Damned if You Do; Damned if You Don’t

Rachel over at Women’s Health News has a post about the girls who supposedly made a “pregnancy pact” to all get pregnant and raise their babies together.  As you’ll recall, this even made it into Time, where everyone could ooo and aah and faint in shock at the slutty, slutty behavior of those naughty teenagers.

Well, as Rachel reports, it turns out to be untrue, made up by the girls’ principal.  And I think that Rachel is spot-on that this is a major case of slut-shaming.

What’s somewhat weird is that, you’d think that, if we’re such a pro-life country, girls who got pregnant and decided to take the pregnancies to term would be celebrated as heroes.  That girls who got pregnant who decided to band together to make it possible for them to keep and raise their children would be hailed as geniuses.

But, no.  We’re all supposed to sit around and titter about their “shocking” naughty behavior.

Grr.

The House Situation

I have a lot of thoughts about the house situation.  Most of them have not quite risen to the surface in any kind of coherent manner.  The thing I keep thinking about is how many of the houses we’ve seen are just god-awful pieces of shit.  Not okay houses in sketchy neighborhoods.  Not even great houses in bad neighborhoods.  Though we’ve seen a few of those, too.

It’s just that I thought that, if we saw, say, 100 houses (Kathy and I think we’ve seen about 60) in my price range, 25-30 would be horrific jokes or houses that would be worth a lot more if you had money to rehab them (so horrific, but maybe not jokes) and say 50-60 would be perfectly fine but just not my thing or clearly not in places I wanted to live or with not quite the size or the amenities I wanted, but houses that you could see working for someone, if not me.  And there would be, I don’t know 20 or so that seemed like “Oh, okay, yeah, I do have to think carefully about this and not let my instant love for it blind me to this or this or this” and from those 20, we would narrow it down to something that would work out.

And I do think that we’ve ended up with, probably, about 20, give or take, that seemed like they might be possible and we put in offers on the two that seemed best from those.  So, this isn’t a post exactly grouching about my situation.

What concerns me is that there weren’t 50 or 60 perfectly fine but just not my thing houses.  There were probably 60 “oh hell no!” houses and 20 “well, okay, maybe” and 10 “Ooo, I don’t know, but I like” and 5 where I thought “This could be it.” (Well, that’s confusing.  I mean to be still speaking allegorically, so I hope y’all see what I mean.)

And it just leads me to continue to wonder–when we talk about there being a lot of affordable housing in Nashville, is that really the case?  Right now, for instance, there are 695 houses on the market under $125,000, which makes it seem as if there’s a lot of housing stock for working class people.  But if sixty percent of those are pits that need major help before you can get into them, are they really real possibilities for folks?  Because, even if you can rehab them–if you have the skills–if you don’t have the money, is that house really feasible?

A General Air of Silliness

We, in our family, believe in a general air of silliness (when we’re not busy being mean, depressed, jackasses, so flip a coin before you come to our family reunions), which is one of my favorite things about living with the Butcher.  We’ll be talking about something, like we were this morning about me possibly being The Left here in Tennessee, and it went on for a good fifteen minutes all the way to work just us trying to top each other with silliness.

It’s times like that I wish we had a pod cast as we’re pretty damn funny.

My favorite, though, are the discussions about the lottery, what’s going to happen when he wins it.  Today he was talking that, if he wins the lottery today he will a.) not be going to work tomorrow and b.) be giving me enough money not to outright buy a house, because he believes that paying a house payment builds character, but to allow me to purchase any house I wanted but still have a $200 a month house payment.

I’m all like “Why can’t you give the recalcitrant brother a house with house payments and just give me one free and clear?  Why do I always have to be the one with the character building experiences?”

And he’s like “You’re the only one of us who’s got a good foundation.”

Which, ha ha, but ouch.

Attention, Man from GM!

Make other 4th of July plans.  No, I mean it.  I don’t care if that makes me bossy.

But We Can Read What You Wrote, Campfield!

So, today Campfield says

The left went nuts! How dare I admit slavery was ever legal! How dare I ever admit that steps were taken to give former slaves rights after the civil war! How could I think the 14th was drafted to give former slaves rights and not every person born in the US?

And I’m looking around, wondering, “Which left is he talking about?” I’m pretty sure I have every lefty Tennessee blog in my Google Reader and I think I’m the only person who wrote about his post yesterday.  Sure, Sean Braisted and Goldni were poking fun at the post over at Tiny Pasture’s, but they were, same as me, making fun of his fear of babies and his inability to read the Constitution (or federal code, if the 14th amendment seemed unclear to him).

So, who are these mysterious lefties who are outraged at him admitting slavery was legal?  I made an aside pointing out that, though Africans were generally brought here legally, there were some smugglers and folks who would kidnap free blacks and sell them into slavery.  That’s a fact, too.

But let’s just pretend that there is some small group of Lefties who know enough to use the internet to faithfully read Campfield, but not enough to show up on the radar of anyone but him, who read his whole strange screed that seemed to be unable to differentiate between parents and children and which advocated undermining the Constitution through pretending that the 14th Amendment is somehow too complicated and mysterious to apply to everyone, and those Lefties didn’t get upset at all that, but somehow focused in solely on his slavery point.

Fine.  I’m willing to pretend.

My point is that Campfield did not say yesterday what he is claiming to have said today.

Yesterday:

The amendment to the constitution that is so confusing was put in place for descendants of slaves so they could become US citizens.

Today:

How could I think the 14th was drafted to give former slaves rights and not every person born in the US?

Those are not the same thing.  Descendants of slaves are different than former slaves.  Just like descendants of illegal immigrants are different  than illegal immigrants.  Parents are different than children.

I, if I am indeed the “Left” who was going nuts over this post, which it appears I might be, was not upset that Campfield noticed that there used to be slavery.  I am, in fact, not at all shocked that he seems to know a little history.  I was shocked that he seemed to think that the words of the 14th Amendment somehow mean something other than what they say.  And I’m entertained to no end to see him now trying to spin things so that he is the deliberately misunderstood victim of some smear campaign by the Left (or me or both, if those are the same thing) instead of the truth, which is him making the Constitution the deliberately misunderstood victim of a smear campaign by him.

And I eagerly await the moment when it dawns on him that he is attempting to do to the children of illegal immigrants exactly what we, as a nation, were afraid would happen to ex-slaves–denying them the right to citizenship, even though there were born here and are legally recognized people.

When will Campfield see that the very legislation he is so proud of trying to get passed is designed deliberately and specifically to deny legal personhood to illegal immigrants and their descendants?  No birth certificates for children born here who’s parents are here illegally?  One step towards stripping those children of their status as legal persons.  Arguing that there is a group of people in the United States, many of whom were born here, who are somehow outside the jurisdiction of the United States?  Another step towards stripping those people of their status as legal persons.  Arguing that the Constitution, which is the law of the land doesn’t apply to some types of people ON THIS LAND?  Yet another step towards stripping those people of their status as legal persons.

Will Campfield ever realize the bitter poetic injustice of his being a servant of the people of Tennessee while at the same time working to deny legal personhood to some of those people?

I doubt it, but you never know.