Apathy, Inc

2003-06-18T18:33:00.000-04:00

Moving On

Okay, I'm going to stop using Blogger now. I've decided that it's time to move on to my new site, and concentrate on that.

You can find my new site http://www.apathyincorporated.com.

Blogger has served me reasonably well, but it's time to move on. Turn the lights out when you leave, please.

2003-06-18T04:16:00.000-04:00

A Thing That Bugs Me

It has become quite common for the right to criticize Europe as being many things. Lazy, economically stunted, uninvolved in world events, things like this.

Let’s set the record clear on a few of these things.

First, the lazy thing. They work shorter hours than we do. In fact, everyone works shorter hours than we do – even Japanese workers work fewer hours a year on average than American workers. In much of Europe, the 35 hour work week has replaced the 40 hour work week. And they get more weeks of vacation than we do.

Wasn’t the goal of progress to make life easier for people? So they’re basically more advanced on this issue than we are – our hours are closer to the start of the 20th century than the start of the 21st.

So, moving on to the economically stunted. Germany’s economy isn’t doing so hot. Neither is most of the world, mind you. Including us. If the bottom falls out of the housing bubble, and the retail sales numbers start to match the dropping consumer confidence index, the US is on the same downward spiral. In fact, the predictions of Germany falling into a Japanese-style depression could happen to the US, too…with interest rates already so low, and a government that’s only working one side of the Supply and Demand chart – the wrong side, currently. So there’s a good chance the US, barring a major change in national fiscal policy, is headed down the same slope. You want to blame our economic structure?

And, lastly, their lack of involvement in world events. This should be read “Lack of involvement in Iraq”, because that’s really it. French troops have been sent to both the Congo and Liberia - the former as a far too limited peace keeping force, and the latter in an effort to rescue US, UK, and other foreign nationals from the fighting there.

And yes, that does say US. As in, our countrymen. The French went in and pulled them out. But Glenn Reynolds calls the French “cowards”.

And then there were the 4 German soldiers killed recently in Afghanistan, where they were part of the multinational peacekeeping force.

So, while Europe is far from perfect, let’s stick to the factually defensible arguments, and let’s not ignore our own shortcomings, huh?

2003-06-18T00:13:00.000-04:00

Middle East Happenings, Pt 2.

Yesterday, I looked into the situation in Iran, and gave a few opinions of what was going on there. I wrote it pretty late, so I’m not sure how coherent it is. Hopefully, this will be a little bit better.

Our topic this time? Israel and Palestine. Specifically, the Road Map, the positions that Sharon and Abbas put themselves in, and the efforts of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop the peace process.

We’ll start with the Road Map. Matt Yglesias has argued, quite soundly, that the Road Map is over-valued. He believes that it is too vague to be a serious plan – it offers no solutions or even ideas for solutions. All it offers are goals.

While that’s a good first step, more is needed. Issues such as borders, the settlements, and more all need to be worked out. Bush is leaving this up to Sharon and Abbas, it seems. While that’s certainly an option, I’m not sure it’s the best option. The only way these two are going to work together is if there’s heavy pressure from the major players in the region, plus the UN, US, and potentially, the EU.

Sharon, of late, had been doing a very good job of talking peace – calling the settlements the occupation that it is, for example. But the actions of Israel’s military doesn’t mesh with the statements coming out of Tel Aviv. The direct attacks they’re making at Hamas leadership is both destabilizing, and directly undermining the Palestinian Authority’s attempts to call for peace from the resistance/terror groups.

Today, there was a story in the Boston Globe about Hamas, as well as other militant groups, talking cease fire with Israel..

This is good news, but it continues to show that Israel has not learned the lessons of how to deal with terroristic resistance groups. Britain wrote the book on this in their dealing with the IRA over the last several decades, and any nation confronting terror would do good to follow their example (the US’s struggle with Al Qaeda could learn a few things, as well).

By fighting the terrorists with military force, Israel is just making the terrorists look more like soldiers. This, in turn, glorifies them in the eyes of the desperate, which means more volunteers. If you treat them like criminals, they gain no such legitimacy. Britain knew this. The US and Israel seem to have missed the lesson, unfortunately.

There’s also the fact that Sharon appears far too willing to react to Hamas’s efforts to disrupt the process. Every time they do something, he responds with ground incursions or helicopter attacks. This isn’t making Abbas any friends, and it isn’t helping the credibility of the Road Map.

The best thing that could be done about Hamas and the other militants, in my mind, is for Abbas to admit that Palestine doesn’t have the police infrastructure to find and arrest the people behind the attacks, and then to call for the joint cooperation of police and intelligence agencies from the US, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt…maybe even include the EU. This would be conditional on the apprehended individuals being tried by Palestinian courts, and not turned over to Israel or anyone else. It is paramount that Palestine takes steps towards sovereignty, and the help of international police and intelligence agencies would help build up Palestine’s law enforcement infrastructure, as well as instill some confidence in their court system (assuming that they currently have one – I’m not so sure on this point).

The US gets included because they have the most resources, and are something of a neutral party. Israel is involved because A) it shows a real commitment to Israel’s security, and B) Israel’s Mossad is probably the most informed intelligence agency in the region on these groups.. Jordan and Egypt get included because they’re Muslim nations with ties to the US and, theoretically, progressive governments, at least as far as the Mideast is concerned.

So, you have that coalition working to find and arrest the militants – under Palestinian guidance. Then you start working Sharon to start scaling back the settlements as a quid pro quo, and perhaps also reducing the Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

That, at least, would be an actual start, and not just a talking start, as we’ve mostly seen so far.

2003-06-17T21:39:00.000-04:00

More Putting the Lie to Republican Claims

Earlier this week, I wrote this post about how Republicans talk a good game when it comes to free market economics, but in the end, they tend to be supply-side interventionists (a term I never managed to put into the earlier post, somehow).

Well, it turns out that they aren't really all that much for supporting our armed forces, either. At least, not if it'll cost people making 7 figures yearly an average of about 7% of their latest tax cut.

See the report here. It's good reading. And one more issue that the DNC and various Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops. I'm gonna have to write a list of "Shout from the Rooftop Issues" soon...first, I'm tackling the Israel/Palestine issue. Expect that post later tonight.

Thanks to Jesse for finding this one.

2003-06-17T02:37:00.000-04:00

Middle East happenings, pt 1

Sorry for all the navel gazing...I guess I spent too much time working on getting MT going (and keeping the readers apprized). But, with all that done, I'll get back to the various rants, news updates, and what not.

So I promised this over the weekend, but ended up not getting around to it.

There's three big situations going on in the mideast right now. There's the Israel-Palestine situation, the Iraq reconstruction/occupation/WMD search, and the situation in Iran.

We'll start with Iran, since that's probably the lease complex.

A majority of Iran's youth, who never knew the Shah, are completely fed up with the Islamic Republic concept. They want democracy. And they're starting to stand up and be counted.

This is key. If these protests and other efforts can gain a foot hold (they already have, to a degree, in the elected portion of the government - which answers directly to the clerics). This is an effort that is practically devoid of US support. In fact, there were arguments that the war in Iraq might make life harder for the dissidents in Iran...it would give the clerics an excuse to crack down on the most vocal groups, claiming that they were being controlled or sponsored by the US.

That, so far, has not really come to pass, thankfully. What has happened is not much better...recently, at protests where students were against the privatization of the university, a gang of thugs attacked several of the protestors. This wasn't a random attack, it was a violent take on the counter-protest. According to this report, at least one person has been killed since the protests started a week ago.

Iran is the key. If the main example of an Islamic Republic fails on it's own, and becomes a democracy - Islamic or not - then that would serve as a perfect example for the rest of the region. Countries rebuilt by the US could never serve as well, because of US action.

After Afghanistan, I wanted to see the US really concentrate on making it work. If Afghanistan could become a strong, successful democracy, then that would give the people of Iran far more support in their efforts to bring about true democratic reform. It would, in my opinion, be far better than some form of direct US support. The US is, currently, not seen as particularly trustworthy by the Islamic world. Rebuilding Afghanistan successfully would be an indirect form of support, which would limit the ability of the clerics to crush the opposition for their ties to America. It would also show the Iranians what they had to gain.

Unfortunately, Iran is now surrounded by two struggling US occupations - Afghanistan to the East, and Iraq to the West. And the US Government is making accusations of support for Al Qaeda, Saddam...all sorts of groups with no religious or political ties to Iran's leadership.

US policy is, obviously, quite flawed in most of it's efforts in the mideast of late - Afghanistan is descending into chaos, Iraq is becoming more violent by the day, Iran and Syria have regularly been threatened, and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two nations considered to provide the most support for Al Qaeda, are our allies.

Our policy towards Iraq and Afghanistan need to be changed, obviously. But our policy towards Iran must be tied in to those two. With the proper work on all three, it's quite possible that a democratized, largely pro-US belt of successful nations could be formed right in the center of the Muslim world. Joined with Turkey, and a stable Palestinian state, these could be the basis of a democratic renaissance stretching from North Africa to the islands of Oceania. Is that overly optimistic? Maybe. It's certainly a very long term solution - it could easily take decades for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan to stabilize into successful democracies.

Tomorrow: Israel/Palestine and Iraq - and maybe Afghanistan. This post is long enough for tonight.

2003-06-16T23:02:00.000-04:00

Done and Done

The MT site is working and up. The calendar, sadly, is going to have to go...it only links to the last post of that day, and I usually post more than once per day.

You can find the new site at www.apathyincorporated.com. Who'd have expected me moving to that domain name, huh?

Please update your bookmarks/blogrolls, etc. All of my archives here have been moved over there, and the links will even work now!

Other than this post, which will be different over there, I'll be posting everything for the next few days to both sites, so as to catch any straglers.

2003-06-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

Yay!

I think I've got MT figured out. Going to try to do that whole export/import thing now. Hopefully, this won't break anything.

2003-06-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

Sigh...

Something isn't right in my MT usage so far.

Nothing I do changes the main index page. Editing the CSS, editing the index.html, nothing. It always ends up looking like the default weblog, minus any posts, with just my title in there. Nothing else I do changes, ever. And I don't know why. I really would like to know, tho. I've rebuilt several times...none of those changes seem to affect the index file, or the css file. Am I missing something?

Update: Indeed, I am missing something. Or, was. I had left two directories named incorrectly in my settings, and all the updated files were getting put into a secondary folder. This problem is now fixed. Time to make it look right...

2003-06-15T23:24:00.000-04:00

Working Under the Hood

Okay, I got MT installed. Fiddling with the templates and what not now. Questions may be coming soon...

Also, I plan on putting together an essay type piece on the Mid-East at some point...but I'm not sure when. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow after work. We'll see. It'll probably end up being pretty long...

Update: This MT thing might take a while. I was pretty good with HTML back in 98, but that was 5 years ago. These days, I just know the basics, and CSS, Javascript and the like are all pretty much over my head. I may enlist the help of a much more script-savy friend. I was hoping to find a set of templates that looked okay somewhere on the net that i could use as a base and then modify, but no luck there. And right now, MT isn't posting my first entry..not sure why.

Ah well, back to work...

Update II: Yup, I'm lost. My complete ignorance of css is going to make this hard. Anyway, it's bed time. I'll see what I can do tomorrow, after work.

2003-06-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

Have you seen me?

Seen on the side of my milk carton just now:

Have you seen me?
Missing since 6/9/03

We miss you Kevin! Please come home!

2003-06-15T11:52:00.000-04:00

Putting the lie to the free market republicans

Free markets suggest that businesses would survive, or fail, on the merit of the business model and the company's procedures.

So if companies are supposed to sink or swim on their own, why is the congress passing massive loan guarantees for nuclear power plants?

The loans are worth 16 billion. If the nuclear plant owners default, we, as taxpayers, are on the hook.

The Congressional Budget Office puts the risk of default at better than 50%. Knight Ridder is reporting that the Standard and Poor's considers it to be a bad risk as well.

It is expected that, at best, the plants will cost 2 to 4 times as much to build as comperable natural gas burning plants. Insurance, regulatory, and other costs are expected to be higher as well.

The market doesn't want to support nuclear power. There isn't a serious lack of providors of coal, natural gas, renewable, and oil burning sources.

So why are we on the hook for loans to businesses with models that the market doesn't want to support, especially if there's no pressing need? How is that a free market policy?

2003-06-14T23:22:00.000-04:00

Descisions, descisions...

So, I was checking out veiled4allah, which is a cool blog (and, apparently, was the first site to give me a permalink, even if it is way down near the end of a miles-long blogroll). Al-Muhajabah, the host of veiled4allah, is also a regular reader of my site (hence the link), as well as a somewhat regular poster. She posted an offer on another blog she reads, where the host would, for free, move me to a Moveable Type blog on Verve Hosting, all I have to do is buy a domain and sign up with Verve, and then contact him.

Here's what I know and don't know about MT: The commenting is built in, which means it can't be down, but I have to worry about bandwith (right now, that's not an issue at all, but...well, a guy can dream, can't he?). There's something called "trackback" which I still don't quite grasp. I have no clue how the backend looks like. I've got no clue how...well, any other part of it works. But I keep hearing good things. And I already have a domain and host for the business I was trying to start last spring (which fell through due to lack of available space in this town, sadly...not sure if I would have gotten the necessary loans...but I digress)...so I'm thinking that I'll install it over there, test it some, see if I can make it work. If I can pull it off, I'll take this guy up on his offer. I'd live my archives to work, I'd like to have more workable comments, and I'd like to figure out how to mess with the look of the site some - I'm not particularly thrilled with this look, but the blogger template isn't the easiest thing to figure out.

So...are any of my readers willing to help me out if I have trouble figuring out MT?

Oh, and speaking of readers, you're definetly sticking around, and I have to say, thank you. You don't have any idea how hard it would be to pound out that big Handicapping post with the knowledge that the odds of anyone seeing it were nil.

Update: Screw it, I'm gonna do it. I'm going to keep this going for now, at least until I get the new site figured out...so I'll keep everyone updated here for now.

Update again: And, of course, commenting died again, just making me feel better about this decision. Let's see how it works.

2003-06-14T20:14:00.000-04:00

Handicapping

So, I figured it's about time I spoke about the Democratic primary races.

There's 9 candidates running (as of right now). Alphabetically, with title and links to websites: Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, Senator from North Carolina John Edwards, Representative from Missouri Dick Gephardt, Senator from Florida Bob Graham, Senator from Massachusetts John Kerry, Representative from Ohio Dennis Kucinich, Senator from Connecticut Joseph Lieberman, Former Senator from Illinois Carol Mosley Braun, and Reverend Al Sharpton - he's from New York, in case you're wondering.

Conventional wisdom has it that there's 3 groups of 3 out of these 9. The front runners, the dark horses, and the ones that never had a chance.

Those groups:

Front Runners:
Howard Dean
John Kerry
Dick Gephardt

Dark Horses:
Joe Lieberman
Bob Graham
John Edwards

Never Had a Chance:
Dennis Kucinich
Al Sharpton
Carol Mosley Braun.

I'm not familiar with several of these candidates yet, but I think that actually gives me a better idea of how the national electorate will respond to them. My gut feelings on them, combined with what I've picked up in discussions with my moderate-republican boss who wants to vote against Bush, too.

Howard Dean: He's getting tons of support from people who've never been involved in politics before. I think that points as much to his exceptional use of the web as much as his stance. Heck, I don't like parts of his stance. He's too attack-minded in public...in group appearances by the Dems, he's been fairly combative. I don't see that playing very well. Plus, he comes across to me (when I see him on TV) as really creepy looking. You know that won't work (not that it's a particularly attractive field in the Democratic party). Plus, he's the governor of Vermont. I'm from Massachusetts, and let me tell you - Vermont is a backwater. Sure, Jimmy Carter was from Georgia, and that's pretty back woods in many people's minds, but at least it has Atlanta. And Bush is from Texas, which is a fairly insane place, but it's big, so it seems like he did something important. Maybe if he had more national-level experience, it wouldn't be an issue.

So, to sum it up...I think Dean could do very good things for the party...but I really don't think that he can win a national election. The Dean-ites, who are practically fanatical at this point, will likely skewer me for this one, but I gotta call 'em as I see 'em.

John Kerry: He's got the war record. He's got years of experience in the Senate. He's got connections. He's got all sorts of things. But he's also got a credibility problem. John Kerry is ripe for a Gore-ing. And that means he doesn't stand a chance. Is it deserved? I don't know. He seems to be fluid on a few issues, but I'm not convinced it's because he's wishy-washy...but that's how it will be portrayed in the SCLM (So-Called Liberal Media, if you're wondering). So he can't win. Lots of people don't trust him (or will learn that they shouldn't). This happened in 2000, with Kerry it could happen again in 2004. That would be disastrous, to say the least.

Dick Gephardt: I like Gephardt. The big 3 all have proposals and stated policy views I like, but Gephardt has qualities that rank him over the other frontrunners. For starters, he's not from New England. That matters. There's an image in much of the country of the elitist New England liberal...Kerry is going to catch flak on that, too. Gephardt is from the midwest, which gives him a bonus. He also has tremendous Union support, and while some think unions might be outdated or something, you still need unions to win. His plan for healthcare is brilliant and he's got a solid war chest built up from his congressional runs.

So, let's see. Union support, solid money backing him up, really smart health care plan, no obvious weaknesses. He's the guy with the best chance to win vs Bush, in my mind. And that is the most important thing. On to the dark horses.

Joe Lieberman: The Daily Show sums this one up pretty well: He's the candidate for voters that like Bush, but don't think he's Jewish enough. Lieberman is one of the most consistently republican voters the democratic party has ever seen. The guy is pro-censorship, pro-big business....he's practically a republican. Let's just move on.

John Edwards: He's got the looks....and not much else. He's been very quiet so far, after a fairly hot start. I have yet to hear anything substantial from him. I'm willing to bet that lots of potential voters don't even know who he is. You have to get your name out there if you want to win, and Edwards hasn't figured out how to do that yet.

Bob Graham: He's from Florida. He's got boatloads of money, as I understand it. But he's a first-term senator, and apparently he keeps an utterly meticulous diary/schedule, one that covers literally every single thing he does. There's rumors that this might hurt him, or maybe there's something in there that can hurt him (I have no idea if there are copies in the possession of anyone trying to discredit him). He, too, has been remarkably silent on most of the issues. He might make a decent VP candidate, since he could help gain Floridian voters.

Nothing spectacular in that group. Let's move on to the Never had a Chance crowd:

Carol Mosley Braun. Her website is as spartan as her campaign efforts seem to be. I really know nothing about her, and neither do 90something percent of the people in this country. She's certainly done lots of work in government, but she just isn't making any noise. Plus, the odds of the first female president also being the first black president are so out-there as to be hard to fathom.

Al Sharpton: Well, first off, let me link to this. How did I find that? It's a paid sponsor on www.google.com. They're actually telling Republicans to change parties and vote for Sharpton.

Al Sharpton is a brilliant man, and a great American. But he's also a bit of a laughingstock. He shouldn't be...but he is. Part of it is his perm...part of it is his ties to Jesse Jackson. The man was ordained when he was 9, for crying out loud. Bush was probably still learning to spell George at that point...

Hopefully, Al Sharpton can help shape some of the debate in the Democratic party. The interests of blacks have been absent from the party's platform for some time, and the Dems need black voters to turn out in big numbers if they want to win...and Sharpton is a guy that can re-invigorate the black voters.

