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politics

Romney

Friday 11 May 2007

Sharpton's words about Romney bring to the debate so much that it's difficult to know where to start.

CBS News has a great editorial about this.

Sharpton is entirely justified to question Romney on his views on the racist aspects of Mormonism. Blacks were excluded from assuming positions of power until the late 1970s. We all know, of course, that Romney will condemn that aspect of his religion -- it would be political suicide to do otherwise. In that sense, we'll never know if we got a straight answer from him. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What's most disturbing about Romney is his religion -- a cult, by the standards of many orthodox Christians. It has all the earmarks:

  • exclusivity
  • specially "revealed" information
  • a founder who was somehow closer to God than anyone else

Oh, wait -- I just described every major monotheistic religion, didn't I?

Romney's Mormonism will be problematic with many of his target constituency of conservative Christians. Evangelicals tend, I believe, to regard Mormons as misguided at best, Satanically deceived at best. Many of these same individuals (who would fall into the umbrella term "fundamentalists") call Catholics non-Christians, and Catholicism is much closer, theologically, to evangelicalism than Mormonism is.

The question is whether Romney's views on abortion and his generally conservative views -- he is a Republican candidate, after all -- will weigh more favorably with traditional Christian voters than his unorthodoxy.

“Background Check? We don’t need no stinkin’ background check”

Friday 20 April 2007

Cho Seung-hui went through the mandatory background check before buying the guns he used in his rampage. No criminal record, no problem.

Yet...

  • He'd been admitted to a mental health care unit within the last eighteen months.
  • Teachers and students alike commented on his disturbing behavior.
  • Complaints had been made about his behavior.
  • A professor had raised concerns about the content of his writing.

But what kind of a background check could have discovered all this?

If if someone has recently received significant mental health care in the same state he's trying to buy a gun, it's conceivable that that information could be available. But since there's no national database of such information, all one would have to do is cross the state line.

Do we want a national database to record that kind of information? I don't think I do.

Do we want to have background checks that include interviews with former educators? Is that even feasible?

Just what kind of background check can stop someone like this from getting a gun? The only solutions I can think of involve national databases and inquiries into very personal information.

Open a Can of Wup Ass

Saturday 20 January 2007

Reading through old journal entries the other night, I found a poem I’d received in a forwarded email in April of 2002:

American Pride

Osama Bin Laden, your time is short;
We’d rather you die, than come to court.
Why are you hiding if it was in God’s name?
Your just a punk with a turban; a pathetic shame.

I have a question, about your theory and laws;
“How come you never die for the cause?”
Is it because you’re a coward who counts on others?
Well here in America, we stand by our brothers.

As is usual, you failed in your mission;
If you expected pure chaos, you can keep on wishing
Americans are now focused and stronger than ever;
Your death has become our next endeavor.

What you tried to kill, doesn’t live in our walls;
It’s not in buildings or shopping malls.
If all of our structures came crashing down;
It would still be there, safe and sound.

Because pride and courage can’t be destroyed;
Even if the towers leave a deep void.
We’ll band together and fill the holes
We’ll bury our dead and bless their souls.

But then our energy will focus on you;
And you’ll feel the wrath of the Red, White and Blue.
So slither and hide like a snake in the grass;
Because America’s coming to kick your ass!!

Looking back on it, almost five years later, the poem and the sentiment it expresses are even more tragically pathetic. Many of the people who sent this around the country were most likely the ones who voted for Bush back in 2000 and were glad that he — “A real man, by God!” — was in office on 9/11. They probably had no doubt that America would go after bin Laden with a fury that the world had never seen.

Most of us had no doubt about that.

Bush’s speech on September 13, 2001, confirmed this: “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”

They were probably surprised when, eighteen months later, Bush said that while bin Laden must be “on the run, if he’s alive at all,” he conceded that he doesn’t “spend too much time on him.” (Source)

Now, in 2007, with Bush promising a “surge” that virtually no one wants, with bin Laden still at large, with Iraq virtually at war with itself, with the Taliban re-grouping, it all just seems like the taunts of a thirteen-year-old.

It smacks of insecurity — and by that I mean a lack of both self-confidence and a lack of a feeling of safety.

State Sentence

Saturday 30 December 2006

We’ve all seen the picture of the hooded executioners putting the noose around Saddam’s neck. The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times ran it on their main pages, as did al Jazeera‘s English website. The Washington Post didn’t.

What struck me about the photo was the lack of officialness about everything.

  • The executioners are wearing street clothes.
  • The room looks relatively small, and suspiciously like a randomly chosen room in a building’s basement.
  • The executioners are wearing tattered ski masks.
  • Not only are the executioners not wearing uniforms; not a single uniform is visible anywhere.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell much of anything about the room itself with such a closely cropped photo.

Still, what immediately came to mind when I first saw this was the obvious similarity to all the beheading videos released from Iraq. It hardly looks like an official state action.

“A New Way Forward”

Friday 15 December 2006

Geoff Nunberg, at Language Log, describes Bush's new slogan "A new way forward" thusly: "it sounds like a tagline an ad agency would come up with for a railroad trying to emerge from Chapter 11."

Short, and worth a read.

Gates Hearings

Wednesday 06 December 2006

I think many of us are fairly impressed with Robert Gates’ confirmation hearings yesterday, but I think Slate summed it up best with their headline: Enter the Grown-Up.

