A Fresh Batch of Senate Scramble (now with extra filibuster!)

     Thank you New York Times news alerts. Without them, I don't really know how I'd find out about things like this (granted, this information is incredibly easy to find, I just like checking my email and not having to search for news much farther beyond that): Today in Washington, the Senate allowed for advances of the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." They voted 63 to 33 -- that means that six Republicans voted with the Democrats. There was a huge desire for some action to be made on this issue, since the 111th Congress is coming to a close, and next Congress will be Republican-ruled in the House (the repeal of DADT had already passed in the House.) And Republicans had been filibustering the repeal for so long that it appeared as if this bill would die, just like the Dream Act (which just failed after a 55-41 vote, 5 short of the votes needed to bring debate to the Senate floor...the Dream Act would grant legal status to the illegal immigrant students. Cloture couldn't be reached, so Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins -- an independent and a Republican, respectively -- asked for Democratic leaders to try instead to vote on a repeal of the ban.
    The Senate still has to vote again to approve this repeal and then send it to the President, as it is with bills, and if passed it will go into effect after sixty days. Lieberman said that forcing troops to lie, which is what the military has been doing, undermines its integrity. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said that this is not something to be done during military conflict, but I don't really know anyone who respects the opinion of someone named "Saxby Chambliss." It sounds like a Costco boxed wine. Senator Inhofe, another Republican, but from the OK, basically said that if the system isn't broke, why fix it? But it is kind of broke when a simple civil right like this -- the right to serve your country -- isn't afforded to a whole group of people. And the Defense Secretary issued a report, along with military leaders, that this repeal should either have a positive effect or no effect at all on military morale/action. Senator Wyden, D-Oregon, said that "I don't care who you love. If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn't have to hid who you are." (Thank you NYT for gathering all these quotes already.)
    The idea for this bill has been around since the days of Clinton, and it's fantastic that it is so close to being passed. As for the Dream Act: that's incredibly unfortunate. The filibuster just couldn't be voted down, and now children are forced to live in this country without being able to truly call it home. Oh well. The Senate can't be expected to promise the American dream to everyone, right? (Sarcasm. I think.)

BREAKING NEWS: Senate voted 65 to 31 to REPEAL DADT. Go Senate! Next stop: Executive office!

Response on Responders Responding to a lack of Response

     So, HR 847: the Zadroga Bill. Zadroga was an NYPD detective who died from respiratory illness derived from working at Ground Zero. As in, the 9/11 Ground Zero. As in, the guy is fairly universally considered a hero. The proposed bill provides money for medical and financial benefits to 9/11 first-responders, many of whom have been suffering from respiratory illness themselves, and will be paid by fixing a loophole pertaining to corporate taxes. The House passed it...and the Senate's Republicans are filibustering the bill to death. This after the Senate passed the extension of tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 annually after taxes. That makes sense.
    You know what else makes sense? The fact that the Republicans and the media -- the two groups who have routinely invoked the name "9/11" to gain outrage and patriotic support, who disparage the building of Islamic cultural centers in a two-block radius of Ground Zero, who have hundreds of montages of pictures of first responders set to Sarah McClachlan songs on tap for any situation -- are either not talking about the Zadroga Bill, or are busy filibustering it down. No main television news station is touching the issue. The Daily Show is the the only program really talking about the bill, and yesterday Jon Stewart hosted some first-responders from the FDNY and the NYPD on his show to discuss the absurdity of the bill still not being passed. Nothing like a comedy news show being the only emotionally viable and politically relevant thing on TV. Stewart then showed a clip of Senator Mitch McConnell crying after a friend's retirement -- where are the Senate's emotions regarding, oh, I don't know, people who committed heroic deeds and are now suffering from lung diseases?
    So, Senate Republicans: can you please put aside party politics or whatever is going on in your hypocritical brains and pass this one bill?
  Here's the link to the Stewart clip: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-16-2010/9-11-first-responders-react-to-the-senate-filibuster

War Reports

   Reading about reports on the Afghan War in the New York Times, I feel like the art of war is a futile, pointless thing. The savage element is kind of funny, in a sick way; it doesn't matter how well an army can dress, how nice their weapons are, how clean their commercials look, or how fierce their fighting words may be -- ultimately, people end up killing each other brutally and dying in the same manner. War is a dogfight, no matter how well it's planned.
  I was watching some of Restrepo a few weeks ago, and I do have respect for people who willingly enter military service. I do not want to sound like I hate soldiers, or that I'd be willing to do their jobs, because I know myself and I know that I'm not. I think they wind up battered, though, and no one should have to see the things that soldiers in every country are faced with. It's tragic. So, I don't wear yellow ribbons. I don't know anyone who is currently at war. I know veterans, but no one who likes to talk. I read reports in the New York Times and get inflamed and just want it all to be over, but that's as close as I get.
   One report is on Afghanistan, and one is on Pakistan. They are called the National Intelligence Estimates, and they state that, although the US and NATO have had some success n this war, Pakistan won't shut down "militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region," and apparently this is a problem because insurgents are free to cross the border between the two countries. This is a border which can't be sealed.
   I can't control anyone's actions. I can't comment on another country's government with any kind of authority; I can barely comment on my government without sounding like an idiot. I don't know. I don't want to make a point today. One war is supposedly over; there are still 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, however. I saw Fair Game on Sunday, about Valerie Plame and the CIA leaking her name, and it seemed pretty obvious that the CIA knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; they knew there was no uranium in Niger. But war commenced anyhow, and once it did, no questioning of the motives was tolerated, since that would "compromise security" and whatever. I know it was a movie, but it was based strongly in reality. That twists with my head, that people are willing to further their own reputations at the sake of their nation's people's intelligence and safety. But, I'm not really surprised.

At Risk of Sounding Like a Crazy Liberal (which, come on, I am)

First, a couple of complaints. Just general complaints:
-Okay, so the Consumer Product Safety Commission has decided to allow manufacturers to determine how much cadmium can be in children's toys, and is calling this "regulating." That's not regulating. That's capitalism at its worst.
-Also, why won't Congress pass a bill offering benefits to 9/11 first-responders? They're also stalling on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal and on a bill to legalize children of illegal immigrants. I mean, I know why they won't -- the Republicans do not want to give the Left anything until they get what they want, which is immature and totally like American government. They said they wouldn't give him anything unless they got their Bush tax cuts continued, and the Senate voted to extend those for another two years. The cuts benefit people who have an annual income of $200,000 post-taxes; this is a very, very small portion of the population. The cut is, like, three-percent. Seriously. Suck it up rich people. I don't want the trickle-down argument, either; This is why Congress is not my favorite branch of government.
     Speaking of regulation: I watched Food, Inc. for the first time last week, and felt like an idiot for not knowing that many members of the FDA have stock in the meat and corn industries. That's insanity. Regulation keeps people safe, keeps food sanitary and businesses from monopoly, protects small farms and small businesses, keeps lead out of children's toys and chemical toxins out of cat food. But there's this myth spread around people who are, for the most part, conservatives who get all their news from each other and the TV, that regulation is bad and undemocratic and socialist and fascist. Well, this is a republic, not a democracy, if that counts, and socialism and fascism are opposing political theories. Government regulation is a good thing. I just find it very annoying that the ex-business people who were recently running for office were supposedly so "pro-jobs" when businesses, to keep down costs and heighten profits, have increasingly (this is no Horatio Alger world -- unless you're born rich, you probably will never be). Whatever. Liberal idealists don't make me feel any warmer or fuzzier inside, either -- putting support in government to, like, reveal its flaws to you, instead of putting your support in WikiLeaks, which will gladly reveal everything to you, is just way to idealistic for me, and fairly naive.
Those are just my thoughts for the day, anyways.

