Tan Horizons

The More Things Change

2012-01-25T09:13:00.001-08:00

‎"This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority, given him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much power and strength conferred on him that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad. And in him consisteth the essence of the Commonwealth; which, to define it, is: one person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defence.

And he that carryeth this person is called sovereign, and said to have sovereign power; and every one besides, his subject." -Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan" 1651

"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers. -- Calvin Coolidge, 1926

"With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions that help the economy grow. But I can do a whole lot more with your help." Barack Obama 2012

And I For One, Welcome the New God-King

2012-01-25T05:17:00.001-08:00

The American worker, the American employer, the American investor and the American family own nothing. They earn nothing. They do not grow the economy. They merely take from others. Your own personal efforts to educate yourself, train yourself to better job performance, new products, more sales, that's just other people giving to you. You didn't do it. They did it for you. You can't claim to own what other people did for you. You can't keep everything other people give to you.

And when the government does not get its full share, when each keeps more than they need to keep, that's a taking from others because government will just have to take more from others to get its need. Abraham Lincoln was right: Government should not do more than what people can't do by themselves. And it turns out what America can't do for itself will cost about $2 trillion a year. Government needs the money to prop up the economy by investing in experiments that won't work. Government needs to create penalties and rewards for "market-based" programs that move us in the direction government wants to go. Solyndra was GOOD. FannieMae/FreddieMac is GOOD. We need more of it.

You punch the clock every day to support government, and through government, the economy. You don't get to have an economy without government. Government knows that and won't forget it. Government can tell what you need and what you don't need. Government can give you what you need and don't have. Government can tell what jobs and companies need to die, and government can tell what jobs and companies need to be invented. Government can tell what jobs should be available to citizens and what jobs need to be assigned to illegal aliens.

And when we say "government" we mean Barack Hussein Obama. His personal preferences have the authority of God. No man, no company, no industry, no state, no Congress has any right to tell Barack Hussein Obama he can't spend money where it needs to be spent, or can't kill an industry whose time is over. Barack Obama's favor shall raise shining cities from bare ground and his wrath shall make blighted wilderness of orchards and factories. Thronging multitudes shall move or stay at his gesture. His wisdom is greater, his will is grander than all the three hundred millions scurrying at his feet. Cause they're so stupid they think they did it for themselves.

But let's not get ideological. It bothers the moderates.

State of the Onion!

2012-01-24T21:06:00.000-08:00

We'll restore our economy by backing losers and failed experiments.
None of us has anything except we taxed your parents and grandparents.
I agree with Abraham Lincoln when he said letting millionaires keep their own money is taking it from old ladies.
That's why tonight I've ordered the Navy to hire illegal aliens.
I've put more tundra up for drilling permits I won't grant.
Our troops are coming home and tonight I call dibs on the savings.
Honda, Ford and Toyota are hiring: I did that!
America works better when Congress gives the President permission, but when you won't I will act.
What happened in Detroit can happen everywhere!!!

Oh THIS blog!

2012-01-18T12:46:00.001-08:00

Well! It let me back in instead of telling me the site was for sale!

Will have to cram this full of thoughts.

How about a Fourth Party

2011-04-01T17:08:00.000-07:00

Senate Republicans are growing impatient with the stalemate over 2011 funding levels and want to save their political capital for a debate on the debt limit and entitlement reform.

But they must contend with a bloc of House conservatives who want an unqualified budget victory over President Obama.

For these die-hard conservatives, anything less than slashing $61 billion in spending and cutting funds for Planned Parenthood, the EPA and NPR would be a capitulation.

Senior Republican lawmakers, however, say they need to preserve their political juice for the fight over the debt limit and entitlement reform, which is more important.

They note that discretionary spending accounts for only 12 percent of the federal budget and that Congress needs to address the explosive issue of entitlement reform to achieve meaningful deficit reduction.

“There’s a sense that we don’t want to use too much of our political capital on last year’s budget battle,” said a senior Republican senator. “We just introduced our balanced budget amendment and we want to focus on that, the debt limit and the budget for 2012.

“People want to move on,” said the lawmaker.

“All of us want to make real reductions over the next six months, but we’re much more concerned about real reductions in the debt over the next 60 years,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican conference.

There’s a growing sense among Senate Republicans that their leaders won’t be able to win much more in concessions from the Obama administration in talks over a funding measure covering only the remainder of the fiscal year.

“Now we’re talking about some billions of dollars, our major goal is to deal with saving trillions of dollars over the next 60 years,” Alexander said. “We care about the next six months, we’re most interested in the next 60 years when it comes to debt reduction.”

President Obama’s team has already agreed to cut $33 billion from the 2011 budget, setting spending levels for the year at $74 billion less than what the administration initially proposed.

“I would like to see us cut more out, but it’s very hard to find it without causing cardiac arrest in a lot of people,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

“I do agree the debt ceiling is the more important battle at this point,” said Hatch.

Some Republicans wonder whether it’s worth the political price to insist on the full $61 billion in cuts when that’s only a small fraction of the $1.6 trillion deficit projected for this year.

“I don’t think the administration will do much better than it’s done,” Hatch said of concessions from the White House.

He said the administration and Democrats will “blow whatever reduction we have out of proportion,” costing the GOP political energy that can be used to slow the soaring rate of entitlement spending.

Entitlement spending makes up the bulk of the federal budget.

About 20 percent of the federal budget in 2010, or $708 billion, paid for Social Security, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program accounted for 21 percent of $753 billion of last year’s budget.

Safety-net programs such as the refundable portion of the earned-income tax and child tax credits comprised another 14 percent, or $482 billion.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a founding member of the Senate Tea Party Caucus, said $33 billion in cuts would have little impact on the deficit.

“If we were going to have a $1.65 trillion deficit this years, that means we’ll have a $1.62 trillion deficit. To me that’s a meaningless cut,” Paul said.

Paul said GOP colleagues have not told him they think it’s time to wrap up the debate over 2011 spending levels.

Senate Republicans increasingly think it’s time to turn to the higher priority of curbing the cost growth of entitlement programs.

One senior GOP senator said, “The real battle for us is the long-term debt.”

Republicans say they’ll have crucial leverage to push for entitlement reforms when Obama asks Congress to increase the debt ceiling sometime between April 15 and May 31.

They will call for a vote on the balanced budget amendment capping government spending at 18 percent of gross domestic product before allowing a vote on the debt-limit increase.

Senate Republicans worry, however, that it might not be as well-positioned to push for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid reform if they get bogged down for much longer in a bruising battle with Obama over 2011 spending levels.

But GOP lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol are also sensitive to the backlash they might receive from Tea Party-affiliated conservatives if they back off from the $61 billion in cuts passed by the House at the beginning of this year.

About 150 to 200 Tea Party activists held a rally across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol Thursday afternoon to press GOP leaders not to give ground in talks over spending levels for the rest of this year.

A Democratic source briefed on the negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said GOP leaders are wary of striking a deal while Tea Party activists are revved up.

Boehner has downplayed reports of a tentative deal with the White House and Senate Democrats to set 2011 spending cuts at $33 billion.

He told House Republican freshmen Thursday afternoon that he has not agreed to a final spending number. He also emphasized he is not looking to shut the government down to win the debate.

“The majority of the conversation was about how we are not going to shut down the government,” Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) said of the meeting with Boehner.

Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said Thursday a spending deal is at hand but warned that Tea Party activists could derail it.

“Today, Speaker Boehner said, ‘Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.’ That is a fair and reasonable position to take, he need not publicly confirm the $33 billion number, but as long as both sides keep their heads down and keep working, a deal is in sight,” Schumer said. “We’re right on the doorstep.”

Poor babies, held up by guys who want a victory over Obama. I'm sure few people bothered to run for Senator as a Republican in order to have a victory over Obama.

If the GOP isn't bound by the promises it chooses to make, why trust it? If everybody knows it will cave rather than endure two or three weeks of arguing, how is it going to deliver anything?

Apparently the Senate hasn't heard that the GOP is on double secret probation. It's going to learn the hard way.

En Passant

2011-03-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

The melody and the chords were worked up in a November 1983 War Tour sound check in Hawaii and completed in Windmill Lane Studios during The Unforgettable Fire recording sessions.[1][2] The guitar part is subtly varied through each verse, chorus, and melody, such that no riff is exactly repeated.[2]

The song had been intended to be about Ronald Reagan's pride in America's military power but after the lyricist Bono had been influenced by Stephen B. Oates's book Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a biography of Malcolm X. these caused him to ponder the different sides of the civil rights campaigns, the violent and the non-violent.[1] In subsequent years, Bono has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lyrics, which he describes, along with another Unforgettable Fire song "Bad", as being "left as simple sketches". He says he was swayed by The Edge and producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who played down the need to develop the lyrics as they thought their impressionistic nature would give added forcefulness to the song's feeling, particularly when heard by non-English speakers.[3]

"I looked at how glorious that song was and thought: 'What the fuck is that all about?' It's just a load of vowel sounds ganging up on a great man. It is emotionally very articulate - if you didn't speak English."
—Bono , U2 by U2[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_(In_the_Name_of_Love)

Somehow, I don't think the author of

Rah rah ah ah ah
Roma roma ma
Gaga ooh la la
Want your bad romance

has that level of introspection.

The Rot Spreads Outward

2011-02-23T18:49:00.000-08:00

"[N]ow, “under heightened scrutiny” since the 2nd circuit court asked for the administration to defend its position given lack of precedent, Holder wrote, the government’s ability to defend the law can no longer be made by “advancing hypothetical rationales, independent of the legislative record, as it has done in circuits where precedent mandates application of rational basis review. Instead, the United States can defend Section 3 only by invoking Congress’ actual justifications for the law.”
That legislative record, Holder wrote, “contains discussion and debate that undermines any defense under heightened scrutiny. The record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.” - Attorney General Eric Holder

This is entirely logical given the premises of what Justice Scalia calls "the homosexual agenda": the idea that the Constitution as written already guarantees the legitimacy and normalization of homosexuality, and the problem is just making everybody obey that without the hassle of winning elections.

Of course, it would be news to the Radical Republicans that they legalized gay marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause. It would be news to most Americans since then, too: on three separate occasions in the 20th century, 3/4ths of the states agreed the Equal Protection Clause was so narrow, it did not guarantee the vote to women, residents of the District of Columbia, and 18-year-olds. That's fact, because each time that percentage of the states ratified a specific, separate amendment to the Constitution to provide that guarantee. Somewhere since the Court has ignored the Law, and decided the Equal Protection Clause forbids any distinction, unless, the motives are sufficiently, uh, pure.

Pure, meaning secular and not religious.

"It must be acknowledged, of course, that the Court in Bowers was making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral. The condemnation has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives. These considerations do not answer the question before us, however. The issue is whether the majority may use the power of the State to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law." LAWRENCE V. TEXAS (02-102)

Can we dispense with the malarkey? This was not enacted in 1868, or 1919, or 1965, or 1973. It is a most recent misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment, by unelected judges, and does not have the moral force of the 14th Amendment behind it. 3/4ths of the states did NOT legitimate homosexual behavior, now or ever.

To demonstrate the insanity of our Law as it now stands: It would be impossible for Eric Holder to prosecute the members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, on the theory that they were bribed by the Vatican to vote for the legislation. It would be impossible because the Supreme Court has held that a criminal court and jury cannot investigate the motives behind an individual Congressman's vote. Congress, as a group of individuals, enjoys immunity from that sort of judicial probe.

But if the Supreme Court thinks each Congressman voted for the Defense of Marriage Act because it agreed with the Vatican that homosexuality was a disordered act -- the Law is void.

As Justice Scalia noted in his dissent to Roemer v Evans:

"The Court's opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of "animus" or "animosity" toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as Unamerican. Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible - murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals - and could exhibit even "animus" toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of "animus" at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct, the same sort of moral disapproval that produced the centuries-old criminal laws that we held constitutional in Bowers...

"It is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort. Central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own Constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance." Ante, at 11-12.

As I have noted above, this is proved false every time a state law prohibiting or disfavoring certain conduct is passed, because such a law prevents the adversely affected group whether drug addicts, or smokers, or gun owners, or motorcyclists - from changing the policy thus established in "each of [the] parts" of the State."

But what separates homosexual conduct from drug abuse, smoking, or polygamy? What legitimate state interests allow regulation of those behaviors - despite the open-ended misapplication of the Equal Protection Clause?

Authority likes it. That's all. Arbitrary decisions by those who occupy the institutions of government. Some guys are on the Supreme Court, and they want the Law writ their way, and all contrary law to wither on the vine, POOF 200 years of law is void. Some guy is Attorney General under a liberal President, and he'd rather the DOMA Act went away, POOF it will not be defended.

It is this endorsement of arbitrary power by right of occupancy, that is the dangerous rot that is spreading. Homosexuality is not going to bring down the Republic. Empowering the Court and the President to smother laws passed by state legislatures and Congress, in the name of Freedom, is unsustainable tyranny.

The Unremarked Revolution

2010-12-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

When I read debates about GOProud and CPAC I get the idea centrists dont' realize what's going on in this country.

I see a lot of Republican hostility towards social conservatives, as being an albatross around the necks of fiscal conservatives. Social conservatives cost elections! They should stop trying to make a national campaign and deal on a state by state level! They're trapped in "slippery-slope" fantasies about polygamy, bestiality and child marriage! Opposition to DADT repeal is bigotry, and nonsense about banning chaplains and churches is just hysterical rhetoric!

In 1996 Colorado passed pre-emptive laws to preclude laws penalizing discrimination based on sexual orientation. The US Supreme Court struck that down in 1996 in Roemer v. Evans, saying it wasn't serving any rational basis but animus towards a specific group, and violated the equal protections clause because it forced the targeted group to go rally political support to change the law.

Seven years later the US Supreme Court struck down all criminalization of sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The majority held that, while homosexuality wasn't specifically guaranteed, there were liberty rights violated by a criminal ban on sodomy.

Now Prop. 8, a California law passed to correct a state Supreme Court decision declaring gays had a right to marry, is being challenged under the doctrines advanced by Roemer and Lawrence. If the 9th Circuit upholds Perry v Schwarzenegger, all the centrist outrage at our "slippery slope fantasies" will be refuted.

Justice Scalia, dissenting in Roemer, wrote:

The central thesis of the Court's reasoning is that any group is denied equal protection when, to obtain advantage (or, presumably, to avoid disadvantage), it must have recourse to a more general and hence more difficult level of political decisionmaking than others. The world has never heard of such a principle, which is why the Court's opinion is so long on emotive utterance and so short on relevant legal citation. And it seems to me most unlikely that any multilevel democracy can function under such a principle. For whenever a disadvantage is imposed, or conferral of a benefit is prohibited, at one of the higher levels of democratic decisionmaking (i.e., by the state legislature rather than local government, or by the people at large in the state constitution rather than the legislature), the affected group has (under this theory) been denied equal protection. To take the simplest of examples, consider a state law prohibiting the award of municipal contracts to relatives of mayors or city councilmen. Once such a law is passed, the group composed of such relatives must, in order to get the benefit of city contracts, persuade the state legislature - unlike all other citizens, who need only persuade the municipality. It is ridiculous to consider this a denial of equal protection, which is why the Court's theory is unheard-of.

14 years later, Judge Walker wrote in Perry:

An initiative measure adopted by the voters deserves great respect. The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters' determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation, and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives.

My emphases.

The "homosexual agenda" has led us headlong into revolution. We are poised to declare, as supreme law of the United States, that a state court finding of a general liberty or equal protection claim, cannot be revoked by "the voters or their representatives". It would be discriminatory and void to make laws that say 'Judge Whoosis was wrong, and his changes are reversed'. This raises immediate problems, not just for "social issues", but every other political argument where the Left is being beaten back at the ballot box.

What happens when a state court rules that "undocumented" residents must be allowed to vote in local elections? Immigration is a federal matter, remember; can there be an legitimate state interest in targeting the "undocumented" population? Isn't that just expressing an irrational animus?

How about state court rulings that state governments must participate in a federal health care scheme? You can't deny the poor and sick their equal protection rights, by forcing them to elect representatives who see it their way! They're entitled to a state government that seeks free money forever! [Courts are beginning to rule public education is such a right.]

The investiture of state courts with superior powers from the Federal Constitution, over their legislature and voters, will help wreck all aspects of the "conservative" agenda. To fight it will require a national campaign of opposition, at the federal level, especially in Senate confirmations of Presidential nominations to federal courts. It begins with refusing to celebrate the "historic" campaign to impose "gay rights" on the majority in our courts, however well GOProud does on MSNBC.

I am a reactionary!!!

2010-12-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

A reactionary is a conservative who isn't a libertarian or a liberal.

A Diet of Baloney

2010-12-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

"Second, while exposure to other diseases seems independent of individual choices, obesity appears to be completely dependent on individual lifestyle choices. This is untrue. Convincing epidemiological research demonstrates that factors beyond individual behaviour – factors such as race, poverty, neighbourhood, national region and even personal contacts – can influence obesity risk by influencing access to healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity, and cultures of diet and exercise. So, obesity is more complex than the simple choice to go for a walk or to ‘eat dessert’…

When they ask where America fell off, this paragraph should do nicely for an explanation. We are not responsible--educated people KNOW we're not responsible. If you believe poverty, neighborhood, national region, and personal contacts are "dependent on lifestyle choices" you are an ignorant fool and probably one a them Teabaggers.

Zing, Pow

2010-12-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

From a commenter on HotAir.com

I always wear a button that lists my favorite sex acts. If this makes you uncomfortable you’re a bigot. If you won’t associate with me because of my button, you’re an Akzedphobe.

To avoid being an Akzedphobe you must let me crash all your parties. You must let me teach your children about my favorite sex acts, and spend time with them to see if they think they might enjoy my favorite sex acts. If they don’t think they’d like them, that’s fine, but they must spend some time thinking about them, and maybe even pass a test about them.

You must let me wear my button as I represent your company to your customers. Yes, your customers should all know what kinds of sex acts I enjoy most. You must let me wear my button in your church. In fact, I want to preach in your church wearing my button! I want to get married in your church to someone else who wears the same button everywhere.

I want to join your clubs, even those clubs where it’s clear that no one enjoys the same sex acts as I do. And I want a special booth at your convention, a nice booth with a banner over it that describes all my favorite sex acts just like my button does, only much bigger of course. If your club is called e.g. the XYZ Club, I want to be known as the Guy Who Enjoys ABC Sex Acts in the XYZ Club.

And finally, I want to wear my button describing all my favorite sex acts on my military uniform. I know that only certain buttons called “medals” are allowed on uniforms, but I deserve an exception: I want my button describing all my favorite sex acts to be right there next to my marksmanship medal.

And after I get all these demands met, I’ll think of some more.

Akzed on December 16, 2010 at 12:01 PM

Christopher Hitchens, Anti-Intellectual Propaganda

2010-12-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

I should take this with a hefty grain of salt. Hitchens is here writing for Vanity Fair, and so his opinions are going to match his market.

In other words, he's a whore.

Now, here is the difference. Glenn Beck has not even been encouraging his audiences to reread Robert Welch. No, he has been inciting them to read the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a man more insane and nasty than Welch and a figure so extreme that ultimately even the Birch-supporting leadership of the Mormon Church had to distance itself from him. It’s from Skousen’s demented screed The Five Thousand Year Leap (to a new edition of which Beck wrote a foreword, and which he shoved to the position of No. 1 on Amazon) that he takes all his fantasies about a divinely written Constitution, a conspiratorial secret government, and a future apocalypse. To give you a further idea of the man: Skousen’s posthumously published book on the “end times” and the coming day of rapture was charmingly called The Cleansing of America. A book of his with a less repulsive title, The Making of America, turned out to justify slavery and to refer to slave children as “pickaninnies.” And, writing at a time when the Mormon Church was under attack for denying full membership to black people, Skousen defended it from what he described as this “Communist” assault.

So, Beck’s “9/12 Project” is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again.

This is a severe assault on the values of Western liberal arts. Educated people have friends on their library shelves, and recommend volumes to each other, without totally endorsing "the man" who wrote it. I find a lot of apt criticism of socialism and "social justice" in Atlas Shrugged, without adopting objectivism or declaring government has no business enforcing the law of contract. I can appreciate Plato without attempting to live in a platonic communism. One of the benefits of a liberal education is exposure to, and understanding of, a variety of political and social theories, which we should evaluate and cogently approve or disapprove. There was a lot of truth to Reagan's quip that a Communist was somebody who had read Marx and Lenin, and an anticommunist was somebody who understood Marx and Lenin.

