Exercise and Elections

I was going to write a blog about my new exercise regimen — How I’m running three days a week and doing massive amounts and pushups and crunches to try to tone up and burn off my hibernation fat. Plus, at some point, I’d like to be able to take off my shirt while playing guitar so I don’t overheat so much.

Instead, I think I want to talk about this primary election. I seem to have my best ideas talking with my wife. She’s an awesome lady, a very patient listener (unlike me) and if she doesn’t understand something she asks questions.

I’ve been reading some stuff about how Hilary might sue the Texas Caucus for something or other. Now, I’m not real sure what the specifics are, but from what I’ve read she’s campaigning under the same rules that her husband did when he won back in the ’90s. This winning at all costs thing scares me.

The purpose of the primary, as I understand it, is for the party to select a candidate to run for president. Each state party determines their own rules for the primary. Many state parties have open elections, realizing that the best chance for their candidate to win is one chosen initially by the people. Their are also caucuses which are often open only to party members. This makes sense to me, too, since the party members conceivably will be doing a lot of the grunt work.

There are certain rules in place, and certain bending of rules is expecting. But what Hilary is doing is sort of nutty. She wants to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida now the chips are down. No other candidates were even on the ballot. She disregarded the rules and left her name on the ballot and now wants to be rewarded for it.

Also, in Texas, she’s about ready to file a law suit for whatever. Again, going the sneaky way, rather than abiding by the will of the people.

And I guess that’s what it comes down for me: she looks like another Bush. Rather than respect the will of the electorate, she wants to circumvent the process and install her own regime.

Lady: the people have been given a choice. They are informed. They realize what you and Obama have to offer and they are not choosing you. I’m sorry. This sucks. You were supposed to get the presidency, but it’s eluding you. Please respect the process.

I’m angry at Bush because he disregards the balance of power in government, makes too many executive decisions, and disregards the will of the people. Sure, democracy can be scary, especially when it seems like most people outside your monkeysphere are idiots, but them are the breaks, kid. We gots to work together, right?

Right?

Ugh. Sigh.

Pickle-gate

Ok. So far, I hadn’t really formed an opinion to this whole Pickle Barrel thing-a-ma-doober. For those of you who haven’t heard, a Saudi exchange student was refused service at the Pickle Barrel sandwich shop in Missoula because he may or may not have insulted the manager a few weeks prior when both were trying to catch a cab home. The manager may or may not have shouted racial slurs when kicking him out. The student did get some professor to call the police, who didn’t do anything, because apparently nothing illegal happened. ASUM took Pickle Barrel off their Griz Card thingy.

All that, I was fine with. I don’t give an effing eff about the Pickle Barrel’s over-priced mediocre tasting sandwiches. I don’t give a flying eff at the moon about two guys fighting over a taxi. I don’t even give one giant mother effer that the manager was probably drunk off his ass at the time and very likely could have made a mistake and that he should have been canned for refusing a customer. I’ve dealt with old nemesis at my current job with professional respect. It’s what I do.

One side has maintained that racism was a factor. The other side does not. I wasn’t affected that much by it.

What finally got my goat about, was people’s support of the Pickle Barrel. The mere hint of “racism” against an Arab was enough to send droves of people to support their brethren at the Pickle Barrel. As the letters to the editor in the Missoulian showed, Allen and Evelyn Holbrook state that “It is also encouraging to know there are still ‘thinking’ and reasonable people in this world, who do not approve of the knee-jerking political correctness which we are forced to encounter daily.”

“Knee-jerking political correctness” means exactly what? To go back to the good ol’ days when all the darkies knew their place and dependence on foreign oil didn’t empower the Middle Easterners? The Holbrooks are from Potomac are going to make it a point to “make a commitment to make the inconvenient drive across Missoula to eat at the Pickle Barrel” thereby ensuring to use more gas and send more profit to the Middle East so they can afford to send more students over here. I may be wrong with my analysis in that regard, but I may not care either.

