got him by the grapes

Now, for some lighter fare. From The Oklahoman:

An Oklahoma City man has been charged with aggravated assault and battery, accused of causing extensive damage to another man's scrotum just because he wore a University of Texas shirt into a local bar.
...
Thomas said Beckett, whom he had never met, called him "everything under the sun” for wearing a Longhorns T-shirt into the bar.

He said he and his friend sat at a table in the corner and tried to ignore the other man, but other man — who apparently is a University of Oklahoma fan — kept screaming at him.

Thomas said he decided he'd had enough after about 20 minutes of Beckett's abuse so he went to the bar to pay his tab. When he turned around, he said Beckett grabbed his crotch and refused to let go.

Thomas hit the other man several times before several bar patrons intervened, but Thomas said Beckett didn't let go until Thomas heard his scrotum tear and blood ran down his leg.

Thomas, who grew up a Texas fan, said it took more than 60 stitches to close his wound.

Two months later, he said he still is a lot of pain.The injury also caused Thomas to fall behind on his child support payments because he couldn't work.

Are your legs crossed right now? Mine are!

As a bit of unintended irony, here's a screenshot of the article when I looked at it. Note the advertisement:

dehumanization

I've noticed a trend lately that, although it's been going on for some time, it's increased in intensity to the point where it's causing problems. No, I'm not referring to the demonization of liberals, although I spend a lot of time talking about that. No, unfortunately I'm talking about dehumanization of conservatives by liberals.

I bring you some examples just from today. Here's the latest "Dear Abby"-type article by Salon's Cary Tennis. The letter he received reads:

How can I love my parents when they are supporters of the most corrupt, willfully ignorant, deceitful, lying administration in our nation's history?

If we were not related by blood, I would have nothing to do with these people. The Bush presidency has ruined our reputation in the world, destroyed many of our civil liberties and increased the divide between the rich and the poor. Plus they think torture is just dandy!

I don't have any Republican friends. I don't like to talk to Republicans mostly. I find them ignorant of other cultures, and smug -- feeling that our country is the best in the world -- period.
...
Why should I spend time with people I don't like and resent for helping to lead my country in the wrong direction? Will I ever enjoy spending time with them again? It doesn't feel like it's possible. They say that you miss your parents when they're gone, no matter what your relationship was like. That might be true but I don't miss them now when they live 2,500 miles away. Can I change my attitude? I doubt it. Maybe you can shed some light.

I imagine many of you have Republican/conservative parents. I have Republican parents. In fact, most of my family is Republican. I'm also pretty f**king partisan: I hang out primarily with liberals and I tend to feel more comfortable around them, and I generally have snide, mean-spirited things to say when I get into political conversations with GOP types. As you know, I also get pretty raucous on this site. But I cannot imagine stopping loving my parents, no matter how right-wing they get.

How could you?

This goes back to an old point on this site: you can't judge people's character by their politics. I know it sounds logical, I know it makes perfect sense in your head, but it doesn't work. In real life, some conservatives are selfish and some are not. Some liberals are effete bleeding-hearts and some are not. One of the most selfish motherfuckers I ever met in my life was as liberal as they come. Some of the most generous people I've ever met want to privatize Social Security. Some of the most intelligent and well-read people I know are die-hard supporters of the Iraq War. Pretty much every university in the country has conservative professors in their poli-sci depts, not to mention economics, biology, etc. Are they all morons who somehow still got Ph.D.'s from respectable institutions?

Get over yourself, people. Your ideology may be superior to someone else's, but it doesn't make you a better person.

This isn't merely some "can't we all just get along" tirade, either; this kind of thinking leads down a dark path. The letter above shows one of the repercussions of this thought process, wherein thinking less of someone because of their politics strains the bonds of friendship and family.

The comment section here shows another, more alarming response, one that occurs when people on opposite sides aren't bound by blood or friendship. The blog post relates to a Republican party strategist who was murdered in his own home, along with 2 other men. You can look at the comments yourself, if you have the stomach for it, but nearly all 90-something of them are various permutations of jokingly asking how the Republicans will blame Clinton for this and speculation as to whether the 3 men were gay or whether they were "whacked" because they "knew too much." Some of the most illustrative:

What more can you expect from a member of a party whose political philosophy matches the psychological profile of the BTK serial killer?

I find it hard to believe that any Republican is capable of ‘love’. Except, perhaps, self-love….

Not the kindest comment I’ve ever written; but, I believe it’s not far off the mark….

...The point is that core GOPers are a bunch of crazy people. Take your pick pedos, self-hating queers, power mongers by day and submissives visiting the dominatrix dungeon at night, religious fanatics by day and crack snorting salami sucking family type men at night. These are folks who have some serious mental issues...

name any person who will stands up to be counted as a supporter of this White House Administration’s agenda of fear hate and suffering and tell me again why such a person deserves compassion just for dying….?

Three less republicans means the world is a better place.

The number of posts expressing grief or compassion for the dead, on the other hand, can be counted on two hands.

The problem with demonization of a particular group is that it leads to dehumanization. Once you tread down the path from "Republicanism is morally decrepit" to "Republicans are all morally decrepit," the journey to "the world would be better off without Republicans" is surprisingly short. And once you're there, you're practically standing right next to "Republicans deserve to die."

The scenery there is remarkably similar to that of the right wing's darkest corners.

South Bend on the Daily Show

Well, not really, but this segment has a GI from SB in it.

oopsy!

It appears I left a bunch of posts from the 10th unpublished. Sorry 'bout that!

Bush will never leave Iraq

Here's Josh Marshall making a point very similar to one of my hobbyhorses:

By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we'll recover from it. And whatever might happen, there are things that matter much more to this country's future -- like whether we have a functioning military any more, whether our economy is wrecked, whether this country tears itself apart over this catastrophe. But we'll go on and look back at this and judge what happened.

Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He's not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It's also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because, like Micawber, something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?

And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.

Exactly. People, Bush needs this war. It's been the focal point of his entire presidency: he was planning it from the beginning (as we now know), he did everything he could and burned all his credibility convincing us to go along with it, he's spent most of his 2 terms waging it, he based nearly his entire 2004 campaign on it, he's sacrificed his approval ratings, his entire domestic agenda, and even his own party's congressional majorities (and, in all likelihood, their '08 presidential candidate) in sticking with it this long. It defines his presidency and will define his legacy. If the war fails, or if we end it before some definable "victory," it's all over for him: he will lose what little relevance he has left and he will be forever branded a feckless, incompetent president who lost a war with the most powerful military in the world. As long as we're still in Iraq, however, there's a possibility, however small, that things might magically turn around and we may snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And at this point, Bush has bet the house on it, because if we "win" in some way, the central action of Bush's presidency around which most other actions were geared is successful, all the questionable actions along the way are justified, and Bush goes down in history as one of the great war presidents.

For Bush, everything depends on victory in Iraq.

That's why he will stop at nothing to keep this war going, even lying about its success, installing Prime Minister after Prime Minister, arming all the different factions as he bounces between allies, and staying even if funds are cut and letting your kids run out of bullets.

Partition is the new black

Because nothing says "Peace in the Middle East" like an independent Kurdistan.

like fishing in an oil spill

The DLC, quite honestly, baffles me. I understand the allure of "centrism," and I get their tactic of tacking right to capture the center (though considering what Americans actually say their views are in polls, I think it's delusional), and I certainly understand that they feel like they're losing the battle for the soul of the Democratic party (if only that were so!). But I think they're stuck in an earlier time. If there was ever a time when the values of the majority of the electorate tracked closer to the Republicans than the Democrats, this ain't it. In fact, judging from the pluralities of most opinion polls, the American people currently oppose the GOP on virtually every issue. It makes no sense, in light of these facts, to emulate the Republicans.

Of course, then again, the head of the DLC, Harold Ford, is a Democrat who did exactly that in a state where the people actually are pretty conservative, and what happened? People chose the actual conservative over the GOP-lite candidate, which is why he's heading the DLC as his day job instead of representing the people of Tennessee in the US Senate. Go figure.

But here's where I'm really stumped. If you're the head of the DLC, which supposedly embraces a blue-dog Democratic ideology to appeal to the middle, why would you go bash Democrats for being too extremist? I mean, if you don't want people to think your party's full of loony leftists, why go on TV and call them a bunch of loony leftists? And more to the point, why would you do it on FOX News? Surely Ford isn't so ill-informed that he never saw the poll that showed that 88% of FOX News viewers voted for George W. Bush in 2004, right? Does Harold Ford, the head of an organization committed to electing Democrats, not know that FOX News viewers vote more reliably Republican than gun owners, white Evangelical Christians, self-identified conservatives, and supporters of the Iraq War? Who does he think he's convincing here? Why not just have the RNC send an email to its supporters about this?

Hillary Clinton: "I have never supported socialized medicine"

Via dKos, we get this quote from Hillary:

"Number one, I have never advocated socialized medicine, and I hope all the journalists hear that loudly and clearly because that has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years, and it is wrong."

First off, there is ultimately one answer, and only one answer, to our health care woes: socialized f*%king medicine. Private, profit-seeking insurance companies and HMO's lower the quality of care for the bottom 90% of the country by their very existence. The only function they provide is to siphon money out of the system and into the hands of their corporate elite by squeezing patients and denying access. They and tobacco companies share the dubious distinction of being two business models where profit is attained primarily by killing one's own customers, and if Clinton or any of the other candidates had the spine or decency to do what's right, they'd commit to "socialized medicine" if for no other reason than to exterminate those parasites from the American health care system.

In order to oversee the people's needs and keep the system running smoothly, the government, like it or not, has to occupy precisely the position currently filled by HMO's. It's at that spot in the economy, the payer/price negotiator/middleman, where our system goes awry, and the reason for that is that the current occupants of said role are not honest brokers. The problem is that they cannot be honest brokers because their primary loyalty is not to the people they represent (i.e., patients), but rather to the wallets of their shareholders. Thus, the party performing that role in a functioning system is not motivated by profit, but rather it genuinely represents, and is accountable to, the people. Put another way, using the popular "car" metaphor for the state, on the only road in sight to well-functioning health care, there's only place for HMO's: on the shoulder, as roadkill.

Interestingly, however, she follows it with this:

"Do you think Medicare is socialized medicine?" she challenged him. "To a degree it is," Ashanti said. "Well, then you are in a small minority in America because Medicare has literally saved the lives and saved the resources of countless generations of seniors in our country."

Of course, Medicare is socialized medicine. That's sort of the point. We know socialized medicine works not only from foreign examples, but from a program we already have. Perhaps, as some of her supporters have suggested, this is merely an attempt to brush off an unpopular term without replacing the thing it represents, such as people did earlier this decade with the term "liberal." Supposedly Hil is crafting a health care strategy that she will unveil soon; I wonder how close it will actually be to universal health care. How do you think it will treat HMO's? Let's just say that, after seeing SiCKO, I'm a little skeptical of Clinton's commitment to doing what must be done to fix the system.

plastic bags: what's the answer?

Salon has a good article up on plastic bags, their environmental impact, and whether they're better than paper (the answer is "not really"). The answer, so the article says, is "bring your own," as in buying canvas bags you can reuse for years, and that's a great idea for fixing the t-shirt bag problem. Despite conservative belly-aching, bag taxes in other countries have proven the simplest and most effective way to get people to invest in canvas bags; make the grocery stores charge people even a miniscule fee per bag (around a quarter), and plastic bag use tanks overnight.

Of course, conservative irrationality on pollution and taxes makes this a thornier issue on this side of the Atlantic (and this side of the 49th parallel).

On a different note, the article misses the simple point that t-shirt-style grocery bags are far from the only plastic bags we use, and this solution isn't useful for some of these other bags. How many of you are down with reusable garbage bags?

is Hillary inexperienced, "even naive?"

From TPM:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, who chastised rival Barack Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in the war on terror, did just that when asked about Iran a year ago.

"I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table," she said in April 2006.

Her views expressed while she was gearing up for a presidential run stand in conflict with her comments this month regarding Obama, who faced heavy criticism from leaders of both parties, including Clinton, after saying it would be "a profound mistake" to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Like I said last week, Hillary's criticism of Obama's utterly sensible statements is totally disingenuous (though beforehand I didn't actually have a quote of Hillary saying the same thing). My problem with her isn't overcriticism, however; it's that she's intentionally obscuring things. It looks to me like Hillary's basing her campaign around misleading people: misleading people about Obama, misleading people about her Iraq stance, and misleading people about lobbyists and the role of moneyed interests in her decision-making, even about health care (about which Michael Moore had some very interesting things to say).

Her own campaign is acting as if people are more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton the less they know about her positions, and the less they know about her opponents'. Why support someone like that when you have people like Edwards and Obama in the race?

interesting results from an Iowa poll

New poll of Iowa Republicans. Romney wins, followed by Giuliani. Guess who's in third?

Barack Obama.

Baptist minister wins!

Are they trying to 1-up each other or something? This is absurd. From AP (c/o Pam's House Blend):

Tommy Tester, 58, of Bristol, Va., was wearing a skirt when he was arrested last week after allegedly urinating in front of children at a car wash, police said.

Police also said Tester offered to perform oral sex on officers who were sent to the scene.

Authorities identified Tester as the minister of Gospel Baptist Church in Bristol and an employee of Christian radio station WZAP-AM in Bristol.

And believe it or not, that's not all he was arrested for. From WGAL in Harrisburg, PA:

A report also accuses Tester of offering police officers oral sex and says an open bottle of vodka and empty oxycodone prescription bottle was found in his car when Tester was arrested Friday. [emphasis mine]

Who'da thunk the '80's rash of ministers getting caught with prostitutes would become "the good ol' days," eh?

ANOTHER pervert in the GOP moral police-- in Indiana

From Taking Down Words:

Clark County GOP Chair and newly elected Young Republican National Federation Chair Glenn Murphy is under investigation for criminal deviate conduct, a Class B felony, for allegedly engaging in oral sex with a sleeping victim. This is not his first run-in with the law for this kind of offense.

Read the investigative report and a prior arrest for sexual battery in 1998 here: glennmurphy.pdf

Naturally, he's since resigned from all his positions, "for business reasons." Heh. Hehe. HeheheheWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!

The trolls at TDW are pretty funny, too. The best ones prove how this story shows that Democrats are hypocrites. Oh, and about how the liberal Supreme Court is enforcing its morality on good conservatives, or something.

what's wrong with America, and what will you do to change it?

Damn.

By the way, that guy's from Indiana.

sacrifice, GOP-style

From AP (c/o TPM):

"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

That was Mitt Romney's answer to why he didn't ask his kids to serve in Iraq.

Romney, of course, like fellow war supporters Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson: Male Prostitute, chose not to serve when he was of age. He was too busy eating good cheese and irritating Parisians with good news from the angel Moroni.

their usefulness is debatable

From ThinkProgress:

Following the conclusion of tonight’s presidential forum, host Chris Matthews immediately began to focus on the pressing issues. He offered an array of trifling analysis that included musings about Sen. John Edwards’ height, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s use of the word “girl,” and Clinton’s Chicago accent. Watch it:

I think this post is helping me see just why I haven't been all that interested in these media guys' take on any of the debates: they don't actually listen to them. For some reason, whenever Democrats (and perhaps Republicans, too) get up on stage and start talking about issues, Chris Matthews et al. don't listen to the substance of what he's saying. Rather, they're just listening for gaffes, for things that can be spun around to create drama, obviously because, according to their logic, candidates angering large sections of the populace or looking stupid attracts more "eyeballs" than candidates talking substance.

Thus when, as with most debates, there were no big gaffes, the press has nothing but the most banal observations, usually calling the debate a draw or calling it for the frontrunner with some vague "they seemed more poised" argument.

To Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer and the CNN crowd, the debate apparently sounded like this:

John Edwards: "Blah blah blah, blah blah pretty hair blah blah, blah trial lawyer blah!"
Barack Obama: "Blah blah Hussein blah, 1st black president blah, blah blah I'm not experienced blah."
Hillary Clinton: "Blah blah Giordano's, blah blah blah Polish sausage, blah blah DA BEARS! blah."

perplexing... or maybe not

From Thinkprogress:

For Oklahomans “looking to show their terror-fighting pride while tearing up the asphalt,” the Oklahoma Tax Commission has extended the deadline to order the global war on terrorism license plate. Officials had set a May 31 deadline for the $37 vanity plate that features a bald eagle transposed in front of the Twin Towers. See the plate design below:

Yes, this is crass and disturbing on many levels. The part of the story worth focusing on, however, is the choice not to use a picture of Oklahoma's own terror-related tragedy, the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. If this plate, like all vanity plates, is a statement, that's the part that "says" the most.

Meanwhile, take a look at the OK City bombing plate. You wouldn't think a terrorist attack on Oklahoma soil would prompt such a different reaction.

muddying the water

I've given her the benefit of the doubt, I've been trying to keep an open mind, but I'm starting to strongly dislike Hillary Clinton. From Reuters:

Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons to go after al Qaeda or Taliban targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan, prompting Clinton to say presidents never take the nuclear option off the table, and extending their feud over whether Obama has enough experience to be elected president in November 2008.
...
Obama struck the tough tone after Clinton accused him of being naive and irresponsible for saying in a debate last week he would be willing to meet without preconditions the leaders of hostile nations Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela in his first year in office.

Clinton's position was that she would only meet those leaders after careful lower-level diplomacy bore fruit. Obama said she represented conventional thinking in line with that of the Bush administration and would not bring the fundamental change Americans need.

The New York senator and former first lady quickly pounced on Obama's remark about nuclear weapons at a Capitol Hill news conference.

"I think presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use, or non-use, of nuclear weapons," she said.

"Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons," she said.

So Hillary's "blasting" Obama because, in the quest to find and destroy individual Al Qaeda officials and small training camps, he thinks it would be foolish to use... a nuclear warhead? In a country with the bomb??? I'm sorry, where's the naivety here? Isn't it basic logic to say that a bomb that wipes out entire cities and the use of which would trigger nuclear war would make a pretty bad choice to use against individuals who can be killed with... gosh, lemme think about this... a regular bomb? Or a sniper's bullet?

But, of course, Hillary doesn't think a nuke is a good idea, either. That's why she has to frame her argument in generalities; when the actual details of the scenario enter the picture, her point becomes ridiculous. Hillary could've made the exact same argument if Obama said he wouldn't kill terrorists in land-locked Afghanistan with navy gunships: "Well, naval gunships have kept the peace since the Cold War...a president should never take the use of naval gunships off the table..."

It may seem like a small point, but this is really bothering me because a) I haven't seen any of the other Dem candidates so brazenly spinning everyone else's arguments, b) this is now the third time in as many weeks that she's spun an argument in the direction of hawkishness.

Tack this onto her plan to "withdraw" from Iraq that would leave as many as 50,000 troops there, her hiring of at least one notorious unionbuster to a high level campaign position, and, of course, her f**king flag burning amendment in the senate, and I'm just not seeing a good Democratic candidate for president. I see some pandering in there, a whole lot of compromising of values, and no small amount of misleading her supporters, but not much of the type of person I want to see be president.

visualize futility

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The main Sunni Arab political bloc quit the Iraqi government on Wednesday in a blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's shaky coalition as suicide bombers killed more than 70 people in three attacks across Baghdad.
...
The Sunni Accordance Front left Maliki's Shi'ite-led coalition over his failure to meet a list of about a dozen demands, including a greater say in security matters.
...
Issawi said Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie and five ministers would resign on Wednesday.

The Sunni Front's 44 members will remain in the 275-seat parliament. Its withdrawal will have little practical effect on the 15-month-old government, which is virtually paralyzed by infighting but needs only a simple majority to keep functioning.

Maliki's government has already been weakened by the withdrawal of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, one of the biggest in parliament, over his refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The Sunnis are leaving the table. We're watching the slow disintegration of the Iraqi government, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What more can American soldiers do, forcibly prevent the Sunnis from leaving the government?

We are like the Celts, taking up arms and charging the sea.

who?

I was looking at Texas Tech's football schedule, and the title of this post was my reaction to several of the upcoming seasons's opponents. I mean, sure, I remember the SMU Mustangs and the Rice Owls from the old Southwestern Conference days (where the only non-Texas team was Arkansas, which meant that the Baylor was, like, the 4th best team in the conference!), but I could've sworn they just packed up their football clubs after the dissolution of the conference and focused their extra time instead on sullying the curbs of Lower Greenville and the reputations of Evangelical girls.

At first, however, I was impressed that Tech has scored a gig with Northwestern (not a great school, but at least a non-conference school somebody has heard of) until I saw it was actually Northwestern State. As in Northwestern Louisiana State, in Natchitoches, LA (that's pronounced "NAK-a-tish" for those of you who've never passed through it-- yeah, I know, friggin' Cajuns...).

Is it because they have to find schools within a certain distance or something? Because I still don't get the rationale for playing these shitty schools.

British army handing over Northern Ireland to locals

Finally. From The Guardian UK:

The British army's longest continuous military operation comes to an end at midnight tonight when responsibility for security in Northern Ireland passes to the police.

Operation Banner lasted 38 years and involved 300,000 personnel, of which 763 were killed by paramilitaries. The last soldier to die was Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, who was shot at a vehicle checkpoint in 1997.

From tomorrow there will still be a garrison of 5,000 troops in Ulster, but they will not be on active operations and will be available for deployment anywhere in the world.

Security will become the responsibility of the Northern Ireland police, and the British soldiers will have a limited role in supporting them.

The Brits are ending their military occupation, the IRA has disarmed... almost like it's morning in Belfast.

Fred Thompson: trial lawyer for drug dealers

I enjoy Fred Thompson's candidacy to the moral police party more and more every week. From Salon:

The Washington Post has a front page feature on Fred Thompson that focuses on his distinctly un-GOP former life as a litigator.

Before he was elected as a tough-on-crime U.S. senator from Tennessee or played a New York prosecutor on TV's "Law and Order," Fred Dalton Thompson worked as a lawyer who argued against the government's authority to regulate drug paraphernalia or to search a boat packed with 14 tons of marijuana.

Once, two decades ago, he urged that more witnesses refuse to testify before grand juries by invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination, boasting that "I start on the assumption that my client will not testify." And over the years, lawsuits he filed helped a state worker win reinstatement to her job while exposing a parole bribery scheme and won money for the family of a Marine pilot killed by a helicopter blade when the family could not sue the Defense Department.

The piece also reports that Thompson accepted $1.5 million in donations from lawyers over eight years. While in the Senate, the Post's John Solomon writes, "Thompson routinely voted against legislation aimed at shrinking the size of fees that attorneys could collect and rejected limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, bucking his own party."

So Fred Thompson is a former trial lawyer who represented drug dealers (and big ones at that: 14 tons is a lot of weed), a former senator who opposed tort reform, a former lobbyist who worked on behalf of abortionists, and a former Watergate lawyer who was a mole for Nixon?

Wow, I can't wait until he officially joins the fray! These are gonna make some great negative ads!

condom sense

The latest brought to you by the party of theocracy:

College students returning to campus in a few weeks will be greeted by steep increases in one of the few items they have been able to buy cheap: birth control.

For years, drug companies sold birth-control pills and other contraceptives to university health services at a big discount. This has served as an entree to young consumers for the drug companies, and a profit center for the schools, which sell them to students at a moderate markup. Students pay perhaps $15 a month for contraceptives that otherwise can retail for $50 or more.

But colleges and universities say the drug companies have stopped offering the discounts, and are now charging the schools much more. The change has an unlikely origin: the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year. The legislation aimed to pare $39 billion in spending on federal programs, from subsidized student loans to Medicaid. And among the changes was one that, through an arcane set of circumstances, created a disincentive for drug makers to offer school discounts.

Because if we make safe sex more expensive, college students will stop having sex! That's what's gonna happen, right? Guys?

only 2 Republicans have signed onto Youtube debate

From the Washington Post blog (c/o Jeff Jarvis):

Four days after the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C,. more than 400 questions directed to the GOP presidential field have been uploaded on YouTube -- targeted at Republicans scheduled to get their turn at videopopulism on Sept. 17.

But so far, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) have agreed to participate in the debate, co-hosted by Republican Party of Florida in St. Petersburg.
...
Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney, both with dozens of videos on their YouTube channels, have not signed up. Neither have the rest of the Republican candidates, including Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), whose "Tancredo Takes" on his YouTube channel draw hundreds of views. Sources familiar with the Guiliani campaign said he's unlikely to participate...

In an interview Wednesday with the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, Romney said he's not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

Very telling. You figure there might a whole mess of questions from Republican primary voters that certain GOP frontrunners don't want to answer? Or that the "Republican primary voter" is a breed that the GOP doesn't want the rest of the country to see?

Josh Marshall's gotten some reader comments, and has posted a couple of good points.

The first one:

You realize why Rudy doesn't like the YouTube debate format, right? He doesn't want the NY fire fighter's to get a clean shot at him on national TV.

Probably true. One can only imagine the reaction of the FDNY posting a scathing video demolishing Rudy's 9/11 cred, how he could possibly answer it, and what that would do to his numbers. Remember, 9/11 is his campaign. That's all he's got. And what are the moderators gonna do, not air the video from the friggin' FDNY? The scandal would probably cause such a ruckus that everyone would end up hearing about it and seeing the video on the Nightly News instead!
Here's the second one:

One of the thoughts that occurred to me with regards to the Democratic Youtube debate was how weird the questions for the GOP candidates could potentially be...As far as issues like illegal immigration and "coercive interrogation techniques" go, how does one ask questions like this in a Youtube format in an amusing way? The differences between the GOP base and the political mainstream can seem less extreme when asked by someone like Wolf Blitzer, but if presented from the standard GOP rank-and-file member of the base, it seemed like a great way to show how unhinged the GOP has become on some of these issues. Personally, I'm surprised the GOP ever got close to agreeing to this format, and once the Democratic debate happened and showed the format in action, I didn't see how it could have been pulled off by the GOP.

I agree that the Republican base, right now, is much farther from independents than the Democratic base, but I kinda think the moderators could weed out the less reasonable-sounding ones. I bet one could find the vids on Youtube (perhaps there's a specific category for the GOP debate? One would think so.) and look for oneself, but I don't really want to subject myself to that.

For what it's worth, I happen to think a debate between a floundering, desperate John McCain and a surging, confident Ron Paul could be fascinating to watch. Romney does contribute some great gag-lines, like "There is a global jihadist movement ... And they've come together as Shi'a and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda with that intent" and "I'm pro-life," but other than that everyone else is just a waste of oxygen in these things anyway.

Robert Samuelson can go cheney himself

Shorter Robert Samuelson: Because the Toyota Prius will not single-handedly solve climate change, the only possible reason you would buy one is to make me feel guilty.

News flash to Samuelson: the whole world does not revolve around you. This is the kind of thing that's starting to wear awfully thin, the cynicism that says people don't change their buying habits out of a sense of collective responsibility or a desire to change the world, but rather only because they want an excuse to look down their nose at you.

Of course, it's a bullshit excuse for Samuelson's attitude, anyway; this has nothing to do with his fatuous interpretation of economics or the price of corn or anything else like that. This is all about guilt. If you didn't feel a pang of guilt that you're not doing enough to help the environment, then it wouldn't bother you what other people do with their money and whether they're looking askance at you while they spend it. Not everyone can buy a Prius (we happened to have one fall in our lap), and not everyone likes the Prius or hybrids in general. Different people will do different things to help save the planet, or nothing at all if that suits them. But crying about how Al Gore's making you feel bad is a transparent admittance of guilt, and a puerile attempt at making everyone else change their behavior (for the worse!) so you can soothe your aching conscience.

The great lesson of adolescence/adulthood is learning that there are bigger, more important things out there than oneself, and that, as they say in the movies, "it's not always about you." I'd suggest Mr. Samuelson get crackin' on learning that.

Nancy Snyderman, Robert Bazell, and Susan Dentzer are on Big Health Insurance's payroll

Explains a lot. From Media Matters:

A July 23 Daily Kos diary by "nyceve" noted that three medical correspondents -- Robert Bazell and Nancy Snyderman of NBC News and Susan Dentzer of PBS' NewsHour -- "all participate on the AHIP [America's Health Insurance Plans] Speakers Network." AHIP describes itself as "the voice of America's health insurers" and "the national association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans." Its board of directors consists mainly of insurance-company executives. A July 25 Roll Call article (subscription required) described AHIP as "the lobbying group for the health insurance industry." The Daily Kos diary also noted that none of the bios for the three journalists on the websites of NBC or PBS disclosed the journalists' roles with the AHIP Speakers Network. Each of the reporters was, indeed, listed on AHIP's website as part of its speakers network, but all three names have since been removed from the list.

You got that? Both of NBC News' health correspondents are literally paid by the health insurance companies. The freakin' reporter and the woman Brian Williams turns toward on NBC Nightly News to explain the import of this or that health news to us gets paid money to advance the insurance companies' agenda.

To spell that out for the healthcare debate, they're paid to oppose single payer health insurance and universal healthcare.

Amazing, then, is the fact that there's widespread, tremendous support for universal healthcare in spite of the great lengths insurance companies, HMO's, and Big Pharma have gone to in order to rig the debate in the media.

Michael Moore has something to tell you

Supposedly Michael Moore will be on Leno tonight and "will be making a special announcement on the show." Dunno what that means, but thought I'd give a heads up.

Lady Bird Lake

Very cool. From UT's paper The Daily Texan:

Austin City Council will honor Lady Bird Johnson by renaming Town Lake to "Lady Bird Lake" today. The former first lady helped beautify the lake by spearheading the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail project.

Since Johnson's death on July 11, there have been calls from citizens and Austin leaders for the body of water to be named for her. Lady Bird had declined becoming the lake's namesake in the past.

Members of the surviving Johnson family, including daughters Luci and Lynda, will attend a ceremony during the City Council's meeting at City Hall today.

"I am delighted and not a bit surprised," said Betty Sue Flowers, director of the LBJ Library and Museum. "She was a modest woman."

The city has taken calls and suggestions about renaming the lake in her honor since her involvement with Town Lake beautification began in 1971, said Rich Bailey, a spokesman for the mayor's office. The lakeshore was once a mixture of sand and weeds prone to flooding. Through her efforts, the once unsightly land has now been transformed into landscaped paths, along which Austinites can enjoy pleasant walks and a myriad of outdoor activities.

"Lady Bird Johnson transformed Town Lake from a garbage-strewn eyesore into Austin's scenic and recreational centerpiece," said Council Member Brewster McCracken in a written statement. "Town Lake, and life in Austin, wouldn't be the same without her vision."
...
Johnson played a key role in other environmental projects, which can commonly be seen on Texas' highways, where the wildflowers she encouraged to be planted now line the medians and sides of the roads. Every spring, a vibrant display of bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush and primrose, among scores of other wildflowers, can be seen by travelers trekking the vast Texas landscape.

The lake is the second posthumous naming of an Austin landmark after a prominent Texas woman in about two months. In May, the Congress Avenue Bridge across the Colorado River was renamed the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, honoring the deceased former governor.

This is a great way remember a woman who did so much to beautify Texas. Some of the wildflower patches off the highway are truly striking:


For those of you who've never seen it, here are some shots of Town Lake. My favorite shot of it, though, is this:

That would be a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn, overlooking now Lady Bird Lake.

every dog has his day... in court

Have we all gotten the chance to get our self-righteousness fix today? Yes, yes, you and I are good people, but not like that big mean Michael Vick! And the news about him has been so, well, deliciously provocative!

Seriously though, Vick has been indicted for some truly heinous crimes. And it doesn't look good for him, considering the evidence found on his property and the abundance of witnesses. The charges carry 5 years in prison, and if convicted, the chances of Vick ever playing professional football again are, in my opinion, infinitesimal, and unless Nike is the worst contract negotiator ever, he'll lose his endorsements as well.

And, of course, if he really did this stuff, then he deserves what's coming to him. After all, he's a role model for the kiddies, etc. And the last thing we all want is some jackass football player making dogfighting cool again.

But has all this become a little bit too "To Catch a Predator" to anyone else, like this whole episode really serves no other function than for the American people to do some collective navel-gazing and bathe in our moral superiority?

There's also the matter of why the Feds have suddenly become so interested in a dogfighting case. Perhaps a chance to push certain other stories to the background?

In any case, we supposedly still believe that people are "innocent until proven guilty," so I think Vick should get his jury trial before we cry out for him to lose his job and endorsements and whatever else. And as far as the people threatening to boycott Nike over this go, if you're the boycotting type and you didn't boycott Nike years ago over child sweatshop labor, you're pretty hideously underinformed. And that's beside the sheer irresponsibility of paying this much for sneakers. Seriously, for those of you who have to have high quality sports shoes: it's called Adidas. Look it up.

the Youtube debate

Check it out here. I don't normally recommend debates-- frankly, they're never anything other than exercises in faking spontaneous wisdom-- but this one was quite good. There was, I thought, a little less ducking of the questions than usual, and there were some interesting questions asked that never get asked in other contexts. There were also some great meta-questions, that is questions that move the conversations to the next level or that don't deal with a specific issue but are still important to people. Hence Clinton got asked whether it makes sense to elect yet another Clinton after 28 years of Bushes and Clintons on the ticket. The candidates got asked whether they self-identify as "liberal" and they think the term means. They got asked whether they would include nuclear power in their solution to the environmental crisis, and whether and in what way they would attack energy consumption as opposed to production.

All in all, this debate was music to my populist ears, as the people asked far better questions, and got better answers, than any pundit or reporter-run debate I've seen. Anderson Cooper, incidentally, also happens to be well-suited to this format: he's quick on his feet and very good at focusing questions. He typically did so with a quick statistic or quote from a candidate that redirected people effectively.

on witchhunts

I was reading this post on Orcinus (and you don't have Orcinus in your daily reading rounds, you *really* should), and it got me thinking.

There are certain moments in history that we use as "lessons" for the modern day (whether one can actually use history in this way is not something I'm dealing with here). There's WWII and the need to stand up against evil, for instance. The siege of Troy, and the lesson of trusting enemies bearing gifts. There's the Holocaust and the "banality of evil."

One important historical lesson is that of witch-burning, in the Inquisition and in Salem, Massachusetts. There's a lesson there about hurting others in the name of superstition, about letting fear take hold of a society and allowing fear to cloud our reason, and about recognizing the good in others.

I wonder, though: if you actually believe in witches and sorcery and the need to combat them, with deadly force if necessary, what's the lesson of the Salem witchtrials?

Bash.org

Quote of the Day:

my math teacher staples burger king applications to failed tests

Priceless.

the king is law

From the Washington Post (h/t Josh Marshall):

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

This is huge news. What the president is saying here is that, since all federal prosecutors, including the one in DC, work for him, and since the only way for Congress to contest executive privilege is to refer the case to a federal prosecutor, Congress simply has no power to contest executive privilege. At all.

And what is covered under executive privilege, kids? Answer: anything the president says is covered.

Short of sending the army to occupy the Capitol building, this is just about the most flagrant action a president can take to undo the constitutional system of checks and balances. If this is allowed to stand, then presidents will no longer be subject to serious congressional oversight, because such oversight will now rely entirely on whatever the president allows to be uncovered. Furthermore, this is a full admittance from the president that the Bush Justice Dept. is simply another office in the political wing of the White House, to be manipulated to further the president's prerogative in the quickly deteriorating system of checks and balances.

This, by the way, is precisely why the US attorney purge was so important. Attorneys with integrity become dangerous and unpredictable when asked by their superiors to allow the Republic to be undermined. Something tells me Bush's shills will be a touch more reliable.

Scott Horton at Harpers has a good article on the issue here.

So what can Congress do? That's the big question from here. They have to find a way to get their case to the Supreme Court. Despite what the president expects, there is one recourse the Congress still has: inherent contempt, whereby the Congress would actually have the Sergeant-at-Arms arrest the person refusing to testify and put them in the Capitol jail (yeah, I didn't know they had those, either). And either chamber can do with a simple majority vote. Then the president's only recourse to getting his employee back would be... taking them to the Supreme Court.

Marty Lederman notes another option as well, namely filing a civil action in a federal court.

And there is, of course, a third option.

It all comes down to Speaker Pelosi and her willingness to take this to the next level.

one hell of a throwaway remark

From Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic:

Why doesn't John Edwards's hair equal Mitt Romney's face paint?

The primary difference is definitional: The centerpiece of Edwards's campaign is his anti-poverty efforts; he presents himself as a dedicated messenger for the cause, and he likes expensive haircuts, bought a gimungous house, etc. etc. His credibility as a messenger comes into question when he spends money ostentatiously. (The haircut was inadvertently billed to the campaign, a spokesman later said).

There is a difference in the political reality: fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards.

Fairly or unfairly, there's also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards. It's not so much interested in burying Romney right now -- many reporters think he's the Republican frontrunner. [emphasis mine]

I'll leave his "primary difference," its twisted logic, its broken morality, and its ridiculous implications aside for now, because I want to focus on the other 2.

Look at his "difference in the political reality." That's an incredible admission from a journalist, eh? That the national political press corps is trying to bury Edwards because they just don't like him?!?! Wow. That answers sooooooooo many questions right there (like, for instance, the truth behind his "primary reason").

So much for that vaunted press "objectivity," eh? And do we really wonder whether that is "fairly or unfairly?" I think we all know which one applies here.

It's also good to know that being "the Republican frontrunner" means that the press will not be interested in "burying" you. That, too, explains a lot. Especially about the last 2 elections.

So much for that vaunted "liberal media."

So remember, kids, the reporter has admitted it openly: if you're the Republican frontrunner, no matter how blatant your hypocrisy, the Washington press corps will not be interested in pointing out your flaws. If, however, you advocate for the poor and don't at least pretend to be one yourself, the press will hate you and try to "bury" you.

the upside of elfdom

From AP:

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who is a vegan, has been hospitalized with "severe" effects of apparent food poisoning.

The 60-year-old congressman from Cleveland became sick Sunday night while flying to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to address the national Longshoremen's convention. He went ahead with the speech Monday but immediately returned home and was hospitalized in the Cleveland area.

Wait, wait, wait a minute... Dennis Kucinich is sixty?! This guy?
with this wife?:

I thought he was 45 at the most. There's an argument for veganism!

Flynt has Madam's phone list, ready to out more

That's right, people. The founder of Hustler Magazine promises to keep up the show. From Crooks and Liars:

Larry Flynt told Larry King that he has at least 30 more names to release in his quest to expose Republican hypocrisy. And ye shall be shocked at a certain Senator that he has left unnamed so far.
...
FLYNT: We’ve got good leads. We’ve got over 300 initially. And they’re down to about 30 now which is solid.

KING: When are you going to print?

FLYNT: Well, the last thing now is we don’t know if we want to let it to drip, drip, drip or we want to go with everything at once.

KING: You mean you might release 30 names at once?

FLYNT: A good possibility.

KING: Will we be — I don’t want to get into names yet. Will we be shocked?

FLYNT: Yes.

KING: Were you shocked?

FLYNT: I was shocked, especially at one senator but…

KING: One senator especially?

FLYNT: Yes.

So who is it, I wonder? I know everyone's putting money on the Republican family values men like Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, and Tom Coburn, but I've really got a hunch here. Remember, it has to surprise Larry Flynt. My guess:

Kay Bailey Hutchison.

You gotta admit, it would be surprising!

What's your guess?

the fallacy of the "God gap"

Here, from Mahablog, is a really good discussion of the God gap and its history. I highly recommend it.

"procedural roadblock"

This is getting ridiculous. I have to be honest, I've never actually seen a double-standard all across the media that they've fought so hard to maintain in the face of all logic and evidence. Or at least, one that's stricken me as such.

This, however, is just so out of bounds, so egregious, that you have to wonder what the hell is going on behind the scenes. Marshall flags material from McClatchy, Reuters, the Washington Post, and Diane Sawyer all going to great lengths to avoid calling what the GOP is doing "filibustering."

Diane Sawyer is convinced that it was Harry Reid who did the filibustering!

What the hell is going on here?

Lugar backs down

From the New York Times:

A handful of Republicans who have distanced themselves from President Bush on the war in Iraq refused Tuesday to back a plan to withdraw American troops from the conflict, leaving Senate Democrats short of the support needed to force a vote on their proposal.
...
Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, two senior Republicans who recently delivered a high-profile criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy, also planned to oppose the Democratic plan, aides said.

What'd I tell ya? Richard Lugar is all talk. Or are we expecting his own nonbinding bill to force change?

Chump.

speechless

After all this time, the press finally ends their boycott on the word "filibuster" and reports:

During the July 17 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, co-anchor Diane Sawyer falsely claimed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "vows to filibuster, talking all night to close out all topics besides a vote on Iraqi troop withdrawals." Sawyer was referring to Reid's plan to hold an all-night Senate debate prior to the July 18 cloture vote on a Democratic proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq. However, by planning to extend the Senate session throughout the night, Reid is not "vow[ing] to filibuster," as Sawyer reported. Rather, he is highlighting the Republicans' blocking of an up-or-down vote on the proposal; in other words, it is the Republicans who are filibustering the withdrawal proposal by requiring that 60 senators vote for the amendment in order for it to pass.

Additionally, on the July 16 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes asserted that Reid is "filibustering his own bill."

Yes, you read that right. Diane Sawyer just reported that it's the Democrats who are filibustering.

This is insane.

Senate's impending all-nighter

It's funny, now that there's a full press boycott on the word "filibuster," I had no idea what the point of this was until I stopped relying on the press to tell me and went to the blogs. Here's some snippets of what I was reading in the papers. From TPM:

This article from Reuters manages to get through an entire article on the filibuster the Democrats are going to force senate Republicans to go through with without ever actually using the word 'filibuster'. It's almost a thing of beauty in its negative capacity of bamboozlement.

Some choice quotes ...

U.S. Senate Democrats, hoping to raise pressure on President George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans to pull troops from Iraq, have scheduled an around-the-clock war debate starting on Tuesday.

and

Democrats have all but publicly acknowledged that they will be unable to pass their end-the-war amendment because opposition Republicans are insisting on 60 votes for a victory.

That's not a good sign.

You figure maybe that's the whole point of why Reid is doing this, i.e., to force the press to acknowledge the obvious?

Thought for the Day

"And I think anybody who doesn't wear an Infallible Tikbalang Ward is a fool. Do you just want to be abducted by a Tikbalang? Think about it. Have you ever heard of anyone being led to their doom in the forest by a Tikbalang who was wearing an Infallible Tikbalang Ward? Of course not. That's why they call them infallible!"

Discuss.

WTF Reuters?!

Here's the title of the latest Reuters article, from Andrea Hopkins:

Americans tired of Iraq war, split on withdrawal

And here's the opening text:

Americans are tired of the Iraq war and doubt victory will ever come, but remained split over President George W. Bush's vow on Thursday to stay the course in Iraq despite a report showing limited progress.
...
A USA Today/Gallup poll this week showed more than seven in 10 Americans favor withdrawing nearly all U.S. troops by April, and several surveys show the approval ratings for Bush, a Republican, are at the lows of his presidency.[emphasis mine]

On what planet is agreement between more than seven in 10 people "split?" And this doesn't show that people are "tired" or "doubting victory will ever come" (though they are), this number shows that people want us to leave, or "withdraw."

It also pointedly undercuts the second part of the article, beginning with:

Americans were divided over the president's stand.

The proof of this fatuous claim? They found two people, yes 2 people, who disagreed with each other. Every poll on the planet shows that Americans are not at all "split" or "divided" about the president's "stand" in Iraq, including the one she cited at the top of the frakin' article, but hey, Reuters found 2 schmoes from Ohio who have different opinions, so it's all relative, right?

Nice work, guys.

contempt of Congress charges against Miers pass out of committee

From AP:

CAPITOL HILL (AP) - A House panel has cleared the way for contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Miers today obeyed an order from President Bush and did not appear at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing. Miers had been subpoenaed to testify about the firing of 8 federal prosecutors.

Addressing the empty chair, the panel's chair, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, ruled that White House claims of executive privilege were out of order. Current White House counsel Fred Fielding has asserted that executive privilege gives Miers "absolute" immunity.

The subcommittee voted 7 to 5 to sustain Sanchez's ruling.

She knows there is no legal backing for this whatsoever. Harriet Miers knowingly broke the law because Bush told her to.

Remember, everyone, our president wanted to make this woman a Supreme Court Justice.

when Ann Coulter gets invited on your show

this is the conversation your viewers get subjected to. But it's ok, because she sells books.

It's hard to imagine why anyone would care what a ghastly person like her has to say.

our liberal media

For anyone with lingering beliefs that this media is liberal (that means you, Camille Paglia), here's the good people of MSNBC, not FOX, not the Wall Street Journal, and at least one of whom actually reports for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, looking heartbroken over the collapse of their guy's campaign. And it ain't John Edwards:

Of course, he's been the media's favorite at least since 2000, when he referred to them as "my base." Tucker Carlson, typically liberal news show host, explained it well (h/t Atrios):

McCain ran an entire presidential campaign aimed primarily at journalists. He understood that the first contest in a presidential race is always the media primary. He campaigned hard to win it. To a greater degree than any candidate in thirty years, McCain offered reporters the three things they want most: total access all the time, an endless stream of amusing quotes, and vast quantities of free booze.
...
I saw reporters call McCain "John," sometimes even to his face and in public. I heard otherse, usually at night in the hotel bar, slip into the habit of referring to the Mccain campaign as "we"- as in, "I hope we kill Bush." It was wrong, but it was hard to resist.

Hey, Senator Lugar: talk is cheap

So there was a big Iraq War bill that got voted on in the Senate today, introduced by Senator James Webb (D-VA), former Secretary of the Navy. It was on troops readiness, specifically that the Administration has to allow soldiers a modicum of time for training before sending them into the meat grinder. It was recommended by the Iraq Study Group, and though it didn't pass McConnell's FILIBUSTER, it did get the votes of no fewer than seven Republicans, a virtual miracle in today's lockstep groupthink GOP:

Chuck Hagel (co-sponsor)
Olympia Snowe
Susan Collins
Gordon Smith
John Sununu
John Warner
Norm Coleman

Notice any names missing? Maybe the name of a certain "very serious," "very wise and trustworthy" senior senator from Indiana? I never thought such an "esteemed" legislator would deny American soldiers adequate training so that he could protect the men behind a war more unpopular than Vietnam.

Dick Lugar: cowardly and immoral.

filibuster

It's good to see I'm not the only one upset about this strange turn in our supposedly "liberal" media. Why is the media refusing to call it a "filibuster" when the Republicans do it, after crucifying the Democrats for merely debating doing it? From AMERICAblog, we see Roll Call referring to GOP filibusters as "the need for 60 votes for passage of any measure — one of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) chief tactical tools this year." You'd think a newspaper concerned about space would use a shorter phrase, like "filibuster."

The best part of the Roll Call article: when Reid complained about the fact the GOP is filibustering everything, here's how they printed it:

"In fact, Reid and McConnell traded barbs on the floor over the process for debating the bill, with Reid saying McConnell's insistence on pre-setting 60-vote thresholds for all Iraq-related amendments amounted to a defacto filibuster. Sixty votes are required to cut off a filibuster."

News flash: requiring 60 votes to bring a bill to a vote in the Senate... can only be done via filibuster.

Meanwhile, here's today's Washington Post:

But the GOP leadership's use of a parliamentary tactic requiring at least 60 votes to pass any war legislation only encouraged the growing number of Republican dissenters to rally and seek new ways to force President Bush's hand.

A free cookie if you can guess what the name of that "parliamentary tactic" is called!

There you go again, Cardinal...

From Rawstory:

The Vatican set itself on a collision course with other Christian faiths Tuesday, reaffirming the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church in a corrective document which it said was designed to clear up recent "erroneous" doctrine.

The document's central claim, that only the Catholic Church is "the one true Church of Christ", is likely to revive a debate which has dogged the Vatican's relationship with rival Christian denominations for decades.

Such faiths, namely the Protestant and Orthodox churches, "lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church," it said.

The document is the second strong reaffirmation of Benedict's traditional conservative line in the space of a few days. On Saturday, he issued a decree bringing back the old Latin mass alongside the modern liturgy.

Yes, Benny, this is exactly the way to save the Church: hold service in a language nobody understands and imply that other Christian denominations are going to Hell. Don't think that's what he's saying?

It restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, “Dominus Iesus,” which set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the “means of salvation.”

Say what you will about John Paul II, he at least thought Protestants and Orthodox were going to Heaven, too.

And what "elements," by the way, are essential to the Catholic Church that other denominations lack?

Central to that identity [of the Catholic faith] is the idea that eastern or Orthodox churches were suffering a "wound" because they do not recognize the primacy of the pope.

It said "the wound is still more profound" in "communities emerging from the Reformation" -- the Protestant and Anglican churches.

Is the pope offering salvation to other Christians only if they bow to himself? Ya see, the Pope has Peter's keys to Heaven, and when he ordains priests, they also have access to the keys, and that's why they can hear confession, absolve sins, perform baptisms and, most importantly, hold Communion. If your preacher wasn't ordained by the man with the Keys, well...

Heckuva job, Benny, this is exactly why the Church is hemorrhaging followers: because the Church's relationship with other churches meant that Catholics were unsure where to go. Perhaps their unseemly proximity to heathens like Anglicans and Methodists was clouding their faith. Or maybe because they just weren't getting enough Latin in their lives. Certainly it couldn't be because the Church looks like a bunch of tools because it preaches against science and birth control and it hoards wealth while its followers starve and its clergy rapes boys and it tells people that God only wants people with penises running God's Church.

Righto, Benny. The problem was your followers were fraternizing with the Lutherans.

SiCKO

Well done. Devastating. Go see it.

It was pointed out to me earlier today that movement conservatives have a specific litany of complaints about nationalized healthcare systems: you have to wait in long lines, you get low-quality care, you'll have to consult a bureaucrat instead of a doctor for your serious medical questions, doctors aren't given incentive to take the best care of you...

The interesting thing about that list is that, of all the healthcare systems in the western world, you know which one these characteristics describe most accurately?

Ours.

Fred Thompson: male prostitute!

Wow, it was a bad campaign week for Freddy. From The LA Times (c/o Josh Marshall):

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.

You got that? Hollywood Fred actually lobbied Bush 41 against the gag rule! Thompson's goons are, of course, saying it never happened, but the man himself?

"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson, who is considering running for president as a social conservative. He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.

Wow, dodgy and an asshole!

Meanwhile, the power tools and other rightwing hacks are preparing another defense: lobbyists shouldn't be accountable to their patrons because they don't necessarily have to believe in someone's cause to lobby for it. Yeah, have fun with that defense, guys.

FOX news vs. Mr. Rogers

I don't really know what to say. From ThinkProgress:

This morning, Fox and Friends asked, “Why is it at the end of every term, these kids who on the bubble…they come in and beg for extra credit so they can get an A?” Citing a report by a university professor, Fox speculated one possible answer: “Blame Mr. Rogers! Because Mr. Rogers had an optimistic message where everyone was special even if they didn’t deserve it.” During the segment, one chyron read: “Mr. Rogers’ Mixed Message: ‘You’re Special.’” Another chyron asked: “Is Mr. Rogers Ruining Kids?: Sense of Entitlement.”

Who are these monsters? And by the way, if by "special" one could mean "unique," then yes, actually all children are special. It's a biological fact proven by our DNA. Furthermore, considering that any one of them has virtually unlimited creative potential and since we as a society give children preferential treatment and consider them particularly valuable, yes, children are special. Why are we even having this conversation? Has the conservative movement truly gone this far down the rabbit hole?

back to Chris Matthews

It appears that Matthews' new hobbyhorse is the apparent hypocrisy of liberals who do not support Libby's commutation and yet also decried the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Matthews' logic here, however, is flawed for the reason that usually gets him into trouble: his knowledge of politics is a lot wider than it is deep. Interestingly, unlike David Broder, who glosses over the details, Matthews frequently loses sight of the forest through the trees. Perhaps he just has to spend so much time listening to spin that it's hard to keep him perspective properly oriented.

Libby's commutation=Clinton's impeachment is wrong for 2 reasons:

1. Bill Clinton was never convicted. Chris Matthews has on multiple occasions brought up this canard about how 50 Republicans voted to impeach him, but it's irrelevant because 50 other senators, plus the VP, voted to acquit (and as we've seen, getting 50 Republican senators to vote for something unjust is not exactly the hardest thing in the world to pull off, especially when they think it will benefit them politically). Civil charges, meanwhile, were not pursued (h/t Media Matters, .pdf).

2. There was no underlying crime. Clinton supporters have been on the rampage about this for years, and they're completely consistent on this point: Clinton lied about cheating on his wife, and adultery is not illegal. Outing an undercover CIA agent is a felony. That Fitzgerald chose not to prosecute Karl Rove and/or Dick Armitage for the leak itself is irrelevant, as prosecutors do sometimes choose not to litigate crimes for a variety of reasons. The act of outing a CIA agent is a felony, and it has been attested again and again, by Fitzgerald himself and by various of Plame's former superiors, that she was undercover and working on Iranian WMD at the time of her outing. Ergo, Scooter Libby lied to cover up a crime, whereas Clinton lied to cover up an embarrassment.

It really takes deliberate obtuseness (or way too much time spent listening to other people's bullshit) not to understand this very simple point.

General Odom on "playing chicken with the troops"

You may have heard by now that General William Odom, Ronald Reagan's old NSA chief, is now calling for withdrawal. But look at this, from his essay on the matter:

To force [the president] to begin a withdrawal before [he leaves office], the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Apparently Odom suspects the same thing I do, and that in my interpretation, Barack Obama does as well: if Congress cuts off funds, the president may keep the troops there anyway, threatening to let them run out of bullets, and dare Congress not to pass a funding bill to save them, hence Obama's verbiage about "not wanting to play chicken with our troops."

This is what even Republicans have been hinting at and implying all this time when they say "defunding the troops" or "defunding the war endangers the troops." What could they possibly mean other than the Commander in Chief letting the troops run out of bullets? And for that matter, why aren't Democrats screaming from the rafters that this is what the Republicans are telling us?!?!

Violent Femmes

THE LEZBOS ARE COMIN' TA GITCHA!!! WITH PINK PISTOLS!!!

What a bunch of dumbasses. And no, it's not reliable, in case any of you were wondering.

it wasn't just FOX News

From Media Matters:

Before the November 2006 midterm elections, NBC News political director Chuck Todd predicted several times that if the Democrats won "control of Congress" and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became speaker of the House, then President Bush's "approval rating will be over 50 percent by the Fourth of July next year." In fact, as of July 4, 2007, Bush's approval ratings are far below 50 percent. Indeed, a recent analysis by the weblog RealClearPolitics.com of national polls conducted between June 11 and June 28 placed Bush's average approval rating at 30.5 percent. Will NBC News question Todd about his inaccurate prediction?

Todd appears to have first made this claim during the October 27, 2006, edition of NBC's Today.

This is what happens now during election periods: even the mainstream news networks try to convince us that we should elect Republicans. This was the political director of NBC News making this Hannity-worthy prediction, people!

It's remarkable, too, how myopic the claim is on its own, regardless of its source. Bush's approvals had been below 50% for a year and a half at this point, and people's opinions of pretty much everything he stood for had gone completely sour. How could Democrats possibly make him look better? Presidents who had recovered before (though exceedingly few had ever had such a prolonged period of low approval ratings) had completely reworked their political strategies in the face of defeat to remake their image. Reagan replaced his cabinet, for instance, while Clinton took a sharp turn toward "the center" and became a master of compromise so as to get things done. There was no evidence that Bush was at all willing to do the former or capable of the latter, even in the face of political decimation, and history has borne that out.

As Darwin famously said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Perhaps the PR consequences of such rigidity were not totally obvious at the time (i.e., whether his ratings would remain the same, buoy slightly, or continue their decline), but such a dramatic rise was out of the question for anyone paying attention.

Luckily for Mr. Todd, there are no consequences in today's media for inaccurate (even dishonest) reporting or electioneering masquerading as prophesy. I have a feeling we'll be waiting for that apology for a long time.

prediction time

Prediction time? PREDICTION TIME!!! *bom bom bom*
................................

The keynote speaker at the 2008 Republican National Convention will be...
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (CFL-CT).
................................

Every week he gets a little more comfortable trashing his party, and every week he gets pushed to go just a little bit further. His hawkishness on Iraq is starting to cause ideological fractures in other areas, like torture. And he's already endorsed the Republican in the big race nearest to CT: Maine Senator Susan Collins.

The transformation of Joe Lieberman from (D-CT) to (R-Military Industrial Complex) is fully underway, and far more advanced than most are willing to acknowledge. He's no longer any more Democrat than Republican, and he's fully admitting to that. It's not a campaign slogan, people.

That's not to say necessarily that he'll officially switch to Republican, as that would offer him tremendous disadvantages (like, say, losing his committee chairs) and no advantage to speak of. He ran his last re-election campaign on Republican money with Republican staff, so he doesn't need to formally switch to get that perk. If there's another 50-50 Senate, though, he'll switch, and if the Dems pad their majority in '08 and Reid repays his treachery by stripping his committee assignments (which should absolutely happen), he'll switch.

But make no mistake, people: by the time Campaign '08 gets into full swing, Lieberman will be working for the bad guys.

Fred Thompson: mole for the Nixon Administration

Unbelievable. From The Boston Globe (h/t Digby):

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

We've been wondered why the anti-Hollywood right swoons every time an actor decides to run for the GOP nod, but I'm now wondering about a different issue: how come these actor-turned-Republican presidential candidates always seem to have some history of being a mole for the bad guys?

Interesting fact: Among the members of HUAC during the period when Reagan provided them with lists of potential communists in the Screen Actors' Guild (of which he was president) was a California congressman named... Richard M. Nixon. And it all comes full circle.

War on July 4th

I thought the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism were pretty crazy, but this is just too far, man!

Libby sentence commuted

Ah, more of that famous George W. Bush mercy toward criminals...:

Bush has granted fewer pardons -- 113 -- than any president in the past 100 years, while denying more than 1,000 requests, said Margaret Colgate Love, the Justice Department's pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997.

In addition, Bush has denied more than 4,000 commutation requests, and hundreds of requests for pardons and commutations are still pending, Love said.

But remember, it was only his prison sentence that got axed. So let that be a lesson to all of you potential criminals out there, if you try to lie to a grand jury and obstruct a federal investigation, you might end up having to, uh, pay a fine.

Meanwhile, Scoot's friends are pushing for Fitzgerald to be subject to charges of prosecutorial misconduct for, I guess, punishing the wrong kind of people. Wouldn't that be peachy, if all this mess ended with Scooty getting off scoot-free and Patrick Fitzgerald's career being destroyed?

Speaking of investigations, Marcy Wheeler at The Next Hurrah, who's an expert on the Valerie Plame outing, believes that W opted for a commutation instead of a pardon to keep Libby from saving his own ass by talking, while preserving his 5th amendment rights. That would, so the argument goes, make W's move technically obstruction of justice. Josh Marshall says that this is actually the most infuriating part of W's decision, not simply the moral double-standard for his buddies. Remembering that the president is in all likelihood a party in the investigation derailed by Libby (and further derailed by inoculating Libby from flipping), and that the vice president most certainly is a party, changes the entire context of the decision and snaps it into perspective.

Someone on dKos made a good point: does this mean that Paris Hilton got a tougher penalty than Scooter Libby?

Or, as Steve Benen says, is this amnesty by another name? Are we now going to hear conservatives busting out with: "It's not amnesty, he'll still have to pay a fine!"

Um, what?

It's truly amazing what an acute case of "The Stupid" conservatives come down with for 3 months after Michael Moore makes a movie. It's like suddenly every new event or statistic that anyone mentions about anything must be marshaled to refute Michael Moore and whatever he's advocating at all costs, no matter how much of a stretch it is. Logic is no longer necessary; merely the faintest whiff of logic will suffice.

Honestly, I don't even get what some of these people are trying to argue.

Romney's dog poop story: an explanation

I just read a commenter who suggested that it was a "canary in the coalmine" maneuver: once the dog couldn't hold it anymore, he knew he had to pull over to let the kids go.

why a Democrat will be president in '09

This is what the GOP presidential candidates sound like on the 2nd most important issue to American voters. The most important issue, as you might guess, is Iraq, and "Yay surge!" isn't exactly the answer most Americans want to hear on that, either (66% want us to do something in Iraq, but "stay" isn't it, I'll put it that way).

The Republicans can talk about evil Messkins and scream "JACK BAUER!!!!" all they want, but the simple fact is that, at the end of the day, the American people have a particular set of issues they care about for which the Republican party has no answer. All they have left is scare tactics and tax cuts, and it looks like both are (finally!) losing their charm.