Don't Know Enough About Obama?

His resume is available, and presumably has been for a while.

Undergraduate Education

Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
Undergraduate, 1981-1983

Columbia University
B.A. Political Science with specialization in international relations
Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament

Graduate Education

Harvard Law School
J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991

President, Harvard Law Review

Organizing and other work experience

1983-1984 Writer/Researcher for Business International Corporation. Helped companies understand overseas markets in the “Financing Foreign Operations” service and wrote for the “Business International Money Report”

1984-1985 Community Organizer for New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), promoting personal, community, and government reform at City College in Harlem.

1985-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago's South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.

1992 Led Chicago's Project Vote! push. This effort resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago. 1)

Teaching

1993-2004 Visiting Law and Government Fellow, then Senior Lecturer, in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Taught courses on the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law, on voting rights, and on racism and law. Helped develop a casebook on voting rights.

Law Practice

1993-2002 Worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Represented non-profits and private individuals in urban development projects, voting rights cases, and wrongful firings. Filed major suit that forced the state of Illinois to enforce the Motor Voter Law and successfully argued a wrongful firing case before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Illinois Senate 1996-2004

• Chairman, Health and Human Services Committee

• Spearheaded a successful bipartisan effort in Illinois to pass the broadest ethics-reform legislation by any state in 25 years, and also gained bipartisan support for his successful bills reforming death penalty interrogations and ending racial profiling by police. Worked with the Republican-led effort to reform welfare

• Also sponsored successful bills expanding tax credits and child-care subsidies for low-income working families, protecting overtime pay for workers, expanding health care for children, and providing job skills training for juveniles
  
  

Sponsored Bill Statistics

• Number of sponsored bills: 65

• Number of sponsored bills passed: 0

• Number of co-sponsored bills 364

• Number of co-sponsored bills passed: 5

www.opencongress.org

United States Senate 2004-present

• Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

• Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs

• Member, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

• Member, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

• Member, Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs

• Shares responsibility for the bipartisan Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, requiring full online disclosure of all entities receiving federal funds, and the bipartisan Lugar-Obama Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006, deepening non-proliferation work with WMD and including surface-to-air missiles, land mines, and other weapons that may be used by terrorists

Bills / Amendments Passed

• Barack Obama has introduced nearly 300 bills during his time in the U.S. Senate, and cosponsored close to 1,000 others. If you would like a full look at his legislative efforts, search the 109th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d109query.html and 110th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html

• S.AMDT.1041 to S.1082 To improve the safety and efficacy of genetic tests.

• S.AMDT.3073 to H.R.1585 To provide for transparency and accountability in military and security contracting.

• S.AMDT.3078 to H.R.1585 Relating to administrative separations of members of the Armed Forces for personality disorder.

• S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

• S.AMDT.524 to S.CON.RES.21 To provide $100 million for the Summer Term Education Program supporting summer learning opportunities for low-income students in the early grades to lessen summer learning losses that contribute to the achievement gaps separating low-income students from their middle-class peers.

• S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy.

• S.AMDT.905 to S.761 To require the Director of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Education to establish a program to recruit and provide mentors for women and underrepresented minorities who are interested in careers in mathematics, science, and engineering.

• S.AMDT.923 to S.761 To expand the pipeline of individuals entering the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields to support United States innovation and competitiveness.

• S.AMDT.924 to S.761 To establish summer term education programs.

• S.AMDT.2519 to H.R.2638 To provide that one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5 million or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee owes no past due Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.2588 to H.R.976 To provide certain employment protections for family members who are caring for members of the Armed Forces recovering from illnesses and injuries incurred on active duty.

• S.AMDT.2658 to H.R.2642 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.2692 to H.R.2764 To require a comprehensive nuclear threat reduction and security plan.

• S.AMDT.2799 to H.R.3074 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3137 to H.R.3222 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3234 to H.R.3093 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3331 to H.R.3043 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• Senate Resolutions Passed:

• S.RES.133 : A resolution celebrating the life of Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.

• S.RES.268 : A resolution designating July 12, 2007, as “National Summer Learning Day”.

Other Bills Introduced

• S.J.RES.23: A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.

• S. 453: Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007. The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R.1281), (S.453), would establish criminal penalties for acts of voter deception. Those who knowingly disseminate false information with the intention of keeping others from voting would face up to five years in prison under the legislation. The Act was sponsored by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and 60 cosponsors in the House, and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and 15 cosponsors in the Senate. (20 Cosponsors)

• S. 2030: A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists. (1 Cosponsor)

• S. 2111: Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act. A bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to allow State educational agencies, local educational agencies, and schools to increase implementation of early intervention services, particularly school-wide positive behavior supports. (3 Cosponsors)

• S. 2066: Back to School: Improving Standards for Nutrition and Physical Education in Schools Act of 2007. A bill to establish nutrition and physical education standards for schools.

• S. Con. Res. 46: A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month

• S. 2044: Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007. A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes. (6 Cosponsors)

• S. 2519: Contracting and Tax Accountability Act of 2007. A bill to prohibit the awarding of a contract or grant in excess of the simplified acquisition threshold unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee has no seriously delinquent tax debts, and for other purposes.

• S. 2433: Global Poverty Act of 2007. A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day. (9 Cosponsors)

• S. 2330: Veterans Homelessness Prevention Act. A bill to authorize a pilot program within the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development with the goal of preventing at-risk veterans and veteran families from falling into homelessness, and for other purposes. (1 Cosponsor)

So uh, yeah! That's totally the same as "doing nothing." It's completely impossible to discern what Obama thinks about anything. His education background tells you nothing, his background as an educator means nothing, and as a community organizer and legislator he did nothing.

Seriously, guys. I don't care who told you that Obama doesn't have any qualifications to speak of, but clearly they didn't check first, and you didn't check after hearing it.

He's not an unknown. It's pretty easy to see where he stands on all kinds of things. The problem isn't that he's vague or inconsistent. The problem is people who feel they have to make a big show of active participation in our government, but who don't actually want to think when they do it. People who feel pressure to vote, but no pressure to vote intelligently. They believe the first thing they hear from Rush Limbaugh or sourceless emails, or the same old lies from the McCain campaign that have been debunked again and again for people who care to look. Except many people don't, and McCain is counting on that.

He is counting on you being a lazy, gullible nitwit. That should be enough to motivate you to prove him wrong. Repeated lies do not become true just because they're repeated, or because they're repeated by people who got shot down in 'Nam. 

Prove McCain wrong. Think. It's not as hard as his campaign is hoping you'll believe.

Damn preppy popular kids!

Just when you think you've left behind all those kids in high school and junior high who hated popular kids and everything they liked just because they were popular, you start talking to people who mock Obama supporters for having a popular candidate, and who refuse to even look at his voting record or read his speeches simply because nothing popular can possibly be good.

So instead, like the goth kids smoking during lunch, they find a group willing to be noncomformists in the same comfortable ways they are. They've moved beyond dressing alike, standing alike, and smoking alike. We're adults now. Now all we have to do to be different for its own sake is say the same things because we all hate the same guy for the same reason.

Because they like him. Lots of people like Obama, and rather than disappear into a crowd of people who surely must be drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid of celebrity worship, we'll band together and drink a different flavor of Kool-Aid secure in the knowledge that at least there are fewer of us. And that makes us better.

I don't think that all the automatic and thoughtless dismissal of Obama is because of race. I don't. I don't think everyone who decided to vote against him and thought of excuses why only after the fact is doing it because they can't stand supporting a black guy. I think a great many of them still can't stand supporting something popular.

