Things I’ve Seen

Time for a personal confession. It took me a while to see why getting rid of Bush was so important.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve known I disagreed with just about everything he stood for since the day I first heard of him. And I’ve known I would have voted against him without having to ponder it very hard, had I been an American.

But that’s not the reason.

Getting rid of Bush is of such importance not because he happens to have a different politics from mine - but because he is a threat to politics per se. He is presiding over, and relishing, the further foaming death-throes of anything approaching intelligent politics in his own country, and he is actively pursuing (with, admittedly, waning glee, now that it’s all gone pear-shaped) the assassination of world politics.

Bush senior was a grey, grey man - the perfect complement to our John Major. Bush junior is, like our Blair, something even worse: an enemy of grey. An enemy of negotiation. An enemy of political discourse. An enemy of multilateralism. An enemy of the public square.

Getting rid of Bush is not a political issue, as such. This is metapolitics. This is about clearing away garbage so that there’s space for us to get political.

I noticed this article by Paul Hawken because I thought I recognised his name. It was only at the end that I realised he was the author of the excellent “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution”.

So why am I supporting Dean?

The first is very practical. I want to support someone who is going to win. Defeating Bush is beyond politics, beyond ideology. It is something we owe the earth and all people living on it.

It’s good to hear someone willing to say that politics go beyond the needs of the nation, to the needs of the world. “I will act, first and foremost, in the national interest” seems to be a standard line for all politicians, of all parties, in all democracies.

Here’s a list of ways Canadians can oust Bush. Applies to other non-Americans as well.

The biggest protest in the history of the world is coming: November 8th, 2004, when more than 50 million protesters will descend on polling stations and vote Bush and all Repubicans out of power. Even those who cannot vote can still be part of the protest.

Seen at a Sydney pub on Friday 20th Nov (Rugby World Cup Finals eve).

Sharp Left Turn is a new blog (I think) - certainly new to me. And it looks good. Lightly written, but the thinking is sharp. Entries are longish, but there aren’t too many of them, and they’re easy to read. I’ll be watching this one.

Here’s a taste…

I could be wrong, I suppose.

I’m not, but let’s pretend. For a minute, let’s assume they’re right. Let’s assume that homosexuality is unnatural, that it defies the Bible. Let’s assume that gay marriage is an assault on the very institution of marriage. Let’s assume that the sacrament of marriage is special and needs to be defended in a way that other sacraments do not.

What do we do about it? Our fearless leader says he will do what he can to “defend the sanctity of marriage.”

I can’t possibly be the first to tell this guy that IT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING JOB! can I?

Invest for Success is a genuinely good reason to support Howard Dean’s run for the presidency. Investing in early years support and education is one of the few proven genuinely good investments in a nation, and yet, because its benefits are long term, it never gets the support it deserves in the democratic system.

Governor Dean’s plan, based on successful initiatives he created in Vermont, will provide all families with young children early access to health care, early education, and other supports critical to children’s health and working families. The Dean Invest for Success plan will double the current investment in early education so that parents will have the resources to be their child’s first teacher without having to struggle to pay for childcare or preschool. This $110 billion commitment over 10 years for community-based services will ensure all children start school ready to succeed at age six.

There is more about the plan here, and it looks good to me. One small part of it catches my eye:

The Welcome Baby Visit plan will make it possible to offer new parents information about community resources and services available to help them be their child?s first teacher.

Similar schemes delivered by Dean in Vermont are reported to have cut the child abuse rate by 43%.

I am a very fortunate parent - I’m in a stable relationship, with a supportive extended family, excellent medical support, and financial security. But even given all of that, the pressure of parenthood occasionally gets to me. How much good can be done, and how much harm averted, by supporting parents to do the one thing that they want to do above everything else - raise great kids…

Excellent article from Tom Englehardt, over at The Smirking Chimp “The Scorecard”

Let’s just start with terrorists and allies (as identified by the administration); you know, the ones we were going to get “dead or alive.”

First and foremost, of course, was Osama bin Laden (still free); then the man who reputedly kept him safe, Mullah Omar, head of the vile Taliban (still free); add in the man/men or woman/women who sent anthrax through the mail along with letters implying that it came from some anti-Israeli Arab cell in the United States, though it now seems certain that he/they were actually human fallout from our own Cold War weapons labs (still free, still nameless); finally, Saddam Hussein, fingered by the administration as the most dangerous potential terrorist of all, linked by them to al-Qaeda and proclaimed ready to turn over to any terrorist in sight a massive trove of weapons of mass destruction (still free).

EdCone.com has this commentary and case study on Howard Dean’s campaign. Interesting to read in the light of Mike’s comments about public discourse.

The dirt on guy brains

In any event, it turns out that women’s brains secrete more of the chemicals ”oxytocin” and ‘’serotonin,” which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes. No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I am referring to my wife) can share as many as three days’ worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen. We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don’t have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we’re thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That’s why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going ”hmmmm.” This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he’s really thinking. In fact, what he’s thinking is, literally, “hmmmm.”

$87,000,000,000.00