Man Bites Blog

and of course by, “should”, I mean, “in order to impress John McG and people like him,” rather than what he apparently thinks.  In any case:

You know, I’ve thought about that vote quite a bit.  I think I fell into a trap that unfortunately it’s all too easy for politicians to fall into.   You start to believe that if an idea came from someone you consider a political adversary, it must be a bad idea.  And if it seemed on the surface to be a good idea, it must be a stealth attempt at some more nefarious goal.  So I saw this bill coming up with the support of those who were opposed reproductive choice, and I prematurely judged it to be an attack on reproductive choice, which I would be bound to oppose.

A lot has happened since then.  As I have moved on to the Senate and now this campaign, I’ve gotten the chance to meet at work with people on both sides of the aisle .  I have been honored to receive the support of people who may disagree with me about some issues, including reproductive choice, but want to work with me to improve this great country.

So if, today, I could, I would have voted differently then I did then.  And the important lesson is that we shouldn’t let partisan differences keep us from pursuing common-sense policies and working together to reduce the need for abortion.

Now, I would still have some problems with what he’s saying here.  And it may not jive with Obama’s rehotric to say he discovered bipartisanship since his days in the Illinois Senate.  But it would be a hell of a lot better than calling pro-lifers liars and saying that he had to oppose it in order to preserve the almighty Roe v. Wade.

I repeat my basic question: if it takes special language in order for a law to ensure that infants receive care not to undermine Roe v. Wade, doesn’t that indicate something’s wrong with Roe v. Wade?

Obama’s own explanation of his vote against the Illinois Born Alive act boild down to him seeing defending Roe v. Wade as a more crucial moral dury than protecting the lives of babies actually born.

This is insanity.

If this in indeed Obama’s position, then I cannot support or vote for him.

I can accept disagreement on this this issue.  But someone who so reveres Roe v. Wade that he would vote against a law protecting babies actually born out of feat that it might undermine that descision is not someone who can be worked with, or who posesses any kind of judgement.

• If a bill that would ban leaving a born baby to die would undermine Roe v. Wade, doesn’t that say more about Roe v. Wade than it does about the proposed bill?  Especially if the person making that claim was the chair of the committee that the bill came from?
• Our sexualized culture: Can’t a father kiss his daughter in a moment of triumph without it being considered “creepy?”  John Edwards cheats on his ailing wife, and we’re supposed to politely look the other way.  But a father shows any affection for his daughter, and that’s supposed to launch some chin-scratching investigation into their relationship.  Our culture is sick.
• The gymnastic announcers last night were the biggest homers I have ever heard, and this is coming from someone who regularly listens to Mike Shannon calling Cardinals games.  I wanted to see the Americans win, too, but other than the uneven bars, I think Liukin’s performances were solid but not transcendent.  She deserved to win, but I don’t think it was a grand injustice that it wasn’t a blowout.  Maybe the announcers are Patriot fans.
• It would have been extraordinarily funny if when they zoomed in on the judges’ computers, they were playing FreeCell.
• Here’s my question — how can it be that there about as many service aces in court volleyball, where there are six players in sneakers on a hard floor as there are in beach volleyball, where there are two barefoot players on sand?  It seems to me that a service specialist would be even more valuable in beach volleyball, though I suppose the nature of the sport requires a greater diversity of skills.  But I haven’t seen a beach volleyball player for whom the serve is a real weapon.

Regardless of whether the Edwardses have held themselves as a model marriage, John Edwards having an affair, and possibly a child, while his wife was ailing with cancer matters.

For a public marriage like the Edwardses, this is not just an offense against Elizabeth Edwards; it is an offense against every married person, and everyone who one day hopes to be married.  Like Henry V and Catherine, couples like the Edwardses are the “makers of fashion.”  If it is acceptable for John Edwards to respond to his wife’s illness by looking for some on the side, it sends the message that it is OK for the rest of us as well. 

One of the reasons people get married is the knowledge that they will have someone’s faithful love and support when they get into hard times.  If the Edwardses are a model marriage, and this is how John Edwards responded, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Are we really so sure we can’t ask for this much from each other, and indeed from our leaders?  If we get sick, should we expect our spouses to go off an have an affair?  If so, why get married in the first place?

I can understand Elizabeth Edwards would like this to be over, but I submit that this is a selfish, if undertstandable impulse.  It doesn’t do other patients any good for us to excuse those who treat their ill spouses this way.

And if Edwards is the child’s father, that raises another host of issues — did he expect the child to never know who his father was?  Isn’t illegitimacy and fatherlessness closely tied to poverty, which is supposed to be Edwards’s crusade?

David Gibson posts at dotCommonweal that, no, really, the Democratic platform is a step toward pro-lifers.

Unfortunately, Linda Hirshman writes today that it is a movement in the opposite direction, and achance for Democrats to “reclaim the moral high ground on abortion.”

