Third Party Redux
Posted by tgirsch

Let’s try this another way.

Suppose you’re stuck in an all-day meeting with twelve other people. Lunch is going to be brought in, and they’ve offered up four choices: Papa John’s Pizza, Subway Subs, P.F. Chang’s, or Taco Bell.

Papa John’s and Taco Bell aren’t your favorite, but you could live with either one of them. What you really want is P.F. Chang’s — it’s your favorite. And you absolutely despise Subway.

The problem is, they’re going to bring in food for everyone from just one of those places. They’re going to vote by secret ballot, and you only get one vote.

Asking around, you learn that five people are strongly in favor of Papa John’s, and five more are strongly in favor of Subway. The other two are split between Taco Bell and Chang’s.

So in this scenario, what do you do? Do you vote for Chang’s because that’s what you want, even though it has no chance of winning, and even though this increases the likelihood of you having to eat Subway, which you hate? Or do you vote for Papa John’s (effectively voting against Subway), and take a less-than-ideal lunch that you nevertheless don’t mind instead of having to suffer through Subway?

January 11th, 2008 | Politics, Weekend Flame Bait | 23 comments

ACLU: Close Gitmo Now
Posted by Kevin

I am sorry I missed this (been a busy day, personally), but the ACLU is kicking off a close Gito campaign. It has been six years since we opened that black hole. We haven’t given a single person in that camp the rights of a prisoner of war or charged them criminally. The BUsh Administration fought for years to keep them locked away forever, subject only to the whims of Bush or his surrogates. And when the Supreme Court, an institution as far right as any in the country, finally pointed out that such treatment was inhumane, illegal, and un-American, the Bush Administration created a process that kept the accused from seeing the evidence against them and allowed evidence based on torture to be used against them. The prison camp at Gitmo is a symbol to the world of our leader’s cowardice and viciousness and it is the single most effective propaganda tool the terrorists have. When they want to “prove” that all our high minded rhetoric about freedom and democracy is a lie, when they want to “prove” that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than a holy war against Muslim, all they have to do is say one word: Gitmo. It is long past time it be closed.

You can find out more here.

January 11th, 2008 | General, Legal Issues, Iraq, Terrorism, Torture | one comment