Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

I think by now it’s news to no one about President Obama’s birth certificate. Almost everyone has strong feelings about this, and I do as well. But they’re mixed.

I’m just as angry as it seems like someone should be at this sort of thing. After years of elegantly dismissing attempts to distract the agenda with moronic claims feeding off racism and paranoia, Obama appears to have caved to the shrill right. Instead of issuing a firm but polite “go fuck yourselves you god damned lunatics from hell,” the President issued his long-form birth certificate. And, y’know, it looks kind of like what any sane person figured it’d look like: a birth certificate from Hawaii.

However, part of me is a little curious at the timing. He’s been swatting at this pile of bloodsucking insects for, as I said, years. So Hairdo McBankruptcy throws his cheap rug on the stage, shrieking about the birth certificate that most Americans had already suffered ADD about, and somehow builds a campaign off that. Well, that and having a terrible show and a disgusting plastic-encased harpy of a wife. And then, just when everyone’s so distracted by the fact that he’s ineffectually sending lawyers to Hawaii to sip cocktails for weeks on end (cause they have absolutely no legal jurisdiction to get at anyone’s fucking birth certificate) that they won’t even focus on the Royal Wedding, the President drops his birth certificate.

“Look at this, bitches.”

Naturally, the people who were so stupid they were deceived this long are still in denial that a black guy had the audacity to run for President — er, I mean, that he was born in America. No, wait, I had it right at first. The birthers are quite simply racists. And Donald Trump was all too happy to play the part of the southern guy handing out the hardest American History tests to the blackest people during the reconstruction. He struts himself around and proudly proclaims what a historic douchebag he is.

And people are outraged. Baratunde Thurston posted an impassioned video response to Trump’s self-congratulatory bullshit festival. Steve Weinstein wrote an blog critical of our still-so-racist society. And these guys are right. It’s a startling thing to realize, as someone who was in his teens before he encountered the idea of racism and what it meant to other people, just how deep these veins of hatred running through our country are.  But I can’t help but wonder if  President Obama knew all this was coming as he released his birth certificate.

Think of it this way: Donald Trump has been building his campaign on jumping up and down on Barack Obama’s legitimacy for the office. Suddenly, the birth certificate’s available. He’s left sputtering about grades at Obama’s Ivy League alma mater. Not only that, but his stupid comments have incensed people who have, at times, been fairly lackadaisical since getting the President elected. I think it’s possibly simply a master stroke from a politician who’s gearing himself up for a fight to get re-elected.

And I should be angry at being manipulated, but it’s hard to be angry at being manipulated into seeing the truth. Sensible people in this country are often outnumbered, shouted down, and ignored. Americans are all too willing to throw reason and progress out the window. It’s a hard fight, but one worth winning. And you know, I hope this is the end of Donald Trump’s flickering candle in the world of real politics.

Because good God is that man a fucking racist moron.

I don’t pray. I haven’t in years. For me, the issue of whether or not to pray today was a complete nonsense kind of question. If you went to my house and tried to find some Christian memorabilia, you’d be hard-pressed, and the closest thing you’d find is old wedding and funeral programs, along with some religious music I’m paid to play at such occasions.

With all that being said, I don’t care about the national day of prayer. I don’t consider it an affront to my non-believing ways that people want a proclamation of a day of prayer. Here’s the code, in case you’re curious (emphasis mine):

The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

You’ll note the “may.” It’s splitting hairs, but then if we’re going to parse the law (i.e. the first amendment) that everyone’s getting their panties in a twist over, then we’re going to parse the damn law. Note that “may” means we don’t have to pray, we just can if we want to. Here’s what the first amendment text is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You can point directly at this thing and say that Congress is respecting Christianity by giving it a special day all to itself. Of course, you can also point at Christmas break and talk about how the federal holidays recognize it as well, but people are suspiciously less outspoken against a day off work.

And that’s the thing, really. This law has hardly any force and effect, other than mandating a proclamation from the President, who, to date, has been a Christian of some variety exactly 44 times. If the law were suddenly repealed, I’d be doubtful that it’d stop the President from issuing some sort of proclamation, and therefore I also doubt it’d shut up the critics of the day. And that’s assuming the law could get repealed in the first place. For it to be challenged up to the Supreme Court, at which point I’d assume you’d have to have a case, at which point I’d assume you’d need to prove that this law adversely affected you directly, that hearing the words cascading from the President’s mouth asking people to honor something you simply don’t believe in has caused you literal harm. The only way I can see this is if people get beaten for not praying on this, our day of prayer, and somehow convert that to “it’s the law’s fault” (as though people who are nonsensical enough to beat someone for not praying are rational every other day without such a proclamation).

