Today I hear that John Edwards is dropping out of the Democratic race, following the withdrawl of Rudy Giuliani from the Republican race yesterday. Apparently Edwards was hoping that in a meaningless primary in Florida (no Democratic delegates will be seated) that voters would feel free to vote for him. Maybe they did, but clearly not enough of them did.
Edwards has always been a tireless advocate for the poor and the disenfranchised. It is significant that he will make his withdrawl speech in New Orleans, which has never received the kind of help from the Federal Government that President Bush promised right after Katrina.
So the candidates who remain are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and John McCain and Mitt Romney for the Republicans Yeah, I know that there are still other Republicans running, but they won't win. Huckabee's shoe-string campaign couldn't afford even a narrow loss last week in South Carolina, but that's what they got. Ron Paul is only still running because he has the opposite problem from Huckabee-- a lot of money to spend and no sizeable base of support within the GOP. After millions of people gave him a ton of money a few weeks ago, Paul pretty much has to keep running because otherwise those Paul supporters would be furious with him for wasting their donations, and something tells me they're not the most forgiving type. It's conceivable though that he could still run in the General as a Libertarian.
Being a Democrat, I'm going to focus on our side. I may put up a post on the Republicans later this week.
I do feel that on the Democratic side, we are left with on balance two candidates who I could support. Right now I am for Obama (I was for Richardson but he quit), but while I've been critical of Hillary in the past I won't have any problem supporting her if she does win the nomination. Obama's commitment to get us out of Iraq is much more believable, and if there is one good thing about his meteoric rise from just being a community activist in Chicago, it's that he's not all that far removed from ordinary life as lived by ordinary people (and if he doesn't remember what that was like you can be sure that Michelle Obama will yank him back to reality in a hurry.) Beyond that, he's right when he talks about moving beyond 'red' states and 'blue' states and remember that we live in the United States. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have been marked by hyper-partisanship which has resulted in one party being shut out of the process when one side has complete control, and gridlock when that is not the case. I personally think that all began with Newt Gingrich and his politics of slash-and-burn campaigning, but regardless of how it started, there is no question that things are more charged than they have been in the past. The atmosphere in Washington today, far from being an honest debate on the issues with the idea of reaching a solution to the problems facing the country and its people, is now about playing a game of 'one-upsmanship' and 'gotcha' against the other side. To be blunt, I believe that President Barack Obama could change that while President Hillary Clinton could not.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Immigration Frankenstein has cost the GOP a lot, and gained them little.
In mid to late 2005, we read a number of stories about how immigration would become the main issue in the 2006 election. The suddenness with which these stories all showed up, followed by how quickly the 'anti-illegal immigrant' crew got in gear, seemed to suggest that the decision to make it a focal point of the election was made somewhere in Washington, D.C., not throughout the length and breadth of America.
No matter. Either way, it certainly did become a major issue in 2006, and remains one today. If it was hatched up in some pollster's office during the desperate search for an issue the GOP could run on last year, it is now a monster that the GOP cannot control.
And it's eating them alive.
The right likes to cite polls that suggest that a large majority of Americans want the border secure, while ignoring the simultaneous polls that suggest that far less than a majority favor mass deportation or other action taken against people who are already here doing nothing more than working for a living.
But the issue here isn't how many Americans favor what. It has to do with how many Americans are being pursuaded to vote for the GOP based on their immigrant bashing, versus how many are being pursuaded to vote for Democrats instead.
The basic flaw is that the anti-immigrant strategy was being used as a 'get out the base' strategy, and it hasn't worked for that, as well as not working for broadening their base.
For a few people, being anti-immigrant is almost like a religion. I'm talking about the real nutcakes, the minutemen, the Tom Tancredo backers, and the like. They certainly would never vote for a Democrat. They might turn out to vote for an anti-immigrant hardliner like Tancredo or Randy Graf (or anti-immigrant converts like J.D. Hayworth) but the results of recent elections prove that there just aren't enough of them. Here in Arizona Graf and Hayworth went down to defeat (as did Congressman Henry Bonilla of Texas in another district close to the border) in 2006, and Tancredo's Presidential bid ended when he (like fellow immigration jockey Duncan Hunter) failed to attract more than one or two percent of the vote, and that was of fellow Republicans. Tancredo's most memorable line in the debates was aimed at fellow Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney for their hardline stances on immigration in which he said the pair were 'trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo.' Well, clearly Romney fell flat in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (and only won his other real contest, Michigan, by pandering instead of discussing much about immigration.) Giuliani should be out of the race come Tuesday when he loses the state he bet all his marbles on, Florida (a state which has a whole lot of immigrants, and would still have a lot even if we didn't count the Cubans.) To put the icing on the cake, the candidate that Republican primary voters seem to favor, John McCain, was a co-sponsor of what the radio jocks teed off on as an 'amnesty bill,' the comprehensive immigration reform bill favored by President Bush which was scuttled by the Senate.
Last year, immigrant-bashing was supposed to be the key issue that would save the Virgnia state Senate for Republicans. It did not, as Democrats picked up four seats, and in a fifth, heavily Republican district the incumbent went on an immigrant-bashing campaign and clearly hurt himself as he hung on by only a few hundred votes in a race he should have won easily.
This year, immigration was supposed to be a huge issue in South Carolina. Not only did McCain win (and Mike Huckabee, who has only sporadically attacked immigrants finish second) but despite the competitive primary, only 445,000 Republicans voted there, which was the same number of Republicans who voted to renominate President George H.W. Bush in 1992 against minor opposition from anti-Semitic speechwriter Pat Buchanan and white supremecist David Duke. That was also the last time that Democrats turned out in the state in larger numbers than Republicans, until today-- when 530,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.
They may be right that a majority of Americans in polls favor some aspects of what they are saying. But they are dead wrong in supposing that is enough to win an election. Not only do some people (both Hispanics and a lot of non-Hispanics) get turned off by all the bashing and the bigotry, but what they've proven is that while there are certainly some zealous and loud anti-immigrant single-issue activists, there aren't enough of them! And worse for the GOP, it is splitting their base (giving conservatives one more reason to refuse to vote for John McCain if he is the nominee, but threatening to drive away a lot of the independents and moderates who supported him and who the GOP really needs if someone else is the Republican nominee.)
Yet some on the right just won't let go, believing that this issue is a 'sure-fire winner' next election, past results notwithstanding. And that's the beauty of conservatives. I remember when the President was refusing to budge on his support for more tax cuts despite the evidence that the tax cuts he had pushed were just not doing the job, and it mirrored his recalcitrance on foreign policy, someone said about conservatives that if they start digging a hole, they will keep on digging it deeper rather than acknowledge they aren't getting anywhere.
Well, Republicans, keep on digging then. You may find half a dozen more survivalists hiding out in an abandoned missile silo in Montana stocked full of all those Y2K rations who will flock to your cause.
No matter. Either way, it certainly did become a major issue in 2006, and remains one today. If it was hatched up in some pollster's office during the desperate search for an issue the GOP could run on last year, it is now a monster that the GOP cannot control.
And it's eating them alive.
The right likes to cite polls that suggest that a large majority of Americans want the border secure, while ignoring the simultaneous polls that suggest that far less than a majority favor mass deportation or other action taken against people who are already here doing nothing more than working for a living.
But the issue here isn't how many Americans favor what. It has to do with how many Americans are being pursuaded to vote for the GOP based on their immigrant bashing, versus how many are being pursuaded to vote for Democrats instead.
The basic flaw is that the anti-immigrant strategy was being used as a 'get out the base' strategy, and it hasn't worked for that, as well as not working for broadening their base.
For a few people, being anti-immigrant is almost like a religion. I'm talking about the real nutcakes, the minutemen, the Tom Tancredo backers, and the like. They certainly would never vote for a Democrat. They might turn out to vote for an anti-immigrant hardliner like Tancredo or Randy Graf (or anti-immigrant converts like J.D. Hayworth) but the results of recent elections prove that there just aren't enough of them. Here in Arizona Graf and Hayworth went down to defeat (as did Congressman Henry Bonilla of Texas in another district close to the border) in 2006, and Tancredo's Presidential bid ended when he (like fellow immigration jockey Duncan Hunter) failed to attract more than one or two percent of the vote, and that was of fellow Republicans. Tancredo's most memorable line in the debates was aimed at fellow Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney for their hardline stances on immigration in which he said the pair were 'trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo.' Well, clearly Romney fell flat in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (and only won his other real contest, Michigan, by pandering instead of discussing much about immigration.) Giuliani should be out of the race come Tuesday when he loses the state he bet all his marbles on, Florida (a state which has a whole lot of immigrants, and would still have a lot even if we didn't count the Cubans.) To put the icing on the cake, the candidate that Republican primary voters seem to favor, John McCain, was a co-sponsor of what the radio jocks teed off on as an 'amnesty bill,' the comprehensive immigration reform bill favored by President Bush which was scuttled by the Senate.
Last year, immigrant-bashing was supposed to be the key issue that would save the Virgnia state Senate for Republicans. It did not, as Democrats picked up four seats, and in a fifth, heavily Republican district the incumbent went on an immigrant-bashing campaign and clearly hurt himself as he hung on by only a few hundred votes in a race he should have won easily.
This year, immigration was supposed to be a huge issue in South Carolina. Not only did McCain win (and Mike Huckabee, who has only sporadically attacked immigrants finish second) but despite the competitive primary, only 445,000 Republicans voted there, which was the same number of Republicans who voted to renominate President George H.W. Bush in 1992 against minor opposition from anti-Semitic speechwriter Pat Buchanan and white supremecist David Duke. That was also the last time that Democrats turned out in the state in larger numbers than Republicans, until today-- when 530,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.
They may be right that a majority of Americans in polls favor some aspects of what they are saying. But they are dead wrong in supposing that is enough to win an election. Not only do some people (both Hispanics and a lot of non-Hispanics) get turned off by all the bashing and the bigotry, but what they've proven is that while there are certainly some zealous and loud anti-immigrant single-issue activists, there aren't enough of them! And worse for the GOP, it is splitting their base (giving conservatives one more reason to refuse to vote for John McCain if he is the nominee, but threatening to drive away a lot of the independents and moderates who supported him and who the GOP really needs if someone else is the Republican nominee.)
Yet some on the right just won't let go, believing that this issue is a 'sure-fire winner' next election, past results notwithstanding. And that's the beauty of conservatives. I remember when the President was refusing to budge on his support for more tax cuts despite the evidence that the tax cuts he had pushed were just not doing the job, and it mirrored his recalcitrance on foreign policy, someone said about conservatives that if they start digging a hole, they will keep on digging it deeper rather than acknowledge they aren't getting anywhere.
Well, Republicans, keep on digging then. You may find half a dozen more survivalists hiding out in an abandoned missile silo in Montana stocked full of all those Y2K rations who will flock to your cause.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Comparing Hillary Clinton to John McCain-- and the contrast is stark.
I've decided to swear off of criticizing Hillary Clinton. That's because of not only the glee I've heard from the right every time a Democrat (especially Barack Obama) says something negative about her, but also because I want to remind readers of this blog that while Hillary Clinton is my last choice (for reasons I've enumerated several times recently) I also wrote several months ago why I will support her if she is the nominee. I won't go into the points I made in that post here (though I thought I made them very well,) but would like to instead compare side by side Hillary Clinton's major positions on issues linked here on her website with the same issues as viewed by current GOP frontrunner John McCain from his website, linked here.
