a socially acceptable group. Hey, that's something.
But mostly, when I think about Fred Phelps, I'm confused by the angry God he imagines. The being they describe, infuriated that we who have free will won't do what he wants us to without any particularly reliable guide to what he wants us to do save people who claim to know* and books written by people who claimed to know a long time ago, reminds me of nothing so much as a little kid, too young to understand how the Sims works, having a temper tantrum because the characters in his video game won't do what they want. Indeed, a God who is freaking out in any sense over human behaviors doesn't seem much worthy of worship.
To me the idea of God having any particular plan for the world and God having the power to carry out said plan doesn't really make any sense given the state of the world unless God's plan is "give people free will and see what happens," which suggests a certain emotional divorce from the process and, again, a certain unlikliness to him getting upset at people for falling in love in ways that he allows them to do so, or really anything else excepting possibly genocide, for that matter. If God were really the cause of natural disasters and used them to punish in any consistent sense, that pattern would be obvious. If God wanted people to be happy all the time or to reward only the good, that pattern would be obvious.
Indeed, the only real patterns I percieve in the universe is that the universe is mechanistic enough to run and chaotic enough to not run predictably.
Personally, I tend to conceive of God as a transcendent force for good that doesn't cause storms or do anything else to directly impact the world other than through the actions of people. Some evolutionary explanations have come up to explain the human desire to create things, for example, but none of them are much more than theoretical as far as I can tell, and note of them explain why other animals with almost-as-big-brains haven't developed SOMETHING to suggest they are more slowly proceeding down the same path. Animals cooperate and help each other in either very basic ways, or complicated-but-mechanistic ways. Human interactions are much more complex, and working together, we help each other out and we achieve things that other creatures can't conceive of, partially because of an internal drive we have to help wach other out and to create. I tend to think that (a) there's something special about humans, which is one reason to call oneself a humanist and (b) that if I'm going to believe in this transcendent force for decency and creation, I should call it something and that something might as well be "God."
So you can see why I have so much trouble with the Reverend's faith. It seems really, really alien to me to think that there's a man up in the sky getting upset over the behavior of individual humans, especially upset enough to "hate the world."
It's a common political trick to argue with the extremists on the other side, then say that you and the ENTIRE other side can't POSSIBLY understand each other. I'm not doing that. I know Christians, even fairly conservative ones, who don't really consider Phelps one of their number any more than liberals are particularly happy to own eco-terrorists or hippies who blew up buildings in the 1960s**. I've had many a frutiful dialogue with people who disagree with just about everything I've said theologically here.
But I just don't get God hating the world.
CC
*This seems like a good time to reiterate that I don't have to follow courtroom evidence rules on my blog.
**One could set up a business-school-style rubric categorizing these folks into "obviously crazy" and "insightful" (Early Jim Jones), "obviously crazy" and "not insightful" (Average guy in Lafeyette Park with a sign quoting Revelations) "not obviously crazy" and "insightful" (the Dalai Lama in general), "not obviously crazy" and "not insightful" (the current Pope, except that thing about condoms in Africa is pretty crazy). But any two people would almost never agree completely on which prophets go where.
Honestly, non-self-proclaimed prophets who don't even necessarily write about God but write honestly and insightfully about the Human condition have done more to provoke spritual thinking in me than anyone above. IMHO, one Jane Austen novel or even one Miss Manners book teaches more by implication than these folks can spell out, though I'll be the first to admit that the Dalai Lama has his moments.
*** Those examples took a minute to think of. Say what you will about liberal extremists, they don't generally run around killing people who disagree, or haven't since the sixties. Conservative extremists are a lot deadlier and a lot quicker to write people off as collateral damage. One shouldn't judge a movement by extremists, but still...
I try to be positive about people like the Reverend because being negative doesn't effect anything and just makes me depressed. I'm glad to have someone in the world showing hippies what protestors look like to people who disagree with them. (Do you give a damn what they yell or what goes on those people's signs? Do you even really think about it? Even if one or two people give them the thumbs-up, does that help their cause? Excepting the emotional damage done to mourners at the funerals they picket (which gets them nothing except the satisfaction of hurting people), do the institutions picketed suffer anything other than inconvenience? When there's media coverage of them standing there, waving their disagreeable signs, does it help them get what they want? No, No, No, No are my guesses on the first few questions, I know the answer to the forth is "No" because I know their legislative goals and they haven't even begin to have been met. Anyway, when you protest, assume people feel similarly and that the only real benefit is to your ego. Which is not to say I won't be going to the big Gay rights protest in DC this fall if only to keep the ChaliceRelative out of trouble.)
For another decent thing, maybe: these are loser rednecks from Kansas who feel like they are an army from God. I can't even imagine what that feels like.
Also, they've made "Hell's Angels" into a socially acceptable group. Hey, that's something.
But mostly, when I think about Fred Phelps, I'm confused by the angry God he imagines. The being they describe, infuriated that we who have free will won't do what he wants us to without any particularly reliable guide to what he wants us to do save people who claim to know* and books written by people who claimed to know a long time ago, reminds me of nothing so much as a little kid, too young to understand how the Sims works, having a temper tantrum because the characters in his video game won't do what they want. Indeed, a God who is freaking out in any sense over human behaviors doesn't seem much worthy of worship.
