What are we going to do with Iraq?

Georges Sada, an Iraqi general and former number 2 in Saddam Hussein's air force, has recently released book that may throw America's left for a revelation. For three years, the left, myself included, has been chastising the Bush administration for its invasion of Iraq. We were in a war with Al-Qaeda which was based in Afghanistan and there was and still is not a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Lacking any sort of explanation other than:

"First, just if I might correct a misperception. I don't think we ever said -- at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein... but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America. The truth of the matter is the whole world thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. ...you might remember, sir, there was a Security Council vote of 15 to nothing that said to Saddam Hussein, disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. The basic premise was, you've got weapons. That's what we thought. When he didn't disclose, and when he didn't disarm, and when he deceived inspectors, it sent a very disconcerting message to me, whose job it is to protect the American people and to take threats before they fully materialize. My view is, he was given the choice of whether or not he would face reprisal. It was his decision to make. And so he chose to not disclose, not disarm, as far as everybody was concerned."

What is troubling about General Sada's book, "Saddam's Secrets", is that he states that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, materials related to weapons of mass destruction, etc. and that Saddam had them moved to Syria. For three years we have critiqued the Iraq invasion for insufficient intelligence of a threat and the non-existence of WMDs, and for three years we have been embroiled in a struggle in Iraq that has seen the loss of 2000+ American military deaths and 30,000+ Iraqi deaths. It is March 2006, more than 5 years after the deadly attack on the World Trade Center and Osama Bin laden is still at large. A mission unfulfilled 5 years after the fact and the only reason Bin Laden's name reappears in the US media is because he sends video tapes reminding us that he still looms in the shadows. It almost doesn't matter anymore, we have concentrated ourselves on Iraq, our responsibilities to rebuild Afghanistan and bring Bin Laden to justice seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Many on the American right will look at the reasons for war and dismiss them for what seems to be a burst of pragmatic consideration. "We are in Iraq, it doesn't matter why we are there, but what we are going to do now that we are there" a friend said to me on my trip home to Jacksonville during winter break. It seems however with this recent revelation by General Sada that soon the left and the right will be on the same page. We on the left will still not understand why we shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, but we will acknowledge the threat Saddam posed with WMDs (if Sada's claims are found to be true). The million dollar question is how we proceed with the 'War on Terror'.
The right's strategy is to occupy Iraq for the remainder of the decade, training Iraqi forces to transfer security responsibility, and establish a government. The left has been increasingly pressing for the US military to leave Iraq immediately and devote our efforts to new threats that are emerging. The strategy of the right represents a belief that we can set up western institutions and they will work in the Middle East. The strategy of the left acknowledges a belief that we need to leave because we are engaging in an illegal war and inciting violence simply by virtue of our presence. Neither view suggests that the problem in Iraq is not sectarian violence, Islamic extremism, but the Islamic faith itself.

The United States has a history of social struggle, racism, sexism, war, economic inequity, and a host of other problems, but these issues have been met with a tradition of progressive thinking and they have slowly been addressed and ameliorated. We are a nation of mixed religions and races; our ability to peacefully co-exist on the macro-scale leads us to believe that our gaping differences have been pragmatic set aside so that we are able to function as a social entity. It is this foundation that most of my generation derives concepts of ethics and morals, and perhaps it is also our naivety that causes us to apply these morals homogenously when we try to put ourselves in someone else's shoes.

We can look at an example: In the United States we have organizations like PETA advocating the protection of animal rights and their humane treatment. While some may find PETA a little extreme for their tastes, a little too righteous, I think we can say that the majority of America has some sort of moral compass involving abuse of animals; we probably don't kick dogs and cats and throw alka-seltzer at seagulls. Although we have such strong convictions about these things it is a little ridiculous to apply the same set of morals to primitive man that was required to be a hunter and gatherer in order to survive. It is comedic to picture one of our caveman brethren screaming at another because he was pounding a wild deer to death with a boulder.

