Gimme a break

Expect a likely halt in posting and e-mail responses for the next 36-72 hours as I begin the process of packing up all my crap and heading back to my dorm at NYU for the spring semester. Though this means you're deprived of new content for a day or so, it does mean the sooner I get back to NYU, the sooner new comics start up again.

If you want something to read, go check out the No War Blog. An e-mail (and subsequent but not-too-subtle removal of my site from their link menu) from them reminded me that I haven't made my required mention of them in a while, so go read what several dozen others have to say about the war for the few days I won't be able to since all the magic tools that allow me write about it will be in the trunk of my car.
 

 

Negative on Affirmative, Pt. 2

This one from Tracy Williams, which I'll address right now as well for all.

I stand (well, sit) before you (well, not really) as a black man, aged 25, college-educated, who opposes affirmative action. I am not a conservative by any means, and I clearly don't feel that affirmative action ever hurt me (although I honestly don't know if I've ever benefitted from it; I like to believe I did not.) I believe that affirmative action has opened some doors for black people who wouldn't have had them opened otherwise; that being said, though, I still believe that it is not a just policy.

At the risk of sounding like a certain ex-Senate Majority Leader, I don't believe that diversity is, in and of itself, always the most desirable thing. It leads to a greater range of views and a greater pool of varying experiences, which can be a good thing if you have set out specifically to find a great range of views and a great pool of varying experiences. But if you're simply out to provide education and you have a limited amount of spaces for people who want to get this education, it seems to me that the only criteria for acceptance should be high school GPA, test scores, extracurricular activities and entrance interviews -- that is, things that the applicants had some control over.

Don't misunderstand -- I'm hardly saying that colleges should do absolutely nothing to attract more diverse student bodies. They should recruit at black high schools, they should attempt to have a multicultural appeal (that is, studies in various cultures and qualified professors of many cultures and nationalities), they should do everything possible to avoid being exclusionary. But when it gets right down to it, I feel that giving an automatic consideration boost to all black applicants, as I understand the Michigan policy does, is racist in the exact same way that white applicants used to get an automatic consideration boost in the years before affirmative action. The motive is different, certainly, but the end product is the same.

Would ending affirmative action tomorrow mean a less diverse student body next semester? Hell yes it would. Would that mean that college admissions boards are actively slamming the door in the face of minority students? No ... it simply means that the minority students who didn't make the cut without the automatic boost will have to study harder and be better so as to win on a level playing field. It's the only fair way.

I don't really want to get into the arguments about whether or not affirmative action hurts blacks in the long run by making people wonder if they came by their success through their merits. I don't really know if it's true, but more importantly I don't think it matters anywhere near as much as the basic fairness problems I laid out above.

So I'm afraid I agree with W on this one. You have no clue how much it pains me to say that. But I can't see this any other way. Trust me, I don't like the company that this position puts me in. I fully agree with you that a large amount of people who rail against affirmative action are closet racists (sometimes, uncloseted racists.) But I hope that this message from a Real Live Black Man Opposed to Affirmative Action lets you know that such a person can exist.

My initial response to Tracy is to read my previous post, because I think it answers a lot of his issues. But that said, there's a lot more to, well, to be perfectly honest, nit-pick with this one.

First of all, I'm just going to avoid detailing the issue with "agreeing with W" on this. Tracy appears to express logic and sentiment in his reasoning for opposition to AA, whereas my argument over Bush's logic is the basic premise that he's lying. Anyone who disagrees with that is more than welcome to provide me one, just one, significant example of George W. Bush using executive power to address what he feels is massive injustice against black people.without claiming essentially that "it's for their own good."

Just as I said how misfortune of whites cannot be used as a specific example, the fortune of Tracy can't be used as the clincher to prove the fallacy of Affirmative Action. The fact is, Tracy knows as well as anyone that in the national scale the fact that he is a 25-year old black college graduate is an achievement. In agreement with his letter, in no way should the idea that his race merit the hard work he obviously did to accomplish this. As one who is (allegedly) graduating college in a few months, I'll be the first to say: it's hard.

I hate to Fisk, but to be honest I'm running short on personal time and need to address the two biggest problems I had with Tracy's letter:

I feel that giving an automatic consideration boost to all black applicants, as I understand the Michigan policy does, is racist in the exact same way that white applicants used to get an automatic consideration boost in the years before affirmative action.

The "automatic boost" is in fact a set of points that rests among others such as family legacy and athletic ability as criteria for acceptance. And as far as how "white students used to get a boost-" the "years before affirmative action" were years in which white students had a "consideration boost" by being the only students accepted to numerous colleges. Affirmative Action, at least partially, is compensating for the years in
which all the black students who met qualifications to enroll in certain colleges still had points put in their tally for admission- only they were negative points. Say... a billion.

