Asking and Telling and Screaming and Yelling

The Constitution: Affirming Peoples' Right to Exist
Since 1789

          I was going to write the rest of this blog with a Dr. Seussian rhyme sceme, but Lieberman has too many syllables to get a good rhyme scheme going. Anyways.
          First let me begin by saying that I am happy that my lamentation of the apparent ineffectuality of the lame duck session of 2010 has proved false; big changes are indeed being made. Today was a historic day in the realm of politics, as it encompassed the (long-awaited) repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (yay!), a policy that is obviously as discriminatory as it is unconstitutional.  This day is awesome for a number of reasons: a) gay people can serve openly without fear of being discharged (as the approximately 14000 servicemen were--many of them specialists--in the past 17 years); b) this bill was a rare show of bi-partisanship, as eight of the sixty-five votes for the repeal came from Republicans; c) it is another step in the direction of gay rights.  Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, led the effort for the repeal, helping draft a bill specifically for that purpose and courting some of the Republican opposition to support it.  This bill will definitely be remembered as his legacy, and that of the 111th Congress, which ends in just under a month.
          The DREAM Act, however, wasn't so lucky; it fell just a few votes short of passage, which is, of course, disappointing.  I guess only so many liberal notions can be stomached by Congress at any given time--gives those conservatives a serious case of indigestion or something.  The idea of a path to citizenship for college educated and motivated young immigrants was a great idea, but a heady dose of Nativism proved to be too much for its idealism.  If the time isn't right for such a bill now, it certainly won't be right within the next two years; if anything, the 112th Congress will seek to crack down on immigration, reinforce Bush-era tax cuts and generally do things I don't like. But such is life. However, I can't be  worried about what the future holds, no, today is a day to feel proud of a country that decided to act in favor of a long-suffering minority, this is a day to commend elected officials for doing what it right.

Lame Duck Period: A To Do List

"Rubber Ducky, you're not the one
Rubber Ducky, don't get nothin' done"
~Freely adapted from Sesame Street

          Yep, you guessed it: it's time for another liberal rant--this time maybe with a little less humor and a little more (self?) righteous indignation.  So, dear reader, I apologize in advance. I digress.
          In the upcoming two years, several things are NOT going to happen under the new, more conservative Congress--such as the repeal of DADT, the termination of the Bush Era tax cuts, a more comprehensive (yes, that is possible) health care act (e.g. the revival of the public option), the passage of the DREAM initiative...the list goes on and on.  The time for congressional Democrats to act, therefore, is NOW.
          Lame duck periods are aptly named; the previous one consisted and a president and a Congress quietly trying not to make the burgeoning recession get any worse while simultaneously trying to slink away, tail between they're legs.  That's just fine--it's the norm--but I do not want congressional Democrats to slink (dammit).  I want Obama to take the reigns a little more than he has been accustomed to doing throughout the first two years of his presidency and I want congressional Democrats to make some serious headway before they are replaced by conservatives who will, in all probability, do what I don't want them to (because obviously the center of the political universe is me, myself, and I--that's sarcasm, just in case you didn't pick up on it).  More to the point, the somewhat extreme ultraconservatives that have been elected have grand plans to further stifle LGBT rights and attack the legality of abortions, which has been a precedent since the momentous Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade in 1973.  That would really, to use the vernacular, suck--it would be a major setback to years of crusading for civil rights.
          The lame duck session congress is already proving ineffectual.  It failed to muster enough support for the repeal of DADT--which was intended to pass as a provision of a much needed defense-budget bill--and so was subjected to yet another filibuster.  True, plans exist to write up a bill exclusively for the purpose of ending DADT, but if the Dems don't act fast, they will have lost the historic opportunity to pass some truly meaningful legislation within the context of a lame duck period.  Sounds worthwhile to me.

