Open eyes, open ears, open mind
November 14, 2003
The Truth Laid Bear
So, in an effort to promote edwardpig (this blog), I have registered in the New Blog Showcase at the Truth Laid Bear site.
The upshot is, if more bloggers in the ecosystem vote for edwardpig than for any of the other newbies registered in the showcase, then I get fame.
However, in order to qualify, I am obliged to vote for a minimum of three other newbie blogs myself, by linking to them. So here goes:
- Observations, Complaints and Lamentations. This entry discusses a new Planned Parenthood clinic which is going up in Austin, Texas, and the efforts of the Catholic church and other opponents of legalized abortion to prevent it. I believe this is counterproductive. I believe that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to provide young women with as much information and medical counseling/assistance as possible, and this is exactly what Planned Parenthood is trying to provide. If the anti-choicers have their way, they will have insured that no abortions will take place at the new clinic. But some of the women who would otherwise have had abortions there will still have them, just in other, less well-supervised places. And the real kicker is that many women who would have received counseling and birth control from the clinic will now end up with unintended pregnancies, and I can't imagine that's what the anti-choicers want.
- Bawstin Tech Pundits. This post is about Sprint's plan to broadcast TV on cell phones, and I agree that it's probably not worth the effort.
- Collected Miscellany. Apparently every post to this blog is a book review or interview, which is cool but probably a lot of work. This particular post is an interview with a guy named John Derbyshire, who wrote a book on the Riemann hypothesis. As a former mathematician, I found it interesting.
And I want to extend a special thanks to my colleague over at Mike's Astronomy Weblog, the first to link to edwardpig, even before it was registered in the Showcase.
More on Moore . . .
Prediction: Should Bush win election in 2004 (or weasel his way into the White House, like he did last time), he will eventually nominate Roy Moore to the federal bench. If possible, he'll nominate Moore to the same federal court which ordred him to remove his Ten Commandments monument.
I should have realized this yesterday. But even I am often fooled by the administration's veneer of reasonability, and often forget that Bush will do anything to appeal to religious conservatives.
More on Powell . . .
The White House may want to muzzle Powell. Recall that some diligent folks unearthed a statement he made back in February 2001 to the effect that Iraq had no significant WMD capability. When confronted about this later, Powell replied that he had made the statement early in Bush's term (the implication, I guess, is that Powell hadn't learned his script yet).
And just now I ran across a report published by The Guardian in May of the transcripts of private conversations between Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in which both men express serious doubts about the quality of the evidence of Iraq's weapons capabilities. Apparently Powell and Straw expressed these doubts to one another shortly before Powell appealed to the UN to support military action, and six weeks before the invasion of Iraq.
It takes a special kind of man to go in front of the UN and claim "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence," when he himself believes that the evidence is "at best, circumstantial evidence highly tilted in favour of assessments drawn from them, rather than any actual raw intelligence" (The Guardian's paraphrase of Powell's privately expressed views).
Specifically, it takes a man who's had too much Ambien.
Surreal quotes from the administration
The editor over at blah3.com calls out a rather remarkable admission by Colin Powell in an interview he gave to a New York based Arab newspaper. It seems that Rush Limbaugh isn't the only one who has been in an altered state recently.
And you've probably already heard about the wacky statements General William "my God is bigger than your god" Boykin has made, but I just today learned that he apparently believes that Bill Clinton became president by divine appointment:
- "Boykin routinely told audiences that God elevated George W. Bush to the presidency. 'Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him,' he would say. 'I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there.' Boykin now explains that he believes God routinely decides American elections and has done the same thing for 'Bill Clinton and other presidents.' This is surely the first time a conservative evangelical has argued that Clinton’s election was caused by divine intervention."
November 13, 2003
Thank God
(Now former) Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has been removed from office for his refusal to follow a federal court order to remove a 5,000 pound monument to the Ten Commandments which he had designed, commissioned, and placed in Alabama's Supreme Court building in the middle of the night 2 years ago, without asking for anyone's permission or approval.
Moore's supporters are upset, of course, perhaps because they're concerned that God's law will not be upheld unless they have Roy Moore around to unilaterally make decisions about the architecture of government buildings in Alabama. When asked why he didn't remove the monument, Moore responded: "It would have violated my conscience, violated my oath of office and violated every rule of law I had sworn to uphold."
Um, no, actually, refusing to follow a court order violates his oath of office and every rule of law he had sworn to uphold. See, he had sworn to uphold and comply with federal and state laws, not God's law.
Another interesting quote from this article:
- Greg Sealy, head of the Sitting at His Feet Fellowship in Montgomery, an inner-city mission, said he moved to the United States from Barbados 23 years ago and that this is the "darkest day" he has seen in America in that time.
"The stole my vote. The judiciary stole my vote. I voted for Roy Moore," he said.
Darker than 9/11/2001?
And the judiciary did not steal your vote. You voted for a man who won an election, was sworn into office, and then abused his office. An example of the judiciary stealing your vote would have been if the candidate you voted for got the most total votes, but due to confusing ballots, systematic voter intimidation and fraudulent absentee vote counts, his opponent was declared the winner by less than one one-hundredth of one percent of the votes cast, and then the judiciary blocked a full hand-recount of the ballots in order to preserve the flawed outcome.
That is an example of the judiciary stealing votes.
Bob Harris?
Tom Tomorrow has a guest blogger filling in for him while he's out of town, a guy named Bob Harris. Bob is prolific. Tom's only been gone about 16 hours, and Bob has already posted 5 times.
His most recent post is great. The last paragraph sums up conservative hypocrisy quite nicely.
November 12, 2003
Depressing . . .