I'm surprised that I'm asking this question, but are we making an error in giving every religion the benefit of the doubt in believing that they are on the same ethical/moral level with us? I concede that ethics and morals are social constructs that don't have comparable levels of worst, bad, good and best. I believe however, that we often assume that because we live in the 21st century, a time of vast technological breakthroughs and relative peace, that the global populace has adopted similar beliefs concerning preservation and promotion of life, helping one's neighbor, and generally working together for pragmatic means. After reading quite a bit of Sam Harris' book "The End of Faith", it doesn't seem to be too ridiculous to say that the Middle East and the West are not functioning on the same plane of morality. Harris tries to show that Islam is a faith of expansionism and has a textual basis for intolerance towards other religious beliefs. Further he explains that Muslims are angry that the US is occupying its territory and by the military's presence and trying to solve problems, the US is threatening the grasp Islam has on its followers. Islamic imperialism however is not "imperialism" but a manifest destiny that the Qu'ran calls its followers to take up.

With 9/11 and the War in Iraq as his evidence, the Muslim world is portrayed to be ready to strike at the heart of Western values. The Muslim world may be everything he has described, but regardless if it is because of the strength of non-Islamic nations halting expansionism or some other reason, it is a truth that the vast majority of Muslims have not taken up arms to wage a global Jihad against all non-Muslims. The war of caution that Sam Harris is waving in our faces shouldn't be lost though, as there is a lot to fear. We can see that Islam is not trying to fly to our country and blow it up. Terrorism is a product of radical Islam and its followers. What Harris wants us to see is that although attacks originate from radical Islam, there is little large scale outrage directed at the terrorism, there does not exist a moderate Islam in the Middle East, moderate in the sense that we understand in the West (the difference between moderate and fundamentalist).

So we must wonder where the Middle Eastern leadership's response to terrorism? As of now I am unaware of any such response, I'm not sure if the Arab nations simply do not care or if they eat dinner and watch their televisions thinking "Another terrorist attack by Bin Laden, how terrible, they are infidels anyways"? There has been no organized condemnation or fatwa against Osama Bin Laden for whatever reason. There have been more than a few Muslims condemning terrorism, suicide bombings, killing of innocents, and Bin Laden from America, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. but these are just the voices of ones among hundreds of millions. The only country I know of that has issued a fatwa against Bin Laden was Spain following the bombing of their trains, perhaps it has happened in London and the US, but I was unable to find any such decree by local Muslim leadership. Such a powerful doctrinal decree is important in fighting the war on terror; there is a hesitance to do so. In fact I believe the last time I heard Iraqis denounce terrorism was when other Iraqis bombed a holy temple in Iraq, and still many chose to implicate American presence as the cause. Sam Harris attributes it to the text of the Qu'ran and hadith. In just the passages that he cites, there are ~ 60 passages from the Qu'ran describing a God that has no tolerance for infidels and that Muslims are encouraged to take up physical action to protect threats against Islam. This is not in my opinion enough to motivate collective peoples to incite a war with the West, but it is reason enough to believe that given a religious fervor catalyst by extremists others will join the cause.

I think we've seen that defense of Islam is not limited to extremists. Defense of Islam does not even need to be as extreme as flying a plane into a building across the Atlantic Ocean. It was only last month that we witnessed a series of protests turned riots caused by the anti-Muslim cartoons published by a Dutch newspaper. As a response to the cartoons, the Danish consulate in Beirut was burned, Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus burned, grenades thrown at Danish embassy in Tehran, Italian consulate in Libya burned, a NATO base in Afghanistan was attacked, mass rioting across Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Christian churches burned down in Nigeria, EU headquarters in Gaza attacked, death threats issued for the cartoonists along with rewards for their deaths, fatwas issued against offending cartoonists and newspapers, and many Muslim demonstrators were killed by crowd stampede, riot by product, and police fire.

