Politics

The Washington State Caucuses are coming up on February 7th. This is everyone’s chance to help choose who will run against George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential election. Only about 40,000 people are expected to participate in the caucus statewide, so if you go, your vote counts a whole lot. It should be interesting, fun, and generally take less than an hour, so you should all go!

Who: Anyone may go. Those who consider themselves Democrats may speak and vote.

When: Saturday, February 7th at 10:00 AM.

Where: Each caucus will be held somewhere near where you live. To find your caucus first find out what Legislative District you live in. This can be done using the WA State Legislature District Information site. Then call or email your Legislative District Chair, whom you can find at this list of District Chairs and Vice-Chairs.

For those political geeks who know which precinct they are in (or have a voter registration card and read their precinct number off of it) you can find exactly where your caucus is at the Precinct Caucus Locator.

What: You basically get together with a bunch of other people, talk about the candidates for a while, and then get into groups based on who you like. Then you pick someone from your group to represent all of your opinions at the County level. If you want a bit more information, you can Precinct Caucuses 101 and get a little more data. If you are interested in a lot more data the Democratic party is running training sessions all month on this subject. Ask your Legislative District chair ASAP if you are interested.

I’m excited about this upcoming time to vote, and I hope you all are too! If your Legislative District chair doesn’t get back to you after a day or two, call or write them again or try the vice-chair. If you have any questions, or need further help, feel free to contact [alexander_west].

P.S. Getting the word out about this is important. Please feel free to copy this to your journal/weblog so everyone else can see it.

(via the LiveJournal Seattle Community)

iTunes: “Come On Eileen” by Save Ferris from the album It Means Everything (1997, 4:10).

Will pointed out an article in today’s Seattle Times about Army Reserve Maj. Grant Haugen having the unenviable and difficult task of letting the families of his unit know that the unit’s tour of duty has been extended — for the third time.

Back in the United States for a short leave, Haugen had the unenviable task of telling family members of his Army Reserve unit that its stay in Iraq had been extended for a third time. The news didn’t sit well with nerve-worn relatives who were already counting the days until the unit’s homecoming.

Alpha Company, a 200-member Chinook helicopter unit based at Fort Lewis, is among the first companies to have their tours in Iraq extended beyond one year.

One thing really jumped out at me as I was reading the article, though. As the families expressed their dismay and frustration with the situation, Maj. Haugen commiserated with them, and at one point, said the following:

“It’s not up to soldiers to question our orders,” he said. “That’s up to us as voters.”

For the first part, he’s very right — as soldiers, it is their duty to do their jobs and follow the orders handed down to them by their commanding officers. It was the second part of his statement that really struck me, not because of what he said, but that he said it at all, and that it was reported.

In today’s ultra-patriotic, with us or against us atmosphere, here we have an Army Major essentially letting the families of his soldiers know that the best way they can support their husbands and protest the repeated extensions is by exercising their right as U.S. citizens to vote — and if the people in power aren’t doing what you think they out to be, you vote them out.

Something tells me Maj. Haugen won’t be casting his vote for Pres. Bush come November.

iTunes: “Keep Hope Alive (There is Hope)” by Crystal Method, The from the album Keep Hope Alive (1996, 5:42).

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the voting booths…

He’s baaaaack!

Not this year — please not this year. I’ve rambled about my reasons for feeling this way fairly recently, so I won’t beleaguer the point, but…danger, Will Robinson, danger!

I don’t have time to rant about this like I’d really like to. As far as I’m concerned, though, getting Bush out of office should be the number one priority — and Nader just isn’t the answer. He wasn’t last election, and he won’t be this election.

Anybody But Bush continues to be my battle cry.

iTunes: “I’m Afraid of Americans (v3)” by Bowie, David from the album I’m Afraid of Americans (1997, 6:06).

One of the things I’ve found that I like a lot about Howard Dean in interviews is that, at least when you can find an article not focusing on his supposed anger, how straightforward and honest he comes across as. Much was made a while ago about how even though he signed Vermont’s civil unions bill giving homosexual couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples, he admitted at the time that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of gay marriage. While most of the spin about this has been trying to paint some form of double-standard, or accusing Dean of signing the civil union bill purely for political gain, the most recent issue of Rolling Stone has an interview with Dean where they actually asked him about his comment.

What makes you think you won’t just get steamrolled once you are in Washington?

The Democrats just need a president who’s going to support them. That’s what I did on the civil-unions bill in Vermont. I came out in favor of civil unions about an hour after the [Vermont Supreme Court] decision came out. I knew it would give cover to a lot of legislators who would want to do the right thing but just didn’t have the nerve.

Didn’t you also say at the time that the whole idea of legally sanctioned gay relationships made you feel uncomfortable?

Sure. Look, I didn’t know anything about the gay community when I signed the civil-unions bill. I grew up in the same homophobic milieu that everybody else did. I was told the same thing about gay people that all heterosexuals were. And most gay people were told the same thing themselves — by parents, ministers and everybody else. I was uncomfortable, and I said so. And I got a lot of flak for it. But I still thought it was the right thing to do.

You don’t allocate civil rights by who makes you comfortable and who doesn’t. I believe that civil unions was a masterful way of making sure that every gay and lesbian Vermonter was entitled to the same rights as everybody else — without getting into the business about telling churches who they could marry and who they couldn’t marry. I think what we did was the right thing. Others may do it differently.

Equal rights under the law is a fundamental part of everybody’s thinking in America — which is why I don’t think civil unions is going to be a big issue in the election for me.

Is this an important enough issue to have it be one of the main issues of a presidential campaign?