To me the idea of God having any particular plan for the world and God having the power to carry out said plan doesn't really make any sense given the state of the world unless God's plan is "give people free will and see what happens," which suggests a certain emotional divorce from the process and, again, a certain unlikliness to him getting upset at people for falling in love in ways that he allows them to do so, or really anything else excepting possibly genocide, for that matter. If God were really the cause of natural disasters and used them to punish in any consistent sense, that pattern would be obvious. If God wanted people to be happy all the time or to reward only the good, that pattern would be obvious.
Indeed, the only real patterns I percieve in the universe is that the universe is mechanistic enough to run and chaotic enough to not run predictably.
Personally, I tend to conceive of God as a transcendent force for good that doesn't cause storms or do anything else to directly impact the world other than through the actions of people. Some evolutionary explanations have come up to explain the human desire to create things, for example, but none of them are much more than theoretical as far as I can tell, and note of them explain why other animals with almost-as-big-brains haven't developed SOMETHING to suggest they are more slowly proceeding down the same path. Animals cooperate and help each other in either very basic ways, or complicated-but-mechanistic ways. Human interactions are much more complex, and working together, we help each other out and we achieve things that other creatures can't conceive of, partially because of an internal drive we have to help wach other out and to create. I tend to think that (a) there's something special about humans, which is one reason to call oneself a humanist and (b) that if I'm going to believe in this transcendent force for decency and creation, I should call it something and that something might as well be "God."
So you can see why I have so much trouble with the Reverend's faith. It seems really, really alien to me to think that there's a man up in the sky getting upset over the behavior of individual humans, especially upset enough to "hate the world."
It's a common political trick to argue with the extremists on the other side, then say that you and the ENTIRE other side can't POSSIBLY understand each other. I'm not doing that. I know Christians, even fairly conservative ones, who don't really consider Phelps one of their number any more than liberals are particularly happy to own eco-terrorists or hippies who blew up buildings in the 1960s**. I've had many a frutiful dialogue with people who disagree with just about everything I've said theologically here.
But I just don't get God hating the world.
CC
*This seems like a good time to reiterate that I don't have to follow courtroom evidence rules on my blog.
**One could set up a business-school-style rubric categorizing these folks into "obviously crazy" and "insightful" (Early Jim Jones), "obviously crazy" and "not insightful" (Average guy in Lafeyette Park with a sign quoting Revelations) "not obviously crazy" and "insightful" (the Dalai Lama in general), "not obviously crazy" and "not insightful" (the current Pope, except that thing about condoms in Africa is pretty crazy). But any two people would almost never agree completely on which prophets go where.
Honestly, non-self-proclaimed prophets who don't even necessarily write about God but write honestly and insightfully about the Human condition have done more to provoke spritual thinking in me than anyone above. IMHO, one Jane Austen novel or even one Miss Manners book teaches more by implication than these folks can spell out, though I'll be the first to admit that the Dalai Lama has his moments.
*** Those examples took a minute to think of. Say what you will about liberal extremists, they don't generally run around killing people who disagree, or haven't since the sixties. Conservative extremists are a lot deadlier and a lot quicker to write people off as collateral damage. One shouldn't judge a movement by extremists, but still...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
I sat in on this sentencing hearing this morning
The lady who stole $50 million from the DC government over 18 years got 17.5 years.
I'm normally a defense-sympathetic kinda girl, but this defense lawyer was not good. He kept interrupting the judge and didn't seem to get that if the judge had said Walters was a sophisticated criminal that arguing that she wasn't probably wasn't the best tactic and he should pick another one. (To say nothing of the fact that she had a conspiracy involving lots of people that ran for 18 years before she was caught. This isn't a waitress slipping $20 from the restaurant till every now and again, this was a pretty complex operation.)
Also, he didn't seem to get the fairly simple idea "Your client stole 50 million dollars from the government. So the government had 50 million dollars less. The government usually tries to use its money to run the city and help out people. So she probably really hurt people by her actions even though we can't know exactly who those people are." which seems fairly straightforward and obvious to me.
The whole thing was interesting becuase it was dickering over the actual sentencing, which could have been between 15 and 18 years, so the whole thing was an argument over three years.
Anyway, 17.5 it was.
CC
I'm normally a defense-sympathetic kinda girl, but this defense lawyer was not good. He kept interrupting the judge and didn't seem to get that if the judge had said Walters was a sophisticated criminal that arguing that she wasn't probably wasn't the best tactic and he should pick another one. (To say nothing of the fact that she had a conspiracy involving lots of people that ran for 18 years before she was caught. This isn't a waitress slipping $20 from the restaurant till every now and again, this was a pretty complex operation.)
Also, he didn't seem to get the fairly simple idea "Your client stole 50 million dollars from the government. So the government had 50 million dollars less. The government usually tries to use its money to run the city and help out people. So she probably really hurt people by her actions even though we can't know exactly who those people are." which seems fairly straightforward and obvious to me.
The whole thing was interesting becuase it was dickering over the actual sentencing, which could have been between 15 and 18 years, so the whole thing was an argument over three years.
Anyway, 17.5 it was.
CC
Monday, June 29, 2009
Quick FAQ on the recent Supreme court decisions
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, some weeks I'm barely a law student. Recently, I'm knee deep in a paper on cyberharassment by third parties. But I have been paying attention to the recent batch of SCOTUS decisions and people keep asking me questions about them. And we all know I like to write FAQs.)
