.ethnically.ambiguous.

Box checking

2006-05-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Reading through blogs this morning I ran across this post at Blackprof.com

A Staten Island couple are challenging the system of racial categorization in their school district because it doesn't allow their daughter to check boxes for both black and white.

The poster's opinion on the issue can be boiled down to this:

it does not seem such an imposition to request that individuals treat the race question as an inquiry into the political meaning of how they are racially perceived, rather than an inquiry into the full range of a person’s racial identity.

I'm normally a lurker on other blogs, but I decided to comment. I ended up writing a big long response so I figured I'd post it here.
...

I personally have always hated filling out forms that don't allow me to check all that apply. Race in America is more complicated than everyone checking one box or another. My experience as a Black woman is going to be vastly different from someone who doesn't consider themselves to be racially mixed.

The argument that people should just check whichever race they're perceived as if they are mixed would almost make sense if biracial people were always perceived as one race or another. But for me and my siblings that is really not that case. Living in California, I have been mistake for Latina about as often as I've been correctly identified as Black. I've been mistaken for being North African/ Middle Eastern as well as Pacific Islander. I've also been mistaken for just being Southern European (like, say, Italian). I get asked if I'm Jewish on occasion. My little brother is sometimes mistaken for Asian Indian. The only people who manage to identify me properly are other Black people and that's not even always true.

If I'm supposed to check one box according to how I'm perceived, I've got no idea what I should be checking. In my experience, I never know how someone is identifying me unless they say something about it so the fact that I can't get a cab on a Saturday night could be for any reason including the cabbie just assuming that white woman don't tip. When someone asks me for directions in Spanish, it could be because they think I'm Latina so there's a good chance I'll speak Spanish or it could just because I happen to look really friendly. I don't know.

Checking all boxes that apply still doesn't speak to my experience fully (obviously) but at least it's an actual reflection of who I am. I don't think putting the work into getting an accurate reflection of people's racial makeup is a silly waste of money. If you want to serve a community, should you know what that community actually is?

...

This whole idea that it's simply an inconvenience to be forced to leave off part of your racial identify when filling out forms has always stuck me as a kind of weird privilege - people who aren't biracial never have to think about how to identify themselves and can't imagine why it would be an issue for someone else. What's the big deal about being confronted with the fact that people think your family doesn't exist? It's just a scantron, right?

It also smacks of being profoundly poorly thought out - if there were 2 and only 2 races in the world and one of them was always the default (like Black is if you're talking about Black/White biracial people.) I mean, I've got a default, right? Sure, I have to pretend half my family doesn't exist a couple times a year, but at least I know which half of my family isn't suppose to exist. But the reality is that in the US there are more than 2 racial categories. What are you going to tell someone who is Japanese and Mexican to check? What's the default there? Do you just check "other"? What good does that so anyone if the point of filling the damn form out is to make sure that disparities based on race get noticed?

And while I'm talking about being wrong raced - about three hours after posting the above comment, a very nice man from Sri Lanka wanted to know if I was maybe Indian or from Sri Lanka because we were the same skin color. Put that in your box and smoke it.

Student protests

2006-03-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

I'm so proud.

Nearly 40,000 students from across Southern California staged walkouts to protest proposed immigration legislation Monday, blocking traffic on four freeways and leaving educators concerned about how much longer the issue will disrupt schools.

*Sniff*

From the UK Guardian:

Even if a compromise emerges from the Senate, it will be hard to reconcile it with the House of Representatives' own hardline bill, which would turn all illegal immigrants, and anyone who offers them help, into felons. The house bill would also erect a 700-mile fence along the border with Mexico. It is that bill, known as HR 4437, which has provoked the usually quiescent Latino immigrant population into taking to the streets.

See now, that's messed up. You can debate all you want about whether people "should" be in the country illegally and what illegal immigration means for working conditions and what it means for border communities. But if the goal is to keep people from being in the US illegally, this bill will not do much good.

If people come into the country and are here long enough to want to become citizens, this bill would make it nearly impossible to do so. Being caught would mean never having a chance to become a citizen because or even a legal resident because you now have a felony on your record. If the goal is to stop people from being in the US illegally where's the incentive to go through the process? There's only increased danger for people.

And then there's the "anyone who offers them help" part. Does that mean that all those organizations that serve the immigrant community would be under legal threat? Those same organizations that help people get their papers would be under attack for helping people without papers.

Being from CA I often fall into the trap of equating "immigrant" with "mexican immigrant" which is not something that anyone should be assuming here. People manage to make it to the US from all over the world. There have been cases in the last 10 years of people being found in freight containers coming in from China. There are lots of cases of human trafficking happening from all over such that women are transported to the US illegally and then forced into sex work. There's a lot going on and making blanket assumption about immigration isn't ok. I'm not really well informed enough to comment beyond that but I can see cases where this could lead to people who are in horrible conditions from ever being able to get out of them.

That ain't right, y'all. Ain't right at all.

The war on atheism....or terrorism...or something...

2006-03-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

What are they going to do? Pray the natural disasters and/or terrorists away?

Or are they defending the nation from the threat of atheism?

What a useless waste of money. What a disturbing breech of the separation of church and state. What a naked ploy to make his "base" happy now that he's facing such low approval ratings.

Katrina: There are no words...

2006-03-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage - along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press - show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

View the video.

Really. I don't have anything to say. The Katrina disaster is horrifying. And you know what? It's not surprising. Who could have guessed that Bush would be well aware of an impending emergency and not lift a finger to do anything about it? Who could have guessed that he'd let all those people die because they weren't rich enough to own cars and pay for hotels?

Oh that's right. Everyone.

I cannot believe anyone voted for this guy. I cannot believe his approval rating is as high 34%. Who are those 34%, anyway? People with magical cars that never break and a tree that grows money hidden in their hall closet?

What does it take to get this man out of office?

Pre-Enlightment thinking

2006-02-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

I just saw this story in the LA Times about some dude who's been conducting seminars teaching kids to make a huge scene in school anytime a teach mentions, well, anything involving science apparently.

This story actually really freaked me out. I mean, I grew up knowing several of kids who didn't believe in evolution. I suspect that many more kids than the examples that I can think of didn't believe in it either but I just never talked to them about it. In any case, I don't think it's really dawned on me how profoundly different their concept of how things work has got to be.

Then I read this.

Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

Geology? Seriously? They don't believe in geology? Really? The study of rocks a little too controversial? The theory of tectonic plates and the meeting thereof being the leading causing earthquakes a little too edgy? Erosion is just a little to secular? I see. Well ok then. They can have fun skipping the geological surveys that would clue them in on where or not your house is going to fall down in an earthquake.

I admit to being a bit California centered here. Living in a state with major fault lines makes certain kinds of science a hard reality. I cannot believe people want to fundamentally disagree with the whole area of study. Obviously the answers for everything haven't been figured out and old theories are changed here and there based on new evidence. It is what keep scientists in business. But the outright rejection of the basics? Yeah, I can't get behind that.

Yikes.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

This really got me too. Evolution doesn't exists because no one alive today was around for the creation of the earth? Cute.

Here's the thing about this line of reasoning. No one alive today was around for the signing of the US constitution either. How do we even know it happened? How do we know it happened when everyone says it did? How do we know that some dude 100 years ago didn't just make the whole thing up and fool everyone into believing that the document was actually much older?

First off we have a written record. Which is all well and good to go on. And if we find new artifacts we can tell where they fit historically because we have scientific tools that can help us identify when those record are from. We can look at different kinds of paper and ink and tell that they're from a specific time period. We can look at how those materials have aged to get an idea of how old they are. If it turns out that something we thought was real is a forgery or some kind of new unexpected evidence is found, the historiography changes. It's what keeps historians in business.

Making the "you weren't there" argument can easily be used all over the place, including on the very document that these people are basing their whole lives on. I mean, no one was there when God handed out copies of the Bible...

Huh. Funny, torturing people for information doesn't work

2005-12-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

Imagine that.

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

Now, I realize that there was a ticking mushroom cloud time bomb or something in Iraq so there was no choice but to torture a confession out of this guy.

Oh. Excuse me. There weren't any bombs. And that confession that you based your war on was totally false. And it's your own damn fault that this dude lied to you because people will say anything to get you to stop hurting them. Which everyone with any sense already knows. And the testimony of one guy who just got the crap beat out of him is no kind of evidence that killing thousands of people is a great idea.

Cute.

I realize that I'm being way too naive in thinking that this story will change someone's mind about torturing people. I don't think that anyone who thinks it's ok to do it actually cares about getting good intelligence out of suspects. I think they just like the idea of beating people up. But at the very least this is evidence that it doesn't work. People pretending that there's any good reason to do it need a new line.

Every time I read about these stories, I'm reminded of one of the Chinese history classes I took in college. It was about 20th century China and we spent a long, long time on the Cultural Revolution. I bring this up because after reading one or two first hand accounts of the Cultural Revolution, I simply cannot imagine any way to justify the treatment of detainees. I cannot stop seeing these people as human beings, deserving of basic decency. And I cannot imagine any way to pretend that any information we could possibly get out of people who've been tortured is any good.

During the Cultural Revolution, thousands of people who sent to work camps across China, separated form their friends and family, hudres of miles away from their homes. Untold numbers of other people were sent to prisons, starved and tortured until they confessed to crimes against the state. It didn't matter whether or not they had done anything. They'd made the mistake of living too comfortably or questioning some part of the government's policy. Most of these people didn't do anything. They ended up making up stories about their brothers and sisters in the hopes of getting out of prison.

Obviously the same situation isn't going on in America. Obviously we aren't moving entire communities around, conducting town meetings where we force people to be "re-educated" by making them accuse themselves of incorrect political philosophies. But we are grabbing people from their homes and isolating them in prisons for years. We are beating confessions out of people. We are demanding that they accuse their friends, family, and neighbors of any number of crimes regardless of what any of those people have done. And we are justifying it based on the fact that someone somewhere disagrees with us. These are the things that I'm reminded of. These are the universals and if we condemn how people were treated then, we should condemn how they're being treated now.

Maybe people think that somehow they themselves would stand up to being starved and beaten. Maybe they think that there's no way they'd confess to something they didn't so no matter how many of their bones had been broken. A few people can. But most can't.

And it doesn't matter. Torture is not justified.

What is it that makes America different that all these other countries that we claim to be so much better than? If it's not how we actually treat human beings, what is it? Is it just capitalism? Really? Is that it? Because if America can't define it's own values against something other than a economic system we're sunk. We might as well just give up now. We've got nothing to believe in.

Listening to the Supreme Court Confirmation hearings

2005-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

In Summary:
.....
Democrats: We have a long view of what it means to be on the Supreme Court. We also have some concerns about your views on the larger themes that the court has been ruling on.

Republicans: We don't think that we should even bother having hearings. We also don't think you should have your current views on any issues stated publicly before we give you a lifetime job. You're record has been looked over by people on the internets, that should be good enough.
.....

Each and every person who's talked so far has fallen exactly in these two camps. The Democratic Senators have laid out which issues that they're most concerned about and have promised to ask questions about them. The Republican Senators have basically given Roberts big wet kisses and argued that asking the man questions would just be rude.

I don't actually think that anyone really thinks there's a chance that Roberts won't be confirmed. I think that looking at this with that in mind, it's interesting the Republicans are refusing to allow that public questions about Roberts actual legal opinions might be a nice idea. There's really no harm in asking the man questions, he's going to be confirmed regardless. They just don't want to the public to know what it is they're voting for out of principle.

Prop 22 and Gender Neutral Marriage

2005-09-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

I previously posted about the Gender Neutral Marriage bill that the California legislator passed today. It was a close vote, and I'm extremely happy that it passed.

I was somewhat confused about this bill so I decided to do a little bit of quick research as to what the bill would do and how it worked in relation to Prop 22.

In 2000, same sex marriage was only beginning to become a national issue. No states had yet voted for same sex marriage and the courts had not yet struck down laws defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. California, always being a forward trendsetter, voted to only recognize heterosexual marriages form other states. I had thought that Prop 22 defined marriage within the state as well, but as the proponents of the current bill point out, the proposition only modified that part of California family law covering out of state marriages. Prop 22 was basically just a Fuck You to states considering changing their marriage laws. It didn't change marriage law for marriages within the state at all. It couldn't have, really. Same sex marriages weren't legal here to begin with. Prop 22 was ahead of it's time and entirely unnecessary. It was a waste of tax payer money to even have a vote on it.

So what happens if the Governator signs this bill into law? From what I understand marriages preformed in the state will be recognized, but marriages preformed outside of the state will not. This makes for a strange situation, obviously. I suppose it will eventually be worked out in the courts. Or maybe with another proposition. Who knows.

Schwarzenegger is caught in rough spot right now. During the SF gay marriage hoo-ha, he said that he'd be happy to support same sex marriages if the laws were changed. He's ducked on this issue over and over again, passing the buck to the courts in the hope that he could continue to have support from moderate and slightly left-leaning voters while not pissing off the national Republican leadership.

Schwarzenegger is trying to get around taking a stand on this by sighting Prop 22 as a reason to veto the bill. And while I can see his point (esp. since he can't get anything through the legislator and desperately needs to have propositions respected in order to get anything done at all, ever), I don't think that anyone can possibly think hat he's vetoing out of some kind of democratic principle. It's bullshit.

He continues to be noncommittal about the issue, only saying that people shouldn't be discriminated against. Which is pretty much how he talks about everything. No details, no real policy. He just puts out feel good non-statements which allow almost everyone to think that he agrees with them. It's really rather brilliant.

Easier than actually voting

2005-09-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

The California Assembly just passed a bill allowing Gays to marry. It has already passed in the state senate. This is the first pro-gay marriage bill to pass through any state without a court order.

The Governator says he'll veto it.

Please call him and tell him to change his mind. You need only to call his number, then press some buttons in order to show your support.

916-445-2841
Press 2
Press 1
Press 1

That's it. If it's busy, just keep calling. I waited a few minutes, called again and was able to get through. It was easier to vote on this than it was to call EDD.

It's important to get the word out that in spite of Prop 22, people in this state actually support equal rights for all citizens.

Rehnquist, dead at 80.

2005-09-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

The L.A. Times has a story about Rehnquist's long career

I'm terrified of who Bush will nominate. Because Rehnquist was a staunch conservative, Bush will no doubt take this opportunity to find the most right wing person practicing law in the country to make Chief Justice. You know, for balance.

My only hope is that Bush's public support is so very low at this point that he'll have a hard time getting backing for a real nut job of a nominee. It's a small hope, really. His low polling numbers don't seem to hurt the man ever, which is beyond bizarre to me. But then again, Reagan is often talked up as a hugely popular and effective president in spite of the fact that his polling numbers dropped below Clinton's. I tend to think that conservatives often view the world as if everyone else is them (meaning with the same economic and racial background, with the same opportunities for education and work, and the same family and community support) so obviously if they like someone everyone else on Earth must think they're great as well.

Anyway, I'm really not looking forward to whichever activist judge Bush will manage to get appointed to the court. It's not going to be pretty.

NOLA

2005-09-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so, so angry and sad about what's going on in NOLA. I've been reading reports about the hurricane and aftermath for days now and each one makes me feel more terribly helpless.

Why angry?

When I first heard about NOLA getting evacuated, I assumed that people were being, you know, actually evacuated. Not just told to leave on their own dime with their own transportation. I assumed that there was a plan in place. The city's on the coast and is practically underwater as it is. It only makes sense that state and Federal agencies would have a plan to get people out in the event of a disaster like this.

They did not. Nothing was done to help the sick and the poor get out of harms way before the storm hit. Nothing was done to help them get out afterwards, when it was clear that more damage was coming. People have just been left without food an water for days. Even when they've arrived in designated shelters, they were still left to starve. Apparently, once you got into the Super Dome, you weren't allowed to leave. Meaning that you had to choose between sticking it out in a place with no food, water, or toilets but the promise of help or leaving to get food.

Federal help is only just coming, days too late. And much too little. You'd expect FEMA to be there right away, but as it turns out FEMA is being dismantled in favor of anti-terrorist funding How that makes sense to anyone anywhere, I do not know. I mean, we know that there will be major natural disasters - from floods to earthquakes, to hurricanes - every few years. We also know that when major disasters strike it's beyond the scope of local and state governments to deal with it. The federal government is the only thing big enough to have the resources (in terms of money, man power, and actual knowledge) to deal with a crisis like this. So why are we pouring money into areas where we don't know how big a threat there really is? De-funding FEMA has caused a greater disaster on many levels than 9/11. How could it be put on such a low priority?

I had wanted to post something about how the extreme loss of life and property should be laid at Bush's feet. About how his policies of dismantling FEMA, and sending the resources that should have been here to help off to Iraq instead had so severely damaged the relief effort that it is impossible not to make this a political issue. But then I saw this:

FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need.

Yeah. That's right. The director of FEMA is claiming that they didn't know how bad the conditions were until yesterday. Meaning that they hadn't bothered to flip on a TV. Maybe the folks at CNN was a little offended that they weren't being watched. I mean, when CNN starts throwing down an angry bitch-slap, you know you're in trouble.

This is unbelievable. The level of willful incompetence is unthinkable. I'm speechless. So instead of trying to put together something coherent instead of just disjointed ranting, I'll just recommend that you read this interview with the mayor of New Orleans:

I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're out-manned in just about every respect.

John Roberts

2005-07-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Ok. So now that the nomination has been made articles about Robert's recent rulings are coming in.

Slate has an article about his Guantanamo decision.

The opinion says that Congress authorized the president to set up whatever military tribunal he deems appropriate when it authorized him to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to fight terrorism in response to 9/11. While the president has claimed the authority only to try foreign suspects before the tribunals, there's nothing in the Hamdan opinion that stops him from extending their reach to any other suspected terrorist, American citizens included.

And just as a bonus, the ruling totally ignored international law. I continue to not understand why anyone thinks it's ok to behave outside of international law. Global anarchy seems like a horrible idea. International laws are what protect Americans aboard. What's keeping, say, France, from putting every American in their borders in jail randomly? Nothing, according to Roberts. But then again, there's nothing keeping American from just grabbing me off the street and throwing me in jail for being ethnically ambiguous either. At least he's consistent.

We all knew something like this was coming...

2005-07-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

But I'm still rather blown away by Bush's choice

NARAL has some information about Roberts up already.

From NARAL:

As Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts argued in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court (gratuitously, since the case did not implicate Roe v. Wade) that Â[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled.... [T]he CourtÂs conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion... finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.Â

He's also on the record supporting Operation Rescue's efforts to block women from reproductive healthcare. Sweet.

From Reuters:

Roberts was part of the three-judge panel that handed the U.S. government a critical victory last Friday, ruling that the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed.

Wow. Well. Wow.

What exactly can you ask, then?

2005-07-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

I’m reading this article in the NYT about “appropriate” questions one can ask of Supreme Court nominees.

"All questions are legitimate," Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. "What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage? They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views. But that's not going to work this time."

But Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee as well, said the push for such detailed positions was highly objectionable and suggested that Democrats might be forming a strategy of trying to derail a nomination on the ground of withholding information.

I don’t really understand what the problem is here. What’s the point of going through a confirmation process if you aren’t allowed to ask the candidate about their views? It’s not out of line to ask what a judges views on pervious rulings are. The Supreme Court has the ability to reverse pervious rulings and modify existing legal standards. Wouldn’t it be responsible to ask someone how they view current law before letting them run around tinkering with it?

Beyond the push for late summer hearings, Republicans say they will try to limit the access senators would have to F.B.I. documents on the potential nominee - the unpredictable wild card in any judicial confirmation because even the White House cannot fully anticipate the outcome of the background investigation when the president makes his choice. They cite as precedent an agreement reached in 1992 between the first Bush White House and a Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

So you can’t ask a nominee about any personal information, and you can’t ask them about how they perceive their job if confirmed. What can you ask them about?

Obviously Bush expects a rubber stamp on whomever he wants.

But as I’ve said before it’s totally ridiculous to expect someone to get a lifetime appointment for a job if they aren’t going to answer any questions about how they plan to spend that time. Past rulings are entirely appropriate to ask about. Republicans seem to be acting like Democrats would just be making up theoretical cases or pulling up things from pending cases. Which isn’t the same thing at all. Maybe they just live in a world where there is no linear time and past, present, and future are all one or something.

That would explain a few things, actually.

