I've never read anything before by Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks, but she sure hit the nail right on the head in her column today on how Georgia got into this situation.
As we know, about a week ago, the Republic of Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia, one of two regions populated mainly by ethnic Russians that have been effectively self-governing for over a decade. Russian strongman Vladimer Putin and his chief underling Dmitri Medvedev were waiting for it, and they launched a full scale assault on Georgia, a former Soviet Republic with a pro-western government.
Brooks asks and answers the question, "how did Georgia make such a foolish mistake?" And she points her finger at two men: John McCain and George Bush.
So where did the Georgians get the silly idea that the U.S. would bail them out?
Maybe from John McCain, Republican heir apparent, whose top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, just happens to be a highly paid lobbyist for the Georgian government. Whoops-- correction! Scheunemann usedto be a highly paid lobbyist for Georgia. The McCain campaign says Scheunemann hasn't taken a dime from the Georgians since May 15. (Which is lucky for the Georgians, who are going to need all the spare cash they can get to rebuild all the stuff the Russians just bombed.)
According to the Washington Post, the relationship between Scheunemann and Georgia used to be very cozy (not to mention lucrative for Scheunemann). Between Jan. 1, 2007 and May 15, 2008, while Scheunemann was also a paid McCain advisor, "Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees."
And what did Georgia get in return?... they got Scheunemann's expensive pledge ot garner U.S. support for Georgia's admission into NATO and for its claims to South Ossetia, and his commitment to use his ties to politicians such as McCain to advance Georgia's causes. McCain has sponsored legislation supporting Georgia's claim over South Ossetia, an issue on which he was lobbied by Scheunemann's firm. And as recently as mid-April, Scheunemann was simultaneously taking money from Georgia and actively preparing McCain for supportive calls with Georgian President Mikheil Shaakashvili.
I thought it was illegal for foreign governments to pay U.S. politicians. But I guess it's OK now to pay their chief advisors. Imagine how much of an outcry there would be if, for example, a top advisor to Obama were found, even months after he secured his party's nomination, to be on the payroll for a foreign country.
Brooks goes on....
Is it any wonder that Saakashvili concluded that he had the backing of the Republican power structure when it came to South Ossetia?
But Scheunemann and McCain aren't the only ones who encouraged the Georgians to think that baiting the Russians was going to work out for them.
President Bush shards the blame.... The Bush administration supported [Georgia and others] and denounced antidemocratic crackdowns in Russia-- while making excuses for 'friendly' authoritarian regimes elsewhere.The administration also virtually shut down extensive multi-issue dialogues with Russia that had been maintained by previous administrations, hammering in the message that we didn't care much about good relations with Moscow....
Meanwhile the administration singled out Georgia for "Our Best Buddy in the Caucuses" award..... In return, Georgia sent 2,000 troops to Iraq, and the administration pretended to be deaf when Georgian politicians crowed that their newly improved military would be perfect for teaching those pesky South Ossetian seperatists a lesson.
But it's all gone disastrously wrong for our best buddies, and we're sitting on the sidelines, offering empty reassurances to the Georgians and empty threats to the Russians.
And this is the danger of the continuous saber rattling and bluster that we've seen from the GOP administration the past few years (and continue to see from Sen. McCain).
Putin (just like other potential opponents like Iranian President Ahmadinejad) know darn well that Bush has gotten our military stuck in the quicksand of Iraq and are in no condition to fight a major war right now. So they can be as belligerent and violent as they want to be, secure in the knowlege that we can't do anything about it. Russian oil provides up to a third of what is imported into Western European countries and Putin is well aware of how to use this power of pursuasion.
The danger is not that Bush and McCain may continue to rhetorically project force that in reality they can't back up. The danger is that someone else may do what the Georgians did-- actually believe the rhetoric.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
As I discussed in November, it appears we do have a Pyrrhic victory. But don't let the right try to claim it is anything more than that.
Lately, it seems that the righties want to talk about Iraq. They claim that since the surge worked, that somehow that vindicates all the crap they've thrown out there about it during these past several years. Fine, let's talk about Iraq.
I beg to differ with the standard right wing analysis. It is true that violence in Iraq is way down (especially U.S. troop casualties) and that we appear to have driven al-Qaeda out of Iraq. The Al-Maliki government has won several battles against homegrown militia groups and appears to have control over nearly all of the country.
And while the right tends to exaggerate the part of this that is attributable to the surge, there is little doubt that U.S. forces played a major role in routing al-Qaeda and in helping the Sunni militias take control of their regions of Iraq, and also in supporting the government's offensives against the Sadrist militia and other similar groups. If the right is guilty of exaggeration by failing to acknowledge the contribution of former Sunni militias that we bought by the payment of cash as being very important to the overall success as the surge, then often we on the left are guilty of failing to acknowledge the plain fact that the surge worked.
But where the righty argument falls flat is when they try to extrapolate from that back to justifying the original invasion of Iraq. Several months ago I anticipated this argument in a post I wrote entitled, The BEST case scenario in Iraq: A Pyrrhic victory.
Now, as an American I'm glad that starting where we were we have achieved this best case scenario.
However if we add up the costs and gains of the Iraq war we find the following:
Gains:
1. Saddam Hussein is gone. Of course there are still many bloody dictatorships in the world including the leaders of the country right now hosting the Olympics and we cannot get rid of them all but certainly we got rid of one. In any case, Saddam was gone by six weeks into the war, and had been captured by nine months into the war, so this still doesn't justify the nearly five years we've been fighting since the capture of Saddam.
2. Iraq is now a democracy. And the first thing they did with the democracy we gave them was to ratify a Constitution that states that the official religion is Islam and that Sharia is a source of the law, and elect a parliament full of fundamentalists that immediately passed restrictions on the legal rights of women so that in matters like divorce, inheritance and custody disputes they have even less rights than they had under Saddam. Democracy is like anything else-- it has to be earned to be treasured, not handed down. That is why Poles value their democracy while Iraqis have elected a majority of members of their parliament who are committed to establishing Sharia. Luckily, the political gridlock in Iraq has had the effect of preventing their parliament from getting much done.
3. There are now at best a handful of al-Qaeda members in Iraq. Which is exactly how many there were back in March 2003 when we invaded (Saddam knew who he could trust, which was nobody.) So we've beaten al-Qaeda all the way back to where it was in the first place.
4. We now know for sure that Iraq was no longer making WMD's or stockpiling them. If Bush had waited for Hans Blix to do his job then we'd have learned that at a lot less cost.
Costs:
1. The five year detour into Iraq have al-Qaeda, almost destroyed (along with their Taliban allies) in Afghanistan by January 2003, a second chance-- and they have come roaring back. They now have far more power in both Afghanistan and in Pakistan than they have had at any time since we put that war on the back burner and went after Iraq instead in March 2003. Righty likes to compare their present status to where they were on September 11. But that is not a valid comparison. Bush could have made the final push in early 2003 to end the earth of the Taliban and rid their Afghan center of power of al-Qaeda (including bin Laden and al-Zawahri) but he chose to relax the pressure and go after Iraq instead. So the nature of our conflict against the Taliban and AQ changed fundamentally in early 2003 from one of offense to one of essentially attrition and guarding certain selected strongpoints (mostly cities and military bases.) This is exactly the strategy the Soviet Union pursued in Afghanistan and it failed then, and it has slowly been failing us over the past five years. Further, the next American President will get to deal with a weak government in Pakistan which is even less willing to support operations and go after al-Qaeda and the Taliban than the Musharraf government was-- and we now have evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service itself is full of Taliban sympathizers, making Pakistan an unreliable ally at best.
2. We have lost the support of the world that we enjoyed virtually unanimously after 9/11. Most righties tend to blow this one off, suggesting that unilateral action is better anyway, but in fact we are overstretched right now militarily (one reason Iran is so belligerent-- they know darn well that as long as we have 150,000 or so troops tied down in Iraq we lack the ground force to seriously threaten to invade them.) Thanks to the poor planning of what to do after the invasion and the years we stayed fighting in Iraq it's a safe bet that next time we need a coalition, be it for political or military reasons, we'll find lots of cheerleaders but very few willing to go out onto the field with us. And incidents like Abu Graib and the use of torture have destroyed a well-earned reputation and given us a black eye that will take decades to fade, even if they are not ever repeated.
3. 4,000 American lives. Yes, this is less than a tenth of the casualty total in Vietnam and only 1% of what we lost in World War II. But then we have to ask: 4,000 lives for what? It's not an insignificant number (for example it is more Americans than died on 9/11) and is it really inconsequential to ask why we had to lose them when there were opponents of Saddam who were willing to fight and die to overthrow him themselves (such as those who rose up in 1991) if we had just supported them?
4. The myth of American military invincibility. There was a time when the armed forces of small countries like Grenada, Haiti, Serbia or even Iraq (during the first Gulf War) would either drop their arms and surrender at the news that the Americans were on the way, or if they fought would be systematically run over and destroyed pretty much at the same rate as if they had dropped their arms. American military casualties from all conflicts that we fought, in total between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the start of the Iraq war in 2003 were less than a thousand (and the majority of those were killed in either the Beirut bombing or the First Gulf War.) Because of the perception of American invincibility, we rarely had to use the 'big stick' to get other countries to do what we wanted to. We just had to tap on it a time or two, and they'd get the message. But that is no longer true. Iraq has made it not true. We've had to fight hard for five years just to win a war in a country no bigger than California, so it is little wonder that countries like Iran and Venezuela have become emboldened. In the movie, "Predator," Arnold Schwarzeneggar's character is emboldened when he discovers that he has wounded the alien creature. He says, "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Thanks to Bush's reckless misuse of the finest military machine in the history of the world, other countries will now have that attitude. Even the small wars in the future, we will have to fight them, not be able to win anymore just by showing up.
5. A trillion dollars at least, once all the costs of Iraq are tallied up. Even if our economy was sound, a trillion dollars of new debt (because it was all borrowed from the future) would be a big hit. But in the sick economy we have now, the trillion dollars of new federal debt (and corresponding drop in the dollar) is more than a big hit. It's more like a crippling hit.
6. Geopolitical winners: 1. Iran. Saddam (their biggest enemy) is gone. They have a friendly government in power in Baghdad (and just in case that changes the Badr brigades they had trained for years in case they needed to push an uprising against Saddam, has seamlessly melted into and put on the uniform of the Iraqi army.) The United States (their most powerful enemy) is no longer able to do more than bomb them, because we played the 'invasion and occupation' card. 2. China. As we decline thanks to Iraq (see #4) we should remember that history always shows us that as one power declines, another invariably rises to challenge its place. Just as we rose, reached parity with, and eventually eclipsed the power of a declining Great Britain. Anyone have any doubt as to what the next superpower will be (or maybe already is?)
As I said several months ago, the best outcome that was possible in Iraq was a Pyrrhic victory. Of course that is better than an outright loss (we've got the trophy, right?) but it in no way vindicates or justifies the stupid and poorly thought out decision to go to war in the first place.
I beg to differ with the standard right wing analysis. It is true that violence in Iraq is way down (especially U.S. troop casualties) and that we appear to have driven al-Qaeda out of Iraq. The Al-Maliki government has won several battles against homegrown militia groups and appears to have control over nearly all of the country.
And while the right tends to exaggerate the part of this that is attributable to the surge, there is little doubt that U.S. forces played a major role in routing al-Qaeda and in helping the Sunni militias take control of their regions of Iraq, and also in supporting the government's offensives against the Sadrist militia and other similar groups. If the right is guilty of exaggeration by failing to acknowledge the contribution of former Sunni militias that we bought by the payment of cash as being very important to the overall success as the surge, then often we on the left are guilty of failing to acknowledge the plain fact that the surge worked.
But where the righty argument falls flat is when they try to extrapolate from that back to justifying the original invasion of Iraq. Several months ago I anticipated this argument in a post I wrote entitled, The BEST case scenario in Iraq: A Pyrrhic victory.
Now, as an American I'm glad that starting where we were we have achieved this best case scenario.
However if we add up the costs and gains of the Iraq war we find the following:
Gains:
1. Saddam Hussein is gone. Of course there are still many bloody dictatorships in the world including the leaders of the country right now hosting the Olympics and we cannot get rid of them all but certainly we got rid of one. In any case, Saddam was gone by six weeks into the war, and had been captured by nine months into the war, so this still doesn't justify the nearly five years we've been fighting since the capture of Saddam.
2. Iraq is now a democracy. And the first thing they did with the democracy we gave them was to ratify a Constitution that states that the official religion is Islam and that Sharia is a source of the law, and elect a parliament full of fundamentalists that immediately passed restrictions on the legal rights of women so that in matters like divorce, inheritance and custody disputes they have even less rights than they had under Saddam. Democracy is like anything else-- it has to be earned to be treasured, not handed down. That is why Poles value their democracy while Iraqis have elected a majority of members of their parliament who are committed to establishing Sharia. Luckily, the political gridlock in Iraq has had the effect of preventing their parliament from getting much done.
3. There are now at best a handful of al-Qaeda members in Iraq. Which is exactly how many there were back in March 2003 when we invaded (Saddam knew who he could trust, which was nobody.) So we've beaten al-Qaeda all the way back to where it was in the first place.
4. We now know for sure that Iraq was no longer making WMD's or stockpiling them. If Bush had waited for Hans Blix to do his job then we'd have learned that at a lot less cost.
Costs:
1. The five year detour into Iraq have al-Qaeda, almost destroyed (along with their Taliban allies) in Afghanistan by January 2003, a second chance-- and they have come roaring back. They now have far more power in both Afghanistan and in Pakistan than they have had at any time since we put that war on the back burner and went after Iraq instead in March 2003. Righty likes to compare their present status to where they were on September 11. But that is not a valid comparison. Bush could have made the final push in early 2003 to end the earth of the Taliban and rid their Afghan center of power of al-Qaeda (including bin Laden and al-Zawahri) but he chose to relax the pressure and go after Iraq instead. So the nature of our conflict against the Taliban and AQ changed fundamentally in early 2003 from one of offense to one of essentially attrition and guarding certain selected strongpoints (mostly cities and military bases.) This is exactly the strategy the Soviet Union pursued in Afghanistan and it failed then, and it has slowly been failing us over the past five years. Further, the next American President will get to deal with a weak government in Pakistan which is even less willing to support operations and go after al-Qaeda and the Taliban than the Musharraf government was-- and we now have evidence that the Pakistani intelligence service itself is full of Taliban sympathizers, making Pakistan an unreliable ally at best.
2. We have lost the support of the world that we enjoyed virtually unanimously after 9/11. Most righties tend to blow this one off, suggesting that unilateral action is better anyway, but in fact we are overstretched right now militarily (one reason Iran is so belligerent-- they know darn well that as long as we have 150,000 or so troops tied down in Iraq we lack the ground force to seriously threaten to invade them.) Thanks to the poor planning of what to do after the invasion and the years we stayed fighting in Iraq it's a safe bet that next time we need a coalition, be it for political or military reasons, we'll find lots of cheerleaders but very few willing to go out onto the field with us. And incidents like Abu Graib and the use of torture have destroyed a well-earned reputation and given us a black eye that will take decades to fade, even if they are not ever repeated.
3. 4,000 American lives. Yes, this is less than a tenth of the casualty total in Vietnam and only 1% of what we lost in World War II. But then we have to ask: 4,000 lives for what? It's not an insignificant number (for example it is more Americans than died on 9/11) and is it really inconsequential to ask why we had to lose them when there were opponents of Saddam who were willing to fight and die to overthrow him themselves (such as those who rose up in 1991) if we had just supported them?
4. The myth of American military invincibility. There was a time when the armed forces of small countries like Grenada, Haiti, Serbia or even Iraq (during the first Gulf War) would either drop their arms and surrender at the news that the Americans were on the way, or if they fought would be systematically run over and destroyed pretty much at the same rate as if they had dropped their arms. American military casualties from all conflicts that we fought, in total between the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the start of the Iraq war in 2003 were less than a thousand (and the majority of those were killed in either the Beirut bombing or the First Gulf War.) Because of the perception of American invincibility, we rarely had to use the 'big stick' to get other countries to do what we wanted to. We just had to tap on it a time or two, and they'd get the message. But that is no longer true. Iraq has made it not true. We've had to fight hard for five years just to win a war in a country no bigger than California, so it is little wonder that countries like Iran and Venezuela have become emboldened. In the movie, "Predator," Arnold Schwarzeneggar's character is emboldened when he discovers that he has wounded the alien creature. He says, "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Thanks to Bush's reckless misuse of the finest military machine in the history of the world, other countries will now have that attitude. Even the small wars in the future, we will have to fight them, not be able to win anymore just by showing up.
