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Saturday, November 13, 2004
Ashcroft

Well, the Attorney General has stepped down, and there is muted rejoicing. After all, if the re-election of this corrupt and deliberately ignorant administration has you down, you must take your small pleasures where you can.

So why am I not happier? Ashcroft was easily the most frightening figure appointed by Bush, and that's truly an accomplishment. This man has called dissent of the President's policies treasonous. He has tried to set back women's rights 80 years. And there is still that disturbing issue with needing to cover the statue at the Department of Justice building. The guy is a nut job, nearly without parallel.

Alberto Gonzales will be named, and will face token questioning from the Senate. I don't know too much about him, but I don't think he's a zealot like Ashcroft. His past record indicates that his actions on controversial laws tend to uphold them whether he agrees with them or not. That will be quite refreshing from the nation's top lawman.

There is, however, his odd memo dealing with the President's criminality if charged with war crimes. In regard to the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales referred to their notions of torture being "quaint" and "outdated." Call me old-fashioned, but I'm just not sure that we really have any right to outrage at the mistreatment of our soldiers when we so cavalierly toss aside everyone else's right to not have their balls hooked up to a car battery.

Gonzales will be confirmed, and he may be a very good attorney general. I honestly believe that, whereas with Ashcroft, I knew the opposite to be true. Will Gonzales have the wherewithal to say to the President, "Uh, there is a great deal of illegal stuff in the Patriot Act, if we are going to use the Constitution of The United States as a guide. We need to fix this problem immediately."

I doubt it. Al has been friends with Bush long enough to know that dissent is not a virtue. My guess is we're going to be saddled with the illegalities for a long while yet. Meanwhile, Gonzales will likely serve his post quite well for the most part. I'll try to keep a good thought for his wanting to protect the Constitution. It's really all I can do.

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posted at 1:10 AM

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Saturday, November 06, 2004
Very Sleepy

That's how I feel, but I've been slacking on the blog, so I wanted to let you know I hadn't killed myself. I've been working a lot of hours, and let this thing fall by the wayside. But I'll try to do better.

As for the election, it's finally over, and that's good. Having hope for change was kind of wearing me out, and now that Bush has his "mandate" (according to Dick Cheney), and has earned "political capital, which I intend to spend" (according to himself), I can pretty much officially give up. The brain tells me that things are going to get even worse, and yet...

Karl Rove is a genius. He knew that by appealing to the worst instincts of the Republican base, he could get even poor white trash to vote contrary to their own economic interests. That's actually quite an accomplishment, if you think about it. This administration has spent four years demonstrating, with no hemming or hawing, that it is only interested in making things simpler for corporations and the wealthy who own them. And we all understand why people who have to work too hard to stay even ended up voting the way they did. It's been examined to death, and I won't rehash it now. Yeah, the lowest common denominator thing again...

But now that the suckers, ah, the people have spoken, what happens next? I'm no optimist, as regular readers may have divined. But the part of me that still has hope (for some reason) wonders about the following scenario:

George W. Bush was appointed to office by the Supreme Court in 2000, after losing the popular vote. He spends four years, assisted in his quest, if we are to be blunt, by Islamic terrorists, scaring the hell out of Americans, and gutting the civil liberties of those of us too stupid to be moved by fear. He appeals to bigotry and ignorance in many forms, and Real Americans turn out in record numbers on November 2 to save our land from towel-heads and damned liberals.

George has no more elections ahead of him. He has no reason to pander to anyone. I'm sure Ralph Reed feels he is owed something, but in reality, has no way to collect it. So, what if...

What if George decides to appoint moderate judges for the inevitable vacancies that the Supreme Court will have open before 2008? He can always tell his base that he is being statesman-like by compromising, and they believe everything their told, anyway. So, maybe?

What if George decides to go back to the UN and make a pitch for a multilateral effort at ridding the world of terrorists? Would they listen? I just don't know. The problem is, that the world is a big set of scales, and America is the largest thing on them. And as scales wish to stay balanced, the further America moves away from balance, the rest of the world lines itself up in a manner to counterbalance our position. If everyone looks to be moving away from us, well, we're moving away from them, too.