What about The Five Thousand Year Leap makes it a demented screed? Hitchens says it contains "fantasies about a divinely written Constitution, a conspiratorial secret government, and a future apocalypse." And that's about it for the book Glenn Beck recommends, the one that hit #1 on Amazon.com. He has more to say about OTHER books by Skousen, which I do not think Beck recommends, and are not #1 on Amazon.com. He does this to "give you a further idea of the man". If what Skousen wrote in The Five Thousand Year Leap was such racist and clerical toxic-waste material, wouldn't a few quotes be a better demonstration than a brief C.V. of the author?

Hitchens' rant is not about developing a serious rebuttal of W. Cleon Skousen, but rather is about shoving the non-sequitor that if Beck liked ANYTHING Skousen wrote, he likes ALL of it, and so do people who turn up at Beck events.

Hitchens knows better.
It means something that he stoops to it.

But it is negated, not amplified, if it comes festooned with racism and superstition. In the recent past, government-sponsored policies of social engineering have led to surprising success in reducing the welfare rolls and the crime figures. This came partly from the adoption by many Democrats of policies that had once been called Republican. But not a word about that from Beck and his followers, because it isn’t exciting and doesn’t present any opportunity for rabble-rousing. Far sexier to say that health care—actually another product of bipartisanship—is a step toward Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ten percent unemployment, on the other hand, is rather a disgrace to a midterm Democratic administration. But does anybody believe that unemployment would have gone down if the hated bailout had not occurred and GM had been permitted to go bankrupt? Why not avoid the question altogether and mutter about a secret plan to proclaim a socialist (or Nazi, or Jew-controlled: take your pick) dictatorship?

The "racism and superstition" bit comes a bit later, I suppose, unless the following errors are evidence of racism and superstition: three-strikes and termination dates of welfare are "government-sponsored policies of social engineering"; their adoption by a Democrat President isolated by Republican majorities, and maintenance by Republican majorities, and criticism and attack by the first Democrat trifecta since they were enacted, represents "bipartisanship"; Glenn Beck is pushing for a partisan victory; individual mandates, and a federal diktat to 50 states to operate internal health-care insurance systems to federal liking, do not represent a march towards totalitarianism; unemployment is the sole best measure of political economy; the Tea Party is ignoring these issues; Glenn Beck touts a secret conspiracy without airing any evidence or documentation.

None of those presumptions are true. The Democrats were eager to destroy "welfare to work" at this, their first real chance to do so. They proudly oppose mandatory sentencing and three-strikes laws, and pretend their success is a mystery. Hitchens himself complained the Tea Party "forfeit[ed] a both-houses Republican victory". Obamacare is uniquely unconstitutional and imposes limits on a free market unknown through 2 invasions, a civil war, two world wars and a depression. Ben Bernanke, presumably after Hitchens wrote this column, said on 60 Minutes that he expects five more years of record unemployment if he's left to solve it, and yes, I think we could have done better with a sharper, shorter depression than by printing money to guarantee Wall Street whenever it fails henceforth. These are not matters of no concern to the angry right. Beck is not concerned with a "secret conspiracy" but an open intellectual theory of political economy and economics, as widespread and respectable as Eurocommunism in the 1970s, argued and advocated in writing, by foundations and think tanks who share executive personnel.

Hitchens knows better.
It means something that he stoops to it.

Again, there is a real debate about the pace and rhythm of global warming, and about the degree to which it has been caused (or can be slowed) by human activity. But at the first Tea Party rally I attended, at the Washington Monument earlier this year, the crowd—bristling with placards about the Second Amendment’s being the correction—was treated to an arm-waving speech by a caricature English peer named Lord Monckton, who led them in the edifying call-and-response: “All together. Global warming is?” “Bullshit.” “Obama cannot hear you. Global warming is?” “bullshit.” “That’s bettah.” I don’t remember ever seeing grown-ups behave less seriously, at least in an election season.

It is nice that Mr. Hitchens will allow for debate on these matters. Apparently he would like a debate on a topic, without ever encountering a gathering held by one side of that debate, proclaiming its point of view, with enthusiasm, to bolster and encourage its rank and file. Apparently the Tea Party should have had Paul McCartney there to urge them to be uncertain and confused, rather than such an unserious demonstration of certainty.
A "real debate" requires real people who are really sure that the other side is really bullshit.
Hitchens knows better.
It means something that he is stooping to it.

Most epochs are defined by one or another anxiety. More important, though, is the form which that anxiety takes. Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority in this country, and the second is that the United States will be just one among many world powers.

And that is why the Tea Party got so excited about Colonel Allen West.

This is by no means purely a “racial” matter.

Oh! I was gonna say--well, I did just say---

(In my experience, black Americans are quite concerned that “Hispanic” immigration will relegate them, too.)

And that is why Colonel Allen West likes Marc Rubio for his governor.
Oh, wait--

Having an honest and open discussion about all this is not just a high priority. It’s more like a matter of social and political survival.

Really? How does saying "there goes the neighborhood" help at all? Ever?

But the Beck-Skousen faction want to make such a debate impossible. They need and want to sublimate the anxiety into hysteria and paranoia.

What possible debate could be held about demographic anxiety? "Resolved, that Hispanics ought not breed." Is that what Hitchens is looking for? What is this man talking about?

The president is a Kenyan.

Proclaimed by his relatives in Kenya.

The president is a secret Muslim.

The President of Egypt says President Obama told him so in a private meeting. More widely observed, this President is extremely deferential to Muslim leaders, Muslim custom, and celebrates Muslim culture and the Arabic forms of prayer.

I don't know that those things are true about President Obama, or even if he did tell the President of Egypt he was a co-religionist, that it is true. I just know there's more, uh, phenomena, if you don't like the term evidence, suggestive of those theories, than the idea that 500,000 people got on the National Mall because 'Amerikkka is going to the negros'.

The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X.

Who says that?

And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this develpment, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there’s nothing racial in their attitude.

The absence of evidence of this racism is just proof of sinister intent!
If Amerikkka hated a black President for his color, one might have thought it would have been apparent from the inauguration. Actually, at his inauguration, the million people on the Mall were celebrating him. Only gradually did we become fully aware that this eloquent, model father was an hard-left revolutionary, eager to apologize to the world for the decisions of our democracy; eager to repudiate our heritage of freedom; eager for arbitrary executive control over private industry; eager to declare his political opponents, enemies; eager to berate his countrymen for their diet, religions, viewing habits, education, employment, ambitions and hopes--and these Tea Partiers can stand up and go on and on and on and on and on about it, all day, and not once stoop to complaining about race. Many of our complaints were aired during the last Democratic Administration. Of course, there's nothing racial about our attitude.

It has nothing to do with racism.
Hitchens knows better.
It's significant that he stoops to it.

By the way, I'm sure Obama speaks English too well to ever describe anybody as "extremely moderate."

As I started by saying, the people who really curl my lip are the ones who willingly accept such supporters for the sake of a Republican victory, and then try to write them off as not all that important, or not all that extreme, or not all that insane in wanting to repeal several amendments to a Constitution that they also think is unalterable because it’s divine!

Well, no. We know it can be amended, in a certain manner, which has not been followed. And for that reason, contrary laws and policy are void. That is not a notion originated by the Tea Party in 2010; it was handed down in 1803. I'm sure Hitchens knows better. It means something that he pretends to forget it.

"Divine", "clerical", "superstition". I think that's the root of this screed by Hitchens. It is another rant at God. And since God is false, the political movement by Glenn Beck --who I find annoying as an absolute pacifist-- must also be false, because it calls on good citizenship as required of true religious faith. Such people, to Hitchens, are deranged. And it's no good going to Vanity Fair and saying "I don't like Jesusfreaks" cause that is not effective. What works is, smearing them as insane, illiterate, fringe racists incapable of "real debate". This is the necessary work that Hitchens has devoted himself to, and it is sad. He was better when he wrote from his brain and not with his bile.

Excesses?

2010-09-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

David Brooks in the New York Times:

This doesn’t mean that the Tea Party influence will be positive for Republicans over the long haul. The movement carries viruses that may infect the G.O.P. in the years ahead. Its members seek traditional, conservative ends, but they use radical means. Along the way, the movement has picked up some of the worst excesses of modern American culture: a narcissistic sense of victimization, an egomaniacal belief in one’s own rightness and purity, a willingness to distort the truth so that every conflict becomes a contest of pure good versus pure evil.

I think those are closer to our historic virtues. It's what Bill Bennett and Glenn Beck are on about. What our great-grandparents understood as a "thirst for righteousness". A belief that there is always a behavior that is wholly good, and pleasing to God, and that we have a duty to seek it out.

I prefer that to distorting facts so we pretend neither Good nor Evil are present in our country today; seeking to be conflicted at all times about what should be done; and refusing to stand with people working to a recognized common Good when they could use our help. THOSE are the excesses of our modern age.

Welcome to Iran

2010-08-04T21:40:00.001-07:00

The ruling on Prop 8 is here.

What can ya say? What arguments in logic can be raised against an institution that insists improvisation is its raison d'etre?

Judge Walker cites plenty of Supreme Court decisions to argue gays are a special class, to be protected from the vicissitudes of the majority...but darn little Constitution...

However the ruling fails to be coherent within itself.

Specifically, Judge Walker argues, quoting precedent, that the State does not have an interest in enforcing private moral or religious beliefs without an accompanying secular purpose. This is nowhere in the Constitution or the amendments; the Supreme Court invented a pretty powerful limit on State's rights.

Judge Walker belies this charge by allowing 4 GBL persons to testify about their personal experiences with their sexuality; with the nature of their sexuality; with their emotional reactions to Prop 8 advertising ("It demeans you"). Judge Walker states in Conclusion #77 that "Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians".

The opposition to the GBL lifestyle, which the Judge cites as pervasive based on testimony from expert witnesses, is "private moral or religious beliefs", but emotional support for the GBL lifestyle is just facts? (By the way, Judge Walker mentions that the proponents did not attempt to challenge the credibility of the four gay witnesses...is that supposed to happen? A gay person testifying should be challenged as to their understanding of their own sexuality? Every gay person who was at one point confused about being heterosexual is open to challenge about being confused about being gay. What if they're really bisexual? How can they tell? What objective standard is there that separates a gay man in denial with a bisexual swinger?)

Judge Walker insists that "The First Amendment rights of opponents of homosexuality" will not be harmed or diminished; yet "religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians"; "the cultural meaning of marriage and its accompanying benefits are intentionally withheld"(#54), and affirms "the right of same sex couples to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect and stature as that accorded to all the officially recognized family relationships"(114), the constant harping on "perpetuates stereotypes" gives the lie to that one. That is THE great flaw in the "you're not affected, lemme alone" argument: How do you generate "dignity, respect and stature" of yourself? Doesn't somebody ELSE have to give them to you? Taken literally, you have no right to approve one marriage over another. That's contrary to the secular purpose of having lots of gay marriages. That does harm. That is just your private moral values, not that you're not allowed to have them, only they're not rational.

Judge Walker maintains that marriage as an institution will change, sure, but it changed for interracial marriage and it changed for gender equality in marriage, and nothing bad happened! So you must secularly assume it will happen here too!

Opposition to that idea has a long history of which Mr. Walker is ashamed. Propogation of that idea has no religious baggage, no history, so...it must be "neutral or positive". (By the way check the divorce rates and domestic violence rates before "gender neutral" and "no-fault" marriage came about. Just saying. Since we're being secular and empirical and utilitarian. Apparently we gotta go for the jugular every--damn--time.)

Forget polygamy; can we continue to criminalize fraud? Can we continue to segregate, demean, stereotype the born liars among us? Hasn't America always conspired against the grifter and the hustler, the con artist? Isnt' that persecution of those who "bear false witness" really a promotion of private religious values and morals? Doesn't great wealth flow to neighborhoods where the biggest con men live? Isn't that a secular benefit? Aren't they able to defend themselves with great "credibility"?

In western Asia there is an ancient realm that has elections and courts and legislatures; but we do not consider Iran free. Iran can vote what it likes, but it is for men steeped in the lore of their separate, moral code that have the final say, that can smite any law or act of government, in the name of Righteousness. The will of the People is subject to challenge in the appropriate forum.

We have that here, now.

Not that you can do anything about it, because you have no authority to decide otherwise:

An initiative measure adopted by the voters deserves great respect. The considered views and opinions of even the most highly qualified scholars and experts seldom outweigh the determinations of the voters. When challenged, however, the voters determinations must find at least some support in evidence. This is especially so when those determinations enact into law classifications of persons. Conjecture, speculation, and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class suffice, no matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives.

No ayatollah could put it better.

Listening to Chant as the sun sets

2010-05-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Relaxing to Benedictine monks singing prayers from a thousand years ago. I sit in my own apartment playing my own music as the sun goes down, like I did eight years ago in Minneapolis. I was so unhappy because I was so far from California, all I wanted was to move back. If that's not enough anymore, whose fault is that? If I'm still unhappy about bills, won't I always have bills? St. Don Bosco took pride that he died in debt, to further the cause of the Lord. I know why I'm broke. "I did it my way" and maybe that was right, if so be content--and if it was wrong, then I know Who to ask what to do

Dance To The Music

2010-04-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah, come on all you black young men,
O Ba Ma needs your help again
Got us all in a terrible jam,
Made Arizona, into Vietnam,
Walk out of school and yell and scream,
Help trample the American Dream.

And it's one, two, three,
Who are we fightin for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Only know Yes We Can;
And it's five, six, seven,
What about the jobless rates?
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! Freedom’s gonna die.

Well, come on amigos, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those Yanks —
The racists bastards what own the banks
And social justice can only be won
When we've legislated Kingdom Come.

And it's one, two, three,
Who are we fightin for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Only know Yes We Can;
And it's five, six, seven,
What about the jobless rates?
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! Freedom’s gonna die.

Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Throw yourself down the rabbit hole.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the jobless with mortgage aid,
Just don’t forget to post a loss,
Or I’ll be forced to fire your boss.

And it's one, two, three,
Who are we fightin for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Only know Yes We Can;
And it's five, six, seven,
What about the jobless rates?
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! Freedom’s gonna die.

Come on girlfriends, across the land,
Lend O Ba Ma a helping hand
Don’t blame me for the jobless flux
Haven’t I blown a zillion bucks?
Go ask Grandma what it means
When a dollar won’t buy canned beans.

And it's one, two, three,
Who are we fightin for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Only know Yes We Can;
And it's five, six, seven,
What about the jobless rates?
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! Freedom’s gonna die.

Takings v Taxes

2010-03-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

I can remember thirty years ago when banks paid 7% on savings.

Applying the Rule of 72 that meant your money doubled every 11 years.

My current savings rate at Chase is 0.02%.

If I bought a 5-year CD I'd get a 2% rate. So that at least would earn something...it would double in 36 years.

I wonder if I'll ever earn 7% in this country in my lifetime. The Treasury Department can't have savings competing with T-bills for earnings; so it would have to match rates; and the Federal Reserve can't have the national debt double every twenty years.

This loss of the most basic earnings vehicle is a harsh taking of wealth by government.

Say What?

2010-01-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

March 24, 2007
Thank you to UNLV for helping to sponsor this event, to CAP for the outstanding work you do, but most of all thanks to SEIU. I've got a history with this union. When I was a young organizer, I had just moved to Chicago. I started with working with SEIU Local 880, home health care workers, to make sure that they were registered to vote. I had a say in the politics in Illinois. When I went to the state legislature, I worked with Tom Balanoff in SEIU to make sure that children who didn't have health care received it. And we made sure that hospitals report on the quality of care, the staffing ratios that they had set up, and now we're working together at the federal level to make sure that all Americans, not just some Americans, are allowed to prosper...

I want to be held accountable for getting it done. I will judge my first term as president based on the fact on whether we have delivered the kind of health care that every American deserves and that our system can afford. And I'm not going to be able to do it on my own, so I hope that the SEIU will partner in that process. Thanks, everybody.

July 23, 2008
Today I had a series of productive discussions with many of Israel's key leaders about how to address the broad range of security threats that Israel faces and the broad threats that all of us face. I look forward to continuing these consultations with Prime Minister Olmert this evening, and I'm also looking forward to consulting closely with our European allies about Iran and other challenges in the days ahead.

Now let me just close by saying that I bring to Sderot, an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security. The state of Israel faces determined enemies who seek its destruction. But it also has a friend and ally in the United States that will always stand by the people of Israel. That's why I'm proud to be here today and that's why I will work from the moment that I return to America, to tell the story of Sderot and to make sure that the good people who live here are enjoying a future of peace and security and hope.

July 24, 2008
Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

January 27, 2010
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

Observation

2009-11-09T20:56:00.001-08:00

I have noticed the socialists have a new favorite trick, when we tell them socialism isn't authorized under the consitution, they claim we have already scrapped the constitution when we accepted the Air Force/Social Security/subsidized housing/public schools/police, so, really, we're already too far along to get technical, because OF COURSE nobody wants to scrap the Air Force/Social Security/subsidized housing/public schools/police!!!

I always tell them, if you think those things justify socialism in America, then ditch them too. And they sputter and call me nuts.

They have forgotten or rather, disbelieve, that millions of Americans still with us were born into American communities without any of those things. Those trinkets have been promoted as useful but our county existed and thrived without them.

One problem with teaching American history to children is that adults later find it childlike.

House Passes Pelosicare

2009-11-07T21:23:00.001-08:00

2 votes more than they needed for a bare minority.

This is war on the Constitution and on the upward mobility of the American worker. The Congress now declares the federal government has the power to dictate the consumption of for-profit goods by citizens. Regardless of income. And if they don't buy as much as Congress thinks good, the citizen owes a tax penalty.

5th, 4th, 8th and 9th Amendment violations all throughout. And after Kelo and McConnell v FEC, I won't wait for the Supreme Court to rescue us. I will not pay up.

We Have Met the Enemy, and It is Us

2009-10-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

I am restrained only by my promise never to trust 60 Minutes to tell the truth. Yet I haven't heard McChrystal come out and denounce their editing.

The notion that the United States Army can only operate in countries we have invaded, with the consent of the governed, is so ridiculous I cannot believe it was suggested.

If after eight years, the Afghan people will fight for the Taliban, they are the enemy. The Taliban, is the enemy. Anybody cooperating economically with the Taliban, is the enemy. If Karzai's regime protects them, they are the enemy.

If we cannot and will not fight to win, then we are fighting for terms. And if we come to such a pass through our own stupidity and weakness, we will be routed.

No Death Panels??

2009-09-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration's pay czar Kenneth Feinberg says he can "claw back" exec compensation
Reuters

Monday, August 17th 2009, 8:28 AM

Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and "binding" authority over executive compensation, including the ability to "claw back" money already paid, and he is weighing how and whether to use that power.

Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup Inc included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government's TARP Program.

Feinberg said he hasn't looked at Hall's contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.

"Whether I have jurisdiction to decide his compensation or not, we will take a look and decide over the next few weeks," Feinberg said after speaking at a public forum in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, part of a newsmaker series hosted by the Martha's Vineyard Times newspaper.

Feinberg has been consulting with seven companies that have yet to pay back money they borrowed from the government, including Citi, American International Group Inc, Bank of America Corp, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co and GMAC Inc.

Those companies faced a deadline of Friday of submitted proposals to Feinberg for their top 25 employees.

Feinberg said on Sunday that decisions he makes will be "binding," but the law limits his power over contracts signed before February 11, 2009.

He also said he has the authority to use a "clawback" provision to go after compensation for executives from any company that received money from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Progr.am (TARP).

"I have the discretion, conferred upon by Congress, to attempt to recover compensation that has already been paid to executives not only in these companies, but in any company that received federal assistance," Feinberg said during his remarks.

Asked by Reuters if he could use that ability to target a firm like Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which paid back $10 billion in bailout money, Feinberg said: "Anything is possible under the law."

"I can claw back, but we haven't focused on that at all," he said.

Feinberg said he has been advising the seven firms under his jurisdiction on a daily basis, characterizing the meetings as "very amicable."

"There have been some tough disagreements, but everyone is trying to get to an end place in compensation that makes sense in a post-TARP world," Feinberg said.

