The Road Not Taken

This is an incredible story in the NY Times today. Apparently we had Saddam Hussein backed so far into a corner by March of this year that he was ready to make almost any kind of deal that we wanted.

“Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.”

So before Bush pulled the trigger on this bloody invasion that we are currently embroiled in, he had an opportunity to take U.S. troops into Baghdad to search for WMDs to his heart’s content. But the Bush administration was already too busy ignoring and covering up mounting evidence that these stockpiles of WMDs were illusory. If the whole purpose of the invasion was to disarm a dangerous dictator who had acquired the means to threaten not just his neighbors, but the entire world, then why didn’t he pursue this opportunity? Is it because such a course of action might have left Saddam’s regime in power? Does that mean the real reason we went to war was not to rid Iraq of WMDs, but to allow Bush to settle a personal score with Saddam?

But even in this case, the deal being offered contained this intriguing “pledge to hold elections” which we could have pursued as a means to force Saddam to step down peacefully the same way we arranged for the former dictator Charles Taylor to step down in Liberia. If Bush had any diplomatic skills whatsoever, he could have taken advantage of this opportunity and achieved much better results than we are faced with today.

But noooooooo. Bush just had to have his war. He wanted to be able to flex his military muscles and show off how macho we can be. None of this wussy diplomacy stuff like most of our allies were suggesting. Bush is a man of action - just as long as it is somebody else’s butt on the line.

Payback for polluters

The NY Times reports today that Bush’s EPA is dropping enforcement actions against 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act.

“...the decision meant the cases would be judged under new, less stringent rules set to take effect next month... the new rules include exemptions that would make it almost impossible to sustain the investigations into the plants...
the change grew out of a recommendation by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force...”

This is just lovely. I wonder how much money these corporate polluters have poured into Bush’s campaign coffers? Now it is payback time. Of course, the person they should really be thanking is Ralph Nader and the Green Party. Thanks Ralph!!

Bond issues approved

All of the San Antonio bond issues were approved yesterday. I won't say that this is good or bad. My position on bond elections can be stated thusly:

Why are you coming to me for approval? What do I or any of these other ignorant voters know about this stuff? I thought we paid you guys to make these decisions. If you screw up and make a bad decision we will vote you out of office next time, that's just the way it goes. Stop hiding behind these bond elections for political cover.

Now, I understand that our screwed up state constitution requires our leaders to put these issues on the ballot. But that still doesn't mean that I have to like it.

Reagan - Tax Raising Machine!

The Daily Howler points to an interesting article by conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, in which he notes the number of times that President Reagan raised taxes during his administration:


“Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year, and the Highway Revenue Act of 1982 raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

The following year, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first two years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.

The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect. According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today's economy.”

I know. It was those darn liberal Democrats who ran the Congress back then who forced all these tax increases through. Yeah, sure. As if the Reagan administration was asleep at the wheel this whole time. Reagan could have used his veto pen at any time or The Great Communicator could have climbed up onto his bully pulpit to stop any of these tax packages. But he did not. He was a politician. Not a demi-God, not a superhero. His administration had its hands in every one of those tax packages - getting favors here, compromising there - and thus he is just as responsible for the outcome as the Congress.

Republicans today have adopted this fantasy image of Reagan as the ultimate anti-tax crusader. Well, he was. But obviously on a more realistic level than what Bush Jr. seems to think.

Wise words on Iraq

Atrios points us to this mystery quote today which turns out to have been by Dick Cheney back when he was Secretary of Defense for Bush the Elder:

“Well, just as it's important, I think, for a president to know when to commit U.S. forces to combat, it's also important to know when not to commit U.S. forces to combat. I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who would we put in power? What kind of government would we have? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shi'a government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Ba'ath Party? Would be fundamentalist Islamic? I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept the responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all.”

And you know what? Cheney was right! Also remember that the vast majority of human rights atrocities credited to Saddam - and which now make up our only reason for being there at this point - happened prior to Cheney making the above statement. Cheney was apparently so unbothered by Saddam’s cruelty at that time that he set out during the next several years to cash in on the Iraq situation as the CEO of Halliburton, raking in millions helping to rebuild Saddam’s oil infrastructure that was damaged during the first Gulf War.

Dictators beware!

Since we have found no WMDs in Iraq, no Al-Quada links or ties to 9-11 and no imminent threat to our national security, Republican rationale for starting the war has turned toward humanitarian goals. Now, we are told that the fact that Hussein tortured his political enemies is reason enough for our invasion. That freeing the Iraqi people from oppression and rebuilding schools is the worthy goal for which more than 200 of our U.S. soldiers have given their lives.

If that is truly the case, then we really do have a long hard slog in front of us as there are a lot of countries out there with people suffering under oppresive dictatorships.

In February of 2003, Parade Magazine consulted independent human-rights organizations such as Freedom House, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to come up with its list of the "Worst Dictators on the Planet."

1. Kim Jong-il (North Korea)
2. King Fahd and Prince Abdullah (Saudi Arabia)
3. Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
4. Charles Taylor (Liberia)
5. Than Shwe (former Burma, now Myanmar)
6. Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Equatorial Guinea)
7. Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan)
8. Muammar Gaddafi (Libya)
9. Fidel Castro (Cuba)
10. Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus)

"Dishonorable Mentions" were also given to Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the leaders of the People's Revolutionary Party of Laos.

Nellie Connally and the three bullets

Nellie Connally, the wife of former Texas Gov. John Connally and the last surviving occupant of the limousine that was carrying President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated, has finally published a book detailing her experience.
One key point she makes in her book which is discussed in this NY Times article is her insistence that three shots struck targets inside the limo on Nov. 22, 1963.

“After shots rang out — and Mrs. Connally is adamant that three bullets, not two as officially established, found their mark — the president was dead, her husband gravely wounded as she struggled to stanch his blood, and the course of history forever altered.”

The problem with this statement is that the Warren Commission official version of events states that only two shots struck the limo occupants and a third shot missed. I will discuss the significance of this in a moment. The NY Times article summarizes it thusly:

”The Warren Commission and subsequent investigations have concluded that the first shot, fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, went wild, that the president and the governor were both hit by a second bullet, and that President Kennedy alone was hit by a third shot.

Mrs. Connally is not dissuaded by this information, as well she should not be.

"Well they're wrong," Mrs. Connally said this week at the beginning of a publicity blitz for the book... "I was there, they weren't. When they argue with me, all I have to say is, `Were you in that car?' The answer has to be no because there wasn't anybody else...
“All I'm saying is there were three shots and I know what happened with each shot," she said.”

But Mrs. Connally says despite this she still believes the conclusion reached by the Warren Commission is correct.

“She said, however, that she was not a conspiracist and that she believed — and that her husband's own exhaustive study of records as Treasury secretary proved — that Mr. Oswald was the lone gunman.
"A $15 gun and a scrambled-egg mind caused all that horror," she said.”

Unfortunately, it is more complicated than that. There is a very good reason why the Warren Commission determined that only two bullets struck the limo that day. Any other outcome would discount the lone gunman theory on which the Warren Commission staked its entire investigation.

Thanks to the Zapruder film, there is a very clear frame-by-frame timeline of when the first and last shots struck their targets to within a fraction of a second. There is not enough time between the moment when Kennedy is clearly reacting to the shot that struck his throat and the moment when Gov. Connally is struck for a gunman using a bolt-action rifle to have fired two separate shots. Since the Warren Commission began its investigation with the predetermined conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots using a bolt-action rifle from the sixth floor of the Book Depository building, they had to come up with some way to shoehorn this inconvenient Zapruder evidence into their lone gunman theory. That is when Arlen Specter, the future Republican senator from Pennsylvania, came up with the infamous “Magic Bullet” theory in which Kennedy and Connally were supposed to have been struck by the same bullet (and Connally had a delayed reaction to his wounds).

The third bullet, they determined, had been fired before Kennedy was hit the first time and completely missed the motorcade. They had to account for at least three bullets because that is how many empty shell casings were neatly piled up for them to find on the sixth floor of the book depository. Plus, we know at least one bullet missed because there was a curbside mark where a bullet had struck next to the motorcade and a bystander who suffered a cut on his face from flying concrete fragments.

The “magic bullet” theory, and by consequence the lone gunman theory, is a bunch of bull. There is lots of evidence that disproves the theory without having to rely on Mrs. Connally’s recollection. The most obvious might be that the bullet fragments pulled out of Gov. Connally’s wrist and the fragments that were left in weighed far more than the amount of mass that was missing from the “pristine” magic bullet that was conveniently found on a cot at the hospital. You also have the testimony of the doctor’s who worked on Kennedy who descibed the wound in his throat as an entry wound (shortly before obscuring it by performing a tracheotomy). They also said the wound in his back was an entry wound that had no point of exit into the chest cavity. The “magic bullet” theory depends upon the back wound and neck wounds being connected and the neck wound being an exit wound.

