Sconehead

Cranberry Walnut Scones

2008-11-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

I've been baking scones for five years, and this is the combination of ingredients I like the best. This is your basic ur-scone. Preparation instructions are adapted from THE CHEESE BOARD COLLECTIVE WORKS.

PREP TIME UNDER 1 HOUR. MAKES ABOUT 8 SCONES.

2 1/3 cups unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup dried cranberries
2/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup buttermilk

Topping

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper. Sift flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in a large bowl. Add salt and sugar to the bowl and stir with a wooden spoon. Add butter by cutting it in with a pastry cutter or 2 small knives until they are the size of peas. Using the spoon, mix in the cranberries and walnuts. Make a well in the center and add half-and-half and buttermilk. Mix briefly until ingredients come together, with some flour remaining at the bottom of the bowl. You can also use a stand mixer to achieve the same results.

Gently shape the dough into balls about 2 1/2 inches in diameter and place them on the prepared pan about 2 inches apart.

For the topping, mix sugar and cinnamon together with the loose flour in original bowl. Sprinkle mixture atop scones. Bake in oven on middle rack for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer scones to wire rack to cool.

Presidential mad libs

2004-11-05T23:17:00.000-08:00

Our Journey Is Not Done

The voters hand _____ a historic victory but send a message, not a mandate: work with the _____

(TIME, November 6, ____) -- A nation born of a distrust of kings won't easily forgive a President who behaves too much like one. And so every four years, the people give a test: first we hand someone the most powerful job in the world. Then we demand that he not be too proud of himself for having it, too desperate to keep it or too sure that he alone knows what to do with it. And then we sit back and watch, until it's time to decide whether to re-elect him.

In four years _____ learned that it is not enough to be smart or charming or plump with vision. His triumph on Tuesday night, for all the records it broke, was a victory for studied modesty; for a willingness to swallow his pride to preserve his power, embrace his enemies to steal their ideas and march into history as the first two-term _____ since _____, not with great leaps forward but one baby step at a time.

The President in question is Bill Clinton, and the year was 1996. Clinton defeated Dole by 8 percent - "NOT A MANDATE". The year is now 2004. Bush's margin of victory is less than 3 percent. I'm curious to read what TIME will write next week. We already know what Bush thinks. How does less than half of a non-mandate equal a mandate? Easily, when you hold a degree in fuzzy math.

And the day after that

2004-11-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

My last thoughts on Tuesday. Well, just stuff collated from daily newspapers. Good stuff.

In The Day the Enlightenment Went Out, Garry Wills calls it William Jennings Bryan's revenge for the Scopes Trial:

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz collates a few more post-mortems (of democracy?) in Media Notes. Most of them aren't very insightful. Kurtz summarizes the New York Times editorialas saying that Bush is a uniter in "part of the country". That's like saying a someone is partly male. Either you're a uniter or a divider! Thwe LA Times reports that Democratic strategists and political analysts (quoting oneself, eh?) claimed that the Kerry campaign lacked one thing: "a boldly rendered portrayal of himself and his vision for the country." Well, for one thing, that's two things. And the first is not accurate. Kerry did have a boldly rendered portrayal of himself, as a man dedicated to service and country all his adult life, and committed to making American safer at home and respected in the world. The second part could have used more fleshing out. He needed to be more aggressive about the Bush administration's character flaws. Not personal flaws, though many they may be. But the administration's pathology, its refusal to listen to other voices (be they other countries or others in the administration itself), and connect that with the failures of intelligence. When you believe something ideologically, it's that much harder to consider the evidence impartially. Unfortunately, that's also a flaw of many Americans - "faith-based intelligence" is not an insult to them. Or at least not the same kind of insult. The Chicago Tribune notes that the war and poor economy made people cling even more to Bush. This sidestepping of reason I can understand better - fear is a evolutionary motivator. I just find it ironic that we are rewarding someone for putting us at risk both at home and abroad. What are we, scared yet dependent 16-year-old child brides in polygamous marriages? Such thinking does not become citizens in a democracy, only subjects in an authoritarian regime. I can be patient for regime change. Four years, or even forty - then all the militant fundamentalists whether in America or abroad will be dead. But global warming, nuclear proliferation, and imminent challenges of social justice require attention today.

Harold Meyerson writes in The American Prospect:

"The Democrats' America looks increasingly like a discontinuous ghetto -- the Northeast, the Pacific Coast, the industrial and upper Midwest, minus (it seems) Ohio. These states are home to the interesting, and promising, demographic changes in the U.S. They are the focus of much Latino immigration, and it's to these states that college-educated young professionals tend to move. Unfortunately, though these developments may make blue states bluer but they also make red states redder."

Aside from the terminology ("discontinous ghetto" is an oxymoron, and in fact ghetto better describes the red state folk, the half of America who live within 50 miles of their birthplace), I think Meyerson alludes to an important point. Many educated people are fleeing the red states, which only makes them less cultured and less amenable to change. But blue states are not inherently blue - "blueness" instead is the result of migration, immigration, the interaction, toleration, and education that is a glad consequence of such movement. And that is a climate change I'm proud of.

Some morning after thoughts

2004-11-03T17:56:00.000-08:00

Atrios says "Move On-ward":

People tend to take a loss like this as "proof" that their personal pet peeve about the campaign was correct, and too much discussion of it reinforces the tendency to try to keep trying to fight the last campaign. Elections are not deterministic things, and the binary nature of their outcomes tends to obscure the underlying complexity. What matters isn't what was done wrong, but what needs to be done right for the '06 elections.

Josh Marshall calls on the president to be a uniter, not a 51% divider:

It would be up to the president...to show concrete signs of a willingness not to govern in the divisive and factional spirit from which he's governed in the last four years.

And then there's this from his comments today: "We've worked hard and gained many new friends, and the result is now clear -- a record voter turnout and a broad, nationwide victory."

This is the touchstone and the sign. A 'broad, nationwide victory'? He must be kidding. Our system is majority rule. And 51% is a win. But he's claiming a mandate.

"A broad, nationwide victory"?

It would almost be comical if it weren't for the seriousness of what it portends. This election cut the nation in two. A single percentage point over 50% is not broad. A victory that carried no states in the Northeast, close to none in the Industrial midwest is not nationwide, and none on the west coast is not nationwide.

And yet he plans to use this narrow victory as though it were a broad mandate, starting right back with the same strategy that has already come near to tearing this country apart.

Margaret Cho takes the, ahem, larger prespective:

Although it might be said that we can't expect change overnight, there really was a very rapid shift in the way we view politics. We have become unafraid of voicing our opinions, using our power, pooling our resources, and allowing our differences to aid us instead of keeping us apart.

These new ways of looking at ourselves politically redefine what it means to be an American. It takes what used to be a very passive identity and turned us all into revolutionaries. In a short time, we activated activism, something that lay dormant in many of us and had not been awakened until now.

The Bush administration will be sorry they won this battle, for they now look forward to losing the war. Ultimately, a government cannot defeat its people

Dante Chinni, who is not seeing red:

some of the party's social moderates - the last holdouts against Democratic realignment such as Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island and both of Maine's senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins- are not happy with direction from the top. Given the Republicans' present course, one can only wonder how much longer they will stay in their party, or how much longer those seats will stay in the GOP column in the Senate.

And then there is the question of what the cultural issues mean to the nation's well-being. If cultural issues are going to be the hallmark of the next four years, it's probably safe to assume the divisions that were there in 2004 are only going to be deeper in 2008. When it comes to dividing a nation, tax cuts have nothing on values.

A Daily Kos reader reveals the so-called "moral values" for what they are:

This is not about Republicans or Democrats.
This is not about the war.
This is not about the economy.
This is not even about counting the votes.

This is the final step in the 20-year creeping coup by the theocrats

And finally, read Katrina vanden Heuvel's incisive affirmation of America's split personality. She quotes John Dos Passos from his USA Trilogy:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the power plants
they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

all right we are two nations."

America is in many ways composed of words: a few old documents; certain speeches by Presidents and religious leaders; our neon vernacular of lyrics, showtunes, sales pitches. And common words are imbued with sacred meaning in this land. I am proud of the words that give America its shape and color. But the dark forces in our country have taken the sacred - "family", "moral values", even "America" and made those words as slimy and foul as they are.

Jeb + Jeanne = Florida

2004-11-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

So I "miscalculated" the election results. But I am right about Kerry and Bush.

THE CONSERVATIVE CASE AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH

2004-10-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Subject: THE CONSERVATIVE CASE: 41 Republican reasons

PLEASE send this message to your Republican and conservative friends. It's an updated version of the Orange County Weekly list of 33 reasons. Alas, the list keeps growing and growing... This is my last election forward. Y'all have been great! - Phil

THE CONSERVATIVE CASE: 41 REPUBLICAN REASONS TO REJECT GEORGE W. BUSH AND VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY:

"To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."

-Theodore Roosevelt, "Lincoln and Free Speech", Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

1. "George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well served by his defeat this November. . . . American conservative politics championed private property, an institution sacred in itself and vital to the well-being of society. It favored limited government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and avoidance of foreign entanglements. . . . The policies of this administration self-labeled ‘conservative’ have little to do with the essence of tradition. Rather, they tend to centralize power in the hands of the government under the guise of patriotism. . . . For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men who abuse conservatism through an exercise of power unrestrained by principle through the compromise of conservative beliefs. . . . George W. Bush is no conservative, no friend of limited, constitutional government—and no friend of freedom."

—William Bryk’s "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush", New York Press, August 4, 2004

2. "The American people are not going to absorb this kind of chaos for several years. I know this country; I know myself. If I’m seeing 10 bodies a weekend over the last weekend in October, that’s going to influence my vote."

—Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly, in early April

3. "The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, served notice that a cruel and relentless set of enemies desires to do damage to the United States. It should also be noted that they represented a massive failure by the government agencies sworn to protect us and a defeat (one may hope only temporary) for the free American way of life. Since those attacks, no government agency leader has been fired. Failure was rewarded with larger budgets. And instead of undertaking a pinpoint yet relentless counterattack on those who actually planned the attack, the government has frittered away resources and credibility in a war against a country that was not involved in the attack. That war bids fair to continue for years, diverting precious attention and resources from the stateless terrorists who may well be planning the next attack even now. Those are sobering thoughts, but three years on Americans should be ready—must be ready—for a dose of realism. Realism is essential in the task of remaking intelligence gathering, its leadership and its execution, essential to understanding the uneasyrelationship between liberty and security and the public policies that mediate the two. It was not an abstraction called ‘terrorism’ that attacked America but a specific group of terrorists. Instead of engaging in a vague crusade to reshape the world, why not renew America’s resolve to inflict damage on those who inflicted damage on us?

—From the lead editorial in The Orange County Register, September 10

4. "I’m dismayed that the campaign turned out, when he was running for president, turned out so different from the policies. And as a politician, your credibility is everything. And to run as a compassionate person—and someone who said in the
debate to the question—"How will you conduct your foreign policy?"—and he answered as a candidate, "It’s important to be humble, and if we are arrogant, countries will resent us." And then be the absolute opposite. I don’t think anybody would argue that there is an air of arrogance about this, about our foreign policy, it’s very deliberate. And so that’s my criticism: that if you are going to run, tell the people exactly how you are going to govern and don’t do something differently."

—Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island), Providence Phoenix interview, July 26, 2003. Chafee recently said he probably won’t vote for Bush

5. "The philosophical collapse of the GOP came with the 2000 campaign of George W. Bush, who ran without calling for a single spending cut, much less the elimination of programs, agencies, or departments. Worse, neoconservatives moved to fill the philosophical vacuum created by the supply-siders. The neocons openly support big government and consider FDR to have been a great president. They are the intellectuals who came up with the ‘faith-based initiative’ and like to frame the political debate as one between people who want religion in the political square and the secularists who don’t. The neocons are the ones who pushed Bush to call for greater federal government involvement in K-12 education than any president in American history. And now the neocons are calling for American Empire. We have, indeed, come a long way from Reagan and Goldwater."

—Edward H. Crane, Cato Institute President, "The Rise and Fall of the GOP", December 2003 Cato Policy Report

6. Reagan family spokeswoman Joanne Drake said Tuesday that permission is needed for anyone to use Reagan's likeness in an ad because doing so implies that he endorsed one candidate over another. "No one has requested the permission to use his image in an ad, nor would we feel it appropriate to give such permission at this juncture," Drake said. "We protect his image very carefully, particularly as it relates
to politics."

—"Reagan's Family Criticizes Use of Reagan in Anti-Kerry Ad", Associated Press, June 15

7. "Reagan was a religious man and a social conservative, but he never tried to get the federal government into the business of funding religion, as Bush has done with his steady push for ‘faith-based initiatives.’ Reagan’s opposition to California’s
anti-gay Briggs Initiative in 1978 stands in stark contrast to the homophobia of the Bush campaign. . . . [Reagan’s] eloquence on behalf of limited government and his success in slowing the growth of government are sorely missed today. I met Ronald Reagan. I campaigned for Ronald Reagan. I was inspired by Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan."

—David Boaz, executive vice-president of the Cato Institute, in "Reagan’s Heir," an editorial in the August 2004 Cato Policy Report

8. "George W. Bush is not only not a good Republican, but he hasn’t been a good president. President Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify." President George W. Bush started a war based on, at best, a one-sided reading of badly flawed intelligence. Doesn’t the president owe it to the American people to check his facts before starting a war?"

—From RepublicansforKerry.org

9. "This is the Republican Party that has embraced as its own every liberal initiative, from Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare to Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education to Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps. This is the Republican Party preparing to enact a Medicare drug benefit that would represent the largest expansion of the welfare state in 40 years. This is the Republican Party that is increasing federal education spending as if doing so had something to do with the quality of local schools. This is the Republican Party that is increasing spending faster than during the Clinton years. . . . [D]espite occasional exceptions, the Bush administration, backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, has been promoting larger government at almost every turn."

—Doug Bandow, syndicated columnist and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, in "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush" in the Dec. 1, 2003, The American Conservative

10. "The answer, alas, is that this president has decided [same-sex marriages] will help him politically to tear us apart. His base is restless over spending and Iraq, and this is a means to placate and energize them. If that means turning a tiny minority into a lethal threat to civilization, so be it. If that minority’s sole crime is to seek to live up to the same responsibilities as everyone else, to uphold the family, to support responsibility, then that also is beside the point. In this battle, the president has shown his true colors. He is a divider, not a uniter."

-Andrew Sullivan, in a July 20 essay for conservative British newspaper Sunday Times

11. "When the president endorsed this constitutional amendment against gay marriage, conservatives should have asked, ‘What’s conservative about it?’ He jealously guarded state prerogatives as governor but now wants to nationalize marriage and family law to create a ‘no-homo-need-apply’ exception to the Constitution. What happened to the president’s reverence for 50 individual state laboratories? When the president chastises so-called ‘activist judges’ in Massachusetts and California, someone should remind him that activist judges put him in the White House.

—Brian O’Leary Bennett, Republican Congressman Robert K. Dornan’s chief of staff from 1977 to 1989, in a March 14 op-ed for The Orange County Register

12. "Then the president uses the phrase ‘if Congress is wise with the people’s money.’ But the point is that, in the past three years, the Congress has, by any measure, been grotesquely unwise with the people’s money. And the president vetoed not a single spending measure. In fact, his own budgets exploded spending on both war and homeland security and every other government department, from Labor to Agriculture, before the pork-sniffers in Congress even got started."

—conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, in the Feb. 9 New Republic

13. "No one should be surprised when economic or budget forecasts coming out of Washington are influenced by politics, especially during an election year. But when economic history is rewritten -- with political consequences -- that's going too far. President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, chaired by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, is trying to get away with exactly such revisionist history. Instead of using the accepted start date of March 2001, the CEA announced that the recession really started in the fourth quarter of 2000—a shift that would make it much more credible for the Bush administration to term it the ‘Clinton Recession.’. . . [Not only is this ploy dishonest, it] masks an attack on one of the few remaining bastions of economic neutrality. For almost 75 years, the start and end dates of recessions have been set b the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonpartisan research group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

—Michael J. Mandel, "Bush's Council of Economic Advisers re-writes economic history to blame Clinton for recession", in the Feb. 23’edition of BusinessWeek

14. "This regime—and I will now call it a regime—has gotten absolutely bizarre. Between Ashcroft and Cheney . . . and their puppet Bush and Powell and his son [FCC chairman Michael Powell] . . . I mean, this has gone berserk. I mean, I’ll be off the air, and I won’t be able to talk to you about it anymore, but, listen, it’s bad. This is the most unbelievable thing, what’s going on, where people are being thrown off the air without a trial. . . . These fascist, right-wing a-holes are getting so much freaking power, you gotta take back the country. [Those are] my last words to you. I don’t know how many more days I have [left] on the air."