5. A trillion dollars at least, once all the costs of Iraq are tallied up. Even if our economy was sound, a trillion dollars of new debt (because it was all borrowed from the future) would be a big hit. But in the sick economy we have now, the trillion dollars of new federal debt (and corresponding drop in the dollar) is more than a big hit. It's more like a crippling hit.
6. Geopolitical winners: 1. Iran. Saddam (their biggest enemy) is gone. They have a friendly government in power in Baghdad (and just in case that changes the Badr brigades they had trained for years in case they needed to push an uprising against Saddam, has seamlessly melted into and put on the uniform of the Iraqi army.) The United States (their most powerful enemy) is no longer able to do more than bomb them, because we played the 'invasion and occupation' card. 2. China. As we decline thanks to Iraq (see #4) we should remember that history always shows us that as one power declines, another invariably rises to challenge its place. Just as we rose, reached parity with, and eventually eclipsed the power of a declining Great Britain. Anyone have any doubt as to what the next superpower will be (or maybe already is?)
As I said several months ago, the best outcome that was possible in Iraq was a Pyrrhic victory. Of course that is better than an outright loss (we've got the trophy, right?) but it in no way vindicates or justifies the stupid and poorly thought out decision to go to war in the first place.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Edwards scandal
Today I've heard about little besides John Edwards' affair. The story has even outweighed coverage of the opening of the Olympics and certainly pushed the biggest news of the day, the war now being fought between Russia and Georgia onto the back pages.
As I said in another post about a week ago regarding tabloids, I was initially skeptical of the story but when Edwards was caught visiting a hotel where the woman in question (identified as Rielle Hunter, who went by the professional name Lisa Druck) had a room I quit being skeptical. One of Edwards biggest political assets has been that he was scandal-free. That served him well when he first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1998 against a Jesse Helms protege and the Helms organization, which specialized in digging dirt dug all around Edwards and found nothing. Ditto the Bush-Cheney campaign sleuths four years ago. So they had to find junk like the fact that he made a living as a trial lawyer or the price of his haircut to attack him on. So for him to suddenly become this stupid is dumfounding. And his interview last year, after the affair in which he looked right into the camera and asked that voters judge him on his integrity and honesty is even more amazing.
That said, the press is right not to be giving this much shelf life (I expect by Monday the news will be all about the Olympics, and if much else is talked about it will be the war in South Ossetia, the economy, the Presidential campaign, Bruce Ivins, but likely not John Edwards.) Had Edwards been the nominee of course it would have been huge but the fact is that he is only a former candidate. He lost. The next President will be Barack Obama or John McCain, not John Edwards. The story certainly removes him from the list of potential Vice Presidential candidates (and probably removes him from consideration as Attorney General in an Obama administration, which is good news for Janet Napolitano) but in that regard it is no more significant than the minor scandal around former candidate Chris Dodd regarding his Countrywide home loan. Figure Dodd won't be named as a veep candidate either.
What is interesting here though is that having run the Monica scandal into the ground for a full year in 1998-99, conservatives are howling that this isn't getting more coverage. Why should it? If this is the standard then one has to ask why the media only spent a couple of days on David Vitter (after all he still is in the Senate, right?) Edwards is now just a private citizen, and while the affair happened in 2006 while he was preparing to run for President that is now two years in the past. The issue of 'hush money' (whether paid by a supporter without his knowledge, as Edwards claims or by Edwards himself) may need some more reporting but it's hard to see how it will be a major story by itself.
I'm sure that Rielle Hunter will be featured in some upcoming spread in Playboy or Hustler, but at this point that will probably only be of interest to the guys who read that stuff.
As I said in another post about a week ago regarding tabloids, I was initially skeptical of the story but when Edwards was caught visiting a hotel where the woman in question (identified as Rielle Hunter, who went by the professional name Lisa Druck) had a room I quit being skeptical. One of Edwards biggest political assets has been that he was scandal-free. That served him well when he first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1998 against a Jesse Helms protege and the Helms organization, which specialized in digging dirt dug all around Edwards and found nothing. Ditto the Bush-Cheney campaign sleuths four years ago. So they had to find junk like the fact that he made a living as a trial lawyer or the price of his haircut to attack him on. So for him to suddenly become this stupid is dumfounding. And his interview last year, after the affair in which he looked right into the camera and asked that voters judge him on his integrity and honesty is even more amazing.
That said, the press is right not to be giving this much shelf life (I expect by Monday the news will be all about the Olympics, and if much else is talked about it will be the war in South Ossetia, the economy, the Presidential campaign, Bruce Ivins, but likely not John Edwards.) Had Edwards been the nominee of course it would have been huge but the fact is that he is only a former candidate. He lost. The next President will be Barack Obama or John McCain, not John Edwards. The story certainly removes him from the list of potential Vice Presidential candidates (and probably removes him from consideration as Attorney General in an Obama administration, which is good news for Janet Napolitano) but in that regard it is no more significant than the minor scandal around former candidate Chris Dodd regarding his Countrywide home loan. Figure Dodd won't be named as a veep candidate either.
What is interesting here though is that having run the Monica scandal into the ground for a full year in 1998-99, conservatives are howling that this isn't getting more coverage. Why should it? If this is the standard then one has to ask why the media only spent a couple of days on David Vitter (after all he still is in the Senate, right?) Edwards is now just a private citizen, and while the affair happened in 2006 while he was preparing to run for President that is now two years in the past. The issue of 'hush money' (whether paid by a supporter without his knowledge, as Edwards claims or by Edwards himself) may need some more reporting but it's hard to see how it will be a major story by itself.
I'm sure that Rielle Hunter will be featured in some upcoming spread in Playboy or Hustler, but at this point that will probably only be of interest to the guys who read that stuff.
Cohen wins big-- to the disappointment of the right.
In attempting to justify their culture war, right-leaning pundits in America pointed to Nikki Tinker's racist and anti-Semitic ads against Congressman Steve Cohen in a primary election in Tennessee (and yes, this is the same Steve Cohen who I was critical of a couple of months back for making what I considered a sexist comment directed at Hillary Clinton.) Cohen is the only white congressman in America representing a majority black district, and by all accounts he has represented it well, doing everything he could to reflect the views and wishes of his constituents. It would be an understatement to simply call Tinker's campaign 'racist,' as she attacked Cohen in an ad in which she tied him to the Ku Klux Klan and another which targetted him for his Jewish religion. And those were only her official campaign ads. Even worse was a flyer mailed out by Memphis reverend George Brooks (a supporter of Tinker) that made an anti-Semitic attack on Cohen saying,
"Cohen and the Jews HATE Jesus so Memphis Christians must unite and support ONE Black Christian to represent Memphis in the United States Congress in 2008. Simply because this congressional district is predominantly Black. And Christian, in terms of religion, who love and believe in Jesus while Jews do not." The flyer concludes by again calling Cohen "an opponent of Christ and Christianity." (you can click on the link if you really want to see this piece of garbage yourself.)
Hannity and Colmes on right-leaning FOX News profiled the race in arguing that the Democratic party itself was racist. I guess they were hoping that Tinker would pull out a win so they could go at it even harder.
Well, in a race that was considered close (a rematch of the primary from two years ago in which Cohen had edged out Tinker in a race with fourteen candidates) the voters made it known exactly what they thought of Tinker's tactics (and also of Cohen's efforts to represent them.) Cohen won, by a 4-1 margin. He won overwhelmingly among black voters in particular.
I might also add that Barack Obama, EMILY's List (which had endorsed and provided some support for Tinker before she started running an anti-Semitic and anti-white campaign), and former Congressman Harold Ford (who had represented the district for years and had once hired Tinker), all came out with statements condemning Tinker's ads.
Clearly Black voters are not the racists that some on the right have tried to portray them as. So the Republican apologists for the kind of culture war that we see more often directed at Democrats will have to look someplace else for excuses.
"Cohen and the Jews HATE Jesus so Memphis Christians must unite and support ONE Black Christian to represent Memphis in the United States Congress in 2008. Simply because this congressional district is predominantly Black. And Christian, in terms of religion, who love and believe in Jesus while Jews do not." The flyer concludes by again calling Cohen "an opponent of Christ and Christianity." (you can click on the link if you really want to see this piece of garbage yourself.)
Hannity and Colmes on right-leaning FOX News profiled the race in arguing that the Democratic party itself was racist. I guess they were hoping that Tinker would pull out a win so they could go at it even harder.
Well, in a race that was considered close (a rematch of the primary from two years ago in which Cohen had edged out Tinker in a race with fourteen candidates) the voters made it known exactly what they thought of Tinker's tactics (and also of Cohen's efforts to represent them.) Cohen won, by a 4-1 margin. He won overwhelmingly among black voters in particular.
I might also add that Barack Obama, EMILY's List (which had endorsed and provided some support for Tinker before she started running an anti-Semitic and anti-white campaign), and former Congressman Harold Ford (who had represented the district for years and had once hired Tinker), all came out with statements condemning Tinker's ads.
Clearly Black voters are not the racists that some on the right have tried to portray them as. So the Republican apologists for the kind of culture war that we see more often directed at Democrats will have to look someplace else for excuses.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
McCain still running away from talking about Social Security, and his own record on it.
It's not often that I feel the need to repost an old post verbatim, but I am doing this now to highlight one of the biggest concerns I have with John McCain: the fact that he is saying virtually nothing about Social Security, one of the biggest domestic issues that we face. In the past two weeks he was asked directly about it, and appeared to contradict himself, first suggesting that he'd be open to raising the limit on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax as one option to make the system solvent, and then reversing himself and saying he'd be against it. That would be all in a day's work for McCain, except that it represents pretty much all he has said about the topic!
So here is the repost of the post that I originally posted on April 19.
McCain has nothing to say about Social Security. But he's already said enough.
In 2005, President Bush introduced a plan to borrow $2 trillion to begin privatizing Social Security. He told us that if Social Security was left as it is now then it would begin running a deficit in 2014 and become insolvent by 2042.
Well, that failed. The President was actually completely correct about the crisis that Social Security is facing, but his solution to privatize the system would have done little to prevent its impending collapse while putting at risk the retirement income of millions of people.
So how does the man who wants to succeed him as Republican nominee and President feel about the issue?
Well, I went to John McCain's website and in his 'search this site' button I typed in, "social security" (quotated so you don't get a bunch of junk about social programs and national security) and
what I get is:
"No documents were found."
Frankly it is frightening that a man who wants to be President of the United States has so little to say about Social Security that the two words don't appear together even one time on his website.
Luckily though there is a record of what he thinks.
On April 1, 1998 he voted, "Yes" to Senate concurrent resolution 86 which would have set up private accounts using the then-surplus.
And in the New York Times on January 11, 2000, an article about McCain's plans for Social Security said:
In a 1999 Fox News interview McCain was quoted as saying,
In 2005, McCain supported the Bush initiative.
In a GOP debate in Orlando, Florida on October 21, 2007, he was quoted as saying
He wants it to be bipartisan, and his language is a bit more nuanced, but it's clear that he still hasn't given up on privatization.
Now I know why he hasn't said anything at all this year about Social Security. If he hadn't thought about such a major issue, I'd question his qualifications to be President. But he's thought plenty about it, and he appears to agree with President Bush on it. So I'm not questioning whether he's qualified, but rather I'm questioning whether his failure to put in on his website is because he knows darn good and well that many people would view his plans as extreme, as well they should..
It is probably also worth noting that if you go his list of 'pick an issue,' Social Security is not an option on that menu either.
It is indeed troubling to me that a man who wants to be President of the United States has so little to say about such a crucial issue.
So here is the repost of the post that I originally posted on April 19.
McCain has nothing to say about Social Security. But he's already said enough.
In 2005, President Bush introduced a plan to borrow $2 trillion to begin privatizing Social Security. He told us that if Social Security was left as it is now then it would begin running a deficit in 2014 and become insolvent by 2042.
Well, that failed. The President was actually completely correct about the crisis that Social Security is facing, but his solution to privatize the system would have done little to prevent its impending collapse while putting at risk the retirement income of millions of people.
So how does the man who wants to succeed him as Republican nominee and President feel about the issue?
Well, I went to John McCain's website and in his 'search this site' button I typed in, "social security" (quotated so you don't get a bunch of junk about social programs and national security) and
what I get is:
"No documents were found."
Frankly it is frightening that a man who wants to be President of the United States has so little to say about Social Security that the two words don't appear together even one time on his website.
Luckily though there is a record of what he thinks.
On April 1, 1998 he voted, "Yes" to Senate concurrent resolution 86 which would have set up private accounts using the then-surplus.
And in the New York Times on January 11, 2000, an article about McCain's plans for Social Security said:
- "McCain will present today his first comprehensive plan for apportioning the spoils of the nation’s current prosperity, calling for. a program to shore up Social Security through the establishment of individual retirement accounts. McCain also specifically allocates money to help Medicare, which like Social Security faces a financial shortfall as the population ages. He calls for workers to have the option of investing at least 20% of their Social Security payroll taxes in private accounts."
In a 1999 Fox News interview McCain was quoted as saying,
- "Allow people to invest part of their taxes earmarked for Social Security to investment, in investments of their choice. I am convinced that that will make the Social Security system solvent."
In 2005, McCain supported the Bush initiative.
In a GOP debate in Orlando, Florida on October 21, 2007, he was quoted as saying
- "It's got to be bipartisan. And you have to go to the American people and say we won't raise your taxes. We need personal savings accounts, but we got to fix this system."
He wants it to be bipartisan, and his language is a bit more nuanced, but it's clear that he still hasn't given up on privatization.
Now I know why he hasn't said anything at all this year about Social Security. If he hadn't thought about such a major issue, I'd question his qualifications to be President. But he's thought plenty about it, and he appears to agree with President Bush on it. So I'm not questioning whether he's qualified, but rather I'm questioning whether his failure to put in on his website is because he knows darn good and well that many people would view his plans as extreme, as well they should..
It is probably also worth noting that if you go his list of 'pick an issue,' Social Security is not an option on that menu either.
It is indeed troubling to me that a man who wants to be President of the United States has so little to say about such a crucial issue.
Righty bloggers will jump all over Ron Suskind. And probably end up with egg on their faces yet again.
Ron Suskind, a longtime critic and watchdog of the Bush administration has published a book in which he makes the case that the Bush administration went so far as to forge a document supposedly proving that a member of al-Qaeda was trained by Iraqi intelligence agents and which was cited by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq war (but has curiously never been cited since then.)
Now, I know the right side of the blogosphere will jump all over this and claim that Suskind is the one who is telling a lie here.
OK, let's look at what's happened when they've swarmed to Bush's defense in the past.
They produced all kinds of criticism of anyone who suggested there might not be WMD in Iraq. By October 2003 the Bush administration was forced to admit that there weren't any. Yet right up until that time (and even on occasion since then) the righty blogosphere was swearing that there were.
They denied the existence of secret prisons outside of U.S. territory. Once again the Bush administration sawed off the limb the righty bloggers were out on in October 2006 when they reversed course and acknowledged that the secret prisons did exist.
They claimed that no one in the administration had anything to do with Robert Novak's unmasking of Valerie Plame's identity. OK, so then they have trouble explaining why Scooter Libby required a Presidential sentence commutation to stay out of prison for committing perjury in the case. Oh, except that they like to blame the Republican special prosecutor (who was appointed by a Republican Congress) and say it was a politically motivated prosecution (facts be damned.)
They claimed that no one in the U.S. Justice Department broke rules in hiring people for political reasons, nor that any U.S. Attorneys were fired because of ongoing investigations. We've since learned that was wrong on two counts, as Monica Goodling has admitted to the first and the second became public in March of last year.
They followed the Bush administration in denying anyone had been waterboarded. Except that the administration later admitted that at least three suspects had been waterboarded. Once again the branch they sawed off was full of righty bloggers who had followed their lying administration out onto a limb.
So go ahead, righty bloggers. Deny the Suskind allegation if you want. But do it on the record so that if this turns out like it usually turns out when you jump up and down and point fingers at those who dare expose the lies of the Bush administration, we can watch you eat crow later.
