US Politics

I've been chewing over this for a while. To be honest, it has taken a while for me to take the issues, digest them, and reach a point where I could articulately discuss them.

From the March 21st article on the "White House Briefing" feature by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, I read the story of a baby boy disconnected from a breathing apparatus against the parents wishes.

For a good dissection of the initial draft of the FEC rule that would have made any political speech on any website a political contribution to be controlled by McCain-Feingold, check out this good article at RedState.

So, I signed the Online Coalition's letter to avoid regulation of blogs under McCain-Feingold. See this article for more info. I commend it to your attention.

There has been a recent blogalanche about the FEC's threat to regulate blogs and other informal Internet sites, which was triggered by this CNET article by Declan McCullough. Michelle Malkin has a good round-up in two parts: one and two. The basic idea is that linking to a campaign web site might be constituted as a political donation and monetized under McCain-Feingold, and therefore those who had already donated the personal maximum allowable might be under threat of persecution.

On the other side of things, I look at a discussion in the Old Dominion Blog Alliance about why they blog. One Man's Trash celebrates the growing influence of blogs, potentially decisive in South Dakota and on an ascendancy in Virginia. He notes that the Kilgore campaign tracks the ODBA. Valley Republican sums it up as, "As John put it so eqloquently [sic] in the Augusta Free Press, we want to play a role in this election." as he links to an article in the Augusta Free Press by John Behan, author of Commonwealth Conservative. Behan writes:


I have a great deal of respect for the members of the ODBA, but while I do believe that blogging is worthwhile I think that this kind of activity is directly what the FEC is contemplating when it detemines whether McCain-Feingold requires it to regulate blogging. I don't believe the prospect of regulation should inhibit their activities; it is a worthwhile service to the commonwealth, and I salute them for their service to the body politic. But they should keep in mind that they may be on the bleeding edge of a battle between individual online journalism and myopic federal regulation of speech.

Update: Malkin has another article, this time on a case between Apple and three bloggers, which is apropos inasmuch as it references H.R. 581, a bill that would among other things define those who are eligible for the journalistic exception very tightly (see Section 7.1).

The article "The Making of a 9/11 Republican" by Cinnamon Stillwell, which I found on lgf, is a compelling story about the conversion of one formerly avid Democrat into a Republican.



Welcome, Cinnamon. We're glad to have you.

This led me to think of something. I wonder how many other people fit in to the same category as Ms. Stillwell. Perhaps the amplification of the voices of the MoveOn cadres and the Deaniac berzerkers is a result of the stifling and the exodus of those who just couldn't bear taking the nihilistic line of throught to it's logical conclusion.

Contrast this to the near inability of someone in the Democratic Underground to account for 9/11, or even mention it, when discussing the state of US politics. The cognitive dissonance of moonbats like these is becoming the stated policy of the Democratic Party. That is what is causing people to seriously question whether liberalism can survive.

Sic Semper notes a couple of secession movements within the US: Texan and Californian independence from the US, and then they noted the East Washington State secession movement that is starting. And now Michelle Malkin notes secessionism among native Hawaiians.

This led to several other secessionst links, like American Secession Project, an attempt at an umbrella organization for such groups within the US, as Secession.net seeks to do worldwide.

Most often when I have met people who seriously advocate secessionism outside of the context of ethnic nationalism, it has been an essentially immature mindset in action. Secessionism is a cool idea if you don't need to worry about consequences. Even here in Northern Virginia, I hear rumbles of secession occasionally - then again, whom in Virginia hasn't heard about their own piece of the patchwork thinking it could do better without Richmond? But rather than slogging through the hard path of activism and making their government more responsive to their needs by raising their voices, they look to the easy, lazy path and say "let's just not answer to them anymore. Then we don't need to argue our case."

There are serious places in the globe where secession is considered by serious men for serious reasons. None of them is in the United States in 2005.

New Sisyphus has an excellent article on Guantanamo, habeas corpus, and holding of enemy combatants without due process, which I find to be an excellent, well researched primer into why, and under what authority, the U.S. is holding even it's own citizens at Guantanamo Bay.

Here's an interesting piece critical of the Condi for President surge. i think Condi for President is an understandable but ill-thought out reflex on the part of republicans who, to be blunt, would vote for the first articulate conservative black republican to come around, regardless of her policy credentials.

My actual issue is the fact that the woman has never been democratically elected to anything. I don't know what her positions are, I don't know what her approach is to the myriad issues that approach an executive. I just know that she has heretofore mostly played out the role of agent of Bush policy, and has done so quite well. But what does she think about Medicare? And how could I think of her as a good candidate without that answer?

If you don't think there's a Condi 2008 movement, check out this Instapundit article.

Could these paragraphs ooze any more condescension? From "Dick Cheney, Dressing Down" in the Washington Post, an article on Cheney wearing a parka to a ceremony at Auschwitz:

Thoughts as I watch inauguration coverage.

Batch One:

• Alan Greenspan is looking like Miracle Max from The Princess Bride. Compare.
  
• If you took a hobbit and tried to make him look like Rush Limbaugh, you would get Karl Rove.
  
• Ah-nuld looks good, although he is walking in with the bland man from the GEICO commercials.
  
• Kerry is filing out with the rest of congress, and he's insisting on stopping to talk with a short oriental man at length, obviously hogging the camera.
  
• John McCain looks like a wet cat.
  
• Strange Nazi reference: Looking out at the republican crowd in their furs, Peggy Noonan said "tonight will be the night of the long coats". Which can only make me think of the night of the long knives, one of hitler's purges. Ms. Noonan, speechwriter for President Reagan and columnist, knows the power of words, and that is an invidious metaphor.
  
• Laura Bush's white dress, on this the first snow-covered day in Washington, seems doubly nice.
  

