Kerry vs. Edwards on the Issues

The New York Times has a summarazation of where Kerry and Edwards stand on the “issues.”

I have to admit that I have not read either candidate’s position papers. But looking at the Times’ summary they don’t appear to be too far apart on most things. Here is a rundown:

Kerry vs. Edwards

Issue: Abortion

Both support abortion rights, however Edwards for whatever reason did not vote on the controversial effort to ban the “partial birth abortion” procedure, while Kerry opposed the ban. Kerry has also said he will not appoint abortion opponents to the Supreme Court while Edwards has apparently not taken a position on this.

Being from Massachusetts, I’m sure that Kerry has to be more specific about his pro-choice views while Edwards coming from a southern conservative state would probably rather just say he is pro-choice and leave it at that. I don’t see this as a defining issue between the two.

Issue: Death Penalty

Edwards supports it; Kerry does not. However, Kerry now hedges and says he would make an exception in cases of terrorism, whatever that means.

This is still not a defining issue. I’m personally opposed to the death penalty, but it would not be a major factor in how I cast my vote.

Issue: The Economy

Edwards is proposing to give companies that make products in the U.S. a 10 percent tax cut while punishing companies that send jobs overseas by scaling back their tax breaks. This sounds like a promising plan, but I have no idea how it would work in practice. What about companies that have plants in the U.S. and overseas?
Edwards also proposes a $5,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Not sure if that would really make a difference in homeownership rates. It might just encourage folks to buy more expensive homes and/or get more upgrades.

Kerry wants to send $50 billion to the states “to create jobs.” I’d have to see some more specifics on that one. He also wants to give out manufacturing tax credits (how many do we already have?) and “crack down on trade violations” (how much do we spend on enforcement now?). Finally, he is promising to cut the deficit in half in five years. I find this promise to at least be more credible than George W.’s

Issue: Education

Edwards wants to give every student a free year of tuition at the public university or community college of their choice provided that they agree to do 10 hours of community service every week.
Frankly, I think this sounds like a logistical nightmare. Who is going to coordinate all these community service projects for all these thousands of students across the country? Who is going to make sure they don’t pull a George W. Bush and just not show up for their community service each week? And how much is it going to cost to make up for eliminating 1/4th of the tuition revenues at every public college?
Edwards is also proposing to increase teacher pay and breakup large high schools, which are local and state issues.

Kerry is proposing tax credits on first $4,000 of tuition for every year of college. As well as a $3.2 billion community service plan for high school students that would let them qualify for equivalent tuition at their four-year public colleges. I would have the same questions and reservations about his proposals.

Issue: Gay Marriage

Both say they are opposed to same-sex marriage, but support domestic partner benefits.
Bush is obviously trying to make this into a bigger issue for the campaign. I would like to see the Democratic candidate stand up to him on this one from a civil rights perspective, but that may be too much to hope.

Issue: Health Care

Edwards wants to provide government-subsidized health insurance for all Americans younger than 21 and cover half of nation’s uninsured at a cost of $590 billion over 10 years. Also proposes expanding the nursing work force by 100,000 (not sure how you do that) and wants to restrict drug company advertising.

Kerry wants to expand the insurance system used by federal employees to cover all private citizens; he would cover 61 percent of the uninsured at a cost of $890 billion over 10 years.

It’s amazing to me that George Bush has managed to run up such a huge deficit so quickly without providing health coverage for any of the nation’s uninsured. At least Edwards and Kerry aren’t pushing the elderly to invest all their Social Security savings in the stock market.

Issue: Iraq

Both voted to authorize the use of force and both voted against the administration’s $87 billion funding package.

Contrary to Republican claims, these votes are not necessarily contradictory. First, authorizing the use of force does not mean they approve the way the president decided to use that power (cherry-pick intelligence reports, ignore the U.N. weapons inspectors, thumb his nose at our allies), and secondly, opposing the dishonest way Bush sought to fund the war doesn’t mean the only other option was to provide no funding for our troops.

Issue: Taxes

Both would eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for people making more than $200,000. Edwards would increase capital gains rates for those making more than $300,000 while providing tax cuts for new parents, new home owners, and the working poor.
Kerry would support middle-class tax cuts for college, child care and health care.

These are standard Democratic positions that were proposed as alternatives to Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts for the last several years.

Issue: Trade

Finally another issue where they can disagree. Edwards wasn’t in the Senate when NAFTA was up for a vote but he says he would have opposed it. Kerry supports NAFTA. Both want to see environmental and labor standards added to trade agreements. Both voted in favor of having China join the WTO as a full trading partner.

Conclusion:

There’s really not a lot of substantive differences between these two guys which is why everyone focuses on things like image and style. I agree that Edwards comes across as the more charismatic and dynamic speaker, but Kerry has the greater stature and more experience.

The problem with Edwards is that he is inexperienced on the world stage. I can remember Kerry during the Iran-Contra investigations 20 years ago. Edwards hasn’t even finished his first term in the Senate. Even Bush finished his first term as governor and got himself re-elected before running for president. And the other problem with Edwards, unfortunately, is his lack of military experience. He has even less military experience than Bush, who at least had four “active” years in the National Guard.

So I will be casting my vote for Kerry in the March 9 primaries here in Texas.

Kerry 55% - Bush 43%

Yikes! Those are landslide numbers in the new CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll.

You know, it’s not too late for the Republicans to start a Dump Bush/Draft McCain movement!

Top 10 Bush AWOL excuses

Reposted from ETALKINGHEAD

Top 10 responses by Bush apologists to the AWOL charge:

1. Bush got an honorable discharge so that proves he did everything he was required to do and nothing else matters. (But why did he blow off his flight physical in ‘72?) LaLaLaLaLaLaLa!!! I’m not listening anymore! LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa!!!

2. No one ever formally charged him with being AWOL so you can’t say that he was AWOL.

3. A couple of Bush’s buddies remember him saying he was leaving to go to guard drill during the Alabama senate campaign. That’s good enough for us.

4. Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed, who commanded the Alabama guard unit, says that although he never saw Bush or knew of any Texan in his unit in 1972, he wasn’t physically present on base the whole time so he could have just missed him.

5. A torn document that the Bush campaign dug up in 2000 proves that Bush really only missed 7 months of guard drill and then made up for it in a burst of drills right before getting his discharge 8 months early so he could go back to MBA school.

6. This all happened a long time ago and shouldn’t count anymore. The only thing that matters is that we got Saddam.

7. Bush had been trained to fly a plane that was being phased out by the military so he wasn’t going to go to Vietnam anyway.

8. Flying airplanes is dangerous even if you’re not getting shot at.

9. Clinton got away with it, why can’t Bush?

10. Oh yeah!? Well, at least he didn’t protest against the war with Jane Fonda!

Bush's business record redux

I agree with Josh Marshall’s sentiments
today:

“Given the president's record as a businessman, and since he's now run the country hopelessly into debt, isn't it about time he sells the country off to some rich friends who will swallow the loss so he can move on to greener pastures?”


Yep. And those rich friends unfortunately are our children and grandchildren who will be stuck with Bush’s tab this time.

Bush and that AWOL thing

No matter how they try to spin it, Bush's National Guard Service
looks pretty suspect today. I don't care whether you call it AWOL or not, but the fact that Bush didn't feel it necessary to show up for drills for 6 months (best case scenario), a year (most likely scenario), or 18 months (worst case scenario) is pretty pathetic. The fact that he failed to show up to take his flight physical and was thus grounded for the final portion of his guard duty is an outrage in and of itself. What was he doing wasting the military's time and money learning how to fly if he wasn't going to be serious about it?


I think Bush has a lot of explaining to do about what went on during that final year and a half of his guard service and the infamous Torn Document just isn't cutting it.

Bush's busted budget

When President Bush took office three years ago, the Congessional Budget Office (CBO) was estimating the country would accumulate a surplus of $5 trillion by 2011. Today, the CBO is predicting a budget deficit of $4.3 trillion by 2011. That is a difference of $9.3 trillion - a remarkable testament to President Bush's fiscal leadership. (Thanks to Center for American Progress for the figures.)

Bush's latest budget has a $521 billion deficit. And that is only if we pull all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of September because Bush provides no funding in his budget beyond that point.

Bush makes the laughable claim that we can half the deficit by 2009 by curtailing non-defense and non-homeland security spending. But that only makes up about 18 percent of the total budget pie. And these programs include health research, education, housing, law enforcement, the State Department, environmental restoration and veterans programs. Is that where Bush plans to make all of his cuts?

The real problem of course is Bush's massive tax give away to the rich. By making these irresponsible tax cuts permanent, Bush would ensure that the federal government will be completely bankrupt after he leaves office - something the radical right would no doubt like to see happen.

Possibly the funniest thing in the Bush budget is his decision to give a paltry $18 million increase to the National Endowment for the Arts, something that has greatly upset some of his far-right supporters here in the blogosphere.