Dennis Kucinich: I've left Kucinich until last for a reason. I'm a big supporter. Dean has co-opted Paul Wellstone's line about representing the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party", but Kucinich is the one who really does. He's a real progressive. He's got lots of good ideas that the party as a whole should be considering. But he's getting crushed by a lack of publicity. After Gephardt, he has the strongest union support. He and Sharpton aren't running to win (well, they might say they are...but they have to know that they can't win). They're running to change the Democratic party, make it more like the party of FDR, JFK, and RFK than the party of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.

Later on, I'll go into some of the reasons Kucinich deserves more support. Not yet, tho.

So, what brings this up? MoveOn.org is having a straw pole to find out where it's membership stands. The winner will get the financial and political backing of MoveOn, which has become a fairly large progressive PAC. If you aren't a member, you should join - and vote.

2003-06-14T10:15:00.000-04:00

Stupid Work...

I have a couple fairly big posts I'd like to make today (one on the deteriorating situation in Palestine, another on my thoughts on the Democratic presidential candidates), but unfortunately I have to get ready for work. I'll try to get them written and posted this evening...check back after dinner time, EST, and hopefully I'll have something for ya.

2003-06-14T02:55:00.000-04:00

Speaking of Guns...

Over at Unlearned Hand, I sorta jump started a discussion of the ACLU and the 2nd ammendment.

It started in the comments to this post, and ended up getting it's own post here.

It's an interesting debate, but that isn't exactly the point of my post now (altho I might get into it later).

No, the point of my post is this.

Logan Airport, the only airport in my beloved city of Boston (which I don't actually live in, but I live close enough...and with Matt Yglesias graduating and eventually moving to DC to take his new job, I think I'm the blogosphere's resident Bostonian), has become the first airport in the US to see security forces armed with sub machineguns. MP5-SD's, specifically. It's a hell of a weapon, as best I can tell (based mostly on extensive testing in Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear). The accuracy is good, it's quiet as all heck (the SD signifies the variant with the integral silencer. You can find more info here), and it's reportedly quite reliable. They've been equiped with the retractable stock, if you're wondering.

They've purchased 30 for use by a special anti-terror branch of the MA State Police that is charged with maintaining security at Logan. They cost $2500 a piece.

The silencers are to keep the airport from erupting in a panic if shots are, somehow, fired. According to a spokesperson I heard, no firearm has ever been discharged at Logan (I can't verify that, tho). The weapons do not have an option for full auto, which is good...full auto is not a good way to handle fire fights in crowded areas. The paper reports single and 2-round bursts, but that should be 3 round bursts, I think...I've never heard of 2 round bursts.

2003-06-14T00:33:00.000-04:00

Big Guns Backing Me Up

Paul Krugman agrees with me on my take of the far right-wing-ification of the Republican party from the other day.

Makes me feel a little smart. And it makes me even more certain that I'm right.

My favorite quote:

There's no point in getting mad at Mr. DeLay and his clique: they are what they are. I do, however, get angry at moderates, liberals and traditional conservatives who avert their eyes, pretending that current disputes are just politics as usual. They aren't — what we're looking at here is a radical power play, which if it succeeds will transform our country. Yet it's considered uncool to point that out.

Read the whole thing, tho.

2003-06-14T00:18:00.000-04:00

Narcisim Factor

Earlier, I mistakenly flipped to Fox News, only to catch O'Reilly use his "Talking Points Memo" segment (is he paying royalties to Josh Marshall? Someone should try to make that one happen).

His topic? A rumor based on a false report by a San Fran paper about his radio station, that had spread like wildfire on the net (reportedly...I haven't heard it anywhere). The paper claimed that the Radio Factor had been dropped, whereas O'Reilly says Westwood One had already made plans to move it, and that's why the station it was on had stopped broadcasting it.

I don't know any of the details. In fact, I don't care. But O'Reilly used probably a fifth of his TV show to rant about how his radio show isn't really doing bad (not sure if it is or isn't...and, like I said, I don't care). Then he attacked the people on the Net as being completely untrustworthy.

I haven't seen anyone reporting this, nevermind trumpeting it. Hesiod, Atrios, and Tom Tomorrow have all ignored this story, and they're some of the leftier sites on the blogosphere (Hesiod probably being the leftist of the larger blog sites). As far as correction issues, Andy Sullivan suggested that blogs allowed faster and more specific/pertinent corrections.

Then, as pointed out by Begging to Differ (via Unlearned Hand), Sullivan went and disproved himself by deleting a post he made and replacing it with an apology. It's impossible to find out what he's applogizing for, of course, since the original is somewhere at the bottom of the memory hole.

Calpundit and Atrios both dealt pretty fairly with the issue of the Guardian's misquotation of Deputy SecDef Woflowitz....especially Calpundit, who was perhaps the most reasonable voice on the issue in the blogosphere (at least, that I encountered).

Also, 3 days with 10+ visitors. Compared to weeks with 1 or 2 being good. Very nice. Now I just need to get back to posting...stupid Stargate SG1 premier sucking up my free time this evening....

2003-06-12T15:31:00.000-04:00

Delusions of Grandeur?

Found this over at Pandagon (freshly added to the blogroll, which I should probably organize soon).

More people think that we're better off now than we were under Clinton?

How freaking crazy can you be?

The books now are subtitled "how to survive a nuclear bomb attack!" and such things. Back then, we had books about the dow hitting 36,000 and the potential that the business cycle had gone by the wayside. Unemployment is the highest it's been since not long after Clinton took office. The World Trade Center Towers in NYC don't fucking exsist anymore. The market is down more than 30% since 99/2000. How are these at all better?

The only improvements are more flags (as Jesse pointed out) and less public debate of blowjobs (as I pointed out in his comments). And less Linda Tripp and Paula Jones, I guess. Which is, all in all, a pretty good thing....but still.

2003-06-12T15:23:00.000-04:00

Commenting Down

Enetation's commenting is down, again. I hate when that happens. Not sure when it'll be back up. If I ever start to get some real readership, I'll move to Moveable Type or something, but I'm still a good ways away from that. In the mean time, if anyone has any ideas on a new commenting provider, feel free to email me or, if they're up, leave a comment.

Update: Real readership? Did I just say that? Before a week ago, I hadn't gotten more than 5 hits in a single day after you take away my checking the site. Then I got a link on Calpundit, etc, etc, etc...I've told the story already. I've now gotten double digit hits for 2 straight days, which, even with the Calpundit link, I've never gotten before. So all of you who are reading me regularly, thank you very, very much. It's much easier to post when I know at least someone is reading.

Update, pt2: Commenting is back up, only about a half hour after I posted. So yay, and stuff.

2003-06-12T01:13:00.000-04:00

I love the Daily Show

A republican congressman from California is pushing an amendment that would ban flag burning.

He even questioned the patriotism of congresspeople not supporting it with him: "Some people, I feel, are hiding behind the first ammendment."

Jon Stewart's response?

"Perhaps they're getting shot at by people hiding behind the second ammedment."

I've heard that The Daily Show routinely gets twice the ratings that Bill O'Reilly gets. Things like that give me hope for this country.

NB: I'm not against the second ammendment. See my post from a few days ago on Instapundit's gun control/Mugabe argument, and my feelings on how to deal with gun control in the US for a pretty good overview of my feelings on the issue.

2003-06-12T00:27:00.000-04:00

The Note speaks

The Note is ABCnews.com's political news blog. It kicks ass, generally, despite it's longish layoff for the War in Iraq.

So, today, it was about journalistic integrity, sort of.

It starts:

With all those reporters covering politics and government in Washington and around the country, you would think that the press would be watching the powerful on behalf of the people pretty persistently.

But you would be wrong.

He goes on to blame a combination of "tight budgets, the evasiveness of those we cover, and the generally (sorry … ) lazy nature of some reporters". Another good quote

For instance, journalists are now routinely relying on the Republican National Committee's missed vote tallies of the Democratic presidential candidates in stories about the subject, as opposed to keeping the records ourselves.

There's more. It's really interesting. Go, read. But be warned, the Note is regularly over 10 thousand words, so make sure you have some free time.

2003-06-11T19:15:00.000-04:00

Peace in the Middle East, y'all

So, I promised a complement of Bush. And here it is:

He's doing very good so far in his efforts to really change what's going on in the Palestine/Israel quagmire.

In fact, I haven't felt this good about the situation since Yitzak Rabin was assassinated almost a decade ago. Clinton was doing wonders around the world back then (See also: Northern Ireland), and things looked really good. They haven't quite looked that promising since Rabin was assassinated (by a hard line Israeli, as I recall). The peace process was stalled at that point. But Mahmoud Abbas looks like the best thing to happen to Palestine in 40 years, and Sharon is starting to say the right things.

At first, I was skeptical. Maybe Bush was making promises in back rooms to get Sharon to play along.

Then, there was this.

Bush actually came down against Israel for contributing to the cycle of violence.

Abbas can only do so much to stop Hamas. And it looks like he's really trying. And, on top of that, his message is getting out. Not long ago, Palestinians were protesting Hamas for launching an attack that brought Israeli troops into their town. These things are real progress, and must not be abandoned in the face of greater terror attacks. That is exactly the goal of the attacks.

Israel's government can control the military moves it makes. And they must be less reactionary, especially now. If they are seen as working towards a real peace, even more support for Hamas and similar groups will fall away.

My hope is that Abbas will request help from the Israelis and US in finding the leaders of these groups and apprehending them. Palestine is making efforts, but the infrastructure required to run real anti-terror operations just isn't there. The US and Israel have it. Perhaps Egypt could be involved, too, to make it look more acceptable to the every day Palestinian who still might not trust Israel or the US completely.

The other thing I'd like to see is increased aid to Abbas's efforts. The West Bank and Gaza Strip have been decimated over the years, and they need help. If the US AND Israel work to make things better there, then that would go even farther to help rebuild the trust between the two, and would do more to destroy Hamas's credibility than anything the Israeli military could shoot at them.

2003-06-11T17:05:00.000-04:00

Niftyness continues

I checked out my stats on SiteMeter, expecting to have had no more than 1 or 2 hits today, as is usual. Turns out, I had my 2nd most ever.

Turns out, I am no on my first blogroll...on Unlearned Hand. And the story of how I got there seems to be a fairly convoluted tale.

It all started over on Matt Yglesias's site. He posted a link to a Volokh post by Orin Kerr. I read the Volokh post, took issue with it, and wanted to comment...but couldn't. So I went back and posted my frustration on Matt's site. Kevin Drum (aka < a href=http://www.calpundit.com>Calpundit) took up my post as a topic of discussion...do the big conservative blogs allow less commenting than the big liberal ones, or does it just seem that way? After I posted my two cents and a link here in Kevin's comments, he updated his post to give me a link (Thanks again, Kevin!). Then, Stentor Danielson, one of Kevin's readers, decided to use an older post by Kevin, a "map of the blogosphere", to check my hypothosis. Turns out I was wrong, sort of (the big 6 are largely comment free, but the medium-large blogs offer comments more often). But it got me a link on Stentor's site, Debitage - I posted earlier about that. That, apparently, got me into the Technorati database, which I'd never heard of, but seems to be a fairly useful tool for tracking who is linking to your site. Somehow, from my one link, Unlearned Hand found me, and liked what I had to say, so I got a permalink.

I'd heard of Unlearned Hand before, but hadn't checked it out. Now that I've got a fairly compelling reason, I gave it a look. He's pretty interesting. He concentrates mostly on legal issues, as best I can tell (being a law student would give one reason to do that, I imagine). So I'll be adding him to the list of blogs I read, and he'll get a spot on the blogroll (since it's made up entirely of sites I read).

A little bit on the mideast peace process later today. And be prepared: It will contain actual complements for George W. Bush!

2003-06-11T01:30:00.000-04:00

Ranting Time

I haven't done this in a while. If anyone has stayed after the Calpundit link (the stats don't look so good), you might want to get used to this, I do it every so often.

So what am I ranting about this time? The right-wing-ification of the republican party. And also some of the hypocrisy of that right wing.

Let me state this first: I like republicans...real republicans, who have an ideology, but are also pragmatic politicians who do what's best for the country and try to work their ideology in, and not the other way around. Bush Sr and Clinton (not that he was a republican, obviously) were both pretty good on these accounts. Hell, Bush saw the budget problems he was facing, and passed a tax increase (heavier on the top bracket, but still not pushing it above the 2nd highest bracket’s rate...Clinton's tax hike put the top bracket’s rate back as the highest rate), because it was the right thing to do, economically.

My boss is another good example. We disagree on some policy decisions, but we debate them and try to compromise. He's a conservative, I'm a progressive...we don't treat one another like enemies...we debate rationally.

But, over the last decade, the Republican party has turned into a party run by people who see politics as a competition, and not a way to make things better for everyone. They have an ideology that they're going to fit the facts to, and not the other way around. And if you break lockstep, they'll come after you with someone who won't.

The best examples of this are Bush, Rove, DeLay, and Grover Norquist, who recently opined that "bipartisanship is daterape."

These guys aren't politicians. They're hacks. They believe that they have The Truth handed down to them from on high, and if they can't get what they want, they have to fight for it tooth and nail. To get it they'll spin the facts any way they have to (for example, tax cuts have become the answer to everything...which is insane).

When Bush calls for bipartisanship, he's really calling for everyone to support him. When his father did it, he wanted Congress to work together to get compromises on things, so they could get done.

As for the spin Bush puts to things...let's start with free trade. Bush is a huge backer of free trade, to hear him say it. Of course, he's passed massive subsidies for farms ($160k per cotton farm per year, for example), tariffs on steel....and that's not even getting into the corporate welfare for failing airlines, and all sorts of other smaller things.

That's not a free market. If our farms need help competing with the world, and we help them, we're tilting the market's playing field. It's no longer free. If an airline can't keep itself running, and we give them billions of dollars, that's not a free market weeding out the weaker companies. Bush supported all these things. Again, winning gets in place of rhetorical statements. But most republicans fall for it, and act like he really does want free markets. What he wants is free access for us to foreign markets, with little in return for those markets. That's a protectionary tactic used generally by poorer, underdeveloped countries that can't compete with the big industrialized economies. It works great for them. It's just insane for us.

And what about those farm tariffs? Aren't the republican people of the heartland supposed to be self sufficient? Isn't smaller government supposed to be their goal? Smaller states, especially agricultural ones, get more federal money from densely populated democratic states do. In fact, most republican states get more money from the federal government then they pay, while democratic states lose money. So while those farms get massive subsidies, (and most of them are big agro-business owned, not smaller family farms), and the FCC is taxing cable modem and DSL customers (most of whom live in democratic, densely populated areas) to pay for high speed access and other telecom infrastructure in sparsely populated states, etc, etc...those same people are arguing that government needs to be smaller. And, of course, at the same time, you see places like NYC that can't afford to keep all their fire houses open. You remember the FDNY, the heroes of 9/11? Bush sure as hell doesn't, since he isn't helping bail out any of the major budget crises in the states...he's just cutting taxes again. And again. And again.

Oh, and that war on terror? Well, we can't spend money to adequately protect the nation's harbors, etc...at least, not anything over 20 billion. The war on Iraq got almost 4 times that for 3 months..that's supposed to cover the costs of protecting the whole country?

What about gun rights? Bush is a big protector of that. Except in Iraq, where we plan to disarm the populace. Or socialized medicine, he's against that, right? Again, except for Iraq, where we plan on installing a nationalized health care system.

Security, war, the economy, everything...it's all tools in playing the game. That's the republican party's leadership right now. They play to win, and then they push their ideology, with heavy doses of spin to make things look better. The compliant (and some times cheer-leading) media help make it easy for them. And if you stand up to them, they'll come after you as hard as they can.

For example: Max Cleland. Cleland was a senator from Georgia, up until the 2002 election. He was attacked by republicans for not going along with Bush's position on Iraq. He was shown in adds as being a supporter of Bin Laden and Hussein. His patriotism was questioned openly.

Max Cleland fought in Vietnam (something that you can't say about many of the people currently leading the Republican party). Not only that, he lost three limbs there. Then he came home and became a senator.

There are few things that show your love of America more than losing 3 limbs (both legs and an arm) in an unpopular, poorly fought war, and then coming home and dedicating yourself to making things better. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of anything that any of the current republican leadership has done that's on that level (Colin Powell not included, since he isn't really part of the republican party's leadership).

And for the whole morality debate, keep in mind that the Clintons are both on their first marriage. Of the prominent republicans that ran against him or attacked him in Congress and the media, almost all of them were on their 2nd or 3rd marriage. Gingrich served his first wife divorce papers while she was recovering from surgery in the hospital, then left his second wife to marry a staffer he'd been having an affair with, Limbaugh had 3 wives, the 3rd he met on the internet, Bob Dole was on his second wife, and Reagan is, so far, the only President to have been divorced. This is the party of family values? Is it a family value to use violent rhetoric on your radio show or news column (and yes, I'm looking at you, Liddy, Limbaugh, and Coulter)?

Hypocrisy runs deep in the leadership of the Republican party. And the rank and fold republicans are the ones falling for the crap the leadership is saying, while they abandon most of those concepts in reality.

Real republicans, the ones I like to debate with, the ones who see politics as a way to make good government work through compromises, need to take the power back in the republican party. And soon.

And for those who think I'm seeing my side as good and the other as bad, I'm not going to argue that the DNC is perfect. Heck, I don't like it very much. But it's problems are doing more to keep it out of power than to get them in power. So that isn't a big problem. It's the opposite with the current republicans.

2003-06-08T16:09:00.000-04:00

Trying Again

This is a 2nd attempt at this post, which Blogger ate this morning.

Instapundit, arguing his disbelief in the whole "Bush lied" theory, stated the following about liberals reasonings about the war:

Well, it's better than admitting that if you'd had your way, Saddam Hussein would still be shoveling children into mass graves, I suppose. And that's what this is really all about. Having lost the argument about the war, and having had Saddam's brutality proven beyond any reasonable doubt, the anti-war folks have to do something to regain the moral high ground -- because, to them, the moral high ground is theirs by right, regardless of the nature or consequences of their actions.

So, first, find me anyone who thought Saddam was a good guy. Find me one.

Second, if we were really all about bringing freedom and democracy to terrorized people, wouldn't we be going into (or at least talking about) Zimbabwe or the Congo? Or Liberia? Or Burma (to be fair, this one got talked about by Powell).

The majority of the anti-war crowd were against the war because the reasoning for going in was bad...and Bush didn't talk about mass graves or Saddam's brutality until just before the war was launched. His pirmary reasoning was tied to Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And, as far as the Bush lied theory, here are the optoins I see:

1) An incredible failure of intelligence. This is possible, but if it were true, wouldn't Bush be doing something about it? Wouldn't he be demanding answers, and showing that he had what he took on good faith to be real proof, but turned out to be bad intel? Wouldn't George Tenet be fired? And the news stories like the ones I posted yesterday that keep popping up are turning out to put quite a crimp in this argument (altho, they could just be the intel community covering it's own asses..but that doesn't answer the question about Bush's inaction)

2) The WMDs were there, and are now gone, dispersed to super-secret bunkers, Syria, Palestine, al Qaida, whatever. If this is what happened, and Bush isn't doing something serious about it, then that's far worse than Bush lying. We fought this war to get those weapons out of dangerous hands. If they've moved to more dangerous hands, that's a failing of the highest order.

3) Bush lied about his case to justify a war that most of his advisors wanted anyway. If this were the case, there'd be a pretty solid attempt to sell WMD's to the people of America after the fact, and also to shift the justification....both of which have happened. Bush called 2 trucks (which the British press now reports were sold to Iraq by Britain (in 87) to produce hydrogen for filling artillery balloons) proof that Saddam had WMD. He's worked very hard to push how brutal Hussein was (which is true, but as I said, he's far from the only one, or the worst one).

