CNN.com - Politics

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Clinton

If Hillary is the inevitable Democratic nominee, then I'm the queen of France. This media narrative is stupid, and I can't believe people are falling for it. Instead of choosing candidates based on personalities, positions, and records, we're picking a candidate because the rebirth of a Clinton-lead presidency is inevitable. It's stupid, beyond retarded, and dumb to boot.

Maybe Hillary offers the most to please the most voters, what with her skills with triangulation and fudging her positions. But then again, if a uber conservative like Reagan can bleed moderates away from the Democrats, who is to say that a very charismatic liberal couldn't do the same? Because that's all that Reagan had going for him: charisma. Hillary doesn't have charisma though, she's not like her husband. And she doesn't have strong positions on really anything, she just polls her way out of messes.

Le sigh. I guess I'll just have to see how this all plays out. Looks like another election process hijacked by the corporate media. Fuck you Chris Matthews and all the other talking heads.


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Monday, September 10, 2007

Don't Just Vote Blue, Act Blue

Never under estimate the power of the masses. I finally got a little money in my account again, so I donated to the candidates in my Act Blue page. The races I'm highlighting there are two seats in my home state of Michigan, U.S. House districts MI-07 and MI-09, featuring Democrats Mark Schauer and Gary Peters, respectively. Also, I have Al Franken, who is running in a Democratic primary to be the challenger for the MN-Sen seat, and Barack Obama, democratic presidential contender. If donating to Mark Schauer before the primary is decided makes you iffy, donate to the MI-07 Democratic Nominee Fund.

Contributions don't need to be large. I plan on periodically giving a few bucks plus spare change in my account. Who knows, maybe if I get excited enough for the candidates, I might sell some of my stuff on eBay, with the proceeds going to Mark Schauer or Barack Obama. Hmmm, sell a llama for Obama... good idea.

Catch you later.

July 2008?

Petraeus: Troop withdrawals by year's end - CNN.com
The 30,000 additional troops dispatched to Iraq in January could come home by next July, but further American withdrawals would be "premature," the U.S. commander there told a fractious congressional hearing Monday.
Whoa, wait a second: July? Of '08? That is unacceptable. That means, in ten months time, a year and a half after the surge began, we'd be down to pre-Surge levels? Hell no, we need an end now, not another six month trial period before deciding the final fates of the extra 30,000, let alone the rest of our forces there. At this rate, we'll be out... around 2020.

Also, the placing seems highly political. July 2008 allows Republicans to say, within four months of the elections, to say that they've started withdrawing forces from Iraq. Absolute bullshit. We cannot stand for this.

Trolls

Trolls on teh internets give me a headache. One of the driving factors in me shying away from participating in forum discussions online is that I tend to come across the kind of troll who likes to misrepresent people's statements because he has an agenda against that person or something a person said. Yet still, I would fight to protect their freedom to criticize and be belligerent, even if I dislike it.

Fuck T.V.

Television bugs me. The quality of the programs are usually substandard, shallow, and often idiotic. There is very little I can tolerate on television in terms of shows, and very few news programs have my respect. CNN, for example, with their new "Most Stories Per Hour" slogan. I like MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olberman, but off the top of my head, that's really the only exception to the rule. All other news programs are mostly background noise while I read the news online.

But recently television has been bugging me more and more. Is it that the programming is getting worse? Maybe. Is it the lack of interactivity that I can find online? Possibly. What the hell is so different about how I perceive the boob tube nowadays? Is cable television dead to me? Or is it a dying breed?

The answer hit me this morning: television is nothing like "teh internets". It isn't very interactive, and even where it is, it's very shallow and limited: American Idol, for example. It isn't easily navigable: search functions are primitive and weak; channel surfing usually involves hitting channel up numerous times, navigating a "guide", or scrolling through your favorites listings. Online, I can just bookmark my favorite sites, open up the bookmarks folder, click a link, and BAM, I'm there. With cable, the closest I can come to that with my favorite shows is navigating the guide to find the channel, navigating the time slots to find the show, and then setting it to record on DVR.

That's another thing: DVR is really the only saving grace for cable or satellite television these days. Websites are there any time you want to access them; television shows are not. You have to hit the day and time of the broadcast, and if you miss that, chances are you're S.O.L. unless they rebroadcast it (whenever they feel like it), you DVR it (what if you forget?), or someone bootlegs it and puts in on BitTorrent (illegal). Television has arguably become the least user friendly of our daily-use technologies.

