Politics

Good commentary on the use of “fascism” and “theocracy” as scare words since the election. I didn’t like the outcome much myself, but I’ve been surprised by how fragile folks seem to think our Republic is. America as we know it will change — it always is changing — and perhaps become something we cannot stand, but I personally doubt we’ve reached a point where drastic change can come in with a bang, rather than sneaking slowly past with a whimper. ...

Wow…uh…just wow. Don’t even know the words to write about it, particulary given the whole Bloomberg/Giuliani thing. Update: “Particulary,” there’s a new word. :) Courtesy of The New York Times (free registration required)

Everyone but you, Mr. Keyes, everyone but you… Keyes Blames Media, GOP for Loss in Ill. - Yahoo! News BTW, did 1.3 million people really vote for him because they were all single-issue pro-life, or did folks just not pay attention to the race? And if they weren’t paying attention to a race that involved a sex scandal involving Jack Ryan, the first candidate, and Jeri Ryan, his actress ex-wife and Borg-turned-school-teacher; Mike Ditka; and the sheer entertainment of Alan Keyes, what would get people to pay attention to it? ...

It’s interesting, in so many of the election post-mortems, how it is blithely assumed that part of the country has grown more conservative, more separated from the Enlightened parts. (Check out the RSS feed from the New York Times referenced here.) Very strange, given just how liberal the U.S. would look today to visitors from times only decades in the past. I’m from North Carolina, a Red state with Blue cities. I was born in the rural Red part, and I remember something about the state where I grew up and still live. No matter where what political color you were, what mattered in such important factors as where you went to school — just back three decades ago — was the color of your skin. (That’s still true in a lot of ways, thanks to neighborhood schools, magnets, school transfers, white flight, and a million other reasons, but it isn’t explicitly a legal matter anymore.) ...

Senator-elect Barack Obama, then a State Senator in Illinois, addresses the Democratic National Convention with a speech that would resonate with Americans no matter what party had hosted it: On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant. ...

sigh…

Oh, good. Our administration has protected Iraq, and by extension the world, from the danger of a small Islamic peacekeeping force under the command of the UN. I’m sure our troops are grateful to our government for saving them from a slightly increased likelihood for peace, free elections, and UN involvement. Yep, busy with such problems as this, it is no wonder the administration’s thought capacity has become so dangerously overextended. ...

Ron Suskind writes in The New York Times Magazine about Bush’s “faith-based” presidency. While the article runs on the anti-Bush side — Suskind isn’t coy about what he thinks of “Bush’s faith” vs. the world of reason and picks and chooses the worst quotes, as most folks do when they are trying to prove a point — it brings up an interesting point: Is faith without doubt good for a fallible human being? Even — or perhaps especially — as a person who respects faith as much as I do, and who has and probably always will be a Baptist at heart, the idea of having certainty that your words are the voice of God bothers me a great deal. ...

You know, I can only laud the fact that Saddam Hussein is out of power, but for President Bush to say over and over again that the world is safer now that has happened is to ignore events such as the removal of Iraq’s nuclear weapons research facilities by parties unknown, while we’re nominally in charge.

BUSH: Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we’re worried about Osama bin Laden. We’re on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We’re using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden. George W. Bush, Third Presidential Debate, October 13, 2004 Hit the Wayback Machine… Q “But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?” ...