Posts tagged politics
here we are
Jason Rhyley / ATL / too geek to function
The Politics of Beer: Stay Nonpartisan, My Friends:
Americans who most often drink Dos Equis are in the middle-of-the-road while drinkers of Heineken’s flagship brand are strongly Democratic. Samuel Adams drinkers are strongly Republican, and more likely to vote.
I’m pretty sure there should be an entry for “any IPA” in the top left quadrant.
Now I know there’s some cynics amongst you who say: ‘yes Clay, but the truth is, government doesn’t actually want to hear from us. They want to hear from rich fancy-pants lobbyists who give them campaign contributions and foie gras.’
You are correct that that’s frequently all that members of Congress listen to. But I don’t believe that’s out of ill-will or spite for the public. Rather, it’s about attention management. Lobbyists can manage the attention of our Representatives because they have the time and the resources. But I’ve never met a member of Congress who liked constantly begging for money so that they could get re-elected. Nobody wants that.
The truth is that Congress would much rather listen to its constituents than listen to lobbyists. They’d much rather be at home in their districts with their families than at fundraisers in Washington, too. But the way to fix it involves a two-fold plan: first, let’s accept that we’ll have to make our own foie gras for the time being. Then, let’s make foie gras obsolete.
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has been held in confinement for the past 18 months on suspicion of having leaked a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, is to go before a military panel on 16 December at the start of the most high-profile prosecution of a whistleblower in a generation
Bradley Manning hearing date set as court martial process finally begins | guardian.co.uk
Imprisoned for a year and a half, this poor kid finally gets his first day in court—but not a real court, since he enlisted, and is therefore basically property. I’d like to say I’m still as enraged as I was when this first began, but increasingly all I am is destroyed. This isn’t something my country does to people. This isn’t something the guy I voted for, as commander-in-chief, does to people.
A thought experiment: could you imagine President Ford, after Nixon’s resignation, holding “Deep Throat” W. Mark Felt in double-secret military incarceration? No, you fucking can’t. (Yes, fine: Woodward, Bernstein & Felt were collectively a bit more clever than this current crop of speakers of truth to power. ‘No one’¹ knew of Felt’s role as a key source until he was quite elderly and retired. But still…) In 1972, this sort of show trial would have been unimaginable, even had the whistleblower’s portrait filled half the first page of every newspaper. His arrest, for the crime of telling secrets that would shock and disgust any occupant of any main street —charges that carry a penalty of death—would have inevitably led to the offices of government being razed to their foundations.
I’ve given up trying to find a less incendiary way to say this, so: what the fuck is wrong with us? What the hell is going on? When did we lose our way so completely?
