Politics

So, this cartoon (original). It’s from a newish online comic strip, which has found an audience by being fervently right-wing. The art isn’t bad. OK, all well and good. Occasionally I see right-wing bloggers chuckling at a strip and I can usually see why. But, y’know, that cartoon. I gotta ask. Is the artist aware that the Dems are in fact blocking only a handful of nominees? Jeff Sutton got through, no problems. Deborah Cook just got through. Michael McConnell got through. Dennis Shedd got through. Timothy Tymkovich got through. ...

Quick little followup on Jimmy Wynn: Jay Bookman wrote an editorial about Wynn (original) in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Read it while you can; it’ll move to a paid archive at some point.) From the summaries of his past columns, I wouldn’t call him a conservative — he looks pretty liberal to me. He defended Wynn and praised the decisions made by the GBI. So, I guess that’s who’ll speak out against this injustice. Liberal columnists. ...

How times change. April 24, 2003 (original): The world must focus on the issue of nonproliferation, says President George Bush. “One of our goals and objectives must be to strengthen the nonproliferation regimes and get the whole world focused on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” he told Tom Brokaw of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) during an April 24 interview aboard Air Force One on his way to Canton, Ohio. ...

Colin Powell’s concerned about Guantanamo Bay, it seems, or at least he’s writing Rumsfeld concerned letters about it. Man, there’s a wealth of implied information in that article. Not the least of which is anything you can glean from the fact that Powell’s writing letters rather than sitting down for a chat. He wants to be on the record? He can’t get a slot on Rumsfeld’s calendar? He wants amateur political observers like me to make random unfounded guesses? ...

Glenn Reynolds wrote about this case (original) as an example of Homeland Security out of control. I figured I’d take a look at it and condemn it; from his description it looked pretty open and shut. In fact, from the article, it looked pretty open and shut. Sure, the guy’s a right winger, but that’s no excuse for persecuting him. On the other hand, if he’s really taking a job at a gun store in order to collect names and home addresses of police in preparation for violent activity, that’s kind of the sort of thing you’d expect the cops to be worried about. So is Wynn telling the truth? ...

Mindboggling. The first debate of the election (original) and there’s no way I can find to watch or listen to it live. There’s not even an Internet feed. If I lived in South Carolina I’d have gone and bootlegged a feed somehow.

So, what’s up in the world this fine morning? Stratfor (original) kindly converted my US/Iraq war subscription into a general subscription, so I have a wealth of material to speak of. India and Russia are conducting joint naval exercises, which are pretty much symbolic — they want to remind the world that they’re allies. It’s a good thing to remember, considering that India fully intends to become a world power over the next twenty years. Bruce Sterling wrote a great article (original) about the India/China space race, which echoed this Guardian article from January. It might be somewhat disturbing to consider the fact that China, India, and Russia are all cheesed off about Gulf War II. Or not, if you think we’ve reached the end of history and no other nation will ever rise in prominence. ...

Not terribly surprisingly, some Democrats are more than willing to jump on the terror bandwagon. Want to push your domestic agenda? Bring up the war on terror! Bah. The proposals, not unlike much of what Bush has been pushing, assume that terrorists are inept idiots. In this case, you’d have to assume terrorists are incapable of stockpiling weapons. Seems an unlikely assumption to me. Via Light of Reason, and while you’re there read Silber’s quietly painful memories of growing up gay in the 60s.

The SF Chronicle has an interesting article (original), which claims the most watched station in post-war Iraq is Iranian national television. The New York Times backs this up. I’m a wee bit skeptical, considering how long Iran and Iraq were at war, but even if I discount the reports by 50% it’s still more reason to think that the Shia, Iran-influenced majority will be fairly hostile to American influence. I was listening to NPR the other night and some guy called in to bitch about the ingratitude of the Iraqis. He’d paid thousands of dollars in taxes to help free ‘em and they weren’t properly grateful. All I can say is that the ingratitude was predicted — but I guess since it was the left predicting it, he figured it was just more meaningless fiskable noise.

“President Bush will tell Americans on Thursday evening that the major fighting in Iraq is over and the threat to the United States has ended, a Bush administration spokesman said.” No, really, that’s what he said. The threat is gone. What threat was that again? Cause as so elegantly espoused here (original), we didn’t find any threat. We found no weapons of mass destruction. No evidence that Saddam had a viable nuclear program. Saddam didn’t use the hypothetical weapons of mass destruction as a last gasp. We didn’t find any of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the terrorist base in Northern Iraq. ...