The RipZAW

The RipZAW

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Saturday, August 09, 2003

I always asked what George Bush planned to do with the $200 million he's committed to raising for his 2004 presidential run. Well, this doesn't answer the question, but at it does make the number look less ludicrous. A recently formed group called ACT (Americans Coming Together) plans to coordinate the efforts of environmental, liberal, and labor organizations (along with some private citizens with deep pockets) in opposition of Bush's re-election. They currently have $30 million, and they plan to spend about $75 million in get-out-the-vote campaigns in 17 states.

Brings back the spectre of soft money, doesn't it? In fact, the group was founded in response to the soft money ban. Unlike the RNC, the DNC is going to be pretty much broke without enormous soft money contributions. To compensate, the dems' backers founded ACT to campaign where the DNC won't be able to. As long as they don't coordinate with anybody's campaign, it's all legal. We'll have to watch to see if they keep inside the bounds of McCain-Feingold. The RNC would have a field day if they caught them doing anything improper.

Back in the days of 2000, I thought campaign finance reform was critically important. Now, I'd seriously consider selling Montana to the Swiss to get George Bush out of office. Funny the difference circumstances make.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 11:51 PM
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Thursday, August 07, 2003

Recent events have convinced me that the management of McCormick and Schmick's in Pasadena, otherwise a fine seafood restaurant, are a bunch of jerks. How else do you explain their "losing" a reservation for an event with 100 people made a week in advance? Well, hey, if they're happy seeing 100 customers walk away, I guess that's their business, but I'm not sure if this customer will be giving them another chance.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 8:30 PM
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Interesting passage I came across, attributed to The Story of Philosophy by Will Durrant:

"Science seems always to advance , while philosophy seems always to lose
ground. Yet this is only becasue philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous
task of dealing with problem not yet open to the methods of science -
problems like good and eveil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life
and death; so soon as a field field of inquiry yields knowledeg susceptible
of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as
philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypotheses and ends in achievement
Philosophy is ... the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the
captured territory. ... Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only
becasue she leaves the fruits of her victory to her daughters the sciences,
and herself passes on ... to to the uncertain and unexplored.

posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 12:33 AM
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003

Realized that in a recent edit to the template, I erased the "contact me" link. Oops! It's back up now in the nav bar.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 7:24 PM
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Over the past few days, I've developed this theory of the political spectrum. While it certainly doesn't cover the multitude of often contradictory beliefs held by any person, I feel that most people probably fall somewhere on this continuum. Any comments, let me know.

Arch Conservative
At some point in the past, society was perfect. It was through the actions of meddling liberals that flaws were introduced into the system. It is the duty of all good people to rectify these faults and send the liberals back to whatever hole they came from.

Orthodox Conservative
Things are the way they are because we’ve refined them to this point over hundreds of years. Anyone seeking to change the status quo is following a misguided path, and is almost certain to cause harm to society. Power should be used only to defend the status quo, not to effect top-down change, contrary to liberal belief.

Moderate Conservative
People need to be careful with the actions they take. What seems like a great idea at first glance may turn out to be a disaster. The world as it is is not necessarily perfect, not even necessarily very good, but we’d darn well better be sure that anything we do to fix it won’t harm more than help.

Moderate Liberal
Without action, the problems we face will never be solved. It is important to weigh the costs of an action against its benefits, but once a viable plan is developed, fear of the unknown should never stand in the way of society’s acting to close obvious holes in its own fabric.

Orthodox Liberal
The world we live in is in danger of collapsing in on itself. Major changes are required immediately in the way we live our lives. If we do not take bold, likely painful steps to drag society out of the mud today, that society might not be around tomorrow. Conservatives standing in the way of these moves, either out of fear or greed, are putting us in grave danger.

Extreme Liberal
If we work hard enough, we can build a Utopia. Unfortunately, there is no way to construct it on top of society as we know it. The only way to reach our destiny is to throw off all the trappings of the past. Those standing in the way of this dream are committing nothing less than a crime against humanity, and must be marginalized by any means necessary.

posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 7:20 PM
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The nice thing about being Larry Flynt is you can put this on your website and no one will care. Don't worry, it's not porn, although perhaps best not viewed by those with a sense of moral indignation. Course, it's also not the sort of thing that gets you elected Governor of California, but who thinks that's gonna happen?
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 12:43 AM
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Monday, August 04, 2003

Another article about the administration's nuclear plans, this one from the San Francisco Chronicle and dating from May. Why in the bloody hell is coverage on this so sparse?
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 10:37 PM
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A charming example of human kindness. A group called the Coalition of Free Men has made it their mission to close down battered women's shelters nationwide through a massive campaign of lawsuits. Their argument? Battered women's shelters don't serve men. So far, fortunately, their lawsuits have made approximately zero headway. Now I happen to agree with a point they make that society too often takes the "women good, men bad" approach. However, the fact that at one point they mistakenly refer to "battered womens' services" as "women's battering services" might give you an idea as to how much credibility their specific arguments carry. Trying to shut down battered women's shelters while pushing for retrials of convicted rapists and defending the rights of deadbeat dads (two more of their current projects) is not a particularly good way to go about starting a men's movement.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 9:52 PM
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Here's one from Washington newspaper The Hill, by way of Bill Maher's blog. Apparently Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) is bitching about there not being enough Hurricanes with African-American names. Yes, the lack of Hurricanes "Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn... Antwon, Destiny and Latonya" is a pressing national issue. Or something. Get a grip, woman! You sound like Rick Santorum making an ass of himself about gay marraige. There are a lot of important issues to tackle in this country today, and this is not one of them.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 9:03 PM
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This blog has finally made the top spot in a Google search for "RipZAW", which doesn't seem like too much of an accomplishment... to the untrained eye, perhaps.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 3:20 PM
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Sunday, August 03, 2003

Our esteemed president has left on his annual month-long vacation, because hey, it's not like we need him around here or anything. This comes on the heels of a speech on unemployment in which he promised not to stop working until everyone who's willing to work can do so (thanks to Lewis Black for picking up on that one).

George Bush, on the job 24/7. That's 24 hours a week, 7 months a year. - Anonymous Wag
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 9:35 PM
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Hmm. According to the Washington Post, there are quite a few cars on the road (All new Ford Explorers, for example) that can run on 85% ethanol - but for some reason, the automakers aren't telling anybody. There are very few gas stations that carry E85 (the ethanol-gas mixture of choice). The only measure in congress to incentivize the installation of ethanol infrastructure has been introduced by, of all people, Orrin Hatch, proud recipient of a 0% rating from the League of Conservation Voters. There has got to be more to this...
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 9:28 PM
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The Guardian reports that the White House has quietly disbanded a federal advisory group charged with monitoring the development of new nuclear weapons. Apparently, the committee wasn't particularly supportive of administrative plans to develop new low-yield bunker-buster nukes, for all those old "non-proliferation" and "avoiding a new arms race" reasons. So, following standard procedure, the dissidents were informed their services were no longer required. I hope our news media picks this up and digs up the rest of the story... I'm not too optimistic, though. As far as I can tell, America's news outlets are in the business only of telling us what we already know.
posted by Mr. Ripzaw at 8:50 PM
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