The "Why" Behind My Political Opinion

I can't deal with the concept of Congressional sly tactics and funding coercion deciding how well supplied my friends are in a combat zone.

I've got 3 guys who I consider my triumvirate. They've gotten me through a hell of a lot. One's at Camp Taji right now, 20 miles away from Baghdad, and I cried Sunday night. One's still in Tuscaloosa, but is pretty sure that Afghanistan, Iraq, some part of the Sandbox is in his future. Thank god the third has no interest in being in the military.

I want him to come home, and I don't want any more of my friends going over there. However, HOWEVER, for as long as I have someone I care about stuck in the fucking sandbox, I'm not going to handle well the idea of his funding being cut.

I came up with a pretty good analogy for it Sunday, when I was being emotional about it. It's like when my black cat Salem died and I knew it was a red pickup truck that hit her, so I had to restrain myself from getting out the Louisville Slugger and bashing in the windshields of every red pickup in the neighborhood.

More on the Congressional Brouhaha (sp?)

From the office of House Minority Leader Representative John Boehner (R-OH) via Jonah Goldberg at The Corner on NRO: Democrats to Change 185 Year-Old House Rule To Allow Tax Hikes Without Having to Vote

The Washington Post also has an article just about the failure of the Iraq bill: Senate Rejects Iraq Withdrawal Amendment (free registration required).

Now, once again while talking to Quin, he and I discussed the rumoured plans of the Democrats in Congress to attempt to rescind the Congressional approval for the war in Iraq. Let me break down how I think this could go procedurally.

1. Pelosi and the D's pass this measure to remove the minority's Motion to Recommit.
2. Pelosi and the D's manage to get the Congressional approval for the war rescinded.
3. Thanks to the removal of the Motion to Recommit, the R's cannot take the original bill to approve the war and recommit it to the House floor.

Sound about right? Gotta love procedural harlequin dances.

Pelosi Working to Reverse a Century of Congressional Procedure

So, Quin and I were talking about this the other day. Bush should've just signed the latest Iraq bill. That way, funding would still get allocated to the troops and he could just ignore the withdrawal date, as it was nonbinding anyway. It's not like it'd be some huge shocker that the Republicans are ignoring non-compulsory legislation.

That being said, the Democrats are in the wrong too because they're hurting the people who deserve it the least: the troops themselves. Whether we end up withdrawing soon or not, our soldiers deserve to be funded for as long as they're over there. They didn't choose to be in the Sandbox instead of here in America carrying on with the civilian portion of their lives. The security of their funds should not be an issue for partisan bickering. It should be something that EVERYONE can agree on, that the soldiers should have plenty of equipment for as long as they have to be over there. Funding for the war and participation IN the war should be considered as two completely separate issues, legislatively, economically, and politically.

Instead, the Senate rejected the Iraq bill, and now this shit has happened:

Pelosi Lowers the Boom, from the Drudge Report.

Basically, Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) wants to restrict the rights of the Minority party in Congress, changing House rules established in 1822.

Amusingly, Pelosi fought for GREATER rights of the Minority, y'know, when she was the Minority Leader!

Pelosi Seeks House Minority 'Bill of Rights'

I find politics interesting, and I have no idea why, since I'm such a goddamn misanthrope. Maybe it's sadistic glee.

So, I leave you these words from Uncle Lew:

"It's government, it's the fault of government!" It's not government! Republicans and Democrats talk about government like it's a BUILDING that's walking around DOING SHIT. Government... is other people! And people... have no common sense! We have common sense occasionally... it's like "oh! there it is!" and then it's GONE. - Lewis Black

US/Middle East Relations and Terrorism on the Home Front

Tonight, three of my friends were discussing the motive of terrorist groups in attacking the United States. One said "It wasn't right of them, but it is our fault."

I feel that one of the best ways to deter terrorism in the future is to try to understand their grievances to begin with. I'm pretty sure Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would agree. Now, there's a big difference between understanding their grievances and tolerating them. Looking at history and determining what policy decisions may have provoked the Islamic people to take up arms against the US or possibly how the US executed said policies should help us in the future to understand what both the aggressive and the passive nations of Islam would like to see in US/Islamic relations. We can then determine which of those desires we'd be interested in granting and which ones we'd prefer to tell them to stick in their collective ear. It's entirely possible, in my opinion, to accomplish this while still maintaining a hardline stance against certain Islamic states and conveying that there are some points we are entirely unwilling to negotiate, for instance our stance on some nations' decision to harbor terrorists.

