Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

Debi’s sister, Suzy, had her baby this past Thursday. It is the first Morgan family grandchild.  From what we’ve been told the birth came off without a hitch.  We’re still waiting for pictures.

Anyone familiar with the Cragun family of Mt. Green, UT who has also visited the Cragun home is probably familiar with foosball or table soccer.  You’re also probably familiar with the passion most of the Cragun’s had toward the game - many a night was spent hunched over that table, cursing at friends (in a non curse word sort of way).  Well, much to my delight, I found out there is an actual foosball league this morning in reading the New York Times.  The World Championships were in Italy this past weekend.  If only I had the time….

On other fronts - GO VOTE!

We saw Cincinnati Ballet’s production of Giselle yesterday. As is typical with the Cincinnati Ballet, the production was very professional. Giselle holds a special place for Debi and I in that it was the first ballet we ever danced together and we danced it while getting to know each other. This is the first time either of us had seen it performed. We also got a special deal on our tickets and ended up with a box seat. I’ve always wanted a box seat at the ballet;I thought they were so cool. Well, they’re not “sooo” cool - we couldn’t see about 1/8 of the stage and missed some significant elements of the ballet as a result. Oh well, now I know that boxes at the theater aren’t all that!

We also played poker last night at a professor’s house - Debi was the big winner of the night, making $8.00 by the time we called it quits. It’s a good thing, too, ’cause I lost all of my $5.00 buy-in. Thanks to Debi we made $3.00 on the night.

… But I think I’m allowed one political post. Just read this editorial from The New York Times and realized that it sums up in a few short paragraphs everything that is wrong with the Republican domination of our government right now. I’m a political independent, so don’t think I’m saying Democrats are any better (clearly they are part of the problem as well), but this brief synopsis of what is wrong with our current government goes pretty far in expressing my sentiments:

The Difference Two Years Made

On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition — and even the more moderate members of their own party — out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

That was already the situation in 2004, and even then this page endorsed Republicans who had shown a high commitment to ethics reform and a willingness to buck their party on important issues like the environment, civil liberties and women’s rights.

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

In the Senate, the path for this bill was cleared by a handful of Republicans who used their personal prestige and reputation for moderation to paper over the fact that the bill violates the Constitution in fundamental ways. Having acquiesced in the president’s campaign to dilute their own authority, lawmakers used this bill to further Mr. Bush’s goal of stripping the powers of the only remaining independent branch, the judiciary.

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

Kevin Eigelbach, a religion columnist with The Cincinnati Post, wrote an article a couple weeks ago talking about a new law floating around Capital Hill (The Public Expression of Religion Act). In the column he mentioned Edwin Kagin, a local leader in the atheist movement. I liked the column, with one exception - Eigelbach said Kagin was wrong in his beliefs toward deity. Taking a small amount of umbrage, I wrote to Eigelbach and told him that I appreciated the attention to the law but that he shouldn’t be so certain that Kagin is wrong. Well, Eigelbach was kind enough to include quotes from my email in this week’s column, along with my name (death threats are already in the mail I’m sure…). All death threats aside, I am proud to announce that I have officially entered the Invisible Pink Unicorn into the archives of the Cincinnati Post! This should be a proud moment for freethinkers everywhere…