Something to Write Home About

Education Matters

2010-03-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Many of the problems that face the world can be solved by a properly educated populace. Educated people are more likely to be politically engaged, more likely to find satisfying and high paying jobs, and therefore also less likely to commit crimes or join terrorist groups. When we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the best uses of the billions of dollars we spent (and lost) would have been on schools. However, it's not just the rest of the world that needs to improve their education systems. We do as well.

For decades, the United States has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science education as well as several other educational markers. After this week's ruling of the Texas School Board on textbook standards, it's no surprise. For a state that so often claims to love it's independence and hate all federal standards, it's ironic that they, through their size alone, tend to dictate what textbooks will be available to the rest of the nation. As goes Texas, so goes the nation it would seem.

The conservative board has made it its mission to teach an ideology through the public school system so that people who cannot afford private schooling or home school their children will be dictated a conservatie worldview. One of the reasons these board members claim they are making these changes is because of the "secular, "liberal" education system we have that isn't teaching children enough about Jesus and Ronald Reagan. Don McLeroy, a boardmember, even said in an interview that "The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel."

Many people who want their children raised with a Biblical worldview, who don't want them exposed to scientific theories or non-American ideologies, homeschool their children in order to control exactly what they learn and especially what they don't, but public education is different. We all pay for it, it applies to the largest number of Americans, and it is both a requirement and the only option for many American children. "Secularism" might be a dirty word to extremists, but in this context it's necessary because, though you may wish everyone was in your religion, they're not. If this was a majority Muslim nation, they wouldn't appreciate having that taught to their Christian children.

Public education shouldn't be a means of indoctrination, but to impart information. If you want your children to learn about Christianity, that's what Sunday's and evenings are for, to talk to your own children about the things you want them to know. Public education should be for teaching facts, agreed upon information like mathematics, history, and yes, science. If at the end of the day you want your children to think that Ronald Reagan was the MOST important President, you can tell them so, or if you want them to know that God created that atom, then that's your right. Not only that, it's your job. It shouldn't be the job of a public school teacher to tell your children YOUR opinions. During a regular school year, especially the short year that most American school districts have, a teacher rarely gets through an entire textbook, so it's not like they're filling for time, and when they barely have time to teach actual facts they shouldn't be expected to also have time to indoctrinate your children for you, especially since everyone - even people of the same political or religious persuasion - would have a different opinion on what needs to be taught.

The public sphere should not be used to promote an insular agenda, and the Texas State School Board has taken it to an extreme by cutting historical fact, like Thomas Jefferson, out of the curricullum while inserting arguable political ephemera, like the "Moral Majority" movement, into it. Most children spend 6 hours a day in school, which leaves parents 18 other hours during whcih they can watch Fox News with their kids, or send them to Bible study, or explain to them what they think the Founding Fathers "really" meant. They don't want liberal secularism forced on them, so they shouldn't be forcing their beliefs on us.

The Complex Delusion of Simpler Times

2009-10-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

In the recent healthcare town halls/9-12 protests/tea party nonsense/etc. there has been a recurring scene, one that was unsurprisingly reprised on Glenn Beck's program last night. There comes the point where, in protesting all the changes being made in our modern world, the protester breaks into tears about losing "their country." Glenn Beck specifically spoke of a simpler time in America, presumably the 1950's that exists only in movies and the imaginations of people who never actually live in 50's. His evidence? A Coca-Cola commerical.

The first fallacy of this argument is its insincerity. No one ever tears up talking about a simpler time when talking about digital cameras or credit cards. There are so many things about the modern world that are, in fact, simpler and easier thanks to all the changes we've made. And when wishing for those bygone eras, no one ever mentions the things that weren't so simple, like trying to guarantee your right to vote.

Which is really what this is about, civil rights. When people like Beck talk about a "simpler" time, they mean a "whiter" time. I'm not saying they are all overt racists, but they prefered the simple dynamic of one group, namely their's, having all the power and not having to worry about including others or competing with others who having to be careful about what you say for fear of offending others. They like when they knew a woman's place and knew that they could say anything except "I love communism" without fear of reproach.

The fact is that the "simpler time" that these people miss was not simpler for everyone, and in fact was pretty horrible for a lot of people. Sure, in the 1950's lots of people were buying homes and automobiles and taking flights to Europe, but a lot of people were also walking miles to work andl living without electricity and sitting in separate sections of restaurants. And during these simpler times, fewer women could go to college or get jobs, and if they did, they were paid far less and respected about as little.

Patton Oswalt has a joke on his new comedy album about people who promote "home birth" like the pioneers did it, commenting that the pioneers would have been thrilled to give birth in a sterile hospital room with specialized electronic equipment and medications that ease the pain and machines that keep your baby from dying immediately. This false nostalgia is the same. Travel back 50 or 100 years, ask any farmer if he'd prefer to have giant combines and automated sorters and he'd probably tell you "yes." Ask any secretary if she'd like a machine that can save documents and print and infinite number of copies, and that she'd make the same money as a man without having those men constantly degrade her, and she'd say the same. And ask any non-white person if they'd prefer a country where they can live anywhere, vote anywhere, attend school anywhere, and one day be President and I think you know what the answer would be.

The times were never simpler, merely different, and the loss of power and benefits in one group is just the result of bringing equality to others. When they say the times were simpler, what they mean is the mindset was simpler. That's not a virtue, and anyone who thinks it is, like Glenn, is simple-minded.

"Empathy" is a 7-Letter Word

2009-05-07T10:33:00.001-07:00

Last week, when laying out his long list of considerations for picking a Supreme Court nominee, President Obama listed "empathy" as an important quality befitting a justice. Of course, he was attacked ad nauseam for having such a ridiculous notion. To them, "empathy" meant "doing whatever the gay, minority, hippie guy in your court wants regardless of what the merits of the case," thus confusing "empathy" with "sympathy" as anyone with a limited understanding of English may. (At this point, they'd be wise to adopt the advice they always give to immigrants: "if you're going to live in America, learn the language.") On the other hand, I assume that to Barack Obama, "empathy" falls somewhere along the lines of "ability to multi-task" and "works well with others" in the Supreme Court help-wanted ad.

More than that, though, I wonder when "empathy" became a negative attribute, one to be mocked or flat-out feared. Then today, as I was reading through the morning news, it occurred to me that empathy is my modus operandi. My first instinct when hearing something or learning something is to try and identify with the people involved; to understand how and why they do or feel what they do. I may not agree or support, but I try to understand.

But for that reason, I often don't feel an important cognitive distinction between things that affect me personally and things that affect others. Injustice is injustice. That, I think, is where it's importance lies as an hallmark of a great Supreme Court Justice. The law may at times be abstract, but it is a construct of human creation, humans who by our nature (and by the things we choose to care about enough to make into laws) are emotional and adaptable. The Supreme Court especially needs judges who can interpret the law, defining the intent and spirit as much as the literal definitions. In order to do this, it helps to not only know the law, but to understand the arguments against that law, arguments that often rely on how it personally affects citizen's lives. If they can't understand where people are coming from, how can they understand why it matters, or whether the law is just?

If the Constitution is the framework for our entire judicial system and the laws within it, and it tries to codify so much that is philosophical such as natural rights and equality, then isn't the ability to empathize with your fellow human beings as equals an essential quality for the highest court in the land? I think there is an important distinction to be made between so-called "activists" who twist the law to their own opinions, and those with "empathy" who are willing to re-examine the law when faced with different or changing circumstances.

A Decade Under the Influence

2009-04-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

If the last ten years have taught me anything, it’s that everything I thought our society had agreed upon had, in fact, not been accepted by everyone. I thought everyone was onboard with evolution, until George Bush enlightened me to creationsim-lite - “Intelligent Design.” I thought that we’d all acknowledged the importance of limiting pollution and protecting the environment, until I’d heard there were people who not merely denied global warming, but even welcomed it.

I don’t think I ever would have thought, though, that I’d discover so many Americans who supported torture. Let me type that again...Torture. Torture. Remember when we invaded Iraq and we were told it was because Saddam Hussein was a despot who tortured his own citizens and had secret detention facilities with rape rooms? He was evil, we were told, because he was a torturer.
Prisoners of War came back from Korea and Vietnam talking about the harsh treatment they received - people like John McCain - and we were told that those people were evil and we were just because we treated people humanely.

And yet, today, there is actual debate over whether it is okay for Americans to commit acts of torture. We’ll skip past the part where it is already illegal, and where it also violates numerous international treaties and agreements, including ones signed by Republicans like Ronald Reagan. We’ll ignore the fact that torture doesn’t produce accurate intel, and that it in reality creates falsh information that we then waste resources checking. Instead, we’ll focus on the moral problem.

The United States, despite all of it’s inevitable failures of judgement, has long touted itself as the moral center of the world: the inevitable pinnacle of reason and justice. For the last half-century, we’ve ridden the wave of having “saved Democracy” in World War II (after which we tried Germans, Italians, and Japanese for war crimes including torture), and acted often as the World’s police. We decry human rights violations in other countries and demand justice when international laws are violated by other nations.

How can we hold the moral high ground and still reserve the right to torture people? When our own Constitution makes the use of “cruel and unusual punishment” a cardinal sin, how can we justify using cruel and unusual means againgst people who haven’t even been convicted of a crime? What morality, what religion, what belief allows anyone to think that it’s okay to cause suffering just because you are afraid?

It offends me as an American, and as a human being, when people say it’s justified because it saves lives. It doesn’t. The time and energy, resources and personell that must be used in first breaking a person down and then following up any leads would be better spent on the actual detective work that has prevented terrorist attacks all over the world, including here in the United States. Keep in mind that the terrorist attack that began the Bush Administration’s road to 2 wars, a prison in Guantanamo, and a secret program of torture didn’t come out of nowhere. We had intelligence on many of the people involved, knew many of their aliases, and the President himself received briefings about the likelihood of an attack. The intelligence community was even aware of the possibility that airplanes could be hijacked and used as projectiles. None of this intelligence was gathered through torture.

Even if torture could be used to gain accurate information on that proverbial ticking timebomb, what would be the end result? One crisis could be averted, but the person being tortured would forever be an enemy of the United States, so our options would be to kill them, detain them forever, or release them with certainty that they would then join a terrorist network. In any of those cases, their friends and family would become our enemies and more easily recruited to terrorist networks. Countries that support our efforts would turn their back on us. In war, the tactics of torture we use would become fair game for others to use on our own troops when captured. The number of terrorists in the world would grow, as would the threat. A war on terrorism can’t be won through escalation.

But mostly, it’s just wrong. Society must protect itself, and when people are criminally dangerous they are locked away or reformed if possible. But torture goes farther. It doesn’t remove threats, it destroys individuals. It breaks them down, destroys their psyches, takes away their free will. Capital punishment takes away a persons life, but torture takes away their humanity. How can that be just? How can that be right? What is the value in saving American lives at the cost of the American soul?

I hear politicians and pundits say, arrogantly but assuredly, that the United States is the greatest nation on Earth. Well, then, we should act like it.

There's a Socialist in my Soup!

2009-04-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

“The Democrats are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism.”

That was written by the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, a party so inclusive that it even allows anarchists like the Governor of Texas to be a member; a man who clearly is unfamiliar with the actual historical meaning of the word “Republic” since he rejects the sovereignty of a duly elected government that he disagrees with. But yes, Michael Steel is just one of many on the right who are trying to scare the American people with the current fashionable buzzword of misdirection: SOCIALISM. This word has become so overused that some Republicans are even suggesting new labels to be used, like Fascist, because they think people have become desensitized to or may even embrace socialism. Again, though, they seem to be unfamiliar with the fact that all of these words have definitions (in dictionaries and everything!)

Tricking people with names is really the only thing the Republican party is capable of, though. Freedom fries. Death tax. Compassionate conservatism. No Child Left Behind. All of these are entirely meaningless, giving you an impression without actually telling you anything about what they are describing, and upon closer inspection, you learn that their labels are often the opposite of what they pretend to be. It’s like these people have grabbed the English language and will waterboard it until it confesses to whatever definitions they tell it to say. In their minds, you can change names and words and make them mean whatever you want… like MAGIC!

So now, since the Democrat in the White House and the DemocratIC party in the Congress are facing growing public approval, they want to rebrand them. You know, when Blackwater came under fire for shooting civilians in Iraq, they rebranded their own company in the hopes that people wouldn’t notice that this new company was exactly the same as the old one that did all that horrible stuff. It takes an extra layer of gumption to decide that you’re not going to rebrand yourselves when you’re unpopular, and instead try to rebrand your opposition in the hopes of bringing them down with you. The RNC is trying to pass it’s on meaningless, symbolic, internal resolution to rebrand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

First, let’s just get this out of the way: We don’t go around calling them the Bush Party or the White Business Interest Party, yet they constantly try to change the name of the “Democratic Party” to the harsher sounding “Democrat Party.” It’s like when someone gives you a crappy nickname and never calls you by your given name… an experience I’m sure most of them have had, so they really should know better.

But aside from that, why do they keep harping on this? I’d say that it’s not true, that Democrats are not, in fact, leading our country towards socialism, but anyone who thinks that labeling Democrats as “Democrat Socialists” is a valuable contribution to our society is also impervious to reason, so I won’t bother. Let’s pretend for an instant that the Democrats really were going to make our country more like European countries. I certainly don’t want that, but is that really the best argument for evil intent that they have. EUROPE? I could understand if they were saying the Democrats were leading us towards Somalia-style government; that would scare the crap out of people. But European socialism?

Have they been to Europe recently? Some of the strongest economies in the world are in Europe. The average lifespan in most European countries surpasses that in the United States. Europe leads us in renewable energy production, in air and water quality. Their money is worth more than ours. If ever there was a capitalist argument, it’s that one. THEIR MONEY IS MORE VALUABLE. It’s like we are using Pesos, that we cart around in wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread.

The fact is that even the so-called European socialist aren’t even socialists. Yes, they do have many social welfare programs, and things like nationalized energy or health care in some places. For the most part, though, they are Democracies and Republics just like ours, with capitalist markets. The only difference is that they tend to regulate these markets more, which is why while we’re in a deep economic depression, some of them are doing fairly well considering.

So stop it, Republicans. You’re embarassing yourselves. Because not only are the Democrats not socialists, but neither are many of the Europeans you’re comparing them to. And if they are, then that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, because we’ve seen what you’re ideology has given us… 2 wars that have outlasted World War II, and the deepest depression we’ve had since World War II. No thanks.

Survival of the Dimmest

2009-04-14T11:35:00.001-07:00

I grew up Catholic. I went to church every week, nearly all of my friends were Christians, and I eventually went to a Catholic High School. Never, in all that time, did I have a problem reconciling that existence with things like science, evolution, or secular politics. I was even under the impression, one shared by Pope John Paul II, that religion had accepted the validity of scientific discovery over biblical literalism. I felt completely at liberty to recognize the existence of dinosaurs millions of years ago and the gradual evolution of man and still be able to believe that God created all of that and guided that process. Only in the last 10 years have I come to realize that people who avoid the broader world, who shelter themselves in homeschool echo chambers, have no such belief and are only becoming more entrenched.

The scariest part is that as they've moved farther to the fringe, and feel more at odds with the rest of society, the angrier and more aggressive they've become. No longer at peace to have their own beliefs, they've started disinformation campaigns to spread their beliefs under the guise of science and reason, and force it into schools. If their arguments come off sounding ridiculous, though, it's because you can't make an effective counter-argument without understanding the initial argument, and since they avoid science and information, that becomes impossible. I have no such problem since I am secure that my beliefs can stand up to scrutiny and contemplation, so I've often exposed myself to their ideas so that I could understand them, and then effectively counter them. In doing so, I've seen a lot of scary things, like the Creation Museum where animatronic humans ride domesticated Triceratops, or power point presentations where evolution is boiled down to the idea that your grandfather was a monkey.

But the arguments are all flawed for one reason: Creationists don't know what evolution is. Without a science class or a library card to support them, they've only ever gotten the cliff notes version of Darwin, and so think it is laughably ridiculous. That argument about a monkey being your grandfather is laughable, but that is not evolution, it's distortion. No one believes such a thing, and it's a straw-man argument to imply that we do. When you explain that evolutionists believe that millions of years ago we had a common ancestral species where over each generation, some diversified genetically to become humanoid species and eventual homo sapiens while others eventually became chimps and others ape, it makes much more sense and seems more plausible. It's also more complicated, which is why biblical literalists reject it outright.

The other adage that they often latch onto is the concept "survival of the fittest." This isn't a universal property like gravity or the speed of light, nor is it a promotion of an ideology, but merely an accepted concept. It doesn't say that the fittest WILL survive and all else will die, but that the fittest are MOST LIKELY to survive while others may not. Again, ambiguity is not as pleasing to certainty, so that ignore this. A favorite attack of Creationists, often under the auspices of their Intelligent Design monicker, is that a belief in evolution leads to an acceptance of eugenics; i.e. that if you believe the fittest DO survive, that only the fittest SHOULD survive. As the lowest common denominator of all discourse, they compare us to Nazis.

But again, in avoiding knowledge they avoid understanding, and so they don't understand what actually happened during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to create what they perceived as a master race, however that does not mean that what they were aiming to create actually WAS a master race. In a way, what they were creating were show dogs: beings that were attractive and fit a certain mold of superiority without regard to actual quality. Dogs that are pure bred win trophies, but they often have shortened life spans, suffer from genetic disease, and are unable to survive in the wild away from constant human intervention. They may be the prettiest, but they are not the fittest, which is precisely what the Aryan race would have been - pretty but dumb. The fallacy is that survival of the fittest led to the holocaust, while really survival of the fittest was the principle that allowed the Jewish people to survive the Holocaust because, in reality, the Jewish were better fit for survival than the Germans.

The Nazis had all the perceived advantages; they had all the political power, the weapons, the money, and far greater numbers. Jewish people were surrounded and at the mercy of the Nazis, who had nothing but hatred for them and a desire to marginalize them and wipe them off the face of the Earth. Yet, despite the odds stacked against them, many Jews survived incredible hardships and went on to prosper, while the Germans lost the war. The Jewish people faced harsh weather, grueling labor, disease, starvation, beatings, distress, and misery. And while millions died, millions survived all of that. When you learn about what occurred during the Holocaust, it is seemingly miraculous that any of them survived, that no human possibly should or could, and yet they did. They were particularly suited to survive, and so they did. The Germans, with all of the advantages they had, were defeated from without as well as within, and were unable to suffer the relatively minor hardships of war compared to the adversity faced by their victims. And now while Germans have carved out a stable place in the world, Jewish people have prosperity and influence disproportionate to their actual numbers. They make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, and yet think of how many Jewish politicians, authors, actors, comedians, musicians, business people, lawyers, and journalists you've heard of. Think of how the entire political reality of the Middle East and global foreign relations is affected by Israel. If the Holocaust proved anything it as not that you can or should create a master race fit to survive, but that the Jewish people were uniquely fit for survival, and so they have.

Evolution extends beyond biology and also to ideas, and the fittest ideas survive while others falter. Evolution is a relatively new concept in the history of mankind, yet in that time it has gained critical mass of support. It has faced legal, moral, and philosophical challenges and survived all of them, and only gained in acceptance over time. The concept of evolution is uniquely fit to survive because it has verifiable fact on it's side, and can therefore withstand storms of controversy and disputation. Creationism has had thousands of years to gain power and influence, and yet cannot withstand those same forces. It is an unfit idea with no rational basis or argument to support it, and like the Dinosaurs or the Troglodyte is doomed to fail, eventually.

What's the Big Deal?

2009-04-03T10:02:00.001-07:00

Smokers are an interesting group. They have an addiction to an unhealthy substance, but don’t get treated the way drug addicts do, and in fact are often able to make friends based on a shared habit. Yet, whenever something comes along to make smoking less convenient, they act as though they are a brutalized minority. Every tax is viewed as an infringement of civil rights.

What never occurs to them is that there is also the matter of everyone else’s rights. I’ve never been one to demonize smokers or smoking, but still I was glad when smoking was banned in bars and restaurants in my home state of New Jersey and my state of residency, New York. What a person does on their own, unhealthy or not, is largely their concern, but I couldn’t attend a concert, go to a bar, or eat out without being forced against my will to breath second hand smoke. I mean, if the guy sitting next to you is eating a double bacon cheeseburger, you don’t get fatter, and yet it’s considered perfectly acceptable to judge fat people for making bad choices. Smokers, on the other hand, aren’t just making a bad choice for themselves, but for the rest of us. Even now, when smoking is banned in most buildings, I can’t walk the streets of the city without being engulfed in clouds of other people’s smoke. I choose not to smoke, and yet depending on who I end up walking near, I can inhale smoke and smell like cigarettes.

So when smoking is banned in specific places, I don’t see it as an attack on a smoker’s rights but as protecting everyone else’s rights. If you want to smoke, you can do it at home but still go out in the world, whereas if I choose not to smoke at home, I can still be exposed to that secondhand smoke when I go out into the world. Cigarettes also have other effects on people other than those choosing to smoke. Yes, they pollute our air. They also litter our streets, fill our landfills, stain surfaces, clog filters, and then there is the biggest cost: health care. Secondhand smoke can have adverse effects which can cost innocent people more in visits to doctors, but the biggest cost is to people who choose to smoke because they get sick more often, more severely, and can eventually gain debilitating or fatal conditions. If they end up in the emergency room, many of those costs are paid by our taxes and others are added into the costs of everyone else’s health care. If they have insurance, by it’s nature a shared burden, their increase health care costs get spread to everyone else in that plan through higher premiums.

Why shouldn’t we recoup these costs to our health and our environment through taxes? If you are okay with infringing on my health for your own pleasure, then why should I feel bad about taking some of your money for things that we all share? It makes sense to me, yet cigarette smokers complain that now they can’t afford this habit, or that it will hurt businesses that sell cigarettes. What is this prohibitive cost? Well, in New York which just raised their cigarette tax, the cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes is now about 10 dollars, or 50 cents per cigarette. That’s prohibitive?

What if instead of cigarettes, your social habit was smoking marijuana? 50 cents for a joint would be a bargain. Ask any marijuana user and they’d jump at the chance to get 20 joints for only 10 dollars. Some people at work take coffee breaks instead of cigarette breaks; 50 cents for a cup of coffee is amazing. Some people are social smokers. Ask any social drinker in New York if they thought it was cost prohibitive to pay 50 cents for a beer. In a New York City bar, you’d be lucky to get 2 beers for 10 dollars, let alone 20 beers. People with a sweet tooth can hardly even get a donut for 50 cents anymore.

The only reason smoker’s care is because, as time goes on, they feel compelled to smoke more and more, almost uncontrollably, so that what equals a 2 dollar a day habit now could be a 30 dollar a day habit later. Still, that’s the cost of doing business and we all have to make choices. People who like lobster choose not to eat it every day because it’s too expensive, and people who are low on cash cut back on the things they like. Yes, smokers may be addicted, but the fact is they chose to start smoking knowing that they probably would become addicted. Now, they complain because that addiction is compelling them to spend a lot of money on what is actually a low-cost product, and somehow that’s my problem? Would you take me seriously if I was eating three boxes of donuts a day and then said that I think donuts are too expensive because, while the cost of one is only 50 cents, the cost of three boxes is 30? No, you’d tell me I shouldn’t be eating 3 boxes and that if I wanted to that I had to accept the cost, and you’d be right.

People have the right to choose, but all choices have tradeoffs. I could choose to party all night or I could choose to get a full night’s sleep before work, but not both. Smokers can choose to smoke and spend a measly 50 cents for the privilege or to quit and save themselves some money, but they don’t get to smoke, bother other people, and get to do it for free. Taxing cigarettes creates revenue that helps everyone, smokers included, and it also creates a financial incentive to quit and for other people not to start. Even if you’re the type of person who loves smoking and never wants to stop, I’m sure you’d welcome better health and more money in your pocket. If you could smoke and have those benefits that would be great, but with choice comes cost, and in this case, the cost is 50 cents a cigarette. Can anyone actually tell me that your health and convenience aren’t worth that much?

The Week in Nontroversies

2009-03-23T15:18:00.001-07:00

Controversy is an expected part of life in the public sphere, because any life that well-scrutinized is going to show some flaws. It’s even more of a usual occurrence in politics because people are actively looking for weaknesses to exploit. Some politicians make it too easy though, with infidelities or illegal business dealings. Unfortunately, controversy paints with a wide brush, and while a politician may be guilty of an infraction in just one small area of their life, all of their decisions and abilities are called into question by it. With Bill Clinton, a personal abuse of position in regard to marital infidelity and sexual malfeasance in the office was used by his enemies to undermine his legislative efforts across the board.

When political enemies don’t have a leg to stand on, though, they have to dig for nontroversies - controversies stemming from non-issues, distortions, and matters of almost no actual importance. Last week, after a few journalists complained about the President’s teleprompters blocking their camera angles and after a very slight mix-up in the order of speeches at an event, and suddenly Barack Obama’s use of a teleprompter became a major issue. This is a doubly effective tactic of distraction because it goes after one of Barack Obama’s greatest strengths; his strengths as a writer, speaker, and as politician who’s able to control himself from making fatal blunders of speech by staying on message. But since the invention of the technology, every President has used it, as well as actors, journalists, executives, etc. And really, why not, when a teleprompter makes it easier to read prepared remarks and still see your audience without losing your place, unlink printed remarks or note cards. It also ensures that you won’t ramble off on a topic and that you’ll be sure to say everything you want to say. No one has any problem with a President writing a speech, and they’d have no problem with him then reciting it word-for-word, but suddenly through in a teleprompter and make it Barack Obama, and they assume a conspiracy wherein someone is pulling his strings and forcing him at gunpoint to read it. This is even harder to believe about Barack Obama who, unlike his most recent predecessor, is well-known for being actively involved in the formulation of his speeches.

Then Barack Obama went on The Tonight Show, which was certainly unusual, but given that George Bush made appearances on Dr. Phil, did not seem to be a sudden and drastic change in the Presidency. People tried to make a controversy out of this, as though if only he spent that 20 minutes in the oval office instead of on television, that he could turn our economy around once and for all. When that nontroversy failed to capture the public’s rancor, the smear merchants then hooked onto a poorly chosen but innocuous comment. Days later, headlines rang out with faux-outrage about the President disparaging the Special Olympics by comparing his paltry bowling score to that of a handicapped person. Even actual journalists quoted him as saying that his score was like “the special olympics or something.” However, those of us who actually watched AND listened to the interview saw that his comment about the Special Olympics came not immediately after telling us his bowling score, but after Jay Leno applauded sarcastically and gave feigned encouragement saying “that’s very good, Mr. President.” It was to this support, despite his performance, that Barack Obama was comparing the Special Olympics. He wasn’t saying that his bowling skills were those of a Special Olympian, but that Jay Leno was acting towards him the way spectators of the Special Olympics acted towards participant, with positive encouragement even when they are unsuccessful. Was it in bad taste? Yes, maybe a little. Was it offensive? No. Does it say anything bad about his character, his view of the handicapped, or his abilities as President? Most definitely not. So why are we wasting time on it?

Everyday there are new nontroversies to distract or to entertain, to enrage or obfuscate, while elsewhere the real problems and offenses are overlooked and underreported. By focusing on inane minutiae, we make it more difficult to solve real problems, which is of course precisely what some people want. Barack Obama’s political enemies see his popularity, and see that his plans have a chance of succeeding, two things which would spell disaster for their political futures. They could offer better alternatives, or support him in hopes of gaining that same popularity and public trust, but instead they choose to distract and make people forget the reason’s they like Barack Obama by giving them false controversies.

The Sad State of the Fourth Estate

2009-03-13T18:36:00.001-07:00

They call it “comedy.” They call it “fake news.” What we saw last night on The Daily Show, though, was neither fake nor funny (well, a little funny.) Last night, Jon Stewart was joined by Jim Cramer, former hedgefund manager and current host of CNBC’s “Mad Money.” This interview was a week in the making, after Rick Santelli cancelled on an appearance that would have coincided with a scathing piece The Daily Show had assembled about CNBC’s failure to see the financial crisis coming, warn their viewers, and then admit their obvious mistakes and place blame anywhere near where it belongs. Jim Cramer took particular offense to the implication and took his views public on his NBC sister stations, thus incurring an even better response from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.

Anyone who hasn’t seen this interview really should, regardless of their interest in finances or in The Daily Show, because it is a bold example of something that The Daily Show is rarely credited with and so many actual news programs are lacking: journalism. Jon Stewart brought Jim Cramer on who, to his credit, had accepted the invitation to discuss the issues face to face rather than continuing the back-and-forth in the media sphere and the two of them discussed Stewart’s initial point about the state of business reporting at CNBC. What Jim Cramer and many of the people reporting on this interview missed was the broader point about the state of journalism. For all of the talk about liberal media and its fringe views, the fact is that the Fourth Estate has never been more corporate. Newspapers, cable news, even blogs are often beholden to corporate parents and sponsors to operate, and as the economy has worsened and traditional models have become obsolete, they’ve had their resources diminished.

Recently, newspapers that have lasted more than a century have folded under the economic pressures, and even biggest cable news networks have had to cut staff and close bureaus around the world. As their budgets have been scaled back, the budgets of corporate PR divisions and firms have risen and gotten better at delineating information as they want it to be seen. That has left the public in a dangerous position where they are under-informed yet always inundated with talk. News outlets, afraid of losing what little influence and access they have, and unable or unwilling to do the serious, long-term investigation they were once famous for, have now traded excellence for efficiency. Stories with an easy angle are repeated ad nauseam; boisterous personalities are given priority over knowledgeability; softball interviews are offered in exchange for access to the biggest names.

What Jon Stewart demonstrated is what people like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite were famous for: speaking truth to power. Jim Cramer himself as well as being a representative of CNBC has influence and authority in the business community, and as such has a responsibility that both he and his network failed to honor. Additionally, as a journalist, he failed to ask the tough questions, dig deeper, and find the truth before reporting to his audience. If he had, he might have had a better, more informed opinion to give to people who rely upon or value his financial advice. Instead, as he said on The Daily Show, he would give a forum for business leaders who would lie to him and then he would share that information - without question or critical investigation - with an audience that took his authority and certitude for veracity.

In today’s White House briefing, one reporter even praised Jon Stewart’s demonstration of serious journalism in a question to Press Secretary Gibbs. What does it say about the state of our media when a White House reporter, a post given normally to the most inquiring of serious journalist, praises a supposed mere comedian? It says that in the 21st century the satirist is alive and well while the traditional investigate reporter is threatened with replacement by news spokespeople. Many of the people we find reporting the news are doing simply that: reporting what they are told, and not trying to find the stories or uncover the truth.

It’s easy to marginalize The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, but in the guise of comedy, they are often more willing and more able to speak the hard truths. The Daily Show, as an entertainment and comedy program, doesn’t rely on getting access to CEO’s or politicians, so they can ask the hard questions without fear of being cut-off. What Jim Cramer, CNBC, and the mainstream media need to remember is that just as they need stories, there are people who need their stories told. The folks at CNBC may want big-name guests to interview, but at the same time those big-names need the pulpit that CNBC provides. It is a mutual relationship and though in recent years the power has shifted away from the news outlets and to those being covered, the media need only remember that they are the gatekeepers to the public forum and that their is always an audience for hard news. For evidence look no further than the ratings Jon Stewart received on Thursday night, and the ratings points that CNBC has been losing since this all began.

On Love and Ideology

2009-03-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been fascinated by people like Jim Carville and Mary Matalin who hold politically opposite points of view and yet love one another enough to want to spend their lives together. Of course, that relationship is fascinating for other reasons as well, but it seems strange to me people who can compartmentalize like that, especially people who have very clear and strong political beliefs. Plenty of people pay little attention to politics, and switch parties from election to election, so in that case it makes perfect sense to me that they could love just about anyone regardless of ideology because it means so little to them. For people that do really care, though, I have trouble seeing how they can maintain relationships, friendships, romances with people at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Take, for instance, my family. My father is about as politically opposite from me as you can get. There are certain things we can agree on, but they are usually general observations about the human condition and have little, if anything, to do with policy. The differences are stark enough that if I wasn’t related to him - if he was just someone I worked with or met elsewhere - I wouldn’t be able to get past these differences.

At other times, I’ve been interested in or even dated women who, when I found out their political beliefs, became completely different people in my eyes. Where once I had some adoration or affection, I started to have antagonism. Ideology isn’t like a taste in music or favorites pastimes, where they all may share some similarities or you can grow to appreciate them. A person’s ideology shapes their perception of the world, and when two people have opposing views, it means that they see the world in two completely distinct and antithetical ways.

It doesn’t just go for politics, obviously, but for things like religion and philosophy as well. If you believe there is no higher power, how can you have real love and affection for someone who does. In your mind, they are not merely wrong but deluded, and their beliefs mean that they, in return, think you are misguided. Sure, these are things people can look past, and many do, but what kind of love can there be between people when you think that a person is fundamentally wrong about their worldview?

I think it’s easy for people to accept one another’s religious beliefs, even if they are contrasting, because so much of religion is hypothetical. Without real evidence to contradict one another, and with most people having their own doubts about the certainty of religion, it’s easier to assume that you may both be right about some things and wrong about others. When it comes to political ideology, there is evidence in the real world - examples to be drawn from - and those beliefs lead to actions with real-world consequences. A lot of religions and philosophies share common themes about the best way to live your life, and they may be all equally valid, but political ideologies are rarely about more than one valid answer to the same question. With religion, it’s as though each group has a different map to get you to the grocery store, with both eventually leading you there. With Democrats and Republicans, one route will get you to the store, the other will lead you to a dentist’s office; sure, a few people may need to get to that dentist’s office, but the rest of us are trying to get groceries.

So how can people with fundamentally different perspectives truly share anything resembling love? Is it possible to be friends with or actually respect someone who you believe is destroying the world one vote at a time? If love is about trusting someone and accepting them for who they are, can you love someone whose values you don’t trust and whose beliefs you yourself can’t accept?

New Adventures in Bad Parenting: United Kingdom.

2009-02-13T08:04:00.001-08:00

The United States takes a lot of flak for our cultural depravity. We’re considered to be fat, lazy, reactionary, shallow, over-sexualized, even jingoistic. Yes, some of that is sometimes true, but the fact is that most cultures are guilty of these things, and not just in the west. The United States, though, is often made the example of everything wrong with the modern world, like we’re the impudent child compared to old Europe’s class and dignity. Well, not this week.

