Some rambling thoughts

At what point does a candidate's past mistakes accumulate to the point that he or she is no longer worth consideration? I don't know the answer. Obama's got his Rezko ties and signing Donnie McClurkin up to help the campaign. I'm sure there are other missteps as well.

Clinton's got the vote for the war, voting for Kyl-Lieberman, and this troubling stuff from her time on the Wal-Mart board of directors. In her defense, it doesn't look like she was actually out busting unions herself, but she could have refused to be a Democratic fig leaf for the company's virulent anti-labor policies. She has repudiated their behavior, though. But she hasn't repudiated her Iraq war vote, nor her Kyl-Lieberman vote. That's troubling.

We can't expect perfection-mistakes will be made. Errors in judgment are unavoidable for even the wisest people. But at a minimum, I think we are right to expect an acknowledgment of the errors. It looks like Obama's campaign is working to shed the Rezko donations, and while he didn't kick McClurkin off the stage of his event, Obama did clarify that he doesn't agree with McClurkin's views about gays. And more importantly, Obama went to one of the most visible black churches on one of the most important days of the year and upbraided (albeit gently) the congregants for their anti-gay bigotry. That's at least something.

I'm just wondering where the point is at which the errors in judgment pile up enough to not trust a person to be president (or mayor, or school board member). I've essentially reached that point with Hillary Clinton (though again, I'll gladly vote for her in the general if it comes to that-Supreme Court Supreme Court Supreme Court), but not through any mathematical formula. This isn't precise, it's very subjective, and I have cast my lot with Barack Obama.

Looking around the liberal blogs, I find that people are so passionate one way or the other (or the other-to be fair, most people I've been reading preferred Edwards), and they largely talk past one another. I don't know what goes into this peculiar alchemy of making a decision, or convincing someone (if I did I guess I'd be some candidate's right hand man). It's endlessly fascinating, though, to read and hear people whose values I share coming to such different conclusions.

One way or another, I hope that the hard-fought nature of this primary doesn't kill the record turnout we've seen, or embitter newly engaged voters. Politics can be nasty, but engaging it is also the only way we can exert a measure of control over things that really do have a measurable impact on our lives. I hope that whatever happens, people who have not been engaged up until now carry that lesson with them and stay aware.

Habeas Lawyers for Obama

Talk about your impressive endorsements.
Next September I'll be going to work at a law firm that represents several Guantanamo detainees. (it's a big firm and that's just one of its many pro bono matters). I couldn't be more proud that the firm I'll be working for is doing that. Seeing the partner running those cases on this list makes me even happier.

The Family Dinner

Hilarious. I'd forgotten how much I loved Mystery Science Theater 3000. Thanksgiving used to involve hours-long stretches of this show punctuated by gluttony.

And this bit is just fantastic. It's like a dispatch from a time before irony.

H/T Driftglass.

Uh oh...

When Mickey Kaus sounds like he agrees with me it may be a good time to step back and take stock...

Calm and sensible

This post over at Balloon Juice is a very calm and sensible explanation of why Obama is a better choice in the Democratic primary. It mirrors my thinking in a lot of ways (though more eloquently).
It's actually not because there is much of a real problem with Hillary Clinton. I've said it before- my reasons for supporting Obama over Clinton are not entirely fair. They involve the fact that this election carries so much weight and I fear putting up a candidate with such high out-of-the-gate negatives. There is a significant portion of the electorate who simply will not ever vote for Hillary Clinton (yes, because they are ignorant troglodytes, but this country is home to many ignorant, voting, troglodytes). I've said it before, I'll say it again: If Clinton wins the primary, I will vote for her in the general. The most important factor for me is the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. The next president is likely to get more than Bush's two nominees to the Supreme Court, and they are not likely to be because of retirements on the right. And the federal district courts and courts of appeal always give a president a big opportunity for a lasting impact. So regardless of who the Democratic Party nominates, I'll vote for that candidate. But for many unfair reasons, I hope it's not Clinton.
Moreover, the further we go on, some quite fair reasons not to prefer Clinton become more glaring. The move by the Clinton campaign to try to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated is shady as hell. And for all of the people mouthing some variation on the theme of "Obama supporters should just shut up about the Clintons being too rough-it's not as if he's going to get a free pass from the Republicans in the general," ? Shut up. Seriously. Just shut up. A team practices hard so it's ready for the other team on game day, but they don't hit their own teammates with everything they have.* Reagan's eleventh commandment couldn't work for the Democrats and isn't something I'm comfortable with as a rule, tending to think sunlight really is a good disinfectant (and in a party that put up Joe Lieberman for vice president, speaking ill of Democrats-excuse me- "Democrats" is sometimes downright required). But basic "don't change the rules in the middle of the game," civility is something I expect in the primary.
The best bit from the Balloon Juice post is this:

But that’s small beans next to the constitutional mess that the Bush legacy will leave for President 44. It’s baggage, a giant bellhop-slaying pile of it, with David Addington’s initials stenciled on the side. The next president should burn it, scatter the ashes and choose judges based on how emphatically they will overturn every aspect of Addington’s totalitarian agenda. Or she could pick up the bags on her way in. It’s a lot of power. If she felt like it the next President could record the phone and email of every critic, Republican and potential Islamic terrorist without the NSA breaking a sweat. I don’t like living in a country where a spineless boy king with machiavellian advisors has that freedom and I don’t look forward to a Democrat having it either.

And that's just it. I have real problems with what the Presidency has become over the last seven years. The problem I have stems not just from the fact that it has been warped and twisted and enlarged in the hands of a malevolent clown troop, but also from the fact that this version of the presidency is simply bad for our country. The executive being as powerful and as unsupervised as is has over the last two terms is simply a bad idea-that's why it's taken such a brazen re-imagining of constitutional principles to achieve.
I have a native suspicion that Obama would be less likely than Clinton to grasp and abuse this new set of executive superpowers, but the bare-knuckled, expedience-is-king nature of the Clinton campaign over the last few weeks makes me fear her abuse of that new power more than I ever did before. Maybe Obama would abuse it the same way, but at least he's shown some restraint in the primary, so I'm left with the impression that the odds of him wielding the unitary executive as a Democratic Bush are low.

Fair? Unfair? A mix? I don' t know. But the bottom line is that the Clinton campaign makes me very nervous. Do with that what you will.



*Can you tell sports metaphors are not my strong suit?

Bill Clinton needs to shut his cake-hole!

Or not. Hell, he can go all over the country poisoning the well of Clinton support for all I care.
Josh Marshall has the goods on Clinton's "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice" comments.
I just wish someone had asked him to finish the thought. "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice so ... what Mr. President? Is there a 'which shows that...' end to that sentence?"

It's all downhill from here

This is not only the funniest thing I've ever seen, but I'm not sure it's possible for anything funnier to exist.

Are we, as a nation, this stupid?

"This whole thing about being muslim, they're really tapping into, I think, a national fear of terrorists. So...muslim-terrorist, I think they've put the two together."

There are times when I can almost physically feel the ignorance of my fellow Americans. While we're playing the debunking game, though, let me just point out that the photo of the guy atop the World Trade Center just before the plane hit is a hoax.
So is the one of the shark leaping at the guy on the helicopter.

The first which what?

Ahem!

That about says it.

Yeah. I have reconciled myself to the fact that I'm a partisan. I am not objective.
But it's a good looking pic, and really, there's meaning in it for everyone.



h/t crooks and liars.

Crooks and Liars » Countdown: John Edwards Was Right On The Economy

Crooks and Liars » Countdown: John Edwards Was Right On The Economy

Investing in infrastructure to battle an economic downturn? Brilliant! It's almost like Ms. Maddow has an advanced degree in some discipline requiring knowledge of history and economics or something. What? Oh...

On a less Rachel Maddow fanboy-ish note: it truly is amazing how much like Herbert Hoover W is trying to be. Tax cuts, huh? Whaddaya know...?

Smoother than I could have been

In which Lanny Davis, having hopped aboard HMS Tucktanic, managed one of the smoothest "you're an idiot son" interactions ever.
Crooks and Liars » Tucker: Hillary Is Too Rich & White To Have Experienced Discrimination

This is why I support Obama

Yeah, it's long. Yeah, it's *just* a speech.
Call me a sucker, but it moved me.

Demoralizing

Congrats to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards for being transparently disingenuous. When they attack Barack Obama for voting "present" while in the Illinois legislature, they are shoveling crap. Nice.
I'm so tired of this BS out of Clinton[s], especially. Yes. I'll vote for her if she wins-but it'll be a vote against the republican, not for her.

This is impressive:

Ordinarily, endorsements don't make much difference to me, but Senator Leahy endorsing Barack Obama is a little different. As the Chairman of the judiciary committee, he has been heroic about returning the oversight role back to congress. If Obama could just sew up Henry Waxman's endorsement, he could plausibly claim to be the choice of the congressional White House-smackdown caucus.

There is so much wrong here.

Uh...roger that, Spaceman.

"I take it it goes without saying that all of this is unfair..."

This post by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is perhaps the best distillation of the reasoning behind my support of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton that I've seen. It gets to a lot of what I was trying to get across to the commenter* on my earlier post about Chris Matthews. I feel a little sad that a well-written, practical, dispassionate defense of a position I hold is extraordinary, but that's where we find ourselves. Things have gotten a little rough and calm, rational discourse is not usually in abundance when things get rough.
I should point out that the reason things have gotten so rough for Democrats (and this comes through in Hilzoy's post-seriously, go read it) is that we are in an "embarrassment of riches" situation. This year we have fielded one of the strongest presidential candidate lists in recent memory. I'd have happily voted for any of them against anyone in the Republican field (OK maybe not so happily for Gravel, but I'd have held my nose, thought of the Supreme Court, and pulled the lever for him-thank god it won't come to that). The unprecedented strength of the Democratic position this year is something to be very happy about, come what may-which I hope is an Obama victory. And I hope that victory is decided as quickly as possible, because I really should be putting more effort into my studies.
Go read the Hilzoy piece.

*That's right! I had a non-spam commenter! *Sniff* That means at least one person not related to me has read this blog!
Seriously-I'm WAY stoked about the commenter (do it again!). The odds of this becoming a place where any remotely significant number of people exchange ideas are longer than the line at hell's ice cream parlor, but I'd love to hear from anyone who happens stop by-use an alias if you're shy. Hell, I do.

Chris Matthews needs to shut his cake hole.

As an Obama supporter and a person who is truly baffled that anyone can muster genuine enthusiasm for Clinton on her own terms (though if she's the nominee I'll be plenty enthused to see her beat whatever paleolithic hairball the Republicans cough up), I wish Matthews would shut the hell up already.
Good gravy, the man's a train wreck! The only rational explanation for his continued mouth-diarrhea about Clinton is that he actually wants her to win the primary and is doing his best to make her opponents seem like misogynist knuckle-draggers. A move like Romney's anti-Mormon push polling.
The only problem with that analysis is that such jiu-jitsu requires a metric ton more intelligence than Matthews ordinarily manifests. So I'm left to the conclusion that there simply is no rational explanation for his continued dipshittery, just some deep-seated loathing for Hillary Clinton that probably comes from his own unrecognized humiliation at having been a part of the two year journalistic search party down Bill Clinton's pants that put us directly in the hell we've enjoyed for the last seven.

My advice below still stands, though-he should simply be ignored. Changing your vote because a pundit pisses you off is totally irrational.

(Note: This post appeared in an early form as a comment to this post over at the group news blog-I was so taken with my prose I reposted it here)

Update: Kos put all of this into a tidy package that pretty well sums up my thoughts.

I don't get it

I've been zipping hither and thither through the blogosphere today and as I have, I've run into variations on the theme of "I'm an Obama (or Edwards) supporter, but I might have voted for Clinton today after seeing how shabbily the media treated her in the last few days" (there are several iterations here).
This sentiment makes no sense to me at all. I don't quibble with the idea that the media has been pretty lame-downright misogynist even-in it's coverage of the Democratic race in the last week. But to alter your vote on that basis is insane. After you cast your "f-you" vote, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough still have a job. All you've done is confirm their influence, albeit negatively.
Don't be a fool-the only way to chip away at the influence of annoying commentators is to ignore them and do what thou wilt.

I hope not...

Andrew Sullivan is wondering if the surprising NH results can be attributed to the Bradley Effect. God I hope not. Moreover, I hope that the mention of it doesn't cause African American voters in South Carolina and elsewhere to pull back from Obama. Yikes, this is a race...

Wait a minute...?

Didn't Edwards talk about Nataline Sarkisian in his last (not really a) concession speech? I like Edwards-he'd likely be my second choice in the primary-but he really shouldn't so obviously recycle material in such high-profile settings.

Is it just me?

Is it just me or is there a palpable animosity between Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews? Their interactions are just loaded with barely concealed hostility. I love it. When Rachel replaces Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, I hope she and Matthews have to work in the same building.

Gang up?

I keep hearing pundits refer to the idea that the debate this weekend tipped the vote toward Clinton. Andrea Mitchell just said that she thinks a lot of voters thought Edwards and Obama "ganging up" on Clinton was unfair. That's just stupid. Sorry. Maybe Mitchell is right, maybe she's just grasping for anything to fill airtime, but if she's right, she's describing the reaction of foolish people. When there are two people who disagree with a third and they are on a stage talking about their disagreements, it's not "ganging up," it's debating. I hope like hell nobody actually made a decision on that ridiculous basis.

Some advice for MSNBC

When debugging your coverage for the next go-round, you would do well to figure out what that interminable beeping in the background behind the anchors is and make it stop!

NH Primary Night

I'm watching the coverage of the NH primary on MSNBC-actually, I'm watching the goings on prior to Olbermann, Matthews, et al having anything to report-and I'll be commenting when I see things that require comment. Here are a couple off the bat:
#1: Matthews was talking to Tom Delay (I have no idea why they would have him on, but they did) and Delay was discussing McCain's appeal to moderates. When Matthews asked him about his apparent denigration of moderates, he asked how Delay defined "moderate" and Delay actually said "someone who thinks too much." Seriously. He really said that. He laughed afterward, but...wow. Not having to represent anyone but himself anymore has apparently unleashed Delay to be just as ignernt as he dang well pleases.

#2: Dee Dee Myers, Bill Clinton's former press secretary actually had the gumption to say that Hillary Clinton was not the frontrunner until last fall. Wha...?! Chris Matthews about fell off his chair, and Myers got a little pissy about it. Clinton has been the front runner in the democratic race starting about the second Wednesday in November of 2004. What does that spin achieve even if anyone's dumb enough to buy it? The wheels are falling off the Clinton bus and apparently whacking the supporters on the side of the road square in the head...

Update: Olbermann is continuing to clown Myers mercilessly. Yeah, he's kind of mean, but Myers is a big girl and she deserves all of the clowning they can pile on.

Not Just on Planes

It would seem that people are assholes everywhere.
You pieces of feces standing to the left on the escalator out of the subway station, causing those of us with a damned pulse to wait behind your slow ass-I'm looking at you!

The Golden Rule

I recently flew a certain airline for five hours at a time twice in a two week period. Sure, so did everyone else-it's called "the holiday season." Here's what I noticed, that everyone else may have missed (and yes, I do notice this every day-I live in New York City but I like to pretend that I write for a national audience-your actual experience may vary): People are assholes.
That's it. People are assholes.
How else to explain the fact that on my five hour flight from JFK to LGB (AKA Long Beach Airport), the "gentleman" behind me decided to chow down on a giant pile of corn nuts (is that one word? "cornnuts"? "cornuts"? I don't know because I'm not rotten enough to eat the filthy devil snacks!). If you are unfamiliar with corn-nuts, allow me to explain: They are corn kernels processed in such a way as to make sure that when a person crunches them open, thereby releasing their internal nasty-gas and allowing it to mix with human saliva and lung vapor, the resulting stank is heinous in the extreme. Like, heinous to the extent that your mild-manored narrator, ordinarily a charming and peaceful man, seriously considered perpetratin' like he was gonna get up and pee only to walk a row back a break a man's nose.
Overreaction?
No.
This was a man confined on a plane eating corn-nuts!!!
Has he never smelled corn-nuts???!
How the f&$k about "do unto others"?
Seriously.
I don't give a good god-damn if you love the smell of corn-nuts-breath, if you have a corn-nuts-breath scented tree hanging from your car's mirror-
How the hell about a little goddamned common mother-fu^%ing sense?
Howzabout exhibiting the sense that says "hey, I like corn-nuts, and I LOVE stinky-ass tuna sandwiches, but maybe I should hold off on indulging my passion for smelly crap until I'm in a place where that indulgence won't force innocent bystanders to be my stank-ass co-conspirators?"
And while I'm on a rant:
NOBODY likes the smell of your perfume and/or cologne enough for you to jam it up their ass on an elevator!!!
If I can smell you on an elevator, you either should have taken a shower and eschewed the artificial stank, or you just can't smell and need to hire a competent smeller to clear you for public consumption before you walk out the door.
I know it seems like I'm nuts and that I'm simply mining a single incident for an overblown blog post, but I swear to whatever deity you can dream up, a week after the initial corn-nuts incident, on my flight back to JFK, there was ANOTHER corn-nuts eating piece of crap on the plane!!! (Yes, it may have been Fritos-just as bad! Keep them both in the privacy of your own homes please!)
The corn-nuts/Fritos scourge is clearly an epidemic. It may indicate that the offendors don't give a damn if they cause others to suffer. More likely, I think, is that we have reached a point where it simply doesn't occur to most people to think whether or not others will suffer. "Corn-nuts? Tuna? Limburgher and onion sandwich? Poop and peppers casserole? Whatever, dude-I paid and I'm eatin-suck it!"
The golden rule? I don't (and can't) ask that it be followed in all circumstances-but when you're in a metal box, breathing recycled air for five to five and a half hours...?

That about sums it up...

Josh Marshall, proprietor of the TPM media empire, handicaps the primary races in today's installment of TPM tv. This quote captures the sunny state of play on the Republican side.

Who is the most likely person to still be the Republican nominee? Mitt Romney. So Mitt Romney, obviously he's in a lot of danger in Iowa, he's a terrible phony, a repeated flip flopper, but the bottom line is because he didn't have a mistress slush fund, he doesn't hang around with mafiosos, and he didn't get a serial rapist out of jail because a bunch of anti-Clinton whack-jobs convinced him that the guy was a victim of the system, you have to assume Mitt Romney is still the one to beat in the Republican nomination battle...

Even if Clinton, certainly not my preference, wins the Democratic nomination, I'll cast my vote gleefully for her. Being so happy to vote against [insert eventual Republican nominee here] makes being happy to vote for someone almost superfluous.

Translation: Eff you.

Classic. The look on Clinton's face after Obama's quip is priceless. That was one of the smoothest verbal knifings ever.

This is stupid. And the song's my new fave.

The East Bay is a weird place.

You gotta be kidding me...

Imagine, if you will, the following scene:
A cop responds to a call from a distraught mother who has just fished the limp body of her son from the family pool. While on scene, said cop slips in a puddle and breaks her knee. She subsequently sues the family for having "negligently" left a puddle on the floor...of the house where they took the child who had just been pulled, lifeless, from the pool.
The child is profoundly brain-damaged from the ordeal and the cop was out on paid disability leave for a spell. Has anyone checked to see if she broke her head along with her knee? How does anyone this cop runs her plan by say anything but "if you sue those people, I will never have anything to do with you again"? Including her mother, her husband, her best friend, and her children. Sure, she should have the right to bring any kind of jack-assed, frivolous suit she wants, and have it tossed out of court fair and square. That's a civil right she enjoys, godblessamerica! And those of us with some sense of common decency have the right to shun her like a whore-loving puritan.
Good lord...


PS: Obligatory law-school-guy comment: I'm pretty sure her case is crap. It's called assuming the risk. And yes, this story will be turned into a thousand torts exam fact patterns come finals season. Guaranteed.

Per-octer?

Can I be the only one who looks at the new(ish) White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, and thinks "Ainsley Hayes?" Ainsley Hayes, you'll remember, was the sharp, conservative young woman tapped to be assistant white house counsel for a couple of seasons on the West Wing. Played by Emily Procter, she was a mighty cute young lady and witty as all get-out to boot. And her sense of civic duty was just enchanting. I've done only a perfunctory google search to find out if anyone else has made the Perino-Hayes connection, but so far, nothin'. Really? It seems so obvious...or maybe I'm just a lecherous old liberal with a soft spot for pretty blond conservatives.

Steve Gilliard

Steve Gilliard has passed away after a months-long illness.
This is an incalculable shame. I can't add much to the outpouring of grief and tribute that has met the news, but I would be an ingrate if I didn't try.
I found Steve's blog via James Walcott of all things. It was around 2004, I think. I was immediately drawn in by his utter non-weaselly-ness. Steve never couched his opinions in the language of "it seems" or "there might" or "I think." What Steve thought is what was as far as he was concerned. I was instantaneously hooked, and before long (like within a day or two), the News Blog was the first site I went to each morning after checking my email. And throughout the day it was "check the email, then check the News Blog," without fail. And I check my email about 82,000 times each day, so I was really on top of Steve's action.
I started the Bush years as a pretty middle of the road "give-him-a-chance" sort of fella. I like to think of myself as a pretty reasonable guy, and by the time I found Steve's blog, I was still quite a bit more willing to listen to the bullshit coming from the right-o-sphere than a lot of liberals. As time and events passed, though, Steve's passionate, articulate stand against everything that Bush and his coterie represented never waned. He simply acquired more targets to fire his erudite criticisms at. And he was erudite. My god. Steve Gilliard was able to stomp a dumbass argument or idea down using analogies to history that simply blew my mind. His knowledge of military history was his great asset. More importantly, I have to say I don't recall anyone seriously questioning the conclusions he drew when he was on his military history jags. On a blog, that's profoundly weird. I don't think it's because he lacked for haters. There were trolls aplently over at the News Blog. But he was authoritative, and that's hard to argue with-even for a troll. Before long, I found that experience and common damned sense forced me to catch up with Steve in a lot of ways. When I started reading, he was a very articulate expositor of a position that I often didn't share, but could see the logic of. After Katrina, thousands more dead in Iraq, Plame-gate, ad-bloody-nauseum, I found myself naturally reading Steve's posts as a reflection of what I was thinking. Just phrased better.
He hadn't moved. I had. Not because he convinced me, either. I moved because he was right and smart and it just took me longer to get where he'd been sitting for years. Though his commentary certainly didn't slow the process.
One thing I got from Steve Gilliard, which I don't get from some other bloggers I read regularly, was the fact that he was a real guy with a real life, and not just some news consumption machine. His food posts, (with recipes included, thank you very much) were as sharp and as useful as what he wrote on politics. My experience as a newly minted soccer fan was immeasurably enhanced by his posts during the world cup. I had something meaningful to say about sports for the first time in my life, and that was all Steve.
I moved to Brooklyn in 2005, and I was able to slip into being a resident of New York City far more easily than I ever would have been able to manage without his help (I suspect that's a legacy he'd be at least a little proud of). Notice I didn't say "New Yorker." I'm not, and I won't be for some time, but when I am (in several decades, probably), I'll have Steve to thank for laying the groundwork.
Steve's blog was the first and only one I posted comments to with any regularity (under the moniker "Mr. Stoopid"). When I thought my posts were awesome, I was quickly reminded of how not-so they were when I read the brilliant (seriously, not kidding, BRILLIANT) musings of Lower Manhattanite or Driftglass, among the many other very sharp commenters over there. The News Blog was a community un-self-conscious about itself as a community and it drew some very talented people into its orbit. This was shown most clearly when Steve went into the hospital and Jen and Jim from LA were able to keep the joint cracking with guest posts from the locals. I came to know many of the commenters' situations (Hubris Sonic is a vet, Jesse Wendell is a doctor, etc...), and so did Steve. Before long, it became apparent that Steve wrote the way he did because he respected his readers, and he respected his readers because he knew them.
I've been reading the many tributes to Steve all over the blogosphere today (by Pachacutec, Jane Hamsher, Digby, and tons more, and have only now found out what a gentle, loving guy he was. But I should have known. It was there between the tough-as-nails lines.
Bottom line: I'll miss the hell out of Steve Gilliard. I didn't know him, but I knew the value he added to my life and to my mind.
Thanks Steve.

And now that I'm back...

I realize that I have come back almost two years to the day that I last posted. I assure you that this was not planned. Also, if you are looking for a worthless online degree, in the years that I've been gone, some helpful spamming soul has loaded the comments with solicitations for just such a thing. Have at it.

Back

So I'm back.
I haven't posted on this blog in several thousand years or so, but here I am.
In the mean time, I got rid of the crappy job and went to lawschool.
I'm embarrassed about some of my previous posts, now that I've had a couple of years of legal-learnin' under my belt, because i now recognize their essential ignorance.

Or that could just be the kool aid talking. They say you go to law school and what happens is not so much that you learn to be a lawyer (you learn that when you get a job and start working as a lawyer), but that you start thinking like a lawyer. Or they teach you to think legally, or whatever. So maybe I'm just looking at my old, very sensible posts and re-examining them with the eyes of a new convert. Or maybe I was slightly dumber then. Or maybe I'm slightly dumber now.

Either way, I'm back-for the moment at any rate. Beyond that, I dunno.

Ethics investigations all around!

From a story in the Washington Times today:

House Republicans yesterday called on Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to provide documentation to prove that a Washington lobbyist firm did not pay for a trip she and other Democrats took to Puerto Rico in 2001.
"We feel that such lingering questions undermine the integrity of the institution and we hope [the questions] will be cleared up as soon as possible," wrote Republican Reps. Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.

Hold your laughter, it gets better...

The questions also come after months of claims against Majority Leader Tom DeLay, accused of accepting a trip paid for by a lobbyist. Mr DeLay and the nonprofit group he listed as the trip's sponsor insist the lobbyist did not pay the bill.
Mrs. Pelosi has called for a full investigation into that matter, which is an inconsistency, say Mr. McHenry and Mr. Westmoreland.
"If you are serious that the mere allegation that a lobbyist paid for member travel warrants a full ethics investigation, it would seem that a member actually disclosing it as fact would more than merit it," the Republicans wrote.

Sure it merits an investigation. Let's get the ethics committee right on it! In fact, let's have investigations into DeLay's golf junkets, Pelosi's Puerto Rico trip, and any other ethically dodgey actions by any other congresspersons. Of course, we'll have to repeal the rules changes passed in January, that essentially killed the committee's ability to commence investigations, but I'm sure the morally upright Republicans will have no problem with that, right? Right? Hello...? Is this thing on...?

Supporting the troops, my ass

As the Senate began to debate President Bush's request for more than $80 billion in supplemental military spending on Monday, senators seized a chance to pack pet projects into an unstoppable bill, adding provisions dealing with oil drilling, forest services, a new baseball stadium for Washington and economic assistance to Palestinians.
[snip]
Senator Thad Cochran, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the draft "a straightforward bill" that "meets the needs of our fighting forces overseas" and "addresses emergency requirements here at home." (emphasis added)

-from yesterday's New York Times.

Being a more or less cultured and well bred type, I try to keep the cursing here to a minimum, but are you fucking kidding me?!
"[E]mergency requirements here at home" such as a goddamned baseball stadium? Senator Cochran and I are clearly operating under different ideas of what the word "emergency" means. You want to tell this guy's family why there's a dime in an emergency military spending bill for anything but direct troop support and protection? How about this guy's family? Or how about this one?
Astounding. Pulling this kind of crap while flapping your lips about supporting the troops is so disgusting as to beggar belief. $42 million to build a baseball stadium is a stupid use of public funds under the best of circumstances, and as we all know, the best of circumstances these ain't. Major League Baseball is a business, and as such, should be made to pay for their own facilities. The military, needless to say (or so I thought), is in a different boat. When we withhold money from them, they go without armor and they die.
Thanks, Senators. You're a real bunch of douchebags patriots.

Here's a gem for you:

"So I'm saying to the left: Stop bad-mouthing your own civilization; get over it, you little twerps. I'm saying to the religious far right: If we are defending Western civilization, as you claimed in the incursion into Iraq, then you'd better realize it's much more than Judeo-Christianity and the Bible. You'd better get real and accept that we have a Greco-Roman tradition of literature and art that started in 700 BC. And yes, some of it deals, quite frankly, with sex and the body; you must deal with it and allow students to deal with it, because that is part of the brilliant strength of our arts. I'm demanding that conservatives support the arts and that liberals stop being so snobby about art and quit celebrating art that is simply cheap sacrilege of other people's beliefs."

-Camille Paglia, from an interview in Salon.com yesterday.
Quite so, Ms. Paglia, says I. Even though they make you watch an ad, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Worth attention

Say what you will about Marshall Wittman, self-styled Bull Moose, DLC fellow, and erstwhile McCainiac (I know I and others have had some choice words), but he has been doing a fine job lately of keeping his eye on things that actually matter. Namely, the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Today's post contains this doozy of a passage:

We live in an age when more attention is devoted to a celebrity child molestation trial than the mass slaughter of innocents. One can only conclude that this incongruity is explained by either the numbing banality of the times or a racist indifference to the massacre of Africans. Perhaps, it is both.

I'd add imperial decadence to that list, but the point is right on. To that end, I commend to your attention the Coalition for Darfur blog.
For info on another of Africa's ongoing catastrophes, the reign of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, check out Democracy Arsenal. Both have been added to the list of sites more interesting than this one.
After all the usual inanity the media bombards us with, it's refreshing to read about something that's actually worth paying attention to, even if it makes me feel sick and saps what little faith I left left in humanity.

I've gotta get me a gubmint job!

If I was asked to do something crazy like perform my prescribed duties at work, and responded with "yeah, yeah...I'm exhausted," I'd be politely told to cram it and get to work. And my job doesn't involve killing people.

Not George Tenet. He says he's too exhausted to make sure the info we're using to invade a sovereign nation is legit, and he gets a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Nice work if you can get it.

Fox=heroin?

It doesn't exactly warrant death threats, but the new Fox News blocker is a silly idea at best.

Kimery figures he's sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets, since its August debut.

Suckers. I got a Fox News blocker for free when I bought my TV. It's called a remote. I'm trying to imagine the poor fool who needs this because he just can't resist the seductive lure of the right-wing echo chamber. No matter how many back issues of the Nation he reads, he just can't keep that snake-charmer,Sean Hannity, off his TV set. Alas, he cannot avert his eyes, so steps must be taken...

Here's a money saving tip from your Uncle Jiminy: Bill O'Reilly doesn't shoot invisible microwave heroin beams from his eyes. Really. All you have to do is not turn it on. No assenbly required.

Integrity's for wussies

Certainly hypocrisy can't be said to be the worst of Tom Delay's ethical transgressions, but it does occupy a prominent position on the list. The latest instance is a doozy. The ever-trenchant William Saletan lays out the bill of particulars at Slate.com.

It's Official

I guess it isn't officially an American media circus until this clown shows up. You can almost hear the calliope music.

The damn shame of it is that Jesse Jackson has done a lot of good in the past and will likely do some more in the future. It's increasingly difficult, however, to pay attention to a man whose chief vocation seems to be getting his name and face inserted into every worthless media frenzy that comes down the pike.

Are they kidding?

Is it possible that the people who run CNN.com are this sloppy?
Option 1: They were trying to honestly and accurately present their polling data in graphic form, and botched the mission spectacularly.
Option 2: They were intentionally trying to misrepresent the data. To make the party-split look more dramatic? To make Democrats look bad? To make them look good?
Whatever the reason, the verdict is the same: Terrible, sloppy journalism CNN should be ashamed of.

Hi-larity!

Or maybe this post should be titled "Hannity-larity". Or not. Either way, it seems that Sean Hannity, right wing radio host, Fox News Channel mainstay, author, and blowhard par excellence has jumped into the matchmaking game. On the "Hannidate" section of his website, you can find pics and profiles of lovelorn conservatives from hither and yon looking for some chaste, prayerful lovin'. Now, call it shooting fish in a barrel, or piling on, if you like, but I just have to point out how wonderfuly entertaining these profiles are. A list of the shinier gems would include:

Aaron, a 23 year old former marine and tattoo enthusiast who WILL NOT HESITATE TO BEAT YOU TO DEATH!!! (or, at least, that's what his charming photo seemed, to me, to imply).
And:

Jessica H., a lovely young realtor and recent addition to the Florida panhandle's dating scene. She enjoys Ann Coulter, upscale entertainment, and seems to be looking for a traditional type of man who's not afraid to mete out a swift elbow to the clavicle, should she be foolish enough to back-sass him.

The cavalcade of conservatives craving companionship doesn't end there, so, do yourself a favor and go check out all of the succulent cuts on offer at Hannity's right-wing meat market. If you don't find that special someone, you might laugh so hard you shoot coffee out of your nose-I know I did!

Yay for spring

Maybe it's in anticipation of Camille Paglia's forthcoming book, or maybe I'm just feeling a little sweet lately (quit yer gigglin', dammit!), but for one reason or another I've been on a little poetry kick. On that note, and in honor of the dawning of spring (which, after all the rain here in California this winter, should be spectacular), I post for your enjoyment Shel Silverstein's "The Garden":

Ol’ man Simon, planted a diamond,
Grew hisself a garden the likes of none.
Sprouts all growin’, comin’ up glowin’,
Fruit of jewels all shinin’ in the sun.
Colors of the rainbow,
See the sun and rain grow,
Sapphires and rubies on ivory vines,
Grapes of jade, just
Ripenin’ in the shade, just Ready for the squeezin’ into green Jade wine.
Pure gold corn there,
Blowin’ in the warm air,
Ol’ crow nibblin’ on the amethyst seeds.
In between the damonds, ol’ man Simon
Crawls about pullin’ platinum weeds.
Pink pearl berries,
All you can carry,
Put ‘em in a bushel and
Haul ‘em into town.
Up in the tree there’s
Opal nuts and gold pears –
Hurry quick, grab a stick
And shake some down.
Take a silver tater,
Emerald tomater,
Fresh plump coral melons,
Hangin’ in reach.
Ol’ man Simon,
Diggin’ in his diamonds,
Stops and rests and dreams about
One… real… peach.

For Future Reference

I'm with Harry Shearer, who's guest-blogging over at TPM today, on the silliness of pitching my two useless cents in on the pathetic Terry Schiavo circus.
I will, however, take this opportunity to publicly (or at least as publicly as a blog that nobody reads can be said to be), affirm my desire not be be kept alive by tubes and machines if I am ever in a similar condition. That is all.

La Maison, C'est Moi

This interesting quote appeared in The Washington Post yesterday in a story about Tom Delay defending himself against a massive and growing pile of ethics charges:

"It is very unfortunate that the Democrats have no agenda. All they can do is try to tear down the House and burn it down in order to gain power."

Uh...actually, Tommy, they aren't trying to tear down the house so much as trying to smoke a big rat out of it-a process with which you, of all people, should be well acquainted.
You almost have to respect the size of the stones on a man who would equate efforts to hold him accountable for bribes cash-flow irregularities, with destroying the House of Representatives. Perhaps we should call him Tom DeLouis XIV? Non, monsieur. La Maison, ce n'est pas toi. That's French freedom-talk for "zip your cake-hole, Tom."

Happy St. Patrick's Day

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, here's one of my favorite poems. It really has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day, but its composer, Seamus Heaney, is Irish (and a Nobel Prize winner, at that), so that sort of counts, right? It's called "Digging":

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Slàinte!

Congrats!

I would like to extend my heartfelt personal congratulations to the editors of the Des Moines Register for printing the single most pointless article in the history of newspaper journalism. Some highlights:

A Cedar Rapids service station attendant's penchant for "air drumming" has cost him his job.

(snip)

"My drums are not a joke; they are a part of me," he said. "People used to come into the store and say, 'Dude, you're so good with those drumsticks.'"

Yes folks,
The Onion truly is redundant.

And not a moment too soon...

Well, huzzah for Oaktown:

As of this week, the Port of Oakland will be the first major seaport in the nation to screen all incoming cargo containers for radiation. Four years and at least $3.2 million in the making, the port's eight radiation portal monitors are advanced models of devices used in former Soviet bloc countries to prevent the spread of nuclear materials.

It's imperfect, but it's an important step and it's about damn time. For a full explanation of the system, imperfections and all, read the whole thing.

Eww, gross...

So let me get this straight: A CourtTV reporter alerts the Santa Barbara county DA to some evidence for the Michael Jackson molestation case, including "soiled Calvin Klein briefs", in the possession of a New Jersey businessman. And the DA or Diane Dimond, the reporter, are supposed to be embarrassed? What about the guy with MJ's "soiled" (*shudder*) tighty-whiteys in his attic? Hell, I feel dirty having just typed that out!

UPDATE: It turns out that the businessman in question came into possession of the foul undergarments when he was "awarded a warehouse full of Jackson family memorabilia in a bankruptcy settlement..." Truth be told, I'm not sure that isn't even stranger.

Here's Hoping

A quick question: Since Judge Richard Kramer, who yesterday held California's law against same-sex marriage unconstitutional, is a Republican (and Catholic, to boot-yee-haw!!!), are we going to be spared another round of yelping about judicial activism?

No, I'm not holding my breath either, but a fella can hope can't he?

Would you rather...

There's a poll out from the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience asking whether voters would choose George W. Bush or a reanimated George Washington if they were running against one another for President. Washington beat Bush overall by about 20 points, but the party-line breakdown has some chins wagging:

Republicans in the survey supported Bush by a margin of more than 2 to 1, while Democrats and independents overwhelmingly favored Washington.

Last night on Air America's horrid show, the Majority Report, host, Sam Seder was shocked (shocked, I say!) that those stinking Republican morons could possibly prefer Bush to Washington. New Donkey has similar (if better articulated) thoughts posted today.
Am I alone in thinking it's a stupid bloody question to ask in the first place? It's like asking if you'd prefer having Hippocrates or Dr. Nick take your appendix out. Next option please...
I wouldn't vote for George Washington for President and I'm anything but a true-Bush-believer. And it's not just because I have an aversion to zombie politicians. I simply prefer a man who's seen the miracle of flush toilets up close as leader of the free world. If the question was put to me I'd have to ask who the third party candidates were.
If we're looking for reasons to criticize the right, there are plenty right here in the realm of the possible.

Check it out...

The current Mayor of Oakland, former Governor of California, likely future Attorney General of California, my mother's favorite politician, and my neighbor, Jerry Brown, has himself a brand spanking new blog.
If it's like his media appearances, it will be anything but boring...
I've added a link on the list of sites more interesting than this one. Give it a gander...

That's a hell of an idea!

Chris Bowers over at MyDD offers Democratic leaders a fantastic, innovative idea.

Along the lines of MoveOn.org's Bush In Thirty Second you should start a wide-ranging, public campaign to encourage individuals within the blogosphere and the netroots to produce television, radio, internet, newspaper, direct mail and door hanging advertisements for both district wide, state-wide, and nationwide distribution in the 2006 Congressional campaigns. The benefits of such a campaign would be enormous[...]

Pelosi, Reid, Dean, et al should consider the plan seriously. Nothing endears someone to you like asking them for help. Some copyright issues and such would probably need to be worked out, but that's what lawyers are for, and I suspect there's no shortage of those at the DNC. There's also the problem of dingbats who think calling Bush Hitler is a good message, but they wouldn't be reinventing the wheel here. Moveon.org already made those mistakes. Their experience could provide valuable lessons on what and what not to do. Either way, huzzah for innovation and breaking out of the stodgy old campaign mold!

State of the Union

I'm currently watching and listening to a fabulously lo-fi C-SPAN.org stream of the State of the Union speech, while simultaneously reading Andrew Sullivan's and Wonkette's runnung blog commentary (blogentary?). God bless the internet, says I.

Best thng about the whole affair? this line from Wonkette:

9:35 Operative: "Oh, great: An ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence, brought to you by the president who wants to ban abortion and starts wars for no reason."

Comedy gold, folks. Comedy gold...

Your liver will thank you

Here it is: The 2005 State of the Union drinking game. Fun for the whole family!

Color me insulted...

I take great umbrage at something the Moose posted today:

The other issue that the Moose will keep an eye out for is immigration reform. Immigration is to the Republicans what trade is to the Democrats - it splits the party right down the middle. Nothing fires up the talk show right than this issue - they are on the side the restrictionists. In reaching out to the Latino community, the President has taken a more progressive approach on immigration reform, but has failed to move legislation. Will he make it a priority and take on the restrictionist right?
The Moose will be watching whether the President is in touch with his inner compassionate conservative or whether he will cave to the xenophobes. (emphases mine)

Well, I think the immigration reform plan the President has outlined is a fantastically bad idea. Does that make me a regressive xenophobe? Mr. Moose might be shocked to learn that there is a rational, non-xenophobic, even *gasp* compassionate case to be made against the plan.

There are two essential parts of Bush's plan:
1) Raising the number of green cards given out each year.
2) Creation of a "guest worker" program, wherein foreign workers will be allowed entry into the US for an unspecified length of time to take jobs that can't be filled with domestic labor. Undocumented workers that are already here will have to pay a fee to enter the program, while those outside our borders will not. All participants in the program will be able to apply for citizenship, but there will be no preference for them over non-participants. There will be various incentives for them to eventually return home.

I have no problem at all with issuing more green cards. It's good for our labor needs, and it's what the US is about, so we should go for it. No hard numbers were outlined in the plan, but whatever the administration has in mind, they should double it.

The main problem I have is that the plan does nothing to strengthen our borders. Without stepping up enforcement of existing laws, this plan does less than nothing. Employers that hire undocumented immigrants need to be dealt with harshly-jailed if need be. The border also has to be way more tightly controlled to prevent more undocumented workers from coming in. I understand people living in horrendous poverty wanting to claim better opportunity, and don't begrudge them the attempt to do whatever they can to feed and clothe their families, but they should be made to do it legally. There's nothing xenophobic about wanting workers to be able to avail themselves of the legal protections against exploitation and dangerous working conditions that legal workers have. And the guest worker program won't be enough to stop the exploitation. If we continue to allow as many undocumented workers over the border as we have, and do nothing to enforce the law on the employers, the guest worker program will be a joke. Why would an employer hire a guest worker at a higher wage and with more bothersome paperwork when there are forty laborers with the same skills and no hassles on a local street corner waiting to be picked up?

Tightly controlling the border is the indispensable cornerstone without which any immigration "reform" is nothing. And there's nothing compassionate about allowing people to come in under cover of darkness only to be put to work at near slave wages doing crushing work picking strawberries with no recourse if they are screwed out of their pay or injured.

Clamping the border shut is good fiscal policy besides. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that the cost to California alone from undocumented immigrants is $10.5 billion a year. This may be an oversimplified picture. I'm not well acquainted with their methodology so it's possible that this study fails to take a variety of factors such as social security taxes withheld but never collected, and lower produce prices into account. The fact remains, however, that the affected states are paying the high costs and the federal government is not reimbursing them. For a state like California, in pretty dire financial straits, this is calamitous. And the services that will need to be cut to get the state out of its budgetary hole benefit the poor, including immigrants. Is it xenophobic to be concerned about that?

So yes, there is a principled, dare I say progressive, position to be taken against the President's immigration reform plan. I'm not saying all right-thinking people necessarily agree with it. But, resorting to knee-jerk characterizations of those who oppose it as xenophobes makes Mr. Moose sound like something other than the thoughtful centrist he's always seemed to be.

Wow. Just...wow.

From the AP today:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The U.S. military said it was investigating, but the claim's authenticity could not be immediately confirmed.
The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what that statement said was an American soldier, wearing desert fatigues and seated on a concrete floor with his hands tied behind his back. The figure in the photo appeared stiff and expressionless, and the photo's authenticity could not be confirmed. (emphasis, mine)

Actually, the photo's authenticity can be confirmed by anyone with a functioning pair of eyes. Those bastards have kidnapped GI Joe! I don't care what we have to do-call in the Transformers, He-Man, the Thundercats, anyone! We've gotta get this real American hero back!

Update: They seem to have figured it out. Nice work, folks!

Sound the alarm!!!

SpongeBob Squarepants is a damned sodomite!!! The god-danged, homo-sekshul, Jew libruls what own the media's tryin' t'infiltrate our young'uns brains!!! Run fer the hills!!!

According to Focus on the Family's James Dobson, because SpongeBob is an ironic icon to some in the gay community, and appears in a video teaching kids about multiculturalism, he's a cleverly laid (pun intended, thank you) trap to entice American youth into a life of sin. Brilliant. I know I shouldn't help these cretins out, but here goes:

Attention troglodytes! Publicly fretting about cartoon characters being gay recruitment tools makes you look like morons.
Yes, even more than usual. That is all.

That's what I call writin'!

This article is only mildly interesting, but it does contain the phrase "deviant bacon orgies", and that's gotta count for something, right?

For your reading enjoyment:

Each year I look forward to and heartily enjoy Slate's Movie Club, in which a bunch of film critics spend a week blathering at each other about movies and movie criticism. This year's edition is off to a delightfully batty start. Dig it.

A missed opportunity...

I mostly agree with the Moose's post today about Bush's response to the tsunami disaster. This was a huge opportunity and it was missed by a wide margin. He calls it "an opportunity missed but not lost", but I'm not so sure it's salvageable. Had the President addressed the nation on TV right after the calamity and promised aid and exhorted private donation to the relief effort, he would have earned credibility for his claims of benevolence toward Muslims, regardless of the amount pledged. The importance of such a move can hardly be overstated. That is how one wins hearts and minds. As it was, the administration quietly offered $15 million and opened itself to charges of being "stingy". You can buy that charge or not (I think it's a bit overblown, to say the least), but the fact that it was leveled at all is evidence of an appalling political performance on the administration's part.

We should aid the rescue and recovery because it's the right thing to do, not because it's politically useful. But doing so the right way is politically useful, and it should be done in whatever way maximizes that usefulness. Rather, it should have been done in such a way. I'm afraid that nothing the administration does now can escape the charge that it is only being done under international pressure. Again, we should do all we possibly can anyway, and maybe the Moose is right that Bush redoubling his efforts can "repair our image in the world", but I'm not so sure that the moment to both ease the suffering and bolster our image in the Muslim world hasn't passed.

Like I've always said...

...When noodling's outlawed, only outlaws will noodle. You smell that, fellers? It's the sweet, sweet scent of freedom. And catfish.

Better late than never?

One of the big issues in California in the last election was Prop. 71, a $3 billion bond measure providing funds for stem cell research. I support stem cell research, and I hope it bears the wonderful fruits its cheerleaders promise, but I voted against the measure. Despite Governor Schwarzenneger's promises to drag us from the fiscal sewer, California is still running tremendous budget deficits, and has the lowest bond rating of any state in the union. Under those circumstances I couldn't support adding an additional $3 billion burden (possibly as high as $6 billion with interest, etc.) to the budget for anything inessential. If the research is as potentially revolutionary as its proponents claim, private investors have every incentive to fund it, and I reasoned that they should step into the void, not this cash-strapped state with so many essential services riding on its budget.

Prop. 71 was endorsed by the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and ultimately the voters. Only now are we seeing some skepticism from the Times and the Chronicle.

When we asked Steve Proctor, the Chronicle's deputy managing editor for news, why his paper didn't report on these controversies before the election, he said, "It's fair criticism to say we should have done more aggressive research into the initiative and looked further into the bill prior to the election." He also pointed out, "As something becomes a reality, you delve into it more deeply."

Uh...thanks? While you're at it, you may want to have a look at methods of putting genies back in bottles and toothpaste back into tubes.

For good overview of the current state of Prop. 71 affairs, have a look at this uncharacteristically calm and cogent San Francisco Bay Guardian article.

Am I missing something here?

In all of the post-election gum flapping about what Democrats need to do now, one consistent theme is the need to address red state cultural anxiety. The line of reasoning is that dems need to take a page from Tipper Gore's book and start criticizing the gratuitous sex and violence of today's pop-culture to prove they are in touch with red-state values without reversing long held positions. On Nov. 4 in Slate, Robert Wright wrote:

If Democrats felt a little freer to moralize, they wouldn't, of course, take over Bush's evangelical base. Still, without giving an inch on gay rights, abortion rights, school prayer, etc., they can make some inroads into the "moral" component of Republican support. But so long as they consider it their sacred duty to applaud Quentin Tarantino or to quietly endure Britney Spears, they may stay where they were this week: 140,000 votes shy in Ohio

And today, New Donkey writes:

We're the "wrong track" party when it comes to the cultural direction of the country, and we have to decide whether to bravely swim upstream out of loyalty to hip-hop and Michael Moore and Grand Theft Auto IV and Hollywood campaign contributions, or do something else, like at least expressing a little ambivalence about it all.

OK. Perhaps decrying the tawdry spectacle of American pop-culture will be the silver Sister-Soulja bullet the dems are after. They may as well go for it, and I hope it works.

But leaving aside cultural criticism's effectiveness as a tactic, I'm confused by the intended audience. It's a given that parents, particularly in red states, see Hollywood as a moral cesspool churning out ever more grotesque slabs of prurient, mind-warping crap. They may be right, but Hollywood isn't making billions of dollars each year selling its crap to itself. I just don't understand how people can watch television in rapt attention while complaining that the programs are destroying civilization. You either watch "The Swan" or you take the high road-you can't do both.

If Madison and Conner are punching each other's sweet widdle faces and cursing like sailors, are the people who make Grand Theft Auto games and Eminem records more to blame than the parents stuffing the kids' stockings with them? It's amazing to me that the electorate wants to hear politicians condemn the very tripe that they wallow in every day. If they don't like what's on TV, they should turn it off, and keep the kids away.

But I think the lesson to take away from this seeming paradox is that people don't vote their interests, so much as their hopes. They vote from the perspective of what they wish they were. So even if they are broke and morally degenerate with nary a second thought about the cultural sewage they pipe into their offspring's head, a lot of people vote for tax cutting bible thumpers catering to the interests of the people they think they ought to be.

Ahhh, catharsis...

It's vulgar, it's largely inaccurate, and it's really, really funny. Check it out:
Fuck the South.

Some good advice

In Slate today, Timothy Noah explains the shifting nomenclature of the "christian right". Apparently they don't like being called the "christian right". Well cry me a freakin' river, Pat.

These pieces of crap have been turning simple descriptors like "left" and "liberal" into pejoratives for so long that we've had to turn to ridiculous designations like "progressive" to describe anyone that doesn't cotton to their brand of corporate socialism and christian theocracy. I say, let's give it right back. It's time for someone new to set the vocabulary of the debate, dammit! We should use the term "christian right" over and over and OVER like a mantra. It should get so ubiquitous that it starts to annoy us. Every time Ralph Reed hears the words "christian right" he should get so "christian right"-eously irritated the "christian right" vein on his "christian right" forehead should throb, and his "christian right" life should be shortened by a few "christian right" minutes.

I'm having fun already.

We sure dodged that bullet!

So Al Qa Qaa is old news, right? The electorate has processed the information and decided they weren't scared enough by this catastrophe to switch horses. Fine, no need to harp on it.
I'll harp on this instead:

American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday. A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said. (emphasis mine, link via Kaus, void where prohibited)

Hmmmm, whose hands might the missile systems be in, if not "any government"? Could it be Satan terrorists? Looks to me like the "central front in the war on terror" is resulting in a lot of Thomas Friedman's "superempowered angry men" getting extra super-duper empowered!

OK, so the administration bungled the post war security situation by failing to plan for an insurgency, and they worked against the war on terrorism by failing to secure vast caches of weapons against looters, and their stated reasons for invading never materialized, but at least they aren't flip-flopping, liberal, French-looking, snobs. Man, we really dodged a bullet there with Kerry.

The New Senate

Josh Marshall seems to be hearing the opening strains of Vader's March as he looks toward the upcoming legislative session in Washington.
He links to a Fox News story discussing Sen. Arlen Specter and Bush's judicial nominees. This amazing quote appears in the story:

"As it stands today [Democrats] can block [a nominee]," said C. Boyden Gray, former legal counsel to President George H.W. Bush. But I also believe that the president and majority leader may well decide to change the rules given the elections ... The president has a very strong political support, potential support, for asking for and getting this change." (emphasis mine)

This is indeed an alarming prospect, but it has about the same chance of happening as I have of being named supreme overlord of the planet.

The current rule requires 60 votes to impose cloture on a filibuster, which given the Senate's makeup, is possible but not likely. A change in that rule requires a 2/3 majority of 67 votes-even less likely. Unfortunately for Mr. Grey and President Bush, a majority leader can't simply decide to change the rules. The Senate is still a parliamentary body, which means that its members have to vote on things to get them done, crazy as that may sound in view of the new "mandate".

I actually see this kind of talk from Republican senators and the administration as an encouraging sign. They are clearly feeling their oats after Tuesday, and have the hubris knobs cranked to 11. Senator Frist and the president may want to ask Dwight Eisenhower how easy changing the cloture rule is. In 1956 and 1957, with astronomical approval ratings, the Eisenhower administration and Minority Leader Knowland tried to achieve a change in cloture rules to avoid a filibuster by southern Democrats against civil rights legislation. Public opinion was firmly in favor of the change, the Republican delegation was solidly behind it, and the liberal wing of the democratic caucus was fairly foaming at the mouth to amend the cloture rule. And yet the southern Democrats won the day.

Certainly this outcome is largely attributable to the legislative juggernaut of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell, but it stands as a warning to those who would attempt to monkey with Senate rules. Even under the best of circumstances, it's difficult to do. And I know there aren't any LBJ-caliber legislative geniuses on the left side of the Senate aisle, but given the proven willingness of the Democrats to filibuster Bush's nominations, I'm not ready to panic.

Interesting times indeed...

If it's a curse to live in interesting times, we Americans are well and truly cursed. Consider the following: Voters in 11 states votes to ban gay marriage on Tuesday. That would be precisely 100% of the states where such initiatives were on the ballot. In Dallas, Texas, however, voters elected a lesbian sheriff. A latina lesbian, at that. In Dallas. Dallas Texas. Just when you think you've got a handle on things...

Repubs Ratify Rovism!

(How that for a Kaus-style headline?)
I think the big news in this election is that Karl Rove's strategy of pandering to the Republicans' evangelical base has worked. The top concern listed by Bush voters at exit polls was "moral issues", i.e. gay marriage:

"It was like the churches just got fed up - it was like a balloon that just burst," said Phil Burress, leader of the Cincinnati-based Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, a group that put the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot. "We had a massive turnout, and lots of people are saying it gave the president the victory."

So I guess we can expect a lot of talk from Republicans about gay marriage, family values, etc. in the next few years, as it seems to have been a winning strategy for getting nervous theocrats out to the polls. I can hardly wait.
There are some silver linings, though.
The youth vote was 54% for Kerry, up from 48% for Gore in 2000. Add in the younger voters that opted for Bush in spite of his evangelical pandering rather than because of it as well as whatever percent went for Nader or Badnarik, and it's clear that the theocratic demographic ("theographic"? Maybe not) is on it's way out. In twenty years, the electorate as a whole will likely be far more socially libertarian than it is now. Which is why the religious right is working so hard to enshrine its intolerance in the constitution.
Unfortunately, Bush's influence on the Supreme Court could still be in effect in twenty years. But if my read on the numbers is right (and it is), Senate Democrats still have the ability to filibuster against particularly noxious nominees. And I think it's safe to expect some will be fairly noxious. I can only hope the Dems in the Senate take their role in judicial confirmations more seriously than they take their role in declaring war.

Some election night thoughts...

It looks like it's going to Bush, but Ohio is still looking a little squirrelly, so I'll hold my tears for the time being.
I have one big, albeit simple, question right now, though. Where in the sweet name of Jesus are the young voters? The vaunted youth vote seems not to have materialized this year. As a recently retired member of the 18-24 demographic, I'd like to ask you youngsters just where in the bloody hell were you today? Were you not up enough on the issues to make an informed decision? Crack a damn newspaper once in a while-it's not that hard! Were you too busy with work or school to make it to the polls? Get an absentee ballot-it's really easy! Do you think that your one vote doesn't make a difference? After 2000? You can't seriously think that. Just what in the sam-hill will it take to get you to go out and vote? I'm at a loss. P-Diddy's exhortations didn't get it done, unprecedented Democratic and Republican get-out-the-vote efforts didn't get it done, clear recent evidence that each vote matters didn't get it done. What do you people need?!
I don't understand any people who don't pay attention to the political process. But apathetic young people baffle me the most. After all, they're the ones who are likely to be around to watch and feel mistakes coming to fruition.
Or maybe the 3 grey hairs on my temples are no anomalies, and I'm actually just getting old...
UPDATE:
It seems that the absolute numbers of young voters was higher than in 2000, but their percentage of the overall electorate was the same. That's a little better. Good enough? No.

Take it easy, Senator

Yesterday, John Edwards said "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again".
And brussels sprouts will taste like Pop Rocks, puppies will be even cuter, and the scourge of athletes foot will be a thing of the past!
Criminy! I understand that at the end of campaigns the rhetoric and promises heat up, but let's not get crazy.
I support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but the operative word is "research". John Kerry is a senator, not the messiah. I hope he wins, but I don't expect the lame to be healed immediately upon his inauguration.

***For the Onion's take on Edwards' hilarity, check this out.***

By the way-

If you want to help in the fight against the erosion of the wall between the things of Caesar and the things of God, please join and support Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I have.

How far we've come...

1960. Ike was finishing off his presidency, Sputnik scared the crap out of the west, the US sent her first boys into Vietnam, and John F. Kennedy had to refute assertions that he would be a papal stooge in the oval office. He was apparently convincing enough to win the election.
I've always viewed the moment when the electorate saw beyond the old canards about all Catholics taking dictation from Rome and elected Kennedy to the highest office in the land as a landmark for the republic as well as American catholicism. Now Catholic bishops in Colorado and several other states are working as hard as they can to turn back the clock:

For Archbishop Charles Chaput, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic in Colorado, there is only one way for a faithful Catholic to vote in this presidential election. Without naming names, he makes it clear: for George W. Bush and against John Kerry.

Earlier this year, Catholic Bishops said they would deny John Kerry, a Catholic, communion because of his view that abortion should remain legal.
So much for the old "Rome not trying to have a Catholic puppet in the White House" business, eh?
The super slick thing here is that these organizations enjoy 501(c)(3) tax exempt status. That's right, you're paying for their partisan advocacy. Oh, sure they manage to avoid saying anything as clear as "vote for Bush or burn", but they make it real clear. They may as well call it a sin to vote for anyone whose middle initial isn't "W". I harbor no naive notions that theses dioceses will be investigated by the IRS, but they should.

Another monster safely off the streets

The brave, heroic drug warriors in Washington DC really have something to be proud of this week. Jonathan Magbie, a quadriplegic man serving a ten day jail sentence for a first-time marijuana possession conviction, died in a DC jail last week.
Despite recommendations of probation that weren't challenged by the prosecution, the ever so appropriately named Judge Retchin sentenced him to 10 days in jail. Her rationale for the harsh sentence was that there was a gun in the car Mr. Magbie was riding in when he was caught with the pot (note the word riding, as opposed to driving). "It is just unacceptable to be riding around in a car with a loaded gun in this city", she said. Who's the last quadriplegic you remember having gone on a shooting spree, your honor? I do understand the impulse to punish those caught with guns or hanging around with people with guns, but the man can't scratch his own nose, much less aim and fire a gun.
So this guy goes to jail, where he quite predictably gets substandard medical care. Being someone for whom substandard medical care=death, he dies.
Lots of kudos to go around on this one:
I'd like to thank Judge Retchin for having the compassion to put a quadriplegic man who smoked pot to ease his pain in jail for simple possession.
I'd like to thank our brave leaders in congress, past and present, for criminalizing pot possession, for medical and recreational use.
I'd like to thank the zealots at the Office of National Drug Control Policy for helping create and maintain a political climate conducive to the creation of the terrible policies that put Mr. Magbie behind bars.
And finally I'd like to thank the incompetent functionaries in the DC jails who shuffled a very sick man (and the buck) back and forth, until he died.
Thanks for proving anew how terrible an idea this drug war is in both theory and practice.

The VP debate-

No clear winner, it would seem. Where some, like Andrew Sullivan saw a listless, work-weary Cheney, I saw calm confidence. His demeanor seemed to say "I am your better *yawn*". Edwards was relentlessly on-message and is clearly a good communicator. But He floundered at times and missed some golden opportunities. For instance, when Cheney impugned Kerry's vote on the original Gulf War, Edwards should have thrown this quote from '92 in his face:

And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq... All of a sudden you've got a battle you're fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq

(link via Sullivan)
So Edwards missed that big one, but did manage to avoid any major gaffes. He also looked much more like he was speaking to us instead of glaring at Gwen Ifill, like Cheney.
Head to Atrios for evidence of one clear, stupid, but ultimately inconsequential Cheney lie. I guess that depends on what your meaning of "met" is Mr. Vice President (ahem).
I thought him waving off further comment on the Federal Marriage Amendment was classy. It was wise to just stick to the line of "I don't necessarily agree but the President sets policy and it's my job to have his back". The more conspiratorial among us might say that this and Cheney's public disavowal of the amendment a few weeks ago are merely attempts to put to rest the argument that Cheney's the President's puppet master. I don't know-you decide.
All in all, pretty even, I think.
Just go to Andrew Sullivan, instapundit, dailykos, TPM, Polipundit, and any of the cable yap-shows to see the widely diverging opinions about who massacred whom and whose pants are more blazingly on fire. Forget instant polls, you can see it was a draw from a quick skip around these various opinion outlets. It's like a boxing match with one judge calling X the victor twelve rounds to none, another calling Y the victor by the same margin, and the other calling it a draw.

From the Republicans against Bush file...

Andrew Sullivan links today to a sharp piece by Marshall Wittmann, former aide to John McCain and self-described "bull moose".
***Just as an aside, can I take a moment to mention just how much I hate it when people wrap themselves in the mantle of long-gone political movements, like the Bull Moose party? I hate it a lot, thanks.***
Silly nomenclature aside, the article is a razor-sharp critique of the Bush administration from the right. Here is a particularly stinging section:

Everything could have changed in the aftermath of 9/11. For a while it appeared that it had. Bush displayed moral clarity and leadership worthy of national greatness. However, it was short-lived. It turned out that Bush would be more of a Tom DeLay than a Winston Churchill. On the domestic political front, there was a brief interregnum of national unity. Bush rhetorically sought to bring together the nation in the fight against the terrorist enemy. However, it was soon clear that no political imagination would be employed to forge a new politics. Rather than challenging Americans to enlist in national service, the administration told them to "go shopping." Rather than asking more of those who have more, the administration refused to explore a progressive way to finance the war against terror. In fact, before long, the president returned to his mantra of permanent elimination of the "death tax." Yes, Virginia, there is a war going on, but the donors must be reimbursed! (Emphasis added)

Mr Wittmann, clearly a fan of historical allusions, makes an important point: This administration has never acted like they were fiscally serious about the military task at hand. They have neither made nor asked for any of the sacrifices necessary in a vital war effort. If you agree with the efforts in Afghanistan and/or Iraq, it's damn near impossible to justify the exploding domestic spending and massive tax cuts undertaken by this administration while these missions are underway. I can almost understand someone who disagreed with the decision to invade Iraq, as I did, saying "screw it-spend the money at home". But I can't understand those who engineered the invasion doing nothing to save the money necessary to do it right. It doesn't make any sense even within their own rationale.
I'm not saying they should have instituted pantyhose and gasoline rations, but maybe forgoing another round of tax cuts to better finance "the inescapable calling of our generation" would have been a good idea.
9/11 may have been a Pearl Harbor for our time-it's a shame Bush is no FDR.