Now, I know the right side of the blogosphere will jump all over this and claim that Suskind is the one who is telling a lie here.
OK, let's look at what's happened when they've swarmed to Bush's defense in the past.
They produced all kinds of criticism of anyone who suggested there might not be WMD in Iraq. By October 2003 the Bush administration was forced to admit that there weren't any. Yet right up until that time (and even on occasion since then) the righty blogosphere was swearing that there were.
They denied the existence of secret prisons outside of U.S. territory. Once again the Bush administration sawed off the limb the righty bloggers were out on in October 2006 when they reversed course and acknowledged that the secret prisons did exist.
They claimed that no one in the administration had anything to do with Robert Novak's unmasking of Valerie Plame's identity. OK, so then they have trouble explaining why Scooter Libby required a Presidential sentence commutation to stay out of prison for committing perjury in the case. Oh, except that they like to blame the Republican special prosecutor (who was appointed by a Republican Congress) and say it was a politically motivated prosecution (facts be damned.)
They claimed that no one in the U.S. Justice Department broke rules in hiring people for political reasons, nor that any U.S. Attorneys were fired because of ongoing investigations. We've since learned that was wrong on two counts, as Monica Goodling has admitted to the first and the second became public in March of last year.
They followed the Bush administration in denying anyone had been waterboarded. Except that the administration later admitted that at least three suspects had been waterboarded. Once again the branch they sawed off was full of righty bloggers who had followed their lying administration out onto a limb.
So go ahead, righty bloggers. Deny the Suskind allegation if you want. But do it on the record so that if this turns out like it usually turns out when you jump up and down and point fingers at those who dare expose the lies of the Bush administration, we can watch you eat crow later.
Everybody come back, I wanna turn!
John McCain has offered to come off the campaign trail if Congress will go back into session. Congress has adjourned for the traditional August recess.
Why then, has he not been present since April 8? Recall that he had long since locked up the GOP nomination by the last time he cast a vote in the Senate, while Barack Obama, despite having to campaign until June to lock up his nomination has still found the time to come into the Senate and cast several votes during that time, including the medicare reimbursement bill for doctors, a bill that Senator McCain conveniently skipped so he wouldn't have to take a position on a controversial issue.
It seems that if John McCain has 'generously' offered to come off the campaign trail to go to work, then he should have done so at least once in the past four months while the Senate was actually in session. In fact if he'd picked the right day he might even have met Senator Obama while he was taking time off the campaign trail to cast at least a few votes.
Why then, has he not been present since April 8? Recall that he had long since locked up the GOP nomination by the last time he cast a vote in the Senate, while Barack Obama, despite having to campaign until June to lock up his nomination has still found the time to come into the Senate and cast several votes during that time, including the medicare reimbursement bill for doctors, a bill that Senator McCain conveniently skipped so he wouldn't have to take a position on a controversial issue.
It seems that if John McCain has 'generously' offered to come off the campaign trail to go to work, then he should have done so at least once in the past four months while the Senate was actually in session. In fact if he'd picked the right day he might even have met Senator Obama while he was taking time off the campaign trail to cast at least a few votes.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Wal-Mart pressuring its employees to vote Republican
I've posted before that I have no love lost for Wal-Mart, which is in trouble every year it seems for various exploitative labor practices. In the past decade or so, Wal-Mart has been caught violating child labor laws, hiring illegals for $2/night to clean its stores, discriminating against female employees, forcing employees to work on their lunch breaks and sending out a memo on how to get rid of employees who have six years working with the company in order to deny them retirement benefits they would have become eligible for when they hit the seven year mark. In most of these cases they've either had to pay a fine or settled out of court, though in the gender discrimination class-action lawsuit they took it all the way through and lost.
And that's not even counting the non-illegal things they've done, including buying products produced in foreign sweatshops, selling products in targeted communities at below cost in order to force local small business competitors out of business, giving employees welfare applications as part of their 'benefits' package, going so far as to close entire stores in order to avoid unionization and only grudgingly, after many years, agreeing to offer health insurance once several states passed legislation which for all practical purposes forced them to.
But now they've gone to a new level: telling their employees how to vote. Oh, of course they say they are NOT telling them how to vote, before telling them how to vote.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change Federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise....
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
It should also be pointed out that Wal-Mart is possibly in violation of the law with these meetings: Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.
Of course they've been in violation of many laws before and seem to consider the resulting fines to just be part of the cost of doing business.
Now, I know, I know. If you are a conservative your knee-jerk reaction to Wal-Mart pressuring its employees in this way will probably be viscerally positive (i.e. it depends on whose ox is getting gored.) So let me turn it around for you:
Suppose that a publically funded institution were to do the same thing. Suppose for example that employees of a public school were called together and told (by their immediate supervisor, who incidentally has a lot of say about their continued employment) that "I'm not telling you how to vote but you should know that if Republicans win in November then we may face massive budget cuts, so that some of you may lose your jobs or take pay cuts, and you may be forced to work under more difficult conditions. Now remember, I'm not telling you how to vote, but you should understand that this is what will happen if Republicans win the election."
If that happened at a school then you'd be screaming bloody murder. You know you would.
Wal-Mart has the right to donate to political campaigns (which they do, heavily), lobby elected officials for or against legislation and even create a 527 or other organization to advertise directly to the public on political issues (which is fair enough, given that unions do the same thing.) As a publically traded company they can even contact all their shareholders and disseminate their political propaganda.
However forcing their employees to attend a mandatory meeting run by their supervisor for the specific purpose of telling them that voting for Barack Obama may cost them their jobs is both illegal and unethical.
And that's not even counting the non-illegal things they've done, including buying products produced in foreign sweatshops, selling products in targeted communities at below cost in order to force local small business competitors out of business, giving employees welfare applications as part of their 'benefits' package, going so far as to close entire stores in order to avoid unionization and only grudgingly, after many years, agreeing to offer health insurance once several states passed legislation which for all practical purposes forced them to.
But now they've gone to a new level: telling their employees how to vote. Oh, of course they say they are NOT telling them how to vote, before telling them how to vote.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change Federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies-- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.
According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise....
The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.
"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.
It should also be pointed out that Wal-Mart is possibly in violation of the law with these meetings: Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.
Of course they've been in violation of many laws before and seem to consider the resulting fines to just be part of the cost of doing business.
Now, I know, I know. If you are a conservative your knee-jerk reaction to Wal-Mart pressuring its employees in this way will probably be viscerally positive (i.e. it depends on whose ox is getting gored.) So let me turn it around for you:
Suppose that a publically funded institution were to do the same thing. Suppose for example that employees of a public school were called together and told (by their immediate supervisor, who incidentally has a lot of say about their continued employment) that "I'm not telling you how to vote but you should know that if Republicans win in November then we may face massive budget cuts, so that some of you may lose your jobs or take pay cuts, and you may be forced to work under more difficult conditions. Now remember, I'm not telling you how to vote, but you should understand that this is what will happen if Republicans win the election."
If that happened at a school then you'd be screaming bloody murder. You know you would.
Wal-Mart has the right to donate to political campaigns (which they do, heavily), lobby elected officials for or against legislation and even create a 527 or other organization to advertise directly to the public on political issues (which is fair enough, given that unions do the same thing.) As a publically traded company they can even contact all their shareholders and disseminate their political propaganda.
However forcing their employees to attend a mandatory meeting run by their supervisor for the specific purpose of telling them that voting for Barack Obama may cost them their jobs is both illegal and unethical.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Is there anything that the pharmaceutical giants WON'T do to sell their product?
I feel very disturbed right now.
We've all heard all those drug ads on television:
Why continue to suffer with painful and debilitating hemorrhoids? Live a hemorrhoid-free life with new Putridex, from Glutton Pharmaceuticals.
Be advised that not everyone should take Putridex. Women who are pregnant or nursing or may become pregnant should not take Putridex. Neither should anyone under 30 or older than 35. Side effects may include nausea, diarrhea, upset stomach, vomiting, dizziness, dandruff, rabies, scabies, bari-bari, scurvy, hair loss, gangrene, gout, hiccups, sexual dysfunction, loss of appetite, gallstones, kidneystones, blindness, insanity and an uncontrollable desire to play golf with Jack Abramoff. So next time you visit your doctor be sure to ask about Putridex. Ask for it by name.
You know the gig. But if you are reading this you are also probably an adult. You know that what is advertised on television should always be taken with a grain of salt. You know that all these medical advertisements are out there not necessarily to educate you, but because pharmaceutical companies have figured out that one way to get customers to buy their products is through direct marketing in which the customer, based mainly on the information in the ad, decides on their own course of treatment and gets their physician to write a prescription for that particular product instead of a competing or generic drug that may do the same thing.
But this is what bothered me-- my 12 year old came to me a few minutes ago, scared to death of getting meningitis, having just heard it will kill rapidly and asking if she could be vaccinated with a product called menactra (I had to look it up.) And do you know where she saw the commercial? ON NICKELODEON! She and her sister it turns out were watching Spongebob Squarepants and that was the commercial that came up.
Now, I have no problem with protecting my kids against deadly diseases (meningitis certainly included.) Two years ago I made a point of going to their doctor and insisting that both of my daughters get the HPV vaccinations that may someday prevent them from getting cervical cancer.
However I have a real problem with a pharmaceutical company (in this case an outfit called Sanofi Pasteur) pushing drugs-- any kind of drugs on kids, and in particular by scaring them about getting a deadly disease. While I don't discount the information in the ad or the need to protect kids (and I certainly intend to have them vaccinated against meningitis sometime before they go to college) I really feel that scaring kids into asking their parents for a shot is unethical.
Of course lots of companies advertise their wares to children. I've become used to telling my kids 'no' by now when they come and ask me for New Nuclear Barbie (decontamination suit that glows in the dark). That's to be expected, I suppose. But pushing vaccines and drugs is over the line, and I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that way. I might add as a parent this gives me a dilemma. Do I tell my daughter she can't have the vaccine (meaning that she now thinks I'm willing to risk her death to save a few bucks) or do I get it (meaning they've now succeeded in writing my household budget for me by manipulating my twelve year old.)
I intend to contact NICKELODEON once their offices open tomorrow and let them know how I feel. If they are going to show kids programming they should categorically reject any ads from pharmaceutical companies (I'm sure there is precedent for this-- can you imagine for example watching Spongebob and seeing an ad for, say, Budweiser?)
We've all heard all those drug ads on television:
Why continue to suffer with painful and debilitating hemorrhoids? Live a hemorrhoid-free life with new Putridex, from Glutton Pharmaceuticals.
Be advised that not everyone should take Putridex. Women who are pregnant or nursing or may become pregnant should not take Putridex. Neither should anyone under 30 or older than 35. Side effects may include nausea, diarrhea, upset stomach, vomiting, dizziness, dandruff, rabies, scabies, bari-bari, scurvy, hair loss, gangrene, gout, hiccups, sexual dysfunction, loss of appetite, gallstones, kidneystones, blindness, insanity and an uncontrollable desire to play golf with Jack Abramoff. So next time you visit your doctor be sure to ask about Putridex. Ask for it by name.
You know the gig. But if you are reading this you are also probably an adult. You know that what is advertised on television should always be taken with a grain of salt. You know that all these medical advertisements are out there not necessarily to educate you, but because pharmaceutical companies have figured out that one way to get customers to buy their products is through direct marketing in which the customer, based mainly on the information in the ad, decides on their own course of treatment and gets their physician to write a prescription for that particular product instead of a competing or generic drug that may do the same thing.
But this is what bothered me-- my 12 year old came to me a few minutes ago, scared to death of getting meningitis, having just heard it will kill rapidly and asking if she could be vaccinated with a product called menactra (I had to look it up.) And do you know where she saw the commercial? ON NICKELODEON! She and her sister it turns out were watching Spongebob Squarepants and that was the commercial that came up.
Now, I have no problem with protecting my kids against deadly diseases (meningitis certainly included.) Two years ago I made a point of going to their doctor and insisting that both of my daughters get the HPV vaccinations that may someday prevent them from getting cervical cancer.
However I have a real problem with a pharmaceutical company (in this case an outfit called Sanofi Pasteur) pushing drugs-- any kind of drugs on kids, and in particular by scaring them about getting a deadly disease. While I don't discount the information in the ad or the need to protect kids (and I certainly intend to have them vaccinated against meningitis sometime before they go to college) I really feel that scaring kids into asking their parents for a shot is unethical.
Of course lots of companies advertise their wares to children. I've become used to telling my kids 'no' by now when they come and ask me for New Nuclear Barbie (decontamination suit that glows in the dark). That's to be expected, I suppose. But pushing vaccines and drugs is over the line, and I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that way. I might add as a parent this gives me a dilemma. Do I tell my daughter she can't have the vaccine (meaning that she now thinks I'm willing to risk her death to save a few bucks) or do I get it (meaning they've now succeeded in writing my household budget for me by manipulating my twelve year old.)
I intend to contact NICKELODEON once their offices open tomorrow and let them know how I feel. If they are going to show kids programming they should categorically reject any ads from pharmaceutical companies (I'm sure there is precedent for this-- can you imagine for example watching Spongebob and seeing an ad for, say, Budweiser?)
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Free speech is too important to restrict
I hate having to defend people who I consider toads, but right now that's just what I have to do.
Last week a British court gave a victory to Max Mosely, a British politician who claimed that he had been smeared by tabloids after they published intimate details of an orgy at his home in Chelsea, which according to the tabloids involved nazi role-play (for the record, Mosely admits to the orgy but denies the nazi role-play.) From this case we've learned that there is now a whole new subcategory of S & M in which one group of people dresses up in World War II vintage Nazi uniforms and then beat and humiliate their 'captives.' Well, just what I didn't need to know. I'd find it offensive that anyone could turn the systematic slaughter of entire populations into a sexual fantasy if it wasn't so utterly stupid. Best left behind closed doors.
The court ruled that Mosely was entitled to his privacy and that it was a violation of that right for the newspaper to publish details of his sex life.
And that ruling is chilling to me.
Now, I'm a strong advocate of the right to privacy from laws, government intrusions and the like. I've always been an advocate for the right of consenting adults to whatever the heck they want in the privacy of their own home (even if it is to dress up as Nazis and whip each other.) It is also true that tabloids are the worst kind of offenders of personal privacy (if you don't believe that then ask anyone who knows Brittney Spears, Angelina Jolie or Lindsay Lohan.) In celebrity-studded Southern California tabloid reporters eager for a picture have caused several minor traffic accidents and prevented people from getting into restaurants by packing around the front door with cameras clicking. The potential for a major, even fatal accident (and we still don't know how much of a role the paparazzi played in the death of Princess Diana a decade ago), or crowds of paparazzi preventing people from getting out of a restaurant in case of a fire, is present and sooner or later the law of averages says that something like that will happen. And that's just the American tabloids, which are by any account far tamer than their British counterparts (one of the benefits of not having a monarchy, I suppose.)
Personally, I make it a point never to purchase a tabloid and I encourage my kids to not buy them. And I take anything I hear from them with a grain of salt unless it is confirmed by a news source I trust.
Nevertheless, the Mosely verdict is the wrong one. Any kind of censorship (and restrictions on what tabloids can report is censorship) is a step towards an authoritarian state like we all fear. Just last week, the National Enquirer reported that John Edwards had been to a hotel in the middle of the night last week to see a former campaign worker who he has been accused of impregnating (Edwards, the campaign worker, and another campaign worker who claims he is really the father all deny it.) Now, I was skeptical the first time I heard that story a couple of months ago (especially since it also originated in the Enquirer). For one thing Edwards was thoroughly vetted by the Jesse Helms organization (nobody dug dirt better) when he ran for the Senate against a Helms protege in 1998 and again four years ago by the Republican attack machine when he was on the ticket with John Kerry. For him to suddenly do something so stupid this year would seem almost unbelievable, short of his having snuck off to a surgeon's office and having had a secret frontal lobotomy first. But in fact now I am not so sure. It seems to me that if a politician were accused of an affair, especially falsely accused, rule number one would be to avoid ever being around the woman he was accused of having it with again (and even more so to avoid being around her in a place like a hotel at 2 A.M.)
