The Punditburo

Dead on the Fourth of July

2008-07-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

Jesse Helms is dead.
He was the vilest politicians in America, which would put him high in the running for vilest pol in the entire world.
Supposedly a foe of big government, Helms was in fact nothing of the sort. From Mother Jones.

A former bank lobbyist whose fundraising machine has been fined for breaking federal campaign laws, Helms favors a big-spending, activist government--one that aids those in economic power. He voted to bail out the savings and loan industry, for example, and has seldom met a big-ticket missile system he didn't like. By contrast, he has voted to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families (see "On the record," below).

From the New York Times Obit

He fought bitterly against federal financing for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from “unnatural” and “disgusting” homosexual behavior.

“Nothing positive happened to Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said, “and nothing positive is likely to happen to America if our people succumb to the drumbeats of support for the homosexual lifestyle.”

In his last year in the Senate, he decided to support AIDS measures in Africa, where heterosexual transmission of the disease is most common.[Italics mine]

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)

In short, his view on AIDs was more or less genocidal.
Helm's hatred applied not merely to gays, but to blacks also. Helms was cery much a segregationist.

More recently, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers," Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I think." (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95)

From The Plank

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into [African-American Illinois Senator Carol] Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." He then proceeded to sing the song about "the good life" during slavery to Mosely-Braun.

Lastly, there is Helms connection to monstrous regimes all over the world.

Finally, Helms' strong if sometimes shadowy support for violent, anti-democratic forces abroad, from South Africa to El Salvador, might have given media outlets further pause in describing him as a mere conservative; few probed his ties to groups that would more accurately be described as fascist. One exception was an editorial in the Boston Globe (8/23/01): "Helms' role in supporting foreign thugs such as Roberto D'Aubuisson, the cashiered Salvadoran major who ran death squads responsible for savage political murders, did lasting harm to America's good name. In South Africa, Argentina, Mozambique, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Helms cooperated with racists and fascists who have nothing in common with the ideals of American democracy."

From Mother Jones.

Since Helms won election to the Senate, no "bums" have felt his rage as fiercely as citizens of poor nations. Over the years, the senator has proposed hundreds of measures to slash foreign aid, overthrow governments he doesn't like, and block administration policies. As the new chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has made it clear that his first priority is to enact deeper cuts to a foreign aid budget already slashed nearly 30 percent in the past decade.

"The fact is that the American people are sick and tired of this whole foreign aid concept anyhow," Helms said last year. "I find myself wishing that somehow we could put it on a national ballot and say: 'What do you think of this?'"

Those cuts will hit hardest in the Third World, where Helms has long been a staunch ally of right-wing military rulers like Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Raoul Cedras in Haiti, and Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador. Confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. "All I know," he replied, "is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."

Helms has long maintained an extensive network of contacts in Latin America that serves as a sort of shadow State Department. "For years he had a cadre of young people who were very well-connected," says a committee staff member. "You could have set them down in any South American junta and they would have been right at home."

The problem, say those familiar with his network, is that the information it provides is one-sided. "When I bring people to his office to tell him what we've seen, we aren't even allowed in," says Gail Phares, who leads delegations to Central America through Witness for Peace. "I remember when one delegation managed to get in and told his staff what they'd seen and heard in Nicaragua about the contras killing doctors and nurses and children, their response was, 'Well, they're just Communists--they deserve to die.'"

Besides his racism, his bigotry about homosexuals, his satanic foreign aid policy, Helms there is so much more villainy Helms has been responsible for. Good-bye, wanker.
(Where not otherwise specified, the source for the quotes is Fair)

Happy Independence Day

2008-07-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

"It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans." -

-Eric J. Hobsbawm

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

-Howard Zinn

(from Informed Comment)
A reactionary says "my country, right or wrong", a progressive says "dissent is patriotic".
I don't think that their is a reason to be loyal to an an imagined entity at all.
Salman Rushdie once said that nation is the third greatest myth of our existence, following money and God.

