tsujigiri

The editorial comments of Chris and James, covering the news, science, religion, politics and culture.

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." -Douglas Adams

Saturday, April 26, 2003

If you're like me, you constantly lament the fact that conservatives don't get their say in society. Those dirty liberals have so effectively shut out honest rightists that there is literally nowhere to turn to hear hasty, generalized conservative thought. Think about it: talk radio, cable news, magazines, books, every branch of the federal government -- none of these places are producing conservative thought. None. But don't worry! Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, is launching a new imprint devoted exclusively to conservative authors. The LA Times article is here. Thank God for Crown Publishing! Thank God for their timing! God Bless America! God Bless the banner ads at the top of this page! Let's all pray to get them to advertise conservative websites once again! The best news of all: Ann Coulter has a new book coming out. What is its elegant and subtle title, you ask? Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Outstanding. The article also mentions another small imprint called Prima Forum that publishes conservative stuff:
One of Prima Forum's titles, "The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values" by Tammy Bruce, was published Tuesday and currently is on Amazon.com's Top 10. Bruce, the controversial one-time president of the National Organization for Women's Los Angeles chapter, is a self-described lesbian, pro-choice feminist. Her book is a denunciation of the now-familiar list of right-wing demons -- multiculturalism, identity politics, moral relativism and "the malignant narcissism" of the "Left Elite." There are all sorts of nasty elites in Bruce's moral schema, including black ones, academic ones and an entertainment one whose "moral depravity is beyond measure." Ozzy Osbourne, by the way, is "a moral terrorist."
No one in the US, left or right, seems to want to cool-headedly discuss the issues and come to rational, necessary conclusions. It's much more fun to throw around epithets like "moral terrorist" and "malignant narcissism". I'd like to see some statistics about thesaurus sales to conservatives, too. Thanks, William F. Buckley, for making neo-cons think that they can validate and improve the persuasive power of their arguments by using words they've never used before and don't understand.

Friday, April 25, 2003

Somebody spent a lot of time on this thing at a blog called uggabugga. I like it.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Interdepartmental tension may be coming to a head in the Bush administration. In "Bush at War," Bob Woodward examines the tension between Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, which generalizes to tension between the departments of State and Defense. Even during Bush's presidential campaign and the early days of his presidency, Powell was careful to consult with his own PR staff before scheduling any joint appearances, as if to avoid tarnishing his own reputation by association with Bush. But Bush seems to encourage conflict among his cabinet members. There is a certain logic to this: constant arguments will expose the weaknesses of every proposal, and avoid falling into any "yes-man" patterns among top staff. The downsides of this high-strung environment are becoming more visible. The two departments are increasingly acting to undermine each other (not necessarily on purpose). Way back in early 2001, someone from Defense said that the US "is and has always been committed to military defense of Taiwan." This sent the State department scrambling to retract that message for the benefit of relations with China. Immediately after September 11, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz suggested taking action in Iraq. This was promptly cast aside by Powell and Rice. When Bush formally decided to remove Hussein, Powell was sent to present the US's case to the UN. The key evidence in Powell's case was a set of forged documents which were provided to Powell by the Defense Department. Powell was described as "apoplectic" when it was discovered that the documents were forged, and that Defense had somehow failed to scrutinize them before passing them to State. More recently, the State department has fired some shots back at Defense. A few weeks ago, State department sources indicated that they might contact Bush Sr. and request that he advise Bush Jr. against too much reliance on Rumsfeld. And today, Elizabeth Jones (US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs) had this to say about Newt Gingrich:
"Newt Gingrich does not speak in the name of the Pentagon and what he said is garbage," US Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Elizabeth Jones told the Publico daily. "What Gingrich says does not interest me. He is an idiot and you can publish that," she added. Gingrich called on Tuesday for dramatic change at the State Department, which he accused of backing Middle East dictators and undermining the policies of President George W. Bush. [AFP]
Gingrich has been acting as a Defense Department advisor. Meanwhile, North Korea admitted it has nukes with a show of diplomatic bravado worthy of Dr. Strangelove:
The United States, for its part, had played down expectations before the meetings began, although Powell had said he welcomed North Korea’s willingness to meet in a multilateral setting. North Korea had been insisting on direct talks with the United States before agreeing to allowing China to participate. But the early hopes were quickly dashed last Friday when Pyongyang declared the nation was “successfully reprocessing” 8,000 spent fuel rods. After a brief flurry of controversy, the North Korean news agency issued a correction to assert that the reprocessing had not begun. U.S. intelligence officials said the reprocessing of the fuel rods would give the Koreans enough plutonium to manufacture five or six nuclear bombs. Adding to the debate — and North Korea’s suspicions about U.S. intentions — The New York Times reported this week on a Pentagon memorandum recommending that the United States join with China to press diplomatically for the ouster of North Korea’s leadership... The Times said the memo seemed at odds with the State Department approach of convincing Kim that Washington does not intend to oust him. Critics of the Pentagon approach say it is absurd to expect China, a traditional North Korean ally, to join a U.S.-led effort to topple Kim. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a South Korean official said Wednesday he was concerned that the memo report could undermine the talks in Beijing.[MSNBC]
Perhaps tommorrow's headline: "Pentagon and State departments obliterated in mutual nuclear strike against each other."

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Wait a minute! You mean that someone in the Bush Administration is an anachronistic Christian ideologue?!? Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education, thinks that a Christian education is better than any other education. He has explicitly said so. The press release, from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, sums it up nicely, and on their front page right now, they have links to several good articles and editorials about the whole Rod Paige affair. The following is taken from the AU press release thing, and the quotes are originally from the interview he gave to the Baptist Press:
In the interview, Paige agreed with [the Baptist Press reporter] Starnes’ assertion that “there’s such animosity towards religion and God in general in the schools and educational system.” Paige replied, “It’s a real puzzle to me. My upbringing just shields me from even thinking that way, so I can’t imagine why, what’s at the root of that.”

Paige's upbringing shields him from even thinking that way. That's good. My own election day decisions have always been based in full on the propensity of the candidate to let his or her own deep-seated religious biases and superstitions influence wholly secular public policy issues. Then again, Paige wasn't elected to his current post. Nor was his boss.

Monday, April 21, 2003

Okay, the last post went through, so I'm going to try this excerpt from the post I've been wanting to put up: (AP) US Congressmen living in low-rent town houses provided by a secretive religious sect. This is a wierd story [AP]

Blogger sucks donkey balls? I've been trying to post for days, but blogger hangs every time I try to send a post with links in it. I have to completely shutdown and restart my browser before I can even load the blogger site again. This happens in both Windows and Linux, but possibly only one the wireless connection... Why, why?