Defending Jimmy Carter

In the comments to a previous post, Mark Harden raises the specter of Jimmy Carter as the low point in presidential office holders of the modern era. He even goes on to accuse the former president of treason for his post-presidential peacekeeping activities.

Jimmy Carter’s record of unmitigated failure as president is completely unassailable. Even I could do no worse. His post-presidential treasonous acts make Carter even more reprehensible, by the way.

Where did that come from, I wondered. How could a guy who has done so much to advance the cause of human rights and alleviate human suffering become so despised?
Even winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 seems to have just stoked the flames of resentment against this elder statesman.

...the sanctimonious, grasping Carter (who had shamelessly campaigned for the prize for years) accepted the prize under those stated conditions...in effect, spitting on his own country.

Mark goes on to say that Carter’s basic human decency is a “myth” and accuses him of being “a disgusting apologist and enabler for any dictator who opposes the United States.”

Then my friend Libertas weighs in with his own denunciation of Carter (and every other president dating back to LBJ).

Jimmy Carter sold himself as a peanut farmer while actually a nuclear physicist. He was a hypocritical snob, sadistically hard on the help and totally incompetent at domestic and foreign policy, all Arafat, Sadat and Zion improv theatre not withstanding. At least Sadat not withstanding. But Ayatollah Khomeini on the rise. As for his treason, it is mostly against other nations whose rigged elections he habitually certifies with his cosmetic auspices. But the canal he “returned” to the Panamanians was ”leased” to the Chinese under Slick Willie.

To help me understand where all this animosity is coming from, Mark pointed me first to a new book just out that calls Carter Our Worst Ex-President. And then to an article in National Review that levels a vicious and rather offensive tirade against Carter.
I went ahead and read the anti-Carter screed by National Review managing editor Jay Nordlinger in an effort to try and understand what’s going on here, but I just came away disgusted by the piece. Nordlinger’s prose is like a stinking pile of dung deposited on the pages of National Review. The fact that they would publish this crap and continue to employ such a person says a lot about the integrity (or lack thereof) of that publication.

Here is how Nordlinger begins his screed:

I’ve got Carter on my mind, so look out. Why Carter? Didn’t he leave office in 1981 (the same day the mullahs decided to spring the hostages, lest RR send a few up their gazoo)? Yes, but he’s back in the news, yapping absurdly about the Middle East and getting ready to visit Castro down in Cuba (May 12 to May 17).

Lest RR send a few up their gazoo?? I assume he is talking about missiles, but as everyone knows now Reagan did send the mullahs a bunch of missiles. Only they weren’t directed at anyone’s gazoo. They were instead neatly gift-wrapped and delivered along with an autographed Bible and a chocolate cake.

Nordlinger goes on to assail Carter’s post-presidency foreign policy adventures for not always adhering to the party line of whichever administration was then in power:

You recall how Carter irked Clinton on Haiti and North Korea. His low moment, however, came during the run-up to the Gulf War, when he wrote members of the U.N. Security Council — including Mitterrand’s France and Communist China — urging them to thwart the Bush administration’s effort. Our government found out about it when the Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney, called the defense secretary, Dick Cheney, and said, “What the . . .?” Some people actually allowed themselves to utter the word “treason.”

In this New Yorker essay Hedrick Hertzberg addresses
the Haiti situation that did indeed irk many folks at the time. However, he notes that the end result were good.

The bottom line was: There was no bloodshed. The elected, legitimate president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was restored, the killings and human rights violations were stopped, Cedras and his pals ended up leaving the country, and Haiti now has a better chance than anyone thought possible to become a relatively normal country instead of a nightmare of death and cruelty.

Hertzberg goes on to challenge the slam against Carter that he coddles dictators:

...these gestures spoke not to any admiration for tyrants but to a Christian eagerness to redeem sinners... In practice, Carter has always showed himself as ready to anger authoritarians as to flatter them, in pursuit of peace and human rights....

But back to Nordlinger, I doubt seriously that Carter used the term “thwart the Bush administration” in his letter to the Security Council, although I don’t doubt it did not square with the message being put out at the time by the Bush administration. Looking back now, however, I think most people would agree that it would have been best had Bush and Co. been thwarted. Not that I would like to have seen Saddam Hussein remain in power, but the costs in blood and treasure to our nation have far exceeded any meager threat the Iraqi regime posed even if they did have a musty stockpile of chemical or biological agents buried somewhere.

Nordlinger goes on to dismiss Carter’s crowning achievements at Camp David in one paragraph without referencing any supporting material other than one unidentified academic’s offhanded remark on the Charlie Rose show.
Then he goes on for several paragraphs assailing Carter for being overly proud of his achievements and for being unseemly in his pursuit of praise. His evidence for this? Carter allegedly “teared up badly” during the 1984 Democratic National Convention when keynote speaker Mario Cuomo praised his work at Camp David. And then there was an appearance on C-SPAN once where he sat silently as a caller praised his work. But according to Nordlinger, something much more unseemly was going on:

Carter enjoyed it in a truly unseemly fashion, grinning and grinning, seeming to draw his very life from it. It was perfectly human — perfectly natural — but obscene in a way. I felt almost as though I had to look away: like I was seeing something too private, something I wasn’t meant to see.

What the hell?!? Where did Nordlinger come up with that? It sounds like he has an unhealthy obsession about Carter and tends to fantasize about what he might be thinking at odd moments. It’s really strange.

But finally we get to the heart of the piece and I at long last discover what it is about Carter that is bugging not just Nordlinger, but my friend Mark Harden as well. You see, according to Nordlinger, Carter is “passionately anti-Israel.” The evidence for this? Well, the Carter Center gets a lot of funding from Arabs, for one thing, and Carter is known to be friendly with many Arab leaders. Nevermind the fact that George W. Bush and family also have recieved considerable financial backing from Arab leaders and have maintained a long and close friendship with many of the most influential people in the Middle East. For some reason, Bush is not accused of being anti-Israel.
So what else did Carter do to attract this particular smear?

In the 1990s, Carter became quite close to Yasser Arafat.

Ah, that explains everything. You see, in the view of most right-wingers, Arafat was the epitome of all that is evil and the Palestinian people aren’t much better. Meanwhile, Israel is all light and goodness and can do no wrong. So if you are trying to negotiate a peace settlement between these two groups, you have to take Israel’s side 100 percent of the time or you are in league with the terrorists. The fact that you may support Israel, but disagree with policies put forward by the right-wing Likud government is a distinction that some people refuse to make.

So the rest of the article just veers back and forth on these themes, taking cheap shots and making the same arguments over and over again. Very tiresome.

For me, Carter is a great man and a great ex-president. He may not have had the best four-year run while in office, but as Mark Schmitt notes he might have done better in another time when his moral leadership would have made a positive difference.

Another press conference

Bush had another press conference today? Good grief! It’s either feast or famine with this guy. Has this become a new addition to his permanent everyday schedule?

7 a.m. Get up and go for morning jog;
7:30 a.m. Eat breakfast;
8:30 a.m. Briefing from Condi and Rove;
9 a.m. Hold press conference to defend decision on Iraq;
10 a.m. Nap time...

Speaking of Iraq, here is an excellent timeline compiled by the folks at Think Progress.
Also, the WaPo has a couple of good stories today worth checking out

Freedom, Yes, Iraqis Say, But at Great, Grave Cost

BAGHDAD, March 20 -- By almost any standard, Bashar Muhammed, the owner of a thriving Internet cafe, is a Baghdad success story. Three years after the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Internet business here is booming, and Muhammed has what most Iraqis could only dream of under Hussein -- freedom, a cutting-edge job, lots of customers.
But when conversation turns to his life and prospects, he sighs and voices frustration that Americans just don't get it.
"It is true that we got freedom after the war, but uncontrolled freedom -- chaos and violence," he said in a cool, deliberate tone. Five of his relatives have been killed in car bombings and assassinations, Muhammed said, noting that most recently an uncle was killed for being a Sunni Arab.
"The new generation is growing on violence and sectarian ethics, and this will affect Iraq for many years to come," he said. "We are living a more devastating war every day."

Old Forecasts Come Back to Haunt Bush

Three years of upbeat White House assessments about Iraq that turned out to be premature, incomplete or plain wrong are complicating President Bush's efforts to restore public faith in the military operation and his presidency, according to pollsters and Republican lawmakers and strategists.

