The Fulcrum
Friday, March 05, 2004
Have a Good Weekend
We're off to Canada this weekend; so no blogging until Sunday night at the earliest.
If you just have to get your fill of some great blog writing, you couldn't do better than any of the folks in the Liberal Coalition.
Hope everyone has a great weekend (and that BushCo keep their collective mitts off of anything dangerous).
If you just have to get your fill of some great blog writing, you couldn't do better than any of the folks in the Liberal Coalition.
Hope everyone has a great weekend (and that BushCo keep their collective mitts off of anything dangerous).
How Can They Sleep at Night?
Compassionate Conservatism Part XXXIV:
How compassionate is it to erect barriers to entry between poor children and a successful child health care program?
From Bob Herbert's column today in the NYT:
Herbert perfectly and concisely sums this all up: "This is mean-spirited stuff. We are finding new and ingenious ways in this country to wreak havoc on low-income people."
If you had any doubts about what "Compassionate Conservatism" really means, you shouldn't any more.
How compassionate is it to erect barriers to entry between poor children and a successful child health care program?
From Bob Herbert's column today in the NYT:
I wrote a column back in January about the tens of thousands of youngsters from low-income families who were eligible for a children's health insurance program in Florida but, instead of being allowed into the program, were diverted by state officials to a long waiting list.So the Republican controlled House and Senate of Florida decided to "reform" Kid Care. They've agreed to cover some portion of the current waiting list, perhaps as many as 90,000 of the over 100,000. But - and there's always a but with these folks - here's the "reform" part: in the future, the state will be prohibited from keeping a waiting list, and there will only be two thirty-day enrollment periods per year which the state is not required by law to actually hold.
Even children with serious health problems were put on the list. Conni Wells, director of the Florida Institute for Family Involvement, which advises families on health matters, told me at the time, "We've had families tell us they've put off buying groceries so they can afford to take their child to the doctor."
The program is called KidCare. It's Florida's version of the nationally popular and successful Children's Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, which covers families with incomes too low to pay for private health insurance but not low enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Herbert perfectly and concisely sums this all up: "This is mean-spirited stuff. We are finding new and ingenious ways in this country to wreak havoc on low-income people."
If you had any doubts about what "Compassionate Conservatism" really means, you shouldn't any more.
States Outsourcing Jobs, Too
This really shocked me. Hard to believe, I know. But it did.
Via MSNBC and The Charlotte Observer:
I can't find any reference to this article on the Observer website so I don't know if there was a list of states doing this. I did find this related article.
Via MSNBC and The Charlotte Observer:
Truth be told, NBC’s call to the Georgia food stamp office was answered in India — as in the country of some 9,000 miles away.Our tax dollars may be helping to send jobs offshore when they should be helping our local communities. This is... an outrage. I can't think of another word that does this justice.
[snip]
Private companies do the most outsourcing, but the Charlotte Observer newspaper found 40 state governments send jobs overseas too.
I can't find any reference to this article on the Observer website so I don't know if there was a list of states doing this. I did find this related article.
The Sheer, Unadulterated Gall...
From MSNBC:
Sorry.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has been hospitalized with a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis, his chief spokesman said Friday.I wouldn't wish this on anyone - not even Ashcroft. My mother had her gall bladder removed after several years of trouble from it and my father-in-law has had his out and still has troubles. I could not, however, pass up the headline.
Sorry.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Pot, Meet Kettle...
This is just wonderfully and wickedly ironic.
Bennett Ramberg, a State Department official from the Bush 41 administration, in today's Wall Street Journal makes an interesting suggestion. Iraq, he says with no trace of ironic recognition, should write into its constitution a "no war" article. Carefully read the following quotes (no link - subscription required) and see if it doesn't tickle your irony bone just a bit:
Not that it wouldn't be great to have such provisions in a constitution, but it would be nice if we could point to our own constitution as an example...
