5 Years in Iraq? I don’t understand…
I don’t understand what all this hullaboo is recently about the War in Iraq having gone on for 5 years. The New York Times is running a whole bunch of pieces about having been at war in Iraq for 5 years. They even have this nifty interactive timeline of events in Iraq from 2002 to 2008. But I don’t understand any of it… The war ended on May 1st, 2003. And I even have proof:
No inflation under Bernake’s watch
According to the latest CPI report “which has been described as ‘bizarre’ and even ‘absurd’” according to this piece on cnbc.com, there is no inflation!
Anyone remember the Iraqi Information Minister (Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf) from the first Gulf War? If you don’t remember his antics and absurdities, check out his precious quotes on welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com. That will probably jog your memory.
So I came up with a little game. Take your best shot!
CNN embraces tabloid headlines
I’ve been really disappointed for the past couple of days. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before or anything, but I think the whole Eliot Spitzer thing is really bringing the mold out of the woodwork.
Case in point, I offer two screenshots of CNN Headlines for the past couple of days. You can see them here and here. The amount of smut and crap that passes for news nowadays is an affront to the intelligence of the American people. This is the kind of stuff I expect from Fox News, whom I won’t even deign to link to. You know, the media smelled blood with the scandal surrounding the soon-to-be former Governor of New York and sure enough a resignation ensued. I’m not even speaking to the point of whether or not that is justified, moreso I’m speaking to the point that the media got their kill, now MOVE ON. Instead, it continues to be sensationalized and now we have front-page headlines about Spitzer’s “escort’s” myspace page. Give me a break.
Notice how the New York Times seems to have moved on and their headlines are no longer tabloid quality. What happened to this ridiculous, illegal War in Iraq? (Or, actually, according to The Onion, things are going pretty well in Iraf.) What about the Chinese arguably fairly telling us to keep our double-standards on human rights to ourselves? (In all fairness, CNN did infact report on this.) But this isn’t just an attack on CNN. Certainly not.
The sensationalist garbage that has been passing for news in the public sphere is pretty reprehensible. Again, I might expect this from the (unfortunately very popular) propaganda and misinformation machines like Fox News, but not CNN.
I’ve been reading Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason, and I must say it is very, very good. It pains me that the GOP was successfully able to ramrod the election process with fiends like Katherine Harris and the real “activist judges” on the Supreme Court and keep this man out of office. America would be in a much better position and hopefully one day he will return and lead the party. But I digress. One reason why the book is so very good is because it is a systematic and scientific analysis of the current state of our “public sphere” which comes to startling and inevitable conclusions regarding the extreme abuses of power by the Bush-Cheney administration. Honestly, it’s very non-partisan. It’s actually stated very early in the book that (paraphrasing) “it’d be too easy and partisan to simply blame the Bush-Cheney administration.” So instead, he systematically evaluates what’s going on and how they’re breaking the law. The conclusions are unfortunate, but they’re hard to argue against. I’m only about 2/3’s way through, so I’ve got some more good reading to go.
I sincerely hope that, as Al Gore describes, the power of the television is reduced from its current monopoly and something like the Internet resuscitates the discourse in today’s “news.” Hint: It has nothing to do with a sultry myspace pages or Star Bucks closing for three hours.
Eliot Spitzer Lawyer Profile - is he truly “No Concern”?
I think this particular lawyer’s rating of “No Concern” may now be in question given this breaking news on CNN that Eliot Spitzer has been linked to a prostitution ring. Here’s the piece about Spitzer in the NYTimes as well. We’ll see what happens. This is normally the kind of thing you’d expect from a Republican. Unfortunately, Eliot Spitzer is a member of the Democratic Party.
Check out Eliot Spitzer’s lawyer profile on Avvo. Some lucky soul might also be the first to update his wikipedia entry.
Maybe there should be a scandals tab for our good politician friend lawyers who constantly meet scrutiny in the public eye.
Obama’s Legislative Accomplishments
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<crickets>
John McCain’s bump on his cheek, what is it?
Some of you may have noticed that John McCain has a bump on his cheek. There are, of course, somewhat expected rumors afloat about skin cancer, etc etc. In fact, they are nuts. He stores nuts there for winter.
2008 Widespread voter disenfranchisement
It’s unfortunate that the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee have disenfranchised so many voters this year.
Are you from Florida? Are you from Michigan? Do you live in Washington and think your primary vote means anything?
Guess again. Your vote doesn’t count for squat.
At the time of this writing, Florida and Michigan are two very large states whose voters have had their voices sileneced because they moved their primary dates to before February 5th. That’s a shame. I guess those tens of millions of people don’t matter. For shame on the Democratic and Republican parties for having such arrogance. I encourage people to use the power of the purse to show them that your votes do count. Do not give a cent to these organizations until you are no longer disenfranchised. Of course, the Republicans are always very good at presenting a unified front, so if anyone who is considering giving money to the RNC actually reads this, I doubt they’ll listen.
What about Washington? Sanctioned by the party, the state has a draconian caucus system which determines allocation of ALL delegates. I wonder how many Washington state residents don’t realize that their mail-in primary ballot, like my own, means absolutely nothing. Personally, I don’t like to hear that my vote is a vote in a beauty contest. As a matter of fact, it flat out pisses me off.