NYT link via Pandagon

O'Connor

2005-07-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

I haven’t posted here in a long, long time. But news today of Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement from the Supreme Court is freaking me out.

By now I’m sure anyone reading this has heard about her leaving and understands the implications. There had been rumors floating around about her departure for a while now but I’m still surprised to hear it. O’Connor has been an important influence on this very divided court. As a swing voter, you couldn’t always predict what side of an issue she’s support. I can’t say that I’ve been a huge fan of hers, seeing as she’s pretty right-moderate but I have respect for her views and her willingness to be open to all sides of an issue. She’s also been a supporter of women’s reproductive rights throughout her tenure on the court and I’m horrified by the idea that she’ll be replaced with an anti-choice conservative justice.

AP has an article about possible nominees. NPR was floating Alberto “I heart Torture” Gonzalez as a possible name as well. This idea has me very scared.

In any case, Bush is likely to try nominating someone far right. He’s never been one to behave responsibly or think ahead of time about how best to avoid a huge fight. Bush has a history of promoting hacks and political suck-ups to seats of power. There’s no reason to believe that the pattern will not continue. I figure we can probably look forward to another Thomas-like candidate, which is unfortunate. I would feel much better if I could at least think that he would nominate someone truly intelligent to the bench. But that’s unlikely. With the Congress stacked full of Republicans it’s going to take a united effort from Democrats to slow down the process. And it will take some heretofore-undisplayed courage from moderate Republicans to block any nomination. As long as Bush nominates someone who hasn’t been cheating on his wife, Bush will get to whine about his candidates being “well qualified” and about how Democrats are just being mean.

I don’t know what exactly we can do about any of this. A real push against whomever Bush nominates will be important. As will sending letters beforehand saying that you’d support blocking a super rightist nominee.

Kos has a list of things you can do. And NARAL is starting an email campaign. Click away.

Lebanon and Syria

2005-03-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

I’ve been hearing about the anti-Syrian protests and the Hezbollah counter protests in Lebanon for a while, but I haven’t taken the time to look into what exactly is happening over there.

I did a quick look at the news sites that I always read and I found some good information. If any of the, I don’t know, three people reading this has better information please to comment.

Slate has a short article on Syria’s involvement in Lebanon. According to this article, Syria has had a long history of involvement in Lebanese politics. Syria had been invited into Lebanon to end civil war on a few occasions, the last time being in the late 1980s. Lebanon had been in a civil war for 10 years by the time Syria began their occupation. Lebanon was also in a war Israel at the time.

The Lebanese civil war began to draw to a close with the Taif Agreement in 1989, which provided for a joint government of Christians and Muslims. The agreement also provided for a "special relationship" between Syria and Lebanon and enumerated their "joint fraternal interests." The Syrians pledged a partial withdrawal from Lebanon in two years, but the possibility of an extended occupation was not ruled out. The Syrian military ended the violence in 1990.

So Syria is in Lebanon on invitation by the Lebanese government. It is also supplying Hezbollah with arms, which it is using to fight a protracted guerrilla war with Israel along Lebanon’s southern border.

From a Salon article about the counter protest:

Hezbollah, the country's only armed militia and one of its most potent political forces, broke a lengthy silence and declared its full support for Syria. The group's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, called for Lebanese to "express their gratitude" to Syria by attending a demonstration Tuesday against U.N. Resolution 1559, which calls for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon and for Hezbollah to disarm. While expressing support for the Lebanese opposition's goals, and framing the demonstrations not as pro-Syrian but pro-Lebanese, he accused the opposition of serving American and Israeli interests by tacitly accepting the resolution.

I think that the Israeli occupation is a major sticking point here. Syria has been called on by the UN to leave Lebanon and Bush is demanding that Syria leave before the Lebanese elections in May. Hezbollah isn’t against a withdrawal of Syrian troops, exactly. They just seem to want more of a say as to when and how it is done.

Lebanon was created to be a Christian state. In the past it has had decent relations with Israel. I’m guessing that the US is assuming that it will go back to being friendly with Israel if Syria gives up it’s influence there. I personally think that it’s a stupid assumption to make considering that it was the friendly Christian government that first asked for Syria to come into Lebanon in the first place. And fifteen years of warfare tends to make a difference in how the population will view you.

Again, Salon:

The Israeli invasion of 1982, masterminded by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, was intended to eliminate the PLO in Lebanon. "Operation Peace in Galilee" succeeded in driving the PLO fighters out and into exile in Tunis, but it killed thousands of Lebanese and made bitter enemies of the Shiites, who had -- because of their resentment of the Palestinians, who had formed a virtual state within a state -- originally welcomed the Israelis. Israel formed a de facto alliance with the Lebanese Phalange, a Christian militia, and welcomed the post-invasion election of the pro-Israel Christian Bashir Gemayel. But Gemayel was assassinated by a Syrian agent, wrecking Israel's long-term political plan. Israeli troops and Israel's proxy Lebanese army continued to occupy south Lebanon, which Israel dubbed "Free Lebanon."
Fresh from its victory in driving out the Americans -- who were ostensibly a neutral peacekeeping force but were increasingly regarded as pro-Christian and pro-Israel -- Hezbollah turned its sights on freeing this territory, waging a 15-year guerrilla war against the Israeli forces while developing a political and humanitarian wing that increased its popularity even outside the Shiite areas. By 2000, the Israelis had suffered enough casualties that it unilaterally quit Lebanon, a victory that put forth Hezbollah as the only Arab army ever to defeat the Israelis.

In any case, it looks like there’s a pretty strong anti-Syrian movement beginning to form in Lebanon, but an established pro-Syrian party there is countering it. It’s totally unclear to me what a full Syria withdrawal of troops would do.

It is pretty clear to me, however, that Bush’s assertion that “All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections for those elections to be free and fair,” is pretty absurd considering that the US is currently occupying two countries that just held elections and has been crowing about how free and fair they were. We weren’t even invited into those countries. Syria seems to have a much stronger claim on staying in Lebanon than we have on staying in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Anyway, this whole post is just me trying to figure out what’s going on over there. I really have no idea so if I’m being totally ignorant, please let me know.

Reuters article about the Hezbollah protests They sound pretty anti-American. Bush didn’t mention them at all in his demands that Syria leave. Ignoring the voice of the people much?

The kids love the censorship.

2005-01-31T13:44:00.000-08:00

I was rather horrified to read this recent poll that finds that when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees.

Horrified, but not really all that surprised. Considering the political climate that they’ve grown up in (high school student’s clear, adolescent memories only stretch a few years back so most of them will only have fuzzy memories of political discourse before Bush was made President the first time) it makes complete sense that students would have notions that their freedoms are limited, especially in regard to free speech.

The post-September 11 hushing of dissent isn’t the only factor that is in play here, however. I was in high school ten years ago and I remember very clearly the kind of extreme restrictions that were placed on the first amendment rights of students. Strict dress codes, limiting of the kinds of topics that were covered in classes, etcetera, etcetera. I remember being told to stop wearing a t-shirt of mine because it would offend the Christian students (never mind that they went around wearing “Jesus Saves” shirts all the time).

Students are subjected to all kinds of restrictions and indignities. By upholding random drug testing and banning specific political clothing, the Supreme Court itself has fostered a climate of limited rights in public schools.

The end of that MSNBC article suggests that schools focus more on teach students about the First Amendment. A nice idea, but I think it’s against administrator’s own interests to do so. If students knew that they were supposed to have certain rights as an American citizen, they’d probably start thinking that they should have those rights in school. That would cause all kinds of headaches. Besides which, right now schools are being expected to emphasize some subjects over others. No Child Left Behind doesn’t leave much room for schools to work on their civics programs. Schools have to prioritize; humanities courses like civics and history aren’t high on the list these days.

Protecting the weak, my ass

2005-01-24T13:16:00.000-08:00

"You know, we come from many, different backgrounds, but what unites us is our understanding that the essence of civilization is this: The strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said.

I really get mad when I see Bush touting his supposed "culture of life". This is a man who whole-heartedly approves of the death penalty. Apparently he's just fine with killing people once they're born.

This is what's always driven me crazy about anti-choice Republicans. They tend to support the death penalty. They support bombings of innocent civilian populations. They're against providing basic medical care to people who can't pay for it. They're against providing basic living standards for the poor. I'm talking food, water, housing, and electricity here. Conservatives are very much against "welfare", meaning that they're against guaranteeing that everyone has these things.

But they want to force women to have children that they don't want because every life is precious? How is it morally correct to force women to have children and then never make any kind of provisions for their care?

It seems to me that in Bush's world the value of life decreases with every year that a person is alive. They're more valuable when they haven't been born.

It also drives me crazy that these anti-choice conservatives are also the ones who want to tie welfare benefits to whether or not the parent of a child has a job. They don't seem to care that they're hurting children by not providing a family with enough money to have housing and food, just so long as they punish adults that they think are lazy. The value of a child is directly tied to the perceived value of a parent, which seems to run counter to Bush's assertion that we have to "protect the weak".

Bush's stand on abortion doesn't have a lot of logical consistency. He'd be banning fertility clinics, which destroy many more fertilized embryos than abortions every year, and working to end the death penalty instead of signing death warrants and mocking people begging for his mercy if he cared about human life as much as he says he does. It just smacks of self-righteousness and a desire to punish adults for having sex.

Meet the Press

2005-01-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

My eyes were rolling so hard as I watched Bill Thomas on Meet The Press yesterday that I was worried that they were going to fall out of my head.

Some choice quotes from the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee:

We shouldn't be attacking his [the President's] proposal even before it comes out. We should be complimenting him on discussing it.

...

I hope we didn't have our friends on the other side of the aisle attacking the president's proposal once it's introduced, because once it's introduced, it becomes part of the legislative process.

You're kidding me with this, right? The President's proposal shouldn't be discussed and refuted before it's introduced to Congress but once it has been introduced...it shouldn't be discussed or refuted? What?

And another one:

Now, there are people who are saying, "Gee, this is great. We can get them into a box and maybe we can win some seats in the next election over this issue." This ought not to be about the next election.

This is pretty choice as well. Yes. Democrats shouldn't be concerned with what voters want, nor should they think to run on issues introduced by the President in an election. What Thomas thinks people should run on, I'm not sure.

I'm going to stop there. Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo
has already picked apart Thomas's more absurd suggestions for changing the Social Security system, including his suggestion that benefits could be doled out according to race and sex. If this is the best out-of-the-box thinking that Republicans can come up with, I think that Democrats will have no trouble making the case against anything Bush proposes.

Scandals, scandals everywhere....

2005-01-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Salon has an article today listing 34 Bush scandals from his first four years in office.

Not a one of these gained traction when they broke, so I have little hope for any of them now. It makes me a little sad that the Dems didn't rehash any of this during the election. The items regarding the Bush admin's bungling of terrorist issues post -9/11 are especially good.

Looking at all this, one wonders if maybe Bush is just too riddled with lies and scandal to have a single one stick.

Or maybe people just expect this kind of behavior from those in power? The media does work pretty hard to paint every politician as being corrupt. Maybe no one cares because it's part of the job? That's a pretty sad considering that Americans tend to have that "city on a hill" view of our country. We're an example of democracy and freedom to everyone.

Maybe that's it. Maybe all these scandals don't stick because they're actually scandals. Clinton's were mostly lies and distortions and you could tell there was little to nothing to most of the accusations. Maybe real things are just too much for people to believe. They'd rather have lies. I think the public in general wants to believe that the people we elect are actually upstanding citizens. Ridiculous sex "scandals" can stick because that's a kind of immorality that everyone can understand and tsk-tsk about. The kinds of things that the Bush administration is involved is immoral on a whole different level and we don't want to admit what kind of people we have running this country. Especially now that we've set ourselves up as some kind of martyrs to freedom. Everyone hates us because we're democratic and free. We couldn't possibly have the same corruption problems that other countries have. We're better than that. Right?

Right.

More on that torture memo.

2005-01-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

Slate has a summary of Gonzales's non-answers.

Slate also had an article about the memo being discussed last June.

"A defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his custody or physical control." It's not enough, in other words, for severe pain or suffering to accidentally result from torture. According to this tortured (sorry!) interpretation, only a real professional (picture the Marquis de Sade of Gitmo) can in fact be guilty of torture since only such an expert would have the requisite knowledge of torture's effects, such as the causal relationship between sleep deprivation and post-traumatic stress disorder. Amateur practitioners, such as the reserve military police soldiers who currently staff Gitmo, wouldn't likely be guilty under this statutory interpretation, because they're not expert enough on how to punish the mind and body.

The memo that our soon-to-be Attorney General (that's the nation's ultimate prosecuted, the person who will decided what laws to enforce, how to enforce them, who to go after for those of you taking notes at home.) signed off on gives board leeway for anyone questioning suspects.

Gonzales ok'd the torture of suspects just so long as you maintain plausible deniability. And he ok'd the idea that the President can just forgive the criminal acts of anyone who doesn't maintain such deniability.

Do we really want this sort of person running the country? How does it make America look? We can't manage to keep checks and balances in our own system. How do we have any place to tell other countries how to behave?

I don't want to get all "they're going to come for you, too!" here. But as terrorism laws become more and more broadly applied I don't see how people can go on not worrying about our civil liberties. If the state's police powers don't even stop a torture, where do they stop? Where's the end to what the government is allowed to do?

Media Matters article about the memo and Conservative coverage.

The memo.

Alberto "I don't mind torture" Gonzales

2005-01-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

NY Times transcript of Gonzales hearing.

SEN. LEAHY: Well, let me then ask you: If you're going to be attorney general, and I'll accept what you said, then let's put on the hat, if you're going to be confirmed as attorney general. The Bybee memo concludes that a president has authority as commander in chief to override domestic and international law as prohibiting torture and can immunize from prosecution anyone -- anyone -- who commits torture under his act; whether legal or not, he can immunize them.

Now, as attorney general, would you believe the president has the authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?

MR. GONZALES: First of all, sir, the president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances. And so you're asking me to answer a hypothetical that is never going to occur. This president has said we're not going to engage in torture under any circumstances, and therefore, that portion of the opinion was unnecessary and was the reason that we asked that that portion be withdrawn.

He never answered the question.

I find this interesting.

The Senators asking him questions are trying to get an idea of what kind of Attorney General he'll be. They want to know what sorts of cases he'll prosecute and what his viewpoint on the limits of police powers he thinks he'll have. And he refused to give them information. Throughout the potion of testimony I heard yesterday morning, Gonzales avoided questioning by claiming that anything he says now might affect cases he prosecutes later. So he's basically saying that he refuses to express an onion now because he'll have to have an opinion later.

These hearings are a job interview. When I'm interviewed for a job, I don't refuse to demonstrate my competence for the job because I'll have to use those skills when I'm hired. Who does that?

Tsunamis relief and missed opportunities

2005-01-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

President Bush is calling on Americans to make
privte donations to humanitarian charities. I applaud any effort to get people to help with relief efforts, but a drive from Bush is a bit absurd.

Bush missed a huge opportunity to restore some of the goodwill that America has lost since he became president. Here's a disaster of unthinkable magnitude. We, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, have the resources to launch a huge relief effort thereby showing that we really do care about what happens outside out borders. But instead, Bush decided that the best course of action is to drag his feet on pledging relief aid. He had to be shamed into pledging money and other resources into doing anything.

I hate having to look at disaster relief in political terms. Any country with enough resources to donate to the relief efforts should do so without thought to how it'll play in the papers. But clearly political implications are the only things that Bush and his crew seem care about. And they aren't even very good at playing politics. How did it not occur to Bush that nothing gets done properly without the goodwill of others? He's clearly learned very little about how to manage America's reputation abroad.

In any case, for once I agree with the President. We should all try to give some money to the disaster relief efforts.

Oxfam
Unicef
Doctors Without Borders

EDIT

Ok. I also would like to link to a story being passed around about the "Christian" Right's response to the disaster. It seems that their response is well, nothing.

So while these organizations tout how moral they are, they aren't really all that concerned for their fellow man. Maybe they caught wind on the gays sending help and are too disgusted with the unclean making donations to do anything.

Compassionate Conservatism means letting them eat cake.....

Bush's poll numbers

2004-12-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Salon has an article about Bush's extremely low approval ratings. Apparently he's polling at 50% approval and 40% disapproval.

That's astounding. Nearly half the country disapproves of this guy.

Now, I know half the country disliked Bush enough to vote against him. But half the country voted against him last time around too and he was polling better then.

What I want to know is how it is anyone gets to pretend Bush has a mandate. How can anyone really claim that he won the election because any of his ideas are popular? I think that it's much more true to say that about half the country strongly disagrees with and distrusts Bush, and the other half is sorta lukewarm on him. He ran an incredibly negative campaign against John Kerry. You can be sure that a good percentage of the bush vote was an Anti-Kerry vote. And these numbers reflect that.

I was reading a little post over at 2071.org this morning that got me thinking. In spite of the fact that the press is trying to gloss over Bush's unpopularity, Democrats can use it to their advantage. Bush's rating numbers have always been somewhat low. They were soft during his campaign and they're worse now. It's time for Democrats to start labeling everything that Republicans want as his plan. They need to start tarring each and every one of his proposals with his past mistakes.
His track record has been terrible. Democrats need to bring it up over and over again. Remind people why the election was close to begin with.

Bush is not a popular President. Let's use that against his party. They can't be helped by his approval ratings and he will not be up for election in four years. Republicans have begun making noise already. Let's give them reason to think twice about falling inline with the President.

Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.

2004-12-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

Salon has a pretty good story about right-wingers and they're strange paranoia about Non-Christians.

Pundits and "hard news" shows alike on FNC (as well as in the print media and on talk radio, for that matter) are constantly running false or misleading stories about how all these "leftists" are trying to ban the Bible or otherwise discriminate against Christians in some way. Whether it's the phony Delcaration of Independence ban or claiming that the Golden Globes not nominating the Passion of the Christ was some kind of Anti-Christian conspiracy, they're all over whatever tiny stories they can find that involve Christians being "oppressed" in some way.

These stories are mostly blow way out of proportion to the point of being flat out lies. Take, for example, the Declaration "scandal". A teacher was using part of the Declaration of Independence to preach to his students about how there's no separation of church and state and how we should all be Christians, dang it. The principal made him stop with the preaching and somehow that became banning the Declaration of Independence. Like students were being forced to rip copies of it out of their textbooks or something. It's ridiculous.

Christmas is an especially difficult time of year to try to watch Fox News. I end up wanting to punch Sean Hannity's smug little face during their Merry Christmas promos. Instead I'll just mention that the folks over on Fox are not being rebels by saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" on the TV. They just aren't. Flip the channel over to CNBC and watch their promos. *Gasp* They say "Merry Christmas" too! Gosh, and CNBC isn't even making a huge deal about being oppressed or anything! Amazing.

This year O'Reilly has been babbling about Jesus as a "philosopher" rather than a religious figure. Which to me seems like a lot of Leftist babble. If a Non-Christian TV personality were to refer to Jesus as a "philosopher", Christian groups all over the country would be up in arms about how their faith isn't being respected. He's attempting to take the religious element out of Christmas in arguing that people of other faiths shouldn't be annoyed by overwhelming displays of Christianity. But at the same time he's arguing about how "secularists" are trying to take "Christ out of Christmas". It doesn't really make any sense.

This same argument is made about displaying the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and schools. It's also used to argue about how "Under God" should be in pledge. They try to diminish the religious nature of whatever symbol they're trying to put up by calling it a "tradition" or a "founding document" while also accusing the other side of being religious oppressors. It's a very confusing argument when you get right down to it. I'm not sure how it all holds together. Maybe they just haven't thought about it for more than a few seconds.

Personally, I would think that Fox would be applauding stores changing their greetings from "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays". If you don't exclude any religious minorities, you can sell stuff to more people. It's capitalism at work. What's their problem?

Social Security

2004-12-14T13:56:00.000-08:00

The Daily Howler has been doing an excellent series on Social Security. I recommend reading at least the first item in the series.

The facts involved here aren’t hugely complex. Social Security isn’t going “bankrupt,” and it can be made solvent through the next century with modest infusions of new revenue.

Like most people, I've assumed that Social Security would not be able to pay out benefits to people entering the workforce now. It was one of the many reason people my age got to hate baby boomers. I guess we'll need to look for a new reason to hate baby boomers because they aren’t going to bankrupt Social Security.

