Saturday, February 28, 2009

Bush the Scapegoat

Isn't it odd that the most "conservative" president this nation has seen in a generation has now been cast out by the movement conservatives?
George W. Bush followed the conservative prescriptions to a T. He didn't even raise taxes after starting a war! Even St. Ronnie raised taxes!
All of W.'s Supreme Court picks were true-blue conservative ideologues - (Roberts, Alito). No wishy washy moderates like his predecessors appointed - (Reagan picked O'Connor and Kennedy; Bush Sr. picked Souter).
Bush didn't budge on Global Warming even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. He was a dream come true for the Neo-Con crowd, allowing them to play out all their Middle East fantasies to their hearts' content.
So why are "conservatives" so down on Bush now?
The simple reason is that they had to throw Bush overboard to avoid having to face the truth. The unfortunate truth for conservative ideologues is that many of the core ideas at the foundation of their belief system simply don't work - like Supply Side economics and No New Taxes as the prescription for all that ails the economy.
Reagan was lucky because he had a Democratic Congress. So when his tax cuts produced record deficits rather than surpluses, the conservative ideologues could blame the Democrats in Congress rather than Reagan. Nevermind that every budget Congress passed at the time was smaller than the budgets proposed by the Reagan administration. Congress was in charge of spending so it was their fault. End of story.
But Bush wasn't so lucky. When his tax cuts also produced record deficits rather than surpluses, he didn't have a Democratic Congress to blame it on. So the blame came squarely down on him. It was his fault, you see, because he didn't veto the spending bills or what have you. Because surely the underlying conservative philosophy couldn't be at fault.
So Bush is the scapegoat or the fall guy who had to be sacrificed to cover up for the failures of the conservative movement's core philosophy.
That way the right-wing ideologues can in good conscience continue to insist that we go back and do the same things that got us into this mess to begin with and as soon as enough time passes they will claw their way back into power and the cycle will start over again.
The only hope for the country is that Obama and the Democrats can get most of the mess cleaned up before that happens so that our country will be strong enough to survive yet another stent of fiscal irresponsibility and economic turmoil.

Conservatives just don't get it

The title of this post was inspired by my friend Nick who was working on a similar post (it appears to be messed up right now but keep checking back and maybe it will get fixed.)
I'm not sure what I expect from conservatives. Contrition? Mea culpas? Regret? A total rejection of their failed arguments and a total embracement of mine?
I suppose all of that is a bit unrealistic in today's world. Stubborn defiance should not be surprising. But still, what MUST they be thinking??
After witnessing the total collapse and utter failure of the Bush presidency, which was the most conservative administration in recent history, and seeing how the tax cuts utterly failed to lift the economy or generate revenues to balance the budget as promised. Instead, we went deeper into debt than ever before with absolutely nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, our nations infrastructure has been badly neglected and the health care crisis has been allowed to spiral out of control.
What will conservatives do if, in the next two years, the economy starts to turn around and the health care reform initiatives start to achieve some positive results? Will they finally concede then? Or will they just continue to demand more tax cuts and denounce every government spending initiative as "socialism"?
I know how I would place my bet.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Robin Hood Budget


Obama’s first budget is already being labeled a Robin Hood Budget because it will raise taxes on the well-to-do and reduce taxes for the less fortunate.

Obama’s budget would dramatically increase taxes on the wealthy, while cutting payments and subsidies to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness and defense contractors -- and mandating a system to charge polluters for their carbon emissions.
It would, in short, reverse the redistribution of wealth that took place during the Bush era. This time, the rich will be subsidizing the poor, not the other way around.


I think this is a healthy change for our country, but I do recognize that it is going to be rough on all those poor rich people. So I want to make a standing offer right now for any rich people who are unhappy about the prospect of paying higher taxes. I will take their heavy, oppressive tax burden onto myself (and their heavy income as well, of course) and give them my comparatively light and miniscule tax burden (and my teeny-tiny salary to boot). I’m sure there are other brave people out there like myself who would be willing to offer the same deal to any struggling rich people. So fear not! We are here for you.
Any takers should feel free to leave a comment on my blog.

Obama's Address to Congress


The thing I liked best about the whole speech was not having Dick Cheney up there sitting behind the president.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Bow Wow!

President Obama’s administration is almost complete!
Yesterday Obama nominated former Washington Gov. Gary Locke for Secretary of Commerce; his Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis was approved and sworn in after Republicans finally ended their filibuster; and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius seems to be the odds-on choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So that just leaves one key opening - The First Pet!
And now that decision seems to have been made as well - Michelle Obama: Dog coming soon!

Here is what the new First Dog might look like.

