ted rall rocks

If a war is wrong, adding deaths does nothing to make it any more right. If you want to honor the dead in a senseless war, DONT KILL ANY MORE SOLDIERS. Then, make sure that those who started said war are held accountable.

come and go

Ah, springtime! Plants are growing, teenagers are humping, and the annual spring cleaning rituals have commenced. Even I, master of template minimalism (okay, journeyman) am getting into the act, mostly because it's easier to tackle than my garage. Sadly, the blogs below seem to be abandonned. I'll miss them, but what are you going to do? So say goodbye. I guess it's about time I updated my sidebar, anyway.

Stinkhorn Rodeo, last post: 8-30-06
The World According to Elvira, last post: 11-01-06
Preston Thinks, last post: 5-20-06
Aunt Sassy, gone to MySpace: 3-26-07
Hot Rocks, last post: 2-10-07
Dear Leaders Daily Thought, last post: 12-07-06
The Skeptical Observer, script-jacked to gay porn, deleted shortly after.

These blogs also arent showing any activity, but it's too soon to say goodbye. I think. Still, they may disappear soon, also.

Sympathetic Stupid, last post: 02-13-07
Library Bitch, last posted in February
Harpowoman Honks, last post: 02-07-07
The Sapient Sutler, last post: 02-27-07
Spastic, last post: 02-11-07

February must have been a bitch of a month. These are/were all good blogs, so it'll be sad to see any of them go, especially Dave and G, who were my first mutual links. But that's life, aint it?

excerpts from The Big Republican Book of Lies

No. 38: "If we dont fight the terrorists in Iraq, then we'll have to fight them here."

Seriously? Okay, for now let's put aside the amoral issue of wanting to fight your gunbattles in the back yard of a third, uninvolved person, and concentrate on the idea that the terrorists cannot come to America while we're tying up our manpower on the other side of the planet.

But wait, number 38 is related to this one:

No. 21: "it is possible to win the War On Terror."

For now we'll also put aside the idea that we can somehow conduct some sort of a "war" on terror (an Orwellian concept if I've ever heard one, and also no. 6 in the Big Book), and I'll just say that I think WWII has warped the American way of thinking about war. Wars are almost never that neatly ended. Hell, even WWII wasnt neatly ended, since it spawned the Cold War, which spawned the Korean War (still going on) and the Viet Nam War (repercussions of which are still being felt in this very war in Iraq), and the mess that was Afghanistan in the 1980's, which led to a base of operations for bin Laden which led to 9-11.
But terrorists are not soldiers. They are criminals, murderers and thugs, who have turned to violence to get their way (or vengeance for not getting their way, or both). Bush has made many mistakes since 9-11, but I suspect that one of the biggies will turn out to be the legitimization of al-Queda by treating them with the seriousness one would give to a rogue nation. They are serious, but they are police serious, not military serious. Or, rather, they werent military serious, until the Bush Administration gave them sovereignty.

But hey, just for funsies, let's imagine the scene as Republicans seem to think it will go if we pull out of Iraq:

Look Hassan! The Great Satan is running home! No longer will he spend billions of dollars on trying to force us to be like him! No longer will his country be torn in two as it debates whether they should be here or not! No longer will their overstretched military sacrifice soldiers for Big Oil! We have WON, Hassan, WE HAVE WON!!!
Quickly, tell the others! Now that they have fled, we will follow them through the magic Baghdad gate, which as every terrorist knows is the only way to reach America now that the Department of Homeland Security has secured the Great Satan's borders.
Oh, and Hassan, tell Achmed to let everyone know, it's time to start killing each other! Now that the Americans have left, we can finally do just as we please! Allah Akbar!
Where's the cookie jar, Hassan? I'm hungry! Hey, that's my kool-aid!

Ooooo. Maybe I should be worried.
Nah, I'm sure they'll have a wizard collapse the gate after the last soldier gets through. Then we'll be safe.


(Just in case you're curious, Ronald Reagan's godhood is No. 12)

More contradictions from the Right

The Republican ability to speak from both sides of their faces (that which they describe in others as "flip-flopping") never ceases to amaze me. I was trying to find documentation on Clinton's successful budget veto in the 90's, when I ran across this little gem by David N. Mayer:

When modern presidents use the veto in so blatantly a political manner, they do more than simply engage in partisanship: they also seriously undermine the Constitution itself. A president who vetoes every piece of legislation that he dislikes on policy grounds forces Congress to accede to his wishes, unless it is able to muster a two-thirds majority in both houses to override the vetoes. Such use of the veto indeed constitutes blackmail. It thwarts not only the will of the people, as manifested in the most recent congressional elections, but also the design of the framers of the Constitution, who intended that the legislative power be vested primarily in the people’s representatives in the Congress. Profligate use of the veto, in effect, transforms the simple majority vote required by Article I to a two-thirds majority requirement--in effect, working a change in the constitutional procedures for enacting legislation. (1996)

Funnily enough, though, now that Congress has passed a budget calling for an end to our military presence in Iraq (ironically, supported by two-thirds of Americans, if not two-thirds of the Legislature), here's what ol' Dave has to say now:

However one sees the policy, one thing is clear, under U.S. constitutional law: although Congress has the authority to cut off funding for U.S. military intervention in Iraq (the “power over the purse strings” is among the legislature’s legitimate powers, even with regard to foreign affairs), Congress does not have the authority to micro-manage the conduct of war, acting in effect as 535 commanders-in-chief. There’s only one commander-in-chief, assigned that power under Article II of the Constitution – the President – and President Bush would quite properly veto any law passed by Congress that interferes with his legitimate constitutional authority. (2007)

Hey, wait, what happened to all that "will of the people stuff? Oh, that's right, it only applies when the people are right, otherwise "wiser" heads, like Big Daddy Dubya, prevail. My what a difference a decade makes.

