So how ’bout those debates last night? I didn’t catch all of the debate, but enough to ramble on about today.
Category Archives: Politics
Did you know there’s an election today?
Yep. Today there’s a primary election in Minnesota. The only reason I know is because a flyer asking me to vote showed up in the mail yesterday, and as I ran past my polling place this morning I saw the flyers.
Visit the Secretary of State’s web site to find your polling place and what candidates are on the ballot in your area.
But apparently one of the races in my district is a non-event, and the other is only for Republicans. And I had to do a lot of searching to figure out that much.
To top it all off, only one of the candidates on the ballot today has a web site, and that candidate is running unopposed in the primary. I’ve gone off on this before, but c’mon people! Is it that hard for the news paper to cover local politics? Is it that hard for a candidate to put up a decent web site? $200 would make a decent web site and answer voters last-minute, I’m off the polls questions. How is that an expense you can afford to skip?
Arg. And they wonder why we don’t vote.
Clear as Mud
I don’t know if I even want to go here, but I guess we’ll see what happens.
I was poking around the web sites for the two presidential candidates and I noticed something rather disturbing. The George W. Bush site has tons of anti-Kerry material. There’s an entire Kerry Media Center taking jabs at the Democratic candiate. Over at the John Kerry site you’ll find a Rapid Response Center that counters Bush. Both sides take their caustic little jabs (Kerry’s “The REAL George W. Bush” and Bush’s “Kerry Flip Flop of the Day”), but I’m amazed at how many Bush seems to take. There’s a ton of videos on the Bush site, and many of them are simply attacking Kerry. While the Kerry site does have a few anti-Bush ads, it’s not exactly an equal percentage of negative ads.
What really amazes me is that the Bush site actually offers John Kerry’s acceptance speech in its entirety. It’s presented as ‘in his own words,’ as if the speech itself is enough reason not to vote for Kerry. Among all the biased, negative ads we actually have some semblance of a balanced approach. Huh? I kept waiting for an edit or text countering what Kerry said in his speech, but nothing.
If only the rest of Bush’s site was like that. And perhaps my complaining is off base. I’m only speaking from my visit to two web sites. Maybe Kerry has plenty of other groups doing the Bush bashing so he doesn’t have to. I don’t know.
What really bothers me about all of it is the inability to have a simple discussion. Each candidate has to blame the other one for doing this or saying that, then jump on them for an apparent contradiction, often ignoring the context. The whole point is to come out the perceived winner, no matter if your point is correct or true in any sense.
No Child Left Behind is an example. The Bush site accuses Kerry of flopping on the issue, pulling quotes from Kerry both supporting and challenging the law. But from my minimal knowledge of No Child Left Behind I know a lot Democrats intially came together with Republicans and supported the bill. But then after passing the bill they saw how much money Bush planned to give No Child Left Behind and they realized it was vastly underfunded. So now they denounce it. (Why you would vote for a law without knowing the funding source is beyond me, but apparently that’s how Congress works)
Simple background knowledge like that really clears up the issue. But does either side give that kind of clear reporting? No. They think it’s enough to cite their quotes. There’s enough goofball Bushisms out there to warrant the use of a simple thing called context. You can’t harp on a man for an innocent slip of the tongue.
Is it really that hard to tell the whole story? One Bush ad accuses Kerry of flip flopping on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. According to the facts the Bush site gives, it seems Kerry has flip flopped. OK, but where does Bush stand? I don’t know. A search found the answer buried in a speech: Bush is for the site. OK, I understand the point was to paint Kerry as a waffler, but is it that hard to give the whole story?
Take any issue and both candidates lay out their pie-in-the-sky vision. Kerry rattles off his plan for peace in Iraq like it’s a no brainer. But there’s no explanation of what’s been done or tried or why or why not. Kerry wants to bring in NATO, but haven’t we already tried that? I thought we did, but maybe not. Where’s the complete picture?
No wonder my generation hardly votes.
Official Religion
66 percent of evangelicals favor making Christianity the official religion of the U.S.
Apparently those evangelicals have forgotten their roots of leaving the ‘official Christendoms’ of Europe to practice their faith freely in the new world.
Ten Dollar Reagan
Ronald Reagan supporters are pushing to have his likeness on some cash, among other places. Current discussion includes putting Reagan on the $10 or $20 bill, though both proposals would require an act of Congress. Another option is to put Reagan on the dime, or possibly on half the dimes produced (leaving FDR on the other half of all dimes produced), something the Treasury can do without approval from Congress.
All of which causes me further speculation about what made Ronald Reagan so great. Speculation that, by the way, is thoroughly honest, innocent, and not malicious, as some seem to think.
It seems especially ironic to consider putting Reagan on our money considering the divided feelings over Reaganomics. According to that CNN/Money article, the idea behind Reagan’s economic policies were to lower taxes, decrease government regulations, and increase military spending. The result was 20 million jobs, a huge drop in interest rates, and a $3 trillion debt by the end of the decade. The opposite approach seems to be Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget and didn’t cut taxes. I’m no economist and I don’t really know how to compare the two, but I do know that the mid-to-late 1990s had quite an economic boom as well. An NPR commentator pointed out that the economic growth in the 1990s was more evenly spread throughout society.
Interesting points to ponder.
At any rate, I find it especially peculiar that there’s a Ronald Reagan Legacy Project with a goal of “seeing a Reagan commemoration in every American county” (Star Trib). Furthermore, they’d like to add Reagan to Mt. Rushmore (though they might have to settle for the road that leads to Rushmore). Apparently there are only some 54 memorials to Reagan across the country, compared to more than 600 for John F. Kennedy and more than 800 for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Apparently it’s a race.