Bush's plan to privatize Social Security looks like a stupider idea all the time. First of all, the concept of private accounts runs counter to the basic idea of Social Security. Social Security should be there for a) people in the lower earning brackets of the workforce either can't afford or don't have access to 401ks or b) as a "just in case" backup for those of us with 401ks who invest in companies like Enron.

I’ll admit that the market overall is fairly stable these days. Banks don't fold and leave you penniless. Shantytowns aren't popping up in the outskirts of our cities because of dips in the stock market. It's not the 1920s anymore. However, that doesn't mean that individual investments are always stable and profitable. Anyone with a memory that goes back more than 4 years knows this.

So why would the public want to trust 100% of the retirement on the stock market? I think the simple answer is that they don't. Even now most people put money into their 401ks and don't bother to adjust their portfolios much. Most people are not interested in doing the research and making the tweaks they need to invest properly .

I just don't think that private accounts are a popular idea. But people have been misinformed about what the state of social security is and what needs to be done to fix it. This is a huge problem.

I think that if everyone knew that you'd only need to make small adjustments to the tax rate or to the limits on payroll taxes, very few people outside of Wall Street would be even be considering the idea of private social security accounts.

The amount I pay into Social Security is indeed "my money" and I don't trust it to stock traders.

Moderate Taliban Amnesty?

2004-12-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

I heard this NPR story today about Karzai working out a deal to allow "moderate" Taliban members amnesty.

I think it's probably an excellent idea to let rank and file Taliban back in. I doubt most of the people in hiding really want to continue fights; they just don't want to get captured by the US. And for good reason considering how people are being treated in Guantanamo.

What grabbed me about the story, though, was this qualifier that Taliban "terrorists" wouldn't be allowed back in. The reporter said that there were probably 150 or so people that the US would want to detain. That would be all well and good, but it didn't sound like we had a list put together or anything.

This article also seems to echo that uncertainty.

Even some members of Karzai's government argue there should be an independent reconciliation panel, rather than the handful of mainly Pashtun security officials who currently determine who goes free. "I am not opposed to the plan in principle, but the way this is being done is worrisome," says a senior Afghan official who quietly disagrees with the current program. "Why do you think the Northern Alliance is refusing to disarm?"

I'm wondering how they'll determine who gets to go home and who doesn't. I'd also like to know how long they think it'll take to screen cases. We already know that several of the prisoners in Guantanamo (or in Iraq for that matter) weren't guilty of much of anything. If I were in hiding, I'd be wary of coming out, personally.

It seems like while we're saying we'll let people go, there's really no guarantee that that will happen.

I'm such a pessimist. I'm sure this isn't really a trap to get people to come home only to hold them for years. I'm just wary of our ability to filter people. I'm hoping Karzai has a better system than we do. He's at least got some experience on the ground and an actual reason for wanting to get people back into the country.

Rumsfeld’s incompetence would be funny if it weren’t, you know, real.

2004-12-09T13:17:00.000-08:00

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing. I think it's a very constructive exchange," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him on Thursday in India, another stop on his regional tour.

Maybe the conditions of the military’s equipment is one of those Unknown Unknowns that Rumsfeld keeps babbling about.

I’d like to know why it is that Bush only seems to back his least competent appointments. If you’re Secretary of Defense in war time, shouldn’t you know what the conditions of your troops are like on the ground? I only get my information from reading the papers and listening to NPR and yet I knew that families are actually sending their sons and daughters armor because the military isn’t providing it for them. Why doesn’t Rumsfeld?

I’d also like to know where all that money we’ve been spending in Iraq is going, if not to properly equip our troops.

peaceniks

2004-12-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

Atrios has a nice little post about the marginalizing of anti-war types.

I have to say that I very much agree with him. I have to admit to being a knee-jerk peacenik myself. I’m not always opposed to using our military to solve problems, I just think that most of the time we’re just going to end up making the situation worse by using force.

I think that we have an obligation to send in troops to other countries where there are cases of ethnic cleansing or genocide. I also think that we should send in troops as peacekeepers when we’re asked to do so. Recent examples of places were I think that military force is entirely appropriate would be in Sudan and Liberia.

I have to admit to having conflicted feeling about the Afghan war. On one hand, I was happy to see the Taliban removed. They had imposed a terrible theocracy on the country and were doing real harm to the people there. On the other hand, I didn’t actually believe that the Bush administration was capable of putting together a real, independent government there.

I just don’t think that hard line Conservatives are up for the task. Conservatives in this country have mildly anarchist leanings and I don’t think that their ideology translates well in countries were you need a strong central government to keep things together. Small government just doesn’t work in places were there’s a long history of ethnic infighting and totalitarian reign. Before 9/11 Bush didn’t even seem to believe that nation building was possible. You need to really believe in government and the concept of nation building before you can even begin to set up a democracy. Otherwise, what lofty ideals are you even going in there with?

Besides that, the Neocons in charge right now aren’t really good at modifying their ideas to fit in situations that differ from those in America. The American system is stable here because everyone respects it and believes they have a stake in it. You can’t just throw something together without regard to history and culture and expect it to work. Just because you think you have a good idea doesn’t mean anyone else agrees with you. The Neocon attitude of “my way or the highway” just doesn’t work in nation building situations.

So yeah, those were my reservations about the Afghan invasion. I have had the same reservations about the Iraq war as well. When you decided that you support a military effort, you’re not just supporting the cause as an abstract. You’re supporting the people who will be making all the decisions as well. If I had confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to be successful diplomats, my opinion about the recent wars might be different.

I think my concerns are valid and I think it’s really too bad that no alternatives to war have ever been discussed. Marginalizing antiwar people does a huge disservice to the country. There should be more creativity in our foreign policy, dang it.

Let's Review

2004-11-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

US 'inflated' foreign fighters' numbers

Ok. Now, I know that this report is courtesy of Al-Jazerra, but I've posted about similar faulty claims before.

Our government has been trying to claim that all the problems in Iraq are due to non-Iraqis coming in and causing problems. This makes us look better because we can claim that we aren't killing the very people we're pretending to liberate. We're just going after the people who would otherwise be planting bombs in malls here in the States.

But instead of killing terrorists, we're killing Iraqis. "Bombing them into the stone age" isn't a figure of speech here. We have bombed people's homes. We've bombed hospitals. We've bombed mosques. We're destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, city-by-city, town-by-town.

Yeah. Maybe we are building new schools and hospitals somewhere in the country, but does that really make the fact that we completely destroyed what was already there ok?

So let's look at the situation...

Iraq is not full of WMDs, nor is it the "new front on the war on terror." There are very few actual terrorists in Iraq. What Iraq is full of are newly homeless and jobless people who are now openly hostile to not just the American military, but all Americans regardless of what they're doing in the country.

Foreign aid organizations like Doctors without Boarders are having to leave the country because the risk to their lives is now outweighing the aid they can give. People who have live in the country for years are being kidnapped and beheaded.

And for what? What have we accomplished in that country, besides destroying entire cities?

What have we done besides killing hundreds of thousands of people?

Yeah, we got Saddam Hussein. But we've just replaced him with another thug who couldn't even hold onto power if we weren't destroying cities for him.

Looking forward....

I keep hearing babble on the talking head shows and in news reports about how horrible Iran is. As has been pointed out by others, this babble is way to similar to the pattern that debate about Iraq followed. I can only hope that enough people will get wise to this shit and stop the invasion before it starts.

Tradition

2004-11-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

It seems like every time I flip on the TV, I hear some conservative pundit or other talking about how we should deny basic human rights to different groups of people because, well, it's tradition. And you know, the whole world would crumble if we stepped away form tradition. This argument is pretty much the entire basis for social conservatism. Change is bad. That's pretty much it.

Now, I'm all for tradition. Really, I am. Traditions large and small, public and personal are wonderful. I love ceremony, both secular and religious. Ceremony and tradition are what bound communities together. I love Fourth of July picnics and Thanksgiving dinners. I'm personally not a member of any religion, but I love the trappings of churches. I'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, even if I haven't said it since I was ten.

What I'm not for is defending discrimination with tradition. Anti-feminist types argue that women should be home making babies instead of being able to work and support themselves because those gender roles are traditional. Gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married because it would mess with people's idea of traditional marriage. Conservatives stand on tradition to justify any number of biases. This needs to stop.

If a group of people start pointing out that certain traditions are discriminatory and outdated, it should be the responsibility of each of us to examine that tradition. You should be able to justify keeping a disputed institution around with more than "that's just how it's always been". Because guess what? Nothing about modern society is "how it's always been". Most of our ideas haven't been around much longer than a few hundred years. As a matter of fact, most of what we think of as "traditional" (like, say, the "one nation under god" bit in the Pledge) are things that haven't even been around for a hundred years.

I could go into any number of traditions that have changed dramatically over time, but right now there are just a few issues the social conservatives have their panties in a wade over. So let's look at the case of marriage rights in this post. I could go into gender roles and feminism, but I think I'll save that one for later.

Marriage hasn't always been what it is today. In fact, it's changed dramatically in just the span of one generation. When my parents were born, they would have been thrown in jail if they had dared to get married. And millions of people in this country thought that was just dandy. Anti- miscegenation laws were traditional, after all. You couldn't have people going around marrying between races; it would destroy all the structures of society! How would we be able to properly pigeonhole the kids from interracial marriages? It would be chaos! Almost forty years after Loving vs. Virginia most of these arguments have been tossed aside and I think most people can agree that people of all races should be allowed to intermarry legally. (I'm not going to get into the lingering discrimination that interracial couples face, as that's a whole other post. Suffice to say, even if people are personally against interracial marriage, most wouldn't argue that we should be amending the Constitution to stop it from happening.)

In the middle ages, couples often shacked up rather than have church marriages. Unless they owned property that needed to be passed down, there wasn't any need to have their relationships recognized by the state. The need to marry was tied to the need for clear inheritance lines. The ultra-wealthy often had their marriages arranged because marriage served political purposes. That's not so true today. Even the ultra-wealthy, for whom inheritance and bloodlines are still highly important, are going around shaking up and marrying totally unacceptable people. Anti-equal marriage rights advocates themselves will argue that marriage is about more than passing on property. I think most people agree that marriage is still about many legal rights and privileges (like immigration rights, tax status, and yes, property rights) as well as being about the

So we can see that marriage has changed dramatically both in terms of who can get married and what marriage means to society.

Standing on tradition is great, but you need to be able to trace the traditions back, examine how they've changed over time and then justify to me why they should continue. Every disputed "tradition" needs to be examined in this way, not just marriage. Cultures stagnant and die if they can't adapt to change.

One of the great things about Americans is our ability to pick up on change and adapt to it. So take note. If you want to justify something as being traditional, you need to be able to back it up with more than that. Otherwise you just sound like a bigoted jerk with no sense of your own place in history. Our culture didn't just spring from the head of God one day. It's changed over time. You need a better reason than being lazy to convince me that change should be beaten back with a stick.

Please excuse this incoherent ranting....

2004-11-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

As the country swings itself as far right as possible, I have the sinking feeling that this might be the time to bail.

Eleven states have voted to ban gay marriage. People are not just standing on old traditions of discrimination. No, they've thought about it and decided that gay people are icky and shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else. I wonder if the hate crimes rates will start to rise now that everyone is in agreement that the gays just aren't people.

Republicans have taken the Senate in a greater majority than before. This is in addition to electing Bush. People in this country aren't just saying that they'd like to keep Bush the person around. They're giving a big thumbs up to all of his policies. They're saying, "My goodness, these deficits, shrinking civil liberties, and ever expanding wars are so great! Let's vote Bush back into office and make sure he has no checks or balances whatsoever! That sounds like fun!"

I don't know what to do with this.

I'm especially upset that I know this will just make the Democrats swing further right. They aren't going to take this as a sign that they should work on being a real opposition party, with a clear and distinctly different message. They're going to figure that running mildly center-left didn't work so they should be center-right instead.

Kerry was a weak candidate with little to no popular support from people outside of his party. He was among the least interesting candidates that ran in the primaries. And the Democrats chose him because they thought he was the most "electable" person running. Except that he so lacked charisma it was laughable. The man couldn't explain his way out of a paper bag. Democrats figured there was no way to beat Bush a year ago so they sent up a sacrificial lamb instead of really running someone. It's ridiculous.

Last time they blamed Nader. But even without Nader, they couldn't win. Who are they going to blame this time?

Dear Tim Russert,

2004-10-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

Please stop referring to those missing explosives as 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'. Those explosives were inspected and deemed legal by the IAEA before the war. They were not WMDs. The term "weapons of mass destruction" refers to specific kinds of weapons. These explosives do not fall in that category. Anyone who is as informed as you knows this.

You know the explosives are not WMDs. You also know that by referring to these explosives as "WMDs" you are confusing the issue. There is a large segment of the population who believe that Hussein has WMDs and that we actually found them. People like you are the reason that so many people are not just uninformed, but misinformed. People watch your show in order to get reliable news and here you are being a complete hack, spinning non-facts and giving false impressions. Do some homework before you get on national television pretending to be an informed newsman.

I'd also like to not that Rudolph Giuliani and Bob Kerrey are not equal spokesmen for their respective parties. Bob Kerrey is a much more independent, non-talking points spokesmen. He is willing to talk about his disagreements with John Kerry. Giuliani is a puppet for the Bush people. It's not a fair comparison and gives the impression that Kerry doesn't even have support in his own party while Bush is beloved by all. It's not true in the least. There are many Republicans who are unhappy with Bush and his policies. You don't get that impression from watching your show. This is not balance.

If you're going to conduct your show in this ridiculous manner the least you could do is move it to Fox news.

Love,

.nicole.

Get off the internet

2004-10-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

I'll meet you in the streets.

Ok. So that site is only marginally useful, but I like the code pink folks so I'm linking to it.

If there is a massive amount of voting irregularities this time around, it will be incredibly important to get out in the streets and protest. One of the factors that let Bush get away with stealing Florida is this idea that "the country needed a winner". The argument went that people didn't care who actually won so long as someone was declared the winner and we could all go back to watching Britney Spears videos in peace. The fact that there weren't widespread protests demanding a fair recount validated this idiotic notion.

No one wants that to happen again.

I really hope I can still travel if Bush wins.

2004-10-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

Salon has an article about the distinction people in other countries tend to make between Bush and his policies and actual Americans.

I've been saying for a while that one of my worries about Bush winning is that the dislike people in other countries have for Bush will begin to be extended to Americans in general.

I know that Bush supporters couldn't care less about what people in other countries think. I know that saying "Look, if you go visit another country now, people will be nice to you. But that won't last long if Bush gets elected." will just make them want to vote for him more.

But I care. I don't agree with Bush on anything. I don't want him representing me to others. I'd like to continue to be recived warmly when I leave the country. But if Bush is in office for another four years, what reason would anyone outside this country have to think fondly of Americans? We've basically said, "Go fuck yourself" to our allies. Why shouldn't they say it back?

Halliburton - selling illegal warheads since 1994.

2004-10-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

A Canadian acquitted last year of illegally stockpiling warheads at his counter terrorism training school in Roswell is suing Halliburton Co.

They sold warheads to a private citizen. What the hell? Our Vice President ran a company that is willing to sell warheads to any fool with enough money to buy. How is this acceptable?

Didn't we invade Iraq on the reasoning that Hussein would be willing to sell this sort of thing to private citizens? Not that he had. That he was willing to. Meanwhile Halliburton is happily making illegal arms deals with private citizens.

We don't know who else they've armed. They could be doing deals with Osama Bin Laden right now. This is proof that they've both got the weapons and are willing to sell them to anyone. That's more proof than we had when we invaded Iraq. We should be invading their corporate headquarters.

Mary Cheney

2004-10-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

During the debate on Wednesday John Kerry used Mary Cheney as an example of a queer person when he was talking about whether or not people choose to be gay. I thought it was a little weird for him to use her as an example, personally. But that was because normally when you bring up a name to use as an example on a social issue, you bring up someone who is either a friend or a family member. Like when Kerry talked about Christopher Reeve in the last debate. He was using Reeves as an example of someone who could be helped by stem-cell research because was a friend of Kerry's, not because he was just some famous guy. Kerry's example of Mary Cheney felt a little odd because she's not a friend. She's the daughter of a political opponent. Using her as an example seemed a little weird.

However, it was just a passing thought on my part. Apparently a bunch of people have their panties in a wad over this.

Thinking about it slightly deeper than "huh, that's a random reference", I can see why Kerry would use her as an example; and it has nothing to do with trying to bring shame on the house of Cheney.

Ms. Cheney has been out for years. I think I first remember hearing about her just after Bush got elected. So Kerry could use her as a well-known example without outing anyone. I suppose he could have used Rosie O'Donnell in the same way, but you know, the last famous person Kerry talked about in a debate died. So I can see how he might be a bit hesitant....

In any case, I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that even Republicans know gay people. Nor is there anything wrong with pointing out that someone from the opposing ticket has a family member that the gay marriage issue directly affects. I would think that Bush's base would be happy to know that just people he personally knows an upstanding nice gay person hasn't changed his mind at all that gay people are icky and don't deserve the same rights and protections under the law as everyone else.

So here's my question. If Strom Thurmond was both not dead and running for President on an anti-black platform and someone pointed out that he had a black daughter, would that be a low blow? Or would it be just pointing out that even the most bigoted asshole isn't so closed off from the world as to not know any black people personally?

Maybe people are freaked out because they want to pretend that queer people are an abstract idea and not our daughters and sons. If we pretend that gay people are just funny celebrities on sitcoms and reality shows and not real people with families and jobs, it's a whole lot easier to deny them rights, isn't it?

Ten Commandments

2004-10-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court is taking a look at the Alabama "Ten Commandments" case in this session. I have no idea how they will rule, but I have some hope that they'll agree that these monuments need to be taken down.

Let me begin by saying that there are examples of what I consider to be appropriate use of religious imagery in public spaces. this slide show has a few examples. In displays that celebrate many different faiths or many different religious or cultural trading, I think religious imagery is fine. The intent needs to be inclusive. It needs to recognize that there's more than one was to interprets our trading and our collective history. Public displays should reflect the public and not just a narrow idea of religion and cultural tradition. Our country should celebrate inclusion.

In spite of whatever arguments conservative "this is a Christian country, there's no reason to think about those of us who aren't Jesus worshipers" types want to make, these monuments are clearly an endorsement of religion. They aren't about "cultural heritage" or "historical roots of our justice system." They are put in public spaces to declare a certain kind of morality. They're there to promote one view of religion and no others. Period.

If the pro-Ten Commandments people were sincerely trying to put up a monument to the ancient roots of our justice system, they'd have put a copy of Hammurabi's Code. The Ten Commandments have a bunch of "thou shall nots" on there, but there's no justice system contained in them. Hammurabi's Code was the first example of a system of laws with clear, secular consequences for breaking those laws. Those modern minimum scantiness rules that conservatives like so much can be traced back to King Hammurabi much more clearly than it can to the Ten Commandments, which as we all know, were enforced in a rather uneven matter throughout the Bible. But they aren't putting Hammurabi's code on granite tablets anywhere. They aren't interested in history; they're interested in religion and making sure that theirs continues to be the dominant one in our culture.

This kind of religious feeding has no place in our country. Conservatives claim that liberals like myself "want to take God out of the public square". Well, yes, yes I do. I would be happy if politicians stopped having to pander to the religious in order to get votes. I would be happy if Howard Dean's lack of "God talk" on the camping trail weren't held against in him the media. I would be happy if in debates about social issues didn't constantly come down to "well, I talk to God and he says you're wrong." I would be happy if we could elect a President who wasn't required to think that huge portions of the population of the world are all going to burn in hell. I would be happy if God and Country weren't tied up together like they are one and the same. Our constitution wasn't given to us out of the blue by God. It's not written on tablets brought down from a mountain. It was written by real people. It has been changed and interpreted by real people. The beauty of our government is that it is people who run things. Real people, not prophets who have the ear of God.

Yes, this country was founded by Christians. But you know what? Back then wars were being fought by Christians over small articles of faith. We've moved beyond that and it's time to move beyond this idea that we're a Christian country. People of all faiths have something to contribute to our nation. We should not be excluding anyone from the public square. By insisting on having one kind of religious symbol in our public spaces, the Christian right is trying to exclude people from the public square. That's not what our founders intended and its time to do something about it.

