This is a sampling of one article on the Michael Vick dog-fighting case that I chose more or less at random:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/26/vick.dogfighting/index.html
The thing to notice here is that one of the lawyers involved said of the protests going on outside the courtroom that they were the most extreme he has ever seen. Really? The most extreme he's ever seen? I'm pretty sure that guy has been around some HUMAN murder trials, pedophilia trials, etc, in his time.
Now I'm not making the slightest excuse for Vick. Animal cruelty laws are on the books for a reason, and he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of them. But this is a striking trend that I've noticed happening in a number of animal-related cases.
For example, when I was in High School in Oregon, a kid in the area tied a cat to the roof of a shed and set it on fire. Now that's awful. The local papers and the kid's lawyer (full disclosure: the kid's lawyer was my dad) received hundreds of letters suggesting that the kid, a victim himself of systematic abuse, should be burned to death in turn. The outpouring of hatred and bile in the direction of this kid was incredible. That same week, my Dad took a case involving a five and a three year old kid. Those kids' parents were meth heads, who made extra money by inviting people over, and forcing the kids to run back and forth across the living room while paying customers shot at them with paintball and pellet guns. There were no letters sent in this case, no press coverage, no nothing. The parents got off on a technicality.
What does this have to do with Michael Vick's case? There is a war going on right now that claims innocent human lives every, single day. Atrocities are committed on people all over the world with shocking regularity. In our own country, children are abused EVERY SINGLE DAY. Where is the public outcry for this? I look out my window, or I turn on the news every night, and I don't see people protesting the War in Iraq (I have gone to a few protests myself). Why do we in this country seem to love animals and hate people so much?
I realize that Vick's high profile makes this a national case (shouldn't, but does), and I realize that dog-fighting is a bad thing. It's cruel, it's inhumane, and it's criminal. At issue here isn't whether Vick ought to be let off the hook or not. Nobody is suggesting he should. My point is that, with all the horrific things going on in the world, I think people with extra energy to burn on protests could find better outlets.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
I'm back
Okay, I've been at a family reunion since Friday, so no updates. I'll be back at it tomorrow full bore...stay tuned, there have been serious developments.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Shocking News from the capitol
In a shocking development, and one that I in no way predicted two days ago in a post on this very blog, the senate has filibustered the vote on ending the war in Iraq. Turns out that despite the all nighter, the Dems didn't have the votes. Oh well, at least I didn't waste my time and stay up until 4 am watching meaningless debate.
Damn that's a lotta C-Span
I've been watching C-Span for a really long time. This is by far the most C-Span I have ever watched in one sitting. It's in first place and the race isn't even close. Here are a few thoughts:
First, I don't think John McCain or anyone else who supports the war should be able to refer to "the opinion of the generals" ever again. Let's just look at a little history lesson. Remember when there were other generals, before Petraeus, who said the surge was a shit idea? Then remember when you got rid of those generals and put in Petraeus, because he subscribed to the neocon strategy? Okay, at that point you stopped being able to refer to the opinion of the generals as a way to prove that we should do what you want to do. In fact, it's dishonest to refer to "the opinion of the generals" as if that opinion is one unified thing. There are a whole bunch of generals that agree with the democrats. They think we should end this war as soon as possible and get all our troops out or Iraq post haste. So don't sit here and try to say that we need to respect the opinion of the generals, because they don't really have any idea of what is going on either.
Second, the Democrats need to get off their ass and stop being such slaves to decorum. Some dipshit GOP senator got up and gave some bullshit, swiss cheese justification, and then Hillary got up there (she looked like warmed over death, by the way. Clearly these people are not used to being up until 5 am.) and started off her spiel with "I'd like to thank my friend and colleague from the great state of blah blah blah... Screw that. If you're going to stay up all night and keep my ass up all night, at least have a goddamn DEBATE. Get up there and point out the ten obvious flaws in his argument. It's not hard. I was sitting here in my living room doing it in real time. And you should be smarter than me.
Third, I'd just like to say that the procedures followed in the damn senate are at least 75% fluff. They have spent the last 20 minutes doing a "Quorum call" and some sort of procedural vote to GET ALL THE SENATORS IN THE CHAMBER. What?!?! We're taking up time with all this debate and the other senators are out of the chamber? Are they getting high? (Okay, obviously Ted Kennedy is getting high, and drinking a bottle of blue label, but still...) Get their asses in there and let's have us a real debate, or better yet, let's get a vote going. I can't take this shit anymore, I'm going to bed. I'm not getting any money out of this, I'm not going to be a live blogger for C-Span while nothing is happening...
First, I don't think John McCain or anyone else who supports the war should be able to refer to "the opinion of the generals" ever again. Let's just look at a little history lesson. Remember when there were other generals, before Petraeus, who said the surge was a shit idea? Then remember when you got rid of those generals and put in Petraeus, because he subscribed to the neocon strategy? Okay, at that point you stopped being able to refer to the opinion of the generals as a way to prove that we should do what you want to do. In fact, it's dishonest to refer to "the opinion of the generals" as if that opinion is one unified thing. There are a whole bunch of generals that agree with the democrats. They think we should end this war as soon as possible and get all our troops out or Iraq post haste. So don't sit here and try to say that we need to respect the opinion of the generals, because they don't really have any idea of what is going on either.
