I passed by this house every Saturday during my long run. Right after the election I made sure to snap a photo of the sign so that I could get a picture before they took it down.
Here in Maryland, Howard County has a bumper sticker you see on almost all the cars - it’s basically that green sign on the top right (without the deplorable thing, of course). So when I saw this, I was blown away at the awesome creative nature of the situation. It’s a nice bit of humor in what’s been a horrible election.
These guys show up during rush hour every Friday. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with their views, but it’s so annoying that it backs up traffic as people try and read the signs.
For the past two years we’ve had increasing evidence that something needs to change in the police/neighborhood dynamic. But Fergusson, New York City, and Baltimore are only the tip of the iceburg in every sense of the metaphor. If, like me, you follow the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Boing Boing, and other organizations committed to justice, you know that for every Freddie Gray there are dozens whose injustices don’t make it to national prominence. Of course, this isn’t even a new trend. African Americans have been complaining about harassment and being framed for a long time.
The lives lost are tragic, but the constant police misbehavior has an even worse effect on society. I came across the following today on an article about Stingrays:
Well, the supposed “good guys” (cops) no longer really care what is legal and what is not, so why should I?
Once this type of sentiment becomes entrenched, civil society is in danger. Just like paying taxes, we need people to believe in the social rules or the illusion comes crashing down.
I heard an interesting theory today - not sure if it’s a causal or correlation relationship, but it goes as follows:
We know that genetics plays a role in how naturally fearful people are. If you’re more towards fearful on the spectrum, you’re not going to want to live in a big city full of lots of fear-causing agents. So you live in the country. Also, if you’re fearful, you’re going to be happier believing in a god that can protect you from all the things you fear. Finally, fearful people hate change. They’ll want things to remain the same - to be conserved. Conservative. It certainly explains the way conservatism manifests itself in the USA. (although I’m sure because of the negative connotations, people would resent being called fearful) It also explains the return to conservatism when times are tough. But, doesn’t necessarily mean causation, maybe it just appears at the same time and there’s another explanation we haven’t found.
The Supreme Court rulings on campaign finance make me think of Animal Farm. All are equal, but some are more equal than others. (Because if money is free speech, some have way more free speech than others)
“What Mailer told me is that the CIA is basically a white Christian Protestant organization," Fellwock said. “And white Christian Protestants have to find a devil in order to justify what they do. Their Christian values say they should help the poor, like the Communists were. But they were not helping the poor. They were helping the very rich. And this created a conflict inside of the white Christian Protestant mind that could only be resolved by them seeking out a devil and making that devil into an exaggerated thing. Thus, they exaggerated the threat of communism just like they’re exaggerating the threat of Islam today.”
Questlove said his most recent stop was conducted at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge a few weeks ago following an appearance at the hip venue Brooklyn Bowl. Officers pulled over his driver, shined flashlights into the car and asked him why he was sitting in the back “like a don,” Questlove said. After showing the officers a copy of his new memoir, Mo’ Meta Blues, Questlove said he was let go.
Stephen Fry is asking for the Olympic Committee to cancel the Winter Olympics in Russia this Winter. The reason is their recent horrible actions against LGBT people. Politically, I think Fry’s in the right. (The gay stuff plus tons of other bad things Russia’s been doing lately) But I feel it could be unfair to the Olympians who spent all these years training. (Especially the older ones who can’t wait 4 more years) Additionally, given all the commercialism BS I’ve heard about the IOC and how you can’t even reference the Olympics if you’re a business in the city in which it’s happening, I doubt they’ll have the convictions to pull the plug. But how awesome would it be if they succeeded and just moved it to the second-place city that was advocating for the Olympics? One can dream….
I’m always late on my podcasts. I have a lot of stuff I want to listen to and not much time for listening. This week I was catching up on the final week of Talk of the Nation episodes as well as some This American Life episodes from a month or more ago. They kept talking about how Republicans need to do something about immigration reform in order to get the Latino Vote - or at least not automatically lose it. After all, Latinos are natural allies with the Republicans - on average Latinos tend to be socially conservative and pro-business. Great allies! Except for that whole Republican racism image that I’m not entirely sure is undeserved. (Especially since it’s been a tactic they’ve been using ever since Nixon used it to wrest the South from the Democrats. Remember McCain’s alleged black son being a tactic to lose him key states in the South?) Instead of “Build that Dang Fence” they should be working on comprehensive Immigration Reform, the pundits said. But here’s the thing - Latinos are quite diverse culturally. See this video from The Daily Show:
Do I even need to repeat it here? Eh, why not: “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”. Between the way the mind works and the way we’ve been socialized, statistics carry more weight than the same information without statistics. However, there are many ways to take the same data and bend the results to draw out your conclusion. In the case of a story I came across at the end of May, it was through omission. The story mentioned a study by the Drug Czar’s office that revealed
This Thursday morning I tweeted that I would need to take a look at the actual ramifications of the Supreme Court’s 26 June decisions before I did too much celebrating. I was right to have a tempered reaction. As is pointed out in the Rolling Stone story on the decision, all the overturning of DOMA does is allow for Federal rights to be given to gay couples. So they can be married in the eyes of the IRS, Federal Healthcare, etc. Now, this CAN have incredible financial ramifications, but we’re still a little ways away from gay marriage in all 50 states. Although, I wonder if the decimation of the Defense of Marriage Act leads the way to a lawsuit about states having to reciprocate marriage. I’m a little ignorant on whether states do that because they’re federally required to or because it would bonkers if you could go from married to unmarried just because you moved for a job. So there’s that.
