On Jan. 1, 1970, my dad, Gray Comer, landed back in the U.S. after a year in Vietnam.
Gray is the middle child of three brothers. His father, my late grandfather, was a career employee at RJR who’d been a Marine MP during World War II. Gray went to Wingate College for a year before transferring to Wake Forest, where his grades fell off far enough for him to lose his draft exemption. But Gray kept qualifying for officer training programs. At the time, the Army had a regulation that one couldn’t be deployed to Vietnam for less than 12 months. Gray was weeks away from the cutoff date that would’ve kept him home when, as he says, “The Army figured out was I was doing,” and off he went to Vietnam for the entire year of 1969.
Gray was 22, and a sergeant, leading other, younger men. He turned 23 in April; Arthur Cama, the man who took his place while Gray had a 24-hour liberty on his birthday, was killed by a sniper. Gray himself would sustain four wounds in his few months of active combat. He also rescued an Australian soldier (who gave Gray his uniform hat in appreciation – it’s still in his office) and saved the lives of several men, one of them a neighbor from back home, earning a Bronze Star.
Gray doesn’t brag about his service in Vietnam. His brothers, my mother, my sisters and I are in awe of the courage he showed, and the horrors he must have seen. But Gray de-emphasizes it, maybe preferring to let the rest of his life speak for itself. So, I will, too.
In the 40 years since Gray came home, he married, had two beautiful daughters (my sisters Karla and Julie); remarried my mom, welcoming my sister Maria and me into his heart; and had a fifth daughter, my sister Elizabeth. He finished college at Appalachian State, taught science in Winston-Salem public schools; went to work for the city as an arson investigator; then went into business for himself selling home fire protection. He went to Heaven-knows-how-many dance recitals, plays, softball and football games and Scout meetings, and later pinewood-derby races with his grandson. He danced at weddings (always shagging, no matter what the style of music playing). He loaned money to family and friends. He huddled outside on cold mornings before sunrise, thawing out the frozen water pump with a hair dryer so a certain middle child could wash her hair before school. He bought a lot of prom dresses and cars. He built a treehouse for his grandson. He buried his father, and visits his mother nearly every week.
He worked 60- and 80- hour weeks so his family could live in a gorgeous house and pay for college, still managing to find time to volunteer at his church and in his community. He’s always been the one people go to for advice, or a job, or a little extra money. He’s been there, always there, solid and uncomplicated, at least on the surface. But that short time in combat left an indelible mark. Gray can’t hear out of one ear, courtesy of a grenade that went off too close to him. He still has scars, and sometimes nightmares.
As I’ve gotten older and endured hard times of my own, I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for what it must have taken him to move through the trauma of combat to lead not just a productive life, but an extraordinary one. My sisters and I joke that the reason none of us are married is because we’ll never find a guy who’ll match our dad for honor and integrity.
I’m immensely proud of my dad’s service to his country. But I’m so much more proud of the love and support he’s shown his family and community over the ensuing four decades.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
"Big Tent" FAIL
A) there are gay conservatives. B) at least one person wants a gay conservative group, GoProud, barred from attending next year's CPAC convention.
Just seems like a bad idea to be booting supporters when you're already in the minority.
Just seems like a bad idea to be booting supporters when you're already in the minority.
Monday, December 21, 2009
One hell of a “single issue”
The topic of the day is not so much the fact that Democrats in the Senate corralled the 60 votes needed to advance health insurance reform legislation, but the compromises they had to make with conservative and independent members of the caucus in order to get there – namely, ditching the public option (still a piece of the House bill) and increasing restrictions on abortion funding.
It’s the second one I want to talk about. I can’t speak for every pro-choicer out there, but I for one have had to do a lot of soul-searching over the past two months. I’ve had to think about my priorities. Namely, is true reproductive freedom – where contraception and surgical abortion are not merely legal, but available – enough of a deal-breaker for me to support jettisoning reform altogether? Am I truly a “single-issue” voter?
That’s the situation we find ourselves in today. In both the House and the Senate, the reform bills arguably would not have passed without concessions to anti-choice Congresspeople. While it continues to piss me off that health issues almost exclusively concerning women (or at least perceived as such) always seem to be at the top of the list of bargaining chips, I can’t ignore that fact that, if reform fails, women will also be hurt. Among those millions of uninsured Americans are women – pregnant women, women with breast cancer, women working two or three hourly-wage jobs to put food on the table.
Also, it’s plainer to me than ever that my personal position on reproductive care is well to the left of many Americans, and that this is largely due to the average American’s un-engagement with issues of women’s health. So those of us who support full reproductive freedom have the continuing responsibility to move the conversation away from inflammatory (and inaccurate) blow-up pictures of Photoshopped fetuses and educate our communities about how anti-choice laws are bad policy for everyone.
