new conspiracy theory

Recently, Rachel Maddow interviewed the authors of the wildly successful Left Behind books. There apparently has been some concern among Evangelicals that Obama is the Antichrist. These guys put an end to that by stating that the Antichrist only comes after the Rapture, and since that clearly hasn’t happened, logically then, our president can’t be the Antichrist.

But I think they missed something. According to Jerry Falwell, the Antichrist is well known to be a Jewish male. Indeed, Al Franken’s theory is that Barry Manilow is really the Antichrist. Which got me thinking; what if the Left Behind guys are all wrong? What if Obama really is the Antichrist? But he’s not Jewish, right?

Well, maybe he is. Remember all those canards about how he’s a secret Muslim? How he’s also a member of an anti-White Christian church? Maybe these were all smokescreens. Let’s face it: a lot of Obama’s best friends are members of the tribe. He lived across the street from a synagogue. Michelle has a relative who is a rabbi. “Barack” might really be a cover for “Baruch.”

So by the transitive property of religions, Obama is a secret Jew. And therefore could qualify as the Antichrist, since the Antichrist has to be Jewish. Ergo, Obama is the Antichrist. QED.

Thank goodness I don’t believe in this endtimes stuff. Or else things could get really scary. Just like what’s posited in all these Left Behind books the Christian right seem to buy in droves.

And I’m just kidding about all this anyway. Isn’t it obvious Barry Manilow really is the Antichrist?

this still gives me goosebumps one day later

the inaugural express

Debbie, Arielle and I worked on the Obama campaign, both for the primary and the final GOTV effort. Debbie and Arielle in particular—Debbie ran the local phone bank, and Arielle did a lot of phone banking. I did door-to-door canvassing, and helped around the campaign office, but Debbie especially did a masterful amount of volunteer work for the campaign, putting in 14+-hour days towards the end.

Perhaps by random, since we really don’t know what process was used, she was invited with a guest to attend the start of Obama’s inaugural train ride to DC this morning. Only 250 volunteers were to be part of this, so she really lucked out. Fortunately, Debbie chose to bring me over our daughter, so I got to go to see Obama and Arielle got to…well, she got to be really pissed off at me. Life’s like that—glad she’s learning this important lesson early.

Anyway, we got there about 20 minutes before the doors opened. There were a lot of police and federal officers present, including bomb-sniffing dogs. While there were 250 of us, there was also a large number of VIPs, including politicians like Michael Nutter, Bob Casey, Arlen Specter, Harris Wofford, Josh Shapiro, Alyson Schwartz and Bob Casey. And many others, including those who were invited to travel on Obama’s train (now that would have been really cool), and even the CEO of US Airways, who I somehow recognized a few rows ahead of us (guess I read too many inflight US Airways magazines, since I fly them every other week or so). I avoided the temptation to complain about the crappy service on his airline this past summer, and instead was polite and told him that the pilot of that downed airplane that landed in the Hudson did a great job. It would have been nice, as a high roller with their airline, to have snared some sort of bonus, like an automatic first-class upgrade for my next trip to California, but that didn’t seem to happen. Sigh…

After intros by local and statewide politicians, Obama, Michelle, Sasha and Malia came out and the crowd went wild. It was very hard to see, but we did manage to grab some halfway-decent photos. I was twittering the entire time, which also gets posted to my Facebook page, so I probably did more twittering today than anytime in the past. I really wish the iPhone had a zoom lens, though, since those were the shots getting posted to Twitter.

While the crowd was a lot bigger than we thought, so it wasn’t a smallish gathering where everyone could shake hands with Obama, Deb did manage to shake Obama’s hand, give a Secret Service agent some homemade Obama earrings for Sasha and Malia, and procure autographs for our copies of Obama’s two books. Debbie also managed to get interviewed twice, one for Salon.com, and again for our local NBC station. The video of the NBC10 interview is below. Deb’s interview starts at 0:54—she did a great job on camera!