Citigroup, in particular, has concerns about pay restrictions causing its top employees to leave, Feinberg said.

"Citibank says if you don't pay us x or y, the going rate for our senior officials, they will leave," Feinberg said. "They will go to Goldman Sachs. They will go to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Worse, they'll go to UBS or the Royal Bank of Scotland, or foreign banks."

Feinberg said the law requires him to take market forces into account, but also to consider performance and past deals between a company and an employee.

"The statute provides these guideposts, but the statute ultimately says I have discretion to decide what it is that these people should make and that my determination will be final," Feinberg said.

"The officials can't run to the Secretary of Treasury. The officials can't run to the court house or a local court. My decision is final on those individuals," Feinberg added.

Feinberg told Reuters he hasn't spoken with President Obama about his role as the administration's watchdog on pay, although he has been in touch with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

This is how Congress does business: it delegates to bureaucrats who won't answer to Congress, or report to the President, just a Secretary.

If their health care commission has the same attitude towards its authority as Mr. Feinberg, you will see your treatment curtailed by a bureacrat and you will also be told you have nowhere to run.

Thoughts on Hon. Joe Wilson

2009-09-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

If Congress can be summoned to the foot of the President at his whim,
because he would like some legislation done at a time he thinks important,
and be lied to willy-nilly as he talks over their shoulder to the camera,
repeating a position taken over months,
and the embarrassment in that is somebody calls him a liar

I'm embarrassed by Congress.

And once more the Republican party let's it be known it never meant to dig in and confront the President. So I guess if you look for a party to do that, it aint the GOP.

Supporting "the War"

2009-08-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

I read some blurbs today from Reuters and AFP that Adm. Mike Mullen is concerned that the war in Afghanistan isn't going so well, and now 50% of Americans by one poll say it wasn't worth fighting for.

It was this Admiral Mullen who testified in front of Congress that "the war in Afghanistan will not have a military solution". This is the guy who supports limited rules of engagement to preclude bombarding too close to houses. We read about that, and we read that the US government is reaching out to the "moderate elements" in the Taliban.

If we're not fighting to wipe out the Taliban, but get them to accept a political subjugation and a cease-fire with the national government, then we're asking for something unprecedented in our history. In VietNam and Korea the goal at least was to make the bad guys leave, not stick around and lose elections.

If that's "the war in Afghanistan", I don't feel like supporting it either. I thought we were looking to win.

David Frum, You're a Bum

2009-08-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

"Contra Rush Limbaugh, history’s actual fascists were not primarily known for their anti-smoking policies or generous social welfare programs. Fascism celebrated violence, anti-rationalism and hysterical devotion to an authoritarian leader. To date, the Obama administration has fallen rather short in these departments. Perhaps uncomfortably aware of the shortcoming, the hardliners have developed — okay, invented really — their own mythology about Obama “brownshirts.” (The popular conservative website RedState.org literally uses the term.) The complaint rests on a single case — that of conservative activist Kenneth Gladney, who got into a scuffle at a townhall in St. Louis, Missouri. The altercation was captured on video and you can watch it on YouTube. What you’ll see is a man, already on the ground, and another man stepping back in order to avoid tripping over him. The man on the ground is Gladney. Gladney walked away from the confrontation and later went to hospital, where he was treated for light injuries and released the same day. Whatever happened and whoever started it, this happily bloodless encounter bears not even the most glancing resemblance to the brutality that made Hitler’s brownshirts notorious. And yet, look up Gladney’s name online and he’s suddenly a poignant martyr.

Can we get a grip here? It is possible to express opposition to a president’s policies without preposterous name-calling — without diminishing and disparaging the unique experiences of those who did actually suffer from actual persecution by actual Nazis. After all, you know who else trafficked in hysterical exaggeration? That’s right: Hitler!"

http://www.newmajority.com/can-we-get-a-grip/comment-page-2#comment-60232

Here's the video. I think we can tell a lot more than that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Q3p6jClQM

You know what's more despicable than saying "Hey, I see similarities between our hostile ogliarchic unconstitutional Administration and Hitler"?

Watching a guy getting beat up and saying "What beating?"

David Frum has such a stake in seizing "conservatism" from the conservatives, he can't allow the public to be more repulsed by Obama & Co. than by Limbaugh. Even if that means ignoring Democrat crimes.

Why, why is it that "moderate" Republicans are so sleazy?

Dumbest Man in America

2009-08-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Prince Fielder

A Day After Fielder Tries to Storm a Clubhouse, Cool Heads Prevail
By BILLY WITZ
Published: August 5, 2009
LOS ANGELES — Prince Fielder gazed intently into the bathroom mirror in the visiting clubhouse, studied his freshly cut hair for a moment and then gave his approval with a smile.

Although Fielder seemed content with the cut Wednesday afternoon, the Brewers’ slugger was not so pleased with the man who had left a mark on him the night before.

After the final out of the Brewers’ 17-4 loss to the Dodgers on Tuesday, Fielder charged through the hallway that joins the visiting and home clubhouses in an effort to confront Dodgers reliever Guillermo Mota, who had hit Fielder with a fastball in the thigh with two out in the ninth inning.

Fielder was stopped from entering the clubhouse by a security guard, who soon had reinforcements from other officers and some of Fielder’s teammates. They led Fielder back through fans who waited for players’ autographs and into the Brewers’ clubhouse.

The Brewers felt Mota’s pitch was in retaliation for Brewers reliever Chris Smith’s nicking the Dodgers’ best hitter, Manny Ramirez, with an inside fastball in the seventh inning. Another Milwaukee reliever, R. J. Swindle, hit Juan Pierre in the eighth.

What Fielder intended to do if he had breached the home clubhouse apparently will be left to the imagination. He deflected questions Tuesday night, and on Wednesday, the Brewers’ director of media relations, Mike Vassallo, stood sentry in front of Fielder’s stall and informed reporters that Fielder would not be answering questions about the incident.

It was not the only extra security detail. The Dodgers called in several guards three hours earlier than usual, so they had eight deployed around the clubhouse by 2:30 p.m., when many players began to arrive.

Ramirez was out of the lineup Wednesday in the last regular-season game between Los Angeles and Milwaukee, which also happened to be Manny Ramirez Poster Night. Manager Joe Torre said the lineup change was not related to the previous night’s incident. When Brewers Manager Ken Macha was informed that Ramirez would begin the night on the bench, he channeled his inner Captain Renault. “Shocking,” he said.

Macha said he was on the phone for an hour with Major League Baseball officials, who will be determining whether to fine Mota, who was ejected, or Fielder for their actions.

Macha was the rare man in uniform who was interested in discussing the matter Wednesday. Several players in each clubhouse declined to talk, and others gave bland answers. Torre, who often patiently answers any question — including those in the wake of Ramirez’s drug suspension — was not in the mood, either.

“I’m a little surprised and disappointed that this is taking all the attention,” Torre said to about 30 members of the news media who gathered in the dugout before the game. “I’m not going to waste a lot of time trying to discuss and viewpoint this and viewpoint that.”

By hitting Fielder, Mota at least seemed to be answering questions about the resolve of Dodgers pitchers to protect their hitters. In last year’s National League Championship Series, Phillies pitcher Brett Myers threw a fastball under the chin of Ramirez, and Dodgers pitcher Chad Billingsley did not retaliate.

But Torre said such a link between then and Tuesday was a reach. “You’re trying to connect the dots with a very long line,” he said.

As it turned out, Fielder was the center of attention again Wednesday in Milwaukee’s 4-1 win. Each time he came to the plate, the crowd of 50,276 booed vigorously. Fielder was 0 for 5, but he did chug down the line to beat a relay throw, thwarting a double play and allowing the Brewers to tie the score, 1-1. He also caught the Dodgers by surprise, stealing second with a thunderous head-first slide.

“I expected it,” said Fielder of the fans’ booing. “Their team is the Dodgers.”

The Brewers talked about Tuesday’s incident in a pre-game meeting. But save for Ramirez’s pinch-hit appearance in the seventh inning — he grounded out with two runners aboard — there was not much other drama. Mota, who threw 38 pitches Tuesday, did not pitch.

It was also a less eventful evening for William Gomez, who has stood guard outside the Dodgers clubhouse for seven years, but had never encountered a player like Fielder.

It is common for opponents to head past him after games on their way to use the weight-lifting equipment and batting cages that are past the Dodgers’ clubhouse.

Gomez said he heard Fielder arguing with his teammate Ryan Braun. “I thought something’s up,” Gomez said. “I told him, ‘I can’t let you in, sir.’ ”

Gomez was more successful at keeping the 270-pound Fielder at bay than any of his teammates who tried.

“Try?” asked Braun. “It was like a raging bull.”

Rare as it may be for a player to go into an opposing clubhouse to challenge another player, it is not uncommon for Mota. In 2002 and 2003, during his first stint with the Dodgers, he upset Mets catcher Mike Piazza by hitting him with pitches in spring training games. After the first incident, Piazza wrapped both hands around Mota’s neck between innings. The next year, Piazza at first charged Mota on the mound and later went into the Dodgers’ clubhouse after the game, but Mota had already left.

“Why do people get so mad?” Mota said Wednesday. “It’s baseball. We have to pitch inside, whether it’s Piazza, Braun or Fielder. We have to pitch inside.”

Mota said he was particularly surprised by Fielder’s reaction.

Fielder lay on the ground after being hit with a look of disbelief, wondering why Mota — his teammate last year — would have hit him. It was a look of bemusement, rather than anger.

“I was thinking he was a good friend,” said Mota, who was lifting weights when Fielder made his run toward the clubhouse. Mota said he found out about Fielder’s charge when he returned from his postgame workout.

A few minutes earlier, as Mota returned to his stall, he could not betray his feelings. The clubhouse television was tuned to ESPN, and Steve Phillips, the former Mets general manager who had criticized Mota for hitting Piazza, now seemed to be siding with him. Phillips said that if Fielder had a problem with Mota, he should have settled it on the field.

“Exactly,” Mota shouted, pointing at the television and perhaps another confrontation down the road.

You have to be on something serious to start a fight at Dodger Stadium...

The Futility of Organized Diplomacy

2009-08-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

From Powerline:

David Ignatius argues that, rather than pursuing talks with the Iranian regime, the U.S. should let it stew in its own juice for now. He analogizes the regime to a "neighborhood troublemaker" who has driven his car into a ditch. The best response, Ignatius argues, is to let him remain there for a while with his wheels spinning.

So far, so good. But Ignatius is determined that we should appease someone. So, with Iran sidelined as a candidate, he argues that we should respond by appeasing its allies: Syria, Hamas, and even Hezbollah. He argues that, given Iran's current problems, its friends may want to hedge their bets by becoming more friendly with us. But unless we're prepared to fund the terrorist activities of Hamas and Hezbollah, as Tehran does, Iran clearly remains their one good bet.

Understandably, then, Ignatius glosses over the question of what it would take for the U.S. to befriend these bloody terrorist entities. However, he does urge, inevitably, that the U.S. take advantage of Iran's predicament by striving to create a Palestinian state. Is there any development in the region that commenators like Ignatius cannot spin into an argument for coercing Israel into agreeing to a state for its sworn enemies?

The notion that the U.S. can shake things up in the Middle East by appeasing bloodthirsty terrorists has long passed for bold, strategic thinking -- and indeed realism --in the salons and op-ed pages of Washington, D.C. The frightening thing is that we cannot be confident that it does not pass for such in the Obama administration.

Long ago, George Shultz was confronted with the fact that Reagan had gone longer than any President without a summit deal with the Soviet Union. His response was "So what. No deal is better than a bad deal."

The career diplomatic bloc in D.C. seems adamant that sort of thinking does not take root. They prefer "movement", dealmaking, to no deal. If American interests prohibit that approach, it's time to rethink American interests.

The notion that we can appease and enable terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban without injury to the United States has already failed, and this failure will be demonstrated again. It's a good question whether any majority party in Washington will be allowed to do anything about it for some time.

Happy Fourth of July!

2009-07-04T16:45:00.000-07:00

Enjoying air conditioning and burgers with the parents... perhaps seeing school friends afterwards. And relaxing...

I had Nothing to Say

2009-07-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

at least nothing really original or developed, in response to our President's failed policy with Iran, or failed policy with Honduras, the crippling energy tax, Jacko's death and deification, Perez Hilton getting what he had coming to him...

But now that I have a preowned classic laptop, I have a much better way to say it!

Senator Leahy: Sotomayor = Marshall

2009-06-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, told civil rights leaders and law students that Sotomayor's confirmation was a certainty.
"You better believe we're going to get her confirmed — take that one to the bank," Leahy said during a speech at the University of the District of Columbia law school.
He compared Sotomayor's nomination to that of Thurgood Marshall, the first black to sit on the court, saying they both faced adversity. He noted that Republicans questioned Marshall at his confirmation hearings about whether he would discriminate against white people — much as they have challenged Sotomayor for saying that she hoped that a "wise Latina" would usually reach a better conclusion than a white male without similar experiences.

And Thurgood Marshall went on to do exactly that.

Q: In terms of making sure you don't exclude African Americans. Would you say it's on a historical basis that they must be included now because they had been excluded previously?
A: I guess that's one of the arguments. But the other one is that the whole comparison is faulted because there's been this discrimination for all of these years and therefore people are in a position that they wouldn't have been in if it were not for that way that passed. So the only way to get rid of the weighted past is to weigh the future. Not as much, but considerably.
Q: But what about colleagues who say that violates the whites' rights?
A: I guess it does, but I don't think the Constitution was meant to use anything that was unlawfully gained and their right is unlawfully gained. For example, your grandfather had a job that a Negro couldn't get. Your father got a job that a Negro couldn't get, therefore you have a better education than the children of those people. So somebody's got to pay for that.
Q: If I say that to a white man he says I didn't own any slaves. I didn't discriminate against anybody.
A: Did he go apply for a job and say he wasn't white? Did he accept the job knowing that Negroes had been excluded? But his father did. That's how he got the money. He got the money from his father to get educated.
Q: But he says let's call it all equal now and I'm qualified but you Negroes aren't qualified.
A: I absolutely agree with that as of 1896, Plessey v. Ferguson [the precedent setting Supreme Court decision legalizing segregated seating on trains]. I agree with him as of that time. If it had been done then I would be with you now. Well if the Plessey v. Ferguson says everybody is equal and the Constitution is color blind and they went through with that, I would say that as of now you have to face up like everybody else and that's not about the race.
Q: A 100 years later?
A: Why of course.
Q: So I say to you how much longer does white America have to make recompense?
A: I don't have the slightest idea. I don't know. I know all that's happened in the past.

The notion that "two wrongs don't make a right" apparently didn't mean much to Justice Marshall. Or that his logic might be a little bit stale four or five generations from slavery, but the country would lack any democratic method to correct his moral failure to uphold the Constitution.

My maternal grandfather was an Air Force sergeant and my paternal grandfather was a Mexican butcher. I'm not sure which of them cheated the black man out of their lofty position; probably both. My father drew the loot in his own person, and went through college. Then I inherited his ill-gotten gains by going to Catholic school so poor, Mom sewed our uniform shirts herself. I suppose I further cheated the other America by borrowing my way through community college, then the University of California, then flunking out of a graduate program in medieval history, and then paying my way through paralegal "night" school--airquotes, I went to work my shift after "night" school let out.

Yeah. Of course.

Thing is though, I wasn't asked if I was white enough or even if I could pay my own way...I couldn't, most of it. I was just called on to prove I could hack it, and I delivered that proof out of my own self. I developed myself to the point I could prove it.

And ANY other human of whatever color who can show and prove, put themselves on top. They made themselves. That's the only way you can deliver reliably, you have it in you, because you trained yourself to do it.

I KNOW Thurgood Marshall is wrong, and if Sotomayor thinks that way, she's wrong too, and a brake on the development of America into something better than a bigger Yugoslavia. And a bigot.

We Californios know why this liberal bastion tossed affirmative action--because it MUST lead to nonwhites demanding their "fair share" from other nonwhites. There is literally no future in "weighing" the future to "atone" for the past. It won't resemble the past, for one thing.

Anybody who thinks we can build a Great Society by "weighing" competing bigotries ought to be deported to Bosnia, and see how it fails.

Leahy also defended the belief that a judge should take into account the real-world impact of his or her decisions, saying the failures of the court's "conservative activists," including Chief Justice John Roberts, to do so recently resulted in the gutting of key anti-discrimination and civil rights laws.

Perhaps Mr. Leahy oughta assuage the groaning yoke of oppression by moving to a democratic republic, and running for the national legislature, and working to secure a majority for his own party in all chambers and the executive, and thus--one day--enabling him to draft the laws as he sees fit.

Oh hey, that's right... he already does have that power...

It's Good to Have Allies

2009-06-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

LONDON: A planned US missile shield may not strengthen Europe's security and could hurt NATO's interests if deployed in the face of Russian opposition, British members of parliament said yesterday. The United States says the anti-missile system is designed to prevent potential attacks from countries such as Iran, but the plan has outraged Moscow which sees it as a threat.

Russia has urged Washington to drop its plan to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Both former Soviet satellites are now NATO members. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, made up of legislators from the main political parties, voiced reservations about the US plan in a report on weapons proliferation. "We are not convinced that, as they are currently envisaged and under current circumstances, the United States' planned ballistic missile defense (BMD) deploy
ments in the Czech Republic and Poland represent a net gain for European security," it said.

We conclude that if the deployments are carried out in the face of opposition from Russia, this could be highly detrimental to NATO's overall security interests," the report said. It did not elaborate but Moscow has threatened to respond to the shield by placing short-range Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. If a ballistic missile defense system in Europe were to be developed at all, it should be as a joint system between the United States, NATO and Russia, the committee said.

The British government's early agreement to allow two Royal Air Force (RAF) bases in Britain to be used as part of the US missile defense system was "regrettable, given that the United States' development of its system involved its abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty," the committee said. The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2002. (From the Kuwait Times)

I'd respond but it seems the Brits feel there's no such thing as a unilateral treaty? I'd better get permission from Moscow to discuss US-UK relations. After all, if the Special Relationship persists in the face of Russian opposition, that might not be a net gain for European security...

Sontomayor Is Not a Racist. She Just Says Racist Things.

2009-06-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today the NYT quoted her as saying "You can't have a racially neutral policy that affects minorities negatively, unless you have an overriding business reason".

Yeah, I remember that in the XIV Amendment.

I can't rent to people based on the math, if it turns out later that not enough blacks got apartments? After the fact?

I'm glad to support racially neutral policies that benefit minorities over majorities, such as college entrance exams. Asian Americans do disproportionately better on those. That OF COURSE is "racist" because they OWE my race slots proportionate to our standing in the last census...right? Or are you saying "wait, what race are you again" because some races are more in need of proportional representation than others...

Or maybe we just celebrate a racially neutral policy and be glad we can even propose racially neutral policy...unlike, well, anywhere else on earth really...

Now having said that, of course we don't want to call her a racist. That is, as Newt said on TV, sweating through his grin, "too direct and strong". And Direct Strength is the last thing the GOP wants to look like (calling the GOP "aimless and weak" may be, well, too direct and strong). So everybody toss Newt's tweet down the Memory Hole. He didn't say it! And don't imagine she is a racist...just that she says things that are open to interpretation...if you conceded Newt and his ilk a right to interpret...

This Can't Happen!

2009-05-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The Tamil Tiger rebels admitted defeat in their 25-year-old war with the Sri Lankan government Sunday, offering to lay down their guns as government forces swept across their last strongholds in the northeast.

The government rejected the last-ditch call for a cease-fire, saying the thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone all have escaped to safety and there was no longer any reason to stop the battle. The military said the remaining guerrillas were still fighting.

With a war that has killed well over 70,000 people nearing its end, Sri Lankans poured into the streets in spontaneous celebration. President Mahinda Rajapaksa scheduled a nationally televised news conference for Tuesday morning at Parliament, where he was expected to tell the nation the war was over.

The fate of the Tamil Tigers' top commanders remained unclear, including the whereabouts of the reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

A senior military official said troops found the bodies of several rebel fighters who had committed suicide Sunday when troops surrounded them. The bodies were suspected of being Prabhakaran and his deputies, but the military was still trying to confirm their identities, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The rebels, who once controlled a wide swath of the north, have been routed by government forces in recent months. On Sunday, Tamil Tiger suicide bombers targeted troops clearing out the last pockets of rebel resistance in the war zone and troops killed at least 70 rebels trying to flee by boat, the military said.

On Sunday afternoon, the tattered and nearly defeated rebel group offered to lay down its arms, saying it was acting to protect the wounded in the war zone.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan said in a statement. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice — to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."

Pathmanathan said the bodies of thousands of dead and wounded civilians lay on the battlefield.

Media Minister Anura Yapa dismissed the appeal, saying government forces had rescued all the civilians.

"We are looking after those people. We want to free this country from the terrorist LTTE," he said, referring to the group by its formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the rebels had not laid down their weapons. "Fighting is still going on in small pockets," he said.

With most journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the accounts of either side.

Troops on Sunday killed at least 70 rebels trying to escape the 0.4-square mile (one-square kilometer) patch of land that government troops have surrounded, the military said.

Thousands of Sri Lankans danced, set off celebratory fireworks and beat on drums in celebration Sunday after Rajapaksa made an initial declaration of victory.

"We are celebrating a victory against terrorism," said Sujeewa Anthonis, a 32-year-old street hawker.

As the fighting raged on in recent days, concerns mounted for the fate of the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the war zone amid heavy shelling and intense fighting.

But 63,000 civilians fled the area over the past 72 hours, clearing the way for the government to finish off the rebels, Nanayakkara said Sunday.

"We're relieved to hear that all civilians have come out of the combat zone," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said. More than 250,000 civilians have fled the fighting in recent months.

Rights groups have accused the rebels of holding the civilians as human shields, which the rebels have denied.

The U.N. says 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded from Jan. 20 through May 7. Health officials say more than 1,000 have been killed since then in heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces. The government denied shelling the area.

The war zone was wracked by chaos Sunday, as troops sought to mop up the final pockets of resistance, Nanayakkara said. At least one suicide bomber attacked troops in the morning, the latest in a wave of rebel attacks on the advancing forces in recent days, he said. He declined to say what damage the attack caused.

Rajapaksa raced home from a visit to Jordan after declaring victory in the war. Upon his arrival early Sunday, ministers and well-wishers cheered as he descended from his plane and Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu and Muslim clerics blessed him.

Many of those celebrating in the streets said the war had badly damaged the country for three decades.

"This victory will ensure a better future for the coming generations," said Prasanna Jayawardena, 38, who was lighting firecrackers in the streets of Colombo.

The rebels, who once controlled a de facto state across much of the north, have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils after decades of marginalization by the Sinhalese majority. Responsible for hundreds of suicide attacks — including the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi — the Tamil Tigers have been branded terrorists by the U.S., EU and India and shunned internationally.

The rebels also controlled a conventional army, with artillery units, a significant navy and even a tiny air force.

After repeated stalemates on the battlefield, the military broke through the rebel lines last year and forced the insurgents into a broad retreat, capturing their administrative capital at Kilinochchi in January and vowing to retake control over the rest of the country.

The rebels have insisted that if defeated in conventional battle, they will return to their guerrilla roots.

We have been instructed that this isn't possible. Our own Pentagon has renounced this outcome in Afghanistan, where a military solution to insurgency is considered impossible.

Except we know it ain't so!

Bravo to the Singhalese, who now can enjoy their victory and freedom from terror.

Why Pelosi Lies

2009-05-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Democrats have tried to pretend there can be no debate that Bush ordered torture. It's just torture, obviously torture, and that's why the neocons wanted it. And everybody who pretends they didn't believe it was wrong at first glance is a liar and an acessory to torture. The Army. The FBI. The Bush justice dept. All clearly evil, as opposed to Democrats...like Nancy Pelosi.

Now if Nancy Pelosi were a bloodthirsty Machiavellian, she'd have started killing people long ago. Since she hasn't, it seems safe to conclude she didn't approve of torture, as torture.

And that's the sticking point. If Nancy Pelosi knows what's going on, and doesn't cry "murder", then maybe she'd have to admit that its possible John Yoo or Donald Rumsfeld had the same impression?

Hence her lies.

I'm on Facebook!

2009-05-09T21:23:00.001-07:00

More time wastage!

I also got a new cool toy, an AIGO e5808 mp3 player. It bummed me out. It's the size of my thumb, plays mp3s, records voice memos, and works as a PDA. It cost $19 in China. Why can't we do that here? I can't get a voice-recorder blackberry for under $500.

I'm on Facebook!

2009-05-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

NYT Thinks Socialism Is Nifty

2009-05-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

From the story:

Because Chrysler was already the most marginal of what were once called the Big Three — this will be its third corporate reincarnation in a decade — Mr. Obama could afford to take a hard line. But when dealing with a company as politically sensitive and as large as G.M., the administration will have a far harder time separating the economic decisions from the political challenges.

In Chrysler’s case, a handful of the company’s 46 lenders presented the biggest roadblock. Mr. Obama could portray them as obstructionists who put their demands for repayment ahead of preserving the company.

But General Motors’ creditors number in the tens of thousands and include pension funds that bought the company’s unsecured bonds. G.M. bondholders have no claim on its plants or inventory, but they will probably attract more sympathy than Chrysler’s Wall Street lenders did.

Cheerful burble from the political side. Despite Obama's squawking, he's merely the President of the United States; a bankruptcy judge will still put a secured creditor ahead of unsecured creditors in the repayment line. THAT is why they could hold out. Whatever politics decrees, they can obey their fiduciary duty to their investors, and seek the best terms in federal court.

For now.

ABC Strikes Again!

2009-04-30T17:47:00.001-07:00

In another blow for freedom, ABC News has published the names and photographs of veterans it claims assisted the CIA in what the President blandly declares to be "torture".

I think ABC just doesn't believe in Al Qaeda anymore.

And even if these guys aren't blown up by independent extremists, they can look forward to prosecution overseas. Maybe an Eichmann style "arrest".

Oddly enough, ABC still keeps its own affairs confidential...

One of Arlen Specter's pet projects is a "shield law" for journalists. So the scum that outed these government contractors is going to get fiercer protection from harassment, prosecution and murder than loyal Americans...

Specter Jumps Ship!

2009-04-28T11:36:00.001-07:00

Thanks be to God!

Perez Hilton Is An Idiot

2009-04-23T07:03:00.001-07:00

I know that's kind of redundant talking about a man with a blowdried mohawk and neon spandex, but still.

Hilton, who also appeared on the "Today" show Tuesday, said his question was relevant and that Prejean should have "left her politics and her religion out because Miss USA represents all Americans."

Right. Because "representing all Americans" means disrespecting some of them.

Hilton should do himself a favor and just go away for a while. First he called Prejean a bitch. Then he apologized. Then he dropped the C-bomb on her. Then, in response to her grandma's comments, he said he prayed for her. He wasn't asked if he calls her a bitch or cunt in his prayers.

Now he's Mr. Good Citizen. Articulating your views on the issues can alienate more important people, so stfu.

Forcing somebody to lie to disguise their religious view is a sort of repression, ain't it? Please remember this when we're told that the gay agenda doesn't harm anybody.

Can You Hang a Pirate?

2009-04-21T17:36:00.001-07:00

The FBI declared the Maersk Alabama a "crime scene" a day before this guy was taken.

Was he advised he was a suspect?

Was he read his Miranda rights?

Did we abide by the Vienna treaty and seek out the consul of Somalia?

I mean, since the Bill of Rights follows the flag, this is our fight too...it's not as if Bush were still President...we got laws...

Another Trump O'Doom

2009-04-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

I was able to sit in on the first session of Michael Medved's and Michael Gallagher's Townhall tour.

They had a lot of fun, and it was a wholly new experience to be surrounded by a couple hundred Conservatives in California. They remain upbeat and optimistic.

I'm not joining the party.

Fed’s Flood May Leave Democracy Needing Bailout: Kevin Hassett

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- The wise men of Washington keep finding more core beliefs that we have to give up. First it was free markets. Now it’s democracy.

The financial rescue may be the least popular big-ticket government program in history. If the U.S. Treasury decides it needs more money to keep the bailout going, it is anybody’s guess whether Congress would provide it.

As a result, Treasury and the Federal Reserve have been running what feels to this lifelong student of fiscal policy like a scam.

Many economists believe that helping financial institutions turn their less liquid assets into hard cash is a key step toward returning them to good footing. The best way to achieve that in a democracy would be for Congress to appropriate the funds to acquire the assets and for Treasury to borrow the money that it needs.

But Congress is unwilling to appropriate enough money, so Treasury and the Fed have cooked up a work-around: the Fed buys the assets instead. Since the Fed exists outside of the normal budget process, no permission from elected officials is required.

Here’s a sketch of how it works. Many financial institutions have reserve accounts with the Fed. If one of them shows up with an asset it wants to ditch, the Fed takes it and ratchets up the balance in the reserve account. This means that the Fed is effectively summoning cash out of thin air to purchase the assets.

In isolation, such a move might be inconsequential. But the scale of this end-around is enormous. The Fed’s balance sheet is closing in on $2 trillion and stands ready to skyrocket above that. Last month, for example, the Fed committed to buy more than $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities.

Printing Cash

This means that the Fed is printing cash at a rate that, while not threatening historic records set in Weimar Germany, promises to create substantial inflationary pressures once the economy revives.

Therein lies the problem. At some point, when the economy begins to pick up again, the Fed will have to withdraw some of those reserves from the system before they ignite an inflation bonfire.

Traditionally, the Fed might withdraw reserves by selling some of the Treasuries it owns. But the scale of the money creation is so grand this time that the Fed might not be able to sell enough Treasuries to meaningfully affect inflation without running up against the debt limit that Congress sets when it gives Treasury the authority to borrow money.

The Fed could, in principle, sell some of the assets it has been buying -- but if these assets were liquid, the Fed wouldn’t have been buying them in the first place. Which means it may be extremely difficult to get the cash out of the economy before it is too late.

‘Fed Bills’

The Fed has cooked up a solution, though. Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, told an audience at the College of Wooster in Ohio that a possible solution would be for the Fed to issue its own securities, which might be called “Fed bills.” Kohn argued that a key attraction of these bills is that they wouldn’t be subject to the debt ceiling set by Congress.

In other words, the Fed wants to have unbounded authority to borrow money and buy assets without the inconvenience of having to explain itself on Capitol Hill.

The actions that have been taken already may indeed necessitate granting the Fed that authority. The cash is out the door, and at some point, the Fed will have to rake it back in. Congress may have to choose between giving the Fed the authority it wants, or having the mother of all inflation episodes.

Crowd Out Spending

Should the Fed’s balance sheet climbs to $6 trillion, then its losses might be enormous and threaten to crowd out spending on defense, education and health care. And it would do so without Congress ever voting on the increase in the debt ceiling that would have been required if Treasury were performing the rescue.

If the Fed receives the authority to issue debt whenever it wants to, then future bureaucrats can, in principle, play whatever financial games they want. The powerlessness of voters will be codified into law.

We can’t let that happen.

It might be that voters are too stupid to understand that government officials should get as much bailout money as they desire. The financial rescue might have been precisely what the doctor ordered.

But the public might be right as well. Our founders didn’t construct a democracy because voters are always right. Rather, they viewed democracy as better than the alternatives.

While fully legal, the steps that have been taken by Treasury and the Fed have clearly been designed to insulate those institutions from the will of Americans’ elected representatives. In that regard, the damage from these actions probably exceeds the benefits. If we accept the view that we can be democratic in some areas but not others, then democracy will wither and die.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@bloomberg.net

Story

Anybody who knows how Speer brought about German rearmament in the mid-1930s knows how practicable this can be. It is also wholly undemocratic, because there can be no legislative review nor repudiation of administrative currency without completely destroying the currency. Not just sparking a recession, but destroying faith in the issuing government and its currency.

The key fact of our times is that voters, given the power to choose, choose free money every time. And the idea we'll ever pay it back is merely ideology. Every cent of federal debt can be renounced by renouncing the issuing government. It's what we did in 1797 when the dollar wasn't worth a continental. It's taken 212 years to ignore the lesson learnt, but we've done it. There's bipartisan consensus that borrowing recklessly is NECESSARY, and I just don't believe we're going to elect successive governments and suffer repayment.

My focus is more towards preparing for the Revolution than conserving the present.

Obama Allows Navy to Win

2009-04-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

This marks the second time I felt like I owe Obama an apology. I don't apologize for thinking a Democrat President is going to let a bunch of pirates bowl over the US Navy under their noses, because in 35 years I've seen a couple. I owe Obama an apology for not really believing he'd let the Navy do the job it's been doing for 200 years.

Oh, the first occasion was joining the criticism of Obama for giving the Queen an iPod. She gave him an autographed photo of herself, which is a diamond mine below an iPod as a gift. An iPod at least shows some human touch and he's to be congratulated for showing more class than the Queen of England.

Hope

2009-04-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I read TIME or any article out of it. It is either inane fluff or inane agitprop.

I'm not sure where to place an article snarking Obama for going to Iraq yesterday. Iraq belongs to BUSH, you see. Obama has to keep his distance.

Something I'll remember when I'm lectured about disloyalty to MY president.

Hope is a virtue and despair is sinful renunciation of the love of God. The love of God for each of is truly personal, however. We tend to forget that, even in the United States, the land of individual rights. We've come to endorse "the greatest good for the greatest number" and the idea of self is officially frowned upon. But in fact our salvation is individual.

I am reminded of that, this Holy Week because I pray daily for hope and faith and charity and then calculate my country is rotting. Our system isn't promised anything. Our system doesn't have to work, and the real power of the Sacred is transcending our improvised, temporary politics. And hope is confidence in our ability to succeed in remaining loyal to the Sacred.

You Miss a Month

2009-04-02T07:24:00.001-07:00

And where do you start to pick up?

Obama federalizes everything moving, puts a hard Left crew into Washington, swings a wrecking ball at 20 years of foriegn policy coalitions and humiliates us to our opponents, raises taxes and scraps the promised cuts...

I'm still adjusting, after six months, to being fully employed and learning how to commute 80 miles a day to a home without internet. The use of the Blackberry to blog, will have to do for a while to come.

Whirlwind

2009-03-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

Appearing on a popular Turkish television chat show, Hadi Gel Bizimle (Come and Join Us), Clinton tackled a few diplomatic questions but the main focus was on her personal life, such as when she "last" fell in love.

"It was so long ago, with my husband," she told the studio audience, adding that she first met former President Bill Clinton in the spring of 1971 when they were at law school.

"We have been talking to each other and enjoying our life together ever since," she said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandid … nnel=1045

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's.

Clinton has set herself a grueling pace on visits to Egypt, Israel and Brussels soon after touring the Far East, attending dozens of meetings and giving speech after speech, with little time worked into her schedule for sleep.

Tiredness appeared to show Friday when she answered questions in front of 500 young Europeans at the European Parliament, where she was the highest-ranking U.S. visitor since the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

A veteran politician, Clinton compared the complex European political environment to that of the two-party U.S. system, before adding:

"I have never understood multiparty democracy.

"It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy."

The remark provoked much headshaking in the parliament of a bloc that likes to trace back its democratic tradition thousands of years to the days of classical Greece.

One working lunch later with EU leaders, Clinton raised more eyebrows when she referred to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who stood beside her, as "High Representative Solano."

She also dubbed European Commission External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner as "Benito."

Still, Clinton has been well received in Brussels, where the Obama administration has been viewed as a breath of fresh air after the unpopular leadership of George W. Bush. His secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, often drew protests on her travels.

Fellow foreign ministers stood and applauded Clinton's presentation at a meeting with NATO counterparts Thursday and extra space had to be set aside for a spillover audience of 800 at the European Parliament.

Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering was effusive in his praise, saying that with the new administration, the United States and Europe once again "share the same values."

"What you said mostly could have been said by a European," he told Clinton after she fielded questions ranging from climate change to energy security and aid to Africa and one on gay rights from a participant wearing an "I love Hillary" t-shirt.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNew … 06?sp=true

GENEVA—After promising to “push the reset button” on relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to present Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a light-hearted gift at their talks here Friday night to symbolize the Obama administration’s desire for a new beginning in the relationship.

It didn’t quite work out as she planned.

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift—a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word “peregruzka” printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise. Instead of "reset," he said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

Clinton and Lavrov guffawed. “We won’t let you do that to us,” she said.

Despite the shoddy translation work on the U.S. side, Clinton and Lavrov emerged from their meeting a few hours later saying they had accomplished their initial goal—reducing the frostiness in U.S.-Russia relations that had taken hold by the end of the Bush administration.

At a joint press conference afterward Clinton and Lavrov called each other by their first names and said they had conducted wide-ranging discussions on Iran, missile defense, Afghanistan, and nuclear arms reduction. They agreed to intensify preparations for opening a new round of nuclear arms negotiations to replace the one that expires at the end of this year.

They each emphasized that major disagreements and disputes remain on matters such as U.S. support for Georgia, the former Soviet republic invaded by Moscow last year, and on an announced sale by Moscow of advanced air defense missiles to Iran. The improvement in tone was unmistakable compared to the icy encounters that Lavrov used to hold with Clinton’s predecessor.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19719.html

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broached the issue of human rights with Chinese leaders on Saturday, but emphasized that the global financial slump and other international crises were more pressing and immediate priorities.

U.S. Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton meets Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Beijing.

The United States will continue to press China on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights, she told reporters accompanying her.

"Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis," she told reporters in Seoul, South Korea.

Clinton made China the last and most crucial stopover in her Asia trip, signaling the new administration's first attempts to lay a foundation toward a China policy. It is Clinton's first trip to China as secretary of state. Watch Clinton talk to CNN about Asian tour »

She met with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday and discussed the framework for further high-level and mid-level discussions.

"It is essential that the United States and China have a positive, cooperative relationship," Clinton told a group of reporters.

Earlier Saturday, Clinton met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing, where they discussed what they regard as the new defining Sino-U.S. strategic goals: the world economic crisis, regional security and the environment.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/21/clinton.china.asia/

I cannot recall a more craven, pathetic, thoughtless foriegn policy from the United States in my lifetime. Since Hillary may just be expertly articulating what her boss tells her to say, perhaps that doesn't make her a bad Secretary of State. Her boss may just be a very bad President.

2009-02-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

HT to Drudgereport.com

Below is the text of the statement issued on Monday on the U.S. banking system by the U.S. Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Reserve:

''A strong, resilient financial system is necessary to facilitate a broad and sustainable economic recovery. The U.S. government stands firmly behind the banking system during this period of financial strain to ensure it will be able to perform its key function of providing credit to households and businesses. The government will ensure that banks have the capital and liquidity they need to provide the credit necessary to restore economic growth. Moreover, we reiterate our determination to preserve the viability of systemically important financial institutions so that they are able to meet their commitments.

''We announced on February 10, 2009, a Capital Assistance Program to ensure that our banking institutions are appropriately capitalized, with high-quality capital. Under this program, which will be initiated on February 25, the capital needs of the major U.S. banking institutions will be evaluated under a more challenging economic environment.

Should that assessment indicate that an additional capital buffer is warranted, institutions will have an opportunity to turn first to private sources of capital. Otherwise, the temporary capital buffer will be made available from the government. This additional capital does not imply a new capital standard and it is not expected to be maintained on an ongoing basis. Instead, it is available to provide a cushion against larger than expected future losses, should they occur due to a more severe economic environment, and to support lending to creditworthy borrowers. Any government capital will be in the form of mandatory convertible preferred shares, which would be converted into common equity shares only as needed over time to keep banks in a well-capitalized position and can be retired under improved financial conditions before the conversion becomes mandatory. Previous capital injections under the Troubled Asset Relief Program will also be eligible to be exchanged for the mandatory convertible preferred shares.

The conversion feature will enable institutions to maintain or enhance the quality of their capital.

''Currently, the major U.S. banking institutions have capital in excess of the amounts required to be considered well capitalized. This program is designed to ensure that these major banking institutions have sufficient capital to perform their critical role in our financial system on an ongoing basis and can support economic recovery, even under an economic environment that is more challenging than is currently anticipated. The customers and the providers of capital and funding can be assured that as a result of this program participating banks will be able to move forward to provide the credit necessary for the stabilization and recovery of the U.S. economy. Because our economy functions better when financial insti tutions are well managed in the private sector, the strong presumption of the Capital Assistance Program is that banks should remain in private hands.''

Copyright 2009 Reuters.
Story.

An amazing lie.

Everybody knows most major banks have bundled mortgages and derivatives they paid hundreds of billions of dollars to acquire. They can't even identify most of the loans. They weren't audited before they bought them and they haven't since. These banks haven't been forced to. Now, since nobody knows really how bad these loans are, or what kind of losses will be faced, nobody wants to buy them.

The value of an asset nobody will buy, is zero. Regardless of what you paid for it, it's zero.

Unlike tracts of open land, which were at the heart of the Savings and Loan crisis, bad mortgages and insurance against losses from bad mortgages are never going to be worth much again. We now know they're a timebomb; sooner or later, a housing slowdown will arrive, and the holders of such assets will get burnt. Because these assets are losers, they cannot form the basis of a profitable government buyout plan.

Everything that has been done by government since September has been a desperate attempt by the banks to avoid having to report they are basically insolvent. In this fraud, our government has been fully complicit.

We have a golden chance to compartmentalize the failure to the for-profit financials. Instead, by proposing nationalization, Washington is going to export the pain to every household that buy food and fuel with dollars. Because the dollar itself is at stake here.

"The viability of systemically important financial institutions so that they are able to meet their commitments" is not at issue. These institutions are not capable. It would be better for the system if they failed, and we were left to start over with credit unions and foriegn lenders. There's too much opportunity for responsible lenders to have credit vanish from America. And there's no excuse for creating inflation just to protect the top 1% from their own failure.

Make no mistake. These guys are going down. It's just a question of taking the rest of us down with them.

Remember This Day

2009-02-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Inflation at the wholesale level surged unexpectedly in January, reflecting sharply higher prices for gasoline and other energy products.

The Labor Department said Thursday that wholesale prices increased by 0.8 percent last month, the biggest gain since last July and well above the 0.2 percent increase that economists had expected.

The acceleration was led by a 3.7 percent surge in energy prices with gasoline prices jumping by 15 percent, the biggest gain in 14 months.

Even outside the volatile food and energy sectors, wholesale prices showed a bigger-than-expected increase, rising by 0.4 percent. Economists had expected a slight 0.1 percent rise in so-called core inflation.

Food prices were well-behaved last month, falling for a second straight month. The 0.4 percent decline in January reflected lower costs for beef and dairy products which offset gains in the price of vegetables and chicken products.

In addition to the big jump in gasoline costs, prices for home heating oil were up by 5.4 percent and liquefied petroleum gas, which is often used to heat homes in rural areas, surged by 20.2 percent, the biggest jump in more than six years.

Outside of food and energy, there were increases for pharmaceuticals, light trucks and passenger cars and civilian aircraft.

Despite the big jump in wholesale prices in January, economists do not believe inflation is on the verge of becoming a problem, given the country's deep recession.

That downturn, which began in December 2007, has been keeping a lid on inflation pressures, which has given the Federal Reserve the room to slash a key interest rate to nearly zero without having to worry about kindling inflation.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told an audience at the National Press Club on Wednesday that he saw little risk that the Fed's efforts to fight the recession and a severe financial crisis would trigger inflation presusres.

He said that once the economy begins to rebound and financial markets stabilize, the Fed will be able to quickly reverse the actions it has taken before inflation becomes a problem.

Story

Bernanke is going to eat this quote.

Yes, the Fed may be able to raise interest rates by 2%. That will not stave off inflation.

Supposedly, according to Nobel Laureate economist and political hack Paul Krugman et al., inflation is not even POSSIBLE at this point. It's just a Republican talking point! We gotta worry about DEFLATION!!!!

This was not supposedly possible. But here it is, already.

These guys do not know what they are doing, their stupid attempt to shore up the fatcats at the expense of the dollar is dooming the dollar.

And I just heard our Legislature passed a fat tax hike in the midst of a recession. Way to go, morons.

Remember this day. This a day the Left went on record. They will push you to forget it. They will argue they had no idea at the time of the consequences. That will be a lie. Remember this day.

We Need Less Parental Involvement in Education

2009-01-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

To the grade grubbers go the spoils. And the grade grubbers in this case are rabble-rousing parents in Virginia's Fairfax County. Residents of the high-powered Washington suburb have been battling the school district's tough grading practices; chief among their complaints is that a score of 93% gets recorded as a lowly B+. After forming an official protest group called Fairgrade last year and goading the school board into voting on whether to ease the standards, parents marshaled 10,000 signatures online and on Jan. 22 gathered nearly 500 supporters to help plead their case. After two hours of debate, the school board passed a resolution, a move critics consider a defeat in the war on grade inflation.

At most schools in the U.S., a score of 90 earns you an A, but in Fairfax County, getting the goods demands a full 94. Merely passing is tougher too, requiring a 64 rather than a 60. Nor do students get much help clearing those high bars if they take tougher courses. Compared with how many districts weight GPAs for Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses, Fairfax County's half-point boost is peanuts. The result, protesters say, is that Fairfax kids are at a disadvantage on multiple fronts: snagging good-driver insurance discounts (which often factor in a student's GPA), earning NCAA eligibility, winning merit scholarships and — oh yeah — getting into good colleges.

Link

I'd rather hire a schmuck that could only manage a C average than some jerk who got politically active over his "right" to have a B read as an A.

But something tells me these brats are bound for government jobs.

The Reign of Mouch

2009-01-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

"Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds 'defrozen' upon plea of 'essential need': the government would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfactory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked: 'what constituted proof?' 'What constituted need?' 'Essential-- to whom?'"--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

I first read that passage 11 years ago. I never thought I'd see it become US policy for two administrations.

Gran Turino

2009-01-10T12:02:00.001-08:00

A good flick...but you should ignore the Dirty-Harry ad campaign. This is the guy who gave us "Misty".

The Loyal Opposition, in Principle

2009-01-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

McConnell said he could support the $500 tax credit that Obama has proposed for working individuals. "This is the sort of thing we could have bipartisan agreement on," said McConnell. "Republicans, by and large, think tax relief is a great way to get money to people immediately."

He proposed further tax cuts, such as lowering the 25 percent individual tax rate to 15 percent. And McConnell identified stimulus flashpoints that are likely to galvanize Republicans in the weeks ahead.

The GOP leader derided Obama's goal of creating 600,000 new government jobs as part of the 3 million workforce expansion that he wants the stimulus to help achieve. "That's about the size of the post office workforce," McConnell said. "Is that a good idea?"

He challenged another proposal to provide grants to hard-hit states. Such aid should come in the form of loans, McConnell said, as "it will make them spend it more wisely."

And McConnell downplayed prospects for extending unemployment benefits to part-time workers while providing health care coverage for unemployed people -- costly efforts that have met stiff resistance in past debates.

"Those are very big, systemic changes," McConnell said. "Do we in the name of stimulus want to make long-term, systemic changes that will affect spending every single year? I think that's at least worth considering, having hearings about, having bipartisan discussions."

But McConnell also predicted the bill could pass overwhelmingly if the current conciliatory mood holds, giving Obama a crucial first win. "If they pursue a fair process, in the Senate at least, where fairness is typically the rule, and give both sides an opportunity to have input . . . he's likely to get significant support."

This has been going on for a week, the Republican push to get a foot in the door on the Second Bailout.

It sounds more like they want a share of the pork, rather than killing the bill.

This panic is recurrent; we'll be here again, and preventing the market from forming new more effective combinations won't promote progress.

Maybe somebody will form a party around sense?

Canary in the Mine, Chirping

2008-12-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

Few really bad ideas escape being floated in the New York Times:

In the case of the Treasury, the money comes from the same wellspring that has been financing American debt for decades: Investors in the United States and around the world — not least, the central banks of China, Japan and Saudi Arabia, which have parked national savings in the safety of American government bonds.

Americans have gotten accustomed to treating this well as bottomless, even as anxiety grows that it could one day run dry with potentially devastating consequences.

The value of outstanding American Treasury bills now reaches $10.6 trillion, a number sure to increase as dollars are spent building bridges, saving auto jobs and preventing the collapse of government-backed mortgage giants. Worry centers on the possibility that foreigners could come to doubt the American wherewithal to pay back such an extraordinary sum, prompting them to stop — or at least slow — their deposits of savings into the United States.

That could send the dollar plummeting, making imported goods more expensive for American consumers and businesses. It would force the Treasury to pay higher returns to find takers for its debt, increasing interest rates for home- and auto-buyers, for businesses and credit-card holders.

...But most economists cast such thinking as recklessly extreme, akin to putting an obese person on a painful diet in the name of long-term health just as they are fighting off a potentially lethal infection. In the dominant view, now is no time for austerity — not with paychecks disappearing from the economy and gyrating markets wiping out retirement savings. Not with the financial system in virtual lockdown, and much of the world in a similar state of retrenchment, shrinking demand for American goods and services.

Since the Great Depression, the conventional prescription for such times is to have the government step in and create demand by cycling its dollars through the economy, generating jobs and business opportunities. That such dollars must be borrowed is hardly ideal, adding to the long-term strains on the nation. But the immediate risks of not spending them could be grave.

“This is a dangerous situation,” says Mr. Baily, essentially arguing that the drunk must be kept in Scotch a while longer, lest he burn down the neighborhood in the midst of a crisis. “The risks of things actually getting worse and us going into a really severe recession are high. We need to get more money out there now.”

Had the government worried more about limiting spending than about the potential collapse of the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it might have triggered precisely the dark scenario that consumes those who worry most about growing American debt, argues Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The most frequently voiced worry about the bailouts is that the Fed, by sending so much money sloshing through the system, risks generating a bad case of rising prices later on. That puts the onus on the Fed to reverse course and crimp economic activity by lifting interest rates and selling assets back to banks once growth resumes.

...But that, as most economists see it, is a worry for another day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/weekinreview/28goodman.html?pagewanted=2&ref=weekinreview

This is wrong. I suppose its the price we pay for 1/3 of the US population being born since 1980. Most Americans, economists included, don't remember the bad old days of the 1970s.

The cutoff for the failure of the US bond market is NOT global disbelief in our power to pay back the bond. We're constitutionally required to do so, and so default is more than just a ministerial decision in this country.

The US bond market will fail when dollar inflation and dollar depreciation is so much higher than our interest rate, that, even after we've paid ten or thirty years of interest in full and on time, the Japanese or European investor comes close to losing money or breaking even, or, appears likely to do so. When we take valuable Euro or Yen and turn them into soft American dollars at a rate much lower than Bonn or London offers, then we're screwed.

And that's right where we're headed, even if we insist it's a problem for another day.

The experts have insisted for over ten years that interest rates need to be below 5% for sustained economic growth. That's nowhere near high enough to whip inflation. When inflation comes, and we waste a decade to fight it, then we're going to have very low growth and intense deficits.

Better a sharp recession now and for a year. We took that medicine in 1982 and our economy was better for it.

The other side of the coin is that it is NOT 11:55 on the Doomsday Clock, a nuclear war among the G8 seems remote, and nobody needs to keep America on all cylinders for their own survival.

I'm told I'm naive to think we can operate without our top tier of commercial lenders, that the private sector can't possibly do enough. It seems more naive to me to imagine that the rest of the planet will bury their wealth here, for our benefit, as we squander it faster than we can borrow.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-26T11:52:00.000-08:00

Blogger wouldn't let me on to post yesterday...

Went to 10:30 am Mass and it was in Korean. A very interesting service and a reminder that we're really a global church, which was comforting.

Koreans hold the collection basket up front and the congregation walks up with their envelopes...a good fundraising technique.

Better Instincts?

2008-12-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

"I think the party has to take a hard look at itself," Powell said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. "There is nothing wrong with being conservative. There is nothing wrong with having socially conservative views — I don't object to that. But if the party wants to have a future in this country, it has to face some realities. In another 20 years, the majority in this country will be the minority."

Powell, who crossed party lines and endorsed President-elect Barack Obama just weeks before the election, said the GOP must see what is in the "hearts and minds" of African-American, Hispanic and Asian voters "and not just try to influence them by… the principles and dogma."

"I think the party has to stop shouting at the world and at the country,"Powell said. "I think that the party has to take a hard look at itself, and I've talked to a number of leaders in recent weeks and they understand that." Powell, who says he still considers himself a Republican, said his party should also stop listening to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

"Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Powell asked. "Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"

Since when is voting our race, appealing to a better instinct?

We can't approach ethnic minorities as Americans, taxpayers, employers, workers, parents? They've got something in their hearts and minds beyond that? Something that blocks any appeal to reason and non-racial politics?

Really?

I wonder if Colin Powell has ever lived in California. That's what not having a white majority looks like, and its why a liberal state enacted a ban on affirmative action based on race--you have nonwhites suing the state because other nonwhites get a "disproportionate" share of the pie.

It doesn't work. That's why we endorse and maintain the "principles and dogma" that oppose such stuff--the alternative doesn't work. You can't call yourself pragmatic if you're going to fail.

And I'd have a better opinion of Powell and most other moderates if they stopped arguing that conservatives, uh, "seem" to appeal to bigotry and racism and such, and started dealing with what we actually say. But then, they'd have to listen.

God Bless Jim DeMint

2008-12-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

[Hat tip: TheHill.com]

“The Capitol Visitor Center is designed to tell the history and purpose of our nation's Capitol, but it fails to appropriately honor our religious heritage that has been critical to America’s success. While the Architect of the Capitol has pledged to include some references to faith, more needs to be done. You cannot accurately tell the history of America or its Capitol by ignoring the religious heritage of our Founders and the generations since who relied on their faith for strength and guidance. The millions of visitors that will visit the CVC each year should get a true portrayal of the motivations and inspirations of those who have served in Congress since its establishment.

“The current CVC displays are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society’s problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans’ rights ‘are endowed by their Creator’ and stem from ‘a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.’ Instead, the CVC’s most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, ‘We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.’ This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation’s real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings. As George Washington stated clearly in his first inaugural address:

‘…[I]t would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes: and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success, the functions allotted to his charge.’

“The fundamental principles of the freedom we enjoy in this country stem from our Founding Fathers’ beliefs in a higher power, beliefs put forth in the Declaration of Independence and manifest throughout our Constitution,” said Senator DeMint. “If we cease to acknowledge this fact, we may cease to enjoy some of the freedoms we take for granted. We must not censor historical references to God for the sake of political correctness. And we must truthfully represent the limited form of government the Constitution lays out so that our ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ So help us God.”

This is now considered 'fringe ideology' to too many wielding political, social and economic power in this country.

Awesome!

2008-11-26T18:55:00.000-08:00

Wow, I have been just too dead tired or isolated commuting from Orange County to Colton to keep current with blogging...

But I thought I'd test blogger with the new Blackberry...and you're reading this!

I can't do the massive quoting but I can check in!

Awesome!

Resuming the Opposition

2008-11-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Well it was a nice eight-year interlude, wasn't it?

Actually it feels like it ended a bit early...

There's a lot of bad advice coming our way as to how to react. From Powerlineblog:

But this column is addressed to politically active conservatives who fear the worst and are now wondering how to cope. The key, as always, is to maintain one's equilibrium. To this end, I offer, unsolicited, the following suggestions:

Pray that President Obama achieves greatness in office. Our overriding concern must always be the country we love, not the success of a party or an ideology.

Don't assume that Obama is always wrong. Judge all of his positions on the merits; don't conclude that a position is wrong just because he takes it. Republicans tended to fall into this trap with President Clinton. For example, some opposed our military involvement in Kosovo based not on an analysis of the situation there, but rather on a knee-jerk anti-Clinton response. This approach is irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Fellas, one thing remains clear as glass: most Americans don't vote. Most Americans would like the Right and the Left to SHUT UP. If you don't think our positions, our "ideology", is vitally necessary to keep this country from real collapse down the road, then give them what they want. I don't tout what NEEDS to be done except because I care about the country. When you run around saying you value country above ideology, it means your plans aren't that important, even to you. If that's true, go away and let us worry about Socialism.

Clinton PLANNED the Serbs would fall down begging for a deal because they were being lightly bombed by the great, the all powerful Wizard of Oz. That was the PLAN. When they didn't fold in the first week we had a general lack of ammunition, because they hadn't PLANNED for a 8-day bombardment. It lasted 90 days and will probably be remembered as the stroke that launched the new Russia. The mission continues because having bet NATO's moral credibility on the issue, America can't admit that NATO is confused, stagnant and incapable of resolving it even after 10 years.

There's plenty of sound reasons to oppose that war, even without Clinton's dumb lies to sell it --"Two world wars started here". Don't throw rocks about the motives that lead people to a CORRECT conclusion.

Be loyal in your opposition. As my blog partner Scott Johnson puts it, paraphrasing Steven Decatur: "May he always be in the right; but our president, right or wrong."

I have no idea what that means. He has the job. BUSH is our president at the moment, you see how much that moves anybody.

From what will probably be my last visit to HughHewitt.com:

The feds can, of course, print money and it isn't a bad thing to do when deflation is even a remote possibility. Significant public works --if they can get built over environmentalist objections-- are a great place to start if you are a new president seeking to cement your coalition, as is some aspect of health care "reform," though that will call out every deep division among Dems as well as thousands of lobbyists.

No one I have asked agrees with me, but I think the Obama Administration would be wise to try and jam through a quick immigration reform package that both regularizes the vast majority of illegal aliens already here but also delivers on the fence that the Bush Adminstration has, inexplicably, managed to barely get underway. Pushing on the immigration issue means delivering to one of the key constituencies that gave him the White House while also tempting some Republicans on the margin of the debate to renew their self-destructive rhetoric on the issue. Leading your institutional opponents into another meltdown while rallying your broad base seems to be a sure winner for Obama.

...The GOP had better be up and ready to respond with substance and a coordinated voice to whatever is unveiled as the new agenda of the new president. Every initiative will be an opportunity to distinguish and define the key differences between the parties moving forward. Letting the back benchers define the GOP on any issue --and especially on immigration reform if it surfaces-- will be disastrous for a party in need of political discipline and intellectual renewal.

I think Hugh is in the wrong party, if "party discipline" means defining the majority of the party as "the backbenchers" and "jam"ming policies down their throats.

Hitler Sings

2008-10-30T19:32:00.001-07:00

I'm not quite sure why this is sooooo funny.

Al Smith Dinner--Apolitical?

2008-10-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

Not to TIME.

You can either fight liberals or assist them. They are of the Leftist tradition of George Orwell, who said "All writing is political; because the statement 'I am not a political writer' is itself political."

Another Victim of the Bush Economy

2008-10-12T12:02:00.001-07:00

I got hired!

Temp to hire, possibly.

So now I am a paralegal: a person who holds himself or herself
out to be a paralegal, who is qualified by education, training, or
work experience, who either contracts with or is employed by an
attorney, law firm, corporation, governmental agency, or other
entity, and who performs substantial legal work under the direction
and supervision of an active member of the State Bar of California,
as defined in Section 6060, or an attorney practicing law in the
federal courts of this state, that has been specifically delegated by
the attorney to him or her.

I'm very glad I landed. Already from a week's work, I see how valuable experience is in this profession.

This is a lifetime career for me; that is, I expect to work at it until I drop. My retirement plan is not to retire. I firmly believe, as even Republicans insist the federal government is the guarantor of failed enterprise and can pick the winners and losers in the economy wisely, that my generation will not be allowed to enjoy sufficient wealth to stop working. That 401(k) will not be left tax-free for your enjoyment. It just won't.

Then Again

2008-09-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not! God Bless the House!

"I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose." Reagan, July 17 1980

Stick it to them, guys!

Spitting Mad

2008-09-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

I am very angry we're going to bail out failed banks rather than take a restorative recession.

This isn't socialism. Socialism is taking over industry. Making industry government's partner is fascism. It's what Italy and Germany did. It's what Putin does in Russia. It's the route we're going.

There's enough capital worldwide to resume liquidity in the US market regardless of what Federal Reserve members do. It's a phony threat. In six months Dubai and South Africa and Asia could form a new commercial bank with no ties to the mortgage crisis. Faster, if government helped cut the red tape. We don't owe failed banks a place at the table.

If these banks are too big to fail, NOW, and we get equity in them, then what? Are we gonna lose the money?

This is not the crisis of the century. This "Hock your shirt for a pig in a poke you sell to a sucker" ponzi-blowout has happened three times in 21 years. It will happen again, and we're going to say up front that Uncle Sucker is responsible to cure it. Because our equity partners are too big to fail and too vital to restructure.

We're going to destroy the dollar. I no longer have to worry about Social Security collapsing, because I don't think the government that issued it is going to survive. It is a whole lot easier to repudiate a Constitution and the debts of its regime than sustain decades of stagflation. Check the record. Look at France, look at Germany.

Forty years. I give the Constitution of 1797 forty years, on the outside.

God in Heaven, this is STUPID.

Busy At Nothing

2008-09-10T12:39:00.001-07:00

Still looking for a paralegal job. While I miss the income, the idea of seriously hunting while trying to sleep all day would have been futile.

As a California resident, my vote for McCain would be a meaningless gesture, and I'm still inclined not to make it. But with a real conservative on the ticket, I'm more optimistic about the future than I was at any time in this campaign season. When did that start, 2005?

Still Blogging

2008-08-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well it's been some time! I was hoping to have a new job lined up by now. Haven't yet, will keep trying.

I meant to post something sooner on the rape of Georgia by our strategic partners. I thought we defeated Kerry so we wouldn't be led around by the nose like this. To tell Georgia, who stood by us in Iraq when the UN ran, that we need to go to the Security Council to get permission to help them out, is obscene.

Lesser Evil?

2008-07-08T00:11:00.000-07:00

I've been slogging away at the hotel and trying to line up a paralegal job. But through the haze some new, dumb arguments of the center-right have oozed through.

"There's no debate about man-made global warming. It's real. The question is, to what extent it happens. And we can do something to lessen it. That's the science."

"People want a balance, they don't want hardline ideology anymore."

"For right now the public wants entitlements in place. We can adjust/correct/reverse them after we win the election. Then we can make the case to the American people as to what needs to be done in the long-term."

PFUI!!!

Anthropomorphic Global Warming was dropped on us as a whole theory, that is, that human pollution was creating a greenhouse atmosphere, and that we could physically observe it to be happening. Now that's fairly universally exploded, proponents are reduced to arguing that a possible statistical correlation makes up for the total lack of observable physical phenomena.

I always wondered why, if human pollution caused greenhouse effects, why there wasn't belts of heat matching the belts of smog. Smog certainly has areas of intense density and sparsity--you see lots of smog over Mexico City, and you don't see much smog over the central Atlantic. The bulk of pollution in Africa, for instance, is centered on the capital cities-- Third World countries generally see the bulk of the population explosion centered around colonial trade centers, and not in the bush. But there isn't a band or belt of higher temperatures. The argument was that at some level, a model predicted a uniform raising of global temperatures. Well, the atmosphere doesn't work that way. Look at Pinatubo. Look at Chernobyl. Look at the smog in Mexico City.

Statistical models have been telling us for nearly a century that Americans have 2.3 or 2.1 kids. That fraction of a child exists only in the statistical model--and in silly jokes--but when it comes to AGW we're suddenly told that a statistical fluke is very real, and it's meteorology that's flawed for not finding it in the real world. Nuts. The map is not the territory.

If there's no physical process that produces AGW, then statistical models that say it must be out there, are just wrong. And we don't need to form national consensus around phlogiston.

"People want a balance, they don't want hardline ideology anymore."

This is sadly a growing hardline ideology on the Republican side. The Democratic party isn't losing voters to the new moderation--it's growing its rank and file. What the center-right doesn't get, is that I can be a Not-Democrat by calling myself an Independent, and I don't have to try to excuse any Republican to family and friends. That's where the GOP is stuck--a majority of Americans don't like Democrats, but they won't rally behind Republicrats who will do what the Democrats do, only sloppily and haphazardly. There seems to be only one medicine for this malaise, and it is constant defeat of people who plan on losing the argument.

AGW, entitlements, earmarks...proven failures, open wounds...

The center-right, in forging a "New" party, propounds two basic axioms:

1. Republicans can't shape public opinion, they can only react to it. (the "demographics timebomb" crowd is especially adamant on this one.)

2. Let's just win, and then worry about policy. Entitlements will bankrupt us, but let's just win. AGW isn't real, but let's just win.

A political machine that will do the wrong thing, to wield power, is capable of any excess. There's nothing a Socialist Democrat would do out of sincere zeal that a New Republican would not do out of calculated greed.

And that being true, who's really the "lesser evil"?

A Troubling Story

2008-06-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

"It's hard being a member of the mean party," says Bob Borochoff, a lifelong Republican who was on Capitol Hill this week asking legislators to support bills that will benefit disabled people like his son, Bradley, and returning veterans suffering from mental illness. There's no shortage of horror stories when it comes to health insurance, but Borochoff's tale on behalf of his son took him on a political journey, as well, and his disillusionment is emblematic of the uphill climb the Republicans face in November.

Borochoff's tidy life as a restauranteur and happily married father of three, including newborn twins, was shattered in 1988 when his 3-year-old son Bradley was bitten by a mosquito, which triggered encephalitis, a swelling of the brain and then uncontrollable seizures, leaving him disabled. The family's insurance premiums jumped from $300 a month to $2,500 a month. Borochoff hired a lawyer to fight the increase but was told he had no choice, so he paid the premiums. A year later, a notice arrived in the mail that the insurance company was canceling his policy along with coverage for his 100 employees.

Well known in the restaurant business in Houston, Borochoff had political connections, and he worked every one of them, even securing an audience, along with other small-business owners, in the White House with President George H.W. Bush, all to no avail. In desperation, he contacted Sen. Ted Kennedy, telling a Houston Post reporter at the time, "I can't stand Ted Kennedy," but he hoped he would help. Kennedy intervened and the next day Borochoff got a call saying the insurance for him and his employees would be reinstated. It would be nice if the story ended there, but Bradley's care became more expensive. Medicine not covered by insurance was $2,800 a month. Borochoff's wife divorced him and in 2003, a single father with three teenagers, he filed for personal bankruptcy and received food stamps for six months.

Kennedy's office contacted him several times over the years asking him to testify, which he did only rarely because he didn't always agree with Kennedy's approach. He was once a strong backer of Tom DeLay, and he counts himself a personal friend of DeLay's successor and the two other Republican congressmen representing the Houston area. But he's angry with them and his party over health care and immigration, and that's what brings him to Washington. He's rebuilt his life and now manages four Tex-Mex restaurants in Houston. He serves on the board of a local agency that provides mental-health services to the poor, and the tug he feels is reflected in his political donations; once almost exclusively to Republicans, now he estimates 40 percent goes to Democrats.

This is one man's story but in a sense he is everyman.

That's from Eleanor Clift's latest column. (HT: Realclearpolitics.com).

I'm old-fashioned. I'm used to my leftist tales of American despair to be about dead children and bosses reduced to living under bridges.

Here's a guy, who gets hit with a tragic illness in his child. Bills mount up. His child gets the treatment. He gets divorced. His business collapes. He files for bankruptcy and wipes out the medical debt. He resumes his career as an entrepreneur. The boy lives.

He's mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore.

The traditional notion of America the Land of Promise, where a hard-worker can fulfill his obligations in life without some despot on his back, is pretty much dead to half (or more) of the country. Somebody Else ought to be helping, probably the State. It's not fair that a Borochoff should pay his own way, or, stumbling, be forced into bankruptcy. It should have been taken care off. All the other Borochoff's ought to have been bled a little to handle it.

Who's opposing this sort of thinking these days? Even Mitt Romney, the Businessman's Republican, had the bright idea of forcing everybody in Massachusetts to buy insurance they didn't need so there was sufficient profits in the kitty to pay out everybody.

That kind of robbery isn't sustainable. TAANSTAFL, and we forget that at our peril.

I Miss My Blog Anniversary Again

2008-06-02T03:39:00.000-07:00

5/12/08. Again too busy and forgetful to honor THE day.

I've been browsing past blogging, the stuff from summer '06 about the failure of the GOP majority seems painfully prescient. I began this blog as an unemployed goober in a joint apartment with my pal, Vinse, looking to boost some skills and vent about the anti-war movement. Four years later and Vinse is nearly two years gone to rest, I've been standing guard through the late watches of the night for over three years, and it looks like my steadfast faith in the Iraq war project is going to be vindicated. Sometime during this summer I'll step out from behind the hotel counter and start work as a paralegal, most likely in some other city, and perhaps move the whole shebang yet again.

So here's to another four years of blogging, maybe... because this whole Internet thing is getting dated, by the hyperactive standards of the Computer Age.

Me, In Passing

2008-06-01T02:55:00.000-07:00

Garrison Keillor can't stand Rolling Thunder.

I can't stand Garrison Keillor, really.

Somehow a person associates Memorial Day with long moments of silence when you summon up mental images of men huddled together on LSTs and pilots revving up B-24s and infantrymen crouched behind piles of rubble steeling themselves for the next push.
You don’t quite see the connection between that and these fat men with ponytails on Harleys.

That is odd, because people rode Harleys on WW2 battlefields but there were darn few French Impressionists.

It took 20 minutes until a gap appeared and then a mob of us pedestrians flooded across the street and the parade of bikes had to stop for us, and on we went to show our patriotism by looking at exhibits at the Smithsonian or, in my case, hiking around the National Gallery, which, after you’ve watched a few thousand Harleys pass, seems like an outpost of civilization...A work of art can lift you up from the mishmash of life, the weight of the unintelligible world, and vulgarity squats on you like an enormous toad and won’t get off.

For 20 minutes you were exposed to some of the best industrial design on the planet, and felt nothing but annoyance. Sculpture in steel and leather and chrome, a centenarian design improved with computers and increasingly complex and ornate gearing and pipework that increases function without sacrificing elegance. A modern Harley is about the same dimensions as the first to roll out of the factory, but is so much more capable. You can sit on one and cross a continent. You could ponder that, too, that our culture and civilization puts these resources and wealth not into a giant pipe organ or a series of fountains for priests or princes to possess and flaunt, but in a practical machine to carry an average person around the country. But instead your thoughts were on the level of a three-year-old waiting in line for a frogurt. A very ill-mannered and impatient three-year-old.

If anyone cared about the war dead, they could go read David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War or Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945 or any of a hundred other books, and they would get a vision of what it was like to face death for your country, but the bikers riding in formation are more interested in being seen than in learning anything. They are grown men playing soldier, making a great hullaballoo without exposing themselves to danger, other than getting drunk and falling off a bike.

Or you might talk to the fat men in ponytails. They were in the jungle, many against their will, and had friends who died alongside them there. Being American teens in the 1960s, perhaps they and their friends enjoyed tinkering with bikes before they went to Nam. Now the survivors are old and have the leisure and wealth to take 10 days to ride across this country as their friends can never do again, to honor them.

I am the boatman and maybe you are, too — it is quiet on the water, we lean on the oars, and we are suspended in time, united with every other man, woman and child who ever voyaged afar.

Unless they voyaged on two wheels, apparently.

Sen Coburn: GOP In Denial

2008-05-28T01:30:00.001-07:00

From the WSJ:

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

Compassionate conservatism's starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the "other" is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives are conservatives because our policies promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government.

Compassionate conservatism's next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor's possessions. Spending other people's money is not compassionate.

Regaining our brand as the party of fiscal discipline will require us to rejoin Americans in the real world of budget choices and priorities, and to leave behind the fantasyland of borrowing without limits. Instead of adopting earmarks, each Republican can adopt examples of government waste, largess and fraud, and restart the permanent campaign against big government.

Republicans can tear up the "emergency spending" credit card and refuse to accept any new spending whatsoever, including for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, until Congress does its job of eliminating wasteful spending. The federal budget contains a vast unexplored area of offsets. My office alone has identified $300 billion in annual waste. Borrowing from the next generation when we haven't done our job of oversight is unconscionable.

Regaining our brand is not about "messaging." It's about action. It's about courage. It's about priorities. Most of all, it's about being willing to give up our political careers so our grandkids don't have to grow up in a debtor's prison, or a world in which other nations can tell a weakened and bankrupt America where we can and can't defend liberty, pursue terrorists, or show compassion.

It is too bad Tom Coburn is being drowned out by all the GOP "leadership" promising that they "got the message" and will be changing any day now to reflect the "current needs" of the American people.

The depth of the problem is demonstrated by Coburn's last paragraph, which he felt compelled--or was impelled--to tack on:

John McCain, for all his faults, is the one Republican candidate who can lead us through our wilderness. Mr. McCain is not running on a messianic platform or as a great healer of dysfunctional Republicans who refuse to help themselves. His humility is one of his great strengths. In his heart, he's a soldier who sees one more hill to charge, one more mission to complete.

So much for spurning the Great Whosis coming down off the mountain with the agenda! While McCain is running, the GOP is the vehicle of McCain. Maybe after November, they'll be ready to absorb what Coburn is pitching here without distractions or equivocations.

McCain at Wake Forest University

2008-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

From the speech:

Of course, in the daily routine of Senate obstructionism, presidential nominees to the lower courts are now lucky if they get a hearing at all. These courts were created long ago by the Congress itself, on what then seemed the safe assumption that future Senates would attend to their duty to fill them with
qualified men and women nominated by the president. Yet at this moment there are 31 nominations pending, including several for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that serves North Carolina. Because there are so many cases with no judges to hear them, a "judicial emergency" has been declared here by the
Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. And a third of the entire Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is vacant. But the alarm has yet to sound for the Senate majority leadership. Their idea of a judicial emergency is the possible confirmation of any judge who doesn't meet their own narrow tests of party and ideology. They want federal judges who will push the limits of constitutional law, and, to this end, they have pushed the limits of Senate rules and simple courtesy.

As my friend and colleague Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma points out, somehow these very same senators can always find time to process earmark spending projects. But months go by, years even, and they can't get around to voting on judicial nominations -- to meeting a basic Senate duty under our Constitution. If a lobbyist shows up wanting another bridge to nowhere, or maybe even a courthouse with a friend's name on it, that request will be handled by the Senate with all the speed and urgency of important state business. But when a judicial nominee arrives to the Senate -- a nominee to preside at a courthouse and administer justice -- then he or she had better settle in, because the Senate majority has other business and other priorities.

Things almost got even worse a few years ago, when there were threats of a filibuster to require 60 votes for judicial confirmations, and threats in reply of a change in Senate rules to prevent a filibuster. A group of senators, nicknamed the "Gang of 14," got together and agreed we would not filibuster
unless there were "extraordinary circumstances." This parliamentary truce was brief, but it lasted long enough to allow the confirmation of Justices Roberts, Alito, and many other judges. And it showed that serious differences can be handled in a serious way, without allowing Senate business to unravel in a chaos of partisan anger.

There were not threats of a filibuster of nominees. There were actual filibusters of nominees--the modern sort, where the Senate president agrees that any topic can be brought to the floor without cloture except the subject of the filibuster.

There were not "threats" to change Senate rules to prevent a filibuster. There was a serious national campaign to make 2004 Senate races a referendum on the plan. Money and volunteers crossed state lines to ensure enough Republican Senators to implement the scheme. And despite the victory of Republicans and the efforts of the Republican leadership to fulfill their election promises, McCain & Co. torpedoed the idea for the "Gang of 14".

You can't name a judge or justice confirmed under the Gang of 14 who would have failed after the Nuclear Option. You can name several who went under the bus because the filibuster is still a possibility. It is because each and every nomination can result in a filibuster, that there is delay in nominations--the leadership must rally a supermajority every time. Ted Olson thinks this was just a "tactical maneuver" by McCain--perhaps he should give thought to why Democrats signed onto the same maneuver? They surely had no desire to get good judicial conservatives confirmed.

Perhaps McCain's Senate caracoles are not directly relevant to his possible performance as President; but he thinks we ought to remember it, because he brought it up. And he'd like some applause for it, too.

Let the verdict be McCain's:

It is part of the discipline of democracy to respect the roles and
responsibilities of each branch of government, and, above all, to respect the verdicts of elections and judgment of the people. Had we forgotten this in the Senate, we would have been guilty of the very thing that many federal judges do when they overreach, and usurp power, and betray their trust.

Drifting like the Tumblin' Tumbleweeds

2008-04-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

There's nothing less conducive to political blogging than the sense of proportion given by a three-week gap in posting...

[ed. Given by? Gained from? Earned?--"earned" is active. "Earned through".]

I knew when I registered for two courses of night school in one quarter that it would be a challenge.

It is. I'm relearning how to be tired all the time. Now if only the sense of discipline regarding schoolwork would kick into high...

Medellin v Texas

2008-03-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court ruling is here.

Basically, when we signed the Vienna Treaty entitling foriegn nationals to consular meetings upon arrest, the treaty did not create a method for enforcement in our domestic courts, and Congress did not create statutory law doing so.

In the absence of those laws, President Bush can't order a state court to review its rulings in light of the Vienna Treaty.

This isn't getting much play in the media, because the accused are undoubtably guilty of child murder and rape, and because Congress doesn't want to touch the issue of greater guarantees for foriegn nationals within state courts with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps after the election.

I'm interested in the Mexican reaction to this case. We'll see if the bawling starts.

Scandalmongery

2008-03-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt is busily shoving the idea that Barack Obama is guilty of skullduggery with Tony Rezko. He's got a link to the National Review Online:

Barack Obama would not be living in the Chicago mansion that he calls home if it had not been for Tony Rezko. The previous owner was only willing to sell the mansion property along with an adjacent vacant lot. Rezko's wife agreed to buy the vacant lot while the Obamas bought the mansion. This purchase occurred in 2005, after Obama became a U.S. Senator...Did Tony Rezko buy Obama's house? No. But he made it possible for Obama to buy his house. He did him a favor to the tune of $625,000. What, exactly, did Rezko expect in return from the U.S.
Senator?

This just stinks.
What did Rezko get? Well, for one thing, he got a personal tie to the junior Senator from his state. He did him a favor. He helped him get the home of his choice.
But the other thing he got, was title to a parcel of land worth $625,000.
And if the day came, as it has, when U.S. Senator Barack Obama told him to get stuffed and don't call anymore, Rezko still has title to a parcel of real estate worth over half a million, in a good neighborhood.
Tony Rezko did not help Senator Obama buy a house.
Rezko helped him buy that house.
Legal value of the difference: $0.
If Rezko had backed out of the deal, and the seller had refused to sell the house to Obama, forcing him to buy a home of equal value elsewhere, he might have been able to sue Rezko for actual expenses of finding a new house. Maybe.
Definitely not the value of that house, definitely not any pain or suffering, definitely not $625,000.
From the facts, it is just as plausible to argue that indicted realtor Tony Rezko did a million-dollar favor to the seller, enabling him to cash out his real estate more quickly.
Am I naive? I don't think so. I know many wealthy men find it shrewd to enrich themselves in partnership with politicians, and we ought to watch out for it. Obama himself says in hindsight, he wouldn't have done the deal. I can believe that; he's tied in with Rezko now.
But when that happens, helping a politician buy a residence by becoming a party to the deal, that isn't corruption. It might easily lead to corruption, but it's not corruption. Obama isn't doing this all over the state, or even in the city of Chicago. He wanted a home.
I think Hugh Hewitt knows it darn well, but he's on a mission to smear a political opponent. Again.
There were two reasons I didn't come down behind Romney. For one thing, I didn't believe he was so happy to be a Massachusetts Republican and suddenly saw the light of mainstream conservatism just in time to become President.
The other was, how sleazy his supporters were. It was Dean Barnett, on Hewitt's site, who assured us as a Boston Republican that Romney had known all along abortion was murder, but just went along with the pro-choice crowd in Massachusetts to advance the Party. This, to Barnett, was a testament to the steadfastness of Romney's core values, that they could remain intact after a decade of submerging them in pragmatic politics. To guys like me who were in the street in 1993 against the Freedom of Choice Act, it told another story...
Only a matter of months ago, Hewitt was shouting that McCain was too old for the job. "Great American. Lousy Senator. Terrible Republican." After Romney dropped out, Hewitt plunked for McCain without an apology. Refused to give one. "I don't apologize for playing hardball."
Well here's the hardball. Rezko. Indicted. Obama. Money. Land Corruption?--who can prove there ain't? Gerahty in NRO again:

Nothing that we know of so far. We didn't know until a month ago that Rezko toured the property with Obama before the purchase. If there was anything scandalous going on, it seems safe to assume that these guys would try to keep it secret.

Hardball...and it's low and inside. I've already walked.

Go With What You Know

2008-03-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a
coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates
said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even
when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the
campaign's woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who
valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.

If she didn't stress loyalty and familiarity, she would have been convicted in federal court some time ago.

Situation Normal...

2008-03-03T03:24:00.000-08:00

The colors and the sidebar are restored, somewhat. I can now resume sporadic blogging as usual.

I do prefer this new template, though.

And if the extended quotes work legibly... Somewhat.

What the Heck Happened????

2008-03-02T01:41:00.001-08:00

For some reason, my beautiful custom template job went blooey and I lost the black text to my posts. Perhaps Blogger dropped Trebuchet MS Verdana as a font type.

Whatever the reason, by switching to a generic template I rescued the post content. I copied the full HTML of my other, happier template and emailed it to myself.

So now I have a project, to figure how to edit this generic template to restore my old header and sidebar goodies. I hope.

Blood on the Water I

2008-02-27T00:10:00.000-08:00

I am sure there'll be more Blood on the Water posts to come. Sadly, unlike 2004 it is the "conservative" candidate who is a dead duck.

Senator John McCain is not competent to win a Presidential election.

Ed Morrissey thinks this is about "Barack Hussein Obama". It isn't. It's about saying anything negative and critical, "disparaging", about "honorable Americans" named Obama and Clinton.

Yes, Cunningham called Sen. Obama by his full name three times. He also called him "Barack Obama" a fourth time, when he conjured up an angelic vision of "Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House", and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader". Ed Morrissey makes a distinction that Senator McCain does not. It's not just about a middle name. The whole critique is repudiated as "inappropriate".

I agree Cunningham laid it on with a trowel here, calling Obama a Chicago-style hack who will steal our money and get us all killed. That is, however, the basis of the post-World-War conservative movement: Liberalism is inherently corrupt, confiscatory and incapable of protecting the United States from its global enemies. And if you agree with that, but think name-calling is bad---"ism"s don't hold office, individuals do. "Fascism" and "Communism" never gave an order to anybody.

Anybody who does any surfing of the Right-Wing blogosphere knows that a lot of people backing McCain do it from "fear and dislike" of the alternatives, not because they rave about John McCain. In a time when "agenda" is a sinister term, John McCain is touted as the most "electable" barrier to the Democrat agenda, while apparently having sold America on the idea that he has no agenda of his own. I am a former Republican largely because too many within that party think simply opposing liberal Democrats is adequate, and preferrable to enacting a positive program of reform and renewal. McCain, today, did not even do that much, and promised to roll over again down the road. That approach is going to forfeit the "Anybody But A Socialist" faction as well as the conservatives.

Dole got less than 40 million votes in 1996. It may get that bad in 2008.

2008-02-12T12:20:00.001-08:00

The Terri Schiavo case is a good example of what is "tearing the country apart".
Here we see a strict, organized ideology, which holds to a universal truth, unalterable, holy, righteous, that demands total obedience in every situation. Schiavo could not be killed absent her directive. Period. Exclamation point!
And I do see, I really can, how people could feel that is not right, not correct, not holy, is arrogant, preachy, oppressive, mean, cruel, harsh, unfair, unAmerican and a sure loser. I can see that.
BUT
In practical terms, either the woman was killed or she wasn't. Either she died or she didn't. There wasn't a gray area between life and death, or reasonably, a shade in terms of precedent. We couldn't kill Schiavo and promise never to kill anybody in that situation ever again; or agree everybody could die in that situation except Terry Schiavo. It was definite and binding and determinative.
Nobody on our side of that issue will argue we were moderate, compromising, broad-minded. We wanted Terry Schiavo spared death by torture because it was right and necessary that always be the law.
What is tearing our country apart is the fiction that doing the direct opposite of our "ideology" is not an opposite, equally oppressive, equally immoderate, equally arrogant, equally strict ideology. What the opponents want to pretend is that striking us down every time is somehow "moderation".
If the Center-Right were truly moderate, broad-minded, avoiding the "evils" of knowing what to do all the time, they would always be a little bit unsure of whether the Religious Right wasn't onto something on any issue. Gay marriage--maybe. Abortion--maybe. No-fault divorce--maybe. If they didn't have their minds made up they'd argue each one separately. But they don't. They declare us wrong and dogmatic to boot.
The opposite of an ideology is not anarchy. The direct, constant opposite of an ideology is a contrary ideology.
I think involuntary euthanasia is wrong. That is a moral point of view. My morality guides my politics--I want involuntary euthanasia banned. Enough moral politics and I have an ideology--a philosophy of proper government.
If you want to challenge the moral basis of my ideology, and say abortion is fine and involuntary euthanasia is fine, that's part of our American freedom to have a different morality. But government policy cannot be unsettled. Either your opposite moral views are enacted or are mine. That fusion of policy issues with your morality means you have created a philosophy of how government out to be run--an ideology.
Only the Center-Right doesn't seem capable of admitting it. They're just being pragmatic instead of dogmatic. They're just leaving matters open. They're just restoring the American balance. They're avoiding the pitfalls of totalitarian government which flow from imagining you always know what is right.
Baloney. They're crusaders of a different faith.
"Get the morality out of politics" is putting a different morality into politics. And coupled to this inability to call that quacking bird a duck, is the strange notion that not only can you not enslave a free man, you can't engage him on a debate about right and wrong.

Sickening!

2008-02-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

In a chamber once known for cordiality if not outright gentility, McCain has battled his fellow senators for more than two decades in a fashion that has been forceful and sometimes personal. Now, with the conservative maverick on the brink of securing his party's presidential nomination, McCain's Republican colleagues are grappling with the idea of him at the top of their ticket.

"There would be a lot of people who would have to recalibrate their attitudes toward John," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a supporter of Mitt Romney's who has clashed with McCain.

Many Senate Republicans, even those who have jousted with McCain in the past, say their reassessment is underway. Sensing the increasing likelihood that he will be the nominee, GOP senators who have publicly fought with him are emphasizing his war-hero background and playing down past confrontations.

"I forgive him for whatever disagreements he has had with me. We can disagree on things, but I have great admiration for him," said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee who has often argued with McCain over government spending.

As president, one of McCain's most critical relationships would be with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a necessary ally in the conflict with a Democratic-led Congress. But their relationship has been gravely tested... But McConnell said last week that he would have no trouble with McCain as the nominee or as president.

"We've had a great relationship since," McConnell said. "All of them [McCain's fights] have been respectable and entirely within the traditions of the Senate."

...Despite the senator's heresies on taxes, immigration and campaign finance, Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the Republican campaign committee, said McCain could appeal to independent voters.

"You'll have more Democrats running away from Hillary Clinton than you'll have Republicans running away from our nominee," he said.

...After spending six weeks away from the Senate, he showed up for final negotiations on a fragile immigration bill, leading Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) to question where he had been. McCain responded by swearing at Cornyn loudly and repeatedly, according to witnesses.

Cornyn, who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, doesn't expect to befriend McCain anytime soon but said he will happily stump for him as the nominee.

"We've had our moments, but we've gotten over that and moved on down the road," Cornyn said. "You're talking about people who are professionals. You don't have to link arms and sing 'Kumbaya' to get things done."

I'm not about to give total trust to the Washington Post, even on direct quotes, but I don't hear of a flock of angry denials of misquotes here.

Such melting doesn't come from strength and confidence. It comes from desperation.

"You'll have more Democrats running away from Hillary Clinton than you'll have Republicans running away from our nominee," he said.

That's the Republican game plan? The other guys are more demoralized than we are?

There's a gangrene odor coming off the Grand Old Pachyderm. McCain will take well-deserved blame as the chief architect of the failure. But he's got willing accomplices who won't be remembered. You see some of them named here.

Grow Up. Vote For McCain.

2008-02-03T01:12:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd pass that on. Zu Befehl!

If we don't elect McCain, Hillary and/or Obama will do irreversible damage to America, and the Democrats will win forever! And you conservatives will have to answer to posterity!

Heard that one lately?

Isn't that basically a center-right, Republican-partisan admission of failure? The GOP is incapable of changing minds. It can only hold fast against an irreversible tide of liberalism.

Why? How so?

The Big Tent of the Republican Party seems adamant there are no moral choices in politics, that we have to be pragmatic and practical. Raising taxes, for instance, is not the most popular choice, but it remains an option that must be considered--hence time limits on tax cuts. The notion that tax cuts are morally right, better than raising taxes, that the taxes come from people's money that is rightfully theirs, that taxes are a necessary wrong imposed on the public, is just a point of view that Republican policy makers are free to take or leave.

The problem there is that a moral code is not just a guide and a measure, but also a goal. The moral barrier to a life of theft not only puts our past behavior in perspective, and instructs our current choices, but it drives us to create a future where we earn honestly and are not reliant upon or tempted by theft. And when we abandon a moral code, and declare choices amoral, we not only "free" our present, but we unwrite our past and cast our future adrift.

If it is not morally right to keep taxes low, then it is not morally wrong to raise them. If we do not have to avoid future occasions of higher taxes, then we do not have to organize our budgets to do without that confiscated wealth. We will make pragmatic, practical solutions for our present prodigality. And that will mean chaos down the road.

And that's...OK. Not as if we had a moral crusade or something.

Heath Ledger, R.I.P.

2008-01-23T00:19:00.000-08:00

I hope this had nothing to do with it. But I'm afraid it probably did.
From IMDB:

The Joker's character is based on his first two appearances in the comic books, as well as his portrayal in the graphic novel "The Killing Joke." To prepare for the role, Heath Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month researching the character and developing his performance, which he claims is based upon Sid Vicious and the character of Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971). Ledger found the role extremely difficult, and suffered insomnia as a result.

Something's Phony Here

2008-01-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

Kay returned to California to start Golden State Fence in 1984 with five employees and was on a roll by the early 1990s. Almost from the start, he relied on illegal immigrants. Nearly all his workers took advantage of the 1986 amnesty but he soon struggled to fill jobs. He shunned applicants who came in off the street, instead relying on Mexican
employees to recruit family and friends.
"They were more trustworthy and more apt to stay long term," Kay told The Associated Press at his office in Riverside, a sparsely furnished room with a white linoleum floor and an empty desktop.
...Installing fences is punishing labor, especially in Southern California's desert heat and rocky soil. Kay requires job applicants to raise 60 pounds over their heads and move wheelbarrows of dirt. About 75
percent of his workers are Hispanic. But Kay compensated his employees well. New hires start at $35,000 a year and jump to about $60,000 after three years. Full-time workers get health and life insurance, sick leave and at least two weeks vacation.
...As they pored over files, investigators discovered a
government audit in 1999 that found 15 employees were illegal immigrants, including three they had just arrested. ....Kay says he ignored the warnings not to rehire the men: "They had been working for me a long time." ...Kay and his son-in-law pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring at least 10 illegal immigrants over a 12-month period. "They give you some ground, you give them some ground,"
Kay says. "That's the best I could get."
...When Kay arrived at his sentencing in March, U.S. District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz said his initial
instinct was to send him to prison. But Moskowitz noted Kay's strong work ethic and support from employees who overflowed the courtroom
into the hallway. The judge said he couldn't ignore that Kay and McLaughlin treated employees like
family. After a federal raid forced them to fire about 200 illegal immigrants, they paid each two weeks' severance, though they were not legally obligated.
..."Are these the poster children for being the first ones to get jail time?" Moskowitz asked. "I think the answer is no."
YES. YES. YES.
Put this in any other context. An employer offers between $35,000 - $60,000 a year, plus full benefits, for entry-level manual labor. He is particularly impressed with Smurfs as employees because they have wonderful qualities. Three out of four of his workers are Smurfs. Most of his workers are friends and relatives of Smurfs who referred them in. He treats his Smurfs "just like family". Non-smurfs brought in to work "just don't work out".
Isn't that boss a prime target for an employment discrimination lawsuit? Who's kidding who? Every non-Smurf who keeps his job is blocking a $35,000 job from a Smurf brother or cousin or classmate. Funny how they "just don't work out", ain't it?
And the fact that these are not Smurfs, but actually people who have no legal right to work here, and he knows it, is just insult to injury.
This is also why I would like Congress to fight hard for mandatory sentencing laws. I did not vote for Judge Moskowitz. Nobody voted for Judge Moskowitz. His arbitrary sense of which guilty people really deserve the statutory penalty, has no remedy.

Me, Sic Transit

2007-12-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

Electability , like legacy, is an inanity. It’s a mark against us, that they get so much air play. It has no meaning. It has no existence. And more than half the experts are wrong about its presence. Did Michael Dukakis really have more “electability” than Gary Hart? Or did they both lack it and nobody caught on? Who was more “electable”, Gore or Bush the Younger? Did Carter and Bush the Elder possess “electability” and then lose it?

Any of these guys could win in 2008. And all of them could lose. Certainly none of them, and nobody across the aisle, has seized America as unstoppable necessity, the one whose election will legitimize our electoral process, whose defeat would indicate a failure of the American system. The voters are about as settled as five-year-olds at a pool. Nobody is going to capture the nomination without a majority of voters throwing over their current stated position. There’s no basis to declare X has the loyalty of the base, and will grab the independents--but Y does not. X, Y and Z haven’t even got a third of the partisan vote tied in.

Let’s cease arguing that the Force is with McCain or Romney or Giuliani--and get back to what we expect a President to do for America in 2009.

Getting the Old Time Religion

2007-12-18T00:47:00.000-08:00

I'm seeing a lot of complaint about how much of the election cycle is given to faith and religion and who's got it and who's faking and who's a kook.

There's really not much earthly matters they can discuss intelligently. Immigration? Energy? War? The budget? I guess they can't come right out and say "It depends who controls Congress, and by what majorities"...but they might as well.

2008 is about winning the power to make whatever quid pro quo is possible for four years, and staking out a position in advance isn't the way to bargain. We didn't have to end up here as a country, but the organized parties insist it be run that way.

And looking ahead, if the value of being a "Republican" or a "Democrat" doesn't mean anything in terms of votes on legislation or policy, but just a sharing of campaign cash...then the power of the two main parties cannot be sustained, in the long term. The reason a state governor or state legislator has to be one of the two Big Parties is to tap into their national organization and campaign chest and voter pool.

But if Ron Paul can go out and raise $6 million dollars online, and fellows like Schwarzenegger can make hay of opposing the national party on almost every issue--then we'll see more state elections become nonpartisan contests. Not all, perhaps not most, but it will become increasingly possible. And that undermines the notion of a "Democrat voter" and a "Republican donor". It will make federal elections more vulnerable to independent challenges.

Should be an interesting century.

Planning for Defeat in Iran

2007-12-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

From Newsweek, a depressingly stupid tale:

It has been a tough few years for the old Washington foreign-policy
establishment, the sort of moderate, non-ideological types who were reared to
believe that partisanship stops at the water's edge. [Secretary of Defense]
Robert Gates gives them hope that the pendulum is swinging back, that it is
possible to forge a foreign policy by consensus and common sense and not wishful
thinking or righteous zeal.

Right now, Gates is seen as the best insurance that the Bush
administration (read: Vice President Cheney) will not leave a legacy of ashes in
Iran. According to many former and current government officials who have
conferred with Gates publicly and privately, he takes the conventionally
accepted view that Iran should not be allowed to build nuclear weapons. He
pointedly refuses to rule out military force while calling for more-effective
economic sanctions. But the secretary of Defense has also told associates that
bombing Iran would create chaos in the oil region, unleash terrorism on Europe
and possibly the United States, and serve to strengthen, not weaken, the fragile
and fractious Iranian regime—while only postponing for a year or two its nuclear
ambitions.

To avoid that scenario, Gates has used his considerable bureaucratic
skills to lower the temperature on Iran. He has cautioned military commanders in
the Gulf to guard against the risk of accidents that might give a provocation
for war—the capture of a pilot, say, or a collision at sea. In recent weeks U.S.
commanders in Baghdad have intentionally sought to praise Tehran for being more
cooperative in Iraq. According to two separate sources who declined to be
identified discussing military plans, Gates has also pared down strike options
against Iran, cutting the targets to its nuclear facilities alone. It is a
mistake to make too much of this—the military is constantly being asked to
devise new options for civilian authorities. But Gates has also allowed the top
brass to make public their qualms about attacking Iran, which makes it that much
harder for the White House to steamroll them. This is classic Gates: no noisy
confrontations with the likes of Cheney, just low-key, pragmatic steps to avoid
sparking a conflagration.

This is wishful thinking of the worst sort.
If Iran is not stopped from building nuclear weapons, they will do so.
A nuclear Iran will "create chaos in the oil region, unleash terrorism on Europe and possibly the United States, and serve to strengthen, not weaken, the fragile and fractious Iranian regime" with impunity.
Faced with a nuclear Iran, nobody will give a damn whether the DoD was run with a pragmatic smirk in the final years of the Bush Administration. Not the American people, not our former allies among the Gulf Arabs, and not the phony cowards Gates is smooching up to. After that strategic failure, the best he can hope for is historical anonymity, and let the blame fall on President Bush.
Our strategic goals cannot be achieved by inertia and inaction. That is what the Democrats desire, and Gates seems ready to give it to them.
We are very badly served.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T02:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, I peek out to wish you and yours a blessed Thanksgiving.

I tried to find video of the President visiting the troops in Iraq in 2003. It appears to have vanished from the Internet. Sad.

Down the Memory Hole

2007-11-02T01:48:00.001-07:00

Still here, btw. Just focusing my consciousness on work and school atm.

The NYT did a ten-page article on how evangelicals aren't solidly Republican. A lot of direct quotes. A lot of mention about how they feel betrayed by the Bush Administration. The war is given as a big reason; also runaway spending, the environment, and racial issues.

Not one word about illegal immigration.

Which leaves the evangelical Right oriented right alongside the readership of the NYT...

Novak: 38% Is Too Strong To Ignore!

2007-10-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

A really pathetic column, even for Robert Novak. Don't count Rudy out--he's got 27% of churchgoers behind him!

"The most surprising recent national polling result was an answer given by Republicans who attend church weekly when Gallup asked their presidential preference. A plurality chose Rudy Giuliani, a Catholic who in 1999 said: "I don't attend regularly, but I attend occasionally." Their choice raises deep concern among prominent conservative Republicans who feel it would be a serious mistake for leaders of the religious right to scorn the former mayor of New York...In an aggregation of 1,690 interviews with Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in four Gallup surveys during August and September, Giuliani led with 27 percent (to Fred Thompson's 24 percent) among those who said they attended church once a week. Even more startling was the result of interviews with adult voters without regard to party preference. Among churchgoing Catholics, Giuliani led with a plus-38 favorable rating (trailed by Sen. John McCain with a plus-29 and Clinton bringing up the rear with a minus-9)."

Does Novak consider President Bush to be mighty, with those kinds of numbers?

I know there's the expectation that if nominated, the ranks would swell. But Giuliani could double that 27% and still only get about half the religious vote.

The strongest arguments against Rudy Giuliani, are the lame, lying, phony arguments put up for him by his "friends". It's no secret what Robert Novak thinks of the religious Right, and it makes me more certain what Giuliani would do to us.

Moron of the Year

2007-10-02T17:14:00.000-07:00

Or possibly of all time.

BOSTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- A Washington taxi driver faces a criminal charge
because he joked about being a member of al-Qaida to an airline worker in
Boston.
Ermiyaf A. Asfaw, an Ethiopian national, was returning to Washington from a visit to his girlfriend Saturday when an Air-Tran check-in employee asked him about stickers on his luggage from Dubai. He told her he had been in the United Arab Emirates.
"No. I'm al-Qaida. I'm with them, and I'm here to blow things up," he said when she asked if it had been a trip for business or pleasure.
Asfaw has been charged with making a false bomb threat. A judge set bail Monday at $1,500.
"This airport is not going to tolerate this type of behavior," said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority. "This type of action is completely dumb."

Haeresis

2007-09-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

One thing you hear about Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky from just about everybody, is how brilliant and fair and sound he is as a legal scholar, even if he does sound off as a liberal moonbat.

I'm not so sure.

The furor over Chemerinsky's nomination, retention, and dismissal as founding Dean of the UC Irvine law school continues. The Los Angeles Times continued to write on the UCI cha-cha on September 14, 2007 [boldface added]:

The criticism [contra Chemerinsky] included a letter from the California Supreme Court criticizing a Chemerinsky opinion piece in The Times.
In an interview Friday, [California Chief Justice Ronald M.] George said Chemerinsky made a "gross error" that was "very troubling" to the court in an Aug. 16 article that criticized U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. [UCI Chancellor Michael V.] Drake offered him the job that same day.
George, an appointee of Gov. Pete Wilson, said that Chemerinsky wrote incorrectly that only one state, Arizona, provided lawyers for death row inmates who want to file a constitutional challenge, known as a habeas corpus petition, to have their sentences or convictions overturned.
George said he was surprised Chemerinsky would make such a mistake. The court asked Court Clerk Frederick K. Ohlrich to write a letter to the editor to The Times to correct the piece.
"None of us could understand how somebody, let alone someone who is very bright and a fine legal scholar, could get that wrong," George said. "It had nothing to do with his philosophy. I certainly feel he is an outstanding legal scholar and a fine advocate."
...George gave a copy of the letter to [prominent Orange County attorney Tom] Malcolm.
Malcolm said he gave the letter to Drake. "It disturbed him, but I don't think it was the reason for his decision." Chemerinsky was angered by the letter when told about it by The Times.
"If the justices sent a letter to UC Irvine with the goal of influencing the dean process, that's inappropriate," he said.
He also stood by his article. "My op-ed was accurate in saying California does not comply with the federal standards for providing counsel to those on death row in their post-conviction proceedings, and Arizona is the only state deemed in federal district court to have met the federal standards."

His August 16, 2007 op-ed [boldface added]:

Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is about to adopt an unnecessary and mean-spirited regulation that will make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court...It's at this stage, which includes habeas corpus petitions, that serious flaws in trial are often exposed, including the kind of mistakes that lead to the execution of innocent people.

Almost no states provide counsel in these crucial proceedings. So the 1996 law laid out this deal: If a state starts providing lawyers to capital defendants, it will get the benefit of a shorter, six-month statute of limitations.

So far, only Arizona has complied. Other states have decided that it's not worth the expense.

...Gonzales, it has been widely reported, is about to certify California and other states as being in compliance with the 1996 law, in essence just giving them the six-month statute of limitations. But these states have done nothing that this law requires. Everywhere but Arizona, death row inmates still have to pay for their attorneys (unlikely), get pro bono representation (difficult) or represent themselves (unwise). Any "certification" is a lie.

Here is the relevant section of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996:

Sec. 2261. Prisoners in State custody subject to capital sentence; appointment of counsel; requirement of rule of court or statute; procedures for appointment
`(a) This chapter shall apply to cases arising under section 2254 brought by prisoners in State custody who are subject to a capital sentence. It shall apply only if the provisions of subsections (b) and (c) are satisfied.
`(b) This chapter is applicable if a State establishes by statute, rule of its court of last resort, or by another agency authorized by State law, a mechanism for the appointment, compensation, and payment of reasonable litigation expenses of competent counsel in State post-conviction proceedings brought by indigent prisoners whose capital convictions and sentences have been upheld on direct appeal to the court of last resort in the State or have otherwise become final for State law purposes. The rule of court or statute must provide standards of competency for the appointment of such counsel.
`(c) Any mechanism for the appointment, compensation, and reimbursement of counsel as provided in subsection (b) must offer counsel to all State prisoners under capital sentence and must provide for the entry of an order by a court of record--
`(1) appointing one or more counsels to represent the prisoner upon a finding that the prisoner is indigent and accepted the offer or is unable competently to decide whether to accept or reject the offer;
`(2) finding, after a hearing if necessary, that the prisoner rejected the offer of counsel and made the decision with an understanding of its legal consequences; or
`(3) denying the appointment of counsel upon a finding that the prisoner is not indigent."

"A finding that the prisoner is not indigent". Means-testing. A state legislature, or Supreme Court, can restrict the offer of a government-paid lawyer to the "indigent", and it can set up a scheme to determine who is "indigent".

My point here and now is not whether Dr. Chemerinsky is totally wrong about the 180-day statute of limitations rule, or its likely effects, or the process of certified compliance.

My point--and that of the California Supreme Court--is that his opposition has crossed a line into misstatement of federal law, and misrepresentation of California as out of compliance with that law. And he continues to do so, in another op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2007:

"What was it about my views that was too controversial? Only one example was mentioned: an Op-Ed article I wrote on these pages criticizing a proposed regulation by then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to shorten the time death row prisoners have to file their habeas corpus petitions. There are more than 275 individuals on death row in California without lawyers for their post-conviction proceedings. The effect of the new rule would be that many individuals, including innocent ones, would not get the chance to have their cases reviewed in federal court.

...The truth is that a person's politics should play no role in the decision to hire them for a faculty or administrative position. All that matters is that the individual be committed to creating an institution where all viewpoints will be respected and flourish. That is what academic freedom is all about."

I would add the proposition that the nominee be practically sound in their field of discipline. Chemerinsky has not been. This is not the first rabble-rousing op-ed where he abuses his authority as a legal scholar to promote a false, but politically favorable, conclusion.

"Arizona is the only state deemed in federal district court to have met the federal standards"--well sure, if Arizona is the only state that anybody sued federally over their compensation mechanism under the 1996 Act.

I think Chief Justice George did get one thing wrong, when he said "None of us could understand how somebody, let alone someone who is very bright and a fine legal scholar, could get that wrong,...It had nothing to do with his philosophy." I can guess why a liberal opposes means-testing, and it does have to do with his philosophy.

So there we stand, with Erwin Chemerinsky defiantly wrong, and telling everybody from the California Supreme Court on down where to go. Do we need that sort of thing at the University of California? No!--Berkeley has already got Angela Davis, and seniority hath its privileges.

Andrew Sullivan Gets Sloppy

2007-09-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

Surfing around I became aware Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece for the Atlantic that is become infamous on the left side of the Net. It's titled "Verschärfte Vernehmung" and it breathlessly concludes:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The
methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

To arrive at this startling indictment, Sullivan quotes from a Gestapo memo on "sharpened interrogation":

4. The sharpening can consist of the following, among other things, according to circumstances: simplest rations (bread and water); hard bed; dark cell; deprivation of sleep; exhaustion exercises; but also the resort to blows with a stick (in case of more than 20 blows, a doctor must be present)

Sullivan also mentions that "waterboarding" and hypothermia were later added to the roster. He lists several accounts from Norway, where hypothermia and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques were used, described as torture, and death sentences handed down.

Sullivan wants to draw specific attention to the definition of torture handed down by the Norwegian court:

Notice the classic, universal and simple criterion used to define torture in 1948 (my italics): "In deciding the degree of punishment, the Court found it decisive that the defendants had inflicted serious physical and mental suffering on their victims, and did not find sufficient reason for a mitigation of the punishment in accordance with the provisions laid down in Art. 5 of the Provisional Decree of 4th May, 1945. The Court came to the conclusion that such acts, even though they were committed with the connivance of superiors in rank or even on their orders, must be regarded and punished as serious war crimes."

Sullivan's point is clear: these activities are so heinous as to be indefensible, condemned historically as capital crimes.

But the conclusion of the Norwegian court was in fact, quite the opposite.

Following the link Sullivan provides, the study reveals that the Norwegian Court was considering violations of Norwegian law by German occupiers:

Art. 228. He who commits an act of violence against another person or in any other way inflicts bodily harm on him, or is an accomplice to such an act, will be fined or sentenced to imprisonment for a period of up to six months. If the act has resulted in some injury to body or health or considerable pain, a term of up to three years imprisonment can be inflicted and up to five years if the act resulted in death or grave injury. . . .
Art. 229. He who causes harm to another person’s body or health, or ;puts another person into a state of helplessness, unconsciousness or any similar state, or who is an accomplice to such an act, will be punished by a term of up to three years and up to six years if the act has resulted in sickness or disability to work lasting more than two weeks, or permanent injury, and up to eight years if the act has resulted in death or considerable injury to body or health. . . .
Art. 232. If an act mentioned in Arts. 228-231 was premeditated and carried out in a particularly painful way or by means of poison or other similar substances which are highly dangerous to the health, or with a knife or other particularly dangerous
instrument, a term of imprisonment must always be inflicted. Life imprisonment may be inflicted for crimes against Art. 231 carried out under the same conditions. For crimes against Arts. 228-229 the term of imprisonment fixed by those paragraphs can be increased by a term of up to three years.

The presiding Norse judge, Larssen, applied the logic of a Judge Skau in a previous case, that violations of Norse law by the occupying power were punishable retroactively as war crimes.

Skau, in handing down death sentences for crimes for which prewar statute provided merely imprisonment of four to six years, or in lethal cases, life, engaged in a breathtaking piroutte of legal activism: The Norse government being in exile, had been forced to take a hiatus on the passage of criminal law. Had the government been aware, prewar, of the wartime excesses of the Quisling regime, it would have been harsher on violation of the three Articles. And in any event, since these crimes were committed in time of war, they were war crimes; and since previous armies historically punished war crimes with death, they were now (in 1948 Norway) punishable by death, despite the lesser statutory penalty.

So that's the historical record behind Sullivan's "reporting": A judge found these actions punishable by a retroactive, blanket death penalty provision, when committed by German occupiers. It was not the horror of "torture" in and of itself that drew the death sentence, but its role as a crime of conquerors against a vanquished people. The Norse made clear, in fact, that there could possibly be a mitigation of the offense.

It would be hard for them to be more contrary to Sullivan's own position on Bush's "torture".

Birthday Musings

2007-09-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

Wow! A lengthy hiatus.

I've been very very very busy. I should be busy now, on my term projects, but I'm snatching a few hours of leisure before returning to the grindstone.

The weather is dreadful, the worst smeltering smelly heat since the big fires of 2003. The crew coming off the racetrack had a few guys suffering from heatstroke. Hopefully it will rain or blow over or something soon.

Within a few weeks I'll be free between classes and hopefully will have more regular internet access.

Connecting the Dots?

2007-08-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago some European netpals rubbed my Yank nose with this one:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years. The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures...The GAO reached the estimate - 111,000 missing AK-47s and 80,000 missing pistols [emphasis mine CB] - by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records maintained by Gen Petraeus of the arms and equipment he ordered. Deputy Assistant Defence Secretary Mark Kimmitt told AFP the Pentagon was "reviewing policies and procedures to ensure US-funded equipment reaches the intended Iraqi security forces under the Iraq program".

Oh those feckless GIs!

Or maybe not. Saw this on Drudge today:

Analysts believe PJAK is the fastest growing armed resistance group in Iran. As well as the 3,000 or so members under arms in the mountains, it also claims tens of thousands of followers in secret cells in Iranian Kurdistan. Its campaigning on women's rights has struck a chord with young Iranian Kurdish women. The group says 45% of its fighters are female. Iranian authorities regard the group as a terrorist outfit being sponsored and armed by the US to increase pressure on Iran. On a recent visit to PJAK camps in the Qandil mountains the Guardian saw no evidence of American weaponry. The majority of its fighters toted Soviet-era Kalashnikovs. [emphasis mine. CB] In an interview Biryar Gabar, a member of the leadership committee, said the group had no relations with the Americans, but was "open to any group that shares our ideals of a free federal democratic and secular Iran."

I'm making a huge leap in the dark here, but it's interesting to speculate ...

False Histories

2007-08-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

My coherent thought--such as it is-- in my free time-- such as it has been-- has been given over to homework lately. Which is what I'm paying for. The job has been bustling so much I stagger out the door each day, which is what I'm paid for. So I suppose this is normal and good. The blog has suffered, though. (Or not, if you don't like how I think.)

Drowsily browsing the Web, I've noted the emerging False History of Iraq. Let me give an example:

It is significant, for example, that a Defense Intelligence Agency team received orders to find links between al-Qaida and Hussein. That there were none was ignored. Key adviser Paul Wolfowitz's immediate reaction to Sept. 11 was "war on Iraq." Anarchy in that land was all but assured when the Iraqi army was disbanded against urgent advice from our people in the field. That meant that a huge number of competent military men, most of them no lovers of Saddam, were rendered unemployed -- and still armed. How was this disastrous decision arrived at? People directly involved said it came as an order from administration officials who had never been to Iraq.

That's Roger Ebert, huge critic of the war, reviewing a war policy flick.

Let me give another example:

A few months ago, the American people, discouraged by an American War effort that was clueless and ineffective, wanted to abandon the Iraqi people to whatever Hobbesian fate might await them...Since David Petraeus took over operations in Iraq, America has had a clear and coherent strategy...Kristol said
words to the effect of, “2006 was a disastrous year in Iraq, and for the President and Rumsfeld and Casey to have allowed it to degenerate as much as it did then almost excuses the voters turning Congress over to the Democrats in November.”...Alberto Gonzales is still sadly the attorney general, but David Petraeus has removed the stench of incompetence and indecision from the Iraqi theatre...With a disastrous war effort afoot, emotional political appeals to bring the troops home immediately had some resonance and made at least a little sense...When a war is being mismanaged (or non-managed) as the Iraq War was for
an extended period, the accompanying stumbling serves to accredit a reactionary sort of peacenik politics that thinks it would be a swell thing to have tea with Ahmadenijad and Kim Jong Il.

That's Dean Barnett, huge supporter of the war, reviewing the Democratic Party.

Ebert feels the whole war is one big snafu, and Barnett speaks with the "I'm With You" pragmatism of the center-right. But there's something seriously wrong when supposed opponents frame their opinions around the same falsehood: In 2006, the United States was losing in Iraq.

Let's move through the list. The 9/11 Commission, which finished deliberating over three years ago, denying it 36 months of captured Al Qaeda records and operatives, did not find "no links" between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bin Laden's #3, said there were. The Czech intelligence service said there were. Mukhabarat archives said there were. That the 9/11 Commission chose to find those facts insufficient proof of an Iraqi conspiracy to further 9/11 is a quotable, arguable conclusion; but it doesn't erase the links themselves. Just as it is historical fact that Hitler met with Indian separatists to discuss a revolt in the British Empire, and historical fact that nothing came of the meetings. The links are there, the policy is not.

It would be news to the Kurds and other minorities of Saddam's Iraq, that the Iraqi army by and large "did not love Saddam". Their apathy didn't stop them slaughtering tens of thousands of opponents of the regime. The history of six continents demonstrates what happens to states whose armies have older, deeper loyalties than the regime. I still can't understand why it's soooo dumb not to have hired assassins and snipers, because obviously they're just violent over being unemployed! Saddam's Army did not radiate an aura of respect that quelled crime nonviolently: they killed people. What Ebert is lamenting, basically, is a failure of neofascist repression.

As for Wolfowitz's "immediate reaction"--perhaps, but this is part of the wider "Rush to War" lie that the Left loves to spin. If Saddam had done a Ghadafi for the Security Council, today he might be a bigger "strategic partner" than Musharraf. The war, up until 2003 itself, was not inevitable, and its the "Warmonger-in-Chief" who spent a year on the diplomacy of "Saddam's last chance".

Barnett, in another post, raked Paul Bremer over the coals for blocking Baathists from holding office--another popular "self-evident truth". But History relates that Paul Bremer held authority in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. Uday and Kusay Hussein were not killed until July 2003, and Saddam himself was only captured in December 2003. Was Bremer supposed to fill Iraq with open conspirators for the fugitive "President of Iraq"? Or was he just supposed to retain independent administrators as "at-will" hires, to be fired once it was safe to bring in the real government of Iraq?

Such questions are in poor taste in 21st century America, they challenge the voter to give serious thought to objective answers, instead of just presenting a head on a pike to boo at. Do that often enough and you find yourself with an "agenda". How 20th century.

2006 was not a year of defeat for the United States, or absence of policy, or the brink of defeat. 2006 was a year where our plans and allied efforts didn't work as well as what weve tried in 2007. That is sufficient reason not to repeat what we did in 2006. It is not a sound basis to slander the war Administration as "clueless, ineffective, incoherent, disastrous." That is not just. The political machinations, the Surge, are possible because of the tremendous good we achieved in 2006. We turned over local administration to Iraqis. We not only allowed them to sell oil contracts to countries like France--we helped them do so. We kept training and arming Iraqi forces who are today fighting for victory. How big a Surge could we scrape up if we still had to maintain direct control of 18 military districts? Again, a tactless question. Just ignore it as a right-wing koan.

Not only is it unjust, it is also dumb. Considering foriegn opinion, postcolonial Africa is full of winners who had worse decades than what the Coalition and the Iraq state suffered. Egypt lost 13,000 troops in two months of the Yom Kippur War, and had to give land back, and they celebrate it as a victory. Such nations are not going to be impressed by American kvetching over our low losses securing national borders and a friendly government. Considering domestic opinion, I can't be the only American who remembers Barnett & Co. speaking just as enthusiastically about Rumsfeld and Casey prior to November 2006.

I think I know, and share, what the center-right wants to achieve, but is the Memory Hole really a tool of the New and Improved GOP?

Truthfully remembering the world as it was, is part of having real integrity. And nothing good comes of surrendering integrity.

UnThink

2007-07-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

My living memory of the Carter Administration was a very rude man who interrupted Sesame Street twice in one day. I was too young, thankfully, to fully appreciate the lack of intelligence to which we were subject.

Walter Mondale offers an example:

Through his vast government experience, through the friends he had been able to place in key positions and through his considerable political skills, he has been increasingly able to determine the answers to questions put to the president -- because he has been able to determine the questions. It was Cheney who persuaded President Bush to sign an order that denied access to any court by foreign terrorism suspects and Cheney who determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rather than subject his views to an established (and rational) vetting process, his practice has been to trust only his immediate staff before taking ideas directly to the president. Many of the ideas that Bush has subsequently bought into have
proved offensive to the values of the Constitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts. The corollary to Cheney's zealous embrace of secrecy is his near total aversion to the notion of accountability. I've never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress -- even when it was controlled by his own party. His insistence on invoking executive privilege to block virtually every congressional request for information has been stupefying -- it's almost as if he denies the legitimacy of
an equal branch of government. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.
Whatever authority a vice president has is derived from the president under whom he serves. There are no powers inherent in the office; they must be delegated by the president. Somehow, not only has Cheney been given vast authority by President Bush -- including, apparently, the entire intelligence portfolio -- but he also pursues his own agenda. The real question is why the president allows this to happen.

Once it becomes clear that the President allows it to happen--that it is, in fact, delegated power from the elected President--where's the extra-constitutionality? If Cheney does not volunteer to obey the polls, Congressional committees, and staff, how is that unconstitutional unaccountability, if he's accountable to the President who assigns him his roles? This smacks of the old Chinese saw that revolt against the Imperial government was necessary to "rescue" the Son of Heaven from his advisors.

Where does the Constitution specify the internal process for floating policy trial balloons? Doesn't a wartime Administration have an obligation to keep tight rein on hypothetical amendments to intelligence operations? Apparently not; apparently a commitment to the constitution requires such measures be floated beyond "immediate staff".

There have not been "many" reversals of the Administration line, and most of those that have been issued by trial courts are still on appeal. Not among them, to my knowledge, is a single reversal of an executive privilege claim by the President--not Cheney, but by Bush covering Cheney's office. Where's the judicial support for Mondale's outrage over Cheney's secrecy?

It's just more of the circular reasoning of BDS: What Bush & Co. are up to is dangerously wrong, because it's being done by Bush & Co.

About Damn Time

2007-07-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

(AP) Democratic Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton D-NY speaks
before a meeting of the...Full Image He added that "such talk
understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume
enormous personal risks."

At last. It shouldn't be left to Dick Cheney, during an election year, to point out that wartime leaders have an obligation to our country and our allies for their conduct.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called Edelman's answer "at once outrageous
and dangerous," and said the senator would respond to his boss, Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.

We'll see, shortly, if this Administration has the political will to carry out the war at home that must be fought for the sake of Iraq.

Summer

2007-07-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

And the days and nights slip by in a blur of quick naps and chores.

I'll blog when I have something intelligent and original. Hopefully at least once a week.

And Still No Outrage...

2007-07-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

At least, no organized outrage.

Pelosi and Reid and Lugar are mobilizing for another "lose the war" drive. The House and Senate GOP are going to have to think for themselves, and act for the country, instead of waiting for somebody else, anybody else, to make it safe to stand up for victory in Iraq.

Committment against the defeatists is going to count for a lot more than waiving jail time for convicted aides.

So Where's the Outrage?

2007-06-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

Lugar and Voinovich want to take a knee to Al Qaeda. They want what Murtha wants, for the same reason that Murtha wants it. They're against our side. They're stumping for defeat.

Where's the outrage?

Republicans had no problem nailing traitors to the wall when they came with a (D). Now what?

I'm an independent now because I saw this coming some weeks back. The Party of Lincoln can't stand for anything. You can't be for victory and sustain defeatists. And until the Republicans purge the party of such scum, I won't stain myself with that (R).