The last debate

2004-10-13T22:48:00.000-07:00

Full Transcript via New York Times

Bush has done much, much better in the last two debates than he did in the first one. He lied a whole lot, but at least he had something to say. I find this ironic since Bush has been running as a War President. You think he could have done better earlier. Maybe he actually prepared this time.

Kerry still did much better. As always I feel better about Kerry after a debate than I did before going in. That alone means that Kerry won, I think. I don't really care for him and I think a lot of people feel a little so-so about him as well. So making people sitting the fence about him is a big win.

A couple of things:

First thing's first. Style. They were wearing the same outfit. How embarrassing! If this were the 70s, they'd need to have a dance off.

Bush

understand there's great differences on this issue of abortion, but I believe reasonable people can come together and put good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions.

Bush has said this before. I find this logic to be, well, idiotic. Seriously, banning abortion will indeed reduce legal abortions. But um...that's not actually a reasonable ban. The hell?

I can see his plans for everything. "I think we can reduce poverty by killing poor people!" Brilliant.

Bush

But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change -- or have to change -- our basic views on the sanctity of marriage.

[snip]
I was worried that activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage

I like this. "we shouldn't change - or have to change". Something about that just struck me. It's just so....I don't know. It's sorta got this attitude of "Well, I'm not *killing* the gays! What more do you want?" He's basically saying that he's willing to put up with the fact that gay people exists, but damn it, he's not going to let them go around having rights! That's just asking too much.

You know, every time I listen to Bush talk about "activist judges" and "tolerance" I'm reminded of Loving vs Virginia. Those activist judges are so terrible. Granting equal rights to people. Horrible.

"Define the definition of marriage"? That just made me snort. Um. How does on "define a definition" anyway? It's not as funny as "the internets" or "You forgot Poland!" but it still amused me.

On a side note, I'm giving Kerry some credit for his answer. However, I'm still annoyed by his middle-of-the-road crap. Domestic partnerships are not the same as marriage, no matter how you want to spin it. There are hundreds of ways, small and large that domestic partnership is not marriage. Kerry knows that.

Bush

And so in order to take pressure off the border, in order to make the borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, so long as there's not an American willing to do the job, to join up in order to be able to fulfill the employer's needs.

This was during a question about immigration. Bush talking about this makes me a bit nervous. Something about this "as long as there's not an America willing to do the job." I think this is intended to encourage employers to make jobs as crappy as possible so that they don't have to hire people Americans. I think something should be done about illegal immigration. I just don't know what exactly. Of course, I don't know how his plan would work in the first place since the reason you hire illegal immigrants is because you want to pay them below minimum wage and not comply with OSHA rules. So does he want them to do that legally?

Ok. That's all I have for now. I'm sleepy.

Tell me agian why I'm voting this year?

2004-10-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

Ah. The Cheney/Edwards debate reminded me why I'm pretty displeased with the Dems as of late. I think I can stand to hear that while they don't hate me exactly, they'd really, really, really prefer it if I just sucked it up and married some guy.

Let me state right now that I'm not planning on getting married anytime soon. And I don't know when I'll be planning for such a thing. There are a lot of known unknowns on that front, one of which is the sex of the person I'll end up with for the rest of my life. But all signs point to the distinct possibility that I'll end up with a member of my own sex. And given that, I really don't appreciate having the "liberal" candidates talk about how they don't think that the life long commitment I may decide to make is less valid because the person I'll make it with happens to have a nice rack. Rackless partner, and I'm an upstanding member of my community. Rack having partner, and I'm a degenerate. It's amazing. I haven't changed in any way, but somehow my status under the law has.

I tired of hearing "liberals" talk about how they think it's a really keen idea for me to be barred from the death bed of my loved one because, you know it's more morally correct. And not only are they willing to not take a stand on it, they're willing to write that into federal law. Yeah, Kerry's not going to try to write up any amendments, but he's not going to push to get rid of DOMA either. So even if all the queer people in America moved to MA and got married, they still couldn't get any federal benefits nor could they travel outside the state and still have their marriages recognized. So while those lucky couples in MA can be sure of their rights while their in their state, they can't travel anywhere. No camping trips, Honey, one of us might get hurt....

Kerry's non-stance on gay marriage means that he's sitting the fence on a major civil rights issue. And yes, gay marriage is a civil rights issue. You have a class of people that have been actively discriminated against in the work place as well as socially. This class of people have been discriminated against under the law as well. Bush keeps babbling about "activist" judges, but let's face it. Law moves at the same rate as the rest of society, even rulings by the courts. Pervious civil rights cases were decided in a social context. Plessy vs Ferguson reflected the America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Brown vs Board and Loving vs Virginia reflected the newly emerging social standards of the mid-20th century. So too with gay marriage and queer rights cases.

It's a personal issue for me, yes, but it's really very important in a big picture sort of way. By being unwilling to take a stand on this, Kerry is basically saying that he's ok with letting religion guide our secular government. He's willing to write discrimination into our laws. Do I really want to vote for that?

Bush doesn't need no stinkin' polls

2004-10-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Or public support. Or, really, an actual reason for doing anything at all.....

William Saletan makes a good point about Bush in his latest Slate article.

Listen to Bush's words again. "The president's job is not to take an international poll," he says. "Our national security decisions will be made in the Oval Office, not in foreign capitals." Bush doesn't say these decisions belong to the United States. He says they belong to the Oval Office. He frames this as patriotism, boasting that he doesn't care whether he offers evidence sufficient to convince people in France. He shows no awareness or concern that evidence is also necessary to convince people in Ohio. He says it isn't his job to take a "poll," to hear what others think. He needs no validation.

Now, I think we all already know this about Bush, but it's nice to have it pointed out in print. Bush feels absolutely no need to give solid reasons for any of his actions. He has no interest in getting the support of our historical allies. But more importantly, he doesn't need to have the support of people he's supposed to be representing. He prefers to think of his power as extending from the fact of his office and not the will of his own people. He thinks like a dictator, not a democratically elected leader. I don't know about you, but I like to think of my elected officials being in office to represent me. Bush has a constituency of one. Perhaps he should be left to represent that constituency and leave the job of governing a nation to someone who cares about representing it.

Yay! Moonies!

2004-10-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I'm writing in regards to your new "faith based" social policies. Let me start by saying that I am all for religious tolerance and respect people of every faith. That respect extends towards followers of Sun Myung Moon as well. If you want to follow some guy who's proclaimed himself the second coming of Christ, go right ahead. Really, I don't mind. Find someone you sorta like and get mass married. More power to you.

But do not go around letting this man set government policy for me or anyone else.

These people get MASS MARRIED. And now you want to have them tell me about forming "traditional" families. Does this not directly oppose your vision for a "traditional" America? These people haven't even had a religion for a hundred years. Hell, they're less established that scientologists. What in God's name are you doing letting them set social policy?

I think that your base might be a little upset to see that you're consorting with a cultist. Don't you worry that your people might become angered about you letting some cult leader run things for you? You like to talk about that "deep religious faith" of ours a whole lot. I would think that said faith should make you think twice before letting this guy set policy for you.

Unless, of course, you don't actually care about "tradition" so much as you care about consolidating power and attempting to control the sex lives of the country in general. Perhaps you aren't driven by faith so much as the desire to minutely control the lives of the people that you reign over. Maybe you're fine with any kind of religion at all so long as it isn't welcoming to those icky queer people that upset you so much.

Sun Myung Moon is rich and owns a paper which has been very friendly towards you, so I can only assume that you're alliance with Moonies is a cynical attempt to gain more political power. It makes sense, seeing that the far right isn't much of a constituency.

If this is the case, then you're doing a bang up job. Keep up the good work.

May I suggest that you hold his next coronation in the White House.

Yours in arranged mass marriage,

.nicole.

The debates

2004-09-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

Ok. I'm not going to say much about the debates right now. But here are a few things.

1) I don't know if it's just that Bush is such a terrible speaker or if Kerry is actually really good, but I feel a lot better about having to vote for that guy now.

2) Bush looked like a cranky child the whole time.

3) This exchange cracked me up because it seemed like Bush just wasn't listening.

LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President.

BUSH: You know my opinion on North Korea. I can't say it any more plainly.

LEHRER: Well, but when he used the word "truth" again...

BUSH: Pardon me?

LEHRER: ... talking about the truth of the matter. He used the word "truth" again. Did that raise any hackles with you?

BUSH: Oh, I'm a pretty calm guy. I don't take it personally.

LEHRER: OK. All right.

Oh what? Kerry said something? Teehee.

4) There was a point in the debate where Bush asked for an extra 30 seconds to reply to something Kerry said then....just paused. For several seconds. Just a tip, if you're going to ask for more time to make a point, have a point to make.

5) People talk about how Bush "stays on message" well. I don't see how it's a plus to say the exact same phrase over and over again. It just sounds like your handlers could only get you to remember three things and told you to repeat them for 90 minutes. But maybe he was told that he could get a cookie for every time he said "

6) I think this was one of my favorite things the whole night (the crowd at the Parkway errupted in cheers at this):

Kerry:

I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many leaders in the world today would respond to us, as a result of what we've done, in that way?

And that is exactly why Bush has to go.

Who would God vote for?

2004-09-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Is God attempting to sway the election?

Between the 4 hurricanes, the recent earthquake, and the possible eruption of Mt St Helens I think god is trying to tell us something.

What that something is, I'm not sure. But I'm going to go on the "terrorist attacks mean they want you to vote for Kerry" logic. God's going around randomly killing people right before the election. I think he might be want us to vote for Kerry.

Do you really want to go against God? I thought not. Let's not piss God off anymore. Vote Kerry.

Debate, debate. Spin, spin.

2004-09-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

I do so love Oakland. Thursday's debate will be broadcast for free at The Parkway, just down the street from my home. That's right...couches, beer, pizza, politics. My heart is full of love for my fair city and all the liberal wackiness it provides. I look forward to hearing the heckling of my fellow man.

I normally look forward to events like these, and this one is no exception. However, I have little hope that the Democrats will properly spin the debate before and after the event. Let's hope that Kerry doesn't follow Gore's example in 2000. At the time, I could not believe that Bush was considered the big winner in 2000. He managed to get out his scripted line in complete sentences and for this he was considered a fabulous debater? He had next to no facts to give and no way to argue Gore's (generally true) assertions except to claim that he was using "fuzzy math". Fuzzy. Math. I still can't get over the fact that people fell for that. Fuzzy math? What kind of counter argument is that? Besides which, Bush's math was significantly more fuzzy, a fact that generally went unreported after the debates.

The press' absolute lack of fact checking will play right into the Republican's hands, as will their generally soft handling of Bush. They give the man a lot of passes even when he's clearly incorrect because he "seems to believe what he says." Which is fine if he's talking about Jesus, but doesn't really work well when he's running the country. I can only hope that Kerry is able to pound him hard for being as out of touch with reality as he is.

The press also seems to really enjoy he's faux folks-y style, which they talk about being "authentic". Bush is old money from New England, but they let him get away with a fake "everyman" persona. Kerry, on the other hand, has sounds like exactly what he and Bush are - old money form New England. And he'll get flak for it.

I personally can't stand Bush's style. It comes off as fake to me. And really, I always feel like he's talking down to me. He pepper's his speech with phrases like "you need to understand" and "see", like I don't know what's he's talking about or I'm too slow to get his points. Like he's making a grand case that might be a little over my head. It pisses me off every time he says something like that. You know what? I already understand and your repeating of your extremely simpleminded argument isn't going to convince me. Make a real case for yourself instead of throwing out broad generalizations that have nothing to do with reality.

The press eats this up, though. I suspect that they think that the voting public is actually very stupid. So they talk up is ridiculous "everyman" shtick because they think it'll play well in the fly over states. I think there is also the added plus that his sound bites make their work easy for them since they don't have to actually parse anything he's said. And he sounds like he believes his falsehoods, so they don't really even feel the need to look up anything later. So everyone wins.

Except the general public, of course.

Kerry needs to come out swinging. His spin-doctors need to work overtime. He needs to make his case very simply so the press can understand him. He also needs to paint Bush as being totally out of touch with reality. They need to outline all the ways he's failed. They need to point out that a vote for Bush is a vote against their best interests. All of the progress that we've made in the last 100 years has made people feel safe, like there's no way we could go back to stock market crashes, banks closing, and dangerous work places, but we can and if Bush and his crew has their way, we will. They need to figure out how to explain that to people. These things shouldn't be hard. I've seen the Democratic punditry spin like nobody's business. They could do it for Clinton, and they can do it again. They need to fight like the fate of our country is at stake because it is.

the windsurfing ad

2004-09-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

i just saw the new GWB ad.

Ok, besides being totally immature and unprofessional, the idea was also stole from the Daily Show.

Seriously, months ago the Daily Show ran a fake GWB political ad. It was viedo of him snow boarding and the voice over talking about Kerry going left and right and don't we deserve a canididate who snow boards in a straight line?

Karen Hughes wa son the show that night. She mentioned the ad in the interview, agreeing with it because it was the Bush meeasge. And John Steward was like "you know, that wasa joke, right?" Yeah. Guess not.

I wonder if that video is still around. Totally ridiculous.

Don't steal form the Daily Show. Jeez.

Protest Much?

2004-09-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Slate has an article about a little known law now being used by the Secret Service to charge protesters.

Generally, if you're arrested for protesting, the most they can reasonably charge you with is disorderly conduct, unless you're actually breaking laws. So if you're standing on a public street, holding an anti-Bush sign while his motorcade drives by, you can't really be charged with much.

Or so you think. Apparently there's a law on the books saying that you aren't allowed to hang out in areas that the secret service has blocked off. Which makes a certain amount of sense. Except that it's being applied specifically to Bush protesters and not supporters standing in the same place. The secret service also doesn't need to mark where the restricted area is. They just need to say that it was restricted.

Now, common sense says that if you're protesting at a rally, you'll be asked to leave. I'm not entirely against organizers kicking you out. Although I do think it's ridiculous and cowardly to kick out people for wearing the wrong t-shirt if they haven't caused any kind of disruption. However, you know that is what will happen when you go to an event carrying signs. The rally's space has been reserved for a specific reason. If you can get kicked out of church for interrupting a sermon, you can get kicked out of a rally for interrupting a speech. These are reasonable limits to set. It's unreasonable to arrest these people, though. Yes they caused a disruption. For that they should get thrown out. But they shouldn't be thrown in jail. A political rally is not any more protected than any other place. As a matter of fact, it should be less protected. The first amendment is there specifically to protect political speech. Everyone should have enough respect for our Bill of Rights to allow people to have their say.

It is totally inappropriate to arrest people on the street for carrying signs. If a protester is in a public space that anyone is allowed to walk through, the police are specifically limiting the freedom of movement and freedom of speech of that individual. They are targeting you for being "off message" not for posing a threat. If I'm allowed to watch the President's motorcade go down the street while carrying a "Bush '04" sign, I should be allowed to be there with a "No War for Oil" sign. The sidewalk is not a restricted space. I don't need credentials to be there. You can't kick me out for saying the wrong thing. You certainly shouldn't be able to charge me with a crime for being there.

People like to believe that the government is really only looking to "stop terrorists" by taking away our civil liberties. As if some protester with a sign is really any more or less likely to be intending to do any harm. The application of this law makes it clear that the government is not targeting potential terrorists. It's targeting protesters. The areas they're arresting people in are not clearly restricted. They aren't clearing the area of all people, just the anti-Bush people. This isn't an attempt to have safety; this is an attempt to stop people from expressing dissent.

GWB and his Guard "service"

2004-09-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about GWB and his Guard service lately. The whole flap over those contested documents has totally eclipsed the whole story. Right leaning pundits babble on and on about how his Guard service shouldn't matter anyway, since he's the President and all now, who cares what he did 30 years ago. Never mind that they don't bother to do any fact checking about the Swift Boat Liars, and pretend that their utterly false allegations matter in the case of John Kerry. Never mind that they harped about Clinton's non-service for years. (Clinton, at least, had the balls to get out of service because he didn't believe in the war. GWB had the gall to support the war even while doing everything he could to avoid service of any kind, even after signing up for it.) But here's the thing, the missing years of Guard service wouldn't matter if that was a one off. It's not.

Look, GWB has a history of this. His whole life has been made up of getting places ahead of everyone else because of his family connects and then fucking up. Over and over again, he's proven that if you give him a chance to fail, he'll do it. He got into Yale based on not on his grades or his potential as a student, but on the fact that his father went there. Once there, he just scrapped by. This man had the benefit of education, money, and family background and he still couldn't do well in school. When he got out of school, he was allowed into the Guard, not based on his merit, but because his family pulled strings there. Once there, he did an ok job as a pilot but then just stopped bothering to show up. Apparently one weekend a month of having to be sober was just too much for him. And did he have to pay the price of this behavior? No. Once again because of his family connections. There goes a whole decade of being given amazing opportunities and flushing them down the toilet.

This is the pattern he set for himself as a young man. He continued it well past when you can excuse youthful inexperience. How many companies was the man handed and then run into the ground?

Each time you trust GWB to do something important, he fails. He failed to get the level of education one would expect out of a man of his position, even after having been handed a fancy Prep school education and spot at Yale. He failed to complete the Guard service that was keeping him out of fighting a war he supported. He failed to run a successful company, even after being bailed out over and over again. And now he's been handed the Presidency, based not on his merit (because, let's be honest, if the Republicans had wanted to run someone with merit, they would have chosen John McCain) or even, you know, winning the election.

Hell, I would argue that his 2000 campaign was a failure. The press hated his opponent. They made up fake stories and falsified quotes, for Bush. They gave him a pass at the debates, even though he was clearly lying about half his points. They even went so far as to call him the winner. Anytime he managed to get out a complete sentence without making up words or screwing up his grammar, the press applauded him. And yet, he still couldn't win the election. Hand him seasoned handlers and a loving press, and he still couldn't deliver.

And he's failed at the Presidency. He's failed miserably at the most important job in the world. He was handed the presidency and he screwed up everything he got involved in. The economy is sputtering, millions of people have been left jobless. His wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have no hope of ending with any of his stated goals achieved.

The man has been out brained and outclassed by anyone he's ever been compared to and yet he is where he is because his life has been handed to him. And he's left nothing but failures in his wake. This is not a man who deserved to be president in the first place, let alone be given a second term. Why is anyone even considering voting for this man?

"big government" and your healthcare

2004-09-14T18:42:00.000-07:00

Ok. There's an ad about John Kerry's healthcare plan running on Fox these days. It's a Bush ad that claims that "big government, not you or your doctor" will be in charge of your healthcare decisions. I cannot believe this is even an argument that they think is fit for TV.

I don't know in what world "Big Government" would be much worse for me than "Big Insurance". It doesn't even make sense in the conservative view of "Big Government". Let's think about it. The government as something that just spends, spends, spends even when they don't need to. And business, well, they're so efficient and are always looking at the bottom line. Yep. I definitely want my healthcare in the hands of people who are doing cost/benefit analysis with my medication. Sounds like a much better plan than having some system wherein people who just spend wildly without caring about how much it costs to provide me with healthcare.

In what world do the people this ad is intended for live in? In my world, insurance companies dictate whom I can see, how often I can see them and what kind of care I can get. Sure, my doctor can say I need any number of treatments, but that has no relation to what my insurance company will pay for. Allergic to one kind of medication? Well, that's too damn bad. That's the only one they cover. Suck it up. Neither my doctor nor I have the final word in my care; the insurance company does. How is "Big Government" any worse? At least they aren't looking at making a profit off my well-being or lack thereof.

FairTrade Coffee?

2004-09-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Swiss-based food giant Nestlé and three other major coffee companies have agreed a code of conduct with producers in a bid to improve standards across the industry.

That's exciting. Neither this story nor the BBC story mentions anything about the coffee being Fair Trade Certified but agreeing to end child labor and trying to pay growers a living wage are both excellent steps in the right direction.

In more FairTrade news, Marks and Spencer just switch to selling nothing but Fair Trade coffee.

Maybe if Starbucks switched over, those black clad anarchists would stop breaking thier windows....

Conservative Salon Article

2004-09-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

Serious conservatives should deny their votes to Bush. "When it comes to choosing a president, results matter," the president says. So true. A Kerry victory would likely be bad for the cause of individual liberty and limited government. But based on the results of his presidency, a Bush victory would be catastrophic. Conservatives should choose principle over power.

Hot damn. And I thought I was the only one to notice that Bush has gone against most conservative principles through his whole administration.

