Practical Politics
Apr 9 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
I saw this quote today. I’ve seen it before and anything by H. L. Mencken is good insight even now. If only we had a Mencken for our time.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
Update on the Primaries
Mar 5 at 12:12pm by Jagwire X
Well, we already know that McCain has essentially won the Republican nomination and gained the blessing of George Bush, to the delight of both Democrats and Republicans.
The Democratic nomination is still up in the air. As of noon central time the Democratic Party delegates are distributed as follows:
| Obama 1,520 | Clinton 1,424 |
| Pledged: 1,321 | Pledged: 1,186 |
| Superdels: 199 | Superdels: 238 |
| Needed to Win: 2,025 | |
The caucuses in Texas are still counting but apparently Obama currently has a slight edge of 52% to 48%, again as of noon central time.
Take a look at the New York Times election guide also for alternative tallies.
March 4th Primaries
Mar 4 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X
Well today is the day. Well not THE day. But it’s the day that will most likely decide who the presidential contenders are.
At this point John McCain is already the presumptive nominee for the GOP. Not too surprising there - another militaristic rich white guy is what Republican constituents think this country needs. I think not.
Meanwhile on the Democrats side of the fence we seem to have all sort of craziness going on. The nomination is down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Either way it’s historical precedent. There are reports of voters overwhelming caucuses and claims by the Clinton camp that Obama supporters are illegally obtaining caucus packets in the several Texas caucus precincts. I don’t know the ground rules for caucuses and I probably should but I am to understand that to some degree it’s a first come first server sort of deal where the packets are concerned. Then there are allegation about the Clinton campaign regularly claiming caucus irregularities with the Obama campaign to the point that it seem to have become a tactic of the Clinton campaign.
There are also reports in Ohio of precincts closing down early because they have run out of ballots because a large number of people wanted to vote on paper. I can understand that. Otherwise in Ohio the only real problems seem to be the winter weather making it difficult for people to get out and vote.
So right now the democratic nomination could go either way. From what I see in the various media Obama is ahead by a small but significant margin. Now just to make things interesting the Democratic Party does not use a winner takes all approach to the votes in the primary - it’s proportional. So even if Clinton wins in Ohio it doesn’t mean she gets all the delegate - if she wins 60% of the vote she gets 60% of the delegates and Obama gets the remaining 40%. So this primary could remain close until the very end. Superdelegates are another story - they can vote for whoever they like and can be persuaded by the nominees (or even the voters) to vote one way or the other. It’s all very exciting and tomorrow morning we may well have a better idea of who is likely to be the next president of the United States.
For the record I prefer Obama to Clinton but, as I said before, either way it’s historical precedent. And I frankly just don’t want another rich white guy to be president. That is hardly representative of a country that is comprised of so many non-rich, non-whites and non-guys. Not to mention people who just are fed up with politics as usual. Being a politician shouldn’t be a career option - it should be a duty.
For those interested in hard numbers you can check CNN (they also have a lot of information about how the primary process works) or look a the latest Daily Kos post.
The Fantasy Years
Jan 28 at 5:05pm by Jagwire X
Everyone should read The Fantasy Years. It’s a novel by Charles Baker about how America was lead astray by an assault on reality by right-wing (read neo-con) pundits. I’ve know about it for a while now but I haven’t gotten that far into as yet.
From the site:
The Fantasy Years is a novel about the magical effect a particular strain of popular politics has had on Americans throughout the 1990s. The blook is just as much about the forces that helped seed and shape extremist political views among the public as the end result of such views. Rush Limbaugh and right wing think tanks form the chorus, a handful of Americans muddling through the 1990s make up the cast.
Once again I recommend it to everyone interested in how we got from the Greatest Generation to where we are today.
Election Year
Jan 28 at 3:03pm by Jagwire X
Well it’s that time again folks. That’s right I speak of election year - two thousand eight. And once again we are presented with such a limited bunch of self-serving ego maniacs that I continue to wonder how this country keeps together at all. Really, my biggest complaint is the party system. We have a two party system, Democrats and Republicans. We allegedly have a multi-party system, with Greens, Socialist, Libertarians and other, but they are never in contention. It sort reduces the choice from an array of candidates to, well, two. The National Football League has a better selection process for how teams get to the Super Bowl. I don’t buy all the crap about uncommon and unconventional ideas remain non-influential and so a two party system flourishes. It’s a strategy to keep any other parties from gaining traction. It’s not like various Socialist ideals don’t overlap with Democrat ideals, or Libertarian ideals don’t have companion ideals that find traction in with Republicans.
Actually are some interesting candidates, Barack Obama (D, IL), Ron Paul (R TX), Mike Gravel (D AK) and Dennis Kucinich (D OH) for example, less self serving that most I’d say, but still full of sound and fury and a bit of demagoguery, you don’t run for president without a formidable ego at very least, even if you aren’t maniacal. You’d go home in tears every night.
Of course we’ve been dropped into an economic, social, political, and diplomatic mire, for which mitigation will be difficult at best, by the current Republican administration, so I shouldn’t hold too high hopes for the next CEO of the USA. Which is the problem, this is a government of the people, for the people and by the people - not a corporation to be run as so. We, citizens all, are stockholders in this nation and it is up to us to decide what we want. Or are we to lazy to make decisions for ourselves?
But I do hold out hope that things will get better. In any event this being an election year should provided plenty of fodder for blogging. We don’t intend to be another DailyKOS or Crooks and Liars (you should read them too) but we do hope to provide a skeptical (or perhaps cynical) view of the political landscape.
