Category Archives: Politics

Read My Lips

Caught on Film In a rare sign of industriousness, Congressional Democrats have assembled a damning catalog of President George W. Bush’s disingenuousness. One of my favorites is Bush’s grandstanding pronouncement just this past fall that, “One of the ways we’ve got to make sure that we keep our economy strong is to be wise about how we spend our money. If you overspend, it creates a fundamental weakness in the foundation of economic growth. And so I’m working with Congress to make sure they hear the message — the message of fiscal responsibility.” Not long thereafter, his administration proposed a budget that would plunge the nation into a $300 billion deficit.

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Anti-War Byrd

This past Wednesday on the Senate floor, Senator Robert Byrd — Democrat of West Virginia, reformed KKK member and self-styled ‘Dean of the Congress’ — made an impassioned, powerful speech against the impending war on Iraq and the generally disastrous policies of the Bush Administration. It’s the speech that I’ve been waiting to hear for months and months, and yet it’s also the speech Democrats have avoided with determined obstinance, like schoolkids afraid of getting ostracized by the cool crowd.

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Blogging Heads

More Lessig:“Right now we have a culture where the most creative and important builders of freedom in the 21st century have zero political savvy and (so far) zero political effect.” This is from his recent blog posting, one communiqué from a very interesting online squabble between Lessig and well-known Userland impresario and knee-jerk blogging evangelist Dave Winer. The debate’s heating up, and this is a good thing.

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Free Culture Has a Price

Lawrence LessigNoted cyber-age legal authority Lawrence Lessig has a wake-up call for anyone frustrated with the way media companies are trying to dominate copyright controls. He laid it down in his powerful presentation at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention: it’s in the old guard’s interest to try and control creativity and innovation; they have the power to do so and they are excercising it, and it’s our responsibility to fight it.

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Clinton on Bush

Former President Clinton had some unkind words on Friday about the Bush administration’s shoddy handling of corporate malfeasance and the Middle East. Bravo.One other thing I’ve been thinking about: people are saying that Shrub’s administration is like his father’s in that it’s strong on foreign policy and weak on domestic affairs. What?! Strong on foreign policy?! I’d say they’ve been obstinately unilateral, un-educated, tone deaf and destructive.

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Represent

Rep. James TraficantWow, Rep. James Traficant is a total loon. I caught his freak-show testimony before the House ethics committee on C-SPAN today — an insane combination of bizarre weeping willow hairstyle, defiantly tacky skinny tie and televangelist’s oratory. It reminded me of some kind of governmental hijinks from the 19th century, a bizarre tale of hucksterism and megalomania you’d only read about in The New Yorker. Only a thousand times funnier.

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Hack Attack

Attack of the ClonesIt’s true that “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones” is superior to its immediate predecessor, but it’s still not much of a movie.

Lucas, while stubborn as ever in his refusal to completely excise Jar Jar Binks, has nevertheless acquiesced to fan pressure by creating 132 minutes of the stuff that fans have been dying to see for two-plus decades: massive lightsaber battles, the secret origin of Boba Fett (which is a truly superfluous subplot), the inner workings of the Jedi Council, the corruption of Anakin Skywalker, and, most tellingly, one climactic scene in which Yoda kicks ass.

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