In other words, I’m okay with preserving the status quo on federal funding for abortion if it means we can improve the overall health care for millions of Americans. But the provisions in the House and Senate versions of the reform bill go far beyond that. Since 1976, it’s been illegal for federal funds (through Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services programs) to pay for abortions. Yes, this has disproportionally affected low-income women. Yes, there’s not a single abortion provider in nearly 90 percent of U.S. counties.
But that’s not good enough for Congress, apparently. For instance, the Senate bill that narrowly overcame a filibuster last night would affect everyone who gets a stipend to buy insurance (which would be quite a lot of us if the new law mandates that everyone buy coverage). According to RH Reality Check, the bill:
"Requires every enrollee--female or male--in a health plan that offers abortion coverage to write two separate checks for insurance coverage. One of these checks would go to pay the bulk of their premium, the other would go to pay the share of that premium that would ostensibly cover abortion care. Such a check would have to be written separately whether the share of the premium allocated for abortion care is .25 cents, $1.00, or $3.00 of the total premium on a monthly, semi-annual or annual basis. Employers that deduct employee contributions to health care plans from paychecks will also have to do two separate payments to the same company, again no matter how small the payment."
Sooo… It’s not enough that an individual writes a check, and then the insurance company itself divides the premium into pots (which several states already do with their federal Medicaid money in order to comply with the Hyde Amendment). Nope, everyone has to write two separate checks. Which of course will have the effect of reminding every single person writing that premium check once a month that abortion exists, and that people get them – and would do so in a more abstract way than, say, personally knowing a woman who needs an abortion halfway through her pregnancy for medical reasons. Remember that this will affect private insurance companies that currently cover abortion, and which have chosen to do so because their market demands it – so much for the idea that conservatives are A-OK with private enterprise!
It’s a blatant attempt to drum up negative feeling for reproductive health. If you think I’m being paranoid, ask yourself – where’s the separate “pot” for funding prescriptions for Viagra, or medicinal marijuana? Going beyond health care, why aren’t our income tax payments apportioned into the War Fund, or the Death Penalty Fund, or the Federal Subsidies for Factory Farms Fund? My tax dollars go to fund plenty of things of which I personally disapprove.
I am willing to support this initial effort to reform our broken health insurance system, which would benefit women in many ways (eliminating discrimination in premium costs for one thing; ending dropped coverage for actual sick people, another). But the current proposals go far beyond the restrictions on abortion funding we’ve had for more than 30 years. It’s patently unfair for anyone in Congress to hold reproductive health hostage as part of such a critical piece of legislation. If they want to further restrict access to a legal medical procedure, let them write and submit a separate bill.
It’s the second one I want to talk about. I can’t speak for every pro-choicer out there, but I for one have had to do a lot of soul-searching over the past two months. I’ve had to think about my priorities. Namely, is true reproductive freedom – where contraception and surgical abortion are not merely legal, but available – enough of a deal-breaker for me to support jettisoning reform altogether? Am I truly a “single-issue” voter?
That’s the situation we find ourselves in today. In both the House and the Senate, the reform bills arguably would not have passed without concessions to anti-choice Congresspeople. While it continues to piss me off that health issues almost exclusively concerning women (or at least perceived as such) always seem to be at the top of the list of bargaining chips, I can’t ignore that fact that, if reform fails, women will also be hurt. Among those millions of uninsured Americans are women – pregnant women, women with breast cancer, women working two or three hourly-wage jobs to put food on the table.
Also, it’s plainer to me than ever that my personal position on reproductive care is well to the left of many Americans, and that this is largely due to the average American’s un-engagement with issues of women’s health. So those of us who support full reproductive freedom have the continuing responsibility to move the conversation away from inflammatory (and inaccurate) blow-up pictures of Photoshopped fetuses and educate our communities about how anti-choice laws are bad policy for everyone.
In other words, I’m okay with preserving the status quo on federal funding for abortion if it means we can improve the overall health care for millions of Americans. But the provisions in the House and Senate versions of the reform bill go far beyond that. Since 1976, it’s been illegal for federal funds (through Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services programs) to pay for abortions. Yes, this has disproportionally affected low-income women. Yes, there’s not a single abortion provider in nearly 90 percent of U.S. counties.
But that’s not good enough for Congress, apparently. For instance, the Senate bill that narrowly overcame a filibuster last night would affect everyone who gets a stipend to buy insurance (which would be quite a lot of us if the new law mandates that everyone buy coverage). According to RH Reality Check, the bill:
"Requires every enrollee--female or male--in a health plan that offers abortion coverage to write two separate checks for insurance coverage. One of these checks would go to pay the bulk of their premium, the other would go to pay the share of that premium that would ostensibly cover abortion care. Such a check would have to be written separately whether the share of the premium allocated for abortion care is .25 cents, $1.00, or $3.00 of the total premium on a monthly, semi-annual or annual basis. Employers that deduct employee contributions to health care plans from paychecks will also have to do two separate payments to the same company, again no matter how small the payment."
