Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Why yes - he was a Democrat. Why do you ask?

Marty February 12th, 2006

NOW I’ve seen it all. Our vice-president shoots somebody while hunting. Of course, this is why they don’t give Bush a gun.

Death and Cartoons

Marty February 7th, 2006

A message to all of the rioting muslims out there - please come to your senses. It was a frickin’ CARTOON. I understand that it was a cartoon in bad taste, and an affront to Islam. The editors and cartoonist should make an apology for being so careless. However, the whole killing people to protest this sounds more like an excuse for radical elements to riot and kill innocents (like they needed one).

I don’t want to sound callous to those who are offended and leave it at that or protest peacefully. I can even understand a good bit of ranting and raving (heck, I do it about Dumbya all of the time). What I can’t understand is that in the grand scheme of things with all that’s going on in the world, don’t these morons who are building car bombs perhaps have better things to be doing - like feeding their families or trying to improve their nations?

Mondays

Marty October 24th, 2005

Long hours all weekend have kept me from being a fun person this morning. So, a quick note about new legislation that I’m torn about. It’s called the Cheeseburger Bill, and basically it is blocking people from being able to sue fast food restaurants for their morbid obesity. Part of me says that putting in legislation to protect these companies which are selling this sludge is wrong, but a larger part of me says FINALLY something is being done to say “Enough - take some frickin’ responsibility for your own actions, for chrissakes!”. I’m not one to suggest that the fast food franchises are entirely innocent in this, but if you think you can have 2 Big Macs a day, and wash it down with greasy fries, hash browns and a 30-pack of McNuggets, and then claim it’s Ronald’s fault you can’t fit through the doorway to blast your toilet to hell on a daily basis, I think you need to be reminded that it was your own fat grubby fingers reaching through the window at the drive-through. They weren’t forcing it on you. And if it’s kids involved, the parents should be in court for neglect and abuse, not an anticipated payday.

To end my rant for the day, here’s a gem from Lewis Black from the Daily Show the other day. In an interview, a spokesman for the Catholic church started answering questions about the new regulations involving homosexuality in the priesthood. One question asked if the crackdown on homosexuality would affect the number of reports of child abuse by priests, to which the priest replied that “Homosexuality and pedophilia are two different things.”

To which, Lewis replied:

“Of course they are two different things - here is the catholic church’s position on homosexuality and pedophilia: Homosexuality has no cure. Pedophilia, HOWEVER, can be cured by a TRANSFER TO ANOTHER DIOCESE!”

Classic.

Michael Brown is a Big, Fat Idiot

Marty September 28th, 2005

Is it me, or does the blame game for the aftermath of Katrina seem to go one, and on, and on… I’ll give it to Michael Brown that the blame does not fall fully on his shoulders and that he is becoming a scapegoat. However, the man seems to want to shirk any responsibility for what was a gross failure after Katrina hit. Despite his vehemence during his testimony, FEMA sucked - period. Yes, the City of New Orleans and Louisiana also had their failings, but for him to try to say that FEMA’s problems were all due to those two governmental entities is ridiculous. Face it, Michael, you sucked it big time.

And the federal disasters keep on coming. My latest favorite is the Carnival fiasco. And Tom Delay finally getting indicted was not a surprise. Bush and his cronies never cease to amaze. Anyone else wonder if we’ll actually survive the remaining 3 years of his reign?

On a Lighter Note »

Ground Zero - Beta

Marty July 7th, 2005

I got into the car oblivious of the world at large.

Within a minute, I was completely transformed - it has happened again.

The terrorists have come back to haunt another country that supported the war in Iraq, although on could make an argument that there were probably other factors involved:

  1. an anti-G8 statement
  2. a reaction to the Olympic bid
  3. a direct attack on the Israeli Economic summit in London
  4. a opportunistic attack because of all three?

It’s scary, and I hope that the casualties are less than they sound like they are going to be.

On the other hand, with leaders like this, do we need outside forces to doom us?

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Live 8 - Philly Shines

Marty July 4th, 2005

First off, I have to say that I was highly impressed by how well Philly managed to pull off Live 8 on Saturday. The trains were all beautifully managed (well, at least the PATCO side - I heard grumbling about SEPTA), the helpers and city workers were all on the same page, and best of all, the people were all … well, particularly un-Philly like.

