Sunday, July 26, 2009

Sweet irony


Ben Shapiro probably couldn’t have shown poorer timing with his recent post at CNSNews.com. With this epistle, Shapiro hand-picks several real news stories that descrribe deplorable events or conditions people elsewhere in the world face: A teenage Iranian girl who faces probable gang rape before she is executed, North Korean citizens starving at the draconian hands of their government, for example. And then with the commonest of a priori reasoning, concludes that these news events are evidence of President Obama’s declining influence throughout the world.

Meanwhile, a new Pew Global Attitudes Project was released that shows opinion of the U.S. overseas has improved. In fact, the report concludes that America’s status in the world has “markedly” improved under the Obama administration. This, mind you, would be an example of an a posteriori argument, one that is based on data.

Using Shapiro’s reasoning, one could easily find plenty of examples in the world press to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration’s neo-conservatism led to an increase in America’s stature throughout the world. But then there would be that pesky empirical data that suggests otherwise.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Reassessing


It’s been nearly three months since my last post, and I have decided to attempt a resurrection. Why, might you ask, have I taken this hiatus?

Frankly, I had doubts about the viability of this blog. I wasn’t convinced of its voice. I wasn’t sure I was saying anything that anyone wasn’t already saying. And certainly based on the traffic numbers, so plainly displayed by the counted on the right, I wasn’t convinced anyone was reading anything I wrote.

But marriage is an extraordinarily important issue for the lesbigay community, as are many topics. And what the “opposition” is up to is always important to keep track of.

Take today for example. Early this afternoon, bloggers and tweeters were all buzzing about the Senate passing the Matthew Shepard Act, a new hate crimes bill that would include sexual orientation at the federal level. This blog here is just one of many that reported on this bill today. But why didn’t the Matthew Shepard Foundation report anything on the bill’s alleged passing? Neither did the mainstream press, such as CNN or the Associated Press? The Wicked Gay Blog reported on the MSA passing the Senate, but a commenter noted that the MSA was attached to a spending bill that President Obama had vowed to veto.

That bill included funding for the F-22 fighter; but the Senate removed that item from the final bill. Which means the reason Obama threatened a veto has been removed from the bill.

Still, it seems odd to me that the mainstream press hasn’t picked up on this.