4) Bush was lied to by the hawks surrounding him. Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rumsfeld, etc...The following Pearle quote was in the recent Vanity Fair article that caused such an uproar over some of Wolfowitz's quotes:

"Two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much... you got the sense that if he believed something he'd pursue it tenaciously."

This one doesn't sit well, does it? It's certainly in the realm of plausability...but nothing good can come of this option.

So those are the options as I see them. Someone should be investigating this (If Ken Star gets over $50 million to investigate White Water, Travelgate, etc, etc...then this is worth at least some investigation). Not that that will happen, tho...

2003-06-08T06:40:00.000-04:00

stupid blogger...

Blogger just ate a fairly long post. I'll rewrite it later, I don't feel like it right now.

2003-06-07T21:43:00.000-04:00

Investigation Breakdown

It's easier to come up with blog post titles when you're only posting a few times a week...

Anyway, there's this story in the Boston Globe today, which states that DIA intelligence last fall stated that there was ''no definitive, reliable information'' that Iraq possessed NBC weapons (Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical - a much more precise name than WMD). And, via Atrios's guest poster Leah, I found Body and Soul, which seems like a pretty cool blog...and Jeanne, the blogger, has a list of news stories chronicling the disconnect between the inteligence and the administration, and also hints that the administration pressured the intel community to get the story they needed to justify the war:

Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for War
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq
Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysts' Views
Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits

There's two possibilities here. The intel community is trying to cover it's own ass, and take down the president a notch instead. Or the intel community was pressured into playing along with the administration's war, and are fighting back now, with the evidence being in their favor. Someone in the Senate should start an investigation right now, but I doubt it'll happen. At the very least, Dems should be shouting from the rooftops over these things...

2003-06-07T19:49:00.000-04:00

Mudders

That's what they call horses who are good at running in muddy conditions. Today's Belmont certainly over-qualified. Funny Cide, the horse with the amazing story, running for the Triple Crown on his home track, was unfortunately unable to win the coveted title. He finished 3rd, with Empire Maker getting the win.

In other sports news, Roger Clemens is still working towards win #300. With the Yankees in Chicago for a matchup with the Cubs (their first in 65 years). Clemens came out after getting one out and putting 2 on in the 7th, with the Yanks up 1-0. It took one pitch for the Cubs to go up 3-1 on a Karros homer - which had to be even sweeter for the Cubs, since Karros had to come in early in the game after the starting first baseman, Hee Seop Choi got knocked unconcious durring a hard fall to the ground caused by a collision between Choi and pitcher Wood while trying to track down an infield fly. Choi is in fair condition, but suffered a concussion, according to ESPN.

As an avid Red Sox fan, and an equally avid Yankees hater, I have to enjoy this. Clemens mailed in his last 4 seasons in Boston (he was 1 win over 500, and at least 40 pounds overweight), then demanded superstar money. When the Sox wouldn't give in, he got himself back in shape and tried to make the Sox look bad (and broke his word twice...he stated that the only other place he'd want to play is Houston or Texas, which would be close to home for him...then he went to Toronto and New York, both AL East teams). His troubles getting win 300 can be traced to his wearing a glove that proclaimed "300 wins" on it as he took the mound to face the Sox in his first bid for 300. I hope he never gets it. (4,000 strikeouts, however, is more or less assured..he's 4 shy).

2003-06-07T01:17:00.000-04:00

WMD Hunting

Over at The Nation, there's a column up entitled How Their Big Lie Came to Be. In it is the following excerpt:

[L]eave it to a Marine to be blunt. When Lieut. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was asked Friday why his Marines failed to encounter or uncover any of the weapons of mass destruction that US intelligence had warned them about, his honesty put the White House to shame.

"We were simply wrong," Conway said. "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered [nuclear, chemical or biological] weapons" in Iraq. And, he added, "Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

That's pretty simple, isn't it? And today there's more news that refutes Bush's argument that the two trucks were mobile bio-weapons labs.

One thing has become staggeringly clear out of all this. If Hussein had bio or chem weapons, they were not anywhere that frontline troops could have used them, and now they could be in anyone's hands. Odds are that, if they've been dispersed (to Syria, or Palestine, or whatnot...maybe al Qaida, but I doubt it). If that's the case, Bush should be clamoring to get every investigator he can in to Iraq to try and find the trail. The other option is that they weren't really there.

What's this all add up to?

There are two possibilities. Bad intel, or leadership that lies to the American public. If it's the former, you'd expect Bush to be demanding an investigation. If it's the latter, you'd expect a coverup. So far, we're seeing more coverup than investigation. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

2003-06-07T00:52:00.000-04:00

Site News

So, I tried (and succeeded, for a few weeks, at least) to post once a day. And that sorta worked. Then I stopped - partly because I started working again, and needed some time to get back into a work schedule while still fitting my normal news-hounding into the day, partly because I didn't think anyone was reading.

I spend hours a day reading blogs, news sites, etc. And I get multiple urges a day to post. So I'm gonna try something new, now that I've got my work schedule figured out, and can manage to post around it. I'm going to post here every time I feel I have something to add to a debate, and I'm going to post here anytime I catch a story that the blogs I follow are ignoring (the blogs I follow are all on the blogroll to the left). That's the explanation for the multiple posts the past few days. With luck, I can keep it up. I'll certainly try.

If you're reading this, that means that you've A) Found me via either Blogger, the comments fiasco thing that happened on Kevin Drum's site, or one of my comments on the handful of blogs I post comments on and B) hopefully decided to stick around. Here's what I ask (it ain't much). I'm going to try to post multiple times a day. I was inspired by seeing a link to me on calpundit, and the knowledge that I actually had readers, and I was hoping to keep a few. So, if I know I have readers, I'll post more. Of course, if I don't have readers, than there's not as much point to post. So here's what I ask. If you like what I've done the last few days, plus some of the stuff in the archives (sooner or later, I'm gonna pull out the good posts from the archives and put a list of them after the blogroll), then just come back regularly. I don't need direct feedback (but it's apprecaited greatly). If you want to comment on something I post, please do...I want, more than anything, a chance to debate these things. Basically, I just want to know someone is paying some attention, so I'm not just writing for my self (which I'd still do anyway, just not as much). I'll check my hit counts regularly (I check it regulalry anyway...if you're wondering, the number of hits I got the day Kevin gave me a link - Thursday - was about 11 times the number of hits I got Friday...and neither number is very big).

Also, this site is still very much in it's infancy, as far as layout, color schemes, etc go. If you'd like to suggest a change, please offer it in the comments. I'm not sure I'm happy with it, but I can't think of anything better...site layouts aren't my strong point. The only thing I'm really attached to is the name. I like the ring of it.

2003-06-06T20:11:00.000-04:00

Bush cutting what now?

There was a story in the Boston Globe today. Hurry up and check it out before it gets locked in the pay-to-read vault.

In it, Bush is criticised by both Republicans and Democrats for supplying a budget of $0 to the HOPE VI program (which had a previous budget of $600 million). HOPE IV is considered to be quite the success by liberals and conservatives alike. Why? Because it does two things, and it does them pretty well.

It gives money to local public housing authorities to rebuild dilapidated housing complexes.

It requires those authorities to use said money as a seed to bring in private investment and create private sector jobs.

So basically, it's intelligently privitizing a socially beneficial goal. In other words, it's a very intelligent compromise between liberals and conservatives. For the record, this was passed by George H. W. Bush. Some of the better quotes:

'We've got a huge disconnect with the administration here,'' said Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who is a member of the committee. ''It's a program they say works and works well, but they don't want to fund it?''

...

Some Republican staff members, speaking on condition they not be identified, said that the White House knew well that Congress would not back its push to eliminate HOPE VI and simply wants to have a scapegoat to blame if the president's budget increases the deficit.

...

Housing advocates have praised the goals of the program, but complain that it leads to a net loss of public housing because smaller, mixed-income housing is built where large complexes once stood. And the Bush administration pointed to delays in spending the grants housing authorities receive.
''That's the criticism?'' Shays said. ''They're not spending it fast enough? So kill the program?''

...

Public housing in Shays's district was rebuilt with a $26 million HOPE VI grant. ''It basically turned what was one of the most challenged communities in the district into an enormous success,'' said Shays's spokeswoman, Betsy Hawkins. ''[HOPE VI] is a program that works from our point of view.''

...

Republicans have embraced the program because it requires housing authorities to use the grants as a way to get additional private money, effectively turning the federal funds into seed money for large, job-creating redevelopment projects. Democrats like it because it rebuilds dilapidated public housing complexes where many of the nation's poorest residents live.

...

''It's very telling,'' Frank said. ''It shows the gap. It's easy to get people to denounce the government, but almost everything the government does is popular.''

Just to clarify, Shays isn't the only republican speaking out. Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri are also against this. And the Frank listed above is Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. I'm not in his district, but I must say, nearly every time he's in the news, I like what he's doing. Too bad he's from Newton...not my favorite town in the state...

This is just one more example of Bush's completely unsupportable economic policies. My boss, who I mentioned in the previous post, voted for him, and even he agrees with me that Gore would have managed the economy better, if not much better.

2003-06-06T19:54:00.000-04:00

Packing heat

I don't read Instapundit as much as I think I should. Mainly because it seems like his morning rituals involve a frenchman pissing in his cereal. One really must wonder what he has against the french (granted, I'm not a big fan...but he's practically obsessed).

Anyway, one of the things I've seen on Instapundit lately was about Zimbabwe, and the fact that Mugabe (a true bastard of a man, just in case anyone starts to think I'm weak on these guys) disarmed the people of Zimbabwe. So that, in his mind, proves the NRA's case.

He's completely ignoring two problems with his argument: First, Iraq was heavily armed durring Saddam's reign of terror. That didn't do much to help those people. Second, we currently plan on taking as many weapons as we can away from the Iraqi people as we build up their democratic institutions.

So if Zimbabwe wouldn't be quite as bad if the people were armed (which is impossible to prove), why wasn't Iraq? And why would we (especially considering our supposedly pro-gun-rights leadership) want to disarm the Iraqi people? Wouldn't those weapons prevent a tyrant from corrupting the Iraqi democarcy, or even worse, using force to overthrow it?

Of course, I've seen Glenn argue for efforts to presure/force Zimbabwe and Burma to reform (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). But I haven't seen any comments on the situation in the Congo (which, granted, I might have missed...I've only gone over the last few days, and I missed a couple weeks before that, so maybe I'm being unfair here). The civil war going on in the Congo (formerly Zaire) is the bloodiest conflict in the world since WWII ended (speaking of, today is the 59th aniversary of D-Day. If you know a WWII vet, take a minute and thank him...that was, as was pointed out on another blog, the most important day in the history of the 20th century). France is leading a UN effort to send peace keepers into the region, but they are incredibly undermanned (estimates of the force required are roughly 100 times the amount of troops being deployed). With these three problems, the Bush Administration has proven that nasty, tyranical dictators aren't really the ones we're going after, post-mortem justifications aside.

And, to clear up my view on gun policy (in case anyone read the above and just assumed I was a left-wing anti-gun type). I have three basic thougths with gun ownership: First, you should be required to learn enough to safely own a gun. You have to prove you can drive to get a car (legally), you should have to prove you can keep a gun safely to own a gun (legally). In Massachusetts, my home state, the rules require you to take 2 classes in safety, upkeep, and the like. That's it. My boss, who's an NRA member and owns 4 pistols, thinks it's a very sound setup. Second, if you're a known felon, you lose your right to own a gun. If you get caught abusing your right to drive, you lose that right. If you get caught breaking the law, you shouldn't be able to own a weapon. Sounds simple enough to me. And third, reasonable weapons limitations. I'm flexible on this one, but I can't believe that someone needs to own an assault rifle. I guess I can see collectors wanting them, and I'm sure there's a thrill to firing an AK 47 full auto...but they aren't hunting weapons, and they aren't particularly good at the personal defense thing, either. But, you give me the first two, and I'll let you own anything under 20 mm. Sound fair?

2003-06-06T02:43:00.000-04:00

Oh, a quick update

The Nation has a great Robert Byrd speech. Somehow, he seems to be the only decent orator left in the Senate. But he's in his 90s and the right always attacks him for being in the KKK back in the 50s (were there any white guys not in the KKK in South Carolina in the 50s?). Of course, they also dismiss Bush's record from 30 years ago as "a long time ago" and "unimportant" and stuff like that.

Byrd makes a great point. Why isn't Bush upset about the WMD issue? He's the one that's going to look bad (and, by association, the rest of us). He's the one that used the argument the most. If they were there, where are they now? And if they weren't there, why was he told they were there?

There aren't many plausible answers, and none of them look good.

2003-06-06T02:17:00.000-04:00

Lewis Black rocks

Lewis Black just gave his vision of how trickle down economics work (on The Daily Show, which should be required viewing.). It was pretty damn funny, which isn't shocking if you've seen him before. His explanation?

Rich people will have lots of money to spend. Talking about spending all that money will make you thirsty. You'll buy a soda, drink it, and throw out the can. Homeless or poor person picks up can, cashes it in, and bingo, a nickle has trickled down the economic waterfall.

Sounds about right.

Moving on...I mentioned in an earlier post, an exerpt from Savage's show that's pretty out there. I mentioned this post to a group of net-friends, and the one who's pretty conservative just floored me. He actually stated that he'd prefer Savage in the White House over Bill or Hillary Clinton. Because they're immoral.

Now, he's never struck me as a total idealogue before. Our debates are pretty level, altho he's always seemed a tad unwilling to accept anything that disputed his point of view, but I figured that was just scepticism in regards to news from the net. But this just was too much.

I was almost ready to ask if he though Bill had shot Vince Foster, or if Hillary had done it, but decided not to go that far (as it was going to really upset a friend who'd agree with me (being as he's a liberal from canada), but would rather prevent any debate, since it isn't really the place.

Seriously. I don't even think Clinton was all that great. But immoral? He lied about an affair. He also helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, presided over the biggest economic boom in decades, and if it weren't for the assassination of Rabin, he might have helpd bring peace to the Israel/Palestine. (I fault him for the DOMA, his fairly weak environmental record, and his complete abandonment of his national health care pledge). He was also the first president in like 25 years to have a balanced budget.

Of course, the same guy (who is ROTC) said that the military loved Bush because, and I quote, "he gave us all a pay raise"...or something very similar. Of course, he bailed on the conversation when I suggested that he had been bought off. So maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked...

Nevermind Bush's lies...I'd rather a president lie about sex than a Pres that lies about the reasons for a war, or his economic policies, for example...

2003-06-05T16:01:00.000-04:00

Four posts, one day, new record

I have no idea how Matt Yglasias does it. Maybe it helps to be in college. Gotta keep this one kinda short, leaving for work in 10 minutes (did I mention I hate night shifts?).

Apparently, my post on Matt's site about which blogs have comments and which don't, which got picked up by Kevin Drum, has now been debunked. Stentor Danielson, using the network map of left-right blogs, checked all the ones on the left and right for comments, and found that the left had 8 more blogs, but only 1 more that offered comments (22/42 for leftists, 21/34 for rightists). It's an interesting bit of research, and I guess it blows my point out of the water. I'd just like to point out a few responses, tho.

First, I only mentioned big blogs. Kevin Drum's original point, that the top 6 rightward blogs have far less commenting than the top 6 leftward blogs, is still true, and goes to my complaint (note that I originally said that it seems like no big conservative/libertarian blogs have comments).

Second, I knew I had far too small a sample from personal experience, and I mentioned that...Stentor's post suggests I was making it as a fact, when I was making it as something of a suggestion.

And third, I'm still frustrated by the lack of comments at the Volokh's place.

Anyway, more after work, probably. Oh, and a question for my readers (assuming anyone who checked me out thanks to Kevin's link - or now, Stenton's - is sticking around)...I found this think tank thanks to some comments on Atrios's site. They have an offer to volunteer for various positions, but there doesn't seem to be any info on how to actually volunteer. This is something I'd be interested in doing. If anyone with some free time wants to look around and see if they can find anything, I'd love to know. Post in comments, or email me. Thanks in advance.

2003-06-05T13:37:00.000-04:00

Shielded?

So, in 2000, Bush promised a Balistic Missile Defense System. Everyone agreed that the technology was going to be wildly expensive, and many people were unsure who we needed to be defended from. Of course, these days there's North Korea, and the CIA reports that suggest that Kim Jong Il could launch a missile that can reach California, and also suggests he has the nukes to put on it.

In today's Washington Post, we have an article highlighting a GAO report that says, essentially, the system is being pushed too fast, without enough testing. And if it keeps up, and ends up getting deployed, it will be at great risk if it ever becomes needed, because it might not work as advertized.

Let's get metaphorical here. This is regularly referred to as a shield, so let's go with that. Let's say you're in a sword fight. You have a big, sharp, well balanced sword (the US military) and now you've added a special, very expensive shield, to help you defeat your opponent, who has a sword, but no shield. Now, this shield you have hasn't been tested much, and there's some holes in it, but you've been told that it's state of the art and you have to have it to prevent your opponent's sword from making contact with you. So you give that shield a try.

So, you're walking through the vilage with your great sword, and your fancy new shield. And one of the local bad guys, a fairly small time player with delusions of granduer, pulls a surprise attack. You've got your shield equipped, always ready for attack, but the villain still manages to get his rapier through the holes in your shield, and gives you a nasty stab. Can you still defeat the creep? Sure, you've got a great sword, and you know how to use it. But that shield cost a lot, and it was pretty useless. And that stab wound hurts, and it's going to leave a nasty scar.

This seems like it's a project that, if we're going to do it, we might as well get it right (I'm not even getting into the issues surrounding it, like pulling out of the ABM treaty, international destabilization, etc). This is another example of Bush answering the "Done right, done quickly, done cheap, pick 2." argument with B and C. One has to wonder how often he can do it before things start going wrong.

2003-06-05T11:47:00.000-04:00

Rudolph, the clean shaven terrorist

Over at Orcinus (who's really the blogosphere's expert on the hard-core right, especially the militia movements and the hard line christian movements), there's a long post about Eric Rudolph and the way home grown terror is being dealt with, both by law enforcement, and the general public in the areas it sprouts up.

Orcinus (also known as David Neiwert, author of In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest) knows this stuff..he grew up around it, from the sounds of his posts. And his points are really, really good. My favorite quote is this one:

Another expert on such groups, Idaho State University sociology professor James A. Aho, said he is reluctant to use the phrase "Christian terrorist," because it is "sort of an oxymoron."

"I would prefer to say that Rudolph is a religiously inspired terrorist, because most mainstream Christians consider Christian Identity to be a heresy," Aho said. If Christians take umbrage at the juxtaposition of the words "Christian" and "terrorist," he added, "that may give them some idea of how Muslims feel" when they constantly hear the term "Islamic terrorism," especially since the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is a brillaint point.

Another great point he makes is comparing the way fundamentalist Islamic groups have moved into the mainstream of the Islamic world, and comparing that to fundamentalist Christian efforts to do the same. As he says, the Christian groups haven't made it quite as far...but they're making inroads, especially when the NY Times quotes one of Rudolph's neighbors as saying that they have similar agendas, and so she doesn't think he's a terrorist. What Rudolph did was scary. What that woman thinks is scarier. That's the stuff we need to worry about. Extremism seeping into more mainstream views is never, ever, a good thing.