I haven't consumed much conservative media beyond Fox News, which isn't so much conservative as pro-Republican regardless of what they do. So now I'm wondering if this sort of grumbling is widespread among actual conservatives. Probably not. The Right seems much less likely to actually talk about such things. They seem to be united in their hate and fear of all things "liberal" as much as they are united by any conservative principles. Which, of course, is why Bush can get away with what he's doing. He's running the country into the ground and his base won't do anything about it. It's sad, really. You'd think they'd care.

Week Old Protest Blogging: Eyes Wide Open Edition

2004-09-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

Thursday.

There were a lot of smallish protest events going on during the day on Thursday and two much bigger events in the evening.

The Eyes Wide Open traveling memorial was at Union Square park all day. People were reading names of all the soldiers who've died in Iraq. They also read the names of known Iraqi civilian deaths. They had a thousand pairs of army boots spread out on the steps of Union square, which had cards with the names of the dead soldiers attached. They also had hundreds of pairs of other shoes to represent the civilians killed during the war. Veterans For Peace set up a makeshift memorial wall. Black fabric with the names of all the dead soldiers listed in white. It spanned about half a block, I think.

The memorial was incredibly moving. Soldiers who had returned from Iraq would stand up and speak and then read names. Anti-war activists read names, as did family members of soldiers overseas. The first day of the memorial, I mostly heard names read. On Thursday, there were a lot more people getting up to speak and telling their personal stories. I was almost in tears when the mother of a solider whose unit had been ambushed got up to speak. Her son had been one of the few surviving members of the attack and he had immense survivors guilt. She spoke about wanting to contact the members of the rest of the unit's families and about how her activism was dedicated to the memory of her son's friends who had died. Her story really affected me. There were so many speakers with personal stories like hers.

I think that these kinds of events are really important. I think that too often, pro-war types choose to ignore the human aspects of the war. As much as conservatives like to talk about "the individual", they choose to ignore how their policies actually affect people on an individual level. I think the memorial did a good job of bringing it home. I also think that it's totally ridiculous that an exhibit like this or a listing of names like the New York Times did can be painted as "too political". Anytime you decided to go to war, you are saying that the cause that you're fighting for is in some way greater than the individual lives you stand to lose. Sometimes, I think it is. In many peacekeeping missions, the loss of 10 or 20 soldiers is worth it because it's saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who would have surely been killed. In those cases, it would also be totally appropriate to memorialize the fallen in this way. Why is it not ok in the case of Iraq? You'd have to have very, very little to stand behind if simply listing the names of our dead soldiers is a threat. If you're up in arms about listing the dead, you need to reexamine your position.

Week Old Protest Blogging: Institutional Feminism Edition

2004-09-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday.

By Wednesday I was feeling a little burnt out on protesting. My feet hurt and I was tired of being under constant threat of arrest. Luckily, NOW was ready to provide me with low-key rally action.

The NOW rally was extremely low key. Extremely. They had their event on the east meadow of Central Park. The grass was patchy and the stage was directly in front of a big dirt patch. It was not the most comfortable venue.

So aside from the lack of grass, the rally was ok. It's what you'd expect form a group like NOW. Some throwbacks to the 70s. Some lesser known feminist types. Generally feel good long established, institutional feminisms. It's like going to a rally for a major party candidate where they aren't really using all their bells and whistles but they're trying.

All week long my protesting partner (*wink*) was commenting on how little queer presence there seemed to be at all these events. She was right; if there were specific queer rights events going on they weren't being publicized in the same places all the other events. It struck me as a little odd seeing has how this Bush is all about appealing to his hate filled base by denying equal rights to same sex couples. You'd think that more New York based queer activist organizations would be taking the convention as an opportunity to get out in the streets.

Well, apparently they were just hanging out waiting for the NOW rally to happen. I swear at least half if not more of the speakers and performers were out queers. It was a little odd. Do East Coasters just not get into queer identity politics or something? What's with the hanging out in feminist organizations instead of having a presence of your own? Of course, I'm really happy that such a mainstream organization like NOW programmed so many queer women. It's good that they're not shying away from queer politics as part of their work. It was just a little odd.

Overall I thought the rally was a decent event. I thought that it was important to show up for more conventional events. I think the media could easily paint the protesters as being a bunch of crazy communists or something and attendance to the NOW rally shows that even mainstream, established groups are willing to do something to show their opposition to the Bush administration.

One of my acquaintances stopped by the rally for a short time and decided that it wasn't radical enough for him so he left. He later mused that it could have easily been organized by the police to keep people from protesting closer to MSG, what with it having such a mainstream feel to it. I found this amusing. I'm all for organizations like NOW, though. I think that they put a palatable face on many issues that would otherwise end up sounding too radical and jarring to much of the somewhat social conservative populace. I think that most of the time change happens when you have groups like now and the ACLU pushing reform through conventional means while at the same time there are more radical groups out there demanding actual change. So yeah. Yay NOW.

Week Old Protest Blogging: Running from the Cops Edition

2004-09-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Tuesday.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, there was an unpermitted march protesting the School of the Americas.

The School of the Americas is a training facility run by the US army. Its purpose was to train foreign nationals on such skills as staging coups in Latin American countries. This is where we groom dictators.

There’s been a movement to shut down our training programs. The groups that organized this march have been around since 1990. They had protesters carrying banners at the march on Sunday and participated in other protesters on Monday.

The march began at ground Zero and was supposed to end at Madison Square Garden. There were hundreds of people lining up to march when we got there. Because this was an unpermited march, we were being watched closely by the police. We would be allowed to march as long as we walked in orderly lines on the sidewalk with groups no bigger than two across. We had to obey all the traffic lights, regardless of other pedestrian traffic. There were a number of National Lawyers Guild observers there advising organizers of their rights and helping to negotiate with police about the march route.

I was a little surprised as to how many people were marching. I had expected just a few hundred but there were at least 600 people there at Ground Zero. The police had expected a huge march, though. There were officers everywhere. There were vans and busses full of police driving by as well as those black, unmarked police cars everywhere.

I think that delegates were supposed to come visit the site around then. The tour buses that I saw the night before were driving by while we were gathering. They looked like they were full of normal people rather than cops. They didn’t look armed or to be in riot gear.

The march started with the police arresting about two hundred people as they tried to walk across the street. There was a lot of indecision as to whether we were going to continue. The organizers finally decided to go ahead and march to MSG. We marched two by two. The march stretched about four blocks. I was impressed by that since a lot of people left during the confusion.

The march was very low key. There wasn’t any chanting and people chatted quietly amongst themselves.

There was a group of 20 year old Free Palestine types walking behind us. I’m always a little annoyed with the militant Palestinian activist types that I run into at every protest I go to. I agree with them, for the most part, even if I don’t always agree with their tactics. I can’t put my finger on why they bother me so much. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re at every demonstration I go to (well, except those that deal with women’s rights or queer rights) regardless of what the actual demonstration is about. I think they bother me because they’re always off message. The school of the Americas trains Latin American terrorists, folks. Could you maybe put away your main issue for a second and focus on what you’re supposed to be marching for? Thanks. I think that combined with their twenty-year-old-more-radical-than-thou attitude just hits the wrong buttons. Yes, I know it would be great if everyone dumpster dived for food and did nothing but odd jobs and lived in housing provided to you by some activist organization, but if it weren’t for corporate folks like myself you’re organizations wouldn’t have funding or dumpsters to dive in. It’s a mild annoyance and I should let it go. Like I said, I generally agree with these kids on many, many points. The pro- intifada chants, though, need to stop. Ok. I’m really done.

The march took a very winding road to get near MSG. I think this was done to avoid being arrested before getting there. The organizers intended to do a “die in” at the convention center. They were planning to block traffic by lying in the street. I was debating whether or not I wanted to participate in the die in while walking there. I decided that I don’t mind getting arrested but I don’t want to ask to be arrested so I figured that I’d refrain from dying.

We finally got close to MSG. As we marched, we picked up other marches and stray demonstrators. We ended up being a pretty large march. The police stopped us at 25th and Broadway. They blocked the road in front of us. Folks determined to do the die in got into the streets. There was a group of women standing on stacks of newspapers leading people in a recital of the first amendment.

After about ten minutes or so of the road in from of us being blocked and more and more police flooding the scene, I spotted a bunch of cops on bikes suddenly turning around and taking off for the cross street behind us. They were going to block everyone in. I decided that this was my queue to leave so I made a mad dash for the other end of the block. The police had formed a barrier with their bikes at the end of the block but they were letting a few people through. There had been a bunch of shopkeepers and non-protesters watching the goings on and they were being given an opportunity leave. I slid through the opening just as they closed it off. Not all the onlookers got out. I watched on the other side of 26th as they began moving the barrier further up the street, corralling everyone in.

They began making arrests soon after. I could hear the wailing of police sirens in the distance as paddy wagons began to arrive. Several hundred activists were arrested. I think the total ended up being something like five or six hundred arrests from this march alone that day. The first set of arrests at the beginning of the march and the second set at the end were reported in the media as two different events the next day. I think this is where the majority of the fifteen hundred or so arrests they made total all week came from.

RepCon blogging : One Week Late Edition

2004-09-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

Monday.

There didn’t seem to be a whole lot going on on Monday. I think a lot of folks decided to take the day off from protesting after the three straight days of events. I couldn’t really find a whole lot to go do. So my protesting partner (*wink*) and I decided to check out the area around Madison square Garden – survey the scene, figure out where the action is happening and all that.

The police had the entire area around the convention center blocked off. They weren’t allowing much car traffic through on any streets and had many areas blocked off from even foot traffic. We got there at about 10pm, so there were still speakers having their say inside. Since I was on the scene I didn’t even know who was speaking then or what they were saying. I’m extremely behind on the news due to the protesting and whatnot so I still don’t know what all was being said during the convention. I hear Giuliani embarrassed himself lying so much. Or at least he should have been embarrassed.

In any case, most of the delegate types were still inside when I arrived. There were people sort of trickling out of the convention center. I watched many people go by. You could walk up to close to the front of MSG, but everything on the front sidewalk was blocked off.

After looking around a bit, I decided to go in search of the free speech zone. (Later we figured we’d also find the “right to bare arms” zone and the “freedom of religion zone” but they weren’t so clearly marked. So we fired guns and sacrificed goats in Times Square instead.) It was on my way there that I got my first glimpse of real life Billionaires for Bush. They weren’t kidding around. Many rotund older gentlemen in expensive navy blue suits with stylish straw hats. I realized that all the conventioneers really looked out of place. They stuck out like sore thumbs. They would be pretty easy targets for the protesters who were planning on following them from location to location. They would be easy to spot on subways and in stores. I couldn’t put my finger on it but they just looked like Republicans.

After getting a few spy shots of the delegates, we headed out. The FSZ was ridiculously hard to get to from the front of MSG. The police had blocked off the entire cross streets for something like five blocks. They had the streets in front of and behind the convention center blocked off. You had to walk incredibly far out of your way to get there. They don’t make practicing your right to free speech easy in this town, let me tell you.

On our way there, we passed a bunch of security checkpoints. Large groups of police officers in full riot gear, complete with batons and helmets, stood around blocking off streets looking vaguely bored and on edge at the same time. Apparently you’re not allowed to photograph the signs telling you that you’re not allowed to walk down the street, either.

While walking around, we saw a bunch of empty buses rolling through the blocked streets. I would later see these same buses carrying delegates around. They also transported police around from protest to protest. I don’t know if they were police buses all the time or if they were just hired for the convention. I find it interesting the both the police and the delegates used the same buses. Was the city paying to cart the delegates around? How much money was the city wasting on these guys? They were being bussed everywhere. They were only going to go to organized events. (During DemCon, the delegates often didn’t leave the area around the convention. 25% never left the North End. It’s not just Republicans; these things are heavily packed with events so delegates don’t get bored. This means they also don’t get out and see much of the city that they’re in.) New York State was having a “tax free” week, so the delegates weren’t even paying sales taxes back into the system on the occasion that they bought anything. What is the point of all this?

By the time we got to the FSZ, there was no one there. There were a few hippies hanging out and that’s about it. I wasn’t surprised, really. I had expected that no one would actually use this area for anything. The whole idea of a “free speech zone” is insulting. Protesters aren’t children in need of a time out. They don’t need to go to their rooms to get their frustrations out and be ignored. Demonstrators are serious people with serious issues. You can’t just brush the huge numbers of people coming out to protest aside. I think it’s dangerous to do so. If you continue to brush aside the general public’s dissent, there’s a good chance they’ll stop behaving. And then you’ve got riots and militants on yours hands. You really don’t want that, do you?

United For Peace and Justice March

2004-09-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday.

Sunday was the big United For Peace and Justice march and rally. This is the march that the city of New york refused to allow to end in Central Park due to worries about the new lawn. The organizers never got approval for a rally at the end of the march. I personally think it's ridiculous that they would use grass as an excuse to stop people from gathering. Republicans get all upset with environmentalists for "caring more about tress than people" but then use plants as an excuse to disallow a rally. Apparently the only environment they care about is the one that liberals would like to use.

I ended up arriving to the march after it had already started so I missed any rally action beforehand. When my group arrived, the police had blocked the sidewalk from the street. There was chaos trying to get out of the metro station as people flooded in and out of the station. I thought it was odd that they were blocking the sidewalk in this particular area as just a block or so down the street they ended the barricades. I suppose they were trying to make sure that people couldn't just bail out of the march and into the metro station if it got hairy, but it seemed to cause more of a danger to the people trying to travel than without the barrier. There was a woman with a stroller trying to get out. With that crowd of people there, I was very afraid for her. My group actually included a pregnant woman. She was more mobile than the rest of us, which was fortunate because if she hadn't been we might have been in trouble briefly. It didn't stop me from worrying, however. Police designed bottle necks are not good for children or other living things.

When we entered the march, there seemed to be a ton of people walking. There were drummers playing and huge signs being carried. The crowd was pretty full. There crowd looked like there were a few hundred people per block, stretching several blocks back.

It turns out that we were in the front of the crowd. It was hard to tell since the march was so huge. After walking a few blocks, we decided to take a break in the shade and watch the theatrics pass. I was glad we decided to sit on the sidelines for a good long time because otherwise we would have missed the Billionaires for Bush.

When I first heard about the Billionaires, I was skeptical about this group. I could tell they were going for ironic humor, but I wasn't sure that they would properly pull it off. I was very very wrong. they were hilarious. They stopped every few blocks to gather and chant. The whole group stayed in character the whole time I saw them. So, for instance, instead of saying "hey, could you move over here" they'd say things like "excuse me old chap, but I think the important people are moving this way". The men were in suits and top hats, carrying martini glasses or cigars. The women were in full length cocktail dresses complete with strings of pearls. They chanted slogans like "No Justice? OK!". At one point they started a call and response that went something like "Whose streets? Our streets! Who's government? Our government! Who's taxes? YOUR taxes!". People would randomly make little speeches, thanking all the little people for paying taxes so they wouldn't have to, which always ended in the rest of the Billionaires yelling "huzza!". I was unendingly amused. Although, I think that the humor is lost on actual billionaires for Bush. I think the parity is a little to close to reality so they don't see the point.

Along with the Billionaires, Code Pink was out in full force. You could see them coming form a block away, with their pink outfits. They made huge pink slips and carried them around. They were very vocal. I felt good about seeing such an active women's organization out on the street. Too often groups are dominated by their male participants and I was glad to see a feminist activists taking the lead. Actually, thinking about it, code pink was one of the most active groups I saw all week. Members were at almost every rally and march I saw and they had several people present at the different parks that people were gathering at before and after actions.

While we were sitting on the sidelines, we noticed that the march thinned out a lot. I was upset that there seemed to be so few people marching. It turns out that the reason for this lag was that someone set fire to a paper mache thing on the street in front of Madison Square Garden (which was actually further back in the march than where my group started) and the police had stopped the march and called in the bomb squad. It held up the march for a long time. It turns out the the bomb squad wasn't needed at all but i don't blame to police for freaking out. The pictures of the fire that I saw made it look huge. I think that all the paper went up at the same time which caused a big fire ball and then died right down. I would have been totally freaked out to be in the crowd let alone someone guarding it, waiting for any sign of a terrorist attack.

Since we didn't know that there was more march coming, we ended up just finishing up the march and taking off. I was a little disappointed that we didn't end up seeing the 1,000 coffins display that was part of the march. The death toll in Iraq has been steadily creeping up daily and this display was a somber reminder of why we were marching. The march was a big tent for every anti-Bush activist coming to New York, but the war is such a central part of why Bush should be thrown out of office and this piece of street theater was a wonderful addition to the march.

The march ended at union Square, but the organizers weren't allowed to hold a rally of any time. As we reached the end of the march, we heard people on bullhorns thanking us for coming to the march and asking us to leave so that the rest of the march could continue. I was really sad to se that there was no end rally of any kind. The crowd estimates for the march (at about 500,000 the largest single protest ever held in response to a party convention) were made at the starting rally. I know that I was not counted in that estimate and I'm pretty sure that many of the "feeder" marches that joined the larger march were probably not counted either so the count may be a little low (or right on target if the organizers were estimating high).

I was happy to see that so many people were on the streets on Sunday. Large, organized protests were the only ones that many native New Yorkers went to so this march was more reflective of the general displeasure that New Yorkers had about the convention than many of the smaller, more radical actions that took place during the week. Non-activists and moderates came out to be counted as people who didn't welcome the GOP. The sheer numbers in the march cannot be glossed over as just "a few" people here and there protesting. It was a great thing to see.

The Ring Out

2004-09-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Saturday Evening.

After marching for my reproductive health, I decided that it would be good to go to the Ring Out. The Ring Out was a peace demonstration held at Ground Zero. The bell ringing was in honor of not just the people who died on 9/11, but also to honor those who've died in the wars since.

It was a neat event. We got there and were given bells to ring. While the crowd was gathering and given bells, we were all supposed to ring our bells for an hour. People were spread out, circling the WTC site, ringing bells. It was a lovely, chaotic noise. Every once in a while small groups would start ringing their bells in a rhythm with each-other. It was like chanting at a protest. The ringing would come together and then step out of beat again.

After about an hour of ringing, everyone was spread out along the perimeter of the WTC site. We all stopped ringing our bells and had a moment of silence. Then one side of the site started ringing their bells for a few minutes. When their time was up, another side would start ringing. We went around in a circle like this for 5 or so rotations. You could hear the wave of bell sounds come closer to you as your turn to ring approached.

It was difficult to tell how well the event was attended. There weren't many people on our side of the site, but everyone was spread out. Where I was there seemed to be more press than people. the group I was with had several press people taking our pictures. One of the reporters happened to be from the San Francisco Chronicle, which is my hometown news paper. They found out that I was from Oakland and snapped a ton of pictures of me. I don't think any of them made it into the paper, though.

I had never been to the WTC site before and I was struck by the sheer size of it. It was difficult to see people on the other side of it clearly. The empty emphasized the huge loss the the city has suffered. I was happy that that was my first visit to the site. I thought that the bell ringing was a wonderful way to honor those who had died.

The March For Women's Lives

2004-09-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Saturday.

I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to go to the March for Women's Lives on Saturday morning. The rally began at 11 at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. I was a bit late getting there so I missed the rally but was in time for the march.

Planned Parenthood was well organized. Volunteers had put printed signs together and left them around the park for late comers to grab. As my group walked to the march line we were able to pick up signs to carry. There was a sea of black and white signs reading "I *Heart* Pro-Choice NY". There were a few other signs that read "Real Sex Education Saves Lives" and a few Rainbow signs reading "New York Says No to the Bush Agenda".

There were a lot of different people marching. Young and old, women and men, children, pregnant women. I was happy to see that so many people had made it out. We stood in front of a group of older activists who sang a few old pro-choice protest songs and there was some chanting. The women behind me had clearly been going to these events for a long time. It reminded me that this struggle had been going on for a very long time.

I think that having to go to these marches is entirely ridiculous. Roe vs Wade happened over 30 years ago. This is settled law. Our right to privacy should not be under constant attack. It's disheartening to know that in a country where people are supposed to be free to make their own choices about their bodies and their lives, we have to continue to fight for our right to do so.

Abortion is a deeply personal decision. We make our choices thinking of our families, our religion, our communities of loved ones. We should not have to battle the state as well. Women should not be forced to go across state lines to find a doctor to preform a medical procedure which has been in practice for years. We should not be forced to go through picket lines to receive medical treatment.

