The Gay Marriage Amendment

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

The Senate is to vote on the amendment Tuesday. It would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages.  I thought that conservatives were against big government engaging in social engineering, but this is precisely what the Gay Marriage Amendment is an attempt to do. 

On the other hand, it’s alarming how many prominent conservatives are against it — not because of the discrimination, but because it abuses notions of federalism.  Dale Carpenter says more:

You’ve already got the publicly stated opposition of prominent conservatives like Bob Barr, Dick Cheney, Chris Cox, Bruce Fein, John McCain, Ramesh Ponnuru, George Will, and others (not to mention several VC bloggers). Now you can add to the list James Q. Wilson, a respected voice in conservative intellectual and policy circles. Last March 18, in the Wall Street Journal, Wilson criticized the one-size-fits-all abortion policy represented by Roe v. Wade. Then he wrote this:

The states should also decide about gay marriage. Some conservatives are urging Congress to propose a constitutional amendment banning this, but this would be a mistake. People should vote on this matter and about the conditions of life they wish to experience where they live. Though I oppose gay marriage, voters in some states may approve it. If they do, we will have a chance to learn what it means in practice, with the costs and benefits falling on people who have accepted it.

Moreover, a state-by-state vote on the matter provides an opportunity for gay advocates of this policy to make their case. A constitutional amendment would deny them that opportunity, leaving them perpetually angry. Since feelings run high on this matter, it would be a mistake to let it be decided as the right to abortion was decided. If there were the gay marriage equivalent of Roe v. Wade or a constitutional ban on it, we would infect the nation with the divisive anger that followed Roe and our earlier attempt at alcohol prohibition.

I love the link here between Roe and the federal marriage amendment. Both spring from the absolute conviction that you have laid your hands on the final truth of the matter, that no amount of evidence the other way could ever convince you that you are wrong, that your conviction must be imposed immediately and forevermore on the entire nation lest some fools living in dissident states think and act otherwise, and that the Constitution itself must be made to conform to your current policy preference.

Well said.

More Iraqi Murders

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Not Haditha, but just as heinous:

The fatal shooting of an Iraqi man could lead to murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against a group of Marines and a Navy corpsman, an attorney for one of the men says.

"The Los Angeles Times and NBC News said troops may have planted an AK-47 and shovel near the body to make it appear the man was an insurgent burying a roadside bomb," the Associated Press reports. "Neither suggested a possible motive for the April 26 killing in Hamandiya."

The earlier Times story cited by the AP has a slightly longer version of the alleged incident and has reaction from other Marines in Iraq. "I think it’s unfortunate that Marines were driven to something like that," one says. "It was out of line and they should be punished, but something must have frustrated them pretty badly to push them over the edge." An NBC News report says that Iraqis first raised allegations about the incident.

The Times publishes a follow-up story today, noting the likeliness of charges and adding context. "Murder charges in the Hamandiya case would be the first brought against Marines based at Camp Pendleton in the death of an Iraqi," the story says.

New York Has No Important Monuments

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

That’s what the Department of Homeland Security says in its report justifying why it was cutting anti-terror funds to NYC by 40 percent–from $207.5 million in 2005 to $124.4 million in 2006.

NY Mayor Bloomberg has to state the obvious for the obvious-impaired people at the DHS:

"All I can tell you is if you look at their worksheets, and it says that New York City doesn’t have any high visibility national icons … I mean, I don’t have to list the Brooklyn Bridge, the United Nations, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and the Stock Exchange…"

***

The formula did not consider as landmarks or icons: The Empire State Building, The United Nations, The Statue of Liberty and others found on several terror target hit lists. It also left off notable landmarks, such as the New York Public Library, Times Square, City Hall and at least three of the nation’s most renowned museums: The Guggenheim, The Metropolitan and The Museum of Natural History.

"I think the facts are clear," Bloomberg said. "What they’ve really done is taken what was supposed to be threat-based and just started to distribute it as normal pork."

