Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Who are ‘We’

Saturday, March 31st, 2007

The Vice President told the Republican Jewish Coalition that we will not pull out of Iraq early. This is not in itself surprising, but the way he said it is interesting.

“A sudden withdrawal of our coalition would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger,” the vice president declared. “And for the sake of our own security, we will not stand by and let it happen.”

CommonDreams.org article

It makes me wonder who he refers to by ‘we’. I think that I am not part of that ‘we’. It is not my security that needs to be protected, and further staying in Iraq does not protect me from harm. It makes things worse.

When I hear that word, security, I don’t really think of physical safety. I think that he means in the sense of being secure. Secure in power, secure in sources of funding and secure in the structures that maintain those things. And, if he is talking to his allies, with all their political and economic goals about security, what it says to me is that he and they are feeling more insecure about it.
I like it. I want them to feel insecure about their hold on power. War is nasty and people who make money off of it are nasty too.

Check out Talking Points Memo, their muckrakers have good tools.

HOUSE BILL NO. 525:Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education Act

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Roger Koopman, a representative in the Montana State Legislature, introduced a bill this session entitled “AN ACT ENCOURAGING INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY IN THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM; URGING UNITS OF THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM TO PROVIDE AN ANNUAL REPORT; PROVIDING A ROLE FOR THE EDUCATION AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT INTERIM COMMITTEE; AMENDING SECTION 5-5-224, MCA; AND PROVIDING AN EFFECTIVE DATE.” I read the bill and I think that it is not a good idea. It is too vague and adds another unnecessary burden on the system. It is a mostly symbolic gesture and does not have any meat to it. (more…)

Molly Ivins, 62, Deceased.

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

The first column I read by Molly Ivins was in highschool. Over the last few years, as I became more interested in politics, I found myself reading her columns more often. I liked her style. She got down to bid’ness and didn’t use flowery prose or tortous logic to get her point across.

During the summer, her columns started to come less frequently, I read she had relapsed into cancer. She was going through chemo and lost her hair. But she kept writing in the same fiery tone.

Suddenly, the columns stopped altogether. For two months, I checked common dreams everyday and read my op-ed columns, but none from her. I guess I had thought that she would get better, that the stubborn, take no quarter spirit would prevail over the cancer.

Then, last week, after not checking common dreams for a while, I read Maya Angelou’s essay.

I will miss that fiery spirit. I will miss that stubborn will that always spoke truth to power. I will miss the hope and the anger her writing made me feel. But, the mistakes and abuses she wrote about continue and it would not do justice to her memory to merely grieve.