Somebody Understands

I can't stop thinking about the shooting of the abortion doctor in Wichita.
I'm disgusted by it; haunted that someone could be so hated for doing what is, by law, legal. It doesn't really matter whether one deems it immoral; it is within the law and thus the choice belongs to the woman and the doctor, not to some perceived moral cause.

But we have those who claim to be protectors of "innocents" who find it their moral obligation to assassinate those with whom they disagree. Before this murder, Dr. Tiller had had his clinic bombed and he had been shot. Twice. His family received death threats; he was taken to court on multiple occasions under paper-thin allegations. And he kept practicing, because he believed so strongly in a woman's right to choose. And so a single bullet met him in the foyer of his church, as he served as an usher. How ironic that he'd be killed there. I wonder how many "houses of worship" put on the face of condemnation at this act while secretly singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead". I cannot fathom how those who espouse the worth of unborn “life” can in the same breath advocate the outright murder of a doctor working within the lines of legality. It makes my blood absolutely boil.

The right to choose is not the same as advocating abortion: it is simply asking that a choice be possible, that the decision rest in the hands of the woman and not in the hands of the church or the government.

“We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.” --Anne Lamott

In 1998 Ani DiFranco released the song, "Hello, Birmingham" about the shootings of abortion doctors. I post a video to it now; the words are powerful even as the video is shoddy.

"A bullet came to visit a doctor in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid & his wife
and knocked his glasses right off of his face
and the blood poured off the pulpit
and the blood poured down the picket line
and the hatred was immediate
and the vengeance was divine."

Sunshine Patriot

It was Thomas Paine who famously wrote,
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

After the lofty and somewhat unrealistic ideals of this election and subsequent inauguration it is time to come back down to the scorched earth that is This Country and figure out who she is under all of this. It feels like a reintroduction of sorts.

I recently made a remark about how, in the throws of this major social change, I was once again proud of my country. This is virtually the same statement that got Michelle Obama into so much trouble in the primaries and a statement I made knowing full well I’d be questioned by a few people for it (and rightly so).

I admit it: I am a sunshine Patriot.

Because I believe wholeheartedly that there is a vast chasm between love and pride, a chasm that is often bridged but a canyon that exists nonetheless, and when I don't recognize my country I am not proud of her and that canyon seems endless.

I love my country. By which I mean our relationship is not entirely neat, by which I mean I am indebted to her and our mutual forefathers for this life that I live, by which I mean there is much I would do in her name should she ask me. I love the way our government is set up; how through soaring economic prosperity and terrifying depressions it has survived, through Presidents that span from capable to corrupt to inept it has stayed intact, even through a Civil War that killed 3% of the population it didn’t falter past that core. I love the sweeping landscapes of this country: from red sand mesas in the Southwest to the rugged shore of Maine to the freedom to sit on the levies of the Mississippi and drink hurricanes from that drive-thru daiquiri stand in New Orleans to the smell of the sea and palmettos that is Charleston, SC. I love our great experiment.
Yet as much as my heart is filled with love for this Nation, most of the past twelve years I have not been proud of her and those who represented her. I have not been proud to be an American. I have looked at my passport and wondered aloud just what was my relationship with the country on its cover. I missed her. That Nation stamped in gold did not represent me; she was a stranger. She made cheap symbols of herself be all that there was to hold to, flag pins and all. That Nation in her jingoistic bravado, clandestine power plays and almost cult-like disdain for dissent was not how I knew her. She was too proud of herself, bold in her intent and selfish in her methods. She was acting like a petulant teenager.

So no, I was not proud of her.

And so when a chance came along to see someone in office who could represent me I jumped at it. I needed to see nine kinds of nerd back in the seat of power, needed to believe that the person who was the face of my nation could be the smartest one in the room, needed to know that the whole world was relieved by the outcome, because though they aren’t our country they are our family. Listening to NPR on Tuesday morning I got proud again. Seeing images of the largest gathering in DC history who turned out to simply be in the space where history was made: I was proud. Just the knowledge that my country can change made me proud. My father graduated from a segregated public high school in the shadow of the CIA headquarters and this year he cried in joy as he voted in the first African-American President. I’m proud of my country that we are resilient; that even in these times we prosper. I'm proud to see that she is slowly coming home.

