Let’s Impeach the President

Neil Young has produced a documentary film of his 2006 tour with his old Crosby, Stills & Nash buddies that focuses on the angst that his politically-charged lyrics produced from some audiences.

It wasn't hard to find unhappy fans at a handful of shows, most obviously in Atlanta. Many streamed out, or stayed to offer hand signals. Some had inexplicably expected a greatest-hits show. Young said he was blown away watching families fight, the children wanting to stay while their parents were eager to leave.

How dense does one have to be to go to a Neil Young concert after he has just released an album called “Living With War” featuring the single “Let’s Impeach the President” and be surprised that it contains an overtly political message?

Good news for Mark Begich

A federal grand jury has just indicted U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Stevens is the senior Republican in the Senate and this will unquestionably be a blow to the GOP's chances of holding this seat in November.
Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, Steven's Democratic opponent, already had a good shot at the seat before this latest turn of events. I'm sure they are celebrating right now.
At least Stevens still has time to put in for a pardon from President Bush.

Domestic terrorist attacks

A man walked into a Unitarian Church in Tennessee over the weekend and opened fire with a shotgun, killing two people and critically wounding five others. His motivation? He hates Liberals.
The church that the man attacked was well know for supporting liberal causes and welcoming all people into membership including gays and lesbians. So that apparently made them a target for this wingnut to take out his frustration over not being able to find a job in Bush’s economy.
David Neiwert at Firedoglake notes that killing liberals has been a common theme on the fringes of the far right for a long time, so we should not be surprised when some Ditto-head finally loses it and acts out on all the pent-up hatred promoted daily by the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Coulters, Savages, O’Reillys, ad infinitum.
Does this qualify as a terrorist attack? Most terrorist attacks in this country are not committed by Muslims, as many believe, but by rightwing nutjobs like Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City) and Eric Rudolph (Olympic bomber).
All of this begs the question -- Why do the wingnuts hate America?

Texas Progressive Alliance roundup 7/28

It's Monday and it's time once again for another Texas Progressive Alliance roundup. Here are the blog highlights for the week of July 28:

TXsharon challenges you to view these pictures of Domestic Drilling Armageddon in the Barnett Shale and still support the Drill and Burn Domestic Drilling agenda.

U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez' Republican challenger for the 23rd Congressional seat is taken to task by Mike Thomas of Rhetoric & Rhythm for shirking his responsiblity on a critical hospital expansion vote before the Bexar County Commissioner's Court.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the GOP's "latest" energy plan in Carter, Oil, & Hair Of The Dog.

Neil at Texas Liberal asks what would be the impact if Polar Bears could vote.

Off the Kuff looks at a Texas Monthly overview of the effects of the Presidential race on downballot elections in Texas and offers his criticism of it.

Guest Columnist JR Behrman at Texas Kaos has a few strong words about Energy Policy: Democrats Routed. He also has a Texas Plan.

Julie Pippert of the MOMocrats asks the Obama campaign to explain its absence in Texas after they announced the roll-out of their Spanish-Language ads as an outreach to Hispanic voters, then discusses a Senate proposal that would require 50% of US cars to have a flexible fuel system by 2012, and finally the MOMocrats share the draft of their position paper to be submitted to the Democratic National Committee for inclusion in the party platform.

McBlogger had a great time in the subprime panel at Netroots Nation. So good in fact that he decided to offer some of his own solutions since the panelists, including the dimwitted Rep. Brad Miller, decided to offer nothing of substance.

XicanoPwr reports on the latest poll by the Pew Hispanic Center on the Latino vote. Latino polling shows that 66% of Latino registered voters will support Obama.

Burnt Orange Report points out that Ag Commissioner Todd Staples finally comes around to what Democrat (and future Ag Commissioner) Hank Gilbert has been saying all along- Texan's are being overcharged at the gas pump due to lack of state inspections.

BossKitty at TruthHugger dreams about the "Count Down To Accountability - Bush, Cheney Indictments"

refinish69 from Doing My Part For The Left invites everyone to meet Annette Taddeo- A True Progressive Democrat.

jobsanger writes about how after years of the Bush Presidency even our cloest traditional ally no longer trusts us in Brits Don't Trust Bush On Torture.