But it gets worse. The average television show is low quality entertainment to begin with: whether it be an idiotic concept, low production values, or shallow source material. But advertising makes it worse. Unlike online, you are forced to watch ads in several minute blocs before your program returns. And then, like on the internets, you get ads slipped into the actual content, whether it be the little bug in the corner of your screen, or characters drinking Coke, wearing Nike shoes, and the Geico billboard in the background. It's a double whammy of advertising, just to put a show on television on a national network to reach a small portion of the national audience.

What then, is the alternative? Once again, the internets come into play. Online broadcast of shows is already becoming a reality. We can also sometimes access clips or even live streams from networks, although internet radio does this more effectively. The internets also offers a cheaper distribution model than cable or satellite television does: it is a global series of networks with a global audience. An investment smaller than that made to air a program on television could reach a larger portion of the global audience, and advertisements would have a greater reach on a lesser budget. An expensive website with massive broadband bills wouldn't even be necessary: the foundations are already laid in the form of P2P networks such as BitTorrent. There are people out there willing to share the bandwidth costs to help distribute your material.

Who wins in direct broadcast online? Viewers, producers, and advertisers. Who loses? The middlemen: the networks. The networks, in their inflexibility, may well lose not only their audience, but their producers and advertisers should legal P2P distribution of shows ever become a reality. Imagine an internet where one could legally watch Heroes episodes by downloading them on BitTorrent, and all one would have to suffer for it is a sponsorship message, a small advertising bug, and some ingrained ads. Where shows don't get canceled because they can't attract a large enough portion of the national audience to justify their continued production: direct broadcast will always reach your target audience if your promotions work, made cheaper by word of mouth and ease of access on P2P networks, is effective.


So what holds us back? A laundry list of problems: cable companies favoring the television format, telecoms drive to kill network neutrality, the drive by the MPAA and RIAA to kill P2P technologies, slow broadband speeds in the United States, inflexibility of the current broadcast system, and sheer force of consumer habit. Some of these issues can be struck down with two simple measures: getting the FCC to restore open access and network neutrality would promote growth of broadband networks in the United States, for example. Some problems are harder to tackle: television, as much as I and many others hate it, has consumers locked into habit, despite how unfriendly it can be to the user. P2P technology is suffering at the hands of a witch hunt due to its association with piracy. And yet, piracy would become less of an issue if television (and music) weren't so god damned restrictive. People bristle at being made to pay $70 a month for the good cable, just to watch a small handful of shows in a small handful of time slots.

The tyranny and the bullshit can only go on so long, though. Television's days are numbered in the information age. Just look at my generation and the next: television digestion is down, internet use is up. The internets are this generation's television, and television is just a distraction from this new reality. It will fade from prominence, and the internets will absorb all of its functions, and it will perform them better than television ever could.

Friday, September 07, 2007

About Time

Democrats in Congress restored money into the federal Pell Grant program and cut corporate welfare to the lending companies in a new student loan bill. Hopefully this isn't the last progress we see in this department, and let us pray that Bush doesn't veto it. My future education rides on this. It really does.

Emanuel on Iraq Report

Oh my god, a Democrat in Congress pointing out the reality of Mr. 25%'s war? What next, an actual proposal for withdrawal in Congress? Maybe we're getting to them, wearing down their resistance.

Net Neutrality

Now the antitrust division of the Justice Department is jumping into the Net Neutrality game (yeah, like anything they can contribute will be trustworthy, right Al?). What's more, they're attempting to use the same tired argument that Rep. Boehner attempted with me last year.

In comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, the department said some net neutrality proposals "could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans."

"Regulators should be careful not to impose regulations that could limit consumer choice and investment in broadband facilities," the department's antitrust chief, Thomas Barnett, said in a statement.

Now compare this to the prewritten response letter sent to me by Rep. Boehner's office last year:
This year, Congress will reauthorize the 1996 Telecommunications Act. One of the key criticisms of that act... is that, despite supposedly benevolent intentions, Congress essentially picked winners and losers in the various sectors of the telecommunications industry instead of allowing a free marketplace in which competition would lead to new technology, better service, and lower prices for consumers. As a result, many industry experts have concluded that governmental regulation has impeded the emergence of new technology and better applications. Perhaps the biggest example of America's stifled telecommunications progress is that the United States, despite being the world's economic powerhouse, is currently ranked 16 th for Internet broadband deployment.
And then, of course, there is my point-by-point response. The argument now is the same as it was then: network neutrality won't kill off the profit margin of telecom companies with their hands in many pots. Net neutrality doesn't prevent companies from charging based on bandwidth use, it prevents them from prioritizing, refusing to carry, or penalizing certain sites in favor of the corporation's interests. The Internet is not there for Time Warner, Comcast, or AT&T to decide what content gets buried, and what content gets promoted. That is wholly against the concept of what the Internet is.

