Office of the Independent Blogger

Reading this article about the state of our country in the New York Times makes me wince because I’m highly critical of it and I know that you, Dear Reader, will look at me as an advocate of all the world’s ills when I’m finished but no matter my fear. I think I can trust you to not consider me a Nazi.

The article is a panicky, perspectiveless piece. It ignores past Presidents who it would certainly laud for their courage and success, like Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. They would likely counter that those men faced more concrete, dangerous enemies than we are currently facing. I would agree, and then say, “But just as our enemies are tamer, so are our civil liberty violations.” After that, they’d point to the CIA, as they do in the piece, and object to waterboarding and the destruction of camera footage in interrogation. I would agree on one point: obstruction of justice is no laughing matter, and it is serious. However, it is hardly the next Reich, and it might actually be appropriate considering the intelligence needs in the CIA.

Besides its hyperbole regarding the “lawlessness” prevelant today (a lawlessness I don’t see), I most ardently object to its romanticizing of principles that weren’t always enforced at the time that they were written. I mean, if our Founding Fathers and original Governors had slaughtered an entire nation of men, enslaved another and prevented about four fifths of its own from voting would we say, “Today’s government is not living up to the principles they set forth”?

Oh. I guess they did do all those things. But that’s okay, because they had nice principles, right? Damn George Bush for not being as flowery a writer as Thomas Jefferson, and damn unreasonable, dialogueless political commentary. “What sucks about our country is that we don’t follow the original founders — I don’t recognize my country!” Well, I do. I don’t have the perspective of a five year old and I’m not going to wax poetic because I’m hoping a Democrat gets elected and Bush goes to hell. I’m not a fan of George Bush’s by any means, but let’s not go nuts.

This is still a free country. I, for one, don’t live my life afraid of a Gestapo that doesn’t exist, or dreading an American President for political disagreement. I know I’m free to seek employment and education where I want, to enjoy film and literature at my convenience, to associate with anyone I’d want to associate with, to feed a hungry man, throw a football with my cousins or write one of several books I’m going to write. This is a greater country than it’s ever been, if for no other reason than “the principles” the Times holds up for all the world to deride as unfulfilled are greater than they’ve ever been in the country’s history. Is Bush a good President? I don’t think so. I think he’s awful, but we have to wait and see. I am sure of my love for this country and that I see its principles alive today. (That isn’t to accuse anyone of not loving their country: that is why there is an and.)

I’m just sorry the New York Times itself signed the article and not an opinion writer. This kind of garbage would be easier to swallow if it were just one man’s stupidity.

Listen: this computer I’m on is the worst in the world. Out celebrating the New Year, have to stop and check the news then blog and guess what? Can’t get a damn thing going and it takes half an hour to load a page, any page. I pledge, for the coming year, to continue being the best blogger I can be and I will devote far more time to the political rather than the international or policy issues at hand. I’ll still write about the world and Congressional paper, but I will focus more on politics what with the worst election of my time coming.

Think Conservatives will still whine about Liberal Media Bias (especially at the NYT) after the Times announced it was hiring William Kristol for its opinion page?

Of course.

Barack Obama has unveiled his “one-two punch” for the closing days in Iowa. My favorite part of the article?

“This is a defining moment,” the Illinois senator told an enthusiastic audience of 300 in the Washington Middle School gym in this eastern Iowa river town late Friday afternoon. “We cannot wait to fix our schools, we cannot wait to stop climate change, we cannot wait to get universal health care… and we cannot wait to bring this war in Iraq to an end.”

I feel sorry for those people who truly believe any of that. I imagine Obama would support the Iraq War for awhile after elected on the advice of military men and the rest are rather ridiculous and broad promises that nobody could possibly deliver.

Is that too cynical of me?

It’ll be interesting, in twenty years when the documents are declassified, to learn whether or not al-Qaeda was indeed responsible for Bhutto’s assassination or it was the work of Musharreff. That’s all I have on that matter until further happens.

In “good news” there was an election in Kenya, and it went well. It’s always nice to see any nation liberalize. It’s a slow process, dreadfully slow even in perfect conditions and snail-like with opposition, but it is a process ongoing all over the world and it is one I take great pleasure in.

If nothing else comes of it, Bhutto’s assassination in Pakistan should be a galvanizing event for democracy in Pakistan, long/intermediate-term. Short-term? I haven’t got a hope. I fully expect everyone to boycott the elections and Mr. Musharreff’s reign to exist in a fog of insurgency and turmoil. When Democracy will revive, whether or not Musharreff lives, the role al-Qaeda will play and continue to play are all to be determined tomorrow. Tonight, I mourn.

This is good.