Well, civil rights is an important issue. Gay marriage is not. Karl Rove will make it that way. Because he’ll claim that everything is gay marriage, and this and that and the other thing.

So you are just going to change the subject?

Yeah. If we allow the Republicans to run the campaign based on divisive issues — like prayer in school, gay marriage and gun control — then we lose. The right wing will try to make a big issue of it, and they’ll get some votes from some people who would have voted for them anyway.

Most people do not want to traffic in hate. And this election is going to be about whether we cater to the worst in us or cater to the best in us, and I intend to do the latter.

Answers like that are exactly why I support Dean. Straightforward, honest, not pussyfooting around the issue at all. Even if and when I don’t entirely agree with his answers, he always seems to have justifiable reasons for the decisions he makes, and he doesn’t make excuses for them. I’ll take that honesty over Bush’s lies any day.

iTunes: “Rescue Me” by Madonna from the album Immaculate Collection, The (1991, 5:31).

On March 16th of last year, Evergreen student Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli bulldozer and killed while trying to protect a Palestinian home being demolished. Now, right-wing weblog Little Green Footballs has awarded her their “idiotarian of the year” award, and the Wall Street Journal has seen fit to include this in a “Best of the Web” roundup under the headline “A Well-Deserved Award”.

Little Green Footballs has given out its second annual Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year. This year’s winner: Rachel Corrie, the terror advocate who died in a bulldozer accident last March. Corrie picked up 28.8% of the vote in the 10-candidate finals, edging out Michael Moore (26.7%), who also finished second (behind Jimmy Carter) in 2002. Moore, who we hear dedicated his most recent “book” to Corrie, is the Susan Lucci of idiotarians. As one LGF commenter writes, “Michael Moore has to be crushed he didn’t win.”

The WSJ’s wording of the account is especially troubling. From what I’ve read, Rachel was a peace activist using non-violent means to try to intervene in the conflict in the Gaza Strip — hardly someone I’d describe as a “terror advocate.” I also see a large gulf between a “bulldozer accident” and a woman in a flourescent jacket wielding a bullhorn being run over by a bulldozer, which then drops its blade and backs over her a second time.

No matter which side of the Israel/Palestine conflict you stand on (an issue which I haven’t investigated enough to truly have an opinion one way or another), or how you feel about Rachel Corrie’s goals and methods (something which I have my own doubts about), to so blatantly and callously mock her death is truly despicable.

(via Kos)

Wow.

A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an “unnecessary” war in Iraq and pursuing an “unrealistic” quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.

The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is “near the breaking point.”

It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the “global war on terrorism” and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.

“[T]he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be readjusted,” Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign “is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security.”

The full 56-page report can be found on the Strategic Studies Institute website.

(via Al-Muhajabah)

iTunes: “Memories of the Future” by Edge of Motion from the album Essential Chillout (2000, 13:02).

Mr. Man says he hears a knock.

Yup, it’s a faint knock.

I open the door a crack and it’s Eric. Eric is from the Sierra Club “our nation’s oldest environmental group” and did I know the Bush administration is a total disaster environmentally and the Bush administration’s policies are “raping our forrests and …”

ME: One question.

ERIC: Sure.

ME: Did you vote for Nader in 2000?

ERIC: Yes sir!

ME: Get off my fucking porch.

The good news is – Mr. Man learned a new word tonight.

Picture me, standing up and applauding.

On the one hand, I have more respect for someone who votes — even if they voted for Nader — than for someone who doesn’t vote. I also can’t really argue with someone voting their conscience, if they cast their vote for the candidate they truly thought would best lead the country.

However.

Last election (and the three years since then) should serve as an example to any and everyone. Much as people may wish that a third-party candidate could come out of nowhere and win, realistically, it’s not going to happen. At this point, any vote that does not go to help the Democratic nominee gain the Presidential office will just help Bush retain his position, and that’s the last thing we need right now.

I’m a Dean supporter. But in the event that Dean doesn’t get the nomination, the bottom line is simply anybody but Bush. And by “anybody”, I mean anybody who can realistically have a chance of defeating Bush — and by that, I mean the Democratic nominee.

It’s got to happen.

I hope none of you sent any comments in to the Treasury if you were actually expecting your comments to remain anonymous:

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the Web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding.

In March 2003, the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) asked for e-mail comments about a proposal (.pdf link) that could raise the price of malt beverages like Bacardi Breezer and Smirnoff Ice. At the time, the department said that the text of comments would be made public–but assured people that e-mail addresses, home addresses and other personal information of individuals would be removed first.

“For the convenience of the public, we will…post comments received in response to this notice on the TTB Web site,” the initial notice said. “All comments posted on our Web site will show the name of the commenter, but will not show street addresses, telephone numbers, or e-mail addresses.” The TTB is the successor to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, portions of which are now part of the Department of Homeland Security.

As news of the proposed regulations circulated around malt beverage aficionados online, word-of-mouth took over and comments started flooding in to nprm\@ttb.gov. By October, the Treasury Department had received about 9,900 e-mail messages, plus 4,800 comments sent through the U.S. mail or fax–and decided it could no longer keep its promise.

“The unusually large number of comments received…has made it difficult to remove all street addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses from the comments for posting on our Internet Web site in a timely manner,” the Treasury Department said in a follow-up notice (.pdf link), published last month in the Federal Register. “Therefore, to ensure that the public has Internet access to the thousands of comments received…at the earliest practicable time, we will post comments received on that notice on our Web site in full, including any street addresses, telephone numbers, or e-mail addresses contained in the comments.”

(via /.)