Owen Courreges digs up some of the NEA's greatest hits to express his outrage. It's funny how conservatives' obsession with these images has given them a hundred times more exposure than all of the other non-offenisve art sponsored by the NEA combined.

Owen at Boots and
Sabers feels compelled to restate why he is still a devout Bush acolyte in spite of Bush's "abysmal failure" at shrinking the size of government.

And then there is Joe Kelley at The Sake Of Argument who has gone so far as to say that he will not cast another vote for this RINO (Republican in name only) president in response to the NEA funding increase.

I certainly hope this is a trend that will keep growing.

Pixar might regret dumping Disney

It's clear enough that the Pixar/Disney breakup is especially bad news for Disney, which hasn't seen any of its own animated films hit big since "The Lion King."

Pixar has been dominating the animation field lately with blockbuster hits such as Toy Story I & II, Monster's Inc. and Finding Nemo. So it would seem that Disney would be the big loser in this deal. But I can't help but think that Pixar might be shooting itself in the foot as well. As good as the Pixar movies have been, who is to say that their mega-box office success wasn't spurred on by the wholesome Disney glow that surrounded each release? Without the Disney stamp of approval, would the films have performed as well as they did? It is clear that quality is not a guarantee of success at the box office.

Without Disney, I'm afraid Pixar will find its films faring about as well as "Ice Age" or "Antz," which is to say not badly, but far from the huge moneymakers that they have been.

Maybe if we are lucky, the Disney board will can Michael Eisner and then lure Pixar back into the fold before it is too late.

I joined a group blog

I've been invited to join a group blog called eTALKINGHEAD which features political commentary, analysis and opinion. There are about a dozen contributors so far and I'm one of just two Democrats in the bunch.
I'm not sure why or how I came to be picked to join the group, but I was flattered by the offer and am enjoying the challenge of trying to balance out a mostly conservative site. Each blogger was invited to select a book from Amazon.com to feature on the site so I chose Molly Ivin's latest work "Bushwhacked" which I have an autographed copy of.

Academy Award reactions

I was hoping Lord of the Rings would score 14 nominations, but I’m happy with 11 provided that they carry through and win most of them. Still, I am bitterly disappointed that Rings did not receive any acting nods, not even a supporting role for Sean Astin as had been predicted. But Rings wasn’t the only Best Picture nominee to go without acting nominations this time. In fact, both Master and Commander and Seabiscuit are in the same boat.
I thought that Russell Crowe being passed over in the Best Actor category was a bigger surprise than Nicole Kidman being left out of the Best Actress category. But I was delighted to see both Johnny Depp and Bill Murray make the cut. I know this is supposed to be Sean Penn’s year for his role in Mystic River, but I would love to see Depp walk away with the trophy.
Considering the all around snubbing that Cold Mountain received I’m surprised that Jude Law still got the Best Actor nod instead of Crowe, although I would have put Viggo Mortensen in that slot for his portrayal of Aragorn.
I’m happy with all of the Best Picture nominees this time, especially Rings and Seabiscuit. And I’m actually looking forward to seeing the ones I’ve missed - Master and Commander, Mystic River and Lost in Translation.

WMDs - "I don't think they existed"

"I don't think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties.” – David Kay

So Bush’s chief weapons inspector for Iraq has finally confirmed what Hans Blix and the United Nations had been saying before the war even began. There were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we invaded and there had probably not been since shortly after the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. And there were no programs underway in the 90’s to produce such weapons.
So there was no imminent threat. The sanctions and the U.N. inspections were working and the French and the Germans and the Russians were right all along.
And as for those 500-plus U.S. troops who died (and continue to die everyday) supposedly defending the world from this threat, well, never mind. We’ve wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives chasing after a toothless dictator, a regional thug who posed no threat to other nations while we’ve allowed Al Quaeda to regroup and plot their next attack.

Even Colin Powell is finally conceding that there probably weren’t any WMDs, although he continues to make lame arguments for why we had to go in and invade:

"We had questions that needed to be answered. What was it?" he asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing? What we demanded of Iraq was that they account for all of this and they prove the negative of our hypothesis."

Prove the negative of our hypothesis? How are they supposed to do that? I do believe that Iraq said repeatedly before the war that they had no WMDs. How do you prove that you don’t have something? You show them nothing?

I wish that our “So Called Liberal Media” here in the U.S. would hold Bush Co. accountable for these lies the same way the British press is doing to Tony Blair.

Remembering Captain Kangaroo

In honor of Bob Keeshan, aka. Captain Kangaroo, who passed away today I am reprinting below a column that I wrote nearly 10 years ago for the Kerrville Daily Times.


A wake for Capt. Kangaroo
By Mike W. Thomas

Kerrville Daily Times, Sept. 7, 1995

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the “Captain Kangaroo Show” which used to air weekday mornings on CBS from 1955 through 1984. Captain Kangaroo was right up there in importance with Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighborhood of the television programs that I grew up watching.
Oddly enough, CBS is making no plans to mark the occasion with any type of 40th anniversary special. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the circumstances behind the Captain’s departure from network television 11 years ago. Bob Keeshan, who delighted generations of children for 29 years as Captain Kangaroo, did not choose to retire in 1984; he was unceremoniously given the boot and his show was canceled by unsrcupulous and greedy network executives at CBS. It seems that the market for Mr. Green Jeans action figures did not appear to be very lucrative.
So why did the CBS executives suddenly turn greedy in 1984 after tolerating Keeshan’s program for so long? It wasn’t the television industry that changed then, it was the government. Up until 1982, the Federal Communications Commission required the three major networks to set aside so many hours a week for quality children’s programming. It did not matter if a gossipy morning chat show or a sleazy tabloid program might pull in more advertizing revenues - the FCC set down the rules and that was it.
But in 1981, President Ronald Reagan entered the picture with his misguided philosophy that all regulation of business is bad regardless of its intent or purpose. By 1982, he had managed to appoint a majority of his ideological cohorts to the FCC and they began changing the rules including the ones setting aside blocks of time for children’s programming. Mark Fowler, Reagan’s appointee to head the FCC, said television should be treated like any other business and not like a public resource. “Television is just another appliance,” he said. “It’s a toaster with pictures.”
Soon thereafter, the networks began unloading their educational children’s programming as fast as they could dump it. As related in Tom Engelhardt’s essay “The Shortcake Strategy,” the networks wasted no time in taking advantage of the new direction offered by Reagan’s FCC.
“In 1982, CBS fired 20 people doing alternative programming for children, dropped the children’s news show ‘30 Minutes,’ and began phasing out the low-rated ‘Captain Kangaroo.’ ABC cut ‘Animals, Animals, Animals’ and ‘Kids Are People Too,’ its low-rated Emmy-award-winning weekend shows, while NBC pulled the plug on ‘Project Peacock,’ its prime time children’s specials.”
Reagan’s FCC also did away with the rule limiting the number of minutes of commercial advertising the networks could air during children’s programs. This effectively opened the way for the 30-minute animated cartoon toy commercials that the networks have passed off as children’s television ever since - Smurfs, Care Bears, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, ad nauseum.
If you check the weekday morning time slots today where “Captain Kangaroo” once aired, you will now find such quality programming as Geraldo Rivera, Montel Williams and Jerry Springer. It’s ironic indeed that the deterioration of television programming to the trash we have today can be traced back to the policies set forth by the so-called “family values” conservatives of the 1980s.
Since then the prospects for quality children’s programming have continued to decline. The current batch of yahoos now running the U.S. Congress have set their sights on eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has become one of the last refuges for good programming in the vast wasteland of our public airwaves. You can be assured that without PBS, Mister Rogers and Sesame Street would have shared the same fate as Captain Kangaroo long ago.
Our public airwaves are a national resource that should have a modicum amount of regulation to insure some benefit to society as a whole; something more than just a means for media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner to make millions in profits. Instead, we are about to deregulate the industry even further.
An anniversary special for Captain Kangaroo? Don’t kid yourself. These days a wake would be more appropriate.


Needless to say, things have not changed much since I wrote this.

Borrow and spend

Bush Budget Pledge Falls Flat

That's the headline on Page A4 in the Wall Street Journal today (Jan. 22). The article talks about Bush's State of the Union pledge to hold spending increases to less than 4 percent next year. First it notes that Bush made essentially the same plege the year before and failed to live up to it. In fact, the 2003 budget increased by a whopping 15 percent making it the largest single year increase in more than three decades.

"During Mr. Bush's first three years in office, annual appropriations will have grown about 32 percent, to about $874 billion from about $664 billion..."

Back when Reagan was cutting taxes and spending money like a drunken sailor they tried to blame the exploding deficits on the Democratic-controlled House. They can't do that today, of course, since the Republicans have been in charge now for nearly 10 years.