We had a caravan (19 people) heading in from Jersey, including 5 teenagers and 5 little kids, and were able to make it to the 2nd big screen with little effort. The trip itself was fun as we got to show off a little of the city - particularly to the kids - while admiring the spectacle around us ourselves. The sights were great to see - people smiling, a great vibe and and around the whole place, the activists, the inactivists, the young, the old, the parents, the practicing to be parents - it was all there to behold and left you with little to do but smile.

Although the shows themselves were a teensy bit disappointing (most of the acts were on for less than 15 minutes), it was still a great time. The Kaiser Chiefs started off very promising, putting on a heck of a set, followed by a very energetic and likeable Black-Eyed Peas. Then Bon Jovi came on to rev up his local crowd.

After that, the ’show’ started to lose momentum throught the sets of Destiny’s Child and Kayne West who were enjoyable if not exactly pumping up the crowd. However, Will Smith really got everyone into the vibe with his set and pulling at the emotions of his hometown crowd. From there it was a mixed bag - Dave Matthews Band was disappointing, as was Alicia Keys - although the disappointment with her was that she didn’t play longer. Toby Keith was in there, and I remember thinking that he wasn’t bad, if again, not entirely entralling. One of the best sets of the night was that of Linkin Park and Jay-Z. They were energetic, they were fun, they were loud and they probably had the most raw passion of any act there. Awesome - I really need to see them live sometime.

Def Leppard was a joke - they came on late, and to be frank could have missed their set entirely. Many of the later bands like Jars of Clay and Keith Urban were okay but not very memorable. Even Sarah McLachlan was somewhat underimpressive - though her duet with Josh Groban was pretty good. And I think that the last two acts - Maroon 5 and perenially excellent performer Stevie Wonder were both excellent but a bit too short.

In the end, I think that might have been one of the major short-comings of this show - there was no time for the crowd to start getting into the often too-short performances. I wasn’t a fan of some of the acts, but I could have been just as happy relaxing (read:napping) through a 30-45 minute set of Destiny’s Child as I was through a 15-minute set. I see no reason why they couldn’t have taken this show into the evening, and adding some of the other acts that were rumored to be coming (including Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones and most especially Bruce Springsteen. It would have also been nice to see some of the local acts like The Roots or even Love Seed Mama Jump play. Heck, what about a Hooters reunion 20 years later? Okay, maybe not.

Still, the music was only part of the spectacle, and the other part was the people and the environs. We had a good time in that respect - the people-watching was excellent, as my wife’s Flickrstream can attest. There were those out for the Live 8 theme, as well as those out for their own reasons (many of whom really need to take remedial English classes). The food was a bit steep, but not excessively so considering the stranglehold they really had over us - we brought our own drinks and still spent $60+ on food and drink while we were there (did I mention that it was hot).

But in the end, after 8+ hours on the grass along the Ben Franklin Parkway, we were all satisfied with the experience. My son and his friends were enjoying the sun and fun, if not as much the music (not their favorite bands, I guess). My mother-in-law and other newly-met relatives from my wife’s side seemed to be enjoying the Philly area that they were being exposed to. And my new cousins (actually my wife’s cousins, but who’s counting) were having a ball - and made their way into the paper.

Like I said, I had a good time. I can think of ways to make it better, but overall I have to say that the day was a huge success. Philly should be proud of the way that it came off in this thing.

Other opinions
A different view - Village Voice

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My Wife Has a Blog

Marty March 21st, 2005

he just started her own blog called Dreams, Rants and Raves to put up pictures, thoughts and poems. I think it will be great - of course, I think she’s awesome, so I’m probably a bit biased.

What is the World Coming To?

Marty March 21st, 2005

A Litany of Rants

Rant #1
The world is going nuts. I can’t believe some of the stuff that I am seeing out there that makes me shake my head and cringe. First and foremost has to be the Terri Schiavo case. I can’t believe the way that this woman’s life has become a chess piece for political action related to religious morality. Do I think she should be let to die? I’m not sure - if she said she didn’t want to be in this state, then she should be allowed to have her wishes honored. Unfortunately, nothing in writing makes that hard to prove. Is she in a vegetative state or does she have limited reaction? I would lean toward the former, since people in that state CAN respond to stimuly - but not consciously. I think her smiles and such are mere reactions to voices without any sentient/cognitive thought behind them. I know that I wouldn’t want to be left in that state. At the same time, it would be hard for me to actually starve someone that I love to death. If it was life-support, it’s easy - they wouldn’t be alive without it. But a feeding tube seems more like assistance than support. To watch someone starve over a period of weeks would be tough to watch, no matter how much I knew that my wife/mother/sister/friend wanted it that way.

