SquasheD
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“ Sometimes the expressed will of the voters is disregarded by federal judges, as in a 2005 case concerning an aggravated murder in the State of Missouri. As you might recall, the case inspired a Supreme Court opinion that left posterity with a lengthy discourse on international law, the constitutions of other nations, the meaning of life, and “evolving standards of decency.”
John McCain on Roper v. Simmons.
What you may or may not also recall is that the case was about whether or not it is constitutional to execute juvenile offenders. The “discourse on international law,” as Jeffrey Toobin points out here, was Justice Kennedy’s observation that the only other countries to execute juvenile offenders since 1990 are China, Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
But apparently McCain is all for executing the juvenile offenders?
“ On Sunday, U.S-Iraqi forces increased a parallel operation in regions between Mosul and the Syrian border aimed at intercepting fleeing al-Qaida figures, an official in the Iraqi security forces’ Ninevah command center said.”
The Associated Press: Iraq reports arrest of al-Qaida figure in Mosul
Fleeing to Syria? I need to pay more attention to this war. It may be going better than I thought it was.
On "the Issues," specifically, abortion.
SDS and I have been having a comment discussion on whether Obama (who I think everybody will agree is left of center) could accomplish anything to end the partisan gridlock in Washington. SDS suggested that the differences many have with Obama are too great to overcome. I think these differences (commonly called “the issues”) are a relatively insignificant relative to the overall job of the President. However, they’re effectively played up by a number of groups to win votes, get pundits to yell at eachother, or classify candidates in seemingly-objective checklist fashion. These are the most black and white issues which seem to have the least room for compromise. They are the political places where we’re not all on the same side. These issues cast a long shadow, but a bit of illumination could tell us whether they are actually the roadblocks we think they are.
There are a number of wedge-issues I’d eventually like to talk about, but let’s start with Wedgezilla: Abortion. It probably has more one-issue voters than anything else out there. It keeps many people (once including myself) who would like to see a bit more government action on things like poverty and equal justice voting Republican. One way or another, it seems typically seems like a crystal clear issue. Choice. Life. I’m going to try to fuzz it up a bit.
(For full disclosure, I’m on the life side of all the wedge issues, which puts me in the minority of the people who will read this. I won’t go into why here.)
Most people agree that abortion is an undesirable thing. A few (likely including a few who will read this) might disagree—but most see abortion as, at best, a lesser harm than the alternative. It’s neither a pleasant thing nor something to be cavalier about. Even leaving the procedure aside, the undesired pregnancy is (tautologically) undesirable, particularly to the very young, those already in precarious health, or those with precarious finances.
(Hopefully) everybody can agree that it is tragic when an abortion occurs due to the unavailability of affordable prenatal care or economic duress. Additionally, nobody thinks that illegal back-alley abortions are an acceptable solution. And nobody thinks that the miscarriage of a desired pregnancy is good.
For those strongly opposed to abortion, the question is whether it is more important that abortion be rare or that it be illegal. I will grant that the legality of abortion is, for both sides, an important symbol—but with the stakes as high as everybody thinks they are, I think the pragmatic trumps the symbolic. I would rather have rare and legal than common and illegal. Here is why this issue breaks toward Obama for me rather than McCain. I think, Obama is more likely to support policies that:
- Cover contraception for low-income women.
- Increase pre-natal care for low-income women. (This would also prevent a lot of birth defects)
- Make childbirth an economically viable option for more families with daycare, guaranteed maternity leave, increasing the minimum wage.
Since low-income women are three times more likely to have an abortion than their higher-income counterparts, steps like this could reduce the total number of abortions by nearly 50%.
McCain, on the other hand, has promised conservative judges. McCain is likely to get one Supreme Court appointment in four years. Maybe. And this judge might vote to overrule or restrict Roe v. Wade when the once-in-a-decade case comes up, which would let state legislatures criminalize abortion, if they wanted to and if their State Supreme Courts let them. There are a lot of ifs in here. And even then, it’s unclear what effect it would have on total numbers. I would be surprised if it came anywhere near a 50% reduction.
