Crazy Week

This has been a crazy week.  I feel like it would be a helpful public service to take a minute here and just sort of review everything. 

First, on Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court announced that they had decided to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Not a good start.  Now, to be fair, were we really going to let minorities keep voting in the south forever?  I mean, come on.  Plus, this Supreme Court is very into the founding fathers, and if you had asked Thomas Jefferson about this he would have said something like "What?  Why would I let my slaves vote? What's wrong with you?".  I assume those are the two basic arguments opponents of the Voting Rights Act made.  I can't think of anything better.

Seriously though, this was terrible.  It seems to me that the right of citizens to vote should be marginally more important than the right of states to not be minimally regulated based on their long histories of institutional racism, but then again, I'm not a big time fancy lawyer. You may not be a minority voter, and if you don't care about minority voters I can't make you, but just remember that the Supreme Court, the group of people who interpret the laws for your country, cares about the rights of states more than it cares about the rights of individuals, and that's pretty sad.

Also, there's no truth to the rumor that Alabama will now be granting an extra vote to anyone who shows up at the polls wearing a confederate flag somewhere on their clothes, and two extra votes to anyone who shows up wearing nothing but a confederate flag. 

But while that was happening, something awesome was also happening, in Texas (seriously).  The Texas State Senate was trying to pass a bill that would severely restrict abortion rights in Texas, because that's what Texans do I guess.  Tuesday was the last day of the legislative session and Texas State Senator Wendy Davis decided she was going to filibuster until midnight so they couldn't pass the bill.  She started a little after 11AM and kept going with no breaks for like 10 or 11 hours. 

I didn't really see any of the filibuster because I had work all day and also none of the cable news networks covered it and it took me a while to realize it was going on, but I tuned in on YouTube around 11PM Texas time and I feel like I caught the best part.  Apparently the Republicans in the Texas Senate were claiming that Senator Davis violated the rules of the filibuster three times, and in Texas three strikes means your filibuster is out.  The Democrats appealed this ruling and I tuned in while the Texas Republicans were googling "how to make a woman stop talking" (supposedly they were actually reviewing parliamentary rules and such, but based on what I saw my theory sounds more plausible).

They finally started Senating again after about 10 or 15 minutes, and that's when Senator Davis' colleagues started trying to help her out.  First, Senator Older Librarian Lady (I don't know any of the names except for Wendy Davis) stepped up, and she was a whirlwind of parliamentary inquiries.  I'd say she took up a good ten minutes just politely asking questions.  Unfortunately she eventually ran out of steam when she ran into some circular "because I said so" Senate logic from the guy running the Texas Senate (hereafter known as Captain Mustache, though I may be making up the fact that he had a mustache, but he looked pretty mustachy to me).

Then they moved on to debate on the appeal of the ruling that ended the filibuster.  Senator Beauregard T. Crockett went on for about ten minutes until Captain Mustache got tired of listening to him and just let some other guy call the vote on the appeal.  My favorite part of this section was that it took me and most of the people commenting on YouTube about five minutes to realize Beauregard was on Wendy Davis' side.  It was sort of jarring when it hit me.  He was just so southerny and Texasy.  Good for him though.

After the Republicans voted down the appeal, it was time for Senator Hispanic Lady in a Pants Suit, and she was awesome.  Senator Pants Suit peppered Captain Mustache for a good 7-8 minutes with her own hurricane of parliamentary inquiries.  When Captain Mustache finally got tired of her, she finished by asking what a female Senator has to do to get recognized over her male colleagues.  What happened next was, literally, the best thing I've ever seen in a Senate Chamber.  OK, that's pretty specific, but still.

The gallery, who had been super well-behaved up to that point, sensed that the Democrats were sort of out of ideas and the Republicans were getting ready to vote on the actual bill.  Captain Mustache finally stopped falling for the parliamentary inquires and may or may not have turned off some microphones so the Democrats couldn't bother him anymore.  You know what they say in Texas, fool me 114 times, shame on you, fool me 115 times, shame on me.  So, with the vote coming and the Democrats defeated, the gallery, in response to what Senator Pants Suit said, proceeded to cheer and chant for about 18 minutes until it was a few minutes after midnight.  At one point, Captain Mustache tried the old "if you stop cheering we'll stop voting" trick, but the gallery didn't fall for it.