I think events like September 11 occurred because we have a history of going into the Islamic world and pulling strings for as long as we need them, and then as soon as we no longer need those strings, cutting them off entirely without trying to tie up the loose ends. Early on, it was Imperialism and that's the fault of Great Britain, not us, but in the modern world they are our lapdogs. Thus, the Islamic world sees us as one in the same. In more recent history, we started out against the creation of Israel in the Palestinian state and quickly fell behind Great Britain and France in support. Now, we've supported them militarily so much that the Palestinians can't help but see us as a direct ally. To the Islamic world, we raped the Palestinians' religion. That's holy land and various landmarks have cultural and religious significance to the Palestinians, and those people, who have been natives of the area for much longer than the Israelis, can no longer access some of those monuments safely.

More directly related to Al Qaeda and Afghanistan, the United States supported the Taliban during the Cold War to empower the people to drive out Soviet occupation. Once the world changed and the Western vs. Soviet spheres of influence era ended, the US no longer had a reason to support Afghanistan. I can understand an end to military aid at that point but, similar to what has occurred in Iraq, there was no humanitarian gameplan. Afghanistan was destroyed by the battle with the Soviet Union and likely an economic shift to war time monetary policy and the US did nothing to correct that. Thus, give it a few years to fester into aggressive animosity, and you have Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

To conclude, I'm not trying to justify Al Qaeda. There's nothing right about driving planes into office buildings and killing a bunch of people, most of whose greatest tie to the Federal government is the paper clips they put on TPS reports. However, I think it's important for the progresssive future to take a look at the policies of the past, apply them to the post-Cold War world, and see what we can do to keep our iron fist clenched with regards to existing terrorist coalitions while preventing the creation of more enemies.

Social Darwinism Rocks! Thanks, Porn!

On March 17, Ron Jeremy came to our campus and debated the societal issues surrounding the adult film industry with a woman whose first name alludes me, so I'll just call her Ms. Cole. I posted the following paragraph on my LiveJournal entry about my St. Patrick's Day...

"Then we went to the Ron Jeremy vs. Some Femmenazi debate on the ethical issues surrounding pornography. I'm not really a porn watcher myself but my opinion on the matter is that if guys want to watch it, and girls for that matter, let them. By the time you're in college (which was the audience of the speakers), you've been exposed to it in some form whether you've walked in on your guy friends watching or you've received one of those annoying e-mails with the images embedded. We all know it exists and MOST people are mature enough to handle it. Also, you can't blame people's behaviour on pornography. Men are going to be pigs whether they have something to masturbate to or not. It's just a fact. By the way, I mean "men" in the general sense. I know a couple of upstanding male individuals, which brings me to my next point. We're all individuals. If an individual you're acquainted with has a negative outlook on women, it's not because he's gotten such a bad example from the adult media. If he's stupid enough to have that outlook, you should disenfranchise yourself from him."

I got three responses from friends. They attacked me because I called the anti-porn activist a "femmenazi."
Sorry, that's the first word that came to mind! Control of the media in favour of women! Sounds like
femmefascism to me....

And then they attacked me for not staying for the whole debate. Sorry, 10 minutes was PLENTY for me. In that 10 minutes I saw the female anti-porn activist bring up issues that really don't count in female domme pornography or gay porn where women are not an element. An acquaintance of mine voiced a question to the speakers about individual responsibility over society imitating media and I don't remember her having a very good response to it except to continue to say that in porn, a woman saying "no" really means "yes" and if a guy pushes harder, suddenly the woman's going to start to like it. My take on that is that if you make yourself into that kind of woman and associate yourself with men who will take advantage of you, that's not porn's fault.

I'm just so tired of people finding a scapegoat!
Don't blame mainstream media.
Don't blame porn.
TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

If you're a woman, and you stay in a hurtful relationship far longer than you should, you learn something and if you're smart, you don't make that mistake again.

If you're a woman, and you treat a man like shit because that's what pro-women media has told you to do, and he leaves you.... bitch had it coming.

If you're a man, and you treat a woman like shit, and she leaves you, maybe you shoulda wised up and treated her with respect.

If you look at the media and decide it's true that "nice guys finish last" and decide to be someone you're not to get a lady, when the facade drops and she leaves you because she sees who you really are, you're going to hurt a lot, and that'll teach you to follow what 80% of the populace thinks instead of 20% or perhaps that 7% category I fall into on the Myers-Briggs test.

And if you're part of that 7%, have decent grooming skills, some social normalities, and some things in common with me...here's my phone #.

I Hate.

