The health care debate debacle

Every person in this country should have the right of access to quality, affordable health care.

No caveats, no conditions, no strings. Everyone. Health care is and should be treated as a fundamental right. Instead, certain individuals and groups in my poor, confused country are trying to make the opposite argument. They're doing it through the use of scare tactics, gross distortions, and blatant lies. And all the while, they're willfully stirring up fearful, ignorant masses and egging them on toward massive public disruptions and even violence, making meaningful debate about this incredibly crucial issue almost impossible.

It's fucking despicable.

The most vocally anti-health care reform Republicans have decided that their own political ambition and desire to see Obama taken down a peg or two trumps the well-being of their fellow Americans. That's the cold, hard truth of the matter. Petty backstabbing and one-upsmanship has taken precedence over honest discussion and work toward bettering the health care situation for their country.

How we've allowed this to happen is beyond me. There's plenty of blame to go around: Democrats too spineless to stand up for what's right or make clear what's really in the bill, politicians too willing to sacrifice work for the great good in the name of ambition, everyday folk too susceptible to the bald-faced lies and fear mongering, a media too ready to spend more time covering nonsense than issues and events that really matter.

The underlying issues are even more complicated. It's fairly obvious that questions of race and class insecurity permeate much of this debate. Selfishness, ignorance, pride, arrogance, and greed play their part, too.

But I want to scream at the top of my lungs that the health and well-being of our fellow citizens should always trump that sort of shit. Always. And how anyone can allow themselves to be distracted from that fact...I spend more time shaking my head these days than not.

• Upwards of 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.
• 8.6 million of those are children.
• The United States has the second worse infant mortality rate in the developed world.
• Prescription drug prices are some of the highest of any industrialized nation.
• More than 60% of bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical bills. (Sidenote: I have personal experience with this, and it's a major sore spot to this day - bankruptcy due to the care of a dying family member, or any other medical situation, should never happen)
  
• Yet more startling statistics here.

The numbers are not good. The personal stories of those effected are even worse. So it should be glaringly obvious to most everyone that serious reform of the health care system needs to be undertaken right now if we're to avoid an even more massive economic and social meltdown.

And yet, we see these angry, sometimes disturbed, shouting, bizarre-sign-wielding protesters crashing town hall meetings and hijacking the national debate. Some have come up with their own reasons for hating the health care bill, many have swallowed the various ridiculous assertions coming out of the GOP. Almost all of the accusations are easily proved false.

Via PolitiFact.com:

• A "death panel" that decides whether you're too old or enfeebled to get care? Not so much.
• Abortions will be taxpayer subsidized! Crock of shite.
• We'll go to a UK-style system of socialized health care where old/disabled people will be denied care! Um...that's a big 'no' - and the UK is miffed at the accusations.
• Illegal immigrants will be given free health care! Not quite (though they should).

And on and on.

None of this is to say that the current bill is perfect - single fucking payer, anyone? - but it's a sight better than what we've got now and at least a starting point from which to do better. We won't get anywhere good, however, if the current reliance on irrational screaming matches and totally untrue statements from opposing lawmakers continues.

We need to decide, as a nation, what's more important: Meaningful debate about and changes made to our health care system so that no one has to go bankrupt because of needed medical care, or selfish and misplaced pride with a side of sensationalism?

The choice we make will have long-lasting repercussions, and probably change everything.

If Obama is secretly from Kenya, then we all are

In honor of the recent spate of birther madness:

Police acting stupidly? NEVER!*

*Except when they do.

Jon Stewart recently (rightly) pointed out how ridiculous it is that the mainstream media has been focusing so heavily on President Obama's response to one of the final questions he received after his recent press conference pushing health care reform. After all, the purpose of the meeting was supposed to be to put heavier focus on the state of heath care in our country, an incredibly important--and often dire--issue for most, if not all, Americans.

The latest U.S. census placed the number of uninsured Americans at 45 million. 9 million of those uninsured are children. Half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. Three-quarters of those filings are people with health insurance (you can include my own family in that statistic). It goes on and on.

Yet despite all of that, we're bickering about Obama's comments regarding the recent arrest of Harvard history professor Henry Louis Gates at his own home, even after he had presented proper ID to police.

Asked what he thought about the situation, Obama made the perhaps impolitic but no less honest remark that the Cambridge police responsible for the arrest "acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

Unsurprisingly, a chorus of righteous indignation (mostly by white, conservative voices) has risen to condemn the statement and accuse both Obama and Gates of racism and anti-police sentiment.

The Village Voice has put together an excellent rundown of the frothy-mouthed antics of the rightwing blogosphere here, and I highly suggest taking a look. It does a nice job of highlighting just how outrageous and ridiculous many of the pro-police/anti-Obama arguments are (it even highlights one of the lowlights of the Wisconsin blogosphere, Freedom Eden). One choice example:

Actually, rejoined Debra Moore of Exposing Liberal Lies, that may have been Obama's plan: "Could it be a lingering resentment for white people that Obama has carried since his youth?" She asserts that his book Dreams of My Father proved that "Obama was obsessed with the issue of race. Add that to his twenty years as a student of Jeremiah Wright, and the result is one angry black man. Isn't it interesting that Obama is friends with a Harvard professor who is clearly a racist himself?" (This last bit proven, presumably, by Gates' arrest.)

But something deep down inside tells me that if police came to any of these bloggers' own homes, accused them of breaking into it, asked for their ID, and then insisted on arresting them even after they produced it for "disorderly behaviour", they wouldn't exactly shut up and take it.