2003-06-05T11:16:00.000-04:00

Nifty

So, update on the last post, Kevin went in and gave me a link. Now I guess I have to post (btw - you rule, Mr. Drum).

So, to start, let's get this out of the way.

Chrstian, AKA The Mighty Reason Man had an interesting post today about Mikey Savage. Go read it, it's short.

Done? Good.

Keep in mind now, that that man has a book deal, a nationally syndicated radio show, and a national TV show (I think...is he still on MSNBC?). Freud would have a field day with that boy, I think....

2003-06-05T01:26:00.000-04:00

Look Ma, I'm Famous

A comment I made on Matt Yglasias's blog was noticed by Kevin Drum and turned into a topic of discussion.

I might even get some traffic out of my response in Kevin's comments (Kevin left out a link in the main post, sadly). It'd be pretty cool to have readers.

Anyway, moving on. I'm watching CSpan 2 right now (roughly 1 AM EST) and they're showing the Senate hearing on the FCC rule changes. It's very interesting. Powell has come across as fairly earnest in his efforts (he's either a hell of a lawyer, or he really believes he's doing good for the people with this), altho a whole lot naive (e.g.: when asked by one of the committe members "who is celebrating your decision now, the people, or the giant media companies?" he responded with, essentially, "I don't know who's celebrating it"). He also seems to think the Net is a far bigger force than it really is. The net is becoming important...Howard Dean's campaign momentum is proof of that. But it's not available to everyone, and it can't be compared to TV, radio, or newspapers, yet. A PC costs far more than a TV or radio, and you don't have to pay a monthly fee to get ABC or NBC like you do for Net access.

Barbara Boxer, of California, put the wood to the majority of the committee on this issue, which was fun to watch. She had letters from all sorts of Americans on this issue, and she used their words to cut the legs out from underneath several of the assenting side's arguments.

A clarification I've heard tonight: Most reports say that one company can own 1 cable company, 3 tv stations, 8 radio stations, and 1 major daily newspaper in the same market. The rules on the TV stations are a bit more complex than that...it turns out that you can own 3, but you can only own one of the top 4. So you get one of the big 4, plus you can sweep up the independents. Or maybe Viacom (which owns CBS and UPN) can pick up some of UPN's stations. But it'd be impossible (under these rules) to pick up ABC, NBC, and CBS all in the same market.

Peter Fitzgerald, R-Illinois, has suggested that anyone could start a news website and compete with their local daily papers. I don't see that as being realistic. And the "with very little capital" part was really silly. In most PC owning households, the PC is the most expensive item in the house (it ranks 3rd on most people's list, after their house and their car, assuming they own their house).

An interesting point from Powell. The middle band of TV markets have 4-9 networks (the lower band has less than 4...that leaves the upper band with over 9, I guess). I live not far outside of Boston, which is, I believe, in the top 6 or so market wise (from a population standpoint)...and we have 8 stations, counting 2 PBS stations. Is there a large number of markets with over 10 stations? Or is there some sort of overlap in markets that I'm not aware of? There's a Rhode Island station I can sorta get in, which would make it 9, I guess. But that's still only 9.

2003-06-03T21:09:00.000-04:00

Winnable Candidates

Most of the leftist type blogs I read have, at one point or another, touched on the fact that Dennis Kucinich is the Democratic candidate that offers the best plans on various aspects of domestic policy...especially his health plan (which would bring us in line with most of the industrialized democracies in the world, providing health care to every citizen). But all those opinions come with the conciet that he can't really win. So I ask this:

Why not?

The media has long held the power to declare who can and can't win (or at least seems to hold that power). But if most leftists agree that Kucinich is the best candidate, why not push harder for him? At the very least, if he got an unexpectedly large turnout, it could only serve to push the Democratic agenda towards his policies, and that, I think we can agree, would be a good thing.

A lot of people support Dean, and the ideas he's been pushing lately are making him appear far more interesting than the anti-war guy with no ideas that he was coming And it seems like the amount of interest he's getting is starting to affect the party in general. Support for Kucinich could do very much the same.

Update: One more reason to like Kucinich. Who else has the balls to even ask these questions?

2003-05-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day, and that has something of a special meaning in my family. My father served two tours in Vietnam, as a marine. All 6 of his brothers served in the millitary, either in Korea, Nam, or both. Somehow, they all made it back in one piece. That was one of hte miracles my family was lucky enough to encounter in the armed services. The second was the story of my oldest uncle, Ray. Ray started in the army, and eventually became a Green Beret. Between his service in Korea and Nam, he managed to spend time with all 6 of his brothers (Paul, Jerry, David, Leo, Rich, and Joe - my father). I'm not quite sure how he pulled that off..but somehow, he found time to take leave and bring one of his brothers with him 6 seperate times. 3 of my uncles have since passed for other reasons, sadly - Paul, Jerry, and David.

My father has a hard relationship with his military past. He is proud of how he served, but there is much of it he isn't ready to deal with. He has been diagnosed with fairly severe post-traumatic stress syndrome....enough that he qualifies for partial disability, and may soon qualify for full disability. He still gets flashbacks...I witnessed one particularly bad one when I was living with him as a teenager (my parents are divorced, and I lived with my mother for most of my life, but I spent almost a year living with my father). He has storys about the friends he made over there....the friends you make in combat, with whom the bonds grow pretty strong. Several of them never made it back. He can't bring himself to travel to the Wall in DC, yet. He wants to, badly...but he can't. I hope one day he will be able to

I'd like to share one of his stories, as best I remember it.

My father is not a tall man. He'll tell you he's 5'4", and that's what his military records say, but my mom thinks he snuck an extra inch out of them somewhere, because he's never beem taller than 5'3" since she met him. For a time over there, he was in a small makeshift base...I'm not quite sure why. He was lucky at this base, because he wasn't quite the smallest person there. There was another little guy there, who's name escapes me. Everyone called him Mouse, or Rat, or something like that. Him and my dad became pretty close. They built their hooches pretty close. Artillery and mortar shelling was something of a way of life over there. But one night, they found their target. My father awoke to an explosion...an artilery shell had hit the camp. When he got out of his hooch, he discovered that his friend's hooch was just gone...there was just a small, smoking hole. My father's hooch was unscathed. Mouse had been in his bed when the shell hit. My dad says they didn't find even a piece of him. My dad pretty much lost it at that point, and couldn't go on.

My father did two tours in Nam because of what happened when he came back from the first one. He was in NYC with a friend of his who had also gotten sent home. They tried to find a restaurant to eat in, because they had quite a bit of money (combat pay and all), and wanted to enjoy a good meal, something that's hard to find in the mud of Vietnam. He and his friend were turned away from every place they wanted to eat, simply because they were Marines, and anyone associated with the military was unwelcome. The two of them ended up buying some food at a market and barbecuing it in Central Park. He decided to go back that day. I can't say why, exactly. When he came back after the next tour, he stayed...eventually, he met my mother, and so on and so forth.

So, on this memorial day, I'd like to give thanks to those like my father, my uncles, and Mouse, who served with honor and pride...you may never get the hero's treatment so many of you deserve, but, god willing, you will never be forgotten.

2003-05-25T03:58:00.000-04:00

Look ma, I'm posting

I really need to get better about this. Oh well.

Kevin Drum had an excelent post/comments debate about concepts like "fair taxation" and "income redistribution". I myself posted, but I'd like to go into my post in some depth.

The main arguments presented were either that A) Income redistribution is only fair if it's moving money from the top down; and B) Income redistribution is always wrong - the rich earned their money, and those who aren't rich don't have a right to any of it.

These arguments are both wrong, sort of. The first is wrong because fairness isn't the best justification for income redistribution to be top down. The second is wrong because income distribution is a given - that's what taxes are, and it's what government does...so you have to decide who's income, and where it gets redistributed to.

So, those out of the way, there's 2 really good reasons for income redistribution to be top-down. One is an issue of benefit analysis, and the other is a simple economic matter. We'll deal with the latter first, since it's the big one, and the one everyone who wants to see social programs saved (and maybe increased) should be shouting from the rooftops.

So here's the economic reason. It's pretty simple, actually. It's all about the middle class. Right now, income distribution is getting completely hosed...and it has been for 2 decades or more. Instead of a nice, fat middle, you get growth at the top and bottom, and shrinking in the middle. The long term economic health of the country is inexorably tied to the middle class. Without an educated, secure middle class, the rich people have no one to hire. Without a middle class, there's far less consumer spending, which can lead to deflation, and even a liquidity trap (which we're potentially heading towards now...check out Paul Krugman's excelent column on just that topic). Things like that lead to economic colapse, or very close to it. If that happens, the poor (who have the numbers) will take power back, either by election (see: FDR) or by force (see: Argentina, Lenin). Assuming force can be avoided, which is obviously what one would hope for, it's going to end up in the situation the US saw durring the period 1935-1955. Marginal tax rates on the top 1% (the highest tax bracket) were at 91%. The first Bush and Clinton both raised the top tax rate, and it was only at 39 and change when George W took office. That 39% was in place for almost all of the 90s boom. So obviously, that tax rate isn't a serious hurdle in the path of entrepenurial efforts, like most Reaganites claimed. While some may think they're too high (and that's arguable, to a degree), every rational person would agree that 91% would be way too high. But that's a risk we're running if the middle class keeps getting smaller and the poor keep getting more plentiful and desperate.

So, we've got a situation where the middle class is shrinking, the wealthy are becoming more and more wealthy, and the poor are becoming more plentiful. How do we fix that? Well, we look at the market. Right now, the problem isn't on the supply side. The problem is on the demand side. Why? Because the people who create demand are poor, and can't afford to spend the money they do have because they're in debt. So you shift some of the tax burden to the wealthy (temporarily...we don't want to push too hard, or we'll go too far and hurt the supply side of the equation). Beyond that, we deficit spend to create jobs. That's how you boost the demand side. Create government jobs, and lower the taxes on the consumer classes. We'll get back to this point shortly.

The second argument, the benefit analysis, is fairly simple, but harder to convince people with. The rich have benefited way more than the poor have from the american social systems. They get an educated, secure work force, a stable economy, etc. It's reasonable, but it's harder to argue (because not everyone sees it as reasonable, and other people just aren't reasonable to begin with)

So, as I mentioned, there's pretty much a set of rules for dealing with a decline in demand. But Bush, on the other hand, is pushing through a heavily pro-wealthy tax agenda (also known as supply-side). There's times for supply side. This is not one of them. The estate tax (or "death tax" as he called it) was a tax on the excessively wealthy family estates, so as to force the children of the wealthy to at least earn some of their money. It's an atempt to reign in any concepts of aristocracy in this country. And, to be fair...if your parents got rich, you have as much right ot that money as I do if I hit the lottery. You got lucky. You didn't earn the money, and your parents didn't earn it for you specifically. If your family is that wealthy (and we're talking multi-million dollar estates), you've gotten enough of a step up. The dividend tax cut is the same way. Dividends are something that you pretty much have to be wealthy as hell to get that money. It's a return on stock investments. But 401k dividends are exempt already...and most non-wealthy who own stocks only have their 401k plans as stock ownership. His other incentives are all fairly heavily weighted to the supply side. It's the wrong half of the economy to work on, but ideology has pushed him and his advisers to ignore the demand side entirely. It could end up being the straw that pushes us over the edge, and into a full fledged depression.

2003-05-17T00:50:00.000-04:00

Hrmm

Sorry for the disapearance. Been an odd few weeks. I missed lots, and I'd love to cover it all here, but there isn't much that Atrios or Matt or any of the other links on my little blogroll over there hasn't covered.

I'm gonna try to be around more, but no promises. It was easier to post every day when I wasn't working.

Anyway, Just figured I'd toss this out there. If you get HBO, you really should be watching Russel Simmons Presents: Def Poetry Jam. It's great And if you catch a rerun of the episode that just aired, you'll get to see Smokey Robbinson absolutely throw it down for black america. Hopefully, it'll come out on DVD in the near future.

Sooner or later, I'm moving to NYC, just to be closer to stuff like that. There ain't much in the way of art out here, in the suburbian outposts wedged between Worcestor and Boston. Unless you count the graffiti in Framingham, but most of that is crap anyway.

On the political side, this is worth checking out.

2003-04-21T15:12:00.000-04:00

Took the weekend off

Sorry I didn't leave a warning that I'd be off for the weekend...I'm working again, and between that and Easter, I didn't spend much time thinking about world events.

Not that I have much to post now. I should have something later tonight, though. In the mean time, go read Josh Marshal...he's got some interesting poitns about the current state of the Bush plans for Iraq.

2003-04-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

Answering a question

Kevin Drum asks what the difference between left wing and right wing dictatorships are.

Up until recently, I'd have wondered the same. But I have recently found a good discussion on Fascism, which is the reaction to Communism.

Communism is what left wing dictatorship means. Everyone knows what it is. Fascism is what a right wing dictatorship is. It's a word that's thrown around a lot, especially by liberals who aren't happy with the way the government treats them. Most people don't know what it is, and with good reason. Communism has a philosophical bloodline...Karl Marx to Lenin to Stalin. Fascism was a reaction to Communism, and therefore doesn't have a philosophical origin. It just sprang up in a hurry, and sorta worked itself out. Both have much in common. And the differences are explained fairly well by David Neiwert, in his blog, Ornicus, specifically his 13 part discussion entitled "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism". He revisited it in this post, and you can find links to all 13 posts at the bottom of that long post. It took me two days to digest it all, but it's a very well written post. Also, it's pretty freaking frightening. You should check it out. I'll sum up his description of Fascism, though:

Fascism is distinguished from Communism in that it is very pro-business, to the point of willingly screwing the working class, where as Communism is built on socialism, which is more about the government providing for the common good. Fascism is built on super-patriotism, Communism generally involves open revolt. Communism points to businesses and the wealthy as enemies of the people, Fascism requires an enemy to point to, and eventually attempt to destroy (in WWII Germany, it was Jews, and other smaller groups, in the US it is likely to be liberals). Fascism is also different in every nation it springs up in, which reflects it's lack of a standard philosophy, while Communism tends to be fairly standardized.

Edit: Cleaned up a point or two. Sometimes I wish I had a better editor...

2003-04-17T05:08:00.000-04:00

"We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks and count on your pens to be mightier."

Tim Robbins can give a freaking speech.

That above qoute is his statement to the press. The speech was given at the National Press Club. That link goes to the transcript on Salon. You can find the audio on National Public Radio.

If only our leadership made speeches like this. My favorite part:

For all the ugliness and tragedy of 9/11 there was a brief period afterwards where I held a great hope. In the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at ground zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all of this I held onto a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of all this. I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat vs. Republican, white vs. black or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television, telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero we can't. But there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers, to tutor children, to teach them to read, our work is needed at old age homes to visit the lonely and infirm, in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots into baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit, and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11. A new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a phoenix, out of the fire we will be reborn.

Remember, though. Bush told us to shop, travel, and go on with our lives like nothing happened.

2003-04-16T21:26:00.000-04:00

Ugh.

This is what I get for watching Fox News.

Sean Hannity just suggested that Democrats were on the wrong side of history, not just with this war, but with the Cold War, specifically in the 80s, with Reagan's policies. Because Democrats were big time commie-lovers. Guys like LBJ and JFK were all about appeasing communists, and the democrats have gone with that strategy since.

I do have to say, Colmes is being better than normal, but he's still letting the republicans dictate things to him.

Reagan, and others in power at the time, saw the Cold War end on their watch, because they got lucky. The USSR was ready to collapse anyway, the US had overstated Soviet military might several times in that decade...that's been documented. And Reagan's economic policy didn't do anything good for the people of the US. The republican party has lifted Reagan up as some sort of saint, and that's hardly the case.

And just because Democrats thought there was a different way to oppose communism, and it wasn't tried, doesn't make it wrong. It was twisted logic with that war, and it's twisted logic with this war, and the differing views on how to oppose Saddam. Especially since the situation in Iraq is far from under control.

2003-04-16T20:45:00.000-04:00

Dang

Syria is calling the US's bluff, sort of.

The Syrian Foreign Minister has just requested on CNN that the US help them work to making the Middle East a WMD-free region.

This is playing a big trump card. Why? Israel's got nukes.

It's a big play. We'll see if the press covers it. I dunno how this will play, but if it can get called out enough, it could screw up Bush, big time.

We'll see how it goes.

Update: CNN has a story online. Fox News is currently ignoring it, or hasn't noticed it. At least, there's no info on the web site right now, and nothing on the air.

It'll be worth keeping up on this to see how it goes. The US Ambasador stated that the US supported the goal of a region free of WMD, but that the timing wasn't quite right. Then he reiterated that Syria has ongoing WMD programs.

2003-04-16T18:50:00.000-04:00

A good read

Read this. Trust me.

That pretty much mirrors my feelings about current US policy in the Middle East. Now if only the people in power would read this sort of thing.

2003-04-16T10:36:00.000-04:00

That didn't take long...

So..remember that great story about the daring rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch?
Doctor claims that soldiers terrorised unarmed staff.

It wasn't quite as perfect as it sounded. Now, don't get me wrong. The military did the right thing with this, mostly. A few questionable acts, but for the most part they behaved fine. My problems lie with the reporting of it.

2003-04-16T10:22:00.000-04:00

Sorry...

My appologies for the lack of posts. Been a rough couple of days. I'll have some sort of rant later today, I'm sure.

2003-04-13T17:09:00.000-04:00

Et tu, Dennis Miller?

Wow. At what point did Dennis Miller start letting Karl Rove and Richard Pearl write his material? He called out "the left" or "liberals" for a whole bunch of things, some of which didn't even make much sense. Like suggesting that "liberals" don't think grades matter. While some liberals have argued against standardized testing, the reasoning isn't because "a D is just a B that lost it's belt". And saying that Bush has made the Presidency repsectable again after that awful Bill Clinton is interesting. I guess Miller really did mis-underestimate Bush's foreign policy strategery.

Also, telling someone to shut up while using your position to tell everyone how right and smart you are is either very subtle irony, or really stupid. Since subtle irony has never been Miller's style, I'm going to guess that he doesn't see how stupid he sounds.

He suggested that we'd get into Iraq and find all the dirt on oil and weapon sales with France. Sadly, he didn't mention the Haliburton conracts Hussein signed after 91, or the biological and chemical weapons we sold Hussein back in the 80s.

Going for an hour, mentioning "the left" or "liberals" at least 4 times and not mentioning conservatives or the right once, and miscategorizing liberals on several issues...at least Miller was funny. Oh wait, he wasn't. Most of his jokes were fairly weak. And he'd used up his best material on The Daily Show and Leno the day before, always a smart thing to do before your big HBO special comes on.

Another issue he got completely wrong was the pledge of allegiance. He suggested the whole thing was outlawed, which isn't true at all. Just the part about "under god", since many Americans don't believe in that god, or any god, or just one god.

Anyway, that's enough on Miller. To sum up, he's a right wing hack, and he's not as funny as he used to be.

2003-04-12T07:48:00.000-04:00

Scoreboard time

Okay, As of right now, Sept 11th started just about 19 months and 23 hours ago. Let's look at how we're doing since then:

Osama Bin Laden? Missing, believed to be alive.

Al Qaeda? A few higher ups killed or captured, no new attacks, yet.

Israel/Palestine? Nothing new to report here, other than the death of an American trying to protect innocent Palestinians' homes from Israeli bulldozers.

The Anthrax Mailer? Not a damn thing. No one seems to care. The odds are that he's an american who gained access to an Army medical lab to get his weaponized anthrax, and also that he's a right winger, since the primary targets were all liberals of one stripe or another.

