A lot of Talking Going On

The 600+ pages to stimulus legislation is being pored over as we speak by anyone and everyone looking to either get a piece of their's or to decry whatever they can that is in the bill.

To wit.

But even before the president stepped into the meeting, Republican leaders in the House asked their members during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to oppose the recovery plan unless significant adjustments are made before the bill comes up for a vote on Wednesday. They said they would ask Mr. Obama to urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, to make changes to legislation that they believe includes wasteful spending.

“The Democrat bill won’t stimulate anything but more government and more debt,” Mr. Pence said before meeting with Mr. Obama. “The slow and wasteful spending in the House Democrat bill is a disservice to millions of Americans who want to see this Congress take immediate action to get this economy moving again.”

The White House has signaled its willingness to make at least some changes, with Mr. Obama on Monday urging Democrats to strike the portion of the legislation that calls for spending $200 million on family planning for low-income people. But it remained an open question how much the president would be willing to change the signature proposal of his term, which could also create a conflict with Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats.

No Republican is going to vote for this bill because contraception funding isn't in the bill. You are going to get a couple of people in the senate but to even believe that the crazy, mouth breathers in the house have any goal other than the fling poo is to ignore the last 14 years. It is very simple, the republicans do not believe that cooperating with the democrats is in their political interest, that is all full stop. They probably actually believe that spending money Keynesian style will hurt their economy. I mean didn't their smart friend from the Heritage Society say that evil Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression with all his programs.

This is Disturbing

I'm first of all unsure why this man needed to be arrested in the first place but I am damn sure that the use of a taser was in no way justified by what he was doing. The officer seemed to know the guy. What the hell was he really going to do.

Spanish Flu Forgotten, more like 1890-1920

Matthew Yglesias asks why the Spanish Flu doesn't have any salience in our historical memory. The answer probably has a lot to do with the fact that there is very little remembered about that time period at all. There is very little mentioned about the rise of the FDA. How many people really know what McKinley even ran on other than that he sat on a porch and ,due to the fevered imagination of Karl Rove, that Mark Hanna was his campaign adviser? The 1912 Election is generally considered to be a three way race between Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson but that perennial vote getter Debbs was also in that race. Does anyone remember from high school history the panic of 1907? Does anyone talk about the collapse of commodity prices after the first world war that put the south and Midwest into a recession? Does anyone even remember that Coolidge said that agriculture was a sick industry during the supposedly roaring twenties?

The real reason that none of this is remembered is two fold. First there are very few people alive to talk about it and no one when they were alive wanted to talk about it because, after that comes the great depression and WWII. The place where modern American history begins, irrespective of the massive changes in American Life that happened before that.

Things No American Should Ever Forget

Old But Still Awesome

Quick Thought

Why can't Democrat's in South Carolina get elected state wide? Is Lexington too spread out to canvas regularly?

Because not everyone has seen this

Any Actual Arguments?

Does anyone have an actual argument for why gays can't get married. Most of the arguments I've heard are more like underpants gnome arguments.

1. Gays get married
2. ?
3. Civilization collapses or something

Most of the argument centers around damaging the "institution of marriage" which before the debate came across my radar I didn't know existed. I knew marriage existed, otherwise I wouldn't be married, but I didn't know that there was an institution called marriage. Does it have a building? Hell does it even have a particular set of rules that apply to everyone. I keep going back to the old saying that you can't ever tell what its like inside of someone else's marriage. Some rules that seem inviolate for me are not for others. Marriages continue to exist after infidelity, madness, hell some marriages probably continue to exist even though both people in them are gay and of the opposite sex.

Marriage seems to be something between two people who decide to make their own rules. Even if you look at the traditional church vows there is a lot of wiggle room inside all those vows as to how they will actually be kept.

So where is this institution?

The other argument is that we'll be changing the traditional definition of marriage. I don't particularly understand why we should be so concerned about a words definition. Many words have changed definition. Awful used to mean full of awe, now means really bad. I mean if someone got up and screamed that pizza was and inviolate word and needed to be chained to one thing for all time most people who just stare quizzically at them wondering if there was anything else nuts that the person was going to say.

But the counter argument might be that pizza is not an important word. Marriage is an important word. Are we then arguing that society is based on words and language and nothing more stable? That its merely a collective agreement amongst individuals? If that's the case then there is no good reason that we can't change the shared consensus in particular ways. Its all subjective anyway if its just a shared consensus.

But marriage, my imaginary arguer argues, was instituted by God, it's in genesis. (I guess this is where the institution of marriage nonsense comes from but it seems that if an institution in this case is just something instituted the the arguer is really piggybacking a lot on the rhetorical power of the word institution which in my mind at least has a lot of buildings associated with it) Of course the normal counter argument to that is that the bible shows that someone can be married to many people even though there is only one favorite at a time. Serial polygamy. The counter argument to that I've heard is that most of the examples of polygamy, such as Abraham taking another wife and then having to send her away at the jealousy of his first wife shows that polygamy is bad. But here we get back to the problem of the utilitarian effects of different forms of marriage which just goes back to my original question, what awful effects would gay marriage have?

Dear Lord

Has it come to this. Has Catholicism really reached this point. I understand the idea that we should possibly worry about certain concepts being diluted by the frequent use of them in unnecessary ways, but really. This is just linguistic fanaticism. That facebook call's the linking of one profile to another friending does in no sense indicate that the individual "friending" believe that their is any necessary link between the pushing of button and the actual fact of having or gaining a friend. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

UPDATE: Well I should probably read the articles a little bit closer before going off. I don't know why there was a news report on this, just as I don't know why the Pope really thought this was an important thing to say.