Category Archives: Politics

Main Ideas

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Do you remember standardized tests, especially in grade school and middle school, where they’d have you read a passage of text and you’d have to identify the “main idea” of the writing? Most of the choices were things that were in the passage, but only one of them was plausibly the main idea, whereas the rest were trivial details.

My takeaway from this WaPo* article? Phthalates is a really funny word, but virtually impossible to pronounce. You can make the “Ffff” sound, and the “Thhhh” sound, but there needs to be a vowel in between. The two sounds can’t be put together. It’d be like starting a word with “qb”—a bunch of valid letters strung together to form something nonsensical. (Realistically, I imagine it’s pronounced “Fih-thal-ates,” but note that the pronunciation adds in a vowel sound that’s not actually there.) If you attempt to pronounce the word, be careful that you don’t spit on anyone.

So what is the main idea of the article?

(a) Congress is considering banning phthalates, a toxic chemical in children’s toys.
(b) The move is seen as evidence of a shifting tide, swinging to the side of consumers and away from manufacturers.
(c) Phthalates is a really funny word.
(d) President Bush has said he opposes the bill banning poisonous children’s toys.

Hint: remember the old “When in doubt, guess C” adage about multiple-choice questions? They say that for a very good reason.

* I spent 5 whole days in Washington. I’m allowed to use the “WaPo” abbreviation, because I’m an insider now.

Iraq

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I keep hearing people on the right reiterating that “the surge worked,” so that withdrawing from Iraq would be surrendering. To me, this is a non sequitur.

First of all, there’s the simple question of why we’re at war. We went in as a pre-emptive strike against Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. We took him out, and although we never did find evidence to support that he was building up his WMD arsenal, we did take out a cruel tryant. I’m a little unclear why we’re still there: the Iraqi threat has been neutralized, and Iraq’s got a sovereign government in place. Al Queda keeps coming to try to attack our troops, but the fact that our troops have become targets is hardly a reason to stay in Iraq.

Now here’s the thing! If the Iraqi government wants us to stay, I’m all for allowing our volunteer troops to keep helping them. But it’s being widely reported that they want us out. While I trust this was an unfortunate accident, it suggests that Iraq has wanted us to leave for some time: “It also bolstered calls from Iraqi politicians to pressure the American military to leave Iraq after this year, when a United Nations mandate expires, unless the United States agrees to permit its soldiers to be subject to criminal prosecution under Iraqi law for attacks on civilians.”

I’d ask: if we’re at war, who are we at war with? It’s the Iraq War, but we’re supposed to be helping Iraq. We’ve taken out Saddam, and most of the violence is directed at our troops: staying in Iraq isn’t going to fix anything.

It’s not “surrendering” or “giving up” to recognize that you achieved your goal a long time ago, and that all you’re doing now is making things worse. It sounds great to try to attack your opponent for that, but it’s simply not true.

Nas’ Black President

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Rapper Nas has a new song, Black President [obscene lyrics, NSFW]. I don’t give it high marks musically, but it’s interesting to me for two reasons. The first is that rap music actually addressing contemporary issues is rare. (Though it’s not entirely unheard of: Changes, for example.) The seconds is that the song is about Obama.

As I said, don’t set your standards too high if you listen to it, and don’t even waste your time watching the video, which seems to just be a montage of images of Nas. Do take care to read the lyrics carefully: a lot of people seem to miss the leading “They said…” and interpret the song as being against Obama. And the “Although it seems heaven-sent, we ain’t ready to see a black President” is actually from Tupac’s Changes, not an assertion that Nas is making.

What troubles me about the song:

Whats the black pres thinking on election night,
Is it how can i protect my life? Protect my wife? Protect my rights?
…
KKK is like what the f—, loading they guns up, loading up mine too,
Ready to ride ’cause I’m riding with my crew, he dies we die too

I read an article a while ago, citing absolutely no evidence, saying that there’s a persistent belief among African-Americans that Obama would be assassinated if elected. Hillary played into it, too, if inadvertently, both when some speaker in NH at a campaign event made a comment to the effect of, “Some have compared Obama to JFK, but let’s not forget what happened to him” (which Hillary denounced), but also when she said the same thing about Bobby Kennedy to explain why she was staying the race when it was clear she couldn’t win. It’s creepy how often it comes up, and then you add in the creepy amount of parallels to Lincoln…

And I find this snippet interesting, too:

Gotta do what we gotta do,
We ain’t got no governors comin’ through to help,
Anything we need, we gotta do for self,
New improved JFK on the way…

You may recall Kanye West’s spontaneous George Bush doesn’t care about black people remark during a Red Cross fundraiser, which then led to the (highly profane, thus NSFW) video, George Bush Don’t Like Black People song. While I’m not necessarily supporting the claim that Bush was overtly racist, I think it’s historically significant: not only was the whole Katrina event horribly mismanaged (the lyrics to the song include, “If it’d had been Connecticut, he’d have been there twice as fast”), but the whole deal with shooting looters (who were inevitably black) makes it entirely understandable that African-Americans may have felt a tad bit alienated.

