Have the media and Obama’s re-election team made the leap that all of us are stupid, just because a lot of people are? The drumbeat has started that Republicans, and those on the ‘right,’ are politicizing the tragedy and should be ashamed of themselves. Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama’s re-election effort, said it, and now Joe Scarborough on MSNBC has said it, so look for this to be picked up and parroted throughout the media.
Here’s a little refresher:
Left-leaning media outlets reported this case, from the outset, not just as a ‘murder,’ but a racially motivated murder. They didn’t have (and still do not have) a shred of evidence that this was so, but hey, who cares? The goal was to get things stirred up, and that they did.
They initially reported that the shooter was white, so a bit of a wrench was thrown into things when they found out that Zimmerman is only half white. (Good indication of how much investigation they actually did into the facts of the case before they took it and ran with it, don’t you think?) They solved this by calling him a ‘white Hispanic’ henceforth, with the order of the words being no accident, of course.
Sharpton (whom MSNBC considers a worthy mouthpiece) and Jackson and the usual hustlers who couldn’t care less about blacks who are killed by other blacks, or whites who are killed by blacks, descended on Sanford, spewing incendiary rhetoric and whipping crowds into frenzies.
While screaming about justice and how Zimmerman was a ‘vigilante,’ various parties, from obscure ones to the likes of Spike Lee and Roseanne Barr, have publicized the addresses not only of Zimmerman, but of his parents, sending them into hiding. (Lee at first refused to apologize when it was discovered he had tweeted the wrong address for Zimmerman, sending a bewildered older couple into hiding.) The New Black Panther Party issued a bounty for Zimmerman's 'capture' and witnesses were terrified of being identified.
As we all know, President Obama has inserted himself into this, and we have had a Democratic member of the House wearing a hoodie onto the floor of the chamber, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation demanding a Justice Department investigation “and an arrest.” Not, you will note, ‘an arrest if it’s warranted,” but an arrest. Why are they even calling for an investigation?
And yet Cutter and Scarborough (and there will be more, you can be sure) have the absolute gall to point fingers at Republicans/conservatives for ‘politicizing’ the tragedy. Scarborough was particularly upset about Trayvon’s social media posts and pictures being scrutinized, and what he considers a ‘blame the victim’ mentality.
I don’t care how many tattoos Trayvon had, or gold teeth, or whatever. I don’t think they ‘prove’ anything about what did or didn’t happen that night. As far as has been reported, Trayvon had no criminal record, which is the most salient fact about him.
But the dishonest and corrupt media precipitated this scrutiny by trying, from the outset, to shape public perception with selective, slanted, and overly emotional coverage. If Trayvon’s tattoos, gold teeth, etc., don’t matter, why did they deliberately hide them? Why did they deliberately use a picture that was years old? We know the answer. They wanted to create a narrative in which an innocent, sweet boy was mercilessly gunned down because he was black, and anything that might have contributed to the impression that he wasn’t a sympathetic victim had to be suppressed.
If I should need to reiterate—I do not believe that anything that’s been revealed about who Trayvon Martin was, five years after that widely disseminated first picture was taken, constitutes “evidence” of anything. And while I don’t believe—at all—that his shooting was racially motivated, I believe it was avoidable, and that a tragedy has occurred, and the investigation should proceed.
But for the people and organizations who deliberately orchestrated a media firestorm to now start complaining because everyone didn’t just shut up and swallow what they were fed, almost defies belief. They started this conflagration, so their lamentations about where it’s spreading ring pretty hollow.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Trayvon Martin
Okay, this one will be pretty short. Unlike some people, I'm not prepared to rush to judgment, not prepared to decide that the tragic incident which resulted in a young man's death is for sure a 'murder,' not prepared to agree that it's on a par with Emmet Till's murder, not ready to agree it's proof that nothing has changed in this country, not prepared to agree with the increasingly hysterical emotion that passes for activism these days.
What I do agree with is that a tragedy has occurred, Martin's family deserves a thorough, competent and impartial investigation, and George Zimmerman should be held responsible for whatever degree of culpability an investigation and subsequent trial, if there is one, is assigned to him. But I also believe he is entitled, like everyone else, to the presumption of innocence and to due process of law.
'But he should be arrested!' people are screaming. They say that law enforcement failed to do its job. But these same people would be outraged if someone to whom they were sympathetic was arrested without probable cause, and as I understand it, the standards for probable cause in this case were not met. (That said, if the local law enforcement were planning to consider the case closed rather than continue to investigate and try to determine what happened, with an arrest to come if it's warranted, they would be in the wrong. It certainly sounded as if Zimmerman could have avoided a confrontation if he had used better judgment.) But at the scene, the police were confronted with an injured, bleeding man who claimed self-defense, who had already called 911 to report somebody suspicious in his neighborhood, which had been subject to an increasing amount of crime as more houses became vacant. I just read three different articles about this, and none of them even mentioned Zimmerman's injuries or that he had apparently been knocked to the ground. Doesn't need to be mentioned, I guess, if your goal is to stoke the fires. Under this set of circumstances, an arrest was not immediately warranted, but that doesn't mean one was never going to occur, and I've heard nothing to indicate Zimmerman is a flight risk or was refusing to cooperate.