Change? What change? And screw the DNC while we’re at it…
I’m obviously biased, but I’m beginning to become quite infuriated that so many people are gobbling up Obama’s ridiculous notion of bringing change to Washington. Seriously folks, what is this man with no substantive policies going to do in DC? Hell, with all his “present” votes, he doesn’t even have substantive votes.
I wish people would seriously consider what is going on in the world instead of blindly embracing some free-love, dreamy notion that everything is going to be all better. Obama will kiss all our boo-boos goodbye and we will scamper off to the playground for another scrape and fall.
This is simply maddening.
And the whole Florida debacle, yet again, although in this case they’re the victim and not the culprit. The DNC has overstepped its grounds in its baseless, anachronistic punishment of FL voters by depriving them of their delegates at the convention. A message to Howard Dean: I like you and all, seriously, but get a fucking grip. The times of slowly coronating nominees is over. It’s time for a national primary and it’s time to realize that the red-necks in Iowa aren’t really “notoriously finicky and pensive about politics” but rather that they more accurately sport a convoluted and backwards caucus. Screw Iowa. There’s no reason why any of the four states “allowed” to break party rules and hold a primary before Super Tuesday. It is completely arbitrary.
Think about it… people want all this change. What if we did have a national primary? What if instead of people constantly being worried about electability, there was one feel swoop of voters voting and making a decision. A simple plurality of votes would do it. Instead, we ween “second-tier” candidates out of the process because they’re not “electable.”
I reject the notion that these four states provide a temperament of the country. They provide a temperament of their states, nothing more. It’s time for a national primary and in 2008 it’s time for a candidate that really will be able to change things from day one: Hillary Clinton.
Obama’s Reagan Comparison
Obama stepped in some doo-doo with his remarks about Reagan recently while interviewing with the Reno Gazette-Journal. I’m going to snatch the quote from this Washington Post blog post:
I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times…I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
Or if one desires to see a talking head, Obama’s remarks can also be found on YouTube.
Now it’s time for the fun part.
Wait a second. How much was the federal deficit when Reagan came into office? $900 billion. And when he left? $2.7 trillion. Check this site out for some interesting statistics on the Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan. At yet, in a mind-boggling fashion, people still place the “mantle of fiscal responsibility” with the Republicans. And now we have take two with the dunce in the White House who has repeatedly requested raising of the federal debt ceiling. According to that 2004 piece in the New York Times:
Since Mr. Bush took office in January 2001, the federal debt has increased about 40 percent, or $2.1 trillion, to $7.4 trillion. Congress has raised the debt ceiling three times in three years, raising it most recently by $984 billion in May 2003.
Mr. Obama, I can only surmise from your comparison with Reagan that you too intend to spend us into oblivion like Reagan and George W. Bush. I can only surmise that you plan to destroy our environmental policies, oppress unionized workers, and push for tax benefits to the super-rich. That’s the kind of change Reagan and George W. Bush have brought about. Sorry, count me out. I don’t think he’d do those things, but by invoking Reagan’s name solely to pander to right-leaning folks, he is deserving of the baggage that will come along with it.
Obama has so very little substance it’s kind of unnerving to me that he is driving so much support. The Reno Gazette-Journal Oped piece goes on to suggest that Obama should be the party’s nominee even after they say:
One can fairly describe Obama’s philosophical optimism and charismatic manner as too idealistic, even a tad dreamy.
Umm. The last thing we need is another foolhardy person in the White House with a free-love mantra. Come on, folks, how long will such a thing last after January 20th, 2009? A week, maybe two? One should not confuse hope of change with visions of grandeur. The fact of the matter is that to get things done in the government, you have to know how to work with the people in government. Bill Clinton showed remarkable gains across the aisle because ultimately he was a centrist. The Republicans hated this fact and still hate it because Hillary Clinton is a centrist as well. Why do they hate it? Because it beats them at their own game of fearmongering and wedge issues.
We desperately need someone in the White House who, from day one, can begin to make inroads domestically and internationally to reconstruct what George W Bush has destroyed over the past 7 years. In the words of the Reno Gazette-Journal:
Hillary Clinton should be the party’s choice.
Edit: I just realized that today is January 20th which I find amusingly appropriate for such a post. Unfortunately, 2008 is a leap year so we have 366 days until The Doofus is out of the White House instead of 365. But still… only 1 year left!!
Mike Huckabee isn’t radical … for a bigot, anyway
While it should come as no surprise for anyone that knows anything about him, CNN’s political ticker had a nice little snippet on Mike Huckabee’s gay marriage comments:
In an interview with the religious Web site beliefnet.com, Huckabee pushes back on recent critics who have called some of his positions “radical.”
“I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal,” he said in the interview, published on the Web site Wednesday. “Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again.”
So you can see he’s really not all that radical - for a bigot, anyway.
“The door is open to change it again.” Interesting he should say such a thing. You know, again, he’s right… because first we did dastardly things like the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution where “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it was all downhill from there. Next thing you know women could vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. We’ve never recovered from these two shenanigans!
Leave it to the Republicans and the fanatical religious right to want to use the Constitution to deny rights rather than to grant them.
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