Month: November 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

Obstructing Democracy

Normally when I vote, I head to the polls, wait my turn, and then cast my ballot. This year, though, I’m going to mix things up. I keep hearing about voter intimidation in some states, and it sounds like something I’d like to learn more about. So today I plan on the following forms of intimidation:

  • Standing extremely close to the person in front of me in line. While doing so I will alternate between ignoring their annoyed looks and moving closer each time they attempt to create more space, and glowering at them with my meanest look possible.
  • Heckling other voters as I would do an opponent shooting free throws. Screaming, yelling, jumping up-and-down, waving my arms, etc. Anything to distract them from the task at hand.
  • Stepping in front of people when it’s their turn to vote. Shuffle left, shuffle right, just stay in their way. After a few moments of that I’ll stop, turn to an imaginary camera, laugh, and say, “And that’s the scene here, Chuck. Back to you in the studio.”

I don’t understand why so many people talk about voter intimidation as if it’s a bad thing. It sounds like a lot of fun!

Reading

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power – Rachel Maddow.

I love Rachel Maddow, at least as much as a straight man can love a gay woman. She speaks from a similar political point of view as mine. And I really like her spin on how to run a news/politics TV show: less yelling and screaming and demonizing and more reasonable discussion of the issues of the day.

So I was looking forward to her book, in which she advances the argument that we’ve drifted far from how the Founding Fathers intended for our nation to handle its military affairs. Unfortunately I think she was undercut by the realities of modern publishing and came up with a book that wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been.

Her premise is the Founding Fathers wanted it to be very difficult to go to war. Thus they built many impediments into the structure of our government to make less likely we would send troops to battle for anything short of all-out war. And that idea, for the most part, held for nearly 200 years. But it began to unravel during Vietnam, and completely came apart in the post-Vietnam era. It’s become almost easy to send American forces to battle, and in fact those who attempt to slow the march to war are cast as the enemies of the republic.

Maddow lays most of the blame at the feet of Ronald Reagan, but every president since him gets plenty of blame. Clinton began the move to use third parties that were free of government restrictions to carry out important support roles for military missions. George W. Bush violated centuries of accepted economic theory and fought two wars not only without requesting funds for them, but continually cut taxes as troops spent more time in Afghanistan and Iraq than our troops spent fighting World War II. And Obama has dramatically accelerated the use of drones.

Today presidents are dismissive of the constitutional requirement that Congress approve the use of force. They hide military actions behind layers of secrecy, in the name of national defense. They farm out work once reserved for the military to private companies where abuses of locals and cost overruns can be hidden from government auditors. They fight wars without paying for them. They ignore the safeguard the reserves were supposed to provide and deploy those troops as regular soldiers, for extended tours. And they use technology to further separate the public from the realities of war.

Problem one is she provides a lot of anecdotal evidence for these assertions. That’s fine. Too often, though, she fails to tie them together in a coherent argument.

Problem two is her solutions are a brief five page concluding chapter. If this is indeed a huge problem, the fixes will be more than bullet points.

But I think her two problems are caused by the reality of political writing today. Publishers want snappy books that can be digested quickly and offer red meat to the true believers. Maddow is a very smart woman, and her academic work was done in the international relations sphere. She knows this stuff. And I think if she had her choice, this would have been a 500 page book. Unfortunately, unless you’re pushing some bizarre conspiracy and can fill half those pages with “evidence” supporting your theory, publishers aren’t interested in dense political works these days. Which is a shame, because I think it would have been a much better book had she been able to go long on this topic.

Stay At Home Dead – Jeffrey Allen.

Based on the title alone, I couldn’t pass this up. A light murder mystery that has a stay-at-home dad at its center? Isn’t this the book I should have been writing over the past nine years?

Light is the keyword here. It’s perfectly entertaining and written to be read quickly, like on a beach or during a flight. I, in fact, knocked it out in a single day, during one of our last, warm days of the fall, mostly sitting outside while the girls frolicked in the sun.

Stuffing The Mailbox

OK, I take it back. One more political post, although I think this one isn’t likely to annoy anyone.

We’ve got a ton of political mailings this year, more than any year I can remember. That’s been fueled by a tight race for Dick Lugar’s US Senate seat and a battle for our state senate seat that is very tough thanks to redistricting. In these final days before Election Day the mailers are flooding in. Yesterday alone we got five.

One was particularly odd.

It came from a group that I would assume, based on its name, to be backing Republican candidates based. But it said nothing about any candidates, any ballot issues, any parties, or anything else we’ll be voting on in Indiana. Instead it thanked me for voting in the past. Then it said they had conducted an audit of voting records and thought I would like to see whether or not my neighbors had voted. Below was a list of six people around us with whether they had voted in 2008 and 2010 noted next to their names and addresses. Then came a promise to update the audit after this year’s election and to share those results.

I wasn’t sure whether it was just weird or freaky. What was I supposed to do with this information? Go badger the people who were listed as not voting to get off their asses and vote for the same people I plan on voting for? Or use it to go door-to-door to my neighbors who weren’t listed either way and start asking nosey questions about their voting habits? Or just sit in quiet judgement of the people around me?

Anyone can access voting records. But collating the data like this and then sending out mass mailings feels a little creepy to me.

Halloween 2012

We had a very successful Halloween here in Casa de B. The sisters hooked up with the neighbors and had matching costumes. The eight year olds went as fairies, the six year olds as princesses, and L. was the knight to protect them all. So she wouldn’t be alone, the neighbors put a little knight shirt on their dog.

We loaded up a wagon with supplies1 and hit the streets. It was quite chilly, so we tackled the neighborhood in two shifts. Along the way we were joined by a couple other families, so at one point I think we had 10 or 11 kids strung out between 2-3 houses. Despite constant orders to wait for the others, M. was usually the first to run on to the next house even if the rest of our group was still waiting for their candy at the last house.

L. was tired of the cold and bailed when we made a pit stop around 7. There is a house a couple blocks over that turns their garage into a mini-haunted house each year. We had never done it before but the girls wanted to give it a shot this time. It’s pretty tame, although I guess the hosts tend to jump out and scream more for bigger kids, but it was basically pitch black with all kinds of spooky things forming a twisting path through a three-car garage. The girls did fine, although there were a few whimpers when someone did jump out at them towards the end.

We raced home, checked out the candy, and desperately tried to get the girls calmed down for bedtime. M.’s class had a major role in this morning’s All Saints Day mass, and we had to be at school earlier than normal. Bedtime was a bit of a disaster, but when isn’t it, really?

Other than that, it was a great Halloween. We went the farthest we’ve ever gone and I think the girls had the most fun they’ve ever had. We’ll give them a few days with their treats, then “donate” it all to someone who needs it more than us. Shortly after I’m sure the girls will kick off the Christmas countdown.


  1. Supplies included extra bags for candy, gloves, a few costume parts discarded through the night, and a growler of a fine local brew for the dads. 
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