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Sweet Day in the Morning
What's going on in Sudan made the front cover of this morning's (Sunday) Post. That's good stuff.
Is This an Ad for Us or for Them?
You really have to see this to believe it -- it's the latest Bush/Cheney campaign ad, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Love the images of Hitler. Very clever, Mr. President.
Christopher Hitchens Has Lost His Mind
I'm inclined to like a guy willing to question
the deification of Mother Theresa, but he's making it perfectly clear he has no
interest in being anything but an intellectually dishonest big mouth. In his
take on Fahrenheit 9/11, Hitch criticizes Moore for the film's ambiguity
-- "Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming
economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime,
they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not." I like the idea
of thinking about the ways of the world in either/or statements. That way, I can
keep it all in a spreadsheet and make pie charts. Of course, Hitchens criticizing
anyone for a supposed lack of logical coherence and consistency is just funny.
But I guess he got his big shmancy Slate headline graphic, so on to the
next.
Finally
Please
tell me whether the following statement applies more to Bush or more to Kerry:
He
is honest and trustworthy. Bush 39%
| Kerry 52%
Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 1,201 random, MOE 3%
Reasons to Not Vote for George W. Bush, A List
So here's a project I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of reasons one
might not want to vote for President Bush in the upcoming election that might
be persuasive to any old aunt, uncle, neighbor, coworker.
There's
more...
Monday Morning Quote
Q: Do you think the Saudis are doing everything they should be doing right now?
Senator Carl Levin: "No, I think the two biggest exports of Saudi Arabia have been oil and terrorism..."
Terrorism Up. No, Down. No, Up.
If you haven't been
following the Global Terrorism Report story, here's what happened -- back
in April, the State Department released the 2003 edition of the annual
report, which said that terrorism had reached its lowest level in 30 years.
Folks naturally ran around saying how great that was. Only thing is that
it's not anywhere near true -- 2003 was one of the bloodiest, most violent
years ever. Turns out -- sweet Mary I can hardly type the words -- that
in addition to other mix-ups, they stopped counting terrorist attacks
in November so that they could get the report to the printer. Secretary
Powell has called it a "a
big mistake." (Jon Stewart calls
it something else.)
I've Got the One-Click
Joe Trippi's almost got himself a new book.
Once I Had One That Tasted Like a Wet Triscuit
Matthew Ygelesias is baffled
about why some might be interested in celebrating the Catholic Church's
upset over celebrating the Eucharist with old Senator Kerry, detailed
here.
(The man attends Catholic mass willingly and regularly. Isn't that, um,
enough? -- Ed.) At the end of all his figuring, Matt comes up with
the idea that the only folks who could possibly care about this are those
pro-choice Catholics who will vote for him only if he continues to eat
the wafer. That's way overthinking this. The point of keeping a story
like this alive is to keep hammering home the idea -- to everybody listening
-- that Kerry is somehow shifty. Seems to me that's all there
is to it.
Scolagoogle
Oh fantastic -- I'm finally on Gmail. Thanks to Anna, and for her, a link to Run Against Bush. Details will follow.
UPDATE: How can Gmail have no new mail notifier? How?
UPDATE: Okay, the targeted ads are at least viscerally creepy. My mom wrote me about buying a new hot water heater and under 'Related Pages' I get links to stories like "Don't get burned by high water-heater setting" and "Noisy sump pump and check valve prevent a good night's sleep". Gut reaction, not so good.
Republican Survivor
I'm sorry but this is funny.
Morning in America
Wow, I was in some mood last night.
Put the Gloves Back On
Folks
have been saying lately that torture is a natural part of war, and I'm thinking
that that's one good reason not to start an unnecessary one. What this Administration
has done in the last year or so is to put
torture back on the international table. Setting the aside the idea that as
human beings might oughtn't go around torturing people or putting others in a
position to act as torturers, this is so damn dangerous because – and I can’t
even believe this needs to be said -- when the gloves
come off, they're off all around. No, non-state terrorist groups won’t abide
by Geneva Conventions, and in large part that sort of disregard for civilized
behavior is what makes them the bad guys. But what we’ve done has legitimized
the torture of American military and civilians by any other nation in which we
come into conflict. Also, in our doing so, we're quite quickly eroding the moral
authority we should have as a nation of laws and freedoms and order and decency
-- a moral authority that had until now been a pretty good weapon in our arsenal.
Get Used to Saying "But We're the United States of America, Damnit"
One of the things I dislike most about this Administration is that the don't seem
to feel warmly towards the idea that ours is a nation of laws -- you see, that's
one of my favorites. A recent confidential Pentagon report released by the Wall
Street Journal asserts, on page 35, that "laws that seek to prevent the President
from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the
United States" are unconstitutional. Also because of the Commander-in-Chief’s
“inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign,” U.S. laws prohibiting
torture “must be construed as inapplicable” in a “Global War on Terror” -- however
he chooses to define that war. So, not only can the President really disregard
any law he feels like disregarding, given that he has asserted
the right to make American citizens enemy combatants in this war, he's also
well within his authority to torture you. Have a good night.
Never Again, Next Time
The U.N. is now
saying that at least 300,000 people will die of hunger in the Darfur region
of western Sudan, no matter what is done from this point forward. As it did in
Rwanda ten years ago, a horror
we made a big show of swearing would never be repeated, the fault here lies
with the aggressors. But I’m in surly mood and I’m gonna say it: we as American
people have failed. As people to whom so very much is given, we have a higher
moral obligation and all that we would need to do fulfill that obligation is to
make clear in our words and in our actions that we are interested in the what
goes on in the world and want to read about it, see it, talk it over now and again.