Over in Great Britain this week, a 13-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl have just become parents. Hardly anyone would be shocked if this occured in the United States, since much fodder for jokes is made about inner-city troublemakers, rural southern rednecks, or western Mormon broods. It’s easy to forget that even a country that places “Great” in their title is full of irresponsible and foolhardy people. These kids, though, are not the biggest problem in this equation.

Nine months ago, when Alfie Patten was only 12, he had sex 1 time with the older Chantelle Steadman. I may be naive, but it boggles my mind that a 12 year old, one who’s voice hadn’t even broken yet, would be having sex but that’s not to say I can blame him because at that age you hardly ever know what you’re doing and can easily just do things without thinking. Where the problem lies is that neither of these kids realized what they were doing or that the consequences of their actions could be a human life. Then, once they found out about the pregnancy, they decided it would be good to have the baby, but also didn’t want to tell anybody.

You could chalk this up to teenagers being teenagers and concerned more about getting in trouble than doing the right thing. I, instead, see a vicious pattern repeating. Chantelle’s parents are both unemployed and have 5 other children who they support on government assistance, while Alfie’s parents are divorced and he has 8 siblings. If you’re a father who only gets to see your children some of the time, and that time is divided between 9 children, how much of that time do you think is going to be spent at soccer matches and movies and how much do you think is going to be spent building trust and talking about sex and responsiblity?

These kids should have known better, first to have sex when they weren’t prepared for it, but putting that aside, they should have known to use protection, and after that, they should have known that this was such a big deal that they should have told their parents. The fact is, they didn’t know these things in part because their parents dropped the ball. It’s hard enough being a good parent under the best of circumstances, and gets exponentially harder when you start to early, can’t financially support them, have an unstable home life, and then have too many children too boot.

It’s unfortunate that now these kids will probably also repeat the mistakes of their parents. They certainly won’t last as a couple, and neither of them works yet so already they can’t take care of the child on their own. Education will now be secondary to them, and thus limit their opportunity to improve their lives and the life of their child, and kids who are having unsafe sex at 13 are just as likely to have unsafe sex at 20, so I’m sure more kids are on the way.

So who’s to blame? Is it just the parents? Is it the teenagers? Is it the schools or the media? Like our stimulus here in the States, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that children are children and that not talking to them about sex doesn’t stop them from having it, but it does stop them from being prepared when they do. Maybe if they’d had proper sex education, or had attentive parents who were comfortable talking to them about sex, then maybe they wouldn’t have rushed into it, or if they had, would have been wise enough to use protection.

New Adventures in Bad Parenting: Octuplets Edition!

2009-02-12T18:21:00.001-08:00

This is one case that has been well worn, so I’ll keep it short. You’ve all heard about the single mother who already had 6 children under the age of 8, all through in vitro fertilization, and just had octuplets. This would be irresponsible behavior from a woman with a lot of support, and maybe it could be at least somewhat understandable if this had been an accidental pregnancy through usual means, but neither is the case. She is single, underemployed, in debt, and doesn’t even have an extended family to help her with these children. Her own mother thinks her behavior is unconscionable.

Here’s the kicker, though, and the part you may not know: she’s now asking for your help. After making the rounds of the talk show circuit, talking about how she doesn’t care if she doesn’t have a job or money because she’ll give these kids love (though with 14 kids, each one isn’t going to get a huge helping of love with her attention and resources divided) she then set up a website asking for donations to help her. So she had 6 kids that she couldn’t afford and couldn’t take care of, then spent money to have a doctor implant her with 8 more, and now after taking both welfare and food stamps wants taxpayers to give her even more out of their pockets. This behavior is unforgivable, and I doubt it’ll be long until she’s having more children and finding new loopholes to make other people pay for her irresponsibility.

People like her say that what really matters is that they will love their children. Well, guess what, that’s not enough, because nearly all parents love their children, and most of them love their children enough to give them time, and attention, and to provide them with the resources to have a home and health and education. It’s hard enough living in this world, and even harder when you start life in an overcrowded house where your mother is so overburdened that she barely has time for you, and certainly doesn’t have the time or money to give you every opportunity to succeed. It’s also harder when she can’t afford to feed you properly.

Child abuse comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s hitting your child. Sometimes, it’s neglecting your child or being emotionally abusive. Often, though, it’s enough to be selfish and to have too many children, too quickly, and without planning for it. She does this not because she thinks she can give these children a great life, but because she wants it. She wants lots of kids, she wants to be given lots of love, and she wants to be a mother, but being a real mother requires more than just having children.

Hypocrisy as Ideology

2009-02-09T16:55:00.000-08:00

Remember the terrifying days when the Republican Party was working on their “permenant majority?” The Democrats were outnumbered in every branch of the Federal Government, and the Republicans flaunted rules wherever they could get away with it. One thing that stood in their way of completely rolling right over the Democratic opposition in the Senate was the filibuster, a long-established guardian of minority opinions. Well, you know how Republicans feel about minorities (ooooh, low blow), and they weren’t having it. There would be one voice, and no dissent, you know, like a real Republic...like Caesar’s Rome.

That’s when they started floating the idea of their “Nuclear Option,” once again showcasing how Republicans care more about labeling things than about actual substance. With this, they were going to eliminate the filibuster, which they thought was undemocratic and being used by Democrats as sore losers to stop Republicans from doing the people’s business. How dare those Democrats… the Republicans would never act so shamefully.

Well, they didn’t proceed, and the filibuster remained, luckily for them. See, now that the Democrats have a majority, the Republicans have decided that, in fact, they kinda dig the filibuster. Before, the filibuster was the plain girl at the party, but now the Democrats have cornered all the hot chicks, and the Republicans are sad and lonely in the corner, and willing to lower their standards a bit to avoid going home alone.

How much do Republicans love filibusters? Well, during the last session, the filibuster was used 100 times. By comparison, when the Republicans were last in charge and the Democrats needed to use the filibuster, it was used only 34 times. What made the Republicans change their mind about filibusters? It certainly wasn’t some change in ideology, simply a change in strategy, which really IS the core Republican ideology. The Republican Party claims to have a platform that is pro-life, small government, state’s rights, but really all of that is lip service. Their real platform is whatever puts and keeps them in power. Right now, the only thing stopping them from being irrelevant in the Senate, as they mostly are in the House, is their ability to extend debate through use of a filibuster.

But let’s not let the Democrats off the hook. See, they’re not so great with the strategy. Democrats didn’t win majorities and the White House with some grand strategy, they stumbled into it almost be accident because the Republicans screwed things up so thoroughly that everyone in America started to realize that Democrats were the ones with all the good ideas. Except some Democrats are now contemplating the idea of abolishing the filibuster so that they can roll right over the Republicans in the Senate. Hopefully, they’ll use their nerdy, policy-wonk skills to, unlike those arrogant Republicans, realize that the American people can be fickle and that their power is not permenant. To abolish the filibuster may help them today, but then they’ll be kicking themselves when the Republicans are back in power and trying to push through the Drilling-Oil-In-National-Parks-For-Use-In-Fire-Bombs-for-Abortion-Clinics ACT (or DOINPFUIFBAC ACT...catchy, right?)

This Record Doesn't Have a B-Side

2009-02-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

When you were a kid, everyone had that friend who always messed things up. Maybe you were friends because of geographic proximity, or because your parents knew one another, or maybe you had limited options, but this friend wasn’t particularly great to have around. You’d invite them over and they’d get you in trouble, or break your stuff, and yet you would invite them over again and again, and get more of your toys broken. It was a vicious cycle and you felt trapped in it, and it almost never occured to stop letting that kid play with your toys.

We find ourselves in the midst of a global recession, one that any good economist (and plenty of lay-people like myself) saw coming a mile away. The last 8 years saw the coporate class raiding the cabinet, stretching every dollar, squeezing every profit, borrowing on borrowed money. The most outlandish, implausible, counter-intuitive economic theories were tested in the hopes of creating some sort of engine of capital, where profits constantly rose and everyone became a billionaire, without ever having to come back down to Earth. Clearly as we’ve seen, and as the last election has confirmed, those theories have failed. They are false.

Cutting taxes doesn’t automatically spur economic growth. Cutting regulations won’t free up the martketplace to police itself. Wealth, does not in fact, trickle down. What we saw time and again was that the only real motivation in an unregulated market is to make the maximum short-term profit. If cutting jobs meant slightly higher profit margins, then it was done, even if it did limit longterm growth and undercut the customer base. If slightly more money could be made by using toxic chemicals, with only a slight chance that you’d ever have to pay out money in court, then it was done. What we are left with now, though, are companies drowning in debt, without the adaptibility or the talent to pull themselves out of it, stuck in a cycle of overpaying executives while reducing output. Perhaps the market will sort itself out, but the thing that people don’t mention is that while the market is sorting itself out, millions of people will lose their jobs, companies will collapse, and years will go by.

That’s why Government steps in. It is not the place of the Government to control the economy or the lives of it’s people, but to boost the economy when it can and ease the burden when it falters. This is precisely the reason that we need a stimulus package. Presently, our economy is not running at capacity, and the options are to either give it a jump or let it continue to wind down. What this means is that where consumers aren’t spending, and companies are losing money, the Government needs to temporarily make up the difference, so that we can continue to run at full speed.

Here’s where it is win-win for us, though. Stimulus spending needs to have tangible results, it has to provide real jobs and funds here in the United States in the present. That means that we can put people to work building schools, repairing bridges, and doing scientific research. For now, they continue to get paid instead of going unemployed which also means that they will continue to go out and spend money at other business - good for everybody. It also means that when we come out on the other side of this recession, we’ll have greater infrastructure which will make it easier to do business. There will be fewer delays on highways for shipping, better educated workers coming out of the public school system, and production technologies that are more advanced and cheaper. How can we go wrong?

By inviting over our bad friends who break our toys. The Republican Party, the party that has cut regulations, made it easier to speculate and operate on imaginary earnings, the party that has allowed the wages of the majority of Americans to decline so that they can’t afford to buy things and allowed debt to climb, that has let the rich get richer and take their wealth overseas while the government has paid the price...that party which created such an obvious mess of the nation’s affairs that they were voted out of power in both the Legislative and Executive branches, they are continuing to peddle the same out wares they’ve been peddling for more than a decade. We gave them power and resources and they broke the economy, and now they are asking us to continue to play with our toys. It’s time that we ask them to go home.

Obstructionism is not an ideology, and we need to stop pretending that the Republican ideas are a valid counterpoint in any discussion. They have no ideas, except to do more of what got us into this trouble in hopes the it could mean one more day of bonuses or lower taxes, even if it only digs us deeper into a hole. This economy is bad for them too, and yet they are willing to take a little more money now even if it means that there will be far less money to be made in the future. The Democrats want to create jobs, now, by putting people to work on projects that need to be done and have needed to be done for a long time. The Republicans want to cut taxes, hoping that with the marginal money you save you’ll suddenly open a small business and buy a sports car. The Democrats want to improve our infrastructure to make us more efficient and make our daily lives easier and less expensive. The Republicans want to cut taxes, something that would give the Governement less money at a time when it has trillions of dollars of debt to pay off to foreign creditors and several wars to fight for billions of dollars a day. The Democrats want to improve educational opportunities and stimluate new industries to grow here in the United States, injecting our nation with new capital. The Republicans want to cut taxes, so that education, government grants, public works projects, and regulation will also have to be cut.

Why are we pretending that they can be part of the solution, that we should have to make compromises or listen to their tired ideas? On the news, they act like these two strategies are equal and simply different ways to solve a problem. That is false. One way may solve the problem, and even if it doesn’t will improve infrastructure and provide jobs for a while. The other way will put us further into debt without providing tangible relief to most people, and will only prolong this recession. I know it, the 60 percent of the American people who dissapprove of how the Republican party has handled this crisis know it, and it’s time that we acknowledge it. If the Republicans can’t stop making a mess, then we should stop inviting them to the party.

Let Them Hear Cake

2009-01-26T15:46:00.001-08:00

Rock ‘n Roll, the truly American invention. We drink German beer, eat Italian pizza, practice Greek and Roman-style government, but if there’s one thing we Americans can claim full credit for, it’s Rock n’ Roll. Nowadays, it seems futile to deny its awesomeness, and at times its artfulness, and yet it remains a black sheep.

From its inception, it was looked upon as a defiler of ears, a disruptor of youth. It was the Devil’s sonic hand reaching out to tempt the sinner. Yes, it’s quaint when you consider that it started with the likes of Buddy Holly. Today, it’s become such a normal part of our culture that the sounds of U2 opens every corporate meeting and Marilyn Manson has been forgotten as banal and passe. Yet, after all this time, we separate our rock selves from our civic selves.

Did you know that in the White House there is a massive collection of Vinyl records? Sex Pistols, Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles...they are all there, and why not? The Library of Congress holds classic films and the White House has it’s own screening room, and much like film, music is an important part of our culture. At both the Inauguration and the Balls that followed, musicians shared the stage with Barack Obama.

But ever since Ronald Reagan took office, those Vinyl albums, classic Americana, have been hidden away in the basement. Apparently, Nancy Reagan didn’t like the White House halls being lined with shelves of albums like John Cusack’s apartment in High Fidelity. But as Wyatt pointed out on The Daily Show last week, we have a cool President now. Isn’t it time that we give this music the respect it deserves, bring it out of the basement, and blast it in the Oval Office (okay, maybe just keep it at a nice low level while the President reading memos).

This music is who we are. It represents our passions, our angst, our ideals, our flaws. We can’t hide these things away in the basement, we must bring them out into the light. Long after people have forgotten the budget fights and confirmation hearings, they will remember these songs. Great men live forever, but so do great songs. So, c’mon Barack, grab your copy of Blood on the Tracks and put it where it belongs, up on the shelf next to your copy of Huck Finn and The Constitution.

It's All About the Benjamins...Bernanke, That Is!

2008-12-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

If we’ve learned one thing, and only one thing, from the federal government’s bailout package it is this: you can’t solve problems by just throwing money at them. It really, really is true. I mean, have you ever tried to throw money? It’s understandable if you haven’t: you are poor. I, on the other hand, have “throwing” money due to my fabulous wealth (and I should also just mention here that I’m also extremely attractive and smell like gold). You can take my word for it, throwing money at things just makes the money scatter in the wind, and then you’re surrounded by all sorts of deviants trying to catch the money. It’s not that I need the money, because obviously I do not. I wasn’t going to pick the money back up, but the least people like you could do is wait for me to walk away before going after my financial leavings so I don’t have to be near you.

I digress; you can’t throw money at problems. What we need to do is fire a rocket full of money at the problem. This “Money Missile” if you will (copyright Chris Fredda 2008) could easily get the money to it’s target (the problems) without having it scatter and inviting vagrants and other lowlifes (millionaires) to swarm. Obviously, this would require precision missle system so that you money doesn’t end up going to some other problem, saying curing AIDS, when really what you’re trying to do is rescue lenders from poorly regulated mortgages. So first, money has to be spent developing a computer system that can accurately target the problem. Caution: do not throw the money...place it in a sack - preferably with a dollar sign on it for easy identification - and then HAND IT to the computer programmers.

Next, we’ll need to make sure that the money doesn’t incinerate on impact. That’s important because how can the money help people if it’s on fire? (that is, unless the people are cold, which is also possible...note: make two missiles, one for flaming money) The best way to make sure the money arrives INTACT is to insulate it with something, and I would suggest flame-retardant foam. I know what you’re thinking: “Why would we want to make the flames retarded? Wouldn’t that just make them more dangerous, unpredictable, and likely to win Oscars?” All of these things are true, but you have to spend money to make money, and that’s where part three of my plan comes in:

SURROUND THE FOAM WITH MORE MONEY! Yes, it sees so obvious now, doesn’t it? See, if there’s money on both sides of the foam, then on impact, the fire will go after the OUTSIDE money, thus leaving the INSIDE money safe and ready to solve the problems. Just in case, you should hire a few firemen to stand by in case the flames hunger is not satiated by the outer money-barrier and it attempts to feast on the essential interior money.

Finally, the missile itself. We want the best of the best. Cheaping out on a missile that won’t even make it to the problem will only mean having to launch a third missile (remember, the 2nd one is for the flaming money, and also remember you don’t need the outer money shell for that one since we want the money to burn, so that saves us a few bucks right there). Like I said, you have to spend money to make money (did I say that? I meant to) so I say we go for a gold missile since, as we all know, gold is the best. We should probably spend the extra 90 bucks to get the extended warranty too... just in case. It seems like a lot now, but it’ll be worth it if something DOES go wrong.

So that’s that. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions (re: the missile, the money shell, the foam, the money payload, or use of my copyrighted name for the missile) and let me know how it goes. You’re welcome, America.

(Final) Draft Aaron Sorkin

2008-11-20T14:49:00.001-08:00

Our nation is at a turning point; economically, socially, politically, environmentally, technologically. From here on out, things are going to be different, and it's up to us to decide whether it is for our betterment or detriment. We've already taken the first political step. Al Gore used to say about the climate change fight that the only resource we lacked was political will. Well, that fight as well as many others has been given the green light by the election of Barack Obama, often times erroneously called the most liberal Senator, as well as a vitally important symbolic figure of change, in addition to the election of an even greater majority of Democrats in the House and Senate. Millions of people have been awoken from complacency, many finding out that they now have a lot of free time because their company has gone under and will no longer be needing their services. This Democratic revolution has been mobilized and now awaits instructions.

Unfortunately, we have too many big problems and almost none of them can be put on the back burner. If we focus on the economy, the environment will suffer even more destruction and inalterable damage. If we focus on the global terrorist threat, millions of Americans will be jobless and American companies will vanish in the turmoil. If we focus on health care, social security will be irreperable.

So, it's a good first step that Barack Obama has created from the most well-oiled campaign in history the most well prepared, organized, and funded transition team in history and that he's assembled a virtual dream team of Democratic executives for his cabinet to each lead a massive charge in each of their respective areas of expertise. Hitting the ground running is an understatement. Like a jet refueling mid-flight, they will be matching speed and altitude long before inauguration day.

Already they've been closing ranks and preparing for an accelerated agenda, even letting Joe Lieberman stay in the clubhouse so he'll keep quiet and not muck things up too much. Bureacracy, willingness, and know-how won't stand in the way, so now really the only thing that could derail these necessary actions is a faltering of the American will and the distractions that play so well on television ("Monica, have you met Joe the Plumber?"). Barack Obama has a lot to accomplish, and though he's already proven his media savvy and political transparancy with his podcasts and new weekly radio/webcast address, he simply doesn't have time to stop what he's doing to convince busy Americans to get on board with every proposal he makes.

So what we need, more than ever, is someone to present the issues to us in context, in easy-to-understand language that also doesn't cut out any of the complexity, and does so in an entertaining way so that we will actually pay attention. We need someone who can present both sides of the issue, much like the news, without feeling a false need to present all arguments as equal for fear of being labeled "biased." What we need, is The West Wing: The Next Generation.

Aaron Sorkin has had his troubles lately. Charlie Wilson's War wasn't as big a hit as he'd probably hoped, and Studio 60 couldn't help but collapse under the post-West Wing expectations and the competition of 30 Rock, not to mention his repeated plagarizing of his own material, a problem that also plagued his stage production of The Farnsworth Invention. Now is just the time to revisit one of his greatest successes and bring us a new West Wing. I think Jimmy Smits would be available to return as President Santos, and Bradley Whitford could probably clear his schedule.

The great thing about The West Wing was that every week it presented issues without making the show ABOUT those issues. In the normal course of their jobs, the characters would discuss and debate issues, taking every side, playing devil's advocate, and generally giving an excellent primer to the underinformed viewer. Now, more than ever, that's what we need on television. We need someone as poetic and persuasive as Aaron Sorkin articulating the debate on both ends of the spectrum with humor and drama and all in an easy-to-swallow capsule. Tell me NBC and Warner Bros. wouldn't be thrilled to have The West Wing back with it's original creator, especially during a time when Democratic values on experiencing a new vogue.

So, fade in, President Santos sits behind the Resolute Desk, awaiting his Chief-of-staff Josh Lyman who at that very moment is in his office talking to his serious, live-in girlfriend Donna Moss, who has just made a passing comment about marriage that has left the two of them in awkward silence. Just then, Sam Seaborn, Deputy Chief-of-staff walks in with Communications Director Louise Thorton in tow. They are in a heated argument...maybe about federal regulation of banking institutions or windfall profits taxes or possible even incentives for green technology producers. Just then, Congressman Will Bailey calls!

See, it practically writes itself, Aaron.

Boy, a Senate Seat Sure Would Come in Handy

2008-11-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

I understand why Barack Obama has resigned his seat in the Senate, effective this Sunday. He is our President Elect, and while Congress is technically out of session, the crisis we face at the moment ensure a lame-duck session, and it falls into some dangerous areas if he is legislating his upcoming Presidency, thus bridging two branches in ways they were never meant. It’s rare that this would even come up, since while nearly all Senators hope to be President, only a few have ever gone directly from the Senate to the White House.

Except now Barack Obama is just two short months from having to take the helm, and there are some problems that won’t wait that long. For one, the $700 billion bailout is still being allocated, and some companies are already coming back to the trough for seconds. This week also brought forth more evidence that companies receiving bailout funds were often using that money irresponsibly, such as on executive bonuses, retreats, and over-expensive corporate events. You’d think that when giving out $700 billion dollars, money that you yourself are having to borrow, you might try to look after where that money is going. It’s a big economy, and a lot of people need help, and what sort of justice would it be to reward people who’ve squandered their earnings by giving them more to squander. That, however, is what we are doing, and there has yet to be an oversight committee or czar put in place to make sure that this money is being used wisely.

Also this week, Barack Obama has been pushing for Congress and President Bush to bailout American auto manufacturers, especially GM, who find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy. American auto manufacturers, for all of their problems in the marketplace, still sell half of the cars in the nation, and their collapse could lead to 2 million more Americans joining the unemployment rolls, at a time when unemployment is at a 14 year high. This would, according to Barack Obama, require a $50 billion bailout now to avoid their bankruptcy before he even takes office. Whether this came from the initial bailout package, or was a new package of it’s own, that’s also going to require some oversight, which Barack Obama also recommends.

The problems with the first bailout was that it was 1.) given to some companies who’d caused their own financial trouble and had a proven record of risky financial practices, 2.) their was little to no oversight to protect the taxpayers’ investment, and 3.) in order to get the thing passed, they had to tack on even more unneccessary spending that we can’t afford. This new bailout, however, if done properly, could be valuable in many ways.

With proper oversight, this money can be directed to these companies to not just keep them in operation, but to help them adapt their business to new, more fuel-efficient and green technologies that can compete better both here in the States and globally. In this way, we could help the cause of combatting climate change, get these companies back into the green thus creating more jobs and helping our economy, and we could become a global leader in new technology and alternative energy.

So yes, I’m on board with this bailout, and I think they would probably be able to get Republicans and President Bush on board. I mean, who wouldn’t give money to save the companies that basically invented the car and the American way of life? Still, it would be nice to have that Senate seat to keep an eye on proceedings and make sure this is done right this time. Yup, sure would be nice.

Necessities of the Unwinnable Fight

2008-11-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

As the Bush Administration wraps up, and the Obama Administration considers how to best use their political capital, the question remains...what's to be done about George W. Bush and his cronies? Torture, wiretapping, abuse of power... these are just a few of the allegations laid at the feet of this President, and considering the shape he's left our nation in, many are calling for charges to be brought against him, Dick Cheney, and many of the senior members of his White House.

I'm of two minds on the subject. For one, I think he has commited crimes against the United States, it's reputation, and possibly even humanity in general. Like any American, when I see injustice, I want to see punishment. As an avid student of politics, and supporter of Barack Obama, I want him to tackle a broad and comprehensive agenda without being bogged down in partisan politics and the past. In a perfect world, he could both solve our economic problems and investigate the actions of the Bush Administration without having his public support diminished. Though most of the nation likes Barack Obama at the moment and a vast majority disapproves of President Bush, that could change if it looks like a partisan attack. Just ask Ken Starr.

The other problem being that as this term comes to a close, and President Bush clearly sees the writing on the walls, his crafty minions are already finding ways to push through last minute orders, and those could include blanket pardons for the people who perpetrated many of these criminal actions that would come under investigation once GW leaves office. So now the problem becomes that President Obama could be spending valuable time, resources, and political capital investigating crimes that no one would be held legally accountable for. You wouldn't write a traffic ticket for a man who died in a car crash, would you?

The fact is, though, that no matter what the cost in political capital, this is important. Maybe there will be no convictions, and maybe fear of political repercusions will have to mean a less aggressive legal process. Still, while there are many important issues to face in the coming years, it is first important to reaffirm what this country stands for, what is legal, and who is above the law (namely, no one). Even if President Bush is never convicted of a single crime, nor anyone who worked with him, it's important that they be held to a standard in the court of public opinion and in the annals of history. Otherwise, future Presidents will attempt the same abuses of power, secure in the knowledge that their is precedence for those acts and the subsequent evasion of responsiblity.

We the people need to know. We need to know just what the United States has been up to, and what the rest of the world has seen us do. We need to know just what damage was done so that we can repair it and prevent it. We need to know who's to blame of course, and they should be held accountable if only in our own opinions of them. More importantly, though, we need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. As we've learend time and again, we can't just ignore the past and hope for a brighter future. Our first step towards the change we need is an understanding of the way that was.

The Myth of a Liberal Media

2008-11-09T11:13:00.001-08:00

It is one often mentioned by so-called conservatives, and anyone who disagrees with what is presented on the news. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every television network is owned by a large coporation, some of them being giant multi-national corporations with interests in many different industries and markets. Their number one goal is to make profit, and the best way to do that is to not alienate any of their customers. They usually don’t buy television station’s in order to espouse a particular ideology, but to make a lot of money from it.

Where the tag “liberal media” comes from, oddly enough, is the right-wing media. It’s a term often used by Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, people who are incredibly popular media personalities with huge audiences. If the media were liberal, how would they find work? Another group who loves to use it is fear-monger Republican politicians. Why do they tell you that the media is liberal? Well, simply because the media reports the facts, and these politicians don’t agree with facts, or the facts prove just how wrong these politicians. So, rather than rethink their ways, they just tell you that the media reports these things not because they are true, but because the media is biased, so they can’t be trusted.

The evidence to the contrary is everywhere. Fox News, the misnamed “Fair and Balanced” network, offers most of it’s airtime to confirmed Conservatives, only offering space for liberals to come on and be berated or pummeled. Most of it’s coverage tends to emphasize the success of conservatives, and the failings of liberals. The man who owns and created Fox News is himself very conservative and owns networks all over the world, as well as 20th Century Fox, Fox Television, radio stations, and the Wall Street Journal. These are often #1 in their respective categories and represent huge market share. How are they not considered “the media.”

Then, look at the other big players. CNN gives airtime to Anderson Cooper and Campbell Brown, liberal leaning if you have to apply labels, but also Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck. MSNBC has both Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough. The majority of talk radio networks are devoted to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, while many newspapers have been complicit in support of George W. Bush’s policies. To me, this does not seem like a landscape overwhelming with liberals while conservatives are hidden away. Both viewpoints are represented, often disproportionate to their actual substance.

See, these corporations that own these entities don’t want to alienate their customers, so they often compell these networks/newspapers/stations/etc. to give equal time and equal weight to differing opinions. In this sense, it becomes and ideological affirmative action, causing them to give time and space to people based not on their abilities as journalists or commentators but based entirely on their politics. It also means that otherwise moderate voices then become drowned out by extremist pundits placed among their ranks, and that anytime a story is reported, the opposing party is given a chance to respond with little to no commentary, even when they are lying.

During this election, it was often claimed that the media was “in the tank” for Obama. If that’s true, how come McCain’s coverage was so favorable for much of his campaign, and he often jokingly refered to the press as his “base?” How come most networks official poll estimates placed McCain neck-and-neck with Obama even when the final election results should a tremendous lead for Obama? How come networks regularly ran stories, later proven false, saying that Obama had gone to a Muslim school, didn’t have a birth certificate, or was close friends with Bill Ayers?

What people meant to say when they said the media was “in the tank” for Obama was that the public was in favor of Obama, and the media was reporting it. They meant that Obama was running a mostly positive campaign while the McCain camp was running a mostly negative one, and the media was reporting it. They meant that Barack Obama has agreed to be interviewed while Sarah Palin and John McCain had refused interviews, yet the media still used the Obama interviews.

See, there is no “liberal media.” There is a media, made up of varying people with varying levels of skill, qualification, and objectivity. There are also facts and events and things that are newsworthy to be reported. And on top of all of that, there is a liberal majority of the populace, especially among the under-30 crowd suggest a growing trend. So what people like Rush mean to say is that they’re in the minority, most people don’t agree with them, and the facts don’t support them.

Participation to Anticipation

2008-11-06T20:04:00.001-08:00

Every child remembers that interminable period between handing in your Christmas list and the day you actually receive your gifts. It’s a similar, though markedly different experience from when you get in trouble at school at you wait for your parents to arrive home to punish you. There are moments when the decisions have already been made, but when you have to wait before anything can be done. Right now, like that child before Christmas, in theory I have this great present I’ll be getting on January 20th, but I can’t enjoy it until then. After coming down from the high of Tuesday night, it’s difficult for it to feel real because while we’ve elected Barack Obama, he’s still not our President for two more months.

At least during the campaign, their was an energy of optimism propelling us forward, and at all times there were actions we could take to achieve our desired outcome. Now, we have that outcome, and while there’s plenty to be done in the meantime, those of us who elected Obama don’t have much to do except wait until that day when we can see the fruits of our labor in action.

It’s important to remember that there is an army of volunteers out here, people who spent weekends phone-banking, or canvassing their neighbors, or donating their money, all to achieve the historic victory we saw on Tuesday night. We’re all still out here, and ready to be mobilized. The DNC and Obama campaign shouldn’t forget that in all of the planning they have to do before January. In the meantime, we should do what we can to stay engaged and keep things moving in the right direction. Volunteer in your community, write letters to your representatives telling them specifically which issues are most important to you, keep canvassing your friends and acquaintances to get them on board with the new President. Sure, the election is over, but we can still win hearts and minds, and make it that much easier for the new administration.

Oppressed and Oppressor

2008-11-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

Here's an upsetting fact: on the same day that one minority group takes a big step forward, another minority group gets knocked back. More upsetting is the fact that the two may even be related.

Due to the historic nature of this election, as well as the effective Get Out the Vote efforts of the Obama campaign, a record number of black people voted nationwide, oftentimes making up a larger percentage of the electorate than they represent in the general population. That wouldn't be a bad thing, except in California. California was one state that had a ballot initiative to define marriage as between between a man and a woman, effectively making gay marriage illegal in the state where it's been legal for the last 4 months. The irony that a lot of the money used to promote this bigoted agenda came from Mormon groups, who themselves are persecuted for their marriage practices, is not lost on me.

So what does this have to do with black voter turnout? In the state of California, white voters opposed this amendment 55% to 44%, while black voters supported it by a margin of 69% to 31%. This measure barely passed with about 52%. Now it's not as simple as saying that one caused the other, because of course that would avoid the other effect of this election. In addition to record black turnout, there was also record youth and first-time voter turnout, and those two groups voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8, including those first-time black voters. Really, black or white, the two groups that are to blame for Prop 8 being passed are older voters (the only age group that also went overwhelmingly for McCain) and religious bigots, which exist in all races. It's not as simple as a cause-and-effect, but it should give us pause that while people were able to overcome one set of prejudices, they were unable to overcome another. While I'm outraged that so many white people supported Prop 8, it's also upsetting that an even greater percentage of an oft-discriminated against group did as well.

So the empowerment of one group results in the disenfranchisement of another. Sadly, there was a time when there were laws on the books preventing people of different races from marrying, but so often we no longer have a sense of history. What is the cause of this? Is it religious? Is it cultural? Or is it simply that strange phenomenon that is fundamentally American? The Pilgrims left Britain to get away from religious persecution, and when they arrived here, they persecuted those who didn't agree with them. When newer immigrants began to arrive in our nation of immigrants, they were persecuted by the immigrants who arrived before them. African-Americans have suffered a long time in this nation, but this learning curve must be improved. If people who've been discriminated against can't see how wrong it is to discriminate against others, what hope do we have?

Not So Fast...

2008-11-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

This morning, all over the world, people are celebrating and with good cause. I think we all deserve a day off (like the nation of Kenya...good for them) or maybe even a couple days to rest and collect ourselves while the final counts are done (and the recounts...Go Franken!) However, the election of Barack Obama is not the end, it is the means to the end. This is an historic moment, but it’s just a first step in changing the world for the better. We can’t let our guard down for a moment, because last night while history broke down one wall, it put up a security fence.

You see, while we were electing our first non-white President - finally living up to the full promise of our Declaration of Independence, abolition, and the civil rights movement - 4 states were turning their attention to one of the last socially condoned forms of discrimination.

In Arkansas, they passed a ban on gay adoption. These are many of the same people who also want to ban all abortion, which means more children being born to parents who don’t want them. If they had their way, there’d be even more kids being put up for adoption, but they also want to eliminate a huge pool of people who can’t have children of their own, so want to give all of their love and attention to an adopted child. Anytime someone talks about how children do better with a mother and a father, I just have to roll my eyes. Straight people don’t have to pass any test to become parents, and in my life I’ve met a lot of people and most of their parents were highly flawed in one way or another. Honestly, gay people couldn’t do a worse job than us, and at least they would be specifically choosing to be parents and not just stumbling into it. Also, they would know that every action they made was being scrutinized, and would probably be better parents.

Arizona, Florida, and California went a step farther. As much as I disagree with the people of Arkansas, it’s one thing to want to keep children in a certain environment, and quite another to reach right into people’s homes where they aren’t influencing anyone else and telling them what they can and can’t do. If tomorrow a constitutional amendment was passed banning all marriage, what do you think people would do? Many would riot, certainly. Some wouldn’t care. Overall though, they would continue to live their lives they way they always had. They’d meet, fall in love, move in together, maybe have children and open a joint checking account. The reason is because marriage as an institution is cultural, not merely legal. So gay people are still going to be gay, still going to fall in love, still going to pair up and have lives together. So all this amendment does, and this is the sinister part, is deny them legal rights and protections. Marriage is a legal, binding contract that provides many benefits, and can even provide financial incentives come tax season. These amendments deny those same benefits to people who want to get married, but who aren’t biologically attracted to the opposite sex. They can’t help that, and yet people in three states think they should either lie to themselves and others or forfeit their rights.