Moral relativism is important when we analyze how we as a country must proceed against terror and Muslim violence. In the United States and throughout the EU, there have been many denunciations against terrorism and the perversion of Islam by each respective Muslim community. We must remember that the EU-Muslim and American-Muslim attitudes are very different from those of the Middle East, as American culture requires the blending of religion with secular humanism. We fight for progressive values in the United States, we fight for equal rights of all of our citizens and it is only natural that Muslims within our borders assume a Western influenced understanding of Islam and the teachings of the Qu'ran.

The only feasible option I envision for Iraq if we are to ensure American safety is to create a culture of Western influence in Iraq. Middle Eastern nations are currently able to remain economically independent; they are oil rich nations that do not bother to tax their citizens. Western nations rely on Iraq for oil; Iraq relies on us to buy the oil. As long as we continue and build economic interdependency we can perhaps survive another day. The religious divide between our two cultures is a problem that is ready to strike at any time. America has its share of religious extremists, but in modern times there are no instances of American religious fanatics undertaking a holy war against believers in 'false gods and idols'. Why these terrorist extremists are able to exist and permeate through Middle Eastern nations and cultures is a question that must be directed at Islam itself.

"Any systematic approach to ethics, or to understanding the necessary underpinnings of a civil society, will find many Muslims standing eye deep in the red barbarity of the fourteenth century. There are undoubtedly historical and cultural reasons for this, and enough blame to go around, but we should not ignore the fact that we must now confront whole societies whose moral and political development-in their treatment of women and children, in their prosecution of war, in their approach to criminal justice, and in their very intuitions about what constitutes cruelty-lags behind our own."- Sam Harris- "End of Faith"

It seems obvious to Western thinkers that terrorism and extremism is a gross bastardization and misinterpretation of the Qu'ran and Islam. It is dangerous to maintain such idealized conceptions as the war in Iraq rages on with no resolution in sight, fundamentalist schools continue to receive funding, Iran seems more dangerous than ever, and more people on both sides of the conflict die as each day passes.

How to take a kidney punch

Professional boxers will throw a light jab that he hopes will fake out his opponent and then deliver a crushing blow as the opponent stumbles. Sometimes though, this leaves his body open and his opponent deals him a bone crunching hook into his kidney or ribcage. [ok. I made that entire thing up, the only thing I know about boxing is Punch Out! for Nintendo and that one Dreamcast game].

The Bush administration has been extremely adept and I'll give them credit, famous for (at least to those paying attention) dodging blows and making the American public think one thing while they are doing another. You're really doing something right when a big enough percentage of the American populace actually believes that Saddam Hussein, given the evidence, was responsible for 9-11 and not Al-Qaeda. That's a scary thought that the propaganda machine works so well or that the American people are so easily mislead.

After 9-11, George W. Bush sat in an elementary school classroom frozen by the news of the terrorist attack on our nation. He continued to read to the children, the response to the crisis was delayed, he had no idea what to do, no idea what initiative to take. He was scared and lost.

After Katrina devastated New Orleans, George W. Bush said:


"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we have to deal with it and will."

"[Katrina] exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government".

"And to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility... I want to know what went wrong or what went right ... It's in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on so we can better respond."

Hindsight. It is easy to be a strong leader after you contemplate what has happened after it sinks in for a few days. It is easy to roll up your sleeves and be the macho guy that America is looking towards in its days of and after crises. Today the damning news came out. There is now video evidence of presidential briefings where George W. Bush, FEMA chief Michael Brown, and Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff and other federal and local officials met to discuss the hurricane and were warned about levees breaking, not enough resources etc.

In Florida we know what category 5 hurricane does. Hurricane Andrew in '92 wasn't even the strongest hurricane from the Atlantic Ocean, but we got... to be blunt, fucked.

It's not like the damage done to New Orleans wasn't something that people had predicted for years prior to Katrina. Bush steadfastly said, we're fully prepared. In the past months, former FEMA chief Michael Brown was getting dumped on, people called him stupid, incompetent, and a litany of other salacious things. Just earlier during the actual Hurricane we heard from Bush, "you're doing a heckuva job Brownie", and not the support from the White House was silent.

