Entries from June 2003 ↓
June 25th, 2003 — impolite company
Reporting on Howard Dean‘s appearance on the Tim Russert-hosted “Meet the Press” this weekend, New York Times reporter Katharine Q. Seelye slants her story as if her paycheck were signed by Rupert Murdoch, rather than by the bastion of the so-called liberal media:
Dr. Dean, a Democrat who prides himself on his straightforwardness, equivocated on several issues. He sidestepped answering whether he would support the prescription drug plan backed by the Bush administration and some Democrats.
Asked whether he would support a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, he said, “I go back and forth on that.” Asked whether a same-sex couple that was married in Canada could be considered legally married in the United States, he said, “I can’t answer that question because it’s a legal question.”
He’s not a lawyer, he’s a doctor. Is it a terrible thing to neglect to take a position on a complicated issue of interenational law if you are not qualified to answer it? Is it wrong to “go back and forth” on controversial issues like Dean admits he does, or is it better to believe in the gospel truth handed down by the radical wing of his party on every issue, like our current president?
And he didn’t know numbers!
Under questioning, he said he did not know how many American military personnel were on active duty around the world, guessing there were one million to two million. According to the Pentagon’s Web site, there were 1.4 million as of March.
Dr. Dean estimated that there were 135,000 American troops in Iraq and said there should be more. The actual number is 146,000.
How dare this man even think about running for president! His estimate of the troops in Iraq are off by 8%! (Of course, the current administration’s estimates of WMDs in Iraq are off by 100%, but… let’s not go there.) And he doesn’t have tip-of-the-tongue access to information which Ms. Seelye had to go to the Pentagon’s web site to confirm!
If this is the kind of crap we’re going to see in a newspaper which is purportedly on “our side” this early in the season, then this is going to be the most disgusting presidential race in history. I’m not sure I’ll vote for Dean — I go back and forth on the issue — but after that trashing and a similar trashing in that other pillar of the SCLM, I felt compelled to donate to his campaign tonight.
June 25th, 2003 — impolite company
Emma, over at Late Night Thoughts, has a seemingly logical proposal. In an essay in which she considers the possibility that she may have benefited from Affirmative Action in her college career, she comes to the conclusion that the solution to the problems of affirmative action is to “…make sure that every kid at the elementary and high school level get the same good education…” And then she continues with her proposal, suggesting that we should
draw up standards for a good elementary school and a good high school. I’m not talking perfect. Just a good basic education that will allow kids to get into college. Then, the government supplements the funding of those schools that do not meet the standards. That way, kids in an inner-city school struggling with lousy funding due to a miserable tax base can compete with kids from a suburban school with an average parental income of $75,000
Emma, Emma, Emma. Don’t you realize that’s not how we do it in Bush’s America. In this world, if a school and its students are struggling, we take funds away from the school. We encourage parents with money to take their kids out of the school and into private for-profit schools. We criticize the teachers for their students’ poor performance on tests — tests which are created for students in schools with working bathrooms, not to mention functioning libraries. Then we punish the teachers by lowering their salaries below their already laughable levels, and wonder why those people entrusted with the education of our children are so woefully under-prepared and under-qualified. We withhold state and federal aid and remove the school’s capital budget, until the building is a crumbling asbestos- and cockroach-ridden mess, serving solely as a sub-minimal daycare center for minimum-wage parents who cannot afford any other kind of care, and whose children should be taught early not to expect any other kind of life than the miserable one their parents inhabit.
That’s how we do it today! Now aren’t you ashamed about that silly proposal?
June 21st, 2003 — brain-candy
20 days in spring, 2003 is a beautifully designed book on an ugly topic: the Iraq invasion. Snippets of newspaper articles and quotes from Einstein, Lincoln and Twain comment on photos of injured and fleeing Iraqi civilians as well as the smug faces of our Imperial leaders. As the author describes it in the introduction, it is a book
…created over a 20 day period in the spring of 2003 as a response to the US invasion of Iraq. It is simply one US citizen’s outlet for feelings of frustration, disbelief and impotence in the face of a war that should not have happened and that has been mounted by an administration drunk on its own power and delusions of grandeur.
Although it is not mentioned on the site, the piece seems to be the work of Terry Irwin, who, along with Erik Spiekerman, was one of the founders of the esteemed MetaDesign studio in San Francisco. Her simple, stark use of grayscale photos and type in black, white and red brings out the emotion and the pain in her — and our — powerlessness.