GOP philosophy, or lack thereof



Driving in to work this morning I subjected myself to one of the local talk radio stations (KTSA) to see what they were saying about Obama’s first address to Congress last night. After a few minutes of listening to Trey Ware go on and on about how he doesn’t believe in getting help from the government and all he wants is for government to “get out of the way” and that if we would just cut taxes on business that we would see this huge economic growth, blah, blah, blah.... I was ready to pull my hair out.
Has he been asleep for the past eight years? What does he think Bush was doing all that time?
Of course, Ware sounded no different than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal did in his embarrassingly bad response to Obama’s speech the night before in which he complained about government spending on volcano monitoring, like that is somehow a bad thing. Does this mean that Jindal is too young to remember Mount St. Helens?

And so I thought Paul Krugman’s response was very much on target.

What is the appropriate role of government?

Traditionally, the division between conservatives and liberals has been over the role and size of the welfare state: liberals think that the government should play a large role in sanding off the market economy’s rough edges, conservatives believe that time and chance happen to us all, and that’s that.

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Taxation and Representation

The District of Columbia took a big step this morning toward finally securing real representation in Congress. A compromise bill that would give D.C. and Utah each one new representative cleared the Senate by 62-34, enough to overcome a Republican filibuster that stymied the legislation the last time it was considered.
This is such an obvious discrepancy that it is an embarrassment that it has taken this long to finally be resolved. There is no legitimate argument that Republicans make against this legislation other than blatant partisanship. If D.C. had 600,000 wealthy white people, rather than 600,000 mostly poor black people, they would have had full representation a long, long time ago. No other country in the world denies the residents of its capital city representation in their government. The fact that we do is a disgrace.
Next step is to give D.C. two U.S. Senators.

A flicker of hope for my TeeVee?

ER is winding down after its long, long run.
Boston Legal is already gone.
And the creators of Lost have already promised to pull the plug on their franchise within the next couple of seasons.
So, for a time there it was looking like I would have nothing to watch on TV anymore. But now that might be changing.
I’ve already gotten sucked up into the excellent new series Life on Mars on ABC.
And now Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, has a new series out on Fox called Dollhouse which I intend to watch.
And next month, there is a new series coming out called Castle featuring Nathan Fillion, late of Firefly, that looks like it could be worth watching.
So maybe there is hope.
Or then again, all these shows could wind up canceled by this time next year and I will once again be left with nothing to watch on TV.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Oscar Review - Thumbs Down!

My Lord that was awful!
Oh, there were some good moments, I guess, I thought Ben Stiller was hilarious making fun of Joaquin Phoenix and I appreciated the tribute to Jerry Lewis, but for the most part I hated the Academy Awards show last night.
It's not that I mind so much that Slumdog Millionaire won everything. I'm getting used to the fact that we can't give the top awards to actual American films anymore. No, now it almost always goes to a British film, or an Austrailian film or now an Indian film.
I guess I'm still just bitter that for the third year in a row, all of the popular films were completely shut out of the top categories again. The one exception this year - the one sop to the unwashed masses - was, of course, the posthumous Supportin Actor award for Heath Ledger. But after that, forget it.
None of the five nominated films cracked the Top 20 films at the Box Office this year, at least not before the awards show. I've not seen any of them and the one nominated film that I most want to see - Frost/Nixon - was completly shut out.
I guess what drove me over the edge last night - the final insult - was when they started handing out even the technical awards to these snooty, high-brow movies. The awards such as sound mixing and visual effects used to be the last place where popular films could still get some recognition from the Academy. But not this year!
I mean, they completely humiliated Will Smith. Did you see how they had this long video tribute to "action films" and then brought out Smith, whose action film Hancock was dissed by the Academy. And then Smith gives this speech where he talks about how much he loves action movies and then he presents to award for Best Visual Effects, which used to always go to popular action films - and the Academy gives it to Benjamin Button over Dark Knight and Iron Man. Ha Ha!! Screw You, Will Smith.
You could tell Smith was annoyed later when he was still out there giving technical awards to Slumdog and cracked that award show host Hugh Jackman must be back stage taking a nap.
But the worst was yet to come. When it came time to do the traditional salute to actors who passed away during the prior year - one of my favorite parts of the whole show - they freakin' screwed it up!!! The director decided it was more important to leave the camera on Queen Latifah while she sang some syrupy number and kept panning away from the screen showing the tributes for the dead movie people. I couldn't read half the names or descriptions of the people being honored because they kept panning the film back and forth giving me a headache and forcing me to strain my eyes to try and read the text. I was so furious! And I still am!!!
The only real surprise of the night was the Best Actor award for Sean Penn when everyone, including Penn, thought it would go to Mickey Rourke.
But other than that, it was pretty much predictable once you saw in the early categories that Slumdog was winning everything over Benjamin Button.
I'm really ticked at the Academy Awards right now. If they do this again next year and nominate a bunch of high-brow, little-seen artsy films and ignore all the movies that have, as Will Smith noted, "fans," then I am definitely not going to waste my time watching it again.
Personally, I hope the ratings for this show was in the dumps.