Shhh.....Whatever. Secrets Are Out.

     Either because of an early exposure to All The President's Men, an over-intense admiration of the Pentagon Papers, or a lack of faith in governmental honesty, I really, really like WikiLeaks. Their server, however, is currently down, so I can't use any direct quotes apart from whatever I remember of the Russian and North Korea cables I was reading on Wednesday. More on the cables later. New York Times had them all sent to them, so I have decent summaries anyhow. Julian Assange, the mastermind, has reportedly been seeking extra assistance from Sweden, where he's been seeking refuge, even though Swedish police accused him (probably wrongly) of rape. INTERPOL wants him, the US wants him for treason (read: HE IS FROM AUSTRALIA. My god.) Assange is egocentric and abrasive, fearlessly tossing aside societal codes and giddily tossing about the information he gets so freely.
     Apparently, of the 251,287 diplomatic cables (note: these are, basically, reports about not-secret-but-not-revealed-to-the-public treaties and such) released, only about 11,000 were marked as secret, and none were top-secret; no one's been harmed, no real diplomatic indecency has occurred, and the world's governments -- particularly the US, much to the chagrin of Secretary-of-State Clinton, going totally against the Hillary she'd been, the Hillary who liked the Pentagon Papers -- just look as shameful and nasty and embarrassed as they really are. I don't pity them, nor do I reproach them. If I was in international politics, I'd cover up my semi-dirty-but-not-really dealings, too. I'd also feel terrible about it. I guess, if really interested, the American populace could demand to view this information, but I'm fairly certain that no politician would really allow this all to go public. So, a large-scale journalistic showcase like this, with all the excitement of any other kind of heist, is really what's necessary.
     When the war information came out (leaked by Pfc. Bradley Manning on a CD marked "Lady Gaga" -- he wasn't really the best info-leaker ever), WikiLeaks became a household name. Their upcoming revelation on bank fraud should be a blockbuster. But a lot of people have trouble embracing the leak of the diplomatic cables. I do not. It's like watching a history book play out in real life...it's finding out what actually happens in diplomacy...it's honest, it's exciting, it's a freaking Bourne movie. Some highlights from the cables include:
-A standoff with Pakistan concerning nuclear fuel, going on since 2007
-Talk of a unified Korea
-Negotiations to empty the prison at Guantanamo
-Corruptions in Afghanistan's presidency
-China's government-sponsored hacking of Google (ha! knew it!)
-Close ties between Russia and Italy (like...they give each other presents?)
-US failure to stop Syria from delivering arms to Hezbollah
-Human rights violation in Germany
      The Times got the information, all of it, and have decided not to publish any of the secret or nonforn or "please protect" documents. The information is, therefore, public-but-not. And the cables are so detailed, with accounts of conversations between generals and foreign leaders. And there's the thing about the Libyan leader and his, um, nurse. It's pretty good stuff. There is talk of Assange being tried for some sort of espionage, and this saddens me: people should be lapping this up, basking in the wealth of information at our fingertips! We're political equals with world leaders! I mean, not really, but at least we can now imagine that, and have the proper information to justify our pipe dreams (if you daydream about international diplomacy).

Bi-Partisanship? Well.....no......

Ok, so, for lack of a better intro, since I don't really have one, this is from Matt Taibbi's "Taibblog" on Rolling Stone's website: 

"Social Security was never the cause of the nation's debt problems. This issue dates all the way back to the Eighties, when Ronald Reagan hired Alan Greenspan to chair the National Commission on Social Security Reform, ostensibly to deal with a looming shortfall in the fund. Greenspan's solution was to hike Social Security tax rates (they went from 9.35% in 1981 to 15.3% in 1990) and build up a "surplus" that could be used to pay Baby Boomers their social security checks 30 years down the road. They raised the SS taxes all right, but they didn't save the money for any old Baby Boomers in the 2000s. Instead, Reagan blew that money paying for eight years of deficit spending and tax cuts. Three presidents after him used the same trick."

       Anyways, I found this interesting in a purely factual way, since I was raised to despise Reagan and I've spent a great deal of my life accumulating reasons as to why said hatred is so necessary. He seemed like a mask, very fake, not really in charge, unaware of a lot of things, given wayyyy to much credit for the hostage situation, and, I don't like his economic plan. This Social Security thing just feeds the flame, so to speak. I digress.

        My point is actually the rest of Taibbi's blog, which consists partially of him saying how a former Nixon aide who he met confused him with Matt Bai, a writer for the NYT. Taibbi, apparently, doesn't like Bai. At all. I know very little about Matt Bai, but the image Taibbi gives is one of a really "agreeable" liberal--agreeable in the worst way possible, like, far too quick to bend for Republican appeasement, ready to mock more extreme liberals (or, really, non-moderates), without any solid liberal philosophy, and completely enamored with the idea that bi-partisanship is best executed as pure centrism without any dogma at all. Taibbi says that Bai wants Obama to bend for Boehner&Co., give the Republicans what they want. But the Republicans, currently, don't want that. When your entire platform revolves around hating someone, the last thing you want is for that person to become less-than-hateable. 

     In that sense, then, bi-partisanship is a myth, and would be detrimental to the US' political system. I'm not saying that I like how polarized the country is. I don't. I hate it very much. But centrism is boring, and I think the clash of ideologies is necessary in order for the truth to appear. That said, I also hate extremist ideologies. But I'm not a politician. I mean, I'm currently blogging about another blogger's blog, which is about another writer entirely.  My opinion on anything, particularly the pros-and-cons of a political climate, are not really that valid. Whatever. I like politics regardless. 

   I also saw the federal reserve chairman on  60 Minutes. He's supposed to be non-partisan. I found that very confusing, since I'm so used to being in a world where people are clearly left or right. He was horrible on camera, very nervous and unprofessional, and I fail to believe that a guy who's job it is to watch a country's money couldn't see an economic meltdown (too harsh? panic? recession? what are we calling it?) coming. Hmm.

