Category: Politics

Matier and Ross report on Ray Haynes’ bill granting concealed carry permits to victims of hate crimes and domestic violence:

PACKING PINK: After years in San Francisco politics, Democratic state Assemblyman Mark Leno is no stranger to special-interest lobbying. But even he did a double-take when a transsexual from the “Pink Pistols” showed up in Sacramento the other day to lobby for a pro-gun bill.

The Pink Pistols (their motto: “Armed gays don’t get bashed”) were there to testify for a proposal by Republican Assemblyman Ray Haynes of Riverside that would give victims of hate crimes and domestic violence the right to pack concealed weapons.

As for why Haynes chose a Pink Pistol to make the point?

“I suppose they were trying to be cute and clever,” said Leno — whose own bill to end job discrimination against transsexuals was being heard the same week.

Ray’s not only one of the smartest members of the legislature, he’s got a great sense of humor. Go visit his office in the Capitol some time and look for the “Spotted Owl Helper” poster. His bill failed, with gay activists Leno and Jackie Goldberg voting “No”. It’s a shame these people have no compassion for the victims of patriarchy.

Teresa Heinz Kerry would add victims of adultery to Ray’s list:

Teresa Heinz Kerry thinks that Hillary Clinton should have shot her husband for being unfaithful, that plastic surgery is essential, and that rabbit meat provides the best diet for children.

Seems prudent (Kerry via Tim Blair).

This entry by Michael J. Totten on the difference between libs and cons is an example of blogging at its best:

Everybody needs to get out of their rut. Start small.

Liberals: Read about Iran. Don’t just read about American policy there, read about Iran. Find out what happens when America isn’t looking.

Conservatives: If you live in a major city, next time the Persian film festival comes to town, buy yourself a ticket. Some of the best films in the world are made in that country. The outside world is greater than the sum of its threats.

Thesis is that libs see everything in relation to America, and cons see everything in relation to the past, more or less. My addition is that modern education aims to turn out libs, while failing to educate. Cons are either very well-educated or not educated at all, and that’s how they escape the conditioning.

The Chronicle: 5/2/2003: The Neoconservative-Conspiracy Theory: Pure Myth is a good summary of one of the most pervasive recent conspiracy theories:

The ruins of Saddam Hussein’s shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world’s greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.

It has lots of good “I told you so” material.

Speaking of people who like to play God, Tim O’Reilly’s bizarre ETech conference is drawing heat from diverse corners of the Blogosphere. As I pointed out, the Warblogging panel excluded actual warbloggers, an observation that’s also been made by Jason Kottke, Glenn Reynolds, and Bill Quick. Brian Carnell takes it step further and notes in the comments that the panel was 100% Anti-war bloggers, so it’s as if there was a panel on anti-war blogging manned by Steven Den Beste and Charles Johnson.

The Warblogging panel isn’t the only place where we see O’Reilly’s bias and desire to manipulate reality on display. Andrew Orlowsky rips O’Reilly and minion Clay Shirky a new one over the exclusion of incorrect thought from the Social Software track, as does blogging legend Dave Winer. O’Reilly’s response to all of this? He’s ordered Orlowsky to call him up for a chewing-out.

Now why is it that the “new technology” conferences, especially those with hefty price-tags like Etech and Supernova, promote a thinly-disguised political agenda, and exclude genuine technology innovators who aren’t on the Cluetrain? One theory: once you’ve amassed a huge fortune, like O’Reilly has, your priorities shift and you want to be King of the World, rewarding flunkies, punishing dissidents, and measuring your wealth by the power you have over others.

So where to go if you’re just interested in the tech and don’t care for the side order of left-wing politics? Hmmm….more on this later.

UPDATE: Dan says Stuart Hughes joined the Warblogging panel by phone from London. Hughes is a BBC producer, reliably left-wing, and an amputee since he lost a leg to a landmine in Northern Iraq. So not only did he add another leftist perspective, he’s a “horrors of war” story, and the most authentic of the warbloggers. But this isn’t really what “warblogging” means, is it? The point about warblogging is that it’s the breakthrough phenomenon that made blogs interesting to people who don’t make their living working with computers, and you don’t have a get a left-media amputee to prove that simple point. I made this observation many months ago on O’Reilly’s web site as a comment to Meg Hourihan’s inane “What we’re doing when we blog” article, but it’s lost on the O’Reilly cult.