Then again this weekend there was a minor row around Barack Obama's trip to Israel. Like many visitors to come and pray at the Western Wall (Judaism's most holy site) Obama apparently wrote a private prayer on a piece of paper and placed it into the wall. Someone apparently retrieved that particular piece of paper and gave it to Maariv, an Israeli newspaper which published the prayer. I know that if I wrote a private prayer and put it in a holy place I'd expect it to remain between me and God and some Israelis are shocked that the newspaper would carry out such a breach of privacy (though apparently no Israeli laws were broken.)
Nevertheless the National Enquirer and Maariv should be allowed to publish what they find out just as much as any other journalistic enterprise (including the British tabloids.) Leaving aside the obvious facts that this information could just as easily be published, even if anonymously, on the internet or that many more people buy news for the salacious details than for any real news (one reason why traditional newspapers are declining in sales while sales of tabloids never seem to be hurt) they should still have the right to publish what they do and by implication go where they do to get the news. There are some things much more threatening than nosy reporters or photographers intruding on people's most private moments (as irksome as that can be) and one of those is the prospect of the law telling any publication that they can't publish something. Because if they can tell you that you can't publish details of Max Mosely's or John Edwards' sex life, then they can tell you what else you can't publish, and then what else until eventually it becomes instead a list of what you can publish (which could still be shrunken.) That is the policy that the media operates under in countries like China, Cuba and Zimbabwe.
There is of course another threat. During the Hoover era at the FBI (as I once posted), J. Edgar Hoover and others were expert at collecting dirt on everyone they could. By the time he died he had files on as many as fifty million Americans from all walks of life (and certainly on every American who might ever be in a position of power.) Often the government would spill details of someone's personal life in an effort to discredit them (This happened to everyone from Dr. King to people who opposed the Vietnam war to members of Congress who suggested budget cuts to programs that Hoover supported.) Of course laws have since been passed limiting the ability of the Federal Government, even if they know something about somebody, to use it against political opponents (though that hasn't stopped them from trying on occasion.) Is there anything to prevent a future, more sophisticated version of Hoover, from using tabloids to further his own private agenda?
Well, no there is not. And leaks happen today, often in the furtherance of someone or some group's agenda. And they don't even have to go to tabloids to leak, unless the story is so sewer-worthy that the official Washington media won't touch it. But that is the price we pay for a free press. The answer is not to muzzle the press, but to aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone who violates the law in terms of leaking privileged information or violates existing privacy laws in getting that information (for example I would have agreed with Mosely if he'd based his suit on his contention that the tabloid press acted as 'peeping toms' rather than adding that comment as an afterthought and challenging their right to publish the story at all.) Similarly, the city of Malibu, California (ground zero for the paparazzi) is now looking at ways they can fine reporters who drive dangerously or otherwise cause disturbances including blocking entrances to businesses. There is nothing wrong with that-- require that they maintain order while going about their chosen line of work.
Last week a British court gave a victory to Max Mosely, a British politician who claimed that he had been smeared by tabloids after they published intimate details of an orgy at his home in Chelsea, which according to the tabloids involved nazi role-play (for the record, Mosely admits to the orgy but denies the nazi role-play.) From this case we've learned that there is now a whole new subcategory of S & M in which one group of people dresses up in World War II vintage Nazi uniforms and then beat and humiliate their 'captives.' Well, just what I didn't need to know. I'd find it offensive that anyone could turn the systematic slaughter of entire populations into a sexual fantasy if it wasn't so utterly stupid. Best left behind closed doors.
The court ruled that Mosely was entitled to his privacy and that it was a violation of that right for the newspaper to publish details of his sex life.
And that ruling is chilling to me.
Now, I'm a strong advocate of the right to privacy from laws, government intrusions and the like. I've always been an advocate for the right of consenting adults to whatever the heck they want in the privacy of their own home (even if it is to dress up as Nazis and whip each other.) It is also true that tabloids are the worst kind of offenders of personal privacy (if you don't believe that then ask anyone who knows Brittney Spears, Angelina Jolie or Lindsay Lohan.) In celebrity-studded Southern California tabloid reporters eager for a picture have caused several minor traffic accidents and prevented people from getting into restaurants by packing around the front door with cameras clicking. The potential for a major, even fatal accident (and we still don't know how much of a role the paparazzi played in the death of Princess Diana a decade ago), or crowds of paparazzi preventing people from getting out of a restaurant in case of a fire, is present and sooner or later the law of averages says that something like that will happen. And that's just the American tabloids, which are by any account far tamer than their British counterparts (one of the benefits of not having a monarchy, I suppose.)
Personally, I make it a point never to purchase a tabloid and I encourage my kids to not buy them. And I take anything I hear from them with a grain of salt unless it is confirmed by a news source I trust.
Nevertheless, the Mosely verdict is the wrong one. Any kind of censorship (and restrictions on what tabloids can report is censorship) is a step towards an authoritarian state like we all fear. Just last week, the National Enquirer reported that John Edwards had been to a hotel in the middle of the night last week to see a former campaign worker who he has been accused of impregnating (Edwards, the campaign worker, and another campaign worker who claims he is really the father all deny it.) Now, I was skeptical the first time I heard that story a couple of months ago (especially since it also originated in the Enquirer). For one thing Edwards was thoroughly vetted by the Jesse Helms organization (nobody dug dirt better) when he ran for the Senate against a Helms protege in 1998 and again four years ago by the Republican attack machine when he was on the ticket with John Kerry. For him to suddenly do something so stupid this year would seem almost unbelievable, short of his having snuck off to a surgeon's office and having had a secret frontal lobotomy first. But in fact now I am not so sure. It seems to me that if a politician were accused of an affair, especially falsely accused, rule number one would be to avoid ever being around the woman he was accused of having it with again (and even more so to avoid being around her in a place like a hotel at 2 A.M.)
Then again this weekend there was a minor row around Barack Obama's trip to Israel. Like many visitors to come and pray at the Western Wall (Judaism's most holy site) Obama apparently wrote a private prayer on a piece of paper and placed it into the wall. Someone apparently retrieved that particular piece of paper and gave it to Maariv, an Israeli newspaper which published the prayer. I know that if I wrote a private prayer and put it in a holy place I'd expect it to remain between me and God and some Israelis are shocked that the newspaper would carry out such a breach of privacy (though apparently no Israeli laws were broken.)
Nevertheless the National Enquirer and Maariv should be allowed to publish what they find out just as much as any other journalistic enterprise (including the British tabloids.) Leaving aside the obvious facts that this information could just as easily be published, even if anonymously, on the internet or that many more people buy news for the salacious details than for any real news (one reason why traditional newspapers are declining in sales while sales of tabloids never seem to be hurt) they should still have the right to publish what they do and by implication go where they do to get the news. There are some things much more threatening than nosy reporters or photographers intruding on people's most private moments (as irksome as that can be) and one of those is the prospect of the law telling any publication that they can't publish something. Because if they can tell you that you can't publish details of Max Mosely's or John Edwards' sex life, then they can tell you what else you can't publish, and then what else until eventually it becomes instead a list of what you can publish (which could still be shrunken.) That is the policy that the media operates under in countries like China, Cuba and Zimbabwe.
There is of course another threat. During the Hoover era at the FBI (as I once posted), J. Edgar Hoover and others were expert at collecting dirt on everyone they could. By the time he died he had files on as many as fifty million Americans from all walks of life (and certainly on every American who might ever be in a position of power.) Often the government would spill details of someone's personal life in an effort to discredit them (This happened to everyone from Dr. King to people who opposed the Vietnam war to members of Congress who suggested budget cuts to programs that Hoover supported.) Of course laws have since been passed limiting the ability of the Federal Government, even if they know something about somebody, to use it against political opponents (though that hasn't stopped them from trying on occasion.) Is there anything to prevent a future, more sophisticated version of Hoover, from using tabloids to further his own private agenda?
Well, no there is not. And leaks happen today, often in the furtherance of someone or some group's agenda. And they don't even have to go to tabloids to leak, unless the story is so sewer-worthy that the official Washington media won't touch it. But that is the price we pay for a free press. The answer is not to muzzle the press, but to aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone who violates the law in terms of leaking privileged information or violates existing privacy laws in getting that information (for example I would have agreed with Mosely if he'd based his suit on his contention that the tabloid press acted as 'peeping toms' rather than adding that comment as an afterthought and challenging their right to publish the story at all.) Similarly, the city of Malibu, California (ground zero for the paparazzi) is now looking at ways they can fine reporters who drive dangerously or otherwise cause disturbances including blocking entrances to businesses. There is nothing wrong with that-- require that they maintain order while going about their chosen line of work.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Mr. Negative
Pay attention to the candidates for a week. One of them is laying out ideas and plans for the future, talking about what needs to be done both in America and around the world and what he will do.
The other candidate is mainly talking about his opponent.
Guess which is which?
John McCain actually caught a break this week when the New York Times refused to publish his letter to them after they had published Senator Obama's letter. The reason was because McCain's letter was not, unlike Obama's, a thoughtful treatise on how to improve things, but rather was just another attack. And if it had been published it would have gone together with the rest of the steady stream of attacks that Senator McCain has been leveling (instead of actually plugging himself) over the past week or so. In fact the refusal by the NYT became a net plus for McCain. There is nothing that seems to rally the nutbag right behind a candidate faster than being attacked or otherwise dumped on by the New York Times. But had the letter been published it would have made it clear that McCain's main tactic in the election is to impugn Senator Obama, with little else he can say.
Now, granted this is a campaign and attacking your opponent when you are behind is standard strategy and is as old as politics itself. And while Senator Obama has refrained from more than a passing mention of Senator McCain most of the time, he certainly has surrogates (as does McCain) out there doing the job for him. The difference is that it is ununsual for the candidate himself to get out in front on this issue. That may be why McCain is toying with the idea of choosing his running mate early. But my guess is that he won't but will instead just continue launching the spitwads himself.
It also says volumes about McCain's lack of anything meaningful to say. His plans for the economy and continuing to stay in Iraq are virtually the same as George Bush's, a President who if he were running today would lose in a landslide. He's praised Bush's Supreme Court appointments and said he would appoint the same kind of judges. I wrote a post three months ago pointing out that McCain's website never even mentions the words "social security" one time. I went back there the other day and it still doesn't. The man is devoid of new ideas, other than to continue the present path of the Bush administration on virtually everything. So I understand why he doesn't want to talk about any of that, so what's left is to attack Obama.
Is Obama vulnerable to attack? Sure, all candidates are. But at least he has some new ideas and some new plans for doing something in the next decade that is different from what we've done in this one.
In the meantime though I don't think these attacks will succeed. McCain has been called a 'grumpy old man,' and he's doing everything to live up to that rap. Maybe after the election Bob Dole (another guy famous for going on the attack himself) will let him co-star in another of those Viagra commercials.
The other candidate is mainly talking about his opponent.
Guess which is which?
John McCain actually caught a break this week when the New York Times refused to publish his letter to them after they had published Senator Obama's letter. The reason was because McCain's letter was not, unlike Obama's, a thoughtful treatise on how to improve things, but rather was just another attack. And if it had been published it would have gone together with the rest of the steady stream of attacks that Senator McCain has been leveling (instead of actually plugging himself) over the past week or so. In fact the refusal by the NYT became a net plus for McCain. There is nothing that seems to rally the nutbag right behind a candidate faster than being attacked or otherwise dumped on by the New York Times. But had the letter been published it would have made it clear that McCain's main tactic in the election is to impugn Senator Obama, with little else he can say.
Now, granted this is a campaign and attacking your opponent when you are behind is standard strategy and is as old as politics itself. And while Senator Obama has refrained from more than a passing mention of Senator McCain most of the time, he certainly has surrogates (as does McCain) out there doing the job for him. The difference is that it is ununsual for the candidate himself to get out in front on this issue. That may be why McCain is toying with the idea of choosing his running mate early. But my guess is that he won't but will instead just continue launching the spitwads himself.
It also says volumes about McCain's lack of anything meaningful to say. His plans for the economy and continuing to stay in Iraq are virtually the same as George Bush's, a President who if he were running today would lose in a landslide. He's praised Bush's Supreme Court appointments and said he would appoint the same kind of judges. I wrote a post three months ago pointing out that McCain's website never even mentions the words "social security" one time. I went back there the other day and it still doesn't. The man is devoid of new ideas, other than to continue the present path of the Bush administration on virtually everything. So I understand why he doesn't want to talk about any of that, so what's left is to attack Obama.
Is Obama vulnerable to attack? Sure, all candidates are. But at least he has some new ideas and some new plans for doing something in the next decade that is different from what we've done in this one.
In the meantime though I don't think these attacks will succeed. McCain has been called a 'grumpy old man,' and he's doing everything to live up to that rap. Maybe after the election Bob Dole (another guy famous for going on the attack himself) will let him co-star in another of those Viagra commercials.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Bush administration reversing itself on all kinds of issues
If nothing else, you know we are winning the battle of ideas when even the Bush administration is reversing itself at a dizzying pace.
Not long ago the administration acknowleged the reality of global warming and announced that it would not block work towards a new global warming treaty (though both Senators Obama and McCain are firmly committed to one anyway so it really didn't matter what the Bush administration did.)
Then as I blogged about last week, they reversed what had been a policy set in stone against talking to Iran. This was done without preconditions (though in a meeting involving multiple nations) and represents a complete about face from a President who just a month ago made a speech in Israel in which he suggested that anyone who wanted to talk to Iran was guilty of pursuing a policy of "appeasement." It also shows that despite the rhetoric criticizing Senator Obama's proposal that we should actually negotiate with our enemies rather than just bark at them, the proposal is both sound and long overdue.
That however pales into insignificance compared to the next flip-flop. The entire debate between the White House and Congress over the past two years has been about troop withdrawals. The White House vetoed multiple Iraq funding bills (and had the vetoes upheld by their congressional allies) all over the singular issue of a withdrawal timetable. Even with the reduction of violence in Iraq since we began paying Sunni militiamen to fight al-Qaeda instead of us and simultaneously implemented "the surge"*, the President has refused to consider troop reductions on a set schedule. But he had little choice, after Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki for all intensive purposes endorsed Barack Obama's proposal (which reflects the collective view of the Democratic Congress) that the American troops can and should be withdrawn on a schedule. The timing of this proposal, on the eve of Senator Obama's trip to Iraq could not be more embarrassing for the Bush administration which was already stunned when the Iraqi government refused to accept their demands and ended negotiations on a 'status of forces' agreement which would have kept U.S. forces in Iraq permanently and beyond the reach of the Iraqi legal system. While Obama himself has allowed that the pace could be slightly adjusted to account for events on the ground, the new Iraqi position clearly represents a meeting of minds, and it is one in which Bush and John McCain are the odd men out. So no wonder the Bush administration has reversed their position on a timetable. It is now a foregone conclusion that we won't have a permanent occupation force in the up to sixty bases that were once envisioned, and all Bush is doing is putting the best face he can on what is clearly a defeat for his policy. And after five years of war, a trillion dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers it will be tough once we do leave for anyone to make the case that invading Iraq was anything other than a mistake.
So then today we see the President apparently reversing himself on Habeus Corpus. (Hat tip to lscottsman at Coldhearted Truth, linked to.) He now says he wants prisoners to be charged and given a trial or released if they are not charged.
Hmmmm.... Not that I'm complaining about the changes (it's nice to know that for at least the last half a year of the Bush administration we will have some sanity) but I'm trying to think--- what exactly is it that George W. Bush stands for, anyway?
*-- any discussion of the 'surge' does have to (in order for me to be academically honest) include the admission that yes, I once predicted it would fail. I'll save you the trouble and link to the post where I made that prediction right here. But yes, I'm actually happy to say that I was wrong in my prediction that the surge would not bring about a reduction in violence-- and one that has led to the present situation in which the Iraqi government refused to sign the agreement the Bush administration wanted and is instead telling us in effect to start packing.
Not long ago the administration acknowleged the reality of global warming and announced that it would not block work towards a new global warming treaty (though both Senators Obama and McCain are firmly committed to one anyway so it really didn't matter what the Bush administration did.)
Then as I blogged about last week, they reversed what had been a policy set in stone against talking to Iran. This was done without preconditions (though in a meeting involving multiple nations) and represents a complete about face from a President who just a month ago made a speech in Israel in which he suggested that anyone who wanted to talk to Iran was guilty of pursuing a policy of "appeasement." It also shows that despite the rhetoric criticizing Senator Obama's proposal that we should actually negotiate with our enemies rather than just bark at them, the proposal is both sound and long overdue.