Q: Why have there been so many SCOTUS decisions recently?
A: There haven't been all that many, but the ones that are coming down are the most famous. Important/weird cases tend to get decided at the end of the term because the SCOTUS takes extra time to argue them.
Q. Is it just me, or have the SCOTUS decisions recently been less crazytown than usual?
A. The Osborne decision notwithstanding, yes, the decisions have been pretty reasonable.
Q: Why?
A: I credit the Sotomayor nomination. After all the crap conservatives gave Sotomayor for suggesting that a court might need diversity of background to make decisions that really took into account the perspectives of diverse parties, they couldn't go and prove her point by deciding that school officials making a 13-year-old get naked was really no big deal.
Q: What was up with Thomas' opinion in that case?
A: He mostly went off an old decision that said that a girl who was suspected of smoking in the bathroom could have her purse searched.
Q: So we should totally pop champagne about that case, right?
A: Eh. First off, without Sotomayor, my guess is it might have come out the other way. The transcript of the arguments really gives the impression that the Justices don't fucking get what the problem with making a thirteen year old strip because she might be carrying advil. Justice Kennedy was like "Is the nature of the drug irrelevant? What if it was meth to be consumed at noon?" and Souter thinks violating the student's privacy is less important that preventing accidental panty meth poisonings. (That's a paraphrase.)
Q: But the court ultimately overcame their fear of panty meth. So good, right?
A. Again, Eh. Ginsburg and Stevens were the only ones who thought the school district should be liable for the girl's emotional distress. The other ones said that making a 13 year old get naked so there could be a search for Advil was insufficiently obviously wrong for it to be actionable.
Q: Is it obviously wrong?
A. If Scalia and Ginsburg and Souter and Kennedy agree on something, it's usually pretty obvious. I would totally have voted with Ginsburg and Stevens.
Q: What about the case about the voting rights act?
A: This is an opinion that I haven't read, but my impression is that the court wanted to find for the municipality with making the smallest possible impact on the voting rights act.
Q. Why? I would think that the court would be overturn the voting rights act since doing so is the properly Crazytown decision to make?
A: Right, but again, overturning the voting rights act would make Sotomayor's confirmation a lot easier.
Q. I want some crazy. What does Justice Thomas think?
A: He thinks that striking down the Voting Rights act would be not a "sign of defeat" but an "acknowledgement of victory," the implication being that, ya know, Racism is over.
Q. Oooh. That's good crazy.
A. It's ok. I like Scalia's brand of crazy better. He's crazy in a your-Crazy-Uncle-Harry-who-makes-Thanksgiving-fun sort of way. Thomas is more like one of those ranting dudes in a bar who won't shut up about how the Bears are the best team ever in absence of any evidence that this is the case. More importantly to me, you normally can get why Scalia feels the way he does even when you disagree which is usually and Thomas is a much greater believer in cherrypicking the one case that's with him and ignoring everything else. And Scalia is snarky and loves to talk to the press enough that he sometimes has to recuse himself because he's already talked about the case before it's argued. He's loads of fun. I'm tempted to name a World of Warcraft character after him.
Q. Now what about the firemen?
A. The Ricci decision is another one I haven't read, though I've read a fair amount about it. One thing I'd like to know that I haven't seen is whether anybody has figured out WHY the African Americans flunked the test. Early standardized tests were specifically designed to keep New York Jews out of the Ivy League and had lots of questions like "Ballanchine:Ballet::Frank Gehrey:__________" that people from poorer backgrounds weren't supposed to be able to answer.
Q: How did that work out?
A: A New York Jew named Stanley Kaplan got very rich.
Q: So standardized tests can be racist?
A: Effectively, yes, but I don't know that this one was. I'd like to know if it was.
Q: Anyway, does Sotomayor's decision show she's outside the mainstream?
A: Not from what I've seen. She followed precedent, the SCOTUS just changed the law.
Q: Will the conservative pundits understand that distinction?
A: If they do, they won't let on.
Q: So what about the case about the Forensic Experts?
A: Crazy Uncle Scalia wrote an opinion that the reports of crime scene lab techs were functionally witnesses for the prosecution, and that the lab techs needed to be available for cross examination.
Q: What's the upshot?
A. Well, running a crime lab just got more expensive since techs will be spending a lot more time in court so the crime labs will need to hire more of them to get through the same number of cases. On the upside, people, with excellent reason, have become really skeptical of the work of forensics experts and this might actually restore their faith. And my undergraduate institution, which needs all the help in can get, has a forensic science program so the new lab tech jobs counts as a win for me personally there, too.
Q: What's weird about this case?
A: I think it by implication concedes that crime techs are not independent and are functionally working for the prosecution, something that has been fairly obvious to anyone who pays attention to this stuff for some time, but that is not typically formally admitted.
Q: Overall picture?
A: Obama should nominate Sotomayor near the end of every term. And anyone who loves law should read Souter's dissent is Osbourne, which includes a beautifully written, thoughtful, jurisprudential discussion that is not precisely on point, but still great.
Q: Why have there been so many SCOTUS decisions recently?
A: There haven't been all that many, but the ones that are coming down are the most famous. Important/weird cases tend to get decided at the end of the term because the SCOTUS takes extra time to argue them.
