Ranting and Raving

More for my own reference than anything:
http://www.buyblue.org/bluexmas.html

This is going to be a bit tricky to write but here goes.

My previous post addressed only half the problem we are facing right now. Now it's time to look at the other half.

If you are one of those Christians - conservative or liberal - who built a web site making the Christian case against George Bush, bravo! If you were out there protesting the war, dressed like Jesus and carrying a sign that says "not in my name!" Bravo.

And if you created or passed around the JesusLand map, or are comparing "Christian" voters to the hillbillies in Deliverance, shame! the_ferrett makes a good point when he says that if one were to say the things some of us have been saying about Christians with regard to say, Blacks, or Jews, or Gays, it would unleash a firestorm.

And please, spare me any crap about how it's impossible, by definition, to oppress the dominant regime. People are people, and whether or not one is part of the "dominant regime" is every bit as much an accident of birth as any other trait they might possess. And derision hurts, regardless of who you are.

In my previous post, I quoted someone very slightly out of context. I'm going to give you a bit more of her comment now, because it raises some important questions:

As a lesbian Catholic, I have not spoken from my religious views on LJ. I'm constantly amazed at what people will say about how it's WRONG to be a Christian here.

Is this what we've done? Have we forced our Christians into the caves? Has the left, with its great claims of "Diversity" been actively silencing the very voices we most need in our choir?

Indeed, we have cultivated a culture in which anyone who is affiliated with the dominant regime is too afraid of giving offense to speak their minds. We have such a great fear of conflict that we let our differences fester without discussion until they explode into major rifts. So now we some sort of holy war raging in our midst between the camps of faith and reason, and we have placed our allies on the defensive against us.

Good Job!

Diversity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gives us e pluribus unum, from the many, one. On the other hand it gives us "divide and conquer."

Which one of these things do you think Grover Norquist is counting on?

So, grab that beat-up six string, the one with the sunflower applique around its sound hole and sing with me, folks:

We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
We shall not be, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.

Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Faith and Science together, we shall not be moved.
Like a tree planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.

It goes without saying that on the national level, I'm appalled. Never mind the presidential or even congressional races . . . the fact that every state that had an "I Hate Fags" amendment on its ballot passed it overwhelmingly indicates that there are entirely too many Americans who will wield whatever power they can to make their fellow Americans miserable. That makes me sadder than anything else. All of the other outcomes of the national races are a natural consequence of that impulse.

However, all is not without hope.

Kerry carried Minnesota handily. The Republican's majority in the state house no longer exists - it is now a tie with each party holding 67 seats. The Judicial races all went to the relatively liberal incumbents. In short, if this election can be viewed as a referendum on the Pawlenty administration, things do not bode well for Pawlenty in 2006. Our congressional delegation remains the same. I had hoped Patty Wetterling would have one in our adjacent district, but it was unsurprising that she didn't. Her platform was basically "I'm the mother of a missing child," and she seemed to have only a weak grasp of the issues, and her opponent, Mark Kennedy, trounced her pretty thoroughly in the debate. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with the outcomes of the local elections.

So what next? I don't know. I'm tired of American politics. Sustained marketing blitzes and appeals to the basest, rather than the noblest, of emotions have become de rigeur. And those tactics are strong enough weapons that both sides must use them to engage a fair contest. But there are other issues too. Our democracy has essentially become a veil over a feudal, corporate oligarchic kleptocracy. The act of voting is a bone thrown to us, because really, when all is said and done, no matter which candidate wins, corporate feudalism remains our de facto government. And while I have some ideas how to fix that, they are neither very nice, nor very practicable, because they require a willingness to die that I don't think many Americans possess. I know I don't.

So if not fight, then flight? I've felt a tug toward Canada since I was around 9 years old. I used to root for the Blue Jays against the Yankees. I think that in Toronto I would find a city more suited to my temperament than Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Canada has made good on a social contract that America is most adamantly breaching. And I don't know that I've ever felt comfortable as an American - the Pledge of Allegiance made me uncomfortable the first time I uttered it in Kindergarten, and that discomfort never went away. Perhaps it's time to find a country I CAN care enough about to settle in.

It's just that overcoming the inertia is going to be a HUGE challenge. The prospect of such a move is overwhelming to me right now.

