Awesome!

...better to be silent than remove all doubt.

I'm in the middle of finals so my posts will continue to be short and mindless - but not as mindless as this. This weekend Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary, appeared on NPR's "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me" and admitted that last October a reporter referenced the Cuban Missile Crisis in a question and..... she didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was! C'mon! Really?!?!

I mean, I've always rooted for her. She seems like a genuinely nice person stuck in the worst job in the world. She's cute too, but I'm just going to pretend that doesn't factor in. But seriously, how does this happen?

I guess stuff like this shouldn't surprise me so much. I've been baffled a lot recently. I keep saying things like, "Don't they remember Watergate?" "Have they forgotten about Vietnam?" etc. Cheney and Bush were alive back then, after all. But then again, maybe they prefer to just forget and surround themselves with people who never knew.

At any rate, a quick shout-out to Marty, who for some misguided reason thinks girls with "long hair = good / short hair = not as good as long hair." I think this is a shallow oversimplification of the wonderfully nuanced subject of female beauty. Some women look better (great even!) with short hair. Take a look at this old picture of Dana Perino for an example.

Here's Your Pledge and My Signing Statement.

According to the Washington Post, earlier this month the Virginia Board of Elections approved a VA Republican Party plan to require all GOP primary voters to sign a pledge stating they intend to support the party's Presidential nominee in the fall, no matter who he is. No pledge, no vote.

Here in Virginia, we don't provide a party affiliation when we register to vote. Consequently, we get to choose which primary we participate in, if any. The sta- er, Commonwealth GOP is paranoid about independents and (GASP!) liberals casting ballots in the primary, so they have decided to clear up any confusion in the mind of voters. If you were a little unclear about whether the GOP is a big tent party open to a range of opinions, this ought to settle the question. May only he who votes in lockstep enter here!

Of course, there are a lot of silly things to point out about this pledge business. First, it is entirely unenforceable; the GOP can't tell who you vote for in the fall. Second, by letting independents know that they aren't welcome to voice a preference unless they would be comfortable with any nominee, the GOP is just ensuring that their nominee will appeal to fewer voters in the general election. Third, it just isn't great PR when someone drives all the way down to the polling station to participate in party politics and gets turned away over some silly pledge. Fourth, it is more of this, "Everybody is out to get us!" paranoia that I keep hearing from the right: "Golly! There's a war on Christmans, gays are trying to cheapen my marriage, athiest want to teach my kids we came from monkeys, and now the liberals want to tamper with our honest elections!?!? Thank God the party is looking out for us!"

Fifth, and most importantly, it illustrates the fact that the people who end up working for political parties (on either side) are the sort that think everyone on my team is better than anyone on the other team. Total nonsense. The dissatisfaction among Republicans with President Bush ought to be evidence enough that one Republican isn't just as good as another. If they were, why bother with a primary? They should just be fiscally conservative and draw from a hat. Nonetheless, I'd like to see these hacks eat their pledges if Ron Paul is nominated.

Anyway, the party is also pushing to put party affiliation on VA voter registration forms so they don't have to mess around with these messy loyalty pledges. I'm against that. Political parties are private organizations, not government entities. But people forget this because parties get so much official recognition from the government. I might be alone in this, but when I worked in the House of Representatives I thought it was weird that Congress provided separate Republican and Deomcratic Cloakrooms right on the House floor. That's prime real estate! If it's for private use, the party should have to pay for it. Go rent a room at the Radisson if you want to have a caucus!

Not to be over-dramatic, but whenever I see the government remember that it isn't its job to carry water for political parties, as I did when I registered to vote here in the sweet Commonwealth of Virginia, I think that maybe there might be some hope for this country yet.

But I digress back to one last point on the loyalty pledge. The leader of the national Republican Party, our dear President (a man of conscience, I might add), has had little trouble putting his signature to hundreds of laws which he has had little intention of either enforcing or abiding by. Perhaps would-be VA primary voters, who don't intend to decide who to vote for next fall until they actually know who is running, may sooth their consciences by taking a page from the the President's playbook. When the GOP puts the pledge in front of you, just add a signing statement to let them know the pledge doesn't apply to you. That way we can all feel Presidential on voting day!

Silly Presidents And Their Magical Thinking

On June 22, 2004, President Bush said:

"The values of our country are such that torture is not part of our soul - our being."

It's funny, the way he said it made me think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia two weeks ago:

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country - we don't have that in our country."

Both men would prefer that their statements were true, but they know, perhaps better than anyone, that they aren't. Maybe convincing us is almost as good as making it a reality.

Of course, the sad part is Ahmadinejad is busy doing all (the executions) that he can to make his fantasy a reality, while Bush would veto any attempt to make his own dream come true.

I guess our President is more of a dreamer. :)

Ending the War on Science

For once Hillary is speaking my language...

I will end the politicization of scientific research that has marked the Bush Administration and restore a climate of scientific integrity and innovation. We will no longer place ideology ahead of evidence…

From her remarks at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

[Thanks to BABlog.com]

Dan Rather Stands by His Story

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/27/dan_rather_suit/

This is a great article that recounts the events of "Rather-gate," Dan Rather's report on the unexplained gaps in Bush's National Guard Duty during the Vietnam War and the blow-back CBS/Viacom received from the administration.

According to this account, the documents showing Bush never showed up for duty were authentic to any reasonable journalistic standard and corroborated all the other evidence gathered in the investigation. However, CBS, still sore from the bruises and "liberal media" labels received by the Administration after being the first to run the Abu Ghraib scandal, and Viacom, hoping for a Bush victory and continued FCC deregulation, were not pleased about another controversial story so close to the election.

CBS/Viacom assembled a panel to ostensibly investigate the validity of the report, but instead they rail-roaded Rather and the producers. The panel concluded that the truth of the story was inconclusive and allegedly ignored its own evidence in support of the story.

Rather, Mapes and 3 other producers were fired.

Rather has now filed a lawsuit against CBS and refuses to settle. He intends to use subpeona power to investigate his improper firing and, in the process, demonstrate that CBS knew the story was true.

Pretty amazing stuff. As much as "liberal media" gets thrown around, all the major outlets are still run by corporations, regardless of who is in the news room. I never considered the fact that FCC deregulation could be a big carrot being held out in front of all of the networks.

If it's true, it kinda sucks for you and me. Just one more way for dishonorable people to retain power once they have it, and one more muzzle on the people whose responsibility it is to let us know how dishonorable the powerful are.