I don’t presume to know what really happened on that day nearly 40 years ago. But I am pretty clear about what DID NOT happen and I am thoroughly disgusted that we as a nation continue to prop up this fiction about a lone gunman. Of course, I also understand that it is more comforting for people to assume that the perpetrator of this heinous crime was caught and punished rather than living with the knowledge that the conspirators - whoever they were - got clean away with the crime of the century.

Straight from Bubba

South Knox Bubba is trying to sort out the Bush Admin’s take on the Iraq situation:

"We've invaded and occupied a third-world (rat) hole to protect America from a clear and present danger which turned out to be some blender parts buried in some guy's back yard and some moldy okra in some guy's refrigerator?
We have hundreds of thousands of troops, civil authorities, and workers there to secure and rebuild it, and we have them under 7X24 martial law enforced by a huge international coalition of the most powerful military forces in the world, and we can't secure anything?
We are told that it's because terrorists are pouring across the borders and killing our soldiers and relief workers and civilians daily, which is, of course, OK because it's all part of the brilliant "bring it on" "fly paper" afterthought strategy which is clearly working because they are so frustrated by our success?
We're going to pretend there are no dead soldiers coming home in boxes and make the wounded and maimed pay for their own hospital expenses and then reduce or eliminate their veteran's benefits?
When we leave in six months, we're going to turn it over to a bunch of babbling religious fanatics and nomadic desert war lords who weren't able to overthrow a brutal, oppressive regime run by a madman and a handful of his goons, in a country that has been around and run this way since more than two thousand years before the first shot was fired at Concord, at which point democracy will commence to flourish, and they will rid the Middle East of terrorism and protect the United States from al Qaida?
Then we're going to send the multi-billion dollar bill to the American taxpayers and tell them and their children and their grandchildren and their grandchildren to make the checks payable to Halliburton?
That's our plan?
OK, then."

The only plan the Bush team is concerned with right now is getting their guy (re-)elected next year. Last year, the Bush team was intent on taking the country’s focus off the poor state of the economy and taking out Saddam seemed like a great way to do it. Now that we’ve gotten some good economic news finally, I expect they will try to shift the nation’s focus away from the mess in Iraq and back to the domestic front.

The Blogroll

My personal blogroll on the left side of the page has slowly been expanding these past few months. As a rule, I have tried to limit its growth to just those sites that I tend to read on a more or less regular basis.
One of the best things about blogging is the opportunity it gives to network with people who have similar interests and to create a community for having discussions and debates about current events.
I think it is especially important to start locally and branch out from there. There are only a couple of other political bloggers in San Antonio that I am aware of and I am slowly getting to know other Texas bloggers in Houston, Austin and Dallas.

The blogs that I have listed to the left are all relatively high-quality sites that tend to be updated regularly (with a few exceptions).
The vast majority are of the liberal persuasion reflecting my own ideological preferences, however, I also link to a number of conservative sites where I have found the quality of debate to be challenging and where contrary opinions are respected. I like blogs that allow readers to post comments, although that is not a requirement. I don’t like blogs that are hard to read (black text on purple backgrounds) or that take a long time to upload. I tend to be prudish about foul language and will avoid sites that can’t seem to find other ways to express themselves.

The blogs that have been kind enough to add my site to their own blogrolls are marked with an asterisk after their name. It is flattering to have someone add your site to their blogroll and I am more than happy to reciprocate with a link on those rare occasions when someone has added my site before I have added theirs.
I am constantly finding new candidates for addition and probably need to find a better way to organize the ones that I have. Suggestions are welcome.

The Greatest American President since Lincoln

Yes, I'm talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Wall Street Journal today has an op-ed piece by Conrad Black, the Canadian publishing magnate, who has recently written a book about Roosevelt called Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom.
The article, entitled 'Capitalism's Savior,' gives a good summary of Roosevelt's remarkable accomplishments which makes every other U.S. president in recent times seem pale in comparison - and that includes both Clinton and Reagan.

It's too bad that the WSJ requires a separate subscription to access its online content (even editorial pieces) so the best I can do for those without access to a paper copy is provide a few excerpts:

"When he entered office in 1933, unemployment was at 33 percent, there was almost no public-sector relief for the jobless, 45 percent of family homes had been - or were in imminent danger of being - foreclosed, and the Chicago Grain Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and the banking system had collapsed. Almost no one was engaged in agriculture on an economically sustainable basis and the nation's food supply was apt to be severly interrupted at any time."

"Most authentic historians credit Roosevelt with swiftly reviving the American banking system, guaranteeing bank deposits, minimizing the number of bank failures and substantially alleviating the Depression. Yet, as with most other historical achievements, the revisionists have been hard at work. Jim Powell of the Cato Institute argues in a new book that FDR actually prolonged the Depression!"

"Most would accept that FDR's system of raising farm income by having farmers vote by category to reduce production in exchange for subsidies and sustainable prices was a success. I know of no serious criticism of the Roosevelt administration's refinancing of home mortgages; low-yield loans to farmers with crops and animals as collateral; the Tennessee Valley Authority and the vast extension of rural electrification; the GI Bill of Rights, which produced a benign, posthumous socioeconomic revolution; the concept of Social Security, including unemployment insurance; and most of the public works and workfare schemes of the New Deal..."

"Roosevelt spared the country the extremes of left and right that plagued every other great power in the '30s. He left the U.S. twice as wealthy as it was when he assumed the presidency. As economics, the New Deal deserves a passing grade, but as crisis management it was a huge success. And in the 1930s, Roosevelt was almost the only leader of an important country who was not either a barbarous dictator, an appeaser of barbarous dictators or an ineffectual ditherer. For these reasons, as well as his genius as a war leader, he is rightly judged the greatest American president since Lincoln."

Maggie's Farm Updated

From The Right Christians I found this new version of Bob Dylan's classic "Maggie's Farm"

Georgie Dubya
To the tune of "Maggie’s Farm" by Bob Dylan

I ain't gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more.
No, I ain’t gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more.
Well, I wake up in the morning,
Fold my hands and pray for peace,
But there’s three more dead in Baghdad
And still no WMDs.
It's a shame the way he lied us into war.
I ain't gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more.

I ain't gonna vote for Georgie’s brother no more
No, I aint gonna vote for Georgie’s brother no more
Well, he crowds kids into classrooms
And cuts their teachers’ pay,
Then claims he’s all for schooling,
Says marriage ain’t for gays.
And he steals your vote, especially if you’re poor.
I ain't gonna vote for Georgie’s brother no more.

I ain't gonna vote for Georgie’s pa no more
No, I ain’t gonna vote for Georgie’s pa no more
Well, he said, “Appoint Colin.”
He said, “Select Dick.”
But he didn’t tell Dubya
Whose policy to pick.
Nobody knows who’s supposed to run the store.
Ah, I ain't gonna vote for Georgie’s pa no more.

I ain't gonna buy books by Georgie’s ma no more
No, I ain't gonna buy books by Georgie’s ma no more
Well, she preaches to all us servants
About man and God and law.
Everybody says
She's the brains behind pa.
Her “beautiful mind” can’t be bothered by the horrors of war.
I ain't gonna buy books by Georgie’s ma no more.

I ain't gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more
I aint gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But Ashcroft wants to force you
To be just like him
They say sing while you slave but I just get bored
I ain't gonna vote for Georgie Dubya no more.

Lionizing Reagan; Vilifying Clinton

Political parties need heroes to thrive and prosper. For years Democrats have boosted themselves on the memories of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. Republicans had a rougher time of it during this period. They wanted to forget about Herbert Hoover. Dwight Eisenhower was a great war hero, but he was kind of bland as a president. Then they had to try and forget about Richard Nixon.

So it is no surprise that Republicans are working overtime now to promote the idea that Reagan was one of the greatest presidents of all time. Their efforts in this respect have included trying to get Reagan’s image carved onto Mount Rushmore, replacing Alexander Hamilton on the 10-dollar bill with Reagan’s smiling visage, and naming buildings and monuments all over the country after him.