Aside from that avenue, which feels unlikely, it seems equally unlikely that Congress will overturn it by virtue of the fact that the Christian base is pretty damn strong in elections. Basically, what I’m saying is: “They’re here, they fear [God], get used to it.”

And that little play on words is where I really get to the meat of why the criticism I’ve heard thus far bothers me: I know plenty of atheists. Some of them are even, dare I make this joke, gaytheists (they’re gay and atheists). And that last pun represents the only people I’ve seen up in arms about this. Just a few months ago, I could have dropped some article about Proposition 8 in front of them and they’d get royally heated, how the Government stripped people’s rights. They might even say “Hey, if the people who hate gay marriage don’t like it, they just shouldn’t get married to another person of the same sex.”  That argument is perfectly valid. Then they’d go on about challenging such an unjust thing in the courts.

And they wouldn’t see any parallels.

The problem with Proposition 8, is that it was an amendment to California’s constitution. Now, I don’t know the process in California by rote, but it stands to reason it’s like US Government Jr., as are most state constitutions. That means that it’d be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to mount any sort of legal challenge. But that won’t stop people from arguing that it violates some basic legally-guaranteed rights. Well, in California, it technically doesn’t.

And that’s the thing, fighting against this religious thing while fighting against that anti-gay thing is cherry-picking your battles. You either respect a Constitution, or you don’t. And you either recognize people’s right to do things their way, or you don’t. I don’t pray. I haven’t in years. This law has no force and effect to make me pray, so I just plain don’t see why we have to fight this battle.

I’ve gotten an uptick in comments on my blog in the past few days. Like, I’ve gotten three. From three different people. That’s an increase of hundreds of percent over the norm. What I found most odd, though, was that 66 percent (i.e., two) of those comments were on my ResearchSaves.org blog post. I find this very curious.

My curiosity led me to Google, whereupon I realized that my humble blog post with its stupid subtitle (which I still need to change, so, please give me ideas) is the second hit for ResearchSaves.org. What I haven’t been able to find, is whether there’s been a recent upswing in marketing from them. It seems that’s the only reason people would be taking a sudden interest.

Of course, despite repeated comments from rakaur (Eric), I haven’t changed my stance. In fact, I don’t think he really said much that I didn’t already think about the whole thing, although he had a much more defend-the-science approach to it all. I’m not going to advocate animal testing. I know it saves human lives. It ends animal lives in the meantime. Predators in the wild also end animal lives, though usually less slowly and painfully (usually). The sooner we get a viable alternative working to animal testing, the better. I’d give ideas for the alternative, advanced simulations, etc., but that’s what we pay the scientists for.

Incidentally, according to Twitter, at least, ResearchSaves.org is related to the Foundation for Biomedical Research. This is hilarious to me, as I’ve received a few E-mails from them titled “HORSE VIDEO.” I’ve never watched it, but it has something to do with using equine biological research to cure some minor ailment. It takes a good few paragraphs to get to that description though, which led me to believe for quite some time that, not only had I gotten bestiality porn, but that whoever made it was really excited about it.

Finally, in closing: no, the place I work doesn’t have any sort of established official opinion as far as I know about this whole thing. I say this because plenty of jerkoffs, jackasses, and shitheads like to politicize science and use any excuse to choke off funding to work that can actually save lives. They get understandably very antsy about it at work so, suffice it to say, I don’t speak for them.

Karl Rove thinks that the President is too self-centered. Or something. Contextually, it’s difficult to know what about that number he thinks is important, other than the fact that we all know now that he can count the number of words in a text.  I’d have liked some follow-up information, but I think that fruit wasn’t low-hanging enough for his stubby hands to grasp.

Yeah, that's mature. The Twice-Divorced Savior of Marriage, everyone.

Fortunately, I did some number-crunching for him. President Obama did, indeed, say “I” 96 times in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night. This is contrasted with President Bush, who kept it at 32 occurrences during his first State of the Union (the link Karl Rove used may not have been counting lexemes, such as “I’m” or “I’d”). The percentage of words between the differing speeches (Obama’s was 7,184 words, Bush’s 3,785) was 1.33% “I” for Obama, and 0.86% for Bush, or a difference of 0.47%. It was definitely an increase of almost 55% in the frequency of that word, but we’re still talking about less than 2% of the speech, assuming “I” is an equivalently powerful word as, say, “mandate” or “bailout.”

But I noticed something else that was interesting. Bush’s percentage of selfishness-induced verbiage decreased over the course of his Presidency. That’s not because he talked about himself less, but because he talked about other things more. While his first State of the Union speech clocked in at 3,785 words, his later ones were all above 5,000, and yet his “I” incidence remained at a steady average of 33, going for its zenith his last year at 37 times.