[via Hebig]
June 18th, 2003 — me & mine
Where do the days go? Amidst the fear of massive layoffs at work, I’ve been slaving away on a very demanding project, which has kept me going in 14-hour workdays. Leave the house by 6:30 am, back home by 9:30 pm, a short “how was your day?” session with my wife, and then to sleep so I can start it all over again in a few hours. Add to that something weird going on with my brain (which I am in the process of writing up in one of my long, rambling essays), refinancing the house, my wife’s worsening relationships with her staff, and coping with the expanding non-litterbox litterbox range of one of our cats…
June 18th, 2003 — impolite company
Over at NewsTrolls, Diva Pasty Drone introduces an excellent Molly Ivins piece with a bit of her own worthy prose, recalling politics (recently) past:
…with all the death the Bush camp has brought us, we can only long for days of thong-snapping scandals…they seem so refreshingly innocent compared to the politics of Team Death…
June 8th, 2003 — impolite company, the web-wide world
I’ve been having computer problems for a couple of days, so I hadn’t noticed that David Neiwert over at Orcinus had posted before me about John Noster, the California man accused of stockpiling weapons for a possible terrorist attack.
David’s a real journalist, and his take on the story is very good, bringing to my attention a couple of other home-grown terrorists I hadn’t heard about. While you’re at Orcinus, follow his link to Tristero’s continuing thoughts on the American counterpart to Islamism: Christianism.
June 8th, 2003 — impolite company
Back in 1990, I picked up “Friendly Dictators Trading Cards“, a box of portraits and facts about 36 tyrants who were counted as America’s friends. The art was by comics genius Bill Sienkiewicz, and the scathing text was by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell.
Lately, in a fad originated by the US Central Command (!), the focus seems to be on playing cards. The copies of the original Iraqi Most Wanted deck are everywhere, spamming my inbox and even showing up on the shelves of my local supermarket. Then come the knockoffs, like the Axis of Weasels set from the morons at NewsMax, a set lampooning the Governor of Alabama for his tax stance, and hand-made cards portraying the Texas Democrats who thwarted Tom Delay’s re-districting hopes by heading across state lines to Oklahoma.
And now, (I hope before the fad has crested and crashed against the Pet Rocks shore), there’s a set from OUR side: The War Profiteers Card Deck. This deck, available for charitable purchase or as a downloadable pdf, exposes
…some of the real war criminals in the US’s endless War of Terror. This is no Sunday bridge club. These are individuals and institutions that stack the deck against democracy in the rigged game of global power. Exposing their place in the house of cards illuminates the links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war….
[via Pax Nortona]
June 8th, 2003 — impolite company
This shocking news was broken first by South Knox Bubba‘ weblog. Enormous caches of Dihydrogen Monoxide have been located. The Pentagon explained that
…this dangerous compound causes death if inhaled, even in small quantities. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage, and that in its gaseous form it causes severe burns. It is found in biopsies of cancerous tumors and lesions, and can even corrode metal. Dihydrogen Monoxide is also routinely used in the operation of nuclear power facilities. Oppressive regimes have reportedly used Dihydrogen Monoxide against dissidents to put down uprisings and quell riots.
I think Bubba posted this news in the hopes that this important story gets picked up by every wire service and wingnut message board. Spread it around!
June 7th, 2003 — impolite company
Heard two stories on NPR‘s All Things Considered the other day which seemed related. The first was coverage of John Ashcroft’s brazen bid for further power to erode our civil liberties in the name of The Wars on Abstract Nouns. The second had to do with homegrown terrorism.
Not satisfied with his gutting of the Bill of Rights using the blunt blade of the Patriot Act, Ashcroft wants more, more, more. Because, he says
…the law does not go far enough and “has several weaknesses, which terrorists could exploit undermining our defenses.”