Over at Popehat they presented an interesting article about the Ideological Turing Test. The regular Turing Test says that a computer passes if you can interact with it and you don’t know you’re interacting with a computer instead of a human. One of the closest things we have right now are the chat bots whose eventual goal is to get you to some website. Well, the Ideological Turing Test tests:
whether a political or ideological partisan correctly understands the arguments of his or her intellectual adversaries: the partisan is invited to answer questions or write an essay posing as his opposite number. If neutral judges cannot tell the difference between the partisan’s answers and the answers of the opposite number, the candidate is judged to correctly understand the opposing side.
There’s an interesting tension in democratic nations. For democracy to work there needs to be transparency. A lack of transparency leads to corruption via information asymmetry. Humans, being humans, tend to exploit this to bad ends. Sometimes they have noble intentions and sometimes they have evil intentions, but the results are the same - an abuse of power. Examples include testing drugs and diseases on African-Americans, testing drugs on military and CIA employees without their knowledge, or the lies about the US winning in Vietnam. However, nations have always needed to maintain a level of secrecy to preserve information asymmetry over other nations. It’s why Caesar of the Roman Empire invented his eponymous cypher. It’s why all countries have an equivalent of the NSA to protect their secrets and obtain the secrets of other nations. So we want our countries to keep secrets, but not the wrong kinds of secrets.
In my 20s I learned something important that changed my idealism when it came to how the world would be awesome if all the politicians would listen to me - the law of unintended consequences. I came across an interesting example in a 22 May story Planet Money did about the uneven Marijuana Laws in the USA. One of the biggest arguments in favor of pot legalization is the legalization will reduce the street price which will allow drug lords and gangs to have less money. This allows them to have less power and we all win. The same number of people get baked and Mexican and border cities don’t become war zones. (For the record I am conflicted. I think legalization does imply a sort of endorsement by the government - “this isn’t that bad for you or it’d be illegal”) Turns out this has pretty much worked exactly like that:
The Executive Pranch of government is a complex place; way more piecemeal than it seems when it’s described/depicted in media. It’s like a bunch of separate companies in which the President’s office has a controlling share. Still, given the ridiculous nature of the conspiracy theories which Right Wing News Organizations irresponsibly do nothing to counter: REALLY?!? You thought it was a good idea to let the IRS give special audit consideration to Right Wing Groups?!? REALLY?!?
[caption id=“attachment_6232” align=“aligncenter” width=“683”] The Capitol[/caption]
I keep hearing that the gun bill was killed in the Houses of Congress despite 90% of Americans wanting it to pass. Now, we know that polls can be rigged based on how the questions are asked. But, if we take as a starting point that this poll is accurate, what does that mean about our representative democracy system? There are basically two types of democracy - representative and direct. In a direct democracy we’d all vote on all the issues. In the representative democracy that we have, we vote on issues by proxy. We believe that Democrats or Republicans will vote a certain way on certain issues and we know where our candidates agree and disagree with their parties. So we elect them and expect them to vote as we would vote. So what does it mean when 90% of us want something and we still don’t get it? Is the system working correctly? Are we effectively saying they know better than us even though they were elected by us to serve as our proxy? And if it’s broken do we have any recourse short of the reprehensible idea of revolution?
A bit of a news roundup for this week’s political post.
[caption id=“attachment_6120” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Game of Thrones - coveted by Australians[/caption]
Apparently, illicit acquisition of the Game of Thrones is making things awkward for the United States Ambassador to Australia. He’s asking Australians to please stop getting the show off the Internet. After all, the US is quick to put (or threaten to put) other countries like Spain onto their special list if they start grabbing TV shows off the net. But Australia is an important ally so it’s embarrassing for them to be pushing the US’s buttons. Here’s where they could have done better by listening to something I’m constantly complaining about. See, according to the linked article, the issue is that for seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones it was not available until a few weeks after it had aired in the US. There’s no reason for that. It’s not like the days before current technology where physical objects need to be ferried around the world. It’s all digital - all parts of the world should be able to watch all programs at the same time. Because NOW that it’s available a few hours after it shows in the US, the people in Australia don’t care - they’re already used to getting it for free online. So - the whole cliche about the genie being put back in the bottle.