My optimism has limits, of course. Will George start trying to help Americans get good jobs and improved health care? I doubt it. Why should he? This administration has been quite clear in it's disdain for the working man, and they ran out in droves to re-elect him. So, I can't even hope for improvement in an economic sense. The stock market is more important than the supermarket, and ultimately, I can't really afford to dabble in either.

In the meantime, I will take solace in the pending resignation of John Ashcroft, who as Bill Maher speculated, wanted to get back to his first love, "standing on a street corner, ranting about the coming end of the world." I'll be glad to see him go, although we look to be burdened with the so-called Patriot Act for the foreseeable future. Small victories, I guess I should take them where I find them.

So, I probably won't watch too much TV for awhile, and that's likely a good thing. I'll try to discuss other things in this forum, although I probably won't. I'm still pretty irritable, but I am working hard at becoming resigned. And I'm told that I can always find peace in Jesus, and for better or worse, I don't have to even look for him. Apparently, the FBI has already given him my address.

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posted at 11:59 AM

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Friday, August 06, 2004
Timeliness is so overrated

Well, due to problems at the old site, I was unable to provide any lush commentary during the Democratic National Convention last week. The world managed to keep spinning somehow, but I wanted to note a few things.

It looks like John Edwards is truly going to be an asset to Kerry. I suspected he would be, as I have followed his political career since he ran for Senate in 1998. The incumbent he ran against was a fat old cracka-ass-cracka named Lauch Faircloth, whose entire campaign was to soak up as much oil and tobacco money as possible, and use it to buy TV ads that showed Edwards with Bill Clinton at a campaign event, with the voice over essentially saying nothing more than, "See? He likes Clinton!" It was just miserable, and happily, not even North Carolinians were dumb enough to re-elect that worthless twat.

Edwards gives a good speech, and he's certainly fast on his feet. He is relatively inexperienced politically, but I truly doubt that there is much he can't learn in a short time. I still can't get over how a man whose father was president, vice-president, CIA director etc could run for the presidency in 2000 and call himself a Washington outsider, but GWB did it. Now he's still an outsider somehow, and bashes Edwards for not knowing enough about how the game is played. Well, I'll bet Edwards wouldn't have sat in a classroom, glassy-eyed and paralyzed for seven minutes after learning the country was under attack. But then, George has had very few shining moments inside of a classroom.

As for Kerry's speech, he said some things that needed to be said. Things that I was afraid no Democrat would have the balls to say. Things like "we need a President who believes in science." I mean, that was mainly in regard to stem cells, but it also covers Evolution, the morning-after birth control pill, and a score of other issues. The government has to lead the way on these things, because the private sector won't unless there's money in it. And some diseases are too rare to have a profit margin.

He also spoke of how the American flag did not belong to one party, and that was good to hear. I don't consider myself a patriotic person even though I love my country. It's not perfect, but it's mine. And it's easy to talk about how much you love America while you dodge combat, and get deferments, like certain people. I suspect the reason so many of these self-righteous jerks want a flag-burning amendment is because they are afraid someone might set the flag ablaze while they are wrapped in it, shitting on my civil rights.

Another key section was when he talked about his choices for the people with whom he would surround himself:

"I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States."

Ashcroft still scares the hell out of me. A man with his hangups about women has no business holding any political office, let alone being the top law official in the United States. You put a turban on this man, and his views are indistinguishable from a Taliban cleric. Ashcroft did one six-year term in the Senate and proposed SEVEN amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The founding fathers? Hacks! Idiots! Ben Franklin? John Adams? Pinheads! Alexander Hamilton? Thomas Jefferson? Didn't know shit! John Ashcroft knows more than these lightweights, and did everything he could to scar up this beautiful guarantee. I will likely vote for Kerry for as much as anything, to be rid of this delusional Attorney General.

There were several other good moments, despite Kerry's general lack of chops at fiery speech making. He seemed to bring the heat pretty well when the chips were down, so I'd give his speech an overall B+.

Lots to do around here before the GOP convention starts, but I will try to be a bit more prompt with the updates. I think I have a handle on it for the moment.

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posted at 2:29 AM

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