Next time someone talks about crazy, liberal California, remind them about this vote. And next time you think about how happy you are that the Presidency has finally broken that racial barrier, remember that in Florida, a state where gay marriage was already illegal, they decided to beat that dead horse with a constitutional amendment. Long ago we abolished discrimination based on race in our laws, but it took a long time for that to change in practice. There are still many barriers to freedom to be broken down. Last night we had one, but we have to keep going. It may be a Sisyphusian struggle, but we can’t stop trying to get that boulder to the top of the hill, because when we stop for even a moment, it rolls back down.

Yes, We Can

2008-11-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

And so it goes. We hoped, we dreamed, and we went to work. What we’ve accomplished is a great thing, and not simply for those of us who supported Barack Obama. Tonight, our course has been set in a new direction, and already the eyes of history are upon us.

There will of course be more results to come in, more down-ticket races, and more analysis of just how this happened and what it’ll mean for the near future. But I’ll take John McCain and Barack Obama at their word, that we should all come together now as one nation, and pull together to solve our problems. I, for one, am excited for what’s to come.

All of the anger and hate and maliciousness of the campaign is past. Now is the time to get on board, or get out of the way. The choice is yours, but some of us are getting to work.

Election Day Predictions

2008-11-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

What a beautiful day for an election. Birds are singing, the sun is shining (at least in my state). People are opening doors for each other and whistling happy tunes. For me, election day is what I assume Super Bowl Sunday, Christmas, or opening day of a Michael Bay movie are for other people. I was up late and woke up early, and I’m giddy with anticipation for tonight when the results come in. There’s an episode in season 7 of the West Wing that takes place on election day, and Josh can’t stop running around trying to make last minute changes, when really all there is left to do is vote and wait. That’s how I feel.

So now many people are filling the hours between when the polls opened and when they will close by predicting the outcome of the election. I’m not going to do that for two equally ridiculous reasons. First, though I consider myself a person of reason, I’m still not immune to the feeling that I’m going to jinx myself. There’s still a small part of me that blames myself for John Kerry’s defeat, all due to my optimism. Secondly, no matter what my prediction, the only thing that matters is what actually occurs, so I have nothing to gain and any semblance of intelligent analysis to lose.

Instead, let me make a broader prediction. I think that in the coming weeks, people are going to come down off their rhetoric, and start thinking about how we can come together and make things work again. People will once again pay attention to George Bush, so that hopefully he won’t get away with all of the last minute executive shenanigans he’s planning. I think all the hate-mongers will retire to their corners to fester in their racism, but will mostly leave the rest of us alone.

I believe that when historians look back on this election, much of the bitterness and mudslinging will be forgotten, but what will be remembered is that Barack Obama ran one of the most disciplined and effective campaigns in history. Win or lose, he has done the seemingly impossible. He’s shown us that a black man, from a mixed background and non-traditional family, with an unusual name and new ideas can overcome the politics of division and a history of bigotry in this nation to become President. He’s shown us that a good man can succeed in politics without resorting to dirty tricks and outright lies. Win or lose, he’s given hope to people that have given up on the idea that America can live up to the promise of it’s ideals. Inarguably, that hope will be better served if he wins, but no matter what happens, starting tomorrow there will be millions more people involved in their own government again.

I also predict that I am going to have either a very good night, or a very bad one. But either way, much like the end of The West Wing, I will be a little sad that this time is over, but also excited and hopeful for what’s to come. Good day and good luck.

This Just In: Obama Wins in Landslide (in Dixville Notch)!

2008-11-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

Perhaps some of you saw that terrific episode of The West Wing (thought aren’t they all) called “Hartsfield Landing” about a small town in New Hampshire in which every citizen of voting age gets together at 12:01 a.m. on election day, votes, and the polls close a minute later. As fantanstic a writer as Aaron Sorking is, he did not invent this concept. There is a real town in New Hampshire which has operated this way since 1960, and it’s known as Dixville Notch. This morning, the first town to vote in the nation chose Obama over McCain in a landslide 15 to 6. That’s a full 71% of the vote for Obama, in a state where he is currently only ahead by a few points.

Why is this, or should it be news? Well, because of a trend it could spell for the rest of the country. See, in this small New Hampshire town, the Republican candidate usually wins...by a lot. Bush beat both Kerry and Gore by a sizable margin. Bush Sr. beat Dukakis 34-3, and Reagan beat Mondale 29-1. The fact that Obama is winning, and by such a large margin, could mean that formerly Republican strongholds may tip in his favor today.

We’ll shall have to wait and see, but I’m liking our chances. And, as Obama has famously said, in the unlikely story that is America, there’s never anything false about Hope.

It's the Final Countdown

2008-11-03T00:41:00.000-08:00

So here it is. After an extremely long primary, and a seemingly long general campaign, the election is nearly past. Certainly, we’ll have the week’s of recounts, and complaints, and political post-game coverage on every network, but for all intents and purposes, it will all be over in 36 hours. Oh, but what a long, strange trip it has been.

Where did it start? John McCain was trailing among all of the Republican candidates. When faced with the options of people who don’t believe in evolution, people who don’t believe in global warming, and people who believe in magic underwear, the Republicans said “I’ll take any of them over John McCain.” Unfortunately, as the fell all over each other to vote for the least qualified candidates, John McCain played the slow-but-steady tortoise and inched by to become the nominee. Meanwhile, the Democrats showed people what a real Democracy looks like, by letting every vote count in every state, keeping the race neck and neck between two historic candidates.

But it wasn’t all wine and roses. We were told that black people would only vote for a black candidate, and that women would only vote for a woman. We were told that to criticize a female candidate is sexist, while also being told that when women don’t get their way, they take their toys and go home. Republican tried to sow dissidence in the ranks of Democrats, all while their candidate did litte and said less.

Then, while calling Democrats sexist for choosing the male candidate over the female, they cynicaly chose their VP based almost entirely on her gender. The two conventions stood in stark contrast: The Democratic convention showing tremendous unity, with thousands of people from every corner of the nation, every race, age, ethnicity, lifestyle coming together and giving a platform for everyone to speak their mind; while the Republican convention allowed fewer speakers, and showed less varied views and faces. The Democratic Convention swung open their doors to 80,000 average Americans, while the Republican convention could barely fill it’s hall with it’s elites. The Democrats showed media savvy and showmanship, while the Republicans had a presentation worthy of a middle management convention, with barely the energy of a watch battery.

And then the past few months. As Barack Obama introduced himself to more and more of America, and more and more of America came to know the real John McCain, the numbers shifted. In every one of the last 159 polls, Barack Obama has been in the lead; sometimes by 2 points, often by a dozen. In desperation, John McCain went 100% negative, lobbing accusations of “socialist” and “terrorist-sympathiser” through a bullhorn, while quietly admiting to reporters that he didn’t really believe these things. In interviews, he spoke of denouncing the hate-speech of his supporters, while at his rallies he neither stopped them nor gave any indication that he disapproved. Actually, no, one time he stopped a woman called Barack an Arab by saying that he, John McCain, thought Barack was a decent man. Yes, he didn’t say that Barack wasn’t an Arab, he just said that he wasn’t evil like, he implied, all other arabs are. Barack Obama has praised John McCain for his service both in the Navy and in the Senate, while the best John McCain can muster is to call Barack “decent.”

After all of this, our country is more polarized than it’s even been under George W. Bush, between two camps of people in this country: those that want to keep the ever-worsening status quo, and those striving for the America we want and not simply the America we have. If John McCain were to win tomorrow, what it would tell us is that despite 80 percent of Americans thinking we’re on the wrong track, and despite economic policies that have hurt our nation, and despite a foreign policy that has damaged our reputation and put our country’s security at risk, that we would rather play to the politics of fear and derision than get over our national bigotry. If Barack Obama wins, I’m certain there will be many crazy people awaiting armageddon, much like they did with Y2K or when the first gay couple married in Massachusetts, but when a week or a month or a year passes without the end of the world, they’ll quietly return to their subtle, silent racism. They’ll go home to their cleaner air, their new jobs, their social safety net, and their America that once again stands proudly as a city on a hill. Sure, they’ll decry every decision President Obama makes, they will speak ill of his policies, and look for any opportunity to knock him down a peg, never admiting they were wrong to think he was a spy, a terrorist, a secret muslim, a dangerous fanatic, or a marxist bent on destroying America. And, we won’t ask them too. We will rise above the poltiics of hate, and even if they never come, they’ll be invited to the party we’ll be having. We’ll have the government we chose, and once again they’ll be working for the people and not for the few. 8 years from now, maybe people will again become complacent and forget just how bad things were before the Obama administration, and they’ll be tricked into voting for whoever the Republicans have nominated (and no, it will not be Palin, not if they want to win). For now though, this is our chance to right the many wrongs that have be done to our nation these last 8 years. I, for one, like our odds.

So This is How You Want to Play This?

2008-10-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

As I've said before, words matter. Cavalier use of language, throwing about words without care for the actual meaning, lowers both the quality of our discourse and the coherence of our culture. Words like "terrorist" are used interchangeably with words like "muslim," and it not only makes us look intolerant, it makes us look ignorant. This week, the buzzwords are "socialist" and "Marxist." I've already spoken about their misuse, but if some people think they can lob these as attacks and think no one will call them on it, they are sorely mistaken. Just this past Friday, while appearing on Larry King Live, Lars Larson referred to Barack Obama and other progressives as a "Marxist," to which Larry King responded by asking if he then thought that Conservatives were "fascist." Of course, Lars refuted this and then continued by falsely claiming that Obama is going to give tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes (apparently also confused about what a "tax rebate" is, since you have to pay taxes in order to get one back, and that it never exceeds the amount you pay in taxes.)

Well, let's examine this. I mean, since Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, and Bill Kristol all think that it's fair to call liberals "Marxist," then perhaps it is fair to call their right-wing counterparts "fascist." Let's take a look. Marxism is considered, politically, the extreme left-wing viewpoint in favor of collective ownership or the means and distribution of production. Fascism is considered the extreme right-wing viewpoint in favor of single-party and single dictator control of government and the economy. Well, under President Bush, the power of the Executive Branch has been expanded to hold more unchecked power (power that Sarah Palin said she would like to extend even more as Vice President than Dick Cheney has). He has also consistently used signing statements and claims of executive privilege to operate not as the law states but as he feels is appropriate, and has been backed up by his party who, for much of the last 8 years, have dominated the other two branches of government.

Fascism is also characterized by that party or dictator forcibly oppressing opposition and criticism. I think we all remember the firing of members of the justice department for refusing to investigate and prosecute Democrats for political reasons. I also seem to recall the constant attacks against liberals and Democrats for being "soft on terrorism," for "planning for defeat" in Iraq, and for "not caring about family values.' You need only check the news for the last few weeks to see how Democrats have been labeled "un-American."

Speaking of being labeled "un-American," fascism is known for emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. When Sarah Palin talks about liking to visit the "pro-America" parts of the country, that sounds like aggressive nationalism. When people complain about Barack Obama not wearing a flag pin (something that he actually did in all three debates while John McCain did not wear one) that sounds like ridiculous nationalism. When they complain about those socialist Europeans, and those terrorist Middle Easterners, and then talk about how America is the greatest and most powerful country in the world, blessed by God, and duty-bound to spread democracy unilaterally, that sounds like thoroughly aggressive Nationalism. As for racism, just watch a video of any McCain-Palin rally, listen to their supporters outside, and listen to Rush Limbaugh who characterized Colin Powell's nuanced defense of his endorsement of Obama as being "all about race."

Fascism promotes military preparedness and cults of unity, strength, and purity. Under Republican leadership, we spend more on our military than most of the world combined. Republican talking points are constantly and manipulatively espousing "supporting the troops," and attacking anyone who even suggest teaching anything other than complete abstinence from recreational drugs and premarital sexual activity.

What else falls under the label of "fascism?" An emphasis on corporatism is at the top of the list, which I think sounds a little like the Republicans. The Fascist government of Italy banned abortion and literature on birth control...that also sounds familiar. Fascist cultures also tend to reject multiculturalism, which springs to mind everytime I hear McCain supporters talk about how this is a Christian nation, and how they are worried about minorities ruining the culture. Fascist governments are also usually strongly opposed to homosexuals.

With them opposed to so many types of people, how is it that fascist regimes come to power? Easy, they appeal to the average person with an affectation of populism, which promotes the "average person" (Joe Six-pack perhaps) over "the elites." You know, like the elite media, that elite Barack Obama, those elite intellectuals and college graduates.

Do I think the Republicans are fascists? No. See, unlike some of these hate-mongers that will do anything to win elections or get on television, I don't just use slanderous labels against people I disagree with. Do I think some of the things they've done in the past decade and in this election share similar tactics with fascists? Yes, and that's something that they need to change. But here's the rub: if you want to label liberals as "marxist," not only is their equal evidence to support an argument that conservatives are "fascist," but their might even be more evidence to validate the latter hypothesis. Liberals are no more marxists than conservatives are fascists, so it's up to Rush, Glenn, Sean, Bill, Karl, John, Sarah, and all the rest if that's a name game they feel like playing.

It's Important to Own a Dictionary

2008-10-19T10:46:00.001-07:00

When we have a national discussion, it helps to have a common vocabulary. Luckily, here in the United States, we long ago agreed on a common language. No, not “American.” It’s called “English,” because as some people seem to have forgotten, everyone in this country is from somewhere else (hey, even the Native Americans came across the land bridge.) Yes, just a few hundred years ago, those English border jumpers crossed the Atlantic to steal jobs and land from the real Americans, the Native Americans. Then some Dutch came to steal the English jobs, and then the Italians to steal theirs. Oh, and the Spanish were here too. It was the English language that won out, though, and since then we’ve agreed on a common vocabulary and meaning, and even published books to spell it out for the people who haven’t been able to pick it up just on context alone.

Some people, though, are real mavericks who don’t play by your “rule” of language. Who’s to say that “maverick” means “a lone dissenter who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.” I mean, if McCain and Palin want it too, why can’t it mean “a person who agrees with their associates 95% percent of the time” or “someone who adopts the opinions that their staff tells them will most appeal to their base?” “Maverick” isn’t the only word they don’t use properly.

How about “pal?” They say Obama is pals, or “a very close, intimate friend,” with Bill Ayers. I have lots of close, intimate friends who were full grown adults when I was 8, sit next to me in a room a couple of times, and whose actions I publicly denounce. I mean, really, not a day goes by that I’m not denouncing my close, intimate friends in the media. That’s what makes us such close, intimate friends.

They mocked Joe Biden for saying that paying your taxes is “patriotic,” which means “characteristic of a patriot.” For those who don’t know, a patriot is “a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” Maybe I’m mistaken, but it sounds like paying your taxes, obeying the laws of this nation, in order to fund your democratically elected government and support it’s efforts around the globe and here at home sounds like “supporting his or her country with devotion.” Yeah, it does. It does sound “patriotic.”

But maybe that’s because Joe Biden is talking about The United States of America, and they are talking about the “real America.” Apparently the parts of the country where the majority of the people agree on issues and more than 50 percent of them support Barack Obama are “anti-American” and the parts where only a third of the people agree on anything and support John McCain are the “real” America. Really, what’s more anti-American than the majority agreeing on issues?

John McCain, Sarah Palin, and their friends, though, know that vocabulary goes by the wayside when dealing with someone like Barack Obama who’s a “terrorist,” “muslim,” “arab,” and “socialist.” Well since Barack is not “a person, who uses or advocates terrorism” I guess he’s not a “terrorist”. And since he’s not “an adherent of Islam,” he’s not a muslim either. Neither is he “a member of a Semitic people inhabiting Arabia and other countries of the Middle East,” since he was born in The United States and his parents were born in the U.S. and Kenya (a part of Africa, not Arabia.)

I guess that just leaves “socialist,” which is a word that they like to use to make you think “communist” and thus “Stalinist” and “brutal dictator.” Nothing could be further from the truth. See, “socialism” is “a system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” Does any of that sound like Barack Obama? Has he ever given a stump speech in which he’s mentioned wanting the government to own all the farms and produce all the food? Or where he’s talked about taking all of your land and redistributing for other uses? No? Well, that’s because he hasn’t.

See, they confuse “socialism” which is an economic doctrine with “social programs.” Socialism would be like the government owning and operating all of the hospitals, and controlling who gets what health care. What Barack Obama wants to do is offer you the choice of belonging to whatever health care program you want, including a cheaper program run by the government. You can go to private hospitals, buy private insurance, or skip the whole thing altogether and just pay as you go. In this case, the government isn’t controlling or owning the health care system, they are becoming another provider in that system. Neither he, nor anyone else in the Democratic party, advocates the government controlling our economy, they just want the government to participate in the economy like any citizen or corporation is allowed to do. The government can give loans, or buy stocks, or create financial incentives, all things that ordinary citizens and corporations can do in the economy. These are activities that Republicans support as well.

Their problem is not with what he wants to do, but who he wants to do it with. Barack Obama wants to fund schools that everyone gets to go to, while John McCain wants to give money to schools that only a few lucky people can attend. Barack Obama wants to invest in companies that are working on creating new, cheap, and American-made energy, while John McCain wants to invest in companies that are making record profits by importing expensive and unclean oil from foreign nations and selling it to us at a markup. Barack Obama wants the government to pick up the slack where the free market leaves gaps, while John McCain wants you to be entirely on your own unless you can afford to hire a lobbyist, a lawyer, or create your own industry. Both of them still want the market to be free to do it’s business. But Barack Obama wants to make sure that someone is keeping an eye on them so that average Americans won’t lose all of their investments or be tricked, while John McCain wants to wait until companies overextend themselves and go bankrupt before then giving them money to keep on doing what they’re doing.

But you can throw around words like “dangerous,” “socialist,” and “unAmerican” and scare people about your opponent so that they support you. Though, in that case, then you become a “terrorist.”

Things McCain Supporters Believe about Obama

2008-10-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

1.) “He’s an A-rab!”
No, he’s really not. See, according to the Constitution, you have to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to run for President. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, a State, to a woman originally from Kansas. He’s also not ethnically Arab either. His mother was white, and his father was from Kenya. Neither of those things is Arab. He’s white, and he’s African.

2.) “He’s a terrorist!”
Again, if he were a terrorist, do you think he’d have made it through a year and a half of campaigning and vetting? He’s a lawyer, educated in the northeast, who worked in Chicago, and then became a Senator. Along the way, he sat on a board with William Ayers, and they met a couple of times. William Ayers was a leading member of a terrorist group, the Weather Underground, here in the United States. They protested things by blowing up statues and buildings, avoiding hurting people in the process. Most of them were caught, convicted, and served jail time. Bill Ayers was on this board because he was elected to it, because since that time he has worked peacefully in the system to improve education, something that Barack Obama was also working on. So they ended up in the same place at the same time, and Barack wasn’t going to, nor should he, abandon that goal because one of the other people working towards the same goal had served jail time for his crimes and was now trying to be a productive member of society. They aren’t friends, and Barack Obama has publicly condemned William Ayers actions as a member of the Weather Underground, which occured at a time when Barack was 8, so he certainly wasn’t involved in them or even old enough to know about them at the time, plus he was in a completely other part of the country.

3.) “He’s a Muslim!”
No, he’s really not. His birth father, the man who essentially abandoned him as a child and he almost never saw was a Muslim, but Barack was raised by his white, Christian mother and grandparents, and has always been a Christian. Remember when you attacked him for what his REVEREND said? Yeah, it’s because he attends a church, with a Christian Reverend. You can’t attack him for what his Christian Reverend says and also call him a Muslim. That doesn’t work.

4.) “He Went to a Muslim School!”
Nope, wrong again. He briefly attended a school where many, but not all, of the children were Muslim’s. The story that he attended a Muslim school broke and was disproven in a matter of hours, even by Fox News who had to admit it was false. Saying the school he attended was a Muslim school is like saying every public school in America is a parochial school, because most of the students in them are Christian. It was a secular school, and Barack was not being taught religion there. Some of the kids were Muslims, but Barack was still Christian.

5.) “We Don’t Know Anything About Him!”
If you don’t, it’s because you’ve been living in a cave. He’s been a major player in the party for the last 5 years, especially since speaking at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He’s been campaigning for President for 2 years now, and received record coverage and investigation by several opponents and the news media during this contentious primary, and since then. John McCain has made it a point to make sure you know every tiny detail about Barack Obama. Barack, himself, has written 2 memoirs to let you know all about him, and has appeared on every major network and been interviewed by all the big name reporters. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was unknown to most of the nation until about 2 months ago, and has refused to be interviewed by most journalists.

6.) “He’s the most liberal Senator!”
This oft-repeated fact is based on one source’s idea of liberalism, and even still, being the most liberal Senator is a lot like being the world’s classiest McDonalds - there’s not much difference between that and all the others. John McCain even pointed out that Barack has voted with President Bush about 60 percent of the time. So is Bush 60 percent liberal? John McCain has also voted with Barack on this bailout package...does that make McCain a fiscal liberal? No, exactly.

7.) “We wants to socialize health care!”
Not at all. He doesn’t propose free or mandatory health care. All he wants to do is allow people who want to be able to join the same plan that Congressman get, so that it’s cheap and effective. They’d still be paying a company for coverage, and anyone who wants to can buy it from any other company they want, and most people would still get it from their employers.

8.) “He Wants to Meet with Iran and North Korea!”
No, but he does want us to have diplomatic contacts with them, meaning that our low-level diplomats can talk to theirs. This is a strategy also endorsed by the UN, Europe, our military leaders, and President Bush. Because, ignoring them has only encouraged them to continue trying to build nuclear weapons so that we’ll take them seriously. Either we bomb them, or we talk to them to get them to stop, and if we bomb them, they’ll have no reason not to bomb us.

9.) “He Doesn’t Support Israel!”
He does, and he’s taken the exact same stance on Israel as John McCain has. If anything, Sarah Palin disagrees with McCain on Israel more than Obama does.

10.) “He’s Not An American!”
Again, check your constitution. You have to be a NATURALLY BORN American to run for President. He was born in Hawaii… a STATE in the UNITED STATES. Sarah Palin was born in Alaska and John McCain was born in… the Panama Canal Zone. Yes, at the time a U.S. territory, but if McCain is a citizen, how can you question someone born in an ACTUAL STATE. He’s lived in the United States, from coast to coast, his wife is from the United States, his children were born in the United States, he went to school in the United States, he served as a Senator in the State of Illinois, and then in Washington, D.C., the United States’ Capitol, as a U.S. Senator. He’s a Christian, like the majority of Americans. He’s half-white and half-black, the two biggest racial groups in the United States. He’s lived in rural areas and cities. He has lived the American Dream, and he is as American or more American than anyone else in this country.

Anymore atrocious accusations? I know fact-checking really slows down the hate-speech.

The "Real" America

2008-10-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

When John McCain, Sarah Palin, and any number of Republican candidates are on the campaign trail, the like to score easy political points by talking about those "East Coast Elites" and "Big-City Liberals" who are out of touch with "real American values." The other night on The Daily Show, author Sarah Vowell made the excellent point that when Sarah Palin visited ground zero in New York, she reiterated how we would never let this happen again, yet as soon as she leaves New York, she's talking about what a cesspool it is and how it's not the "real" America. "If New York is America enough for al qaeda," Sarah Vowell said, "it should be America enough for [Sarah Palin]."

There is a tale of two America's that only exists in elections. People joke about "fly-over" states, and about the East Coast elites and West Coast liberals. People like Governor Palin and Senator McCain spend their time talking to the people on "Main Street" about how they represent real American values, and demonizing Washington, Hollywood, and the Northeast. What makes the south and midwest the real America, though? When the Pilgrims first came to the United States, they landed in the Northeast. When the American Revolution was sparked, it was in Boston. When the battles were being fought, it was in Concord and Lexington, Trenton and New York. The Founding Fathers were meeting in New York and Philadelphia, and all that existed of the America we know was on the East Coast.

All of our history and the people who founded our nation were East Coast elites, and yet at some point it became politically effective to trash Massachusetts, New York City, and Washington, D.C. They talk about how the people in rural Iowa are "real" Americans, and those of us in cities are all living lives of sin and depravity. Not only is this insulting to people like me, but it's insulting to anyone who understands the history of the United States. For instance, Republicans like to insult those Ivy-League liberals (even though many of them went to the Ivy League schools), but the prototypical Ivy League school, Harvard, was founded by the Puritans who landed in Massachusetts in 1630. They believed deeply in the Bible, but also believed deeply in education and learning from the ancient cultures of Greece, Roman, and others. From these earliest days, through to the present, when people first came to America, they came to the cities. This is where they integrated into American life, where they began to build there fortunes, and from where they then branched out to tame the west. If everyone in America came from somewhere else, then all these first settlers of the west and the south came from the East Coast.

And today, what can be more ridiculous than to claim that Kansas is the real America, and that Massachusetts is not. The most densely populated states are in the Northeast. In a nation that defines itself on the will of the majority, more than half of the people in the United States now live in cities. To say that they are not the "real" America is not merely wrong, but is an insult to America, because that is where most of Americans live. And, I assure you, they are all real. New York has our nation's oldest and most respected newspaper, and Boston has many of our most respected Universities. Washington, D.C. houses our nation's history in it's Museums, and our every branch of our federal government. Major cities from Atlanta to Nashville to Seattle are the sources of our culture and music, and Los Angeles creates the movies and television shows that all Americans watch and love. Yet, we in the city don't claim that the people out in the suburbs or on the farm aren't real Americans. We are all Americans, and it's time for people like Sarah Palin and John McCain to insult the majority of Americans in order to rile the affections of those who live in the sparsely populated states.

A Palin's History of the United States

2008-10-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

There was something that outraged me a few weeks back while I was watching the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Well, actually, there were many things that outraged me, but one in particular that, at the time, I couldn't quite explain why it was important. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I know, so let me explain.

During the debate, Sarah Palin leaned heavily on prepared remarks and Republican party buzzwords, specifically invoking Ronald Reagan. At one point, she stated the following: "And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said..." Anyone who knows anything about Reagan would recognize this line, since he said it often. The thing that made me mad was that, Reagan didn't write that line. She was crediting Reagan with a line that he himself was quoting from someone else. At first, I assumed this bothered me because it was doing what Republicans often do: crediting Ronald Reagan with all manner of things that happened that weren't his doing. Really, though, this bothers me because it says something far more worrisome about Sarah Palin specifically, and a large number of people in her party generally. That is, that they have no true sense of History.

Sarah Palin and her supporters have developed a myth of America, in which everything they believe is confirmed by our founding fathers and everything the disagree with is wiped from history in Orwellian proportions. When Ronald Reagan refered to America as a "city on a hill," he was referencing a famous sermon by John Winthrop titled A Model of Christian Charity, who himself was referencing Matthew 5:14 from the Bible. Perhaps it doesn't matter where the quote came from, but it's a sign of a much larger problem that I don't think Sarah Palin is aware of who John Winthrop is, and probably doesn't know that the phrase is from the Bible. As far as she's concerned, Ronald Reagan created the line from whole cloth, and whatever he says is the final word on the subject, rather than him being in the middle of a long line of commentators.

Despite having no understanding of history, though, they so often rely on it to bolster their arguments. When we talk about the separation of church and state, an important concept put in place by the Founding Fathers of our nation, they talk about the Pilgrims and the Judeo-Christian (by which they mean, mostly Protestant Christian) foundation of our country. However, to know history is to know that this is a false affirmation. The reason the Pilgrims came to the New World is because they had suffered under a government that had established a religion, and they specifically preferred local congregations that were neither related to government nor even to a larger, national church. They would also probably be surprised to know that Governor John Winthrop, the man who referred to his new colony, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as that proverbial "city on a hill," and who so inspired Reagan, in fact thought that democracy was "the meanest and worst of all forms of government." He also thought it was a violation of the Bible's Fifth Commandment. So, it's difficult to claim that our nation's values should be dictated by a group of people who think our nation's very founding could be sinful. These were people who, though they disagreed with the King's mistreatment of religion, they believed that he was owed due respect as an anointed representative of God. The King was the father of the nation, and as such, had to be respected as the Bible commands.

By misunderstanding history, they can claim that the founding fathers wanted all citizens to have guns, ignoring the fact that the 2nd Amendment was written at a time when we had no army and needed militias, and at a time when gun violence was not a huge societal problem and guns couldn't be easily concealed and fire hundreds of rounds a minute. They can claim Mexicans are stealing our country while ignoring that the Europeans were the original immigrants, and they stole land from the people who were here, and then made the same claims against every wave of immigrants from the Irish to the Italians to the Russians, all of which now make up large and productive parts of our America. They can even deregulate the banks and blame the economic decline on Democrats while ignoring the Great Depression which was under a Republican President's watch and lead FDR to establish many of those regulations in the first place. And of course we can't forget the attacks of September 11th, which they tell you will be repeated if we allow a Democrat into office, even though they occurred with a Republican President and Congress, and with a Republican mayor in New York, and it was those same Republicans that have endangered us since by not finishing the job in Afghanistan and creating a hotbed for terrorists in Iraq.

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not understand history, doom the rest of us.

Things I Never Knew About John McCain

2008-10-07T21:10:00.001-07:00

1.) Ronald Reagan is his hero.

2.) No, check that, Teddy Roosevelt is his hero.

3.) No, wait...not quite his hero, but he has a big boy crush on General Patreus.

4.) He is so ready to contest anything that Barack Obama says, that he furiously starts writing notes even before the debate has begun. It's because he can see the future, and is furious about what Obama is about to say about his economic plan. Spooky.

5.) His bedtime is 11 p.m. EST. That's why Cindy had to rush him out after the debate while Barack and Michelle took pictures, signed autographs, and spoke with people. Listen, if the American people want John McCain to address their concerns, they have to show up during office hours. And even then, he'll probably trail off into something about Iran and not answer your concerns.

6.) He thinks it's awesome that eBay is doing so well. Yes, for every person that loses their job in this bad economy, John McCain wants you to know you can have a successful career selling all of your possessions on ebay to other unemployed people who can no longer afford to buy things new from a store. Sure, our economy is crumbling, but the black market economy is on the rise! (Side note: John McCain thinks the CEO of eBay would make a great treasury secretary. The CEO of eBay just laid off 10% of her company.)

7.) John McCain is uncomfortable with human contact of any kind. Whether it's giving an awkward pat on the back to a veteran, or refusing to shake Obama's hand after the debate, or giving his wife the awkward one-armed-side-by-side hug that I usually reserve for my male friends or people I've just met.

8.) John McCain doesn't understand your question, and won't respond to it.

9.) McCain knows just how to fix the economy, how to win the war in Iraq, and how to capture Osama Bin Laden. But, he can't tell you. Vote for him on November 4th and he'll let us in on the secret. I bet the answer to all three is "with robots."

10.) You know that bailout bill that many Americans are opposed to, and that John McCain both voted for and then called for the President to Veto? He thinks we should get the country's money back by...buying all the bad mortgages that put these banks in trouble in the first place and then...renegotiate them lower. Yes, he wants to spend MORE MONEY to buy the loans that are LEAST LIKELY to be repaid, and then make a deal so that if they are repaid, that it will be for less then we dish out for them. So, to counteract the bailout that he said was terrible, he wants to expand the bailout and get even less of a return.

And see, after all this time, I thought I couldn't learn anything new about John McCain. I guess he really is a mavericky maverick.

Soon We'll Be Reading in the Future

2008-10-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

Increasingly, we are moving to a digital world, and while downloading information straight into our brains a la The Matrix or Johnny Mnemonic (what’s with Keanu Reeves?) is a long way off, it still gives pause to someone who grew up with the analog. In some cases, it just makes sense. You can’t play a record in a car or on the go; you can’t bring a board game with you to play on the subway; you can’t keep everything in file drawers when you have limited office space. Television, the latest to join the digital revolution, is better in a digital form than in an analog form.

Sadly, though, the trend seems to be constantly towards the impermanent. Having shelves of LPs gives physical presence and value to the music, and the act of having to take them off the shelf, place them on the record player, and flip them halfway through turns listening into a participatory experience. You have to really want it. It’s for that reason that while CD sale decline, sales of Vinyl LPs are actually increasing for the first time in years. People don’t want just convenience, they want meaning.

Luckily, one medium that has resisted the switch to digital has been the printed word. Sure, you can read newspapers online and occasionally find a book on the web (or in an audiofile), but by and large, people still consume literature in book form. The e-book has been slow to gain acceptance, and it’s because of the very nature of books. They too are a participatory experience, requiring your active looking and page turning but also the active participation of your imagination and interpretation.

An iPod allows you to place thousands of songs in one small device. Songs go by quickly, and in the course of a day you might listen to several albums worth, and it’s simply not practical to carry around your whole physical music collection with you so that you can choose your next album or song on the fly. It would also be impractical to carry around movie projector and a series of reels, or a television with VCR and collection of tapes.

Books, on the other hand, take time. If you leave the house in the morning with one book, chances are you won’t finish it by the time you get home. At most, maybe you’ll need two books. An e-reader, in order to be comfortable to hold and read, as well as to have the proper storage and power requirement, needs to be a certain size to be practical, and that size is roughly the same as a short book. So it’s not necessarily more convenient than an actual book. In addition, a book requires no additional power source. Unless you’re in a pitch black room or out at night in the woods, the natural world provides everything you need to see that book, without you having to worry about finishing the book before the battery runs out. You can pick it up and start reading without having to open a program or scroll through pages, and you can do so in any setting without disturbing others with your glowing page.

Frankly, I like books because they are so analog. I can see at a glance how much I’ve read and how much further I have to go. I can, on a whim, skip ahead or travel back for a second to check something. I don’t have to turn off my book when the plane is taking off, and I don’t have to find an outlet to plug in my book. When I was a kid, I could hide my book in my lap and read during a particularly boring health class or assembly, and no one would be the wiser because my book gave off no sound or light and could easily be hidden amongst my other school-required books.

So feel free to convert everything else I own into a digital copy that can be attached to me at all time and hold everything I own, leaving me with the fear that one day it will crash and I’ll lose it all. I’ll keep my every increasing shelves with my collection of books taking up valuable space.

And All the Rest That Fits

2008-10-02T21:02:00.001-07:00

Now that I've completed my overall analysis, and my guy reaction, of the Biden-Palin debate, I have a few points I'd like to delve into. To begin, something of a petty one:

We've had two terms of a President who has butchered the English language, setting a bad example for children in America and making us look stupid abroad when foreign leaders can speak our language better than our own President. I don't think it's elitist to suggest that we try a President who, with a team of people telling them on a daily basis, is able to remember that "nuclear" only has the one "u" in it. It's "nu-cle-ar" not "nuc-u-ler." Also, "Iraq" and "Iran" are not Apple products (though I hear the new iRaq has wi-fi). It's not "I- Rack." If we're going to invade a country and kill tens of thousands of it's citizens, let's not add insult by acting like we've never heard of the country before and don't know how to pronounce it's name in our own language.