And if they did--if they're so unquestioningly loyal to every police officer in the country no matter what--then where on earth do they get off calling themselves patriots? Apparently a police state is no problem so long as it's only used against their political and ideological opponents.

As imprudent as Obama's remarks may have been, I'm still inclined to agree with them. I am not a police hater, and I don't know Sgt. Crowley and therefor cannot pass judgment on his actual character. Still, based off all accounts of the incident, I can say that I think his actions were stupid. A trained police officer should better know how to deal with an instance like this. So Gates was supposedly talking back - he was being (falsely) accused of breaking into his own home and threatened with arrest even after proving he was who he claimed to be! It should be obvious, then, why he might be a little bit annoyed. Arresting him for said annoyance is ridiculous, not to mention illegal.

I have a lot of respect for cops in general for doing a job that is, by all accounts, incredibly difficult and often dangerous. There are, I believe, more fine, upstanding police in this country than not. But I'm also not so naive as to believe that no bad apples, or just apples that sometimes make poor decisions, occasionally make it onto the force.

In fact, I've dealt with them personally over my lifetime. One instance was so abhorrent that it soured me on an entire city's police force for many years, and intensely strengthened my resolve to speak up and act out on improving how sexual assault is dealt with by authorities.

Point is, like any stereotype or generalization, labeling all police officers either perfect and infallible or piggish and fascist is a fool's errand, and one that's liable to lead us toward ruin as a society.

Further, I have no idea if race played a role in this particular incident - but to write off the very possibility is to do a great, ignorant disservice to the hard lessons of our country's history. The sad truth is that we still have a long way to go before anyone can claim that the mistakes of the past have no bearing on our present. It's not "white liberal guilt" to admit to that, either. It's just honesty.

(h/t illusory tenant)

The healthy man does not torture others

I feel a little sick to my stomach. It's not as though many of the facts contained within the recently released Bush-era torture memos are new to us. Several of the techniques described within had already been admitted to, sometimes rather flippantly, by the last administration and its officials.

Still, seeing so many of them spelled out with such clinical--and often blatantly hypocritical--language is difficult to absorb without being left with some nausea.

I applaud the ACLU for doggedly pursuing the release of these secret memos, and I applaud the Obama administration for going ahead and making them public, despite heavy pressure from vested interests like Gen. Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey and several others who claim the move will harm the country's ability to gather intelligence.

But I am more committed than ever to making sure those people who ordered and justified these disgusting and illegal interrogation methods are held accountable for their actions. I can understand Obama's decision to "assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

After all, prosecuting individual operatives for these actions would be both time-intensive and not at all a way to get at the root of the problem. So I sincerely hope that the rumors are true, and neither Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder's statements on the matter close the door on going after those people truly responsible for these reprehensible techniques. Obama specifically said:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

If he's just talking about the individual CIA agents, fine, but I would have to vehemently disagree that "nothing will be gained" by properly investigating and, if need be (and I suspect there will be a great need), prosecuting those officials responsible for ordering, drafting, and justifying torture.

What a farce we'd make of the rule of law if we simply let bygones be bygones is cases as egregious as this. These memos strongly implicate those behind them of war crimes, and there can be no hope of regaining any moral authority in the world if we do not hold the appropriate people truly accountable.

Glenn Greenwald, as usual, lays it out quite well:

But the decision of whether to prosecute is not Obama's to make; ultimately, it is Holder's and/or a Special Prosecutor's. More importantly, Obama can only do so much by himself. The Obama administration should, on its own, initiate criminal proceedings, but the citizenry also has responsibilities here. These acts were carried out by our Government, and if we are really as repulsed by them as we claim, then the burden is on us to demand that something be done.

You can sign a petition urging Holder to assign a Special Prosecutor for this case here.

And you can speak out against the use of torture, the tricky linguistic maneuvering used to justify certain types of torture as not really being all that bad (I'd like to see Cheney volunteer for a nice waterboarding session), and allowing those responsible to get off scot-free.

If we're going to bother having standards in this country, why not do everything we can to hold to them?

(photo courtesy remuz [Jack the Ripper] on Flickr)

Change fail

As a friend of mine sometimes likes to say when something outrageous and silly happens, "Really? We're doin' this now?"

It appears that the Obama Administration's Department of Justice has not only embraced some of the more ridiculous claims of the Bush Administration when it comes to the wiretapping and surveillance of domestic communications, but has actually gone even further.

Not cool.

Glenn Greenwald lays it out like this:

...EFF -- which was the lead counsel in the lawsuits against the telecoms -- thereafter filed suit, in October, 2008, against the Bush administration and various Bush officials for illegally spying on the communications of Americans. They were seeking to make good on the promise made by Congressional Democrats: namely, that even though lawsuits against telecoms for illegal spying will not be allowed any longer, government officials who broke the law can still be held accountable.

But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government's first response to EFF's lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush's NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

This is absolutely unacceptable. Obama and his staff have already done a lot of good for this country, rolling back many of the more egregious pieces of legislation passed under Bush and pushing for many progressive programs, but that by no means buys them a free pass to get crazy in other areas.

And crazy they've gotten, in terms of basically reaffirming and actually expanding upon every single one of the Bush DoJ's radical secrecy powers.

There is simply no reason whatsoever that the government needs to be or should be allowed to spy on its own citizens without warrant. The sheer volume of information gathered through such means alone is grounds for criticism, as no amount of man or computing power could possibly sort through it all to find the potentially relevant tidbits. But even more important is the issue of legality and civil rights. We the People have the right not to be eavesdropped on at the whim of government.