Compassion and Choice

I'm going to be charitable and assume that the pro-life stance is not just primarily about protecting children, but is solely about protecting children. Let's take away all those debates about economic and social parity between men and women. Let's take away all the questioning of heteronormative gender roles and Christonormative social norms, and the adoption system that reinforces them.

Let's talk about protecting children.

Currently in America there are 500,000 children in foster care, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

On any given night in America, over a million children are homeless. Being homeless doesn't just mean no shelter, compromised hygeine, and no guarantee of safety. It also means a staggering rate of mental illness and compromised educational opportunity, according to the National Mental Health Association.

Every day, worldwide, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes according to The Lancet.

About 20 million children are homeless and over 2 million are dead because of armed conflicts worldwide in the last decade, this according to UNICEF.

This is why, if I ever raise children, I feel a strong moral imperative to adopt. This is why, if I ever call a young person my son or daughter I do not plan for them to be of my own blood.

This is why, if I become pregnant, I will do my damndest to have an abortion. Y'know why? Because if I'm going to pour resources into a child, I can think of children who need it a lot more than the one I'd be producing.

Stop telling me I hate children. That I'm a babykiller. That I'm a destroyer of families, a reaver of responsible moral values. I intend to have an abortion to stop the introduction of more children into a world that's got enough needy children already. You want to turn every single abortion discussion into an appeal to emotion? You really want to go that low?

I can play that game, too.

I think every single person who deliberately conceives children of their own instead of taking in a child in need (and they're all around us, guys) is being self-serving and short-sighted. I do. I think these people are allowing themselves to be complicit in a system where the only children that are recognized as needing safety, food, and love are one's own, where the children we value most are still aspirin-sized parasites, while real living, breathing, thinking, feeling, suffering children are left to their plights because millions of parents who could be doing something for them are creating more and more children instead.

Every time I'm slurred as a babyhating militant women's libber out to destroy families I have bitten my tongue when it comes to this particular argument because I didn't want to come out and say it. But now I will.

You say I'm devaluing the lives of children by planning to have an abortion should I become pregnant. I say that pro-lifers are devaluing the lives of children by sanctifying a fetus above a needy child who quite simply to them matters less.

I use two forms of protection and am still considering more permanent sterilization options (that, let's face it, are expensive and invasive for women). But you can bet that if I become pregnant despite that, I will have an abortion. Without hesitation. Without guilt. Without permission.

And I'll be thinking of you. I'll remind myself how glad I am that "pro-lifers" and their lust for forced birthing don't get to force me to make the wrong choice, to make a choice that I believe will be exacerbating a global child welfare disaster that could easily be fixed if more people cared for existing children as much as they cared for a smear of cells less distinct from my own body than the normal flora in my gut.

I'll be wondering why the hell more women aren't right here with me, putting live children first.

So don't rail at me about protecting children like it's never occurred to me that they need it. I am a thinking, discerning, moral human being, and thinking, discerning, moral human beings are able and obligated to decide for themselves how best to serve the world in their time here. We are able and obligated to choose. I choose contraception and abortion, as many times as I want them. I choose adoption, every time I want a child.

That's my choice. Why should you get a veto? Why should the moral choice of this woman be worth so little, and dismissed so easily? I'm pro-choice, and we believe in morality, too.

If given a choice (and I will demand one), there is a direct moral conflict for me between bearing a child of my own blood and caring for suffering children who are already here. When in conflict (and I've stated that it always will be), my obligation will be to these living children first. Why are all these living children less important to "pro-lifers" than the children I may abort? Why do they want women like me to be forced to bear children, when I know in my heart that children worldwide are better served if I avoid breeding at all costs?

Call it the Bob Barker school of child welfare. Spay and neuter yourselves. Adopt a child in need.

To clarify: I'm not demanding that all people have enforced abortions until there are no more needy children. I can understand people choosing personally that, when they get pregnant, they're not comfortable getting an abortion. Oopsie babies happen, and I know not everyone can be as cavalier about it as I am.

What I can't excuse morally even if I understand it emotionally is deliberately creating more children when you know that there are already kids out there who need you. Resources are limited, and you can't take care of every kid. But I believe it is wrong to deliberately create a new child instead of adopting. Not everyone has to make that choice, but it is a moral choice I have made, and not mere selfishness as it gets portrayed by anti-choicers.

If all we're going to talk about is compassion for children, I think it shows a lack of compassion for children to deliberately breed more instead of caring for the ones who need care.

The Excuse of a Killer

I love The Curvature. Every time I read it I find something that pisses me off, but at the same time it's stuff I feel I should know.

Some of the most compelling entries for me about about violence against transgender individuals. It's startlingly common for a transgender person to be murdered and then have their deaths (and lives) trivialized by insinuations that murdering people whose gender identities don't match what's in their pants is somehow more understandable and excusable than murdering people who fall in love with others of the "wrong" sex. This next entry is not her most recent example of this, but it's the best one to start with, I think.

Killing a Woman Because She’s Trans “Not a Classic Hate Crime."

Angie Zapata was murdered in July. Allen Ray Andrade, who has admitted to beating Zapata to death, supposedly became uncontrollably “enraged” upon learning that she was transgender after a sexual encounter. This is, of course, a common defense in such murders (known as “trans panic”), and one that apparently plays into bigoted public sensibilities that transgender individuals are unethically “fooling” people and of course no one would ever knowingly have consensual sex with them. It’s also worth noting that Andrade claims to have only learned Zapata was transgender by sexually assaulting her, grabbing her genitals without her consent. He then saw it as an excuse to kill her.

(snip)

“This is not a classic hate crime, where an individual is beaten to death because of their orientation. This is a case when an individual reacted irrationally and unlawfully to learning they had been fooled,” said Robinson.

“Fooled.” “Not a classic hate crime.” Why isn’t it a classic hate crime? The argument doesn’t hold up — the defendant did kill Zapata because of her gender identity. He sexually assaulted a woman, in the process discovered that she was transgender, and as a direct result he chose to beat her to death. Ergo, he killed her because she was trans, and this is not hard to follow logic. So allow me to translate. What Robinson really means is: “This is not a classic hate crime, because this time the defendant had a good reason.”

There’s no other way to put it. There’s no other reason to use language like “duped” and “fooled.” There’s no other reason to use this as an argument unless you’re trying to show that there was an understandable, if “irrational” reason for the murder.

As this blogger cites in another entry, according to the Human Rights Campaign, "transgender individuals in America have up to a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. One in twelve. Let that sink in." This is in contrast to the average person, whose chance of being murdered is about 1 in 18,000.

Not only are they more likely to be killed because they're trans, but their killers can get their charges reduced because even if you can't really excuse it, it's understandable to be faced with a transgender person (even when you were looking for one) and fly into a violent murderous rage, just because the surprise was so traumatic for you.

If anyone reading is looking for some way to help with this, I suggest making whatever donation you can to one of these organizations. At least check them out, and for the gods' sake if you hear people slurring transgender people, or you read it online or whatever, just remember how far people take that sentiment. Just remember what it really means to say, "Man, if I found out some hot girl had a dick I'd lose it." It's not just the excuse of a narrow-minded idiot. It's the excuse of a killer. Don't let anyone use it, no matter who they are.

Freedom of Assembly at the Republican... Assembly

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government.

This is why we need judicial review. I know there are people on my friends list who don't like the idea of the Judicial branch "making law," since that's the Legislative branch's job. However, the Judicial branch is here to evaluate laws that are brought to them and determine whether they're Constitutional or not. If they're not, the Judicial branch has the legitimate power to strike down those laws, effectively changing our legal code by ruling that certain parts of it should never have been passed.