For those who think I am saying the man is innocent--no, I'm not. I don't know that, any more than do those who are sure he's guilty, but that's not stopping _them_. An investigation, conducted by an agency in whom all involved can have confidence, should proceed without delay. But those who are ranting for 'justice,' those like Farrakhan who are making veiled threats of general violence and those who are making explicit death threats to Zimmerman, and those like Sharpton who never seem to have any outrage about racially motivated violence unless the victims are black, don't even know the meaning of the word.
What I do agree with is that a tragedy has occurred, Martin's family deserves a thorough, competent and impartial investigation, and George Zimmerman should be held responsible for whatever degree of culpability an investigation and subsequent trial, if there is one, is assigned to him. But I also believe he is entitled, like everyone else, to the presumption of innocence and to due process of law.
'But he should be arrested!' people are screaming. They say that law enforcement failed to do its job. But these same people would be outraged if someone to whom they were sympathetic was arrested without probable cause, and as I understand it, the standards for probable cause in this case were not met. (That said, if the local law enforcement were planning to consider the case closed rather than continue to investigate and try to determine what happened, with an arrest to come if it's warranted, they would be in the wrong. It certainly sounded as if Zimmerman could have avoided a confrontation if he had used better judgment.) But at the scene, the police were confronted with an injured, bleeding man who claimed self-defense, who had already called 911 to report somebody suspicious in his neighborhood, which had been subject to an increasing amount of crime as more houses became vacant. I just read three different articles about this, and none of them even mentioned Zimmerman's injuries or that he had apparently been knocked to the ground. Doesn't need to be mentioned, I guess, if your goal is to stoke the fires. Under this set of circumstances, an arrest was not immediately warranted, but that doesn't mean one was never going to occur, and I've heard nothing to indicate Zimmerman is a flight risk or was refusing to cooperate.
For those who think I am saying the man is innocent--no, I'm not. I don't know that, any more than do those who are sure he's guilty, but that's not stopping _them_. An investigation, conducted by an agency in whom all involved can have confidence, should proceed without delay. But those who are ranting for 'justice,' those like Farrakhan who are making veiled threats of general violence and those who are making explicit death threats to Zimmerman, and those like Sharpton who never seem to have any outrage about racially motivated violence unless the victims are black, don't even know the meaning of the word.
Friday, February 10, 2012
It's not about pills; it's about power.
The latest news is that the Obama administration has offered what it considers to be an acceptable solution to the objections (primarily by the Catholic Church) to its directive that religious institutions (other than individual houses of worship) provide free birth control and abortifacients to their employees. As best I can understand, the administration's claim is that the religious institutions will not have to pay for these things, after all; their insurance providers will have to provide them.
If you are scratching your head right now, so am I. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a religious institution's insurance provider will be required to provide access, free of charge, to birth control methods and so-called 'morning after' pills, then the cost of these items will be passed on to the employer. They are going to be paying for it, no matter how you slice it, and it will be interesting to read the defenses of this 'adjustment' that will no doubt be forthcoming.
What's also been interesting (but not surprising given the administration's apparent unpreparedness for the backlash) is its attempt, aided by the dependable lackeys in the media, to characterize the whole controversy as being about contraception, women's health and women's rights, when it is not. There seems to be almost a deliberate strategy to exploit the sloppy and emotional thinking that contributes to forming opinions these days, to obscure the central fact: this is about government's power to impose its will wherever it wants. By railing about how people opposed to the new policy are mounting "an outrageous assault" as Planned Parenthood put it, on women's health, denying them their 'rights,' and so forth, they expect that people will support this serious encroachment on the First Amendment simply because they support the availability of birth control. (The administration and its defenders are shamelessly politicizing the controversy by assailing 'Republicans' for their opposition, but not very successfully, given that many of their most outspoken Catholic critics are Democrats.)
I support the availability of birth control, should I need to make that clear. I used it for a while during my own marriage, and after we decided our family was complete, my ex-husband had a vasectomy, another procedure which is anathema to the Catholic Church. But I don't think my opinion about a matter is sufficient to determine the best policies government should follow, and I'm amazed at the number of people who apparently do. I am also dismayed that so many people's conception of what constitutes a 'right' has gotten so fuzzy. Our mothers used to caution us that life was not fair, but many people seem to believe it can be made so--indeed, that we have a 'right' that it should be so.
