Matthew Zimmerman

Most of the time, I disagree with the Bush administration. They usually make decisions that baffle and anger and frustrate me. But, as hard as it is to admit it, I must come to their defense about this deal to give an United Arab Emirates company control over some port operations at several U.S. ports.

Politicians of both parties, many of whom coincidentally will be running for President in 2008, have crawled out of the woodwork to criticize this deal. Rep. Sue Myrick (R, NC) had the least literate response (PDF) to the deal:

In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO-- but HELL NO!

But her letter does reflect the basic idea that most of the other slightly more eloquent critics of the plan have expressed. They've sensed what they think is a rare opportunity to portray Bush as weak on terrorism. Bush, for his part, has stuck with the deal and with the Adminstration organization that authorized it, and (so.. painful.. to write this...) I think he is right to do so.

First, as the administration has stated many times, the UAE company won't be in charge of port security. See, we have these people called the U.S. Coast Guard, whom I'm pretty sure is an American organization. Secondly, this UAE company would not be the first foreign company in some capacity in American ports. NPR had a story yesterday about one of the ports, located in New Jersey, that would be affected by the deal. They reported that several foreign companies ran various operations at the port, including one from Denmark and two from China.

In other words, the UAE company wouldn't be the first foreign company at the port, but it would be the first foreign company with "Arab" in its name. I'm trying to come up with another word to describe all the criticism, but the only one I can think of is this: racist.

I love Virginia. Your state is beautiful, and you are friendly, welcoming people. I am proud to call the commonwealth my adopted home these past seven years. Yet there is one thing about this place I dread, and about this I must be direct. You, the drivers of Virginia, have no clue about how to drive on slippery winter roads.

Yesterday we had a full day's worth of sleet and freezing rain. It bent trees, downed power lines, canceled schools-- before a single drop of precipitation fell, somehow-- and generally made everything miserable. So, when I awoke this morning, everything in sight was covered in slick sheets of ice. I am a native of a (slightly) colder climate, perhaps a little more accustomed to slippery roads than many of you, and while such conditions are annoying, I can handle them. Most of you, on the other hand, lose any remnants of common sense you might retain.

During my commute to work this morning, I saw nearly a dozen of you wildly stepping on your accelerators and spinning your wheels on the ice. My commute is less than ten minutes, so this is not an idle observation. Let's be clear: if your wheels are not spinning at the same rate and in the same direction that your car is traveling, you are not in control of your car. The only things controlling your vehicle are the laws of gravity and friction, and I don't think they care the slightest bit about your insurance deductible.

This is ice, people. You can't just step on the gas as if it were the middle of July. God forbid, you might even have to shift into first gear and travel slowly (gasp!). And turn into the skid. And brake sooner. And not follow other drivers so closely... You know, have you thought about taking a sick day? The kids are out of school; maybe you can go build a snow fort in the back yard? How often do we get a chance to play in the snow in our busy lives? Come on, it'll be fun. Just don't go anywhere near your car, at least until I get to work.

So United Airlines recently declared bankruptcy, which is not surprising given the generally poor fiscal state of most American air carriers. The company also recently decided that it had to default on $9 billion of pension obligations [washingtonpost.com-- try bugmenot.com for a registration], which will affect 120,000 employees and retirees. I understand that when a company is in such severe financial straits, there comes a place where you have to take a step as drastic as that. If there isn't the money, there isn't the money. But I don't understand what United's CEO says later in the same article:

Last week, United Chief Executive Officer Glenn Tilton testified to the Senate Finance Committee about $4.5 million he is receiving from United to replace benefits he had accrued over a 32-year career at Texaco, his previous employer. Tilton said that the default will not affect the payment, and that he has $1.5 million left to collect. He said this does not represent a double standard because United promised him the money in his contract.

This guy is a jackass. Of the highest order. He's a multi-millionaire. He runs a company whose 80-year-old retirees are now applying for jobs at Wal-Mart to make ends meet, and demonstrating by his actions that his own $4.5 million is more important than the retirement benefits of his employees. True, maybe a few million dollars wouldn't stave off a pension default for long, but nonetheless it points quite clearly where his true loyalties lie.

I fly to Chicago for work on a fairly regular basis. Since O'Hare is a United hub, they are almost always the cheapest, and about two years back I got a frequent flyer account to take advantages of the regular trips. But now, I feel sick about this. I don't know if I can patronize a company run by a man who acts like this, who insists on being overpaid even when his company is screwing over the people who were most loyal to it. I think I'm going to cut up my frequent flyer card and mail it to Mr. Tilton. This makes me so angry I'm having trouble finding the words.