Obama and the down-ballot races in Texas are the focus of two articles by R.G. Ratcliffe of the Houston Chronicle. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs summarizes, and finds some to agree with and some not.

Mean Rachel writes an open letter to Rep. Elliot Naishtat, encouraging him to consider joining the technology age and starting an inexpensive, easy-to-use website tailor-made for state legislators with Wired for Change's DLCCWeb, a Netroots exhibitor.

nytexan at BlueBloggin keeps an eye on Mitch McConnell, the GOP king of distortion and extortion. McConnell plans to block legislation that can impact Americans now and push for a bill whose product will not be seen for 10 years; McConnell Extorts Senate For Off Shore Drilling. McConnell never fails to please Bush and his corporate buddies.

WhosPlayin looks at a new USGS petroleum estimate for the Arctic Circle, and notes that only a small portion of ANWR is estimated to be productive, and that the study doesn't address economic feasibility. (Includes Map)

Vince from Capitol Annex tells us that, while indicted former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land) won't accept a presidential pardon, he'd love one from Texas Governor Rick Perry.

CouldBeTrue from South Texas Chisme gets upset with crappy newspaper article.

Obama smeared over phony troop snub

I got this email the other day forwarded to me by my brother-in-law who is in the Army National Guard. It describes a visit by Barack Obama to a military base in Afghanistan where he supposedly does not take the time to shake hands and visit with the soldiers.
I can understand why something like this would upset him. The only thing is I don’t believe it is true. Here is the bulk of the email:

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plan and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the American's back home that he is their candidate for President. I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here you would thank those that are providing the freedom that they are providing for you. I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States . I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

In service,
xxxxxxxx
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

I took the name off so as not to disparage anyone. The person who wrote this didn’t necessarily make it all up. From their perspective, it may have been accurate as far as what they saw. But they clearly didn’t see the whole picture.
Since this email has come out it has gone viral on the Internet and now it turns out not to have been true afterall as I suspected.

Army officials refute claim of Barack Obama snub in Afghanistan
By James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Updated Friday, July 25th 2008, 10:05 AM
WASHINGTON - The latest chain e-mail smear against Barack Obama: He "blew off" troops at an Afghan base to shoot hoops for a publicity photo.
The letter was apparently written by a Utah Army National Guard intelligence officer in a linguist unit at Bagram Airfield who claimed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was rude to G.I.s.
"As the soldiers where [sic] lined up to shake his hand he blew them off," wrote the Task Force Wasatch "battle captain."
But angry Army brass debunked the Obama-bashing soldier's allegations, which went viral Thursday over the Web and on military blogs such as Blackfive.
The e-mail claims Obama repeatedly shunned soldiers on his way to the Clamshell - a recreation tent - to "take his publicity pictures playing basketball."
"These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect," said Bagram spokeswoman Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, who added that such political commentary is barred for uniformed personnel.
Obama didn't play basketball at Bagram or visit the Clamshell, she said. Home-state troops were invited to meet him, but his arrival was kept secret for security reasons.
"We were a bit delayed ... as he took time to shake hands, speak to troops and pose for photographs," Nielson-Green said.
E-mails to the officer who made the charges and a call to his wife were not returned.

It didn’t make sense that any politician worth their weight in salt would be so politically obtuse as to “blow off the troops” during a campaign stop at a military base. And certainly not a politician of the caliber of Barack Obama. It’s nonsense. Would John McCain blow off a bunch of union workers during a visit to a factory so he can hobnob with the fat cat CEO? Of course not. And Obama isn’t snubbing our troops during his tour of the Middle East.
There are going to be a good number of people who are going to vote against Obama regardless, but if they want to have a reason for voting against him they should look for something legitimate, like a disagreement over a policy issue, and not something bogus and exaggerated like this.

