War on bipartisanship

Well, Bush has decided that you can never have too many battles: he's renominated a dozen+ failed judicial nominees from his first term. Reid clarifies matters thusly:

Last year, the Senate worked to confirm 204 of the President's judicial nominees and rejected only the 10 most extreme. This confirmation record is better than that achieved by President Clinton, President George H.W. Bush and President Reagan. Despite our unprecedented effort to work with the President in discharging our constitutional duty to advise and consent to his nominees, today he renominated 7 of the 10 rejected nominees.

There's no way this will increase Senate harmony -- at best, they refilibuster the most unacceptable of the batch; at worst, the Republicans exercise the "nuclear option," and nothing more will get done this year and for a long time...

For more on the battle and on the more controversial of the renominees, see this kos story.

Update: Apparently one of these "highly qualified" candidates actually practiced law without a license for several years before being nominated the first time. Who could oppose such a rose?

Some conservatives appear peeved

Paul Craig Roberts is the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and a Contributing Editor of the National Review -- pretty sound conservative credentials. And yet, when you hear him seething at the Bush Administration's unwillingness to take responsibility for its failures in Iraq, he sounds like a self-righteous lefty blogger:

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Cheney and Bush blame Syria and Iran for the troubles that they brought upon themselves. The Iraqi insurgency, say the Five Morons, is the fault of Syria and Iran.
. . .
It does not serve America for Bush to impose Ariel Sharon's agenda on the Middle East. Bush's insane policy is producing rising anger that endangers Israel and America's puppet governments in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan along with the Saudi regime. Ironically, this is recognized by Egypt's Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, who was unable to refrain from pointing out that Bush has managed to create a Shi'ite crescent from Iran to Lebanon.

Wow. I mean, when insiders finally pick up what the outcast intelligentsia has been trying to tell them for a few years, the shit must be getting mighty close to that fan . . .
[and these are just a couple of high-points; go read the rest to see how angry this guy really is]

(via Follow Me Here)

Another splash

That is, the splash of an unintercepted test missle hitting the ocean, during a failed test of our Star Wars missle nondefense program. This time, the interceptor rocket didn't even launch -- I sort of imagine it looking innocently around at the scientists like, "what? can't a guy sleep around here?!"

Mr. Lehner said it was too soon to speculate on when another test might be held, because it takes about 60 days to build a target missile. He said the latest failure was similar to one on Dec. 15, when an interceptor also failed to launch from the Marshall Islands to chase a target sent up from Kodiak, although that misfire was linked to a problem in the interceptor itself.

The Dec. 15 event was a major disappointment, because it was the first full test of the defense system since Dec. 12, 2002, when an interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, missed its target by hundreds of miles and burned up in the atmosphere.

Of course, supporters urge that we plunge ahead, arguing that "it is better to field even a limited system sooner rather than later, especially with North Korea's formidable missile arsenal and its embrace of nuclear weaponry." Hey, I could fix you up something out of plastic for a billionth of the cost that would meet these standards!

I'm kind of with Eliot at Follow Me Here in feeling a sense of relief when these tests don't work. It's another reprieve from our overt scoffing at international treaties, not to mention the temptation to develop a sense of inpenetrability by spending a few hundred billion on more of these things (that barely work in theory, let alone in practice)...

Inside every dark cloud...

It appears that a new, more virulent strain of HIV has emerged, which is resistant to common anti-retroviral treatments and which progresses to AIDS very quickly. Unarguably bad news. However, its one upside is that it may prod Americans, and especially adolescents, to take HIV more seriously than their current tendency to dismiss it as just another controllable disease...

(via Follow Me Here)

And the winner is....

...not the Bush administration, at least not the way things look after the Iraqi election. Two slates got some 70% of the votes, and both are closely aligned with Iran. Thus, the new showcase government is not only unlikely to be a shining example of pro-American democracies but is likely to undermine the balance of power previously represented by the competing Iraq and Iran sectors in favor of a united Islamic region. Nice work.

Update: I just love this pithy (if depressing) summary by kos:

The neocon pipedream was an Israel-friendly Iraqi government, something even their Chosen One (Chalabi) refused to promise. Now, instead, we get a marginalized but still powerful Sunni minority enraged at their marginalization, and a ruling majority that have more in common with the Taliban than a secular Democracy.

On to the next conquest...

Fall in, fall in!

This is one of the most wonderful poems I've come across in a long time, thanks once again to whiskey river (and, more importantly, to Mary Oliver) -- the whole thing is too long to paste here, but go and read it all, maybe twice!

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives -
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Go already! [are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?]

Who's in charge around here, anyway?

I haven't really been following the fluff-up about Ward Churchill and Hamilton College, but I greatly enjoyed this essay about the exchange of ideas, meaning of tenure, and who gets the blame for bad academic hiring decisions (hint: the subtitle of the essay is "Why is Bill O'Reilly chairing our faculty meetings?"). Read it through to the end; it makes some great general points.

I am reminded of the following quote from Ursula LeGuin: "Good ideas are like grass; they thrive from being walked upon." Indeed.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

All together, now

Well, our antics concerning Iran are starting to have effects. Not necessarily those the Bush folk hoped for, but clearly those that anybody outside the Sanctum could have predicted.

Iran, facing mounting U.S. pressure over its nuclear program, promised yesterday a "scorching hell" for any aggressor as tens of thousands marched to mark the 26th anniversary of its Islamic revolution.
. . .
Khatami is widely recognized as a leader of a moderate faction in Iran. Indeed, Khatami himself indicated in his speech that the talk of a possible U.S. invasion was pushing him into a united camp with Iran's hard-liners against foreign meddling.

Well, as Rafe at rc3 put it, nobody can claim that Bush isn't a uniter...

Hiding our light

Digby has a very unnerving screed about the degree to which we (the populace and the legal community) are becoming ok with the end of "innocent until proven guilty" -- from the dehumanization of detainees to the notion that the President can make or overrule laws as he sees fit.

We are disappearing people, rendering them to friendly governments that aren't afraid to put the electrode to genitals and threaten with dog rape. And we are building our own infrastructure of torture and extra legal imprisonment. It is a law of human nature that if you build it, they will come. This infrastructure will be expanded and bureaucratized. It's already happening. And when they decide, as Professor Yoo has already decided, that an election is a sanctioning of anything the President chooses to do in the War on Terror, it is only a matter of time before internal political enemies become a threat.

And then it will be us.

I certainly share his fears, especially given the increase in eliminationist rhetoric lately. Surely the American public can be wakened and made to care about the nation's onetime core values -- can we do it in time?

Update: This Tom Tomorrow cartoon feels all too accurate to me in the way we lower the bar for dismay ever further...

Return of Sid-blogging!

Am feeling a little under the weather, so posting is light. Naturally my response is to turn to that reliable source of sunshine, Sid! We continue with the popular Sid-in-Action series, this time giving you our hero in the midst of contemplating his killer play at bridge. (sorry, no glimpse of gruff-but-lovable partner H.)