Death and Texas

Good article in the WaPo today.

Sharon Keller's radical jurisprudence

I was appalled back when I first learned that Criminal Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller refused to hear a last minute appeal for a death-row inmate.

Now that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct has commenced formal proceedings against her she could be forced off the bench soon.
What is most upsetting about the case is not that the inmate was put to death - he probably would have been executed anyway after the Supremes dealt with the issue of lethal injections being "cruel and unusual" - but it was the cavalier way that she let her rigid, hard-line ideology take precedence over normal jurisprudence.
I don't want someone on the court who will ignore conventions when they conflict with her extremist ideology. That is not being "conservative", it is being radical. Keller should be off the bench.

Friday, February 20, 2009

I have that effect....

Welcome to The (Yawn!) Arena....

The Express-News’ new Opinion Page Blog - The Arena has been a pretty dull place recently. They’ve had a grand total of seven posts since they launched the blog on Jan. 27 and there have only been two people who have left comments including myself. In fact, I’m the only person who has commented over there since Feb. 4. I guess I scared everyone else away.

The Burris predicament

I had no problem supporting Roland Burris being seated in the U.S. Senate a while back despite the fact that he was appointed by scandal-tarred Gov. Rod Blagojevich largely because I thought he was adequately qualified and because he appeared to be clean from all the pay-to-play allegations swirling around the governor then.
Now it appears that if Burris was clean it wasn’t for a lack of trying to get dirty. He has recently acknowledged that he tried to raise money for Blago while under consideration for the Senate appointment without any success. He surely hid this tidbit away from his fellow lawmakers knowing full well that it would have sunk his changes of getting the Senate nod. But now that the beans have been spilled there are lots of calls for his resignation. I cannot defend him at this point, although I still see him as a mostly sympathetic character. What concerns me are the calls to have him resign and then fill his seat with a special election - after state lawmakers pass a law allowing such an election to be held. I would only support such a plan if the governor can still appoint a temporary replacement. Otherwise, Illinois would be without full representation in the Senate for possibly months while the election campaign is underway.
No doubt, this prospect will delight Republicans. It is pretty clear right now that the only reason Norm Coleman is continuing his futile lawsuit in Minnesota is to keep Democrats from having another vote for as long as possible.
We just saw how crucial this is in light of the Republican strategy of filibustering everything that comes to a vote from here on out. Nevermind that Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the Senate, they will be stifled if Republicans can continue to tie up two or three Senate seats indefinitely. During the filibuster of Obama’s emergency stimulus package, we saw that there were just three Republican senators willing to crossover and support their country over their party.
Right now Democrats should have a 59-41 majority in the Senate, requiring just one Republican crossover vote to defeat a filibuster. But because Coleman has tied up Al Franken with his frivolous lawsuits, they only have 58 votes. If Ted Kennedy is sick and can’t make if for a vote, they are down to 57. Now if you take away Roland Burris for the duration of a special election campaign, they are down to 56 and suddenly three Republican crossover votes are no longer enough.
Democracy was never meant to be abused in this manner. At a minimum, we will need a temporary replacement if Burris is forced to resign and the Minnesota recount lawsuit should be wrapped up immediately or else allow Franken to be seated temporarily until it is done.
And finally, we desperately need to reform the filibuster that has been so misused and abused by the Republican minority.

Republican SEC negligence

The case of Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford looks like another example of the failure of Republican governance. This is the second massive case of financial fraud that the Republican-run Securities and Exchange Commission either missed or ignored.
Why was the SEC so feeble and toothless in its enforcement of security laws. It has been reported that there were numerous "red flags" about Stanford Financial Group, but each time the SEC responded with a small slap-on-the-wrist fine. Was it because of Stanford's political connections? The "pro-business" ideology of the Republican-controlled SEC? Or a combination of both?

Stanford is clearly a flight risk. There were already reports that he tried to get a one-way ticket to Antigua where his offshore business operations are based. So why, when they when the authorities finally tracked him down was he simply "served papers"?
As one blog commenter noted, they should have planted a marijuana cigarette on him so that he would at least be guaranteed to do some jail time. Because bilking countless people out of $8 billion apparently isn't a serious enough crime when you are wealthy and white.

