Humpty Dumpty and Compromise

God, what a mess!!

The Election is over and the new President is installed in office (yes, I know Obama won, but each 4 years a “new” President is sworn in).  Now the work of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. No doubt about it: the country is broken. And as I see it the cause is hyper-partisanship. The Right has moved farther to the right and the Left has moved farther to the left. Leaving very little in the middle.

In the old days political parties regularly switched places in the lineup and voting districts were filled with a mix of political types such that many, if not most, districts were able to put canditates in office who were “middle-of-the-roaders”.  No more. This trend is especially seen in the Republican Party, but is growing in the Democtratic Party as well. It bodes badly for the country and is manifested in the continuous gridlock seen in recent years in congress.

The old political art of compromise seems to have gone the way of the floppy disk. We now have the art of political confrontation and brinksmanship in plain view every day. Right now the Dems have the White House so the Republicans balk and block. It the situation were reversed I have no doubt that the Dems would do the same.

It is just a damn shame to ruin a good country with partisan crap like we see now.

There is a way out though: challenge the redistricting of congressional districts in the courts and hope for a better plan. Hope. Well, when all else fails there is always Hope.

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Woody Attempts to Clarify

I think I need to clarify and redirect my comments some comments about a women’s right to choose. Abortion is not an issue in and of itself for me. Personally I think termination of pregnancy should be a last resort taken very seriously. I believe that while no woman should ever be forced to have an abortion, no woman should be denied access to the procedure either. Whether to terminate or not should be, in my view, entirely up to the woman involved. So what about the man? Which man is that? The rapist? The woman’s father? Her brother? The drunken frat boys? None of them should have any say at all. There are times when consensual sex leads to pregnancy and there may be legitimate dispute about “keeping the baby”. If the father is willing to take over 100% of the care and support of the baby and leave the woman free to move on, then there could be a case for carrying to term. This is a problematic area that I agree has no easy answers. Still, I come down on the side of the woman and her absolute right to control her own body. And the rights of the embryo/fetus? None that I can see. Life begins at conception. Or does it? Isn’t an egg alive? Aren’t sperms alive? Of course they are. In many cultures both past and present babies are considered for life or death based on circumstances. They have no natural right to live. They have value or not, and on that basis are kept or discarded.

No, the issue isn’t abortion. The issue for me is control or lack thereof. Laws that require people to have medical procedures against their will have mostly been abandoned. Forced sterilizations of “undesirables” are mostly gone. So why should there be laws that criminalize voluntary procedures? Where is the constitutional basis for such laws? Well, one party wants to put the concept of “personhood” which by their reckoning begins at conception, into the Constitution. Then laws against abortion would be “legal”, and women would lose the right to choose. The RIGHT TO CHOOSE. The basis of such an amendment is biblical. It defines life as “god given” where there is no reason at all to believe that it is, in fact, anything other than natural.

So it boils down to this in my view: Laws that proscribe behavior based on the sanctity of life are in fact religious laws. And they are laws of convenience. “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. Did I get that right? Kill what, or who and under what circumstances? Not kill animals? Nonsense. Not kill in war or time of threat? Nonsense. Not kill in punishment? Nonsense. Not kill for mercy? Nonsense. Laws of convenience. The same legislators who want to pass ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill the Unborn” want to kill enemies, and criminals and animals. Many of the very same legislators who want to limit the rights of a woman to control her own body also want government out of their businesses, out of their taxes and out of the way of “progress”. What is going on here anyway? You mean it is all right to pour millions of gallons of poisons into rivers and lakes, and all right to pollute the air, and all right to “frack” the ground without concern for the water supply but is not all right for a woman to control her own reproductive functions? Nonsense.

And yes, a lot of women want to control the lives of other women by passing restrictive (religious) laws on the control of their bodies. So what? That doesn’t make it right, does it? The other day the Taliban beheaded 17 people for dancing. Dancing offended their concept of their religion so they killed the dancers. Ordinary people having a good time at a private party. That is what happens when religion runs amok. Passing laws based on any religion is the beginning of the end of real freedom. Our founding fathers had it right: Keep Religion Out Of Government and Governance. Still a good idea today. Or, you can move to Saudi Arabia were religion trumps everything.

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"LIAR!!!"

"Liar" said Gavroche!

Is a lie still a lie if you don’t know it is a lie?

Suppose someone tells you that a friend is a Republican, but the friend is actually a Libertarian. You believe the person and tell someone else that this friend is a Republican. The first person lied to you. So the question is did you lie when you passed on the information or did you tell the truth?

I suppose there is some arcane philosophical discourse about this that involves truth tables or logic trees or something, but I am looking for a simple answer. And I think I have one: Yes, you are lying too. Why do I think this? Because I believe it is up to each of us to investigate the truth to the best of our ability before repeating an assertion. This could be time consuming and difficult but necessary if you want to be truthful. In the example above you simply make a phone call or send an email and ask, assuming you give a crap. If not, don’t pass it on.

The core of the question goes to the idea of “belief”.  If you “believe” something is true and pass it around as “truth” you are a potential liar. If the belief is actually true, then you don’t lie. If not, you do. You are the person responsible to verify the facts of your assertions before you assert them. You think there is a tooth fairy? Check it out and then tell your kids. You think there is a Santa Clause? Check it out. You think there is a God? Check it out before you go around proclaiming “TRUTH”. If you can’t come up with a factual basis for your belief in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or God, qualify yourself with “I believe this to be true, but I have no evidence to support my assertion.” Now, what you really might mean is “I know this is true but a moron like you will never see my reasoning so I won’t even try.”

It is really simple: You pass on a lie, you are a liar. You question or qualify a lie, and you might just be a thinking person.

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