That however pales into insignificance compared to the next flip-flop. The entire debate between the White House and Congress over the past two years has been about troop withdrawals. The White House vetoed multiple Iraq funding bills (and had the vetoes upheld by their congressional allies) all over the singular issue of a withdrawal timetable. Even with the reduction of violence in Iraq since we began paying Sunni militiamen to fight al-Qaeda instead of us and simultaneously implemented "the surge"*, the President has refused to consider troop reductions on a set schedule. But he had little choice, after Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki for all intensive purposes endorsed Barack Obama's proposal (which reflects the collective view of the Democratic Congress) that the American troops can and should be withdrawn on a schedule. The timing of this proposal, on the eve of Senator Obama's trip to Iraq could not be more embarrassing for the Bush administration which was already stunned when the Iraqi government refused to accept their demands and ended negotiations on a 'status of forces' agreement which would have kept U.S. forces in Iraq permanently and beyond the reach of the Iraqi legal system. While Obama himself has allowed that the pace could be slightly adjusted to account for events on the ground, the new Iraqi position clearly represents a meeting of minds, and it is one in which Bush and John McCain are the odd men out. So no wonder the Bush administration has reversed their position on a timetable. It is now a foregone conclusion that we won't have a permanent occupation force in the up to sixty bases that were once envisioned, and all Bush is doing is putting the best face he can on what is clearly a defeat for his policy. And after five years of war, a trillion dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers it will be tough once we do leave for anyone to make the case that invading Iraq was anything other than a mistake.
So then today we see the President apparently reversing himself on Habeus Corpus. (Hat tip to lscottsman at Coldhearted Truth, linked to.) He now says he wants prisoners to be charged and given a trial or released if they are not charged.
Hmmmm.... Not that I'm complaining about the changes (it's nice to know that for at least the last half a year of the Bush administration we will have some sanity) but I'm trying to think--- what exactly is it that George W. Bush stands for, anyway?
*-- any discussion of the 'surge' does have to (in order for me to be academically honest) include the admission that yes, I once predicted it would fail. I'll save you the trouble and link to the post where I made that prediction right here. But yes, I'm actually happy to say that I was wrong in my prediction that the surge would not bring about a reduction in violence-- and one that has led to the present situation in which the Iraqi government refused to sign the agreement the Bush administration wanted and is instead telling us in effect to start packing.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Bush administration does something right-- reverses itself on Iran talks
Remember when Barack Obama said that he was willing to meet unconditionally with foreign leaders we don't get along with, including Iran? In fact, even his pledge to negotiate with them at any level was lambasted. He was called an appeaser and worse, and the right has been howling ever since then about it. Of course the policy of the Bush administration has been never to negotiate with governments it considers part of the 'axis of evil' or otherwise involved in 'sponsoring terrorism.' Even John McCain got into the act, refusing to meet with Palestinians during his last trip to the middle east (incidentally, Barack Obama has accepted an invitation to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Israeli President Ohlmert when he goes to the middle east next month.)
Of course earlier this year we saw the Bush administration reverse themselves and negotiate directly with the North Koreans. But the biggest and most obvious foreign bogeyman-- Iran-- they have always publically refused to negotiate with.
So it was suprising today to see the Bush administration do a 180 degree reversal today and announce that Undersecretary of State William Burns will meet with Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili this week during negotiations between Iran and diplomats from the European Union.
This is huge, and it is long overdue. It is not of course the kind of Presidential level talk that Obama has been criticized for saying he would pursue, and the scope of the discussion-- Iran's nuclear program-- is limited, but it nevertheless marks the first time in several years of saber rattling that the U.S. and Iran have had any kind of direct talks.
It is overdue because whether we like it or not, Iran represents a significant player in a part of the world that is both vital to the U.S. and where we have now gotten a significant portion of our military bogged down in (how much of our problems in Iraq the past five years have been due to Iran is debatable, but it is foolish to think that there is no connection.) Iran has much more influence over the Maliki government than we do (starting with the fact that much of the Iraqi military is composed of former members of the Iranian backed Badr brigade.) Iran also has a lot of influence over Hezbollah and other groups that whether we like it or not have significant power bases and ability to cause trouble around the middle east. And then there is that nuclear program and the obvious likelihood of a confrontation sooner or later between Iran and Israel. In other words, Iran is just too important to ignore. We may not like them, but then during the Cold War we didn't like the Soviet Union either. But like them or not, we had to deal with them.
The Bush administration is also clearly coming to the realization that in its waning days, with the costly mistake of Iraq only now settling down after five years of brutal war while the country we took our eye off of to go into Iraq, Afghanistan, is now heating up, any plans that they had to invade and occupy Iran (and we know that it was on their long term agenda) will have to be thrown away. Right now they have neither the military force needed nor the support of the American people for adding a long term military war and occupation of Iran to what is currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their about face and willingness to negotiate is ample proof that they realize this.
It also vindicates Obama's position on negotiations with foreign adversaries, and leaves conservatives (especially the variety of neocon who can think of no other way to engage a country like Iran than militarily) blustering and red in the face. I'm not saying that the deployment of military force is never required (I've always supported the Afghan war and believe that we must leave Iraq as soon as possible so that we can do what we should have done half a decade ago and finish the job there) but clearly diplomacy has its place. Even the Bush administration, which early on used terms like 'with us or against us' and 'coalition of the willing' to excuse its unwillingness to rely on diplomacy, has realized that the world is not always such a simple and easily managed place.
I know, I know. Someone will undoubtedly point out that 1) this isn't a Presidential level meeting, and 2) that Ahmadinejad is still a nut who makes all kinds of outrageous rhetoric. My answers are 1) this kind of reversal by the Bush administation is nonetheless hugely significant and could well pave the way for a Presidential level meeting eventually-- by whoever is President; and 2) Ahmadinejad is a not particularly popular politician who makes outrageous statements largely for domestic consumption. But he will be gone next Iranian election (which I believe is next year) and replaced as the 'face of Iran' by another politician. The guys who call the real shots in Iran-- a council of mullahs led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-- are in effect being engaged at just as high a level by diplomatic talks as they would by Presidential talks.
Besides, how is Ahmadinejad's threat to destroy Israel any more outrageous than Bush's declaration of the 'axis of evil' followed by his actual attack on one member of that group-- Iraq? As a North Korean diplomat candidly said a year after that speech, "Your President called us a member of the axis of evil....of course we have a nuclear program" Rhetoric like that often spurs countries to take more, not less action (and the threat from America may be part of Iran's nuclear motivation). So maybe it is time for both sides to tone down the rhetoric and shake hands. This meeting is long, long overdue.
Of course earlier this year we saw the Bush administration reverse themselves and negotiate directly with the North Koreans. But the biggest and most obvious foreign bogeyman-- Iran-- they have always publically refused to negotiate with.
So it was suprising today to see the Bush administration do a 180 degree reversal today and announce that Undersecretary of State William Burns will meet with Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili this week during negotiations between Iran and diplomats from the European Union.
This is huge, and it is long overdue. It is not of course the kind of Presidential level talk that Obama has been criticized for saying he would pursue, and the scope of the discussion-- Iran's nuclear program-- is limited, but it nevertheless marks the first time in several years of saber rattling that the U.S. and Iran have had any kind of direct talks.
It is overdue because whether we like it or not, Iran represents a significant player in a part of the world that is both vital to the U.S. and where we have now gotten a significant portion of our military bogged down in (how much of our problems in Iraq the past five years have been due to Iran is debatable, but it is foolish to think that there is no connection.) Iran has much more influence over the Maliki government than we do (starting with the fact that much of the Iraqi military is composed of former members of the Iranian backed Badr brigade.) Iran also has a lot of influence over Hezbollah and other groups that whether we like it or not have significant power bases and ability to cause trouble around the middle east. And then there is that nuclear program and the obvious likelihood of a confrontation sooner or later between Iran and Israel. In other words, Iran is just too important to ignore. We may not like them, but then during the Cold War we didn't like the Soviet Union either. But like them or not, we had to deal with them.
The Bush administration is also clearly coming to the realization that in its waning days, with the costly mistake of Iraq only now settling down after five years of brutal war while the country we took our eye off of to go into Iraq, Afghanistan, is now heating up, any plans that they had to invade and occupy Iran (and we know that it was on their long term agenda) will have to be thrown away. Right now they have neither the military force needed nor the support of the American people for adding a long term military war and occupation of Iran to what is currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their about face and willingness to negotiate is ample proof that they realize this.
It also vindicates Obama's position on negotiations with foreign adversaries, and leaves conservatives (especially the variety of neocon who can think of no other way to engage a country like Iran than militarily) blustering and red in the face. I'm not saying that the deployment of military force is never required (I've always supported the Afghan war and believe that we must leave Iraq as soon as possible so that we can do what we should have done half a decade ago and finish the job there) but clearly diplomacy has its place. Even the Bush administration, which early on used terms like 'with us or against us' and 'coalition of the willing' to excuse its unwillingness to rely on diplomacy, has realized that the world is not always such a simple and easily managed place.
I know, I know. Someone will undoubtedly point out that 1) this isn't a Presidential level meeting, and 2) that Ahmadinejad is still a nut who makes all kinds of outrageous rhetoric. My answers are 1) this kind of reversal by the Bush administation is nonetheless hugely significant and could well pave the way for a Presidential level meeting eventually-- by whoever is President; and 2) Ahmadinejad is a not particularly popular politician who makes outrageous statements largely for domestic consumption. But he will be gone next Iranian election (which I believe is next year) and replaced as the 'face of Iran' by another politician. The guys who call the real shots in Iran-- a council of mullahs led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-- are in effect being engaged at just as high a level by diplomatic talks as they would by Presidential talks.
Besides, how is Ahmadinejad's threat to destroy Israel any more outrageous than Bush's declaration of the 'axis of evil' followed by his actual attack on one member of that group-- Iraq? As a North Korean diplomat candidly said a year after that speech, "Your President called us a member of the axis of evil....of course we have a nuclear program" Rhetoric like that often spurs countries to take more, not less action (and the threat from America may be part of Iran's nuclear motivation). So maybe it is time for both sides to tone down the rhetoric and shake hands. This meeting is long, long overdue.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
McCain rape joke
One of my favorite Arizona bloggers, Tedski, did a post on the worst side of John McCain's sense of sick 'humor' in which he dug up this image of a Tucson newspaper article from 1986 in which John McCain is quoted as telling the following joke:
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’
But, hey this is a guy who publically called his own wife the c-word.
All I have to ask is DO WE WANT THIS KIND OF A NEANDERTHAL SEXIST AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
Incidentally, Tedski has been selected as the state blogger representing Arizona at the Democratic convention. I put in for it, but I don't mind saying that the credentials committee made an excellent choice.
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’
But, hey this is a guy who publically called his own wife the c-word.
All I have to ask is DO WE WANT THIS KIND OF A NEANDERTHAL SEXIST AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
Incidentally, Tedski has been selected as the state blogger representing Arizona at the Democratic convention. I put in for it, but I don't mind saying that the credentials committee made an excellent choice.
It's good to see Hillary keeping her word to stand behind Obama
I think that Hillary Clinton is a better candidate when she's stumping for someone else.
And it's good to see that she's keeping her word and pushing Obama as she travels about.
She made a pretty good speech in fact to the convention of the American Federation of Teachers (a group which I used to be a member of when I worked at an institution where we organized a union under AFT auspices.)
Obama was also in Chicago on Saturday, and addressed the conference by satellite today. But Clinton, who received the AFT's backing during the primary, appeared in Obama's hometown yesterday to speak highly of her former rival before an audience of her supporters.
"I can't wait to see Barack raise his hand, take that oath of office and get to work," she told several thousand educators at the conference.
And she jabbed at the Republicans, using a line that drew such applause when Clinton used it earlier this week in New York that Obama borrowed it when he spoke at an event without Clinton on Thursday in Virginia....
"A vice-president who shoots somebody in the face, you couldn't make that up," Clinton said to laughter.
She added, "the Republicans should hold a press conference and apologize to the country and say they're just not going to run anyone for president."
I admit that I was a bit concerned about whether Hillary's promise to 'work her heart out for [Obama]' if he won the nomination might be just words. Obviously during the obligatory joint appearances she praised him, but the real test is what she would say when she goes on the road alone and doing her normal routine. And now we can see that she is doing what she can to help him. This will certainly help get her back into the good graces of a lot on the left who had abandoned her over Iraq and other issues before.
And I loved that line about Cheney. I agree, that if the Republicans can't come up with anybody better than Dick Cheney for number two, then it would be better to leave that line on the ballot blank.
Of course Cheney has served his role well. Over the past eight years, he's been the best argument Bush had against any serious attempt at impeachment.
And it's good to see that she's keeping her word and pushing Obama as she travels about.
She made a pretty good speech in fact to the convention of the American Federation of Teachers (a group which I used to be a member of when I worked at an institution where we organized a union under AFT auspices.)
Obama was also in Chicago on Saturday, and addressed the conference by satellite today. But Clinton, who received the AFT's backing during the primary, appeared in Obama's hometown yesterday to speak highly of her former rival before an audience of her supporters.
"I can't wait to see Barack raise his hand, take that oath of office and get to work," she told several thousand educators at the conference.
And she jabbed at the Republicans, using a line that drew such applause when Clinton used it earlier this week in New York that Obama borrowed it when he spoke at an event without Clinton on Thursday in Virginia....
"A vice-president who shoots somebody in the face, you couldn't make that up," Clinton said to laughter.
She added, "the Republicans should hold a press conference and apologize to the country and say they're just not going to run anyone for president."
I admit that I was a bit concerned about whether Hillary's promise to 'work her heart out for [Obama]' if he won the nomination might be just words. Obviously during the obligatory joint appearances she praised him, but the real test is what she would say when she goes on the road alone and doing her normal routine. And now we can see that she is doing what she can to help him. This will certainly help get her back into the good graces of a lot on the left who had abandoned her over Iraq and other issues before.
And I loved that line about Cheney. I agree, that if the Republicans can't come up with anybody better than Dick Cheney for number two, then it would be better to leave that line on the ballot blank.
Of course Cheney has served his role well. Over the past eight years, he's been the best argument Bush had against any serious attempt at impeachment.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
And this is an accomplishment he's PROUD of?
President Bush went to his last G-8 summit this week, and spent the week with other leaders of developed countries discussing a variety of topics, not the least of which was curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Of course President Bush has always been the one sticking his foot in the way of any real attempt to do anything about pollution. So when it was over, as his successor will go to the next G-8 summit, he decided to say goodbye to his old (and some new) partners.
"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter," said the President with a broad grin on his face.
And just to show what a huge accomplishment he thought that was he gave it some extra emphasis.
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Some joke, huh? And just a day after the White House had to issue an official apology to Italy after President Bush was given travel notes describing Italy as a 'country known for corruption and vice.'
Of course this isn't the first time that Bush has embarrassed America at the G-8 summit. Remember two years ago when he goosed Angela Merkel in an episode that was so bizarre that I still have trouble comprehending it (though it's been hard to not notice that since then Merkel, who was elected as a Bush ally, has been noticeably cool toward Bush and kept her distance from him.)
I've watched lots of Presidents, including some conservative Presidents who I disagreed with, like Nixon, Reagan and Bush's father. But I've never seen a President who has so consistently been a poor representative of our country on international trips (and that's even counting the time when Jimmy Carter vomited in the lap of the prime minister of Japan after eating sushi.) Bush's behavior is strange, bizarre and disjointed. The only thing I wonder about is whether he behaves that way all the time, just that on these international trips it's harder for his handlers to keep it under wraps.
"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter," said the President with a broad grin on his face.
And just to show what a huge accomplishment he thought that was he gave it some extra emphasis.
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Some joke, huh? And just a day after the White House had to issue an official apology to Italy after President Bush was given travel notes describing Italy as a 'country known for corruption and vice.'
Of course this isn't the first time that Bush has embarrassed America at the G-8 summit. Remember two years ago when he goosed Angela Merkel in an episode that was so bizarre that I still have trouble comprehending it (though it's been hard to not notice that since then Merkel, who was elected as a Bush ally, has been noticeably cool toward Bush and kept her distance from him.)