The form ignored that New York City is the capital of the world financial markets and merely stated the city had four significant bank assets.

New York City is home to Chase, JP Morgan, Citi Group, The New York Stock Exchange, The Commodities Exchange, American Express, George Soros funds, Michael Gabelli’s funds, Lazard Frere and Salomon Brothers, to name just a few of the more prominent banking interests located there.

Unbelieveable. 

The Bush Administration truly is the gang that can’t shoot straight.  Bin Laden attacked the U.S., so we go into Iraq, where bin Laden and al Qaeda wasn’t (well, now they are, but that’s a consequence of our foolish war policy). 

The Bush Administration truly is the gang that can’t shoot straight. They and their supporters argue that the greatest threat to our national security is . . . Mexicans coming across the border(!), while they hand over port security to the United Arab Emirates (who has sponsored Islamic terrorism).

The Bush Administration truly is the gang that can’t shoot straight.  Heck, they can’t even go quail-hunting without shooting old men in the face!

The Future Of Air Travel

Ken AshfordScience & TechnologyLeave a Comment

Cp0206luxhotel_485This is how we may travel across the continent or oceans in the future.  Because it is not lighter-than-air, it is not a blimp.  On the other hand, it requires no runway, because it takes of vertically with massive jet engines.

Unlike a plane, you don’t sit in passenger seats.  Instead, it’s similar to a cruise.  The interior cabin is one acre, and you can stoll around, visit casinos, etc.  Or you can retire to your stateroom:

Cp0206luxhotel_170artbThis two-football-fields-long concept airship is the brainchild of Igor Pasternak, whose privately-funded California firm, Worldwide Aeros Corporation, is in the early stages of developing a prototype and expects to have one completed by 2010. Pasternak says several cruise ship companies have expressed interest in the project, and for good reason: The craft would have a range of several thousand miles and, with an estimated top speed of 174 mph, could traverse the continental U.S. in about 18 hours. During the flight, passengers would peer at national landmarks just 8,000 feet below or, if they weren’t captivated by the view, the cavernous interior would easily accommodate such amenities as luxury staterooms, restaurants, even a casino.

To minimize noise, the aft-mounted propellers will be electric, powered by a renewable source such as hydrogen fuel cells. A sophisticated buoyancy-management system will serve the same purpose as trim on an airplane, allowing for precise adjustments in flight dynamics to compensate for outside conditions and passenger movement. The automated system will draw outside air into compartments throughout the ship and compress it to manage onboard weight.

The company envisions a cargo-carrying version that could deliver a store’s worth of merchandise from a centralized distribution center straight to a Wal-Mart parking lot or, because the helium-filled craft will float, a year’s worth of supplies to an offshore oil rig. "You can land on the snow, you can land on the water," Pasternak says. "It’s a new vision of what can be done in the air."

Spelling Bee

Ken AshfordLocal Interest1 Comment

As I was watching the Scripps Spelling Bee finals last night, it occured to me that this "English As Official Language" movement is even more stupid than I originally opined.  I mean, our language is derivative of other languages, and we should acknowldege that.

Anyway, our local girl did well, coming in third, after being reinstated following a very rare judges’ error:

She spelled "h-e-c-h-s-h-e-r," and the judges debated for a few seconds before ringing the bell, signaling that she was wrong. They spelled it "h-e-c-h-s-c-h-e-r," with a second "c." The word means something has been certified as kosher.

Saryn stepped to the side and sat down with her parents after the bell rang. They didn’t know that at least two sets of parents immediately went to the information table outside the hall. They had the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, the official dictionary recognized by the bee, the so-called speller’s bible.

According to the dictionary, Saryn had spelled it right. But the only people who could contest it on her behalf were her parents, and they were on stage. The matter was brought to the attention of Ben Flynt, the Winston-Salem Journal’s spell-ing-bee director, who was in the audience.

