MarteyDodoo.com

A confession: I am not a fan of February. Reading through my private journal (which goes back to late 2001), it is not clear that it has never been a good month for me, especially since I started living in Cambridge. In New Jersey, February is mild enough that it feels like the beginning of [...]

Yesterday, I read Mark Mardell's BBC News article about Armenians in Turkey. I was sort of bored by it (no real new information nor insights) until the very end:
It seems to me that nationalism comes in two distinct types. One is fiercely proud of the achievements of the country, its history and language. The other [...]

Canada may be a different country, but conservatives are angry everywhere.

Although Adlai Stevenson has been dead for more than 40 years, he came alive for me again earlier this week when I heard his song, named after the Democratic presidental candidate in 1952 and 1956. Although Pitchfork did not like it, I found it uniquely compelling. A relatively short track at just under two minutes, [...]

In his most recent New York Times column, David Brooks further explains the conclusions of his previous column on the political aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law [...]

An essay on three issues (corruption, democracy, and identity) in today's Russia.

Besides John Garang's death, the other major news story of today is the death of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. I would argue that the latter is actually far less important (despite the fact it has replaced Garang's death as the lead story on both BBC News and Google News), since the King's half-brother and [...]

This BBC News article about William Crutchfield, a Georgian man who shot his postman in order to get sent to prison confuses me. I understand that Mr. Crutchfield has very large medical debts, and that he would prefer to be in prison than to be homeless, but the way he carried out his crime was [...]

I have always liked Senator Biden, even if the last time I mentioned him here was to make fun of him (the Talking Points Memo interview I link to in that post is still worth reading in its entirety, though). I think it is his willingness to give it to you straight:
"My intention is to [...]

This International Herald Tribune article lambasts Musharraf and the Pakistani government, claiming that Pakistani liberals face a "mullah-military alliance" intent on restricting civil liberties and freedom of expression:
Democracy, human rights and meaningful civil liberties are anathema to a hypermilitarized state. Pakistan's voters consistently vote overwhelmingly for moderate, secular-oriented parties and reject religious extremists, so the [...]

Although most of the world's attention seems to be focused elsewhere, the recent political uprest in Bolivia culminated in the resignation of the president, Carlos Mesa, two days ago. Some suggest that it may be part of a larger trend toward liberalization in South America.
"The bottom line is that Latin America is in open rebellion [...]

Given Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker about US Special Forces operating in Iran (as they operated in Iraq and Afghanistan before the countries' respective invasions), I found this typo (or perhaps, Freudian slip) in this New York Times article about Congressional concerns about the use of military intelligence units disturbing:
In general, Democrats and [...]

From the Boston Globe comes an entertaining article about those whose houses are bisected by the municipal border between Cambridge and Somerville. While taxes seem to be determined by what percentage of their land and homes reside in each municipality, voting and public school eligibility seem to be determined by the town in which one [...]

Jim Holt's article in today's New York Times Magazine has an unique plan for Blue Staters weary of Republican political control: adopting a pro-states' rights platform.
There are big differences among the states, as the last election showed — differences in their understanding of tolerance, in their attitude toward the role of religion in public life, [...]

This week: Ashcroft resigned, Arafat died, Firefox 1.0 came out - with a customized start page, GMail got POP3 access, and the Nader/Camejo people responded to the email I sent them several months ago.
On a hopeful note (at least for those who do not want the world to end anytime soon), Ashcroft's resignation is surely [...]

As I have noted before, the one election result that I think is more untenable than a Bush victory would be for both candidates to get 269 votes. I do not expect that a close election will bring about civil war, but the elections in 2006 and 2008 would definitely be more partisan than this [...]

I have been waiting for my absentee ballot to come, so I was excited to find it in my mailbox today. I was less excited to find letters from the local party organizations congratulating me on my request for an absentee ballot. The Democratic literature was relatively normal, so I will not spend any time [...]

I was looking through my stats page (sorry, no public access) when I noticed a ridiculous amount of traffic to my post about the Ryongchon explosion, along with several search queries for various permutations of "north korea explosion." "But that I happened in April," I thought, "that's really old news." Then the obvious truth hit [...]

George from Pathetic Earthlings suggests that George W. Bush is the intellectual heir to Wilsonian foreign policy.
Wilsonians, or those who claimed to be so, include FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan and George W. Bush. Even Nixon (according to this writer the President closest to the TR worldview) kept a portrait of Wilson in his cabinet room. [...]

The MemoryBlog points to a Washington Post article (hot tip: try the DailyKos newspaper logins) highlighting the danger (and absurdity) of the government's misuse of its ability to classify information. It examines the Department of Justice's use of "secret evidence" in the ACLU's cases against it:
Among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a [...]

Robert Bennett writes in today's New York Times about the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College, an issue I have touched upon before. Bennett has a simple solution for this problem, adding another member to the Electoral College in order to increase its numbers to 539. He admits that such a solution would [...]

Because of the extensive amount of time I have spent configuring my laptop, I am extremely behind on my blog-reading. I spent all of last night awake trying to catch up. I still have not.
A large part of the problem is a prolific blogger like Atrios. On a whim, I selected his latest post "The [...]

The first two paragraphs of Maureen Dowd's latest column, "Banned in Boston":
BOSTON ? The Democratic convention stage has the hushed mahogany dignity of a Republican men's club: all dark wood paneling with maroon and faux marble trim. The podium has an ersatz presidential seal with a flag. Even the hoi polloi in the press are [...]