Ethics: Apparently, They're Totally Overrated

     Last week, the House ethics committee decided that Representative Charles Rangel (D- NY) was guilty of 11 of the 13 ethics violations charges against him. The committee almost unanimously recommended censure, which is just one step, punishment-wise, shy of actual expulsion. The House will then vote on censure, and if that's passed, then the speaker (either Pelosi or Boehner, depending on when this will occur) will publicly rebuke Congressman Rangel. His accusations included accepting gifts over fifty dollars from a Manhattan developer, using his office to raise charity money from people with business motives, and a failure to report about half a million dollars worth of assets. He's also accepted trips to the Caribbean, and he's been unwilling to admit to his misdeeds.
   Obviously, Rangel has been unethical, and a mere reprimand probably wouldn't be a just punishment, and his actions have to accounted for so as to, I don't know, preserve some scraps of congressional integrity. But Rangel is a twenty-term congressman, one of the strongest political voices to come from Harlem, a strong liberal and a good compromiser, and a co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. He's not unproductive, and has actually proved to be a vital part of the House for decades, and, although I don't want to rationalize, it's not like the rest of Congress is completely pure in ethics, either. I don't feel that Rangel being punished is a race issue; ignoring blatant ethics violations so as not to seem racist is, in its way, racist, since doing so fails to look at actions objectively. It's just that Rangel is not a bad person, and he's a good congressman, too, so this situation is just very hard to watch. If he had just been ethical, things would be fine. There'd be no hearings about censure and whatnot, no reports of unreported money, etc.
   But it's really, really difficult to be ethical, and popular, and successful. Although unrelated to the Rangel issue, there is also a clear lack of ethics in Sarah Palin's TLC special series...and in her job on FOXNews, and with her daughter being on Dancing with the Stars despite her lack of talent or celebrity status, and with Palin's constant blurring of the line between "political figure" and "spotlight-seeking nutcase." Her constant media presence is, I've decided, hilarious, given her constant sneering at the "lamestream media" (ooh, good job Sarah. Way to make up even more words which signify your adorably limited vocabulary. Refudiate that). I don't think it's ethical at all to have a TV series which is, ostensibly, a six-part endorsement that she doesn't even have to pay for. Mark Burnett, the reality show guru who produced the series, pays her six figures. I was reading an op-ed piece in the NYT about Palin, and apparently her new book is set to rocket up the bestseller list, her TV show is a red-state hit, her daughter can't get voted off that dancing show (I saw Bristol on that once--she said that she's an "activist" for, I don't know, safe sex for teens. I think the terms she was looking for would be closer to "cautionary tale" or "case-in-point"), populist-ish folk adore her (like, 80% approval-among-conservatives adore), EVEN THOUGH all the candidates she endorsed in mid-terms lost (because they were insane) and the not-extremist Republicans can not stand her. Rupert Murdoch touts her as his prized pet, vouching for her obviously ghost-written policy op-eds. The point I got from the NYT column is that Palin and her fans don't hate liberals, or the rich, or the media -- they hate education, they rally against it, they despise it, view it as some elitist trick their opponents use against them. "Anti-elitist" currently means "pro-mediocrity," and, while that's a charming idea for a basic cable reality show, that's no way for a politician to behave. And for a politician to be actively supporting that -- now, that's a lack of ethics.
   Oh well. If Palin does run in 2012, and the Mayan calendar doesn't run out and we don't all die, at least Tina Fey will be employed.

Safety Scissors Cut the National Deficit?

       A bipartisan deficit commission recently proposed a plan to cut four trillion dollars in federal spending. It’s a ten-year plan and pleases no one: liberals of furious, conservatives are trying to pretend it didn’t happen (one of those, “oh, well we’re sort of in power now, I guess we have to govern, but let’s just ignore it when we do” kinds of things), and Obama isn’t saying much about the proposal, probably for fear of alienating either side, which is inevitable with this sort of plan.

            The Defense Department refused to cut its funding, so instead earmarks are supposed to end, which only saves half the cost of Secretary Robert Gates’ plan for the Department (San Francisco Chronicle). The retirement age is set to go up to 67 and, ultimately, 69 by 2075. Also, retirees would be given the option to collect half of benefits before retiring, and the Social Security threshold will raise. There are some proposed domestic spending changes, too, such as a freeze on Defense salaries and a cut of two-thirds of overseas bases, a 15% decrease in White House budgets, no more grants to large airports (who also have to fund security themselves), and less funding for public broadcasting. Taxes, too, are affected. The word “overhaul” is used a lot, particularly to describe the change in tax deductions, income tax rates for corporations, and an increase in the gasoline tax. Healthcare is deeply affected, with a limitation set for the tax-free status of employer-to-employee health care, and Medicare should have limits on annual cost increases.

            This plan seems to affect a lot, and I doubt it will really all be implemented, since it seems to please very few, besides the people who wrote it. At least it’s bipartisan, I suppose. 

What About Free Speech?

     So, the Judicial is quickly becoming my favorite branch of government. The Supreme Court is like this awesome TV show, but real, with a bunch of random people in robes sitting around talking and scaring lawyers. On November 2, the oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association commenced. Basically, California is invoking some of the results of Ginsberg V. New York, a 1968 case which ruled that erotic material which isn't obscene may be harmful to children, and thus can't be sold to minors (this involves, like, soft-core magazines.) So, California wants harsher regulations of violence in video games, "restricting minors' ability to purchase deviant, violent video games that the legislature has determined can be harmful to [their] development" (from the transcript).
     As soon as Morazzini, California's lawyer, made that statement, the Justices leapt-- what constitutes "deviant?" Are gory fairy tales deviant? What about movies? Scalia, Gingsburg, Sotomayor, Roberts, and Kagan all seemed to be on the same page near the beginning of the case in regards to how vague the lawyer's statement was. They seemed to decide that any time a new technology is developed, or a new form of entertainment, people try to restrict it more (i.e., the proposed restrictions wouldn't pertain to film, but to those new-fangled video games). The Justices were also unsatisfied with how loose the term "minor" is -- what is okay for a 17-year-old differs vastly from what is okay for a 9-year-old. Justice Breyer insinuated that, despite the age issue, these violent video games (which is a very vague construct, since Morazzini only mentioned one game, and refused to regard the previously instated video game ratings system as a clear-cut separation of nonviolent from violent) have no artistic, political, or scientific value; it's only entertainment.
   This is very much a free speech issue; Justice Scalia said that he is concerned with not only the vagueness, but with "the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. And it was always understood that the freedom of speech did not include obscenity. It has never been understood that the freedom of speech did not include portrayals of violence." What is obscene -- are movies with people drinking or smoking obscene if shown to children? The First Amendment doesn't make exceptions; free speech is protected, and was instituted with the sort of unspoken sentiment that the general public would be able to figure out was was reasonable and what wasn't. Obviously, that turned out to be asking way too much of the general public, but the amendment remains as it is. But there's nothing about violent materials in the Constitution; Justice Alito joked, "I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games." (Scalia didn't get it. If this was a television show, he'd be like Stanley on The Office, the cranky guy who everyone plays little tricks on just because he never notices).
   Later, as Smith -- the EMA's lawyer -- presented the counter-argument, Justice Breyer brought up the sex/violence issue. He said how inane it is that a thirteen-year-old can't buy, like, a photo of a naked woman, but can buy a game with the premise of exploding people's heads or something. Violence and sex are treated differently; either both are protected by First Amendment, or neither are.
  Anyways, this case is extremely interesting and I will probably return to it and Snyder v. Phelps as the cases progress.