Joe Barton may retire

Congressman Joe Barton may retire in 2010, according to this post by one of his former primary opponents. (H/T to Brains and Eggs)
This delights me to no end. There is probably no one in Congress who I despise more than “Smokey” Joe Barton, mainly because of my personal connection to him. He was my Congressman when I was at Texas A&M and the last reminder of the huge mistake I made in 1984, the first year I was old enough to vote. That year I was completely enamored with Uncle Ronnie and his “Morning in America” tripe. And so I cast my first-ever vote for “the Gipper” and then proceeded to vote a nearly straight Republican ticket which meant that I voted for both Phil Gramm for U.S. Senate and Joe Barton for Congress. Reagan and Gramm are both gone now, but Barton has endured all these years, finally rising far above his level of compentence to become chairman of the House Energy Committee.
Fortunately, the Democratic tidal wave of 2006 brought that travesty to an end and stripped Barton of his chairmanship. Now it seems that his all-but-certain minority status for the forseeable future plus some unfortunate health problems are leading him to consider retirement in 2010 (and no doubt entry into a lucrative lobbying career for the energy industry that he has catered to all these years.)
Barton was always a reliable rubber-stamp for the “movement conservative” causes and has most recently used his senior status on the Energy panel to throw roadblocks up on efforts to address Global Warming issues.
Barton’s retirement will finally relieve my conscience for the huge mistake I made two dozen years ago, but it probably won’t result in better representation in Congress since Barton’s district is heavily Republican and will likely elect someone equally as wingnutty to his seat - just with less seniority.

Obama nails a 3-pointer

You know things are going well for the Obama campaign when you get photo-ops like this one:



He gets it on the first try. How cool is that?

Update
I think he nailed this one too.

Lyle Larson shirks his responsibility

The Bexar County Commissioners Court had to make a big decision last week on providing additional funding for the University Health System in San Antonio. UHS is the only civilian Level I trauma center for Bexar County and the surrounding communities. It handles 65 percent of all the trauma cases in the area - about 70,000 per year - in an ER that was designed to handle about half that number.
There is no question that an expansion of the hospital is long overdue and the longer we wait the more expensive it will be. Last week, the commissioners court approved a $900 million expansion project for UHS that will require an 8 percent property tax increase (about $19 per $100,000 valuation).
The plan was approved on a 4-1 vote with Commissioner Larson voting against. Was Larson’s “No” vote a principled stand against a project he does not support? Not exactly. Larson told the Express-News:

“I'm 100 percent behind the expansion of the health system. I just differ in one way, and that's how we pay for it.”

How does Larson think we should pay for it? He doesn’t say. He just wants to throw the whole issue into the voters’ laps and have them vote on it in a referendum.
But this would be grossly irresponsible. Not only would it waste time and make the project more expensive in the long run, but it would be disingenuous. This is not some whimsical pursuit like a publicly-funded sports arena that should get voter approval first. This is a vital public necessity. A “No” vote would not be acceptable. And yet, when it comes down to making that decision, Larson wants to shift responsibility on to the largely uninformed and ignorant masses. Isn’t that why he was elected in the first place? To make sure he is well informed and make key decisions that are in the best interest of all of us? Why even have elected representatives if we are going to hold referendums on every major issue?
If Larson wants to shirk his responsibility as a county commissioner on this vitally important issue, why should he be promoted to higher office as a U.S. Congressman? Larson is the Republican nominee for the 23rd District of Texas challenging incumbent Democrat Ciro Rodriguez.
In an editorial after the vote, the Express-News said the four members of the Commissioners Court who supported the UHS expansion project will be held responsible by voters in the near future. But it is Lyle Larson who should be held responsible for his spineless and weasel-like actions on the commissioners court.

Pardon me

As Ann notes today, we should not be surprised by the presidential pardons that Bush is bound to dole out before the end of his term.
To date, he has been exceedingly stingy with his power to commute sentences, handing out about one pardon for every 10 that Reagan granted during his eight years in office. But he still has time. Clinton waited until the final three months of his second term to pass out nearly half the pardons he issued (slightly more than Reagan did in total).
The New York Times noted that felons are currently seeking pardons in record numbers. Some of the prominent people seeking pardons from Bush include billionaire junk bond king Michael Milken and former U.S. Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Other prominent pleas come from former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, American Taliban John Walker Lindh (fat chance!) and Olympic sprinter Marion Jones who was nailed for doping recently.
Could Bush issue some blanket pardons to folks like Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney, the way his father did for Casper Weinberger? Perhaps Scooter Libby will get the full pardon he still lacks. The possibilities are limitless.