Afghanistan? Salon has an article that describes a nation we've basically abandoned. In some places, the Taliban is making a come back, as people who hated them for their brutality would rather have brutality and peace than brutality and warlords.

Iraq? No proof of involvment, no proof of WMD, but hey, we got their asses. But Fox News and George Pataki are pushing this war as a continuation of 9/11. Remember, folks. The hijackers were largely Saudis and Egyptians. You know, our allies.

Oil use? Well, as one Republican in the House, Mike Rogers of Mich., tried to tell us, mandating a tougher fuel standard would be comparable to "treating obesity by mandating smaller pant sizes." (thanks to CalPundit for pointing this out. He also had a perfect response, so I'm going to borrow it, with an appropriate link)

"No, Mike, it would be like treating obesity by getting people to eat less, a proven strategy. Giving people tax breaks to eat less, on the other hand, would rightfully be considered a rather dubious plan, wouldn't it?"

The economy? 2 million jobs lost and counting!

Civil Liberties? The Patriot Act not being good enough, we've got the sequel coming. Sure can't wait to live in a country where your citizenship can be revoked on the basis of what you say or what groups you identify with or support.

The Sept 11th investigative committee? Not even up and running yet, and with less funding than the committee investigating the Columbia disaster.

All in all, not so good. Remember, tho. If you questoin the government, the terrorists win!

2003-04-11T03:24:00.000-04:00

North Korea

Frontline had an excelent episode tonight on the path the US took to get to where we are with North Korea today.

Some background: The US made a deal with North Korea in the mid 90s, where Clinton promissed 2 things - 2 light water nuclear reactors (which are more or less unable to produce weapons grade uranium or plutonium), and 500k tons of fuel oil yearly until the reactors were built. In exchange, N. Korea would start shutting down their current nuclear program, which was on the path of making weapons grade material. The UN and IAEA were used to monitor compliance. N Korea's compliance record, according to the IAEA, was spotless. The US record wasn't so solid. Partly because the republicans attacked the agreement as "appeasment".

The agreement WAS appeasement. But it was appeasement that worked. The Bushes came in, and basically tore the whole policy up. The US Ambassador to S Korea durring the first Bush presidency stated "This administration abandoned the Clinton policy towards North Korea." When asked what the Bush policy was, his response was a bit scary: "They don't have a policy, they have an attitude." And what is that attitude? "Hostiliy."

Richard Pearl was one of the people interviewed. He had no solution for the situation, other than saying that Clinton was wrong. The only person who argued with Clinton's policy was John McCain, who said that we should go in and handle it similarly to how we handled Iraq, other than the early decision to go to war. Tell them what's acceptable, and if they don't live up to it, use military strikes to make them.

Pearl actually said something which along the lines of "Yes, South Korea wants us to appease N. Korea. I don't blame them...Seoul is in range of N Korean artilery tubes. But President Bush isn't focusing on South Korean security...he's concerned with American security." Basically "If we piss off North Korea, and they attack South Korea, that's South Korea's problem". Brilliant.

Yes, it was appeasement. But it worked. And appeasement is better than the road we're on now, which is pushing us to a place where North Korea can hit Los Angeles with a nuke, and we're going to try to tell them to change things. If they get a nuke, or more than one, why would they listen? They win, at that point...we can't touch them unless we're in a position to take the whole arsenal out at once, and good luck with that. Our on the ground surveilance in N Korea isn't something one would call good.
Meanwhile, North Korea asks for bilateral talks, we're saying we want the other important regional governments involved, and the other governments in the region are, in the words of a US Senator, telling us "multilatteral is good, but don't wait for us to get invited".

My advice? Get the hell out of LA, at least until this is settled. Tool described LA best, anyway. "One great big festering neon distraction." Sounds about right.

(Tool lyrics available here. The song in question is Ænima, track 13.)

Edit: Completely forgot: The Frontline episode can be checked out here.

2003-04-10T05:36:00.000-04:00

Down by the boondocks

Aaron McGruder is pretty much my favoirte cartoonist going. His strips are clever, witty, and actually deals with current events. Gotta love it.

2003-04-10T04:08:00.000-04:00

Ashes in the Fall

A mass of hands press on the market window
Ghosts of progress
Dressed in slow death
Feeding on hunger
And glaring through the promise
Upon the food that rots slowly in the aisle
A mass of nameless at the oasis
That hides the graves beneath the masters hill
Are buried for drinking
The river's water
While shackled to the line
At the empty well

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over the new ground

Listen to the fascist sing
"Take hope here
War is elsewhere
You were chosen
This is god's land
Soon we'll be free
Of blot and mixture
Seeds planted by our
Forefather's hand"

A mass of promises
Begin to rupture
Like the pockets
Of the new world kings
Like swollen stomachs
In Appalachia
Like the priests that fuck you
As they whisper holy things
A mass of tears have transformed to stones now
Sharpened on suffering
And woven into slings
Hope lies in the rubble of this rich fortress
Taking today what tomorrow never brings

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over new ground

Aint it funny how the factorys doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that the doors of the jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper
Aint it funny how the factorys doors close
Round the time that the school doors close
Round the time that a hundred thousand jail cells
Open up to greet you like the reaper

This is the new sound
Just like the old sound
Just like the noose wound
Over the new ground

Like ashes in the fall

I used to joke that if things were as bad as Rage Against the Machine made them look, Rage wouldn't be allowed to write what they do. Of course, I was young and fairly stupid back then, at least to the world beyond my small corner of it. They were one of my favorite bands then because they had brilliant music, and clever lyrics. It took me a few years to realize how true so many of them could be. This song was penned in 1999, but it could have easily been about the last year. "Take hope here/war is elsewhere/you were chosen/this is God's land"? Sounds like something Bush might say, except I doubt he could get it out that elegantly.

The whole part about the priests matches up pretty well with the issues the Catholic church had last year. Then there's the part about factory and school doors closing as jail doors open. In the last year, we've lost a dizzying number of jobs, state and federal budgets are so hosed that Oregon is going to have to cancel a month of school because it can't afford it, and we saw the number of Americans in prison top 2 million for the first time ever.

I always have music playing. I prefer stuff that goes with my generation for the most part, so I don't listen much to music from the 60s or 70s (please note that I do like music from those decades...it just isn't relevant to me the way Rage, Pearl Jam, or Public Enemy are). Music, right now, sucks. It's at an all time low. In the first half of the 90s, it was better than it had been in at least a decade...Nirvana lead the vangaurd of a whole host of bands doing new things and not trying to fit a sound. That's pretty much ended. The number of bands doing great music today is tiny. Especially in hip-hop. I can't stand bling-bling hip hop. Great rap tells a story, it isn't a 3 minute brag about how good your life is. When Tupac and Biggie were gunned down, I hoped that the lessons they (especially Pac) were pushing, that there was more to life than being a thug, would be seen by a majority in the hip hop world. Sadly, that isn't the case. They backed away from the gang thing, for a bit, but it all became about money and respect anyway. Eminem doesn't play that game most of the time, but he doesn't quite come from that world, either. And no one else current seems to care to write stuff like PE or Run DMC wrote back in the day..really good songs that were either lots of fun, or incredibly thoughtful. A few older groups are still keeping up on the fun songs part (Wu Tang is one of the best about this), and a few artists are putting out jams with thoughtful lyrics (see: DMX's Who We Be), but most of the rap you hear on the radio is more about Crystal and thug life than the thoughtfulness or good story telling that was the basis for so much of hip hop back in the day. Snoop can still bring it, but he's been around for over a decade. Wu Tang, as I said. Nas had one of the best songs of last year and it barely got any play on MTV (thank god for MTV2). It's called One Mic, if you haven't heard it. He's getting play now with Made You Look and I Can, and those are good songs...I Can is the first positve rap song not done by Eminem to make it onto MTV in a while, as best I can tell. (Not counting all the crap love song/duets going around, since there's no message there). But Nas has been around for a while, too. 50 Cent has some crazy talent, but I'm still not sure he'll ever get past singing about partying or gang banging. One can hope

Oh, and someone please let Ja Rule know he can't sing, and really needs to stop trying. Supposedly, he's going to have a cameo on the new Metallica album. This cracks me up.

And, not to give the white music a free walk, rock sucks too. Eveveryone sounds like everyone else. Looks the same, too. Some good stuff comes out of it, but the only newish bands that released a really deep song last year was Blink 182 (Stay Together for the Kids - a friggin gem of a song) and Jimmy Eat World (A Praise Chorus, my favorite rock song to come out so far this millenium). Everything else was some combination of whining or crappy jokes. If I hear one more bad song use a word like "addicted" to be able to say "I'm a dick...I'm addicted to you" (that's Simple Plan, I think...Lit did something similar a few years ago), I'm going to snap. It only sounds clever to 14 year olds. Jimmy Eat World is awesome, and Blink is an amazing mix of deepness and goofiness...but there's so many Blink look-a-likes, and Staind look a likes, and Limp Bizkit sound a likes. Don't even get me started on Taproot. They did a song who's chorus was built around the line "In case of fire, break the glass". I wish I were making that up. The worst part was that, while the lyrics were retarded, the guitar line was freaking briliant, so you wanted to like the song. P.O.D. had Youth of the Nation put out in 2001, and that was deep, and they had a good reason to do it, what with the school shootings in San Diego a few years back happening only a handful of blocks away from their homes. Sum 41 seems like a boatload of fun, and Still Waiting is a brilliant tune. But both bands suffer from some serious inconsistency..some of their stuff is great, a few songs touch on brilliance, but half of each album feels like filler.

So, that's my music rant. The bands/acts I'm keeping tabs on right now are The Ataris, Sum 41, Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, REM, Eminem, Snoop, and a few others. Seems like so long ago that there were that many bands that were flat out great, not just worth keeping tabs on. I know it's unfair to expect another Nirvana any time soon, but I'd kill for a Soundgarden or a Pearl Jam (and please don't tell me that Pearl Jam is still going. They took a huge left between Vitalogy and No Code, and it isn't the same...they lost part of their fire). Never mind STP (also not quite the same as they were back in the day...this can be blamed on Scott Weiland cleaning up his act. All in all, it's a change for the better, but I still prefer their older music), Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, Soul Asylum, Sublime, Tool, and after Nirvana, the Foo Fighters...and I'm not even getting into hip hop, when we had Tupac and Biggie, a young Wu Tang Clan, Snoop...there's more, and that's still only the top level stuff. There's lots of smaller bands that made a few contributions here and there. Nowadays, other than Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, I dunno if there's a band on that level, and Eminem is the only rapper to put himself there lately (the jury is still out on 50 Cent..I haven't heard all his stuff).

Anyway, that's my (way longer than I expected) rant on music. I'm 23, and I just made myself feel really old. Kurt died over 8 years ago, Rage lost their rage and picked up Chris Cornell, which is a good thing, but I'd trade it in for Rage and Soundgarden both being back together in a heart beat. It's harder to make that argument for the Foo Fighters...if I had my choice, Kurt would come back and kick Grohl out. Bradley Nowell was dead before he even made it, which is tragic...Layne Staley's battles with drugs finally got the best of him last year...Tupac and Biggie were the only casualties of the East Coast/West Coast crap...which I compared to a British Rock/American Rock battle that culminated in the deaths of Lennon and Dylan to a friend who isn't a fan of rap...it may be pushing it a little, but it was close. Pac and Lennon are a good comparison especially...Pac's lyrics were brilliant, and he always had these hopes for something better than what there was now. Jam Master Jay got shot to death, too. I'm 23, and 6 of the most talented musical personalities of my lifetime are dead already...and only 1 made it with me into my 20s. How f'd up is that?

Okay, enough of that. More disgust at politics later, or perhaps another rant, who knows. I'm gonna watch a muppet show DVD.

2003-04-09T21:29:00.000-04:00

Almost forgot

The other day, while watching Fox News, they tried to pat themselves on the back with one of the most misleading stats ever. To argue claims that the media and the President haven't done a good job of explaining the reasons for this war, they showed the responses to a poll question that, as best as I can figure out, read "Do you know why the US is involved in the following war?" and then listed all the major wars of the last century or so.

The thing here is, if someone believes that the whole point of this war is to get oil, they can still say yes. It's completely freaking skewed.

The current war had the highest number. No shock there. A surprising number of people answered Yes to the question when posed about the Vietnam War. Overall, the longer ago a war was, the less people answered yes. Pretty freaking sad that WW2 was near the bottom, 60 years ago or not.

This just goes to show: Don't ever trust polls. They're all shoddy and can be influenced to get the answers you want just by shaping the question the right way.

2003-04-09T20:44:00.000-04:00

Awnaw, hell naw, ya'll went up and done it

Actually, I went up and done it. I've challenged the freepers to a debate. Why? Because there seems to be some growing dislike of NAFTA, GATT, and the like, and also there's some people there seeing why unions might be a good thing, and I figured if I can say a few things respectfully and change a few minds, it'd be worth it. I'll keep everyone updated on it.

Oh, and the title is part of the chorus to a Nappy Roots song, Awnaw. The Nappy Roots rule. Onto:

LinkFest 2k3!

I've got almost 20 links I've been wanting to post, but I'm lazy and whatnot. Since that'd be insane, I'm going to say this: Check the last 2 days worth of stuff at Atrios, This Modern World, Very Very Happy, and Talking Points Memo. Most of what I was going to link to came from one of those places. I'll just hit a few good ones:

Americans seem to be waking up to the fact that their civil liberties are getting stripped: Survey: Americans say some new federal powers infringe on civil liberties

This made me laugh big time: Thin Ice

Things like this make me want to hurt people: Army Chaplain offers baptisms, paths . That title is really off. He's trading baths for baptisms. You want to be bathed, you're getting baptized. On the plus side, it seems that the Army is investigating him.

The Boston Globe is reporting that the Fed is working on a plan to help the economy. The problem there is that the problems are systemic, and not something the Fed can really address. They need to be addressed by the government as a whole. But Bush is too busy building huge deficits and waging war. I'll talk about this more soon. It ties into my Freeper debate, as well.

Salon.com is pointing out what most people should know already...that The Daily Show is the best political satire available. Some good quotes in there.

CNN has a report on the numbers of Americans in jail. It's pushing closer and closer to 1%. That's pretty messed up, if you think about it.

The Guardian, a British paper, of all things, has a story on the increasing amount of money spent by the media on political contributions in America. This should be seen as bad news by pretty much everyone.

And, finally, thank you, Arianna Huffington.

I think tomorrow I'm going to rant about something. If I happen to have any readers (it would be nice), feel free to offer topics to rant on in the feedback section.

2003-04-08T20:46:00.000-04:00

Feel More Secure?

This is from a column in Wired:

In the documents, all of the travelers complained about the inability to clear their names from the list. One person wrote that he must show up four hours before his flight in order to clear security in time for departure. Another said government officials suggested he change his name.

"I've endured too many security checks for this to be 'just a random search' -- this is harassment. I am a 62-year-old Caucasian grandmother and law-abiding citizen," wrote one woman, who also said she is screened on nearly every segment of a flight, including transfers.

That's thanks to the government watch list, which is pretty simplistic, consisting just of names. Another guy had problems because he had the same name as a guy who's been in US custody for months. He flys twice a week for his work, and has to get the FBI involved to keep his flights from being held up like these people see it.

Those that argue that the "temporary" lack of liberties these people face is necessary for security, would do well to remember a quote of Ben Franklin's: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety..."

2003-04-07T18:02:00.000-04:00

Ugh, part 2

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.

Here's the picture. (warning: image is somewhat graphic.)

That woman was protesting the war, and the police did that to her. Lovely.

Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing this one out.

Update: Thanks to This Modern World, I found more images.

2003-04-07T17:49:00.000-04:00

Ugh.

Some journalist thinks God saved him from oncomming fire in Iraq. By guiding the rounds into the soldiers in front of and to the left of him.

Luckily, the two soldiers survived, but one most likely lost an eye, and the other suffered a sucking chest wound.

I prefer to believe it was the hand of God that put them there, one behind me, one to my left. They were there to protect me.

That's freaking despicable. I'm certain that God doesn't feel the lives of those soldiers are less important than the lives of that reporter. I only hope their families don't have to see that crap.

Thanks to Atrios for pointing this crap out.

2003-04-07T17:07:00.000-04:00

A few links

Why is it that our best orators are almost all in their 80s?

First, there was Senator Robert Byrd and his speech back in February.

And now, we can add to that a column by George McGovern in The Nation this week.

Those opposed to war speak like this, and those in favor shout "unamerican" and the like. Our president can't even speak properly half the time. When did this country fully embrace idiocy?

2003-04-07T08:18:00.000-04:00

Keeping up the daily pace, sort of

It's technically the 7th, so I missed the 6th, but I slept through most of the 6th (stupid day light savings time) and so this is my post for both days. Lots to post about.

Molly Ivins has a new column up, which is a must read. Ivins is actually from Texas, so she's known about Bush longer than most of us. And judging from her writings, he doesn't seem to get better with time. One part worth quoting:

And of course we are all happy to learn that the Bush administration plans to provide universal health care and massive school construction for postwar Iraq, while simultaneously cutting health and education funding here at home.

We voted for that, right? 1 in 6 kids in the US lives in poverty. 1 in 6 people in the US doesn't have health insurance. But, as everyone is so willing to state, we're the best nation on the planet. Right.

Here's the deal. The US was founded on the best ideals, and the American way of life is the best available. But the system in this country is broken, big time. Nineteen percent of people in this country think they're in the top 1% in income, according to a survey conducted last year or so. This country spends more on insurance ($900 billion, with a b, is the total for the last year with a stat available) then we do on food. China listed the cost of higher education as a US humans right violation. The US prescription drug industry has some of the highest profit margins of any industry in the world. Drugs here cost 6 to 8 times what they do in Canada. People in the US work longer and harder than anyone else in the industrialized world, even longer than the Japanese.

This is big enough that it gets it's own paragraph. We work, on average, just shy of 50 full work weeks a year...1966 hours on average. That's 49 full work weeks plus 6 hours. So basically, in a 52 week year, people in the US get 2 weeks and 4 days off. The Japanese only work 1889 hours a year, or just over 47 full work weeks...they get, on average, about 2 more weeks off than we do. (these numbers are from 1997-98, I haven't seen anything more recent). Also, compared to 1960, we're the only major nation working more now than we were then per year. The other major industrialized nations...Japan, Britain, Germany, and France, saw their hours go down over that period by 429, 182, 576, and 285, respectively. We've gone up by 171 in that period, and I bet it's going up still. Two reasons people in the US work longer? They have to pay much more for health care, and for their higher education...two things which are mostly free in the rest of the industrialized world (even in poorer countries, like Cuba). And in the last 20 years, the wages of the average US worker have not kept pace with workers in other democratic nations. That means that, while they saw their working hours shorten (and we saw ours go up), they saw their wages raised relative to ours. In Germany, for example, in 1997, German wages for manufacturing jobs were 32% higher than US wages (based on purchasing power..it gets worse for us if you look at exchange rates), while Germans were working 406 hours less...10 full 40 hour weeks. How does Germany get by on so few hours? They've gone to a 7 hour work day. Higher wages, shorter working hours, and more vacation days ever year. Plus, socialized health care and higher education. And, in case no one noticed, the Germans have a pretty solid economy.

