politics

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

Thirteen Days

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I rented Thirteen Days (about the Cuban Missile Crisis) the other night, as I hadn’t seen it, and I was curious both about the film itself and about New Line‘s Infinifilm brand.

The movie was certainly quite decent (though Kevin Costner seemed to do his usual trick of being an inattentive babysitter for his accent, rather than actually adopting it), but what really struck me about it was the similarities to the current air of tension, fear, and paranoia sweeping the nation. While the setups for the two conflicts are different, the attitudes and feelings of many of the characters in the film were very familiar. In one of the (fascinating) historical background pieces, there were some ‘man on the street’ interviews with people at the time this all was going on — and just about anything that they said could easily have been said at any point within the past month. Average people worrying about their safety, whether or not it’s right to go to war, whether a conflict is justified — very eerie to hear sentiments I’ve heard, read, and spoken since September 11th coming from the mouths of people forty years back.

It also made me very curious about just what’s going on in the conference rooms of the White House these days. Considering the wide range of emotions and suggested courses of action during the Cuban Missile Crisis that only recently came to light (such as Kennedy’s secret tapes of the meetings, as discussed in the extra materials on the disc), it really makes me wonder how much is being debated — and how much is known — behind the scenes, that we’re not likely to find out for years, and possibly decades. I’m not one to try to raise paranoia or fears…the film just made me think a lot more than it probably would have had the events of September 11th not taken place. Until now (I’m 28, by the way, born in ’73), I hadn’t really had anything that could make me sympathise with the events portrayed — I could empathise to a certain extent, but I hadn’t had any experiences that really came that close to what was happening in 1962. Desert Shield/Storm affected me to a certain extent, but not like this — it was too distant…a war on TV. Now, for better or for worse, it’s all too easy for me to understand just what was going through peoples minds then — because it’s going through mine, now.

Neat, neat stuff. Not necessarily comfortable. But very worthwhile.

Kudos to The Onion

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I just got a look at the most recent issue of The Onion, and I have to say that it’s very, very well done. If you’ve not read them before, The Onion is one of the more biting online humor sites — basically, they use a news-site format to skewer whatever is going on in the world.

This issue is their special issue regarding the terrorist attacks, and I really think that it’s an incredibly effective series of articles — using humor and irony to point out very serious, deep truths. Plus, it’s really funny — and it’s nice to see someone able and willing to take the initiative to look at some of the opportunities for intelligent humor in the wake of the tragedies. Sometimes, laughter really can be the best medicine — and The Onion is giving us just the right dose.

Some of my favorite quotes come from the article God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule:

“I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?”

“To be honest, there’s some contradictory stuff in [the Bible], okay?” God said. “So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it — My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it’s God’s will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall.”

“I don’t care what faith you are, everybody’s been making this same mistake since the dawn of time,” God said. “The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don’t even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you’ve been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades.”

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Anyway, go check it out. There’s quite a few different articles, and so far all of them I find well worth reading.

I don’t even know what to say to this

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God Gave U.S. ‘What We Deserve,’ Falwell Says.

Casey told me about this while I was over at his place this weekend, and I just stumbled across a news article with the details. It may be the single most disgusting and infuriating response I’ve seen yet to last week’s tragedy, and all the more so because of the people it comes from — men who claim to be spreading God’s word on earth.

I’m not even sure how to react, or what to say right off. I was amazed enough when Casey told me about it, but actually reading what those two men had to say…it’s just reprehensible. I’ll try and come up with something more substantial later.

It all keeps getting scarier

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My god — the radio just reported that NY Mayor Giulianni (sp?) has requested 6,000 body bags for the excavations through the rubble. Racial tensions are on the rise — there’s a report on the radio now about shots being fired into a Dallas Mosque. It was done in the middle of the night, thankfully enough, so no one was hit, but it’s still a pretty sad event.

Apparently the remains of the southern tower of the WTC, which had been jutting about five stories into the air, finally collapsed into the rest of the rubble. Hopefully there was enough warning before it fell that it didn’t land on anyone.

On a brighter note, there have been five people pulled from the wreckage of the WTC. Pentagon death estimates have dropped to between 100 and 200, from the 800 that was being estimated earlier.

