Keeping up with Sarah

...but I still Heart John McCain

John McCain just resigned from the Board of Gallaudet University because he disagreed with the board's caving to the student protest against the newly appointed president Jane K. Fernandes.

From the New York Times "Ms. Fernandes, 50, has said she became a lightning rod for those frustrated about changes in deaf culture. She had spoken about expanding Gallaudet, known for its expertise in and adherence to American Sign Language, to all kinds of deaf people — those with cochlear implants, those who speak and those who do not sign very well.

But some students were worried about preserving sign language and perhaps being left behind if other forms of communication became more prevalent on campus."

Watch Sound and Fury.

Change the World One Vote at a Time

My dear friend Eric Loeb has attacked the miasma looming over American politics, that makes us all cynical, and insures that only the rich win. He's started a Political Action Committee (PAC) called Good Works. It's focus is to raise money and support democratic candidates that do real good works on the ground in the communities they want to represent.

He's got democratic candidates doing Meals-on-wheels and helping out at nursing homes, picking up litter and helping Katrina refugees. The PAC's purpose is to change the way democrats are viewed on the ground. We've gone from being the party of union organizers and everymen looking for a decent pay check to white-shoe pro-tort lawyers, or so we were perceived in the last national election. Wouldn't it have been nice if those swing voters had been able to say, "Well the two candidates are almost identical, but at least I know the Democrats give a damn about me and my children."

He's in Philadelphia and focusing on Pennyslvania as a starting point - it's a good place to start because the margins there are very, very narrow. If you want to volunteer I'm sure he'd love the help.

I plan to be out there in force. This is exactly my kind of politics - the get your ass up and moving kind that doesn't just sit around wimpily complain or hold a sign.

Send him some minimal amount of cash so he can say he's got more supporters which helps him meet the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and will help him raise more cash for this cause in the future. He's the anti-giant corporate rich politics running guy - he's the fiddle playing dust covered burner who's taking on the establishment at the grass roots.

Or just let him know it's a good idea on this form. http://www.goodworks-pac.org/ratifiers

I spy with my despicable eye...

W's just gone too far. Somehow believing that a "War President" is a great title for diplomatic relations, conflating despotism and terrorism, and turning the biggest budget surplus into the bigget budget deficit, wasn't just enough for him. Now he's flagrantly breaking the law by wiretapping without getting court permission first. This is the laziness equivalent of driving through a stop sign - you can do it, but it just doesn't take that much effort or time to hit the brake, obey the law and then do what you wanted to do anyway. Unless there was some reason why the courts wouldn't have given him permission in the first place.

John Schmidt in the Chicago Tribune says it's allowed based upon previous court decisions, that "the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant." So what's the story, can't Condolezza Rice memorize that much over the weekend? Clearly it's not that simple. She said, speaking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, in summary, "He can do it because it's allowed in the constitution." "Where in the constitution?" "I don't know - I'm not a lawyer. Remember 911!" Um, yeah, it's so easy, the PhD National Security Advisor can't parse it on a decent talk show.

If you just can't get your arms around this issue legally, read Jennifer Granick's article, "Lawbreaker in Chief," in Wired News. If you're not already up in arms, get your thinking hat on for a minute and take a stand. Do you really think this doesn't apply to you? Get a grip. If all you do is read this blog, you're associated with someone who makes anti-W statements, which are therefore in Cheney's view, "not patriotic." The issue here is that while W may have some right to wiretap for foreign purposes, maybe perhaps foreign embassies just like they do to us overseas, he doesn't have the right to wiretap American citizens and civilians, even if they happen to talk on the phone to foreigners, or make perceived "anti-American statements." (See that scene in Fahrenheit 911 again where the Peace Activists in Berkeley are infiltrated by an agent. How is peace anti-American?)

The argument that's being made is that this law was created in the "Pre-9/11 World" where individuals weren't attacking the U.S. That's false. Timothy McVeigh, an American, was a terrorist, and not the first or the last Amercian terrorist. He attacked the United States and it would have been patently illegal for the President to authorize a wiretap of his house, or the Unabombers, though he didn't have a phone, without a court order. What's the story - why is a court order such a huge impediment that he had evade the law?

So if we destroy the environment, will you let us end the war?

No way. Last night the House voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling "as part of a military measure." The Republicans added the oil drilling measure to the Pentagon spending bill, which includes $29 billion in hurricane relief, $3.8 billion for flu pandemic preparation and a $8 billion spending cut. In other words, they took a highly unpopular bill and added it to a necessary bill, forcing the unpopular measure through.

I gather there isn't enough oil in Iraq, less than the oil guys thought, and we still need to destroy the wilderness at yet a faster rate than just global warming. What is up with these guys? Don't they care about anything? What happens to them if Jesus doesn't come and grab them all in the next twenty years? Have they developed underwater Atlantis style strongholds that will keep them safe while the rest of us drown? I used to think that Republicans gave a damn about stuff, but apprently that's just not true. There needs to be even more analysis of exactly how they all make their money. What other corruption is there in Congress.

More about Bush's Bull

See the first letter to the editor in Stars & Stripes.