Q. Is it just me, or have the SCOTUS decisions recently been less crazytown than usual?
A. The Osborne decision notwithstanding, yes, the decisions have been pretty reasonable.
Q: Why?
A: I credit the Sotomayor nomination. After all the crap conservatives gave Sotomayor for suggesting that a court might need diversity of background to make decisions that really took into account the perspectives of diverse parties, they couldn't go and prove her point by deciding that school officials making a 13-year-old get naked was really no big deal.
Q: What was up with Thomas' opinion in that case?
A: He mostly went off an old decision that said that a girl who was suspected of smoking in the bathroom could have her purse searched.
Q: So we should totally pop champagne about that case, right?
A: Eh. First off, without Sotomayor, my guess is it might have come out the other way. The transcript of the arguments really gives the impression that the Justices don't fucking get what the problem with making a thirteen year old strip because she might be carrying advil. Justice Kennedy was like "Is the nature of the drug irrelevant? What if it was meth to be consumed at noon?" and Souter thinks violating the student's privacy is less important that preventing accidental panty meth poisonings. (That's a paraphrase.)
Q: But the court ultimately overcame their fear of panty meth. So good, right?
A. Again, Eh. Ginsburg and Stevens were the only ones who thought the school district should be liable for the girl's emotional distress. The other ones said that making a 13 year old get naked so there could be a search for Advil was insufficiently obviously wrong for it to be actionable.
Q: Is it obviously wrong?
A. If Scalia and Ginsburg and Souter and Kennedy agree on something, it's usually pretty obvious. I would totally have voted with Ginsburg and Stevens.
Q: What about the case about the voting rights act?
A: This is an opinion that I haven't read, but my impression is that the court wanted to find for the municipality with making the smallest possible impact on the voting rights act.
Q. Why? I would think that the court would be overturn the voting rights act since doing so is the properly Crazytown decision to make?
A: Right, but again, overturning the voting rights act would make Sotomayor's confirmation a lot easier.
Q. I want some crazy. What does Justice Thomas think?
A: He thinks that striking down the Voting Rights act would be not a "sign of defeat" but an "acknowledgement of victory," the implication being that, ya know, Racism is over.
Q. Oooh. That's good crazy.
A. It's ok. I like Scalia's brand of crazy better. He's crazy in a your-Crazy-Uncle-Harry-who-makes-Thanksgiving-fun sort of way. Thomas is more like one of those ranting dudes in a bar who won't shut up about how the Bears are the best team ever in absence of any evidence that this is the case. More importantly to me, you normally can get why Scalia feels the way he does even when you disagree which is usually and Thomas is a much greater believer in cherrypicking the one case that's with him and ignoring everything else. And Scalia is snarky and loves to talk to the press enough that he sometimes has to recuse himself because he's already talked about the case before it's argued. He's loads of fun. I'm tempted to name a World of Warcraft character after him.
Q. Now what about the firemen?
A. The Ricci decision is another one I haven't read, though I've read a fair amount about it. One thing I'd like to know that I haven't seen is whether anybody has figured out WHY the African Americans flunked the test. Early standardized tests were specifically designed to keep New York Jews out of the Ivy League and had lots of questions like "Ballanchine:Ballet::Frank Gehrey:__________" that people from poorer backgrounds weren't supposed to be able to answer.
Q: How did that work out?
A: A New York Jew named Stanley Kaplan got very rich.
Q: So standardized tests can be racist?
A: Effectively, yes, but I don't know that this one was. I'd like to know if it was.
Q: Anyway, does Sotomayor's decision show she's outside the mainstream?
A: Not from what I've seen. She followed precedent, the SCOTUS just changed the law.
Q: Will the conservative pundits understand that distinction?
A: If they do, they won't let on.
Q: So what about the case about the Forensic Experts?
A: Crazy Uncle Scalia wrote an opinion that the reports of crime scene lab techs were functionally witnesses for the prosecution, and that the lab techs needed to be available for cross examination.
Q: What's the upshot?
A. Well, running a crime lab just got more expensive since techs will be spending a lot more time in court so the crime labs will need to hire more of them to get through the same number of cases. On the upside, people, with excellent reason, have become really skeptical of the work of forensics experts and this might actually restore their faith. And my undergraduate institution, which needs all the help in can get, has a forensic science program so the new lab tech jobs counts as a win for me personally there, too.
Q: What's weird about this case?
A: I think it by implication concedes that crime techs are not independent and are functionally working for the prosecution, something that has been fairly obvious to anyone who pays attention to this stuff for some time, but that is not typically formally admitted.
Q: Overall picture?
A: Obama should nominate Sotomayor near the end of every term. And anyone who loves law should read Souter's dissent is Osbourne, which includes a beautifully written, thoughtful, jurisprudential discussion that is not precisely on point, but still great.
There, I fixed it
Maybe you have to have a home that is being renovated to truly appreciate thereIfixedit.com. But I appreciate it.
Hat tip to IntenseElizabeth, who put it on her facebook page.
CC
Hat tip to IntenseElizabeth, who put it on her facebook page.
CC
Just when I'm snarking on Obama
Something comes along to give me perspective.
In other news, Bernie Madoff will die in prison unless, he's ya know, a vampire or something. (If you make that idea into a hit television show, please pay off my student loans.)
And Micheal Jackson's parents want to add to their record of stellar parenting. Janet, from one "only reasonable member of the family" to another, please step in.