Sooo… It’s not enough that an individual writes a check, and then the insurance company itself divides the premium into pots (which several states already do with their federal Medicaid money in order to comply with the Hyde Amendment). Nope, everyone has to write two separate checks. Which of course will have the effect of reminding every single person writing that premium check once a month that abortion exists, and that people get them – and would do so in a more abstract way than, say, personally knowing a woman who needs an abortion halfway through her pregnancy for medical reasons. Remember that this will affect private insurance companies that currently cover abortion, and which have chosen to do so because their market demands it – so much for the idea that conservatives are A-OK with private enterprise!
It’s a blatant attempt to drum up negative feeling for reproductive health. If you think I’m being paranoid, ask yourself – where’s the separate “pot” for funding prescriptions for Viagra, or medicinal marijuana? Going beyond health care, why aren’t our income tax payments apportioned into the War Fund, or the Death Penalty Fund, or the Federal Subsidies for Factory Farms Fund? My tax dollars go to fund plenty of things of which I personally disapprove.
I am willing to support this initial effort to reform our broken health insurance system, which would benefit women in many ways (eliminating discrimination in premium costs for one thing; ending dropped coverage for actual sick people, another). But the current proposals go far beyond the restrictions on abortion funding we’ve had for more than 30 years. It’s patently unfair for anyone in Congress to hold reproductive health hostage as part of such a critical piece of legislation. If they want to further restrict access to a legal medical procedure, let them write and submit a separate bill.
Friday, December 18, 2009
NASCAR is hockey, and NASCAR fans are Boof
Full disclosure: I don’t follow the NHL. I didn’t even know that the Carolina Hurricanes were in the Stanley Cup Finals this spring until I found myself fighting through traffic on the way to my youngest sister’s graduation from N.C. State at the same time as a finals match the night before. (Although I have to give major kudos to the staff of the RBC Center for turning an ice skating rink into a chair-filled floor in roughly six hours.)
So I never really thought to make the comparison between the NHL and NASCAR until I read the second part of Bill Simmons’ e-mail exchange with Malcolm Gladwell:
"The league had 24 teams when [Gary] Bettman took over, including eight in Canada. Now they have a whopping 30 teams, including more warm-weather American teams (L.A., Phoenix, Nashville, Carolina, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Anaheim) than Canadian teams (only six). Here's Canada, the country that loves hockey more than anyone loves anything … and it only represents 20 percent of the National Hockey League. This is the single dumbest true fact in sports right now. And it happened on Bettman's watch."
Gosh, that sounded familiar. A lot of long-time NASCAR fans feel that the sanctioning body has moved from its loyal base in the same way. Since I started really following NASCAR in 2002, The Body has removed all top-series races from N.C. Speedway in Rockingham and shuffled other parts of the schedule around, such as moving the traditional Labor Day weekend race away from Darlington.
The schedule doesn’t really reflect the extent to which NASCAR has moved away from its base in the rural South, though. For instance, remember the first year that Nextel (now Sprint) signed on as title sponsor, and the pre-season fan day was moved from Winston-Salem to Daytona? (And got, what, roughly 10 percent of the attendance that our fan day drew?) More than that, there’s a perception problem among long-time fans in what had always been NASCAR’s core geographic area. When I interviewed fans at a local track for my undergrad thesis back in 2004, I found a very real belief that NASCAR as an institution was abandoning the very people who made the sport the multi-billion-dollar force that it is. The complaints ranged from ditching Rockingham and North Wilkesboro to competition changes (such as the “lucky dog” rule) to a suspicion of younger, unproven drivers who were better corporate spokesmen than the Ward Burtons of the world.
Why? Let’s be very, brutally realistic: it’s true that, as the auto racing critics say, watching 40-some cars go around an oval for four hours is not, in and of itself, terribly compelling. What made stock car racing interesting was two things: the spectacle of raw machinery and ingenuity – who is clever enough to build the best car, and bold enough to push it to its limits? – and personal identification with the sports’ participants.
And that, more than dumping Rockingham, is what has sapped NASCAR of its intrigue in the last few years. Jimmie Johnson just won his fourth championship in a row. And I yawned. Nothing against Johnson – he’s a talented driver on an incredibly well-managed team, and I’m sure he’s a lovely person. He’s not the first driver to win multiple championships, even successive championships. Hell, Richard Petty and David Pearson used to regularly win races by multiple laps. But NASCAR fans still cared then, where they don’t so much now.