By what understanding of the First Amendment is this crap okay? Our courts had better do their damned jobs here, even if it gets them labelled "activist judges." This shit, now that it's been invoked and can be challenged, needs to be thrown out and America needs to take a good hard look at itself, wondering how we let ourselves come to this.

Mediocrity

Thank you, Ezra Klein.

I just want to note, if only for the record, that in a saner country, the fact that Sarah Palin wants us to teach our children lies rather than biology, and doesn't believe in man-made global warming, should be enough to cost the Republicans the election. The other way of stating those two position is that part of her platform is telling schools to misinform kids and telling the government to ignore a preventable ecological catastrophe that could cost countless lives. But for whatever reason, those positions are considered totally acceptable in American political debate, but god forbid someone comes out for single payer health care or a gun ban. Now that would be crazy.

At first I didn't mind her too much, but the more I learn about her the more astonished I become. Evidently it turns out I can't credit her for her state's fairly respectable record on providing contraceptive access, since Palin herself only supports abstinence-only sex ed. Evidently her scorn for research (AKA reality?) also extends to evolution in addition to sex ed, and the human impact on the Earth's climate.

Does she trust experts on anything? Or is this philosophy over fact all over again?

Do we really want another administration that thinks evolutionary biologists don't understand biology? That thinks that the CDC and everyone else studying teen pregnancy and STD rates don't understand teen pregnancy or STD rates? That thinks ecologists don't understand ecology?

We've already seen McCain's willingness to ignore economists with his little gas tax holiday (and his offshore drilling plan), since evidently economists don't understand the economy either.

I'm sick of this. Really, I am. Is it just the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less. Dunning and Kruger were awarded a 2000 Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.[2]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

I hope so. Disgusting as it is, at least it's an explanation. It also explains why so many people in America truly believe that the Judicial Branch should have no power. The legislative branch is elected by the people. That makes them qualified to have legislative power and the power of the judicial branch. Why do people believe this? Because they mistrust expertise. Experts are scary, holding dark and arcane knowledge that makes them dangerous. The fewer experts we have involved in government the better! Apparently.

Even if you don't believe it, those of you who plan to vote McCain had better get really comfortable with this really fast. Because this is the trend you're playing into. There are people out there who believe that truth is a matter of consensus, not of... well, truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach their children science or religion in science classes, as if by voting they could determine the truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach children sex ed that works, or sex ed that sounds good to parents who're afraid their kids may one day grow up. These are the people who want the majority to determine the rights of the minority, as if justice were also merely a matter of majority rule.

These are the people who mistrust experts because experts erode the notion that one person's vote of confidence in a complicated matter is as good as any others. They claim to know more than you do. Those assholes. Who do they think they are, anyway? Elitist bastards. We don't need them. We don't need science at all. We'll just put everything to a vote and decide on whatever sounds best... not necessarily what those nasty elitist experts and their "research" indicates.

There are fewer of them anyway, how much can they possibly know? We're the people. Vox populi, vox dei. If we vote that something is so, damn the facts. We voted.

A vote for McCain-Palin is a vote for the disrespect of education and the disrespect of truth. And do you know why?

"Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."
-Sherlock Holmes

McCain and Palin are mediocre representatives of a mediocre party that elevates mediocrity itself above expertise. Do they represent you?

Political Animal on Sarah Palin

Finally! Blogs caught up. Was a pain in the ass trying to find real info on her this morning. But I thought this entry from today was pretty good.

A CONFOUNDING CHOICE.... Charles Homans offers some very helpful background in an item below about Sarah Palin, but I have to admit, I'm still struggling to understand what on earth the McCain campaign is thinking here.

* McCain has spent the last several years insisting that the most important qualities in a candidate for national office are experience and a background in national security. Sarah Palin was, up until recently, the mayor of a town of 9,000 people, and is currently the governor of a small state with a part-time legislature, with one-and-a-half years under her belt.

* McCain may want to improve his appeal among women voters, but he skipped right past more qualified Republican women -- women he actually knows -- such as Kay Bailey Hutchison, Elizabeth Dole, and Olympia Snowe, all of whom would have brought genuine credibility to a ticket.

* In an election season in which voters desperately want change, McCain has picked a hard-right conservative. I mean, really conservative. We're talking about a former activist for Pat Buchanan, staunch opponent of reproductive rights, global-warming denier, and skeptic of modern biology. There's a reason every right-wing group in America is jumping up and down with glee this afternoon.

* The usual pattern is for Republicans to reach national office and then face ethics investigation for alleged wrongdoing. This year, the GOP seems willing to reverse this, putting a governor on the national ticket who's already facing an ethics investigation.

* She recently asked what a Vice President does all day. How encouraging.

* Can anyone, anywhere, explain why Sarah Palin would make a good president? Given that McCain is a 72-year-old man with a history of health trouble, isn't this a rather important question right now?

I realize Palin is new, which necessarily generates some excitement. But I can't help but find this announcement utterly bizarre, and completely devoid of seriousness.

I heartily endorse Kevin's take: "This whole thing is crazy.... I'm just stunned by the cynicism of the whole thing. I'm sure Palin is a fine person, loving mother, devoted wife, learning her way as governor, and so forth. But a heartbeat away from the presidency? ... You gotta be kidding."

Seriously. The life expectancy for a white American male is 76, according to the CDC. Presidents of the United States are placed under incredible stress (which is why they always come out of it looking ten years older than when they went in). The odds that McCain will die in office and we'll end up with this for a president is pretty alarming.

Thankfully there's another candidate who's served in legislative bodies on the state and national level, who taught Constitutional law at a prestigious law school, and who's been proven right on foreign policy again and again. Let's vote for him, shall we?

Let Palin go back to Alaska and help dig her buddy Ted Stevens out of the pile of corrupt political manure he created for himself.

Sarah Palin for McCain's VP Pick!

I'm curious about McCain's VP choice. The obvious comment is "Ah, look. McCain respects women after all! He's willing to run alongside Republican Mom number six thousand seventy-five."

On the one hand, she's the only person in this election (as either a Presidential or VP candidate) with executive experience, McCain included(though unfortunately only about two years of it, which is less stellar). On the other hand, she's got no legislative experience, which makes it much harder for voters like me to figure out what the hell she believes and whether it represents us. Voting records are good quick and dirty ways to get a ballpark idea of who believes what.

ontheissues.org is generally a pretty good site for this, so I guess I'll go through here first. Lots of areas on here are unknowns, which means we either have no idea what she wants or plans... or she doesn't actually have any plans yet.

She's pro-life, which is to be expected. My opinions of pro-life women notwithstanding, at least this'll make it clearer to women who (somehow) still believe that McCain is pro-choice. Her main stance on civil rights is that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Pretty standard. Death penalty is also A+ by Palin. I guess her state's administration is so efficient by now that they don't wrongly convict people anymore like the rest of us. Good for her! [/sarcasm]

Pretty sure she also wants to open up the Alaskan wildlife refuge for drilling, and that's all we know about her stance on energy and oil. Judging from this she'll probably be on board with McCain's discredited offshore drilling plan.

What our health care system needs is competition. Evidently the free market will fix it. Again, pretty standard. She does, however, disapprove of taxes which discourage small businesses, which I can agree with her on. Favoring corporations at the expense of the smaller businesses has proven... unwise. So as far as her faith in the free market, she's being consistent here. She thinks competition is good, so she isn't simultaneously discouraging it by fellating big corporations. Good for her on this one.

Overall, she's clearly made her constituency happy. She's got a high approval rating, and that's something. Better than Bush (whom McCain believed was right more than 90% of the time) and that means that at the very least Palin has more sense than McCain. She certainly pisses off oil companies more, something McCain has been too scared to do. We'll see if she and McCain end up clashing here.

