Politics: July 2005 Archives

OMG IPN ROFL!

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The Nebraska Attorney General's Office sends out a newsletter called The Consumer Advocate. I wound up on their mailing list when Lexis-Nexis had that nasty security breach (which, since I use the Lexis-Nexis database for school stuff, might have compromised my identity, not that it was "secure" in the sense that they like to push). So, on the back page of their most recent scare rag (let's not kid ourselves) which is all about the "Internet predators" who "prey on our children", they have a list of "25 acronyms that are being used by young people today".
121
One to one
A/S/L?
Age, sex, location
CRBT
Crying real big tears
F2F
Face to face
FUD
Fear, uncertainty and doubt
ILU
I love you
IPN
I'm posting nude
IWALU
I will always love you
KOC
Kiss on cheek
KOL
Kiss on lips
LMIRL
Let's meet in real life
NIFOC
Nude in front of computer
NP
Nosy parents
OLL
Online love
P911
My parents are coming!
PA
Parent alert
PAL
Parents are listening
PANB
Parents are nearby
POS
Parent over shoulder
SWAK
Sealed with a kiss
TAW
Teachers are watching
WTGP
Want to go private?
TOS
Teacher over shoulder
WUF
Where are you from?
(For more gems, they have a PDF with almost 200 of them.) My question is, where the hell do they come up with this shit? Out of that list, I can only find three that I've ever seen actually used; of those, A/S/L is so idiotic it's a joke; I can't see why FUD should alarm parents; and NP doesn't mean nosy parents, it means no problem. Maybe next time they want to print this garbage, they should contact people who actually use the internet. Or maybe, if a parent's busy snooping in their kids' chat logs, it's time to ask their kids what they're talking about, instead of listening to people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Oh, wait. That would almost verge on personal responsibility.

China?

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I was chatting with my friend Jason earlier about the military buildup in China, and he brought up some good questions.
  1. They've built up forces to roughly one third of ours. Do they really think that's enough?
  2. Why would they want to go to war with the U.S.? If I'm not missing something, we're a substantial part of their export economy.
  3. Don't we have quite the list of Friends With Big Sticks? Does it make any sense to fight that?
  4. Why? Why? Why?
If you have some insight, leave a comment!

