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Thoughts on the body politic, the human soul, Billie Holiday songs (and other people's) -- with a lot more questions than answers
That pretty much sums it up. A lot of bigotry shows up not in obvious incidents, but in patterns of discriminatory behavior. Without the data, you have no way of tracking it. Racism won't disappear, but fighting it will get harder.
Anyway, according to today's LA Times, the initiative has been kicked up to October, and will share the ballot with the recall.
Now that's interesting because turnout is crucial here. Talk radio is doing it's best to bring out the angry white guy vote. The "personalities" are appearing in paid ads. My question is, will the threat to affirmative action bring out progressives who won't rush to the polls only to support Davis?
And contrast:
I might have more faith in this new money for Afghanistan is the president was just a tad more honest about the old money. If you pledge 3 billion and end up spending 200 million, somebody's forgetting to sign some checks.
So, we're sending more than 2,000 marines to somewhere in the vicinity of Liberia, but we don't know what they're going to do when they get there, or if we do know, we aren't telling anybody?
That's what I like about this gang -- straight-shooters who always know exactly what they're doing, the whole lot.
Okay, I really don't want to be snide or partisan about this, because the situation in Liberia is not one anyone should be playing politics with (although, God knows there are even worse crises that seem to have fallen completely off the world's radar), but it does look distinctly like Bush is attempting to have it both ways -- to get credit for intervening to save desperate people, while at the same time not actually doing anything. In typical Bush fashion, he seems to be grabbing credit for good-hearted rhetoric, while immunizing himself against criticism of the mission. Hard to criticize when you can't figure out what it is.
The Washington Post quotes an interesting display of Bushspeak in explaining the mission:
We're deeply concerned about people in Liberia, and we plan to watch as Nigerians try to save them.
I admit, that's a bit harsh. The Pentagon, according to the NYT is talking about "providing logistical, intelligence and communications support" but what that means is that right now there don't seem to be any plans to get the marines off the ships. And Nigeria, to put it mildly, doesn't have the military capacity of the United States. Worse, history doesn't bode well here. ECOMOG (the West African peacekeeping force and military arm of ECOWAS) was formed in 1990, specifically to deal with the civil war in Liberia, but quickly began to take sides in the conflict. It doesn't have a stellar reputation for respecting human rights law.
If there's any good news in this, it's simply that the marines are there -- or will be in a week or so -- and will be able to do something if anyone in the administration figures out something for them to do. But it doesn't look like the Pentagon is exactly putting its best minds to work day and night trying to figure out a solution.
Not much has been offered, and Liberians know it. And so do the aid workers who are trying to help them:
Since this is a blog post, not a book, I won't go into what a meaningful intervention would entail, but International Crisis Group has made a number of recommendations. Here is a whittled down version.
The key though, is that solving the problems in Liberia isn't just a matter of keeping warriors away from civilians for a few months. It would mean a long term commitment to dealing with the social and economic problems of the entire region, and it is hard to imagine Bush taking any real interest in that.
So, we're sending more than 2,000 marines to somewhere in the vicinity of Liberia, but we don't know what they're going to do when they get there, or if we do know, we aren't telling anybody?
That's what I like about this gang -- straight-shooters who always know exactly what they're doing, the whole lot.
Okay, I really don't want to be snide or partisan about this, because the situation in Liberia is not one anyone should be playing politics with (although, God knows there are even worse crises that seem to have fallen completely off the world's radar), but it does look distinctly like Bush is attempting to have it both ways -- to get credit for intervening to save desperate people, while at the same time not actually doing anything. In typical Bush fashion, he seems to be grabbing credit for good-hearted rhetoric, while immunizing himself against criticism of the mission. Hard to criticize when you can't figure out what it is.
The Washington Post quotes an interesting display of Bushspeak in explaining the mission:
We're deeply concerned about people in Liberia, and we plan to watch as Nigerians try to save them.
I admit, that's a bit harsh. The Pentagon, according to the NYT is talking about "providing logistical, intelligence and communications support" but what that means is that right now there don't seem to be any plans to get the marines off the ships. And Nigeria, to put it mildly, doesn't have the military capacity of the United States. Worse, history doesn't bode well here. ECOMOG (the West African peacekeeping force and military arm of ECOWAS) was formed in 1990, specifically to deal with the civil war in Liberia, but quickly began to take sides in the conflict. It doesn't have a stellar reputation for respecting human rights law.
If there's any good news in this, it's simply that the marines are there -- or will be in a week or so -- and will be able to do something if anyone in the administration figures out something for them to do. But it doesn't look like the Pentagon is exactly putting its best minds to work day and night trying to figure out a solution.
Not much has been offered, and Liberians know it. And so do the aid workers who are trying to help them:
Since this is a blog post, not a book, I won't go into what a meaningful intervention would entail, but International Crisis Group has made a number of recommendations. Here is a whittled down version.
The key though, is that solving the problems in Liberia isn't just a matter of keeping warriors away from civilians for a few months. It would mean a long term commitment to dealing with the social and economic problems of the entire region, and it is hard to imagine Bush taking any real interest in that.
There seems to be a plan here, although I'm not politically astute enough to judge whether it's a good one or not. But I must say I'm feeling like a crazy fundamentalist at a Republican convention. It is so nice to be pandered to.
I guess it depends on how you define stability.
It's tempting just to laugh at Bush and Company when they laud "Iraq successes" that most of us, thinking more in terms of how people are coping, don't see as terribly successful, but I guess it's all a matter of what you view as important.