But the biggest asshat move is having Congress legislate over this. Congress’ job is to pass laws for THE PEOPLE, not THE PERSON. They aren’t supposed to create an end-around to get past judicial process, but that is just what they are doing. If they think it’s wrong, they should write a law to handle cases like these in the future - like they did for Megan’s Law - but to step in - and on normal Judicial process - tramples over the separation of the 3 government branches for what becomes a moral judgement over - and this was said several times by Reverend DeLay - “a right to life issue”. To subpoena her for a congressional hearing was nothing more than a back-handed way to ignore the judges decree - and is something that no one save for the Supreme Court should have been allowed to do.

More and more I see this administration warp or ignore elements of the constitution and common sense to achieve their quasi-religious agenda (or their pro-crony agenda, in some cases). It sickens me that so many people in our legislative branch thought themselves as having the right to overrule the courts and a woman’s own desires to support their own moral objectives. Listen, Delay, if it’s YOUR mom, go right ahead. But keep your hands off of my family and our wishes. Keep them off when we make a decision about our bodies when we are living and when we are dying.

Rant #2
Another photographer that I follow recently took a picture of a park in Erie County, NY that has been closed to the public. According to him,

“After getting the sales tax increase shot down (we are at 8 ¼% and they wanted to raise it to 9 ¼%) Erie County Closed all the parks to strong arm the public! Let me just point out that the park workers are still employed and working in the parks…there is just no public access…”

.

What? What the heck is going on where we are paying a percentage of our hard-earned money to our government, and they do this to the spaces that we are supposed to have. Now, I don’t know about Erie County, but I know where I live, a percentage of our taxes are earmarked for “Open Space”, so if that happened here, you know that I would be going ape shit on these people. Hopefully Dave will do the same - I know that he’s angry but I don’t know how close he is to really make a stink.

Where do our politicians get off in penalizing us for not allowing us to raise taxes?

Rant #3
ANWR. It’s a term that is sure to evoke strong feelings in a lot of people. I’m a strident environmentalist, and I’ll admit that I tend to lean toward the environment over business in most cases. I’d love to say that I’m 100% justified because corporations have a long-standing history of saying that they’ll do the right thing until the right thing affects the money thing - then promises get left behind. So, when the oil industry throws around promises of ’small footprints’ and ‘leaving no trace’, I cringe. So did many others - which is why every piece of legislation devoted to opening up ANWR to drilling has been defeated.

So, what do those crafty politicians do? They merely do an end around, attaching a small rider for ANWR drilling onto the 2005 budget. What? Don’t want that rider - well, then you need to vote against the budget, vote against giving Americans more tax cuts and letting our government do its job, right? In essense, the Republicans and other ‘bought-vote’ senators have realized that they can never get the vote through the more legal methods, so they are sticking it up our asses in other ways instead. The vote on 3/16 basically rejected the attempt to remove that piece of legislation from the budget, and if the budget gets approved, the oil interests will be able to start drilling.

Once again, the debate will start, but this is what it comes down to - with oil prices sky-rocketing, instead of looking to jump-start renewable or sustainable energy sources, Bush and Clowns, LLC will cater to oil interests for what will amount to a short-term solution AT BEST. First of all, by the time they find the oil, it will be years before we can get to it. Second, we don’t know (and environmentalists and industry reps are very far apart on) how much oil there really is. Last, the oil industry has a horrid history of leaving ’small footprints’ where they’ve been.