—Radio personality Howard Stern, a former Bush supporter, on his Feb. 26 show

15. "It’s possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn’t know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaeda attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert-action program against al-Qaeda; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaeda. Maybe the vice president was so busy running
Halliburton at the time that he didn’t notice."

—Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism for the National Security Council under George W. Bush, responding to a question by Salon.com’s Joe Conason regarding Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that no U.S. administration had ever responded to the terrorist threat

16. "[I] left the Republican Party because I feared the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress were moving too far to the right and not listening to moderate Republicans such as myself. Much of what we have seen since then has only confirmed those fears. We are in a war that we shouldn’t be in; the wealthy get tax cuts while our schools get shortchanged; the deficit grows by the day while millions of jobs are lost here at home. Meanwhile, the White House tries to placate the far right by supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, diverting the nation’s attention from where it should be focused. We are headed on the wrong course, and it troubles me deeply."

—Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, former Republican and now an independent, speaking to Salon.com on March 26, 2004

17. "I’d like to know more about exactly what has been happening. Was this an isolated incident. Was it a pattern of misconduct? Who was involved? Was it military, CIA, reservists, people on contract with the government? We don’t know the answers to all that yet. But, frankly, Joe, that’s one of the problems. Apparently, this investigation and a report have been in the process for weeks. Nobody in Congress seems to have been notified that this was going on. The conduct was totally ridiculous, intolerable."

—Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) , on the May 4 broadcast of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country regarding the Administration’s withholding information on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal

18. "Since the conclusion of the war, the Bush administration has shown a dismaying capacity to believe its own public relations. . . . Ultimately, even if our choices now can help or hurt, it is Iraqis who have to save Iraq. It is their country, not ours. In coming weeks and months, we will have to defer to the authorities we hope will eventually take control, in the process endorsing compromises that we will consider less than ideal. But it is time for reality to drive our Iraq policy, unhindered by illusions or wishful thinking."

—"An End to Illusion," an editorial in the May 3 National Review

19. "During George W. Bush’s keynote address to the 40th anniversary black-tie banquet of the American Conservative Union last week, diners rose repeatedly to applaud the president’s remarks. But one man kept his seat through the 40-minute oration. It was no liberal interloper, but conservative stalwart Donald Devine. As ACU vice chairman, Devine was privileged to be part of a pre-dinner head-table reception with President Bush. However, Devine chose not to shake hands with the president. . . . What most bothers Devine and other conservatives is steady growth of government under this Republican president. If Devine’s purpose in devoting his life to politics was to limit government’s reach, he feels betrayed that Bush has outstripped his liberal predecessors in domestic spending."

—Conservative columnist Robert Novak, in his May 20 column

20. "I would not have voted for [President Bush’s] taxcut based on what I know. . . . There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit. . . . Too often, presidents do things that don’t end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won’t tell them their actions stink on ice."

—Former Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, in an interview with a North Carolina business magazine via Salon.com’s "War Room ’04" feature

21. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption. False rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military."

—Retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, in his book "Battle Ready"

22. "For all their brilliance, [Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken] Mehlman and Karl Rove (who no doubt vetted this lineup) have made a very serious mistake with this convention’s lineup. It is one that the rank and file should not tolerate. If the president is embarrassed to be seen with conservatives at the convention, maybe conservatives will be embarrassed to be seen with the president on Election Day."

—Paul M. Weyrich, in a July 12 article for newsmax.com, criticizing the Bush administration’s decision to bar true conservatives from addressing the Republican National Convention in favor of free-spending RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki

23. "We are fighting undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an open-ended war against terrorism worldwide. If the president claims extraordinary wartime powers, and we fight undeclared wars with no beginning and no end, when if ever will those
extraordinary powers lapse? Since terrorism will never be eliminated completely, should all future presidents be able to act without regard to Congress or the
Constitution simply by asserting, ‘We’re at war?’ Conservatives should understand that the power given the president today will pass to the president’s successors, who may be only too eager to abuse that unbridled power domestically to destroy their political enemies. Remember the anger directed at President Clinton for acting above the law when it came to federal perjury charges? An imperial presidency threatens all of us who oppose unlimited state power over our lives."

—Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the libertarian website www.antiwar.com

24. "Retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action, especially without a broad and engaged international coalition.
The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible. Our country’s reputation around the world has never been lower, and our alliances are weakened. From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force. Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world."

—Representative Doug Bereuter (R-Nebraska), a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the Select Committee on
Intelligence who voted for a House resolution authorizing the president to invade Iraq, in an Aug. 18 letter to his constituents

25. "As Republican former governors, senators and public officials, we urge our party to renew its allegiance to the proven, common-sense values that unite America. Instead of partisan ideology—which increasingly has led moderates to leave the
party—what’s needed is a speedy return to the pragmatic, problem-solving mainstream. Here’s how the president and Republican-majority Congress can send that clear signal to the nation:

•Stop weakening environmental law—and once again protect our air, water and public lands as Teddy Roosevelt and other great Republican leaders intended;

•Restore fiscal responsibility—with ‘pay-as-you-go’ budget discipline to end record deficits that jeopardize economic growth;

•Put the health of millions first—and clear the way for embryonic stem cell research;

•Appoint mainstream federal judges—and respect the Constitution;

•Make America safer—and protect cities and towns, still vulnerable three years after Sept. 11, by securing chemical and nuclear plants and shipping containers;

•Rebuild our alliances—with real partnerships and restore America’s standing in the world.

•By returning to the mainstream in these ways, our party can regain the trust of a divided nation and earn a vote of confidence in November."

—Statement signed by 17 former Republican governors, senators, state attorney generals, and members of the Nixon and Ford administrations that appeared in a full-page ad if the Aug. 30 New York Times

26. "It’s because of the influence of [neo-conservatives] on the president that Mr. Bush may have ‘overreacted’ to the threat of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, said Mr. Scowcroft, and that the ‘preoccupation with terrorism’ meant that ‘we are maybe not paying enough attention to other problems in the world that have nothing to do with terrorism but are really significant.’ Mr. Bush had squandered opportunities to avoid war in Iraq, said Mr. Scowcroft, who also speculated that the Bush administration had exaggerated the threat of weapons of mass destruction because it provided ‘the only reason which you could use to propel a war [in] a particular time frame.’ He fretted that the ongoing fighting in Iraq made it impossible for the administration to confront nations much closer to actually acquiring nuclear weapons, like Iran. Most of all, Mr. Scowcroft reiterated his skepticism about the prospects for gunship democracy in the Middle East—outlining the kind of realism for which George W. Bush’s father was known around the world. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe Iraq is capable of democracy,’ said Mr. Scowcroft. ‘But the notion that within every human being beats this primeval instinct for democracy has not ever been demonstrated to me.’"

—From a Sept. 6 New York Observer profile on retired General Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to George H.W. Bush

27. "Log Cabin has proudly supported the President’s firm leadership in the war on terror. As principled Republicans, we believe in our Party’s commitment to a strong national defense and a confident foreign policy. We especially applaud the President’s leadership in cutting taxes for American families and small businesses, his belief in free market principles and his compassionate and historic leadership in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. . . . At the same time, it is impossible to overstate the depth of anger and disappointment caused by the President’s support for
an anti-family constitutional amendment. This amendment would not only ban gay marriage, it would also jeopardize civil unions and domestic partnerships. . . . Some will accuse us of being disloyal. However, it was actually the White House who was disloyal to the 1,000,000 gay and lesbian Americans who supported him four years ago. Log Cabin’s decision was made in response to the White House’s strategic political decision to pursue a re-election strategy catered to the radical right. The President’s use of the bully pulpit, stump speeches and radio addresses to support a constitutional amendment has encouraged the passage of discriminatory laws and state constitutional amendments across America. Using gays and lesbians as wedge issues in an election year is unacceptable to Log Cabin."

—Excerpts from a Sept. 8 press release by the Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for gay GOPers, announcing it was withholding endorsement of President
Bush’s re-election

28. "Anyone who was involved in the 2000 McCain campaign, as I was, knows exactly who is responsible for the ‘Swift boat’ slime attack on Senator Kerry—in Bush World, all low roads lead to [Karl] Rove. When I was at the Christian Coalition, I witnessed first-hand the alliance of the deregulation, no-tax crowd with the religious conservatives. Ironically, the rank and file of the religious right are hardly the country club set. They are largely middle-class Americans who don’t rely on trust funds or dividend checks for their livelihoods. But the leaders of the religious right have betrayed their constituents by failing to champion such economic issues as family leave or access to health insurance, which would relieve the stresses on many working families. The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment. The religious right has consistently provided the ground troops, while the big-money men have gotten the goodies.

—Marshall Wittmann, who ran the "Bull Moose" website before leaving to work for John McCain. A Teddy Roosevelt fan and McCain Republican, he says he’s voting for John Kerry

29. "The fact is a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies are required. We didn’t do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost. We can’t lose this. This is too important. There’s no question about that. But to say, ‘Well, we just must stay the course and any of you who are questioning are just hand-wringers,’ is not very responsible. The fact is we’re in trouble. We’re in deep trouble in Iraq. We need more regionalization. We need more help from our allies. We need the Iraqi people to come around us in a more supportive way. That means more jobs, more development. The hearings we held this week in the Foreign Relations Committee were an eye-opener on the long side of this.

—Nebraska Republican Senator and Vietnam veteran Chuck Hagel, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sept. 19

30. "We have to have better coordination between our people who are doing the bombing and the military side and the Iraqis who are doing the police work so that we do not alienate further the Iraqi people by intrusions that are very difficult and are costly in terms of lives. We’ve got to get the reconstruction money out there. That was the gist of our hearing this week, that $18 billion is appropriated a year ago and only $1 billion has been spent."

But why isn’t that happening?

"Well, this is incompetence in the administration."

—Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on ABC’s This Week, Sept. 19

31. "I think President Bush needs to get the message from people across this country, including Republicans, that his strategy in national security and his economic policies need revisiting."

—South Charleston, West Virginia Mayor Richie Robb to the Wheeling News-Register on Sept. 10, explaining why he might not cast his Electoral College vote for Bush

32. "As son of a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election
of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and
barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry."

—John Eisenhower, in a Sept. 28 guest column in the Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News

33. "Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers,
and his continuous mistakes regarding Iraq."

—From the Sept. 29 lead editorial in the Texas Iconoclast endorsing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Based in Crawford, President Bush’s hometown, the paper endorsed his 2000 presidential bid and the war on Iraq. That was a mistake, it now acknowledges: "Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda."

But wait, there's more!

34. "Republicans used to believe in balanced budgets. Republicans used to believe in fiscal responsibility, limited international entanglements and limited government. We have lost our way. We have come loose from our moorings. The Medicare reform bill is a good example of our lack of direction, purpose and responsibility. If we don't get some control over this out-of-control spending and policy-for-the-moment
decision-making, we will put America on a course that we may not be able to recover from."

- Chuck Hagel, "This Meaure WIll Not Strengthen Medicare", editorial for American Conservative Union Foundation, November 26, 2003

35. "I have no problem with war in principle. I kind of enjoy it, and I'm good at it. What I don't like and what drove me out of the Republican Party was carelessness and slipshod work of the kind we've seen from this administration."

- Retired General Merill "Tony" McPeak, Air Force chief of staff during Persian Gulf War and co-chair of Oregon veterans for Bush-Cheney 2000, "Ex-Air Force chief critical of Bush's Iraq policy", the Oregonian, August 31, 2004. McPeak now advises John Kerry.

36. "Though the disappearance of police is a universal condition of most post-conflict situations, the Bush administration completely failed to anticipate that, and it should have..... If we had gone into Iraq with the understanding it would take [an extensive] level of commitment, we might accomplish something. That is
not the case. The Bush administration's lack of planning underscores the lack of seriousness with which the war was undertaken".

- Francis Fukuyama, New Perspectives Quarterly interview, March 29, 2004. Fukuyama, a founder of the
neo-conservative movement, declared in July he would not vote for Bush, and has called on Rumsfeld to resign.

37. "If John Kerry wins the presidential election, he can thank Donald Rumsfeld."

- Bill O'Reilly, on BillOReilly.com, October 28, 2004

38. "It's painful for me... and for many other Republicans to oppose our President. But loyalty has to be earned, not just expected."

- Tom Pelikan, board of directors for REP America, the national Republican organization for environmental protection.

39. "This president has pursued policies pandering to the extreme right wing across a wide variety of issues and has exacerbated the polarization and the strident, uncivil tone of much of what passes for political discourse in this country today....

My Republican Party has always been a party that stood for fiscal responsibility. Today, under George W. Bush, we have the largest deficit in the history of our country -- a deficit that jeopardizes economic growth that is so desperately needed in a nation that has lost 2.6 million jobs since he took office."

- William Milliken, Republican Governor of Michigan from 1969 to 1982 and Kerry supporter, Why I'll Vote for John Kerry", Detroit Free Press and other newspapers, October 19, 2004.

40. "Although I'm a lifelong Republican, I will vote for John Kerry on Nov. 2. The choice seems simple under traditional principles of the Republican Party.

I first met John Kerry in the spring of 1971. Each of us was just back from Vietnam -- he as a Navy officer and I as a member of Congress -- and were appalled by what we had seen there. I found Kerry to be idealistic, courageous and, above all else, truthful to a fault. He demonstrated courage in Vietnam, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, the courage to speak against prevailing opinion in civil strife is
often greater than that demanded on the battlefield....

A return to the ``speak softly but carry a big stick'' philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt should be far more effective than the bluster, bravado and ``shock and awe'' firepower of the neocon advisers who have commandeered White House foreign policy....

In truth, John Kerry and John Edwards come far closer to the Republicanism of Teddy Roosevelt, Earl Warren, Barry Goldwater, George Bush the elder and, yes, even Richard Nixon, than does the present incumbent.

Ending secrecy and bringing truth and honesty back to the White House are reasons enough to elect Kerry and Edwards."

- Pete McCloskey (R-CA), member of Congress from 1969 to 1983 and decorated Korean War veteran, "If you're a true Republican, you'll vote for Kerry", San Jose Mercury News, September 10, 2004.

A wonderful evening

2004-10-09T01:18:00.000-07:00

About 100 people turned out in Irvine's Democratic headquarters on Friday night to watch John Kerry explain his domestic plans and reiterate his incisive criticisms of Bush's foreign policy. Last week over 300 they were anxious, but in a good way. Tonight, they were loose and confident. What a difference a few days can make.

They also got to see more of the same from Bush. Same tired and lame defenses of the Iraq invasion. Same phrases, working hard, run but can't hide, wrong war wrong time, as if they were conjunctions to his infrequent thoughts.

My thoughts? I think that Bush struck back more often, but at times seemed out of control.

In the walking and talking style, he got kinda uncorked after being told by moderator Charlie Gibson a second or third time (the firm warning) that they were moving on (Bush had had his reply already), but Bush cut him off (they were talking over each other for about five seconds) and then kept talking. This is Charles "Good
Morning America" Gibson. I could not believe my eyes. So this is the bullheaded young man who wanted to go "mano a mano" with his dad.

You can run an ideological presidency, but you can't run an ideological election. Particularly if the ideology and ideologues have led you, and the nation, down the garden path. And Bush simply doesn't understand when slightly over half the country doesn't see things his way. Facts never seem to change his thinking, or his "values" as he likes to call it.

"When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you."

"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land."

"He's got a record. He's been there (in the Senate) for 20 years. You can run, but you can't hide."

Articulate lie, un-credible opinion, non sequitur. Take your pick. (You can run, but you can't hide?? He says that a second time when it makes even less sense.) The crowd laughed, jaws dropped, and people went home happy and charged for the final stretch. Thanks George, for reinforcing our low opinion of you.

When voters ask you a question, they're saying "Convince me." A pro-life woman asked a question about embryonic stem cells, another about federal funding for abortion, and Kerry said in both cases, first, I respect your belief, or I respect the faith
behind that question. I am a Catholic. But I don't put my faith over the laws (i.e., Roe v. Wade) And if it's lawful we shouldn't bar people an important
choice just because they're poor. I thought that was a great answer. A long one, but now he's so on message and more concise that the long ones sound okay
too. In contrast, Bush was asked, what could be changed about the Patriot Act, given the violations of civil liberties. And he completely rejected the premise of the voter, which is unheard of. Later, a woman asked him to name three mistakes that he made as president, and he all but said he didn't make any mistakes, except he implied in some appointments (I'm assuming people who later had a falling out with him).
The woman wasn't an opponent, just a questioner. And then it hit me, everyone who questions him becomes his enemy. At the very least, the GOP's spectacular success at limiting ordinary voter access to Bush has backfired, created a hothouse flower that has wilted under the white light of the electorate.

