Category: Politics

The GOP ain’t what it used to be. After 25 years of affiliation with the Republican party, attorney James Chaney is calling it quits. Chaney writes for the Eugene Register-Guard:

My Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, and George H.W. Bush. It was a party of honesty and accountability. It was a party of tolerance, and practicality and honor. It was a party that faced facts and dealt with reality, and that crafted common-sense solutions to problems based on the facts as they were, not as we wished them to be, or even worse, as we made them up. It was a party that told the truth, even when the truth came hard. And now, it is none of those things.

Not sure I agree that the GOP was traditionally a party of honesty and accountability, but it sure as hell isn’t now. Disaffection seems be a growing trend as the needle on the seisomograph of extremism continues to wander off the charts.

Via Liberaltopia

Jury duty. Foolishly expected that, as usual, I would get in, not get selected, and get back to work. What unfolded instead could be called a comedy of errors, but that would be too charitable a description for the expanse of waste and idiocy (and yes, comedy) that I encountered today.

Update: I’ve added the end-game to this post.
Continue reading “Jury of Peers”

Salon: Back in March 2003, Reps. Walter Jones and Bob Ney led the effort to get French Fries renamed to “Freedom Fries” in the Capitol’s cafeteria. But since the North Carolina Republican has come full circle on the war, Jones now says he wishes the incident had never happened. Once a staunch supporter of the war, Jones now wonders whether Americans were intentionally given bad information in order to justify the war. He’s not alone.

Sites like rightwingstuff.com offer t-shirts bearing such enlightened slogans as “Peace through superior firepower,” “ACLU – Enemy of the state” and “Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions” (sorry, liberal baiters, I’m not biting). A UCSC prof of mine once went on an extended tirade about the seductive idiocy of bumper sticker philosophy, but the crap just keeps getting thicker. Meanwhile, Pomo Sideshow offers sideways magnetic yellow ribbons to counter the current flood of sideways magnetic yellow “Support our troops” ribbons, featuring sensible slogans such as “Demand open source voting” (I’m down with that), “God bless jingoist ribbons” (you know she does!) and “Support the magnetic ribbon industry.” Tell it like it is.

Thanks baald and mneptok

When Rush Limbaugh decided to lambaste what he perceives as a crisis of multiculturalism in American education, he should oughtn’t of picked on Evanston Township High School. “All ETHS sophomores choose among several “global perspectives” courses covering the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Russia.” Imagine the crisis – students learning about the rest of the world! What Limbaugh apparently didn’t know was that ETHS students also do extremely well on standardized tests of U.S. history.

“What multiculturalists is, is balkanizing this country,” Limbaugh said Tuesday.

Students respond:

Until 10th grade, all we did was U.S. and European history. It’s just so false that what he says is funny.

Now some of the students want to debate him in U.S. history. I wonder if they’re accepting wagers. Would be more lucrative than bake sales…

Lunatics are preparing to storm the asylum:

Norm Olson, senior adviser to the Michigan militia and pastor of a strong right-to-life church in Wolverine, said Tuesday he had put together an unarmed coalition of state militias that were prepared to storm the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo has been left to die, and take her to a safe house.

Olson said he needed only the OK from Schiavo’s father, Robert Schindler, either directly or through his attorney David Gibbs, to put the plan, called “Operation Resurrection,” into action on Sunday.

See also: 22 Things We Learned from the Terri Schiavo Case

Bhutan, which is famous for, among other things, sheltering its people from TV (until 1999) is drafting its first constitution. For a country that has shunned most technology and been fairly repressive of free speech, it’s interesting to see that they’ve put their draft constitution online in PDF form, and are taking public comments.

The impression I got of Bhutan after watching a documentary a while ago was that the country was a paradox – repressive yes, but the people were happy in a way that the film makers described as untarnished — the Luddite approach had an Amish aspect, intended to keep life simple and pure. The government was repressive, but the documentarian commented repeatedly that the people seemed exceptionally joyous and warm (albeit hungry for information from the outside).

From Article 9, this makes me smile:

The State shall strive to promote those circumstances that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness.

Orville Schell with more on the GNH and the introduction of technology to Bhutan.