Second, the Democrats need to get off their ass and stop being such slaves to decorum. Some dipshit GOP senator got up and gave some bullshit, swiss cheese justification, and then Hillary got up there (she looked like warmed over death, by the way. Clearly these people are not used to being up until 5 am.) and started off her spiel with "I'd like to thank my friend and colleague from the great state of blah blah blah... Screw that. If you're going to stay up all night and keep my ass up all night, at least have a goddamn DEBATE. Get up there and point out the ten obvious flaws in his argument. It's not hard. I was sitting here in my living room doing it in real time. And you should be smarter than me.
Third, I'd just like to say that the procedures followed in the damn senate are at least 75% fluff. They have spent the last 20 minutes doing a "Quorum call" and some sort of procedural vote to GET ALL THE SENATORS IN THE CHAMBER. What?!?! We're taking up time with all this debate and the other senators are out of the chamber? Are they getting high? (Okay, obviously Ted Kennedy is getting high, and drinking a bottle of blue label, but still...) Get their asses in there and let's have us a real debate, or better yet, let's get a vote going. I can't take this shit anymore, I'm going to bed. I'm not getting any money out of this, I'm not going to be a live blogger for C-Span while nothing is happening...
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Vick indictment by far most interesting thing going on today
Atlanta Falcons Quarterback uber-bust Michael Vick was indicted today on charges relating to a dog-fighting ring he was running out of his mansion. Wow. Just...wow. Honestly, these charges seem too weird not to be true. Like if I was going to make up some fake charges to try and discredit a black superstar athlete, I don't think my go-to move would be "running an illegal dog-fighting ring". I'd just say the guy stabbed somebody, probably his wife or girlfriend, like they usually do, and that would be that. But dog-fighting? Is this the 1800's? Did Michael Vick somehow become embroiled in the plot of "The Great Train Robbery?"
As you can see, it's a somewhat slow news day. The only interesting thing happening other than this is a plane crash in Brazil, which is tragic but fairly cut and dried. And, oh yeah, the senate is going to meet all night tonight to discuss a renewed vote on the Iraq war. Look guys, nobody would be happier with a renewed war vote than I would, but the bottom line is that it takes sixty votes to get around a filibuster. So either you have the sixty votes or you don't. It doesn't take all night to figure that out. You just count the votes and either move to the resolution stage, or you go home, wait for a couple hundred more soldiers, and a couple thousand more Iraqis to die, then come back and see if anyone else has woken up and decided to listen to reason. All this debate and crap is just ego-stroking for Harry Reid and the rest of the politic hacks on Capitol Hill. We get it, you hate the war, it's a bad idea. Two thirds plus of the country agrees with you, and the other third still thinks Saddam Hussein was flying one of the planes that hit us on 9/11, and thinks those planes contained biological weapons. They're idiots. Who are you trying to convince? How about the 41 or so idiots in congress like Lindsay Graham, who I could happily condemn to death? The problem is that those fucks won't be convinced by debate on the issues. Staying up all night fighting about it isn't helping anything. They need the political heat of dead soldiers in order to change their minds. That's all that will get it done.
As you can see, it's a somewhat slow news day. The only interesting thing happening other than this is a plane crash in Brazil, which is tragic but fairly cut and dried. And, oh yeah, the senate is going to meet all night tonight to discuss a renewed vote on the Iraq war. Look guys, nobody would be happier with a renewed war vote than I would, but the bottom line is that it takes sixty votes to get around a filibuster. So either you have the sixty votes or you don't. It doesn't take all night to figure that out. You just count the votes and either move to the resolution stage, or you go home, wait for a couple hundred more soldiers, and a couple thousand more Iraqis to die, then come back and see if anyone else has woken up and decided to listen to reason. All this debate and crap is just ego-stroking for Harry Reid and the rest of the politic hacks on Capitol Hill. We get it, you hate the war, it's a bad idea. Two thirds plus of the country agrees with you, and the other third still thinks Saddam Hussein was flying one of the planes that hit us on 9/11, and thinks those planes contained biological weapons. They're idiots. Who are you trying to convince? How about the 41 or so idiots in congress like Lindsay Graham, who I could happily condemn to death? The problem is that those fucks won't be convinced by debate on the issues. Staying up all night fighting about it isn't helping anything. They need the political heat of dead soldiers in order to change their minds. That's all that will get it done.
The press has failed us...
I saw Bush today say that "The same people bombing innocent people in Iraq are the ones who attacked us on 9/11". Now, that is bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it. Two weeks ago, Bush admitted that Al Qaeda accounts for less than a quarter of the violence and fighters in Iraq. And even those fighters don't work for Osama bin Laden, they are Al Qaeda in name only. But here's the thing -- Nobody pointed that out to Bush. The reporters present at the time just sat there and nodded like idiots. Nobody said anything. If nobody is going to say anything, OF COURSE he's just going to keep spouting that unadulterated bullshit. It is totally absurd. Fuck the press, fuck the government, they are in this together as far as I am concerned. What happened to the muckraking, take no shit, call everyone's bullshit of journalists past. Ed Murrow, we hardly knew ye...