Bennett Ramberg, a State Department official from the Bush 41 administration, in today's Wall Street Journal makes an interesting suggestion. Iraq, he says with no trace of ironic recognition, should write into its constitution a "no war" article. Carefully read the following quotes (no link - subscription required) and see if it doesn't tickle your irony bone just a bit:
Japan's denunciation of war in Article Nine emerged in 1947. Its origins remain obscure. ...[snip]... Whatever the origins, the provision marks a bold repudiation of war as an acceptable instrument of statecraft: "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling disputes.I really think that these dour, pessimistic, rich, isolated, old men have lost their sense of humor, of propriety and of irony. I can hardly read this stuff without at least smirking - some of it makes me laugh out loud. And yet they pass this off as serious recommendations.
"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
Germany's May 1949 constitution or "Basic Law," as it was called, proved more muted. Still, it upheld the "no war" principle. Under Article 26, "Activities tending and undertaken with the intent to disturb peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for aggressive war, are unconstitutional."
Bold emphasis added for the irony impaired.
Not that it wouldn't be great to have such provisions in a constitution, but it would be nice if we could point to our own constitution as an example...
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Red Mars - Green Mars - Blue Mars
NASA announced yesterday that Mars was once a wet planet. Based on observations of the soil, rocks and terrain around the rover Opportunity, scientists, even former skeptics are saying that there is no doubt. Where there is water (and where it is available to certain chemical processes and in the presence of the appropriate molecules), life is likely to have arisen.
Now we wait. Will there be gross signs, observable by the instruments on Opportunity, of life? Or will we have to send further exploratory vehicles able to do more robust experiments and longer traverses of the Martian terrain? Such a finding would be the biggest news ever in history...
QUESTION: Anyone familiar with the progression in the title of this post?
Now we wait. Will there be gross signs, observable by the instruments on Opportunity, of life? Or will we have to send further exploratory vehicles able to do more robust experiments and longer traverses of the Martian terrain? Such a finding would be the biggest news ever in history...
QUESTION: Anyone familiar with the progression in the title of this post?
Town Mayor Arrested Over Gay Marriages
New Paltz, NY hasn't gotten quite the attention that San Francisco has, not least because of its size. But the mayor of this small New York town on the Hudson, not far from NYC, has been "solemnizing" same-sex marriages without issuing the couples licenses. The basic legal issues are somewhat different in this case, but the broader issues, of course, remain the same. Here's a bit from this morning's Wall Street Journal:
Mr. West performed wedding ceremonies for 25 gay couples on Friday, making him the second mayor in the country to perform same-sex marriages. More than 3,400 couples have been married in San Francisco.I keep waiting for the damn to break on this. If a small but critical mass of mayors and county clerks pick up this bit of civil disobedience it's just possible that the process will gain enough momentum to become the de-facto norm. Then, with thousands of married same-sex couples all around the country, the genie will be much harder to stuff back into the bottle.
Mr. West has insisted his actions were legal.
Mr. Williams said he believed Mr. West was served with a summons by New Paltz police that would require him to report to town court. He said the charges do not judge whether gay marriage is legal in New York, only that the weddings were performed without a marriage license.
[snip]
State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he will decide this week whether New York law allows gay marriage.
Small Town Voting
In the last Presidential election, my polling place was in a large suburban area. I had to stand in line to get to one of four or five tables, separated by sections of the alphabet, to check my registration. Then I moved to another line in front of a bank of voting machines - still the lumbering, curtained, mechanical beasts. By the time I made my way to a machine, cast my vote, double checked it and made my way outside, about 30 minutes or so had passed.
Last summer, my wife and I moved to a very small town, Marion, NY (map) and I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I made my way to the small elementary school in the village center. There were no signs, either outside or inside the school pointing the way towards the polling station. So I made my way - it's amazing how even a school I've never set foot in can evoke such strong memories - and eventually found my way to the auditorium.
I stuck my head inside the door and what I saw made me smile.