On a related note, Phil Gramm's employer UBS has recently agreed to pay a substantial fine to the IRS for its complicity in shielding billions of dollars from U.S. clients from taxing authorities. UBS, the Swiss banking conglomerate, has also promised to hand over the names of several hundred of its U.S. customers who have used it to avoid paying taxes.
I anxiously await publication of that list. Two of my biggest pet peeves are wealthy tax cheats, and companies that set up in tax havens like Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

They want to do WHAT with the bailout money???

General Motors and Chrysler now say they need another $14 billion in bailout money on top of $39 billion they already got from the Bush administration and in exchange they are promising to close five plants and layoff 47,000 workers.
Oh goody!
Excuse me, but as Robert Reich pointed out on NPR this morning, the whole point of the government-financed bailout and the stimulus package was to create and/or preserve jobs, not to bailout stockholders and corporate investors. I would hope that before the Obama administration hands over any more bailout money, that they go over some options to see what plan would be best for the workers involved. Otherwise, we will just end up spending billions more on top of this to pay for unemployment insurance, retraining and more stimulus for all the workers that the auto companies want to shed.

Back taxes

So now it turns out that Gov. Sarah Palin owes back taxes on per diem income she received over the past several years.
And so you know what that means..... Sarah Palin is a TAX CHEAT!!!!!!!
At least, she is based on recent Republican definitions of that term. So that should pretty much sink any future presidential prospects she thought she had.
That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing whether Palin ‘12 could do any better than Quayle ‘96. Ha!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Curse of Caroline

From Political Wire:
“Curse of Caroline” Haunts Paterson, Gillibrand
A new Quinnipiac poll finds both Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and the man who appointed her, Gov. David Paterson (D) trail Democratic primary challengers in 2010.
Atorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) crushes Paterson, 55% to 23%, in a possible gubernatorial primary.
Manwhile, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) beats Gillibrand in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 34% to 24%, with 39% still undecided.
Explains pollster Maurice Carroll: “The Caroline Kennedy mix-up still haunts Gov. David Paterson... Three quarters of New Yorkers heard about the nasty news leaks. They think Kennedy was treated unfairly, but most don’t blame Paterson for the leaks.”


Good! I hope that Andrew Cuomo wipes the floor with that idiot Paterson. And if McCarthy can defeat Gillibrand then all the better. I see Gillibrand as a potential Joe Lieberman clone.

Monday, February 16, 2009

E-N Funnies now Less-Funny

Today is a sad day for newspaper comics lovers who read the San Antonio Express-News.
Today, the E-N editors kowtowed to a group of hard-right whiners by canning "My Cage", one of the best new comic strips added to the section in recent years, and replacing it with the vile and grotesque "Mallard Fillmore."
Now there are three political strips crammed onto the comics page - two right-wing strips - Mallard and "Prickly City" sandwiching in the liberal "Doonesbury" strip.
It is a shame not just because they brought back the grotesque Mallard, but because they couldn't find any other comic in the section to replace. With so many old, tired, humor-free comics - the original authors long dead and now being churned out by syndicate hands - it is pathetic that they would choose to replace a fresh, new strip with living authors.
It is just one more reason for readers to abandon the print edition of the paper and seek out the comics they like online.
Of course, I'm not like the whiners who forced Mallard onto the funny pages. I don't cancel my newspaper subscription whenever things don't go my way. Instead, I will hold my nose and follow Mallard everyday and document the lies, the misconceptions, the grotesque and insulting caricatures and the offensive, humorless, mean-spirited venom that flows out of the pen of Bruce Tinsley everyday. I'm sure it will be loads of fun.

Worse than Hoover

I think this group of historians was awfully generous to George W. Bush by ranking him at No. 36 among all U.S. presidents. That is two slots behind Herbert Hoover, but still six slots from dead last which is where he probably should be.

1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FD Roosevelt
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Truman
6. Kennedy
7. Jefferson
8. Eisenhower
9. Wilson
10. Reagan
11. LB Johnson
12. Polk
13. Jackson
14. Monroe
15. Clinton
16. McKinley
17. John Adams
18. George HW Bush
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Madison
21. Cleveland
22. Ford
23. Grant
24. Taft
25. Carter
26. Coolidge
27. Nixon
28. Garfield
29. Taylor
30. Harrison
31. Van Buren
32. Arthur
33. Hayes
34. Hoover
35. Tyler
36. George W. Bush
37. Fillmore
38. Harding
39. WH Harrison
40. Pierce
41. A. Johnson
42. Buchanan

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Bipartisanship rejected

I think we just witnessed a Republican Senator's self-immolation. That was the most pathetic spectacle I think I have ever seen. What could have possessed Judd Gregg to pull a stunt like this? At least he acknowledges that his political career is now over and won't be seeking re-election in 2010. That is the one good thing to come out of this mess. And I'll bet that Bonnie Newman is pretty ticked off right now.