Of course, that still leaves a stunning number of people killed.

Airlines are slowly being granted permission by the FAA to resume operations, though it sounds like it will be sometime Thursday before any of them actually do — and that service will be restricted at first, under heavy security measures. One of the new restrictions following the news that the hijackers had used knives to take over the planes is that no knives of any sort will be allowed onto an airplane. Apparently it had been within regulation to carry “small” knives — up to four inches in length — onto planes. Four inches? That hardly sounds very “small” to me.

Talk of war is still flying around, and seems to be getting stronger and stronger. NATO earlier declared that it would honor Section V of the NATO accords, declaring that an act against any single member of NATO will be considered an act against all, and the other member nations will stand with the U.S. should we initiate an offensive strike against those who struck at us.

That is, of course, assuming that we are sure who it was that attacked us. Osama bin Laden is definitely the prime suspect, but consensus is far from definite at this point. Senator Oren Hatch (sp?) seems to be practically foaming at the mouth in his zeal to go after bin Laden, but thankfully, there are other, calmer voices repeatedly advocating the need to hold back until we are absolutely sure.

So many things are so haywire these days. Since all airplanes are grounded, the skies above Seattle have been bizarrely clear and quiet since Tuesday. Normally I’ll see a few flights a day coming into Sea-Tac through my office windows, so seeing empty skies is a bit disquieting. Conversely, though, anytime a noise like a plane is heard — which does happen occasionally, as some military flights and some helicopters are allowed aloft — everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it’s coming from, where it might be going, and whether it’s friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering.

I just called and spoke with my parents until my phone card ran out. Was a nice, and very welcome, little piece of normalcy in the midst of all this turmoil. It turns out that Mom was able to go with Dad to Grandmother’s funeral, and they said that it was a very nice service. Dad said that it seemed like the entire town of Martinsville (Indiana) came out to the viewing.

They also told me that the prevailing opinion among Dad’s side of the family is that stable, boring jobs can be found anytime, and that if I can get a chance at this DJ’ing gig, I should take it. That was great to hear. Mom’s parents, of course, favor my staying with the stable, boring job — but that’s much as I expected, and while it would have been nice to have their support in my wanting to run off to sea (my, how turn-of-the-century that sounds), it’s also comforting to know that Grandma and Grandpa are still, most stolidly, the G&G I’ve known all my life. Wouldn’t want ’em any other way.

I also tried to call Miranda to find out how she’s doing, and to see if all the turmoil is affecting her husband David in any way. Should the U.S. end up entering into a wartime situation, he’d be one of the people virtually gauranteed to hit the front lines, due to the nature of his job. Given that the two of them have been working hard at getting through their differences, I’d hate to see him suddenly get called away to a situation that he might very well not come back from. Hard as it may be for some to believe, my thoughts and prayers go out to the two of them (and, of course, to their daughter Lorelei, Queen of Wozzles) as to anyone else.

That’s it for tonight, though.

Political cartoons

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Lady Liberty in distressIt’s interesting. There’s a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday’s tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes — Uncle Sam being surprised/distraught/enraged by the attack, terrorists looming over the US, and so on — but there’s one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. That is the theme of Lady Liberty in distress as she witnesses the city she stands over in turmoil.

Lady Liberty stands tallHowever, there is one cartoon that I found to be much more effective — and to my mind, a much more welcome sentiment. Simply clouds of smoke, with Lady Liberty’s torch still held high, cutting through the destruction to continue casting her torchlight across America.

I’m not normally exactly rabidly patriotic — I’ve had more than my share of differences with the directions that this country and her leaders have taken over the years — but it still stirs something in me to see expressions of hope and optimism such as this one. I only wish there were more — it may be sorely needed in the weeks to come.

How far is this going to go?

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Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now about today’s attacks in New York and Washington, so I’ll refrain from rehashing it all (though if you’d like a refresher, or want to check for any new information, here’s a link to CNN’s Special Report on the events).

What’s really starting to worry me is just where this is all going to end. Too much has happened in too short of a time, and I’m starting to get mildly paranoid about seeing it all blow up in our faces — maybe a little more literally than I’d like.