...it simply means that the minority students who didn't make the cut without the automatic boost will have to study harder and be better so as to win on a level playing field. It's the only fair way.

I'm very confused here. The point of Affirmative Action is extra consideration to minorities who meet the equal requirements of whites. As such, the idea the blacks should "have to work harder" to equal the cultural, historical, and economic advantages whites have over minorities on the national whole is possibly the most unfair situation for minorities to endure.

The only people who might possibly "hurt blacks in the long run" by suggesting AA allowed them to surpass their lack of merit are the people who don't understand how AA works. As I said before, AA does NOT give less-qualified people advantages. It uses an additional factor added to the previously-met requirements of the minority to help reach an unofficial goal of racial parity.

That all in mind, I acknowledge there are those who are not using racism as a pretext for their opposition to Affirmative Action. I still, however, disagree with the opposition part.

I'm sure I'll get responses from a lot of you on both of these e-mail response posts. If I have the time later, I'll put up any reader responses to these two letters, or my comments on them, that I find suitable. God, with all the responses I'm getting on this subject you'd think I'm talking about that damn billionaire dog again.
 

 

Negative on Affirmative

I just finished a long response to an e-mail from reader Chris Gillum, which I felt I should just put up here. Gillum's letter reads as follows:

I think your quota argument regarding affirmative action is flawed by definition. According to dictionary.com, "quota" definition 3b a quota is: "A number or percentage, especially of people, constituting a required or targeted minimum."

Affirmative action is about targeted numbers, not required minimums. But technically, both are quotas.

I am an engineer. At the college I went to we had on the order of 70% of our faculty being non-white. This was not due to grand progressive ideals on the part of the administration, this was due to the fact that for some reason all we could hire for prof's were foreigners. Every year they had a report in the student paper about diversity in the university and the engineering college always ended up on top. If anything, the engineering college was one of the more sexist organizations on campus. Some of the prof's were openly against females entering the field. In my opinion, this seems a little silly to say "look how diverse the engineering college is, isn't that fantastic" when in reality it was economic pressure that was driving the diversity and not philosophy.

I feel the same thing goes for AA. Successful affirmative action programs will claim they are successful based on percentages. Whenever percentage participaiton doesn't match populations, someone will claim that this is a problem that needs addressed.

And as for being white giving you a "leg up" in the world, try growing up white in Appalachia. Some of the poorest people in this country live in Wild Wonderful West Virginia, and everyone seems to find fun at the expense of a bunch of backwater hicks who talk funny. They get no preferential treatment from anyone and are pretty much left to themselves to rot in the hills. Ever seen a rural ghetto? Come to Southern Ohio, or Western West Virginia, or Eastern Kentucky (where they ship trash in on trains from New York City and bury it in old strip mines) and I can show you a few. Are these the same white people as the white people who have benefited from the oil industry, the Republican party, globalism, et cetera? Affirmative action says they are.

My response followed, which I shall now also reprint verbatim, so keep in mind the context of the grammar:

Using technicality is a great stretch to the argument. Affirmative Action does not penalize or implicate any institution that attempts to reach goals in good faith. The idea of a quota, and such a term that is identified by any pundit opposing AA, means the idea of a legally-bound target that one is forced or required to obtain. Unless mandated by a judge in penalty for extreme cases of discrimination, AA does not force or demand a "target minimum" of any kind. It sets an obtainable goal with a broad stretch of options and objectives, most of the time which are re-established on annual basises depending on the success of last year's goal. Despite the right-wing rhetoric, AA does NOT require the hiring or selection of unqualified, or in most cases even less-qualified, individuals of color. AA programs obviously use percentages and statistics as identification of success or failure because A. they are setting goals, and B. exactly what else does one use to measure success of a program intended for the sole purpose of increasing minority success?

The use of specifics to oppose AA is also an argument that is manipulated in numerous ways beyond the way you have done so. AA opponents use examples of black success (ex. Tiger Woods, should a rich black kid get scholarships, etc. and as you have given white failure to oppose AA as a whole, which is a contrary concept to the nature of AA, which exists not because of individual injustices but injustices done to an entire group as a whole. Bush's and others' idea of selective identification of individual injustices and "fairness" is nearly impossible, and even if so would be exponentially more complicated than the current system to enact and maintain. The fact is that on the national scale, any success on behalf of minorities is in spite of racial adversity, not because of the benefits of AA that succeeded it. You mention the fact that there are poor white people- though tragic, this is irrelevant. Despite the rhetoric, it is as ludicrous to suggest that white people in a selective area are lesser off because minorities are given an attempt to reach parity with them as it is to suggest that minorities are all collectively responsible from taking all the jobs from white people away. Affirmative Action has not stripped white people of any rights whatsoever, and as such it is unfair to accuse AA of taking away the ability for anyone to succeed. All it has done is given a previously-hindered group incentive to do so. To argue against such is tantamount to complaining that the abolition of slavery made it "harder for white people to work" because all the black people suddenly had to get paid for their labor.