It is also no surprise that this lionizing of Reagan is a two-pronged strategy that also requires tearing down and vilifying President Bill Clinton at the same time. As with most issues, Republicans see this as a black and white issue. Reagan can do no wrong, and Clinton can do nothing right. Reagan is a larger-than-life figure of grandiose accomplishments who merits reverential treatment. Clinton is a despicable character who nearly wrecked the country and deserved to be put in jail.
To counter this kind of political gamesmanship, Democrats don’t have to place Clinton on a pedestal and worship him the way Republicans do to Reagan. But they do need to stand up and defend his policies that helped produce the longest period of economic expansion in U.S. history.
Here are just a few:
* In 1992, the deficit was $290 billion, a record dollar high. In 2000, the projected budget surplus was $167 billion -- the largest dollar surplus on record.
* 21.2 million new jobs created, the most jobs ever created under a single Administration -- and more new jobs than Presidents Reagan and Bush created during their three terms.
* The longest and fastest period of real wage growth in three decades.
* The lowest unemployment rate in three decades.
* Highest home ownership rate in history.
* Lowest poverty rate in two decades.
* Lowest crime rates in 25 years.
* Smallest government workforce since the 1960s.
* Lowest government spending as a share of GDP since 1974.

This isn’t a record that anyone should shy away from defending and compared to the accomplishments (or lack thereof) of our current president during the past three years they look really good.

I really hate bond elections

San Antonio has several bond elections coming up for a vote on Nov. 4 and I can pretty much guarantee that 99.999 percent of the people who will cast votes in the election won’t have a clue as to what they are voting on.
I admit that I am no fan of direct democracy. I agree with the Founding Fathers who set up a republican form of government with representational democracy at its core. We elect people to represent our interests, study the issues and make decisions that are for the greater good. The average person doesn’t have the time to spend studying all the details of every issue. We depend on our representatives to do that for us.
(In fact, in many cases our elected representatives don’t even have the time to study all the details of every issue and that task ultimately falls to the paid professionals we hire to manage and run our government agencies - while the reps are essentially there to keep an eye on things.)
Everytime I hear about a bond election, a constitutional amendment election or some other ballot initiative - all I can think about is how our form of government is continuing to be subverted. It means that our elected representatives are not taking responsibility and are leaving it up to the ignorant electorate - and I count myself among them.
After 12 years of covering city councils, county commissioners, school boards and planning and zoning commissions in rock-solid conservative locales such as Kerrville and Lubbock - I have observed time and time again where people on the outside come to the meetings to criticize the budget process, then get elected to serve on the same body and the next time around come to the realization that there is nowhere to cut and end up defending the budget against the next group of naysayers.
In every city there is always a group that I call the CAVE people (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) who can be counted on to come out and oppose any bond election. It’s no different in San Antonio where you have the Homowner Taxpayer Association. In some places these people have held sway for so long that school children are forced to attend classes in overcrowded temporary buildings next to deteriorating schools built in the 1950s.
I don’t understand why these people don’t trust their local representatives to make these kinds of decisions, and yet seem unfazed everytime President Bush breaks a new record in deficit spending without having to seek similar voter approval.

Science and sexual orientation

Here is another study out purporting to show that sexual orientation is based on genetics. I have long accepted this as a matter of fact.
But I’m sure this study will do little to dissuade the legions of flat-earthers out there who are unwilling to accept or consider scientific evidence that does not conform to their predetermined religious views.
My theory on sexual orientation can best be summed up by drawing two concentric circles side by side that overlap by about 10 percent. One circle represents the realm of masculine orientation and the other represents the realm of feminine orientation. The overlapping section represents the gay and lesbian population. I think that sexual orientation is a matter of degree. Depending upon where people fall in each circle is determined by their particular genetic makeup. Some people may be very masculine or very feminine. Others may be less masculine or less feminine, but still definitely heterosexual. Likewise there will be those who are very gay and those who are less gay but still homosexual. Then there are those who fall very close to the dividing line and in these cases I think you find people who can actually “choose” which way they want to go or they can be bi-sexual.
Maybe this is a lot of nonsense. I am only speculating on a theory that makes sense to me. Regardless, I believe it is wrong to discriminate against people of any sexual orientation.
Interestingly enough, if this theory is correct it means that just as conservative fundamentalists fear there is a choice element at work here (although with just a very small percentage of the population) and that means if our society becomes more accepting of homosexuality it could result in more people coming out of their closets and/or choosing one orientation over another. But since I don’t view sexual orientation as a “sin” and because I am not threatened by the prospect of a few more open homosexuals in our society I really don’t see it as any big deal.

But one can’t really address the issue of homosexuality without also addressing the Biblical condemnations of the practice that have turned so many people over the years into homophobic crusaders. Here is where one must determine whether they are going to believe as the fundamentalists do that the Bible is the “inerrant Word of God” or whether it is a divinely inspired work that was still written by men who in many instances allowed their own human faults, prejudices and superstitions to be sprinkled throughout the text. I do not believe the Bible is inerrant. There are too many instances where Biblical text has been used to condone everything from wars and crusades to witch burnings and slavery. Even Jesus did not treat the Bible as inerrant. Quite to the contrary he countered some of its teachings and overwrote it with his own message of forgiveness, compassion and love.
Ultimately, everyone will have to decide for themselves how to deal with the Biblical passages that condemn homosexuals. But for those who opt to follow the condemnation route and believe that God makes everyone with a clearly defined sense of sexual orientation - answer just one question. What about these people who are born with both male and female sexual organs? What is God’s intention there? A cruel joke? I believe God is compassionate, not cruel. We can accept God's creation or we can reject it. That is our choice here.

Shameless Gurwitz

Express-News Columnist Jonathan Gurwitz has no shame. In his latest column, the right-wing pundit-wannabe demonstrates his lack of shame by accusing critics of the pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Iraq of claiming that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction - even though he knows this is not true. Gurwitz is being intentionally deceptive and deceitful in this instance.

“Saddam Hussein not only possessed weapons of mass destruction, but also used them against Iran and his own Kurdish population. There are the pictures of mottled bodies; there is the testimony of scarred survivors. Yet the Iraq inquisitors insist that Saddam never possessed such weapons.”

The argument prior to the war - as Gurwitz well knows - was not whether or not Hussein had WMDs - but whether or not this in and of itself posed such a serious threat to world security that it required such extreme measures as a military invasion which has so far cost the lives of more than 200 U.S. soldiers and seriously injured many more. Opponents of the war said that U.N. sanctions and inspections were adequate to counter and contain any potential threat posed by Hussein.
Critics of the war - at least those with half a brain - were very much aware that Hussein had once possessed WMDs - that was back during the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s when the Reagan administration embraced Hussein and his Baathist regime as the antidote to the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. We know very well that he used WMDs at that time because the Reagan and Bush I administrations helped to pay for them and encouraged him to do so. And when he turned around and used those same weapons against the Kurds, we turned our eyes the other way and ignored it.

What the Kay Report demonstrates very clearly - and what Gurwitz refuses to see because of his own blinding dogmatism - is that the U.N. sanctions and inspections were working. Hussein did not have tons of biological and chemical weapons stockpiled or an active nuclear weapons program as the Bush administration repeatedly claimed. It appears now - as Hans Blix has already noted - that Iraq got rid of most if not all of those stockpiles shortly after the first Gulf War and that Hussein’s efforts to restart a WMD program was being stymied by the U.N. sanctions and inspections. There was no imminent or immediate threat.

By ignoring evidence that showed Hussein was not an imminent threat and forcing the U.S. to go to war in defiance of the U.N. and most of our major allies, President Bush has demonstrated a recklessness that should cause even his most loyal followers to question his judgment.

Yankees again!

So it's the Yankees and Marlins in the World Series. I couldn't help but root for the Yankees the other night, even though I kept telling myself I should be for the Red Sox. I love Boston - the city - and wouldn't mind seeing the Red Sox win some day - but I've been a Yankees fan since 1998 and even though they dumped my favorite player - Chuck Knoblauch - I'm still too familiar with the team not to empathize with them.
I didn't want to see Roger Clemen's final game be one where he was knocked out in the 4th inning.
Back in 98-99-00 the Yankees had a solid team player in almost every position. The only weak point was left field where they couldn't make up their mind and kept swapping out players - Ricky Ledee, Chad Curtis, Shane Spencer - and then Knoblauch after his arm gave out.
Today, they have adequately filled the Left Field slot with Hideki Matsui - but now they have a weak spot in Right Field where they have yet to find a solid replacement for Paul O'Neill. And I have to admit that Soriano has filled in well at second base in place of Knobby. But now they are weak at third base where no one has been able to step up and fill the shoes left by Scott Brosius (Aaron Boone's 11th inning home-run last night aside). And I also think they are weaker at first base for having traded away Tino Martinez to make room for the unimpressive Nick Johnson.
But the Yankees still have super stars like Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada in the linup and they have added Jason Giambi to that list as well. And their pitching rotation is still first rate with Clemens, Andy Pettite, David Wells, Mike Mussina and Mario Rivera in the bullpen.
Still, I won't be surpised if the Yankees fumble in this Series and lose to the young Marlins team. There still maybe something to the Knoblauch curse I noted in the previous post. We shall see.

