Politics Sunday

Let's start off with the good news - that is, President Obama's memo allowing gay couples visitation rights at hospitals.

This is one of those, "Well, duh," executive actions that should have been taken at least five years ago (I mean, in reality, it should have been done thirty years ago) and to which it will be hard to find any opposition. Even if the country hasn't reached broad agreement on gay marriage, who could be callous enough to declare that gay couples should not be allowed to see each other in a hospital? What possible reason could they find to deny this basic and innocuous right to anyone?

I use the term "innocuous" because I can't find any way in which this right could be misconstrued into infringing on the rights of anyone else. Somehow, you see, our country was hoodwinked into allowing a Defense of Marriage Act to go forward under the false argument that by allowing gays to be married, it would somehow lead to the dissolution of marriages everywhere. Well, guess what, it's 14 years later (14 years!) and marriage has only become less concrete.

Among my generation, marriage is a strange word. Ask ten people what they think of marriage and you will likely get ten radically different answers. I've known people with open marriages, people who were married but don't live together, people who have been separated but not divorced for over a year. One friend of mine says that he won't live with his girlfriend until he gets married. Others (like me) would never even consider marrying someone until they have lived with them for some period of time. The point is, if we're going to allow marriage as a concept to continually evolve in the above ways, but not allow that evolution to include gay and lesbian couples, then it's clear that DOMA is not protective of marriage, but rather prejudiced against homosexuality.

Ok... I strayed from the subject at hand. Sorry.

The main thing that I wanted to say about Obama's memo allowing visitation rights is that it is a good, but safe action. At least it's a step in the right direction, but our President needs to do much more. He could repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell right now if he wanted to, but my guess is that won't happen until after the 2010 election. And it was never part of Obama's platform to rally for gay marriage. I see us moving slowly towards gay rights in everything but name. Our government is taking soft actions towards progress, but still keeping themselves shielded from being labeled, "pro-gay."

So let's end the ruse. Democrats, come out and fight hard for gay rights. You may perceive that it will hurt you in the polls, but truth be told, public opinion (especially for people under 40) is overwhelmingly for gay rights. Other than marriage (which will take only a little more time to bring people around to), people are ready to embrace gay rights in a big way, and my opinion is that if the Democratic party can do it, they will make continued inroads among the younger population.

But for today, let's celebrate the hospital visitation rights. It means the world for people with sick or injured loved ones, and it is a positive step.

Next... Nukes.

This has always been my position on nuclear weapons: They're bad.

But they're also a necessary evil that are not going to ever go completely away. To be perfectly honest, as irresponsibly as our country acts from time to time, I would feel uncomfortable if we had no nuclear weapons as a deterrent. It's inevitable that nukes will fall into the hands of evil madmen at some point, and the threat of mutually assured destruction at least makes them think twice about using one.

Still, there are far too many nukes in the world, which is why President Obama's agreement with Russia to slash nuclear arsenals in half is such a positive step. Our arsenal is going from about 20,000 nuclear weapons to about 10,000. Those numbers should scare you. We have 20,000 nuclear weapons and in all of history, only 2 have been used in combat. What's the point? By the time we used all 20,000 weapons, wouldn't the world have ended about 30 times?

And it seems to me that the concurrent nuclear summit this week was a little bit of a farce, leading to little tangible action other than agreed sanctions against Iran and North Korea (let's see if that works). But at least talk against nuclear arms buildup is again in the national dialogue.

Here's my plan (and feel free to comment): Let's cut the world's nuclear arsenals down to just enough to destroy the world one time. Wouldn't that be more logical? Isn't destroying the world enough of a deterrent to keep from using that last nuke?

Ok, lastly for politics Friday, I get to revert to a 1950's little boy as we talk about Space!

Golly-gee do I love space. It's so cool - so dark and mysterious. I wish I could be an astronaut. I want to go to the moon just like Neil Armstrong back in 1969... 1969? Gosh, that was so long ago. Why haven't we gone back since? Oh, well. George W. Bush says that we will start developing new spacecraft to go back to the moon by 2020 - and by then, maybe I'll be old enough to be an astronaut. I'd better do well in school. I'll learn all about math and science and then I'll go work for NASA and become an spaceman (or at least a well-paid engineer).

Wait, what's that, pa? You say Obama's not going to go back to the moon? But... (sniffle) but... I wanted to land on the moon and be a cool astronaut. Aw... shucks. I guess I'll cut class and smoke some non-filtered cigarettes.

... Yeah... that part didn't work as well as I thought it would. Sorry. I'm rushed as I write this.

I guess these are my real thoughts on the space program: as NASA goes, so goes math and science education. The last time we went to the moon, we invested billions of dollars in engineering and education that paid off exponentially in our country's productivity and technological capability. Kids looked up to NASA, and wanted to emulate astronauts. So they were eager to learn math and science because they felt like one day they too could take part in an amazing project like the Apollo program. Most of them did not, but still ended up getting a good education and good jobs as engineers, researchers, and computer programmers. The Apollo program was kind of a long term economic investment.

Obama's announcement that we will be bypassing the moon and heading straight for Mars is at once inspiring and foolhardy. He's basically asking that we throw a Hail Mary to get to the Red Planet and at the same time gutting all of the space infrastructure we have in place. For the next decade, the country will rely on commercial and foreign spacecraft to get astronauts to the space station while we create the new technologies to blast us into deep space. While I indeed think that going to Mars must be the ultimate goal, don't you think that heading to the moon just a few times would be similarly inspiring?

Think about it, we could shoot footage of the moon in HD and show it on the Discovery Channel right after a marathon of Planet Earth and Life. It would be called, simply, Moon.

In the end, I think Obama's plan to go to Mars is really just a punt to another administration on creating significant space exploration. Real progress towards reaching the planet will require a huge investment, which the current policy does not have.

Well... I feel this was a lot of ranting and overall a little boring. Sorry everyone. My mind is trained on the Reds who have dropped 4 straight. Here's a fun video to make up for it.

But Deidre's tomorrow, so chin up.