Yes there is a large chasm between pride and love and this week I’m happy to note that when it comes to my country, the bridge is open again.

Calm Before The Storm (o' Change)

I'm sitting on the hours before our country swears in the President we have ordained as the next Lincoln and all I can think about is how I won't have a date for Valentines Day.

Politics are personal, I guess.

In some ways I don't want to see his presidency in actuality. I like the simple idea of hope, rather than the gritty and much less unglamorous world of the day-to-day policy. I'm afraid to get bogged down in the 24-hour news cycle and the politics of Washington and realize he is just like every other politician. I like his speeches; they stay like cologne long after their physical presence has passed. He is an orator of beauty, a man who wears simple and sparse like he invented it, a consummate gentleman who loves his wife and children and isn't shy about being the smartest man in the room. And I eat it up. He could feed me mashed potatoes with a slingshot and if he kept talkin' pretty I'd sit in the corner and take it.
What a relief from the past 8 years of jockdom, bravado, truthiness and preconceived decisions. I almost don't quite know how to respond to a Congress, Senate and President all representing (more or less) my basic civic beliefs. It hasn't been this way since before I was legally allowed to vote.

I want Obama to succeed. Badly I want him to succeed. I want the sacred names of American History to contain him. I want WashingtonJeffersonLincolnRooseveltKennedyObama to be a sentence every American school child knows. I want him to appear on the money my nieces and nephews will carry, replacing that bastard Andrew Jackson on the $20, the new face of hope smiling at you every time you withdrawal from an ATM.

But.

Oh But.

I'm steeling myself against this hope, because Gulf of Tonkin and Watergate and Iran Contra and Lewinsky and Haliburton and Blackwater tell me to do so. Because even the Emancipation Proclamation had ulterior motives than just freeing slaves (read: keeping France out of its support of its industrial partner in the South and drumming up support in the North from seriously pissed voters wondering why their kids were coming home in boxes. It essentially made Slavery the issue). Because we have a government that uses the phrase “collateral damage”. Because loving the current America requires a certain level of forgetting America, like agreeing to date a boyfriend that has time and again let you down.

I want to believe that Obama will change the Presidency but I can't help worrying that the Presidency will change Obama.

We Loved Our Generals

I don't think I can really top the hilarity of the last post of proposed ice cream flavors for The Dumbass in Chief so I won't even try, instead I'll tell a little tale about wars that never seem to die.
I was born and raised in Virgina, a fact I bring up so often my friends from Texas even tell me I'm a little nutty with state pride and that's saying something. For the entire 13 years of my public education in the Old Dominion we had a holiday that fell the third Monday of January called "Lee-Jackson-King Day". It was on all my school calendars and official school documentation and I never thought it was odd and had no idea it was called anything else in other places. I thought the whole nation celebrated Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr on the same day, like they celebrated both Lincoln and Washington on the same day in February.
It wasn't until my freshman year of college in New York that I very publicly found out the truth about other states. Since we didn't have classes that day several of my friends and I stayed together at a big house off campus and then got up early to go cross-country skiing. They were standing in the kitchen, all 12 of them, when I slid into the room in my socks and yelled "HAPPY LEE-JACKSON-KING DAY EVERYBODY!!!" to a suddenly silent room of Yankees.
"What?"they asked.
I repeated my salutation, though noticeably it was less emphatic than the first.
"What is that?" they asked.
I told them about the great holiday for Generals Lee and Jackson and Dr. King.
Their faces were all frozen in a stunned grimace.
"You mean to tell us that you celebrate two slave owning, Confederate Generals and an assassinated Civil Rights leader on the same day?"
"I never thought about it that way...but...yeah. We do. What, is that weird?"

(note: Virginia has been celebrating Lee-Jackson Day since 1904, as they are both rather revered Sons of the Commonwealth. When Reagan made MLK a national holiday in 1983, Virginia decided to tack on the existing holiday to the national one and managed to ignore the irony of it all until 2000, when they finally split the holidays again. Today is Lee-Jackson Day in Virginia; the Friday before MLK Day.)

Yes, Pecan!