Bush vs. Reagan

I never thought I’d see the day when liberals would be vigorously defending Ronald Reagan, but that is just what we have now in the ongoing discussions of whether George W. Bush is the Worst. President. Ever.

I have to agree with Schmitt and Marshall, Reagan was a far better president than Bush. GW will one day take his place in the pantheon of really bad presidents such as Grant, Buchanan, Harding, Coolidge, (Andrew) Johnson, Pierce and so on. While some would argue that he has still not sunk to the level of Buchanan or Grant, I think there is no question that he is the worst president of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

$9 trillion debt limit

This will be President Bush’s legacy:

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

Or raising taxes, which would be the fiscally responsible thing to do... Instead, we just keep piling up the debt onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. But Republicans today don’t believe in raising taxes, so they just raise the debt ceiling instead.

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

If these are all things that we need to pay for, then we should take responsibility and pay for them. Raise taxes and pay the bills! Quit just running up huge debts on the false hope that it will all just go away.

Gov. Perry calls Bush a Liar

While touring the Texas Panhandle areas damaged by the recent grassfires, Gov. Rick Perry told reporters that he has asked President Bush for federal aid.
He then added the following:

He said the federal government made "very substantial promises" about reimbursements for help the state provided after Hurricane Katrina but "has not lived up to its word." That concerns him as Texas needs help with wildfires, he said.

So the "federal government" has not lived up to its word, which is a nice way of saying that they lied. But who is the "federal government" in this case who is not good to their word? Who made these "very substantial promises"? President Bush, perhaps?

This isn't the first time that Perry has complained about broken promises from Washington:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who holds George W. Bush's former job, told Congress Tuesday the federal government has turned its back on the Lone Star State. He demanded an additional $2 billion to repair damage and other hurricane-related costs in Texas.
Perry criticized the federal response to the devastating storms, saying states slammed by Katrina are getting more generous help than his state, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Rita.
"Financial aid has been a fraction of what was promised," Perry told the Senate Appropriations Committee. Funding for housing, education and community development has been shortchanged, he said.

I'm afraid that if Perry gets any shriller about the Bush administration breaking promises that we will see Karl Rove coming out and reminding everyone that Perry used to be a Democrat.

Outrageous story of the week

This story in the New York Times just makes you want to pull your hair out by the roots. How do you like paying extra fees on your utility bills disguised as taxes that the government never collects? Since the link will only be good for a short time, I’m posting the whole story here so please excuse the length.

Many Utilities Collect for Taxes They Never Pay
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Many electric utility companies across the nation are collecting billions of dollars from their customers for corporate income taxes, then keeping the money rather than sending it to the government.
The practice is legal in most states. The companies say it is smart business.
But some representatives of utility customers say that the practice, which involves using losses from other subsidiaries to reduce taxes owed, is not fair. They say that money that utilities are required to collect for federal and state taxes — typically a nickel on each dollar paid for electricity — should go for just that, or not be included in electric bills.
Otherwise, they argue, these legal monopolies make more than they are authorized to, and other taxpayers have to make up the difference in higher taxes or reduced services.
An examination of regulatory filings by The New York Times shows that companies with electric utilities in at least 26 states have pocketed money intended for income taxes, and that utilities can legally do so in 21 more states.
Because they are legal monopolies, utilities must charge rates set by state regulators. These cover all costs — from buying fuel, to building new power plants, to a virtually guaranteed profit and paying the taxes on that profit.
Normally, customer payments for those taxes eventually find their way to federal and state governments. That is usually the case for independent utilities like Consolidated Edison, which serves the New York area, and American Electric Power, which operates in 11 states from Kentucky to Oklahoma.
But in recent years many utilities have expanded into unregulated businesses, like energy trading and aircraft leasing, while others have been acquired by companies that own other businesses. When those other businesses lose money or create artificial losses through tax planning, those losses can be used to offset income earned by the utilities.
As a result, the parent companies owe less in taxes than their electric customers paid. Sometimes these companies owe nothing, or receive large tax refunds. By not remitting the taxes, the parent companies effectively have more money to invest in their operations or pay to shareholders in dividends.
The ability to intercept tax payments is not limited to electric utilities. Natural gas, water and telephone utilities can use the same techniques. The potential tax benefits are much smaller for gas and water utilities, however. And most telephone companies are no longer regulated as monopolies and their rates no longer include income taxes. (The taxes and fees that phone companies add to monthly bills are not corporate income taxes.)
Among the electric utilities whose customer tax payments are not reaching tax coffers is Pepco, serving four states and the District of Columbia. Pepco collected nearly $546 million from customers to cover its income tax bill for the years 2002 through 2004. Yet the parent Pepco Holdings did not pay income taxes during those years; indeed, it received $435 million in tax refunds.
Pepco says the beneficiaries of those refunds were not the company's shareholders, but utility customers. A vice president, Anthony J. Kamerick, said that without the ability to use taxes embedded in monthly electric bills to help finance its unregulated investments, including new power plants, electric customers would pay higher rates.
Customers paid Xcel Energy, a big utility in 10 Midwest and Western states, at least $723 million to cover taxes from 2002 to 2004. But the money did not go to the government; in fact, the company received cash refunds of $351.4 million.
A spokesman, Ed Legge, said the refunds resulted from a failed energy trading business. "Utility customers did not bear the risk of that business, and they should not benefit either," he said.
Also expressing the utilities' view, Paul L. Joskow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "For the customer, the result is the same." If the utility were a stand-alone company and filed its own tax return, he added, the customer would pay the same for power.
But critics argue that when utilities collect taxes the government never receives, customers do lose.
The Minnesota attorney general, Mike Hatch, said, "Essentially, the utility ratepayers pay the tax twice, once through the utility bill and again through the lost revenue to government that means either higher taxes for them or less government services." Mr. Hatch is trying to require that any taxes included in Xcel bills be paid to the government. Xcel opposes this.
The critics say that while many profitable businesses use losses to minimize their tax bills, utilities are unique because their taxes are built into the bills that customers pay.
Critics also say utility companies are enriched beyond the limits set by law if they pocket the tax money. "Utilities are entitled to a just and reasonable return," said Myer Shark, a 93-year-old lawyer who sued unsuccessfully to recover $300 million in taxes paid by Minnesota customers of Xcel. "But when they keep the taxes, they are earning an unjust and unreasonable rate of return."
Enron was a pioneer in turning taxes into profit. Since 1997 the company, now in bankruptcy, has collected nearly $900 million from customers of a utility it acquired, Portland General Electric, to cover income taxes. But none of that money reached the federal government from Enron, and only a quirk in the law forced Portland G.E. to pay about $800,000 in income taxes, of which $20 went to the state of Oregon.
Enron could keep the tax money because it created 881 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and other tax havens, tax shelters that on paper generated losses for the parent.
The tax benefits are one reason Wall Street these days likes electric utilities, long seen as unexciting investments. Warren E. Buffett, Henry R. Kravis and David Bonderman are among investors drawn to utilities in recent years in hopes of earning returns through parent companies that can be several times those typically approved by state regulators for the utilities themselves.
For decades utilities have been able to delay paying the government the taxes collected from customers; the delayed taxes are known as phantom taxes. But the more recent issue involves taxes the government will never receive because tax rules have not caught up with changes in the ownership structure of utilities.
Three decades ago, said James T. Selecky, a utility-rate consultant to the Minnesota attorney general, "we had true utility companies with very few or minor other operations," so the taxes eventually flowed to the government. But that is no longer true.
Only a few states have mechanisms to prevent pocketing such money. West Virginia and Oregon require that taxes be paid to the government, although the Oregon law, enacted last year, is under attack by utilities there.
In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that "fictitious" expenses, such as taxes government never receives, cannot be included in utility rates.
The prospect that a utility could charge for taxes that the government would never receive became a major issue in Oregon when David Bonderman's Texas Pacific Group tried to buy Portland General Electric in 2004.
Texas Pacific specializes in revamping financially troubled companies like Burger King and the clothier J. Crew. Such companies typically have tax losses, but little or no profit to make use of them. If Texas Pacific had acquired Portland General Electric, whose profits are virtually guaranteed and which had $92 million a year of taxes embedded in the bills customers pay, it could have used the losses from its other companies to offset the utility's profit and keep the money paid by customers ostensibly for taxes.
Texas Pacific persuaded Oregon utility regulators to keep most records of the purchase proceedings secret.
When these documents became public, they showed that Texas Pacific expected annual returns greater than 33 percent, three times the expected rate of return for a utility. That revelation generated public and official criticism. The state Public Utility Commission unanimously rejected the Portland purchase a year ago.
In the wake of the controversy, the Oregon Legislature passed a law requiring that taxes on electric bills be turned over to the government and rates adjusted each year to accurately reflect what customers paid and governments collected.
MidAmerican Electric, an Iowa utility holding company controlled by Mr. Buffett, and PacifiCorp, a Scottish-owned electric utility, have been lobbying in Oregon for repeal of the law.
The National Federation of Independent Business's Oregon chapter, with 12,000 members, favors the law. J. L. Wilson, its executive director, said it helped prevent a practice that "just bumps up electric rates."
One way to make sure customers do not pay for taxes that governments never receive would be to require each utility to file its own tax return. That way, taxes would be paid to the government, not to a parent company.
Another solution has been advanced for three decades by Robert Batinovich, a California businessman who promoted innovative approaches to regulation when he was chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission in the 1970's. Mr. Batinovich, now chairman of Glenborough Realty Trust in San Mateo, Calif., suggested exempting regulated monopolies from the corporate income tax. "It's just a disguised consumption tax, just another way to take from the little guy," he said.
But he said that if governments wanted to raise money from regulated utilities, it would be easier just to add a tax, similar to a sales tax, to monthly bills and require that all that money be turned over.

