Bush’s Propaganda Offensive Fails To Inspire

Ken AshfordBush & Co., IraqLeave a Comment

Bush took some time off from his record-breaking vacation to give a "major address" intended to shore up support for the Iraq War, which is going badly and causing even conservatives to question.

So Bush gave the speech, and it was the same thing as always.  A friendly audience of war veterans, and so on.  And the speech itself?  A lot of patriotic jargon and references to 9/11, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The only thing novel was this:

Bush made a rare reference of the U.S. military death toll — more than 2,000 killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

"We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for … by staying on the offensive against the terrorists, and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight — fight and win the war on terror," he told the VFW convention.

You gotta love that logic:  we should continue to allow our soldiers to die, so that those who have already died will not have died in vain.

Mr. President, does the phrase "throwing good money after bad" mean anything to you?

I sometimes feel bad for the right wing these days.  They have to defend a war policy that is (a) losing; and (b) wholly indefensible in the first place.  They’ve simply have run out of talking points that they can say without embarrassment. 

So you can understand why they looked to Bush to bail them out, and give them the message to spread.

Bush, sadly, did not rise to the occasion, and conservatives seem a little, well, annoyed.  Like this guy at Redstate:

Former Presidential Speechwriter, David Frum, has some thoughtful words on President Bush’s current promotion of the war effort. I am reminded of a diary we promoted the other day, which argued that Bush supporters are tired of defending the President when the President himself does not defend his administration. Frum writes

Again, supporters of the war can do our bit to try to change minds. But the biggest megaphone in the country belongs to President Bush – and much depends on whether he uses it well or badly.

He is using it very badly indeed.

Let me single out just one single but maybe decisive problem. Again and again during the Bush presidency – and yesterday most recently – the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chose. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says … nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.

If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him – especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.

It’s almost as if conservatives can’t understand why the lame horse they backed isn’t leading the pack as it comes around the back turn.

But the problem isn’t Bush’s speech about the war — it’s the war itself.  I imagine Bush’s speechwriters, sensing the growing public dissatisfaction with the war, huddled around to come with a new game plan.  A new rationale, if you will, to inspire people to the pro-war side. 

But they had none.  So they pulled out the tried-and-true playbook.  Appeal to patriotism and fear.  Oh, and 9/11.  Always 9/11.

Not Angry

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Congress, Corporate Greed, Crime, Foreign Affairs, Godstuff, Iraq, Plamegate, Republicans, Right Wing Punditry/Idiocy, War on Terrorism/Torture1 Comment

In response to a comment on that his blog is "full of hatred and anger", Corrente not only denied the charge, but set out to compile a list of things he was not angry about, as well as things he doesn’t hate. 

It’s not only long, but a work-in-progress, so check out  Corrente’s site for the latest revisions and updates:

  1. We are not angry at Bush for his war of choice in Iraq.
    1. We are not angry at Bush because 2,000 Americans have died in Iraq, together with many thousands of Iraqis.
    2. We are not angry at Bush because in Iraq quot;the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
    3. Nor are we angry at Bush because the WMDs were not found.
      1. Nor angry that the aluminum tubes story was not true.
      2. Nor angry that the drones story was not true.
      3. Nor angry that the bioweapons story was not true.
      4. Nor angry that the "yellowcake uranium" story was not true.
    4. Nor are we angry at  Colin Powell because nothing he said in his UN speech to justify the war was true.
    5. Nor are we angry at Bush for claiming that Iraq and 9/11 were connected when they were not.
    6. Nor do we hate the members of the press who enabled Bush’s war of choice.
      1. Especially we do not hate Judy Miller whose WMD reportage helped Bush "fix the facts"
        1. Nor her boss, Bill Keller.
          1. Nor his boss, Arthur Sulzberger.
    7. We are not angry at Donald Rumseld because his "Revolution in Military Affairs" resulted in sending our troops into urban warfare in Iraq without proper armor.
      1. Nor do we hate Donald Rumsfeld because after three years the problem is not yet corrected.
      2. Moreover, we do not hate Donald Rumsfeld for using an automatic signature machine to sign condolence letters to the parents of dead soldiers.
      3. And furthermore, we do not hate Donald Rumsfeld for taking souvenirs from the Pentagon site on 9/11, a felony.
    8. We are not angry at Alberto Gonzales for writing memos purporting to justify torture.
      1. Nor are we angry at the higherups who set up torture camps and then let their subordinates take the blame when the truth came out.
        1. Nor do we hate the higherups who got promotions after torture occured on their watch
      2. Neither do we hate the doctors and psychiatrists who violated their Hippocratic oaths by abetting torture at Gitmo.
      3. And if the torture techniques we have spread in Iraq are ever used in this country, we promise not to get angry about it.
    9. We are not angry at the Republicans for losing $8 billion dollars meant for Iraq.
    10. We are not angry that Iraq has become what it was not before the war, a training ground for terrorists.
    11. And we promise we will not get angry if Iraq ends up as an Islamic theocracy.
      1. And we further promise not to get angry that 2,000 Americans will have died to make that happen.
    12. And we promise never to hate the members of the White House Iraq Group (Hughes, Libby, Card, Matalin, Wilkinson, and Rove), who worked together to make it all possible.
      1. Even if Bush gave them all promotions. Every single one of them.
  2. We are not angry at Bush for stealing election 2000 in Florida by using the "felon list."
    1. Nor do we hate those who helped him to do so.
      1. We do not hate Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
      2. We do not hate Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Bush’s brother
      3. We do not hate the freepers who staged the "bourgeios riot" to intimidate the vote counters, not even Buckhead.
      4. We do not hate the majority in Bush v. Gore, not even Antonin Scalia
      5. We do not hate Al Gore for not getting all the votes counted.
    2. Nor are we angry at the Republicans for claiming a "Bush Mandate" in 2000.
    3. Neither are we are angry at the press for dropping the story.
  3. We are not angry at Bush for stealing election 2004 in Ohio by preventing Democrats from voting
    1. Nor do we hate those who helped him to do it
      1. We do not hate Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
      2. We do not hate any Republican election official
        1. We do not hate Tom Noe and his wife, Bernadette, even though they steered contracts to Diebold for machines that left no paper trial.
        2. We do not hate the Republicans in Warren County who closed their building during the count, claiming a terrorist threat when there was no threat
      3. Nor do we hate any of the electronic voting machine manufacturers
        1. We do not hate them, even though they are all Republican contributors
      4. Nor do we hate any of the authorities that certify electronic voting machines
        1. We do not hate them, even though they too are all Republican contributors
    2. Nor are we angry at the press for refusing to cover the story.
  4. We are not angry at Bush for making all his appearances before screened audiences of Republicans only.
    1. We do not hate Bush for doing this during the campaign.
    2. We do not hate the Republicans for removing citizens who visibly did not support Bush from campaign events.
      1. We do not even hate the Republicans for removing schoolteachers and then stripsearching them.
    3. We do not hate Bush for doing the same thing during his Social Security barnstorming
      1. Nor are we angry because we, as taxpayers, must pay for events that we will never be allowed to attend.