Now, I allow that Hirshman may be pumping up her own side a bit, but if she’s celebrating, it’s doubtful pro-lifers should be as well.

And BTW, it doesn’t matter how ineffective the Republicans have been in ending abortion.  In order to win, and especially to win the kind of landslide they want, Democrats will need the support of people who see themselves as pro-life.  This shouldn’t be enough to earn it.

I motioned to it in the post below, but the proposed Democratic platform is uncompromising in its support for legalized abortion:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right,

Pro-lifers looking for an olive branch aren’t going to find it here.   No wording about every abortion being a tragedy.  No acknowledgement that this is a controversial issue on which good people disagree.  No, the voice of god says this is a right, and nothing should weaken or undermine it.

But wait!  Didn’t they say nice things about giving birth?

The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Well, isn’t that nice?  So, if you choose not to abort your baby, that’s OK; the Democrats will help you.  But the important thing is that your right to abort your baby is not weakened.  You sure you don’t want to abort your baby?  Because all those programs cost a lot of money, and it’d be a lot easier on everybody if you just aborted it.

If Obama wants to win votes from pro-lifers, he’s going to have to do better than this.

Ross Douthat rounds up the recent commentary on why evangelicals are more pro-life than Catholics.  The conclusion seems to be that those who self-identify as evengeleicals are more intense about their faith than those who self-identify as Catholics.

This is true to a point, but One thing I didn’t see mentioned is that both evangelicalism and the primacy of “social conservative” issues like abortion in Christian political actions are both relatively young phenomeneons, at least as compared to the Catholic Church.  Many Catholics formed their political identities before Roe v. Wade, when issues like welfare, civil rights, labor, and capital punishment were at the forefront.  These issues tended to align Catholics with the Democratic Party.  Those ties take a while to die out, even in the face of something like Democrats’s uncompromising support of abortion rights.

Meanwhile, evenagelicals looking to apply their faith to the public square now face (or faced) a landscape where abortion and same sex marriage are the primary issues, and thus align with Republicans.

An interesting question might be how each group comes out on issues like torture and the war.

• Good to see Brett Favre going to New York, where he’ll finally get some media attention.  Hey, Peter King is right down the street.
• I am a firm believer that good starting pitchers are more valuable than relief pitchers, and that many “bad bullpens” are a result of starters not eating up enough innings.
  Thus, when Adam Wainwright returns, he should go into the starting rotation. 
• Look for my ode to sports fandom soon at quiblit.com

Sure, the standings say the Cardinals are only 6 games out of first place, and in the thick of the wild card race, but they are rebuilding this year.

Proof?  In last night’s game against the Phillies, there were the following match-ups:

• Top of the eighth, mand on first,one out, Cardinals up by one: All Star Chase Utley vs. Jaime Garcia
• Same innning, man on first, two out: former MVP Ryan Howard vs. Jaime Garcia
• Bottom of the ninth, runners on first and third, Cardinals down by one run:  All-Star closer Brad Lidge vs. Cesar Izturis
• Same inning, bases loaded, one out:  Lidge vs. Nick Stavinoha
• Same inning, bases loaded, two out: Lidge vs. Joe Mather

Suffice it to say, the Phillies will take those match-ups.

The Cardinals were simply not built to compete at this level this year.  Some guys have played over their heads, and catapulted them to a strong record.  But real contenders don’t send rookies (and these are real rookies, not phenoms) into the game to face All Stars with the game on the line.

This problem is also not helped by the Cardinals being managed by someone who burns through his players chasing the platoon advantage.  Stavinoha was in the game because he had pinch hit for starting center fielder Skip Schumaker in the previous inning.  Schumaker is an established major leaguer at this point, but he’s left handed, and Tony LaRussa will not be on the wrong side of a lefty-lefty matchup in the late innings.

LaRussa’s theory is that if they’re good enough to be on the roster, they’re good enough to play.  Which is true.  But a contending team should have something better than AAAA players in the final innings of a tight game with another playoff contender in August.

Tyler Cowen regularly hands out an award for the sentence of the week, but he may have to give it to himself for this one in a post about a Saudi Arabian effort to reduce fornication by banning the sale of cats and dogs:

To limit sex, cats should be subsidized, not taxed. 

I’m not a fan of the McCain “gas tax holiday” idea, but…

One of the criticisms is that the oil companies will simply eat the savings rather than pass it on to the consumers.

My question:  if this is the case, why is it that differing gasoline taxes result in differing prices between states?  Why don’t oil companies in Missouri charge the same for gasoline as the do in California, and take in the rest as profit?

And how would whatever reason posited for the above not apply to a gas tax holiday?

 I suspect there’s a good answer, but I don’t know it.

Matt Yglesias laments that Barack Obama is considered an elitist for saying kids ought to learn more than one language, but John McCain is considered a man of the people despite his $500 shoes.

