Tonight, Bush and Kerry will pretend to debate. It took months of haggling to agree on the rules for this complicated, stylized Kabuki dance. Fortunately for the rest of us, the drinking game rules required just a few minutes and ten shots of Evan Williams. I'm gonna drink until I'm less coherent than George Bush!
Of course, both campaigns have been spinning expectations like crazy and they even have a disinfo campaign on the rules themselves.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Man, I'm as down with DIY as I am with OPP, but home surgery should perhaps be avoided on certain parts of the body.
Tired of hearing Bush's stump speech over and over again? Now thanks to Mr. Sun, you can make your own Bush stump speech.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
There were over 2300 attackes by Iraqi rebels last month and the NYTimes has a handy pictographical guide to all the freedom (in the sense of "free punches") over there.
Bush, Inc.'s response is that things are going as planned. There are no problems and there's nothing to see here except smiling kids drinking Coke. All the violence means that we're winning.
Meanwhile, career civil servants working with the administration think the rebellion is worse than admitted and that the situation is getting worse, not better.
I guess that's why Bush's hometown paper in Crawford, Texas, has endorsed John Kerry. They went with their local boy in 2000, but have become disenchanted with his "smoke-screen agenda". I'm not sure what Bush's plans are for smoke screens, but if they're anything like his missile defense system (which is only 20% effective), I'd be pretty disenchanted with them too.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
A recent national Gallup poll shows Bush trouncing Kerry, which would be bad news for Kerry if the poll were accurate. Fortunately, it's not.
It's true that Gallup asked a bunch of likely voters who they prefer, and it's true more of them said Bush than Kerry. But for some reason, Gallup interviewed a lot more Republicans than Democrats. It shouldn't surprise anybody that a bunch of Republicans are voting for Bush.
What's great is that Bush's margin of victory was less than the bias of the polling group. The interview pool was 12% more Republican than Democratic, yet Bush's edge was just 8%. I wonder what a fair poll would have found.
Another thing to note is that polls select likely voters from people who voted in prior elections. As a result, all these "likely voter" polls are missing all the people that have registered to vote just for this election. It's also missing people that usually don't vote, but will in 2004 because the battle is so contentious. My gut says most of the new registrations are Anybody-But-Bush folks.
Regardless, ignore the polls. The only poll that matters is on November 2. Go register. Register your friends. Vote Kerry.
Via AmericaBlog.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
How many Iraqis do we have to kill to save the country? At least 3500 and counting. That's how many Iraqis have been killed by Iraqi police and coallition forces since April 5. Those deaths are in addition to the 13,700 Iraqis we've wounded.
The good news in these numbers is that the Iraqi resistance has only managed to kill half as many people as we have. Is that what Bush means when he says we're winning?
Another good question: How many did we kill and wound prior to April 5? Nobody knows because we didn't bother to keep track. If you think we didn't keep track because it's hard to justify killing and wounding tens of thousands of Iraqis to prevent attacks that kill a few thousand Americans, then you only hate America and all its freedoms, you terrorist Commie.
Via Matthew Yglesias.
Update: Matthew's blog has an ad for Betty Castor's Florida Senate run. The ad has a picture in which she looks surprisingly like Herman Munster. No word yet on whether this helps or hurts her candidacy.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
My girlfriend keeps threatening to get me these for Christmas. Yes, those really are mittens built for two. It's yet another reason to be happy I'm spending the winter in Puerto Rico.
The NYTimes obits Midcentury Modern and crowns Directionalism the young upstart king. Of course, the only problem with Directional furniture is that it's ugly. Even mid-80's minimal modern pieces are tacky formica monstrosities, so before we let the taste makers from Times Square burn our furniture, let's see if people are really willing to trade their sleek, low-slung Le Corbusier chaise lounges for a giant aluminum cookie-cutter turned on its side.
In Lousisiana, land of haters and bigots, voters have passed their own little hate amendment. And they wonder why hurricane Karma just trashed their state.
Assholes.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Annan said at the UN today, "Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it." Not only is he slamming Bush for wiping his ass on the International furniture, he's reminding us all that Bush is a pretty poor pretender to the throne.
I'd vote for Annan. Let's pass the Schwarzenegger Amendment so he can run instead of Kerry.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
San Diego had a problem with dangerous, illegal street racing. They coupled harsh penalties for racers and spectators with weekly legal drag racing nights at Qualcomm stadium. The nights are open to all and cost just $20 to race or $5 to watch.