The truth is that Republicans don't really care about the deficit. They load up spending bills with even more pork than the Democrats used to with the difference that they accompany it with big tax cuts. The Democrats used the tax and spend formula to promote their programs while Republicans prefer to borrow and spend. Republicans are anti-government as a rule so now that they are in charge they are trying to milk it for all it is worth while running it into the ground. And once the free ride is over they will just wash their hands of it and walk away. They got theirs and everyone else will just be out of luck.
I don't believe the crockodile tears being shed by some conservatives over the budget problems. If they are so concerned about it why aren't they running somebody against Bush who can balance the budget?
And grow the economy? Someone like Bill Clinton....

Howard Dean: Decoy candidate

The truth about the Democratic presidential race can now be revealed. Howard Dean was a decoy from the start meant to distract Republican opposition researchers from spending their time attacking the real nominee - Sen. John Kerry.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The plan worked brilliantly!

What did Bush pick? The Dixie Chicks?

I’m definitely closer to John Kerry and John Edwards when it comes to music.

“An Associated Press canvass of the candidates on what album they'd most like to pop into their CD players turns up gospel, opera, hip-hop, country and rock.
The rock fans are Wesley Clark, who likes Journey's "Greatest Hits"; Sen. John Edwards, "The Essential Bruce Springsteen"; and Sen. John Kerry, the Beatles' "Abbey Road."
Howard Dean singled out the music of Grammy-winning hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean. Rep. Dennis Kucinich chose country's Willie Nelson (who has endorsed him), and Al Sharpton favored gospel's Yolanda Adams. Sen. Joe Lieberman's favorite album is "Sueno," by classical Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.”

Link via Atrios

State of the Union

As best as I could make out there were two key messages in Bush’s State of the Union Address last night:
1. The world is a better place because we captured Saddam Hussein.
(Never mind that Hussein was just a regional thug with no WMDs and no connection to 9-11)
2. The economy is improved because we cut taxes.
(Never mind the budget busting deficits that are now threatening to drag down the world economy, not just the U.S. And never mind that the so-called recovery has failed to produce enough jobs to keep up with normal growth, much less replace the millions of jobs that have been lost.)

Beyond that it was a rather bland and listless speech. Oh, there were a few other things he threw out like protecting the “sanctity of marriage” by making sure that gays and lesbians are shut out, and denouncing the use of steroids by professional athletes. But most everything else was pretty much unmemorable. He didn’t even bother to talk about his plan to send a manned mission to Mars while cutting NASA’s budget at the same time.

Maybe what Bush needed was a little more passion. He probably could have used some of that "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" left over from Howard Dean’s Iowa concession speech.

Update:

Someone put together a song using Howard Dean’s Iowa speech.

Link via Atrios

Guess I'm an expert

WOW!! Good job! You know as much about Middle Earth
as I do!! Finally, someone who knows Middle
Earth! Most people think they know everything
there is to know about Middle earth just by
watching the movies! HAH!! well keep up the
good work! ( I wouldn't be surprised if you are
learning elvish!! ) RATE MY QUIZ!!


*~* The TOUGHEST Lord Of The Rings Quiz *~* [with pictures!]
brought to you by Quizilla

Well that was a surprise finish

The Democratic race is suddenly interesting again.
When it was just starting out I figured I would be a John Kerry supporter. He seemed like the best candidate with Al Gore out of the running and he has a strong military background to counter Bush on foreign policy and national security.
But as recently as last week I still believed that Kerry's campaign was over and had all but conceded the race to Howard Dean (with an outside hope that Wesley Clark might come on strong in the stretch.)
Now things are entirely different with Kerry bouncing back from a near-death experience to take the lead and John Edwards earning a second look at Dean's expense. I'm still mad at Edwards for giving up his senate seat for what will almost certainly be a Republican pickup, but if he actually wins the race then more power to him.
It's too bad that Gephardt fell so far short of expectations. I wish he would have stayed in the House and continued to fight for a Democratic majority. I think he did the most honorable thing by withdrawing so quickly when things did not go as planned. Now I will be curious to see who he will endorse, if anyone.
I predict the next candidate to drop out will be Joe Lieberman. For what it's worth.

Hot air and little else make up Bush space proposal

Bush's Mission to Mars proposal on first glance is exciting. But on closer examination it is revealed as little more than election year posturing with no serious effort by the administration to follow up on Bush's rhetoric.
Bush Co. is proposing a whopping 5 percent increase in NASA's budget to finance its proposal or about $1 billion over five years. This is worse than a joke, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. A typical space shuttle flight costs $500,000, so we get the equivalent of two extra space shuttle launches over five years (saying nothing about the cost of building another space shuttle to replace the one that just blew up.)
Bush Co. has tried to spin this initiative as being comparable to what Kennedy did in 1961 when he launched the Apollo project. But Kennedy went much further than just flapping his jaw to back up his proposals. NASA's budget was doubled the very next year and then doubled again the year after that.
Bush Jr.'s proposal is more like the one his father made in 1989 on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. The first President Bush called for lunar colonies and a Mars expedition as well, but like his son he did nothing else to make it happen and the proposal went nowhere.
The Apollo missions cost about $150 billion in 2003 dollars which just shows how far off Bush's proposal is from reality.
If anything, Bush has made our prospects of going back to the moon or sending a manned mission to Mars much worse by bankrupting the government with his fiscally irresponsible trillion dollar tax cuts.

Television losing its grip

I just want to say how much I appreciate the major television networks and their efforts to help ween me from my nightly television viewing habits. By continuing to cancel shows that I watch regularly and failing to produce any new shows that are worth my time they are making it much easier for me to spend my evenings doing more productive things.

Just this past week they announced this is the last season for Frasier. And earlier they announced that there will be no more Friends. That frees up a whole hour right there. Unfortunately, I did get hooked recently by the new series Joan of Arcadia, so it’s pretty much a wash right now. But I’m fully expecting the networks will opt not to renew Joan of Arcadia next season since my decision to watch a show typically seals its doom in that respect.

Right now my weekly television viewing habits are pretty sparse. Here are the shows that I watch on a regular basis:
Monday: None
Tuesday: Frasier; Judging Amy
Wednesday: Star Trek: Enterprise
Thursday: Friends; ER
Friday: Joan of Arcadia
Saturday: None
Sunday: None

My wife and I just started watching Friends for the first time this season. I’m sure that was the final nail in the show’s coffin. But at least we have six years worth of re-runs that we have never seen.
I’m worried about Enterprise. The ratings have gone down and the show has become increasingly desperate to draw more viewers which usually only speeds its descent into oblivion.
ER is still going strong even with an almost entirely new cast. I was preturbed, however, when they decided to kill off my favorite character this season - Dr. Ray Romano, the arrogant and saracastic jerk with the heart of gold. Last season they decided to torture his character by chopping his arm off with a helicopter propeller and this season they wrapped it up by having a helicopter drop out of the sky to squash him like a bug.
Over at Judging Amy, the main character is continuing to torture every man who has the audacity to fall for her. This season she abandoned her latest beau at the alter - literally. And the show’s writers are continuing that Hollywood tradition of breaking up every marriage and keeping all the characters unhappily single. I suppose that locking a character into a loving relationship is a hardship on the poor writers who then cannot fall back on their bag of cliches for new plot developments.

Inattention to Deficits Disorder

The American Prospect recently said President Bush is suffering from a new malady called IDD - Inattention to Deficits Disorder.

Bush is going to request $1 billion over 5 years "to fund the start of a new American campaign in space intended to put a permanent base on the moon and land astronauts on Mars."
I think that is great. The only problem is that it is going to take a lot more money than that to accomplish those feats (hundreds of billions by some estimates) and Bush has put the nation in a position where it cannot afford to do these things. If this space campaign is to ever come to fruition, it is going to be up to some future administration to make it happen.

In the meantime, Bush is proposing to spend even more money ($1.5 billion) on a conservative campaign to "promote marriage" among low-income couples.

The International Monetary Fund has recently scolded the U.S. for its troubling debt warning that "the U.S. profligacy and its voracious appetite for credit will drive up interest rates around the world and threatens the global economic recovery."

"An economic slowdown and President George W. Bush's huge tax cuts conspired to swing the U.S. federal budget from a surplus of 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2000 to a deficit of about 4 percent in 2003. Add the states' own budget shortfalls and the country's trade deficit, the IMF report notes, and the United States faces an "unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country."

The Bush administration's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts are without a doubt the most fiscally irresponsible action by a U.S. president in our nation's history.

Things that would make a really happy new year

Here are some of the things that need to happen in 2004 to bring peace and harmony to the world and make everything right again.

* Pete Rose is reinstated by Major League Baseball and declared eligible for election to the Hall of Fame.
* The “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” wins the Oscar for Best Picture.
* Howard Dean wins the Democratic presidential nomination and selects Wesley Clark as his running mate.
* Texas A&M beats t.u. in the only football game that matters.
* The San Antonio Spurs repeat as NBA champions.
* The Supreme Court strikes down the Texas GOP’s re-redistricting scheme.
* The U.S. hands control of Iraq over to the new Iraqi governing body and gets our troops the hell out of there!
* George W. Bush loses the election - again. And this time the Supreme Court does not step in to declare him the victor on a technicality.

Defending Pete Rose

So far one of the best articles defending Pete Rose has appeared in the right wing journal National Review.

"Should Rose be in the Hall of Fame? Well, he has more hits than anyone, the most singles, he's second in doubles, fifth in runs scored, was rookie of the year, a 17-time All Star, and probably has as much of the requisite fame as any living baseball player. Fan polls regularly give him overwhelming approval margins, and when he appeared before Game 4 of the 2002 Series at a ceremony honoring to his record-breaking 4,192nd career hit as #6 on the list of the 10 most-memorable baseball moments, the crowd went wild. But Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has sat on Rose's 1997 application for reinstatement to eligibility. Reading some of the recent editorials on Rose you get the sense that baseball is not so much a sport as a brotherhood established to protect a rarefied morality. Witness Rose's horrible crime — he gambled. He committed the ultimate sin. He attacked the game's integrity; he "called into question the moral core of an entire industry."

Man, get over it. So he gambled. So what? Betting is synonymous with sports, and has been since ancient times. It is often a crime — increasingly less so these days — but also socially acceptable, within reason. For spectators, betting makes the game more interesting. It gives the outsider a chance to participate, to have more riding on the outcome than local bragging rights....

This is what has always bothered me about the Pete Rose case. He was suspended for gambling on his team — but there is no evidence to suggest, nor has it been charged, that he ever bet against his team or himself. Given Rose's personality, his dogged pursuit of achievement, his legendary single-minded focus on the game, it is impossible to believe that he ever would. It is true that a manager could change the way his team won in order to win a bet, but Rose has not been charged even with that. His bookie Ron Peters, stated that "Every time [Rose] called, he'd bet on the Reds if they were playing," which suggests that Rose was not betting on the Reds strategically and manipulating victories, but doing so all the time as a matter of course. This was his team, and he wagered his money in the same way he wagered his skill. For him, betting was just another arena of competition, another test of his ability and manhood. It was an act of arrogance, the monetizing of hubris. It was not particularly admirable behavior, and probably illegal, but it did not affect the game.

The standard anti-Rose line is that he is being kept out for the good of baseball, that his actions were an insult to the integrity of the game. Integrity? At these ticket prices? You're kidding me. Endorsements, free agency, television markets, licensed souvenirs and trinkets, skyboxes, not to mention multimillion-dollar contract negotiations and players strikes — the game is all about money. I have nothing against the profit motive, but let's not pretend baseball is some kind of morality play enacted for the benefit of a needy society. It is a business. And if MLB really wants to cleanse itself, I'd like to see some proof that no current Hall of Famer ever placed a bet of any kind that violated rule 21(d). Perhaps a full-scale investigation would restore the moral core of the industry. Or maybe the commissioner could just admit that Rule 21(d) is outdated and its punishment provisions are disproportionate. A lifetime ban? The average sentence for murder is 15 years."

I would have thought that defenders of Pete Rose would more likely come from the left since they tend to be more forgiving as a rule. But so far that hasn't been the case. Rose is being bashed on the left for lying about gambling just as hard as Clinton was bashed on the right for lying about sex. And in each case the punishment that is being foistered on them is far disproportionate to the crime - lifetime banishment/impeachment.

Bush's "Nixon in China" moment

Every president needs some big issue that they can go against the grain on.
Something that can be their 'Nixon in China' moment. It was said that Nixon
was able to muster the political support to open the doors to communist
China because he had such strong anti-communist credentials.
For Clinton, the issue was welfare reform. If a Republican had tried to go
in and make such huge sweeping changes in the welfare laws, he would have
met with much opposition.
Now George W. Bush has defined his Nixon in China issue as immigration reform.
It is obvious that he is doing this now during an election year to pander to the growing Hispanic vote. But I applaud his effort anyway because it is long overdue and it needs to be done. The illegal immigrants that I met when I was growing up were some of the hardest working people I have ever known. They provide a needed service in our society and they should be allowed to do so without the constant fear of deportation hanging over them. This will also free up our border patrol people to concentrate on the real problem areas - the drug smugglers and the terrorists coming across the borders.
I hope that Bush will stick to his guns and not give in to pressure from both the right and left to abandon this initiative.

Global warming and real science

Here is a great article on global warming by actual scientists. I found it in a recent issue of Chemical & Engineering News, one of those geeky science publications that I only know about because my wife is a Ph.D. chemist.

"Clearly, Earth is warming. Surface air temperature records, radiosonde (a small instrument package suspended below a balloon) data, and satellite observations all indicate that the planet has heated up over the past century. The 11 warmest years since the beginning of instrumental records have occurred since 1990. The warming observed in the Northern Hemisphere since 1900 has been greater than any other during the past millennium. At the same time, ocean temperatures have risen significantly since the mid-1950s.

Even without temperature records, there is strong evidence the planet is heating up. Mountain glaciers all over the world are retreating. Snow cover is decreasing. Snow is falling later in the season and melting earlier than it did a few decades ago.

Concomitant with the warming have been increases in cloud cover and precipitation at mid to high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and decreases in precipitation in the subtropics. Droughts are more severe in Asia and Africa and in some parts of the U.S. and Europe. Since 1900, sea levels have risen 10 to 20 cm, from thermal expansion and melting glaciers. El Niño events--the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific that affects weather patterns around the world--have apparently become more intense and more frequent."

The article is densely packed with real scientific data and takes pains to expose a lot of the myths that right-wing groups tout and which frequently end up in the popular media.

I was going to point out a particularly bad column by J. Francis Gardner that parrots some of those same right-wing myths (Part II on his Kyoto bashing series), but for some reason it is not online. Maybe the E-N decided to yank it for being so filled with wrong-headed and incorrect statements. But if that were the case, they still have not pulled the Jonathan Gurwitz' column that was quoting an article in the London Daily Telegraph that turned out to be based on forged documents. And of course Gurwitz has never offered a correction either.

Hall's partisan charade is over

U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall has finally ended his long charade and declared himself to be a Republican. The final straw came in 2002 when he would not even vote to support the Democratic House leader to be Speaker of the House. Once that line was crossed the party label was all but meaningless. I'm not sure when the last time Hall actually voted with the Democrats on anything. Probably not for a dozen years or longer. Hall always made Charlie Stenholm seem like a party loyalist.
It's too bad that Hall didn't take his wife's advice and just retire, but obviously the one Republican position that he still hasn't come to terms with is term limits.

Neil Bush - Worst presidential relative of all-time

Wow! In one day President Bush’s brother Neil made at least $798,218 on three stock trades in a small U.S. high-tech company where he had been a consultant, according to an AP report at CNN.com.
Remember how people gave Hillary Clinton such a hard time for her cattle future trades dating back to the late ‘70s? She supposedly used her connections to turn a $1,000 investment into $6,300 overnight. Scandalous!!!
Well, it would seem that what Neil Bush has done dwarfs that by about a hundred fold. So where is the outrage??

Neil Bush has lately been really busy
rehabilitating the reputations of Billy Carter and Roger Clinton. Neil makes those two embarrassing presidential brothers looks absolutely respectable these days.

As if the financial scandals weren’t bad enough, Neil has lately compounded things with his sleazy sexual escapades and the resulting break-up of his 22 year marriage.

Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

The Baseball Writers Association of America is casting its ballots this week for the 2004 Hall of Fame inductions. Once again Pete Rose is not even eligible for consideration which makes the whole exercise a sham in my opinion.
The Wall Street Journal’s Allen St. John wrote his predictions on Friday, Dec. 26 (not online) where he notes that Paul Molitor is considered to be a lock for induction this year. Why? Because he is No. 10 on the all-time hits list with 3,319 dingers during his career. That and I suppose because he must be pure as the driven snow in his personal life which we all know is today the most important consideration for Hall of Fame nominees.
I don’t have anything against Molitor, but did I mention that Pete Rose is No. 1 on the all-time hits list with 4,256 hits? It is true that Rose played for four more years than Molitor. But Rose had far exceeded Molitor’s career total by his 16th season in the majors.

Molitor’s career ran from 1978-98 during which time he had a .306 batting average; played in 2,683 games; and had 10,835 at bats to achieve 3,319 hits.

In 24 seasons, Rose had a career batting average of .303; played in 3,562 games; had 14,053 at bats and collected 4,256 hits.

St. John believes that in addition to Molitor, pitcher Dennis Eckersley should be a lock for induction this coming year while former Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg and Red Sox slugger Jim Rice are on the bubble.

You can go to the National Baseball Hall of Fame web site for a sample ballot and details on all the eligible nominees. You can vote for up to 10 people. I tend to be pretty liberal in who I think should be in the Hall and would like to see more people get in than are likely to.

Here is how I would cast my sample ballot:

Pete Rose (write-in)
Paul Molitor
Ryne Sandberg
Dave Concepcion (because I’d like to see all the players from the Big Red Machine era get inducted)
Dennis Eckersley
Bert Blyleven
Lee Smith
Steve Garvey
Rich (Goose) Gossage
Jim Rice

UPDATE

Former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent has an Op-Ed in the NYTimes today titled “The Confessions of Pete Rose” in which he offers further conditions he thinks should be met before the All-Time Hit King should be readmitted by Major League Baseball.

Vincent arbitrarily proposes a two-year transistion period for Rose’s reinstatement for no other reason than to limit Rose’s chances for induction to the Hall of Fame via the Baseball Writers Association to just one shot. During the transistion period, Rose would be forced to travel about the country wearing a Scarlet ‘G’ on his breast and confessing his sins to anyone who will listen.

Vincent’s spiteful article is filled with disparaging remarks and insults if not outright slander directed at Rose. Vincent compares him unfavorably with Saint Augustine who wrote a confessional and comes to the shocking conclusion that Rose is NOT a saint. It seems that Rose has not been remorsefull enough to suit Vincent.

Excuse me, Mr. Vincent. I know I’ve made this point many times before but let me say it one more time. It is the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Saints that we are talking about here.

Furthermore, as someone whose career in baseball was somewhat less than exemplary (Vincent was forced to step down as commissioner after just three years when he received a vote of no confidence from the baseball owners) one might think he would be a bit more forgiving of someone else’s faults.

A Musical Odyssey, Part 1

I’ve always loved listening to music for as far back as I can remember. My record collection today is a diverse conglomeration of rock, country, classical, jazz, new age, broadway, Christmas and contemporary folk music.
Some of my friends have said that my musical tastes are so broad that I really have no taste at all. Maybe so. But I can usually find some examples of music that I like in nearly every musical genre.
While there are some exceptions, I generally tend not to like opera, heavy metal, punk and rap music. I also have as yet to get terribly interested in blues music, although I acknowledge its influence on music that I do like.

Purely for my own edification, I have put together a mostly chronilogical list of the music that I have heard, absorbed and in many cases purchased throughout my life to chart how my musical tastes have developed over time.
My parents were naturally the earliest influences on my musical tastes. They gave me a portable record player when I was in about the second grade and passed down a few record albums:

Records passed down from my parents:
Elvis : A Legendary Performer Vol. 1
Glenn Campbell - By the Time I Get To Phoenix
Bobby Goldsboro - Autumn of My Life

The most significant of these was Elvis. The first song on the album is “That’s Alright Momma,” which is still to this day my all-time favorite Elvis song. When I was in the second grade, a kid at school asked everyone who their favorite singer was. For some reason - probably because I had just watched his variety show on TV the night before - I said my favorite was Donny Osmond. To my embarrassment that illicited laughter from my friends, so I quickly changed my mind and announced that my favorite singer was Elvis Presley. I was relieved when that seemed to be a satisfactory answer.
The Glenn Campbell album was good too, but a lot of the songs were depressing - especially the title track - and there were just a few upbeat numbers that I liked including “Hey, Little One” “Back in the Race” and “I’ll Be Lucky Someday”. But Glen Campbell came across as almost blissfully happy compared to the miserably depressing Bobby Goldsboro album which I hated. I think I may have listened to it once. Yuck! I guess you can’t say I didn’t have any taste back then.

Aside from those few albums, I was influenced by stuff I heard on the radio and more predominantly by the Saturday morning cartoon shows and the Variety shows that were on at the time. There was Donny and Marie Osmond, The Jackson Five, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Sonny and Cher and The Monkees.

A song I heard on the radio that stuck with me:
Spinning Wheel - Blood, Sweat & Tears

I was in college before I finally figured out who sang that song that had bounced around inside my head from my early childhood.

A few years later, when I was old enough to play with my dad’s reel to reel player, I discovered the music he had purchased or recorded when he was in Vietnam. I now have most of this music on CD.

From my Dad’s reel-to-reel collection:
Kingston Trio (miscellaneous)
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
Buddy Holly (miscellaneous)
Peter, Paul & Mary (miscellaneous)
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass (miscellaneous)
Zounds! What Sounds! - Dean Elliott and his Big Band
Ray Conniff Singers - We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Still my favorite Christmas album!)

I especially liked the humorous Kingston Trio songs such as “MTA”, “Bad Man’s Blunder” and “Merry Minuet”

The first record album I remember purchasing (well, my folks paid for it but I picked it out on my own) was a weird psychedelic rock album called Raiders - Collage which featured Mark Lindsey and Paul Revere (They would later become known as Paul Revere and The Raiders). One day my mom told me I could pick out a record album and I picked that one out almost at random. It had lots of fuzzy, distorted guitars, screaming lyrics and songs that in retrospect were kind of mediocre. But it was my album and I listened to it repeatedly.
Unfortunately, at some point I dropped the record and broke a 1-inch piece off that messed up the first songs on both sides - which also happened to be my favorite songs on the album.

The next album I got had an even bigger influence. It was a compilation of hit songs from 1974 (slightly abriged) by Ronco:
Ronco Presents: In Concert - Various Artists 1974
Side One
1. Rock the Boat--THE HUES CORPORATION
2. I'm Leaving It All Up To You--DONNY & MARIE OSMOND
3. Put Your Hands Together--THE O'JAYS
4. Takin' Care of Business--BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE
5. The Need To Be--JIM WEATHERLY
6. Come and Get Your Love--REDBONE
7. La La Peace Song--O.C. SMITH
8. Soledad--ERIC BURDON & JIMMY WITHERSPOON
9. The Streak--RAY STEVENS
10. Sweet Home Alabama--LYNYRD SKYNYRD
Side Two
11. You Little Trustmaker--THE TYMES
12. Hang On In There Baby--JOHNNY BRISTOL
13. Wildwood Weed--JIM STAFFORD
14. Radar Love--GOLDEN EARRING
15. I'm the Leader of the Gang--BROWNSVILLE STATION
16. The Other Side of Love--JIMMY WITHERSPOON
17. I'll Take You There--THE STAPLE SINGERS
18. In the Ghetto--MAC DAVIS
19. The Night Chicago Died--PAPER LACE
20. Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)--REUNION

My favorite songs on the album was “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace. I especially liked the fact that the father came home safe at the end of the song. It probably had something to do with the fact that my own father kept getting shipped over seas during the Vietnam war.
I also liked “Life is a Rock” which was a kind of novelty song where the singer strings the names of a bunch of rock groups and song lyrics together very fast.
The one real stinker in the collection is “The Need To Be” by Jim Weatherly which I’m sure is unlistenable in its long version.
Actually, whenever I hear any of these songs today in their long version I’m taken aback (with the exception of “Sweet Home Alabama” which I am now used to.)
Interestingly enough, although I came to dearly love almost every song in the collection - the only artists I would continue to listen to years later would be Bachman, Turner Overdrive and Lynyrd Skynyrd.



A few years later I picked up another hits collection, this one by K-Tel.

KTel - Stars 1977
Side One
The Things We Do For Love - 10CC
Rich Girl - Daryl Hall & John Oates
Year Of The Cat - Al Stewart
Torn Between Two Lovers - Mary MacGregor
A Little Bit More - Dr. Hook
Love Me - Yvonne Elliman
So In To You - Atlanta Rhythm Section
Devil Woman - Cliff Richard
Slow Dancin' Don't Turn Me On - Addrisi Brothers
Side Two
I'm Your Boogie Man - K.C. & The Sunshine Band
Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel - Tavares
Don't Leave Me This Way - Thelma Houston
Coal Town - Stanky Brown Group
The World Is Ghetto - War
Theme From Roots - Quincy Jones
Hard Luck Woman - KISS
Tryin' To Love Two - William Bell
Couldn't Get It Right - Climax Blues Band

My favorite song in that collection was “I’m Your Boogie Man” which has a terrific horn section. I also liked “The Things We Do For Love,” “Rich Girl,” “Devil Woman” and “Year of the Cat.”

Junior High Years

In junior high I used to hear lots of music on the bus drive to and from school everyday. The bus driver would always have a local rock station on the dial.

Songs on the radio:
Queen - We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions (A dangerous song to listen to on the bus since everyone would stomp in unison).
Heart - Barracuda
Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music
Rolling Stones - Beast of Burden
Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night
Lukenbach, Texas - Willie and Waylon

This is also when I started purchasing albums more frequently.