My ass, it does.

Listen, if anyone has a link to when Clinton and his budget veto brought the government to a halt and handed the Republican congress their ass, I'd appreciate it.

if we enter a new dark age, it will come because we have our collective head up our collective ass

Ever wonder just how far up the ass of the Right this nation's bureaucracy is? Maybe this article will tell you. Seems a prominent Canadian psychotherapist, who's done work with LSD, has been barred from the US forever due to drug use. Was he convicted of said drug use? No. Was said drug use perpetrated in the pursuit of mental health science? Yes. Does this matter to the Authoritarian dickheads who currently lead our power structure? Nooooo.

Just how long can this stupidity go on, before our collective head explodes?

props to Spoonfighter.

running awayjoining the carnival!

After a very long time (it was still in single digits), I've again submitted and been accepted into the 37th Carnival of the Liberals!
Still, that's no reason not to go and read it.

What are you waiting for?

think tank, redux

I had this thought the other day... okay, it was in Oct, 2005, but I'm gonna share it with you, again.

According to George Lakoff, there are far more Conservative Think Tanks than there are Liberal ones (I didnt confirm this). Whether this is a money issue, or an organization issue, he didnt say, and frankly, it's irrelevant to my thought. Which is this:

Why dont bloggers start forming Think Tanks?

After all, what is really necessary for a Think Tank. Money? Suits? Donuts? Unused corporate boardrooms and a spare secretary or two? A cynical desire to destroy freedom-loving American workers for personal profit and power?
Nope.
All you need are some people, some ideas, and a willingness to discuss those ideas, add new ones, or throw away untenable ones. And then, a press release or two. That's it.

It might be helpful if one of the think tank members was a Name, someone who might make those press releases more exciting to media outlets. It's not necessary though.

Imagine this: A group of bloggers set up a blog site, calling it, oh, I dont know, "Bloggers For A Progressive America". Members post an idea, then other members comment on it (or even non-members). Eventually someone takes the original post and, with its comments, reworks it up into a position paper-like thing, and re-posts it. More commentary, more reworking, more reposting. Eventually, consensus is reached, a final draft for release is worked up, and the Media is informed (bloggers as well as traditional media). Maybe copies are sent to the Democratic Party, or other Liberal think tanks. Go ahead, blogwhore your think tank, dont be shy.
At first, no one will notice, even with a Name blogger (unless maybe it's a really big name), but if you persist (and your ideas and/or presentation dont suck), recognition and discussion and, dare we say, Implementation of your Ideas may actually occur. Most bloggers started out as lonely voices in the crowd and some (in theory, the best) have risen to the top. Why should blogger-based think tanks be any better? David Brin theorizes a coming "Age of Amateurs" in which amateur groups take over the function of many of the things currently controlled by Professionals now (possibly due to budget cuts?). Why not Think Tanks also? And even if nothing ever happens as far as widespread recognition of your ideas, so what. Will that make any thoughts or insights your think tank may come up with less valuable?
Start enough amateur think tanks, and something good and useful ought to come out of it, if only to get people more involved in issues and politics, and acting on that involvement, moving beyond mere talking. Talking is important, and everyone can do it, but eventually some of those talkers need to move up to something more.

Here's nice quote from coturnix, which, while it wasnt addressing my Idea, dovetails with it nicely:

While old Big Blogs are themselves centers of the Universe from which all opinion radiates, small blogs have a different strategy. Large blogrolls, lots of blogwhoring, commenting on each others blogs, linking to each others posts - those are all strategies to gain one's visibility, with a consequence of new knots forming. These new knots are much larger than knots of Big blogs. Several dozens of blogs in each knot keep linking to each other all the time, and the knots get bigger and bigger, connecting to each other, forming a really extensive web which only tangentially includes the Big Old Ones.

This kind of structure, this "blogging neighborhood", if you will, could be used for forming a think tank. Imagine hundreds, thousands of these groups. Talk about your Power to the People!

Anyway, that's my idea. I cant do it alone (to be honest, I'm not really of the temperament to do it at all), but I can come up with it and hope that it makes it's way out there by osmosis. Probably it already exists, in some form I've not yet heard of. Or maybe I've seen it and just never recognised it (blogstorms, perhaps). The important thing is to come up with a way to combat the Conservative think tanks, to fight their fire with a fire extinguisher (better metaphor, really, considering the destructive nature of what seems to be coming from Conservatives these days).
So, I've thrown my thoughts out into the void, and now I'll watch and wait, hoping for an echo.