The Knoblauch Curse

Everybody is paying a lot of attention to the “Curse of the Bambino” in Boston - which has kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series since trading away Babe Ruth - and the unnamed curse that vexes the Chicago Cubs who have not even won a pennant much less a World Series since the end of WWII.

But no one is paying attention to another curse involving the New York Yankees that I think might have an impact this year. I call it the Knoblauch Curse after the Yankees’ former second baseman and leadoff hitter Chuck Knoblauch who faded away into free agent obscurity earlier this year after having a dismal final season with the Kansas City Royals. Knoblauch, a Texas A&M grad who went to my wife’s high school in Houston, was the Rookie of the Year in 1991 when he helped the Minnesota Twins win the World Series that year.

The Yankees have not won a World Series since they decided to bench Knoblauch during the 2001 Series against the Diamondbacks. They began their impressive streak of World Series appearances and back-to-back-to-back victories in 1998 shortly after acquiring Knoblauch from the Twins. But sometime between 2000 and 2001, Knoblauch began experiencing throwing problems and the Yankees were forced to shift him from second base to left field. His hitting started to suffer as well and by the time the playoffs came around they were mostly playing Knobby off the bench. As a result, the Yankees came up short of their fourth WS victory in 2001 and the next year, after they traded Knoblauch to the Royals, failed to make it out of the playoffs.

Maybe this year will be different and the Knoblauch Curse will be shortlived. But if the Red Sox come back and/or the Cubs/Marlins pull off a World Series victory, I will know the real reason.

Where do I sign up?

The National Rifle Association has put together a helpful list of "National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies"

Here is just a sampling of some of the groups on the NRA hit list:

American Academy of Pediatrics
American Medical Association
American Trauma Society
National Association of Community Health Centers
Children's Defense Fund
National Association of Children's Hospitals

No big surprise that there would be a lot of medical and health groups on the list.

So what exactly does the NRA hope to accomplish by compiling this list? Are they urging their members to try and undermine these organizations? To work against them?

This is actually kind of scary when you consider how many people still blindly support the NRA long after it has been taken over by extremist radicals. Not unlike the Texas Republican Party, the NRA today is controlled by a tight-knit group of hardliners who see any reasonable regulation of gun ownership as an affront to the Second Amendment.

The reason that they can come up with a list like this in the first place is because they have defined "anti-gun policies" to such an extreme degree that anyone who objects to the unregulated sale of assault rifles, cop-killer bullets and plastic guns - is included.

Update

To illustrate my point that the NRA is currently controlled by dangerous radicals, here is a quote from a speech by NRA President Wayne LaPierre at the 2002 NRA Convention where he makes it clear how he feels about people who disagree with his extreme views on gun proliferation.

"If you consider the Constitution less relevant, if you ignore or distort the Second Amendment, if you conspire to make lawful firearms less accessible to lawful citizens, if you infiltrate school boards and churches and legislatures and foundations to advance an anti-freedom agenda of any kind - the fact that you were born on American soil won't mask the fact that you're an enemy of freedom and a political terrorist."

I guess that explains why the NRA would want to keep such a list - so they can keep track of all these "enemies of freedom and political terrorists."

Recuperating

Had my wisdom teeth removed on Friday so I spent most of the weekend sitting around the house recuperating and had a chance to catch up on some movie watching.
Here are some quick reviews of the films I saw:

Bend It Like Beckham - A very enjoyable film that was about what I expected after reading all the rave reviews. Kind of sad though to see the film now after the U.S. Women's Pro Soccer League has gone bankrupt. The film is about two British girls who get the chance to come to America to play pro soccer.

The Italian Job - A good crime caper film with some decent action sequences. I like movies where the protagonists are able to pull off a scam without resorting to killing and shooting people.

Down With Love - Much better than I expected. A very clever romantic comedy with some hilarious dialogue. They did a great job recreating the feel of a 1963-era movie.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Disney's classic live-action film from 1953 with Kirk Douglas, James Mason and Peter Lorre. Had never seen the film before that I can remember and really loved it. Still haven't seen all the extra features on the 2-disc set.

What the Calif. recall election was really all about

Why would so many Republicans fall in behind Arnold Schwarzenegger, a movie actor with no experience who is somewhere to the left of Joe Lieberman on the political spectrum, when they had a perfectly good conservative candidate like Tom McClintock standing in the wings? That is the question that has vexed many right-wing radio talkers and bloggers these past few weeks.

Even when Arnold was being exposed as a serial groper with enough accusations of sexual misconduct to make even Bill Clinton blush - Republicans stood by him, unwavering in their support.

The reason is quite simple really and it was clearly evidenced by the results of Tuesday's recall election. Arnold has the kind of star-power that every Republican operative in the country would love to tap into. Unless California is falling into the ocean next year, you can bet that Arnold will be the No. 1 invitee to appear at Republican fundraisers and to speak on behalf of Republican candidates at their campaign rallies.
And the topper will be when Arnold gives the nominating speech for George Bush at next year's Republican National Convention.

That was the GOP's goal in this race. They don't really care about what happens to California. Anything that goes wrong from this point forward will just be blamed on the Democrats who still control the state legislature. The real point was to annoint the newest Republican superstar: "Conan the Campaigner" coming soon to a political rally near you!

Conservative writers block?

Woo Hoo! This is a nice change - Bestseller list dominated by liberals

"Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" by Al Franken.
"The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception" by David Corn
"Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" by Joe Conason
"The Great Unraveling," by Paul Krugman
"Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.
and soon to unseat the latest Bill O'Reilly screed for the No. 1 spot is Michael Moore's new book, "Dude, Where's My Country?"

I guess it is one of the few advantages of being out of power - plenty of time to sit back and write books critical of those who are in charge.

By the way, I will get to see Molly Ivins in person tomorrow at the Barnes & Noble on DeZavala where I plan to buy her book and get it autographed.

The Clinton Test

Josh Marshall has a good rule of thumb that I would like to see more bloggers taking up. He calls it the Clinton Test.


"When I come across something fishy from the Bush administration, I try to use what I call the Clinton Test to keep myself honest and steer me right. As I’ve noted before in these pages, the Clinton Test is quite simply, how would I react to situation X if it was Clinton --- someone I supported --- rather than Bush --- someone I oppose. It’s a good rule of thumb because seeing a given action through the prism of someone whose motives you are inclined to view favorably is a good check on unwarranted suspicions."

Of course, some conservatives already have their own version of The Clinton Test as Atrios points out.

"We should compare Partisan Liberal Journalist Josh Marshall's "Clinton Test" with Partisan Conservative Journalist Chris Caldwell's "Clinton Test:"


CALDWELL: Well, yes, one of my colleagues likes to say, "The Golden Rule is that all rumors about the Clintons are true". But I think ...
KURTZ: That's quite a journalistic standard.

Liberals electing Republicans, and vice versa

With California on the verge of installing a Republican governor once again, I’m reminded of the peculiar habit of states that traditionally vote a certain way electing governors from the opposite party.

Assuming that The Groper pulls off his electoral coup tomorrow, California will join such other “liberal” states with Republican governors as: Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and even Hawaii.

On other hand, there are many “conservative” states that typically vote Republican that have elected Democratic governors of late. They include:
Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wyoming.

Cubs win!

I got to see a Cubs game at Wrigley Field with my parents some time in the early '70s when I was about 8. My Dad was stationed at Grissom AFB in Indiana and we went mainly to see the hapless Astros play. All I remember is that the Cubs won and Billy Williams hit a home run.
So I'm glad to see the Cubs finally make it back to the Post-season for the first time since 1908. I'll be rooting for them to knock off the Florida Marlins and make it to the World Series where I'm guessing they would end up facing the Yankees.

I haven't paid much attention to the Marlins this year, but it looks like Pudge Rodriguez nearly single-handedly helped them to knock off the Giants. I still can't believe the Rangers let Pudge go. It figures that they end up in the last place while Pudge takes his new team to the Playoffs. It reminds me of the idiot owners of the Cinncinnati Reds in the late-70s and early-80s when they decided to break up the Big Red Machine and started trading off everyone except Johnny Bench. They even let Sparky Anderson go and Sparky responded by taking the Detroit Tigers to the World Series while the Reds wallowed in last place.