I guess it just sickens me to see Montanans tripping over themselves to support a business that may or may not condone racism. For my part, I’m not boycotting Pickle Barrel because I never ate their gimicky sandwiches in the first place. It takes more than a pickle to pull me through the door.

Grow some, yeah?

I was scanning through the links over at 4&20 Blackbirds when I came across an article about the rebelliousness of the freshman senators. It was at CQ.com and indicated that Jim Webb D-VA voted against a tax increase for cigarettes, not because Phillip Morris is headquartered in his district, but because “a cigarette tax would hurt the poor.”

Now what??? Come on, Jim. Call it for what it is and don’t appear like a moron. I think the poor are hurt more by the cigarette itself than any increase of price. Use the economy for an excuse. Here’s an example, “While I do not condone cigarette smoking, this tax would cost jobs in my district. Regrettably, I can not vote for it.”

But don’t get me wrong. If I thought legislating were that easy, I would run for office myself.

Political Labels Part III

The notes that I took directly underneath the “pinnacle versus progress” had a little diagram. Bear with me while I try to explain it. I wrote four words: Liberal, Republican, Conservative, and Democrat. Connecting the words in a circle were four arrows. In the big empty space in the middle, I wrote Meaning.

The lecturer had started out his talk with an example of advertising in politics. Rather than advertising just now creeping into politics, that was always the purpose of advertising. The father of modern advertising was Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Now, I don’t believe in nepotism or even hereditary gifts (you know, that somehow the nephew was born with all of Freud’s knowledge), but the point made was that the nephew very well knew of his uncle’s legacy. The nephew (didn’t grab his name, too lazy to google) made no bones about using advertising for political purposes. His book on the subject was allegedly titled “Propaganda.” That was before the word got such a negative connotation. Anyway, this was in the early twenties.

What I’ve noticed since that time, is that politcal movements are increasingly advertising oriented. One of the main concepts of advertising, as I understand it, is to sell something to someone that they don’t really need. The most effective way to do this is through branding. Advertising spends billions of dollars getting us to associate certain brands with certain experiences. Likewise, in politics, advertising brands politicians (and oh how I sometimes wish it was with a cattle brand) as representing this or that. In Montana, politicians always represent Montana values, while never really explaining what those values are. We saw branding in the last senate election when Jon Tester was shown holding a hunting rifle on his ranch when he apparently had not had a hunting permit for a number of years. However, a good advertising campaign (campaign — such a war-like word except the war is for your brand loyalty and association) will convince us, usually psychological techniques that anything can represent anything else.

Now, let’s take a little side trip. I’ve recently become interested in tribalism. No, not those tattoos or even Native Americans, but humans tendency to form little tribes, clans, or BFFs. We congregate with our sports teams, represent our local city or state, or defend someone’s musical selection as long as it matches our own. Tribalism, I believe, held an important key to Homo Sapien Sapien’s survival into the modern era. Humans want to engage in tight-knit groups. It’s only since the French Revolution that we’ve really stepped up nationalism. Before then, we didn’t really identify with a such a huge political entity as an entire country. So, it sort of makes no sense to only have two political parties represent a country that about as large than all of Europe.

Though, as many in the blogosphere know, we don’t have two politcal parties. I would argue that we actually have sort of a paradox. We have both numerous political parties and only one political party.

Numerous political parties: Each region has its own interpretation of the main political party. That’s how we can have a Democratic Governor in Montana and a Republican Governor in Massachusetts. Each region dictates its own interpretation of the political party.

One political party: Taking a far enough step back, you see both political parties saying essentially the same things while only changing the labels. Plus they flip-flop whenever political advantage might be had. Many of the same corporations are the top donors to both parties. Both parties are run from the top down with political consultants running from party to party, paycheck to paycheck, indifferent to any classical merit of the party.

