DNC Bylaws

This really doesn't need any commentary from me.

Obscenely Funny - RIP George Carlin

This just in: George Carlin Died this Morning.

I most remember Carlin for somehow managing to be indecent without being obscene - an ironic and rewarding assessment on my part, because when I told my parents as much, and they gave me the "parental eye-roll", I referred them to my good friends, Warren E. Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, and John Paul Stevens.

Apparently, the Supreme Court had my opinion [438 U.S. 726 (1978)] before I did. If you ask me in a social setting, however, I'll tell you that they are merely my predeccessors. (Hey cmon dude, I don't get girls with my looks).

For those of you who don't know about this, Carlin is perhaps most famous for a comedy routine ("7 Words You Can't Say on TV") in which he managed to be so profane that the FCC, and in turn the Supreme Court, felt obligated to intervene. The routine is below, if you're interested - but I warn you not to listen to it during hours in which children are likely to be proximally close to you, or the FCC might come after you, too.

It's a small, small world...after all.

It's not just us....

Dubai eGovernment Shares Expertise At 2nd National Conference Of Egovernment In SyriaPresents Successful Strategies And Policies To Assist In The Development Of Syria’s Digital Information Society
Dubai, UAE - June 16, 2008: Dubai eGovernment has announced that it has participated in the 2nd National Conference of eGovernment in Syria held on 8th and 9th of June, 2008 in Damascus, Syria. Dubai eGovernment shared its expertise and experiences to support the development of Syria’s digital information society.Dubai eGovernment presented a paper titled “Strategies and policies to achieve e-governance” where it provided a detailed overview of its objectives, policies and strategies, with an emphasis on the systematic application of these strategies. The paper focused on methodologies used to enhance the effectiveness and productivity of public institutions using information and communication technologies. “The Syrian Government, particularly its Ministry of Communications and Technology, is to be commended for taking a serious and aggressive stance towards enhancing the digital capabilities of government. Electronically-enabled institutions can better serve society and thus contribute significantly to enhanced progress throughout the country. Our presentation will definitely encourage the Syrian Government to sustain its efforts to create a digital information society,” said Salem Al Shair, e-Services Director, Dubai eGovernment.Among the factors that helped in the success of Dubai eGovernment's experience, according to the paper presented at the conference, are the clear vision of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and the patron of the initiative; the entry of modern technologies in the daily operations of Dubai government departments since the 1980s; the continuous development and modernization of administrative procedures and staff; as well as a number of initiatives that contribute to the enhancement of governmental institutions such as the Dubai Government Excellence Award. The major challenges facing eGovernment are: raising awareness about eServices among the public and encouraging them to adopt electronic services; and convincing government officials that the electronic transformation is in the public interest and does not hamper growth, but instead paves the way for staff development. Sponsored by the Syrian Ministry of Communications and Technology and held under the theme “Practical Steps towards Reality,” the two-day conference aimed to expand national electronic services and increase public awareness on the importance of digital information; thus paving the way for improved socio-economic conditions throughout the country. Syria chose Dubai eGovernment to share its experiences with eGovernance due to its widespread reputation as an effective enabler of e-citizen services and comprehensive administrative reforms. Through Dubai eGovernment’s comprehensive web portal, www.dubai.ae, citizens, residents, visitors and business enterprises can access more than 2,000 electronic services, including fee payments, health cards renewal and company registration, among others.

THe Kitchen Sink Too? YES WE CAN!!

McCain, Obama present different views on taxes
Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:44pm EDT
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama staked out starkly opposing stances on taxes on Tuesday, with McCain promising corporate tax breaks and Obama pledging tax increases for many.
McCain in a speech in Washington accused Obama of seeking the single largest tax increase since World War Two while Obama, in a television interview, said he would increase taxes on the wealthy and on stock profits to pay for a middle-class tax cut of $1,000 a year.
"No matter which of us wins in November, there will be change in Washington. The question is what kind of change?" McCain told a conference for small businesses.
Obama told CNBC that he would raise taxes on Americans making $250,000 a year or more and raise the capital gains tax for those in higher income brackets while exempting small investors. He said the U.S. economy has been "out of balance for too long."
"The general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think, is a sound one," Obama said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Or, if you prefer the infotaining version...


--------------------------------------------------------------------
What I find really interesting, however, is that both plans will effect an increase in the national debt. Every time I turn on the television, I'm barraged by the McCain vs. Obama headlines, which typically sound something like: "Barack Obama promised a %15 hope increase by January 2009...in other news, John McCain is still alive." The theme of this year's election is "change". Both candidates claim to be Washington outsiders who will shake up U.S. Bureaucracy; the only real difference in this regard is that Obama accuses McCain of being Bush III, while McCain spends his valuable breath calling Obama an idiot.

Still, I (for one) would like to see change in any area that isn't "campaign mantra." Just for shits and giggles, let's hear a candidate who says something truly different - that is, any complete set of policies which cannot be summarized as a "promise to do everything AND lower taxes."

I wish that candidates would grow some, err, "courage"; and I wish that citizens would study history.