Again, I’m hardly in agreement with everything put forth in the song, but I think it’s culturally significant. It’s not an advertisement or a campaign song, but just his perspective on the state of affairs. And I think it was interesting to look at.

Missing the Point

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As I research candidates, I keep coming across a past proposed (U.S.) Constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m hardly for flag desecration, and would be appalled if any American did so. But do people not see the irony that the flag represents our freedoms as Americans, especially our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, and thus freedom of expression? To protect the flag from trampling, people are trying to trample the First Amendment. And I wouldn’t vote for anyone who values the flag itself more highly than what it stands for.

Wikipedia lists the times it’s come up as a Congressional vote, which is frighteningly often. There was H.J.RES.12 (“House Joint Resolution 12”) in 2007, introduced by PA’s John Murtha, with 70 consponsors: no local politicians cosponsored it, but Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave both supported it. It had a parallel in the Senate, but with only one sponsor. Neither bill appears to have come to a vote.

In the previous (109th) Congress, House Joint Res. 10 passed 286-130; the vote rolecall is here indicating that Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley both voted for it. Its parallel, Senate Joint Res. 12, failed in the Senate, though it failed narrowly at 66-34; it’s not clear to me exactly what it needed, but it seems like it may have been one vote shy of passing with 2/3. Rollcall for that vote is here: Judd Gregg, John McCain, Harry Reid (!), and John Sununu all voted for it.

For the love of God, and all that is holy!

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Do you guys recall Obama’s “fist bump” with his wife when he clinched the nomination? It was a big hit with younger Obama fans.

It was not a big fan with E.D. Hill, a Fox News anchor who called it a “terrorist fist jab,” as I was just reading about. That’s not the real concern, though. I just rolled my eyes at that.

What really concerns me is the “news contributor” Liz Trotta who suggested that Obama should be assassinated.

Are you serious?! How the hell is that acceptable? Can you imagine how outaged everyone would be if a CNN anchor joked that someone should shoot McCain? It would be incredibly inappropriate.

Fight the Smears

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The last paper I ever wrote in college was for my Power and Propaganda course, and addressed the propaganda being hurled against Obama. One thing I addressed was that many of the criticisms of him were blatant lies. It’d be like if I started posting here that John McCain said, “Thank God for the Nazis!” and President Bush met with McCain and used “the N-word” to refer to Obama. Total fabrications as part of a smear campaign.

The problem is that they work. I’m going from memory, but if memory serves me correctly, 13% of people in a recent poll said that they thought Obama was a Muslim. Soon it was being reported that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran, too. Of course, the Muslim rumors would soon be contradicted by trying to label him racist because his pastor said some crazy things, and the fact that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran would be refuted by photographs showing him with his hand on the Bible when being sworn in.

Obama Singing the National AnthemThere was also the big row over the photograph of him “refusing to say the pledge,” with some versions of the chain letter or website alleging that he refuses to do it for religion reasons; one even said that he didn’t know the words. In actuality, Obama was singing the national anthem, as a video of the event shows.

There’s another one about him hiding his birth certificate because he’s not actually a citizen. (If you want to get technical, John McCain is the one who wasn’t born in the US… Though it’d be asinine to argue that he’s not a US citizen because he was born on a US military base.)

The Obama campaign has finally launched Fight the Smears, a page refuting the utter falsehoods against him. The latest one seems to be alleging a videotape of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey.” Frankly, I could see this being done in a non-racist manner, but it’s a moot point, because none of the <sarcasm>reputable</sarcasm> sources claiming to have seen / possessing the tape have released it, and because one person has some pointed allegations of exactly where the tape was filmed, most of which seem fabricated.

It’s totally cool with me if you’d prefer to vote for McCain. (Well, I’d still disagree, but I’d at least respect that you had a rational difference of opinion.) Obama isn’t a Muslim, terrorist, or unpatriotic. John McCain isn’t a rapist and he doesn’t eat babies for breakfast. In a time when the truth is so sorely missing, can we please try to stick to reality this election?

Flip-Flopper

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While looking at job postings on Craiglist, I somehow ended up at Craig Newmark’s personal blog. (He founded Craigslist.) He linked to this YouTube video.