Allow me to explain…

McCain’s shoes are not a normative statement about you.  McCain happens to be able to afford the shoes, finds them comfortable and/or attractive, and thus wears them.  He is not telling you that you ought to be wearing those shoes.

Not so for Obama’s statement about language.  There is an implicit message that if you don’t speak more than one language, then you are deficient and poorly equipped for the modern economy.  And if you think it’s more important for kids to learn math and science than Spanish, then you are a closed-minded bigot who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world.

Now, that reaction to Obama’s call for students to learn multiple language is very uncharitable, and has little connection to what Obama was trying to say.   But it’s out there.  And it won’t go away by pointing to John McCain’s shoes.

After Johann Santana was pulled from consecutive starts against the Phillies after eight inning with his pitch count around 100, and the Mets lost both games.  Joe Sheehan writes that the efforts to protect starting pitchers have gone too far.

I’ll add one more data point — Joe Buck spending most of the last few innings of the All Star Game fretting that Terry Francona might need to use Scott Kazmir for more than an inning or so.  Generals have sent entire battallions on semi-suicidal missions with less moral anguish than accompanied the possibility of a pitcher throwing pitches, which is, you know, his job.

Sheehan writes:

Starts of greater than 130 pitches have disappeared from the landscape, and with so much misplaced emphasis—for which we have to take some blame—on “100 pitches,” even starts of 120 or more throws are becoming rare.

That was never, ever the intent.

If that wasn’t the intent, you could have fooled me.  The metric was called pitcher abuse points, and every pitch thrown over 100 added to the ledger, every pitch over 120 added 3.  What is the optimal level of abuse?  Zero, of course.    If you don’t intend to prevent something, labeling it as “abuse” is a curious way to go about it.

No, the statheads got quite the righteous thrill out of convicting the “old-school” managers they didn’t like — Tommy Lasorda, Jack McKeon, Dusty Baker, etc. — of “abuse.”

But they don’t get all the blame — I think the second factor was Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS when Grady Little famously sent Pedro Martinez out for the eight inning, to disastrous results, both for the Red Sox and Little’s reputation as a manager.

This single event turned conventional wisdom on its head.  It used to be that the mantra was to “lose with your best.”  Pedro Martinez was the best pitcher on the Red Sox; it was his game to win or lose.

Now, the pitch count is the manager’s friend.  Pedro Martinez may have been the Sox best pitcher for pitches 1-100, but after that, he’s below average.  Better to get him out of there.  And with aware broadcasters keeping fans aware of the pitch counts, the safe play is to have established roles for your relievers, and bring in the appropriate one when the started crosses his threshold.    If you do that and lose, no-one can blame you.  Plus, you’re not keeping your pitcher away from risk.

And so we have your 2008 Cardinals, carrying 13 pitchers, regularly using starting pitchers as pinch hitters, constantly playing roster games.

Anyway, I hope we swing back.

Why is it necessary to find a hypocrisy angle in order for it to be news that a married man, one of the top three presidential candidates for one party’s nomination, and someone rumored to be part of the next Democratic administration is paying late night visits to the hotel room of a woman who is not his wife and recently had a child?

I don’t care if Edwards spent his entire campaign fighting for the rights of adulterers.  Having a child with another woman while your wife has inoperable cancer is reprehensible behavior.  Why is it so hard for us to say so?  And one way to cut down on such reprehensible behavior is to say that those who engage in it are disqualified from being our leaders.

If we’re OK with spouses of cancer patients going off and starting families with other people, then we should say so.  Yes, it’s probably no fun taking care of a sick spouse, and the temptation to stray is strong.  Tough.  That’s partly why we socially stigmatize those who stray.  If we tell ourselves this isn’t our business, then we are weakening the social incentives for people to do things that aren’t so fun that have to be done nonetheless.

Some justify keeping quiet by saying they are protecting Elizabeth Edwards.  I don’t think it helps either Elizabeth Edwards or other cancer patients to withhold social disapproval for a spouse who has an affair during her spouse’s bout with illness.  John Edwards is the one who has done Elizabeth harm, not The National Enquirer.

A running theme of mine is that liberals are always advancing arguments for gun control that they would laugh out of the room if they were advanced for restrictions on abortion.

Ramesh Ponnuru points out one from Timothy Noah:

More legal guns therefore mean more illegal guns. More illegal guns mean more people get killed. The inconvenience this poses to the dead and their families, and to society at large, does not concern Scalia.

In the case of abortion, those who don’t like the procedure are supposed to acknowledge that people will get abortions anyway, and it’s better that they be “safe, legal” abortions than back alley abortions.

But in gun control, things are reversed.  Apparently, in this case, the existence of legal guns make illegal guns more common, since handguns aren’t intrinsically illegal, so the way to stop illegal guns is to make all guns illegal.

