The Abortion Debate

So I was reading Andrew Sullivan's blog the other day and came across a reference to this bit of nonsense from E.D. Kain. The entire thing can be read at the link, an excerpt follows:

If you believe in your heart of hearts that an unborn child is nevertheless a child – a living, growing, human being – and yet the law of the land dictates that said living, growing human being is not in possession of even the most basic right – the right to life – then how different is this from slavery?

Ugh. Let us re-phrase Kain's idiotic comment in a different context. I believe we can all grant that I am a person? And that I myself enjoy a "right to life"? Tomorrow I am diagnosed with a serious illness. My liver is shutting down. I'm dead in a day if I don't find a liver donor to donate a piece of their liver to me to keep me alive.

There is one compatible donor available.

They say no.

OMG Slavery! My right to life has been denied to me!

Is anyone incapable of seeing the idiocy of that statement? Yes... I have a right to life... however NO person, anywhere in our society, under any conditions... enjoys the kind of "right to life" Kain is claiming is being denied to the fetus. A right to life that over-rides another person's right to control over their own damn body. I cannot declare that because I need a piece of that person's liver to continue living they are legally required to consent to the surgery to cut it out of them and give it to me because I have a "right to life".

But let's go further.

I've been in a car accident. Some idiot drunk driver swerved into my lane and I'm in bad shape. I need a blood transfusion or I'm going to bleed out. I'm a rare blood type. There is exactly one person available who give me the blood to keep me alive. Just give me some damn blood... a little prick with a needle and some temporary inconvenience. Almost non-existent risk. I STILL can't invoke any "right to life" to make that person do it because it's their damn body, not mine.

The person in question is the drunk driver who hit me.It's his fault I'm in this situation! Guess what? STILL can't force them to do it. Their body, their call, no exceptions EVER. And I am not being in any way made a "slave" by having some non-existent right to commandeer another person's body to keep me alive denied to me. And there is damn good reason for that, going down the road where you start saying people can place themselves in positions where they irrevocably forfeit the right to control over their own bodies? THAT gets us slavery.

And if I, an undisputed person with a "right to life", can't require another person to do something as trivial to their body as give a little blood against their will to save my life then someone explain to me what "right to life" Kain is blathering about that would let another "person" require a woman to undergo an entire nine month pregnancy and the act of birth against her will, which is what we are talking about when we talk about making abortion illegal.

If Kain wants to toss the word "slavery" around he might want to take a good long look at what the word means and then have a good long think about what making abortion illegal would involve. He's directing the term at the wrong side of this argument.

Ranking Presidents

Every few years the Sienna College Research Institute conducts a survey of historians to rank the US presidents. they just finished the latest round since 2002. Anyone who follows politics in the US even a little will probably have heard Bush or his supporters saying how history will judge his legacy kindly. Well, history has a long way to go:

Worst Ever: A. Johnson, Buchanan, Harding, Pierce and G.W. Bush

Bush was ranked 5th worst of all time.

Now that alone is pretty bad... but frankly if I was surprised by anything it was that he managed to come in that high. So I decided to figure out why. It's just... sad.

The rankings were conducted based on 20 independent criteria... these were Bush's rankings in each (out of 43):

Now, there are 3 categories he did uncharacteristically well on relative to his general performance... and 2 he did somewhat better on. Let's take them in order.

Bush's Great Presidential Strength

Criteria # 7. Bush's top score out of all 20 criteria evaluated. He ranked 18th out of 43 on this one. It was....

Luck.

I shit you not.

Defining a Bailout

Did I mention I'm Canadian?

Well, I am. And recently while I've been keeping up on economic news I've been encoutering two really popular themes about the home country.

1. "Canada's banks are really, really stable."
2. "That's a LIE! The government gave them a massive bailout!!!"

So, which is it? (Spoiler: It's the first one.)

First, some examples of people making the latter claim. This guy at Pacific free Press. "Sean" in the comments section. The people at "Global Research". etc...

I'm particularly dissapointed in that last one... I'd expect someone who uses the word "research" in the name of their very organization to, well, research things. And it's not like it takes a lot of reseacrching to find the problem in these claims after all. Opening a dictionary and looking up the definition of two little words would get the job done:

1. Bailout: noun. A rescue from financial distress.
2. Insurance: noun. A promise of reimbursement in the case of future loss.

Now, let's look at what that link at "Global research" has to say about how the Canadian governemnt "bailed out" the Canadian banks, shall we? I'm going to go ahead and highlight a word in the statement they spend consireable time ranting about:

"Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) will purchase up to $25 billion in insured mortgage pools as part of the Government of Canada’s plan, announced today, to maintain the availability of longer-term credit in Canada." (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Supports Canadian Credit Markets, CHMC Press Release, 10 October 2009)

So apparently the Canadian banks were rescued from the financial distress of... holding a bunch of mortgages that they were guaranteed not to lose a penny on.

Wow, they must be so grateful for that "bailout".

What actually happened, is that the government bought the mortgages so that the banks would have more cash on hand to engage in more lending. And the reason the government wanted this to happen is because at the time the global recession was seizing up credit markets all over the world and they wanted to make sure Canadians kept ready access to credit while this was happening. It was a simple recession-fighting measure that had nothing to do with rescuing (a.k.a "bailing out") the Canadian banks. There was nothing to rescue them from.

Hypocritical Political Leaders... Better Than The Alternative?

Interesting point I saw raised a while back by one of the readers at Andrew Sullivan's blog, which has since been percolating in the back of my brain...is it really always such a bad thing to have hypocritical political leaders?

The immediate reaction to that question will tend to be an emphatic "yes!", but given the assumption that no politician we ever get in office, anywhere, in any capacity, is ever going to be perfect... do we really want a leader who does the NON-hypocritical thing and says "well, I really have quite a few shortcomings when it comes to financial ethics (for example)... so I'm not going to try and make anyone else play by those rules any better than I do"... or do we want the leader who is going to crack the whip and keep everyone else in line regardless of how good he is at staying in line himself, even if that is hypocritical of them?

Or the leader who can't stay on a diet, so he does the non-hypocritical thing and refuses to contribute any effort into educating the children of the nation that eating healthy is a good thing?

Or, pick your personal shortcoming...

I have to say, after giving it considerably thought, given those two options I kind of want the hypocrite. I mean sure, ideally I'd want the leader who holds the government and the nation to the highest standard AND meets that standard themselves... but let's be realistic. Not happening. Any human being is going to fall short of the standards we'd like to see maintained in *some* area. But we still want the nation held to the highest standards in ALL areas, at least ideally. So... if you look at it a certain way, hurray for hypocrisy!

On the other hand, there's hypocrisy and there's hypocrisy. For example... if I think it through I'm pretty ok with the guy who rides around in private jets burning through fossil fuels while trying to champion the envirnoment. I mean... bad optics, but I find it hard to get seriously outraged about it.

However, no matter which way I look at it I get enormously ticked off by the guy who is condemning people as shameful and immoral for their sexual orientation while they're running around Europe with a gay escort they claim is only there to "carry their luggage".

And the difference between those two that's making me reach different conclusions about how acceptable they are is the first one is an example of someone trying to improve the lives of others with their advocacy even if they're not perhaps living up to their own ideals... and the other is just some jerk who is spreading hatred and bigotry over an issue that I frankly have difficulty believing he actually really thinks is the great evil he runs around telling people it is so that they'll give his organization money to fight it.

Of course, I appreciate that a certain segment of the population views that last situation differently. Your mileage may vary.