Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

The Ciccones: Lies

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Here’s a mashup worth listening to: The Ciccones‘ “Lies” (6.5Mb .mp3). While most of the all-Madonna mashup album is fairly hit-and-miss, this is by far the standout track. Over the music for “Live to Tell“, audio quotes from the justifications for the Iraq war are juxtaposed with the song’s original chorus:

A man can tell a thousand lies,
I’ve learned my lesson well,
Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned,
’till then, it will burn inside of me.

Cute and clever.

iTunes “Lies” by Ciccones, The from the album Immaculate Concoction, The (2005, 5:45).

The 24.6 Second College Degree

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Update: I munged up some of my math this morning and got the numbers slightly wrong. I’ve updated the post with correct numbers. They’re still scary and infuriating.

According to this morning’s Seattle Times, the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing approximately $118,000 per minute — $100,000/minute for the war in Iraq, and $18,000/minute in Afghanistan.

CNN/Money reported last October that the average cost of attending a four-year public university was approximately $12,127 per year, or $48,508 for four years.

In other words, 2.69 minutes worth of the money we’re spending in Afghanistan would pay for the average four-year degree. Only 29.1 seconds worth of the money we’re spending in Iraq would do the same. So would 24.6 seconds of the two operations combined.

Every day, we’re spending enough money in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for 3,503 four-year public school college degrees.

And yet, George Bush is asking for $70 billion more to pay for those wars, while cutting education funding by $12.7 billion.

The bill the U.S. Senate passed in the last hours of its 2005 session is called a “budget reconciliation” – an attempt to force the federal budget into balance with spending cuts or tax increases. But there’s no way to reconcile one of the biggest items on the chopping block, aid to education, with the long-term interests of the nation, its students, families and economy.

The bill includes a $12.7 billion cut in federal aid to education. The Senate passed it 51-50 with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote. The cut, the first in federal education spending in more than a decade, accounts for nearly a third of the bill’s spending reductions.

[…] If the House approves them, the cuts will be very real. Here’s what they will mean:

  • An increase in the federal Stafford Loan Rate from 4.7 to 6.8 percent. The will go to 8.25 percent in July.

    The higher interest rates mean that on average students will pay $2,000 more and parents $3,000 more.

  • Pell Grants to low and moderate-income students will remain frozen at $4,050 for the fourth straight year despite the president’s earlier promise to raise them to $5,100.

    According to the American Council on Higher Education, Pell Grants covered 84 percent of the cost of attending the average public four-year college when they were created in 1972. They now pay 34 percent.

The cuts come at a bad time. In five years the average cost of tuition at a public university has increased by 57 percent, the cost of room and board by 44 percent. American higher education is becoming more unaffordable at a time when attending college has never been more important.

A conversation Prairie and I had while walking into NSCC about how we’re going to afford getting me a degree prompted this little exploration. Meh. Not happy right now.

It’s Illegal to be Annoying

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Update: Apparently, the article I’m quoting is somewhat misleading. According to a lawyer’s comment on BoingBoing:

Declan’s article is misleading. The provision extends a telephone harassment law to apply to email. Declan describes the provision as applying whenever a person “annoys” another: “A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity.”

But that’s not what the law says. Instead it provides: “Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Note that “annoy” is part of the intent element of the statute — it requires the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass. Far from an anti-anonymity provision that applies whenever a person annoys another, it is merely a prohibition on harassment.

Thanks, Don! This kind of thing happens when I’m a bit behind…

No, I’m not kidding. Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

[…] Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.”

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section’s other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

Once again, something which, admittedly, likely started from good intentions — preventing cyberstalking — has been dumbed down to the point of ludicrousness by politicians too stupid to think about the real legal ramifications of the laws they’re enacting.

On the bright side, maybe we can use this law to get the freepers booted off the ‘net? ;)

(via [seattle's info]seattle)

iTunes “Relax (AK1200)” by Keoki from the album Jealousy (2001, 6:46).

Narnia and Christianity — does it matter?

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After reading Terrence’s ‘Saying No to Narnia‘ and Pharyngula’s ‘Narnia as an inoculation‘, both of which pointed to a Guardian UK article titled ‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion‘, I was somewhat annoyed. As an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal who was brought up in a Christian household and counts Christianity as a major part of who I am and why I’m an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal, it occasionally gets under my skin when I’m reminded yet again that ‘Christian’ has become a dirty word synonymous with the worst of the bigoted bible-thumping set, tainting anything that it touches.

It was quite nice to see Arcterex’s take on the same article, then:

I read the Narnia books as a child, and absolutely loved them. They had a similar draw as modern day Harry Potter. The downtrodden who think they aren’t anybody in the world finding out that they are a heros in a magical world.

Of course, then I found out later on in live about the religious overtones in the books…

And couldn’t care less. A good story is a good story, and personally I find this sort of ignorant reporting as bad as the Christian groups who go around saying how Harry Potter is promoting kids to become satanists and how it’s an evil book. It’s a friggin’ book and a good story. Geez.

Damn skippy. Sure, there are Christian overtones to the Narnia stories. There are Christian overtones to the Matrix stories, the Lord of the Rings stories, the Star Wars stories, and countless other stories (both printed and filmed), too. Why all the rancor? Just because the religious right (who all too often seem to embody the antithesis to the Christianity I grew up with) has jumped all over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is it suddenly impossible to go out and enjoy a fun fantasy movie?

Sure, you can read all sorts of meaning into the stories and why they’re being brought to the screen now — religious indoctrination, right-wing propelled mass media conspiracy theories, whatever. You can also tell your inner Fox Mulder that every so often it doesn’t matter and go watch a movie.

That’s what I’m planning on doing.

Bush targets Al-Jazeera for bombing

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The man is certifiably batshit insane.

President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a “Top Secret” No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.”

[…]

Al-Jazeera’s HQ is in the business district of Qatar’s capital, Doha.

Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US’s desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of “collateral damage”.

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.

To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

Why Target’s target is red

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Hmmmm…suck-o: Target’s CEO is a massive republican.

Now we know why the target is red.

And, we seem to be getting a clearer picture as to why Target has sided with the far-right Christian wackos, in permitting their pharmacists to turn you away because they think you’re a sinner.

Over the years, Target CEO Robert Ulrich has donated:

  • $71,353 to Republicans
  • $3,660 to Democrats

Hmmm… that’s interesting.

Perhaps my favorite donation is the $5,000 he gave just two months ago to a PAC named “Every Republican is Crucial.”

And here’s some info from the first link in the quoted text above, because I hadn’t heard about this before:

Planned Parenthood has had other communications with Target. Target’s policy is that the customer can go to hell if their pharmacist thinks you’re a sinner. Target will let their pharmacist turn you away so that YOU have to go find another pharmacy, rather than their pharmacist getting another frigging job.

You have to love Target. They’re willing to hire people who don’t wan to do the very job they’re applying for. And their own employee’s bigotry and bias matters more to them than the emergency health needs of their own customers.

Dammit — is it even possible to shop guilt-free anymore? As far as I can tell, the only way to make sure as little of my money as possible goes to causes and organizations that I don’t support is to keep it in a jar in my mattress and never spend any of it.

Wal-Mart Sics Secret Service on Student

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Need another reason to stay far, far away from Wal-Mart? Or maybe another reason to be disgusted with the culture of fear and repression of political dissent in the country? Be glad you’re not this high school student.

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.
But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s-down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

Is this really the country we want it to be? Sadly, it’s the country the voters asked for.

(via seagoth)