Sure, Obama’s approval rating (currently 43%) is low. But geez, stop believing the lie that it’s any different than any other President. George W. Bush was at 42% at this same time in his Presidency.
Obama’s lowest score ever was 38% a few weeks ago. Let’s compare that with other Presidents’ lowest scores ever:
Does this man look worried?
Harry Truman (22%)
Dwight Eisenhower (48%)
John F. Kennedy (56%)
Lyndon Johnson (35%)
Richard Nixon (24%)
Gerald Ford (37%)
Jimmy Carter (28%)
Ronald Reagan (35%)
George H.W. Bush (29%)
Bill Clinton (37%)
George W. Bush (25%)
Hmm. Just using these numbers, it looks like Obama is the most popular President since John F. Kennedy. 😉
PS: After writing and posting this, I realized some people may not get the subtle point I was trying to make with my smiley face, which is this: You don’t look at one number to proclaim that a President is the “worst ever” or “most popular.” George W. Bush’s popularity was tremendously high after 9/11 (as would any President’s be), but if you average out his term, it’s very low.
Better is to compare based on similar periods. All Presidents start off strong and drop over time. Also, comparing poll numbers in the present day to those from Truman’s time where there was not 24 hour news coverage, lots of channels, the internet, and Fox News is probably not too enlightening.
Here’s a great link to a page where you can compare the Presidential ratings.
You’ll see lots of headlines like that in November. The Republicans will be taking over the Senate and if you thought this was a do-nothing Congress before, just wait until they’re in charge. They’ll pass bills outlawing abortion, abolishing medicare and Obamacare, allowing for discrimination against gays and women, and otherwise work to reverse many gains we have made in the past ten years.
No, I’m not exaggerating. These are all things they’ve either said they’d do or they’ve tried to do over the past six years but have been unable to because they weren’t in the majority. 
They can be stopped, you know. We Democrats outnumber them. Many of these races are very very close and winnable.
But we have to vote. We have to actually do the absolute minimum a democracy requests of you. And Democrats are terrible at that.
We vote in big numbers in presidential years and we win lots of House and Senate seats. Then in the off years we sit on our butts and watch while every gain we made is rolled back. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Whining and bitching about how things are when you have the ability to change them does not convince anyone. You want change? Do something about it.
Today is Register to Vote Day. So use the right. Register. Then vote.
Seriously, what do you have to do today that is more important?
With their live reunion show done (I’m anxiously awaiting its airing), the members of Monty Python are once again in the news.
Monty Python can be compared to the Beatles — They didn’t invent anything; they just took what had been done before, improved it, and made it their own. (And, like the Beatles, they were never quite as great apart as they were together.)
I remember being astounded at their humor when PBS first started showing their TV shows in the US when I was in High School. My friends would gather at the house on Monty Python night to watch. 
Many of the skits I first learned from their records, long before I ever saw them performed on the TV show (so in my mind, the records are the “official” versions). A group of us went to the afternoon showing of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on opening day, and the usher gave us all free coconuts as we left. (Seriously, that was the promotion.) I went back a few more times to see it in the theater after that, and practically have it memorized now. The main character in my latest novel BLOODSUCKERS is a Python fan, and he quotes the show often (which usually confuses those around him). I have lots of Python books and films. You can say I am a fan. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my cats, Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion.
Anyway, besides being tremendously funny, here’s why they are important:
1. They broke the rules about TV comedy. When John Cleese was given the opportunity to create his own show for BBC, he asked for complete freedom. He was already a bit of a comedy star in Britain and could have easily made this “The John Cleese Show” (like his previous partner Marty Feldman had done — wouldn’t it have been interesting had he not, and had joined Python instead?) but instead he wanted a team effort. Instead of a traditional comedy show where there would be a skit with a punch line and then the guest host would introduce the next skit and then someone would sing a song and so on, the Pythons decided to just do a comedy show, and screw those punch lines. When the premise stopped being funny, just stop the skit and move on to something else. For that matter, they’d often end the show in the middle, run closing titles, and then keep going. Rules? We don’t need rules!
2. They never edited themselves for being smart. “That won’t play in the boonies” was never an issue with the Oxford- and Cambridge-educated Pythons. So what if half the country wouldn’t get their jokes about philosophers? If it made them laugh, it went in. (Which meant, of course, even if it was gross or childish. It works both ways!)