That’s what I think my diagram was portraying: the one party system that seems to dance around meaning. The advertisers have gotten so good at building political brands that for a large swath of Americans, it doesn’t matter what their candidate actually does or says. A recent study showed that many ardent Bush supporters believed that Bush approved and was implementing the Kyoto Accord. Both political parties flip-flop their traditional stance every few years or even every few months.

But with humans tendency and needfor tribes, how does this actually translate for us? We pick a side and then we fight the other person. We subscribe to our media outlets. We support each other in branding the “enemy.” We believe that “God” or “Reason” or “Over-arching philosophical system” is on our side and the enemy is crazy, stupid, or heretical. We get caught up in this race, this dance to catch the enemy’s tail that we don’t even notice that a giant void opened in the middle, the void of “meaning.” (“Meaning” meaning actually agreeing that certain words mean certain things or that things should get done that help us rather than harm us.)

I don’t know how true this trilogy of tripe actually is, but it sort of makes sense to me. With all this partison bickering us constituents engage in, both politcal parties are accepting huge checks from most of the same corporations. And while the public continues to get this shaft in regards to education, transportation, prisons, health care, and trade, Corporations get NAFTA and a nice big war.

Politcal Labels Part II

I did manage to take some notes from the lecture on Political Labels.  One of my notes showed a sort of diagram that stated Conservative = pinnacle.  Liberal = progression.  I think what I meant when I wrote this is that within a lot of conservative strains that I read, conservatives believe that we have either reached the pinnacle of history or that we have already reached it and must work hard to go back to it.  One example can be found within evolution.  Many anti-evolution advocates believe that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creation.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  Animals may or may not evolve, but they will never reach the excellence of humanity because God doesn’t want them to.   Liberals believe that evolution is a process.  Humans, too, will change give enough time or climate changes.  We have discovered that we have “dark DNA” — DNA that can be switched on or off given the right circumstances.  In the liberal’s world, humanity is quite capable of destroying everything and is already in the process of doing so.Capitalism can be seen this way, too.  In conservative thought, the free market is the pinnacle of all economics.  Nothing better will ever come along and nothing better could ever exist.  Any inefficiencies within the system can be explained by the market not being free enough, no matter pervasive human tampering with the system.  Any more, the democrats seem to be indistinguishable from the Republicans in this regard.  Both sides want to squeeze as much as they can from the economy as possible.  The difference comes with non-political liberals.  These liberals believe that capitalism, as practiced now works, but is in the process of working better.  Humanity, and earth, needs to develop a better system, one that takes care of our neighbors and respects the environment.

But the above argument seems to have switched places with classic conservatism and classic liberalism.  Today’s conservatives believe that this man-made idea, capitalism, can magically solve any problem if left alone, while today’s liberals believe that a little more finger-in-the-pot is necessary to make sure we don’t suddenly wake up in a hand-basket.

 However, one of the things the lecturer admitted over and over again, is that he’s not sure exactly what today’s liberals and conservatives stand for.    I’ll share some more of my thoughts about this in part three.

Political Labels

My wife and I went to a lecture last night.  The focus on the lecture was “Political Labels.”  We went because of my wife’s ethics class, but the talk resounded with me and things that I’ve been trying to figure out.  I’ve been reading a lot of politcal blogs since October or so–ever since the Independant ran an article alerting me to the wide world of webpolitik. 

 I used to think things were more cut and dry, but as you may or may not have noticed, my political blogs have gone from feast to famine.  It’s not that I’m gloating over a Democratic victory at the national level or lamenting the Democratic setbacks at the local level or even fuming over the Democratic inertia everywhere.  In part it results from a conversations I’ve had with family members over the last few years that have finally congeeled. 

What is the difference between a liberal and a conservative?  I’d get to arguing with family members about issues.  As long as we left off the labels, we were hating the same things and agreeing about the same things.  I would say the Repubs were evil and un-American and they would say the same thing about the Dems.   

