Obamamania

If you're going to hate on Barack Obama, hate him because he appropriated the rhetoric of a grassroots progressive social movement to energize the left with the power of American sunshine in order to get into office only to enact more or less the exact same neoliberal and imperalist policies that George Bush would've passed. 

Guantanamo?  Gay marriage?  Imperialist conflicts in the Middle East?  Regulation and reform of the financial sector?  George Bush tax cuts?  Pretty much the only thing he changed was health care, and even that is more of a bonanza for health insurance companies than anything else.

But don't blather on about his birth certificate and set up some kind of absurdly high standard for him to prove his citizenship and then turn around and say "see!  I knew there was no way in hell a black man could've been President without some kind of foul play involved!" when he refuses to play games to appease the crazies.

I lost my birth certificate and I got issued the exact same "short form" birth certificate from the State of Hawaii that Obama did.  Does that mean I wasn't born in Hawaii??

Awesome Argument of the Day/Week

Bill O'Reilly lectures Ann Coulter about responsibility in journalism.  How hijacked by the crazies does the political right have to be in order for Bill O'Reilly to be considered a voice of reason?? 

It's official:  we now live in bizarro land.

There are budget cuts and then there are budget cuts.

There's a difference between proposing budget cuts to streamline and boost efficiency of government, and proposing budget cuts to destroy government entirely.  Look, an additional $30 billion in cuts in discretionary spending isn't going to do anything for the budget deficit and the long term public debt.  The budget deficit is $1.4 trillion.  The US public debt is over $14 trillion.  The Republicans are behaving as if an additional $30 billion in cuts is going to avert some kind of existential crisis.  It's not.  And the social costs of these additional cuts will be ENORMOUS. 

You can't tell me that you're "investing in our future" and "for our children and our grandchildren" when you're cutting Planned Parenthood, the EPA, the Affordable Housing Program, Commission of Fine Arts, Consumer Product Safety Commission, food stamps, WIC, education, and every other social service and government agency designed for that purpose.

Awesome Argument of the Day/Week

I don't think enough people are aware that the Arab world isn't a monolithic entity, that Islam is not a monolithic entity any more than Christianity is, and that Arab doesn't necessarily mean Muslim.  Islam has a long and robust tradition of debate and jurisprudence and these types of discussions occur throughout the Arab world.  Maybe if we understood this and viewed Muslim extremism in its proper economic, social, and geopolitical context (of which religion is a part of) instead of framing it as "OMG!  Islam!", we wouldn't have idiots like Terry Jones burning the Koran and elected officials like Louie Gohmert completely losing their shit over fictitious Islamic terror babies.

"Don't blame me, I voted for Bu!"

I think Donald Trump running for President is similar to Bu La'ia's 1994 gubernatorial aspirations in the sense that both men weren't really serious about running for their respective offices and were using the political process as a way to solidify their brand names, or in Bu's case, more as a joke ("eh, we go see how far we can make um in the governor's race.  you like?")

The similarities end there, though.  Donald Trump is a billionaire and self proclaimed populist that is playing to the lowest common denominator in the Republican Party, claiming that he is a Birther, that US foreign policy needs more "spine" (whatever that means), and that he would "pound China."  Bu La'ia is a Maui boy who grows taro, participates in the Kaho'olawe cleanup projects (cleaning up all the practice freedom bombs that the navy used on the island before the term "freedom" became used to describe everything from the justification of illegal invasions of sovereign countries to deep fried potato sticks sold in the cafeterias of Congress), wants to decriminalize marijuana, and advocates replacing sugar cane cultivation with taro, which may be a thinly veiled reference to food sovereignty issues in Hawaii.

Whereas Donald Trump is running for office in order to expand his multi-billion dollar empire of lavish hotels, casinos, and shitty reality TV shows, Bu La'ia was probably just doing it for the lulz.

By the way, When Bu La'ia ran for governor, he received 5,761 votes in the Democratic gubenatorial primary, enough to place him third among seven democrats running, and that's AFTER he got disqualified for not meeting the age requirement to run for governor.

I highly doubt that Donald Trump would come anywhere close to that in the Republican primary.

We figured it was more of a guideline, not a rule...

Last I checked, the Constitution was the law of the land, not a series of friendly suggestions.  The fact that the House Republicans could pass the "Force of Law Bill" and get away with it leads me to suspect that they're all Jedi knights in disguise, waving their hands and saying "these aren't the droids you're looking for."

It didn't fool Rep. Anthony Weiner.  Let the penis jokes commence.

It's all politics, though.  Say H.R. 1255 passed the Senate, Obama would veto it.  Say Obama doesn't veto it, the SCOTUS would strike it down with great vengeance and fuuuurious anger.  It looks like the circus has come to Capitol Hill.

In other news, does this mean we're going to drop a freedom bomb on Japan too?

Freedom Bombs: A Love Story

Mission creeps and creeps
Liberate the brown people!
Freedom bombs for all

Awesome Argument of the Day/Week

Says the Chancellor to God-Governor Walker:  You will get nothing except my highly educated middle finger.  This is the University of Wisconsin-Madison, asshole.  Good day to you, sir.

On Military Dictatorship

True or False:  The US is a military dictatorship.
 Bonus Question:  Why?

Note to self:  When writing a screed to the Honolulu Weekly about how the US is and always was a military dictatorship, be sure to first understand what a military dictatorship actually is.

The issue of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and nationhood is a very contentious one, especially because it deals with issues of land and is in direct conflict with the US settler state structure embodied in the State of Hawaii.  The people in power (both Asian and white settlers) have no interest in relinquishing political power and land to a bunch of angry Native Hawaiians who were supposed to have been conveniently erased from existence and confined to Polynesian Cultural Center and Paradise Cove luaus, and in general, the Native Hawaiian nationalists have no interest in engaging in a debate with a government which they feel is of dubious constitutional and international legality.

The discussions about this issue usually get pretty heated and a lot of words like "genocide" get thrown around by the Native Hawaiian community, and that's perfectly fine, as long as these terms are clearly defined and the arguments are supported (which they are).  But when you just string together a bunch of non-sequiturs and factually incorrect statements like "the US military launched air strikes on Libya without the approval of President Obama," and then shout "military dictatorship!", it's really no different than Glenn Beck and the Tea Party yelling "socialism!" for any issue that has the words "health" or "care" in it.

Don't get me wrong, there are MANY compelling arguments from Native Hawaiian nationalists about this issue and there's definitely something to be said about emoting, but most of what the public sees (and what the media portrays) is the stereotype of the homeless irrational Native Hawaiian yelling "give me back my land!" in front of Iolani Palace.  And that says a lot about the media apparatuses in Hawaii and how they cover these issues, but letters to the Weekly like these don't help.