In a recent New York Times article, Ann Romney, wife of GOP presidential hopeful Mitt, revealed that one of her husband’s main motivations for seeking the White House is to rectify his father George Romney’s sudden collapse in the 1968 Republican primary. Perhaps not the best tidbit to blurt out in a campaign after the past seven years under an unpopular president with daddy issues.

Mitt Romney isn’t the only candidate who harbors a dark, deep-seated motive for wanting the presidency. What drives some of the other men who would be leader of the free world?

Dennis Kucinich: No more humiliating measurements when waiting on line to ride the Cyclone.
Fred Thompson: What better way to fulfill a life-long dream of napping in all 132 rooms of the White House while your young wife shops for shoes in foreign capitals?
Ron Paul: Free market? Free love is more like it.
Bill Richardson: Did you know the White House chef will, at any hour of the day, make the president a dish of gravy-soaked beef quesadillas and rub the Commander in Chief’s belly as he eats them? It’s true.
John McCain: Let’s just say if he starts moving up in the polls it’s time to sell that rice stand in Hanoi.
John Edwards: Obsessive compulsive disorder.
Mike Huckabee: Jesus told him to. Obviously.
Barack Obama: Racial confusion stemming from not getting the comedy of Tyler Perry.

There are two “compromises” I’d like to briefly touch on today. Bush traded Iraq War funding for earmark money with the Democratic Congress. I know everybody else will be infuriated by such a move, because it’s “the worst of both worlds!” but I think it’s a good thing. We can continue to work in Iraq (the last year has been “good” in Iraq), the Congress is working with the President in line with tradition and local projects are funded. Could be worse — we could have everybody fighting and hard feelings all around heading into the next year which could be crucial in Iraq and will be critical, politically.

The NFL, and here is the “other” compromise, has agreed to televise the Patriots game on Saturday. New England, home of the Celtics and the Red Sox and the Patriots, just keeps winning. A few years too late for John Kerry! (Hat tip to him, though, for being an advocate on this issue.)

Have a bad headache; it’s been a good day and a half, past. Looks good for the coming days. Not much else to say, today. I think this says it all.

I have to keep this short as I’m on my way out the door to spend some divine time with my “family” and I’m still sleepy. This is nice to wake up to: Bush intends to spend 2008 rebuilding America’s image in the world. I think the “everyone hates us!” angle is overstated, though I don’t deny our unpopularity. I’m not a foreign policy Britney Spears.

This is really cool.

While great nations fretted over coal, oil and global warming, one of the smallest at the U.N. climate conference was looking toward the heavens for its energy. The annual meeting’s corridors can be a sounding board for unlikely “solutions” to climate change _ from filling the skies with soot to block the sun, to cultivating oceans of seaweed to absorb the atmosphere’s heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Unlike other ideas, however, one this year had an influential backer, the Pentagon, which is investigating whether space-based solar power _ beaming energy down from satellites _ will provide “affordable, clean, safe, reliable, sustainable and expandable energy for mankind.”

Tommy Remengesau Jr. is interested, too. “We’d like to look at it,” said the president of the tiny western Pacific nation of Palau. The Defense Department this October quietly issued a 75-page study conducted for its National Security Space Office concluding that space power _ collection of energy by vast arrays of solar panels aboard mammoth satellites _ offers a potential energy source for global U.S. military operations. It could be done with today’s technology, experts say. But the prohibitive cost of lifting thousands of tons of equipment into space makes it uneconomical.

That’s where Palau, a scattering of islands and 20,000 islanders, comes in.

In September, American entrepreneur Kevin Reed proposed at the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, India, that Palau’s uninhabited Helen Island would be an ideal spot for a small demonstration project, a 260-foot-diameter “rectifying antenna,” or rectenna, to take in 1 megawatt of power transmitted earthward by a satellite orbiting 300 miles above Earth. That’s enough electricity to power 1,000 homes, but on that empty island the project would “be intended to show its safety for everywhere else,” Reed said in a telephone interview from California.

Reed said he expects his U.S.-Swiss-German consortium to begin manufacturing the necessary ultralight solar panels within two years, and to attract financial support from manufacturers wanting to show how their technology _ launch vehicles, satellites, transmission technology _ could make such a system work. He estimates project costs at $800 million and completion as early as 2012.

At the U.N. climate conference here this month, a Reed partner discussed the idea with the Palauans, who Reed said could benefit from beamed-down energy if the project is expanded to populated areas. “We are keen on alternative energy,” Palau’s Remengesau said. “And if this is something that can benefit Palau, I’m sure we’d like to look at it.”

Space power has been explored since the 1960s by NASA and the Japanese and European space agencies, based on the fundamental fact that solar energy is eight times more powerful in outer space than it is after passing through Earth’s atmosphere. The energy captured by space-based photovoltaic arrays would be converted into microwaves for transmission to Earth, where it would be transformed into direct-current electricity.

