Congressman Hostettler: fascist prick

From the Indianapolis Star:

The Indiana Republican who heads a House immigration panel criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for not cracking down on illegal immigrants at Monday's immigration rallies.


"It was stunning to realize that so many lawbreakers concentrated in one area were given a free pass by federal law enforcement," said Rep. John Hostettler, chairman of the immigration and border security panel on the House Judiciary Committee. "The administration demonstrated once again that it would continue not to take seriously its constitutional obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed' when it comes to the enforcement of our immigration laws.

Millions of Latinos and immigrants demonstrate peacefully against a wicked, unjust bill that would separate families and cripple the economy, and Hostettler is ticked because the feds didn't go into the protests and deport everyone without papers.

How incredibly American that would've looked!

Hey residents of IN-08: had enough of this jackass' antics? There's a solution to your problem: his name is Brad Ellsworth.

And by the way, a graf for all you other resident Hoosiers:

Spokesmen for Reps. Dan Burton, Mike Pence, Chris Chocola and Mike Sodrel said they continue to support the House approach.

That would be the "House approach" that makes being a illegal immigrant, or providing any aid whatsoever to an illegal immigrant, a felony. Not a misdemeanor, a felony. As in prison time, revoking your right to vote felony.

Support Joe Donnelly, kick the bums out.

Atrios is right: thank God the Republicans are so mind-bogglingly foolish as to alienate a group that is the largest and fastest growing minority in the country, as well as one that has been trending red for some time.

Iran

Josh Marshall joins a growing chorus shrieking about possible nuclear war with Iran. Josh, shockingly for such a perceptive dude, was played for a fool on Iraq (as in he was for it at one time, before he figured out that W would fuck up a bowl of cereal if there wasn't a picture of the finished product on the box), so maybe he's just overcompensating now.

God, I hope so.

election in San Diego

Something to watch tomorrow: there's an election today in the newly convicted Republican scumbag Duke Cunningham's old district, CA-50 (which I believe covers San Diego). This solidly red district is having a special election to see who will take his place, and a Democrat, Francine Busby, holds a commanding lead. Chris Bowers at MyDD has a nice rundown of the race here. Whoever wins between the Democrats (so, Busby) and the 18 or so Republican contenders will face off in a run-off later this year. However, if Busby gets 50% +1 vote, she wins outright, and becomes the district's new congresswoman.

In the latest poll, Busby is clocking 47%.

This race is worth watching b/c of its import for the November midterms. This race, though certainly not a bellwether, is sort of a political weathervane: if Busby takes home 47% in a district where only 30% of registered voters identify themselves as Democrats, it's pretty dire news for the Republicans heading into November. If she pulls off the win, expect to see serious political ramifications: swarms of turncoat conservatives and Republicans trying to wash their hands of the current government before it drags their careers down with it, flurries of media stories smearing the Democrats, Bush pulling a fair bit of political buckshot out of his rear, and maybe even some sudden and serious (but, of course, transient) attempts at actual governing.

You want more evidence that change may be at hand? How about this, from the Washington Post:

A majority of registered voters, 55 percent, say they plan to vote for the Democratic candidate in their House district, while 40 percent support the Republican candidate. That is the largest share of the electorate favoring Democrats in Post-ABC polls since the mid-1980s.

This grim news for the GOP is offset somewhat by the finding that 59 percent of voters still say they approve of their own representative. But even these numbers are weaker than in recent off-year election cycles and identical to support of congressional incumbents in June 1994 -- five months before Democrats lost control of Congress to Republicans.

People tend to be skeptical of the generic poll question, but notice, this doesn't ask who the respondents like more, or who they'll vote for generally, but who they'll vote for in their own congressional race. And I remind you, in November of '94 the Republicans gained 52 seats, while the Democrats in '06 only need 17 (16 if Busby wins).

Seriously, do you really think a political bloodhound like the Newt would jump ship if something wasn't up?

just one more...

Sorry, just had to gloat one more time.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

"a Howdy-Doody looking Nimrod"

There is a great article by Amy Sullivan in the Washington Monthly challenging the traditional media narrative of "GOP strong, Democrats weak." She writes:

One clear indication that things had changed [after the 2004 elections] came in the fall of 2005 when Republicans went after Jack Murtha. Two years earlier, Democrats had stood silently by while the GOP viciously attacked Daschle, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But when newly-elected Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) called Murtha a coward during a House budget debate, Democrats shouted her down and booed. Schmidt was forced to return and ask her remarks be stricken from the record, the parliamentary equivalent of eating her words. Later in the debate, when Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) taunted conservative Democrats as “lapdogs,” Democratic Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark.) shot back, calling him a “Howdy-Doody looking nimrod.” As the House chair tried to gavel down the fracas that followed, shouting, “The House is out of order,” California Democrat Rep. George Miller could be heard yelling back, “You're out of order!”

Perhaps figuring they have little left to lose, Democrats have begun turning up the heat in countless small ways. When in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bush quietly suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in order to allow federal contractors to avoid paying the prevailing wage to workers involved in clean-up efforts, Miller led Democrats in handing the president a rare defeat. Appalled that “the President has exploited a national tragedy to cut workers' wages,” Miller unearthed a little-used provision of a 1976 law that allows Congress to countermand the president's authority to suspend laws after a national emergency. While it is usually nearly impossible for Democrats to get bills through the all-powerful House Rules Committee, Miller's maneuver would have bypassed that step and guaranteed an automatic vote by the full House. Bush, faced with a vote he was sure to lose, reversed his earlier action and reinstated Davis-Bacon.
...
So it is that Democrats can be “hopelessly divided” while voting together 88 percent of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly; just one percentage point lower than the vaunted lock-step Republican caucus. They can be “pathetically ineffective” while dealing a humiliating defeat to the president's biggest domestic policy effort. They can be deemed “weak” and “timid” while setting the terms of the debate for pulling troops out of Iraq.

It seems the only way this particular narrative is going to change is with a Democratic victory in November. “They'll have to pay attention to us if we win,” Slaughter told me. Taking back either house of Congress while battling the idea that they're a weak, ineffective party with no ideas won't be easy for Democrats. But stranger things have happened. Just ask Newt Gingrich.

There is also a shout-out to Josh Marshall, who used to write for the Monthly, and now runs TPM. That's right, folks, a news magazine article actually blew apart the traditional narrative of beltway journalistic cocktail-weenie addicts while, get this, citing a non-rightwing blogger in a good way.

Something strange is happening in Mediatown, USA.

The Gospel of Judas

Unveiled this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia was a papyrus fragment of the lost Gospel of Judas. There's been a lot of hooplah over the discovery, and even more discussion over its "implications" for Christianity. I want to take a second to add a little perspective on this.

The current narrative being profferred by way too many people is that this document lays bare facts long hidden by the insidious and secretive Catholic Church, and that we will come closer to learning "the Truth" about Jesus and the events of the Gospels.

This is bullshit, pure and simple.

For a century and more, we've been discovering works that had been lost since the Middle Ages and before, through the Dead Sea Scrolls, the treasury of texts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and other places. We know of a plethora of "gospels" that do not appear in the canon, attributed to Peter and Mary and Thomas and all sorts of people. There was perhaps in some sense an effort by the churches (there was no monolithic "Catholic Church" until quite late in Antiquity) to consign this stuff to oblivion, but the reason these works got singled out in the first place is that people didn't put as much stock in them as the stuff that's now in the canon. They didn't weed out the works that were actually being used and taught in most of the churches. If the early Christians had found the Gospel of Judas to be particularly compelling, then it wouldn't have gotten tossed.

So the question now is, what is it? What's in it, and does it matter?

A little background: in the earliest centuries of Christianity there were a number of interpretations of the "meaning" of Christ's message. Eventually the interpretation we know today became dominant and aggressively assimilated the others, the "heresies" if you will.

Among these heresies was a belief system known as Gnosticism. The beliefs of Gnosticism are tough to pin down, as even that term is an umbrella encompassing a whole panoply of ideas, but it tends to include notions of having a secret knowledge of the truth, hidden from others. It often includes the belief that salvation lies not in deeds, or purity, or even faith, but in having this knowledge of the divine, given willy-nilly to some but not most for no particular reason. Sometimes it purports a dichotomy between matter, which is evil, and spirit or knowledge, which is good; the startling conclusion it draws is that the God of the Old Testament is then evil, because he made the world, an evil thing made entirely of matter. Jesus came as a savior from a higher God to break the tyrannical rule of the evil, spiteful Old Testament God, and although he preached to disciples and masses, he saved his true knowledge for one disciple alone (which one that is depends upon the attribution of the work: it's Thomas in the Gospel of Thomas, James in the Protoevangelion of James, etc.).

I know that, as an aspiring early Christian historian, I'm not supposed to say this, but I think it's obvious enough: most of this Gnostic stuff is wacko. Color me ideologically Darwinist, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that most early Christians thought that, too, and that's why Gnosticism disappeared long before many other heresies.

It sounds like the Gospel of Judas is another one of these Gnostic writings, though perhaps of a strain of Gnosticism closer to orthodoxy (as I said, Gnosticism, like orthodoxy, comes in many forms). It's Coptic (not important in itself, but a lot of Gnostic stuff came to us in Coptic form), and it involves Judas being given "real" knowledge that Jesus withholds from everyone else. The article I linked to above also seems to think it's Gnostic.

If this thing ends up being anything more than a blip on the radar, I think it's contribution to popular theology will be that, from the sound of it, it begs the question, "If God knows everything and everything happens according to God's divine plan, and Jesus is God, then Jesus must have intended the Crucifixion, and thus Judas' betrayal. If that's true, then what hand did Jesus have in Judas turning him over?"

It will be up to us, then, to decide if it matters, and what it means for us.

upcoming

Some pretty excited news here: it looks like Amber's going to be doing the job I did last summer-- teaching reading classes. It'll be a great experience for her, the chance to improve her own skills while giving kids a leg up on school and fostering a lifelong love of reading while making pretty damn good money. Plus, it will shatter her fear of standing in front of a classroom, which in my opinion is priceless.

Also upcoming is a post from me on this whole Gospel of Judas business. I suppose I should dust off the ol' Early Christian Studies hat and share a couple of my thoughts on the matter, but I want to take some time to do it, and I can't do that at work.

In the meantime, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to this post from a blog in Sugarland, TX that got pictures and video of some of Tom Delay's thugs intimidating people and beating on an older woman during a Nick Lampson rally (Lampson is the Democratic contender in that race, and the frontrunner). The worst part of it is that they have proof that this harassment was organized by Delay's campaign manager. And this is just a single day after Bars and Stripes Delay had the audacity to get all sanctimonious about Cynthia McKinney's misbehavior in the Capitol.

What a snake.

Libby trial reaches the oval office

Oops, looks like Libby decided getting out of the clink trumps keeping W's skeletons in the closet. Via Josh Marshall:

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case.

The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.

I don't think the sheistiness or the hypocrisy or the implications that W had a hand in the Valerie Plame matter need to be pointed out. (Remember, Plame was the covert CIA operative working on counter-proliferation of WMDs who was outed by Libby as a way of shutting up/visiting revenge upon her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who spoiled W's "Iraq is seeking uranium from Niger" line in the State of the Union address, essentially undermining W's case for war against Saddam.)

Is anyone really still convinced that W has any claim whatsoever to the slightest hint of honesty?

BC

What's up with today's BC comic? Am I missing something here, because I thought BC tried to be, ya know, funny, and not so serious. Am I not getting the joke?

new signs from Homeland Security

My understanding is that the signs are real, the commentary is not. The funniest thing about the signs, though, is their ambiguity: can you imagine someone in the middle of a terrorist attack stopping to figure out what the hell some of these mean?

Merry Christmas, America!!!

From Reuters:

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, one of the most powerful members of Congress, is now ready to call it quits in the face of mounting legal problems and a tough reelection campaign.

Twelve years after helping Republicans win control of the House of Representatives, the former majority leader, long called "The Hammer" for his hardball political tactics, intends on Tuesday to announce he is ending his bid for a 12th term and will leave Congress as early as next month, party aides said.

DeLay's decision highlights the problems faced by President George W. Bush's fellow Republicans in the scandal-rocked Congress.

"Tom DeLay's announcement is just the beginning of the reckoning of the Republican culture of corruption that has gripped Washington for too long," Democratic Party spokeswoman Karen Finney said.
...
"The fear of the party losing the seat was a driving force in his decision," another aide said.

I would be positively giddy right now, if it weren't for all the work and time it's gonna take to undo all the damage this jackass has done to our national reputation, character, and discourse. If there is any "justice" in the "justice system," the founder of the infamous K-Street Project will have some serious hard time to do to repay society.

Merry Christmas, America!!!

From Reuters:

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, one of the most powerful members of Congress, is now ready to call it quits in the face of mounting legal problems and a tough reelection campaign.

Twelve years after helping Republicans win control of the House of Representatives, the former majority leader, long called "The Hammer" for his hardball political tactics, intends on Tuesday to announce he is ending his bid for a 12th term and will leave Congress as early as next month, party aides said.

DeLay's decision highlights the problems faced by President George W. Bush's fellow Republicans in the scandal-rocked Congress.

"Tom DeLay's announcement is just the beginning of the reckoning of the Republican culture of corruption that has gripped Washington for too long," Democratic Party spokeswoman Karen Finney said.
...
"The fear of the party losing the seat was a driving force in his decision," another aide said.

I would be positively giddy right now, if it weren't for all the work and time it's gonna take to undo all the damage this jackass has done to our national reputation, character, and discourse. If there is any "justice" in the "justice system," the founder of the infamous K-Street Project will have some serious hard time to do to repay society.

academic McCarthyism

Here is an important story from the Guardian, in the UK, on a subject no one in our media wants to talk about for fear of the dreaded accusation of "liberal bias":

Few would argue there are direct parallels between the current assaults on liberals in academe and McCarthyism. Unlike the McCarthy era, most threats to academic freedom - real or perceived - do not, yet, involve the state. Nor are they buttressed by widespread popular support, as anticommunism was during the 50s. But in other ways, argues Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes - McCarthyism in America, comparisons are apt.

"In some respects it's more dangerous," she says. "McCarthyism dealt mainly with off-campus political activities. Now they focus on what is going on in the classroom. It's very dangerous because it's reaching into the core academic functions of the university, particularly in Middle-Eastern studies."

Either way, a growing number of apparently isolated incidents suggests a mood which is, if nothing else, determined, relentless and aimed openly at progressives in academe.

Earlier this year, Fox news commentator Sean Hannity urged students to record "leftwing propaganda" by professors so he could broadcast it on his show. On the web there is Campus Watch, "monitoring Middle East studies on campus"; Edwatch, "Education for a free nation"; and Parents Against Bad Books in School.

In mid January, the Bruin Alumni association offered students $100 to tape leftwing professors at the University of California Los Angeles. The association effectively had one dedicated member, 24-year-old Republican Andrew Jones. It also had one dedicated aim: "Exposing UCLA's most radical professors" who "[proselytise] their extreme views in the classroom".

I think the chilling effect these kinds of actions have on academic freedom should be readily apparent. It should be equally obvious that the cogency of a certain group's arguments must be weak when they have to intimidate the most astute among us into keeping quiet.

The article discusses many different fronts in this all-out war on progressive professors, some of which are pretty scary, as well as legislative battles over the cynically Orwellian "Academic Bill of Rights" (it's one of those "Clear Skies Initiative" type of names) which calls for things like requiring universities to hire quotas of conservative professors. I guess affirmative action is ok as long as the beneficiaries are conservatives. Seriously, though, the whole point of academic objectivity is lost when you start hiring based on political allegiance, especially when you're hiring people for their politics to counter people hired for their professional credentials.

Channeling Atrios, you don't balance professors with conservatives.

irony (cont.)

And while we're on the subject, I submit to you that, contrary to the opinion of Alanis Morissette, "a black fly in your chardonnay" and "a traffic jam when you're already late" and all the things in that song are not, in fact, ironic. They're just bad luck.

However, a musician writing a song called "Ironic" and laying out a series of events, all of which are implied as being ironic but none of which are actually ironic, is, in fact, ironic.

oh, the irony!

A couple of points about this paragraph from the New Republic's Peter Beinart:

". . . Prominent Republicans don't talk much about Clinton's impeachment today; it doesn't quite square with their more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger fretting about Bush hatred. But I don't know of a single major Republican politician or conservative pundit who has admitted the obvious: that impeaching Clinton was a farce and a disgrace, the likes of which we should pray never to see again. The Republican strategy on Feingold's censure effort is to keep calling it absurd without engaging it on the merits. But, on the merits, Feingold's case is much stronger. As former Reagan-era Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein has put it, Bush's actions are "more dangerous than Clinton's lying under oath, because it [Bush's claim of nearly unlimited executive authority] jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages." If Republicans want to keep suggesting that censure (let alone impeachment) is a singularly extreme act to be taken only when our constitutional system is in peril, then they need to apologize for what happened in 1999. I'm not holding my breath."

Possibly the biggest irony of the Bush Administration, and certainly its greatest contribution, has been that it rehabilitated the presidency of Bill Clinton. Despite his general success and the respectable amount of good that he did, Clinton left office loathed by half the country, the poster boy for moral turpitude and the butt of late night talk show jokes for aeons to come. Meanwhile, every time Bush screwed something up at first, every Republican hack would immediately say, "But what about when Clinton..."

Unfortunately for them, that trick lost its potency when it became clear to everyone (except the DC establishment and their media whores, apparently) that Bush was clearly a less politically capable, mentally agile, and emotionally mature president than Slick Willy. Then all of a sudden, a funny thing happened: wide swathes of the electorate starting looking affectionately back at the days of the late '90's and a president that was indisputably intelligent, well-spoken, and responsible with the levers of military power. And here's the kicker: looking back at someone they could trust.

So here we are, 6 years later, and many people have long ago accepted as fact what Beinart and his establishment buddies are just now figuring out: that Clinton's impeachment was not, in fact, about values or role-models or even the law, and furthermore, that the willingness to misuse of such a powerful congressional weapon has been detrimental to the political process and discourse in this country.

If things play out the way they're looking now, Bush may manage to do what Clinton could not: lay the deathknell to the Republiccan juggernaut.

I disagree, sir, it's brilliant!

Really good Doonesbury comic today.

Snakes on a Plane

Check out the next blockbuster, The Greatest Movie Ever!!!!

Adios...cabron...

From AP:

White House chief of staff Andy Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget director Joshua Bolten, President Bush announced Tuesday amid growing calls for a White House shakeup and Republican concern about Bush's tumbling poll ratings.

"I have relied on Andy's wise counsel, his calm in crisis, his absolute integrity and his tireless commitment to public service," Bush said. "The next three years will demand much of those who serve our country. We have a global war to fight and win."

You can almost hear the Prsident slurring and spitting his way through that, eh?

So here's that harrowed "switch up advisors in the Oval Office to get back on track" advice finally put to work, though apparently President Mushmouth didn't quite get the point behind the advice. Ya know, the whole "bringing in some less tainted, more competent people" thing?

Instead, Bush heard "Ya know, Mr. President, maybe you shake up the Oval a bit," and replaced Card with... did you catch it?... his budget advisor. That's right, people, W brought in the guy behind the George W. Bush "China is my blackjack table" fiscal program. A man who, apparently, is so bad at designing budgets that, 4 years after inheriting record surpluses, the best Bush could promise from him was that he could half the record deficits this wanker was accumulating.

And he's failing at that.

Good God, what's next, the President's speech therapist as the new White House spokesman?

"Fer the nexsht three yearsh, thish man will be briefin' you on our shteadfasht progresh in *eyes narrowing* the War On Terra.

God Blesh Merrka"

question for the month

Take the new poll.

the Immigration problem

Now this is a protest (pic via Digby):
This is a shot of a protest of over half a million people in Los Angeles that happened today over the new Republican immigration bill in the House. Another 100,000 marched in Chicago, and there were many others protests across the country.

The bill, which has already passed the House, would (among other things) make simply being an illegal immigrant an aggravated felony, criminalize helping illegals, and build an iron wall across 1/3 of the U.S./Mexico border. Jeralyn at TalkLeft has done a pretty good job putting together info on the bill, and if you're really curious, the ACLU has dealt exhaustively with the subject.

Needless to say, the protesters are right to be ticked off.

Let's be honest, to start off: this is not an easy issue, and there are no simple answers. This Republican bill is particularly ridiculous, however, as the great lesson conservatives should have learned over the last 10 years is that you can't expect to solve the immigration problem simply by being "tough" on it. In point of fact, according to the ACLU we've poured exorbitant amounts of money and manpower into enforcing immigration controls in the last decade, and the result? The number of illegals immigrating doubled.

So what can we do about immigration reform? There are some great ideas here. I don't claim to know all the answers , but what I do know is that, in both politics and medicine, you eradicate the symptoms by treating the disease. As they say, the important question is not who, or what, or when, but why. In this case, there are several "why's." For one, there's worker exploitation. Employers are able to pay illegals less (and probably be a little lax on any number of workers' protection laws) because the illegals lack the ability to appeal to the government to protect them. Thus many industries choose to hire illegals instead of others because it's cheaper. Often, too, it's individual households hiring them: I remember as a kid my grandparents talking about the "hired hands" that came up every harvest season to do various jobs around the farm that they couldn't pay anyone else to do.

This problem has only compounded itself over the years as entire industries were developed around the super-cheap labor provided by exploitation of immigrants, and suddenly changing the situation could mean massive economic repercussions. This partially explains the reckless intransigence of the South toward emancipation, as they had built their entire economy upon oppression: the system couldn't function without it.

There is an even deeper "why" to this problem, however, the answer to which also lies in injustice. The case of Mexico is hugely important to our discussion, as I'm willing to bet it contributes the lion's share of our illegal immigrants. By accident of geography, Mexicans are born in a country lacking the means to take care of them adequately. Yet they're languishing in the backyard of a nation swimming in money with lots of employers just aching for cheap labor, guaranteeing a job and a sweet paycheck to anyone with the cajones to come get it.

The American Dream.

Thus, Mexicans are left with the awful choice of either 1) staying at home with your family, but without money to live the life you want, or 2) leaving your family to go work illegally in a foreign country, making the dangerous trek across the border each time you want to see them again or bring them money. Now, we "natives", being all pro-family and such, want to believe that we'd be willing to risk danger and break the law to protect our loved ones, right? Who wouldn't agree that it's the right thing to do? In fact, the very choice illegals are making here, to leave their homes to go on an often dangerous journey to carve out a better life for themselves and their families in a foreign land, laws be damned, is the exact same decision our own ancestors made.

Thus, for many Mexicans, the decision is so obvious, and contains so many factors out of their control, that it's hardly a decision at all. To channel Malcolm X, on some fundamental level they didn't cross the Rio Grande: the Rio Grande crossed them.

I say it again: the protesters are right to be ticked off.

They beat them up!

Uh oh, looks like someone forgot their crazy pills. Here's a snippet of Pat Robertson today, via Crooks and Liars:

ROBERTSON: Ladies and gentleman this is a fascinating book. If you want to, you'd better take your blood pressure medicine before you read it, but it's "The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America" and that's just a short list of the 30-40,000 of them, they're like termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it's appalling. This is available at CBN.com and book stores everywhere, and you really ought to read it and be informed.

TERRI: It’s interesting that so many conservatives haven't seen this because decades ago we were told that infiltrating education was the way to take over the country, we should have been on alert.

ROBERTSON: They gamed it, these guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, you know some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order and they don't want anybody else except them. That's why Regent University for example is so terrifically important and why we're setting up an undergraduate program that hopefully will see shortly 10,000 students, and then from there 250,000 because you don't want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don't want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission. Ahhh! "The Professors", read it.

That's right, people, that socially awkward, uber-introverted, spindly old man in front of the blackboard, the one in the corduroy sportcoat with the elbow patches: he gets together with his spindly buddies, corners a couple of uppity conservative freshmen, and all of a sudden the whole scene is a flurry of broken tortoiseshell frames and shredded MLA handbooks!

Yes, folks, they beat these people up! And cower them into tautologie... er, I mean, submission! And they walk them around like dogs on leashes! And then they cover them in cheese! And make them watch old reruns of "Herman's Head"! AHHHHHH DAMN YOU LIBERALS DAMN YOUUUUUUU!!!!!

Another military torture site???

"A couple of bad apples" strike again. From Editor and Publisher:

Just in time for the third anniversary of the Iraq war, The New York Times offers a bombshell account Sunday on a secret U.S. torture facility in that country that remained in business even after the Abu Ghraib abuses became known.

The article by Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall reveals that an elite Special Operations forces unit took one of Saddam Hussein's former torture centers near Baghdad Airport and made it their own. They called it the Black Room.

"In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball," the reporters relate.

How many of these damn things are we gonna find before we hold the people in charge accountable for the obvious, namely that this torture business was ordered from the top? And just what sort of stuff went down there, you might wonder? What kind of "fraternity-style pranks," to channel Rush Limbaugh?

"Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, 'NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.' The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: 'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it.' According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. 'The reality is, there were no rules there,' another Pentagon official said.

What bothered me the most about reading this wasn't the paintball. It wasn't the fact that we continued Saddam's work in this awful place. It wasn't even the line about "making them bleed."

It was that the story of Americans torturing people didn't upset me as much as it used to.

censure

For anyone reading this who hasn't heard, Congress has been dealing with a motion by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to censure the president for breaking the law in conducting wiretapping against American citizens without a court order. Yet, despite the fact that the president's wiretapping (like the president himself) is unpopular, and despite the fact that Democrats have been complaining about the constitutionality of said wiretaps, Democratic senators have reacted tepidly to Feingold's motion. 2 have even said they plan to oppose it. There's some good analysis and discussion of the situation going on at Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald (speaking of, I'm updating my blogroll, adding a couple of the better sites I've found lately).

The sad thing about all this, to me, is that the Democrats were getting a lot better at actually fighting the Republicans until very recently. Starting with the surprisingly pathetic roll-over for Samuel Alito, however, they've been acting like it's 2001 again and W's approvals are back in the 80's (as many of you know, in fact the opposite is true-- W's ratings are the worst ever, and less than 10 points away from Nixon's when he resigned).

If the Democrats ever want to run Congress again, they're going to have to internalize one single immutable fact about the American electorate: they only vote for people with the integrity to fight for their beliefs. In a way, it's almost like it's the only thing they look for in their candidates. Republicans have not done well because of what they stand for; in fact, surveys show that, on the issues, the American people's beliefs line up well to the left of the Republicans, and even some Democrats (with the exception of gay marriage). Rather, Americans vote for Republicans simply because they appear to stand for something. Democrats got the boot in '94 not because their message was wrong, but because they looked corrupt and spineless.

So, to the DC Democrats: FIGHT. No more running. No more pussyfooting around, no more sidestepping or backing down or handwringing. For the love of God, stop these jackasses before they do any more damage.

FIGHT.

John McCain is a figment of your imagination

(picture via Ezra Klein)

I'm glad the netroots are finally getting around to disenfranchising the American media and public of the wildly inaccurate picture they have of John McCain, but I'd sure love to hear someone in the media besides Paul Krugman give this some air. From Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times (no link because it's behind a pay firewall):

So here's what you need to know about John McCain.

He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.

And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.

It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

This isn't all, either. , McCain was for Bush's Social Security privatization plan, and as I noted back in November, he gives speeches at racist organizations, has kneeled at the throne of Jerry Falwell (a man he demonized during the 2000 elections) and is for Intelligent Design and a gay marriage ban in Arizona (he got so much "maverick" air play for voting against a federal ban, but he actually was for it: it's just that he wanted the states to be ones who pull the trigger).

Everyone needs to understand that John McCain is great at PR and image maintenance. He has a pretty good bead on what people like to see, and he plays the part when the cameras are rolling. He's like other supposedly "moderate" Republican senators in this way, like Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, or Arlen Specter. He talks a lot of talk for the cameras, then walks into the Capitol building and meekly toes the party line, just like Snowe and Hagel weep and wail about illegal wiretapping and then cave for the president the moment he shows a hint of displeasure, or when Specter grandstands about the Senate's role to protect Americans from bad judicial nominations and then votes to confirm Sam Alito, one of the worst Supreme Court candidates since Robert Bork (and incidentally, one who did little little to hide the fact that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade-- yet Specter plays up his "pro-choice" cred every election).

I think (at least I sincerely hope) that McCain's obsequious cleaving to W will come back to bite him in '08. It just seems like a serious miscalculation to me, and it would be a fitting end for the career of a man who thrived on PR and political calculation instead of conviction and principles.

Profile in Libertarianism: FDR

This quote explains exactly why I think the Libertarian party is fooling itself in thinking it has a) any understanding of what "freedom" would even look like, or b) any sense of morality and decency. 10-gallon tip to FDL for finding the right words from a living rebuke of Libertarianism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

regulation

A couple of great posts today(specifically "Sign O' the Times" and "The Republican Revolution...") on FDL. Greg talks about deregulation and the ridiculousness of the idea behind it:

Businesses exist for one reason only : to make money. I don't begrudge them that, but I do think one of the big lines that separates the two parties is that Democrats by and large think our laws should protect Americans from amoral entities, while Republicans are content with pretending that corporations have our best interests in mind. Of course, if a company is actually held to that same standard later, "pro-business" shills are quick to point out that their obligation is to shareholders.

He poses this inconsistency another way later:

When a politician talks about 'deregulating' something, what he really means is getting rid of the laws that 99% of the time exist for a damn good reason...For a party that prides itself on its common sense, [Republicans] seem smitten with the retarded idea that the only thing that stands in the way of corporate titans keeping the environment clean (to cite one example) are the laws that mandate the very thing they're refusing to do.

Exactly. This is something I've been harping on for a while as well, though I never connected the Republican equivocations about the "obligation... to shareholders." This type of ideological inconsistency is a pretty clear indicator of insincerity in my opinion. It's normal for people to be somewhat inconsistent, but usually it's because there's they just haven't completely explored, or "unpacked" as philosophers say, the ramifications of their beliefs on a certain subject. Sorta like when an anti-Roe v. Wade person goes to a fertility clinic because they haven't considered the connection between abortion and in vitro fertilization (i.e. in order to fertilize you, they have to kill an awful lot of other fertilized eggs). Or when someone who's vehemently anti-Disney pays money to see a Touchstone picture, not considering the fact that, since Touchstone is owned by Disney, they're in fact paying Disney to see the movie.

This inconsistency, however, is on the very same issue, and anyone who gets paid to develop their political philosophy (like political parties) would catch this inconsistency. A genuine believer would untie that knot, but these guys don't bother, because their primary loyalty is not to their ideology or, for that matter, their voters. Voters are slack-jawed sheep who can be convinced to support even the most blatant lie. Just like corporations themselves, their primary loyalty is to their shareholders, i.e. big business, the Republican party's biggest donors.

don't bite the hand that bribes you

He's been getting called names like "crook" and "con-artist" by guys who courted his attention. Conrad Burns has smeared him again and again. Dennis Hastert gave back his money. George W. Bush pretended to have never heard of him. Now arch-lobbyist Jack Abramoff enthusiastically spills his guts to Vanity Fair after being sold down the river by the very Republicans that used to rely upon him for campaign cash:

The newly elected House majority leader, John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, also doesn’t know Abramoff, but Abramoff’s clients gave him $30,000 over the past few years, and ate many meals at Signatures.
...
Then ,most important, there’s President Bush.“I, frankly, don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy,” he has said. But how about those 10 or so photographs of him with Abramoff, or with Abramoff’s sons, or of Laura Bush with Abramoff ’s daughters, apparently taken during all of those meetings that never took place? And the time when the president joked with Abramoff about his weight lifting: “What are you benching, buff guy?” How about the invitation to the ranch in Crawford, where Abramoff would have joined all of the other big Bush fund-raisers?Abramoff didn’t go to that—it fell on the Sabbath, which, as an Orthodox Jew, Abramoff observes—but how about that speech Bush but how about that speech Bush gave to big donors in 2003, when Abramoff sat only a few feet away, between Republican senators George Allen (Virginia) and Orrin Hatch (Utah), and was the only lobbyist on the dais?

The article is long but good. It has everything you need to know about Abramoff (minus the dumbass tripe about "Abramoff-related tribes" giving money to Democrats-- it's been proven pretty thoroughly at this point that Abramoff directed tribes to give less, not more, money to Democrats), plus some interesting quotes from the man himself. I especially recommend the part where he raves like a scorned lover at the reporter's comment that Newt Gingrich says he doesn't know him.

more Jon Stewart

In reply to Grimsaburger, who said: "Maybe they just don't get it when no one's telling them when to laugh."

That's exactly what I'm starting to think as well. I noticed, reading one critic, that after bashing Stewart for being too tepid and too nice to Hollywood (clue #1), they noted his few shining moments, which eerily coincided with the moments where the audience laughed the most (clue #2).

First of all, I thought Stewart eviscerated Hollywood; my only worry was that he was being so hard on them that the audience would turn on him. And about the "high points", sure, those moments were funny, but I thought it was fairly obvious that most of the humor (and the sharpest barbs) came at Hollywood's expense, so it would stand to reason that TV viewers would find it funnier than the live audience, which is exactly what one should expect of Stewart.

Of course, if you've become so conditioned by TV that you only know something's funny when the audience is shown a blinking "Laugh" sign, I guess you might not notice.

Post Secret

Easily the most deliciously haunting website I've ever seen: PostSecret.com.

These are real cards people made and sent in.

Jon Stewart and the Oscars

Saw the Oscars Sunday night. Enjoyed them for the most part, and I liked that there wasn't just one movie that swept the whole show like 2 years ago. Kinda thought Brokeback should've gotten more, though.

So what's up with the punditocracy pooping all over Stewart's performance? Everything I read mentions him as being "tame," "boring," and "falling flat." What the hell are you talking about? Stewart was the biggest iconoclast the Academy Awards has had up there up there in years. Didn't any of these wankers see his response to that sanctimonious montage of films tackling controversial subjects when he looked at the camera, donned that signature smirk, and said,

"And the best part was, none of those issues was ever a problem again."

Famous musician arrested for beating his girlfriend

Before you read any further, guess which musician.

Who's your guess: Lars Ulrich, Tommy Lee, Toby Keith? From AP:

The musician Yanni was arrested at his home after an alleged domestic dispute with his girlfriend, authorities said.

Yanni, whose legal name is John Yanni Christopher, was arrested early Friday and faces a domestic battery charge, according to a police report.

This just in: Yanni and Charlie Daniels are going on tour together, Kid Rock to open for them.

CENTCOM now monitoring blogs

Ok, I'm a little creeped out. This is from their own website (c/o Georgia10 at DKos):

U.S. Central Command officials here took notice [of blogs] and created a team to engage these writers and their electronic information forums.

...
McNorton said the team contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. This outreach effort enables the team to offer complete information to bloggers by inviting them to visit CENTCOM's Web site for news releases, data or imagery.

The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information. They extend a friendly invitation to all bloggers to visit the command's Web site.

...
"Now (online readers) have the opportunity to read positive stories. At least the public can go there and see the whole story. The public wants to hear these good stories," he said, adding that the news stories the military generates are "very factual."

From his desk at CENTCOM headquarters here, Army Reserve Spc. Claude Flowers of the 304th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment from Kent, Wash., fights in the global war on terrorism daily in his own way. It is an effort, officials here said, that is making a big difference in the communications arena in the online world.

This is just crazy on so many levels. If you read the article, you actually feel like you're being propagandized; it has the tone of those 1950's infomercials the government released, with the surreal happy music in the background and all that.

This line is priceless: "The public wants to hear these good stories," he said, adding that the news stories the military generates are "very factual."" Of course, your expected response now is "Oh good, glad to know it's "very factual"!" The fact that they go out of their way to mention that their work is "very factual" should be a red flag anyway: have you ever gone up to hand a paper to a teacher and said, "Now don't worry Mr. X, it's very factual..."?

Frankly, what the hell do English-speaking blogs (I think that's a safe assumption since any Arab-speaking military personnel would have more important jobs) have to do with the War on Terrorism anyway? Are they even interested in winning the war in Iraq, or just in convincing us that they're winning it? Furthermore, how does the military benefit from us wrongly believing that we're winning?

The only people I can think of that benefit are Republican officeholders, and it's not the military's job to protect Republicans approval ratings. Maybe if the Republicans had been busy trying to help the Army win its War on Terrorism, instead of using the army to win Republicans elections, we would be in a little better shape in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

And of course corollary to that, I'm sure you're all just as s**t-tickled as I am to know this is where my tax dollars are going, instead of, ya know, body armor for the troops or other such sundries.

US Congress at Italian PM's beck and call

Congress: what a bunch of buffoons:

We set aside legislative business and filed into the House Chamber only to hear right-of-center media billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speak in Italian with no interpreter. Organized applause was prompted at certain points from the uncomprehending crowd (Members of Congress plus "blue-coated interns, sent in to fill empty seats").

C-SPAN snubbed the event -- a Joint Session of Congress! (Doesn't C-SPAN cover everything?) But the rousing reception aired live overseas, on Berlusconi's own TV stations, skirting his country's equal-time laws in a tough election cycle.

Berlusconi's Italian papers laud the show as one of the most warm receptions from the US Congress to an Italian leader.

a new spin on the "brothel law"

From the St. Louis Dispatch (c/o AMERICAblog):

Olivia Shelltrack finally has her dream home. Her family moved into the five-bedroom, three-bath frame house in Black Jack last month. But now she fears she and her fiance face uprooting their children because of a city ordinance that says her household fails to meet Black Jack's definition of a family.

Shelltrack and Fondray Loving, her boyfriend of 13 years, were denied an occupancy permit because of an ordinance forbidding three or more individuals from living together if they are not related by "blood, marriage or adoption." The couple have three children, ages 8, 10 and 15, although Loving is not the biological father of the oldest child.

"I was basically told, you can have one child living in your house if you're not married, but more than that, you can't," she said.

This law is actually one that I've heard of before. As you Lubbockites may know, such a law exists in Lubbock as well, although it's more typically described as a "brothel law" down there. Apparently laws of this sort have multiple uses.

In fact, I've heard that South Bend has one, too.

Of course, something they don't discuss in the article is that these laws are also legal loopholes to discriminate against gays or discourage them from adopting (where such loopholes are necessary, anyway). I experienced manifestations of these laws myself as discrimination against college students, who were forced into the ghettos because they were the only places with homes we could afford between just 2 of us, even though some nicer areas had larger homes that 3 or more of us could've afforded together (and we wouldn't have had to deal with our cars getting broken into every couple of months).

Such a brilliant law, so versatile in its ability to screw so many people all at once!

(and by the way, did any of y'all catch the color of the woman vis-a-vis her children? Ya think that might have something to do with her getting nailed by this law? Just sayin'.)

US soldiers overwhelmingly want us out of Iraq

Surprising. But I guess, ultimately, not very surprising. From michael1104 at DKos (quoting Nick Kristof at the New York Times, which is subscription-only):

A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq -- and soon.

The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"

Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately." (emphasis mine)

For more polling fun, let's go to the newest presidential poll-- this one from CBS News:

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

And then the hits just keep on comin':

In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
...
For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

As a side note, the poll also gauged Dick Cheney's approval rating... at 18%.

Baghdad burning

It seems to be quickly becoming conventional wisdom, to the chagrin of the administration, that the current violence in Iraq underlies the collapse of Iraqi unity and the final, inexorable descent into civil war. Even William F. Buckley, a titan and founding douchebag of the conservative movement, proclaimed yesterday in the National Review that America has officially failed in Iraq:

[Bush] will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

They all may well be right, and I think a perfectly reasonable question right now is "in what way exactly has Iraq not already been in the grips of civil war for months?" Furthermore, the claim of conventional wisdom is bolstered by the simple fact that violence has an uncanny knack for perpetuating itself, as we have seen from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or American gang violence.

That being said, if the current situation is not yet civil war, then I don't want to jump to the conclusion that civil war's beginning just yet. My hesitation exists despite what logic dictates, and may stem purely from misguided hope, but nonetheless it exists. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail. For once.

As a side note, Juan Cole, professor of history at UMichigan, has an excellect blog on the subject of terrorism and the Middle East. Unlike reporters, pundits, and most bloggers, he actually knows this subject well (I assume it's his academic specialty).

Pat Tillman movie

So it appears that some conservatives are calling for a movie to be made about Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals player (don't remember his position) who left the NFL to go fight (and die) in Iraq. I agree with Kevin Drum and Atrios: it's a great idea.

Whyzat, you ask? I'll let Tillman explain to you himself, as quoted in this superb report of Tillman's service, death, and the Administration's cynical manipulation of his legacy:

"You know, this war is so fucking illegal."

execution and the medical profession

Truly fascinating. The state of California has indefinitely postponed an execution because they can't find any medical personnel willing to administer the lethal dose of sedative. It's an odd story, like something out of a Coen brothers movie. I just find it interesting because the reason NOT given by the doctors was their Hippocratic oath "first, to do no harm." I mean, you'd think it would've been that pesky oath that got in the way of their ability to execute people. But maybe that's just me.

and speaking of pictures...

New Abu Ghraib photos released today. Among them are a picture of what appears to be a corpse, and several pictures of a wide blood trail. And of course, your run-o'-the-mill (I can't believe we've come to that point) naked terrified malnourished detainees covered in all manner of filth.

"We do not torture." -President Bush, 11/7/05

freedom and responsibility (read the next post down before this one!)

Ok, so now that we've seen the damn cartoons we can talk about them. If you didn't get some of them, it's ok, I didn't either. Then I read the background: it appears that someone wrote a right-wing Danish paper called Jyllands-Posten saying that he couldn't find any cartoonists willing to draw a picture of the prophet Muhammad. I suppose the paper printed the letter, because these cartoons were sent to it by Danes in response. That should clear up a number of the cartoons, especially the one with the schoolboy named "Muhammad" chiding the paper.

People on the left and right, both here and abroad, have rightly faulted Muslims for their heavy-handed response to these cartoons. Certainly the fact that Muslims are asking European governments to step in and censor the Jyllands-Posten (and the other papers that reprinted the cartoons) is both disturbing and deeply offensive to those of us who live in secular democracies.

My question, though, is this: isn't the Muslim reaction at least understandable? Clearly these cartoons were printed for one reason, and one reason alone: Muslim-baiting. The point of the cartoons is to offend Muslims. That's it. Even the paper itself admits as much in its explanation for the cartoons (see the section "Publications of the Drawings" for the original statement and subsequent apology, both of which are pure unadulterated bullshit). These cartoons aren't funny or insightful or even particularly creative, but for Muslims, who believe that representations of the Prophet are by definition blasphemous, they are, again, deeply and deliberately offensive. They are qualitatively no different than slapping "Jesus is ugly and stupid and nobody likes him, ha ha!" across the top of the page.

They are a sign of something that, for some reason, few if any are willing to say out loud: religious intolerance. Or, put another way, bigotry.

With freedom of speech and press, like any freedom, however, comes responsibility. Just because you can spew hate and intolerance all over your paper doesn't mean it's a good idea, and it doesn't mean that it's not your fault if bad things happen because of your insensitivity. When you express yourself, you represent a larger group in the minds of those who hear you, whether you like it or not. Thus, when the Jyllands-Posten printed these images, they recklessly validated the Muslim extremist narrative that breeds hatred, and ultimately terrorism.

I guess Jyllands-Posten isn't Danish for "class act."

did you actually see it?

Ok, I think I've digested the issue enough to try to write some sort of coherent commentary on the Danish cartoons. I am first, however, going to do something about which I'm a little morally conflicted: I'm going to link to the pictures (here, and here for an alternate translation). The reason I am doing so is because of conversations I've had occasionally over the last 2 years.

I talked a lot about movies in 2004. There were a lot of good ones that year, and a lot of controversial ones. It so happened that my two favorite movies of 2004 were The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11.

You can see why I had so many conversations.

I talked to many people about both movies, and had a great many of them get all worked up because I dared to even see one or the other, let alone enjoy it. Ultimately, in fact almost without exception, after a couple of minutes it became clear that they had never actually seen the movie themselves, and had just blindly accepted some pundit's (some of whom had never seen it themselves) interpretation of it. Despite that fact, no, because of that fact, they also were so passionate about "their" opinion that they were utterly unable to listen to reason. Naturally, every time I had to cut off the conversation then and there, because it's asinine to carry on such a discussion.

I have a feeling that same thing is going on with the Danish cartoons, on both sides of the debate. In fact, it only occurred to me today that I still hadn't seen them. So go take a look at the cartoons, and then we can talk about them.

ssshhhhhhhh... we're hunting Wepubwicans

(c/o Atrios)

Fair and Balanced

You have got to be kidding me. From Media Matters (c/o Atrios):

Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume showed an edited video clip of Rev. Joseph Lowery's remarks at Coretta Scott King's funeral, during which he mentioned the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lowery's remarks were greeted with 23 seconds of applause and a standing ovation, but the clip Fox News aired presented nine seconds of applause and little hint of the standing ovation without noting that the clip had been doctored. After seeing the clip, Roll Call's Morton Kondracke concluded that the audience "wasn't exactly uproarious in its response" to Lowery.

For God's sake, why does anyone watch that pathetic channel?

Budgets are Moral Documents

From the Washington Post (via FDL):

After a difficult political struggle that badly divided congressional Republicans, lawmakers muscled through savings from Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, federal child support enforcement and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Before Bush has even signed that legislation, he is coming back for more. His budget proposes to wring out $4.9 billion more in savings from Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, $17 million from child support enforcement and $16.7 billion from the federal pension insurance program through 2011.

ReddHedd adds:

"Oh, and just in case you missed this one -- the city of New Orleans has had to appeal for foreign aid because the Bush Administration has failed to live up to its promises. So much for that whole backlit speech in the Big Easy when the President's poll numbers needed a big photo-op.

Move on, folks, nothing to see here but a bunch of empty promises and false bravado."

I think I know just what the prophet Isaiah would say (chapter 10):

Woe to you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes,
to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!
What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain?

Meet Jacob Robida

Caution: the following links are a little creepy. For the record, I do very much remember what it was like to be that age, with all the confusion and emotional turmoil, and having lost people in their teens I very much sympathize with the pain and loss that Robida's friends and family are enduring. The circumstances, I'm sure, make it even more painful.

Yet it's also important that we keep a little bit of perspective here. I have to say I find it a little wacky that all the talking heads have been driving it up our noses that "no one could POSSIBLY imagine that such a sweet boy as this could EVER be involved in this!"

I guess we're supposed to believe that any kid could be this kid, so BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID. I'm sure it's perfectly normal for kids these days to have swastika tattoos.

I guess brownshirt is the new black.

Bush: "I got some beachfront property back in Midland for ya"

So in W's exceedingly weak (one blogger said "castrated") State of the Onion lay one single nugget of life-- the promise to use alternative energy sources to cut our reliance on foreign oil by 75% (where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, that was part of John Kerry's platform!). We've already seen that his own administration said he didn't mean that "literally."

Now, for the grand finale, courtesy of the New York Times! This is rich:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

shadows of Chile

No, no, of course this isn't government intimidation! We just think that, ya know, any paper publishing anything takes a stance against the war deserves to be browbeaten in a letter by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

West Virginny

The proverbial straw finally landed today:

Two mine workers were killed in separate accidents in West Virginia on Wednesday, prompting Gov. Joe Manchin to call on all coal companies to cease production until safety checks can be conducted.
"We're going to check for unsafe conditions, and we're going to correct any unsafe conditions before we mine another lump of coal,'' Manchin said.

This is potentially huge, considering the central role of coal mining in the West VA economy. The question is, of course, whether or not Manchins' "call" has any legal teeth, or clout in the private sector.

We'll see.

more State of the Onion fallout

MSNBC:

Capitol Police dropped a charge of unlawful conduct against antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan on Wednesday and apologized for ejecting her and a congressman’s wife from President Bush’s State of the Union address for wearing T-shirts with war messages.

“The officers made a good faith, but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,” Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement late Wednesday.

...
The extraordinary statement came a day after police removed Sheehan and Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, R-Fla., from the visitors gallery Tuesday night. Sheehan was taken away in handcuffs before Bush’s arrival at the Capitol and charged with a misdemeanor, while Young left the gallery and therefore was not arrested, Gainer said.

Hmmm, so many things to lambast here, the incompetence, the double-standard, oh and the editing for GOP-friendliness. The earlier version of this article, caught by Kos, added:

"We screwed up," a top Capitol Police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said Sheehan didn't violate any rules or laws.

you have GOT to be kidding me...

Knight Ridder:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

It's apparently kinda like that whole "I promise to fire anyone involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity" thing. He wasn't lying, he was just, ya know, speaking in metaphor.

Jackass.

Why Alito must not be confirmed

Well hell, here I was about to write a thoughtful, reasoned, information-rich, and witty essay telling people that Alito is wrong for the Supreme Court and will gut our civil liberties, when lo and behold, ReddHedd from Firedoglake (a very insightful website, by the way-- her and Jane Hamsher are pretty good at this bloggy stuff) already has. Unfortunately, her writing is so thoroughly studded with important hyperlinks that copying a quote really doesn't do it any justice. Just go read it yourself.

On a side note, even though I'm not in total agreement with her, she provides possibly the most cogent argument for abortion rights I've ever heard:

I don't want people to have more abortions. If I could, I'd wave a wand and make all babies be born under ideal circumstances to parents who would love and care for them.

But I happen to live in the all-too-real world, where sexual abuse and violent rape and all those other nasty things happen, where children wake up and wonder if there will be any food for them to eat -- right here in the US of A -- and where other things that most people can never even imagine happen within families and neighborhoods and all over the place.

And I know enough to know this: I don't speak for God, and neither should anyone else. That's why it is an individual choice -- you make peace with your own soul, your own faith and your own family and friends based on your own, individual and hideous circumstances in each case -- and beyond that, it's no one's business. And I say this as someone who struggled with fertility issues for close to seven years and fully understands how very precious that life is. But I've seen enough horrible things in my life in the law to know that there are just some circumstances where you cannot know unless you happen to be walking in those particular shoes...those very dismal, very difficult shoes.

Gambling with this right is not something anyone sensible should do, given the long-term implications and the horrible circumstances we saw in this country when illegal abortions were being performed. A vote for Alito is a vote for the back alley, plain and simple.

Canadian Elections

I know Canada isn't exactly the favorite country for many on this blog, but Americans (yes, even Texans) have to face the fact that Canadian politics mean more than any other country for the US. We are socially and economically (as well as geographically, of course) bound to Canada like no other country, so what happens there affects us in palpable ways.

It looks, at this point, barring extraordinary circumstances, that the Liberal party's 13 year reign in the parliament is coming to an end tonight. The Conservatives (aka. "Tories") nailed them on corruption allegations and came out on top (well, sort of-- the Tories actually will have a plurality, not a majority, but it's enough in Canada).

I know many will disagree with me, but I say good for the Tories. I don't like the Conservative platform, and I don't think they're the party to move Canada forward. I think they're militaristic, selfish, and overly nationalist. But, the ends don't justify the means. No matter how good your ideas are, if you can't keep your nose clean then you don't deserve to rule.

Furthermore, corruption and lawbreaking erode the rule of law and wipe away accountability. The natural result, therefore, is a party that is a) more authoritarian, and b) more incompetent. The natural link between authoritarianism and incompetence is something Josh Marshall pointed to a week or os ago; I'm not gonna go find the link, but I'd suggest taking a look at TPM. I don't know if those traits have already begun to appear in the Liberal party, but if haven't yet, then they would have if the Liberals weren't held accountable for their transgresses.

As we know with the American Democratic party, nothing cleans up a party like getting burned in an election because of internal scandals. The Liberals will be back, cleaner and better than before, and Canada will be the better for it, even if it means dealing with the Tories for a while.

Chris Matthews: Brown-nose Commando of the "Liberal Media"

Here's the host of Hardball on the day W "landed a plane" on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq (the link has so much more):

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

Of course, this is coming from the same guy who said a month ago that if W's gamble to create a democracy in Iraq works, then "he belongs on Mt. Rushmore." I guess Truman and Marshall get a fruit basket for creating two.

Mr. Matthews, the President's proctologist just called. He says he's found your glasses.

Reporters are not stenographers

Atrios nails the problem with the Media's practice of reporting without verifying the facts (aka. stenography):

"Despite how some like to think of themselves, reporters are not passive conduits of information. They choose their sources. They choose the quotes. They decide when a source has been full of shit so many times that, if they care, they stop going to them for information.

More than that, from the perspective of the reader when the journalist passes on the quote without question or any rebuttal or refutation, the journalist is implicitly putting his/her stamp of authentication on it."

Sounded pretty obvious after you read it, eh? That right there, folks, is why Atrios is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the internets.

State of the Union predictability

Since someone let the cat out of the bag, and the media has already found out what W will be touting in his State of the Onion address (yes, that was intentional misspelling), I'll go ahead and offer you a great analysis of W's craptacular Health Savings Accounts by Ezra Klein (c/o TPM).

Great for big business, sounds "responsible" yet screws the average joe: talk about "second verse, same as the first"!

Ford's "Way Forward": Another Great Leap?

It was announced today that Ford Motor Company will be canning as many as thirty thousand people over the next 6 years. NPR said this morning that such a number represents about 20% of their workforce. The stated objective of the cuts is to offset a $1.6 billion loss in domestic sales.

I hate to poop on Ford, as I understand they typically treat their employees a little better than many other companies, but this is a raw deal for the workers. For one, Ford is actually still profitable; the losses they sustained domestically are more than offset by good profits abroad. Second, if the losses are anyone's fault, it's the fault of people at the top of the company, not the bottom, but it's the plant workers lining up at the unemployment office. Not to mention the fact that Ford is one of many companies facing massive pension debts, meaning Ford workers may not get their retirement money.

Thus it's worth asking: what's happening to, say, Ford's CEO, the person who actually is ultimately responsible for the company's failures? Well, he has decided to forego his salary every year since he's been there, so he must be taking a hit for the team, too, right? Not so much. It appears that CEO William Clay Ford Jr. has raked in $53 MILLION over the last three years in stock options, including $18 million last year alone.

Abramoff spin in the news

Unreal. From Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist, on Hardball:

Look, this is going to come out. Nobody is going to keep it a secret. Jack Abramoff is so radioactive—I've got Jack Abramoff fatigue already. I mean, good grief, he didn't kill anybody. Maybe that one guy in Florida.

Wow.

[by the way, here's the background on that last comment]

And for an example of how actual reporters are skewing the story, here's an AP story, discussed and disected by Josh Marshall. It's pretty sick how misleading the story is.

Abramoff and the Zombie Lie

By now most of you probably know about the lobbying and corruption scandal going on surrounding super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Predictions are that between half a dozen and several dozen Republicans in Washington could get burned by Abramoff's decision to flip and testify to the grand jury about his relationships on Capitol Hill and, to a lesser degree, in the White House. There is one undebatable fact that is both the most significant aspect of the story, and the one the media is for some reason hellbent on hiding:

The Abramoff affair is an exclusively Republican scandal.

Abramoff lavished figures like Tom Delay, Dennis Haster (the Speaker of the House, arguably the second most powerful man in Washington after the President), and Bob Ney, yet he never gave a dime to Democrats. Not one penny.

Yet there remains the great lie being told not only by politicians with a vested interest in misinformation, but by media figures too biased or lazy or credulous to see the truth, namely the lie that Abramoff or "Abramoff-related Indian tribes" gave money to members of both parties. This is what people like Atrios are calling "the Zombie Lie"-- no matter how many times you refute it and kill it, it keeps coming back.

Bloomberg News does a pretty good job of cutting through the crap and showing what is really going on here. From their article:

Of the top 10 political donors among Indian tribes in that period, three are former clients of Abramoff and Scanlon... All three gave most of their donations to Republicans -- by margins of 30 percentage points or more -- while the rest favored Democrats.

Abramoff faces allegations that he bilked the casino-owning tribes out of millions of dollars and attempted to corrupt public officials. E-mails released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee during a year of hearings offer evidence that he directed the tribes to donate funds to specific lawmakers.

Abramoff's tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past.

This portion outlines the issues at stake rather well. First, remember what the scandal is about, and what it's not about. It's not about Indian tribes or anyone else (including Abramoff) giving money to politicians. That's perfectly legal, and has been a central aspect of the political workings in Washington for a long time (the term lobbying, in fact, dates from the Grant Administration, when people waited in the lobby of a famous hotel to catch the president on his way out).

Rather, this scandal is about lobbyists and operatives buying favors, i.e. bribery, and politicians receiving illegal contributions by laundering money through a lobbying machine run by Abramoff. Now, it's no secret that in 1994, when the Republicans seized control of Congress, they designed "the K Street Project" as their long-term strategy for holding onto power. The K Street Project is a coordinated attempt by Republicans to infiltrate and coerce "K Street", or the lobbying sector in Washington, into giving as much of their money as possible to Republicans. Part of that tactic involves bullying the lobbyists into not supporting Democrats, part of it involves installing Republican operatives (like Jack Abramoff) in high-powered lobbying positions, and part of it, inevitably, involves granting favors to the more obedient lobbyists in return for their support (in whatever form that might take).

It doesn't exactly take a genius to understand that such a tactic lends itself to corruption and bribery. And that's exactly what happened in the Abramoff matter.

Now, looking at the above quote, notice that the tribes Abramoff consulted had always given to Democrats, but gave substantially less to them once he attached himself to said tribes. What that clearly means is that Abramoff was not directing them to give money to Democrats; in fact, he was doing exactly the opposite i.e. directing them NOT to give to Dems, which was all part of the K Street Strategy.

This scandal is a Republican scandal. Republicans devised it 12 years ago. Republicans executed it. Republicans have reaped its benefits.

Metonymy Gone Bad

metonymy: n. Rhet. the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part, as "scepter" for "sovereignty." [The Random House College Dictionary]

[from the movie "Canadian Bacon" (1995)]
Boomer: The capital Toronto.
RCMP Officer at Headquarters: No, the capital of Canada is Ottawa.
Boomer: Yeah, right. Do we look that stupid? Ottawa!
Roy Boy: Nice try, Dudley.

This is a gaff that, were any layman to make it, would be perhaps funny, but it's not exactly super-common knowledge. Robert Kagan, however, is a world affairs columnist for the Washington Post. He really should know better. Kagan writes:

In East Asia, meanwhile, U.S. relations with Japan grow ever closer as the Japanese become increasingly concerned about China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. China's (and Malaysia's) attempt to exclude Australia from a prominent regional role at the recent East Asian summit has reinforced Sydney's desire for closer ties.

As Matt Yglesias snarkily comments, "But what do they think in Canberra?"

Canberra, not Sydney, is the capital of Australia.

my bad Joe

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the site lately, things have been hectic with me trying to get on my feet at work. There's a lot to talk about, though, and I wanna get onto that ASAP. If I'm thinking right, then the first matters on deck are Alito and whether judges' views in important in confirmation hearings, Abramoff and the "Zombie Lie," and the Washington Post's recent woes, including what I call "Metonymy Gone Bad."

In the meantime, a question: have any of you seen Brokeback Mountain? How was it? I'm hoping to see it in the next week or so, and I hear it's great, but ya never know.

Also, who are your picks for the Oscars?

cah tahk

So I don't usually talk about cars very much. To be honest, I'd love to live somewhere where I didn't need one; I hate the damn things. At the same time, I have to appreciate the auto industry's ability to recycle ideas and sell them and new and cool... even badass, with umlauts and everything.

Take, for instance, the new Dodge "Magnum." The title just screams macho, badass, "watch out, sucka."

But ya know, I can't help but keep thinking that this hot new machismo-mobile reminds me of something. I just can't quite put my finger on it...

Dean lays the smackdown

Here's a hilarious clip of Howard Dean clowning Wolf Blitzer on national television. Blitzer tries spouting off that ridiculous Republican talking point that Democrats are involved in the Abramoff scandal, and was visibly surprised to find out that he "doesn't know Jack" about the Abramoff affair. Watch Blitzer's face as Dean shoots him down.

At least we can still rely on Dr. Dean to set the record straight.

The Christmas season is finally complete

Tom Delay is out as Majority Leader.

I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Abramoff flipping.

In-Vince-ible

I dedicate this post to all the sports commentator douchebags who said this one was in the bag, and had their nose so far up Matt Leinart's ass that they could watch the game through his navel.

All hail the 2005 NCAA champions...

The Texas Longhorns, biatch!!!

Casting the ol' snapoon!

Dayum.

This is a letter to the editor in the Dallas Morning News about Governor Perry's record. If this is all true, then I'd say the facts speak for themselves.

Digby

Heh, indeedy.

(my impression of Atrios).

Strayhorn opens up Texas gubernatorial race

News out yesterday says that State Comptroller Carol Keeton Foghorn-Leghorn has decided to run for the governorship... as an independent. It must be noted that, as of yet, she is not on the ballot, as independents in Texas cannot begin collecting the requisite 46,000 signatures to get on until after both party primaries. The chances of her getting on, however, is pretty good.

This is potentially huge news for the election. Perry is suddenly stuck with a serious problem: he can no longer count on disillusioned Republicans to vote for him in the election if he wins the primary, as they now have a solidly conservative alternative. This is also huge news, I think, for Kinky Friedman. The man who would've been merely a Democratic spoiler in a 3-person race has a much bigger shot at taking it all in a 4-person one.

I still have yet to be convinced that the Kinkster is worth considering as a serious candidate (he doesn't seem to have a plan for anything other than appointing Willie Nelson as head of the Texas Rangers, and his decision to take on Tom Delay's attorney as his campaign advisor gives me further pause), and Governor Goodhair is, of course, as useless as a 1-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Strayhorn, meanwhile, fully embodies the bigotry and intolerance we've all come to expect from the Texas Republican party by revoking the Unitarian-Universalist Church's tax-exempt status, claiming that it's not really a religious institution because it "does not have one system of belief."

What's your take on this whole poopstorm?

more New Year's

I can see you!

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to NCAA championship trophies in Austin, a Texas Tech and Notre Dame bowl win, and the onset of authoritarianism! Bottoms up and asses in the White House!