Category Archives: Politics

I thought that Tim Kaine had a little more substance than Marc Fisher in the Washington Post on January 31 gave him credit for, but hey, you saw the Kaine sign in my yard and me out there handing out literature in October and November. And you heard or later read the Kaine speech for yourself hopefully, so make your own decision. There was plenty of substance if you know the programs and initiatives in Virginia and in other states that Kaine referenced. And a broad plan for getting out of Iraq with our faces still on and other body parts intact surely does not belong or fit into a response to the State of the Union address.
However, speaking of the Democratic victories in Virginia, Fisher summed up:

…there is a majority that either leans Democratic or holds independent views and favors curbs on development and has little patience for kneejerk, hard-right stands on social issues.

I believe we were in the majority all along, in Virginia and elsewhere, and I hope it continues to show in elections.

I was going to put something on my blog about Cheney being a real-life honest-to-Christmas Pete Scrooge, but first I did a Google search on “Cheney Scrooge” and I got this result:

Results 1 – 10 of about 53,200 for Cheney Scrooge. (0.23 seconds)

So maybe it has already been said enough.
If there is a person in the country with an income under $150,000 a year who would still vote for a Republican, that person needs intervention. Maybe a 12-step program to develop common sense.

While we are debating whether or not there is a war on Christmas, six Methodist churches here are uniting to sponsor “Blue Christmas, A Service of Worship for the Longest Night,” on Sunday, December 18, 2005. Then on Friday, December 23, 2005, you can attend “The Tree,” presented by the Highlands Fellowship, described as “a stirring candlelight service” to “honor the Living Tree of Christmas.”
What is going on here is not new, nor is it a war. It is an old custom sort of like borrowing from one’s neighbors or trying to keep up with them. To make it pretty simple to understand, just pretend for a few minutes that there are only two religions in the world, The Church of Us and The Cult of Them.
There are always more Themians than there are Usians. This is true in part because the Usians are clearly defined into named sub-groups (parties or denominations) that agree on the central Usian core beliefs but have small differences of understanding that separate them. Any single one (or any group) of these parties or denominations may at any time declare that any other Usian group is more Themian than Usian. This practice insures the plurality of Themians.
Themians, by contrast, are a solid block and do not separate into denominations. Because of this characteristic, they always present a threat to Usians, who see them as stronger, more organized, and more focused on taking over everything. Seeing Themians as a unified opposing block insures that Usians always perceive themselves as a persecuted minority.
In addition to their strong solid focused emphasis, which makes them practically invincible, Themians have an incredible number of holidays with parties and celebrations designed to draw borderline, disaffected, or young and foolish Usians into their circle of influence. This Themian practice and the Usian response to it have resulted in an alignment of holidays between Usians and Themians. The alignment occurs because the Usians, seeing their young going into the desert to worship Tamuzi or some such, design and establish a concurrent celebration of their own, drawing some of the more attractive and less offensive characteristics of Themian custom into their own practice. They do this in order to keep the Usian kids busy on Themian holidays and thus out of the clutches of Themianism.
This borrowing by Usians from Themians is disparaged by Usian purists and frequently produces disagreements that generate new parties or denominations. However, when the borrowed celebration has been around a while and the rough edges have been brushed and blended into the Usian lore so that it seems to have been present at the origin of Usianism, it is accepted by Usians who formerly criticized it.
One of my religion professors described this process as like the growth of an onion, which, while maintaining a central unchanged living core, grows and increases by adding layers to the outside. Thankfully I had zoology before I had this class, so I did not waste a lot of the genus Stinkus Delicioso searching for the core. It was not my first religion course either, so I also did not waste time telling the professor that an onion grows from the inside as the outer layers expand and thin. The onion has no relationship to this commentary. I just could never get it out of my mind, so I am trying again here to give it away. Take it, please. It was a gift to me, and it may serve you as well.
And have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Joyful Yule, Happy Holidays, or whatever you have at or around the winter solstice. It’s cold, and we need a few carbs and a little firelight. Be generous and smile at someone. Give somebody a present. Have a cup of cheer. Spend twice the money you have. Eat a lot of food. Go outside and look at the stars.
And by all means don’t stress yourself out by getting offended at anyone. Bill O’Reilly is so good at that we can just let him take care of it for all of us.