Newspapers across the country sponsor the competitors, who advance by winning local competitions organized by the newspapers. Saryn was the winner of the 66th Winston-Salem Journal Regional Spelling Bee in March.

Flynt took the information to the Scripps officials, who took it under advisement. A few seconds later, as the room was told that the next round would begin, it was also announced that the officials had made a mistake – Saryn was back in the bee.

Saryn got utzed on "icteritious", a word for the yellowish color of jaundice, in the 12th round.

Election 2004 Fraud – RFK Jr’s Article

Ken AshfordElection 2004Leave a Comment

RFK Jr’s Rolling Stone article is out now — all about the shenanigans of the Presidential Elections in 2004 in the State of Ohio.

It’s a lengthy and heavily sourced article, and one that — hopefully — will get some notice outside the blogosphere.  Want an idea of the kinds of things that went on?  Here’s some frightening excerpts (sources omitted and replaced with numbers):

According to the Conyers report, a team of twenty-five GOP volunteers calling themselves the Mighty Texas Strike Force holed up at the Holiday Inn in Columbus a day before the election, around the corner from the headquarters of the Ohio Republican Party — which paid for their hotel rooms. The men were overheard by a hotel worker ”using pay phones to make intimidating calls to likely voters” and threatening former convicts with jail time if they tried to cast ballots.(84)

***

In heavily Democratic areas around Youngstown, where nearly 100 voters reported entering ”Kerry” on the touch screen and watching ”Bush” light up, at least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for chronically flipping Kerry votes to Bush.(165)

***

In addition to spoiling ballots, the punch-card machines also created bizarre miscounts known as ”ballot crawl.” In Cleveland Precinct 4F, a heavily African-American precinct, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka was credited with an impressive forty-one percent of the vote. In Precinct 4N, where Al Gore won ninety-eight percent of the vote in 2000, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik was credited with thirty-three percent of the vote. Badnarik and Peroutka also picked up a sizable portion of the vote in precincts across Cleveland — 11M, 3B, 8G, 8I, 3I.(178) ”It appears that hundreds, if not thousands, of votes intended to be cast for Senator Kerry were recorded as being for a third-party candidate,” the Conyers report concludes.(179)

***

How might this fraud have been carried out? One way to steal votes is to tamper with individual ballots — and there is evidence that Republicans did just that. In Clermont County, where optical scanners were used to tabulate votes, sworn affidavits by election observers given to the House Judiciary Committee describe ballots on which marks for Kerry were covered up with white stickers, while marks for Bush were filled in to replace them.

***

In Miami County, after 100 percent of precincts had already reported their official results, an additional 18,615 votes were inexplicably added to the final tally. The last-minute alteration awarded 12,000 of the votes to Bush, boosting his margin of victory in the county by nearly 6,000.

***

The most transparently crooked incident took place in Warren County. In the leadup to the election, Blackwell [Ken Blackwell — the man in charge of the counting Ohio ballots, who was also the co-chair of President Bush’s re-election committee] had illegally sought to keep reporters and election observers at least 100 feet away from the polls. (190) The Sixth Circuit, ruling that the decree represented an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, noted ominously that ”democracies die behind closed doors.” But the decision didn’t stop officials in Warren County from devising a way to count the vote in secret. Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials — citing the FBI — declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

In fact, there was no terrorist threat. The FBI declared that it had issued no such warning, and an investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer unearthed e-mails showing that the Republican plan to declare a terrorist alert had been in the works for eight days prior to the election. Officials had even refined the plot down to the language they used on signs notifying the public of a lockdown. (When ROLLING STONE requested copies of the same e-mails from the county, officials responded that the documents have been destroyed.) (191)

***

In Hocking County, deputy elections director Sherole Eaton caught an employee of Triad — which provided the software used to count punch-card ballots in nearly half of Ohio’s counties (197) — making unauthorized modifications to the tabulating computer before the recount. Eaton told the Conyers committee that the same employee also provided county officials with a ”cheat sheet” so that ”the count would come out perfect and we wouldn’t have to do a full hand-recount of the county.” (198) After Eaton blew the whistle on the illegal tampering, she was fired.