Given that it’s important to at least one person, I wonder if there was a busy little highlighter in the weeks before the previous President’s addresses, going through and counting the appearances of “I” and yelling at his cohorts to remove them. I won’t name names about whose highlighter I think it was. It does make sense, though: rhetoric about “our” country certainly feels like it should sell better than that about “my” country, especially with the President.

Tangentially, President Bush used, on average, 24 lexemes of “terror” (“terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorist(s),” “terrified,” and “terrorized”) in his speech. He talked about “terror” 73% as frequently as he talked about himself, compared to President Obama, who only did so 3% as much. He said “terrorism” once and “terrorists” twice. Take from that language lesson what you will.

As always, feel free to check for yourself:

• State of the Union Transcripts and Videos – C-SPAN

• Word Frequency Counter – Rainbow.Arch (I don’t think it’s that rainbow)

It’s going to be hard to say this without sounding like a sore loser, but the filibuster really should just go. I’m almost positive all the complaining now about it is loser-itis. However, it’s not just that for me. I say this because, as ominous as it sounds, it’s looking more and more likely that the Democrats, in their incredible ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, may hand the majority back over to the Republicans with some cookies and a nice fruit basket in just under a year. At that point, the filibuster will surely benefit the current-majority-soon-minority, right?

Except, as a rule, it does nothing to help anybody. Much has been made in the discussion about it on how it was used to try a block on civil rights legislation in the 60s. It’s also been noted that there’s an ever-increasing frequency of its use. In this past congress, before they lost the guarantee, Democrats knocked down more filibusters than had been attempted in the first 80 years of the 20th century. As I said, all these facts come from posts replete with sore-loser syndrome, and thus I don’t have a good bead on the count that the Democrats tried when they were out of power, but it was probably a whole hell of a lot.

“But its frequency and its past history shouldn’t cloud what it’s capable of now,” I hear the devil’s advocate replying. The problem with that idea is that it’s not capable of much of anything good. When the country was founded and people didn’t send members of Congress with predefined notions of what they would and would not support, and issues of the day really did receive debate on the floor, it made some convoluted sense to allow a combo breaker. But now, all it exists for is to provide the majority party with a severe case of legislative blue balls.

For the civics-disinclined, the Senate is composed of 2 senators from each state, plus the Vice President when necessary. Each state, regardless of its size geographically or socially, receives equal representation. That already should set off warning bells of disproportionate power assigned to smaller numbers of people. With the filibuster in place, preventing legislation can be permanently blocked by representatives elected by 31.5 million Americans, or just over 10% of the current estimated population. Don’t believe me? Bust out a calculator and do the math. That’s an extreme case, but it’s nothing when you consider that the legislation is, in all reality, blocked by only 40 Americans, or 0.00000013% of us.

Just how many ego-swelling power trips do Senators need, anyway?

I’m thoroughly unsurprised to hear that the Supreme Court has cockblocked Democracy.  Whereas previously we had the illusion of a people with a voice, now we’ve got companies freed from their shackles to spend whatever ungodly amount of money crushing their opponents as they’d like.

Take a gander at some relativity on recent news.

The health care reform is an important issue; I know far too many people who work “part-time” jobs more than 40 hours a week and get health care coverage that basically amounts to “we’ll buy you some vitamins at the Safeway.”  That so many people should go without health care completely and others who have it should have such marginal coverage, in our behemoth of a wealth-generating nation, is a travesty.

Democrats being terrible at campaigning and losing at key issues when they have all the leverage is an important issue; see health care reform above.  It shouldn’t come as a shock that people are pissed off that Oakley lost, it was a deck horribly stacked against the Republicans and she couldn’t be bothered to win cause she needed some time to take down her Christmas lights or whatever.

But these issues are all passing problems; if health care reform passed in any form, it’d be repeatedly challenged.  If Democrats had won in MA, they’d still face down a hard fight in November and in 2012.  They are things that require passion on both sides; Democrats to be infuriated that their party is so impotent, and Republicans to be spurred on by their victory.  This verdict handed out by the Supreme Court is a body blow to both sides.

You see, as it was previously, there was already a value assigned to a seat in Congress, or to the White House.  You couldn’t get your foot in the door without millions to advertise and put your name out there.  With PACs and other outside donations, the latest presidential race reached astronomical financial proportions.  The only thing holding the reins back was the fact that the richest constituency, the faux people created at each and every corporation to provide a taxable singular entity, were barred from unlimited contributions.

The donations provided by individual Americans were a huge boon to the Obama campaign.  However, if you think of what sort of amazing advertising can be bought with $100 million, think about the fact that during the 2009 Super Bowl, NBC sold their spots for $209 million, and that’s not including the production costs.  Hopefully, once you realize that the budgets of all the camps in the biggest presidential campaign in history was blown for one day of advertising by the private sector, you’ll see how the Supreme Court just fucked America.