WIKILEAKS (again)

Hello, my name is NOT Neil Patrick Harris

          I suppose one could say I'm a bit behind the times for posting this, as fresh Wikileaks news arrived very early this week, but I felt compelled to catch up on the topic after posting about it in October.  There has, of course been a great deal of media fracas and Hillary Clinton has been having a field day trying to repair diplomatic ties with nations who discovered mildly unpleasant US remarks and plans thanks to a release of quite a few diplomatic cables earlier this week (yes, ENTIRE governments function like cliques of high school girls if given the chance, weaving webs of intrigue and gossiping behind each others backs).  The release of these cables has been called a "diplomatic disaster" and many have feared that it will destabilize already unstable nations like North Korea (as per the recent attack on South Korea). Seriously?? If a volatile country like that is going to arbitrarily attack, it's just going to, not because some it finds out about Wikileaks...then again, Kim Jong Il sort of acts like a pubescent child sometimes, too.
          I digress. Despite the so-called "disaster," I am not particularly upset at the leaks; I actually think it's pretty cool, a sort of modern-day Pentagon Papers.  I mean, from an objective standpoint (concern for American foreign policy aside), it's kind of cool to watch an agent of chaos (think norse troublemaking god Loki) arrive on the scene and stir the pot, challenge the way in which our government conducts its business behind closed doors, make the American public privy to ideas and documents that it would not ordinarily EVER see.  Such occurrences, if timed right, may challenge complacency.  If I was an optimist, I would say maybe this incident will do for American diplomacy what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did for the meatpacking industry.
          Unfortunately, I'm not an optimist.  Much of the worries about a catastrophic event as the direct result of the leaked cables and other documents found on Wikileaks and its fellow websites were sensationalized by the media.  What will (undoubtedly) happen is a quiet cleanup on the part of our government, the (at least partial) demolition of the website, and the quiet return to pre-Wikileaks normal American life.  It is already beginning.  While still evading the authorities, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks will not be free for long.  Sites like Amazon and Paypal which tentatively endorsed Wikileaks have slunk meekly back to their corporate empires, tail between their legs.  And the website itself...well, when I attempted to access it today, it said domain not found.  Thus life returns to equilibrium.
          HOWEVER, there is a rumor--spread by various media sources--that Wikileaks may return triumphant, just in time to perform a huge document dump of top secret information from within Wall Street.  Such an exposé of the banking industry would be timely indeed.

California Prison Reform Claims the National Stage

SO MANY INMATES

         The issue of prison overcrowding, which was an (admittedly small and generally sidestepped) issue of debate between gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and governor-elect Jerry Brown has now been thrust into the national public consciousness thanks to a pair of twin cases that have arrived on the doorstep of the Supreme Court. Both cases, Schwarzenegger v. Plata and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger have to do with the squalid conditions (such as lack of healthcare and adequate sanitation) that plague the California prison system, which is choked to the brim with inmates.  The prisons themselves, which are designed to hold 110,000 inmates at maximum capacity currently hold 147,000 prisoners.
         The lawyers that have been engaged in building their respective cases have primarily cited the Eighth Amendment in their quest to prove the current prison situation in our Great State to be unconstitutional.  Personally, I agree, as the conditions described in various articles I have read are beyond inhumane--some prisons keep their inmates in conditions that would barely befit livestock.  Something obviously needs to be done.
          Although no definitive decision has yet been rendered, the judges on the highest bench are currently divided on rather partisan lines, with one judge wavering in the middle.  The more liberal judges are arguing in favor of a reduction in the numbers of inmates in order to remedy some of the buildup which has lead to the horrible conditions, while the more conservative side is focusing on the problems presented with the release of some 30,000 inmates into the world at large; it should be noted that it has been suggested that the nonviolent criminals in the prison system be shuffled down to the jails.  Personally, I believe that a way to alleviate at least a very small portion of the pressure and overcrowding in the prisons is to eliminate the Three Strikes Law, which has put too many people permanently behind bars.  Whatever the decision, it will be interesting to see how these cases play out, as the issue is all too close to home.

Health Care Bill Pronounced Unwell By Virginia Judge

Guess what, little girl? I voted down the Public Option.

