Monthly Archives: October 2006
On My Mind This Week
swift boats scum to town
Well, we’ve hit a new low in supposedly local politics as those vile vets of villainy, the Swiftboat Bums, chip in their 2 million cents to attack Gary King and support the oh-so-squeaky-clean Bibb. To think I actually had some respect for Whitney Cheshire, his campaign manager, as a New Mexican-style Republican, which is to say not-rabidly-radical. My mistake in judgement.
wilson and responsibility
Heather Wilson says quite baldly that she can’t be expected to keep track of 435 House members; the echo chamber picks it up. Let’s see — Heather is on the Page Board. There are about 60 pages. Can she be expected to keep up with 60 pages when it is her job to do so?
Perhaps more importantly, haven’t the Republicans been thumping their chests as “THE Party of Personal Responsibility?” Doesn’t that include responsibility for your job on Capitol Hill? Apparently not.
Isn’t it interesting that other members of the Page Board will testify, but Heather won’t have to. I guess everyone knows her position on the board was meaningless.
Pobrecito Dendahl
Another interesting bit of nonsense conservatives tell each other is why John Dendahl can’t raise money. You see, it’s because Bill Richardson will remember the names of every donor to Dendahl’s campaign. It’s bad business to support Dendahl.
Understand — I don’t doubt that. However, isn’t that cowardice? To let Bully Bill shut you up? Aren’t the Republicans the Party of Balls and Principles? Let’s see them. Or does business sense trump principle for Republicans? Dendahl is simply a bad investment.
It is also interesting to hear the same conservatives object to Richardson’s war-chest and the fact that he is giving money to other candidates. They say those candidates will be in debt to Richardson. Hmmm. This from the same people who insist all campaign money is protected as free speech and handing wads of cash to Republicans doesn’t buy any access. Apparently, only Democrats are corrupted by the system Republicans endorse. Yeah, right.
baseball, football, nascar and narnia
No one expects any decent TV on Saturday night, for whatever reason. Yet, last night was a new low to me (and, I’m sure, a high for many others). Not only did we have baseball, which screws up all of October every year, but football and, omg, Nascar. Choose your poison.
So, we chose to watch the Chronicles of Narnia. When I was a kid, I loved Narnia and it made me aware of literature, and literary technique, in a way that was of necessity new to me. That said, I think I was oblivious to most of its Christian underpinnings. I’m sure I didn’t get the death and resurrection of Aslan in the way that is now obvious even to me. But I grew up believing the bible isn’t as interesting as Aesop’s Fables. And certainly, Narnia, if it is a reworking of Christianity, is much more appealing than the original.
Still, I had to pause the DVD and rail for a few minutes on the madness of war in the name of religion. And I am frustrated more today than at 10 by a story that elevates children to warriors and kings and queens. It is a twisted and stunted imagination that resolves the largest issues with warfare. Real creativity would paint a world in which peace flourishes. But that’s almost beyond conception, isn’t it?
crazy safe
This week, we took our friend, Kathleen to the airport for a flight to Texas and beyond. I sat in the observation area browsing the Web on my laptop. Merri gamely accompanied Kathleen through the gauntlet. Kathleen is 91 years old and nearly blind. It took an hour to get her through security. Her metal knees required a strip search and pat-down.
Kathleen, a kind and patient woman, endured the nonsense and apologized for burdening the insane system that regards her as a potential terrorist. This is the legacy of 9/11, where we turned our world upside-down with madness.
Mind you, I don’t think she should sail through security while “the usual suspects” are the only ones inconvenienced. I just think we need to find a better way to make air travel safer. Some way that doesn’t require groping a 90 year old. mjh
Counting The Iraqi Dead
Counting The Iraqi Dead By Eugene Robinson
[T]he exact number [of Iraqi civilians killed] is not the point. Rather, it’s the scope and scale of the carnage.
Late last year President Bush gave an off-the-cuff estimate of 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths — this after the administration had steadfastly refused to acknowledge even trying to count the Iraqi dead. Now the administration is willing to allow that perhaps 50,000 civilians have died. It is unclear whether any science at all has gone into these estimates or whether they were essentially pulled out of a hat.
600,000 Iraqis Killed By War, Credible? – Early Warning by William M. Arkin
In an editorial yesterday, [the Washington Times] commented on the Hopkins numbers, opining that probably over 100,000 Iraqis have died: “The independent British organization Iraq Body Count reports 44,000-49,000 deaths, which is probably too low. President Bush’s “about 30,000” in December was obviously too low. The Iraqi group Iraqiyun reported 128,000 between the invasion and July 2005, which is probably closer to the mark. Extrapolated to the present, the figure would be in the high 100,000s or low 200,000s. But nearly 400,000 couldn’t possibly be the answer.”
