🏷️ politics

......Served hot and fresh, like crumpets and tea, based mostly on some links I found on Drudge this morning.

The Democrats have tried hard to sell "new direction" as their slogan, while at the same time denying what that new direction really means. The newly elected leadership has said that it is not the Democrats' intention to cut-and-run, or surrender, or to leave Iraq in a state of chaos, nor is it their intention to cut off funding.

Only a few bold souls have been willing to be honest with us about their intentions, and while I may not agree 100% with them, at least they are not trying to bullshit us.

Kucinich proposes removing the funds for the military operations (from The Dennis Kucinich web site):

Carl Levin proposes near-term troop withdrawal (Breitbart):

Mitt Romney, detestable to liberals because he is a Mormon, and detestable to evangelicals because, well, he's a Mormon, opens up on the Boston Media for having two points of view - the liberal view and the progressive view (paraphrasing, from mediabistro):

Nanny state politics are alive and well, and someone recently laughed at me when I said that eventually smoking will be banned in general, sooner than later being very likely. Laugh no more! Here we have the first American city to ban smoking. All I can say is that at least it isn't criminalized (for now).

Smoking Ban Article on San Mateo Daily Journal:

Al Gore just can't stay out of the spotlight, can he? He's recently said that he might not go into politics again, because he is very comfortable and happy being an environmental activist. Hmmm. I don't think you can be an activist and NOT be political. That's kind of the point, isn't it Al? I think he's really enjoying the attention he's getting. Personally, I think he's more effective doing what he's doing now than being part of the government.

Al Gore calls Aussies and Americans "Bonnie and Clyde" of Global Warming:

Aussie PM John Howard Hits Back at Gore, Promotes Nuclear Energy: 't-panic-just-wait-for-a-more-convenient-truth-urges-howard/2006/11/13/1163266484014.html#

Lastly, a comment based on some things I read in the Jerusalem Post last night. The left here and in Europe may not be taking Ahmedinejad seriously, as proven by that unwatchable Mike Wallace interview, but I'm going to tell you right now that Israelis have had enough. They've also had enough concerning the Palestinians. With Europe being completely unsympathetic, with Iran's nuclear games only being given lip service, and with bodies piling up on a daily basis on both sides of the border with Gaza, I've been hearing many Israelis stating that they want this nonsense to END, period, and what does that mean? It means this shit is going to come to a head very soon. When told that it would end if they could just give up more land, they say "We gave them Gaza and now it is only more or less a staging ground for attacks." If there was ever a time to prove to people that diplomacy is the only solution, it is now, but I have my doubts.

And I'm not using those words lightly:



Jason

Not to break up the rants or parties you guys are enjoying, but I have to ask you all something. You're all just talking about the national elections, and you're happy that the "corrupt, unethical" Republicans no longer have control - yet we just elected two real gems to Albany, and I want to know why nobody is talking about it. I suspect it's a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, or a case of just looking the other way. I hate to be so cynical but that's the way it looks.

Alan Hevesi (D) - An out and out THIEF of taxpayer dollars for his own personal purposes, and a repeat offender to boot. Famous for doing the same thing in the city. Oh, what a guy, he repaid it after he got caught. Unethical, inappropriate, and apparently completely acceptable to Democrats. I heard a good comment on the radio yesterday. Someone said "Who better to look after thieves than a thief? Who knows them better?"

Antoine Thompson (D) - This notorious yes-man, and proponent of the casino ran UNOPPOSED, which speaks to our local apathy and carelessness when it comes to local elections. Can you believe that people who will be harmed most by the Casino voted for this guy? And here we have to deal with the tired, incorrect rhetoric about Republican voters not voting for their own interests, which makes 750 howl with laughter. What a joke, an absolute joke, and nobody is talking about it. Why?

Oh, be happy that the Republicans no longer have national power, but hang your heads in shame and self-loathing after you learn that we continue to move backwards locally. The local elections are what matter the most to us on a day to day basis, and we are asleep at the wheel, mindlessly turning the (D) option in support of people who never should be in office.

The Democrats have, as expected, taken at least one portion of Congress away from the Republicans. I have mixed feelings about this, because I think replacing a group of far right wingers with a group of far left wingers will not result in anything useful for the majority of people.

We will still have minority beliefs and values forced upon us, but they will be of a different nature. I don't think having one party in control of the legislative and executive branch is helpful, so in a way I think it is better overall that things have gone this way, although nothing of any consequence will be done in the next two years.

I will guarantee you one thing - all of the talk of fraud, trickery, illegal activity, so on and so forth, all of this stuff is going to disappear into thin air, and why? Because in the end the left got their desired result. As long as they get their result the rest is sort of insignificant. When Democrats win, obviously nothing out of the ordinary happened. The one liner is "No loss? No problem!" I doubt we'll ever read another Niman rant about this, nor will it be plastered all across the mainstream press. It appears to me that it was all faux outrage. I hope that I'm wrong, and that there are a lot more DCoffee types out there who really give a shit about something other than victory for their party.

