Category Archives: Politics

Pat Tillman

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BayArea.Com: SJ’s Tillman, who quit NFL to fight, killed in Afghanistan

He was three four years ahead of me in school and I knew his younger brothers. (The Tillmans were a sports dynasty at my high school.) I’m wondering what it’s going to be like to go home in May after this happened. This is the first person I knew within two degrees of separation of me that has been killed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Along the same lines…

Pentagon Angered by Soldier Coffin Photos

The Department of Defense has been catching so much fire over this. It used to be that the cameras were on and taking the coffins off the plane was a last tribute and hurrah to those who had died. Now… the cameras are off. All the Vietnam-era people and family members of those who have died are up in arms because they want the world to see the coffins being taken off the planes and the bodies of their sons and daughters coming home. I happen to agree.

The Draft

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I was talking to my mother last night and she told me that there is talk of Bush bringing the draft back if he is re-elected. I found this website which has various articles to back up the claims.

The administration denies it but I honestly don’t trust them as far as I could throw them, especially since there is legislation in Congress to do it.

Read this bill and this bill. Then keep track of the progress on the bill and write your reps if that is what you do in situations like this. Granted, it’s still in committee and will not probably come up until January 2005, but I think it’s an issue we need to examine in this election year, especially as it pertains to the War (and it still *IS* a war) in Iraq.

And for those who say “but this is good and will encourage patriotism”, go talk to someone who was alive during the Vietnam War and had a friend, family member, or classmate sent over. This will NOT be permitted to happen again, especially after the mistakes made in Vietnam and the effect it had on the lives of those who served there.

Rick’s Friday Five

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1) what would you do the first day after being elected president?
Sleep in and send my vice-president out to get me some chai at C’bou.

2) what would you do the first day after losing the election for president?
I’m with Rick on this — prank call the White House pressroom. *goes off to think of a good prank call*

3) as president, which country would you try to build diplomatic ties with?
Norway. Make a deal that if we promise not to send Britney Spears over there on a tour that they’ll stop exporting the dregs of their cuisine over here.

4) as vice president, on which late night talk show would you like to be a guest?
Letterman. Why is there any question of this????

5) as the first lady, what would you add to the white house decor?
It’s all about tye-dye.

Jen’s April Fool’s Day Entry

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**In addition to this entry, I also altered my CSS file to give me a red, white, and blue site. I put a BlogsforBush button on and I had this image as my header. **

I know that this is hardly the day to announce it but…

I’m joining the GOP.

I have contacted my county registrar and asked for a new voter registration card. I will change my political affiliation to Republican and fight to bring Bush’s popularity up in this area, which is full of farmers whining about why they aren’t getting any of Bush’s tax cuts despite the fact that they grow most of his food.

Minnesota has a Republican governor who has done great things to try and bring civility to this state as Bush brought to the state of Texas. There is talk of instituting a death penalty, especially for people like the killer of Dru Sjodin and they are trying to get huge stadiums built for the Twins and the Vikings. There is also talk of an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage.

I am also just fed up of compromising my morals to fit in with the Democratic Party. I’m sick of having to be silent while people protest the gay marriage ban, being villified because I actually am sort of pro-life, and hearing that my party is Satan’s cubbyhole. Jesus seems to have chosen the Republicans, so I guess I should be going in that direction.

I am starting a committee with some of the people in my neighborhood to have a klub supper at the VFW to fundraise for the Bush-Cheney campaign. I’d do lutefisk but I don’t think most people are going to pay $100 for the privilege of eating “fish jello”. If you are interested in helping, email me.

Continue reading →

GOP Foolishness

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GOP challenges anti-Bush ads

This shows the GOP’s ignorance about what these groups actually are. They are groups that try to raise advocacy for issues that aren’t on Bush’s agenda. I have not had one mailing from MoveOn ask me to donate money to the Democrats. It’s usually something along the lines of “sign this petition to raise mercury poisoning awareness” or “censure Bush for lying about WMD’s”. The one time they did ask for money to be raised, it was for an ad during the SuperBowl campaign criticizing Bush’s tax cuts. It wasn’t a tacit approval for any party (since a lot of MoveOn members are third party voters) — it was a complaint against a move that they thought was unwise and was going to be harmful for future generations.

RightMarch.Com, the Republican answer to MoveOn.Org, *IS* collecting money for campaigns. Ironic that the GOP attacks the groups who criticize Bush and wrongfully accuse them of illegal fund collection when their PAC is engaging in the practices they are complaining about.

The GOP is even trying to cheat using the FEC. They want the FEC to quickly consider their complaint and then dismiss it so that they can proceed in federal court. Uh yeah… if you’re going to involve the FEC, you need to go through ALL the protocols and not go for quickie justice. What’s the point of going to them if you aren’t committing to a full investigation?

