2/28/2004 The Draft is coming. Probably.

There may be a draft coming. We need bodies in the military and not so surprisingly people don’t seem to be particularly keen to get sent half way around the world to clean up a mess that shouldn’t have even have happened and possibly get killed for the trouble. The fact that Halliburton is making money hand over fist doesn’t seem to be boosting troop morale or enlistment levels. My left leaning colleagues seem to think the draft is only a threat if Bush remains President. I disagree. I think it’s a bigger threat under Bush than under Kerry/Edwards but the threat is very real no matter who the President is. According to the Guardian (and several other papers) there’s been an ongoing move to quietly replace the draft boards across the country. The website the government used to announce these hirings has since been pulled down. (Thankfully the people at the Memory Hole archived the page.) The question is why? Is it because there’s no problem with numbers of personnel? I doubt it when “Some 60,000 of the 130,000 US soldiers in Iraq are members of the National Guard or the reserves. An opinion poll last month in the Pentagon-funded Stars and Stripes newspaper, showed 49% threatening not to re-enlist.” And that poll was taken in November. It hasn’t exactly gotten better over there. The whole Guardian story about the draft boards is here. Then you add the little reported foregone conclusion that we are going to “incur” our forces into the mountains of Pakistan this Spring in a desperate pre-election push to get Osama’s head on a stick. What do you mean we’re invading Pakistan you ask? Well look here. It was a story like this that let me know we’d be invading Iraq last Feb/March in June of the 2002. We’re al;so going to eventually have to send at least some forces to Haiti. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow but there’s a place where we’re seriously dropping the ball… again. We’re gonna end up putting troops there but I think Bush’s “compassionate conservative” plan is for them to kill themselves off a bit first so that they’re ready to quit when we arrive. We’re gonna be in Afghanistan for a long time yet and we may be stuck in Iraq for “decades.” (See below) Not to mention North Korea, Iran, Syria, and probably Canada for being so goddamn nice all the time. We’re not through sticking our military noses into other country’s yet, and that sticking requires bodies. So if you want your kids to get killed for oil and corporate special interest; vote for Bush. The sad part is, if you vote for any Democrat other than Kucinich, you’re probably voting for the same thing, just in smaller doses. Don’t worry, it’s just a little cyanide. Don’t forget, Johnson was a Democrat and he didn’t exactly pull our forces out of Vietnam. And Kennedy, a Democrat, was the one to put them there in the first place. Clinton dropped his share of depleted uranium on people too. This “anyone but Bush” attitude that is clouding people’s judgment keeps them from looking clearly at Kerry, another Skull and Bones rich guy with the worst Democratic voting record of anyone running. The man voted for the Patriot Act. Anyone one either side of the aisle who signed that bill is a moron. This blindness is going to keep us in Iraq. It’s going to cause a draft. Poor kids are going to die. Not rich kids, not even a single one. That sucks.







2/27/04 Passion of the Christ and ban on suing gun manufacturers.

The Passion was a snuff movie. It wasn’t real, so it wasn’t technically a snuff movie, but ultimately it was watching a man get slowly tortured to death for 2 hours. ANY human being watching this movie is going to be moved. I mean they flay the guy for like 15 minutes. That’s hard to watch, period. This is where I think the film actually fails. The movie was meant to portray the unique suffering that Christ went through in order to hoover up the sins of humanity. But I honestly believe that you could’ve made the Jesus character a murderer and it wouldn’t change the impact of the film one iota. No one wants to see anyone treated in so barbaric a manner. As far as the anti-Semitic argument, no way. However, will it inspire those who are already prejudiced to feel more anger towards the Jewish people? I think that it definitely will. However, Mel Gibson is not responsible for the misinterpretations of the stupid people who watch his film. I mean, look how many Christians have killed in the name of Christ. I don’t blame him for that do I? Speaking of killing, it’s ridiculous that they have to ban people from suing gun manufacturers. For two main reasons. First, there are gun manufacturers who have a terrible record of supplying their wares to dealers they reasonably should no not to sell to, and building guns that simply have NO reasonable reason for existing. The automatic handguns, ceramic guns, and semi-automatic assault weapons come leaping to mind. Second, there are certain “features” that hand gun manufacturers like to add and advertise that make them complicit in the bad things people do with the guns. Features like fingerprint resistant gun handles and easy loading clips. I’m sorry, if you cannot protect your home with an 8-shot clip then you shouldn’t be allowed to have the thing in your house in the first place. Go away, take some shooting lessons, and then 8 should suffice. Guns are only for one thing, putting holes in stuff. Too often that stuff is people.