Parody of the Parody

Last night we watched Dennis Leary's Christmas special, Merry F#%Sin' Christmas, on Comedy Central. I loved it - it was the anti-Christmas special with all the reasons that Christmas sucks. His opening monologue forces up the bile unique to the Irish-American experience with a resounding thwack in the face of traditionalists. But the eeriest moment of the show, was Steve Bridges "amazingly accurate characterization"* of our dear President. Weirdly, the comedic errors made to lampoon our sham-everyman President were so accurate that it was hardly funny. We both sat and watched, transfixed. How can one lampoon the great lampooner? Our Ivy League, millionaire, blue blood President already lampoons the idea of a good old boy everytime he gives a speech, as he did just this morning in Annapolis.

This guy ain't no Teddy Roosevelt, and he said some horrific things buried in his speech delived ro the US Naval Academy.

"Others are preparing to lead Marine rifle platoons that will HUNT the enemy in the mountains of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraqi cities." Is this what civilized people do?

And contradictory statements: "Yet the terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity. And so we must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.
As we fight the enemy in Iraq, every man and woman who volunteers to defend our nation deserves an unwavering commitment to the mission and a clear strategy for victory.
A clear strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy we face. The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists."

What? The enemy in Iraq is clearly terrorists in the first paragraph, but now we have some new categories in the third - what are exactly "rejectionists" and "Saddamists?"

And so he goes on to explain...
"The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein. And they reject an Iraq in which they're no longer the dominant group." Uh...so they're people who were happy prior to U.S. invasion? No wonder they're the largest group - and they are CLEARLY NOT TERRORISTS!!!

And Saddamists are...
"...smaller but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein, people who still harbor dreams of returning to power."
Sounds like their a subcategory of the first group, but still CLEARLY NOT TERRORISTS!!!

And finally, after acknowledging that U.S. troops are fighting a predominantly nationalist movement in Iraq, surprise, surprise, he says, "The third group is the smallest but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida." Ahh, not even necessarily members of Al Qaida, but potentially "inspired" by them. As perhaps people would be when trying to get an invading foreign power out of their country.

And yet despite acknowledging that even the terrorists may not be associated with Al Qaida, he goes on to say that Zarqawi, Al Qaida's chief, is their leader. And their goal is to "...use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America and overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East and try to establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain."

What? Iran HATES Iraq. There's no penetrable border there, no matter who's in charge. On the side is the KINGDOM of Saudi Arabia, not exactly a non-totalitarian state there either, and very much concerned with its own soverignity. The tiny kingdoms of Kuwait and Jordan are mostly likely to fear Iraqi expansion.

And he says, "This is an enemy without conscience, and they cannot be appeased. If we're not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people." Sp by fighting the SMALLEST GROUP of potential adversaries in Iraq we're defeating a direct threat to oru country, despite W recognizing that what MOST of the adversaries want is their own country back in their control.

And he's looking for his JFK line here: "Against this adversary there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory." He's so going to eat those words.

And here's more spindoctoring. "Most Americans want two things in Iraq: They want to see our troops win and they want to see our troops come home as soon as possible. And those are my goals as well. I will settle for nothing less than complete victory.
In World War II, victory came when the empire of Japan surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri.
In Iraq, there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship."

Yeah, that's because he already announced Mission Accomplished on a battleship two years ago, when really what he meant was Mission Impossible.

He wants a "partner in the cause of peace and moderation in the Muslim world?" What the F*&*(*&(*&(*&K!! Send our troops to democratic Pakistan to build housing, provide medical care and act as true peacemakers to the gatekeepers to the most ungovernable part of the Muslim world. Give the wildly independent thinkers there a reason to like America and abandon the mujahdeen.

Merry F#%Sin' Christmas to you too Mr. B. We believe in you and Santa Claus.
------

*Quoting Comedy Central, but my impression as well.

Peace in the District

Yesterday there was a peace march in the District of Columbia. Those marching were united in their poor fitting of their uniforms; what is it about peace demonstrators that requires badly fitting or matching clothing? They converged on Washington and milled around a lot. Unusually for me I was downtown with Moishe and a friend visiting museums, so I got to see a lot of the demonstrators. At the same time they were converging, the Parks Service was co-sponsoring a Books on the Mall book fair with Barnes & Noble. There appeared to be as many people standing on line to get an autograph from Neil Gaiman as there were gathering to protest the war. But that really wasn't true, the war protestors were just more dispersed. Poor Neil Gaiman, however, must have really had a sore hand by the time that line was up. We didn't get to see him, however we saw John Irving signing autographs for his new book.

We also spent a lot of time slogging through the marchers who were doing anything but marching. I wish they had Peace Protest Marching Bands and Step Teams and things like that because there is about nothing more boring than watching a huge pile of poorly dressed people drag themselves along carrying home made, and often poorly made, signs. By the end of our day of sightseeing downtown, the streets around the White House were covered in trash, water bottles in particular, the garbage cans were overflowing with dumped protest signs, and piles of them were stacked outside of the Old Ebbitt Grill which is a notorious White House staffer dinner spot. The tired, filthy and smelly blocked the streets with their aimless shuffling and really just did nothing to endear them to this particular local.

The only worse behaving people were the anti-peace protesters who showed up to bait the ANSWER folk. Baiting people who are peacefully making a statement is just wrong, despite how irritating their congregation might be to anyone trying to get through their crowd. But nothing makes a cause come together than having a visible and verbal enemy. Truly the only times I saw the crowds united were in the face of their visible enemies, while both sides looked exactly alike. Grunge: not just for liberals any more!