Note the Obama earrings…

So I don’t know how Debbie and I became one of 250 local volunteers to see Obama relatively close up at his 30th Street Station event that started his inaugural train ride to Washington, DC, but we’re really amazingly happy we got to attend. It was also wonderful to see several others we came to know through volunteering at the local Baderwood Obama campaign headquarters. When a true grassroots effort like this one actually succeeds, it’s very gratifying. I hope Obama continues to fulfill his promise, and his promises. I also hope that people get beyond partisanship. And race/religion/sexual orientation, etc. Maybe then, we can start to put the horrible events of the past eight years behind us.

ok, i’m really, really happy now

Hanging out here at our local Obama headquarters and it’s an amazing scene. After a lot of work involving my family and a ton of local friends and new acquaintances, along with the massive efforts of millions of volunteers, the people won. Sanity won. Maybe we finally have our country back. I really hope so.

VOTE!!!!

I’ve been blogging much more of late on politics than on new music and other things, but this election is really important.

No surprise here: I totally endorse Obama/BIden. The McCain of 2000 would have made this a tough choice. But McCain has proven to be a tool of George Bush. McCain reversed his principled stance on torture, supporting the Bush Administration’s idiotic belief that waterboarding doesn’t constitute torture and therefore can be applied to detainees. McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin was pandering at best, extremely dangerous and divisive judgement at worst. The tone of McCain’s campaign was the worst I’ve ever seen, and at one point even McCain seemed to realize he’d created a monster out of control. The last time I saw such blatant racism out in front was, maybe, the 60’s. I’m not saying McCain is racist; I don’t believe that at all. But I do think a lot of the core Conservatives out there who are coming to the McCain/Palin rallies are very racist.

I think most folks who read this blog (all five of you) are keenly aware of how important this election is. It’s like the lettering on any auto transmission: if you choose D you go forward, R takes you backwards. i don’t want to go back to the same crap we’ve just been through for the past eight years. Some people don’t think that McCain’s administration will be another Bush administration. The reality is that McCain’s policies are very close, and often identical, to those of the failed Bush Administration. Indeed, Palin and many other McCain campaign officials can’t come up with any ways that McCain would be different from Bush whenever they get asked that by reporters.

So please vote tomorrow. It’s not just a right, but a responsibility. And for those few people I’ve come across who remain unregistered and refuse to vote at all, don’t bitch when the government does something you disagree with.

What remains to be seen is how much disenfranchisement will occur. We need to have some form of automatic voter registration, so that voter suppression will no longer be a tool of the right wing.

obama earrings in geneva

As anyone who looks at this blog knows, I’m a very big supporter of Obama’s campaign. So’s my entire immediate family—we volunteer, canvas, do phone banking, etc. In particular, my wife Debbie has been giving tons of her time helping to manage the local phone banking activities, and also makes these great Obama earrings (showing the campaign’s logo) that she sells for the campaign.

Anyway, Debbie sent a pair of Obama earrings to her cousin who lives in Geneva, Switzerland. A local news program apparently did a spot on local US expatriates who are voting for Obama and Deb’s cousin, along with the earrings, made it on the program. It’s hard to see in the image below, since it’s bitmapped a bit, but they’re there. Nice to see that Obama’s reach is pretty global.

we’re turning into a nation of haters, thanks to McSame/Palin

I’ve lived in Allentown, which is right next door to Bethlehem. Not everyone there is like this. Honest. But some are, and they’re pretty vocal. Fascism, I thought, was thrown in the waste bucket of history after WWII, but perhaps not. This is disgraceful, and none of the Republican candidates are really disowning this or discouraging their minions from becoming an angry mob. Guess that means the good guys are winning, but it’s really scary. Reminds me of the run up to Rabin’s assassination in Israel years ago.

the things I miss for work…

I’m in Mexico for work, all while my wife and daughter got to be a few feet away from our next president during his rally in Abington, PA, just minutes from our house in Wyncote. Sigh…

an enlightened attitude about abortion

I had dinner tonight with two Canadian colleagues, and near the end of dinner (after regaling each other with the usual gynecologic surgery “war stories”), somehow the topic of abortion came up. For starters, unlike some experiences I’ve had with gynecologists in my own country, I was not shunned nor was the conversation suddenly uncomfortable for the other physicians. Even better, I was told that in Canada, there are simply no laws regulating abortion; none whatsoever. Instead, it is considered something outside of the legal and legislative domains; it is a matter between a woman and her physician. 