Addendum:
Save the Internet Coalition's blog has a good post about open access and how it transformed Japan's broadband landscape. Open access laws were developed here in the United States, but were dropped by the Bush Administration at the behest of the telecom lobby.

Letter to Sherrod Brown

So this morning, laying sick on the couch, I got the overwhelming urge to bombard my Senators and representatives with appeals to create and back stronger proposals for withdrawal from Iraq. But considering that one of Ohio's Senators is Republican George Voinovich, and the Representative from my district is Mike Turner (yuck), that left me with one real option: Sherrod Brown. So below is my letter to Senator Brown.

Dear Senator Brown and his staff,

It concerns me that our Democratic Congress is capitulating on the subject of total troop withdrawal in Iraq so easily. With such an unpopular war, supported by such an unpopular party (Republicans), mismanaged by such an unpopular President, what possible backlash could you really imagine there being against us for ending this quagmire?

You, sir, were elevated by the people to the post of U.S. Senator for a myriad of reasons, among them the belief that you could be a great leader on Iraq policy. Much the same with the elevation of Democrats to power in both halves of the federal legislature. This war is deeply unpopular, and Democrats were empowered to end it.

I fear that failure to do so may cost us much, maybe not in 2008, but beyond that. The Democrats must show that they have the strength and moral conviction to lead us out of this mess. What I'm asking, sir, is that you lead the charge in the Senate. The time for compromise with Bush and his Republican cronies is over.

We need change, we need to be out of Iraq before it drags us under and destroys our military capability. Put a proposal on the table for an actual timetable for withdrawal, and oppose the weak piece of legislation which suggests that Bush should figure something out, and then Congress would just merrily do with whatever the Decider decides.

Also, deny the war the funding to continue until you get Bush and the Republicans to capitulate to you. Even if you can't get enough votes to block spending bills, filibuster them to death. If Strom Thurmond could manage a 24 hour filibuster, it should be no problem for you, sir.

In conclusion, you hold my deep set respect as my representative and I hope that you continue to represent the people of your state fairly and honestly. I know that you are destined for greatness in the Senate if you just apply yourself. Thank you for your time.

Act Blue (Edited for Errors)

I created an Act Blue page, primarily to support Mark Schauer, candidate for MI-07; Gary Peters, candidate for MI-09; Al Franken, candidate for MN-SEN; and Barack Obama, the next POTUS.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

A Thousand Words

Battle Hymns

Music is a large part of my life. Cliche, yes, but true: somewhere out there, there is a genre, a band, and a song which reflect every aspect of my personality. From love to work to politics, the sounctrack to my life would be eccletic, eccentric, and electrifying.

I especially have a special place in my heart for folk music of a socially and politically charged nature. Organizing songs, protest songs, jaded commentary, revolutionary themes, and ballads of wrongs commited against humanity; all of these stimulate the fighting spirit that drives my heart. They keep me going, campaigning, pushing for a better future for Darrion and the children I one day hope to have.

Good folk music, just like any music, can be a double-edged sword. It can motivate people to great works of justice and peace, but can also incite people to violence and bigotry. You have to be careful in digesting the message of an inflammatory work of art so as not to lose control and do something irrational. Like with anything, you need to have a mental filter when listening. Allow the music to foster contemplation, not rash actions.

I guess the whole point of this post is that the fading of good folk music from public perception saddens me. In a time when folk would serve us best, instead we get rap songs about money and hoes, emocore music about how dad sucks, and crappy pop bands who talk about shallow lust and beauty. Not that those things can't also be good, but I find the general apathy in the average American to so many things to be disturbing. Doesn't it bother people that, in a supposed free market economy, the worker/consumer has no real power to negociate prices or wages, because there's always someone else willing to demean themselves by working for less? Or that our rights to speech, to self-government, and to free association are being threatened by corporate lobbyists, political dynasties, and a sense of superiority our business-class has over the average American?