Results?

   So, the results from the 2010 Midterms are in, and I'm excited since I voted for the first time on Tuesday, and therefore I feel a newfound connection to politics which is largely unwarranted and will likely wear off  in another seven years of so, as my liberal fervor subsides to a vaguely socialistic disillusionment. I digress. California proved to be an anomaly, remaining very, very blue. Whitman and Fiorina's excessive advertisements and extravagant campaigning ultimately did not seal a victory for either candidate. I never thought people could relate to someone who spent around $160 million on a campaign, no matter what script she read in her speeches. Apparently, I was right, and Jerry Brown is back. I don't really want to talk more about Californian politics, but basically Prop 19 was defeated, which is what I expected (it's a poor law) but not what I wanted (basically, I think that two of the most self-glorified groups are moralistic law-enforcers and stoners who grow their own weed, and I will vote for anything which someone pisses off both factions), and 23 was defeated, maintaing AB 32's environment laws. 20 passed and 27 didn't, which means there will now be a 14-person re-districting committee, which is just strange and I doubt will last long. 25 thankfully passed so now only a simple majority is needed to pass a budget, but 21 failed, which is sad because I think an $18 vehicle license surcharge is not too much to ask and would keep the endangered state parks open.
   Nationwide, voters proved that, no matter what the (fake)-party's rhetoric insists, the Tea Party is not a viable option. It's an extremist faction (eh, that might be too strong of language--they're just really annoyed neo-Cons who sometimes wear tri-pointed hats and aren't witches) without a clear agenda (New York Times discussed this today in an article by Kate Zernike). Ideology can only go so far, apparently: although Rand Paul won a Senate seat in Kentucky, and Marco Rubio won one in Florida, the other major Tea Party candidates (Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, etc) all lost. O'Donnell lost to Chris Coons, who would have lost to a more moderate Republican. The Senate is still mostly Democrat, and Harry Reid still has his job, but the House majority has shifted, with John Boehner being the new majority leader and Pelosi now the minority leader. Tea Party activists are still insisting that in Washington D.C. their members will not be like other Republicans, but more like really stubborn libertarians. The chances of anything getting done at all with that kind of attitude is impossible; it also can't last. Health care reform won't be repealed, and neither will Medicare or other welfare systems. So, basically, the House is going to have a fun, fun new session.

Midterm Mania

   In an article in today's New York Times, it is suggested that Obama might benefit if the Republicans gain control of Congress in the Midterm elections (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/weekinreview/24baker.html?_r=1&hp "In Losing the Midterms, There May Be Winning" by Peter Baker). This is an interesting opinion, given that it's fairly likely that Republicans will at least gain control of the House, thus switching the roles of John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, which I highly doubt will actually benefit any of Obama's proposals or ideals or anything. I know that Boehner is, as present-day Republicans go, pretty moderate, but he has a lot of party support and is unlikely to back energy reform bills or other more liberal causes. A Republican Congress would most likely make it difficult for Obama to do his job effectively, because that's what usually happens when the government is divided. Divided government isn't bad, of course -- there's more room for debate and a chance that a middle ground could be reached. But often things just stalemate and reach gridlock and then absolutely nothing of importance occurs. By this reasoning (which is extremely normal reasoning), any president would want a unified government as much as they seem to when stumping for party candidates nationwide.
   But the NYT article expresses that having a conservative Congress would, basically, give Obama someone to blame, making 2012 an easier victory for himself. There's obvious logic to that -- if the Republicans get Congress, and then screw it up, Democrats look good. This is the game which Republicans are currently playing, saying that Democrats ruined everything concerning the economic meltdown and health care and whatnot and therefore the only way to fix things is to start afresh with the GOP. That's a really stupid platform but it's something which both parties do when they're not in the majority. And then they get the majority and the positions reverse. There is far too much focus in politics about getting elected, and what needs to be said/done to then get re-elected, rather than a focus on actual politics; if this isn't so, it at least appears this way. The NYT article describes how Newt Gingrich, as House Speaker, made Clinton "look good" and that a Republican House gave Clinton the opportunity to be more moderate than liberal, necessary when dealing with the opposite party (a skill he was able to acquire as a Southern politician, which Obama doesn't have as much experience doing). A Republican Congress may be good for 2012, but that's an incredibly risky statement; why hope for two years of likely gridlock and petty political tensions just for an election?

A Whore By Any Other Name...

  So this is, for the most part, a follow-up to some topics raised in my previous posts. First off, yesterday I watched the third and final televised Brown/Whitman gubernatorial debate. Of the three debates, I enjoyed this one the most, although I spent most of the time yelling at the television, the way I imagine normal people yell at televisions during, like, sports. There was this beautiful moment near the beginning when Tom Brokaw invoked John F. Kennedy and asked the candidates what they think the people should have to do for their country, and Whitman proceeded to completely not answer the question and then sort of answer it a little bit at the end, followed by Brown sort of answering the question (yes, yes, "live within our means" -- we've seen the commercials, Jer. We get it) and then going off about, I don't know, experience, I'd assume. Whitman has always been disgustingly on-message, and Brown was doing the same thing last night; trying to bring his answers back to his main points. Eventually, he seemed to give up on that, and went back to his usual style of just saying whatever pops into his head, and it made him seem so much better, so much more honest (whether or not he really is.)
   A few other issues I had included:
                 --Everything anyone said about the budget. I mean, that has to go through the legislature. Like schools being left to school boards, budgets aren't completely under the governor's jurisdiction. Brown did try last night to clear up a few things concerning limitations of powers, but candidates really have to be careful with that. I'm assuming Whitman doesn't know better. And her budget ideas, her "detailed plan" -- what is it? She's never described it. And she seemed skeptical of spending extra millions on the Bay Bridge to keep it seismically safe. Honestly, I don't care how much is spent on that bridge if it's earthquake-proof.
                --Can somebody please do something about Prop 13? So that would mean more taxes. I like taxes. It connects people to their government.
                 --Oh, that fantastic moment when Whitman, the so-called "jobs candidate" (who sent jobs overseas, but I digress) said in one breath that she plans to get California back to work, and then, in the very next breath, said she was going to cut state workers' jobs. And their pensions. I don't think she realizes that state workers are kind of the workers she has the closest responsibility of. And all of her, oh, I'll help small businesses with less regulation -- well, that's stupid because deregulation was how the nationwide recession was started, and it's stupid because she is speaking directly from her experience as an employer and investor who would have benefited for her proposed tax cuts, and it's stupid because she's also beholden to out-of-state oil companies HENCE her support of Prop 23.
              --Every time Whitman brought out one of those "well I talked to a (worker/man/woman/business owner) in (some small town) and they told me..." stories. Come one. You can't connect to the common man and spend one hundred and twenty million dollars on a campaign. You just can't. And if you think you can, well, have fun checking into Tammany Hall, because you just got political.
               --When Whitman kept commenting disparagingly about Brown being a politician. Generally, experience is an asset in a profession. Also, if she was referring to politician as being political in the sense of giving half-answers and trying to please everyone with a good deal of partisan mudslinging-- oh my god, she does all of that regularly! Finally, if elected, she'll be a politician too. You can only play the newbie card once.