    4. Nor are we angry because White House political operatives removed citizens from a barnstorming rally while impersonating Secret Service agents.
      1. Nor are we angry that the White House will not tell us the name of this operative.
  5. Because we consider hypocrisy the tribute that vice plays to virtue, and a natural part of the human condition, we do not hate any Republican who exhibits it, not even those put forward to us as moral exemplars
    1. We do not hate Rush Limbaugh, even though he had a 30-a-day Oxycontin habit
      1. In fact, we do not even hate Rush Limbaugh because he got his housekeeper to buy his drugs for him.
    2. We do not hate Bill Bennett, even though he had a million-dollar gambling habit.
    3. We do not hate Bill O’Reilly, even though we can’t forget the word "loofah."
    4. We do not hate Newt Gingrich for handing his wife the divorce papers when she was in a hospital bed recovering from cancer.
    5. We do not hate Henry Hyde for his "youthful indiscretions."
      1. Or Robert Livingstone
        1. Or Arnold
    6. Especially we are not angry at the Republicans for spending $70 million investigating a blowjob.
    7. We do not hate war-backers who do not or have not served their country in the military
      1. We do not hate any administration official who has not served the country in the military.
        1. Above all, we do not hate Dick Cheney for having "other priorities."
      2. Nor do we hate Bush, even though his missing year in TANG has never been explained.
      3. Nor do we hate those Republican war-backers who do not ask their eligible adult children to serve.
        1. Not even Bush.
      4. Especially we do not hate Jonah Goldberg, even though he says he can’t serve because he has a job and kids.
    8. We do not hate gay Republicans who back a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
      1. Not even Ken Mehlman.
        1. Let alone "Jeff Gannon."
  6. Nor are we angry that Bush used Homeland Security as a pork barrel in the red states while leaving blue state cities unprotected against nuclear attack.
  7. We are never angry at Beltway Dems even when they are gutless and feckless.
    1. Especially we are not angry at John Kerry for taking the Swift Boat attacks lying down.
    2. Nor are we angry at John Kerry for not keeping the Ohio 2004 in the forefront of the public mind.
      1. Even though he solicited contributions for doing precisely that
    3. Nor are we angry at Tom Daschle for losing the 2002 mid-terms because he wouldn’t confront Bush on the war.
    4. Nor are we angry when Joe Lieberman attacks other Democrats on FOX.
    5. Nor are we angry when the Democratic Leadership Council calls war opponents "anti-American."
      1. Not even when they don’t call Republican war opponents, like Chuck Hagel, anti-American.
    6. Nor do we hate any Democrat who voted for Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, not even John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, or Evan Bayh.
      1. Even though the Democratic netroots had Bush dead to rights on this one from the start.
    7. Nor are we angry at any Beltway consultant, not even eight-time-loser Washington General Robert Shrum.
  8. We do not hate Rush Limbaugh, or any Republican, or any member of Little Green Footballs, even when they call us traitors and call for our exile or summary execution.
  9. We do not hate any member of any Republican think tank, not even the Discovery Institute.
  10. We do not hate the right wing for calling political operatives "scholars."
  11. We do not hate any so-called Christian.
    1. Not the so-called Christians at the Air Force academy who called their fellow pilot a "filthy Jews."
    2. Nor Pat Robertonson, who supports assassination as a way to get rid of Hugo Chavez.
  12. We are not angry at the billionaires who funded the right.
    1. We do not hate Richard Mellon Scaife, who funded the attacks on President Clinton.
    2. We do not hate R.J. Rushdooney, who funded the Dominionists
    3. Nor do we hate Koch, Olin, Coors, or Bradley
      1. Nor the Bush Rangers and Pioneers, even though many of them are criminals
  13. We are not angry that 50 million Americans don’t have health insurance.
  14. We are not angry that the No Child Left Behind Act is designed to destroy public education by requiring tests but not funding the teaching for the tests.
  15. We do not hate Doctor James Dobson, or any other theocrat, not even Reverend Moon, or Reverend Moon’s backers on Capitol Hill.
  16. Nor are we angry that Bush is trying to destroy Social Security.
  17. Nor are do we hate the CEOs who make hundreds of millions of dollars while their companies fail and workers lose their jobs.
    1. In fact, we don’t even hate Bush’s top contributor, Enron’s Ken Lay, who is not yet in jail.
      1. Even though Enron’s market manipulation caused California Democrat Gray Davis to lose the governorship to a Republican.
  18. Nor are we angry that …

