politics

Conveniently for me, South Carolina’s The State has stated in their endorsement of Barack Obama the exact reason that I support him:

due credit: Andrew Sullivan

On positions from Iraq to health care, the policy differences between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are minute… The one most significant difference between them can be found in how they would approach the presidency - and how the nation might respond.

…[We] have a good idea what a Clinton presidency would look like. The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare. That is not all Bill and Hillary’s fault - but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored. Hillary Clinton doesn’t pretend that it won’t happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons’ joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication.

Read the rest of this entry »

Even in this era of with-us-or-against-us partisanship, I never cease to be amazed at the neocons’ mendacious, irresponsible, utterly illogical denial of the escalating environmental crisis. You can arm yourself with Coby Beck’s excellent syllabus, but what can you ultimately do about people who are shallow enough to play politics with the habitability of the planet?

I have beaten my head against this particular wall in far too many conversations, so today, I’m sending in the cavalry.

Who’s a puppet now?

There’s a new mutation of bullshit that is taking hold in Washington, and I want everybody to get inoculated now. Before we have to listen to any more of this infectious mealymouthed tripe. And look, it is not my aim to just pile on Bush again. He’s had a bad week, and I feel for him in that regard, but this little outbreak started with him.

September 14, 2006 press conference, transcript posted on Whitehouse.gov:

REPORTER: What do you say to the argument that your [Military Commissions Act] proposal is basically seeking support for torture, coerced evidence and secret hearings?

PRESIDENT BUSH: This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, “outrages upon human dignity?” That’s a statement that is wide open to interpretation.

Is it? The rest of the world hasn’t seemed to have had all kinds of trouble interpreting what Common Article 3 means in the 50+ years since it was written Read the rest of this entry »

Pictured below is the Lightsaber of Democracy: my satellite TV remote. Subtly highlighted is the “skip forward” button, which allows the viewer to jump ahead in 30-second increments while watching recorded programming. The practice of skipping over commercial breaks, normally a mere convenience, in pre-election months becomes absolutely vital for the prevention of Autumnal Voter Disgust Syndrome.

A VoterShield
1000, and its
mighty "Skip
Fwd" button.

Campaign advertisers are a crafty predator. They’ll often position their ad as the last one to play before resumption of the TV show, meaning that even skillful ad-skippers will see their final slogan as it fades to black. This year’s slogan I most often saw in this manner was the phrase “No on 87.” Noticing this trend, each future occurrence prompted me to think “Wow, somebody is spending a ton of money to defeat Proposition 87. Eh, I’ll probably end up voting ‘Yes.’ ” Flippant? Sure, a bit - but allow me to explain my rationale.

I’ve noticed that like nearly every aspect of American politics, ballot initiatives are by and large about money. Initiative campaigns that churn out a lot of TV advertising are about A LOT of money - specifically, either a promotion of or an impediment to someone making a lot of money. To discern what a given ballot measure proposes to put into effect, a voter needs only to find out what interests are pouring money into the respective “No” and “Yes” campaigns, and then connect the dots through critical thinking. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: kudos to Bill O’Reilly.

From FOX News, via Andrew Sullivan:

O’REILLY: Now Brian Ross of ABC said — reported the CIA waterboarded [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed. That is dunked him in water, tied him down and then that broke him. Is that true?

BUSH: We don’t talk about techniques. And the reason we don’t talk about techniques is because we don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust. We’re in a war.

O’REILLY: Is waterboarding torture?

BUSH: I don’t want to talk about techniques. And — but I do share the American people that we were within the law. And we don’t torture. We — I’ve said all along to the American people we won’t torture, but we need to be in a position where we can interrogate these people.

O’REILLY: But if the public doesn’t know what torture is or is not, as defined by the Bush administration, how can the public make a decision on whether your policy is right or wrong?

BUSH: Well, one thing is that you can rest assured we’re not going to talk about the techniques we use in a public forum. No matter how hard you try because I don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust their tactics if we capture them on the battlefield.

But what the American people need to know is we’ve got a program in place that is able to get intelligence from these people. And we’ve used it to stop attacks.

Before we begin scanning the skies for flying pigs, it should be known that the tough questioning in this excerpt is not necessarily typical of the interview as a whole. Nevertheless, O’Reilly deserves credit for putting the waterboarding question directly to Mr. Bush - it was more than anyone else had done.

Bush’s ham-fisted evasion, “We’re not going to talk about techniques… because we don’t want the enemy to be able to adjust” is ludicrous on several levels. First, it’s such an obvious smoke screen that it practically begs for a Colbert-esque “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ” The absurdity is dialed up further with the notion that Bush’s answering the question would enable the enemy to “adjust.” This assumes that the preceding several weeks of public controversy over such interrogation methods somehow escaped the terrorists’ notice. To top it off, the president apparently believes that our foes are capable of turning themselves into amphibians in order to resist being waterboarded. This just in: Aqua-Man has defected to Al Qaeda.

George W. Bush is not just a bad president - he’s an embarrassment to the office. The loftiest hope I can summon for the next two years is that he does as little further damage as possible. The toll his policies have taken on the American citizenry is severe, and the stain he is leaving on the good name of our country will take years to scrub away.