I'll be rooting for the Red Sox to make a miracle comeback against the A's tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

Coming up empty

From the Washington Post:


“After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and have determined that Iraq's nuclear program was in only "the very most rudimentary" state, the Bush administration's chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday.”

Six months is twice as long as Bush allowed the U.N. inspectors to have before he rushed headlong into this war. But Bush wants to give this group an additonal six months and $600 million to continue this snipe hunt.
Meanwhile our soldiers are continuing to be shot at and killed at an alarming rate - nearly two a day - and U.S. taxpayers are being asked to foot an additional $87 billion tab for “reconstruction” in addition to nearly that much that has already been spent.

“Before the war, the administration said Iraq had a well-developed nuclear program that presented a threat to the United States.”

And shortly after the war Bush claimed that these trailers were evidence that Iraq had a mobile bio-weapons lab. Proof of WMDs, he claimed at the time. That partly explains why so many people seem to believe that we have already found WMDs in Iraq - especially folks who get their information from Fox News.

Bad day for Dittoheads

First the news that Rush Limbaugh has resigned his sports commentary job at ESPN over racially charged comments he made about Eagles QB Donovan McNabb.

And now this...

"Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring.
The moralizing motormouth was turned in by his former housekeeper - who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years."


"... The drugs Rush Limbaugh is accused of abusing are legal only with a doctor's prescription. All are habit-forming.

* Hydrocodone

Anti-cough agent and painkiller similar to morphine. Side effects include anxiety, poor mental performance..."

I think this really explains a lot.

Scandal summary

The Washington Post has an editorial today that helpfully summarizes the CIA leak scandal that is currently haunting the Bush administration for anyone who is still not up to speed on the topic.

One thing the editorial makes clear is that the case actually involves two leaks - the first being the one that outed Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife as a covert CIA operative and the second being a White House whistleblower who ratted on the ones who did the inital leaking.

"What sets this case apart is that it was a Bush administration official who turned (anonymously) on other Bush administration comrades. We know this because on Sunday Post writers Mike Allen and Dana Priest reported that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." The senior Bush administration official told The Post, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." Asked about the motive for disclosing the behavior of other administration officials, the purported whistleblower said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

I would be interested to know which of the two sets of leakers Bush is more interested in plugging up at this point.

The Post also makes clear that the story is not about to go away any time soon.

"The expanding probe, which promptly shifted to a full investigation after an initial review..."

In other words, we are already well beyond the point where this could all be explained away as no big deal. If, as some conservative bloggers have tried to argue, Valerie Plame was not an undercover agent but just an analyst and therefore no crime was committed by publicizing her name - then that would have been found out during the initial review period.

I can accept that the Justice Department will need some time to conduct a thorough investigation, but if it begins to appear that they are dragging their feet - as appears to be the case with the Enron probe - then expect lots more carping from Bush critics that an independent counsel be appointed. They can't just sit on this scandal and hope that people forget about it until after Bush is safely re-elected to a second term.

Time to bring back the independent counsel

I turn now to my favorite source for hard-hitting news - The Wall Street Journal (9/29/03 pgs. A3-A7):

"The investigation could prove explosive no matter how it unfolds, because the probe will be up to the administration's own Justice Department to investigate the allegations. If charges are brought against the source of the leak, it could indicate that the administration sought to silence critics of its decision to go to war. If no charges are filed, questions could arise as to whether the department pursued the case aggresively, and lead to calls for an independent inquiry."

My conservative friends would not tolerate Janet Reno investigating Bill Clinton, so they can hardly expect me to accept that John Ashcroft will be adequate in investigating this scandal.

My only concern though is one of fairness (and balance). Who could we select as an independent counsel who would be as rabidly partisan in conducting this investigation of the Bush administration as Ken Starr was in investigating the Clinton administration?
Suggestions are welcome. Maybe Alan Dershowitz? Michael Moore?

A vengeful White House

Was the Bush White House being vengeful when it outed Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent?
This issue which is now under investigation has the potential to be a bigger scandal than anything that ever occurred during the 8 years that Clinton was in office.

But with Bush, it is becoming difficult to pick out the biggest scandal.
Is it Bush's ties to Ken Lay and Enron? Is it the huge tax cuts for the wealthy that were supposed to jumpstart our economy and instead have drained our budget surplus and replaced it with a mounting budget deficit? Is it Bush's disastrous handling of the economy that has led to the most job losses under any president since Herbert Hoover? Or is it the lies and deceptions the administration used to railroad the nation into supporting a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq?

Davy Crockett at the Alamo

Staying up last night with the baby I managed to catch a Discovery Channel special on the Alamo.
I know it is an old issue and all, but it still irritates me when I have to listen to all the debate about the Jose Enrique de la Pena diary and whether it proves that Davy Crockett was captured and executed by Santa Anna.

The first thing that struck me about the show was that de la Pena apparently had two diaries. The first was written in his own hand and was a journal that he kept during his travels with the Mexican Army. There is little doubt about the authenticity of this first document which is certainly a valuable contribution to our historical knowledge. But nowhere in this first document is there any mention of Davy Crockett being captured at the Alamo. He apparently didn't find that little tidbit of information important enough to mention in his daily journal at the time. Instead, it shows up in the second set of documents which were allegedly transcribed by de la Pena many years later while he was sick and dying in prison. This second set of documents which were written by as many as five separate people contain the controversial account of Crockett's execution.
The Discovery Channel show spends an inordinante amount of time trying to determine whether the second set of documents could have been forged. Their conclusion is that there is no evidence to support claims of forgery.

This is all fine. But why does it therefore follow that the story told in the document is true and accurate? The Discovery Channel show just assumes as much. To accept de la Pena's account we have to disregard the eyewitness accounts of two other people present at the aftermath of the battle - Susanna Dickinson and Travis' slave, both of whom identified Crockett's remains surrounded by dead Mexican soldiers.

Let's assume that the second set of documents are not forgeries and also that de la Pena was telling the truth as he remembered it.
Could someone please tell me how Mr. de la Pena would have even known what Davy Crockett looked like? At least Mrs. Dickinson and Travis' slave had the opportunity to meet and see Crockett in person. De la Pena at best might have at one time seen a drawing of Crockett though that is never addressed in any of the historical accounts. Was this person wearing the famed coonskin cap? That was common headgear for many of the Tennessee volunteers at the Alamo.
Did this person identify themselves as Crockett? How do we know it wasn't someone else pretending to be Crockett in the hope that it would save his life.
All in all I find the de la Pena account of Crockett's death to be wholly unconvincing and I'm constantly amazed when I hear historical reports about his accounts that fail to raise these obvious questions.

Ashcroft: Plea Bargains are for wimps!!

Attorney General John Ashcroft is an idiot! OK, maybe that is a bit strong. What I mean to say is that he is an ideologue who is driven to the point of being impractical.

Case in point:

Today the NYTimes is reporting that Ashcroft has issued a directive to federal prosecutors requiring them to always charge defendants with the "most serious, readily provable offense" and not to engage in plea negotiations thereafter.

Nevermind that experts say such a move could swamp our courts with defendants going to trial rather than plea-bargaining for lighter sentences. Ashcroft has a political point to make and he won't let something as inconvenient as reality get in the way.

"If even just a small fraction of the 96 percent of all defendants who currently plead guilty end up going to trial, the courts will be overrun in no time," said Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a research group in Washington that supports prisoners' rights.

"David Burnham, co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks data on federal law enforcement, said the Justice Department could not significantly reduce plea bargains "without collapsing the entire court system."

Plea bargains "are a necessary thing," Mr. Burnham said. "Plea bargains have been used historically because the courts don't have time to have trials. Charges are reduced to encourage prisoners to avoid going to trial, and we just don't have enough judges to do it differently. If you force everyone to go to trial, you'd have to hire a lot more judges."

Oh, I get it! This must be part of Bush's plan to try to create more jobs to make up for some of the thousands that have been lost under his watch.

"Alan Vinegrad, a former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said the change represented a philosophical shift. "There is less of a focus on justice and more of a focus on efficiency," Mr. Vinegrad said."

Well, we wouldn't want too much "justice" in our judicial system. It's just not very efficient. What we need is fewer prosecutors who think for themselves and more automatons who act like rubber stamps.

Update:
The NYTimes ran a guest op-ed on this issue in the Sunday paper -
A Practice as Old as Justice Itself

Music survey

Zagat Surveys has just put out its first book on music in which it lists the 1,000 top albums.