Boston Liberal

I was slowly becoming a fan of Boston Legal. I figure any show that features two former Star Trek alumni, plus Murphy Brown and the guy from Stargate must be doing something right. But after watching last night’s episode I am completely sold.
Check out the clips here or here (extended version) of James Spader’s character making an impassioned speech in court about the sad state of our nation and the loss of our civil liberties. Great stuff, sure to make liberals swell up with sentimental tears, while causing steam to pour out of most conservatives’ ears.
I’m definitely reprogramming my DVR to start recording this series.

GOP longing for better days

Now that President Bush is sitting at an all-time low approval rating, I think it would be better for everybody if the Democrats would retake control of the government. Seriously. Democrats would be delighted, obviously. The country would be better off in the long-run with competent people back at the helm, and even Republicans would be happier.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my Republican friends happier than they were back in the 1990s when the economy was booming, federal spending was declining, welfare rolls were being chopped and they could spend everyday bad-mouthing the Democrats and blaming Bill and Hillary Clinton for the demise of Western culture.
But today I see these same Republicans cringing everytime they pick up the newspaper or turn on the news and have to learn of some new idiocy perpetrated by this inept administration. What lunacy will they have to defend next? Bush appointing Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court? Dick Cheney shooting someone in the face?
How many more scandals will they have to cover up and try desperately to ignore? Abramoff? Valerie Plame? Domestic spying?
What will be the next cherished ideal they will have to watch flounder and fail spectacularly? Supply-side economics? Gun-barrel diplomacy? Faith-based social services?
I see my conservative friends straining every day to come up with some new rationale for blaming all their current troubles on the liberal media or on powerless minority Democrats in Congress. You know they aren’t really taking it seriously. It’s more therapeutic than anything. If only there was some Democrat somewhere with some actual power and some actual authority who they could pass the buck to (and I’m not talking about the governor of Louisiana).
I know that deep down the Republicans miss the good old days when they were in the minority, free to lob bombs at their opponents while having no obligation to demonstrate that their ideas could actually work better.
Well, don’t worry, my friends! Happy days will soon be here again! Chin up, and all. We can weather these last few years of Republican irresponsibility before the electorate finally sets things straight once again. Then Republicans can go back to doing what they do best - representing this country’s wealthy minority and working with lobbyists to insert as many loopholes into the tax code as possible.

I’m glad I quit watching '24'

I was really hooked on the show '24' during its first thrilling season. But I still remember being completely turned off with the way they ended that first season by killing off Jack Bauer's wife. I figured they did that just to free his character up to have romantic trysts with different women every episode, just like James Bond.
But now I see they’ve started killing off characters left and right to the point that current fans are screaming foul.
It is so unreasonable to like to watch a show and not have to worry that your favorite character might get offed in the next episode?

Bush ready to “cut-n-run”

It looks like Bush has finally gotten the message via his pathetic poll numbers and has decided to “cut-n-run” from Iraq.

President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.
Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target in the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy for victory.

My confidence level in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to hold together after we leave is zero. I don’t think it matters how much longer we stay there propping them up. They will scatter to the high winds the moment we pull up our stakes and move out.

Good News Friday

I’m about to go out of town for the weekend to the Rodeo in Houston but first I thought I would leave this roundup of happy stories (for Democrats, that is).

First, the collapse of the Dubai ports deal has thoroughly exposed this administration’s gross incompetence once again.

When President Bush and senior adviser Karl Rove mapped out plans for a political comeback in 2006, this was nowhere on the script. Suddenly, the collapse of a port-management deal neither even knew about a month ago has devastated the White House and raised questions about its ability to lead even fellow Republicans.

The bipartisan uprising in Congress in the face of a veto threat represented a singular defeat for Bush, who when it came to national security grew accustomed during his first five years in office to leading as he chose and having loyal lawmakers fall in line. Now, with his poll numbers in a political ditch, the port debacle has contributed to a perception of weakness that has liberated Republicans who once would never have dared cross Bush.

Now it looks like the scales are finally falling off of peoples’ eyes and they are beginning to come to the realization that George W. Bush is without question the Worst. President. Ever.

Republicans fret as Bush's popularity sinks

More and more people, particularly Republicans, disapprove of President Bush's performance, question his character and no longer consider him a strong leader against terrorism, according to an AP-Ipsos poll documenting one of the bleakest points of his presidency.

Nearly four out of five Americans, including 70 percent of Republicans, believe civil war will break out in Iraq — the bloody hot spot upon which Bush has staked his presidency. Nearly 70 percent of people say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a 6-point jump since February.

By the way, Bush’s overall approval in this poll is 37 percent. WooHoo!!
(By the way, I am not in any way celebrating the prospect of civil war in Iraq. That is just a symptom of Bush's miserable failure as a world leader. The good news is that if people finally start to recognize the serious problems we are facing in the world, we might be able to do something about them before it is too late.)

Next, the Washington Post’s political blogger thinks Democrats have an excellent chance to pick up seats in the Senate and maybe even regain control of that chamber in November.

Democrats should be optimistic -- if not yet elated -- about their prospects for gaining Senate seats this fall as takeover opportunities for their party continue to dominate The Fix's Friday Line.
Republican incumbents hold the top five slots this week -- meaning they represent the five Senate seats up for grabs this fall most likely to change party control.

And those five most vulnerable Republican senators are Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island; Conrad Burns of Montana; Mike DeWine of Ohio and Jim Talent of Missouri. Democrats also have a good shot at taking the open seat in Tennessee from the retiring Bill Frist.

Oh, and good riddance to Gail Norton, certainly a strong contender for Worst. Interior Secretary. Ever.

Meet the new boss...

Shiite death squads, torture chambers and now mass executions.

Remind me again how this new government in Iraq is supposed to be better than the old regime.

Annual war costs increasing

Annual expenditures for the Iraq war will reach $117.6 billion this fiscal year, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.
That’s an 18 percent increase over the previous 12-month period. Monthly expenditures in Iraq are running at $5.9 billion plus another $1 billion for Afghanistan.

All of that in spite of the fact that troop levels are supposed to be drawn down this year. The Pentagon estimates personnel costs will decrease by 14 percent this year, but that is offset by big increases for the procurement of new equipment - $25.7 billion in 2006, up from $18.8 billion in 2005. Also, maintenance spending is up 30 percent.

Why is this? Higher fuel prices are part of the reason. Another is the loss of support from National Guard troops who have been sent home after their mobilization has run its course. To make up for the loss of manpower, the military has been hiring contractors for all the logistical chores that the Guard used to help out with.
“They don’t have enough people,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn.

The WSJ goes on to report that three years in Iraq has taken its toll on stocks of military equipment requiring the creation of in-country maintenance facilities in Iraq.
“There are unprecedented costs. It’s staggering,” says U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a member of the Appropriations Committee.

All of this has given us “...a total defense budget that in real dollars surpasses those of the Vietnam War era and the defense buildup under Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War.”

We are now entering our fourth year in Iraq with the country teetering on the verge of Civil War. We can’t afford to keep this up. We already have record deficits that are weighing down the economy. Our military is stretched past the breaking point. And we are being led by an administration that has proven itself to be dangerously incompetent and is incapable of figuring any good way out of this mess.