For some reason I’m reminded of Hillary’s tall tale of ducking sniper fire. I respect McCain as a decorated soldier and a Senator who understands bipartanship, but after eight years of the Commander in Chief misleading* us about Iraq, I’d really prefer to not elect a president who will do more of the same.

* Whether it was intentional lies or him being fed false information I’m not sure, but either way, we were misled.

Obama Wins!

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Ed.: Because the blogs have been slow, and because this is a hot topic, I’ve fudged the date on this to appear to have been published two days later, so it will stay on the main page a bit longer.

Obama LogoIt looks like Obama is the Democratic nominee, while Hillary Clinton, the woman who has twice alluded to Obama being assassinated (okay, the first time was a speaker at her event, not her), has conceded that she’d be open to running as his VP.

I’d be happier with an Obama-Richardson ticket, but people are calling Obama-Clinton the fastest way to try to heal the wounds this election cycle saw. In her defense, if she doesn’t get him assassinated, she’d make an excellent VP.

Needless to say, I’ll be watching the news tonight for what may be two very historic speeches: Obama’s victory speech and Hillary’s concession speech. (It seems like it was just weeks ago that Obama gave his “concession speech” that was anything but a concession speech, in New Hampshire, which led to the Yes We Can Song.)

The AP story is hot off the press, and many MSM outlets aren’t carrying it yet. Whether that’s because the polls don’t close for two hours, because it’s not factual, or just because MSM isn’t as obsessed with checking Google News as I am remains to be seen.

Update: It seems that Hillary hasn’t conceded quite yet. Honestly, I’m not sure how the AP is so sure that Obama’s won yet.

Update 2: USA Today has a good piece suggesting that, while Obama might do it tonight, it’s still about 30 delegates premature. And they also have this good article on exactly how the AP story was put together.

Update 3: You can follow the whole Google News thread.

I Can’t Take It!

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Rusty and I were just talking about the recent decision by the Democratic party and how we’re going to count delegates from the two states, which has left both sides somewhat unhappy.

But then we kind of realized that no one is talking about the real issues? I don’t particularly care how we seat delegates. The whole system sucks, and I hope after 2008 is over we can overhaul the way the DNC works. And I kind of had an epiphany: I feel like I’m trapped in this country, a faded emblem that used to be a beacon of prosperity and freedom.

Let’s talk about some things that actually matter.

  • I paid $53 to put gas in my car yesterday. It’s increasingly tempting to get a hybrid, but they’re in short supply. Not because they’re in high demand (though they are), but because not many are produced. American auto’s only hybrid seems to be the Ford Escape hybrid. (I refuse to count GMC’s “greenest” SUV that gets 20MPG.) A question on Ask MetaFilter today called my attention to the fact that they’re basically impossible to get, with the dealer he went to telling him flat-out that they wouldn’t order one for him. BTW, Ford just announced a $3 billion plant in Mexico.
  • We are the only civilized country in the world that doesn’t have universal health care. Americans are running into massive debt because they got sick. The typical response, beneath it all, seems to be a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that if you get cancer and go bankrupt paying for your treatment, it sucks to be you. Attempts to reform the system are consistently subverted by cries of “socialized medicine” without ever presenting a legitimate claim, just the catch phrase? (And there’s a good point to be made about how this is costing us huge money in less-obvious areas.)
  • If you come to see homosexuality as something that isn’t ‘wrong’ or ‘bad,’ opposition to gay marriage seems appallingly bigoted. I really don’t think opposing gay marriage is any different than opposing interracial marriage.
  • College is $40,000 a year. Schools throughout our country are failing. To quote, well, everyone, No Child Left Behind has left plenty of people behind.
  • Veterans are returning home and getting next to no support, or staying in ramshackle hospitals. Support our troops! Anyone? Those who oppose sending young Americans—my peers; people I went to school with; maybe me if I was born into a different family—to die in someone else’s civil war are branded as unpatriotic and not supporting our troops by the same people who can’t be bothered to waste money caring for our returning soldiers?
  • The United States economy is tanking. It probably has something to do with the fact that our schools are being surpassed by countries around the globe, that our post-9/11 xenophobia has resulted in immigration policies forcing college students who come here from abroad to leave our country, and that our health care costs are through the roof.

The thing is, I really love this country. But all around me I see signs of our great nation crumbling. At times I almost feel trapped. Can we please stop focusing on the things Republicans and Democrats disagree on, and instead work on getting things done? We all love America, want our troops to be cared for, want our schools to be the best, want to get treated in hospitals, and want our economy to thrive. Working with two parties seems to keep us from ever getting anything done, because all we can ever do is disagree. But why does it have to be that way? We all want the same things deep down. Can’t we take our different viewpoints and use them to our advantage, crafting solutions that appease both of us?