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Friday, April 28, 2006Do you trust the phone companies?Me neither. The people who brought us Ma Bell have great ideas about how to "improve" the internet. And Congress is considering action to help them. Visit SaveTheInternet.com to find out how corporations have already abused their positions in the internet infrastructure and drop a note reminding your legislators that they work for us, not the telco lobby. 
posted by gbarto at 9:45 AM Thursday, April 27, 2006The DilbertBlog today questions the existence of free will in a run-up to the real question: Why did we really invade Iraq and topple Saddam? He posits that we were acting from emotional reasons and undertaking actions designed to satisfy emotional needs.What is interesting is he doesn't tell us if this is a bad thing. Considering the viewpoints he normally seems to offer, I'm not sure he finds it any more - or any less - ridiculous than anything else he's dissected. Just another example of how we decide what makes sense to us and then rearrange our perceptions of and approaches to the world to even it out. I don't think he's that far off in his reasoning. Speaking candidly, my support for the Iraq invasion was definitely visceral. Looking at my posting from those days, I think that's fairly clear. I was not outraged about Saddam's treaty violations so much as hopeful that they would rouse Europe to give us the green light in rousting out a thug who organized gang rapes, mass executions, genocide and more to the ho-hums of sophisticates. Had he been booted before 9/11, I would have thought it a good thing. And post-9/11, I was eager - as I remain eager - to see those who sponsor terrorism come to a bad end, not because I fear that particular actors will show up in my home town but, rather, pour encourager les autres. I loved the efforts of some to try to distinguish the IRA or the ETA from Al-Qaeda, and while, for clarity's sake, I like to think of this as the war on the Islamo-nutters, War on Terror has a nice ring to it that gives us greater latitude in lashing out, ferociously, at both the Islamo-freaks and those who egg them on, with both parties needing a good lashing out at. Again, the disclaimer: Those Muslims who, like the average Westerner, turn to faith to guide their lives in civilized society, rather than using it as a bludgeon against their fellows, are a-okay in my book. If the Jews and Christians can give up stoning, so can the Muslims, and those who have are perfectly fine people as far as I'm concerned. But post-9/11, those who a) read the Koran to call for bringing down the infidels and slaughtering the apostates and b) acted on it needed to have put to them explicitly the question, "Where's your god now?" It was a time to écraser l'infâme and with Saddam attempting to graft his imperial ambitions onto calls for a Caliphate, he turned himself into an example just waiting to be made. Toppling Saddam was, in a few words, a damn fine and emotional thing: It made the right people feel good and the right people feel very, very bad. A policy that whatever it's irrationalities still so far excels the typical practices of the diplomatic community when confronted with an unapologetic tyrant that we'll give it three cheers just because it feels good.
posted by gbarto at 6:43 PM Monday, April 24, 2006This post by Rich Lowry at the Corner has it about right: As bad as Bush's problems appear, he's still better than Congress. Reading the headlines this a.m. and seeing that Congress was going after Big Oil, I thought we need a corollary to Godwin's Law (argument ad Hitlerem is proof you're on the losing side): When a political party or body goes after Big Oil it proves either that they have no real program to offer or, worse, they don't want people looking at what their program is.Whatever my problems with Bush - aside from tax cuts, there's little in his domestic program that he's actually done and I think is particularly useful, while NCLB and such is worse than useless - he is at least a serious terror warrior. And that makes up for just about everything else at a time when pushing back the barbarians at the gate is, honestly, a greater civilizational challenge even than what to do about health care or the impending implosion of Social Security. But the Trent Lotts of the world are out hijacking the terror war not to slaughter our enemies but to reroute home state railroads. Throwing out a hypothetical: if today, Bush and the Congress were both standing for re-election, I'd cast a moderately enthusiastic vote for our terror warrior president while doing my best to forget about his disastrous domestic program (all it's given us is solid growth...). On the other hand, in voting for Congress my chief regret would be the problems involved in trying to vote against both parties. The latest developments remind us what a damn shame it is that the real change agent, Shadegg, didn't win the leadership race. While a quick look at the state of the GOP makes is clear that the typical Republican doesn't want that kind of change, just somebody to make business as usual look not quite so awful.
posted by gbarto at 10:53 PM |
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