What Else Have Do You Have for Us, Mr. Bush?

"The Bush administration has rushed through a last-minute gun rule...The Interior Department published a rule last week that will allow loaded, concealed weapons in nearly all of this country’s national parks."

"Right now, the National Parks are among the very safest places in this country, according to the F.B.I. The presence of concealed, loaded weapons is likely to change that, and it also is likely to pose an increased threat to wildlife."

I guess we'll wait until Obama repeals that law to take our Yosemite vacation. From The New York Times.

Bitter-Sweet Celebration

The husband and I couldn't be happier that Obama will be our next president. Early on election day morning we walked over to our local polling place and connected our arrows. We used to vote using touch-screen machines, but this time around, at a new place, we had the huge ballots - they were about 2 feet tall and made out of heavy-weight paper. Talk about old school.

California has a weird process where the citizens vote on a lot of stuff you would expect the state government to take care of. There are always a ton of measures and propositions (some that can even amend the constitution) on the ballot. This really annoys the husband. Makes you kind of wonder what the legislative body does all day.

This year we voted a definite YES on proposition 2, for the improvement of living conditions for farm animals. It passed with a pretty strong majority. It's a start for farm animal well-being.

We voted no on proposition 4, to not require parental notification before the termination of a minor's pregnancy. The husband and I both support abortion rights. I'm actually surprised this didn't pass (no notification will be required), but I expect it was the strong young voter turnout. There were actually quite a few measures and propositions around the country relating to limiting abortion rights and none of them passed. That's an even bigger surprise.

One of the bigger political disappointments I have experienced is the passage of proposition 8, amending the California constitution to ban gay marriage. Wow. How hateful and unjust. In banning gay marriage, California is basically telling gay people all over the world that they are second class citizens. Melissa Etheridge doesn't believe she should pay taxes as a second class citizen.

I can think of two reasons why the propositions passed. The first is because the "Yes on Proposition 8" campaign ads claimed that unless proposition 8 passed, all schools would be required to teach about same-sex marriage. That's BS. I learned about marriage in high school, but that's because I went to a private, Catholic HS. We never discussed marriage in K-8 grades, not even in sex-ed.

The second reason proposition 8 passed is because of the church influence. Fine, believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman because that's what God intended. It turns out that the Bible does have a few passages that mention homosexuality, but the big surprise is that Jesus said nothing about it. You would think that if it was such a big issue, that God would make sure Jesus did not forget to mention it. Huh, miscommunication? And same-sex marriage is not what's ruining the American family. Sumana counters this quite well:

"I say to those opponents of same-sex marriage: If you care about the stability and happiness of the American family, then work to subsidize daycare, lengthen paternal and maternal leave and move us to single-payer healthcare. If you care about the sanctity of marriage, then work to institute a federal waiting period and separate the civil contract of marriage from your religion's requirements and ceremonies. Widows, grandparents, uncles, nannies, foster children, step-parents and same-sex partners all contribute to and sustain households everywhere."

I love my husband. I know that even if we weren't married, I would still be happy on whatever other path in life I had chosen. But I can't believe that another path would be as fulfilling and as happy as the one we chose together. And now that we are a few months away from growing as a family, I can't imagine a greater joy we might experience. To deny a group of people this right to happiness is heartbreaking to me, to say the least.

Sorry about the rant. I feel a little guilty that maybe I didn't do enough to help stop the passage of proposition 8. I could have talked to more people or perhaps I could have had better answers to the religious arguments. Hopefully California's judicial system will recognize that it's unconstitutional to deny a minority group their right to happiness.

I know this post is over a week late but I had been working on it for a while. Just had a enough time to proofread and publish.

Dear Congress,

The Markets aren't doing well. So I think you should take the $700 billion and save yourselves. It's the least that we, the American people, can do to thank you for all that you've done. It's hard work to run a country and to make decisions about what to do with our money. So please, save yourselves.

Sincerely,
Cleaty

Holy Crap!

Is this guy for real?

"The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock."

I don't know what to say. Found by Alkaline Earth.

We Are in Good Hands

Thanks to the President making this decision, I have no doubt we are totally safe. Remember that satellite that was falling out of the sky that I had mentioned earlier? Well, they are going to try to shoot it down.

"The option of striking the satellite with a missile launched from an Aegis cruiser was decided upon by President Bush after consultation with several government and military officials and aerospace experts, said Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey."

Hail our Commander-in-Chief.

You Gotta be Rich to Vote Republican

A couple of weeks ago I heard an NPR piece that shocked me. NPR called the economic advisors of the top 2 contenders in each party--Democrats Clinton and Obama and Republicans McCain and Romney--and asked them what their candidate's first economic priority would be. Here's what they said:

Obama: fixing the economic slowdown and then health care reform
Clinton: passing a universal health care plan along with health care reform and then fixing the real estate market/economic slowdown

Romney: completing the free trade agreement and then making permanent the Bush tax cuts
McCain: bringing federal spending under control (no earmarks on bills) and then reforming entitlements (health care, social security)

Wow! I don't think it can be clearer than that. I don't understand how anyone, apart from the small percentage of millionaires out there, could vote Republican. It must be the scare/regligious tactics they use - gay marriage, abortion, etc.

$8.8 Billion Is Unaccounted For

I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks now. This is from an NPR morning program I heard on my way to work one morning. It's art of a two part series on what went wrong with the reconstruction of Iraq.

What caught my attention was Paul Bremer's (the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority) suggestion that it was "naïve to try to impose Western-style accounting practices in Iraq during a war". Right. $12 billion cash was requested and shipped to Iraq. "We have no idea where that money went. Of the $12 billion, $8.8 billion is unaccounted for."

As soon as the Mission Accomplished sign came out, billions of dollars were awared, often sole-source awards to singel companies, such as Haliburton.

"U.S. officials once described reconstruction aid for Iraq as a gift from the American people. But after four years and tens of billions of dollars invested in reconstruction, Iraqis have less electricity, less clean water and fewer jobs than they did before the U.S. invasion."

I wonder what that money would have been used for if we hadn't gotten into this war.