The slippery slope rebuttal can be pretty annoying depending on how dumb the person using the argument wants to be. For example, many people say all the surveillance cameras we have everywhere are a slippery slope towards totalitarian governments. While I think we still have a few tricks up our sleeves before we have to be worried, I give the argument some credibility because in the past one of the greatest tools totalitarian governments had at their hands was to create a snitch society. When your neighbors (or even your kids) are going to potentially rat you out to the government, it means you really have to watch what they catch you doing. Even something that is innocent (as far as the government’s rules) can be dangerous if your neighbor misinterprets what you’re doing. So if you don’t have to worry about neighbors, but have video everywhere - all the worse!
Usually for my blog posts, I write them in isolation and try to guess how my regular readers might respond. However, for this topic, I spoke with Dan about it as I wrote it. As someone who’s visited Hiroshima, Dan has a pretty unique perspective on the topic compared to most Americans.
With the current revolution in Egypt I’ve been hearing a lot of speculation on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about who will come to power when the current government falls. There’s been a lot of talk about the consequences of a government run by The Muslim Brotherhood. The fact is that some key figured in Al-Qaeda were active in The Muslim Brotherhood. Another fact is that Hamas is an off-shoot of The Muslim Brotherhood. However, at least two guests have mentioned that in the last few decades the organization has sworn off violence. Wikipedia (caveats about Wikipedia reliability apply) claims that bin Laden has denounced the fact that The Muslim Brotherhood has denied violence and is participating peacefully in Egypt’s parliament.
Recently I was listening to Fresh Air’s interview with David Weigel. The occasion was a book he had written about how the Republicans are shifting what their party is about. Frankly, I’m a bit concerned. The party seems to be less and less about small government and big business and more and more about courting religious fanatics. Seriously, a lot of these people sound just as bad as the Mullahs in Iran. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with courting religious voters. For some people they don’t care if their government is going to have financial policies that will harm them as long as they try to make abortion illegal again. But religious fanaticism is wrong whether it’s Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, or any other religion.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“I’ve got some beef with the White House’s Policy”] [/caption]
The Whitehouse has been posting the official photographer’s photos on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse . They each have the following written in the description:
This official White House photograph is being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way or used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The Seat of Power”] [/caption]
The last time I really blogged about politics was back around the 2008 election. Looking over my archives, I found that, by contrast, I blogged about politics quite a bit from 2007 and prior. My heaviest political post density (for It’s A Binary World 2.0) seems to be 2005-2006. Why so much back then? I think because I was already posting pretty regularly about politics and I was extremely frustrated over the second Bush term win. I think this post best sums up the despair I was feeling at the time. It was very interesting to read this post with 4 years of hindsight. First of all, this sentence: “There haven’t been any abuses of power (that we know of) … “. Little did I know we’d find out that December about the NSA’s Warrentless Wiretapping which, I believe, would have heavily swung the elections in 2004. ( THANKS New York Times!) Second, this fraction of a paragraph:
If you are an American reader of this blog, make sure you vote. It doesn’t matter who you vote for - just vote. And keep your eyes out for any hanky-panky with the voting machines.
Today I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR. They had an economics guy on who’s now a professor at one of the University of Maryland campuses and was involved in Clinton’s economic team. (Although he didn’t always see eye to eye with Clinton’s treasury secretary) This guy put the current economic crisis in the best terms and framed it so well, I can’t believe that we’re in this mess. Those stupid jackasses on Wall Street “were betting that people who did not have money to pay their mortgage would pay their mortgage.” Just take a second and read that again. Yeah, pretty nutty, isn’t it? If people had just used their noggins we wouldn’t be in this mess. “Sure,” you might say, “hindsight is 20/20.” Yeah, but it doesn’t take hindsight to see that people who have bad credit probably aren’t going to pay their mortgage. Couple that with the fact that Wall Street swindled them into interest only loans and variable rate mortgages, and you HAD to see that a disaster was on the way. Again, they were betting that people who didn’t have the money to pay their mortgage would somehow pay their mortgage. Again, in their defense you might say, “but they thought housing prices were always going to go up.” And to that I say, WHEN has ANY market EVER gone up FOREVER? Hello! The tech bubble was just 10 years ago! Nothing ever goes up without an end. That’s just ridiculous. Sigh! Seriously, I don’t know how they let this happen. These guys all have degrees in finance. They should have known and done case studies on how whatever’s hot now won’t be hot in a few years. And then AIG freakin’ insures the mortgages of people with bad credit? I just can’t believe it!