Only note I have is, let’s not use it for “military purposes” alone or primarily. I mean, if we’ve got to, and it’ll help make the world a better place and save lives, go ahead — but let’s use this for peaceful purposes, too and mainly.

How sad is it that in this day and age there are still feral children?

Here is an article about fundraising money and the dirty men who pass it around. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been rightly criticized for its associations but as this article points out, other campaigns have filth under their nails, too. What other than corruption would you expect from people who give thousands of dollars to politicians?

There’s little more obnoxious than a person who can’t take responsibility for his actions, and so it is with seventeen year old “men” who kill seven year old girls and then blame it on Mortal Kombat. This is Lionel Tate all over again. I just hope the trial ends with a guilty conviction rather than an innocent ruling. “I was imitating moves from Mortal Kombat.” Blaming others for your actions is the sincerest form of cowardice.

If you’re wondering what you can get me for Christmas Dear Reader (and I know you are), here’s what you can do: take a hungry person out to lunch. Doesn’t have to be anything extravagent. Could be fastfood or Olive Garden or cafe — just food. That is a suggestion given me by someone who has given me one of the greatest opportunities in my life, and it is the Christmas gift I want as well, my Dear Reader.

Or you could make a Bloomberg/Hagel Presidential campaign happen. It’s breathing, and the two parties are talking extensively, so if you want to give me a Christmas gift with stocking stuffing, here’s your chance. (I am genuinely interested in a Bloomberg/Hagel run. I don’t believe they could win but a great third party campaign, any great third party campaign, runs on a movement that eventually triumphs. If that is what these men can do, and it is if they want, then I am all for their run. At the least, it’ll make the campaign even more fascinating.)

Another gift you could give me, and the world, would be a little backbone for the Presidential candidates. A little candor. A little integrity. A little belief in something. That’s about the only thing I admire about George Bush, you know. He truly believes in what he fights for and so he fights for what he believes. Of course, that’s different when he’s President and not a candidate, but you get what I mean. It’s just a travesty that Barack Obama voted many times in his career, “Present” instead of aye or nay to avoid taking a stand. What kind of garbage is that? How can you respect him as a candidate? And that goes for the other candidates, as well, with their pollsters and media men.

Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its Man of the Year over Al Gore and third runner-up, JK Rowling.

Figure that one out.

Another quick “hit-and-run” for you: my latest baseball column is here, entitled “In Favor of Inclusion”. It is about baseball’s Hall of Fame and steroid users. You might see a “different side” of me, a more forgiving, understanding, justice-seeking side!

Okay, in “real” news: I wrote recently of the woman who was raped in Iraq but has received no sympathy or support from the American government despite the fact that Halliburton was partly responsible for it all. She appeared before Congress today and guess what? The Justice Department couldn’t be bothered to even send a representative. I think this is the most ashamed I’ve ever been of my government.

Bill Clinton seriously claimed that President Hillary Clinton would, upon entering office, send him and George H.W. Bush out around the world to restore America’s image. George H.W. Bush countered, not so much. Raspberries to the ex-President for claiming that his predecessor had all-but-endorsed Mrs. Clinton and subsequently thrown his son under the bus.

Make no mistake: George H.W. Bush is with Brent Scowcroft and does not approve of the job his son is doing, but for Bill to take that to an extreme so as to try and fool one or two people with a headline is wrong. And people wonder why Bill didn’t accomplish any of the original things he set out to accomplish as President!

Since we’re talking about the past trying to consolidate power today and into the future, let’s talk about the FCC. They’ve re-emerged in the national picture and this time, they’re scarier than before. They’ve overturned a thirty year old rule preventing newspaper men from being owned by broadcasters.

Great news! If you’re owned by a Republican.

Bob Kerrey is out doing the Clinton campaign’s dirty work. At least, I think so.

Former senator Bob Kerrey, who recently endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said during a television appearance on Monday that her primary opponent, Sen, Barack Obama, attended a “secular madrassa” as a child.

Kerrey was in the process of lauding Obama’s capacity to connect with the Muslim world when he made the claim, which has been discredited.

“I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust [Obama] because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa,” the Nebraska Democrat said on the Situation Room with John King. “I feel quite opposite. I think it’s a tremendous strength whether he’s in the United States Senate or whether he’s in the White House.”

The Clintons are brilliant, calculating characters the likes of which politics haven’t seen since the Nixon Crime Syndicate. This is an obvious attempt by Bob Kerrey to embarrass Obama by masking a smear as a compliment. “He was educated by Muslims! Some people think it’s a bad thing, but I think it makes him like them, know them, understand them.” It’s a clever, underhanded embarrassment that few can do anything about because it is made out to be a good thing. Cute, huh?

If you’re looking for “good news” today, there is some. Very good news, in fact. New Jersey’s the first state in four decades to abolish the death penalty.