..."They cannot see how much of the misery of human life is derived from the indulgence of wrath" - William Henry Seward
Friday, November 30, 2007
The Real Reason To Vote For Obama?
I don't know, I have never seen The Wire.
TV guide asked the candidates for president for their favorite TV show. Edwards? L&O. Hillary? Grey’s Anatomy. Barack Obama’s? The Wire.
The Wire! Now that’s interesting choice for a presidential candidate. The Wire is objectively the best television series ever created—a detailed, beautifully scripted, acted and filmed deconstruction of every institutional failure in a major US city.
I was watching The Empire Strikes Back over the weekend and this piece of dialogue stuck in my head. I've re imagined it in honor of our current politics.
Luke: "Is the dark side Republican Party stronger?"
Yoda: "No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive."
I would like to introduce you to my new Teddy Bear, Muhammad. Isn't he cute?
Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."
This whole mess cries out for a Teddy Roosevelt. Enough with the "expressions of displeasure" from the diplomats. Someone in the British government needs to deliver a "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!" speech on Gibbons' behalf. And mean it.
Before I go home tonight I’m going to pop across the street to the new Crypt, buy myself a buttplug, and name the fucking thing Mohammed.
And the Bush Philosophy of "government that does the least, does the least", continues. The hardworking Bush Administration has been caught plagiarizing a report on Iraq BIG time.
"State outright plagiarized much of the major media in making its "report." And what's really funny, they even stole a number of paragraphs from a New York Times article when, as I recall, the NYT is the newspaper that George Bush refuses to read because it supposedly has such a "liberal bias."
"it turns out the entire thing is basically plagiarized word for word from those news articles, with the slightest of adjustments so as to maybe give the impression it’s in their own words.
All this makes Maureen Dowd's story of Condi Rice's work ethic make so much more sense.
That same year, in another instance of spectacular willful ignorance, she was blindsided by the Hamas win in the Palestinian elections.
As she described it to Bumiller, she went upstairs at 5 a.m. the morning after the Palestinian elections in 2006 to the gym in her Watergate apartment to exercise on her elliptical machine. She saw the news crawl reporting the Hamas victory.
"I thought, 'Well, that's not right,'" she said. She kept exercising for awhile but finally got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department. “I said, 'What happened in the Palestinian elections?' and they said, 'Oh, Hamas won.' And I thought, 'Oh, my goodness! Hamas won?' "
When she couldn't reach the State Department official on the ground in the Palestinian territories, she did what any loyal Bushie would do: She got back on the elliptical.
"I thought, might as well finish exercising," Rice told Bumiller. "It's going to be a really long day." It was one of the few times she was prescient on the Middle East.
That's our Condi - keeping up with world affairs by watching the TV
Awful. Simply. Awful. If Kelly hadn't fallen asleep during the concert, I would have walked out (didn't want to wake him).
I was amazed that the audience gave Queen Latifah a standing ovation. Twice. I have come to the conclusion that the audience must have been comprised of tone-deaf sycophants.
Barack Obama On Abortion and Gay Rights - Interview With Christian Broadcast Network
I bristle when Senator Obama, and anyone, for that matter, talks about religion, faith, prayerfullness, and the whole WWJD? meme, but it is refreshing that he says these things to CBN.
Democratic Republican Senator Diane Feinstein Should Be Censured
One day after voting to elevate a divisive conservative judge to the federal appeals court in New Orleans, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the president's guest aboard Air Force One. She had been invited to survey the damage from the recent spate of Southern California wildfires.
The senator later remarked privately that she found her conversation with Bush aboard Air Force One "illuminating," a source close to Feinstein told the Huffington Post.
A group of progressive Democrats in California are moving to have Diane Feinstein censured. Two weeks later, Feinstein was one of two Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee to vote to send Michael Mukasey's nomination to be the new attorney general to the full Senate. Her support helped turn the tide in favor of a nomination that faced an uncertain future after Mukasey refused to say whether waterboarding was torture.
When the full Senate voted, Feinstein was one of only six Democrats to vote in favor of confirming Mukasey.
Now, a coalition of progressive Democrats upset with Feinstein's controversial votes will ask the California Democratic Party to censure her at its executive board meeting this weekend, the Huffington Post has learned.
The move comes as Feinstein again finds herself under fire for saying Thursday that she now supports granting legal immunity to telecom companies that shared customer email and phone messages with the federal government as part of the warrantless surveillance program.
"Dianne Feinstein does not listen to the people of California," said Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a progressive organization in California. "She supports George Bush's agenda time after time."
I know that in a previous entry, I stated I couldn't support Barrack Obama for President. Well, after watching his interview on Meet The Press this morning, and his recent speech in Des Moines, Iowa, my feelings towards Senator Obama have changed. I feel Obama is the only choice to take America out of the deep trench the Bush Administration has pushed us into.