Batch Two:

• We were watching as the Clintons filed in, and as soon we saw them Evelyn started kicking Mommy vigorously. I wonder if Republicanism crosses the placental barrier...
  
• I wonder which cabinet secretary got to watch from Camp David.
  
• What was that blue circular logo with three white stars on Bill Frist's scarf?
  
• The Capitol is impeccably decorated, and the view from the top of the capitol down at the crowds always gives me a thrill. I love remembering the fact that we were there, sloshing through the frigid grass that had been pounded into mud, in 2000.
  
• Heather remarked, and I agree, that, Cheney looks happy, happier than I think I have ever seen him publically. The President just looks proud, as he damn well should, and Bush 41 looks overjoyed.
  
• Love the blue tie.

Batch Three:

• Comment from Heather: "Someone needs to slap Trent Lott, and in a way he doesn't like, for saying mezzo-soprano". He said MEZ-zo like "messanine", whereas you properly say it MET-zoh.
  
• Then again, Trent does need to be slapped. A lot.
  
• Did Chief Justice Rhenquist use a voice-box?
  
• Heather was engaging in some Cheetah-therapy during the irritating moments.
  
• Watching Bush's speech now. His call to push for democracy everywhere is powerful - it reconciles the Wilsonian global mission of the US to bring peace and rights to all, with Vegetius's famous wisdom, "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." He seems to make a link also to the abolition of slavery when framing tyranny in the concepts of master and slave, even quoting Lincoln.
  
• I see the other allegory, that of the War on Terror to the Civil and Revolutionary wars, and of the Declaration of Independence to Bush's proclamation of liberty to the world. This is a new Manifest Destiny, not of empire but one that continues the exportation of the American Revolution of democracy to the world.
  
• Only a twenty minute inaugural speech! Wow, pretty short and to the point. I found it powerful and elegant.
  
• The music directly after the speech seems randomly winsome.
  

Heather has Inauguration day off, so I took a day off as well. My new boss is very cool: if someone in our group is on-call over a major holiday event, we get a free comp day. I was on-call over New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, so I am taking my comp day now.

A few interesting points in the news:

• The WaPo has an interview with Dick Cheney that has a number of interesting observations. I find his observation that Iran-Contra to be "an attempt to 'criminalize a policy difference' between the president and Congress" to be an interesting comment. Reagan is the first president I knew (I graduated middle school in 1988 ), and Iran-Contra occurred during the time that I started to become conscious of the political world. Seeing to what extent Iran-Contra has become an article of faith in leftist circles, it's good to see someone commenting on it, a Republican elder statesman pulling back the veil.
  
• Speaking of articles of faith in leftist circles, check out this list of the top ten lies. Fabulous.
  
• The Daily Demarche has a roundup of inaugural coverage around the world.
  
• The Insider blog at the Washington Times notes that the Democrats have crossed the Rubicon in terms of inaugural civility. I wonder if the next chance for civility to be restored will be when the Democrats win the presidency next, and Republicans can then break the streak.
  
• The WaPo reports on the errors in 2004 exit polls, but I agree with Althouse that the theory that the flawed results were a result of the pollsters being too young sounds too much like an attempt to avoid what may be a structural problem in the polling problem.
  
• As we watched morning inauguration coverage, we saw an ad by these people. Interesting.
  
• 2008 presidential election watch: LaShawn Barber gives what I think will be a representative reaction to a possible bid by Newt Gingrich. (hat tip: Blogicus)

I think that is enough for now.

I was reading an article over at Villa Santiago, and I have to say I thoroughly agree. I remember Clinton's second inauguration, and even though I highly disapproved of - nay, loathed - the man, I never questioned his right to be president, having been duly and legally elected.

It is a commonly known thing on the Right that those on the Left, or a large and vocal number of them, have projected so many of their stereotypes and prejudices on conservatives that they can't see anything but their own image. What is the political version of the word 'bigot'? That kind of an impairment of mental faculties is it when you genuinely can't tell the difference between a Nazi and a Republican?

Questions for the ages...

I recieved an interesting comment from Jim Maule at Mauled Again regarding my article on the tsunami. His angle is that there is no economic incentive, as his comment indicates that according to his analysis a taxpayer recieves 50¢ of tax relief per $100 donated. He takes issue with that, but I think that it is fine.

In many cases it is important not to make a huge difference, but rather to show the country that you're making a change. Yes, perhaps the amount of money is paltry if you look at it, but the number of people that will donate is now larger because of those who may have been waffling or procrastinating who have now been pushed over the edge. The government is attempting to lead by example, as well as raising awareness.

Yes this complicates the jobs of us doing our taxes, if we itemize, or those we pay to do it. Perhaps the easy way out is to allow us to double up on the deduction, and remove the complexity of having to account for it in 2006. But that is speculation on my part.

Tom Delay is using the "fool who built his house on the sand" passage from the Gospel of Matthew to impute blame on the victims of the Tsunami. This is vile and egregiously evil. I can look upon the imam from my previous post with a kind of benign intolerance - he is suffering through a cataclysm in what is, most would agree, a backwards part of the third world. But Tom Delay is different.

I self-identify as a Republican. I believe George W. Bush is working for what he believes are the best interests of our nation an I trust him to do so. I believe I have sufficient credentials as a Republican. I publicly excoriate and castigate Tom Delay. He should be stripped of his leadership position, and I believe he would have been, if the Democrats had not pushed so hard to have him removed as to engender resistance just from the normal force.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and U.S. Senator John Kerry meeting in Damascus. I worry that Kerry is trying to position himself as a Jimmy Carter, a former Democratic bigwig of diminishing importance whose foreign policy statements are taken seriously despite the obviousness of his non sequiturs.

And how can this help?