Politics

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

Bush ad equates Kerry, Gore and Moore with Hitler

by

To be entirely honest, I’m torn between being disgusted by this latest video from the Bush campaign, and outright laughing at how spectacularly it could — and should — backfire on them.

Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.

The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.

[…]

How does the Bush camp identify the Hitler footage? “Sponsored by Moveon.Org” says a label on the first Hitler clip, evidently put there by the miscreants who submitted the ad. “Images from Moveon.Org ad” says the Bush campaign’s label on the second Hitler clip. The only organization that doesn’t identify the clips as a “Moveon.org ad” is MoveOn.org, which denounced the ad and never “sponsored” it. But never mind. Instead of apologizing for this implicit misrepresentation of sponsorship, the Bush campaign has made the misrepresentation explicit. “The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters,” says a graphic appended to the beginning of the video.

The Bush campaign’s claim that the amateur Hitler ads represent “John Kerry’s Democratic Party” is laughable. Kerry didn’t control MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org didn’t make the ads. When the ads were submitted, the membership of MoveOn.org largely supported Dean, the candidate who had nearly wiped Kerry off the map. Kerry had just mortgaged his house to get the cash Democrats were refusing to give him. The suggestion that he controlled the party is preposterous—but only slightly more preposterous than the suggestion that Kerry is responsible what Dean and Gephardt said while running against him, or what Gore and Moore said while supporting candidates who were running against him. Not to mention that the question Gore poses in the ad—“How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?”—is well warranted.

I really can’t see this clip doing any good for Bush’s campaign — and hence, I think it should be broadcast round-the-clock, during every commercial break of every major news broadcast, television show, and sporting event.

But that’s just me.

(via Len)

iTunes: “Thoughts and Words” by Supersoul from the album Secret Broadcast – Pirate Radio USA (1998, 4:48).

NYT interview with Ron P. Reagan

by

There’s a very interesting interview with Ron P. Reagan (President Reagan’s son) in the Times today. I like the way this man thinks.

Now that the country is awash in Reagan nostalgia, some observers are predicting that you will enter politics. Would you like to be president of the United States?

I would be unelectable. I’m an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won’t accept.

[…]

Do you and your wife, Doria, have children?

No. We have three cats. It’s like having children, but there is no tuition involved.

[…]

How do you account for all the glowing obituaries of [your father]?

I think it was a relief for Americans to look at pictures of something besides men on leashes. If you are going to call yourself a Christian — and I don’t — then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog’s leash? How can Christians tolerate it?

It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight — it has put them in greater danger.

Did you vote for Bush in the last election?

No. I did not.

How did your mother feel about being ushered to her seat by President Bush?

Well, he did a better job than Dick Cheney did when he came to the rotunda. I felt so bad. Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80’s, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don’t think he’s a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it.

[…]

One thing that Buddhism teaches you is that every moment is an opportunity to change. And we will have a moment in November to make a big change.

Damn skippy.

iTunes: “Lazarus Raised” by Gabriel, Peter from the album Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ (1989, 1:25).

Going down

by

A plane is about to crash. There are five passengers on board, but there are only four parachutes.

The first passenger says: “I am Ronaldo, the best football player in the world. The football world needs me, and I cannot die on my fans.”

He grabs the first parachute and jumps out of the plane.

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, says: “I am the wife of the former president of the United States; I am the senator of New York and I have a good chance of being president of the United States in the future.”

She grabs a parachute and jumps off the plane.

The third passenger, George W. Bush, says: “I am the president of the United States of America. I have huge responsibilities in the world. Besides, I am the smartest president in the history of my country and can’t shun the responsibility to my people by dying.”

He grabs a pack and jumps off the plane.

The fourth passenger, the Pope, says to the fifth passenger, a young school boy: “I am old. I have lived my life as a good person and as a priest should and so I shall leave the last parachute to you; you have the rest of your life ahead of you.”

To this the little boy says: “Don’t fret old man. There is a parachute for each of us! The smartest president of America took my schoolbag.”