Now, the real facts. Palin disputed Biden's claim that our commander in Afghanistan said a surge-like strategy wouldn't work. She said that "McClellan" never said that. Perhaps that's true, because our commander in Afghanistan is named "McKiernan" and he did in fact say that something like the Sunni Awakening wouldn't work in Afghanistan, because the tribal situation there is more complex than the situation in Iraq.

Palin refered to the Obama-Biden strategy in Iraq as a "white flag of surrender." General Patreus, who she repeatedly invoked as someone she thought could do no wrong, said recently that he didn't think "victory" was possible in Iraq. If our goal is to rid the world of terrorists, specifically in Iraq, you never can have a victory. Terrorists aren't an ethnic group that can be wiped out. Terrorism is a tactic, and it will be employed anytime you have dissidents. It's happend in Iraq, it happened in Africa, it's even happened in Oklahoma. Obame and Biden don't want to drop our weapons and run for the hills, they want to continue fighting for the next YEAR and a HALF, they want to keep training the Iraq army for a YEAR and a HALF, and then they want to keep some American troops in Iraq to support the 400,000 MAN Iraqi army to defend their own country (a policy that both President Bush and the president of Iraq now support). That's not a white flag. That's turning the country over to the people we said we were rescuing from a dictatorship. That, is victory.

When asked about what campaign promises they might have to scale back considering the financial crisis our country is in, Joe Biden was very straightforward. He said we might have to slow or scale back our foreign aid, something I would oppose but certainly won't cost him any points here. He also named other things that he would put on the back-burner while specifying all of the things he thought we couldn't afford to withhold money from, including health care and education. Sarah Palin's response? Nothing. In a time when the value of the dollar has dropped, the stock market has plummeted, unemployment has risen, job creation has decreased, and our deficit is at an all-time high...Sarah Palin and John McCain will both cut taxes (decreasing the money our government has to spend) and increase spending, thus ensuring that our deficit climbs higher, we have to borrow more money from China, and our dollar and economy continue to decline in power.

How about that health care? Obama and Biden want to make sure that all Americans can get it, because studies (and common sense) have proven that if our citizens can go to the doctor when they need to, they will get sick and injured less often and therefore not have to miss work or work at a diminished capacity, thus increasing productivity and growth in our economy. Sarah Palin and John McCain say they would like to increase payroll taxes, thus causing employers to be burdened and therefore decrease health benefits, and then they want to replace the average of $12,000 in benefits you get with a $5,000 tax credit. They claim this is "revenue neutral," meaning that it won't cost extra, but in fact it means it will cost the government $5,000 for each person, because that's 5k in taxes they won't be paying to the government but to a healthcare provider. I don't understand how they don't consider that socialism when they want to take tax money and give it right to the health care companies.

Palin again repeated the falsehood that Obama wants to sit down with our enemies without preconditions. His actual policy is that he wants to engage with these countries diplomatically. He's not saying that he personally wants to sit down with these leaders, or that he will do it whenever or however they dictate. He is merely saying that we can't just ignore these countries and think that our threats will change their ways. His idea is so crazy, though, that 5 former secretaries of state, our current President, and much of the rest of the world agrees with it. Meanwhile, she thinks we shouldn't even bother sending diplomats unless they agree to immediately disarm, something you can't get them to do until you send diplomats to convince them to do it, and she has no response for why McCain doesn't want to meet with the leader of NATO-ally Spain who has troops in Afghanistan fighting with us.

Palin again repeated the falsehood that McCain put country first and suspended his campaign to take care of the financial crisis. He "suspended" his campaign by continuing to do television interviews, continuing to run campaign ads, and not going to Washington until the following day, at which point he derailed that negotiation process for his own political ends. She also said she wouldn't answer the questions they way the moderator wanted, and that she wanted to talk straight to the American people without the media filter. As a filter take the toxins from your drinking water, or cuts the tar from you cigarette, does she not realize that the media filters bs from a candidate's mouth and tells us when they are lying to the American people. Yes, I think she does, which is why she wants to talk straight to us - so she can lie to us.

She doesn't believe an unstable Pakistan WHICH ALREADY HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAT COULD HIT ISRAEL is as big a threat as Iran which merely wants Nuclear weapons. She states that America has nuclear weapons as a deterrent and that's a good thing, I suppose unaware of the fact that the reason Iran and North Korea want them so badly is so that they can use them as a deterrent against us so we'll negotiate with them and not invade. She said McCain knows how to win wars, even though the war he fought in is a war we lost and that as Senator, he presided over and supported several conflicts we fared poorly in, and opposed ones in which we succeeded. She said that, like Dick Cheney, she believes the Vice President is a member of Congress as well as the Executive branch, and that she wants to expand that role. She promotes placing our embassy in Jerusalem, a move that increase hostility against the U.S. and Israel from Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. She supports a two-state solution in Israel, something most Israeli's are opposed to, but has no problem with the fact that Hamas won in the elections in Palestine, probably because she doesn't know what Hamas is.

And her solution to the lending crisis? She thinks Americans should stop borrowing money. Well, you see, since the United States' government can't stop, and her policies would mean that more people are out of work and have higher costs, how are they supposed to live if they don't occasionally put something on the credit card? Well, if average Americans are anything like her, they'll just have to live in their Governor's mansions instead of their private estates, and they'll have to sell their jets and instead take flights paid for by lobbyists. She said she doesn't think paying taxes is patriotic, but maybe that's because in Alaska she cut their taxes and made the federal government and the American energy consumer foot the bill.

Finally, a special note for both Biden and Palin. I know you're trying to win an election. I know that change comes slowly. I know that a lot of people in America aren't ready for real change. However, there is never an acceptable time for bigotry. You can say you support the right of a same-sex couple to have hospital visits and joint home ownership. You can say they should have the right to enter into contracts together. None of these, however, are rights you couldn't get through a lawyer or as partners in a corporation. The fact is, you can say you are "tolerant" as Sarah Palin did, but tolerance is not enough. "Tolerance" means that you'll put up with something. I hate bees buzzing around me in the summertime, but I tolerate it. When she says "tolerate" she means she thinks you are a sinner, a pervert, someone who made a terrible choice, and because of that she doesn't think you should have the same rights as anyone else in this country, but I guess that she won't actively try to get you thrown in jail or beaten up. That's her "tolerance." But Joe, you should know better. You fought actively for civil rights, at a time in this country when black people, like the man you are running with, still hadn't been afforded all of the equal rights of the rest of us. You can give gay people all the individual rights in the world, but as the Supreme Court proved, separate but equal is not what our country stands for. As long as they are treated as "other" they will never be equal, and we will as a nation will never be truly free.

Thank you for reading, and good night.

Past is Prologue.

2008-10-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as I watched the Vice Presidential debate, time and again I was reminded of the past. No, it was not from Joe Biden, who Sarah Palin accused of being focused on the past and not the future. To address that, I say that the reason we are in the bad situation we are now in both Iraq and with our economy is because the Bush Republicans ignored the lessons of the past. No, I was reminded of the past by Sarah Palin's performance. Her caricatured folksiness, her inability to answer the questions she was asked, her reliance on memorized talking points, her mispronunciation of all words including "nuclear," and her attempts to pretend she's "just like you" despite being wealthy and powerful; all of these things reminded me of George W. Bush's debates.

It was a joke on the Simpson's that, to paraphrase, you can't be "cool" if you tell people that you're "cool." Well, tonight, Sarah Palin repeatedly tried to tell us that she was "an average American," that she was a "maverick," and that she was "a Washington outsider." So again, if you have to tell people repeatedly that you're a maverick, then you probably aren't one, or else they would think it without you saying so. As I watched the debate, though, I thought Sarah Palin did well in one important respect: she played to her base. She played to the people who care only about her as a persona and not her as a politician. She played to those who care more about what a person says than what their record proves. She played to the people who hear only the buzz words and forget the substance.

If the bar is set so low for Sarah Palin that she'd have to stutter and fumble, then yes, she just cleared it. She may have mispronounced "nuclear,"" Iraq," and "Talibani" but she gave that folksy twang that will blind those people to the fact that she's a wealthy, powerful, Alaskan separatist who's in the pocket of oil interests and other lobbyists. To think on substance, however, she had none. She repeated over and over that we had to take on "the greed of Wall Street" and that she came from a "team of mavericks," but nowhere in there did she state what they would do if they were elected, how they would be different from George W. Bush, or how she came to her false conclusions about the policies of Barack Obama an Joe Biden. Unfortunately, well the dust settles, though the news media will report the misstatements (or flat-out lies) she made, it will already be too late, and all people will remember is that she said Barack Obama voted against the troops.

By the one hour mark, though, she was winded and Joe Biden was just getting started. He called her out on her distortions of his record. He called her out on McCain's record. He called her out on the fact that she is not the only one on that stage who understands the needs of families. When he spoke so eloquently, in response to her harsh negativity, and choked up about knowing what it's like to struggle to care for your family, she responded without even an acknowledgement, going right into another prepared talking point that didn't even address the question.

Ultimately, I think much of the blame for the fact that she was allowed to ignore the substance and dodge the questions falls on the moderator, who seemed to haphazardly employ the rules of the debate, asking a series of questions but never seeking followup or allowing a chance for the candidates to stay on a topic beyond a single response each, meaning that she could suddenly jump to a prepared talking point about taxes or Afghanistan without addressing either what was asked, or responding to Joe Biden.

My view of Sarah Palin's performance can be demonstrated by what she did at the end of the debate; she brought her whole family up on stage, including her infant son that should have been in bed by now. The child was tired and probably annoyed by all those lights, and after using him as a prop for photo ops, she passed him off to her youngest daughter, barely big enough to hold him, and went back to glad-handing. Sarah Palin is all about the photo op, and not about the substance. She's about getting in the sound bite and not answering the question. She's about looking like she's a good leader (or a good mother) and not about being one. So when our country needs real leadership and real change, she'll keep us up past our bedtime, drag us through the political side show, and then pass us off onto cronies and people with even less experience. Well, Sarah Palin, I for one have been kept up way past my bedtime.

The Day After: Debate Analysis in the Sober Light of Day

2008-09-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

Last night, expectations were high for this first debate. The campaign is often a constant barrage of soundbites and political ads, shading issues with hearsay and rumor, constantly barreling towards the finish line in November without concern for the praciticality of positions. Debates, on the other hand, and a bit of an anomaly. The two candidates are placed face to face, unable to just lob accusations or assaults without immediate rebuttal. A single journalist-moderator is given full control of the direction of the debate, choosing topics and questions at his on discretion. In the end, a roomful of commentators, spinmeisters, and pundits do their best to interpret the results of the debate, and the following days and weeks determine whether or not the public at large agrees. The idea of a winner or loser in the debate is, frankly, ridiculous considering that each person is swayed in different ways by different things.

So, any debate is a fascinating prospect, and one that could potential change the entire direction of the campaign. One slip up on live television becomes the media theme for the rest of the campaign. Too long a pause is replayed as a demonstratoin of your ignorance. A repeated phrase such as “lock box” becomes a verbal albatross that makes a serious proposal sound ridiculous.

This particular debate raised the stakes considerably higher. At first meant to be a debate on foreign affairs, it was Obama’s best chance to unseat McCain from his reputation as the better Commander-in-Chief, and to demonstrate that his short tenure in Washington does not preclude his ability to comprehend and tackle the big issues of State. Then, the immediate concerns of our economy cried out for a platform where these candidates could make clear to the American people how their needs could be met and problems solved. On top of all of that, McCain’s failed gambit to postpone or cancel the debate in his feeble attempt to appear “above” politics demonstrated his fear of the questions he might face, and piqued public and media interest in how the debate would proceed.

Yesterday, in the immediate aftermath of the debate, I thought it was perfectly clear that Barack Obama had come out on top. He was clear, concise, congenial, and above all, demonstrated a deep comprehension of the issues facing America both domestically and abroad, with many proposals to meet the needs of the future. McCain, on the other hand, was condescending, dismissive, and easily flustered. While Obama painted a picture of how we would turn things around, McCain seemed more apt to tell us where we’ve been, and who’s to blame for where we are, and gave vague promises of how he would act in the future.

Policy, however, is not what the debates are about. We can hear and read about their policies everyday, and they have been previously vetted so greatly that we are unlikely to hear anything new or drastically dramatic. Instead, the debates are an opportunity to demonstrate the ability to act “Presidential,” a rather undefinable quality that, like pornography, we know it when we see it. Barack Obama began the debate by graciously shaking McCain’s hand and wishing him luck, thanking Jim Lehrer and the school for hosting them, and then spoke directly to the American people by looking right into the camera. McCain, conversely, avoided looking directly at or speaking to Obama, began with a sullen tone by wishing Ted Kennedy well, and then awkwardly shifted at his podium while addressing his opening remarks to Jim Lehrer off-camera.

While his opponent spoke, Obama appeared engaged, listening intently, and remained calm even when falsehoods were stated about his positions. When he did interupt, he did so politely, and allowed the moderator the opportunity to take control. John McCain refused to look at Barack while he was speaking, and spent most of the time smirking and laughing with incredulity, or mumbling off-camera. His frustration would boil over with squiting grimaces and gesticulating with his arms in anger like a petulant child or a curmudgeonly old man.

On the issues, Barack Obama suggested investments in alternative energy, education, and health care, while John McCain suggested a budget freeze except for Defense, and cutting programs that amounted to a paltry 20-30 millions dollars, while also increasing our Defense expenditures and increasing our debt by cutting revenue. He hit all of the Republican buzz words; called Obama the most liberal member of the Senate, repeated the name “Reagan,” and talked of “supporting the troops.” While Obama spoke knowledgably about diplomatic solutions to dealing with America’s enemies and bolstering our allies, McCain stumbled to pronounce the name of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called President Zardari of Pakistan “Kadari” while calling his country a “failed state,” and called the volatile Prime Minister Vladimir Putin akin to the KGB which - true or not - is the sort of inflamatory statement that could make it difficult to deal with this former superpower over former Eastern Bloc nations joining NATO.

While, like I predicted, most perceptions of the debate’s outcome fell along party lines, and the pundits were overly kind to McCain, the biggest surprise is that undecideds and moderates had their opinion of Obama greatly improved. In nearly all the polls, undecideds declared Obama the winner and better prepared to handle economic issues, and in most of these polls, he also did better than McCain on foreign affairs issues. According to one CBS poll, he went from being 9 points down compared to McCain on the questions of whether he was “prepared to be President,” to being 21 points ahead of McCain. On understanding the needs of the American people, his lead jumped from 18 points ahead to 56 points ahead. If the other debates go like this, including the VP debate, his lead on McCain should only increase, and considering that the nielsen ratings last night for this debate were highest in the midwest, many swing states that just two weeks ago were considered no longer in play, could once again lean towards Obama, marking a dramatic shift in the predictable nature of our electoral map.

The Debates: Live!

2008-09-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am an Obama supporter (obviously) and whenever possible, I’m probably going to make a joke, so don’t read this if you want purely serious analysis.

9:01 And away we go…

9:02 Emphasis on the “global financial crisis.” I think we know what Jim wants to talk about.

9:03 Hey, look, they both showed up. I guess that means John McCain was able to fix our economy in time to make it down to Mississippi. Barack is all nice and friendly to McCain, who remains absolutely silent with a look of contempt in his eyes as they shake hands.

9:04 Nice. Obama gets the important “Thanks for having us at your awesome school” first question. Oh, and he’s answering directly into the camera. I think he’s looking right into my soul.

9:05 Ouch. Obama just laid the blame for the economic crisis on the policies of Bush supported by McCain. He comes out punching.

9:06 Okay…McCain starts out by wishing Ted Kennedy well. That’s weird. Both a downer and a pander to Democrats, and a way to delay answering the questions that he can’t answer.

9:07 McCain tries to make a joke which goes so flat that he literally clears his throat afterwards, like Rodney Dangerfield. He should try looking into the camera like Barack, because by looking at Jim Lehrer he just looks like he’s avoiding America’s gaze, like the guy who borrows 20 bucks from you and “forgets” to pay you back.

9:08 So the first question is done and Barack began by laying out specific idea, and McCain basically said “we need to fix stuff. No more foreign oil. I’m old.” Jim Lehrer lays down the gauntlet and asks the two candidates to “talk it out, bitch” (not an actual quote) and solve this problem in the next five minutes.

9:10 “Are you going to vote for the plan, Senator McCain?” Pretty straightforward question, right? Response: “I hope so.” You hope so? That’s another way of saying “I don’t know.”

9:12 Jim Lehrer is trying to start a rumble, and Barack gets the first laugh of the night. Charm will get you everywhere.

9:13 This feels awkward, like couples counseling. “Tell him how you feel, John. How has he hurt you?”

9:14 John McCain: “Our best days are ahead of us.” Oh, so you mean this isn’t the beginning of the apocalypse? How bold of you.

9:15 Finally, John McCain admits that the Republicans are neither conservative nor responsible. And apparently John McCain is so ready to cut the size of our government that he already bought a pen for vetoing everything.

9:17 John McCain keeps smirking and wincing when Barack Obama describes his policies. I guess words do hurt.

9:18 John McCain says he’s fought against earmarks his whole career…and also that they’ve tripled in the last 5 years. Clearly, his fight isn’t going well. That’s leadership.

9:19 John McCain: “The worst thing we could do in this economic climate is raise taxes.” Yes, if we’re going to dish out $700 billion dollars to corporations, we should make sure we bring in less money so that the government will be broke and then corporations won’t be able to ask us for money.

9:20 Jim Lehrer keeps trying to get them to respond directly two each other, and they keep avoiding it. It’s like an eighth grade dance up in here. Make eye contact, people.

9:21 John McCain keeps coming back to pork-barrel spending. Is that the entirety of his economic plan? Cutting 18 billions dollars. He also keeps mentioning that people have requested hundreds of billions in earmarks. It’s not like they were all at once. It’s not like Obama wanted a trillion dollars. When one thing gets rejected, they ask for something else. What’s so crazy about that?

9:23 John McCain cuts off the moderator to do what? That’s right, talk about earmarks again. He also wants to simplify the tax code by making a second code, and then you have to look at both and pick one for yourself. This must be a use of the word “simplify” that I’m not familiar with.

9:25 John McCain can’t stop interrupting Barack, and he keeps laughing inappropriately. That is not a comforting smile.

9:27 Barack just gave a shout-out to Ohio and Michigan. Hello electoral college.

9:28 Barack Obama is for alternative energy, broadband connections, and science education. He’s the future.

9:29 John McCain: “We’ve let the government get completely out of control.” He realizes that he and his party “are” the government, right? And he’s opposed to Ethanol.
Yeah, fuck you, Iowa.

9:30 John McCain saved us 6.8 billion dollars by cutting a Boeing contract. Thank god, that’ll take care of all of our deficits.

9:32 Jim Lehrer is getting very frustrated.

9:33 John McCain suggest a spending freeze on everything except defense. So in an election year, he’s promising the people…nothing. We refuse to pay for anything new, so forget it. Barack calls this “using a hatchet instead of a scalpel.” Nice.

9:34 McCain is really pushing for Nuclear Power. This is just like that West Wing live debate. Watch out, California, you’re about to have a meltdown.

9:35 This “foreign policy” debate has, so far, been all about the economy. That’s good for Barack, I think, but c’mon, let’s talk about foreign policy a little. It’s kind of a big deal.

9:36 I can’t believe it took McCain this long to talk about veterans. Oh, and he’ll cut spending, but won’t say how or what. He assures us he has plans though. I guess we should just trust him.

9:37 Obama: Bush’s “orgy of spending.” Damn, that’s incendiary, and sexy.

9:38 What? You mean McCain wasn’t elected “Ms. Congeniality?” Oh, and he finally said “maverick”… twice in one sentence, and called Palin his “partner.” She’s a woman but that doesn’t mean you’re married, John. I know it’s confusing since you’ve cheated on the women you’ve been with.

9:39 According to McCain, we’re winning in Iraq. I guess those were victory bombs exploding and injuring our troops.

9:40 McCain: We can’t leave Iraq because we might have to go back. But we’ll come home. What?

9:44 Obama: “Our troops have done a brilliant job” McCain: “(giggles)”

9:45 Obama lays into McCain on the war, and McCain just smirks and laughs. He’s going to jump over the podium and punch Obama in a minute.

9:46 Hey, they passed a law in Iraq! One law?! I guess we are winning. Thanks, John McCain.

9:48 Obama: “…capture and kill Bin Laden, and crush Al Qaeda.” He wins!

9:49 The look on Obama’s face while McCain rambles on is priceless. It’s the way you look at an old person who’s confused and trying to understand “these darn kids today.” So sad.

9:51 Barack Obama, unlike McCain, knows how to pronounce words, like “Taliban,” “Pakistan,” and “Iraq.”

9:52 John McCain admits that all of our problems began when people like him washed their hands of Afghanistan after we helped them boot Russia out. Thanks for taking the blame, senator.

9:53 McCain on bombing Pakistan, “You don’t say that out loud.” So you would secretly bomb Pakistan? Yeah, that’s better. How’d that work in Cambodia?

9:55 McCain guarantees that he will not “publicly state” that he will attack Pakistan, and then grins. How is that a good thing? Does he mean he will attack them, but it’s in bad taste to say it?

9:56 Based on his facial expressions, I think McCain will have a stroke by the third debate. He does not take criticism well.

9:58 John McCain runs us through his entire record, and keeps saying “I have a record.” It’s been two minutes and he hasn’t come to a point yet. Lucky for him Jim Lehrer isn’t being a stickler about time. This was all in response to a comment about him bombing Iran. He ends by talking about Iraq. Good job, way to get confused, John.

10:01 John McCain is staring off into the distance while Barack Obama tries talking to him. The silent treatment, that could work.

10:02 Ouch, McCain is literally gritting his teeth while he talks. I can’t wait for him to lash out.

10:03 Obama flatters Jim on his ability to keeptime, and Mr. Lehrer swoons.

10:04 John McCain wants to make clear that we “can’t afford another Holocaust.” Was that unclear before, John? Was Obama suggesting we should get one? John McCain also suggests a “League of Democracies.” It’s like the League of Nations meets the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Movie. Nothing but success.

10:05 John McCain is trying to be as vague as possible.

10:08 It took McCain three times to get the name of Iran’s leader right, and he still failed, and looked crazy doing it.

10:09 McCain looks fucking pissed. I swear, he’s going to punch someone, and if it’s Lehrer, it might just kill both of them.

10:12 Every joke Obama makes gets a laugh. Every joke McCain makes meets awkward silence. John McCain’s favorite phrases “By the way…, “I know that…,” “Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand.” And he refered to Kim Jong Ill as “our dear leader.” That’s weird.

10:15 McCain tries sarcasm. Once again looks crazy. Why does he keep waving around that sharpie?

10:16 Obama ignores the crazy, has another charming exchange with Jim Lehrer. Even if he were to lose this debate, he’s one Jim Lehrer’s heart.

10:17 Someone bought Barack a geography book…he just rattled off the names of most of the countries in western Europe, Asia, and the middle east.

10:18 Barack is hardcore.

10:19 McCain: “He doesn’t understand…” Man, this guy is a broken record.

10:20 According to McCain, Russian posters in Georgia are in English. Then he rattles off the names of Eastern European cities, and says we should “watch” them. Not take action, just watch.

10:23 Barack brings it full circle back to energy independence. I’m bummed he mentioned “clean coal” because it’s misleading.

10:26 McCain is almost stumped when asked what are the chances of another 9/11-type attack. He pauses wayyyy too long, and then says “less.” Then he shows off how tough he is by saying that he was “stymied” until some 9/11 families came along. Oh, and he fought for a commission. That’ll show those terrorists.

10:27 McCain stumbles again…couldn’t remember the word “sure.”

10:28 John McCain: “America is safer than it was on 9/11.” Well I should hope so. That’s like saying, “My house is less on fire than it was when it was on fire.” He’s essentially proud of the fact that we are just in danger, and not immediate danger.

10:31 Man, I have to go to the bathroom. Can’t McCain just storm out and end this thing. You know he wants too. Also, why bring up Reagan’s failed Missle Defense Shield? What’s that about?

10:34 Barack Obama seems to know he’s won this debate. John McCain again pivots back to “the surge.” Broken record. Also, he loves veterans. Doesn’t say how he’ll help them, just that he loves them.

10:36 “When I came home from prison…” That doesn’t sound good. It makes it sound like he was in Oz and not in a war camp.

10:37 And that’s the end of that. Barack looks pleased. McCain looks pissed. I wish his mic was still on. That sound guy is probably hearing some awesome snide remarks.

My first thoughts on the post-debate coverage on the major news networks. Were these people watching the same debate? They give McCain points for repeatedly mentioning the surge and earmarks. Was it not clear to them that he did that because those are the only talking points he has? He has no new ideas, no proposals, no ability to think on his feet.

My final thoughts on the whole debate. Obama was clear, concise, and had a lot of excellent and well-phrased proposals. John McCain was barely in control of his emotions, constantly stuttering, fumbling, fuming, and repeating the same three soundbites over and over while not actually answering some of the questions he was asked. I’m sure Obama’s supporters were pleased, but I’m just as certain that most of McCain’s supporters probably thought he did great. Early polling though, done of undecideds immediately after the debats, showed that the majority of ordinary Americans thought Obama won and think that he would be a far better President when it comes to the economy and the war in Iraq. Since those are two of the biggest issues right now, this should bode well for Obama. Now on to the Vice Presidential debates.

New Adventures in Bad Parenting: The United States

2008-09-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen a parent with their child in public and thought to yourself, “you know, there really ought to be some sort of qualification for becoming a parent.” It’s the fleeting thought that pops into all of our heads when we see the mother handing her toddler a giant bag of candy, or the dad who’s walking with his son in a harness on a tether, or the couple on the airplane who’s baby won’t stop crying and they keep asking it to shut up. Let’s be honest, raising a child is one of the most important responsibilities a person can have, and yet the prerequisite for having a child (working genitals and sex without protection) are engaged in by everyone, and often disproportionately by people who are irresponsible or, well, dimwitted. All you have to do is look around at the state of our society and watch a little reality television and you’ll see that there are literally billions of people out there who’s parents could have done a better job of raising them.

Obviously, though, every child is different and no parent is perfect, so people can be forgiven for missteps here and there. What can’t be forgiven, though, is physical abuse. “Of course,” you say, but I don’t just mean the parents who drunkenly slap their kid around for 20 minutes because they accidentally spilled their juice box. I mean spanking, hitting, shaking, slapping, even done rarely. Don’t misunderstand me; I completely understand the impulse and can even understand the rationalization. Children can be frustrating and can even be jerks, just like adults, but what is it that every parents tells their child when the child hits someone? “It’s not okay to hit people.” Yet, parents do it all the time.

Even with the recent trends towards time-outs and other more comprehensive strategies, 63 percent of parents still admit to occasionally using corporal punishment against their 1-2 year old children, and even more parents (80 percent) admit to having used corporal punishment on older children. Joe Biden’s father once said, “It takes a small man to hit a small child,” and clearly his avoidance of hitting his children didn’t lead to delinquency and criminal futures. He is not alone.

It’s been proven in numerous studies that children who are disciplined without corporal punishment not only can behave, but often behave better than children who are spanked or hit when they do something wrong. The reason? Well, let me ask you this, rhetorically: how would you respond if your boss slapped you across the face when you screwed up? You’d be shocked, you’d be embarassed, and perhaps those would be enough to make you more cautious in the future. After a short while, though, maybe a few hours or days, you would be furious. You’d be angry, resentful, and would lose respect for your boss. That’s precisely what happens with children and corporal punishment. The immediate fear and pain of being hit corrects their behavior in the short-term, but over time they grow more aggresive and rebellious in response to this treatment, and in the longterm they grow more resentful and distant with their parents which means that they are also less likely to take their parents’ advice and guidance.

Here in the United States, though, it’s become yet another troubling behavior we consider “private,” and as long as the children aren’t showing up to school with bruises or acting unusually aggressive, we don’t do much to stop it. This behavior that’s considered acceptable when done by parents, though, is considered unacceptable when performed by anyone else. Twenty-eight states have banned corporal punishment in schools, and many other local municipalities have done the same nationwide. Of course, in my opinion, it should be a no-brainer that this should be banned in all 50 states, but at the very least it seems clear that most parents would not tolerate anyone hitting their child, unless it is them.

We are behind much of the western world on this issue. Ninety-one countries have banned corporal punishment in all schools, and twenty-three countries have gone so far as to ban corporal punishment everywhere, including in the home. The United States did help to author the United Nation’s ‘Convention on the Right’s of Children’ wihch would, among other things, mandate that government do all they can to protect children from physical and mental violence. In the United Nations, 192 nations have ratified this treaty and only 2 haven’t. Those two? The United States and Somalia. Somalia. Take a second to really let that sink in.

The United States has proven again and again to be opposed to any effort by the UN which would seem to take sovereignty away from the United States, even thought we have could certainly ratify any treaty and then ignore it whenever it encroaches on anything we want to do (hey, we’ve done it before). When it comes to things like the Kyoto accords or the World Court, these arguments can be understood even when they are irresponsible, but how could anyone possibly argue against ratifying a document that would seek to prevent abuse and neglect of children. Most of our laws already adhere to that, and there would be little public resistance to a few more. Two of the arguments made by critics in the United States is that this could infringe upon the ability of the United States to a.) recruit 17-year-olds into the Armed Forces, and b.) prevent the States from using capital punishment on criminals who commit capital crimes while under the age of 18. If that’s the best excuse we have, then the solution is simple. The Army can wait the extra year to get those recruits, which is probably the wise decision since 17-year-olds can be prone to rash or poor decision-making and that our Armed Forces would be benefitted by having recruits who had all completely finished high school and taken the time to consider higher education. As for capital punishment, it too encourages violence in our society and has been ineffective as a deterent to crime, so a ban to prevent capital punishment of people under 18 (which account for only a rare few of those put to death each year). If you need further encouragement, every other country on the planet has banned the death penalty from being used on underage perpetrators except for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia… and The United States. That’s a terrible list to be on, and we should get off of it.

If an adult hits another adult, even something small like a slap, they canbe arrested and charged with a crime. If an adult spanks someone as a punishment, they could be sued. If an adult hits one of their pets, there are often severe legal punishments. All the while, children, least able to defend themselves and least likely (aside from your pets) to report abuse, are left largely on their own. Severe abuse can lead to children being removed and parents being arrested, but more minor transgressions that could find you in a courtroom when performed against an unconsenting adult or animal are ignored or forgiven when performed against a child by his or her own parents.

There needs to be a comprehensive effort to educate the populace, and new parents especially, on ways to discipline children without resorting to violence, even slight physical punishment. They need to be taught that while hitting may seem to correct the problem that it is ineffective over the longterm and will only lead to an escalation of trouble behavior, which will then encourage greater acts of violence against the children. We complain about violence in media, violence in our schools, violence in our culture and yet we still turn a blind eye to the subtle but influential violence in our homes. If education starts at home, we need to start teaching the corporal punishment against anyone, and especially children, is not acceptable.

How to Lose an Election in 5 Easy Steps by John McCain

2008-09-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

1. Change

Change every opinion you’ve ever had. Once will do, but two or three times is even better. If you used to question President Bush’s military strategies, not only embrace them but take them even further and talk about invading Iran. If you voted with the President 95% of the time, pretend that you’re a maverick who will shake up washington. Remember those tactics you denounced in the last election? Not anymore...you love those!

2. Choose

Choose a running mate who is the antithesis of not only your opponent’s running mate, but the antithesis of everything a President should be. If you are opposed to earmarks, find someone who can’t get enough of them. If you are a war hero with decades of experience in Washington, try to find someone who’s rarely left their home state and doesn’t know anything about Government or foreign affairs. It’s best if this person holds the opinions of the majority - especially concerning abortion, the economy, and foreign affairs - in absolute contempt. Bonus points if this person has a hateful personality, little to know understanding of anything, and likes to make bad jokes and lie as much as you do.

3. Cheapen

Cheapen your service to the nation by using it as an excuse for everything. The reason you are out of touch with 95% of the country concerning economic woes? Say it’s because you were a prisoner of war and they didn’t let you have money or read up on mortgage laws while you were being tortured. Imply that your opponent is a traitor who hates the troops to distract from the fact that you want to put them in greater danger and use them as a political shield here at home to avoid having to answer tough questions. You know that thing you did when you got home from the war? You know, public service and government work? Cheapen that service by mocking anyone who believes in helping their community and devoting their lives to public service and call people who work in Washington “out of touch.”

4. Check-out

Try to ignore what’s going on around you. Pay no mind if your strategies are failing. Ignore the fact that the economy that you called “fundamentally strong” is getting worse, and the war you said we are “winning” is getting more violent and precarious. If people try to ask you serious questions, pretend you can’t hear them or don’t understand, and ignore any evidence that the things you say aren’t correct. That brings us to the most important one…

5. Cheat

As much and as often as you can. No, not on your wife, besides, you already did that when you cheated on your first wife with Cindy, then divorced your wife, then married Cindy a month later. No, cheat in the election. Lie about everything - your voting record, what your opponent says, how the media is treating you. Swamp the airwaves with misleading ads. If you can, challenge voter roles in swing states to try and get minorities disenfranchised and encourage last minute changes to voting protocols, like ID cards and rules for early voting, so that poor people and minorities can’t get their votes counted. And did we mention: Lie! Lie so much that even Fox New pundits have no choice but to flat-out call you a liar. Lie like there’s no tomorrow because this is your last chance to bring change to Washington by replacing those corrupt Republicans in the White House with...new and improved - and more corrupt - Republicans! It’s time that America gets the change it deserves: four more years of cronyism, anti-choice judges, tax cuts and deficit spending, moral hypocrisy and contempt for the rest of the world.