And yet? That's exactly what they have been, and likely will continue to be doing. The insult to injury is that the government is now saying that we have no recourse to hold them accountable for these illegal actions. It's essentially the DoJ giving American citizens the ol' Scalia va fanculo.

Greenwald again sums it up well:

Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President's DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President's actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts -- such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs -- would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because "its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets."

What's being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it's being claimed with a straight face. It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Heck, even Keith Olbermann is deeply displeased with the move, and he's been one of Obama's biggest cheerleaders. You should know you've messed up pretty royally when you've pissed off such a loyal supporter.

So are we going to sit back and continue to allow this sort of gross violation of our rights to go unchecked? I sure as hell hope not. Thankfully, we've got organizations like the EFF and ACLU getting our backs, but it's going to take all of us standing up and speaking out, working to hold the appropriate people appropriately accountable, to make the big difference.

Otherwise, we have no right to call ourselves a democracy.

Of gardens and plants

Two pieces of good news today, which is especially welcome given how every morning, when my alarm goes off, NPR comes on detailing further economic woes and such. The first item I'll just mention briefly, but the second I'd like to delve into a bit deeper (as I promised to do in a previous posts' comments section).

First up: Official indication that a White House organic garden, if not a farm, is an entirely probable eventuality. Neil Hamilton, an adviser to USDA head Tom Vilsack, was heard saying:

I believe that by this summer there will be a garden – another garden, a vegetable garden – on the White House lawn...I believe the Obamas are committed to that. It’s a big idea, and its gonna happen. During the campaign, going around shaking peoples’ hands, he never got sick once. He was eating well, and it could have to do with having an organic chef with him. This is someone who 'gets' nutrition.

Maybe Claire Strader will get her Obama Administration post after all, even if it's just as official White House Gardener instead of Farmer. In any case, this is good news.

Secondly, our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, made it clear in a recent press conference that, under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department will no longer raid places that distribute medical marijuana in states where such things are legal.

Under Bush, the JD had been instructed to carry out the rather draconian raids based on state law conflicting with federal law on the matter. So this new policy is definitely a step in the right direction, even if we, as a country, still have a long way to go on this issue.

Simply put, US drug policy as it specifically relates to marijuana is outdated, misdirected, highly flawed, and costly - both in terms of the cash required to enforce, and in the sense of pushing its cultivation and distribution underground, feeding into an often violent culture of organized crime (Prohibition, anyone?).

I am not a pot smoker. Frankly, I don't smoke anything, as I think it's gross. But you know what? I've still done the research, and I've talked to the people most effected, and I've come to the same conclusion as that of thousands of other, more well-informed and qualified individuals. We need to, at the very least, decriminalize the stuff.

As most advocates of relaxing laws related to pot will readily admit, marijuana is not an entirely harmless substance. But it still poses similar, if not lesser, risks to that of the use of alcohol and tobacco. As those things are legal but heavily regulated, so should marijuana be.

The US spends billions of dollars a year on the arrest and incarceration of people for pot related offenses. According to the most recent set of statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half of all drug related arrests in the country are made for marijuana related offenses. Furthermore:

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

Decriminalizing pot wouldn't get rid of all of those offenders. Some of them are desperate or nasty sorts who will find other ways to make money, no doubt. But I think a pretty solid argument can be made that such a move would drastically reduce the overall number of arrests and incarcerations. The associated savings combined with tax revenues from good regulation would stand to make/save a decent amount of money for the country/tax payers.

Part of the problem that leads to our current, misguided policies toward pot is the sheer amount of misinformation that's been fed to the public for the past century. The stigmatization of the "demon weed" by moneyed interests has been well documented but somewhat poorly marketed.

The propaganda campaign aimed toward instilling a sense of fear and menace in regards to this plant has ranged, over time, from the ridiculous to the sneakily mundane, but much of what we've been taught has been either outright falsehood or very stretched truth. Worse, because of that atmosphere, truly scientific medical studies of its use were almost non-existent until very recently.

The real casualties of all this aren't to do with perpetually stoned hippies, but rather with those who stand to really benefit from its medicinal uses, and those who've come up with a whole slew of ways in which to use its non-intoxicating counterpart, hemp (read a comprehensive explanation of the plant and its many uses here).

Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, health food, and fuel. It is...one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It also runs parallel with the "Green Future" objectives that are becoming increasingly popular. Hemp requires little to no pesticides, no herbicides, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product polychlorinated dibensodioxins, popularly known as dioxins, which is carcinogenic, and contributes to deforestation), cosmetics, and plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily. The strongest chemical needed to whiten the already light hemp paper is non-toxic hydrogen peroxide.

While some inroads have been made in certain states through the passage of bills making it legal for farmers to grow industrial hemp, there are still several hurdles to jump and a ways to go before the practice is legal and commonplace throughout the country. In the meantime, we're missing out on a valuable, sustainable, low-impact source for all sorts of goods.

And medical marijuana holds the promise of extreme pain relief, sleep assistance, and appetite increase (among other things) in patients suffering from a range of maladies. Peer reviewed studies have shown this to be the case, even in the face of continued ignorance on the subject by those making the laws.

I am only somewhat hopeful that the new administration will take a serious, scientifically-based look at and approach to US drug policy. We need to do our part to hold them to this, and to see that action is taken from the ground up, too - starting with our own communities. Such action makes economic, medical, and social justice sense.

The new Victory Garden

The movement to convince the Obamas to plant an organic Victory Garden on the White House grounds is growing, and a Madison-area farmer has been nominated for the theoretical position of official White House Farmer by one of the groups pushing the notion.

I am extremely excited by this idea (it has come up before), and sincerely hope the new First Family will take up the cause. Having an organic garden on the premises would not only provide fresh produce to the White House and, potentially, surrounding food pantries, but also serve as a powerful example to the rest of the country.

