My Tiny Republican

Mark and I being rabid Democrats, naturally I worry that we’re raising Noah to have a similar values system.  Of course one could argue that at three years old he’s still too young to try to have a political identification but recently I’ve noticed some disturbing behavior patterns that point to the fact that our son is leaning Republican.

1.  All he does is say “No!”  He automatically shoots down my suggestions without offering any alternatives of his own.  Take for example yesterday’s stalemate conversation:
Me: Hey Noah. Today we’re going to go to the city and have lunch with Daddy!
Noah: No! I want to eat lunch here!
Me: But don’t you want to see Daddy?
Noah: No!
Me: Ok, well, you can stay home and eat lunch here. I want to go eat with Daddy.
Noah: No! You stay here! I want lunch here!
Me: Look Noah. You can either stay here with Ate and eat lunch or you can go out with me and have lunch with Daddy.
Noah: NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

2.  He has a complete disregard for science.  Try to explain to a three-year-old why he can’t fly.  He thinks anything with wings or a cape can fly despite being presented with evidence to the contrary — like the existence of flightless birds (hello penguins!) or the laws of flight and motion.  He prefers to cherry-pick his evidence to fit his desired result.

3.  The Bush Doctrine.  Noah is a total fan of the pre-emptive strike.  Now, I have nothing against defending yourself but Noah prefers to strike first.  And he’s definitely got that whole “you’re either with us or against us” mentality going on.  He’s not content just to tell you who he is or isn’t friends with, but he’ll also tell you who you are and aren’t friends with.

4.  His environmental record is pretty dismal.  He is a horrible energy waster — he likes to open the refrigerator door for absolutely no reason (unless the fact that he can reach the handle and open the door by himself counts as a reason) and insists on every light being left on.  He takes long hot baths and complains when I try to shut the water off before his preferred water level (deep enough so he can swim) which annoys the hell out of me since I spent some time growing up during a California drought.  Oh, and he litters.  Although in his defense he does prefer public transportation over taking a taxi everywhere we go so I guess that’s a start.

5.  He doesn’t play by the rules — an obvious homage to Bush and his signing statements.  When we play games Noah likes to tell me what the rules are and then refuses to follow them himself.

Of course there’s still plenty of time for him to change (yes he can!).  I’m hoping that as he outgrows his terrible three’s he’ll move more towards the left.

Hodgepodge

The Academy Awards — HK-style
I finally just got around to watching the Oscars. They’d been showing the red carpet segment on E! for days now — but only the red carpet. Which is frustrating when you endure two hours of Ryan Seacrest only to discover that they’re showing Friends reruns next. Ahhhhh! Bastards. But finally the wonderful people on Starz Movies took pity on me (and my insane desire to watch Angelina Jolie’s reaction while Jennifer Aniston presented) and showed it last night. I’d read the coverage and watched some of the acceptance speeches online already so I wasn’t expecting to be surprised — just mildly entertained for three hours or so. Well, imagine my annoyance on discovering that they had censored out parts of the Oscars. But from what I could tell, they only censored two speeches from the entire night: Dustin Lance Black’s (best original screenplay for Milk) and Sean Penn’s (best actor for Milk). They cut out any references to Harvey Milk’s legacy, growing up openly gay, equal rights and gay marriage. Sad — not only because of the explicit homophobia but also because I thought these were two of the best, most inspiring speeches from the entire night.

Reasons why I’m glad I’m a Democrat
For now, let’s leave out some of the really obvious reasons — GWB and his disastrous legacy of preemptive war, torture, undermining the basic tenets of the Constitution, financial disaster, and running the US basically as a theocracy/ATM for big business for the last eight years — because, really, I was a Democrat long before GWB came along. But every now and then, something happens that reaffirms why I’ve chosen the party that I have. And yesterday it was watching Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. The imagery alone was powerful stuff. Who would’ve imagined a few years ago that we would have a black man and a woman occupying two of the highest positions in government? And to see Obama flanked by Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, as opposed to the old white guy triumvirate of Bush/Cheney/Hastert, really brought that message of diversity and progress home. I’m going to leave the parsing of the speech itself to the experts (and to the poll numbers of course), but positivity and hope aside, there are also those reasons why I’m glad I’m not a Republican. I know that we have our fair share of bone-headed Democrats (Roland Burris and Rod Blagojevich come instantly to mind) but seeing/reading things like this makes me think that the bone-headed Republicans (**cough** RushLimbaughBillOReilly **cough**) out there far outnumber bone-headed Democrats:

• LA Gov. Bobby Jindal is Kenneth the page:
• Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — she of last year’s ‘investigate Congress to find out who is pro-America and who is anti-America’ fame — and her ridiculous willingness to believe any rumor regardless of the actual facts.
• Prevalent racial tone-deafness.  Never mind wannabe RNC chair Chip Saltsman’s distribution of the song “Barack the Magic Negro” in December, the latest example of which is an Orange County mayor emailing out a photo of the White House with the garden replaced by a watermelon patch.  Classy.  And so sad that some people still don’t understand racism when they see it (or distribute it in electronic form).
• CO state senator Dave Schultheis voting against a bill requiring HIV tests for pregnant women on the grounds that the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”  He even clarified his position by stating “What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that.”  Being in favor of babies having AIDS to punish women for promiscuity.  Nice.  I bet he considers himself a good Christian man too.