The New York Times reported this morning in a story titled “Iraq Prison Raid Finds a New Case of Mistreatment” by Edward Wong that the Iraqi government is mistreating prisoners:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 12 – American and Iraqi forces raiding an Iraqi government detention center last Thursday in Baghdad discovered more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped space, 13 of them mistreated so badly they had to be taken to a hospital, a senior American official said early Monday.
The raid was the second in the past month in which American forces have uncovered mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of Interior Ministry officials. On Nov. 15, soldiers with the Third Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad, entered a ministry bunker in central Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured. Most of those prisoners were Sunni Arabs.
The detention center raided Thursday, situated to the east of the Tigris River, is run by a commando unit from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country’s police forces, said the senior American official, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for the American detention system in Iraq. When members of the search team entered the building, he said, they found “overcrowded” conditions that prompted them to begin transferring the prisoners.
“Thirteen of them were removed due to medical reasons and sent to a hospital,” the colonel said in a telephone interview, declining to specify exactly what signs of abuse or torture, if any, the prisoners might have exhibited. Iraqi officials are still investigating the findings, he added. A total of 625 prisoners had been kept in the center.

Does anyone know what we are fighting for over there? We kicked out one abusive government and put in another abusive government that somehow we are managing to call Democratic because they voted for themselves.

After a day at the polls passing out sample ballots marked with the Democratic ticket in Virginia, (Congratulations, Governor Kaine! Victory for Democrats in Virginia!) I am once again overwhelmed by the Republican Party’s ability to get out the ignorance vote.
Several voters, male and female, made it plain that they were voting one issue, pro-life versus pro-choice. Although this was the basis of their vote, they could not respond to how economics impacted abortion choices, did not know what abortion rates were or whether they had gone up or down in recent years, and in fact knew nothing about the issue except that abortion is always morally wrong.
Responding to the question “Is there anything else that is morally wrong that is legal?” they cited homosexuality, unmarried people living together, and unmarried women having babies. Nobody said it was immoral for medical care facilities to turn away people who are sick but cannot pay for medical care. Apparently they know about lust, but nobody cited any of the other immoral actions or attitudes included in the 7 deadly sins, most of which are legal in most of their familiar aspects.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch – the Kansas ranch, that is – Republicans have actually pushed through a pro-ignorance initiative. The AP story posted on CNN on November 8, 2005, Kansas school board redefines science says:

TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — At the risk of re-igniting the same heated nationwide debate it sparked six years ago, the Kansas Board of Education approved new public school science standards Tuesday that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
The 6-4 vote was a victory for “intelligent design” advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Predictably, all six of the persons who voted for the new standards were Republicans. Of the four against, two were Republicans and two were Democrats.

“This is a sad day. We’re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,” said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
Supporters of the standards said they will promote academic freedom. “It gets rid of a lot of dogma that’s being taught in the classroom today,” said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.
The standards state that high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that some concepts have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
The challenged concepts cited include the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and the theory that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

In case you want to believe it is just a Kansas thing:

The Kansas board’s action is part of a national debate. In Pennsylvania, a judge is expected to rule soon in a lawsuit against the Dover school board’s policy of requiring high school students to learn about intelligent design in biology class.
In August, President Bush endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.

I love CNN’s instant QuickVote, and one attached to this story had quite a few votes when I added mine. The people who thought intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in schools were 26 per cent (2009) and those opposed were 74 per cent (5647). CNN had the standard disclaimer, which begins “This QuickVote is not scientific…”

Kaine4Gov

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

I’m supporting the Democratic ticket in Southwest Virginia: Tim Kaine, Leslie Byrne, and Creigh Deeds.

Last time I put out yard signs they were stolen, so this time I thought it would be wise to make a photograph.

