Just when we could actually believe there could be a pull-out of Iraq as recently promised, this tape is released. Bin Laden knows his enemy and knows that if he suggests Bush pull out, well, by golly, even though that was the plan, well, now we’ve got to stay and fight. I’d say bin Laden is using his reverse psychology on a guy who is easily fooled twice. “You fool me once, … shame on…me. Fool…me…twice… … …You can’ can’t fool me twice!”
Here’s the BBC’s story.
And The Guardian’s.
I know, I haven’t posted in a bit. My life had become insanely hectic (and I swear I have a few hour reprieve right now) with grading, comment writing, and doing end of semester work. Plus Sujal and I wee doing a wedding planning marathon, though it seems like we have accomplished little. I did lots of good work doing my grades and comments, and I am happy with the effort I put in. Alas, now I have one of those nasty teacher colds.
And to think about what nasty Mitt Romney said about us at an MLK Day tribute breakfast:
“Sad to say that the teachers union and their supporters will fight these answers [how to solve problems with the achievement gap between white and minority students] with every tool they have…They will distort and deprive, they will torture and twist, but don’t forget, to them, it’s first about compensation and jobs. To you, it’s about kids and their future.”
I heard that on WFCR on my way to work (and to get coffee) on Tuesday morning. It made me so angry. I taught in that state for five years, and it pains me that I quasi-served under him in some capacity. No one ever questions doctors’ concern over compensation and jobs. And then to be most timely, as I told a class of mine that I once managed a record store at the Mall of America, yes our nation’s largest mall and some of my darkest days, they siad they thought managing a record store must have been cool. They asked why I quit to take a job as a secretary, and I said the pay was bad, one student aptly questioned, “Then why did you become a teacher?” after which he quickly apologized. I was hardly offended (by the truth), and it just further illustrated how OFF Romney is. NO ONE TEACHES FOR THE MONEY!!! I am not saying we teachers are paupers necessarily, though some are, but we are not paid handsomely. Fact. And boy is it a fact in Massachusetts.
Hello faithful readers (take that how you will): I’ve been thinking a bit more on this “war” on Christmas. I was reading from this conservative blog when I realized that we may be unified in strongly disliking commercialism. I remember this little epiphany I had years ago — I’m sure it is a common epiphany. I think even Dr. Spock had it. All you need is love. The Beatles certainly had it. We all want to be accepted for who we are and appreciated. That’s really not such a bad thing. Let’s try to not put people on the defensive. When people feel threatened, they attack. Okay, not earth shattering. Try to see the other perspective, be empathetic.
I don’t know that anyone really ever had that much of a problem with Christmas itself. The complaining I’ve heard is that it is Christmas season from Halloween until Mid-January, that everywhere you look, you are slapped in the face with it. I know many Christians who complain about the fact that they have to listen to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” in early November. What is the cause of this? Capitalism and retail.
Culturally, non-Christians often get annoyed with Christmas, because it seems like the only holiday. For years, Jews did not get off on major Jewish holidays. We did not get Diwali off from school. Kwanzaa? What do we do for Ramadan? If one does take off for a religious observance, then s/he is excluded from the rest of what is going on. If I kept my child home for Diwali, s/he would miss a day of school. I believe there has been a move to secularize Christmas to make it more inclusive. Let’s celebrate all the holidays that happen during this season. It is not to exclude God. Ultimately, I think the message we want to send goes something like this: It is fine for you to worship your god; just be respectful of me worshipping mine.
It seems like it’s such a better idea to come together as a community rather than to exclude, and I do not understand this tendency to exclude.
In my reading of the West Hartford News, the article that headlined was Council approves two votes aimed at teen safety. Of course when I saw that, I thought how great that is. And while I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to keep teens safe — in fact I think it is a good thing — I just don’t know how realistic the council is being. Perhaps I do not understand the workings of the Graduated License Law, which would require 16 and 17 year old licensed drivers to have a licensed adult driver of 25 or older in the car, with no more than one other under-25 year old. Unrealistic? you ask. Let me explain.
First of all, I’m not sure if this is a West Hartford law or not. It seems like a state’s jurisdiction. I teach at a school where a lot of 16 and 17 year olds drive to school. We do not provide free bussing, so kids and parents would have to find an alternative. But looking at this realistically, if it is a West Hartford law, and a kid drives in from Farmington, does he or she get stopped at the townline? If a 16 year old from West Hartford is caught in Farmington, do the rules apply to him or her? Clearly I have a lot to learn about local politics and how to enforce this law.