There’s been a lot of news for the past 3-6 months about the new FISA bill and how it provides immunity for the telecommunications companies. A lot of people including the Electronic Frontier Foundation are opposed to this provision of the bill (if not bill in its entirety) because they say the telcos have acted illegally by assisting the Executive Branch with their warrentless wiretapping of phone calls. The reason they argue this is illegal is that the original FISA bill, as written in the 1970s (and ammended throughout the years) requires a warrant for all wiretapping of US Persons. That includes foreigners who are physically in the United States. As the New York Times revealed in 2005, the Bush Administration started acting against this law in 2001 because of opinions written by some radicals in the Justice Department (such as Yoo).
This year has been an incredibly racist year from people being afraid to vote for Barack Obama because they believe he’s a secret Muslim (so? Any American-born person should be allowed to run for president) to people who say he’s too black or not black enough. Now this old guy claims that Obama’s an Oreo and it’s unfair for him to reap the rewards of the Civil Rights battles of the previous generations.
Obama will not be the first African-American President of the United States. Barack Obama will be the first mulatto President of the United States of America. This is the myth of race in the USA. Apparently because Barack is half-black, he’s the first African-American President. But if he’s half-black then he’s also half-white. So why isn’t he just the 40-somethingith white President of the US? I don’t understand, if one half is valid, why isn’t the other?
Yes, the race for the White House has hit new lows, even for this race. It appears that we haven’t learned from the past two races and it’s starting to scare me. Both in 2000 and 2004 one of the biggest reasons stated for George W Bush winning was that both Al Gore and John Kerry seemed too “elite” and “aloof”. George Bush seemed a little more down to earth, someone you could invite to a BBQ. Well look where that got us!!
On Hardball on MSNBC they were talking about Barack Obama’s poor bowling performance during his campaigning in Pennsylvania. One of their political commentators quipped, “Perhaps he should have stuck to shooting hoops.” I absolutely couldn’t believe they would say something like that on the news. And it wasn’t some random yahoo, it was someone that I’ve seen on MSNBC making political commentary in the past. If it matters in how you think of this, this commentator was white.
I’ve always been a bookworm and so around the age of 11 or 12 I asked all my male and female friends whether they would vote for a black man or a white woman for president. Everyone, male and female alike would always say black man. I was surprised that the ladies didn’t stick up for one of their own. I was so surprised, that I would ask my friends this question every couple of years. We moved a little and I also changed who I hung out with so I wasn’t always asking the same people. Yet, even though high school and college a majority would say they would rather go for a black man.
As you know, a student was tasered at UF a few days ago. I hadn’t written anything about it until now because I wanted to get some details from my brother who matriculates there. Before I get to his info, I just want to say that this incident has shown why video is important in news. Anyone who, like me, saw the video thought the kid deserved to be tasered. Why? The kid, who had the smirk of a self-entitled jerk as he stepped up to the podium, was clearly resisting arrest. When the police detained him, he pushed them away and broke free. He then pumped his hands in the air victoriously, although this was cut short by the police catching him again. He continued to push and shove the cops until they finally tasered him. You don’t want to listen to the cops, that’s what happens. But the people who only read about the tasering though that it was undeserved. Undoubtedly those written bits of news left out the way he was acting, the look on his face, and the shoves against the cops.
Stanford University, a leader in trying to get Congress and the public to understand the importance of the Public Domain have done what I’ve been dreaming of doing for a few months now. They decided to test the doctrine of Fair Use in copyrights by creating the following video. Any Disney fan should be sure to watch. Don’t know what fair use is? Don’t worry, they’ll explain it below.
In the case that the above video should be removed from youtube, download it from their page. If that page should happen to be down, then you can download it from me here.
Looks as though my method of figuring out which Congressmen are gay is correct. Just look to see who is working the hardest to restrict gay rights. For example, Senator Larry Craig. He pleaded guilty to basically trying to solicit sex in a men’s bathroom. He’s now claiming that he wasn’t guilty and he plead guilty to get people off his back.
Sorry buddy, but that’s pretty weak and it’s hardly a good defense. After all, if that’s true then you are admitting to perjury and that, in and of itself, is enough to end your career. That WAS the charge brought against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Alberto Gonzalez has resigned as Attorney General. The guy who Bush said wasn’t going anywhere is leaving! I haven’t been able to to catch the news at all today as I was in training, but I saw a little headline on Tv in the lunchroom! I am so curious to find out what caused this to occur. I am even more curious about what he’s sitting on. What did he do that was worth pushing him out. Even more strangely, people seem to be abandoning ship like rats. You know that old saying, (paraphrasing) “you know the ship’s going down when the rats flee”.
I came across the follwing European Threat information the other day but have been unable to validate its status. Anyone else seen these and can verify?
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved”. Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross”. Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance”. The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.
