Thursday, January 16, 2003
A clear and present danger
An Associated Press story in Tuesday’s paper brings us still another chapter in the continuing attack on American values by the Attorney General. Here’s the relevant quote in Curt Anderson’s report:
"Out of fear, ignorance and occasional bigotry, faith-based groups have been prohibited from competing for federal funding on a level playing field with secular groups,” Ashcroft said in a text of his speech released at the Justice Department.
“Fear, ignorance and occasional bigotry” is apparently Mr. Ashcroft’s code phrase for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which can be found here:
The very first words of the very first item in the Bill of Rights are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”. Ashcroft is enthusiastically and fervently in support of the last portion of the phrase, but conveniently forgets (more accurately, it seems, tramples upon) the start of it. Of course, he’s well practiced at that, blissfully ignoring the phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” whenever he invokes the Second Amendment.
Considering the source, I don’t suppose I’m surprised by this. Ashcroft has constructed his entire political career on selecting his few favorite pieces of the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution while blithely ignoring and/or violating the rest of it. In his shorthand, there’s really only one Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and even that one is pared down to his unswerving support of guns in all forms, in all places, in anyone’s hands, without “interference” by anyone.
What’s troubling is that, by and large, We the People put up with Ashcroft’s bludgeoning of our American rights. He and Dubya and the rest of the cabal have wrapped it all in 9/11, and will continue to ride that excuse as long and as far as they can. Their public relations approach has been impeccable—truly a marvel to behold, if it wasn’t so damn frightening.
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Posted by N in Seattle on 01/16 at 06:09 AM
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Thursday, January 09, 2003
Political satire, eh?
While surfing through the channels Wednesday evening, I chanced upon the Western Canada CBC feed. I’m just close enough to the border that my cable provider is required to include it. Seeing the semi-familiar face of Colin Mochrie (one of Drew Carey’s sidekicks and also a mainstay on Whose Line is It Anyway?, the improv show) sitting at what appeared to be a news-anchor desk, I stopped in for a moment.
It turned out that the program was This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a CBC comedy revue. A couple minutes into the programme (gotta use the Canadian spelling, y’know) came an absolutely scathing rip into Dubya, Iraq warmongering, oil, America as bully, and much more ... all performed by what I’d describe as a solo version of Bob and Doug McKenzie from the old SCTV shows. By which I mean that the guy was wearing flannel and parka, speaking in the broadest of Canadian accents, saying acutely observant things about the Halliburton/oilfield reconstruction bidness while sounding like a poorly-educated hoser.
I wish I could find something to point to on the Web so that I or a reader (if anyone ever happens by) could take a another look at this comedy/commentary. The 22minutes.com site is sadly deficient, talking about an “upcoming” season premiere from last October. I couldn’t find anything displaying more recent material from the series, much less something that was done within the last day or two.
I’ve seen nothing remotely as pointedly political anywhere on whitebread American TV. SNL is a pussycat, of course. Jon Stewart is about as close as anyone gets, and he’s orders of magnitude less biting than this little routine was. I don’t know who the actor is—it was the other male in the show’s foursome, not Mochrie—but I did notice in the show’s closing credits that the performers also do most of the writing on the show.
Wish I could be more helpful in finding the sketch. I will note that the usual time for This Hour Has 22 Minutes on CBC is Tuesday evening at 8pm. I happened upon a repeat showing on Vancouver’s CBUT. Based on the pieces I saw, I may need to set my VCR to record the show…
Posted by N in Seattle on 01/09 at 12:10 AM
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Wednesday, January 08, 2003
What if...???
In 1992, Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was forced to resign because he hadn’t acted sufficiently hard-line in negotiations with the players’ union. At that time, George W. Bush ran the American League’s Texas Rangers. Dubya really, really, really wanted to replace Vincent as Commissioner, and he apparently lobbied his fellow owners mighty hard in the hope that they would choose him for what he obviously thought would be the coolest job in the world.
The owners negotiated among themselves to determine the best choice for the next Commissioner. Then they negotiated a while longer. And a while longer. And a while longer. After working on it for a year or so with no end in sight to the impasse, Bush finally gave in to the pressure he’d been undergoing from the Texas Republican party and threw his hat into the ring as a candidate against Governor Ann Richards in the 1994 election.
What if he’d gotten his wish?
George W. Bush probably would have been a pretty good Commissioner. He opposed (and may even have voted against) the wildcard, doesn’t particularly like the designated hitter, and was in general a savvy baseball owner. Had he been made Commissioner, it’s highly unlikely that he and his minions would be occupying the White House today. Even better, it would have kept the horrid Bud Selig out of the Commissioner’s office, which would have been a tremendous boon for baseball.