Measured Positions

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Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring. I'm sure that's not news to much of anyone; it's on every news show and every news site and every even sort-of politically oriented blogs. I'm still going to give my perspective, though, because I recently discovered I have one and haven't yet decided to have it surgically removed. (Pause to remove tongue from cheek.) The ABC News article linked, along with most of the other articles I read reporting on the same thing (I know, I'm a very exciting person - you should see me at parties!), brought up the idea that she was "the swing vote". ABC News, at least, had the decency to put that moniker in scare quotes and let O'Connor comment on it.
"It seems to me that often people writing for public consumption try to find some hook to hang a slogan on," O'Connor said, "and that's not a slogan that I think is very apt."
Right on. Let's get a few things straight: A person is not their vote, whether they're a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States or Joe Schmoe. My vote for Bush last November does not make me a Republican. My vote supporting casinos in Nebraska doesn't make me a compulsive gambler. Next up: let's just kill the word "swing", please. Sandra Day O'Connor supposedly has a history of pissing people off. The hardcore liberal pro-choicers claimed her when she voted to keep abortion legal but got pissed off when she voted to limit it; the hardcore conservative pro-lifers got pissed off when she voted to keep it legal. Oh. My. God. You mean, she voted both for and against abortion? Screw John Kerry - buy this lady some flip-flops! (Re-removing tongue from cheek.) See, there's a wide gulf between flip-flopping and having a measured position. I haven't read an opinion by O'Connor that seemed unreasoned, or unmeasured, even the ones I disagreed with. I respect the woman because she wasn't knee-jerk consistent; the merits of the cases put before her were judged before she decided. So, she supposedly pissed a lot of people off. More true, actually, would be to say that she pissed a lot of very vocal people off. That's more accurate because most people don't live in the hardcore-liberal-pro-choice or hardcore-conservative-pro-life camps. Most of us sit somewhere in the middle - and that's true of most issues, not just abortion. Discussing abortion for the moment, though, you hear a whole bunch of dependent clauses when you talk with reasonable people: "I believe abortion should be legal if the mother's life is in danger." "I think abortion should be illegal unless there is clear evidence that the child is going to be born with a debilitating, terminal illness." "I think abortion should be completely legal, but I will give any other option much more support." "I think abortion should be legal only within the first trimester." "I think it's ok for victims of rape." Those are all actual opinions I've heard, talking to people. Some people had combinations of those. Some people had entirely different opinions that were still somewhere between "let's have an abortion-tupperware mixup party" and "if you have an abortion you're going to die and burn in hell because every sperm is sacred and zygotes are more human beings than mothers-to-be". Abortion isn't as contentious as everyone thinks. Almost everyone wants there to be as few of them as possible, regardless of their political stance on the topic. And the reasoned position is finding an unlikely (well, to me, anyway) spokesperson: Hilary Clinton. From a recent article in Time magazine, Andrew Sullivan reports:
Something very unusual is happening to some Democrats and pro-choice abortion activists. They're getting smarter about their strategy. For years, they've harped on and on about a woman's right to choose, while failing to capture in any meaningful way the moral qualms so many of us have about abortion itself. So they often seemed strident, ideological and morally obtuse. They talked about abortion as if it were as morally trivial as a tooth extraction--not a profound moral choice that no woman would ever want to make if she could avoid it. But that obtuseness seems--finally and mercifully--to be changing. Senator Hillary Clinton led the way in a recent speech to abortion-rights activists. She said something so obvious and so right it's amazing it has taken this long for it to be uttered: whatever side you're on in the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate, we surely all want to lower the number of abortions. Whether you believe that an abortion is a difficult medical procedure for a woman or whether, like me, you believe that all abortions are an immoral taking of human life, we can all agree on a third principle: we would be better off with fewer of them. And the happy truth is, abortions have been declining in numbers. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, since 1990 the number of reported legal abortions dropped from 1.4 million a year to 853,000 in 2001. The number of abortions for every 1,000 live births dropped from 344 to 246.
(For those of you who don't subscribe to Time, the full article is available elsewhere.) Perhaps our retiring justice is more than a reactionary. I think she's a better reflection of the American people than most of the justices sitting with her - for better or worse, but frequently better. Sandra Day O'Connor may have had some poor decisions in her career, along with some good ones. Let's not forget that she spent almost a quarter of a century trying to make wise decisions for our country. She's not a swing vote. She's a Supreme Court justice with realistic, measured positions.
In case you had illusions that the Supreme Court finding in the Kelo case wouldn't have much effect, tell it to the thousands of people for whom home-theft is now imminent given the judicial green-light. (Link via The Agitator.) While I see a lot of people slanting this case as America's big "fuck you" to the poor, I think that it's going to affect a much larger slice of the citizenry. Sam and I wanted to buy a home - probably one that needed considerable work, since it would be our first and we figured on making some extra money that way - but what's to keep Omaha from blighting the home we buy for condos? We're pretty firmly in the middle class, and this ruling just makes it that much less likely that the risks of homebuying will be outweighed by the rewards. Meanwhile, over at Reason they're talking about how these kinds of rulings happen (discussing Raich & Kelo, cases which seriously redefine and undermine formerly limiting clauses on government power). And our congress-critters seem to have noticed that we're pissed, and are using their spending power to make use of eminent domain for private gain a sour pill for those hoping for federal money. Nancy Pelosi, an idiot with too much power, thinks that the measure (which passed by a pretty margin in the house) is "in violation of the respect of separation of powers in our Constitution". Funny, I was thinking something similar about the 5-4 decision in the Kelo case (it's in violation of the Constitution, anyhow). It's interesting to hear someone posit that measures which oppose and counterbalance each other are in violation of separation of powers. I thought that the whole point was to limit governmental power, but hey, since when has Pelosi known anything about limited government? The Washington Post article linked notes that the measure to deny federal funds to eminent domain abuses went 231-189, the split going 192-31 for Republicans and 39-157 for Democrats. And Dems wonder why they can't win a Presidency or Congressional majority - 86% of them are apparently morons. Are those the kind of odds we want? Didn't think so. (If you're curious how your house representatives voted on this amendment, check the voting record; for Nebraskans, the reps in question are Jeff Fortenberry, Lee Terry and Thomas Osborne, all of whom, I'm encouraged to say, voted aye to block federal spending on eminent domain abuse. I should write them pretty letters. With... sparkles and perfume.) Time for me to go take my physics test, so I'll leave the ranting to others for a couple of hours.
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    This page is a archive of entries in the Politics category from July 2005.

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