Who would have thought it, that the anti-war Iraq Body Count would now be hailed as “too low” in its accounting? Who would have thought that the right wing newspaper would be urging acceptance of a number four times larger than the anti-war group for assuming Iraqi civilian casualties?
Ending the GOP ‘culture war’
Eugene Robinson: Ending the GOP ‘culture war’
The culture war is supposed to be about morality, but really it’s a crusade to compel Americans to follow certain norms of private behavior that some social and religious conservatives believe are mandated by sociology, nature or God. Republican officeholders have paid lip service to this crusade, all the while knowing that the human family is diverse and fallible. They know that the gravest threat to marriage is the heterosexual divorce rate. They know that Republicans drink, swear, carouse and have affairs, just like Democrats. They know that homosexuals aren’t devils.
Most Americans know all of this too, by the way. Main Street hasn’t been Hicksville for a long time.
But Republicans positioned themselves as our national Church Lady and were rewarded with the support of the staunchest religious conservatives, who now feel betrayed.
No political party has monopoly on morals
No political party has monopoly on morals By Leonard Pitts
So, anybody up for a chat about family values?
The term has been a registered trademark of the GOP — the self-styled Morals Party — for years, a bludgeon against Democrats who, by implication, oppose families and have no values. Like most political language, it’s a code, intended to be understood by those with ears to hear. “Family values” means the pol in question has God on speed dial and can be counted upon to oppose gun control, the so-called “homosexual agenda” and abortion, while pushing schools to teach, as Tina Fey once put it, that Adam and Eve rode to church on dinosaurs. …
Now Foley is in seclusion, sending his representatives out with roughly an explanation a day: Foley is a drunk, Foley was molested as a teenager, Foley is gay. Of them all, that last would-be clarification is the most vexing, playing as it does to the conservative predilection for conflating homosexuality and child molestation — as if Foley’s actions would be one iota less execrable if the pages were girls. Meantime, his party has its knickers in a knot over whether Speaker Dennis Hastert will survive this scandal.
I am preoccupied by different questions: what should we make of the fact that members of the Morals Party have behaved with such an appalling lack of same? How could our self-appointed decency police have been so inert while one of their members practiced perversion against children? Isn’t protecting children a family value?
I make no case for Democratic moral superiority. The Monica Lewinsky, Gary Condit, and Barney Frank scandals are too fresh in memory for anyone to suggest that with a straight face. But at least the Democrats had the good taste not to sell themselves as The Morals Party, never claimed to have God on speed dial.
One feels sorry for those who bought what the GOP was selling. One hopes they will be less gullible in the future.
And the Morals Party? There is no such thing.
This Week’s Deep Thinker – WTF?
ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Democrats, Media, ACLU The Real Terrorist Threat
INSTEAD OF being united to fight the war on terror and the war in Iraq, the Democratic politicians, the far-left news media and the ACLU are doing everything they can to keep our country in disarray. Just because they don’t like President Bush, they do everything they can to hurt our country.
Democratic politicians, far-left news media and the ACLU are the biggest terrorists in this country. They may not be killing Americans and American soldiers directly, but indirectly they are.
Foreign terrorists don’t have to come here to attack us, the above named organizations are doing it for them. Our country is safer in spite of them. They oppose the Bush administration on everything he tries to do to protect our country.
John Kerry claimed he had a plan for everything. If he and the Democrat politicians care about our country why don’t they come up with those plans as Democratic proposals to help our county and get credit as their ideas. Everything from the Democrats is negative, never anything positive.
LOUIS GALLEGOS
Albuquerque
I don’t mean to be negative, but I’m positive Gallegos is a divider, not a uniter — and an idiot, to boot.
Here’s an idea: stop equating those who won’t kiss the president’s ass with the terrorists. mjh
I Wrote A Book!
I have just turned in the last chapters of my book on Windows Vista. I’m not elated or even relieved, but I am reasonably happy and proud of the intense concentration I put into this project over the past two months, which seem to have flown by. I wrote over 100,000 words and took over 200 screen captures. In the process, I installed at least 4 Builds (versions) more than a dozen times.
Which is not to say I’m done, just at the end of a big phase. Now, I begin “author review,” in which I’ll graciously accept the comments of two or more editors. Of course, I’ve already worked with the best editor — Mer has read every word and contributed considerably to the book.
In this final phase, I also have to compare my text and figures to the latest build, Release Candidate 2. I want to be as current as possible, though the final version — the RTM (Release to Manufacture) — comes right around my deadline.
Three weeks from now, I can return to the blogosphere and ignoring the clock and calendar a little bit. mjh