Beyond your personal beliefs about whether abortion is right or wrong, there's a larger issue at stake. When protesters block Planned Parenthood clinics, they aren't just blocking women from getting abortions. They're blocking women from getting basic medical services. Planned Parenthood provides many more services than abortions. The people picketing clinics have to know this. They are trying to take a women's access to all reproductive services away. My access to STD testing and treatment, my access to birth control, pregnancy tests, and real reproductive health information is at risk when people start blocking access to these clinics. When Planned Parenthood is painted as a "radical" organization in the media, it's not being considered radical for providing abortions. It's being considered radical for giving me a choice. It's considered radical for giving women agency in their own lives. It's not right.

Abortion is just one part of a larger fight. It is already the case that some insurance plans don't provide coverage for birth control. Solid sex education is not being taught in schools. Access to emergency contraception is not available unless you can get in to see your doctor first (and we all know how hard it is to get an appointment as it is). These things are basic medical services but access to them is being limited for political and religious reasons. No one should have to march for the right to seek medical treatment, but here there we were, marching....

I'm behind....

2004-08-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm in New York. I arrived on Friday afternoon and met up with my lovely hosts.

This whole week is full of planned protests and other activist-y events and I wanted to start going to things right away. Friday night happened to be Critical Mass. For those of you who've never heard of it, Critical Mass is a monthly guerrilla bike riding event. It's held in cities across the country. People meet up at designated locations and bike en mass throughout the city. It blocks up traffic for blocks each month. The idea behind Critical Mass is to promote bicycle awareness. There are many more bikes on the street than people tend to think and getting everyone together all at once serves to raise awareness that, yes, there are bikers on the rode. It also promotes a sense of community among bicyclists.

Critical Mass has been going on for over ten years now. The size of the Mass fluctuates every month. This month, a stated focus of the event was to protest the RNC's arrival in New York. It's a march on two wheels. Estimates of the size of the ride were between 5,000 and 10,000 people. I'm inclined to believe the number was closer to 10,000. Bikes took over something like 45 blocks at any one time. The largest Mass that New York had seen before this was about two or three thousand people. That ride blocked about 10 blocks of traffic so 45 is just amazing. There were a ton of people like me – demonstrators from out of town who came to protest at the convention. On the way there, I met someone who just got in from Seattle and while gathering at Union Square, I met two people who had just biked in from Chicago earlier that day.

The police presence at the ride was huge. Before it started they were handing out flyers stating that we were all breaking the law and that we could be arrested. There were helicopters overhead and even a police blimp. Cops were out in riot gear, riding around on their new looking scooters. At some point during the ride they started to pen in riders and not letting them pass intersections. They also started arresting people who had gathered at an after-ride meeting spot.

My experience of the ride was amazing. I've never been to New York before so taking to the streets on a bike my first night here was a wonderful introduction to the city. We rode through most of midtown. I saw Times Square, the village, soho, Madison Square Garden (where I'll be protesting later today) and a host of other sites. I was near the front of the ride and for the most part it seemed really chill. People stopped in front of cars and held traffic for us. We let emergency vehicles pass when they needed to get through. People were really friendly the whole time.

I ended up leaving the ride after about 2 hours on the road. We went made a huge loop around Avenue A and ended up running into the ride. I figured at that point the event was becoming too disorganized and the cops would certainly take the confusion as an opportunity to begin arresting people. I was right, they made some 200 arrests that evening. I was happy that I left when I did. I had nothing but a positive impression of the event by that point and it was a good time to bail.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed biking in New York. The streets tend to be pretty wide and flat. The cars seem to acknowledge that you exist and might want to be on the street. Although the streets are full of potholes, I found they were pretty easy to avoid. I have a deep fear of riding in San Francisco, but after Critical Mass here, I was ready to bike all over Manhattan.

I like biking a lot. It is a fast and easy way to get around a city. Buses are often slow and indirect and cars are not only polluting, but inconvenient to drive around and park. Bikes allow for easy transpiration and easy parking. You'd be surprised at what you can carry on your back and it's great exercise. I hope events like Critical Mass actually promote bikes as a regular form of transportation.

shout, shout, let it all out...

2004-08-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

This is just too cute. For those of you not protesting in NYC we have The Great American Shout Out.

I'm into it.

i think this may be the dumbest thing i've ever seen

2004-08-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

Drug Tax Stamp

please tell me this is a joke....

Dick Cheney comes out...

2004-08-24T14:46:00.000-07:00

against the marriage amendment.

Marry Cheney might just get to the chapel yet...

Raise your hand if you think this is a ploy to get the Log Cabin back into the party. "Oh, don't worry, only one half of the ticket hates you!"

International Waters - The Land That Law Forgot

2004-08-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Dutch Abortion Ship Sets Sail to Portugal

Wow. I don't have much to say about this except that those are some bold Danish folks.

I'm always a little ambivalent about actions like this. On one hand, I absolutely support their cause and I'm happy that they're providing this sort of service. On the other hand I'm always a little weary of tactics like this because I can see all the ways that they could be used for purposes that I would strongly disagree with.

Anyhow, go Dutch doctors. Get women the health services they need.

And yes - I do mean need. If a woman is willing to break the laws of her country and get smuggled out into international waters to get an abortion she's clearly serious about it. That should go without saying, but I read over and over again that women are just using abortion as birth control. This is totally false, of course. The fact that women are willing to risk so much to get access to this health service should be proof enough of the fact that family planning services, including abortions, are absolutely necessary and wanted by the women in these countries. I think this should be used as an example as to why abortion should stay safe and legal in this country as well.

RepCon Riots?

2004-08-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

Intresting article in Salon about how unruly protests in NYC this year could actually help Bush get elected.

People keep bringing up Chicago in '68 comparisons. The whole article, in fact rests on the idea that the '68 DemCom riots were what brought Nixon to the White House. What I question, though, is the logic that riots will always be good for conservatives. The Chicago riots were during the Democratic convention, not the Republican one. I question the assumption that the riots brought about a conservative win or if they just brought about an urge to change the party in power. I mean, the Democrats were clearly not pleasing these protesters, right? Maybe people thought getting rid of them would end the social upheaval. Maybe they weren't voting for conservativism, exactly. Maybe they were voting to shut people up?

I don't know. My knowledge of this period has been filtered through Todd Gitlin's work. So maybe he's right. But I'm inclined to believe that Nixon was elected because:
1) The Democratic candidate was shot before the convention so they had a weaker candidate running.
2) The peace deal that Johnson was working on fell through.
3) When the country seems to be going to hell in hand basket most people will opt for new leadership.

I find the whole idea of discouraging protests to be ridiculous. The protests will be spun by the media in a certain way. I'm not sure the actual events will matter to anyone. One kid throwing a rock or wearing black can be easily thrown on every front page in the country regardless of what anyone else does. So there ends up being an argument that doesn't make any sense. The only way to make sure protests don't get negative coverage is to not protest at all. One kid fighting with one police officer is enough to taint an entire event. So what do you do? Don't bother with direct action? Don't organize marches? Just vote and that's it?

Voting is great, but Kerry isn't much of a protest candidate, is he? He voted for the war. His stated philosophy on foreign policy isn't all that stellar. His domestic policy is better than Bush's but doesn't really spark the imagination.

Given that, it seems like the only way to actually express disagreement with Bush is to go out and protest.

What I hope for is Bush out of office and a new President who takes notice of the protesters and coalitions that put him in office. It would be totally counter productive to vote for a middle of the road, pro-war candidate and just hope for the best. Kerry does not represent those who are going to protest in NYC. Simply voting for Kerry isn't enough.

linkage

2004-08-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

I think Fafblog has said all there is to say about John Kerry

Bush to the rest of the world : Screw you guys, I'm going home.

2004-08-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Bush plans to remove troops from around the world.

Man, can Bush time anything properly? Normally I'd welcome any scaling back of our military around the world, but with the way Bush has conducted foreign policy these last four years this just comes off like a five year old throwing a fit and taking all his toys home.

I'm not sure how this fits into Bush's overarching strategy of global domination, though. It seems to me that Germany is a better place to launch an attack on Iran or whatever country he dislikes this week. Pulling out of these countries seems like it would be counter to what he wants to do.

Unless, of course, he thinks that this will punish our allies. Or he's getting kicked out and is trying to cover....

in other gay, gay news

2004-08-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

N.J. Governor Resigns, Admits He Is Gay

Can't we just all get gay married?

Apparently not. I understand that McGreevy has been an opponent of Gay Marriage in the recent past. Of course, those two marriages to people he's not all that attracted to were totally vaild.

Rueters UK

Full text of his statment

....

"And so my truth is that I am a gay American. And I am blessed to live in the greatest nation with the tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, in a country which provides so much to its people."

This is just too awesome. Um. Our traditon of civil liberties would probably be even greater if closeted homos like yourself weren't working against the out folks in the world. Thanks!

just kidding about that "until death do us part" thing

2004-08-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

Calif. Top Court Annuls San Francisco Gay Marriages

Getting gay married in CA is like hanging out with Britney Spears in Vegas. Only these couples actually meant it.

This side, the Incumbent.....

2004-08-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm heading to New York City to go protest during RepCom. I figure that if a middle class young woman from Oakland won't drop everything to go hold up signs and get a good beating from the police, no one will.

I'm absolutely disorganized in relation to what I'll be doing once I get there. I'm not associated with any groups and I don't have a specific action that I'm going for. I just think that if we don't speak up, nothing will change. I'm flying into JKF at 3:25pm on Friday, August 27th. I'm planning on leaving NYC the day after the convention.

I'm going to update this post as I heard about events that I want to go to.

First up:
The March for Women's Lives

Saturday, August 28th.
11:00 a.m. Assemble at Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn
12:00 noon Step off across the Brooklyn Bridge
1:00 p.m. Rally for Women’s Lives at City Hall Park, Manhattan
.......
Ring Out
World Trade Center/ Ground Zero
Observance

Saturday, August 28, 5:00-7:45 PM.
.......

Sunday, August 29:
Untied For Peace And Justice March
Assemble at 10:00AM,
Seventh Ave. @ 14th St., NYC
March steps off at noon

racial profiling

2004-08-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of this stupid "statistical likelihood" argument about racial profiling. Steven E. Landsburg, you're an idiot.

In today's Slate, he makes two basic arguments:

But there are two points those on both sides seem to have missed. First, detaining 14 Middle Eastern men is neither more nor less an infringement of civil liberties than detaining 14 passengers chosen at random. Either way, 14 people have their liberty infringed.

And:

If you're going to detain 14 people, they should at least be the 14 people who are statistically most likely to be worth detaining.

...

Now, that first argument is a little silly. People don't get detained at random. They get searched at random. Their luggage gets searched at random. We aren't dragging random people to the backroom for questioning at random, though. The premise that since we're going to detain people anyway so it might as well be Arabs is false to begin with.

Besides which, I would argue that it's much more of a threat to civil liberties to detain specific people rather than random people. Random searchers are problematic on their own. You can at least argue that while you're giving up your right to privacy you do so willingly for safety reasons. If everyone else has to give up these rights, you aren't putting people into special classes.

Pulling people out of line because they look a certain way is a much, much bigger problem. This creates two classes of people. You're asking one class of people to give up freedoms that you yourself do not wish to give up. How is creating a racial class system where some are denied their rights while others are not ok?

How many times must it be said that racial profiling like this is simply not going to work?

I haven't written anything about this yet, so I think I'll do it now.

Racial profiling in an attempt to catch terrorists is not going to work. It will not work for a variety of reasons. It will not work because racial profiling will not screen everyone you think it will, but it will screen thousands of people that you don't think you'll screen. It will not work because racial profiling wastes resources. And finally, it will not work because as soon as you have some screen process down pat, the profile of the people you're looking for will change.

Lets take this point-by-point.

Racial profiling will not work because it will not screen everyone you think it will, but it will screen thousands of people that you don't think you'll screen. Case in point: me. I have been taken for just about every broad ethnic or racial group under the sun, often times by people in said racial or ethnic group. That's why I call my blog "ethnically ambiguous". I am. So if you start screening people simply because they "look" Arab, you'll screen me. I'm not Arab. I'm not even Muslim. By your criteria, I'm not any more of a danger than the old Midwestern lady everyone feels bad about inconveniencing. Using the "statistical likelihood" argument, I should not be held up. I should breeze right through security. But I'm not going to because I'm brown. On the flip side of this, I have known a great many Arab-Americans who "look white". They would never set off your radar. They're ethnically ambiguous too; they're just not brown. There are more non-"ethnic looking" Arabs running around than you think. So while harmless me is sitting around having my underwear searched, you're letting the "statically likely" person walk right through security no questions asked.

Ok, you say, how about just screening everyone from an Arab country? All the 9/11 hijackers are from Arab countries, right? Sure. Unfortunately, not everyone with Islamic terrorist leanings is from an Arab nation - hell not all of them are even Arabs. Several people held in Guantanamo Bay right now are British or Australian. The Brits and Aussies are our great allies and yet we're holding their countrymen indefinitely for fighting with the Taliban. We even caught one of our own - a white kid from Marin county named John Lindh.

Why don't we just detain everyone who's ever opened a copy of the Q'uran? Short of that, there's no good way to screen people based an affiliation with some group. Racial profiling is going to let terrorists breeze through security and detain innocent folks from the Midwest. Hey, sounds like what you say is going on now!

Next point: Racial will not work because it wastes resources. I think I've already outlines how it will be entirely ineffective in screen all the people you think you want to screen. You'd have to increase your resources ten fold in order to handle detaining all the brown/Muslim/Arab/whatever, folks. Throwing all that money away when you're not even all that likely to screen the people you want to is wasteful. But here's another factor - all those people freaking out because we aren't profiling are on the lookout for strange behavior. Is someone acting weird near the bathroom? You're going to notice and tell a flight attendant. But if you think you're safe because all those "likely terrorists" you were worried about have been screened you're much less likely to be on guard. So you're wasting government resources and you're not even looking out for yourself. Waste, waste, waste. Hell, it's more wasteful to profile screen than it is to randomly screen and you have no guarantee of effectiveness! How safe is that?

And finally, racial profiling is not a well thought out idea because as soon as you have some screen process down pat, the profile of the people you're looking for will change. I know we all like to think that terrorists are all exactly the same nationality, color, ethnic group, but they're not. There were people supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan from all over the world. I'm absolutely sure that Islamic terrorists could eventually find someone who does not fit your profile in any way and use that person. Racial profiling would work for just as long as no one knows you're using racial profiling. As so as you know for sure you're going to get screened you're going to find someone else to do your dirty work for you. So, sure, for the next year you might be able to effectively screen people, maybe. But you can't hope that it will last any longer than that.

Racial profiling is a wasteful system with no guarantee of success. Why do we even need to argue about it's worth? Instead of endlessly debating whether or not it's ok to screen hundreds of thousands of people based on a model that will change as soon as you start screening, we should be thinking of better security measures that have an actual change of working.

More troubles for Karzai...

2004-08-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Afghan electioneering gets nasty

Looks like Karzai dropped his running mate for the October election. His running mate was the current Vice President and defense minister, Muhammad Fahim.

According to Al-Jazeera, there's talk that he did so to split up the ethnic Tajik vote:

Afghan politicians and analysts believe Karzai's change of partner nine weeks before the presidential election has effectively split the Tajik vote.

More than a quarter of all Afghans are Tajiks. They number in excess of four million people and form the second largest ethnic group after Pashtuns.

According to Reuters Fahim is now backing Karzai's main opponent, Education Minister Yunus Qanuni. Apparently Qanuni decided to run after Karzai dumped Fahim.

Fahim is also accusing Karzai of having lost support from Northern Alliance leaders.

NPR:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking the support of former Taliban officials in an effort to stabilize the democratic process. The U.S.-backed Karzai has been fighting insurgents, some of them Taliban, since he took office.

Good times. Good times.

twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

2004-08-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

I watched John Kerry's speech last Thursday. I think I'm going to end up voting for the guy, but there's not a whole lot about the platform he's presented that I can get behind.

John Kerry. My Smart-ass comments.

Please note that I'm cutting out the boring bits. Here's the BBC's full text.
....

My fellow Americans: we are here tonight united in one simple purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.

Bush has totally completely pissed off the rest of the world. If elected, we may be forgiven. I promise not to piss everyone off.

This is one of Kerry's strongest selling points. I think most people can agree that we actually need the rest of the world to get on board with our anti-terrorist plans. International terrorism requires and international effort. Bush doesn't seem to get that.

I was born in Colorado, in Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, when my dad was a pilot in World War II. Now, I'm not one to read into things, but guess which wing of the hospital the maternity ward was in? I'm not making this up. I was born in the West Wing!

Man, how much was i hoping he'd say 'the left wing'.

I'm not sure anyone but those "God chose George Bush' folks really wants a guy who was destined to be President. I dunno. Maybe that's just me.

My mother was the rock of our family as so many mothers are. She stayed up late to help me do my homework. She sat by my bed when I was sick, and she answered the questions of a child who, like all children, found the world full of wonders and mysteries.

She was my den mother when I was a Cub Scout and she was so proud of her fifty year pin as a Girl Scout leader. She gave me her passion for the environment. She taught me to see trees as the cathedrals of nature. And by the power of her example, she showed me that we can and must finish the march toward full equality for all women in our country.

"Hey ladies, here's a shout out. I like my mom and by extension I like you. I'm not really promising you anything useful besides being pro-choice right now, but hey, that's not so bad, right?"

Ok. I appreciate the shout out. Thanks. You do mention the wage gap and the fact that women get worse healthcare than men. You get some points. But, like every other damn thing on your site, you tell me that you care and then don't really have anything concrete to address these issues. "I've noticed that the situation for women sorta sucks" is nice but I'm demanding. I want more than that out of a candidate. This just feels like nice rhetoric without much intention of action.

My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt and my first bicycle. He also taught me that we are here for something bigger than ourselves; he lived out the responsibilities and sacrifices of the greatest generation to whom we owe so much.

"I like women, but don't worry. I'm still a man. Look, I played baseball."

I like that this assumes that a girl wouldn't have played baseball or rode bikes around. You know, I played softball and rode a swank black boys bike. In a skirt. Hey! My dad did the things that a boy remembers too, only for his daughter! *gasp* I live in a world where Title 9 is still being blamed for budget cuts in the "important" sports because they have to fund "girls sports" too. Yeah. Kerry's better than Bush, but he's not impressing me.

Yeah, yeah, I know that's might not be the intended message, but why throw that in there? The bit about "things a boy remembers"? It is there to contrast with the mother things. But those are typical all American boy things too. He's doing it to make it clear that he's not some wussy boy. He grew up like all the other boys. A "real" boy.

"Also, I respect my elders. I really want you old folks to vote."

(cut to babble about growing up in Germany. That one joke he made might have been funny if Kerry were better at telling jokes.)

But what I learned has stayed with me for a lifetime. I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for all that we had done. I felt goose bumps as I got off a military train and heard the Army band strike up "Stars and Stripes Forever." I learned what it meant to be America at our best. I learned the pride of our freedom. And I am determined now to restore that pride to all who look to America.

"Let's all remember that one time we did a good job rebuilding a country. Hey! I was there then. I've actually been overseas! Fighting Soviets! When I was 5!"

Mine were greatest generation parents. And as I thank them, we all join together to thank that whole generation for making America strong, for winning World War II, winning the Cold War, and for the great gift of service which brought America fifty years of peace and prosperity.

"Just in case you forgot it, I like the old folks!"

My parents inspired me to serve, and when I was a junior in high school, John Kennedy called my generation to service. It was the beginning of a great journey, a time to march for civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, and for peace. We believed we could change the world. And you know what? We did.

I do like this. It contrasts nicely with GWB's unfocused youth. Kerry's a straight arrow with a sense of duty. It also gives a shout out to the liberals out there. Bravo.

But we're not finished. The journey isn't complete. The march isn't over. The promise isn't perfected. Tonight, we're setting out again. And together, we're going to write the next great chapter of America's story.

We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

Ok. He starts good, but ends a little weak. He's right, minority and women's rights aren't fully realized. But I'm not totally sure "telling the truth to the American people" is exactly the place to start. I don't think that women earn 77 cents on the dollar to men because Bush is a lying bastard. I think they're getting paid 77cents on the dollar because of bad hiring practices and unenforced equal rights policies.