3. They refused to take the easy way out. The easy thing to do if you are writing for a comedy show is to reuse characters. You’d write a great sketch (Say, “The Coneheads”) and then, after it goes over, you rewrite the same sketch with a slight variation and run it again. The audience is happy to see their favorite characters back again and it’s easy work. The Pythons refused to do that. Oh sure, there were minor “characters” (such as the Gumbys and the Pepperpots) but they were rarely used and when used, they were not just repeating the same old skit in a new way. There were also a few that appeared tremendously briefly (Palin as the “It’s” Man, Jones as the nude organist, Gilliam as the knight with a chicken, Cleese as the “And now for something completely different” announcer) but those were minor. This decision to not take the easy way out with repeating skit ideas was a deliberate decision on their part.
4. They took control of their own work. I mean this in a legal sense as much as anything else. Because the BBC assumed this would be just another comedy show that would appear for a few episodes and never be heard from again, they didn’t mind when the Pythons asked for the rights to the show. In fact, when the BBC edited the show to give to American commercial TV, the Pythons sued — and won, establishing new precedents about what right a network has to change an artists’ creation.
5. There is no number 5.
So here’s to the Pythons. Thanks, guys!
And now for something completely different.
It is possible to hate Megan’s Law without supporting child molesters, you know.
Megan’s Law requires those convicted of certain sexual offenses to register where they live. They get their face and name plastered all over the web and people in the neighborhood knows who they are. It also restricts where they can live so that they cannot come into contact with children. It’s like having to wear a big Scarlet Letter for the rest of their lives. 
The problem is that legislators have made the law so expansive and added so many limitations that it can provide a punishment much harsher than the underlying crime.
I have a current case wherein my client, who was a good, upstanding citizen with no criminal record, copped a feel from a 14 year old girl. That is absolutely wrong, and a crime, and he admitted to it and went to face his penalty. He got a few months in jail for this.
But Pennsylvania recently changed its Megan’s Law, and now this crime — a misdemeanor — is included. He finished his jail time and was ready to be released, but lo and behold, Megan’s Law won’t let him go back to the home in New York city where he’s lived for most of his adult life. You see, he has an upstairs tenant and they have a four-year old girl.
So he found a relative to live with. Nope, no good — Megan’s Law says you can’t live within a certain distance of schools or bus stops, and that distance means that there is practically no place in New York where you can live. He’s now searching for someplace outside of the city, which means he has to rent a new place and commute a long distance every day. (It also means he can’t use a computer because, you know, people can use it to look at child pornography. In this day and age, not being able to use a computer is like not being able to watch TV or go to the library.)
This guy is no risk. His evaluation showed that he was not a pedophile. They checked him out completely and there was no child pornography anywhere in his home or on his computer. He did not fit the profile of a child abuser in the slightest.
He copped a feel over the clothes of a mature 14 year old, and now he is on a list that everyone can see but not know what he actually did. For all they know, he raped a child. Megan’s Law doesn’t care or differentiate.
If he had punched her in the face, he would have gotten less jail time.
Once more, I am not against Megan’s Law in principle, but this is like treating a murderer and a jaywalker with the same harsh lifetime penalty.
“What’s the big deal?” some say. “So what if a parent beats their kid? I was beat and I turned out all right.”
Well, no. No, you didn’t. You’re not all right, because you think it’s OK to beat kids. 
There are many things our parents and grandparents did that are not all right. For instance, there used to be no law against raping your wife. She’s your property, right? The fact that your parents thought this was just fine does not make it just fine.
At the same time, there certainly are people who go way too far in the other direction — I’ve had cases where parents were charged with neglect for the most ridiculous of things (“You left your kids alone for ten minutes while you went to the store!”) I am not falling for the slippery slope argument here. But beating your kid? I mean, really beating them so it hurts? No, we should be past those days now.
My parents would whap me with a flyswatter on my butt. That was the extent of their “beatings.” It only hurt psychologically. But even so, that was in the 60s, and things have changed. I don’t want to open the door and make distinctions (“If you hit your kid with a soft flyswatter, that’s OK, but a hard one? No way.”) I think we should be telling parents not to hit their kids at all.
An assault is an assault. It doesn’t become a “not-assault” simply because it was your child. Your children are not your property.
It is wrong to hit your wife; it is wrong to hit your husband; it is wrong to hit your friends; it is wrong to hit strangers; it is wrong to hit your pets; it is wrong to hit anyone.
And it is especially wrong to hit a small child.
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