2008 Movies

This is turning out to be quite a big year for “must-see” movies in my opinion. There seems to be a plethora of geek-centric movies coming out this year compared to the relatively thin offerings in 2007.
My list of “Must See” and “Must Own” films (not always the same) is getting rather lengthy compared to last year.
So far, I’ve seen three films in the theater this year, the kid-friendly “Horton Hears a Who” and “Kung Fu Panda” and “Iron Man” which I managed to see one week when my wife and kids were out of town.
But the number of movies that I want to see “eventually” is piling up and quite a few are already on my list for eventual inclusion in my video library.

Starting with my Must Own list I have:

Horton Hears a Who
Kung Fu Panda
Iron Man
Wall-E
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
The Dark Knight
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Nim’s Island
Speed Racer
and Hell Boy II: The Golden Army (which I will probably get as a package with Hell Boy I)

And then there are the films that I want to see that I may or may not eventually buy copies of including:

Hancock
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Incredible Hulk
Dave

Then there are the movies that have not been released yet which I will probably add to my collection eventually:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Star Trek
James Bond No. 22
The X-Files Movie

Other films currently out or set to come out in 2008 that have caught my interest include:

“Wanted” - a Matrix-like action film with Angelina Jolie
“The Happening” - M. Night Shalmayan’s latest spooky film
“The Lovely Bones” - It doesn’t sound like a movie I would want to see, but since Peter Jackson (i.e. Lord of the Rings) is the director I am automatically interested nevertheless.
“Where the Wild Things Are” - based on the classic children’s book. If it is as good as Polar Express it will end up on my Must Own list as well.
“Valkyrie” - About the attempt to assassinate Hitler during WWII starring Tom Cruise.
“The Changeling” - Another film I’m not sure about but Clint Eastwood is directing which raises the interest level.
“The Curious Case of Ben Button” - Based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who lives life in reverse and starring Brad Pitt.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” - A remake of the sci-fi classic with Kenau Reeves in the lead role.
“Angels and Demons” - Apparently a prequel to The DaVinci Code with Ron Howard directing and Tom Hanks starring again.
“Frost/Nixon” - Another Ron Howard project about a post-Watergate interview of Nixon by David Frost.
“Shantaram” - I don’t know anything about this film except that it stars Johnny Depp.

It ain’t gonna be close

Michael Grunwald at Time finally spells out what should be obvious to every astute political observer in the country right now - John McCain is toast.
This election is not going to be close no matter how many headlines from now until November try to play up the race as a horserace going down to the wire.

John McCain might seem like a long shot. He's the Republican nominee at a time when the two-term Republican President is wildly unpopular and Republicans are losing elections in perennially Republican districts and the party base isn't exactly drooling over him. He supported the president's unpopular efforts to transform Iraq and revamp Social Security; he was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them. He's a 71-year-old Washington hand in a change election. And his 46-year-old opponent is a lot better at raising money, delivering speeches, drawing crowds and registering new voters.

Oh, let's just admit it: John McCain is a long shot. He's got a heroic personal story, and being white has never hurt a presidential candidate, but on paper 2008 just doesn't look like his year. And considering what's happening off paper, it might be time to ask the question the horse-race-loving media are never supposed to ask: Is McCain a no-shot?

Yes, he is a no-shot. Any Republican candidate this year would be a no-shot. The best Republicans can do this year is whine about how Obama has “flip-flopped” on a few issues (but nowhere close to the number of issues McCain has flip-flopped on) and point out his supposed inexperience. But in a change election, “experience” is not always a positive factor and stubbornly refusing to change positions when circumstances warrant it is precisely what got us into our current jams both foreign and domestic.