Hidden in most news reports and in the above summary were some interesting moves about Kerry's domestic agenda - his health care plan, his pledge not to raise
taxes on incomes under $200,000. As well as the lack of principle behind Bush's "values" - even on his own terms. Take the ethics of stem-cell research. Bush opposes using embryos on moral grounds, but supports existing lines that were developed from embryos. What's his response? Well, they already died! That's a justification, but it's not a moral one. And it's also consistent with using
embryos that doctors will destroy in the future. Am I right about that? What do you think?

In other news: in their zeal to cover the Nick Clooney-Geoff Davis campaign for Congress, the Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle mistakenly referred to Fourth District incumbent Ken Lucas as Kentucky's lone Democratic representative. That assertion might surprise Democrat Ben Chandler, who in February won a special election to the Sixth District. Now I know that there are 435 members of Congress, but it's not too much to ask the LA Times to fact-check Kentucky's delegation. Especially as Chandler was running for the only open seat in February.

Bush has 'wrong impression' about Philippines

2004-10-02T05:03:00.000-07:00

from the Manila Bulletin Online

Recto hits Bush remarks

Sen. Ralph Recto yesterday tagged as "false" the claim of US President George W. Bush that the Philippines is a major battleground in the war against terrorism.

This incorrect description made by Bush during a televised 90-minute debate with Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry meant the country’s already bruised reputation suffered another beating, added Recto.

"This is a global effort. But the front on this war is more than one place. The Philippines...we’ve got help...we’re helping them there to bring...to bring an Al Qaeda affiliate to justice," Bush said in response to a question on how he was going to pursue the fugitive Osama bin Laden.

But Recto’s reaction: "Well, the world’s most powerful man had just told a worldwide TV audience of half a billion, to the effect, that the Philippines is a major battleground in the war against terror.

"This is not the kind of publicity that we want. First, it is false. If Mindanao is being referred to, all is quiet in the Southern front; in fact, it’s not a front anymore. Guns have long been turned into ploughshares in that area. Peace is about to be won."

Recto added "we’ve been hit as collateral damage in the Bush-Kerry verbal war. There is no Al Qaeda presence here as there are no atomic bombs in Iraq."

He then said there is no Philippine intelligence report tagging the Moro Islamic Liberation Front as an organization of having direct links with the Al Qaeda.

Recto expressed hopes that people planning to visit or invest in the Philippines would not be scared of by the "imprecise remarks" of Bush and get the "wrong impression that the Philippines is an Al Qaeda hotspot." (Mario B. Casayuran)

Undecided Voter Blog

2004-10-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

I've decided to blog a bit for the undecided voter. You can find the original article here. McCloskey is a real Republican, having represented the party in Congress for 16 years. Moderates and even conservatives should stop and listen to him.

Fri, Sep. 10, 2004
San Jose Mercury News

If you're a true Republican, you'll vote for Kerry

By Pete McCloskey

Although I'm a lifelong Republican, I will vote for John Kerry on Nov. 2. The choice seems simple under traditional principles of the Republican Party.

I first met John Kerry in the spring of 1971. Each of us was just back from Vietnam -- he as a Navy officer and I as a member of Congress -- and were appalled by what we had seen there. I found Kerry to be idealistic, courageous and, above all else, truthful to a fault. He demonstrated courage in Vietnam, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, the courage to speak against prevailing opinion in civil strife is often greater than that demanded on the battlefield.

During Kerry's public career after his election to the Senate, he has clearly grown and matured. I believe he is incapable of deliberate deceit or dissembling. This alone represents a refreshing hope for a return of public faith in our government.

That Kerry has attained the solid support of former Secretary of Defense William Perry, with whom he has worked for years on issues of nuclear proliferation, confirms his ability to study, listen and reach sound judgments.

The primary issue in November will be who can best lead us in the bitter struggle against the Islamic fundamentalists who perpetrated 9/11 and are willing to die to kill Americans throughout the world. The Iraq occupation has caused thousands of new suicide bombers to join the jihad against us; with Kerry as president, the nation will properly refocus the battle away from Iraq and against the true enemy, Al-Qaida.

As Kerry has stated, we desperately need the cooperation of every country in the world, friend and enemy, where terrorist cells can germinate and operate.

We need to be more humble in asking for this assistance. A return to the ``speak softly but carry a big stick'' philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt should be far more effective than the bluster, bravado and ``shock and awe'' firepower of the neocon advisers who have commandeered White House foreign policy.

There are many other reasons to support John Kerry.

The incredible budget deficits projected to be $2.3 trillion or more in the next decade, disrespect for the United Nations, international law and Geneva Conventions, secrecy in government -- all of these are positions Kerry would certainly reverse.

As a Catholic, Kerry is sure to maintain the constitutional separation between church and state, recognizing that while we are indeed a nation under God, everyone is free to choose his or her own faith in God.

He will also end the inordinate secrecy that has characterized this administration. It seems incredible that a matter as important as our national energy policy could be decided in secret by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force -- individuals whose very names have been withheld from the public.

Kerry's record on environmental issues is superb, an area where the Bush administration has been a disaster.

Finally, there's the matter of John Ashcroft and prospective judicial appointees who could undo Roe vs. Wade, a woman's right of choice and many of the civil liberties we have earned over 225 years.

Each of the foregoing reasons for supporting Kerry is based on traditional Republican values of fiscal responsibility, limited governmental intrusion and the accountability of individuals.

In truth, John Kerry and John Edwards come far closer to the Republicanism of Teddy Roosevelt, Earl Warren, Barry Goldwater, George Bush the elder and, yes, even Richard Nixon, than does the present incumbent.

Ending secrecy and bringing truth and honesty back to the White House are reasons enough to elect Kerry and Edwards.

PETE MCCLOSKEY represented the San Francisco Peninsula in Congress from 1967 to 1983. He earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts as a Marine rifle platoon leader during the Korean War. He wrote this column for the Mercury News.

John Kerry-George W. Bush Debate, Round 1

2004-09-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

Left out are the great zingers, like Kerry's remark that Bush outsourced the hunting of Osama bin Laden to Afghan warlords! But this thread of back-and-forth is substantial, and worth reading. You can see that Kerry is responding to Bush, and to the facts on the ground, and our current standing in the world. Bush is simply repeating what he always says. Yes Saddam is a threat, but no you didn't really try to bring in the UN (before or immediately after), no you didn't have a plan to win the peace, and no you didn't find any weapons of mass destruction - points left out of the excerpts! In sum, Bush's words would fit if the situation in Iraq were 180 degrees different from the disaster it is now. And then it hits you, maybe his view is 180 degrees from reality...

Debate Excerpts
By The Associated Press
Excerpts from Thursday's presidential debate at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.:

___
PRESIDENT BUSH:
"I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead. I have -- I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand."
SEN. JOHN KERRY (news, bio, voting record):
"I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are. But we also have to be smart. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan (news - web sites) against Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and taking if off to Iraq (news - web sites)."
BUSH:
"My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared in 2002 that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was a grave threat. He also said in December of 2003 that anyone who doubts that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein does not have the judgment to be president. I agree with him. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein."
KERRY:
"This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. And judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America."
BUSH:
"First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force and now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place. I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?
"No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I've just outlined."
KERRY:
"Yes, we have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we're there. We have to succeed. We can't leave a failed Iraq. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake of judgment to go there and take the focus off of Osama bin Laden. It was. Now, we can succeed. But I don't believe this president can."
BUSH:
"My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time? Not a message a commander in chief gives, or this is a great diversion. As well, help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87 billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it."

KERRY:
"Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse? I believe that when you know something's going wrong, you make it right. That's what I learned in Vietnam."
BUSH:
"I understand how hard it is to commit troops. Never wanted to commit troops. When I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that. But the enemy attacked us ... and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us."
"But a president must always be willing to use troops. It must - as a last resort."
KERRY:
"The president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, 'The enemy attacked us.' Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al-Qaida attacked us."
BUSH:
"First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that. And secondly, to think that another round of resolutions would have caused Saddam Hussein to disarm, disclose, is ludicrous, in my judgment. It just shows a significant difference of opinion."
BUSH:
"I fully agree that one should shift tactics, and we will, in Iraq. Our commanders have got all the flexibility to do what is necessary to succeed. But what I won't do is change my core values because of politics or because of pressure. And it is one of the things I've learned in the White House, is that there's enormous pressure on the president, and he cannot wilt under that pressure. Otherwise, the world won't be better off."
KERRY:
"I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the (United Nations (news - web sites)). ... But we didn't need to rush to war without a plan to win the peace."
BUSH:
"I've got a good relation with (Russian President ) Vladimir (Putin). And it's important that we do have a good relation, because that enables me to better comment to him, and to better to discuss with him, some of the decisions he makes.
KERRY:
"I regret what's happened in these past months. And I think it goes beyond just the response to terror. Mr. Putin now controls all the television stations. His political opposition is being put in jail. And I think it's very important to the United States, obviously, to have a working relationship that is good. This is a very important country to us. We want a partnership. But we always have to stand up for democracy."
KERRY:
"Let me look you in the eye and say to you: I defended this country as a young man at war, and I will defend it as president of the United States. But I have a difference with this president. I believe we're strongest when we reach out and lead the world and build strong alliances. I have a plan for Iraq. I believe we can be successful. I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning. And we need a fresh start, a new credibility, a president who can bring allies to our side."
BUSH:
"If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. That's not going to happen, so long as I'm your president. The next four years we will continue to strengthen our homeland defenses. We will strengthen our intelligence-gathering services. We will reform our military. The military will be an all-volunteer army. We will continue to stay on the offense. We will fight the terrorists around the world so we do not have to face them here at home."

Weekend worrier

2004-09-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

If anyone's noticing... I returned to the older format for this blog. It was called "The Daily Orange" for about two weeks, hence the brightly coloredmargins. I switched back for two reasons: one, I found that the Syracuse campus newspaper already goes by that name; and two, I don't particularlycare to spend more than the occasional moment decrying the conservative biasin the Orange County Register or the civic close-mindedness of local yokels, many of them as ignorant as they are wealthy. It's a waste of my time. Or rather, it's MORE a waste of my time than other wastes of my time. Toparaphrase Green Day, I don't want to be an American Idiot, but I also don'twant to be preoccupied with their redneck agenda. Or orangeneck agenda,as I think of certain Sunbelt suburbanites.

This weekend was the first I really enjoyed in a while. It didn't start smoothly - my dad and I wentto see "The Bourne Supremacy" on Friday at the bargain theater in Woodbridge. And what a bargain - something was wrong with the sound during the trailers,got better during the movie, which went completely silent after 40 minutes - loose crystals, caused by bumping into the projector, the kids at the frontcounter said. We'd get a free pass if we stayed through the movie, which I figured was just as good as getting our money back - even better, as itwas a matinee, but as I mentioned the sound went completely out, so we tookour money and left. Which was too bad, as the action was just heating up,and I was left slightly dizzy by the cuts and handheld realism. I don't mind that technique, but I minded missing the "payoff" of seeing the plot unfold. And these days, the Bourne character is one of the few mainstream creations who is not working FOR the CIA! All over the TV, you see the CIA or some cousin agency as the good guys, ala Alias or ThreatMatrix or what have you. Folks outside the US must wonder how we can do this after the revelations about the coup against Allende in Chile, Arbenz in Guatemala, and Mossadegh in Iran, plus the funding of the same Afghan groups supported by Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, the CIA's misjudgments in Afghanistan that has ultimately led to the disaster that has elevated its reputation - or maybe not its reputation, but its relative standing - among the American public. In "The Bourne Supremacy", the CIA is seen fairly close to how it really is - another self-interested bureaucracy dedicated to preserving its own standing, and its members interested in covering their hides. Yes, there's the public service/national security bit, but the Agency's overreaching as even more bad consquences than their underreaching - hence the creation of robot assassin types like Jason Bourne. It's not inherently evil. But its aims, or perhaps the aims of this country, put in, and sometimes on, the path of evil. Well, this weekend I put those thoughts largely out of my mind.

I'll probably not return to that theater - Captain Blood's, an odd name for the Irvine "family theater" - you know the kind that shows "family" fare like "The Passion of the Christ" and the above film. But I'll remember it fondly. As a kid, I went to the movies very infrequently. But most movies I saw in the 1980s were at this theater, like "Revenge of the Nerds II" and "Troop Beverly Hills". Ah, the classics! Back then it belonged to the Edwards Cinema chain, before it went bankrupt under the huge expansion spending spree of James Edwards. A pleasant byproduct of this spree is the fact that Irvine has seven movie theaters, with roughly 60 screens. Even nicer, the University 6 (near UCI) plays limited release films, some might call them "indie" films, while others call them "art" films (aren't movies supposed to be?) - and occasionally, so does the one at Irvine Spectrum 21.

After the botched film excursion, my dad and I went to Barnes and Noble. I glanced at the various current non-fiction titles, including the increasingly numerous political books that expressly or by implication favor of disfavor Bush or Kerry. The difference, if anyone takes care to notice, and not many do, is that the "pro-Kerry" or "anti-Bush" books are often written by conservatives or moderates such as Eisenhower Center head David Brinkley (Tour of Duty), Reagan adviser Kevin Phillips (American Dynasty), and Bush I's Ambassador to Kuwait Patrick Wilson (The Politics of Truth). Not to mention Rand Beers and David Brock. "Anti-Kerry" or "pro-Bush" book authors tend not to have any independent standing outside of the right-wing media, such as talk-show brother David Limbaugh, and WSJ OpinionJournal editor Tony Taranto. In other words, the blowhard candidate are being supported by blowhards. So what's new.

After glancing at the new titles, I finally found what I was looking for: In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman. Who better than this New Yorker and author of Maus to depict the tragedy and tumult of September 11th and its crazy aftermath? I found a couple good reviews at the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times. My own observations: for a oversized (11" by 17") book, it's very hard to find. That's because the hard cover is black, like the New Yorker cover following the terrorist attacks. Inside though is an almost zany world of colors, starting with the inside cover page, which was the September 11, 1901 edition of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Front page headlines? The assassination of President McKinley, by a man with anarchist beliefs who was thought wrongly to be a foreigner. Sideline? The arrest and questioning of Emma Goldman, the famous immigrant labor activist, feminist, and revolutionary, about the assassination which of course, she had nothing to do with at all. The more things change...

racial profiling is un-American

2004-09-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

Funny, I thought the 'war on terror' was an attempt to protect our democratic and free society, not to eviscerate it.

Amnesty condemns US use of racial profiling

Mon Sep 13, 7:16 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Racial profiling by US law enforcement agencies has grown over the past three years to cover one in nine Americans, rights group Amnesty International said in a report.

"State and federal agencies, under the guise of fighting terrorism, have expanded the use of this degrading, discriminatory and dangerous practice," said Curt Goering, deputy executive director for Amnesty International USA.

According to its study, some 32 million Americans have been subjected to profiling, defined as the targeting of people because of their ethnic or religious background.

And some 87 million Americans are at risk of racial profiling during their lifetime.

Amnesty said use of profiling has seen a major increase since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The practice "violates human rights, undermines national security and simply does not work," said Goering.

Timothy Lewis, a former district court judge and federal prosecutor, said that racial profiling is not only ineffective, it violates the US Constitution. "It is wrong, and nothing that happened on September 11, 2001 makes it right," he said.

The Amnesty report pointed to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, British shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh -- who escaped as police searched for Arab suspects -- as examples of people who did not fit the standard terrorist profiles.

President George W. Bush vowed to end racial profiling in US law enforcement in February 2001, but the ban is a policy -- not law -- and has no enforcement teeth, according to the report.

Bush "has failed to support any federal legislative effort" to eliminate racial profiling in the country, Amnesty said.

Cathy Harris, a senior US Customs inspector, complained in 1998 about racial profiling practices that included strip searches of black and Hispanic women. Following the complaints Harris said that Customs changed their practices and the group saw drug arrests increase by 300 percent.

But following the September 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs merged with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and 20 other federal agencies -- and Customs "is slowly going back to its old ways," Harris said.

"The targeting of certain groups -- specifically Arab and Muslim Americans and travelers who are citizens of Arab and Muslim nations -- has increased," she said.

