Just saw the Charlie Gibson interview...

(Yes, a bit late)....as a result, I have decided to run for office. If someone so devoid of intellect can be that close to the nuke button, I'm sure I can snag a place on the local school board at the very least..

thus spake Zarathustra.

The McCain/Palin Hypocrisy

McCain-ites and Republicans are infuriated that the media "went after" Sarah Palin's family after the news came out that Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was pregnant and unwed. Aside from the Daily Kos and CBC, however, I have seen no media outlet bashing Bristol Palin. They have simply been reporting on the story, which Sarah Palin herself announced to the media. On the other hand, Sarah Palin is more than happy to parade her Iraq-bound son Track in front of the media as an example of her dedication to the military. She's more than happy to discuss her newborn special-needs child as a reason that the American people should believe in her. She's showing classic "have it both ways" political rhetoric.

But even more insulting and insidious is the conservative right's insistence that the dialogue should not focus on her family--that the public and the media should stay out of her private life. I agree that one should tread very carefully in approaching the subject of politician's families, and that private matters should be private. But I see a huge amount of hypocrisy in a woman who would so willingly inject her opinions into my friend's private lives--for instance, my gay friends who are in stable, committed long-term relationships and want the same rights as us heterosexuals do...and my good friend who made the choice to terminate an unexpected pregnancy. Sarah Palin and John McCain and all of their windbag cheerleaders have no problem inserting themselves into those private decisions, into those people's private lives. Conservative Republicans have no business fiercely guarding their privacy, especially if they don't think it's a right protected by our Constitution.

Don't even try putting lipstick on this pit bull...

If the goal was to fire up hard-core conservative Republicans, Sarah Palin's speech was a tour de force. If the goal was to tick off mainstream and progressive independents and moderates, Sarah Palin's speech was a tour de force. If the goal was to appeal to voters based on small-town values and motherhood, Sarah Palin's speech was a tour de force. If the goal was to give an electrifying and bellicose oration with little in the way of substance and decorum, Sarah Palin's speech was a tour de force.

Most objective observers, however, realize that there's a whole lot more to running this country than degrading one's opponent, and distorting his positions. I could have been more inclined to look at the Republican ticket as a legitimate choice if they could focus on issues and how they would address them. Instead, this convention has solidified my opposition to this ticket. I would have warmed more to Sarah Palin if she would have focused less on mocking Barack Obama's laudable experience helping the poor and downtrodden on Chicago's South Side and his remarkable rise in Democratic politics, and more on why she believes him to be unqualified. Attacking him on the issues would have endeared her more to a voter like me--a voter who doesn't take kindly to personal attack politics, from wherever it may come. Of course, now that the Republicans have opened the door to attack politics, I fully expect the Obama campaign to come out with all guns blazing.

Mitt Romney demonstrated classic straw man argument tactics tonight

1. Oh, those Democrats, they think the solution is big government and raising taxes.

--Conveniently forgetting that the Bush administration presided over one of the biggest government expansions in history, and that the "raising taxes" that Obama proposes is simply a roll back of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans. But that's too convenient for this moron to forget.

2. We need to kick those liberals out of Washington!

--Conveniently forgetting that 6 of the last 8 years have seen Washington dominated by conservative Republicans, and the 2 years that Democrats have dominated Congress have been crippled by Bush's vetoes. (Not that I'm making excuses for the uber--pitiful Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who might as well offer themselves up on the platter of history for their wimpiness.)

3. The Democrats don't understand that EVIL NEEDS TO BE DEFEATED.

--Conveniently excluding any sense of nuance, which intelligent people usually see in any issue. It's not that OBL isn't a bad man, but if there's anything we've learned from the last 7 years, it's that we can't defeat terrorism and extremist ideology with a flyswatter alone. We need to begin to win the battle of ideas and ideology, and to relate to the people who might otherwise be disposed to this ideology. There is a time for brute force and a time for intelligent discretion. Unfortunately, Mitt Romney and his man John are demonstrating that all they know how to do is the former. YEAH, THAT's THE GUY WE NEED!

Whatever.

Go home, McCain. As an American, I officially reject the Repubs as American citizens.

What Would REAL Change Look Like?

"Change" is obviously shaping up to be the buzzword thus far in this year's primaries. We can thank President Bush for that--his presidency has been such an absolute disaster that the best way to gain support amongst voters is to dissociate one's self as much as possible from his example. (So much for that legacy, Mr. President. A big pat on the back.)

To be fair, every single new candidate who comes along wanting the presidency campaigns on some permutation of the idea of change. That's because it's human instinct to want to see society grow, evolve, progress, and reach out in new directions. Some of us resist that urge as much as possible, but most astute Americans know that change is, most of the time, indeed good.

But let's talk about that big elephant lurking in the corner of this room called the '08 presidential campaign. I not-so-lovingly refer to him as "the system."
The facts, my dear jurors:

First, America's political system feeds off of the rivalry between two powerful parties. No other party or independent individual can really touch that, although we have had independent candidates who have been able to influence the outcome of elections by attracting disillusioned or independent voters sick and tired of having to choose between a Democrat or a Republican. Our two-party system prevents the introduction of any truly dissonant ideas. It forces people who may start out with divergent ideas to fall into line. Yes, unity is a good thing, but not when it channels intelligent people into the Nietzschean herd mentality. This country was founded on the philosophy that different viewpoints should have the opportunity to be heard, and to matter. As long as the only true prospect is having either a Democrat and Republican in the White House, there can be no true change.