Also, when I was a kid, I campaigned and campaigned for a walkman. My parents assured me that it would make me antisocial. I pointed out that all the kids with lots of friends had them to no avail. Anyway, as a mildly misanthrophic adult, I get to read that a thirteen-year-old's impression of the device I so pined for.
CC
In other news, Bernie Madoff will die in prison unless, he's ya know, a vampire or something. (If you make that idea into a hit television show, please pay off my student loans.)
And Micheal Jackson's parents want to add to their record of stellar parenting. Janet, from one "only reasonable member of the family" to another, please step in.
Also, when I was a kid, I campaigned and campaigned for a walkman. My parents assured me that it would make me antisocial. I pointed out that all the kids with lots of friends had them to no avail. Anyway, as a mildly misanthrophic adult, I get to read that a thirteen-year-old's impression of the device I so pined for.
CC
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sour Grapes Moment: Did the level of civility hurt the Hallman campaign?
Ms. Kitty has an interesting post up about how very civil the recent campaign for UUA president was. Now, as Robin Edgar will no doubt show up here and mention, Diane Miller felt that there were untrue rumors spread about her during her campaign, an opinion that shows a charming innocence about the way elections work anywhere as she seems to think that supporters of one candidate having false negative ideas about another candidate is sufficiently unusual to be worth comment*.
Anyway, the Hallman/Morales campaign was a very civil campaign. Too civil, perhaps.
I was a member of the UUA election mailing list for several months and I developed the impression that everyone's attempts to be polite actually made for a far less accurate picture of things and one that might have slanted things toward Morales.
For example, it was made very, very clear that there was to be no questioning of the veracity of anything the candidates said. As Morales has a serious fondness for hyperbole and Hallman does not, this meant that he was free to make questionable assertions, knowing they would go unquestioned, and phrases like "a star-studded cast of religious educators" were, in my opinion, insufficiently made-fun-of**. For awhile, his supporters were actually calling him "the Prophet of the Possible" with no obvious discouragement from the Morales campaign. Let's hope he leaves that off his business cards. On the upside, if you reread "Pride and Prejudice," Mr. Collins is a lot funnier when you have Morales in mind.
Anyway, maybe it's polite to accept Morales' fondness for grandiose phrasing. But I do have worries about how it's going to sound when his purple prose is speaking for us all.
Even more worrisome to me was that because the candidates could not be criticized, rumors that Laurel Hallman was the principal architect of Pathways and did a terrible job of it were forced underground rather than being addressed up front.
Less than a month before the election, I received an e-mail, from someone with a UUpdates blog no less, that asserted at least half a dozen unsupportable accusations about Hallman's part in Pathways*** and about the overall sanity of the Pathways project. I put together an FAQ addressing all these concerns and put it on the list, but it was too little too late.
I fully believe that the person who wrote me the email believed what he said about Hallman. Maybe that's what he had been told. I wish he had accused her of these things on his blog or before the election list turned into one dull endorsement after another and the Hallman campaign pulled out as the campaign probably has more information that I was able to glean from UUA sources.
But hey, it was a civil campaign.
CC
*Also, Miller was shocked and saddened to find that "identity politics" was an issue in the election where the black guy ran against the woman. I supported her, though halfheartedly, and am horrified to discover that the UUA elected, I think, the right person in Sinkford as his opponent was apparently Howard-Dean-level not ready for primetime. I wish Hallman had run then. Or Morales, though he would have had to start his campaign as he was graduating from Starr King. Also, I hate it when people talk about "identity politics" as if it is something new and excludes the idea of decades of upper-middle-class white men voting for each other.
**If you can read "a star-studded cast of religious educators" without thinking of this Onion article, you're a better person than I am. (Note to the CSO's mom: Gastonia gets a shoutout in that article)
***My favorite was the idea that Hallman was crazy to think that a large UU church could be built within 20 miles of another large UU church. When I pointed out that my church and UU church five miles down the road have a combined population of about 1,300 I wasn't surprised not to get a response.
(EDIT: Suzie pointed out that I named the wrong organization in one of my comments. She's right, I was wrong. Cecile Richards is still head of Planned Parenthood. If you follow that link, you get her analysis. She believes the election was decided by gender more than I do, but whst she has to say is interesting.
As a response to what she has to say, I will say that I think Morales was a better politician and that his dancing-around of the question about patriarchy was just the politiciany way he answers questions, not any real substantive comment on his feelings about feminism. For an example of what I'm talking about, note the question Robin keeps talking about where when asked about mistakes they had made, Laurel directly addresses Pathways and acknowledges that some of the mistakes were hers while Morales gives some blather about how difficult it is to schedule a church service because his church has SO MANY MEMBERS.)
Anyway, the Hallman/Morales campaign was a very civil campaign. Too civil, perhaps.
I was a member of the UUA election mailing list for several months and I developed the impression that everyone's attempts to be polite actually made for a far less accurate picture of things and one that might have slanted things toward Morales.
For example, it was made very, very clear that there was to be no questioning of the veracity of anything the candidates said. As Morales has a serious fondness for hyperbole and Hallman does not, this meant that he was free to make questionable assertions, knowing they would go unquestioned, and phrases like "a star-studded cast of religious educators" were, in my opinion, insufficiently made-fun-of**. For awhile, his supporters were actually calling him "the Prophet of the Possible" with no obvious discouragement from the Morales campaign. Let's hope he leaves that off his business cards. On the upside, if you reread "Pride and Prejudice," Mr. Collins is a lot funnier when you have Morales in mind.