My little sister is complaining that I am spending too much time blogging and not enough talking to her, but after *almost* blogging about the same back-to-school girl appearing on both Dell and Gateway's website, I could not pass this up. I was reading Adam Penenberg's latest Wired article when I came across a link [...]

New York Senator Chuck Schumer on blogging:
ES: What do you think of blogging, and the fact that the Convention offered approximately 35 bloggers credentials?
CS: I think blogging is great. It supports a dialogue that reaches out to everyone, and in our new interconnected, more democratic world, blogging fits the bill. It has its tentacles that [...]

Crooked Timber reports that the lead in the Iowa Electronic Markets' 2004 US Presidental Election Winner Takes All Market shifted to Kerry (blue) earlier this month. Unfortunately (as you can see in the image to your right), the lead has shifted back to Bush (yellow). Current asking prices are 0.501 to 0.499.
I blogged about the [...]

From W's campaign blog comes a link to SportsIllustrated.com's latest poll: which presidental candidate is the bigger athlete and sports fan?
I would assume that several avid readers of georgewbush.com have already voted on the poll, resulting in a sample with skewed political leanings. The title of the post is "Who's the Bigger Sports Fan?," which [...]

Corrente is one of my favorite political blogs. Not just because it hails from Philadelphia, but because they have incisive commentary. In their recent post on Minnesota Republicans being asked to provide political data on their neighbors, I am afraid that they have been fooled. They quote Larry Colson, Bush's e-campaign chair in Minnesota, calling [...]

I was browsing a post on Political Animal which directed me to a fake Bush-Cheney website, which in turn led to the real site. A quick look at the right hand sidebar of thehome page shows the "Bush-Cheney Quick Vote," which at first glance seems like a standard web poll. Select an option besides "All [...]

From an interview at Talking Points Memo:
So if I say, if there's ten people in the room and there's a guy out in the hall screaming and he's bothering us and I say “We ought to stop that guy. We ought to stop that guy.” And everyone says, “Oh no, no. This guy's a bad [...]

In David Brooks' latest column, he harps on a topic that seems to be increasingly in vogue as the election approaches - the political polarization of the country. After noting both that polarization rises with higher education, which together with the "information age" is leading to "political ghettos" being created, in the red and blue [...]

I would like to think that Secretary of State Powell's trip to Darfur (NYT, BBC, etc.) will cause the situation there to be thrust into the national limelight, spurring action to prevent what can already be considered a humanitarian crisis, but I think that I know better by now. Consider these three factors:

The Bush Administration [...]

This post on the official Bush campaign blog claims that Kerry has the lowest percentage of positive supporters in recent history.
Furthermore, the poll confirms something we've suspected for a long time, while President Bush's grassroots overwhelmingly supports him because of his leadership and positive agenda, an unusually low number of Kerry supporters are inspired anything [...]

"The View From Purgatory," Safire's latest column in the New York Times takes the format of an interview with the deceased Richard Nixon. Despite the obvious potential in such a format, Safire simply uses Nixon (and this is not the first time) in order to voice his own half-baked ideas about Iraq, the current domestic [...]

Juan Cole attempts to compare Bush with Neo and Agent Smith from The Matrix. On the blog "Just a Bump in the Beltway," Rodger comments that:
Bush could be Agent Smith though most people won't see the analogy Mr. Cole posits as it is a bit obscure. Then again I can't really think of a contemporary [...]

The only question is who will win? Oxblog pointed out this excellent map of the two candidates' current position, "state by state." On the other hand, Pandagon links to this New York Post article by Deborah Orin suggesting that Bush will triumph, like Reagan did in 1980 against incumbent Jimmy Carter:
But there's a big [...]

The UK newspaper The Telegraph reports on how Governor Schwarzenegger's role as a Turkish sultan in the film Around the World in Eighty Days may re-raise public images of him as a lecher. While this is possible, I suspect that like past California governors, Schwarzenegger's political personality is made of Teflon.
One thing that struck me [...]

According to this Washington Post article (courtesy of BoingBoing), provisions in the Patriot Act are preventing the ACLU from revealing details about their lawsuit challenging other provisions in the law.
I apologize for linking to a Washington Post article. I do not subscribe to their required, free registration scheme (yes, I registered at the New [...]

I feel obligated to blog about the debate about whether to raise the Activities Fee and make it mandatory. I am personally going to vote 'no' to both questions (although I doubt that my endorsement means anything to those Harvard students reading). The burden of proof is on those who seek to increase [...]

Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column contains some ridiculous statements. For example, the first paragraph:
I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. [...]

From Pathetic Earthlings comes an SFGate article entitled, "California lawmakers propose lowering voting age to 14 for state elections." Unfortunately, those are not full votes. 16 year olds would get half of a vote, and 14 year olds could get a quarter.

This potentially blasphemous entry from the Commissar was too funny not to link to. Ann Coulter pictures, Messiah-Dean (not Mujahid-Dean!), and gratituous Jackson Family references - what's not to love?

This New York Times op-ed about the differences between the treatment of the Vietnam National Guard service of Dan Quayle and George W. Bush got me thinking. The only possibility that I could come up with is that Clinton's experiences during the Vietnam years changed the political landscape by eliminating the war from litmus [...]

When I first went to canvassing in New Hampshire for Clark, my email address made its way to the lists of various Clark-related groups. Not only did I receive emails from the national campaign (asking me to volunteer in Iowa and New Hampshire), but I only got mail from "New Hampshire for Clark" (talking [...]

He'll have my head for forgetting his birthday. Join in the celebration.

I am not sure whether I would buy this eBay item; the seller just joined eBay yesterday.
Seriously though, I am hopi