Category: Politics

CNN’s headline for this story reads, quote, “Bush: crime of slavery ultimately ‘set America free’”. Which has, to my eye, somewhat questionable implications.

In fact, what he really said was “The stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.” The crime itself didn’t set people free; rather, the people we wronged helped set us free. Very different meaning, there.

The mainstream press is pretty much gonna dogpile on whoever looks vulnerable, whether they’re liberal or conservative. The Republicans have just done a better job convincing the press they aren’t vulnerable. That’s why it’s important to have a big whacking mass of think tanks pumping out stuff that supports your point of view — it lends the weight of authority.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Remember that Iraqi children’s prison? It was a big deal. It was proof that we were right to go into Iraq. It was a noble, shining moment.

It was an orphanage. A really bad one, but not a prison, and not someplace kids were sent for refusing to join the Ba’ath Party.

And hey — if we’re in the business of liberating facilities which treat children horribly, maybe we should start here. It’s run out of Utah. We can start at home.

David Neiwert’s excellent series of essays, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism, is finally available as a PDF. He’s asking five bucks as a donation if you download it. It’s worth more than that.

Neiwert is further to the left than I am; I don’t agree with the idea, for example, that the government is “the one entity that has the capability to protect them [middle and lower-class workers] from the ravages of wealthy class warriors and swarms of corporate wolves.” But that’s really beside the point. Even if you disagree with his politics, you should read this pamphlet for what he has to say about the effects of Limbaugh and his poisonous ilk.

For that matter, the left ought to take heed of his warnings. “There has been little recognition of the way the far right is able to insinuate its ideas and agendas into the mainstream; indeed, the left’s generally superior, dismissive attitude about right-wing extremists has only helped further their ability to penetrate broader society.” I haven’t seen much discussion of Eric Rudolph after the first week of stories about his capture — similar to the way everyone forgot about him while he was on the run.

Neiwert has as much experience with proto-fascist movements in America as any journalist I know of. I found his book on the subject very informative. He knows what he’s talking about, because he’s an expert in the field, and when he points a finger it behooves us to take him seriously and investigate with an open mind.

Now I’m gonna have to dig into his bibliography. I’m glad to have it.

In February, 2002, the CIA asked an old Africa hand to visit Niger and look into the allegations that Niger sold uranium to Iraq. He reported that the allegations were highly doubtful. In January, 2003, Bush made those allegations as statements of fact.

Said Africa hand, Joseph Wilson, has a nice op-ed in today’s New York Times.

Northern Iraq has been fairly peaceful, despite pre-war worries about Turkey’s reaction to Kurdish freedom. There’s been the occasional skirmish in Turkey and the Kurds clearly still intend to control the northern oil cities, but on the whole matters have gone all right.

Unfortunately, the situation doesn’t seem entirely stable. The US just detained 11 Turkish soldiers, who were reportedly trying to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk. It’s a touchy enough situation for Cheney to handle it personally.

Truth is, our alliance with Turkey was important because we needed another ally close to the Middle East. With troops in Iraq, that need diminishes. Armenia and Georgia aren’t really hotbeds of trouble right now.

This is funny. The Texas House is currently in the middle of a special session, trying to get that pesky redistricting done. Unfortunately, the Republicans can’t agree on how they want to draw the new lines. Great stuff. Good times.

The BBC (and others) report that three of the six Guantanamo prisoners who are to face a military tribunal are citizens of US allies. Specifically, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi are British and David Hicks is Australian.

Apparently, while we don’t try our own citizens in front of a military tribunal, we’re OK with trying Aussies and Brits in a closed court. There’s really no excuse for this. In particular, Australia has suffered Al Qaeda attacks — but Australian courts aren’t good enough to try Mr. Hicks? How insulting.

And, once more, the tribunals will have the authority to sentence prisoners to death. You can say the United States would never sentence someone to death without a public trial, but if that’s the case, why not explicitly remove that authority now?

Between this post and this post, Howard Dean raised over a million dollars from Internet contributions. That’s 45 hours. His total fundraising income for the quarter is over seven million.

It’s significant because Dean almost certainly outdid every other Democratic candidate this quarter, and he’s solidly in the top tier because of that. This is a major difference from insurgency candidacies such as McCain’s, Tsongas’, and Bradley’s.

It’s interesting because the average contribution was $66.85. By my count that’s around 15,000 contributors. That’s both a lot of eyeballs looking at a political website and not very many eyeballs at all when compared to the number of votes Dean needs. Sort of the first trickle of a dam breaking, I suspect. I don’t see the Internet having an immense effect on this election cycle, but 2008 should be interesting.

I have seen an interesting political meme a few times of late. It says that third party candidates are always spoilers, and cites the Republican dominance of the Presidency between 1896 and 1932 as partial evidence. The argument is that Eugene Debs pulled votes away from the Democrats, causing them to lose. It also cites other examples, but it’s the turn of the century example I’m going to address here. (Because it’s the one which is wrong. The others are pretty much accurate.)

I’m making this post because I spent a while putting together the data and I don’t want to lose it; also because I believe in spreading accurate information, where such is available. My data source is David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Content moved into the extended entry because it was messing up the front page.

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is all about criminalizing gay marriage. It’s a pretty odd argument, too. Let’s step closer, shall we?

His fear is that “this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I’m concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned.” That’s a little stumblemouthed on the face of it, actually. If criminal activity within the home was being condoned, that’d be expanding the zone of privacy. Not encroaching upon it. Still, I think you can see what he meant.

Still, it’s odd, isn’t it? The recent Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy doesn’t condone criminal behavior. It clarifies what may be considered criminal. Those are two very different things. If the Supreme Court had said “It’s OK to make sodomy illegal, but you can do it in your bedroom if you like,” I can see where Frist might be coming from. Alas, that’s not what they said.

One more thing: “Generally, I think matters such as sodomy should be addressed by the state legislatures. That’s where those decisions — with the local norms, the local mores — are being able to have their input reflected.”

I’m curious as to how big a locale is. For example, if Provincetown decided to outlaw het sex, would that be OK? If it reflects local norms and local mores?

Perhaps not. “Asked whether he supported an amendment that would ban any marriage in the United States except a union of a man and a woman, Frist said: ‘I absolutely do, of course I do.’”

That’s not very much like allowing the state legislatures to make decisions based on the local norms, is it? I sense some inconsistency here.