sick sick sick

2008-07-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

What's been making the blog rounds lately is the story of a tactic I never thought would happen: Republican operatives are pretending to be disgruntled hillary supporters, and they're setting up a network of websites to tear down the Obama campaign. Apparently opposing him on policy would be too difficult.
The ringleader website/blog is called PUMA PAC and from research at TPM
it appears that a ring of about 50 to 100 bloggers are setting up a number of accounts to create the impression that all 18 million Hillary supporters won't vote for Obama, Hillary must be the nominee. How that accommodates the 18+ million who voted for Obama, I don't know, but their posts are quite frightening. You take four parts conservative rage, three parts bullshit, and one part random Democrats who appear on CNN who don't unwaveringly support Hillary Clinton (still), and you get PUMA PAC .
In short, this is the sleaziest, most disgusting pile of trash I have ever seen in a long time. gah.

Waterboarding is torture

2008-07-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

We all know this, but if anyone needs a real, live reason why waterboarding is a horrible interrogation tactic, Christopher Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded. It's not a fun experience.

Distraction

2008-07-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Via Matt Yglesias, Andrew Bacevich thinks that endless debating about the surge is distracting us from far more important issues.

Bush's harshest critics, left liberals as well as traditional conservatives, have repeatedly called attention to this record. That criticism has yet to garner mainstream political traction. Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of "global leadership" are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century.

While some of our wiser intellects argue these questions, the seem limited to New York Review of Books intellectuals. I'll try to write about these questions in later posts. I personally have mixed feeling on some of these questions, however, I very much feel the idea of a "global war on terror" is deeply misguided.
Many other issues are off the table as we more and more simply argue about whether the war is working. Liberals have been so distracted by these issues that we've nearly forgotten what else is wrong in American society: the widening wealth disparity, the growing prison populations, the "war on drugs" etc.

The BBQ vote

2008-07-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

It seems like the American people enjoy having a beer more than going to a French bistro and sipping wine. So, the perennial poll question is "who would you rather have a beer with?" In this case, the question is barbecue, and in this case, Obama wins.

It's not a huge margin, but if we get the backyard cookout vote, I'd say that's one less obstacle to overcome in Obama's quest for the presidency.

Charlie Black Gets it Right

2008-07-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

It appears our political culture has a deep revulsion when pols and their advisors make perfectly accurate claims about the American electorate. Suggest that Americans have an over-attachment to fire-arms and religion, or that some might be less likely to vote for a black man, and you will be attacked by the chattering classes as an elitist.
I think Charlie Black is a sleaze-ball for the lobbying he's done for foreign strong-men. Still, when Black states that a terrorist attack would be a huge advantage, is he hoping for an attack? I doubt it, that's merely his analysis, and it may well be right. Barron YoungSmith:

Is Charlie Black right? A few writers are now saying the idea that terrorist attacks help Republicans is merely a social construct.

I'm not so sure. While it's logically nonsense to think a terrorist attack would help Republicans, there are powerful neurobiological reasons it might.

As John Judis explained in detail last August, there's actually a good deal of scientific evidence showing people become more tribal and conservative--more attracted to grand, apocalyptic rhetoric about good and evil--after they've been reminded of their own mortality. And not just in the abstract. One experiment in the run-up to the 2004 election showed test subjects were 400% more likely to support President Bush after being asked to contemplate what would happen when they die--or hearing someone invoke 9/11. Subjects also became more intolerant of out groups, like gays and people who seem un-American.

Of course, the political landscape is a lot different now than it was in 2004. Democratic critiques of Republican foreign policy are more developed and more widespread. If we're attacked, it's possible the left would provide a counternarrative that channels the us vs. them-type fear and recrimination against Republicans, blaming them for distracting us from fighting al Qaeda; not securing ports; whatever. And Barack Obama, now the left's standard-bearer, might figure out a way to channel the tribal desire for transcendence and unity more effectively than John McCain.

Nevertheless, scientific evidence and political precedent both suggest Charlie Black's hypothesis is reasonable. If San Francisco were nuked, it would drastically alter our psychology and knock issues like health care off the table. Watching their countrymen die, voters would almost certainly give McCain's campaign--with its obsessive focus on foreign affairs and a transcendent war against Islamic fascism--a second look.

I don't know how a terrorist attack would play. Barack Obama is certainly a more talented politician than John McCain, perhaps he could turn it too his advantage. But the idea that it's merely Rovian propaganda that a terrorist attack would help the Republicans is untrue. A threat will almost always help the party of authoritarianism, whoever that is. There is good evidence that the apartment bombing the heralded Vladimir Putin's rise were staged by Russian intelligence for this very reason.

Wes Clark and Swift-boating

2008-07-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Wes Clark is sure getting pilloried in the press for stating the obvious.
The McCain campaign and the cable channels have evidently decided that stating that being shot down doesn't qualify you to be the president (obvious) is tantamount to spitting on a mans military service. Watch the video, and you will see that the talking-heads are shrill, uncivil, and oddly personal in their attacks. There is swift-boating going on here, but it's of Clark, not McCain.

Oh, the huge (ego of) Hannity

2008-06-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the Colbert Report right now, and he just brought up Hannity's ultra-patriotism. I think the phrase was "America is the greatest best country god has given us on the face of the earth." He used iterations of that phrase a number of times. In response, I offer Mr. Hannity a super quote about America of my own.

"The best country in the world, they say. That may be, I haven't really lived anywhere else. But its not good enough as far as I'm concerned."

-Ella Baker

Liberals aren't about hating America, Mr. Hannity, we're about making it better. It's assholes like you that keep America from becoming/staying great.

Lock, Stock, and a Smokin' Supreme Court Decision

2008-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

It is incredible how much controversy a single, badly constructed sentence can create. Take, for example, the Second Amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Just what the hell does that mean? Does it mean that the people have a right to bear arms individually? Or does it simply mean that the states may establish militias?
According to the majority of the Supreme Court, the first part ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State") doesn't mean anything, it just adds flavor. This seems unlikely.
The amendment was written when every capable man was expected to be a member of a militia, and furnish his own fire-arms. This is why the amendment says "the people" rather than "militia members", the two were then interchangeable. What the amendment states is that a man should have a gun so that he may be a member of a state militia.
One question is, why are we parsing these words, the whole thing seems pretty archaic. We no longer have universal militias, and we don't expect a man to bring his own gun to be in a state militia. Things were different then... for example, can you imagine a concealed fire-arm in the time of the founding fathers?
So, I think the Supreme Court majority is wrong. The Constitution does not permit an individual right to bear arms, not really. But the decision doesn't really bother me. Mark Kleiman's full post on the subject:

Now that the Supreme Court has struck down the DC gun ban, how much should we expect the Washington homicide rate to go up as a result?

Zero.

There's simply no evidence that keeping guns out of the hands of those currently eligible to own them under Federal law (adults with no felony convictions, no domestic-violence misdemeanors or restraining orders, and no history of involuntary commitment for mental illness) reduces the level of criminal violence. Nor is there evidence that allowing anyone who can pass a background check and a gun-safety course to carry a concealed weapon increases the level of criminal violence. All that matters is keeping guns away from people who demonstrably shouldn't have them. Present law does that, but the gun lobby has done many things to make that law impossible to enforce.

With any luck, taking the "gun confiscation" card out of the political pack might actually reduce the fervor of the opposition the NRA can whip up to sensible measures such as requiring background checks for gun sales by private individuals (the current rule that requires them only for purchases from gun dealers), computerizing data on which dealers are selling the guns that get used in crimes, and developing and deploying technology that would allow police to identify, from a bullet or a shell casing found at a crime scene, when, to whom, and by whom the gun that produced that metal was lawfully transferred.

That won't satisfy the people who think that guns are icky and who want to inconvenience gun owners as much as possible. But that was never a legitimate object of public policy.

Footnote Even if local gun ordinances were useful, the Supreme Court decision leaves most of them in place. The DC ban made it a crime to have an unregistered firearm, and prohibited registration of any handgun. A DC resident could have a long gun at home, but only disassembled or with a trigger lock, and there was no exception for self-defense, though there were other enumerated exceptions: if the text were read literally, it was a crime under DC law to remove the trigger lock from your rifle to confront a home invader. No, I'm not making this up, though both the District and Justice Breyer assert that the statute should be read to include the self-defense exception that its text omits.

Justice Scalia went out of his way to say that anything less drastic might well pass muster.

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Justice Breyer, in his closely-reasoned dissent, purports to carry out an "interest-balancing" test between the citizen's interest in self-defense and the District's interest in crime control. But nowhere in his account does he cite a single study showing that a local ban on private handgun ownership actually prevents crime, for the excellent reason that no such study exists.

Basically, the problem is not that we don't have enough gun control, merely that it is not well-enforced. This seems right to me. the only suspect part is the idea that this ruling will defuse the gun issue for the next election. This could be partly true, at least of the more moderate gun enthusiasts. On the other hand, there are lots of people in America who think the UN is going to go door to door to confiscate guns. To loons like these, the ruling probably won't have an effect.
I have previously made clear my antipathy toward the conservatives of the court, but I'm not too angry about this call. They aren't the only ones who think that the constitution provides an individual right to bear arms. Barack Obama, a constitutional law professor before he was a senator, has said the same thing, and qualified it by saying this right must be regulated for reasons of safety. There's nothing in the Supreme Court's majority opinion that would contradict this position.

Debunking Creationism

2008-06-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Patrick Julius has an opinion in the Ann Arbor News.

This is in response to Scott Nelson's June 13 Other Voices essay on evolution and creationism, which presented a very misleading view on the subject.

First and foremost: Evolution (more properly known as the Modern Synthesis) is a scientific theory so firmly established and so foundational to the life sciences that it is absolutely accepted by the whole of the mainstream scientific community. That National Academy of Sciences which Nelson keeps bashing? That's a professional organization representing thousands of the most prestigious scientists in the United States. Nelson appears to have absolutely no scientific credentials, and yet purports to tell the National Academy of Sciences what is and is not scientific.

And yes, evolution is as well-established as the theory of gravity; actually, a good bit better established, because the theory of gravity as we know it currently runs into problems at very small (subatomic) and very large (galactic) scales. Evolution as far as we can tell runs into no serious roadblocks, anywhere, ever. Everything it has ever been asked to explain, it has - and more.

Read the whole thing.

Myths of Porkbusting

2008-06-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

John McCain has a cute computer game called Pork Invaders, which is space invaders rip-off (did I mention that came out in '78? John McCain is old!)
Listening to Republicans, they seem to think they are massively unpopular because they failed to reign in government spend. It's amazing how they manage to completely ignore the Iraq war in this narrative, and completely overlook their own culpability in the abuses of the Bush administration? What was their problem? Not cutting enough programs.
Could it be that this explanation is popular because it allows them to ignore that their movement is intellectually bankrupt, and worse, is dedicated to defending the corrupt, powerful pols who come from its ranks?
McCain insists he's different from Bush because he will cut "pork-barrel spending"... indeed, he says this will enable him to finance his own (massive) tax-cuts. Jon Chait shows how this is bullshit.

Actually, McCain is following the pattern of not just Bush but every Republican president since Ronald Reagan. Phase One is to enact tax cuts and promise that they'll cause revenues to rise, or will cause revenues to fall (leading to spending cuts), or somehow both at once, so, either way, there's no possibility that it will lead to deficits. Phase Two is deficits. Phase Three is to blame the deficits on big-spending congressional fat cats and to issue increasingly strident threats to cut expenditures, without going so far as to identify actual programs to cut.

One of the tropes of this phase is railing against the evils of pork-barrel spending. President Bush's position is that earmarks are really bad. ("The time has come to end this practice [of congressional earmarking]," he urges. "So let us work together to reform the budget process, expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress.") McCain's position is that earmarks are really, really bad. He likes to hold up for ridicule a federal program to study bear DNA, and he has taken to using the same language to taunt congressional appropriators ("I'm their worst nightmare") that he otherwise reserves for Hamas.
...
McCain's crusade against domestic spending is a wild misdiagnosis of the problem. Most conservatives believe their main error has been to deviate from the true small-government faith, and McCain has embraced the narrative. "We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative," he told the Republican group GOPAC. "Then we lavished money, in a time of war, on thousands of projects of dubious, if any, public value."

The audience is meant to take this to mean that the size of government has expanded under Bush largely because of pork-barrel spending or other domestic outlays. In fact, the growth of government under Bush is mostly due to higher spending on defense and homeland security, which have grown from 3.6 percent of the economy to 5.6 percent. Domestic discretionary spending (that is, programs other than entitlements) has fallen as a share of GDP, from 3.1 percent to 2.8 percent. (These numbers come from Richard Kogan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

McCain is promising to cut taxes by $300 billion per year on top of the Bush tax cuts, which he would make permanent. In addition to this, he promises to balance the budget in his first term. When asked how he could possibly pull this off, McCain has asserted that he could eliminate all earmark spending, saving $100 billion per year.
I don't find this explanation persuasive. The first point I'd make is that $100 billion is, in fact, less than $300 billion. The second point I'd make is that McCain won't even cut $100 billion, or anywhere close. By conventional measures, earmarks only account for $18 billion per year. McCain gets his number by employing an unusually broad definition of what constitutes an earmark. McCain's definition includes things like aid to Israel and housing for members of the military that are not "pork" as the term is understood. When asked if he would eliminate those programs, he replied, "Of course not."

So we're left with a pot of money closer to $18 billion. And McCain surely won't eliminate even that. He has frequently found himself campaigning at places funded by federal earmarks and beloved by the local citizenry, and he keeps inadvertently showing how impossible it is to fulfill his promises. Last month, McCain visited a hospital in Pennsylvania and met an ovarian cancer patient who's being treated with a clinical trial program funded by an earmark. Asked if he would eliminate that program, he replied, "It's the process I object to. ... When you earmark in the middle of the night, you have no budgetary constraints."

Likewise, when pressed by NPR's Robert Siegel, McCain insisted he supports programs so long as "there's a need" and only wants "to do it through an open, honest, transparent process that is proceeded by hearings and authorization." A perfectly sound position. But, if you're merely shifting spending from earmarks to the regular budget process, then you're not saving any money.

In other words, McCain's budget is pure flim-flam.

Rove: Dipshit?

2008-06-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

From the mouth of Karl Rove:

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Think about it: Karl is considered an political mastermind.
What country club? Where? Is it the same as Karl Rove's club? I'd be willing to bet not.
Here's a list of responses.
From what I understand of the Republican critique of Obama, it is that he is a Communist, Muslim, black-christian who hangs out at countries clubs.

Oil!

2008-06-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

The most usual response to expensive oil is to blame this on nefarious speculators. This might be political expedient. As Paul Krugman writes

Mr. McCain tried to touch all the bases. He talked about conservation. He denounced the evils of speculation: “While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end.” A weird aspect of the current energy debate, incidentally, is the fact that many of the same market-worshipping conservatives who first denied that there was a dot-com bubble, then denied that there was a housing bubble, are utterly convinced that nasty speculators are responsible for high oil prices.

Now Obama is adopting the same message.
The only problem with this is that there's no evidence that there's an oil bubble, and that rising oil prices are probably very much demand-based.
So, how can we explain this in a way that might not be politically self-defeating? Peter Dorman has a cogent economic explanation that just might be on the right track.

So what’s the alternative? The problem is not that oil is expensive, since burning it is truly costly for the human race, whether we pay the monetary price or not. The problem is that the money ends up in the hands of governments and oil companies that get rich simply because they’ve captured the resource. In economic terms, it’s the problem of rents: vast sums of money are being transferred from us, the consumers, to those who control a commodity in high demand but limited supply. And the solution is to get the money back. This is another reason why we need a cap-and-rebate plan for carbon. Put a tight cap on carbon fuels. Auction all the permits. Give the money back to the people. By drastically lowering demand we also put a lid on the price of oil at the wellhead. In other words, rather than paying lots of money to Exxon and the Saudi royal family, we pay it back to ourselves. Either way, oil will be expensive, because it has to be. But the solution is to get the money back, so we can protect our standard of living in other ways that won’t imperil the planet.

More on Telecom Immunity

2008-06-23T19:22:00.000-07:00

I don't care whether Americans make money suing telecoms. I think this is in the competence of a court to judge, but don't think it's terribly important. The telecoms were not the instigators of what happened (see Kevin Drum writes about why he symapthizes with the telecoms).
What is important is the administration got its way, preventing the disclosures these cases would bring. That is unfortunate. Telecoms are merely scapegoats, the people responsible for what happened have already been let completely off the hook. Josh Patashnik, like Kevin Drum, sympathizes with the telecoms.

It's worth emphasizing, though, that there was an ideal solution to this problem: the Specter–Whitehouse substitution amendment, which would have allowed lawsuits to go forward but would have substituted the United States as a defendant, letting the telecoms off the hook. But the administration, Senate Republicans, and a handful of Democrats conspired to kill this amendment. The primary reason the Bush administration wants immunity isn't to help out its telecom friends, but to prevent the details of the wiretapping program from being scrutinized--even confidentally--in a lawsuit, regardless of who the defendant is.

I don't really sympathize with the telecoms, but obviously they're not the really wrong-doers. The government giving them immunity was bad, but the real scandal is the government giving itself immunity.
You may recall Republican complaining the telecoms were ungrateful, in that they didn't give the Republicans enough contributions to compensate for what Republicans were doing on their behalf.It makes sense to me. Big businesses hedge their bets, and the telecoms were probably in no mood to be grateful, having been put in this uncomfortable position by the administration in the first place.
They knew the Republican would vote for immunity, simply to cover for the administration. If I were running one of those companies, I'd concentrate on the Democrats too.

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

"Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time."
-George Carlin
George Carlin is dead. We're going to miss George Carlin and his special brand of humor.
By our works shall you know us:
Religion is Bullshit (this may be my favorite)
The Ten Commandments
On America
There's lots more, too, but if you are interested, those are easy enough to find on Youtube (in fact, just check the side of these two).

Pre-9/11 Mentality

2008-06-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama, very much rightly, in my view, said that domestic terrorism seems to think domestic terrorism should be treated as a crime. The approach of the Bush administration is not compatible with the rule of law. Using the first bombing of the World Trade Center as an example, Obama said that terrorism can be successfully prosecuted in civilian courts, without recourse to Bush's Dirty War tactics.
The Republicans reply was characteristically flim-flam. Jon Chait:

And so, when Obama let pass from his lips a reference to trying terrorists in court, McCain's campaign pounced. Foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann warned, "Obama holds up the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the tragedy of September eleventh." McCain's blog scoffed, "It's hardly surprising that a lawyer would think that the war on terror would be fought more effectively by lawyers than by the United States Marine Corps."

It doesn't matter that Obama never said, or even implied, that legal prosecution should be the sole method of preventing terrorism. The fact that he even mentioned prosecution apparently proves that he has what McCain's campaign called a "September 10th mindset."

Yet some logical flaws with this analysis present themselves. (And yes, I realize that the mere fact that I would intellectualize this issue, rather than understanding it in my gut, proves that I too have a September 10th mindset.) First, terrorists often operate in our country, or in friendly countries, which makes military action against them tricky. McCain (through his campaign blog) assailed Obama for favoring "prosecutors rather than predators." But, when the terrorists are holed up in New York City, as was the case with the 1993 bombers Obama referred to, simply arresting them strikes me as more efficient than leveling their apartment with a drone-fired missile.

Second, when terrorists can be found outside the reach of law enforcement, Obama has explicitly proposed to strike them militarily. Last summer, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had actionable intelligence about high-level Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. It planned a snatch-and-grab operation but cancelled at the last minute. In a speech the following month, Obama called this "a terrible mistake," and promised, "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." McCain criticized Obama for this, too, saying he "once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan."

Sellout on Telecom Immunity

2008-06-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

If you recall, the issue of telecom immunity was the first War on Terror related issue that the Democratic congress stood up to Bush on. Alas, the Democratic congress has caved to the our lame-duck president and his lackeys. From the Obsidian Wings:

[T]he telcos are getting immunity and everyone knows it. They literally only have to show that the Bush administration sent them a letter. That’s it. Show the letter, and you’re immune — no discovery, no nuthin'. (As I've said, I don’t care that much about punishing telcos, I care about generating information through discovery).

However, instead of just admitting that they caved, the Dem leaders are pretending like they’ve instituted tough new standards by requiring a district court to make the final decision. Thus, they’re essentially doing two things: (1) lying about what they’re doing, and (2) shifting blame to a politically unaccountable branch of government.

So... telecoms are given immunity for having broken the law, just so long as they can prove the executive of the US asked them to do it. In short, corporate lawbreaking is ok, so long as it is in the service of the imperial executive.
What is most disheartening is how successfully the President has shielded the massive spying program from being brought to light. It couldn't have been done without Bush's Republican henchmen and the support from much of the "opposition" party. More from the Obsidian Wings:

To recap: there are some minor fixes to the FISA law that everyone agrees should be adopted. The sticking point is whether companies that helped the government engage in surveillance that broke the law should receive immunity for their actions. It seems to me clear that the answer is 'no'. First, people who break the law should be held accountable. Second, we're not talking about some private citizen who might understandably have been inclined to give the government the benefit of the doubt on questions of law, but about large companies with serious legal departments. Third, since our government does not seem inclined to tell us exactly what it has been doing, discovery in these lawsuits has been about the only way in which we have found out anything at all. Shutting down these lawsuits might prevent us from ever finding out.

Most importantly, though, when the government asks someone to break the law, they hold a lot of the cards: the prestige of the Presidency, the power to exclude companies from federal contracts, and so on. Just about the only reason someone might have to say no, other than conscience, is the fear of legal liability. By immunizing these companies, we make it much more likely that the next time some President who thinks he has dictatorial powers asks a company to break the law, it will do so. And that's just wrong.

Why has Democratic leadership sided with the Whitehouse? I can only speculate. Is it telecom money? Both parties are easily influenced by money, so perhaps, the telecoms, seeing the way the wind is blowing, hedged their bets. Perhaps it was sheer political cowardice... the Dems still afraid of looking weak on the question of terror. Or maybe, the Democratic leadership has been complicit in Bush's spying program, and believes that the courts bringing out such information would be politically damaging. Whatever the reason, this "compromise" is shameful.
One of my greatest hopes for the Obama administration is that they will be able to investigate the abuses of the last four years (unlike a McCain administration, which would sweep all of this under the rug). Unfortunately, Obama supported the cave-in on this issue. This does not bode well.

The Ramen Review

2008-06-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

My friend has a blog where she reviews Ramen noodles (as Dave Berry says, I swear I am not making this up). Worth checking out hear.

the gays and their marriage

2008-06-17T04:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone already knows that gays can get married in California, since at least a few hours ago. I may be a straight man, but this makes me so happy, and proud for our country that we've come at least this far. I remember when my home state of Kentucky banned gay marriage, the next day I saw a gay friend looking like some of the spark of life had been taken out of him. I mean, you try to be cheerful when your fellow citizens tell you that you're not allowed to legally express your particular love for someone else. Imagine if we next banned infertile women from being married, or fat people, or even just people who engage in heterosexual S&M with their spouses or partners?
Marriage is an important partnership to a lot of people, and one thing that will make that partnership more meaningful to me - if I ever get married - is if everyone can share in that experience, not just straight people.

Veepstakes

2008-06-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

Wes Clark on MSNBC.
My friend made the case to me that Wes Clark would be a good VP candidate. I think this may be right. Clark can't run a campaign, but he seems like a good surrogate. Jim Webb has the same advantage. They are good choices, not because they balance out Obama's lack of "toughness", but because either of them would help challenge the Republican narrative on national security. Webb showed he could do this in his thumping response to Bush's State of Union, though he may be a chancy pick: usually, people go for someone who won't rock the boat.

More on US Beef

2008-06-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman writes about implications of the South Korean reaction. I recommend the op-ed.
He basically argues that free-market ideology and crony capitalism has led to a deplorable state at the FDA,which in part led to the crisis.

Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist. And the department’s response to the crisis — which amounted to consistently downplaying the threat and rejecting calls for more extensive testing — seemed driven by the industry’s agenda.

One amazing decision came in 2004, when a Kansas producer asked for permission to test its own cows, so that it could resume exports to Japan. You might have expected the Bush administration to applaud this example of self-regulation. But permission was denied, because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit.

When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.

Eventually, the department did expand its testing, and at this point most countries that initially banned U.S. beef have allowed it back into their markets. But the South Koreans still don’t trust us. And while some of that distrust may be irrational — the beef issue has become entangled with questions of Korean national pride, which has been insulted by clumsy American diplomacy — it’s hard to blame them.

The ironic thing is that the Agriculture Department’s deference to the beef industry actually ended up backfiring: because potential foreign buyers didn’t trust our safety measures, beef producers spent years excluded from their most important overseas markets.

To go even deeper into the problems our world food system, might I recommend this article from the New Yorker as a start.

Obamanomics

2008-06-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

I've probably given the most thought to the foreign-policy views of the two presumptive nominees, but the nature of our terrible economy seems to dictate that the economy will play just as big a role, which is good news for Obama and the Democrats (actually, at this point practically any issue is good news for Obama and the Democrats).
At any rate, McCain claims that he will offset tax-cuts with spending cuts, something that Republicans have claimed every election for a long time. He talks a good game about cutting earmarks from the budget, but the truth is they only amount to $20 billion (which will not be easy to get rid of), while his tax-cuts amount to $300 billion. One gets a better idea of his plan from the fact he hired Phil Gramm, who played a role in paving the way for the foreclosure crisis.
Obama's economics seem pretty much center left, even Clintonian. This is evidenced by his recent appointment of Jason Furman. This article in the New York Review of Books talks pretty extensively about Obamanomics.
As this post argues, I wouldn't worry to much about Obama's economic centrism.
One thing I wish Obama would talk more about is regulating financial markets. It's good politics (Obama can further tie McCain to failed Republican policies by pointing out Phil "Foreclosure" Gramm's role in the financial crisis) and good policy: it can be done without to much more spending, and could help head-off future financial crises.

I'm Voting Republican!

2008-06-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's the cool thing to do. How about you?

http://www.imvotingrepublican.com/

Cheney in a McCain Administration? "Hell Yeah!"

2008-06-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

From the Politico

n an interview he gave to the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in 2006 for Hayes’ biography, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President,” McCain said: “I will strongly assert to you that he has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.”

Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post.

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

This is why I'm not particularly worried about very many Dems who back Clinton defecting to John McCain. Though McCain sells himself as a different kind of conservative, but he is ready to put Cheney in his administration. It is hard for me to believe that anyone voting for McCain over Obama out of spite had much loyalty to progressive causes anyway.
In what capacity might Cheney serve? He was Bush I's Secretary of Defense. Might he reprise this role, or serve as National Security Advisor? Perhaps.