Daily Kos reports that 67% of their readers use Internet Explorer, down from 80-90% a few months ago. 22% of Daily Kos readers use an operating system other than Windows (18% Macintosh, 4% Linux or Unix). At one conservative site, 75% of their readers use IE and only 6% use an OS other than windows (4% Mac, 2% Linux/Unix).
News and Politics
Poll says Americans want Roe v. Wade upheld
via Sun-Sentinel: A majority of Americans say President Bush’s next choice for an opening on the Supreme Court should be willing to uphold the landmark court decision protecting abortion rights, an Associated Press poll found.
The poll found that 59 percent say Bush should choose a nominee who would uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. About three in 10, 31 percent, said they want a nominee who would overturn the decision, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
While the public is generally divided on the abortion issue, polling consistently has found a clear majority of people who think abortion should be legal in at least some cases.
Another issue the Supreme Court will have to deal with at some point is homosexual marriage.
By 61 percent to 35 percent, people opposed gay marriage, with young adults between 18 and 29 about evenly split. Recent polls have indicated people are about evenly divided on the question of civil unions, which would provide many of the same legal protections as gay marriage.
The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,000 adults was taken Nov. 19-21 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
This dispels any doubt whether the government truly represents the people. We’d be a lot better off if the government just avoided such issues instead of using them as a wedge.
Coming out for one of their own
Great story at MetaFilter: Sand Springs, Oklahoma overcomes their own homophobia to defend a gay teenager against attacks by Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church.
Magnanimous Defeat
A must read essay by John Perry Barlow describes a lot of what I’m feeling now. A few days later, it still hurts. Knowing that most of the country hates me and doesn’t believe I deserve the same rights they do just plain sucks.
Here’s a reason to look forward to 2008. During this term, some of Bush’s debt will come due and he’ll have a hard time repaying it. The situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate. He’ll struggle to clean up his own messes and he wouldn’t be able to blame it on Clinton or the Democrats. By 2008 the country will be looking for a change. We need to start planning for 2008 now.
Get the government out of marriage
Here’s a great idea from Juan Cole, via Daily Kos:
If Democrats were sly, there is a way out. The Baptist southern presidential candidate should start a campaign to get the goddamn Federal government out of the marriage business. It has to be framed that way. Marriage should be a faith-based institution and we should turn it over to the churches. If someone doesn’t want to be married in a church, then the Federal government can offer them a legal civil contract (this is a better name for it than civil union). That’s not a marriage and the candidate could solemnly observe that they are taking their salvation in their own hands if they go that route, but that is their business. But marriage is sacred and the churches should be in charge of it.
If you succeeded in getting the Federal government out of the marriage business, then the whole issue would collapse on the Republicans. You appeal to populist sentiments against the Feds and to the long Baptist tradition of support for the US first amendment enshrining separation of religion and state.
We Lost
This really hurt.
The most disturbing thing about the election is the exit polls which said people considered moral values the top issue, over the economy, terrorism, and Iraq. It shows that Americans basically hate gays and you can win an election by attacking gays.
I had thought that this country was basically Libertarian and secular, but the election results tell another story. I’m afraid of the US further weakening the separation of church and state or even descending into a Taliban-like Christian fundamentalist theocracy. With the rest of the world becoming less religious and granting more rights to gays, I’m disgusted that the US is the only country moving in the opposite direction.
It wouldn’t bother me as much if Bush won on issues like Iraq or terrorism, but the fact that he won on anti-gay sentiment & moral values makes it painful and shakes my faith in this country.
The rest of the world already fears and hates us because of Bush’s actions. His re-election will further alienate the rest of the world. As Oliver Willis said, “We’re telling the world that we endorse the last four years, and give thumbs up to more evil”. We need a sane foreign policy that values diplomacy and builds alliances rather than going it alone.
We face the prospect of more conservative Supreme Court justices who would reverse decisions on abortion, gay rights, and separation of church and state. That’s the most frightening thing about the next 4 years. It will take us several decades to undo that damage.