Amusement park time again!
Mark is in Tokyo again this week. For some reason — quite possibly because of my overdeveloped sense of guilt — I always feel the need to go all-out with Noah whenever Mark’s away. I randomly buy him toys or books, we go on outings, we’ll eat out. This week, it was taking him to Ocean Park. Again. Which means, if anyone’s counting, I’ve taken him to Disneyland and Ocean park within a week. It was actually Noah’s idea. The day before he asked if I could take him to Ocean Park and after thinking about it for a few seconds I thought, “Hmmm…well, I really don’t see why not.” After all, we have season passes to the park and it’s just a 10 minute cab ride away — going to the grocery store takes longer. It would be a cheap trip, I figured, and it would make the boy happy so I told him we would go the next day.

Well, cheap trip my ass. On our last outing there, the boy blew right through their coral reef aquarium — barely stopping through the three levels of fish, sharks, turtles, rays and coral — and he can only tolerate, at most, 10 minutes of the dolphin show so I was determined to skip the scary cable car ride over the mountain and stay in the front part of the park where the kiddie rides were. Unfortunately for me, the front part is also where all the games and vending machines were. We spent half our time on rides and the other half playing games. The first game we played was that one where you get a bunch of balls, toss them in a huge area of cups and try to get the ball to land in one of the colored cups. Noah picked up his first ball, tossed it and had it immediately land in one of the red cups. The girl at the booth rang the bell signifying that someone had won a prize and another family that was there cheered for Noah as well. After that, anytime he threw a ball Noah followed it up by raising both arms in the air and yelling out, “Woo-hooooo!!!” regardless of where the ball landed. By the end of the day, he’d racked up a small collection of stuffed animals which cost me a small fortune to win. But at least he had fun.

Just because…
Noah was so pooped out after six hours at Ocean Park that he fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down in bed. You would never guess from the picture what a little hellion he is when he’s awake:

Absentee Voter

I got my general election ballot in the mail today.  I was worried that it would arrive while I was back in CA and I wouldn’t get to vote, so I was super excited when I checked the mail today to see it waiting for me.  I went upstairs, tore my envelope open, read the instructions really quickly (because I’m anal like that) and immediately filled out these two on the ballot:

For anyone who knows me, or anyone who happened to notice the Obama badge on the front of my blog, my vote for president has got to be pretty obvious.  I know this is going to sound cheesy, but I really did feel a rush of excitement when I filled in that little circle on my ballot.  Not only is Obama the first African-American presidential candidate of a major political party, there is a pretty good chance that he will be the first African-American president in the history of the U.S.  That’s exciting stuff to feel like you’re part of.  And as crappy of a time it is now — what with the current financial meltdown and war in Iraq — I really do feel a sense of hope and optimism when I think of an Obama administration.  That he will fight for the middle and lower classes — not just for rich, corporate donors; that he will appoint Supreme Court justices that are fair in their application of the law; that his will be an open administration — none of the oppressive secrecy that’s been rampant in this current administration; that he will advocate civil rights for everyone — not just for a particular religion; and that he will raise the U.S.’s standing and reputation in the world again — by rejecting torture as an interrogation tactic and pulling our troops out of Iraq — so that I can hold my head high as an expat and not have to qualify the statement “I’m American” with “but I didn’t vote for Bush.”

That second vote is a No on California Prop. 8 — which eliminates marriage for same-sex couples.  From what I’ve read Prop. 8 looks like it’s going to pass by about 4 points right now which is so disheartening to me.  To think of the gains that same-sex couples have made in the area of civil rights recently, for Prop. 8 to pass it would be a major blow to marriage equality for years.  Of course, I’d hate to presume to tell you how to vote on this issue, but from what I read, the Yes on 8 side has put out a lot of misleading commercials.  It’s one thing to win based on the merits of your cause, it’s another thing to win based on lies and scare tactics.  So on that note, I would refer you to the No on 8 website, and more specifically their Fact vs. Fiction page in the hope that you vote based on facts.

Anyway, politicking aside, I plan on doing some more research on the rest of the ballot and later filling it out with Noah in the hopes of getting him started early on the political process.  He may not know what on earth I’m doing, but it can’t hurt to try.

Politics. As Usual.

Most people who know me know that I’m a big politics nerd. I majored in it at UC Berkeley and afterward worked for a campaign consulting company in San Francisco (which is where I met Mark). Although neither Mark nor I have worked in politics for a very long time now (our exit coincided with the beginning of Bush’s presidency), it’s still a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. That said, because I still get very passionate about it, it also means that I can become overly heated, overly emotional, less rational and very stubborn when discussing politics. In fact, I’ve found that I’m a much happier person when I stay away from political news and blogs.

With this upcoming election I’m finding it harder and harder to stay away and I find myself drawn to my old habits…obsessively checking Daily Kos for updates, reading campaign news on MSNBC’s political blog, hitting the Politics section of major newspapers and anxiously anticipating the first presidential debate on Sept. 26.

In actuality, I’m trying hard not to be so rabidly political because, frankly, I’m pretty sure it scares the children.  I tend to discuss my outrages only with Mark because I know he can handle the eye-rolling.  However, when I read articles like this one:

EPA won’t limit rocket fuel in U.S. drinking water – USA Today

it reminds me again why I’m so fervently Democratic and how I shouldn’t be afraid to voice that or my desire for a better standard of living in the US — a country that I love deeply despite not currently living in.

Anyway, perhaps this will be the only political post I ever write.  Or perhaps it’s only the first of many.  Either way, I honestly hope that everyone takes the time to educate themselves on the issues at hand in this upcoming election, identify what’s really important to them and hopefully vote for the candidate they feel best represents that.  Happy election season everyone!

Some important upcoming dates…
Friday, Sept. 26 — First presidential debate
Thursday, Oct. 2 — Vice-presidential debate
Tuesday, Oct. 7 — Second presidential debate
Wednesday, Oct. 15 — Third presidential debate
Tuesday, Nov. 4 – Election Day
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 — Inauguration Day