Sorry guy.

You can only get dumped on for so long though, and because of spite or for moral whistle blowing reasons, the private video made its way to the Associated Press. I bet "Brownie" is giving himself a little chuckle right now.

The video almost vindicates him.


"A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and then-
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome."
"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,"
"We're going to need everything that we can possibly muster, not only in this state and in the region, but the nation, to respond to this event," Brown warned. He called the storm "a bad one, a big one" and implored federal agencies to cut through red tape to help people, bending rules if necessary.

"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."

All on video.

What did Bush do? He sat silently. He assured everyone that the government would do everything in its power to help. He assured everyone things would be fine.

As of today, about 1300 people are dead due to Katrina. You could almost say that Bush's optimism and lack of action increased their probability of death about ten-fold.

After 9-11. Inaction. After being warned about Katrina's potential for destruction. Inaction. Heroic after people have died, our President is not supposed to be a hand waving queen figure. History will remember you Mr. Bush, mourning families will as well.

"We are fully prepared."- George W. Bush.

Rove Misstep?

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping. Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

Karl Rove, in my opinion, has been one of the most brilliant political strategists I've ever seen or heard of. Every move is coldly cool and calculated, it's almost as if he knows what's going to happen before it's going to happen, like a puppetmaster moving all the marionettes.

This move to line up the rank and file of the GOP just doesn't seem like a good move at all. Right now, the only leverage the Bush administration has in Washington is the good fortune of a. being in office b. Having a Republican dominated House and Senate and c. having the remnants of Tom Delay's K-Street project GOP lobbying giant machine. Bullying congressmen, especially during a time where the President already has senators like Arlen Spector scratching their heads, seems to be a recipe for backlash. Not funding dissenting Congressmen is bad for America and if anything, is going to widen the hairline cracks already forming within the GOP.

I don't know the statistics, but during this year of re-elections, it seems to be in the best interest of the Republicans to back the incumbent, especially with the balance of power beginning to teeter towards the Democrats. Democrats have been spreading the slogan "Culture of corruption" all over the Republicans. In my opinion, that's well deserved, but if the White House wants to maintain an advantage in the bodies that do the checking and balancing, it should be in their best interest to present a united front with a little honesty. Say congressmen get pissed off that Rove is basically trying to squash their pride, telling them that they are pawns in his game, tell them that they are there because of him and have no ability of their own. Say they get pissed. Who is going to get the money and the presidential backing? A porn star that loves rifles and is anti-abortion?

Then again, maybe i'm wrong. Maybe Rove really does hold everyone's political destiny in his grubby chubby hands, and maybe everyone in Washington (at least on the Republican side) knows it. The Whitehouse has everything to lose here, 6 years of political dominance and not a whole lot to show for it, why play hardball, why toy with the possibility of losing the only weapons you have?

Trent Lott believes in free lunch

"Now we're going to say you can't have a meal for more than 20 bucks," said Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. "Where are you going, to McDonald's?"


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/politics/19cong.html?ex=1295326800&en=d02648232b366277&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/AR2006011902527.html

No, Senator Lott, you can pay for your own meal like everyone else in America.

GOP "reforms" are formalities for more of the same

Congressional Democrats yesterday laid out a plan to change what they called a GOP "culture of corruption" in Washington, even as Republicans pointed to ethics lapses on their antagonists' side of the aisle...
Rather than limiting the value of a gift to $20, as House Republicans are considering, Democrats would prohibit all gifts from lobbyists. Democrats also take direct aim at some of the legislative practices that have become established in the past 10 years of Republican rule in Congress. They vowed to end the K Street Project, under which Republicans in Congress pressure lobbying organizations to hire only Republican staff members and contribute only to Republican candidates.

from Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011801760_pf.html

The GOP's answer is limiting the value of a gift to $20? That doesn't even make sense, what is the significance of $20 when compared to the tens and hundred of thousands of dollars that Jack Abramoff fundraised and directly donated to the Republican party? The answer almost seems too obvious.