And, here's what bothered me the most, and since I can tie it back to other things I wrote, I feel no shame in focusing on this really small event which has gotten far too much media coverage:
Whore is not a bad word.
    Okay, so I heard the story break about Brown's phone message with the Police Union while some unidentified staffer in the background could be heard calling Whitman a whore. And then Whitman kept saying how that's a disgrace against all women in California, or something to that effect. Brokaw raised the issue at the debate; when Brown apologized for his staffer's conduct but conceded that it's not at all comparable with the n-word, which Whitman had previously insinuated, Whitman made a low "noooo" noise and shook her head in a weird, weird vie for attention, and then kept saying how it was going to anger all the women in the state. Seriously? I'm a woman in this state, and I was definitely not offended. This kind of outrage is just playing the gender card, which further breaches the equality and legitimacy of women and men in politics. It's not like this staffer was actually accusing Whitman of prostitution; he's working in a campaign against her, of course he doesn't like her, and it is very common behind closed doors in politics and in business and in high school to say simple, kinda-mean words about people not because you actually mean it but just because you don't like them. If the staffer had been caught calling a male candidate a dickhead or an asshole, there wouldn't be this kind of outrage-- yeah, it's immature, but it's considered perfectly normal.
   And then, in Delaware, there's Christine O'Donnell and her "i am not a witch" commercials. Not sure why I find this so disturbing, other than that it has nothing to do with policy or anything relevant to an actual election, but only to a small media store which has caught public attention. Which I would say is kind of being a media whore. But the biggest whores of all are still Westboro Baptist Church. I finally finished reading the transcripts of the opening argument, and Chief Justice Roberts asked Phelps, the lawyer/Westboro Baptist defending her father's church in Snyder v. Phelps, if the group chose to picket Snyder's son's funeral because they knew it would garner the most public attention. She begrudgingly agreed with that statement. If that's not whoring out a cause -- albeit a creepy and hateful and disgusting one-- then I honestly don't know what is.

Supreme Court Groupies!!!

   Firstly, I'm not actually a Supreme Court groupie. I have a feeling that is not actually a thing. But I'm kind of an American Civil Liberties Union groupie, at least to the extent that I'm a fan of the ACLU on Facebook and a lot of the issues being brought up by said organization also involve the Supreme Court. The Court actually has a pretty interesting session ahead, with the appeal of California's Prop 8 to be reviewed next year being highly anticipated. There's also November's Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Assoc. (California doesn't want violence in video games--is this a free speech violation?) , December's Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (involving Arizona and immigration and privacy, which, if SB 1070 taught us anything, is a super-exciting combination), and next year's FCC v. AT&T (do corporations maintain personal privacy? fun stuff!). Interestingly, newest Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagan, won't be sitting on or voting for about half the docket, since she was recently solicitor general. This means that a good deal of cases could end in a tie vote, and then have to resort to the original ruling of the lower court. She will, however, be present throughout my favorite case on the docket, Snyder v. Phelps, which began October 6th with the arguments set forth by Summers (Snyder's lawyer) and Phelps' lawyer/daughter (apparently it's a good idea to raise a bunch of semi-competent lawyers when you're running a hateful religious group that nobody likes). This case is complex, in its way, involving First Amendment rights and privacy and the limits of free speech, particularly of really, really unpopular opinions. This is why the ACLU supports Phelps -- well, not exactly Phelps, since the ACLU isn't really into handing out "God Hates America" signs to little girls so they can protest military funerals, but the ACLU supports his and his Westboro Baptist Church's right to free speech.
   Westboro Baptist Church, which Phelps is in charge of, is a really small organization which has been disowned by the actual Baptist church, is intolerant of basically everyone, and has a URL called "godhatesfags" which describes how God is punishing America by killing soldiers because of our acceptance of homosexuality, out-of-wedlock sex, Judaism, and Catholicism, all neatly organized around a running tally of souls which God is damning to hell each minute. These are not exactly likable people or, given the fact that everything they say is hateful and totally groundless, rational individuals. In 2006, WBC picketed Snyder's son, a Marine's, funeral; although Snyder did not see the protests during the funeral, as they had been strategically placed 300 feet from the procession as per a Maryland law, he did see the hateful signs on the news that evening and read the "epic poem" on WBC's website which describes how just it was of Snyder's son to die. Snyder won the case in Maryland, lost in the Fourth District Court, and so, here it is, before the Supreme Court. Summers, the lawyer, began with a statement about how emotional duress was placed on a family during a funeral, and, after being passed around from judge to judge until he was thoroughly eaten alive, started invoking Hustler v. Falwell over and over again, even though that case "involved intentional emotional distress" (a cartoon in a Larry Flynt publication constitutes emotional distress? Yeah right) inflicted upon a public figure, not a private citizen, which Snyder is and his son was. Summers seemed rather intimidated by the Justices, at least from my reading of the transcripts, and rightly so; what he was saying was not totally applicable to the case. The judges contributed greatly, with an interesting question raised by Justice Breyer-- "under what circumstances can a group of people broadcast on television something about a private individual that's very obnoxious [and] to what extent can they put that on the Internet, where the victim is likely to see it?" Justice Ginsburg continually went back to the private v. public nature of the Snyder family, and then how much precedent cases like Hustler v. Falwell or Gertz v. Welch really take in this particular case. And Justice Scalia insisted that Summers stop talking about the funeral thing and say what he really meant, which would be that this is a case involving personal attacks-- but, conversely, how personal were they if similar protests occurred in Annapolis at the same time they occurred at the funeral? Is this just general hatred? This case is turning out to be not just about a man who lost his son going against a hate group, or just the freedom of speech v. freedom to worship peacefully argument that most people had expected it to be; this involves the relevance of freedom of speech electronically, the differentiation between a private citizen and a public figure if a very public attack is made on that individual, and really where freedom of speech turns into libel or hate crime. It harkens back to the concerns of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and the very reason the First Amendment was made at all: to protect the opinions of the minority, particularly the unpopular opinions. The content is not so much the issue here, it's the action, and as deranged as the opinions expressed are, they may very well prove to be legally expressed.

Notes on the First Debate (&etc.)