So! I think she'll make conservatives happy. I think she'll give them something to point to besides their abysmal record to claim they respect women, and that's gotta make them feel good. She also seems to actually be doing many of the things McCain abandoned years ago: mainly disagreeing with her party now and again.

My main issues with her are her social policies, since we don't have too much information on anything else. I mean, hell. They called Obama an unknown but at least he had a voting record. I'm having to cobble together a profile of her in my head from scattered statements she's made about issues that matter to me.

So I'll look at Alaska, and assume that if she's governor she agrees with things that're going on there in cases where she hasn't expressed disapproval.

Alaska ranks well as far as access to contraception and public funding for reproductive health services. Their laws and policies rank 14th in their ability to facilitate access to those services (which isn't fantastic, but it's better than my state which is 42nd). Their teen pregnancy rates are pretty good, since 29 states out of 50 have them beat. Contrast this with McCain's state, which is number two. Despite being pro-life, Palin was in charge of a state that's actually doing sensible things to decrease unwanted pregnancies (particularly among young women).

Their stand on gay rights... not so good. Palin supports their 1998 amendment barring gays from receiving equal marriage benefits, because she believes that married gays threaten "the family structure." However, it's not all sour notes here. She did veto a bill that she thought was too discriminatory against gays, suggesting that while she doesn't want gays and straights to be equal there are at least limits to how unequal she wants them to be.

So she's not as bad as McCain. He arguably picked a woman with more sense than he has, with a better ability to make consistent moral decisions. This is lukewarm praise from me, though, since McCain set the bar pretty low to begin with.

Edit:

She's also a creationist, who thinks we should "teach the [nonexistent] controversy." People everywhere who believe in science... start cringing.

Edit: She does not believe that humans can cause climate change, but acknowledges that her own state would be hard hit by such changes.

Woman's Shelter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota Needs Help

One of the groups in America that has it hardest when it comes to the safety of women is Native Americans.

Things are so bad on reservations that it strains belief. But choose to believe it or not, the CDC's got numbers.

Why do I bring this up now?

I've got something to repost from naamah_darling.

Passing this along, in the hopes that you'll do the same.

My Sister Friends' House is a shelter for women fleeing from domestic violence. It primarily serves Native American women.

They have lost their grant funding, and face a host of issues that they must overcome if they are to continue operation. They need $11,000 by August 31 if they are to keep operating through the next month, and they are hoping for $35,000 by the end of September.

If you have a minute, familiarize yourself with the situation, and perhaps donate a little.

If you don't have money, you could always mail them some material donations like diapers and basic first aid stuff. It'll go a long way for these women, because Native American women have it really rough when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault. Lend them a hand if you can.

Enough.

"But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change."

Enough Bush, enough bullshit.

Enough said.

Gustav Predictions

Poor New Orleans. Not again...

Three years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast, New Orleans residents on Wednesday again faced the prospect of an evacuation as Tropical Storm Gustav loomed.  

Not since Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed in its wake, have residents faced government orders to evacuate their homes and businesses. Many are still struggling to rebuild their lives in a city famed for its jazz clubs and Mardi Gras festival.

On Wednesday, two days before the third anniversary of Katrina's August 29, 2005, landfall, Gustav drifted away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic after killing 22 people. It could hit the U.S. Gulf Coast around Monday.

You wanna know what's really great about this? What's going to make this oodles of fun for New Orleans to manage another natural disaster?

Guess where much of Louisiana's National Guard is.

Come on! You can guess this one! I believe in you!

Their second deployment to Iraq!

I'm sure this is going to be handled at least as poorly as the last one, which considering the area's infrastructure has been fucked once by Katrina and has now been further handicapped by troop redeployments.... yeah.

Damn Mexicans!

So I read someone complaining about the reason so many people in the US are out of a job is that Mexicans have stolen them.

Now, the obvious first point is that many of these people supposedly believe in the free market above all else. For them to cry "wait that's not fair!" when they lose out to competition that's willing to work more for less... it's just a little disingenuous.

That's not what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the similarity between these claims and claims by various ethnic groups that they have to compete with other ethnic groups for marriage. I remember hearing men in my family complain when I was a child that lots of women want to date black men because they have bigger cocks. Really. That's the only reason. "That's just not fair, them comin' in with them huge cocks! They stealin' our wimminz!"

Even in Europe where they're supposedly so much more comfortable with other cultures than America is... there's a long history of warring ethnic groups putting out propaganda explicitly aimed at convincing like to marry like. "Our girls marry our girls. Your girls marry your girls." Yes, this is about ethnic and cultural purity, but it wouldn't be a problem if men in each culture weren't so afraid they would prove unable to "measure up" against (read: "compete with") the foreigners.

I have no sympathy for this. Women aren't refusing to date these white guys because their dicks aren't big enough. Women are probably refusing to date them because (like my father) they're narrow-minded blockheaded assholes. In short: they aren't succeeding in the market because they themselves aren't competitive, not because someone else has an unfair advantage. The solution is for these men to adjust to the market demands for guys who aren't assholes, not to bitch about how the ones who're succeeding don't really deserve it. When someone else offers something that makes them more competitive (whatever it may be), the rules of the free market state that they're not cheating. They're competing.

So to all those people bitching about how Mexicans are stealing your jobs (just like Irish people used to steal our jobs and Italians used to steal our jobs and Chinese people used to steal our jobs) ask yourself how badly you want that strawberry-picking job. Badly enough to compete for it as vigorously as the Mexicans? Badly enough to work for almost nothing with no job security and no benefits with an employer who will likely abuse you physically or sexually?

Do you really want that job you just lost to a Mexican?

No?

Then it's not their fault you don't have a job, is it? It's yours, for not being willing to flow with the market. No wonder you got left behind, eh?

Granted, this only applies to people who can simultaneously believe that A) the free market will solve all problems, but B) that they've somehow been slighted by the introduction of competition for jobs.

You guys. You wouldn't even be worried about this shit if we didn't have unions that pushed decades ago for things like minimum wage and job benefits. If this were the Industrial Revolution, you'd be willing to compete on an equal ground with the Mexicans because you'd be used to working the way they work: in unsafe conditions and for a pittance.

These people just annoy me because it doesn't seem like they're thinking very carefully about all these things they're claiming simultaneously. I want several things from them. If you're going to cry foul every time competition doesn't work out in your favor, maybe you could also adjust your own demands to make yourselves more competitive. Or, and here's a thought, you should re-evaluate how strong your faith in the free market really is now that you're the one losing out.

I don't care which you do. Just start making sense, please.

Philosophy and Fact

So... if you had to choose between doing something that kept with your principles and doing something that had a better chance of achieving the end you're looking for, which would you choose?

Classic example, sex ed as a way to reduce teen pregnancy, STDs, etc. If you're a conservative Christian, you're faced with a choice. Will you advocate for your values as they were given to you (meaning, teach only abstinence)? Or will you compromise your values to do what the facts indicate will actually achieve the end you desire (teaching about contraceptives and even abortion)?

To me this highlights a common conflict between liberals and conservatives. In keeping with the sex ed example, conservative Christians are ostensibly trying to protect families and children. Since they believe that premarital sex is wrong, they would rather discourage that than compromise on their hardline stand to achieve the result they claim they care about most.

And this means one thing: to conservative Christians, the means are more important than the ends... to the point that they completely disconnect from the reality of the situation. This is why showing statistics about teen pregnancy and STDs and high school dropout rates to conservative Christians will not convince them that children should learn anything but "abstinence good, sex bad." It won't convince them because the end isn't the point. The result isn't the point. They don't care nearly as much about the actual fates of children as they do about their moral high ground.