Some economists argue that US unemployment was lower than in places like Germany...4% or so in the US, vs 8 to 11% for most of Europe. But the US uses a different standard for unemployment than the EU does. In the US, if you stop looking for work, you don't get counted in the work force, and so you don't factor into the number of unemployed. One economic survey done in the US in 2000 suggested that the unemployment rate that year should have been 35%, because 70 million healthy adults not actively seeking jobs hadn't been counted. Britain has the same counting problem..they don't count people not looking for work. Also, 40 million Americans are counted as employed, but are working part time...and even if they are actively looking for full time jobs, they are still counted as being fully employed, which I'm sure they would argue with, given the chance.

The US economic policy for the last 2 decades has been devoted to globalization, moving from manufacturing jobs to service sector jobs, increasing hours with relatively stagnant wages for the middle and lower classes, and increasing wealth for the upper class.

A friend of mine who's relatively new to America, having grown up in Bahrain and England, asked if the poor were willingly supporting tax cuts for the wealthy out of generosity. I had to explain that most people who voted didn't think about who tax cuts affected, they just went by the argument "tax cuts good, tax hikes bad".

Speaking of taxes. In the 50s and 60s, the percentage of the federal budget raised through corporate taxes was 26.5%, compared to 6.9% for payroll taxes. In 2000, 31.1% of the federal budget came from payroll taxes, compared to only 10.2% for corporate taxes. This is actually an improvement over 1990, when 35.5% came from payroll taxes compared to just 9.1% from corporations.

I don't think anyone would argue that the balance there is very much off. And that doesn't even go into the subsidies provided to different industries, to the tune of $87 billion a year in 2001, according to the Cato Institute

That isn't the free market. That's making the rich richer on the backs of the poor. All of this means that the majority of Americans don't actually get to live the American way of life. Unless they're lucky enough to be born rich, or get lucky and come up with something like Amazon.com, you're going to work your ass off to break even for most of your life. So wave that flag proudly as you drive from your first job to your second job, and don't worry about not seeing your kids, the TV will raise them just fine.

All economic stats come courtesy of Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, by Kevin Phillips. If you have any interest in economics, it's a must read. And in case any conservatives think it's just some liberal stat-twisting, Kevin Phillips is a conservative, who's first major book was "The Emerging Republican Majority". So nyah.

Hmm. Went off on something of a rant there. I have more to talk about today, but it'll wait til later, as I'm sure this is enough reading for now.

Assuming someone is actually reading.

2003-04-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

Holy Crap! Good News!

Note: The good news isn't actually war-related, it's political. But we'll take what we can get here at Apathy, Inc.

John Kerry is making some headlines today, and with good reason. He's the first democrat to show signs of a backbone.

Kerry has used a joking comment about needing regime change here as well as in Iraq in his recent speeches. Recently, this has gotten him attacked by the likes of Tom Delay and other leading republicans for supporting the enemy, lack of patriotism, and trying to compare Bush and Hussein.

The important thing to remember here: None of the prominent Republican leadership served in Vietnam. Kerry did. And he came back swinging.

Kerry's response? "I'm not going to let the likes of Tom DeLay question my patriotism, which I fought for and bled for in order to have the right to speak out."

Delay claimed that he couldn't get into the military during Vietnam because minorities had taken all the available spots. Dick Cheney says he missed the war because he had "more important things to do in the 60s", or something like that. The only two Republican leaders with military experience that i know of are Rumsfeld, who fought in Korea, and Powell, who fought in Nam, was head of the Joint Chiefs for the first Gulf War, and hasn't exactly been a cheerleader for this war.

Another thing Kerry said: "I watched what they did to Max Cleland last year. Shame on them for doing it then and shame on them for trying to do it now."

Max Cleland was a Senator from Georgia. He left 3 limbs in Vietnam...both legs, and an arm. In the 2002 midterm elections, the Republicans attacked him as being weak on homeland security...they questioned his patriotism. And it worked. I don't live in Georgia, so I don't know the details of the campaign...but the fact remains that anyone who loses 3 limbs fighting for America should get a pass for the rest of his life on patriotism, period.

Of course, no one in the Democratic party, save Cleland is backing Kerry in his fight to prevent the Republicans from painting everyone who disagrees with Bush as a commie pinko bastard. And that's going to have to change for there to be any reasonable debate on the diplomatic failings of the last year plus.

To balance out this good news, Atrios points out the following quote:

"Nearly eight in 10 Americans now accept the Bush administration's contention — disputed by some experts — that Hussein has "close ties" to Al Qaeda (even 70% of Democrats agree). And 60% of Americans say they believe Hussein bears at least some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — a charge even the administration hasn't levied against him."

It should be noted that nearly all experts say there is no link between Hussein and Al Qaeda, especially not "close ties". And the 60% who are now blaming Hussein and Iraq for Sept 11th are certainly living by the "Never Forget!" claim that, as Very Very Happy points out, is being pimped by Fox News on a regular basis. Maybe they should change it to "Never Forget, But be Willing to Get a Little Fuzzy on Some of the Details." I guess that's kinda wordy, tho.

For those who are a little thin on the details: Al Qaeda actually paints Hussein as a lesser evil, second to America. Bin Laden wants the world to live under Muslim governments, based on the laws of the Quran, as he sees them (which is an exceptionally strict interpretation, to say the least). One of Hussein's biggest fears has been the religious groups in Iraq opposing him, and Al Qaeda would support those groups before they supported Hussein. There has, to date, been no reliable evidence whatever linking Al Qaeda and Hussein. Just lots of words and images suggesting it from the White House and their supporters.

2003-04-04T19:37:00.000-05:00

The Grand Experiment, Day 3

For those wondering, "the grand experiment" is my attempt to post at least once a day. This will mark the 3rd straight day I've posted. I'm awesome! Or something.

So far, the bad news is certainly regular enough to keep things going.

From the website of The Nation, we find Matt Bivens' "The Daily Outrage" spouting off on the Bush Energy Plan, which is currently in the House.

A quote he got from the Natural Resources Defense Council:
"The bill would do almost nothing to improve energy efficiency, save oil, or advance clean, renewable energy sources. It would, however, provide billions of taxpayer dollars to the oil, coal and nuclear industries -- even though energy companies are currently making record-breaking profits -- and create massive subsidies to log our national forests."

On top of that, two journalists were killed in Iraq...Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly and respected Iranian photojournalist Kaveh Golestan.

And the Washington Post has an editorial on a proposed US funded, pro-American Arabic language news service to be beamed by satellite into the Mid East. The Post sees this as an obviously bad idea...in my limited correspondence with people who have lived in the Arab world, there is a very good understanding of the money and power behind major news agencies, and so the bias of most is understood. For example, al Jazeera is run by the Qatar government. So they almost never cover things that show said government in a bad light. Similarly, Dar Al Hayat, which is my Arabic news agency of choice, is owned by a Saudi family, and run by Lebanese people...so they focus fairly regularly on Lebanon and rarely speak badly of Saudi Arabia. While both of these stations have these problems, they both also feature a commitment to journalistic integrity. If they aren't pro-US, it's because they represent the news from a perspective that isn't pro-US. And neither can be said to hide the facts. al Jazeera may be willing to show things that are graphic, but that doesn't make what they are showing false, or less relevant. There is a war on. And while CNN, Fox, and MSNBC all follow the Pentagon's lead and try to make the war look clean, the reality is that war is hell, and people are being killed. Laser guided 2000 pound bombs may be able to go through specific windows of a building, but when that building explodes, the whole neighborhood gets affected. Iraqis are getting killed in droves. People who did nothing more than get drafted into their nation's army are getting killed for reasons that have not been articulated to the people paying for the killings.

The only real reason that hasn't been struck down by credible arguments, and also the only cause the US leadership hasn't actually gone into, is the reason PNAC has argued for some time. The goal here is to replace all the questionable governments in the middle east with democracies set up by the US. This is a goal most Americans probably wouldn't support...because it will require hundreds of billions of dollars...maybe even trillions, and will require the US to go to war in, at the very least, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Saudi Arabian and Egypt may also end up on the list of invaded nations.

There are dozens of problems with this. For starters, it's an attempt to build an empire. Empire isn't really a democratic concept. The people of many of these nations don't like the US, and for many, they have good reason. In some nations, we have supported non-democratic, sometimes totalitarian regimes, for decades, simply because we wanted the suppliers of much of our oil to be stable. Why would they trust us now when we promise them democracy and self government, especially if it requires us to invade their country first? We supported Saddam up until he invaded Kuwait. Bush was planning on giving millions to the Taliban in the spring of 2001, to help get a natural gas pipeline built through the country. To suggest that the moral blindness we have lived with for decades is now gone is hard to believe, at best.

The US took longer to get into both world wars than anyone else, including the "cowards" like Canada and Russia, who won't back us now. While the Vichy government in France rolled over, and the leadership of much of France's army was unable to prepare for the German Blitzkrieg, the majority of the people of France worked to fight the Germans, even knowing the brutality that their nations would face. The Prime Minister went into hiding in Algeria, starting a government in exile. Every member of the Vichy government was executed for treason, save the head of it, who was imprisoned for life (at the age of 87). The French are not "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". Do they have financial interests in mind? Of course they do. So do we. Every nation has multiple things to consider before committing to wars, and economic reasons are among them.

The US completely stonewalled the EU and NATO in Afghanistan. It was felt that, in Kosovo, the US had to get NATO permission for every bomb they wanted to drop, and that was a bad thing...to quote one senior defense official, "No one's going to tell us where we can and can't bomb". But the Kosovo situation was a triumph of diplomacy...it was the first time in the history of the world that a group of nations had worked together to stop a humanitarian disaster in another country through force, instead of through diplomatic and economic efforts. One nation taking action against another to force change, without the support of the rest of the world, is very, very different from a group of nations working for the same goals.

Especially when there is little visible evidence of a pressing need to force those changes. If the US had gone to NATO, or the EU, and said "We, as a group, shall use all available diplomatic, economic, and military pressure to change the governments of places with criminal regimes, for the betterment of the populations of those nations, and also the world", perhaps the argument would have won the day. But focusing on one nation (especially with much more serious problems in places like North Korea), providing various arguments, several of which proved to be false (the Nigerian uranium, for example), and insisting that force was the only option at every juncture, is not a way to prove to the world the good intentions, or the case, for the actions we currently undertake.

Hussein is a criminal, of the highest order. He has done more to harm his people and the people of neighboring nations than anyone else currently in power. But he is far from the only criminal in power in the world, and he isn't the most dangerous today. For example, North Korea and Zimbabwe are both facing larger problems. Kim Jong Il starves his people to build nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach the United States, China, and Russia, among others. Mugave in Zimbabwe is using violence to crush any political opposition, as well as to prevent international human rights workers from doing their vital work.

Both of these problems, among others, are being left untouched by the US...the US was even responsible for much of the problems in North Korea, as the N Korean nuclear program had been stopped through the diplomacy of the Clinton administration. The deal Clinton got was abandoned by the Bush administration (along with nearly everything else Clinton did, save NAFTA). These are amazing diplomatic failings, which must be laid at the feet of the Bush administration, and the lack of reporting on these in the general media is nearly criminal.

2003-04-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

Blogger Must Feed!

Hmm. Blogger ate the post I'd just written on a news story that's bothering me something fierce.

Start here.

The scary thing? Technically, all that stuff is legal. The KGB tactics, the indefinite jailings, and the questionable reasoning.

As best as his family can judge, he has been brought in because he once donated to a Muslim charity. Said charity was later declared to be supporting Al Qaida, simply because an Al Qaida higher-up donated money to them at some point.

Either the rules regarding evidence are getting kinda flimsy, or we're playing Six Degrees of Osama here, and anyone who can be linked to him is screwed.

For those too lazy to click, the first paragraph goes like this:
"On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms parking lot. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR."

Now, if that doesn't sound KGB-ish, I dunno what does. If he's a witness, there's probably nothing in his house requiring those assault rifles, or the house being searched. I'd be completely willing to argue the situaiton on the merits, but there are no merits..it's all secret. And that's the scary part. The guy was taken, and only a cursory explanation was given. This isn't how the American justice system is supposed to work.

2003-04-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Step 1: Complete. On to Step 3!

Okay, so we now have feedback, thanks to the good folks at enatation. They won because it's available, something only half the services I found could actually claim. Also, they have the most editable interface, and they have lots of already created templates.

So, now to see if anyone's reading. If you are, please post a comment, as I'm curious.

I'm also a bit sleep deprived. Inspiration doesn't always come on schedule. Time for a bit of a nap. I expect many, many comments when I return. Well, actually, I expect none. Between my complete lack of self-pimpage and my infrequent updates, I don't expect to have many regular readers. It'd be pretty cool to get one, tho.

2003-04-03T06:11:00.000-05:00

Update Time!

A few things. I've been pretty bad about updating this site regularly. I want to be better about that. I'm not the greatest writer in the world or anything, but I think I'm pretty good, and I think I have decent things to say. So I'm gonna try harder, and stuff. As part of that, I have a few goals: Redesigning the site some, and figuring out how to get a comment board up for each post. I've already done a little redesign..I added links and changed the table layout a bit so the links all look decent. Look to the shiny new links to the right to see what I mean. I'll probably keep adding to that as I go, but there's a good start there.

My big quest now is for something allowing comments. I have no idea if anyone is reading this, because no one has emailed me to date, at least that I've caught, maybe it's getting blocked as spam. Who knows.Comments would let me know if anyone's replying, and also make everything far more public. Intelectual voyerism: It's the new black. Until I find something, feel free to use my email address, now linked at the bottom of every post, as well as in the table to the left.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm going to try to hold myself to at least one post a day, possibly more. We'll see how long I can keep that up. Lord knows there's enough bad news out there for me to work with.

Update to the update: Blogger lists five commenting options...The first three on the list are YACCS, netcomments, and Falasério. If you follow those links, you'll learn that YACCS isn't accepting new users to sign up right now, netcomments seems to no longer exsist, and Falasério isn't in english. Not a good start. Checking on another search found 4 options, 2 of which aren't open, and other which I've already found. So out of 8 options, I've found 3 others that look to be open to me: enetation, BlogOut, and SquawkBox. Time to fiddle and see which one I like. Hopefully there will be comments soon. Much like the underpants gnomes of South Park, I have a 3 step plan:

Step 1: Comments!
Step 2:
Step 3: Internet domination!

My plan is flawless. My humor could probably use work, tho. Ah well, back to the fiddlin'.

2003-04-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

Damn Communists

One of my basic beliefs is that there are 2 ways to determine if something should be controlled or heavily regulated by the government. The first is "Should every person have equal access to it, no questions asked?" Medicine, education, and arguably the internet and electricity are things that I feel fall into this category. The other question is, "Are the methods of providing the product ill-suited to a free market?". Power, phone, cable and to a degree internet access all fall into this column. Air travel does, too, sort of. Power, phone, and cable services are all things that have to travel over wires (as is net access). It's hugely inefficient to string up 2 sets of powerlines for everyone to give everyone access to power from 2 companies, and it's also inefficient to offer the services of multiple companies over one set of lines. The air lines are similar, yet different. Air travel must flow through choke points - airports. They also provide identical services in most major routes, which is innefficient. 20 half full flights is less efficient than 10 full flights. But maximum efficiency might cut out routes that are not high traffic, which would be unfair to people who live away from the major coridors.

Very few poeple would argue that education should be deregulated or privatized. The educational system in this country is a problem, because it is not the same for every person. People in poor areas do not get the same educational opportunities that people in more affluent areas get, because of the way education is paid for in this nation. Also, people from poorer families are less likely to go the the best colleges, because the best colleges are the most expensive, and there are limited ammounts of financial aid available to those students. This isn't even going into the racial issues still facing the educational system, because many minoriteis live in areas that do not have the same affluence as white neighborhoods. That's a topic for another day.

Medical treatment is quickly becoming a similar issue. One study suggested that 75 million americans did not have health insurance for at least part of 2002. Since I don't have health insurance, I can give you an idea of what that means. I have been to the dentist once in the last 3 years. I haven't been to a doctor in 5 years. I've been lucky (read: healthy) over that time, but if something were to happen to me, say a broken limb, I would be screwed. Even with smaller problems, like an illness that won't go away, the only options for me are the emergency room and...the emergency room. Which burdens the hosptials because they have to use resources designed to deal with actual emergencies to deal with things that people should see their primary physician about. And if people who go to the emergency room can't pay, then things are made even worse, as the resources have been expended without anycash coming into the system, so the hospital must bear the burden of replacing the resources. It drags the system down.

Another argument for nationalized health care is borrowed from The Mighty Reason Man at Very Very Happy:
The only real point I have to make tonight is this: the opportunity to be as physically healthy as modern medicine allows should be a basic right. One of the fundamental ideals of this country is that everyone should have the chance to make their lives, or the lives of their children, better -- that's the essence of the American Dream -- and people who are not healthy cannot do that.

It's as simple as that.

Far more eloquent than I could ever say it.

Arguments for socializing the power and telecommunications industries to come later.

2003-03-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

How To Take Back America

Marching in the streets is important work, but wouldn't we have greater
success if we also took control of the United States government?

It's vital to point out right-wing-slanted reporting in the corporate media,
but isn't it also important to seize enough political power in Washington to
enforce anti-trust laws to break up media monopolies?

And how are progressives - most standing on the outside of government,
looking in - to deal with oil wars, endemic corporate cronyism, slashed
environmental regulations, corporate-controlled voting machines, the
devastation of America's natural areas, the fouling of our air and waters,
and an administration that daily gives the pharma, HMO, banking, and
insurance industries whatever they want regardless of how many people are
harmed?

This lack of political power is a crisis others have faced before. We should
learn from their experience.

After the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a similar crisis faced
a loose coalition of gun lovers, abortion foes, southern segregationists,
Ayn Rand libertarians, proto-Moonies, and those who feared immigration
within and communism without would destroy the America they loved. Each of
these various groups had tried their own "direct action" tactics, from
demonstrations to pamphleteering to organizing to fielding candidates. None
had succeeded in gaining mainstream recognition or affecting American
political processes. If anything, their efforts instead had led to their
being branded as special interest or fringe groups, which further diminished
their political power.

So the conservatives decided not to get angry, but to get power.

Led by Joseph Coors and a handful of other ultra-rich funders, they decided
the only way to seize control of the American political agenda was to
infiltrate and take over one of the two national political parties, using
their own think tanks like the Coors-funded Heritage Foundation to mold
public opinion along the way. Now they regularly get their spokespeople on
radio and television talk shows and newscasts, and write a steady stream of
daily op-ed pieces for national newspapers. They launched an aggressive
takeover of Dwight Eisenhower's "moderate" Republican Party, opening up the
"big tent" to invite in groups that had previously been considered on the
fringe. Archconservative neo-Christians who argue the Bible should replace
the Constitution even funded the startup of a corporation to manufacture
computer-controlled voting machines, which are now installed across the
nation. And Reverend Moon took over The Washington Times newspaper and UPI.

Their efforts, as we see today, have borne fruit, as Kevin Phillips
predicted they would in his prescient 1969 book "The Emerging Republican
Majority," and as David Brock so well documents in his book "Blinded By The
Right."

But the sweet victory of the neoconservatives in capturing control of the
Republican Party, and thus of American politics, has turned bitter in the
mouths of the average American and humans around the world. Soaring
deficits, the evisceration of Social Security, "voluntary" pollution
controls, war for oil, stacking federal benches with right-wing ideologues,
bellicose and nationalist foreign policy, and the handing over of much of
the infrastructure of governance to multinational corporate campaign donors
has brought a vast devastation to the nation, nearly destroyed the
entrepreneurial American dream, and caused the rest of the world to view us
with shock and horror.