I ask you to judge me by my record: As a young prosecutor, I fought for victim's rights and made prosecuting violence against women a priority. When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street.

"Hey, I'm not like those pansy-ass criminal loving liberals! I like cops! And balanced budgets! Look! Cops!"

And then I reached across the aisle to work with John McCain, to find the truth about our POW's and missing in action, and to finally make peace with Vietnam.

"Hey swing voters! John McCain worked with me a couple of times. We all over John McCain, right? Ok, sure he's working for the other guy right now. But look! John McCain!"

Hey, I'm all for getting closure on the Vietnam POW issue. I know that was important to vets, but the John McCain dropping here is just silly.

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

"Read my lips - no new neocons!"

(skippping some stuff about how bad your quality of life is)

We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that new jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best we can do. They say this is the best economy we've ever had. And they say that anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can't do better.

We can do better and we will. We're the optimists. For us, this is a country of the future. We're the can do people. And let's not forget what we did in the 1990s. We balanced the budget. We paid down the debt. We created 23 million new jobs. We lifted millions out of poverty and we lifted the standard of living for the middle class. We just need to believe in ourselves and we can do it again.

Good job deflecting the "dour liberal" thing. I like this theme and that whole "taking back the flag" thing he does later.

(skipping the crap about Edwards and his wife and Kerry's wife. Yeah, yeah, kiss kiss love love.)

And in this journey, I am accompanied by an extraordinary band of brothers led by that American hero, a patriot named Max Celand. Our band of brothers doesn't march together because of who we are as veterans, but because of what we learned as soldiers. We fought for this nation because we loved it and we came back with the deep belief that every day is extra. We may be a little older now, we may be a little greyer, but we still know how to fight for our country.

"Hey, man, I've actually served in the military unlike you-know-who."

I think it might have been this point in the speech where Max Celand clapped with his hand and his amputated leg. That was priceless.

(cutting out the "we're not holding grudges thing about the primaries)

My fellow Americans, the world tonight is very different from the world of four years ago. But I believe the American people are more than equal to the challenge.

SPETEMBER 11 CHANGED EVERYTHING!

(snip)

I am proud that after September 11th all our people rallied to President Bush's call for unity to meet the danger. There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans. There were only Americans. How we wish it had stayed that way.

Wait...what now? You wish we'd all remained united under Bush? Are you sure about that because he still sucked back then. The economy didn't just tank when he started the war in Iraq. All those domestic problems didn't just appear out of nowhere.

Whatever. I guess you're trying to dodge Republicans calling you un-American for campaigning against Bush during a war, but dude the war isn't why I want him out. And you go on later to talk about how militant you're willing to be so it's not like you're the peace candidate or anything.

Now I know there are those who criticize me for seeing complexities and I do because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so.

As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation's time-honoured tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

Nice. Stand by being intellectually engaged. That Bush guy might as well be napping his whole way through his presidency.

I know what kids go through when they are carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place and they can't tell friend from foe. I know what they go through when they're out on patrol at night and they don't know what's coming around the next bend. I know what it's like to write letters home telling your family that everything's all right when you're not sure that's true.

In case you missed it, war hero.

As President, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent." So lesson one, this is the only justification for going to war.

And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.

That's funny, because you're keeping us in Iraq. And um...promising to use the military to do exactly what Bush is using the military to do. So um. Ok.

I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers. That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

Here is the reality: that won't happen until we have a president who restores America's respect and leadership -- so we don't have to go it alone in the world.

And we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us.

Ok. Good, good. So you're willing to work with the UN and take their advice when they say that going in somewhere is a bad idea, right?

I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.

Oh. Um. Ok. So no. No you won't. So how, exactly is this policy any different from Bush's? I'm supposed to just trust that you won't go around invading people. Because, of course, you saw the intel on Iraq and decided to vote against it....oh wait. You voted for it.

You voted for a war of choice, based on shaky intel. But you were on the intel committee in the Senate so you should have known it was shaky. And you voted for it anyway. And you're not going to take the advice of the UN if you don't feel like it.

Right. Great. Well, you've got my war-protest vote.

We will add 40,000 active duty troops not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations. We will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of National Guard and reservists.

Ah. So you'll expand our military to send kids in harm's way on a war that we all know is founded on nothing. Yay! Sign me up!

(snip)

We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to and not just feared.

...by not promising to honor our obligations to the UN or act in accordance with it's mandates....

We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.

"Now that all the nuclear powers in the world are our allies, I don't think anyone else should get nukes." Bold. Real bold.

We need a strong military and we need to lead strong alliances. And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose and we will win. The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.

"I ain't no hippie! But you know, it'd be sorta nice if other countries could pay for a few things now and then. But I'm not promising anything. Screw you, France!"

And the front lines of this battle are not just far away they're right here on our shores, at our airports, and potentially in any town or city. Today, our national security begins with homeland security. The 9-11 Commission has given us a path to follow, endorsed by Democrats, Republicans, and the 9-11 families. As President, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement the recommendations of that commission. We shouldn't be letting ninety-five percent of container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected. We shouldn't be leaving our nuclear and chemical plants without enough protection. And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America.

Ah. Please follow through with this and fund our first responders. I'd like that.
In fact, I think people should be far more worried that we don't have the funding for first responders here that we should. Who cares if we invade France if a grenade in an office building can't be responded to properly?

(snip)

That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology and it doesn't belong to any political party. It belongs to all the American people.

"I can flag wave with the best of 'em!"
I'm actually all for taking the flag back from Republicans. I can't stand that seeing flag waving makes me think of neocons and religious zealots. I'd like to see it stand for more than that. Of course, Kerry likes to get his war on so I'm not sure how much will change.

My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values. In the end, it's not just policies and programs that matter; the president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle.

WHAT?!?!?!? No he didn't. Did he just say that his "values" are more important than his policies? What? How does that even make sense.

"Please don't vote for Nader. I promise I'm liberal too, even if I won't implement any of my policies."

For four years, we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Values are not just words. They're what we live by. They're about the causes we champion and the people we fight for. And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

Doesn't that just contradict what he said above? Are values our actions or not?

(snip nice use of repetition in listing off all the way Bush has failed to provide anything useful to people)

We believe that what matters most is not narrow appeals masquerading as values, but the shared values that show the true face of America. Not narrow appeals that divide us, but shared values that unite us. Family and faith. Hard work and responsibility. Opportunity for all so that every child, every parent, every worker has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential.

"Bush is trying to play on your baser instincts. Don't let him."

(snip all these "real life" examples. he's pumping me so full of sap I'm blowing my nose with a pancake.)

And so we come here tonight to ask: Where is the conscience of our country?

I dunno, where?

I'll tell you where it is: it's in rural and small town America; it's in urban neighbourhoods and suburban main streets; it's alive in the people I've met in every part of this land. It's bursting in the hearts of Americans who are determined to give our country back its values and its truth.

Oh. There it is! Under my couch!

We value jobs that pay you more not less than you earned before. We value jobs where, when you put in a week's work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, and lift up the quality of your life. We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better.

I'd also like to say that I value a job where I can get a raise instead of having to company hop to earn more money. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

Also, last time I checked the middle class could generally pay their bills. It's the working class and working poor who can't make ends meet. What's up with this middle class thing? I guess most people in this country consider themselves middle class even if they aren't but man, you'd think you could use the right terms here.

So here is our economic plan to build a stronger America:

Yay! New plans!

First, new incentives to revitalize manufacturing.

Second, investment in technology and innovation that will create the good-paying jobs of the future.

Third, close the tax loopholes that reward companies for shipping our jobs overseas. Instead, we will reward companies that create and keep good paying jobs where they belong in the good old U.S.A.

We value an America that exports products, not jobs and we believe American workers should never have to subsidize the loss of their own job.

I think the manufactuaring boat has sailed, dude. The 90s took care of that.

Yay! investment in technology! That'll be great for those of us who were already on the right side of the digital divide.

Oh. That's nice. Close those gaps! And while you're at it, could you stop giving contracts to companies that have tax shelters in the Bahamas?

Next, we will trade and compete in the world. But our plan calls for a fair playing field because if you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's nobody in the world the American worker can't compete against.

What now? Fair playing field? What does that mean, exactly? Higher tariffs? Getting the WTO to force other countries to bend to our will? Or do you mean relaxing regulations here so it's like third world countries?

And let me tell you what we won't do: we won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as President: I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in job creation, health care and education.

Read my lips: no new taxes!

Our education plan for a stronger America sets high standards and demands accountability from parents, teachers, and schools. It provides for smaller class sizes and treats teachers like the professionals they are. And it gives a tax credit to families for each and every year of college.

Huh. Ok, this tax credit thing is only so helpful. This kids who have the hardest time paying for college are the kids whose families have so little money that a tax credit won't mean anything. Tax credits might help better off families and that's nice an all but what about the kid whose mom is on welfare? Where's their chance at a higher education?

And we value health care that's affordable and accessible for all Americans.

By being willing to fight for socialized healthcare so that everyone can have it no matter how poor they are?

Our health care plan for a stronger America cracks down on the waste, greed, and abuse in our health care system and will save families up to $1,000 a year on their premiums. You'll get to pick your own doctor and patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats, will make medical decisions. Under our plan, Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. And all Americans will be able to buy less expensive prescription drugs from countries like Canada.

Oh. Just kidding. We'll just make insurance slightly less expensive and let you buy drugs from Canada.

Drugs from Canada? Ok. Look here, buddy. Drugs from Canada (and if your Californian, Mexico) are not the answer. The answer is to make drugs cheaper here. Why are you campaigning on a dumbass workaround like this? Where are my big ideas?

And when I'm President, America will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, the connected, and the elected it is a right for all Americans.

By letting you buy drugs from a country that actually values the healthcare of their citizens!

Seriously, people. Offering the same healthcare plan members of Congress has to everyone is great but it does not solve the problem of people who can't afford insurance in the first place. How are you gunna tell a Wal-mart employee to buy your insurance if they can't make the rent as it is?

(Cut all that crap about mid-east oil. Yeah, it was a great line but I don't really care.)

And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future -- so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

He wants to burn more coal.

*hack* *wheeze*

I've told you about our plans for the economy, for education, for health care, for energy independence. I want you to know more about them. So now I'm going to say something that Franklin Roosevelt could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com.

And get more non-information. Seriously, I'm looking at the website right now and I'm not seeing a concrete plan here so much as expanded campaign rhetoric.

Ok. I'm done.

I have more to say about this but this post is long enough as it is. That man is long winded let me tell you.

Our CEO in Chief really knows how to run the government.

2004-07-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

US budget deficit to hit $445bn

The numbers are in. Let's take a look.

The forecast is, however, lower than a $521bn figure projected in February, an improvement the White House put down to better than expected tax receipts.

Well then. I guess that's a buy rating right there.

How many times have "fiscal conservatives" yammered on and on about "liberal overspending"? Too damn many, if this is the best a Republican Congress and White House can do. You'd think with all those business leaders running the country, we'd be doing a little better.

Oh wait.

Bush is running the country just like all his other businesses - right into the ground. With a track record like that it's amazing anyone's letting him touch anything. I guess that's what a Yale degree and a good family name will get you. If this guy were running a reputable company, he'd be thrown out on his ear.

I'd like to see some "tax and spend" happen here. This whole no revenue and spend thing seems like a bad idea. What happened to the "tax cuts will bring us more money" thing? Oh. Right. That was just something people say.

I can see why they waited until such a late time on a Friday to get this news out. With DemCon making Kerry look so good, these numbers are nothing to brag about. This is yet another standard to judge Bush unfavorably against.

Full text of John Kerry's speech

2004-07-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

Brought to you by the BBC

...but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward,
and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom...

Work's killing me at the moment. I'll have more to say about this in a bit.

Blogging - don't leave it to the professionals

2004-07-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

Ok. I'd like to take a quick moment to bitch about these mainstream news orgs starting blogs for DemCon 2004.

Blogs have been around for years, folks. There are some standards that I think you should need to abide by. Like having freaking perma links for each entry. Every damn blog service on earth archives posts as single events. That way when I need to throw a fit about some off hand comment our press core types, I can do so with ease.

Got that CNN?

How 'bout you Slate?

Slate, I'm most ashamed of you. You who are entirely and online magazine. What excuse do you have? None. That's how much. You've had a running "blog" in the form of the Kausfiles for years and you have yet to figure out how to format a blog properly. For shame. Why can't you be more like your older sibling, cuter Salon? Would it really be that hard?

Gay Marriage

2004-07-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

House Bill Strips Federal Courts of Power Over Same-Sex Cases

I have many things to say about Same-Sex Marriage. There are a lot of arguments made and a lot of legal wrangling to do. So right now I'm going to try to focus on the attacks conservatives are making on our court system.

The House just passed a bill that would strip the federal court's jurisdiction on gay marriage issues. I'm not totally sure how this is would work. According to this Find Law Article:
If the MPA were to become law, the federal courts would be divested of the powers to hear two kinds of "federal question" cases: Cases relating to the MPA itself, and certain cases relating to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

It seems to me that the Supreme Court would easily overturn the Act if it were brought to them. I'm having trouble imagining that the Federal Courts would allow themselves to be bound by such a law. The entire point of the Supreme Court is to rule on the constitutionality of cases brought before it. How could Congress limit what they rule on?

The DOMA is iffy on a constitutional level at best so I can understand conservatives trying to pull this sort of thing now. They must figure that proposing acts that are at base simply a political statement and not a serious law will be enough to energize their base. The DOMA passed as a meaningless statement. There were no pro-gay marriage rulings at the time of it's passing. In fact, I'm guessing that the Gay Marriage issue became more mainstream after it's passing. Social conservatives must figure that they can fight for this act as well without fear of doing real damage to our court system.

And real damage they would do. If the courts actually let this sort of thing pass, where would it stop? Why not pass all kinds of laws banning anything you please and then pass laws that prevent them from getting stuck down? It could easily work against conservatives as well as liberals. Congress could easily pass laws concerning interstate trade. Say, banning shipping anti-abortion pamphlets across state lines. Then they could pass a law saying that you couldn't challenge that law in court. They could do it with gun control as well. There wouldn't be any limits on what you could ban the courts from ruling about. The Supreme Court is mostly conservative these days. They wouldn't want to limit their ability to get precedent set for the things they want any more that liberals do. Laws can change on a whim, but court rulings have a lasting affect on legal and political debate. They wouldn't want to limit that affect any more than liberals do.

It's absolutely ridiculous to think that any serious lawmaker would try to get this passed. The people pushing these things through the House are political attack dogs with no respect for our system of government or the rule of law. They're trying slick legal tactics to score political points and it is detrimental to the political process. When our political leaders start rallying around laws like this it sullies the reputation of Congress as a whole. These law makers are not here to serve the public so much as they're here to gain power and keep power. They should be ashamed of themselves.

One from the Blog-o-sphere

2004-07-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

White House Helps Block Extension of Tax Cuts

I love this. The White House blocked extending it's own tax cuts because Democrats weren't opposing it. That's right, they opposed their own plan because the opposition didn't oppose it. (Yeah, I love the word 'oppose')

Now, I sort of understand the Bush Team Logic here. Bush's solution to everything is tax cuts. (Too much money going to the government? Cut taxes! Not enough money going to the government? Cut taxes! Too many jobs? Cut taxes! Too few jobs? Cut taxes!) It's pretty much the only thing he's got to stand one since he's opposed to government spending across the board. (In theory anyway, we all know how much he likes to spend money on wars of choice and public funding for churches.) So he can't really offer people government programs to make their lives better. All he can do is cut taxes and take away funding to government agencies. So if his single issue has bi-partisan support he can't really run on it, can he? You want middle class tax cuts? Both Bush and Kerry will give them to you plus Kerry's going to offer you more stuff. I'd go with the plus stuff if I were a swing voter.

So Bush has to make sure that he scores big on any tax issues. But getting something passed that nobody opposes won't make much news and won't really define him as a man with singular vision. Of course, he'd rather his tax cuts be pushed in with some squabbling and fanfare.

But damn. Opposing your own plan? How much sense does that make? If this story gets a lot of play, you just end up looking like a crass politician with no ethical or ideological foundations. You end up looking like you don't really care about the American people so much as about your own hold on power and ability to get a good photo op. And of course, political mongering of this kind keeps you from being able to accuse your opponent of political maneuvering of the same kind.

Way to paint yourself into a corner. When's Rove getting the boot?

A few bad apples?

2004-07-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Afghans Try Americans on Torture Charges

These guys aren't making us look very good. It looks like some crazy group of guys randomly went over to Afghanistan to make some money and beat some people up.

As if the people of Afghanistan don't have enough trouble with the US military. Did they really need extra nut jobs beating people up? We're the bombs enough? Do they need to deal with entrepreneurs too?

For anyone not reading Atrios

2004-07-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/07/flogging-allawi-story.html

Paul McGeough reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald that Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi carried out the summary execution of six Iraqi detainees (with one left wounded, bringing the count of victims to seven) in Baghdad just days prior to the power handoff.

Wow. This is a damaging claim, if I've ever heard one. As each argument for the war falls away, we're told that Iraqis are much better off without Hussein in power. Yet we've but men like this in charge of the country? If that's the only argument hawks have, they're doing a poor job of making sure it continues to be a valid argument.

Guantanamo

2004-07-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon says it has notified all detainees at Guantanamo Bay that they can challenge their detentions, including in the US courts.

That's good news.

Los Almos

2004-07-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

Security lapses at all three major US nuclear weapons labs - Sandia and Los Alamos in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California - have included the loss of keys, laptops and even a van, as well as the two-year disappearance of two vials of plutonium oxide.

The what now? 2 years?

Funny how I don't believe her.

2004-07-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

"We've had elections in this country when we were at war, even when we were in civil war. And we should have the elections on time. That's the view of the president, that's the view of the administration," Rice told CNN on Monday.

So I've been interested in what, exactly The Constitution says about voting for President. It's interesting. Our Founding Fathers didn't actually believe in "one man, one vote". It looks like, technically, we don't have to have an election at all.

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like manner choose the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each state having one vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice President.

So our state legislators pick out some folks to go vote for President and Vice President. The popular vote isn't mentioned at all. It's just sort of a custom, I guess.

"America - the birthplace of modern democracy" my shiny metal ass.

Luckily, the Constitution isn't the only place where the rules of governance are established. The Congress gets to draw up agreements about when the electors are selected and how disputes are resolved.

Presidential Election Laws Provisions of the Constitution and United States Code relating to Presidential Elections

The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.

I guess Congress could choose to suspend the election. However, Bush's term would still end on the Jan 20, 2005. At which point, I guess Congress gets to figure out what to do.

In short, Congress would have to OK suspending the election. I don't have too much confidence in this Congress, considering that most of them didn't even bother to read the Patriot Act before signing it. They've also pretty much let Bush do whatever he wants, no matter how damaging.

Two things can be done. One: Write your Senators and Representatives and tell them that you don't support any postponing of elections. Two: Prepare to take to the street to protest. I think that the people running this country think that we're just going to accept underhanded crap like this. Let them know that we will not. Law doesn't bind them; custom binds them. We have to make sure they know that we aren't just going to sit down quietly while our system of government is destroyed.

John Edwards - Trial Lawyer

2004-07-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Republicans and their dislike of "trial lawyers". One of the arguments against Edwards that the Bush-Cheney camp has been throwing around is that he's a "trial lawyer" - meaning that he's a personal injury attorney. Which means that he helps people who've had debilitating accidents get enough money to live, because God knows that the state won't be of much help.

So what's wrong with being a personal injury attorney, exactly? I mean, yes, you can paint a picture of a sleazy Lionel Hutz style picture of an unethical ambulance chaser, but for the most part personal injury attorneys are just trying to get the best deal they can for their clients. Isn't that the American way?

Republicans argue that we need to cap the awards people can get in malpractice lawsuits because they're not "fair". One person with a good attorney can get a lot of money while someone with a lesser attorney will get very little. They describe this situation as being like winning the lottery. This is all well and good, if you actually believe that Republicans care anything about equitable distribution of wealth. It seems pretty clear that they don't, however.

Let's think about it. Doesn't putting a cap on the amount of an award you can get run contrary to the rights of the individual? Didn't that trial lawyer do a good job? Shouldn't she be rewarded for being the very best trial lawyer she can be? Shouldn't the plaintiff get everything they can out of the system? And shouldn't doctors be held accountable for their screw-ups? Isn't that the "personal responsibility" that social conservatives say is so lacking in today's society?