During World War II, the White House planted a Victory Garden and encouraged citizens to do the same, all as part of helping the country to attain a sense of food security during a time of crisis.

Now we're all faced with a growing threat to our our food supplies, both in terms of quality and availability. In accordance with the "teach a man to fish" line of thinking, I think encouraging and supporting community agriculture projects is one of the more important movements of the day. So I'm signing petitions and raising my voice and hoping that our new president heeds the call.

You can learn more and lend your support to the cause at the following websites: Eat the View, White House Farmer, and TheWhoFarm. Green thumbs for all!

History is right now

Today, I won't be on the Mall in D.C. with the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people who've descended to watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. I can't say I wouldn't have loved to have been present for it, but I'm happy to report that my place of business will be giving all of us working saps a paid break and a big projection screen on which to watch the ceremony. And free apple pie! (Seriously, I love my company.)

No matter where you are today--on the Mall, at home, at work, across the globe--you can't help but feel the weighty and emotional sense of history-in-the-making. There are so many reasons for it: the first non-white president in US history, the first African American, the first person of mixed race. It's also about a country and a world exhausted by 8 years of disastrous American leadership, desperate for real, positive change, for a new direction--a better, more sustainable economy, comprehensive healthcare, improved education for all, real care for the environment...and the list goes on.

In short, this Obama fellow has a pretty heavy burden to carry on his shoulders. The hopes and dreams of millions swirl around his head, and as much as I'm gunning for his to be the positively transformative administration that everyone is claiming it could be, I'm also of the opinion that this change transcends one single man. We're all involved, we're all responsible, we're all important. Obama and his team cannot make things better all on their own. And they're going to mess things up from time to time. We need to call them out when they make mistakes, and we need to support them when they do right. Most importantly, we all need to stand up and do our part to make the wished for (and needed) improvements to our world.

So enjoy this momentous day, this joyous occassion when people from all walks of life, from across the world come together to celebrate this accomplishment. Then keep that sense of hope and happiness in your heart, and get to work!


(P.S. The Badger Herald included a very nice piece about yours truly and that there book of mine in their back-to-school issue today. Check it out here.)

Thoughtful economic stimulus package needed, emphasis on 'thoughtful'

The economy is ill. We all know it. Several hundred point fluctuations in the stock markets have become so common place that they barely raise eyebrows anymore. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. Too many homes foreclosed. Banks and large corporations are going belly up. The auto industry is on life support.

President-elect Barack Obama has called for the creation and implementation of a massive economic stimulus package, something on par with (or greater than) the New Deal policies of the 1930's. He wants hundreds of billions of dollars to go toward unfreezing the markets and creating enough new jobs to get us all back on track again. A major attribute of those jobs, Obama says, should be that they are in "green" sectors of the economy.

Because the environment is ill, too.

Some people don't believe that we can both right the economy and the environment at the same time, that focusing on conservation and sustainability will only hinder the markets and make things worse for us all.

What many other people are saying, though, is that we can have it both ways. We'll all need to ante up and kick in, work hard, to make it happen--but it can happen.

The November/December issue of Mother Jones includes a series of articles dealing with this very conundrum, and they're all well worth the read. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from them, though, is this number: 350.

And what does that mean, precisely? James Hansen, the NASA scientist who in 1988 was one of the first public voices to warn that burning fossil fuels was warming the earth, recently published a paper in which he (and several coauthors) laid out the case for "Target Atmospheric CO₂" levels. It says:

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.

The Mother Jones article goes on to clarify:

Get that? Let me break it down for you. For most of the period we call human civilization, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hovered at about 275 parts per million. Let's call that the Genesis number, or depending on your icons, the Buddha number, the Confucius number, the Shakespeare number. Then, in the late 18th century, we started burning fossil fuel in appreciable quantities, and that number started to rise. The first time we actually measured it, in the late 1950s, it was already about 315. Now it's at 385, and growing by more than 2 parts per million annually.

And it turns out that that's too high. We never had a number before, so we never knew whether we'd crossed a red line. We half guessed and half hoped that the danger zone might be 450 or 550 parts per million—those were still a little ways in the distance. Therefore we could get away with thinking like the young Augustine: "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet." Not anymore. We have been told by science that we're already over the line.

Scary as that is, it's not an impossible goal. Some might balk at how much of a challenge it might be, or how much reaching that number will alter the economic world as we know it. But, as always, I ask this: Would you rather the alternative? A world toxic to life itself? I hope not.

The fears of the greedy souls so thoroughly entrenched and invested in a fossil fuel dependent society are well-founded, and frankly I'd like to see their worst nightmares come true--A world powered by human innovation that leads to sustainable, renewable sources of energy and technologies.

Obama has the right idea when he calls for a vast stimulus package that focuses heavily on creating "green jobs" - but the devil's in the details.

His promotion of so-called "clean coal" is, unfortunately, misguided. Coal is not and is not likely ever to be clean. From its extraction through habitat destroying processes, to its harnessing through pollutant spewing factories, coal is far from the answer.

We should also be wary of the calls for more infrastructure spending. While it's incredibly important to upgrade our aging bridge, sewage, and power transmission systems, we shouldn't allow expensive and unnecessary road building projects to weasel their way into the game, too.