(click to enlarge)

This is just funny

XOverboard has an amusing take on recent (and future) Superbowl frenzy, based around the increasing ridiculousness of the Roman numerals to come...

A couple of choice tidbits

Steve Clemons over at The Washington Note has two particularly interesting pieces from the last few days:

1. a look at upcoming Supreme Court openings from a strategic point of view -- not who might be appointed, but what Bush will have to consider and what response the Democrats should make to nominees (depending on what camp they come from)
   
   
2. a program that represents a rare bipartisan effort to give real people a stake in real "ownership" in this country (as opposed to the illusion of private SS accounts). I hadn't heard of this, and the sponsors are quite strange bedfellows...

More on the battle for language

Apparently the latest front in the War on Language abortion battles is the handling of "leftover" embryos at fertility clinics. Many couples just abandon these bunches of cells to indefinite time in liquid nitrogen; others donate them to use by scientists for research; still others may give them away to couples or women who would like to have a baby. This last option is one that apparently most couples don't know about, but the HHS would like to encourage. It's also the focus of new linguistical maneouverings, as the HHS (and some of its supporting agencies) push to call the process "embryo adoption" rather than "embryo donorship" -- note the shift from an analogy with "tissue donor" to treatment of the fertilized ovum as a child.

Currently, only eight states have enacted statutes that govern parental rights in embryo-donation arrangements: All but one use the term "donation" and state that an embryo donor is not a parent. Only Louisiana identifies embryos as "juridical persons" that are subject to "adoption." (Specifically, if fertility patients in that state terminate their rights to an embryo, the embryo cannot be destroyed or otherwise donated; it must be made available for "adoptive implantation" -- but only to married couples.)

One conservative writer in this article even uses the term "microscopic Americans." Thus they manage to finesse the issue of when personhood begins, while simultaneously making the notion of stem-cell production (a possible use of discarded embryos) seem unthinkable. Clever. Creepy. Likely to lead to even more embryos being left in the freezer until they're no longer viable...

Effectiveness is in the eye of the beholder

Markos calls Bush to task for his hypocrasy in slashing so many programs while raising funding for abstinence education, a proven failure. As kos says,

Abortions are up during Bush's term. Divorces are up during Bush's term. And, thanks to abstinence-only education, it looks like teen sex is also up during Bush's term.

Go, mindless application of "values"!

Am I the only one

...who doesn't want to read the stories about Bill Cosby? They're getting a lot of play around Philly because he was from here. And a second person came forward to support the first complaintant and say that the same thing had happened to her. And I believe them, but it just, you know, makes me sad too. I don't tend to have heroes, but I feel like I'm hearing bad things about an old school friend whose memory I would prefer to have left in the box with my yearbook...

Quote for the day (and for our era)

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

-- Phillips Brooks

(via A Mindful Life)

If he's *drinking* the Kool-aid, then who's brewing?

Digby at Hullabaloo has an interesting post about the recent (and somewhat surprising) Bush push on Social Security. He draws a convincing parallel between this move and the last time that Bush broke free of his handlers to insist on the same issue, and opines that Bush perhaps learned the wrong lesson from how that other initiative played out.

During the 2000 campaign, then-Texas Gov. Bush overruled his horrified political handlers and insisted on pressing for Social Security privatization - particularly when speaking to Florida's millions of geriatric voters.
. . .
"He still thinks it helped him then," a senior Bush political adviser remembered. "We all still think he's crazy."

This makes some sense; Bush thinks he has a mandate from his reelection, and he thinks (in his fact-immune way; see the striking recent poll results that Digby cites) that Americans want this.

I suspect strongly that putting social security at the top of the agenda was Bush's call. He really believes that he "won" on the issue and interprets that to mean that he has the support of the American people no matter what the polls, the experts or even other Republicans say.

Both Napoleon and Hitler thought they could invade Russia in the winter, too.

Let it snow, man!

When you run the numbers...

...the Bush plan on Social Security is really jaw-dropping. Even in theory it shows huge cuts in the benefits of the average worker, let alone if you were to use less rosy predictions than those the Administration cherry-picks. We're talking up to half. Check out the table over on Atrios site, taken from the Congressional Budget Office.

The way these things work is really surreal. According to the sketch in yesterday's Inquirer (can't find a decent link online), they're essentially set up as loans that the government gives you against your taxes (or something like that) and you have to repay them with interest -- thus it's even possible that you could end up owing the government money, after paying into "your own" account for decades, if you don't earn enough to beat the loan percentage rates. Some security!

Update: Pandagon skewers the proposal here, pointing out that in addition to screwing the little guy, the Bush plan actually increases the financial shortfall in the program. Yes, more!

Also in the late-Friday news

...a New York state court ruled that denying gays the right to marry was an unconstitutional infringement of their equal rights.

State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said the law violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions.

She also compared the law to ones that once prohibited interracial marriages.

Those better placed than I to judge such matters have suggested that this decision was written in a way that's likely to survive the inevitable appeals (the logic closely parallels that used in MA). All language referring to gender (bride, husband, etc.) would have to be removed from NYC marriage licenses when this ruling goes into effect. I particularly liked this quote from the judge:

"Similar to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples are entitled to the same fundamental right to follow their hearts and publicly commit to a lifetime partnership with the person of their choosing," the judge said in her unprecedented ruling. "The recognition that this fundamental right applies equally to same-sex couples cannot legitimately be said to harm anyone."

Well, yes, that's always seemed obvious to me...

Addendum: for legal geeks or those wanting to know more about this decision and how well it will hold up, here's an interesting article by Yale law professor James Balkin about possible legal bases for supporting the right to same-sex marraige, along with their differing strengths and weaknesses... (via How Appealing)

After-the-fact-checking

Washington insiders consider any news released on a Friday to be "the trash," because almost nobody will read it on Friday/Saturday, and other news will have come along by Sunday (and all the more so on Superbowl weekend!!). Thus, these stories are born buried. What's up this week in this category? Apparently turn-out in Iraq wasn't quite as rosy as initially reported -- on-the-ground folks are now calling it something on the order of 10%, not the 60% we were hearing on Monday (when everybody in the press was apparently too relieved to ask what those numbers meant and what the sources were).

Poem for the day/weekend

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

-- Mary Oliver

(via whiskey river)

A poor prognosis

Despite the frequency with which sociologists bemoan American irresponsibility with credit cards, it's not voluntary spending that gets most people into the most serious trouble: half of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills, and the majority of those who go under started out with insurance but fell through the loopholes. Another large percentage result from divorce. Only around 1% of bankruptcies are due to credit card-related debt

The President assures us that "these are different times" from the 1930s -- sure, insofar as we haven't just seen for ourselves what happens when there's no safety net and something bad happens to a lot of people at once. Why learn from past experience?

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

A rolling blackout gathers no...

Oops! Enron is back in the news, as a tape surfaces showing that they intentionally took a power plant offline in 2001, leading to the shortages and then rolling blackouts throughout the West.

Snohomish Public Utility District in Everett, Washington, released the tapes as part of its effort to void a $122 million lawsuit Enron has filed against it seeking payment for electricity it was contracted to provide.