This is why you see liberals advocating for practical sex education, even if it means allowing for the possibility that young people will have premarital sex. Sure, it'd be nice if they weren't, but if our end is really to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates... we've gotta do what we've gotta do.

That practicality is completely lost on many conservatives. Even if they support their arguments with facts and predictions of results, in the end the results are secondary. 

You've heard this before.

"Teaching teens about contraceptives may reduce the rates of teen pregnancy and accompanying dropout rates (which would result in economic and social benefits for those teens who would otherwise have dropped out), but it's wrong! Teaching them how to have responsible sex is... well, it's teaching them to have sex!" Link.

"Some wealth redistribution may reduce our deficit and reduce the tax burden on poor and middle-class families to fund our whole economy. Sure. But it's wrong! Did you know Hitler was a socialist?!" Link.

"Sure, entering peace talks with countries hostile to us might help us handle global challenges. But damn it, we're America! We'll handle global problems ourselves, our way, and you'd better either help us or get the heck out of our way." Link.

So at this point you have to ask yourself. How dedicated are you to the principles behind your goals? Are you dedicated enough to the principle to sacrifice the goal?

This is one of the sticking points for me when talking to my very conservative friends (and yes, I do have them). It seems most of the time like they'll uphold all these great and noble goals, but they have little interest in achieving them or actually working toward them. They feel teen pregnancy is a tragedy, but they reject any practical means of reducing it. They moan about the economy, but cling to Bush's "principled" stance that there's nothing more important than protecting the wealth of the wealthy. They sigh that America's always having to pick up other people's messes and finish other people's fights, but they don't want to admit that we don't have all the answers, that other nations may have something to bring to the table.

At this rate, there is nothing I can do to convince them. I can't offer facts or expert opinions, because those are merely result-based. My "reality-based thinking" has no impact because we're not really talking about the same thing. This is why every discussion with conservatives I've ever had has become a philosophical debate and not a practical one.

Most conservatives I've spoken with (particularly conservative Christians) truly are interested in philosophy first and results second. If I can't somehow argue that my solution doesn't just work but also fits into a philosophical model of America as God's Chosen Blessed Land of Opportunity, they don't care. The fact that a plan could work for the goal we agree upon doesn't matter if it requires a shift away from a comfortable philosophical model.

I don't know if this helps anyone reading this, but here's my summary.

To conservatives: If you're talking to a liberal, be honest when you're upholding principle most highly, and when you're upholding results. It will muddle the discussion much less if you make your priorities clear.

To liberals: Conservatives are listening, honest. Odds are you're just not talking about what's really on their minds. When they reply to studies or statistics by reasserting their philosophy, they're trying to reiterate what matters to them in the debate. They may not intentionally be shifting the goalpost onto philosophical terrain; odds are that to some conservatives that's where it's been the whole time.

Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade...

I don't know if you heard about this, beloved readers (all, what, five of you?), but I thought it would entertain you.

See, there were Christians pushing each other to pray for rain at the DNC.

"Focus on the Family is asking for "abundant, torrential" downpours to flood Denver and silence Senator Obama when he accepts the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on August 28."

Evidently rain of "Biblical" proportions to flood out the liberals would show them that God is displeased with their war on his poor marginalized believers in this country that has so little tolerance for them. Never mind that rain of Biblical proportions would kill lots of people. The point is to show that nasty liberal candidate that God is a republican. You can check out the video here.

Well, there was a flood of sorts.

No, really!

There was a sprinkler malfunction that flooded part of the Pepsi Center..

The sprinkler was located on the club level in a skybox which had recently been renovated to host a news crew. It appears the skybox belongs to Fox. ...All of the equipment in the skybox had to be removed quickly due to the possible electrical issues. No one was injured.

Oh yes. Oh ho ho ho yes.

Fundies may not have a great sense of irony, but someone up there sure does.

Damn, Dana.

Dana Hunter, one of my favorite bloggers, has decided to write up what might be the best take-down of John McCain's insistence that his experience as a POW exempts him from all criticism.

It's here, and I think that by quoting it only in part I'm doing it a disservice, but I know that most of you won't read it if you don't at least see a sample bit.

Being a rape survivor does not make me an unimpeachable expert on rape, the combatting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. Being a POW does not make John McCain an expert on war, the fighting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. It apparently doesn't even make him an expert on torture, because if it had, he wouldn't have worked so hard to allow America to engage in it. (Imagine me redefining my rape as somehow "not rape" so that sexual violence could be legally perpetrated against women. Morally repugnant? I think so. But that's essentially what McCain has done.)

(snip)

Being a rape survivor does not mean I get to claim that I'm a better person than my opponents because I survived rape and they didn't. McCain is no better than the people he smears - in fact, he's far less of a good man than they are. If we're going to be claiming higher ground by virtue of our travails, we'd better be fucking standing on it.

I can't use my status as a rape survivor to disclaim responsibility for the actions I take, the things I say, the people I hurt, and all my many failures. It infuriates me that McCain thinks this status as a POW allows him to do all of that and so much more.

Get it? Go read.

"Worse than no change"

Check out this Op-Ed Column from the NYT.

What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he’s sexier news. But as George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama’s coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain’s most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he’s railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month.

What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there’s no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried.

But Obama is never going to be a John Edwards-style populist barnburner. (Edwards wasn’t persuasive either, by the way.) Nor will wonkish laundry lists of policy details work any better for him than they did for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton. Obama has those details to spare, in any case, while McCain, who didn’t even include an education policy on his Web site during primary season, is still winging it. As David Leonhardt observes in his New York Times Magazine cover article on “Obamanomics” today, Obama’s real problem is not a lack of detail but his inability to sell policy with “an effective story.”

(snip)

The Bush White House is now poised to alight with the Iraqi government on a withdrawal timetable far closer to Obama’s 16 months than McCain’s vague promise of a 2013 endgame. As Gen. David Petraeus returns home, McCain increasingly resembles those mad Japanese soldiers who remained at war on remote Pacific islands years after Hiroshima.

Christian Privilege

Okay. It looks like I'm going to be writing an entry on privilege. Thought I was gonna be able to avoid it, but it doesn't look like that'll be happening.

I am going to preface this with something. I don't like the word "privilege" to refer to things like "male privilege" or "white privilege" or "Christian privilege." It implies that white people and men and Christians (or whatever) all have things they shouldn't have, that no one should have. Personally I feel that being able to walk home past sunset without worrying you're going to get kidnapped and killed is not a case of anybody's privilege. Everyone should have it, and it's a damn shame that they don't.

Right now it feels every time the term "privilege" gets used we're talking about things like "seeing people your own race or sex in public office" or "being able to get a job based on your qualifications and not your face" or "being able to control people's sexual access to you." I feel that treating these as privileges treats people who've got them like they have more than they should instead of treating the people who don't as though they've got less than they should. It's why I prefer to talk about people who're disadvantaged over talking about people who're privileged (unless I'm using it to mean precisely what I just mentioned: people who've got more than they should).

It doesn't seem like it makes much of a difference, but feminist scholarship and analysis as I've seen it is often about just this kind of thing: linguistic subtleties. What message are people getting by the words we use? It seems when "male privilege" comes up that we're not talking about women dealing with shit they shouldn't have to, but men enjoying autonomy and security they shouldn't get. Even if that isn't what's meant, I'll be happier the day we find another term.

That said, we don't have other terms. So please understand what I mean when I use the word "privilege," and that I feel icky because I have no other options.