          Yes, I realize the headings of my blog posts are starting to read like newspaper headlines and yes, this is intentional. I digress.  Within the last week Justice Hudson of a Circuit Court in Virginia deemed certain provisions of the "ObamaCare" Health Reform Bill unconstitutional, calling its legitimacy into question and initiating a judicial process that will in all probability bring the disputed Law before the Supreme Court within the next two years.
         Perhaps there are legitimate discrepancies between the Health Care Law and the Constitution, such as its interpretation of the national government's role in Interstate Commerce--this was Justice Hudson's ruling--but I am inclined to doubt that the sudden calling into question of the law is purely for the purpose of upholding the Constitution. Are there political motives involved in the various cases that have been brought before Circuit Courts throughout the country? You betcha. In the wake of the Midterms of 2010 which produced a overwhelming Conservative victory in Congress, there has been much talk of repealing the law by newly-elected republicans.  If the law was brought before the Supreme Court, it would erase the necessity for policy-makers in Washington to propose a repeal of the law and wade through all of the inherent complex political processes.  Knowing this, Republican Congressmen such as John Boener have been quick to express their support to the rendering of the decision.
         Unfortunately for supporters of the law, the way in which the original bill was written eschewed contingencies such as a Severability Clause, which would mean that parts of the law, if proved illegitimate, could be throne out without destroying the integrity of the law as a totality.  This means that if part of the law is called into question, the entire law (or at least most of it--some provisions such as insurance regulations would presumably be unaffected) could be thrown out.  As a supporter of the law, I really don't want this to happen.

2012: The Latest Conspiracy Theory

No brains, no headaches

          Earlier this week, Sarah Palin, everyone's favorite folksy, air-headed ex-governor told talk show host Barbara Walters that she thought she had a decent chance of beating Barack Obama in the election of 2012, essentially announcing her candidacy.  While liberals like myself have been liable to discount members of the Right fringe such as Sarah Palin and her protégés, I think the time for complacency is past--this, I believe was proved by the recent Midterm Elections, in which Democrats and more centrist Republicans alike took a decent whopping from that pesky Tea Party, foe of moderates everywhere and the darling of a pissed-off electorate.
          The sad thing is, if Obama (read: his congress) does not manage to make substantial economic gains within the next two years, voters everywhere will continue to hate him, and there will be a very good chance that America will be "rewarded" with not only its first female president, but its first reality television star as well.  This possible picture of American life is a pretty accurate representation of the pervasiveness of "celebrity politics" in our society.  A recent edition of Newsweek featured a lengthy article listing the "most powerful people in America."  It was telling that the top five on the list were all media personalities and that four of those five were staunch Rightist Conservatives. Barack Obama, meanwhile, landed in twentieth place.  While this list (and Newsweek in general, for that matter) is certainly not the be-all-end-all of journalism, it is a relatively accurate barometer for the faith that We the People put in the so-called "experts"--the media personalities--who may in fact have no expertise on a given issue.
          Despite this gap in actual credibility, the partisan rants that come out of the mouths of the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and yes, Keith Olbermann are exactly what the public wants to here.  Given the current state of public opinion, I would hardly be surprised if Beck were to announce his candidacy within the next six months or so, as he has emerged as a seeming beacon to fringe Conservatives, so much so that he has made his extremist form of Conservativism mainstream.
          However, public opinion is fickle.  Maybe, just maybe, two years down the road, the aims of Tea-Party-esque candidates will have lost their luster.  Until then, I'm more liable to believe there's a grain of truth in that completely-out-of-context legend of the End Of The World, as "predicted" by the Mayan Calendar (and lapped up by conspiracy theorists).  At the risk of sounding absolutely silly (and I say this with more humor than seriousness), I must say that anything is possible with that woman's hand on the proverbial Button.

One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State

Lower than average voter turnout rate? Seriously?

         Well, I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious: the Democrats took a good thwacking in midterms--Republicans gained control of the house (the current total being 239 R seats to 187 D seats with 9 undecided) and edged into a larger minority in the senate (now 53 D seats to 46 R seats with one undecided).  This was an overwhelmingly national trend, with Republicans making substantial gains in traditionally Blue areas of the map.  Everywhere, of course, except California, which, strange as usual, decided to utterly buck the national trend and vote in a Democratic Senator, Governor, and NOT replace any House Democrats with Republicans.  I guess everyone must have gotten sick of Meg Whitman.
          I digress.  Not long after the majority of the elections had been officially called, the former House Minority leader and Heir Apparent for Speaker of the House, John Boener delivered a speech that essentially said "the people have spoken, and we have received the national mandate," et cetera.  Midterms are, by nature I suppose, opportunities to vent frustration and anger on the the party of the president/the party in control Congress.  This was no exception.  Whether or not the Republicans and their more radical Tea Party Brethren (who, admittedly did not do quite as well as they had hoped), actually received a national mandate is unclear--less than half of those registered to vote exercised their right to do so on Tuesday, and many of those that didn't were liberals and moderates--but what is clear is Obama is going to have to adapt his strategy to incorporate combatting gridlock within congress in order to maintain a successful presidency.  If he doesn't, I fear for him in 2012; regardless of how little control a president has over certain aspects of the legislative branch he will be blamed for legislative mistakes and lack of cooperation.  Such is politics.
          However, it's not all bad for those of us that are democrats, right? Gridlock isn't all bad, right? Besides--a friend of mine said it best: "now that midterms are over, we can start campaigning for 2012." There's always something to look forward to.  And this time, this time I'll be voting.