The legal venue keeps the dangerous activity off the streets and puts it in a venue where it can be done more safely and under supervision. Car deaths and injuries (a big killer of teens) is down in the area and many of the formerly illegal racers are now happily complying with the law.
To me, this is a model of good governance. Instead of just pounding people with penalties (which doesn't work in this context or any other), they found a way to make a dangerous practice less dangerous. They accepted that they won't eliminate the dangerous activity and instead worked to reduce the harm caused by that activity. If only the racist drug warriors would do the same.
Kudos to San Diego.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
On Thursday, the Yankees will play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to make up a game that was cancelled by hurricanes. The Yanks have the best record in the American League. The Rays are 30 games out of first place and their season is over. Anybody want to come watch the Yankees ronk all over them?
Because the game is a make up, tickets for any seat in the stadium are just $5. Also, hot dogs and sodas are half-price. Proceeds from the game go to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
If you want to get to a ballgame this season, this is one of your last chances. They only play six more games, and three are sold out. If you're an American, you gotta go to a baseball game once in a while.
The game is at 3:00. We'll be there. Who wants to come? Take the afternoon off and let's day trip to the the Bronx. Come play hooky with us tomorrow. It's for charity.
Email any of the Brutal Huggers if you're interested.
Mark Kleiman makes the case for why Kerry's Iraq position is nuanced and those of us who don't see it just lack the ability to comprehend anything more subtle than a punch in the nose. He has no problem with Kerry voting for the war and then saying it's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kleiman says
There is, then, no inconsistency in saying both (1) that changing regimes in Iraq was a valid goal and (2) that waging war when and as we did was imprudent.
Kerry wriggles out of flip flopping by saying he was abstractly ok with forcing Hussein out of Iraq. He claims that when he later learned the flimsiness of the evidence for WMD and saw Bush botching the entire thing, he saw that it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What's wrong with this is that the entire anti-war bloc (about half the country) was astute enough to see the WMD claims were bogus and that Bush would botch the entire thing. America's alienation of its allies and the problems in post-regime-change Iraq weren't suprises to anybody but Bush and Kerry. If Kerry's excuse is "I didn't flip flop, I just have bad judgment", he shouldn't be president. We already have a president with more conviction than judgment.
The vote for the war was a vote for this war in this place at this time. If Kerry saw that coming, he shouldn't have voted for it. If he didn't see that coming, he's not fit for office.
My own guess is that he saw it coming but didn't thought it would hurt him politically to vote against the war.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I've never been afraid of genetically modified foods. The potential upside of GM food is that it will revolutionize the world, end hunger and chronic malnutrition. We can use GM foods to make foods healthier, heartier, better-tasting and cheaper. GM fibers will change the materials that make up our daily lives. And GM organisms will produce chemicals and drugs that will save millions of lives.
Unfortunately, the potential downside is similarly huge-- trashed ecosystems, extinction of natural crops, super strains of killer plants, and refreshingly addictive tomacco.
My desire for more GM food and research is based on a belief that the downside risk can be pretty easily eliminated. GM seeds can be engineered to be barren. Any plant that can't reproduce can't run amok for more than a generation. Obviously we need to be careful and do the research and make sure things are safe, but barren seeds are a pretty foolproof protection.
So bring on nature's bounty. The second green revolution will change the world even more radically than the first.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Michael Chu has a beautiful cooking blog aimed at people with analytical minds. Recipes are presented as tables, and he works methodically through various issues related to cooking. You'll find informative articles on knives, cutting boards, fats, oils and more. If you approach cooking as part art, part science, check out Cooking for Engineers.
While I try not to burden this blog with it, I am a huge Yankee fan and a huge Steinbrenner fan. Steinbrenner gets slammed for carrying a huge payroll, one that no other team can match. The competitive advantage of outspending your rivals by $100 million can't be denied.
But the Yankees are not just a rich team buying championships. It's true that the Yankees spend a lot because they make a lot of money. But they also spend a lot because Steinbrenner invests his profits back into the team instead of putting the money in his pockets. Other teams (the ones complaining that Steinbrenner is outspending them) are making huge bank off their teams. If they had more money, they wouldn't spend it on player salaries. They'd pocket it. And we know this is true becase as these teams have taken in more money through revenue sharing and the luxury tax, their payroll hasn't increased at all.
