It burns

The stu­pid­i­ty of this take on why 9/11 mat­ters is ago­niz­ing. We have to remem­ber because … it helps the pres­i­den­t’s poll num­bers. I won’t re-debunk the silli­ness of the Patri­ot Act argu­ments, except to say that the Patri­ot Act, ille­gal wire­tap­ping, or bio­met­ric whatz­its would­n’t have pre­vent­ed 9/11. We had the infor­ma­tion already, we just lacked the atten­tion of the pow­er­ful, and the resources for the law enforce­ment. In this sense 9/11 and Kat­ri­na both rep­re­sent the same exact problem.
This may also be why peo­ple don’t think it’s impor­tant to remem­ber No Man’s Land. The pres­i­dent won’t get any bump from remind­ing us that he wait­ed until the hard work was over in New Orleans before vis­it­ing. Nor will any­one soon for­get the tremen­dous vac­u­um of lead­er­ship, the way that bucks were rou­tine­ly FedEx-ed from 1600 Penn­syl­va­niaCraw­ford to Baton Rouge. Nor should any­one for­get that when Amer­i­ca was attacked on 9/11, the Pres­i­dent spent the day in hid­ing, as far from New York or Wash­ing­ton as he could get.
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Odd

World­Net­Dai­ly seems to endorse Nan­cy Boy­da.

I don’t know what to think.

Good news/ Bad news

On one hand, Sur­veyUSA’s find­ing that a plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans think we are los­ing the war on ter­ror (45% think ter­ror­ists are win­ning, 41% think we are, 2.4% MoE) is bad. So is the find­ing that a quar­ter of the respon­dents think it’s time for a draft.

But I sup­pose there’s a sil­ver lin­ing in the obser­va­tion that 60% of peo­ple dis­ap­prove of the way the Pres­i­dent is han­dling that war. After all, if they approved and thought we were los­ing, it’s hard to know how we’d turn things around.

I do find it deeply dis­turb­ing that 62% of the respon­dents think we are head­ed towards or already engaged in World War III, and that a major­i­ty of the pub­lic sees the occu­pa­tion of Iraq as a front in the war on ter­ror. It just isn’t and nev­er was.

The most inter­est­ing ques­tions in the polls was:
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Death by any means

Shel­ley of Ret­ro­spec­ta­cle asks:

“Are you for or against the death penal­ty, or (if its con­di­tion­al), in what cas­es? Fur­ther­more, do you believe that soci­eties that sanc­tion war are hyp­o­crit­i­cal for oppos­ing the death penalty?”

The answer, of course, is complicated.
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Tookie

Repost­ed from the old TfK.

In Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone, he tells this joke:

A cou­ple hun­dred years ago a ship­wrecked sailor drift­ed for weeks till he saw land. He crawled up the beach not know­ing what coun­try or con­ti­nent he’d land­ed on. He stag­gered up the bluff, and at the top found him­self in a large field where there was a gal­lows and a man hang­ing. He exclaimed, “Thank God! I’m in a Chris­t­ian country.”

I’m con­flict­ed on the death penal­ty. On one hand, I see noth­ing inher­ent­ly unjust in exe­cut­ing Osama bin Laden, Jef­frey Dah­mer, Tim McVeigh, or the leader of a vio­lent crim­i­nal gang. On the oth­er hand, I do believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­son­al reha­bil­i­ta­tion and sec­ond chances. The life and death of Stan­ley “Took­ie” Williams, co-founder of the Crips brings my ambiva­lence to the forefront.

If any­one deserves the death penal­ty, it’s peo­ple who plan and care­ful­ly exe­cute large-scale crim­i­nal enter­pris­es that leave cities in ruins and kill peo­ple. That explains three of my exam­ples above. Incur­able ser­i­al mur­der­ers are the the oth­er class of peo­ple who seem to present a pro­found case for the death penal­ty, if any­one does. And on paper, Took­ie fit that bill also when he was sentenced.

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Kansas Board of Education: Still Battles to be Fought

August 1 brought a thrilling result, the over­throw of the cre­ation­ist major­i­ty on the Kansas Board of Edu­ca­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there remain two races where cre­ation­ists won and where we need to take the seat in the gen­er­al election.

The pic­ture above shows 4 of the 5 Democ­rats in the race. Two are work­ing to unseat the remain­ing cre­ation­ists on the Board (Don Weiss, right and Jack Wempe, who had yet to file when this pic­ture was tak­en at the Kansas Democ­rats Wash­ing­ton Days), two who will be hav­ing seri­ous, thought­ful debates about edu­ca­tion with the mod­er­ate win­ners (Kent Run­yan, left, and Tim Cruz, cen­ter-right), and one run­ning unop­posed (Janet Waugh, center-left).

Click through to find out more about the last two can­di­dates run­ning against creationists.

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Popular Governor

This is part of an ongo­ing series of posts decon­struct­ing Sur­veyUSA’s state-by-state polls of Pres­i­den­tial approval, Sen­a­tor approval, and Gov­er­nor approval. Today SUSA released their lat­est guber­na­to­r­i­al results.

Kath­leen Sebe­lius is a pop­u­lar lady. For a Demo­c­rat in Kansas, that’s fair­ly remark­able, so under­stand­ing how her pop­u­lar­i­ty plays out has some broad­er inter­est, espe­cial­ly as rumors of Sen­ate runs or VP nom­i­na­tions sur­round her name.

SUSA finds her to be the 12th most pop­u­lar gov­er­nor, up from 15th last month. With 63% approval, her oppo­nent in Novem­ber will have a steep hill to climb, and her pop­u­lar­i­ty keeps on ris­ing, with net approval up 6% to 31%. 

For the details on who likes her and who does­n’t, click on through.
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Today’s adventure in Political gossip

From the KC Star’s blog:

Nah, a lead­ing Repub­li­can strate­gist says, Gov. Kath­leen Sebe­lius won’t take on Sen. Pat Roberts in 2008.

Why? Roberts was once chief of staff to Rep. Kei­th Sebe­lius, father of Kath­leen’s hus­band, Gary. Too many fam­i­ly ties, the Repub­li­can says.

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