They say that they will only need small drilling sites that won’t disrupt the caribou and other wildlife - that they only need 2,000 of the 1.5M acres of ANWR (total space 19M acres) that would be opened up. But as TIME pointed out, the oil industry is only counting the actual square footage that the equipment is physically sitting on - not the space under pipes going between sites, the roads going back and forth, or even the housing for the workers. As the article states:

“It may be. Turns out the 2,000 acres don’t have to be contiguous and only the space of the equipment touching the ground is counted. Each drilling platform can take up as little as 10 acres. The pipelines are above ground. For space purposes, the amendment counts only the ground touched by the stanchions holding up the pipe. Road widths also are conveniently left out of the space limit. “It’s a complete sham,” complains Allen Mattison, a spokesman for the Sierra Club which opposes drilling. “It’s like a fishing net. If you count just the space of the string’s width, that’s small. But if you open up a fishing net and count the area it covers, that’s much larger.” Environmentalists complain that the House limit ends up allowing oil companies to spread out over practically the entire 1.5 million acres.”

Worse, they’ve said that they will be able to clean it up once they are done, leaving the land in the same condition they found it. And we’re supposed to believe that based on coal industry and natural gas industry claims to the same effect (not to mention the oil industry). In their history, this industry has been notorious for coming in, doing the damage and then walking away scot-free while the environment and those who live nearby suffer the repercussions for decades. Why would it be any different here?

It’s a sham, and it’s going on because Bush and the rest of the corrupt administration are more concerned with keeping oil and energy cronies happy than protecting our environment. So they get rich, America’s cars continue to suck up gas, and in 20 years, we’ll be no better than we are now - well, maybe we will. When the gas runs out, we’ll HAVE TO walk.

At last, another cynic!

Marty March 9th, 2005

When we went to Shari’s relatives this past weekend, I got a good luck at someone else who feels as strongly - if not stronger - about Dumbya as I do. Philip has a large collection of great pictures, quotes and more that skewer our Idiot-in-Chief fairly well, including a Village Voice poster with GWB acting like a vampire sucking the lifeblood from the Statue of Liberty, and another of Uncle Sam looking rather beaten-up, saying “I Want Out”. But perhaps some of his greatest items are the variety of knick-knacks and even some marionettes he has. Enjoy…

GWB. Cheney & Bush Puppets

What Would YOU Do With $50M

Marty January 24th, 2005

Okay, the guy won the election and deserves to have his inauguration and inaugural ball. That’s fine. But doesn’t anyone in his administration see ANYTHING wrong with spending over $50 million for this thing? I’ve been laying off ol’ Dubya for a bit now, although he has done nothing to make me feel any more comfortable with him winning in November. In fact, I’ve only seen more of the same and that scares me.

But this is just ludicrous. FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS. Think about it - this is the same administration that only committed $10 million to the Tsunami relief at first, but had $40 million ear-marked for a party for lobbyists, politicians and the well-connected (yes, I know that they have donated a bunch more - but impressions still count). I can think of a hundred things that it would be better spent on. Sure, go ahead and blow a cool million on your party - I still think that’s a bit much but if you are hosting dignataries from around the world, at least it is somewhat understandable. But $50M? What about our troops and their need for supplies? What about the cuts to funding for urban renewal projects? What about the budget shortfall of the Park Service? What about kicking some of that money into alternative fuel development research.

No, it’s obviously better spent providing entertainment and dinner to the people who supported the President in his bid to further screw up this country. But let’s just say MAYBE we had ear-marked it for something else. What else could $50 million have got us?

  • It could give the Forest Service the $12M they need to meet their budget, and still have enough to fund energy research to the tune of $38M
  • It could provide food and shelter for $1.78M homeless people in the U.S. (Lewin Group Report, 11/19/04)
  • It could buy more than 100,000 kevlar body armor vests for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (based on an estimated $500 per vest).
  • It could pay to hire 900 new police officers for cities around the country (based on average pay of $55,613 - U.S. Census Bureau, March 2003) or for 1,377 new firefighters at an average salary of $36,309 (source: Salary.com)
  • It could provide $1.67 to every poverty-level individual in the U.S. (source: U.S. Census)
  • It could pay for 75% of the additional fire-fighting equipment requested by the Forest Service to fight the wildfires it has seen increase every year since 2000.
  • It could give 600 Enron employees back their average losses ($83,300, according to IBEW.com) or give all of the 12,000 employees $4167 of lost money back. After all, how much of that money came from Kenneth Lay, Dubya’s #1 contributor for his first campaign?

Don’t those all sound like better causes than a big party for a moron?

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