According to Amnesty, people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and those of the Muslim and Sikh faiths are most at risk, especially since the September 11 attacks.

Amnesty wants the US Congress as well as state and local governments to enact comprehensive legislation banning the practice.

Amnesty's 50-page report documents cases of people pulled over by police and treated as suspects solely based on their looks, as well as people of Middle Eastern and south Asian descent who do not call police or the fire department because they fear they will be targeted based on their race.

"A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws." - Justice Anthony Kennedy

at home in the world

2004-09-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I read a random blog authored by a medical student or resident doctor in Saudi Arabia. I was reading about him and his friends, who all had odd non-Arabic names and then I scrolled to see photos of a bunch of Asian men about my age. Like so many productive denizens of Saudi Arabia, they were Filipino.

I didn't plan this introduction, and in fact I have no idea where to find this blog of - let's call him Mr. F. But I learned a lot more about the importance of Mr. F and his friends, to his family, his country, and the intricate weave of the world economy, all of which are threatened by a war of choice.

In July, the Philippine government decided to withdraw from the "coalition of the willing" in occupied Iraq. I don't recall much coverage of this event in the U.S., though it reveals how willingly they participated. Anyway, here is how Radio Singapore analyzed the decision.

The Philippines has begun pulling its forces out of Iraq, after a militant group has threatened to execute a Filipino hostage.

The pullout was initiated after another group of kidnappers in Iraq said they beheaded one of two Bulgarian hostages.

Despite the pullout, Manila had no information on the situation of Filipino hostage, Angelo de la Cruz.

Asiri Abubakar (AA) is the Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Philippines, and he updates RSI's Melanie Yip on the contingent pullout.

AA: I think the final figure now, the remaining contingent in Iraq is about 43.

Now, on the issue of the hostage taking. Other countries like South Korea and Japan did not pull their troops out of Iraq despite public pressure. So why did the Philippines decide to withdraw their troops now and earlier than their scheduled pull out date in August?

AA: I think that on the part of our government, the Arroyo Administration is, for the first time, facing a tremendous internal pressure on this issue. You see, we have around 8 million Filipinos working abroad, and there is tremendous pressure from families of these millions of Filipinos who are working abroad. They leave the country in search for jobs abroad because our country is not in any position to give the people that many jobs. This is purely internal pressure, which is tremendous. The Arroyo Administration cannot set aside this pressure.

But do you think that by pulling out the troops, it will help President Gloria Arroyo's political standing in the country?

AA: Well, it is a terrible choice for the administration, it must be admitted. But the [Philippines Presidential] elections have just concluded, there are so many political and economic issues facing the administration, so these are some of the factors the administration had to consider the pressure coming from the families, and other sectors to take advantage of the ongoing hostage taking situation.

Now, how is the United States reacting to the Philippines' decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq?

AA: I think it is a great displeasure for the United States, particularly for the Bush Administration, when he is facing re-election this year. It is understandable for the Bush Administration to be displeased with the decision of our government. This is the first time that any Philippines Administration has openly defied its decision to support an American policy, particularly in the case of Iraq.

What message will this current situation of the Philippines withdrawing their troops from Iraq, how would this set a precedence for the coalition of the willing in future?

AA: Well, other countries have done it, like Spain. We are doing almost like Spain, although in their case, Spain has experienced such horrible happenings like the train bombings before their elections. The new Spanish government decided to withdraw their troops. I hope it doesn't set an example for other countries to follow. As far as the Philippines is concerned, it is unique to us. We have this tremendous number of Filipinos working abroad, most of them in the Middle East. So there is tremendous pressure on this administration.

Will the terrorist groups get the upper hand?

AA: I don't know whether we can influence, and how much our decisions matter. It may not also help that the terrorist threats the Philippines is facing on the domestic front. The Philippines went to Iraq on the basis of our commitment to help the international community laid by the US to fight terror. But there is also a problem with respect to the war in Iraq. Even the US officials and some members of the coalition of the willing, including the UK are saying that there was not much justification for going to war. So that's also one problem.. The war was not internationally recognized, and even some Filipinos feel that the war is immoral.

Some people have said that a truly international coalition desired by the realists ala the Gulf War would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. But the fact that the U.S. didn't even try but instead created a multilateral facade to hide its singular arrogant face, means that even the facade will be very difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate.

I didn't realize how globalized our society has become, for everyone. Not just the very rich or very poor nations, but especially for those in between like the Philippines, whose human talent is not matched by its economic might. So its doctors, nurses, engineers, and maids are flung across the world, applying their skills where the financial rate of return is greater.

But all the flinging and border crossing depends on stability, and the more far-flung your pool of talent becomes, the greater becomes your desire for international political stability. By diving into Iraq under American pressure, President Arroyo put her nation's welfare at risk. And domestic terrorism or insurgency doesn't even play into the decision, because that occurs anyway. The concern are the 8 million living abroad and sustaining home who are potential hostages.

And the retractions regarding "weapons of mass destruction" by US and UK leaders really unhinge the screws from the facade. Americans may be alright with the war of choice and regime change, but the rest of the world really sold this on terrorism. But we sold our satellites' leaders a bill of goods, and forced them to sell it to their people. Either sale will be much harder when we need to make the hard sell - say, in fighting real terrorism or preventing a nuclear threat. Or how about averting genocide? International law aside, those political consequences are arguably worse than leaving a brutal dictator in power.

As the town elder told the shepherd boy who cried wolf, "You must tell the truth, not just now and then, but all the time."

A deficit in objective reporting

2004-09-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

I opened up our local paper today to find on the front page, right-hand column, the following headline:

"CBO sees federal deficit shrinking from predicted size"

Underneath the title is the lead, in small font:

Deficit - The Congressional Budget Office projected that this election year's federal deficit would be a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year. The projection became instant fodder for both political parties. News 13

So I turned to page 13, where I saw the headline in even bigger type:

"Congressional analysts lower deficit forecast"

And then below it, the subheader: "However, the latest federal projection - a $422 billion shortfall - is still the biggest dollar amount in history."

It seems obvious to me that the most significant and newsworthy fact is that this deficit is $422 billion dollars, and that is a record deficit. After that, one can add that however, the new projections are lower than before. Certainly Alan Fram thought so. Fram is the Associated Press writer of this article. The headlines, however, were produced courtesy of The Orange County Register, probably the most conservative daily paper of its size in California, and certainly one of the most conservative in the nation. A reader can see that slant in the editorial pages, and come to expect that bias.

What once surprised and now just offends me, is the way the bias bleeds into the news and even the copy (headlines, graphs, placement of stories). It's fine to reflect one's opinion in the opinion section, but it seems unethical for a publisher to massage the facts like with the record deficit story, particularly in an election year. Of course, being who they are, that's even more reason for the Register folks to soft-pedal bad news for the Republicans.

Am I reading too much into the headlines? If I didn't, I would not have caught their sleight of hand. But let's test my hypothesis. Other dailies surely picked up this AP wire story. What do their headlines look like? I turned to Yahoo! News and searched for the article using deficit and Fram. You can even repeat my experiment. I posted the results below.

The top 20 hits come from 14 unique sources. Of those 14 unique sources, NINE mention $422 billion, TEN mention record deficit, and just TWO mention the lowered prediction. One of those two, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, said "Record deficit but less than forecast". The other mention comes from fredericksburg.com, a site that registered seven separate hits because it takes all AP feeds and does not produce any copy of its own.

No other news site crafted headlines like the OC Register, even though the article itself was virtually the same across the board. And to say that the CBO sees the deficit "shrinking" from its predicted size falsely implies that the deficit situation is materially improving. I mean, the CBO announcement is a prediction too. In fact, no "real" shrinking of the deficit has or will happen - especially not with the current administration. But that conclusion is exactly what the Register wants to obscure from plain view.

NEWS STORIES

Results 1 - 20 of about 183 for deficit fram.

Sort Results by: Relevance Date

Analysts predict record deficit ALAN FRAM; The Associated Press
Tacoma News Tribune - Sep 08 1:25 AM
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Congressional Budget Office projected Tuesday that this election-year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 8:15 PM
The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 8:15 AM
The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that this election-year's federal deficit will reach $422 billion, congressional aides said Tuesday, the highest ever, yet a smaller shortfall than analysts predicted earlier this year.

Analysts Expect Smaller Budget Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 5:16 AM
Congress' top budget analysts still expect the 2004 federal deficit to set a record, though a smaller one than they and the White House anticipated earlier in this election year.

Federal Budget Deficit To Reach $422B This Year, Pressure on Medicare
Medical News Today - Sep 08 4:14 PM
The federal budget deficit will reach a "record" $422 billion, or 3.6% of gross domestic product, in fiscal year 2004 and is expected to rise to $2.3 trillion over the next 10 years, in part because of the rising cost of programs such as Medicare and Social Security, according to new figures released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, the Washington Post reports.

Federal deficit expected to be record $422 billion
Miami Herald - Sep 08 12:22 AM
Congressional analysts projected a record $422 billion deficit this year, a figure that falls short of earlier forecasts.

Federal deficit will increase to record $422 billion this year
The Ohio University Post - Sep 08 6:45 AM
WASHINGTON -The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected yesterday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

Record deficit projected
Kansas City Star - Sep 08 12:48 AM
WASHINGTON â€” The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday.

Deficit predicted to reach $422B
Long Beach Press-Telegram - Sep 08 12:53 AM
Parties seize record figure as political fodder. WASHINGTON â€” The federal deficit will swell to a record $422billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

Year's deficit to reach record $422 billion
Denver Post - Sep 07 8:08 AM
Washington - The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that this election-year's federal deficit will reach $422 billion, congressional aides said today, the highest ever, yet a smaller shortfall than analysts predicted earlier this year.

Deficit numbers still a record
Albany Democrat-Herald - Sep 07 3:06 PM
WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office projected today that this election-year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year.

A record deficit but less than forecast
The Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 08 12:22 AM
At $422 billion, the projection fell short of what had been expected. Each party had its own spin.

for
SanLuisObispo.com - Sep 08 6:29 AM
Parents, coaches and rec league officials are invited to submit their stars of the week. Please remember that kids can appear only once a month. And if your star doesnâ€™t make it the first time, try, try again.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 5:59 PM
The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 4:30 PM
The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 10:29 AM
The Congressional Budget Office projected Tuesday that this election-year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit By ALAN FRAM
Fredericksburg.com - Sep 07 7:31 AM
The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that this election-year's federal deficit will reach $422 billion, congressional aides said Tuesday, the highest ever, yet a smaller shortfall than analysts predicted earlier this year.

Analysts forecast record $422 billion deficit
The Olympian - Sep 08 5:28 AM
WASHINGTON -- The federal deficit will swell to a record $422 billion this election year but fall short of even more dire forecasts, Congress' top budget analysts projected Tuesday in a report that became instant fodder for both political parties.

Congressional analysts say deficit will be record
Daily Bulletin - Sep 08 12:46 AM
WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office projected Tuesday that this election-year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year.

CBO Projects $442 Billion Federal Deficit
Lebanon Daily Record - Sep 07 3:04 PM
WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office projected Tuesday that this election-year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion, a shortfall that would be smaller than analysts predicted earlier this year.

* Note: the San Luis Obispo headline, which does not show in the hyperlink, reads CBO Projects Record $442 Billion Federal Deficit. Check it out.

Charge of the Far-Right Brigade

2004-09-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

Forward, the Far-Right Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
No, though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the Valley of Death
Drove the ten hundred.

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Reaches Grim Milestone

(Reuters) - The American death toll in Iraq topped 1,000 on Tuesday nearly 18 months after President Bush launched the war that has become a central issue in the November U.S. presidential elections. U.S. casualties in Iraq have surged in recent weeks, particularly among Marines, as Washington fights a guerrilla war that has no quick end in sight. Bush's Democratic rival John Kerry -- a decorated Vietnam War veteran -- called it "a tragic milestone." More

Today is the day I dreaded, and yet expected, would come. Expected, given the lack of international support for our invasion, the loss of civil order and resulting chaos in Iraq, our lack of a transition or exit strategy, and our abuse of the Iraqi people and destruction of their daily life. These reasons are known to all, and too well. But the thousand American deaths surprised a few. It certainly would have surprised the man who in May 2003 commandeered some real military pilot's jet and landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he had ordered the unfurling of a banner that said "Mission Accomplished". I'm sure that George W. Bush hoped to shower us with photos of that day during the fall of 2004. Well, here we are.

Ironically, Bush said today that "We will be there until the mission is finished." If i were prosecutor cross-examining him, I might ask, "Were you lying then, or are you lying now?" Or, there's a third possibility. Perhaps under Bush's watch, we're simply moving backwards.

Only backwards thinking can explain their continued effort to confuse the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq, two events connected solely in the minds and plans of the neocons:

Bush administration officials sought to put the 1,000 deaths in Iraq in the context of the war against terrorism. "When combined with U.S. losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.

Rumsfeld's smug and cavalier (is there any other kind?) words are well past the "sell by" date for the fictional al-Qaeda connection. It only makes sense if we're going backwards in time. Personally, I don't blame the Bush administration for the events of September 11. Those attacks were probably unavoidable, given our resources and knowledge. But the deaths of 1000 Americans, and over 10,000 Iraqis, was totally preventable. By going to Iraq, we've made it another Ground Zero, another place for American suffering, a tragic connection of our own creation.

At the same press conference, AP News reported that Rumsfeld said "our enemies have underestimated our country, our coalition. They have failed to understand the character of our people. And they certainly misread our commander in chief." Like Bush, he seems to suffer from rhetorical dyslexia--mixing up his subjects and objects. It'd be more accurate to say that we underestimated their country and their coalition of Sunnis and Shiites. We failed to understand the character of the Iraqi people, proud and unbowing. And our commander in chief certainly misread them. Again, these administration folks have things...backwards.

This entry would not be completely meaningful if I just left it at that: my angry thoughts and my sadness at a country gone wrong. Even though it's not 1854 Balaklava and they're not the Light Brigade, our soldiers still obey and do and die because thats what soldiers do. I only hope we can recast our mission and trim our sails so that their brave efforts were not offered in vain. I try to contribute in some miniscule way, by pointing out where and how civilian leaders and citizens can be more responsible, and more worthy, of their sacrifice.

On June 19th of this year, Marine Pfc. Sean Horn died in Iraq. Before that he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, just south of Orange County. Before that, he lived right here in Irvine. He joined the Marine a year ago, just out of high school. He died of a single shot to the head, in his bunker. The military calls it a "non-combat incident". It wouldn't be right to say any more. I won't try to reason why, and in fact I don't know anything except what was written in the newswire, and at the Fallen Heroes Memorial website, where a fellow soldier wrote these words:

"sean
im so sorry i let this happen i never should have convinced you to join . i loved you like my own brother through all of it and theres nothing i can do now. but it haunts me and ill never forget you or the last time we spoke in kuwait.i love ya"

josh of al asad iraq

There's nothing we can do now, for Sean. But maybe for Josh, for the 100,000 soldiers there, for the millions of Iraqi men, women, and children, we can do something, something different. We owe them that much.

Salute what?

2004-09-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

My Front Page Headlines Aug 30 9:29pm PT

Top Stories from Reuters	Aug 30 7:52pm PT
Republicans Salute Bush's Leadership After 9/11 Iraqi Cleric Calls Cease-fire After Bloody Uprising U.S. Guard 'Stomped on Fingers' in Iraq Jail

I think the nature of Bush's "leadership" after September 11th is amply illustrated by the next two headlines. Rather succinctly, they sketch the result of our president's decision to channel national grief and outrage into fueling his war of choice, and an occupation that was little more than a barely controlled atmosphere of violence, both American (bloody fingers) and Iraqi (bloody uprising).

The violence will dissipate and calm will return to Iraq, as the American presence dissipates among a larger international coalition and American soldiers return home. Now, that would be a win-win situation.

Congratulations, Ken Jennings!

2004-07-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, Ken Jennings became the first person to win $1 million on "Jeopardy!" More impressive, in my opinion, has been his winning streak of 30 consecutive games. In the old days - before this year - "Jeopardy!" contestants who won five days in a row were rare. So rare that five-day champions were feted and given an early retirement.

I'm not a big Jeopardy! watcher. So I was surprised when I happened to catch the show, and hear Alex Trabek announce that the pleasant-faced blond-haired fellow who overwhelmed his competitors had won his 23rd game. That's when I learned the new rules, probably a response to the high-stakes gameplay on the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" But Jeopardy's new format makes for superior entertainment, because an outstanding contestant will potentially appear over and over (and over and over) on the television screens and by golly, he or she is just like the audience at home.