Is it 'fair' that women who work for a Catholic university or hospital have had to pay for their own birth control? Maybe not. But no one forced those women to accept employment there, as opposed to somewhere where the insurance provided it. If the answer to that is that those women needed a job and perhaps there were no other available jobs, well maybe that was true. But does that translate into them having a 'right' to employer-funded birth control? I guess if logic isn't your strong suit, maybe it does. But even if that were true, does their right to birth control trump the religious employer's right to follow the deeply held and long-standing tenets of the faith?
Don't get me wrong; I certainly understand the conviction that a woman's ability to plan her family shouldn't be a financial hardship or an impossibility for some women while it's available to others either through their insurance or because they have adequate means. But nothing is ever 'free.' Free means that the government provides or subsidizes it, which means taxpayers are paying, or in this case, if insurance companies provide it, 'free' means employers and/or people who pay premiums are covering it.
So the central question in this case is, does government have the power to force a religious institution to pay for something that violates a core, deeply held and longstanding pillar of its faith (and your opinion, or mine, on birth control, is not what counts here) or does the First Amendment protect them from that intrusion?
If it doesn't, then be prepared for future encroachments on religious liberty that you might not happen to agree with. But, by then, your opinion on the issue itself won't matter, if a precedent is set.
If you are scratching your head right now, so am I. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a religious institution's insurance provider will be required to provide access, free of charge, to birth control methods and so-called 'morning after' pills, then the cost of these items will be passed on to the employer. They are going to be paying for it, no matter how you slice it, and it will be interesting to read the defenses of this 'adjustment' that will no doubt be forthcoming.
What's also been interesting (but not surprising given the administration's apparent unpreparedness for the backlash) is its attempt, aided by the dependable lackeys in the media, to characterize the whole controversy as being about contraception, women's health and women's rights, when it is not. There seems to be almost a deliberate strategy to exploit the sloppy and emotional thinking that contributes to forming opinions these days, to obscure the central fact: this is about government's power to impose its will wherever it wants. By railing about how people opposed to the new policy are mounting "an outrageous assault" as Planned Parenthood put it, on women's health, denying them their 'rights,' and so forth, they expect that people will support this serious encroachment on the First Amendment simply because they support the availability of birth control. (The administration and its defenders are shamelessly politicizing the controversy by assailing 'Republicans' for their opposition, but not very successfully, given that many of their most outspoken Catholic critics are Democrats.)
I support the availability of birth control, should I need to make that clear. I used it for a while during my own marriage, and after we decided our family was complete, my ex-husband had a vasectomy, another procedure which is anathema to the Catholic Church. But I don't think my opinion about a matter is sufficient to determine the best policies government should follow, and I'm amazed at the number of people who apparently do. I am also dismayed that so many people's conception of what constitutes a 'right' has gotten so fuzzy. Our mothers used to caution us that life was not fair, but many people seem to believe it can be made so--indeed, that we have a 'right' that it should be so.
Is it 'fair' that women who work for a Catholic university or hospital have had to pay for their own birth control? Maybe not. But no one forced those women to accept employment there, as opposed to somewhere where the insurance provided it. If the answer to that is that those women needed a job and perhaps there were no other available jobs, well maybe that was true. But does that translate into them having a 'right' to employer-funded birth control? I guess if logic isn't your strong suit, maybe it does. But even if that were true, does their right to birth control trump the religious employer's right to follow the deeply held and long-standing tenets of the faith?
Don't get me wrong; I certainly understand the conviction that a woman's ability to plan her family shouldn't be a financial hardship or an impossibility for some women while it's available to others either through their insurance or because they have adequate means. But nothing is ever 'free.' Free means that the government provides or subsidizes it, which means taxpayers are paying, or in this case, if insurance companies provide it, 'free' means employers and/or people who pay premiums are covering it.
So the central question in this case is, does government have the power to force a religious institution to pay for something that violates a core, deeply held and longstanding pillar of its faith (and your opinion, or mine, on birth control, is not what counts here) or does the First Amendment protect them from that intrusion?
If it doesn't, then be prepared for future encroachments on religious liberty that you might not happen to agree with. But, by then, your opinion on the issue itself won't matter, if a precedent is set.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Musings on the race for the Republican nomination
I looked back to see when I had written about Herman Cain, and saw that it was mid-October. I think that was shortly after the Florida straw poll when he surprised everyone by winning handily, and his candidacy was just beginning to catch fire. There's nothing but ash now, of course, and burned up in that conflagration was any chance of Cain being selected as another candidate's running mate--a place I thought from the beginning was ideal for him.
About a month after that, I got distracted from following up on Cain, by another story that caught my eye, but mentioned along with him my 'new man,' Newt Gingrich. Since then he has surged and faded, too, although he's not going quietly. (Maureen Dowd actually got a laugh out of me--she referred to him as 'a crazed Chuckie doll.)
Which leaves Mitt the last man standing, because Santorum is unlikely to maintain any momentum outside Iowa, Perry's last hope is South Carolina and he doesn't appear to be polling well there, and Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire notwithstanding, I can't see him getting enough traction in time, or ever engaging the more conservative wing of the party.