In regards to this specific case, there are no injustices done to white students and no quotas or targets mandated. There is a goal of a general increase in black student population, and therefore race is made A, not THE, factor in addressing specific benefits of selecting such a student for entry. Athletic ability and family legacy are also such point-bearing issues in the college's admission policy- examples that Bush hypocritically does not seem to be making any outrage out of.

In full disclosure, I must give masive credit in the AA examples to Liberalism Resurgent, which has so many resources on Left-leaning idealogy that the need to point you all to it should be the final straw in getting off my ass and finally making a links page. Maybe after the weekend.
 

 

I'm sorry, what?

Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries, former Israeli intelligence officials told United Press International.

Another former Israeli government official said that under Sharon, "diplomatic constraints have prevented the Mossad from carrying out 'preventive operations' (targeted killings) on the soil of friendly countries until now."

He said Sharon is "reversing that policy, even if it risks complications to Israel's bilateral relations."

A former Israeli military intelligence source agreed: "What Sharon wants is a much more extensive and tough approach to global terrorism, and this includes greater operational maneuverability."

Does this mean assassinations on the soil of allies?

"It does," he said.

Ummm.... I'm no expert on international diplomacy here, but isn't this... whaddaya call it.... oh, yeah: murder? (The full story here)
 

 

And speaking of executing children...

American and British forces sent to Iraq may have to fight units of child soldiers trained to mount ambushes, sniper attacks and road blocks, according to US military analysts.

In a recent briefing document, Peter Singer, an analyst with the Brookings Institution think-tank, said there were up to 8,000 such child soldiers in Baghdad alone. He said that as with the Hitler Youth, which fought in the battle for Berlin, the Iraqi child soldiers could "operate with unexpected and terrifying audacity".

Rachel Stohl, an analyst with the Centre for Defence Information, said the first American casualty in Afghanistan was shot by a 14-year-old. "Ultimately, they have to be treated as soldiers," she said.

The full story here, but as Cursor will also point out, there's a great international strategy to prevent Iraq from using children and civilians in combat: telling them it's against the rules. Oooh. That'll do it.
 

 

Oh, cut the crap

Look, at least some reporters will acknowledge it: there's no guessing here. So will everyone please stop pretending that John Lee Malvo possibly isn't going to die?

I don't even care about the story anymore. He's a tragically screwed-up pathetic person who along with another man killed eleven people. He's obviously a dangerous criminal and outside of the greatest case of perjury and evidence tampering in American judicial history it's safe to say he's guilty. Sane or insane, he needs to be, and will in some way be, safely prevented from harming another living person. Thank goodness for that. If anything, it's one of those things that keeps you up at night over which could actually be worse: being a 17-year-old and being killed, or being 17 years old and being told you will spend the rest of your life in a 10-foot concrete cell.

But the truth is, there's really no guessing on this one. Malvo was specifically picked to be tried in Virginia- the state which is beaten only by George W. Bush's Texas in executions. And, as the news has informed us- he will be tried as an adult. There is only one obvious reason for this, and that is of course that "adults" can be put to death.

In the long run, I don't see how this is good. So a judge declared that Malvo is "like an adult." Whoop-de-freaking-do. That doesn't magically make him not a 17-year old boy, and being "tried as an adult" doesn't mean that if when the U.S. executes him we'll be among such charming partners as Iraq and Yemen in the handful of countries that still execute children.

My mom made an observation that I'll pass on to you all: it's so very odd that we use death as the sole excuse to remove the barriers of age. You rarely hear about statutory rape cases where the judge says the 14-year old girl was old enough to know what she was doing, and we don't see casinos ever saying it's alright for a 17-year old to win at slots there... and we certainly don't seem to think children can drink alcohol or drive cars earlier than a set age in life if we're deemed mature enough to do so. Yet we feel that it's important to decide that a child is old enough to die, becuase it's vitally important that everyone is made to feel better by killing him because he killed someone else.

It's because, you understand, we're the most advanced nation on earth.
 

 

Right, pt. 2

I have a lot of difficulty when it comes to discussing Affirmative Action. It's one of those situations where you don't want to analyze its reasons, its implications, and certainly not what inspired its inception in the first place. All three are delicate elements, and frankly, as a 21-year-old middle-class white man it's very hard for me to claim any stake in the statistics of it.

Therefore, I always look at stories about Affirmative Action not in the context of Affirmative Action itself, but rather the debate over it. And when I look at that element of the issue, it gets a lot easier to establish a personal point. And that personal point is quite blunt: anyone who openly and actively opposes Affirmative Action is lying their ass off about why they oppose it.