Why? Part of it is a failure to personally identify with the drivers who currently dominate the cup series, for whatever reason. I for one don’t think it’s as simple as geography (Johnson being from California). I think it’s a shift from drivers from a blue collar background to drivers who came up racing from childhood. Not horrible… but it does mean that fans who felt a kinship with Dale Earnhardt (age 28 in his 1979 “rookie” season) won’t relate as closely with drivers who come up through development programs and land their first full-time rides in their teens.
Can you imagine the media obsession that we’d get if, say, the Patriots won four Super Bowls in a row? None of that happened with Johnson. Which, to me, says that the national sporting collective consciousness doesn’t really care that much about NASCAR or who wins its championship. Which further suggests to me that, if NASCAR wants to keep the fans who a Sports Illustrated survey found had close to a 90 percent loyalty to sponsors, they should forget trying to catch the general ESPN audience and go back to what made them.
I could be wrong… People who are far more in-the-know than me obvs don’t feel the same way. But I can’t help but think that, if this were a romantic comedy/sports flick, we’d now be at the point where our hero NASCAR has all the money and success he always dreamed of, but felt strangely unfulfilled and found himself dreaming of the sorta rednecky gal next door who loved him when.
So I never really thought to make the comparison between the NHL and NASCAR until I read the second part of Bill Simmons’ e-mail exchange with Malcolm Gladwell:
"The league had 24 teams when [Gary] Bettman took over, including eight in Canada. Now they have a whopping 30 teams, including more warm-weather American teams (L.A., Phoenix, Nashville, Carolina, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Anaheim) than Canadian teams (only six). Here's Canada, the country that loves hockey more than anyone loves anything … and it only represents 20 percent of the National Hockey League. This is the single dumbest true fact in sports right now. And it happened on Bettman's watch."
Gosh, that sounded familiar. A lot of long-time NASCAR fans feel that the sanctioning body has moved from its loyal base in the same way. Since I started really following NASCAR in 2002, The Body has removed all top-series races from N.C. Speedway in Rockingham and shuffled other parts of the schedule around, such as moving the traditional Labor Day weekend race away from Darlington.
The schedule doesn’t really reflect the extent to which NASCAR has moved away from its base in the rural South, though. For instance, remember the first year that Nextel (now Sprint) signed on as title sponsor, and the pre-season fan day was moved from Winston-Salem to Daytona? (And got, what, roughly 10 percent of the attendance that our fan day drew?) More than that, there’s a perception problem among long-time fans in what had always been NASCAR’s core geographic area. When I interviewed fans at a local track for my undergrad thesis back in 2004, I found a very real belief that NASCAR as an institution was abandoning the very people who made the sport the multi-billion-dollar force that it is. The complaints ranged from ditching Rockingham and North Wilkesboro to competition changes (such as the “lucky dog” rule) to a suspicion of younger, unproven drivers who were better corporate spokesmen than the Ward Burtons of the world.
Why? Let’s be very, brutally realistic: it’s true that, as the auto racing critics say, watching 40-some cars go around an oval for four hours is not, in and of itself, terribly compelling. What made stock car racing interesting was two things: the spectacle of raw machinery and ingenuity – who is clever enough to build the best car, and bold enough to push it to its limits? – and personal identification with the sports’ participants.
And that, more than dumping Rockingham, is what has sapped NASCAR of its intrigue in the last few years. Jimmie Johnson just won his fourth championship in a row. And I yawned. Nothing against Johnson – he’s a talented driver on an incredibly well-managed team, and I’m sure he’s a lovely person. He’s not the first driver to win multiple championships, even successive championships. Hell, Richard Petty and David Pearson used to regularly win races by multiple laps. But NASCAR fans still cared then, where they don’t so much now.
Why? Part of it is a failure to personally identify with the drivers who currently dominate the cup series, for whatever reason. I for one don’t think it’s as simple as geography (Johnson being from California). I think it’s a shift from drivers from a blue collar background to drivers who came up racing from childhood. Not horrible… but it does mean that fans who felt a kinship with Dale Earnhardt (age 28 in his 1979 “rookie” season) won’t relate as closely with drivers who come up through development programs and land their first full-time rides in their teens.
Can you imagine the media obsession that we’d get if, say, the Patriots won four Super Bowls in a row? None of that happened with Johnson. Which, to me, says that the national sporting collective consciousness doesn’t really care that much about NASCAR or who wins its championship. Which further suggests to me that, if NASCAR wants to keep the fans who a Sports Illustrated survey found had close to a 90 percent loyalty to sponsors, they should forget trying to catch the general ESPN audience and go back to what made them.
I could be wrong… People who are far more in-the-know than me obvs don’t feel the same way. But I can’t help but think that, if this were a romantic comedy/sports flick, we’d now be at the point where our hero NASCAR has all the money and success he always dreamed of, but felt strangely unfulfilled and found himself dreaming of the sorta rednecky gal next door who loved him when.
