Mark's Musings

Via FiveThirtyEight.com comes this quote:

We discussed voter registration, and the varied approach each party’s campaign takes. “Democrats use a shotgun approach to voter registration. Republicans use a rifle.” If Democrats are setting up a voter registration table on the Downtown Mall, for example, “they’re registering a lot of Republicans.” By contrast, Schoenewald said, “we’re going after very targeted people.”

In other words, Democrats are trying to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard, whereas Republicans care only for their own.

So, lovely financial mess we’re in, isn’t it. To think of the opposite of blame, we come up with responsibility. To this point, (via Geoff Arnold) Christopher Hitchens has written for Vanity Fair an article titled America the Banana Republic. The wikipedia entry on the term banana republic can only be found on the disambiguation page, but “kleptocracy” can be found both there and in Hitchens’ article.

Hitchens asks:

Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? Has anybody even offered to resign?

Who was the last person you can remember resigning as a result of a governmental failure? I’d be surprised if there weren’t any since, but the latest one that immediately sprang to mind was Michael “heckuva job” Brown. Forgive me whilst I go away and sob.

Via Robert J. Elisberg‘s column on Huffington Post, I learned what duties the Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin’s former job, performs:

1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;

Huh. And people say she’s not qualified to be VP? The VP’s duties are to preside over senate sessions, casting votes in case of a tie, and to certify the official vote count of the Electoral Collage. Sounds like Palin’s got all the experience she needs!

I am torn between the idea that impeachment will just be a distraction from the necessary work of congress, and the idea that a person must be held accountable for his or her actions.

Can we do this here in the states too? Please?

The two boys were walking through the woods towards the river. They were looking forward to a nice day of fishing under the shade of the large Norway Maple that marked their favorite spot. Originally, they had been drawn to the tree due to its unusual red leaves, but discovered the bend in the river it grew beside to have the perfect ratio of fish. Not too few such that nothing would be caught, but not too many such that they would be disturbed from their lounging too often.

Suddenly, one of the boys stopped. The other had continued a pace or so before stopping and turning to look back at his friend.

“‘Sup?”

“Look,” said the first, pointing. “Look at that rock.”

“So? It’s a rock.”

“No, look,” the first said, almost scared. “See?”

The second boy looked again, but saw naught but a lizard sunning itself.

“So what?” he asked. “C’mon, let’s get to the river.” The second boy started off again.

“Wait! You can’t feel it? You can’t feel the monster?” asked the first, almost pleading. The second boy stopped and looked again.

“What monster? The lizard?”

“No! There’s a monster under that rock! Can’t you tell?”

“Knock it off, Johnny. I wanna fish.”

“I’m serious!”

“Sure you’re serious. Let’s go.”

“No, I can’t. I can’t walk past that rock. The monster.”

“There’s no monster!”

“Prove it!”

The second boy looked over at the rock. It stuck out of the ground almost as high as he was, and curved lumpily into the ground.

“I can’t lift that.”

“Good thing, too. He’d get you.”

“Who?”

“The monster!”

The second boy sighed. He couldn’t think of a way around the impasse. “There is no monster. We’ve passed that rock a jillion times. It’s never bothered you before.”

“Well, I can feel it this time. I can feel the monster. The monster will get us.”

The second boy walked up to the rock, the lizard eyeing him warily. After the boy walked around the rock, he said “See? He didn’t get me.”

“Don’t care. He’ll get me.”

“How do you know there’s a monster there?”

“I just do! I know it.”

“Prove it, then. Show me.”

“You prove it’s not there!“

Abraham Lincoln wrote this, almost 160 years ago:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — “I see no probability of the British invading us”; but he will say to you, “Be silent: I see it, if you don’t.”

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

January 2009 can’t come soon enough.

How do we reverse this process?

Alonzo Fyfe says it better than I ever could.

I’ve been reading the Jon Swift blog at blogspot for a while now, after Geoff Arnold pointed him out to me. The writer is not always spot-on, and sometimes jokes meant to be subtle are a bit heavy-handed, but I wanted to recommend today’s entry: Who Killed E. Howard Hunt as it is one of his better columns.