Scott Brown won the Senate seat.  ”Huzzah and hurray,” say the Republicans, “we’re once again relevant!”  Of course, they’ve been building to this moment for a year, ever since the White House was unduly upset from their hands and into a historically black President.  Meanwhile, Democrats are going nuts, or so I’m told.  I haven’t been able to care enough to check on that myself.

You see, I barely did any research on this whole Coakley/Brown affair.  To be quite honest, no one really made a fuss on my Twitter stream until about two days ago; and, since I’ve become quite disillusioned with our system of government, I only read the news when it’s slapping me in the face.  However, since it tossed everyone into such a tizzy tonight, I finally looked Scott Brown up on Wikipedia to see what kind of sack of crap America had bought itself this time (Libertarian-flavored, it turns out).*

About halfway down the page, I noticed a mention of a campaign ad where the Democratic candidate slammed (perhaps inaccurately) her challenger on a bill he proposed in “Massachussetes.”  That, right there, told me everything I needed to know about the campaign.  Well, that and the fact that, with the election squarely in her pocket (MA is a blue state, after all), she took a week off to let her opponent build up steam.  Democrats lost this like they lost 2004′s run for President: sheer and utter stupidity.

I’d bemoan this, but it’s just par for the course these days.  Democrats had a chance to tell conservatives to take their unsustainable tax cuts and shove them, and to give the country a chance at bona fide health care for people within our borders who desperately need it.  Instead, they wandered from topic to topic, and after some loony bins started being meanie poo-poo heads and acting like 5-year-olds at town halls and no one could muster up a single “shut the fuck up you crazy S.O.B., I’m talking,” they got scared and backed down.  Again.

I was a political idealist, once upon a time.  I thought that one of the two extremes, with enough sanity and moderation, could make things work in this country.  If conservatives gained a stronghold, we’d have a smaller government with fewer taxes, but fewer programs to suck the revenue stream dry.  That’s not my choice, I’d rather help people with government than give them the finger and say “not my problem,” but that’d require higher taxes.  Both ideas have merit, if you take into account the need for someone to balance the books at the end of the day.

But when we had conservatives in charge, we got fear.  We got tax cuts and explosions in spending.  We got a social agenda that looked like it longed for the pure and holy days where sinful acts like interracial dating were beaten out of people.  We got imperialism run amok, miring us in wars that we had no business starting.  I’d say more about the conservative years, but I think people blogged it to death just fine without me.

Then, the glorious hope from the heavens came.  2006: the great big upset.  For the first time in 12 years, congress was a bright and shining blue.  But we got nothing.  2 years of hand-wringing and complaining and the best we could get is blame on the fact that they couldn’t override a veto on Bush, they just didn’t have the numbers.  Thank whatever gods you like, then, that Barack Obama, the Champion of Change, swooped in.  After battling Hillary for Prom Queen for a year, he took Pennsylvania Avenue by storm.

But we got nothing.  Again.

Some liberal pundits talk about how much Barack Obama has done.  Maybe it’s more like Snow Leopard was to Mac OS X: it’s all under the hood.  But we aren’t treated to rousing speeches anymore.  We’re treated to meetings with the opposition, to see if maybe they’ll sell their agenda up the creek for tea and cookies.  Democrats didn’t learn from the other side of the aisle: you take the power you’ve got and you ram through your agenda, and you don’t care if half the country disagrees with you.  You won’t win them over with passionate pleas of “can’t we all just get along.”  You win them over by beating them and trumpeting the success of that which they didn’t support.

Of course, the core will never believe you.  But the people on the edges, the ones swaying on the fence, they can be won over by success.  They’ll never be won over by cowardice.  And that brings us to tonight.  After a barely-fought and not-really-particularly-contested fight for Massachusetts, Democrats lost the ability to block a filibuster (if they ever had it).  At this point, it hardly seems like the agenda will change at all.  Things that wouldn’t come to a vote before will still manage not to come to a vote.

The future does look more grim, though.  The political pendulum doesn’t seem to have stayed very long on the left.  If all that happens is fiscal conservatism, I’ll call us all lucky.  But I don’t foresee that.  The talking heads warning us of ever-impending doom and war, against the world and against each other, are still out there.  Some espouse libertarian ideals of social responsibility and fiscal conservatism, but most are willing to stoke the fires that burn us the most.  I don’t want another world where I have to fear what my government is willing to do to me to safeguard against largely phantasmal enemies at the gate, but if Democrats don’t shape up and grow a pair, that’s where we’re headed.

* Note that I’m not saying conservatives are sacks of crap.  Politicians are sacks of crap.