Bushed military

On Meet the Press, Dean was off by 7% on his off-the-cuff guess as to the size of the armed forces. The resulting media elite chatter about Dean's foreign policy experience and supposed "hostility to the military" has been unceasing. But it's not the media elite that Dean needs to address - it's the military itself. And nowhere has Bush's hypocrisy and empty rhetoric - and outright betrayal - been more evident than the issue of supporting our troops.



via Billmon, from the 2nd Presidential Debate (Oct. 11, 2000):

It's time to have a new commander in chief who will rebuild the military, pay our men and women more and make sure they're housed better, and have a focused mission for our military.

Rebuild the military? Under President Bush, the military that Clinton built has been stretched far thinner on imperial adventurism than it ever was under Clinton. Nicholas Confessore's essential article in the Washington Monthly, GI Woe, details exactly how our armed forces are strained under the neocon-driven foreign policy that Bush, as Commander in Chief, must take ultimate responsibility for.



Pay our men and women more and make sure they are housed better? Ask the Marine Corp Times, which headlined: "House Republicans dig in against child tax credit for combat troops." Or ask the Army Times, which called the praise of the military by Bush and the GOP Congress "nothing but lip service". Army families are noticing- and reacting with anger.



Have a more focused mission for our military? What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan? Where are the WMDs that Rumsfeld knew for a fact were "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad" ? Is there any coherence to our foreign policy whatsoever besides economic and strategic opportunism?



Then consider Bush's rhetoric for those who served - about veterans, Bush has said (at the VFW 2001 convention):

My administration understands America's obligations not only go to those who wear the uniform today, but to those who wore the uniform in the past: to our veterans. And at times, those obligations have not been met. Veterans in need of care have been kept waiting, and thousands of veterans' claims have been delayed, or in some cases lost in the bureaucracy.

Understands America's obligations to our veterans? Then why didn't Bush provide additional funding to VA by designating $5 billion appropriated by Congress as emergency spending, as he had promised? Why are veterans in the Priority 8 Group (including vets with incomes as low as $24,644, affecting about 520,000 veterans by 2005) being shut out of health services? Why doesn't VA have sufficient resources to meet its obligations to those who served? Why won't the Bush Administration put its support behind concurrent-receipt - allowing those veterans who incurred a disability while serving the nation in uniform to receive both retirement and disability benefits?



These broken promises are the wounds - but Bush's dereliction of duty, his clumsy propaganda of ingratiation, and his false and harmful bravado thousands of miles from the front, are the salt rub.



These are the simple facts. Bush is unfit to be Commander in Chief, and the GOP is brazen in its attempts to sacrifice the interests of our men and women in uniform for tax breaks for the rich. And armed with these facts, Dean can wipe the floor with any who dare to suggest otherwise. We don't even need Wesley Clark to be onboard to make these simple arguments. The facts speak for themselves. Bush can't hide from his record.

join me in supporting Dean

Have you heard about Howard Dean yet?



I started a little blog called Howard Dean 2004 almost a year ago, to track the inevitable growth and rise of Howard Dean. I was certain that his mix of energy and idealism, coupled with his principled pragmatism on the issues, would be a real force to be reckoned with, and would transform the election in 2004. I had no idea how right I was.



If you want to know more about Dean, check out his position on the issues. Or read the original pair of profiles from last year in the American Prospect and The New Republic.



If you're already a Dean supporter, please help Dean Nation reach our goal of raising $10,000 by Tuesday evening. We have already raised $3662.23 (37%). The campaign knows that we are the core of their support - we are Dean's, but Dean is also ours. Donating only serves to strengthen that two-way relationship.



But even if you haven't yet decided to support Dean, I'd like to appeal to you to consider making a token donation. Dean has pioneered the New Model of American politics - which used to be the old model, namely, "of the people, by the people, for the people."



Dean draws his strength not from massive corporations, or wealthy individuals - it's actually the ordinary people who fuel his campaign. The average donation in the second fiscal quarter was only $112, but he raised over $7.5 million dollars total! This speaks of a vast (and growing) base of support that is the opposite of the top-heavy cabal of special interests that pull most other candidates' strings.