But let's look at it in another way. Republicans love a good "lottery". That's why they hate unions, isn't it? People don't get to negotiate their own wage if unions have set wage standards. I would argue that non-union labor is like a lottery. If a company has the budget to hire two employees for the same job, it's highly likely that they won't be paid the same amount. Each person will have to negotiate their own terms based on very little information about how the company pays or what anyone else is getting. So person A could, in theory be getting thousands of dollars more a year for the exact same work person B is doing. Person B may even be a better employee but she didn't win the "wage lottery".

How does this relate to personal injury claims? Well, Republicans argue that personal injury claims aren't really based on anything but how the jury feels about the plaintiff and there's only so much money to go around so if Plaintiff A gets a lot, plaintiff B will get less. So instead they want Plaintiff A to get less money. Ok. Well, you could look at salary the same way. Workers A and B aren't being paid for the quality of their work, they're being paid based on how their manager feels about them. And if Employee A makes a lot of money, it probably means that employee B will make less money to make up for employee A's large salary.

So it seems to me that they really don't care about people getting unequal money for the same things. What they care about is the insurance lobby not wanting to do their jobs and pay claims. And somehow they're trying to tar John Edwards because he works against their lobby. But it seems to me that people like John Edwards are the only thing getting normal voters their claims paid. Which the Kerry-Edwards campaign could easily argue. And it would be a compelling argument. Who'd you rather elect, the guy fighting with the insurance company for you or the guy with the business degree who's on the side of the insurance company? I think most voters would rather vote for the trial lawyer. It's a bad argument against Edwards.

Unless, of course, the Republicans aren't really trying to sway Joe Public and are instead trying to get the insurance industry on their side. Wow. Good job, guys.

Conspiracy much?

2004-07-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Why must Bush insist on making cynical conspiracy theorists correct? How can we, as Americans have confidence that our government officials aren't planning secret take overs of our country in smoke filled rooms when he keeps pulling things like this?

U.S. Mulling How to Delay Nov Vote in Case of Attack -Reuters

Officials discuss how to delay Election Day - CNN

Report: US 'considering' postponed elections - Al-Jazeera

As soon as Tom Ridge made his terrorist threat announcement last week, the chatter started. People all over discussed theories as to how Bush was going to use this to scare people away from voting or stop the election all together. And now they make this announcement.

This whole thing leaves me wondering about Bush and his supposed political savvy. Bush, I ask you! How are God fearing, America loving people supposed to keep from questioning Bush and his motives if every crazy liberal conspiracy theory turns out to be true? How, I ask you, are we supposed to ignore the dire warnings of America haters if you keep taking away rights and scaring people for no reason? How is Bush supposed to be vindicated by God if he is not allowed to stomp his opponent in the election is there's not election? And finally how are you going to keep large scale, kids in black masks, Seattle type protests from breaking out when you try to pull a fast one on the American public? Are you just hoping that we're all so apathetic that destroying the very core of our democratic traditions won't get people off the couch?

Oh look, we were wrong about "bringing the fight to the terrorists"

2004-07-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

Apparently the AP decided to actually look into what the military was telling them about the Iraqi insurgency. Or rather, the government is changing its story all of a sudden.

Contrary to U.S. government claims, the insurgency in Iraq is led by well-armed Sunnis angry about losing power, not foreign fighters, and is far larger than previously thought, American military officials say.

I guess that whole "we're bringing terrorists out so we can fight them" spin on the Iraqi resistance isn't going to fly anymore. It was a stupid justification anyway. Overthrowing a government so that people who have no ties to said government would come fight you? How is that a plan? I think Bush has mostly dropped that line of reasoning as of late. Which is a good idea considering it was so difficult to understand.

So if there weren't any WMDs, and there weren't any terrorists there before hand and there aren't any terrorists now, what exactly are we doing? We don't even have the support of the Iraqi people.

With our death tolls rising to over 1000, it seems like it might be time to figure out a strategy that isn't just "shoot them all until they shut up".

More on Guantanamo

2004-07-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through the latest issue of Time earlier this week when I noticed this tiny story about the Guantanamo decision last week.

According to this article, while the prisoners have the right to a trial, they may or may not have been informed of this. It's also unclear as to how anyone who doesn't have a lawyer already will get one.

Great. So you have the right to a trial but you have no access to the information about getting one. You may not even know you have that right and after two years of being told that you have no rights, it seems unlikely that anyone will start asking all on their own. What good is the court ruling in your favor if you have no idea that anything has happened? Due process doesn't mean a whole lot if you aren't even aware that there is a process.

I realize that it's only been a week since the ruling, but with the amount of foot dragging the Bush administration has done already about these prisoners, it seems unlikely that they'll do anything to forward the prisoners cause without being further prodded by the courts. Lets hope I'm proven wrong. And if not, let's hope hat there are some super active lawyers out there.

Barbara Ehrenreich

2004-07-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Barbara Ehrenreich's column for the NYT is making me happy. In this column she responds to the comments Bill Cosby recently made about those oh-so-lazy Black youths of today.

I agree with Timothy Noah. I hope they try to keep her on staff. I think she's a sharp writer and would make and excellent columnist.

Also, I really enjoyed Nicked and Dimed and I think everyone should read it. It's an eye opener for us college educated middle class types.

Apparently they don't even have to both raising the threat level anymore.

2004-07-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Tom Ridge announced today that Terroists might be planning something around election time. I have trouble taking these announcements too seriously. The office of Homeland Security makes all kinds of announcements about up coming events and I don't see how this is any different. They seem to sever to get people a little on edge about whatever event they were planning on attending but they don't seem to do much else.

The Bush administration would probably argue that this is their attempt at keeping the public informed. It seems to me that it would be much more useful to make specific local announcements about threats than to scare everyone in the nation. It's pretty unlikely that international terrorists are going to hit a little town in the Midwest so why make the people living there on edge? And people in major cities like Washington DC and New York know that there's always a vague threat. How is getting on TV and announcing a bigger vague threat useful to them? The Bush people aren't stupid. They know that getting on TV and telling people that we could be Attacked At Any Time is only going to foster a sense of fear and not do any good. It seems to be their aim.

So given that, it is deeply disturbing to me that they're making these announcements about threats to our "democratic traditions". It seems to me that if previous announcements of threats have only served to scare people about going to 4th of July picnics and shopping malls at Christmas, this threat announcement can only serve to scare people about going to the polls, going to rallies, or protesting at the conventions. Now, I like to think people will still go to the polls, but I have my doubts. If people are afraid of something happening while they vote they may just avoid going. I think that further scares about the election could also serve to get people scared enough to want to postpone the election until the threats have passed. This all seems too 1984 for me, but who knows? So many tactics the Bush administration have used have smacked of the Orwellian as it is. I couldn't rule it out entirely.

Terrorists attacking before the election would only serve to re-elect Bush, as this article in Slate points out. I think simple threats of it may do the same. I think that it's our duty to go out and be as active as possible during this election. If no one votes, the terrorists have already won.

Full Transcript what Ridge said

Kenny-boy's going down

2004-07-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

It's been a slow news day for me. Not a lot had caught my eye. But I am delighted to see that Ken Lay's getting indicted.

I'm happy to see that he is actually going to face a trial. Let's hope he actually has to serve some time. It's the best we can hope for since it's highly doubtful that he'd have to give up any of his ill-gotten gains, which would be the most appropriate punishment. How bad is it to get convicted of a crime if you can live without having a job for the rest of your life?

I think investor fraud should be dealt with at least as harshly as drug crimes. Enron's misdeeds directly hurt thousands of people. I think raising energy bills of elderly and poor people and stealing the savings of many thousands of your own workers ranks up there with whatever societal harm you could claim drug dealers do. We take everything a drug dealer owns - houses, cars, cash money - no matter how much or little they're caught with. It seems like we could do the same with CEOs committing the scale of fraud this guy did.

He wasn't even a very good CEO! You'd think Enron could have done better just messing with energy prices in CA. But even with that, Enron still didn't turn profits. The hell?

Because I'm interested in how we do and do not use international organizations....

2004-07-06T17:56:00.000-07:00

The US tends to give lip service to using international organizations. And by lip service, I mean that it seems like we are all for them but only if they do exactly what we want. The Iraq war is a recent example, but our flip-flops on international organizations have a much longer history. Our pulling out of the Kyoto agreement is another example. As is our use of unilateral actions against the governments of small countries with whom we disagree - Vietnam, Chile, ect.

So I decided to look a little bit more into our opposition to the International Criminal Court. I found this on the state.gov website. It's our announcement that even though we signed the agreement to start this thing, Bush has decided that we aren't going to recognize its authority. I find the logic to be a little flawed.

-We believe that states, not international institutions are primarily responsible for ensuring justice in the international system.
-We believe that the best way to combat these serious offenses is to build domestic judicial systems, strengthen political will and promote human freedom.

Ok. Now, the whole point of the ICC is that war criminals wouldn't be prosecuted by their governments. Either the criminals are running the government or they're following the orders of people running the government. Your run of the mill war crime (mistreatment of POWs, rapes, theft, et cetera) is committed daily by troops from every country in the world. The ICC wasn't established to take care of those things. The ICC was established to take care of the heads of state who order or condone genocide and widespread, systematic war crimes. As such, the heads of state would not be brought to justice without force from the outside. Domestic systems of justice work well for prosecuting those offences committed by people low enough on the totem poll that high government officials won't be brought down by the trials.

These arguments really don't apply to most of the governments in the world in the first place. Domestic court systems? How is a dictatorship supposed to prosecute its war criminals? That's ridiculous on it's face. The Bush administration used past war crimes as a reason to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Clearly they don't actually think that such crimes need to be dealt with domestically or we would not have used that as a reason, right?

We have concluded that the International Criminal Court does not advance these principles. Here is why:
-We believe the ICC undermines the role of the United Nations Security Council in maintaining international peace and security.

Huh. Is this the same Security Council that we deemed useless in the case of Iraq? It interests me that we use that a measure for international legitimacy and then call it useless. Which is it, people?

The rest of this document is more of the same. The only point that they make that actually means anything is that the Bush administration sees the ICC as a threat to our sovereignty. And it is. I mean, we can't just go around doing anything we damn well please if we have an organization out there with the authority to hold our leaders personally accountable for their actions.

Iraqis told CIA that there were no WMD

2004-07-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

Short Washington Times story about pre-war interviews with family member of Iraqi scientists.

Ok. Now I can see how you'd be inclined to not believe Iraqis who claimed that that Iraq didn't have banned weapons. I mean, they'd be risking thier lives to say otherwise, right? But this on top of all the clearly false "evidence" that we were throwing around just makes us look bad.

You'd think that we'd be somewhat inclinded to listen to people who have direct contacts with those in the know. Instead we chose to believe the shakey rumors from some guy working for Iran?

Oh, speaking of Chalabi, what is this I hear about his nephew being in charge of the Sadamn tribunal? I'm having a hard time finding a story that even mentions that Salim Chalabi is related to Ahmad Chalabi even though they're family members. Weird.

A quick note about comments

2004-07-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

I just changed the comment settings to allow for non-blogger account having folks to post. Please be sure to give your name on posts if you are commenting without an account. I used to forget to do this all the time but it's important.

Thanks.

Kerry picks running mate

2004-07-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

It looks like John Kerry finally picked a running mate. Edwards has been rumored to be the front runner for a while now so there aren't any suprises here.

I'm glad this issues has been settled. I was tired of hearing conservatives babble on and on about how much they wanted Hillary to run. It was getting tired.

I don't really have much of an opinion about Edwards. He's a lot more photogenic than Kerry. That's about all I can say for him. He's pretty. I am glad he didn't pick Gephart as the New York Post announced. Gephart would be way too establishment. He's been around too long and Kerry's voting history will already be a huge issue in the election. Edwards was hardly in office before running for President. He's a safe choice.

Now we'll be yawning all the way to November. I wonder what the parties are planning to do to keep the press at their conventions. The Republicans have no drama and neither do the Democrats now. I suppose the Republicans are hoping for some rioting in New York. I don't know what the Dems have planned. Maybe they'll let Nader speak.

UN election observers in the US?

2004-07-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

Last Friday several house members sent a letter to the UN requesting election observers be bought in for the November elections.

I'm not sure how much press this has received but Rush Limbaugh and Al-Jazeera both picked up the story.

I'm pretty surprised that anyone in our government would go so far as to contact the UN about election fraud here. We generally think ourselves above that sort of thing. I guess people really are still pissed off about what happened in 2000. I notice, however, that the signatures of this letter were all in the House. I'm concerned that no Senators have been willing to take the political risk. It's pretty clear that election fraud happened in Florida last time around (not to mention the questionable happenings in other states), why won't any Senators take a stand on this?

It seems to me that election fraud hurts everyone. We bemoan the lack of voter turn out and yet we turn away voters. Why would anyone think that they have a stake in the political process if you can't even be sure you can vote at all? I think everyone in the government (and hell, everyone working and volunteering for our political parties) should make this a top concern. How can we talk about bringing democracy to other countries if our voting system is broken? We need to be an example to the rest of the world. It's bad enough that we don't have a "one man, one vote" system here. (The Electoral College guarantees that voters in some states are more important than voters in others. Even if there was not voting fraud in Florida and the state really did go to Bush, Gore still would have had the popular vote. You can see from this example that the people do not directly elect the person in the highest office in the land.) Why make it worse?

I'm guessing that many people will argue that asking the UN to observer the election just makes us look bad to the rest of the world. Airing our dirty laundry in public and all that. I disagree. I think that having someone in the government willing to take any measures necessary to have a clean election shows that we really do care about our democracy. The letter is clearly just a publicity tactic designed to highlight their concerns about the election. Hopefully it will serve to make people more aware of voting rights issues.

Afgahn elcetions postponed

2004-07-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

Al Jazeera article about the Afgahn elections

I heard about this on NPR this morning, but a quick look on google news and top AP stories didn't have it. The Al Jazeera article also talks about the continued fighting there.

Anyhow, according to Al Jazeera the elections have been postponed because the 22 diffrent political parties couldn't agree on a date or what should be voted on.

22 parties. That's pretty amazing. I wonder how much a base each party has. All the reports I've read indicate that the newly installed government doesn't reach too far away from the captial. Are they parties represting war lords or are there real parties there?

It's unfortunate that Afghanistan has fallen out of the news. Our government rebuilding track record isn't so stellar and I think the press ignoring the situation in Afghanistan has allowed the government to ignore the situation there. It's also allowed Bush to paint our allies in Europe as false friends even though they helped us in Afghanistan and continued to do so while we were changing the name of the french fries on Captial Hill.

Hopefully the press focus on Iraq will continue. I'd like to see at least one of our efforts turn out well.

International Criminal Court

2004-07-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

Intresting.

U.S. Removes Peacekeepers Over War Crimes Court

We're pulling out some troops from Kosovo and Ethiopia because they aren't going to be exempt from prosecution in the international criminal court.

I don't know what our beef with the criminal court actually is. According to this article, the US argument against the International Criminal Court is that politically motivated suits would be brought against US troops. I suppose that might be the case, but I’m wondering who would be bringing these suits if we aren’t doing anything. War’s messy. I’m assuming that even the best intentioned force could end up being accused of war crimes. It just seems to me that unless we’re breaking international law all over the place, isolated incidents would probably not be prosecuted. But I could be wrong.

I’d like to hear more about our opposition to the court.

Press Bias

2004-07-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

How many times have you seen American pundits and American administration officials complain about the foreign press and their "anti-American bias"? Over and over again we're told that the press from other countries don't try to stay objective, that they have an agenda they're pushing. You can't take anything they report on seriously, they're just biased.

Now, I know that any thinking person will recognize that our media has some bias to it. Conservatives argue that it's all "liberal bias". Liberals, on the other hand, will argue that there's either no bias in the media or else it's slightly right. (I personally see little to no liberal bias in the media. If the media was really biased left we'd all know about good recipes for vegan cookies and how to run our cars on biodiesel or vegetable oil.) In any case, most people recognize that there is some kind of bias in the media. But I think people fail to realize the kind of pro-American bias we see every day. It's the American media; American companies and American people run it. There's going to be a heavy American bias. That's normal. I just want people to notice this when looking at our news sources.

Case in point: Defiant Saddam Rejects War Crimes Charges. "What's biased about this headline?" you ask. Well, first off "Saddam" is not the man's last name. It's his first name. Would you ever see an article about GWB refer to him as "George"? No, obviously no. Bush isn't Madonna; we use his last name. So why are we using Saddam Hussein's first name all the time. He isn't Madonna either.

And another thing, for the last few days any pictures of Saddam Hussein you saw were from when he was captured. Nothing of the man in a suit or, I don't know, his hair combed. You could argue that the capture photos were the most recent picture of him but, you know, when Regan died you didn't see hundreds of pictures of him crapping his pants. I bet you there were many recent photos of him with drool on his face that we'd never see. I'm not defending Hussein here, nor am I comparing him in stature to Regan. I'm just pointing out the bias we can see in little things like what pictures get shown with a news story.

And while we're talking bias, I should go find some stories about Clinton while he was in office. GWB is almost always shown as a large figure in front of a flag or a sign that says "integrity" or "progress" or some other silly thing. I don't remember this from Clinton's presidency. I could be wrong. Clinton could have always been photographed like that, but I doubt it. I think it's probably another case of not-so-subtle bias that no one ever thinks about.

Just kidding about that whole "college post military" thing

2004-06-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

It looks like they're calling in the IRR

The IRR, for those of you who didn't know about this, is the Individual Ready Reserve. Soilders sign up for a certian length of service but actually only serve about half of that. After they leave the military, they can be called up to serve the rest of their term at any time.

My understanding is that the people who may be called up haven't been in training since leaving the armed forces. So it's a little like a draft, I guess, in that you have a bunch of people who weren't expecting to have to go to war going over there. Except that they've already been trained once years ago. One can only hope their training has stuck with them better than my C++ classes.

I guess this answers the "how are we going to get more troops to fight all these wars" question.

Slate has a little info about the IRR today

sovereignty shmoverignty

2004-06-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

Slate has a little write up about the limits of Iraqi sovereigty.

I have a little beef with the ending paragraph:
Of course, there's nothing that says sovereignty means equanimity. In his new documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, filmmaker Michael Moore notes that the United States invaded "the sovereign nation of Iraq" when it went to war last year. Considering the totality of Saddam Hussein's control at the time, that statement is both correct and seemingly irrelevant. After all, governments such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy also met the base-line definition of sovereignty, and American troops helped dislodge them from power, too.

Yeah, yeah. Of course Germany was in the middle of invading SEVERAL COUNTRIES by the time we went over and invaded them. It's not comparable in anyway and I thought we had dropped the Hitler/Saddam comparisons a year ago. It was silly then and it's even more idiotic now. You could use any number of countries that we've invaded since WWII, why bring up Germany? Why not use, I don't know, Chile or North Korea? Geez.

Anyway, I have to say that this whole "hand over" thing is very silly. The government that's been set up to run Iraq until such time as they have elections doesn't have any more power than it did last week. We aren't handing over much of anything and we certainly aren't leaving Iraq anytime soon. I guess it plays with in the papers. I have noticed that that reports are saying "two days early" like that's some sort of accomplishment. If the papers were really hating on Bush, they could have said "in secret due to worries of assai nation. Just a thought.

Note to GWB

2004-06-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

People stop listening to you when you bust out the Hitler comparisons

This link takes you to the Bush/Cheney '04 website. Check out the "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed" ad. Ok. How many times do the MoveOn.org people have to say that they didn't fund or support those silly Hitler ads? Bringing up the issue yet again just seems desperate. Is this all Bush has?

Bush spokesman repeat over and over again that Bush has a "clear vision". He's "optimistic". Where's the vision, here? Where's the optimism? Attack ads speak to neither vision nor optimism. "I'm not an American hating Nazi like *that* guy" isn't much of a platform for any candidate, let alone a sitting President. One would think that at this early stage in the campaign Bush would be reminding us of all the wonderful things he's done for the country in the last four years.

I'm not a Bush supporter. I think he's been a terrible President. I think this country is worse of than it was four years ago. But I'm not running his campaign. If his image-makers can't even come up with something positive, the administration is in serious trouble.

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