Remember who's using you, military
I got home late from a Christmas party last night, and indulged in one (more) glass of wine while scanning the evening headlines. When I read about how GOP Senators were planning to filibuster a military spending bill, openly admitting that their goal was to disrupt a health care reform vote, I just assumed I was reading it wrong. So I read the article again - nope, no misunderstanding. Just disgust. (Luckily, they failed.)
"Most of us are going to support the Department of Defense appropriations bill when the time is right, but I think it is very important to have the opportunity to talk about the health care bill,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.
Asked if he would vote for the defense bill, which Republicans routinely support, Senator Sam Brownback Republican of Kansas, replied bluntly: “No. I don’t want health care.”
The idea was that, if the Republicans had thrown up a roadblock to a routine military appropriations bill, the Senate would have had less time to debate and vote on a health care reform bill before the session ends for the holidays. So, in other words, all but three Republican members of the Senate voted to hold up funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a cynical attempt to screw the president.
How full of shit is this? Sen. Russ Feingold, who reflexively votes against any funding for anything defense-related, voted to end the filibuster (even though he'll probably vote against the final version of the funding bill later this weekend).
Money for military operations [was] due to run out Friday under a stop-gap bill and the Senate needs to either complete the bill or pass another extension while the spending bill is completed.
The Pentagon measure also includes a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and health insurance for out-of-work Americans as well as temporary renewals of several expiring federal programs and laws.
Democrats chided Republicans for forcing the procedural vote on a measure they would normally support, saying it was a flawed strategy to slow down Pentagon money in their anger over health care.
“There is no more important bill for the safety of our troops,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “I think they picked the wrong bill.”
Question: if the Democrats had pulled this at any point during the Bush Administration, how loudly would the entire population of the Fox News Network be screaming? How many years would this be brought up to demonstrate that Democrats are anti-military?
"Most of us are going to support the Department of Defense appropriations bill when the time is right, but I think it is very important to have the opportunity to talk about the health care bill,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.
Asked if he would vote for the defense bill, which Republicans routinely support, Senator Sam Brownback Republican of Kansas, replied bluntly: “No. I don’t want health care.”
The idea was that, if the Republicans had thrown up a roadblock to a routine military appropriations bill, the Senate would have had less time to debate and vote on a health care reform bill before the session ends for the holidays. So, in other words, all but three Republican members of the Senate voted to hold up funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a cynical attempt to screw the president.
How full of shit is this? Sen. Russ Feingold, who reflexively votes against any funding for anything defense-related, voted to end the filibuster (even though he'll probably vote against the final version of the funding bill later this weekend).
Money for military operations [was] due to run out Friday under a stop-gap bill and the Senate needs to either complete the bill or pass another extension while the spending bill is completed.
The Pentagon measure also includes a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and health insurance for out-of-work Americans as well as temporary renewals of several expiring federal programs and laws.
Democrats chided Republicans for forcing the procedural vote on a measure they would normally support, saying it was a flawed strategy to slow down Pentagon money in their anger over health care.
“There is no more important bill for the safety of our troops,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “I think they picked the wrong bill.”
Question: if the Democrats had pulled this at any point during the Bush Administration, how loudly would the entire population of the Fox News Network be screaming? How many years would this be brought up to demonstrate that Democrats are anti-military?
Friday, December 11, 2009
Tea Party movement fracture?
According to various media reports this week, the Tea Party movement is splitting into different factions based on differing priorities.
This reminds me of a joke I heard once. A ship traveling the South Pacific notices a distress signal, and discovers a small, uncharted island in the distance. As they approach, they see three huts built on a bluff. Well, the ship reaches the island and finds a lone man who'd wrecked there months earlier. He's thrilled to meet his rescuers, and they're naturally fascinated by how he managed to survive on a desert island for so long.
The crew asks about the three huts on the hill, and the man tells him about building shelter for himself. "I'm a Southern Baptist," he goes on. "And so, once my personal shelter was taken care of, my first priority was building a place where I could worship God."
Wow, that's really cool, the crew said. So, one hut for you to live in, another for a church. What about the third hut?
"Oh," the rescued man says with a disdainful sniff. "That's the church I used to go to."
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | ||
| Teapocalypse - The Tea Party Split | |||
| www.thedailyshow.com | |||
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This reminds me of a joke I heard once. A ship traveling the South Pacific notices a distress signal, and discovers a small, uncharted island in the distance. As they approach, they see three huts built on a bluff. Well, the ship reaches the island and finds a lone man who'd wrecked there months earlier. He's thrilled to meet his rescuers, and they're naturally fascinated by how he managed to survive on a desert island for so long.