Albums purchased:
Elvis Presley - Elvis’ Golden Records
KISS - Double Platinum
The Who - Who Are You
Boston - Don’t Look Back
Three Dog Night (mail order greatest hits collection)
Fats Domino greatest hits
Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack
The Bee Gees - Spirits Having Flown
The Village People - YMCA
Steve Martin - Wild and Crazy Guy

I liked the Sgt. Peppers movie so much I couldn’t wait to run out and buy the soundtrack album. I didn’t even know who The Beatles were at the time. Years later I was both shocked and impressed to discover that every song in the movie was originally written and performed by The Beatles.
Most of the album featured the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, but there were also contributions from Aerosmith, Earth Wind & Fire, Alice Cooper and (my favorite) Steve Martin.
I bought the KISS album mainly because it was popular with my friends. My friend Tommy told me that even if I didn’t like anything else by KISS, I was sure to like the song “Beth.” He was right. But I also liked most of the other songs too.
Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” was a radio staple at the time and the main reason I purchased the album. It would be years later, however, before I would finally get the first Boston album which is even better.
Believe it or not, “Who Are You” by The Who was another random album purchase that I made. Not bad for my second try.
I bought “Spirits Having Flown” after being blown away the first time I heard the song “Tragedy.” Plus, I was still a Bee Gees fan because of the Sgt. Pepper’s movie. (I did not see “Saturday Night Fever” until year’s later. For me, John Travolta was always a Sweathog.)

LOTR Quiz

Aragorn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Aragorn, Man of the West, leader of the Rangers who guard the hobbits. In the movie, I am played by Viggo Mortensen. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Libya-Iraq: What's the difference?

With Libya we have a country ruled by a brutal dictator who is "widely regarded in the West as the principal financier of international terrorism" and who has an "appalling" human rights record...

"Over the past three decades, Libya’s human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduction, forced disappearance or assassination of political opponents; torture and mistreatment of detainees; and long-term detention without charge or trial or after grossly unfair trials. Today hundreds of people remain arbitrarily detained, some for over a decade, and there are serious concerns about treatment in detention and the fairness of procedures in several on-going high profile trials before the Peoples’ Courts. Libya has been a closed country for United Nations and non-governmental human rights investigators."

And yet we now have word from Bush and Blair that because Col. Moammar Gadhafi has agreed to
dismantle its WMD programs they are ready to welcome Libya back into the international community.

Why are they so willing to negotiate with Libya when they insisted that military force was the only way to deal with Iraq? Saddam Hussein had already made the same agreements that Gadhafi is proposing. He said they had no more WMDs and he allowed U.N. inspectors in to check it out. None were found. Why couldn't we have handled Iraq the same way we are doing in Libya? Why was regime change necessary in Iraq but it is not in Libya? Is the freedom of the Iraqi people more important than the freedom of the Libyan people?

The difference is simply that Bush's foreign policy is not based on principles - it is determined by political opportunism. We needed a war to distract the country from the poor economy and to make it look like we were doing something about the 9-11 attacks.

Pillars made of straw and forged documents

Last week Jonathan Gurwitz, the Express-News’ right-wing columnist, rushed out a column
in the wake of the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Gurwitz sought to trumpet the capture as an ideological victory for war proponents and as an excuse to throw sand in the face of liberal war critics.
“Saddam’s capture, news reports erode anti-war myths” touted the headline.
The only problem is that Gurwitz based much of his column on a report in the London Daily Telegraph that as it now turns out was based on a phony document. (Thanks to Allen Brill for the links).

“Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported that the new Iraqi government has uncovered documentary proof that Mohamed Atta, mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, was trained in Baghdad by the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal.”

I knew when I first read Gurwitz’ column that it did not pass the smell test but I had no way of proving it. As it turns out, it was only a matter of time until someone exposed the story as a sham - MSNBC - Dubious Link Between Atta and Saddam.

“A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in  the summer of  2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents.”

Gurwitz also throws out another lame argument in his column which tries to invent the “pillars of criticism” upon with liberal anti-war sentiments are based.

“The third pillar of criticism ridicules the notion that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction or programs to produce them. This pillar, too, is crumbling.”

That’s because this pillar is made of straw - as in it’s a strawman argument. The majority of war critics have never denied that Hussein “possessed weapons of mass destruction” - i.e. in the past tense. That Hussein once possessed chemical weapons is a historical fact. The question was whether or not he still has these weapons in sufficient quantities so as to be an imminent threat and thus merit a pre-emptive strike by the U.S. military. It looks like that is the real myth. Even now the Bush administration’s chief weapons hunter in Iraq is about to give up and throw in the towel.

I would say that Gurwitz and the Express-News owe their readers a correction, but I doubt that any will be forthcoming.

Best films I have seen in 2003

Needless to say, I haven't seen very many movies this year. Being a new dad seriously cuts back on the time you can spend watching videos and practically eliminates the ability to go to the matinee.

Nevertheless, as the movie awards season approaches I have listed the best movies of 2003 that I have actually seen. The list will obviously change as I see more movies and I may as well just leave the top spot blank for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Best films I have seen that came out in 2003

1. Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2. X-Men 2
3. Bend It Like Beckham
4. Down With Love
5. Terminator 3
6. Matrix Reloaded
7. Shanghai Knights
8. The Italian Job
9. Daredevil
10. The Recruit


Worst Films I have seen in 2003

1. Hollywood Homicide
2. Legally Blonde 2
3. The Hunted
4. The Hulk
5. How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days


Films I still want to see from 2003

LOTR:ROTK
Finding Nemo
Seabiscuit
Master and Commander
The Last Samurai
Cold Mountain
Matrix Revolutions
Bruce Almighty
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Open Range
Once Upon a Time In Mexico
Love Actually
Mystic River
Lost In Translation
Secondhand Lions
Runaway Jury
The Haunted Mansion
Brother Bear
Lara Croft 2
Freaky Friday
Elf
School of Rock
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
The Missing
Winged Migration
Matchstick Men
Cheaper By the Dozen

Hussein captured

I got up Sunday morning and read the papers and then went about my day without turning on the TV or the radio (other than for Christmas music). So it wasn't until much later that I finally learned of Saddam Hussein's caputure by U.S. forces in Iraq.
This is certainly good news. Regardless of whether Hussein has actually been coordinating the guerrilla warfare campaign against U.S. troops, his capture is a psychological blow to that faction. The fact that we were able to capture him alive is also a coup for U.S. intelligence services. I hope that this means the security situation in Iraq will improve but it is no guarantee.

One has to feel a little sorry for the newspaper industry due to the timing of the announcement. Word came too late to get the news in the Sunday papers and gave every other news medium - TV, radio, Internet, a 24-hour head star at providing mass coverage. The newspapers were left having to trumpet the news nearly a day late in their Monday papers which are typically their least read.
The 14 hour delay in breaking the news is understandable and even commendable, but I couldn't help but wonder at first whether Bush's professed indifference to reading newspapers didn't play a role in the decision as well.

Lord of the Oscars

So “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” is the odds-on favorite to get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

That is all good and fine, but the question remains whether or not it will finally win the Oscar this time around. Oscar voters passed over LOTR the first two chances they had and their choices haven’t fared well over time. Picking “A Beautiful Mind” over “Fellowship of the Ring” two years ago should be an embarrassment to them today and “Chicago” over “Two Towers” is rapidly approaching that same status. But if “Return of the King” wins the big prize this year (and Peter Jackson gets the Director Oscar) then I will consider all the past slights forgiven.

This year I was worried that films like “Master and Commander” starring Russell Crowe or “Last Samurai” starring Tom Cruise would displace LOTR:ROTK on Oscar night. But now both of those fills seem to have run out of steam and the new favorite of the snobby critic class is “Cold Mountain” with Jude Law and Nicole Kidman (again).

LOTR:ROTK doesn’t even make the Top 10 for 2003 according to the snobby National Board of Review. Their list includes "Mystic River" at No. 1 followed in order by "The Last Samurai," "The Station Agent," "21 Grams," "House of Sand and Fog," "Lost in Translation," "Cold Mountain," "In America," "Seabiscuit," and "Master and Commander."
Needless to say, I find this group’s assessment to be beneath contempt.

It is a shame that the snobby critics won’t give any acting nominations to the superb LOTR cast. Ian McKellen (Gandalf) should have been nominated for Best Actor for Fellowship and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) and Sean Bean (Boromir) deserved Supporting nods in the same film. Andy Serkis deserved a nomination as Gollum in Two Towers. Now they are talking about Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) and Sean Astin (Sam) as potential nominees this time around.

Bush-style diplomacy

Small-minded, petty and vindictive. These are words that best desribe Bush’s attitude towards our allies and helps explain why we are becoming increasingly isolated in our efforts to pull ourselves out of the quagmire in Iraq.

Bush’s decision to keep the spoils of war for himself and his friends is really not surprising considering his background. It sounds sensible enough in a simplistic way and it fits with Bush’s overall “My way or the highway” style of diplomacy. But these kinds of juvenile schoolyard antics may excite Bush’s right-wing supporters, but they don’t fare as well on the international stage. I’m afraid the end result will be that U.S. troops and U.S. taxpayers will continue to shoulder the brunt of the workload in Iraq for the forseeable future.

