Wednesday, August 29th, 2006

Hairy Indiana
Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, is making the GoP ultracons mad, standing in tomato fields, posing with migrant workers. Why are they so mad? He's anti abortion, anti-big-government, pro-rich, pro-tax-cut. So why are pundits snubbing their golden child? Because he's not violently opposed to immigrants. Because he doesn't want to shoot them at the borders and catapult their bodies back into Mexico City. And here's why pretty much all politicians are hypocritical bastards. They take one issue, and wrap all other issues around it. I'm no fan of Pence, to be sure. His reason for not being a democrat is that his Christian values could not allow for their supporting abortion on demand. Because, yes, Mike, that's the only reason the Democratic party exisits. And now fellow elephants are getting their backhair up over the issue of immigration. If you ask me, I think they're really mad because he's, really, anti-big-government, and though that's been a so-called tenet of Republican philosophy for a long time, the GoP has actually expanded government to new sizes and forms of invasiveness over the last 15 years. Its just another indications of the dissolving of Republican solidarity.

Let's (Not) Go Way Back
A judge in Florida has struck down their new voter registration law, calling it unconstitutional. Can I use subtle and obvious at the same time without creating an oxymoron? The law carries stiff fines for delays in procedure, fines which political parties are immune to, which essentially would allow for the politicalization of registration. Voter registration should be as non-partisan as possible; there should never be an agreement tied to registration, like you must vote democrat if you are registered by democrats. Indeed, except for primary elections, one registered with a party should always be free to vote for other parties. And non-political groups should have as much leeway as possible when facing our nation's number one problem: voter apathy. So hooray for Florida in it's effort to avoid the 2000 election all over again.

Katrinagate
I'm one of the first people to toss out the -gate suffix to indicate scandal, partially because I'm fascinated by language, and I find it incredibly interesting how Watergate has lent part of its name to our political vocabulary. But I recognize that it gets used too often, and so I am willing to overuse it on an effort to be ironic. Call it ironygate, if you want.

So far I've avoided talking about Hurricane Katrina except when corruption looms it’s head, but now the bickering is starting, so I'd better wade in. The mayor of New Orleans, in an interview on "60 Minutes", when asked why rebuilding was taking so long, responded "You guys in New York City can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later... so let's be fair." Oh, and the bleeding hearts wept. I haven't checked in with my favorite pundits, but I am looking forward to their spin. Because Katrina is another black mark on the Bush record, and everyone knows it. Call it FEMAgate if you want, or Superdomegate, or Kanye Westgate. And the Bush apologists love to attack anyone who criticizes their greatest president of all time.

Bush wishes Katrina had been his 9/11. He and his cronies have been using 9/11 as a justification for virtually every money-laundering scheme they could conceive of. And that hole in the ground serves as a constant reminder and supporter of such speeches. But New Orleans is a little bit bigger, and will take a little more effort to fix. Bush wishes he had a city-sized disaster that he could have led the country from. Ah, but hurricanes are a little more difficult to control than airplanes, and intelligence reports on tropical storms are a lot more public than CIA notes on terrorist activity. When your administration needs to deny storms to create a ripe environment, which member of the meteorology community to you out to the papers in order to punish her husband for not helping you lie?

And now the Republicans are whining that the Democrats are politicizing Katrina. To paraphrase Ann Coulter: "That's why they call it Politics." El presidente et al use 9/11 to prop up the war in Iraq, which will be the only issue Republicans will talk about this election, but when a real matter for discussion is on the table, they dismiss it as "politics." Don't you just love it when they try to spin the spin? Oops, the spins this time have cancelled each other out, leaving just oily politicians with their records to account for. Let the accounting begin.

Wal-Mart Gets Defensive
Wal Mart is test-marketing some ads that discuss their business side, as opposed to merely advertising their service as a discount market. The new ads have a quasi-campaign-ad feel to them, with factoids tossed out about their health care plans for "qualifying" associates, and how much money they save families. "...and that buys a lot of freedom." I hope this backfires on them big time, because last I heard, freedom was not something citizens in this country had to pay for. In fact, isn't freedom one of the inaliable rights? You can argue you with amendments, you can argue with the constitution, but when you argue with the Declaration itself, you are in serious trouble.

No Place for You Here, Poor Man
While reading a story about Mike Pence, above, I came across a quote about Reagan. I'm looking for the source now, but essentially, there was a pipe-fitter who said told Old Ron that was glad to see the rich prosper, because, he said, he'd never been hired by the poor. Oh, how folksy and nice, right? No, it's disgusting. The gipper would have liked you think it's proof that even the working class like trickle-down economics, and that it accurately shows how compassionate conservative policies are. What it accurately portrays, however, is that the only people who have any business in the day-to-day business of being free American citizens are the very rich and the people who work for them. If you're poor, you're not part of the equation. When are we going to stop lionizing the man who made George I and George II possible?