Everything You Know Is Wrong

I'll take "Adam's Apple" for... um.... nothing?!?

2006-07-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't allow my personal problems get in the way of blogging but there you have it...

A diary on DKOS pointed me to this, Ann Coulter showing up to stump for Bob Beauprez and the event netted - ZERO - dollars for the Beauprez campaign (from ColoradoConfidential):

“We found out the hard way,” says former Beauprez for Gov campaign chief Steve Truebner, “that Ann Coulter is not a major draw for donors.”

Nary a one showed up, according to Truebner, leaving Ms. Coulter and Mrs. Beauprez -- the candidate himself was in D.C., working his day job -- to hobnob in the Paramount’s 2d-floor lobby with about a dozen earnest but penniless campaign volunteers, plus some KOA listeners who’d won free tickets to the Coulter show from the station and just happened to be in the vicinity.

Smiles were flashed, photos were taken, and cheese/crackers were eaten, just like at a real campaign event. The only things missing were the $1,000 checks.

The flag survives a desecration attempt and so, time to move on...

2006-06-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

Despite attempts by unamerican radicals to desecrate our flag and wipe their collective fat ass with the constitution, stupidity failed by a single vote, keeping America safe from drooling fools.

Unfortunately, a flag-burning amendment is not the last refuge of these scoundrels and we should expect a long summer of base pandering presented meretriciously with a straight face.

The good news is, the Dems have the upper hand if they play smart. The GOP is playing the politics of desperation card and the country is fed up. More, later...

Not catching up, not keeping up

2006-06-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

In my blogging experience (since the halcyon days of 2002), it's sometimes Feast or Famine. I returned yesterday from self-imposed famine in Longmont only to find I had nothing to say. Today, there's too much to say and so I'll try and fit it all in.
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Although the latest poll has Bill Ritter up by 5 points, the race is far from a slam dunk for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter.

ProgressNowAction has put up a wonderful site - BothWaysBob.org - illustrating what a wretched liar the Republicans are backing for governor.
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News on another local race: Jay Fawcett (CO CD-5) picked up an endorsement from yet another US miltary general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry H. (Hugh) Shelton.

Jay's exemplary military record makes him a strong candidate in a heavilly red district. It's an uphill battle even though none of the candidates facing the primary are very strong. A Fawcett victory would be a minor miracle and a huge boost for the Democratic party.

More on this later....

Call Allard and ask him, "WTF were you thinking?!?"

2006-06-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

One would think Wayne Allard (whose constituency includes one of the largest US Army bases in the country, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, and several other military bases) would have voted soundly against the "amnesty for insurgents" bill that was soundly defeated in the US Seanate Tuesday. Then again, Allard is a lame-duck and not seeking re-election, so I suppose he believes it doesn't matter how he votes.

Any service person in this area who meets Allard should spit in Allard's sorry face, the way Allard spit on the grave of heroes. Furthermore, El Paso county Dems need to make some noise regarding this vote and use it as a heavy cudgel on whomever Colorado Republicans pick to succeed sorry-ass Allard. As Digby says (and you need to read the entire post):

We should... ram it down the Republican party's throats. Here we had a day when two poor American schmucks were just found tortured and killed. We have no moral authority left with which to even condemn the torture --- after all, we've made torture cool again. And yet 19 Republican senators voted for amnesty for their killers. I ask you to contemplate what the Republicans would do to us if the shoe were reversed --- regardless of the merits. You don't have to think very long do you?

Politically, this should have been Dubai all over again, a media firestorm, forcing the Republican rank and file to see what was being done in their name. Rove is going to run on the patriot card again, calling us cowards for wantin' to cun 'n run, and here they are proposing to forgive the killers of 2500 Americans while we still have 140,000 more of them sitting over there like sitting ducks for no good reason. We should hang this around the Republican Party's neck and light it afire.

On the post is a very angry letter from a soldier in Iraq (one I hope is based out of Ft. Carson) and it spells out trenchantly just one more example of how BushCo has mismanaged this war.

OOOOOOH, MANNNNN!!!

2006-06-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

Firedoglake has nore than I can say:

Yee Haw! The Codpiece is back with a vengeance! And guess who can’t keep his grubby little hands away from it. You guessed it: Joe Klein.

Via John Amato:
"I was up there in the cockpit of that airplane coming into Baghdad," the President told the press corps assembled on the White House lawn after his dash into and out of the war zone last week. "It was an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling." In fact, George W. Bush’s body language—let’s call it the full jaunty—was reminiscent of his last, infamous cockpit trip, onto the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to announce the "end" of major combat operations in Iraq, beneath a mission accomplished sign. His public language is more cautious than it used to be, but he seemed downright frothy in a private session with the congressional leadership after his press conference.

He called the new Iraqi Defense Minister an "interesting cat" and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, "a dangerous dude." Bush had reason, finally, to strut. The al-Zarqawi raid had netted valuable intelligence data that were enabling U.S. and Iraqi forces to roll up al-Qaeda cells—the best haul since the capture of Saddam Hussein, which made it possible for U.S. forces to disable much of the dictator’s inner circle in early 2004. What’s more, the first elected Iraqi government was finally fully in place. Back home, Karl Rove was officially unindicted in the CIA leak case, and the Democrats were busy being Democrats-divided, defensive and confused about the war, with Bush’s favorite punching bag, Senator John Kerry, leading the charge..

That’s right. Bush is stuck in the mid-30’s, his brain narrowly escaped indictment and he had to mount the most top secret trip since Kissinger went to China (someone left the cakewalk in the rain) yet Klein is drooling and panting over the president’s pants again, getting all hot and bothered when the frat-boy in chief calls the Iraq defense Minister an "interesting cat" and al-Zarqawi a "dangerous dude." Why it’s almost as if Joe got invited to a kegger with the BMOC’s and got to hang with them and "rap" all night about "chicks" (or "dangerous dudes", whatever.)

Perhaps someone can explain to me the strange male attraction to George W. Bush. I have never encountered anything quite like it. From day one, DC nerds like Klein have had massive man-crushes on Junior, describing him as "loose-hipped" and "swaggering" and showing all manner of strange obsession with his masculine body language. Klein seems to barely be able to contain his squeal as he writes about Bush’s "strut" and his "full jaunty" (which sounds suspiciously like "full monty" — giving full rise, as it were, to speculation about what Klein was thinking about when he came up with it.) But, can someone please tell me what in the hell he’s talking about when says that Bush was "downright frothy?" What in god’s name was Klein doing while he wrote this column? (Don’t go there…)

Seriously, this has been a huge problem since the beginning of the Bush administration. And it tracks quite handily with the opposite reactions among the chattering geeks during the Clinton years. Bubba was female friendly (if you know what I mean) and was the object of a great deal of derisive coverage for his tomcat vibe by the priggish DC press. What worked in his favor out in the country — his smarts ‘n sexual charisma — made the Washington media squirm like a bunch of little old ladies caught by accident at a Marilyn Manson concert. And then along came the codpiece and they all fell in love. Wassup with that?

On the substance of Klein’s column, such as it is, after he extolls the vitues of Bush’s manly manliness for two paragraphs he points out that his policies are all wrong and that Karl Rove is a lying sack of manure — but that Democrats are icky so we need to stay the course. John Kerry says we should leave by the end of the year and that’s crazy Democratic defeatist talk. Hawkish, man’s man Klein, on the other hand, thinks we shouldn’t get out for another six months. You do the math.

It’s a typically shallow analysis that could have been written in his sleep, but the first two paragraphs are carefully crafted observations of the president’s confidence, demeanor and manly assurance. (How many people can manage to get past the first paragraph of any Joe Klein column, do you think?) It’s the image of Bush as some sort of cowboy hero that kept him propped up for so long (if you’ll excuse the expression) and which the press corps has been dying to get another lingering look at. They love their man when he’s all sweaty and swaggering. Preferably in a tight jumpsuit.

But this will do too.

Joe’s screensaver:

Pay no attention to the transmitter on his back.

Get busy, push for Net Neutrality

2006-06-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

Many of you have probably heard that corporate shill Mike McCurry had his ass handed to him on Friday by Amazon.com's Paul Misener at debate hosted by George Washington University. If you haven't watched the debate, you can see the entire video at Politics TV (or just watch the Q&A where McCurry really gets slaughtered). You can also read ">some the transcript at SaveTheInternet to see how the Telco's argument does it's counter-clockwise spiral down the bowl but the entertainment value of seeing McCurry get soundly spanked is worth watching.

If you're unsure about how the Net Neutrality goes, here's the down & dirty talking point. The big Telcos (AT&T, Bell South, Verizon, etc.) claim that unless they can run the internet their way, innovation is dead, and the internet will suck forever. The big Telcos are calling Net Neutrality "regulating the internet".

What a crock of shit. What the big Telcos want to do is create a monopoly for themselves, rake in money on services that are currently free (by setting up "toll booths" for those services - such as blogging, video streaming, etc.) and potentially determine which content will be provided to users. In order to argue this, McCurry and the Telcos have resorted to outright lies, claiming that Net Neutrality is an issue advocated by the far left and that if the Net Neutrality amendment passes, traffic on the internet will bog down in an increasingly overwhelmed network.

Both claims are nonsense, desperate words to cover fatcat asses. Net Neutrality is supported across the political spectrum, as Eli Parser points out,

Telecom companies also like to paper Congress with propaganda implying that Internet freedom is somehow a left-wing issue. Tell that to the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Instapundit, the business executives, and the many libertarians who are fighting right along with MoveOn, the inventors of the Internet, thousands of bloggers, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition in support of Net Neutrality.

As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners says, when the left and right agree on an issue like Internet freedom, "it's been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American." On the proposal to destroy Net Neutrality, most Americans would probably agree.

The canard that internet traffic will slow to a crawl (and will squelch innovation) is a laugh, pure and unadulterated bullshit. In fact, there is so much infrastructure in place, the companies decades away from using it all. As Fiber Optic Association (FOA) president Jim Hayes said to streamingmedia.com,

"The backbone was terribly overbuilt. Ninety-three percent of all the fiber that’s been installed is still unused."

However, you can decide for yourself and read S 2917 in its entirety.

The bill goes to committee this Thursday; Colorado voters don't have a dog in this fight at that point. However, should Net Neutrality pass the Commerce Committee, Senators Allard and Salazar need to be urged to support the Snowe/Dorgan amendment AKA “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006." Good local coverage of this issue is over at Coloradopols (where I got this contact info and directions):
them.

Contact Senator Ken Salazar: Click here to email or call:
Phone: (202) 224-5852
Fax: (202) 228-5036

Contact Senator Wayne Allard: Click here to email or call:
Phone: (202) 224-5941
Fax: (202) 224-6471

If you email, be sure to click the ‘High-Tech/Telecommunications’ choice so that it is directed to the correct place.

As I mentioned, there's good coverage of this over at Coloradopols; you'll also want to catch what's written over at Squarestate.net as they have more information and some lively discussion in the comments.

It's your internet - for now. If you don't call or email, you have no one to blame but yourself if you start getting charged "tolls" and find that you can't access your favorite site. You have the power but you have to fight to keep it.

Joel Hefley goes for big corporate cock

2006-06-16T08:13:00.000-07:00

The matter of Net Neutrality should be a no brainer - they have enough pipe to keep us phat for a long damn time. The jist of this is who is a corporate whore.

Obviously, Joel Hefley (who voted against Net Neutralty) is a corporate whore; he voted AGAINST Net Nuetralty. Give him a call and say he's a shill:

Congressman Joel Hefley
Phone: 202-225-4422

Then, call these guys and let them know that if they vote against Net Nuetrality, you'll put bags of dogshit on their porch, light it on fire, ring the bell and run like hell;

Senator Wayne Allard
Phone: 202-224-5941

Senator Ken Salazar
Phone: 202-224-5852

Get busy - CALL; our freedom depends on it.

Tom Tancredo thinks Catholics are a bunch of damn commies

2006-06-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Soot-black and stupid hungover from his latest cross burning, Tom Tancredo looks for another group to slur (via CSIndy):

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) who helped draft the House bill, has said the Catholic Church's immigrant rights campaign is run by "left-leaning religious activists" who want "blanket amnesty" for the undocumented.

Although a lapsed Catholic m'self (I was 6-years old when I decided the whole religion thing was sillier than Davey & Goliath), one thing I've admired about the Church is its dedication to social justice. Sadly, the Church's voice in matters of social justice has been drowned out by the idiocy of anti-choice and anti-gay marriage babblers of late but it's heartening to see Catholic bishops taking a stance on an issue that adheres closest to the words and deeds proscibed in the Gospels.

I really hope Bill Winter pushes Tancredo on this. A lot of bingo money gets pushed to the candidate who doesn't imply that Catholics are a bunch of commies.

Everything you know is WRONG!!!

2006-06-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

So, you thought this was a blog about national politics?

I started this little blog back in 2003, have given up on it several times. Obviously, I can't let it die. However, I want to change the emphasis again and try and focus on the local political scene, advocate for local liberal candidates, work for change here at home. It's my firm belief that change on a national and global level begins with our own backyard.

What I learned from Yearly Kos (no, I wasn't there but I followed the party closely) is that local blogs are going to create a blue US map. There are thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of liberal blogs but this is the only blog for my congressional district.

That doesn't mean I'm giving up pretending I know what I'm talking about on national issues - with the GOP today, the jokes write themselves. It also doesn't mean that I'll ignore races outside of my own district; I'd love to see Angie Paccione defeat the odious Marilyn Musgrave, Bill Winter take the racist Tom Tancredo's seat, and I urge readers in those districts to donate time and money to get Paccione and Winter elected. If we decide that 2006 will turn Colorado blue, we can make it happen.

You local Coloradans can also help me by dropping me a line (I'll check my email more often than the comments) and giving me a heads-up on any news or issues pertinent to Colorado voters.

Welcome to my new blog; let's take our state and country back!

They've broken out the white sheets, the crosses and the gas

2005-10-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

A contradiction I've noticed about GOoPers is, on the one hand, their high dudgeon when the left accuses them of racism - "You're playing the RACE CARD card (goddamn, I'm soooooooo sick of seeing that term "race card" because, in itself, it SOUNDS like a term a racist uses) - then, on the other hand, they use an Appeal to Authority to justify the obvious racism that seeps through.

Check Sully's ongoing affection for Murray's "Bell Curve" and the recent defense of Bennet's stupidity.

I mention this because if you check any blog, left or right, where race is an issue, you can read the comments and read just how stupidly racist rightards are. No apologies, "that sack of shit doesn't speak for me" but "well, if you look at the statistics..."

Except, as Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Looking at the trees but neglecting the forest fails to tell us anything. Bennet (in his now infamous blunder) quoted "Freakonomics" but failed to see the larger picture. Levitt clues him in:

It is true that, on average, crime involvement in the U.S. is higher among blacks than whites. Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide. (The homicide gap is partly explained by crack markets). In other words, for most crimes a white person and a black person who grow up next door to each other with similar incomes and the same family structure would be predicted to have the same crime involvement. Empirically, what matters is the fact that abortions are disproportionately used on unwanted pregnancies, and disproportionately by teenage women and single women.

Go to the link I just included and watch the righties squirm: they indeed want to justify their racism, without apology and with drooling alacrity. Without looking back and without embarrassment, they reveal their true colors (usually with the kind of witless sarcasm one sees on Free Republic of LGF).

My own sense is that quasi-racists like Sully want Murray to be right so they can justify a larger conservative fallacy, that some people are just genetically predisposed to rule while the rest (no matter their merit) are meant to serve. Utter shit, we know, but Sully and his ilk will draw on such pseudo-science in order to rationalize their closet monarchism. However, the vast majority of these neanderthals are simply enamoured by the notion that, by virtue of skin color, thay are superior to those with a darker skin color. It has nothing to do with the kind of Tory politics favored by Sully or, say, George Will, and everything to do with the kind of tribalist hoodoo that we should have evolved out of a long time ago.

Check this out while I tidy up

2005-09-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

Over in the DKos diaries, Bonddad has a brilliant rebuttal to a RedState.org post rationalizing the fiscal madness of the Bush administration. Imagine a conservative justifying these kinds of deficits in a liberal administration (or don't, lest you're dying to have your head explode).

One thing Bonddad doesn't address is, if running up deficits is indeed a brilliant fiscal strategy, why do the Bushies keep paying lip service to a balanced budget (i.e. "Oh we project a balanced budget, um, sometime in the future...")?

Trusty Getto emailed me a fine critique of my "rules" and I am going to consider his recommendations and make a few revisions. He doesn't think I should apply pure logic to the discourse and his point is well taken. However, when fallacies arise, they will be duly noted (and you're forewarned that there are a couple of fine logicians lurking hereabouts).

I have to put in some bullshit administrative/office hours today and revising "the rules" might be a fine way to kill some time. If anyone else has suggestions, please email them to me (instead of using the comments). I still think arguments put forth here should be judged on their soundness and validity but I concur with Trusty that they shouldn't be narrowly critiqued through a lens of pure logic.

A work in progress...

Changing gears - my first question

2005-09-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, I got off track....

One of the problems with writing a left-y political blog is the redundancy throughout the blogosphere. I concur that it's heartening to hear all these voices raised to reiterate that "Bush sucks" but that's hardly interesting or groundbreaking. Thus, my reluctance to post, not just in the last 11 days but in the past few months.

I want to find a niche as well as honor the intent of this blog which was not really to be a left-wing echo chamber but to ask questions of the right and the left, to gainsay the conventional wisdom, to examine what works and what is sheer idiocy. When I was getting my Philosophy degree (yes, many of you know me as a therapist but I also got a degree in Philosophy in order to secure my future as a well-paid waiter), I was known within the the Philosophy department at my school as a bit of a maverick. A "soft-Marxist" certainly but also a bit of an iconoclast and I tended to step on more leftist toes than conservative toes.

My intention here, on a daily basis, will be to examine where the US has come from and where it should head. I'm hoping for an honest dialogue from all sides of the political wading pool. I'm asking for people to enlighten me.

I start today (I'm hoping this will be an ongoing series) by critiquing the notion of a "strict constructionist" approach to the Constitution. As I see it, the intellectual underpinnings of my political opposition is founded on republicanism (small 'r') functioning within an iteration of federalism (also defined here).

Lakoff's metaphors aside, I believe that liberals and conservatives in the US mostly diverge with Constitutional interpretation, narrow versus broad interpretations of what the framers meant when drafting the Constitution.

Obviously, we can't divine the intent of dead men. Those of you on the right will certainly accuse me of deconstructionism with this (and further) arguments but I don't think it's unfair to place this first question in the context of the times with which the US Constitution was written.

At the time of its inception, the Constitution was the guideline for a country that was about a tenth of the size it is now (geographically) with little intent of grabbing much more territory. Indeed, had fortunes changed slightly it's not difficult to imagine that much of the continental US would be either French or Spanish (and even Russian), if not Native American. There is nothing to indicate that the framers held any pretense for empire much less exporting The Grand Experiment on a global scale.

Furthermore, in the late Eighteenth-century, the US was a largely agrarian society that had no notion of its industrial potential. Considering that provisions were made for slave-owners, it could be argued that the framers envisioned a country with an economy driven largely by "gentleman farmers" (and a few "hard-scrabble" farmers) with a some urban bourgeoise tradesman, a system that reflected most progressive European economies - with the exception that government would be democratically elected.

Considering those humble expectations of the country, the framers believed that government would serve minimal administrative functions in order to facilitate inter-state commerce (i.e. an objective judiciary to decide crimes or disputes of rights, the institution and maintenance of urban and rural infrastructure, a standing army to secure borders, and a minute legislative/administrative tier to oversee all these functions) but not much else. Although such a view, in this day and age, is considered a kind of fundamentalist libertarian utopian dream, it nonetheless provides the philosophical foundation for modern conservative thought.

So here is my first question: is the historical milieu of the framers relevant to a country that was far more complex than anything they could have conceived?

