Terrace Agenda

President Obama’s Weekly Address

Posted in Law, Politics by Fletch on May 30, 2009

Dude, just because Sonia Sotomayor is way smarter and more experienced than you are doesn’t mean you need to go around calling her racist or wondering if that spicy pork and rice she fancies will influence her decisions on the bench. Seriously, grow up, it’s embarrassing.


For the Love of God! Show Us the…Oh, hello…Here it is…

Posted in Politics, Scandal by Zack! on May 29, 2009


From the beginning of this video, you have about thirty seconds to feel sorry for Les Kinsolving–that is, if you haven’t heard of him before, in which case, you’re probably already waiting for the punchline.  Kinsolving, who writes (ostensibly) for the so-called news organization WorldNetDaily, is obviously not one to be trifled with.  Neither is WND.  You can tell that they’re dedicated to hard journalism because their website hasn’t had a redesign since 1996–they’re that hard.  And so is Les (Nessman) Kinsolving.  This is a guy who won’t take reality as a premise just because it’s called reality; that’d be selling out.  Les is a guy who digs deeper than reality:  he digs into sub-reality.

(Actual paraphrased question-answer session between Les and Robert Gibbs)

Les:  Show me the birth certificate.

Gibbs:  Yeah, alright.  Here it is.

Les:  No, the real one.

Gibbs:  Uh-huh.  This is it.

Les:  No, the one that says where he was born.

Gibbs:  Yup.  Hawaii.  This is the one.

Les:  Pretty sure it isn’t.

Gibbs:  Pretty sure you’re tossed.

Seriously, Les–that birth certificate schtick is soooo 2008.  You remember 2008, right?  The fundamentals of the economy were strong, we had won the war, we were respected internationally?  Hold on…that was 1998.  But you get my point.

Of course, you don’t get the point, so I’ll go ahead and say it:  The question of Obama’s birth certificate is one with no answers, at least, none that you are going to accept.  If the prez were to hold up his original birth certificate and wave it around, I’m pretty sure even then you wouldn’t find that credible enough.  If you licked it, the taste, evoking memories of jukeboxes and student riots and disgusting free love, wouldn’t subvert the phantasmagoric visions that careen around that cavernous cranium catering to credulous conspiracies.  Ha!  Alliteration!

The obvious truth is that you just can’t stand Barack Hussein Obama–which is fine.  But there are plenty of valid reasons to disagree with and hold to the fire the man who is president.  We’d give you a few examples, but you’d never believe them.

There are no words for this.

Posted in Human Rights, International Affairs, Scandal by Fletch on May 28, 2009

The Human Condition, in two parts

Posted in Human Interest by Fletch on May 27, 2009

Actual ticket dispenser at entrance to actual parking garage. I have seen this with my own eyes.

Internal conflict. Competing impulses or desires. What do we want? What do we need? Do we push the button? Do we believe the sign?

We push the button.

The world sends us mixed messages. Incongruous information. How do we reconcile seemingly rational, yet diametrically opposed, views?

(via shades of grey)



Houses under floodwaters, presumed (but not verified) to be after Katrina.

The universe as Cosmic Joke. How often have events conspired in such a way that we think to ourselves, “Whoever is pulling the strings has a devious sense of humor”? Too often. What seems to be a series of coincidences ends up leaving us feeling as if we’re being taunted by an unseen force. To struggle against it seems useless. What to do but shake our heads and move on?



Off the Grid

Posted in Meta by Fletch on May 26, 2009

I’ve basically been completely away from the internets since Saturday morning, and I realized the same thing I realize every time I don’t log on to something for more than 24 hours: I don’t really miss it. Like, at all. As much as I covet information, and as handy as it is for me to be able to keep in touch with people and spew opinions and snark all over computer screens, it’s somehow liberating not to feel plugged in all the time. What’s funny is that I think most people ultimately agree with me (see? isn’t that funny?). So I’m not really sure why we do this to ourselves, except that we can’t stop. Already, I can feel myself being pulled back in to this interweb obsession, and it won’t be long before I’m vomiting all sorts of nonsense on these pages again.

But it’s true that not only did I not care about checking all of my zillions of websites and networks while I was away, I actually had a negative physical reaction when I decided that maybe, yeah, I should probably look at my email, just in case. I didn’t feel good, and I still kind of don’t, and yet here I am.

What I’m really trying to say is that I didn’t miss talking to you.


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President Obama’s Weekly Address

Posted in Politics by Fletch on May 23, 2009

This Memorial Day weekend, Americans will gather on lawns and porches, fire up the grill, and enjoy the company of family, friends, and neighbors. But this is not only a time for celebration, it is also a time to reflect on what this holiday is all about; to pay tribute to our fallen heroes; and to remember the servicemen and women who cannot be with us this year because they are standing post far from home – in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world.

On Friday, I traveled to Annapolis, where I spoke at the Commencement of the United States Naval Academy. It was an honor to address some of America’s newest sailors and Marines as their Commander-in-Chief. Looking out at all of those young men and women, I was reminded of the extraordinary service that they are rendering to our country. And I was reminded, too, of all of the sacrifices that their parents, siblings, and loved ones make each day on their behalf and on our behalf.

Our fighting men and women – and the military families who love them – embody what is best in America. And we have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us.

And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve. That is a betrayal of the sacred trust that America has with all who wear – and all who have worn – the proud uniform of our country.

And that is a sacred trust I am committed to keeping as President of the United States. That is why I will send our servicemen and women into harm’s way only when it is necessary, and ensure that they have the training and equipment they need when they enter the theater of war.

That is why we are building a 21st century Department of Veterans Affairs with the largest single-year funding increase in three decades. It’s a commitment that will help us provide our veterans with the support and benefits they have earned, and expand quality health care to a half million more veterans.

That is why, this week, I signed a bill that will eliminate some of the waste and inefficiency in our defense projects – reform that will better protect our nation, better protect our troops, and save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

And that is why we are laying a new foundation for our economy so that when our troops return home and take off the uniform, they can find a good job, provide for their families, and earn a college degree on a Post-9/11 GI Bill that will offer them the same opportunity to live out their dreams that was afforded our greatest generation.

These are some of the ways we can, must, and will honor the service of our troops and the sacrifice of their families. But we must also do our part, not only as a nation, but as individuals for those Americans who are bearing the burden of wars being fought on our behalf. That can mean sending a letter or a care package to our troops overseas. It can mean volunteering at a clinic where a wounded warrior is being treated or bringing supplies to a homeless veterans center. Or it can mean something as simple as saying “thank you” to a veteran you pass on the street.

That is what Memorial Day is all about. It is about doing all we can to repay the debt we owe to those men and women who have answered our nation’s call by fighting under its flag. It is about recognizing that we, as a people, did not get here by accident or good fortune alone. It’s about remembering the hard winter of 1776, when our fragile American experiment seemed doomed to fail; and the early battles of 1861 when a union victory was anything but certain; and the summer of 1944, when the fate of a world rested on a perilous landing unlike any ever attempted.

It’s about remembering each and every one of those moments when our survival as a nation came down not simply to the wisdom of our leaders or the resilience of our people, but to the courage and valor of our fighting men and women. For it is only by remembering these moments that we can truly appreciate a simple lesson of American life – that what makes all we are and all we aspire to be possible are the sacrifices of an unbroken line of Americans that stretches back to our nation’s founding.

That is the meaning of this holiday. That is a truth at the heart of our history. And that is a lesson I hope all Americans will carry with them this Memorial Day weekend and beyond.

Thank you.

HOLY CRAP! I was wrong! Leave ‘em there!

Posted in Human Rights, International Affairs, Law, Politics by Fletch on May 21, 2009

I have no problem admitting when I’ve made a mistake, and I’ve really made a mistake. I’ve been running my mouth off saying that our Supermax prisons wouldn’t have any trouble holding the Guantanamo detainees, but I obviously had no idea what I was talking about.

Through a confidential source, The Agenda has obtained security camera footage of one single Al Qaeda terrorist and his daring escape from a Maximum Security Korean prison, generally considered to be among the most secure prisons in the world. If one terrorist alone can do this kind of damage, imagine what a couple hundred might do:






The Pragmatist

Posted in Politics by Zack! on May 21, 2009

Larry B, longtime friend of the Agenda and, not incidentally, my neighbor, has a problem:  skunks.  Recently, a small troupe of these odoriferous little fellows set up camp underneath his chicken coop, most likely intent on enjoying a daily bounty of eggs; a desire that Larry is not happy to indulge.  As a descendent of good farming stock (around here, I guess that most of us are), Larry is not one to take any guff from free-loading wildlife, so this week he set about the grim job of trapping the invaders and removing them from temptation.

By “removing” I mean “killing,” and if that shocks you, then I probably don’t need to remind you to renew your PETA membership.  I should say, though, that I am more than certain that Larry takes no pleasure in the dispatching of the skunks.  It is a dark task, but if he is to have eggs, and his chickens peace, then the skunks must go.  Releasing them is no good:  the skunks know where the chickens are and they will return; and, so far as I know, there is no skunk adoption program–what makes a skunk a skunk also makes them difficult housemates.

The elimination of critters is not something that decent folk brag about, but it does need to be done on occasion; even Gandhi said that if monkeys are eating your vegetables, and the choice is between you and the monkeys, well–the monkeys ought not be long for this world.

It is somewhat along these lines that I imagine the Obama administration is thinking in regards to the war in Afghanistan.  More is supposedly “at stake” than a few eggs, but the principle remains the same, at least, in principle.  The Taliban and Al Qaeda have each, to varying degrees, disrupted the peace of their home country, their neighboring country, and, at least once, our own country.  They have shown themselves to be unwilling to go along with the rules we have set, and since we’re the Dungeon Master, they’ve got to go.  It appears we’re still at a “you’re either with us or against us” mentality–although with these two groups, I’d believe it’s pretty hard to find a common ground.

I’m not willing to concede that this is the proper way of thinking about Afghanistan; the caveat is that I don’t have any better ideas (the caveat to that is that a lack of alternatives doesn’t make war a good idea).  It does seem that we’re locked into this war in many ways, and out of decency, we should try to finish it.  But, out of decency, does it have to cost so many civilian lives?

I may be putting words into Larry’s mouth, but I don’t suspect that he’d be willing to kill even all of his skunks if it cost the life of one of his chickens.  And another thought on this:  There is no such thing as “collateral” damage–it is all consequential.

The pragmatist understands this, but to a point.  Consequences are carefully tabulated and amassed in reams of papers analyzing the ratios of terrorists killed to terrorists created; if it comes out greater than one, success is nigh.  Stalin was either exaggerating or had his terms wrong when he said that one death is a tragedy and a million deaths are a statistic.  These days, every death is a tragedy so long as it’s one of ours–anything else is a statistic, one or a million.

What is lacking in the Afghanistan war is not numbers–there’s plenty of those to go around–it’s the flesh and bone and breath that those numbers were supposed to represent in the first place.  A sense of decency and consequence, which is another way of saying responsibility.  A responsible policy would be to supply more farmers and builders than bombs and bullets; it would redirect our faith from the fleeting luck of trajectory towards the slower, more nourishing arc of a harvested crop, a sewer system built, a semester completed.

If this sounds idealistic, consider the enormous fantasy implicit in the idea that in order to save a country you must first reduce it to rubble.  We often think of idealism as rosy, ain’t gonna happen, pie-in-the-sky day dreaming, but there are negative idealisms, too:  war may be the darkest idealism of them all.

Ironically, Obama campaigned with a message of democratic idealism, heavily invoking that soaring American mythos of “Yes We Can” that saturates our high school history textbooks.  And while we may be seeing some of that reflected in his domestic policy, we have yet to see it in the ways that America projects itself to the world, especially those parts of the world that we are actively engaged in destroying.  What may seem like a responsible pragmatism–”we have to face the world as it is”–is in reality nothing more than intellectual, imaginative, and political laziness.  Of course, a pragmatism that is not rooted in a healthy idealism will always be just that:  an anemic practicality that does nothing to improve a problem, but slogs along, fueled by the gas of its own rhetoric.

Twitter ate Jake Tapper’s brain.

Posted in Human Rights, Law, Media, Politics by Fletch on May 21, 2009

We’ve already documented a few of ABC Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper’s Twitter atrocities, and, to be fair to Jake, he’s always been especially lame, but it seems that the unfiltered nature of Twitter is really allowing him to expose his stupid.

Today, while covering Dick Cheney’s torture-slobbering “speech,” Tapper came up with these gems:

in all honesty, this is a great thing for America. a substantive debate on an important issue. Two distinct worldviews.

Not 2 be corny, but on that level, we all should all feel proud of today. Lots of places in this world where this debate is impossible.

He obviously got blasted by a number of people who, presumably, told him that they didn’t actually think this was a “debate” to be proud of (for my part: because we’ve already had this debate when we made, you know, the Constitution and signed the Geneva Conventions, although I did concede to him that there are “lots of places in this world where this debate is impossible” because, for instance, there are plenty of places where they would just throw torturers in prison and lose the key instead of pretending those torturers were legitimate voices in our public discourse and asking who “won” in a “debate” between those war criminals and our President), because he quickly started defending himself thusly:

to say im praising a debate on whether brutal interrogation methods considered torture by the intl cmte of the red cross is unfair

i’m saying that for one sec we shld appreciate that we live in a country where debating serious issues on national security is possible

was expressing an appreciation of free speech and a substantive moment for the nation – we shld have had these debates in 2001/2002 etc



Jake, you still don’t get it. You know, I would even agree with him if this were just an issue of “free speech,” because then Dick Cheney would just be talking theoretically about whether or not we should torture and he would be laughed out of the room. Instead, Dick Cheney is talking about actual torture that we actually did and how it’s super hunky-dory.

This is not a “free-speech” issue.



Boston Police Department: Model of Transparency

Posted in Crises, Health, Human Interest, Law by Fletch on May 21, 2009

Two nights ago, the following post appeared on the Boston Police Department’s Twitter feed:

INJURED OFFICER: Officer from district 4 transported to Beth Israel Hospital, human bite to arm, suspect in custody.

Alert Twitterer willcady quickly asked the BPD what is OBVIOUSLY on everyone’s mind:

@Boston_Police: if that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?

The Boston Police, to everyone’s relief, replied:

@willcady: Yes, absolutely

(Via The Consumerist)



No word yet from the BPD on whether or not it did turn out to be a zombie bite, so we’ll assume the best.



Be ever vigilant!