On Iraq (since this issue has formed the root of why so many Democrats who consider ourselves progressive like myself are disappointed with Hillary):
Hillary Clinton: America is ready for a leader who will end the war in Iraq. Hillary's roadmap out of Iraq, the Iraq Troop Protection and Reduction Act of 2007, is a plan to end the war before the next president takes the oath of office. But if the Bush administration won't end the war, as president and commander in chief, Hillary will.
John McCain: John McCain believes that we must not fail in Iraq. Succeeding in the cause of helping the Iraqi people build a stable, secure, representative state is essential to achieving an enduring peace in a region of the world central to American prosperity and national security.
McCain is using exactly the same words as George Bush has been using for five years in this quote, and recently said it would be fine with him if America stayed in Iraq for a hundred years.
Health Care:
Hillary Clinton: America is ready for universal health care. Hillary has the vision and the experience to make it a reality. This is a battle Hillary has fought before -- and she has the scars to prove it. She knows better than anyone how to fight and build the political support to get the job done.
John McCain: His initial blurb said nothing substantive so I had to click on the 'read more,' where he gives the standard GOP lines about promoting competition and choice (which as we know is a red herring because hospitals provide practically no information about their price structures, certainly not in time to allow anyone to make an informed decision no matter how much research they do), tort reform, and some other blather. He does suggest developing a protocol for re-importation of drugs, but that is about the only thing he said that I somewhat could support. On the other hand he plans to revise the tax structure in a way that would in effect phase out employer-provided health insurance (which would leave people on their own and leave the people with the most health issues stuck without anyone who would sell them insurance at an affordable rate-- ironic coming from a cancer survivor.)
Economy:
Hillary has a plan to help people who need help right now. John McCain proposes corporate tax cuts.
Hillary: For freedom of reproductive choice, energy independence and improving public schools.
McCain: For slashing spending (he's been against 'pork' for years, even when it does a lot of good) and praises NCLB and school 'choice' (which is a term that is traditionally used by backers of vouchers for private school tuition). The only time he ever hinted that he might support the right to an abortion was when a reporter asked him during the 2000 campaign what he would do if his own daughter had an unwanted pregancy. But he has consistently been against the right to reproductive freedom for women he's not related to.
I began supporting Richardson, and since he dropped out I've been moving steadily towards supporting Obama. But these reasons make it clear that Hillary Clinton, despite being my last choice among Democrats, is far, far better than what we will have if John McCain is ever elected President.
And what if the GOP nominee is not John McCain? Well, it's hard to see how Rudy or Mike or Mitt would be any better.
Oh, and just in case you need one more reason why we have to come together behind the nominee, even if it is Hillary: Do you really want to gamble that Justice Stevens' fragile heart (though a noble heart it has been) will hold out for another four years?
On Iraq (since this issue has formed the root of why so many Democrats who consider ourselves progressive like myself are disappointed with Hillary):
Hillary Clinton: America is ready for a leader who will end the war in Iraq. Hillary's roadmap out of Iraq, the Iraq Troop Protection and Reduction Act of 2007, is a plan to end the war before the next president takes the oath of office. But if the Bush administration won't end the war, as president and commander in chief, Hillary will.
John McCain: John McCain believes that we must not fail in Iraq. Succeeding in the cause of helping the Iraqi people build a stable, secure, representative state is essential to achieving an enduring peace in a region of the world central to American prosperity and national security.
McCain is using exactly the same words as George Bush has been using for five years in this quote, and recently said it would be fine with him if America stayed in Iraq for a hundred years.
Health Care:
Hillary Clinton: America is ready for universal health care. Hillary has the vision and the experience to make it a reality. This is a battle Hillary has fought before -- and she has the scars to prove it. She knows better than anyone how to fight and build the political support to get the job done.
John McCain: His initial blurb said nothing substantive so I had to click on the 'read more,' where he gives the standard GOP lines about promoting competition and choice (which as we know is a red herring because hospitals provide practically no information about their price structures, certainly not in time to allow anyone to make an informed decision no matter how much research they do), tort reform, and some other blather. He does suggest developing a protocol for re-importation of drugs, but that is about the only thing he said that I somewhat could support. On the other hand he plans to revise the tax structure in a way that would in effect phase out employer-provided health insurance (which would leave people on their own and leave the people with the most health issues stuck without anyone who would sell them insurance at an affordable rate-- ironic coming from a cancer survivor.)
Economy:
Hillary has a plan to help people who need help right now. John McCain proposes corporate tax cuts.
Hillary: For freedom of reproductive choice, energy independence and improving public schools.
McCain: For slashing spending (he's been against 'pork' for years, even when it does a lot of good) and praises NCLB and school 'choice' (which is a term that is traditionally used by backers of vouchers for private school tuition). The only time he ever hinted that he might support the right to an abortion was when a reporter asked him during the 2000 campaign what he would do if his own daughter had an unwanted pregancy. But he has consistently been against the right to reproductive freedom for women he's not related to.
I began supporting Richardson, and since he dropped out I've been moving steadily towards supporting Obama. But these reasons make it clear that Hillary Clinton, despite being my last choice among Democrats, is far, far better than what we will have if John McCain is ever elected President.
And what if the GOP nominee is not John McCain? Well, it's hard to see how Rudy or Mike or Mitt would be any better.
Oh, and just in case you need one more reason why we have to come together behind the nominee, even if it is Hillary: Do you really want to gamble that Justice Stevens' fragile heart (though a noble heart it has been) will hold out for another four years?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Seven years of the Bush economy
Yesterday marked seven years since George W. Bush took office. And one year from today someone else will take over and inherit a far different country than the one that President Bush took over on January 20, 2001.
In Biblical times (and more recently as apprenticeships) seven years was the standard period of servitude, and after seven years it was long enough to assess whether someone had done a good job or a poor one.
I could do a very broad post, touching on everything from war to crime and academic performance, but I will limit this post to looking at that most basic of issue, the economy (which ultimately is what everything else sooner or later rides on).
The fact of the matter is that today, on the seventh anniversay of President Bush's inauguration, the Bush record on the economy is just not good. Some years have been better or worse but let's just look at the whole.
Taking a look at some numbers:
On January 20, 2001 the Dow stood at 10,587.60, so where it is today represents an average yearly growth rate of just over 2%. In other words, the average boring, conservative bond fund outperformed the market average.
Or better yet, invest in foreign funds:
On January 20, 2001 it cost $0.9400 to buy one euro. Today it costs $ 1.4482 to buy one euro.
George W. Bush has presided over the creation of a net eight million jobs in seven years. Which means he will have to create twelve million more just this year just to catch up with his predecessor. Put another way, if the economy adds 200,000 jobs in a month that is now considered good news, while it was considered a mediocre month during the Clinton years.
On January 20, 2001 the spot price for a barrel of crude was $25.98. That has practically quadrupled in seven years. And it is with the deepest irony that one remembers the response during the 2000 election season to criticism that George Bush and Dick Cheney were both oil men was that some on the right suggested that oil men would understand the industry and know how to keep down energy prices for the rest of us.
The national debt has increased from $5.8 trillion to almost nine trillion dollars.
It is true that Bush has one more year to serve. But that is not very promising, with the most optimistic outlook for this year being only that we avoid a recession.
In Biblical times (and more recently as apprenticeships) seven years was the standard period of servitude, and after seven years it was long enough to assess whether someone had done a good job or a poor one.
I could do a very broad post, touching on everything from war to crime and academic performance, but I will limit this post to looking at that most basic of issue, the economy (which ultimately is what everything else sooner or later rides on).
The fact of the matter is that today, on the seventh anniversay of President Bush's inauguration, the Bush record on the economy is just not good. Some years have been better or worse but let's just look at the whole.
Taking a look at some numbers:
On January 20, 2001 the Dow stood at 10,587.60, so where it is today represents an average yearly growth rate of just over 2%. In other words, the average boring, conservative bond fund outperformed the market average.
Or better yet, invest in foreign funds:
On January 20, 2001 it cost $0.9400 to buy one euro. Today it costs $ 1.4482 to buy one euro.
George W. Bush has presided over the creation of a net eight million jobs in seven years. Which means he will have to create twelve million more just this year just to catch up with his predecessor. Put another way, if the economy adds 200,000 jobs in a month that is now considered good news, while it was considered a mediocre month during the Clinton years.
On January 20, 2001 the spot price for a barrel of crude was $25.98. That has practically quadrupled in seven years. And it is with the deepest irony that one remembers the response during the 2000 election season to criticism that George Bush and Dick Cheney were both oil men was that some on the right suggested that oil men would understand the industry and know how to keep down energy prices for the rest of us.
The national debt has increased from $5.8 trillion to almost nine trillion dollars.
It is true that Bush has one more year to serve. But that is not very promising, with the most optimistic outlook for this year being only that we avoid a recession.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
This could only be a guy whose ambition is to be the next Tom DeLay
Dean Hrbacek, a Republican who is the mayor of Sugar Land, Texas and is running for the GOP nomination to run against Congressman Nick Lampson in the district that was once represented by Tom DeLay, is wearing some egg on his face because he sent out a mailer in which his face was attached to a photograph of another man's body. A man in a suit and tie whose frame was considerably thinner than Hrbacek who is, shall we say, a stout man.
HOUSTON — A mailer from a congressional candidate's campaign contains a photo of his head attached to an image of a different body that makes him look thinner.
The photo is presented as a true image of Dean Hrbacek, a Republican former mayor of Sugar Land. In reality, it is a computerized composite of Hrbacek's face and someone else's slimmer figure, in suit and tie, from neck to knee.
Hrbacek, a tax lawyer and accountant, did not immediately return a call to his campaign headquarters Friday by The Associated Press. He is seeking the nomination to run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson.
Campaign manager Scott Broschart acknowledged to The Houston Chronicle that the image is a fake. Hrbacek has been so busy that he had no time to pose for a full-length photo for the mailing, Broschart said.
Hmmm. That excuse does not hold up on further inspection. How long does it take to snap a photo? Less than a minute, even if you are posing. Abd certainly far less effort and time than it took to go to all the trouble of clipping the two photos and melding them together using a computer program. Or here is a thought-- most candidates who have a weight problem don't go for the full length photo to begin with. Or an even better thought-- go with the real photo and admit that he's a few pounds on the heavy side. People don't expect Congressmen to compete in the Olympic decathlon anyway.
Well, in any case if Mr. Hrbacek does win, then he will be off to a good start in representing the district that DeLay once did, misrepresenting the 'facts.'
HOUSTON — A mailer from a congressional candidate's campaign contains a photo of his head attached to an image of a different body that makes him look thinner.
The photo is presented as a true image of Dean Hrbacek, a Republican former mayor of Sugar Land. In reality, it is a computerized composite of Hrbacek's face and someone else's slimmer figure, in suit and tie, from neck to knee.
Hrbacek, a tax lawyer and accountant, did not immediately return a call to his campaign headquarters Friday by The Associated Press. He is seeking the nomination to run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson.
Campaign manager Scott Broschart acknowledged to The Houston Chronicle that the image is a fake. Hrbacek has been so busy that he had no time to pose for a full-length photo for the mailing, Broschart said.
Hmmm. That excuse does not hold up on further inspection. How long does it take to snap a photo? Less than a minute, even if you are posing. Abd certainly far less effort and time than it took to go to all the trouble of clipping the two photos and melding them together using a computer program. Or here is a thought-- most candidates who have a weight problem don't go for the full length photo to begin with. Or an even better thought-- go with the real photo and admit that he's a few pounds on the heavy side. People don't expect Congressmen to compete in the Olympic decathlon anyway.