I guess, deep down, I'm still just the jaded little revolutionary that my mother swore I would grow out of when I got older. But then again, what has my mother ever really understood about me? As much as I love her, and as much as it sometimes worries me, I am my father's son, and we understand one another as far as we care to reveal ourselves to each other. Two of the key things that have always united my father and I, though, is our ecclectic love for music and our abhorrence of injustice and inequity.

My father is my inspiration, even though we may differ in method and even opinions. It was because of him that I first started looking into the music of my parents generation, and the folk music that was popular at the time. It was something we could share and enjoy together, a rare thing for us. My aunt and uncle furthered this process, and my musical exposure and education as a child was varied and helped formulate my being.

My point here, really, is to wax philosophical on my love of music, via a long and twisted road. And, as I suck at closing a stream of consciousness post, I wish to say a few words: tweak, oddment, and blubber. Thank you.

Battle Hymns, by The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello)
Battle hymns for the broken
Battle hymns for the misled
Battle hymns for the wretched
The forgotten and the dead
Battle hymns of redemption
Of solidarity and pride
Battle hymns we will be singing
At the turning of the tide

Can you explain to the mothers
And the fathers of those
Who come riding home in coffins
In their military clothes
Shiny medals pinned
To their dead teenage chests
While the trumpets blare
And you lie your best
So ask all you want
From the dusk til the dawn
The answer's still no
Cause brother I'm gone

Battle hymns for the broken
Battle hymns for the misled
Battle hymns for the wretched
The forgotten and the dead
Battle hymns of redemption
Of solidarity and pride
Battle hymns we will be singing
At the turning of the tide

Can you explain away the sleight of hand
And the criminality
Of spending souls for oil
Well in the mirror I can see
I am the path that leads down
I am a dark and bloody hall
I'm the reaper, executioner
Hangman, judge, and the law
So tie a yellow ribbon
Round the oak tree on the lawn
But the cavalry's not comin'
Cause brother they're gone

Battle hymns for the broken
Battle hymns for the misled
Battle hymns for the wretched
The forgotten and the dead
Battle hymns of redemption
Of solidarity and pride
Battle hymns we will be singing
At the turning of the tide

So I'm sharpening my shovel
I'm firing the kiln
I'm blind and I am purposeful
A martyr on the hill
The dream you might be dreaming
Might be someone else's dream tonight
I'm the whisperer of misgivings
I'm the fading tail light
I'm the call for retribution
From the back of the smoke filled hall
I'm the vow of bitterness
I'm the poison in the well
I've a photographic memory
Of the deeds I will avenge
I'm the cold in the river hollow
I've a hatpin, I've a plan
I don't care of cause or consequence
Head shaved and body lean
I'm the go-getter, the score settler
I'm the shadow on the green
There's a flock of blackbirds flying
Nearly ten thousand strong
Who set off this morning
And brother they're gone

Battle hymns for the broken
Battle hymns for the misled
Battle hymns for the wretched
The forgotten, for the dead
Battle hymns of redemption
Of solidarity and pride
Battle hymns we will be singing
At the turning of the tide

Friday, August 31, 2007

BREAKING: Craig Resigning

He's formally announcing his resignation from the Senate tomorrow, it seems. So now we wait and see who Idaho's governor appoints to fill the rest of his term.

Rez, Plz (Or "How I Learned to Stop Slacking and Love the Blog")

It has been a long year since I last touched this blog, and during the time... well, little has changed about me. Eight months of democratic rule in Congress has done little that I had hoped, but hey, at least we have a minimum wage hike, right?

One year of silence, a communications blackout from the twisted genius that authored this blog only to let it fall before it could truly be established. My sounding board for my insanity, home to my outrage, core of my hope for the future. The place where I wax poetic about the corrupt realm of politics ("many blood-sucking insects").

But no more. I have said it before, but this time I mean it: never shall I fall silent again, lest the grave take me from this world. Even then, I would hope there would be a meaningful message in the end of my time on this Earth. But let us not speak of such depressing possibilities. There is much afoot that needs addressing, many wrongs which need righting.


I guess it strikes me at how sad it is that the Republican Party is so full of closeted homosexuals at the top. Strange to ponder how a person could be a gay Republican and be accepted by the party, so long as they follow the subtle (or often times not-so-subtle) anti-gay party agenda set by the leadership. The hypocrisy required is just staggering, and it makes you wonder why these men just don't come clean about who they are instead of trying to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle in the closet, soliciting sex from strangers in public restrooms.