Primary ups and downs

I haven't really grasped the full extent of the primary results from yesterday. I was happy to see in the one race where I had a vote, Carlos Uresti prevailed over Frank Madla for the state Senate District 19 seat.

But while that was cheerful news, it appears that Republican Henry Cuellar prevailed over Democrat Ciro Rodriguez for the Dist. 28 congressional seat.(Thanks to Red State for the picture.) I guess I just don't understand why so many so-called Democrats in Laredo would support someone like Cuellar just because he is the home-town boy. If I had a choice between a Laredo Democrat like Richard Raymond versus San Antonio Republican Henry Bonilla, there is no question that I would support Raymond.

I wasn't surprised to see Tom DeLay win his primary race. The national media seems to think that was the big story of the day. I'm actually glad that he won because I think it will be easier for Nick Lampson to beat him in November than some fresh Republican without the baggage that DeLay has.

James Leininger was only partly successful in his bid to knock off anti-voucher Republicans. It looks like his puppet candidates prevailed in two of five races. I could have told him he was wasting his money going after Delwin Jones in Lubbock though.

Walls in Heaven

It amazes me sometimes the things that must occupy the minds of right-wing fundamentalist preachers. Here is a case where one of the local ayatollahs apparently got in trouble with his flock because of a misperception that he might be suggesting that maybe, just maybe, all the Jews in the world aren’t going to hell in a handbasket.

Neither San Antonio televangelist John Hagee nor the Rev. Jerry Falwell has expressed a belief in a "dual covenant theology" as reported Wednesday in the Jerusalem Post, Hagee and a local rabbi said Thursday.
"Dual covenant theology" refers to a belief that Jews can be saved without believing in Jesus Christ — as Christians do — because of God's covenant with the ancient Israelites....
Falwell, in a statement posted on his Web site, www.falwell.com, said he stands "on the foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to enter heaven."

To tell the truth, I don’t believe in a "dual covenant theology" either. I believe in a single covenant that God has with the entire human race - each and every person individually - regardless of whether they are Israelites, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics or atheists.

But it is sad to see these supposed leaders of Christianity today dithering over whether they think God arbitrarily condemns trillions and billions and billions of people to eternal damnation or maybe just trillions and billions and millions of people. All because they were born into a culture where they weren’t taught to repeat the magic phrase that automatically unlocks the doors to heaven to them while keeping them sealed shut to everyone else.

The Catholic theologian Hans Kung once said it would probably be necessary for God to put up walls in Heaven to keep certain groups of people from knowing that other groups are up there too.

Common sense wins out

It’s nice to see the Supreme Court can still agree on common sense issues such as this one.

The Supreme Court yesterday unanimously upheld a federal law that forces colleges and universities to permit military recruiting on campus, despite the schools' objections to the Pentagon ban on openly gay people serving in the armed forces....

The Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) -- a coalition of law schools and professors that formed to sue the government -- had said the law "compelled speech" that made it appear schools were endorsing the government's exclusion of acknowledged gays in the military, thus violating the schools' right to free speech under the First Amendment.

But in writing for the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that Solomon "neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything."

"Law schools remain free under the statute to express whatever views they may have on the military's congressionally mandated employment policy. . . . Nothing about recruiting suggests that law schools agree with any speech by recruiters and nothing in the Solomon Amendment restricts what the law schools may say about the military's policies," Roberts wrote.

A shining example

I don’t remember where I saw this first, but it is from an interview with country singer Dolly Parton
on the Larry King Live show on CNN where they are talking about her Oscar-nominated song for the movie Transamerica. I thought her answer was just an excellent example of what it means to have a good heart.

KING: Why have you been -- you've been interested for a long time in gay/lesbian, transgender stories, why?

PARTON: Well, I'm not interested in anything. I haven't made any efforts to do -- I just am totally accepting of people. I really believed that everybody should be allowed to be who they are.

KING: That's what I mean.

PARTON: Well yes, I'm very tolerant of just people in general. I believe we're all God's children. I think we all have a right to be who we are. I'm certainly -- I'm not a judge and I'm certainly not God, so I just try to love the God core in all people. And I know that is in the center of us all, so I just try to accept people for who they are, whatever that is.

I think you could hold up Dolly Parton in this instance as an example of the true Christian spirit in contrast to Fred Phelps and his ilk.

Oscar upset

That must be some kind of record for fewest number of Academy Awards won by a Best Picture flick. Crash, which surprised everyone and took the award from Brokeback Mountain, only went home with three total Oscars - in addition to Best Picture, it won for Original Screenplay and Film Editing.
Two films that weren’t even nominated for Best Picture took home that many Oscars - King Kong which won for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound and Best Sound Editing; and Memoirs of a Geisha which won for Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume.
Brokeback Mountain also walked away with three Oscars after being snubbed for Best Picture - Best Director, Adapted Screenplay and Original Score.
No other film had more than one Oscar for the evening. Capote, Walk the Line, Syriana and The Constnat Gardener split up the acting Oscars; Hustle and Flow won for Best Song and Chronicles of Narnia won for Best Makeup.

I missed Jon Stewart’s opening monologue, but from what I did see I thought he did a good job of hosting the show. My personal favorite, though, is still Steve Martin.
I was happy to see George Clooney win the Best Supporting Actor trophy. He had the best line of the night with his brief acceptance speech:

You know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it’s probably a good thing. We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.

I know how he feels. When I saw that more people tuned into American Idol than the Olympics the other week, I had no doubt I am out of synch with the masses.

Voucher Man

James Leininger, San Antonio’s right-wing billionaire philanthropist, had an op-ed in the local paper the other day explaining his particular passion for school vouchers.
The good doctor, who made his fortune by selling specially desinged and manufactured hospital beds, has recently poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a political campaign targeting a select group of supposedly “liberal” Republicans for defeat in next week’s primary. The unlucky lawmakers got on Leininger’s bad list by opposing a school voucher plan during the last legislative session.
While not specifically addressing his political activities, Leininger explains in the piece that his sole motivation is “to improve the lives of poor children in Texas.”
That is certainly a noble goal and Leininger comes across in the piece as being both sincere and dedicated to that long-term effort. Unfortunately, he has latched onto a program that, while possibly helping some students in select situations, would ultimately hurt all of the other students who get left behind.

Leininger explains how he got involved with vouchers in the first place:

Almost 15 years ago I read about a private scholarship program helping kids out of bad schools in bad neighborhoods in Indianapolis. I thought, "That's the answer!" That summer we offered 1,000 scholarships to low-income children in San Antonio. The first week we saw more than 6,000 applications. Because we have been blessed with financial resources, my wife and I knew we needed to help as many children as possible. With the help of other generous, caring people, we created a $50 million scholarship program in San Antonio's Edgewood Independent School District, one of the worst districts in Texas at that time.

So far this is all quite commendable, but then Leininger makes a faulty assumption:

Inspired by competition, that district, which had three failing campuses, had no failing schools two years later and the district improved to a "recognized" rating by the Texas Education Agency for the first time. This greatly benefited even students who chose to remain in the public school system.

So Edgewood ISD suddenly improved because of competition with Leininger’s scholarship program? Were there no other efforts underway at that time to improve the school district? Was more money pumped into the district at the state or local level during that time? What other factors might have contributed to that improvement?
And what about the big distinction between Leininger’s privately-funded scholarship program, and the publicly-funded voucher program that he is trying to ram through the Legislature? The first one does not divert funds away from the school district, while the latter one does.

Leininger says he wants to “give parents the option of choosing a better school.” But even if there is a “better school” available, which in many cases there is not (especially in small town and rural areas), not every child can just pick up and switch to that school.

Leininger also says it doesn't matter if it is a public or private school; “our concern should be that tax dollars are used to see the child get the best possible education.”
For an idea of what Leininger thinks is the best possible education, check out Patrick Henry College where he sits on the Board of Trustees. Especially, check out the school’s Statement of Biblical Worldview.

Leininger notes that there are “many more Texas children desperately in need of help. “And adds that he “will oppose those who force needy children to be trapped in bad and dangerous schools.” But what about the “non-needy children” who would still be stuck in those “bad and dangerous schools”? In Leininger’s ideal world, public tax dollars would be drained away from these struggling schools to send a few select students to private, religious institutions that share a Biblical worldview with Patrick Henry College.

