Mr. Paul goes to Washington

Mr. Paul goes to Washington

I think Senator Rand Paul was right yesterday and hope you’ll read why.

Not sad but not excited by the death of a terrorist

When something is thrown upwards, there is a point at which the object’s upward momentum and the force of gravity are equal. For some time period — even if it is incredibly small — when the object hangs suspended. That is the emotional space I have occupied since learning about Osama bin Laden’s death. Any relief/closure/positive emotion has been tempered by my normal instinct that death is bad and deaths, even of bad people, are not meant to be celebrated.

Now, I should confess a few things. I grew up on Long Island and live in Washington, DC. My emotional location vis-à-vis 9/11 had been a strange place. It remains one of the worst days of my life and few things would make me happier than seeing the towers built back exactly the way there were and despite knowing New York as well as I know any place on earth, I still get lost in lower Manhattan sometimes because I still look for the WTC when I get out of the subway. Growing up, that was my compass in the city. It may always be. These are the reasons, my liberal friends tell me my opinion of anything 9/11 related is less valid because I am too close to it.

At the same time, I will never think we should do to ourselves what the terrorists could not; destroy out way of life and take away our belief in the ideals that inspired our republic. Racial intolerance cannot be mistaken for vigilance against terrorism. We cannot convince anyone outside of the US  to believe that we believe in the importance of the rule of law if we do not apply it uniformly within the US. And the Bill of Rights is as important today as it was on 9/10/2001. These are the reasons my conservative friends tell me my opinions on this subject are less valid because I “do not understand the impact 9/11 had on America.”

You can see the paradox. One might think these opinions would give me more reason to hate Osama bin Laden but I don’t. I can’t. He doesn’t deserve that. The closest thing I have had to “joy” at seeing him be killed was when I laughed at a photo of President Obama that had the caption “I am sorry it took me so long to get you my birth certificate, I was busy killing Osama bin Laden.”

At the end of the day though, if I were to become the kind of person who celebrates any loss of life — even of someone as reprehensible as this mass killer — I just become more like them and I don’t want that.

Note to the right wing: You lost, get over it.

Note to right wing:  You lost, get over it

 

After stealing the 2000 election, you have the nerve to say that President Obama is not really the president because the chief justice that your president appointed screwed up.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Seriously.  People, you desperately need lives.  My bitterness about the Gore 2000 campaign aside, what do you do?  Is your entire diet irony mixed with crack?

 

And the difference this groups is making would be huge.  All those executive orders yesterday would have to be signed again.  Oh, and I guess the senior staffers could retake the oath.  Second note: the 20^th amendment to our Constitution states that the POTUS takes office at noon on 20 January, no matter what he says in the oath.  http://www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/20th_amendment.shtml

 

Note three:  If you have one job on Inauguration Day and it is to say 35 words, get it right.  Write it down.  On your hand, on your butt on an index card.  This is not the day for improv.  But sure, blame the Dems.

 

And while I am on my high horse, does anyone believe Cheney hurt his back moving boxes?  The VP with an ambulance in his motorcare (no, Gore did not have one, he was healthy) was told to move boxes?  Right.  Moving bodies, I would accept.  Moving boxes, not unless they contain said bodies or secret files.

 

The bottom line is that you cannot totally fuck with the constitution for eight years and then use it against your opponents because you lost.  Welcome to the wilderness, bastards.

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Happy Flag Day!

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the and to the Republic for which it stands,

one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

 

As an ardent opponent of any Constitutional amendments banning flag burning, one might be surprised to hear that I think Flag Day should be celebrated.  At the same time, it strikes me that it should be ‘Constitution Day’ because that is what the flag represents.  Should we celebrate the ideas that guide our country or the symbol we use to represent it?

 

Anyway, Flag Day is June 14th and since it is a holiday should be celebrated but to do that we need to acknowledge the history of the day and the history of our flag, the allegiance to it and the holiday.

The precise history of our flag is not known and there are many theories.  My information comes from what I was taught as a child (and that information is hardly reliable), http://www.usflag.org and Wikipedia.  Before 1912 the proportions and alignment of the various parts (stripes, stars, etc.) were left up to the flag maker but an executive order changed that.  On June 24, 1912 President Taft signed the order that “established proportions of the flag and provided for arrangement of the stars in six horizontal rows of eight each, a single point of each star to be upward.” (www.usflag.org)  Two other executive orders followed:

 

•  Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated January 3, 1959 – provided for the arrangement of the stars in seven rows of seven stars each, staggered horizontally and vertically.

•  Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated August 21, 1959 – provided for the arrangement of the stars in nine rows of stars staggered horizon tally and eleven rows of stars staggered vertically. (both from www.usgflag.org)

 

The Pledge of Allegiance:

 

It was written in September 1892 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance) for a children’s magazine by Francis Bellamy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bellamy).  His goal was to make it quick so that it could be recited in under 15 seconds and originally was “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”   The National Flag Conference pushed to have the words ‘my flag’ changed to “the Flag of the .”  The allegiance became official by Congress in 1945.  The words ‘under God’ were not added until the 1950s during the anti-communist fever that swept the country as a way to distinguish us from the ‘godless communists,’ and is why I leave it out when I say it and in the version at the top of the page.  Politicians love to bring up what our founding fathers’ would have wanted and while I am not a big fan of that, I am pretty sure they would not have approved of including ‘under god’ in our official allegiance.

 

Flag Day:

 

The day “commemorates the adoption of the flag of the , which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_in_the_United_States)  Some people refer to the day as the “flag’s birthday.”

 

Seeing as we are at war right now, it feels especially important to celebrate the flag and all it represents.  The reason I am so opinionated about all things political is I am very patriotic and think it is all of our responsibility to try to improve things here.

 

Happy Birthday Flag!

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