Midterms 2010: The Weird, the Wonderful, the Scary

Fear the beard

          Although this political season may not have been as vicious as, say political campaigns of yore, it certainly was one for the books.  The rise of the tea party looks imminent, with ultraconservative republicans poised to regain control of the house and gain a more substantial minority in the senate.  Obama, who has finally risen to the challenge of  trying mobilize his party into a state of driven determination, it seems that the self-righteous indignation of the Far Right holds more appeal to undecided voters across the board.  With things looking so grim for the Democratic Party, it's hard to see how a liberal like myself could still be happy.  I say happy, not complacent, for a purpose.
          Yes, there are aspects of the Tea Party that scare me--Sharron Angle for instance, a senate hopeful who strongly supports the (conservative interpretation of the) Second Amendment as well as the proposed destruction of the EPA and Dept. of education, running in a state in which the majority of my family resides.  However, I would be fibbing if I said I hadn't found this election season immensely entertaining for a number of reasons.  I will admit that a fair amount of my enjoyment in the campaign ads/debates/speeches was probably schadenfreude, the idea that (most) humans take a degree of pleasure in the embarrassment/misfortune of others.  I will, for instance, NOT claim that I didn't laugh after seeing the video clip of Christine O'Donnel claiming that she was "not a witch" and then watching her popularity plummet in the following weeks--it did comfort me that Americans decided to desert a candidate who seemed more preoccupied with campaigning against masturbation and (allegedly) dabbling in witchcraft than actually knowing anything about policy/supreme court cases/the constitution; maybe there was still hope.
          Yes, this election season has been full of plenty of fodder for soundbites and political cartoons--between New York's "The Rent Is Too Damn High Party" to seemingly endless jokes about John Boener's false tan, I was never at a loss to find something politically entertaining.  Although I am certain that political humor does have a place in our society--indeed the first section I read in Newsweek is usually the political cartoons (don't worry, I DO then proceed to read it, and other news sources, cover to cover)--I am beginning to think maybe it can be a bit distracting.  Maybe, just maybe, the Tea Party and other Republicans will gain even MORE seats than expect. And if they do, it may be because liberals like myself are so blown away by a few (admittedly hilarious) lunatics on the fringe that they become complacent.
         Just because one party perceives another as crazy does NOT mean the general population at large will find them so.  With the wind blowing as it is, in the direction of the far right, it would be anything but intelligent to ignore the possibility of a serious upset.  With that in mind, I really do encourage everyone that can to go out and cast their votes on Tuesday.  Me, I'll just be interested to see what happens.

Espionage in the Cyber Age.

TMI? Mayyyybe

         This week's lecture on Article Three, Sections Two and Three coincided rather perfectly with a piece of shocking news I unearthed on the New York Times' Website a day or two later.  What is being called one of the most ingenious acts of espionage in the history of the internet as well as this young century is unfolding as I type this--a self-titled "non-profit" website called Wikileaks.org (active for years in whistle-blowing for various human rights-abuse coverups such as those in Kenya and East Timor) just released what it called "the largest classified military leak in history."  The documents posted on the website (which, out of curiosity, I browsed) ranged from military journals--accounts of a day's mission--to tactics and strategy, all detailing a five year period of the the Iraq War.  Some 100,000+ deaths of Iraqis are recounted in the Wikileaks papers as well.
          Needless to say, the Pentagon and the Justice Department are both an uncomfortable mix of furious and deeply uneasy, as this brash vigilante journalist/computer hacker has, in their eyes, put national security at risk.  They have a point, according to various aid organizations such as Amnesty International who fear for the lives of Iraqi soldiers/rebel figures who have been put at risk for Taliban persecution by being named within the reports.  The mastermind of the operation, an Australian named Julian Assange, does not see any ethical repercussions for his actions, for he believes himself to be righteously exposing the Truth.  That said, he happens to be currently on the run, jumping between countries throughout Europe in order to evade the authorities who so ardently desire his arrest.
          How the U.S. would go about prosecuting Mr. Assange?  According to the Article Three he should be brought before the Supreme Court in a Foreign Citzen v. United States-type case.  However, the Eleventh Amendment changes this slightly, saying that citizens of foreign states are not to be tried against the United States in its highest court of law.  This Amendment notwithstanding, it will be interesting in the coming months to see what the United States will do toward this Australian man who, although clearly outside of US jurisdiction (and not just because he can't be found at the moment), has committed an "act of treason."  Currently, the Justice Department is trying to see if his actions fall under the domain of the 1917 Espionage Act, and if these actions merit a trial in front of some sort of high court. In the meantime, much of the US' doings in Iraq and Afghanistan are up on the web for anyone to see.