A male Florida Senator was recently arrested attempting to solicit sex from a male prostitute. His excuse, “I was in a bad neighborhood and I saw all these black guys and I got scared.” I don’t understand how that excuse works well. John Oliver from The Daily Show had a better excuse, “I’m bulimic and I have putting my finger down my throat.”
Politicians continue to take the gay vote for granted. Personally, with the stances that Republicans take on social issues I don’t see how anyone with an alternative lifestyle can vote republican. Well, today, while listening to last week’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, I found out that recently John McCain fired some of his campaign staffers. His complaint? He wanted them to stop dressing him in “gay sweaters” on the campaign trail. Wow….
Every time politicians speak, I want to question their numbers, to force them to quantify where it came from. No one has the balls to do this out there other than Colbert and John Stewart who will play back to back quotes of politicians contradicting their selves. Seriously, does the rest of the news industry work for the Ministry of Truth?
With all the news recently about whether Tillman’s death was just a ploy by the White House to make the war sound great or whatever the heck was going on, I was very surprised to find that I had blogged about it when it happened.
It’s not often that one finds acts of selflessness and courage nowadays. Especially here in the States people seem to only be chasing after money, power, and fame. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those goals - we simply tend to take things too far and puruse those goals at the blatant disregard for others. That’s why Tillman’s story has made such an impression on me. He was a football player who gave up a multi-million dollar a year contract to go fight in Afghanistan. He died last week in post-war combat.
As we know, there are many drugs which cause memory loss. They must be taking all of them up there because every time they end up in front of Congress, they spew a series of “I dont’ remember"s or “I don’t recalls"s. In a clip they showed this morning on CNN from Alberto Gonzalez’s testimony I counted about 10 “I dont’ remember/recall"s. It’s clearly a mockery of the system. If they can’t compell him to remember, what’s the point of the trials? To give the media something else to focus on?
It’s not Paul Wolfowitz’s fault that he used nepotism to give his girlfriend a job at the state department paying $200k a year. No, no…. You see, he told use yesterday why he did it - He was new to the bank and didn’t know that it was wrong. Of course! The World Bank obviously operated under different rules than the rest of the US Government where he worked for 24 years. But then again, he was one of the nut jobs that said invading Iraq was a good idea, so perhaps his judgment isn’t working so well.
In t his post, Scott Adams mentions some of his dissapointment with our goverment. The key three paragraphs to his post were:
Recently our so-called Speaker of the House was meeting with the Syrian government while our so-called Vice President was on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show reminding the world that the so-called Speaker of the House doesn’t speak for the United States in foreign policy. Foreign policy is the job of the so-called President who doesn’t speak to governments that don’t already agree with him.
Whenever one political party expresses wishes to give a fixed percentage tax cut to all Americans, the other party portrays it as tax cuts for the rich. (I’ve complained on this blog about this before) Their proof: the rich get back a few thousand bucks while the poor only get back a few hundred. The stupidity: if it’s a tax cut where everyone gets 1% off, and the rich people put more in, 1% of their money is more than 1% of the poor person’s money. Of course, they never dig deeply into it in the news and perhaps it’s a tax cut on Porches or something else that only rich people have. Somehow I doubt that or the other party would bring it up.
Back in 2005, when gas prices were high, the Republican Congress (although the Dems may have acted the same in their shoes) decided that, to save a few barrels of oil, they would move daylight savings up 3 weeks. They forgot that the ENTIRE WORLD now runs all of its most critical applications on computers and computers are programmed to follow the same daylight savings from 60 years ago! Now Bill Gates is warning people not to trust their appointments in MS Outlook and other software until the day of the old daylight savings. Don’t these guys remember the Y2K mess? And now they want to mess with the way computers keep time AGAIN?
For the last few years, the movie industry’s battles with Internet pirates offered an entertaining diversion during Oscar season. Their problem: they need to “leak” their films to Academy members for consideration, but don’t want those official leaks to fall into the hands of pirates. In 2003, the MPAA banned all screeners, causing a massive uproar from directors, actors, critics and indie studios. The plan was eventually scrapped in December 2003
Yesterday Democratic Senator Joe Biden was announcing his candidacy for president when someone asked him what he thought of presidential candidate Barack Obama. His response?
[Barack Obama is] “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
This immediatly became a huge race issue. I mean, it just boil’s people’s potatoes to hear educated blacks called “articulate”. Why doesn’t anyone say, “Man, you should vote for Hilary. She’s articulate.” It seems to imply that all blacks speak ebonics and it’s some kind of wonderful achievement for them to speak articulately.
First they release news that Barack Obama went to school in a madrassa in Indonesia. When CNN decides to do some research and proves that it’s just a public school, Fox comes out and shows their anti-muslim racism outright.