Buster Olney, writing for ESPN, wants to see Steinbrenner go to Cooperstown. I agree. When Steinbrenner goes, it will be the end of an era, one that won't be repeated by his successor.
Digital Journalist has a page of 100 Photos that Changed the World. They're all Life photos, they're all mezmerizing, and they're all heart breakingly depressing.
Clicky the linky at your own risk.
China might not have free, fair and open elections, but then again neither do we. One thing they do have is an orderly succession of power, which means they got it all over us. We can keep patting ourselves on the back for muddling through the 2000 coup without a civil war, but but maybe we should rethink the whole democracy thing. What's the point of having elections if they're rigged?
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
All the timeless questions of the universe are religious in nature. Debates range from creation to evil to the afterlife to morality and religiion is the quest for authoritiatve answers. The questions are huge and they are answered with suprising brevity, even pith, in The Official God Faq.
My only remaining question is, "What makes it official?"
Anybody who's nobody understands that New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws need to go. So it's not surprising that an underdog challenger won the Democratic primary for Albany DA on a drug reform platform. The challenger, David Soares, pitched his message of getting politics out of the criminal justice system and beat the get-tough-on-crime incumbent.
Congrats, Mr. Soares. In November, we'll celebrate your victory as one more step towards ending the racist drug war.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Kofi Annan has finally stopped pussyfooting around. He's come right out and said that America's invasion of Iraq was illegal.
This doesn't change much. It's not like the UN can sanction America. And whether the invasion was legal or not, it doesn't change the situation in Iraq, which is where attention needs to be focused.
This is America. We do what we want. International law is ours to make, break and dictate.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
New York recommits to recycling. When Bloomberg gutted NYC's recycling program, everybody screamed and howled. Sure the old program wasted a lot of money and didn't result in much recycling, but a lot of people took up the "mend it, don't end it" cry.
Bloomberg brought back some recycling, but the program still wasn't really working. And now, after three years of tinkering and brainstorming, we get an innovative, widely-praised private-public approach that seems poised to both lowre our trash costs and recycle a lot of waste. Bloomberg, it seems, has done something right for once.
Of course, the deeply skeptical cynic in me predicts this will cost us several times more than promised and we'll be reading a Daily News expose on how all the recylcables are lining landfills within 5 years. Hush, little cycnic, maybe this one will be ok.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
The secretary who would have typed the Bush-dissing National Guard memos says they're forgeries. But she also says their content is right-- i.e. while she didn't type these specific memos, she typed something quite like them.
Meanwhile, Dan Rather, tells the Observer that Bush could sidestep this whole document farce by answering three questions plainly and honestly:
- Did Mr. Bush get preferential treatment for the Texas Air National Guard?
- Was then-Lieutenant Bush suspended for failing to perform up to Texas and Air Guard standards?
- Did then-Lieutenant Bush refuse a direct order from his military superior to take a required examination?
It seems to me the answers to these questions are "yes", "yes", and "yes", followed by "big fucking deal". But that's just me and maybe I got the extra credit question wrong.
Rather defends his story, saying
It’s never been fully, completely denied by the Bush-Cheney campaign or even the White House that he was suspended for meeting the standards of the Air Force or that he didn’t show up for a physical. The longer we go without a denial of such things—this story is true.
The gauntlet has been thrown. Bush's response comes via his wife, who has rendered her expert opnion that the docs are both altered and forgeries. Setting aside the obvious logical problems with that, we can all just forget them now because if she says it's bunk, it's case closed. After all, she's a librarian and she knows from documents.
Ultimately, it all comes down to... me not really caring whether he flew those last few months. Like a lot of rich kids, Bush hid from Vietnam in the National Guard. Strings were pulled. He got favors. None of that is affected by the memos, and if Bush's privileged admission into the Champagne Unit is a voting issue for you, I'm sure you've already made up your mind about it, forgery or not.
I came of age after Vietnam and I was raised to believe that if America ever went to war again, I should oppose that war and refuse to fight. This refusal wasn't an idealistic stand for pacifism. It's statement was really just "I ain't gonna die in no white man's war". My mother cried the day I sent in my selective service card, and she assured me the whole family would sooner move to Canada than see me in uniform.