This entry is not about male privilege. This entry is not about white privilege. This entry is about Christian privilege. Keep in mind what I said earlier about privilege. I'm not saying that Christians enjoy lots and lots of things they don't deserve. I'm saying that Christians enjoy lots and lots of things that not all religions have, but all religions do deserve.

1. I can be sure to hear music on the radio and watch specials on television that celebrate the holidays of my religion.
2. I can be sure that my holy day (Sunday) is taken into account when states pass laws (e.g., the sale of liquor) and when retail stores decide their hours (e.g., on Saturdays, they are open about 12 hours; on Sundays, they are closed or open for only a few hours).
3. I can assume that I will not have to work or go to school on my significant religious holidays.
4. I can be financially successful and not have people attribute that to the greed of my religious group.
5. I can be sure that when told about the history of civilization, I am shown people of my religion who made it what it is.
6. I do not need to educate my children to be aware of religious persecution for their own daily physical and emotional protection.
7. I can write an article about Christian privilege without putting my own religion on trial.
8. My religious group gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other religions.
9. I do not need to worry about the ramifications of disclosing my religious identity to others.
10. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my religion.
11. I can worry about religious privilege without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
12. I can be sure that when my children make holiday crafts, they will bring home artistic symbols of the Christian religion (e.g., Easter bunny, Christmas tree).
13. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my religious group.
14. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my religion most of the time.
15. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a “credit to my religion” or being singled out as being different from other members of my religious group.
16. I can, if I wish to identify myself, safely identify as Christian without fear of repercussions or prejudice because of my religious identity.
17. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence and importance of the Christian religion.
18. I can protect my children from people who are religiously different from them.
19. I can have a “Jesus is Lord” bumper sticker or Icthus (Christian fish) on my car and not worry about someone vandalizing my car because of it.
20. I can buy foods (e.g., in grocery store, at restaurants) that fall within the scope of the rules of my religious group.
21. I can travel and be sure to find a comparable place of worship when away from my home community.
22. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my religion will not work against me.
23. I can be sure when I hear someone in the media talking about g-d that they are talking about my (the Christian) g-d.
24. I can be fairly sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my religion.
25. I can be sure that people are knowledgeable about the holidays in my religion and will greet me with the appropriate holiday greeting (e.g., Merry Christmas).
26.I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of other religious groups without feeling any penalty for such a lack of interest and/or knowledge.
27. I can display a Christmas tree and/or hang holly leaves in my home without worrying about my home being vandalized because of my religious identification.
28. I can be fairly sure that some hate group does not exist whose goal is to eradicate my religious group from the planet.

-Lewis Z. Schlosser (cited further later on)

Much of this is unavoidable, because Christians are a majority in America. That's why Christians have national holidays and Hindus (to my knowledge) do not. That's why Christians can fill every town and city in America with their places of worship. That's why Christians can support their own television channels, and their own private schools (at least to a greater degree than Wiccans or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists). I say this because I want you to understand that I understand that this is not a concerted effort on the part of most Christians to make other religions feel marginalized in a nation that is only tolerating them. Sometimes it is largely because Christians have numbers on their side in this country.

For a more thorough explanation of what "Christian privilege" is for the purposes of this discussion, I'll refer you to Understanding Christian Privilege: Managing the Tensions of Spiritual Plurality, by Tricia Seifert. Tricia Seifert is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Iowa. She studies the impact of educational programs and policies on student learning. This article mainly discusses Christian privilege on college campuses, but the general ideas apply well enough that I'll probably refer back to this a good bit.

Adapting Peggy McIntosh’s white privilege and male privilege framework, Christine Clark, Mark Brimhall-Vargas, Lewis Schlosser, and Craig Alimo developed several examples of Christian privilege. In an article in Multicultural Education, Clark and her colleagues define privilege as the manifestation of unearned and unacknowledged advantages that those in the dominant social or cultural group (in this case, Christians) experience in their everyday lives.

See? It's not always the fault of Christians, and I'm not asking Christians to feel guilty for being the dominant group. I don't know a single Christian who is powerful enough to be to blame for the marginalization of non-Christians in America. What I'm trying to get across is that because Christians are a privileged group in America, non-Christians commonly and easily feel marginalized and merely tolerated in a country that is supposed to belong just as much to them as to their Christian neighbors.

Lewis Schlosser and William Sedlacek, in a 2003 issue of About Campus, note that the timing of the term break at Christmas—which often goes unquestioned— privileges Christian students, who do not have to choose between their schoolwork and attending religious ceremonies, while it marginalizes non-Christian students, who must negotiate conflicts between their studies and their spiritual observances. For example, in some years, Ramadan—one of the key religious observances of Islam—may coincide with many campuses’ midterm exams.The perceived secularization of Christmas has helped to reinforce its position as central to the college and university calendar.The suggestion that Santa Claus and a Christmas tree are devoid of religious connotations and are “just part of the culture” (p. 124), as Douglas Hicks notes in Religion and the Workplace: Pluralism, Spirituality, and Leadership, cements Christian privilege.As Christian symbols are placed at the center of our institutions’ cultural fabric, non-Christians are pushed further to the margins.

Again, this is not something Christians necessarily need to feel guilty about. Christians who truly believe that their religion deserves special treatment above all other faiths and at the expense of all outsiders are few and far between. But they do exist, and they are the reason that I'm writing this.

Christians often claim that it is difficult to be Christian in America. They say that liberals are "waging war" against Christians on sites like this one, dedicated to exposing the introduction of Islam into our culture (and an alleged accompanying undermining of Christianity). Because students are encouraged to learn how Muslims pray (since American culture already teaches them how Christians pray), Christian groups view this as a threat to their supremacy, a threat to their privilege. If children learn as much from outside their homes about Islam as they learn about Christianity, the perceived "right" of Christianity to be vastly overrepresented is undermined.

So the reduction of Christian privilege gets painted by many Christian groups as persecution. When the symbol of their faith is held up above all others as a symbol for America and patriotism, they cheer. When they learn that they must share religious displays on government property with other faiths, or not post them at all, they claim persecution.

What Christians are losing in these cases (and in most I can think of) is not the right to practice their religion on an equal footing with Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or whatever other faith you can mention that has migrated to America. What they are losing is supremacy. Their privilege is being eroded, and rather than claim they should not have had such an overwhelming advantage in the first place (or at the very least that other groups should not have been so proportionally disadvantaged), they cry foul and play the victim.

So here's a warning for my journal. You may post whatever comments you please. I haven't deleted a single comment to date, and I don't intend to start. But if you post on my journal with the pose that Christians in America are somehow in dire peril of being marginalized, persecuted, or even just maligned widely in the arena of public opinion, I ask you to remember this.

If you are Christian, you have power that no other religion in America has. I find it hard to believe that anything can happen to Christians in America to bring them down to the level of every other religion in this country anytime soon. Fret all you like that Christianity is under siege, but the rest of us are well aware you aren't going anywhere. You make it kind of hard to forget. Whether you mean to remind us who's boss or not, non-Christians in America face that reality every day.

For more information on how Christians can forget they have privilege, check out Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo by Lewis Z. Schlosser.

One possible explanation for the existence of Christian privilege is the notion of a “nonconscious ideology” (Bem & Bem, 970, p. 89). Bem and Bem first defined the concept of a nonconscious ideology to describe how implicit beliefs and attitudes are used to maintain the status quo in terms of gender inequality. They used the analogy of a fish and its environment to illustrate their concept of nonconscious ideology. A fish does not know its environment is wet, because that is all it knows and all it has ever experienced. The fish has no idea that anything else exists besides water because it has never had to think about any other possibilities.

