PHOTOGRAPHY: vote

Liberty

On Valentine's day, the Senate approved a prohibition on the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill. The Senate voted 51-45, largely along partisan lines. (Apparently torture is a conservative value).

Presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, himself once a victim of torture and an outspoken critic of it, voted against the bill.

When asked about this during a CNN interview, McCain explained that he voted against the ban on torture by talking in great length about what a terrible thing torture is, and reiterating the reasons why it should never be used, sentiments I and many others happen to agree with...In other words, he explained why he should have voted for the bill banning torture...but he voted AGAINST it.

One of the problems with the straight talk express is that it's just talk.

Liberty no. 2

You would think voting in favor of torture as a means of pandering for votes while being an outspoken critic of torture would cause a moral and ethical dilemma, but one of the things we've learned about politics, especially on the right, is that there are no morals or ethics.

USA, Inc.

One would think that this would make a difference to people. It probably would if they cared to know it, but Americans have an unhealthy distrust of knowledge. We are, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, willfully stupid, ignorant by choice.

There's an article about that in Saturday's New York Times. It's titled Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?. I'm gonna excerpt from it here.

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?"

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”...

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture...Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge...

Now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

The author of seven other books, [Ms. Jacoby] first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits...

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

Unbeatable Prices

A major part of John McCain's economic policy is to make permanent the Bush tax cuts he vehemently spoke out and voted against (and it is indicative of American ignorance and desire for instant gratification that we should opt for a $200 tax refund in exchange for lower wages and/or loss of jobs, foreclosure on our mortgages, a tripling of prices at the gas pump and the resultant increase in the cost of food and consumer goods, etc., even when the math clearly shows considerably less money in the bank account after the deal is done). McCain could explain away this contradiction as a function of time: he is human, after all, and humans change their minds and/or make mistakes, although you'll never hear a politician admit that. There is no way to explain voting for torture and then speaking out against torture in the same day, unless, of course, McCain were to confess to being a unethical hypocrite who will sell out his principles for a vote, (provided, of course, that he even has principles).

Hope

No hope.

This is the stretch up and down Sunset Blvd 3 block in either direction from my apartment on Super Tuesday. My polling place was 3 blocks away at the Sleep EZ mattress store. Surrounded by mattresses were 6 polling booths -- 4 Democrat, with lines in front of 'em, and 2 Republican, which were empty. I understand this story was repeated all over this part of town.

Between my polling station at Sleep EZ and my work 5 blocks away were two other polling stations -- one in the alley behind the Sumi Ink Club studio and another 2 blocks further down and across the street in the Salvation Army hospice and women's shelter.

My neighborhood is traditionally a Hispanic neighborhood although it has become rather hipster infested and the houses on my side of Sunset are not cheap. Census data has it 62.5% Latino, median income $28,651, 28% below the poverty line. Unemployment is at 7% (that would probably be the hipster musicians).

Barack Obama has not been polling well with Latinos, which is why Hillary won by the margins she did here in So Cali. Nevertheless, Echo Park seems very much like an Obama neighborhood. There are Latinos for Obama posters everywhere. I stopped to take a shot of the Hope poster on the electrical box outside the Lavanderia, and the burly Mexican guy who runs it came out and told me that it was better from the other side where the door handle didn't chop off the "H" in hope. All four sides of the box had the Obama poster; he'd proudly festooned his corner of Sunset and Coronado.

The guy at the fish taco joint with the Latinos for Obama poster behind the register wouldn't take my money when I tried to pay for my tacos because I was wearing my Obama button and told him I was photographing all the Obama stuff I could find in the neighborhood that day.

The only Hillary sign I spotted was a xerox flyer on a lamppost outside the liquor store reminding us that she'd voted for the war. The next lamppost down, next to the Escrow sign, reminded us that Obama didn't.

Here are a couple of important stats: about 71% of Obama voters indicate they'd be happy to vote for Clinton, and vice versa. And Obama and Clinton each won about 5 million votes yesterday. John McCain, who basically swept the Republican primaries, won about 3 million votes. The Democrats are voting in record numbers this year. That is a great thing.

The fact that Hillary polls so much better with Latinos than Obama is a bit disturbing if you are an Obama supporter because McCain also polls well with Latinos (he wants to recruit more for his proposed 100 year war in Iraq). But Obama handily won a number of traditionally red states yesterday, states that used to be democrat in the pre Reagan days, and the Democrats need those states to win a general election. Obama also does really well with independants, as does McCain, and Hillary does not. The independent voters have decided the last few elections, and they've picked Bush.

Whether it's Barack or Hillary, the next administration is going to have a lot of cleaning up to do.