America's Chief Inquisitor Resigns

Oh, Happy Day!

Lady Justice, Themis to her friends, can bare her fair and balanced breast once more without fear of rude and ignorant cloaking by America's top cop. John Ashcroft, the man who put the most Orwellian twist of Newspeak on the Department of "Justice", has resigned.

His famous last words are wonderfully telling of just who was wearing the blindfold at the DOJ (hint: it wasn't the statue).

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved," Ashcroft wrote in a five-page handwritten letter to Bush.

I know I feel much safer with his departure but not for the reasons he's cited. Prior to his being picked as Bush II's national marshall, Mr. A had recently lost in bid for governor of Missouri to a dead man. Sadly, the corpse of Mel Carnahan would've made a better Attorney General as well. I don't think a dead man would've worked so hard fighting porn and prostitution that he never even considered domestic terrorism a threat until after 9-11. Nor would a dead man have even attempted to draft any sort of legalistic end run around the Geneva Conventions so we could get away with torturing prisoners in Abu Grhaib and Gitmo.

And so to Mr. Ashcroft let us not say "good-bye" so much as "good riddance"!

Slamming Poetry and Free Speech

(Disclaimer: As it is a matter of personal integrity that I endeavor to raise the standard of e-journalism, I must note that this source is somewhat questionable as it is not from an accredited news agency. That said, the story does have "a ring of truth" in my mind which is backed up by this, more reputable follow up story. The follow up article confirms many of the major points in the first one but leaves many holes the first article would seem to fill in. Similarly, this feature on the teacher in question lends some credulity to the events as reported in the first article as well.)

Many folks on the right (and some on the left) have pooh-poohed the idea that the idea that Bush and/or his supporters are trying to force any sort of agenda that would actually deprive anyone of their civil rights. While I've yet to find direct evidence linking W to such activities, I think it worthy to note the milieu this administration is creating.

As the disclaimer above notes, I cannot personnally vouch for all of the details of the following but overall there is "a ring of truth" the events in general as described. However, it is possible that a grain or two of salt may be necessary.

Back in the early part of 2003, a high school teacher in New Mexico was the faculty adviser for a "Slam Team", a group of high school poets. In March of that year, a girl presented her poem "Revolution X" in a live reading off campus and later via school's closed-circuit television system. Her poem questioned the country's involvement in the war in Iraq and the failure of the No Child Left Behind program. A school military advisor (I assume the ROTC teacher?) and the principal accused the girl of being un-American. The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the poem. The teacher-advisor was suspended and later fired for not censoring the students' poems. Later, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own choosing during a flag raising ceremony. When students and faculty raised objections to these acts or espoused opinions contrary to the principal, he replied, "Shut your faces."

Yes, I know there are incidents where the right wing justifiably whines about how they've been victimized by "political correctness". But I've not heard of such things to this level of vindictiveness. Is this "compassionate conservatism" or the latest flavor of "PC"?

A Graphic Worth a 1000 Lies

They did it in 2000. Remember that oh so ubiquitous map showing the county by county "victory" of George W. Bush over Al Gore? Never mind that it was people, not the geographical masses that voted. That map showed the results for a mythical land where dirt votes. Even though Gore won the popular vote in 2000 this map was extolled as "proof" of Bush's mandate. No matter how counter-intuitive it seemed, I know many people who bought into it.

Well, leave it to the right wing to take an intellectually bereft yet politically successful tool and trot it out once more. Yes, they're at it again. Sean Hannity has been touting this map for all would we be duped by it. Now, while the graphic paints a compelling picture it does have one glaring fault: it is a lie.

The problem with that graphic is two-fold. One, as mentioned above, it is a grave analytical flaw to compare land areas (e.g. counties) when one is supposedly measuring human behavior (e.g. voting results). This is what those in the scientific community call "comparing apples to oranges". In layman's terms I'd call it "bullshit". The other problem is the misleading nature of the rounding effect. While I don't dispute that a majority of voter's voted for Bush in those red counties, being a binary display the graphic implies the entire county voted that way. That's like the winner-take-all problem with electoral votes in most of the states. The reality is that most of the nation's counties voted in nearly equal proportions for both Bush and for Kerry.

This is a far better representation. An honest evaluation of the votes by county must weigh both sides of the issue, not just those that won the, often very slight, majority. Ironically, I think the two maps also show the difference between the world views of black-and-white conservatives (map #1) and more nuanced liberals (map #2).

However, even the second map above is still displaying landmass to indicate voters. If you feel compelled to view voter behavior within the context of a map of the US, this is really the best sort of representation. Here we finally see some indication of actual voters (i.e. people not just dirt) in the "hills". I find it interesting to note that while there are only a few purely blue peaks, I could find no red hills at all. As a matter of fact, the only areas where we see solid Bush-red is in the lowest "valleys" indicating the sparsest population areas of the entire nation. In other words, the less likely you are to run into another human being the more likely you are to have voted for W.

This begs the question: is there a connection between anti-social behavior and Republicans?

No Child Left Behind gets scary

This was some sort of snafu accident, of course. No one is blaming the Bush Administration for this. However, the symbolism is blinding: a high-tech fighter jet actually fired upon an elementary school! The plane, an F-16, flying for the Air National Guard--that's the folks who are supposed to be our homeland defense, right?--the symbol of our military superiority fires live ammo at an institution dedicated to the care and education of our children. Thank God it was at night and no kids were there.

Sometimes life employs literary devices. Sometimes we actually experience foreshadowing or a thematic mood is set within unrelated situations. Coming so soon after Bush II's victory this incident dramatizes the progressive's fear of the next four years: all that is good and valuable in America will be subsumed by the quest for military might.

No, I'm sure this act was not intentional. Quite the contrary, which speaks, perhaps, to other forces trying to warn us about the times to come. It is a dark harbinger, indeed.

ref: Fighter jet strafes New Jersey school - Nov 5, 2004

on the mend

Work has been mercifully pre-occupying my time the last couple of days. I've retreated from almost all news sources for the time being. Gone through the anger, the denial, and the bargaining. I think I may be coming out of the depression and almost ready to move into acceptance. I know, I know: "don't mourn, organize". I will. WE will. Unless Bush was just playing to his exteme base for the election, I think we'll his true colors now and that will probably frighten the moderate Republicans to their senses. But for now, I'm going to leave the news phone off the hook a little while longer. I'm sure this hangover will pass in time. And then...!

#&!@*%$

Today's the Day

What are you doin' readin' this?!

Get out there and vote!

Who Would Osama vote for?

Interestingly, neither Drudge nor most of the Western sources list the entire transcript, only excerpts. I found it here, at AlJazeera.net. Here are some interesting tidbits left out of the sanitized, Western versions:

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two Mujahideen to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

and

Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations – whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction – has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results.[emphasis mine]

Many Bushies insist that Osama would vote for Kerry and this is touted as reason enough to support W. But here we see what a boon GWB has been to Al Qaeda and OBL. Or...maybe he's just playing a pychological con game. Either way, I think the real story here is not what Osama said but what we in the US didn't get to hear from him and why.