Wanted: Sanity and a Larger Monitor

Glee

August 27th, I'm getting my braces out. Finally.

I'm rather excited.

More Politics, Now With Footnotes!

This article gives some outside verification to what I had previously suspected¹, namely that the Republican party in Iowa has changed considerably:

Grassley won't be GOP delegate

So, what's the big deal, you say?

The big deal is that back in the day when I was a young'n² Grassley was the Awesome Iowa Political Figure, at least once Branstad was no longer governor. He was the opposite of Harkin, who was (and still is) the Democratic Iowa Senator. Jim Nussle, our local House member, was a Republican as well, but he was always on slightly shaky ground, especially after his marriage started having trouble. Not as Awesome as Grassley, for sure.

Anywho, it's really a bit surprising that Grassley's no longer considered worth giving a voting delegate position to. Well, it would have been surprising a few years ago. Having been to some of the local conventions, I'm not terribly surprised anymore.

The party in Iowa is definitely taking on more Christian overtones, with a couple of completely foreseeable results. For starters, people who aren't a) very conservative evangelical Christians, b) rather strident neoconservatives, or c) life-long party movers-and-shakers, just aren't participating much at all. It's turning into more of an activist-only scene, which as the Libertarian Party guys will tell you, does not actually lead to more widespread influence.³

Not only are the centrist-righters leaving, but the libertarians are, too. These are the people who got very excited about Ron Paul, made it to the conventions, and then realized that the Christian far-right in Iowa was slightly too much in the majority⁴ and a lot too uncompromising to work with.

I'm guessing that various members of the Christian right here in Iowa are all kinds of excited about this, since new-found power is a heady thing, but I have one small observation to make:

When you scare the Silent Majority, the Silent Majority leaves.

Just a heads-up.


¹ Okay, okay, so I've been more than suspecting it. I mean, when a party goes from complaining about hog lots to worrying that the terrorists are gonna buy up our precious, precious farmland, something's changed.

² I.e., not out of highschool yet. So, at least 8 years ago.

³ It does, however, lead to vastly more entertaining conventions.

⁴ This would be the majority after the centrist-right deserted in droves.

Quotes And Paraphrases

Today, in lieu of having really anything to write, I bring you the most entertaining bits of the Republican Iowa 2nd District Convention. Which, incidentally, will probably serve to be the reason I skip out on the state convention, if in fact I do.

One of the candidates for US Senate, whilst going on about all his other qualifications: "I was exposed to anthrax." One can only assume he considers this to be a qualification for political office.

Steve King, US Representative from western Iowa, and clearly one of the leading economic lights of the House of Representatives: 'The economy really isn't as bad as everyone says, and anyway, if we would've just made the Bush tax cuts permanent, we wouldn't have had this little economic downturn.'

This was shortly followed up by: "John McCain will end the war on terror." I do not think this sentence means what he thinks it means.

The Iowa State Auditor: "We need to put a Republican back into the White House." This was possibly more entertaining for me than for anyone else in the room.

An unnamed US Senate candidate: 'Arab males are crossing the border at night. I ask you, why are they crossing at night?'

The head of the Iowa GOP offered the revelation that it is vitally important that we win in Iraq, basically because we haven't won enough wars recently. His connections to Michael Ledeen are unknown.

But the highlight of the entire day came during the platform discussion (Again. Pity we didn't have enough time to get through even half of it.), concerning this plank in the Agriculture section:

We support laws that restrict foreign ownership of Iowa farmland.

There was an amendment up from the local Lew Rockwell contingent to strike this plank, and during the discussion on said amendment a very concerned and passionate delegate declared fervently that we needed this plank in the platform, because...

The Linn County GOP Convention, or Why People In Groups Frighten Me

On March 8th, I spent all morning and afternoon sitting in a metal folding chair, watching the slow, steady trickle of insanity take over a room full of people. I went to the Linn County Republican Convention.

Initial impressions first: it was held in the Teamsters Union Local No. 238. Apparently Jimmy Hoffa spoke at the building's dedication. Also apparently, John McCain is still a hard sell around these parts, as I ended up with no less than four glossy brochures going on about sacrifice and being Ready To Lead From Day One. Possibly the most convincing aspect was how half of them were obviously left over from January, giving the option of being a McCain supporter by voting in the Iowa Caucus.

They were expecting 400 or so, and ended up with somewhere around 150. Clearly only the most dedicated, plus me, showed up. This was a wee bit frightening, as it made me out to be dedicated. I like to tell myself I'm nothing of the sort; I just show up to keep myself informed on how local GOP politics is going. And to remind myself that yes, I'm mostly libertarian now.