Oooh. I can hear the e-mail programs starting already. But seriously, I don't have a choice because of the basic statistic I will look at in this issue: virtually every person I have ever seen, heard, talked to, and argued with who opposed Affirmative Action is a middle-to-upper-class white person who, even if it's subconscious, think they're being cheated. To which I basically imply: relax, white person. You're fine.

The issue at hand, of course, is Bush's latest jaunt into shattering the fine plate-glass shard of credibility the Republican Party is now attempting to balance on that is the believability of their commitment to racial diversity. This week, he's decided to announce his support for a lawsuit attempting to end Affirmative Action in college admissions brought on by a handful of white students who decided that it's the fault of black people that they didn't get into college.

Bush is droning that the system is "flawed" because of a quota system that apparently... what? Lets too many blacks into college? The horror! Except, of course, as Rob Humenik < a href="http://www.getdonkey.com/archives/000687.php#000687" target="_blank">pointed out on his site the other day, that's in no way what the college is doing, and Bush is using the flimsiest example and the stupidest of lawsuits to make himself look good in front of a bunch of politicians who don't dislike minorities at all, no sir not at all nope no siree noooooo.

So, back to my point about the white people using code language to hide their outright hatred of blacks succeeding. You want to know how to end this discussion? Here is the question that not a single reporter has bothered to ask Bush. It's the one simple question that would end the entire debate and bring the administration to its knees:

Mr. President, will your alternative plan make it easier for more minorities to get into college- in other words, do you believe that a change to your initiative will result in an even more diverse national student body?

Deer. In. Headlights. That's what you'll get, because you and I and especially the president know that the answer is no. That is the spin, and that is the inherent racism that opponents of Affirmative Action are trying to hide, be it subconscious or openly exposed. Anyone who is complaining that "blacks have an unfair advantage" or that "it's harder to accomplish so and so if you're white" is trying to hide the true statement that they are trying to convey: they think there's too many black people here.

Affirmative Action has never meant quotas. It has never meant "unfair advantage" because the entire nature of it is removing the unfair advantage held over minorities. And yet a nation of white people, who have benefited from generations of "unfair advantage" and preferential treatment find one or two unique individual elements of America where they feel blacks might have an advantage over them, and announce that "in the interest of true diversity," they want to make it harder for the black people.

Getting rid of Affirmative Action and replacing it with something a white person calls "fair" has never led to a newer paradigm of racial diversity... all it's ever done is whiten the pool again. Funny how no one seems to say it that way, though, isn't it?

Update: Mikhaela Reid continues her creative strategy of being more talented than me in just about everything I consider myself talented in with her notes on Bush, race, and Affirmative Action. Go to her site and read significnt portions of it.
 

 

Right.

President Bush plans to challenge a University of Michigan program that gives preference to minority students, telling the Supreme Court there are better ways to promote diversity, administration officials say.

Yes, says Bush, there truly are better ways to promote diversity in his opinion. Like, you know, re-nominating Charles Pickering.

The full article here. We will reflect on the strange nature of this alignment- you know, Bush joining a lawsuit brought by white students because they were victims of special preference in Grad School selection while he himself was, you know, a beneficiary of special preference in Grad School selection- as the day progresses.

Update: Barry Routh has pointed out that Bush has in fact made this announcement on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Well, we're certainly aiming for tact today, aren't we, Mr. President?
 

 
Okay, that's really hilarious

Screenshot from Yahoo! News taken from Buzzflash.
 

 

Where do you live near again? Did you say the Crymeafucking River?

The convicted cross-burner at the center of the Pickering re-nomination speaks of the vast Left-wing Conspiracy out to destroy his good nature.

Really.

Daniel Swan, the Mississippi cross-burner whose potential prison sentence was reduced by embattled Judge Charles Pickering, says both he and the judge are victims of political intrigue.

"Politics are hurting a good man like Pickering and have put me in a real bind," he said.

Prosecutors had planned to ask that Swan receive a seven-year prison sentence. Under pressure from Pickering, they agreed to ask for 27 months, which Swan served.

Publicity about the cross-burning case, which had drawn little attention - even in Mississippi - before Pickering's nomination, has put Swan's small trucking company out of business, he said.

Swan admitted at trial he had used a racial epithet. But he says he's no racist.

"I'm guilty of sticking the cross up and burning it," he said. "But I'm not guilty of all the hate crime things they accused me of."

You heard him. He's not a racist, he just uses racial epithets. He didn't do a hate crime, he just... burned a cross. Umm... forgive me for my outright East-Coast Librulism, but isn't there just the slightest chance that this guy is losing business because he sounds too stupid to drive a truck?

The full article can be found here, which was found via Atrios, because, for some unexplicable reason, just about every relevant political story in the last three weeks has suddenly been found at his site. It's actually quite scary.
 