So Ben and Jerry's has announced that they are doing a flavor to commerate Obama's Presidency and they, the masters of the flavorful pun, are calling it "YES, PECAN!".
Today my co-worker showed me this list on reddit that asked, "If Obama gets a flavor, what would George W. Bush's be?"
Hilarious.
These are my favorite suggestions:

Shock & Almond
Weapon of Fudge Consumption
Grape Depression
Cluster Fudge
Nut n’ Accomplished
Iraqi Road (and Iraqi Roadside bomb)
Good Riddance you Lousy MotherFucker…swirl
Wire Tapioca
Impeach Cobbler
Lime with Stupid
No Chocolate Left Behind
Mess-o-Pistachio
SNAFUdge
Housing Crunch
Credit Crunch
Housing Bubble Burst
Strategerberry
Chocolate Chip on my Shoulder
Marshmallow Accomplished
Apple De-Cider
George W. Bush Doesn’t Care About Dark Chocolate
WMDelicious
IADelicious
Guantana Mo’ Chocolate
Chocoalition of the Filling

HA! If you can think of any, I'd love to hear 'em.
Six more days!

Woven Friendship Bracelets

Back during the 2004 election the comedianne Jessi Klein did an absolutely HILARIOUS commentary on the presidential debates for CNN.com. Liz and I would watch the debates and constantly refresh the website to see her commentary. Made the debates so much more entertaining.
Example:

"Kerry is reminding us that airplane cargo is not x-rayed and our intelligence needs to be better. But again, he's not addressing the fact that Hilary Duff has a movie in theaters right now, and meanwhile, nothing is being done to protect our recording studios and record stores from her striking us again musically. Does he have any plan at all on this?"

Or my favorite:

"It's so cute that Bush refers to Putin as "Vladimir." That's adorable. They must be totally BFF. I heard that they exchanged little, woven, friendship bracelets at a pizza party that Kerry didn't even know about. Kerry's such a loser."

They are still posted on CNN. I wish she'd done them this year too, love 'em.

Anyway, now she has a blog that is quite good and recently wrote this article about hairy chests that had me cracking up. So...read it. Anytime someone can use the phrase "sexily untamed man fur" in an article it will probably be a worthwhile read.
Happy Weekending!

For the Better

I remember sitting on the floor in the office of Environmental Studies my junior year of college, watching the planes hit and re-hit the towers and thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same after this. This is history at its worst."
Last night I sat on a couch in my friend's living room, wearing blue Mardi Gras beads, drinking some strange concoction out of an orange bendy straw, watching CNN's headline "BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT" pop up on the screen and thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same after this. This is our country's history at its best."
We toasted with cheap champagne in white Dixie Cups.We screamed, we clapped, we hugged, we stared. We got emotional.
We literally danced in the street.
As the senate and house results came in, one young guy said almost to himself, "Democrats in the White House!? And Congress!? I might have health insurance in two years!!!" The very first thing he thought of when confronted with such a change was his health. That was and is his biggest fear: to be hurt and not get care, to have something small happen that would bankrupt him for life. How telling. Politics has an intimacy we gloss over.

Just as I did on 9/12, I woke up today not knowing what the day would look like, only that yesterday I witnessed a watershed moment in our nation's history and that from here on out the rules have changed.
This time, for the better.

Declarations of Desire

It's the Puritans' fault we have a set election day.
Blame them for the 20+ months of campaigning and advertisements, the robocalls, the countless countdowns, the feeling of Election Day being a sort of New Years Day for the civic minded.
Thank you, Puritans.
I live in a state that sponsors early voting and many of my friends have gone out and done so. Good for them, any vote at any time is worthwhile!
I consciously chose to vote today because I believe so strongly in the day itself, the feeling of waiting in line for such a purpose; standing in a queue with fellow citizens all keen to exercise their right to do so. I walked into my polling place with no one in front of me; I got there in a lull and took my ballot to my booth and filled in the little circles that I prayed would mean something. I placed my sticker over my heart and walked out into the fall.

I remember the first time I consciously went into the voting booth with my mother. It was the 1988 election and she was one of the last to vote in the tiny fire station five miles from our house. I remember looking up at the levers, my mom explaining what they do and why we do it. I got chills watching her pull that handle to seal her votes and open our curtain to the rest of the world. She did something important.

We women have only had the right to vote for 88 years. That means we weren't allowed to vote for Teddy Roosevelt or Taft or Wilson; we voted after they had come and gone. In North Carolina the 19th amendment was only officially ratified by the state in 1971. We aren't a state that thought it was a good idea to give women the vote 88 years ago. I am blessed to have that privilege now.