Well, it apparently doesn't say we're "innocent until proven guilty" in the Constitution. It does have this cute little bit about not being "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law", but hey, what does that mean? In 1895, the Supreme Court decided to step in and clarify the issue a little more:

The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. [156 U.S. 432, 454] It is stated as unquestioned in the textbooks, and has been referred to as a matter of course in the decisions of this court and in the courts of the several states. [...] Concluding, then, that the presumption of innocence is evidence in favor of the accused, introduced by the law in his behalf, let us consider what is 'reasonable doubt.' It is, of necessity, the condition of mind produced by the proof resulting from the evidence in the cause. It is the result of the proof, not the proof itself, whereas the presumption of innocence is one of the instruments of proof, going to bring about the proof from which reasonable doubt arises; thus one is a cause, the other an effect. To say that the one is the equivalent of the other is therefore to say that legal evidence can be excluded from the jury, and that such exclusion may be cured by instructing them correctly in regard to the method by which they are required to reach their conclusion upon the proof actually before them; in other words, that the exclusion of an important element of proof can be justified by correctly instructing as to the proof admitted. The evolution of the principle of the presumption of innocence, and its resultant, the doctrine of reasonable doubt, make more apparent the correctness of these views, and indicate the necessity of enforcing the one in order that the other may continue to exist.

Damn activist judges. :)

So apparently three people were asked to leave a Bush town hall meeting in Denver a few weeks ago [Washington Post, try bugmenot for a free registration]. They did or said nothing disruptive, but were nonetheless "forcibly" ejected because one of them had a bumper sticker on their car that read "No Blood for Oil". When asked about it, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that the White House did "welcome a diversity of views at events", but:

If they want to disrupt the event, then I think that, obviously, they're going to be asked to leave the event. There is plenty of opportunity for them to express their views outside of events; there are protest areas.

Emphasis mine. Later in the same briefing, McClellan stated "If they're standing up and disrupting an event, like I said, they're going to be asked to leave." But that's not what he said. He said that if they want to disrupt the event, and that's a very big distinction. If people are interrupting and disrupting and disregarding civil discourse, well, then there's something to be said for asking them to leave. But these folks didn't do anything. They just sat there, and they were asked to leave, because the organizers thought they were going to be disruptive. Isn't there something in the Constitution about "innocent until proven guilty"? Did I just hallucinate that?

Also, in what way exactly does that "welcome a diversity of views"? It seems to me that when President Bush comes out to speak directly with the American people, situations somehow are arranged so that he ends up speaking only to people who already agree with him. And those aren't conversations, but pep rallies. I think somebody at the White House needs to look up the words "welcome" and "diversity", because they apparently don't know what they mean.

I love my father very much, but he and I disagree on many political issues. Once, when I was complaining about this very issue, he said something to the effect of "why do I need to hear what the other side has to say if I already know what it is?". At the time, I accepted the point, but the more I thought about it, the more troubled I got. That's exactly the problem right now, all around the country. We as a nation don't listen to each other (though I think Dad and I do). We get our news from different sources, sources that emphasize what we want to hear. We disregard or ignore what our opponents have to say, under the pretense that we've already heard it. What happened to consensus building? What happened to compromise, to finding middle ground? Why do we automatically assume that people who disagree with us are unreasonable?

So I was walking through the grocery store today, and I ran across one of those fitness magazines. It had a picture of a thin, busty, blond-haired woman wearing what I assumed was one of those harnesses that Himalayan explorers wear so that they don't fall off of mountains. Of course, mountaineers also wear things like parkas and, well, pants, while this woman had nothing else but what the good Lord (and likely a whole platoon of plastic surgeons) gave her. I must confess my eyes lingered a moment (forgive me), but what also caught my attention was written in large type over the magazine's title: "For Women!".

It is not a new observation that most modern magazines, targeted for either sex, feature pictures of scantily-clad women, presumably because men like them and women want to be them. While in recent years we men have made significant steps to close the unhealthy-body-image gap (did you know there's now skin moisturizer for men? Seriously, if I wanted to moisturize I'd go to the friggin' pool), women still bear the brunt of societal pressure to live up to some impossibly high standard of beauty. It's a little disturbing that since we all, men and women, are collectively obsessed with these kind of images of female "beauty", we need extra instructions to determine which magazines are for whom.

Corporations in the United States are legally considered persons. So some documentarians from our friendly neighbors to the north asked themselves what kind of people, psychologically speaking, these corporate "persons" would be.

Their conclusion? They're psychopaths.

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

(Hey Vinegar Hill: it's called The Corporation. You know what to do. Wink wink, nudge nudge...)

So I was in Kroger (the grocery store) the other day and the cashier asked if I had a discount card. I don't, and I told her so. Most of the time, people accept this, but every once in a while, I run across a cashier who takes the initiative to let me know how much money I could be "saving". On this particular occasion, I apparently would've paid less on every item. The elderly woman who checked out ahead of me even joined in, and voluntarily offered me hers, which I reluctantly accepted.

Well, I don't have any of those discount cards, and I do know how much less I would pay for my groceries if I did. I used to have them, and I cut them up. And you know what? You should too. They're not discount cards. They're a form of blackmail that supermarkets use to pressure us to give them our personal information. There's little evidence to suggest that they provide any kind of discount at all. "Regular" prices for items almost universally rise after card programs are instituted, and the "discount" prices with the cards often aren't discounts at all.