  With the second gubernatorial debate between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown to begin in about half an hour, I'm still trying to process Tuesday's debate at the Mondavi Center and what, if anything, really was said/happened. The scripted quality of Whitman's rhetoric allowed her to stay eerily close to message (which is basically impossible to escape thanks to the hours and hours of airtime of her commercials) and sound very, very canned, something like a pull-string doll spouting out Palin-style aphorisms with little-to-no substance. Just on an visceral level, she kept on this forced smile, which failed to hide neither her nervousness nor her growing anger. She kept discussing insanity, specifically a quote she falsely attributed to Einstein which stated the definition of insanity to repeat the same mistake and expect different results. She repeated this statement at least three times. Oh, the irony.
    But anyhow, Whitman has spent $120 million of her own money, plus another $25 million, on her campaign -- the most of any candidate, ever. Business-wise, sure, she's fairly savvy. But government is not corporation, and this fact does not quite seem to register in her mind, at least based on her debate contributions. Her figures never matched up; how, exactly, would she give $1 billion to schools (without actually making an executive decision about the UC budget, instead giving that job to the schools' chancellors -- way not to lead, Whitman) AND re-route the water lines AND build a border fence and improve border security AND deport illegal workers and their contributions to the state's economy AND force later retirement ages for state employees AND refuse to raise taxes? That's impossible. According to Time magazine, she plans to fire about 40,000 state employees; hence, many state employees and other unions, such as the nurses, do not support her. In the debate, she called state workers and workers' unions "special-interest groups," to whom Brown would be indebted. That was pretty fallacious; for one, as a private donor to her own campaign she effectively is a special-interest group, and two, Jerry Brown doesn't really seem to care about who he owes what. He's been involved with politics for most of his life, basically nonstop, understands first-hand California government and, ultimately, is too old to really have any more political goals after this campaign. I feel the need to momentarily digress and say that, although I generally do agree with Brown, his debate wasn't flawless; one of his trademarks is getting off-topic and trying to sum it up with a little motto, this time, "I've done it before, and I'll do it again," and quite a bit of what he said about elementary schools and water conservation wouldn't really be in his powers anyway, which he would obviously know. But at least he tried to answer the questions; Whitman turned each question into a way to follow her script, somehow answering a UC-budget question with a welfare-themed answer. (Digression over.)
   This debate was one of the first times Whitman really publicly discussed her beliefs on immigration, saying she opposes the "Arizona law" but would basically create something similar-but-not to deport illegal immigrants; Jerry Brown said something about instead working towards naturalization, which is far more reasonable than deportation. Anyways, Whitman also has been courting the Latino vote, gaining a peak of 35% of Latino voters's support (this is a traditionally Democratic group, according to the Sacramento Bee). Today's debate is being shown on Univision, with Spanish voiceover. I just think it's strange that her heavily anti-immigration sentiments -- which, in my opinion, would peg her as the a protector of upper-class whites and not much else (yeah, I'm biased against her, but her tax cuts for the rich and job cuts for the not-rich kind of influences how I see her)-- haven't affected this demographic too drastically. Until last Wednesday, of course, when celebrity lawyer and professional annoyance Gloria Allred came forward with a story about Nikki Diaz Santillian, former housekeeper to Whitman, until she told her boss that she was an illegal immigrant and Whitman, instead of assisting her, fired her. Whitman is quoted in the Sacramento Bee as calling herself a "victim" to another illegal immigrant worker -- seriously? The rich, white woman with the governor's campaign is being victimized by a poor immigrant? Currently, on the debate in Fresno, Whitman is accusing Brown of controlling this story and releasing it to Allred at a pivotal time during campaign season. In return, Brown says that she's "talking out of both sides of her mouth" as she vies for support from the Latino community.
   This has gone, again, off-topic and into a virtual rant, and I apologize for that. But at least I don't have to apologize for never voting like Meg Whitman did so pathetically at the Davis debate.

Girls Just Want to Run For Office as Republicans and Exploit Feminism

   Friday's New York Times featured a front-page article detailing the political philosophies and campaigns of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, both high-profile, politically inexperienced, ultra-conservative businesswomen candidates in California. Whitman is running for governor against Jerry Brown, while Fiorina is attempting to take Democrat Barbara Boxer's senate seat. The governor's race is at about 41%/41% at the moment, while Fiorina unfortunately seems very likely to win her race, leaving Diane Feinstein as the only liberal senator in California. There is no way I will vote for either candidate. Whitman's campaign has mostly consisted of her pouring money from her own billions as ex-CEO of eBay into advertisements bashing Jerry Brown (like the commercial with the clip of Bill Clinton bad-mouthing Brown? from 1992? the year they were running against each other for the Democratic primaries? the statement which Clinton explained as not what he meant -- which isn't probably true either, but whatever -- last week?). Although she does support abortion rights and is against Prop 23 (Prop 23 would undo AB 32, the environmental law), Whitman is a very traditional conservative, very corporation-minded and more focused on sounding like a good politician than on actually proving herself to be a good politician. She's had barely any experience, except for working on Mitt Romney's and McCain/Palin's campaigns in 2008, but lately Republicans have been valuing that fresh, new-politician smell, and decrying any experienced candidate as a "career politician" (oh, the illogic of campaign advertisements -- I think most people would like the idea of being led by people who have had some sort of knowledge and experience in office, and just two short years ago, conservatives were yelling about how Obama wasn't experienced enough. He'd been a senator, for chrissakes. Whitman's done basically nothing political and they're all just fawning over her. But I digress.) Fiorina is pro-Tea Party, pro-gun ownership, pro-Central Valley farmer (and thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner) and offshore drilling and Prop 23, as unabashedly conservative as Boxer is liberal, referring to San Francisco as "that other world" even though she lives in the Bay Area, and relies on her temp worker-to-HP executive (until she was effectively fired) story as a selling point.
    The main crux of the story was Whitman's emphasis of her event in Anaheim as a "women's town hall," her belief that free enterprise and fiscal discipline are subjects well-known to working women. She has a campaign group called Mega-Women and speaks in that oh-women-get-together-and-vote-for-me-because-I-don't-have-a-Y-chromosome-either sense. Fiorina, too, is trying to rally female voters. Whitman and Fiorina have good reason to rely on their gender to try to garner votes -- most Californian women are registered Democrat, though, of course, most Californian Democrats don't vote (neither do young Californians, but that's a different story). But I can't stand that women actually do this; they resort to old stereotypes and aphorisms to capitalize on their femininity or maternalism or non-maleness or whatever to try to get votes. And there are women who respond to this. I vaguely recall flipping through some idiotically bland ladies' magazine in line at the grocery store in '04 and reading a "Letter to the Editor" from some lady who probably proudly refers to herself as a "housewife" saying that she was definitely going to vote for George Bush because "of that old housecleaning mantra -- if you make a mess, you clean it up." This angered me; yeah, maybe that works to get some kids to clean up milk or whatever, but politically you do not vote incompetence back into office. An argument some suffragists used during the turn of the last century was that women would vote more compassionately, and not at all like men would; up through to today, there have still been women arguing that a female president would be good for America because she'd be more nurturing and responsible and, basically, act like a housewife. This further separates women from men, making it seem like the only way for a woman to be politically equal is if she, well, isn't; although some men do try to use military backgrounds as a sort of off-handed proof of their machismo and, therefore, electability, the majority of male candidates try to be elected because of presence and policy, whereas women politicians usually try to resemble Sarah Palin trying to rally "mama bears" to vote because of the children and whatnot. This bothered me in '08, when Hilary Clinton didn't make the primary and Palin attempted to gain her old supporters as a sort of, "well, since that girl didn't make it, why don't you vote for me?" faux-feminist type of thing. But I didn't want a woman to be in higher office; I wanted Hilary Clinton to be in higher office. And playing the gender card, like Whitman and Fiorina are currently doing, devalues women's right to vote and choose and support personal political beliefs.