So, after campaigning for the job and going through the whole vetting process, Gregg now decides to blindside President Obama by announcing his "change of heart" just as Obama is making a public appearance at an event in Peoria, Ill. to promote the stimulus package. How insulting.

Well, good riddance. I didn't see any upside to appointing Gregg in the first place since he refused to support the stimulus package and even demanded and got a Republican replacement for his Senate seat from a Democratic governor.
At leat now, we are pretty much guaranteed to get a Democrat in the Commerce slot for the first time in eight years.

Oh, and while this little charade has been hogging the limelight, Leon Panetta has just been approved to be CIA Director. Remember when that was supposed to be a big problem for the Obama administration? Also, Hilda Solis' nomination for Labor Secretary looks like it will go through very shortly as well.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Troublemaking columnist returns

Uh Oh! The Express-News is running another column by that troublemaking liberal blogger.
Didn't they learn their lesson the last time?

Inauguration gigapan

This is an amazing photo from Barack Obama's inauguration. It allows you to zoom in and see close up to an incredible degree. Check it out.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Cage Match

When the Wingnuts say “Jump!”, the Express-News editors say “How High?”

This weekend Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter announced in his column that the local paper is backpedaling on its decision to dump the Mallard Fillmore comic strip because a lot of wingnut dittoheads called the paper to whine and complain. So they are going to take the nauseating and noxious strip and jam into into the comics section, which is already crowded with right-wing fodder like Prickly City and B.C., all so that we can have “balance”. By balance, of course, they mean keeping a 3-to-1 ratio of wingnut fodder to anything deemed “liberal.” Kind of like the 3-to-1 ratio of conservative columnists to liberal columnists that they maintain on the Op-Ed page.
But the worst part of the decision, is that to make room for Mallard they are going to dump “My Cage”, one of the new, up-and-coming strips that they added over the past year.
It is bad enough that they ignored “Rudy Park” after its one-month stint as a “guest comic”. It’s bad enough that they relegated “Curtis” to a Sunday-only slot and dropped the week-day comics. It is bad enough that they don’t have a Sunday slot for “Pearls Before Swine”, but now they are goin to dump “My Cage” which I have come to enjoy a great deal recently. There are not a lot of “must read” comics in the E-N for me - the kind that I will take the time to seek out and read even when I am in a hurry - such as LuAnn, Zits. Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur. But My Cage had slowly worked its way up into that pantheon for me.

One of the authors of My Cage was as surprised as I was and left the following comment on Richter’s column:

Wow. I have to say...I’m stunned. I write ‘My Cage’ and we get a lot of really positive feedback from the good readers of this paper. Despite all the other papers we’re in, I’d say 25% of our feedback is from this paper and 99% of that is overwhelmingly positive.
Huh.
In fact, when we held a contest for readers to appear in the strip last year our three winners all ended up being form THIS paper. One reader even baked a cake in the form of our lead chracter. Actually, you can read all about it here:
http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/comics/2008/05/expressnews-readers-to-appear-1.html
I’d really hate to lose touch with all the readers we’ve gotten to talk to. The feed back and suppost has been greatly appreciated.
Hopefully if you won’t reconsider the decision, we can at least have a chance to say good bye. Too bad. I really liked this paper. Huh. Very shocking.
-Ed Power
Writer of ‘My Cage’
mycagecomic@yahoo.com


I have tried repeatedly to leave a comment myself without success. I don’t know if there is a technical glitch or if my comments are being singled out for deletion. But I would encourage anyone else who is interested to go and leave the good folks at the E-N a comment about this situation.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Republicans embrace their Hooverite roots

It is extremely frustrating to think that after winning a huge election victory in November, Barack Obama could be denied the economic stimulus package that he and all the top economists agree is desperately needed to pull the nation’s economy out of its nosedive.
Democrats have a 58-seat majority in the Senate (59 with Al Franken) and could easily pass the stimulus package on an up-or-down vote. But because Republicans have chosen to filibuster the bill, it teeters on the brink of defeat due to the wavering of a small handful of “centrist” Republicans and a couple of Democrats.
The remarkable thing is that the vast majority of Republicans are committed to blocking the stimulus package even as everyday brings more bad news about the deteriorating economic situation.
Obama may be president right now, but until this legislation is passed the country is STILL operating on Bush’s rules and Bushes economic prescriptions. If Republicans want to blame Obama for the economic problems, they need to get out of the way and let his plan go into effect. Then, if it doesn’t work, they will have a case to make next time elections roll around. All they have to do is stop filibustering and allow an up-or-down vote. But instead, they are clinging to the same economic policy prescriptions that have been in place for eight years and that are responsible for bringing us to this point in the first place.