Unfortunately, all too many state governors and mayors have sent reams of just such proposals off to the Obama administration. Right here in Wisconsin, Gov. Doyle is requesting funds for a much disputed plan to expand I-94 from Milwaukee to the Illinois border. John Norquist, CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism, writes that:

Though it will achieve only minimal reductions in drive times, it is projected to add more than 200,000 automobile miles per day. Say hello to 130,000 pounds in new daily carbon emissions (assuming the average miles-per-gallon of cars on the road climbs to 30). It’s the kind of project Exxon might dream up to get cars back on the road after seven unprecedented months of declining driving.

That's not the direction in which we want to go if we want any chance at getting our emissions down to the recommended 350.

We should instead be focusing on developing better mass transit systems, like the proposed Midwest commuter railway that would link cities like Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Things like that would get more cars off the road while helping a wider range of people to get from city to city, all the while cutting down on emissions and creating jobs (we'll need people to build, operate, and maintain those rails, after all).

Intentional, well-thought out urban infill would help, too, making more people less dependent on their cars to get them to their jobs, grocery stores, schools, etc. It would free up more land for conservation, and for sustainable farming that could serve local communities.

We need to make a serious, concerted push to pump more money into those industries and organizations working to innovate greener modes of transportation and energy. Right now, alternatives and renewables only receive a pittance in terms of tax incentives and government grants, while the oil, coal, and natural gas industries sit pretty and fat. Our priorities need to pull a 180.

And in the meantime, we need to put a hard cap on the amount of CO₂ our nation releases, heavily taxing those industries that exceed set limits (and making them pay for permits to do so). The companies would then, presumably, pass those extra expenses on to consumers, who would likely cut their usage dramatically.

To offset the burden placed on the consumer, however, the government could take some of the money earned from the industry payments for their emissions, and maybe money from a gas tax as well, and give it back to us regular folk by way of a monthly check (or something similar), then invest the remainder in helping create newer, cleaner, more affordable means of powering our lives in the long-run.

There are many opportunities to go about this the right way, and just as many to go about it the wrong way. We have lots of smart, thoughtful people out there working on the problems right now. What we lack is the national (and international) willpower and cooperation to properly fund their efforts, and to see this through to the hopefully less bitter end.

We can hope that an Obama administration understands that, and acts on it--but we also need to make sure they do. Hold them accountable. Speak up. Don't allow yourself to be cowed by pretty rhetoric or the easy path. Make it happen. We have to, now, before the pendulum swings so far out and up that there's nowhere to go but crashing down.


(h/t: Sprawled Out)

The Definition of Marriage

I have been thinking long and hard about Obama's selection of Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. It's hard not to take it as a slap in the face to the LGBT community, and those who've fought for their equal rights in general. But it's also hard not to see it as a purely political maneuver. Warren is, after all, one of the more palatable of the evangelical super-pastors, what with his heavier focus on poverty and environmental issues. And Obama is, after all, a politician hoping to draw in a larger coalition of supporters. If you're going to appeal to the conservative, evangelical base without completely alienating your more liberal supporters, Warren may seem like the smart choice.

I can see all of that, and I'll be the first to point it out when people start raving about how ridiculous they think Warrengate is - and yet, I also agree with them.

We're talking about the fundamental rights and equality of our fellow citizens here. It is not something that should be left to the whims of political tactics or fickle majorities. At the same time, though, we don't want to completely ostracize those who disagree with our beliefs. We want them to come over to our side. It is difficult, however, to balance a no-bull approach to attaining equal rights with the patient, educational, compassionate approach needed to bring more people into the fold.

After all, it is quite difficult to understand how and why some folks continue to wish to deny basic rights to their fellow man.

Warren is an interesting case, and somewhat illustrative of the larger anti-gay marriage movement these days. He has stated, on record, that he thinks of gay marriage as being synonymous with pedophilia and bestiality, which is about as ridiculous and insulting as it gets.*

Worse, in responding to an interview with Beliefnet wherein he equated gay relationships with pedophilia and bestiality, he went semantic and claimed that:

...he didn't mean to say that gay relationships are like incest and pedophilia, just that gay marriage is. "I was not saying those relationships are the same thing", he says, adding that "I'm opposed to any redefinition of the definition of marriage."

And there's the buzz phrase: "redefinition of marriage." What folks who keep trotting this defense out fail to grasp, no matter how many times it's pointed out to them, is that marriage has been redefined hundreds of times throughout history and across cultures. Marriage today is not even the same thing that it was 50-100 years ago, when women were still predominantly expected to take their husband's name, get handed off by their fathers, have few rights over their children in the case of divorce (if even allowed to divorce in the first place), etc. Heck, a woman wasn't even allowed to say "no" to sex with her husband and have it be considered rape if he forced her into it anyway.

Things change. And they should change. I, for one, have no desire to live in a society where women are treated as property, with no say in how a marriage progresses, no control over her own body, and even no control over just how many wives her husband might decide to take. That's traditional marriage, so you'll excuse me if I have to laugh when people still make that argument.

Unless that's what they secretly want back. In which case, we have even less common ground than I thought, and this is a much larger problem.

Ultimately, I believe that religious marriage should be left entirely up to the individuals and churches involved. You can marry (or not) whoever you like, but it's not going to be recognized on a federal or state level. For all of the actual rights and regulations, we should really stick to a federal civil unions type agreement for all couples, gay and straight. Keep church and state separate, you know?

Thing is, I suspect at least some of the people crowing about "traditional marriage" wouldn't like that solution, either, because deep down, they're just plum uncomfortable with gay folks in general. That's why their surface arguments don't make any sense. They're not being honest, and instead grasping at slightly less inflammatory straws. Frankly, I wish they'd just come out and say what they mean, because at least that way, we'd be able to more effectively deal with the real issues: homophobia and fear.