Do it from faith, do it to avoid going to hell, do it from guilt, pride, a need
to feel needed, whatever. But goddamnit, we need to start giving a damn.
50 Years Ago Today...
The Army's chief attorney to Senator Joseph McCarthy in defense of a young associate: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" What's the point? None, really. Just has a nice ring to it.
Important: Scott Peterson Enron
Just another day at work at Enron: "You gotta think the economy is going to f------g get crushed, man;" "This is like a recession waiting to f-----g happen;" "This is where California breaks," "Yeah, it sure does man," "What we need to do is to help in the cause of, ah, downfall of California;" "You guys need to pull your megawatts out of California on a daily basis," "They're on the ropes today," "I exported like a f------g 400 megs," "F--k 'em, right!"; “It's all how well you can weave these lies together,” "I feel like I'm being corrupted now," "No, this is marketing." Just the sort of decent, hard-working company you’d want appointing federal energy regulators, helping to craft our national energy policy, being good buddies with and donating big buckets of money to the President. Yup, move on, nothing to see here.
Go Home Already
I'm in the very midst of a phase of reading both political biography and stuff by people I might not agree with. As such, I've just finished former Rep. Tom Coburn's account of his time in Congress. Coburn blames the failures of Washington on careerism -- the habit of professional politicians of making a habit of being professional politicians. I'm somewhat conditioned to see the positives of professional politicians: institutional knowledge, consistency, and the time and opportunity to make truly paradigm-changing changes -- like, say, McCain-Feingold -- that can, in the current system, take years of persistent work. I say “conditioned” because, I’m beginning to fear, my academic background in anthropology may have saddled me with the tendency to find meaning only in situ -- which, while really the point of anthropology, puts one at a disadvantage in seeing the patterns and broader context that make politics and government as they are. So, though I reject term limits as too undemocratic, I'm coming around to the possibility that a cultural norm -- enforced both by the elected and the electorate -- of serving a couple terms and bowing out for a bit might not be such a bad thing. It would of course fully alter the practice of national politics, but I'm just not so sure what we would lose by it. Or, at the least, I'm not so sure that we’d lose more than we'd gain.
I'm Not Saying It's Falling, But I'm Not Saying It's Not
Just sat down at my computer hoping to find out when the next yoga class is at my local Gold's Gym and so I did what anyone would do -- typed "gold's gym" into Google. Not only is goldsgym.com not the first record returned, it's nowhere within the first ten pages of results. I turned to Yahoo, something I haven't had to do in years, and goldsgym.com is the first non-sponsored result. For the sake of all that is good and decent, we'd all better hope this is just a freak aberration.
Just How Dumb They Think We Are
George Bush's latest campaign ad asks the question we’ve all been wondering on: just how does John Kerry feel about great economy we’ve got going? Gosh durnit, seems as if that Kerry is running around "talking about the Great Depression" and if “one thing’s for sure,” it’s that “pessimism never created a job." (Never? What about, like, firefighters? – Ed.) If you can’t imagine that the Democratic nominee would equate our current tough times to those truly disastrous ones, that’s only because you’re of course right. What Kerry has said is that Bush is the first president to lose jobs “since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression," which really is along the lines of, um, actual fact. So, as it turns out, we’ve learned this week that in addition to truth being liberal, history is a negative nelly.
dKosopedia
Just pointing out the launch of the dKosopedia, what he's calling a free political encyclopedia. While I'm no fan of that brand of ass-backwards mixed case, it has the potential to be a phenomenal resource and playground.
Blogs, or Web Logs
There's been a recent flurry of articles like this one discussing blogs, bloggers, and blogging, most of which hinge on the great questions like: Will my blog bring me oodles of money? Will Jodi Wilgoren read my blog? Will I ever have drinks with Wonkette? Here’s an alternative, sweet Mary I promised myself I’d never use the word, 'meme' for all you hard-working reporters: blogs, bloggers, and blogging foster discourse and debate and community and are helping to rebuild our crumbled civil society and socialize our young people. Can we not pretend that these are important things, even when they don’t involve fortune and celebrity? Continue to write these inane stories, and you will forever be ridiculed like the IBM engineer who said of the microchip "but what is it good for?" Oh, you will be, my friend. You will be.
Befuddlement Captured
Love this Matthew Yglesias lead:
Surveying the vast wasteland that George W. Bush has made of American governance, even the most sophisticated observer is driven to ask, like the simple son at a Passover seder, what is all this?
And I don't even have a clue what 'simple son' means. That's how good it is.
Boo to Reuters Headline Writers
In an article today on a San Francisco judge's finding that a ban on late term abortions is unconstitutional, Reuters refers to the procedure as "what critics call 'partial birth abortions.'" (And if you’re not a critic of the procedure, then you’re what, a big fan? – Ed.) The headline? “Judge Rules Against Ban on Partial - Birth Abortion.”
UPDATE: Oh yeah, and boo to the New York Times for running it.
Herseth Just About Wins, Yay or A Friend in Deed is a Friend Indeed
While I'm of course glad that Democrat Stephanie Herseth may well fill South Dakota's open House seat, I may have been just a tinch bit happier had she not been quite so effluvient in her support for that goddamned Constitutional amendment.
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