Sarah Vowell, whom I'm currently obsessed with quoting, has a lovely statement in her essay, "Dear Dead Congressmen" talking about suffrage.

"...look up the word suffrage in the dictionary. In mine, after noting the main meanings--the privilege of voting, the "exercise of such a right," the third interpretation of suffrage is this: "A short intercessory prayer." Isn't that beautiful? And true? For what is voting if not a kind of prayer,, and what are prayers if not declarations of hope and desire?"

Ponderosa of the Week

Two best text messages of the week:

"I kinda just want to get drunk, dress up like a fairy and throw glitter on people. But I want to do that pretty much every day." --Margarita, on Halloween plans.

"Yesterday I was called 'city boy' three separate times. I'm beginning to wonder if I smell like an appletini..." --Paul W, who happens to live in rural Wisconsin.

Friday night I lost my voice playing a karaoke game on Nate's PS3. That was really, really fun, especially since I kept winning. I like winning. And Cara and I dueling on "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as a finale was just...wow. Had problems talking Saturday but totally worth it.

This week I told someone they were a hermit and they told me they were going to choose to think I was referring to the type of cookie. New fact for the week: hermit is a type of cookie. Who knew.

Thanks to Nate for this Article on 5 Presidential Elections Dumber than this one. Anytime sarcasm, snarkiness, nerdy and American History combine I call it a good time.

Four weddings already lined up for summer 2009. Wow.

My Old Dominion

Dear Nancy Pfotenhauer;
I am a native Virginian. I was born at home, the middle of five children and didn't live on a paved road until college. My father is a war veteran and my mother has worked as a school teacher. My high school was 800 students; the school district covered half a county and in that half we had a total of three stoplights. My brother, my sister and I would ride our bikes down our dusty little road the five miles to the closest town where we would stop at the general store to buy Cokes. The closest mall was an hour away.
This "All-American" life wasn't near Roanoke, Salem, Danville or Floyd; this was 40 miles from Washington, DC.
Northwest of there, in fact.
That would make it Northern Virginia.
And that was in 1992.
I am 27 years old.

I take great offense to your crass statement that the Northern part of my Commonwealth is any less Virginian than the rest of the state because it may have a more urbanized and diverse feel to parts of it or, as in your definition, it votes in a way you don't like. Virginia is simply a place not easily understood. We are the Mother of Presidents and yet the Capitol of the Confederacy. We have the D-Day Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. We aren't the north but we really aren't the south; we are simply ourselves. Virginia is home to the writers of the Declaration of Independence, The Consititution, The Bill of Rights and the Marshall Plan. We have the oldest legislature in the western hemisphere and we are home to "The Silicon Valley of the East". We've two NASCAR tracks and the headquarters for the Washington Redskins. We are "America": past, present and future.
And Northern Virginia has, in the past ten years, survived a sniper randomly killing us as we go about our days, anthrax attacks and one of the planes from 9/11 departing from our airport only to slam into our Pentagon. We've watched the dot-com bubble grow and burst, we've watched one of our own commit the worst sort of crime at our Commonwealth's Virginia Tech. And we have survived and grown stronger because Virginia stood with us. We might squabble with other regions of our state but that keeps us together and makes us grow, just as it did our forefathers, as it does our families.
We are The Real Virginia. Just as Roanoke, Salem, Danville and Floyd are The Real Virginia.
And your short-sighted dig at us won't do anything to change that.
You went to George Mason, you ought to know better.

Sic Semer Tyrannis!

S. Spooner

A Series of Sentences That Have Nothing To Do With Each Other

Yesterday morning I saw three hot air balloons floating in the cloudless blue above the just-starting-to-turn Smokies and I sighed and was in love.

When Tina Fey's Palin made fun of people playing drinking games with the VP debate I laughed because I was guilty of that.

I leave for London and Paris in three days and I am stressed about travel.

My father and stepmom came to AVL on Thursday night for dinner and didn't meet a single of my friends and it breaks my heart to have had them here without knowing it as I do.

My youngest sister turns 15 on Wednesday and I suddenly feel creaky and unbearably old.

