Nickel-n-dime pro-life

My wife had occasion yesterday to accompany a friend to an abortion clinic. The only part of the experience that bothered her was that, “by law, they said”, the mother had to be offered an ultrasound of the fetus. Mind you, she didn’t actually have to look at it; she had to be offered, and could decline, which she did.

Now, I understand how such a law could come to be. There are lifebots out there who would say, “If they only see that it’s a BAYBEE, they won’t go through with it, because BAYBEEZ are cute ‘n adorable.” True enough, but I’ve seen early-term ultrasounds, and if you can tell that’s a baby, you have more imagination than I have. And they probably figure this is pretty harmless, and not really an infringement of anyone’s liberty, though it does mean that the clinic has to have ultrasound equipment, which maybe they wouldn’t need otherwise (though having it is certainly a good idea). Conservatives figure that none of their laws infringe liberty, because they’re the pro-liberty party.

Maybe my conservative friends would see things differently if we applied this strategy to Blue Team issues. What if, every time you bought a gun or even ammunition, you had to be shown pictures of what that particular caliber does to human flesh, because, really, you might be ignorant of that, since most of us have never shot anyone. “Yes, the .308 is pretty gross; wouldn’t you rather buy a .22?” Or what if fast-food milk shakes came with a picture of a diabetic’s gangrenous extremities printed right on the cup? Let’s not even discuss cigarettes. We’re all dolts, and need to be scared into taking care of ourselves… Yes, life could become one big shop safety/driver’s ed film.

It doesn’t help my opinion of this that I’m so squishily pro-life as to be barely pro-life at all. It’s a really hard sell to convince me that “There ought to be a law” about darn near anything. But I have no way of proving with reasonable certainly that the fetus is not a human being, the preponderance of the evidence suggests that it is a human being, and if government exists for anything, it’s to protect the lives of human beings. That doesn’t offer a lot of wiggle room. One could argue, I suppose, that fetuses don’t enjoy the protections of citizenship (since the unborn are by definition not native-born), but that doesn’t get you anywhere; if it’s OK to kill people because they aren’t citizens, then let’s grab our baseball bats, go down to the WalMart parking lot and bash us some Mexicans.

Worse, in this particular case, I can’t help seeing the abortion as a goodness. This is a person with a messed up life, who has been crawling out of the messed-up part and can’t afford to slide back. The child would be a born cheesesucker. I really can’t gin up any judgement whatsoever. When Rusty tried to bait me about it, I said, “She’s going to Hell anyway; one fewer sin isn’t going to change that.” She was taken aback a bit, mostly I think because her ex was in the habit of telling her she’s going to Hell. But I’m sorry, pagan girls are held to a looser standard than pillars of the Lutheran Church like George Tiller. I don’t approve; I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for it. But I have absolutely zero interest in hiring some guns to stop her from doing it. Does that make me an evil baby-killer-enabling person? I don’t know, and I don’t much care. Auntie Ayn would say, “Contradiction? Check your premises”, but I suspect she might not have much truck with some of the premises at work here. Given the track record, I think I’ll get better input from the Holy Spirit anyway. But I’m writing this because I have contradiction and uncertainty, and this one is in my face.

Election wrapup

OK, there were things to be happy about last night: Virginia, the removal of the odious Jon Corzine, the defeat of the Communist Rick Nagin in his quest for a Cleveland Council seat.  The Cuyahoga charter amendment was a good thing overall. Yes, Hoffman losing in NY23 was a bummer, but it was a fair fight, and at least the liberal will wear the proper ID tag.

But locally, I’m not seeing any of the revulsion to government that I’ve pipe-dreamed of. In my county, both the Democrat-backed judges won (though at least my candidates came in 2nd in 3-4 man races). All 3 statewide issues passed handily, with the casino gambling issue coming in the closest. That’s not  a clear-cut issue of principle, but stupidity and veniality as usual.

The Rethuglicans will make much of their wins, and one can understand why. But one swallow doesn’t make a spring. We live in a country increasingly dominated by cheesesuckers, and it’s going to take years to repair the damage sustained to American culture in the last century.

QatD Electoral recommendations

Nobody from around here reads this blog anyway, so my making recommendations is rather silly. But for those interested in my thoughts on The Great Issues Facing Our State Yada Yada, here goes:

Ohio Issue 2: creation of Livestock Care Standards Board

Hell no!

