Another Perspective

From a letter to Andrew Sullivan:

 

I am a 36 year old African American woman.  I have two girls ages 10 and 8.  The country does not get the full import of this moment.  My daughters and I sat together along with my husband to watch Michelle Obama tonight.  Mr. Sullivan, we were all in tears.

 

Read his blog post here.

Contraception, Contraband

Apparently, the Department of Health and Human services is attempting to classify all forms of contraception (birth control pills, condoms, the day-after pill) as abortion so physicians won't have to engage in the morally destructive act - if they feel it is such - of enabling an "abortion" or "contraception," or whatever you wish to call it.

Most confounding to me:

The proposed regulation defines defines abortion as "any of the various procedures -- including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation."

How can termination of "a human being in utero between conception and natural birth" occur before implantation? Am I misunderstanding something? Please comment and let me know if this is this case.

Anyway, hat-tip to Mel, my roommate. Check out comment No. 4, hers. She gets at the issue from all sorts of angles, and I fully endorse her thesis - women should begin refusing men sex. That would make for some grumpy lawmakers.

I encourage you to read every word of the link, including all the comments below.

Update: OK, I think I get it. If "any of the procedures" occurs before or after implantation, it is considered abortion. So this was a crime of syntax.

Damnit, Text It To Me!

This is all so true. I mean, the more i think about it the more ingenious this idea is. People - including journalists, Obamamaniacs, Obama supporters, and politics junkies in general - are just waiting, waiting, waiting to receive a text message from ... Barack Obama?

It creates so much drama and anticipation, it's become like a pop-cultural event. It reminds me of last year, when everyone was eagerly awaiting the first review of the final Harry Potter book, which was secretly purchased first by the NYT a day early and reviewed by Michiko Kakutani within hours. It was all over the Internets.

Regardless of whether or not you support Obama, they've come up with some pretty nifty stratagems in this campaign.

Oh yeah, so I was wrong about the timing of it. Oh well.

Text It To Me, Baby

Barack Obama's vice-presidential text-message stunt may be superhip, but it's also getting a little silly. A Google News search for "Obama" and "text message" turns up thousands of hits for stories about it all. Everyone's a little breathless waiting for it.

So when is it coming? Well, the NYT story from a couple of days ago indicates (look halfway down the page) that the veep text will be coming early in the morning to take advantage of a full day's news cycle. The logical extension of that is that it would be on a weekday, when all the news shows and various media outlets are in full swing.

Even ignoring that fact, Obama has already announced that he will be appearing with his veep (whoever that may be) on Saturday at a big campaign event to lead into the Monday kick-off of the Democratic convention.

So using the logic I so carefully honed in college and with innumerable logic problems in high school and middle school, the conclusion is that the text message is coming out... early tomorrow morning, Friday.

Go sign up for your early morning veep text, and join the fray!

P.S. - Seriously, try the logic problems. Those are totally rad.
P.P.S. - Also, screw around with the biggest Obama fans you know. Send fake VP texts!

Nah, You're Elite!

Maybe McCain is the elitist. Although in all seriousness, I don't put much weight in this "out-of-touch" talk.

An Unjust Death

After a long hiatus (due in part to the unbearable heat the last few weeks), I have begun reading the paper on the train again. Today I managed to get through the entire front page - and, my oh my, what a crazy world we live in.

But this story, above all, got to me. It's about a Chinese immigrant who overstayed his visa but managed to make a life here. After marriage to an American citizen and two American-born sons, the INS caught up with him last July as he was looking into his green card application.

Today, he is dead. He was 34. Read it to the end.

PS - There's an entire resource page at the NYT website called "In-Custody Deaths" - this story is not unique. Who cares if these people are not our citizens, or that they are criminals? They should be treated as people.

PPS - Is this not a greater injustice than the Olympic singing-girl controversy?

Dear Spain: Yao Is A Large, Large Man

I have only one word: Wow.

Superpower

With the news that Roger Federer will lose his No. 1 ranking - a pretty monumental event to tennis fans, who know he may never earn it back again - Harvey Araton gives it some perspective, and analogizes Rafael Nadal's rise to supremacy to that of China's in the Summer Games medal count.

Araton makes some good points at the bottom, and offers up some good quotes from Federer. You can tell from the focus of the story that Araton, like many, is still in disbelief that starting Monday, Federer's name will reside in the No. 2 spot.

Windfall

The U.S. has been busting its butt in Iraq, and now, to the chagrin of Democrats and Republicans alike, it seems like Iraq will yield an oil-fueled surplus of up to $79 billion by the end of this year, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan organization that is the so-called "congressional watchdog."

Why is that a bad thing? Well, only a tiny fraction of that is actually going toward reconstruction within the country. Meanwhile, the American budget remains deep in the red - we'll rack up roughly a $500 billion deficit in 2009, the highest dollar amount ever (breaking the 2004 record) - at the same time that we continue to spend scores of billions of dollars on ... yup, Iraq reconstruction.

Statement of Senators Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who requested the GAO report:

"The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large-scale reconstruction projects," Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a joint statement with Mr. Warner. "It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank."

Fine. But what's the cause of the massive amount of unused funds? Apparently, it's Iraq's molasses-slow bureaucracy and general managerial incompetence, according to the the New York Times story.

(It's a little perverse: Iraq sits on their huge profits, and we're racking up unprecedented levels of debt, spending huge amounts of tax money on Iraq reconstruction and simultaneously boosting Iraq oil profits with our fuel consumption. That's seriously screwy.)

That view, however, doesn't fly with a U.S. diplomat in Iraq.

The official said the new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent watchdog, captured only part of the picture when it said Baghdad was failing to spend on reconstruction, leaving much of the task to Washington.

"The impression that somehow the Iraqis are sitting back on these huge growing balances doesn't really fit what's happening," the official in Baghdad said, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.

...

The U.S. official said he hoped bureaucratic changes to facilitate contracts and authorise spending would help Iraqi officials get money out the door. "They are looking for ways to de-bottleneck their own expenditures," he said.

Under close scrutiny from the United States and the international community, he said the government's effort to improve budget execution "is actually a positive story."

Diplomatic, for sure. I mean, listen, I don't usually get bothered by too much in the news, but this kind of irritates me. What are we, Iraq, your petrodaddy? Get it together!