Rummy is now gone, and I don't think anyone would disagree at this point that it's the best thing for everybody. I would hate to work for a boss like that.

Congress is going to be locked in investigation hell, and every kook conspiracy theory is going to be given the kind of respect they should never receive. This is going to get very boring very quickly.

The Democrats won in part by courting moderate candidates. This is interesting to me because the House leadership will now be comprised almost entirely of far-left liberals, not moderates. Pelosi (if you believe Time magazine) is infamous for bending people to her will who disagree with her. America voted for Moderates, and that's not the kind of leadership we are going to receive.

I know there are those of you who are begging to have your taxes raised. Pelosi and Schumer have said repeatedly recently that they are not going to raise the rich's taxes, or anyone else's taxes! Do any of you really believe this? Will the Democrats wait until 2010 for Bush's tax cuts to expire? Absolutely not. Not a chance.

How many of you want Bush to be impeached? First of all, if you are thinking seriously about this, you do not know what it is you are asking for, because if you did you would understand that 67 senators need to agree on it. Pelosi and Schumer and the rest have also repeatedly said that Impeachment is off the table. Either they are lying or they are going to disappoint a lot of liberals.

What of Iraq? This is what voters went to the polls to protest. They say they will not "cut and run," but I don't see how moving our troops out of Iraq is indicative of any other attitude. Anyway Bush is still at the top of the military food chain. I see no significant changes in America's Iraq policy. If anything, people are going to vote to cut the funding of the war, in lieu of sticking their necks out for a major policy change.

How will the Democrat leadership do its job? It is going to be gridlock. All that is going to happen is a push for the '08 elections, and the Democrats aren't going to be active enough to hang themselves, if they are smart. They will leave the decisions concerning America's foreign and domestic policy to the UN, or to Paris.

I'm not happy, but then again there wasn't a result of this election that I would be happy with. I feel like it was a choice of bad or worse, and bad is still bad, you know?

Whether you are a proud American or not, the only way we can make things better is if we take ownership of this, our country, and show the incumbents they just aren't good enough. I'll be voting strictly along anti-incumbent lines today. Whether you're straight up commie or a fascist pig, get out there and stake your claim to our great nation and vote.

Partisan double standards, and fictionalizing for profit

The current flap over the upcoming ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 is a textbook case of partisan hypocrisy. And that label applies to liberal and conservatives alike.

Let's start with the liberals -- not all liberals, of course; I am referring to activists and bloggers -- since they're the ones who are ticked off at ABC. Their outrage is directed at various fictionalizations of the 9/11 saga that the Hollywood types have either dreamed up or improvised. These scenes apparently depict Bill Clinton's national security team as being less than vigilant about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden during the late '90s. Infuriated liberal activists are currently demanding that ABC either shelve those scenes -- or cancel the five-hour miniseries in its entirety. (And a new report in Variety says that outright cancellation is still possible.)

Looking at this case on the merits, it's clear that the liberal camp does have a legitimate beef; even ABC has admitted taking some dramatic liberties with the known facts. But I don't recall the liberal camp acting with similar concern back in 2003, when a CBS docudrama about Ronald Reagan was planning to take some dramatic liberties in its depiction of the former president.

Quite the contrary, in fact. Liberals thought that the Reagan show should air just as the miniseries producers intended it to air -- in the name of freedom of speech. And when conservative activists, led by the Republican National Committee, went after CBS and demanded (in the end, successfully) that the network dump the show, liberals were outraged that there could be such an assault on free expression.

People for the American Way railed in a press release about "right-wing thought police," and Barbra Streisand (whose husband was playing Reagan) wrote on Nov. 4, 2003, "I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this....This (conservative effort) is censorship, pure and simple." But now that liberals are going after ABC for taking similar liberties with Clinton, I don't hear her, or other famed Friends of Bill, sounding any concerns about "censorship."

Most conservatives, however, are also selective in their outrage. They don't seem very concerned that the Hollywood types (whom they generally dislike) have filmed fictionalized scenes that depict a former president in a negative light. In fact, they've barely said anything at all, content instead to chuckle at the liberals' discomfiture.

Yet the scene was very different in October 2003, when they were so outraged that Hollywood had filmed fictionalizeed scenes depicting their favorite former president in a negative light. Back then, when a major network acted in this fashion, it was viewed as fresh evidence of liberal-media perfidy.

As Ed Morrow of the National Review said, "Attempts to distort our history must be resisted. Historical truth is simply too valuable to be made a plaything for biased filmmakers rewriting it to fit their politics." And Ed Gillespie, the Republican party chairman, said on MSNBC that "there's infotainment and docudrama and reality TV and the lines between fact and fiction blur. That's fine when it's entertainment, but when you're talking about...the Reagan legacy formation, I think that it's important that we get things right."

Where's the plea from Gillespie today, demanding that ABC "gets things right" about the Clinton legacy?

Actually, some conservatives have spotted the double standard, and they have copped to it. Commentator Jonah Goldberg: "A pox on everybody...(C)onservatives howled in outrage (in 2003), and got CBS to drop it. Why shouldn't liberals have a go at the same thing?" James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal website wrote the other day, "The Clintonites may have a point here. A few years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, we were happy to see CBS scotch The Reagans."