So that leaves very few Republicans, or interested Independents like myself, satisfied with what's on the menu. Conservatives can't stand him and threaten to stay home in November or cast a protest vote, establishment Republicans support him not out of any great enthusiasm but because he seems the only viable choice, and the Obama re-election team rejoices, because not only have they have been handed the perfect foil for their planned strategy of class warfare, but the other Republican hopefuls are providing lots of good video clips for attack ads against Romney.
Is what has so far been a raucous, surprise-filled run-up to the 2012 election going to turn into just a long, boring slog? If so, I might just have to check out the news once a week instead of daily, because it will all be the same--blah, blah, blah. There is an occasional flare sent up by one or another of the pundits about the possibility of a brokered convention, but one can't even imagine who could ride in on a white horse at the end of August, and go on to win. The Republican establishment would only be forced into that if they really came to believe disaffected conservatives would stay home in sufficient numbers that Romney didn't have a chance. And again, even if they considered it, who could turn out the vote in only two months? The only conceivable choice would be Palin, but that would be a huge gamble, in terms of losing the Independents/centrists Romney is presumed to have garnered. Not only that--and I never thought I would hear myself say this--I think Palin is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future; she would be reluctant to jeopardize that with a probably futile attempt to unseat Obama this time.
The wild card, of course, is Paul. If he were to run on the Libertarian ticket, whose chances would he spoil? The usual answer would be a given--the Republican. Think Ross Perot. But Paul is wildly popular with a lot of young people, one of the Obama team's key demographics. If the messages coming out of OWS were any clue, their grasp on economics is tenuous, at best, but there's certainly a growing awareness that, as Obama rails against the likes of Mitt Romney, he's filled his administration with exactly those people. They are beginning to see (contrary to Michelle's pronouncement that the public is 'confused' about how much her husband has accomplished and needs to be educated to that end) that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. Paul could hurt him a lot more than Romney.
However, it's widely held that Paul won't run as a third-party candidate because of the damage--fatal damage--it would do to the career of his senator son, Rand. No other Libertarian candidate could make so much as a dent in the outcome, so it would have to be Paul, and it's a crying shame that he is so 'out there' on certain things, because he is perhaps the only candidate who really seems to comprehend the seriousness of our financial future as a nation.
So, I think it's Romney and, to use the president's phrase, those of us who hope a Republican candidate will at least steer us away from the abyss instead of stepping on the gas will just have to 'eat our peas' and vote for him.
About a month after that, I got distracted from following up on Cain, by another story that caught my eye, but mentioned along with him my 'new man,' Newt Gingrich. Since then he has surged and faded, too, although he's not going quietly. (Maureen Dowd actually got a laugh out of me--she referred to him as 'a crazed Chuckie doll.)
Which leaves Mitt the last man standing, because Santorum is unlikely to maintain any momentum outside Iowa, Perry's last hope is South Carolina and he doesn't appear to be polling well there, and Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire notwithstanding, I can't see him getting enough traction in time, or ever engaging the more conservative wing of the party.
So that leaves very few Republicans, or interested Independents like myself, satisfied with what's on the menu. Conservatives can't stand him and threaten to stay home in November or cast a protest vote, establishment Republicans support him not out of any great enthusiasm but because he seems the only viable choice, and the Obama re-election team rejoices, because not only have they have been handed the perfect foil for their planned strategy of class warfare, but the other Republican hopefuls are providing lots of good video clips for attack ads against Romney.
Is what has so far been a raucous, surprise-filled run-up to the 2012 election going to turn into just a long, boring slog? If so, I might just have to check out the news once a week instead of daily, because it will all be the same--blah, blah, blah. There is an occasional flare sent up by one or another of the pundits about the possibility of a brokered convention, but one can't even imagine who could ride in on a white horse at the end of August, and go on to win. The Republican establishment would only be forced into that if they really came to believe disaffected conservatives would stay home in sufficient numbers that Romney didn't have a chance. And again, even if they considered it, who could turn out the vote in only two months? The only conceivable choice would be Palin, but that would be a huge gamble, in terms of losing the Independents/centrists Romney is presumed to have garnered. Not only that--and I never thought I would hear myself say this--I think Palin is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future; she would be reluctant to jeopardize that with a probably futile attempt to unseat Obama this time.
The wild card, of course, is Paul. If he were to run on the Libertarian ticket, whose chances would he spoil? The usual answer would be a given--the Republican. Think Ross Perot. But Paul is wildly popular with a lot of young people, one of the Obama team's key demographics. If the messages coming out of OWS were any clue, their grasp on economics is tenuous, at best, but there's certainly a growing awareness that, as Obama rails against the likes of Mitt Romney, he's filled his administration with exactly those people. They are beginning to see (contrary to Michelle's pronouncement that the public is 'confused' about how much her husband has accomplished and needs to be educated to that end) that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. Paul could hurt him a lot more than Romney.
