A Political Bird

12:00 am - Open Thread 2008

Need to say something, but don't feel like emailing? Here you go!

04:42 pm - Is this new? I'm only twenty-three, I wouldn't know...

Around the corner and down the street from my house is a "Bake Sale for Obama".

Current Mood: surprised

09:13 pm

Okay, as a liberal (and therefore interested) and a Republican (and therefore nearly powerless), a suggestion to the Democrats out there: can you all stop insulting each other, please? Obama and Clinton are very similar candidates!

Seriously. Go drink some tea, play Facebook Chess, write an eleven-hundred-word breakdown of McCain's total lack of a substantive energy policy - whatever. And whenever you feel tempted to complain about any of your allies, consider this: my party gave me two warmongers and a theocrat as the only viable candidates. You guys got off frelling lucky.

That's all.

04:56 pm - "The War Prayer"

From Fred 'slacktivist' Clark, who found it through The Washington Monthly:



From thewarprayer.com - available also on YouTube.

It was written circa 1905 but unpublished for a decade thereafter - six years after Twain's death - for fear that it would be seen as sacrilegious or unpatriotic.

01:19 pm - Serious

Hat tip to Jim Macdonald @ Making Light for the news -from the AP, Chicago, Monday, May 19th:

Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.

The likely GOP presidential nominee made the criticism Monday in Chicago, Obama's home turf.

"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess," McCain said at the restaurant industry's annual meeting.

09:18 pm - Linkbit: the Pope and the President

P.Z. Myers on Benedict XVI meeting George W. Bush - outraged, as you should be. Outraged, to a great extent, because in all the "coverage" of this "event", and indeed in the "event" itself, there is not shown the slightest awareness that these men we are seeing praise each other and be praised in return are complicit in horror and terrible horror.

I know I, for one, am tired of this eternal drumbeat of dreadful revelations, each of which has effected not the slightest visible good in its wake. But that exhaustion is no excuse. Each beat of this drum stands for the agony of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. The least we can do is stand for them.

(P.S. On a much more minor point, Expelled came out today. Do not watch it. Expelled is a terrible movie, morally and cinematically.)

08:55 pm

Thanks to the Slacktivist commenter crowd: the transcript of Obama's speech.

If you haven't watched the speech, for whatever reason, and you don't want to watch it now, for whatever reason, please: just read it. I won't even ask you to keep an open mind - just to click the link and push the down arrow when you hit the bottom of the screen, and whatever you think of him afterwards is fair game. But read it.

03:53 pm - Rule 101: "All players must always abide by all the rules then in effect, ...

...in the form in which they are then in effect."

The above sentence is extracted from the first rule of Peter Suber's game of self-amendment, "Nomic". As some of you know, I am a fan of this game, to the point where I and a Livejournal friend of mine decided to set one up on Livejournal.¹

The reason why Rule 101 was placed in the ruleset is explained simply enough by the author:

Nomic even makes some rules explicit in order to make them amendable, when in most games they are implicit —rules to obey the rules, rules that players each start with zero points, and so on. No tacit understanding that one brings to most games simply qua games, let alone any explicit rule, is beyond the amendment power of Nomic. After Nomic was first published in Scientific American,² a German philosopher wrote to me insisting that Rule 101 (that players should obey the rules) should be omitted from the Initial Set and made part of a truly immutable shell. He missed an essential point of the game. Rule 101 is included precisely so that it can be amended; if players amend or repeal it, they deserve what they get.

bradhicks

1. The friend is active_apathy, the game is nomicide. It's not the first, but it's the longest-lived so far. Slash advertisment. ^
2. Editor's note: the <em> tag that appears to have been erroneously applied to the magazine title has been appropriately replaced with an <i> tag. ^

Current Mood: under the weather

03:27 pm - Obama: The Path of a More Perfect Union

Via Fred 'Slacktivist' Clark:



I remember - sometime last year - reading a blogger talking about Barack Obama who said that Obama was too kind, too positive, too unwilling to be harsh. I remember the fellow talked about Kennedy and others, said that they were certainly not the plaster saints that Obama seemed to be imitating, and that his refusal to use aggressive tactics would most likely sink his campaign.

In the months since, it's become clear that it's quite the opposite.

04:39 pm - On Prickly City, Leap Year's Day.

I've never been a fan of Prickly City. Generally, I find it to be of poor quality - I suppose The Wizard of Id is the easiest comparison - and so it rarely crosses my radar.

redneckgaijin just sent out an alert on today's strip.