Church and State

Ken AshfordCongress, Foreign Affairs, GodstuffLeave a Comment

The Los Angeles Times (subscription requied) reports that evangelical programs on Capitol Hill attempt "to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God":

"Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement."

In related news, God told Pat Robertson to violate the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" commandment.

UPDATE:  Ezra Klein defends Robertson, I think:

I mean, sure, it’s not exactly neighborly to call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination, but neither is it necessarily un-Christian. The Bible, after all, offers no shortage of grounds on which you can put a man to death. All we need to do is catch him on one.

Think he’s ever masturbated? If so, Genesis 38:8 says he’s finished. Exodus 12:12 lets us off him if he’s ever struck another man with a deadly blow, a particularly helpful passage if we let Robertson do the deed himself with a blunt object — they can exit stage left together. I don’t know if Chavez ever hit his parents, but Exodus 21:15 finishes him if he did. Better yet, he sure seems like he was stubborn and rebellious as a kid, a juvenile heritage that we can stone him for (Deuteronomy 21:18). If Hugo’s got any friends who pray to a God other than the fearsome overlord of the Bible, we can take him down for letting them live (Deuteronomy 13:6). But screw it, we can basically throw all this out and follow Titus 1:10 which says, in essence, that there are tons of talkers and deceivers, many though not all of them Jews, who we can silence for the good of the community. I’m sure Hugo fits in that category fairly neatly.

So enough of this pious squeamishness. Compared to the Bible, Tony Soprano is an all-too-merciful wimp. Chavez has had it coming to him for a long time. But then, so has Pat, George Dubya, any number of on-air evangelists and on-pulpit preachers, your humble host, and all you sinners reading along.

Klingon Fairy Tales

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

Klingon From McSweeney’s:

"Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears"

"Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others"

"There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe With a Big Spike on It"

"The Three Little Pigs Build an Improvised Explosive Device and Deal With That Damned Wolf Once and for All"

"Jack and the Giant Settle Their Differences With Flaming Knives"

"Old Mother Hubbard, Lacking the Means to Support Herself With Honor, Sets Her Disruptor on Self-Destruct and Waits for the Inevitable"

"Mary Had a Little Lamb. It Was Delicious"

"Little Red Riding Hood Strays Into the Neutral Zone and Is Never Heard From Again, Although There Are Rumors … Awful, Awful Rumors"

"Hansel and Gretel Offend Vlad the Impaler"

"The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates"

Women And Iraq

Ken AshfordIraq, Women's Issues1 Comment

UPDATE:  Think Progress (via LQ) reminds us of what the Bushes said not even a year-and-a-half-ago:

“The advance of women’s rights and the advance of liberty are ultimately inseparable.” – President Bush, 3/14/04

“President Bush has made the advance of women’s human rights a global policy priority. … We all have an obligation to speak for women who are denied their rights to learn, to vote or to live in freedom.”
– First Lady Laura Bush, 3/8/05

MyDD is making me think.

While I don’t pretend to speak for others, I do wonder how these women (pictured below) would react if they learned that we invaded Iraq only to create a country which goes backward in womens’ rights.  So what say you, ladies?

Women

Oh, that’s right.  They can’t talk.  They were American servicewomen killed in Iraq. (Photo montage from MyDD)

Here We Go Again

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

A vacationing president snubs war mothers, the Iraqi Constitution is a piece of shit, U.S. soldiers death toll climbing, gas prices going through the ceiling . . . let’s face it, current events are a downer.

Fox News has the antidote to distract its minions.  You guessed it: another missing white woman!   And here’s an added bonus — not only is she a student (read: "young"), but she’s a "part-time model"!  Woo-hoo!  Right wing media paydirt!

Discovery Institute Exposed

Ken AshfordEducation, GodstuffLeave a Comment

The New York Times has an excellent backgrounder on the Discovery Institute, the right-wing think-tank that has propelled intelligent design to the fore:

SEATTLE – When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation’s culture wars.

After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute’s Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.

Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists. But Mr. Bush embraced the institute’s talking points by suggesting that alternative theories and criticism should be included in biology curriculums "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Financed by some of the same Christian conservatives who helped Mr. Bush win the White House, the organization’s intellectual core is a scattered group of scholars who for nearly a decade have explored the unorthodox explanation of life’s origins known as intelligent design.

Together, they have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin’s defenders firmly on the defensive.

Like a well-tooled electoral campaign, the Discovery Institute has a carefully crafted, poll-tested message, lively Web logs – and millions of dollars from foundations run by prominent conservatives like Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Philip F. Anschutz and Richard Mellon Scaife. The institute opened an office in Washington last fall and in January hired the same Beltway public relations firm that promoted the Contract With America in 1994.

Read the whole thing.

Below 40 And Dropping

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

This poll from American Research Group is the first non-partisan poll I’ve seen where Bush’s approval rating goes below 40%.  I expect to see more.

Overall, 36% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president, 58% disapprove, and 6% are undecided.

Bush job approval Approve Disapprove Undecided
Aug 2005 36% 58% 6%
July 2005 42% 52% 6%
Jun 2005 42% 53% 5%
May 2005 43% 51% 6%
Apr 2005 44% 50% 6%
Mar 2005 47% 48% 5%
Feb 2005 49% 45% 6%
Jan 2005 51% 44% 5%
Dec 2004 50% 45% 5%
Nov 2004 51% 43% 6%
Oct 2004 45% 47% 8%
Sep 2004 45% 48% 7%
Aug 2004 43% 50% 7%

North Carolina Now Has A State Religion

Ken AshfordCourts/Law, GodstuffLeave a Comment

This is an unbelieveably unconstitutional decision:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Traditionally, witnesses taking the stand in court are sworn in by placing their hand on the Bible .

But when Muslims in Guilford County, N.C., tried to donate copies of the Koran for courtroom use, judges turned them down.

Chief District Court Judge Joseph Turner says taking an oath on the Koran is not allowed by North Carolina state law, which specifies that witnesses shall place their hands on the “holy scriptures,” which he interprets as the Christian Bible.

“We’ve been doing it that way for 200 years,” he said. “Until the legislature changes that law, I believe I have to do what I’ve been told to do in the statutes.”

But the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the Guilford County Courts.

“This was the first time that we had a judge … going on record and stating unilaterally what is a holy scripture and what is not — what we believe to be a violation of the establishment clause,” said Arsalan Iftikhar of CAIR.

Their case is solid, according to one Duke University law professor.

“I have absolutely no doubt that higher courts, if it gets there, will say that persons of Muslim faith can swear on a Koran rather than a Christian Bible,” said Erwin Chemerinsky. “The case law is so clear here that a person doesn’t even have to swear on a Bible to be a witness so long as they’re willing to promise to tell the truth.”

Remember what the point of "swearing on the Bible" is.  It is intended to ensure that the witness is telling the truth. 

Suppose you are sitting on a jury of a car accident case, and an eyewitness to the accident, a devout Muslim, is about to testify.  Wouldn’t you want him to take an oath on the Koran?  It doesn’t mean that you have to believe in the Koran; it only means that you acknowlege that he believes in the Koran, and the testimony he is giving you is truthful.

Let’s expand it a little more.  Suppose there is another witness to the car accident whose testimony contradicts that of the Muslim eyewitness.  And supposed this second witness is a devout Christian who take an oath on the Bible.  Isn’t that fundamentally unfair and discriminatory?  The Bible-oathing witness’s testimony is more likely to be believed that that of the Muslim, simply because the Christian has made a promise to his God to tell the truth.  The Muslim has no such opportunity (he must take a secular oath).

This is wrong, wrong, wrong, but I am confident it will be overturned.

Disorder In The Court

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
______________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, “Where am I, Cathy?”
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it
until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he’s twenty-one..
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh….
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

RIP: Moog

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

MoogI must have been 13 years old, or so.  Sometime in junior high.  In music class, some guest speaker came in with this really huge thing.  It was like a piano — I recognized the black and white keys.  But it had buttons and dials and lights.  He demonstrated it for the class, and we were all bowled over.