I guess that people in glass houses should be very, very friendly with their neighbors...

(via This Modern World)

Score one for Reid

When Harry Reid became Senate minority leader, many progressives and activists were dismayed at the mild-mannered and uninspiring leader that they had been given. But he has proven himself better for his time than his detractors ever imagined, and been a credit to the colleagues who elected him. First, he put together a war room to enable quick responses to Republican maneouvers (and it proved its merits with flashy counter-moves on several recent issues and the introduction of some excellent framing, such as a debt-derived "birth tax" introduced after the State of the Union), and now he's made a touching and pointed speech at the close of the Gonzales confirmation hearings yesterday.

If we fail to oppose an evil as obvious as torture -- it is an evil and it is obvious it is wrong--then as President Thomas Jefferson said, I will "tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

To the 36 Democrats who stood up for their principles and our national reputation, kudos. And to those like Joe Lieberman who couldn't be bothered, beware the volcano . . .

In a nutshell

Tony Auth captures my feeling about the SotU (which I didn't watch) and the new Bush policy priority in this cartoon.

Oh and... for those who need it, fine-grained fact-checking of the President's speech can be had by the thorough folks at Think Progress.

Our ports may not be safe...

...from terrorist infiltration, but no fake NFL gear is getting through!
whew! glad somebody's keeping their priorities in order!

A cool (r)esource for aspiring cooks

Anybody who ever feels inept in the kitchen (or has knives they don't know what do with) should check out this remarkable site explaining the best cutting technique for a variety of foods -- from how to hold the knife, or peel, to the most efficient way to end up with pieces of the appropriate size for your purpose, taking into account the texture of the thing being chopped. Most amazing to me are the graphical illustrations, which demonstrate the angles and techniques, as well as how the food in question will look at each stage of the process. Somebody invested some serious time there.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

More on liberalism, strategy, and faith in America

Jeanne has a pair of lengthy but interesting posts over at Body and Soul right now that muse about liberal values, the conservative dexterity at spin, and the need to change people's minds. I recommend the first one, at least.

Once we stop ranting about the unfairness, and the Orwellian distortion of language, some of us start asking ourselves how we get in on this game. Where's the money for our p.r. machine? How do we create the mechanism to make our mindless drivel as much a part of the common wisdom as theirs? How do we learn to do this propaganda thing?

Which is not an unreasonable reaction, but it's based on the disturbing -- and conservative -- notion that most people are so deeply stupid, or at least so uninterested in the world, that they can only be reached in the dishonest and patronizing ways conservatives have been reaching them.
. . .
I know that's the game conservatives play, and it has worked for them. But it won't work for us, because you can't save a democracy except by democratic means, and running a manipulative propaganda machine is profoundly anti-democratic.

Anything that encourages irrationality makes conservatism stronger.

Her definitions of conservative and progressive (and the lines between them) aren't those that you usually hear, and you may or may not agree with them, but this point about the "two can play at that game" approach resonates with me. I do think we need to change the way that many issues are discussed, but less by coming up with equally manipulative sound-bites and more by getting down to the basics where most of America actually agrees with the left -- making the real distinctions clear rather than drawing false cartoons, giving people the fodder for real informed choices. (Sounds like education, rather than sales; how radical!)

Her follow-up is here and amplifies some of these points, using talk radio as an example.

Liberalism depends upon people questioning authority and themselves, wondering if the the received wisdom is valid, looking for reasons for why things happen, acknowledging things that are painful to acknowledge. Asking talk radio to encourage that process is like asking people to browse for books in Best Buy. Thinking you can create progressive opinions without asking people to think uncomfortable thoughts -- the United States is sometimes the bad guy? -- is a fool's errand.
. . .
They don't need answers, they need places where they can find encouragement in the process of finding answers. And that, not propaganda, is the most important thing we need to offer them.

Whew, that's a much bigger assignment. But it sure feels like one that would not only benefit the recipients but allow the rest of us to retain our humanity. Please, yes.

(hat tip to rc3.org for reminding me to visit here)

Pundit for hire

Feeling left out from the wave of conservative pundits hired to schill for government programs, this enterprising fellow just auctioned off his services on eBay.

Since the Bush Administration hasn’t called (yet), I’m dropping a not-so-subtle hint that I, too, have bills to pay. I’m making my services as a talk host, writer and pundit available quickly and easily right here on eBay. And, because I’m a true conservative capitalist, my services are available to the highest bidder!

Too beautiful.

(via Fables of the Reconstruction)

It's their courage, not ours

Atrios has a pointed post about a ludicrous attempt at triumphalism planned by congressional GOPsters for tonight. I can't top his combination of points.

Leave No Child Unwatched

Apparently topping the list of educational needs in New Jersey is surveillance of students and staff. That's the only possible explanation for a new pilot program advocated by acting Gov. Richard J. Codey to install "smart cameras" and mandate ID cards for teachers and students at a subset of the state's elementary schools. Is face-recognition software really about preventing terrorism (?! Columbine was kind of an inside job!) or about keeping an eye on our nation's future subversive intellectuals?

Maybe we can get the Homeland Security guys to help fund texbooks and lunch programs...

A small ray of sunshine in the AIDS wars

Apparently the US is on the verge of eliminating infant HIV, largely because of the effectiveness of AZT in preventing mother-to-child transmission and because of wider use of prenatal HIV testing of mothers.

n 1990, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; now, that number has been reduced to a bit more than 200 a year, according to health officials. In New York City, the center of the epidemic, there were 321 newborns infected with H.I.V. in 1990, the year the virus peaked among newborns in the city. In 2003, five babies were born with the virus.

Across the country, mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. has dropped so sharply that public health officials now talk about wiping it out.

It's only a tiny victory, but one that means everything to those new lives . . .

(via Think Progress)

These United Soviet States

The Administration's war on the press continues unashamedly: apparently no press were allowed to wander freely at any inaugural events, but had to either stay in the media pen or be accompanied by an escort at all times.

Their real purpose only occurred to me after I had gone home for the night, when I remembered a brief conversation with a woman I was interviewing. During the middle of our otherwise innocuous encounter, she suddenly noticed the presence of my minder. She stopped for a moment, glanced past me, then resumed talking.

No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.

This is the experience of Iraqi scientists, not allowed to speak with the western press without government chaperones, or of Russian dissidents, always looking over their shoulders.
But apparently nowadays the thought police are us.

(via This Modern World)

A guilty pleasure, enabled

For anybody who has been or might yet be a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a show far far better than its name implies), the ultimate online resource has arrived:

Buffyology.

Its key strength is summarized in its subtitle: "Every Buffy character, episode, cast member, writer and director and every word of every show, in a searchable database." Wow. I'm hardly a groupie, on the scale of what's out there, but being able to find a quote or scene when it's itching the back of my mind is a heady prospect.

(via boing boing)

A headline that speaks for itself

Veterans' Benefits "hurtful" to National Security, says Pentagon

(via Booknotes)

Provocateurs

The Pentagon is walking a very fine line in its recent attempts to suss out Iran for possible intervention (if the European effort at negotiating nuclear containment, which is weakened by lack of American involvement, should fail):

The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran's ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.
. . .
A serving U.S. intelligence official added: "You need to know what proportion of your initial air strikes are going to have to be devoted to air defense suppression."

Maybe this is all a show to force Iran to submit to international oversight, but we already know what kind of patience our Administration has for diplomatic avenues...

(via Follow Me Here)

Update: looks like 42% of Americans would support an invasion of Iran, without the case's even having been made yet. I guess that the 81% who value international respect just don't understand cause & effect. We need a mandatory Junior Year Abroad program to open Americans' eyes to the dynamics of how we're perceived elsewhere...

In case Big Brother doesn't scare you

The ACLU has a new ad that makes clear why privacy matters to everybody! Eeep!
There's a call to action at the end . . .

(via Liberal Avenger, at the Daou Report)

Breaking news

In a victory for human rights and the rule of law, a federal judge has just ruled the Guantanamo military tribunals illegal.

In today's decision, Green said the hearings, called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are stacked against the detainees, and deny them crucial rights. She said some detainees may indeed be guilty and pose a danger to the United States, but the government must first give them a lawful hearing on the evidence against them.
. . .
Green also criticized the military for using an illogically broad definition of "enemy combatant" in deciding to hold Muslim men from dozens of countries for as long as three years. She said after reviewing classified material for the detainees, she saw many cases in which the military presented no evidence that individuals were ever engaged in actual combat or terrorist crimes.

This isn't the end of the story, as there have been conflicting rulings in a number of related cases, so expect to see the Supremes weighing in, whether or not they'd like to get involved.

(via Suburban Guerilla)

Up from the ice

From today's Thoreau-blog entry:

We too have our thaws. They come to our January moods, when our ice cracks, and our sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen up under stern experience gushes forth in feeling and expression. There is a freshet which carries away dams of accumulated ice.

Many are the thoughts and directions of Democrats and unaffiliated progressives looking right now for new ways to influence our nation's politics. I suspect that they will start to set their courses and roll in the coming month or two . . .

Historical parallels

Patachon at dKos reminds us of this timely headline:

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote (NYT 9/4/1967)

United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

Yeah, thanks for the cheerful thought.
For those whose history is cloudy, this election was followed in less than six months by the Tet Offensive by North Vietnam, and then decreasing support at home for the war, 5 years of "Vietnamization" in which Nixon tried to get our troops out, and finally the Paris Peace Accords which left the South Vietnamese to fend for themselves. Finally, the cutting off of further military aid to the South Vietnamese government and the resignation of Nixon (1974) led to the political toppling of the SV President, and eventually the fall of Saigon and the conquest of South Vietnam by the North (1975).
[Thus endeth the history lesson.]

Winter with Orwell

This story, bubbling up over the last few days, freaks me out. The deeper you look into the conservative spin machine/press/think-tank/funder world, the less you can keep track of all the interconnections and lies. Now it appears that there's a fake reporter (from a fake news agency) with real White House press credentials asking questions that are designed to be, in essence, information pushes. Help. The details are still being sorted out, but this could be tangled into a bunch of evil Rovian machinations of recent years.

Big players take a grim view of the dollar

On top of general observations that foreign bankers are increasingly turning to the Euro, now comes news that Bill Gates is shorting the dollar (joining his pal Warren Buffet, who's been betting against the greenback since 2002).

Gates's concern that widening U.S. budget and trade deficits are undermining the dollar was echoed in Davos by policymakers including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The dollar fell 21 percent against a basket of six major currencies from the start of 2002 to the end of last year. The trade deficit swelled to a record $609.3 billion last year and total U.S. government debt rose 8.7 percent to $7.62 trillion in the past 12 months.

Gee, what are they so nervous about? Don't they know that we're the primary purveyors of wealth and freedom in the world?

The U.S. budget shortfall is "the No. 1 risk, disregarding geopolitical risks" to the global economy, German Deputy Finance Minister Caio Koch-Weser said in a Jan. 27 interview in Davos. He urged Bush to present a "credible" plan for getting the deficit under control.

I'm sure a credible plan will be immediately forthcoming. As soon as we finish sketching out our strategy for spreading our military involvements into Iran... ($billions more needed? what billions??)

(via corrente)

Because sometimes one good satire piece...

...is worth a thousand wordy columns. See the last month of Talking Points Memo for the latter (and they're even good), but the inimitable fafblog boils down the bloviation in Social Security Crisis! The FAQ!!.

Thanks to boing boing for the pointer.

Quote for the day/weekend

So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"For" and "against" are forgotten.

-- Chuang Tzu
translated by Thomas Merton

(via whiskey river)

Imagine, if you will

Bob Harris has occasional polls over at his blog, and this one from three weeks back (really the multiple-choice options) really takes the cake:

If Donald Rumsfeld is doing "a fine job," what would a "bad" job look like?

yeowch!

More financial rumblings

The destabilization of our economy continues behind the scenes:

1. The Chinese central banks own us (they have something like 86% of our debt). (via kos, clearly)
   
2. Meanwhile, central banks around the world are increasingly choosing the Euro over the dollar. (via Pandagon)

When you put those two together, you could start getting sleepless nights (with dreams of banana republics) . . .

Extreme academia

Just what the networks need to revive sagging ratings: a series of reality shows about academics. "The Swan: Tenure!" and "Celebrity Poker: Theory" are just a few of the suggestions here... I'm sure that some of my many professorial friends could suggest others of the "Fear Factor" sort.

(via La Di Da)

You can never have too much cheese

Of the literal kind, that is.
I love cheese and have been trying to get to know more kinds and be wiser about the sorts of things I do and don't like. Luckily, we live a block from a big Whole Foods Market, which has a great selection, and another couple of blocks will get us to the famed DiBruno Brothers, probably the best source of cheese (and associated noshes) in the country. But it does help to have information, and/or a place to look things up when you bump across a new favorite. Thus, I present to you Cheese.com, where there is enough information to fuel many years of investigation into what to eat with your next good bottle of wine (and how to store, serve, and appreciate various types)...

(via rafe's bio at rc3)

Sucking out the soul

There's just so much bad news out of Iraq, and we know in our hearts that we're only hearing a tiny fraction. And the combat situations are sucking the soul out of the young people in the midst of it, and looking the other way is sucking the soul out of our nation. It's beyond painful.

1. What is it like to be on the ground in Iraq? Ira Glass of This American Life (a radio show on NPR) did a great show a few weeks ago that really gives you the sense -- not the sound of bombs but the upheaval of a life, as they follow National Guard troops thrown unprepared into circumstances beyond their training or their comprehension. Listen. You won't be able to tear yourself away.
2. What is happening to us? Seymour Hersh looks at the consolidation of power in our national government, and also draws some disturbing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. You can listen or read the transcript of the interview.

I have distinct memories of the rag-tag bunches of Vietnam vets who marched in the first ever welcome-home parade that they were given (in Kalamazoo, MI, and it was many, many years after the war), and they came from all over, wearing bits and pieces of their uniforms, and men in business suits along the way at last left their spots and joined in (yes! I was there too!), and I remember a helicopter coming over, and the hush that fell, and the faces uniformly turned skyward and the hands raised involuntarily in greeting.

Why would we ever do this to ourselves again? Why??

(Hersh via Follow Me Here)
Sorry, I'll go try to find something cheerful now...

Come-uppance

Over at kos, excerpts from a long sobering Financial Times article cataloging the ever-increasing ways that American hubris and hypocrisy are causing the rest of the world to draw away from us. Not only are we no longer the moral authority to the world, but we are being eclipsed on financial and strategic fronts by nations and alliances with a longer view.

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.
. . .
In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation.

I guess it's just more for the list of eventual regrets. I can hardly keep up.

Could Japan let women reign?

Problems in generating male heirs to the Japanese throne are causing the government there to consider changing the laws of succession to allow for empresses as well as emperors. The much loved current Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako have only one child, a girl, and apparently there aren't any other males in the extended family under 40. Of course, Japanese culture is one of the most patriarchal in the modern developed world, so there will be plenty of opposition to this idea...

(via Echidne of the Snakes)

Time to draw a line in the sand

All the Senators who have expressed outrage (or even dismay) over the apparent US comfort with a policy of torture are about to have the chance to put their money where there mouths are: it's time for the vote on confirmation of Gonzales for Attorney General. I understand the "President has a lot of leeway in Cabinet choices" argument, but this is our only chance to make a statement as a nation to the rest of the world that our professed principles actually mean something to us. Urge your Senator to vote no on Gonzales.

Need encouragement?

• Here's my previous post How Bad is Gonzales really?
  
• Here's a letter from a heap of generals opposing his nomination
  
• Here's a blogger petition over at kos (which I have already given my name to)

  As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.
  . . .
  Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: "After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should 'judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.'" We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales's nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, "[t]he world is indeed watching." Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

• The nomination will be voted on by next week. It was voted against by all the Committee Dems, which hardly makes this a resounding recommendation.
  

This may just happen, given the party-line divide, but then let's let the Republicans take full responsibility for the stain they're forcing on our national honor. No Democrat should vote for this monster. Nor should any Republican of conscience, although I realize that the pressure on them to toe the line will be unbelievable. Here's a list of the contact info of all Senators -- go! call, email, write, while there's still time!

For those who refuse to grow up

I knew that my generation had hit the big time, from a commercial standpoint, when the Muppet and Looney Tunes DVD sets came out with full nostalgic packaging and Schoolhouse Rock could market a songbook. But now the real truth of our eternal adolescence (combined with a whiff of adult responsibility) has come to light: Trix and Cocoa Puffs are now available with 75% less sugar (the decadent sweetness is maintained with Splenda)...

Already it was impossible to say which was which.

Looks like the post-Saddam Iraq involves just as much torture as it did under his rule (and no, I'm not even including "abuses" by US interrogators):

Iraqi authorities routinely torture prisoners, a leading human rights group [Human Rights Watch] said on Tuesday, citing examples of abuse which will sound all too familiar to those who suffered under Saddam Hussein.

Starvation, electrocution, all the favorites. As kos says, "why did we invade again?" One supposed reason after another slips from under our feet . . .

(If you didn't recognize the quote that's the title of this post, see here.)

A local-politics scorecard

Have spent many a sleepless lunch (ahem) in the last couple of weeks with Google and the local press, trying to edumacate myself about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics to the degree that I feel clueful about national issues. It will be slow untangling, but I already feel miles from where I started. As many of you know, about two weeks ago I launched a blog to help me keep abreast of local developments, and now I introduce a little standing feature under the auspices of that effort:
The Scorecard™
which catalogs the biggest names in regional politics and a smattering of the reasons that they're famous (or infamous). I hope it's of some use to others trying to find a starting point for understanding the local jungle of civic operations...

Senate Dems come out swinging

Well, Harry Reid promised that his "war room" would be just the start of creating a genuine coherent opposition for the next few years, and the Senate Dems appear to have followed through: they've compiled a panel of 10 bills to be introduced this session, which cover topics from better treatment of veterans (and a Nationa Guard Bill of Rights) to improving education (including funding No Child Left Behind) and reforming the voting system. Maybe most impressive is the complete absence of any legislative suggestion about Social Security in this top-10 list, because Reid says "there is no crisis"! Look out, we may be seeing early signs of spine!!

You can become a citizen co-sponsor of this legislative agenda. Encourage your Senators to get the debates on issues underway!

Pithy protest

Apparently a band of German pranksters have been planting tiny American flags and Bush likeneses in piles of dog poop found in parks and on sidewalks over the last year. It's not strictly illegal, but appears to have the German police in a bit of a twist. I myself find this disproportionately amusing.

Question: Wouldn't a maximum win in this situation be better enforcement of leash laws or whatever can be done to prevent the proliferation of steaming dog piles? Then the flags would sort of take care of themselves... Oh, nevermind.

Soft-boiled information

Pew Internet just did a study of the use and understanding of search engines, with results that surprise me, at least--many people use them very seldom, and most appear not to understand the significance of "sponsored links."

This finding is ironic, since nearly half of all users say they would stop using search engines if they thought engines were not being clear about how they presented paid results.

I wondered whether the survey findings would differ with age; i.e., are the younger generation of Internet-native users more savvy about potential marketing-driven manipulations? Younger users (under 30) are described as "more active searchers" and "more comfortable with the existance sponsored results," but also more trusting in the results they get; is that because they filter the sponsored links, or because they don't know their own blind-spots?

(via boing boing)

Lest we forget

Two pioneers of women's health recall vividly what happened in the days before abortions were legal. It was traumatic and dangerous for all concerned.

“We can’t go back; we cannot go back,” she implores. “We’ve seen what happens to women when they don’t have the option to control their own fertility. We’ve seen them die. We can’t let that happen. We might end up with a constitutional amendment banning all forms of abortion. That could happen if the people of this country don’t stand up to be counted and say that we will not permit rights for reproductive care of any kind to be taken away.”

It's easy to take the current state of reproductive control for granted, but we must not do so.

(via LaDiDa)

Incrementally less funny

I initially thought that this was quite funny.

And then I read this.

Sigh. Satirists can't begin to keep up...

Vigilante politeness

This writer has a bit more nerve than I do in punishing rude drivers for their needless honking, but I applaud the sentiments entirely.

In New York City, the horn is used not for emergencies but to express aggravation or to tell pedestrians to get out of the way. When you blast your horn, you're basically shouting "fuck you" at 70 decibels in the middle of a crowded street. Horn-blasting is profoundly anti-social behavior.

Sorry you're having a tough day, but honking in stalled traffic (or when there are a lot of pedestrians claiming their right of way) never improved any situation. Some folks are just immune to learning that (and probably many other lessons that might intrude on their personal convenience).

(via dangerous meta)

Strange days indeed

A US-based civil rights organization has brought a war crimes charge against Donald Rumsfeld in Germany, causing him to cancel a planned February trip to a security meeting in Munich.

The organisation alleges violations of German legislation which outlaws war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide independent of the place of crime or origin of the accused.
. . .
The organization said it had turned to German prosecutors "as a court of last resort" because the US government "is unwilling to open an independent investigation" and had "refused to join the International Criminal Court".

Many aspects of this strike me as bizarre yet apt...

(via WTF)

Grim resonances

Billmon at Whiskey bar has a series of posts from the last week or so that demonstrate disturbing historical parallels between current events and, um, crazy past leaders and literary characters... (and a couple of internal paradoxes too, just for fun)

In reckless extravagance he outdid the prodigals of all times in ingenuity . . . and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold, declaring that a man ought either to be frugal or be Caesar.

Suetonius
Life of Caligula
110 AD

The quotes are short and to the point.

A few images...

...from the protests yesterday, complements of Tom Tomorrow... Must have been a cold outing on many levels.

Update: Let's not overlook this one either...

People in respectable positions can still be idiots

Or, to say it via satire,

Women barred from Harvard presidency by "genetic predisposition," study finds

(if you don't know what this is in reference to, see the link given there)

(via Medley)

This bodes ill...

Did you think that the "Iran next" craziness would be limited by our not having enough troops to fight one profit-driven war, let alone two? Think again. The government has apparently hired the Rand Corp. to do a study on ways to make fewer troops stretch further. Their (completely unforeseeable) suggestion? Hire out the support positions and put those desk soldiers (trained or not) into the field. Eep. As kos says:

Logisitic troops make up the vast majority of military personnel (somebody probably has the figure, but it's like 8-1 or 9-1 support to combat forces). The proposal would dramatically increase the number of fighting forces (though many of soldiers in support jobs will have no business being in the front lines), and the Haliburtons of the world would clean up taking over support functions.

Great. This worked really well for the supply chain, right?

Something we all regret

Via kos, a quote from outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (given to The Australian):

And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot.

Yeah, me too. Almost every day.

What do men/women want?

An excellent post from Ampersand at Alas, a Blog about the popular belief that (a) men want to marry women who aren't as smart as they are, and/or (b) that intelligent women have a significantly lower chance of getting married. He not only blasts last week's NYTimes piece by Maureen Dowd, but even examines the studies being discussed, and points out that the wording leads casual readers astray -- even at the extremes, there is only about a 5% difference in marriage rates between the groups studied. Not much basis for a whirlwind of societal self-examination!

Subdued mourning

Not as acute as, say, mid-November, but a fresh reminder of the tragic mistake that we've made as a nation, as we re-inaugurate the President who has emptied the public coffers and squandered the nation's moral capital to satisfy his own hubris. Medley provided these appropriate links for the day:

• The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration (The Nation, October, 2004)
  
• The Scandal Sheet, 34 scandals from the first term, each one worse than Whitewater (Salon Premium, January, 2005)

I can't even take a grim satisfaction from reviewing these, so I guess I'll just add this one:

• Sorry, Everybody

At the very least, a newly engergized minority in this country are going to be gearing up for every election from the Senate to the School Board in the next few years!

Haiku for the day

snowy night
sometimes you can’t be
quiet enough

-- John Stevenson

A ray of sunshine via science

Apparently scientists at Cornell have learned how to delink the utility of plastics from reliance on petroleum as a source by making a promising plastic from orange peels and carbon dioxide. Very promising!

(via boing boing)

I... but... [gaping blank]

Via Craig's BookNotes, this amazing story:

Woman loses insurance coverage for her politics

! ? !!!

More echoes of Stalin's boots

Digby has a really good piece from the weekend that starts with Armstrong Williams and looks back over 30+ years of increasing media manipulation by the right. It includes lengthy quotes from a number of articles, among which the most telling are often those relating concerns about Nixon-era activities (which clearly pale by recent standards; e.g., Erlichman wasn't able to drive out Dan Rather, but...). His cheery summary take?

Today, that dream of control is fully realized. Republicans routinely bully any reporter or organization that doesn't play ball while they feed lots of juicy propaganda to their bought and paid for media like FOX, Rush, Drudge and The NY Post knowing that the story will work its way into the mainstream anyway. They created an entertainment model for news in which entertainment values superceded civic values and it attracted a different kind of person to the field. Over time, fewer and fewer reporters wouldn't play ball because those that refused were weeded out in a form of (un)natural selection. In the end, the survivors don't even know they are biased. They are so enmeshed in this system of celebrity punishment and rewards that their own self esteem is now drawn from their acceptability to the (Republican) establishment. And each and every day the partisan right wing media pushes the discourse a few inches further to the right.

Make all the claims of "liberal media bias" that you want, but there just isn't anything to equal this on the left, and I'm not sure we'd have the stomach for really building it (crazy humanists that we tend to be). This just ruined my lunch.

Why we should never rely on the benevolence of the powerful

Why am I paranoid about things like the Homeland Security ministry and the Patriot Act? Because history shows over and over that once the government has a tool, they will use it in whatever way suits their goals, whether or not those goals were behind the creation of said tool. Case in point: Homeland Security apparently now includes copyright enforcement (or maybe just the intimidation of small-town toystore owners, to "set an example") . . .

Six weeks after her brush with Homeland Security, Cox told The Oregonian she is still bewildered by the experience. "Aren't there any terrorists out there?" she said.

(via This Modern World)

You knew this, and yet you hoped...

We're already preparing for the expansion of our Mideast Recolonialization Campaign, with or without sufficient troops.

The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.

The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.

Are we actually on a reverse learning program? Sure, we've turned Iraq into a hotbed for terrorism, why not do some more!!!

(via Follow Me Here)

The content of his character

This morning on NPR I heard a reading of Martin Luther King's famous speech from the March on Washington -- the "I Have A Dream" speech -- and once again I found it inspiring and was moved. It is appropriate that the nation revisit that speech which rallied the Civil Rights movement and the nation to hope.

But it is also important that we not freeze King in 1963. Yes, he called for freedom to ring from every hill in Mississippi and throughout the country, and that goal has not yet been fully achieved 40 years later. But he also, in the five subsequent years before his death, turned his eye to other realms of our nation's failings, and these thoughts we seldom revisit. Many of them are apt today, as much of his energy went into calls for an end to war (especially in Vietnam) and explorations of the use of economic leverage for social justice (e.g., boycotting large companies until they agreed to use black contractors, banks, and newspaper ads for their stores in black communities). Many of these ideas made the government of his time as nervous as certain types of discussion and dissent rile our government today. So, in honor of Dr. King, a selection of heretical/trouble-making thoughts, and a few with continued hope.

I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our nation: The great initiative in this war is our; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
(from "Beyond Vietnam," April, 1967)

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
(ibid.)

I knew that I could never raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.
(ibid.)

Operation Breadbasket has a very simple program, but a powerful one. It simply says, "If you respect my dollar, you must respect my person." It simply says that we will no longer spend our money where we cannot get substantial jobs.
(from "Where Do We Go From Here?" August, 1967)

The ghetto is a domestic colony that's constantly drained without being replaced.
(ibid.)

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.
(ibid.)

Five years ago [John F. Kennedy] said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
(from "Beyond Vietnam")

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.

I refuse to accept the idea that the "is-ness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "ought-ness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unvolding events which surround him. ...

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
(from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, December, 1964)

Enjoy the holiday, whether or not you've been granted time off from work. A holiday for somebody younger than most of our parents!

Links

• The Martin Luther King papers project
  
• Operation Breadbasket
  
• P.U.S.H.

(quotes taken from A Call to Conscience, The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., C. Carson and K. Shepard, eds., Warner Books, New York, 2001; Amazon link here)

It's all in the lens you look through

I enjoyed the recent movie The Incredibles, in the same way that I enjoy a James Bond film -- slick styling, a little tongue-in-cheekiness, some Good Guys Win action (where you overlook the terribly chauvenist definition of a hero). Maybe, in a Family Movie vein, I also saw it as a testimony in favor of trueness to The Self, in the sense of not overlooking your natural talents to fit a different image -- even the bad guy could have been something greater if he had been willing to be a Brillian Scientist instead of a Superhero.

However, an interesting alternative take is presented by Sally at Prednisone Nation, who argues that this is primarily a film with a Randian agenda of defending inequality:

Some people, according to The Incredibles, are just born better than the rest of us. This superiority is innate and inherited: superheroes make up a kind of master race. The movie doesn't just suggest that it's destructive to stifle talented people; it also derides the notion that everyone has talents that should be celebrated, and it raises and dismisses the idea that ordinary people could make their way into the elect. You don't choose to be a superhero; you can't earn it through ingenuity or hard work. You're either born super or you're not.
. . .
This movie says that powerful, hereditary elites are good for society not because they're more talented but because they're more moral. It's a nineteenth or even eighteenth-century version of how society should be ordered: it's a celebration of natural aristocracy and the concept of knowing your place.

Fascinating, as is her snide comment about the aptitude of such a philosophy in a time/place where the situationally elite (but intellectually encumbered) are running the world...

(via Alas a Blog)

Friday Josh-blogging!

Our pal Sid is not entirely sure what to make of his blog mascot-hood, so we have decided to share the wealth a bit. Today's addition? Josh! We have been intending to humiliate celebrate Josh here for some time, and today's spur was the word that our little Joshlette has become engaged (toward The Marriage). Whoot! Congratulations!!
(click the picture to enlarge)

More glowing success in Iraq

Armando at dailyKos explains why the war in Iraq, while not orignally related to the "War on Terror," is now an intimate part of that battle, but not as we might have hoped:

[T]he Iraq Debacle is NOW about the War on Terror because of the tremendous harm caused to the United States' fight against terror: the recruitment bonanza; the spike in anti-American Arab sentiment; the fraying of our alliances; the degrading of our armed forces; and the development of Iraq as a training and proving ground for terrorists (no the insurgency in Iraq is not Al Qaida, but terrorism is a part of the resistance to the U.S. occupation).

Only everybody with any foresight foresaw this, but now even government reports are up to speed (see the link for an NYT article on same).
Sigh, always another sigh.

Cultural evolution?

Score one for the good guys in the ongoing battle between the 21st century and the 15th: A federal judge ordered the removal of stickers claiming evolution is "a theory, not a fact" from high school biology books in suburban Atlanta.

Scientists, several of whom testified in the case, say the sticker confuses the scientific term "theory" with the word's common usage and inappropriately combines science with personal religious belief.

(For a prior humorous rant about the Georgia stickers, see this, and for a discussion of Intelligent Design and science as a way of viewing the world, start here.)
Of course, the local religious conservatives decry another foul act by "activist judges."

The school district just north of Atlanta approved the stickers after more than 2,000 parents complained the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life.

Just another battle in the ongoing Fundamentalism Wars taking place in countries around the globe. In Europe (most notably France and The Netherlands), this seems to be taking the form of debates about Muslim girls who want to wear the veil, but here in the US our fundies are home-grown, so it seems to be about whether we pass along to the next generation our current best understanding of the natural world.

(news via LaDiDa)

And yes, Jeremy, I haven't forgotten your question. It may get some time this weekend...

A tale of two 'gates

"Rather-gate" and, um, "WMD-gate" -- now the reports are in, and . . .
this is almost too stupid to justify bandwidth. No surprises here!

Anyway, the Poor Man, as is often the case, boils it down to the pith: Compare and Contrast.
I have nothing further to add.

(via kos)

Update: Tom Tomorrow has something to add -- or rather, he said it already some months back.

Too little too late

Ohio has decided to get rid of all electronic voting machines and stick with paper ballots and optical scanners (even though those had a higher rate of failure; at least they're verifiable). Great, but the state's votes were already delivered this time around...

(via WTF)

No really, the money means nothing to me

Amidst the furor over payments by the government to journalists as propaganda, Armstrong Williams has claimed that his support for the Administration's No Child Left Behind education policy predated his mega-payment to plug it. But, the record shows otherwise:

In an attempt to defend his decision to accept $240,000 from the Bush administration in return for promoting the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law, Armstrong Williams has claimed that he always supported the policy. But in 2001, he strongly criticized the administration's decision to drop private school vouchers from NCLB, even touting this criticism on television and going so far as to write in his nationally syndicated column that by dropping the voucher provision, Bush had "scooped out" the legislation's "soul."

To paraphrase Jon Stewart, "Curse you, liberal file footage words from my own column!"

(via WTF)

Bloggers beware!

Here's a list of companies that have fired or sanctioned employees for having blogs...

The Bloggers' Rights Blog

(See also their Bloggers' Bill of Rights.)
Just Between Strangers isn't the sort of blog that would really have work-related content, so I should be ok there (as long as I actually get some work done between blog entries)...

(via boing boing)

Oregon governor takes a stand

The governor appears to be planning to come out of the box swinging for the new term, with an anti-homophobia bill first on his list -- will have to see if his economic arguments sway any legislators. I can attest to (well-adjusted tax-paying) couples that have moved from PA to NJ sheerly because of the better protections that exist for their mutual life there. We need more states serving as examples of the normalcy of gay couples, whatever the degree of legal protection they are afforded...

(via pandagon.net)

All politics is local

My interest tends to focus on news of national (or international) import, to the neglect of things and people more locally. In an attempt to rectify that situation and expand my politicization into things on the state and local levels (in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, respectively), I am starting a smaller blog called A Smoke-Filled Room. There may be a few posts that involve catching myself up on the players and big stories in the area, but I hope that in the long run that space will be of interest to others hoping to become more educated/active in this region of the world...

Vicarious snow

Despite major winter storms around the country, Philadelphia has yet to see any accumulation, and has had strange bursts of spring-like weather intermittantly all winter so far. Of course, we may get a dump any day now, but until then I offer this great service: catch glimpses of individual snowflakes as photographed by amateur scientist and Vermont legend Wilson A. Bentley.

The Collection Online (at Buffalo)

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

DNC chair rumblings

I haven't written much about the campaigning for DNC chair, since (a) it's a bit too esoteric for most of my civilian readership and (b) it's kind of early days in terms of who is even running. But I guess I finally reached critical mass of interest, so here you go.

I'm a bit biased toward the "reform" candidates (as opposed to, say, the pro-life, conservative-think-tank-schilling "establishment" favorites), as are most of the blogs that I read, so here are some thoughts on the most promising/prominent of those:

1. Howard Dean -- if you've heard anything about this race, you probably know that he's in it. He certainly has the prominence to claim such a national office, but also, of course, a good dose of controversy. Pandagon has schitzophrenically argued both sides, so I'll give you his summations:
   • the upside boils down to his talent, outspokenness, fundraising capability, rural roots (he can relate to gun owners), and high profile
     
   • the downside is mainly the baggage that he carries from his Presidential run, which might make him an easy jumping-off point for continued right-wing characterization of Dems as extremists
   
   
2. Simon Rosenberg -- less known to most ordinary folk, but appears to be a strong candidate, as "everybody's second choice."
   • here's kos's summary of his strengths, which are that he "gets" the need for reform, for left-wing infrastructure, and for better claiming of the internet; downside? might he be too nice?

     Rosenberg isn't in this game to push the party one way or another ideologically. He's in it to rebuild and modernize. He's seen what the Right has done to control the levers of power, and he wants Democrats to level the playing field.

   • Schaller at Gadflyer endorses Rosenberg, as a strong strategist, not a prior elected figure (thus harder to pigeonhole), young, and someone who has been working on solutions for a while
     
   • interestingly, Rosenberg is one of the few people who have tried to generate a job description for the DNC chair, which is useful in evaluating his suitability...

So anyway, all this discussion has made me quite curious about this election as an augur of what the Democrats see as their future needs and strategies (and I will be interested to see what moves the winner makes, all part of my increasing awareness of the mechanics of politics). A first move of self-definition after this fall's disheartening defeat. Make it a good one, kids!

Not to beat this topic to death...

...but anybody who is still innocently buying the "Social Security Crisis" just isn't paying attention. Anyway, for those retaining some interest in private accounts (always a great solution for those who can't afford to save), check out the disaster that privatization caused in England.

And ironically enough, considering that America is on the verge of copying Britain’s mistake, most experts seek reform in the direction of a more generous, and simpler, basic state pension -- one similar in design, in other words, to America’s Social Security program.

Interestingly, one of the aspects of our SS program that they envy is the efficiencies of scale which are possible only with such large quantities of money being managed...

(via kos)

Moment of truth

Scornful of those who don't know geography? Ok, it's time to put your money where your mouth is -- let's skip those difficult smaller nations in Africa and the Middle-East and see how you do with the U.S. map!

Place the State

Of course it gets easier as you go along. But can you put that first interior state on an empty map?

(via pal Douggie)

Corporate drudgery meets playtime!

A brilliant new toy for adults, The Cubes give you the chance to set up a cubicle farm of your choice, and move your mindless corporate hacks through their meaningless daily lives. The site is a riot, with performance reviews of the various characters, a random title generator (e.g., Regional Communications Planner), and even downloadable posters for those grey, grey walls...

(available for purchase at Archee McPhee, which has a great shot of a huge office floor made from these sets)

(via boing boing)

On a lighter note

A comical take (classic fafblog wit) on the confirmation hearings of Alberto Gonzales, in which his merits are compared with the quite different pros and cons of a baked potato.

(via boing boing)

Time to kill that "liberal media" meme

Because it's been a fabricated talking point of the right for long enough. Atrios lists the examples (mild liberal slips resulting in career death, huge conservative fabrications resulting in promotion) in his post What Liberal Media. Lots of bloggers have been using the acronym SCLM (so-called liberal media) for some time now, and this gives you a sense of why...

[There's only one part of the political sphere that promotes a coordinated message for months on end, and it's certainly not affiliated with Democrats!]

A "mandate" of the unfunded kind

Not only is Bush throwing some dozen major inaugural bashes in a "time of war," but it appears that he's intending not to pay for them -- in an unprecedented move, the Administration is refusing to reimburse D.C. for the huge security costs associated with the inauguration, which is likely to mean that the strapped District will have to divert Homeland Security funds from other projects to cover the party activities. Have these folks no shame?

Another bulls-eye for Trudeau

I don't read the daily paper anymore, so I tend to forget Doonesbury and catch up in great swaths. Was given a nudge by a friend this weekend, who told me about the series on confirmation hearings for the Secretary of Toady Affairs, run between Christmas and New Year's. Too excellent. As the nominee points out, "Blind fealty is the only game in town now." [sigh.]

The series can be found starting here (although my favorite, that captures the feel of the whole week, is this one).

Quote for the day

After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box.

-- Italian Proverb

Nothing clears the sinuses

. . . like Digby on a good rant. Here he quotes some bloviage that DeLay offered during the brief discussion of the Ohio electors last week and proceeds to some proper skewering of more general Congressional hypocrisy. Conclusion: "Garlic won't work with these people. It takes a stake to the heart." heh.

Operation Fabricated Truth continuing well...

Bendygirl at dailyKos reports the official wording of deployment orders for National Guard units headed to Iraq, and they make it look like the 9/11 Commission (and any number of rationality-based data bits) have had no effect:

The orders specifically stated: "this unit is being deployed to operation Iraq freedom in support of the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon".

Um, grammar quibbles aside ("in support of" ?!), shouldn't the government eventually be required to acknowledge status of reality?

Oh, silly me...

Learning something from history, anyway...

Apparently the Pentagon is considering a new option for handling the worsening situation in Iraq, being referred to as the Salvador option.

[In the early 1980s], faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported 'nationalist' forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

Ah, there's nothing like a death squad. Civilians, be damned!

Question for the audience: How would Bush rationalize this kind of drastic option for Iraq (and nuking our possible future relations with the Arab world), given his insistence on nothing but good news about how things are going?

(via Follow Me Here)

Update: Atrios has a bit more on this crazed idea. I think he captures the whole wrongness when he opines,

Let's be clear, "death squads" are terrorists. Their goal is not simply to catch/kill suspected bad guys, but to frighten populations into submission. It's collective punishment of an entire population.

As Yglesias says, "This isn't much of a way to run a humanitarian intervention" . . .

In my bad novel...

Krugman bemoans an increasingly surreal series of events with hypocritcal characters and events barely fit for a bad novel...

In my bad novel, apologists for the administration will charge foreign policy critics with anti-Semitism. But they will be silent when a prominent conservative declares that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular."

In my bad novel the administration will use the slogan "support the troops" to suppress criticism of its war policy. But it will ignore repeated complaints that the troops lack armor. ...

Last but not least, in my bad novel the president, who portrays himself as the defender of good against evil, will preside over the widespread use of torture.

(requires NYT registration, sorry)

(via Medley)