I’m not too heavily on either side of the gun control issue, though I think it’s worth noting that the right to bear arms is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, while the right to an abortion is not.

Tyler Cowen notes Amon Shea’s observation that many words that describe things that are commonly encountered are nonetheless obscure.

It seems that words are more of a “tipping point” thing than a “long tail.”  Words either are used somewhat commnly or virtually never.

It seems that all it would take for a word to bust through would be for one prominent writer to consistently use it in the proper context.  I’m obviously nowhere near prominent enough, but I wonder if someone like Cowen is…   Where’s the threshold?

PZ Myers and his acolytes like to point out that that point of the Eucharist desecration stunt wasn’t to offend Catholics, but to draw into relief the absurdity of transubstantiation, which is what motivate Bill Donahue and others to hyperventialate over Wesley Cook.

So, we’re about a week in — how’s that workin’ for ya?

Has there been anyone who’s said something like, “Geez, I had no idea that Catholics believed that a ‘cracker’ was the actual Body of Christ!  Man, they sure are goofy.  I’ll never listen to a Catholic again!”

Mostly, I’ve seen people who were already convinced that Catholics were stupid defending Myers, but also atheists distancing themselves from Myers and his stunt.

So far, I’d have to say it’s a failure.

I’m glad I got involved in the Myers debate, if only because it’s been a while since I was a kid and had a little sister, and thus was a bit rusty about how to respond to arguments like the following:

• But I’m not touching you!
• But you hurt me first!
• <Rips head off toy doll/action figure>  Why are you crying over a stupid toy?
• I know you are, but what am I?

In any instance, after a week of dealing with the faction of Dr. Myers’s acolytes who are inclined to defend obtaining a religion’s more sacred items under false pretenses and then desecrating them, I feel I an now equipped to handle any first grader.

It would be a lot easier to believe that conservative resistance to global warming was motivated by a healthy skepticism of scientific claims if these same people didn’t also immediately jump on scientific claims against global warming, as Jonah Goldberg does here.

Didn’t Jesus teach about turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and loving one’s enemies?  How is that compatible with what has rained down on Dr. Myers?

I guess this notion explains why atheists were slow to criticize the Church’s handling of the pedophilia scandal.  After all, Christians shouldn’t act against evil; they should turn the other cheek.  I still fondly recall all the brave writings by atheists that although the rape of minors was unfortunate, it was admirable for the hierarchy to remain true to their prinicples, and not act against those who were comitting evil.

Oh, no, wait a second –  that would have been absurd.  There were no such outpourtin of support, and atheists still use the pedophilia scandal as a trump card against Catholics.  So, apparently, under some circumstances it’s OK for Chrisitans to confront evil.  In fact, their failure to do so in the case of pedophile priests was a derelection of duty.

But that was raping kids; this is “a frackin’ cracker”

Yes, this is the fundamental disagreement.

The argument was that for a Christian to protest Dr. Myers’ stunt was in violation of Christian principles.  You disagree that the Blessed Sacrament should be treated with reverence, but believing that it is is not a violation of Christian principles.

Why are you more concerned about “a frackin’ cracker” than how Wesley Cook was treated or the death threats that have been received?

Why are you and Dr. Myers more concerned about a college student geting treated a little roughly than the children who will starve today or be killed by genocidal gangs throughout the world?

I wasn’t there when Wesley Cook was confronted, and stories conflict.  It appears the sitution should have been handled with a bit more pastoral skill.  But yes, on the list of injustices in the world crying out for my attention, it’s not near the top.

As for the death threats, anyone with a large audience who writes about controversial things receives them.  It is an unfortunate feature of our national discourse.  That a professor outlining a plan to directly offend the world’s largest religion would result in a handful of them responding this way is disappointing, but should not be surprising.  There are violent unhinged people who are part of any movement.  That they exist among Catholics does not prove anything on one side of the other. 

But the Hosts are freely given…

When one walks up to receive communion, the minister says “The Body of Christ,” and the communicant responds “Amen.”  By saying “Amen,” the communicant is affirming her belief that Jesus is physically present in the Eucharist, and in the Church gathered around them.

You might call that “free;” I’d say it’s a high price indeed. 

OK, you still haven’t said why this is such a big deal for you.

Admittedly it’s my oxe that’s being gored, and I am being personally offended.

But regardless of that, I don’t want to live in a society where stunts like this are a regular feature.  Think through what would happen if desecrating what others believe is sacred was seen as a valid form of protesting if you didn’t like what someone in that religion did.  There would have to be increased security around all religious services and places.  Any stranger would need to be regarded with suspicion. 

If this is the kind of society you want — and arms race over who can find the vilest way to insult other groups, and the groups must build greater walls of security around what they consider sacred, go for it.  But as things stand right now, I don’t think you’ll win.