That's my question. I hope we'll proceed from here and it should be obvious that my agenda will be to undermine the foundational philosophy of the conservative argument (I make no pretense of being purely objective in this). However, I am setting aside shrill indictments in the interest of inviting an open, informed dialogue. I'm not certain that we'll solve anything and, frankly, I propose to shatter conservative contra propositions.

I will provide guidelines in another post. I'd like an answer to this first question and I'll live with deviations from the rules until those guidelines are posted. You can think of this as a bridge game: I know what cards I hold and what cards I will show but you can also play your cards as you see fit. However, your best play will be to answer my bid - as you see fit.

The game is on.

Guidelines

2005-09-19T01:45:00.000-07:00

This series is about open and honest dialogue, not about out-shouting one another or playing hit-and-run trolling. I live in the service of truth, not agenda or dogma. If you can enlighten me, great; if I am wrong now but you guide me towards being correct, I thank you.

However, certain rules apply, most of them laid out long ago by Aristotle - logic. Arguments based on intuition - my gut - just don't cut it. Our system of justice ostensibly relies on the rules of logic (in a perfect world, I concur) but more importantly, empiricism is founded on this entire system. Logic provides proofs for mathematics, geometry - what more could you ask? Obviously, you won't be seeing any arguments here about "Intelligent Design".

Left or Right, I will delete comments that do nothing to further the discourse and reduce the discourse to name-calling or indulge in the following fallacies:

Distraction

False Dilemma: two choices are given when in fact there are three options
From Ignorance: because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false
Slippery Slope: a series of increasingly unacceptable consequences is drawn
Complex Question: two unrelated points are conjoined as a single proposition

Appeals to Motives in Place of Support

Appeal to Force: the reader is persuaded to agree by force
Appeal to Pity: the reader is persuaded to agree by sympathy
Consequences: the reader is warned of unacceptable consequences
Prejudicial Language: value or moral goodness is attached to believing the author
Popularity: a proposition is argued to be true because it is widely held to be true

Changing the Subject

Attacking the Person:
(1) the person's character is attacked
(2) the person's circumstances are noted
(3) the person does not practice what is preached
Appeal to Authority:
(1) the authority is not an expert in the field
(2) experts in the field disagree
(3) the authority was joking, or in some other way not being serious
Anonymous Authority: the authority in question is not named
Style Over Substance: the manner in which an argument (or arguer) is presented is felt to affect the truth of the conclusion

Inductive Fallacies

Hasty Generalization: the sample is too small to support an inductive generalization about a population
Unrepresentative Sample: the sample is unrepresentative of the sample as a whole
False Analogy: the two objects or events being compared are relevantly dissimilar
Slothful Induction: the conclusion of a strong inductive argument is denied despite the evidence to the contrary
Fallacy of Exclusion: evidence which would change the outcome of an inductive argument is excluded from consideration

Fallacies Involving Statistical Syllogisms

Accident: a generalization is applied when circumstances suggest that there should be an exception
Converse Accident : an exception is applied in circumstances where a generalization should apply

Causal Fallacies

Post Hoc: because one thing follows another, it is held to be caused by the other
Joint effect: one thing is held to cause another when in fact they are both the joint effects of an underlying cause
Insignificant: one thing is held to cause another, and it does, but it is insignificant compared to other causes of the effect
Wrong Direction: the direction between cause and effect is reversed
Complex Cause: the cause identified is only a part of the entire cause of the effect

Missing the Point

Begging the Question: the truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises
Irrelevant Conclusion: an argument in defense of one conclusion instead proves a different conclusion
Straw Man: the author attacks an argument different from (and weaker than) the opposition's best argument

Fallacies of Ambiguity

Equivocation: the same term is used with two different meanings
Amphiboly: the structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations
Accent: the emphasis on a word or phrase suggests a meaning contrary to what the sentence actually says

Category Errors

Composition: because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain property, it is argued that the whole has that property
Division: because the whole has a certain property, it is argued that the parts have that property

Non Sequitur

Affirming the Consequent: any argument of the form: If A then B, B, therefore A
Denying the Antecedent: any argument of the form: If A then B, Not A, thus Not B
Inconsistency: asserting that contrary or contradictory statements are both true

Syllogistic Errors

Fallacy of Four Terms: a syllogism has four terms
Undistributed Middle: two separate categories are said to be connected because they share a common property
Illicit Major: the predicate of the conclusion talks about all of something, but the premises only mention some cases of the term in the predicate
Illicit Minor: the subject of the conclusion talks about all of something, but the premises only mention some cases of the term in the subject
Fallacy of Exclusive Premises: a syllogism has two negative premises
Fallacy of Drawing an Affirmative Conclusion From a Negative Premise: as the name implies
Existential Fallacy: a particular conclusion is drawn from universal premises

Fallacies of Explanation

Subverted Support (The phenomenon being explained doesn't exist)
Non-support (Evidence for the phenomenon being explained is biased)
Un-testability (The theory which it explains cannot be tested)
Limited Scope (The theory which it explains can only explain one thing)
Limited Depth (The theory which it explains does not appeal to underlying causes)

Fallacies of Definition

Too Broad (The definition includes items which should not be included)
Too Narrow (The definition does not include all the items which should be included)
Failure to Elucidate (The definition is more difficult to understand than the word or concept being defined)
Circular Definition (The definition includes the term being defined as a part of the definition)
Conflicting Conditions (The definition is self-contradictory)

Finally, and I don't know why this should be stated but I'll put it out there anyway, just to codify this entire thing: your arguments must be consistent, meaning, if they are going to to be used to validate a proposition, that argument must validate all propositions following the original proposition. If you're going to argue from complexity, you need to either devise a new argument or a new proposition.

Too tough? Tough shit, them's the rules and if you think that's too much to ask then don't play. The point is that we cut out all the bullshit ("liberal media" and every other canard) and do with this rationalism. If you're not intellectually prepared for that, stay away.

OK, maybe I'm a bit stupid-ish when it comes to the MSM

2005-09-08T02:34:00.000-07:00

MSNBC - "BREAKING NEWS!!!" - three nitwits breaking into some hotel. Really. "Breaking news". Where was MSNBC when my tires were slashed?

I wonder how "breaking" that news would be if three shitheads were breaking into a hotel (or liquor store or a Ford Fiasco or Stop-n'-Dump) around here. Holy shit, MSNBC wouldn't have a moment for Tweety or Dan "I'm flacid unless it's a celebrity" Abrams or even - God forbid - Olbermann was interrupted every time a few criminals decided to bust a lock and grab some goods.

Guess we're going to get "breaking news!!!" when a meth-head holds up a Kwiki-Mart with a tire iron in Butte, Montana...

A little anecdotal relief from White House spin

2005-09-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

Although I reside in a teeny-tiny patch of blue due west of one of the reddest blotches marring the landscape of this great land of ours, I work in the depths of that red scourge. Indeed, I have to cross it every day (a commute that is killing me with current gas prices) with eyes wide open and head held down.

A strange phenomenon: prior to the November election, you didn't see all that many 'W04' stickers on cars. As I've heard from different corners, the last Presidential election wasn't so much about showing support for Bush but stating distaste for Kerry. That seems to have been borne out days before the election because, as I traversed the red sea hereabouts, my count of Kerry stickers relative to Bush stickers was a dead heat.

What I found interesting was that, after the election, 'W04'stickers bloomed, as if local drivers felt confident enough to slap the damn things on their SUVs as if to say, "Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I supported the WINNER!" Before the election, my count of 'W' stickers amounted to about 1-in-20 cars; after the election, that count jumped to about 1-in-6.

Until this past week. Oddly enough, the 'W' stickers have disappeared. No shit, for the last two days I have not seen a single 'W' sticker anywhere on my trek across town (and today I had several errands to run, so my drive was considerably longer and more circuitous.

Believe me, I've had my eyes peeled because I've wanted to roll up on some winger with a Bush sticker so I could shout, "Nice job he did while on vacation, huh?" but no such luck.

I'm not sure what that means but I have my suspicions.

Adding to that, my groups have been given the opportunity to process their feelings regarding the Katrina disaster (I'm a therapist for court-ordered DUI therapy groups). I've listened to roughly 60 clients regarding the disaster and only two were in Bush's corner. Not everyone expressed anger at Bush and the Federal government but I have to say the vast majority said "Bush should be impeached."

Anecdotal evidence, I know, and it probably doesn't mean much, but it tells me that not many people have been swayed by the whirring of the White House spin machine's spew of fallacies over the past couple of days.

It's been widely reported on the blogosphere (but it bears repeating here), that the MSM has been dizzied by Rovian spin. A prime example from TPM today:

While watching the MSNBC program, CONNECTED, COAST TO COAST with Ron Reagan, a man from the Evergreen Foundation was on air spinning the myth that the President had to "beg" the Governor of Louisiana to take action. Having been on this show several times I called one of the bookers, Susan Durrwatcher, to alert her to the fact that this man was misrepresenting what happened. I offered Susan the following objective, documented facts (see timeline below). Susan thanked me for my "opinion" and said "we just have a different perspective". Stunned, I asked her by what standard of journalism that an objective fact was mere opinion? I asked her to simply look at the documents and correct the record. She declined.

Perhaps the left is gun-shy when considering the intelligence of the average American (echoing the Daily Mirror's post-election headline, "How can 59,054, 087 people be so DUMB?") and although the left blogosphere is rightfully exasperated by the media carrying White House water, it's not as though this battle is brand new. Although the MSM did an admirable job in its criticism of the delayed response to the disaster, we all knew that their week of sobriety was short-lived and a relapse was imminent.

Sure, recent polls find most Americans ambivalent regarding Bush's performance but in my own little corner of the universe, people are saying something different. As the stories of the evacuees make the rounds, as the true death toll begins to get reported, and as the results of an independent start to come to light, the things the vast majority of my clients are saying will be repeated, louder, with more anger.

As far as the sudden dearth of 'W' stickers in this area? My own interpretation is that, although people aren't exactly blaming Bush, they can't exactly bring themselves to support him. And that's not something the polls are reporting.

Want to be sexy? Be liberal!

2005-09-05T20:41:00.000-07:00

If this is your first visit to this blog (or you have a really tight rubber band around your neck), allow me to explain my political philosphy: I believe politics (in the US) are cyclical. The pendulum swings too far to the left and then, having reached the threshold, turns back to the right. There is no "center", per se, but eventually the center is articulated in the statistical mechanics of the pendulum: it is the place where the pendulum rests twice more than any place on its path.

Being big on latin tonight (ex-Catholic schoolboy, me) I'll offer a caveat: by nature, the pendulum always - ALWAYS - tends towards the left. It cannot sustain itself on the right, the right is committed to the old order of the few having much and the many having nothing. Call me a Marxist (you won't be the first) but the algebra is too obvious; take too much and those without will hit back and take it from you.

As the world watches, appalled, not just at the results of Bush's economic policies but decades also of Democratic appeasment to corporate interests, the American public begins to ask questions. Was it beneficial to give tax cuts or should we have been funding an infrastructure and safety net? In the eyes of the world, we are an embarassment; inward-looking, we are disgusted.

Suddenly, the right-wing canard that "those people should be responsible for themselves and their actions" is equivocated. First of all, "those people" takes on a racist overtone (considering the images that came out of NOLA and the reluctance of our government to act) and makes us wonder how far we really have come since the 60's; most Americans are having problems with that. Secondly, many Americans are beginning to realize that working two minimum-wage jobs still gives most families no opportunity to save and get ahead. The images coming out of NOLA are not of the "lumpen proletariat" but of the working poor, people who have fulfilled their part of the bargain but were no further ahead welfare welch. Indeed, most of the working poor require government assistance to just get by.

As Americans drain their resources at the gas pumps and consider the obscene profits raked in by energy companies (and other corprorate CEO's), as our economy continues to go south and the housing boom is shunted, the shift will go towwards the left. It's inevitable.

History, my friends. No society has ever benefited from giving the rich a by on their duty to the rest of the world. in fact, if you consider how FDR took the US out of the Great Depression (and why hard-core conservatives hate him), it was through progressive, across-the board taxation that turned the tax income into work programs that built an infrastructure in this country that has not been repeated. EVERYONE was working, investing, saving... just ask your gramma or gampy; the country had it going on BEFORE the war (WW II, the war and time dipshit Dubya attempts to evoke for emotional effect).

The US became a world power - THE world power - because of progressive taxation. When a nation offers all workers a chance at a decent life those workers have can build on an increasingly greater legacy, kids in college, adding to the greatness of the American dream.

Conservatives have always opposed diversion from the "natural order". They tried (and failed) to defeat integration in the 60's and continue now: NAFTA, CAFTA, a slave class is in their best interest. If they have to appeal to religious extremism (check opposition to integration), they will. They have.

Now that Katrina has thrown the US economy into a tailspin (and I suspect the hurricane season is far from over), Americans have had it with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. After all, the US was founded on the notion that anyone can grow up to be president. Clinton did it, but he did it within an America that allowed anyone from the bottom to rise to the top (the fact that he sold out the vision of America that gave him opportunity is a sad statement on our national character).

The pivot has come.

The "me first" attitude in the US is on its way out. The way the administration sold the folks of New Orleans down the river (figuatively and literally) turned off too many of the "good Americans" - we've evolved beyond stupid racism and there's no going back. More than that, we're all about to be stung by the kind of poverty that we ascribed to "them" - those conservatives pigeonholed as not having any personal responsibility. Too many of us are about to find out that our current system is oblivious to circumstances or status.

The rest of the world has observed the disparity of race and economic status. Circumstnces have kept a majority of Americans oblivious to those facts but that's about to change.

For the past 20 years, it's been sexy to be un-PC, ironic, and selfish. However, the pendulum just passed the mid-point and now it's on its way to being conscious of race, gender, and social status. Get used to it. "Liberal" is the new black.

"Blame the nigger!"

2005-09-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

In light of the entire nation connecting the dots and the MSM waking up from years of stupor to actually get angry at BushCo, I've wondered when the Right-wing Noise Machine would start spewing idiocy. Until now, it's mostly been racist drivel (see this idiots comment from my last post), "Looters!" but not much else.

Today I got some sense of how the pips would squeak and I have to say, the squeaking is a sorry noise, hardly representative of the quasi-clever quips of previous hand-in-the-armpit wingnut noise-making. Indeed, what's passed as "Support our Preznit" nonsense the last few hours has amounted to the hissing of a balloon on its way to becoming flaccid rubber.

Most of the wingnut spittle has amounted to "it's hard work" in the same resigned, whining sigh echoing Bush's resigned, whining performance in the second Bush/Kerry debate. With that pathetic little soundbite we're supposed to put ourselves in the Preznit's Bass Sperry's and see how we would have done, given the pressures of having been asked to cut our five-week vacation short a day early.

Let me tell you, my four-year old could have put her Powerpuff Girl sneakers on and done a much better job than the four-year old in Chief (am I the only one who is suspicious why he'd name his dog "Barney"? Do you get the sense he did that because "Barney" is his favorite show?).

The pippiest squeak thus far was provided by Ben Stein whose "13 Points No One Should Make Unless They're a Complete Mindless Shill (or the Spread I'm Taking in the Bears vs. the Redskins)" essentially amounted to 11 points stating what an awful disaster Katrina was with the final two points reminding us who is in charge, after all. Uh, I think we got that, Ben, and if that's the money I'll win, well, that hardly fills my tank.

Poonan, on the other hand, was impressed with Junior's lip-diddling press conference but what struck me was her reference to The Cranky Old Man regarding 9/11:

Remember what Dick Cheney said when flight 93 went down in a field in Pennyslvania? He said he had a feeling an act of significant bravery had occurred on that plane.

Cheney's quote being significant since he just managed to step out of the Wyoming anabolic chamber they preserve him in (until they need him to re-invigorate the Death Star) so he could return to Washington to slap Dubya across the head and growl at how everything was foot-fucked while Dick was bathed in the blood of Guatemalan virgins. That and to spur Poonan on with her 30-odd-six, "Shoot those monkeys, you saucy little whore!" while her fat ass slickens her naughahyde seat with a snail-trail of excitement.

Over at the Corner, David "say what you will about those cross-burnings but at least they're patriotic" Frum frets that the "left-wing attacks on the Bush administration," regarding Katrina (because the right-wing attacks were perfectly sensible) are contradictory and proves it by, uh, per incuriam, contradicting himself. I can imagine Frum's shaving ritual, looking at himself in the mirror (an act of extreme courage, I assume), shouting, "You're an idiot!" "Yes you are!" "No, I'm NOT!!!" "Yes you're not but I am!!!"

Considering the impotence of wingnut answers to criticisms of Bush, it's not surpising that the best we get are echoes of some desperate freeper pooch chained to a tree and and howling for kibble. That argument doesn't even make it to a proper blog post bust gets parroted in blog comments, hit-and-run palaver blathering, "Yeah, what about NOLA's mayor?!?"

I don't know where this particularly repulsive meme came from (although, since we all know it amounts to "Blame the nigger!" I asume it was Little Green Footballs) but allow me to enlighten the fuckwits who hold to that tiny-minded argument: the mayor doesn't control Federal assets. In a disaster of this scope (arguably the largest in US history), the Feds move in and try to get everyone fed and housed and the fuck out of the rubble. Read some fucking history (I know, it's something you lack, history and the ability to read) but it's all there, in black and white, shitheads. For fuck's sake, the argument isn't just lame, it's WRONG.

The fact that the right is reacting to the criticism should tell us all something about the impotence of the so-called Republican revolution. The success of conservatives in the past 20 years has been their ability to skirt the impression of being reactionary and have been, almost to a note, proactive in spreading shit, true or not (again, check your history and see how much of it has been "true"). That the best they have is to attack Ray Nagin is an indication of utter desperation. If patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel (and we all know how often the right has made that tired poppet dance), blaming the nigger is truly the bottom of the barrel. As I saw John Howard say (over at Skippy):

...anyone can make excuses for why this isn't bush's fault, and isn't the administration's fault, and a lot of those excuses might be valid and might be true, but if you want to sit around making excuses for why you can't do anything, then why the fuck do you become the president of the united states in the first place?

Answer that, assholes, before you go after the mayor.

Rehnquist is dead

2005-09-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

The news just broke that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died.

So much for a slow news Labor Day weekend. This is going to throw BushCo into a goddamn tailspin. After completely botching the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, on the heels of increasingly bad news in Iraq, BushCo doesn't have a sou in political capital.

With conservatives attacking Bush on his response to Katrina just as a few were trickling away from support from his adventure in Iraq, this does not bode well at all for Bush's desire to pack the court with conservative activists. Furthermore, it doesn't do anything for Roberts pending nomination. Some may argue that Rehnquist's death would expedite a Robert's nomination (in order to get seats filled on the court) but I doubt that will be the case.

If anything, Rehnquist's passing should give Dems pause to consider the ramifications of bending over and playing nice. Indeed, Dems and liberals have complete momentum to force moderate nominations. All they need is a little spine; the muscle is already there - the opinion of the US public. Bush has no capital to spend (less than 40% of which most are fanatical fundamentalists) and as the titular head of the Republican party, he's got a lot of asses to cover.

In the midst of the tragedy down in the Gulf, I don't think anyone considered what Rehnquist's death would mean. Obviously, our thoughts were occupied with so many other deaths. I hate to be ghoulish about this but Rehnquist's death is the last thing conservatives needed at this point. There's too much egg on too many faces (and remember the Plame investigation? That's just a few weeks away from getting really hot) and trying to play hardball with a broken back is foolhardy. Pardon the analogy but it would be the same as, after botching the occupation of Iraq, having the hubris to rush into Iran.

Hmmmmm... come to think of it, Bush may be that fucking stupid. God help us all.

RIP, William Rehnquist.

And so it begins

2005-09-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were fired at a military helicopter, the chief of the medical evacuation service said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Why would anyone fire at a military helicopter that refugees would assume was there to help?

There's no way of knowing, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that word was spread that Bush was flying over NOLA to survey the disaster and the shooter was hoping that Dear Leader was riding in the chopper.

It's become clear that the vast majority of people who could not evacuate before Katrina hit were folks who did not have the means to escape. No cash, no credit cards, no car, no way to flee the storm. Now, with the federal government slow to respond to the disaster, the poor have been left to die. Not just in New Orleans but in all of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Tens of thousands of people left without food, shelter, or medical care. Whatever low wage jobs they had are gone. Whatever meager belongings they possessed were washed away in the flood.

It's not going to get better. Reuters is already reporting palpable class anger brewing in Biloxi, MS and if the "man on the street" interviews are any indication, the sentiment is widespread.

The images that are coming out of New Orleans aren't being lost on the poor around the country and they're wondering what will happen if a disaster hits their community. Most likely, they're getting the sense that will be likewise neglected and regarded as expendable.

As the rich continue their garden party with Bush's tax cuts, the poor are taking stock of their place in America. I just read this, about Condi Rice spending thousands of dollars on shoes:

What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.

Am I the only one who thinks our country is beginning to resemble 19th-century Europe? As a student of history, I recall how the workers and peasantry responded then and it's not much of a stretch to think that it might happen here, now.

Dredging up the old corpse to see if it still stinks

2005-08-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

If the air, the past day or two, has been redolent with the reek of a Rove, it's not because Uncle Karl has been asking Junior to pull his finger. It's a familiar stench, yes, but far more foul than anything Rove could muster up from the brimstone pit of his colon.

For almost a year after the war, lip-diddlers of all political stripes were heard whistling a trite and simple tune, "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops, you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy and you support the terrorists." Of course, anyone with a salt shaker-full of brain knew that song and dance was utter hooey but it was catchy and like the Macarena, got the best of normally sensible and nominally intelligent people. Democrats and Republicans alike could be heard reciting the verses verbatim and no matter where you turned, the damned song was being blasted out of some pinhead's piehole.

Eventually, the song got old and as those things go, when it piped up people could be heard muttering, "Uh, could you change the station?" As the war dragged on and it became evident to everyone that the war had nothing to do with terrorism, that the reasons for the war were a web of fabrications and lies not worthy of a three year-old, people began to think that maybe supporting the war had nothing to do with supporting the troops, that maybe, by golly, the troops were better off backing out of a turd hunt so completely botched, so perfectly fiddlefucked, that it could have only been hatched in the tiny minds of an idiot child and his oatmeal-brained buddies.

Not many people wanted to hear it. Whenever it got played (usually in places with a playlist limited to 4 or 5 songs, all of them stale), the vast majority was reminded of how foolish they had been to sing along, flail their hands in the air like zombie minstrels and line-dance to a truly awful and inauthentic melody. An ugly memory, it was best buried and forgotten, like a trove of old pornography.

So here's the stench: someone snuck into the back yard to dig up the stinking corpse and dance it around on a stick like it was suddenly new and alive and minty fresh. Bush dangled it around in Idaho earlier today, telling the handful of people who are still willing to endure his bullshit that, "I think those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States."

Rumsfeld took his turn shaking the bag of bones (observers were stymied at times deciding who was who), comparing thos against the war to Stalinists. Having seen the corpse dance around like a klansman at a cross-burning, The American Legion decided it ought to have a turn at letting the long pig dance it up at it's Honolulu convention (what with the luau theme and all).

Having subjected you to this lengthy mixed metaphor, I'll drive a stake in its heart and, unlike the perseverators on the right, give this thing a quick demise. I'll only add that if you want to know who revived the tired tune of "If you don't support the war, you don't support the troops," you need only look as far as Karl Rove. I assume he's banking on the collective short-term memory loss of the American people since the reappearance of the played out song occured today in a big way. Which should announce to all of us that their crew has truly run out of ideas.

Unfortunately, we'll hear this song for the next few weeks because Junior and his tittering nitwits will think they have discovered something really cool.

What they won't expect is that the American public has added a new verse to the tired old song, a reprise actually, from an old song that never gets stale:
"We won't get fooled again!"

Evidence of spine detected in several recent CNN incidents

2005-08-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

In an amazing discovery this past week, scientists and television viewers alike were astounded when small evidence of a spine was exhibited in two separate incidents on CNN.

The first discovery occured on Wolf Blitzer's talking puppet show "The Situation Room" when "resident curmudgeon" Jack Cafferty objected loudly to CNN's gleeful licking of the BTK Killer's balls. Cafferty revealed his spine when he said:

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Publicity is this monster's gasoline. It's what kept him going during the years he was playing cat and mouse with the cops and murdering innocent people. He loved being the BTK killer. He loved reading about himself in the newspapers, watching the television stories on the local news in Kansas, on the nights before he got caught.

Doesn't anybody get this? This thing should have been sentenced in a closed courtroom in 30 seconds and thrown into a hole to rot. I'm a little embarrassed to be a part of the media on a day like this.

Later in the day, Bob Costas bowed out from licking the same balls while also refusing to hump the non-existent corpse of Natalie Holloway. Asked to fill in for the Larry King (who was due for his semi-annual re-inflation):

Costas, hired by CNN as an occasional fill-in on "Larry King Live," refused to anchor Thursday's show because it was primarily about the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba. Chris Pixley filled in at the last minute.

"I didn't think the subject matter of Thursday's show was the kind of broadcast I should be doing," Costas said in a statement. "I suggested some alternatives but the producers preferred the topics they had chosen. I was fine with that, and respectfully declined to participate."

In the meantime, media experts are baffled how any amount of spine might have infiltrated the newsrooms at CNN. Some experts are speculating that CNN chief Jon Klein has devoured so many brains and hearts that the emergence of spine may have emerged from under "tons of fat".

Blowback

2005-08-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Although I'm not particularly enamoured with the "politics of the center" (especially as it's described by some Democrats), there is something to be said for its potency. For better or worse, it's how most Americans vote.

"Blowback" is a phenomenon that is not unique to American politics but is certainly characteristic of our system. Things move to far to the left and the voters are easilly swayed towards the right. Sure, the organization and effectiveness of the right-wing noise machine during the past two decades had an undue influence (especially in the erosion of worker's rights and the primacy of the corporation) but the sentiment that was played on was an unsettling disturbance of heartland values.

Clinton didn't help when he lied about Monica. Although the entire affair was trifling at best, it still perpetuated a perception that Democrats were corrupt after years of ethical problems within the Democratic party. God knows I was no fan of Clinton but oh how I wish he had been honest about what went down with Monica.

What resulted was less "blowback" and more a hard snap to the right - and the country suffered, continues to suffer.

Fortunately, I see the blowback shifting back to the left. If the Dems can't (or won't) take advantage of this, maybe it's time for a strong third party of true progressives. The inertia is with us. The SCLM is beginning to see the entertainment value in the problems of Rove, De Lay, Taft, et al and Dems need to shout louder, jump higher.

Read the polls and fuck conventional wisdom because the tables can be turned in 2006 with some effort and righteous indignation.

-------------

Yes, I "blew back". Too much politics on my Daddy blog so I decided to revive this thing. We'll see how it goes.

The Culture of Life is Dead - From the Neck, Up

2005-03-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

The reason I haven't weighed in on the Terri Schiavo fiasco in days is because I find the whole thing idiotic. This issue is really just the anti-choice crowd grandstanding for the sake of creating some kind of medical and legal precedent so they can overturn Roe v. Wade.

It is placing principle over common decency.

The so-called "culture of life" twits have, in their lip-diddling pathology: put up "wanted" posters featuring the faces and addresses of the judges ruling on this case and the representatives who did not vote the way the "culture of life" crowd preferred, made death threats against not only against those judges/representatives but also threatened their family members, offered a $250,000 "bounty" for the murder of Michael Schiavo and $10,000 for the murder of Michael Schiavo's attorney, consistently called for overturning 200-and-some years of the US Constitution by having law enforcement forcibly remove Terri Schiavo from Michael Sciavo's custody... among, oh, a dozen other attrocities.

Nice. Way to conduct yourselves like rational, law-abiding adults. Put your hypocrisy out there for us all to see, show us just how valuable "culture of life" really is as a guiding principle. And, oh yeah, by all means, don't distance yourselves from the numbskulls spouting garbage science, screaming for murder, and otherwise tainting your philosophy with abject ignorance.

Finally, remember that none of the people on the "culture of death" (or whatever you're calling it) side of this issue has called for the murder of anyone. Nope, no, shut it, no sophistry here, don't say the other side is calling for the murder of Terri Schiavo, that argument is groundless and disingenuous. Don't cover your own hypocrisy with a clumsilly constructed straw man.

Enough for me, my rant doesn't compare to Robert Friedman's piece in the St. Petersburg Times:
Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

CNN = Christian News Now?!?

2005-03-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I should be sorry that I broke my boycott of CNN but on some piquant level, I'm glad I tuned in to watch how low that sorry-ass network has sunk. They're down on their knees, certainly. Praying for better ratings, perhaps, or preparing to receive the host of some hieratic phallus.

When I awoke today and saw the news that the US Supreme Court refused to hear arguments on the Schiavo case, I tuned in CNN to see what kind of noise they were making. From what I'd been reading around the blogosphere, CNN (and the rest of cable/network television news) had put themselves firmly on the wrong side of the issue - at least as far as polled Americans feel about this case and I tuned in to CNN with a kind of I-told-you-so glee.

James Wolcott clued me in how bad things had gotten at CNN with his report of CNN correspondant Bob Franken reporting in Florida. I missed that episode but I caught Franken and another reporter giving exclusive coverage to the right to life extremists with unashamed and appalling bias. On the screen rants some idiot preacher pleading with Jeb Bush to intervene stormtrooper-like to save Terri Schiavo, saying "if this was an african-american person who was being denied the right to attend a school or eat at a lunch counter, wouldn't we demand that the governor intervene?"

These people are shameless (i.e. Tom DeLay calling Michael Schiavo "a terrorist") in their willingness to twist the truth and indulge hate rhetoric to suit their agenda but CNN is especially venal in its genuflection to these nutjobs.

That report was followed immediately by yet another "lookee here" for Ashley Smith and the obligatory hosanna for "The Purpose Driven Life".

I'm not sure DC Media Girl is entirely correct that CNN is trying to outFox Fox but that CNN is doing what it can to capture the narrow demographic of the rabid evangelical right.

"Quorum? We Don't No Steenk-ing Quorum!!!"

2005-03-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

I know a little Robert's Rules of Order but little about US constitutional law. So I ask, how does this happen?

The Senate approved the measure on an unchallenged voice vote during a rare Palm Sunday session that came amid charges of cynical political maneuvering. Only three members were on the floor and the bill's prime sponsor, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, served as presiding officer.

If I was a congressman or a senator could I break into the chambers and just make shit up?
"Beets are the national vegetable"
"Lord Vadar rules the empire with the dark force"

I still don't get why no one finds this is a dodge by Tom DeLay to get out of ethics charges. As I said in the last post, grasping at straws in order to divert attention from DeLay's problems.

Don't Look at the Man With His Hand in the Till, Look at the Woman in a Coma

2005-03-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Early last week, things were heating up for Tom DeLay, so much that members of his own party were beginning to turn their backs on him. Monday promised dark days ahead for Tom DeLay.

DeLay needed something to divert attention from his snowballing ethics problems and his savior was a comatose woman. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the feeding tube could be removed from Terri Schiavo, The Hammer moved quickly, front and center, leading the battle cry to save Terri Schiavo - and save his own sorry ass.

Like a herd of sheep, the GOP lined up behind DeLay in a great show of kissing Christian Right ass, hundreds of clowns pouring out of a tiny little car causing the American electorate to wonder how they all fit. They all fit because they had been politicizing the Schiavo case all week in the grand tradition of GOP whoring. And of course, the media bit. Forget about DeLay's legal woes, we have a goddamn media circus to stage.

Timing is everything in show business and especially, comedy. What the GOP fails to realize is that the Schiavo story is tragic. No one's laughing except the gooper twits who think they've got the mother of all red herrings on their hands. With just a little digging, blogs have uncovered the monumental hypocrisy of a party that has pushed through legislation forcing doctors to pull the plug on patients. More than that, they've completely missed which way the winds of popular support are blowing on this one (almost 90% of Americans say they would not want to be kept alive were they in Terry Schiavo's condition). I'd wager another poll would show most Americans don't believe the GOP has no prinicpled stance on this that it is merely politics.

Yes, merely politics but also a means by which DeLay is ducking the spotlight on his declining political fortunes. If the Democrats are smart, they'll let the smoke clear on the Schiavo case and revive the other patient on the table - the investigation of DeLay's brain-dead sense of ethics.

If This is True, It's EXPLOSIVE

2005-03-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

If true, this is extremely disturbing.

All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.

The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.

One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service. He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old girl.

"She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters.

She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead," Jamail relates.

To their credit, the Free Internet Press site qualifies this report as not being substantiated. My thinking is that it's not so far-fetched to seem just simple propoganda. However, I would like to see some verification from news sources other than Al Jazeera or sources within the military itself.

As I've said many times, I believe the vast majority of our military are people of conscience and I would welcome a soldier or soldiers stepping bravely up to admit that yes, this is indeed going on.

Had the Right not been so eager to spread rumor and innuendo - getting a lie out there without any basis in fact only to rescind the story after the damage is done - I would not be posting this at all. However, in this climate of attack politics and sadly aware at how effective those tactics have been, I have no compunction with posting this and waiting for independent verification later.

And as I said, this story seems too real to be in the tin-hat domain.

(Thanks to Skippy for the heads up)

Need. To. Update. Mooooooooooooore.....

2005-03-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Problem is, no recent news stories have really twisted my nipples. Wolfowitz is Bush's choice for World Bank president. Whatever. Considering the spectacular success Bush had in the private sector, everyone was expecting him to make an enlightened choice? The Senate has a hard on for drilling in ANWR and we're just beginning to wonder if any of those crooks are drooling over the prospect of kick-backs?

It's not that I can't get excited about these issues (and the four-score and twenty others), it's that I'm sick of hearing the same tune played with only slightly different lyrics.

The Left remains on the defensive, reactive, letting the Right call the plays, rewrite the rules, determine where and when the game will be played. Which, of course, puts the Left in a dodgy position - and a losing one.

Same old tune again, this time from me: c'mon Dems, take the initiative, start calling the shots. Get on the winning side, for once.

Give me a reason to update more.

I'll See Your Tip, Atrios, and Raise You a "Hell Yeah"

2005-03-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

An emailer over at Atrios suggests that the NYT, with only MoDo on board on the OpEd crew, should hire Katha Pollitt immediately.

I'm on board with that and if the blogosphere is indeed wrangling some influence with the SCLM and politics, a "Hire Katha" campaign is something I'm definitely down with. I've admired her work at The Nation for years and the NYT would only benefit from Pollitt's wit and immense style.

"The Power of Pride" and Other Silliness

2005-03-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

I've been focusing on the writing of a post over on my single-dad blog thinking I could shine in The Zero Boss's blog-writing contest "Blogging For Books" and you might want to go read my entry, it's potentially more interesting than anything I'll post here.

I've seen the post-9/11 bumper stickers "The Power of Pride" everywhere I go, it seems. Someone made a tidy sum from patriotism. Ribbon magnets and the entire schmeer, I have no objections really, I'm just reminded of John Prine's "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore".

"The Power of Pride", though, strikes me as a little troublesome. After all, isn't Pride one of the Seven Deadly Sins? I know these comments will draw some wingnut half-witticisms about me hating the country and how I should move to France or whatever, that I'm missing the point and, well, I'm wondering, what is the point? Are we selective about what sins are acceptable?

Obviously lying is something that comes easy for Republicans (although I don't recall "Dishonesty" being one of the Seven Deadly Sins), killing and sacrifice of others doesn't appear to bother neo-cons. Greed, also one of the Seven Sins, seems to be a virtue in the me-firstism of Red State morality. So why would I think that Pride is something that those folks would want to eschew?

Hubris is nothing new to BushCo. International adventures under the guise of furthering democracy is the epitome of Pride: "We know how to run a country, you don't, and we'll bomb you into submission until you understand that." The self-righteousness of the Religious Right and its determination to force its morality on the rest of us is Pride taken to dangerous extremes.

Instead of exercising a little humility, the country has lunged blindly behind a puffed up little twit girded with the arrogance of a rich frat boy convinced of his superiority to others. This is, in the grand scheme of things, a monumental mistake. The proud get their comeuppance because the proud are blind to their own humanity and their own failings. I'm no theologian but I can say I understand why Pride would be one of the Seven Deadly Sins. As a psychologist I know that Pride is invariably a defense mechanism used to cover an underlying sense of fear, usually an irrational fear.

Pride prevents us from admitting a need for improvement because in being proud, we're satisfied that everything is just as it should be. Pride is the mark of the emotionally immature. To continue learning, accumulating knowledge, requires the humility to admit that there are things that we don't know. The humble evolve; the proud decay.

"The Power of Pride" is really just the bluster of a bully. Assured of being right, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the bully beats up on a weaker person until the weaker person cries "Uncle". The weaker person isn't really convinced but will tell the bully anything to avoid further pummeling.

I'm sure most of the people displaying "The Power of Pride" sticker are really just saying, "I'm proud to be an American," without thinking that what it's really saying is, "I'm proud to be a punk nazi bully". Unfortunately, acting without really thinking things through is what got us the result in the last election.

Playing Like We Want to Win

2005-03-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

When are Democrats going to learn how to act like an opposition party?

There has been no shortage of tut-tutting from Left Blogosphere over Dems bowing to the Rice and Gonzales nominations, a noise that has only increased with the passage of the Credit Card Bankruptcy Bill, a piece of legislation that benefits fatcats and no one else.

Unfortunately, the noise has amounted to little more than "Whatcha' gonna' do?"

I came across this piece by Gene Lyons in (of all places) the Northwest Arkansas News Source

Naïve souls, they prefer to see national politics as a giant PTA meeting, and to comfort themselves with civics text bromides about the virtues of compromise and bipartisanship. Even in the face of the Clinton impeachment and the naked power play that decided the 2000 presidential election, they have trouble comprehending the sheer ruthlessness of the GOP political juggernaut. This is nothing new. Even during FDR’s presidency, Will Rogers joked that he belonged to no organized political party: He was a Democrat.

Again, we're left with the impression of "Whatcha' gonna' do?"

As much as I'd like to see Dems steel their spine and answer the GOP point-for-point, what Dems really need is a political infrastructure similar to what the GOP has built. The cohesion and gutter-level tactics we associate with the GOP today is the result of almost 30 years of patient plotting by conservative fanatics and idealogues. Since the early 70's (some say, since the early 60's), the Right has invested heavilly into think-tanks with intellectual and monetary capital, scheming the overthrow of a largely progressive tide that dominated American politics since the Great Depression.

The pit-bull style of attacking without substance is not the result of the Right's political instinct but the product of careful training and indoctrination developed during the past few decades. Indeed, there is a martial efficiency in how the Right trains its functionaries in how to wage political warfare and it's no coincidence how ex-military leaders have been highly esteemed in the conservative strategy machine. Discipline and unity are the winning qualities of the Right's soldiery. Just like a platoon of diverse elements - a kid from the streets of Philly, a kid from a Montana ranch - put aside differences to create an efficient fighting machine, the GOP has managed to attack as a cohesive whole.

It didn't hurt the Right that the Left had become diffuse and scattered. When the Vietnam War gound to a halt due in large part by pressure applied by the Left and the anti-war movement, liberals took the end of the war as a mandate for progressive politics. From the mid-70's on, the Left became diffuse and prone to in-fighting. With no central issue to unify the Left, liberals began marking territory, pushing one agenda at the expense of others, stepping on toes and generally dismantling the structure that had evolved under the civil rights/gender rights/anti-war movements.

Gender politics became factionalized, environmentalists stood opposed to the aims of the labor movement, various civil rights movements fought for primacy, while the entire Left became an annoying din of self-seeking Politically Correctness and irrelevant to the minds of many Americans. By the 1980's, the Left had become a parody of itself. Assured of their righteousness and invincibility (granted by that righteousness), the Left seemed unaware that it was becoming a parody of itself (aided, in no small part, by the media). Meanwhile, conservatives watched and waited, ready to take advantage of the melee.

To use the military analogy, it was as if Stalin had let his guard down after signing a mutual protection pact allowing Hitler to roll right in. The time was ripe for the Right to take advantage of the Left's lack of unity. Furthermore, with the US having lost its first war and having been humiliated by the Iran hostage situation, the GOP was in a good position to exploit a tide of backlash that was simmering in the middle sections of the country. The Right was prepared for the attack, the Left was busy navel-gazing.

Years of strategy meetings and planning allowed the Right to demonize "liberals", "the loony left", "feminazis", etc., in the media and in speeches. What's the matter with Kansas? Kansas doesn't know that the GOP works against the Kansas voter's economic interests because the GOP has been successful at creating scapegoats for problems that have nothing to do with economic self-interest. The think-tanks knew this would be the plan from the early 70's. Focus on the issues that tore at the moral core of the typical Kansas voter and gussy up the corporatist agenda in terms of those moral values. Classic Bait-and-Switch, a strategy that had been developed well before the conservative movement of the 80's.

Dems can't merely answer the attacks by the Right. The GOP's tactic is (and has been) to be on the offensive and make Dems reactive. "Reactionary", a term applied to conservatives as a characterization of their opposition to the progressive swing in national politics, no longer applies to the Right. Conservatives have set the agenda and the terms of the fight, it is their game and they change the rules as they see fit. Dems have to do more than to just be the opposition.

Dems need the same type of intellectual foundation that has carried the conservative movement since the early 70's. Conservatives have no devotion to philosophical purity other than its unifying function; theirs is a devotion to winning. Win and let philosophy take care of itself.

Dems have to develop the same kind of discipline and unity that has been the hallmark of the GOP. Think-tanks, political boot camps, and a willingness to put aside individual differences for the sake of providing a united front are all necessary for taking the momentum back from the Right.

A disadvantage that will hobble Dems in the years to come is the success of the Right in undermining the media and making it their own. Corporate-owned media is going to continue to support a corporatist agenda at the expense of objective reporting. The Left will need to acquire an alternative to Fox, ABC/Disney, NBC/GE, CBS/Viacom, CNN/Time-Warner, etc. but I have no suggestions for how that will be done. I doubt George Soros is prepared to become a media mogul and start a liberal alternative to a monochromatic media and not controlling the media (or being in a place to demand fairness) is a tremendous obstacle.

Fortunately, there is evidence that the cohesion of the Right is beginning to show some strain. The Bush administration has become enamored by its belief in invincibility and has reached too far, its hubris leading it to forget political expedience in favor of blind allegiance to ideology. Bush's commitment to scrapping Social Security (a move driven purely by ideology) has created immense dissension within Bush's own party as savvy politicians scramble to salvage their own destinies. Fanatical elements on the Right, likewise taken by hubris (specifically, members of the Religious Right), have driven moderates to step out of line with the discipline and unity that has made the GOP such a formidable force in American politics.

Liberals are not quite in the strategically advantageous position that conservatives were in the late 70's but there's no need to wait for that moment. Now is the time to close ranks, build an intellectual foundation for winning, develop strategies to win. The Right built their infrastructure as a way of negating liberal progress and asserting greed. Fortunately for the Left, the purpose for creating a similar infrastructure has a far more noble and positive purpose.

Why Don't We Have a Frank Luntz?

2005-03-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

Because, gawdamighty we don't want him. Let me put it this way: I'm not dedicated to "liberal" or "progressive" values so much as the Truth - although those values tend to reflect my own, due to their foundation in Truth. I'm not enamoured with the Democratic Party (I'm a registered independent) but I find their platform more in line with my own values, certainly more than the GOP.

Thanks to a heads-up by Kos, the text of Luntz's GOP playbook is available online and it's a revealing document. It's a testament to the GOP's commitment to spin over Truth, the retention of power over the recognition of reality, and furthering corporate interests at the expense of average Americans.

Shorter "Republican Playbook": "9/11 changed everything. Sure, you've been unemployed for over a year but at least you're not a victim of terrorism. Those same terrorists don't want you to privatize your Social Security account."

See also: Oceania v. Europa, Victory Gin.

Re-evaluation

2005-03-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

Having stepped away from this for almost a month, I was amazed I kept getting traffic. Not just some traffic but a lot of traffic. That's not to toot my own horn but to express my own amazement.

There are so many political blogs, I just felt I was not adding anything to the discourse but recent comments have made me re-think that. When I quit writing here, it was just as the Gannon/Guckert story was really heating up and it appeared to me that so many other blogs were doing a better job than me. Not that I felt intimidated, just redundant.

Believe me, the urge to write here has been strong (my normally apolitical single-dad blog has picked up some of that slack) but I was unsure of what my place in the left blogosphere should be. A couple months back I thought to tackle logical inconsistencies in conservative "thought" but it occured to me that conservatives aren't concerned with logic. No converts were going to be made by pointing out syllogistic flaws.

I thought about using this site to do something creative (not tipping my hand with that) but I realize there is a place for this blog.

So, I'm back.

This Guy Gets It Right

2005-02-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

Found this on the AARP site.

This administration's unprovoked attack on Social Security needs to be understood in this context. It is not a well-intentioned effort to solve a vexing policy dilemma. It is, instead, an important front in their ideological war on non-market solutions to any social problem. Quite simply, they don't care how well it works. They just don't like it because it doesn't fit into their worldview of corporate feudalism. That's the crux of it: THEY OPPOSE IT ON PRINCIPLE. Well, isn't that just jim-dadny? Their callous ideology, which has reduced us to a state of social regression, has no room in it for beneficial programs which help people and provide a safety net as they were intended to do.

Read the whole thing, though. The author remembers when progressive politics were the norm and this country was sitting pretty.

Idiots AND Cowards

2005-02-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Really, this is too easy. Who doesn't love it when Conservatives do your work for you?

Checking the comments from my previous post, I came across this little gem:

Have you considered the possibility that your challenge hasn't been answered because no one considers you important enough to bother responding to?
Anonymous | 02.04.05 - 10:06 am |

First we notice that "Anonymous" is, well, anonymous; this person obviously lacks the courage to post a comment and an identity. Someone's skeeeeered. Anyway, we'll call this chicken-shit commenter 'A' as we use A's words to illustrate the premise of my previous post.

Next we notice 'A' hasn't really provided a rebuttal or counter-argument to my post but merely indulged in ad hominem games. "Maybe no one responds because you're not important enough," is the kind of thing my three-year old plays with her two-year old brother. When my three-year old does stuff like that, she gets a time-out. Nonetheless, I'll answer A's tiny-minded claim by pointing out that Conservatives have countered countless other claims in this blog so apparently I'm important enough to warrant a response.

However, had A any intellectual integrity or maturity, A would have risen to the challenge. Ah, but that assumes A has integrity and the means to answer my query. Lacking any substance, A posts an unsubstantiated claim and runs under the cover of anonymity.

A cannot (nor can any other Conservative, apparently) provide me with an example when tax cuts have resulted in long-term economic benefit because no precedent exists. I confess that there's a certain amount of snark-factor in my challenge because I know it's a bet that I'll certainly win but to my credit, there exists a certain amount of intellectual curiosity. I asked to be taught a lesson and no one on the right seems to be prepared to teach me.

Thus, one can conclude that the right's unnatural affection for tax cuts is symptomatic of greedy self-interest. There is no substantiated theory or higher principle that guides their aversion to taxation, it is puerile self-centeredness, "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

Thank you, A, for providing a "clue as to how simple-minded and infantile Conservative "thought" really is," Q.E.D., your service is duly noted and ridiculed.

You Don't Have to Look Far

2005-02-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made a comment on a DKos diary regarding a challenge I have made to conservatives on this blog over and over and over again, a challenge that has not been answered. Briefly, I said that I'd asked numerous times for conservatives to "provide me with evidence, any historical precedent, where tax cuts have resulted in long-term economic benefit in the aggregate (i.e. the nation as a whole, not just a few rich people). No one has provided me with an answer. My cursory research (and I confess I'm neither an economist nor an historian) has not yielded a single instance of tax cuts creating long-term economic prosperity."

Conservatives have, along with an inability to cogitate with any amount of complexity, severe memory problems. It would be interesting to see a neuropsychological study that associates rigid, black-and-white thinking with memory deficits. In the issue mentioned above one only has to go back twenty years to see that the result of Reagan and Bush I tax cuts entailed raising taxes in order to bring the country out of the economic shit hole that the original tax cuts created.

Timing is not of the essence, here; just wait five minutes and the Atomic clock of Conservative stupidity will spew forth something else idiotic or indicative of shit-for-memory. As soon as Democrats booed Bush's nonsense during the SOTU, the Conservative punditry were bleeting with a whine worthy of a pre-school class deprived of snacks. "Rude!" they cried with high dudgeon, self-righteously sniffing that Conservatives are, above all else, not prone to boorish behavior.

The Conservative method: shoot first and let the liberals do the thinking. No sooner had the Cundits been caught in their own caterwauling when the liberals pointed out, "My, my Mr. Pot, Mr. Kettle seems to remember this":

1999: Republicans Booed Clinton's Entrance Many Republican lawmakers gave him a cool, though not impolite, reception. There were a smattering of boos when Clinton first entered the House chamber, but they were quickly drowned out by applause. Some Republicans barely applauded, or refused at all to clap. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) were conspicuously silent. (Boston Herald, 1/20/99)

1998: Republicans Booed Clinton's Medicare Proposal Clinton's health-care initiatives, chiefly in the form of a medical bill of rights, found support on both sides, especially his attack on managed-care health-care plans. ... Clinton's proposal to expand Medicare to allow Americans as young as 55 to buy into the system drew shouts of "no" and some boos from Republicans during his speech. (Chicago Tribune, 1/28/98)

1997: Republican's Booed Clinton's Opposition to the Balanced Budget Amendment The Republican response was far warmer than perhaps any of Clinton's previous four State of the Union speeches. Time after time, Republicans jumped to their feet to join Democrats in applauding the president. Only once did they unmistakably and collectively show their disapproval--when Clinton spoke disparagingly of a GOP-sponsored constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Many Republicans hissed and some booed. (LA Times, 2/5/97)

1995: Republicans Booed Clinton and Walked Out During Speech The upheaval wrought by the Republican election landslide was visible throughout the president's State of the Union address - from the moment Speaker Newt Gingrich took the gavel to the striking silence that often greeted Clinton from the GOP. At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left as Clinton went on and on for an hour and 20 minutes. (AP, 1/24/95)

Tip o' the top to Mr. Kettle Oliver Willis for superb memory and research skills.

Given such sever cognitive deficits, Conservatives are prone to perseveration on a pathological level. Sadly, it's all too easy to reduce the substance of Conservative arguments to these simple terms:

Hillary
Tax-and-spend Liberals
You hate America
Liberal Media
Bill Clinton lied about a blow job
Big Government
Personal Responsibility
Socialistic program
From my cold, dead hands
Gays are destroying the country

...and that's about the extent of it. Which should be a clue as to how simple-minded and infantile Conservative "thought" really is. If I've left anything out, leave your addition in the comments and I'll post a revised list next week. I promise I'll remember.

How the Republican Healthcare Plan Works

2005-02-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

Note: this was supposed to have posted yesterday, before the SOTU but blogger was acting up. Don't know if anyone else had these problems but... anyway, here it is.

When Bush talks about an "Ownership Society", I wonder if he's including taking ownership for his own inveterate stupidity?

Skippy brought this to my attention, an article in today's LA Times with excellent commentary from The Talent Show:

So, let's sum up the GOP plan for medical overhaul that will be part of this "ownership society".

First, they want to encourage employers to dump you from your existing insurance plan (and if you read the rest of the article, if doesn't sound like they need much convincing).

Second, they want to force you into an expensive insurance plan that will only cover "catastrophic" medical procedures.

Third, on top of the higher cost of your insurance policy, they want you start saving up any extra cash that you probably don't have lying around.

Finally, the whole point here is to ease the financial burden on your employer, make you pay more for less coverage, and encourage you to seek medical help as rarely as possible.

Make those your talking points.

If You Haven't Called Ken Salazar Yet...

2005-02-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

MAKE THE CALL!!!

Senator Ken Salazar: 202-224-5852

I just came from Daily Kos and read:

At a private luncheon Tuesday, freshman Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who is Hispanic, defended Gonzales to Democratic colleagues. Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the minority leader, said a "low" forecast was that 25 or 30 Democrats would vote against Gonzales, but it appeared yesterday Gonzales was in danger of receiving even more than the 42 "no" votes John D. Ashcroft got in 2001, the most opposition ever to a nominee to head the Justice Department.

In a tacit acknowledgment of the hostility his nomination has provoked, Gonzales reopened discussions yesterday about meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus after earlier resisting such a meeting. The group has declined to endorse Gonzales, sending a letter to Senate leaders last week saying that Gonzales's office had informed the caucus it would "have to wait until after he was confirmed as attorney general before being granted a meeting." As of last night, a meeting had not been scheduled. In contrast to the Rice confirmation, in which a majority of Democrats voted in favor, the opposition party appeared almost entirely unified against Gonzales.

Dammit, I spent a lot of time last summer and fall working to get this guy into office, arranging babysitters for my kids so I could (as I believed then) fight the good fight. And now I'm feeling betrayed. Salazar needs to know that just because Gonzales is hispanic, that is not sufficient qualification to excuse his support for torture.

Don't do anything else today until you've made the call to let Salazar know he won't see a second term if he supports Gonzales.

UPDATE: If you're not convinced of the importance of this go read this DKos Diary regarding a letter by Ted Kennedy ennumerating Gonzales' inability to take ownership for supporting torture.

Idiots For Christ

2005-02-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Like I said in a previous post, I'm not going to indict all Christians with the "shit-for-brains" label. It's my considered opinion that a good number of Christians are intelligent, caring, loving, individuals.

It's bozos like The Center For Reclaiming America that taint the rest with a jaundiced "Good God can these people really be THIS FUCKING STUPID?!?"

First a claim that the idea of evolution has killed 135 Million people. This isn't satire (like yesterday's Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings post on Eschaton), I'm not making this shit up.

"Communistic evolution, according to the Senate committee that examined it, is responsible for 135 million deaths in peacetime," he said. "There's no religion that has a tiny fraction of that many deaths on it conscience." And it is amazing, he added, that evolution -- despite its widespread acceptance -- has no scientific basis. "There are scientists who will admit that there's not one iota of scientific evidence to support it."

Ahhhh, it's "Communistic evolution". Um, right, whatever that is. I guess if you link anything to Communism (as these shitheads tried to do to martin Luther King), you instantly demonize it. What amazes me is the statement

And it is amazing, he added, that evolution -- despite its widespread acceptance -- has no scientific basis. "There are scientists who will admit that there's not one iota of scientific evidence to support it."

Yes and text books and academic journals are bursting with scientific evidence that "Communistic evolution" is responsible for 135 Million deaths.

What are those scientists thinking? Accepting the Theory of Evolution blindly, without "one iota of scientific evidence" (because really, all those fossils and rocks aren't really evidence, God or Satan stashed them to make us all look foolish), when a perfectly sound explanation exists in the 1,000 or so different fairy tales made up by various religions. Those silly scientists!

Instead of wasting your time thinking about "Communistic evolution" (Christ, the term just smacks of hillbilly invention), the good ol' boys at The Center For Reclaiming America want you to "Contact your local, state, and national representatives and tell them you are tired of the glorification of the homosexual lifestyle." Seems a Gay-oriented pay-cable outfit wants to run a morning show "Good Morning, Gay America" and that gives these talibanitols an uneasy feeling. Can't think about a Gay morning show while that break-of-day erection throbs.

I'm almost inclined to think The Center For Reclaiming America is really just another Landover Baptist site.

Snark On the Mark

2005-02-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

Jesse at Pandagon gives us this trenchant shorter Republican African-American strategy, The Conservative Message To Black Americans:

You will die early. Rather than do anything about it, let's end a program tremendously helpful to you in general (partially because we also don't care about higher poverty rates, higher infant mortality rates, or higher concentrations of minority in high-risk jobs and high-crime areas) so that you don't have to suffer the indignity of not getting as much Social Security as healthier, richer white people.

You are slaves on a liberal plantation. The entire body of civil rights laws in America was improperly enacted and is an affront to "states' rights". Vote Republican!

Rather than deal with the issues that actually impact your lives, we're going to try to unify you around resentment of gay people. Progress!

One of our major supporters, and a guy who runs one of the preeminent conservative newspapers in America, is trying to get your churches to remove their crosses and put up his cult symbols. Your Christian faith demands you be Republicans - and if that doesn't work, you're about to be a member of a cult that is part and parcel of our party anyway, so join the party!

Uh, we know black people. You're black. If you don't support them, you're a white liberal racist elitist.

Snark factor aside, what's just as insidious is the media's collusion in all of this. Points #1 and #3 have been parroted uncritically on the Sunday Talk Shows as if transmitting administration talking points is a patriotic duty that supercedes journalistic integrity.

If you're African-American you should be shirt-ripping pissed, not so much at the GOP (that resentment should come as easy as breathing) but at how the SCLM has refused to do their job.

For All of Us Colorado Voters

2005-02-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

I posted this up on the Colorado Springs DFA blog but it bears re-posting here.

Call Senators Allard, Salazar to Vote "No" On Gonzales

Senator Wayne Allard: 202-224-5941
Senator Ken Salazar: 202-224-5852

Let them know we, as US citizens, do not support torture and cannot in good conscience, support an AG nominee who condones torture.

I reached a receptionist at Allard's office and let her know that, as a constituent, I would not support Sen. Allard on a "yes" vote for Gonzales. Sen. Salazar's office phone rang into a message system and so I just left a message that I'd not only voted for Ken Salazar but I worked the phones and canvassed for the Salazar campaign but I would not be so inclined to support Sen. Salazar if he, by implication of his vote, condoned torture.

Don't do anything else until you've made your calls.

"Good" and "Bad"

2005-01-31T19:59:00.000-07:00

Seems my mind has been on spiritual matters, lately, perhaps a function of my own life path. That's fine. I've always maintained that if there is a God (and that God was concerned in the affairs of every living thing), that God would not be so concerned with what someone believed than with how that person lived.

Being so spiritually inclined, I wanted to differentiate between "good" Christians and "bad" Christians. By bad Christians I mean the ugly, hate-filled, intolerant nitwits who have completely lost sight of Christ's message. There should be no confusion as to whom I refer.

These posts (past and future) aren't meant to be a blanket indictment of Christianity, just the noisy minority who have chosen to pervert Christ's message for their own narrow-minded, hateful agenda. They did it in the 60's in opposition to civil rights and the rhetoric is the same, today. Notice how familiar the arguments are - both then and now, the progressive tilt of civil rights (for blacks then and gays now) would "rend the social fabric" and destroy civilization as we know it. Same shit, different day.

I believe the majority of Christians are decent people who don't really believe the hate spewed by the Falwells and Dobsons; these are the people the Dems will win back.

More "Values", In a Good Way

2005-01-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

A very good friend of mine sent me this article by Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, a nun framing Bush's "Culture of Life" in terms of the carnage in Iraq (and references the sad picture I ran in a previous post):

Here was the other side of the inauguration story. No military bands played for this one. No bulletproof viewing stands could stop the impact of this insight into the glory of force. Here was an America they could no longer understand. The contrast rang cruelly everywhere.

I sat back and looked out the train window myself. Would anybody in the United States be seeing this picture today? Would the United States ever see it, in fact? And if it is printed in the United States, will it also cross the country like wildfire and would people hear the unwritten story under it?

There are 54 million people in Iraq. Over half of them are under the age of 15. Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children. We are killing children. The children are our enemy. And we are defeating them.

"I'll tell you why I voted for George Bush," a friend of mine said. "I voted for George Bush because he had the courage to do what Al Gore and John Kerry would never have done."