RFK Jr. has tons more — everything from phony voting registration, to turning away voters, and many odd discrepencies and anamolies in the ballot counting.

I’ve never paid much attention to the whole Election 2004 allegations of fraud, but this is a real eye-opener.

Better Than American Idol, Sort Of

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

20040609spellingbeeThe finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee are being broadcast live on network television tonight (ABC, 8 p.m. ET).  The top finalists who will be competing tonight will be posted here at 4:00 p.m. today.

If you’ve never seen this before (ESPN covers it every year) — trust me — it’s really fun to watch.  You’ll be impressed with the kids, and really get into the drama of the competition.

And you just might learn how to spell "obstreperous".

To whet your appetite and test your spelling skills, play this.

MORE: Below the fold, the list of past winners (from 1925 forward), their sponsors, and their winning words.  Of the 81 champions, 42 are girls and 39 are boys. [Two past winners are from Winston-Salem!]

UPDATE:  My mom informs me one of the finalists tonight is also from Winston-Salem. (She’s actually from Taylorsville, I believe, but the Winston-Salem Journal is probably her sponsor).

RELATED:  Great moments in Scripps Spelling Bee History (from 2004 – a contestant faints, gets up, and spells the word correctly):

Read More

Toynbee Tiles Mystery Solved?

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Sidewalk_1I’ve seen them in New York.  I’ve seen them for decades now.

These strange tiles embedded in the pavement and sidewalks.  With strange writing.

They are all over the world, including Russia and Chile, but mostly in the United States.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about them:

Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt in several major cities in the United States, and in three South American capitals as well. As of 2006, there are approximately 130 tiles, which are generally about the size of an American license plate but are sometimes considerably larger. They all contain some variation on the following inscription:

TOyNBEE IDEA
IN KUbricK’s 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER.

Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was long a mystery to enthusiasts, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound.

Articles about the tiles began appearing in the mid-1990s, though there are some stories that earlier references may have started in the mid-1980s.

Websites have devoted themselves to the origin and meaning of the tiles.  The tiles obviously refer to the movie "2001", and Toynbee is probably a reference to mid 20th century historian Arnold Toynbee.

But aside from guesswork, nobody really knows what’s going on.

However, a new documentary about the tiles may provide the answer.

According to Sploid, Toynbee tiles may be the doings of a guy named James Morasco, a social worker in Philadelphia who died in 2003.  He reportedly believed:

…we could colonize Jupiter "by bringing all the people on Earth who had ever died back to life and then changing Jupiter’s atmosphere to allow them to live." Morasco discovered these ideas while reading the works of Arnold Toynbee. He also believed Toynbee’s ideas of resurrecting dead people’s molecules were depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s monumental film of regeneration and growth, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Well, that seems to explain it. 

Unfortunately, Morasco’s widow doesn’t know what the hell anybody is talking about.

Colorado Rockies Of Ages

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

I have no problem with the Colorado Rockies becoming a team of evangelistic believers, or whatever this article is saying, so long as they are not discriminatory (and they appear not to be).  Certainly, the baseball profession, like all professions, can only benefit from having its members adhere to a Christian (or Christian-like) code of conduct, at least so far as their job is concerned.

I just don’t think it’s going to effect their place in the standings.  Hopefully, the Lord has more important things to worry about.

UPDATE:  Looks like the USA article about the Colorado Rockies may have been a little exaggerated, displeasing some of the team:

Todd Helton and [pitcher Jason] Jennings were quoted supporting the article’s premise regarding religion’s role in the clubhouse. But both said they never were asked about religion, and were questioned only in general terms about the clubhouse environment.

"I wouldn’t say it was accurate. (The writer) asked me about the guys in here and I said it’s a good group. We work hard and get along well," Helton said.