I've watched lots of Presidents, including some conservative Presidents who I disagreed with, like Nixon, Reagan and Bush's father. But I've never seen a President who has so consistently been a poor representative of our country on international trips (and that's even counting the time when Jimmy Carter vomited in the lap of the prime minister of Japan after eating sushi.) Bush's behavior is strange, bizarre and disjointed. The only thing I wonder about is whether he behaves that way all the time, just that on these international trips it's harder for his handlers to keep it under wraps.
Monday, July 07, 2008
FEMA-- Brownie's gone and the President probably still thinks they're doing a Heckuva job.
How do you figure out a way to hide millions in relief supplies from the people who need it, and then give it away to other state agencies instead?
Easy-- you create an obscure office that no one knows about, send them there and then declare that since no one applied for them they are actually not needed.
Then if you have a state government run by good ol' boys (somebody must have tipped them off) they can jump in and claim the loot to plug budget holes in their own agencies.
That's what the Bush administration did with millions of dollars in supplies that never made it to Katrina victims, many of whom are still waiting (I guess it would be a good opportunity to mention that today is July 7, 2008 which makes it officially 1,043 days they have been waiting.)
BILOXI, Mississippi (CNN) -- Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The state's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.
Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.
Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.
But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found...
Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.
The state of Louisiana -- the most hard-hit by the storm -- had not asked for any of the supplies, prompting outrage in the community after the original CNN report.
CNN's investigation showed that Mississippi was one of the 16 states that took the FEMA supplies, but it did not distribute them to Katrina victims.
Jim Marler, director of Mississippi's surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.
Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, "There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property."
That doesn't sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need," said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.
Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi's surplus agency.
"There is no specific designation outside of a disaster period that says we have to have sustained properties going to the disaster area," Wiggins said.
CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.
Yeah. There are thousands of people who are still waiting for help, and they haven't gotten it.
Ultimately the fact that the state of Mississippi, where the story is focused knew about the goods but chose to give it to other state agencies instead of to the victims it was intended for is something which both the Bush administration and Governor Haley Barbour's office is going to have to answer for. In Louisiana, neither former Governor Kathleen Blanco nor current Governor Bobby Jindahl apparently even bothered to apply for the aid at all.
Like I said above, it is 1,043 days and counting that some people are waiting for assistance.
And Brownie's long gone, so it must be someone else who's doing a Heckuva job.
Easy-- you create an obscure office that no one knows about, send them there and then declare that since no one applied for them they are actually not needed.
Then if you have a state government run by good ol' boys (somebody must have tipped them off) they can jump in and claim the loot to plug budget holes in their own agencies.
That's what the Bush administration did with millions of dollars in supplies that never made it to Katrina victims, many of whom are still waiting (I guess it would be a good opportunity to mention that today is July 7, 2008 which makes it officially 1,043 days they have been waiting.)
BILOXI, Mississippi (CNN) -- Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The state's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.
Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.
Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.
But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found...
Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.
The state of Louisiana -- the most hard-hit by the storm -- had not asked for any of the supplies, prompting outrage in the community after the original CNN report.
CNN's investigation showed that Mississippi was one of the 16 states that took the FEMA supplies, but it did not distribute them to Katrina victims.
Jim Marler, director of Mississippi's surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.
Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, "There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property."
That doesn't sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need," said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.
Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi's surplus agency.
"There is no specific designation outside of a disaster period that says we have to have sustained properties going to the disaster area," Wiggins said.
CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.
Yeah. There are thousands of people who are still waiting for help, and they haven't gotten it.
Ultimately the fact that the state of Mississippi, where the story is focused knew about the goods but chose to give it to other state agencies instead of to the victims it was intended for is something which both the Bush administration and Governor Haley Barbour's office is going to have to answer for. In Louisiana, neither former Governor Kathleen Blanco nor current Governor Bobby Jindahl apparently even bothered to apply for the aid at all.
Like I said above, it is 1,043 days and counting that some people are waiting for assistance.
And Brownie's long gone, so it must be someone else who's doing a Heckuva job.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Obama's 'flip-flops' are greatly exaggerated.
A lot has been made about Barack Obama's supposed 'flip-flops.' First there was the campaign finance issue, when he reversed a pledge to accept public financing because he can raise a lot more on the internet. Then on each of the Supreme Court rulings last week he came down on what could be considered the conservative side (disagreeing with the ruling outlawing executing child rapists and agreeing with the ruling that the District of Columbia can't ban all handguns.) Then he said he will vote for the latest incarnation of the FISA bill despite it giving telecom companies immunity, and today while campaigning in North Dakota he made a statement that he would withdraw troops from Iraq on a pace subject to the safety and security of the troops and the need to maintain stability.
There is a lot to say here. First, most of the supposed 'flip-flops' are greatly exagerrated when put in the context of what he has said in the past. And where they aren't, so what? No one is suggesting that Barack Obama isn't a politician. Would you rather have John McCain, who if elected pledges to continue virtually all of the Bush administration's policies? What makes Barack Obama special is his ability to inspire millions of people. That is not contradictory to also being a politician. Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were politicians to the core, but that was not contradictory to their also being inspirational leaders.
The most clear flip-flop is on the campaign finance issue, so let's start with it. A long time ago, during the primary season, Barack Obama did pledge to take public financing in the general if his Republican opponent did likewise. That is true. But he did reverse himself. However, let's be clear here-- there is little doubt that he can raise as much as three or four times as much on the internet as the $84 million he would otherwise get in general election financing. For that matter, do you honestly believe that if John McCain had a way to raise hundreds of millions of dollars he wouldn't take it? That is the reason why Mitt Romney is still on McCain's list as a veep candidate. So for Obama to limit himself to a third of the resources he would otherwise have would be stupid. He proved he isn't stupid. Next issue?
The FISA bill. It gives most of us on the left heartburn that Obama will vote for it. The bill puts into law immunity for telecom companies that broke the law (at the request of the Bush administration) when they violated your privacy and gave access to government snoops to your telephone calls without a warrant (you don't actually know for sure than nobody did listen to your calls, now do you?) It's true that he had pledged to vote against this earlier. He is saying that the new bill is an improvement, which is true, but the big issue, the immunity for the telecom companies is still in there. So while he can use the cover provided by the changes in the bill to say he didn't flip-flop, yeah he did. However this is hardly a reason to vote for John McCain. You know darn well he will vote for the FISA bill enthusiastically (assuming he bothers to show up at all-- his absentee rate is worse than Obama's in the U.S. Senate this year, negating an issue Republicans once thought they could use.)
Let's discuss the two Supreme Court rulings. I don't consider these to be flip-flops at all. Regarding the first, Obama has said in the past that he supports the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes. He never said whether he considered the rape of a child to qualify, until it became a valid question in the wake of last week's SCOTUS ruling. So if it's the first time he's commented on it, where is the flip-flop? I happen to disagree with him (I actually think the Supreme Court ruling is right-- if we have the death penalty at all then it should be used as an 'eye-for-an-eye' punishment, exclusively for murder) but there is no flip-flop in this case.
Then on the gun case, the Supreme Court ruled against the D.C. gun ban. The justices interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right to bear arms, not just a collective right. Obama, who in the past has supported gun control laws, agreed with this interpretation. Again, there is no flip-flop. The court ruled the D.C. ban went too far in banning all guns of a certain type, but that isn't contradictory to jurisdictions regulating them. Senator Obama's past statements and his current support of the D.C. ruling are not contradictory in that regard.
For that matter, I agree with both Supreme Court rulings. This puts me in opposition to Senator Obama on the first, but not the second, and in opposition to some liberals on the second, but not the first. Proving what? Proving that in the Democratic party we can have disagreements on issues and still remain united.
OK, what about today's Iraq statement? It is no secret that Senator Obama has pledged to get us out of Iraq. So today he said,
"I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”
Again, where is the flip-flop? Look at this quote from a Democratic debate in 2007:
We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later, but our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month.
Which according to the article led to his taking some heat from some of the other candidates in the debate, particularly John Edwards and Bill Richardson.
That was last September. So what he said today is completely consistent with what he said then. Again, it isn't like he is talking about anything other than withdrawal. He is talking about using information he gathers (i.e. from his upcoming trip to Iraq) to develop a more informed plan for withdrawing. That in itself is a refreshing change from our current executive, who when he began talking about Iraq had his mind already made up what to do and ran an administration that cherry picked intelligence reports to only pick out any which supported their pre-drawn conclusion. I'd much rather have a President who is capable of adjusting the specifics of his policy when and if he receives new information.
Of course then John McCain isn't talking about withdrawing at all, he's talking about staying there for a hundred years. And while we are debating this the Bush administration is feverishly twisting arms in Iraq to try and get them to sign onto a 'treaty' that will involve our building and maintaining as many as sixty military bases in Iraq. What do we need sixty bases there for? Only if we plan on using Iraq as a base from which to exert military control throughout the middle east. Barack Obama opposed George Bush's stupid and criminal war in Iraq from the beginning and he is the only candidate talking about withdrawing from Iraq soon. That's a plain fact. What he said today is in no way contradictory to what he said then.
That said, the attempt by the right-wing media to paint him as a sellout is an attempt to drive a wedge between him and his supporters. And it's met with some success. Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) already announced that while he will endorse and vote for Obama, he has torn up the check he was writing him. And as Moulitsas goes so go many supporters. For Obama to realize his goal of raising $250 million online he needs that support.
To a degree Obama also is creating part of the problem by his attempt to 'seize the center.' That doesn't work. He is blessed with the ability to articulate policy positions. Look at what a couple of good orators who can speak directly to the people (mainly, Socialist Bernie Sanders but also Howard Dean) were able to accomplish in Vermont. It was such a Republican state for generations that it even voted against FDR in 1936. Jimmy Carter and Massachusetts neighbor Michael Dukakis couldn't crack it either. But by the late 1980's then-congressman Sanders had laid out such an articulate vision and in terms that anyone could understand that the whole state moved to the left. And unlike, for example, California, it was not an immigration-driven change. Most Vermonters were born and raised in Vermont. But the majority of them are now among the most liberal people in the country when a generation ago they were among the most conservative. Obama could make the same kind of change for America, and I believe it is a mistake for him not to do so.
In fact, exhibit A is Obama himself. He beat Hillary Clinton largely because she had spent six years in the Senate staking out the center, and a lot of activists (who especially were unhappy with her continuing support for the Iraq war long after it became clear to everyone else that it was an unnecessary mistake) by that time were ready to support anybody else who could beat her.
However, while I may have some concerns about Obama's small steps towards the center, let's be clear here-- they have been greatly exagerrated by those who attempt to paint him as a 'flip-flopper.' Those people have the ultimate goal of electing John McCain. And that would be a horrible mistake and a disaster for the country.
There is a lot to say here. First, most of the supposed 'flip-flops' are greatly exagerrated when put in the context of what he has said in the past. And where they aren't, so what? No one is suggesting that Barack Obama isn't a politician. Would you rather have John McCain, who if elected pledges to continue virtually all of the Bush administration's policies? What makes Barack Obama special is his ability to inspire millions of people. That is not contradictory to also being a politician. Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were politicians to the core, but that was not contradictory to their also being inspirational leaders.
The most clear flip-flop is on the campaign finance issue, so let's start with it. A long time ago, during the primary season, Barack Obama did pledge to take public financing in the general if his Republican opponent did likewise. That is true. But he did reverse himself. However, let's be clear here-- there is little doubt that he can raise as much as three or four times as much on the internet as the $84 million he would otherwise get in general election financing. For that matter, do you honestly believe that if John McCain had a way to raise hundreds of millions of dollars he wouldn't take it? That is the reason why Mitt Romney is still on McCain's list as a veep candidate. So for Obama to limit himself to a third of the resources he would otherwise have would be stupid. He proved he isn't stupid. Next issue?
The FISA bill. It gives most of us on the left heartburn that Obama will vote for it. The bill puts into law immunity for telecom companies that broke the law (at the request of the Bush administration) when they violated your privacy and gave access to government snoops to your telephone calls without a warrant (you don't actually know for sure than nobody did listen to your calls, now do you?) It's true that he had pledged to vote against this earlier. He is saying that the new bill is an improvement, which is true, but the big issue, the immunity for the telecom companies is still in there. So while he can use the cover provided by the changes in the bill to say he didn't flip-flop, yeah he did. However this is hardly a reason to vote for John McCain. You know darn well he will vote for the FISA bill enthusiastically (assuming he bothers to show up at all-- his absentee rate is worse than Obama's in the U.S. Senate this year, negating an issue Republicans once thought they could use.)
Let's discuss the two Supreme Court rulings. I don't consider these to be flip-flops at all. Regarding the first, Obama has said in the past that he supports the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes. He never said whether he considered the rape of a child to qualify, until it became a valid question in the wake of last week's SCOTUS ruling. So if it's the first time he's commented on it, where is the flip-flop? I happen to disagree with him (I actually think the Supreme Court ruling is right-- if we have the death penalty at all then it should be used as an 'eye-for-an-eye' punishment, exclusively for murder) but there is no flip-flop in this case.
Then on the gun case, the Supreme Court ruled against the D.C. gun ban. The justices interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right to bear arms, not just a collective right. Obama, who in the past has supported gun control laws, agreed with this interpretation. Again, there is no flip-flop. The court ruled the D.C. ban went too far in banning all guns of a certain type, but that isn't contradictory to jurisdictions regulating them. Senator Obama's past statements and his current support of the D.C. ruling are not contradictory in that regard.
For that matter, I agree with both Supreme Court rulings. This puts me in opposition to Senator Obama on the first, but not the second, and in opposition to some liberals on the second, but not the first. Proving what? Proving that in the Democratic party we can have disagreements on issues and still remain united.
OK, what about today's Iraq statement? It is no secret that Senator Obama has pledged to get us out of Iraq. So today he said,
"I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”
Again, where is the flip-flop? Look at this quote from a Democratic debate in 2007:
We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later, but our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month.
Which according to the article led to his taking some heat from some of the other candidates in the debate, particularly John Edwards and Bill Richardson.
That was last September. So what he said today is completely consistent with what he said then. Again, it isn't like he is talking about anything other than withdrawal. He is talking about using information he gathers (i.e. from his upcoming trip to Iraq) to develop a more informed plan for withdrawing. That in itself is a refreshing change from our current executive, who when he began talking about Iraq had his mind already made up what to do and ran an administration that cherry picked intelligence reports to only pick out any which supported their pre-drawn conclusion. I'd much rather have a President who is capable of adjusting the specifics of his policy when and if he receives new information.
Of course then John McCain isn't talking about withdrawing at all, he's talking about staying there for a hundred years. And while we are debating this the Bush administration is feverishly twisting arms in Iraq to try and get them to sign onto a 'treaty' that will involve our building and maintaining as many as sixty military bases in Iraq. What do we need sixty bases there for? Only if we plan on using Iraq as a base from which to exert military control throughout the middle east. Barack Obama opposed George Bush's stupid and criminal war in Iraq from the beginning and he is the only candidate talking about withdrawing from Iraq soon. That's a plain fact. What he said today is in no way contradictory to what he said then.
That said, the attempt by the right-wing media to paint him as a sellout is an attempt to drive a wedge between him and his supporters. And it's met with some success. Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) already announced that while he will endorse and vote for Obama, he has torn up the check he was writing him. And as Moulitsas goes so go many supporters. For Obama to realize his goal of raising $250 million online he needs that support.
To a degree Obama also is creating part of the problem by his attempt to 'seize the center.' That doesn't work. He is blessed with the ability to articulate policy positions. Look at what a couple of good orators who can speak directly to the people (mainly, Socialist Bernie Sanders but also Howard Dean) were able to accomplish in Vermont. It was such a Republican state for generations that it even voted against FDR in 1936. Jimmy Carter and Massachusetts neighbor Michael Dukakis couldn't crack it either. But by the late 1980's then-congressman Sanders had laid out such an articulate vision and in terms that anyone could understand that the whole state moved to the left. And unlike, for example, California, it was not an immigration-driven change. Most Vermonters were born and raised in Vermont. But the majority of them are now among the most liberal people in the country when a generation ago they were among the most conservative. Obama could make the same kind of change for America, and I believe it is a mistake for him not to do so.