Right. I can see those sneaky, swarthy terrorists, slithering around, hidden from sight because of the weaknesses in… our “material support” statutes? And I can see the fear in the suicide bombers’ eyes when they hear their action may subject them to… the death penalty? And look at the great secrets we uncovered by holding 762 illegal immigrants for up to eight months: we found the roommate of one of the 9/11 bombers and another with “‘jihad material’ and more than 30 pictures of the World Trade Center.” (Could be a copy of the Qu’ran and one of those fold-out postcard books that you can buy at any gift shop…)
And what have these expanded federal law enforcement powers given us so far? Can’t count John Walker Lindh or Yaser Hamdi, who were captured on the battlefield. Nor can we count two North Africans in Detroit who were caught (before the Patriot Act was law) with fake passports, cash and a videotape of Disneyland. We also have to leave out the shoe bomber, who was actually caught by fellow passengers who tied him up with belts and headphone cords. Zacarias Moussaoui doesn’t count either, since he was actually arrested before the September 11 attacks even took place.
That leaves us with seven Muslims in Portland, Oregon who may have been planning to go to Afghanistan, possibly to hook up with al-Qaeda — no trial or convictions here, yet. Also, six Yemenis in Buffalo who trained at a Taliban camp in Afghanistan — all of whom have pled guilty to charges of supporting a terrorist organization. And Jose Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber” who has been held incommunicado for more than a year now without charges and without the opportunity to speak with a lawyer.
That makes 14 men and women in nearly 18 months of free rein — not a terribly impressive record, considering the resources and dirty tricks placed at Mr. Ashcroft’s disposal. And how many people’s rights have been trampled on in the process? How many libraries have the FBI visited? Whose e-mail have they read? How many people have had their phones wiretapped? We don’t know because Mr. Ashcroft refuses to answer. He believes he is already above the law — or answering to a higher law — and yet he wants the blessing of the Congress to legitimize him going even further.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty going on at home: terrorist acts perpetrated by all-American Christian boys with apple-pie complexions. Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber, was captured this week after 5 years of being pursued by the FBI. Funny, isn’t it, that, although his attacks have injured or killed more than 150 people, the word terrorist isn’t generally used to describe this fundamentalist religious zealot. (While I don’t doubt the sincerity of the many federal agents who’ve spent years tracking Rudolph, I can’t help but wonder whether their boss, the Attorney General himself, isn’t just a little bit disappointed in the downfall of his brother-in-arms in the fight against godless heretics.)
How did Rudolph evade capture for so long, with agents hot on his trail in the woods of North Carolina? He was likely aided and hidden by some local followers of the Christian Identity movement, which has historic ties to rural North Carolina. And how was he captured? Was it through wiretaps? Examination of credit reports? Searches through library records? Nope. he was caught by a 21-year-old police officer who found him scrounging for food behind a supermarket.
That brings me to the second story on All Things Considered, about another terrorism case broken recently, due to good old-fashioned policework. This one got significantly less coverage. John Noster, an accountant serving time for vehicle theft in a California prison, is now linked to the discovery of
…two incendiary devices, three pipe bombs, six 55-gallon drums of highly explosive jet fuel, five assault rifles, thousands of rounds of military ammunition, smokeless powder, cannon fuse and electric matches, and $188,000 in cash…
Although, at a news conference, the Los Angeles County Sheriff said his officers stopped a case of ‘potential terrorism…’”, Bernard J. Zapor, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field division of the ATF, doesn’t agree. He
…declined to call Noster anything other than an individual involved in the illegal possession of explosives… Zapor said there is no evidence that Noster had any international contacts. He said he did not know whether Noster acted alone.
Of course, since he isn’t Muslim or Middle Eastern or swarthy-skinned, this isn’t terrorism, right? And since it’s not international, it’s not terrorism. And since he may have worked alone, it’s not terrorism.
What Mr. Ashcroft needs to do, instead of begging for further disembowelment of the Constitution, is use the extraordinary resources and people of the Justice Dept, the FBI and the ATF to work — within the law as it stands — to seek out and capture those who do harm to this country, regardless of skin color, religion, or country of origin. Justice is blind and throwing a curtain across her statue doesn’t blind the rest of us…
June 5th, 2003 — impolite company
Over at Ruminate This, Lisa reports on an issue I wrote about recently: the so-called Family Time Flexibility Act. This is the act which gives employers the flexibility to take away your family time and pay you for it up to 13 months later.
A vote was originally scheduled for today, but after some head-counting and head-scratching, the House leaders figured they didn’t have the votes to pass the bill, so they pulled it from the schedule. But, as Lisa says:
…be wary, because all we’ve got is a temporary stay here. The Republicans simply decided to delay the vote because they didn’t have the numbers this morning. Figure that ’round about the time we’ve our next Code Neon alert, this piece of legislation will be making a quiet return engagement.
