Category: Politics

Imperialism in the Western Hemisphere!. Oh, the shame of it; where’s the UN when our neighbors need them?

Turning the Tide replaces Protein Wisdom as the world’s funniest blog thanks to posts like this one:

People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call “the third world,” or the “developing countries”) often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families with plenty of clout in the very narrow political system, who went to the same elite university and even joined the same secret society to be socialized into the manners and attitudes of the rulers, and who are able to participate in the election because they have massive funding from highly concentrated sectors of unaccountable power that cast over society the shadow called “politics,” as John Dewey put it.

While Protein Wisdom’s humor is stylish and intentional, ChomskyBlog’s isn’t, and that’s why it’s so funny.

Link via Michael J. Totten

Forget Paul O’Neill and Dick Clarke; the Bush campaign is in real trouble now that Kerry’s got the most coveted endorsement in contemporary politics:

Noam Chomsky, the political theorist and leftwing guru, yesterday gave his reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party’s presidential contender, John Kerry, calling him “Bush-lite”, but a “fraction” better than his rival.

The Chomsky endorsement follows similar Kerry votes-of-confidence from Courtney Love and the homeless guy who nibbled her nipple at Wendy’s, and is of similar magnitude. Karl Rove can’t be happy about this.

So now it turns out that our favorite Vietnam war hero has been lying about his involvement in a plot to assassinate US senators in 1971:

Kerry said he hasn’t spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author Gerald Nicosia, that assertion is wrong. So is Kerry’s insistence that he did not attend a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), at which group members discussed the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who were still supporting the war in Vietnam, Nicosia said.

And of course Kerry didn’t rat out his assassin buddies. Sounds worse than a war crime to me.

Link via Protein Wisdom (click through).

Want to know who your neighbors support for president? Go to Neighbor Search and find out who’s given what to whom. This is a great little tool, by gum.

Just catching up a bit, I’d like to point out that Lessig’s candidate Rohit Khanna made a spectacularly poor showing in his attempt to unseat pro-Iraq-liberation incumbent Tom Lantos in San Mateo County (just south of Frisco.) Khanna touted his anti-liberation and anti-PATRIOT Act stances, and was beaten like a red-headed stepchild on election day. San Mateo County voters aren’t as shallow as they sometimes look.

In a similar vein, Jean Kerry’s plea to Zapatero not to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq was very, very, smart – it allows Kerry to continue pretending to be serious about American defense while continuing to offer-up Zap as the one foreign leader (other than Osama) known to support Jean for the presidency. And yes, we prefer to spell Kerry’s name in the Original French.

Clark County, WA, the place where I sleep, had an election today on a bond measure to fund a decent library system. Now you’d think this would be the kind of thing everybody would get behind, but this place is weird. The local Taliban, AKA LifePAC, waged jihad against the measure on the grounds that the young people aren’t adequately protected against the porn that forces itself onto library patrons through unfiltered computers, but I suspect their real issue is books on evolution. The leader of the book-burning faction, Margaret Tweet, is a member of fundamentalist church that believes Satan rules the world and the 66 books of the Bible are the complete and infallible word of God. There’s not much point in a library if you believe that sort of thing, and porn is a great excuse for derailing it.

Every day for the past month, one of their minions had a letter published in the local dog-trainer on the evils of libraries, some of the weirdest, most paranoid, and generally sex-obsessed crap you’ve ever seen. Early returns have the measure leading, but not securing the 60% necessary to pass, so the terrorists may win this round.

UPDATE: The library district is created, but the bond measure to fund it fails; victory to the Clark County Taliban. Those of us who believe in learning, progress, and reason will clearly have to organize and fight a better fight another day.

Before the Lott affair, we used to admire Josh Marshal’s blog even though we don’t agree with his politics, not understanding that he’s a puppet of Sidney Blumenthal, the man credited by Kaus as initiator of the Get Lott campaign:

Leave it to Harvard’s Kennedy School to produce a 25-page paper on the role of bloggers in the Trent Lott affair that ignores the key part played by Sidney Blumenthal’s e-mails.

Those who’ve crowed the loudest about the Lott Affair’s showing the power of blogs to influence politics have ignored Blumenthal’s role, but any sensible person can see that the more powerful the tool the greater the incentive to manipulate it. Since blogs rely more on e-mail from dubious sources than conventional media, it stands to reason that they’d be easier to influence, and that’s the way we see the lesson of Lott. I’m glad we’ve got Frist running the Senate instead of Lott now, but I’m not at all thrilled by how the transition came about.

Josh Marshall is an insider, and he knew exactly what he was doing and why when he jumped on Lott; the semi-cons like Reynolds who jumped aboard Marshall’s bandwagon were much less aware of what Kaus calls the “dark matter”, and were simply trying to do the right thing and get a few hits in the process.

Many of the high-traffic blogs covering politics extensively are written by political outsiders who don’t actually appreciate the dynamics of political drama, and this makes them super-attractive to spin doctors who make their living, after all, manipulating those who know they’re being manipulated. If “citizen journalism” is going to become a constructive force in our politics, the citizens doing the journalism are going to need some lessons in the day-to-day practical realities of the political system.

It turns out that Frisco mayor Gavin Newsom was way out of line in taking it on himself to declare Sec. 300 of the Family Code unconstitutional and issue non-standard marriage licenses to gay couples. The DHS is not accepting them, so these “marriages” will not be registered and none of the couples will get marriage certificates. Newsom’s boner flies in the face of the California Constitution:

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION

ARTICLE 3 STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SEC. 3.5. An administrative agency, including an administrative agency created by the Constitution or an initiative statute, has no power:

(a) To declare a statute unenforceable, or refuse to enforce a statute, on the basis of it being unconstitutional unless an appellate court has made a determination that such statute is unconstitutional;

(b) To declare a statute unconstitutional;

(c) To declare a statute unenforceable, or to refuse to enforce a statute on the basis that federal law or federal regulations prohibit the enforcement of such statute unless an appellate court has made a determination that the enforcement of such statute is prohibited by federal law or federal regulations.

So the proper course of action for a politico who doesn’t like a state law is to take it to court, not to simply ignore it. Newsom collected substantial fees from the gay couples, which he will now have to refund.

Newsom probably made this decision following advice from his benefactor, Willie Brown. Willie’s first act as an assemblymember was to pass a bill repealing California’s anti-sodomy law, and this won him lifetime support from the very active gay activists, including generous financial support. Having secured this base, he was able to reach out to government-regulated businesses for more, and his life in politics was secure. Newsom is the kind of guy who’s considered a moderate in Frisco, even though he’d be a flaming liberal anywhere else. Now that he’s secured his place in the Gay Rights Hall of Fame, he’s free to seek a larger constituency as well.

So politics is about politics, this time and always.

I think Roger L. Simon’s narrow” or “close“? The margin was 40-34, meaning he got close to 18% more votes than Edwards. That’s not exactly a landslide, but it’s no squeaker. Presumbably the media are trying to drum up some interest in a nomination contest that’s basically settled business.