May Ask, Can Tell?

I like Equal Rights...except when I DON'T

         This week, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the the case Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America, officially rendering the current military policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell unconstitutional--which, of course it is, under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech...and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  However, this is still a tentative step in the direction toward equality, and experts are currently predicting that this, the issue that was successfully filibustered out of the senate just months ago, will reach the nations highest Bench by mid-2011.  That being said, gays within the military have been cautioned against coming out to their superiors, as protocol is still uncertain--a similar state of limbo to that which gay couples found themselves in the wake of Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling with regards to Proposition 8 in the state of California. Although this and other recent decisions (i.e. Judge Joseph Tauro's of Boston's twin rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act, another semi-archaic piece of legislation that looks suspiciously unconstitutional) have been steps in a positive direction for gay rights groups advocating for equality, the country is still at an uncertain stage in this, the latest Civil Rights Movement.
          Having several good friends and various family members that happen to be gay, I am hoping that when these cases hit the Supreme Court within the next couple of years, the judges rule in the favor of those whose civil rights are clearly being denied by discriminatory legislation such as Prop. 8 and DADT, rather than in favor of their opponents, whose most ardent backers tend to belong to fundamentalist religious organization trying to push their own agendas.  Along with Freedom of Speech, I believe the Constitution is also relatively explicit with regards to the Separation of Church and State.  I'm just saying.....
          Morality and constitutionality aside, however, DADT still doesn't make any sense.  According to a recent Newsweek article, which featured interviews with veterans discharged under DADT, the policy is actually a costly one, as thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in training are put to waste.  Some of the veterans interviewed had had highly specialized occupations, such as interpreters of obscure dialects of Pashto and other languages within Afghanistan.  If such people were discharged arbitrarily, whole missions might be jeopardized--it all seems a bit senseless.
          That said, I think it is important to remember that as well as being discriminatory and unconstitutional, laws such as the ones struck down in California and Massachusetts are also often inefficient and grounded in prejudice and fallacious thinking.

Freedom of (Hate) Speech

Dear WBC: Get a life. Love, God.

           I begin this blog, dear reader, by expressing my deep shame that hate groups such as the the Westboro Baptist Church continue to exist in what we consider to be free and enlightened society.  That said, under the protection of the First Amendment of U.S. Constitution, such groups are entitled to pour forth their malicious babble nearly anywhere they please.  Last week's hearings of Snyder v. Phelps brought the purported freedom of speech to the test, and, initially upheld in favor of Mr. Snyder, who was suing Mr. Phelps, the head of the Westboro Baptist Church, for picketing at his son's military funeral in order to spread his hateful, anti-homosexual agenda.  However, this decision was eventually overturned in favor of Mr. Phelps' protection under the first amendment.

          The Westboro Baptist Church, of course, has a somewhat dubious history of picketing all across the country against gays, Jews, Catholics, and essentially everyone that is not, in fact, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Its members (most of which are related to Mr. Phelps in some way) have been sued on numerous occasions for invasions of privacy and personal distress, but nearly all of the charges have been dropped in favor of the First Amendment. These people are, of course, universally regarded as hateful whack-jobs and are, indeed on several discrimination watch organizations' lists of hate groups; however, that does not deter them--negative press seems, if anything, to empower the group to expand.  Though their very existence is a travesty, I suppose, in some strange way, it's a little bit better than the alternative. I suppose I'd rather live in a society in which anyone has the right to speak their views than one in which no one has that right. I guess the Supreme Court thinks so too.  

