Without reservation.
Another conclusion from Netroots Nation. Bean sprouts are caterers’ revenge for having to create a sandwich without lunch meat. They are pale green stringy things with the flavor of dank soil, and generally the only flavor in the entire sandwich. I’ve been vegetarian for 18 years and I’d guess that 90% of the bean sprouts I’ve eaten were on vegetarian sandwiches made by caterers.
I should record my favorite quote from Netroots Nation. Said John Dean, former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon:
Mitt Romney is like Nixon on Paxil. Rudy Giulliani is Nixon on meth.
This is an important and telling fact: John Dean and I were both born in Akron, Ohio. Such a start gives you a lot of room to grow.
Netroots Nation is in Austin and I live in Austin, so I decided to go. There were bloggers I read regularly, bloggers I used to read, and bloggers I will start reading. There were also a variety of speakers, authors and politicians I wanted to hear speak. There are some really smart, enthusiastic folks out there.
If there is one word to summarize the conference this year it is “accountability.” Everyone wants administration officials held accountable for their many offenses and crimes, which I don’t need to list for you. They want telecoms to account for breaking the FISA law, written specifically to prevent them from wire-tapping Americans without warrants. They want the Democratic congress held accountable for not doing a damn thing but give w everything he wanted and more. Some want the Netroots Nation organizers held accountable for crippling the Ask the Speaker session, letting the speaker off way too easy. Al Gore was a hit, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who anticipated the high point of the conference would be Speaker Pelosi answering the tough questions, and feeling our disappointment in her up close and personal. Instead, she took a scant few questions, blamed the Republicans and the Senate, and talked out the clock until time to pop the Gore “surprise” that effectively took her off the hook. No satisfaction there.
It would be unfortnate to let the 43rd presidency pass by with no accountability. The desire for retribution is intense, to be sure, but over and over I heard voiced a belief that we cannot reverse course and repair damage without the deterrent effect of prosecution and punishment. Electing Obama is not going to change much of anything without that. For a year and a half, the democratic congress has failed to stand up to the administration and some of us are just learning what others have long known: Democrats are not politically weak so much as they are afraid, calculating, and often complicit. There are Democrats in congress who believe in the surveillance state they are creating, some who are afraid to be labeled weak on terrorism, and some who are beholden to lobbyists and corporate donations and so they do not represent us as they should. Some are simply complicit; they knew about the FISA breaches and torture programs because they were briefed about them. The most they ever did was write sealed letters of protest. Some are willing to forego the fight if they can lay the blame elsewhere.
I haven’t blogged because I don’t feel I have anything to say that someone else isn’t saying. I read a bunch of blogs and watch C-SPAN and cable news like everyone else, but I’m not a lawyer or a veteran or a congressional aide or a journalist. I’m just a typical liberal atheist gay vegetarian nerd tech writer with four cats, a chiweenie dog, too many interests to be expert at anything, and a stack of unread books I really want to get to soon.
I don’t like writing what’s already been written even if, as Don Knuth said, some people occasionally like a little redundancy now and then. Judging from cable news, the redundancy market is insatiable and highly competitive.
I was thinking today that if I was going to blog, I’d have to select a subject area to chronical and become knowledgeable about, because then I’d be building a resource, the quality of which is as yet not known. Here are some of the things I feel strongly about, in no particular order:
I’m looking for common threads in there. Many of my issues have to do with the fact that corporations control basically everything now. Corporate money wins election, earning favorable legislation, freedom from regulation and liability, tax breaks, subsidies, and immunity when they abuse their own customers. Even collectively, citizens do not have the kind of influence corporations can buy. Corporations famously have a single motivation, which is profit. CEOs, boards, employees, and shareholders may all have altruistic values, but in the end they have to be fit into the profit equation. Wall Street—speculative, irrational, and short-sighted—is unmoved by good works unless they’re good works with a quick dollar payoff. So maybe I’ll just start writing about that. Find the stories, document the horrors, and keep my mouth shut about Outright for a while.
I’ll give the Outright backstory some other time. Spike is growling for attention.