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. ...

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. ...

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 (original). 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 (original) 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. ...

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. ...

Between this post (original) and this post (original), 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 (original). 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. ...

Jimmy Breslin is pissed off. Who can blame him? He says he’s thinking about getting out of the news business. Hope he doesn’t. This government’s kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism. He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when one of the owners shows up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know. ...