First, because I have no natural right to do such a thing. If I were to walk onto the farm of one of these guys who got the yard sign  from Farm Bureau, waving a gun around and saying things like, “Get these cattle off this feedlot NOW and onto pasture. You don’t have any pasture? Sell the cows!”, I’d be very lucky to leave there vertically, and rightly so. Nobody in their right mind would argue that I have any right to do that. If I don’t have such a right, how can I validly delegate that right to the government? Not only have I no right to vote “yes”, but I have an affirmative duty to vote “no” to cancel out the asshat who thinks that, because he hid in a voting booth, it wasn’t really him sticking it to his neighbors’ farm.

Second, because it will fail in its declared intent. HSUS has already announced that this will not be sufficient to stave off a ballot drive, so we are likely to have California farming rules PLUS a useless bureaucracy. If the CAFO and egg factory guys can’t make a moral and economic case to the public for what they’re doing, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it.

Third, any such board can and will be captured by the big money players, and your home chicken flock will be forced into cages because letting them free-range leaves them vulnerable to predators. You ever see what a stray Black Lab can do to a flock? I have, and it’s not pretty. Downright cruel, in fact.  And no killing your spent hens unless you have a multi-thousand dollar machine to euthanize them. You don’t hand over a loaded gun to just anyone.

Ohio Issue 3: Casinos

Don’t vote!

If this were a vote on principle, a constitutional amendment saying, “The General Assembly shall make no law respecting gambling”, I would be so there. It’s not. It’s a vote on giving another sweetheart deal to big gambling interests. On one hand, we have people who think that Ohio’s economy can be saved by encouraging Ohioans and a few out-of-staters to piss money down a slot. Casinos produce nothing. Sure, it would be a miniscule liberalization of Ohio gaming law. But on the other hand, we have Christianists anxious to save sinners from the vice of gambling. A plague on both their houses, I say. I don’t have the right to stop people from gambling, so I sure don’t have the right to establish a monopoly.

Judges

David Brode

Tommie Jo Marsilio

It’s very hard to choose judges on the substantive issue: do they actually believe in the Constitution and natural rights? My belief is that association with either of the two criminal conspiracies against the Constitution is circumstantial but persuasive  evidence that they do not…which leaves the above as the outsider candidates. Both appear to be as qualified if not more qualified than their opposition.  And Marsilio deserves a break : she was fired by the prosecutor because he didn’t like her style of campaigning, plus her parents really really wanted a boy.

Twp. trustee:

Damned if I know

Neither has distributed any substantive campaign literature, and Rusty, who has met at least one of them, is not enough of a policy wonk to ferret out their positions. We’ll probably go with Todd Phillips, as the same people who supported the odious Kevin Knight last time are supporting Jesse Wirick. If either of you search-engines this up and want to tell me what you won’t do, I’ll consider it carefully. (Beckie Dean could do it; why can’t you?)

 

Trouble in Windham Twp.

…”and that starts with a T, and that rhymes with Soinski…”

The Outdoor Heritage Preservation Association is Dale Soinski’s DBA. He has 1500 acres (including an old quarry) devoted to shooting, hunting, off-road vehicles, and wildlife appreciation.

Unfortunately, there are a group of people who don’t like Dale to enjoy his land and share it with his friends. One woman, who my wife described as “somebody used to getting what she wants”, showed up at the township trustee meeting last week and waxed hysterical about “fireballs over my soybeans” and not knowing where she can walk without being shot, and the sheriff can’t do anything because “they all have guns there” (and the sheriff doesn’t have a SWAT team?) and “people (kids?) have been putting firebombs in our mailboxes”. (They just used a baseball bat on ours.) They got little comfort from the trustees though.

The hassles have been going on for some years (before 2003 anyway) The new fit has been playing out in the Villager (the local paper), first here (p. 12), and now in this week’s issue (not yet online). One of the odder claims made there was that the Ohio National Guard couldn’t shoot .50 BMG at the RTLS (“Ravenna Arsenal”) because there wasn’t room per military regs. I tried to get a confirmation of that from the ONG Public Affairs office, but never got called back. I finally did find an army manual that suggested that it was at least possibly true, in the configuration the site is in now, given that the largest training area is 1421 acres or 5.75058 km² and the Army requires 6.5km straight-ahead safe distance for .50. But the average Joe will think, “It’s too dangerous to shoot this stuff on 20,000 acres, and they’re doing it on 1500? Divided by a road yet??

Of course I couldn’t resist stirring the pot. Here is the letter I just sent to the Villager:

After the recent letter by “Concerned residents”, I’d like to write in support of Mr. Soinski’s operation. I love to work on my property and hear the music of automatic weapon fire. I feel safer knowing that my fellow citizens are “sharpening their liberty teeth”. My friend, music professor and birder Dr. Lisa Rainsong, was recently there on a field trip, and was amazed at the variety of birds, insects and plants present. Granted, I live east of Colton Rd. , and it may be different on Frazier Rd. Certainly I haven’t heard any ground-rumbling explosions or seen plumes of smoke, and I was here on the Fourth.