However, it's widely held that Paul won't run as a third-party candidate because of the damage--fatal damage--it would do to the career of his senator son, Rand. No other Libertarian candidate could make so much as a dent in the outcome, so it would have to be Paul, and it's a crying shame that he is so 'out there' on certain things, because he is perhaps the only candidate who really seems to comprehend the seriousness of our financial future as a nation.
So, I think it's Romney and, to use the president's phrase, those of us who hope a Republican candidate will at least steer us away from the abyss instead of stepping on the gas will just have to 'eat our peas' and vote for him.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
The vote suppression fraud
One of the things we will hear about a lot in 2012 is the supposed push to ‘suppress’ the minority vote by requiring voters to show valid ID. Those whose sole sources of news are left-leaning outlets like MoveOn, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, MSNBC, and so forth, may already believe there is such a ‘conspiracy’ underway to return us to the days of Jim Crow. That such utter balderdash is being accepted as truth by some intelligent people, along with the credulous, demonstrates the frightening power of propaganda. (These outlets are scrambling to smear the reputation and motives of black Democrats like Artur Davis who are not toeing the party line and have stepped forward to assert that voter fraud does indeed exist and that voter ID laws should be enacted.)
Attorney General Eric Holder, who was unconcerned about members of the New Black Panthers standing at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, armed with billy clubs and telling several voters that they were “about to be ruled by the black man, cracker,” is using his office to block South Carolina’s recently enacted voter ID law, in part on the basis that voter ID requirements cause hardship to the poor, even though the law provides free identification to anyone who needs it. Mr. Holder is apparently unconcerned, as well, that the Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional.
It really makes you wonder how we’ve gotten to such a place—where the idea that providing proof that you are a citizen who has the right to vote is being represented by one of our political parties and their allies in the media as not merely a grossly unfair hardship, but evidence of racism and nefarious intent by the other party. It’s mind-boggling. One can’t help but wonder if those people secretly are fine with the idea of an unfair election, as long as it goes their way.
To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the securing of valid ID isn’t more of a challenge for people who are poor or otherwise on the margins of society. But the difficulties involved are being vastly overblown, along with the numbers of those affected. Those Democrats who are genuinely concerned about it—as opposed to those who are fanning the flames of irrational hysteria in order to defeat reasonable voter ID requirements—will be out there canvassing to find the people who need a ride, or who need assistance to obtain the ID. The election is nearly a year away—there’s plenty of time for legal citizens who need to acquire ID to do so, and for those who think this is a problem to be out there remedying it. If the NAACP, for instance, is so concerned, why aren’t they organizing to locate the people who need assistance and providing it, instead of lobbying the United Nations to condemn laws passed by U.S. state legislatures as human rights abuses? It beggars belief.
The people who are trying to demagogue this issue are deliberately creating the impression that the laws various states are enacting make the process difficult, on purpose, to deter people, and that is simply not true, something a little open-minded investigation would make evident. The SC law is a good example—an objection always cited is cost, so the ID is free. It should also be instructive that the RI voter ID law was passed with the support of black Democrat legislators. (Media response to that is to ignore it or, again, to smear them.)
If there’s one thing people of good will, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on, it’s that elections should be honest. Only living, legal voters should be able to cast a vote, and they should be able to cast only one vote. By all means, every effort should be made to ensure that those who qualify for proof of voter eligibility but don’t have it, can get it with the least amount of trouble and at no expense if they can’t afford it. But the claim that _any_ burden of proof of eligibility is unfair—never mind abuse—doesn’t pass either the common sense test, or the smell test.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who was unconcerned about members of the New Black Panthers standing at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, armed with billy clubs and telling several voters that they were “about to be ruled by the black man, cracker,” is using his office to block South Carolina’s recently enacted voter ID law, in part on the basis that voter ID requirements cause hardship to the poor, even though the law provides free identification to anyone who needs it. Mr. Holder is apparently unconcerned, as well, that the Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional.
It really makes you wonder how we’ve gotten to such a place—where the idea that providing proof that you are a citizen who has the right to vote is being represented by one of our political parties and their allies in the media as not merely a grossly unfair hardship, but evidence of racism and nefarious intent by the other party. It’s mind-boggling. One can’t help but wonder if those people secretly are fine with the idea of an unfair election, as long as it goes their way.
To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the securing of valid ID isn’t more of a challenge for people who are poor or otherwise on the margins of society. But the difficulties involved are being vastly overblown, along with the numbers of those affected. Those Democrats who are genuinely concerned about it—as opposed to those who are fanning the flames of irrational hysteria in order to defeat reasonable voter ID requirements—will be out there canvassing to find the people who need a ride, or who need assistance to obtain the ID. The election is nearly a year away—there’s plenty of time for legal citizens who need to acquire ID to do so, and for those who think this is a problem to be out there remedying it. If the NAACP, for instance, is so concerned, why aren’t they organizing to locate the people who need assistance and providing it, instead of lobbying the United Nations to condemn laws passed by U.S. state legislatures as human rights abuses? It beggars belief.