The crew asks about the three huts on the hill, and the man tells him about building shelter for himself. "I'm a Southern Baptist," he goes on. "And so, once my personal shelter was taken care of, my first priority was building a place where I could worship God."
Wow, that's really cool, the crew said. So, one hut for you to live in, another for a church. What about the third hut?
"Oh," the rescued man says with a disdainful sniff. "That's the church I used to go to."
Monday, December 7, 2009
Krugman on cap-and-trade
One of the reasons I love Paul Krugman is that he's a pundit with a memory that goes back further than last week. Case in point: in assessing whether instituting a cap-and-trade policy on carbon emissions would work or would cripple the U.S. economy, Krugman looks at the way our country handled the acid rain threat back when I was an earnest elementary school budding environmentalist:
The acid rain controversy of the 1980s was in many respects a dress rehearsal for today’s fight over climate change. Then as now, right-wing ideologues denied the science. Then as now, industry groups claimed that any attempt to limit emissions would inflict grievous economic harm.
But in 1990 the United States went ahead anyway with a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide. And guess what. It worked, delivering a sharp reduction in pollution at lower-than-predicted cost.
Cap-and-trade isn't the government telling businesses what to make and how to make it - it's offering a mechanism by which businesses can profit from reduced emissions.
Last week, I interviewed the owner of Leon's Beauty School in Greensboro, who just installed 165 solar panels and four geothermal panels on the school's roof. She did it because she found out she could get a tax break for doing so, and is now looking for other "green" modifications that will make her business more profitable. Or, as we also call it: capitalism.
Look, right now we have a system of incentives dictated by coal-corporation lobbyists. Cap-and-trade shifts that agenda-setting function to the public, in the form of governments full of people that you and I select to make decisions, and whom we can influence. Between the two, I'd rather have a system where I can have a voice.
The acid rain controversy of the 1980s was in many respects a dress rehearsal for today’s fight over climate change. Then as now, right-wing ideologues denied the science. Then as now, industry groups claimed that any attempt to limit emissions would inflict grievous economic harm.
But in 1990 the United States went ahead anyway with a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide. And guess what. It worked, delivering a sharp reduction in pollution at lower-than-predicted cost.
Cap-and-trade isn't the government telling businesses what to make and how to make it - it's offering a mechanism by which businesses can profit from reduced emissions.
Last week, I interviewed the owner of Leon's Beauty School in Greensboro, who just installed 165 solar panels and four geothermal panels on the school's roof. She did it because she found out she could get a tax break for doing so, and is now looking for other "green" modifications that will make her business more profitable. Or, as we also call it: capitalism.
Look, right now we have a system of incentives dictated by coal-corporation lobbyists. Cap-and-trade shifts that agenda-setting function to the public, in the form of governments full of people that you and I select to make decisions, and whom we can influence. Between the two, I'd rather have a system where I can have a voice.
Cal Cunningham enters U.S. Senate race
Cal Cunningham, a veteran and former state legislator from Lexington, had initially demurred... but a healthy grassroots movement encouraged him to enter the race against Sen. Richard Burr next year. Along with N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Kenneth Lewis, Cunningham will run in the Democratic primary next year.
Target: Mommies
I have a very clear memory of going to Mayfest in Pilot Mountain with my sister Maria and my nephew Alex when Alex was about three months old. I was away at college when he was born, so this was the first time I’d really been around him with any regularity. Anyway, at one point Maria pulled the stroller into the side street across from Hardee’s, next to the funeral home that’s now a bed & breakfast, to reapply Alex’s sunscreen. Since his hair was still pretty thin, it went all over his scalp, over the backs of his ears, down his neck – basically every bit of skin that wasn’t covered by clothing.
Alex did not enjoy this; he started crying. Or maybe he was hot and he started crying, or irritated by the constant banjo music and he started crying, or just pissed off at the world because sometimes infants get that way and he started crying. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, we hadn’t made it 20 feet back down Main Street before Alex’s face had turned beet red.
A woman passing us glanced down at the red-faced, wailing baby, then glared up at my sister. “That baby’s got a sunburn,” she said – using the same tone with which most of us would say “Your baby’s playing in traffic. With knives” – before waddling on her merry way. I was furious – a) who the hell do you think you are? And b) his mother JUST slathered him with half a bottle of Coppertone, and c) seriously, who the hell do you think you are?
Maria just let it roll off her back. You need to understand, she told me, that once you have kids, everybody and their brother assumes that you need and want their advice, and have no compunction about sharing it with you. Even if they’re perfect strangers passing you on the street.