I would prefer a huge reduction in abortion through enablement and empowerment to an improbable and likely lesser reduction through coercion. Am I wrong on this? On the whole thing? Did I leave something important out?
Helpful hints on rain barrels from local blogger homelessdave.
An US plane headed to Tempelhof to deliver supplies to Berlin; children watched, hoping to catch some of the candy pilots often dropped on approach. NYT.
mills wrote about the Berlin airlift,
“Not long ago, Squashed noted how preferable it would be for the United States to ”transform a quarter of our military into the best disaster response team ever assembled.” It’s certainly not an historically unprecedented phenomenon, as the above photo demonstrates: during the Berlin Airlift, which is quite wonderful to read about, the same massive harnessing of human power, mechanical capacity, logistical planning, and political drive that produced D-Day led to an amazing humanitarian achievement.
“This is not to say that idealism motivated the Airlift; there was cold and hard strategic calculation behind it, but it was nevertheless a non-violent solution to a rather dangerous situation, and there were as many hawks then as now.
“What’s unfortunate: presently, the ruling forces of America -by which I mean both politicians and many of the people- do not see such efforts as meaningful responses to the contemporary strategic conflict they perceive. That is, there is no real sense that humanitarian aid is an adequate response to our foes.
“I hate to quote from the same damn Martin Amis essay I noted just a week ago, but he offered this just days after 9/11:
We would hope that the response will be, above all, non-escalatory. It should also mirror the original attack in that it should have the capacity to astonish. A utopian example: the crippled and benighted people of Afghanistan, hunkering down for a winter of famine, should not be bombarded with cruise missiles; they should be bombarded with consignments of food, firmly marked LEND-LEASE USA.
“Amis is right to call this utopian, but it’s not so far from the Berlin Airlift in its stubborn hopefulness, its determination to respond to aggression without violence. We might have tried to smash the Soviet blockade; we might have gone to war to ‘liberate’ the Germans and everyone else. We didn’t, and there were historical consequences.
“But I find the whole effort to be an excellent example, at the absolute least, of what a massive organization of well-trained people with enormous funding, loads of transportation capabilities, and expertise can do.”
In the interest of contributing content, I’ll add a few things to Mills. First, there’s a recent book on the Berlin Airlift by Andrei Cherny. Here’s Cherney’s interview on The Colbert Report. He mentions two things. First, three years into the occupation of Germany, things weren’t going well. Nazi sentiment was reemerging. Secondly, this massive mobilization may have halted the Soviet’s march across Europe. It worked.
Chocolate
On top of it all, my husband rearranged the kitchen, which made me temporarily unable to find the chocolate.I once thought that chocolate was a tasty food, but that all the hype about its semi-divine powers was mostly a joke. Then I married Carolyn. She’s been writing a paper on transnationalism in 19th century literature—and it’s driven her to chocolate. She’s been eating 100% baking chocolate. (As a point of reference, Hershey’s “extra dark” chocolate is about 60%.) She says, “I’ve transcended sugar.”
“ I also think these folks should lay off my wife.”
Seriously. Are the Republicans trying to self-destruct? Because if we’re going after spouses in the general election, somebody’s going to run an ad about Cindy McCain stealing drugs from her own charity—and that wouldn’t be polite.
“ Sen. Obama claimed that the threat Iran poses to our security is ‘tiny’ compared to the threat once posed by the former Soviet Union.”
Come on, McCain. The cold war ended. Don’t try to cram our tension with Iran into the same Manichean mold that you grew up with.
Byrd endorses Obama
When a former KKK chapter leader endorses Barack Obama for President, I feel our country really can change.
When a former KKK chapter leader endorses Barack Obama for President, I feel our country really can change.