Stupid Letters to the Editor

Sometimes I really hate the Letters section in the local paper. They allow people to publish things that are incredibly stupid, blatantly false and often malicious.
Today, for instance, we have this gem from frequent wingnut letter writer Bud Martinez:
"Let's face it, the economy thrives because of private entrepreneurs, not government intervention. The government can create favorable conditions like favorable taxes for business, but government doesn't "create" jobs."


Nevermind that we have been taking the "favorable tax breaks for business" option almost exclusively for the past eight years and look where it has gotten us. Let's just look at the last staement: The government doesn't create jobs. Got that?
OK, now go talk to any member of the U.S. Military, any company working off of government contracts, anyone working in the schools, the post offices, the court houses, the police stations the fire departments, the road crews, the hospitals caring for Medicare and Medicaid patients, all over this country and repeat that "government doesn't create jobs."

Why does the paper even publish letters like this? Maybe they need to print a warning at the top of the Letters section that says "Beware. Letters may contain statements that are stupid, idiotic, false and have no correlation to the truth and or reality."

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Confirmation delays

Republicans have been throwing a huge hissy fit in Washington because Barack Obama actually appointed someone to be Secretary of Labor - Hilda Solis - who is (gasp!) PRO-LABOR! The nerve!!!
And now they have found some new ammunition to throw at her. It turns out that her husband had an outstanding tax lien of $6,000 on his business. A-ha! Failure to pay taxes derailed Tom Dashle’s nomination. So now they can do the same thing to Solis. Except, of course, that it is her husband’s business and not hers. But, whatever!
And next, Leon Panetta’s bid to be CIA Director will be held up after it is discovered that one of his second cousins twice-removed has an outstanding fine for an overdue library book.

AP challenging Fair Use standard


I agree with Kos that this case is ridiculous.

On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year’s presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.
The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.
“AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey’s attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.”
“We believe fair use protects Shepard’s right to do what he did here,” says Fairey’s attorney, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP.”


I don’t want to see the AP go under like Kos does, but I think they don’t have and grounds to make a claim in this case.

Republicans take cues from Taliban

Making the rounds this morning is this interesting quote
by U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas which compares the Republican Party to the Taliban.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes.
“And these Taliban -- I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”


This is especially ironic as Steve Benen notes because comparisons between the GOP and the Taliban have been made pretty consistently recently by frustrated Democrats, but now coming from the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee it has gained new credibility.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Stimulus Response

Andres Bocanegra at The San Antonio Conservative has a post up listing so-called wasteful spending in the Stimulus Bill that has been identified by Republicans. He adds his comments to each one in italics and I thought I would then add my responses in bold.

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient. why restart a program we know is inefficient?
We know no such thing. We only know that the Republican administration, which was ideologically opposed to the program, pulled the plug. Democrats, who are now in charge at the Department of Energy, want to restore funding. But does it belong in the stimulus bill?
Well, $2 billion in government spending will create a log of jobs and business opportunities around the coal plant in Illinois.
One of the main reasons that we in San Antonio are not suffering as much as the rest of the country is the $2 billion in government spending associated with the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) out at Fort Sam Houston. That money, spread out over several years, is creating thousands of jobs and is providing a nice cushion for San Antonio during the economic downturn.


• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film. so the support from Hollywood helped out for them … I suppose
Tax breaks provide the least “bang for the buck” compared to direct government spending, and yet the stimulus bill is filled with tax cuts because they are also the quickest way to get money back into the economy. Lots and lots of tax breaks in the stimulus bill, many at the insistence of Republicans who are now opposed to the package at all cost. The Republicans have singled out “Hollywood” here because it is a favorite boogeyman of the far right. But the movie industry is a huge economic generator. Aside from the jobs it creates directly through the production and distribution of movies, think about the other industries that depend on Hollywood. If they stopped making movies and TV shows who would want to go out and buy all those flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems?

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
Money well spent in my opinion. The initial coupon program proved to be very popular and ran out already. That means the money is being turned over very quickly and making its way back into the ecomomy which is exactly what the stimulus is trying to do.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship). this might be ok but this is just for the design … whats wrong with the icebreakers we have at this point?
Some company is going to get the contract to design that ship. Another will get the contract to build it. That means jobs, jobs and more jobs.

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. yeah this is a NO …
Constructing buildings is very clearly stimulus. It is infrastructure. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. seriously hit up a WalMart for furniture … but again NO
Wal-Mart does not make furniture. They are a re-seller. Why go through them just so they can take a cut? Some company out there that makes the furniture will get the contract and that means more jobs, etc.