I can’t imagine even the most hard-core Republican can watch the new McCain ad that tries to blame Obama for the run-up in gas prices and not snicker or roll their eyes. They are desperate to the point of self-parody.

As Grunwald concludes, it is really quite simple at this point to predict the election outcome in November:

The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you'll keep seeing "Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns" headlines. But when Democrats are winning blood-red congressional districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, when the Republican president is down to 28 percent, when the economy is tanking and world affairs keep breaking Obama's way, it shouldn't be heresy to recognize that McCain needs an improbable series of breaks. Analysts get paid to analyze, and cable news has airtime to fill, so pundits have an incentive to make politics seem complicated. In the end, though, it's usually pretty simple. Everyone seems to agree that 2008 is a change election. Which of these guys looks like change?

Back to work

OK, I’m back and I’m swamped at work.
In the meantime, here is an interesting article about how the roots of today’s politics were mostly planted in 1978, not 1968 as some have claimed.

Everyone seems to be telling us that if you want to understand 2008, you have to look back 40 years to 1968. "It's the year that changed everything," wrote Newsweek last November. Seen through tie-dye-tinted glasses, Iraq is the new Vietnam, Barack Obama is the new Bobby Kennedy, and bloggers are the new student activists.
But are we commemorating the right year? If we really want a time that defined the way we live now, we should look back not to the romance and trauma of the '60s but to the gloriously tacky '70s, to the year that made modern America -- 1978. Look beyond the year's bad disco and worse clothes; if you peer deeply into the polyester soul of 1978, you can see the beginnings of the world we live in today.

My biggest problem with the article is this concluding line.... “But from politics to technology, from civil rights to foreign policy, 1978 marked the start of the age we live in. Thank God, disco didn't survive.”
Disco didn’t survive?? I’m sorry to burst that bubble, but “disco” didn’t die. It mutated, evolved and now dominates today’s musical landscape. You can call it Hip-Hop, Electronica, Eurobeat, Synthpop, Diva Rock or what have you, but it is all just dance music and it is everywhere.

On Vacation

I will be on vacation all this next week and may not have access to a computer. So posting might be very sparse. In the meantime, everybody play nice while I'm gone and have fun!

McCain throws Gramm under the bus - again

“You’re all a bunch of whiners!” says Phil Gramm, former U.S. Senator from Texas and John McCain’s top economic advisor.
The economic hard times are all in your head. The country is in a “mental recession” and you are all a “nation of whiners.”
That Phil Gramm is quite the character, isn’t he? Now it looks like McCain wants to distance himself from Gramm once again. It wasn’t that long ago that McCain was disavowing Gramm over his ties to the home loan mortgage industry as a big time lobbyist for UBS.
But they must have patched things up, because there was Gramm again stumping for McCain and meeting with the big shots at the Wall Street Journal on his behalf. But wait, McCain protests. Gramm doesn’t speak for me, he insists.
Right.
You whiner.



Update
I have to feel kind of sorry for some of my conservative friends who are now forced to try and defend Gramm's statement.
But maybe if he can whether this onslaught, McCain might consider that Gramm would make the ideal match for him as his vice president.
McCain-Gramm! That has a nice ring to it doesn't it? That's a winning ticket for sure!
And I know just what their campaign slogan could be:
"You're all a bunch of whiners! Now, get off of my lawn!"