They've created a system of "accountability" that is filled with even more loopholes, but loopholes that can prove to be legal. Have you ever looked at grocery coupons?



Notice how they say that the value of the coupon is either "no cash value" or something really small like a fraction of a cent.

Lobbyists could continue to give Tom DeLay millions in gifts but say that they have a cash value of less than $20. Sneaky. Why wouldn't I be suprised that something like that would happen if Republican lobbying "reforms" were passed?

Wait for it... wait for it...

Mr. DeLay said he had "always acted in an ethical manner within the rules of our body and the laws of our land."

Right.
Tom Delay gets about a month and a half on my watch before he cries and apologizes. Remember his statement above, and then wait for that quote to turn into...

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt, I acted unlawfully, sniffle, ::cry:: I have dishonored my family, the people I represent, and my nation. sniff. I only hope that I will be redeemed by the Lord almighty. Again I want to apologize to my fellow Americans, ::break down in tears some more:: and... I hope that one day you will be able to forgive me. ::sob sob:: May God Bless America, Oh god I wished it would never have turned out like this, I got carried away I'm so sorry".

You just wait. It WILL happen. The sad part is nobody feels bad or unethical about the things they apologize for, until they get caught.

EXHIBIT A: RANDY "DUKE" CUNNINGHAM

"Duke Cunningham strongly denies these allegations and we will contest them in court as soon as the judge permits us to do so."

The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.

EXHIBIT B: JACK ABRAMOFF

"Abramoff insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing concerning millions of dollars in funding he received for helping Indian tribes set up casinos in their tribal homelands."

"Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," he said. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."

iraqi democracy. good idea || bad idea?

Jacksonville is no New York City (as if it wasn't obvious). Driving from the airport back to my house, Bush/Cheney 2004 and yellow "support our troops" ribbon stickers peppered every SUV and truck that passed us on the bridge. The last time I came home, it was for Thanksgiving. I ended up getting into a fight with my friend's little brother over politics. If you want an insight into how Bush won a second term presidency with a majority vote, talk to him.

No he didn't offer any stunning insight, nor is he a borderline genius just waiting to be uncovered; he represents the predominant American response towards 9-11 terrorism, fear. He kept snickering at me, "liberal". When I pushed him a little deeper, you know hot button topics of the day like Iraq, he tossed back at me that he couldn't understand why I didn't just let it go, "we're there, give it up". When you have a brother in the Marine Corp. who one day in college simultaneously became the head of a frat, avid listener to country music, and ardent republican, it's almost like having Rush Limbaugh living with you. Southerners are tacitly interested in politics, most things are gung ho attitudes left over from the last presidential election or some flare up ala Cindy Sheehan or gay marriage.
Everyone supports the troops, the world is different after 9/11 (we have to think with a different paradigm), we're in Iraq so deal with it (no one even bothers to debate the decision to go in the first place), George Bush is no-nonsense you whiny liberal.

I really had had enough. I really pushed him and he got red in the face. Ask probing questions like, "ok so we're in Iraq, what do we do now?" after a few minutes of trying to make a semblance of an answer I got something similar to, we can't pull out troops because that strengthens the terrorists. I almost thought I was watching FOX news. Push a little harder. "So you just want to sit in Iraq, you think it's ok to have a refill 30,000 troops and maintain a presence in Iraq? You think its ok for your brother to have to get his stay in Iraq extended? Make a deadline, what needs to get done, Constitution, Government, etc. then withdraw slowly, you don't need a hard timeline, what's so wrong about that?” He stared at me. I thought he was going to cry, in an argument you feel good when you win; there is nothing feel good about crushing a 16 year old. I ended with, "you keep telling me to let it go and that I am criticizing what you passionately believe in, I don't think you actually know what you believe in". I think I went too far. It's too bad I'm pretty sure I was right, I felt pretty terrible.