We had planned to mow the grass, but when it’s shaggy it hides the trip wire better.

Alright, now, I work for a living and have a household to manage. In addition, this month we have had medical concerns and I have been called for jury duty. Then there’s Katrina and Rita. And in the background I keep hearing more and more about suicide bombings. Several times a day there is an administration screw-up from the Bush gang that is really outrageous, but before I can comment on it he does something worse.
Do we have a scorekeeper? Did we hand the whole thing over to someone who believes that the vision is the job and reality is a distraction? What percentage of his appointments have had any appropriate background at all? Does Bush believe our government has any function except distributing no-bid contracts and solidifying corporate control to repay campaign debts? Is there a center where people who voted for him can go for counseling when they wake up?
Down here in Tennessee Rita is still keeping Bill Frist off the front page. I hope somebody is monitoring Pat Robertson. He’s probably praying for another hurricane because 1) Sodom wasn’t completely destroyed and 2) the Neo-Cons need natural disasters for cover.
And in the middle of it all, Bush and Frist et al take time to promote something called Intelligent Design. Who are they kidding?

In case anybody is amazed that we didn’t get a good response to Katrina from the federal government, that the recovery money is going to the same large corporations that are absorbing the Iraq appropriations, and that Bush intends to suspend environmental regulations and exempt from inheritance taxes the estate of anyone who died in Katrina’s path that was worth more than 1.5 million dollars (I’m waiting to see who that person was) …
In case more tax cuts in spite of record deficits seem to you to be a little inconsistent with reality …
Remember Bush ran on a platform that said private individuals could spend money better than the federal government. His process since his election has been to cut, downsize, outsource, and let the people who have money keep more of it. His slow response to Katrina will enrich the rich and return more of our tax money to the “private sector,” defined as the pockets of his political base. Small properties of middle income and poor people in the flood area will become part of the holdings of large companies.
It is a scheme in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle goes away.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an administration that does something right in the first place instead of one that is so adept at investigating and explaining what went wrong after it bombs?

I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood close to downtown in a sleepy little city whose City Manager has the stated goal of making the city a retirement community. Not a lot goes on most days. My front yard is on one of those tree-lined streets, and my backyard is on an alley that gives access to garages and back yards. Kids play in the alley, cars slow down, and cats track softly over car windshields, unnoticed except on days when it rains and the tracks are muddy. Quite a few people find it pleasant to walk their friends, dogs, spouses, and children along the alley in the early mornings and late afternoons. It’s the “nod and say good morning” kind of alley.
Well, this good morning on my way to work I put my bag in the passenger side of my car in my open garage and take the three steps from the front door to the back bumper, see the person walking, and stop halfway into my “nod and say good morning.”
A woman whom I do not know is walking down the alley with a cute white and tan spaniel on a leash. She is enjoying the morning and doesn’t see me. In the time it takes for a nod to cancel, she stops beside my charming green utilities company trash can and holds the leash while her spaniel finds itself a spot. In this spot, where I would more than likely be standing if I went to take out the trash, the spaniel proceeds to do what dogs do.
The woman holds the leash patiently and continues to enjoy the summer morning serenity of my backyard, where just a drizzle of rain accents the quiet. I take a couple of steps toward her — it’s not, believe me, a large yard. She is less than 20 feet from me, patiently holding the dog’s leash while he makes a pile in my yard.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you know that this is my yard?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, startled. She waits for the dog to finish.
Feeling a need for a better response, I stand there and hold eye contact considering what to say. What she had done was, after all, illegal and not neighborly. Well, I guess it’s illegal. There’s a leash law. But the dog was on a leash, if you want to get particular.
“If you have a bag, I’ll clean it up,” she offers.
What does she mean, “If I have a bag”?
I tell her, “I am on my way to work. I do not have a bag.”
“I’ll come back and clean it up,” she says, pulling the dog away.
Either the rain washed it away (unlikely) or she came back and cleaned it up before I got home from work. But all day long I tried to remember the precise phrasing of that old kindergarten rule about what you do when nobody is looking.