But Ken is not just like anyone. I know this from watching the 23rd episode. I know this from hearing excerpts on KROQ's usually inane "Kevin and Bean" show. In their rock-jock stupidity, they suggested half-seriously the game was rigged. But the very fact that two idiots were talking about Jeopardy! suggests that many other people are talking about the record.

Ken's not just like anyone. But he does resemble a number of people I know. In fact, he looked vaguely familiar to me. Turns out, he played quiz bowl in college around the same time I did. Now he helps run National Academic Quiz Tournaments, or NAQT, a main engine of the collegiate quiz bowl circuit. I played in the first NAQT National Tournament in 1997, for Berkeley. Upon returning to school at Oregon, I led that team to its first Nationals berth in 2001. Ken played quiz bowl between those years, which is why I remember him vaguely.

After a bit of research, I found that Ken and his Brigham Young University team played at the first Caltech summer tournament, nicknamed Quesadilla. Ken finished 5th in the singles tournament, but the record shows he lost only to Peter Freeman and Jesse Molesworth, an astrophysicist and a English literature grad student, respectively. (Summer tournaments allow participants to be "alumni", which I was in 1999.) Ken also finished behind 4th place Dave Farris, the wizard from Edison High/Harvard/Berkeley, and my good friend, Michael Bennett, now a grad student at Chicago. Michael, if you're reading this, here's an idea to pay your way through grad school... Incidentally, 6th place finisher Pat Friel (UCLA) was the minor celebrity then, having been on Jeopardy! in 1997 and winning twice. He lost to Berkeley professor (and eventual five-day champion) Art Malia. Yes, I watched a bit more back then.

I didn't play in the singles portion of the tourney. Instead, I was driving myself and Rob Hentzel from the Bay Area that afternoon. Rob, Peter, and I won the team competition. Incidentally, individual-champion Peter was the 3rd scorer on our three-man team. Rob averaged about 8 questions, I averaged about 4, and Peter about 2.5. The overlap in knowledge between Rob and Peter skewed the team results. Still, if I was better than Peter, and Peter beat Ken... Well, that was five years ago. Mr. Jennings definitely appears a stronger player now. Yet looking back at this seemingly insignificant Saturday in my life, five years ago, definitely inspires me to try out for Jeopardy, as many friends have urged me.

But you don't have to be a nerd to be inspired. I think it's great a young person is rewarded with fame and fortune because of his knowledge, rather than his or her ability to drink snake blood or cast someone off the island. And if it takes a nice Mormon computer programmer to show America that, more power to him, and bully for us.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some TV.

"Lately, it's occurred to me..."

2004-07-09T01:47:00.000-07:00

About ten years ago, Jennine told me her writing instructor suggested that improving one's writing involved doing it every day. It was something the instructor heard from Alice Walker. Or was in Ray Bradbury?

I was reminded of this advice when I saw Amy Tan at Cal Day a few years later. She also stressed the importance of writing daily, and first thing in the morning (though according to Oscar Hijuelos, she added, one should make an exception for conjugal purposes).

Concurring is Tan's bandmate in the Rock Bottom Remainders, Stephen King. After I read On Writing, a Christmas gift from Katy, I restarted my old journal and wrote every day. For about two weeks. That was three or four years ago.

Day is the key word. I'm finding that 1:00 AM is often NOT the best time to write. Fatigued and cluttered mind aside, one's best writing conveys a sense of joy, passion, precision. Extra stuff. When I write, sometimes something will happen - a turn of phrase, perfectly placed - that never could be otherwise planned.

During the day, I am more likely to ponder aloud the thoughts swirling in my head: my 5K training regimen, the last settlement I mediated, a missing recipe for gazpacho, the current New Yorker with David Remnick's article on the prospect of Islamist politics in Egypt and Tad Friend's report on turning SF's Lusty Lady into a worker's utopia, the disappointing portrayal of native Hawaiians in entertainment media, and my thoughts on the omission of Adrian Beltre from the National League All-Star team.

I wish I could say something pithy tonight. Hmm, guess I just did.

in a democracy, there are means which no ends can justify

2004-07-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

In the process of unifying China over 2200 years ago, its first emperor Qin Shi Huang Di attempted to crushed all dissent and debate. The great Chinese historian Sima Qian records the Qin Emperor's chief adviser, Li Si, saying thus:

"Now the August Emperor has unified all under heaven, distinguishing black from white and establishing a single source of authority. Yet these adherents of private theories band together to criticize the laws and directives. Hearing that an order has been handed down, each one proceeds to discuss it in the light of his theories. At court they disapprove in their hearts; outside they debate it in the streets. They hold it a mark of fame to defy the ruler, regard it as lofty to take a dissenting stance, and they lead the lesser officials in fabricating slander. If behavior such as this is not prohibited, then in upper circles the authority of the ruler will be compromised, and in lower ones cliques will form. Therefore it should be prohibited.

"I therefore request that all records of the historians other than those of the state of Qin be burned. With the exception of the academicians whose duty it is to possess them, if there are persons anywhere in the empire who have in their possession copies of the Odes, the Documents, or the writings of the hundred schools of philosophy, they shall in all cases deliver them to the governor or his commandant for burning. Anyone who ventures to discuss the Odes or Documents shall be executed in the marketplace. Anyone who uses antiquity to criticize the present shall be executed along with his family. Any official who observes or knows of violations and fails to report them shall be equally guilty. Anyone who has failed to burn such books within thirty days of the promulgation of this order shall be subjected to tattoo and condemned to 'wall dawn' [convict] labor. The books that are to be exempted are those on medicine, divination, agriculture, and forestry. Anyone wishing to study the laws and ordinances should have a law official for his teacher." An imperial decree granted approval of the proposal.

Ah, the good old days. While Li Si's doctrine may be abhorrent to modern minds, his rhetoric is clear and uncomplicated. That's because in the ancient world, the idea of absolute rule was accepted and desired. That emperors could have banned the different schools of philosophy is not questioned, only its desirability.

Of course, since the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the individual has displaced the ruler at the center of government. Governing required consent of the governed, and hence, appeals to the interests of the governed. So political philosophers and the rulers who employed their ideas (and sometimes them) have had to invent schemes to increase their power using the language of individual liberty and political equality. So they invented doublespeak.

Starting almost three years ago, however, many Americans have been made to feel such fear that they "freely" expressed a desire to give up some individual rights. In this timorous climate, certain members of our government dropped their coded language and began to speak frankly about the desirability of certain speech. They would spout atavisms like:

to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends.

And later, they objected when anyone questioned their authority to denigrate those who questioned anything at all:

Anyone who reported this morning that he criticized anyone who opposed him was absolutely wrong and in doing so became a part of the exact problem he was describing.

The first quote is from John Ashcroft, and the second comes from his spokesperson, Mindy Tucker. The second in some ways scares me more than the first, because through his mouthpiece Ashcroft moved beyond targeting certain criticisms of the war on terror, to denigrating anyone who questioned him.

The quotes, which I've cut and are analyzed in full here, are from December 2001. But the same people still run the Department of Justice, and their views have not changed. In fact, those views have not changed in over 2000 years.

taking the fourth

2004-07-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I took my parents to see the fireworks from the panoramic outlook just north of Dana Point Harbor. It's too bad Vicky couldn't be here - she heard about a place along the south county coast where a 360-degree view was possible. I found such a lookout point on my San Clemente ride. Just a bald clearing, flanked by the ocean on the southwest and PCH on the northeast. And walking a few yards to the south, you'll overlook the harbor and the marina. Perhaps you'll see a replica of the Pilgrim, which carried Richard Henry Dana as a seamen on a hide-gathering voyage from Boston to what was then Alta California.

That was then. This is now. But "then" reminds us that not all the land was America at once, nor all Americans. But this - who and what we are now, and have come to be - is what counts only. In first or second grade, I learned the words to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and every time the words "land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride!" I shuddered a little. They were serious words. But my ancestors did not die here, and they definitely weren't Pilgrims. We only sang one verse. I never learned those lines in the third, "Let mortal tongues awake, let all that breathe partake."

For all my political passion and cultural angst, I do believe America is different from every other place that came before. There is no literal "American race" or "American language". Here, citizenship confers nationality, not the other way around. The poet Shirley Geok-Lin Lim wrote that "If you come to a land with no ancestors/to bless you, you have to be your own/ancestor." That instruction confronted my parents even more than it affected me. Sometimes I forget the distances they travelled, and chasms they leaped, in so many ways, to have American children. And the person who has American children, they're Americans too.

Here's a poem by Ms. Lim which I really like.

Learning to Love America

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean

because I saw we rather than they

because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacarandas bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don't know

because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time.

the far side of the world

2004-07-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

My sister arrived in Australia yesterday. She will be studying biology at the University of Tasmania for a semester. Vicky called us on her first morning in Hobart, which has made a pleasant first impression. Apparently, it's a bit like Sausalito: a laidback, resort town. She went grocery shopping at Salamanca Market, a bustling public market which reminded her of Pike Place in Seattle. She had not seen the university yet. We got an email from her today, sent out to all her friends. I'll take the liberty of sharing a part with you.

Hobart, Tasmania is very nice. It looks like a new england town that
people visit on holiday-- a little too quaint for my lifestyle but small
enough that I can walk around. It is at the foot of Mt Wellington,
which doesnt seem that high, but right now it is snowcapped. Hobart is a
30 min drive to the top, and also a 20 minute drive to the bay, which i
think is pretty cool. It's wintertime here, which is comparable to so
Cal's winter, about 9 degrees Celsius, but way more sunlight. Damn
hole in the ozone layer. It is also windier so you'd have to wear 3
layers instead of 2. and gloves. and a hat.

The people have been pretty friendly so far, but I havent met my
flatmates yet, or any other students. my room has a nice view of the river
and the city, and I will post pictures on my geocities or livejournal
when i have the means.

(to her housemate): i wish i had gone to see a rugby match with you
because the aussies are really into "footy" which i gather is sort of like
american football and soccer and rugby.

...I am glad i got to hang out with most of you before i left. it was
good times and I miss you already. for those i whom i did not see, well,
it sucks to be me.

lost in translation:
give way = yield (traffic sign)
rubbish = trash
toilet= restroom
chemist = pharmacy
take away= takeout
no worries= no problem = ain't no thang

hope to hear from you!
vix

I'm sure she'll soon write more about her Tasmanian adventures in her fabulous journal. A moment's glance through it makes me realize that she's become her own adult person. My parents and I are thrilled for her. No, Vicky, it does not suck to be you...

Open House

2004-07-02T11:31:00.001-07:00

I would like to welcome everyone to my new weblog. You may notice a link to February 2004, when I wrote my first entry, but today is the first time I am promoting it. Besides, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears, does it really make a sound? Or as NBC executives cynically advertise their reruns, "It's new to you!"

Why the long wait? I wanted to make sure that I was inviting my friends and interested strangers to something worth their while. To meet that threshold, I needed to find subjects and ideas that were worth my while to write about them consistently. At the same time, I hoped to develop a way of approaching serious issues and significant moments without letting myself become too heavy, dull, or both.

My favorite novelist, Italo Calvino, dealt with a similar problem as a young writer:

When I began my career, the categorical imperative of every young writer was to represent his own time. Full of good intentions, I tried to identify myself with the ruthless energies propelling the events of our century, both collective and individual. I tried to find some harmony between the adventurous, picaresque inner rhythm that prompted me to write and the frantic spectacle of the world, sometimes dramatic and sometimes grotesque. Soon I became aware that between the facts of life that should have been my raw materials and the quick light touch I wanted for my writing, there was a gulf that cost me increasing effort to cross. Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world -- qualities that stick to writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.

He goes on in his essay "Lightness" to champion writing with a light touch, with agility, to countenance the weight of the world. That's my rough summary. You can find that essay among his Six Memos for the Next Millenium, which he composed for the 1985-86 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. Before Calvino could deliver them, he died suddenly.

It is hard to write the things of this world, sometimes harder to write about one's own life. The word petrify doesn't seem out of place, both in striking fear into your soul (can I really do this?), and silencing you with weight (will I ever read this?). I've been told that I write well, but I don't know if that's true. However, it's also true I have few other talents. So why don't we get this party started?

Hello, my name is Philip. I grew up in Orange County. I live in Irvine, which promises to be the setting of many amusing stories. Often, I'll write about current events, from the tragedy in Madrid to this year's elections to the infant formula lobby. News can get too heavy to write or even think about. Sometimes I'll talk about favorite music or my adventures in mediation. And once in a while, I'll reflect on a life well lived. I hope such a life can be mine.

Please, add your thoughts in the comments section. Make suggestions, requests, and of course, comments. This journal, like my writing, my career, and my life, is a work in progress. Unlike certain leaders of the free world, I am quite glad to recognize certain aspects of life as team work. Wrote Emily Dickinson,

A sepal, petal and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn-
A flask of Dew-a Bee or two-
A Breeze-a caper in the trees-
And I'm a Rose!

A song of experience

2004-07-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

In my Blakean year
I was so disposed
Toward a mission yet unclear
Advancing pole by pole

Fortune breathed into my ear
Mouthed a simple ode
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

In my Blakean year
Such a woeful schism
The pain of our existence
Was not as I envisioned

Boots that trudged from track to track
Worn down to the sole
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

by Patti Smith

There's a record store called HEAR Music in Santa Monica. It started in Cambridge, and popped up in Berkeley during the late 90s. I spotted one at the Metreon in San Francisco during the boom days, but now it's gone. Relatively few people have ever set foot in HEAR Music. But more than a few have heard their Artist's Choice compilations (Ray Charles, Lucinda Williams, Sarah McLachlan), courtesy of the frothy caffeinated juggernaut and its owner Howard Schultz, who now runs it.

My wanderings around 4th Street's HEAR Music figure prominently in my post-graduate Berkeley days. Sometimes after running to the Marina, I'd stop in and listen to a record I'd never heard before. I believe that store held the record for most listening stations per square foot. That's where I first heard albums by Lucinda, Belle and Sebastian, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt, Pink Martinis, Billy Bragg, Caetano Veloso, Art Blakey and the Messengers... This eclectic array of musicians ensured that my adult tastes did not calcify at 22, nor grow bland with radio.

I didn't buy a lot of CDs during those Bay Area boom years. After all, I was a teacher. My road was just a road. Or so it seemed. Those exciting tech jobs held by many friends and acquaintances don't exist anymore, nor in many cases do the companies. But the institutions where I worked are still around, and still needed. My biggest regret? That I virtually stopped writing for an audience, or a cause. I suppose I am trying to, ahem, start up again.

Yesterday afternoon, Jukka and I ran the east-west length of Santa Monica and strolled down the 3rd Street Promenade. HEAR Music's appeal hasn't faded with time and taste. If anything, SoCal's cultural shortcomings make the record store even worthier of a visit. And so I was rewarded with a new discovery, Patti Smith's "Trampin".

This is not a CD review. I and my slight Manichaean tendencies in writing are not suitable for aesthetic criticism. (See what I mean? Not suitable!) I will say a little about why I like her lyrical writing, and what her example means to me.

A look at her discography shows the Patti Smith Group made four albums in five years, the last (1979) capped off by a stadium concert of 70,000 cheering Italians. I knew none of this when I heard "Because the Night" as a college freshman, almost fifteen years later. Or when KFOG played "Dancing Barefoot" or her version of "Gloria", with its defiant opening line torn from her early poem, "Oath": "Jesus died for somebody's sins/but not mine." Or when I discovered her Early Work, and one of my favorite lyrics about being American, "Notebook". Or when I saw her at the Bridge Concert, leading Neil Young and Pearl Jam and the Bridge School children in a rousing rendition of "People Have the Power".

I did not know that she had spent a decade and a half as a housewife in suburban Detroit, with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith. The godmother of punk and guitarist of the proto-punk MC5, playing house and raising two kids. Imagine that. What is true of most people is also true for most artists: the most fruitful or personally rewarding life may not always be the most ambitious or artistically productive. "I never did miss fame," she has said. "What I really missed was a good cup of coffee."

Or to quote "Oath": "I can make my own light shine/and darkness too is equally fine"

We can take that line to mean confidence in one's ability to choose the good and the "sinful". Or perhaps also, comfort in choosing the path of fame and fortune or a life of obscurity. And not regretting the choice of either. But it is either. And many people are not comfortable with that, because they think they can have both, when in reality not many can live with either well.