•$600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. how does this create jobs or help US automakers
How does it NOT help the auto industry? The government is going to BUY vehicles from the auto companies. This is the most clear example of stimulus for a distressed company that I’ve seen. Whoever put this list together doesn’t have a clue.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s. this doesnt stimulate the economy
I agree that this one is questionable. They would have to hire people to go out and provide the screening services and so that is clearly a boon for some medical supply and service companies. But it probably doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system. again how does this stimulate the economy?

By employing people who would build and maintain the waste disposal and sewer systems (i.e. infrastructure).

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities. see above comment
The Smithsonian museum has been badly neglected during the Republican reign in Washington. There are cracked ceilings, water leaks and major structural problems that have forced the closure of some sections of the museum and has even resulted in damage to some of our nation’s most prized treasures. It is a disgrace. I don’t care if you want to call it stimulus or not. I say it is infrastructure that needs to be better cared for.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion. create more efficient census techniques
Fine. What are your ideas? The Census is a huge job that gets bigger and more complex every 10 years as the population continues to grow and diversify. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill, but it is money the government will need to spend anyway.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.” no stimulation here …
When you convince people to stop smoking it saves millions down the road in health care costs. It is a worthy program assuming that it is effective, but probably shouldn’t be in the stimulus bill.

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
That means jobs for the companies that make and sell computers, jobs for the companies that install and maintain computers and jobs for the companies that build out the spaces where the computer centers will go. Plus it is a boon to education and can help people retrain to get better jobs and so on and so on...

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. no … this belongs in an budget appropriations bill not a stimulus package
I agree. Don’t know how that got in there. But in a $900 billion stimulus bill, we are essentially arguing about change found under the sofa cushions.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction. no stimulation here
See comment on smoking cessasion above.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Any questions?

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.
The key words here are “job programs.” Got that?

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property. how does this create jobs … oh yeah it doesn’t
By employing the people who do construction renovation work

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland. I guess these are considered construction jobs?
Yes.


The list goes on and it gets a bit repetitive, but I think you get the idea. But as Steve Benen has noted, all the items that Republicans objected to come to just 2 percent of the overall stimulus bill.
So why are we holding up a bill that we are 98 percent in agreement on to squabble over 2 percent?

Welcome to the Neighborhood

A couple of new, local, political/opinion blogs have come online recently.
First, the Express-News Op-Ed page has a new blog called The Arena where the editorial board members such as Jonathan Gurwitz will post brief commentaries.
You have to register on the site in order to leave comments, which is a pain. And it also looks like they have it set so that comments have to be “approved” before they will appear, which is an even bigger pain. But hopefully they will get all the kinks worked out soon and it will become a fun site for debating the issues of the day.

Second, we have a new conservative blogger on the local scene looking to fill the void left by our AWOL friend Bill Crawford.
Andres Bocanegra is a political science student at the University of Texas at San Antonio who is deeply involved in the College Republicans and his blog is appropriately titled The San Antonio Conservative.

So a warm welcome to our new neighbors. I look forward to open, honest and invigorating debates.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

E-N Op-Ed RIP (not quite)

I was about ready to write the obituary for the Express-News Opinion page. On Monday, they slashed the section down to one-page and then on Tuesday it was cut down again.
But then I finally found Bob Richter’s column explaining the change where he notes the cutback is only for two-days a week rather than six, as I had assumed. So we will still have some room in the Op-Ed section to run some columns and commentaries. I assume that means Jonathan Gurwitz will still have his Wednesday slot.
But Doonesbury has been shipped off to the comics pages next to Prickly City and - the best news of all - Mallard Fillmore has been canned. HAHAHA!!! WooHoo!!! YippEEEEEEE!!!
Ahem. Excuse the spontaneous celebration, but no comic was ever more deserving of getting pink-slipped than the obnoxious, horribly-drawn, frequently ass-backwards wrong, humorless garbage churned out everyday by Bruce Tinsley. Good riddance!
So anyway, I hope that one day they will add those pages back to the Opinion section, because I think it is a mistake to cut back on that section. And I hope they don’t chop any more pages out before Obama’s stimulus plan finally gets past all the Republican sniping, whining, pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth.

Power of the Pen

In a remarkable nod to the news media, Tom Daschletold NBC News today that he decided to drop his bid for HHS Secretary after reading this mornings editorial in the New York Times.
It was a good editorial, I have to admit. I hate to see Daschle go and I wish this could all have been washed away, but the reality in today’s political culture is that it would never have gone away and would have hung around like a cloud over the Obama administration from here on out.

Academy to movie fans: Drop Dead

In the “I told them so” category comes this story in the NYTimes the other day about Academy Awards officials fretting that nobody will watch their big show later this month.

The nominations of a still relatively little-seen crop of best-picture contenders — “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” which together have accumulated less than half the box office of “The Dark Knight,” which was snubbed — are making it harder for producers of the Oscar ceremony to deliver on an earlier promise: to create a big night for the movies, even if some of the movies are not so big. Operatives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are quietly scrambling to assemble an event that would make some extraordinary bows in the direction of the crowd while trying to do right by the honorees.


Oh, that’s nice. They will make some “bows to the crowd” after thumbing their noses at them for the fourth year in a row.
This isn’t a new phenomena, as I noted earlier, and it has already been having an impact on the Oscar ratings.

After the American audience for last year’s Oscar show hit an all-time low of about 32 million viewers, ABC cut its rate for a 30-second ad on this year’s broadcast to $1.4 million from $1.7 million, according to Advertising Age.


So how are the Academy bigwigs planning to draw in viewers after snubbing the top 20 box office winners?
By hyping up the one and only caveat they made to popular taste - the supporting actor nod for that dead guy in the Batman film.
I hope that makes all you lowly, movie-watching rabble happy because it’s the only scrap you are likely to get off of the Academy’s elitist, super-exclusive table this year.
Check it out:

The message, on posters and Web sites and in televised ads, aims to tell people that this year’s show has something even for viewers who may not care much for the nominees.
Anyway, Ms. Weiss said in a recent telephone interview, the more pop-minded fans should find a glimmer of comfort in the supporting actor nominations that went to Heath Ledger, as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” and Robert Downey Jr., for his blackface turn in “Tropic Thunder.”
“The Oscars,” she said, “is a show for them too.”


It’s a show for THEM too, she says. Can’t you just FEEL the love?

Monday, February 02, 2009

Supremely out of balance

The New York Times had a good article yesterday illustrating just how far to the right the Supreme Court is skewed today. A recent study shows that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are currently on the Court - No. 1 Clarence Thomas, No. 3 Antonin Scalia, No. 4. John Roberts Jr. and No. 5 Samuel Alito. Anthony Kennedy comes in at No. 10.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the top liberals on the Supreme Court since 1937, we currently have just one in the Top 10 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg at No. 9.
And when you consider that the people most likely to step down from the Supreme Court in the next few years - John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ginsberg - are all from the liberal wing, that means Obama won’t have much of a chance to correct that conservative imbalance unless he appoints someone who is very, very liberal.
And so that is just what Obama needs to do when the time comes. Appoint a liberal lion in the mold of Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan. Someone who will be as far to the left as Clarence Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito are to the right.
Don’t worry whether the person is “too liberal”. They need to be “too liberal” just to begin to bring back some semblance of balance to the Court.

Odds and Ends

I only watched the last five minutes of the Super Bowl, but that was apparently all I needed to watch. The lead changed twice in the final minutes and had a very exciting finish. I didn’t really care who won, but watching it at the very end I was suddenly torn as both teams struggled for the advantage. From a political perspective, I suppose I’m glad that the Steelers won since they are from a Blue state and Obama was rooting for them, while the Cardinals are not only from a Red state, but John McCain’s home state to boot.

I recorded the halftime show so that I could go back and watch it later and I thought Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were terrific. It was great to see that he was clearly NOT lip-synching and even changed the lyrics to some songs to suit the occasion.

I was disappointed this morning to see that Rudy Park is no longer on the comics page of the Express-News. And I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow, but it looks like their whole, lame “guest comic” thing will turn out to be for not as Rudy Park was replaced on the page by Doonesbury, which had been bumped from the suddenly shortened Op-Ed section.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see if this one-page editorial thing was just for today or if it is a permanent cost-cutting measure. Is it just for Mondays? Or will it be like this all week except for Sundays? That is a real shame. My two favorite sections of the paper are the comics and the Op-ed sections and those are the sections that always get hit hardest during downturns in the economy because they generally don’t allow room for advertising, which is the newspapers’ life blood.

The one bright spot is that while Doonesbury wound up on the comics page, the loathsome Mallard Fillmore was apparently dropped altogether. Ha!!!

I hope that Tom Daschle can weather this confirmation process and still become Secretary of Health and Human Services, but damn! He should have known better on that tax thing.

I was excited when I heard that Obama was tapping Republican Judd Gregg for Secretary of Commerce, but now that it appears the New Hampshire Democratic governor is just going to appoint another Republican as his replacement in the Senate I’m thinking “Why even bother?” What is wrong with these governors and their awful Senate picks anyway? Sheesh!