It started off, as conventions always do, with lots of talking about how people need to be 'united' and 'pull together behind the candidates' and 'support the party' and a whole lot of rot. All a massive ploy to get people to buy snacks from the tables in the back, really. The idea is that if you talk a lot about things people don't want to hear, they'll drown out the pain by buying food. Brilliant, without a doubt.

This was followed by the keynote speaker, also known as the Iowa State Auditor. He was there to reveal to us all about how the governor, who happens to be a Democrat, is running the state into the ground financially. Wouldn't actually surprise me, but I wasn't paying much attention any more as I'd finally got my hands on a copy of the 2008 Linn County Republican Party platform, and it was a sight to behold. 238 planks, prior to amendment, with about half proposing new ways to spend money, a third proposing new ways to violate the US Constitution, and most of the remainder weaseling out of saying anything at all.

A few samples:

We support companies and individuals who invent an affordable car that gets 100 miles to the gallon - We also support ponies and rainbows. And sunshine, because it makes us feel happy.

With the increasing percentage of obesity and several health conditions, it is essential that our children are fed nutritional, life-giving foods in our public schools. It is time to be proactive instead of reactive, our kids deserve it because they are our future. Let's teach our kids how to eat to live instead of living to eat. - Clearly, we must cancel all the mandatory classes on junk food appreciation. And also stop serving things that literally suck the life out of kids in their school lunches. And also probably suspend students for buying Skittles. It's the only way.

We affirm that any Global Warming that may be occurring is not the result of human activity. - Now, I'm as much of a skeptic of an anthropologic cause for global warming as anyone, but the logic in my head says that affirming things in party platforms doesn't actually make them so, and that possibly attempting to use a political platform to state things about science is a dumb idea. But maybe I'm wrong, and the best thing for the country is a plank that states how we affirm that gravity is indeed that force which causes attraction between two masses.

We affirm that the current language in the Pledge of Allegiance and the original language of the Declaration of Independence are very important and must be protected. - Clearly, I missed the memo stating that historical documents like the Declaration of Independence are in a state of flux and can be arbitrarily reworded at any time. Given that, I have a brilliant new version of the Magna Carta I'm going to be shopping around.

We call upon the Linn County Building Department to honor state standards and stop making normal construction difficult. - I admit it, this one was just amusing. I'm envisioning a very put-out local entrepeneur writing this one hastily down at his local caucus.

We demand that when DHS (Department of Human Services) is involved with a family that the courts protect both the best interests of the child or children also protecting the rights of the parents. - We also demand that we not be constrained by the petty restrictions of English grammar.

And, of course, the section on Defense, Immigration, and Foreign Policy:

We believe that the United States Embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem. - But seriously, why stop there? Since increasing controversy is clearly the answer, we should start construction of a nice new facility on the Temple Mount itself.

Terrorist websites at home and abroad should be closed down using computer warfare. - Yes. Yes. We must send out our remote-control mini-tanks into the tubes of the internets, post-haste!

We believe in more restrictions for legal immigrants (H-1B visas). - Wait. Are we trying to restrict legal immigrants, or are we trying to restrict the number of H-1B visas? Or perhaps we're trying to tell ourselves that all legal immigrants have H-1B visas? We're confused.

*insert a week-and-a-half writing break here*

I can give the platform a break, though. The planks are generally written by random people at local caucuses, and then collected with little to no editing by the platform committee. It's quite common to find incredible leaps of logic and massive internal inconsistencies in a county platform.

However, what happened as we were going through potential amendments to the platform was rather eye-opening.

I really, really wish I would have thought to write down the exact wording of the potential new plank that came up as an amendment. What I remember of it is that it referred to fighting terrorism in some way, and then went on to say that U.S. citizens should receive full due process rights regardless. It came up on the screen, there was no discussion brought up, and I thought to myself, "Well, that's fairly reasonable. I mean, it doesn't go as far as I would like, given that I'd rather see due process rights extended to everyone, period, but I can't imagine the average conservative having much problem with it. Eminently respectable."

But, no. The voice vote was not obvious enough to carry the amendment, and when they had those for, and then against, stand, I realized it was going to fail by a nearly 2-1 margin. Clearly, Republicans in Linn County are massively unconcerned about fair trials. It's not actually fun to find out that your neighbors wouldn't particularly mind you getting held without trial if you were under suspicion of terrorism or something.