Oh, and Kerry just conceded. I won't hold it against him the way I held it against Gore, because the way the Congressional races turned out, he would not have had a snowball's chance in hell of actually governing. It would have been nothing but unrelenting grief for him much as it was for Clinton.

I meant to post this earlier, but athelind was a bit quicker than me, posting both this and "Anthem" to his journal.


Democracy
-Leonard Cohen

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.


PRESIDENT
John Kerry - A solid democrat, though by no means "the most liberal," a stauncher supporter of Israel than his opponent, has a health plan that at least brings home a little bacon while being a giveaway to the insurance industry, as opposed to a health care plan that is nothing but a giveaway to the insurance industry. Opposed the Defense Of Marriage Act. Voted to fund Iraq reconstruction by reducing tax-cuts, opposed funding Iraqi reconstruction through deficit spending.

US Representative District 04
Betty McCollum - My only disappointment in her is that she dismissed my warnings about the PATRIOT act. Otherwise her votes have consistently advanced my agenda. I may not have survived my unemployment period with legislation to extend it that she authored.

State Representative District 67A
Tim Mahoney - I've been happy with him. Despite Mark Jorgensen's charges that the East Side has lost businesses like Taco Bell, it is worth noting that lots of family owned and run businesses are being developed on the East Side, and that Mahoney has been actively working with these business owners to promote their success.

Soil and Water Supervisor District 2
Dorothy Waltz - A stronger sense of purpose is evident in her self-presentation than in Gwen Williams'. Both seem to be strong conservationists as opposed to industry lobbyists.

Soil and Water Supervisor District 3
Marj Ebensteiner - Active in Friends of Lake Phalen. Her opponent, Jill Wilkinson, was once treasurer for the Libertarian Party. Jill was charged with embezzlement and is now paying back the money.

Judicial Races
The Republican Party has published a very nice brochure on Judicial Candidates which can be found at http://www.mngop.com/documents/judicial_voter_guide_2004.pdf - regardless of your party affiliation, this guide is useful.

I am only posting about contested races.

Supreme Court - Position 6
Alan Page - Held that public medical assistance could be used for therapeutic abortion services. Held that searching a boat's open area while it is on the trailer constitutes unreasonable search and seizure. Held against having a new Mayoral election in Minneapolis because candidate John Derus accused the Strib of casting him in an unfavorable light. In short, this is a candidate who will not attempt to legislate morality from the bench.

Minnesota Court of Appeals - Position 3
David Minge - Strong record on free speech and privacy. Opposed putting Visa Expiration dates on licenses. Raised concerns about vagueness in a Child Pornography statute. His opponent, Paul Elliot Ross, is a member of Minnesotans Concerned For Life, which is sufficient to disqualify Mr. Ross from consideration.

Minnesota Court of Appeals - Position 14
Jim Randall - supports the right of the courts to deviate from sentencing guidelines. His opponent both lacks experience, and seems determined to effect his religious values through the court. The difference between them seems to be the difference between the old MN-IR and the modern GOP. I'll take the IR any day.

Second District Court - 14
Patricia Sifferle - Both candidates are reasonable choices for the voter with liberal leanings. I'm leaning toward Sifferle because her work with labor law and human rights.

Just to vent about the contents of my previous post.

( hastily drawn political cartoon )

It's been a while since I've written about Iraq, so I'm going to do a bit of that now. The pacifists say we should pull out now and cut our losses, because the longer we stay the more life will be lost without us ever achieving our objective. They are absolutely right.

On the other hand, the hawks say to us that we have to stay and finish the job because to do otherwise would demonstrate that we are weak and vulnerable, and another group says we have to stay because we broke it and have an obligation to fix it. They, too, are absolutely right.

How can they both be right? Aren't those positions contradictory and mutually exclusive? Well, yes. And that's the point. We have placed our selves in an impossible situation. There would have been no negative consequences from refraining from invading Iraq. Saddam would still be in power, yes, but he was, in many ways, a lesser evil than the bind we find ourselves in now. Because right now we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

Ultimately, I think I'm with the doves now. Although I have argued in this space that we should stay and rebuild what we broke, I don't know that it's really possible. Because while repairing broken infrastructure seems the moral thing to do, the thing we really broke was the regime of fear that kept Iraq from breaking down into civil-war and revolution during Saddam's rule. The tensions from all those years are being released right now, and they really want us out of their way so they can kill each other with impunity. And we don't want to go because we know that at the end of it all, there will be another Islamic Republic run by Shiites, and we really don't want that.