Some of the speakers at the meeting seemed to make strong cases supporting this vote, and I see that if an adult is in the car, a teen is less likely to speed or take risks, but at the same time, accidents are common. Inexperience in driving does not only play out in the form of risk taking. My problem is less with the law itself than with the way it will be enforced.
So I realize I am late in the game, but I’ve been feeling under the weather. I wanted to write this last night but just didn’t have the energy. We watched the presidential address from the Oval Office last night, and while we’ve known for a long time that GWB has some issues with elocution, it just became more and more clear to me how uncomfortable he is in front of a camera. Sujal and I talked about how he clearly just put this together with not a lot of rehearsal time, and a good president should be able to speak to his or her country. He looked scared. He looked scared of us. He reminded me of someone you catch doing something wrong. In essence, that’s what last night’s speech was about, but it seems he is not comfortable with looking the nation in the eye.
The AP and the New York Times have articles reporting on Bush defending his legal authority to “spy.” As we were watching this address, and again, it was so obvious that he was squirming through it, I began to think, What is Bush pulled a Richard Nixon — a Watergate Scandal? Would the American public still back him? Where do we draw the line for breaking the law?
I was trying to think of some Fox News-esque type headline. 🙂
To some people (a.k.a. Sujal), many people support or poo-poo a potential justice based on one issue — abortion. I disagree. The right to choose is a civil liberty, a symptom of the ills that still plague women’s status in society. Yes, even our modern American society. The issue is about social class, gender equality, separation of church and state, and “parents’ rights” — which as far as I’m concerned, if right-to-lifers want to follow their line of logic that life begins at conception, then they should be calling it Grandparents’ rights — because parents’ right would be the rights of the pregnant teen (or tween) daughter and the father of the unborn. So in essence, parents’ rights are still the rights of the pregnant young woman.
At the point that a girl is pregnant, parents should have already begun to impress upon their daughter the importance of sound decisions. This is also a reason I am in favor of sex ed in schools. None of this is new, of course. We’ve heard the arguments for both sides for a long time now. It makes me sad that this is still an issue. It makes me sad that people don’t see the word “bitch” as the epithet it is. These thoughts tie into my post-shower musings from today.
I had this funny jump of thoughts this AM that began with thinking about boy bands because of this link that Sujal showed me. One thought lead to another, and I had this memory that made me very sad. I believe I was in 9th grade, sitting in front of “Ray” in homeroom. Ray and I shared no classes, so I didn’t know him very well, but I liked him in terms of being a homeroom pal. My memory of him is that he was not wildly interested in school. He was in a clique (if I recall correctly) that we at my HS called the freaks — though freak was not as insulting as it is in regular speech (though being called a freak can rarely be construed as a positive thing.) Other terms for the group: heads (short for potheads), stoners, metalheads, etc. Really, there was this strain of classist divide going on there. My clique was the punk crowd, which was on the same side of the class divide as the freaks. Nonetheless, Ray, the freak, and I were homeroom pals. We also chatted with “Nicole”, who sat nearby. Nicole was also a freak, and as most freaker chicks, she was a “known slut.” I remember one day Ray, teasing I’m sure, put his hand on my back and caressed me. Being the prim and proper, naive girl that I was (i.e. good catholic), I turned around and said to Ray, “Don’t do that! Maybe SHE (pointing to Nicole) likes it, but I don’t!” So this morning, looking in the mirror, I uncovered that ugly wrinkle in my past.
How did Nicole end up being the target when she wasn’t even involved? I misplaced my blame and anger on an innocent girl. Why? She was an easier target. I also clearly recall “Michelle” who was also a “known slut.” She was in my gym class, and the other kids were really nasty to her, challenging her to fights, calling her a slut, etc. Being on the same side of the class divide, Michelle and I hung together during gym. She was one of the most soft-spoken, kind people I’d met in high school. How did she become a target for harassment by being labeled a slut?
I don’t believe that there is such a thing as a slut; there is only objectification and anger that is easily placed on women (often by other women). If I have a daughter, I am going to teach her that there is no such thing as a slut, to not judge people by a “reputation” like that. I’m going to teach her to recognize double standards, and that should she get called such a thing to try to recognize it is misplaced aggression. If I have a son, I will teach him these same lessons, though he cannot be called a slut and have it carry the same stab.
How does this tie in to the supreme court discussing an abortion law? I do not understand why there are still sluts in our society. I do not understand why people believe it is their role to control the behaviors and decisions of girls and women more than boys and men. Damn! This law is coming from New Hampshire — the Live Free or Die state. I read this article in the New York Times this afternoon. Here’s a snippet from the article:
In asking the justices to restore her state’s law, which was passed in 2003 but has never taken effect, Ms. Ayotte was sharply questioned by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter after she asserted that another state law would guard a doctor from legal action, and that in any event the state attorney general’s office would lay down a policy shielding physicians in such cases.