Thus, many progressives are suggesting that it's time for concerned
Americans to reclaim Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Party. It may, in fact,
be our only short-term hope to avoid a final total fascistic takeover of
America and a third world war.

"But wait!" say the Greens and Progressives and left-leaning Reform Party
members. "The Democrats have just become weaker versions of the
Republicans!"

True enough, in many cases. And it isn't working for them, because, as
Democrat Harry Truman said, "When voters are given a choice between voting
for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for
the Republican every time." (And, history shows, voters are equally
uninterested in Republicans who act like Democrats.)

Alternative parties have an important place in American politics, and those
in them should continue to work for their strength and vitality. They're
essential as incubators of ideas and nexus points for activism. Those on the
right learned this lesson well, as many groups that at times in the past had
fielded their own candidates are now still intact but have also become
powerful influencers of the Republican Party. Similarly, being a Green
doesn't mean you can't also be a Democrat.

This is not a popular truth.

There's a long list of people who didn't like it - Teddy Roosevelt, H. Ross
Perot, John Anderson, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader - but nonetheless the
American constitution was written in a way that only allows for two
political parties. Whenever a third party emerges, it's guaranteed to harm
the party most closely aligned to it.

This was the result of a well-intentioned accident that most Americans fail
to understand when looking at the thriving third, fourth, and fifth parties
of democracies such as Germany, India, or Israel. How do they do it? And why
can't we have third parties here?

The reason is because in America - unlike most other modern democracies - we
have regional "winner take all" types of elections, rather than proportional
representation where the group with, say, 30 percent of the vote, would end
up with 30 percent of the seats in government. It's a critical flaw built
into our system, so well identified in Robert A. Dahl's brilliant book "How
Democratic Is the American Constitution?"

When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to craft a
constitution, republican democracy had never before been tried anywhere in
what was known as "the civilized world." There were also, at that moment, no
political parties, and "father of the Constitution" James Madison warned
loudly in Federalist #10 against their ever emerging.

In part, Madison issued his warning because he knew that the system they
were creating would, in the presence of political parties, rapidly become
far less democratic. In the regional winner-take-all type of elections the
Framers wrote into the Constitution, the loser in a two-party race - even if
s/he had fully 49.9 percent of the vote - would end up with no voice
whatsoever. And the combined losers in a 3- or more-party race could even be
the candidates or parties whose overall position was most closely embraced
by the majority of the people.

The best solution to this unfairness, in 1787, was to speak out against the
formation of political parties ("factions"), as Madison did at length and in
several venues. But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification,
Jefferson's split with Adams had led to the emergence of two strong
political parties, and the problems Madison foresaw began and are with us to
this day.

This is particularly problematic in presidential elections. H. Ross Perot's
participation in the 1992 election drew enough votes away from the elder
George Bush that Bill Clinton won without a true majority. Similarly, Ralph
Nader's participation in the 2000 election drew enough votes away from Al
Gore that it was easy for the Supreme Court and Jeb Bush to deflect media
notice away from Florida's illegal vote-rigging in the pre-election purging
of the voter rolls and thus select George W. Bush as President.

Conservative activists recognized this inherent flaw in the electoral system
of the United States and decided to do something about it, recruiting Ronald
Reagan and forming his infamous "kitchen cabinet." They took over the
Republican Party and then successfully seized control of the government of
the United States of America. As we can see by comparing documents from the
1990s Project For A New American Century with today's war in Iraq, these
once-marginalized conservative ideologues are the real power behind Bush's
throne.

Liberals weren't so practically minded. Instead of funding think tanks to
influence public opinion, subsidizing radio and TV talk show hosts
nationwide, and working to take over the Democratic Party, many left to
create their own parties while others gave up on mainstream politics
altogether. The remaining Democrats were caught in the awkward position of
having to try to embrace the same corporate donors as the Republicans,
although they weren't anywhere near as successful as Republicans because
they hadn't (and haven't) so fully sold out to corporate and wealthy
interests.

We see the result in races across the nation, such as my state of Vermont.
In the 2002 election for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, the people who
voted for the Democratic and Progressive candidates constituted a clear
majority. Nonetheless, the Republican candidates became Governor and
Lieutenant Governor with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote respectively
because each had more votes than his Democratic or Progressive opponents
alone. (Example: Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin - 32%;
Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican "won.")

Similarly, Republicans have overtly used third-party participation on the
left to their advantage. In a July 12, 2002 story in the Washington Post
titled "GOP Figure Behind Greens Offer, N.M. Official Says," Post writer
Thomas B. Edsall noted that: "The chairman of the Republican Party of New
Mexico said yesterday he was approached by a GOP figure who asked him to
offer the state Green Party at least $100,000 to run candidates in two
contested congressional districts in an effort to divide the Democratic
vote."

The Republicans well understand - and carefully use - the fact that in the
American electoral system a third-party candidate will always harm the
major-party candidate with whom s/he is most closely aligned.

The Australians solved this problem in the last decade by instituting
nationwide instant run-off voting (IRV), a system that is making inroads in
communities across the United States. There are also efforts to reform our
electoral system along the lines of other democratic nations, instituting
proportional representation systems such as first proposed by John Stuart
Mill in 1861 and now adopted by virtually every democracy in the world
except the US, Australia, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

These are good and important efforts for the long-term future of American
democracy. But they won't happen in time to influence the 2004 elections,
and we're facing a crisis right now. A few Democratic stalwarts survive who
may oppose Bush on the national stage, but while the rest of us fixated on
the war, neo-cons are creeping on cat's paws into the very heart of
Jefferson's Party.

Thus, the best immediate solution to advance the progressive agenda is for
progressives to join and take back the Democratic Party, in the same way
conservatives seized control of the Republican Party.

After writing the first draft of this article, just as the first 2003 attack
of Baghdad began, I thought about how the Democratic Party could change if
most of the protesters in the streets were to join the Democratic Party and
run for leadership positions in their local town or county. In short order,
it could become a powerful force for progressive principles and democracy in
America and the world, maybe even in time to influence the 2004 election.

So, I called the Democratic headquarters in my home state of Vermont.

"Sign me up!" I said to the startled young man who answered the phone.

"What?" he said, taken aback by my enthusiasm.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," I said, standing and
waving my arm as I talked on the phone. "We have to stop the right-wingers
from ripping up our constitution, despoiling our earth, and turning America
into a fascist state! Sign me up!"

"Are you a Democrat?" he said.

"Can I be a progressive Democrat?"

"Sure!" he said.

"Then I'm also a Democrat now!"

He chuckled, and said. "We're getting a lot of calls like this."

He took my contact information, and gave me the name of my county's Party
leader. I told him to put me on the list for future fundraising events, to
let me know how and when I could run for local Party leadership, and how I
could participate on a regular basis in the decision-making processes of
"my" local Democratic Party.

An hour after that call, I received an email characteristic of so many I get
these days.

"I've never been so depressed in my entire life," the correspondent, an
attorney and longtime progressive activist wrote. "Bush is completely
ignoring us. My nation, using the same rationale Germany did in the 1930s,
has just gone to war against a nation that did not attack it, and my
president has declared himself a military dictator. Every time we announce
peace marches, they raise the 'threat level' so they can keep us away from
government buildings or use force to prevent us from marching. I've lost all
hope."

A few minutes later, another old friend and activist wrote that her "heart
was heavy and tears came easily." A flood of other emails arrived after the
publication of my most recent article on Common Dreams, and all but one
expressed despair, fear, or panic.

So I've started answering them by saying:

"The nation I love is confronting a crisis no smaller than those faced by
Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington: a crisis that will determine if American
democracy survives to the next generation. So-called 'conservatives' are
turning our government inside out, trying, as they say, 'to drown it in the
bathtub,' killing off regulatory agencies, ripping up the Constitution,
cutting funding to social services, and turning pollution controls over to
industry. Government expenses in the trillions of dollars are being shifted
from us, today, to the shoulders of our children, who will certainly have to
repay the deficits Bush's so-called 'tax cuts' (which are really tax
deferrals) are racking up. War is being waged in our name and without our
consent.

"And, most disconcerting, the leadership of this administration is made up
of blatantly profiteering CEOs, former defense industry lobbyists, and
failed hack politicians so outside the mainstream that one - Ashcroft - even
lost an election in his home state against a dead guy.

"Unlike most other modern democracies, our American electoral system only
allows for two political parties, at least at the national level. So, given
that the rich, the polluters, the paranoid, and the zealot war-mongers got
to the Republicans first, we have no choice but to take back the Democratic
Party, reinvigorate it, reorient it, and lead it to success in 2004. We may
not be able to stop Bush now, but we sure as hell can throw him out of
office next year at the ballot box."

But what, some have said in response, about the corporate-controlled media?

That was the same problem faced by the Christian Right 25 years ago, when
the coverage they could get was of Tammy Faye Bakker scandals. But once
they'd taken over the Republican Party, the press could no longer ignore
them, and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are now regulars on network TV.

Another person answered my now-form-email by saying, "I want to participate
in producing a detailed plan for the future of America, rather than just
joining a corrupt and tired-out political party."

My response was that if there were enough of us in the Democratic Party, it
could become a cleaned-up and powerful activist force. It's possible: just
look at how the anti-abortion and gun-nut folks took over the once-moribund
Republican Party.

Another said, "But what about their rigged computer-controlled voting
machines?"

My answer is that only a political party as large and resourceful as the
Democrats could have the power to re-institute exit polling, and catch scams
like the voter-list purges Jeb Bush used to steal the 2000 and 2002
elections for himself and his brother.

And the Democratic Party can only do it if we, in massive numbers, join it,
embrace it, and ultimately gain a powerful and decisive voice in its
policy-making and selection of candidates.

Thom Hartmann (thom@thomhartmann.com) is the author of over a dozen books,
including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."
www.thomhartmann.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so
long as this credit is attached.

2003-03-23T17:31:00.000-05:00

Job Hunting

Check this out.

That guy got FIRED for losing 75% of the company's stock value, and also for getting the company investigated by the SEC on a couple fronts. And when they fired him, he got around thirty-one million dollars in severance pay.

So here's my offer. If there are any companies out there looking to be driven into the ground, and wanting to save some money, send me an email. I can guarantee that I won't do worse than that guy. And I don't want anywhere near that level of compensation.

2003-03-21T03:38:00.000-05:00

With God on Our Side

Lyrcis by Bob Dylan.

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

It's a bit dated, but with the religious fevor coming from the White House, it fits.

2003-03-18T11:29:00.000-05:00

Supporting Our Troops

The President and his advisors are all telling Americans to support our troops through these hard times. And it's good advice. They should follow it. While planning for this war, the Republican House Ways and Means Committee has produced a budget that, among many other cuts, cuts 15 billion dollars in veterans programs. My father is a disabled veteran, having served 2 tours in Vietnam, another war that was started with questionable reasons, helped by outright lies (in the case of Nam, the Gulf of Tonkin was the lie that started it..in this case, it's the lie that Iraq was involved in 9/11...not pushed directly by the administration, but now believed by about half the people in this country).

This is the eve of war. A war that we chose to wage. America has abandoned Afghanistan, and we've done nothing in the last two years to help bring peace to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and yet we expect the world to trust us to rebuild Iraq successfully. Right.

More later, probably....

2003-03-15T05:41:00.000-05:00

Elephants in the Room

There are now dozens of elephants in the room, and the press and political leadership in this country seem completely willing to ignore them (and allow each other to do the same). Hundreds of cities and towns have or are working to pass anti-war resolutions. Millions have marched in the streets the world over. The UN's weapons inspectors state that Iraq could be disarmed in a matter of months. 300,000 workers lost their jobs this past February. Inflation adjusted incomes of the bottom 3/5ths of the population are lower than they were in the 70s. There have been no real, lasting changes to the main problems that led to the allowance of the corporate "malfeasance"...which is a friendly way of saying "crimes". Poll after poll show that the people of this country support what would be termed a progressive set of policies for this country, but the President, and the media, continue to act like his loss in the popular vote constitute a mandate for his policies, many of which go against his claims. He has, repeatedly, said one thing and done another. He talks like a member of the center-right, and pushes policies that must be giving hard core right wingers fits of joy. The man who uses Sept 11th to justify nearly everything he does isn't even supported by the nation's Firefighter's Union. The president of said union told Bush, who rejected a $150 million plan for grants to state and local first responders, "don't lionize our fallen brothers in one breath, and then stab us in the back by eliminating funding for our members to fight terrorism and stay safe". The president of the Virginia firefighter's association said "The president has merely been using firefighters and their families for one big photo opportunity." And this is hardly the only issue he's pulled these stunts on. A list (which is hardly complete) can be found here.

Clinton was crucified in the press regularly for any perceived irregularity between his policies and his statements. Millions of dollars, mostly those of the tax payers of this country, were spent to investigate every questionable action he and his supporters ever took, and many that he never actually took. Bush gets a pass on everything he's ever done that wouldn't stand up to public scrutiny. He skipped out on his military service - as have most of his advisors...Cheney "had other priorities in the 60s", and most everyone he's appointed to the Department of Defense has never served. In fact, the only member of his cabinet with a real record of military service, Powell, is the closest thing we have to any insider dissent in the White House. But the press largely ignores when Powell goes out on his own and states things that retired generals all over the place are stating...that this war isn't necessary, and that the proof isn't there.

The "liberal" media has shown time and again in the last decade and a half to, in fact, be heavily conservative. And the need to always have the story first is pushing the standards of journalism farther and farther towards outride tabloidism. Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, and other leaders of the conservative vanguard, are at best playing loosely with the facts, and at worst, outright liars. Coulter went so far as to suggest that democrats not clapping when Bush stated that he had begun deploying "a shield that will protect us from" ballistic missiles is equivalent to treason. If, perhaps, this shield worked reliably, or wasn't insanely expensive, there would be reason to clap. But the serious number of faults (which the journal Science will no longer cover, since they are censoring themselves in case terrorists are reading and happen to have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US), and the huge cost overruns of the program, have shown it to be a controversial issue, at best. In fact, Donald Rumsfield has asked that it be approved and deployed without being submitted to the testing process that every single military project has been subject to. Why? He claims it's because the program is so important to US security that it can not be postponed. But maybe it's because there have been several reports that the positive results reported by the program are, in fact, false.

The best example of the willingness of the press to roll over for the President was his "press conference" last week. In it, he worked off of a seating chart, only took questions from people who his team had approved, and didn't allow any follow-ups. He mentioned Sept 11th time and again as an excuse to tell the people of this country the possible costs of the war he plans to force on us, and the world. Almost half of people in America think Saddam helped mastermind the attacks, and the number keeps going up. Do the press do something about this by pointing out to Bush that the two aren't related in any documented way? No, because to ask a hard or critical question will just get you treated as a persona non grata.

Journalists alone can not be blamed. The American people have shown a shocking distaste for actual, issues based political journalism. Instead, we're more worried about how "stiff" Al Gore seems, or how personable Bush seems. They were treated as if they had similar platforms by most of the media, when in fact they had very little in common. Gore would have continued many of Clinton's policies, while Bush has gone after just about every Clinton policy he could, going so far as to reversing a Clinton executive order that would have lowered the amount of arsenic allowable in drinking water. That would have been the first lowering of arsenic levels since the 40s.

Then there's the right wing idea that "Terrorists hate us because we have freedoms". Some say they're jealous, others say they hate everything freedom stands for. The media largely repeats this, without looking for more in depth explanations. While I don't doubt that Osama Bin Laden hates us because we aren't governed by a strict definition of Islam, the majority of the members of al Qaida and other terrorist groups do not hate us because we have freedoms. They hate us because they see us as preventing them or other Muslims from getting those same freedoms. From our abandoning of the group that was going to start a revolution in Iraq, to the support we give to dictators throughout the middle east and central Asia, to our treatment of the Palestinians, it is hard to argue with this point. And this war with Iraq is only more likely to prove that position right, as we murder thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis, and install a government that may or may not represent the wants of the people of Iraq.

And that doesn't even get into the argument of the nasty, nasty precedent this war will set. Now, China will be free to attack Taiwan, and point to our reasoning as their own. The same could happen with Pakistan and India...and those two nations have nukes. And North Korea or Iran could justify attacking us by saying that we pose a threat to them, having listed them as members of the "axis of evil", and having already attacked one of the members of said axis.

But on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, these topics are largely ignored. Shows like CNN's "Showdown Iraq" and MSNBC's "Countdown Iraq" treat this coming war as a ratings bonanza, not the morally and diplomatically questionable adventure of a dishonest administration. Because the people seem to want hi-tech graphics and simple, "bomb the bad guy" answers, not complex discussions and debates on what got us here and what's really going to help us repair relations with the middle east.

I could go on, but this has been a long enough post, I think. More soon.

2003-03-14T08:50:00.000-05:00

Time to Post

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled this past week that it's illegal for state agencies to allow flags to be hung in public places, but not other banners. Their reasoning was that the flag is indeed speech, and state bodies are barred from limiting one type of speech while allowing another, thanks to the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit said that "honoring the principles for which the flag stands extends beyond waving it in tribute." I couldn't have said it better myself. Censorship in the name of patriotism is wrong. It goes against the best parts of this country's heritage.

In another interesting development, the city of Dallas is trying to decide what to do with an old marble fountain that has the words "Whites Only" on it. The only way to remove the words would be to tear out all the marble. Until recently, the marble was covered by a piece of metal. The options are to leave it covered, to tear out the marble, or to uncover it, and put up a plaque that explains it's historical context. The NAACP wants the sign removed, and possibly placed in a museum. I think that's wrong. Important history should be left where it can be seen by the most people. The sign, plus an explanation of it's historical context, seem like the best answer to me. Segregation isn't old news...it was ended less than 40 years ago. This was endemic until the 60s, and it touched the lives of many people who are still alive today. To destroy or hide that history should be a crime. People need to know the mistakes of the past, and learn why they were mistakes, or the possibility of them being repeated will grow, and that's not acceptable.

One more thing. A recent survey of Americans showed that 19% of people in this country think they are in the top 1%, income wise. That's obviously pretty wrong. And that might not even include the entire top 1%, considering that some people may be just above that level, and not think they are. Some people use statistics like "50% of this tax cut would benefit the top 1% of Americans" or something like that, but the media rarely explains what it takes to be in that little bracket. To be in the top 1% of incomes in America, you have to make $330,000 a year. That group is almost 3 million people. You learn something new every day.

2003-03-06T21:14:00.000-05:00

The President Speaks

President Bush gave a press conference just now, and made several statements that were completely accepted by the journalists there. These need some rebuttals.

When asked about the anti-war protests, Bush stated that he'd had many policies protested, including one on "trade". By this he meant free trade, something he claimed to support. Which is odd, since he worked to pass tarriffs on lumber and steel. The tarriff on lumber was attacked by Canada as being a breach of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

When asked about the costs of the war, his simple response was "The costs of doing nothing far out weigh the costs of this conflict." Then he went and pointed at the costs of Sept 11th. Which is odd, since Sept 11th didn't involve Iraq at all. And the people responsible for 9/11 are still out there.

Oh, he also asked "What if he lobs a weapon of mass destruction into Isreal?" Excpet that Iraq has no weapons that can reach Isreal. The Al Sammoud 2 missiles he's destroying now (which Powell says he's building more of, but he has shown no proof) couldn't reach Isreal...not by a longshot. And, like I said, the Iraqis are destroying them.

These are all points that the journalists there should have raised. None of them did. This is a faliure of journalism at a basic level. Journalists are supposed to get to the truth, not accept whatever they're told. These are obvious questions. They need to be asked.

2003-03-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

Bullet Points!