In every other conceivable situation - if you have a military unit that is struggling or a hospital that has problems with poor health care or a police department that is understaffed and unable to control crime - the answer is never to take money away. It is always to provide more money in those instances. But for some strange reason, right-wingers believe the magic answer for education is to withhold funding as the ultimate cure-all to our educational woes.

It’s really too bad, because it is clear that Leininger has a good heart and has every good intention to help these students. He just needs to understand that there are no easy and painless solutions to these kinds of problems. If you want good schools you have to pay for them.

Mutiny on the Potomac

You know that George Bush is in trouble when the rightwing pundits are beating up on him with the same ferocity as those on the left.

Last week, we had the Godfather of the far-right, William F. Buckley Jr. saying
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.

And then adding sarcastically in his latest column that
In four years (during WWII) we marched from Pearl Harbor to the heart of what was left of Tokyo and Berlin. In three years (today) we can't yet take a cab from Baghdad to its airport without an armed guard.

Now we have right-wing pundit emeritus George Will noting that
”all three components of the "axis of evil'' -- Iraq, Iran, North Korea -- (are) more dangerous (now) than they were when that phrase was coined in 2002...”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, right-wing think-tank guru and former Reagan administration policy wonk Bruce Bartlett has penned a book called Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

Ouch!!

Madla vs. Uresti

I’m being deluged with political campaign mailings and phone calls this past week. It seems I’m in the crosshairs of this Democratic primary skuffle between incumbent state Sen. Frank Madla and state Rep. Carlos Uresti.
I got two mailings just the other day, one from each side. The Madla piece, like his previous mailers, features a pouty-faced little girl on the front cover who is apparently upset by the prospect of having bad old Mr. Uresti representing her in the Senate. On the inside page , the same girl is in Mr. Madla’s arms with a big grin on her face. This is obviously the positive mailer for Madla as compared to his last one which accused Uresti of single-handedly handing the keys to the state Capitol to the Republicans.
In this flyer, Madla makes the one argument that works best for him - contrasting his years of experience in the Legislature with Uresti’s.
“This is no time to elect a rookie to the Texas Senate,” the flyer declares.

From the Uresti campaign I got one of his negative mailers that goes after Madla for his now infamous statement that “when I get to the State Capitol, I lock the Democratic Party in my trunk.” (I got one of his positive mailers last week which played up his biographical information and touted his military service.)
You can see a video clip of Madla making the statement over at Red State and also at Burnt Orange Report.
The trunk video is plaguing Madla in the same way that the picture of Henry Cuellar being embraced by President Bush is dragging down his campaign.
And Uresti continues to pound Madla for the one vote that has probably caused him the most grief - a procedural vote in which he did not block a Republican proposal to make harsh cutbacks in CHIP funding from going to the full Senate. Madla voted against the measure on the Senate floor, but by that time it was too late. It was that one vote that angered many Democrats and encouraged Uresti to launch his primary challenge in the first place.

For the record, I’m firmly in the Uresti camp. I will probably be voting later this week while early voting is still going on. One of the things that has driven me into the Uresti camp is that on my drive to and from work I keep seeing Madla campaign signs grouped with Henry Cuellar signs at places that are notorious for being big backers of Republican candidates, such as the San Antonio Board of Realtors. I wish that I could vote against Cuellar too, but unfortunately I am in Henry Bonilla’s district where there are no Democrats challenging him this year (at least none who have made enough noise for me to notice). So in that race I have committed to supporting the Libertarian candidate Cecil Lamb, who is a good guy even though I disagree with most of his stated positions.

Redistricting challenge

Here’s some good news from the Supreme Court today which is looking into the Republican mid-term re-redistricting scheme in Texas.

According to the AP:
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was the key swing voter in that (previous redistricting) case, and on Wednesday expressed concerns about at least part of the Texas map.

In that previous case, the justices voted 5-4 to throw out a gerrymandered map with Kennedy serving as the swing vote joining Breyer, Souter, Stevens and Ginsberg.
The two new justices on the court, Roberts and Alito, could only make a difference if they surprise everyone and side with the forces of righteousness and goodness. That’s because they replaced justices Rehnquist and O’Connor who both crossed over to the Dark Side on this issue.

If Kennedy’s concerns cause him to vote the same way this time it should mean that at least part of Tom DeLay’s map could be scrapped regardless of how Roberts and Alito vote.

Jeffrey Toobin had an in depth analysis in The New Yorker recently which SCOTUSBlog conveniently made available in pdf format.

Interesting admission

President Bush acknowledges in a new book that just came out that Osama bin Laden may have helped him beat John Kerry in 2004 by issuing a tape shortly before the election.

The al Qaeda leader had issued a taped diatribe against Bush the Friday before Americans went to the polls....
"I thought it was going to help," Bush said.
"I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."

So Bush apparently thinks that bin Laden is an idiot.
Because for one to believe that bin Laden was trying to hurt Bush’s chances at re-election by issuing his diatribe when he did, one must assume that bin Laden actually thought he could influence American voters to side with him before the election.

If bin Laden were really that stupid, one would think that we might have already caught him by now. However, if he is not an idiot then he must have realized that anything he said before the election would have the opposite effect, if any, on the electorate. So perhaps bin Laden really did help Bush win the election, just not for the reasons that Bush thought.

Whether or not bin Laden’s statement really did impact the election is probably impossible to know for sure, but the fact that Bush thinks it did is very interesting and also highly disturbing.

Spoke too soon

Today is one of those days where events are happening so fast that the news you see in the morning paper is outdated before you even get in to work.
The front page headline in the Express-News today (picked up from the WaPo) says “Deadly clashes easing in Iraq.” A subhead then quotes a U.S. envoy exclaiming that the ‘crisis is over.’ I noted this as I picked the paper up off the driveway and threw it into my truck. But then as I was driving to work I turn on NPR and hear that there have been a string of car bombs and suicide bombs in the last few hours claiming more than 30 lives and injuring more than a hundred others.

Here’s the story from New York Times:

A string of three bombs went off in quick succession here today, killing at least 30 and wounding more than 130, Iraqi officials said, bringing a sudden end to the relative calm that had followed a curfew imposed after last week's outbreak of sectarian violence.
In signs that the new violence represented a resumption of the sectarian strife, two of the blasts took place in Shiite areas in the southeastern part of the city, while the roof of a Sunni mosque in Baghdad was also blown off. In the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit, the mosque built over the grave of Saddam Hussein's father was attacked, according to an official in the Iraqi interior ministry.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has downgraded the only Iraqi Army battallion that had been considered able to carry out attacks on its own:

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.
The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.
The competence of the Iraqi military has been cited as a key factor in when U.S. troops will be able to return home.

Shades of Nixon

Via Josh Marshall, I see that one of our homegrown progressive activist organizations here in Texas was just put through the ringer by Tom DeLay’s crony’s in Washington.

Fortunately, they now have a clean bill of health from the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service recently audited the books of a Texas nonprofit group that was critical of campaign spending by former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) after receiving a request for the audit from one of DeLay's political allies in the House.

The lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group, Texans for Public Justice, from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents.

This is an abuse of government power at the highest level. It’s even worse than when DeLay commandeered the FAA to hunt for the fleeing Texas Democrats when they were breaking quorum over DeLay’s mid-term re-redistricting scheme.
I remember reading about some of the abuses of the Nixon administration when I was in college and I always thought his use of the IRS to go after his political enemies was one of his worst crimes. Now, here it is again and as Josh notes, they are not even bothering to try and cover it up.

The Disney Vault

I joined the Disney Movie Club a while back hoping to build up my collection of Disney animated movies. I already had a modest collection on VHS tape including:
Fantasia
Snow White
101 Dalmations
Aladdin
Mary Poppins
The Emperor's New Groove
Toy Story 1 & 2
and A Bug's Life

But I had very few on DVD at that point:
Lion King
Bambi
Monster's Inc.
Finding Nemo
The Incredibles
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Home on the Range

By joining the club I was able to pick up
Robin Hood
The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Aristocats
The Rescuers and
Alice in Wonderland

Then with the first of my three required purchases I picked up Cinderella which was just released from the Disney video vault and put on DVD for the first time ever. Next month I plan to make Lady and the Tramp my second selection and in the fall I understand they will finally be releasing The Little Mermaid on DVD.

I cannot find a schedule that shows when Disney will be releasing other films from its pantheon onto DVD, but I have at the top of my wish list Pinochio, Jungle Book and Peter Pan.
And that is not even getting into the live-action Disney movies that I wouldn't mind having.