2/25/04 Iraq

Real quick, everyone in America should read about how long we’re really going to be in Iraq. Can anyone say “Decades?” Story Here. Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.







2/25/2004 Gay Marriage

What year is this? 1758? It’s so ridiculous that we are still having discussion about whether or not gay people can be in love that I almost feel it’s not worth commenting about.

Then his Shrubness decides he wants a Constitutional Amendment to BAN equal rights. It’s bad enough we haven’t passed the equal rights amendment. Now we’re going to try to pass the exact opposite? Where do these fucking idiots come from? If you don’t want gay marriage, don’t have one.

I am completely unable to understand how or why ANYONE would care who gets married. I mean Brittney gets married for three days, that’s fine. (It really is.) But two people who have been together for 20 years, unofficially because of a bigoted and ignorant public, they are an affront to the very idea of marriage? What kind of ignorant madness is that?

I worked in a hospital ICU for two years and the issue came up on occasion. Gay spouses had no legal rights the way a husband or wife do. Now Bushy wants to declare gay people “officially constitutionally sanctioned” second class citizens. Does no one remember the civil rights struggles? Aren’t there more than a few similarities here? This is the modern Klan and the guy with the pointiest hat is in the white house. Yet, I bet it will poll well in the Red states.

And so the public will be distracted from the real issues. The war in Iraq, the economy, the total takeover by corporate power, nary a word will be said.

Oh yeah, and one more thing about Kerry, he also voted for the Patriot Act. He’s an asshole.









2/24/2004 Ralph Nader



Ralph Nader.

Mixed feelings. On the one hand, Bush is the worst, most dangerous President we’ve ever had. On the other, John Kerry’s voting record demonstrates that once again the Dems have failed to produce an even quasi-decent candidate to run against what should be the biggest meatball the Repubs have ever run. It’s going to be Kush vs. Berry just like it was Bore vs. Gush.

Kerry’s got nothing. He voted for NAFTA, for the war, for the telecom act of 96, for permanent trade status for China, for the No Child left behind act. He sucks. He’s a millionaire Skull and Bones guy. He’s Bush without the Jesus Fish.

The media (of course) are saying Naer’s run is about ego. Bullshit. Nader has been consistent in his public life for several decades. His shtick, what Nader does, is to go after large consolidations of power. Now, I think it’s inarguably true that the Repubs and the Dems ultimately are getting paid by the same class, if not the same groups, of super rich people and multi-national corporations. This is the drum Nader is beating on. He’s saying, “Look, Clinton and his people sold the Democratic party down the river to big corporations so that they could remain competitive money-wise with the Republicans.” This was a mistake that must be rectified. Bottom line, he’s right.

If you don’t think so take the example of Dean. Kerry comes out of nowhere to get the Iowa fight, Dean makes an impassioned speech that shows that he actually WANTS to be the winner and the media crucifies him. (By the way Dean is NOT A LIBERAL OR A PROGRESSIVE by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.) The anger at Dean by the Dem hotshots was well known. They didn’t hate him for his positions, which were actually quite mild, but because of his funding techniques. Dean was a threat because he told the corporate controlled Dem National Committee to go stick a flagpole up their asses and used grassroots and the internet. Thus the ubiquitous “WHOOAAAH.” It was a character assassination, pure and simple.

This is the real battle Nader is ultimately fighting. He’s committing what he knows to be political suicide not because of ego, but because of a lack of ego. He’s trying to break the back of a monopoly so ever-present that 95% of people don’t realize it’s a monopoly. Most people seem to see the two parties as a very small Professional Political League where there’s only room for two teams. This serves the Dems and Repubs very well. It sucks for the rest of us. He wants to get 3rd parties into the debates, he wants better access for non-corporate candidates.

If you don’t think this matters check out Dennis Kucinich. He’s one of four candidates left and 90% of Democrats don’t even know who he is. Why? He’s not interested in corporate financing either. The guy would stomp Bush on the issues, he’s got a history of standing up and doing the right thing. Where’s that get him? Nowhere.

So Nader might end up being a spoiler for Kerry, causing Bush to win. This scares the hell out of me, but if it works, there’s a chance, slim as it may be, that the Dems will realize Nader isn’t going away until they loosen up a little bit and allow some Democracy back into the Corporate US political system. It may backfire. But it’s an honest fight, one that HAS to be won in the end if we want our advertised form of government to have any validity at all. So in the end, I guess I have to say, RUN RALPH RUN.