 

Angry John

I really hate saying stuff like this, because I fully acknowledge that I'm not famous. I'm not relatively important, and I certainly don't mark the cultural landscape with my website considering how few hits a day I actually get compared to mainstream political writers/bloggers/cartoonists/etc. So with that in mind, the stuff I hate saying is the stuff that makes me sound as if I'm much more important and powerful than I really am.

That stuff is this- the flagrant negligence of e-mail functions has officially pissed me off beyond reproach.

I respect people e-mailing me. Hell, I benefit from it: thanks to all of you I have been given many mentions and been alerted to many stories and important things. Not to mention the compliments, the advice, the grammar error reporting, and the requests for sex. I am beyond grateful for all of that.

The problem is that in my contact page I have a very small, and I thought very managable, list of requests for e-mailing me. They make it easier for me to sort through my excess of mail, and put me in a much happier mood afterwards to do something about it. Every single one of them has been broken.

I have people trying to send me files, people sending me e-mails where I can clearly see the "cc" to about thirty other people hoping that just one of us will mention their website, people expressing outrage that I didn't reply to them or mention them as if I'm required by international law to do so, and, of course, the most offensive thing someone can do to my Inbox: subscribing me to mailing lists.

It is with much regret that I say this, because it's a line I never wanted to cross. This afternoon I officially blocked my first e-mail address. I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Someone out there subscribed me to some site's mailing list, a mailing list which simply refused in any way to let me remove myself from it until I faked a legal threat, a mailing list which then, literally within an hour of announcing my removal from the list, started sending me e-mails again.

Whoever did this has no excuse, and they are no longer able to give me one, because any e-mail sent from any prefix with his site as the "@" section will now not even reach me. Ever. I wish I could have taken more time to address the implications of this action, but I also wish spammers and annoying e-mailers would understand this quicker: you have no idea how ridiculously easy it is to just press a button and silence you forever. My site host's e-mail blocking tools just simply made it too easy for me to not just block the address.

And to be honest, I regret it. I feel bad that I had to, basically, outright shun one of my readers. It makes me feel very pretentious and very condescending. The fact that you people are out there and want to hear what I have to say is, frankly, the only reason I enjoy saying anything here. If you didn't want to read my work, I wouldn't be putting it online.

But for once, I've decided to act superior, and in the nature that is me, will spend the next few days making myself into a martyr for it. It's a line I finally crossed, and I hope to hell I don't have to do it again- though I can tell you for sure that like most things, it only gets easier to do it again.

I don't know how I can thank all of you for reading while essentially saying that you've all just been warned without sounding like a complete and utter asshole. So, I guess, today I'll be an asshole. I'll do my best to avoid being one again anytime soon.

Update: Well, that was quick. I just checked my e-mail again and had eight- that's right, eight- messages from those "majordomo" servers that send out e-mails informing me I've been removed from their system. Apparently, the fear of God is third only to the fear of being threatened with a lawsuit and fearof being summarily blocked from any chances to spam you again, respectively.

It also, however, explains why my multiple attempts to cancel the membership to the mailing list the person put me on failed- technically, they put me on about ten or eleven of them. I can't even go into lengths about how utterly stupid that is, nor will I dwell on the oft-noted statement that I will never buy anything from an ad that is e-mailed to me, ever, just on principle, you annoying bastards, because that would be inappropriate.
 

 

So that's what the ridiculously old little lady is doing there!

FAIR reports on the latest verbal spanking of Ari Fleisher, courtesy of the 214-year-old Helen Thomas:

"At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the president deplored the taking of innocent lives," Helen Thomas began. "Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world?"

It was a simple question -- and, unfortunately, an extraordinary one. Few journalists at the White House move beyond the subtle but powerful ties that bind reporters and top officials in Washington. Routinely, shared assumptions are the unspoken name of the game.

In this case, Thomas wasn't playing -- and Fleischer's new year wasn't exactly off to a great start. His tongue moved, but he declined to answer the question. Instead, he parried: "I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds."

Of course that attack was reprehensible. But Thomas had asked whether President Bush deplored the taking of "all innocent lives in the world." And Fleischer didn't want to go there.

But Helen Thomas, an 82-year-old journalist who has been covering the White House for several decades, was not to be deterred by the flack's sleight-of-tongue maneuver. "My follow-up is," she persisted, "why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?"

On a dime, Fleischer spun paternal and nationalistic. "Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends --"

Thomas responded: "They're not attacking you. Have they [the Iraqis] laid the glove on you or on the United States ... in 11 years?"

Fleischer laced his retort with sarcasm. "I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then."

"Is this revenge," Thomas replied, "11 years of revenge?"

The man in charge of White House spin revved up the RPMs. "Helen, I think you know very well that the president's position is that he wants to avert war ... "

But the journalist refused to jettison her original, still-unanswered question. She asked: "Would the president attack innocent Iraqi lives?"

The full exchange here.
 

 

Just so you know...

