Campaigning with humor

Bob Sullentrup is running for reelection as Secretary of the Libertarian National Committee. While he has a webpage with the normal sorts of things one might expect from a candidate for internal party office, he's also added some additional reasons to vote for him—and some are quite funny. Here's the list:

> As a kid he almost counted to infinity once
> He square dances counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere
> He has never seen the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'
> He has already completed his preparation for Y3K
> He always obeys the Law of Gravity
> He gets really pissed off at anger management classes
> He likes to speak simultaneously with other Bobs, thus creating oral Roberts
> He videotapes baseball games without the expressed, written consent of the Commissioner
> He once tried to buy camouflage trousers but couldn't find any
> He has always considered himself a male lesbian
> He can perfectly spell all English words shorter than two letters
> Once a week he will always make time for Wednesday
> He has been falsely accused of having killed the Dead Sea
> He can perform long division using Roman numerals
> He can change a dollar in 292 ways
> He has never had knee surgery on any other part of his body
> He believes a fish with no eyes should be spelled 'fsh'
> He likes astronomy and can readily identify the moon
> Reading this sentence is prohibited by law
> He likes to collect numbers from places that tell customers to please take a number
> He travels 300 million miles around the Sun every year
> He has a hard time telling when his invisible ink pen is empty
> He has never claimed to have invented the Internet
> He is capable of explaining to Bill Clinton what 'is' means
> He has no current plans to surf lava flows
> He appreciates his mother having diapered the proper end, usually
> He harbors no fear of irrational numbers
> He avoids girl scout Cookies made with real girl scouts
> He can watch 60 Minutes in well under two hours
> He tried as a kid to build a scale model of the sun using two D-cell batteries
> He can prove this statement is false
> He has been the incumbent LNC amanuensis (secretarial slave) for about 4/97ths of a century
> He has calculated it is VIII years until Super Bowl L
> He knows a few females he believes put the woe into the word woman
> He wonders why they aren't called the Oklahoma Cheaters, since that's that the Sooners did by jumping the gun
> He wants to meet a nattering naybob of negativism (ask Steve Dasbach if you're too young for that one)
> He lost his collection of donut holes
> He disagrees with Al Gore in that it's the extra sunlight from daylight savings time that causes global warming
> He never leaves the generation of random numbers to chance
> He observes a lot just by watching
> He continues to protect the Missouri River against theft and relocation
> He wonders why it's a clown that appears after the music calls for a weasel to pop out
> He believes that half of baseball is 90% mental
> He still wants to invent a portable hole
> He does not think of the hole of the donut but of the donut as a whole
> He has not been able to locate Mona Lisa's lost eyebrows
> He believes there are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't
> He has never seen a woman apply mascara with her mouth closed
> He does not think a 10-gallon hat really holds that much
> He believes Pi r round while cornbread r squared
> He really does believe the Italian dessert tiramisu is named for his Mizzou Tigers
> He thinks skydivers are good to the last drop
> He deplores the discrimination against fractions sports teams perpetrate but stops short of calling for Congressional hearings
> He lived in Chicago for years but never once saw the town toddle as the song suggests
> He wants to solve global warming by organizing a Hands-Across-America-like event to get everyone running in the same direction to increase the rotational speed of the earth making the wind blow stronger to cool things off
> He takes his oxygen with two parts hydrogen
> He has never heard anyone say “I'm going to retire and move north”
> He agrees with Bill Clinton that 'If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure'
> He always wanted to be a major league ballplayer so he could wear the number square-root-2
> He actually did play against the Harlem Globetrotters as a member of the Washington Generals on January 8, 1988 in St. Louis

~ from Third Party Watch ~

Should Moscow Root for Obama?

Some Russian pundits, including Duma members Sergei Markov and Konstantin Kosachev, have rushed to say that Obama might be the best candidate for Russia since he is of the same generation as President-elect Medvedev, and is not burdened by the Cold War mentality. Perhaps this is true, but Obama himself has not had much to say about Russia. He criticized Russia's presidential election by stating that the vote was not fully free and fair, due to the absence of free media and a crackdown on political parties and the opposition. He seems to be less ideological than McCain and promises to work with Moscow on strategic issues. He is not averse to direct talks with Iran and Syria and does not appear to share the enthusiasm for the lavish use of U.S. military power. He opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning and even introduced a bill to have all American troops withdraw from Iraq by March 31, 2008. This is pretty much the extent of his known foreign policy views.