Here is their Top 10:

1. "Born To Run," Bruce Springsteen
2. "Abbey Road," the Beatles
3. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the Beatles
4. "The Joshua Tree," U2
5. "The White Album," The Beatles
6. "Kind of Blue," Miles Davis
7. "Darkness on the Edge of Town," Bruce Springsteen
8. "Revolver," the Beatles
9. "Dark Side of the Moon," Pink Floyd
10. "Achtung Baby," U2

I have all of these albums so I guess my musical tastes fit the popular mood pretty well.

Compare and contrast

I want to compare and contrast two guest columns that ran in the San Antonio Express-News this past Sunday.
The first takes a critical look at the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq and is written by Joseph Beck, a local high school student.
The second is defending the U.S. war on terrorism and is written by Mike Reeder, a former senior television producer for the Republican National Committee who now lives in Boerne.

Upon first seeing the columns my reaction was dismay. Once again the "So Called Liberal Media" was setting up an unfair fight with the "conservative" view point put forth by a professional pundit straight from the RNC, while the "liberal" perspective is left to the defense of some high school kid.
But after reading the articles, I have to admit that young Mr. Beck carried off his part rather well. His article is straightforward and coherent. He is tough on the administration without being rude or disrespectful. He seems to have all his facts straight and doesn't go off the deep end making any wild accusations.
Here is a sample of Beck's column:

"Of course, it is possible, and probably very likely, that the administration believed WMDs did exist at one time in Iraq. However, how could the administration, with power and responsibility of unparalleled proportions, have relied so exclusively on "information" that has so easily been discredited?"

Now compare this with the article by Mr. Reeder.
He starts off right away with name calling and insults. The "left" is "soft-headed" and their every utterance is "drivel", Reeder opines.
He then makes some rather disturbing statements regarding the war in Afghanistan that he also ties in with the war in Iraq.

"Not a single one of the trained terrorists killed in that conflict will ever board a plane with mayhem in mind or carry out the biological and chemical attacks they were trained to conduct. When one considers the destruction wrought by a handful of hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, it is difficult to see how permanently eliminating thousands of would-be emulators has not enhanced our security."

First off, our reason for going into Afghanistan was to confront the Al Quaeda leadership that we had determined was holed up there. Ousting the reprehensible Taliban from power was a nice bonus that resulted from the conflict. But to assume that everyone of the thousands of Afghan men killed in the conflict were somehow complicit or guilty of the 9-11 attacks is very wrong. And to assume that their deaths will somehow make us safer, is just sickening.
We were right to go after Al Quaeda, but what Mr. Reeder seems to advocate is a type of lynch mob justice where just about any person of Middle Eastern descent can be labeled a terrorist and become a target. Such illogic is what led our nation into its current detour into the Iraqi quagmire.

Reading articles like the one by young Mr. Beck gives me some hope for our country that the shrill rantings of people like Mr. Reeder cannot undermine.

What the Texas Democrats should do next...

Here is my contribution to the Blogburst that is being coordinated by the Texas Democrats No. 1 blogger Charlie Kuffner:

The Democrats showed a spark of life this year for the first time since losing all their statewide officeholders.
By showing a little backbone and doing something outrageous to protest the GOP's re-redistricting they garnered national attention and energized much of their core constituency.
Now even if the Republicans ultimately succeed with their mid-decade Perrymandering scheme, at least the Democrats didn't just roll over and take it like chumps. Now the question is how can they keep that spark of life going into the foreseeable future?

First, the Party should make a big issue of trying to save the Congressmen who are being targeted by the re-redistricting effort. Nick Lampson, Jim Turner, Chet Edwards, Charlie Stenholm, heck even Ralph Hall, should be the focal point of a statewide or perhaps nationwide Democratic effort to deny Tom Delay his illicit victory. And even if some or all of them lose, they should be encouraged to run for other statewide offices in the next election. Have one of the ex-congressmen challenge a Republican state senator or try to win back some of the statewide offices that are now under GOP control.

Second, the Party should make sure that they have a viable candidate in every statewide race next time around. Leaving so many open spots on the last general election ballot was a debacle for the Democrats. We can't cede anything to the Republicans without losing more and more ground. And worse, failure to run candidates in every race opens the way for those Republican dupes better known as the Green Party.

Third, don't let the Party's message become too centered around divisive issues - such as race and religion. The Democratic Party's strength is in its diversity. If there is a group of people who are opposed to one issue, try and find common ground on some other topics. The Democratic Party's primary focus should be good government. We are the party that believes that government of the people can and does work. We should never shy away from defending the principles of good government and we should always be ready to point out the shortcomings of the Republicans' anti-government philosophy.

I was proud to be a Democrat again this year and I'm sure I am not alone. The Democratic Party can and should take advantage of this situation and just remember that the tide will turn back again, perhaps sooner than many people are expecting.

Still not committed

I'm still not committed to any of the Democratic candidates at this point. While that would not be surprising for an average American at this point, it seems to be highly unusual for a denizen of the political blogosphere.
In past elections I've seen candidates I liked drop out long before I ever had an opportunity to vote for them in the primary, so I have a tendency to want to hold back and see how things shake out first.

My initial response to the Democratic lineup was to lean ever so slightly towards Sen. John Kerry. He is a mainstream liberal with lots of experience and his military background makes for a striking contrast with Bush. However, I have also been intrigued by Howard Dean's candidacy, especially as it began to catch fire on the Internet. One of my best friends lives up in Burlington, Vermont and is now a big Dean supporter and that has encouraged me to take him more seriously, in fact, you could say that the idealistic part of me is already on board with the Dean camp. But the pragmatic side of me still has fears dating back to the 1988 Dukakis campaign when I first witnessed the Republican slime machine in full force. I still remember Bush Sr.'s smug references to the "L" word, his visits to the flag factory, and the creepy visage of Willie Horton that hovered over the campaign.
The thing that is different about Dean, however, is that he has generated this level of interest so early in the race. Dukakis really did not stand out until he wound up on top of the heap after the primary voting had begun.

As for the other candidates, I think Gephardt should have stayed in the House rather than throwing in the towel on trying to win back a Democratic majority there. Edwards ticked me off by deciding to give up his Senate seat in South Carolina. Lieberman is a tad too conservative for my taste. Graham would be a great candidate if he could get traction, but that will probably only happen if several other folks stumble badly (i.e. Gary Hart). Kucinich, Mosely Braun and Sharpton are not serious candidates.

Wesley Clark's entry into the race adds another level of intrigue for me. The biggest drawback here is his lack of political experience. E.J. Dionne has an excellent article in the WashPo today discussing that topic. I have to be fair in admitting that if Clark had announced that he was a Republican, his lack of experience is one of the first things I would have jumped on. So I would need to rectify that in some way before I could fully commit to his candidacy. That being said, however, I would support almost any one of these candidates in a general election matchup with Bush.

Kennedy's Complaint

Sen. Ted Kennedy is being attacked today for making what I believe are some very obvious points about the Bush administration's conduct before and during the war in Iraq.

Kennedy essentially said that the case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud and that the Bush administration relied on "distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence" to justify their case for war.

Based on what we know now, there is little that Bush partisans can say to refute this statement.

Now, I think that Kennedy took his partisan attack a little too far when he said that the whole case for war had been "made up in Texas" as a way to help Republicans on the political front. I have no doubt that the timing of the attack - that the rush to build up support for the war just prior to the mid-term elections last year - was politically motivated. However, I also accept that most if not all members of the Bush team truly believed that taking out Saddam was a good and necessary thing.

The real question is not whether Saddam needed to be overthrown, but how we went about doing it - hyping up dubious allegations (i.e. Lying) to make the threat from Iraq seem more serious than it was; and forging ahead with a pre-emptive attack without the support of the large majority of our traditional allies; and refusing to curtail Bush's massive budget-busting tax cuts to help pay for the invasion and its aftermath.

But Kennedy also made another allegation that hasn't gotten much attention up to this point and is something I find very interesting. He said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month and went on to says that he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops.

I'd like to see some of the Bush administration's defenders address that issue rather than just casting aspersions at Sen. Kennedy.

Don't Let It Be

Here's one for my Christmas wish list! The Beatles' "Let It Be" minus Phil Spector's syrupy string arrangements. This is a dream come true for all those Beatles fans who wished that Spector had just let it be to begin with.
Anyone who has the Beatles Anthology CDs has already had a taste of this with the stripped down version of "Let It Be" with just Paul and his piano.