All Tomorrow's Parties?

  Just by principle, I've always been simultaneously underwhelmed and annoyed by the Tea Party "movement." I have trouble considering a group of largely middle-aged white conservatives as a "movement," since historically consequential political movements are either young (the uprise of post-Kennedy liberalism in the sixties, as well as the Founding Fathers, who were for the most part on the young-ish side, and upstarts at that), minority-based (such as the Black Panther Party), or liberal (the Progressive movement in the early 1900s). This is not to say that the pendulum never swings to the conservative side, or that middle-aged white men tend to hold political power, but a movement which isn't young and doesn't have liberal vitality seems extremely laughable and likely to fail. But the Tea Party has been gaining quite a bit of media attention, first as a sort of sideshow of old guys in Patriot hats, but in the past two weeks, the Tea Partiers have been talked about everywhere from PBS' Newshour to the Today show, culminating in the most recent issue of TIME which features an oversized teacup on its cover. The group is still relatively small, still rallying with misspelled posters advertising fabricated anti-Obama conspiracies, still demanding a return to how America used to be (which is highly ironic, because if the majority of the party had been alive during, say, the Revolution, they'd probably all be dead. Lower life expectancy. And if they were actually living I highly doubt they would have enjoyed the progressivism of employing a new form of government. But I digress). The issue is that the Tea Party is actually winning, beating out establisment Republican candidates in Senate races in Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Alaska, Kentucky, Florida, and Delaware. Delaware is the latest story, featuring former anti-masturbation pundit Christine O'Donnell as the newest Republican Senate nominee who looks like a poor man's Sarah Palin and speaks in a bastardized version of apocryphal Jeffersonian with taglines like "When the government fears the people, there is liberty." There is also, of course, the off-chance that perhaps a government which was originally set in place to protect the liberty of its citizens and has managed to provide levels of freedom superior to the majority of the world's nations is actually a pretty damn good source of liberty, but the Tea Party doesn't really deal with such novelties as "reason" or "rationality."

   The "cause," as O'Donnell and others refer to it, desires a small central government, financial markets with little-to-no restrictions, low regulation, and few federal entitlements (TIME). The extreme conservatism doesn't bode well for traditional Republic candidates, but also haunts Democrats; Republicans have been voting more in this year's off-season primaries anyhow. Tea Party candidates, such as O'Donnell and Alaska's Joe Miller have been elected after elections with very few voters, and these candidates sell themselves based on their supposed connection to the "people;" they have very little political experience, which they somehow have twisted into a selling point. It's all part of their anti-elite campaign, regardless of the fact that they don't represent minority groups or the working poor or pro-union workers or the young or the politically literate or the non-radical conservatives. Their definition of the "people" is vague and largely incomplete. Personally, I don't feel threatened by or afraid of this Te Party; I think it's silly, and since I'm not a member of the GOP I'm not worried about my party being toppled. But on the other hand, I would feel a lot better having a more moderate GOP, and not have to live under the discretion of politicians elected by the idiot masses because they are, as Rush Limbaugh or  Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, the ones farthest to the right. The demagogues are pushing for their supporters to vote as extremely conservative as possible, according to the TIME article, and even though I have enough faith in people to trust that most won't listen to the crazies, victories by people like O'Donnell make me question the sanity of conservative voters. These are the same people who call Obama a socialist, and here they are, vouching for the extreme right and not expecting to be called fascists -- obviously, I know this isn't fascism, but I mean it is a pretty hypocritical situation. But whatever, I keep digressing. Back to politics, I just don't agree with the Tea Party's support of devolution of health care and the EPA and the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. The Tea Party will likely die out by 2012, and if not that, then definitely 2016, but as for now they're an annoyance with increasing clout. Or maybe not. Maybe all this media focus just makes it seem that way.

   

Feelings, Followed by Less Personal Writing

    Today, I realize, is September 11th. I feel like I should post something relevant to this being the ninth anniversary of the attacks, but I can't figure out exactly what would even be relevant. I remember what it was like when everything happened; I was young, I didn't understand what was occurring, but I knew that something had happened. The grief was so palpable, followed by what I sensed was some kind of national bonding, a lot of compassion, a lot of outpouring of respect even from the most cynical. I'm not incredibly patriotic, in the sense that I'm not some blind, flag-wielding nationalist, but I don't think the way people felt was mere patriotism -- it was more about compassionate responses to human loss, and a reassessment of what freedom means. And I don't mean that in like a country-music-station, taking-a-gun-into-a-bar-in-Tennessee-just-because-I-can kind of way. I like having the freedom to criticize people in charge and policies I don't like and general hypocrisy in the media, to have whatever opinion I want about the nation's predominant religion(s), to (theoretically) be eligible for whatever school or job I want. Yes, it's self-interest in the most Madisonian terms, but it's also humanistic (and it's basically my version of what Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show on September 20, 2001 -- except everything he said was heartfelt and brilliant and beautiful). So that's what I've been thinking about in regards to the day's date, just what things were like nine years ago.
   Because I don't really know what matters now. Less than two years later, the U.S. invaded Iraq on the terms of finding WMDs (there weren't any) and al-Quida (who weren't secretly harbored there) and eventually turning into a dictator-overthrowing, "democracy-spreading" mission in futility ignoring the importance of the Shi'ite/Sunni dynamic in an attempt to Westernize the Middle East and occurring around the same time as Iran's controversial presidential election, continued strife between Israel and Pakistan, increasing worldwide oil dependency and a furthering of oil as a main cause of American warfare, continued terroristic activities in Europe, an American economic recession, etc. It hasn't been the best decade, apparently. Combat activities officially ended two weeks ago, but troops are still abroad, and will continue to be until next year (and about 50,000 will remain non-combatant). Islam-related news has been very prevalent the past few weeks, straight off the heels of the cultural center "debate" (I assume it's not really a debate if there's no actual, legal reason not to build the center), with that idiotic preacher in Florida trying to get his 15 minutes of fame. I'd really rather not even mention that story, since the over-mustached, under-educated little wannabe-demagogue (the church he founded -- and had to leave due to something along the lines of money laundering, I believe -- in Germany has decried him, as has General Petraeus, the Pope, et al) wouldn't be having any impact at all on the world if the media hadn't covered his story. Even that statement conflicts me -- the media should cover stories about book-burning and other violations, but at the price of giving a nutcase a microphone? Mayor Bloomberg called him an idiot, but cited freedom of speech -- I feel like destructing a Quran isn't an exercise in freedom, but an exercise in Klan-style passive-aggresive hate crimes. I saw this story covered on PBS Newshour, which showed video clips of flag and effigy-burnings (effigies of the preacher) in the Middle East; news of the man is well-known, giving the impression that all Americans are the same way as him, just as violent and stupid. And this information, just as Petraeus feared it would be, has been spread mostly by extremist groups. My realization after watching the segment was that this is not a battle between different peoples or different values, but a battle between uneducated extremist Christians and uneducated extremist Muslims. Both deny evolution, both want to convert everyone to their system of beliefs, both refuse to learn anything not strictly following a fundamentalist interpretation of dogma. I am fairly skeptical of any religion, and a good deal of my skepticism comes from the fact that stupid, hateful people like this exist in every expansionist religion.
  I just read an Associated Press article from yesterday describing Obama talking about the continued pursuit of Al-Quida leaders. The article included a quote from former 9/11 co-chair Lee Hamilton, stating that "the American relationship with the Islamic world is one of the really great foreign policy challenges of the next decades...[w]e're not going to solve it in a year or two or five or even 10 years." Obviously, the timespan it takes for two cultures to understand each other is a very, very long one, and most Americans don't have the patience, and most humans don't have the foresight. News stations are going crazy over the story about the woman sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for adultery, while one of the men involved only has a three-year prison sentence and in the midst of two other women sentenced to a similar fate. This is primitive, this is unjust, sexist, wrong -- but many Americans are using this story as a way to justify their own discomfort with Islam. You can't just tell a country that it's cultural law is wrong; it is wrong, but it's just not possible to change centuries-old law. At the same time, if Iran wants to be respected as a viable modern nation, this kind of human rights violation needs to end.
  I've gone far enough off-topic for now....