Five things you should know about the Bush administration's justification for war with Iraq:

Saddam got his weapons of mass destruction from the US. We sold them to him back during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s. Reagan and Bush the first were both involved in these sales. In fact, Donald Rumsfeld was the head US liason to Iraq during Reagan's presidency.

Colin Powell isn't the most trustworthy guy: In the build up for the first Gulf War, Powell used falsified intelligence to help build his coalition. He had pictures of Iraqi troops amassing near the Saudi border, making it seems as if there was an imminent threat to Saudi Arabia. When coalition forces got there, the troops were no where to be found.

Isreal is in violation of over a dozen UN resolutions, and has been for decades. And that isn't counting the 30 or so resolutions the US has vetoed on Isreal's behalf. One of those resolutions involves keeping the Middle East nuclear-free...a policy that we helped Isreal defy by arming them decades ago.

"Regime Change" in Afghanistan is turning into a massive failure. US troops are not helping keep the piece, and the US is severly underfunding the government that we helped form. Outside of Kabul, warlords are back in power, and some of them are so brutal that some people have voiced a longing for the days of the Taliban.

Iraq != al Qaida. != is geek-speak for does not equal. The Bin Laden tape that Colin Powell said would show that al Qaida supports Iraq involved Bin Laden railing against Saddam, who he calls a socialist pig and other such things. They ties that Powell explained in the UN were based on the reporting of one journalist, who got his info from one source..a man that's in jail in Kurdish-controled Iraq, and who is reported to be willing to say anything to get his freedom.

2003-03-06T00:32:00.000-05:00

New Name Time

You'll note that I changed the name of my little blog. Well, if anyone's reading. Anyway, I felt that the old title was a bit unwieldy. Apathy, Inc has a nice ring to it. Plus, apathy is such a nationwide thing right now that I can't be the only one who can claim it as my own. Heck, apathy.blogspot.com was taken, probably a long time ago.

So, anyway. I went to the Bruins - Canucks game this past Monday, and watched the home town team get beat, 6-4. It was a pretty good game, and we had good seats..nosebleeds, but right over the redline. If only the B's could have played some more consistent D.

I'm almost done with my C book, and I don't really want to keep going. The last few parts have been kinda hard, and I'm not picking it up as well as I had been earlier.

So, I've been pointed to a fairly local game company that's hiring...I may drop off a resume, try to get a QA tester position. It'd be cool, but also a ton of hours and only 3-4 months...but it beats nothing.

I think that's about it for this entry.

2003-02-28T03:50:00.000-05:00

I'm not creative enough for a good title at this point

Working my way through my C book is going well. I can program all sorts of nifty little things. Three chapters of C stuff left, 2 more chapters of other useful info, than I move onto my C++ book. I wouldn't have gotten this far without my buddy Q, who's a programmer, and also really good at Unreal Tournament 2003.

I went to the Celtics - Rockets game this past Monday with my brother. It was a zoo...I dunno how much the Chinese people in Boston care about basketball, but they love Yao Ming. The place exploded every time he touched the ball.

In a fit of boredom, I gave match.com a look (it was a banner on dilbert.com). I found some interesting matches, and decided to give it a shot. What do I have to lose, right? I've emailed 4 girls now, and gotten exactly zero replies. I don't get it. You'd think I'd get at least one. I generally don't write anything that would make me seem insane, or like a giant loser. Ah well. Why should my love life stop sucking now? Being nice is no way to get a girl, it would seem, at least not when they're young.

Sometimes I wish I could pull off being an asshole. I've watched enough great girls fall for guys that didn't respect them that I'm fairly certain it'd work, I just can't do it. I blame my parents for teaching me to respect everyone. Maybe I'll sue.

Yes, I'm being goofy. 4 am will do that to you, and it's just about 4 am. Bed time.

2003-02-23T15:17:00.000-05:00

Argh

Blogger ate my last post. Bastards! Guess I get to try and rewrite it from memory.

Let's see. I started out by saying that I hadn't posted in a while. I blame it on the weekend....not much noteworthy seems to happen on weekends. This weekend, mostly it was tragic stuff....the fire in Rhode Island, the fire on Staten Island, the girl with the wrong organs transplanted to her, then the right ones found in a hurry and transplanted died. The one in Rhode Island is an interesting case. The band's rider didn't have any mention of pyrotechnics in it (check it out here at The Smoking Gun). But both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald are reporting that other bands say they have played the club many times using the same type of pyro, and the club's management had agreed to it, verbally. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

If you've never checked out The Smoking Gun before, you should. They have all sorts of interesting stuff. No tabloid or shock journalism, just hard documents and paper trails. Plus a great collection of celebrity mug shots.

Also worth checking out is Molly Ivins' latest column, which can be found here. Ivins is one of the best progressive op/ed writers out there, and worth reading regularly.

Having quite a bit of free time, I've taken to teaching myself C. Mainly because I have a book that came highly recommended, and I've never really touched it before. The book is 15 chapters, and I worked through two yesterday, and plan on doing the next two today. So far, so good.

That's about it. Get your Re-Freak on! (Link leads to post on Lisa Rein's blog, which I found on BoingBoing.)

2003-02-19T19:27:00.000-05:00

Finally

Blogger.com was down for a while, so that's why this post didn't come this morning.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt

Good advice these days. A WWII veteran marching in New York City this past Saturday stated "It can't be 'My country, right or wrong.' - it has to be 'My country, supporting it when it's right and correcting it when it's wrong'. The feeling in New York was that the people there are angry that Bush has co-opted their suffering and used it to push his agenda. Unlike rallies that had happened earlier in DC and San Francisco, the rallies in New York and San Fran this past Saturday were not large meetings of smaller left wing groups, protesting everything from capitalism to the anti-abortion stance of many republican leaders. Instead, these rallies were groups of Americans, every type of American, meeting in large groups to tell Bush that his war was not right. He hasn't justified them. I don't think Saddam should remain in power, but reports show that the US plan for after the war is to install a US military dictator, and to basically leave Saddam's party in power in most places. This isn't a fight for democracy. It's a fight to show the US that the "war on terror" is getting something done (cause it sure isn't capturing any major Al Qeada leaders, or any Taliban leaders, for that matter), and also to secure US access to the oil this country refuses to slow it's consumption of.

The federal government has done everything in it's power to prevent higher standards from hitting the road. California, back in the 70s, had a smog problem that was growing so bad that the feds gave them permission to set their own standards, which before that wasn't allowed (since having as many as 50 different state standards wouldn't be a good thing). Other states were given the option of using Federal standards, or California standards. A few months back, as California’s state government pushed for higher standards, Bush tried to strike their efforts down, saying they weren't allowed under federal law. Which was, we'll assume, a misunderstanding on his part, and not a lie. He gave up on that fight. California also got screwed in the energy crisis they faced in 2001. Several companies had worked to fix prices and limit the supply of energy they were giving to California. Among these were Enron, Williams Energy (who held back more electricity than any other company), Duke Power, PG&E, and others. Williams reportedly left generators offline while people in California sat in the dark. And the Feds knew about it, but didn't report it to anyone or do anything about it for over a year...a Freedom of Information Act suit had to be filed to get the reports. From CBS.com's reporting: "The government sealed the tapes in a secret settlement and still refuses to release them." While the government knew, Dick Cheney went on Frontline and stated that the problem was with how California deregulated. If they'd deregulated all the way, and not just part way, it wouldn't have happened. When in reality, the problem wasn't the deregulation scheme, but some companies wanting to make extra money by faking a crisis. And it worked great for them. And the consumers got screwed.

Cheney also suggested in that interview that other places where deregulation has done good is in phone and airline services. As for phone service, I'd agree, if it weren't for the fact that so much of the country is still without access to high speed internet access. The companies that control the phone lines these days refuse to spend the money to upgrade the lines, because they won't be the ones to profit from them..at least not the only ones. And the airlines..well, just look. US Air and American Airlines are both bankrupt, or on the verge. This isn't a post-sept 11th thing..they were on the way there before hand. The feds gave them billions, and they couldn't get solvent. They are hemorrhaging money. Discount shuttle carriers, like American Eagle, start their pilots at a yearly salary roughly equivalent of someone working full time at McDonalds or the local mall...$13,000 a year. That type of money is going to attract the best qualified pilots?

Deregulation generally doesn't work. In the radio industry, it's created Clear Channel, a company owning well over one thousand stations, pumping out the same formula on station after station. They banned Tom Petty's The Last DJ just because it attacked corporate radio. No vulgarity at all in the song, just lines like "as we celebrate mediocrity/all the boys upstairs want to see/how much you'll pay for/what you used to get for free".

Check out Salon.com's article on Clear Channel and the attempts to further deregulate the media here. It's a good read.

2003-02-18T13:28:00.000-05:00

White, Discussion

The post title is a song by the band Live, and the title seems fitting, for I have two subjects for this post. The link goes to the song's lyrics.

First, White. Snow. I'm completely sick of it. The plow guy showed up as I was putting my boots on, and plowed out half the driveway. (my driveway holds 6 cars; 3 deep, 2 wide. We put the 3 cars on one side, so everyone can pull out to the other side. He plowed the empty side). It still took me an hour and a half to clear the 2 cars left, plus clear the snow around the cars, and then clear the walkway. We've had WAY too much snow this year, and there's still a month to 2 months of the season left. On the plus side, it's going to be in the 40s the rest of the week, and rain's expected on Friday. Should clear away some of the snow-mountains building up.

Second, Discussion. George W Bush claimed that the rallies seen world wide would not slow his push for war with Iraq. (The Washington Post). "Size of protest, it's like deciding, 'Well I'm going to decide policy based up on a focus group.' The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security — in this case — security of the people." Other than the fact that his english continues to be poor, the fact remains that these protests were not minor in any way. The polls show anti-war majorities in many of America's allies....Turkey (something like 93% of the population is against the war in a recent poll there), England (52% in the last poll, with 29% supporting war) and in Australia, the 600,000+ protesters that marched all over the country Saturday were referred too by the Prime Minister as "the mob". That 600,000 represents about 3% of the population of the country (compared to the less than 1% that marched all over the US). The people in charge of the preeminent english speaking democracies are asleep at the wheel...ignoring the will of their constituents in a race for the US to grab the oil in Iraq and to show that the US is scoring victories in this manufactured front of the war on terror, and for the US's allies, to maintain a favored position in the eye of the US leadership, who control a huge percentage of the world's economy.

Speaking of the economy, Bush is still pushing for another tax cut..one that could cost trillions in the long run. Why? Because he wants his rich friends to get more money. I can not see any other reason...he's stopped trying to pass it off as an "economic stimulus". The cut would give more money to people who have more money than they can spend anyway. The top 5% would get an overwhelming majority of the savings of this cut - 75% of it in the first year, with the ratios getting worse after that, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. What do we, the bottom 90% get? We get things like federal funding for Head Start and Superfund cleanup passed onto states that can't afford the programs they have to run currently. The wealthy in this country think that their money should buffer them from paying taxes. You want to see how bad things are? Pick up Wealth and Democracy. It's a bit dry in parts, but if you're interested in economics, it's a good read. And the numbers are not good. Corporations pay for as much of the federal budget as payroll taxes do.

My economic plan would be simple....make corporations pay taxes on their profits. Don't let them use tax havens to make it look like they lost money, so they can get a refund (see: Enron, Halliburton, etc). And pass laws that make things hard on companies that set up a post office box in an off sea tax haven to protect themselves from federal taxes. Then, add a few more tax brackets, and put larger taxes on the highest groups (right now, someone who makes $300,000 pays the same percentage in taxes as someone who makes $10 million). In the 40s and 50s, when the middle class was better off than it's been at any point in the last 100+ years, the tax rate for the highest bracket was well over 75% (including FICA). For the median family, the rate was under 13%. In 1989, the last year statistics were available, the median family paid just over 24% of it's income to the federal government. Millionaires paid 26.7% that year. Median families are paying twice as much of their income, while millionaires are paying a third. And Bush wants to get rid of one more tax that affects the rich more than the poor. Good plan.

One last thing. Screw the stock market...buy a congressperson.

2003-02-18T09:57:00.000-05:00

Snow Daze

It snowed about 15 inches yesterday/last night. I get to go dig out my mom and sister's car now. Our lease says we're supposed to get plow service, but they haven't shown up so far. This is the 2nd storm to drop more than a foot on us just this month...the 3rd this season. Plus we've had at least a half dozen storms that dropped 5-8 inches. We've gotten at least 7 feet of snow this winter. It's really not fun. Last winter I think we got a total of about 3 feet.

Anyway, off to shovel. Maybe I'll get lucky and the plow will come soon and save me a bunch of work...I'll still have to dig the cars out, and clear the walkway tho.

2003-02-18T03:07:00.000-05:00

Comics are good!

Quick post before bed...more in the morning, on the off chance that anyone's reading.

The Boondocks. Great comic, highly recomended.

2003-02-16T18:39:00.000-05:00

Post, the second.

Yesterday the world saw something, the likes of which it has never seen. Peace rallies in the capitals of just about every major nation, lots of minor nations, and lots of other cities. Over 600 in all. Over a million in London. As many as 2 million in Rome. 100,000 or more in Paris. As many as a half million in Berlin and Amsterdam. Madrid saw crowds that closed in on 1 million. And in New York City, home of the UN, a crowd that has been estimated as small as 100,000 (according to a report on CNN) and over a million (according to the rally's organizers. My guess would be over a half million, at least, judging by how it compared to other protests world wide.

All in all, over 10 million people protested the coming war.

I had planned on going to New York, but I couldn't afford the bus fair, and the local ride drives had all filled up. So I watched on tv, I listened to it on WBAI's web cast when I could get onto their servers. I wish I'd gone.

Many people who support the war make claims that need to be examined. The first is that this war is going to help fight terrorism. This could not be farther from the truth. There is no evidence of Iraq supporting Al Qeada. In fact, Iraq is an enemy of Al Qeada, because Saddam Hussein's government is secular, and not Islamic. And Hussein fears the Islamic fundamentalists, because they could give the people of Iraq a means to unite and rally against him. In fact, the odds are that this war will create more terrorists than it will stop. Muslims all over the world will see how we bomb and kill their brethren, and will hate us more for it. Many will finally give up, and fight back. There are over 1 billion Muslim people in the world, and it's the fastest growing religion. In 20 years, that number is expected to top 2 billion. We can not fight these people to the death...morally, that's entirely unacceptable, and besides that, the odds are that we would lose.

The second claim is that we are "peace loving hippies" or something similar. They spit out "peace loving" like it's a curse. This is what happens when the people in this country have spent almost 30 years protected from war, both the threat of it here, and the losses it causes when we fight it. Since Vietnam, the US has done everything it can to prevent American deaths, and they have done spectacularly. But we have been involved in conflicts almost constantly since the 80s...20 years now. And they are all shown on CNN and Fox News and all the other news outlets like they were the latest baseball highlights. Flashy graphics, victories for the home team, and little hint of the real damage we are doing to the people we fight.

Yes, Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. But there are lots of dictators in the world, and we aren't fighting any of them. Genocide and government sponsored murder are a fact of life all over Africa. And as for the threat of weapons of mass destruction, North Korea is building missiles that can reach California, and working on developing nuclear weapons of their own. Pakistan and India have been on the brink of all out war for over a decade, and both sides have nukes. Israel has over 400 nuclear warheads (supplied by the US), and has never submitted to inspections. Iraq's supply of Anthrax was supplied by the US (in fact, after the anthrax mailings, the US ruled out Iraqi involvement because the anthrax used was a US designed variant, but not the variant we sold to Iraq in the 80s). And the US itself is still developing chemical and biological weapons (which they plan on using in Iraq), despite having signed treaties banning both. And let's not forget depleted uranium. Depleted uranium is a radioactive material that the US uses in cannon shells, because it is incredibly dense, so it has more mass, and therefore has more power to pierce armor. The US left as many as 80,000 pounds of depleted uranium in Iraq after the first gulf war. Between 1991 and 1994, the rate of birth defects in Iraq has gone up 700%, according to the UN.

And what about after the war? We have all but abandoned Afghanistan. Warlords rule much of the country. Of course, they're our warlords, so the US doesn't have to worry about traveling around to continue their hunt for the Taliban. In some places, the people long for the days of the Taliban. Democracy has not happened, and will not. We are not supporting the government we helped put in place in any serious way...no military support, no monetary support.

Would we do better in Iraq? Sure, Iraq has oil, so I'm certain we'd be more concerned with the stability of the country. But could we even expect the US companies (that would steal the oil contracts from the French and Russian corporations that hold them now) to even pay their taxes? Or even consider themselves to be US corporations? Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company, and one of the leading candidates in the "who gets to rebuild the oil fields" contract bonanza, filed taxes in 1999 that netted them an 89 million dollar refund, despite having garnered billions in government contracts. George W Bush's old company, Harken Energy, has a similar record, with a majority of their business run through off shore tax havens in the Cayman Islands. So we'd be paying to defend the companies that would be exploiting Iraq's resources, and then we'd also be paying those companies tax refunds. Very nice of us taxpayers, isn't it?

So, my point of view:
Iraq's dictator is an awful man. But he's not even close to the only one out there, nor the most dangerous. And the reasons we've given for going to war don't make sense...if we were worried about weapons of mass destruction, we'd also have to begin threatening North Korea over inspections and whatnot, but we aren't. If we wanted to go after brutal dictators, well, there's a whole bunch of them out there, but we aren't doing anything about them.

I leave you with the words of the Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd.

Oh, and a note: Bush has left two big items out of his budget for 2003. First, there is no hint of the money he promised to help Africa deal with it's monumental AIDS crisis. And second, there's no money being put aside to fight the war in Iraq. His reasoning for that? Reportedly, if we put the war in the budget, well then we'd have to go to war. The war could cost $200 billion or more. The budget is already $300 billion or so in the red, according to CNN. Remember when being conservative meant that you wanted to balance the budget?

That's all for now. Feel free to let me know what you think.

2003-02-16T05:23:00.000-05:00

I always wanted my own Blog...

Hey. My name is Joe, and I need a place to rant. So ta-da. I have no idea if anyone will read this, but I figure what the heck, right?

My inaugural rant, or how I came up with a blog name.

I'm 23. I'm single. Right now, I have no job. And, as the blog suggests, apathy got me here. Well, apathy and a lack of self confidence. But mostly apathy. I'm generally someone you'd describe as mellow, if you knew me. But under the surface, I'm generally a torrent of emotions. I just hide them. Why? Because I had to when I was young. I was always one of the smallest kids, and showing emotions just got me beat up or picked on or what not. So I learned to hide my emotions, as a defense mechanism. Problem is, now it's easier to hide my emotions than it is to show them. It's easier for me to turn an apathetic glance at the world than it is for me to go out and do what I want. And it's hard to change your ways once you're an adult, even if it's just 23. But I'm going to try, because I really can't deal with it any more. I hate raging at things in my head while, externally, I barely seem to notice. These rants should help, I think. Apathy isn't my only problem, of course. I'm shy, especially when it comes to a situation where I risk rejection or something similar. I'm not good at confrontation. But they all stem from roughly the same place. And it's time I conquer these problems, so I can be happy with my life, and not just constantly frustrated with things I could control if I would only try.

It may sound simple, but after 15 or so years of not trying, it's hard to start.

Anyway, that's it, for this edition. Who knows how often I'll update. I tend to be inspired to rant fairly often. Don't expect most of these to be introspective, as I'm fairly unhappy with the current situation politically in the US, and I'm also a huge tech geek. So I'll cover lots of odd stuff.