On the plus side, Barack Obama won his senate seat, but that was no surprise. It brings him one step closer to becoming the first black president.
One (Hu)'man One Vote
This song by Johnny Clegg is very appropriate for today:
The west is sleeping in a fragile freedom
Forgotten is the price that was paid
Ten thousand years of marching through a veil of tears
To break a few links in these chains
These things come to us by way of much pain
Don’t let us slip back into the dark
On a visible but distant shore — a new image of man
The shape of his own future, now in his own hands — he says:
Chorus:
One ‘man, one vote — step into the future
One ‘man, one vote — in a unitary state
One ‘man, one vote — tell them when you see them
One ‘man, one vote — it’s the only way
In the east a giant is awakening
And in the south we feel the rising tide
The soul inside the spark that gives breath to your life
Can no longer be made to hide
These things come to us by way of much pain
Don’t let us slip back into the dark
On a visible but distant shore — a new image of man
The shape of his own future, now in his own hands — he says:
Chorus:
One ‘man, one vote — step into the future
One ‘man, one vote — in a unitary state
One ‘man, one vote — tell them when you see them
One ‘man, one vote — it’s the only way
I Voted
It took less than 20 minutes to vote. There was absolutely no line and it was very quick. The most difficult thing was finding a place to park. This is a fairly small precinct; almost everyone there is from my condo community. One of my neighbors works in the poll every year and I met a few more neighbors voting (one of them is the only Bush supporter I know here).
The people who went for early voting were stuck for 3 hours or longer. That’s why I didn’t go for early voting, and I see that I made the right choice. I knew voting at my own precinct would be faster & easier since we don’t have people from all over the county coming to vote here.
Oliver Willis endorses Kerry for President
Oliver Willis: “I endorse John Kerry for President because he represents a return to the mainstream values that have been the hallmark of American democracy. If elected, I believe Kerry will be a vigilant defender of our security, our rights, and of our economic wellbeing. I believe that a vote for John Kerry will be a rejection of radicalism, fear mongering, hate, and divisiveness. John Kerry needs to become our next president in order to save democracy both here and abroad.”
A Personal Appeal from George Soros
An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends.
Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong.
President Bush has shown that he is incapable of recognizing his mistakes. He insists on making reality conform to his beliefs even at the cost of deceiving himself and deliberately deceiving the public. There is something appealing in the strength of his faith, especially in our troubled time. But the cost is too high. By putting our faith in a President who cannot admit his mistakes we commit ourselves to the wrong policies. We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.
Open Societies suffer from an innate weakness: uncertainty. Leaders who claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth offer an escape from uncertainty. But that is a snare, because those leaders are bound to be wrong.
Under the influence of globalization we have been exposed to more than a normal dose of uncertainty. That is why the kind of faith that guides President Bush is so appealing. The traumatic events of 9/11 have reinforced that appeal. President Bush rose to the occasion and he carried the nation behind him. But he has led us in the wrong direction. He used the war on terror as an excuse for invading Iraq. If we reelect President Bush we are endorsing his policies and we shall have to live with the consequences. We are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. If we reject him at the polls we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and break the vicious circle. Our future depends on it.
For 18 months after 9/11 President Bush suppressed all dissent by calling it unpatriotic. That is how he could lead the nation so far in the wrong direction.
The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where Osama bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified.
The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not of necessity, as President Bush claims. It goes without saying that Saddam was a tyrant, and it is good to be rid of him. But in invading Iraq as we did, without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our disregard for international law has endangered our security, particularly the security of our troops.
The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In response to American pressure, the United Nations had finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could have persisted with the inspections but President Bush insisted on going to war.
By now we know that we went to war on false pretenses. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. What has not yet sunk in is that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice knew that Saddam had no nuclear capacity long before we invaded Iraq. The intelligence experts of the Energy Department told them in 2002 that the famous aluminum tubes, which were presented as the most concrete evidence that Saddam had a nuclear program, could not possibly be used for enriching uranium. Yet they used them as evidence. They deliberately deceived the public, the Congress and the United Nations.