Politics

I’m pretty strongly liberal — about as far left as one can go without falling into libertarianism. Posts collected under this tag will likely reflect that viewpoint.

Fahrenheit 9/11

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At this point, writing up much of a review is more or less pointless. If you’re of a mind to see this film, you’re quite likely to already, and if you’re not planning on seeing it — well, you should.

Most of what was in Fahrenheit 9/11 I knew about already, of course, having been trolling the various political sites regularly for a while now. The single biggest bit that I didn’t know much about beforehand was shots of the protests in DC during Bush’s inauguration. I’m not in the least surprised that there were protests, I just wasn’t paying as much attention to the news back then, and hadn’t heard much about what happened.

I was also very impressed by how Moore handled the day of the attacks. Rather than show us the same footage of the airplanes hitting the towers that we’ve seen time and time again, he stayed with footage of the reactions of people in the street as they gazed up at the towers, and later, as they moved through the streets, ash and papers floating down around them out of the sky. Far more effective and powerful than if he’d stuck to footage that we’d already seen enough times to become at least somewhat inured to the horror.

I was also a little surprised at some of the things that weren’t mentioned in the film. At one point, Moore mentions some of the member nations that joined the US in the “Coalition of the Willing” for the attack against Iraq, calling out a few that didn’t actually have any military forces to contribute. What he didn’t choose to mention, though, was something that I looked into at one point — the human rights records of the member nations. Rather disturbing to see what some of our partners in “fighting for democracy” are doing on their own turf.

My one real worry about the film is that it’s going to be preaching to the choir for most of its run. At least now, in its initial theatrical run, it’s far more likely that the majority of the people seeing it are people like me, who don’t need to be convinced that Bush needs to go. If Moore and Lion’s Gate/Miramax can get Fahrenheit 9/11 into the video market by mid-to late September or early October, though, the increased exposure of rentals might end up reaching a far wider range of people who aren’t as likely to bother seeing it in the theatre.

One can hope, at least.

iTunes: “Instruments of Darkness” by Art of Noise, The from the album Best of Rave, The Vol. 1 (1991, 3:40).

9/11 ≠ Iraq

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Designs on the White House has been running a t-shirt design contest, and they’ve just announced the winners. Some good shirts in there, I’m hard pressed to find a favorite.

This just might be it, though:

I was the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy and all I got was this lousy president.

iTunes: “New Jersey Turnpike” by Anderson, Laurie from the album United States Live (1984, 11:19).

Hagar the Horrible

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In the midst of a Seattle P-I article about trying to convince more young women to vote comes this little tidbit of information:

This week, Cavendish said, the falling piece of sky was Bush’s reappointment of “Hagar the Horrible” — W. David Hagar — to the influential Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA.

…there were the 25,000 pro-choice activists who pleaded with Bush not to make this move.

Hagar, Time magazine reports, refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. And in his book, “Stress and the Woman’s Body,” (co-written with his wife, Linda) he recommends reading Scripture as treatment for premenstrual pain.

More urgent to young women is the fact that Hagar used his position on the reproductive health committee to oppose the otherwise overwhelmingly approved vote to recommend over-the-counter sale of the morning-after contraceptive Plan B. The vote to approve the sale of Plan B was then overruled by the Bush administration.

Old white men using religion to dictate what young women can and can’t do with their bodies. And people say that there’s no reason to vote?

I read something earlier this week — unfortunately, I don’t remember where — that gave me pause to think. One of the tactics that the right has used to counter the “Pro-Choice” designation of abortion rights activists has been to deem themselves “Pro-Life”, implying that Pro-Choice equates to “Anti-Life” or “Pro-Death”.

Given Bush’s track record of sending more people to their executions while he was Governor of Texas, plus his railroading America into sending almost 1000 soldiers to their deaths in an unjust war, can he really campaign on a “Pro-Life” platform?

iTunes: “Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, The from the album Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury (1992, 3:47).

Bush ad equates Kerry, Gore and Moore with Hitler

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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

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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

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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)

More on Moon’s coronation

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Kirsten pointed me to a Salon article following up on the bizarre coronation of Rev. Moon. I’m so flabbergasted by this event.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin — the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him “none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

To many observers, this bizarre scene would have looked like the apocalypse as depicted in “Left Behind” novels. Moon, 84, the benefactor of conservative foundations like the American Family Coalition — who served time in the 1980s for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice — has views somewhere to the right of the Taliban’s Mullah Omar. Moon preaches that gays are “dung-eating dogs,” Jews brought on the Holocaust by betraying Jesus, and the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls “Godism” — with him in charge. The man crowned “King of Peace” by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church’s Unification News: “Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father.”

The more I read about this, the more bizarre it gets.

iTunes: “Good Person Inside” by Sobule, Jill from the album Sobule, Jill (1994, 3:12).

Jay and Silent Bob want you to vote

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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

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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).