I believe there is a timelessness to "Find the River" by R.E.M., the last cut on "Automatic for the People"

My summer shoe collection is much more extensive and feminine than my winter shoe collection.

I feel like all I do in conversations is tell stories, like all I am is just a bundle of stories...maybe I am and maybe that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

My friend Paul sent me the following text: "Do a search for 'ferret' & 'hat' under google images sometime. I won't tell you how the subject was broached initially." and I burst out laughing without even doing the search (which is very funny) because it was just so bizarre and typical.

I have been needing more time alone lately than normal, and I normally need a lot of alone time.

Why is it that blogger (which is owned by Google) doesn't recognize the word "google" and just started to recognize "blog"?
(mystery solved...capitalize Google and it's all well and good)

Lastly, this is what I look like when I do an impression of Seth, my dear friend (and a 260lb man)...now that I know what I look like when I'm thinking uber fat man, I'm a little creeped out.

There are 435 Members of the House

I believe in nerds.
I believe in the power of nerd-dom, the glory of geeks basking in their knowledge of the arcane.
And one of the most important places for nerds to show their stuff is politics. Politics should not be run by the cheerleader, the jock, the emo band kid. Politics should go to the smartest know-it-all in the room, the one who has the capacity to retain the information crucial to making a decision and the ability to stand behind that decision. Politics should not be a popularity contest, who seems to be the candidate most like your average American because your average American is a moronic jackass who can't tell you where New York City is on a map and doesn't know how many Representatives there are in Congress. Your average American has no business stepping up to bat with the leaders of the world.
Maybe I'm crazy and elitist but the person running my country shouldn't be someone I completely understand. They have to make decisions that effect the entire world; millions of peoples lives are in their hands. I don't really want that person to be someone I can relate to, I want them to be someone so much more intelligent and informed and calm than me that I probably wouldn't know what to talk to them about.
Which is precisely why I thought the VP debate last night was a joke. It was like watching LaBron James play a 10-year old in tether ball. Biden was hitting point after point around Palin's head and she was waiving her arms madly, pretending like she hit it. But she winked and was cute and used phrases like "Joe Six-Pack" and "Doggone it" and ergo she's an average American and she'll get votes. How in the world is she being taken seriously? She sounds like Bobby's mom from "Bobby's World". It's like Lois from "Family Guy" in a battle of wits against the brains of Kit, the Knight Rider car. This is ridiculous.

(I woke up this morning thinking about Sarah Vowell's 2002 essay "The Nerd Voice" from her book The Partly Cloudy Patriot and had to reread it later in the day. The book itself is highly recommended during an election year. Her new release, The Wordy Shipmates comes out on Tuesday)

She Just Slap-Shot the Constitution...

Thanks to everyone who shared this with me...
I love having a "Mocking Sarah Palin" section on le Blog. Fitting.

I'd Like to Phone a Friend...

Once again, SNL...hilarious.

"When cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?"
And, if possible, this whole impression has made me more smitten with Tina Fey. I want to buy her a BFF necklace or at least get her to blog about the debates. Or just have a blog. And be my BFF.

Weekly Ponderosa

Back to the tidbits kiddies I'm beat!

(1) Tina Fey as Sarah Palin was clutch...it really is creepy the similarities. Why do only the comedy shows have the wherewithal to call out the BS? Why are the Daily Show/Colbert Report/SNL the shows that actually go, "Hey, you guys realize this is all spin and absolute crap, right?" No wonder we are getting more cynical. PS I looked up what a flerg was...just go to Urban Dictionary. It fits.



(2) Thank you Drew Brees for absolutely killing my fantasy standings this week. Of course the team I was playing in that league was comprised of many of my players from my other league, so I knew I'd probably win one and lose won, which I did. And in real life Brees was playing my Redskins, so sorta glad he sucked.

(3) Leave for VA on Wednesday right after work for a wedding (surprise! A wedding!) Another bonsai trip with another huge one sitting on the horizon. I love to travel but it truly does exhaust me.

(4) I watched "Snatch" again on Saturday night. I love that movie. It is such a guy film but also is so funny.

(5) Jonathan and I were speaking vaguely about our personal long-term plans last week and it made me realize how few of them I actually have. I made a whole bunch after college but they blew up in my face so fantastically that I haven't made many since then. I need to get over that and start thinking about what I actually want. Cuz I have no idea.