The story stated that men’s magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and Maxim could not be found in the Rockies’ clubhouse, but that Bibles were present. Several players read Maxim in the visiting clubhouse during the Padres’ series this week. Two separate issues sat on the center coffee table Wednesday.

"I have never seen a Bible (out in the open) in our clubhouse," said pitcher Aaron Cook, who has led the team’s chapel service during spring training. "Most of the guys on this team are Christians, but not all of them. And the fact is you don’t build a winner around just Christians. If that was the case, everybody would be doing it."

Mike Adams Takes On Logic, And Loses

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy1 Comment

In his Town Hall column, UNC Professor Mike Adams provides transcripts of "conversations people actually initiated with me after seeing my copy of The Da Vinci Code".  It’s hard to believe that Adams had so many conversations about The Da Vinci Code — initiated by others, as he claims.  It’s even harder to believe that he could memorize those conversations word-for-word.

But let’s ignore that and look at these supposed sparring "conversations" that Adams dreamt up writes about.  It’s a textbook example of logical fallacies:

Conversation 1

Quacky conspiracy theorist (Q): So, you’re just now reading The Code? What took you so long? How do you like it?

Adams (A): Well, I’m trying to enjoy it like a Grisham novel but, unfortunately, people are taking it way too seriously.

Q: Oh, do you mean the religious right?

A: No, I’m talking about the whacky conspiracy nuts who actually think the book is evidence of patriarchal oppression. Those nuts really annoy me.

Q: Well, you have to agree that it’s curious that the Bible was written by males, don’t you?

A: That’s a great point, I’ve never really thought of that.

Q: Really?

A: Yes, really. I’ll remember that the next time I read a report from the Women’s Resource Center or the Women’s Studies department.

Q: What does that have to do with it?

A: Obviously, since all the authors of those reports are women, they must be involved in a conspiracy to oppress men. I think I just discovered a new concept; matriarchal oppression. Thanks for the inspiration.

The point of the (fabricated) conspiracy theorist was quite simple — the Bible was written by men.  That fact alone does not mean that the Bible is just part of a conspiracy to oppress women — remember, that’s Adam’s strawman.  It does suggest, however, that literature from that era was dominated by men, and the female point of view was sadly lacking — a fact which is undeniable.

Conversation 2

Q: Oh, I just love that book. Have you read about the Council of Nicea and how they conspired to keep out the Gnostic Gospels? It was all so political the way they choose the Books of the Bible, don’t you agree?

A: No.

Q: Well, why not?

A: I’ve read the Bible seven times, the New Testament ten times, and all of the so-called Gnostic Gospels.

Q: And what have you concluded?

A: The New Testament books were selected long before 325 A.D. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were either written by eyewitnesses or on the basis of eyewitness evidence. The Gnostic Gospels were not. In addition to being incoherent fragments, they were written many, many decades later.

I just try to treat the life of Jesus as a murder mystery, which is easy to do since he was, in fact, murdered. If you want to solve the mystery, you have to know everything you can about the victim. To do so, you should prefer eyewitness testimony over all other forms of evidence. There was no better type of evidence back then. And, of course, only a fool would give preference to the accounts that were written later. That is a backwards way of thinking. I mean that literally.

Q: Then why does The Da Vinci Code suggest that members of the Council of Nicea conspired to exclude certain books for sexist reasons, if it isn’t true?

A: Because The Da Vinci Code is fiction.

Q: How do you know?

A: Because I picked it up at Barnes and Noble in the section marked “fiction.”

The flawed logic here is obvious.  Most, if not all, books — especially historical novels — borrow from facts, or at least have facts in them.  Is Adams going to deny that slavery existed, because he found Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the fiction section?

This is a form of division fallacy — the (false) argument that just because a book is a work of fiction, every detail in it is fictitious (i.e., untrue).