Dear Meg Whitman: Please Emigrate from California.

Money can't buy do-overs

          Although I am no political analyst, I certainly think that the once tight race for the governorship of California is rapidly slipping through the fingers of one Meg Whitman, whose alleged behavior toward her ex-housekeeper, an illegal immigrant, compounded with her inability to appear at all sympathetic in Saturday's debate (which, incidentally, was moderated by the nationally-syndicated Spanish-speaking Univision Network) has her sinking fast in the polls, especially among Latinos, the very demographic group that she had spent millions of dollars attempting to cater to in the earlier half of her campaign.  While Whitman alleges that she had no grounds to suspect that Nicky Diaz Santillian was an illegal immigrant during her nine years of service, there is much evidence to the contrary.  Although, as Whitman has noted, the timing (right before the second debate between the candidates, and the first-ever California gubernatorial debate moderated in Spanish) seems a little too "perfect," Whitman is offering no real explanations in the face of the allegations--indeed, she has taken to blaming everyone but herself: Ms. Santillian, Jerry Brown, even her own husband.  Regardless of her political views, this does not speak very highly of Ms. Whitman's character, and, as Mr. Brown pointed out in the debate, demonstrates that Whitman does not necessarily take accountability for her actions, something he noted was fundamental to one's ability to successfully govern.
          After watching two gubernatorial debates, what strikes me most about Ms. Whitman is the way in which she presents herself--as a business-minded executive, who does not seem to empathize with the problems of those not affiliated with corporations.  Although she certainly sounded less scripted in the second debate, I still found her responses relatively disturbing.  Her response to a Fresno State student who professed to be an undocumented immigrant herself about a path to legalization for college students and the possibility of tuition assistance for such individuals (i.e. the DREAM initiative) proved her stance on Immigration to be much more stringent than she had previously admitted.  Personally, I agree with a statement she made; I think that immigration is indeed a "complex issue"--but I think she is taking absolutely the wrong stance on the issue.  We certainly do need immigration laws, but we also need to have a degree of compassion for illegal immigrants, who, by circumstance, are generally forced into the lowest-income, manual labor jobs.  These people are not, as Whitman claims, "a drain on the economy;" on the contrary, they are the very backbone of the California economy, which thrives, to a certain extent, on exploitation.
          Although Brown didn't necessarily emerge as victor in this debate, Whitman certainly emerged as the loser--she appeared harsh and apathetic and said exactly the wrong things.  While Whitman may not lose all of the Latino vote, I am relatively certain that after this debate, she will not garner the 30+ percent of Latino support that experts say a Republican candidate needs in order to win the race.  So it goes when one alienates a politically potent minority.

Politics Sells

JFK: I'm a boss lolz
 Nixon: I know :P

         Fifty years ago today, something rather extraordinary happened.  Instead of watching I Love Lucy or Bonanza, legions of Americans tuned in their televisions to the first ever televised presidential debate, that of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Nixon.  Historians have debated the effect of media on this election, many postulating that the new media had a positive effect on the campaign of Kennedy, who, through the medium of television, appeared young and dynamic, making his rival look old, unpleasant, and ineffectual by comparison.  Presidential elections had, to be sure, had a long history of basis in personal popularity, but the birth of the televised age has transformed the way in which politicians campaign for office.
          Televised debates were just the beginning.  Next political campaign advertising that infiltrated all of the broadcast networks and leaked on to prime-time.  And it didn't stop there.  Once the internet hit the scene, the campaign beast raged and filled up the world wide web with political ads.  By the time YouTube hit the scene, most people, even those not particularly interested in politics could at least claim familiarity with a candidate or two that they had seen in a viral video.  In the age of mass-media, politicians feel more pressure than ever to spend, spend, spend in order to get themselves re-elected.  For instance, in her campaign for governor, Meg Whitman broke all sorts of records by spending $119 million of her personal fortune on campaign ads, a record previously held by NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg.  And that's to say nothing of the massive amounts of cash that Barack Obama fundraised in his presidential campaign. Whether it is true that political hopefuls must raise gobs of cash in order to get the swing voters to cast ballots in their favor is obvious, whether it is just that it be so is doubtful.  As midterms and the California gubernatorial race approach, I can't help but be a little wistful for a day in which sitting down and watching two candidates debate the issues in front of a live audience was not only a novelty, but something important, something that must be paid attention to.  But even this little reminiscence isn't quite accurate--even then, the viewers were just as transfixed by Kennedy's youthful appearance as by his oratorical prowess.  I just hope that maybe at least some people take the time to watch the candidates verbally spar about important issues in the upcoming weeks.
        On that note, be sure to watch the Brown/Whitman debate on Tuesday.  Even if one's mind is made up, it still might be informative....
      