If I consider the quiet and fairly happy life of obscurity that was Patti Smith's life, or that William Blake earned a living from engraving in order to support his poetry habit, then I scorn to change my state with kings, or Supreme Court justices. And for a moment I cease to regret that I didn't write in 1999 or whenever, because hey, I was teaching kids algebra in a neighborhood the New Economy forgot. I can make my own light shine, and darkness too is equally fine...

So. What I like uniquely about Patti Smith, is that her voice, her energy, is neither male nor female. Like many 70s icons (David Bowie, for one), her image is essentially androgynous. But I'm talking beyond image, about the music itself. Her voice and lyrics pulse with intelligence and passion. And those qualities are neither male nor female. Often you can read a poem or song lyric and say, oh a guy wrote it, or a girl wrote it. And many fine lyrics are like that. But what a feat of the universal to transcend the experience of gender, how pure is that? How pure is white light? Or the human heart? Or grief? Or being American? And to transcend it in popular music, with a voice both wise and vigorous and kind.

Formula 1, Babies 0

2004-06-26T00:02:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine gave birth to her second child last month. She would not be pleased with the following story, which I found on Motley Fool:

According to an ABC News report published last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) first postponed, then watered down, a series of TV ads promoting breast-feeding of infants -- at the request of the infant formula industry.

The ads, slated to air six months ago, originally conveyed in stark terms the increased risks of bottle-feeding: respiratory, urinary tract, and ear infections during infancy; asthma and diabetes during childhood; high blood pressure and obesity in adulthood. Most notably, the ads reported that infants who were not breast-fed were more prone to leukemia than breast-fed babies.

To make a long story short, executives in the $8 billion dollar industry of infant formula manufacturing became alarmed. They sent their reps to lobby Washington, where Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson gave them a private audience. Halliburton, anyone?

Breast-feeding advocates - you know, people like mothers and doctors - sought to meet with Thompson, but they were turned down. You can read more at the full ABC News article, which also provides a link to the "thank you" letter written by Clayton Yuetter, formula lobbyist and former GOP chair. "Dear Tommy", the letter begins. Rather curdling, I think.

At least several of the public service ads aired, at the beginning of June. But the watered-down versions may not be enough to counter the millions of dollars spent promoting infant formula in hospitals and doctor's offices, something that formula mankers Abbott Labs and Bristol-Myers Squibb honed into an art form while pushing their pharmacuetical products. Can we educate a new generation of mothers and give newborns a healthy start? We don't know, not until the babies grow up either granted or deprived of the substantial protections that evolution has bestowed on human beings through mother's milk.

Speaking of protections, I think this sad incident exemplifies a weakness of democratic capitalism. First, in cases of public health the benefits are often great but diffuse. Clean air, clean water, breast milk, etc. However, in our economy the man-made sources of damage are often controlled by a few or at least organized very well. So the organized few can act to preserve their flow of profits, at the expense of the diffuse many, who in a democracy should win. Until very large groups can organize around their common interests (parents, immigrants, skateboarders) and transcend internal differences, the many will not prevail over the few.

Second, the people who lack political resources are the vulnerable elements of society, and hence the ones who need it the most. And I cannot think of anyone more vulnerable, or less blameworthy, than an infant. Obviously the infant has an interest in his or her own health, but in most political systems the infant has no voice. Congressional districts count infants. Why not elections, at least in such child-relevant areas as health care and education. Yes, a parent votes, but those issues concern both parent and child. Parents manage their children's money and lives, why not their votes too?

Finally, has anyone noticed that there's no breast milk lobby? Yes, doctors, scientists and parents advocate for it, but nobody will spend big money to do so. That's because there's no money in winning an argument for a product that is, essentially, free. You don't have to be a socialist to acknowledge that the best things in life are free. A socialist might say that good things and services should be free, or at low cost to everyone. But what I mean by free things are gifts of nature, like air and water and seeds that won't Terminate. Rather than adding to things we want, some folks try to take away what we already have and sell it back to us. Wouldn't the latter be detrimental to human health and welfare? And isn't that just the sort of job where a Secretary of Health and Human Services would lead the way? Dear Tommy . . . do your job!

Until we start fighting for those things that are free, we'll keep losing them, and the loss will feel very precious indeed.

Oregon Trails

2004-06-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I dusted the cobwebs from my bike and rode along PCH to San Clemente. I hadn't planned to make it there, but I felt like going after reaching Laguna Beach, and then Dana Point. The weather was unusually cool for June, and the cloud cover was helpful. I made a number of short detours, the first at my friend Albert's place in a new development, Oak Creek, near I-405 and Jeffrey Rd. His neighbor Rory spotted me, and when he saw my bike, showed me the three he owned and talked up a storm about local trails and such. He handed me a bunch of maps from his car, mostly Southern California stuff but there was one of Central Oregon.

"Why Oregon?" I asked him, curious. I knew he was a LA native.

"Oh, I went to Mt. Batchelor." For skiing, of course.

I was about to close the map when I saw in the small sectioned-off, right-hand corner, a map of the Mackenzie River Trail - without question, the most beautiful place I've ever biked, in the most beautiful state I've ever been.

Here's one of the last letters I wrote in Oregon, to one who had left recently.

"I am glad to see that you are alive and well! Tanya and I were a bit worried. We were Portland this past weekend and met up with an old friend of mine, Linda. We saw elaborate sand castles in Pioneer Square. Walked around Saturday Market. Drove along the Columbia Gorge, which Linda had never seen. Visited Hood River for the Cherry Festival. It was late-afternoon but the farmer at Alice's, a third-generation Japanese American, took us in his cart for a tour of the pear and cherry farm. Had no idea so many varieties besides Bing and Rainier existed. We sampled extra-large Lapins, and slightly bitter Black Republicans. (Wonder why they call 'em that.) The sky was clear blue, except for the giant clouds massing around Mt. Hood. I'll miss Oregon."

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..."

2004-06-15T01:18:00.000-07:00

Today I returned to my main job-like activity for the past two plus months: working as a small-claims mediator at Orange County Superior Court. It's nice to be active again, using the Alternate Dispute Resolution skills I learned during law school, and providing a needed service to the community.

I have mediated or co-mediated about 30 cases, reaching a settlement in all but one. Business disputes, landlords and tenants, creditors and debtors, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends - I've handled the whole range. I like the business cases most (contractors, credit unions, etc). That may seem counterintuitive for a "fuzzy" like me, but in fact such disputes only involve money and are the least stressful, for the parties, and hence for me. Those people tend to be nice and are almost always professional. Today a man agreed to repay several hundred dollars mistakenly deposited into his bank account - the second time this mix-up has landed on my lap. Apparently, he spent this money by the time the bank caught its mistake.

Since mediation is voluntary, almost everyone who participates is civil - as they chose to negotiate an agreement with my help, rather than argue their case before a judge (like they had intended). In fact, roughly half of my "successful" resolutions are worked out in principle by the parties in the hallways before they talk to me. That happened today. So my awesome success rate has little to do with my abilities as a mediator, which are just adequate enough not to impede them from helping themselves.

Even though I've chosen the path of law, I believe that the law often interferes with justice and fairness - not only in its "objective" meaning, but also in its shared "subjective" meaning. The former is easy to understand. By the latter, I mean that the law may take a dispute out of the hands of the two parties. Mostly for the good of society, which wants to discourage a plaintiff or victim from resorting to "self-help" (i.e., me and a few buddies). And if the original act was criminal...

However, in some cases, two people or organizations might want to resolve their dispute without going through civil litigation. Neighbors, family members, parents sharing custody of children, people with long-term business relationships benefit from sitting down and resolving their argument without the time, cost, and emotional strife that lengthy litigation or even small-claims court, can bring. Even a small formal step such as being served by a stranger is off-putting to many people. And personally, I enjoy being the neutral, the third-party who brings people together, helps them realize what their shared interests are, and leaves them on friendly terms with each other, sometimes even a hug between former friends.

Mediation holds natural incentives for both plaintiff and defendant (if you're wondering why they'd show up). For the defendant, it's a way to resolve their situation without a court judgment. They may not owe the whole amount, but most of the time they owe something - and if a judge enters that "something" against them, it will damage their credit rating for years to come. For the plaintiff, payment is more likely if the defendant helped fashion the payment plan himself, as the court does not assist plaintiff in collecting judgment.

For myself, I need to purge from my system the emotional traces from the more complicated cases. Sometimes I don't realize how a certain defendant or plaintiff or broken relationship has stayed in my mind. And I could do better to find ways to find release - other than reading, which if it involves the news does the opposite! Even something simple like treating myself to ice cream, or catching an afternoon matinee alone - I can't recall the last time I did either. Sounds fairly pitiful, no? Striking a steady balance between extremes: if I can help others do it, surely I can help myself.

Weenie Roast notes

2004-06-13T23:45:00.000-07:00

My homeboy Will Farrell (Class of '86) made a surprise appearance at the KROQ Weenie Roast and spoke to the nubile masses last night:

"I'm Will Farrell. (Loud cheers.) I'm...one of you. I grew up in Irvine, beautiful Irvine, California. (Scattered cheers.) I remember all the times I used to sneak in here... I have some bad news. Our next guest couldn't make it tonight. That's right, I'm sorry to say you won't be able to see Crazytown. Come, my lady. Come come, my lady. You're my butterfly, sugar, baby..."

Then he introduced the scheduled performers, the Beastie Boys.

Weenie Roast is an ten band, 11-hour affair... So I will not try to sum up.

The afternoon kicked off on the side stage with Story of the Year, a young and spirited five-member band. Oh, how young they were!
They were followed by Yellowcard, New Found Glory, and Hoobastank.

Then it moved to the main stage, which was nice as it allowed you to hear all the bands, with The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Cypress Hill, The Hives, Velvet Revolver, Bad Religion, Beastie Boys, The Strokes.

I'd write more, but I must return to life as a (relatively) responsible adult now and turn in early.

Devil's advocate?

2004-06-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

I interviewed with the Orange County Public Defender's office on Wednesday afternoon. They asked me the same eight questions they posed to every other applicant, which seems fitting for an employer concerned with procedural fairness and substantive justice. Believe me, that structure is highly unusual for interviews in the rest of the legal world. Which, in its own way, makes sense too. The last question the two senior deputy public defenders asked me: how do you justify defending people who often do not have the law or facts on their side (who, in effect, probably committed the crime with which they are charged)? Why, that's a very good question I said.

I also said a few other things. A public defender is someone that our system provides to represent the accused's interests, just as we have prosecutors in the District Attorney's office to represent the interests of society at large. Yes, many people accused of a crime are in fact guilty of some wrongdoing, and most of the time it's pretty obvious. But the PD's job is also to see the defendant fairly treated in his sentence, as well. Because someone has committed a crime doesn't mean he gives up his rights, or that society can throw the book at him. The prosecutor isn't looking out for the defendant, that's not his job. That's the public defender's job. If the PD couldn't do that, the DA's role would be incredibly unfair. Instead, in our adversary system, the prosecutor pushes with all the resources of the state. And the defender is ethically bound to push back.

For two years I taught and tutored students in Oakland public high schools. I wanted to work there because those were the kids who lacked the money, education, and family background to do well in math. Hence, they were the kids who needed my able services the most. I would say the same with public defense. Individuals who need public defenders can't afford to choose their own lawyer. They often come from the same socioeconomic groups as my students, and deserve the same degree of help we believe those students ought to have. Mind you, my students weren't all angels - sure you've got poor neighborhoods and mediocre teachers and lack of family help but many kids are just lazy or unfocused - as at any other school. Let's not hold their poverty and background against them too.

The public defender defends not just the person but also the rights of the accused, and those rights belong to us all. And when those rights are threatened, so are we all. In fact, since indigent criminal defendants are the most vulnerable elements in society (without friends or wealth), indigent defense is the most likely area where the state will cut corners to a "just result" and in the process short-circuit our system of rights. Democracy is a cloth that frays around the edges, and affects those who live on the edges of society first and most often. We see examples of fraying today not only in murder and rape cases, but also in the area of terrorism and war crimes.

And so I ask you... Would you ever work for the public defender? Why or why not? If so, would you ever draw the line at representing someone? A murderer? Rapist? Child molester? What do you think?

Houston City Limits

2004-06-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2001, I chose to take an internship in Houston, Texas, rather than travel to China with my friends.

Looking back at that summer, I realize it was the last time I could really choose where I wanted to be. Shanghai or Houston? The comparative merits of each city aside, I didn't realize the key word wasn't either. It was the word in the middle. Or. I had to choose one or the other. Instead I chose one, thinking I could have Houston now, and save Shanghai for later. Well, later is now. And now my horizons seem to be the four walls of my room, and soon the four carpeted panels of my cubicle. What a thing to have hoped for!

But while in public I express regret at my choice, in my heart there's no other place in the world I'd rather explore than my own frontiers, this land made for you and me. And so I drove from the Redwood forests to the Gulfstream waters, because Texas is a big part of America, and in the courts, clubs, and strip malls of Houston I would learn a little bit about how things worked, or why they didn't.

What did I learn that summer?

I learned that muffalettas are the best-kept, tastiest secret in American sandwiches. I learned that bourbon and coke is a great drink. And then there's Mexican food and barbeque and country fried steaks... Houston, you have a weight problem!

I learned it IS the humidity - oh, the humidity! I learned to fear mosquitoes. I learned to love the Gulf of Mexico, which is warm and teeming with fish.

I learned to say "y'all" and "a little sumpin' sumpin'. I learned to do the electric slide... I learned that some people still fly confederate flags, but even rednecks call those people rednecks. I learned that Houston loves a good bookstore more than Orange County, and young Houstonians like pot every bit as much as their counterparts in Oregon.

I learnedthat a judge is a very nice thing to be. I learned that immigrants still come from France and the Netherlands as well as India and Mexico. I learned you can major in animal science and still become governor of Texas.

I learned to love the songs of Robert Earl Keen and Kelly Joe Phelps. I learned that "King of the Hill" is reality TV. I learned there still exists in spirit, such a thing as the "Republic of Texas".

Elsewhere in the blog world

2004-06-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

I read far more than I write online, which isn't saying much. But the blogs I choose to read do say a great deal worth reading. Here are some of this week's sightings:

From 1982-1984, the White House spreads a new infection: the AIDS joke.

Thanks to Insomnia for bringing this callous, irresponsible behavior to my attention. I'm old enough to remember the atmosphere of permissive ignorance about AIDS and HIV, but too young to have recalled these comments firsthand. The 1980s seem to be a forgotten decade in terms of what really went down. Statements like those by Larry Speakes should wake Gen Y types to our recent history. We often take the tolerance and pluralism of the 1990s for granted.

Josh Marshall follows up on his observations about Republican attempts to denigrate the non-white vote. I discussed examples of this sorry behavior yesterday. Today, Marshall responds to the WSJ "Best of the Web's" attempt to pooh-pooh the significance of the racial voting gap. Marshall correctly notes that the WSJ site ignores the real question, "Why do blacks vote so disproportionately for Democrats?" It's not as if Republicans could win over half of the black vote. If they did, it would be the result of changing policies and attitudes, which might alienate a huge chunk of the Southern white vote (on which the modern Republican Party depends for its margins. Anyways, Josh Marshall says it better so read him!

Finally, a shout-out to Haggai's Place: Mr. Elitzur keeps tabs on both American and Israeli politics with similar detail and insight. I came across the blog of my fellow quiz-bowl alum last fall, in trying to find an old New Yorker piece on Wesley Clark.

One down, more to go...

2004-06-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't heard: Stephanie Herseth was elected to Congress in South Dakota. Herseth, a Democrat, defeated Republican Larry Dietrich by 3,000 votes in this statewide race. (South Dakota has only one seat in the House.) I'm impressed by her performance, considering that: 1) South Dakota went for Bush 60%-38% in 2000, 2)the Republican Party and Dietrich spent $2 million to win about 125,000 votes, or roughly $16 per vote, and 3) Herseth is just 33 years old.

Herseth's victory in South Dakota follows Democrat Ben Chandler's February election to Congress in Kentucky. Since both were special elections, they'll have to run again in November, albeit with the power of incumbency. South Dakota? Kentucky? It seems Democrats are showing some clout in these alleged "red states". Both Herseth and Chandler are familiar family names in their home states (like the Browns in California or Udalls in the Southwest), so their triumphs might be anomalous. On the other hand, it does show much politics is local. Gain trust and affection locally, and you can counter national party affiliation. At the same time, some folks will turn out largely due to disgust at Bush's policies. Call it a form of negative coattails.

Josh Marshall notes the Republican Party is full of excuses for their losses, suggesting that minority voters who provide the margin of victory aren't quite real Americans. Consider this statement by Congressman Davis, following the Republican defeat in South Dakota:

“If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), former chairman of the NRCC.