The problem as I see it is that everyone wants control of other people’s property and lives. That’s why we have excessive zoning laws in this township, with the threat of worse, and the rabid government we have in Columbus and D.C.. That’s why “concerned residents” are invoking a whole alphabet soup of agencies, in order to stop somebody from doing something they don’t like. Now, there might be a tort here. If bullets are flying onto your property, if “fireballs (tracers?) are burning my soybeans”, if smoke from burning tires drifts through your windows (and you don’t burn plastic in your backyard burn barrel — should we turn those folks in to the EPA too?), then you are being trespassed against, and have an absolute right to legal redress in a court of law, where matters of fact can be weighed and where Mr. Soinski can confront his accusers. That “concerned residents” haven’t united in a lawsuit suggests to me that they have no actual legal grounds for complaint, just a wish to live in a perfectly controlled environment. Well, if I wanted to live in Shaker Heights, I’d live there, and save myself 2 hours commute per day. I value guns; others may value French-manicured toenails. If we get to vote on each others’ values, where does it all end?

And why the obsession with “.50 caliber ammunition”?. Our military snipers use rounds far narrower than that, and they kill from quite far away. At a minimum of $4/round, I doubt Dale and friends are shooting much of that. If they’re enjoined from using .50 ammunition, what’s next? .45? .40? 9mm? A .22 will do if you hit the right place. Is this really about noise, nuisance and danger, or is it just hoplophobia? It is claimed that the 2nd Amendment and the 5th/10th Amendment right to property are trumped by the “constitutional right…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those words appear nowhere in the Constitution, but rather in the Declaration of Independence, which, inspiring though it may be, is not and never was a controlling legal document.

Perhaps everything could be worked out with a little neighborly discussion and compromise. Maybe they don’t need to blow up cars there, but if they just do it on the 4th, maybe neighbors don’t need to take offense either. History has taught us that when basic principles like the right to property are compromised, they cease to exist. If people really can’t stand living in my neighborhood, houses are cheap now, especially in places with lots of laws and lots of lawlessness.

Political endorsement, sorta

The Cleveland Journal of Bourgeois Marxist Culture wishes to alert us all to OH Rep Jennifer Garrison, who is running to be the Democrat candidate for Secretary of State. It seems that Ms. Garrison is pro-life (!) and anti-gay marriage, and thus stretching the big tent.

Now, she’s an effing Democrat, which is as bad as being an effing Republican. It’s unclear from her website what her other positions are. But one possible way of taking back the power from the parties is to nominate folks who don’t toe the party line. I won’t go so far as to say she’s a Ron Paul Democrat. But she’s definitely not a Nancy Pelosi Democrat. If you vote Democrat in the primaries for sentimental reasons, you could do worse.

Girlfan drool

The bimbo responsible for “Cash for Clunkers” is profiled here by one Sabrina Eaton, who is positively agog at Betty Sutton’s Goddesslike effectiveness in Congress.

Anti-dog-fighting provisions she authored were part of an agriculture bill that became law last year.

You say that like you think it’s a good thing.
And comments are turned off. Oh gee, I wonder why?

PETA spares Columbus

…from fake “factory farm” exhibit. They’ll be bringing the cowshit to D. C. instead.

Coals to Newcastle, either way.

Great Lakes Medieval Faire being persecuted by township trustlessees

Larry Rickard, owner of the Great Lakes Medieval Faire in Trumbull twp., Ashtabula Co., is considering closing after this season because of a 10-year legal assault by local trustees over the heavy traffic brought in 12 days a year. In the latest onslaught, they went after the vendors with a law, because it sounded good:

The simmering feud boiled over a few weeks ago, after the trustees revised the township’s laws requiring “transient vendors” to register with the township and pay a $150 fee.

None of the Faire’s more than 100 vendors, who sell artwork and crafts, registered. Two weekends ago, deputies from the county sheriff’s department handed out about 50 citations, ordering vendors to appear in court today.

Griffith says she and the vendors refuse to register.

“We’re not going to let them extort $150 from each of us,” said Griffith. She contends that transient vendors already have permits from the state and that township registration is not needed on private property.

Indeed, section 505.94 of the Ohio Revised Code gives township trustees the right to require transient vendors to register, but not those people “invited by an owner or tenant to visit the owner’s or tenant’s premises to sell.”

