Wednesday notes 6/21/06

Check out the prose in this letter to the Eureka Reporter:

America, in righteousness, does judge and make war, just like the fellow sitting upon a white horse and with many crowns on his head in Revelations of the Bible, “and in righteousness he doth judge and make war, and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

That was the explanation for the killing of al-Zarqawi. If the Eureka Reporter does in fact establish its monopoly, it may be because of the vitality of the writing it seems to attract.

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The Redwood Times reports that sales for 4th of July parking at Benbow has begun. For just $25.00 a vehicle (plus $5.00 per person at the park itself unless you’re under 12), you too can enjoy a fireworks show that would be free just about anywhere else. For $1.00 you can take a shuttle from Garberville.

You know, years ago a Bay Area based law office on the opposite side of a suit called my office to arrange a deposition here in Garberville. They asked us if we validated parking. The anecdote used to be funny.

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Dr. Frankenstein says that California needs more medical schools, but opposes the single payer system because it won’t pay doctors enough money. As quoted by the Times-Standard:

He said the tendency of government programs is to “overpromise, underfund, and shift the blame.”

Yeah, and the private sector based system is serving Humboldt County so well!

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As San Francisco prepares for a weekend of Gay Pride (originally organized to commemorate the Stonewall riots), Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans to explain his veto of the equality of marriage bill. It’s early enough in the campaign – enough time for the wingnuts of the party to forget this moment while he collects some campaign donations from the more gullible contingent of the gay and lesbian rights movement.

Meanwhile, the governor is the recipient of this year’s “pink brick” award, for that same veto.

I hope to be writing something on my thoughts about evolution of the Gay Pride celebrations sometime before the weekend.

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Ex-congressional representative Ron Dellums avoided a run-off in the Oakland mayor’s race. With all these formerly high level pols running for Oakland Mayor, you’d think the office is as prized as the presidency itself. Maybe Clinton can run next time around.

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The Mendocino County election results are final. D.A. incumbent Vroman will be facing a run-off and Pinches ousted Wagenet by just under 300 votes.

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Just drove to and from Ukiah today, and noticed for the first time that the Willits Environmental Center is closed. It’s empty with “for rent” signs up. Got back to my office and found this reference to a “new Willits Environmental Center” next door to Tsunami, but the message is two years old. I could swear I’ve been reading freshly edited sign messages at the old site during that time, and I haven’t noticed anything happening at the new location, though I haven’t really paid much attention. What gives?

Republican Senators want American soldiers to die

Actually, they don’t. But if I wanted to use the same quality of rhetoric the Republicans were using last week against those who refused to vote for a meaningless bill that rejects timetables for withdrawal last week, I would be making that argument.

In a rather bizarre twist yesterday, 19 hardcore war supporters in the Senate voted against another non-binding resolution, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 – this time “to express the sense of Congress that the Government of Iraq should not grant amnesty to persons known to have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the Armed Forces of the United States.” The 19 are as follows:

Wayne Allard of Colorado
Kit Bond of Missouri
Jim Bunning of Kentucky
Conrad Burns of Montana
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
Thad Cochran of Mississippi
John Cornyn of Texas
Jim DeMint of South Carolina
Mike Enzi of Wyoming
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska
Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma
Jon Kyl of Arizona
Trent Lott of Mississippi
John McCain of Arizona
Jeff Sessions of Alabama
Ted Stevens of Alaska
Craig Thomas of Wyoming
John Warner of Virginia

I honestly understand the reluctance to handcuff the Iraqi government in future negotiations, but again, this amendment imposed nothing by way of sanctions or any means of enforcement. These votes are fair game for the coming election which will follow a campaign season in which you are going to hear phrases like “cut and run” and other strawmen to stigmatize any skeptism about the war.

What these 19 votes represents is a concession of sorts – a concession of the very complexities of Iraqi culture and politics that may very well make this war unwinnable by any reasonable standards. Yet Representative John Murtha is vilified by hawks simply for pointing out the fact that 80 percent of Iraqis want us to leave and nearly half feel that it is appropriate to kill American troops. It’s not so much to me that their vote is wrong or immoral, but rather that they fail to appreciate the irony in it.