Commentary (and rants) on national and local politics.
Tomorrow's Election Day and I've been hard-pressed to find any pro-"YES to Proposal #3" media coverage. There's a solid, well-reasoned piece in last week's Village Voice that includes this interesting counter to the argument that non-partisan voting harms minorities: Unlike most major American cities with nonwhite and female voting age majorities, New York has elected just one black mayor, and no woman, Latino, or Asian mayor. In fact, Latinos, the city's largest minority, have yet to hold any of the three citywide posts, and Asians, the fastest growing minority with 10 percent of the voting age population, are represented by…
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Say it out loud a couple of times so you understand that it really happened. Let it sink in. Note the feeling, if any, in the pit of your stomach while you consider the potential ramifications of a political neophyte governing the largest state in the country, in charge of one of the largest economies in the world. Identify the feeling you get from knowing such responsibility has been entrusted to someone whose positions on most issues are vague at best, and whose platform was that he'd go to Sacramento to "knock heads together" and "kick some…
Damn! Blogger's lost a post for the first time. Grrrr... Quick shots: * It's gonna be a loooooooooong season out at the Meadowlands. The Jets looked terrible last night with Vinny at the helm. Thank goodness for FANTASY football! :-( * Watched last night's debate and didn't hear anything that changed my mind all that much. Dean is ripe for Saturday Night Live mockery, with that stiff neck and habit of talking out of one side of his mouth. Darryl Hammond should be able to nail him nicely. (Side note: An interesting analysis of the debate at Slate, includes a…
Unpatriotic soldiers, Dr. Bushlove, Howard Lieberdean & The Reality of 2004 First, protestors were being unpatriotic and endangering our troops by speaking out against the war. Now, the troops themselves are being told to shut up! Pentagon makes moves to contain complaints from US troops in Iraq Written by Douglas Quenqua Published on August 04 2003 WASHINGTON: After several troops made some highly publicized negative comments to the media about the war effort in Iraq, the Pentagon has taken steps to keep the frustrations of both soldiers and their families out of reports. According to a story in the July…
Must see: http://www.bushflash.com/dlc.html While I don't buy the Kucinich-Dean parallel, it's a pretty powerful piece of propaganda. I'm watching the AFL-CIO / Working Families Forum on C-SPAN right now, featuring all nine candidates and it's been a bit of an eye-opener so far. Interestingly, it's being held at the Navy Pier in Chicago where this year's National Poetry Slam Finals will take place on Saturday night and the forum has a bit of a slam feel to it. Lieberman is one smug bastard that loves to reference Clinton as if some of his mojo might run off on him. He…
"[Marc] announced a three-year sabbatical in '99; by the fall of 2001 he was back. Without him, he says, things had gotten so bad that this year's 14th annual National Poetry Slam... wouldn't be happening otherwise." "He says that some of the people who tried to step in while he was gone were looking to use the slam for personal gain. 'This thing that I started and have put so much energy into [but] have never exploited for my own purposes. I was pissed off." I wasn't going to address this until I had a chance to read the full…
"I know where weapons of mass destruction are... Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. And when the government lies to the American people, that is a weapon of mass destruction!!" -- Dennis Kucinich, 21 May 2003 (www.kucinich.us) Assuming the building doesn't catch fire or some other random act of randomness, at about 3pm today, I'll be getting three of my wisdom teeth ripped out of my mouth. Joy! On the off-chance I don't survive (the potential…