I’m thinking the GOP is getting real scared by groups that have a whole lot less money than they do…

9/11 Commission and Its Theoretical Prevention

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Every time I’ve posted on 9/11 and Bush and anything complaining about the executive branch, Mike leaves me a comment alleging that Clinton did squat to protect against Al Qaeda or that we couldn’t have guarded against what happened on 9/11. Well Mike… I guess you weren’t in a position to be reading a lot on all this stuff for the last 5 years because you’ve missed the boat on this. Here are the answers to the many comments you’ve left me. 🙂 Oh yes, if you want sources, do a search at your local library on Muslim terrorists, Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and anti-U.S. propaganda. Much of this prior to December 2000 was in my Sociology 188 reader which I shredded when I graduated. (My professor was a jerk and I didn’t want anything having to do with him. They were all TIME, Newsweek, and U.S. News articles.) The rest were on CNN.Com and various other news sources that I kept tabs on for my Modern Middle East class.

What Clinton Did
-Bomb Afghanistan and Sudan after the attacks on the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya to try and root out bin Laden and destroy his weapons-making capabilities. (Republicans criticized him saying that he went too far. Now who’s laughing?)
-Developed ties with countries where a lot of chatter related to Al Qaeda had been picked up. (Example: Jordan, the Phillipines, Indonesia)
-Attempted to expand authority of the intelligence agencies’ wiretap authority. (Republicans shot him down on that.)
-Created a national stockpile of drugs and vaccines in case of a biological attack.
-Fought to get more counterterrorism funding. (Again, Republicans shot him down.)
-Issued a directive to have Osama bin Laden assassinated. (Unfortunately, it was limited by Reagan’s Executive Order 12333.)
-Developed strategic plan and position paper on how to destroy Al Qaeda. (Too bad he was a lame duck president at the time.)

What We Knew That Could Have Been Useful in Preventing 9/11
-Al Qaeda had plans to blow up planes over the Pacific as early as 1995. (In other words, airplanes were a viable weapon.)
-Security at airports was more lax than it was in Europe. (Gore tried upping it but got shot down.)
-There was an elevated level of chatter that nobody bothered decoding.
-The FBI in Minneapolis knew of some suspicious circumstances at flight schools. (That agent was punished for whistleblowing. Ironic, no?)
-Bush and Co. dragged their heels on meeting to discuss all of Clinton’s plans to destroy Al Qaeda until September 4th. (He had ranch duties to attend to.)
-There were people on a watch list in the country and the proper agency did not bother notifying anyone about it.
-There was a report on August 6th that bin Laden was planning a strike on the U.S.

In other words, this could have been prevented if the various agencies had actually been talking and if Bush and Co. had actually met to discuss the Clinton plans in February as had first been planned. You’d think that our government could have seen this coming if a 21 year old Religious Studies student could figure out that something was going down in August from the news stories she was reading. I even remarked to my parents while walking through San Jose International in June 2001 that it was ironic that they let me take my pocket knife on the plane with me — I cut part of my knuckle off with that sucker and it could be used as a weapon.

It’s also been pointed out by many people that Bush had been focused on Iraq since the campaign trail and that was what he focused on instead of Al Qaeda. Guess what? Saddam wasn’t the one sending those planes and none of the hijackers were Iraqi. In other words, Bush screwed up.

We can’t take back everything that happened on 9/11 — it’s in the past and all we can do is learn from the mistakes that were made. The reason I want Condi (and would prefer that Dubya and Cheney went in front of the panel as none of what they would say would impair any current stings or hunts for terrorists) in front of the panel is that someone needs to admit to dropping the ball and I know that it wasn’t Clarke. This guy was with Clinton when all this was drafted — he KNEW there was a problem and tried to do something about it.

And for the record Mike, I wouldn’t have been opposed to the U.S. going in and removing Saddam if we had been able to prove the WMD existence post-1998. We could have easily gone in for human rights reasons (and I would have backed that 100%) but I guess that wasn’t important enough to justify going in for. And for the record, the Iraqi response was basically “you got rid of our leader — booyah! Now go away!”

A Letter to Dr. Michael Newdow

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I wrote this as a sermonette for blogs4God. (It will be posted tomorrow morning.) For those of you who aren’t members of the portal or read the site frequently, feel free to let me know your thoughts here.