First off, the mind-numbing attack, involving coordinated hijacking of four airplanes, three of which found their targets, severly damaging the Pentagon, and utterly destroying three buildings of the World Trade Center (and a fourth looks ready to go as I write this). Then, just about 45 minutes ago, reports started hitting CNN’s TV feed (though I’ve not yet seen much mention of this on their website) that there are explosions in Afghanistan, a country known to have harbored bin Laden — the terrorist most strongly suspected of masterminding today’s attacks. The U.S. is currently denying that these are U.S.-led counterstrikes (which makes sense to me — it seems a bit soon for us to be retaliating in force, without clear and definite knowledge of who we should be retaliating against), but it’s certainly not helping the international situation in the least.

Popular sentiment is rather ugly at the moment, also. Understandably enough, given the strength of the emotional response this soon after the attack, but if left unchecked for long, it could get really frightening. I’ve been following two threads on the Home Theater Forum, and it’s taken some work on the part of the administrators to keep it from degenerating into revenge-motivated hate mongering.

Even some articles I’ve found links to around the web make me nervous — for instance, while I have no idea what the general stance of the site The Ornery American is (I have yet to dig through their site), their article Can We Win This War? starts out with statements I had no problem agreeing with (“America’s leaders are calling for patience, for a measured response to the acts of war we suffered on 11 September. They are right.”), but by the end of the article, they seem to be crying out for an all-out dive into World War III. This is the kind of thing that really starts to get me scared.

Is this the proverbial beginning of the end?

I certainly hope not, it’s just far to easy for my (possibly over-)cynical mind to see retaliation after retaliation build up until we’re far past the point of no return, never having noticed when that point arrived and we passed it by.

My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today — not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair.

Dub-yuh’s at it again

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Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

Dub-yuh and his financial people take a look at the budget a few months ago and see that we’ve got an apparent surplus — $281 billion or so, $122 billion once we set aside a chunk for Social Security. He then introduces his famous tax cut/rebate program, which not only reduces the amount of money that the government will gain through collecting taxes, but sends a huge chunk of the surplus out to the American public (and I’m still convinced that this $300/person ‘rebate’ check was nothing more than a bribe to get his tax-cut package through as easily as possible — kind of a ‘spoonful of sugar’ technique, only with poison instead of medicine going down in the end).

Then, when the economy (as it is wont to do) does something other than as predicted in the most optimistic forecasts, the government suddenly realizes that it’s got a whopping $600 million surplus — instead of $122 billion — and is surprised?!?

Ah, well. At least I’m not the only one with tight finances these days. But at least I didn’t blow $121.4 billion dollars to get there.

Homophobic idiots

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Okay…I’m pissed right now. My friend Kirsten just tipped me off to an article in todays Anchorage Daily News. In case the link dies, the basic gist is that there was a display put up at the Loussac library dealing with gay pride issues on Monday evening. Before the library opened on Tuesday morning, though, Mayor Weurch had ordered the library to pull the exhibit. The reason?

“I just said ‘no,'” Wuerch said. “This is a fundamental responsibility of the mayor, to make decisions. Once in a while, you have to say no.”

Ugh…this is so aggravating. The fact that we’ve got such a backwoods, predjudiced, homophobic mayor in office is downright depressing. From the accounts in the newspaper story, the display was fairly low-key, nothing overly controversial at all, a display case that had gay-themed books and videos couldn’t be seen unless you were right at it, and the library has hosted displays dealing with controversial issues in the past. However, because this dealt with gay issues, Mayor Weurch decided to effectively pull rank — after the display had been approved by the library administration and set up, mind you — and had it taken down, before more than a very few members of the public ever got a chance to see it and make their own judgements.

Argh. I’m just going to stop there, before this post goes any further downhill.

[From the archives: 1.3.96 0257]

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[Note: This was originally written back when I was hand-coding my pages. Original entry is here.]

Okay, changed some things around again. At the request of someone who e-mailed me, I have brought my page about the new teen curfew law back online. To do so took a little bit of space, though, so I zapped some of the older documents here…the bit on why Santa can’t exist, the Net Cruisers Anonymous flyer, and the flyer I did for Gig’s (but never actually put out on the streets) a couple of weeks back. (shrug) Change is the only constant in the universe…that and the beauricratic mentality.