[Sca-cooks] even further OT (more political rant)

[El Hermoso Dormido]

[warning, long politically-oriented sermon follows :-) ]

On Friday 23 August 2002 12:20 pm, Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
> Also sprach Michael Gunter:
> >My latest "Dubba" rant (sieg heil!)
[...]
> I just enjoy watching Dubba Bubba work
[...]
With a number of rather disturbing things going on in politics
today, it always disturbs me when people pay more attention to making
fun of (insert hated candidate here)'s name than to rational discussion
of the serious problems.  It seems that the longer this goes on, the less
people pay attention to what's really going on instead of going along
with the current "make fun of (hated candidate)" fad (complete with
obligatory Nazi reference...[the sorts of extremist tendencies the
current administration is generally accused of sound more Stalinistic
than Nazistic to me, personally])

This isn't much better than the wartime practice of giving the enemy a "funny
name".

In fairness, I feel precisely the same way about people who referred to The
Other Candidate (tm) as "Al Bore" and other such references.  In further
fairness, I will also admit that this is a perfectly natural social tendency -
even I have taken to referring to the two parties which currently have a
stranglehold on the US political system as "Disneycrats" and "Ruperticans"
(from the continued abuses of draconian "intellectual property" laws that have
been going on for the past few administrations at the behest of major media
coporations and trial lawyers who make money every time a new law lands
somebody in court...this is a problem with both of the so-called "mainstream"
parties - consider Sonny Bono's [Rupertican] retroactive robbing of the public
domain with the latest in the series of eternal copyright extension, also
subject to name calling [it's widely referred to by names like "The Mickey
Mouse Copyright Protection Act"...], as well as Fritz Hollings' [Disneycrat]
recent attempt to introduce the "SSSCA" (renamed as the "CBDTPA", which, I
will confess, I occasionally name-call as well ["Corporate-Bought Disney
Trashes the Public Act"]) and bipartisan efforts to legalize vigilantism
if you are a major media corporation pursuing a "suspected" copyright
infringer...)

While I'm not particularly pleased with the current executive administration
(and Ashcroft's policies and desires seem downright frightening at times),
much of the current messes we're dealing with in this country are dumped on
his shoulders because he's a convenient, easily recognised target, rather
than the actual perpetrators:

> big *Senate*
[emphasis added]
> scene in "Star Wars: Episode II" and stage-whispered, "Isn't that
> basically what Bush is doing?"

So, no, that's NOT what Bush is doing.  Bush's power over the legislature (who
makes the rules that the president is supposed to enforce) is limited to
vetoing laws and loose interpretation of how and where he's supposed to
enforce said laws.  The LEGISLATURE is where the serious problems seem
to be.  The president (whoever he may be at any given time) can only ask
or veto (and congress can override even a veto if enough of them want to, and
for that matter, are capable of completely removing the president from power
if enough of them agree on it [impeachment], while I don't know of any
legal mechanism for the President to dissolve Congress...) when it comes to
the rules we operate under.

In short - just about anything the president does is with the permission
of Congress, who grants him powers to abuse, and has the power to stop him
if they were to choose to do so, but because it's such an effort to keep
track of who's who among the 100's of congresspeople, everyone lets them
get away with it.

I'd say you missed a fine opportunity to explain The Way
Things Really Work that future voter, your precocious daughter (It's
a fine thing to see an 11-year old already developing a comprehension of
the sorts of abuses a governmental body can perpetrate, but that comprehension
won't do a lot of good without serious thought to how and where the abuses
arise and what can realistically be done to curb them)....

Sorry about the rant - it's just that as the years go by, it seems people
more and more take the media's focus on the President (whoever he may be at
the time) to mean everything that happens in the country is to be blamed on
(or, occasionally, credited to) him while Congress continues to get away with
keeping the abuses going.  (The house [but not the senate yet, as far as I
know] has already quietly passed the Constitutional amendment to criminalize
"desecration of the flag" [which I consider a childish and stupid form of
protest, but nonetheless find singling it out for a constitutional amendment
unnecessary and a bad precedent], and the house has already introduced a bill
to mandate "up to a year" of military training for all males of "selective
service" age [which is far from being "the draft" but has certain inobvious
implications that disturb me] - but since The President hasn't mentioned
either one, it seems nobody cares, though if they pass you'll be hearing
"Dubya just wants a police state!" as if he made the laws himself rather than
the legislators, who probably got elected more due to their political party
than their actual policy views...)

In the interest of having at least one, tiny, marginally "on topic" part in
this post, I will add that I'd love to see congresspeople dragged around the
country on sleds with copies of bad laws tied around their necks, as was
once done with sellers of underweight or unfit bread in period...

Signed,
El Hermoso Dormido, who feels better now :-)

P.S. In regards to the trees - what would YOU do about the fire danger?  Make
it illegal for lightning to strike in heavily wooded areas? :-)
(The proposed solution may very well be highly questionable and subject to
gross abuses by logging corporations, but I've not SEEN questions, only "Bush
is stupid and hates trees" comments...and I don't just mean in these posts
here...)