Justice Souter challenged Ms. Ayotte’s assertion that a doctor who performed an emergency abortion would be “constitutionally protected” from prosecution or civil liability. “What do you mean when you say it would be constitutionally protected?” asked Justice Souter, who is from New Hampshire.
Justice Breyer seemed skeptical about her statement that another state law would protect a doctor in an emergency situation. “How do we know that’s the law?” Justice Breyer asked. He said “people of good faith on both sides” might disagree on whether the other law conferred such protection.
If it is not clearly worded in the law, prosecuters will be able to try to prosecute doctors acting in an emergency. It will also cause doctors to have to make tough decisions, where they may want to abort because of imminent danger, but the imminent danger may be debatable. They may fear that another expert may say that the mother would have been fine to carry to term.
What troubles me more is this excerpt:
But Jennifer Dalven, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which challenged the law, said that even a minor delay can be disastrous. “As the nation’s leading medical authorities have explained, delaying appropriate care for even a very short period can be catastrophic and puts the teen at risk of liver damage, kidney damage, stroke and infertility,” she said.
Ms. Dalven met with some skepticism when she said that the provision for a judge’s order can be a dangerous obstacle. “Once a minor arrives in the emergency room, it is too late for her to go to court,” she said.
Justice Antonin Scalia wondered what would happen if the state created “a special office, open 24 hours a day” to field just such emergencies: ” ‘This is the abortion judge.’ It takes 30 seconds to place a phone call.”
So Scalia has this brilliant idea to have an on-call judge. How will the judge be appointed? Now there’s a disaster of bias waiting to happen.
Instead, why don’t we stop treating pregancy as a punishment for premarital sex. The parental values of “might makes right” is actually quite juvenile. Teens and tweens need sincere input (driving input) into the major decisions that will affect their lives and bodies. Parental consent laws like this are for protecting those parents that are overprotective. Clearly, if a child wants an abortion without her parents knowing, there is a reason for that.
Most of us probably know girls who had abortions, particularly who really could not tell their parents without having had awful results. I recall a chat I had with two of my catholic relatives several years ago, and both disagree with abortions in general, yet they both agreed that a friend they had needed the protection of being able to make that choice without having to tell her parents. Her parents would have done something drastic. Ugh, and socioeconomic class is so deeply tied in as well, so no, I do not at all think that rejecting a potential justice based on his or her past rulings around the right to chose is a single issue at all. Not at all. I have no interest in hanging my rights on the coat-rack and grabbing my apron as I head into the kitchen. None at all.
I am not as well informed as I would like or ought to be about local and state politics, so as I mentioned before, I subscribed to the West Hartford News particularly so I could learn about the candidates up for local election. Sadly there have been no articles. The only helpful info was a listing of the times that the debates would be aired on local access TV. Unfortunately, I’ve been working a ton lately and haven’t been able to watch TV, particularly the nights when the debates aired. Actually I wanted to GO to the debates, but had no clue where or when they were. I tried googling around to no avail. What I did find is it seems like Beth Bye is very qualified in that she has a lot of experience working in education. But here’s a scary thing — when you google West Hartford Beth Bye this blog comes up on the first page. Why aren’t there news sources for local politics? Can anyone tell me some more information on the various candidates other than the glassy mailings I get? Comment away!
Sujal left this morning saying that he thought the bombings in London might help out both Blair and Bush in their approval ratings, and I’m sure he’ll elaborate later, but my first reaction, as I was watching CNN, was that since the British have been vehemently against the war from the getgo that they would would be extra upset about this and really want out. Of course then there’s the complexity that “we don’t want to send the message that the terrorists have won” — but I wonder how this will play out. It’s all just an icky mess. I also can’t help but notice that we seem to pay so much more attention to western lives lost than mideastern lives lost. I suppose proximity is a reason, but it’s still pretty sad.
I’m leaving for Portland, OR tomorrow, and I don’t want to be selfishly concerned about my safety, but I guess I am. NPR would have me believe that I am unsafe if I am taking the subway. I suppose I am lucky that there’s no subway between West Hartford and Portland, OR. I guess there is actually a “superway”, popularly referred to as a train. This self-focused worry perhaps illustrates why we (myself included) have a tendency to focus on western targets much more than eastern targets. At the very least, I wish for myself that I had more equitable concern for all people attacked. And I think I do (moreso than the republican faction in the US), but I suppose as humans we have to have a cut-off point of caring entiely, otherwise we’d be consumed by constant worry and concern. Ugh.
The Connecticutian 