I'm not sure what his point is, or even what he thinks it is. Yeah, if you take out Arkansas, Gore would have won. But my example makes little sense, because Arkansas counts as much as any other state's six electoral votes. Are Republicans implying that folks on the rez shouldn't count as much as white voters? Maybe three-fifths, perhaps?

Herseth won the special election to the seat vacated by Bill Janklow, who resigned following his conviction for second-degree manslaughter. Janklow served 100 days in jail and was released in May.

On the side of angels: Reginald Zelnik

2004-06-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

Reggie Zelnik, professor of Russian history at Berkeley, died last month. He was 68. I found out a week ago, through the alumni grapevine. I knew he was respected and liked by colleagues and students. What I didn't expect is how widely he was recognized, not only for his scholarship, but also for his advocacy on behalf of the political and academic freedom of students. Both his historical work and his role in the Free Speech Movement is remembered, not just in Berkeley, but also in dailies from The New York Times to The Scotsman.

I was never his student, but I heard him give public speechs on two occasions. The second time was at my history graduation in 1997. As chair of the history department that year, he persuaded Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park and Bay Area resident, to give the commencement speech. Smith was one of Zelnik's favorite novelists, and a sign that his love of Russian culture was deep and abiding.

The first time was in 1996, when he delivered a eulogy for Mario Savio. I don't remember much about his I remember he quoted from the "little known" (his words) Russian political theorist, George Plekhanov. I forgot his words, but from time to time I would try to recall what they were, because they had made an impression on me eight years ago. Well, today is as good as any to actually look them up:

"A great man is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time."

I think the idea embodied here is a wonderful antidote to the culture, and cult, of celebrity. And from reading the obituary, it seems like Plekhanov's words describe Zelnik himself, much as it did his friend.

Professor Zelnik could have mined a narrow, comfortable path in academic life. But he recognized one could not divorce the life of the mind, from life in our world. And our world, our nation, began to experience painful yet necessary changes during the 1960s on many fronts. The most important front was the battle for racial equality.

During the summer of 1964, many students from Northern campuses went to Mississippi to register African-Americans to vote, open schools and community centers for its poorer citizens, and organize alternative to the white racist Mississippi Democratic Party. It was known as Freedom Summer.

Many students were beaten by local thugs and local police. Three Northern volunteers - Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman - were killed. Three local blacks were lynched. Thousands of people were allowed to vote for the first time in their lives. Students returned to school that fall, filled with a sharpened sense of racial injustice and a passionate commitment to protecting civil rights.

When students returned to Berkeley to organize, the administration attempted to prohibit them from advocating political causes. All summer they had organized for civil rights in Mississippi and encountered harsh resistance - and now they discovered resistance and denial of their own political rights on the Berkeley campus!

The rest, they say, is history. You can read the chronology to learn how events unfolded, how five thousand students staged a sit-in, how Savio stood on an abandoned police car and gave his famous speech:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

As a young faculty member, Reggie Zelnik was scarcely older than the students themselves. He understood what they were fighting for in Mississippi, and why they were fighting this battle against the University. He also understood the faculty and administration, and the political pressures upon the university president, Clark Kerr. (Kerr was persecuted by reactionary political forces and eventually fired in 1967 by then-governor Ronald Reagan.) A majority of the faculty eventually sided with the students, whose right to organize and advocate on campus were recognized. Some senior faculty had been persecuted under the Loyalty Oath cases of the early 50s. Due to FSM's victory, neither blanket infringment of academic and political freedom would ever repeat itself at Berkeley.

The consequences of the Free Speech Movement extended beyond college campuses, which one by one conceded to students their inalienable rights. It signified that political discourse had freed itself from straitjacket of the Cold War. The changes wrought by a bunch of ordinary, ideologically diverse professors and students, also helped broaden the scope of history as a discipline. Social historians began to discover peasant movements and worker revolts, and investigate their impact. In 2002, Zelnik himself co-edited The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, whose essays examine these perspectives. His own essay is entitled "On the Side of Angels", examines the role of faculty in supporting the students.

Anyone who reads this little essay of mine is probably literate, politically informed, and interested in the world around us. The question is, do we have the qualities which make us capable of serving the great social needs of our time? Do you possess the passion, imagination, and ethical outlook that demands nothing less than service in the interests of good, and refusal in the face of evil? That's a question only we can answer for ourselves.

Go with the angels, Professor Zelnik.

Ronald Reagan, revisited

2004-06-06T03:17:00.000-07:00

Ronald Reagan is dead. He became President when I was five, and left office when I was thirteen. During his second term, from 1985-1989, I had my first lessons in the politics of ecology, foreign policy, human rights, and economics. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, he utterly transformed American politics and the political language we now speak, for better or for worse.

The media blitz has already begun. Personally, I don't mind the amount of coverage. He was our President, and a historic figure on the world stage. I respect him for reversing course and transcending his conservatism on taxes and the Soviet Union. His eloquence and ability to comfort the American people, as during the Challenger tragedy, was real. But I mind the overwrought and often inaccurate manner with which every media outlet is tripping over themselves to out-eulogize Reagan, concluding that "he tore down the Berlin Wall and ended the Cold War."

Um, excuse me? I think the German people had a hand or two in the former, and Gorbachev and Eastern Europe did much to foment the latter. Those pro-peace and anti-nuke activists whom the Republicans love to hate? The ones who practice mass demonstrations and civil disobedience? They helped end the Cold War.

Last February, I wrote a column on this subject, Cold War and Peace, Revisited. I wanted to affirm the relationship between mass democracy and world-historical change, in light of the vast anti-war protests then sprouting around the world. I wasn't thinking about Reagan per se when I wrote the essay, but it's a healthy antidote to propaganda blitz we'll endure over the next week. I hope that he rests in peace, whomever we credit with restoring it, momentarily, to our troubled world.

Memorial Day thoughts on Pat Tillman

2004-05-31T03:24:00.000-07:00

Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Why did it take over a month for the Army to admit it?

"The results of this investigation in no way diminish the bravery and sacrifice displayed by Cpl. Tillman," said Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, who made the surprising announcement in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Vigorous, but irrelevant. I don't think anyone was questioning the bravery of Corporal Tillman, the former NFL starter who gave up celebrity and fortune to become a Ranger. He was brave and idealistic and his sacrifice was irrevocably real.

It's Army's conduct many people should and will question, both in creating a situation were super-skilled Rangers could kill each other with friendly fire, and their delay in revealing the true circumstances of a tragedy. Again. I won't even go into the policy ramifications of diverting priorities (not to mention earmarked millions) from Afghanistan to Iraq. I cringe when I read that line in Sports Illustrated, "Tillman, and the thin detail of Rangers and Afghani fighters in his patrol..."

Over the past five weeks, the U.S. military has received tremendous positive and free publicity, courtesy of the news and entertainment media, as well as the NFL. Don't the actual events leading to Tillman's death demand the opposite - that the military deserves blame? And wouldn't our military have the ethical burden not to benefit from a tragedy it caused, by coming clean as soon as possible?

Or perhaps we should file military ethics under "O", along with military intelligence. Americans, civilian and uniformed alike, deserve better.

An unjust cause and the trigger effect

2004-05-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

"Theophrastus, in his comparison of bad acts - such a comparison as one would make in accordance with the common notions of mankind - says, like a true philosopher, that the offenses which are committed through desire are more blamable than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered with pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate in his offences. Rightly then, and in a way worthy of philosophy, he said that the offense which is committed with pleasure is more blamable than that which is committed with pain; and on the whole the one is more like a person who has been first wronged and through pain is compelled to be angry; but the other is moved by his own impulse to do wrong, being carried toward doing something by desire."

- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

So many words, intelligent and otherwise, are being written about the torture of prisoners in Iraq. Likewise regarding the execution of Nicholas Berg. I have only the following to say: The second evil does not mitigate the first. On the contrary, the second evil must be added to the evil of the first. Keep in mind that:

1) Had we not tortured the prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Nick Berg would still be alive.

2) Had we shared peacemaking and governing duties with the United Nations, Nick Berg would still be alive.

3) Executioner Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is not Iraqi. He was born in Jordan. The Iraqis are innocent people in both situations. Their conduct is not in question.

But here are some questions.

What kind of people are we, and to what depths will we go to achieve our ends? Are we a nation of laws, or not? Do we resolve disputes like civilized people, or not? These questions are doubly important since the powers that be have framed the Iraq War and "war on terror" in terms the superiority of our ideas and culture. If our ideology is what we say it is (Enlightenment, democracy, pluralism, marketplace of ideas) then neither war nor peace can be won by force. But they can be lost through cruelty.

A city upon a hill

2004-05-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

"...for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us..." - John Winthrop, 1630

On Wednesday, I got to hear George Mitchell discuss "America's Role in the World" at UCI. It's a welcome topic, as the people actually leading America today have so few intelligent, or even intelligible, things to say about it.

Mitchell is a former Senate majority leader and chair of the successful peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. So he's a natural authority on the subject of America's role in the world, the substance of which I have roughly transcribed below. During his lecture, he struck me as a kinder and gentler Winthrop, the Puritan who led the Massachusetts Bay Colony with a visionary but iron hand. Mitchell believes America is the best and greatest, but he also recognizes that being a great nation has nothing to do with being a great power. We are a great power, but power should serve our ideals, always.

If people around the world perceive that our greatness is merely the result of our power, and if our power serves interests counter to our ideals, then we're in trouble and we will lose the world. As well we should. He didn't go so far as to draw that conclusion, but maybe that's the optimist in him. Or the pessimist in me.

Over 100 Americans, and many more Iraqis, have died since I last wrote. That makes me so sad. Perhaps, if enough people keep speaking out...

"America's Role in the World" by George J. Mitchell

Most nations aspire to what we call American values:the primacy of individual liberty, equal justice under law, and opportunity for each member of society. However, our policies are opposed by many: specific actions against others, indifference to their plight, and resentment at our place in the world.

I have visited every country in Europe. I asked every European leader that I met with: now that the Soviet Union doesn’t exist, and Russia has withdrawn to its national borders, what should be America's place in their country? They want American forces on their soil. Why? Most want to be on the side of the strong. Power is perceived to be the exclusive basis of American authority. Power is essential for many reasons. But power must serve our ideals.

The United States was a great nation long before it was a great military and economic power. Its greatness began with the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights - the most eloquent and concise document of individual liberty in the world.

People expect our actions to match our stated ideals. There is a widespread perception that this is not true. Regarding war, peace, and terror, we need friends, allies, and international support. Throughout history, the dominant power has overextended itself. Power is most effective when used sparingly and with restraint, but when used, decisively. No challenge is more daunting than terrorism and the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East.

[Mitchell summarized his work on the Northern Ireland Commission, which he chaired.] Three objectives: ending violence, halt the destruction, and return to meaningful negotiations. Commission offered to continue services. Disappointed when this administration did not show interest. Report incorporated into the “Roadmap”. Disappointment when the current administration did not implement their “Roadmap”. We must keep trying until there is peace.

The Palestinians must end incitement of violence, and prosecute those who commit terrorism. The Israelis must order the return of military to their borders, and freeze settlements. But they harbor a “double fantasy” - some Palestinians and many in the Arab world want the removal of the Israeli state. Some Israelis, including some in cabinet, want the physical removal of Palestinian people -every man, woman, and child. The Israelis have a state, need security. Palestinians want a state, that is viable and geographically contiguous.

Violence. Palestinian violence is reprehensible, unacceptable, and politically counterproductive. Nonviolence. There must be available to Palestinians a nonviolent path to their political goals - a state - which a majority on both sides still support. The culture of peace has been totally destroyed over the past few years. Mutual mistrust is total. A majority of Palestinians support the terrorists. A majority of Israelis support “whatever” force.

From my experience in Northern Ireland: there is no such thing as a conflict that cannot be ended.

Iraq. The borders of Iraq were drawn by the British after World War I. A British civil servant drew the lines on a map that created Iraq and Jordan. They were concerned with their immediate political situation, not the history of the region or the desires of its people. They created a territory that never existed before - with the Kurdish in the north, and Sunnis in the South. This land had been separate regions in the Ottoman Empire for 400 years.

The military plan was well planned and executed. The political phase was not. Failing to act as leader of broad international coalition was “so unwise” and so shortsighted. Bush now recognizes that error, and is practically begging the UN to share political responsibility over Iraq. The total disarmament of the Iraq security forces was also unwise. Transfer of limited power will be important, they (Iraqis) must be able to choose for themselves. That’s what self-determination means.

The war on terror cannot be waged solely by military means. This war also requires effective intelligence, coordinated police work, and checks by financial institutions - all of which require international cooperation. George Bush gave a great speech after September 11. When he announced the first arrests, he named the seven cities where they occurred - Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, etc - only one was in the U.S.

Is World Peace An Impossible Dream? A college student once asked. If by "world peace" one means a complete absence of conflict between and within nations, then yes. World population from 1 AD to 1800 AD increased by 1 billion. Since then has increased by 5 billion. Consequently, more struggle for land, water, natural resources, power. Technology of killing has increased brutality of war. And war drives technology more than anything else. Today's technology allows fewer people, with less skill and resources, to kill more people than ever.

Yet, more freedom, more knowledge, more prosperity, can be the world's future. For example, the Constitution: its authors were constrained by their society and time. They allowed the vote only to adult white men who owned property. Compare to this moment. To expand the definition of what freedom means (i.e., to whom it applies). A dominant power can use its authority to end war, famine, injustice. That is our destiny.

A final anecdote: as a federal judge, my favorite task was to preside over the naturalization ceremony for immigrants, and making them American. My mother was an immigrant, she didn't speak English when she came. My father was the orphan son of immigrants. They were poor, but here they were able to give their children the education they never had. My family's experience reflects the openness of American society. After the ceremony, I would talk with the new citizens, asked them what they thought. Favorite quote, from one Asian man, who said in halting English: here in America, everybody has a chance.

Notes on a Spanish tragedy

2004-03-17T04:25:00.000-08:00

200 people have died in the attack on commuter trains in Madrid last Thursday. Over 1400 were wounded. Before we delve into politics, let's think about what those numbers mean.

Spain has a population of 40 million. The United States is home to over 290 million, or over seven Americans for every Spaniard.

To appreciate the impact of these attacks, on the people who lost loved ones, or know others who did, multiply the dead and wouned by seven or eight... This tragedy for Spain approaches what 9/11 meant for us. Let's respect that. And however you feel, let's respect the decisions the Spanish people have made, just as we asked the world in our time of grief and outrage.

Now, back to the news. This update is about a day and a half late. Job hunting and resume sending tends to interfere with this enterprise. It was on Monday afternoon, while I sat in the car near a downtown Santa Ana law office, that I heard the election results on NPR:

Reiterating a campaign promise, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the leader of Spain's Socialist Party and new prime minister-elect, pledges to pull his country's 1,300 troops out of Iraq if the United Nations does not take control by June 30.

Zapatero's Socialists won an upset victory in Spain's general elections Sunday. Turning out in unexpectedly high numbers, Spaniards voted to remove Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's ruling party from power. Analysts say the results reflect anger over last week's deadly terrorist attacks in Madrid, which many blame on Aznar's support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The voter backlash was also fueled by the widespread perception that Aznar's government had tried to exploit the attacks for political gain by blaming the Basque separatist group ETA. On the eve of the vote, a groundswell of anger and demands for full disclosure forced Aznar's government to reveal the arrests of three Moroccans and two Indians.

Earlier, the NY Times reported that President Bush called to congraulate the new prime minister, and "reiterated our solidarity with the Spanish people."

Reiterate? How do you reiterate something that you didn't, um, iterate?? 80 to 90 percent of Spain OPPOSED sending their troops to Iraq. Bush NEVER expressed solidarity with the Spanish people. I guess unilateralism means never having to say you're in solidarity...

With Spain's strong economy, Aznar and his party seemed headed to victory a week ago, despite widespread dislike for his arrogant, authoritarian manner. His arrogance led him to drag Spain into Bush's War - the war on Iraq, not the war on terror. That drew his country into the terrorist line of fire. Aznar could have shown the courage of the soldiers he sent and simply faced the music. He should have said: yes, it was al-Qaeda, they're targeting us now, but let's stand together. Instead, Aznar chose to exploit a national tragedy for political gain by blaming Basque separatists, a tactic which outraged most of the independent voters. His government cried "ETA!", while they CONCEALED the fact that they were arresting members of al-Qaeda! It even ordered the state-owned TV station to avoid covering the widespread protests against the ruling party, and aired a documentary on ETA instead. The party founded and led by Franco supporters was now raising his spectre. So the voters punished them, and now Spain is finally heeding the will of its people. This election was not a blow to democracy. It was a blow to authoritarianism.