Ping!

news to me

Dave Barry did this great piece in his book "Dave Barry's Money Secrets" about how the Press is worried that young people dont read newspapers, and so keep making changes that tend to alienate their current readers in order draw in those younger viewers. It never works, of course, because, as Barry points out, young people dont read newspapers.

Talk about television news strikes me as being a lot like that. Apparently, people just dont watch TV news as much as they used to, despite the almost unbelievable surfeit of it available. So how do broadcasters respond? They try different tricks to try and lure those lost watchers back. Did they ever stop and think that maybe these lost viewers have left because of the tricks, and no bells or whistles will ever bring them back because what they really want is straight news.
I listen to NPR, at least when they're not spending half their airtime raising funds, and I cant think of anyplace else, at least not in television, where you can get that kind of coverage. Considering how much actually goes on across the planet, why is it that all they seem to be able to report on is white house press feeds, corporate press releases, and celebrity lifestyles, interspersed with endless, yet uninformative, "breaking" stories.

So here's my suggestion: People really do want to see news on their news shows. Maybe not all of the people, all of the time, but at any given time, there is somebody who wants news. Not to be entertained, not to wait "breathlessly" while something might (but doesnt) happen, but real, honest-to-god, informative news. So to some news organisation out there, why dont you try giving us information in our news, and only information. You might find that even though you wont draw the big numbers at first, you will become the source of real news that people trust, and more importantly, refer to when citing news stories, which will lead to more viewers, who will appreciate the information. Hire reporters, give them research money, replace filler and puff pieces (even NPR's puff pieces are informative), but most important, give us news. Because you can do all sorts of promotions, play all sorts of games, and talk about celebrities all you want, but it wont increase your news ratings, because it's not news, and people want to see the news on their news shows.
Try it, just try it. You'll get a ton of respect, and you might, eventually, make a lot of money.

Think of it as your Corvette. Corvettes dont make GM any money, but they're a great cachet for respect (or were until GM blew their respect elsewhere). Make news programming your corvette. Eventually, somebody's going to fill that niche, and when they do, they'll get all the respect, which they'll parlay into money, and you'll be scrambling to catch up.

quote for the day

"This is the story of the Elect. A giant us and them mentality, and a Father who picks and chooses who he's going to bitch-slap for all eternity. It's like eternal Duck, Duck, Goose. I guess Goose becomes the Elect, seeing as there are usually more Ducks, and 'the road is straight and narrow'."

from I Think In Maps

a response, as best I can

Since the Rude Pundit doesnt do comments, the only way that I can respond to his post is with one of my own. Let me add that the Rude Pundit is not a conservative or a war apologist; he is a firm believer that the Bush Administration is a clusterfuck (literally). He is a confirmed member of the Liberal side of the line.
Nonetheless, here's what he said:

But we're not in Iraq. We're not in a war zone. It's okay for this to be awful, in and of itself, without saying, in essence, "Well, if you think that's bad, look over here." 'Cause, you know, if you're stabbed in the leg, it ain't gonna make you feel that much better and it sure ain't gonna stop your bleeding to see the man who was run over by a truck.

Now, I'm not going to say that he's wrong, at least not completely. I seriously questioned posting my own piece which did just that. To an extent, we do cheapen the deaths in Virginia by saying, "oh, that happens everyday in Iraq". His assessment of our national desensitizing is spot on; for every mourning stranger, there are probably twenty who merely shrugged and went on their way.
But, in a way, isnt trying to divorce our tragedy at VT from the daily tragedy in Iraq a form of desensitization?
Connecting the shooting at VT with the carnage in Iraq should be an attempt to re-sensitize people, to awaken their empathy and make them say, "oh... that happens every day in Iraq".

The hard part, after that, is to try and make them understand what America's part is in that day. Every day.

---

Analogy time! And regular readers will know that I love an analogy.

Think of it this way. I like to compare countries to eight-year old boys*, since the maturity level when dealing with others seems to be about the same. Rude Pundit compares Lefties pointing out the killings in Iraq to be like trying to make someone feel better by pointing out how other people have got it worse. And if that was all it was, he'd be right; "Eat your vegetable, there are people starving in Africa" has never made any kid like brussell sprouts any better. But this isnt quite like that, it's more along the following line:

There are these two kids, right? They dont like each other, but they've joined together to kick the crap out of this third kid (not necessarily at the same time), partly 'cause they're kind of mean, and partly 'cause the kid has a pretty good lunch money supply. The bigger of the two kids, while taking a break from torturing the third, has accidentally cut himself on his pocket knife, which he carries despite school rules prohibiting this. Now, to be honest, this bigger kid mostly relies on his fists, while the more weasely second kid does a lot more cutting, but the first kid has used his knife occassionally, and does even more threatening with it.
Question? How much sympathy have you really got for the first kid? And is he thoughtful enough to connect his cut with those inflicted on the third kid repeatedly?


* In the one-person-for-a-country analogy, even an event like 9-11 was just a nasty sucker punch to the nose. Iraq, on the other hand, has been getting punched every single day for over 4 years.