The people who are trying to demagogue this issue are deliberately creating the impression that the laws various states are enacting make the process difficult, on purpose, to deter people, and that is simply not true, something a little open-minded investigation would make evident. The SC law is a good example—an objection always cited is cost, so the ID is free. It should also be instructive that the RI voter ID law was passed with the support of black Democrat legislators. (Media response to that is to ignore it or, again, to smear them.)
If there’s one thing people of good will, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on, it’s that elections should be honest. Only living, legal voters should be able to cast a vote, and they should be able to cast only one vote. By all means, every effort should be made to ensure that those who qualify for proof of voter eligibility but don’t have it, can get it with the least amount of trouble and at no expense if they can’t afford it. But the claim that _any_ burden of proof of eligibility is unfair—never mind abuse—doesn’t pass either the common sense test, or the smell test.
Friday, November 11, 2011
American Heroes
Today I attended the Veterans Day ceremony at the National Cemetery in my town, Wilmington, North Carolina. Like all military cemeteries, it is beautiful--peaceful, plain, the orderly rows of matching headstones a reflection of the order which permeates military life. It is probably more beautiful than many such cemeteries, actually, because it is studded throughout with huge, old trees. The day was perfect, too--cool and sunny with enough breeze to keep the dozens of American flags flying.
A local middle school singing group performed, and during one song which I thought was an inappropriately perky and hip-shaking number for the occasion, I wandered away, down the road that runs down the middle of the cemetery. Two headstones, side by side, caught my eye because the last name was the same, although no alphabetical order existed. One of the men, born in 1899, had served as a private in WWI, and had died in February of 1953. The second, a veteran of the Korean war, was born in 1931 and had died in October of 1952, presumably in the midst of the conflict. Were they father and son, I wondered? Had the loss of a beloved 21-year-old son sent the older man to his own grave only months later? I'll likely never know.
But it reminded me vividly that the collective sacrifice of our armed forces is made up of thousands upon thousands of individual sacrifices, each story unique in some way. There's no paying back, no compensation for what is sometimes utterly crushing heartbreak. I thought, as I often do, about a man from Antioch, Illinois named John Peck.
Cpl. Peck was in Afghanistan in May of 2010, when he stepped on an IED as he acted as minesweeper for his men. He immediately lost both his legs and most of one arm, and yet, believe it or not, it actually got worse. He had picked up bacteria from the soil which invaded his body, and doctors had no choice but to amputate his only remaining limb. His home became Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he underwent dozens of surgeries to fight the bacteria, along with grueling physical therapy. His young wife left him. Honestly, I couldn't believe anyone would be glad to be alive under those conditions, and I felt relief and a little lightening of heart (not to mention profound awe and respect) after watching a video of him in which a strong spirit and a determination to live showed strong and clear. (I'm not sure now
what his current status is, as I haven't been able to find any recent information.)
I guess my point is that when stories like this surface, we are all sad, but the immediate reaction in some quarters is condemnation of the war itself, and the conclusion that this tragedy and all those like it were "for nothing." I'm not saying those people are wrong about the advisability of this war. Perhaps they're right. But what a thing to say to people like John Peck! For myself, I wish not one more American soldier had to die or be injured in that godforsaken place. But I'm also aware that some--including some who fight there--know a lot more about what's at stake than I do, and they think it's a necessary fight. So maybe they're the ones who are right; I simply don't know.
But the one thing I do know, is that Veterans Day should be a reminder that our own opinions of what the government decides to do should not affect our gratitude, respect, and duty to those who have fought and continue to fight. A common perception among a certain part of the population is that soldiers are 'victims'--of propaganda, of economic hardship, of government malfeasance, etc. I wish those people could listen to John Peck talk, after all that happened to him, about his pride in being a Marine, about knowing ever since he was a kid that he wanted to be a military man, because he saw that they even "held themselves" a different way--you could just see the difference in them.
That's no victim talking.
(In honor of these heroes, if your means allow, please consider a donation to Hope for the Warriors or another charity of your choice that serves vets and their families.)
A local middle school singing group performed, and during one song which I thought was an inappropriately perky and hip-shaking number for the occasion, I wandered away, down the road that runs down the middle of the cemetery. Two headstones, side by side, caught my eye because the last name was the same, although no alphabetical order existed. One of the men, born in 1899, had served as a private in WWI, and had died in February of 1953. The second, a veteran of the Korean war, was born in 1931 and had died in October of 1952, presumably in the midst of the conflict. Were they father and son, I wondered? Had the loss of a beloved 21-year-old son sent the older man to his own grave only months later? I'll likely never know.