(snip)

In a similar fashion, Christians are not likely to know (or believe) that the environment is oppressive, because that environment has never been oppressive to them for being Christian. Thus, Christian privilege is likely to be a result of Christianity being the nonconscious ideology (in terms of religious group membership) of the United States. Even if this is a valid explanation for the existence of Christian privilege, because Christians are the dominant religious group in the United States, it is their responsibility to recognize their power and the accompanying privileges.

Maybe you can afford to forget who's in charge, but we cannot.

Christians reading this don't have to feel like I blame you for the myriad awkward conversations, occupational difficulties, educational barriers, and glaring injustices non-Christians in America can face. You are personally not to blame. That's not what acknowledgment of Christian privilege needs to mean.

What it does mean is that every time you get the urge to bemoan the sad state of Christianity in America today, remember where you are in relation to the rest of us. Remember what non-Christians in America go through because of Christian supremacy before you complain about the persecution of American Christians. Remember that when you claim Christians are a maligned and hated group in America, you may be talking to someone who really knows what that's like.

Oh God DHHS no.

The Bush administration has officially proposed a rule to the Dept. of Health and Human Services that doctors can refuse to treat patients if their consciences protest for any reason. Basically if they dunwanna, you don't get medical care.

Send an email to consciencecomment@hhs.gov, with the subject line "provider conscience regulation." They are publishing these comments right now, because it is in a 30-day public comment period. This is an absolute emergency. Don't let the misogynist religious whackos be the only voices DHHS hears. Say something. Just send an email. Otherwise, after thirty days, this rule goes into effect.

Really. It does. This is going to happen. Please tell them you are NOT falling for this bullshit, and that you are NOT going to let fundamentalists speak for you. Forward this to anyone you know who doesn't believe that women should be forced to breed on anyone's timeline or by anybody's rules but their own.

Here's what I'm saying.

Doctors do and always have had the freedom of conscience to choose not to provide certain kinds of medical care. This is the choice they make in medical school when they're investing tens of thousands of dollars to become educated and licensed. If they are not ready to fulfill the obligations of their chosen profession, then just like anyone else who doesn't want to do their job? They shouldn't be doing it. Doctors need to provide patients with medical care. End of line.

Here's the problem. Doctors should not be the ones to decide which patients "deserve" the standard of care they are coming to receive. Those who say that this ruling is not about denying women access to birth control are either gullible or lying. Here's how I know it's about denying women health care.

One: This is clearly about allowing doctors to refuse to perform abortions for patients who request them. Considering that 87% of counties in America don't have an abortion provider, this puts rural women at a serious disadvantage when they need medical care. Why does this statistic matter? Because if the one doctor within reasonable range of a woman in need refuses to treat her, she may not be able to find another, particularly considering that this proposed rule does not include provisions for women who have been refused. Not only can her doctor say no, but he is not obligated to refer her to a physician willing to provide her with an abortion.

Two: This becomes truly scary when you think about the fact that DHHS wants to change the definition of "life" to "at fertilization" rather than "at implantation." These are both pretty damned arbitrary classifications considering that a fertilized egg is less of an independent organism than the gut flora living in my large intestine (and which I am allowed to slaughter at will with every antibiotic treatment I undergo). Why is this scary? See point three.

Three: Non-barrier methods (basically anything but a diaphragm or condom) works at least partly by preventing implantation. It prevents the fertilized egg from sticking to the inside of your uterus so that it never has a chance to start getting nourishment from your body. It's flushed out like any unfertilized egg, and your body does this on its own. What this means is that any non-barrier method that interferes with implantation will be classified as an abortion, giving doctors a perfect airtight legal excuse to deny women these prescriptions because a moral imperative the patient obviously does not share (or she wouldn't be asking for contraceptives) dictates that she doesn't need contraceptives after all.

If you are not ready to provide the services of a physician, don't become one. If it's against my religion to dance in public, I should not dream of Broadway. If I believe that rum is the devil's poison and that Prohibition should be re-established, I should not aspire to become a bartender. If it's against my conscience to provide medical advice or procedures to certain people or for certain reasons, I should not dream of a medical career.

Medicine is about service. You are doing a disservice to half the population of this country by codifying an appalling belief: that women's LIVES are not as important as the FEELINGS of doctors who should never have gone into that practice in the first place.

And yes, this is about a woman's life versus the feelings of her doctor. If a woman cannot control her reproduction, she cannot control any aspect of her life. If a woman cannot delay pregnancy she is at a serious disadvantage compared to a man when it comes to getting an education, maintaining a career, and supporting herself. If at any time she could be railroaded into halting her life to bear a child at someone else's will, then her life as she know it can end at any time.

Anyone reading this, I'm begging you to think about this. Think about what effect having a child really has on women. In third world countries early pregnancy and single motherhood are one of the chief reasons that women and their children are economically and socially the biggest victims of poverty, disease, and hunger. Do you want that here? Are you ready for those consequences? Because that's where we're going.

If you love even a single woman in your life--mother, sister, daughter, friend, lover, anything--please protect her. Say no to this. Treat them like human beings, with wills and lives of their own. Let the women you love control their reproduction, instead of breeding on someone else's timeline and by someone else's rules. You owe them that much.

The right to choose. Women may choose to bear children from these "surprise pregnancies," and they may choose to delay childbearing. But they have the right to choose for themselves on their own terms.

Period Control!

Got this one from The Curvature.

It's just a fun little video making fun of birth control marketing. Thought I'd share.

Their Feelings > You

Fuck you Mike Leavitt.

I've commented on his blog before, on this whole "let's redefine nearly every form of contraception as abortion" clusterfuck going through DHHS right now. Because, y'see, this isn't about restricting women's health care (even though that's what'll happen). That's not even a relevant issue! Even though that's what'll happen. No, this is about FEELINGS.

The doctors' feelings, to be precise. Didn't you know? They're more important than the patient's health, or a contractual obligation to provide a service patients pay for. If a doctor doesn't believe in abortion, then they aren't going to provide them. This doesn't sound truly terrifying until you consider that DHHS thinks it should be allowed to define "abortion" however loosely they'd like. They want to change it to "life begins at fertilization, so anything that prevents the fertilized egg from sticking to the inside of your uterus is now an abortion." That way a doctor can deny you a whole list of things (most notably every birth control method I can think of that isn't a barrier method) because it is more important to DHHS that doctors provide care according to their consciences than for patiences to receive care according to their consciences.

Leavitt mocked the position of people like me who believe that doctors should provide the care they agreed to provide when they got licensed, stating, "Freedom of expression and action is surrendered with the issuance of a medical degree."

You lose the freedom to betray the standards of your profession, yeah. Doctors lose the freedom to deny care to people who come to them for it, psychologists lose the freedom to gossip about people who talk to them in a professional context, etc. I realize this loss of freedom of expression and action must be deeply traumatic for doctors. Being held to the same professional standards as all other doctors is just awful. If your argument is that doctors should be allowed to exempt themselves from their oaths just 'cuz they wanna... well, I'm with you! Professional standards and accountability are for those secularist babymurdering liberals.

Yes. That was sarcasm.

In all seriousness, though. If you are not ready to provide the services of a physician, don't become one. If it's against my religion to dance in public, I should not dream of Broadway. If I believe that rum is the devil's poison and that Prohibition should be re-established, I should not aspire to become a bartender. If it's against my conscience to provide medical advice or procedures to certain people or for certain reasons, I should not dream of a medical career.

Medicine is about service. You are doing a disservice to half the population of this country by codifying an appalling belief: that women's LIVES are not as important as the FEELINGS of doctors who should never have gone into practice in the first place.