Now, I’ve been there once or twice. I worked the Michigan Faire in Holly for a number of years. I’d be interested in a medieval cultural fair, sort of like the Ann Arbor Medieval Festival ca. 1980. But it’s hard to get excited about the cheesy theme parks that RenFaires have become, about working for entertainment directors who would rather hire umpteen pub singers singing anachronistic songs accompanied by anachronistic instruments than have real period music. I knew a folk-singing couple who worked a Faire in New Jersey, and were reprimanded by the ED for singing Twa Corbies …”It sounds like a doige! People wanna hear happy music!” … leading to a rewrite of Twa Corbies in the style of Tommy Makem, with the chorus line “We’re gonna eat ‘im!” Now, if you’re an Entertainment Director of taste, click here and maybe we’ll find something to talk about. (Also, this is not to disparage some of the fine nonmusic professionals I have worked with, including the Flaming Idiots, John and Patty Benson of Ormworks, SAK Theater, and others.)

But that’s neither here nor there. Nor is the trustees’ flagrant disrespect of state restrictions on their power. The problem, my friends, is your neighbors. People seem to think that township trustees and zoning boards have the right to take over private property for them, or at least to dictate the uses to which that property can be used. Not all … our trustees have been very good about ignoring complaints about shooting on Dale Soinski’s land, (unlike the Nelson trustees) even if they haven’t been as proactive about cleaning out the boilerplate from the local zoning ordinance (what’s wrong with single-wides, anyway?). But in general, citizens don’t care about property rights unless it’s their property.  Real Americans, as opposed to whining wussies, would be calling their local roofers and chicken farmers for contributions for a parade, with the trustees as guests of dishonor. Evidently, since GLMF is the only thing in the local economy, they aren’t getting enough of the tourism swag to compensate them for heavy traffic. Also, Rennies are probably way too much like hippies for local tastes. So let’s make it all go away, diversity be damned.

Latest on Dorothy Richardson

…the 75 year old woman accused of beating a fawn to death with a shovel. There’s been an article on her arraignment, with a picture, and I said, OMG! She’s black!” (Why this should have surprised me, considering that it’s Euclid, is a question I am meditating upon.) So of course I had the evil thought: “Of course, it’s all racism.”

It turns out that the same thought occurred to George Forbes, local head of the NAACP:

Dorothy Richardson, 75, was treated differently by Euclid officials because she is black, NAACP President George Forbes said Friday.

“It’s a goddamn deer,” Forbes said. “It’s not a human being, it’s a deer. The way this lady is being treated is unfair.”

Euclid officials have not been impartial with Richardson, he said.

“It’s typical Euclid,” Forbes said. “It’s what they do in Euclid.”

Personally, I think it’s a lot more about class than race, as such things often are. But I never thought I’d see the day when I was agreeing with and cheering on the slimy, race-baiting Forbes.

In related (?) news, the black bear that has been wandering around Streetsboro tore a chunk out of somebody’s house. If that had been my place, I’d have been out there with shotgun slugs. Tell me, why is it that when homo sapiens invades your house, you have a right to shoot them, but when ursus americanus does so, it’s supposed to be protected?

UPDATE: I evidently inspired Beck to look into this.

There’s another similar mob going on about a 20 year old (now former) employee of Petland who drowned two injured rabbits, had her manager take a picture of her holding them, and then put it on Facebook, where PETA et al found it. She and the manager both got canned, which one can’t complain about since there’s a corporate policy against employees euthanizing animals. I even understand why they closed the franchise; it’s overkill, but I can see how it might be necessary PR (esp. if the branch was not doing well and was expendable)

What I don’t understand is the howling mob demanding to do things to a particular homo sapiens that they would not for a minute countenance being done to any other animal. It’s an odd kind of moral inversion. Other species get to be as cruel as they want to other species, and that’s just business as usual, but let a human do it, and the Iron Maiden is way too kind.

Space-out on Obamacare abortion funding

A Blue Dog Democrat is still a Democrat:

The amendment said health care legislation moving through Congress may not impose requirements for coverage of abortion, except in limited cases. It was approved in the Energy and Commerce Committee after conservative Democrats joined Republicans to support it. But committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., invoked House rules that allowed him to bring up the amendment for a second vote, despite Republican objections. This time, one conservative Democrat — Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee — changed his vote from “yes” to “no.” And a second conservative Democrat who hadn’t voted the first time — Rep. Zack Space of Ohio — voted “no.”

They were for it before they were against it, just like John Kerry.
Aren’t those thirty silver dollars a little heavy, Zack?