Senator Obama gives a sense of hope and renewed balance to America that has been lost for the past years. He sees the possibility of America, not the angry, fear diven America of the Bush Administration. He sees beyond the anger and bitterness the Bush Adminitration, the Reuplican candidtes and the Clinton's thrive on. He is the only hope to break free of the dangerous idea that another Clinton Presindency represents (I don't understand why so many gays love Clinton so much - have we forgotten The Defense of Marriage Act? "Don't Ask, Don't Tell? - why do we think Hillary Clinton would be so different?). America needs to get away from the inherited Presidency. We need to free ouselves from the anger and bitterness of the baby boom generation. The generation that is still arguing about Vietnam needs to be told enough. We need to break free from the aruguments about who did and did not dodge the draft. We need to free ouselves from the arguments of who did or did not deserve a purple heart. We need to let ouselves free from the philosophy that corporate america's wishes trump those of the average American.
For all those reasons, I see that Senator Barack Obama is the only canidiate that can see beyond the boomer generation's past hatreds. Senator Obama looks forward, not back. Senator Obama knows we must stop these old arguments and move on.
Does this mean I agree with everything he says? No. But I see hope for change. I see what America needs.
While surfing YouTube this afternoon, I cam across the speech Senator Obama gave at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa:
I couldn't find the interview on Meet the Press on YouTube, but while I watched it this morning, I was struck by his measured answers. When Sen. Obama was asked about the homphobic preacher, Donnie McClurkin's anti gay rant, he stated that he does not agree with McClurikin's stance on gay rights. He went further to say he thinks it is important to talk to people that he doese not agree with, not shut them out. He also said he believes gays and lesbian couples should be afforded all the rights that heterosexual married couples are granted. While he would not endorse marriege, he was for Civil Unions. It's not everything I would hope for him to say, but he is far and away the better choice for standing up for full and equal marriege rights, even though he does not call it marriege.
For those reasons, I can only see Senator Obama as the change America needs.
I hope he doesn't dissapoint.
updateLooks like Andrew Sullivan has many of the same feelings about Obama I hold
Mukasey Nom. Is Sent To Senate - Constitution And Rule Of Law Weep
The Constitution is a shred even further by Feinstein, Schumar and the Republicans.
The man that refused to say whether waterboarding is torture, the man that thinks the President of the United States is allowed to break the laws passed by Congress, the man that would put Bill Clinton's parsing of the the meaning of "is" to shame when he said he couldn't rule on the legality of waterboarding until he saw the classified government interrogation documents is sent to the Senate for a vote to be the next Attorney General of the United States.
I don't think the United States knows what a dark day this is.
I wrote a letter to Senator Diane Feinstein this morning asking her not to vote for Judge Mukasey as the next Attorney General of United States. I tried to make it as short as I could, but long enough, I hope, to get how important this vote is. Here it is:
Senator Feinstein,
I am writing to beg you not to allow Judge Mukasey as the next Attorney General of the United States. By voting for Mukasey you are setting a dangerous precedent in the United States where torture will be allowed based on parsing of definitions. This is such a crucial moment in the history of the United States that I can't plead strongly enough that you reverse your position on Mukasey.
This has been dark times for the Constitution and the U.S. I beg you to not allow our Constitution to be further ignored by allowing a man that fudges what is a clear answer about waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture. Everybody knows this.
Please do not look at the short term political expediency of your decision, but the long term meaning your choice has for the very foundations of our government.
Please do not vote for Mukasey as the next Attorney General.
I would like to thank you for allowing your children to run up and down the tables that are used to fold clean clothes at the laundry this afternoon. When you and your kids walked into the laundry, you with your dirty wifebeater and plastic garbage bag full of clothes, I knew I was in for something special. Little did I know how special. When you lifted your little kids brats up onto the the folding table and allowed them to run around on top of the folding table, I could see you were man of class and refinement. When you handed the little hellians some hard candy, butterscotch, I beleive it was, I realized you had no clue when it comes to parenting skills. As I watched your little boy repeatedly take the candy out of his mouth, drop it, try and pick it up off of the table, smearing sticky residue everywhere, I thought you would certainly see the error of your ways and take your kids off the table, and clean up the sticky mess. But you didn't. No, you picked up the candy from the table and handed it back to your little boy. It was at this time I secretely gave names to your brood. Your boy? I named Dysentary. Your girl? Tick. Now judging by the cleanliness of your stylish wifebeater, I assume you allow your disease infested spawns, after bathing in the toilet, no doubt, run along the top of your dining room table. Thinking further on that, I then came to the conclusion your dining room table is, more than likely, the floor. So, I guess, you are just carrying over your diciplinary skills you from your home to the laundry. Thank you for that. Oh, but it got better. I knew I was in for a real show of your finely honed parenting skills when you handed your daughter an open bag of Doritos. When you daughter took the bag, ate some Doritos, a not uncommen snack in your family judging from you famly's size, and then threw the bag onto the counter, thereby spreading Dorritos over the counter, I felt the power of your parenting skills. Fortunetly, I was done folding my clothes (on the other table), and left. But I must thank you for showing me I need to bring some all purpose spray cleaner with me on my next laundry trip so I can be sure I do not fold my clean clothes on any surface your family has been near.
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Well, it would seem this blog has gone all politics on me - you can blame the dangerous theory and prcatice of the "unitary" executive, spinless Democrats and craven Republicans.