Ritter's ratings

I'm not surprised that ABC decided to continue production of the sitcom "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter." Considering the amount of publicity the show has received in the wake of star John Ritter's sudden death, it is sure to receive high ratings for the episodes filmed just prior to his death. The high ratings will continue for the first several episodes after that in which they will have the sitcom characters react to Ritter's death, however, interest will begin to wane after that and ABC will cancel the series before the year is out. That's my prediction, anyway.

By the way, before all of this happened I had no idea that John Ritter was the youngest son of Tex Ritter.

No tax cut left behind

An interesting article in the Washington Post today
about the No Child Left Behind legislation. School officials are quoted saying the program's goals of 100 percent student proficiency on standardized tests are unrealistic. I have to sympathize with Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) who notes that setting a goal any lower than 100 percent sends a message that is OK to let some students fall overboard.

But it is not the goals of the program that are the real problem here. The No Child Left Behind Law was a bi-partisan effort that combined George W.'s insistence on standardized testing with Sen. Kennedy's push for more education funding. But guess which side is getting the short shrift.

Critics of the law, such as George Mason University educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey, are less hard on its goals than on what they say is a severe lack of money. For the 2004 fiscal year, congressional Democrats want the $32 billion initially authorized for No Child Left Behind, rather than the $22.6 billion Bush has requested.

"If you want to try to get poor kids to high proficiency, you take the JFK man-on-the-moon-in-a-decade approach and fund the program adequately," Bracey said. "To succeed, this task needs an $87 billion supplemental appropriation more than the rebuilding of Iraq needs an $87 billion supplemental appropriation."

If we funded our public education system the same way we fund our military programs we would have the strongest education system in the world to match our strongest military in the world.

Mass graves ignored in 1988 are propaganda fodder in 2003

The Associated Press has a story today
that fails to provide the reader with some essential background information:

"Secretary of State Colin Powell visited a mass grave Monday to highlight perhaps the single biggest human-rights abuse of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime - the chemical weapons murder of some 5,000 people in March 1988."

What the story fails to tell us is how the U.S. responded to this "single biggest human-rights abuse" at the time it happened.

How did we respond? We ignored it, of course.

You see, in 1988, the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran because our biggest concern at that time was the fundamentalist regime headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

ABC News has a good historical summary of that forgotten period of our history here.

"There was real concern in Washington that this Islamic revolution in Iran would catch fire, and would scorch the rest of the region," said Kenneth Pollack, a former Iraq analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council, "that the Iranians would go on a march and roll through Baghdad and into Riyadh and into the Saudi oil fields and effectively be able to corner the world's oil market."

So we were more concerned with securing the world's oil market in 1988 than we were with a few thousand Kurdistan casualties. The Kurdistan massacre took place in March 1988 - a very inconvenient time for the U.S. which was at the same time preparing to help strike a critical blow to Iran just one month later that would help Iraq to win the war...

"Soon after the United States began supplying Saddam's Iraq with critical intelligence, the American military launched an active — and secret — campaign against Iran. U.S. helicopters attacked Iranian gunboats from a secret platform in the Gulf. And on April 18, 1988, the U.S. military destroyed much of the Iranian navy just as Iraq launched a major offensive."

1988 is also the year that George Herbert Walker Bush became president. How did Bush Sr. respond to "the single biggest human-rights abuse of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime" ?
Why, he "signed a secret executive order, National Security Directive Number 26, that called for even closer ties between the United States and Iraq."

Update:

The E-N ran another version of this story Tuesday from the Washington Post that provides just a smidgen of background info.

"Although the United States condemned the Iraqi government's use of chemical weapons as a "grave violation" of international law, the Reagan administration did not sanction Hussein, who was regarded as a U.S. ally because of his war against Iran's Islamic revolutionary government. At the time, the State Department said there were "indications" that Iran had used chemical artillery shells against Iraqi positions in the area.

Asked today about the U.S. response, Powell, who was Reagan's national security adviser, told reporters that "there was no effort on the part of the Reagan administration to either ignore it or not take note of it." But when speaking to about 250 relatives of victims, Powell said there should have been a more aggressive response."

Notice how at the time that the massacre occurred, the Reagan administration tried to blame it on Iran.
The story also points out that Powell was "Reagan's national security adviser" at the time. Do you think he believed at the time that Iran was responsible for the gas attack rather than Hussein?
Today, Powell says there was no effort to ignore the attacks, but what about efforts to cover them up and mislead the American people about their origins?
Of course, we only covered up the attacks temporarily. We were more than happy to uncover them a few years later in time to drum up support for Gulf War I and now Powell is forced to use them again since there are no contemporary examples of WMD usage in Iraq that he can point to.

The other P.C. - Patriotically Correct

I'm glad to see that Johnny Depp is enjoying box office success this week despite the barbs that have been cast his way following an interview in which he allegedly compared the U.S. to "a dumb puppy that has big teeth" in reference to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Oh my!!! How dare Johnny Depp have the audacity to criticize the U.S.! And what's worse, he did so from his home in FRANCE!!!! The horror!!

Depp tried to clarify his remarks a few days later, saying that they were taken out of context, and apologized to anyone who may have been offended - but of course all to no avail.

We Americans are easily offended by such things these days and we relish the opportunity to pass judgments and condemnations onto those who are not adequately P.C. (Patriotically Correct). We have no use for such wussy notions as "forgiveness," so his apologies will fall on deaf ears.

Already, it seems that Depp has dethroned Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks as the latest poster child for the new PC revolution. Just check out the lovely comments thread from the folks at Free Republic.

Still at the top of his game

Johnny Cash, Country Music's Bare-Bones Realist, Dies at 71

Some of the first music I can remember listening to as a child was Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison which my dad had on reel-to-reel tape. Most of the songs were over my head at that age, but for some reason the song “25 Minutes To Go” about a man counting down the minutes to his execution really stuck with me.
Many years later when I was in high school I remember being moved upon first hearing his tribute song "Ira Hayes" about the Native American WWII veteran who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.

Norbizness has one of the better tributes to Cash by simply posting the lyrics to his song “The Man in Black.” I'm not sure if there was ever a more radical protest song in our nation's history.

Check out Cash’s last work the music video - for his cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” which won all kinds of accolades this year from MTV.

Government growth explodes under Bush

I nearly missed this article in the Wall Street Journal while I was on my maternity leave last week:

Despite Bush’s Credo, Government Grows
As Conservatives Groan, Study Cites Increase of Employees on Federal Contracts, Grants

from the Sept. 4 issue, page A4.

“The Bush Administation has brought the era of big government back...”

According to this study from the Brookings Institution, the number of full-time employees on government contracts and grants has zoomed by more than 1 million people since 1999. The study found that the growth during the Bush years has occurred in such diverse areas as the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administation - not just in areas such as homeland security and defense.

The study has upset a number of conservative scholars who bemoan the increase in the government’s size since Bush took office.
“We are now seeing the biggest expansion in government since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House,” says Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth. “It is pretty much an across-the-board mushrooming of government. We have the biggest education, foreign aid and agriculture bills in history, and bigger expansions are on the agenda.”

Heritage Foundation economist Daniel Mitchell called the growth in government under Bush “very troubling for conservatives.”
“That is quite discouraging,” Mitchell said, “particularly since we made so much progress under Clinton in reducing the size of government.”

Mitchell notes that government was much better contained under President Clinton, in part because he faced a skeptical Republican Congress.

But now, with Republicans running the whole show, government growth is exploding. And that wouldn’t be so bad except that Bush blindly refuses to acknowledge and pay for the growth and thus his fiscally irresponsible tax cuts are causing the deficit to roar out of control.

So if you want to get the nation back to some semblance of fiscal sanity the answer is obvious - elect a Democratic president in 2004 (again), either that or put the Democrats back in control of the Congress.

More Bush lies exposed by the WSJ

The ever invaluable Wall Street Journal has another story today exposing the Bush administrations "selective use of intelligence" during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
This time it is the Bush team's claim that Iraq had developed drones - unmanned aircraft - capable of carrying chemical and biological weapons that is being called into question.

"The Air Force, which has expertise in designing such unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, was never convinced Baghdad had developed drones capable of effectively distributing chemical and biological weapons as the White House claimed.
"But the Air Force dissent, attached to a classified report last October on the Iraqi threat, was kept secret even as the president publicly made the opposite case last fall prior to Congress voting on the war resolution."

Just more confirmation of the Bush administration's pattern of covering up, hiding or ignoring evidence when it doesn't match up with their predetermined notions. That is the danger that is inherent in a president who is driven by ideology rather than reason.

