XyzzyB - politics

Obama Victory

2008-11-05T14:02:00Z

It isn’t January yet.

[Indy and his father have boarded the airship]
Indiana Jones: Well, we made it!

Professor Henry Jones: [looking out from behind his newspaper] When we are airborne, with Germany behind us, then I will share that sentiment.

My poor inbox

2008-09-06T19:39:00Z

Another Presidential Election is upon us, which means a return of the dreaded Forwarded Political Emails with 5% facts, 100% spin, and that trite smugness only Republicans can muster. Somehow the Republicans keep managing to cast themselves as the underdog outsiders with real rural values who would have everything cleaned up and working right if it weren’t for those sleazy Democrats.

In a hundred years modern American history undergraduate students will be writing papers trying to explain how millions of Americans could so willfully ignore the fact that Republicans weren’t the party of financial responsibility, family values, and small government but corrupt, borrow-and-spend, no-bid contracting exploiters who want to legislate morality because letting us make our own choices is just out of the question.

HBO's John Adams

2008-03-27T02:36:00Z

If you aren’t watching the new John Adams mini-series on HBO you are missing out on some seriously great historical drama.

If you want to check up on the series’ historical accuracy, Boston 1775 is a great blog.

The progression of cool

2008-03-06T15:17:00Z

The progression of cool (images preserved locally for posterity):

and, for sake of completeness:

Coolest-est-est

But “coolest-est” is clearly the apex of the meme.

Iraq War is more expensive than you think

2008-02-29T02:24:00Z

And the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because “the saving rate [in America] is zero,” says Stiglitz, “that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America’s war.” The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn’t have the money to bail out its own banks. “When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank.” This creates a precedent of dependence, “and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves – it’s that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan – that has all changed the US’s economic position in the world.”

- The War in Iraq is even more expensive than you think it is

Obama in 08

2008-01-29T02:22:00Z

As XKCD reports:

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy.

Yes! When you want to talk copyright reform, the only person you should be talking to is Lawrence Lessig (who also supports Obama). Brilliant! I’m officially pulling for Obama on ‘08.

Martin Luther King's ignored message

2008-01-21T15:39:00Z

I encourage you all to read the entire article The Martin Luther King you don’t see on TV, but here’s a salient excerpt.

You haven’t heard the “Beyond Vietnam” speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 — and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post patronized that “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

Yes, Mr. King had started a new fight, but this one didn’t play as well. Declaring war on poverty and America’s supression of third world countries was not very popular. King’s Beyond Vietnam speech is depressingly prophetic.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

…

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word” (unquote).

…

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

The Martin Luther King you don't see on TV

2008-01-21T15:06:00Z

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jesus v. Republicans

2008-01-07T02:29:00Z

Jesus v. Republicans