My point in relating this anecdote was that there are somethings that we as the American public just take for granted. We can usually tell the two sides of a coin, we know hot and cold are opposites, we have a basic sense of right and wrong, we know that our democracy is better (at least for us) an oppressive authoritarian government. So when we proclaim that we are sending our troops out the Iraq and the middle east, even as partisan as we are, as much as half the country thinks that marching into Iraq and deposing Saddam was a good idea, deep down we still kind of think that spreading democracy is a good idea.

I had an epiphany one day as I was lying in bed. Maybe invading Iraq was a good idea. I couldn't remember the exact reasoning but over the next few days I pieced together that it was similar to playing a RTS game like Civilization 4. If you want to start expanding your influence and having a section of the world become friendlier, you can carve out some land and use it as a beacon for your world view. We have a democratic haven next to Iran and Saudi Arabia by which we can effectively pursue and drive out terrorism.

I entertained that idea for about a week before reality stepped in and I realized just how similar that idea actually was to a computer game, an idealized version of reality and its mechanisms.

Liberals like myself, started off the criticism of the Iraq invasion by saying that democracy isn't good for every country, different strokes for different folks. Conservatives said we were digging our own graves that thinking like that was creating too much headway for terrorists and their harbor states.

That approach wasn't the right way to look at the situation as I've recently discovered. The real question is, is democracy a curse in disguise, and is it actually a threat to American security?

Iraq recently had its parliamentary elections; everyone in the administration patted themselves on the back. Looking at the election results we see the clear winner, religious fundamentalists: Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds. With a Shia dominated parliament, it is difficult to say that we are better off, "we" being Americans. We have not created a bastion of democracy in the Middle East; we have created an Islamic Republic.

There is nothing wrong with Islam. It's just that that neighborhood isn't full of potlucks and picnics. Iran new ruling party openly wants to blow up Israel, so two years down the road, pair up Iran that wants to blow up Israel, Sunnis who aren't exactly our best friends and have been leading Iraqi resistance, Saudis that wouldn't mind blowing up Israel, and Palestine's Hamas and you have one big mosh pit of fun. So in the name of democracy, we've allowed the people to build the foundations of an Islamic state, a concept which is still rather fundamental (Islamic democracy, that is). With only a basic premise as to how an Islamic democracy would work, the people will default to a religious Islamic state and with that comes the specter of possible continued terrorism and Middle Eastern conflict. Did we just accidentally tip the religious balance in the region? Israel, watch out.

interesting articles.

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27261950.shtml

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_insider__alleges_company_plagued_1206.html

The second one... I admit, I haven't read it yet, but it's an expose on Diebold and their voting machines.

I don't understand the way electronic voting machines are being handled in our country. President Bush, after his election, the first one, promised that there would be no more, alleged voting scandals. We would have clean elections, Katherine Harris would update everything so Florida wasn't the laughing stock of the nation, etc.

What happened though? I'm sure the article offers insight into it. Katherine Harris hasn't done anything, well other than help Bush get elected. Florida hasn't updated anything, in my county, Duval, we can't even provide enough voting stations in our downtown area.

If we truly truly wanted to fix the voting in our country, and we were dead set on making it electronic we could have done it, we can still do it. We have the most brilliant computer scientists at our top universities, who I'm positive, wouldn't mind working on a project like this. So here's my list of how to fix elections to make them clean.

1. Electronic voting machine software is completely open source. this allows academics to look at it, hackers on the internet to look at it, and your armchair computer scientist to look at it and assess vulnerabilities, code weakness and tampering. Why shouldn't the code be open to inspection? The secrecy makes no sense, how can we expect to trust the government if they are so secretive?

2. Ask nation's top computer scientists to pitch in, provide a grant for their time.

3. Paper trail.

What's so difficult about this? You'd think after all of the software malfunctions and machine failures, we'd think, ding ding ding, what we've got doesn't work. That is of course, if the powers that be actually want the voting process to be fair and accurate.

round 2005. fight.

