Month: October 2004

Anyone Still Afraid the Bush Administration

will Capture Bin Laden Before Tuesday’s Election?

I find it nothing short of bewildering that many are arguing that Bin Laden’s recently released tape will give a boost to Bush’s re-election efforts.

Let’s see, according to this twisted logic the fact that Bin Laden remains free and able to broadcast at will shows that … ?

We need to re-elect Bush to continue his fight against terrorism?

What the Fuck kind of reasoning is that?

According to that kind of reasoning, Bush should probably also appoint Ken Lay Secretary of Energy as he once wanted to do so that he can “solve” America’s energy problems using his own unique methods of screwing Western taxpayers who voted for Gore.

After three years, the Bush administration has been unable to capture or kill the avowed terrorist leader who perpetrated the most devastating attack ever made on American. Does anyone truly believe we have any real plan in place to bring Bin Laden to justice? Except, perhaps, by invading Iran?

Given the chance to rise to greatness as past Presidents have done when faced with a crisis, President Bush has managed to prove himself little more than a posturing buffoon who camouflages his ineffectiveness with a false bravado, as if somehow wearing a flight jacket and challenging those tempted to attack U.S. forces to “bring it own,” would really solve the problem.

Frost’s “The Courage to be New”

I’ve virtually finished Frost’s Collected Poems
and will shortly be starting In the Clearing, his last book of poems. So far, the poems I’ve liked the best have conveyed Frost’s love of nature, and, generally, a positive attitude towards life.

It would be a mistake to assume that those few poems accurately convey Frost’s
attitude towards people and life. Like most “modern” poets, his poetry also contains a cynical element. Simply put, Frost didn’t always hold people in high regard. Like Frost, I occasionally despair that the human condition will ever improve:

The Courage to be New

I hear the world reciting
The mistakes of ancient men,
The brutality and fighting
They will never have again.

Heartbroken and disabled
In body and in mind
They renew talk of the fabled
Federation of Mankind.

But they’re blessed with the acumen
To suspect the human trait
Was not the basest human
That made them militate.

They will tell you more as soon as
You tell them what to do
With their ever breaking newness
And their courage to be new.

Somehow it seems strangely appropriate that when I Googled “Federation of Mankind” that I found an ongoing discussion of this poem with one of our troops stationed in Afghanistan. What could better epitomize the first stanza but a country dominated by warlords and ancient hatreds?

Do you think it’s because he’s “disabled/ In body and mind” that Bush began talking about turning Afghanistan and Iraq into “beacons of Democracy” in the Middle East? Although Frost apparently used the phrase “Federation of Mankind” to refer to the United Nations and convey’s Frost’s distrust of that organization, it’s obvious that the poem is about something far more innate in human nature than a single institution.

Like Frost, I often find it difficult to believe man will ever find “new” ways of eliminating violence from our world for far too many people are afraid of new ideas and blindly follow old ideas, the ones that demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Has Florida Become a Third-World Dictatorship?

I found a link to this truly frightening BBC article while reading American Black.

At first glance, I was tempted to dismiss it as mere blogger hype. After all the war raging between conservative and liberal bloggers on the net has gotten so divisive that I’m beginning to wonder if we are going to be able to put this country back together after this election, no matter who wins.

If this story is true, though, one suspects that there may well be lawsuits that will cast doubts on this election far into the future. These apparently deliberate attempts to disenfranchise voters because of their party affiliation casts doubt on the entire democratic process in America, not to mention making Florida appear to be some third-world dictatorship that manipulates the vote to serve its own purposes.

How truly sad that the BBC feels it necessary to set up cameras outside polling places in AMERICA, for Christ’s sake. This is truly a disgrace that reflects badly on all Americans, but particularly on the Republicans. Has America suddenly reverted to an anti-bellum South where blacks and other minorities were prevented from voting by those in power?

On one hand, this truly casts doubt on whether Bush did defeat Gore in Florida four years ago. If this kind of intimidation is still going on when Florida authorities must realize that they are being observed, can there be little doubt that it was much worse four years ago when they weren’t being observed?

I guess you could argue that the fact that the Republicans feel so desperate that they will stoop to these tactics in the face of international exposurure that they must know how close they are to being thrown out of office.

UPDATED:

Speak of the devil, here’s a Christian Scientist Article that suggests that recent changes in voting rules may well end up with one, or both, of the candidates challenging the votes in a number of states.

The article suggests new voters were passed because:

An estimated 1.5 million to 3 million would-be voters were turned away from the polls in similar challenges during the 2000 election. Congress created provisional voting as a mechanism to capture those lost votes.

Unfortunately, the very laws intended to ensure that every American who is eligible to vote is allowed to vote may result in new problems because:

But definitions in the federal law are vague, and voter eligibility ultimately turns on an interpretation of state law that may differ from judge to judge. Analysts say that is a recipe for bare-knuckled legal tactics that could swing the election one way or the other in a close race.

I don’t know about you, but personally I’m hoping that Kerry wins so overwhelmingly that such challenges are irrelevant. It would be truly ironic if Bush were to attempt to overthrow election results in ways that Gore finally rejected.