And thus, my concern for the state of mind of the Linn County Republican Party.

The Illogic, It Hurtses!

I ran across this a few days ago, and forgot to post it until now:

Did terrorists cause the housing mess?

Yeesssss. Clearly, without any terrorist attack, the US economy would have never have had any problems. I expect a similar explanation for the dot-com bubble any day now. Called "Did terrorists use a mind-control ray to cause us to invest in companies consisting primarily of cute logos and catchy names?" or something similar. After all, we're much too smart to lose money all on our own. Must be those pesky terrorists.

Caucus

Welp, another even year, another caucus. Personally, my small contribution was a rousing success. They might love me now as the bright young thing who actually put some effort* into this thing, but I suspect there'll be less happiness come the county convention and they realize there're gonna be a bunch of issues brought up by libertarian-influenced statements that they'll have to discuss instead of quietly ignoring.

It really is quite shocking how much effect you can have from just an hour's worth of work beforehand. I'll bet that fully half the planks submitted in writing were mine. Most people have maybe one issue they care about, and if they're feeling incredibly involved they'll write something up for that, and then call it a day. Me, I'm rather too much too concerned about too many things for my own good.

As for the results in Iowa tonight, I just have to say that I'm incredibly, incredibly amused. A large number of people in the Republican political machine are going to be very, very ticked about Huckabee's substantial margin of victory.

As for the Democratic side, Clinton's clearly got much larger issues than she thought she had prior to tonight. It's going to be very interesting to watch this thing play out, in both parties.

*by effort, I mean that I showed up, voted, and then proceeded to hand in 3.5 handwritten pages of potentional Republican Party platform planks. The last bit got some shock and some clapping, because, you know, I'm young and need to be encouraged.

Oscar The Grouch Was Always My Favorite

As a way of inaugurating my own week-long vacation, I bring you the news that the first two seasons of Sesame Street are no longer considered fit for small children.

Enjoy.

Open Season On Political Ads

Mitt Romney's new 'Jihad' ad made me want to simultaneously tear my hair out and throw the remote at the tv. This would have a) hurt, and b) cost me money, so I decided against it.

Instead, for your amusement, I have channeled my pent-up rage and despair into shockingly bad interpretive haiku.

"It's this century's nightmare - "

Romney's time machine,
it gets a workout, indeed.
Twenty-fifty-three?

"Jihadism - violent, radical, Islamic fundamentalism"

Speech writer: "Too short;
proper descriptions have more.
Room for fascistic?"

"Their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate."

Shiites want no part
of a world-wide caliphate.
But facts are boring.

"To do that, they must collapse freedom-loving nations, like us."

Islamofascists
are stronger than Communists.
Fear is the answer!

"As president, I'll strengthen our intelligence services, increase our military by at least a hundred thousand, and monitor the calls Al-Qaeda makes into America."

"Computers, soldiers,
foreign policy is not."
Yoda reveals all.

"And we can and will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

Mahmoud is crazy.
But I can be crazier.
Watch me threaten war!

"I'm Mitt Romney, and I approve this message."

The background music
was faint, yet inspiring, no?
I will go cry now.

Finally, A Place For The Piranhas

I need 1.5 million dollars.

Why?

To buy my own Titan 1 missile base, of course!

The possibilities, they are mind-boggling.

They Said What?!

US Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing Plan

Somebody had better be making this stuff up. I won't be happy, but I'll be a lot less happy if we start dropping bombs in 8-10 months.

Next Time, I'll Believe The Previews

Stardust, the novella/graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, is a rather lovely little fairy tale which I happened to pick up in the bookstore about a month ago.

Stardust, the movie directed by Matthew Vaughn, while retaining about half of the major aspects of the plot, is a farce, switching madly between attempts at epic fantasy and romantic comedy, and succeeding at neither.

postingDate += Month;

For starters, I am not a Cylon. This is not, however, externally verifiable. Everyone will have to take my word for it.

Secondly, while it's supposed to only be about 80 degrees outside, it feels much warmer when actually mowing the lawn. This would make me unhappy, but the lawn is finished now, and I'd much rather sit around and tell myself how much I've accomplished today. (Accomplishments being: weeding a 3-square-foot patch of the front flower bed, and mowing the lawn, and washing a set of sheets. Also watching an hour and a half of anime, but for some reason, normal people don't consider that an accomplishment.)