But seriously, it makes me wonder about who we honor and why we honor them. Why are there 600 memorials for JFK? Was his shortened presidency that great? Was averting a nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis that much of an accomplishment? Or was he just a popular guy and we feel bad he was shot?
I understand that it’s important to remember the past and honor national heroes, but all the rangling over who’s a better hero or a more worthy hero is really odd. And at one point is one hero better than another? When can Reagan, hero of the Cold War, replace Alexander Hamilton, hero of the Revolutionary War? Because there’s only so much space for memorial. I can imagine a park absolutely cluttered with bronze statues to hundreds of years of American presidents. You’d be walking on the George H.W. Bush Memorial Sidewalk reading your Official Gerald Ford Map and sucking away on your large Bill Clinton Sodapop.
All the while no one can remember what any of them did.
Bedtime for Bonzo
Despite the goofball picture, I really don’t mean any disrespect in this posting. I just couldn’t resist. This is Monkey Outta Nowhere after all.
I’m going to come across as a completely uneducated bafoon, but what was so great about Ronald Reagan’s presidency? He passed away yesterday and the homage has been thick and deep. I know I’m a bit biased with my anti-Republican comments in the past, but I’d honestly like to know why people are saying he was one of the greatest presidents.
I blame a lot of my naivete on the school system that never covered anything after World War II, leaving me with a pitiful understanding of modern world history.
On a theoretical level, I know Reagan’s presidency came at a time when things weren’t looking good for the country. There was the energy crisis of the 1970s, the hostage thing in the Middle East, and recovering from a lot of 1970s muck like Watergate and Vietnam. And a lot happened during Reagan’s presidency. There were nuclear arms treaties with the Soviets, that whole Star Wars thing (I was always pissed when the news talked about the Star Wars program because I thought they were talking about the movie and I’d watch to see more about the movie, but they never had anything), and the merging of conservative Christians and the Republican party.
But I know a lot of messed up stuff happened during Reagan’s presidency. There was the whole Iran-Contra scandal. There was El Salvador and other conflicts where we were supporting war and bloodshed for dubious reasons. There’s the fact that Reagan was all about smaller government, yet he also created the biggest deficit in history.
There’s also the whole go-go 80s. The 1980s were really a big business era, and part of me wonders if that’s why Reagan seems so great. The economy was booming and whether or not he had anything to do with it, he gets the credit.
I was born in 1979, so Reagan is the first president I remember seeing. You tend to idolize a world leader when you’re that young, and you don’t know a lot of the facts.
Some of this is probably over-generalizing from what little I know (or think I know) about Reagan, so feel free to correct me. I know there are certain leadership qualities that stand out and would make a good leader, regardless of how you feel about their politics. I’m eager to know if that’s part of what made Reagan such a great president.
One Nation Under Persecution
I’ve argued about the whole ‘one nation under God’ thing before, and most of you are probably sick of it. But that’s OK—it’s my blog.
Lee Greenwood, a country music artist who wrote “God Bless the USA” and is a spokesperson for the effort to keep “under God” in the pledge, said the following in a Decision magazine Q&A “One Nation Under God: A Conversation with Lee Greenwood”:
“It bothers me to know there is the possibility that I as a Christian would be not only an underdog, but that I would be trodden upon if I claimed that I was a Christian.”
Maybe I shouldn’t nitpick Greenwood’s statements, but he seems to be expressing a fear of persecution. Get used it, Greenwood. You’re a Christian. It’ll happen. You are an underdog. You should be trodden upon. That’s the whole nature of our faith. We are beaten down, we are losers, we are illegitimate.
“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10, NIV)
It kind of gets to me when Christians think we live in a Christian nation are are therefore free from any trouble, any hardship, any difficulty. That’s false security.
Christian Republicans vs. Christian Democrats
A friend’s blog is getting into a pretty heady spiritual-political discussion, and it’s making me think.
Republicans and Democrats are so weird when it comes to Christianity.
Republicans want to legislate moral issues, government imposed restrictions on abortion or gay marriage. The Bible says it’s wrong, so we make it illegal. Democrats, on the other hand, want to leave those moral choices to the people.
Democrats want to legislate social justice issues, government imposed help for the poor and the oppressed. The Bible says to help the poor, so we make a welfare system. Republicans, on the other hand, want to leave helping the poor up to the people.
Is it just me, or are those two stances really contradictory and just plain odd? Maybe I should have just gone to bed a long time ago.
Update: More than four years after writing this post I wrote another post about disagreeing well. That post linked to a survey that asks you questions and tells you where you stand politically. I think taking that test and understanding where you and those you disagree with stand can go along way towards disagreeing well. For me, it helps explain the differences between Republicans and Democrats.
The Presidential Comedian
At a recent media dinner President George W. Bush gave a speech laced with laughter. I know — quite a shock. The speech included the White House Election Year Photo Album — basically a bunch of candid photos backed with quips from Bush.
The best one has to be a picture of Bush looking under a chair, which he narrated with the comment, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”
As sad as it is to say this because of what it means about American politics, it’s humor like this that could really give Bush an edge. I’m not exactly a big Bush fan, but this is a side of him I haven’t seen before. The ability to poke fun at himself tells me he’s a bit more human than I thought. Humor can be powerful.
Now if the Bush team is really smart, they’ll release this speach and slideshow in some web-friendly, viral format.
Political Donations
You know what’s scary? Looking up who’s donating money to which presidential candidate. You can search by name or address and find out who’s giving cash.
Kottke first brought this to my attention, and he points out that it’s information that’s been available before, but is much more accessible thanks to the Internet.
It’s especially fun to search for your friends or famous people.