This was fun to watch and really impressive/inspiring, but I went to bed thinking the bill had still passed, seeing as Captain Mustache said it did.  When I woke up, I found out that Captain Mustache is a liar and a cheater and the bill had, in fact, not passed.  The bill will almost certainly pass eventually, Texas isn't getting any smarter, but this was an awesome moment of democracy and I'm glad I had the chance to see it.

That was just Tuesday.  Wednesday featured two almost simultaneous happenings.  Two things which received news coverage almost inversely proportionate to how important they were.  First of all, we found out that while the New England Patriots may not have won a superbowl in a while, they've been secretly leading the league in murders (allegedly).   And that's really all I have to say about that because the TV won't shut up about it and I just don't care.

More importantly, the Supreme Court (remember them from yesterday?) announced that they had struck down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act and had also declined to rule on Proposition 8 in California, effectively restoring marriage rights to same-sex couples in California.  Both of these rulings were, while not perfect, full of all kinds of good stuff for marriage equality.

Here's how you know this was a big day for marriage equality.  Fox News almost completely ignored this story all day.  If you've never watched The Five on Fox, they basically get five of the stupidest people you could ever find (OK, four of the stupidest people you could ever find and Dana Perino, who is adorable), put them at a table and have them talk about politics and stuff.  I watched them for pretty much the whole hour yesterday, they didn't go anywhere near this.  I'm not sure Republicans have any idea what to do with this now.  Even the Roberts court won't back them on homophobia.  It's a bad week for bigots and religious nuts.

Fox spent the rest of the night talking more about Paula Deen than they did about two historic Supreme Court decisions.  Ya know, I was originally on the fence about Paula until she went on TV this week like a blubbering idiot and cried about how you can go ahead and cast the first stone if you've never said something you regret.  You know what Paula.  How about she who has never said the n-word can keep getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to melt butter on TV.  Go away.

And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, today the Senate passed an immigration reform bill.  Sure, it's probably dead on arrival in the House, but still, the Senate did a thing!  I had to check with all three cable news networks to make sure MSNBC wasn't hallucinating.  So it was a crazy week, and here's what I learned:

1) Seriously, cable news is awful.  They spent more time this week on Paula Deen, Aaron Hernandez and George Zimmerman than they did on the awesome Texas filibuster and three really important Supreme Court decisions.  A friend from college pointed out to me the next day that while the filibuster was going on CNN was airing an important discussion between Piers Morgan and Dr. Drew regarding blueberry muffins.

I guess CNN gets a pass, I have a lot of questions about blueberry muffins.  Why not chocolate chips? Can I trade you one blueberry muffin for four mini-muffins? Can you tell me what blueberries taste like because I don't really know?  I guess if I had watched Piers Morgan and Dr. Drew instead of the filibuster, I'd know the answer to these and many other muffin related questions by now.

2) No matter how obviously you murder someone, you can always find people on TV to take your side. I watched like five minutes of George Zimmerman coverage, because MSNBC literally stopped in the middle of a great discussion of the DOMA ruling so they could show us silent pictures of the Zimmerman trial, and you know what I'm already 100% sure of?  George Zimmerman is definitely a murderer (allegedly).  Even if you believe every word of his story, his basic story is "that guy was punching me, so I shot him in the chest".  That's not a proportional response!  I'm not a Florida law expert, but it can't possibly be legal to shoot somebody in the chest for punching you.

3) I will stay up way later than I planned to in order to watch anything that even remotely reminds me of an episode of The West Wing.

4) I think...oh wait, forget about what I learned, because also, I almost forgot about this, the President made a big speech about climate change and said he's going to start doing a bunch of executive orders to get on top of that whole thing.  I don't know if he'll actually do anything, or if it'll actually work, but that was like the 8th biggest story this week.  Crazy week.

Guardians Of The Secret

About three years ago, a friend of mine told me she was a fan of Jackson Pollock's work. I asked if she'd ever seen the movie about Pollock starring Ed Harris. She said she didn't think there really was a movie like that because, if there was, she would have seen it. This presented me with a golden opportunity. By purchasing this movie for my friend, I got to do something nice and be right about something at the same time. That's a perfect storm for me, so I went to Amazon.com, got the movie and gave it to her.

Since then, without fail, Amazon.com sends me an e-mail anytime something new goes on sale that's related to Jackson Pollock, or artists, or art, or colors, or really anything that can be connected in any way to my one purchase. I always laugh a little when I get the e-mails. How do they decide who gets what e-mails? Do they just send me an e-mail every once in a while that tells me about whatever new things are closest to my previous purchase, even if they aren't that close? Or are there certain parameters, and I get an e-mail whenever something new falls into those parameters?