Amazing. This was literally one of the few times I didn’t feel slightly ill at ease when talking about one of the most common gynecologic procedures with my fellow gynecologists. Usually someone looks at me when the subject comes up and says something to the effect of “Oh David, do we have to talk about that?” or “Mind you, I’m ‘pro-choice.’ Really. But I don’t do voluntary interruptions of pregnancy; they’re kind of associated with a certain reputation.“ Or else they just stop talking and politely find an excuse to walk away. These folks never mention the ”a-word.“ Every medical euphemism gets used instead: ”voluntary interruption of pregnancy,“ ”VIP,“ ”elective terminations.“ But never the word ”abortion.“ I think I have a scarlet ”a“ on my forehead, even a decade after stopping clinical practice altogether.

So it was refreshing that up here they wouldn’t interfere with the most private decisions, indeed some of the most difficult decisions, a woman makes in conjunction with her physician. They don’t determine, for example, when a fetus becomes a person. They also don’t legislate moral and religious questions such as when does life begin, questions that lack sufficient medical or scientific answers.

In a week when the Republican candidate can’t recall his previous vote against requiring insurers to pay for birth control (when they already cover Viagra) and then claims to not have thought about the issue at all, and a week when my candidate inexplicably claims that second-trimester abortion can be restricted by states when the indication is ”mental distress,“ it’s refreshing to be in a country, albeit temporarily, that at least recognizes that women have brains and should have control over their bodies.

Barack, just between you and me: my family and I are volunteers for your campaign in the Philadelphia suburbs. I am about as strong an Obama supporter as you’ll ever see. But with all due respect, what were you thinking? States should be able to prohibit second-trimester abortion unless there is a physical disorder that would result from the pregnancy?  I get it…you’re trying to pick up some right-wing voters. But good luck with that; they don’t trust you on abortion and probably never will. Worse: some of us progressives are now questioning your commitment to our issues in light of your FISA vote, your comments on abortion, and your sudden support for faith-based initiatives. Going to the center during the general election is one thing, but going into Rush Limbaugh-ville is scary. 

For starters, please stop using the phrase ”late-term abortion.“ There is no such medical term. A term pregnancy is 37-42 weeks in gestation. So isn’t late-term what we would usually call ”post-term pregnancy,“ namely 42 weeks and above? We don’t do abortions at that point. I don’t think I’ve done one above 20 weeks personally, and know of very few folks who do them even at 28 weeks (and those few generally do them in cases of severe fetal defects incompatible with normal life). Also, for anyone to suggest that a woman wakes up one morning at 24 weeks of pregnancy and decides then that ”What the hell, let’s go have an abortion” is both insulting and ridiculous at the same time. When we use the term “acute situational anxiety of pregnancy” as an indication for abortion, we’re talking about women who, after a complicated and very difficult decision process, clearly indicate that their lives would be abnormally and unduly burdensome due to a pregnancy. We’re not talking about a temporary inconvenience that some women are callously avoiding, much like the way that Corporal Klinger tried to avoid being in the military on M*A*S*H by faking a gender disorder. We’re talking about much more than that. To say that “mental distress” should not justify a second-trimester abortion is not within your purview as a presidential candidate, as an attorney and legislator, and most importantly, as a non-clinician.

I expect McCain to say something ridiculous vis a vis women’s rights, like trying to duck the fact that he voted down legislation to compel insurers to fund contraception. I expected Barack Obama to be much more sensitive to the rights of women when they are faced with an unexpected and undesired pregnancy, much like how I expected Obama to stand up for privacy rights and against the telecommunications companies that colluded with the Bush administration to spy on private communications. I’ll still vote for you and will of course continue to vigorously volunteer for your campaign as much as I can with limited free time. But please don’t disappoint me again. Do I have to visit Canada to encounter a more advanced attitude towards women? Can’t I at least expect this attitude in my own country as part of the change I can believe in? Right now I’m tired, and am not sure what to believe anymore.

don’t let me down, pennsylvania

For the record, I filed my absentee ballot in person last week in Norristown, PA.

Arielle did a nice job with her chalk art: