Supporters Only At the Parade!

This morning my wife told me that somene she knew tried to get tickets for Gearge Bush's Inaugural Parade, and discovered that only supporters who donated at least $1000 were allowed to get tickets!

This Washington Post article seems to confirm it.

People answering phones at Ticketmaster yesterday said callers needed an invitation and identification number to buy a ticket. "As of right now, the onlyway you can get a ticket is if you get an invitation," one said. "We haven'theard anything yet, but I don't think they're going to release any to the public."

But there are also a lot of ticket agencies selling parade tickets. The order forms have no unusual required fields.

I also read that - like rock concerts - large blocks of tickets are allotted to people with connections, including congress members and campaign people. Maybe the Bush was campaign was using Ticketmaster distribute their allotment.

How many tickets - if any - were truly public? We'll see.

West Wing: CJ's cop-out

That night's West Wing had a storyline about bloggers speculating that chief of staff CJ Craig was a lesbian. This was based not any relationships with women, but on her sports record in high school and college. When she finally resonded to the question "Are you a homosexual?" she gave the "None of your damn business" answer.

Unfortunately, that response is seen by many as a "yes." But a direct denial would be calling more attention to the rumor-mongering bloggers than they deserve. A better response would be as follows:

It has come to my attention that some people on the Internet are apparently buying and promoting the stereotype that any woman with athletic ability must be a lesbian. If you feel that your job as journalists is to report erronious rumors based on dated stereotypes then you will report this story. But if your job is to file stories based on substantiated facts, you will ignore this one.

Israel and Democracy

Today the Drudge Report posted an article about British attitudes toward Isreal.

While Israel is far from the "least democratic country" in the world, it may the least democratic of those countries that claim to be democratic.

In the Untied States, as well as most democracies, full citizenship is based on where one is born, not ethnicity. In Israel it is the opposite. Jews born in Brooklyn can easily obtain full Israeli citizenship but Arabs who were born in what is now Israel but happened to be on the wrong side of the front when the 1947 war ended cannot. This is not democracy as most westerners understand it.

I've read quite a bit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I still not sure what Israel had in mind when it occupied the West Bank & Gaza more than 35 years ago. If the intention was to make these areas part of Israel, then the people living there should have been granted citizenship a long time ago. If not, they should have been given independence a long time ago.

Another Red vrs. Blue

For Christmas this year, my wife & I purchased the Star Wars Troligy DVD set.

We noticed that when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker fight Darth Vader, Kenobe and Skywalker use blue light sabers while Vader fights with a red saber.
Was Lucas making a statement 25 years ahead of time?