Anyway, maybe it's polite to accept Morales' fondness for grandiose phrasing. But I do have worries about how it's going to sound when his purple prose is speaking for us all.
Even more worrisome to me was that because the candidates could not be criticized, rumors that Laurel Hallman was the principal architect of Pathways and did a terrible job of it were forced underground rather than being addressed up front.
Less than a month before the election, I received an e-mail, from someone with a UUpdates blog no less, that asserted at least half a dozen unsupportable accusations about Hallman's part in Pathways*** and about the overall sanity of the Pathways project. I put together an FAQ addressing all these concerns and put it on the list, but it was too little too late.
I fully believe that the person who wrote me the email believed what he said about Hallman. Maybe that's what he had been told. I wish he had accused her of these things on his blog or before the election list turned into one dull endorsement after another and the Hallman campaign pulled out as the campaign probably has more information that I was able to glean from UUA sources.
But hey, it was a civil campaign.
CC
*Also, Miller was shocked and saddened to find that "identity politics" was an issue in the election where the black guy ran against the woman. I supported her, though halfheartedly, and am horrified to discover that the UUA elected, I think, the right person in Sinkford as his opponent was apparently Howard-Dean-level not ready for primetime. I wish Hallman had run then. Or Morales, though he would have had to start his campaign as he was graduating from Starr King. Also, I hate it when people talk about "identity politics" as if it is something new and excludes the idea of decades of upper-middle-class white men voting for each other.
**If you can read "a star-studded cast of religious educators" without thinking of this Onion article, you're a better person than I am. (Note to the CSO's mom: Gastonia gets a shoutout in that article)
***My favorite was the idea that Hallman was crazy to think that a large UU church could be built within 20 miles of another large UU church. When I pointed out that my church and UU church five miles down the road have a combined population of about 1,300 I wasn't surprised not to get a response.
(EDIT: Suzie pointed out that I named the wrong organization in one of my comments. She's right, I was wrong. Cecile Richards is still head of Planned Parenthood. If you follow that link, you get her analysis. She believes the election was decided by gender more than I do, but whst she has to say is interesting.
As a response to what she has to say, I will say that I think Morales was a better politician and that his dancing-around of the question about patriarchy was just the politiciany way he answers questions, not any real substantive comment on his feelings about feminism. For an example of what I'm talking about, note the question Robin keeps talking about where when asked about mistakes they had made, Laurel directly addresses Pathways and acknowledges that some of the mistakes were hers while Morales gives some blather about how difficult it is to schedule a church service because his church has SO MANY MEMBERS.)
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you
Well, actually, I'm not.
Since the news that Obama plans to issue an executive order permitting terror suspects to be held without a trial date, or really much hope of one, happened to accidentally come out on a summer weekend, I wanted to make sure you saw it.
CC
who still thinks he was a better choice than McCain, but hasn't forgotten what it was like to be a Hillary supporter early last year when Hillary was "just more of the same" while Obama was made of kittens and fairydust and was going to change politics forever and ever.
Ps. While I'm in a pissy mood anyway, here's Obama's current scorecard on campaign promises, and here's a guy arguing that the promises kept/promises broken record looks remarkably like Obama is only keeping the promises that give him more power and ignoring campaign promises like "posting bills on the internet for public comment," which admittedly seems like a much better idea if you are unfamiliar with, say, youtube commenters.
Anyway, compared to a Cheney-style power grab, it's really not that big of a deal, but still...
Since the news that Obama plans to issue an executive order permitting terror suspects to be held without a trial date, or really much hope of one, happened to accidentally come out on a summer weekend, I wanted to make sure you saw it.
CC
who still thinks he was a better choice than McCain, but hasn't forgotten what it was like to be a Hillary supporter early last year when Hillary was "just more of the same" while Obama was made of kittens and fairydust and was going to change politics forever and ever.
Ps. While I'm in a pissy mood anyway, here's Obama's current scorecard on campaign promises, and here's a guy arguing that the promises kept/promises broken record looks remarkably like Obama is only keeping the promises that give him more power and ignoring campaign promises like "posting bills on the internet for public comment," which admittedly seems like a much better idea if you are unfamiliar with, say, youtube commenters.
Anyway, compared to a Cheney-style power grab, it's really not that big of a deal, but still...
Random thoughts on GA from one who isn't there
1. I'm glad the article 2 revisions failed for reasons I've detailed here before, primarily because my favorite section of article 2, the one about freedom of belief, was so toned down as to barely exist.
My favorite thing about the new article 2 provisions is that they would be much harder to memorize, and much less compelling when put on the wall as a creed. That's not a lot to recommend them.
(For what it's worth, in the original version the bit about freedom of belief is written in equally lovely language but Katy-the-Wise and I are the only ones I know who have memorized it, I think in both cases not purposefully but as an accident of repetition. She might be able to rattle off the actual seven principles, I couldn't.)
2. The UUA elected the person I didn't want them to. Color me shocked. I'll save the snark for another time, congratulations President-Elect Morales.
3. Someone else asked if there was a service project and the response they got was that the "service project" was giving money to Utah Pride (a cause I support) and a "public witness action" for immigrants rights (a cause I also support). Is it true that there's no service project of the "help some local poor people" variety? If not, why not? They've has such things at previous GAs.