Bush ducked service that I would have ducked. Sure, he used influence to do it and you can probably say some poorer, less connected kid went in his place, but I have a hard time judging him for that. If you had his options arrayed before you, what would you have chosen? Perhaps a better question is what would you have chosen for your son or your brother? Even on my beer budget, I know I'd chose champagne for my family every time.
There's a lot of reasons I don't like Bush, but I can't honestly say his National Guard service is one of them.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Remember when Abu Ghraib became synonymous with torturing and killing innocent Iraqi men, women and children? It turns out we all rushed to judgment way too soon. Before deciding that Abu Ghraib would forever stand for American shame, guilt and horror, we really should have made sure there weren't other Iraqi cities vying for the honor.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
Burning Man is over, dude. Black Rock City is going, going, gone. Guess I have to stop neglecting this blog. Soon. I promise.
In the finest of democratic traditions, Vladimir Putin proposes to put an end to Russian elections of governors and independent lawmakers. They will instead be chosen by his appointment. It's a democracy of one. It's one man, one vote (but that man is Putin).
Apparently, there is all kinds of support for this plan. The major parties love it. The governors love it. Nobody's asked the voters how they feel.
Yay democracy!
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I've long thought cemetaries to be rather tasteless and ghoulish. I'm not the only person to see that if we insist on burying our dead, there has to be a better, more life-affirming, less mournful way to go about it. And now there is.
Italian artists have designed a biodegradable coffin that holds the deceased in the fetal position. The body is planted in the ground like a seed, with a young tree above it. Over time, the tree grows and is nourished by the decomposing body.
Imagine forests instead of cemetaries, where we tend to living trees instead of cutting back the plants around a headstone. It's hard to change a culture's death rituals, but I hope this idea catches on.
Via Boing Boing.
The Washingtonpost has a good article on the Assault Weapons Ban being a "big nothing" ban on gun cosmetics.
The only reason to renew the ban is as a stalking horse for more stringent legislation. And whether you want more strict legislation or not, that's the kind of thing that should be debated on its merits and not snuck through by incrementally strengthening a toothless ban.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Yes, yes, Burning Man is over. I haven't thought about this website in a month (and apparently neither have my co-bloggers), and I come back to some truly hideous news. When I left NY, the Yankees were up 10.5 games over the Red Sox and I come back to a 3.5 game lead, an injured Kevin Brown, and an under-utilized Steve Karsay. It's like if I don't watch every game they fall apart.
In other news, John Kerry has pretty much managed to lose my vote. I'm not voting for Bush or anything stupid like that, but I won't be pulling JFK's lever in November.
What gets me is that Kerry doesn't have a clear, consistent and easily articulated position on Iraq. For many, Iraq is the biggest and most important issue this year. The ways these two candidates differ in their approaches to Iraq will determine a lot of votes. Despite this, Kerry has managed to be a muddled mess about his past positions on Iraq and refused to explain how he'll get us out of Iraq if he's elected.
One day, he's all against the whole Iraq endeavor (wrong war, wrong time, wrong way, wrong everything). The next, he stands by his war resolution vote. Sort of. He's not sure whether he supported invasion or just the threat of invasion. And if he can't find some conviction and the courage to take a sure stance, I just can't vote for the guy. Simple as that.
If Kerry were president would we have invaded Iraq? Would we have rattled the saber, stepped to the line, ignored the problem? Just what would Kerry have done differently that would lead us to a better place than Bush has? At least with Bush, you know what you get. You might not like it (I don't), but you can see it coming.
All I can say is praise jeebus I live in NY, where my vote doesn't count. I'll be writing in Grandpa Al Lewis.
Update: Time Magazine invited Kerry to draw the contrast between himself and Bush on Iraq. Here's Kerry's response:
The contrast could not be clearer. They spent a lot of money trying to confuse people, but I have been consistent. I would not have taken the country into war the way he did. I would not have put young Americans in harm's way without a plan to win the peace. I would not have interrupted as abruptly the effort to build alliances with other countries. I would not have turned my back on the international community. And Americans are paying a $200 billion cost today because this President rushed to war.
In other words, not one word about what Kerry would have done. Would Kerry have taken us to war? Under what circumstances and in what way? What would have been Kerry's plan to win the peace? How would he have handled our alliances differently? How come we don't know the answers to these questions six weeks before the election?
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #