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Bush v Kerry II

Tuesday 31 October 2006

Bloomberg’s take:

While campaigning in California yesterday for gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, Kerry said: “Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Kerry’s suggestion “that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and it is shameful,” Bush said at an appearance in Georgia tonight. “The members of the United States military are plenty smart. And they are plenty brave. And the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.”

Contrast this with a snippet of a story on NPR earlier this week:

In their living room, Carmelo Roman de Jesus and Gloria Cruz have a shrine to Alexis, a glass cabinet with his baby shoes, baby teeth, toy cars and Medals of Honor. They’re still upset with military recruiters who promised their son $20,000 to enlist.

In an economy without many options for those lacking a college degree, the military can appear to be the only real option. Particularly when recruiters are making empty promises like that.

Michael Moore makes the same point about his home city of Flint, Michigan.

Kerry’s remark could have been better phrased, but Bush’s response shows a typical lack of introspection.

Assumption

Monday 30 October 2006

In Poland recently, a middle school teacher was called out of her classroom for some administrative duties — a meeting or some nonsense — and while she was gone, a group of male students assaulted a female student, stripping her to her underwear (or further — I can’t recall exactly) and pretending like they were going to rape her.

She committed suicide the next day. Reports indicated that there were other issues precipitating the suicide and that her parents held nothing against the perpetrators’ parents.

It’s hard for me to imagine me reacting similarly were something like that to happen to my soon-to-be daughter.

It’s no longer permissible to say parents are responsible in any way for their children’s behavior. It’s this; it’s that — it’s anything but poor parenting. Yet as L’s birthday approaches, I can’t help but wonder at the validity of that assumption.

Fee Fi Fo Fum

Friday 27 October 2006

Read in the Washington Post:

“I have to think there are Democratic strategists out there thinking the words of the old Japanese admiral: ‘I fear all we’ve done is wake a sleeping giant,’ ” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Washington-based advocacy group. “They were coasting into an election with a Republican base with dampened enthusiasm. This brings it all back home to the base, what this election is about.”
Religious Conservatives Cheer Ruling on Gays as Wake-Up Call

It’s amusing that the religious conservatives think of themselves as a slumbering giant. Even when in power, they see themselves as victims.

They also think Rove’s “back to the base” campaign strategy will still work its magic for yet another election. Still holding out hope…

What’s even more disturbing is the notion that gay marriage is such a central plank in their whole ideology. Literally thousands of people are dying because of the debacle in Iraq, and these folks are more concerned about something so relatively petty in comparison. The neocon hope of salvaging this election hinges on exploitation of people’s fear.

How…very…predictable.

But it’s really their own doing. The neocons hard-line approach has left them little wiggle room. “Stay the course” has meant “make absolutely no changes in the Iraq strategy” and “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” has turned what should be nuanced foreign relations into Pavlovian over-simplicity. What’s ironic is that neocons are now wanting to stay the course without saying “stay the course” and the “us-vs-terrorist” simplicity gets a little fuzzy when we start talking about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But they’re staying the course about gay marriage, and they seem to be pretty sure that if you aren’t with the straights, you’re with the gays. Let’s just hope that such nonsense doesn’t win elections.

Listening to Duncan Sheik

Thursday 26 October 2006

Listening to Duncan Sheik’s version of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” a slow realization.

“When was I really listening to this song a lot?” I asked myself. Answer: in late 2002, the beginning of my fifth school year in Lipnica Wielka. “Those were good times,” I said to myself, almost audibly.

There was a time when listening to music I’d associated with Lipnica could send me into spirals of depression if I weren’t careful. I’d lived an idyllic life there during the first three years, and re-adjusting to the States was tough ” tough enough that I ended up going back and staying for another four years. But before I returned, before I made the decision to return, I lived in the past a lot.

Fast-forward to today. I realized that I no longer look back to those times in the same way, and the reason is simple. I’ve got the most amazing reason ever to look forward instead of backward: I’m going to be a father.

Kick!

Tuesday 24 October 2006

We felt L move some time ago — last week, we finally saw her move. That’s rather like saying “I saw the wind blow.” We saw the effects of L’s movement: a bump on K’s belly that grew and shrank and grew again, moving about slightly before disappearing.

Almost nightly, rubbing K’s belly, I say in amazement, “There’s a little person inside you!” Despite K’s increasingly rotund belly, the pregnancy is still so abstract. The coming responsibilities and joys are still little more than a daydream. It was like imagining being “grown up” when you’re a kid: you know it will come eventually, but it’s so nebulous that it might as well be a fairy tale.

But during those moments, when L is thumping and bumping about in K’s belly, it really settles in. The “we’re going to be parents” morphs into “we are parents.” We just haven’t met our little girl yet…

Veils and Teaching

Monday 23 October 2006

The case of Aishah Azmi, the teaching aid in Britain fired for refusing to remove her veil, got me to thinking about what it would be like to try to perform the basic functions of her job while veiled.

What was her job, exactly?

Headfield Church of England Junior School, where Azmi taught 11-year-olds learning English as a second language, suspended her in November 2005 after she refused to remove her veil at work. School officials said students found it hard to understand her during lessons and that face-to-face communication was essential for her job. Officials said the decision to suspend her was made only after school officials spent time assessing the impact of wearing the veil on teaching and learning. British Panel Reprimands School in Veil Dispute

I have a little bit of experience in teaching English, and I can’t imagine trying to do it without making my mouth visible. I spent much time sitting with students individually and showing them what my mouth was doing to make certain sounds, particularly “th”. It would be extremely difficult to do so with my mouth hidden.

Additionally, I know what it’s like from the learner’s point of view as well. My experience living abroad showed me how critical to comprehension it is to see someone’s mouth. When I was first learning Polish, a conversation that would have been simple enough in person was a nightmare over the telephone. If those who were trying to help me learn Polish had done so with their mouths completely hidden, I think I would have learned far less, far less quickly.

Veiling is not the same issue as observant Jews leaving work early on Fridays to get home before shabbat begins. Leaving early does not affect the quality of an individual’s work while at work; wearing a veil, in this case, seems to do just that.

The question is whether or not personal religious convictions trump job requirements. When they come into conflict, what gives?

Autumn on the Parkway

Sunday 22 October 2006

Yesterday, K and I took the Hoary Ones out onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Last year we did the same, but the autumnal colors were dim, to say the least — a dry summer and a drier early autumn meant that the leaves just turned dark and fell off.

Parkway Autumn II

This year, there was some color. Nothing like what’s possible in New England, but colorful all the same.

Parkway Autumn VI

More pictures available at our Flickr account.

Political Schizophrenia

Saturday 21 October 2006

In local elections in Jabłonka — K’s home village in southern Poland — there’s a man running for mayor as a candidate of the Prawo i Spawiedliwość (“Law and Justice”) party, a fairly right-wing party that, like many Republicans, tries to build a base out of religious conservatives. However, he’s running for a position on the county council as a candidate of the Platforma Obywatelska (“Civic Platform”) party, a centrist, left-leaning party, something slightly right of a Clintonian Democrat.

Really, I just don’t know what I could add…

Fondling Foley

Friday 20 October 2006

Some unusual frankness from a church official:

Once maybe I touched him or so, but didn’t, it wasn’t — because it’s not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that you know. We were just fondling,” Father Anthony Mercieca, 69, said in a phone interview with CNN affiliate WPTV from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean. CNN.com

It wasn’t rape — just an older authority figure playing with a kid’s privates.

I mean, let’s not blow things out of proportion here.

Mercieca, however, rejected the idea that he sexually abused Foley, saying, “See abuse, it’s a bad word, you know, because abuse, you abuse someone against his will. But it involved just spontaneousness, you know?”

I mean, he did seem to enjoy it. There are, uh, I mean, there are ways to tell, know what I’m talking about?

Wink wink.

So I’m not sure what to call it, but because there was no penetration and he seemed to like it, “rape” and “abuse” are definitely out.

How about we call it “a good time?”

Mercieca apologized to Foley but implored the former lawmaker to remember the fun they had together.

“I would say that if I offended him, I am sorry, but to remember the good time we had together, you know?” he said. “And how really we enjoyed each other’s company. And to let bygones be bygones. Don’t keep dwelling on this thing, you know?”

Besides, there are plenty of psychiatrists and such to help it if — and that’s a big if — Foley had any problems with it.

“Let’s say it was 40 years ago, almost 40 years ago, so why bring this up at this late stage?” Mercieca asked. “Anyway, he will overcome it, with a psychiatrist you know. Mark is a very intelligent man.”

Mercieca said he and the teen Foley were friends, “almost like brothers,” and they went on trips together to the beach, rodeo and arcade. They also went out of town together to New York and Washington, where they visited museums.

Maybe “incest” would be a better word, then?

This is like something from the Onion.