December 22, 2005 – 1:37 pm
In an obvious attempt to move towards a more middle of the road reputation, Senator Clinton backs a proposed flag burning law. This is illustrative of the lame state of politics in our country in a number of ways. What should be even more obvious is that she has no chance of winning the presidency in 2008, regardless of the hype around that possibility.
- No conservatives will ever vote for Hillary Clinton, no matter what ridiculous laws (like this one) that she backs.
- I seriously doubt that either party would put a woman through the primaries and make her their party’s primary candidate. The only way there would ever be a woman president in 2008 would be if both parties decided to run one, which they would not do. The most likely choices from either side (probably Clinton and Rice) would probably result in Clinton winning, because Rice would not only have the sexists against her but also the racists. Despite all the progress we’ve made in this country, I believe there is still (unfortunately) a large group of people in this country (not to single out any areas of the country, but let’s just say they aren’t near large bodies of water) that are not ready to vote for either a woman or a non-white person as president.
PS - I really tried to think of an “… is good” second part to complete the title, but I can’t think of one, so the reference will probably not work out very well.
December 22, 2005 – 12:53 pm
This came up in a conversation on Nate’s blog, but since he doesn’t want to discuss it there anymore, I’ll branch off and discuss it here.
It’s my opinion that the actions of a person (or group of people, or government, etc.) can still be evil regardless of their “motives”.
In the context of what we were discussing (the Israel/Palestinian conflict), I would say that the killings and other bad actions taken by both sides are wrong, regardless of their stated (or even honest) motives. Both sides would not consider themselves to have sinister motives, like just trying to kill as many people as they could. Rather, they would both say that they are acting in response to an attack from the other side (in self-defense); both sides target and kill people who were not directly involved in the specific case that they’re retaliating against, but they both say that this is necessary on their part because it is impossible to only target those who were actually involved in the previous acts.
My take is that it’s always wrong to set off a bomb on a bus full of innocent people, just like it’s always wrong to fire machine guns into and/or bomb unarmed crowds and bulldoze inhabited homes, and so-called “motives” don’t mitigate that in any case.
What do you think?
December 20, 2005 – 9:59 pm
Martha has acknowledged that I have had my current phone (Nokia 3650) for quite a while now (without breaking and/or losing it), and has officially agreed that I should get a new one.
So I thought I’d open it up for suggestions. I’ll start by saying that I like everything about my current phone other than the camera quality and the circle dialing pad, which has gotten annoying because I want to be able to dial without looking. There are several features on my current phone that will be prerequisites in any new model for consideration: Read More »
December 20, 2005 – 9:21 pm
A couple weeks ago I had what I thought was a brilliant, original idea for a new podcast that I could do where I would do play-by-play commentary on poker games, including pro matches on TV, and pro / high-stakes internet games, and perhaps eventually live games as well, although that may be more difficult because I wouldn’t want to do it while I was playing, but I could take notes and then start recording if I bust out early and go back and record the beginning (based on notes) later.
Anyway, before I actually did anything on this I decided to search around and make sure that no one else had snatched up my brilliant idea before I got to it, and sadly found that they did. I haven’t listened to any of them yet, and I think they are all internet-only coverage of the actual person playing, but still, I don’t know if I want to do it anymore now that I know it’s not unique. Who knows, maybe I’ll listen to them and they’ll stink, and then I might still consider doing it.
Oh well, I guess that I have plenty of other stuff to keep me busy without starting yet another new thing, so for now I probably won’t do it. Maybe someday we’ll get around to doing another episode of our Tythyl podcast.
December 20, 2005 – 2:29 pm
I finally saw the teaser trailer for this today, although I think it’s been out for a while. As a big comic book (and specifically Superman) fan, I’m really looking forward to this one.
Thumbs up from me for getting an unknown actor for the role instead of someone like Nicholas Cage, who was being considered before it got canceled the first time; if they had done that I would probably still watch it, but reluctantly.
Also, this one will take place (chronologically) after the original Superman 2 movie, so everything that happened in the first two movies (the good ones) is still part of the history, whereas numbers 3 and 4 are wiped out, which is great because they sucked (4 much more than 3, because at least 3 had Richard Pryor, as well as the money rounding scheme that they copied in Office Space). I really think this will work well, whereas with the recent Batman picture they pretty much had to scrap all the previous movies and start over because they were so bad.
For those who found the Christian symbology in the recent Narnia movie, I think you may find it in this one as well. The Superman story has always had some parallels of that nature in it, and the trailer definitely emphasizes one in particular.
The story (or what I’ve heard so far) is interesting as well (Don’t read this next part if you don’t want to know a little about the plot; nothing major, but still…) Read More »
December 20, 2005 – 1:35 pm
that when you’re working at home, the kids wait until mom has gone to the store and you are on a work related phone call before they decide to start fighting with each other?
December 19, 2005 – 7:51 pm
So I officially talked to the doctor today when I took Riley in for his follow-up shot about the V procedure, and they’re officially putting the paperwork through to the insurance. I’ll probably be doing it pretty soon, during the vacation time if possible. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and it’s probably a good time to do it as any. Not that we don’t like having kids, but we like the ones we’ve got now so much that we should probably quit while we’re ahead, or at least before one comes out looking more like me than Martha.
December 19, 2005 – 6:41 pm
Step 1 - Remove a lot of the tags/categories that were cluttering up the list before: done.
Next is going back through all the older posts and re-categorizing them; that will be the hard part.
There are a whole bunch of cosmetic changes that I’d like to do to, depending on how much time I want to spend on it.
December 19, 2005 – 3:20 pm
In this Reuters article about the recent spying on Americans controversy, the administration attempts to defend the practice of spying on Americans (which they have previously denied and now have been caught doing secretly, so now they have to defend it). It is illegal for the government to spy on citizens without the approval of the court, but the administration is alleging that they are justified because we are “in a time of war”.
This just keeps coming up over and over again, and I’m surprised that anyone is still accepting it (although I think/hope fewer are). It should be plainly obvious to everyone by now that if you’re going to consider the “war on terror” as a qualification for the US being “in a war”, then you have to accept the fact that we will now be in a “war” forever. I heard several different radio commentators talk about this today, referencing all kinds of stuff that Lincoln did in his efforts as president during the civil war, but they’re totally missing the point that the so-called “war” we’re in now is completely and totally different from the actual wars of the past.
The other thing I’d really love to hear is the response of all the people who I’ve talked to about the Patriot Act who’ve said that it’s OK to do that kind of stuff to non-citizens (because for some reason they are not as deserving of civil rights as we are), but the government would never do that kind of thing to “us”.