In fact, exhibit A is Obama himself. He beat Hillary Clinton largely because she had spent six years in the Senate staking out the center, and a lot of activists (who especially were unhappy with her continuing support for the Iraq war long after it became clear to everyone else that it was an unnecessary mistake) by that time were ready to support anybody else who could beat her.
However, while I may have some concerns about Obama's small steps towards the center, let's be clear here-- they have been greatly exagerrated by those who attempt to paint him as a 'flip-flopper.' Those people have the ultimate goal of electing John McCain. And that would be a horrible mistake and a disaster for the country.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Death while waiting to be seen
It's hard to even know what to say about this story:
NEW YORK (AP) -- City hospital officials said they were shocked by surveillance footage showing a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.
Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. June 19, falling face-down on the floor.
She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her...
And this is really galling:
Security guards and a member of the hospital's staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times but made no visible attempt to see whether she needed help. One guard didn't even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body and then rolling away a few moments later.
Yeah. We have the best healthcare money can buy in America. IF you can afford it. Otherwise, our healthcare system is becoming medieval at an accelerating pace.
The hospital is run by the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation, a private entity that contracts with the state.
"We are all shocked and distressed by this situation," HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement. "We express our deep regrets to the patient's family and will ensure a thorough investigation to answer any questions that remain."
That doesn't ring true, considering what has been found in the past at this hospital:
A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric center "a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger."
Patients, the suit said, "are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs."
"From the moment a person steps through the doors," it added, "she is stripped of her freedom and dignity and literally forced to fight for the essentials of life."
The suit was especially critical of the hospital's emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.
Sometimes, the unit runs out of chairs, according to the lawsuit, forcing people to wait on foam mats or on the waiting room floor. The suit also claims that bathrooms are filthy and filled with flies, and that patients who complain too loudly are sometimes handcuffed, beaten or injected with psychotropic drugs.
I have only one question. Why doesn't the state just take over and run this hospital as a public entity? It's hard to imagine that it could be run any worse than it is now, and at least if the state were running it then we could collectively fire the management if they continued to run this kind of apalling institution.
NEW YORK (AP) -- City hospital officials said they were shocked by surveillance footage showing a woman falling from her chair, writhing on the floor and dying as workers failed to help for more than an hour.
Esmin Green, 49, had been waiting in the emergency room for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat at 5:32 a.m. June 19, falling face-down on the floor.
She was dead by 6:35, when someone on the medical staff, flagged down by a person in the waiting room, finally approached, nudged Green with her foot and gently prodded her shoulder, as if to wake her...
And this is really galling:
Security guards and a member of the hospital's staff appeared to notice her prone body at least three times but made no visible attempt to see whether she needed help. One guard didn't even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body and then rolling away a few moments later.
Yeah. We have the best healthcare money can buy in America. IF you can afford it. Otherwise, our healthcare system is becoming medieval at an accelerating pace.
The hospital is run by the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation, a private entity that contracts with the state.
"We are all shocked and distressed by this situation," HHC's president, Alan Aviles, said in a statement. "We express our deep regrets to the patient's family and will ensure a thorough investigation to answer any questions that remain."
That doesn't ring true, considering what has been found in the past at this hospital:
A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric center "a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger."
Patients, the suit said, "are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs."
"From the moment a person steps through the doors," it added, "she is stripped of her freedom and dignity and literally forced to fight for the essentials of life."
The suit was especially critical of the hospital's emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.
Sometimes, the unit runs out of chairs, according to the lawsuit, forcing people to wait on foam mats or on the waiting room floor. The suit also claims that bathrooms are filthy and filled with flies, and that patients who complain too loudly are sometimes handcuffed, beaten or injected with psychotropic drugs.
I have only one question. Why doesn't the state just take over and run this hospital as a public entity? It's hard to imagine that it could be run any worse than it is now, and at least if the state were running it then we could collectively fire the management if they continued to run this kind of apalling institution.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Yes, there is such a thing as a regime that is odious enough to rebel against.
This week we've been reminded again how important a gift democracy is, by watching another country in which it has been brutally suppressed.
Robert Mugabe once led a successful guerilla war against the racist white government of Ian Smith in the 1970's and 1980's in what was then Rhodesia. Since winning it though he has led Zimbabwe pretty much alone. He has also proven one of the world's premier despots, especially over the past decade.
His record of abysmal failure is actually pretty astounding. Keep in mind that his country was once the breadbasket of the region, and was one of the few sub-Saharan African countries where nobody starved. That ended over the past decade as he sent in gangs of thugs to take over farms. The farms were white-owned and he justified it as 'redistributing to the masses.' Only the 'masses' were actually gangs of his supporters who knew nothing about farming, to the extent that starvation is now widespread in his country. Many white farmers were shot or hacked to death either when they refused to leave their land or if they didn't leave it fast enough (as an example to others to leave faster.) His brutality isn't limited to whites though (and it should be noted that not all whites in Zimbabwe supported the Rhodesian government either-- some were very progressive at that time and stood shoulder to shoulder with the guerilla movement.) Opponents of his regime, black and white, have similarly been brutalized.
The latest chapter in Mugabe's saga began this past March. An election was held in Zimbabwe, and both exit polls and other indications were that Mugabe's main opponent, Morgan Tsvangarai, had won an outright majority. The electoral commission however (which is controlled by Mugabe loyalists) delayed releasing the vote totals for five weeks. By that time the election results had clearly been tampered with, and the commission released totals that showed Tsvangarai winning, but not by the absolute majority he would need to avoid a runoff.
Although Tsvangarai made it clear that he considered the election results fraudulent, he agreed to participate in a runoff. Virtually everyone in Zimbabwe who had voted for another candidate (primarily Simba Makone) was expected to vote for Tsvangarai in the runoff.
So then Mugabe went back to the tactics he knows how to use. He threatened if he lost the election he would go back into the hills and start his guerilla war again. But there was no need for him to say that. His fighters are already in every town. He unleashed his gangs of thugs. They murdered scores of Tsvangarai's supporters. And he also used the tools of the state, raiding the offices of Tsvangarai's party, detaining and torturing supporters, and breaking up campaign rallies. Tsvangarai himself was detained several times. Finally, Tsvangarai announced last week he was withdrawing from the runoff after reports surfaced that Mugabe-backed militias planned on mass murders of Tsvangarai supporters at the polls. Mugabe continued to claim that the election this past Friday was 'free and fair,' but obviously it is the farthest thing an election could be from free or fair.
Everyone agrees on this point. Both the African Union and the United Nations issued resolutions condemning the violence. Even Nelson Mandela took time out from the festivities surrounding his ninetieth birthday party to verbally slap down Mugabe (once united with him in the struggle to free southern Africa) and criticize the 'failure of leadership in Zimbabwe.' And it is likely that there will be more sanctions.
So what? I've concluded that sanctions never or almost never work. Mugabe has little to fear. They don't work because 1. they actually strengthen a despotic leader by giving him an excuse and an external enemy to blame for the problems of the country (want proof? We've had sanctions on Cuba, Iran and N. Korea for a combined 136 years and the sanctions have done nothing to weaken any of them.); 2. Sanctions often produce more suffering for the people they are supposed to help and not for the tyrants. Zimbabwe may produce very little food anymore, but even if things get so bad that there is just one loaf of bread left in the country then Mugabe will get to eat it; and 3. Sanctions only produce profits for black marketeers who will smuggle whatever isn't supposed to be sold in or out anyway. Even in the case of Rhodesia, the Smith government was not toppled by international pressure or western sanctions (as much as we might want to wish it were so) but frankly by the successful guerilla war led by Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo (that's a fact. Period.)
There are some who suggest military intervention. I disagree with that. A military intervention in a place like Zimbabwe would likely just provoke an endless conflict, and I'm not sure what exactly we are supposed to do once we are there. It would also smack of colonialism. Even an African-led intervention would likely just inflame regional tensions and not achieve anything.
Instead, I would suggest that when we have a despot who is as recalcitrant and brutal as Mugabe, it may be time to use his own tactics against him. Rarely do I support violent revolution as an alternative to democratic reform, but clearly the latter is impossible in Zimbabwe, and there are many people by now who are ready to risk their lives to fight against Mugabe (that is shown both by the number of people who boycotted Friday's election-- despite the fact that no purple finger paint makes them targets, and also the number who were willing to openly support Tsvangarai when he was running.) This may the very rare case where I would suggest supporting armed opposition groups, including those who may be willing to wage a guerilla war within Zimbabwe. Supporting them with political support, but also with arms and covert operations.
It bothers me to say that, but it is clear by now that no other option than continuing repression or violent revolution is left for Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe once led a successful guerilla war against the racist white government of Ian Smith in the 1970's and 1980's in what was then Rhodesia. Since winning it though he has led Zimbabwe pretty much alone. He has also proven one of the world's premier despots, especially over the past decade.
His record of abysmal failure is actually pretty astounding. Keep in mind that his country was once the breadbasket of the region, and was one of the few sub-Saharan African countries where nobody starved. That ended over the past decade as he sent in gangs of thugs to take over farms. The farms were white-owned and he justified it as 'redistributing to the masses.' Only the 'masses' were actually gangs of his supporters who knew nothing about farming, to the extent that starvation is now widespread in his country. Many white farmers were shot or hacked to death either when they refused to leave their land or if they didn't leave it fast enough (as an example to others to leave faster.) His brutality isn't limited to whites though (and it should be noted that not all whites in Zimbabwe supported the Rhodesian government either-- some were very progressive at that time and stood shoulder to shoulder with the guerilla movement.) Opponents of his regime, black and white, have similarly been brutalized.
The latest chapter in Mugabe's saga began this past March. An election was held in Zimbabwe, and both exit polls and other indications were that Mugabe's main opponent, Morgan Tsvangarai, had won an outright majority. The electoral commission however (which is controlled by Mugabe loyalists) delayed releasing the vote totals for five weeks. By that time the election results had clearly been tampered with, and the commission released totals that showed Tsvangarai winning, but not by the absolute majority he would need to avoid a runoff.
Although Tsvangarai made it clear that he considered the election results fraudulent, he agreed to participate in a runoff. Virtually everyone in Zimbabwe who had voted for another candidate (primarily Simba Makone) was expected to vote for Tsvangarai in the runoff.
So then Mugabe went back to the tactics he knows how to use. He threatened if he lost the election he would go back into the hills and start his guerilla war again. But there was no need for him to say that. His fighters are already in every town. He unleashed his gangs of thugs. They murdered scores of Tsvangarai's supporters. And he also used the tools of the state, raiding the offices of Tsvangarai's party, detaining and torturing supporters, and breaking up campaign rallies. Tsvangarai himself was detained several times. Finally, Tsvangarai announced last week he was withdrawing from the runoff after reports surfaced that Mugabe-backed militias planned on mass murders of Tsvangarai supporters at the polls. Mugabe continued to claim that the election this past Friday was 'free and fair,' but obviously it is the farthest thing an election could be from free or fair.
Everyone agrees on this point. Both the African Union and the United Nations issued resolutions condemning the violence. Even Nelson Mandela took time out from the festivities surrounding his ninetieth birthday party to verbally slap down Mugabe (once united with him in the struggle to free southern Africa) and criticize the 'failure of leadership in Zimbabwe.' And it is likely that there will be more sanctions.
So what? I've concluded that sanctions never or almost never work. Mugabe has little to fear. They don't work because 1. they actually strengthen a despotic leader by giving him an excuse and an external enemy to blame for the problems of the country (want proof? We've had sanctions on Cuba, Iran and N. Korea for a combined 136 years and the sanctions have done nothing to weaken any of them.); 2. Sanctions often produce more suffering for the people they are supposed to help and not for the tyrants. Zimbabwe may produce very little food anymore, but even if things get so bad that there is just one loaf of bread left in the country then Mugabe will get to eat it; and 3. Sanctions only produce profits for black marketeers who will smuggle whatever isn't supposed to be sold in or out anyway. Even in the case of Rhodesia, the Smith government was not toppled by international pressure or western sanctions (as much as we might want to wish it were so) but frankly by the successful guerilla war led by Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo (that's a fact. Period.)
There are some who suggest military intervention. I disagree with that. A military intervention in a place like Zimbabwe would likely just provoke an endless conflict, and I'm not sure what exactly we are supposed to do once we are there. It would also smack of colonialism. Even an African-led intervention would likely just inflame regional tensions and not achieve anything.
Instead, I would suggest that when we have a despot who is as recalcitrant and brutal as Mugabe, it may be time to use his own tactics against him. Rarely do I support violent revolution as an alternative to democratic reform, but clearly the latter is impossible in Zimbabwe, and there are many people by now who are ready to risk their lives to fight against Mugabe (that is shown both by the number of people who boycotted Friday's election-- despite the fact that no purple finger paint makes them targets, and also the number who were willing to openly support Tsvangarai when he was running.) This may the very rare case where I would suggest supporting armed opposition groups, including those who may be willing to wage a guerilla war within Zimbabwe. Supporting them with political support, but also with arms and covert operations.
It bothers me to say that, but it is clear by now that no other option than continuing repression or violent revolution is left for Zimbabwe.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Back from vacation.
A lot has happened since I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago. So here is a brief wrap-up of what's been going on.
1. I was disappointed that Congress gave in on letting telecom companies have immunity for breaking the law in the FISA bill and also on Iraq war funding. Giving in on important issues like this in exchange for more pork is NOT a compromise. For a lame-duck President I'm disappointed that Congress is still letting him lead them around by the nose on crucial issues involving Iraq and warrantless surveillance. It's no accident that Congress' approval rating, which was rising for a couple of months into 2007, started tanking to the day that they first knuckled under to the Bush administration on Iraq war funding.
2. I'm encouraged by how quickly the party is coming back together. It's been eighteen days since Hillary suspended her campaign, and it's safe to say that while there is still work that needs to be done, the rate that Clinton supporters have been uniting with the Obama campaign is faster than the rate at which conservatives were rallying to McCain after he in effect decided the issue on Super Tuesday, or even after he clinched the GOP nod a month later.
3. In 1977, Jimmy Carter proposed (and Congress for the most part passed) a plan to make us energy independent by 2000. Unfortunately, virtually all of it (except for the original Alaska pipeline, which was only a small part of the whole) was dismantled during the 1980's. Also last year Congress finally passed increased CAFE standards for the first time since the Carter administration-- and it was a combination of Republicans and oil or auto-state Democrats who had scuttled it for thirty years. Keep in mind that a model-T Ford got 25 mpg, and that was a hundred years ago. If the GOP wants to make energy an issue, then bring it on. And yes, while in California I did have to pay $4.679 a gallon for a tank of gas.
4. I was encouraged by some state polls out the last couple of weeks. A survey USA poll out today shows Obama slightly ahead though statistically tied with John McCain in Indiana. The Hoosier state politically has always been a staunch Republican bastion that the GOP could pretty much count on to avoid getting shut out in the Rust Belt even in years when the rest of the region went to the Democrats. That may not be true this year. And a poll in Alaska the other day showed Obama within four. Alaska has also been a solidly Republican state, but then again-- maybe not this year. Obama has said he intends to send paid staff to all fifty states, which he will have the funds to do and McCain won't be able to counter him everywhere.
5. That leads into this observation-- Yes, Obama's decision to pass on Presidential matching funds was a flip-flop and a crass political decision. So what? He's trying to win, and does anyone honestly believe that if McCain had a way to raise $200-$300 million for the general he wouldn't do the same thing? Obama's learned quickly how to play the game, and having a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 money advantage (McCain will be limited to $84 million) in the fall will allow him to do exactly what Republicans have done in the past to Democrats (when they had the big money advantage.) The real root of the problem is that campaigns are getting more expensive and fewer Americans are dedicating that $3 of their taxes to go to the Presidential campaign. One reform that I would suggest Congress may want to pass sometime would be that when one of two major party candidates opts out of the system then the funds that would have gone to that candidate go to his or her opponent.
6. This observation-- when we went to Disneyland (we were lucky to be able to go this year ourselves, but we had promised the kids and we never break promises to them, plus they themselves worked harder and raised more for going to the Cinderella finals than they needed to this year) it was a lot less crowded than it was the last time we went-- on the same days and the same time of year-- in 2004.) Granted we were only there for two days, but either Disney raised prices too fast or less people can afford to go this year. Likely a bit of both. And oh, yeah-- speaking of Cinderella girls-- congratulations to Erin Nurss. She's always been really nice to our girls every year when we go to the state finals, and she's a class act all the way around. I hope she wins the Miss America pageant.
