2004 08 31 - Tue
posted by jack at 15:19 CET in / politics 
In democratic circles, John McCain is often considered to be fairly tolerable (for a republican), and is sometimes thought to be somewhat "like us", since he has had some public disagreements with Bush's policies.
At the RNC yesterday, however, most of this went out the window, at least as far as I'm concerned. McCain made a clear jab at Michael Moore (which Moore seemed to take pretty well) in the midst of his praise of the Bush regime's foreign policy mess:
"Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- not our political opponents, and certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker [...] who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace when, in fact, it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves, and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children held inside their walls."
Frankly, I'm beginning to get pretty tired of this sort of straw-man argument where the liars of the right claim that anyone who questions Bush's policies is actually a big Saddam supporter. When has Moore, or any liberal for that matter, ever claimed that "Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace" or anything similar? On the contrary, well-informed liberals have been critical of Saddam since the 70's and 80's, since even before the time when
the Gipper sent Rummy to shake the old bastard's hand and sell him some weapons.
2004 08 30 - Mon
posted by jack at 21:02 CET in / politics
Garrison Keiller wrote a nice essay with the incredibly long title "
We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore: How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk? -- In These Times" which everybody should read. A choice quote:
[...] angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
2004 08 18 - Wed
posted by jack at 22:21 CET in / politics
An interesting but
huge article explains what conservatism really boils down to (maintaining a ruling aristocracy) and the tricks used to keep this antiquated world-view in power.
Check it out if you've got a half-hour to burn.
posted by jack at 16:01 CET in / politics
Check out William Rivers Pitt's excellent
open letter to George W. Bush. Good stuff from
truthout.
2004 08 13 - Fri
posted by jack at 20:24 CET in / compute / blogging
OK, things have been pretty quiet around here. I've been busy with traveling and ongoing parental leave, but at some point soon I'll get back on track with the nuthole, and hopefully post a new version of
spinvaders soon.
"Re: I Can't Believe I'm Not a Millionaire" by "Jin Ryu"