Second, there is no way for a presidential hopeful to succeed in our system without having to waste 3/4 of his or her time raising money. Money has become the turbine that drives our political system, and it serves to shut out those who might not have the name-recognition, visibility, or access to deep pockets. It unfairly puts certain candidates at an advantage, and it is an advantage that is not grounded in the superiority of credentials or capability, but rather in their fame or perhaps their ability to shmooze. Until there is a level playing-field in terms of the way that money influences elections, there can be no true change.

Third, American voters do not use a very rational thought process to choose candidates. Sorry, guys. I am an American too, and I love my country, but I have to tell you the truth (which is something your politicians are not usually willing to do, by the way). The great majority of us who go out and vote in elections are not too sophisticated when it comes to discerning what makes a good presidential candidate and what doesn't. We've chosen well at times, but on the whole, American voters pretty consistently demonstrate that their criteria are not intellectually honest, but rather emotional or whimsical. We choose candidates based on "charisma," whatever that means, or "personality." We choose candidates based on our visceral reaction to them--their looks, their voices, their laughs, our image of them. If we actually chose our candidates based on the question of who is most qualified to be president of the U.S. (leaving aside the fact that the most qualified candidates do not even run), Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson would still be in the race--and Rudy Giuliani would not even have polled at 1% from Day One of his candidacy. And, obviously, George W. Bush would never have gotten close to the White House 8 years ago.

So there you have it. Change. The candidates can bandy the term about--but I think it's pretty clear that we're nowhere close to it. No matter what John Edwards tells you.

The Surge is Incomplete at Best, and Disastrous At Worst...

There is a time to persevere in the pursuit of a goal, and then there is a time to shift direction away from sure defeat. A wise individual knows the difference between the two. It is now time for the Bush administration to do the latter in Iraq, and finally begin being honest with himself and with reality. The majority of the American public thinks the war is and was a mistake, and opposes further U.S. involvement. The November 2006 election was essentially a referendum on the Iraq War, and the verdict was unequivocally negative. But on Wednesday night, Bush took his middle finger and threw it up in the American public's face. There's no other way to describe the decision to add 21,000 more troops to the mix.

The war has stretched on for nearly four years, costing the American taxpayer billions of dollars per month. Some experts predict that the war will end up costing us more than $1 trillion. Thousands of American soldiers have died, tens of thousands more wounded, many of them catastrophically so. And I still have not heard a viable estimate of the amount of Iraqis who have died or been injured as a result of this war. Yet, with all of the resources that have been dedicated to the war, we not only lack a coherent goal or end-state that we are trying to achieve, but we lack the resources to continue persevering while we scramble to find a realistic one.

To distract attention from these realities, Bush and his supporters dismiss criticism of the surge strategy as defeatism, and any talk of drawdown as options for failure. And that is all they say! "The stakes are too high in Iraq to lose." "Failure now would embolden the terrorists." These are straw-man arguments. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NB) so passionately pointed out on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, no one opposing the troop surge is advocating defeat in Iraq. But we do have to accept that more of the same is not getting the job done. And we have to acknowledge that the mission to be accomplished in Iraq is going to require so much more than military muscle. That mission is one that will require diplomatic strength, political compromise, and skillful mediation.

Some say that it's impossible to focus on the latter three goals without establishing some baseline level of security. Perhaps. But one thing is for sure. The sooner we begin planning and implementing a diplomatic and political strategy in Iraq, the sooner we'll be ready to move on in Iraq to disengagement. So why not think about it, and strategize it? This near-term fixation is what got us into trouble in the first place with the postwar situation in Iraq--the lack of research and lack of planning. So why not learn from that mistake?

The real mistake in my view is simply adding more troops to the conflict without any strategy or plan for solving the underlying issues that are leading to sectarian strife and civil war. No amount of troops will be able to address those issues. And while a short-term surge in troop levels might assist the forces in Iraq in stabilizing the place, the surge will not do anything to solve the conflicts that are giving rise to the violence in the first place. In other words, a troop surge is just a Band-Aid.

Bush has said that he plans to "double the number of reconstruction teams" in Iraq in order to disseminate experts who will aid the process of Iraqi reconciliation, but there is no clear explication of what that means. There needs to be very serious, and clear-cut strategies for addressing the political problems, otherwise a troop surge is just more of the same. Perhaps the President needs to dispatch a special envoy or set of envoys to take charge of the diplomatic side of things. Or maybe he needs to be clearer about what he intends to do to help speed the reconciliation process that is so central to the future of Iraq and our eventual disengagement. Without this, a simple troop surge is just more of the same.

A Very Happy New Year!

Today for many is a day of recovery from hangovers. For me, it's feeling more like a day of reflection, or of hope, even. As hokey as that sounds.

I won't bore you with my personal aspirations for the coming year, nor my endless list of New Years resolutions. (I'm still pretty much 0-29 in sticking to my New Years resolutions anyway.) What I will say is that I hope this year finds us making strides forward with the world's problems. I hope we begin being honest with ourselves, about our good decisions, and our not-so-good decisions, our vices and our virtues (in no way meant to conjure parallels with the Taliban), and our strengths and our weaknesses. I also hope that we as Americans can begin to find an opportunity for peace. Let's hope the war ends this year, and let's hope that Iraq begins to find some stability. Let's hope that the Darfur situation begins to calm down finally. Let's hope that corporate leaders will begin to find ways to make health care more affordable and accessible. Let's hope that the forces of peace, equality, reason, and human compassion can finally make some headway against the pervasively dominant forces of fundamentalism, vengeance, intolerance, ignorance, and belligerence. (All of the latter negative qualities are made more dangerous when mixed with utter stupidity, which is unfortunately also rampant these days.)

But most of all, my New Year's wish for everyone--from heads-of-state to grassroots activists, from the consumer to the journalist--is for the rare, but priceless, attribute of objectivity to begin making a comeback.