He had a Moog synthesizer, and it was as revolutionary as the electric guitar.  We now take electronic keyboards for granted, but back when I was in my early teens, it was a sight to behold.

Robert Moog, the man behind the Moog synthesizer, died yesterday in Asheville, N.C. at the age of 71 from brain cancer.

UPDATE: CNN obit here.

More “No, You Can’t Have A Pony” Tweaks

Ken AshfordBloggingLeave a Comment

Most of the overhauls were under the hood, but I did change a few things:

  1. Got an AOL IM account and made my "online status" known
  2. Widened the sidebar, and made the main page font more readable
  3. Added more webcams, and changed the presentation (it is a rotation slideshow).  Not sure how I feel about the "reload" button — I wish I could just make it reload and update the images without reloading the entire page!
  4. New banner at top
  5. News feeds from CNN, Sploid, and the New York Times (thanks, Typepad!)
  6. More extensive blogroll
  7. Got rid of most of the ads.  I kept reading that advertisements on blogs are not money-makers, especially ones like mine that hardly anybody reads.  I did, however, add some Amazon "ads", although they are couched as my "recommendations".
  8. Added a photo album of my dogs, Bo & Arrow
  9. Added a bunch of silly animations to the sidebar way at the bottom

I still need to work on have all links open to an external page (I know how to do it, but I’m trying to find an easier workaround).   And I can’t seem to adjust the borders of the entire page the way I would like.  And finally, I’m still miffed that I can’t list my complete Archives.

And I wonder if the "load time" is too long.  It seems to be okay on my home computer, but I’ll have to experiment more.

But for the most part, it is where I want it to be. 

For now.

Democracy In Iraq – For Men Only?

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Iraq, Women's IssuesLeave a Comment

It is now common knowledge that the new Iraqi Constitution will be grounded in Islamic law which, as everyone knows, spells bad news for the women of Iraq.  Most of them will actually have been better off under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein where they enjoyed western-style equality for more than 40 years.

What do the neo-cons say about that?  "Yawn". 

Here’s what Reuel Marc Gerecht, a conservative fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank and AEI and People for the New Century big wig reportedly said, discussing the forthcoming Iraqi constitution on Meet the Press, August 21:

"Women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they’re there, I think they will be there, but I think we need to keep this perspective."

[…]

His exact words to MTP guest host David Gregory were, "Actually, I’m not terribly worried about this."

I wonder how women in America, especially those who support the Iraqi War, feel about this.

Not What They Need

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

From Yahoo News:

"If you believe the liberal media’s reporting on the American military effort in Iraq, you’re almost forced to be ashamed of America," the Media Research Center, a conservative media-watchdog group, said in a recent message to potential donors.

In return for a donation, the organization will send a specially inscribed military-style dog tag to a soldier in Iraq.

From the New York Times:

[T]he Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks by insurgents.

The ceramic plates in vests worn by most personnel cannot withstand certain munitions the insurgents use. But more than a year after military officials initiated an effort to replace the armor with thicker, more resistant plates, tens of thousands of soldiers are still without the stronger protection because of a string of delays in the Pentagon’s procurement system.

I find it very bizarre that the groups that support the Iraq War most don’t seem concerned about the fact that our soldiers are needlessly unprotected.  They send the soldiers ribbons?

LaShawn’s Carefully Constructed World

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy1 Comment

Lsb From Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, we learn that conservative Christian blogger LaShawn Barber (pictured at right) is making sure that everybody acts as the no-insult-Barber police:

LaShawn Barber has a set of rules for tracking back to her site that have me giggling a little bit. Here are the good ones:

4) Trackbacks leading to offensive, ad hominem-laced, and/or libelous posts where I’m the subject will be deleted. Habitual offenders will be permanently banned.