I think it’s time we rethink why we execute criminals. Because we seem to have some very funny and contradictory ideas right now as a result of no one wanting to examine them. For example, Jon Doe brutally murders a family. He gets the death penalty and we must ensure that his death is quick and painless. Did he ensure that the deaths he committed were quick and painless? And what kind of a deterrent is death if it is going to be a as nice as being knocked unconscious?
I think it’s now pretty obviously true what people were suggesting in the month before elections. All of a sudden, gas, whose high prices had been a thorn in the side of the Republicans, took a dive in price. The truth (no conspiracy) is that Republicans are in bed with Big Oil. Bush and others own oil companies or are on their boards and stuff like that. The conspiracy was that the gas companies were helping them out by lowering prices. (They could afford to with the huge profits they were raking in that summer)
MSNBC predicts Democrats control the House of Representatives with anything from 7 to 47 seat majority. The Senate is nearly 50-50. This will leave us in a very interesting place where they will either need to get all bipartisan or nothing at all will get done. With the voting machines and their uncertainties I predict there will be massive calls for recalls. The Republicans will not just go out without a fight. And I don’t blame them - the democrats would do the same in their shoes.
President Roosevelt’s dream, and a proper implementation of Woodrow Wilson’s Leage of Nations concept, was founded 61 years ago by 50 members, with 51 members when it finally opened up. Today it has 192 member states and has had both many failures and many successes. May it continue to prevent World War 3, while also providing help for its member states to overcome poverty and injustice in the world.
So, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, despite our warnings. It is now time to see if our threats have some backbone to them. Kim has continuously defied the world and has been rebuffed each time. Does he give a darn? No, because all we do is threaten sanctions over and over and threaten with talks. Despots do not respond to talks they respond to violence. We need to either sabotage their country and cause as peaceful a revolution as possible, or we need to attack. Although I hate war, we went into war in Iraq because they supposedly had nukes. Kim not only has nukes, but he is a nut and will probably sell nukes to his good friends in Iran. The world needs to stop being so pusillanimous.
The man who was in trouble last year for saying, “New Orleans, at the end of the day, will be a chocolate city….” is now in trouble for remarks he made last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes. The reporter asked him why, after a year, New Orleans was a mess. He replied, “Look, you guys in New York City can’t fix a hole in the ground, and it’s been five years. So let’s be fair.” The “hole in the ground” he referred to? The former site of the Twin Towers, also known as Ground Zero. Just like the chocolate city remark, which was meant to reflect tensions that aftrican americans may not have the money to return to New Orleans, this new remark is a great example of one of those things you may think to yourself or tell your close friends. However, it’s not something to say on Tv if you are a mayor, especially if you have a history of saying things people find offensive. Then again, he DID get reelected after his chocolate city remarks, so maybe it’s a noteriety thing which will benefit him in the end.
As the British (and even some Americans) begin discussing the possibility of racial profiling after this latest foiled airplane terrorism plot, we should remember that not all terrorists are Arabs or Middle-Eastern-looking. Take, for example, the worst terrorist attack in the US prior to the attacks of 11 Sept 2001 - The Oklahoma City Bombing. The terrorists in that plot, which blew up a federal building and killed many people, were white guys. In fact, although I was young at the time, I remember them saying in the news that they had delayed in capturing the guys and even had given them the chance to get away because they were looking for Arabs instead of white guys. So think about that before you start racial profiling. Also think of the DC Sniper - a black man. There are a lot of people who hate the US government or just like to kill people and they don’t all have “al” or “bin” in their name.
UK Police say they have stopped 21 suspects who were going to blow up a plane from the UK to the US. Effective immediately at Heathrow, people cannot take beverages, hand lotions, or USB thumb drives onto an airplane. What were these suicide bombers going to do? Get drunk, lather up, and throw USB sticks at everyone? More news after work. In the meanwhile check out Google News.
I wanted to get an idea of what the Brits thought of this whole scandal with the US allowing their ports to be run by a company owned by the country United Arab Emirates. I found a British article with an interesting side to the story. As you know, the ports used to be run by a British company. The article said that he couldn’t believe that a company based in England for over 140 years could be sold away to another country. It was, he said, one of the last vestiges of the British Empire. The former CEO was nearly outraged at this. The biggest irony in the whole situation is that the new company is owned by the state of Dubai, a former English colony. So a symbol of English colonialism was bought by a former colony. I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. That particular article didn’t have much to say about port security and Arabs. Personally, I think most of the American outrage came over the fact that the proposal came out of nowhere. Even pres Bush *claims* not to have known about it until it came out in the news even though he said he would veto any negative responses. Kinda weird for someone who was supposedly in the dark. In the end, it’ll probably pass, but his credibility has been sorely damaged. I heard the other day his approval ratings were down to 34%.