Well, in any case if Mr. Hrbacek does win, then he will be off to a good start in representing the district that DeLay once did, misrepresenting the 'facts.'
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Forget evolution. Pope doesn't even believe in Astronomy.
Pope Benedict XVI has cancelled plans to give a speech at La Sapienza University in Rome.
The pontiff cancelled plans amid protests of a speech he gave in 1993 in which he called the trial and conviction of Galileo in 1633 for heresy over his observation that the earth was not the center of the universe (contradicting the doctrine of the medieval church on the subject) "reasonable and just" and suggested that the church back in the early 1600's had more reason on its side than Galileo.
I guess I'll quit worrying so much about creationists who want to censor my biology book. Now I'll have to start worrying about real fanatics, led by the Holy Father himself, who want to burn my physics book.
What comes next? Defending the 'reasonableness' of the Inquisition? Come to think of it, with the willingness of the Bush administration to justify torture, maybe as a matter of fact that will come next.
The pontiff cancelled plans amid protests of a speech he gave in 1993 in which he called the trial and conviction of Galileo in 1633 for heresy over his observation that the earth was not the center of the universe (contradicting the doctrine of the medieval church on the subject) "reasonable and just" and suggested that the church back in the early 1600's had more reason on its side than Galileo.
I guess I'll quit worrying so much about creationists who want to censor my biology book. Now I'll have to start worrying about real fanatics, led by the Holy Father himself, who want to burn my physics book.
What comes next? Defending the 'reasonableness' of the Inquisition? Come to think of it, with the willingness of the Bush administration to justify torture, maybe as a matter of fact that will come next.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Trying to 'fix' the game in Vegas
The Nevada State Education Association, some of whose top leaders have endorsed Hillary Clinton (though the teachers' union is officially as yet uncommitted), has filed a suit attempting to block a number of caucuses which are scheduled to be held in casinos. The last-minute lawsuit was not filed until the culinary workers union endorsed Barack Obama. Most of the people expected to attend the caucuses in the casinos are members of the culinary workers' union, and with 60,000 members in the state their support could very well make the difference in the state, though the caucuses are open to any shift worker, whether they are casino employees or union members or not.
"The Democratic Party of Nevada has violated the principle of 'one person, one vote' by creating at-large precincts for certain caucus participants, based solely on the employment of such participants," the suit alleges...
The state party quickly dismissed the lawsuit. Going back to last spring, every presidential campaign was involved in setting up the unusual casino caucus sites while state party officials and the Democratic National Committee ironed out the details. "This is a fair, legal and proper way to choose delegates under established law and legal precedent that has been reviewed by attorneys....The time for comment or complaint has passed," the party said in a statement.
The [culinary workers'] union was more blunt, contending the arguments are only a political effort to muddy the waters in case Clinton loses. "It's strange [the suit] is coming after our endorsement," said D. Taylor, the secretary-treasurer of the local labor group, told the Washington Post in an interview last night after an Obama rally in his union hall.
He's right about that. I have no problem with filing a suit challenging the rules if the teachers' union thinks they are unfair, but then do so when there is still time to resolve the differences, not five days before the election. It's a bit like a team that is up by seven points in a football game with the other team on the one yard line and ten seconds left, going to the referee and asking for a rule change that a touchdown in the last ten seconds will only be worth four points.
"The Democratic Party of Nevada has violated the principle of 'one person, one vote' by creating at-large precincts for certain caucus participants, based solely on the employment of such participants," the suit alleges...
The state party quickly dismissed the lawsuit. Going back to last spring, every presidential campaign was involved in setting up the unusual casino caucus sites while state party officials and the Democratic National Committee ironed out the details. "This is a fair, legal and proper way to choose delegates under established law and legal precedent that has been reviewed by attorneys....The time for comment or complaint has passed," the party said in a statement.
The [culinary workers'] union was more blunt, contending the arguments are only a political effort to muddy the waters in case Clinton loses. "It's strange [the suit] is coming after our endorsement," said D. Taylor, the secretary-treasurer of the local labor group, told the Washington Post in an interview last night after an Obama rally in his union hall.
He's right about that. I have no problem with filing a suit challenging the rules if the teachers' union thinks they are unfair, but then do so when there is still time to resolve the differences, not five days before the election. It's a bit like a team that is up by seven points in a football game with the other team on the one yard line and ten seconds left, going to the referee and asking for a rule change that a touchdown in the last ten seconds will only be worth four points.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Why so many Democrats are moving beyond Clinton.
Having your hard drive crash and having to send your computer out for repairs does have a way of letting one think a bit and oberve the news from a different perspective. We do have a Mac that is not connected to the internet but my wife decided that it would be a lot more trouble to take it over here, hook it up to the internet and then unhook it and take it back to the room it is in once the repairs were completed.
I've been watching a bit of an unfolding story in the Democratic party. Since Hillary Clinton bounced back and won the New Hampshire primary over Barack Obama, it is Obama who seems to be on a tear, having won a string of endorsements (from the culinary workers union, a big deal in Nevada, just the day after the New Hampshire primary, followed by 2004 nominee John Kerry and today by our own Governor and arguably the highest profile female Governor in the nation, Janet Napolitano (who got her big break when she was appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by Bill Clinton and has since been a friend of Hillary Clinton, but called Hillary on Thursday to say that while she still respects her that Napolitano felt that Obama was the best choice for Arizona, the Democratic Party and the United States.)
The bigger story here is about the soul of the Democratic party.
It is not about ideology. It is true, as I wrote in the last post, that Clinton certainly opened the door for a strong challenge from the left by her hawkish pro-Bush administration stance on the war and other ares where she has tilted towards the right, but let's be honest-- Democrats, even liberal Democrats, have been willing to vote for centrists from within our own ranks. Janet Napolitano is a prime example of that. For that matter, it is also not even about ideology in terms of our opponents: polls have consistently shown that Hillary Clinton has far higher negatives than even the most liberal of Democrats-- Republicans, and what is more important, independents don't like her because of the hyperpartisanship that whether fairly or not the Clintons engender (and which we've seen more of with the Bush administration.) That also has nothing to do with ideology (for example Bill Clinton, a DLC endorsed Democrat, ran a much more conservative administration than most Democrats would like and agreed with Republicans on a wide range of things, going along on everything from missile defense to signing the welfare reform bill to NAFTA.)
What it is about, is that people want to see something different. It does not matter to me whether Barack Obama is right about one specific item (though on the issue that matters most to me, his pledge to work towards getting us out of Iraq carries much more credibility than anything that Hillary Clinton says after supporing the war for so long), what matters to me is that he is a 'big-picture' kind of guy, of a type we've not seen in this age of pollsters, focus groups and minute parsing of 'swing' voters by organizations mostly headquartered in Washington.
And right now that's something we can use, a visionary who can bring people together, not a myopic, detail-oriented candidate who just thinks in terms of what is printed out on some report.
Finally, there is the matter of that Iran vote and a subsequent incident in Iowa. Hillary Clinton did have a chance to prove earlier this year that she had learned about greasing the skids for war, and vote against an aggressive resolution aimed at creating tension with Iran. Now, I'm not going to rehash the fact that Clinton voted for the resolution, which many in the anti-war movement were using a test to see if she had really learned anything from Iraq. What I'm going to point out is how tone-deaf Clinton has become. Not only did she completely miss how focused the left was on that particular vote but also, as I wrote in this post: Does Hillary understand that this is a nation sick of war? she answered a voter's question by suggesting that he was a plant (someone told him to ask a question about the Iran vote). Of course this was ironically not that long before it did turn out that as a matter of fact Clinton did have some questioners who her own staff people told what to ask. But as I wrote back then,
Referring to her recent vote in the Senate supporting the Bush administration in its attempts to get us into a military confrontation with Iran, as well as her 2002 vote in favor of going to war in Iraq and her continued refusal to admit being wrong about that vote, the attendee, Randall Rolph asked,
"Why should I support your candidacy, if it appears that you haven't learned from your past mistakes?"
Sen. Clinton's response was particularly concerning to me as a Democratic voter:
After defending the vote, Clinton finished by saying about the question, "somebody obviously sent it to you."
Rolph responded, "I take exception. This is my own research. Nobody sent it to me. I am offended that you would suggest that."
"Let me finish," Clinton answered, "I apologize. I just have been asked the very same question in three other places."
What concerned me then and concerns me now was not the specifics of the question, and not even the fact that she thought a legitimate questioner was a plant. it was how after being asked the same question three times, she could still underestimate the importance of it and how passionately a lot of people felt about that.
Obama may not be right about a lot of things. But one thing I think he can do-- he can tell if people are really concerned about an issue and address it.
I've been watching a bit of an unfolding story in the Democratic party. Since Hillary Clinton bounced back and won the New Hampshire primary over Barack Obama, it is Obama who seems to be on a tear, having won a string of endorsements (from the culinary workers union, a big deal in Nevada, just the day after the New Hampshire primary, followed by 2004 nominee John Kerry and today by our own Governor and arguably the highest profile female Governor in the nation, Janet Napolitano (who got her big break when she was appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by Bill Clinton and has since been a friend of Hillary Clinton, but called Hillary on Thursday to say that while she still respects her that Napolitano felt that Obama was the best choice for Arizona, the Democratic Party and the United States.)
The bigger story here is about the soul of the Democratic party.
It is not about ideology. It is true, as I wrote in the last post, that Clinton certainly opened the door for a strong challenge from the left by her hawkish pro-Bush administration stance on the war and other ares where she has tilted towards the right, but let's be honest-- Democrats, even liberal Democrats, have been willing to vote for centrists from within our own ranks. Janet Napolitano is a prime example of that. For that matter, it is also not even about ideology in terms of our opponents: polls have consistently shown that Hillary Clinton has far higher negatives than even the most liberal of Democrats-- Republicans, and what is more important, independents don't like her because of the hyperpartisanship that whether fairly or not the Clintons engender (and which we've seen more of with the Bush administration.) That also has nothing to do with ideology (for example Bill Clinton, a DLC endorsed Democrat, ran a much more conservative administration than most Democrats would like and agreed with Republicans on a wide range of things, going along on everything from missile defense to signing the welfare reform bill to NAFTA.)
What it is about, is that people want to see something different. It does not matter to me whether Barack Obama is right about one specific item (though on the issue that matters most to me, his pledge to work towards getting us out of Iraq carries much more credibility than anything that Hillary Clinton says after supporing the war for so long), what matters to me is that he is a 'big-picture' kind of guy, of a type we've not seen in this age of pollsters, focus groups and minute parsing of 'swing' voters by organizations mostly headquartered in Washington.
And right now that's something we can use, a visionary who can bring people together, not a myopic, detail-oriented candidate who just thinks in terms of what is printed out on some report.
Finally, there is the matter of that Iran vote and a subsequent incident in Iowa. Hillary Clinton did have a chance to prove earlier this year that she had learned about greasing the skids for war, and vote against an aggressive resolution aimed at creating tension with Iran. Now, I'm not going to rehash the fact that Clinton voted for the resolution, which many in the anti-war movement were using a test to see if she had really learned anything from Iraq. What I'm going to point out is how tone-deaf Clinton has become. Not only did she completely miss how focused the left was on that particular vote but also, as I wrote in this post: Does Hillary understand that this is a nation sick of war? she answered a voter's question by suggesting that he was a plant (someone told him to ask a question about the Iran vote). Of course this was ironically not that long before it did turn out that as a matter of fact Clinton did have some questioners who her own staff people told what to ask. But as I wrote back then,
Referring to her recent vote in the Senate supporting the Bush administration in its attempts to get us into a military confrontation with Iran, as well as her 2002 vote in favor of going to war in Iraq and her continued refusal to admit being wrong about that vote, the attendee, Randall Rolph asked,
"Why should I support your candidacy, if it appears that you haven't learned from your past mistakes?"
Sen. Clinton's response was particularly concerning to me as a Democratic voter:
After defending the vote, Clinton finished by saying about the question, "somebody obviously sent it to you."
Rolph responded, "I take exception. This is my own research. Nobody sent it to me. I am offended that you would suggest that."
"Let me finish," Clinton answered, "I apologize. I just have been asked the very same question in three other places."
What concerned me then and concerns me now was not the specifics of the question, and not even the fact that she thought a legitimate questioner was a plant. it was how after being asked the same question three times, she could still underestimate the importance of it and how passionately a lot of people felt about that.
Obama may not be right about a lot of things. But one thing I think he can do-- he can tell if people are really concerned about an issue and address it.
Monday, January 07, 2008
The reason why I'm not voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary.
Let me quote from a comment I just put up on a post on Althouse in response to a post she put up in which Bill Clinton is bemoaning the fact perception that people are voting for Obama because he is younger than Hillary Clinton.
I wrote,
She doesn't get it. Doesn't get it at all. Neither does he.
Age has nothing to do with why so many Democratic primary voters don't want her. Neither does gender.
As a typical Democratic primary voter, let me spell it out:
Seven years ago, I was excited that Hillary Clinton became a Senator. I'd read some of her books, and I felt that she would be a progressive voice for moving things forward in the United States Senate.
Then came her voting record. She voted a lot like Joe Lieberman. NCLB, Patriot I and Patriot II, the Bankruptcy bill, and most importantly the Iraq war resolution. Then this year, she had a chance she'd learned her lesson about voting for the Iraq war when a resolution came up that appears to grease the skids for a war with Iran. She also voted for that.
Now, I am left with two possibilities.
1. She believes in this stuff. In that case, she is too conservative for me, and maybe she should move to the Republican party (since she's voted with them when it mattered.)
2. She voted that way because she a) was looking at how to run to the center, thinking about the general election of 2008 all along, b) took primary voters like me for granted, thinking we'd all just vote for her automatically, and c) we can assume more of the same when she takes office, that she will keep placating the right so she can appear centrist for the election of 2012.
Either way, I want someone who will stand up and fight for the things I believe in. Now granted, Obama isn't perfectm for example Clinton is right when she attacks him for having shifted to supporting the Patriot II Act (for the record I started out supporting Bill Richardson, and having endorsed him will still vote and work for him unless he drops out before my state votes on Feb. 5) but I feel that Obama much more reflects my passionately felt positions that does Hillary Clinton.
Isn't that what a Democratic primary is for anyway? I assume that the Republicans will pick someone who reflects what they want, not just someone who some pollster or focus group tells them might pick off a few votes from indecisive Democrats.
In other words, my vote was Hillary's to lose. Seven years ago she's had it. But during the past seven years, she's lost it.
I wrote,
She doesn't get it. Doesn't get it at all. Neither does he.
Age has nothing to do with why so many Democratic primary voters don't want her. Neither does gender.
As a typical Democratic primary voter, let me spell it out:
Seven years ago, I was excited that Hillary Clinton became a Senator. I'd read some of her books, and I felt that she would be a progressive voice for moving things forward in the United States Senate.
Then came her voting record. She voted a lot like Joe Lieberman. NCLB, Patriot I and Patriot II, the Bankruptcy bill, and most importantly the Iraq war resolution. Then this year, she had a chance she'd learned her lesson about voting for the Iraq war when a resolution came up that appears to grease the skids for a war with Iran. She also voted for that.
Now, I am left with two possibilities.
1. She believes in this stuff. In that case, she is too conservative for me, and maybe she should move to the Republican party (since she's voted with them when it mattered.)
2. She voted that way because she a) was looking at how to run to the center, thinking about the general election of 2008 all along, b) took primary voters like me for granted, thinking we'd all just vote for her automatically, and c) we can assume more of the same when she takes office, that she will keep placating the right so she can appear centrist for the election of 2012.
Either way, I want someone who will stand up and fight for the things I believe in. Now granted, Obama isn't perfectm for example Clinton is right when she attacks him for having shifted to supporting the Patriot II Act (for the record I started out supporting Bill Richardson, and having endorsed him will still vote and work for him unless he drops out before my state votes on Feb. 5) but I feel that Obama much more reflects my passionately felt positions that does Hillary Clinton.
Isn't that what a Democratic primary is for anyway? I assume that the Republicans will pick someone who reflects what they want, not just someone who some pollster or focus group tells them might pick off a few votes from indecisive Democrats.
In other words, my vote was Hillary's to lose. Seven years ago she's had it. But during the past seven years, she's lost it.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Pat Robertson predicts a stock market crash. That means it's time to buy.
Well, America's favorite New Year's prognosticator, Preacher Pat, is back at it again.
Let's recall last year's prediction of a terrorist attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon that would cause 'mass killings' in the U.S.
That follows Preacher Pat's May 2006 prediction about a tsunami hitting the United States by the end of the year.
In the past, he's made some really stupid statements, including saying that Ariel Sharon's stroke was a punishment from God for the Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005 or suggesting that God's wrath will be visited upon the town of Dover, Pennsylvania as punishment for the citizens of Dover voting a bunch of creationists off of the school board. Still waiting on that one.
Earlier this year, he broke with many of his cultural conservative brethren and endorsed then-frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, just about the same time that Giuliani started to tank.
So in other words, Robertson's record on 'predictions' is distressingly poor, especially for someone who claims to have an open line to God.
So today he said that in 2008 there will be a recession in the United States, with a major stock market crash by 2010.
I'm not going to guess one way or the other about the recession, because I'd call that even money about now. You could predict that there will or that there won't and have a decent chance of being right. But his prediction of a stock market crash, together with his past record on these kinds of predictions tells me that there is only one thing to do: BUY!
Let's recall last year's prediction of a terrorist attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon that would cause 'mass killings' in the U.S.
That follows Preacher Pat's May 2006 prediction about a tsunami hitting the United States by the end of the year.
In the past, he's made some really stupid statements, including saying that Ariel Sharon's stroke was a punishment from God for the Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005 or suggesting that God's wrath will be visited upon the town of Dover, Pennsylvania as punishment for the citizens of Dover voting a bunch of creationists off of the school board. Still waiting on that one.
Earlier this year, he broke with many of his cultural conservative brethren and endorsed then-frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, just about the same time that Giuliani started to tank.
So in other words, Robertson's record on 'predictions' is distressingly poor, especially for someone who claims to have an open line to God.
So today he said that in 2008 there will be a recession in the United States, with a major stock market crash by 2010.
I'm not going to guess one way or the other about the recession, because I'd call that even money about now. You could predict that there will or that there won't and have a decent chance of being right. But his prediction of a stock market crash, together with his past record on these kinds of predictions tells me that there is only one thing to do: BUY!
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
More troubling questions about the Bhutto assassination
The Pakistani government is raising a lot more questions than it is providing answers in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto herself sent an e-mail to be released in the event of her assassination that blames Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharrif, who she believed was behind blocking a request to have the FBI and Scotland Yard investigate a bombing at one of her rallies on October 18, and subsequent moves to reduce her security when she had asked for more.
It does seem very likely that the bombing was carried out (as claimed) by radical Islamists, almost certainly associated with al-Qaeda. I don't buy into the theory that some in Pakistan and a few in the United States have claimed that Pakistani security were directly involved and tried to make it look like al-Qaeda because 1. that ascribes to them a level of competence and sophistication that frankly they don't have; 2. it is hard to imagine Pervez Musharrif inspiring a suicide bomber to give up his life for the regime; and 3. it would be illogical for the Musharrif regime to do so because there are enough real Islamicists in Pakistan who wanted Bhutto dead that they would only need to take a step back and let them kill her.
It is this last possibility, however, which seems at least distressingly close to the most likely scenario. Bhutto was widely disliked and distrusted both by the Musharrif dictatorship and by Islamic radicals within the army itself, and that has been widely reported. There is no reason why they would have blocked outside agencies from investigating the October 18 blast unless there were something to hide. And to reduce security when she asked that it be increased seems inexplicable unless they were actually hoping that it would fail. There are reports that even the security that was provided, mainly local police, abandoned their posts as the rally last Thursday droned on longer than expected.
Most damning however is the set of contradictory reports regarding the cause of her death. Within thirty-six hours it went from bullet wounds to shrapnel and then to a report that she had bashed her head against a lever on the sunroof of her minivan after the explosion.
This may not seem important, but it is in Pakistan. To be killed while standing for what you believe in is seen as a martyr's death and is much more inspirational than to be killed in an accident. Martyrs hold a special place in the Islamic world and are valued as inspirational leaders in a way which western culture has trouble understanding.
For this reason, some had tried to portray it as her fault that she 'just happened to clumsily bash her own head while ducking while she was coincidentally being shot at' in order to deny her a martyr's death. That seeems odd to me, reminding me of the case in Belen, New Mexico some years ago when I lived there when a 21 year old thug was charged with murder after he had jumped on the chest and head of an 89 year old woman, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. Originally the diagnosis was that he ahd caused her death by crushing her windpipe, but then it turned out that she had died from a massive heart attack, which she apparently suffered moments before he landed on her windpipe, while he was still jumping on her chest. So his lawyer tried to get them to throw out the murder charge, arguing that she had died from the heart attack, which she coincidentally just happened to have while this guy was jumping on her chest and the prosecution couldn't prove that the two events were related. I don't remember how that one turned out, in fact I think I left the state before they ruled on the motion. But common sense dictates that he was responsible for her death, regardless how it happened, and the same kind of common sense is that Bhutto was assassinated no matter what the immediate cause of death was.
However, a videotape made of the assassination shows clearly that she was shot and fell back into the vehicle before the attacker blew himself up. That makes a huge difference because not only does it prove that she did indeed die specifically of wounds suffered by the gunshots (as people who were in the vehicle have been saying) but that the story put out by the government is simply a fabrication. For them to have said something like that is stupid in 2007 (or 2008) when it is virtually certain that at a public event like that there would be hundreds of video cameras, cell phones and other video recording devices. Like I said before though, competence is not their strong suit.
Bhutto herself sent an e-mail to be released in the event of her assassination that blames Pakistan's leader, Pervez Musharrif, who she believed was behind blocking a request to have the FBI and Scotland Yard investigate a bombing at one of her rallies on October 18, and subsequent moves to reduce her security when she had asked for more.
It does seem very likely that the bombing was carried out (as claimed) by radical Islamists, almost certainly associated with al-Qaeda. I don't buy into the theory that some in Pakistan and a few in the United States have claimed that Pakistani security were directly involved and tried to make it look like al-Qaeda because 1. that ascribes to them a level of competence and sophistication that frankly they don't have; 2. it is hard to imagine Pervez Musharrif inspiring a suicide bomber to give up his life for the regime; and 3. it would be illogical for the Musharrif regime to do so because there are enough real Islamicists in Pakistan who wanted Bhutto dead that they would only need to take a step back and let them kill her.
It is this last possibility, however, which seems at least distressingly close to the most likely scenario. Bhutto was widely disliked and distrusted both by the Musharrif dictatorship and by Islamic radicals within the army itself, and that has been widely reported. There is no reason why they would have blocked outside agencies from investigating the October 18 blast unless there were something to hide. And to reduce security when she asked that it be increased seems inexplicable unless they were actually hoping that it would fail. There are reports that even the security that was provided, mainly local police, abandoned their posts as the rally last Thursday droned on longer than expected.
Most damning however is the set of contradictory reports regarding the cause of her death. Within thirty-six hours it went from bullet wounds to shrapnel and then to a report that she had bashed her head against a lever on the sunroof of her minivan after the explosion.
This may not seem important, but it is in Pakistan. To be killed while standing for what you believe in is seen as a martyr's death and is much more inspirational than to be killed in an accident. Martyrs hold a special place in the Islamic world and are valued as inspirational leaders in a way which western culture has trouble understanding.
For this reason, some had tried to portray it as her fault that she 'just happened to clumsily bash her own head while ducking while she was coincidentally being shot at' in order to deny her a martyr's death. That seeems odd to me, reminding me of the case in Belen, New Mexico some years ago when I lived there when a 21 year old thug was charged with murder after he had jumped on the chest and head of an 89 year old woman, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. Originally the diagnosis was that he ahd caused her death by crushing her windpipe, but then it turned out that she had died from a massive heart attack, which she apparently suffered moments before he landed on her windpipe, while he was still jumping on her chest. So his lawyer tried to get them to throw out the murder charge, arguing that she had died from the heart attack, which she coincidentally just happened to have while this guy was jumping on her chest and the prosecution couldn't prove that the two events were related. I don't remember how that one turned out, in fact I think I left the state before they ruled on the motion. But common sense dictates that he was responsible for her death, regardless how it happened, and the same kind of common sense is that Bhutto was assassinated no matter what the immediate cause of death was.
However, a videotape made of the assassination shows clearly that she was shot and fell back into the vehicle before the attacker blew himself up. That makes a huge difference because not only does it prove that she did indeed die specifically of wounds suffered by the gunshots (as people who were in the vehicle have been saying) but that the story put out by the government is simply a fabrication. For them to have said something like that is stupid in 2007 (or 2008) when it is virtually certain that at a public event like that there would be hundreds of video cameras, cell phones and other video recording devices. Like I said before though, competence is not their strong suit.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The best baseball had to offer
Today, December 31, 2007, marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the death of Roberto Clemente. Let's look at why we must remember him, and what he meant, by looking at what happened in baseball this year:
In this steroid soaked year, when we saw Floyd Landis lose his final appeal of his disqualification for steroid use following last year's apparent Tour de France victory, Olympic medalist Marion Jones reverse years of denials and even a lawsuit alleging defamation to finally admit using steroids, and damning revelations involving many athletes in many sports, no sport was hit as hard as baseball. It was a year when Mark McGwire, just a decade removed from being named as the most admired man in America, couldn't even garner a quarter of the votes on Hall of Fame ballots-- suggesting that Big Mac won't ever make it to Cooperstown (since three quarters are needed.) It was a year that saw Barry Bonds break one of the greatest records in the game, and then not long after that get hit with an indictment for perjury in connection with his testimony to a federal grand jury investigating steroid use. And then it turned out that Bonds had a lot of company. A couple of weeks ago the Mitchell report came out and named scores of present and former players and slammed everyone from the commissioners office and the owners to the players union for fostering the use of performance-enhancing drugs at every level of the game.
Roberto Clemente was the opposite of all of that. To begin with, he was a great player. Probably nobody ever played better in right field. He could have played center, to be sure, but he was best in right and was a consistent gold glove winner. Clemente had a gun for an arm, and could throw strikes to home or to third base from anywhere in the outfield. In fact he rarely had to do so after the first few years because other teams learned that trying to run for the extra base was foolish if Clemente was fielding the ball. But when someone tried, they learned quickly that his arm didn't deteriorate, either in strength or in accuracy. He also got 3,000 hits. Unlike the fictional hero from the movie, Mr. 3000 (who gets 3000 hits, 'guaranteeing' his hall of fame induction and immediately retires with his team in a pennant race) Clemente finished with 3000 hits, but no one knew that his last regular season hit on the last day of the season was destined to be his last. His last game was a real disappointment-- in the 1972 playoff against the Reds, the winning run scored on a play that Clemente and the rest of the defending world champion Pirates could only watch helplessly, probably the least memorable ending ever to a thrilling playoff series--a wild pitch. But Clemente and the rest of the Pirates looked forward to getting back to the playoffs and trying to win another World Series in 1973. Clemente's 3000 hits would likely be higher if he hadn't missed a lot of games because of injuries (though he played hurt a lot too, and some of those injuries were caused by the fact that he wasn't a bit cautious about doing things like barreling into catchers if that was what he had to do to score or running into the outfield wall in order to make a catch.)
Ironically, in what is looked at more and more as another disappointment by many baseball fans, he just barely missed being voted onto baseball's all-century team in 2000. You may recall that that year it was all about Pete Rose. Rose, although he played before the steroids era, is banned from baseball for life because he gambled on himself (though always betting on his team to win.) Regardless of how anyone feels about Rose (and for the record I am a Reds fan) the fact is that the voting on the all-century team came down (thanks to the media looking for the 'big story') to a referendum on Rose. Now, Rose is a great player and there have been a lot of great outfielders but one has to wonder, given the fact that Rose barely edged Clemente for that final spot whether Clemente should have been on the team.
Certainly he should have, if baseball really means what it claims to mean about the character of players.
And that's where Clemente is really the greatest of players.
His code of ethics started with his family (where Roberto was the youngest of seven children). Both his parents worked very hard to support the family and taught Clemente about the value of work. They also taught him the value of honesty. He wrote in his biography (published just about the time of his death) that while playing for a Puerto Rican team for forty dollars a month, he was offered a contract in 1954 for $6000 by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He agreed verbally to accept it, and shortly thereafter got a phone call from the Braves organization offering him $20,000. This was a huge amount of money, especially in the early 1950's in Puerto Rico, and he called his mother for advice. Luisa Clemente had no doubts about what he should do. "You gave your word, you keep your word." Clemente signed with the Dodgers (though after one year in the minor leagues Clemente's contract was sent to the Pittsburgh organization via the draft, which worked differently then than it does today.)
But Clemente did a lot more than just show exemplary personal character. He realized he had been blessed to be in a very fortunate position, having the talent and having been given the opportunity to become an American baseball star, while others were not so fortunate. So he decided to give back, not only to his family and his community, but to the world.
His most famous quote was,
"Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth"
And more to the point he lived it. Clemente got involved in charity work, both in Pittsburgh and in his native Puerto Rico, before anyone expected baseball players to do that (remember he played while there was still a 'reserve clause' that essentially gave team owners the right to tell players what they would get paid with little recourse for the players other than to quit the team and even the highest paid ballplayers were paid less, even in real dollars than bench players make today.) Partly because of his charity work and partly because of his success as a Latino ballplayer, Clemente was idolized throughout Latin America, and it was for this reason that he would visit the area often for charitable work, knowing that his presence alone would lift the morale of millions (though he did a lot more than sign autographs.) He did the hard work, often working with his hands distributing food, medicine and other items to people who desperately needed them. He gave generously to those who were most in need.
And so it was hardly out of character for Roberto Clemente to do what he did on December 31, 1972. Most people who could were celebrating New Year's Eve festivities on that day. Clemente too was back home in Puerto Rico, where he would have been most welcome and honored at any celebration on the island. But he heard on the news about an earthquake that had struck Managua, Nicaragua. Thousands of people were injured or homeless. So instead of going to a party or enjoying a quiet evening at home he went to the airport in the middle of the night and helped load blankets, food and other relief supplies onto a rickety old airplane that was to fly to Nicaragua. And then he climbed onto the plane, to be there and help unload it when it landed.
The plane took off and a few minutes later it crashed into the sea.
And baseball has not been quite the same for thirty-five years.
Friday, December 28, 2007
President is doing the right thing by vetoing bill.
It is exceedingly rare that I agree with George W. Bush, and even more so that I agree with him or say he is right about anything pertaining to Iraq, but I will say that he is right in his statement that he will veto the defense spending bill, depsite provisions (which everyone agrees are sorely needed) increasing soldiers' pay and spending more on veterans funding.
At issue is a provision in the bill which would allow survivors or relatives of victims of atrocities committed by the regime of Saddam Hussein to sue the present Iraqi government. The provision would have frozen Iraqi assets as soon as a suit was filed. The Iraqi government had threatened to withdraw $25 billion in assets from American banks.
I have no problem with the concept that victims of Saddam's regime should be able to sue for damages and receive compensation for the horrible things that were done to them. And it is a longstanding international principle that the successor government (in this case the present Iraqi government) is responsible for settling matters attributable to the nation, including those charged to the previous government. Usually this applies to international debts and obligations (banknotes, for example) but it can apply to individual human rights cases (so for example the German government has set up a fund to help pay Holocaust victims.) It is also true that much of the Iraqi assets in question were accrued under Saddam's regime.
However, while I believe that it would be entirely appropriate for the present government of Iraq to set up a system to compensate Saddam's victims or their families and dedicate to that fund money which was accrued by Saddam's government, such settlements have to be set up in a structured and clearly defined manner. The bill the President is vetoing would simply have allowed lawsuits to proceed in a haphazard manner and result in the freezing of all the assets. Another closely related fact of the matter is that there are many thousands, maybe even millions of people who could file suit. However if this were simply pursued in U.S. courts, the likelihood is that those few who got in first would receive the lion's share of the cash (they, and their lawyers) in which case the assets would soon be used up and there would be nothing left for most of the victims.
I hope that the reason for the President's veto is because he understands this and recognizes that there should be a provision in place allowing victims of the former regime to collect damages, just that it has to be set up by the Iraqi government in a formal legal framework, as opposed to simply doing the bidding of the al-Maliki government and having no concern at all for the rights of those who did suffer.
At issue is a provision in the bill which would allow survivors or relatives of victims of atrocities committed by the regime of Saddam Hussein to sue the present Iraqi government. The provision would have frozen Iraqi assets as soon as a suit was filed. The Iraqi government had threatened to withdraw $25 billion in assets from American banks.
I have no problem with the concept that victims of Saddam's regime should be able to sue for damages and receive compensation for the horrible things that were done to them. And it is a longstanding international principle that the successor government (in this case the present Iraqi government) is responsible for settling matters attributable to the nation, including those charged to the previous government. Usually this applies to international debts and obligations (banknotes, for example) but it can apply to individual human rights cases (so for example the German government has set up a fund to help pay Holocaust victims.) It is also true that much of the Iraqi assets in question were accrued under Saddam's regime.
However, while I believe that it would be entirely appropriate for the present government of Iraq to set up a system to compensate Saddam's victims or their families and dedicate to that fund money which was accrued by Saddam's government, such settlements have to be set up in a structured and clearly defined manner. The bill the President is vetoing would simply have allowed lawsuits to proceed in a haphazard manner and result in the freezing of all the assets. Another closely related fact of the matter is that there are many thousands, maybe even millions of people who could file suit. However if this were simply pursued in U.S. courts, the likelihood is that those few who got in first would receive the lion's share of the cash (they, and their lawyers) in which case the assets would soon be used up and there would be nothing left for most of the victims.
I hope that the reason for the President's veto is because he understands this and recognizes that there should be a provision in place allowing victims of the former regime to collect damages, just that it has to be set up by the Iraqi government in a formal legal framework, as opposed to simply doing the bidding of the al-Maliki government and having no concern at all for the rights of those who did suffer.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
There are worse things than regulation. One of them is not enough regulation.
We saw more fallout from the mortgage crisis this week, as we find that home prices dropped 6.7% since this time last year. Many large metropolitan areas registered double digit declines in home prices since October of2006 with the highest being Miami, Florida where housing prices dropped 12.4% in that month. The rate of growth in housing prices began to decline in 2005 but it was not until late 2006 that prices themselves began to drop, slowly at first but with an accelerating trend.
This line sums up what part of the problem is:
The Case-Shiller report emerged as some economists and industry analysts are beginning to lower their expectations for housing markets, predicting a longer and deeper price slump than they had previously forecast.
NOW they figure out that this isn't just a minor hiccup? Tell that to a family who has been working hard and paying their bills but is now being foreclosed out of their house because their payments have doubled.
As we know, much of this was caused by unregulated or under-regulated or regulated but not enforced lending practices. Like the 1980's Savings and Loan debacle, this is the latest example of where lax government regulation and oversight has created problems that ultimately effect the economy as a whole and everyone in the country.
There are those who have an 'economic libertarian' view, in which they argue that government regulation is always or almost always a bad thing because it restricts economic freedom, and oppose almost all regulation. In their view, essentially an extension of the now-discredited philosophy known as "Social Darwinism" the world is made up of essentially two kinds of people, 'sharks,' and 'marks.' The 'sharks' are those, like the great showman P.T. Barnum, who are somehow blessed to be smarter or otherwise better repositories for wealth, and so they have a natural advantage over the 'marks,' which means anyone the 'shark' can snooker out of their money. Barnum once had a famous way of describing the 'marks,' when he said in response to someone who questioned why people kept falling for his tricks even when they were publicized, "There's a sucker born every minute."
But every time the 'sharks' get their way (generally in a situation like this where unscrupulous people figure out a way to make money that the government doesn't catch up to, and usually during a time period when those in charge of the government don't want to catch up very quickly) in the end a few people make a lot of money, sometimes a few people go to prison (as in the Enron/insider trading scandal of the early part of this decade) and many, many people end up on the short end of the stick. And in the end that costs society as a whole, when we have to pay to prosecute the insider traders or bail out the S&L industry in order to save millions of people from losing their savings, or recently when the government had to intervene to get the banking industry to reduce payments for some homebuyers so there won't be even more foreclosures.
In the past, government has had to regulate, over the objections of those who did not want it eveything from legal working age to workplace safety to pollution standards. Before that, seven year olds could be forced to work for long hours for very little money, children and adults could work in filthy, dangerous conditions in which injuries and death in the workplace were commonplace (workers, after all, were easier to replace than expensive equipment) and there was little concern about toxic pollutants, either in products or what was dumped out into the enviroment for the rest of the world to drink, inhale or otherwise be exposed to. We got a dose of that recently with the discovery of unhealthy levels of lead in children's toys imported from China. In China the government does not consider consumer safety to be very important so not surprisingly, millions of kids in America yesterday opened presents that conform to Chinese standards, but not necessarily to American standards. Pray to God that they all do (because it is extremely optimistic to think that during the recent furor we caught all of them, with 80% of U.S. toys coming from China).
Which in turn points out that we need to consider how to regulate products that are made outside the U.S. and how to condition trade agreements on that (I once wrote a post about free trade agreements in which I suggested that the U.S. enter into trade agreements with other countries only contingent on upholding American labor and environmental standards, but as recent events have made clear, I should have added consumer safety to the list.
I'm not saying that Government regulation is the answer to everything, but clearly those who argue that they are not needed and that industries can 'police themselves,' have failed in their argument. Or perhaps the banking industry has made the case for them that there has to be more government oversight. Because we see here the great lesson that undid Social Darwinism, and reached its sickening climax during the Second World War: No matter how much freedom and how much power people have, human beings are still the same, and you won't create a 'better' kind of human by just letting things go. Government was originally designed to be an arbiter as to what people can do, and it is still needed in that role.
CORRECTION: As commenter IndyVoter points out I misread the report, the drop was between October 2006 and October 2007 (I had originally read it as a drop JUST in October 2007). That has been corrected.
That represents my tenth material error in 719 posts (four of which have been pointed out by the same commenter), representing a fielding percentage of .986
This line sums up what part of the problem is:
The Case-Shiller report emerged as some economists and industry analysts are beginning to lower their expectations for housing markets, predicting a longer and deeper price slump than they had previously forecast.
NOW they figure out that this isn't just a minor hiccup? Tell that to a family who has been working hard and paying their bills but is now being foreclosed out of their house because their payments have doubled.
As we know, much of this was caused by unregulated or under-regulated or regulated but not enforced lending practices. Like the 1980's Savings and Loan debacle, this is the latest example of where lax government regulation and oversight has created problems that ultimately effect the economy as a whole and everyone in the country.
There are those who have an 'economic libertarian' view, in which they argue that government regulation is always or almost always a bad thing because it restricts economic freedom, and oppose almost all regulation. In their view, essentially an extension of the now-discredited philosophy known as "Social Darwinism" the world is made up of essentially two kinds of people, 'sharks,' and 'marks.' The 'sharks' are those, like the great showman P.T. Barnum, who are somehow blessed to be smarter or otherwise better repositories for wealth, and so they have a natural advantage over the 'marks,' which means anyone the 'shark' can snooker out of their money. Barnum once had a famous way of describing the 'marks,' when he said in response to someone who questioned why people kept falling for his tricks even when they were publicized, "There's a sucker born every minute."
But every time the 'sharks' get their way (generally in a situation like this where unscrupulous people figure out a way to make money that the government doesn't catch up to, and usually during a time period when those in charge of the government don't want to catch up very quickly) in the end a few people make a lot of money, sometimes a few people go to prison (as in the Enron/insider trading scandal of the early part of this decade) and many, many people end up on the short end of the stick. And in the end that costs society as a whole, when we have to pay to prosecute the insider traders or bail out the S&L industry in order to save millions of people from losing their savings, or recently when the government had to intervene to get the banking industry to reduce payments for some homebuyers so there won't be even more foreclosures.
In the past, government has had to regulate, over the objections of those who did not want it eveything from legal working age to workplace safety to pollution standards. Before that, seven year olds could be forced to work for long hours for very little money, children and adults could work in filthy, dangerous conditions in which injuries and death in the workplace were commonplace (workers, after all, were easier to replace than expensive equipment) and there was little concern about toxic pollutants, either in products or what was dumped out into the enviroment for the rest of the world to drink, inhale or otherwise be exposed to. We got a dose of that recently with the discovery of unhealthy levels of lead in children's toys imported from China. In China the government does not consider consumer safety to be very important so not surprisingly, millions of kids in America yesterday opened presents that conform to Chinese standards, but not necessarily to American standards. Pray to God that they all do (because it is extremely optimistic to think that during the recent furor we caught all of them, with 80% of U.S. toys coming from China).
Which in turn points out that we need to consider how to regulate products that are made outside the U.S. and how to condition trade agreements on that (I once wrote a post about free trade agreements in which I suggested that the U.S. enter into trade agreements with other countries only contingent on upholding American labor and environmental standards, but as recent events have made clear, I should have added consumer safety to the list.
I'm not saying that Government regulation is the answer to everything, but clearly those who argue that they are not needed and that industries can 'police themselves,' have failed in their argument. Or perhaps the banking industry has made the case for them that there has to be more government oversight. Because we see here the great lesson that undid Social Darwinism, and reached its sickening climax during the Second World War: No matter how much freedom and how much power people have, human beings are still the same, and you won't create a 'better' kind of human by just letting things go. Government was originally designed to be an arbiter as to what people can do, and it is still needed in that role.
CORRECTION: As commenter IndyVoter points out I misread the report, the drop was between October 2006 and October 2007 (I had originally read it as a drop JUST in October 2007). That has been corrected.
That represents my tenth material error in 719 posts (four of which have been pointed out by the same commenter), representing a fielding percentage of .986
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The price of no insurance, or of Scrooge-like insurance companies:DEATH
A report has come out using data gathered by the American Cancer Society showing that lack of insurance is directly correlated with an increased number of deaths in cancer patients.
Not that this is surprising, as the lack of health insurance influences everything from the decision of people to seek treatment or get screenings that they may have a hard time paying for, to the decisions by hospitals and healthcare providers not to provide more than the minimum amount of care they can knowing they may not get paid for it.
ATLANTA: Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as those with private coverage, according to the first national study of its kind and one that sheds light on troubling medical care obstacles.
People without insurance are less likely to get recommended cancer screening tests, the study found, confirming earlier research. And when these patients finally do get diagnosed, their cancer is likely to have spread.
The new research, analyzing information from 1,500 U.S. hospitals that provide cancer care, is being published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
It is true that only about four percent of cancer deaths actually occur in patients who lack health insurance (whereas the overall percentage of Americans without health insurance is around sixteen percent and rising) but that figure is misleading since the vast majority of fatal cancers occur in people over 65, all of whom are covered by medicare.
Of course, as we tragically saw in the case last week of Natalie Sarkisyan*, a seventeen year old who died needing a liver transplant even though one was available because her HMO, Cigna health, refused to authorize payment until the case hit the national media and by then it was too late, even having health insurance may not save you if the insurance company simply decides that they'd rather have you dead than cut the check.
Now, there are those who will continue to advocate that we should have the system we have now, where people can 'choose' to buy (or not to buy) health insurance. They conveniently ignore the fact that most people who don't have health insurance are not without it because they don't want it, but because they can't afford it. It is still true that for those who can afford it, there are more high tech, specialized treatments available in America than elsewhere. For those who can't, it might as well be a trip to the moon. The truth is, we have no real options available for the uninsured to get adequate treatment, other than don't get the treatment, or go far into debt to pay for it (so far that most hospitals, when they see that a patient is uninsured, will automatically 'fast-track' them out of the hospital with the minimum treatment they can, knowing that the large majority of them won't be able to pay.)
However, you may be one of those who will defend to the hilt the present system and say that the choice not to buy insurance, for whatever it's drawbacks are, outweighs all other alternatives.
Fine. But be advised that we now have hard data, in the form of this cancer study, indicating that one of those drawbacks is the increased numbers of deaths in Americans without insurance. If the death of other Americans is an acceptable price for maintaining the system we have now, then go ahead and advocate for it. But don't pretend that it is a benign system, or is something that it is not.
*-- On a personal note, I might add that I am an organ donor, should that ever occur. But the circumstances surrounding the Sarkisyan case cause me to wonder whether I should be, or how I should discuss organ donation with my kids. I've always felt that if I (or one of my kids, one of whom has said she would be willing to be a donor) were ever in a position in which my organs could save a life, then to do so. But I feel uncomfortable now, given what happened in this case, knowing that my organs could simply become available, not based on need but based on who is insured and whether their insurance company would pay. That would be one criterion I would absolutely NOT want used to determine who received my liver or other organs, or those of my family members.
Not that this is surprising, as the lack of health insurance influences everything from the decision of people to seek treatment or get screenings that they may have a hard time paying for, to the decisions by hospitals and healthcare providers not to provide more than the minimum amount of care they can knowing they may not get paid for it.
ATLANTA: Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as those with private coverage, according to the first national study of its kind and one that sheds light on troubling medical care obstacles.
People without insurance are less likely to get recommended cancer screening tests, the study found, confirming earlier research. And when these patients finally do get diagnosed, their cancer is likely to have spread.
The new research, analyzing information from 1,500 U.S. hospitals that provide cancer care, is being published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
It is true that only about four percent of cancer deaths actually occur in patients who lack health insurance (whereas the overall percentage of Americans without health insurance is around sixteen percent and rising) but that figure is misleading since the vast majority of fatal cancers occur in people over 65, all of whom are covered by medicare.
Of course, as we tragically saw in the case last week of Natalie Sarkisyan*, a seventeen year old who died needing a liver transplant even though one was available because her HMO, Cigna health, refused to authorize payment until the case hit the national media and by then it was too late, even having health insurance may not save you if the insurance company simply decides that they'd rather have you dead than cut the check.
Now, there are those who will continue to advocate that we should have the system we have now, where people can 'choose' to buy (or not to buy) health insurance. They conveniently ignore the fact that most people who don't have health insurance are not without it because they don't want it, but because they can't afford it. It is still true that for those who can afford it, there are more high tech, specialized treatments available in America than elsewhere. For those who can't, it might as well be a trip to the moon. The truth is, we have no real options available for the uninsured to get adequate treatment, other than don't get the treatment, or go far into debt to pay for it (so far that most hospitals, when they see that a patient is uninsured, will automatically 'fast-track' them out of the hospital with the minimum treatment they can, knowing that the large majority of them won't be able to pay.)
However, you may be one of those who will defend to the hilt the present system and say that the choice not to buy insurance, for whatever it's drawbacks are, outweighs all other alternatives.
Fine. But be advised that we now have hard data, in the form of this cancer study, indicating that one of those drawbacks is the increased numbers of deaths in Americans without insurance. If the death of other Americans is an acceptable price for maintaining the system we have now, then go ahead and advocate for it. But don't pretend that it is a benign system, or is something that it is not.
*-- On a personal note, I might add that I am an organ donor, should that ever occur. But the circumstances surrounding the Sarkisyan case cause me to wonder whether I should be, or how I should discuss organ donation with my kids. I've always felt that if I (or one of my kids, one of whom has said she would be willing to be a donor) were ever in a position in which my organs could save a life, then to do so. But I feel uncomfortable now, given what happened in this case, knowing that my organs could simply become available, not based on need but based on who is insured and whether their insurance company would pay. That would be one criterion I would absolutely NOT want used to determine who received my liver or other organs, or those of my family members.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Why is the Republican establishment so afraid of Mike Huckabee?
This week, new GOP co-frontrunner (hard to say who is in front over there) Mike Huckabee has been taking a lot of flak from Republicans. Of course this is to be expected when it is from other candidates, who are competing for the same prize he is (and they have certainly gone after him, especially Mitt Romney, who has seen Huckabee come out of nowhere to suddenly be on the verge of snatching Iowa from Mitt.) One Romney commercial attacked Huckabee's record on pardons as Governor of Arkansas, saying "Huckabee granted more pardons than the previous three Governors of Arkansas combined." Them's fightin' words in a Republican primary, because they well know who one of those former Governors of Arkansas was. And Huckabee probably earned the barbs from Romney after making an anti-Mormon comment during an interview for the New York Times magazine.
What is really different though is that Huckabee has been getting a lot of flak from 'establishment' Republicans, such as Condi Rice (part of the Bush administration) and Rush Limbaugh, who usually either praise or say nothing about candidates in Republican primaries. While Rice was responding to a comment by Huckabee critical of the Bush policy in Iraq to be sure, some of the Bush administration's policies have come in for much harsher criticism during the campaign by other candidates and the administration has chosen to turn the other cheek, so the comment by Rice represents a change from how they've treated other candidates.
It is clear to me why they are suddenly treating Huckabee like a cat in a dog pound.
The truth is, that the GOP establishment has patronized the religious right and their millons of votes sort of like patronizing a crazy old uncle, but they have been careful not to let religious conservatives get too close to the tiller, afraid they will run the party onto the rocks. They promise them the moon, and give them enough bones to make them happy.
Originally the Republican establishment wanted John McCain. He was the early front-runner, and with his traditional appeal to independents they calculated he was the Republican most likely to hold the White House for the GOP. But then McCain ran his campaign into the ground, creating an organization that required more money than he was able to raise. "Mr. fiscal conservative" was embarrassed out of the lead, and dropped into the second tier during the summer as his campaign seemed to fly apart and was deep in debt. So then Rudy Giuliani jumped up as the apparent choice of the Republican establishment. As a social liberal with a base in the northeast, they figured he could be the one who could challenge the Democrats, on their home turf. They even tried hard to sell Rudy to social conservatives as a guy who 'could win,' and Rudy, the pro-choice Republican, promised to only appoint 'strict constructionist' judges. But social conservatives never warmed to Rudy (selling a guy with Rudy's positions and his personal history to the religious right is a little like trying to sell a package of ground beef to a vegetarian.) So then they brought out former Senator and lobbyist (about as 'establishment' as it gets) Fred Thompson to try and appeal to religious conservatives, but the former actor had all the appeal of one of those zombies from, "Night of the living dead." So they went back to trying to sell them on Rudy, even convincing social conservative Godfather Pat Robertson to endorse Giuliani.
But a string of recent scandals has soured many Republicans, not just members of the religious right on Giuliani. So now, McCain (remember him) who has been hanging around on the edges of the race has re-emerged as the apparent choice of the 'establishment.' They don't want Mitt Romney, though they will get behind him if he muscles his way into the nomination (and being worth a quarter of a billion dollars and having shown himself willing to spend freely on his own campaign, Romney has the muscles, at least financially.)
But Huckabee is the guy who scares them to death. He puts exactly the face on the Republican party that they don't want. An ordained Baptist minister, he is wildly popular with social conservatives, but many of his positions (such as wanting to teach creationism in schools) are viewed with skepticism (to put it mildly) by the majority of Americans. Even on areas where he tends to the center he becomes less electable. I personally admire Huckabee for being willing to actually seriously consider his authority as a Governor to exercise pardons (he still did deny 90% of them) even when he runs the risk of what happened, that one of the many people he pardoned subsequently went to Missouri and committed a brutal murder. But it's a very risky position politically, because people will remember (or be reminded of, a la Willie Horton) the one failure and not of the dozens of people who turned their second chance into something good for themselves, their families and society. His record on taxes and spending irks fiscal conservatives (the reason his success elsewhere has not been mirrored in New Hampshire, a state where fiscal, not social conservatives dominate the Republican primary.) Unfortunately for the GOP, fiscal conservatives make the most inviting target for Democrats to appeal for crossover votes. Most national Democrats are diametrically opposed to the position of social conservatives on abortion, gay rights, creationism and other hot-button issues, but it is possible for a Democrat to be nominated who preaches or has a record of fiscal responsibility at least as good as that pushed by most Republicans. Fiscal conservatives are in many cases disillusioned by the Bush administration and GOP Congress that actually accelerated the rate of increase in Federal spending and ran up huge deficits in the process. A Huckabee nomination would make them ripe for the picking if a Democrat was ready to capitalize on this concern, and GOP insiders know it.
For these reasons, they fear Huckabee, or rather they fear that if he is the nominee he could well lead the GOP to a historic landslide defeat. Given that Congress is already firmly in control of the Democrats, and that Democrats will likely gain Senate seats this year, Republicans fear most that there could be a Democratic Presidential landslide, electing a President who had a lot of political capital to push for something like, say, national health care and who would sign all of the bills that Congress has been frustrated with this year, everything from a timetable for Iraq withdrawl to comprehensive immigration reform. There is even an outside chance (though they'd pretty much have to run the table in terms of winnable open seats and knocking off vulnerable GOP incumbents) that Democrats could next year win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This is very unlikely but would become more likely if the GOP suffered a crushing landslide defeat in the Presidential race.
So Huckabee in fact scares the GOP establishment. That is why they tried to establish him early on as 'second tier.' And now that he is clearly up with the raft of candidates they've been pitching to the GOP faithful, they will do anything they can to try and prevent him from actually winning the nomination.
The only candidate that would scare the GOP establishment more than Mike Huckabee if he wins the nomination, is Ron Paul.
What is really different though is that Huckabee has been getting a lot of flak from 'establishment' Republicans, such as Condi Rice (part of the Bush administration) and Rush Limbaugh, who usually either praise or say nothing about candidates in Republican primaries. While Rice was responding to a comment by Huckabee critical of the Bush policy in Iraq to be sure, some of the Bush administration's policies have come in for much harsher criticism during the campaign by other candidates and the administration has chosen to turn the other cheek, so the comment by Rice represents a change from how they've treated other candidates.
It is clear to me why they are suddenly treating Huckabee like a cat in a dog pound.
The truth is, that the GOP establishment has patronized the religious right and their millons of votes sort of like patronizing a crazy old uncle, but they have been careful not to let religious conservatives get too close to the tiller, afraid they will run the party onto the rocks. They promise them the moon, and give them enough bones to make them happy.
Originally the Republican establishment wanted John McCain. He was the early front-runner, and with his traditional appeal to independents they calculated he was the Republican most likely to hold the White House for the GOP. But then McCain ran his campaign into the ground, creating an organization that required more money than he was able to raise. "Mr. fiscal conservative" was embarrassed out of the lead, and dropped into the second tier during the summer as his campaign seemed to fly apart and was deep in debt. So then Rudy Giuliani jumped up as the apparent choice of the Republican establishment. As a social liberal with a base in the northeast, they figured he could be the one who could challenge the Democrats, on their home turf. They even tried hard to sell Rudy to social conservatives as a guy who 'could win,' and Rudy, the pro-choice Republican, promised to only appoint 'strict constructionist' judges. But social conservatives never warmed to Rudy (selling a guy with Rudy's positions and his personal history to the religious right is a little like trying to sell a package of ground beef to a vegetarian.) So then they brought out former Senator and lobbyist (about as 'establishment' as it gets) Fred Thompson to try and appeal to religious conservatives, but the former actor had all the appeal of one of those zombies from, "Night of the living dead." So they went back to trying to sell them on Rudy, even convincing social conservative Godfather Pat Robertson to endorse Giuliani.
But a string of recent scandals has soured many Republicans, not just members of the religious right on Giuliani. So now, McCain (remember him) who has been hanging around on the edges of the race has re-emerged as the apparent choice of the 'establishment.' They don't want Mitt Romney, though they will get behind him if he muscles his way into the nomination (and being worth a quarter of a billion dollars and having shown himself willing to spend freely on his own campaign, Romney has the muscles, at least financially.)
But Huckabee is the guy who scares them to death. He puts exactly the face on the Republican party that they don't want. An ordained Baptist minister, he is wildly popular with social conservatives, but many of his positions (such as wanting to teach creationism in schools) are viewed with skepticism (to put it mildly) by the majority of Americans. Even on areas where he tends to the center he becomes less electable. I personally admire Huckabee for being willing to actually seriously consider his authority as a Governor to exercise pardons (he still did deny 90% of them) even when he runs the risk of what happened, that one of the many people he pardoned subsequently went to Missouri and committed a brutal murder. But it's a very risky position politically, because people will remember (or be reminded of, a la Willie Horton) the one failure and not of the dozens of people who turned their second chance into something good for themselves, their families and society. His record on taxes and spending irks fiscal conservatives (the reason his success elsewhere has not been mirrored in New Hampshire, a state where fiscal, not social conservatives dominate the Republican primary.) Unfortunately for the GOP, fiscal conservatives make the most inviting target for Democrats to appeal for crossover votes. Most national Democrats are diametrically opposed to the position of social conservatives on abortion, gay rights, creationism and other hot-button issues, but it is possible for a Democrat to be nominated who preaches or has a record of fiscal responsibility at least as good as that pushed by most Republicans. Fiscal conservatives are in many cases disillusioned by the Bush administration and GOP Congress that actually accelerated the rate of increase in Federal spending and ran up huge deficits in the process. A Huckabee nomination would make them ripe for the picking if a Democrat was ready to capitalize on this concern, and GOP insiders know it.
For these reasons, they fear Huckabee, or rather they fear that if he is the nominee he could well lead the GOP to a historic landslide defeat. Given that Congress is already firmly in control of the Democrats, and that Democrats will likely gain Senate seats this year, Republicans fear most that there could be a Democratic Presidential landslide, electing a President who had a lot of political capital to push for something like, say, national health care and who would sign all of the bills that Congress has been frustrated with this year, everything from a timetable for Iraq withdrawl to comprehensive immigration reform. There is even an outside chance (though they'd pretty much have to run the table in terms of winnable open seats and knocking off vulnerable GOP incumbents) that Democrats could next year win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This is very unlikely but would become more likely if the GOP suffered a crushing landslide defeat in the Presidential race.
So Huckabee in fact scares the GOP establishment. That is why they tried to establish him early on as 'second tier.' And now that he is clearly up with the raft of candidates they've been pitching to the GOP faithful, they will do anything they can to try and prevent him from actually winning the nomination.
The only candidate that would scare the GOP establishment more than Mike Huckabee if he wins the nomination, is Ron Paul.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Building containing Dick Cheney's office is on fire
The Eisenhower Executive Building, which houses the Vice President's office is on fire. Hopefully no one is injured, but here are some explanations for how it might have happened:
1. With the clock running down on the Bush administration, they were going to build a bonfire to burn all those documents on Cheney's energy committee hearings, but with his penchant for secrecy he suggested that they hold it indoors.
2. After all those years of the CIA trying to get him with those exploding cigars, Fidel Castro finally got his revenge. He sent a box of them to Cheney, and Cheney, not knowing who they were from, lit one.
3. We now know where the 'secret, undisclosed underground location' is, and it's a hell of a long way down under the Eisenhower building, and quite hot down there.
4. Speaking of the devil, Dick Cheney forgot to extinguish himself this morning when he entered his office.
5. The ghost of Ike is sending a message that he doesn't like what Cheney and his crew have done to the military, the country and the Republican party.
6. With Congress withholding funding for Iraq, the Bush administration took out one of those risky subprime mortgages on the building and now they are also trying to collect the insurance money.
7. It is sort of cramped in there, so it was inevitable that they'd waterboard somebody too close to an electrical outlet.
8. We will find out who started the fire, because Scooter Libby will tell Bob Novak.
9. They just made the building non-smoking, so it started with Cheney sneaking a smoke in the bathroom. He accidentally caught the toilet paper on fire.
10. They experienced a short circuit in an electrical cattle prod during an interrogation session. After it melted one set of testicles, the fire really took off.
11. Dick Cheney is known to sometimes be a volcanic hothead. So this morning his temper got the better of him and the fire started in the room he was in due to spontaneous combustion.
12. The Vice President's answer to global warming: burn documents that were left in the office by the previous occupant.
13. On April 10, 2003 Dick Cheney said that the rioters who were burning all those government buildings in Baghdad were just 'blowing off steam.' So with tension rising in the Vice President's office, maybe he thought it was time to do the same.
14. With Congress passing the new energy bill, oilman Dick Cheney is doing his own research to try and develop a cleaner burning fuel.
15. While duck hunting in his office, Dick Cheney misfired with his shotgun and shot an electrical outlet.
16. The Vice President started a couch on fire with his rhetoric.
17. Congress and the Justice Department are looking into those destroyed CIA tapes. So they need to destroy the tapes of them destroying the tapes.
18. The Vice President had a meeting this morning with some space aliens from Altair-7, and the staff forgot to fireproof the room first.
19. Realizing that he was going to be leaving the office next year, Cheney wanted to make it clear which furniture was his. So remembering his old cattle ranching days he heated up the branding iron and tried to brand the sofa.
20. Never an advocate for civil liberties, Cheney was amusing himself by burning a copy of the Constitution.
1. With the clock running down on the Bush administration, they were going to build a bonfire to burn all those documents on Cheney's energy committee hearings, but with his penchant for secrecy he suggested that they hold it indoors.
2. After all those years of the CIA trying to get him with those exploding cigars, Fidel Castro finally got his revenge. He sent a box of them to Cheney, and Cheney, not knowing who they were from, lit one.
3. We now know where the 'secret, undisclosed underground location' is, and it's a hell of a long way down under the Eisenhower building, and quite hot down there.
4. Speaking of the devil, Dick Cheney forgot to extinguish himself this morning when he entered his office.
5. The ghost of Ike is sending a message that he doesn't like what Cheney and his crew have done to the military, the country and the Republican party.
6. With Congress withholding funding for Iraq, the Bush administration took out one of those risky subprime mortgages on the building and now they are also trying to collect the insurance money.
7. It is sort of cramped in there, so it was inevitable that they'd waterboard somebody too close to an electrical outlet.
8. We will find out who started the fire, because Scooter Libby will tell Bob Novak.
9. They just made the building non-smoking, so it started with Cheney sneaking a smoke in the bathroom. He accidentally caught the toilet paper on fire.
10. They experienced a short circuit in an electrical cattle prod during an interrogation session. After it melted one set of testicles, the fire really took off.
11. Dick Cheney is known to sometimes be a volcanic hothead. So this morning his temper got the better of him and the fire started in the room he was in due to spontaneous combustion.
12. The Vice President's answer to global warming: burn documents that were left in the office by the previous occupant.
13. On April 10, 2003 Dick Cheney said that the rioters who were burning all those government buildings in Baghdad were just 'blowing off steam.' So with tension rising in the Vice President's office, maybe he thought it was time to do the same.
14. With Congress passing the new energy bill, oilman Dick Cheney is doing his own research to try and develop a cleaner burning fuel.
15. While duck hunting in his office, Dick Cheney misfired with his shotgun and shot an electrical outlet.
16. The Vice President started a couch on fire with his rhetoric.
17. Congress and the Justice Department are looking into those destroyed CIA tapes. So they need to destroy the tapes of them destroying the tapes.
18. The Vice President had a meeting this morning with some space aliens from Altair-7, and the staff forgot to fireproof the room first.
19. Realizing that he was going to be leaving the office next year, Cheney wanted to make it clear which furniture was his. So remembering his old cattle ranching days he heated up the branding iron and tried to brand the sofa.
20. Never an advocate for civil liberties, Cheney was amusing himself by burning a copy of the Constitution.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Kisses and Hugs
THE KISSER
endorses THE HUGGER
And the media is saying they are shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!
Boy, are they asleep at the switch, or maybe they want to be shocked.
Because the truth is, you could take the difference between Joe Lieberman and John McCain and put it on a butter knife and spread it thin on a cracker. An oyster cracker.
endorses THE HUGGER
And the media is saying they are shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!
Boy, are they asleep at the switch, or maybe they want to be shocked.
Because the truth is, you could take the difference between Joe Lieberman and John McCain and put it on a butter knife and spread it thin on a cracker. An oyster cracker.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Hillary's national co-chair takes a cheap shot at Obama. And misses the target.
In the wake of a tightening race that shows Barack Obama pulling into a tie with Hillary Clinton in his home state of New Hampshire, top Clinton advisor Bill Shaheen has raised concerns about Obama's past admissions of drug use.
CONCORD, N.H. - A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate....
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen's remarks:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."
I agree that this is a desperation ploy by the Clinton campaign and they are worried they might (gasp) lose.
Here is the question: WHAT DOES WHAT SOMEONE DID AS A TEENAGER HAVE TO DO WITH HOW THEY WOULD CONDUCT THEMSELVES TODAY? Obama said he has learned from his mistakes, and that is as good an answer as the question has.
It's been years since Obama's acknowleged use of drugs, and the fact of the matter is that you probably will find very few people who were absolutely squeaky clean in every way when they were in high school.
And at least he admits that he inhaled.
Let me quote from a post I wrote recently, ironically defending a campaign advisor to Republican Fred Thompson who it turned out had served prison time for drug related crimes a quarter century ago:
First and foremost, it's a matter of time. I wrote a post once, called the prison that follows prison that dealt with how hard it is for a convicted felon in America to become a productive member of society, or for that matter to be anything other than a convicted felon in the eyes of most people. For that matter, unless he's had his rights restored, Philip Martin would not be allowed to vote in most states. But look, his last conviction was TWENTY-FOUR years ago! TWENTY-FOUR bloody years ago! Do we EVER forgive anybody, or let them move ahead with their lives? The man has kept out of trouble for nearly a quarter of a century, and some people want to haul up what he did in 1979 or 1983. Guess what? Besides it being a long time ago, he was also a lot younger then. Sometimes younger people do foolish things, and then they learn from them. All the evidence is that Philip Martin did learn from his mistakes.
Unfortunately after I wrote the post praising Thompson for standing by Martin and not pressuring him to resign, Martin did resign under pressure.
People make mistakes, especially when they are young. I've never thought that the mistakes that people made in their youth should be held against them when they get older, assuming of course that they straighten themselves out and stop making those mistakes. Obviously, Obama has done that.
And to be honest, I have a former co-worker who lives in Albuquerque and grew up in Chicago, and he knew Hillary's family and was a friend of her brother's. He's told me stories about that, but I won't choose to publish them here.
I won't, because they don't matter.
CONCORD, N.H. - A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate....
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen's remarks:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."
I agree that this is a desperation ploy by the Clinton campaign and they are worried they might (gasp) lose.
Here is the question: WHAT DOES WHAT SOMEONE DID AS A TEENAGER HAVE TO DO WITH HOW THEY WOULD CONDUCT THEMSELVES TODAY? Obama said he has learned from his mistakes, and that is as good an answer as the question has.
It's been years since Obama's acknowleged use of drugs, and the fact of the matter is that you probably will find very few people who were absolutely squeaky clean in every way when they were in high school.
And at least he admits that he inhaled.
Let me quote from a post I wrote recently, ironically defending a campaign advisor to Republican Fred Thompson who it turned out had served prison time for drug related crimes a quarter century ago:
First and foremost, it's a matter of time. I wrote a post once, called the prison that follows prison that dealt with how hard it is for a convicted felon in America to become a productive member of society, or for that matter to be anything other than a convicted felon in the eyes of most people. For that matter, unless he's had his rights restored, Philip Martin would not be allowed to vote in most states. But look, his last conviction was TWENTY-FOUR years ago! TWENTY-FOUR bloody years ago! Do we EVER forgive anybody, or let them move ahead with their lives? The man has kept out of trouble for nearly a quarter of a century, and some people want to haul up what he did in 1979 or 1983. Guess what? Besides it being a long time ago, he was also a lot younger then. Sometimes younger people do foolish things, and then they learn from them. All the evidence is that Philip Martin did learn from his mistakes.
Unfortunately after I wrote the post praising Thompson for standing by Martin and not pressuring him to resign, Martin did resign under pressure.
People make mistakes, especially when they are young. I've never thought that the mistakes that people made in their youth should be held against them when they get older, assuming of course that they straighten themselves out and stop making those mistakes. Obviously, Obama has done that.
And to be honest, I have a former co-worker who lives in Albuquerque and grew up in Chicago, and he knew Hillary's family and was a friend of her brother's. He's told me stories about that, but I won't choose to publish them here.
I won't, because they don't matter.
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