I'm not happy that Obama chose Warren to give the invocation, and I suspect there were better choices out there, but it's not a deal-breaker, either. I have to hope that, in addition to the political maneuvering involved, Obama did this as a way to extend compassion even to those who disagree with us--which is an important part of the march toward true equality. We must remember, though, that while we shouldn't hate or cause violence toward those with different viewpoints, we should also refuse to compromise on that equality. We can maintain a sense of civility and a loud, strong, proud voice for change, all at the same time. It may not be easy, but it is possible--and, I would argue, necessary.


*Equating things like pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy with same-sex marriage is not only insulting, but also extremely fallacious. The former arrangements cannot be consensual, being that they involve minors or animals (who we define as being unable to give consent) - or in the case of polygamy, are unequal and sexist situations wherein a man basically owns several women. Same-sex marriage, on the other hand, is a consensual agreement between two adults who are not immediately related (by blood) to one another. So you can argue until you're blue in the face about how "unnatural" you think it is, but you cannot argue that gay marriage is anything at all like pedophilia, etc.

Afghanistan, we (really) hardly knew ye

Have you ever read an article or story about a subject that really made you take a moment and think to yourself, "Damn, I don't know what I thought I knew about that"?

I recently came across just such an article. "How We Lost the War We Won: A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan" by Nir Rosen turned out to be an incredible eye-opener for me.

An American reporter granted nearly unprecedented access to some of the most off-limits part of that country, Rosen relates a story of a far more nationalistic than fundamentalist resurgent Taliban--one even open to women in schools and jobs--and a situation that cannot be "won" through military means.

I urge you to read it. Go on, I'll wait.

A taste:

With the Bush administration focused on the war in Iraq, money poured into Afghanistan from Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, who were eager to maintain a second front against the American invaders. The Taliban — once an isolated and impoverished group of religious students who knew little about the rest of the world and cared only about liberating their country from oppressive warlords — are now among the best-armed and most experienced insurgents in the world, linked to a global movement of jihadists that stretches from Pakistan and Iraq to Chechnya and the Philippines.

But this isn't a Bush bashing piece. Rosen gets down in the dirt and dust with the people of Afghanistan, literally risking his life to bring this story back to the rest of the world. And his main point seems to be that merely throwing more troops, more brawn at the problem is not going to fix much of anything.

"More troops are not the answer," a senior United Nations official in Kabul tells me. "You will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman." It is a point echoed in dozens of off-the-record interviews I conducted in Kabul with leading Western diplomats, security experts, former mujahedeen and Taliban commanders, and senior officials with the U.N. and prominent aid organizations. All agree that the situation is, in the words of one official, "incredibly bleak."

...

As one top official with a Western aid organization put it, "We're simply not up to the task of success in Afghanistan. I'm increasingly unsure about a way forward — except that we should start preparing our exit strategy."

The key line, and my inferred moral to Rosen's story, is this:

"This can't be solved other than by talking to the Taliban," says a top diplomat in Kabul. A leading aid official adds that it is important to understand the ideological goal of the Taliban: "They don't have an international-terrorist agenda — they have an Afghanistan agenda. We might not agree with their agenda for the country, but that's not our war."

It's a tough pill to swallow. I'm the polar opposite of a fan of any regime or ruling power that oppresses any of the people over whom it holds sway. I don't agree with conservative Islamic doctrine, or any doctrine, that subjugates women. But Afghanistan is not my country to rule. It is not anyone but Afghani's to rule.

The trick, of course, lies in making sure that Afghanis, all Afghanis, have an equal and unthreatened voice in those ruling decisions. Part of that does, I believe, require outside involvement, but much more in the form of international aid for infrastructure rebuilding, schools, security training, and know-how for a whole host of programs and problems. Not so much with the armies and weapons.

It was, after all, the US and Soviet Union that provided the region with much of its military training and armament. I would argue that it is then up to us to help them recover from all of that, but not by repeating past mistakes. Like the man said, you will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman.

Crass, but you get the point.

What's really interesting to see is how that country's government is now slowly flexing its independent muscle, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of the end of the Bush administration. Just today, the Karzai government made what's being called a "surprising reversal" and agreed to sign on, with 100 other countries, to a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs. The United States, it should be noted, has refused to sign the treaty and had been urging Afghanistan, one of the countries worst effected by the bombs, to follow suit.

Whether Karzai's move is purely political or not, it's impressive and important. Cluster bombs, much like modern nuclear weapons, are, in my opinion, completely unneccesarry tools of barbarous overkill. And the people they most hurt--regular Afghani citizens--are who we should all be listening to anyway.

What this all comes down to, I think, is the same moral of the story that we've learned (or were supposed to have learned) from Iraq. More often than not, the people who actually live in a place are the ones who best know what that place needs and how its people live. Even with the best of intentions, an outside power that swoops in and attempts to force change through violence is destined to wreak havoc and, usually, fail in its ultimate goals.

The US wanted to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan as part of their larger effort to "contain the spread of communism". They succeeded at that, but in the long run provided training and weapons to people like Osama bin Laden, who would go on to return the favor by helping to kill thousands of people on 9/11.

The US wanted to prevent the Islamic Revolution happening in Iran from spreading into Iraq and other nearby countries, and so threw its support behind Iraq during the '80-'88 conflict. In so doing, they helped supply the regime of Saddam Hussein with many of the weapons and intelligence it would go on to use against our own forces.

We have to stop supporting dictators and regimes simply because it seems convenient to our country's own selfish goals at the time. It always comes back to haunt us in the long term, which is a tense we seem to have a difficult time thinking in. We also have a difficult time asking for help and advice from the people most likely to know what's really up: the locals. And we are far, far too quick to rush toward force and violence as means to our ends.

