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Category: Society Page 57 of 69

Hardly Strictly Anything

By

On October 11, 2007

In Society, Travel

Enjoyed some time at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this weekend. The festival is entirely free to attend, and is a gift to the public from the pocket of one Warren Hellman. It was so good that I’m thinking of making a trip back for next year’s show.

At the moment of this picture, we were all digging a bluegrass rendition of “That’s Just the Way It Is” with Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs. The park was filled with pot smokin’ porn watchin’ hippies, singlespeed ridin’ Pabst swillin’ hipsters, and Redman dippin’ truck drivin’ rednecks. And we all loved what we were hearing. Then, just after this picture was taken, the US Navy Blue Angels soared overhead in formation.

And the crowd cheered.

This is my America.

Talk to your daughters

By

On October 10, 2007

In Society

In case you haven’t seen this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaH4y6ZjSfE&feature=related[/youtube]

Fighting the Good Fight

By

On October 3, 2007

In Personal, Society

Two stories reminded me of the importance of fighting the good fight, today.  First up, we have the Amish of Nickel Mines.  I’m generally rather critical of the Amish belief system, but I have to give them much credit for their actions in the wake of the loss of their daughters a year ago.  Not only did they attend the funeral of the shooter, but it was recently revealed that they have even given financial assistance to the murderer’s widow.

Think about that.  Not only did they show their forgiveness through their public presence at the funeral of the man who killed their children, but they followed that through with private support of the person they’d expect to be closest to the killer.  Honestly, that is breathtaking.

I don’t know that I could do the same.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I could not.  But that does not stop me from recognizing that it’s something we’d all be better off emulating.  Bitterness and hate are ugly things, and forgiveness goes a long way towards countering them.  Hatred will get you nowhere, and the sooner we can excise it from ourselves, the better off we all are.   Anger, however, is not the same thing.  Which brings me to the second story.

Brandon Mayfield.  You may recall him as the lawyer who was wrongly accused of masterminding the Madrid train bombings.  He, too, found a way to forgive the FBI for ruining his life by fingering him as a terrorist (tho’ I’m sure the $2m settlement made that a bit easier than one might otherwise expect).  He dropped all personal claims against the FBI, but retained one very important claim – “that two provisions of the Patriot Act were unconstitutional on their face.”  Mayfield is moving on with his life while vigorously pursuing an action against the sneak-and-peek and related sharing provisions of the Patriot Act.  His is a rare position – he has solid standing (the basis on which many claims against the Patriot Act have been thrown out) to challenge these Constitution-circumventing provisions.  Mayfield puts it this way:

“We have a perfect balance between liberty and security, between criminal investigation and privacy. It’s called probable cause,” he said. “We ironed out these issues a long time ago. That’s why we’re such a wonderful country.”

Indeed.  Would that we all could put aside our bitterness and hatred while continuing to fight the good fights.

Obama on Nuclear Weapons

By

On October 2, 2007

In Politics, Society

I hope he’s serious:

If elected, Mr. Obama said, he would lead a global effort to secure nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years. He also will pledge to end production of fissile material for weapons, agree not to build new weapons and take remove any remaining nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert.

It’s not just Iran that has no business wielding nuclear weapons.  No one on this planet should have the power to ruin the entire planet for the rest of us.

Watching Burma

By

On September 28, 2007

In Society

It struck me how easy it was to find photos and accounts in realtime during the coup in Thailand last year, compared to the dearth of information about what’s going on in Burma now.  Listening to NPR just now, a caller made a claim that some of the army had split – if true, that would be extraordinary.  Yet no one seems to have the first way to confirm it.  One of the very first things the world could do to help is get a crateload of satellite phones and portable data stations into the country.

  • The BBC is printing personal accounts here.  Read a few.
  • There’s a flickr stream from someone inside Rangoon here.
  • A Burmese blog reporting on the ground (mostly in Burmese, but good sections of account in English) here.
  • An aggregator of Burmese news here.  This is the source of the photo below.  (If it’s your photo, I’ll credit it or take it down, though I hope to be able to leave it up.)

Burma

Ken Burns’ The War

By

On September 27, 2007

In Personal, Society

Like many other people, I’ve been watching the new Ken Burns series – The War. Yes, it’s about World War II, which is probably among the most documented events in history. What more is there to say? Well . . . plenty. Without taking away from many of the existing efforts at examining WWII, I think that The War does an excellent job of zeroing in on the most important thing – the human cost of war. Please give it a chance.

Update: I happened to be watching Ken Burns get interviewed on the Daily Show, and he just said that he doesn’t think he could have made it 10 years ago, because the WWII vets didn’t really want to talk about it, and that he wouldn’t be able to make it 10 years from now, because so many of them will be gone.  It’s his experience that right now, at this point in time, a lot of WWII vets are willing to talk.  I bring this up because it fits with something I was shocked to learn a couple of days ago – my own grandfather is watching this series.  It’s shocking not just because he’s never been one for documentaries or history, but because the subject of his time in the Pacific in WWII (and esp. in Nagasaki, immediately after the atom bomb was dropped) has rarely been a subject he was willing to broach, nevermind discuss or let others examine.  I hope this series doesn’t disappoint him.

Hope for Burma

By

On September 23, 2007

In Personal, Society

The appalling state of human rights in Burma is largely overlooked on the world stage. But it means a lot to those who live there. And it’s those who live there that are risking much to take a stand. The New York Times is reporting that:

The largest street protests in two decades against Myanmar’s military rulers gained momentum on Sunday as thousands of onlookers cheered huge columns of barefoot Buddhist monks and shouted support for the detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

While it gives me hope for Burma, it also worries me. The same article notes that:

The public display of discontent in Myanmar mirrors that of the previous uprising — anger over a brutal and incompetent military government that has turned one of Southeast Asia’s best-endowed and most-sophisticated nations into one of its most-repressed and poverty-ridden.