I don’t agree with a lot of what the current administration is doing. While I don’t necessarily believe that G. W. Bush is evil like Mr. Burns and wishes to bring the US and England together under IncSoc, I do agree with some congressmen that he has set some perilous precedents if congress just leaves things alone. For example, as many jounalists and bloggers have pointed out, one of the key themes in 1984 is perpetual war. Because Oceana is always at war, people are willing to tolerate a loss of freedoms and a worse quality of life than they had prior to World War II. I agree that we have certain rights afforded to the Executive Branch during war-time. However, If Bush can do whatever he pleases because we are at war and we are always at war, then he can always shirk the constitution.
According to many sources, including BBC News, an audio tape purported to be from Bin Laden calls for a “long-lasting truce” between the US and the terrorists. He also claims that we have been safe in the US only because they have been focusing all of their attacks on Iraq. BBC didn’t mention this, but according to a Fox News broadcast, we should believe his truce because he is forbidden to lie since he is a Muslim. As compelling as that logic is, the US is not biting. Personally, I wouldn’t either.
“Indeed, it has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.” - Winston Churchhill
There has been a lot of talk recently concerning the CIA and their interrogation techniques with Terrorism suspects. Specifically, the talk has centered around “secret prisons” in Europe and the fact that the UN can’t go and investigate the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, I suggest that the debate is centering around the wrong tennants. Most of the debate has centered around whether we have been torturing prisoners. I don’t want to minimize the evils of torture. We obviously don’t want to use torture because it undermines our message to dictatorships and it increases the chance that Americans will be tortured when they are captured.
To all those who have had to fight in wars justified and unjustified;
To all who have left their families, uncertain if they would ever return;
To all who may have lost everything from limbs to families:
Thank you for fighting and keeping us safe. Without you, we wouldn’t have the great country we have - one where we even have the freedom to protest against the wars it rages.
Bush asked Congress to earmark approximately $7 billion to help save us from a bird flu pandemic. I think this is good, but with the regular “plain jane” flu season around the corner, I think we’re going to have a huge problem. First of all. Congress takes forever to take action on Bush’s initiatives, if they take action at all. Remember all that money Bush promised the Katrina-ravaged gulf states? The vast majority of it still hasn’t been approved/sent out to the states that need them so badly. And this is something that has already happened, therefore allowing people to demand action. We usually have a problem getting a large number of people mad about something that may happen in the future, but people can protest really quickly over something that has already happened and is currently affecting them.
“Scooter” Libby, VP Cheney’s advisor, looks like a really shady guy. So it was no surprise to me when I heard on NPR news that he has been indicted and he has resigned. He wasn’t indicted with outing the CIA agent, but with perjury and obstruction of justice. Paltry crimes you say? These were the crimes that ended getting Bill Clinton impeached! Carl Rove didn’t get indicted, but isn’t scot free either! They’re still investigating him even though the Grand Jury has been retired. I’m currently listening to the Special Prosecutor on WYPR’s (our local NPR affiliate) streaming audio and I’ll update you if I learn anything else.
First a quick aside:
That Civ4 post got pushed back a little as I couldn’t resist playing and then I had to get to bed since I have an early day today. Expect it later today if nothing irregular happens. To Tara’s comment yesterday - your comments made me check my tech tree poster - Mine is in English. It seems like you got a European version even though their debut is in November.
While browsing Andrew’s page this post of funny news stories. The one I thought was the best was the one about Chairman Mao doing weddings. I went ahead and checked out the yahoo news story he linked to and I thought it was quite an interesting story. Apparently, there is a guy who looks exactly like the late Chairman and he performs at weddings for 500 yuan. I guess that’s the key difference between the way a communist/despotic country is run when compared to a democracy. Apparently people there idolize this guy enough that they would love to have him speak at their wedding. Could you imagine someone dressing up as George Washinton and performing at your wedding?
Those of you who have been reading since I was blogging on Tripod will recall (or be able to go back and read) my post in which I wondered why the terrorists, if their true aim was terror, were not attacking us randomly in all manner of locations. You can only do the big attacks so many times before security gets too tight around the important targets. For example, for a long time after the 11 September attacks in the US, the Statue of Liberty was closed. Washington DC is also now off limits for any pilots who have not obtained prior clearance. Anyway, these types of attacks barely terrorize me. They happen in certain high visibility areas that most Americans have no contact with. If it weren’t for visiting my wife’s family, for example, I’d never be in the New York City area. Therefore, I wondered why they didn’t just attack mass transit and other public areas which are impossible to protect.