Conversation 3

Q: Won’t you admit that there was a conspiracy to label Mary Magdalene as a whore in order to deny her true place at the top of the Christian hierarchy?

A: No.

Q: Aren’t you open-minded enough to even consider that Pope Gregory’s public labeling of her as a whore was an intentional act undertaken in concert with the members of the Council of Nicea?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Well, Pope Gregory made the statement in 591 A.D. If he were Pope during the time of that council, too, that means he called Mary a whore in the 266th year of his pope-hood. You conspiracy theorists are either profoundly ignorant of history or just plain crazy enough to believe in time travel. I don’t know which is worse.

Another strawman.  Who said that Pope Gregory labeled Mary a whore while present at the Council of Nicea? 

The gnostic argument is this: The Council of Nicea was where the bishops basically decided on the divinity of Christ.  Pope Gregory, a couple of centuries later, claimed that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, in furtherance of the Council of Nicea edict about Christ’s divinity.  Hence, he was acting "in concert with" their goals.

Now, whether you believe that or not is up to you.  However, Adams here is simply mischaracterizing the argument into one he can win, i.e., that Pope Gregory was actually present at the Council.

Conversation 4 

Q: Why do you keep demanding that I produce evidence to support my theories? Do you have evidence to support everything you believe in?

A: I don’t know. Test me.

Q: You believe Jesus was a real person who walked the earth, don’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: But they haven’t found Jesus’ bones have they?

A: No.

Q: Is that consistent with the Bible?

A: As a matter of fact, yes. It is consistent with the story of his resurrection.

Ironically, Adams here is using a fallacious argument often employed by the most ardent conspiracy theorists: absence of evidence is the proof of something.  As in, there was a second and third gunmen on the grassy knoll — we know this because there is no existing evidence of it, showing that the government was complicit in the Kennedy assassination and cover-up.  It’s called an appeal to argument from ignorance.

Someone needs to point out that they haven’t discovered the bones of the Tooth Fairy either.  But that isn’t compelling evidence that she died and was resurrected.  It could mean that she never existed at all.

Conversation 5 

Q: Did you hear that they have uncovered evidence that Adam had another wife before Eve?

A: No. But, please, tell me more.

Q: She was not subservient to Adam so he divorced her and married Eve. Since Eve was more submissive they put her in the Bible.

A: Well, that’s certainly impressive research. When you got your Master’s Degree at Duke, I assume there was a “Dr. They” who uncovered all of this information. Or maybe there was a They Institute of Historical Research.

Q: Why do you have to be so crass and cynical?

A: I’m only joking. But when people talk about what “they” have discovered or research that “they” have done, I find that “they” generally don’t know what the hell “they” are talking about.

Leave it to Adams to create a fictional dialogue that makes him look like an asshole. 

This isn’t really a logical fallacy, since Adams here is, in essence, complaining that the authority/expert isn’t identified.  It’s a fair cop, but Adam’s himself is engaging in a bit of intellectual laziness.  Just because his fictional conversation partner doesn’t cite who "they" are, does not mean that "they" do not exist. 

Adams here is hardly one to complain about this however — a quick review of Adam’s columns reveals that he rarely if ever cites any authority for anything he says.

Conversation 6

Q: Are you really serious when you say that there would have to have been too many people involved in a conspiracy to keep Mary Magdalene’s marriage to Jesus a secret?

A: I am.

Q: Well, what about the fumes coming from airplanes?

A: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Q: Well, they have found that the government has been using commercial airplanes like the one we are on now to spray the earth with chemicals to counteract the effects of global warming. The government makes them do it. You can tell because the fumes look different from the earth than they did before global warming.

A: Ma’am, that is rich. I’m going to write about it in my column next week. I hope you don’t mind if I quote you. I promise not to reveal your name in the column. I don’t want to hurt your career as a practicing psychiatrist.

This exchange simply makes no sense.  How did they get from the subject of The Da Vinci Code to airplane fumes?