By making a token donation to Howard Dean, even if you don't support him for the nomination, you can help change the political system (at least, for Democrats). Every dollar Dean raises sends a message to the DNC and the DLC that their addiction to corporate cash is obsolete. Every dollar Dean raises reminds politicians that Dean's principled-pragmatism is the Right Way to approach policy, not craven ideological and partisan maneuvering.



A dollar for Dean - or five, or ten - is a way that all of us can make an impact on our system of politics in a tangible and discrete and effective way. Regardless of who you support, we all win.

why I am not a Mac user, but maybe you should be

Let's get something straight first off - I'm not looking for a saint. I don't care about the politics of the company that makes my hardware or my software (or both). Yes, Microsoft is evil. Bill Gates is the Borg. Steve Jobs distills Kool Aid moonshine and spins the Reality Distortion Field. Linus Torvalds is a megalomaniac. I've heard it all before.



The decision that I make regarding my computing platform is solely built on one thing - my personal usage. I use my computer(s) for many things but there are certain things that I cannot do on a Mac. For example, I use MATLAB for my research. I like to dabble in building my own computers and do incremental upgrades. I am not rich - $3000 for a desktop machine is about 4 times what I am willing to pay. All the networks that I use at school or VPN to at home are Windows-sharing. And, once in a blue moon, I like to play my favorite flight-sim Star Wars games, X-Wing Alliance and Tie Fighter.



I also am conservative in that I don't have any particular desire to adopt a learning curve for a new OS. To make a Switch compelling, I'd have to be able to do significantly more with a Mac in addition to doing everything I presently (need to) do. And I'm just not really into the video-editing scene (and don't want to spring for an $800 FireWire camcorder either - my trusty old Hi8 works just fine). Ultimately there are lots of cool things that you can do in Mac OS (and Brian has been a really good advocate - inspiring real geek envy at times. Just not practical geek envy.)



Do I think Macs are worthless machines? absolutely not, and if you read my posts about the Mac you'll see that I respect the platform very highly. However, most Apple partisans are unable to read my posts with the objectivity required to distinguish between a respectful disagreement of need assessment, and a flat-out assault on the integrity of their belief system. I usually have to terminate Apple discussions with the "agree to disagree" escape hatch, even with dear and close friends, because communication is simply impossible with someone who has a religious conviction that everyone would be better served by a single OS and hardware combination (which is ironically exactly what Apple partisans accuse PC users of believing)^[1]



Tacitus wants to be convinced to Switch. I think that asking Apple users to make a case is wasting your time. The best way to find out if Apple is for you is to 1. sit down and make a list of your essential computing activities, and 2. go to the nearest Apple Retail Store and sit down on a Mac (and be sure to AVOID the "Genius" bar - they're as interested in helping you make the Right Decision for your Computing Needs as Catholic missionaries are for your spiritual ones). Play with it, wander the software aisles, and demo all the whiz-bang stuff. And then if you have the funds (wince), and you like what you see, I'd recommend going the laptop (specifically, an iBook) route first. Apple's laptops are superb and cheap, and it's a better way to take an initial plunge than to mortgage your house for a G5.





^[1]The analogies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are numerous, but that's another post. I've had enough of playing the Target for the time being.

construction begins on Bohra Masjid in Fremont

It's always nice to see local press about my community - this article in the SJ Mercury News is a nice piece about our new masjid there. It also features a lot of good quotes from my friend, Yusuf Ezzy:

``We want to bring his holiness to our town to bless us and leave us with a lot of good fortune,'' said Yussef Ezzy, a Fremont Dawoodi Bohra Muslim.



The history of the Dawoodi Bohra sect in the Bay Area dates back to the late 1950s when the largely professional community of engineers, doctors and business people began emigrating from India.



The masjid, or mosque, will be used exclusively by Dawoodi Bohra Muslims, who number about 50 families in the Fremont area and about 90 families in the Bay Area, according to Mufaddal Hotelwala, a spokesman for the group. He estimates there are about 1,500 families nationwide.



Ezzy, 28, who grew up in Fremont, said his religion played a large role in his life. The community is small and intimate, and its members socialize and worship together.



``I think of myself like anyone else, but as Muslims, we pray five times a day. We don't just go to church once a week,'' he said. ``Furthermore, what his holiness Burhanuddin says is very important; he guides us in a spiritual sense and gives us practical guidance, too.''

reclaiming liberty from the Liberals

Steven Den Beste has another essay I can agree with - about the absurdity of the EU's proposed regulations to force individual companies, not public agencies, to guarantee the "safety" of chemicals in industry.