Some perspective on FISA

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA was passed by Congress in 1978 in response to abuses by the Nixon administration in the use of wiretapping technology. Nixon had used wiretapping to keep tabs not just on foreign and domestic terrorists, but also on his domestic political adversaries.
FISA essentially set up a secret court system to oversee future wiretapping by intelligence agencies to prevent these kinds of abuses from happening again.
But because it was written in 1978, before the advent of cell phones, e-mail, and much more, it is now horribly out of date. It was in bad need of updating prior to 9/11. Afterwards, the Bush administration used the fact that the law was outdated as an excuse for tossing it aside and going forward with a modern surveillance program outside the realm of the FISA courts. This was wrong.
But the question now is how wrong was it? If they had ditched the FISA courts so they could go back to Nixon-style monitoring of their political adversaries, I would say that it was a very serious and possibly impeachable offense. However, if they simply did what they said they did and ditched FISA so they could more aggressively pursue foreign terror suspects in the aftermath of an attack on our country, then I think we would be hard-pressed to make the case that they deserve criminal punishment for those actions today.
The caterwauling I’m hearing about warrantless wiretapping threatening our Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure makes no sense to me. I have never had a problem with the government using wiretaps to keep track of criminal suspects and the fact that they needed to expand that effort in response to 9/11 seems like common sense to me. What I have always insisted, however, is that we have a check in place (i.e. the FISA court) to oversee these intelligence activities and make sure that they are not be abused ala Nixon.
It seems to me that the FISA bill that Obama supported satisfied that concern. The fact that it also provides things that President Bush wanted doesn’t make it automatically bad. I’m sure there are parts of the bill that are not ideal and should be changed. But we can’t get everything we want now with a Republican president and a 50-50 Senate. So we have to compromise because that is the way that government works. And the option of falling back on the outdated 1978 FISA law was a non sequitur and would have made Democrats look weak on terrorism right before the general election.
I think it is pretty clear that laws were broken by the administration after 9/11. But that could be like trying to fine somebody for speeding when he was trying to drive his sick wife to the hospital. The general public isn’t going to go along with it unless you have evidence that they were abusing the wiretapping program.
The fact that there are people who are now using this issue to say that they will not support Obama is appalling. They need to get some perspective.

Losing perspective

There have been so many issues for people to get outraged about during the past dozen years that it is hard to keep track of them all. Warrantless wiretapping is just one of them.
Ideally, I’d love to see the Bush administration and their telecom cronies get nailed for their clearly illegal wiretapping program post-9/11. But the reality is that there are not enough votes in the Congress to see that happen.
So it looks like we will end up with a bill overhauling eavesdropping regulations that lets the telecom companies off the hook.
The best thing to do in this case then is to push for the best deal we can get and then move on.
Unfortunately, there are some on the left who aren’t satisfied with that bit of reality. They are prepared to throw a huge hissy fit when they don’t get their way as if this issue - telecom immunity - was the end all most important thing in the universe.
Hogwash!
Let me put this bluntly. I don’t give a damn about telecom immunity or warrantless wiretapping if fixing it in any way hurts Democrats’ chances of winning back the White House in November. It will be small consolation indeed to have the FISA bill defeated and the telecoms tied up in court for the next decade if it also means we get four more years of Republican misrule.
But what I am seeing right now is groups of people on the left (and some on the right) preparing to throw a big stink bomb
into the race if all their demands aren’t met in full. Others are even encouraging folks to withhold funding from Obama’s campaign in protest of his nominal support for the FISA overhaul legislation.
That is so fundamentally stupid that I can’t believe politically astute people would even be considering it. Karl Rove couldn’t have dreamed up a better scheme for throwing a monkey wrench into the election prospects of Democrats this year.
You can protest the FISA bill all you want, but I think folks like Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith have been going overboard lately with their claims that our very Constitution is hanging in the balance.
Yes, it will be irritating if some folks get away with breaking the law. But the reality is that it happens everyday and our country is still surviving.
We’ve got a big mess to clean up after a dozen years of Republican shenanigans and we are going to have to take things one step at a time. Step One is putting a Democrat in the White House! Everything else is superfluous in the long run.

Left and Right misconceptions

My conservative friend jimmyK left a lengthy comment in the previous thread that I think merits an in depth response.

Don't you reckon' Clear Channel knows how to spend their money better than you do?

No, I would not make that assumption. Companies make bad decisions all the time and I think paying Rush Lamebrain $400 gazillion in the middle of a recession when they are struggling for ad revenues may prove to be unwise.
Heck, Jay Leno only makes $25 million a year compared to the $38 million Clear Channel will be stuck paying Rush.

You know why conservatives whom you call stupid listen to Rush, they are all at work and only have radios to listen too. Liberals on the other hand have nearly all of T.V. stations, and most all the newspapers...