Why I won't be moving to Alabama anytime soon

No More Mr. Nice Blog has a good rundown on the sad situation in Alabama where a Republican governor tried to do something to fix the state's miserably regressive tax system only to get slapped down by the very people he was trying to help.

"...austerity measures needed to balance the budget were likely to include cuts of more than 20 percent at some agencies, steep cuts in money for school textbooks and supplies and cuts in money for already overcrowded prisons that could force officials to grant early parole to thousands of nonviolent felons."

Susan Pace Hamill, the Alabama law professor and divinty school graduate who influenced Gov. Riley's change of heart on taxes, summarized the arguments for the change in tax structure here.

She notes that:

"The moral well being of a society is judged on how the powerful treat "the least of these" and Alabama miserably fails this test."

And it looks like Alabama will continue to fail this test for the foreseeable future.

Bloom County is back!!

Well, sort of. At least a Sunday-only version of the strip featuring Opus the Penguin is scheduled to return to the funny pages by Nov. 23, according to the Washington Post.

I hope he brings back all of the characters and not just Opus and Bill the Cat. I want to see Milo and Binkley, Steve Dallas and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all the other great characters. That was the weak point with Outland, Berke Breathed's post-Bloom County strip. He just let all of these other great characters he had built up just fall away.

D.C. stands for Disenfranchised Citizens

Imagine for a moment that we are in an alternate universe where Democrats are in control of the U.S. House of Representatives. In this alternate universe, the U.S. Congress controls the budget for a tiny state whose population is overwhelmingly Republican. Now, imagine the outrage that would be heard if the Democrats in Congress were to use their budgetary powers over this group of people to experiment with various liberal social programs - perhaps they require that all the schools in this state distribute free condoms beginning in junior high school, or maybe they force all of the schools to adopt a non-graded, open format where students study at their own pace with no time or age restrictions limiting how quickly or how slowly they advance. Imagine that the Democrats can force this tiny state to serve as its guinea pig despite the unanimous objections of its political representatives.

OK, now back to reality. In the real universe, the Republicans control Congress and the tiny state that they are experimenting with isn’t really a state - it’s the District of Columbia, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. And the social experiment that the Republicans are trying to force onto the District is school vouchers.

“The plan to spend $10 million on vouchers for District of Columbia children, an idea supported by President George W. (Leave No Child Behind) Bush, was approved only narrowly, by a vote of 205-203. Four Democrats voted for it, with 201 Republicans.”

The political representatives for D.C. are opposed to the voucher plan because it would not help their public school system. Instead it would give a select few students the opportunity to bail out of the public school system, but since all of the public school children cannot be absorbed by local private and religious schools most will be (ahem) LEFT BEHIND!!!

The District’s non-voting representative in the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, tried to have the voucher legislation stricken from the budget bill, but her efforts failed after a tie vote of 203-203 - a decision that she was not allowed to vote on!!!

I’m not sure that I would support D.C. statehood as opposed to having the Disctrict absorbed by an existing state- most likely Maryland - but situations like this just scream out the need for some resolution to the disenfranchisement of more than 600,000 people.

Edwards goes to the top of my bad list

Sen. John Edwards is sinking Democratic hopes of regaining control of the Senate in the near future. Edwards of North Carolina has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2004 so that he can cocentrate on his long-shot bid for the presidency.
Since N.C. doesn't have a Lyndon Johnson rule that allows someone to run for president and senator at the same time, Edwards only other option was to drop out of the presidential race.

It is very unfortunate and highly irritating that Edwards did not pursue that option. He has no chance whatsoever to win the party's nomination for president and isn't even at the top of anyone's list as a vice-presidential prospect. His decision not to seek re-election gives the Republicans a wide open shot at picking up another Senate seat to go along with the ones being vacated by retiring South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings and retiring Georgia Sen. Zell Miller.

There is some speculation that Edwards was afraid he could not win a second senate term, but if that is the case what makes him think he can win the presidency?
In the past, U.S. Senators have used presidential bids to build up their name recognition and political clout - at least, that is what I saw with Sens. Paul Simon, John McCain, Al Gore, Richard Lugar, Arlen Specter, Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey - just to name a few - none of whom gave up their senate seats to run. It's just not worth it.

The Death Penalty: No room for forgiveness

The execution of anti-abortion nutcase Paul Hill shows very well the futility of the death penalty. Hill was a deeply disturbed individual and a danger to society. He needed to be locked away from society, but there was no reason why he or anyone else should have been executed.

The death penalty serves but one and only one purpose in our society - vengance. It accomplishes nothing else that cannot also be accomplished by life imprisonment. It does not deter other people from committing crimes and it allows no room for correcting errors when an innocent person is put to death.

I think it is sadly ironic that a nation that claims to be overwhelmingly "Christian" is so strongly in favor of the death penalty. After all, Jesus was himself a victim of a state-sponsored execution. Jesus flatly rejected the "eye for an eye" values of the Old Testament and even stood up to a mob at one point to stop an execution. When Jesus prevented the stoning of Mary Magdalene, he did not do so because he thought she was innocent of the crime. He defended her despite her guilt. Forgiveness was the key to Christ's message and we are a nation that is very short on forgiveness.

There are many ways to argue about the death penalty - both secular and religious. But I think it all comes down to a person's philosophy of life which can be boiled down to the simple question "Why are we here?" If you believe as I do that we are created by a loving God then you have to then ask what is it that he expects us to do while we are here. The best answer that I can come up with is to love God and we do this by loving his creation - i.e. one another. The more we love one another, the more we show our love for God and the closer we come to God. A very simplistic formula, I know, but it works for me.

Assuming that God wants everyone to reach this goal while they are here and knowing that God is very big on forgiveness, I have come to the conclusion that we should not be in the business of shortening the lifespan of people who are probably the furthest away from reaching that goal. Maybe this person would have turned their life around in prison when they were 40, but we executed them when they were 25. Maybe some people think this is just because out of a need for vengance they want this person to be separated from God (or in their minds "Go to Hell) rather than have the opportunity to turn their life around (after all, their victim(s) did not have that opportunity). But don't you think that God takes all of this into consideration? Wouldn't a loving and forgiving God be more likely to give someone a second chance when their life was artificially shortened by execution, murder, war, plague or accident? It seems only fair to me.

That is why we need to get out of the business of executing criminals and leave matters of vengance up to God.

Random Notes redux

My friend Mark Harden should be pleased this week to see that his browbeating campaign to persuade Express-News Insight Editor Joe Holley to add more conservative voices to the weekly Random Notes section of the Sunday paper has been very successful.

This week the right-left balance is a strikingly conservative 7-2 if you include the throw-away Martin Luther King quote at the end as a liberal statement.

First we have a quote from a New York Times war correspondent making the highly suspect statement that there were "probably fewer people (who) died in the six weeks since this war began than would have died if Saddam Hussein's killing machine had gone about its daily business." Of course, we still don't know how many people actually died during the U.S. bombing campaign and invasion so there is no solid figure to use for comparison. And while Hussein's regime was without a doubt corrupt and murderous, are we to really believe that they killed people at such a high rate for such a long period of time. Wouldn't they have depleted the nation's population at some point? Were they killing that many people everyday back when Dick Cheney and Halliburton were over there making millions rebuilding the country's infrastructure?

The second quote by the New York Times' Thomas Friedman is a right-wing pot shot at Palestinian statehood - something even Bush believes needs to happen.

Then we have quotes from Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, right-wing blogger Mickey Kaus, Gov. Rick Perry and a Republican County Commissioner from Gillespie County.

The only real quote from the left is by the chairman of the Tejano Democrats trashing a Republican attack ad that aired on radio stations in the Valley.

Perhaps Holley is trying to make up for past instances where the random quotes have too heavily favored the liberal viewpoint, but nevertheless, Mark would not seem to have much to complain about this time around.

Back to Work

Blogging has been exceedingly light (actually non-existent) this past week as I have been discovering firsthand the difficulties involved in doing much of anything when tending to the needs of a week-old baby. The rest of the world suddenly seems less important at times like this, but I will try to get back into the groove of daily posting this week.

I am eternally grateful to my employer for giving me two weeks of "paternity leave" to stay at home with my son. But it is still a very short time and I am exceedingly jealous of my wife who will stay home with the baby for 12 weeks. But I suppose she earned that privilege after going through nine months of pregnancy and a C-section.

Still, it would be nice to have more time that I could take off. I think there is a lot of merit to the arguments made by Juliet B. Schor in her book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who says that Americans should have four weeks of paid vacation every year as a rule.

Happy Labor Day!