Monday, July 16, 2007
Palestine...Lost in the shadow of Iraq, but still with lessons for us.
I just saw this really interesting guy named Dennis Ross on Charlie Rose. He's an author and a think tank guy on the middle east. He made some interesting statements about the elections in 2005 (the ones in which Hammas took power, and directly after which the world cut off foreign aid to the region). This guy claimed that those elections should never have taken place, because Hammas refused to abide by the election criteria established during the previous elections in 1996. Apparently, the Bush administration pushed for these elections to take place anyways, and were the first to condemn them when Hammas won power.
There is an interesting parallel here between the kind of faith-based decision making that Ross describes, and the kind of faith-based decision making that has gotten us into such incredible trouble in Iraq. That is, Bush pushed for elections in Palestine because he had faith that free elections were a prescriptive wunderkind that would solve problems in any context. Now, from his own janky election victory, he should have known categorically this was not true. At least as importantly, he should have seen that with Fatah (the party opposed to Hammas in those elections) in shambles at the time, the better organization and message discipline of Hammas would allow them to triumph in spite of being in fact a minority party. After that happened, Bush (and much of the democratic world) was left in the awkward position of opposing a duly elected democratic regime, because of human rights violations and explicitly religious values.
Similarly, in Iraq, faith based decision making has gotten us in trouble across the board. We had faith that Iraqis cared more about freedom than they did about religion. To put it another way, we had faith that Iraqis cared more about being Iraqis than they did about being Sunni or Shia Muslims.
We also had too much faith in the superiority of US troops and firepower. My best friend is a US Marine, and I have as much respect for their capability as anyone, but they were tasked to use less than a quarter million troops to pacify a nation of more than twenty million. And to do so on that nation's home turf, more than a quarter world away from home. There simply aren't enough bodies to occupy that much space. US troops can achieve any specific tactical objective, but they cannot be present in the entire country at once. It's like trying to sop up twenty gallons of liquid with a single rag. There's no question the rag can absorb water, but at the same time, there's no question there is more liquid than a single rag can absorb.
At the core, the Bush administration is guilty of the same faith based error as the general in the Kubrick film "Full Metal Jacket". The general confronts Joker wearing ambivalent imagery on his uniform, and says that the US must prevail in Vietman because "Inside of every Gook there is a red-blooded American trying to get out." Replace "Gook" with "Iraqi" (or with "Towelhead", if the slur must stick), and you have a pretty accurate description of the Bush attitude towards the middle east. We are finding out, to our detriment, just like to the film's General, that this is simply not the case. Whether Palestine, Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East, Muslims are simply, categorically, and finally different than us. They care about different things, they live in different ways. The only way they are like us is that they are willing to fight and die for their families and their beliefs.
There is an interesting parallel here between the kind of faith-based decision making that Ross describes, and the kind of faith-based decision making that has gotten us into such incredible trouble in Iraq. That is, Bush pushed for elections in Palestine because he had faith that free elections were a prescriptive wunderkind that would solve problems in any context. Now, from his own janky election victory, he should have known categorically this was not true. At least as importantly, he should have seen that with Fatah (the party opposed to Hammas in those elections) in shambles at the time, the better organization and message discipline of Hammas would allow them to triumph in spite of being in fact a minority party. After that happened, Bush (and much of the democratic world) was left in the awkward position of opposing a duly elected democratic regime, because of human rights violations and explicitly religious values.
Similarly, in Iraq, faith based decision making has gotten us in trouble across the board. We had faith that Iraqis cared more about freedom than they did about religion. To put it another way, we had faith that Iraqis cared more about being Iraqis than they did about being Sunni or Shia Muslims.
We also had too much faith in the superiority of US troops and firepower. My best friend is a US Marine, and I have as much respect for their capability as anyone, but they were tasked to use less than a quarter million troops to pacify a nation of more than twenty million. And to do so on that nation's home turf, more than a quarter world away from home. There simply aren't enough bodies to occupy that much space. US troops can achieve any specific tactical objective, but they cannot be present in the entire country at once. It's like trying to sop up twenty gallons of liquid with a single rag. There's no question the rag can absorb water, but at the same time, there's no question there is more liquid than a single rag can absorb.
At the core, the Bush administration is guilty of the same faith based error as the general in the Kubrick film "Full Metal Jacket". The general confronts Joker wearing ambivalent imagery on his uniform, and says that the US must prevail in Vietman because "Inside of every Gook there is a red-blooded American trying to get out." Replace "Gook" with "Iraqi" (or with "Towelhead", if the slur must stick), and you have a pretty accurate description of the Bush attitude towards the middle east. We are finding out, to our detriment, just like to the film's General, that this is simply not the case. Whether Palestine, Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East, Muslims are simply, categorically, and finally different than us. They care about different things, they live in different ways. The only way they are like us is that they are willing to fight and die for their families and their beliefs.
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