I could just leave the issue here, having made the argument about partisan hypocrisy. But that's not the root problem. Actually, it was Gillespie, in the service of his partisan argument, who identified the root problem when he mentioned the rise of infotainment and the blurring between fact and fiction.

The networks have opened themselves up to these kinds of partisan attacks by embracing the docudrama format, apparently in the belief that mass audiences aren't interested in history unless actors read the lines and scripts contain the dramatic "beats" that work best between commercial breaks. There once was a time when vital issues, such as the road to 9/11, would have been explored at length in news-division documentaries that aired in prime time -- I can remember NBC White Paper and CBS Reports; Edward R. Murrow came earlier -- but that format was not deemed sufficiently profitable, so it was dropped.

But now that the networks, in the pursuit of ratings and ad dollars, have embraced a format that necessarily mixes fact and fiction, they have in a sense reaped the whirlwind -- opening themselves up to attack from whichever partisan camp feels aggrieved about the fiction element. One Hollywood producer laments to Variety, "Starting with The Reagans, everything is now political. It's become so divisive and nasty. It's very sad."

Actually, what's really sad is the networks' assumption that, in our polarized era, they can somehow take liberties with history in the pursuit of profits -- and not get any grief about it.

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MY TAKE:

This article expresses my feelings on the subject very accurately, and blasts the canard that since the media is corporate, then they will always side with Republicans.

Another point to be made is that the networks are VERY interested in playing down their participation in the tabloid journalism which is aimed at playing into the divisive, partisan nature of almost every single discussion. Nope, the media isn't at fault at all! Ahem.

Jason

Are you angry about Joe Lieberman running for Senate?

Is open voter disenfranchisement better than the underhanded kind?

Discuss.

Well, I have to say I'm disappointed. I made it outrageous on purpose! @jewishpride, you misunderstood the thrust of my blog. In no way do I think Jewish lives are cheap. I don't think Lebanese lives are cheap for that matter. I doubt too many people at Bidwell understood that Hezbollah uses civilians (the very people who they provide services for!) to hide themselves and their munitions. They talk about "collective punishment," the liberal buzzword of the day, with no sense of irony at all.

Where are these jerks when Jews are getting death rained on them on a daily basis? Where is the outrage? I thought these people wanted peace! I thought these people were outraged by violence! Clearly this is only true when we go after the enemy. They don't protest Hamas or Hezbollah. They don't protest Al Qaeda. They aren't the self-styled caring people they purport themeselves to be. These protests are fucking disingenuous, and so are the protestors.

If they don't at all care about violence perpetrated by Islamofascist terrorists, then one has to wonder why. What's the reason? And I am absolutely NOT going to hear or put up with any assertions that they do care about Israeli deaths, because every single last action they make proves the opposite.

Next in Jason's Blog: Surge in aggressive Panhandling - What to do?

Ben Stein talks about perspective:



A pretty good article, not so political in nature.

In continuing with the discussion prompted by @joshua -

I've looked at the SF Gate article, and it is incredibly illuminating. Sometimes I really do wonder what is in the water on the left coast. The first thing I will say is something everyone should be able to agree on - First Amendment rights are not limited only to what we personally agree with. Time and again we see people representing all political affiliations who forget this fundamental American truth. Liberals fight tooth and nail to defend Ward Churchill's crazy speech, and the next minute work just as hard to silence equally nutty fundamentalists. Fundamentalists think it's okay to call homosexuality a sign of the end times, and yet protest over themes in our popular culture. Where is the consistency? Where is the respect for the First Amendement, and fundamental rights that we all share? With that in mind, I won't call either group "mine" as I can't respect either one.

Here are some interesting tidbits I took from the article:

1) The SF board of directors, in denouncing the Christian protestors, called the protest an event to "negatively influence the politics of America's most tolerant and progressive city." The irony cuts like a hot knife through butter!

2) Assemblyman Mark Leno (D), in true tolerant San Francisco fashion, says of the Christians "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." Read the article to find more nuggets of tolerance from San Francisco residents.

3) The word "fascist," which @uncutsaniflush correctly indentifies as a horribly diluted, school yard taunt, almost as bad as the word "Orwellian," is again brought out by the left to describe something they can't understand or relate to. What about the "eco-fascists" who blow up SUVs, home developments, and support taxing gasoline even more, to force Americans to live according to their vision? I'm sure we'll see an official statement from Mr. Leno any day now.

4) The Christian fundies use the word "war" a hell of a lot in describing the conflict they have with America's popular culture. Remember, these ARE fringe fundies, and I'm not being flippant. I'm beginning to wonder when Christian fundies will adopt a similar action plan to the Islamic fundies world wide. I wonder if SF will go down in a blaze of "holy justice."

5) Hypocrisy is something that lives on, and resolutely stays in every human heart and mind. It doesn't matter what stripes you bear, you are a fucking hypocrite.

Jason