Campaign for the National Popular Vote

I fully support this group’s efforts.

A coalition of former congressmen is launching a campaign to change how Americans select their president by reforming the Electoral College system, saying campaigns for the White House should be reliant on the nationwide popular vote rather than simply the outcome in a handful of swing states....

Previous attempts to change the Electoral College by amending the Constitution have failed in Congress, so proponents of reform are seeking to change laws through individual state legislatures. The initiative, called the Campaign for the National Popular Vote, does not seek to abolish the Electoral College, but rather award the electors from each state to the candidate who wins the country's popular vote.

Supporters of the plan say the last two elections illustrate the need - for Republicans and Democrats alike - to change the system of electing the president.

In 2000, Gore won the popular vote by about 500,000 ballots, but lost the election in the Electoral College after George W. Bush narrowly won the popular vote in Florida and all 25 of its electoral votes. In 2004, President Bush won the popular vote by 3 million ballots, but would have lost his re-election bid if Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., had simply carried Ohio.

The Bush Boom

Here’s more evidence of the booming economy under President Bush and the Republicans.

The average income of American families, after adjusting for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to 2001 while their net worth rose but at a slower pace....
The median, or midpoint for net worth rose by 1.5 percent to $93,100 from 2001 to 2004. That growth was far below the 10.3 percent gain in median net worth from 1998 to 2001...

Just to be clear, that’s a 1.5 percent increase in median net worth during the Bush years, compared to a 10.3 percent increase during the Clinton years.

Clueless George strikes again

I find it quite amazing that President Bush, who has staked his presidential legacy on the notion that he is keeping America safe from any future terrorist attacks, would be left out of the loop by his administration on a deal giving the United Arab Emirates control of six major U.S. ports.

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

It makes me wonder what things his handlers feel that he can be kept in the loop on. I thought this was supposed to be the new post-9/11 world, where average Americans are forced to live with all kinds of new and invasive restrictions on their personal freedoms.
And yet, allowing the UAE to step in and take control of our ports doesn’t even get the requisite investigation before it is approved without the knowledge of the President or the Congress.

Now, some people are making a reasonable case that this is really no big deal.
Kevin Drum raises the following points in defense of the decision:

• This isn't a matter of outsourcing a government operation to a private company. P&O has been operating ports in the United States (and the rest of the world) for a long time, and they do it under contract with the port authorities, not the federal government. What's more, there are plenty of port operators in the United States besides P&O that are foreign owned too.

• P&O doesn't "own" the ports, they just manage one or more terminals at each of their ports and try to make money by attracting shipping companies to their terminals.

• P&O was on the auction block no matter what. If Dubai Ports hadn't purchased them, PSA International of Singapore would have acquired them instead.

• Port workers would mostly (all?) be American union members regardless of who owns the management company. Security will continue to be provided by the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs.

Those are all good points, and it may be true that this will turn out to be much ado about nothing. But just because the UAE won’t be physically operating the ports doesn’t mean we can breathe easy. As the owners of the management company, they will have access to all the intelligence that would let anyone with half a brain skirt the system and enter the U.S. without detection. Do you suppose there are any members of the UAE who might have sympathies for al-Queada and might be tempted to leak that information to certain groups?
Is it really such a good thing in this post-9/11 world to be outsourcing the management of our ports in the first place?

Down the memory hole

I found this story to be particularly disturbing today.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

Bush’s comittment to renewable energy

This is really funny.
President Bush, sitting on a 39 percent approval rating, is still traveling the country trying to promote initiatives from his long-forgotten State of the Union speech when his handlers decided to send him to a renewable energy lab in Colorado to highlight his new-found interest in promoting renewable energy sources.
Oops!
It turns out that lab just got hit with massive budget cuts recently thanks to Bush’s inept mishandling of the economy and 32 people, including 8 researchers, had to be laid off just two weeks ago.
So Karl Rove got on the phone to Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and had him funnel $5 million to the lab so that the jobs could be restored - at least temporarily - so as not to spoil Bush’s photo opportunity.
What a bunch of incompetent clowns we have running our government.

Party purge

Nacho Guarache is an excellent political cartoon by local artist Leo Garza. San Antonio readers of the E-N are fortunate to have it. But sometimes Garza can be such a Republican hack (some would call him a wanker) that it starts to detract from the quality of his stuff.

This past week, for example, he once again went after his favorite whipping boy, the local Democratic Party by lampooning them as being hardline party disciplinarians.

And while there may be a sliver of truth in his criticism (obviously geared toward to backlash against Rep. Henry Cuellar for playing kissy-face with President Bush prior to the SOTU speech), Garza completely overlooks the log in his own party’s eye in the form of multi-millionaire James Leininger who is financing an effort to purge the Texas Republican Party of so-called “liberals.”

A political action committee gave nearly $700,000 last month to the Republican primary opponents of five state House members who fought school voucher proposals during last year's legislative session.
James Leininger, a prominent supporter of school vouchers, was the only contributor during the latest reporting period to the Texas Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, according to reports to the Texas Ethics Commission....

Leininger, a San Antonio businessman, gave the political action committee $500,000 and pledged $250,000 more, The Dallas Morning News reported in its Wednesday editions. Leininger also made direct donations to some of the challengers.
The political action committee made in-kind contributions of advertising and mailings to primary opponents of Reps. Carter Casteel, R-New Braunfels; Tommy Merritt, R-Longview; Roy Blake Jr., R-Nacogdoches; Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock; and Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth....

Bill Crocker of Austin, one of the state's two members of the Republican National Committee, said he founded the Texas Republican Legislative Campaign Committee in October to go after "liberal Republicans" in the Legislature.

So while Democrats are having a widely publicized cat fight in two local primary races this year - Cuellar vs. Rodriguez for a congressional seat and Madla vs. Uribe for a state senate seat - for which they are getting lampooned in the paper, Republicans have their own ideological cleansing program underway which is both larger in scale while also recieving less attention.

The lost post

That was odd. This post inexplicably vanished over the weekend, yet can still be found in my archives. Very strange. I guess it was a Blogger quirk.

Cuellar and E-N editors think alike

The Express-News is throwing its editorial support behind Henry Cuellar in the 28th District primary race.
This is not a surprise if you look at their editorial board's recent history. Cuellar is clearly their kind of "Democrat."
Cuellar supported Bush/Cheney for President in 2000 and 2004, just like the E-N.
Cuellar supported launching the invasion of Iraq over the bogus threat of WMDs, just like the E-N. And he continues to make excuses and apologize for that initial blunder, just like the E-N.
Cuellar supported CAFTA to the detriment of U.S. labor, just like the E-N.
And Cuellar promises to continue playing kissy-face with the Bush administration for as long as he is in office, just like the E-N.

Fortunately, there is a real Democrat in this race - former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez who has a good shot and regaining his seat. Let's just hope that Democratic voters can see through these faux endorsements by Republican groups like the Club for Growth and the E-N Editorial Board.

A lack of empathy

There was an interesting piece in the NYTimes today on Harry Whittington giving the backstory on his long ties to the Texas Republican Party.
What caught my attention was this graph describing one of Whittington’s ‘passions’ “that do not fit so squarely with his image as a Republican elder” - prison reform.

While serving on the board of the Texas Department of Corrections in the 1980's and after observing the conditions in many state prisons, he once claimed, "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants." He also led an effort to move mentally retarded inmates out of the general prison population and followed this with outspoken support of a bill to ban execution of retarded prisoners. (Although Gov. Rick Perry vetoed that bill in 2001, the United States Supreme Court later outlawed such executions.)

"A person who is born with a body that becomes an adult and a mind that remains a child needs special protection in our criminal justice system," Mr. Whittington, one of whose four daughters is retarded, wrote in a letter to The Dallas Morning News in 2001.

Is it just me, or is the only time I see conservative Republicans taking a liberal position on something like this is when it affects them personally?

Whittington, who has a daughter who is mentally retarded, is an advocate for changing the way the mentally retarded are treated in our prisons.

Dick Cheney, who has a daughter who is a lesbian, refuses to endorse Bush’s anti-gay marriage agenda. Ditto the late Barry Goldwater.

Nancy Reagan, whose late-husband suffered from Alzheimers, is an outspoken advocate for stem cell research.

And so on, and so on.

Why can’t more people have empathy for others when it does not affect them personally?

Taking blame, finally

Thanks to The Agonist for the graphic.