Kroger's program is supposed to be a program to reward customer loyalty, as they say, but here's the funny thing: I'm a very loyal Kroger customer. I probably shop there 8 or 9 times out of 10, and I would gladly tell them (1) how often I came in and (2) how much money I spent each time, if it would help them figure out whether I'm a "loyal customer" or not. Heck, they probably could figure that out from my debit card receipts. But, no! That doesn't matter! I'm forced to pay more because I'm unwilling to give them my address and an exact list of items I buy each time.

At first, when cashiers would ask me why I didn't have a card, I would want to argue about it and make a point about how evil they were. I was truly shocked by the response I got, how often I apparently struck nerves. I could practically see people wondering if I had something to hide. I quickly learned to drop the subject when it came up, to pretend that I had just lost my card.

Well, I don't have something to hide, but that's not the point. The crux of the "do you have something to hide" argument is that the party you're "hiding" from is an honorable one with honorable motives. If you want to hide from them, clearly you're up to something Very Bad[TM]. And many people apparently have that kind of faith in their supermarkets, their pharmacies, their governments... and this is where I part ways with them. What about Tyco, MCI, Value America, Enron?

Distressingly, privacy is like virginity. You can't get it back once you lose it. We are being forced to give it up bit by bit, by economic and legal pressure, privacy agreements and bonus cards and RFID tags, each step eroding our privacy rights. It's slow, sometimes even unperceptable, but if we don't fight each step, sooner or later those rights will be gone.

I'm apparently not the only one who has noted our President's lack of rhetorical ability. NPR's White House correspondent Don Gonyea had a few interesting questions for Bush during the primetime press conference held back in April.

Q Following on both Judy's and John's questions, and it comes out of what you just said in some ways, with public support for your policies in Iraq falling off the way they have -- quite significantly over the past couple of months -- I guess I'd like to know if you feel in any way that you've failed as a communicator on this topic? Because --

THE PRESIDENT: Gosh, I don't know. I mean --

Q Well, you deliver a lot of speeches and a lot of them contain similar phrases, and they vary very little from one to the next. And they often include a pretty upbeat assessment of how things are going -- with the exception of tonight's pretty somber assessment, this evening.

THE PRESIDENT: It's a pretty somber assessment today, Don, yes.

Q I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way? You don't have many of these press conferences, where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?

THE PRESIDENT: I guess if you put it into a political context, that's the kind of thing the voters will decide next November. That's what elections are about. They'll take a look at me and my opponent and say, let's see, which one of them can better win the war on terror? Who best can see to it that Iraq emerges as a free society?

[Emphasis is mine.] Note carefully the multiple talking points in Bush's initial response.

Also, here is some interesting research on what exactly Bush was doing on September 11th.

There are so many things about the current presidential administration I can't stand that I could rant for days and days about it. (I just might, eventually.) But it's not the war-mongering or privacy invasion or disregard for human rights or squandering of diplomatic goodwill with the world. No, the worst part is very simple.

It's George W. Bush.

I have seen him do nothing in the three years of his presidency that would convince me he can express a cogent thought of his own. How many debates did Bush and Gore have in 2000? Bush's more than willing to go on television and read prepared statements, but how often does he actually answer questions from the press? In the few situations where the political climate has demanded that he respond, he just responds to hardball questions by grabbing a handful of talking points and throwing them out like he's feeding birds at the park. (If I hear "Saddam Hussein was an evil man" one more time, I'm going to explode.)

But that's not the worst thing. Consider filmmaker Michael Moore's take on Bush's response to 9/11:

Conventional wisdom has it that the president was reading to schoolchildren when he got the news and quickly left the room.

The Moore version: He was informed of the first attack, went into the room anyway, was informed of the second attack, and remained with the students until a staff member suggested that he leave.

"The teacher in that Sarasota classroom happened to tape the whole event," Moore told me. "We'd seen other footage from the networks, but it was all edited. She just left the camera running. She said nobody had ever asked her for the film. Bush didn't instinctively jump up and go into action, but just stayed on autopilot until someone told him what to do."

Now I understand that Moore's hardly a nonpartisan observer. He's got a very big axe to grind, which he does in an often heavy-handed manner. But he has this on videotape, for chrissakes!

I keep thinking back to what Robert Kennedy said the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. Kennedy got up and informed the crowd of King's death, than proceeded to say perhaps the most calming, the most moving, the most healing thing anyone could have said. I don't know if Kennedy spoke extemporaneously, but it doesn't matter. I can't imagine George W. Bush quoting Aeschylus. (I'm pretty sure Bush's never heard of Aeschylus.)

And I realize that rhetorical skills alone aren't sufficient to make a good president, but why aren't they a requirement? Why is it wrong of us to wish that our leaders be capable of bringing us together, to speak eloquently about our collective pain or joy? Think about some of the other people who have been president: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy... It is nothing less than an insult to these great, eloquent men that George W. Bush is included in their number.