April 29, 2006
Preaching to the Perverted
http://www.gulbransen.net/preaching/2006/04/breaking_news_d.html I love being gobsmacked, don't you? It's just such a great word that the feeling must necessarily also be great. Gobsmacked. I just like saying it. But about these gas prices and our addiction to oil, etc: Aren't we all pretty hypocritical about this? That said, it seems like every day now Mr. Resident Bush is in some new part of the country or world and every time I hear he's flying here or there (meaning, every day), I wonder: How much freaking fuel does it take to move that dumbass all over the damn world? I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket, so to speak, but hey, he said the other day when he said he'd make no more deposits to the oil reserve that “every little bit helps.” Gobsmacked. (Sorry, I had to say it again. What an awesome name that would be for a blog, but apparently it's kind of taken.)Posted by mowabb at 08:04 AM
February 24, 2006
Mother In Law: S.D. House Approves Abortion Ban Bill
http://blawgcoop.com/lawmom/archives/2006/02/sd_house_approv.html So now the government can spy on anyone it chooses AND will soon be able to decide when women give birth. The Handmaid's Tale, anyone? Exactly. I never thought the spying would be allowed to continue but here we are, months after we learned about it, and it continues w/no end in sight. And w/our new High Court we've nearly gotten to the point where even a “regime change” in 2008 won't be able to redraw these boundaries to protect our civil liberties. Handmaid's Tale, indeed.Posted by mowabb at 06:57 PM
February 21, 2006
Objective Justice: Banning protests at funerals
http://objectivejustice.blogspot.com/2006/02/banning-protests-at-funerals.html Wow, it's hard to believe you can be so unreserved in your support of this. It seems like a fairly complex issue to me. What if you strongly believe that the way to a more peaceful world is to convince soldiers to put down their weapons and refuse to fight? Where do you reach those people to give them that message? One place might be a soldier's funeral where, presumably, there will be other soldiers and families of soldiers who could influence those who fight. It seems kind of likely that your protest would backfire -- the people at the funeral you protest would probably just get mad at you and refuse to listen to your perspective. Thus, this kind of activity might be politically unwise, but should we really ban it? On public property? And what about other funerals? What if it's not a soldier, but a political leader and all of his/her followers are there? Any sort of demonstration there should also be banned?Posted by mowabb at 07:29 AM
February 12, 2006
Washington Syndrome: Something To Believe In
http://www.washingtonsyndrome.com/2006/02/one_nation_under_bryant_gumbel.html You ignore commands from William “the Refrigerator” Perry at your own peril!Posted by mowabb at 09:35 AM
January 29, 2006
buzzwords: Check out how awesome the law students at Georgetown are!
http://tonguebutnodoor.net/monica/archives/2006/01/check_out_how_a.html Hey, how come you just get love in your comments about this and I just get heckling? I feel so, um, singled out. Or something. Be that as it may, someone expressed wonder the other day that this Georgetown protest drew so much attention, and it did quite a bit of press. I was thinking the reason for that (and the reason it made so many of us so happy) is that it's so rare that anyone in the Bush administration actually has to see or hear dissent of any kind. As far as we know, they have no clue people protest their every speech and appearance b/c at nearly every appearance the protestors are kept so far on the margins that neither the object of the protest nor the media eyes and ears can even see or hear them. But at this Georgetown event, the protest was loud and clear, front and center. No wonder it gives us hope!Posted by mowabb at 08:23 AM
November 13, 2005
The Unreasonable Man: Umm, What?