Hmm. Arrogance. Lying. Exploiting a national tragedy to punish domestic enemies. Does Aznar remind you of anyone? Anyone?

Blair had his "sexed-up" dossier, Bush had Niger and the missing WMDs, and now Aznar has had his comeuppance. A few months ago, a very smart friend of mine asked me: What was wrong in deposing a bad man like Hussein? The answer, I think, lies in the corruption of our own character. The more dangerous we make our enemies to be, the more desperate we become, and the more willing we are to bend the rules and violate our principles. And those who rise to power in times of paranoia are the least scrupulous kind of people. Democracies may or may not be able to force change in other regimes. And reasonable people may disagree on whether we ought to do so. But we should always adhere to our professed values, because the legimitmacy of all our actions, at home and abroad, depend on it.

What makes this turn of events absurd is, after anthrax and Saddam, the chickenhawks finally can tie something evil to al-Qaeda and not have to lie about it...and they lie about it! Maybe the title to Al Franken's book wasn't overkill after all.

Finally, let's be clear on one thing. There was no cowering, no retreating from al-Qaeda here. While Spain's involvement in Iraq may have led to the attacks, the attacks themselves did not drive voters into the arms of the Socialists. Anyone who conscientiously followed the news from day to day saw that the government's response - which avoided taking on the real terrorists - angered the public which saw it, correctly or otherwise, as duplicitous and appallingly cynical. Just read the NPR report, or better yet, listen to the audio, especially the comments by the Christian Science Monitor journalist. While writing tonight, I haven't heard any other analysis. But I am now looking up what Josh Marshall has been saying - basically, the same thing. Only he does it all in a few sentences.

Of course, I am hardly clairvoyant and often, not even timely. I know a few things about contemporary Spain, but I certainly am not an expert. What lent me a modicum of insight was my experience as an American over the past two and a half years, as a witness to our government's willingness - nay, eagerness - to demonize anti-war protestors, critics of globalization, environmental groups, skeptical nations, even the teacher's union, with words like "terrorist" or "traitor". Such loose talk can trivialize the real demons, the unequivocal terrorism that truly threatens the free world. And it makes those in any potential coalition a little less willing to follow where America wants to lead.

So many words unspoken

2004-03-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

When she quietly entered through the curtain last night, after two bands and almost two hours, almost no one in the crowd noticed. My sister asked, "Is that her?" Low slung jeans, bright ski cap, a cherubic face in the shadows. It was Mary Lou Lord, alright.

Seven years had gone by since my college girlfriend introduced me to her music. Ironically, we had broken up by then. But the chemistry of our musical tastes continued. Back in college, I was into "classic" rock, and then folk. During 1995 & 1996 I was listening to a lot of Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Zeppelin, Neil Young, as well as newer folks like Pete Droge and Sarah McLachlan. Rachel was into "indie" rock, 10,000 Maniacs, Guided by Voices, Helium, the Cranes, Mazzy Star, Lemonheads, and later Belle and Sebastian and Sleater-Kinney. Our musical worlds were not far apart, and in effect doubled through playing each other CDs and later, sending mix tapes.

So along comes this Boston-based singer who hung out in Seattle with Kurt Cobain, a folkie girl on Kill Rock Stars with a punk ethic. Which is pretty much the folk ethic - authentic, anti-materialist, do it yourself, independent, keep it simple stupid. Her first song I ever heard was "Some Jingle Jangle Morning":

"Song about a sunbeam, song about a girl
Her voice still rings and echoes in my mind
So many words unspoken, so many worlds apart
Your memory is all you left behind..."

I saw her twice in 1998, in San Francisco. The first time, she opened for Whiskeytown. The other time, the Raging Teens and Slim Dunlap from the Replacements opened for her. She covered Dylan, she covered Pete Droge, I never heard someone of such impeccable musical taste. For a singer, she was also 100% fan, and a huge fan and friend of Elliott Smith. That was the night of the Academy Awards, and Elliott performed "Miss Misery" from Good Will Hunting in front of half of America. That was 1998.

And now it's 2004. Elliott Smith is dead. Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams is the biggest and most brilliant thing in alt-country, big enough to spawn a backlash. One of the girls in opening act Sister South (think acoustic and pretty Dixie Chicks) wore a T-shirt that said, "Ryan Adams Sucks". I later found out that Ryan Adams himself puts out the shirts. Talk about beyond irony.

And Mary Lou Lord? Rehab, motherhood, still busking on the street... She just keeps on trucking, neither burning out nor fading away.

When she came out, I hoped that six years ago would tessllate into yesterday. Instead, I felt the full weight of six years had passed, a lot of water under the bridge. My interest in music waned and has recovered just recently. Other things took priority: teaching, law school, the real world. I only heard about the concert through Vicky, whom I had introduced to the novelty hit "His Indie World":

"I don't think I fit in to his indie world,
Guided by Voices and Velocity Girl
Eric's Trip and Rocketship, Rancid, Rocket From the Crypt
Bikini Kill and Built to Spill, it's plain to see that I don't fit..."

I remember the weirdly compelling music wafting from the dorms of my fellow frosh: Alice in Chains, Suede, Primus, Jane's Addiction. The same folks later tuned into Matchbox 20 and Asian pop. We like to yak about musicial integrity. What about the listener's musical integrity?

So many words unspoken, so many worlds apart... It's not just her tuneful ear, or her intimate voice, or the life she's chosen - a life dedicated to music - not just her music, but the music of the troubadour giants on whose shoulders she sings.

It's the noisy six-year silence to which I can relate only too well. I like to read more than I like to write. I'm also better at the former. The components that make me a writer (appreciation of language, respect for insight, a love of words) make me a bigger fan. When I read Jonathon Kozol's first-hand account of inner-city schools, Louise Gluck's poem on friendship between a believer and an unbeliever, or Natalia Ginzburg's meditation on real virtues, I want to give a shout out to their vision. But I also lose the desire to share mine with its similar but duller perspective.

One way to clear my inferiority complex would be not to read anything by professional writers. Ignorance is bliss, right? Because poor writing or thinking agitates me as much as its superior counterpart leaves me in thrall. I get depressed when I read Michael Kinsley claim in Time that "Greed is good" for the economy (then why aren't people investing in WorldCom or Martha Stewart Omnimedia?) or NPR's Rob Gifford compare Roh Moo-hyun and Chun Doo-hwan as if they were fellow presidents tainted by similar scandals (Roh violated a parliamentary technicality, while Chun overthrew the government and imprisoned his political opponents). Actually it's the inability to respond with equal measure. People who think their weblogs are doing something are fooling themselves. But if you write or shout or sing out of love, or hate, or a need to purge your soul, then yeah, bring it on.

Mary Lou Lord @ Club Spaceland, March 13, 2004

First impressions: I thought she seemed a bit nervous and/or tipsy. Or maybe just plain tired. (Turns out she and the band Gingersol have been playing every day for nineteen consecutive days! I didn't know.) She told the crowd she has spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder she described as writer's cramp for the voice. She apologized for her condition. So the first few songs - Western Union Desperate, His N.D. World (the Americana version, and a request on her second song), He'd Be A Diamond - she sang the low notes instead of the high ones. Sometime she sprechstimme-d in a sweet growl - think Renee Zellweger. More than once she remarked, "I’m getting too old for this shit..."

And then she shut out her worries, the chatty El Lay barflies, the cheapo guitar, and let her music take over her voice.

It started to happen with a cover of "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", by the great Richard Thompson. Her voice was still clipped but she never faltered in singing of a love between a British gangster, a girl, and the title motorcyle. The intricate melody drew me to notice her proficient guitar-playing too.

After ten or so songs, she brought on the previous band, Gingersol, to back her electric set. She sang "Stars Burn Out" (dedicated no doubt to her friend-muses Kurt, Elliott, et al), 43, and then "Aim Low". Despite the tricky sound system and the drowning power of her band, the indie soul of her last great song (2000) shone brightly. It's like Mount Kilimanjaro, a musical peak standing by itself. Why not more? Maybe it's as the song says: "You can't lose if you don't take part." Sigh.

Despite making the "Real Life Rock Top 10" (with a bullet!) of Greil Marcus, the art critic and fellow alum (class of '63 I think), I can 't find the full lyrics anywhere on the web. I found the line above on a Brazilian's blog, listed as her "Frase do momento" for February 23rd. That day, she was listening to "Aim Low", had just watched "Peixe Grande" ("Fish Great" says the universal translator), and ate Sesame Chicken. Sounds like an American girl to me.

Speaking of American girls, the song reminds me of a few:

"I never asked you if you'd like to go dancing
It saved hearing that you might decline
I never told you that I wanted to be with you
I aimed low when you walked on by."

She followed with "Lights Are Changing", which like the previous three, were written by or co-written with Nick Saloman of the famously obscure Bevis Frond. As an interpreter, she is always confident and loose. The opening chords are familiar, she quipped, and sang "I was born in a small town". Then she repeated it to the tune of "There she goes", before starting the song in earnest. The band was sharp, especially drummer John Florance, whose mighty drum rolls even caused the band once to turn their heads.

The only full-band song she sang of her own was "Some Jingle Jangle Morning". But she has made the others her own, while ironically, her song alludes to Nirvana, Guns and Roses, and Bob Dylan (and their songs that allude to drugs). Nonetheless, the lyrics are intensely personal and defy easy interpretation. For me it conveys a feeling of love and realization of loss - realizing a part of your life is irretrievably gone. It may be an old lover, or the Northwest scene, or the person you were way back when. I can identify with the song now in ways unknown when I first heard it.

Lord went solo acoustic again, and played "Sayonara" which I had never heard before. She followed with "I Figured You Out", "Camden Town Rain" and "Birthday Boy" - probably the three songs of hers I listen to most. Elliott Smith wrote "I Figured You Out", but never recorded it - he once said at a concert that "I thought it sounded like the Eagles and I thought it sucked. So here, check it out, see what you think." As she finished, she added, "And no, it doesn't sound like the Eagles."

By the latter two songs, I noticed she had regained her range, probably during the electric set. Her voice soared without losing a whisper of intimacy. Along with "Some Jingle Jangle Morning, "Camden Town Rain" is among the finest songs she has written. They also place the bulk of her most memorable work in the early 1990s. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that. Right, Pearl Jam?

I wonder if the handful of fans who she recognized had followed her for a decade. They were slightly older than me, so it's possible. She even dedicated "Birthday Boy" to Daniel, by personalizing four familiar lines.

Before we left Club Spaceland, I stopped to say hi. I heard her say to a fan that her new album was "pretty good" with a half-satisfied look on her face. I told her I'd last seen her in SF, at Bottom of the Hill. It was Academy Awards night. Rachel came out to see you. "Oh, Rachel," she said. Yes, she remembered the show. She had somebody tell her when Elliott would be performing on TV.

She is only a troubadour, soul sister of Dylan, before Dylan changed the rules, and she has survived the angst. Look: she has just walked onto the plaform, smiling at the subway riders, strumming a guitar. She's got the heart to back it up.

The square within a square

2004-02-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, I drove my trusty 1984 Honda Accord to Heritage Plaza, about a mile away in North Irvine. One of the better malls around town, Heritage is probably the largest in Irvine. Yet it sports a rather low-key, beige-colored, wood frame appearance. Nothing too kitschy or loud. The look hasn't changed much over the past two decades, though of course stores come and go. On the main "strip" is Ralph's, Savon Drugs, ACE Hardware, and Lamppost Pizza, plus a variety of stationary and jewelry stores, hair salons, and small restaurants. Jutting out at the strip's end is a complex of offices, doctors, chiropractors, and such. North of the main strip is a smaller quad which in the past decade has filled with the ethnic stores. I had lunch at Wendy's, withdrew some cash from BofA, got a haircut from one of the many salons, picked up contact solution at Savon Drugs, bought two inner tubes at Jax Bicycle, and a few grocery items at Super Irvine.

Super Irvine is the Persian market in the "ethnic" square, or maybe I should say Persian square. Five of the stores now bear Arabic script, while Chinese and Korean appear on three others. The largest building houses the Caspian restaurant. In the mid-1980s it held Pavilion, then Irvine's only Chinese restaurant. I remember the waiter brought our rice in individual bowls. How weird, I thought! Anyways, the Chinese businesses have moved on to other squares. But I shop at Super Irvine sometimes, because it's close, they have good pita bread, and I can honor the Southern California grocery workers strike.

The current issue Food and Wine had some neat Mediterranean recipes, and I wanted to make Citrus-Scented Lamb Stew, a Feta, Tomato, and Red Onion Salad, and perhaps some Spinach Pastries. Not only does Super Irvine have lamb but it's also hahal. That means the animal is slaughtered by a believer who recites the Muslim prayer, and the meat is kept free of contamination from "other" products, and the process is certified by a religious authority. Of course, certain meat products are always haram (not halal), like pork or blood - as with kosher laws.

I bought some lamb shoulder, carrots, an onion, ground cinnamon, bread, dried pineapple, and pomegranate juice. I forgot the feta cheese, which I'll pick up this afternoon. Vicky's coming back from LA today, so it's a good day to get back in the spirit of cooking.

The square within a square exudes a welcome atmosphere. Most folks seem quite secular and stylish (in a 80s sort of way). After all, my Persian neighbors were fleeing a theocracy when they came here. And the few headscarves mixed with bottle blondes speaks of cultural pluralism. Like Chinese Americans, they've become part of the natural fabric of far suburbia: engineers and doctors, soccer and science fairs, lawns and nice sedans. Irvine's "live and let live" lifestyle fits natives and immigrants just fine. language schools for the kids, cultural festivals for the families, and sports competitions for the teens.

So I was surprised to read that controversy erupted just a stone's throw from my house, all because of a soccer tournament thrown by the Muslim Football League in Irvine. Some players selected team names like "Mujahedeen" and "Intifadas". Last month's news, but the League continues to organize tournaments.

You wonder if these critics are the same people who laugh when Native American groups complain about the Washington Redskins or Cleveland Indians. Is warrior imagery fine if "we" exploit a racial minority, but not if members of the minority promote their identity?

After the brouhaha, the teams who had chosen politically-charged names changed them, except for the "Intifadas", a word that has a broader meaning than the one most Americans know. That seemed to satisfy the protestors, except for a middle-aged blond woman waving an American flag. I saw her picture in the January 5th Orange County Register. Her name was Shelley Rubin. She was the wife of a terrorist.

Of course, the Register failed to note this little detail. They just described her as the widow of Irv Rubin.
Rubin was arrested two years ago for plotting to bomb a mosque in Culver City, as well as the office of Congressman Darrell Issa. Issa, a Republican best known for launching the recall election, is of Lebanese descent. While awaiting trial on the charges of conspiracy and terrorism, Rubin committed suicide in jail. Last week, his associate Earl Krugel pleaded guilty to the charges.

Make no mistake, Irv Rubin was an American terrorist. For Shelley Rubin to protest the football tournament while waving an American flag is the epitome of chutzpah. But it's her right to wrap herself in the red white and blue, because free expression - especially political expression - is what our country stands for. Too bad Shelley Rubin doesn't understand that free expression is not hers alone.

2004-02-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

I woke up today to find that "The future's Orange County". Heralding this prediction was no self-promoting local rag whose name I won't mention, but rather the Guardian UK. Nearly three million people, yet no public hospitals or law schools to serve them. Billions on toll roads, not one cent for affordable housing. Countless gated "neighborhoods", but no downtown. Yes, if privatization, segregation, and alienation figure in our national destiny, then OC is the future.

But fortunately, the Guardian was not talking about OC, but "The OC", a show about which I have many good things to say. Is the drama flamboyant and hyperbolic? Sure. But if only the exaggerations are true, as Adorno once said of psychoanalysis, then much rings true about the OC. Especially the greed, insecurity, insincerity, hypocrisy - well I could go on. And I will.

But there's a lot behind the "Orange Curtain" to incite those sins. Beauty. Wealth. Sunshine. Space. Promise. My family moved here almost 28 years ago, and it's been the landscape for our American Dream. I've seen it change too much not to miss what "progress" and "planning" have destroyed, and not to cherish what is still left, and not to praise what it still could be. For better or worse, Orange County is my community. It does not belong to the John Birch Society, or Donald Bren, or the despotic homeowner's associations, or to the ironically named freedom.com. They don't own it, as long as we tell our experience and share our vision of how things ought to be.

OC belongs to all of us - to strive, to speak, to fight, and to resist.