Charles Gibson Does His Duty

2008-09-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Much has been made of the media during this campaign season. During any election since the beginning of this nation, the fourth estate has had the ability to shape the debate and even the public perception. At times, they have been complicit in the abuses of the government or have uncovered those abuses and brought down Presidents. The modern news media, though, - running 24 hours a day on the radio, television, internet, and in print; under greater economic pressure than ever to provide returns in viewership and advertising revenue; appealing to a public with lives moving at a faster pace and with shorter attention spans - has often followed stories on a whim of drama rather than importance. During the primaries, the Democrats dominated news coverage because that’s where the exciting horse race was (and no, I’m not calling Barack or Hillary horses, Mr. McCain). Meanwhile, John McCain was given a pass by the media because he had previously been so good to them and because of his compelling story as a war hero and self-declared maverick. Then, when it became clear that he did not wish to run on issues and wanted to run on attacks, the media stopped covering him with such unflinching favor. That’s when John McCain declared war on the media. He claimed that they were “in love” with Senator Obama, and were biased to support him, even at a time when the majority of coverage was more favorable to John McCain.

Every time John McCain leveled an attack on Barack Obama, the media readily reported it, giving his unfounded claims equal weight as Barack Obama’s defense. Still, this was not enough for John McCain. He claimed bias when network news anchors followed Barack Obama around the world while lesser known journalists went with him to a grocery store and German restaurant here in the states. He assumed the bias was towards the candidate, and not towards the fact that one story was interesting and important, and one was boring and mundane. After all this, though, hardly a journalist called him on his vicious attacks, his refusal to talk about issues, or his shameless use of his war record as a deflection to any criticism.
John McCain, though, was not appeased.

So, when he hastily chose his running mate, he expected the media to swoon and give him enough coverage to steal the thunder of Barack Obama’s convention speech. To his horror, the media did what it is meant to do: investigate. They began reporting on Sarah Palin’s record, on her political views, on he lack of experience, and not (as he had hoped) merely on the fact that she was a young and conservative woman. This was the final straw to McCain, and he blamed the media. It was the media’s fault that he didn’t vet his candidate. It was the media’s fault that Sarah Palin had so often contradicted her previous statements. It was the media’s fault that Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy was reported on after Sarah Palin reported it in a press release and then dragged her daughter and fiance on the campaign trail. Yes, this would be the end of the line for the media.

Last Sunday when John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all appeared on the Sunday political shows, Sarah Palin stayed home. They were not going to serve her up for the biased media to attack. Heck, John McCain would have stayed home if not for the fact that he’s trying to become President and the President occasionally has to come out of hiding. This week, though, they thought it might be safe to bring Sarah Palin out and place her in the soft embrace of Charles Gibson. After all the talk from the McCain camp about wanting to control the story, it seemed obvious to everyone that this would not be an in depth discovery. This would be the very model of modern network puff piece. At even the hint of a bold question, the interview would be ended, and ABC would lose it’s access and the ratings that come with it. People began to talk fancifully of the questions they would like to ask, with no belief that any of those questions ever would be.

Charles Gibson, though, is a greater journalist than any of us dared give him credit. As Sarah Palin repeatedly refered to him as “Charlie,” in either an attempt to be folksy, unawareness of the formal nature of such an interview, or in contempt for him and his educated ilk, Charles Gibson calmly and respectfully asked her the serious questions that none of us thought he would.

He began by mentioning that even John McCain could only name two credentials that Sarah Palin had as experience for the Vice Presidency; that she had been commander-and-chief of the Alaska National Guard (which when used for military or foreign service becomes nationalized so she is no longer in charge of them) and that Alaska was relatively close to Russia (and I would suppose Canada, so I don’t know why John McCain never brings that up.) Her response? That her real foreign policy credential is that Alaska has a lot of oil, and energy independence is one of our greatest foreign policy goals. She even stated that 20 percent of our energy comes from Alaska, though I’ll assume she just meant 20 percent of our oil since most of our actual energy comes from coal which comes mostly from the lower 48. What she didn’t seem to understand was that this means that 80 percent of our oil is coming from places other than Alaska, and a lot of those places are overseas, and that means that as long as we depend on oil for energy, we will be unable to meet our own demands through domestic drilling. Actual energy independence would require us a.) conserving more energy, b.) developing new, domestic sources of energy, and c.) developing alternative energy. We can drill all we want, but we’re never going to find all of the oil we need here, and even if we do, we will run out, and then we’ll be stuck again. Real energy independence comes from renewable energy that can be created here by Americans, such as with wind farms, like the ones she opposed in Alaska because it would have cut into demand for Alaska’s oil.

He asked her if she’d ever met a foreign head of state. At first, she said yes, because she’d met people from foreign nations who’d come to discuss issues of trade, for oil. When Charles Gibson prodded her on whether she’d ever met a head of state, and not just a trade representative, that’s when she became defensive. She said that people were sick of the “Washington establishment” with their “fat resumes” who “meet heads of state” because they are part of “closed door, good-old-boy network that has been the Washington elite.” So, let me get this straight… at first she claimed she had met heads of state, showing no sign that she thought something like that was distasteful or elitist. Then, when Charles Gibson called her out on this untruth, she turned it into a negative saying that she didn’t want to meet heads of state because people were sick of those “Washington elite” who spend decades working in the government and meeting with foreign leaders and building up all sorts of experience. That’s not what we want in our next President. We want someone with even less experience than George W. Bush had (please note irony).

Charles Gibson also used one of those dirty, liberal media tricks… telling a person what they’ve already said. Here’s the exchange in question:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said—first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

Well, actually, she did presume because she said the soldiers were on a task from God, which means she presumed it was a task of which God would approve. Rather than answer the question, she tried to make Mr. Gibson out to be the one who was manipulating words. She didn’t want to own up to what she’d said, or even explain it if she actually believed it. She could have easily said “Yes, our boys are doing God’s work in spreading Democracy and saving lives, but no this is not a holy war.” Look, I’m not running for Vice President and yet somehow I was able to come up with an answer that is honest, pleasing to both sides, and doesn’t make me look like a liar.

When asked about the United States getting involved in a conflict between Russia and Georgia, she said we would have to keep an eye on Russia because they attacked Georgia “unprovoked”. ; Charles Gibson, good journalist that he is, questioned this because, no matter what your view on Russia’s intent and the validity of what they did, no one can possibly think that it was completely unprovoked given the fact Georgia had first mobilized their military in South Ossetia, an area with many ethnic Russians and in which Russian peacekeepers were stationed.

Following this, Sarah Palin stated that we have to avoid another Cold War, which according to her assessment was “won” by Ronald Reagan “without a shot fired”. She also thought that Ukraine and Georgia should be added to NATO, and when Charles Gibson asked her if she thought we would then have to enter a war with Russia if they attacked Georgia again, she said:

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

She also suggest diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions. Perhaps she’s confused by the “war” part of “Cold War,” but right there, she described the Cold War. It was us, the United States, placing sanctions on Russia, and using smaller, democratic nations to fight for control of Eastern Europe. That rationale of what “the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries” is precisely what led to our Cold War conflicts, the fear of the domino effect of democracies being attacked.

Then, when asked if she, like John McCain, felt we would have to attack a nuclear Iran, she suggested sanctions and diplomatic pressure. When Charles Gibson pointed out that those are the things we have done and they haven’t worked, she said we “wouldn’t stand for it.”

PALIN: We cannot back off. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe they’re going to have nuclear weapons, what can we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to stand for that.

I hope I’m not the first to say it, but the word “gee” has no place in any discussion of nuclear proliferation. Also, she just said that we shouldn’t be asking ourselves “what can we do about it?” if Iran gets nuclear weapons, which it is already in the process of developing. So, we shouldn’t back down, but we also shouldn’t do anything or consider doing anything? Hmm...gee, that’s real leadership. When she wouldn’t say what she would do, Charles Gibson asked what we should do if Israel were to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. She said “we cannot second guess what Israel has to do to defend itself.” When he asked if this meant we’d support it, she repeated the sentiment. When he asked for clarification, she repeated it again. So, we shouldn’t question it, and because we can’t question it, apparently we wouldn’t have an opinion on it.

He ended by asking Sarah Palin her opinion of the “Bush Doctrine.” First, she didn’t know what it was, despite the fact that it’s been at the center of our foreign policy for the 6 years since he declared it. Then, she thought he just meant “Bush’s world view,” apparently unfamiliar with the historical use of the world “Doctrine” as it involves Presidents and foreign policy. When Charles Gibson stated it, flat-out, that it referred to our right to preemptively invade sovereign nations if we felt our national security was threatened, she swam into a sea of non-answers about how we had to protect ourselves and if we had intelligence and about terrorists hell-bent on destroying America and it’s allies. Here is my favorite part of the evening:

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?

She ended with another non-answer about leaving all options on the table, without a hint of irony since she thinks we should invade any countries we want if we feel threatened, but that Russia shouldn’t invade the country right next to it when it feels threatened by actual troops, not terrorists but troops, on its border. So, once again Sarah Palin, you have lowered my opinion of you. At this point, you’re going to need a shovel to get any lower.

But, Charles Gibson, you have proven yourself a true journalist in my eyes. You didn’t waver, you didn’t cave, you didn’t attack or distort. You did what journalists do: ask questions. You stuck to the facts and you looked for answers and I look forward to seeing you do it again tomorrow unless Sarah Palin’s handlers figure out a way to sneak her out the back tonight.

Absurdities of the Campaign Trail: "Lipstick on a Pig"

2008-09-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

“You know that, because you’re stupid but you’re not stupid, you know what I’m saying?”

Press Secretary C.J. Cregg said that on Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant series, The West Wing, to a reporter who was over eager to distort the facts of a situation to make a good story. It’s one thing to misinterpret or not understand something the way it was meant, but quite another to maliciously distort something by pretending that you didn’t get the meaning. That’s stupid on a whole other level.

This week, the cynical, dirty campaign being waged by the flailing McCain camp did just that because when you can’t win on the issues, you try to change the story. It wasn’t so long ago that a McCain spokesperson said that this wasn’t going to be a campaign about issues but about personality. The problem with that is that Barack Obama has a great personality, which the McCain camp has oft been quick to point out as a flaw because of his “rock star” status and his cult of personality. It is his personality that draws 84,000 people to a stadium in Denver to hear him speak, and to donate record amounts of money in small incrememnts to his campagin. Just the latest in the attacks designed to distort people’s views of his personality, next in line after “elitist” and “presumptuous,” comes from the McCain’s just-launched and Orwellian-named “Palin Truth Squad.”

Today they are attacking Senator Obama for calling Sarah Palin a pig. What’s that you say? “That doesn’t seem at all like something Barack Obama would do, not after saying her family should be off limits and after the clean campaign he has run?” Well, even if you didn’t say that, you should have, because you would be correct. Barack Obama did not call her a pig. Something like that should be pretty obvious though, right? Either someone says “she’s a pig” or they don’t.

What he did say, was this when discussing the McCain campaign’s attempts to paint their ticket as a ticket of change: “You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” Just in case someone wasn’t sure what he was refering to, he continued: “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change.’ Iit’s still gonna stink after eight years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing! It’s time to bring about real change to Washington. And that’s the choice you’ve got in this election.”

He laid it all out right there, he was talking about change, and how saying you’re for change doesn’t mean that there is any substance beneath that veneer. He does that by using folksy colloguialisms, something that George Bush has done repeatedly and which has been credited with winning him support from voters who want their President to seem “just like them.” Could it be that the “Truth Squad” doesn’t know what a colloguialism is? A quick refresher…

A colloguialism is a phrase not used in formal speech or language, and is often meant to convey meaning that is not strictly dictated by the literal interpretation of the phrase. In this case, putting “lipstick on a pig” means to “make the unattractive superficially attractive,” or “to dress up an idea and try to pass it off as something else.” Literally, that while makeup is usually associated with people making themselves more attractive, that when applied to a pig, it would make the pig neither attractive nor a person. It’s a phrase that’s not actually about pigs, but about how tihngs are viewed and about tactics.

So does McCain’s camp not know this colloquialism, or are they playing deliberately dim? For a clue, you need go no farther than McCain himself, who said about Hillary Clinton’s proposed health care plan during the primaries: “I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” No one then thought he was calling Hillary a pig, and certainly he wasn’t intending anyone to. No, John McCain was saying that he thought her “new” health care plan was exactly like her old health care plan that failed to gain support back in 1992. It was an attack on her ideas, not on her physical appearance.

So John McCain is familiar with the expression and how it’s used, as is his former press secretary who used it as the title to a book, “Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No Spin Era.” Clearly the Spin Era isn’t quite over, though, since the “Truth Squad” is now trying to spin Barack’s remarks and turn them into a sexist attack. Speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, former Gov. Jane Swift (who’s last name can’t help but remind you of a certain Swift Boat campaign to distort reality), said that she was certain Barack was calling Sarah Palin a pig because “She’s the only of the four candidates...that wears lipstick.” Let’s follow this trail of logic: the word “lipstick” was in the sentence, Sarah Palin wears lipstick, i.e. the sentence was about Sarah Palin exclusively. She also said that she expected an apology and, if he wasn’t refering to Sarah Palin and was calling John McCain a pig, then he should apologize for that too. I really hope Jane Swift isn’t actually that foolish to think Barack Obama was actually calling anyone a pig and that his reference to lipstick was a reference to a woman, because if so, I worry for the people of Massachusetts who she governed. Just to put an exclamation point on that thought, she also commented that Barack’s reference to wrapping an old fish in a paper called “change” was calling John McCain an “old fish.”

So either the “Truth Squad” is remarkably stupid, or equally malicious, and either way they are not fit for the duty of protecting the truth. This “MiniTruth” of the McCain/Palin campaign should leave the real reporting and investigating to journalists and not paid campaign spinmeisters. One of those journalists pointed out to Jane Swift that McCain had used similar phrases himself, such as when he refered to Gov. Romney’s attacks on him during the primary and stated “Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.” When the journalist asked Jane Swift if she thought Mr. McCain was calling Romney a pig, she said “Of course not.”

Of course not.

Abuses of Power I Can Get Behind: New Zealand

2008-07-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

As reported by the Associated Press, a family court judge in Wellington, New Zealand, has made a nine-year-old girl a ward of the court so that they could change the girl’s legal name against her parents consent. On the surface, this seems like a ridiculous abuse of power and a violation of those parents rights and that girl’s liberty, all of which might actually be true. At the same time, I fully agree with it because of the details of this case, which I will lay out for you in a moment.

In the book “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - an excellent book and an enjoyable read - they devote an entire chapter to the phenomenon of parents giving their children unusual names, and how often those names correspond to that child’s future success in life. Some of the names are just strange or incorrect spellings of common names, and in other cases they are ludicrous names like Moon Unit or Dweezil. Ultimately, through rigorous standards of analysis and compelling argument, they conclude that it is not the name that most affects the child’s future success, but that the intelligence and quality of their parents that both determines their future success and also the quality of their name. A child with well-educated parents will read to them and help them with their homework, while a child with dumb parents will feed them nothing but junk food and name them Yeah Detroit (a real example).
In this case, the New Zealand parents had named their child Talula...not so bad on its own, but wait, there’s more. He legally given name, as chosen by her parents is “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.” Yes, her name is actually a full sentence with a verb, a rhyme, and references to both a dance and a U.S. state.
For reasons of privacy, the last name was not released but there’s not a single name I could think of that would mitigate such an absurd first name, unless it was Rockefeller-Einstein, and then only because the wealthy and famous are often excused from the names they give their children.

A person’s name will follow them for most of their life, and can greatly affect the amount of ridicule they receive during their formative years before they themselves are allowed to change it. For that reason, I think most parents put far too little thought into the naming of their children. They pick something that will sound cute for a baby, or that honors a family member or historical figure, without really considering the fact that this child will have that name for the rest of his or her life presumably, and that it will affect how other people treat them or base their first impressions. When people go out of their way to give the child a name like the one in this case, or other real examples from New Zealand such as “Violence” and “Number 16 Bus Shelter,” that’s not merely a sign of their own need for attention or their own stupidity, it is frankly a form of child abuse. The reason parents have all the legal rights when it comes to their children, and the children have few, is because it is assumed that the parents will have better judgement. In this case, it was the opposite.

The little girl in question hated the name, and was so embarassed by it that she didn’t tell anyone what her real name was, not even her closest friends, and rather than even shortening it, she went by “K.” That’s right, she asked to be addressed by an initial and not even the one that started her name, that’s how much anguish and suffering her birth name brought her. If you were in her shoes, you would probably do the same, because unless you the most beautiful, funny, charming, and smart girl in the world, every other child would mock her real name without mercy or hesitation. In this case, the judge was protecting the girl from the shame and embarassment that her parents were causing her, and was honoring the child’s wishes, two things that I can get behind. When people talk about “activist judges” who interpret laws far beyond the mere letter, I’m reminded that there are so many ways that people can be harmed that no one would ever think to write a law for, and that real judges should be able to follow the spirit of laws when the actual laws are lacking.

Under the laws of New Zealand, Name Registration officials must reject names that would cause offense to reasonable people, such as curse or derogatory words. A name like “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii” is offensive to me, not because of what it says, but because of what it does. It hurts this little girl who has spent nine years of her life ashamed or her own name, something that defines us in many ways. While I believe that its a precarious slope when courts are taking away the decision-making rights of parents, this is inarguably a case in which the courts did exactly the right thing and, possibly, should look into whether these parents can be trusted to raise a child. If the first and most basic decision was so disastrously wrong, chances are they’ve been making a lot of other terrible decisions when it comes to this child.

West Wing Fantasy Camp: Things I'd Like to See Under a New Administration - #5

2008-07-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

#5: Poll Meets Body

This November, we will stand up and be counted. Though we often speak of our Democratic values, and though we live in a Democracy, our nation is a Republic. Though rule is by the will of the people, the people rarely get to make decisions directly. Most of the time, those decisions are made by the elected representatives of the people, who are devoted to doing the work of the people in their stead while the people live their lives. It is a noble system, and though flawed, has seen no greater alternative in the modern world.

Since the people are not voting on every bill, every act, every decision, it is vitally important that their votes for candidates be counted accurately because the winner of the election will essentially hold the voting power of all their constituents for a number of years. Unfortunately, even in our great democratic republic, voting irregularities happen far too frequently, as well documented in the 2000 Presidential election, and to a lesser extent in the 2004 Presidential election and other state and local elections. After those problems arose, several actions were taken to improve the system nationwide, including the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002. Of course, problems still exist and it is vitally important that this issue not be forgotten, because even though we face war, economic strife, global climate change, and other serious issues, all of those issues are affected by the outcomes of our elections.

In the Presidential election of 2000, had the Supreme Court not put a stop to the recount in Florida, Al Gore would have become President, and the state of our nation and global affairs would be vastly different. Regardless of politics, though, the more troubling affect of this problem is that even if the will of the people is done and the right candidate wins, voting irregularities call into question the legitimacy of our elected officials and thus create divisions in our society and corresponding instability. If people believe our elections are rigged or manipulated, it destroys faith in the system, discourages voter turnout, and adversely affects the health of our democracy.

If our nation is truly to be of the people, by the people, and for the people, then surely it is necessary that we make sure the people are involved and accurately represented. At present only around 70 percent of eligible voters are even registered to vote, and often these numbers are disproportionate based on age, race, and region. The number one priority should be to get more people involved in our democracy. The so-called Moter Voter bill helped to make voter registration easier for many Americans, but more should be done, including voter registration drives, voter education campaigns, and actively going into schools and communities to register voters. In addition, there should be greater efforts on the part of communities to inform voters of when and where elections take place, and provide non-partisan information on the candidates running and the process of voting. If we can get millions of people to a blockbuster movie on opening day with ads a year in advance, surely we can get them to their local polling place for a few minutes on election day.

Despite 70 percent of eligible voters being registered, only approximately 45-65 percent of eligible voters turn up to vote, with midterm elections and local elections attracting far fewer voters than Presidential elections. That means that if a candidate wins with 51 percent of the vote, they only have the confirmed support of 25-30 percent of the adult population. That’s not a mandate or rule by the majority, it is hardly even a victory. Not only do people need to be informed about elections and encouraged to go, but obstacles to their voting need to be removed. Many people are discouraged by having to wait in long lines at their polling places for an hour or more due to a shortage of voting machines and qualified personnel. Some people lack transportation to their polling place. Both of these problems can be remedied through drives for volunteers, and through an investment in in election infrastructure. Employers should also be encouraged to give employees paid time off to vote during the work day.

Its not simply a matter of getting more people out to vote, though. Each state and each precinct may follow slightly different protocols and use different voting equipment. Voter databases often contain errors, and don’t always track when people move or when felons return to society and are supposed to have their voting rights restored. Some ballots have a confusing or misleading layout, while many electronic voting methods have security flaws or lack a meaningful method for recounts. Add to this the confusion caused by early voting which often means that those voting early are basing their choice on more limited information than those voting on election day, and the fact that absentee ballots are more likely to be tampered with, can be lost in transit, and in some precincts are not even counted unless a recount is ordered or election results are narrow.

There needs to be a nationwide move to overhaul the system, making sure that all precincts have enough equipment and equipment of the highest caliber. There also needs to be better fraud prevention and election monitoring, and greater standardization of how elections are run in each state so that a person voting in Alabama has the same ease and security as a person voting in Washington state, and that all votes are equally accurate. On top of this, its necessary to discourage fraud by actively investigating and prosecuting it when it happens. All of this seems like common sense, and yet it is not being aggressively pursued, and the health of our democracy is suffering for it.

First and foremost, we must have a system for elections that is beyond reproach. We must then inform our citizenry through every means we have, in every medium, and with regularity on everything from how to register, how to vote, and when votes are scheduled. At school, at work, and in the public sphere, people should be encouraged to follow election politics and make the effort to inform themselves and go vote. There should be an easily accessible and nationwide voter database regularly updated so that no one who is eligible is ever prevented from voting, and so that when they arrive at their polling place they are able to do so with no difficulty. Each polling place should have the most secure and accurate voting machines available, and enough to meet the needs of their populace, so that lines are short and waits minimal, allowing people to vote at their leisure during their busy lives. They should be encouraged to vote in person on election day unless absolutely necessary to vote absentee, and then those votes need to be counted and protected from fraud. Additionally, there must be election monitors and trained personnel at every polling place to ensure everything is handled properly and efficiently, and if any irregularities appear or dirty tactics are used to discourage people from voting, they need to be aggressively investigated.

All of this will require money, dedicated people, and the leadership of a new President, untainted by shady politics. None of this is beyond our capability, and if we truly wish to model Democracy for the rest of the world, this is where it must begin.

West Wing Fantasy Camp: Things I'd Like to See Under a New Administration - #4

2008-07-21T16:13:00.000-07:00

#4: Fourth Estate of Mind

Much has been made about the state of our press. Even in the time of Jefferson, newspapers were often thought of as sensationalist exploiters and manipulators, more concerned with circulation than verification. Despite all its faults, though, even these detractors knew that when the press was at its best it was the most effective means of uncovering and disseminating information to the public. So valued was this capability that it was protected in the First Amendment to the Constitution, often thought of as the highest ideal of American Freedom.

Though the medium has changed, its value has not. Radio, television, blogs, all of them have added to the forms through which the press operates. 24 hours a day their eyes are watchful, always looking for the cracks that need exposing. Often thought of as the fourth branch of our government, they serve as a check on not only our politicians, but on every facet of our society.

That is, of course, when they are at their best. To cast such a wide net, to cover so much area and so much information, requires a wealth of diligence, funding, and personnel. As such, corners are cut and costs considered. Some stories go uncovered and others oversimplified to make for easier marketing, and always, information is not just the product but is proprietary: the means to making money. In this competitive landscape where the scoop, the exclusive, is what stands between excellence and the also-rans, access is valued like solid gold.

Reporters know that to be successful, they have to be on the inside. Politicians and celebrities have used that to their advantage, opening their doors to those who offer favorable coverage and closing the doors to those that don’t. Nowhere is this more pronounced and more concerning is in the White House. This administration has been notorious for their manipulation of the press corp, keeping them always at arms length and providing exclusives to only the softest of inquisitors.

The results are obvious. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, the press was complicit in perpetrating a fraud on the American people. Each justification for war was covered without critical examination, a trend that since September 11th had followed the notion that you cannot question your Commander-in-Chief in times of war and still be called a patriot. For this reason, the majority of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD, that he’d colluded with Al Qaeda in planning those terrorist attacks on our soil, and that diplomacy had been exhausted. With this public support, George Bush steamrolled the Congress and took us into an unnecessary and detrimental war that we have still not completed. So effective was the press’s complicity that even after all those statements had been proven false, most of the public still believed it.

Things have improved somewhat since then, but the fact is that the press, in order to do its job effectively, needs unfettered access and opportunity. A new President can improve both the image of his office and the state of our press by treating them not as a hostile opponent, but as a necessary and valuable conduit to the American people; not just as a means to convey a message but as a voice for the people to power. Instead of merely sending the Press Secretary to hold the press at bay, the President should meet regularly with press to take questions and discuss issues. These press conferences shouldn’t be held only when the President has some initiative to put forward, but at regular intervals so that he is always aware of what matters are important to his constituents and so that the press can always ask what it needs to ask.

The President should also use his time with the media to discuss policy and matters of public importance, and not as opportunities to promote their own public image. If the only question that will be asked is what they are doing for the holidays or which team they are rooting for, that time can be better spent. Above all, the President should not pick and choose who gets access by who gives favorable coverage. If a journalist is responsible, is diligent in seeking the truth, and honest in their reporting, then they should be given access.

It can no longer be acceptable to treat responsible journalists as purveyors of bias, or to demand that all sides of an argument be given equal weight regardless of veracity. When the media is treated as the enemy, the quality of reporting will suffer, and irrespective of whether the truth is told, the public will not believe them. A new administration must work with the press; not around them or coercively with them. Just as our government works best when all three branches are at full strength, so too must the fourth estate be allowed to serve its function, so that in all respects the truth may keep us free.

West Wing Fantasy Camp: Things I'd Like to See under a New Administration - #3

2008-07-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

#3: Trump Le Monde

For now, the United States is the richest country in the world. For now, these United States are the most powerful nation in the world. For now, this country is the sole superpower. However, these often criticized and sometimes disputed superlatives aren’t permanent. With the decline of the dollar, the rise of China, and our overall loss of status in the global community, its not long before we are just one of many wealthy and influential nations bucking for advantage in an overcrowded field. How do we stop from being yesterday’s news, the “once was” or “used to be” of foreign affairs?

Prior to World War II, the United States wasn’t the unequaled powerhouse that we have taken for granted it should be. We had a great deal of influence in the world, but much of the world was still run by Old World powers holding sway across multiple continents. Our economy was in depression, and there were still strong political, ethnic, racial, gender, and financial divisions amongst our citizenry. Trade was imbalanced and many in the United States were happy to ignore the rest of the world’s troubles after the toll it had taken during The Great War.

Needless to say, even then the world was shrinking, and the trouble’s of foreign shores were to wash onto ours regardless of our feelings. Though it took convincing, the United States stepped out. Within only a few years, our mediocre military was built into an unrivaled force with hundreds of thousands of airplanes, armadas of warships, and well armed and armored soldiers from every walk of life. While fighting a war on two major fronts, across three continents and the air and sea around them, our country rallied its industries to supply the war effort. When the war ended, not only did our country have greater internal unity and identity, but our nation had been turned from an isolationist one in economic depression to the rich and powerful savior of world democracy.

With post-war Europe in ruins, and much of the world in post-colonial transition, the United States took the lead in International Affairs. We helped to create the United Nations, and the Marshall Plan provided funds to rebuild Europe, funding which was never expected to be repaid. In the ensuing cold war, we provided financial aid around the world to protect allies from the influence of the USSR and destabilizing effects of poverty. For a time, our help was appreciated and helped to reorder the world so much so that even our former enemies Germany and Japan could grow into competitive economic powers.

During the cold war, though, with each passing year a greater percentage of our money was spent on our arsenal of advanced weapons and less was spent in foreign aid, and even that was often given for military defense and to countries that were most important strategically against the Soviets. In the past 40 years, of even the money we’ve promised in foreign aid, we’ve delivered less than 50 percent. As of last year, 2007, the United States gave out 21 billion dollars which is twice as much as the next on the list, Germany; but in terms of a percentage of our Gross National Income, we are well at the bottom of the list of western democracies. As Germany gives 11 billion in foreign aid, that amounts to 3 times as much as us in terms of GNI. Nations such as Norway which have much less money than the United States still give a larger percentage than the United States.

Clearly, its not merely an issue of how much we give, but where our priorities lie. When only .16 percent of the money we have goes to help foreign nations, it demonstrates a disregard for the rest of the world’s problems, which in time will become our problems. Right now, both our military and financial assets are tied up in two major wars, one greatly necessary and the other of both questionable motive and execution. Had we not undertaken the war in Iraq, major combat operations may have been completed in Afghanistan, and our assets would be free to tackle other problems in the world. While our focus has been on these two nations, political unrest has continued in South America and Africa; genocide has been allowed to occur in violation of stated goals of the United Nations; North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and elsewhere nuclear weapons have been allowed to proliferate; and countless people around the world have been exploited by the very nations that wish to usurp our position atop the International hierarchy.

Change is coming, and we are not prepared for it. As we’ve seen, strife elsewhere in the world will reach our shores, and though we cannot always fight our enemies “over there,” we certainly must stem the problems where they arise because they will become our problems later when it is far more costly in resources and lives to fix it. We must increase our diplomatic presence in other nations, specifically in those we think of as hostile. We must develop a foreign policy approach that uses the might of our force to encourage discussion rather than to force our will at the barrel of a gun. Economic resources must be used to help impoverished nations enter the global marketplace without exploiting their own people, and so that all people of the world can be fed and educated to be responsible world citizens. With other powerful nations, we have to coordinate our influence and resources to bring rogue nations to the light to prevent conflict.

This requires a variety of tactics and approaches, but mostly it requires the kind of leadership and goodwill that was evident after World War II. A greater amount of aid must be given to foreign countries, and allocated not just for defense or to countries that serve our own national interest. It is to our advantage that nations not wallow in poverty, because those nations become breeding grounds for extremism. It is to our advantage that nations have the financial resources to improve their infrastructure, because then they will be able to build their own economy and provide us with new markets. It is also to our advantage that developing nations have the wealth to undertake costly improvements such as building rail lines and renewable power plants, because relying on their own coal and oil will lead to greater damage to our own environment.

We need to take charge globally again, and not in the way we have been in the recent past. The United States needs to take the lead on climate change, on human rights, on nuclear disarmament, on democratic and economic reforms, and most certainly on matters of international cooperation. In addition to greater and better-designated financial aid, we also need to work with our allies to provide people on the ground in areas to assist in peacekeeping operations, public works projects, and in election monitoring. Step one of this whole process should be a national effort to increase participation in and funding of the Peace Corps and other organizations that provide targeted assistance outside our borders. Though our image has been tarnished, it is the Americans digging wells and building literal bridges that remind the world that we are the good guys.

West Wing Fantasy Camp: Things I'd Like to See under a New Administration - #2

2008-07-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

#2: Won’t Get Schooled Again

Education can be the silver bullet. It’s the rising tide that lifts all boats. It’s the “opportunity” proceeding our “land of.” We have made great strides in this country, from an agrarian society with limited and localized education, to a system in which every child is not only able but required to have years of free education, and then the opportunity to go to colleges and universities which are the envy of much of the world. An educated populace is more engaged in elections, is better equipped to find well-paying jobs, is better able to create and develop new technologies and ideas, and less likely to turn to crime or fanaticism.

Yet, with each passing year, our student’s test scores, knowledge, and competitiveness decline. It’s an international punchline how little most Americans know about the rest of the world, or even our own history. Jay Leno makes hay of it on his mediocre talk show as each person laughs at someone who’s, frankly, no dumber than they are. Are American’s inherently dumber?

No, of course not. We are just as smart, just as clever, and even with our educational system in disarray we still spearhead some the greatest innovations in technology, entertainment, and science. The troubling signs of our diminishing returns, though, is all around us. People from around the globe used to flock to the United States to be educated and work in our superior industries.

Now, they flock elsewhere, and the American economy struggles as innovation declines. The best new cars are being designed in Japan, the biggest scientific breakthroughs coming out of Europe, and profitable green technologies being advanced almost anywhere but here. We’ve become a nation of the status quo. Where once we reached for the stars, we now strive to simply pass muster. No matter what it may say on the report cards we write, we are a nation of C students.

Is it any wonder, though? The base education of our populace, the foundation upon which all future character and knowledge is formed, is paid for with a paltry 70 Billion Dollars by the federal government, and then supplemented by local taxes which, in many of the poorest areas amount to very little. Compare this to the 500 Billion Dollars which we spend on defense, which then ends up being much higher when additional appropriations are added throughout the year, especially in this time of war. Of course, it is necessary to defend our freedoms and our country, but what kind of country is being left behind?

Money is not enough, however, to fix this problem. It takes commitment, and a real understanding of what is necessary. Tens of thousands of dollars are being spent per student, but much of that money and much of our classroom time is being mishandled and misappropriated. George W. Bush tried to make a symbolic move on the issue, back when he misleadingly labeled himself the “education President” before labeling himself even more misleadingly a “war Presdient.” The so-called “No Child Left Behind” law placed school districts under increased pressure to achieve on standardized tests or face a loss of already low funds. In return, the Bush administration didn’t even pay to fund the initiative.

So what is necessary? A lot. Firstly, a massive reorganization of the way schools are funded and held accountable. Money needs to go to educational necessities first and foremost, not to new sports equipment or administrator salaries. While sports and extra curricular activities are an important part of education, they shouldn’t get funding priority or Algebra and History. There needs to be greater involvement at the federal level to help insure that schools can collectively pool their resources when possible, and that there is not disparity between the education received in a rich district versus a poor one.

The solution to this last problem offered by the Republican party as been something called “school-vouchers.” Essentially, this would allow some students to receive money from the government to go towards paying for a private education if their public school is lacking. Where would this money come from?
Well, it would come out of the education budget, meaning that these students would be leaving their schools for supposedly greener pastures, and their former classmates would now have less money for their own educations. The problems, of course, are that this system would benefit only a few at the detriment of others; a sick reversal of the American ideal. Also, this assumes that private education is better, and while private schools tend to have smaller class sizes and better order, the education they provide is comparable to public education as far as test results go. Finally, due to the nature of the free market that these same Republicans think can solve all problems, as more students try to attend these private schools, demand for the limited spots will become greater and tuition will rise accordingly, meaning that these vouchers may not cover the costs and, if they do, will cost the government even more money that they will take away from public education.

So, we need to focus on repairing the system, and not on providing an out for only a few students. Another major step that needs to be taken is improvement in education infrastructure. Some schools end up sending children home early when it gets too cold in the winter or warm in the spring, all because they don’t have proper heating and air conditioning. Student projects are hindered by a limited and outdated library, or a lack of computers in the classrooms. Poorly maintained facilities also create an environment in which students feel like school is unimportant, boring, or just another obstacle to be waited through.