That’s what the Chesire Cat told Alice in the Disney version of the story when she informs hims that she doesn’t want to visit the March Hare or the Mad Hatter because they’re both mad. I feel as though the entire US has fallen through the rabbit hole. Don’t get me wrong - I love my country; it’s got the best combination of freedoms and protections that exists in today’s world. But the things people have been saying recently have been scaring me a little. Long-time readers of my blog (who have been with me since the beginning) will know that ever since the 11 September attacks on the US, I have been a bit wary of how our political system has been becoming more and more like IngSoc. There are days that I feel that those speaking for the US are part of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.
Americans may remember George Bush’s comments this last election in which he said that America had to check to see if it was ok to import drugs from Canada. When he said that, my jaw dropped to the floor. Did he just say that we had to check and see if drugs from Canada were safe? We’re talking about Canada here, not some developing nation. I am pretty sure that the Canadians have equal or higher standards for their medicines; Europe usually does. Basically he didn’t want to upset the drug companies who had paid Republicans so much money to keep being able to charge Americans higher prices than our neighbors to the north and he didn’t want to upset Americans who might not vote for him if he flatly told them they wouldn’t be able to buy these cheaper drugs.
What does “Deep Throat” mean to you? Well, if you were born in the 80s and happen to have a “dirty mind” then the term is a reference to a type of oral sex. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d rather not be the one to take away your innocence so go google it. If you are a history buff or were born in the 60s (or earlier), “Deep Throat” was the name given to an informant to the Washington Post who helped to leak key information about Richard Nixon which ended up in his resignation. In my opinion, it was a very weird name to give to this person considering the fact that it was a reference to a cult pornography movie in which a woman who was unable to orgasm, called upon a doctor who found out that the problem was that her clitorus was located in her throat. I think you can guess where the porno went from there. (I’ve never seen it, but saw some clips on VH1 - I think it’s the grandfather of cheesy 70s music-style pornography - the kind which is always parodied)
I am coming to the end of the Lexus and The Olive Tree. In part three of his book, he had a very interesting analogy for the world’s economic systems. If they were a gas station….
Japan - the gas costs $5/gal, but there are five guys who service your car. They pump your gas, fill your tires, and clean your windshield. They are all guaranteed to have their jobs for life.
I’m still listening to The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which I mentioned back back on 12 March, since it’s a massive 21 hour book. Today I heard what I consider to be one of the most interesting theories involving wars. The author of the book noticed that no two countries containing a McDonald’s in their borders had ever fought. In other words, if Country A and Country B both have a McDonald’s they won’t fight each other. If Country C didn’t have a McDonald’s, then it may be attacked by either Country A or Country B, or it may attack either of these countries. His main exclusion to this theory is that a Civil war doesn’t count, so the problems in Yugoslavia don’t disprove the theory. The author then took his theory to McDonald’s who then independently verified that no two countries containing a McDonald’s had ever attacked each other.
Today is Good Friday, the day that Christians celebrate the betrayal and death of Jesus the Christ. Jesus was murdered in order to fullfill the prophecies dating back to the days of the Old Testament books of the Bible. According to the doctrine of Original Sin, when Adam and Eve committed the first act of disobedience against God, they caused all of their descendents to also be born into sin. In order to symbolize a washing away of this sin, God commanded the ancient humans (proto-Hebrews) to sacrifice a purely white lamb, sprinkling the blood symbolically onto the sinners, to take away their sins. The lamb, being without defect, was supposed to stand in for the humans who had the “defect” of sin.
I recently began listening to an unabridged version of The Lexus and The Olive Tree and I must say that after about ten minutes of listening to the book, I’m quite disconcerted over the increasing connectedness of countries and their ability to affect each other. Allow me to illustrate this by paraphrasing the book’s opening story.
In 1998 the Thai government had been keeping the currency, Boht, valued at one US dollar. Banks and investment first in Thailand therefore were borrowing money from US banks for their ventures since US banks were much more stable. In August of 1998 the Thai government, for whatever reason, decided to no longer tie the values of the two currencies and the Boht fell to 30 Boht for 1 US dollar. The Thai banks now had to come up with a lot more money to pay back their loans to the US banks. A short time later, 56 of Thailand’s 58 major banks closed down. Over 20 thousand white collar workers in Thailand lost their jobs. Foreign investors began removing their money from developing Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, South Korea, and others. This would have only caused an asian recession except for the ties to Russia.
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The slippery slope rebuttal can be pretty annoying depending on how dumb the person using the argument wants to be. For example, many people say all the surveillance cameras we have everywhere are a slippery slope towards totalitarian governments. While I think we still have a few tricks up our sleeves before we have to be worried, I give the argument some credibility because in the past one of the greatest tools totalitarian governments had at their hands was to create a snitch society. When your neighbors (or even your kids) are going to potentially rat you out to the government, it means you really have to watch what they catch you doing. Even something that is innocent (as far as the government’s rules) can be dangerous if your neighbor misinterprets what you’re doing. So if you don’t have to worry about neighbors, but have video everywhere - all the worse!
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