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Dr. Newdow:

I have read your website, heard all your arguments, and read quite a bit on your drive to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Having grown up as a northern Californian in an atmosphere that was much more progressive than other parts of the country, I knew from an early age that I had the right not to recite the pledge — I could even name the Supreme Court ruling that gave me that right. I knew that I had the right to not say the words “under God” if I didn’t happen to believe it; but that didn’t stop me from saying it, even in the days before I actually believed in God. Even as an elementary school student, I understood that my saying of the words “under God” was not a tacit endorsement for any specific deity or even that one existed. Becoming a Christian in my teen years did not add or subtract from any feeling I had about those words in the Pledge of Allegiance. It was something con safos that we just didn’t question because we knew that we could just not say it if we had a problem with it.

As I learned more about my First Amendment right to freedom of religion, I started seeing why a lot of Christians were up in arms with the ACLU. Other faiths had the right to practice and have their symbols displayed, but my Christian holidays and symbols were banned. Prayer was not allowed in school because it might offend someone (something I did understand because I had friends of different faiths) but most people who prayer was supposed to offend were very gracious about those times when it did exist because they understood that it really meant something to some of us. I had teachers who decried the teaching of creationism in school and voraciously pursued the teaching of the theory of evolution instead. They still respected my right to believe in Genesis as long as I could understand their viewpoint and repeat it back to them on a test. In my government class, I sought to understand how the Bill of Rights affected me and how it could be used in legal decisions. I pondered a career in law but decided in favor of medicine with another switch to religious studies two years later. In Religious Studies, I looked at how religion is something that is intertwined in every aspect of our lives from our language to the way we interpret the world. One cannot merely separate themselves from religion — it is a part of our every day lives.

Having studied religion as it relates to politics and ideology, I cringed when I heard about the lunacy of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals when they sided 2-1 in your favor. It wasn’t surprising that they decided in your favor — they are overturned more frequently than any appeals court in the nation, but the decision sparked a debate over the place of those words in the Pledge of Allegiance. Democrats and Republicans were tripping over themselves to be the first to denounce the decision in a show of unity only seen before after the 9/11 attacks. That alone should have shown you the power of the change you wanted to make. Most thought that your case wouldn’t make it to the Supreme Court and would simply be overturned. I guess we underestimated your tenacity.

You have stated that “[you] have the right to be able to have my child in public school without her being indoctrinated with religious belief” and “this is supposed to be a public school and supposed to be religion-free.” I ask you then how you will handle your daughter reading the following works in her English classes:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
The Chronicles of Narina by C.S. Lewis (the series)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson
the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson

All of the above works of literature contain allusions to religion in some way/shape/form.

How will you handle your daughter’s world history classes as they discuss medieval Europe, a period heavily influenced by Catholicism? What about any Asian history which would cover Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religions? Are you going to request that she be excused from class as they discuss the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment? What about her government class as they discuss the bases for our laws: the Ten Commandments, Englightenment and Deist principles (as these Framers you so adore quoting were Deists)?

You seem to be fond of science. What do you plan to do when discussing the origins of the world and she asks what came before the Big Bang (if you subscribe to the theory)? How will you handle it when she asks about the naming of the planets and moons as those come from various ancient mythologies? As I stated earlier, religion is entwined in everything we do. The words “good bye” are an abbreviated form of “God be with you”. Our days of the week are named for Norse gods. There is nothing you can do to escape mention of religion or some type of deity.

Another issue that has arisen from your lawsuit is the demand that “[you] want [your] belief system to be given the same weight” as other belief systems that profess faith in a deity. Did you ever consider that doing so would limit the belief systems of others? I’m not going to claim that atheism isn’t a belief system because it is: you have to be resolute in the belief that there is no deity and no higher power, making it a religion of sorts. You believe that all references to God should be removed because you do not happen to believe in one. What about the other 265 million of us who do? Do we not have a right to include words regarding our deity in our public expressions of patriotism? You can exercise your freedom of religion by not saying the Pledge and by not participating in civic events where prayers are said. You have filed lawsuits alleging that the government will not hire atheist chaplains, but you have not managed to prove that such people could exist, let alone serve the needs of the other 90% of our population who are not atheists like yourself.

You have stated with a smug and arrogant certainty that this will be a 8-0 decision in your favor. Given the statements of the judges regarding the frivolty of your claim, I wouldn’t put money on you having a victory in this case. You might think the Bill of Rights grants you freedom from religion, but you obviously mixed up your prepositions there because your freedom of religion is guaranteed for all of us.

Above all Mr. Newdow, you have failed to see that our government’s non-endorsement of a religion is the only reason you can practice yours. If we had a state church as some would like, you would likely not be allowed to profess your atheist beliefs and would likely be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance with the added words. If you want to keep your right to your beliefs, please refrain from abusing the legal system to infringe on my right to my beliefs.

C/S