Once the buildings are better, they need to be filled with proper educators. Many teachers in our public school system don’t have degrees in the subjects they are teaching, and some teachers who have lost their effectiveness remain in place. The reason for this lowered standard is that there are too few people going into the field, and the reason for that is that educators are paid too little. A person who’s good in math would make more as a financial analyst than as a geometry teacher, so why would they choose the latter? Teaching positions should be highly valued and highly competitive. They should receive the respect of Generals and they pay of Wall Street traders. The best and the brightest should be recruited to pass on that knowledge and skill to the next generation.

In addition, there should be greater opportunity for all people, regardless of income, to further their education beyond high school. Publicly financed colleges and post-graduate schools should be available to those with limited financial means. The impoverished will always remain impoverished when they can’t get jobs that require a college degree without taking on massive loans that they may not be able to repay.

This will take guts, and the strong leadership that only a President can provide for this nation. Someone bold and brave enough to suggest seemingly radical ideas, such as year-round schooling, which would also take the financial burden off of parents who work during the summer and have to pay for child care. Lengthening the school day, so that more subjects can be taught in greater depth, rather than rushed in half-hour installments between gym, lunch, and assemblies. There should also be a greater focus on Socratic teaching methods that encourage students to explore, discuss, and tackle issues on their own rather than simply memorizing dates and facts for a standardized test; facts and dates that will soon be forgotten without any broader understanding.

It's time for a revolution in American education, to make us not only competitive, but the envy of the world. Other countries should look to our system for emulation. With a better educated populace, our industry and economy would again become dominant in this quickly changing global society, and here at home, we wouldn’t have to overcome the constant challenge of a divided political system where the weak and dumb can be tricked into voting for things with easy and comforting lies. If you need proof, look up the number of people who still believe Barack Obama is a muslim despite constant rebuttal, or that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attacks on September 11th despite all evidence to the contrary, or the shocking number of people who still believe that the universe is only 6,000 years old and science is somehow contrary to faith.

West Wing Fantasy Camp: Things I'd Like to See under a New Administration - #1

2008-07-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

#1 (not in order of priority): Stand by Your American Indian

They crossed the African continent, following game to cooler climes. Their skin lightened and hair straightened to absorb more UV light in the northern hemisphere where it was both colder and less sunny. They walked across Asia, and a land bridge to the Americas, and spread far and wide, winning the distinction of being here first. Native Americans, American Indians, Eskimos, Pacific Islanders… a group composed of many nations, tribes, cultures, ethnicities, having one thing in common: they were here first, and we screwed them over.

This isn’t white man’s guilt, its just fact. Whenever possible, European settlers pushed them aside, made war, spread disease, or simply made deals and treaties with no intention of keeping them. After all that, how much recognition are they given? They are taught about in broad strokes in elementary schools, they are sepia-toned in our films, they are sometimes fetishized or caricatured in our culture, and to what end? Though once numbering in the millions, in total, all of these groups make up less than 2% of our total population, and much of that is so spread out and integrated into the rest of our society, that truly cultural American Indians make up only a few hundred thousand of our 300 million population.

We pushed them west, we traded them trinkets for acres of valuable land, we forced integration upon them, or encouraged our worst traits. Then, finally, when we outnumbered them in population, in land, in weapons, in wealth, we decided… sure, you can be a sovereign nation. So, on the worst land, with few resources, we let them govern what was left of their nations with financial handouts - growing smaller all the time - from Uncle Sam.

What was left to govern? While the United States unemployment rate wavers around 5 or 6 percent in times of sluggish growth, the unemployment rate on reservations tends to be more like 50 or 60 percent. Water is scarce, because most of the natural sources of water are already tapped by the federal government, and electricity or industry of any kind is sparse. This impoverished existence leads to increased rates of alcohol abuse, and by extension crime, and thus, even more hardship. Within a generation or two, many traditions will be lost, and some native languages will disappear.

So, where am I going with this? Consider this: the war in Iraq has, thus far, cost us about 500 billion dollars in deficit spending. Add to that the cost of lost productivity due to so many of our resources being stretched overseas rather than put to use in the United States. On top of that, add the billions of dollars continuing to be spent in Afghanistan, a war that very well could have been wrapped up by now if not for our disastrous diversion to Iraq. Add the lost GDP of the plunging American Economy due to our mishandling both these wars and our interactions with other nations. Think about the destruction we’ve caused and how much we are spending to rebuild countries that we have torn apart.
For a fraction of that cost, we could be rebuilding a country right within our own borders. Every dollar that we give to Halliburton or other private contractors to - slowly - build schools, roads, and power stations in Iraq could be spent with greater efficiency building vital infrastructure on reservations in the United States. Roads, power lines, water pipes, schools, homes and farms… the basics for a people to lift themselves out of poverty when they no longer have to spend all of their time figuring out how to scrape through another day.

It’s not sexy, it’s not bold, it’s not great politics, but it is valuable. The world views Americans as culturally devoid, as people who demolish their history for a bright, new shopping center. I disagree, but I also think that there is something for us to gain in protecting the heritage of our nation, of the people who came before, and the diversity that exists within our borders. Think what could be possible if Reservations could raise money not through casinos but through cultural tourism, unique Universities, or green industries.

We have so many challenges to face, so much work to be done, so many mistakes to overcome in this coming administration. My hope is that amid the chaos of war and the tumultuous economy, that we won’t forget the debts we owe - the responsibilities we still have - to the people that we stepped on, and then stepped over. These aren’t people that need handouts, or pity, or special privilege. What they do need, and what we would benefit from, is real effort and cooperation to help them help themselves. If the sons of former slaves can become billionaires and politicians, then why shouldn’t the people who were here long before most of us be able to have their own sustainable society without becoming ours.

Is It Getting Hot in Here?

2008-06-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

Friday, Senate Republicans once again demonstrated tremendous foresight by blocking a bill that would have required fairly major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They did so with a filibuster, the very thing that just a few years ago they called a threat to our Democracy because when they were in the majority it was used so effectively to prevent them from doing whatever they wanted. However, the tables have turned and now the filibuster doesn't seem like such a bad thing, so they pulled it out of retirement to delay our already lagging action on global climate change until next year when the Democrats may have an even larger majority and will certainly have a more receptive Executive.

Why, though, does such a large contingent of the Republican Party, and a few Democrats, drag their feet on such an important issue? A simplistic view would be that these restrictions would raise the cost of business for companies that donate money to the campaigns of many Republicans. As satisfying as that might be to think, it is not accurate or at least not complete. This party which often espouses the superiority of the free market is sadly behind the curve here. Many of the largest corporations in the United States are already investing in so-called "green" technologies and strategies, and benefiting from them.
Toyota, a company that at one time was a joke in America next to the behemoth of General Motors, has seen its market share and reputation shoot to the top thanks in large part to their Prius and other hybrid vehicles, while GM and other American companies are falling behind worldwide because their vehicles can't meet the tighter emissions restrictions of foreign countries. At a time when gas prices are doubling, then doubling again, energy efficiency is not merely trendy, it is financially necessary. This week, Chevy announced its official plans to release the Chevy Volt electric vehicle in 2010, just a little over a decade after GM sabotaged its first electric car.

At the recent Wakefern biennial, the keynote speaker addressed the crowd of executives from ShopRite and Wakefern's other properties about the financial benefits of "going green" to great applause. The often attacked giant WalMart lowered its energy costs in some stores with as little investment as adding doors to their refrigerated displays of milk and dairy. New architecture takes greater advantage of natural light where possible and water reclamation to cut costs to the companies occupying those buildings, sometimes by as much as half.

The economic benefits of using less carbon are clear. If you want to look at the big picture, combating global warming will save us future health care costs and increased food prices as more droughts occur. For once, though, social responsibility and selfishness can come together. Using less energy means less carbon into the atmosphere, but it also means less money spent on energy. Creating eco-friendly products can cost more to produce, but the "green" label can justify a premium price which increasingly eco-conscious consumers will pay for. Multi-billion dollar companies have already discovered that doing right by the environment will also increase their profits and cut their overall costs.

So, again, why do many Republicans fight it? The free market is already rewarding companies that cut their carbon emissions voluntarily, and mandatory regulations could create long-term savings for the companies that are more reluctant to undertake such an effort. The problem is that our stock-ticker corporate culture places a premium on the here-and-now; on what the stock price is today and not what it will be in a year. No matter how much it may save later, many companies don't want to spend money now to change the way they do business, especially when a sudden change in economic fortunes could wipe out their market share. It is not enough for them to remain profitable. They want to maximize profits, which includes not spending money on carbon reclamation efforts. With these maximized profits, they have money and influence to throw around in Washington and elsewhere.

Public perception of this issue has already turned, in large part thanks to the efforts of notable celebrities, responsible companies, and Al Gore whose unlikely documentary became a box-office success. The average person, and especially the well-informed, recognize the danger posed by climate change. More to the point, though, people realize that whether or not this is caused by man or poses an immediate danger, that being environmentally responsible has real benefits not just to polar bears and the rainforest, but to us. The estimated 5-year cost for gasoline for a Hummer or similar vehicle is now equal to or greater than the initial cost of the car itself, and that's based at today's gasoline prices which will surely only go up. Farmers who rent out unused land for to energy companies to build wind turbines can get upwards of $20,000 a year in return. Homeowners who place solar panels on their roof can now sell the excess energy they collect but don't use back to the power company. Carbon-based energy becomes more expensive by the day. Renewable energy is a pay-day to anyone willing to take it.

This bill that was prevented from coming to a vote would have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent by mid-century. Most international scientists agree that we have to cut our emissions in half by 2050 to prevent irreversible damage to the environment. Had we passed this bill, it would have shown that the United States was a leader on this issue, that we were serious about combating a problem that we are largely responsible for, and it would have made us economically competitive with the rest of the world in new sustainable technologies. Instead, the buck has been passed to another Congress, another term, another election year.

The public wants change. Many companies are already making a change. When legislators block such progress, they cease to be leaders and become mere obstacles. The public is leading, and it's time that the Republican Party catch up.

The Feminist Dilemma

2008-06-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Certainly it was about time. This year marked the first time that a female politician had been a serious challenger for the Presidency of the United States. Certainly, other women had run in the past with varying degrees of success. In the case of Hillary Clinton, however, there was not merely strong support for her candidacy, but for a time it was considered a foregone conclusion that she would be the Democratic candidate and very likely would be elected. It was a momentous event, a triumph of progressive values, and, many would say, about time.

For all of the United States' reputation as a land of opportunity, long established but oft-embellished, we were late to this party. Many other Democracies around the world have already elected women to the highest offices in the land, including roughly a dozen presently serving in such posts, and there have historically been many successful female sovereigns. What took us so long?

There have been many hindrances to the advancement of women politically, from the historical to the religious to the biological. Slowly but surely, however, women have made greater advancements socially than politically. There was a time when women were thought not to have the constitution to lead, at least not outside the home or over men. Time and time again, though, women demonstrated that not only could they take charge but that they did so quite successfully. Presidents and Kings were aided by wives who often showed greater sense than they, and while some men went to war or to find their fortune, women handled everything from the education of children to running the finances of family businesses. Long before they had the right to vote, women were an active part of the political process and often essential in helping men to be elected.
While the men made themselves kings, women made inroads everywhere. Finding employment, gaining position in social organizations, building communities. Despite lingering inequities, women make up the majority of students at many Universities, they are CEOs of companies, and are Senators and Governors. Still, though, despite all evidence to the contrary, many people of both genders thought that the idea of a woman as President was nice but unsound.

Yet, when Hillary Clinton first campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate, people spoke about it being a first step towards a Presidential run with hardly a consideration of her gender. People spoke about her qualifications, her drive, her political machinations, but not her gender. She was berated for being too liberal by pundits and being too calculating by liberals, but by and large the talk was not about whether a woman should be President. It was an inevitability that had not merely come but was, in fact, overdue.

Had it been any other year and any other slate of candidates, it would have been a done deal. Frustration with the political establishment, specifically the Republican party and the Bush administration, however had left the populace not merely hungry but desperate for change. This was a year where people were willing to reach far to the other end of the spectrum for something new, something drastic, and that would have been a great time for a woman running for President, but this time another political underclass was being represented. No argument can be made about who's more oppressed or more deserving culturally, but as the son of a black father, Barack Obama was also a milestone candidate. Add to that his eloquence, ability to build a grassroots organization from the ground up, and the fact that he was not considered part of the "establishment" like a Clinton would be, and suddenly her forgone conclusion was a jumping of the gun.

It would be cynical to think that people based their primary votes entirely on her gender and his race, but all other things being equal, it was certainly a factor for everyone including African-Americans and women. That being said, no one thought that their candidate should be chosen because it was time that we had either a black or female president. However, as the campaigns waged and waned, and as the optimism of the spirited debate turned to the diatribes of punditry, the idea of "sexism" came into the conversation.

Racism and sexism both still exist in our society, arguably in a more subtle way that we are often not conscious of, but in this race a vote for one candidate came to symbolize a rejection of either women or black people. With the tide turning against her, Hillary Clinton often commented that the attacks against her by the media or by other politicians were sexist. While this was certainly sometimes true, it demonstrated a certain unintended consequence. Mud is always slung in Presidential races, especially by 24 hour news channels looking to fill time, but since all of the candidates tended to be men, there could be no bias of gender. With Hillary, a conundrum existed; to treat her harshly could be sexist, to treat her more lightly would also be.
Feminism is rooted in the idea that women should be empowered, with the idea that as the equals of men they should not be ashamed to act it. Hillary certainly fit this ideal, and always acted the equal of men. While some of the barbs thrown at her might have contained language against her gender, the question remains of whether it was unequal to the kind of assaults launched at male candidates. More importantly, though, by saying that she was losing because some voters are sexist is, in itself, sexist. In essence, she is saying that her gender is her defining characteristic, so a rejection of her as a candidate must be a rejection of her gender as a candidate.

All, however, is semantic. Even Hillary Clinton knows that her success or victory cannot fall squarely on whether Americans remain more sexist or more racist. This election has demonstrated that a tipping point has been reached where inequality is not the guaranteed state of affairs. Though it may often occur, black people and women are not necessarily always discriminated against, and in fact may be treated equally in the majority of cases. As such, proclamations that it's time a woman be President then become sexist, because it assumes that gender is more important in the decision than character. Many Clinton supporters have lamented that they won't be witness to the first woman in the Presidency, but it betrays that feminist ideal of true equality to think that a woman in the office should be rated differently than a man. Though it may in fact be a milestone, the truly feminist argument would be that the best candidate should win, regardless of gender, so that therefore it shouldn't matter whether the President-to-be should be a man or a woman. To treat it as a special event, or one that should be fought for above alternatives because the candidate is a woman, disregards that ideal in favor of symbolism.

Hillary Clinton's political career is certainly not over, and she very well may one day be in this position again, and make it to the White House. Hopefully, in that time, the focus will not be on whether she is the best woman to be the first female President, but whether she is the best candidate to be Commander-in-Chief.

Life is Weird, etc, etc.

2008-03-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

Despite being a reasonable person, I still am often optimistic beyond reasonable expectations, which probably explains why I thought that John Kerry would win in the last Presidential election. "Certainly," I said, "President Bush's remarkably low approval rating will encourage voters to pick the other guy." "And of course," I continued, "all of those kids who go to those war protests and write angry blogs will be motivated and turn out record numbers of young people to vote for John Kerry." "And really," I concluded, "you couldn't possibly vote for a silver-spoon duty-dodger over a thrice-medaled war veteran and honest-to-god hero!"

Of course, on all of those counts, I was wrong. I didn't take into account the fact that while people love to complain, very few people ever do anything about it. I also negelected to imagine the sheer number of wild smear campaigns that Bush supporters would enact against John Kerry, most notably the swift-boat bs, nor did I realize how many people would fall for something so stupid and factually inaccurate. And I didn't take into account the voter fraud and irregularities that would occur in swing states like Ohio. Oh, and I nearly forgot, people care more about abortions and gay marriage - which the Republicans love to talk about but never want to act on for fear of losing the issue and because the majority of Americans are on the other side of those issues - than about the safety of our country or the health of our economy for the common person.

It is this same unthinking optimism that has me believing that not only can Barack Obama beat a Clinton - second only to the Bush's as far as modern political dynasties go - but that an African-American son of an immigrant and product of an inter-racial marriage who spent much of his youth outside of the continental United States and has an unusual name that reminds people of villians...will become our next President. It makes perfect sense to me that he will win. Why wouldn't he? He's on the right side of all the issues. He has integrity. He's honest. He inspires with his words and impresses with his dignity. He appeals to our better angels and not our basest fears. Not to mention, he's just plain cool. You'll never catch him doing a tap dance on the steps of the White House like George Bush, or doing some terrible Sopranos spoof like Hillary Clinton. Why wouldn't people vote for him?

Of course, if I can tap into future Chris' consciousness...for the same reasons they never vote for the good guy. Because, in this coming year, and starting already, people will convince them of things that aren't true simply by saying them. Fox News says he went to a Muslim school. It doesn't matter that within a half-hour every news source in the world, Fox News included, debunked that story. People heard it, and they only remember the first part, not the retraction. The majority of voters in the south believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Why? I don't even think there was ever a news story claiming it was true, not even from Fox Noise (thanks, Keith). But they heard he's got a funny name and collectively all decided he was probably a Muslim. Not that it should matter, either, but it's ridiculous since the same people who won't vote for him because they think he's a Muslim are the ones that would vote exclusively for him for being a devout Christian, which he is.

And I'm sure that come election time there will be rumors and allegations of shady business dealings or marital indescretions or secret drug problems, none of which will be true, and no one will remember that the same rumors dogged George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and that it didn't stop them from voting for those guys.

So, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that the right man, at the right time, for the right reasons will be elected President. I'm optimistic that it will mean something to our spirit here in America and will repair our reputation worldwide. I'm optimistic that the environment will get safer and the air cleaner. I'm optimistic that good shows will be renewed and that, eventually, people will stop watching that crazy lie-detector show. I'm optimistic that I'll be appreciated and that jerks will suffer.
But hey, who knows.

Whole Darn World's Gone Crazy

2007-08-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

Janeane Garofalo used to do this comedy routine about the absurd arguments between different religions all based on the word of a book, and how it was as if people had declared "The Bridges of Madison County" sacred ground on which nobody builds. It's disturbing just how accurate an interpretation that is.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour did a three-part special report entitled "God's Warriors" where she looked at extremists in the three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The impression you come away with can only be described as appalled disbelief. You normally assume that people turn to religion to find peace and satisfaction. But instead, many of these people couldn't be more miserable. Everything angers them, everything hurts them, and they are constantly dissatisfied with everything. Not only that, but when peace and accomodation become possible, they often provoke conflict where there was none.

It's maddening, and it's enough to make a rational person think that the whole lot of them are completely insane from start to finish. Jewish settlers who are surprised when Arabs are mad that they've been kicked off the land they own, and blame the Arabs for the atrocities of Germans. Muslim women who are angry when Westerners question the fact that they have to be covered head-to-toe, and yet act surprised when they aren't allowed to run for public office in the theocracies they defend so vehemently. And Christians...oh those American Christians.

I can't speak as authoritatively on other religions because while I've read a lot, I've never lived them. Christianity, though...I've had an insiders look, and sometimes it's terrifying. There's a distinct difference between "Christianity": the philosophical belief that promotes charity, humility, love, and moral behavior; and the special brand of Christianity that we think of when we see television evangilists, Republican Senators, and homeschool documentaries. They talk about abortion and gay marriage as though Jesus and Moses had reached down from Heaven and personally written a whole new book of the bible about them. Yet greed and gluttony, which are mentioned in the same book as being worse sins than sleeping with a man, are given a pass. Did they get a special Bible decoder ring that the rest of us didn't, which tells them which sins god really cares about, and which ones he was just kidding about? It's okay to be fat, and materialistic, and step over homeless people on the street...but don't even think about telling someone of the same sex that you love them, cause that's just wrong.

In all the religions, the broader themes of the religions - things like love, good works, introspection, peace - are overlooked in favor of minutae. Things like dress codes, holy sites, and ritual take precedence over actual substance and real character. The worst part is that whole new generations of young people are being privately schooled away from any differing viewpoints, indoctrinated and brainwashed, and left with an even more narrow, watered down, unwaveringly selective view of these faiths. Like the kids in Teen Mania (seriously, that name alone is telling) who blame popular music and Paris Hilton for the fact that their parents abandoned them and that they liked drinking and having sex in high school. If listening to music makes you do bad things, it's not because of the music, it's because you're an idiot. Playing violent video games doesn't make you commit violence - being a poorly raised psychopath who thinks Grand Theft Auto is tame does.

And if your faith makes you want to fight other people, it's not because god wants you to, it's because you're a jerk.

Life Begins at Contemplation

2007-06-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Anyone who pays attention to politics, or at least the polarizing, media-hyped, red-state/blue-state politics that is trumpeted during any election - or the 2 years leading up to one - are presented with certain bullet points; one being that Republicans hate all non-white people and Democrats want Mexican Islamic terrorists to move into your neighborhood and date your daughter. Another is that Republicans think life begins at the mere thought about having sex with your girlfriend while Democrats think children up to 8 years of age can be murdered as long as it's for "a good reason". Exaggerations? Yes. Far from how it's usually depicted? No. Abortion is a divisive issue for many people which would be perfectly understandable to me except many of those same people don't care so much when it comes to genocide ("That's all the way over on another continent") or the death penalty ("It says 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' - unless they kind of deserve it").

Here's the dirty little secret though that nobody tells you...
During President Clinton's terms in office, the number of abortions performed nationwide went down each year. During President Bush's terms, those numbers have gone up. Why? Well, it could have something to do with moral leadership, seeing as how Bill Clinton had morals (aside from the whole adultery thing) and George Bush has PR people to say he has morals. But really, it's much colder and simpler. When people have money, jobs, and educational opportunities, they have fewer abortions. See, people with money are more likely to have the baby since they'll actually be able to feed and clothe the baby. People with good jobs will actually have the baby when they're pregnant because they'll have health insurance to take care of it and won't have to be worried about finding someone willing to hire them while they're 6 months pregnant. And people who are educated are smart enough to not spend all of their free time on their back with their drunken paramour and are also wise enough to use contraception. However, when you're the kind of President who tells schools that condoms and sex education are sinful and abstinence is the only thing worth teaching, then when teens eventually do have sex - and they will - then they do it unsafely and before they are intellectually and emotionally prepared. That's what leads to abortions.

And oddly enough, the perceived sin of contraception in America also leads to abortions the world over. See, President Reagan in all of his wisdom initiated a policy that prevents the United States from providing aid of any kind to overseas clinics that perform or even inform people about the option of abortion. That aid includes contraceptives. We are so appalled that they are giving abortions to people who are unintentionally pregnant that we are refusing to give them the tools to prevent those people from having more unplanned pregnancies and thus...more abortions. Cause really, if you let it happen once, chances are you may let it happen again.

The House of Representin' just passed a bill that would overturn that policy, and no doubt if it passes the Senate, President Bush will be waiting with his stamp and pen to veto it, but honestly, how irresponsible is that? I can understand if he doesn't want to give them money because that could be used to actually facilitate abortions. But this is just giving them contraceptives...a means to prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus prevent abortions. I believe in personal responsibility, and believe that no one should ever have an abortion if only because no one should ever put themselves in a situation to become pregnant when they aren't willing and/or able to take care of that child - though of course that's sometimes unpreventable. So, like most Democrats, I believe the mantra that abortion should be "legal, safe, and rare". President Bush however seems to think they should be "illegal, dangerous, and performed often instead of educating people on safe sex, encouraging responsible behavior, and trying to help poor people to a level where they can economically take care of a family" (albeit that is a much less-catchy mantra).

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say "How dare you, Republicans, be supporting more abortion! I for one think there should be fewer abortions, and that's why I support this bill!"

That would make an awesome bumper sticker.

The First Amendment Extends to High Fives

2007-06-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

In fact, I think the original text was "The necessity of demonstrating through physical means the awesomeness of a given event, the right to High Five your bros shall not be infringed". Damn John Adams had to stand in the way, yet again.
A school in Vienna, Virginia has a strict "no touching" policy, which makes sense when you consider that most touching between adolescents is inappropriate, whether it's the awkward groping of the first "for reals" girlfriend, the homoerotic ass slapping of "straight" athletes, or the numerous physical tortures perpetrated on the whole of the chess team/av club. So really, on the surface it seems normal. But this policy is so strict in fact that a student got in trouble for putting his arm on his girlfriend's shoulder when he leaned down to say something to her at her lunch table. Surely, you would think that even in this hyper-sensitive, overly-cautious, dateline-myspace-predator obsessed day and age we could distinguish and allow for consensual, non-sexual, non-violent touching. Of course, you'd be wrong.

On CNN, they spoke to the head of the PTA (because the school was at least smart enough not to try and defend such a crazy policy). This woman then espoused the dangers of even the "high-five" (as the kids are calling it these days). Her reasoning is this: when you and your buddy are high-fiving in the hallway, of course other people are gonna wanna get in on that action. Soon a third person is high-fiving you, then four, then five people are high-fiving in a virtual orgy of celebratory hand-slapping. In such a situation, traffic in the hallway would come to a complete standstill as, almost contagiously, all of the students break into spontaneous high-fives. Elbows would fly, legs would kick, and people would be bound to get hit in the head. Despite my exaggerations, that last sentence was literally what she said would happen. I mean, I know just what she's saying. When you and your friends are high-fiving, you get so caught up that you can't help but kick your heels and flail your arms wildly. Sure, someone always gets hit in the eye, and more than once I've had a friend end up in the hospital, but it's so worth it for an awesome, full-power high-five.

The other argument for the policy, suggested by the school, is that some handshakes are actually secret gang signs. Luckily though, if you don't allow people to do those handshakes in school, the entire gang network breaks down. In fact, the only reason I ever joined a gang was for the cool handshakes. If I couldn't high-five my gangmates (that's what they call them, right?) in school the next day after a sweet drive-by shooting, I don't think I would have joined. "Hardly worth it," I would have said.

The only thing possibly more absurd was the father of the boy who was at the center of the news story that first sent me on this rant. Just as he was proclaiming that high-fives are constitutionally guaranteed as free speech (though not in as concise terms or complete sentences for that matter) he also stated that people of other cultural heritages who attend the school who might not be so into physical contact in the classroom should adapt to be more American when they come here...you know, since the things we do make so much sense.

It's so much harder when you disagree with everyone on every side of an issue.

You're Just Never Satisfied

2007-06-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

You know what bugs me about modern media? It has become too interactive. You can look up things at your leisure on the internet, or text in your votes with your cell phone, or e-mail the pundits your opinions, or get the DVD with 10 different possible endings because the studio wanted to satisfy every single person in the world. People have so many options, and so much input, that they start to feel like other people owe them; they start to feel like they should have some sort of creative input into everything.

Worst of all is television. Take, for example, Lost. This year, it got tons of flack from fans, who also gave it intermitent flack last year, because they wanted all of the mysteries answered in every episode. Of course, that would be stupid since if you answered all of the questions, it would no longer be a mystery, and then you'd just have a show about a bunch of people who used to be stranded on an island, and where's the fun in that?

But their complaint was that the show wasn't what they wanted, and yet they continued to watch it, or at least talk about it, when really...the show was what it always was. Plus, it was free, so they were free to just watch something else or nothing at all. My feeling with creative endeavours, whether they be books or movies, music or television is that people have a story to tell...if it entertains me and I enjoy it, so be it. If not, then I'll find that somewhere else and maybe someone other than me will enjoy what they have to say. When American Idol comes on I don't watch it and complain about what I want the show to be...I just don't watch it. It's their show, not mine.

The other problem is that people start to blame the artist for the audience's expectations. My sister will often complain about a perfectly good movie she saw simply because it wasn't what she thought it would be. Meaning, she sees the trailer and, for whatever reasons, thinks the solution to the mystery was going to be more supernatural or that the romance of the lead characters was going to be a bigger deal, and then blames the movie for not being what she expected or wanted rather than being pretty good at what it was. A movie or a show is what it is, or at least what the makers want it to be. Should it be their fault that it isn't what we expect, even if our expectations are based on nothing to do with them?

My point is about The Sopranos. A show I like, but probably not as the be-all-end-all that some people think. It's a quality show that is interesting, unconventional, and at times insightful. Is it the word handed down by some supreme deity to change our world like the monolith from 2001? No, nor does it need to be. It is what it is, and quite good at it. But, somewhere during the long break between the 5th and 6th season, people seem to have forgotten what that show was really about. In their memories, they remember all of the crazy hits, the strippers, the drugs, the mob fights and surprises. What they don't seem to remember is that 80% of the show was always therapy sessions, dream sequences, ambiguous glances, and silent scenes with characters deep in thought. The problem is The Sopranos was an unconventional show from the start, but it also attracted a huge audience of people who would be equally pleased if every episode was just wall-to-wall sex with strippers with brief interludes of massive explosions killing dozens of people with no talking whatsoever. They complain that this show has gotten worse, and there's not as much action, but if they were paying attention, this show is exactly what it has been all along. It's barely changed at all.

So why are they all so up in arms about the finale? First, is there any ending that would have pleased everyone? Some people wanted Tony to die, or to end up in jail, or they wanted Phil and everyone he knows to die, and others wanted AJ to kill himself or Meadow to die or Janice to become a mob boss or any number of crazy theories, none of which would have made anyone happy. If anything, David Chase gave the audience exactly what it wanted...an ending that implied something, but left enough room for people to interpret whatever ending they wanted.

The fact is, the show is what it always has been, and nothing would have satisfied people's expectations. The finale of The Sopranos was great, if only because it knew that it was better to serve the needs of the show than the varied and unreasonable expectations of a fickle and uncreative audience. They complain that this ending was open ended, but what ending wouldn't have been? Nothing is ever completely wrapped up. Unless the show ended with Tony building a doomsday device that would blow up the entire Earth, then after the show ended, these characters were always going to go on and do other things and live their lives without us watching. At least they didn't try to have some cheesy or sappy or silly ending (like Seinfeld perhaps) that would have betrayed the essence of the show. Stop bitching people. David Chase doesn't owe you anything. You don't like the ending, too bad, it's not their fault. It's yours. Go buy Sex in the City on DVD and enjoy it.

No Place Like Homeworld

2007-03-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

So earlier today I was watching the BBC/Discovery Channel series "Planet Earth" because hey, who doesn't like to hear about their own planet. It's easy, especially when you live in a densely urban metropolis like New York City (or all of New Jersey for that matter), that there are vast stretches of the world that don't have buildings and electricity and highways and Fox News (oh what a wonderful place that would be). The things that are out there, and down there and way up there, are mind-blowing (much like last night's season finale of Battlestar Galactica, but let's not go there). It's impressive, and a little sad too given that many of these creatures are bound to die out because of human expansion.

To be fair, nature is harsh, and when one species expands, others tend to suffer, and I'm not suggesting that it should be us to suffer. I'm supporting the home team. But as much as possible, we should protect the natural world, if only so we can go make interesting documentaries about it. For instance, feel free to eradicate all of the viruses you want, and the giant, creepy looking fish that live in the depths of the oceans can f*ck themselves for all I care. But really, we can stretch our legs, build our cities, and still find room for Elephants and Penguins, right? With only minimal effort we can reserve some biodiversity. If you want to think of it in selfish terms, the more species there are, the more we can learn about life in general and perhaps one day we'll learn that the cure for cancer can be found in some obscure creature that we were just paving over, literally.

It should also be noted that studies have found that humans have a natural fondness for the appearance of young animals, especially mammals. Now, it doesn't take a detailed study to tell me that baby polar bears are adorable, but they've found that this adoration crosses species, meaning that even a Wolf thinks it's adorable when your kid runs around the house in his feety pajamas. Genetically, naturally, we have an inclination to be fond of the young...meaning that across the board we are less likely to kill young creatures, even though they are helpless and it would be easy, thus ensuring that more animals will survive to adulthood. So it's not just tree-hugging hippies, but all people who are, through the miracle of evolution, compelled to protect life, even when it's not our own or even our own species'.

But on that note, what is wrong with Germans? Yes, that's a phrase I've probably used often, but I'm sure you've heard of the German "environmentalists" who are demanding a baby polar bear in captivity be killed because it's mother rejected it. Their argument is that in the wild, without its mother caring for it, it would be dead, and so the natural thing to do is kill it. But really, once you're taking animals out of the wild and putting them in small cages where you feed them out of a bucket at regular intervals, haven't you thrown natural selection out the window. Yes, nature is cruel sometimes, but that doesn't mean we have to keep it going. This bear is most likely never going back out into the wild, and if it does, sure it may not be able to take care of itself, but that's no reason we have to end its life now. You know what, if a human baby was rejected by its mother and left in the wild, it would die too, but we still have orphanages. We don't leave them to fend for themselves. It's one thing to allow nature to happen and not want to interfere in natural occurences, but it's quite another to idolize nature as though anything that happens naturally should be encouraged or idolized. There's a reason people built societies, because nature has a lot of flaws.

So, to some up: Nature can be stupid, but let's try to keep a lot of it just in case. Also, feel free to kill anything with tentacles, cause those things freak the hell out of me.

Why You Gotta Pick on the Fat Kid?

2007-03-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

Everyone gets a label. At some point everyone latches on to a particular aspect of a person and that becomes their defining feature, even if that feature changes or completely dissappears. It's simplistic and often mean-spirited, but there's no doubt that it's the way it is.

And so it goes that Al Gore can't be mentioned in any sentence without an adjacent sentence mentioning his weight gain. I feel like the news media, in their attempts to be viewed as balanced assume that if they are going to mention something positive about Al Gore that it has to be tempered with something negative...like "Al Gore starred in an Academy Award winning documentary, but hasn't he let himself go."

That's right, fatty. I know we're supposed to be talking about global warming or whatever, but let's talk about your weight first. Every news report, every article, every mention of Al Gore now comes with a requisite mention of his Oscar win (which is always wrong because even though it was undoubtably his achievement, he himself did not win the Oscar since he didn't direct the film) and a mention of his weight gain. It's not like he's suddenly morbidly obese and can't fit through his front door, which might at least be newsworthy psychologically speaking. What does his weight or appearance have to do with anything he's saying or anything that's being reported about him?