The Craig situation both sickens me and excites me. It is sickening in the way the G.O.P. calls for his head and forces him out of his position for something as personal as his sexual orientation. There's nothing wrong with homosexuality that I can identify, and I believe that they should leave his sexual preference out of things. So he was busted for trying to hook up with a stranger in an airport restroom. What the hell are they doing wasting police resources trying to catch gay people, not in the act, but in the attempt to even make contact. I would call that entrapment, as he didn't commit any lewd acts to be charged with.

On the other hand, it's exciting that Democrats might have a chance in Idaho because of this. Not necessarily because of Craig being gay, but because of his impending resignation and the flaws of his potential replacements. Idaho Republicans could very well slaughter each other in the primary for the seat, just because there are more Republican politicians in Idaho than positions they could possibly fill without engorging the size of the state government.

I feel good about our chances in an Idaho Senate race for a change, and may well be contributing to Larry LaRocco's campaign this cycle.


Speaking of campaign contributions, I'm seriously considering making a contribution to Senator Obama's campaign for the presidency, and I'm also considering small contributions to Gary Peters for MI-09 and Mark Shauer in MI-07. Chances are that I'll be living in one of those two districts when I move back up to Michigan in early November, and I would like to do my part to secure Congress out of Republican hands.


Which reminds me. I'm moving back up to Michigan from Dayton, OH. The move isn't finalized yet, but it will be happening before the year is out, probably in early November as stated above. If you need to be in the know, you will be. If not, you can find out the details after the fact.


That's all for now. I'll be back, I promise.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Marijuana's Bad, Mmmmkay?

Growing up like I did, with illicit substances always around the house in the hands of my stoner parents, I guess I have a hard time understanding -- even though I haven't smoked since I was a high school Junior -- what exactly should make my parents criminals and marijuana illegal. How can something less damaging than alcohol with more legimate medical uses be considered a dangerous narcotic?

This brings me to another one of my random, off-the-wall theories: should marijuana be used to treat menopause? Or better yet, hash brownies? Because if marijuana acts enough like estrogen that males can begin to develop breasts after enough exposure (supposedly), then why exactly aren't we using it to treat women with hormonal imbalances across the spectrum? Imagine it, hash brownies -- pot and chocolate -- being used to treat women for entire spectrums of problems, relatively naturally! Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass -- I'm not a chemist or a biologist. But if I'm right, think of the potential! :-P

It just always struck me as funny that even the big three illegal drugs -- marijuana, heroin, and cocaine -- all have legimate medical uses. Novacaine is a synthetic form of the main painkiller in cocaine, and it replaced the use of cocaine in modern medicine. Heroin is a derivative of morphine. Then there's pot, the seeming wonder drug. A myriad of uses is possible with the most harmless of the big three, and I really wonder why we don't just give up the stupid war on hash. What good has that part of the Drug War ever really brought us? Although I'm in danger of sounding like every other pothead legalization advocate -- or as they call themselves, the "anti-prohibition" movement -- I really do think we need to give it up and make weed a regulated substance, complete with sin tax.

I mean, imagine the revenue for state and federal governments from sin taxes on weed. And yes, there would be so many more people who might use it recreationally due to relaxed fears of being screened out of jobs and custodial rights by drug tests; but is that a bad thing? They would be regulated with the strength of their pot under strict control, much like we control the various proofs of alcohol. Let people do with their bodies what they want: you're not going to stop someone from drinking or smoking by enacting draconian laws and punishing them far beyond their crime. You're just creating a lot of bad will towards the law and the government. If the general consensus becomes that there are laws that are unjust and they deserve to be broken, then they will be. But when, then, should people stop ignoring the law? Total freaking anarchy, am I right?

I know I can't be the only one to see this? Are there really that many authoritarians who want to see draconian legislation and bans on (mostly) harmless substances like marijuana maintained and expanded?

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Iraqinam?

There's nothing that bothers me more than the twisting of historical fact into political rhetoric to justify a certain course of action. I've been watching President Bush use our withdrawl from Vietnam to justify not withdrawing from Iraq for years, and however you feel about the war, the analogy just doesn't fit. As the article linked states, "Asia didn't go Communist. Our Asian allies didn't abandon us. Rather, the Vietnamese began to fall out with her Communist allies."

And the boat people I understand, but the killing fields? Sorry, but that was Cambodia, not Vietnam. Sheer historical fact twisting, misrememberance, and idiocy. I just can't stand that sort of thing.