Time has an online poll asking which of these three countries is the biggest threat to world peace: Iraq, North Korea, or the United States.

Hee hee hee.
 

 

Mom, don't read this

Attention residents of Georgia: you may now fuck.

That is all, unless any female readers from Georgia wish for me to help them celebrate. In which case send a photo and directions to your house. I'll stop by after, you know, I go to Hell for pretty much everything I just said in this post.
 

 

How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient

Well, who saw this one coming? When you've screwed up relations with a nuclear-powered volatile state, accused them wantonly of being part of an "Axis of Evil" ("Axis," of course, meaning a coalition of three countries despite their, you know, complete hatred and/or complete lack of communication whatsoever with one another) and cut off their international aid to dismal, for that matter possible apocalyptic results, what's the best way to explain your errors?

Why, of course! Blame Bill Clinton.

A senior Bush administration official suggested yesterday that the nuclear crisis with North Korea was the predictable result of a flawed 1994 agreement signed by the Clinton administration with Pyongyang that "frontloaded all the benefits and left the difficult things to the end" -- for the next president.

The new formulation of blame coincides with a spate of accusations, some from strong administration supporters, that President Bush may have antagonized North Korea by labeling it part of the "axis of evil" and helped provoke the crisis.

That sentiment appeared to be echoed by North Korean officials meeting Friday and yesterday in Santa Fe with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D). Sources involved in those talks said North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol, had said the Bush administration's tough policy toward North Korea was motivated primarily by Bush's desire to do the opposite of what his predecessor had done on foreign policy.

In other words, the Washington Post is doing it's journalistic job of being very nice and cordial about stating the blatantly obvious fact that Bush is knee-deep in his own stink and acusing Clinton of passing wind.
 

 

Well, this certainly raises all eyebrows

A blogger named Alissa Ann appeared in my link log today with a post to this site here. The article in question has the great title of "The 50 Most Loathsome People in America." And, after reading it, I discovered that this article could single-handedly offend just about anyone who read it in some way, regardless of race, religion, gender, and especially political affiliation. Therefore, I suggest you all go read it now.

Even more important, I suggest you read the rest of the site hosting it, as it's got some really cool and very well-done articles and yes, cartoons. Which are without a doubt drawn better than mine. Whatever, the whole site seems pretty well-put-together. It's very much like SomethingAwful, only without making you feel stupider for actually reading it.
 

 

My greatly commuted opinion

The truth is, I have very little to say about outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan's actions. There's little to elaborate on my reaction outside of the basic fact that it's probably one of the greatest and boldest political moves in the history of this nation, and I applaud the decision without any regret or doubt whatsoever. The reasons for this feeling do not need to be repeated, as every accurate and valid point about the fallacies of the death penalty were addressed by Ryan when I watched him make his speech Saturday afternoon. Instead of trying to understand my ramblngs about it, I suggest you just read what he said, as I am very sure that before I die the text of this will be archived somewhere as one of the most prolific public adresses of the 21st century.

I guess, if anything, I can only address the voices that followed the speech, mostly those of outrage that Ryan would do this. I maintain the feeling I always have when people talk like this: I for one simply find it amazing that so many people can be outraged that a complete stranger is no longer going to die for killing a complete stranger. Seriously, people make it sound like this is a movie or something.
 

 

Weekend Mailbag! Intolerable italicized text for all!

Happenings of dubious time-consumption to commence this weekend, so let's cleanup the Inbox while satiating your thirst for new insight at the same time. As an NYU student, I'm so into the Global Village thing. (Sorry, In-joke)

From Diamond LeGrande in regards to the earlier posts about North Korea's nuclear gambit:

First, the clear: North Korea has no plans at striking the US with nukes. This would be mad for the Kim Jung Il, as the US would wipe him and the rest of the North Korean government from the planet so fast that we'd miss it if we blinked.

Same thing for Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Ba'ath party. Both these men and the folks around them know this, and even if Hussein or Kim were to go mad and try this, the generals would hold a coup and shoot their leader in their drive to keep living. I do keep wondering if the talking heads don't think about this due to ignorance, arrogance or prejudice. ("Dammit, don't those slant-eyes and towel heads know that the US will kill all of them if they try to kill us?")

ZMag has a pretty good article about all this. Even I wonder if the writer is underplaying the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea a bit, and blasting the US too much. That is a hard threshhold to cross with me.

Anyhow, these moves are three parts defensive, one part offensive. The three parts defensive are the US, China and Russia, all of whom either border North Korea or are hostile toward North Korea, all of whom have nukes. The one part offensive is South Korea. Countries who have nukes like to strike countries who lack nukes without fear. The US (Afghanistan, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, all of Indochina), Russia (Afghanistan, eastern Europe) and China (Vietnam) have done this for years.

