Category: religion and politics

Church and State should be separate in the body politic, but never in individuals.

When geeks rule politics

From Chris Kelly’s article on Huffington Post:

One good thing about Hillary proclaiming her right to a four-day national non-concession? We’ll never have to wonder what it would have been like if she’d been elected and that phone in the White House had rung at three AM.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Hello?

KIM JONG IL
All your base are belong to us!!! You are on the way to destruction!!! You have no chance to survive make your time!!!

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Can I call you back? I need at least a week for this to sink in.

(Personally, I’d move ZIG for great justice.)

Weird factoid. Back when this meme was first forming, you could type “All Your Base” into K-Mart’s website search box, and it would say. “Geeks like you also bought…”

Posted on by tychay 1

Advocates of Single-Payer

This shocking article, especially in light of their tactical PR moves, makes a number of people theorize that WalMart would be advocates of a Single-payer health care system.

No. Just the opposite.

In 2004, WalMart spent $650k to defeat Proposition 72. Now a careful reading may have some wondering how a bill requiring heath coverage is not the antithesis of “single payer.”

But that’s because most people’s understanding of economics is naïve.

[The business of single-payer after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Reading George Orwell

In my seventh grade English class, I got an opportunity to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

My mom had read it once as a little girl during the brief occupation of Seoul in the Korean War.

“One day Ohma brought home fish for dinner, wrapped in paper. But it was too much paper—everything was scarce. I noticed that the paper was numbered and I put them together and that was the first time I read Animal Farm.”

“Did you know what it was about?”

“Of course! I really liked the part where they said, ‘All animals are equal.” and then it got changed to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ 😀 I loved it so much that when the war ended I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it didn’t make any sense. 🙁 I didn’t know what a ‘television’ was.”

[Politics after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Obama's 2002 speech

“Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

“The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly.”
—Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator speaking at Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq, 2002

Brent Budowsky reminds us of Barack Obama’s 2002 speech opposing the war.

The speech is classic. The constant use of word pairs (“Auschwitz and Treblinka,” “Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz,” “Pakistan and India,” “the Saudis and the Egyptians,” “Exxon and Mobil.” “ignorance and intolerance” “corruption and greed,” “poverty and despair”), the sentence repetition an and counterpoint (“I don’t oppose all wars.” and then “I oppose dumb wars” followed by, “You want a fight, President Bush?”), the use of quick powerful sentences (“A dumb war. A rash war.” and then “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man”); it even ends, in the final sentence with three references to another Illinois politician’s reference to the greatest American speech of all time.

Truly impressive word play and well worth a read.

Read the full text here.

Posted on by tychay 0

Hurrah, we're Klingons again!

“Gotta say, it’s kind of breathtaking what Bush has done to you, the awakening is something to behold!.”
—rafaelh, “Well, Of Course.”

The slow transformation of political blogger, John Cole, from a Bush supporting Republican to “Noam Chomsky” really is that. In the linked article, he points out the “settling in for a longer term confrontation with China.”

I think we need to remember how the early Bush administration kept playing cat-and-mouse with the Chinese airspace until an accident happened.

It was pretty obvious then that the idea wasn’t to start a war, the idea was to scare us enough to provide funding on the completely useless national missile defense system. And then, five months later, 9/11 happened and they got their missile defense system budget anyway.

I always found it interesting how the Klingons in Star Trek the original series were the Yellow Peril, then they became the Soviets. I was hoping they’d be the Arabs this time, but it looks like they’re back to being the Chinese again.

I can’t wait. 🙂

Posted on by tychay 4

Requiem for the Republican Party

Last week, the politics of fear ended:

“Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

“If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations — including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11.

“I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

“We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.”
—U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, “Letter to President Bush regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” February 14, 2008

[A requiem after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5

Why Red States vote red

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”
—Mark Penn, Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign

By my count, if you are from Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, or the District of Columbia, the Democratic Party establishment thinks you’re insignificant.

Clearly the party is powered by idiots. These guys have won majority of the popular vote only once in the last 27 years! Triangulation my ass.

I’m so glad idiots like these will have been the first ones against the wall when the revolution came.

Parting Shot.

Posted on by tychay 11

Economic darwinism and bleeding hearts

Tomorrow, the stock market will crash. The fact of this crash is already written in the future’s market, but the depth and duration of the coming recession it may herald is the realm of the astrology and numerology that is part and parcel with macroeconomics.

Like Krugman, I’d like to mark this point in time with another one:

“The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
—Bill Clinton, 1992

The “greed is good” of the 80’s has become resurgent in this decade under the banner of libertarianism. It has provided a rationalization for our irresponsibility with a wishful-thinking outlook via such self-deluding sloganeering as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative.”

And the cornerstone of this Economic Darwinism has been the myth of Reaganomics.

I can only hope that it is among the first casualties of coming recession.

[Bleeding hearts after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 10

…surrounded by reality

At dinner the other day, A— quoted someone saying:

“San Francisco. 14 square miles surrounded by reality.”

I thought that was rather clever as I seem to like a slight self-effacement now and again. I bothered to look up the full reference. It turns out the quote was by our very own Mayor McDreamy and he really said:

“San Francisco, a wacky wonderful place, a place of dreamers and doers. I think someone described San Francisco as ‘49 square miles surrounded by reality.’ I kind of like that.
—Mayor Gavin Newsom, Speech at the Sierra Summit

I guess they didn’t have Google in San Francisco in 2005, because Gavin is quoting a saying about Madison, Wisconsin—the Left Coast of Wisconsin.

Sometimes, reality is a big old let down.

Parting shot. I love this city.

Posted on by tychay 3