We are essentially punishing allies like France, Germany, Russia and Canada because they were right in their initial assessment that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat. Their doubts about his supposed arsenal of WMDs have proven to be prescient. And in a brilliant stroke of diplomacy by Bush Co., we are beating them over the head with this rebuke at the exact same time that we are going to them on bended knee with hat in hand to beg for more money to support the reconstruction efforts. The Wall Street Journal has a good story about this today on page A5:

“Former Secrestary of State James Baker did President Bush a favor by agreeing to lobby U.S. allies to write off $120 billion in Iraqi debts. But Mr. Bush did his old family friend no favor at all by angering Iraq’s major foreign creditors just before he sent Mr. Baker overseas to plead for their generosity...
“It looks terribly clumsy, poorly timed and it looks vindictive,” said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, which has long experience in developing world debt negotiations.”


In the meantime, we find out today that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton has been gouging U.S. taxpayers with overpriced gas and other services. That’s good to know now that Bush has cleared much of the competition away for the remaining contracts. Halliburton can continue to bilk U.S. taxpayers for the forseeable future because they have ‘friends in high places.’

UPDATE:

I said the Iraqi contracts decision was small-minded, petty and vindictive. But William Kristol at the conservative Weekly Standard goes one step further and calls it ‘dumb.’

“A truly wise American administration would have opened the bidding to all comers, regardless of their opposition to the war -- as a way of buying those countries into the Iraq effort, building a little goodwill for the future, and demonstrating to the world a little magnanimity.
But instead of being smart, clever, or magnanimous, the Bush Administration has done a dumb thing. The announcement of a policy of discriminating against French, German, and Russian firms has made credible European charges of vindictive pettiness and general disregard for the opinion of even fellow liberal democracies. More important, it has made former Secretary of State James Baker's very important effort to get these countries, among others, to offer debt relief for the new government of Iraq almost impossible. This is to say nothing of other areas where we need to work with these governments.
This decision is a blunder. We trust it will be reversed.”

No, sorry Mr. Kristol. Bush is currently defending the decision, not reversing it. We are not talking about a wise administration here.

Josh Marshall knocks the argument that this decision will somehow encourage these governments to cooperate with us in the near future:

“Some folks seem to be under the misimpression that there's some clever bargaining going on here. There's not.
Think about it. The whole pot is about $20 billion. Let's imagine the French and the Germans both got fabulously lucky and their companies managed to land contracts for a billion a piece. Does anyone think that Germany or France are going to write off billions of dollars in Iraqi loans or invite a backlash from their anti-Iraq war publics by sending in some troops all for the privilege of having the French or German versions of Halliburton or Bechtel make a few million dollars?
Of course, not.”

Paul Krugman thinks the decision was a deliberate attempt to screw up efforts at reconciliation with our allies by hard-right elements of the Bush administration. Of course, my only question is which elements of Bush Co. are not hard-right?

President Dean

Like a lot of Democrats I have been worried lately that a primary victory by Howard Dean could doom the party to another McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis type of defeat. So I've been secretly hoping that John Kerry might bounce back or that Wesley Clark will ride in at the last minute and save the day.
But the truth is that it really doesn't matter whether the Democratic nominee is Dean or Kerry or Clark. Any one of those guys plus Gephardt, Edwards and Lieberman would be sufficient to beat Bush next year. These are different times than '72, '84 or '88 and Bush is in such a weak position that it will be very hard for him to recover enough to win a second term. It's funny that it took a conservative like William Kristol to point that out, but the points he makes - even the partisan jabs - are good ones and should have been more obvious to me.

"Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004."

Kristol tends to soft pedal the obstacles facing Bush next time around but even so doing he makes it clear that they may be insurmountable:

"Bush is also likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover under whom there will have been no net job creation, and the first since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S. soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been misleading."

Kristol also bursts some of the Republicans' wishful thinking regarding Dean the candidate:

"But is Dean a credible alternative? ... Dean has run a terrific primary campaign, the most impressive since Carter in 1976. It's true that, unlike Carter (and Clinton), Dean is a Northeastern liberal. But he's no Dukakis. Does anyone expect Dean to be a patsy for a Bush assault, as the Massachusetts governor was?
And how liberal is Dean anyway? He governed as a centrist in Vermont, and will certainly pivot to the center the moment he has the nomination."

Kristol even lays out Dean's attack plans for the campaign:

"On domestic policy, Dean will characterize Bush as the deficit-expanding, Social Security-threatening, Constitution-amending (on marriage) radical, while positioning himself as a hard-headed, budget-balancing, federalism-respecting compassionate moderate. And on foreign and defense policy, look for Dean to say that he was and remains anti-Iraq war (as, he will point out, were lots of traditional centrist foreign policy types). But Dean will emphasize that he has never ruled out the use of force (including unilaterally). Indeed, he will say, he believes in military strength so strongly that he thinks we should increase the size of the Army by a division or two. It's Bush, Dean will point out, who's trying to deal with the new, post-Sept. 11 world with a pre-Sept. 11 military."

I know that Kristol is just trying to scare his conservative readers into not being complacent in the upcoming election, but he does so by laying out some very hard truths that most Republicans have refused to acknowledge so far. Democrats actually have cause to be optimistic about the next election. We have a big opening before us just waiting for someone to step up and take advantage of it. If that someone is Howard Dean, then so be it.

Green growth strategy

Jan Jarboe Russell has been writing a political column for the Express-News for at least a decade, maybe two. But judging from her naïve column this Sunday, you might think she was just starting out in the business.

Russell gave a glowing endorsement to the Green Party growth strategy being advanced by Houston attorney David Cobb, who helped to found the Green Party in Texas.
Russell acknowledges (a bit late) that Ralph Nader played the spoiler role in the 2000 election that helped popular vote loser George W. Bush win the White House. But she thinks a Green Party presidential bid by Cobb this next time around will be just fine because he has promised to only campaign in the “40 or so safe states.” (Golly, I’d sure love to have access to his crystal ball to know precisely which states those will be!)

Unlike Nader, Cobb says his only goal is to build the Green Party and not to win the White House. Of course, his promise not to campaign in the non-safe states only applies if the Democrats nominate a candidate who he agrees with. If Joe Lieberman or Wesley Clark get the nod then the deal is off, he says.

Cobb, of course, is an idiot. And it is sad that Russell can’t seem to recognize this. What Russell doesn’t seem to understand is that serving as a spoiler is the only thing a Green Party candidate can do on the national level. Just by placing his name on the ballot in every state helps to draw votes away from the Democrats and thus benefits the Republicans. It doesn’t matter where he decides to “concentrate” his time and efforts.
The 2000 election in Florida was so close (the official tally was less than a 200 vote difference) that it didn’t matter if Nader had campaigned there or not. He would have drawn enough votes away to tip the scales to the Republicans without ever stepping foot there during the campaign.

The Green Party is like a cancer eating away at the Democratic Party. Every vote that goes to a Green candidate helps to get a Republican elected. It is not just the presidential race in 2000 where this has happened. On at least two occasions in New Mexico the Green Party helped to elect Republicans to Congress in districts that would have gone Democratic otherwise.

Green Party drones argue that they are not taking votes away from Democrats because they are tapping into disenchanted voters who aren’t voting at all. But these are still the very voters that the Democrats need if the party is ever going to regain the majority. If these Green Party activists were really concerned about advancing the political goals that they espouse, they would join the Democratic Party and work to push it in a progressive direction. But by pulling out and supporting a third party in a two-party system is nothing short of political suicide. If we had a parliamentary system it might make some sense, but we don’t and we are not going to adopt one anytime soon.

Russell ends her column by warning that “another Nader candidacy helps Bush – again.” Yes, but so does any Green Party candidacy. Just remember, GREEN stands for Get Republicans Elected Every November!

More fun with lists

This is fun. pandagon.net - 12/04/2003: "Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003"

But I just can't see putting a non-conservative like Arnold Schwarznegger on the list and leaving off Tom DeLay.

There they go again

As if we don't already have enough buildings, ships, airports and schools named after Ronald Reagan before the man has even passed away, now a group of Republicans are trying to get his image on the dime.

But that would also mean knocking off Franklin D. Roosevelt whose image was placed on the 10-cent piece in 1946 the year after his death in part because of his support for the March of Dimes campaign to fight polio. Roosevelt's image doesn't appear on any other currency so replacing him on the dime would mean dishonoring his legacy. But that of course is exactly what the radical Republicans are shooting for here. They see Reagan as the anti-Roosevelt who led the charge to tear apart the New Deal reforms that helped bring us out of the Great Depression. Choosing the dime as their latest goal for enshrining Reagan is meant as a direct slap at Democrats. I mean, they could have picked the Lincoln penny since Lincoln is also on the $5 bill, or the Washington quarter since Washington is also on the $1 bill. But this way they can knock down a Democratic icon at the same time.

Personally, I think it would be most appropriate to put Reagan's image on the $100,000 bill since the people who are most likely to have one of those bills were Reagan's biggest supporters and his biggest beneficiaries.

Lotto losers

Now that Texas has joined one of those multi-state lottery abominations, I have an exercize that I would like all avid Lotto fans to practice. (Not that any actually read this blog).

