Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Yes, i know all politicians are crooked, and you’ll be pointing out these same things to me next time a Democrat comes up for re-election. I just plan to do everything i can to make sure that happens exactly four years from now.


Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

This from a Time article via Metafilter via Pandagon, a person i actually know (sorta) through Rabi. I don’t think that this move is downright evil, as Bush is certainly a big part of why we have a Department of Homeland Security today, but when it comes down to it no-one should be telling the Department to look into photo-ops — i don’t care what party they’re from.

Here’s an alternative to partisan voting: If we reward the people who lie less on a consistent basis, maybe everyone will lie less. Along those lines, a conservative classmate of mine put together Anybody But Bush 2004 as his senior project. Go Geoff!

Also, if you missed the big campaign story from last week, the article does an excellent job of rehashing it simply: Tipped off by Democrats on Capitol Hill that the appointment was in the works, Kerry’s staff had quickly done a LexisNexis search on the proposed nominee, Anthony Raimondo, and discovered that the Nebraska manufacturing executive laid off 75 U.S. workers in 2002 while building a $3 million factory in Beijing. That might make it awkward for him to champion keeping jobs at home. Two hours before the Commerce Department was scheduled to announce Raimondo’s nomination last week, the Kerry campaign did it for them. A day later, Raimondo had withdrawn his name from consideration … White House officials insist that the nomination collapsed because a Senator in Raimondo’s home state did not approve of him.

Anyway, BushBashing aside, the article is a good read. I’d obviously love to put a Democrat in office, but what i’d love more is for every person who has ever read this site to go out and vote in November. That would be much cooler.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/03/107939524276123597/

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If you didn’t already know that election time was drawing near, you would have been tipped off by President Bush attempting to surf his way into office on a coffin of a 9/11 victim (probably not for the last time) in one of his campaign’s first national adds. Story here. I don’t know that you can deny the man the ability to refer to 9/11 in the list of his political accomplishments, but let’s not forget that he said he’d avoid it. From the article: Added Rita Lasar, who lost a brother on 9/11, “President Bush promised in a speech he gave in 2002 that he would not use the site for political reasons. We believed him; we trusted him. He has broken his promise to us.”

This is the same guy who said of gay marriage “The state can do what they want to do” while on the 2000 campaign trail, so if you had any illusions about him not being a liar feel free to dispel them.

I personally support gay marriage because it is in keeping with the way i interpret the Constitution, the way i feel about State rights, and my religious beliefs. I feel very strongly that the federal government should not impose a standard for or against gay marriage on the entire nation. This doesn’t mean we should have a national amendment stating “Queers can get hitched!,” but it also means i find a national marriage amendment or initiative to be an alarming overreach of Federal power.

I realize that at a time like this it is everyone’s responsibility to voice their opinions in a logical way that can be appreciated by both sympathizers and opponents. Also, i think all of my friends deserve to marry the people that they love as much as i do. Expect to be hit on the head by my big liberal hammer repeatedly in the coming months.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/03/107853080587457072/

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I’m not even going to touch this whole hilariously disgusting Margaret Cho thing because it’s on, like, every blog on the planet. The comments mailed to Ms. Cho churned my stomach, which seems to be a fairly standard reaction, but Mykeru made me feel a little better about it. I especially like the bit about the “witless ditto monkeys;” i often feel like there are no stark raving crazy liberal politico bloggers out there because i spent so much time last year in shock and awe of all the pro-war-hawks and their Uruk-Hai like ditto-monkey followers. That’s what so many people are these days. I could take a whole year just to talk about politics and the media and how mislead we are on a daily basis, but that’s not why i’m here. I just wish people understood the choices they were making, and could diversify a little bit as to not just follow the same thing all of the time.

Anyhow, just as soon as you print out a State of the Union scorecard you can consider me mum on the matter. I don’t even find the meta making fun of the people who make fun of the people who make fun of G.W. thing at all hilarious. Not even a touch.

::snicker::

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107440499290189188/

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In comments on a MetaFilter post about Democratic Presidential hopeful Howard Dean insinuating that President Bush and his advisors had advanced warning about the 9/11 attacks, there is an interesting link to a extensively footnoted timeline of the President’s actions on the morning of September 11th. I not only admire the extensive research presented here, but am rather more apalled than usual at the picture it paints of the President — rather than implying knowledge, it would seem to actually imply that no one thought to interrupt his grade-school photo-op in order for him to act as a the Commander in Chief during the most major foreign orchestrated attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107074426798247507/

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Randomness.

Lindsay and i have far-ranging discussions from eight to eleven in the morning. Our words lilt out to the tune of folk music and classic rock as we alternatingly bag, scan, sing, bag, scan, sing. I am unafraid of saying things to Lindsay now; although i know she still has the ability to be upset about something i say, i also know that it will ultimately not change our friendship.

There is this: a step towards striking “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and the immediate backlash against it. Religion seems to be playing into this issue a lot more than Strict Constitutionalism, and i suppose that if we have to define Lindsay is a lapsed Catholic and i’m an Amendment-clutching agnostic. And we, apparently (though not shockingly), have differing opinions on the pledge of Allegiance.

As a sensible American who enjoys upholding the actual text of the Constitution, i have never supported the mention of God in the Pledge. For those of you still ignorant to how it got there, NO, it wasn’t in the original pledge. Not by a longshot. In fact, it was adopted in 1954. Yes, that’s right, while one of my parents was alive. Without ever having known this, i refrained from reciting the pledge for most of High School, but now i see that i wasn’t just another young punk flouting the will of the administration. Lindsay seems to think my idea is crazy, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Ninth Circuit Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who wrote the presiding opinion, stated that “A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.” Indeed. Many might note that we have God’s name on our money, for god’s sake, so why make a big deal about the pledge. However, the bone of contention isn’t merely the mention of God – at least, not legally. In fact, it’s all about implementation.

According to the court, upon President Eisenhower signing the legislation that inserted he wrote that “millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” Not because he wanted it to be consistent with our money. Not to be consistent with all the flowery language about “Nature’s God” in the Declaration. No. Not for any of those reasons, but because in 1954 President Eisenhower thought that it would be a good idea for every child to be reminded of God – his “Almighty” – every morning in homeroom. Not Zeus. Not Vishnu. Not Satan, god help us. God. The God. You know which one i mean.

Says the court: “The Pledge, as currently codified, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion because it sends a message to unbelievers ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.'” While that might be a little excessive, personally i think he’s got to go. God, that is. Either that, or we need to make a clearer and more pertinent phrasing of the original 1954 law to make it clear what God’s purpose is in the phrasing.

Lindsay seems to disagree. She voices the opinion, shared by many, that God is a small thing to be squabbling about right now. The divisiveness introduced by an argument over something that is at once so trivial and yet so vital is exactly the sign that we aren’t the country we need to be. My response is that our country is built upon the foundations of inclusiveness and Constitutionality, and to suspend that just because we’re involved in a greater conflict is a sign of how weak we truly are. Unfortunately, my labeling us as already weak and divided apparently undermines my argument solely on the fact that i am just not patriotic enough in the first place. Which is probably true. However, i’m sure there are plenty of bright young patriots out there who have actually read the establishment clause and can see that this is an issue of constitutional interpretation … not of lapsed nationalism and atheistic ideals.

*sigh* … back to work i go. I’m sure you can find a better news source than me for more on this story – it should be interesting to watch both political parties swallow all of their stances on interpretation as they attempt to rectify this very real inconsistency between amendment and law. I say we shouldn’t vote any of them back into office.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85304687/