John Kerry's Gaffe

Isn't much of a gaffe when you think about it. It's only a gaffe when you purposefully distort his words.

For those who don't know, he was making a speech and he said "You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." It is clear that, in context, the you in that last sentence refers to President Bush.

Out of context, it refers to the soldiers serving in Iraq - and you can guess which intrpetation is more popular with Republicans. Fortunately for us all, Senator Kerry isn't cowed by this assault.

Enough is enough. We're not going to stand for this. This policy is broken. And this president and his administration didn't do their homework. They didn't study what would happen in Iraq. They didn't study and listen to the people who were the experts and would have told them.

And they know that's what I was talking about yesterday. I'm not going to be lectured by a White House or by the likes of Rush Limbaugh who's taking a day off from mimicking and attacking Michael J. Fox, who's now going to try to attack me and lie about me and distort me.

No way. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did.

It's over.

I don't think it is over - but I don't think it's going to be ended by taking such distortions. Rather I think Kerry is doing the right thing by fighting them. "To take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

New Quotes Page

Hi all. Just letting you know that we have finally updated the quotes page.

As noted below I am having to change how I run the blog in some ways, and this is one of them - the quotes page will take you to another domain, where I will be hosting a few pages (like the Quotes Page). It may also allow me to upload a music playing or to create a bulletin board like feature. We will have to see what shakes loose.

On Ne Badine Pas Avec L'amour

I don't know if I've posted this before - probably have. Should have checked my own website. Anyway this is a really great friend play by Alfred De Musset. Actually it's mostly pretty predictable and crappy, but in the middle there is a long discussion between two of the main characters in which it gets very good - in part because this section is cribbed directly from letters he wrote to a woman he was in love with at the time.

Anyway, here is my favorite section, translated as best as I can.

All men are cheats, flakes, frauds, grand-standers, hypocrites, braggarts and cowards, all females are liars, falsifiers, narcissists, busybodies and concubines, the world is nothing but sewer without bottom where the wisest of seals romp and climb on mountains of shit, but there is only one thing in the world holy and sublime, and it's the union of two of these being so imperfect and so hideous. One is often mistaken in love, often wounded and often sad, but one loves and when one has one foot in his grave, one can turn and see, and will say to oneself, I have suffered often, and I have fallen from time to time but I've loved. It is I who have lived, and not a false being created by my pride and my boredom.

Anyway that's the quote of the afternoon.

In other news Blogspot is discontinuing a service they had previously provided to me. Which means I can't update the quotes page or add additional pages to the website - I am working on a work around, but it is taking some time. If I can get this to work, however, it might give me more flexibility in adding things to the website. We'll have to see how it pans out.

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Or at least the political landscape. So writes this years Travis Bickle, Michael Johnson, in his latest article.

On this week devoted to the doings of the Dark Side, it seems apropos, somehow, to pause and reflect on those who have done so much to darken the spiritual landscape of these United States …

… the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion who yearn, like vampires, to suck the very life out of our religious freedoms and sense of community …

… the too-many innocuous voters and ordinary citizens who, in their thirst to avoid conflict, played along with political correctness at the ballot box, and helped create the monsters of immorality that now dominate the political scene …

… the aggressive attorneys and activists who, wrapped mummy-like in their own agenda, have found their fortune in pressing the lawsuits that have brought paranoia and social paralysis to churches and school districts and businesses all over America.

See this is a Travis Bickle with ambition. Not content with obsessing over the evil of one town, he's gone national.

He gives a litany of crimes perpetuated against the innocent Christians of this country, presumably not the same folks who go around killing doctors who preform abortions or who killed Matthew Shepard. No we are talking about the poor sap who wants to wear a shirt saying Homosexuality is Shameful to school on a gay awareness day.

I suppose there's nothing to worry about when one writes an article demonizing half of America. I mean nobody would be crazy to act out these paranoid fantasies, right?

How did Taxi Driver end, anyway?

Man of the Year

Went and saw Man of the Year, and it turns out the reviews were largely right. There's bits of a good smart comedy here, but somehow they got jumbled up in a decidedly non-taut political thriller, and overlaid with a patina of not wanting to offend anybody. So you cut from Robin Williams bravura performance at the debates to Laura Linney being given a forced drug overdose. Those scenes don't mesh well.

The movie wants to have it both ways. It suggests that Robin Williams would actually be a pretty good president; but he has to do the right thing and walk away from the office, because he wasn't actually elected. There's a few moments that suggest that as good a person Robin Williams is, he's not prepared to be President.

And the whole thing turns on a computer flaw thought up by people who clearly have spent very little time with computers.

At any rate, enjoyable enough in parts - particularly the bits with Robin Williams, Lewis Black, and Christopher Walkin. Lewis Black has a great little commentary on how Television equalizes everything - how it gives all points of view the same relevance, and by implication rendering all points of view irrelevant. That's worth the price of admission right there, practically.

Conservative Pundits Want Conservatives to vote for Republicans

Big news eh? But they seem pretty insistent about it. Check out these articles.

Burt Prelutsky: Vote early and often
Carol Platt Liebau: Election '06 matters to everyone
Doug Wilson: V Squared: Why you must vote and volunteer

And there's a few others that seem to touch on this issue indirectly. The argument is pretty consistent - You should vote because as bad as Republican rule has proven to be, Democrat rule would be even worse.

The truth is, I know an awful lot of conservatives and I don’t know a single one who is so irresponsible, so unconcerned about America’s well-being, that he would sit idly by and allow this catastrophe to take place.

It would be bad enough to allow Democrats for the next two years to determine where and when, or even if, the war on terror will be waged; bad enough to allow them to eliminate Bush’s tax cuts; bad enough to let them decide whether or not to erect a wall along our southern border; bad enough to give them an even bigger say in who gets appointed to federal judgeships. But the worst part is that there’s not only no guarantee that they’d be gone after a single term, but in fact not the slightest chance. There is a reason, after all, that they’re called incumbents, not outcumbents.

Burt Prelutsky, and you can see why he's called an humorist.

We must set aside our anger and frustration and support Republican candidates across our nation. Why the switch from critic to supporter? Because the alternative is much worse. For example, Nancy Pelosi, the would-be Democrat majority leader, is no friend of the taxpayer. In fact, she has voted 19 times against eliminating the death tax. She also voted against the historic welfare reform bill of 1996; against protecting the right to say “one nation under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance; against banning partial-birth abortions; and against requiring voter identification at polling stations so that we can ensure that only legal citizens cast votes.

This one's from Doug Wilson, who is very keen on preventing voter fraud, as all Republicans are. Because, of course, they want to make it harder for minorities to vote, and being tough on voter fraud accomplishes this important goal, without being as crude as some of their other tactics.

. . . if Democrats are given the power to weaken America’s position in the war on terror, not only will they put all of us in greater jeopardy, but – through a premature retreat from Iraq – they could also undermine the cause for which so many brave American soldiers have died. Next Tuesday, we need to vote as if our lives – and our families’– depended on it.

And this is the money quote, from Carol Platt Liebau. If you don't vote for Republicans you are going to die.

These are not the kinds of articles you want to write at the end of an election cycle. It should be a forgone conclusion that voting for your candidate is the right thing to do. It says a lot about how far the Republicans have fallen that they have to keep hammering this point home.

And then they don't even offer any positive accomplishments, they simply press the "hate Democrats" button a couple of times and call it a day. "Yeah I know our guys are a bunch of losers, but come on. Democrats are far worse." That's not inspiring. We'll have to see if that strategy works.

4th Year

Well I just finished the fourth year of the blog - it started 4 years ago today. Unfortunately due to travel constraints and general lack of interest, I'm not really celebrating on the day of - I do have some stuff planned, but it will come out Monday and Tuesday.

But today was actually the day.

I don't think Republicans are a bunch of Orgres

Contrary to what the title of Mike Gallaghers latest article suggests.

But I don't know what an Orgres is. So maybe I do think Republicans are a bunch of Orgres and just don't know it.

Here's a saved saved version of the page.

Anyway the substance of the article is about a recent incident involving Michael J. Fox. He appeared in a commercial in support of a Democrat candidate speaking out in favor of stem cell research. Rush Limbaugh suggested he was faking it (he's an actor as you know). Rush Limbaugh then decided he was really upset about Fox being exploited. This article is about how as much as they have sympathy for Michael J. Fox and others who are suffering like him, Republicans don't want to do the research that could help them.

He does trot out the bizarre argument that if you are pro-life you shouldn't have to pay for research you don't like. I'm opposed to the Iraq war; should I have to pay for it? Why yes. Because only Christians get the special privilege of not having to pay for government programs they are opposed to.

And that's without mentioning the obvious point that if Pro-Lifers really think it's murder, why are they ok with private citizens doing it?

So poor Mr. Galleghar had to suffer the slings and arrows of republicans paying the price when they say something stupid. Poor guy. Poor Rush. Poor Ann Coulter (who he also references as someone unfairly targeted by the media who can't stop putting her on and giving her leave to express her vies). I hope those Orgres will be able to hold up under the strain.

Top Twenty

I'm on the road today, so I've prepared another in my serise of Mix CDs. I think this one is the latest!

Jet, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" *
World Party, "Way Down Now"
Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"
Pulp, "Common People" *

INXS, "Bitter Tears"
Jefferson Airplane, "Good Shepard"
Everclear, "Everything to Everyone" *
Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffanys"

Beautiful South, "Hooligans Don't Fall In Love"
Three 4 Tens, "I'll Feel Better" *
Lemon Drops, "I Live in the Springtime"
The Byrds, "John Riley"

Cake, "Never There" *
U2, "Rejoice"
The Psychedelic Furs, "President Gas"
The Police, "Nothing Achieving"

Offspring, "Self Esteem" *
REM, "Maps and Legends"
Ani DiFranco, "School Night"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Under the Bridge" *

The ones marked with an asterix are from Albums I don't own, but downloaded using Rhapsoday. I did own some of those albums once upon a time, and others I borrowed from people living near me.

Find Myself A City To Live In

The Talking Heads are great.

Any writing some more on the investigatory power, in response to an article by Paul Greenburg about Paul Krugman and the investigatory power.

There you have it, folks. Give the Democrats control of the House or Senate, or both, and you won't have to worry about any legislation of great import being passed - as Dr. Krugman was honest enough to note. Instead, boy oh boy, the country can spend the next couple of years as tied up in investigations as it was during the Clinton Era of Bad Feelings. Hot dawg!

This could be the greatest thing since sliced bread - or at least since Monicagate.

In short, as an argument for electing a Democratic Congress, Dr. Krugman's column makes a pretty good case for re-electing a Republican one. If just to avoid wasting a couple of years on scandalmongering.

A couple of points.

Isn't it funny for a Republican to note that the public doesn't want Monica style investigations? I mean Greenburg does remember that his party was the one who pushed that, right?

But of course we aren't going to be doing Monica style investigations. We are going to be doing Watergate investigations, looking into how President Bush and his allies have subverted the constitution and our country to their own ends. That's about as far from Monica style investigations as you can get, while still doing investigations.

Investing in Bush

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo has made a great point about President Bush's presidency and how we have bought into it.

Think of the president as a failed or deadbeat entrepreneur (again, not such a stretch) who's already lost his investors a ton of money. He goes back to them and says, 'Okay, fine. You think I'm a moron and a screw-up who lost you guys a ton of money. Fine. But do you really want to finally, totally, conclusively kiss that $300 billion goodbye. You wanna just totally call it quits? Admit it's a total loss? What about giving me just another $10 billion and maybe somehow I'll actually pull this off? Or, since that's just not gonna happen, a mere $10 billion to put off for six months having to write the whole thing off as a loss, having to come to grips once and for all with the fact that all the money's gone and the whole thing's a bust?'

That's really what this is about. And I think we all know it pretty much across the political spectrum. In this way, paradoxically, the very magnitude of the president's failure has become his tacit ally. It's just such a big thing to come to grips with. And reinvesting in the president's folly, even after any hope of recouping the money is gone, carries the critical fringe benefit of sustaining our own collective and increasingly threadbare denial.

But President Bush's interests are not the same as the country's. He's maxed out, in for 100%. If Iraq is a failure, a mistake, then the same words will be written right after his name in the history books. A country, though, can take missteps and mistakes, course corrections and dead ends, and move on. We've done it before and we'll do it again.

But President Bush can't and won't withdraw from Iraq because when he does, under the current conditions, he'll sign the epitaph, the historical death warrant for his presidency. Unlike in the past there are no family friends to pawn the failure off on and let them take the loss. It's all his. So he'll keep kicking the can down the road forever.

This is dead on, but obviously a lot of President Bush's friends in the media have bought off on this one - what does it do, for example, to the Dittoheads if Iraq is declared a mistake, a failure, a disgrace? I suspect they can just blame liberals and the media as they have for Vietnam (when they aren't busy pointing out that it was Democrats who got us into Vietnam). Still the contrast between reality and ideology might eventually become too sharp even for them.

Way Down Now

Paul Weyrich, who is trying to build his brand as a serious political commentator, has written an article arguing that Republicans should in fact vote for Republicans. If he really wants to be taken seriously, though, he might want to check his facts a bit more thoroughly.

I realize that Republicans impeached President William J. Clinton. He was only the second President to be impeached. There are those Democrats who are still angry about that action. But Clinton was impeached for perjury. Bush and Cheney would be impeached for "lying us into war." I disagreed with the Iraq conflict. But to suggest that the President and Vice President deliberately lied to get us there is over the top. I believe our President meant well and I surely do not want to see him tried.

First of all we are not going to impeach Bush and Cheney for lying us into the war. If we decide to impeach them it will be for actual high crimes and misdemeanors, of which there have been quite a few.

Secondly, President Bush is doing a lousy job in the war on terror and more and more Americans are waking up to this fact. While it might not be feasible to remove him and Cheney from power, if we could I'd be bang up along side it. But it looks like actually impeaching him and Cheney is a bit of a long shot, so we'll have to settle for simply watching over them. Investigating them. Protecting America from an out of control Executive Branch. Whatever you want to call it.

Which is kind of what Congress is supposed to do anyway.

This is not a Title

David Limbaugh's latest article is entitled "Without conservative help, Democrats shouldn't bet the farm." It is about how Conservatives shouldn't support Democrats. Which sort of ties in with the title, but not really. This article is terribly generic actually - Limbaugh's been writing variations on it since last Christmas. He covers the same old themes - Democrats have no plan and Republicans/Conservatives would be foolish to vote for them. I guess the tie in with the title is that unless Conservatives help Democrats by not voting at all, the Democrats will lose? We'll have to see I guess.

In other news I am thinking of renaming this blog, in honor of our first 4 years. Here are some obvious possible names.

"Legal Daisy Spacing" - I've already been this once, and I liked it pretty well - originally suggested by Random Goblin.

"Stupid Enough Unexplanation" - From a music review I posted here at one point, a fan music review that just wasn't very good.

"Greetings to you, from little Fred Williams" - From a letter I got once upon a time (Space Lobster answered it).

"Political Comment" - which would line up with the url to this blog.

Those are the ones that already have a connection to the blog. I'll post what others I've come up with as the day progresses.

Walt Disney and Cal Thomas

This is an oddity - I'm going to praise a Cal Thomas Column. His latest column, reviewing a biography of Walt Disney ("Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler) is pretty inoffensive, and it looks like an interesting book. Thomas does describe Fantasia as "futuristic" which it really isn't, but other than that he does an ok job.

Of course he doesn't look at the content of Disney's movies, including Fantasia, where he might have found some conflict with modern Conservativism. Fantasia's Rite of Spring section for example. Or the implicit environmentalist message of Bambi.

Two Americas

There's the America of the blind and the America of those who can see. Ruben Navarrette Jr. decries these two Americas in his latest article.

The divide shows up in a recent CNN poll that asked people if they thought the American Dream was now impossible to reach. Fifty-four percent said yes, while 45 percent said no.

How depressing.

There are Americans who believe that this is still a country of unlimited opportunity for those who work hard and sacrifice. And there are others who are convinced that the deck is stacked against working men and women.

There are those who believe that what works against some folks are not the bad breaks, but bad choices such as dropping out of high school or ambling through life without ambition. And there are others who believe that human beings are at the mercy of sinister forces beyond their control.

See in the blind America that Naverette occupies, there are no problems with our economic system that removing government regulations can't solve. The obvious disparities in our system are caused not by the wealthy and the corporations trying to maintain their privileged place in society, but by poor people being lazy and stupid. But obviously this is in part fantasy.

In any capitalist system, and make no mistake, I'm a capitalist, you are going to have losers, who will sometimes deserve it and will sometimes not. But when the pundit and business class says that the economy is going gangbusters and yet a large portion of the economy doesn't feel like they are sharing in the wealth, doesn't feel like they could share in the wealth, well, the problems are more than just laziness and stupidity on the part of poor people.

And the answer has to be more complex than Naverette's "pay no attention to the corporations and Republicans behind the curtain."

Remember to vote

At a suggestion we are reminding you to vote in the upcoming election, and have added a note to that effect over to the right.

Sci Fi Madness

I went to the used book shop again this week, and as a special treat thought I would post scans of two of my purchases.



Here's a large version of this cover.

You remember back in 1993 when the US was ruled by a drug syndicate that could read our minds. Actually that would seem prophetic to a few of our conservative buddies, who might see that as a pretty good description of the Clinton White House.

Here's another book I got.



Here's a larger picture of the second book.

This one is about a robot who goes to the gambling program. Then he falls in love with his owners wife, and has a lot of bad stuff happen to him. Being a robot sucks, apparently.

Nothing can prepare you for the Eldricth Horror . . .

of the Thing in a Beatles Wig.



I might have posted this picture once before - I can't help it. It really makes me laugh.

What are Christian Conservatives getting for their Vote

Marvin Olasky's latest article is about the David Kuo book coming out in the new year (apparently). Bits of it have been released which paint the Bush Administration and Karl Rove in a bad light when it comes to Conservative Christians. Olasky, unlike many of his colleagues in the Conservative Punditry (who are busy discovering that Kuo, speech writer for Bill Bennett, Bob Dole and others, was never really a Conservative), takes Kuo seriously.

To me, Kuo's book is valuable for its specific detail on how the Bush faith-based initiative went astray. Kuo notes that the 2001 Bush tax cut left out "the president's promised $6 billion per year in tax credits for groups helping the poor. Those tax credits had been the centerpiece of compassionate conservative efforts for years." But the White House, Kuo charges, decided that it was more important to cut the estate tax than to help the poor and decentralize poverty fighting. Not wanting to make the big tax bill any bigger, the Bush administration surprised key congressional leaders by pushing successfully to have the anti-poverty tax credits dropped.

Kuo, saying he still wants the compassionate conservative movement to succeed, hopes through his book to attract attention to its yet-unrealized potential: "If this hadn't come out now, how many conservatives would even have given it a single thought?" He wants to communicate to Christians: "Please understand that you are being used. Look shrewdly at that and remember, remember, remember that Jesus must come first."

He's right. Christians clearly need to be discerning and to accentuate biblical ways of helping widows and orphans. But the irony of Kuo's call for Christians to "fast" from politics is that it would increase the power of anti-Christian politicians. If the saints go marching out, others will march in unimpeded.

I've noted for a while how quickly the tax cut was passed verses how quickly abortion and gay marriage were ended. That said, of course I don't agree with the characterization of Democrats as Anti-Christian. I suppose the boat has already sailed on that one, but it's just not accurate.

A Rallying Cry

So I know a lot of Republicans are a bit down in the mouth about this election cycle. Fortunately help is on the way, thanks to a new article by Matt Towery.

Here's the skinny, folks: The Republicans have held power for too long, and grown cocky and lazy. Bush strutted around defiantly. Republican leadership took a Nixonian, siege-mentality approach to the press. Bad things got worse. Now they may lose Congress.

Even so, absent the issue of personalities, political style and the like, a neutral scorecard based on policies makes at least a modest case to return the GOP to power.

A modest case! Let that be your rallying cry, Republicans.

A Modest Case! To the Barricades!