Having said that, I doubt North Korea will strike South Korea any time soon, but I think they will threaten to strike South Korea to gain something -- likely the power agreements the writer wrote in the above article, likely reunification terms much better for North Korea (as the talks have been held by South Korea and its US patron, the terms have been almost certainly better for Seoul).

This is an interesting article courtesy of Aimee Woznick, who notes the following... umm... let's say disagreements with the painting of Richard Nixon as a staunch advocate for civil rights:

As I am currently editing a book about the Fair Housing Act and the policies of HUD from the administrations of Johnson to Reagan, I was shocked at this effort to paint Nixon as an admirable vanguard in the fight to achieve racial equality. This forthcoming book, The Politics of Suburban Segregation, by Dr. Charles Lamb, argues (on the basis of a mass of evidence from the archival collections of Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan) that "Nixon's basic policy opposing federal pressure to integrate the suburbs has remained substantially intact at HUD over three decades, across six presidencies, including two Democratic administrations holding power for a total of twelve years." In other words, Nixon's staunch aversion to housing desegregation lead to such stagnation and powerlessness in the Department of Housing and Urban Development that a sharp separation of the races between the suburbs and the cities continues to perpetuate indefinitely. Of course, prior to the election Nixon donned a compromising exterior, supporting "nondiscrimintation" in housing. A paradox is evident, however, if Nixon's view of "Gee, people shouldn't refuse to give blacks housing just because they are black" is juxtaposed next to his ideals that federal action should not be used to enforce this concept and public housing should not be built in the suburbs in order to diminish this gap.

Furthermore, the author of this editorial attributes the success in ending school segregation to Nixon, rather than mentioning the countless individuals, schoolboards, and Supreme Court justices who battled unflaggingly to end these divisions. This article has the same goal that Republicans have when they make sure to appear at photo shoots with a token African- or Hispanic- American, the same objective that Trent Lott has when he exhibits his rapport with blacks by appearing on BET.. It aims to send the message that the party represents all types of Americans, while at the same Republican officials use covert, underhanded maneuvers to prevent equality not only between races, but between people of different genders and sexual orientations. It supports a facade that complacent Americans will continue to take stock in, solely because facing the painful truth requires real, immediate action.

(Besides, why would any proponent of the Republican Party hold up NIXON as proof of the party's efforts to promote civil rights?!)

We haven't talked about the Middle East for a while, primarily since there hasn't been much hope and/or improvement in the recent past, but a reader caught something on TV that I didn't see. According to Lorell NoLastName:

I was watching television just now (WCVB, "New Hampshire's News Station") and they were covering the recent dual-suicide bomber attack in Israel. They were showing Sharon saying his usual bit about how terrorist attacks must stop before peace talks can begin... However, the sign on the front of his podium showed a large blue (traditional) star above the words "Birthright Israel."

As Lorell pointed out in his(?) e-mail, you can't argue that a man with vision like that really hopes for a shared Jerusalem.

Stephen Bates has strengthened my complete lack of faith in Americans realizing that SUV shoud be an insulting word with the following:

One consequence of Americans' love affair with the SUV is that some manufacturers are starting to call things SUVs that really aren't, at least not by our standards of the past few years. My girlfriend just bought a Subaru Forester to replace her dying '90 Accord. Last year, the Forester was a compact wagon, not an SUV. This year, it's designated as an SUV. No, there do not appear to be very many design changes from last year to this year; they just decided to call it an SUV... possibly to dodge one or another government reg, but IMHO most likely simply to appeal to more people who want to buy something called an "SUV," though it is really more like a medium-sized passenger vehicle.

Kevin Wohlmut sent me a link to this article from Reason about former drug enforcement men who now oppose the War on Drugs. It's an interesting set of interviews.

Finally, I won't quote the passagesbecause the context is too hard to explain, but I finished an e-mail exchange recently with a reader who apparenty assumed that my status as a cartoonist with a very, VERY small-audience website earns me the side benefits of... get this... women fawning over me. It's not a political issue, but I'm flattered and amused by the very concept that drawing slightly legible cartoons merits someone larger chances with girls. If that's the case, then I must be doing somethign wrong, because outside of the occasional messages of as-yet unredeemed promises of physical affection as response to my art to which I maintain a stolid "I'll believe it when it happens" policy.... well, let's just say I'm still waiting to be convinced. The question was also raised to the level of which I would prefer- a larger website audience or more girls wanting me. And then my brain just stopped for a while.

If I don't post again, have a great weekend. I'll probably spend mine fighting off all these groupies with a bat. Of course.
 

 

For those of you you had the silly belief that the resignation of Trent Lott eliminated all racism on the planet forever. Yes, both of you.

Via Media Whores Online, now active after their winter vacation (which is of course a good thing about 85% of the time. Just kidding):

The White House and the Republican National Committee declined to comment yesterday on a racial controversy involving a Bush administration ally who is campaigning to become chairman of the California Republican Party.