I don't know, and I don't really care either, but I thought of those questions when I heard about the new immigration reform law in Arizona. As I understand it, Arizona law enforcement will be able to ask anyone for identification, specifically proof of U.S. citizenship, if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person might be an undocumented immigrant.

How will they define reasonable suspicion? What will the parameters be? Will they post a Spanish language billboard for free dinero at the police station and arrest anyone who shows up? Will they just stop anyone who seems muy caliente? How exactly does one go about acting like they're here illegally? This seems like a poorly thought out idea. I'm not here to complain about Arizona though. I'm a states rights guy and if they want to try a terrible idea, that's their problem.

On a related topic, Congress is talking about taking on national immigration reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has threatened to make it the next issue after financial reform. Alternatively, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is all but begging Reid not to do it. Yesterday, I heard Senator McConnell say that we currently have very high unemployment and we have serious border security issues, so this isn't the time for immigration reform. Wait, what? That sounds like a great time for immigration reform.

Democrats don't really care about immigration, they don't even want a bill. They just want the argument so they can call Republicans racists. It might work too, because some of those guys are racists. Republicans don't really care either, and a lot of them would probably support a bill on immigration reform, but they don't want the argument, because it'll give the Democrats a chance to call them racists.

I think Republicans picture a future time when the mood of the country is different and they can win an immigration reform argument by accusing Democrats of being hippies and leaving the borders open in the name of rainbows and moonbeams, but they know that time isn't now. I also think both parties have a secret. There's actually not a whole lot we can do about illegal immigration from Mexico. Here are some bad ideas that won't work:

#1 That idiot-ass border fence
When I was a kid, there was a fence between the house my family lived in and the neighbors' house. It was literally ten feet out of my way to walk around it. How many times did I climb the fence just for the hell of it? Hundreds, maybe thousands, I don't know, I lost count by the time I turned seven. I know we're building a better fence then the one I climbed as a kid, but unless we're building a magic fence, I'm pretty confident the clever Mexicans will find a way around our super awesome fence technology.

#2 Armed rednecks patrolling the border
I know, if America has a problem that can't be solved by armed rednecks, we may be in trouble. I didn't say I had good news, I'm just telling you what I know. Putting the actual military at the border might work, but they're busy trying to restore order to countries we invaded.

#3 Laws that allow police to ID anyone with brown skin, or a nice tan
I expect the Arizona law to get destroyed in a courtroom somewhere before it ever goes into effect. I hope they televise the case just so I can see if the judge laughs at the people defending it. You never know with judges these days, but I wouldn't get my hopes up for that law.

It's an equilibrium problem. Living in America is awesome, everyone wants to be here, plenty of room to succeed. Mexico, not so much, lots of pressure to leave. So, people will keep flowing from Mexico to America until we reach some kind of equilibrium. This is why you don't see thousands of undocumented Canadians running around putting syrup on everything and robbing people in Minnesota at hockey stick-point. Life in Canada is pretty cool. That leaves us with two things we actually could do...

Possible Solution #1: Fix Mexico
This is the better of the two solutions, but it isn't going to happen. I don't know how much money it would take to make life in Mexico comparable to life in the U.S., but since we're, ya know, massively in debt, I know we don't have it. I guess we could borrow money from China and Japan and give it to Mexico, but I'm not sure how much overall good that would do. This brings us to...

Possible Solution #2: Break America
There are plenty of ways to do this.
-We could do away with our currency and switch to an entirely cheese-based economy (that sounds delicious, doesn't it? Different cheeses would be worth different amounts. It would actually be pretty awesome at first, but eventually it would fail because we'd eat all the money).
-We could genetically engineer an army of killer zombies and unleash them on ourselves.
-We could allow the big banks to use campaign contributions to control both political parties, and therefore the government, leading to an endless cycle of economic failures at the hands of the economic equivalent of war profiteers. (wait, we're already doing that one? Uh oh). I probably won't get a lot of support for possible solution #2.

(Sidenote: I don't really have anything against actual bankers. I interned at a big bank in grad school. Everyone has to make a living, there are plenty of good, regular people working in the financial sector and it isn't their fault that the system is a mess)

I guess there's a third possibility. We could invade Mexico. If you wait around long enough, I'm sure you'll see some intrepid young President come up with an excuse to invade Mexico (manifest destiny!), but until then, like I said, there's nothing we can do.