But it reminded me vividly that the collective sacrifice of our armed forces is made up of thousands upon thousands of individual sacrifices, each story unique in some way. There's no paying back, no compensation for what is sometimes utterly crushing heartbreak. I thought, as I often do, about a man from Antioch, Illinois named John Peck.
Cpl. Peck was in Afghanistan in May of 2010, when he stepped on an IED as he acted as minesweeper for his men. He immediately lost both his legs and most of one arm, and yet, believe it or not, it actually got worse. He had picked up bacteria from the soil which invaded his body, and doctors had no choice but to amputate his only remaining limb. His home became Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he underwent dozens of surgeries to fight the bacteria, along with grueling physical therapy. His young wife left him. Honestly, I couldn't believe anyone would be glad to be alive under those conditions, and I felt relief and a little lightening of heart (not to mention profound awe and respect) after watching a video of him in which a strong spirit and a determination to live showed strong and clear. (I'm not sure now
what his current status is, as I haven't been able to find any recent information.)
I guess my point is that when stories like this surface, we are all sad, but the immediate reaction in some quarters is condemnation of the war itself, and the conclusion that this tragedy and all those like it were "for nothing." I'm not saying those people are wrong about the advisability of this war. Perhaps they're right. But what a thing to say to people like John Peck! For myself, I wish not one more American soldier had to die or be injured in that godforsaken place. But I'm also aware that some--including some who fight there--know a lot more about what's at stake than I do, and they think it's a necessary fight. So maybe they're the ones who are right; I simply don't know.
But the one thing I do know, is that Veterans Day should be a reminder that our own opinions of what the government decides to do should not affect our gratitude, respect, and duty to those who have fought and continue to fight. A common perception among a certain part of the population is that soldiers are 'victims'--of propaganda, of economic hardship, of government malfeasance, etc. I wish those people could listen to John Peck talk, after all that happened to him, about his pride in being a Marine, about knowing ever since he was a kid that he wanted to be a military man, because he saw that they even "held themselves" a different way--you could just see the difference in them.
That's no victim talking.
(In honor of these heroes, if your means allow, please consider a donation to Hope for the Warriors or another charity of your choice that serves vets and their families.)
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The biology of a bashed-in skull, aka just another day in school
I had intended to write something about my man, Herman Cain, and my new man, Newt Gingrich, but as I scanned the headlines an item about a fight in a Chicago high school caught my eye. Actually, it wasn't a fight at all. It was a beatdown. Another student filmed the attack with a cell phone.
A pair of sisters, one 17 and one 18, are punching the 14-year-old victim and slinging her around their Biology classroom. The sisters are both large; even in a 'fair fight' with only one of them as an opponent it's doubtful the younger girl could have prevailed. She is clearly just trying to stay on her feet. The sisters are using her long hair to hang onto her and, at one point, smash her head and face into a lab table. According to the news report, the victim sustained a concussion, a neck sprain, and multiple scratches and contusions. Unless it went unreported, there was no concrete reason for the sisters' animosity; the victim says that they told her she'd 'better answer them if they asked her a question,' and the victim's friend says, "they got angry and went ghetto on her."
The news report included an interview with another student who criticizes the teacher for failing to stop the assault, but it should be noted that the teacher appeared to be far smaller than the sisters and, one presumes, not in the habit of settling things with violence. She hovers briefly at the edge of the altercation but indeed doesn't try to stop it, and it's rather hard to blame her. A determined effort to break things up would almost certainly have resulted in physical injury to herself, and probably wouldn't have been successful, anyway. I broke up a couple of fights in my career by physically getting between the combatants, and realized when it was over that I was very fortunate not to have been hurt, possibly seriously. One incident left me with a grapefruit-sized bruise on my thigh.
There are too many issues here to count--race, possibly (the attackers were Black, the victim Hispanic) what's going on in classrooms that something like this could escalate to such a point in the first place, how the obvious lack of student and teacher safety affects learning, and so on. But ultimately, the only thing that really matters is how to stop it. Compare the following statements:
The victim's best friend, a freshman at the school, to NBC Chicago on Wednesday: "Every day there's a fight. Today there was a fight in Algebra."
Chicago Public School spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus, responding to reporters: "Chicago Public Schools does not tolerate violence among students in any way. The safety and security of our students is a top priority and we will take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that schools remain a safe environment for learning."
"Remain" a safe environment?? Sounds like that horse is already out of the barn. Whose view do you think is more accurate--a kid who is actually in school for seven or eight hours a day, or some (probably highly-paid) bureaucrat who spends most, if not all, her time in an administrative office? 'We do not tolerate violence among students in any way'? That's school bureaucracy speak for you. Clearly they _do_ tolerate violence because if they didn't, there wouldn't be so much of it. The reality is that in most places, to be actually expelled (and then it's often only for the year) a student has to bring a gun to school or get caught selling drugs. Even if a violent assault like this results in criminal charges, the student still comes back to school!