Our culture still treats women as if we’re public property**, but you’d think that mothers of all people would be exempt from the Greek Chorus of What You’re Doing Wrong. But no – mothers might even have it worse than the rest of us. Recently, a breastfeeding mother was kicked out of a Target store in Michigan for doing what society would judge her for if she HADN’T been doing it. It’s like a psycho patriarchal choose-your-own-adventure book:
You don’t have kids? Man-hating whore.
You do have a baby? Ah, but what birthing method did you use? WRONG!
You dared to leave the house with your baby, and now the baby’s hungry and crying in the store/on the plane? Why don’t you feed that baby already?
Oooooh, you breastfeed? Why don’t you use a breastpump and bottles, or formula?
You can’t afford a breastpump and its accessories, or they just don’t work for you? Hmm, well, I don’t know, but you’re still wrong.
Mothers can’t win. Despite the fact that they’ve brought into the world and are rearing children, mothers are treated as children themselves, with perfect strangers who know nothing about their circumstances questioning their every decision. I don’t even HAVE kids and I’m already sick of it.
Can we please just stop? Can we collectively stifle this urge to second-guess the parents of other people’s children (excepting cases of clear abuse)? We can’t, as a culture, claim to value families and then throw up crazy barriers in the faces of those same families. If I see a woman breastfeeding in Target, or changing a diaper in a restroom, or anything else… I just can’t see how it’s any of my business.
**I talk a lot about the experience of women because, duh, I am one, but I’d very much like to hear from men who also feel that our culture objectifies their lives and experiences.
Alex did not enjoy this; he started crying. Or maybe he was hot and he started crying, or irritated by the constant banjo music and he started crying, or just pissed off at the world because sometimes infants get that way and he started crying. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. The point is, we hadn’t made it 20 feet back down Main Street before Alex’s face had turned beet red.
A woman passing us glanced down at the red-faced, wailing baby, then glared up at my sister. “That baby’s got a sunburn,” she said – using the same tone with which most of us would say “Your baby’s playing in traffic. With knives” – before waddling on her merry way. I was furious – a) who the hell do you think you are? And b) his mother JUST slathered him with half a bottle of Coppertone, and c) seriously, who the hell do you think you are?
Maria just let it roll off her back. You need to understand, she told me, that once you have kids, everybody and their brother assumes that you need and want their advice, and have no compunction about sharing it with you. Even if they’re perfect strangers passing you on the street.
Our culture still treats women as if we’re public property**, but you’d think that mothers of all people would be exempt from the Greek Chorus of What You’re Doing Wrong. But no – mothers might even have it worse than the rest of us. Recently, a breastfeeding mother was kicked out of a Target store in Michigan for doing what society would judge her for if she HADN’T been doing it. It’s like a psycho patriarchal choose-your-own-adventure book:
You don’t have kids? Man-hating whore.
You do have a baby? Ah, but what birthing method did you use? WRONG!
You dared to leave the house with your baby, and now the baby’s hungry and crying in the store/on the plane? Why don’t you feed that baby already?
Oooooh, you breastfeed? Why don’t you use a breastpump and bottles, or formula?
You can’t afford a breastpump and its accessories, or they just don’t work for you? Hmm, well, I don’t know, but you’re still wrong.
Mothers can’t win. Despite the fact that they’ve brought into the world and are rearing children, mothers are treated as children themselves, with perfect strangers who know nothing about their circumstances questioning their every decision. I don’t even HAVE kids and I’m already sick of it.
Can we please just stop? Can we collectively stifle this urge to second-guess the parents of other people’s children (excepting cases of clear abuse)? We can’t, as a culture, claim to value families and then throw up crazy barriers in the faces of those same families. If I see a woman breastfeeding in Target, or changing a diaper in a restroom, or anything else… I just can’t see how it’s any of my business.
**I talk a lot about the experience of women because, duh, I am one, but I’d very much like to hear from men who also feel that our culture objectifies their lives and experiences.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Quickie: Meet Marc Trestman
The Charlotte Observer's Tom Sorensen is going for "reality check" in this piece, arguing that retired Steelers coach Bill Cowher might not be the best replacement for Carolina Panthers coach John Fox, should Fox be fired at the end of this season. His suggestion? Montreal Alouettes head coach Marc Trestman.
Trestman is older than I would like for a hypothetical new Panthers head coach, but his resume looks intriguing.
Trestman is older than I would like for a hypothetical new Panthers head coach, but his resume looks intriguing.
Friday, December 4, 2009
THIS IS NOT FUNNY
Is anyone else getting REALLY tired of the “Ha, ha, Tiger got his ass beat”-type remarks we’ve been hearing all week? I feel like I can’t get away from them. Bill Simmons managed to slip three into one column today, including a segment allegedly written by his wife:
"I wish Mrs. Tiger would admit what she did, if she did anything. She won't because Florida has strong domestic violence laws. California does not. If Bill ever follows Tiger's skank-chasing footsteps, I am going to beat him to death with his 2.8-pound book, while also having sex with cabana boys and masseurs. There will be no mystery about what happened.”