I still say it's a poor quality strip. But I will praise it for this: it states, badly but boldly, that torture is not something that "good guys" do, and waterboarding is torture. That once you get beyond a certain threshold, relative comparisons don’t really matter, and waterboarding is horrible, terrible, inhuman torture.

I don't know Scott Stantis from Adam, and I still ain't fond of his strip. But, sickening as it is, speaking truth about this subject paints a bullseye on yourself, and the man said it anyway.

So: good job, Mr. Stantis. I'm rooting for you.

09:54 pm - Online Residuals

I would take a moment here to congratulate the Hollywood writers on a successful strike. Their cause was worthy, and I applaud the studios for acceding to the bulk of their demands.

That is all. Thank you.

(My opinions of the remaining Presidential candidates are still incomplete - sorry, roaminrob...)

10:08 pm - Maryland Primary, Feb. 12, District 8

1. I support no Republican Presidential candidate among those running.

2. For Congress, I support Bruce Stern (Gazette interview), for supporting women's right to choose, same-sex civil unions, and withdrawal from Iraq at a reasonable speed.

3. Among the candidates for delegates to the Republican National Convention, I oppose Gus Alzona, but otherwise have no opinion.

4. For the Montgomery County Board of Education At Large, I support first Alies Muskin, second Phil Kauffman, as the candidates who demonstrate the most knowledge and passion for the position.

02:14 am - Obama's Jericho Speech

Would you believe I hadn't seen any of Obama's speeches until tonight? alchemi gave the heads-up, and I watched this one.

Today - yesterday, now - he gave a speech in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church. C-SPAN has the full speech on video - actually, with probably about ten minutes of extra material extending on either end.

It's a good speech, a really good speech. Omitting the thank-yous at the beginning, a transcript (not quite the same as the one that's been floating around the net - I think he slipped from the script a bit...):

( The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates of Jericho... )

It's two a.m., and I'm really stupid right now, so I'm not going to make any big announcements. I'm not even a member of the Democratic Party, and on top of that, I can see where the scoffing is coming from. But, you know, I heard you ought to be willing to let politics break your heart, and I can't help but think maybe I will.

02:44 pm - Huckabee and God

Monday evening, Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee stated his intention "to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards".

It is conceivable that a fair number of people may be unconcerned by this statement. However, to quote Fred "Slacktivist" Clark's excellent take on Huckabee's statement:

The main point here is sweet fancy Moses this guy wants to rewrite the Constitution to align it with his idea of "God's standards"!

11:59 pm - Open Thread 2007

Anything you want to say you don't know where? Here you go.

10:04 pm - And on a lighter note...

It's even more appropriate today than when I first saw it.

08:31 pm - A Simple Argument Concerning Climate Change

Via remix79:

09:08 am - "Resolved: Ron Paul, as US President, would be disastrous for America."

Being a liberal Republican, it is meet* for me to state my stance on Ron Paul.

I believe that Ron Paul would be a terrible President for the reasons cited here. Most prominently among these are:

• The gold standard would lead to economic turmoil (not to mention devastate industries which use gold),
  
• The abolition of the income tax would cripple the federal government,
  
• A law to prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on an issue is un-American, even when it is not explicitly intended to bolster prejudice,
  
• Racism - be it against black men in DC or immigrants throughout America - is wrong, (edit: I cannot defend this claim; I withdraw it.) and
  
• Undermining modern medicine would destroy millions of lives in the most brutal fashion.

10:28 pm - Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

Subtitle: KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says.

I don't know if the story is true. True or not, I can't even think about it right now.

Link via dietrich.

Current Mood: poleaxed

05:45 pm - Romney's "Faith in America" Atrocity

When I read the transcript of Mitt Romney's speech yesterday, I really did not know how to respond. It's so well-written that I don't know how to express my objections to the content.

Now, Fred 'Slacktivist' Clark has already replied to the worst part - the line "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." I can add very little to what he said on that point; I recommend you read his entire post.

But there is one more paragraph that needs addressing.

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

When the Senate, of the very first Congress, was considering the wording of the religion clauses of what was to become the First Amendment, it rejected, on September 3, 1789, two proposed phrases that, if adopted, could have arguably only prevented government from favoring one religion over another. The first proposed wording, rejected by the Senate, read: “Congress shall make no law establishing one religious sect or society in preference to any other.” The Senate additionally rejected wording that read: "Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination or religion in preference to any other." The Senate finally chose wording that read: "Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion."