Scream of Consciousness

No free pass for Roberts

JaredRaphael — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:01:58 EDT

Last night I freaked out when Bush mentioned that he consulted with Sen. Leahy on the Roberts nomination. Did Old Pat really give this guy a pass? Today, this:

"No one is entitled to a free pass to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court," said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the committee that will question the 50-year-old appeals court judge later this summer.

and this, in his email to Democracy for America listmembers:

The American people deserve a justice who understands and respects the views of all the people of this great nation. The Supreme Court belongs to all Americans, including the 49 percent who made a different choice for President. Now that a nominee has been chosen, the debate begins on whether Judge Roberts will be such a jurist. We all have a stake in this process -- and a responsibility to evaluate this nomination on the basis of the facts and the issues of vital importance to ordinary Americans everywhere.

I knew the guy would hang tough. (Vermont's congressional delegation always represents. He basicly sums up my opinion on wether this thing is worth a fight. We might not have a chance of Borking Roberts, but that does not mean that the Democrats should shut thier mouths, as some have suggested. So what if Roberts is not pure evil? The confirmation hearing will be a great chance to interogate the conservative worldview.

nomination blogging

JaredRaphael — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 21:04:59 EDT

My two cents here.

SCOTUS Nomination = Next Big Test for Internet Activism

JaredRaphael — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:36:54 EDT

We know how high the stakes are. With Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, MoveOn, People for the American Way, and the rest of the big adovacy organizations are springing into action, preparing for a rumble.

I noticed that both PFAW and MoveOn did something interesting with this campaign—they asked for my cell phone number so that they could text message me when the nominee is announced. Here's why:

Both sides have prepared hour-by-hour chronologies of Supreme Court fights, ranging from the 73 days from nomination to confirmation for Justice David H. Souter in 1990 to 137 days for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. In a calculation akin to the "golden hour," in which paramedics race to get a critically ill patient to a hospital, Senate strategists have concluded that the first four to six hours will determine which side is left on the defensive. These minutely detailed strategies are ready to be activated regardless of whom Bush nominates.

Personally, I'm pumped. After Social Security, Bolton, The Nuclear Option, Darfur, The Downing Street Memos, just to name a few recent campaigns, the first mega-battle of the age of internet mass-mobilization is upon us. And this time, if we are serious about winning, we have to act with all the lightning speed of the digital world.

This is terrifying and hopeful at the same time. At the very least, I am thankful that technology has made this sort of civic participation possible. I know that I will join the swarm. I will drop everything and call my senators and send my letters to the editor as soon as the message arrives on my phone. I will attend a rally. I will plan my own rally if necessary.

My fellow progressives, let's roll.

Action links in the extended.

Fear and Loathing in Wallingford, CT. Part Two of Two: Pimp the Welfare State.

JaredRaphael — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 21:45:22 EDT

Second in a two-part meditation on my job as a Health Advocate.

This is from Dead Prez’s 2004 hit “Hell Yeah (Pimp the System)”.

I know a caper
we can get some government paper
ya' know food stamps, can we really do that
hell yeah right there for the takin'
fuck welfare we say reparations
Ya' know the grind
get up early get on the line and just wait
everybody on break
that's part of the game and when they call your name
Miss caseworker lemme state my claim
I'm homeless, jobless, time is hard
about hopeless, but I gotta eat regardless
no family to run to I'm 22
now tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do
my sad story made her feel close to me
I made her feel like it was in emergency
and when I came to the crib niggas couldn't believe
I came back with a big bag of groceries

The song suggests that people struggling to feed their families in this country are better off committing petty crime (against retail stores, credit card companies, and the government, never against other poor people) than they are playing along with the System. This song follows in a long line of Hip Hop songs that will blow you away illustrating the social and economic origins of crime. The line “now tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do” is lifted directly from one of the first such songs, “Loves Gonna Get’cha” by KRS-One

[More in the extended]

Fear and Loathing in Wallingford, CT. Part One of Two.

JaredRaphael — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 01:27:57 EDT

Just before eight-thirty this morning, I arrived at the compound of the Connecticut Hospital Association in Wallingford. My coworker, who drove us there in her boxy black SUV, wondered sarcastically how the “nonprofit” federation of the state’s medical establishment would find itself in possession of a thick-carpeted, air-conditioned, convention center. The place looks like a sterile cross between the Marriot and the dentist’s office, but compared to some of the Spartan hell-holes that have passed for office space in my time in the trenches of nonprofit advocacy, this place was like the Pentagon. Our own one-room (we used to rent the adjacent office but stopped in order to save money) office back in New Haven, at Student Health Outreach, looks more like your average “nonprofit.”

[More in the extended]

The Left's Anemic Foreign Policy Challenge

JaredRaphael — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 23:02:25 EDT

With Bush attempting to claim credit in recent months for the apparent 'wave of democracic movements' sweeping from Egypt to Kyrgyzstan, I have been dissatisfied with the Left's relative silence on the issue. The trouble is that we progressives have been struggling to come up with a good, serious intelectual challenge to the assertion that Bush gambled and won on the idea that democracy would flourish in the Middle East and Central Asia as a result of the occupation of Iraq.

In April, I got a chance to make a minor contribution to this debate.The Hippolytic sponsored a public debate between me and Al Jiwa, the president of the Yale College Republicans. One of the speeches I gave, on foreign policy, developed, with the help of the rest of the Hippo crew, into a bullet-pointed list of ways that Bush is actively making the World less safe for democracy:

6.) The War in Iraq has been a setback for the cause of Democracy in the Muslim World and around the World. The recent Pew Trust Poll shows that significant majorities of people in countries from Pakistan to Morocco actually support violence against American forces in Iraq. Indeed, the rhetoric of democracy is surprisingly weak next to the images of Iraqi civilians at Abu Grhaib, naked, shackled, being raped and urinated upon. Because “democracy” is the slogan of the American occupiers of Iraq, we have, in the words of Richard Clark said, closed Muslim eyes and ears to our subsequent calls for reform in their region.

7.) Under Bush’s leadership, the US continues to actively support brutal, authoritarian regimes around the world.

a. We embrace Uzbekistan as an Ally in the war on terrorism. Political prisoners and religious dissidents in Uzbekistan are routinely tortured, even boiled alive.

b. We continue to Support the deeply conservative monarchy in Saudi Arabia, and the Pakistani Autocrat Pervez Musharraf. We give a great deal of military aid to the authoritarian government of Egypt.

c. The Bush government supported a coup to over through Hugo Chavez, the Democratically elected president of Venezuela

You get the idea. There's more in the extended.