4. As Kate Clinton making jokes in a town full of Mormons go, what was said was pretty mild, and FAR less nasty than some of the things Sandra Bernhard said when she was in DC last fall. I wish Ms. Clinton hadn't said it because, well, it was stupid. But any annoyed Mormons can nurse their hurt feelings with the comfort that they are likely still legally married, and Kate Clinton's right to be treated as such in California was taken away, which has to be quite the balm. I have to say that if any group of people, religious or otherwise, starts lobbying to take away any of my civil rights in any state, Ms. Clinton's words will sound like a Jane Austen character's compared to what I have to say about it.
It's very UU that so many UUs are so embarrassed that she, a non-UU said that at a UU gathering* and some UUs laughed, while the Mormons have given no sign of caring one way or another as far as I've heard, because, well, every religion has been saying snotty things about every other religion since the beginning of time and Mormons know this as well as everyone else does. God knows the Mormons I used to work with gave me occasional guff about UUism**, though I didn't give it back because they were the bosses.
5. For all my bitching, I wish I were there, but it wasn't in the cards this year.
CC
*And fifty bucks said she was explicitly asked not to make fun of other religions and just decided to ignore that.
** "If there's no hell," I was once asked "why should people do good things? Why not just do evil since you might as well?"
And I thought 'Frankly, Lady, if you can't answer that for yourself, I'm not risking my job to enlighten you'
And that's one example of at least several.
My favorite thing about the new article 2 provisions is that they would be much harder to memorize, and much less compelling when put on the wall as a creed. That's not a lot to recommend them.
(For what it's worth, in the original version the bit about freedom of belief is written in equally lovely language but Katy-the-Wise and I are the only ones I know who have memorized it, I think in both cases not purposefully but as an accident of repetition. She might be able to rattle off the actual seven principles, I couldn't.)
2. The UUA elected the person I didn't want them to. Color me shocked. I'll save the snark for another time, congratulations President-Elect Morales.
3. Someone else asked if there was a service project and the response they got was that the "service project" was giving money to Utah Pride (a cause I support) and a "public witness action" for immigrants rights (a cause I also support). Is it true that there's no service project of the "help some local poor people" variety? If not, why not? They've has such things at previous GAs.
4. As Kate Clinton making jokes in a town full of Mormons go, what was said was pretty mild, and FAR less nasty than some of the things Sandra Bernhard said when she was in DC last fall. I wish Ms. Clinton hadn't said it because, well, it was stupid. But any annoyed Mormons can nurse their hurt feelings with the comfort that they are likely still legally married, and Kate Clinton's right to be treated as such in California was taken away, which has to be quite the balm. I have to say that if any group of people, religious or otherwise, starts lobbying to take away any of my civil rights in any state, Ms. Clinton's words will sound like a Jane Austen character's compared to what I have to say about it.
It's very UU that so many UUs are so embarrassed that she, a non-UU said that at a UU gathering* and some UUs laughed, while the Mormons have given no sign of caring one way or another as far as I've heard, because, well, every religion has been saying snotty things about every other religion since the beginning of time and Mormons know this as well as everyone else does. God knows the Mormons I used to work with gave me occasional guff about UUism**, though I didn't give it back because they were the bosses.
5. For all my bitching, I wish I were there, but it wasn't in the cards this year.
CC
*And fifty bucks said she was explicitly asked not to make fun of other religions and just decided to ignore that.
** "If there's no hell," I was once asked "why should people do good things? Why not just do evil since you might as well?"
And I thought 'Frankly, Lady, if you can't answer that for yourself, I'm not risking my job to enlighten you'
And that's one example of at least several.
Friday, June 26, 2009
When I was a fundraiser, this wouldn't have happened under my watch
Check out this fundraising appeal from Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
Or just look at the part I'm quoting here:
I believe the only way to take back our freedom is to return to the constitutional principles our founding fathers promised in 1776. It’s upon those principles I announced my conservative alternative to President Obama’s liberal healthcare plan just yesterday.
I can’t do all this alone. That’s why I launched my Club 2010 team of Internet activists to help propel my re-election campaign. Just last week we received $5,000 from donors giving $17.76. I trust that conservative activists are willing to stand behind the ideas I’ve been pushing in Washington, so I’ve set a loft goal of raising $17,760 in $17.76 increments over the next five days.
Chalisseurs, what's the problem with this? (Aside from the proofreading error.)
CC
Or just look at the part I'm quoting here:
I believe the only way to take back our freedom is to return to the constitutional principles our founding fathers promised in 1776. It’s upon those principles I announced my conservative alternative to President Obama’s liberal healthcare plan just yesterday.
I can’t do all this alone. That’s why I launched my Club 2010 team of Internet activists to help propel my re-election campaign. Just last week we received $5,000 from donors giving $17.76. I trust that conservative activists are willing to stand behind the ideas I’ve been pushing in Washington, so I’ve set a loft goal of raising $17,760 in $17.76 increments over the next five days.
Chalisseurs, what's the problem with this? (Aside from the proofreading error.)
CC
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Multiple Choice Quiz
This lady's much-mocked-by-the-internet Guns and Roses "November Rain" themed wedding was:
A. Awesome
B. Awesome
C. Awesome
D. I'm blind to the obvious fun the people in the photos are having and WAY too *ahem* wedded to the concept of the WASPy traditional wedding.