5) If a trackback leads to a non-offensive post, but you allow commenters to libel me, the trackback will be deleted and habitual offenders permanently banned.

Permanent banning from having LaShawn Barber readers attack other blogs for her being wrong? Glory be, what’s this world coming to?…

You’ve also got to love the fact that a site owner, in Barber’s eyes, is now responsible for other people not hurting her feelings in their comments. (And yes, that’s ultimately what this is all about – preventing conservative bloggers from ever having to hear anything about their positions other than the degree of agreement between you and the linker.)

Maybe LaShawn is feeling a little tentative about venturing outside the echo chamber because of what happened a few days ago.  She asked an opened-question to "All Abortion-Supporting Liberals and Homosexuals that went like this:

As you may know, technology has advanced to such a degree that parents may choose to kill — pardon me, “sex-select” — their babies if they have sex-related diseases such as hemophilia. The latest topic of discussion in Britain is whether sex selection should be allowed for family planning purposes.

Not mentioned in the article, but an obvious cause of controversy, is that “undesirable” human beings will be killed. My questions to liberal homosexual and non-homosexual abortion supporters are these:

If a significant number of women begin choosing to abort their babies because doctors discovered a “gay gene,” would your stance on the “right to choose” change or shift in any way? Would the number of women killing these “defective” babies make a difference? Is one potentially gay dead baby one too many?

Please disseminate this post far and wide. No doubt it will attract trolls, but I’m dead serious. Pardon the pun.

Apparently, LaShawn and her readers thought they had us pro-choice liberals in a trap.  As one commenter wrote:

You really put these Leftists on the spot with your question.

Another wrote:

[Y]our questions emanate’s [sic] as a paradox wrapped in a quandry concealed behind an enigma.

With that said, how could a liberal or a homosexual give a concise and meaningful answer?

I will give the answer I posted in a moment.  But my point is that in her mind, as well as those of her readers, this was a tough question.  However, if they only bothered to educate themselves about liberals’ views, they would easily see how it is not a difficult question.

It is one thing to disagree with someone else’s viewpoint.  It is another thing to complete avoid listening to someone else’s viewpoint, and think you know what it is.  LaShawn and her readers fall into this latter category, and her new trackback policy merely insures that they stay warm and cozy in their world of ignorance.  After all, how can you control the message when there are competing views?

Anyway, my answer — again, a no-brainer — was this:

“If a significant number of women begin choosing to abort their babies because doctors discovered a ‘gay gene’, would your stance on the ‘right to choose’ change or shift in any way?”

Of course not.

Ethically, I would have a problem with women who choose to have abortions for that reason, but I don’t get to make that decision. Please understand: the right to choose necessarily means the right to make bad and unpopular choices. Even choices that are bad and unpopular to pro-gay-rights liberals like me.

To take away the “right to choose” simply because we may not like the choices some women make, is like taking away the “right to free speech” simply because we don’t like the racist or sexist speech that some people utter.

That’s why “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” are not necessarily contradictory (like pro-democracy and anti-liberal aren’t contradictory). I sometimes wonder why so many people on the right can’t grasp that. But I digress (a little).

“Would the number of women killing these ‘defective’ babies make a difference?”

No. Nor would I take away women’s voting rights if a number of them made (in my view) the wrong choice. See above.

“Is one potentially gay dead baby one too many?”

I hope you are not under the impression that liberals want to populate the world with gay people. You seem too intelligent to believe that rhetoric.

That said, your last question is loaded. Obviously, we pro-choicers wouldn’t consider the abortion to result in a “dead baby” since (a) to become dead, you have to be a life first, and we don’t necessarily ascribe to your rules as to when life begins (although, being pro-choice, some of us might); and (b) “baby” implies a living human being which again, is a subjective determination.

But I think you can glean my answer from the previous two responses.

Hope this helps!

LaShawn closed down the comments on that post shortly after mine appeared.  I guess the trap she laid wasn’t quite the mindfield she thought is was.