American Politics

Lesser Known Signs of the Apocaplypse


REVELATION~THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE.

Image by tommypatto ~ IMAGINE. via Flickr

The Royal family marries off an heir to the throne minus coercion, Osama bin Laden is officially dead and Stephen Harper wins a majority government. An apocalypse has to be looming, don’t you think?

Being an American in the Canuck Kingdom feels like one of the Marvel Comics Bizarro worlds sometimes. Part of the Commonwealth, you’d think that Canadians would be all over the wedding of Kate and Wills, but it was a bigger deal to the folks down South than it was here. Similarly, for all our military fetch and carry deference in the ongoing American wars in the Middle East, the reaction to the dancing in the streets à la Arabs celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers left most Canadians a bit chilled.

And tonight? Not only have the Tories claimed their third consecutive election victory, but they will rule as the majority. No less startling was the utter collapse of the Liberals, the near extinction of the Bloc Québécois and Jack Layton‘s NDP rising up to claim the official opposition mantle.

Why do I care?

I have been struggling of late with this tangled web I weave around the Internet, and it occurred to me today – after vainly trying to write a post for my paying gig for the last two weeks and recoiling in weariness from a couple of Tea-Bagging baiters in the comment section of a Des Moines Register columnist – that I am tired of the way nothing changes.

Osama bin Laden is dead. They tell us at any rate.

No, they don’t have his body – conveniently they dumped it overboard on the way to spread the good news. There are no pictures, dental records or fingerprints. There’s video … of the swabbies tipping a shroud into the dark drink, in case anyone would care to be convinced by that.

It’s like someone captured BigFoot in the Rockies then killed it, cooked and ate some of him, dumped the body for wolves and came back to civilization to tell the tale – minus pictures even though he was carrying his brand new white iPhone 4.

“You just have to trust me.”

And the incredible thing is that “they” do. Try to tell anyone that even if bin Laden is actually dead – recently – nothing is going back to the way it was before – they won’t care. It’s enough to dance around with the Stars and Stripes proclaiming “justice!” “victory!” “Wolverines!”

I’m tired of writing about the slow death of public education or the coming loss of choice for women and their subsequent June Cleaver re-enslavement. No one cares. The choir is too busy blogging and writing non-fiction that no one reads. The opposition smugly sits back to wait for their next victory lap. “Wolverines!” The commenters in the  boxes choke on the smoking flames.

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Because America’s Kids Deserve to be Hated On Too


Child labor, can't we try to stop it?

Image via Wikipedia

“I was coming home from kindergarten–well they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I had been working in a factory for ten years. It’s good for a kid to know how to make gloves.” – Ellen DeGeneres

It’s not just women. The Right is equally at war on American children as well. They’ve been strangling the public education system with a steady pressure and two hands around its neck for nearly a decade though the campaign itself began with the over the top alarmist Nation at Risk in 1982.

Currently, our Congress – already a year overdue at setting the budget for the current fiscal year –  paper cuts what’s left of the K-12 budget in an attempt to bleed it to death so slowly they won’t be suspected of murder when it finally keels over. As their minions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana work to destroy what little influence over educational practices and curriculum teachers have left by stripping unions of their right to provide input into the profession they’ve earned university degrees to be allowed to practice, Congress ignores the real budget issues and the public goes along with it.

“Of course you are right,” they nod sheepishly. “How foolish of us to think that it was Social Security or a bloated Pentagon at fault? It’s those greedy teachers and our free-loading children of elementary school age. They are the root of this financial nightmare that prevents us from shopping at will and ignoring public policy issues. But what to do? If not school, where can we warehouse our kids during the day while we hunt for work or pretend we love our mind-numbing, ever lower compensating jobs?”

Missouri stepped up to the plate first with a proposal to lower the age at which a child can apply for a work permit from 14 to 12 and eliminate the need for 15 year olds to have a work permit at all. At fifteen, one is certainly old enough to work at will.

Utah followed with an inane state’s rights ploy* that doesn’t question the awfulness of child labor, just the federal government’s right to forbid it.

The states should be able to decide for themselves**.

Really.

A state like Michigan, perhaps? Where the Governor is asking for the right to declare martial law and replace duly elected school boards, city/town councils with anyone he deems fit – whether that be his out of work brother-in-law or some shill of the Koch brothers?

Do you trust the states to act in the best interest of the people or themselves and those who bought them their jobs through campaign contributions?

In other parts of the world, where women have no rights and children are sent to work instead of school (when they are not being sold outright into some form of slavery) and governments pretend to hold elections but the people are not actually represented – we, the self-righteous people of America – point an accusatory finger and say “Bad totalitarian regime.”

Did anyone ever notice that only one finger points and every other is waving back at us?

*Let’s not forget the states were just fine with slavery, Jim Crow, rules that forbade a married women from having her own bank account as late as the 1950’s and weren’t as keen on ERA as they were for the incredibly unnecessary amendment to forbid flag-burning. The states also are big on the whole idea that women need to be treated as though they are retarded once they are pregnant. Let’s not place too much credence on their ability to do the right thing without federal incentive.

**The states will argue that they are rightly giving control back to parents. My maternal grandfather and the husband of one of my cousins were farmers and worked their kids as though they were hired hands from a young age. Not chores. These children were not just helping out a bit. They were farm laborers on par with adults. One of my cousin’s sons actually died because he was given work to do that outstripped his age and size. Even now the exceptions for agriculture border on abuse when they don’t completely cross the line. Do we want to move the line to ensnare more children?

I Have Sex


Students at Wesleyan University in Connecticut have sex and they want Congress, those members ready to throw Planned Parenthood under the budget bus, to know it.

Do you have sex? Congress, the GOP and the religious right appear to think you shouldn’t – especially if you are a woman – and if you do, you should suffer Job-like travails for your audacity.

The truth about Planned Parenthood is that they spend more time providing access to healthcare to young women, underprivileged women and women without health insurance than they do providing access to abortion, which by the way is legal and nobody’s business but a woman’s and her doctor.

Planned Parenthood, at any rate, is not the problem in the debate about abortion. The problem is that some people believe that life begins at conception and some don’t. Just like some people believe in God and some don’t. And just like all things theological, Americans in particular have a really hard time respecting other people’s right to believe or not and to act upon those beliefs where their lives are concerned.

Americans practice the idea of freedom in a random manner. They believe in it for themselves personally and for other people only when it suits them.

It’s also a matter of not understanding the difference between life and existence.

And it is, sadly, yet another example of the fact that women are not valued, being reduced again and again to little more than a sex object with incubator potential.

If you believe that life begins at conception fine. Live it. Be a good example. God would approve.

What he wouldn’t approve of is forcing your will and views on those who don’t hold the same views. Aside from his tantrum in the temple, not once does Jesus ever impose his will on anyone he interacts with throughout the Gospels.

Jesus, it would seem, was a “choice” kind of guy.

If only his followers could have established such an enlightened attitude once he wasn’t around to physically keep an eye on them anymore. Perhaps the history of the world would have played out differently and perhaps people who have sex would be allowed to take responsibility in a manner that fits with their beliefs.

I don’t believe that life begins at conception. I do believe that Planned Parenthood’s services are important for women who don’t have the money or the access to gynecological services otherwise. I do think that the assault on reproductive health services in the United States is part of a widespread disrespect for female independence and civil rights and an attempt to force us further into second class status.

Oh, and I have sex. So I support your right to have sex also, if you choose, and to make decisions about your body for yourself alone. And I support Planned Parenthood.

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