Obama's choice of foreign policy advisors is also troubling. He gets coaching from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a man not known for any kind feelings toward Russia. His principal Russia guy is Michael McFaul, one of the most vocal Putin critics in Washington. And he gets his lectures on democracy promotion from George Soros. None of this is a good sign for Obama's ability to “turn a page” in U.S.-Russia relations.

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War Tax Resistance Update

From Martin Sheen undeserving of award

Mr. Sheen's many pronouncements on public issues merit discussion, including his views on homosexual rights, his "doubts" about the 9/11 Commission Report, and his personal but guarded opposition to abortion. Regrettably, his commendable opposition to the intentional killing of the innocent has never led him to appear at an abortuary to offer the sidewalk counseling which can immediately save innocent lives; such would be politically incorrect.

This column, however, is concerned with Sheen's attitude toward military service. In a 2003 interview with David Kupfer, Sheen denied the accusation "of not supporting the military."

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Sheen said. "The leaders… make the decisions…. I support the soldiers as human beings."

One manifesto, however, that Sheen signed on January 5, 2005, described "military training" as "schooling body and spirit in the art of killing… It is the perpetuation of war spirit. It hinders the development of the desire for peace." The manifesto called for "non-violent resistance to the military system," including not only conscientious objection "by conscripts and professional soldiers, in war and peace time," but also "Civil Disobedience, War Tax Resistance, Non-Cooperation with military research, military production and arms trade." The Laetare award to Sheen could generate confusion as to whether military service is consistent with "the ideals of the Church."

From War Resisters Block IRS HQ, 31 Arrested

Thirty-one people were arrested this morning as they staged a nonviolent blockade at the national headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, DC. The protestors had placed yellow police tape saying "WAR CRIME SCENE" across the entrance to the building.

The demonstration was part of a national day of protest marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than 100 others joined the demonstration carrying signs, banners and props that illustrated the disparity between war spending and the needs of an economy crippled by five years of war.

"Just as military recruiters supply bodies for the war, the IRS supplies the funding," stated New York City War Resisters League organizer Ed Hedemann before he was arrested. "I'm doing my part to disrupt that relentless flow of money by standing in front of the IRS entrance and by refusing to send my taxes to the IRS."

More than 20 organizations are sponsored the event, including: the War Resisters League, United for Peace & Justice, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), Movement for a Democratic Society, Ground Zero for Peace, Granny Peace Brigade, Code Pink, and the Socialist Party USA. Members of the participating organizations feel the need to engage in civil disobedience in order to dramatize their vigorous opposition to United States government's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and President George W. Bush's "global war on terror."

From War tax resistance forum is Monday

A forum on war tax resistance will begin at 7:15 p.m. Monday at First United Methodist Church at 9 Ross Valley Road in San Rafael.

The event, which starts with a potluck at 6 p.m., is sponsored by the church and the Marin Peace and Justice Coalition.

The forum will be presented by Northern California War Tax Resistance and Sonoma County Taxes for Peace.

Antisemitism down in Russia but up in Ukraine

From Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 12

Antisemitism is decreasing in Russia but still needs to be fought, Rabbi Berl Lazar told Interfax on March 18. "If we speak about the post-Soviet republics, unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of antisemitism in Ukraine, while in Russia antisemitism is decreasing," said Lazar, one of Russia's two chief rabbis. However, that does not mean that "antisemitism is over and done with in Russia." "Unfortunately, such manifestations persist and a risk of new attacks persists," Lazar said. For this reason, the Jewish community "firmly intends to locate all incidents in which Jews are hurt" and continue to combat antisemitism, he said.

"However, it is simply wrong to say that Russia looks bad in this respect compared with other democratic countries," Lazar said. More people are found guilty of antisemitism than previously and the sentences for crimes inspired by antisemitic ideas are now much more severe, he added.

Indians' Bloodlines Traced To 6

Nearly all of today's American Indians in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated about 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.

Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about 95 percent of Indians, researchers said.

The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent, said study co-author Ugo Perego.

The women lived between 18,000 and 21,000 years ago, though not necessarily at exactly the same time, he said.

The work was published this week by the journal PLoS One. Perego is from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City and the University of Pavia in Italy.

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