Find yourself a set of percentile dice - two 10-sided die of different colors - and pick a random number between 1 and 100. Now role the dice (00 = 100). Did you win? No? That's too bad. Now mark down that you just spent $1 and try again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Did you win yet? OK, well keep trying. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Is your arm getting tired yet? Remember the odds for this exercize are just 1 in 100. You can add a third 10-sided die and make it 1 in 1,000.

The odds for Lotto Texas are 1 in 47 million and for the new multi-state game it is 1 in 135 million. You would have to have a bucket to hold that many 10-sided dice. You would also need to have a strong arm and lots of money. Have fun!

Democracy is a fragile web

Norm Ornstein had a column in the Washington Post last week that I just stumbled upon that gives a good perspective on the Republicans' disregard for the rules and decorum in the House.
Ornstein is a moderate conservative who works for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, so his sharp rebuke cannot be dismissed as mere partisanship. It is such a good column that I want to excerpt several sections:

"One of the most disgraceful moments in American sports came in the 1972 Olympics, when officials gave the Soviet Union's basketball team three chances to shoot the ball after the clock had apparently run out -- allowing it to defeat the U.S. team.

American politics now has its own version of that infamous game. Early last Sunday, starting at about 3 a.m., the House of Representatives began its roll call on the Medicare prescription drug plan -- the most significant vote of the year. The House votes by electronic device, with each vote normally taking 15 minutes. After the allotted time, the bill, supported by the president and the Republican leadership, was losing. The vote stayed open. Before long it became clear that an absolute majority of the House -- 218 of the 435 members -- had voted no, with only 216 in favor. But the vote stayed open until Republicans were able to bludgeon two of their members to switch sides. It took two hours and 51 minutes, the longest roll call in modern House history.

"This was not, technically speaking, against the rules. House Rule XX, clause 2 (a) says that there is a 15-minute minimum for most votes by electronic device. There is no formal maximum. A vote is not final until the vote numbers have been read by the speaker and the result declared. But since electronic voting began in January 1973, the norm has been long established and clear: Fifteen minutes is the voting time.

In the 22 years that Democrats ran the House after the electronic voting system was put in place, there was only one time when the vote period substantially exceeded the 15 minutes. At the end of the session in 1987, under Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, the vote on the omnibus budget reconciliation bill -- a key piece of legislation -- was one vote short of passage when one of the bill's supporters, Marty Russo of Illinois, took offense at something, changed his vote to no, and left to catch a plane to his home district in Chicago. He was unaware that his switch altered the ultimate outcome. Caught by surprise, Wright kept the vote tally open for an extra 15 to 20 minutes until one of his aides could find another member, fellow Texan Jim Chapman, and draw him out of the cloakroom to change his nay vote to aye and pass the bill. Republicans went ballistic, using the example for years as evidence of Democrats' autocratic style and insensitivity to rules and basic fairness.

In 1995, soon after the Republicans gained the majority, Speaker Newt Gingrich declared his intention to make sure that votes would consistently be held in the 15-minute time frame. The "regular practice of the House," he said would be "a policy of closing electronic votes as soon as possible after the guaranteed period of 15 minutes." The policy was reiterated by Speaker Dennis J. Hastert when he assumed the post.

But faced with a series of tough votes and close margins, Republicans have ignored their own standards and adopted a practice that has in fact become frequent during the Bush presidency, of stretching out the vote when they were losing until they could twist enough arms to prevail. On at least a dozen occasions, they have gone well over the 15 minutes, sometimes up to an hour.

The Medicare prescription drug vote -- three hours instead of 15 minutes, hours after a clear majority of the House had signaled its will -- was the ugliest and most outrageous breach of standards in the modern history of the House."

Ornstein sums up with the following statement:

"Democracy is a fragile web of laws, rules and norms. The norms are just as important to the legitimacy of the system as the rules. Blatant violations of them on a regular basis corrode the system. The ugliness of this one will linger. "

And linger it shall.

Biased labeling?

Former Express-News political reporter Sherry Sylvester, who is now working for a right-wing think tank out of Austin, wrote an Op-Ed column last week for the Houston Chronicle that touts a study by a Stanford University professor as demonstrating a liberal bias in the nation's newspapers.
The study does this by looking at the use of the labels "liberal" and "conservative" and counting how many times they were used to describe various politicians or groups. The study apparently does not take into account the fact that the term "liberal" has been continuously vilified since the 1980s while the term "conservative" is widely embraced by people in both political parties. The study concludes and Sylvester concurs that the newspapers have been biased because they have more readily used the term "conservative" to label conservative groups and Republican politicos than they have used the term "liberal" to describe liberal groups and Democratic politicos.

"Reviewing news stories over a 12-year period -- from 1990 to 2002 -- Brady and Ma found that The New York Times and The Washington Post were far more likely to label a U.S. senator "conservative" than "liberal."

But what if a politician objects to the term "liberal"? Are the newspapers supposed to force the label on them anyway? By whose standards? How does one define a liberal?
And is it wrong to use the term "conservative" when the person in question embraces the term and uses it constantly to refer to themself? This is what is really being revealed in the Stanford study. Not an ideological bias in favor of liberals, but a willingness to acquiesce to the wishes of the people the newspapers are interviewing, quoting and using as sources.

I'm sure if asked, Sylvester would readily produce a list of who should be called a conservative and who should be called a liberal, but I'm afraid that it isn't up to her. In the column, Sylvester vaugely defines a conservative as someone who is opposed to an income tax, opposes legal abortions, favors the death penalty and supports the war in Iraq. Of course, there are a lot of Democrats who hold most if not all of those positions to some degree.

And what if someone opposes legal abortion but also opposes the death penalty? How do we label them, Sherry? Is the Pope a liberal?

Sylvester and the conservative moneybags who fund her organization are so blinded by their zeal to expose left-wing bias in the media that they can't see how ridiculous their arguments come across some times. Case in point: Sylvester points to this example to show how Republicans are more frequently labeled as conservatives than Democrats are labeled as liberals:

"U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett was labeled as "liberal" in 61 news stories this year but most of those reports were from Washington not Texas....
By contrast, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, was identified as conservative in 2,816 state and national news reports."

Wow!! 61 to 2,816!! Well, there is some liberal bias for you! The fact that Tom DeLay was written about in more than 2,816 stories while Doggett and other Texas liberals were written about fewer than 100 times doesn't even seem to phase Sylvester at all.

Round up the usual suspects!

I'm trying to get caught up on a backlog of postings that I wanted to make after a long Thanksgiving break. One thing I want to talk about is an extention of my previous post on the alleged illegality of the Guantanomo detainees.
My friend Mark scolded me for drawing a comparison between the U.S. treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo and other countries such as China and Iran where such things are common place. I suppose I should take solace in the fact that our government doesn't just line everyone up against a wall and shoot them, but I guess when it comes to issues of justice like this I'm one of those "glass is half empty types" who demands that we strive for the full glass everytime.
Since my last post, there has been news reports from Time Magazine many of the detainees may have been kidnapped by Afghan warlords looking to collect the bounty the U.S. was offering for the caputure of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

So far, the processing of detainees, whether for trial or release, has been slow; the Supreme Court's intervention, however, may have delivered a jolt. A U.S. military official tells Time that at least 140 detainees—"the easiest 20%"—are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them." U.S. officials concluded that some detainees were there because they had been kidnapped by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty the U.S. was offering for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The Time report goes on to note that the miltary is now just waiting for a "politically propitious time" to release these detainees.

"A U.S. military official tells Time that at least 140 detainees—"the easiest 20%"—are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them."

An AP story today would seem to confirm that report.

The obvious question now is why it took more than two years to figure this out?

Bribery and threats: GOP means to an end

The last time we heard from Robert Novak he was being used by the Bush folks to expose a U.S. covert agent as a way to punish a critic of the administration. But when he is not commiting blatant acts of treason, Novak can still be a pretty good shoe leather reporter.

In his most recent column, Novak sheds some light on the bribery and intimidation methods that Republican House leaders used to secure their whisker thin passage of the screw-up Medicare legislation.

"(U.S. Rep. Nick) Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat."

Republicans not only abused House procedures far worse than the Democrats ever did by extending a 15-minute vote to a record-breaking three hours, but they resorted to outright bribery and threats to get their way on the Medicare legislation. I mean, why even bother with the charade of a democracy and a representative government if the Republicans are just going to run roughshod over everyone and everything to get what they want no matter?

I suppose this should not be a surprise coming from an administration that took power with 500,000 fewer votes than that other guy. The democratic process is just a game to them, something that can be manipulated to your advantage provided you have enough money. And money is one thing that the Bush folks have plenty of.

I'm starting to wonder with all the millions of dollars Bush Corp. is raising for the next election, how will they ever be able to spend all that money during the election cycle. They are going to have to come up with some pretty creative ways to spend money if they expect to go through that huge pile Bush has been raising in such a short time. Maybe they will offer $1,000 checks to undecided voters in key swing states. After all, offering cash for votes is just business as usual for today's Republicans.