In the big picture, particularly when it comes to large, urban public schools, society is going to have to make a hard decision. Are the schools really in their stated business, or are they holding areas because we don't know what else to do with kids who are either uninterested in, or unable to benefit from, a genuine education?
If the answer is the first, then simply paying lip service to the idea of zero tolerance for violence must stop. A well-intentioned desire to 'keep kids in school' has resulted in this attack and way too many like it. No matter how egregious some kids' behavior is to others, no matter how egregious their disrespect and contempt for their teachers, they get to stay. So what happens? Their behavior and disrespect become even worse. Truly, I am sympathetic to the question of what happens to the kids who get kicked out, because in many cases their unacceptable behavior has been encouraged by becoming completely 'lost' over the years of their supposed education, and that is not their fault, but the system's. (One wonders about these two sisters--17 and 18 in a class that is usually freshman level--note the 14-year-old victim and her freshman best friend--but is required for graduation.) Nonetheless, that problem can't be solved by allowing chronic troublemakers or those who commit savage assaults to remain in school putting others at risk. Their prospects shouldn't trump those of the non-violent kids who could certainly thrive in a better environment.
A pair of sisters, one 17 and one 18, are punching the 14-year-old victim and slinging her around their Biology classroom. The sisters are both large; even in a 'fair fight' with only one of them as an opponent it's doubtful the younger girl could have prevailed. She is clearly just trying to stay on her feet. The sisters are using her long hair to hang onto her and, at one point, smash her head and face into a lab table. According to the news report, the victim sustained a concussion, a neck sprain, and multiple scratches and contusions. Unless it went unreported, there was no concrete reason for the sisters' animosity; the victim says that they told her she'd 'better answer them if they asked her a question,' and the victim's friend says, "they got angry and went ghetto on her."
The news report included an interview with another student who criticizes the teacher for failing to stop the assault, but it should be noted that the teacher appeared to be far smaller than the sisters and, one presumes, not in the habit of settling things with violence. She hovers briefly at the edge of the altercation but indeed doesn't try to stop it, and it's rather hard to blame her. A determined effort to break things up would almost certainly have resulted in physical injury to herself, and probably wouldn't have been successful, anyway. I broke up a couple of fights in my career by physically getting between the combatants, and realized when it was over that I was very fortunate not to have been hurt, possibly seriously. One incident left me with a grapefruit-sized bruise on my thigh.
There are too many issues here to count--race, possibly (the attackers were Black, the victim Hispanic) what's going on in classrooms that something like this could escalate to such a point in the first place, how the obvious lack of student and teacher safety affects learning, and so on. But ultimately, the only thing that really matters is how to stop it. Compare the following statements:
The victim's best friend, a freshman at the school, to NBC Chicago on Wednesday: "Every day there's a fight. Today there was a fight in Algebra."
Chicago Public School spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus, responding to reporters: "Chicago Public Schools does not tolerate violence among students in any way. The safety and security of our students is a top priority and we will take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that schools remain a safe environment for learning."
"Remain" a safe environment?? Sounds like that horse is already out of the barn. Whose view do you think is more accurate--a kid who is actually in school for seven or eight hours a day, or some (probably highly-paid) bureaucrat who spends most, if not all, her time in an administrative office? 'We do not tolerate violence among students in any way'? That's school bureaucracy speak for you. Clearly they _do_ tolerate violence because if they didn't, there wouldn't be so much of it. The reality is that in most places, to be actually expelled (and then it's often only for the year) a student has to bring a gun to school or get caught selling drugs. Even if a violent assault like this results in criminal charges, the student still comes back to school!
In the big picture, particularly when it comes to large, urban public schools, society is going to have to make a hard decision. Are the schools really in their stated business, or are they holding areas because we don't know what else to do with kids who are either uninterested in, or unable to benefit from, a genuine education?
If the answer is the first, then simply paying lip service to the idea of zero tolerance for violence must stop. A well-intentioned desire to 'keep kids in school' has resulted in this attack and way too many like it. No matter how egregious some kids' behavior is to others, no matter how egregious their disrespect and contempt for their teachers, they get to stay. So what happens? Their behavior and disrespect become even worse. Truly, I am sympathetic to the question of what happens to the kids who get kicked out, because in many cases their unacceptable behavior has been encouraged by becoming completely 'lost' over the years of their supposed education, and that is not their fault, but the system's. (One wonders about these two sisters--17 and 18 in a class that is usually freshman level--note the 14-year-old victim and her freshman best friend--but is required for graduation.) Nonetheless, that problem can't be solved by allowing chronic troublemakers or those who commit savage assaults to remain in school putting others at risk. Their prospects shouldn't trump those of the non-violent kids who could certainly thrive in a better environment.
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