7. The state legislature, after shutting everyone out (especially members of the Democratic minority) for months has two budgets out-- the house Republican budget that makes deep cuts (and looks great for political grandstanding), and the Senate budget, more or less supported by the Governor, that is more reasonable given the current fiscal pressures facing the state. They will then resolve the differences by negotiating a budget that is likely to be closer to the Senate version. This is the same thing as happens every year. Here is an idea to save the state money-- since we know how this will turn out anyway, why not come out with the budgets in February and have the process wrapped up by March. Just think how much money this would save--especially by not having to pay legislators per diem pay for another three or four months. Well, read that last line again and you'll know why they give us this show every year. Incidentally, I want Obama to win, but if he does I'm well aware that it will hurt us in Arizona because Governor Napolitano would likely get a cabinet post, which would mean that Jan Brewer would move into the Governor's office-- and she'd likely sign the nutty stuff that comes out of the legislature. Plus, a cabinet call for Napolitano would likely deprive us in the Arizona Democratic party of our top candidate for McCain's Senate seat in 2010. Ah, well-- sometimes you are called on to sacrifice for your country and an Obama win would benefit all fifty states.
8. Apparently Senate Banking Committee Chairman and former Presidential candidate Chris Dodd got special treatment on his home loan from Countrywide (though he denies knowing he was getting anything better than anyone else.) He is now sponsoring a bill (actually a bi-partisan bill with Senator Shelby) to help bail out lenders, most notably Countrywide. It's a good thing Dodd isn't the nominee, otherwise this story would be broadcast wall to wall and would be called the biggest banking scandal since Credit Mobilier. In fact, it shows questionable judgement but no wrongdoing and will probably be gone within a week. But the fact that it will shows how much of a higher standard Presidential nominees are held to than also-rans.
9. I admit to being wrong about something. I picked the Lakers in five. What they really need is five. Five guys. Five guys playing defense. They are lucky they play in the western conference because the way they don't play defense I doubt if they would have even beaten Detroit or Cleveland to get to the finals if they were in the east. In fact, I'm wondering whether Tim Donaghy is right-- because the Lakers that showed up in the NBA finals weren't even good enough to have really beaten the Spurs.
10. It's good to be back.
1. I was disappointed that Congress gave in on letting telecom companies have immunity for breaking the law in the FISA bill and also on Iraq war funding. Giving in on important issues like this in exchange for more pork is NOT a compromise. For a lame-duck President I'm disappointed that Congress is still letting him lead them around by the nose on crucial issues involving Iraq and warrantless surveillance. It's no accident that Congress' approval rating, which was rising for a couple of months into 2007, started tanking to the day that they first knuckled under to the Bush administration on Iraq war funding.
2. I'm encouraged by how quickly the party is coming back together. It's been eighteen days since Hillary suspended her campaign, and it's safe to say that while there is still work that needs to be done, the rate that Clinton supporters have been uniting with the Obama campaign is faster than the rate at which conservatives were rallying to McCain after he in effect decided the issue on Super Tuesday, or even after he clinched the GOP nod a month later.
3. In 1977, Jimmy Carter proposed (and Congress for the most part passed) a plan to make us energy independent by 2000. Unfortunately, virtually all of it (except for the original Alaska pipeline, which was only a small part of the whole) was dismantled during the 1980's. Also last year Congress finally passed increased CAFE standards for the first time since the Carter administration-- and it was a combination of Republicans and oil or auto-state Democrats who had scuttled it for thirty years. Keep in mind that a model-T Ford got 25 mpg, and that was a hundred years ago. If the GOP wants to make energy an issue, then bring it on. And yes, while in California I did have to pay $4.679 a gallon for a tank of gas.
4. I was encouraged by some state polls out the last couple of weeks. A survey USA poll out today shows Obama slightly ahead though statistically tied with John McCain in Indiana. The Hoosier state politically has always been a staunch Republican bastion that the GOP could pretty much count on to avoid getting shut out in the Rust Belt even in years when the rest of the region went to the Democrats. That may not be true this year. And a poll in Alaska the other day showed Obama within four. Alaska has also been a solidly Republican state, but then again-- maybe not this year. Obama has said he intends to send paid staff to all fifty states, which he will have the funds to do and McCain won't be able to counter him everywhere.
5. That leads into this observation-- Yes, Obama's decision to pass on Presidential matching funds was a flip-flop and a crass political decision. So what? He's trying to win, and does anyone honestly believe that if McCain had a way to raise $200-$300 million for the general he wouldn't do the same thing? Obama's learned quickly how to play the game, and having a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 money advantage (McCain will be limited to $84 million) in the fall will allow him to do exactly what Republicans have done in the past to Democrats (when they had the big money advantage.) The real root of the problem is that campaigns are getting more expensive and fewer Americans are dedicating that $3 of their taxes to go to the Presidential campaign. One reform that I would suggest Congress may want to pass sometime would be that when one of two major party candidates opts out of the system then the funds that would have gone to that candidate go to his or her opponent.
6. This observation-- when we went to Disneyland (we were lucky to be able to go this year ourselves, but we had promised the kids and we never break promises to them, plus they themselves worked harder and raised more for going to the Cinderella finals than they needed to this year) it was a lot less crowded than it was the last time we went-- on the same days and the same time of year-- in 2004.) Granted we were only there for two days, but either Disney raised prices too fast or less people can afford to go this year. Likely a bit of both. And oh, yeah-- speaking of Cinderella girls-- congratulations to Erin Nurss. She's always been really nice to our girls every year when we go to the state finals, and she's a class act all the way around. I hope she wins the Miss America pageant.
7. The state legislature, after shutting everyone out (especially members of the Democratic minority) for months has two budgets out-- the house Republican budget that makes deep cuts (and looks great for political grandstanding), and the Senate budget, more or less supported by the Governor, that is more reasonable given the current fiscal pressures facing the state. They will then resolve the differences by negotiating a budget that is likely to be closer to the Senate version. This is the same thing as happens every year. Here is an idea to save the state money-- since we know how this will turn out anyway, why not come out with the budgets in February and have the process wrapped up by March. Just think how much money this would save--especially by not having to pay legislators per diem pay for another three or four months. Well, read that last line again and you'll know why they give us this show every year. Incidentally, I want Obama to win, but if he does I'm well aware that it will hurt us in Arizona because Governor Napolitano would likely get a cabinet post, which would mean that Jan Brewer would move into the Governor's office-- and she'd likely sign the nutty stuff that comes out of the legislature. Plus, a cabinet call for Napolitano would likely deprive us in the Arizona Democratic party of our top candidate for McCain's Senate seat in 2010. Ah, well-- sometimes you are called on to sacrifice for your country and an Obama win would benefit all fifty states.
8. Apparently Senate Banking Committee Chairman and former Presidential candidate Chris Dodd got special treatment on his home loan from Countrywide (though he denies knowing he was getting anything better than anyone else.) He is now sponsoring a bill (actually a bi-partisan bill with Senator Shelby) to help bail out lenders, most notably Countrywide. It's a good thing Dodd isn't the nominee, otherwise this story would be broadcast wall to wall and would be called the biggest banking scandal since Credit Mobilier. In fact, it shows questionable judgement but no wrongdoing and will probably be gone within a week. But the fact that it will shows how much of a higher standard Presidential nominees are held to than also-rans.
9. I admit to being wrong about something. I picked the Lakers in five. What they really need is five. Five guys. Five guys playing defense. They are lucky they play in the western conference because the way they don't play defense I doubt if they would have even beaten Detroit or Cleveland to get to the finals if they were in the east. In fact, I'm wondering whether Tim Donaghy is right-- because the Lakers that showed up in the NBA finals weren't even good enough to have really beaten the Spurs.
10. It's good to be back.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Obama's experience was right for Lincoln; and some advantages that the next President will have.
I will be leaving on vacation for a couple of weeks, so I'd like to bring up two (somewhat related topics) that I've been mulling over today.
The first is that McCain has said he wants to contrast his experience with Obama's relative inexperience. OK, ask Hillary Clinton how well that worked. However, one point that has been overlooked-- Obama's experience (lawyer, community activist, Illinois state legislator, four years in Washington) bears an uncanny resemblance to the experience that America's greatest President had, when he held the reigns of power during America's worst crisis. So to automatically assume that Obama is too inexperienced to be President is rebutted by historical fact.
I wrote a letter on the subject to the USA Today. Since I've had three letters published in that publication (the most recent was last year) my guess is that it won't be published. So I have no problem posting it here.
Dear Editor,
Barack Obama is running for President of the United States. He was a lawyer, active in his community, was in the Illinois state legislature for a few years and spent four years in Congress.
Which is exactly the same governmental experience as Abraham Lincoln had when he ran for President in 1860.
The real experience question is why anyone would think that the best way to solve problems that have been created in Washington is to elect someone who has spent decades in Washington, as John McCain has.
Eli Blake
The second is the observation that the next President will have a tremendous amount of political capital when he takes office. I predict this for three reasons:
1. The American people are tired of hyperpartisanship, which is why they nominated two candidates who talk about 'bringing people together' rather than some of the candidates who might have been more polarizing, such as Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee. That will not be lost on the next Congress.
2. The next President will be a sitting Senator (something that has not happened since 1960.) When governors are elected, a lot of times (in fact most of the time) they've made the mistake of talking down to Congress the way they are used to talking down to their state legislature, and Congress is always ready to deliver a reminder to the President of how limited his power is, especially if one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the opposition party. But these two candidates as members of the world's 'most exclusive club' know about how to package legislation and make deals, and certainly in the case of the Senate will already have the familiarity with individual Senators to be able to sit down and work something out in a way that former Governors have always had trouble with.
3. The next President being a Senator also means that the Senate will be unlikely to block whatever he wants in terms of legislation, treaty ratification or confirmation of appointments (including judicial appointments.) There is an old joke that a Presidential primary debate is the same thing as a Senate subcommittee hearing. That actually isn't too far off-- for some reason 'President-itis' seems especially to afflict members of the senior body. Just among today's 100 sitting Senators, I count fourteen who I've read at least one report of in the past few years as forming an exploratory committee or otherwise feeling out the prospect of running for President
(Bayh, Biden, Brownback, Clinton, Dodd, Feingold, Hagel, Harkin, Kennedy, Kerry, Lieberman, Lugar, McCain and Obama).
Obviously some have been more serious and/or successful at it than others.
This however is one out of seven members of the U.S. Senate. That's a significant number, and there are probably more who also have had visions of themselves sitting behind the President's desk, they just to date haven't voiced it out loud. These other would-be Presidents realize that this is the first time since 1960 that the voters are poised to send one of their number to the White House, so they have a vested interest in the President at least being somewhat successful, so as not to return the voters to the old mindset that Governors are better Presidential material.
For this reason this election is all the more important. We can expect that the next President will have some clear advantages in dealing with Congress that past Presidents have not had.
The first is that McCain has said he wants to contrast his experience with Obama's relative inexperience. OK, ask Hillary Clinton how well that worked. However, one point that has been overlooked-- Obama's experience (lawyer, community activist, Illinois state legislator, four years in Washington) bears an uncanny resemblance to the experience that America's greatest President had, when he held the reigns of power during America's worst crisis. So to automatically assume that Obama is too inexperienced to be President is rebutted by historical fact.
I wrote a letter on the subject to the USA Today. Since I've had three letters published in that publication (the most recent was last year) my guess is that it won't be published. So I have no problem posting it here.
Dear Editor,
Barack Obama is running for President of the United States. He was a lawyer, active in his community, was in the Illinois state legislature for a few years and spent four years in Congress.
Which is exactly the same governmental experience as Abraham Lincoln had when he ran for President in 1860.
The real experience question is why anyone would think that the best way to solve problems that have been created in Washington is to elect someone who has spent decades in Washington, as John McCain has.
Eli Blake
The second is the observation that the next President will have a tremendous amount of political capital when he takes office. I predict this for three reasons:
1. The American people are tired of hyperpartisanship, which is why they nominated two candidates who talk about 'bringing people together' rather than some of the candidates who might have been more polarizing, such as Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee. That will not be lost on the next Congress.
2. The next President will be a sitting Senator (something that has not happened since 1960.) When governors are elected, a lot of times (in fact most of the time) they've made the mistake of talking down to Congress the way they are used to talking down to their state legislature, and Congress is always ready to deliver a reminder to the President of how limited his power is, especially if one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the opposition party. But these two candidates as members of the world's 'most exclusive club' know about how to package legislation and make deals, and certainly in the case of the Senate will already have the familiarity with individual Senators to be able to sit down and work something out in a way that former Governors have always had trouble with.
3. The next President being a Senator also means that the Senate will be unlikely to block whatever he wants in terms of legislation, treaty ratification or confirmation of appointments (including judicial appointments.) There is an old joke that a Presidential primary debate is the same thing as a Senate subcommittee hearing. That actually isn't too far off-- for some reason 'President-itis' seems especially to afflict members of the senior body. Just among today's 100 sitting Senators, I count fourteen who I've read at least one report of in the past few years as forming an exploratory committee or otherwise feeling out the prospect of running for President
(Bayh, Biden, Brownback, Clinton, Dodd, Feingold, Hagel, Harkin, Kennedy, Kerry, Lieberman, Lugar, McCain and Obama).
Obviously some have been more serious and/or successful at it than others.
This however is one out of seven members of the U.S. Senate. That's a significant number, and there are probably more who also have had visions of themselves sitting behind the President's desk, they just to date haven't voiced it out loud. These other would-be Presidents realize that this is the first time since 1960 that the voters are poised to send one of their number to the White House, so they have a vested interest in the President at least being somewhat successful, so as not to return the voters to the old mindset that Governors are better Presidential material.
For this reason this election is all the more important. We can expect that the next President will have some clear advantages in dealing with Congress that past Presidents have not had.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Obama is the Democratic nominee
The last primary results are in and the last state to vote, Montana (which closed its polls one hour after South Dakota and so deserves credit for being the last) is the state that pushed Barack Obama over the top and gave him the delegates needed for the nomination. As a former resident of the Big Sky state I'm glad that Montana put him over the top.
Hillary Clinton ran a great campaign, but it's time for her to put action behind her pledge to 'work to unify the party.' She said she won't make a decision tonight, but he's now got enough delegates that when the roll call is called in Denver he will end up on top. She has the right to continue to challenge, but I'd only point out that the last four nominees who had convention fights (Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1980 for the Democrats, and Ford in 1976 for the Republicans) all lost the following general election. And were that to happen then any ideas that Hillary had about running in 2012 would probably be about as good as Ted Kennedy's of running in 1984 were after a lot of people blamed him for Carter's loss in November. Yeah, I know-- Ronald Reagan fought Ford at the 1976 Republican convention but it didn't hurt him in 1980. However the difference was that in 1976 neither Ford nor Reagan entered the convention with a majority of delegates; there were some legitimate unocmmitted delegates to fight over. True, this year the Democrats have 'superdelegates' who can change their mind, but that is the point-- they would have to change it. Hillary has already made every argument she can think of and they are still for Obama. So it's unlikely they will change now.
But regardless, the night clearly belongs to Obama. He made a great speech, and is clearly ready to go after John McCain.
Hillary Clinton ran a great campaign, but it's time for her to put action behind her pledge to 'work to unify the party.' She said she won't make a decision tonight, but he's now got enough delegates that when the roll call is called in Denver he will end up on top. She has the right to continue to challenge, but I'd only point out that the last four nominees who had convention fights (Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972 and Carter in 1980 for the Democrats, and Ford in 1976 for the Republicans) all lost the following general election. And were that to happen then any ideas that Hillary had about running in 2012 would probably be about as good as Ted Kennedy's of running in 1984 were after a lot of people blamed him for Carter's loss in November. Yeah, I know-- Ronald Reagan fought Ford at the 1976 Republican convention but it didn't hurt him in 1980. However the difference was that in 1976 neither Ford nor Reagan entered the convention with a majority of delegates; there were some legitimate unocmmitted delegates to fight over. True, this year the Democrats have 'superdelegates' who can change their mind, but that is the point-- they would have to change it. Hillary has already made every argument she can think of and they are still for Obama. So it's unlikely they will change now.
But regardless, the night clearly belongs to Obama. He made a great speech, and is clearly ready to go after John McCain.
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