Last night’s talk really hit home for that reason.  The professor (sorry, but I never saw an ad and didn’t get his name) expressed his own confusion with political labels.  He went through the history of classical conservativism, explained the main points (wariness of a centralized power and wariness of too much power residing in too few individuals were a couple of them).  Conservativism also exists specifically within a family or community.  It seeks to protect the family and community.  Likewise, conservative economics tend to be protectionist, e.g. NOT free trade as we know it. 

Liberalism, on the other hand, seeks to acheive a grander more abstract goal.  It also views a person in more abstract terms.  One of the more astounding things the lecturer mentioned is that Milton Friedman considered himself a liberal in the classical sense, in that he advocated for freer trade with other countries. 

Please excuse me if I’m vague on a lot of details and refer to my intro which states that I want this blog to partially be a place for me to think while writing out.  I don’t care so much about being completely coherent.  Besides, he was speaking at a breakneck pace.  My wife gave up trying to take notes after the first ten minutes.  After 30 minutes, my head was hurting and my temple veins were throbbing. 

 I’ll try to break up this post a little, so a part II will show up soon.

Should have known…

My wife works around televisions and said that all the news channels were blaring such breaking news as whether or not Anna Nicole Smith died in a cloud of scandal. Because, as we all know, if Anna Nicole Smith ODed then that threatens the fabric of our democracy. She was such an icon, such a skank, such a cockpole that three men admitted to being her child’s father.

My wife came home and told me that she thought something was going on. She even ranted to her mother that something important was happening or else the networks wouldn’t be focusing that much attention on a stupid blond.

Was she ever right. Yesterday, the Inspector General (sounds like something out of Les Miserables) determined that the “Pentagon manipulated pre-war intelligence.” Basically, the secondary reason we went to war, you know the reason directly after WMDs and right before it morphed into saving the world for “democracy” was Iraq’s alleged link to Al Qaeda.

Even the Misssoulian has noticibly neglected to mention anything about this. I guess they must be afraid to lose their valued Bitterroot subscribers.

If the executive branch uses false information to come to false conclusions to fight a phony war then I believe that constitutes a breach of national security and a treasonous activity. Engaging in phony wars should not be an excuse for executive immunity. Two more years is too long.

Pelosi’s Plane Problem?

I started paying attention to this only a couple of days ago. It seems like such a non-issue to me. Yet, the issue keeps getting hammered and hammered and hammered. So I wondered if the true reason Republicans are so upset by Pelosi making non-stop flights between D.C. and San Fran is that they believe air travel for congresspeople is the responsibility of the Lobbists?

Neo-con Lexicon

Just for reference sake:

“Decision-maker” = “Dictator”

Those Pesky Youngsters

On Sunday, November 5th I was sitting at work and the topic turned to the coming election. One co-worker informed me that she wasn’t going to vote while the other said that she wanted to vote, but, being a college student, she had forgotten to re-register in Missoula from Billings. Under the old rules, she would have had to drive to Billings since she had already forgotten to get an absentee vote. We googled Montana Registration, found the government’s website, but couldn’t find a clear answer in all the jargon. She left work in clear anxiety about how to vote. Later on that day, I found out about same day registration, but had no way to contact my co-worker.

I believe it’s these pesky people–these young people who aren’t quite settled enough to be registered in the same place every year–that has the Republicans up in arms. They (along with Rick Jore of the Constitution Party) have introduced a bill to eliminate same day registration. Citing “long lines” is ridiculous if only because this is democracy in action. They also claim that last minute voters might not be as “informed” as other voters. This, too, is ridiculous. Who is to say that these voters are any more or less informed than any other voter? No voter takes a test before entering the poll. There’s no panel of judges who determine comptency. If anything, same day voters might indicate the first step towards competancy. Though they forgot to register by some arbitrary and ill-publicized deadline, they will fulfill their civic duty to vote. And by and far, I would guess that same day voters are college age people.

I saw my co-worker again that weekend and asked if she drove to Billings after all. She said no, that she stayed here in Missoula. She stood in line at the courthouse to register and voted.