I give up.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a long-time nemesis of mine in the California Legislature, proved he’ll do anything for a vote when he married his third wife:

The small, private wedding of William Westwood Lockyer and Nadia Maria Davis last Friday was limited to close family and friends, but 35 million Californians have an interest.

The groom is California’s Attorney General and is raising money to run for governor in 2006. Serving his second term in an office that’s a traditional springboard to the governor’s office, and with 25 years in the state Legislature also under his belt, Lockyer is a potent fund-raiser and Democratic power broker.

Now he has married a politically active Latino woman 30 years his junior, and the child they expect late this summer will turn 3 years old in the year Lockyer makes his gubernatorial bid.

Lockyer dated some much more substantial women before marrying this one, including the former head of the California Judges’ Association and state senator or two. The only question about this marriage is who the child’s father is, but we’ll probably never know. Congratulations are in order all around.

Reason: Velvet President: Why Vaclav Havel is our era’s George Orwell and more is a first-rate essay to read when you’ve got more than a few minutes of peace and quiet.

This is your reward:

…Havel has enabled Czechs to punch above their weight in international affairs for 13 years; this will likely end as the extraordinary geopolitical circumstances that created him fade and are replaced by more provincial Czech political concerns. Havel himself sees his career as a massive historical accident, even a joke. But as he walks off the global stage, Czechs and the rest of the world can be thankful that someone like him was essentially in the wrong place at the right time. He remains a figure from whom not just insight but inspiration can be drawn.

“The most important thing,” Havel said in his final New Year?s address as president, “is that new generations are maturing, generations of people who grew up free and are not deformed by life under Communist rule. These are the first Czechs of our times who inherently consider freedom normal and natural. It would be great if the breaking through of these people into various parts of public life leads to our society more factually, thoroughly and impartially examining its past, without whose reflection we cannot be ourselves. I also hope it will lead to our successfully parting with many ill consequences of the work of destruction the Communist regime wreaked upon our souls.”

A Field Poll conducted April 1-6 showed Lieberman winning the Democratic nomination for president, only to lose to Bush in the general election by a 45-40 margin.

A more recent one shows that Barbara Boxer is in big trouble unless the Reeps nominate Simon or Wilson to run against her.

California’s not so out-of-step with the nation as some folks might think, in other words.

If you liked Christopher Hitchens’ letter of resignation from The Nation, you’ll love John Lloyd’s farewell to The New Statesman:

France and Germany, the two leading anti-war states in Europe, baulked at acting against murderous tyrannies or collapsed states throughout the 1990s – in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, as well as Iraq. Where action to overthrow dictatorial regimes has been taken in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and now Iraq, it has been taken either with US prompting, or with the US military in the lead. In the first three cases, the result was a lifting of tyranny and the chance of a better life for the peoples of those countries.

European states are far more active and efficient in providing development assistance and peacekeeping forces than is the US. But there are times when peace must be made before it can be kept; and Europe as a whole has seen such moments as none of its business, relying on the US, and then usually blaming it for carrying the can.

It’s really sad, and I mean that, that the Left has marginalized itself as badly as it has. With so many things going on in America that put civil liberties in jeopardy, we need a zealous and credible watchdog that can hold the Administration’s feet to fire, but the Left is more interested in having “Not in my name” rallies than in doing their job. Like I said, it’s sad.

It was a real treat to see Michael Moore’s face when the audience at the Oscars treated his drooling diatribe against the president with boos, heckling, and cat calls. His ears will be ringing with the contempt his peers showed him for months and years to come.

It was especially heart warming because he thought he was preaching to the choir with the kind of false courage he makes his living on, and when faced with a little opposition, he folded like the Iraqi army*.

* registered trademark of Ken Layne.

Results…

Democrat – You believe that there should be a free market which is reigned in by a modest state beaurocracy. You think that capitalism has some good things, but that those it helps should be obliged to help out their fellow man a little. Your historical role model is Franklin Roosevelt.

Which political sterotype are you?
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