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Monday, September 06, 2004

Quotes Here are some quotable comments from stories I've bookmarked in the last few days but haven't had time to post a longer response to: The New York Times' Frank Rich reaches for, and finds, an apt and accurate word to describe President George W. Bush: "Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man." Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., summing up his reaction to the Republican National Convention last week in New York City: "The Republican Party has come loose of its moorings. ... I think you've got a party that is in a state of uncertainty." White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, speaking about George W. Bush: "This president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child." (That, again, was Bush's own chief of staff saying that. The sissy thinks you should be treated like a 10-year-old.) William Saletan, "Imperial President: Opposing Bush becomes unpatriotic," in Slate: So now you have two reasons to show up at the polls in November. One is to stop Bush from screwing up economic and foreign policy more than he already has. The other is to remind him and his propagandists that even after 9/11, you still have that right. Chris Sullentrop, "I Love 9/11: The GOP convention's nostalgia for tragedy," in Slate: The president's defenders say he invaded Iraq with good intentions, and I believe them. But if President Bush didn't mislead us into war, he's misleading us during one, and he deserves to be defeated for it. Hendrik Hertzberg, "Under Fire," in The New Yorker: The campaign to blacken the honor of Senator John Kerry does not appear to be the direct work of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. or the Republican National Committee but of an "independent" group styling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. ... The anti-Kerry veterans group and the official Bush campaign are advised by the same lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg (or were until last Wednesday, when he abruptly resigned as national counsel to Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.); they enjoy the financial support of the same wealthy Texas Republicans, especially Bob Perry, a close friend and political associate of Karl Rove; and they are connected to each other and to the Republican Party by a web of operatives and consultants. Facts such as these do not in themselves demonstrate unlawful coordination between the Bush campaign and the veterans group. ... They offer even less support, however, for the assertion of Marc Racicot, the chairman of Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., that "there is no connection of any kind whatsoever." Suffice it to say that if the provable ties between the Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaida had been a fraction as strong as the provable ties between the Bush campaign and the veterans group, the "coalition of the willing" would have been larger than it is. And, just because it was so dead-on, here's Frank Rich again: "Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man." Did he just call George W. Bush a sissy? Yes he did. It stings because it's true. (See also here.) [slacktivist] 10:55:12 PM  Permalink  comment []

TiVo and Netflix team up to deliver movies to net-connected TiVos Xeni Jardin: Newsweek breaks the story that TiVo and Netflix have joined forces to offer downloaded movies direct to net-connected TiVos ("Damn," says Fred von Lohmann as he points us to this news -- "And I'm stuck with my modem-bound gen.1 TiVo!") Link (via PVR blog) [Boing Boing] 1:32:16 PM  Permalink  comment []

Missing National Guard Records MISSING NATIONAL GUARD RECORDS....Several weeks ago the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information request demanding access to the original microfilm of President Bush's National Guard records. Yesterday, AP's Matt Kelley turned up the heat by filing a story that... [Political Animal] So of course they've got the time and money and inclination to look into Kerry's medals, but not to dig into Dubya's National Guard files. 1:31:44 PM  Permalink  comment []

[Interesting] Pentagon orders investigation of John Kerry's 5 Vietnam War decorations [Telegraph] [Fark] Is the entire federal government an agency of the Bush re-election campaign? 1:08:50 PM  Permalink  comment []

Kicks Are For Republicans She was on the ground being held by three secret service agents when this young Republican thug kicked her. Help me save a little bandwidth and only use the quicktime link if you have a Mac Link for PC users at Talk Left Link for Mac 4.1MB Quicktime required... [onegoodmove] 9:56:24 AM  Permalink  comment []

I Just Ordered This Book from Amazon Between this review in the New York Times, and the reviews calling it the work of the anti-christ on Amazon, I had to get a copy of the book. My library doesn't have it, so maybe I'll donate it after I read it. From the Times review: It's not often that I see my florid strain of atheism expressed in any document this side of the Seine, but ''The End of Faith'' articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated, almost personally understood. Sam Harris presents major religious systems like Judaism, Christianity and Islam as forms of socially sanctioned lunacy, their fundamental tenets and rituals irrational, archaic and, important when it comes to matters of humanity's long-term survival, mutually incompatible. A doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say in contemporary America: ''We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad,' 'psychotic' or 'delusional.' '' To cite but one example: ''Jesus Christ -- who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death and rose bodily into the heavens -- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad?'' The danger of religious faith, he continues, ''is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.'' This has been widely quoted. I also like this chunk of the review, it resonates totally with me: ''Criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture. On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.'' A zippered-lip policy would be fine, a pleasant display of the neighborly tolerance that we consider part of an advanced democracy, Harris says, if not for the mortal perils inherent in strong religious faith. The terrorists who flew jet planes into the World Trade Center believed in the holiness of their cause. The Christian apocalypticists who are willing to risk a nuclear conflagration in the Middle East for the sake of expediting the second coming of Christ believe in the holiness of their cause. In Harris's view, such fundamentalists are not misinterpreting their religious texts or ideals. They are not defaming or distorting their faith. To the contrary, they are taking their religion seriously, attending to the holy texts on which their faith is built. Unhappily for international comity, the Good Books that undergird the world's major religions are extraordinary anthologies of violence and vengeance, celestial decrees that infidels must die. 9:47:19 AM  Permalink  comment []

Somebody Call the Swift Boaters! Associated Press: Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts. For... [The Stakeholder] 9:22:21 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.