Here, Adams’ is exemplifying the ad hominem fallacy.  The woman here is wrong about the Da Vinci Code conspiracy because she is obviously a nut.

Marie Jon On Iraq

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy13 Comments

Marie0601_1Rewew America columnist Marie Jon really shouldn’t be talking about how stupid Americans are when it comes to war:

Americans have allowed themselves to be misinformed. They all too often can’t give an intelligent answer as to why they are giving up resolute to fight a war on terror.

Wars are lost because of what happens right here at home. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have American’s pegged correctly.

We are a foolish Neabel Chamberlan type people, waiting to be appeased and soothed.

The title of her column is "Iraq, we simply must just do it. Win!"  I must just wanted to point that out.

Note to Marie:  Maybe you should go back to plagiarism

The Truman Show

Ken AshfordHistory, IraqLeave a Comment

Bush and Rice have been quoting Harry Truman a lot recently, as part of their never-ending propaganda war to reclaim support for the real one.

Nobody’s buying it:

Bush and Rice are correct that Truman saw tyranny as a threat to world peace and believed in resisting it, by means that included force. At West Point, Bush quoted Truman’s famous declaration in his March 1947 speech proposing military aid to the besieged governments of Greece and Turkey: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

But there are other Truman classics that Bush conveniently overlooked. For instance: "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please." Truman did not believe merely in promoting democracy and peace; he believed that doing so required powerful international institutions, which could invest American power with the credibility that the Soviets lacked.

This constant attempt to caste Iraq into a WWII mold simply doesn’t work.  If people want an accurate historical comparison, it’s not hard to find it.

Things Fall Apart

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

This Haditha thing just keeps getting worse.  Bad enough that U.S. Marines summarily execute 24 Iraqi non-combatent civilians (including children) in cold blood, an act that is far worse than the Abu Gharib scandal (at least the abused prisoners in Abu Gharib were, you know, supposedly combatents).

But now there’s strong evidence of a cover-up by Marine superiors:

The U.S. military investigation of how Marine commanders handled the reporting of events last November in the Iraqi town of Haditha, where troops allegedly killed 24 Iraqi civilians, will conclude that some officers gave false information to their superiors, who then failed to adequately scrutinize reports that should have caught their attention, an Army official said yesterday.

Ezra Klein hits the right note when he discussed the long-term implications:

American troops have massacred innocent Iraqis, not by accident, but on purpose. This is a barrel of gasoline dumped on the already-flaming insurgency. This will ricochet across the Arab world. We will become more hated than we already are. Al Qaeda will have another item to add to their list of casus bellis. Our country can’t afford to further inflame anti-American sentiment — but doing so was as inevitable as morning dawn the moment we entered Iraq.

The Bush administration has many failings, but in the long run, their most dangerous blind spot will be the one they had for anti-Americanism. No hated country is ever safe, and we are truly loathed, more so every week. It was all predictable, it could all be foreseen. But the Bush administration refused to see it. They believed they could fight a perfect war, and didn’t consider or didn’t care what would happen if they couldn’t. But they proved unable to alter the nature of combat, and now the very portion of the world we needed to mobilize against the murderers in their midst see us as ruthless monsters.

RFK Jr: “Election 2004 Was Stolen”

Ken AshfordElection 2004Leave a Comment

In other times, this allegation would be a MAJOR story, especially since it comes from Bobby Kennedy, Jr.  But with daily scandals piling up on each other, and scandal fatigue setting in with the general public (myself included), this story will probably just waft around for a few days and disappear.  Too bad.

Actually, it’s not a story yet.  But BradBlog has the exclusive:

A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

The article — headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" — has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio — and thus the country — in 2004!

Kennedy told The BRAD BLOG this morning that "the best evidence says the Republicans succeeded" in their plan.

He writes in the 10-page long article, and confirmed to us today, that evidence shows Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was "certainly in on" the scheme, and there are indications that the effort went all the way up to the White House.