I thought I knew a thing or two about Afghanistan and the Taliban. But things, as they are wont to do, change or are not what they at first appeared to be--and we all need to work to keep our minds open and flexible to keep up with the times. We need to really listen to the Afghani people to find out what they want, and then stick to that plan. Sorry Mr. Obama, but "more troops" isn't going to win that war. Through arrogance and incompetence, we've already lost it. Now's the time for finding a way to lend a hand in securing a meaningful peace--and to give up the reins of power and control over anyone but ourselves.

A torn heart

I watched the returns roll in with a festive and like-minded crowd last night at the High Noon Saloon, and admit that I found myself getting misty-eyed on several occasions.

When the camera coverage on CNN cut to images of the Rev. Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes, I almost lost my composure completely. I haven't agreed with everything he's done and said over the years, but still I have a great deal of respect for the greater fight he's been fighting. And here is a man who walked beside Martin Luther King Jr., and now he gets to see the election of this country's first African American president. Amazing.

Too, it's very nice to be on the winning side of a national election for the first time in my voting career.

We all deserve to feel really good, to revel in this massively historic accomplishment. But still, not to rain on any parades, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Obama said it himself in his victory speech last night. It's going to be an uphill battle. We have far better tools and leadership with which to see that battle through now, but it's still not going to be easy.

With the new-found Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature here in Wisconsin, and a strengthening of those majorities at the national level, Democrats must now kick into high gear and get things done. And we, their constituents, must hold them accountable and push them to do the right thing. It's often very tempting for the majority party to just run roughshod, more focused on assuaging their own egoes and selfish desires than on actually working for a better country for all of us. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.

And while we're at it, let's do something at the national level to actually fulfill the promise of equal rights for all under the law. Last night saw one giant step forward for equality, and several state-level steps back.

In California, for instance, Proposition 8 looks to have passed by a slim margin, stripping the rights of LGBT people across the state and (hopefully only temporarily) extinguishing the light of one of the great beacons of fairness in this country. It also throws into limbo around 18,000 same-sex marriages that have been conducted over the past 4 1/2 months.

I want you to imagine, if you can, waking up one morning to find that your fellow citizens have voted to revoke your marriage license, simply because your idea of love differed from theirs. I cannot even begin to understand how heart-rending this must be for all those couples who thought finally, finally, they were able to enjoy the same rights as everyone else. To know that so many people still have such a fundamental misunderstanding and fear of something as simple as the love you have for your partner. To realize that, after so much gained ground, you've once again been pushed back into the muck.

It's time to up our game, then--to launch a nationwide campaign to garauntee equal rights for all just as we did to rid ourselves of things like anti-miscegenation laws.

Just as important, though, is the continued and more quiet rise in visibility for LGBT people. The more gay folks people get to know on a personal level, the more they tend to support gay rights. It's about education and familiarity. The false spectre of the evil, degenerate, family-destroying gay falls pretty quickly to the wayside once people really meet and interact with members of the LGBT community. So despite these crushing blows to the cause--or perhaps because of them--it is crucial that we continue to fight the good fight, never stopping, because as Americans we have to believe that equality and fairness will eventually win out over ignorance and oppression.

We saw the potential for positive results yesterday, when Obama claimed victory. Take heart in that, and keep movin' forward.

TO ADD: I don't agree with the "fascist" part, but the rest seems about right:

This whole thing makes me doubly angry, because 1) it's super lame, and 2) it's making it difficult for me to be as happy as I ought to be about Obama winning. Blargh.

MORE TO ADD: Andrew Sullivan has a really good take on this here.

YET MORE TO ADD: OK, I'll buy this and dare to hope. The proposition alone may not actually be enough to amend the CA constitution.

Elation.

I am exhausted, but so immensely happy.

(Now I'm just hoping that California doesn't harsh my mellow)

Chosen by God

A brief anecdote:

There's a rather conservative church that I pass on a regular basis here in Madison (I know, gasp!) that sports a sign on its front lawn that is often updated with phrases that range from regular ol' churchy stuff to fundamentalist proclamations. Tonight I drove by and noticed that it had been changed to something about "the powers that be" having been "ordained by God."

Was this church implying that our government had been "ordained by God" or was I misreading it? They'd also helpfully supplied the relevant Bible verse, so I went ahead and looked it up when I got home.

Romans 13:1 - "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

That Paul, always good for a laugh. But yes, it would appear that the person who decided what to put on the sign (at least) believes that we should all submit fully to government because those in it have been handpicked by God his ownself.

I wonder, then, if this conservative church will feel the same way if Obama wins the election. Or will they suddenly decry the teachings of Paul in favor of the somewhat more anti establishment leanings of the big JC?

Which leads me to wonder - if Obama wins the election, will all those far-right-wing fanatics start sporting "Impeach Now!" bumperstickers and the like? If so, I'd be mighty tempted to start telling them to "Love it or leave it." Be good for shits and giggles, anyway.

But that's not what I believe, and I certainly as hell don't believe that any of our leaders have been ordained or chosen by God. I'm not certain why anyone, especially those as into the deep rooted fallibility of humanity as conservative Christians, could believe that.

Then again, it's just a sign, right?

Vote, damn it!

You stay classy, Republican Party

A friend of mine--a dyed-in-the-wool liberal--has somehow managed to land himself on the Republican Party of Wisconsin's mailing list, and as such, has been receiving some rather lovely pieces of political propaganda.