Bush’s baseball ownership history is instructive. After Poppy was elected President, Dubya used his and his father’s Yale connections to put together a syndicate (mainly from Cincinnati and New York) that bought the Rangers from family friend and fellow Texas oilman Eddie Chiles for $89 million in 1989. At that time, the Commissioner was Peter Ueberroth, architect of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, mastermind of the late-1980s baseball owner collusion scheme, and a fellow Yalie. Bush only put up $500,000 himself, and even that relatively small stake was borrowed from a Texas bank, perhaps using as collateral his proceeds from ditching his shares of Harken Energy a bit earlier. Bush became the club’s managing general partner, which meant that he was the public face of the Rangers, the one who attended baseball meetings and cast votes in the decisions of Major League Baseball. For that, he paid himself a nice little $200,000 annual salary. Dubya put in another $100,000 the next year, and added $6302 to his investment in 1992. He was instrumental in pressing for a new publicly-financed stadium for the team; The Ballpark in Arlington was built in time for Opening Day in 1994.
After he upset Richards to take the governorship in 1994, Bush resigned his post as the managing general partner of the Rangers, but retained control of his equity stake in the team. His $606,302 investment had gotten him 1.8% of the club’s stock, but Bush also had a side deal in which he would gain an additional 10% of the stock (plus accumulated interest) if the Rangers were sold. Which is what happened in 1998, while Dubya was preparing for his gubernatorial reelection. The buyer was Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks, head of media oligarch Clear Channel Communications and heavy contributor to Bush-related PACs. The price paid by Hicks was $250 million, and the net profit to George W. Bush (enhanced by a subsidy enacted by the Texas legislature at the urging of the Governor) was a tidy $14.9 million. Just another example of how bidness happens in the world of Texas oil, I guess.
Sadly, we’ll never know how different things might have been under Commissioner Bush ... would that the baseball owners had cottoned to him back in 1993.
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Posted by N in Seattle on 01/08 at 10:42 AM
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Saturday, January 04, 2003
Slow news day
Saturday’s newspaper is often the most meager of the week for those seeking actual news. After tossing aside the auto dealer advertising, the weekend’s lists of real estate open houses, general classified and help wanted ads, there isn’t all that much left of the paper. Why, there weren’t even any op-ed pieces today.
Still, even on a slow news day, the front section of the newspaper does contain stories that beg our attention.
For instance, we learned today that the F-16 pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan last April, killing four and wounding eight, were flying on Dexedrine, an amphetamine. And where had these guys scored their hits of “speed”? From the dispensary at their airbase, that’s where. It seems that the USAF not only permits its pilots to use this drug, they issue the pills to their pilots.
Apparently, it’s a longstanding practice in the US military. Their use was especially high during the Gulf War, when most USAF missions were carried out at night. At that time, pilots would be issued “Go pills” for their nocturnal missions, then get “No-Go pills” (i.e., sedatives) afterwards. Not surprisingly, this practice led to a not-insignificant number of addicted pilots. Alarmed by what was happening, the Air Force banned the pills after the Gulf War, as did the Navy. But the Air Force reversed its ban during the Bosnia/Kosovo campaign in 1996, and the Navy lifted their ban in 1999.
According to a Pentagon report, Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, the pilots who bombed the Canadian contingent, “had been prescribed Go and No-Go pills for use in combatting fatigue and in adjusting to the new times zones in the deployed region.” At the time of the strike, the two had been in Afghanistan for more than a month.
The physiologic status of the pilots probably had far less to do with this tragic error than a failed command-and-control structure and poor communications among the allied forces. Still, this report does give a whole new meaning to the term “War on Drugs”.
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Posted by N in Seattle on 01/04 at 11:13 AM
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Thursday, January 02, 2003
Opening Day
Another year, another blog…
I can’t say what shape this enterprise will eventually take. There are daily events worthy of comment and discussion, in a myriad of arenas, but the one or ones that inspire me to bat out a few words can’t be predicted. It might be a political decision or it might be a baseball game; a piece of music or a magazine article; scientific research or a well-cooked meal.
Whatever I happen to discuss, my viewpoint will be one of seeking rationality, of following the subject to its logical conclusion ... even if that logic sometimes takes us to a reductio ad absurdum. It’s a viewpoint tempered by 50-some years of living, by two years residence in the Pacific Northwest after spending most of my days in the Northeast, by a career of research into healthcare and the quality thereof, by Woodstock and the assassinations, by close observation of governments in action, by Herman Melville and Bill James, by Bob Dylan and Dan Bern, and by much, much more.
As the title says, today is opening day. Who’s pitching tomorrow???
Posted by N in Seattle on 01/02 at 08:27 PM
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