Thirdly, it is only two weeks until the Iowa Straw Poll. This is one of those things that all second-tier Republican presidential candidates show up for so they can claim they're more connected to the heartland than those other dudes. First-tier candidates alternate between buying lots of votes to try and impress people with their vote-buying powers, and ignoring the whole thing whilst trying to claim those farmer-types in Iowa have no relation to the nation at large anyway. This, while possibly true, is a sure-fire way to not win the Iowa Straw Poll.

I have great plans for showing up in my "meh." tshirt and sitting stolidly through attempts to raise my patriotism to proper levels. This will probably be followed by trying to place my vote, having to pull out my driver's license in order to prove that yes, I really am over 18.

Oh, wait. They have everyone show photo ID, in some lame attempt to prove how awesome having voter ID laws would be.

Finally, I bought another five-shelf bookcase the other week, right? Almost full now.

Home Again

The house hasn't burned down in my absence, the refrigerator is restocked with food, and the AC is still working.

*crashes*

Ardith Will Be In Texas

So, uh, I'm rather slow about certain things. Like letting people know when I'm going to be in the area. Anyway, since we've got our Hoyt family reunion in Tyler in two weeks, I'm going to be in the area. Specifically, I've set aside some time to be in Longview (unless everyone decides to be mysteriously gone at the same time) probably from the afternoon of the 24th, until sometime later, but no later than the afternoon of the 26th, because it takes a day and a half to get home, and I have an orthodontist appointment on that Thursday.

That was an amazingly long sentence.

Anyway, I will be in the area, and available for movies, ice cream, eating at Joe's, parties, being lazy, and/or any combination of the above.

I Should Just Quit Watching Debates Anyway

The Republican Party, in its current incarnation, disconcerts me. Actually, I'll go further and say that it pretty much scares me and comes close to keeping me up at night. This is, to a great extent, due to popular Republican stances on the "War on Terror" and associated questions of liberty vs. security and foreign policy.

But even more disturbing is the inability to rationally discuss various facets of policy, especially foreign policy, without resorting to some sort of twisted accusation of 'lack of patriotism'. It's not so much that I disagree with 9/10 of the foreign policy views I hear in a Republican presidential debate, it's that were I to miraculously become a Republican presidential candidate and stand on the stage with them, I'd be called insane, at best. Not a "Hey, I think you're wrong, and I disagree with you, but I can see how you might arrive at that opinion. Now here's why my idea's better," but a "I've never heard of anything so idiotic, and you have no reason for saying what you do. In fact, I'm offended and demand an apology."

Before you think I'm overreacting, you might want to take a look at this short clip from the last GOP debate.

Alrighty, Giuliani's clearly obsessed with his "I was mayor of New York City during 9/11!" talking point.

Now, obviously, I'm not Ron Paul, and I don't agree with everything he says. But he makes a valid point when he brings up the idea that our foreign policy decisions have, you know, actual consequences. And at least he's saying something besides the recurrent "If we leave Iraq, they'll come and murder us in our beds! If we hadn't invaded Iraq, they would have come and murdered us in our beds!" In all seriousness, I expect someone who believes the invasion of Iraq was vital to our national security to be able to lucidly explain why it was necessary. Invoking 9/11 is a cop-out.

The next question is, inevitably, "Ardith, why do you care? I mean, they're all politicians, after all." Which is true. But I do care, and for two reasons. First, I do think Ron Paul is more right than wrong when it comes to foreign policy, and I and my friends and siblings will have to deal with repercussions of the current U.S. foreign policy over the next 40 years. I'm not currently looking forward to that.

So yeah, that's depressing. But even more depressing is the apparently complete lack of any intellectual curiousity; strident adulation of a specific set of talking points, coupled with instant, almost unthinking denial of anything that might call those talking points into question. And this is in a primary debate. What, exactly, makes foreign policy and its relation to events on our shores untouchable when immigration policy, even abortion is debatable?

Of course, it doesn't actually help when FOX News personalities and popular conservative bloggers hear "what we do in and to other countries has consequences" and translate that into "Gasp! Ron Paul thinks 9/11 was an inside job and the Twin Towers were demolished by previously planted explosives!" I mean, I walk away with some doubt as to Gibson and Malkin's ability to hear properly (or have any sort of reading comprehension? I assume there are transcripts of the debate floating around), but others may not be so aware of the facts. But that's another post entitled "Why FOX News is Just as Annoying as CBS."

And this has been tonight's episode of Tirades About Politicians - Pointless Because They Don't Listen To Me Anyway. Thanks for listening, and don't let the piranhas bite.

EDIT: Fixed the YouTube URL.