That's especially true when you consider that this is a country where the majority of the people are overweight. Al Gore, a man who was voted for by a majority of the people, has simply become a little more like them...physically. You might also remember that this was the same treatment Bill Clinton got when he entered office. There were no scandals yet, and he was trying to talk about National Health Care and ending discrimination in the armed forces...but all people could mention was his love of fast food.

We've had Presidents who were dangerously obese, and any number of people in the Senate, the Judiciary, and every facet of average american life who are not merely overweight, but rotundly fat...but Al Gore gains a couple of pounds and suddenly that overshadows his message. I suppose we only take our threats of global destruction from people with six-pack abs. Well, maybe he's been too busy crisscrossing the country trying to warn people about the ongoing destruction of our natural environment to stay in shape. Really, if most people can't find time between their 9-5 and watching American Idol to work out, why should we expect more of Al Gore who actually has something important to say? Why do people take such joy in mocking the appearance of others? And why should it be mentioned anywhere in a discussion of news? Well, that's when journalism becomes merely gossip with a few facts thrown in.

If Only It Were So

2007-03-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan, the oft-wrong but always well-informed, had a link on his site to a recent Pew study detailing how, in a mere decade and change, the neo-con revolution has crashed and burned. Of course, someone like me would take tremendous joy in such a revelation, if only I could believe that this was some permenant sea change. On a person by person basis, you like to think that people are intelligent, thoughtful, good...and you tend to see that people aren't easily swayed. However, when you look at the public at large, through research, polls, or reality television, the opposite seems to be true. People, collectively, are under-informed, misguided, selfish, and change their opinions about as often as they change their clothes. For example, recent surveys find that over 60 percent of people say that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and a bad idea..which is easier to do in hindsight I suppose, but you'll notice that a mere 5 years ago roughly that many people thought the war was a great idea (I not being one of them).

Sure, this Pew research study finds that since 1994, fewer people have faith in the Republican party, more people support social welfare programs and proposals to alleviate poverty no matter the cost, and more people are accepting of minorities/alternate lifestyles/alternate religious beliefs. The same study found that the number of admitted atheists, though still a discriminated minority, is increasing with each generation which would seem to contradict all of the social evidence as of late. The fact is, amid the Republican scandals recently - and boy have their been a lot - people are frustrated and willing to say just about anything. But that can all change quickly. Prior to September, 2001, lots of people thought George W. was a bumbling idiot and partisan hack, but suddenly people realized that, no, he wasn't. What that terrorist attack on his watch taught most Americans was that he was a visionary and hero. None of that was true, obviously, but it became the common perception that no one was eager to question. If there were another terrorist attack tomorrow, perhaps all of the successes of the Democrats would be forgotten in favor of once again calling them weak and unpatriotic, and all of the scandals of the Republicans would be forgotten because, hey, there's no time for ethics in war.

I'd like to get my hopes up and think that 2008 will bring a great change in our nation, where new ideas and new avenues of discussion will be opened - where the level of discourse will be raised and real solutions to pressing problems will be levied. But really, what are the odds. Nothing is permenant, and things can quickly change as we all have seen.

Glenn Beck Needs a Punch to the Throat

2007-03-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when I'm away from my Tivo: I'm forced to actually see what's on television in between the shows I actually want to watch. I'm on a shoot in PA and though my hotel suite is...well, sweet...there's still only so much to do when I have to be up early, so this is what I've seen tonight.

MTV has really documented exactly the kind of kids that are now raised on MTV and how it's destroying out society. They have one show where spoiled, rich girls try to top one another with overly expensive Sweet 16 parties which their parents pay for while all the while the girls are yelling at and ordering their parents around and then crying about how their lives are horrible because the dress they really really really wanted didn't fit so they could only get the one really expensive one that they only really liked. Oh, and then the parents buy them a car that costs more than most people's houses (and which the girl most certainly will wreck before she's 18), and her classmates worship her like being a spoiled, shallow shell of a girl is a good thing.

Luckily I only saw the last 3 minutes of that, which then allowed me to see the first 3 minutes of a show about teenagers who get married. Seriously. 16 years old girls who get knocked up by their 22 year old boyfriends and then decide to get married, or 17 year olds who decide they have to get married right now because they are going to spend the rest of their lives together...but it has to be RIGHT NOW! The part I saw was where the girl was having her bridal shower and playing a game where they asked her questions about her fiance who she's totally in love with, and she got all of them wrong. But really, knowing her soon-to-be husband's life aspirations and or what his first job were are probably just trivial things. I mean, my grandparents were married for 50 years, and then never even got around to finding out each other's last names or birthdates.

But worst of all was Glenn Beck. It's shocking how someone can be so condescending and act so superior and yet be so completely ignorant and, to put it in the common parlance, a d-bag. He defended Roger Ailes' attempts to once again relate Osama bin Laden to Barrack Obama in the public's mind, as though his network hasn't done that 50 times a day already. He simultaneously complained about how the the conservative Democrats have sold out and are voting in lock-step with their party while at the same time saying that all the Democrats are in-fighting and in disagreement. Oh, and the war in Iraq shouldn't be politicized. A war...started by a thoroughly partisan administration...involving billions of dollars of our nation's resources...killing thousands of our soldiers...stretching our army so thin that we are in constant danger...increasing our foreign debts to be passed on to our children...the war that has served as the Republican party's entire political strategy against the Democrats...THAT shouldn't be politicized. If politics is the process by which we have a national discussion of issues, by which we elect our leaders, and by which our government is created, maintained, and made to do the will of the people, then is he saying that this War shouldn't be talked about or acted on by our government? Is this war supposed to fight itself, entirely out of our control?

Much like Glenn Beck, the war in Iraq is misguided, devastating, and brings nothing but suffering. People who say "The war in Iraq shouldn't be political" do that because they are on the losing side of that argument, and it's too late. You started this conversation, and now that people are turning on you, you should be made to answer.

I'm going to go enjoy some free toiletries and amenities, and then maybe jump on the bed for a while. Hilton knows how to make a springy bed...which is then enjoyed by the heirs to the fortune in amateur porn. Our popular culture makes me a little bit ill.

At Long Last, Have You No Shame

2007-02-02T08:50:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, a study was released by a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change today which stated that global warming was indeed occuring and that it was "very likely" due to human actions...which in scientific terms translates to a "90% probability", which when you consider that many of the countries involved would like to continue polluting and not acknowledge global warming means that the evidence must be so overwhelming that even they can't prevent such strong assertions.

Never to be outdone, corporate evildoers are already on the offensive to prevent anything from being done about this. A think tank, funded by Exxon Mobil (true friends of the environment) have offered $10,000 plus travel and other expenses to any scientist who will critique or debunk this report. Now, obviously, peer review and analysis is part of the scientific process, and obviously people should always be checking each other's work to make sure it's accurate, but in this case, the conclusion is already decided. They aren't looking for the truth, they are looking for a specific answer and are willing to pay anyone who can give them that answer. Far from being scientific exploration, this is a P.R. move to debunk the notion of global warming in the minds of the public.

I honestly don't know how anyone can actually think that this was a good idea. Even if you want to keep polluting and this report spells trouble for you, they have to know how shady this is, and exactly how shady it will look when it gets out, which of course it does. It amounts to them saying "Yes, we know our products are to blame, but we want to keep selling them at all costs". What type of scientist would agree to what is essentially academic prostitution?

Although, a sign that our society is not completely without merit; in Detroit, Michigan, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a man's use of the word "goddamn" during a town meeting is not criminal. Why would that even come up? Well, because during this town meeting, when this man uttered such a foul, terrifying word (please note sarcasm), he was arrested on the spot. Yes, arrested, but luckily our courts are still sane enough to recognize a violation of First and Fourth Amendment rights when they see it. An interesting question: I wonder if this man would have been arrested if he had merely said "damn" instead of "goddamn"? I don't understand how you can say "damn" on television or the radio and it's perfectly acceptable, but if you add "god" in front of it, it becomes equal to saying "f*ck" or "sh*t". Only in a puritanical and backwords culture could that happen.

president Bush is Right

2007-02-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

And just in the nick of time. Tomorrow, a consortium of scientists from nations all over the globe, including the U.S. are releasing a report which states categorically that global warming is real, is caused by man-made pollution, and will have devastating effects for the next few hundred years, and those are their conservative estimates. After years of saying that the jury is still out on Global Warming, Mr. Bush has finally acknowledged that we are the cause of this global climate change. Wow, finally. Now we can start to do something about it.

Well, no, not so much. For you see, though he now acknowledges that it's our fault (and by our, I mean mankind...this is not all the United States' fault) he doesn't think that we should be limiting our greenhouse gas emissions. That would be incredibly inconvenient to industrial polluters pulling in record profits and those jackasses who don't care how much gas costs, they just want to drive their Hummers. But you know what, he's right. You see, the problem is not that we're polluting too much, but too little. At this rate, it'll take decades, maybe centuries, for all of the polar ice to melt. If we speed up that process, then sea levels will rise, salination will decrease, and oceanic currents will change thus sparking a new ice age. Believe me, no one will be complaining about summer heat death and tropical storms when the summer temperatures are below zero. Plus, frozen glaciers from here back to Asia will open new trade routes, as long as you've got a sled. China is an emerging market, and we should take advantage of that, especially since, with their growing energy needs, they have been even more insistent than the U.S. that there should be no greenhouse gas emmissions caps.

Good job, George. You are of the same mind as a communist dictatorship. So, let's get to work on swinging this climate pendulum the other way. Once we jump start a new ice age, you won't hear any hippie liberals complaining about global warming. In fact, they'll be begging for it.

File This Under Question Mark

2007-02-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

While at work today, I read an interesting item from Reuters about a town in Quebec that has taken a proactive approach to integrating the 10% of their population made up of immigrants. Their iSolution (much like adding the number 2000 to products in the 20th century made them cutting edge, adding the lower-case "i" before words does the same in the 21st century) to this problem has been to post a set of guidelines on the town website informing immigrants of how Canadians roll. For instance, it says, literally, that women should not be stoned to death, set afire, or burned with acid. Now, some people might say it's racist to assume that a.) all Muslim and Hasidic immigrants are extremists who would be inclined to do these things unless we good Christians told them not to, and b.) that even if they did believe these things to be acceptable that they'd be so stupid to not understand that Canada has laws of it own that they have to follow. I disagree, because these are just good, common sense guidelines that should always be posted...all over town like "No Skateboarding" or "Employees Must Wash Hands" signs. Sometimes, when I'm walking through Central Park and I see a pretty woman with her face uncovered, I think to myself "you know, someone should really stone that women to death". Considering that the City of New York doesn't post that information explicity anywhere on their government site (I checked,) I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. Don't they know that the only thing stopping our society from turning to cannibalism and forced sodomy is a strongly worded set of rules posted on a never-checked website.

Here's the thing, if you want to give people a heads-up about the cultural differences between the country they left and the Canada they've come to, go right ahead. Educate them about the principles of an open society, so they won't be so shocked when they see women driving and dancing (those are two things they actually do list in their guidelines...along with the suggestion that the only time your face should be covered is on Halloween - word for word). When you start down the path to reiterating things that are clearly illegal under the assumption that these people are all barbarians who have traveled around the world to Canada of all places to break those laws...well, as the Canadians say, that's just un-neighborly, eh?

You really have to wonder about the people who have such a low opinion of other people that they have to write idiotic and insulting guides for them. Recently, when Northwest Airlines laid off hundreds of their employees, they distributed a pamphlet called "101 ways to save money". Included in the suggestions were "Make your own baby food" and "Make your own kitty litter" (believe me, you do not want to mix those two up). So, let's just say it's only mildly degrading for your former employer who was apparently paying you so little that you wouldn't have any savings and has just laid you off to imply that you won't be able to find another job or manage your finances without resorting to making your own clothes out of newspaper scraps...but where this goes from rich poppycock to fatcat editorial cartoon absurdity is when they suggest, and I kid you not, they suggest you try dumpster diving. "Don't be afraid to look in dumpsters and take anything you like."

That's right. "Dig in, poor people. You like table scraps and soiled clothes, right?" If that's something people at some point need to resort to in order to survive or as a personal choice, that's their business. But for the people who laid you off to suggest that you shouldn't be shy about enjoying the trash of people who can afford to discard things...man is that arrogant and insulting. It's like saying "Poor people don't have dignity, right? I mean, I would never dig through trash in million years, but I'm sure poor people just love it. That's like shopping at Tiffany's to them."

And people wonder why everyone hates white people.

A Whole New Month with Nothing to Say

2006-10-31T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have not posted a blog in a while, so you'll have to forgive me there. I've been busy / lazy / had things on my mind which don't easily fall form into a coherent blog (as though there were such a thing). But, I thought I should post today if for no other reason than so you'll know I'm still alive and won't come searching for the body, only to discover me in the buff playing backgammon with a robot (it could happen).

The biggest problem with being a news junkie is that the most easily accesible news, and the most reported, is also the most sensationalistic (i.e., depressing). For instance, the story of the teenage boy in Alabama who got in an argument with his brother over a girl and in retaliation decided to rape his own mother. How did that happen? Well, she was passed out drunk on the couch in the middle of the day, and when she awoke, the kid wanted to finish. Seriously, I share a planet with these people?

And then because I didn't learn my lesson after reading that, I read an article about a mother who hit her adopted son on the head with a hammer, causing trauma that took a week to kill him. And the husband never took the kid to the hospital because he didn't want to get in an argument with his wife.

But the news isn't all bad. I for one am very excited, and hopeful, about the elections next week. I'm not the kind of person who thinks things will instantly become better overnight, but I'm hopeful that a step in the right direction might help to make things better. Here's the part where I normally would tell you "no matter who you vote for, make sure you vote" but we all know that's a crock. If I had my way, everyone who was eligible to vote would, and would take it seriously enough to be informed and actually think about their decision. Sure, I'd think it would be great if everyone voted for the people I want to win, but it's also simple-minded and childish to say "I'm going to vote for whoever the guy is who isn't Republican" or "I'm going to vote for whoever is against the war". When electing someone to a position for a term of years where they will vote on any number of bills and issues and wield power and influence, it's stupid to pick the person based solely on their party affiliation or a single issue. That really bugs me. Almost as much as people who say "what election? Didn't we just have one?" That's the problem with the heavy-handed executive, that people start to forget about the other branches. Anyone who only votes for President and neglects to care about their other representation should be forced to only eat one meal each week, forgoing all others. If they survive, then they are free to continue being lazy simpletons.

Is This Your Beer?

2006-10-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

A few tiny things that annoy me on an average day.

When people pronounce the word "Alzheimer's" as though there were a "T" in it. I think it helps people remember because it's like "Old Timer's Disease", but of course, that's not what it's called. This wouldn't bother me as much, except newscasters do it all the time, and they should know better because a.) they are supposed to research these kinds of things and b.) they are reading it off of a teleprompter, so they can see it right there.

When people step onto an escalator that isn't running, and wait several seconds before realizing that it isn't moving and then start walking down/up because they are oblivious to the world around them. Most people have used an escalator enough times to be able to tell just by looking whether or not it is moving, and even if they can't they should know immediately that they are just standing still. Really, when an escalator is turned off, it magically turns into stairs, and after all this time if you don't know how to use stairs without needing to think about it, perhaps you should just stop leaving your house in the morning.

When people sit on the floor in the aisles of a Barnes & Noble, thus blocking access for both walking and for paying customers to get to the actual books. If you are spending enough time reading in Barnes & Noble that your legs can no longer support you, you're not browsing...you're stealing. Buy the damn book already, or go to a library (and don't sit on the floor).

When people leave their garbage just lying around, especially in a city where you are almost never more than ten feet from a garbage can. This applies to the people who take 20 napkins at a movie theater/starbucks/fast food restaurant and then leave the 1 dirty one and 19 slightly dirty ones on the table along with their empty cup and the gum wrappers they emptied out of their purse before leaving. It's even worse when they do it in a park. I'm sure that empty cup and snickers wrapper is weighing you down, but seriously, just carry it until you get to a garbage can. You were able to carry it while it was full, so now it should be easier since it's empty. Why should other people clean up after you, when clearly you wouldn't do it.

When politicians complain about things being politicized. Who do they think politicized it? They did. And if they weren't politicizing it, it would simply be called "governance", and Fox News isn't going to put their face on TV for that.

and finally....

When people talk about how everything changed after 9/11. And yes, the lives of the people involved and the people they knew changed. And certainly the political climate changed, and then we went and started our global rampage. What I mean is when politicians and pundits say it, implying that before 9/11 the world was a happy and peaceful place and then the day after, terrorists just appeared from thin air and we had to do something about it. In fact, there were many terrorists and many terrorist attacks before 9/11. North Korea had nuclear weapons programs (and rudimentary weapons) before 9/11. Iraq was ruled by a dictator and Iran was ruled by a hardliner all before 9/11. Afghanistan was a hotbed of terrorist activities long before 9/11. The world didn't change on 9/11, we just started paying attention to all the bad things that we'd been ignoring before 9/11.

Mind you, each of these thoughts pops up for about 2 seconds out of my day, and the rest of the time I am content to listen to my iPod, enjoy the beautiful weather, and read a good piece of fiction. It would just be extra nice if these little speed bumps didn't pop up in the middle of my great day.

The Mafia in the Music Industry

2006-09-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

So running up to the midterm elections, I'm wondering why we even bother ending elections, because it seems that politicians start running for office again earlier and earlier, leaving a smaller and smaller window of time during which anyone feels comfortable doing real work. Take for example the most recent bill passed by the Senate: the "compromise" between the President and his rivals...Republicans. Wait, what? Anyway, he wanted to be able to define what "torture" was and hold "enemy combatants" without trials. John McCain and friends said "NO!" and came up with a bill to challenge him by...allowing him to define what "interogation" techniques are allowed and setting up military courts to try combatants without congressional oversight or a right of habeas corpus. Totally different than what the President wanted. He must be fuming..."Damn John McCain, ruining everything" he must say as he twirls his mustache.

I'm surprised they were able to get this passed, what with those cut-and-run Democrats trying to add on crazy amendments...like one that would guarantee the Constitutional right of Habeus Corpus and one that would give Congress (the people who passed this bill) oversight over C.I.A. interrogations. Who'd want those things? Oh, and the other amendment that luckily they didn't pass would have required the State Department to inform other countries of what interrogation techniques we thought were permissable on captured American soldiers. Thank god that didn't pass, because then otherwise our soldiers might have been treated humanely and other countries might have found out what types of interrogation techniques we might possibly be using. It's really better if all captured soldiers everywhere are kept hidden, without rights or oversight, and that we don't tell people what we do with them or what they tell us. It just makes sense.

Why is this a waste of time? Well, it's so broad and seemingly in violation of the Constitution and various international treaties that many of the Republicans who voted for it commented that the Supreme Court will almost definitely overturn it, adding that they wished they weren't rushing this before midterms so that they could do it right because they're going to have to do it again once the Supreme Court knocks it down. So, the House and Senate have passed a bill that even they are pretty sure will never become law just so they can say they are doing something to combat terrorism and to make Democrats (and one or two Republicans) look like they are coddling terrorists by giving them things like "trials" and "humane treatment". We can't be bothered being ethical when we have information to get, through means that would make that information insubmissable in an American court but not in a secret tribunal.
At times like this, I just want to put on Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" and wipe my tears with an American flag.

I Feel Safer Already

2006-09-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

A classified intelligence report concludes that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat to the United States, something that I could have told them, if only they had thought to ask. The newly revealed document is the first formal report on global trends in terrorism by the National Intelligence Estimate, which is put out by the National Intelligence Council. This, also coming during the same week when U.S. casualties in Iraq have reached the point of being double the casualties of 9/11 which precipitated this whole thing (and dozens of times more if you include the Iraqi civilian deaths, but who cares about them, right?).

So now we have professionals in the intelligence community telling us what we already knew, that we've only been creating more resentment and fueling terrorist action and recruitment. As for how our nation building is going, the Associated Press reported today that some U.S. soldiers working in Shiite neighborhoods say the Iraqi troops are among the worst they've ever seen. That's fine, though, because we can just stay there for 20 or 30 years until all of the kinks are worked out. Even Senator McCain acknowledged on "Face the Nation" that the war in Iraq is a rallying point of terrorists and that at this point we're fueling terrorist organizations, but that also failure now will lead to a greater threat than we ever had pre-Iraq.

So, when we began this little "War on Terror", it was to eliminate the threat of terrorists and bring justice to the people who perpetrated the attacks on September 11th. Five years later we have failed to bring the terrorists to justice, especially the guy at the top, and we have since increased the terrorist threat. Oh, and we've taken a country that was so weak that we were able to topple its government in the span of a long weekend and created a hotbed of chaos and violence where, if things continue as they have been, terrorists will have a fertile training ground. Awesome. Mission accomplished.

You Just Got F'ed in the A

2006-09-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

After talking about Bill O'Reilly yesterday, that got me thinking about torture. Like when I go home to visit my parents and have to walk through the gauntlet of televisions in the house tuned to The Factor. As you may know, there's discussion in the Senate, and especially in the media, about a bill that would "define" torture, or to be more accurate, would legalize some types of torture. There are of course the arguments that torture is ineffective and only gets people to tell you what they think you want to hear and not the actual truth. There's the argument that if we torture people then we'll have no clout in demanding that our own soldiers not be tortured. There's also the argument that human decency doesn't allow torture no matter who or why. But, just in case our government decides to do the weaselish thing, I'd like to suggest some alternative forms of torture that won't leave any marks (because as we all know, it doesn't hurt if there's not a bruise).

* Make them watch hours of speeches given by President Bush, giggling and fumbling over the English language, and then show them a copy of his diploma.

* Subject them to a normal American diet by attaching an IV of corn syrup directly to their heart.

* Drive them around the country and make them enter every single children's beauty pageant. (Torture if ever there was)

* Ask them a question, and then when they try to answer, shout "Shut up, shut up!" before they can say anything (also known as the O'Reilly method)

* Lock them in a house with all of the kids from MTV's "My Super Sweet Sixteen". Then tell all of the kids that all of the other girls have nicer clothes than them. Stand back and watch the chaos ensue.

* Dress the victim in a suit and tie, make them work in an office for 40 years. Force them to take weekly diversity and sexual harassment seminars and engage in "casual fridays". Require them to go for happy hour at Applebee's with the gang from accounts payable. When they go to retire, tell them they don't have a pension. (More a long term strategy, but proven to break spirits).

* Sit them in front of a bank of monitors showing all of the 24 hour news channels for 3 months straight. Then tell them that they can go free if they can fill one index card with the list of topics discussed (one per line). When they can't, show them a picture of Chris Matthews with his shirt off. Repeat.

These are just a few ideas, but I'm sure I can come up with more. That's why, I offer my services to our president as "Torture Czar". I'll be in charge of all torture operations whether they be "enemy combatants", "evil-doers", or "dirty, hippie, liberals". I've watched enough episodes of 24 to know how to torture someone, and enough clips of American Idol to know what it's like to suffer.

There's a Communist in my Soup

2006-09-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

A recent article in Child magazine listed J.K. Rowling as one of the 20 people who have changed childhood forever, stating that her Harry Potter series has entertained children and instilled a love of reading in them that extends beyond her own books. In many ways, fiction author Bill O'Reilly has done a similar service for the Fox "News" crowd, teaching them that you don't need facts or consistancy to write or enjoy a book. My dad is already camped out for the Monday release of Bill's latest yarn, "Culture Warrior" wherein he identifies all of the people that are destroying America...minus all of the people who are actually trying to destroy America such as terrorists or leaders who violate our own Constitution and civil liberties.

For instance, who is "enemy number one" according to Mr. O'Reilly? You guessed it, Osama Bin Laden. Oh, wait, no, he's not an enemy to American culture. I was wrong. Enemy number one is George Soros. He's a real left-wing nut job who finances crazy, liberal initiatives like scholarships for Black students in apartheid South Africa and defeating communism in Poland and Czechoslavakia, though I'm sure those aren't the reasons he's enemy number one. It might just have to do with the fact that he's a progressive who gave a lot of money to organizations who attempted to defeat George W. Bush in the last election. Luckily, Bill O'Reilly is an "independent" and wouldn't base his decision on something so partisan.

Also high up on the list of people destroying America with their progressive secularism are the liberal press, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Houston Chronicle, and The Denver Post even though all three endorsed George W. Bush for president. Damn liberal newspapers, always trying to get Republicans elected to the highest office in the land. What sinister plot do they have planned? But, it's true, because it's in a book. Another new fact that Bill was kind enough to invent for us all to know is that liberal newspapers outnumber conservative papers 10 to 1. He doesn't cite any source for this
"fact", but it FEELS true, especially when I hop on the subway and everyone is reading Rupert Murdoch's liberal New York Post (oh, if you don't live in New York, you might not get the sarcasm that the New York Post is what you would get if Fox News and The National Inquirer made sweet love).

I could probably spend hours writing about all of the falsehoods in his book wherein he makes up things that people never said or takes things entirely out of context, not to mention the things he says which are just stupid, but honestly I have a broader point to make. He's not the first one to write a "book" about the "culture war", in which he tells us that George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore, and Alec Baldwin are trying to murder baby Jesus in his crib. The concept of the Culture War is inherently flawed and mostly a political wedge, but if you are going to talk about people destroying our wholesome, Christian, Capitalist culture, are the biggest enemies really Al Franken and Bill Moyers (who, by the way, he refers to as "fanatical" which, if you've ever seen Bill Moyers is like calling a lump of clay "fanatical")?

How about the people at his own network who have further sensationalized and polarized news like when they displayed banners such as "Taking cheap oil from Hugo Chavez: Act of treason?" on their broadcasts? How about the folks at American Idol who are dumbing down our children and our culture with shallow, vindictive, and cookie-cutter personas?
Who is hurting our culture more: George Clooney who makes a thoughtful movie about Edward R. Murrow that not many people see, or the people who make movies like Jackass and Texas Chainsaw Massacre which tons of people see? Well it must be George Clooney, because even though Johnny Knoxville teaches people that it's funny to watch a man take a baseball to the groin or to make fun of fat people and midgets, at least he doesn't do something horrible like talk about politics in front of people.

This isn't about people attacking American culture; it's about people attacking the Conservative movement, and those are most definitely not the same thing. When Bill O'Reilly hears someone on the radio with a liberal viewpoint, he thinks to himself "this man is a traitor and a lunatic". When I hear someone on the radio with a conservative viewpoint, I think to myself "I disagree with this person". Then, there are the people like Bill and Rush and Sean Hannity who I hear and think "these guys are liars and hypocrites and are lowering the level of public discourse." The threat to American culture and American values is not differing opinions, but blowhards who create false culture wars to distract from real issues.

Bill, I know you are "independent" and "a washington outsider" and "a journalist", but let me clear up a few things for you. First off, secular progressives are not trying to kill Christmas, and if they were, they are doing a terrible job of it because everyone I know got presents last year. Second, nobody cares about Barbara Streisand's opinion on anything, so the only way she is a threat to our culture is with her music. Third, the idea that there is a "liberal" media is laughable considering the fact that the majority of media outlets in radio, print, and television are owned by giant corportations mostly run by conservatives like your buddy Rupert, and also since for every Al Franken there is a Bill, Rush, Sean, Michael Savage, and 5 other conservative pundits. Yes, so some newspaper editors are liberals, but not every editor and the majority of newspapers do not have a liberal slant.
And, just to round this off, stop telling tales out of school, because no one is buying.

This past week on his show, Bill O'reilly mentioned how his publisher prevented liberal news organizations from getting advance copies of his book, but guess where I read excerpts of your book? That's right, liberal news organizations. This week he also mentioned on air that the FBI came to Fox "News" headquarters to inform him personally that he was on al Qaeda's hitlist, a "fact" that was then disputed by other people at Fox and the FBI who said he's not on any list and that the FBI never went to Fox News and told him anything. So, if you want to give us your opinions about why The Passion of The Christ is better for our country than The New York Times, go right ahead. But try not to make up so many lies and try not to insult people for being name-callers and then call them "cowards" and "far-left zombies".
You really are making our culture glitter like a diamond.

Something to Talk About

2006-09-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

The other day, Wednesday to be precise, I was up far earlier than any person need be, especially one who has the entire day off with nothing to do. Given that my options at that point were watching Matt Lauer's sexual discomfort with his new co-host or watching the Fox morning gang giggling about whatever it is that those darned celebrities are up to, I put on C-SPAN while I ate breakfast and then when I sat down to read (and since this all makes me sound like a grandparent, I then bought a cat and knitted an afghan throw). Sometimes its interesting to see the day-to-day process of governing that most people don't hear about because it doesn't involve aborting immigrant emryos with burning flags at a gay wedding.

Anyway, during this day of varied debates including issues of disclosure of federal funding and "Indian" gaming (and isn't it stupid that centuries after we realized this wasn't India as Columbus thought, we still refer to them in legal Congressional records as "Indians"?) there was extensive debate on HR 994.

What exactly is House Resolution 994, you might ask? Well, for those in the know, not only does the House of Representatives vote on things like bills and appropriations, but they sometimes vote on Resolutions that simply make a statement, such as showing support for Black History Month or the color Green and its importance in American history. In that way, HR 994 was a resolution recognizing "that the American people will never forget the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and the loss of innocent lives that day, will continue to fight the war on terrorism in their memory, and will never succumb to the cause of the terrorists."

And they spent hours debating that. I'll quickly jump past the fact that its fool hardy to think (or in this case imply) that without the House of Representatives on top of this that Americans might actually forget the significance of Sept. Eleventh, or might in fact decide to invite the terrorists over to America to take over and maybe have a spot of tea with us. Also, imagine listening to hours of debate in which most of it was Congressmen recounting the facts we already knew and finding new ways to add adjectives to the word "tragedy". It was a terrible day, we all remember that, and we don't need you repeating it over and over which will, as they say, "wear it out". The more you mine it for political gold, the more desensitized we become.

The reason there was so much debate was because wedged in the middle of this Resolution, which no one in their right mind would vote against because then it looks like they are personally saying "screw you" to each and every widow and parentless child, were some incredibly partisan and manipulative statements. Namely, apart from recognizing the valiant efforts of rescue workers and the terrible sacrifice of ordinary Americans, this resolution recognizes legislative acts such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. So, unless you want to vote against recognizing the heroism of Americans who died on September 11, you also have to vote to recognize all the wonderful things Republicans are doing to make us "safer" while those damn Democrats are selling nuclear secrets to Osama.

Republicans know that Democrats have problems with some of these bills which allow people to be held without trial or have their phones tapped, so they put it in this resolution in order to force Democrats to show support for them. If ever their was a sick, election-year ploy, this is one of them (don't worry, there are more to come). The resolution essentially states that the House of Representatives will support everything the President has done and will do to fight the "War on Terror". Oh, and did I mention that the resolution also refers to the war in Iraq as being on the "frontlines of the global war on terrorism", which is funny since most of the terrorists in Iraq showed up AFTER we invaded the country and dismantled their army and infrastructure. I guess it is now on the frontline, a frontline we created.

Nancy Pelosi gave a great speech that day about how we should be coming together across party lines to recognize the tragedy and to come up with real solutions for making us safer, which we certainly are not (despite what the resolution states). She even points out while she's speaking that "of course" the Democrats will vote in favor of this resolution (and nearly all of them did), but that they did so to recognize the heroes who died that day, and not the accomplishments of this administration which has put us in greater danger, not less. And I agree.

Growing up near the end of the Cold War, there was always a palpable feeling of threat and destruction. People were paranoid; annihilation seemed plausible. And then the Cold War ended and, for a brief while, things seemed to be getting better. In the past five years, that palpable feeling has returned, and every action taken has not made us feel more secure or decreased the terrorist threat, it's increased it. Even progress we were making, such as the toppling of the Taliban and improvements in Airport security, have been rolled back. Afghanistan is still not a stable country, and the Taliban is making inroads every day, and as you can learn by watching just about any special report on any news station, contraband still gets through at airports. Five years later, and we're not safer, and yet our Government is wiping away a tear with one hand and patting itself on the back with the other. I cannot wait until midterm elections.

Mmmm.....That Smells Crazy!

2006-09-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

On his September 6th broadcast, syndicated radio hate-monger Michael Savage had this to say about the imminent threat of terrorism:

"So I want every able-bodied man and woman who is licensed to carry a firearm or who knows how to use a weapon, I want you to organize in your neighborhood. We don't want you to commit violence, but we want you to learn how to create a homeland defense system in this country."

Yes, because we all know that when al Qaeda strikes, it will be with a massive army that will come in across the sea that we'll be able to fight off with a well-maintained militia. There are any number of problems I have with this, but no matter how organized your neighborhood gang is, unless they are trained in surveillance and intelligence, they are not going to be any help detering a terrorist attack. Any attack is going to come in the form of an unannounced, quick, and small terror cell that will most likely blow themselves and/or something else up. By the time you know they're doing something, it'll all be over, and then you'll just have a group of people standing around with guns with no one to fight. A neighborhood militia would be helpful if we were getting invaded by Britain, or Russia in one of those bad 80's cold-war movies. Not against terrorists.
He then went on to advocate:

"They're training their sons to use an AK-47, and we're teaching our sons how to swing a baseball bat. Tell me who wins that fight. I have nothing against baseball, but the times don't call for an obsession with sports. They call for a militarization of our children."

There are so many layers of crazy on that paragraph, I'm going to need a shovel to dig through them. Apparently he thinks that the best way to fight nut-jobs who indoctrinate and arm their children to fight mindlessly and inhumanely is by...wait for it...training our children to be just like them. What the hell is wrong with this guy? He's right though, our kids are wasting time with this little league bs. They should be spending their after-school time fighting the good fight and training in heavy arms and hand-to-hand combat. They're going to need those skills when they get sent to fight the unending War in Iraq. In fact, school is a waste of time. What value is learning math and history? If the terrorists take over America, they won't even be able to use that knowledge. Let's teach them important skills in school, like how to clean a rifle or interrogate a prisoner of war. Instead of "Elementary Schools" we can call them "Military Schools", or better yet, "American Patriot, and anyone who says otherwise is a terrorist, Schools."

So, no, Mr. Savage (an apt name if ever there was one) I don't think I'll join up with other gun nuts in my neighborhood to start training to repel an invasion force. And no, I don't think I'll start getting together with the children at the park to teach them how to fire an AK-47 at a moving target. Because you know what it means when we start doing that? It means that the terrorists have already defeated us. It means we have compromised our values, our beliefs, our morals, and it means that we are just like them except with a different name for God. Why don't you just save us time (and do your part) by going over to the middle east and fighting the terrorists there, so we don't have to put up with you here.

