But Then On The Other Hand…

It’s really hard for me to not read these lawsuits against Federal health insurance reform as just more States Rights arguments, and you’ll forgive me if I’m a tad bit weary of those.

First, Quick Thoughts on Last Nights Legislation Passage

The health insurance reform (which should be distinguished from the health care reform that we have yet to see) that passed last night leaves me in an uncomfortable place. On the one hand, I want to share in the hope/change rhetoric that argues that the passage of this bill is a stepping stone towards more meaningful reform. There are few, either on the right or the left that will honestly claim that there aren’t some very good things about this bill, things that will make many people’s lives easier. It’s still hard for me not to ask at what ultimate cost the handful of good things come. There are a lot of good points being made right now about how this legislation could potentially backfire on the very people that it is supposedly designed to help. There are just as many good points being made right now about how this legislation will ultimately benefit us all and make the country a better place to live in. I think a lot of this is still up in the air.

But something huge did happen yesterday, and it goes beyond, or shall I say greatly reinforces, the historic nature of this piece of legislation.

The passage of this bill ultimately focused on abortion, with Bart Stupak & Co. holding President Obama and the Democrats hostage. The Executive Order, which cleared the passage of the bill by Democrats, has been the starting point of both conservative opposition and liberal praising of this bill. The conservative argument against the bill being that the Executive Order is meaningless and so leaves the cost of abortion services ultimately funded by taxpayer dollars, etc. and the liberal argument for the bill being that the Executive Order is meaningless and so leaves The Hyde Amendment open to repeal, allows Stupak to save face, etc. Both sides are correct, I suspect, of the legal meaningless-ness of the executive order. My concern, however, is with the left, and I suspect the left is failing to acknowledge with their argument that there is more to politics than hardcore, strict legality. While from a strict legal standpoint this executive order may be meaningless, politics, especially the politics of justice, doesn’t work itself out in purely strict, legal terms. There is also symbolism and ideology at play and neither should be underestimated. This executive order, while perhaps being legally meaningless, does still serve a purpose. This is a symbol of acceptance. There’s no reason to reaffirm a law unless you are also willing to ultimately accept it and endorse it. Coming from the leader of the Democratic Party, this is also a symbol of a rather large shift in official Democratic ideology with regards the pro-choice position. Regardless of the technicalities of the order, I’m not sure how you can’t see this as anything but an official shifting towards the right regarding pro-choice ideology on behalf of the Democratic Party.

I suspect that Stupak didn’t save face. Instead, he pulled off a major Democratic Party coup that will have the effect of shifting Democratic legislation further to the right.

I’m uneasy about how easy it was for him to do so.

History Is Bunk

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

A few highlights:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

…

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

…

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

…

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

…

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

…

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

It’s just mind-boggling. The erasing, demonizing, and/or minimizing of people of color in this far-right version of United States history is par for the course, frankly. Heaven forbid conservative white men don’t get their due credit for ending racism. But now they also want to vanish a white-dude major political figure in United States history because he coined a phrase inconsistent with their political worldview? In what sort of deluded, made-up, historical world can one argue that the primary author of the Declaration of Independence didn’t help inspire the American Revolution?

WTF Wednesday

In which I shake my head at the sad, pathetic things that people do and say:

We refer the Board to the following link – http://logansrogue.livejournal.com/1327524.html – which will corroborate our client’s allegation that their advertisement has been the subject of discontent for the feminist bloggers on the said site. We are sure the Board will note that the bloggers on this site do not represent the majority of society who are reasonably minded and less sensitive to an advertisement with a tongue in cheek approach.

This from a complaint regarding an ad banned in Australia for be wholly inappropriate.

Oh, those feminists and their unreasonable demands that women be respected! Any reasonable person man can easily see the relationship between almost naked women swimming in cream (oh the originality!) and purchasing a domain name, right?

I would laugh at this if I didn’t believe that a lot of people men will think that’s a good point.

————–

Many, many many of our great grandmothers were raped in slavery. But surely a few of em were loved and surely some…

…Some were cunning and brilliant enough to use their bodies to gain liberation thus fooling massa.

Of course most were raped, we know that, but some were sharp enough to trade that good-good for status or liberation.

They are absolutely not “hos.” They’re sexually heroic. They’re self-liberating by any means necessary.

Tweets by ToureX. I’m at a rare loss for words on this one. How that thought could even enter anyone’s mind is beyond me. Like Renee, however, I’m wondering why more people aren’t crying foul on this one. (MSNBC President Phil Griffin at 212-664-4444, EMAIL: viewerservices@msnbc.com. *hint, hint*)

Immigration Fail

This is from the Facing South blog, a great blog that everyone should be checking out daily.

Immigrant advocates say immigration enforcement worse under Obama

Prominent immigrant advocates launched their most sharply worded public critique yet of the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

Advocates who spoke at a press conference Monday in Washington, D.C. angrily pointed to statistics that showed a significant acceleration in immigration enforcement over President Bush’s last year, with over 387,000 immigrants deported since Obama’s inauguration.

As a result, livelihoods were lost, local economies affected, and families split apart, the advocates said.

“These are the same enforcement practices that we marched against during the Bush administration,” said Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

On any given day, Salas added, over 32,000 immigrants are under detention in jails and prisons around the country awaiting deportation.

The advocates said they felt betrayed by an Obama administration that promised to take their concerns into account and then became more aggressive than its predecessor in cracking down on immigrants.

You can watch the news conference from yesterday (8 March 2010) here.

I Want To Blog Again Even Though The Internets Make Me Sad

So, after all that fanfare about starting a new blog and whatnot (which obviously didn’t work out too well, seeing how I haven’t written anything here since, what, October of 2009?) I’m ready to give this another try. Why yes, I’m gonna give it a go at being a blogger again. I’m going to put down those messy pens and all of that flammable paper every once in a while and occasionally commit my thoughts to the Digital Ether.

And I will do it with panache.

I can, of course, think of no better way to alienate encourage people to come back and read what I have to say than by posting this video of conservative (is that what we’re calling them now) people rapping against Obama (I’m not saying that conservative (and frankly very white) folks can’t rap. Or that Obama shouldn’t be criticized. I am, however, saying that these folks can’t rap, or dance, or criticize anything in any way that any thinking person would or should ever take seriously ).

So, um…enjoy? (I had the misfortune of first seeing this video here.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MddREczVeL4[/youtube]

If you can watch the above video and not hate me for posting it (which would be understandable) you should come back and check me out again. I promise hope to never offend you this much ever again.