Al Gore's speech to MoveOn makes me realize how different things would be today if he were president. There would almost certainly be no war in Iraq. There might not have been a 9/11, and even if there was, there probably would be no Patriot Act. John Ashcroft would certainly be enjoying a well-deserved retirement in Missouri.
Of course, there probably would still be something like No Child Left Behind; the only difference is that it would have adequate funding, since Gore's proposed tax cuts amounted to a fraction of those Bush got passed. And most of the rest of the world would still view America as a defender of Democracy and human rights.
Our allies would still like us.
We must do whatever needs to be done to get King George out of the White House and back to his Crawford ranch.
Thomas Sowell replies!
Hey! I actually received a response from a Townhall conservative to the letter I wrote a few days ago about war profiteering! Here is Thomas Sowell's response, complete and unedited:
- I never cease to be amazed at people who not only use undefinable
words but think that laws should be based on them.
I don't think I managed to persuade him.
November 11, 2003
Support Our Troops!
Do you notice a theme running through my recent posts?
For the record, I have never served in the armed forces, so I don't know what it means to be a veteran. I always thought a veteran was anyone who put oneself in harm's way in service to our country, but apparently I'm wrong about that. Apparently there's also a requirement that one be opposed to peace.
Anyway, since the question of what it means to be a veteran is far too complex, I thought I'd research what it means to 'Support Our Troops'. More and more, it seems that people only say 'Support Our Troops!' when they really mean 'Only Someone Who Hates America Would Question Any Of Bush's Policies!' But in order to conduct an impartial (if not very meaningful) study of what we mean by 'Support Our Troops', I entered the phrase into a Google search. Here's a summary of the first 30 sites Google came up with:
- 6 of the sites merely had links to other sites.
- 2 of the sites were very useful, with lots of good suggestions and information about how you can really support the troops. 2 other sites had their hearts in the right place, but suffered from poor design.
- 3 of the sites had forms to send a 'thank-you' to the troops. Some allow you to personalize your 'thank-you' more than others.
- 3 of the sites were using the issue to promote the conservative political agenda.
Only this TomPaine article mentions the plethora ways in which the Pentagon and the Bush administration are failing to support our troops. This is a shame, because although I believe that there is no place for politics in supporting our troops, I also believe that supporting the troops means supporting all of the troops. And any site devoted to support of the military ought to publicize articles like this one, as well as today's Paul Krugman article, so that people will know what Bush is doing to our fighting men and women and take steps to stop him.
Unfortunately, people are most likely to remember the two positive policy moves Bush made today, as window-dressing for Veterans' Day.
But enough carping. I believe today is an important day to honor our men and women in uniform, past and present. So I'll close by providing links to the few useful sites I found in my Google search:
Write a Letter
- http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html
- http://www.isupportourtroops.us/
- http://anyservicemember.navy.mil/ (this is the best one)
November 10, 2003
Support Our Troops!!
A story in The Army Times tells how The Pentagon is planning to close up to 38 commissaries and "close or transfer control of the 58 schools it operates" in the continental U.S. The Army Times characterizes these actions as "the latest in a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty."
Col. John Kidd, garrison commander of Fort Stewart, Ga., called this action a "betrayal" and stated "As a commander, I will fight this tooth and nail. Folks down there are not just militant on this issue. They will march on Washington."
Man, I hope they do, and I wish them all the best. After all, I know how important it is to Support Our Troops!
Support Our Troops!!
By which, of course, I mean 'Support Our President and his policies.' I'm not so concerned about actual support for the troops currently fighting in Iraq. And as for the troops who fought in the FIRST Gulf War, well, forget about them. Fat, no-bid contracts for Bechtel and Halliburton (with no particular penalty for profiteering, you'll recall) are much more important.
Tom Tomorrow republishes an interesting bit of a White House press conference from last week.
More 'good news' from Iraq
When the administration makes one of its accusations about how the media are failing to report all of the 'good news' from Iraq, one frequently mentioned item is the fact that there is an Iraqi Governing Council which represents the beginning of a transition from U.S. control to Iraqi control of the country.
Well, turns out the news about the IGC isn't as good as the administration has claimed (try to contain your surprise). Yesterday's Washington Post reports that "The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution." An unnamed 'well-placed' U.S. official states that the council has done "nothing of substance" since they were appointed 2.5 months ago.
Apparently, the U.S. is even reconsidering a proposal the French made to transfer authority to the Iraqis, if you can believe that. Sacre bleu!
November 09, 2003
It's official: There was no plan
The Guardian is reporting that the U.S. has initiated "their most furious attack in Iraq since the official end of the war" in response to the escalation in guerilla attacks which has resulted in the deaths of 34 U.S. troops since the start of November.
The Guardian, surprisingly, buries the lead in this story, though. The real news is the revelation that an official Army review of the war thus far reveals (in The Guardian's words) "the army had no plan for the occupation of Baghdad." The report was leaked to GlobalSecurity.org.
I haven't read the whole report (it's 281 pages long), but it's not too difficult to find statements like:
- "We must be ready for success. Follow-on SASO [Security and Support Operations] plans must be developed in advance and the necessary resources readily available for commitment."
- "Prior planning for a force protection mission would have aided the transition."
- "Plan for SASO before combat operations begin and be prepared for transition to SASO early."
- "Facilities engineer support is critical during SASO and has to be planned for prior to the beginning of combat operations."
- The report states that Baghdad International Airport had been ". . . an objective throughout the entire development of the [combat] plan, but no specific plan existed for the occupation of the site."
There's also a section on embedded reporters which I haven't read, but might be interesting.
Many conservatives (Ann Coulter in particular) have chosen to defend Bush by saying, in effect, "When the battle starts, all plans go out the window". That may be so. But the Army still seems to believe that it is nevertheless a good idea to have a plan in the first place.