To Expand or Not To Expand

Friday 17 November 2006

McCain wants more troops in Iraq; the generals don't:

Military officials and defense experts, however, said yesterday that significantly escalating the number of U.S. combat troops in Iraq is largely implausible because it would severely strain the military, would be unsustainable for more than a few months and would offer no discernable long-term benefit. (Post)

I'm no military expert -- I've never even been in the military -- but it seems to me that

  1. if things in Iraq are deteriorating;
  2. if our military is already so thinly spread that it would "severely strain the military" to add more troops;
  3. if the military says that adding more troops "would offer no discernable long-term benefit" to the operation...

If all these things are the case, then it's hard to see how anyone in America could look at the situation, with that knowledge, and not see Iraq as the hopeless quagmire that it is.

"America's new Vietnam!" was the cry from opponents in the States and enemies abroad, but this is so much more disastrous. Vietnam didn't produce an army of individuals seeking revenge coupled with a culture in which individual "military" actions are the norm. Vietnam didn't produce terrorists, in other words, and it's difficult to foresee anything other than that coming out of Iraq.

If we stay, it's an ever-present propaganda tool, not to mention a gigantic terrorist training camp. If we run, we "embolden" the enemy -- not that they need any help with that. Still, it will prove to be a powerful recruiting device. "Look at our success with the Infidels! Imagine if we more aggressively take Jihad to their soil!"

In other words, "stay the course" and we make things worse; "cut and run" (or rather, "redeploy" or "withdraw" or any number of euphemisms) and we make things worse.

The problem is that we aren't just fighting insurgents who want us out of Iraq. We're also fighting insurgents whose primary goal seems to be civil war. If that's true, we're not trying to prevent civil war from breaking out as an unintended consequence; we're trying to stop people from inciting civil war. It introductions a consciousness to the actions, not to mention, in this case, a perverted religious conscientiousness.

Number Two Man

Wednesday 15 November 2006

The Washington Post has an editorial about Murtha’s bid to be the majority leader, and Pelosi’s aid in the matter. In it, Ruth Marcus succinctly explains why this is such a dumb move:

If she gets her way and helps Murtha win a come-from-behind victory against Maryland’s Steny Hoyer in tomorrow’s leadership election, she’s buying herself — and the Democratic caucus — endless news stories about Murtha’s ethics. If, as he says, Hoyer has the votes, Pelosi has made herself look weak within the caucus — not a smart move for any new leader, and certainly not for the first woman in the job. Perhaps the late timing and measured phrasing of Pelosi’s endorsement were meant to ensure that it would have little impact. If so, Pelosi failed to recognize that once she weighed in, the vote for majority leader would inevitably be seen as a gauge of her clout. (Source)

Really, not the best start for the new Speaker. “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history,” cooed Pelosi, and it seems to have lasted an entire week…

It brings to mind a famous closing line:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I had such hope for the new Congress, but Pelosi is making me think it’s just business as usual…

Kononowicz the Great

Tuesday 14 November 2006

At first I thought Krzysztof Kononowicz was a joke. "Some clever Polish YouTuber has done some video editing and acting and created an idiot," I thought. Apparently I'm not the only one. In comments posted about the video on YouTube, someone wrote,

ENGLISH: this is a hilarious electoral TV ad of a guy running for mayor of a town in Poland. The ad, which, incredibly, is NOT a joke, contains a huge amount of unintended humor. The cheesy jingle, the studio's awful colors, the candidate's look, and, last but not least, his horribly mangled and heavily accented Polish plus his dumbass ideas have made this video an instant classic of political humor. I'll be posting my translation on my profile soon.

I even said as much here, in a post that I removed as I thought about it and realized Kononowicz is not a joke, not even unintentionally.Kononowicz was a candidate for the mayor of Białystok. Elections were held Sunday, November 12. He didn't win. Watch the video, and even non-Polish speakers would have thought there was little chance he could win. But he did garner 3.5% of the votes.

What makes Kononowicz's candidacy seem like a joke is his naivety. His platform is simple, Catholic, and slightly nationalistic: stop underage drinking and underage smoking; get rid of crime; protect Poland's Ukrainian border against smuggling; improve the transportation infrastructure. They are all very practical political goals, from an obviously practical man.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kononowicz is not an eloquent speaker. He mumbles as if his mouth is filled with marbles and cotton. He begins by discussing his family, touching briefly on his mother, then speaking of his father (who fought bravely in the war but no longer lives with the Kononowicz family because "he relocated. He's in heaven now."), he refers to him as "Daddy."

He concludes that it's very much worth it to vote for him because "I am person truly honest, truly fair." He is not all talk, he assures voters:

"Other parties talk. They talk, and they do nothing. They did nothing for the city of Białystok. And what I said, I will accomplish everything. Because I am a faithful person and a practicing [Catholic]. And I know how to do it. How to fix the roads. How to do everything. How to get rid of cigarettes. How to get rid of everything!"

A simple man. With simple ideas. But necessary ideas.

There is indeed a lot of underage drinking in Poland, as everywhere. Indeed, there's just a lot of drinking, period, in Poland. Frigid winters and a 19% unemployment rate will do that to a country.

While I've only passed through Białystok's train station on my way to the northeastern corner of Poland, I'm sure the roads there are just as bad as everywhere else in Poland. Poles like to joke that their roads are so bad that even the holes in the road have holes.

I can't comment on the smuggling on the eastern border more than to say it makes the news regularly. Having lived on the southern border, I know there was a significant amount of smuggling things to the west — cheap alcohol mainly.

These are important concerns, but I never really heard politicians talk about them as directly as Mr. Kononowicz did. And that's why I've come to admire the man. Simple though he is, he decided to try to do something about the problems he sees his fellow Białystokites face. I can almost see him sitting at a table with his friends, probably over a bottle of vodka, saying, "Damn it, I'm going to do something about this! I'm going to stop sitting at this table complaining and go out and do something."