I was trying to write a witty boxing match intro between Christianity and Atheism... (not just atheism, but every other religion practiced in the United States), but that turned out to be a lot lamer and a lot less funny than I had though.

Has anybody been catching the O'Reilly factor, Fox "News", or maybe just www.crooksandliars.com lately? If you have, you might have noticed that there is something going on called "the war on Christmas". If you're like me, you have no idea what the hell, the war on Christmas is. Last time I checked, the only war we were waging was the one on Terror (with a capital "T"), and that wasn't going so well.


Sidenote (vaguely amusing):
from www.anncoulter.com - "The only Republican congressman who did not offer to have sex with John Murtha on the House floor was Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio. While debating Murtha's own proposal to withdraw American troops from Iraq in the middle of a war waged to depose a monstrous dictator who posed a threat to American national security"

Since when did we wage a war to depose a monstrous dictator? I thought we waged a war against the terrorists who flew a plane into the World Trade Center a hundred and some blocks south of me. Also I thought we already established that he did not pose a threat to American National Security. Sometimes you wonder when these people, Bill O'Reilly, Coulter, etc. claim to be fair and balanced, are they just talking from underneath the payroll of the Republican party? If they were I wouldn't be suprised, these days, who isn't?

Moving on. Christmas. I was wondering since when has the United States been waging a war on Christmas? I must have missed the email. Fox News posted just recently a talking point that "economic disaster if liberals win the war on Christmas". Apparently there is some sort of secret plan by the political left to "undermime" the holiday season as apparently in America, Christianity has monopolized the month of December in all forms of material wealth (I thought Jesus wasn't big on material wealth). The big outrage apparently is that the right says that the left believes that since we live in a country whose constitution (at least by most people's interpretation of the First Amendment) does not embrace one religion over another's we should not be so blatant about Christmas, aka our tax dollars don't go toward funding a giant Christmas tree in the middle of NYC when not all of us are Christians. Bill O'Reilly gave a lot of heat to Boston for their short lived use of the "holiday tree".

At what point do we realize that the Christmas Tree has nothing to do with Christ? It's funny that such things are never mentioned in the Bible, yet we are brainwashed into believing so. Christianity was an aggressive animal during the outset, it was smart and calculating and realized it needed to incoorperate other beliefs if they ever wanted to increase their flock with the as of yet unconverted pagan masses.

At what point do we realize that Christmas, for very few has anything to do with Christ, but has everything to do with your bratty sons and daughters hoping that they find an Xbox 360 under their Christmas Tree? Christmas, the ultimate celebration of materialism and excess.

But war on Christmas? To me it sounds like an excercise in political correctness and making sure we follow the constitution.

The war on Christmas is entirely fabricated and designed to embolden everyone to buy more. "Gosh those fucking liberals don't want Christmas, we'll show them how much we love Christmas, let's goto Wal-Mart kids!". Democrats in the Senate and the house, I don't even need to research before saying that most of them are Christians and celebrate Christmas and have Christmas trees, etc. I would go so far as to say that the majority of this country is Christmas and uses all the Christian terminology for the late December time frame. So who is behind this left wing anti-Christmas conspiracy that threatens, according to Fox News, to spell immenent economic catastrophe (funny because if Bush's economic strategy continues to stagnate... we can blame those crazy now Christmas people)? Scare tactics. We've had our ups and downs for major retailers forever, there is no 1% of the population war on Christmas that is going to make a difference.

The funny part is Bill O'Reilly is advocating for a boycott of all stores that don't use "Merry Christmas" in their advertising, FOX blames radical lefties for not supporting the economics of Christmas time. flip flop flip flop.

The left is stupid if it keeps fielding people to go on FOX to further pronounce this war on Christianity. It doesn't exist, stop falling into the trap.