Dick Cheney finally comes clean.
On the grounds that it’s always better late than never, Cheney can be commended for finally coming forward and taking full responsibility for shooting his hunting partner in the face last Saturday.
However, the lengthy delay in doing so has left a bitter public impression that he was hoping to avoid taking responsibility by having his spokespeople point the finger of blame back at Whittington. That was inexcusable and should never have been tolerated.

No laughing matter

There has been a lot of joking and a lot of ducking and covering over this Cheney shooting incident, but now it appears that it could all become very unfunny very quickly.

The 78-year-old lawyer who Vice President Cheney accidentally shot in a hunting accident suffered a minor heart attack this morning after a piece of birdshot moved and lodged in his heart, doctors said.

Doctors treating Harry Whittington said the Republican lawyer was moved back into the intensive care unit and will need to remain hospitalized for at least a week.

This can’t be good for a 78-year-old to have a lead pellet lodged in his heart. What happens if he dies? Is Cheney still “cleared” because of the non-investigation by the local sheriff’s office which didn’t find out about the accident for several hours afterwards and was not allowed to come out to the ranch and interview Cheney until the next day?

Also, is the vice president’s office paying for this guy’s hospital bills and rehab? Does Cheney have insurance for this kind of thing?

This is so funny, it’s sad.

From The Daily Show:

“Rob Courdry: 'Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time-there-were-quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be the 78 year old man. Even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists-he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.”

Now I’m just waiting for Mr. Whittington, as a loyal Republican, to issue a statement accepting full responsibility for the accident and declaring that he was honored to have been shot in the face by Cheney.

UPDATE

Go here to see more coverage from last night's The Daily Show.

Trigger-happy Cheney

Trigger-happy Cheney nearly blows hunting partner’s head clean-off.

Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old hunting companion of Vice President Dick Cheney, was recovering in stable condition Monday after Cheney accidentally shot him during a weekend quail hunting trip...

I went to high school in a small town not too far from where this all happened. I know that hunting accidents like this are not uncommon. I even knew a kid in my high school class who was killed as a result of a hunting accident in the early 1980s.
What bugs me the most about this whole thing is the way the Vice President’s office has handled the aftermath. First, they didn’t bother to report it for 24 hours (shades of Chappaquiddick),...

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported it Sunday.

... and then they left it all to the poor people who own the ranch to handle the torrent of media inquiries.

Katharine Armstrong, daughter of Republican Party stalwart Anne Armstrong, did her best to try and spin the story in a way that is favorable to the vice president, but ultimately I think she just made matters worse by making it appear that Cheney is trying to shirk responsiblity for the accident.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," said Armstrong.

Oh, so it’s Whittington’s fault that he got shot. I see.

"The vice president didn't see him," she said. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Let me just say that Cheney is damn lucky that he didn’t kill Whittington. We’re not talking about a BB gun here. This was a 28-gauge shotgun which can and does kill people at that distance. And he was damn careless to swing around and fire away without knowing where everybody in his hunting party was. So don’t try and blame Whittington for not jumping up and down and waving his arms. Cheney was the one with his finger on the trigger and he alone was responsible for that weapon when it was discharged.

UPDATE

I think fellow Texan Paul Begala sums things up nicely over at TPMCafe.

For the record

If this is true, Bush deserves to be impeached:

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

Pillar's critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of the administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.

Bush and company will, of course, deny these allegations and the Republican Congress is not about to investigate them, so I doubt anything will come of it. But if you want to know why Democrats are so angry (along with other people who are paying attention) then here it is in a nutshell.

DINO-MIGHT!!!

Democrats have a couple of interesting primary races this year, not least of which is the rematch between Former Congressman Ciro Rodriguez and current U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar.

Cuellar managed to boot Rodriguez out of his seat last time around thanks largely to Republican redistricting that took away familar San Antonio territory in exchange for a big chunk of Laredo. So the Laredo-based Cuellar was able to best the San Antonio-based Rodriguez in a race that came down to geographics. This time the race will be based on ideology and it will be interesting to see how many Laredo Democrats will stick by their man after he has practically shed his Democratic ties and donned a Republican cloak.

Recently, Ciro has become a regular celebrity over at Eschaton ever since President Bush gave Cuellar that curious face massage just before his SOTU speech. It has helped raise Ciro’s profile and contributed significantly to his campaign coffers.
There is good reason why Cuellar is Bush’s favorite “Democrat” as the folks at Burnt Orange Report detail.

Another interesting race here locally is state Sen. Frank Madla’s hotly contested re-election campaign against State Rep. Carlos Uresti. Like Cuellar, Madla is accused of being a DINO (Democrat in name only) who too often casts his lot with the Republicans. He has been especially hit hard on a vote to reduce funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program or CHIP.

The E-N had a story this morning that is apparently not online in which they note that Ciro is getting a lot of support from trial lawyers while Madla is getting lots of financial support from the traditionally Republican tort-reform groups. As I was driving in to work today I thought it was interesting that I would see clusters of Madla signs grouped together with Cuellar signs. How much you want to bet they are being put out by Republicans?

Look out Elmo

Look whose neck is on the budget chopping block again. Big Bird.

Bush wants to slash $150 million from Public Broadcasting, the sharpest cut yet. He just won’t let up on his ideological crusade to crush quality children’s television programming.

And here is more awful budget news:

In his $2.77 billion budget, Bush asks Congress to sharply cut or eliminate 141 government programs. Almost one-third of the targeted programs are in education, including ones that provide money to support the arts, vocational education, parent resource centers and drug-free schools.

Bush: The Anti-Education president. That will be just part of his legacy, along with the corruption, incompentence and the bloody quagmire in Iraq.

UPDATE

TxBubba of Southpaw notes that while Bush proposes saving $400 million by axing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, he is advocating that we spend $670 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency that supervises all US government non-military propaganda including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

Bush’s awful, horrible budget

What a pathetic waste of paper this is. There is no chance that Bush’s sorry excuse for a budget will ever see the light of day. Nevertheless, I think it is important that everyone study the proposed budget to see just how screwed up and misguided our president’s policies really are. The Wall Street Journal has excellent coverage of all the atrocities contained within Bush’s recipe for disaster.

Much of the squeezing would be of programs aimed at low-income Americans - and wouldn't save all that much money in the aggregate.

The budget is cowardly in the way it fails to address entitlement spending; frivolous in the way it handles defense spending; and downright cruel in the way it slashes domestic programs for the poor that will result in little to no savings - Especially when you realize he is more than offsetting any of those savings with requests for even more tax cuts for the wealthy.

But as the WSJ points out, this budget will be DOA when it gets to the Congress.

Welcome Back!

Bill Crawford of All Things Conservative is back from his extended hiatus.

Also, I was delighted to find out today that two groups have opted to advertize on my humble little site. Wow! I’ll be raking in the big bucks in no time! WooHoo!!

Robin Hood

My little boy just loves Robin Hood.
I mean the Disney version, of course. At 2 1/2, I don’t think he’s quite ready for the live action versions of the story. (I have both the Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner versions on DVD) But the one where Robin is a fox, Little John is a bear and Prince John is a lion, that one is right up his alley.

I’m not exactly sure what it is about this movie that has such a hold on his fancy. He used to be all in to Winnie the Pooh, but from the first day I let him watch Robin Hood it has been his favorite. He’ll watch others things, but will request Robin Hood at every opportunity.
At first it seemed to be one of Disney’s lesser efforts with animation that was geared more toward Saturday morning cartoons than for a feature film. But now that I’ve seen the movie about 157 times and counting, I have developed a special appreciation for it.

The movie has a lot of the stock Disney vocal talents for that time including Phil Harris as Little John (he was also the voice of Balu the Bear in “Jungle Book” and Thomas O’Malley in “The Aristocats”); Pat Buttram as the Sheriff of Nottingham (he was Napoleon in “The Aristocats”; Luke in “The Rescuers”; and Chief in “The Fox and the Hound”) and Carole Shelley as Lady Cluck (she was the goose in the pink bonnet in “The Aristocats” and one of the Fates in “Hercules”).
Other notable voice talents include Andy Devine as Friar Tuck (recognizable because he had bit roles in just about every Western movie ever made) and country singer Roger Miller as the Rooster/Alan-a-Dale. Roger Miller also contributed most of the songs for the film.
But for my money, Peter Ustinov steals the show as the voice of Prince John, the vain, scheming, vindictive, cowardly, thumb-sucking lion who has it out for Robin Hood. One of the reasons I can make it through multiple viewings of the film without my head exploding is because he gives such an enjoyable and over-the-top performance.