To Whom it May Concern
Jan 16 at 4:04pm by Jagwire X
The 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair presaged the future in more ways than one. This old postcard, commented upon, or defaced presents some of the underlying currency that was forthcoming in the 20th century.
Click the thumbnail to see the full size version.
Steal This Country
Nov 7 at 1:01pm by Jagwire X
Well it’s Steal This CountryTM day. I’m curious if the mainstream media will continue to gloss over election fraud and voter manipulation. I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the election process at this point. I do not trust electronic voting machines - never have - as a programmer I know what can go wrong and that’s without people deliberately adding code that might be used to manipulate votes. I don’t like that I can’t get a paper receipt of my choices. Hell anything I order online and can print out a receipt for. Anything I buy at a store I can get a receipt for. But something as important as voting - “Nope, sorry pal, you’re out of luck. Just trust us.” Yeah, right.
No transparency means no trust in my eyes. As things stand now, voting is a privilege. It should probably be mandatory for everyone over the age of eighteen. At least that should be the case in national elections, hence the will of the people. When elections are won based on who can market their candidate better and move people to vote based on that marketing determines the turnout there’s something seriously wrong with this basic premise of a democratic republic. Failing the marketing campaign there’s always the possibility of just altering you non-transparent, receipt-less electronic vote.
I am extremely disgusted with the amount of corruption in our government. There is so much I can’t even keep track of it all. The level of hypocrisy that the Republicans have managed to attain alone should be cause for their being voted out of office, or in some cases jailed. No sane person should even consider voting for any of them at this point. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Now I’m not saying the Democrats don’t have problems - no one party could ever come close representing me but the Democrats are generally closer than the Republicans at this point.
Its obvious that a two party system is not working. Vote for the lesser of two evils. Meh. I want some freaking choices here people! I want to be able to elect candidates that arent politicians, but rather statesmen. I want to see the money taken out of their pockets. I want to choose someone who, really cares about the environment. I want to elect a scientist. I want religion out of politics. I want to elect candidates who have a long view. I want to elect someone who doesn’t care about politics. I want to elect no one.
August 22nd 2006 - The Beginning of the End?
Aug 15 at 11:11am by Jagwire X
Bernard Lewis (aka. Bush’s Historian) the man who coined the term “clash of civilizations” is predicting that Iran will initiate a third world war or some sort of end of times conflict. You can read his absurdly bigoted, hypocritical and fanatical article on the Wall Street Journal op-ed site, August 22: Does Iran have something in store?.
As an extremely cogent counter balance I present this article by Brian Whitaker of The Guardian, World to End August 22nd.
Unsurprisingly, Bernard Lewis, brings religion into it. He demonizes the Muslim world making the bigoted claim that the Iranian President would happily allow his country and people to be destroyed because for him it’s a win-win situation. This is complete bullshit. It’s not in Iran’s best interest to allow a war of the magnitude suggested to start. It might be in the best interest of a certain few people here in the U.S. but I don’t think it’s in Iran’s. It certainly isn’t in the interest of the common man anywhere in the world.
None of the governments involved in Middle Eastern politics have my sympathy - this includes the United States. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of these power hungry lunatics trying to manipulate us through scare tactics, fundamentalism, and black/white world views. Screw it - don’t believe it, don’t buy it, don’t play it, don’t choose it!
It’s always the common man who suffers - the common man is who has my sympathy - not our taskmasters. And those who align themselves with the antiquated ideals of these nation states have my pity that they cannot see beyond the carrot being strung out in front of them. It’s up the common man to make sure we don’t get screwed over. No right, no left, no middle, just human.
Frankly we should all (and I mean everyone in the world) get over it (our differences, our greed, our violence, etc.) There are more than enough resources in the world for everyone to live quite happily - see Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller for a realistic scenario of how it can be accomplished. There’s no profit in it though.
Enlightened interdependence* is what we should strive for - anything else is just fucking stupid (in which case we, as a species, probably deserve to wipe ourselves out.) It is also, in fact, much easier to achieve enlightened interdependence, than to maintain an endless struggle. Hell whether we want to or not we are all already interdependent.
“The western hemisphere
And all inside
We learn
Who is murdering the innocent
They are children playing with guns
They are children playing with countries
Mining harbors, creating contras
The games they play
The lives they take
They bank their money in the country
They steal from the innocent
A colonial trait
That’s much too old
The banks, the lives
The profits, the lies
The banks, the profits
The lives, the lies
I would call it genocide
Any other word would be a lie”– Minutemen, From Double Nickels on the Dime
Apocalypse Now!
Aug 3 at 10:10am by Jagwire X
There are some seriously crazy people in the world. Unfortunately a great many people of influence are counted among them. What we have here are power mad lunatics who want to push the world to the brink of war to facilitate the second coming of Christ. Sounds very Christian doesn’t it - actively condoning the murder of innocents. These people disgust me with their hypocrisy of claiming to be Christian while going so far against the basic teachings of Christ. I may not be a Christian but I know enough to know that this is just plain wrong (moral, ethically and every way possible.)
US to implement insecure RFID in passports beginning in August (2006)
Jul 13 at 9:09am by Jagwire X
An mainstream press article about RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) in passports and how insecure they are.
“Imagine being overseas and your identity being available for the taking - your nationality, your name, your passport number. Everything. That’s the fear of privacy and security specialists now that the State Department plans to issue “e-Passports” to American travelers beginning in late August.”
US to implement insecure RFID in passports beginning in August
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