(6) There is a prank war happening at work. And it gets better and better. I love my coworkers and essentially disdain my job, but I guess it is the people that make the experience.

Conventions

So I'm a bit of a presidential political junkie...I followed the primaries and previous campaigns with a feeling akin to watching a slow wreck where I don't want to watch but can't turn my head away from it. These conventions have been an experience, that's for sure. My friend from college, Jonas, works for CSPAN and has been sending email updates from both conventions and I thought I'd share a bit of what she is witnessing. It offers up a different view.

From the Democratic Convention in Denver:

Romney showed up at the Pepsi Center in Denver this week (he was doing analysis on CNN, who by the way, has a skybox bigger than most people's houses), and C-SPAN has video of him wandering aimlessly outside the gates, waiting for someone here to let him in. Priceless.

Also, The Crowd outside of the Daily Show has been about three times larger than the crowd outside of CNN.

Oh, and FOX news put their lights too close to the sprinkler system in their Skybox. FOX was safe, because they moved all of their stuff out of the way of the water, but the Skybox below them, which just happens to belong to PBS, was mysteriously not informed of the water raining down, and it shorted out their video fiber...so they went to black, LIVE on the air.

Just a few highlights from Denver...

And from the Republican Convention in Minneapolis:

Went to a party on Monday night held by what I like to refer to as the "gray area lobby" (i.e. Liquor, Prescription drugs, and tobacco subsidiaries, as opposed to actual tobacco companies). Drinks were, of course, excellent. Four floors of entertainment in downtown Minneapolis, including belly dancing on the third floor, and a cigar porch on the second, complete with former MSNBC personality Tucker Carlson holding court, surrounded by women. Went to grab a lobster puff (to go along with my "we swear they're not cuban" cigar) and ran into Rudy "I used to be someone" Giuliani.

Also, Republican boys are creepy. One shouted at me as he walked past holding his cigar "Try it, you'll like it" in a totally lecherous way.

PS. If you were wondering why all of the "handmade signs" that the crowd is holding up at the Republican Convention look uniform and beautiful, that's because each and every sign that is in the crowd was made by a single RNC intern with a colorful sharpie... I asked her.

On Tuesday, yelled at Joe Lieberman and Andrea Mitchell (NBC) for messing up my groove...

Oh politics...you could make a bitter cynic out of just about anyone.

John McCain is Buggin'...

Oh Huffington Post, I love you for things like this...
P.Diddy's take on the Sarah Palin announcement. I have no idea why he is spinning most of this video, but it's just great. He's crazy. Just go look up Diddy's Video Blog on Youtube and you will thank me. Specifically look up "Bitchassness Alert Level Orange"

Nobody Does it Like Kathy Lee

Any time a political figure looks, sounds and essentially is Kathy Lee Gifford and that fact is pointed out to me....well, good day to you sir. Well Done, Michael Ian Black. Seriously, read it. Funny. Way to go, McCain.

Damn Hippies

HA! I feel somewhat validated by this cartoon, in a "I hated SUVs before it was cool" sort of way.

(Taken from The Sunday Washington Post; I do not own this image.)

Citizenship

Josh and I are having a strongly-worded email discussion on politics and, more specifically, citizenship. He is a Libertarian who is strongly against most social programs and income taxation; I'm a liberal who believes social programs benefit the society as a whole. The emails are just flying back and forth. It's like the Matalin-Carville household sometimes.
The discussion really centers around these two questions:

What do you think are the obligations of citizenship, if they indeed exist?
What is a citizen to give to its country in exchange for structure, peace, safety, etc?

My thinking is this country gave us the opportunity to live somewhere where electricity, heat and water are subsidized and available, where schools are open and free to any kid around, where roads are maintained and safe, crime is dealt with, fires are put out, hospitals are open, political power is checked and rechecked and jobs are plentiful. This country gave us standards to keep our air and our water at levels where they won't slowly kill us (well...maybe they will), parks and museums to see the wonders of creation and beauty of life, standards to keep our investments safe, places to go when there isn't anywhere else. Your country will most likely ask you for nothing more than your vote and some money in return. I don't see this as a moralistic standard but a civic one.

What about you? What do you think are the obligations of citizenship?

Happy Good Friday. Jesus: Thanks for dying today. I mean that.