Don't Confuse "Republic" with Democracy

In case you aren't up on your international news:

Nepal to End 240-Year Monarchy With Vote for Republic

By Michael Heath and Jay Shankar

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Nepal's parliament, meeting for the first time since former rebels won elections in April, will declare the Himalayan country a republic today, ending a 240- year-old monarchy.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has told King Gyanendra to quit the palace and become a ``common citizen.'' The king hasn't commented on his plans.
``There will be no problem to pass the resolution abolishing the monarchy,'' Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara said by phone yesterday from the capital, Kathmandu. ``It should go smoothly as most of the parties want it to happen.''

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This, by the way, is nepal:

:

The aspect of this that I find most interesting is that an "oppressive monarchy" is being thrown off by what is, for all intents and purposes, a Maoist Republic. Fair or not, accurate or otherwise, every time a Maoist rebel yells "freedom!" I visualize a pig named snowball leading the fight against "oppressive" farmers.


The new Republic of Nepal should be careful that it does not become the People's Republic of Nepal, China.


We have a bias in the United States of America (well, we undoubtedly have many, but that's tomorrow's post) - we have an American bias. It begins with the patriotic dogma that America is the "greatest country on earth," and frankly, aside from the observation that different folks very often like different strokes, a good case can be made for our United States. The (prevalent) error, however, emerges when we Americans make the assumption that the practice of politics is a science and not an art; we stray when we follow the idealists in their insistence that good government is derived from good (a priori) ideas. Such adamance in favor of a "singularist" political philosophy, taken as a universal and trans-cultural premise, waxes of Hobbes and Marx as much as it does Locke, Montesquieu or Jefferson. Liberty, freedom, and democracy, we claim, all in the American mold, are the answer for all cultures - and the sooner the better.


Why, then, have words such as republic, democracy, and election become sacred? Or, at least, why does people's republic signify "them damn commies!" while republic remains untouchable? "Because," you might say, "we are a republic!" Well, yes, "We the People" most certainly are.


George Bernard Shaw's famous claim that "democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve," is a painful admission, and a nearly accurate one. It might be better said, I think, that "democracy ensures that we shall be governed no better than our ability." "Now hold on! Wait just a moment there!", I hear from the back, "democracy defines the American way of life!Don't go throwing the baby out with the bathwater!" But this isn't a criticism of democracy, and I'm certainly not defenestrating any children; I'm only suggesting that we learn to distinguish between the two. Democracy isn't good because it is called democracy - it is only good insofar as it provides freedom for the pursuit of happiness.

Nepal, like China, is nothing like our United States; furthermore, the United States did not become a "successful" democracy easily. Consider the things which were necessary (working as a whole) for our secular democratic republic to come about:

1. The rise of "individualism" through Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau and many, many others.



2. The rebellion of Martin Luther, in the spirit of this individualism, which splintered western culture along religious lines, inevitably seperating religious and temporal authority.



3. Hundreds of years of English civil war in which royal oppression fostered popular hostility towards monarchist rule.



4. The defection of Henry VIII from the Catholic Church, leading into further monarchial oppression along religious lines, against all major religious groups.



5. The discovery of the New World



6. English and French warring, making possible the American Revolution in which a group of(then) extremist idealogues were able to establish a Republic far from the nation against which they had rebelled.

This is not to say that the 'rise' of democracy is a fluke. Quite to the contrary, it is almost self-evident that American democracy was the culmination - not an anomaly - of the past few centuries of Western civilization. Rather, I would argue that what the list above can teach us is that democracy is fragile; it does not "just flourish" wherever it finds itself. In fact, we too often forget (in our struggle to "bring democracy to the third world" and such) that the path to Western democracy has hardly been an easy one; its value has not always been recognized. It was the same idealism that birthed America which engulfed her in civil war a short time later. And however wrong his solution, Marx was right, after all, when he wrote that "for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the bourgeoisie] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation". Capitalism ultimately allowed democracy to succeed, but it was no cure-all, and it did so only with substantial difficulty; Smith's invisible hand was all too invisible for much of American history. When democracy was tried in France, it was done so by revolution, and with great cost. France engaged in what what Edmund Burke would describe as "a foolish imitation...which impaired their natural character without substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were". His point is that democracy itself can kill as well as cure, and can in fact be more oppressive for its sheer strength. "Of this I am certain," Burke writes, "in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...with much greater fury".

If Burke remarks are true of a democracy, they are doubly true of a Maoist republic. Socialist Republics have not only the oppression of the majority to fear, but the oppression of an oligarchy acting in the name of the people.


Time will tell if Nepal shall flourish under Maoism. I fear, however, that it will not, and that it will become one more nation to pay the steep price for a failed republic.

Hardly Making an Entrance

So here it is - my first post. This, I now see, would be a most convenient time to have something to say. I should have thought about what to write, for example, in class (just kidding Dr. Taylor!).

...but seriously.

Instead, you get a picture of an alchoholic, cynical-sarcastic canine. Everybody, meet Brian.