Bill Back, the California party's vice chairman running for the top job, sent out an e-mail newsletter in 1999 that reproduced an essay that said "history might have taken a better turn" if the South had won the Civil War and that "the real damage to race relations in the South came not from slavery, but from Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won."

The controversial article that Back reproduced in his e-mail newsletter was written by William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, who posed the question: "What If The South Had Won the Civil War?"

Lind's answer, in part, stated: "Certainly Southerners would not be living under the iron rule of an all-powerful federal government, as we all do now. Northerners might not be, either; a Union defeat would have given states' rights a boost in both countries. . . . What would my great-grandfather, Union Army sergeant Alfred G. Sturgiss, say to all of this? If he could see the sorry mess the country he fought for has become, I think he might sadly say that he'd fought for the wrong side."

The full article here.
 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created- Hah! Just kidding!

More than one of you have asked: yes, I've heard. For the moment, words sort of fail me on this one.
 

 

The war on drugs again being fought by those with their little pesky points

I've drawn on the "drugs=terrorism" issue before in the less-legible format (as seen here in a February and October 2002 comic) but the issue of the stupid and painful hypocrisy of the government blaming drugs for terrorism with one hand while stroking off the auto industry with the other as they ignore any attempts at increased fuel regulation remains. We're addressing, of course, those pesky SUVs now.

For the record: on the whole, I dislike SUVs not because of their existence, but because of the abuse of their purpose. According to consumer reports nearly 20 percent of American car-owners own (at least) one SUV: a vehicle which, as the ads for them all explain, is meant for cross-country trekking, outdoor wilderness exploration, mountain climbing, and if really necessary full-on military assault. SUVs are advertised as even more grunt-work intensive then pick-up trucks, which usually restrict their ads to mentioning the horsepower of the engine, which apparently means how much dirt or lumber can be dropped in the back of the truck without crushing the suspension. (Look, I'm not a car expert)

What these ads never seem to show is what at least 90 percent of those 20 percent are actually, and probably only, doing with their SUVs- driving back and forth to the mall, soccer practice, down the block to drop off the mail, etc. As Dave Barry once noted, the average SUV owner would never dream of actually driving it into the woods, because they'd be too afraid that a squirrel would poop on it.

The point is, SUVs are really designed not to fill some need which jeeps and trucks filled a long time ago, but rather fulfill a luxury desire- the problem, therefore, that I have is that the government refuses to place a luxury tax on this luxury, so to speak. SUVs, though classified as cars for pricing, licensing, and safety regulations, are classified as trucks for fuel consumption. The result is that if Ford makes anything bigger than the Expedition, which currently comes equipped standard with its own escape pod, the fuel requirements will be so great to move the damn thing that you'll actually need a hose running directly from the gas tank of the car straight into a derrick in Venezuela.

The issue of an SUV's general obnoxiousness is one that will never be solved. Like all other luxury goods, those who seek status symbols will obtain them, hence the existence of too-big houses, too-big lawn art, too-big swimming pools, too-big mammary enlargements, and anything else that people with the extra cash deem worthy to waste it on something that makes them be recognized as an asshole even quicker than I do most other Americans.

In other words, I know SUVs will never go away. There's too many people who just don't give a damn. With that in mind, the issue is the oil. When someone buys a bigger house, they pay more rent. When they want to be fat, they eat more food. The difference between their desire to own a vehicle that the waste the essential use of is that we don't need to (at least, not yet) invade countries to secure cheap access to rent and food that are, according to most scientists, in very limited supply when calculating the overall estimate of length of human existence. Humanity will always find a new source of food and nourishment, the food chain guarantees that. Oil, however, will eventually run out, and the government is doing its damndest ot prevent any alternatives from being discovered.

And, as Arianna Huffington has revealed, they're scoffing at the reverse-logic of those anti-drug ads. Ms.Huffington recently started funding a series of parody drugs=terrorism ads, which again, I should point out is being done well over ten months since, you know, I did it. Not that I'm bitter, just that if anyone tries to cash in on a "growing your own weed doesn't help the terrorists" before I do I will run them over with a 2003 Escalade.

This is George," a girl's voice says of an oblivious man at a gas station. "This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V."

A second commercial depicts a series of ordinary Americans saying things like: "I helped hijack an airplane"; "I gave money to a terrorist training camp in a foreign country"; "What if I need to go off-road?"

At the close, the screen is filled with the words: "What is your S.U.V. doing to our national security?"

Now that is flat-out brilliant. That's why Arianna has the big bucks. Okay, I guess it's also because of that other thing. But I digress.

Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said of Ms. Huffington, "Her opinion is out-voted every year by Americans who buy S.U.V.'s for their safety, comfort and versatility." He said that S.U.V.'s now account for 21 percent of the market.

Eron Shosteck. Shosssteeeeeeeck. He's