I've been thinking about that one.

Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Sadam Hussein is still alive. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still alive. Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah are burning. But my government has the courage to kill children or their parents. And I'm supposed to be impressed.

I'm beginning to see backlash, not just from the Left but from Christians who are refusing to have Rich White Men define what "values" are for true believers.

The Social Security Debate: Opening the Door For Evangelicals

2005-01-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

An article in today's NYT discusses a movement among Evangelicals to frame "moral values" to mean something more progressive and something less exclusive:

In Chicago last weekend, Dr. Frenchak joined a gathering of 20 Christians, mostly evangelicals, to produce a book defining moral values to include a focus on poverty. At the meeting, one man held up a Bible from which he had cut every verse that addressed poverty. "There was hardly anything left," Dr. Frenchak said. "He said, 'I challenge anyone in the room to take their Bible and cut out every verse about abortion or gay marriage, and we'll compare Bibles.' "

Dr. Frenchak said he had been involved in more conversations about moral values in the past two months than ever before. "We meet to discuss how poverty got left out of the discussion of moral values. The question is, 'How do we talk about what we do as a moral value, rather than as an assumed good?' I don't think a day goes by that I don't get some communication about rethinking an understanding of moral values."

In postelection analyses, "values voters" were often equated with evangelical Christians, just as "values" were equated with opposition to abortion and gay marriage. But evangelical churches and seminaries have become increasingly mobilized around poverty both in the United States and abroad.

As I said earlier this week, the attempt by Conservative Christians to blackmail the administration, by withholding support for Social Security privatization unless Bush pushes FMA, is an empty threat. Those Christian leaders know they can't rally support from their constituents for privatization; to many of their flock prefer security to risk.

A door has been opened to those Christians, most of whom identify more with the poor than with Wall Street hot-shots. What Dems need to do is frame opposition to Social Security privatization as, "We're looking out for you and especially, the least of you, by opposing privatization."

My "WTF?!?" Quotient Goes Off the Charts

2005-01-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

Clicking between my Hotmail accounts, I noticed that NBC ran some Katie Couric special on teen sex, giving me yet another reason not to turn on my television.

Unfortunately for Skippy and his missus, they watched the "special" and Skippy reports that:

...the very second question that katie asked her little group of 14 year olds about how sex affects their lives was...hold on to your seats, we kid you not...did Bill Clinton's affair influence you into having oral sex?

There's no reason to believe that Skippy is lying about this but I'm dizzy with disbelief. Not that I've ever given Ms. Couric credit for more than a cap full of functioning neurons but trying to blame teen sex on the Clenis - what, SEVEN YEARS after the fact? - and one would have to assume that Katie would be declared braindead in almost any municipality.

My resolve in cutting out mainstream media grows stronger everyday. Katie bar the door, the level of stupidity at NBC is at critical mass.

Time For a Time Out

2005-01-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

It's as if the US of A has curled up into a little ball in a tantrum, like my two-year old son; no one wants to play the way we want to play so we'll shut down and whine.

Sy Hersh has some dire predictions for how our infantile behavior will be punished:

It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe -- Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us. Certainly, nobody -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here. But he could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he's going to do between then and now is enormous. We're going to have some very bad months ahead.

Yeah, but God's on our side...

Christian Groups Attempt To Blackmail Bush On Social Security

2005-01-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Talk about an empty threat.

In today's NYT I read that

A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Good, let em' start firing since it appears their front line has taken on a circular design.

What Falwell, Robertson and the rest of the Holy High Rollers set fails to realize is that their influence only extends so far with the flocks they fleece. The vast majority of the faithful aren't the gilded automatons who pick up the check for the pleasure of having lunch with preacher, they're the little people who are doing well if they're actually tithing. And although they'll gladly pay a little extra to ban gay marriage, they're not too sure about giving up their social security checks just because a Falwell says it's the godly thing to do.

Trace the circle one-eighty and you'll find Republican lawmakers who know they don't have the support for a consitutional amendment banning gay marriage. If Conservative Christian leaders are displaying vast ignorance regarding their constituency, they're showing themselves to be completely in the dark regarding constitutional law. They think changing the constitution is no more complicated than turning in last year's limo for this year's model, that a constitutional amendment is no more complicated than breaking a C-note in the temple.

BushCo has no qualms with peddling superstition and fallacy but it has not had much luck selling the demise of social security. That the real purveyors of superstition, the charlatans of Conservative Christiandumb, won't toe the BushCo line without quid pro quo carries all the marks of a fine shootin' match.

Ready. Aim. Fire.

No On Gonzales

2005-01-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

In sane times (with a half-bright administration), this should be a no-brainer: a pro-torture judge wouldn't catch a moment's consideration as AG. But these are not sane times.

Get ready to contact your senators...

Go here to find the contact info for your Senators:
http://www.senate.gov/ and click on the red "Senators" button on the left.

So I again hork wholesale a post from DKos and add my voice to their open letter:

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. In this case, we, the undersigned bloggers, have decided to speak as one and collectively author a document of opposition. We oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General of the United States, and we urge every United States Senator to vote against him.

As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Convention, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

Legal opinions at the highest level have grave consequences. What were the consequences of Gonzales's actions? The policies for which Gonzales provided a cover of legality - views which he expressly reasserted in his Senate confirmation hearings - inexorably led to abuses that have undermined military discipline and the moral authority our nation once carried. His actions led directly to documented violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and widespread abusive conduct in locales around the world.

Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: "After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should 'judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.'" We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales's nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, "[t]he world is indeed watching." Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Co-Sponsor the Senate Democrat's Opposition Agenda. GO!

2005-01-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not taking a bit of credit for this since it's coming almost verbatim from Manyoso's diary on Daily Kos. Everything following is from the diary:

Senator Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats have just released their opposition agenda and you have the opportunity to become a citizen co-sponsor.

The agenda looks very good as it includes specific Senate Bills that the Democrats will introduce to the full Senate. The Bills cover a comprehensive set of issues including major reforms in our approaches to the military, trade, medicare, education, health care, and election reform. Other targeted issues include terrorism, veterans issues, deficit reduction, and abortion prevention.

These Bills will be reconciled with the House Democrats and will hopefully spur action on a Democratic parallel to the Republican's infamous Contract with America. I've created a quick bulleted summary of the Bills below. I really hope whoever is responsible for the webpage description of these Bills will take a look at it. Whoever drew up the descriptions was waayyyy to verbose. These need to be presented as no-nonsense, serious policy proposals. I'd like to see them present it as a resume to the American people of what we intend to do.

Senate Bill 11: Standing With Our Troops.

Increase our military end strength by up to 40,000 by 2007.
Create a Guard and Reserve Bill of Rights.
Fight for the families of soldiers by providing income security and affordable health care.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 12: Targeting the Terrorists More Effectively.

Increase our Special Operations forces by 2,000.
Target the institutions that spawn new terrorists.
Expand the pace and scope of programs to eliminate and safeguard nuclear materials.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 13: Fulfilling Our Duty to America’s Veterans.

Expand the availability and accessibility of mental health care.
Ensure that no veteran is forced to choose between a retirement and disability check.
Commitment to the soldiers of today a 21st Century GI Bill.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 14: Expanding Economic Opportunity.

Restore overtime protection to 6 million workers.
Increase the minimum wage for 7.4 million workers.
Eliminate tax incentives for companies that take jobs overseas.
Create new jobs through an expansion of infrastructure programs to repair America’s backbone.
Pursue a trade policy that protects American workers.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 15: Quality Education for All.

Increase support for pre-school education.
Fully fund No Child Left Behind and improve its implementation.
Create tuition incentives for college students to major in math, science and special education.
Providing relief from skyrocketing college tuition.
Increasing the size and access to Pell Grants.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 16: Making Health Care More Affordable.

Make prescription drugs more affordable through the legalization of prescription drug reimportation.
Ensure drugs are monitored after they are approved for use.
Ensure that all children and pregnant women will have health care.
Offer tax credits to small businesses.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 17: Democracy Begins at Home.

Reform the voting system in this country by creating Federal standards for our elections.
Add verification, accountability and accuracy to the voting system.
Increase access to the polls with Election Day registration, shorter lines and early voting.
Modernize our election equipment while providing the resources to the states to implement the bill.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 18: Meeting Our Responsibility to Medicare Beneficiaries.

Repeal the provision that prevents Medicare from negotiating better prices.
Eliminate the slush fund for HMOs.
Improve the prescription drug benefit by phasing out the current doughnut hole.
Buy down the Part B premium so premium increases are not too steep.
Ensure that no seniors are forced into HMOs.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 19: Fiscal Responsibility for a Sound Future.

Restore the Senate pay-as-you-go rule.
Reinstate sequestration to enforce pay-go and discretionary spending limits.
Ensure that any legislation increasing deficits is subject to full scrutiny, debate, and consideration in the Senate.
Prohibit the fast-tracking of Congressional budget resolutions that contain a reconciliation instruction that would worsen the deficit.
Read more here.

Senate Bill 20: Putting Prevention First.

Increase access to family planning services.
Improve contraceptive coverage by assuring equity in prescription drug insurance.
Provide relief to Medicaid by decreasing the financial burden of pregnancy-related and newborn care.
Read more here.

In my estimation, this is pretty damn encouraging. I really hope this means we're actually going to have a functioning opposition party. Let's play some offense!

Make sure you take the time to co-sponsor this agenda and don't miss Steve Soto's breakdown of the bills.

Maxspeak, You Listen! has the actual word documents being circulated. Here are the MS Word documents on election reform, fiscal policy, veterans, economic policy, Medicare, education, reproductive rights, health care, supporting the troops, terrorism, and "Keeping America's Promise." Also, I just called Reid's office and they said the actual text of the Bills is not available yet as they haven't introduced them.

Me again -- GO CO-SPONSOR THESE BILLS!!!

Republican Lawmakers to Attend KKK Meeting

2005-01-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

Ever since I was an undergraduate, I've wondered if there are evolved minds as opposed to minds that are mired in some proto-human form, stunted by prejudice and an inability to think analytically. In the 21st Century one would imagine that racism would be as dead as Spiro Agnew but apparently not.

OK, I overstated the "KKK Meeting" thing but via Atrios we learn that

Some Mississippi lawmakers are scheduled to speak Thursday to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls "a patently white supremacist group."

Having gone to the CCC website, I was appalled at what kind of proto-human "thought" (I'm loathe to call it "thought" since what they espouse appears to arise from the cerebellum) is presented there. The usual incoherent nazi-thug-skinhead drivel one would expect from un-evolved minds.

The fact that elected representatives would attend a ~~cross-burning~~ meeting like this is further evidence of Red State knuckle-dragging. Ever since I've ranted about Republicans (and BushCo) playing the race card in the south, several Republican friends have argued, "Not all Rebulicans are racist." Well, I agree with that and I have been guilty of generalizations, in my ire. No, not all - just most - and that's bad enough.

Maybe David Chalmer's new site will weigh in on the subject of evolved minds... Michel Foucault did but that was mere conjecture...

Donald Rumsfeld, War Criminal

2005-01-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

Oh, the irony (especially after my last post), according to an article in the German magazine Expatica, Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled a trip to Munich for fear of being prosecuted as a war criminal:

Rumsfeld has informed the German government via the US embassy he will not take part at the Munich Security Conference in February, conference head Horst Teltschik said.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in December with the Federal German Prosecutor's Office against Rumsfeld accusing him of war crimes and torture in connection with detainee abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
-------
The organisation alleges violations of German legislation which outlaws war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide independent of the place of crime or origin of the accused.
-------
The Center for Constitutional Rights said it and four Iraqis tortured in US custody had filed a complaint with German authorities against Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and eight other senior military and civilian officials over abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

Less than 60 years ago the US was prosecuting German officials for essentially the same thing: ordering torture.

It's a sad commentary on how far our country has sunk under Bush. It shouldn't be up to the Germans to prosecute Rumsfeld although I doubt a Democrat administration (in 2008) would have the stones to go after our home-grown nazis.
------ UPDATE -----
Frank Rich made the same connection as I did in today's NYT, unbeknownst to me (via Smirking Chimp).

No Wonder Bush Is So Chummy With Britain!

2005-01-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

In the picture below you'll see Prince Harry tastefully dressed for a London soiree, wearing the costume favored by the majority of atendees at Bush's inauguration.

Good God, these people don't care that we know where their political proclivities fall. Welcome to the New World Order.

Boycott CNN, FNC, MSNBC, Major Network News

2005-01-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

A very good friend of mine wrote to me about the photo in my previous post, how CNN was softening the episode, "the soldiers were skittish because of so many car bomb attacks... the US will indemnify the girl..." - the US is going to buy her new parents?

I didn't catch the CNN report because I have been boycotting CNN, Faux News, MSNBC, since the election. By and large, I've also boycotted the major network's news (I did tune in during the first two weeks of the tsunami disaster) but my rule is not hard and fast - ABC, CBS, NBC, they're all the same.

As Media Matters reported yesterday, CNN, Faux News, and MSNBC have completely abandoned any pretense of being balanced. The corporate masters know where their bread is buttered (a corrupt administration engaged in corporate quid pro quo) and have forsaken objective journalism for giving the Red States - and BushCo - what they want.

I don't know why anyone on the left (with the exception of media watchdog groups) would continue to tune into cable or network news, especially since it's common knowledge that journalism has been replaced by spin. Still, I recognize that it's a hard habit to break.

Break the habit. Turn off cable and network news and then let everyone you know why you've done it. If cable and network news outlets want to fall back on the excuse of free-market capitalism determining spin, er, "content" (at the expense of objectively reporting facts) then we can play by free-market rules and not buy the bullshit. Since I went cold-turkey with cable and network news I've used the internet exclusively for news and I'm still better informed than 99.9999% of Americans.

Kill ugly TV - Boycott CNN, Faux News, MSNBC and network news.

While Bush Danced

2005-01-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

This photo has been making the rounds on the internets but it's worth posting if only to remind us of the human toll this war is taking. The photo is of a 10-year old girl whose her parents were shot to death by US soldiers when the car she and her family were in failed to stop at a checkpoint. It's haunting.

Feel free to use my bandwidth and post this picture.

Random Bits on MLK's Birthday

2005-01-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Some day's I get so overwhelmed with anger at BushCo that I can barely think straight. A million fucking things to say and frustrated by no means to say them all. Under Bush, this country has become a shithole of absurdity.

I dare any inbred conservative cocksucker to tell me I don't love my country because I love it more than you psuedo-flag waving shitsacks. You don't love your country, you love a delluded little martinet out to destroy this country. The USA used to be a country that looked forward, to progress, to the justice and determination of all people. Conservatives look back, at an ideal, at a false picture, and pretend that's love of country.

Absurdity: call the Mississippi tax commission today (601-923-7000), you'll find that the office is closed " in observance of Robert E Lee's and Martin Luther King's birthdays." (via Wonkette)

I can't recall a holiday being named to commemorate Confederate generals but the pointy-headed racists in Mississippi deem R.E. Lee's birthday sufficient reason to close up shop.

Riverbend over at Baghdad Burning gives a frightening portent:

The weapons never existed. It's like having a loved one sentenced to death for a crime they didn't commit- having your country burned and bombed beyond recognition, almost. Then, after two years of grieving for the lost people, and mourning the lost sovereignty, we're told we were innocent of harboring those weapons. We were never a threat to America...

Congratulations Bush- we are a threat now.

And the shithead about to be innaugurated believes the election justifies his failure in Iraq:

President Bush said that the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

I love my country because I'm determined not to allow it to become a Kafka-esque joke. Under the leadership of a blood-thirsty punk, our country is becoming just that.

On Martin Luther King's birthday, I try to draw strength from King's determination. However, I keep thinking about Malcom X's determination: "By any means necessary."

Irma Graner Speaks Out - Who Hears?

2005-01-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

Our worthless SCLM won't report on this; I googled

'irma+graner+higher-ups+little+guys+fall'

and got results from two Aussie papers and one Chinese paper. Here's Mrs. Graner's quote (via lapin's DKos diary which gives the attribution to TurkishPress.com):

"You know its the higher-ups that should be on trial ... they let the little guys take the fall for them. But the truth will come out eventually," Irma Graner told journalists outside the courtroom at the Fort Hood army base in Texas.

She also denounced Bush for comments he made last year after pictures of the abuses at the US-run Iraqi prison caused worldwide condemnation.

"My son was convicted the day President Bush went on TV and said that seven bad apples disgraced the country. But Bush and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld are the ones who disgraced the country," she said.

If the American public has any shame regarding torture, the SCLM is happy to hand them scapegoats. Then leave it at that.

The days of "investigative reporting" and courage in our media are quaint relics of the past. Corporate owned media is nothing but a mouthpiece of the government.

As If You Didn't Know

2005-01-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

The only thing the Iraq War has succeeded in doing (aside from putting Saddam Hussein in jail) is providing a place to train more terrorists:

The war in Iraq is creating a training and recruitment ground for a new generation of "professionalized" Islamic terrorists, and the risk of a terrorist attack involving a germ weapon is steadily growing, an in-house CIA think tank said in a report released Thursday.

The "dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq" to other countries will create a new threat in the coming 15 years, especially as the Al Qaeda network mutates into a volatile brew of independent extremist groups, cells and individuals, according to the report by the National Intelligence Council.

David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said those who survived the Iraq war would pose a threat when they went home, "even under the best of scenarios."

I'm telling you, in thirty years people will look back on this period in US history and say, "What the fuck were they thinking?!?"

Contrast of Truths and Lies

2005-01-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Poor Man does an excellent job of contrasting Rathergate and WMDs:

Rathergate vs. Saddam's WMD - A Quantitative Comparison

	Rathergate	Saddam's WMD
Investigation recently concluded?	Yes	Yes
Use of highly questionable supporting documents?	Yes	Yes
Central claims disproven?	No	Yes
Media spread questionable information?	Yes	Yes
Number of firings resulting from investigation	4	0
Number of high-profile reassignments resulting from investigation	1	0
Number of wars started using flawed justification	0	1
Cost to American taxpayer	$0.00	~$150,000,000,000 (as of 1/12/05)

See the rest here.

Three Years of Shame

2005-01-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who thought the US was a free country, today marks the third anniversary of an absolutely shameful page in American history: the establishment of the the "detention camp" at Guantanamo (that "camp" nomenclature has Kafka-esque overtones).

Naturally, that is not how the Bush administration sees it. No official spokesman will admit that Guantanamo was a mistake that has besmirched the US image around the world. The Pentagon claims that detainees have provided valuable information, which has helped thwart several planned terrorist strikes. If they were not under lock and key at Guantanamo, says Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, many inmates might be plotting such attacks, or back fighting US troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

But many of these claims do not survive scrutiny. Privately, Pentagon officials admit that most detainees are low-level figures. Outside experts query the intelligence value of many prisoners, insignificant figures now behind bars for two years or more.

In the meantime, the charges of prisoner abuse and torture multiply. With each one, it becomes more apparent that wittingly or unwittingly, Guantanamo was a test bed for the techniques - and incubator of the mentality - that the world discovered in the horrific prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib.

A little later today, I'll show preserving how the principles of democracy has taken a back seat to fighting the "enemies of democracy".

When protecting corporate interests assumes the guise of "furthering democracy" you can assume a laissez-faire apporach to human rights.

Vacation's Over

2005-01-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised I still have readers...

I have a post in the works regarding the logic of torture. In the meantime, check out this email that winger college students are circulating to intimidate professors.

Back soon.

Life During Wartime

2004-12-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Is the function of the press to report events objectively or is it meant to provide a narrative sufficient to further the goals of a government?

Earlier this year, when Democrats were in an uproar over Sinclair Broadcasting Group ordering its affiliates to show the anti-Kerry "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal", not much was said about the fact that Sinclair had previously sent correspondents to Iraq to report on “good news about the war”. Sinclair (and its supporters on the Right) apparently felt that Americans were only getting negative reporting from Iraq.

In the interest of objectivity myself, I Googled “Iraq + good + news” to no avail; the first ten pages of results returned stories reporting that the good news is that not more people are being killed. Indeed, Sinclair gave up its endeavor when it became clear that there’s not much mileage in US soldiers handing out candy to Iraqi children and found it difficult to justify the stories of schools being built – for every twenty schools destroyed. Given both sides of the story, only the most myopic (or, prevalently, misinformed) Bush supporter could say there’s a plethora good news coming out of Iraq; recent polls suggest most Americans think otherwise.

Still, for many pro-war conservatives, “news” is not about providing facts to the public but about conjuring narratives sufficient to support the goals of the Bush administration. Fighting 101st Keyboarder Roger Simon states that reporting the news makes

"Many members of our media are anti-American traitors." "Civil liability is something the families of those murdered should be asking about... I don’t think it is too much to expect reporters to have a sense of history..." "Not biased, just on the other side." "Without a Democratic party that would enact policies favorable to the terrorists, the terrorist/AP collaboration would have no effect." "If you are subscribing to a newspaper that carries the AP why not just send a check to Hamas?"
(via AlicuBlog)

Indeed, why bother with the truth at all?

Because, the function of the First Amendment, and the Press it protected, was to keep the government in check by informing American citizens without the oversight of the government what exactly was going on with their elected leaders.

Whether or not a citizen chooses to believe what the Press reports is up to that citizen, I suppose. However, it was difficult to find The Fighting 101st Keyboarder Division complaining about so-called liberal bias in the media when the war started. So it’s a matter of wanting to have it both ways, for pro-war conservatives. “Reactionary” is the term I believe is suitable (check the definition) because a coherent philosophy doesn’t waver with the wind. You can’t be gung-ho about how the Press goes ga-ga when a space-age military is rolling over an essentially stone-age force and then accuse that same Press of anti-American sensibility when things go terribly wrong and they report that, too.

The First Amendment is a uniquely American construct and if anything is "anti-American" it is the notion that the First Amendment only exists in order to support the aims of the government.

Now, a pro-war conservative (such as Roger Simon) may contend that reports of prisoner abuse and torture are the acts of "anti-American" members of the press seeking to undermine the aims of the Bush administration. However, such a claim is untenable when no contrary claims exist (i.e. torture or abuse did not happen). In fact, Simon doesn't claim that contrary reports exist. He's merely spewing ad hominem bile because the reports don't suit his view of the war.

The logic is simple. Either you report facts that suit the aims of a pro-war agenda or you simply report facts. The former flies in the face of the Constitution. If you're going to claim "Americanism" or "anti-Americanism", you must establish identity with the creed that determines what an "American" is - the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Democracy demands the truth not narrative, not a gussied up version of the truth. Informed decisions are made on information - not opinion. In a truly free - American - society, the Press reports on "what is" not on "what we wamt to hear".

New Look, New Direction

2004-12-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

Nice thing about the holidays is time on my hands. So why haven't I been posting?

With all this time, I've been seriously considering the purpose of this blog. To me, it's not enough to merely parrot what I've read on other leftist blogs and sites; that's done elsewhere and usually done far better than I can do it. I'm not a journalist (we'll forgo the "blogger as journalist" nonsense) nor did I ever want this blog to become "journalistic". In the last month or so, I've been looking for my place in the blogosphere and the new look here announces where I intend to take this space.

I have degrees in Psychology and Philosophy and I think both those areas give me a unique perspective on world events. Some of my posts have indulged in a little psychoanalysis and I'll continue with that, especially when examining the motives of conservatives. However, Philosophical (and specifically, Logical) analysis of conservative arguments are always entertaining - and revealing.

Back in the early 90's Rush Limbaugh had an hourly show, basically a stripped-down repetition of his show, and the college Republicans used to gather in the student union at noon to watch him. Likewise, I would watch along with them, keeping a tally of the logical errors he would make. It never failed to amaze me how many Straw Men, Red Herrings, False Analogies, and other fallacies Limbaugh could manage to fit into 40 minutes of broadcasting.

What's truly astounding is that The Federalist Papers are gorgeous works of pristine logic - read them and follow the exquisite arguments laid down by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay to see what I mean. Conservative "intellectuals" constantly refer to the Federalist Papers but it seems to be mere lip-service; modern conservative arguments tend to rely more on "belief" and emotion than reason - a tragic development, especially since it has degraded the discourse in politics. Rather than confronting liberals on terms of reasoned argument, conservatives have reduced themselves to name-calling and scapegoating.

A rather broad, sweeping indictment on my part. I intend to use this space to support my claims. We'll see how successful I am.

Taking the Christ Out of Christmas - In Iraq

2004-12-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting post over at Juan Cole about yet another unfortunate product of our adventure in Iraq - the oppression of Iraqi Christians:

Iraq's approximately 700,000 Christians actually are having to hide their celebrations for fear of violence from radical Muslim extremists. Borzou Daragahi reports that most Iraqi Christians are declining to put out Christmas lights or symbols, and many are attending daytime masses or none at all for fear of car bombs. Many masses have even been cancelled by the churches

US enmity with Syria can only worsen the situation.

Thousands of Christians have fled Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Estimates vary widely, from just 10,000 to as many as 200,000. Most have moved to Jordan, Syria or Lebanon, all of them relatively hospitable to Christians. The Baath regime had been generally tolerant of Christians, since it stressed Arab nationalism rather than Islam as the basis of the state.

A conference on Christian-Muslim dialogue was held recently in Baathist Syria, where major Christian and Muslim figures spoke about harmony between Christians and Muslims. Most Syrian Christians support the Baath government because it provides tolerance to them, and they know that were it to fall, it would likely be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. About 10 percent of Syria's 18 million citizens are Christian.

Ironically, the Bush administration wants to overthrow the Syrian government, risking the same kind of destabilization there that has so hurt Iraqis--including Iraqi Christians.

Of course the neocons have no love for Christianity (except when it furthers their interests) and protecting Chrisitians (or Kurds or Sunnis or anybody else) is the furthest thing from their minds.

Sen. Feinstein to propose an end to Electoral College

2004-12-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

Looks like we have another Senator in our corner:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday that when Congress returns in January, she will propose a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a one-person, one-vote system for electing the nation's president and vice president.
----------------
"The Electoral College is an anachronism, and the time has come to bring our democracy into the 21st century," Feinstein said in a statement. "During the founding years of the republic, the Electoral College may have been a suitable system, but today it is flawed and amounts to national elections being decided in several battleground states.''

Despite some popular appeal, the proposal faces a difficult road to passage. It takes a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress followed by ratification by 38 states for a constitutional amendment to become law.

Feinstein's staff pointed out Wednesday that 25 years ago, the Senate voted 51-48 for a proposal to abolish the Electoral College, a majority but still far short of the two-thirds required. About 10 years before that, the House voted 338-70 for abolishment, but the Senate didn't act that year.

Feinstein, who has the support of Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island, as a co-sponsor, said the Electoral College, which awards each state and the District of Columbia a minimum of three votes, is unfair to states such as California because it takes far more popular votes to win even one of California's 55 electoral votes than, for instance, to win one of the three in a sparsely populated state such as North Dakota. Most states award their electoral votes in a winner-take-all fashion, although Nebraska, with five, and Maine, with four, have a proportional system for allocating their electoral votes.
--------------
Electoral College supporters say the current system for electing a president guarantees small states a voice in the campaign. They argue it is consistent with the intent of the Founding Fathers, who created a republic in which voters delegate powers to elected representatives, and not a direct democracy.

They also say that even without the college, candidates of the two major parties will still focus their efforts where their parties are strongest and that the proposed system would lead to more third parties, which could splinter the vote.

I don't see why "the proposed system would lead to more third parties," is a problem; seems to me the current two-party system isn't a spectacular success. If this makes it to the floor for a vote, we need to write to our representatives to make sure they support ending the out-dated Electoral College.

Merry Christmas, Support Our Troops

2004-12-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

In the silly and simple-minded canard of the rightards, not supporting the war is equivalent to not supporting the troops. It's difficult for me to conceive that some people are actually stupid enough to believe that but it's been spewed hit-and-run style in my comments by psuedo-patriotic Americans.

They're not patriotic Americans, they're Nationalists which is tantamount to fascism and so, completely un-American. Nitwit Nationalists without the intellectual wherewithall to comprehend that criticizing ill-considered foreign policy is actually more pro-American than blindly following the lies of crooks driven by self-interest while putting fellow Americans in harm's way.

I've challenged these anti-American types to back up their bile with actual facts but as you can see, none have the courage or intellect to do so. Deep in their hearts they know they hate America and believe that one day the America they hate will be destroyed for the sake of the fascist theocracy they wish for.

Merry Christmas, your wish won't come true.

In the meantime, I point you to an excellent DKos diary by ttagaris that shows just how much conservatives hate our troops. Cutting VA benefits for our troops is hardly a show of support. Oh, and by the way, the diary is nicely cited, so anyone can check the facts. Funny how us liberals are sticklers for facts and rightards run from facts. Rightards mainly indulge in ad hominem attacks and then cower when confronted with facts. It is 100% my experience the entire time I've blogged here. They call me a name and then run when asked to back up their shit with facts. Sad.

To everyone - Merry Christmas.

Social Security and The Fainthearted Faction

2004-12-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

Fuck I'm tired of dealing with all of this stupidity... thank God for Christmas!

Anyway, I'll let Josh Marshall do all the work fill you in on the Fainthearted Faction and their willingness to sell us out to Wall Street:

In any case, a few other points. First, though he is sponsoring a partial Social Security phase-out plan, I will at least give Sen. Graham credit for a level of responsibilty on how to pay for it. He has publicly scolded President Bush's willingness to borrow one or two trillion dollars to finance his Social Security phase-out plan. And he himself has suggested eliminating the caps on payroll taxes (thus incresing the taxes on upper-income workers) to finance the transition.

At the end of the day, he still wants to partially phase-out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. And partial phase-out will lead to total phase-out. But there is some virtue I think in noting cases in which you have fundamental political and philosophical disagreements with someone and yet you can see that they are advocating what you see as bad policies with some measure of honesty and responsibility, in contrast to the likes of President Bush who is doing so with the characteristic recklessness and deception. Graham was also a standout on Abu Ghraib. So, anyway, I just wanted to noted these points.

Sorry-ass lot.

Unfurling the Prisoner Abuse Story

2004-12-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Not a lot going on in the blogosphere - almost everyone's on vacation, it seems. But not your intrepid Nino.

Seems the military tried to cover up prisoner abuse (including murder) and side-step prosecution by abusers:

Army documents released Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered new details about the deaths of Iraqis in U.S. custody and suggested that prosecution in several cases was pre-empted by military commanders.

The case was one of dozens included in the latest release of government documents relating to the detention and interrogation of U.S.-held detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The documents were turned over to the ACLU and other human rights groups that filed a joint lawsuit to force compliance with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request earlier this year.

The ACLU and its fellow petitioners won a major court victory late Monday when a federal judge ordered the Central Intelligence Agency--which had failed to respond to the FOIA petition--to disclose files that are currently under internal review for evidence of possible wrongdoing by its agents in Iraq.

Aside from a handful of rightards hiding out in momma's closet proudly serving the 101st Warblogger keyboard division, most Americans believe the US needs to be held to a higher standard. Setting a precedent of abusing prisoners opens the door for the abuse of US P.O.W.s by enemy forces.

We need to set this right.

Mein Fuhrer Just Fucked Up

2004-12-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

This just out from the ACLU website... I also heard it on KRCC from the BBC World News:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.
---------
The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.

Stealing elections? Torturing human beings? It's all the same thing to these thugs...

Class Warfare For Christmas

2004-12-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you sift through my archives, you'll find a number of instances where I have challenged conservatives to provide historical evidence of tax cut benefits. Specifically, I have asked for an historical precedent where sweeping tax cuts for the rich have benefited society in the long-term. Being neither an economist nor an historian, I'm not sure my cursory research has provided me with pat answers. However, what research I have done has indicated that there is no time in history when tax cuts for the rich have benefited society. My research has indicated quite the opposite; progressive tax rates have created long-term economic stability and sustained growth by benefiting society as a whole.

I say "society" rather than "the economy" and stipulate "long-term" over "short-term" because I am willing to acknowledge that Reagan's tax-cuts benefited the economy over the short-term. Needless to say, that benefit was felt by a small segment of society and even then, the effects were short-term. In the long term, a majority of Americans did worse under Reagan and his so-called "legacy" conspicuously neglects his economic record. A short-term economic boom that eventually leads to economic crisis (that occured towards the end of Reagan's second term and throughout Bush I's presidency) hardly qualify as success.

So my challenge stands.

I bring this up because my post Saturday on this season's holiday retail performance was borne out in a report today:

Recent sales figures from the nation's largest retailers underscore the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Wal-Mart missed its November sales numbers, posting a meager seven-tenths-of-a-percent gain over November, 2003. The company had expected 3 to 4 percent sales growth. City saw a 3 percent decline in sales last month, and K-Mart's sales are likely to drop 10 percent.

"You have wealthy consumers spending in unprecedented proportions and the cash and credit starved consumers are suffering," says retail analyst Burt Fleckinger of the Strategic Resource Group.

The lesson should be clear here but I'm afraid not many people get it. A spending spree by a small number of Americans cannot sustain long-term prosperity, nor is it inidicative of a healthy economy.

I've always maintained that as long as you have a strong middle-class and a working class that can afford to own a couple of cars, a fishing boat, and a home, socialism will remain a dirty word. As such, I didn't think I'd see a socialist America in my lifetime. With the rise of the Right, I may be reassessing that prediction. As more Americans fall into poverty and families find it harder to make ends meet.

Since 2000, Gray and more than 6 million other Americans have joined the ranks of the families who find it increasingly difficult to perform a most basic function - to put food on their tables.

The economic indicators are numerous.

After a seven-year decline, the number of Americans on food stamps has shot up 39 percent since 2000, according to federal statistics. Every state, except Hawaii, has felt the impact. In Arizona, food stamp rolls have increased 104 percent, in Nevada, 97 percent; Oregon, 79 percent; South Carolina, 68 percent; Missouri, 65 percent.

Texas has added nearly a million people to its food stamp rolls in only four years.

Part of that increase was fueled by states' increased efforts to enroll a greater portion of people eligible for food stamps and the placement of people back onto the rolls who were knocked off during welfare reform. Most of it, however, social workers say, is the growing number of Americans unable to feed themselves without help.

"Clearly, most of this is because of increased need," said Carol Adams, head of the Illinois Department of Social Services. Illinois has seen a 31 percent increase in the number of people on food stamps since 2000.

If you ask me, this hardly looks like an economic expansion. What it looks like is that Bush's tax policies have benefited a few while hurting many more.

I'm not asking for a dogfight, I'm asking to be enlightened. If there are any conservatives reading this who can lead me to facts (and not opinion, conjecture, or theory), I would be more than happy to look at those facts. Let's start a dialogue: sway me.

Until then, I'm tending to think that if there's anything to the term "Reagan Revolution" it is that, in the long-term, it's a Marxist's dream.

Dr. Menlo Rocks the Universe

2004-12-19T02:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe because it's late and maybe it's because I've had a few but if you're not making Dr. Menlo one of your daily visits well... you're not like me except in the fact that you hit the '= key' instead of the backspace key.

Gutless Rightards

2004-12-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

I get my share of hate email/comments and as much as I'd like to shake the last one, I just can't let it go. it's too cowardly. Plus, well, not alot to write about, frankly.

So.... I get this anonymous bullshit comment on a Rumsfeld post yesterday that says:

You have no idea what you are talking about. I for one get tired of people like yourself discrediting our military and this great country of ours.

And my response was:

I for one get tired of cowards like you posting anonymously. If you have contrary evidence, shit-for-brains, by all means, put it up. Otherwise, shut your fucking fascist mouth, skank.

Of course, the shithead hits-and-runs. Like so many of that ilk. What I wanted to say, in entirety, was that I love my country much more than you do because I am willing to speak my mind, practice democracy, you only improve by recognizing your mistakes and correcting what's wrong.

You'd think the anonymous poster would realize that: he writes a whiny-ass blog about being a half-assed wrestler and being a piss-poor student. A really, REALLY boring blog. I have no clue who he's writing it for unless it's some kind of code for anti-American terrorists, I mean it involves lists of what - who knows what the fuck - could be construed as coded lists for plans to MURDER GEORGE BUSH or drop BIOCHEMICAL WEAPONS IN A UNITED STATES MALL AT CHRISTMAS TIME - his blog seems pretty hinky to me, suspect, a little Islamofascist because why else would he want to stifle dissent? Get me here, DHS, I think this guy is an actual TERRORIST!

Anyway, he's not so "anonymous":

Referring Link http://theplans.blogspot.com/
Host Name pool-141-153-52-176.char.east.verizon.net
IP Address 141.153.52.176
Country United States
Region West Virginia
City Charleston
ISP Verizon Internet Services
Returning Visits 0
Visit Length 15 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 6.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1280x1024
Javascript Enabled

Yee-haw, ain't technology wondeful?

The Fat Getting Fatter

2004-12-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

It will be interesting to see what the final retailer numbers are for the holidays; a quick Google search didn't indicate anything other than bad news... well, except for those shitsacks whose hands are on Bush's dick. The tax cuts did benefit the upper crust and their attitude seems to be "Fuck the rest of Americans".

Retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears, Target - you know, where us poor folk go and shop - are having a pretty dismal season in light of the "recovery". On the other hand, high-end retailers like Neiman-Marcus and Sacks are raking it in. Welcome to the Bush economy where a few live it up and quite a few suck it up:

The recovery is showing up in stock values, corporate profits and other measures at the upper end of the economic spectrum. But in data more meaningful to most Americans, things don't look so rosy. Employment has trickled up during the past year, but still stands at 400,000 fewer jobs than in 2001. Productivity gains and outsourcing mean some U.S. jobs are gone for good.

Wages have risen, but only modestly. The ranks of those without health insurance grew by 1.4 million to 45 million in 2003.
----------
Some of those tax-cut recipients seem intent on displaying their riches as conspicuously as possible.

In such places as East Hampton, N.Y., and Seal Harbor, Maine, the $10 million weekend place is commonplace. Yacht sizes have swelled, and superluxury cars are selling like, well, Volkswagens. Volkswagen, for its part, is about to introduce a 1,000-horsepower Bugatti that does 250 mph. The price tag: at least $1 million.

To quote another artist, Billie Holiday: "Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose." Great song. But not very good economic policy.

Now if there's equivocation on this, I want to hear it. Don't just anonymously say "You're wrong" like the nutless sack of shit in my last post, really, that just diminishes any impact you rightards thought you were making. That's schoolyard sissy bullshit and does nothing to add to a debate. Show us your brains by backing up your argument with FACTS (and "you're anti-American" is not a fact, dumbass) and for God's sake, try and show a modicum of courage, posting anonymously is well known throughout the internet to be as cowardly as it gets.

So if you have FACTS to present an alternate view of the economy, bring it out, I'd love to read it. Enlighten me.

The Rummy Thing Gets Rummier

2004-12-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

If the Chimp still hangs onto Rummy after this, we can all congratulate ourselves for identifying Bush as a complete moron:

Renewed exposure of prisoner abuse, torture and even murder by American military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan is widening already deep divisions between the Pentagon and the intelligence community -- and creating an untenable situation for Donald Rumsfeld, the beleaguered secretary of defense. A recently disclosed FBI memo indicates that "marching orders" to abandon traditional interrogation methods came from the defense secretary himself.

In recent days, a coalition of human rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights has brought new cases of abuse to public attention. Using the Freedom of Information Act, they have pried thousands of pages of previously secret documents from the Defense Department and other agencies.
--------
Scott Horton, a New York lawyer and president of the International League for Human Rights, has spent months investigating the role Bush administration officials played in the torture scandal. He says there is mounting evidence -- including the May 10 FBI e-mail -- that strongly suggests that Rumsfeld and his top intelligence aides were directly responsible for the wholesale abandonment of legal and ethical norms as well as international treaty obligations. Now that Republican senators and neoconservative ideologues are publicly turning their backs on the defense secretary, perhaps even he may someday be held accountable for this disgraceful stain on the honor of the U.S. armed forces.

For all of it, justice is him dying in prison.

Google Bomb O'Reilly

2004-12-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

Google 'coward' and there's no Bill O'Reilly; considering 4 of the first 6 sites are for Noel Coward, maybe it's time to "Google bomb" Bill O'Reilly with 'coward'. I take my cue from this Letter from David Brock to Bill O'Reilly (via Oliver Willis):

You once offered your viewers your definition of the word "coward." On the January 5, 2004, O'Reilly Factor, you declared: "If you attack someone publicly, as these men did to me, you have an obligation to face the person you are smearing. If you don't, you are a coward."

Well, Mr. O'Reilly, you have attacked me publicly on numerous occasions, and you refuse to face me. You, sir, are a coward -- by your own definition of the term. You are "hiding under your desk" (to paraphrase your August 26, 2003, claim about a "coward" who declined to appear on your show) rather than allowing me on your program to discuss your insults. You are "gutless," to borrow the phrase you used on January 10, 2003, and February 8, 2001, to describe people who would not appear on your program. I attach additional examples of your pejorative descriptions of those who decline invitations to appear on your broadcast.

Your frequent complaint that your words are taken out of context appears to have spurred your recent assault on my organization. While reasonable people can disagree about conclusions we, or you, have drawn about your comments, you are simply wrong to say that we took you out of context. I remain willing and eager to appear on either your television or radio program to discuss your contention that my organization has taken your comments out of context.

Should you continue to refuse this offer, it is only reasonable that the American people will conclude that you are not only -- as you would put it -- a "coward," but a hypocrite as well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the 'Google bomb', it's quite simple. Whenever you type 'coward' into your site, you hyperlink coward to Bill O'Reilly's site (if you put your mouse over every instance of 'coward' in this post, look at the bottom left corner of your browser and you'll see that it's linked to Bill O'Reilly's site). With enough bloggers linking coward to O'Reilly's site, whenever someone types coward into a Google search, O'Reilly's site will come up as the first result.

Go to it!

UPDATE: Bumblebums suggested in comments on my DKos diary that we should Google Bomb Bill O'Reilly by linking his name to 'coward' on the M-W Dictionary site, i.e. link every instance of 'Bill O'Reilly' to the definition of 'coward' listed on that site. Superb idea.

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/coward

Where Is My Fucking Visit?!?!

2004-12-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

Goddamnit, I have been itching for a visit from ~~brownshirted~~ blue-suited Secret Service thugs so they can see how a single dad with three kids gets by well below the line of poverty. I'm dying for those soul-less pieces of crap to come and rough me up in front of my kids so my kids can come to respect the power and lack of integrity of crepping fascism in our country. Furthermore, I want my kids to see how, after another terrorist attack, our moron Preznit had nothing better to do than to send his bullies out to initmidate people exercising their first amendment rights.

For instance, the shit-for-brains Secret Service wasting your tax money to brow-beat a Macon, GA man for his bumper stickers:

Jesse Ethredge doesn't care much for President Bush, and he doesn't hesitate to say so.

In fact, if you're following the 57-year-old Eatonton man down the road, you'll quickly learn just exactly what he thinks of Bush.

"Don't U blame me. Thief -- Liar -- Two Faced Murderer Geo W. Bush. Hell with Bush and all damn Republicans."

Those are the words printed, in plastic stick-on letters, on the back of the camper on Ethredge's truck, which is also adorned with a cartoon child urinating on the word "Republicans."

Those also are the words that earned Ethredge a visit from the U.S. Secret Service last week.

"They came Tuesday, wanting to ask me what did I mean by that there," Ethredge said, pointing to the slogan on his truck. "They asked me a bunch of questions, like if he was to come into my driveway, what would I tell him. I said I'd tell him to get out as fast as he come in it. ... They wanted to see if I was a danger to him."

This isn't the country I grew up learning about. George Bush has fucking ruined this country. I recall how Rethugs whined and pointed fingers when Janet Reno had the ATF storm the Branch Davidian complex. Well, guess what, you dipshits, Koresh was armed to the teeth and was molesting children. Screw his first amendment rights, he got what he deserved. Where is your outrage when people are jailed for wearing a shirt at a Bush circle jerk or when the Secret Service gorillas intimidate old men for their bumper stickers?

Yeah, I thought so you phony fucks...

Kill Em' All and Let Lavasoft Sort Em' Out

2004-12-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

This made me smile: adware companies developing software to root out and destroy programs from rival adware companies:

Adware cannibals feast on each other

Companies that use free software downloads to target Web surfers with annoying ads are turning on each other to keep customers--and the cash they generate--for themselves.

The tactic is in the spotlight in a little-noticed legal dispute unfolding in Seattle. Caribbean-based ad company Avenue Media last month accused New York-based DirectRevenue of using competing software to detect and delete Avenue Media's Internet Optimizer program from its customers' computers.

According to the Nov. 24 complaint, DirectRevenue's software detects Internet Optimizer and then sends a command to "kill" the program, a process that deletes its files from the PC registry and from the computer altogether. Avenue Media said DirectRevenue's tactics have caused it to lose about 1 million customers--about half its installed base--and as much as $10,000 a day in revenue.

I hope the swine cannibalizes each other into oblivion and then let the programmers have it out in a fight to the death. Then they can share a room in hell.

Email To Investigate the Ohio Election

2004-12-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

This is too important NOT to do this, Click here:

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/contact.html

To support Rep. Conyers call to investigate the Ohio vote.

Check Out the Bridge I'm Selling On eBay!

2004-12-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting piece in today's NYT about how companies are hiring professional union busters:

"They did everything they could to make the union look bad," Larry Brown, a union vice president, said.

Many workers became angry with the union over the pay cuts, especially because they received no raises from 1995 to 2001.

The anger fueled the effort to oust the union. Tom Brown organized anti-union meetings, sent mailings to the plant's 500 workers and asked them to sign cards saying they wanted the union out.

Mr. Brown testified that Mr. X, the company consultant, had given him advice. EnerSys officials later admitted that they had paid the consultant $39,000 to help guide the anti-union campaign. Mr. Brown also acknowledged that company officials had given him stamps for anti-union mailings.

One of the many Republican lies that the bah-bah Dems have been reluctant to answer, "Pro-Labor is Anti-Worker" has got to be the silliest. Look, I understand how some workers would take the bait of "Labor hurts business and that means you might lose your job" but even that falls apart when you reveal the real reasons for companies shipping jobs overseas (enriching shareholders and upper-tier management, shifting capital to other industries or investment).

On the face of it, "Pro-Labor is Anti-Worker" just doesn't make a lick of sense. Unions exist in order to advocate for worker's rights but Big Business and Republicans have been able to convince workers that Unions only want to collect dues. Huh? You mean Unions aren't there to negotiate better wages, benefits, employment guarantees, pension protections, advocating safer working conditions and limiting the amount of hours an employer can demand from workers? Right, because companies are well-known for taking care of those details themselves.

Unfortunately, the DLC and Clinton Democrats were unwilling to lift a finger for labor. That centrist/corporatist attitude is arguably a miscalculation that cost Dems the last election. As the Supreme Court and the government became less friendly to Labor, Clinton and the DLC stood back and raked in corporate donations. Small wonder workers have become disillusioned with Dems as the party that would protect their interests. With both parties apparently forsaking the American worker, economic interests are pretty much moot as a campaign issue.

I'm not saying that anyone has to appropriate "Pro-business is Anti-worker" as a platform. There was a time in this country when unions thrived - and so did the US economy. But as long as the Dems pay little more than lip-service to unions and American workers, working-class voters have little choice between the two existing parties.

This Is the "Democracy" We're Importing to Iraq?

2004-12-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

If or when we're hit by another terrorist attack, DHS can assure us it's not because they hadn't vetted all the 11-year old boys:

When the two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff's investigators showed up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous. But when they told her why they were there, she got angry: A complaint had been filed alleging that her 11-year old son had made "anti-American and violent" statements in school.

She was aware of an incident at Belmont Ridge Middle School in which her son, Yishai Asido, was assigned to write a letter to U.S. Marines and responded, according to his teacher, by saying, "I wish all Americans were dead and that American soldiers should die." Yishai and Albaugh deny that the boy wished his countrymen dead.

Why worry about Smallpox and nuclear devices when the real threat is apparently from wrist-rockets, BB guns, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards...

They Get a Gay RNC Chair and Then This Happens

2004-12-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

You just have to check this out over at Skippy the Bush Kangaroo... biggest laugh I've had in a week!

Magic vs. Science

2004-12-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

It's weird how one thought leads to another.

It's not that it hadn't slipped under my radar but the closing of an art exhibition for showing an unflattering portrait of the Preznit was covered elsewhere:

A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month.

"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."

Sure it bothers me that the US continues to resemble a Soviet state. The government lies, shrouds its operations in secrecy, engages in subterfuge, spies on its citizens, and apparently we're moving into the realm of "state approved" art. It's disturbing and I'm afraid I'm becoming inured to it.

That Bush and his throngs of holy-roller robots are anti-intellectual is not exactly news. However, when it comes to pushing their mumbo-jumbo agenda into classrooms across all levels of the educational system, it makes me wonder why these people hate America. It's not just their venal dismissal of global warming for the sake of placating big business but the dissemination of bogus information and outright falsehoods (such as the nonsense toted in federal "abstinence-only" programs) is intolerable.

The epistemological rationale for evangelicals insistence on equal time for their superstition is specious at best, untenable at worst. So I pose some simple questions: how many computers did "faith" build? How many prayers have lifted rockets into space? Where in the bible is the periodic table?

When religious dogma provides coherent answers to problems posed by physics, geology, biology, chemistry, astronomy, anthropology, engineering, mathematics, etc., I'll consider a more tolerable view of God in the classroom. Until then, I'm putting my faith in empiricism. Progress depends on our dedication to science and our commitment to bettering the whole of humanity. Organized religion has done nothing for the former and very little towards the latter.

Because I Care...

2004-12-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

...and because I have neither the energy to write not the creativity to come up with something decent, I submit to you these links for fellow bloggers who actually have something worthwhile to read. Considering every other blog today is KERIK KERIK KERIK and DEATH for Scott Peterson, I didn't feel like I had much to add today. Maybe tonight but unitl then, enjoy the links.

Roxanne over at Rox Populi asks us to come up with gift ideas for Dubya, Condi, Uncle Karl, Uncle Dick, and little Scooter... could be fun!

Mac at Pesky' Apostrophe has a new look AND argues with a Baptist about the true history of Christmas, sweeping aside the fairy tales for a little reason. Except it isn't the season for reason (it's more the mall parking lot demolition derby season) but why quibble? Indeed.

Susannity! and the very sweet Susanne tells us about an UGLY practice of putting "glue boards" up to trap and kill birds in the rafters of a store. I also agree that the inventor of said boards needs to get stuck on those things for awhile... or get a board upside the head (is my suggestion).

At Net Politik, Mick Arran (who also does the fine Arran's Alley) calls for the Electoral College to reject a second Bush presidency and who can't get behind THAT?

Jude at iddybud says what needs to be said about Beinart's nit-wittery, that Dems need to hand the dead animal of Iraq back to Bush and be done with the fiasco, not get on board as Beinart would have us do and share the blame for the biggest military blunder in US history.

Random Toughts Kathy rolls up her sleeves and weighs in heavilly on the stupidity and hypocricy of Abstinence Only Sex-Ed cretins.

Simply Appalling gives liberals yet another reason to despise Hillary. Look, I'm BORED with the right demonizing this woman (it's not just passe, it's idiotic and always has been) butI've never been a fan of either of the Clintons.

Google fun (and loads of other fun) over at Biomes Blog...

Over at Jews Sans Frontieres, Levi has some interesting developments for us from that little island of paradise known as the middle east.

~A at Watching the Watchers has a good piece about religion in America, saying some things that I've been thinking that, those of us on the left who are not religious need to show a little tolerance for...

Pharyngula shudders and opines on the right's neverending hunt to eliminate all things not them.

At the Shameless Agitator, Andrea sees what I (and many others) see as far as the inevitability of another Bush lie coming to light, namely, the return of a military draft.

Righteously pissed off, Attaturk goes ballistic at Rising Hegemon.

Props to the Baby-faced Brigade: Gotta' help out Benjamin's sister on her research paper, folks. Benjamin Solah's Blog, bright kid and hope for the future. Also among the brigade is the left blogospher's new wunderkind Brad Plumer who lends his usual keen mind to the "what ails the left" discussion and although this discussion has gotten a little stale (IMHO), Brad does an excellent job of reheating it and giving it some dire flavor.

Another Brad (though slightly more grizzled), Brad DeLong reports on the other Bush failure (the economy) and the half-assed attempts by the administration to blow a little smoke across some mirrors...

Ezra at Pandagon gives us a nifty list of how well the Republicans have done - at disintegrating.

Jesus' General has a grand idea: to shore up flagging troop numbers in Iraq, get those who supported the war to volunteer. First on his list is Tom DeLay.

World O'Crap reminds us to thank the ACLU for giving us Chistian children to slap this ~~Christmas~~, er, "Holiday Season".

Finally, as a bit of writer's frustration, I've wondered why no one has commented on my "Here There Be Boogeymen" post. I thought the piece was rhetorically sound and the logic pristine... *sigh*, it's weird how you put a lot of work into a post and it gets ignored while the off-the-cuff half-assed posts get gabbed up to no end.

The single dad blog calls... more here, tonight.

Winning Back the Working Class

2004-12-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to American Samizdat for pointing me to an interesting analysis by Stan Hister at Zmag on the wrong direction of class warfare. Like so many post November 2 analyses, it uses Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" as a starting point and cranks the debate up a few degrees:

So while the right is doing everything it can to appear more extreme, the left is all sweet moderation. While the right is constantly emphasizing its 'principles' and 'values', the left is shamelessly selling out to the first 'electable' pretty face that comes along. In this sense there is a grain of truth in the mountain of right-wing lies about morality: the left doesn't seem to stand for anything anymore, it doesn't seem to have a moral compass. This is true even of so evidently moral a film as "Fahrenheit 9/11", easily the most influential intervention by the left in the campaign. You came out of that movie wanting to storm the barricades - and all you were offered was a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker.

Hister's solution? Get honest about economic issues by putting socialism back on the table. Well, I don't see that happening, at least not to the extent that the radical left defines it. In the US, "socialism" carries the kind of connotation of some extreme anti-everything-American ideal, that if Americans accepted socialism we might as well all start cross-dressing, burning down churches, speaking French, and forcibly aborting babies from women who dared to engage in heterosexual activity for the sake of procreation.

Another right-wing boogeyman, socialism is about as bad as it gets. However, whenever I hear someone (right or left) shudder at the mention of socialism, I point to the Scandinavian countries as an example of socialism working just fine.

Strip away the pejorative aspects of "socialism" by re-stating the issues as livable wages, the end of corporate welfare, child care, health care, and putting a stop to allowing big business running rough-shod over ordinary, working Americans. I don't forsee the Dems dumping their corporatist patronage and that's unfortunate. Until Dems are willing to get completely honest about economic issues, they're going to continue losing elections.

Pick Me! Pick Me! Pick Me!

2004-12-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

A few of you know that I write several other blogs. One (linked over there to the right) is for a local band, Boodgoggle, and a third blog is about my day-to-day existence as a full-time single dad. Another blog (also linked on the right), Patriside, is not the most successful (if you measure success by the number of hits, this space gets twice the hits Patriside gets) but it is a labor of love and, as such, my favorite.

Well, that labor has paid off as I have been nominated for the 'The Best of Blog Awards: Best Daddy Blog' award. It's not a big deal but it's nice to be recognized. Anyway, please go read Patricide and if you like what you see, by all means, go to 'The Best of Blog Awards: Best Daddy Blog' and give me a good word.

Buy Blue

2004-12-12T03:24:00.000-07:00

This has been posted for so long, in so many places (including my Colorado Springs - Democracy For America blog) but it bares repeating; I didn't think it would be successful at first but it looks like the ball is rolling.

So... go to http://www.choosetheblue.com/main.php before you make your holiday shopping decisions, we're putting Republican donors on notice that we're not supporting their politics or their businesses.

It's a Good Thing We Don't Have Socialized Medicine.... Because?

2004-12-12T03:12:00.000-07:00

If you want a straight answer, one out of three times you're going to get a bogus answer:

Medicare's toll-free telephone line, one of the main vehicles for disseminating information about new prescription drug benefits and drug discount cards, gives accurate answers less than two-thirds of the time, Congressional investigators say.

In a test of the service, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, found that 29 percent of callers received inaccurate answers, while 10 percent got no answers at all.

Last night I listened to some Ayn Rand-ite dipshit pontificate about how she didn't want to wait three months to get her teeth cleaned, like Canadians have to do. Whatever. You only need your teeth cleaned every six months, so shut up and besides, I don't see Canadians pouring over the border to take advantage of our nifty healthcare system. Much less to get their teeth cleaned.

If You're Feeling a Draft...

2004-12-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

It really gripes me to hear conservatives claim that things are just peachy over in Iraq. It's not just their inability to provide evidence for their claim nor is it their blindness to the facts. What gets me is that they've gone to the bank so many times with the canard that they support the troops and that we, by opposing the war, are hurting the troops.

Like all things conservative, the palaver about supporting the troops goes into the trash heap. Indeed, it looks like it's the troops themselves who are handing conservatives the bad news:

Soldiers always gripe. But confronting the defense secretary, filing a lawsuit over extended tours and refusing to go on a mission because it’s too dangerous elevate complaining to a new level.

It also could mean a deeper problem for the Pentagon: a lessening of faith in the Iraq mission and in a volunteer army that soldiers can’t leave.

The hubbub over an exchange between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and soldiers in Kuwait has given fresh ammunition to critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

It also highlighted growing morale and motivation problems in the 21-month-old war that even some administration supporters say must be addressed to get off a slippery slope that could eventually lead to breakdowns reminiscent of the Vietnam War.

It's not just the well-publicized swipe at Rummy that's an indication that things are coming apart at the seams. The US military is fighting desertion, recruitment shortfalls and legal challenges from its own troops as it becomes apparent to soldiers and civilians that things in Iraq aren't as rosy as the Preznit claims. In fact, an Associated Press poll yesterday found that of Americans polled:

Fewer than half, 47 percent, think it's likely Iraq will be able to establish a stable government, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Just over half, 51 percent, see it as unlikely.

You think this might be the reason that military recruiters can't fill their quotas and can't retain National Guard and Reserve members through re-enlistment? Or that:

The Army Reserve is facing an extreme shortage of company officers, a situation aggravated by a surge in resignation requests.

The shortage — primarily of captains — has seriously reduced the capabilities of the reserves, and continued losses will further reduce the readiness of "an already depleted military force," an Army briefing document submitted last month to Congress said.

Army Reserve resignation requests have jumped from 15 in 2001 to more than 370 during a 12-month period ending in September

If you're not feeling a draft yet, maybe this will give you a chill:
Many experts say that America's 1.4 million active-duty troops and 865,000 part-timers are stretched to the point where President Bush may see other foreign policy goals blunted.

The bleed from the US military is heaviest among parttimers, who have been dragged en masse out of civilian life to serve their country with unprecedented sacrifice. For the first time in a decade, the Army National Guard missed its recruitment target this year. Instead of signing up 56,000 people, it found 51,000.

"This is something that the President and the country should be worried about," said Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defence under Ronald Reagan and now a military analyst who opposes the war.

A further sign of strain can be seen in the Army's decision this year to mobilise 5,600 members of a pool of former soldiers that can be mobilised only in a national emergency.

More than 183,000 National Guard and reserve troops are on active duty, compared with 79,000 before the invasion of Iraq. Forty per cent of the 138,000 troops in Iraq are part-timers who never expected to be sent to the front line.

What can one conclude from all of this? Obviously, the status quo cannot be maintained if US forces are to remain effective in Iraq. Any player of war games knows there are only two options: either boost up the numbers in Iraq with the use of conscripts or pull out entirely. Since I don't see Bush doing the latter, the former is - must be - the only reasonable answer. Considering Bush has such an aversion to admitting mistakes, and given the relative size of the mistakes he's made (the Iraq fiasco versus saying there would not be a draft), he'll certainly opt out admitting to the lesser mistake.

We Get It

2004-12-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Over at Oliver Willis' blog, Oliver has a great post about how well the Dems did with reaching a grassroots constituency (particularly Howard Dean), a fact that still seems to escape the entrenched Dem-machine hacks inside the beltway.

Howard Dean isn't trying to kill your party. He's trying to save it. For the love of all that is holy, it isn't about getting to go to all the nice Cap Hill parties so you can boogie down with Andrew Sullivan and Chris Matthews and the editors of The New Republic. It's about fixing this country of ours, and by being honest, vigorous advocates for your constituents, the people not hobnobbing with the jet set!

WAKE UP.

Well said.

Fox Muldaur Calling All Channels....

2004-12-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

OK. I've called attention to disparities between exit polls and actual results (especially in precints where fraud has been suggested), I've recommended Bev Harris (although I'll second guess that), and I made some to-do over the latest Madsen article so... some could say I have a tin-foil hat somewhere in my closet. I'll grant you that.

What I want to know is who checks me out daily - yes, DAILY - from:

204.46.110.83 (U.s. Environmental Protection Agency)
North Carolina, Research Triangle Park, United States, 19 returning visits

client2.ed.gov (U.s. Department Of Education)
Washington Dc, Washington, United States, 14 returning visits

I like regular readers but I hate to think I'm being followed by agents of TPA. I'm certain they'd use more stealth than what I'm seeing on my trackbacks but... well, I'm just curious.

Any of you other lefty bloggers getting these hits? We'll see what transpires if these mystery guests answer my query...

Here There Be Boogeymen

2004-12-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

There's a good piece over at Matthew's site regarding the silliness of the corrupting effects of video games:

I thought it was odd back in 1992 when many people were inclined to blame high crime rates on violent video games rather than, say, high rates of drug abuse, a dysfunctional parole/probation system, a law enforcement community that often has its priorities screwed up, a structural shift toward diminished earning potentials for low-skilled workers combined with an inadequate public school system, etc., etc., etc. But since the time I was eleven years old, video games have only gotten (much) more violent and (much, much) more vivid in their portrayals of violence. And guess what? Since that time the rate of violent crime in the United States has gone monotonically down. The video games are fine. If you don't like them, don't play them. If you don't want your kids playing them, then take a deep breath and think of all the things you and your friends liked to do when you were kids that your parents and their friends didn't approve of. Remember the great comic book scare?

The last sentence is where I'm going with this. Conservatives NEED a boogeyman in order to muster support for their agenda. Look back at the 50's (or still, in today's nuttier evangelical churches) and Rock n' Roll was going to create an army of sex-crazed teenagers roaming the streets looking for their next rape victim. Listen to any right-wing radio loudmouth and you'll get a litany of troubles attributed to liberals. George Bush and Dick Cheney got quite a bit of mileage convincing a lot of Americans that terrorists were just waiting for a Kerry victory so they could walk into our cities and detonate a nuclear bomb. Marriages at risk? It's because of the radical gay agenda.

As I said in a previous post, the politics of fear is the bread and butter of the Republican party. It's much easier to identify a scapegoat than to deal with the complexities of an issue and make hard decisions. As Matthew points out in the quote above, blaming video games requires much less thought than considering a multitude of issues that are most likely the true causes of the problem.

Psychologically, if 'A' is the cause of 'C' but 'B' is easier to identify and, easier to beat up on, then even if beating up on 'B' doesn't solve the problem, it sure feels good. In the face of powerlessness, having something to flog gives us the impression that we're doing something about the problem. Furthermore, beating up on something - ANYTHING - helps to eliminate our distress with the issue.

About 15 years ago, Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky released a paper on stress reduction behavior among sub-alpha males in baboon troops in East Africa. Sapolsky noticed that once a sub-alpha male was beat up by an alpha-male, the sub-alpha male would turn around and wail on a sub-sub-alpha male. Sapolsky wondered if this behavior, turning agression around on a weaker member of the troop, was eliminating stress. He took cortisol levels (a stress hormone) after the sub-alpha male was attacked and then again after the sub-alpha male attacked a weker male and found that indeed, attacking a weaker baboon lowered the levels of stress hormones.

The tendency of conservatives to scapegoat is analogous, I think. Video games might not be the reason for high crime rates but it's an easy target, a target that can't defend itself, and although condemning video games might not solve the problem, it sure feels good. It might be something to consider the next time you hear a baboon like Rush Limbaugh attacking liberals.

Is the DLC Even Relevant At This Point?

2004-12-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

Oliver Willis clued me into this on-the-money essay over at Orcinus, a dead-on critique of Peter Beinart's recent piece in The New Republic. Beinart and the DLC have been a-whoopin' an' a-hollerin' about how we lib-ruhlz need to get firmly behind Bush's "War on Terror" if we expect to win elections. More than that, we need to turn our backs on the anti-Iraq war element because they're weak and unpopular and probably high on drugs.

"Wrong," says Neiwert,

They've also bought into the right-wing paradigm of what's wrong with liberalism: namely, the antiwar left. This is self-serving not just for those on the right but for the liberal hawks who now seem too chagrined to acknowledge that they were wrong and -- gulp -- Michael Moore was right.

Kevin Drum put the hypocrisy inherent in this position on display the other day responding to Atrios:

And evading the issue by constantly implying that no one who supported the Iraq war is morally qualified to criticize those who opposed it doesn't really help matters.

This has it exactly backwards. No one is saying the Beinarts and Drums of the world don't have anything to contribute. What Beinart is explicitly saying is the reverse: That the Michael Moores and MoveOn folks have no value to the party.

So really, what doesn't help matters is evading the issue by implying the people who opposed the Iraq war -- that is, the people who were right -- not only are unqualified to contribute, but must be evicted from the ranks of liberalism. That, in fact, is the opposite of an honest conversation.

The problem with the DLC (and its Right-leaning clones like Kevin Drum and Peter Beinart) is that it confuses the medias pro-war cheerleading and the bleeting of gung-ho NASCAR sheep, all wrapped up in empty, masturbatory displays of patriotism as success. Screw the fact that the Iraq war is a massive failure, if only Dems could get behinf THE BIG LIE then Dems would be winning elections.

Except that was tried. Kerry was no anti-war candidate and one of his biggest blunders was not articulating a stronger anti-war message or a coherent plan for combating terrorism. What the DLC fails to see is that liberals are strongly in favor of a sane plan of attack - going to Iraq was not (nor would ever be) part of that plan.

Maybe it's because I mostly hang with left-leaning Dems (and read mostly lefty blogs) but from where I sit, the DLC has pretty much lost any credibility it might have had. As long as your philosophy is, "If we can be almost as blindly militaristic as the GOP", the second part of your bi-conditional will be, "Then we can almost win elections!"

Hotmail SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS

2004-12-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Jeebus Orrin H. Christ on a goddamn popsickle stick, why is it that 30% of the time when I try and use Hotmail I get some silly-ass "Our servers are real busy right now so go fuck yourself" message? I mean it's Microfucking$oft for god's sake, you'd think they'd have servers being used as foot stools. And they have, what, a couple of old boxes serving all of hotmail?

And now I get either idiotic "This document contains no data" errors or "The connection was refused when attempting to contact by5fd.bay5.hotmail.msn.com" messages. WTF?

Hotmail started promising 250 MB of space on their accounts (up from the magnanimous 2 MB) "by late summer" and just finally delivered last month on my one account, YESTERDAY on my other account. That's timely, especially since Yahoo scooped you last spring with FOUR TIMES that ammount and G Mail scooped you in the summer with FOUR HUNDRED TIMES that amount. In the meantime, every week Hotmail spams me with a reminder of how great they are and then tries to sell me an "upgrade" for $20 because, of course I'm so thrilled with the service I figure giving them a twenty will let them know just how thrilled I am with a service that only connects 7 out of 10 times.

Should I assume that if I pony up I'll finally get the signature files to work? Should I assume that my $20 will buy me the ability to update my address book? Will my $20 pay for a spam filter that actually works?

Considering the e-voting machines ran off a Windows platform, no wonder the results were shit. Or hacked.

Having It Both Ways Is a Family Value?

2004-12-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

One criticism I consistently level against conservatives is that when they whine, their whine is usually a function of wanting it both ways, i.e. "You liberals can't say this but we can because when we say it, it makes total sense." Of course it only makes total sense if you're oxygen deprived and maybe that's the conservative's problem - it would certainly explain why they're so hot to gut EPA regulations.

Case in point: Josh points out at TPM that some conservatives are claiming that "Sen. Harry Reid must be a racist because he said on Meet The Press that he would consider voting for Justice Scalia for Chief Justice but not Justice Thomas since the latter had been an "embarrassment" as a member of the court."

These are the folks who maintain that hiring based on racial preferrence rather than merit is wrong. So Reid states that Scalia is not nearly the boob that Thomas is and conservatives say Reid must be a racist. Uh, uh, uh... OK. Sounds like these conservatives are indulging in the most knee-jerk liberal argument around.

Having it both ways; who would have thought the Family Values people were anti-gay but firmly in support of bisexuality? Not me, homes.

Donald Rumsefeld, A Warrior, A Man Among Men

2004-12-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there's just not a lot going on (like yesterday) and then there's days like today where I sign on an immediately see something like this (via DKos):

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, which is made up mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the war started.

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.

Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army you have," not the one you might want [...]

And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.

Or basically, "Buck up, ya' pussy!"

They just gave Donald "I never saw a moment of combat in my life because of my multiple deferrments" Rumsfeld another four years of managing this fiasco. You'd think a sane and smart administration would turn the Sec. of Defense position over to someone who at least knew how to salute instead of just giving our troops the finger. However, Bush didn't run on a platform suggesting "sane and smart". They ran on a platform of "If we say 'X' is 'Y', we expect you to believe 'X' is 'Y' or we'll sic the Patriot Act on ya'".

Here, There, and Everywhere

2004-12-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Good stuff, hither and yon. Or yawn. You decide...

Mike, our guy in Iraq who is not just doing the hard work but ALSO fighting the good fight, tells us about his out-processing on At Ease (his excellent from-the-front-lines blog) - he's coming home! Good job, Mike! Anyway, he's noticed that what he's seeing at the field hospital he was at that the numbers of US injured far out-strip the "official" DoD numbers. And Mike, buddy, I hate to tell ya' this but Rummy has more travel plans for ya'...

Random Fate wonders if the goopers might be in the midst of a cat fight; things are coming apart at the seams, it seems.

Pesky's Apostrophe is always - ALWAYS - a worthwhile (and entertaining) read, a daily visit from me because of what I just said AND Mac allus sends me good traffic...

The exquisite (and eternally FUN) Maria drunkenly slams the Rethug Sinophiles over at By Beauty Damned and passes on the egg rolls.

MajikThise asks for some feedback for a paper on intuitive epistemology, if you're interested in that kind of thing (I am).

Buck at Postcards From Nowhere does some random searches and finds out the web is pretty dull.

Mad Kane has a new poem, this one about the Kerik DHS nomination. Why wouldn't you check it out?

Issues with Blogger? Yeah, me too AND Susanne over at Susannity! and we're none-too-happy about it. However, I seem to have more issues when I blog out of Firefox than if I blog out of IE - anyone else?

Over at ThatColeredFellasWeblog, TCF calls Keith Olbermann out on journalistic integrity (RE: Madsen) and does it righteously. TCF has become my favorite stop-by lately because we're on the same page as far the Right's racial hypocricy.

Speaking of racism, Pinko Feminist Hellcat gives us a really fucked up story (via Prometheus 6) about why this country is in trouble (and takes the burden off of my shoulders so I can take a break from ranting about this country's racist horseshit, for once).

At Angry White Kid, Scott gives us a few examples of why the US is shaming itself in its bogus "War on Terror".

As if Ratboy 55 isn't scary enough, his post on Ratboy's Anvil about smallpox and, er, the goverment monkeying around with said virus is truly disturbing. Not for the weak-hearted (but if that's you're problem, why are you reading ME?!?!).

Feministe does what I've done but has done it much better. She also needs your vote on that Best Blog award thing, so give her your vote.

Finally, your cool-ass video of the day has been brought to you by Cyndy over at Mouse Musings and what's the use of surfing around if you don't get a cool-ass video out of it?

My faithful few know I have no trouble telling folks where to go. So I've gone and done it and even provided the links to make it go down eeeeeeeeee-zeeeeee...

Otherwise known as shamelessly fishing for traffic.

Meanwhile, In the Reality-Based Community...

2004-12-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

The whole Curtis story sucked me in and I confess that I spent way too much time following the thread on DKos hoping to see if any new developments would crack.

Not much to report. I talked to a friend last night and she said, "This could be the next Watergate!"
"Yes, that's what I've been thinking..."
"BIGGER than Watergate! This blows a burglary out of the water!"
"We'll see..."

Obviously, my enthusisasm for the story had waned a bit. Not so much because a bit of skepticism had crept in (although there was some of that) but I was just... tired. Exhausted. The thought that the Curtis story could blow the lid off a story my gut had always told me was valid had me psyched up.

After four years of gritting my teeth and clenching my fists, only to learn that I had another four years of that, has me ready to knock something over - ANYTHING. Nothing would make me happier than to have hard evidence that the election was rigged so I would have sound rationale for smashing bobblehead dolls. As a therapist with a degree in Neuropsychology (and a strong background in Evolutionary Biology), I know the value of alleviating stress by busting stuff up.

Short of that, I'll direct you to some other developments around the blogosphere:

Josh Marshall has been carrying a good series on why Kerik is the wrong man for DHS on TPM.

Don over at Blah3 links to a story about a Fundie loudmouth who has gone to China to get fetal stem-cell implants.

The always informative Juan Cole keeps us abreast of the catastrophic... um, catastrophe in Iraq.

You can surf the rest... time to get my daughter to kindergarten.

NASA Programmers and Off-Shore Accounts Implicate Bush Stealing 2004 Election

2004-12-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

The cap is off the bottle (as I just said on Andrew C White's DKos Diary), I just saw this on Online Journal regarding a sworn affadavit from a former contract NASA computer programmer who was asked by former Florida state representative Tom Sweeney to develop vote-rigging software (Sweeney is now in the U.S House of Representatives).

While working for Yang Enterprises in Florida, the 46-year-old programmer says he was instructed by then-Republican state representative Tom Feeney to "develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in the election and be undetectable."

Feeney, a former failed running mate of Gov. Jeb Bush, is now represents Florida's 24th district in the House of Representatives. At the time, he was serving both as general counsel and lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and the Florida state congressman.
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The programmer, Clinton Collins, said that he was told the program needed to be "touch-screen capable, the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, [and that] the programming was to remain hidden even if the source code was inspected."

Collins asserts that he told Feeney it would be nearly impossible to write a code to change the voting results if anyone were able to view the source code.

"However," he added, "if the code were compiled before anyone was allowed to review it then any vote fraud would remain invisible to detection."

Interestingly enough, Yang Enterprises is currently under investigation by the FBI. It seems Collins filed a suit with the state alleging Yang Enterprises overbilled the state on another contract and his report "resulted in the arrest of a Chinese national accused of sending secret information to China about the development of the U.S. Hellfire missile."

As they say, developing... (also at The Blue Lemur)
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UPDATE: Gotta' goive credit where credit is due: Brad Blog first broke the story on the affadavit (his site was down due to traffic so I assume he's getting his due!)

Fast Food Low-Wage Republicans

2004-12-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

The other day, someone on my Democracy For America list sent me a link for Choose the Blue, a nifty little site where you can type in a product or company name, find out where their donations went during the last election (Bush vs. Kerry) so you can decide of that's where you want to send your money. Timely, considering the season.

Jen over at Good Intentions was kind enough to do a little checking for us (seems she likes her fast food) and came up with these figures:

Wendy's - 90% in 2004, 92% in 2002

McDonald's - 94% in 2004, 86% in 2002

Burger King - 67% in 2004, 24% in 2002

TacoBell, KFC, PizzaHut - 78% in 2004, 70% in 2002

WaffleHouse - 100% in 2004, 100% in 2000

She does mention that Arby's gave 100% to the Dems, so if you're going to fix your trans-fat jones, you ought to do it at Arby's (I gotta' say the Roast Beef Jr. is a GREAT hangover killer).

So why are these fast food companies tilting so far towards the Republicans? I think that it's primarilly because Republicans oppose all "Livable Wage" initiatives or minimum-wage increases. Republicans oppose unions. Republicans oppose mandating businesses providing healthcare and child care benefits. Republicans oppose stringent OSHA requirements.

Sure, Republicans also oppose regulations on food quality and Tort Reform so there would be limits on how much you could sue if say, your kid died from eating an E Coli tainted whopper, stuff that effects you, the consumer. But I think their support is mainly due to low-wage issues so that they can continue to operate on what is essentially slave labor.

A few years ago in Colorado Springs, a young single mother was convicted for leaving her infant in the car (the child died) while she worked her shift at McDonald's. The local press was quick to jump on the tragedy of a negligent mother but completely missed the point that she had no child care options (turns out her sitter backed out at the last moment). I'm not defending the mother's extreme poor judgement - I would have told McDonald's "fuck you, I can't come in, I can't get anyone to care for my kid" but it's just another example of the contradictions furthered by low-wage Republicans (and Welfare Reform Democrats). "Get off the dole, get a job, ANY job, and too bad if your child care basically eats up your paycheck, we just want you to WORK, you fat welfare queen!".

Punishing single mothers by consigning them to poverty hardly seems "compassionate". If your fat ass craves a Whopper or a Big Mac or faux-Mexican food, you might want to consider what kind of system you're supporting.

An Indecent Proposal

2004-12-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

...to paraphrase Jonathan Swift. Listening to Morning Edition as I prepared my kids for pre-school I started thinking about Democrats and how they should be performing, what they might do to insure seats in 2006/2008. In my mind, Intelligence Reform should be a slam-dunk in post-9/11 America. Yeah, I know most of the opposition has been coming from Republicans... but how gung-ho are the Democrats?

Will Democrats roll over the next two years and allow the illusion of a "mandate" dominate legislation in the House and Senate? Would giving Republicans free reign to completely screw up the country set the stage for voter backlash?

My last post yesterday about how Bush and the Republicans intend to gut environmental protections had me ripping-my-shirt pissed-off and wondering why they would even consider scrapping regulations that a majority of Americans support. It would be easy enough to position a full-body slam at the Republicans:

It's YOUR country.
YOUR air and YOUR water.
President Bush and the Republicans are trying to give your country to Big Business so that they can spoil the water you drink, foul the air you breath, and create an environmental disaster that your children and your grandchildren will be left to clean up. Do you want Big Business to ruin America for your children?
Tell your representative that this country belongs to us, not Big Business.

Yet, I see Democrats kneeling down on this even if most Americans would oppose it. Why would they do that? So that they can gain seats a few years down the road?

It's not like Democrats have shown themselves to be strategic geniuses but this isn't a plan of strategic genius. Nor is it a plan that requires a far-reaching conspiracy. A few well-placed abscences or abstentions and the Republicans can shit all over the country, do it well enough to show voters what a mistake it was to elect House and Senate Republicans.

I hope I'm just riffing here, I really do...

Here We Go!!!

2004-12-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

The President with the worst environmental record is seeking a new low:

George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

If I wasn't afraid the Secret Service was checking up on wacky, leftist bloggers I'd say why not take anti-environment legislators off the Endangered Species list and declare open season, go bag one for the holidays. But since I'm aware that the Secret Service is looking out for said bloggers, I'll refrain from endorsing all you sportsmen from filling your fat-cat tags.