Politics

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

Wag the dog, Bushie

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I know Dick Cheney finds it “reprehensible” that anyone could think the White House’s timing on Iraq is politically inspired, but the administration has exhibited a pattern of behavior that (as Cheney rightly warns with Saddam) creates a context that raises extra concerns. What else should reasonable people make of these facts?

  • In June a floppy disk found in Lafayette Park across from the White House turned out to contain a Powerpoint presentation used by Karl Rove to detail the White House’s strategy for the midterm elections. “Focus on war” was a key point in a talk that centered on the White House’s desire to “maintain a positive issue environment.”

  • Around this time Rove was upbraided (at least for PR reasons) after he told a Republican gathering that the war and terror themes and the associated military buildup could and should play to the Republicans’ advantage in the midterm elections.

  • When White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was asked why the administration waited until after Labor Day to launch its campaign to convince the American people that military action against Iraq was necessary, Card replied: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

— Matthew Miller, My ‘reprehensible’ suspicions on Iraq

(via Kirsten — hopefully she won’t mind that I snarfed her idea for the title!)

So it’s been a year

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I’d like to come up with something amazingly deep and profound to say, but for one reason or another, it’s just not in me. Besides, plenty of other people have worthwhile things to say.

I think part of my little bout of writer’s block is just that the entire situation is frustrating. One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of ‘patriotism’), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. It’s a different kind of scare, but it’s a scare, nothenless. Awareness of this side of things does seem to be growing, though, which is good.

I guess, most of what I’d really want to say I’ve said already, either in some of my rants over the past year or in the links I’ve chosen to highlight in this blog (the majority of which, unfortunately, still reside in limbo).

I dunno. I’m rambling. Caught between wanting to say something, and not really having anything of real import to say.

Portland protest

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Bill of Rights, R.I.P.An interesting and nicely even-handed writeup of an anti-Bush protest in Portland that went wrong — from a peaceful protest march to conflicts with the police, including pepper spray and rubber bullets. What happened? Murphy’s law…

…I felt that the police and the protestors were, behaviorally, mirrors of each other. The police officers were mostly acting within decent bounds, and the protestors were mostly peacefully making their views known. However, just as the police had a few unprofessional punks who felt compelled to spray and shoot at protestors, so did our side have its share of adolescent morons who thought it was a good idea to spit at the cops, throw things at them, try and force their way past them, and generally try to provoke violence. As some of the asinine “kill a cop” “they are subhuman” sentiments one hears clearly show, our side cannot claim to be free of infantile, violent cretins, much as we might like to believe it.

It is time to be serious-minded, friends. All the best things about this nation are under assault, and we have lost a great deal of ground already. We have mostly lost it through shortsightedness, internal bickering, and an annoying habit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to stop acting as though “smash the state, stick it to the Man” is anything other than a child’s point of view. We need to take actions that will have a real effect, supporting candidates who can win even if they’re not 100% ideologically perfect, forming alliances with people who might not share every one of our pet issues, and generally approaching this problem as adults in the real world approach problems. Our freedoms will not be won back in the streets by dashing young revolutionaries. Get that image out of your mind. Our freedoms will be won back by dull people at city council meetings, by policy wonks in congressional office buildings, by months and years of painful, uninteresting, and EFFECTIVE work.

(via Boing Boing)

9-11 tributes

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Yahoo! on 9/11 2002Several sites across the ‘net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren’t bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least).

Of the ones I’ve seen so far, Yahoo‘s seems the silliest. Essentially the same old Yahoo! as ever — just all in greyscale. I kind of prefer the approach that other sites have taken (such as Excite, who set their main page to a simple black background, a rememberance message, and links to enter the content area). This just gives me the feeling that while Yahoo figured they had to do something, they sure as heck weren’t going to hide their content — why, some poor soul might actually get distracted by thinking about actual issues and miss out on some ads!

Then again, maybe I’m just too cynical.

(via MeFi)

What kind of God…?

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Thinking about the upcoming one year anniversary of Sept. 11th, Dave had this to say:

A common theme — what kind of God lets this happen. I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn’t see that 9-11 was [the] tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS? They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don’t wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It’s out of balance. We’re out of balance. 9-11 was, IMHO, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the U.S. participates in the world, both from the U.S. perspective, and the world’s perspective. That we got so much sympathy says how big the human heart is. That there wasn’t more celebrating in the streets of world capitals says that they forgive us for our selfish attitude, which is back in force as if 9-11 never happened.

So what was the lesson of 9-11 that the U.S. has failed to learn? I think it’s that God doesn’t think we’re as important as we do. The concept of national security is obsolete. We can’t close our borders. We live on this planet with everyone else. Global warming, AIDS, terrorism, all penetrate all borders. New York is a world city. The last gasps of isolationism will be snuffed out by more humiliation, until we get the truth, we aren’t above the rest of the world, but we are part of it.

Amen.

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Yahoo! editorializing

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Yahoo! editorializingHere’s an interesting little piece of editorializing on Yahoo! — a picture of Ground Zero in New York captioned “Recovery and debris removal work continues at the site of the World Trade Center known as ‘ground zero’ in New York, March 25, 2002. Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror’ since September 11.”

I went ahead and grabbed a screen capure of the page, since I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it gets re-edited sometime soon. It may have been just an editorial mistake, as pointed out in the MeFi thread…even so, it’s certainly an interesting editorial gaffe.

Rights we used to have

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Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

By The Associated Press | September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:

  • FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
  • FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
  • FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
  • RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
  • FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
  • RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
  • RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

— Newsday, via Wil

Strait or Gay?

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This is an e-mail that Karl just sent me…

For me, voting in the Republican primary election for my district (Turnagin District 26 in Anchorage), l have to choose between Strait and Gay.

This is ABSOLUTELY TRUE…no kidding!

This is from the State of Alaska, Division of Elections candidate page.

Look at the bottom two entries of the candidate listing where it says:

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 26

GORDON W. HARTLIEB (Libertarian)
3419 Grissom Circle
Anchorage, AK 99517
Phone: (907) 243-8198
e-mail: gordon@systems33.com
Candidate’s web site: http://www.ak.lp.org/hartlieb

ETHAN A. BERKOWITZ (Democrat – Incumbent)
1219 Inlet Place
Anchorage, AK 99501
Phone: (907) 279-5659
e-mail: ethanb@alaska.net
Candidate’s web site: http://www.ethanberkowitz.com

STEVE STRAIT (Republican)
2500 Douglas Drive
Anchorage, AK 99517
Phone: (907) 248-1028
e-mail: steve@stevestrait.com
Candidate’s web site: http://www.stevestrait.com

BECKY GAY (Republican)
PO Box 190428
Anchorage, AK 99519
Phone: (907) 248-5909
e-mail: beckygay@alaska.com
Candidate’s web site: http://www.beckygay.com

These Republicans are running against each other in the primary!

I’m switching to Libertarian GODDAMNIT!

Sounds like a good idea to me…

Church vs. State

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Y’know, sometimes — in my more cynical moments — I wonder if this whole argument over seperation of Church and State isn’t a waste of time…flawed in some deeply fundamental way.

I mean, come on — is the belief in politicians who actually work and act to do their best for the people they represent and the country they live in really that much different from the belief in an all-knowing, all-seeing entity who created us and oversees our lives?

Personally, I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that George W. Bush has the best interests of anyone other than himself in mind.

Anyway. Just a random thought.