(via Len)

Wartime Censorship

by

While taking a look at the pros, cons, and possible long-term consequences of news and information censorship during times of war, Liam Callanan presents this fascinating historical tidbit:

Improbable though it may sound, from late 1944 through the spring of 1945, the Japanese launched more than 9,000 balloons from their nation’s eastern shores. Filled not with mild-mannered hot air but extremely flammable hydrogen and armed with incendiary and antipersonnel bombs, the balloons rode the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean for several days before landing throughout North America.

No, really. Throughout North America. From Alaska to Mexico and as far east as suburban Detroit. Perhaps even more incredible, the balloons themselves were not made of any high-tech, weather-hardened fabric but simple paper panels held together with potato glue.

The entire article is worth reading, both for the historical information and the look at the potential ramifications news censorship can bring about.

(via Danelope)

iTunes: “Macho Man” by Transmutator from the album Saturday Night Fetish (1997, 5:00).

Rights

by

The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

— Bill Moyers, “The Fight of our Lives”

iTunes: “Satellite” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1992, 4:11).

Jay and Silent Bob want you to vote

by

Kevin Smith is directing a series of short commercials where various stars urge people to go out and vote. According to Smith, one of the shorts will feature “a pair of stoners who’re coming out of semi-retirement for the cause.”

Okay, folks. If Jay and Silent Bob are going to be voting, you’ve got no excuse not to. ;)

iTunes: “Moodswings” by Purple Nine from the album Essential Chillout (1999, 5:05).

Rev. Moon crowned Messiah in Senate office building

by

I really don’t know what to say about this (aside from the obvious fact that it’s absolutely insane), but apparently the Rev. Moon was crowned Messiah last March.

Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah — with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building?

[…]

First, we’re shown a rabbi blowing a ram’s horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He’s having a ball.

Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated.

[…]

But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon’s newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he’d been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation.

Rep. Curt Weldon’s office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon’s website. “Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it,” press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded.

Some pictures of the crowning ceremony are available at Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon?, where John Gorenfield is tracking this story.

Absolutely amazing.

(via Rick)

iTunes: “She Caught the Katy” by Blues Brothers, The from the album Blues Brothers, The (1980, 4:12).

Not terribly subtle

by

From Ron Reagan Jr.’s remarks at the funeral of his father:

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

Gee…I wonder who he could be talking about…

(via Len)

iTunes: “War at 33 1/3” by Public Enemy from the album Fear of a Black Planet (1990, 2:07).

Art is terrorism

by

Yet another case of law enforcement officials going overboard, in this case of an artist being accused of being a bioterrorist.

Steve Kurtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, and a member of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble.

? Kurtz’s wife, Hope Kurtz, died in her sleep of cardiac arrest in the early morning hours of May 11. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz’s art supplies and called the FBI.

Within hours, FBI agents had “detained” Kurtz as a suspected bioterrorist and cordoned off the entire block around his house. (Kurtz walked away the next day on the advice of a lawyer, his “detention” having proved to be illegal.) Over the next few days, dozens of agents in hazmat suits, from a number of law enforcement agencies, sifted through Kurtz’s work, analyzing it on-site and impounding computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife’s body for further analysis. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Health Department condemned his house as a health risk.

Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, makes art which addresses the politics of biotechnology. “Free Range Grains,” CAE’s latest project, included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events.

FBI field and laboratory tests have shown that Kurtz’s equipment was not used for any illegal purpose. In fact, it is not even possible to use this equipment for the production or weaponization of dangerous germs. Furthermore, any person in the US may legally obtain and possess such equipment.

“Today, there is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food,” said Defense Fund spokeswoman Carla Mendes. “Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of ‘Frankenfood’ will get you accused of ‘terrorism.’ You can be illegally detained by shadowy government agents, lose access to your home, work, and belongings, and find that your recently deceased spouse’s body has been taken away for ‘analysis.'”

Though Kurtz has finally been able to return to his home and recover his wife’s body, the FBI has still not returned any of his equipment, computers or manuscripts, nor given any indication of when they will. The case remains open.

More details can be found in this article from the Washington Post.

Just ludicrous.

(via Boing Boing)