One comment by "Michelle" got a chuckle out of me, and I wanted to share it.

I think I'm going to become a doctor. Of course, I'm morally opposed to inhaled steroids and albuterol--in my religion inhaling something other than the air we normally breathe is counter to God's will. I'm going to have a lot of asthma patients! When all those asthma patients drop dead on the floor of the ER during a massive asthma attack--Oh well, at least my god will be pleased. Whatever the patient needed/wanted to do with their body doesn't matter. And in fact, I'll work very hard to lobby against allowing asthma drugs to exist! I need to save those people who think they need the medication I don't like, even if it kills them. By denying them proper medical treatment, I'll be pleasing God and that's more important than what the patient thinks is right for his/her body! Go me, medical degree here I come!

I followed a particularly well-thought-out comment to the site linked, and was delighted to recognize the name of someone on my friends list. naamah_darling, you rock.

Here's one small piece of the glory she posted.

I think everyone should be free to act with conscience (though an argument could be made that someone who does not wish to perform their duty should not have taken the job to begin with). But what assurances, sir, do we have that you will see to it that women who need services will still be served? What are your plans for that? Or have you forgotten the entire point of the medical profession, which is to provide care for those who need it? I demand to know this, sir. I demand to know how you plan to make sure women are not further harmed by this policy of yours, as they are being harmed by existing laws and policy.

If you put into place a system or set of rules that dictated women MUST be promptly referred to another provider covered under her insurance plan, then and only then will I be able to "conscience" turning these incredibly important decisions over to anyone but the woman.

I have to say I am not very impressed with your responses so far. You don't seem to care much about patients at all, when arguably, you should care about them above all. That, sir, is disgusting.

That about says it as far as I'm concerned. If you want to preach, become a pastor. If you want to control women's lives, move to Saudi Arabia. If you want to become a doctor, treat the patients that come to you.

I encourage others to leave comments on Leavitt's blog. A pro-life group has encouraged its members to flood his blog with grateful comments, and I agree with NARAL Pro-Choice America. He needs to be hearing us, too.

Otherwise, it's gonna be a lot of this: "There IS NO financial reason not to have a child, if we trust in God's Providence."

Yeah. That's a comment on there, by Elizabeth Victory.

Please. Be the voice of reason, and be a loud one. Those of us females who want to control our childrearing don't want to be treated like cattle, breeding at the behest of someone with authority over us. Those of us females who want to be as free as a man to live independent lives would really appreciate the right to control our reproduction.

Don't let DHHS take it, and certainly don't let idiots like Elizabeth Victory encourage DHHS to take it.

As Anita Monical stated:

Well, I for one am happy to know that soooo many doctors view their right to deny women access to and information regarding contraception as a matter of personal integrity, and not a matter of women's health.

I certainly would have all kinds of faith in physicians who put unshared moral values above the health and wellbeing of women. No really.

I never thought of medical professionals as an enemy of my own physical health, mental wellbeing and yes, my financial security. I do now.

That should scare you. It scares me.

All you have to do is post a comment. It'll take you thirty seconds.

DHHS wants to say that physicians have the right to refuse you care if they decide it hurts their feelings to give you what you need. DHHS wants to say that physicians have the right to hinder women's access to legal and safe contraception and abortion. DHHS wants to say that the consciences of female patients are less important and valid than the doctors who would deny them the care that the patients have chosen to seek out.

Say no.

The Persecution Complex

To all those people who lament the impression that colleges and universities are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that human rights groups are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that foreign countries are biased against them?

To all those people who lament the impression that the media is biased against them?

Have you ever considered the possibility that all or some of these people might actually be right and you're the one who's wrong?

1. If educated people are often liberal, is it simpler to assume a broad-sweeping brainwashing conspiracy, or to assume that upon exposure to other views and the facts behind them people don't seem to remain conservative? If liberals claimed that universities had a conservative bias, you know that conservatives would be claiming that it's not their fault educated people lean right. Why do you let them get away with the anti-intellectual bullshit when you would never allow it from liberals?

2. If human rights groups tend to be liberal, is this a sign that they're all secretly members of the anti-conservative conspiracy bent on eradicating an entire school of thought from the face of the earth? Or is it simpler to assume that the liberal philosophy places a higher emphasis on the well-being of individuals, from which it follows naturally they'd care more about human rights?

3. Maybe the fact that everyone thinks you're acting like an imperialist dick means that imperialism makes you a dick. Calling you a dick and treating you like you're a dick when you're being a dick isn't biased. It's called "self-preservation."

4. Media coverage of the election doesn't have a liberal bias... it has a bias in favor of McCain. Conservatives loved the guy doing this study when it said the opposite, but now that they're the bad guys, suddenly the methodology must be wrong. See, you gotta be skeptical about the media if you're a conservative. A good unbiased source will agree with you. Never trust a source that doesn't agree with you. It's just that damned liberal conspiracy acting up again, but thankfully they're easy to detect. They say crazy things like "pissing off other countries makes them hate us," and "voodoo economics doesn't work" or "abstinence-only sex ed doesn't work." They're always pushing this ideological bias, so it makes them easy to detect and ignore.

All in all, I'm getting tired of the "I hate your evidence! You elitist liberals are always pickin' on us simple salt o'the earth conservatives. Just because I don't have any credentials in the field we're talking about doesn't mean that my opinion isn't just as valid as yours!"

Well, I'm an elitist bastard and let me tell you something. If I hear one more time about how educated people can't be trusted (because too much exposure to the diversity and complexity of reality brainwashes you liberal, see), or about how educated people are out of touch with reality (at least compared to people who've only ever exposed themselves to their own way of life), or some other bullshit excuse to cover the bitterness and resentment of uneducated people that educated people always abandon their cause... I'm going to have some kind of episode.

I don't know how to say it more simply than this. If education is a danger to your worldview, that is hard proof that your worldview needs examining. If entertaining other worldviews turns out to be a danger to your own, your worldview is a hell of a lot more fragile than you want to admit. If studying other cultures is some kind of threat to your own, your own culture isn't worth your slavish loyalty. If exposure to people who believe they can make the world better somehow erodes your reinforced sense of self-serving exploitative entitlement and privilege, perhaps that's a clue that you need to abandon that sense of entitlement.

There are too many people who resent educated people for learning a few new things and suddenly changing their minds. I didn't think I was a liberal. Sure, I thought that gays were human beings and so were women. Sure I thought that it'd sure be nice if college weren't a way to transform wealth into privilege so that the super-rich could claim they'd earned what they've got. Sure I'd love to have the first, last, and final say over when I carry a child. But I didn't think that made me liberal. I thought liberals were these frothing man-hating Communists out to create a man-free, gun-free Marxist paradise off the cost of California on a human-made island of singed bras.

I didn't realize what would happen to me. I didn't realize that once I left my town of 8,000 people I might really have a chance to learn how other cultures lived and what made them that way. I didn't realize that this would cause me to take a good hard look at my own culture. I didn't realize this was all part of the grand liberal mafia brainwashing conspiracy.

In short, reality turned out to have a liberal bias. Once exposed, I fell.

For all you conservatives out there... it could happen to you. I suggest you do what the Amish do. Drop out after eighth grade. Wouldn't want to start getting ideas and putting on airs. Wouldn't want to change your mind. Wouldn't want to become liberal or anything.

Drop out. Delete every news channel from your cable but Fox News. In fact, delete every channel but the televangelists. Burn every nonfiction book you own. Save yourselves before it's too late! Above all remember!

The liberals are sly. The liberals are stealthy. The liberals will find you.

YOU MAY ALREADY BE ONE.