Five Months Later....

Grease Lightning 

        Today, almost exactly five months after the fact, the US government finally declared the exploded oil well in the Gulf of Mexico to be "dead"--completely capped and no longer hazardous.  Five months and 4.9 MILLION barrels of oil later seems like a bit too much waste to me--the impact on the local economies of the Gulf (which were highly dependent on a once-thriving tourist trade), let alone the vast destruction of the oceanic habitat, has been tremendous.  Although the well is capped, there is still much to be done before the problem is to be fixed; there is still rather a large quantity of that unfortunately slick brown stuff floating about in an ocean previously full of wildlife and successful commercial fishing businesses.
         The fact that it took five months for the government (and the company BP) to fully control the oil spill and secure the oil righ indicates (to me at least) that there is something wrong with the government's response mechanism to man-made (and natural, for that matter) disasters.  This, I suppose, is one of the cons of an expansive bureaucracy.  In one of the articles I read on the subject, an investigation on accountability for the spill passed from National Incident Command to an agency of the Department of the Interior, just because.  I know when the spill was at its most critical, there was at least as much investigation (both within and outside of the government) on the issue of accountability as there was on the much more pressing issue of how to cap the leak itself.  And the response time just wasn't what it should have been--I know I cannot fully appreciate the complexity of coming up with a solution to a problem so complex as the Deep Horizon leak, but I do know that I felt a little disappointed at the President and Congress' reticence to take more action.  Five months is far too long.

"...And we shall never forget...."

United We Stand

        Nine years ago yesterday, a rather hateful (and, unfortunately incredibly well organized) group of people decided it would be a good idea to crash several planes into important sites on the East Coast of the United States of America, including the Pentagon, The World Trade Center in New York and the Capitol in Washington DC (although the latter was diverted by some very brave passengers who managed to crash-land in a field somewhere in rural Pennsylvania).  This is an event that has shaped the national consciousness for the better part of the last decade, and has had an especially profound impact upon people of my generation, who had viewed the events on television as children, and who grew up in the era of the so-called "War on Terror."  As a child of seven or eight, I remember my parents reading news stories of an upsurge in anti-Muslim sentiment directly following the attacks, and I remember them telling me that the people in the stories were wrong and bigoted and that an entire group of people should not be held accountable for the actions of extremists and that I should never judge a person merely because of how he looked.  To my seven-year-old brain, this logic seemed perfectly sound, and I accepted it as fact that the attacks on the Twin Towers were the fault of a few crazy people, and that it didn't particularly matter to which deity they prayed.  As a young adult, I now see, unfortunately, that not everyone's parents instilled in them comparable values of tolerance.  The hate speech I have seen in the media these past few months contains echoes to the time of Japanese Internment that I have only read about in history books.  I just don't understand how a person can justify being so very intolerant, so bigoted.
         About a month and a half ago, while visiting cousins in New York, I actually visited the remains of the World Trade Center, now little more than a large construction site, with nary a trace of rubble.  My cousin, who was so kindly driving me around on a tour of the city, and who had known several people who had lost family members in the attacks, made a point of remarking that she acknowledged that the proposed building of the Muslim cultural center would certainly pour salt in some still-open wounds, but that she herself had no personal problem with it.  At the time I was visiting, I knew very little about the proposed center, and so was surprised to discover that it was not proposed to be right next door to the gaping structural chasm that had once been two very tall buildings, but several blocks away in a rather large building that had once housed a Burlington Coat Factory.  I am sad to say that, from my following of the story since my return, many Americans are still ignorant of the fact that the proposed cultural center will not be built upon the actual foundation of the World Trade Center and that al-Qaeda is not actually behind the building of said mosque.  Such propositions sound rather ludicrous, but people are liable to believe all sorts of untrue things, when blinded by hatred.
          And speaking of hatred, as if the outcry against the mosque (which is actually a cultural center) wasn't bad enough--seriously, this country was, well founded upon the principle of freedom of religion--a rather inflammatory pastor from Gainesville, Florida thought he would take all the anti-Muslim sentiment a bit further and actually burn the Quran on the anniversary of the attacks.  Fortunately, the volume of public outcry got the best of Mr. Terry Jones (who, I am sad to say, is not the lovable Monty Python cast member best remembered for his falsetto female impersonations).  However, the fact that such a thing would be proposed (and supported, both covertly, and overtly by a worryingly large minority of the population) disgusts me.  Politicians love to wax on quite romantically about how we live in a post-racial society, chock full of religious tolerance and devoid of bigotry, but clearly this is not the case.
          I know it's probably quite idealistic of me, but I hope that I will one day live in a society that celebrates the building of mosques (and all other houses of worship, for that matter), and does not accuse the president of being a Muslim, but accepts it. Yes, it is true, that I shall never forget the events of the eleventh of September, two thousand one, but it is equally true that I will never forget that, instead of stepping up to heal its wounds in a way that encouraged tolerance, our great nation turned its back on a minority and allowed bigotry to flourish and re-emerge even stronger nearly a decade later.
 