That previous uprising – in 1988 – resulted in a bloodbath. I wish I could do more than this. I wish the world would do more than nothing.

DC Voting Rights: Still Angry

By

On September 19, 2007

In DC, Politics, Society

The more I look at what happened with the Republican filibuster of the DC voting rights bill, the angrier I get. And not just at the Wish-I-Were-in-Dixie GOP that prefers to preserve the Old Plantation. It’s at the utter lack of interest in the issue by anyone who lives more than 20 miles from DC. And they’re the only people than can do a thing about it.  That’s the very core of the issue.

Short of violent revolution, DC residents do not have ultimate control over those that govern them. Sure, there’s the DC City Council, but that exists at the pleasure of Congress (who has a long history of micromanagement and meddling in DC’s issues anyway, over the objection of the Council). And yet no one really seems all that concerned about it. What little conversation you do find about it on liberal discussion sites seems to boil down to a few desperate voices from DC which are overwhelmed by variations on the following:

  • Oh well, it was unconstitutional anyway.
  • If you don’t like it, move someplace else.
  • DC shouldn’t have as much power as [my state].
  • DC is represented by all 100 Senators and 435 Representatives.

The first can be almost always be ascribed to ignorance and laziness. The rest are ridiculous on their face. But what really really gets me is the underlying theme: that DC doesn’t deserve representation. And my response to that? Best left unprinted, I think.

~

Correction to my piece yesterday – Democrats were *not* unanimous in their support of the bill.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) voted against it, reportedly citing worries about it resulting in less influence for Montana.  It’s been reported that he said he would have voted for it, if it would have been the deciding vote.  So much for principles.  Also, on today’s Kojo Nnamdi show, a number of political reporters claimed that Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), John McCain (R-AZ) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) had each indicated that they were planning to support the bill earlier in the week (this would have gotten the bill the 60 votes it need to overcome the Republican filibuster).   Apparently they “came under intense lobbying pressure.”   From who, the RNC?

Democracy: GOP labels its Export Only

By

On September 18, 2007

In DC, Politics, Society

So today, the GOP successfully blocked a vote that would have given DC residents what every other US citizen already has – representation in Congress. Every Democrat (save Byrd, who was absent) voted for it, as well as seven Republicans (Robert Bennett, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch). My Virginia readers will note that our Gosh-Darn-He’s-Such-an-Honorable-and-Decent-Fellow John Warner is not on that list of supporters.

Just stop and think about this for a moment. The GOP just said that some Americans don’t deserve what the GOP is willing to spend thousands of lives and billions of dollars for in Iraq. Unfuckingbelievable.

Martin Austermuhle at DCist.com has been doing an admirable job of following this, and lays out the tactical options as follows:

Amend It: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted yesterday that the cause of voting rights is as important to him as it is to anyone else. Fine. Let’s hold him to that. If it takes an amendment to the Constitution, let’s propose one, and let’s regularly remind him of the very words he used — “If we want to give the residents representation, then we should begin the amendment process.” [MB: I do not think a Constitutional Amendment is required, but would be more than happy to see voting rights enshrined in the Constitution.]

Publicize It: Let’s force the voting rights message on to everything the District owns, controls or has even the scantest of influence over. The new baseball stadium? We’ll call it Taxation Without Representation Field. The Wilson Building? Let’s get a big sign out front tallying how much in federal taxes we have paid, how many residents we have lost in foreign wars and for how many days the injustice has continued. Let’s partner up with local businesses to have them display signs supporting District voting rights. Whenever members of Congress come back to town, they should know that the cause is still alive. Whenever tourists come to visit, they should be forced to ask what the ruckus is about, and then ask their own members of Congress where they stand on it.

Change It: One of the biggest impediments to effective lobbying for District voting rights is a law Congress passed that forbids the city from using its funds to lobby for the cause. This has to be changed. Our shadow delegation should be paid so they can make this more than just a part-time gig. If the District wants to hire a lobbyist to incessantly push the issue on the Hill, it should be able to.

I’m not about to let Democrats off the hook on this. We’re NOT waiting another two years for this bill to come back up. If Senate Democrats can roll over in a heartbeat to legalize the Administration’s illegal spying, they can get their asses in gear to do this again. Soon. Please help me – and our fellow disenfranchised Americans – by contacting your Representative and Senators about this.

(A modified version of this was crossposted at DailyKos and RaisingKaine)

Arlington’s Ron Carlee Gets the Immigration Issue Right

By

On September 18, 2007

In Policy, Politics, Society, Virginia

A recent DC Examiner piece noted that Ron Carlee, Arlington’s County Manager, recently submitted a memo to the Arlington County Board on the impact of immigration on the administration of government in Arlington. From the memo (PDF):

“Much has been reported lately of an immigration ‘problem’ in parts of Northern Virginia. There is no such ‘problem’ in Arlington County,” County Manager Ron Carlee wrote in a Sept. 11 memo. “Much of what is being said about immigration is political rhetoric during a hotly contested campaign season.”

This is exactly right. Mr. Carlee goes on to lay out the facts:

 During a time of rapidly increasing diversity, we have experienced the following:

  • The lowest crime rate in our history.
  • The most rapid increase in property values in our history – now stabilized.
  • Some of the best schools in the nation.
  • Some of the highest incomes in the nation.
  • Full employment resulting in labor shortages.
  • Extensive private commercial investment.
  • Expansion of retail and leisure activities.
  • Lowest tax rate among major jurisdictions in Northern Virginia.

I’d like to see more local governments taking the time to make similarly honest and public statements about the actual impact of immigration in those jurisdictions.

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