Oh, Democracy...

  I'm well aware that the United States is a representative democracy, not the pure democracy of Athens or whatever, that it's really a republic and all of that. But I came across the website for a progressive magazine called Democracy: A Journal of Ideas while trying to find some sort of substantial information about, really, anything. I found an article by Joe Klein, the venerable TIME columnist, entitled "DMV Liberalism," about pendulum changes between conservatism and liberalism. It looked at first to be an article about abstract theories and ideas, but it wasn't; Klein usually writes with substance and facts, which is why I don't mind reading what he writes. In this article, he calls for liberalism to produce a tide change similar to the Reagan-era conservatism beginning in the early 1980s, recognizing the difficulty to change the mind of nation so assured that government interference in their lives is bad, not paying higher taxes is good, and anything worth saying or doing can be done so succinctly and with immediate effect. Klein cites such acts as tax cuts and the uncomfortably quick move to invade Baghdad; actions like these are brash and noticeable and easy to digest for the general public as, well, actions -- but they're short-sighted and ill-fated. Liberalism's curse, Klein argues, is that creating a universal health care system or reacting effectively to  environmental issues or acting with diplomacy (as apposed jingoism or militant paternalism) abroad are all actions which will take much time, much work, and much patience on behalf of the public. Our culture, at least in the post-modern world, does not appreciate complicated processes or long-term planning, which makes conservative sound bites, vague mottos, and brash actions so appealing.
   In regards to the idea that perhaps the American public is not capable of understanding broad, complicated issues, that it's unreasonable to ask the masses to try to learn about issues instead of just listening to bastardizations of the definitions of "freedom" and "constitutionality" from self-serving fringe groups, I'm citing another Klein piece, this time his most recent column in TIME. In his article "How Can a Democracy Solve Tough Problems?," Klein discusses the act of kleroterion, an Athenian system used to pick a random group of citizens (free white men) to make an educated decision on an issue. James Fishkin, a professor at Stanford, has attempted to use this system in communities in several different countries; the results are actually very good. The groups are selected scientifically to represent the local population, and then all are educated on the issue by experts with opposing viewpoints. The citizens can ask questions to understand the issue, but are then forced to make their own decisions based on what they have learned. Apparently this led to Texas' surge in wind power and some public works decisions in a small community in coastal China. Fishkin reports that, in general, people aren't as into extremes as it seems; when given a chance to make an individual decision that will actually be heard, they tend to care more about what they are voting about. I'm not sure that I agree with this; they are plenty of stupid people who honestly don't care about being educated on anything once they've set themselves on an opinion of identified so completely with a larger group, so I doubt this kleroterion system could work in every community or on any platform larger than strictly local. But it is interesting, and far more substantial and forward-moving than Obama's blue-ribbon commission developed to study the federal deficit (as opposed to actually revising or expanding the frustratingly vague Keynesian economic policy), which is what the rest of the article is about. So I'm not sure what I think of the public as decision-makers, since I basically called us all a herd of impatient sheep in the first paragraph.

...Or So I've Heard

   I wish I was as informed as I'd like to be. I try; I attempt to watch different news shows (except for FOX; their over-conservative bias and constant dumbing-down in order to trickle down their corporate-sponsored, often inane prejudices to their equally uninformed self-righteous audience is the single most disgusting waste of airspace that I'm conscious of), I read through the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Chronicle and occasionally the New York Times, and then whatever Associated Press articles show up online, but I just don't think I know much beyond the obvious issues, which tend to be more of social issues (ie abortion rights, gay marriage) or campaign issues. I'm not stupid and I've really tried to be politically aware the past year or so, researching basic tax laws, the powers of the legislature as compared to the judiciary (a month or so ago I heard Sarah Palin basically calling the judiciary branch unconstitutional for denying the "will of the people" in regards to the Prop 8 appeal; I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or scream at how completely wrong that statement is).

    So this first blog post is basically the pieces of things which I've heard about and tried to learn more about. I'm very liberal, I've never understood the logic of extreme tax cuts especially in times of financial recession and/or war (for that matter I've never agreed with the war which just sort-of-ended -- why invade the country that didn't attack the US, in order to look for weapons which weren't there? I mean besides oil, which was a reason, and some kind of international good will which has completely devolved into neo-paternalism. Then there were the elections in the Middle East, which I highly doubt were accurate, given the amount of hostility facing those who chose to dip their thumbs in ink). (I like parentheses.) Speaking of the war, I'm amazed by how many people don't know/care that it was announced last week that 80,000 troops will be coming home by next year, with 50,000 remaining as non-combatant. I have no idea what was achieved anywhere in the Middle East, besides the fall of Saddam Hussein; tensions between countries and ethnic groups are still incredibly high, as they have been for centuries. The entire "nation-building" enterprise or whatever just reeks of paternalism. 

   On a totally different note, I have been following fairly closely the story about the new Islamic cultural center that's supposed to be built in an old Burlington coat factory about two blocks from Ground Zero in New York, the place where about 300 Muslim lives where also lost. Freedom of religion, and the right to build places of worship, should make this something of a non-issue; constitutionally, the center (which isn't a mosque. I have no problem with a mosque being built there either -- there's one like five blocks away already -- but it's just inaccurate to call a cultural center a mosque) can be built. I empathize with those who lost loved ones on 9/11, and I understand that this might be a sensitive subject, but this is not like the Taliban setting up a watchpost. It's a cultural center for people who are not connected to terrorist groups (quite the opposite, actually) and just want a place to worship peacefully, which is probably a reason they came to New York in the first place. The loudest media voices against construction, the fear-mongerers-who-don't-always-do-careful-research of FOX news, have recently been decrying Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who had the idea to build the center. Mere months ago the same pundits were praising his work as an author on books pertaining to the interaction between Western and Islamic cultures. But people on news shows, especially FOX, are usually hypocrites, saying what they need to please whoever is paying for their show. I'd prefer not to limit freedom of speech, but I also like freedom of religion, so I feel that building the cultural center is totally justified.