There was one table, staffed by three "little old ladies," of the kind you could only find in a small town; anyone would have loved to have had any one of them as a grandmother. Next to the table, where they checked my registration, marveled over my registration card (which is apparently new, they had only seen one other), and chatted with me was a lone voting machine. There were no other voters there as it was already close to 8:00 pm so I was in and out in just a few minutes. (Dr. Dean got my vote.) The late hour and the fact that I was voting Democratic in a small, rural town that is likely 80% Republican probably accounted for the lack of other voters. It was, nonetheless, one of those wonderfully ordinary events that never fails to strike me as very inspiring.
The local news this morning stated that about 20% of registered Democrats had voted in last nights Primary and that John Kerry easily carried the state as he did in all the other "Super Tuesday" states save Vermont. I contrasted that sorry statistic with how voting makes me feel and I could only shake my head.
I also realized that it will be John Kerry on whom all our hopes and desires will be pinned come November. I hope we are all ready for the onslaught from the Republican spin machine aided by $100 million and a complacent media. We have a big fight ahead of us - we're going to need a lot more than 20% of Democrats voting in November.
Last summer, my wife and I moved to a very small town, Marion, NY (map) and I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I made my way to the small elementary school in the village center. There were no signs, either outside or inside the school pointing the way towards the polling station. So I made my way - it's amazing how even a school I've never set foot in can evoke such strong memories - and eventually found my way to the auditorium.
I stuck my head inside the door and what I saw made me smile.
There was one table, staffed by three "little old ladies," of the kind you could only find in a small town; anyone would have loved to have had any one of them as a grandmother. Next to the table, where they checked my registration, marveled over my registration card (which is apparently new, they had only seen one other), and chatted with me was a lone voting machine. There were no other voters there as it was already close to 8:00 pm so I was in and out in just a few minutes. (Dr. Dean got my vote.) The late hour and the fact that I was voting Democratic in a small, rural town that is likely 80% Republican probably accounted for the lack of other voters. It was, nonetheless, one of those wonderfully ordinary events that never fails to strike me as very inspiring.
The local news this morning stated that about 20% of registered Democrats had voted in last nights Primary and that John Kerry easily carried the state as he did in all the other "Super Tuesday" states save Vermont. I contrasted that sorry statistic with how voting makes me feel and I could only shake my head.
I also realized that it will be John Kerry on whom all our hopes and desires will be pinned come November. I hope we are all ready for the onslaught from the Republican spin machine aided by $100 million and a complacent media. We have a big fight ahead of us - we're going to need a lot more than 20% of Democrats voting in November.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
One Person, One Vote
Tonight, after work and after spending some time with my daughter, I'm off to the polls.
I have my registration card, I've spoken to someone from the local Board of Elections so I know exactly where my polling place is. The last thing I read had Dr. Dean still on the NY ballot - he will be getting my principled vote.
I have my registration card, I've spoken to someone from the local Board of Elections so I know exactly where my polling place is. The last thing I read had Dr. Dean still on the NY ballot - he will be getting my principled vote.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Give Up The Funk
Today is just one of those days...
Busy at work, too much going on in the world and nothing is really inspiring me to write.
For now:
Busy at work, too much going on in the world and nothing is really inspiring me to write.
For now:
| world and work conspire the blogger's keys left silent no news is good news? |
Sunday, February 29, 2004
"Seeking and Obtaining Their Safety and Happiness"
For an excellent post on the gay marriage issue with some of the best amateur analysis of the arguments, you couldn't do better than heading over to Bark Bark Woof Woof. Mustang Bobby brings his usual sharp eye and great writing to bear on three opinions from the New York Times.
It makes for some great Sunday reading.
It makes for some great Sunday reading.
Bash Bush Bigotry!
I'm joining the chorus of Liberal Coalition Members asking you to support Natalie Davis at All Facts & Opinions. Support her drive to garner opposition to the Resolutions moving through the House and Senate that would ensonce bigotry and hatred of gays in our Constitution.
Read her post here.
Then take action here!
Read her post here.
Then take action here!