The most recent one is, simply put, pretty despicable, and I'm having a hard time figuring out why exactly the GOP seems to think that the "Obama makes love to Bill Ayers' TERRORIST body on a nightly basis" narrative is 1) beneficial to McCain's campaign, and 2) at all true.

Opinion polls and facts aside, however, they march on with this nonsense and send out garbage like this:

(click to embiggen)

Oh yeah, the Republican Party: one classy operation.

UPDATE TO ADD: madison.com is running an AP article that talks about this mailer and the other shady activities the GOP/McCain campaign have been up to lately. This is the choice quote: "...there is no evidence [Obama and Ayers] are close friends."

There's also a quote from Wisconsin Republican Party spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski defending the mailer:

"We're not calling Barack Obama a terrorist," she said. "We never have and never will. He is not."

The mailer was just a small part of the party's overall message, she said.

"I guess our goal is to put the information out there and let people make up their own minds," Kukowski said. She said despite nearly two years of campaigning, Obama remains an "unknown figure."

No, you're not directly calling Obama a terrorist, but by trying again and again to (falsely) make him out to be a close personal friend of Ayers, and putting things like "Terrorist. Radical. Friend of Obama." on your mailers, you're coming damn near close. And your followers are clearly getting the message.

As for Kukowski's claim that Obama is still an "unknown figure," I call bullshit. We've got several auto/biographies, a pretty damn thorough vetting of him through his state and national Senate campaigns and his years long run for the presidency, and more. This assertion that we still "don't know the real Barack Obama" is as ludicrous as asserting that dinosaurs and man roamed the Earth together.

Biblioburro

I'm just back from an incredibly exhausting weekend, and am not entirely sure I have a proper post in me. We'll see, but in the meantime I wanted to share this wonderful article from the New York Times. Long live the Biblioburro!

Expect a recounting of my weekend adventures at some point either late tonight or tomorrow: of minivans breaking down in Indiana, drag kings, German villages, bike/clothes shops, and Roman nudity. Huzzah!

Oh and apparently Barack Obama himself is going to be rocking the capitol steps here in Madison on Thursday. Will you play hooky from work to see him?

And on a final note, I have to brag a little bit: my first published-in-print article since college is in the current issue of Isthmus, and I couldn't be more pleased. You can also read it online, if you're so inclined.

The desperate campaign

This is just ridiculous. The RNC is sending out a particularly heinous robo-call to various Wisconsin residents, once again linking Barack Obama to "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers." This shit has been put to bed so many times and so thoroughly, that I can't help but think that the McCain campaign is seriously stuck in second gear and can't think of anything else to throw out there.

I'm going to parrot Dustin and say "NO. BAD. INNAPPROPRIATE. Do I have to rub your nose in this before you'll learn?" Seriously, this is unnacceptable.

Apparently, someone recorded said message as left on their answering machine, and you can have a listen to the rubbish here.

My friends, that's what we call a clean sweep

I was at band practice during the debates last night, but I came home and watched most of it via the good ol' intertubes and read some of the immediate commentary/reaction as well. My impression of who "won" the debate (subjective as that is) seems to be in line with the majority of the rest of the country: Obama, easily, and that makes him three for three in this debate thing. He was cool, collected, and on point, whereas McCain came off as whiny, irritated, and scattered.

When it came to awesome facial expressions, though, the winner was clearly McCain.

This photo seems to sum up what he thinks of so-called "women's health", though I think what's actually happening is that he's just had a vision of his future in politics:


I was especially impressed with (and relieved by) how Obama addressed the issues of ACORN and Ayers. Not that I suspect what he said will quiet the most rabid of the right-wing noise machine, but for those moderates who'd only been hearing snippets about the issues, I suspect it will put them to bed once and for all. Here's that section of the debate, for reference and because I think it's that good:

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let's get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.

Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.

Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican-leaning newspaper.

Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.

Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they've done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn't really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.

It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved. The only involvement I've had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

Now, the reason I think that it's important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Senator McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling.

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.

Meanwhile, in somewhat related news, Obama's lead in Wisconsin is apparently so great the the Republican National Committee is pulling all of its McCain ads out of the state. While I'm a little sad that we've apparently lost our battleground state status and thus some national spotlight, I can't say I'm disappointed.

EDIT: That photo above reminded me of this screengrab from a recent-ish episode of the Colbert Report:
John McCain is a reptilian! It all suddenly makes sense now.

No zingers in the debate, but so what?

I actually had the chance to sit down and watch the second presidential debate last night (and because I am a super ultra-modern lass with no cable TV, I did the sensible thing and streamed it live through hulu.com, which was pretty great, actually). And while I think Obama could have done a better job of articulating some of his points, and not gone over time hashing out the same stump speech points as always, I was overall pretty pleased with how it went.

My slightly biased opinion is that Obama "won" - simply by dint of doing a better job of directly answering a higher percentage of the questions with actual policy ideas than McCain did, and by not making any weird references to overheard projectors and Jello.

It's interesting, though, to see so many people bemoaning what they saw as such a "boring" debate. No harsh zingers, no smack-downs. And hey, I'm all for a good smack-down, but when it comes to deciding the next president of the United States, I'm a bigger fan of getting actual substance. Should we really be hoping for nasty talking points? I think it's more important to expect our elected officials to actually talk about issues, which they did a fairly decent job of last night. Not great, but decent, and I think that's worth something.

Still, all the headlines call it a snooze-fest. Sigh. Maybe I'm just missing something here.

EDIT TO ADD: A tip of the ol' hat to John for passing this article along to me - this is an insightful and blunt look at McCain's newly minted call to buy up people's bad mortgages. I am about as far from an economist as you can get, so this kind of analysis is incredibly helpful.