Let's actually do research for once.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/DTT_DR_HolOut2005_Nov05.pdf
Deloitte Consulting has put out their 2005 Holiday season prediction on consumer retail spending. 65% of companies expect stagnant sales. They have reasons why the Holiday season spending will be lower this year, here's a hint, it's not the "war on christmas" conspiracy. Thank god FOX isn't in the consulting industry. All of their inaccuracies and outlooks leave me wondering, how are so many academics fans of Fox news? It bewilders the mind. The deviation in data and conclusions from FOX and EVERYONE who does this for a living is astounding.

Reasons for Holiday 2005 downturn:
Here is an interesting paragraph-
Since the spring of 2003, retailers have enjoyed a strong selling environment. The combination of steady job growth,stable prices, tax cuts and low interest rates pushed real consumer spending up at an annualized rate of 3.8% over this 24 month period, well above the 2.4% pace of the
previous 2 years. However, this overall performance was somewhat below average for the typical upswing of an economy recovering from recession.
The business cycle does not remain in the upswing forever. After 18 to 30 months of improving sales growth, any pent up consumer demand is spent. Consumer debt levels rise, income and employment growth slows, and, with them, consumer
spending grows at a more tepid pace.

And here I was thinking that Republican economic policies were largely long term plans that I didn't understand, this makes it seem like all of our economic policies during Bush Term II have been patches and temporary fixes.

1. Hurrican Katrina
2. Energy Prices
3. Real Wages deteriorated
4. Employment Growth low
5. Savings and Debt (near 0 and getting larger, respectively)


"Real wage growth has turned negative, employment growth has flattened, and
savings rates are approaching zero."

What happened to stimulating the economy? What happened to the administration claiming we were creating more and better jobs? Truth is that we created lots of temp jobs, wages are going down, people are saving less... I think it's about time to get serious about the economy. We live in a spend spend spend spend lifestyle, we aren't as competitive in the global market anymore, we are hating on intellectualism, pushing religion as actual science, have we gone crazy?

Christianity is just political capital?

Get the IRS OUT of My Church
Bradley Whitford
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bradley-whitford/get-the-irs-out-of-my-chu_b_11672.html

I have been a member of the All Saints Church in Pasadena for over ten years. The recent revelations of an IRS investigation into its non-profit status as the result of a sermon given a week before the last presidential election by Rector Emeritus George Regas has outraged and galvanized our congregation.

The support we have received from across the spectrum of faith communities, including traditionally conservative evangelical leaders, has solidified our resolve—the United States government has no place in our houses of worship, and the selective targeting of churches who speak out on the issues of the day sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the religious freedom of every citizen.

The sermon in question explicitly refused to endorse a particular candidate. It did, however, hold George Bush and John Kerry up to the high standard of Christian values. Both were found wanting.

Values not put into action are meaningless, no matter how lofty they are. It is the obligation of our spiritual leaders to not just articulate those values, but to make them a reality.

We live in an age where describing oneself as a “person of faith” carries with it a tremendous political advantage. But too often in the public arena, being “religious” is defined only as a search for personal salvation and a willingness to adhere to dogma.

Declaring oneself a Christian is easy. Putting Christian values to work in a dangerous and violent world is not.

Perhaps the best response to the tragedy of 9/11 was a preemptive war against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Tens of thousands of deaths later, perhaps it is still the right decision.

But it is not Christian.

Perhaps it is good economics to give me, an actor on a television show, over a quarter of a million dollars in tax relief over the last five years as the poverty rate climbs, as we burden our children with structural budget deficits and cut services for our most vulnerable citizens.

But it is not Christian.

Perhaps the death penalty is an acceptable way to punish criminals.

But it is not Christian.

Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Preemptive War. He was an advocate for the poor, not of supply-side economics. And let’s not forget that Jesus himself died in a bogus death-penalty rap. His was the original “bleeding heart,” yet I am afraid he would be described pejoratively by many today as a “do-gooder.”

President Bush proudly proclaims himself a Christian and tells us that his faith has changed his heart. Perhaps one day his faith will change his policies. Until then, I am proud to be a part of a congregation that seeks to hold all public officials to their easy— and too often empty—proclamations of faith.