Okay… let’s just hop in our time machines a minute and go back a few months to when Chris Brown beat up his then-girlfriend, Rihanna. If Simmons had joked about beating his wife to death, should she have acted like Rihanna (having the temerity to demand that he not cheat on her, apparently) – oh, my hell, I can’t imagine how quickly ESPN would yank him off their Web site and set fire to the server holding his column archive.
But it’s okay to joke about Tiger Woods? For the record, none of us will ever know if Woods’ wife did in fact physically attack him early last Friday morning, and he’s saying she didn’t. But that’s beside the point. Why is this supposed to be funny? Oh, yeah, because men can’t be victims of domestic violence or something. Hardy frakking har.
Men are also apparently un-rapeable, if you ask the dipshit that wrote this in the New York Observer. Let’s put aside for a moment the revelation that there is now officially no single demographic category of women who can’t be described as animals (cheetah, really?). The behavior described in this piece (exaggerated for effect though it may be) isn’t douchey or predatory – it’s rape. Feministe switched up the genders in one exchange… see what you think:
Sharon had allowed the open bar to get the better of her. She knew she was completely wasted. What she didn’t know was that a predator was watching her every move…
Jennifer said, “O.K., I think she needs to go home.”
David, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”
“I wanna go home,” Sharon warbled.
“O.K., I’ll take her home,” David said.
Jennifer gave Sharon a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take her home.”
“Don’t worry about it,” David said, hailing a cab and then bundling Sharon inside…
A few months later, Sharon found herself watching helplessly late one night as David picked off one of her pals much the same way he had her: The girl was babbling, stumbling drunk…
“He knows what he’s doing,” Sharon told me.
Comedy is about transgression; turn something commonplace on its head, and it’s automatically funny. A male victim of domestic violence or sexual assault is supposed to be humorous because it goes against the far-more-typical case of a female victim. The problem is that there ARE male victims of the type of intimate partner violence we normally associate with women.
Don’t believe me? Ask Fred Lane. The wife who murdered him got out of prison earlier this year. ROTFLMAO.
"I wish Mrs. Tiger would admit what she did, if she did anything. She won't because Florida has strong domestic violence laws. California does not. If Bill ever follows Tiger's skank-chasing footsteps, I am going to beat him to death with his 2.8-pound book, while also having sex with cabana boys and masseurs. There will be no mystery about what happened.”
Okay… let’s just hop in our time machines a minute and go back a few months to when Chris Brown beat up his then-girlfriend, Rihanna. If Simmons had joked about beating his wife to death, should she have acted like Rihanna (having the temerity to demand that he not cheat on her, apparently) – oh, my hell, I can’t imagine how quickly ESPN would yank him off their Web site and set fire to the server holding his column archive.
But it’s okay to joke about Tiger Woods? For the record, none of us will ever know if Woods’ wife did in fact physically attack him early last Friday morning, and he’s saying she didn’t. But that’s beside the point. Why is this supposed to be funny? Oh, yeah, because men can’t be victims of domestic violence or something. Hardy frakking har.
Men are also apparently un-rapeable, if you ask the dipshit that wrote this in the New York Observer. Let’s put aside for a moment the revelation that there is now officially no single demographic category of women who can’t be described as animals (cheetah, really?). The behavior described in this piece (exaggerated for effect though it may be) isn’t douchey or predatory – it’s rape. Feministe switched up the genders in one exchange… see what you think:
Sharon had allowed the open bar to get the better of her. She knew she was completely wasted. What she didn’t know was that a predator was watching her every move…
Jennifer said, “O.K., I think she needs to go home.”
David, who was 29, said, “Let’s go get another drink!”
“I wanna go home,” Sharon warbled.
“O.K., I’ll take her home,” David said.
Jennifer gave Sharon a “WTF?” look and said, “I’ll take her home.”
“Don’t worry about it,” David said, hailing a cab and then bundling Sharon inside…
A few months later, Sharon found herself watching helplessly late one night as David picked off one of her pals much the same way he had her: The girl was babbling, stumbling drunk…
“He knows what he’s doing,” Sharon told me.
Comedy is about transgression; turn something commonplace on its head, and it’s automatically funny. A male victim of domestic violence or sexual assault is supposed to be humorous because it goes against the far-more-typical case of a female victim. The problem is that there ARE male victims of the type of intimate partner violence we normally associate with women.
Don’t believe me? Ask Fred Lane. The wife who murdered him got out of prison earlier this year. ROTFLMAO.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
"Everyone suffers"
Actor Patrick Stewart on his experience living with domestic violence:
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_27bpIb30
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_27bpIb30
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