http://theunreasonableman.blogspot.com/2005/11/umm-what.html#comments Ha! You've found a silver lining to being totally in debt -- you can bet all you've got w/out fear of losing b/c you have nothing! Yay for negative personal wealth! You're very measured in your criticism here. I prefer to just reduce it to its simple core: Bush is a liar.Posted by mowabb at 07:09 AM
October 16, 2005
thisdarkqualm » Superdome
http://thisdarkqualm.com/?p=297 I'd missed this post the first time around so I'm glad you recently linked to it again. Although I've spent far too much time bemoaning the failures and blind spots of Yubbledew, et al., I'd never really thought about the whole Republican philosophy in these terms. It seems in many ways the 20th century took sort of a hammer to that traditional belief in human and social progress and our ability to make our own world better as we instead saw demonstrations of our ability to destroy the world forever (via world wars, the halocaust, nuclear weapons, etc.). Such apocolyptic power feeds right into the Republican “end times” thing that says something like “Hey, god made the whole deal and he's going come back and end it soon so let's just sort of keep the status quo 'til he gets here, ok?” The thing is, they're right that there *are* limits to what we can do with design in terms of improving life for the majority of the people on this planet, but I agree that we really haven't even come close to finding what those limits are. I do babble about things about which I really know nothing, don't I? Alas, law school has made me stupid.Posted by mowabb at 07:09 AM
October 08, 2005
Woman of the law: remove Bush from office immediately
http://womanofthelaw.blogspot.com/2005/10/remove-bush-from-office-immediately.html Happy Birth Day? Was it, and you didn't tell us? If so, I second Schulte... And about Bush: Not only is he fearmongering to try to boost public support for whatever it is he wants to do now, but he also sounds really whiny while doing it. He especially sounds like a defensive, whiny, petulant child whenever the subject of Harriet Miers comes up. It's really kind of sad. Since about September 2001 I have made it a practice to turn of the tv, radio, etc. whenever Bush gives a “major speech.” It's guaranteed to be bullshit and I have better things to do w/my time. Plus, I can count on NPR to play the most ridiculous bits on the highlight reel later in the day, so I get plenty of material to be angry about w/out subjecting myself to the undedited propaganda of the whole thing. And hey, don't you have some clients to be defending or something? ;-)Posted by mowabb at 01:41 PM
September 28, 2005
Althouse: Free speech and campaign finance.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/09/free-speech-and-campaign-finance.html#comments I know I shouldn't but I just can't help it: Limiting campaign contributions or campaign spending does not entail “minimizing Free Speech Rights.” Dollars are not speech, and speech is not free if you have to pay for it. Something like the “death tax,” the “right to life,” and other names or phrases those on the right of the political spectrum have invented to advance their objectives, this supposed association between money and speech is simply a rhetorical move to ensure that the side w/the most money always wins. While that may be what capitalism is about, it's not what democracy is about.Posted by mowabb at 12:42 PM
March 28, 2005
prod & ponder -- flickr's future:
http://www.prodandponder.com/?p=13
Hmm. I hadn't given this too much thought before these comments, but now that you mention it, there does seem to be something very different going on with things like Flickr and del.icio.us and Orkut and Friendster (although I don't hear much about those anymore). They're already coops in a way, since they require the cooperative participation of thousands of users to be useful or worthwhile, yet they are coops beneath corporate structures -- coops in the service of corporations. That's really really icky, and I think many people sense that, which is why you get such activist/sensitive user communities. People seem to recognize their own participation in making these things cool, and some of them want to demand something in return for that besides just making the site cool. I wonder if something like this could be something of a model for a new sort of activism or a new way of “waking people up” to the way corporations are taking advantage of them every day and giving so little in return. For example, imagine if the AFLCIO had started flickr for its members, but opened it to the world. Suddenly every flickr user would have some stake in the success of the union movement. It would be easier for people to recognize and value the role they could play in that movement and in its larger goals of improving society. Sort of. Maybe. There's at least a utopian impulse there....
Posted by mowabb at 07:31 AM
March 19, 2005
Crime & Federalism: Two types of Federalists?
http://federalism.typepad.com/crime_federalism/2004/11/two_types_of_fe.html Great piece; you've helped clarify the Federalist Society for me, and your analysis is consistent w/similar arguments I've read about the "right" more generally -- that rather than being a monolithic party, it's really a loose coaltion of competing factions that often compete against each other but which manage to rally behind certain pivotal issues (e.g. abortion, "law and order," school vouchers, etc.) when it counts, such as during election seasons. There seems no greater evidence of this that the "values" rhetoric of the 2004 elections where the concept of "values" became an empty vessel that each different faction on the right filled with its own content in order to convince that faction's members that Bush was their best choice. However, I take issue w/your conclusion that "the Federalist Society is more diverse than the ACLU." This may be true, but it's arguable at best. The "left" has been criticized for decades (both from those who consider themselve part of the left and those on ther right) for being too factious and diverse to advance a coherent agenda that can compete with the coalitions on the right. For example, Lieberman Democrats are at least as far apart ideologically from, say, Kucinich Democrats or Greens as are Heritage Federalists from Cato Federalists, yet the Liebermans and Greens are still equally likely to be part of the ACLU and to oppose much of the agenda of the political right. It seems to me that both sides do themselves and society a disservice when they make condescending generalizations about the "other side." Even talking about "left" or "right" is obviously an oversimplification to which we tend to resort in order to strengthen whatever position we happen to be promoting ourselves.Posted by mowabb at 01:59 PM