An Open Letter to Users of YouTube

2006-09-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, we're all very proud of you. Your parents bought you that video camera you wanted/you hooked up that new webcam. You've got just so much to say and share with the world, and we're all very excited to hear it. In fact, I can just imagine spending hours away from my friends and loved ones in order to watch you and your friends lip sync to your favorite songs in a poorly lit basement, preferably if I can only see the top half of your head.

Hey, while you're at it, you know that clip from the Daily Show? You know, the really funny one that everyone's been talking about? You should put that on there. What? It's already on there? Well, put it up again, it can't hurt. Don't worry if you're not technically savvy, just point the video camera at the television, glare or no, and upload that shit. We'll be forever grateful if you do.

Hold on a sec, I'm looking for that new Ok Go video. They are such a good band, and their videos are really clever. You know, I bet I could imitate this video and it would be pretty fun. Hey, look, some other people did that. That's neat. I've always wondered what all the 8th graders are doing for their talent shows...now I know. This is great. Why share the brilliance of a song/video/television show when you can just imitate it for people. That's almost the same, which is why I never go to actual concerts, only cover bands.

I wish I could tell you face-to-face just how much I appreciate all of your hard work. If only there were some way, other than typing, to let you know how I feel. Maybe I could hook up a camera and speak right to it, telling you what I think of your video of you talking to a camera. Then I could upload that, and if you watched them back-to-back, it would be like we were having a conversation. That would sure be neat. Plus, I wouldn't have to shower or put on nice clothes or leave my room to do it. Awesome!

Thank you, YouTube. At first, I just thought this would be a great way to share significant news clips or funny bits from our favorite shows. It could even be used to promote up-and-coming bands or give people an inside look of the war in Iraq. Boy, would all that have been boring. Now we finally have something worthy of the internet...a network where anyone with a computer can upload clips of their favorite anime videos or video game cinematics scored to a popular rock song. Finally I have a place where I can go to see strangers teach themselves to play a piano version of the Mario Brothers theme or play the guitar solo to that new hit song I heard on MTV. And, the cherry on top...I can see people's video blogs so that finally I can hear what's going on in the life of the guy who gained 50 pounds because he spent all day in front of his computer posting video blogs.

I feel like I'm wasting my life away just doing this stupid written blog, just typing for five minutes and using my knowledge of grammar and spelling and thinking about stuff. If I were smart, I'd just set up a camera, put on my least stained t-shirt, and ramble on for 8 minutes about what I did today, namely sat in front of a computer, watched videos of people sitting in front of computers, and posted video blogs. Thank you, YouTube. I love you.

I Love a Crusade!

2006-09-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

Isn't it interesting how some people can ruin things for everyone? Like poltics. People choosing to devote their lives to looking out for their fellow citizens seems pretty noble, and yet the terrible actions of a few makes everyone think of politicians as liars, fools, and weasels (which, granted, many are). Same thing with religion. Organizations devoted to helping others and answering people's deep, unanswered questions...also sounds pretty good. Of course then you have your religious terrorists, and your religious hate-mongers. In both of these cases, what should be valuable discussions about the best ways to make our world a better place to live in turn into hateful arguments and name-calling.

The difference being that Republicans and Democrats get along better with Independents than with each other sometimes. In religion, the person who believes your god is a fake and their god is real is more your friend than the person who sits the whole thing out. That's something I never quite understood. I mean, I understand that having a belief system and faith in a higher power connects people across religious lines, but it also puts you on opposing teams where you can't both ultimately be right about everything. Yet, it's Atheists and Agnostics who are viewed by both sides as misguided, immoral, and untrustworthy.

In a Newsweek poll, 92 percent of Americans said they believe in God, though you'd be hard-pressed to tell, giving how awful most people act throughout their days. 6 percent said they definitely didn't believe in a god, and 2 percent said they didn't know. Talk about minorities, that's a big one, and also seems to poke a hole in the idea that there's some huge liberal secular army coming to destroy Christmas and make your kids worship Kevin Federline instead of Jesus. Even more shocking is that only 37 percent of people said they'd be willing, not even likely but willing, to elect an Atheist as President. More people said they'd be willing to elect a homosexual President, meaning that there are people who actually believe someone who's life is considered sinful to them is better than someone who may lead a moral life but just doesn't believe in an all-powerful being that he can't see. And despite what some people would have you believe, the number of respondents who say they believe in God is going up, and the number of people willing to accept an Atheist is going down.

That reminds me of one of the most memorable moments I had just before my Catholic Confirmation. As anyone Catholic would tell you, and as anyone else could probably assume, confirmation is a big to-do as it represents a coming-of-age in the church. So, as one of the steps leading up to that big day, to make sure you know exactly what you're getting into and to make sure that you're worthy of it I suppose, at my church they had one of the higher-ups interview each person. Really, it was more of a discussion than an interview, though for some reason they required a Resume and a headshot (it helped that I could pray 75 wpm). Keep in mind, I was all of 14 around the time.

Anyway, towards the end of our discussion about morality and faith, he asked me something that surprised me, and I'm not easily surprised. He asked me if I thought someone could be a good person, but not a good Christian. My answer, which seemed very clear to me, was yes. A person could be kind, honest, hard-working, self-sacrificing, abstinant, moral, virtuous, and all the things that make you a good person and still not believe in Jesus Christ - essential to being a Christian by definition. Many of the things that make you a good Christian also make you a good person, but without that whole "God/Jesus/Bible" part of it, you would never be a good Christian, just a good person. He listened and then not angrily, just matter-of-factly, stated that he didn't believe that at all. He actually believed that it was impossible to be a good person if you weren't a Christian. You could be an alright person, I suppose, or an okay person, but not a good person. I was appalled. He might as well have just slapped me in the face with a Bible, because apparently I had been living in some delusion all those years going to Church when they preached openness and acceptance. Apparently it was "join us or live in depravity" with no middle ground.

There is a polarization going on in the world today, and it's only getting worse. Whether in discussion of politics, religion, economics, values, even science and history, people are being asked to take sides and turn on one another. Where's the middle ground with people who "don't know" or "aren't sure" or who want to come to a consensus? Instead of focusing on whether someone is Muslim or Christian, Republican or Democrat, Rock or Country, can't people focus on what it is that makes people good across these divisions? Because what happens when people focus on beating the other team rather than on improving themselves? They cheat, they lie, they compromise their integrity, and ultimately, the end up hurting themselves.

Life's Tough in the Aluminum Siding Business

2006-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

As a former earner of the minimum wage and a future dependent on retirement benefits, I feel confident in saying that we deserve more. Everyone wishes they had more money, whether they deserve it or not. Republicans would like to keep more of their taxes, while Democrats would generally like to get paid more up front. Obviously some people are overpaid and milking the system, and it's hard to judge the value of things as abstract as ideas or customer service. How do you decide the exact worth of an hours-worth of answering phones or a years-worth of accounting? Obviously their are factors to consider and a fair amount of guess-work that smarter people than I have figured out long ago. But, I think it's fair to say that it might be less than precise.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, productivity has risen 67 percent in the past 25 years, most of that during the late nineties. As a nation, we've all been working harder, and accomplishing more in less time. This is all evident from the huge economic expansion that's occured, and the growth of everything from e-commerce to commodities markets. Yet, during this time when our nation has been producing more and making more profit, wages have only risen 8.9 percent. I'm the first to admit that maybe in 1979 people were being paid too much and working too little so there was some catching up to do as far as productivity is concerned, but still that's a huge gap. And, since 2001 the median wage for college grads has stagnated while the median wage for people without degrees has actually begun to go down. Growth in real wages, including benefits, adjusted for inflation have slowed, and in some cases decreased. And to top it all off, fewer employers are offering retirement plans and most have decreased pensions and medical coverage.

There are no easy answers here, and fluctuations in markets and the economy are going to have effects on wages that aren't always fair or predictable. However, these trends represent a larger problem, that overall the American worker is giving more and getting less. In a nation where our highest ideal is to give our children a better life than we received, its a big let down to have each generation facing more difficulty and less reward.

Hippies Need to Take a Bath

2006-09-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think all people could benefit from working in certain fields, like the service industry, so that maybe when they went back to their normal life they wouldn't be total a-holes to cashiers at Best Buy. I think people could also benefit from working in advertising so that they could learn a few things about selling ideas.

I took Katherine Harris to task for trying to get people to vote for her by calling non-christians immoral legislators and saying that God chooses our rulers rather than, as is the common misconception, the people choosing our leaders. Seems like a bad sales pitch to me.

Well, far worse than that and far more insidious is the sales pitch from the firm of bin laden, Gadahn, and al-Zawahiri. Their latest video release (don't they have DVDs in those caves?) features al Qaeda's "second-in-command" (which I think might be the title of everyone in al Qaeda) as well as an American-born, FBI-wanted member of everyone's favorite terrorist organization. In this video they once again encourage everyone to embrace Islam and are even inclusive enough to invite former Bush and Blair supporters/emloyees to join in all the Islamic fun. For 48 minutes on this tape they talk about just how great Islam is and what it has to offer ("...all for one low, low price...but wait! There's more!") And then, to top it all off they add: "Decide today, because today could be your last day."

As if the actions of al Qaeda and the fact that they are a bunch of muderous hypocrites who live in caves and slums wasn't already enough to turn people off their personal brand of Islam, we also get the added barrel of a gun stuck in our face. Why not just say "Behold the Glory and Love of Allah...or else motherf*ckers!" Most people in marketing would tell you that people don't respond well to threats (especially not explicit ones). It reminds me of the time I was at Blockbuster and the clerk told me "You can rent 'Bring It On' for just $1.99. You really should, because otherwise I'm going to rape your family." Religious beliefs are deeply rooted, based on a lifetime of indoctrination, personal experiences, and introspection. It's not the sort of thing that people change or abandon overnight, and certainly not when they are being threatened. If you wanted people to convert to Islam, maybe you could go into some of the ways it is similar to their present beliefs, and some of the ways it promotes morality or tranquility. Instead, they decided the best pitch they had was that if you don't turn your back on a lifetime of faith, then you're going to get blown-the-hell up. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, people ain't buying, and you should probably just give up with your tapes. People are so afraid of everything now from immigrants to fast food that you're not scaring anyone any more than they already are, and you certainly aren't making any converts. All you're doing is pissing us off more, and everybody knows you don't pick a fight with a big, fat drunk.

Take That, Poor People

2006-09-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Five days ago on Rush Limbaugh's syndicated radio program, the one that my dad is such a fan of (he has an autographed picture of Rush and, I wouldn't be surprised, probably a tattoo of Rush on his person,) he unleashed this insight worthy of Confuscius:

"I think you might then say that the obesity crisis could be the fault of government, liberal government."

'Oh no he didn't' Oh yes, he did. We all know there is an obesity crisis in this country. In fact, you can't watch a local newscast without seeing at least one of those montages where they just show fat abdomens walking around city streets while a reporter talks about fast food. To be fair, this same obesity crisis is occuring throughout much of the western world, being that we now have a greater abundance of food than ever before, the food we have is chock full of sugar and corn syrup, we have the wealth to buy a lot of it, and thanks to modern technology we only have to do a minimal of physical exertion to get through a day. My pal Rush, though, seems to think that rather than this being a systemic problem due to bad personal choices and a change in the way we live, it is in fact the fault of the "liberal welfare state", and I'm certain also probably the personal fault of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Recent studies have found a link between poverty and obesity, I'm guessing in part because the same poor decision making that can lead to eating poorly can also lead to making bad economic decisions. There's also the fact that while wealthy people can afford quality food and gym memberships, poor people not so much. There are complexities, and also many exceptions (you've seen tons of thin poor people and plenty of hefty rich people). But Rush seems to think it's all the fault of food stamps, because as you know, the government hands out so many of them and that the people who get them can just afford reams of food with them. A single food stamp in fact can be used to purchase over 3 tons of delicious Chewy Chip A-Hoy (it's true, look it up).

For some reason Rush thought it would help his argument to point out that the states with the highest incidence of obesity are also states with high poverty rates, and the states with the lowest incidence of obesity are states with lower poverty rates. Those poor states? Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Yes, those five, liberal states. Oh, wait, those look like awfully Red States to me; states where Republicans hold a majority, and who support a Republican president and hold to Republican values. The five least obese states? Colorado, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, and root-of-all-liberal-evil Massachusetts. This list looks a little bluer to me. Do I think there's any connection? Honestly, no, but if Rush is going to make this a partisan food fight, maybe he should make sure he's not whipping cupcakes at his friends.

His argument is that because people are poor, they must be getting handouts in the forms of food stamps, food drives, soup kitchens...and we are just overfeeding these poor bastards (pun intended). I wonder how many food stamps the government is forcing on Rush Limbaugh each week, because he's not so trim himself (though he did lose a lot of weight when he was illegally abusing prescription drugs). Correlation does not equal cause and effect, and I think the correlation in this case has more to do with the individuals and with cultural values than with welfare. It also doesn't help that you can buy a 2 litter bottle of soda for less than a bottle of water, or a bag of chips for less than a bag of apples. When people are forced to make choices based on a limited income, they tend to go for quantity rather than quality, and it's not because we're giving them too many food stamps, Rush.

So Mr. Limbaugh, if you'd like to have a discussion about our warped values system or about a health crisis in the United States, we're happy to have you at the roundtable. If however you'd like to talk about how liberals are making people fat, then first perhaps you should push yourself back from the dinner table and have a good look in the mirror.

Forging the Erudition of the Foibles of Fission

2006-08-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

And other scientific inquiries.

Today on CNN.com, a featured article discussed advances being made in the field of cancer eradication, namely, in creating a "smart-bomb for cancer" (a phrase which caught my eye in part because it was used on The West Wing about four years ago). Though still in it's early stages, and not wholly successful, a promising new study has found that the human immune system can be genetically enhanced to target cancer cells, something it doesn't normally do. Not only is that bad-ass in a science-fiction sort of way, it's also incredibly inspiring and a little terrifying. Essentially, what they do is extract some white blood cells. Then they genetically engineer them by mixing them with a lab-created virus which seeks out and attaches itself to cancer cells. Then, with traditional chemotherapy, they wipe out the person's existing immune system, and then re-introduce the new Jack Bauer immune cells, which then go about eradicating the cancer. In the study it only worked in 2 out of 17 subjects, but in those subjects it worked completely. Tell me science isn't amazing.

And this very week the new Pope is meeting with some former theology students to discuss that. They will be meeting for a three-day discussion/debate on the subjects of evolution and creationism. Of course, they won't be coming to any definitive answers or making any proclamations of one over the other, but it will be a discussion which is refreshing given the climate here in the United States where it seems people have no room for concession or understanding. Even the last Pope gave some credence to Darwin's assertions. I think everyone on both sides of the aisle could learn a lesson from these Popes, that religion and reason are not mutually exclusive, and that discussion and investigation do not denote a lack of faith. Obviously, Pope Benedict doesn't believe that evolution is an entirely random process, and he certainly believes that God created everything, but all the same, any discussion on the merits of both evolution and creationism (or its modern guise of intelligent design) concedes that there is a possibility for truth and faith in evolution. My point: science is a great thing. Also, breaking news: Ice cream is delicious.

Notes from the Campaign Trail

2006-08-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

It's hard to keep track of all the goings-on in an election year, especially a mid-term election year, especially when we have all this breaking news about how Hurricane Katrina happened a year ago and a guy falsely confessed to a single murder a decade ago. So, I thought I'd help you cut through the treacle with a little clip of the kind of thing we find in this election season.

From the party of inclusion, we have Katherine Harris, belle of the Bush coup. Some of you may remember her from the 2000 election when she was co-chair of the Bush Florida Campaign while simultaneously being the Secretary of State for Florida and thus the person who certified Bush's electoral victory in Florida, a decision later overturned by the state supreme court (then even later overturned by the national one) and then again by any number of non-partisan studies since. Before I continue, I should also mention that she is so crazy, many of her own party don't support her.

Her most recent madness came while she was campaigning and giving an interview to the Florida Baptist Witness publication. Just so I can't be accused of taking things out of context, here's what she said...
"...that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

and also...

"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they dont know better, we are leading them astray and its wrong."

I guess I'll start from the top...that old "lie" that is our concept of the seperation of church and state. It's just like that story about Washington chopping down the apple tree...pure poppycock. Our founding fathers never wanted there to be separation of church and state. That's why when they wrote our laws, based in part on English law, they decreed that the Anglican church would be the official state religion and then proceeded to copy the bible word-for-word onto what we would later colloquially call our "Constitution". God already has a grade A form of governance. He's like the President, but for life, and Jesus is like his Vice President. And the Holy Ghost is like the Speaker of the House I guess. They never wanted these things separate. They wanted religion to dictate our laws, and for the law to enforce religion. That's why murder is a crime. That's why stealing is a crime. That's also why it's a crime not to honor my father or to desire my neighbor's possessions. Oh, wait a minute...

Sure, religion influences and is entwined with a person's moral and political values, and certainly if a person believes that something is a sin, then they would probably also think it should be illegal. However, there is the small matter of the fact that not everyone has the same religion, and even the ones that do often disagree, and that unless Jesus was elected to the House of Representatives, that no one in our government is capable of speaking for God or Allah or Vishnu and dictating how we should choose to live. The separation of church and state ensures (in theory) that decisions in government are based on reason and the good of all people and not simply the religious assertions of a few, while at the same time making sure that government never interferes in people's free expression and practice of their religious faith, whatever that may be (unless it harms another, which is why we no longer have sacrifices). But, you know what, I guess it is all a lie, because God has chosen our leaders, and as a Representative of both her district and the one true God, she must know what she's talking about.

So let's get into that. She says that our leaders are chosen by God. Not that God encourages people to run or gives them a calling, or that God informs people's decisions...no, God has hand-picked all of our leaders, and doesn't He just think it's adorable how we go through the motions of holding elections when it's so unnecessary. In fact, on election day, I usually head on down to the pulpit and pray "Dear Lord, in your infinite wisdom, please use your infinite power and wisdom to fill out millions of ballots across the country and tell us who you have decided we want to lead us." And you know what, God always elects someone, and whether I know it or not, that person is the best person for the job, and who am I to question the creator of all things.

It's an odd campaign strategy in a democracy to go out and tell people that they don't choose their leaders. Why is she campaigning then? If God chooses our rulers, then shouldn't she show some faith and let God decide whether she should be one of them? Is she doubting the power of Yahweh by thinking that she, and not He, can convince the voters? If God wants her to rule, it'll happen, amen.

Which then brings us to the part that really inspires. Apparently, only Christians are wise enough to rule. Not Jews, or Muslims, and most definitely not Hindus or Buddhists. Nope, only Christians, because everyone who is not a Christian believes that every woman should be required to have an abortion and that the fetus should then be eaten whole before going out and stealing, murdering, and engaging in forced sodomy or, as non-christians call it: Friday night. Its true though, it really is. All Christians always do the right thing, and all non-christians are constantly trying to make sure that everything sinful and debaucherous is legal, if not legally required. That's why the Jewish people in Congress are always trying to overturn federal murder statutes, and why Atheists are always complaining about how it should be legal to steal. Note to Mrs. Harris: IF YOU HAVE A MORAL PROBLEM WITH ABORTION AND HOMOSEXUALITY, JUST SAY SO. Don't call everyone else a godless sodomite, and don't call any Christian who disagrees with you a false Christian. Though she backtracked and said she supports other religions, especially those wonderful Jews, she still believes that Christians hold the moral high ground.

You know what the difference between a good person and a good Christian is? A belief in Christ. Really, that's what it boils down to, meaning that it's possible to be a good and moral person and still not be a good Christian, so why can't people vote for a non-Christian and still be voting for a capable and noble person? Well, according to my buddy Kathy, it's because when you elect people who aren't true Christians, they legislate sin which then leads the average, dumb people astray by making them think sin is a good thing. Perhaps her Lexicon is out-of-date or her Dictionary has a tear across the page in the "A" section where the word "average" appears, but I think by definition it means, in the case of people, "typical, the norm". You know what is typical in the United States? Christians. 77 percent of the population of our country identify as Christians. 77 percent sounds pretty average to me. Considering that the next highest representation (aside from 'no affiliation') is Jewish with 1.3 percent, seems like the average person in the U.S. is Christian. Most of our leaders are Christian. So, is she saying that the average citizen, a Christian, is being led astray by the Christians in government, the ones that God appointed? Is she saying that the whole world is now going to become a new Babylon of abortions and gay marriages because Christians aren't electing enough Christians?

So after all that, I guess my point is that if you have objections to things, be they abortions, gays, liberals, social programs, free speech in the media, etc., and you expect to do something about it in Congress, perhaps it's best to start forming a real argument and deciding a.) why it is you believe what you do, b.) whether that's the best thing for all Americans, and c.) what's the best way to convince the people who disagree with you. Instead, your friend and mine in Florida decided it would be best to call people stupid, to call people heathens, and to tell people that Christians, and only Christians, are good people and that if you let a single Muslim get elected, that you are killing an unborn child.

Me Fail English? That's Unpossible.

2006-07-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Education really is a silver bullet. It can be a cure for poverty, for violence, for crime. The problem is that information, much like speech, needs to be complete and unfiltered to be of significant value. That's the reason that children who are taught in authoritarian environments (think terror states and dicatorships) end up with a skewed version of "truth" and gain none of the benefits I mentioned at the top. In the United States, we've had many debates recently over what our children should be taught, and who should decide what to teach. Should educators decide what is relevant, or what is factually viable, or should people and the government decide what they do and do not want their children to know? Some people assume that if you teach a child about Evolution that they'll reject religion, or that if you teach a child about sex that they'll start having it. I can safely say that both of those are untrue.

After a two-week research study in Texas, they found that children who are given proper sex education (and not merely the "wait until marriage" part) are more likely to wait to have sex, and more likely to wait until they are married then children who aren't. What this says is that giving children information doesn't mean that they are going to put that information into practice, it simply means that having that information allows them to make responsible and informed decisions. With anyone and especially with children, telling them not to do something if only because you say so will only make them want to do it more. Explaining things to people and allowing them to make the decision on their own means that not only are they more likely to do the right thing, but because they came to the conclusion themselves, that they will understand it and stick to it.

If we truly live in an information age, then we need to start acting like it and stop trying to hide the unpleasant truths. Instead, we should be seeking to make sure that all avenues to information aren't blocked and that instead of just getting one person's opinions we are getting the whole truth. That means allowing open discussion, open exchange, and not restricting information simply because we don't like it or we don't think people can handle it. This also goes for politicians, pundits, and journalists who think that ignoring the other side of an argument will make it untrue.

Two Minus Three Equal Negative FUN!

2006-07-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

My dad is a hardcore Republican; a card-carrying member. He used to tell me that he had been a Democrat when he was younger, but then I would joke that when he got older he got bitter and Republican. He didn't so-much appreciate that. Even though I almost never agree with his politics, he's a smart, well-educated man who was accepted to Rutgers and Princeton, and served in the Army, and for the life of me I can't understand why he seriously defends some of the people in his own party who are not only ill-informed, but dumb and actually working against his own party's platform. I used to tell him "Dad, I know you're a Republican and I think that's really cute and all, but really...George Jr...is that really the best you guys could come up with?"

Case in point: Today our president decided to use the full power of his office to veto a bill for the first time. What horrible, liberal, welfare-socialist bill was this you ask? It was supported by a 63-37 margin (253-193 in the house) and sponsored by those left-wing nutjobs....Arlen Spector and Bill Frist? Yes, the bill was put forth and supported by anti-choice Republicans, people who have agreed with the President nearly 100 percent of the time and are the cream of the neo-con crop.

This bill would have loosened regulations on funding for Stem Cell research so that diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's might one day be cured by using stem cells generated from discarded embryos. Whenever a women stores embryos at a fertility clinic, or has embryos taken out for in-vitro fertilization, the unused embryos are normally just thrown away, which no one seems to have a problem with and no one in their right mind considers murder (because if they did then women would be murderers at least once a month). However, studying or using those embryos to cure disease is, in the eyes of one G.W., apparently is equal to or worse than grabbing children out of their cribs and ripping their limbs off in order to create Frankenstein-like abominations. Believe me, Bill Frist isn't suggesting that we hold women down and take all of their embryos to do with as we please, and the Republican from Pennsylvania doesn't think we should be harvesting stem cells from fetuses in the womb. All they are suggesting is maybe we should look into saving lives that have already been created, born, and blessed by god by using cells that were going to be discarded anyway.

Bill Frist and Arlen Spector are both morally opposed to abortion, just like the President. And, agree or disagree, at least Bill and Arlen (and all of the Republicans that support this bill) recognize that life at least needs sperm, a womb, and about 9 months gestation. Is the President suggesting that every embryo is a life? If so, does he think that we should be striving to make sure that every single egg a woman has is given the chance to be fertilized and grown into a full-grown human? Not only is that idea silly, but its actually sort-of frightening.

Sure, go ahead, take those extra embryos and try to find a woman who wants to "adopt" it and use it to have a child; there are many infertile women who will jump at the chance. But, as a species, I think we have far more embryos than we ever could or even should use (oh the financial burdens of having hundreds of children each). Why not then use these extra embryos, already out of the womb and never intended to become lifeforms themselves, to save lives. I'm not suggesting we grow clones and steal their organs, and I'm not suggesting that we start draining women of the embryos they're not planning on using. I'm not even suggesting that we start mass-producing stem cells...I'm just saying why can't we do some research and see if it would even be possible to improve the health and lives of people that everyone on both sides of the aisle can agree are lifeforms. Not every embryo and every sperm is a life. There are many gray areas, but can we not all agree that as long as those two things stay separate that neither of them counts as a lifeform? When a man is murdered, you don't count all of his sperm as living entities, otherwise newspaper headlines would read "Apparent Suicide Kills Billions". Now that's just silly.
Also silly: For once I am agreeing with Bill Frist. BILL FRIST! The guy who thought the woman who's brain had literally shrunk was not brain damaged because he watched a videotape of her not moving. That Bill Frist. Thanks a lot George. You've got me siding with that guy. Just sign the damn bill.

Nothing Sells Tickets Like a Spectacle

2006-07-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

Looking over the news coverage, I was shocked to see that people are using sensationalism and fear to boost interest in foreign affairs. Shocked. This sort of thing has never been done before, and it is a sure sign that the stalwart credibility of our national media is finally showing some flaws. I am, of course, being ironic. I am not at all surprised, though I really didn't see this coming.

Before any close election, and even the ones that aren't, you can always rely on the pundits to change the topic or skew the argument. The last Presidential election is a prime example of how the simple repetition of a few falsehoods was enough to make people think that a decorated war hero would be a poor commander or our nation, yet the man who led the country into a poorly planned war that the majority of Americans were opposed to at the time of the election would defend the nation with his own bare hands.

This time the numbers are much worse for the Republicans, so the tactics are a bit more grandiose. Turn to any news channel, any program, where a prominent Republican appears and they will most likely use the words "World War III" to describe the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, terror threats around the globe, and continued animosity with Iran and North Korea. You may ask how exactly that constitutes a world war when only two of those nations are actually fighting, and Iran and North Korea have been threats for a decade, while terror threats don't equate with the ability to carry out those threats. Not to say that all of these things aren't serious and shouldn't be of the greatest importance, but what I am saying is that a great disservice is done by using hyperbole and mischaracterization to incite fear and panic in the American people.

This is a time for diplomacy, for well-planned and restrained military action, for international cooperation and reform, and for complex issues to be treated accordingly. This is not a time to shout "fire" in a crowded theater so that everyone can be trampled and half of us burned to death. As soon as you say "World War III", you conjure up images of a nuclear holocaust and global annihilation. You also draw a clear picture of organized alliances where there are none. So, basically, what you do is turn a colorful and complex mosaic into a black and white cartoon where everyone is against us and everyone must be dealt with by force or else we are all screwed.

So, coming up to this next election, rather than discussing prudent strategy and necessary domestic reforms, rather than talking about ways to limit troop deployments and stabalize democracies, and rather than working to return to fiscal and social responsibility we are going to be talking about the Apocalypse and who you want at the helm of our John Connor/Omega Man/Beyond Thunderdome future...the unflinching Republicans who stay the course no matter what public opinion, reason, or the actual outcome suggests...or the weak willed Democrats who just want to be loved and give the world a hug. Does that sound over simplistic? Watch Meet the Press and listen to Newt Gingrich, because that's basically what they're setting us up for. They think we're ignorant and easily swayed, and you know what? They just might be right.

Someone Should Do Something About All the Problems

2006-06-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

Adding to the list of election year stunts, the Republican majority has pushed the anti-Flag desecration Amendment to the floor of the Senate for debate. Let me clear up right at the front that anything I say is not an attack on Republicans only, especially since many of them are smart and decent enough to oppose this nonsense, and some Democrats are just desperate and dumb enough to support it.

This is another thing that I just don't understand. At least when people are opposed to gay marriage they have some sort of moral or religious reason to back it up; in this case I don't think "You shall not burn your own flag" fell anywhere near the Ten Commandments. Burning the American flag, or desecrating it, are forms of free expression, which is a foundation for, if not what our country stands for, than at least for the ideals we pretend to stand for. Do I think it's a bit misguided? Yes, if only because it's too easy a target and represents too many different things to serve as a proper protest in most cases. It represents our government in it's present form, it represents our history, it represents ideals that we strive for, and unless you are ready to protest all of those various things, all it does is make a mess of your argument and distract from whatever valid points you have. Also, it's incendiary (pun intended). Some people get irrationally upset over the burning of a flag, as though you had dug up a veteran and then burned the corpse. Perhaps it's because violent protests overseas often involve the burning of U.S. flags. So, really, if you're trying to make a legitimate argument, burning the flag immediately shuts a lot of people's ears and makes them equate you with a terrorist, so it's not an effective means of creating change. That's why I'm opposed to it. Otherwise, I think people should be free to do whatever they want with the flag.

Why? Well, because freedom of expression is a cornerstone of any democracy, and specifically ours, and ensuring that this right is protected is the only way to ensure that truth will be protected and change will be allowed to come when it is needed. Also, the desecration of a flag has no consequence other than a little smoke, so unless this is meant to protect the environment, it's foolish. Burning a flag is not some gateway rebellion that will lead to armed conflict, it is simply a symbolic way of expressing anger or disappointment.

Some people like to think that the American flag is some holy object, deserving of greater respect than our leaders or our laws, and certainly more important than even our Constitution. I had a professor in college who, not long after the September attacks asked our class how many people had American flags in their windows or on their cars. It was roughly 80-90 percent of the class. When he asked how many of us had voted in the Presidential election, it was four of us. Four out of 40. Clearly the 10 percent of us who weren't flag waving were too busy actually participating in the Democracy to participate in such shallow displays. If anything, I think it's more disrespectful to paste a photocopy of the flag in the window of your SUV. It's more tacky and insulting to print it on your t-shirt or as a design on your underwear. It's shallow and ironic to buy up cheap flags at Wal-Mart, made in China. If the flag is deserving of such protection as a Constitutional Amendment, then perhaps we should devote more time to protecting the things it stands for in our minds.

I think it's more damaging to the integrity of our nation and our flag to ban its desecration. The flag is a symbol. It is the physical expression of an idea or an institution. Are we saying that this expression should be protected, but that any counter expression should not? Are we saying that the good things about our country should be said loudly and proudly, but the negative things should be hidden and kept silent under punishment of law?

I think burning the flag sends the wrong message, but it is not my right nor the right of anyone else to tell people what message they want to send. If someone wants to express themselves this way, so be it. Make laws to ensure that it is done safely, or with precaution, but to make an Amendment banning any form of free expression certainly sends the wrong message, not only to us but to the world. When we are desperately trying to convince the world that we are great lovers of freedom and liberty, this is not the message we should be sending.

On a side note, if the Senate should get so far as to pass this, which I certainly hope they won't, then I think it should be amended to protect the flag from being defiled by hypocrites and cowards. In order to buy a flag, you should be required to take a test on the Constitution. You should only be allowed to buy flags made in America. You should be able to prove that, if you are over 18, that you voted in the last election, Presidential or otherwise, unless you were in the hospital or in the midst of battle. The right to own or display a flag should not be permitted for people who commit corporate crime or lie to the American people. The right to wave the flag should be kept from people who care only about the symbol and nothing about the ideas for which it stand. And, it should be kept from anyone who supports a war with a country that they can't point to on a globe.

Some People Just Don't Get It

2006-06-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

When I was in France, I discovered the burden and the gift of a language barrier. Well, that's not entirely true. I first discovered it in high school. See, I attended a good and competitive middle school (well, comparatively). When I got to high school, I discovered that not everyone had that same benefit. For instance, since I had been taking typing and computer courses all through middle school, I was already proficient by the time I entered typing my Freshman year (it was required) and I was shocked to find that most of my classmates seemed to have barely even seen a computer before (keep in mind this was way back in 1995). Within a month, I completed every assignment the teacher had planned for the semester, plus a few she made up. After that, I spent the rest of the time goofing off and helping my friends cheat on their assignments. So, to get back to my point, I also found that I had a better vocabulary than most of these kids, so I had to dumb myself down to be understood most of the time. It was frustrating.

Anyway...France. With my limited knowledge of French, plus my insecurities about sounding like an idiot, it was burdensome to try and communicate for fear of not being understood (without resorting to English, which most of them spoke anyway). On the plus side, I found how great it is to be able to walk around and not have to listen to people's inane chatter all of the time because I couldn't understand them anyway. It was quite a shock when I came home and could no longer block out the ramblings of random people as they perused the aisles of Barnes and Noble.

Unfortunately, living in a heavily populated city, it is completely inescapable, especially when your iPod freezes up on you and you've finished the only book you were carrying (always bring a back-up). It's hard to say which is worse, the people who feel the need to express every thought they have as loudly as possible no matter how mundane ("This subway is so cold" "I had chicken for lunch, I like chicken.") or the people who try to hold lofty conversations about subjects they know nothing about.
The thing that really bugs me is that people just don't understand the world around them. Either they are not paying attention, ignoring the news, and stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, or they are willfully ignoring the world around them, choosing not to think about why it is that things are the way they are. I don't just mean on a global scale, I mean on a personal one. Do you know how much of the day I spend analyzing my own actions and the actions of others? Its a lot, and yet they can just stumble through life without a care, knocking into you and getting in your way, ruining your new suit and making a mess. Ignorance is bliss, but the greater bliss is in being completely self-centered but thinking otherwise. But anyway, let's talk about me.