Wheeling Toward Midterms

Life Is a Highway...well, only if there's
decent infrastructure

          Midterms are coming up. No, not the kind that make high school and college students cringe in fear and develop nervous twitches due to too much coffee and not enough sleep.  These congressional elections will, in all probability, have a wider reaching impact on American life (through the influencing and shaping of  American policy) than a teenager's temporary sleep deprivation.  Of course, President Obama realizes the significance the outcome of these elections will have on his ability to turn his agenda into policy and as such, he has been campaigning vigorously on issues that he hopes will court the vote into his party's fold.  One such issue is the national infrastructure--from highways to railroads to airline runways.
          Probably picking this issue because it generally enjoys bipartisan support, Mr. Obama can be assumed to hope that the strengthening of the nation's infrastructure (and especially highways) will generate the kind of economic growth that was seen under Eisenhower's highway program in the nineteen fifties.  His plan, however, extends beyond that of the Interstate Highway legislation of yore; in his plan, supported by various Democrats and Republicans , Mr. Obama proposes to not only boost funding for infrastructure, but to create a specific bank, purely for the purpose of holding infrastructural funds in order to make the process more organized.  This sounds logical enough, but then again, the American people at large (and indeed the American government at well) do not usually take kindly to nationalized banks, whatever they happen to be for.  Regardless of the efficacy of the proposed plan, I believe that if Congress is able to create a bill in accordance with Mr. Obama's suggestion, I am confident that this may sway some voters (for better or for worse) to vote Democratic, purely because it will look like the Democrats are (finally, in the eyes of many of the semi-jaded and/or right-bent public) getting something useful done.  Personally, whatever the outcomes of the midterms, I hope some sort of infrastructural bill passes, because goodness knows America could use it.

Nepotism at Its Finest

         

Mmm, starchy vegetables

           In the wake of the strange political hijinks that was the SB1070 Arizona Immigration Law, an almost equally strange occurrence in the same state has been widely ignored by the American public. Ben Quayle (yes, the son of the former vice president who once publicly misspelled "potato" and whose substandard grasp of the English language resulted in some of the most endearingly garbled political rhetoric ever--until Bush 43, that is) has just managed to grasp the Republican Party's nomination for Representative of the Third Congressional District, which encompasses the greater Phoenix area and the majority of the population of the state.

           His shady personal life and his father's comical vice presidential  career notwithstanding--for these factors are somewhat irrelevant to his ability to be a successful politician--Ben Quayle troubles me because of his political inexperience (being Dan Quayle's son only counts to a certain extent, and does not necessarily ensure this man's ability to shape policy) as well as his political rhetoric, which caters to the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement that is picking up steam (pun intended) nationwide.  I personally do not want a man who makes sweeping claims on our current president's status as the worst president in history, seemingly without any reasons for said claims, to have substantial political sway in a state that has already passed an (essentially unconstitutional) law that would turn it into something resembling a police state.  Although I know it is wishful thinking, I can't help but dream that the American public (regardless of political affiliation) would be just a little more sensible.