I’m sure the reason my son likes the film is because it has all these animals running around doing funny and exciting things in a non-threatening way. But the Robin Hood story itself has an appeal that goes much deeper for everyone old enough to understand the political dynamics of the time.
When I was in college, a friend gave me a collectible action figure of Kevin Costner as Robin Hood in recognition of my then developing leftist political beliefs. Robbing the rich to feed the poor is the penultimate statement of leftist economic thought. A forced redistribution of wealth to right the wrongs of the oppressive capitalist overlords. But Robin Hood also has many traits that appeal to conservatives such as his loyalty to the crown and his devotion to his childhood sweetheart Maid Marian. And then there is the fact that the thing he is objecting to the most is the high taxation being imposed by the despicable Prince John.

My son will eventually outgrow his obsession with this particular movie, but hopefully he will retain a certain amount of pleasure in the timeless story that inspired it.

Grapes and watermelons

In the comments to the Bono post, Mark Harden takes exception to the implication in Bono’s speech that the U.S. is not being generous enough with its foreign aid to developing countries.

Here is a website with a lot of good information on that very topic.

What we find out from the site is that the U.S. does indeed lead the world in foreign aid assistance when looking at total dollars given. Here is a list of the developed countries and the amount the dollar amount (in millions) that they donate towards ODA (Official Development Assistance).

United States 19,705
Japan 8,906
France 8,473
United Kingdom 7,883
Germany 7,534
Netherlands 4,204
Sweden 2,722
Canada 2,599
Italy 2,462
Spain 2,437
Norway 2,199
Denmark 2,037
Switzerland 1,545
Belgium 1,463
Australia 1,460
Portugal 1,031
Austria 678
Finland 655
Ireland 607
Greece 465
Luxembourg 236
New Zealand 212

But when you take that same list and look at the donations as a percentage of each country’s Gross National Income (GNI), the U.S. suddenly winds up near the bottom.

Norway 0.87
Denmark 0.85
Luxembourg 0.83
Sweden 0.78
Netherlands 0.73
Portugal 0.63
Belgium 0.41
France 0.41
Switzerland 0.41
Ireland 0.39
United Kingdom 0.36
Finland 0.35
Germany 0.28
Canada 0.27
Australia 0.25
Spain 0.24
Austria 0.23
Greece 0.23
New Zealand 0.23
Japan 0.19
United States 0.17
Italy 0.15

So you could argue the point two ways. Yes, we donate more than any other country. But it is not that much when taken as a percentage of our GNI. It’s like comparing a watermelon with a bunch of grapes.
We could give more, but choose not to. So are we really being all that generous?
Or let’s put it another way, who is more generous? A person who makes $10,000 a year and gives $100 to charity. Or a person who makes $100,000,000 a year and gives $1,000?

P.S.
Mark insists that the U.S. more than makes up for the paucity of its government assistance through private donations, but I have not seen a citation for this yet. He is welcome to add any links he finds in the comments.

What’s wrong with the GOP today

Too many Ralph Reeds ; Not enough John Danforths.

Bully for Bono

Bono shows once again why he was tapped by Time Magazine to be Man of the Year.

Ho-hum

Remember when just one U.S. serviceman killed in Iraq was big news?
Now when we have five soldiers killed in one day it only merits an inside story combined with an update on the Hussein trial.

The SOTU shuffle

I nearly fell asleep last night trying to watch Bush’s State of the Union speech.
While the speech itself was not terribly inspiring, reaction to it has been less muted here in the local blogosphere.

Cernig was distracted by Bush’s Columbo-like eyebrow that “hovered and moved around, halfway up his brow as if it had a life of it's own.

Libertas was annoyed with the president’s overuse of the term “freedom,” which is near and dear to his heart.

“How many times can a guy say the word Freedom in one speech? Saying it ain’t the same as doing it Mr. POTUS...
It is not the Manifest Destiny of the United States to spread Freedom throughout the world by force of arms. It is the United States’ Mission to spread Freedom by example. Given current American imperialist tendencies at home and abroad, I’m not so sanguine as the POTUS about which direction has the momentum when it comes to the so-called March of Freedom.”

Over at the E-N’s new political blog, Strange Bedfellows, Gary Martin takes notice of the oddly intimate embrace of President Bush and his favorite Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar upon the president’s entrance into the House chambers right before his big speech.
But it is Cincinnatus who finds and posts the picture.

My take on the president’s speech is that when times are bad and his poll numbers are low he tends to jettison the red meat typically tossed out for his core constituency of rabid right-wing radicals and instead begins to sound like a moderate Republican or even a Democrat.
Just look at Bush’s energy proposal. Denouncing our addiction to oil? That sounded like it was ripped right out of the pages of Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance.” And not one word about ANWR. Likewise, most of the foreign policy parts of the speech could have been voiced by John Kerry while the health care proposals sounded like they could have come from Hillary Clinton.

But don’t expect anything to come from these proposals. This is an administration that is just treading water, struggling to keep from sinking any further as the Abramoff scandal, the Iraqi quagmire and mounting deficits continue to weigh it down.

As an aside, I thought the arrest of Cindy Sheehan for wearing an anti-war t-shirt to the event was a sad spectacle and a testament to our nation’s current state of paranoia and intolerance. As if to show that the sword cuts both ways, the security folks also bounced Republican Congressman Bill Young’s wife from the gallery for wearing a t-shirt that promoted the war effort. Provided that they sat quietly in the chamber, both women should have been allowed to stay and wear their respective shirts.

A newsie day

Yesterday was one of those days when everything seems to happen at once. It is a nightmare for news editors who must decide which stories to put on the front of the newspaper each day. There were easily five and possibly six national stories deserving of Page 1 treatment yesterday. Let’s review:

President’s State of the Union address
Correta Scott King dies
Samuel Alito confirmed to the Supreme Court
Academy Award nominations announced
Last day for Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve and Feds raise interest rates
Enron trial has opening arguments
The Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran has plans for nukes

That doesn’t leave any room for local stories, and most dailies insist on having at least one local story out front. It was fortunate for them that nothing big happened in Iraq yesterday. So what is a poor news editor to do? I was curious to see what the Express-News would do.

They went with a 5-story front with the SOTU story on top, a King feature anchored in the middle and the Enron and Iran stories running down the sides. They also decided to cram in a local feature story in the upper left column just for good measure. The Academy Award nominees got the top of the page banner teasing the story in the Life section while they also found room to squeeze in a tease below the SOTU story on the Alito confirmation. Greenspan and the Feds were relegated to the Business section with no tease.
All in all not a bad set of choices.

Mistake of the Union

Juan Cole has a list of the Top 10 things Bush won’t tell you in the State of the Union address.

Also, I highly recommend anyone with a sense of humor to check out this spoof of Bush giving the 2006 State of the Union. Be sure and pay attention to the two guys in the background playing VP Cheney and Speaker Hastert. Hilarious.

The (Yawn) Oscar nominees are...

Here is the list of Academy Award nominees. Having not seen any of them, I’m not in a position to judge, but based on my perception of which films I would like to see given the choice I think the field this year is pretty lousy.
Like I said before, I will probably never see Brokeback Mountain, not because of the gay theme, but because I don’t like movies about people cheating on their spouses and breaking up families. It is all too depressing.
Nor do I have any desire to see Crash. I’m curious about Capote because of the excellent reviews Philip Seymour Hoffman has recieved for his performance, but it did not strike me as a best picture contender.
I probably will see Spielberg’s Munich at some point and I want to see Goodnight and Good Luck, which I will cheer on to win the Oscar even though I think Brokeback is going to sweep everything.
Personally, I think 100 years from now people will look back and say this was the year that Peter Jackson directed his version of King Kong, while all the other films will be long forgotten.
Quick! Which film won the Oscar in 1977? You know! The year that Star Wars came out! (At least Star Wars got a Best Picture nod that year).

UPDATE:

Underscoring the importance of Disney’s purchase of Pixar Entertainment is the shutout of Disney’s first attempt at digital animation “Chicken Little” in the animation category. With no Pixar feature out last year, there were no digital films even nominated this year.
The nominees were the hand-drawn "Howl's Moving Castle," and the stop-motion films "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" and "Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."

My new truck

I just bought a new truck this weekend. Not this one in particular, but it is a red Dodge Dakota quad cab.