GLASS HOUSES AND STONES

Been almost a week since my last entry...gotta get crackin'. Got a fax today from the Mississippi Republican Party which attempts to blast Dean (ahead of his visit to the Magnolia State on March 1). It's headed "Dowdy To Dean: Will You Be Mine?" and notes sarcastically that "Wayne Dowdy, chief of the Mississippi Democratic Party is one of many Democrat's recently struck by Cupid's arrow." Is he saying Dean and Dowdy are gay lovers? Is that what he's trying to imply? Because the new head of the Republican National Committee ain't exactly no man's man, if you catch my meaning.

Jim Herring, head of the MS Republican Party, needs to watch it with the gay jokes, given that gays in or related to people in his party include the following:

Ken Mehlman, RNC Chair
David Dreier, Representative from CA
Mary Cheney, the Vice-President's daughter
Newt Gingrich's sister Candace
Alan Keye's daughter Maya (who was just kicked out of her father's house for being "out")
Jeff Gannon/James Guckert of Talon "News"
and so on...


The Democratic Party has gays, sure, but that is seen as a strength, not a weakness or spiritual failing by members of that party.

Dean was very good in his press conference this weekend at which his chairmanship was confirmed. I was particularly impressed by his response to a reporter who asked him something to the effect of "people say you may not project the right image for the Democratic party" and Dean said "I don't respond to blind quotes." That was hot! Right outta the gate, Dean's letting people know he's not going to play foolish media games.

Iran All Night And Day

I agree wholeheartedly with this Reese piece in which he states the obvious:

But let's assume Iran does develop a nuclear weapon. I don't care. I've lived
most of my life 30 minutes from total destruction by tens of thousands of the Soviet Union's nuclear warheads. The Bush administration's claim that nuclear deterrence, which worked against a superpower, will not work against a smaller and poorer country is bunk. Israel alone has enough nuclear warheads to
pulverize Iran.

Indeed why should we care what countries have nuclear weapons and which don't? By itself the U.S. can destroy the whole world several times over and any country who would use nuclear arms against us knows that they would pay dearly for such an act:

When Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, stated in 1957 his belief that the equivalent of 720 warheads on invulnerable Polaris submarines would be enough to deter the Soviet Union, the United States already had almost six times as many deployed. When retired Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell Taylor wrote in 1960 that "a few hundred missiles" (presumably armed with a "few hundred" warheads) would satisfy deterrence, the United States already had some 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons. And when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued in 1964, that within a few years the equivalent of 400 megatons would be enough to achieve mutual assured destruction and hence deterrence, the U.S. stockpile had almost 17,000 megatons, 17 billion tons of TNT equivalent. In short, there has always been a tremendous gap between what informed military and civilian leaders thought necessary for deterrence and what was actually deployed, a state of affairs that has not changed with the end of the Cold War.

Besides, the only reason other countries want to have nuclear weapons is because we have them. Countries like Iran and North Korea do not trust us any more than we trust them. And why should they?

Bush Admits "Safety" Is An "Illusion"

So Bush wants the Patriot Act renewed. No surprise there, but what was his stated reason?

``We must not allow the passage of time, or the illusion of safety, to weaken our resolve in this new war,'' Bush said during a ceremony at the Justice Department in Washington.

He's saying that our safety is illusory? All this airport hassle, over 10,000 dead and wounded in Iraq, and yet our safety is still an "illusion?" Well, of course Bush meant this remark in the sense that safety is always an illusion. No person or nation can ever be totally "safe." No amount of weaponry, vigilance or what have you can ever make anything totally safe. It's not possible now, it never has been possible, and it never will be possible.

But supposedly that's why Bush was re-elected--because he'll keep/make us "safe." Then he comes out today and says that the drastic measures we have already taken only provide the "illusion of safety." It's incredible. It's sick. Especially when you consider that the simple idea of not endlessly provoking other people and other countries would go a long way toward insuring safety--insofar as safety is even possible (and that idea comes from uber-con Pat Buchanan. Oh but my my, that doesn't fit the Master Narrative that most red-state types carry around in their heads...