But these intramural hostilities simmered under Saddam, and they will simmer until our inevitable leave taking. That being the case, we might as well pull out and let them have done with it, knowing that the blood they spill will be on our hands, and that the atrocities that they will perpetrate upon each other will almost certainly exceed what Saddam perpetrated upon them.

Saddam was the pin in this grenade. And we pulled it.

The UN is comprised primarily of nations that attained their size and power primarily through tools like assassination, torture and conquest over hundreds of years. Then they all get together and come up with the Geneva convention that says the tools they used to get big and powerful are no longer in play.

Handing Israel the Marquis of Queensbury rules when they've been getting their nuts kicked in a barfight for decades is completely unacceptable. It stinks of the rankest anti-semitism for them to say that its OK for the palestinians to blow up your civilians, but we're going to condemn you everytime you do something about it.

And that is precisely what the UN resolution does by not bothering to mention the fact that this wheelchair bound quadruplegic with the beatific smile engineered the death and injuries of thousands of Israelis and Arabs. Even the blood of the suicide bombers he radicalized is on his hands.

The same is also true of Rantisi, whose definition of the "occupied territories" just happens to include everything inside the Green Line, and has had a long standing agenda to eradicate every Jew in the region.

If the UN is going to condemn Israel every time it goes after the killers of its people, I am left wondering: were they giving the Jewish People a state, or a Jumbo-Sized Concentration Camp when they created it?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR03920:@@@L&summ2=m&

A Bill has been introduced to allow congress to reverse the decisions of the Supreme Court. So much for separation of powers!

Here is an Excerpt from an article discussing the first televised Presidential Debate, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon:


In August, Nixon had seriously injured his knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. By the time of the first debate he was still twenty pounds underweight, his pallor still poor. He arrived at the debate in an ill-fitting shirt, and refused make-up to improve his color and lighten his perpetual "5:00 o'clock shadow." Kennedy, by contrast, had spent early September campaigning in California. He was tan and confident and well-rested. "I had never seen him looking so fit," Nixon later wrote.

In substance, the candidates were much more evenly matched. Indeed, those who heard the first debate on the radio pronounced Nixon the winner. But the 70 million who watched television saw a candidate still sickly and obviously discomforted by Kennedy's smooth delivery and charisma. Those television viewers focused on what they saw, not what they heard. Studies of the audience indicated that, among television viewers, Kennedy was perceived the winner of the first debate by a very large margin.


The full text of the article can be found here

Now, with that bit of background under our belts let's turn our attention to this article, in the New York Times, by Maureen Dowd. Her stated purpose in this article is to pose questions to Kerry designed to provoke emotional responses so that she can discern whether or not he is using Botox.

With all the fuss about the 60-year-old John Kerry going from Shar-Pei to whippet, I figured a physiognomic quiz might be in order. The candidate's more serene visage has spurred rampant speculation that his attractive 65-year-old wife, Teresa, a Botox aficionado, turned him on to the wrinkle diffuser, which paralyzes the muscles that deepen wrinkles.


Note that this is the same Maureen Dowd who hamstringed the Dean campaign by casting aspersions on his wife, and who has confessed to thinking that W. looks hot in a flight suit.

As was the case with the NYT/CBS debate that posed questions like "what are your religious beliefs?" and "do you think you have enough 'Elvis' to beat Bush?" this is about 700 words devoted to something that has no bearing on Kerry's ability to govern. What's worse it is a mere accusation, impossible to prove within the context of Dowd's poorly designed experiment. Ultimately it is little more than an ad hominem attack on Kerry without any real purpose. Even if this accusation is true, no crime has been committed, no wrongdoing

The reason I'm bringing this up is to call attention to the fact that a presidential campaign is something that takes place within an environment that is wholly controlled by the press. The Kennedy/Nixon debate cited above demonstrate the power of appearance. The Dowd article focuses again on appearance and perception. And I think that in the televised debate, we can expect to see a red spotlight on Bush, making him appear robust and healthy, while a green spotlight trained on Kerry confers upon him that Nixonian pallor that served Kennedy so well in 1960. I also expect that questions will be posed to Bush in a respectful manner while Kerry is treated as a hostile witness, in order to decrease his discofiture.

This tight control that the media have over our perceptions should worry us, especially in an era of unprecedented media consolidation fostered by a sympathetic administration.