CC
who doesn't mind being snarky herself sometimes, but hates it when people feel they just have to suck all the joy out of everything.
A. Awesome
B. Awesome
C. Awesome
D. I'm blind to the obvious fun the people in the photos are having and WAY too *ahem* wedded to the concept of the WASPy traditional wedding.
CC
who doesn't mind being snarky herself sometimes, but hates it when people feel they just have to suck all the joy out of everything.
Experiment
So I'm going to write "Maria Belen Chapur photo" and see if my blog hits go up.
In other news, if you just found this post on a search engine, you're visiting the Chaliceblog for the first time, and your name isn't Jenny Sanford, you should probably get a life.
CC
who would sort of like to see a photo of Maria Belen Chapur, but actually doesn't care.
In other news, if you just found this post on a search engine, you're visiting the Chaliceblog for the first time, and your name isn't Jenny Sanford, you should probably get a life.
CC
who would sort of like to see a photo of Maria Belen Chapur, but actually doesn't care.
Subways
Someone I know, someone significantly older than me, once told me that when she came back to her home city to visit from college, she discovered that when she rode the subway, she had, all her life, been unconsciously choosing the part of the subway car that had more white people in it*. After that, her consciousness having been raised by her liberal northeastern college, she started choosing the part of the subway car with more women in it.
I responded that I had always chosen the part of the subway car with the fewest people in general. I didn't rub it in to my friend, but I was quietly pleased that whatever sway societal racism and sexism had on my character, the sway of my long-admitted misanthropy was still stronger.
This conversation came to mind this morning as theCSO mentioned, as I drove him to the subway, that in metro's two most recent accidents, the only people killed and most of the injured were in the first or last car so one could be significantly safer by sticking to the middle cars.
At which point I confessed my pleasure two days before at discovering that post-accident nobody was riding in the first or last cars and I could have them nearly to myself.
Sigh.
CC
*At the time, I thought, though I didn't point out, that a majority of one's pre-college life, one's place in the subway car is not chosen by one, but by one's parents and their influence might have been the cause of this.
I responded that I had always chosen the part of the subway car with the fewest people in general. I didn't rub it in to my friend, but I was quietly pleased that whatever sway societal racism and sexism had on my character, the sway of my long-admitted misanthropy was still stronger.
This conversation came to mind this morning as theCSO mentioned, as I drove him to the subway, that in metro's two most recent accidents, the only people killed and most of the injured were in the first or last car so one could be significantly safer by sticking to the middle cars.
At which point I confessed my pleasure two days before at discovering that post-accident nobody was riding in the first or last cars and I could have them nearly to myself.
Sigh.
CC
*At the time, I thought, though I didn't point out, that a majority of one's pre-college life, one's place in the subway car is not chosen by one, but by one's parents and their influence might have been the cause of this.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
I've often questioned why we even have a UUA Washington Office
Given what's going on right now in Iran, and that the top three posts on their blog are about:
Oprah
Gay Pride
and
Finding the right "Dr. Seuss Metaphor" for our movement.
I'm asking again.
Now, in the past, I have criticized the UUA Washington Office for focusing on events in a foreign country that doesn't give a damn what they think while there was legislation that adversely effected UU World that they hadn't commented on that a small religion could actually have made a difference by speaking about since it wasn't particularly well-known or politicized legislation.
But it would be nice to hear their take on Iran, for well, obvious reasons.
And seriously? Dr. Seuss?
CC
who notes that the Dr. Seuss post got more comments than anything else I've ever seen on the UUA Washington office blog get.
Oprah
Gay Pride
and
Finding the right "Dr. Seuss Metaphor" for our movement.
I'm asking again.
Now, in the past, I have criticized the UUA Washington Office for focusing on events in a foreign country that doesn't give a damn what they think while there was legislation that adversely effected UU World that they hadn't commented on that a small religion could actually have made a difference by speaking about since it wasn't particularly well-known or politicized legislation.
But it would be nice to hear their take on Iran, for well, obvious reasons.
And seriously? Dr. Seuss?
CC
who notes that the Dr. Seuss post got more comments than anything else I've ever seen on the UUA Washington office blog get.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
With three minutes left of Bloomsday...
I'm starting Ulysses.
Comments, advice, etc, welcome. Joe-the-Math-guy, Jana-who-Creates and I are going to meet regularly on the telephone to discuss it regularly.
I would love to post law student/mom/mathematician insights on the book as a regular thing, but we will see if that happens.
CC
Comments, advice, etc, welcome. Joe-the-Math-guy, Jana-who-Creates and I are going to meet regularly on the telephone to discuss it regularly.
I would love to post law student/mom/mathematician insights on the book as a regular thing, but we will see if that happens.
CC
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Ben Franklin
only expressly prohibited in the more contemporary areas, I've never
met a museum guard who especially liked it.
Anyway, this is Jean-Antoine Houdon's sculptural portrait of Ben
Franklin, made in France sometime after 1778. It's in plaster, a copy
of a bronze version that is no doubt in a museum with better resources.
I am immensely fond of this because it is Franklin as I imagine him,
looking like he's up to something. I mentioned this to
LinguistFriend, who pointed out that Franklin pretty much was up to
something his entire time in France.
So true.
CC
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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