The deeper problem is the same thing that afflicts the Right as well as the Left - taking your view too far on ideology rather than looking for a pragmatic synthesis (and willing to accept compromise). The necessary and counterbalancing principles that can safeguard our society from such dangerous folly are principled pragmatism and perfection is the enemy of the good, respectively.



I'm not a true conservative, so I'll leave the redefinition of conservatism to my equally principled and pragmatic friend Tacitus, who occupies the sole position in his niche as far as I am aware in the Blogsphere.



But I do identify myself as a liberal, and so it's reclaiming the word from the idealouges that I turn my attention towards. By liberal, I mean that I want liberty - to practice my faith, to pursue happiness, to make personal decisions and raise my family. I am liberal because to me liberty means removing obstacles to these pursuits and freedoms. And throughout history, the major barrier to the common man achieving them has been the interests of the Uncommon man - the powerful, the elite, the upper class, all those who have sought to concentrate economic, social, and political power in the ranks of the few.



The worst terrorists can do is kill me. I will live free and die free. But the worst that the Powers can do is make me live without freedom - because their goal is to bend my existence towards supporting theirs. Such is the foundation of their power. I prefer to live free or die.



To understand just how essential the struggle against these Powers has been, and how dearly bought our freedoms are, I strongly recommend Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States. The foundations of American freedom were laid in 1776 on today's date, but they were not achieved until much later for blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, poor laborers... The spirit of America is the struggle to put the written words of the Declaration of Independence into actual tangible reality for all those without the money or the influence to have mattered.



But Howard Zinn's history book is not a paean to socialism! It is simply a reminder using historical facts of what being Progressive means, of the goal of freedom and the details of teh struggle of the journey towards that goal.



For many Liberals today, however, that journey is equated with the goal. There is no recognition that the journey and the goal of the Progressives throughout history were to redress a balance, not serve as a complete system of philosophies on their own. The European Union is in many ways the ultimate manifestation of embracing the mechanisms of the Progressive movement while having completely lost sight of their rationale.



I mourn what Europe will become if it continues. And I know that there are many Liberals in America who see themselves as the intellectual heirs to the Progressive movement, but who do not realize the simple truth that by following the Liberal ideology they risk everything that the Progressives fought for. If the economy is destroyed as business moves away, there will be more poor and fewer rich - and the yoke of class tyranny will rise. If we abandon our sovereignity to higher and higher supra-national entities whose decisions are made in remote assemblies, then we again shackle ourselves to government without representation.



It's why I cannot support Dennis Kucinich - his vision of where America should be is fixed with Europe as an ideal. That way lies the destruction of our society. It is why I support Howard Dean, who has demonstrated the ability to find balance between principle and pragmatism. Dean is not a Liberal but he is a better guardian of Progressive ideals than any self-labeled Liberal candidate. The irony of his being labeled "unelectable" because of his supposed extreme liberalness is ironic - and even hilarious, as Republicans donate money to Dean thinking that they are torpedoing the Democratic party.



We must avoid the temptation of the extremes. Europe's Liberal implosion will take decades to play out - and we have to act in 2004 to avoid the mirror image process occurring here under extreme Conservative rule.

why freedom matters

15 months ago, the reasons I love America took on a tangible, personified form:







It's for her that I cherish our freedom, it's for her that I love my country. My country will give her the chance to be whatever she wants. It will allow her to practice our faith freely, to have drems and ambitions, to speak out and to express herself and have her ideas taken on their merits, not filtered by her gender or her race.



It's for her that I care passionately about our democracy - and why I support Howard Dean. It's her future, not mine - and I want it to be filled with hope and health and the bounty of nature, not the bills come due for military adventurism and quagmire.



It's for her that I care about what happens to my community, to my state, and to my nation. Because they will be her community, state, and nation.



and it's for her, ultimately, that I blog. Happy Independence Day!

Qutbdate!

Bill has posted a Qutbdate - chapter 8:4. I'll update my index soon.



I'll be sad to see Bill leave Blogger, but I am looking forward to his move to MT forteh sole reason that he will then actually have a comments section :) in which I plan to spend a significant amount of time....