I hate when people pretend to care about something because it gives them societal status. The "something" can be anything, but of course, when it hits close to home I care even more. Here in Alabama, the oldest theatre in Montgomery is having a gala this Saturday. At these sorts of things, the money of Montgomery comes out of the woodwork and gets drunk together with some movie showing. This year, it's "Some Like it Hot." I really don't care how some like it because I'm betting these people aren't at the Capri for any other movie that shows. Now, I'm not an independent movie fanatic. However, the Capri gives me Japanese anime movies I want to see from time to time, like "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away," movies no normal theatre would show in Alabama. They also show historical movies from time to time that I enjoy, that probably wouldn't get any screen time if it weren't for the Capri.

Now, you might wonder why I'm complaining about this in a politically angled journal. I'm getting to the point, I promise. I also hate when people back a political party blindly. I don't like this concept that if your parents vote a certain way, you're going to go mindlessly into the polls and vote the same way they do. I won't vote in an election unless I am certain that I've examined the race and I know who I want to put my 2 cents toward. It just doesn't feel right. So, 2004 is coming up, and just like every other year, we're going to have a lot of people voting for whoever they know, or whoever they heard the most about on the news, or whoever represents the political party their family's been backing for generations.

And we're going to have the people voting who don't know where Iraq is. I love that. I really frikkin do. Last year, I was on the city bus going to campus when I went to Ohio State University. There were protesters on the street corners practically blocking the street with signs against the U.S. going to war in Iraq. I had my headphones on, rockin out to some Metallica, but I did hear a woman sitting in front of me ask what they were protesting about. I said, "Oh, they don't agree that the US should be considering military action in Iraq." The woman looked as if she'd gained some clarity on the issue, and then she opened her mouth. "So, what country is Iraq in?" *facepalms* I give up. I really frikkin do.

Okay, I'm done complaining. On to other news.

Denial of Service takes on a whole new meaning...

Saw this today while perusing CNN. To give you a brief summary, Bill Gates has decided to help Toronto police crack down on child pornography by developing software to make it easier on law enforcement to detect the dissemination of such material. Does it really matter? It's Microsoft! It's gonna crash! Think about it. It's trying to detect pornography on the internet. No software's strong enough to deal with that much data input.

China does a bang-up job of hiding its space base.

From itself! China apparently did such a good job of keeping its aeronautics base a secret that they couldn't find it! Too bad it wasn't an embassy. We'd have found it first.

When Animals Attack!

That tiger didn't mean to maul Roy during an act with Siegfried at the Mirage in Las Vegas. But those bears? They're hardcore. Need a more docile animal, accepting of human lifestyles? Australia has 50,000.

Ah yes, the news is funny. It could be worse. It could be local news: The Ten Commandments with a side order of Biscuits and draft beer.

LawNerd Alert! I'm spastic...

I... wow. The words. Trying to find the words...

Okay, here we go.

So, I'm looking up topics to use for an international law simulation I'm directing this Spring at Auburn University. I start searching on Google and I hit an article entitled "International Law and the Preemptive Use of Military Force." I skip past the cover page before it loads and go on to the meat of the article. I notice in the header of one of the pages that the author is Dr. Anthony Arend from Georgetown University!

Okay, let me put this in perspective for you guys. If I had to have a hero... it'd probably be this guy. He speaks for the international law committees when we go to the National Collegiate Security Conference (NCSC) hosted by Georgetown University. I've listened to his lectures and asked questions twice, both times I went to NCSC. Second year I was at NCSC, I asked a question when his back was turned. He said, "Hmm. Your voice sounds familiar. You've been here before. Aren't you the young lady from Alabama?" I WAS SO FLATTERED! I was like "OMG he remembered me." I don't think it was just the atrocious accent that doesn't fit into Washington DC. I ask reasonably good questions.

But oh god. Yeah, I think I'm going to print this out and peruse it mightily.

....NCSC is at the end of this month! I get to hear Dr. Arend speak again!

This man is several of the reasons I want(ed) to go to Georgetown so much. He's also one of the reasons NCSC is my favourite Model United Nations conference. Well, okay NCSC also has the best committees and is the best place to meet friends you'll keep for years to come.

But Dr. Arend rocks on levels that lack precedence.

No Shore For You!

Anyone else think it's odd that if you're Cuban and you paddle your way to Florida, you're good to go as long as you have one foot on land when immigration officials catch you, but if you're Haitian, you're S.O.L.?

It makes me wonder... if the Cubans and the Haitians teamed up and made a mad race for the shore, would anyone notice? I mean, it'd be like trying to pick out North Koreans from South Koreans, not that we have that problem anymore. *cough*

I keep envisioning a situation playing out in my friend's dorm room with a friend of ours who is lovingly referred to as "Cuban" because he's got as much Cuban pride as I have Irish.

"Well, Cuban, you've got one foot in my door. Might as well go all the way."
"Oh, sorry Haitian. No shore for you. Go home."