You harbor a lot of stereotypical misconceptions about “conservatives” and “liberals.” It is not accurate to claim that all working class folks are conservatives any more than it is to say that all university professors are liberals (How do you account for university professors-turned-politicians such as Phil Gramm, Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich?)
If liberals dominate the TV stations and newspapers then why is it so difficult to get a liberal viewpoint on TV? The networks fill their news shows with conservatives, a few moderates and apolitical reporters. They hardly ever have an outspoken liberal on the air. Keith Olbermann is currently the sole exception to that rule. Otherwise you have to go to Comedy Central to find a liberal viewpoint that isn’t “balanced” out with 2/3rds dosage of conservatism.
As for newspapers, are you referring to our own local daily, the San Antonio Express-News that never fails to endorse the full slate of Republicans in every election? I wish that liberals had more control of the media, but unfortunately that is a myth spurred on by multi-million dollar propagandists like Rush Limbaugh who dominate our airwaves.

Working class people today are suffering greatly as a direct result of the flawed policies and misrule of Republicans for the past eight years. Under George W. Bush we saw our balanced budgets vanish and replaced with record high deficits as a result of fiscally irresponsible tax giveaways to the uber-rich. Meanwhile, promises that these tax cuts would stimulate the economy have proven to be a big joke as the economy has ranged from deep recession to weak recovery and now back to deep recession again.
The only hope the GOP has to stay in power now is to use propagandists like Rush Limbaugh to brainwash enough people into voting against their economic interests and keep the current bunch of crooks and swindlers in power.

...where people who are not working can watch and read, draw welfare and set on their asses and hope to get the democrats to give them more money with the working peoples taxes.

Once again, you have misconceptions about the nature of welfare, which mainly goes to support children and the elderly, while ignoring the real scandal of corporate welfare and the billions that gets squandered in no-bid, sweetheart contracts overseen by Republican operatives funneling money to their friends and supporters. The Enrons and Halliburtons have been making out like bandits these past dozen years while Rush and Hannity distract you with bogus stories about welfare cheats. You are like someone who is obsessed with finding change under the seat cushions while lending out your credit card to a gang of mall-roaming teenagers.

Obamanation, seems to be losing some of its steam. Looks like just another liberal trying to pull the wool over his own supporters eyes. Mr. Flip/Flop.

Obama is just getting started with the general election after a long drawn-out primary race. Meanwhile, McCain has had a three-month head start and is still just spinning his wheels. Down in the polls, last week he did another overhaul of his campaign staff.
And don’t even try to start this “Flip/Flop” garbage when I know damn well that you can’t even list three things that Obama has legitimately changed his position on. (Hint: Iraq ain’t one of them).
But as Ann noted above McCain has flip-flopped so much lately he is at risk of breaking a hip. He has changed his positions on tax cuts, immigration reform, drilling moratoriums, Social Security privatization, and on and on.
In fact, one of the only things he has been consistent on is global warming and that is what has him in the most hot water right now with the wingnut crowd. They WANT him to flip-flop even MORE!

Your guy looks really scary, he is a liar to start with, he flip flops, he now throws moveon.org under the bus. Who is next ? He is dissed his own grandmother, that is weird. This guy will be a disaster for this country and John McCain would not be much better.

Like that classic Public Enemy song says, “Don’t Believe the Hype!” And that goes for both sides. Obama is not the annointed one or whatever such nonsense. Sure he is just a politicians, but at least he is not advocating the failed policies that have gotten us into the mess we are in today. A disaster for this country, you say? What do you call what we have now?? The Bush/GOP rule of the past eight years has been an unmitigated disaster from the beginning.
You are not giving Obama a fair shake. He may not be the greatest president we have ever had, but he certainly won’t be the worst like we currently have now.

Bad deals and bad ideas

In the news today I see that San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications is betting that people will stay stupid well into the future.
They have renewed their radio contract with rightwing blowhard Rush Limbaugh through the year 2016.
I have to admit that it is probably a pretty good bet that people will still be stupid enough to listen to Rush eight years from now. But I’m not sure that it is a good bet for Clear Channel to pay Limbaugh an estimated $38 million a year for the next eight years. As the NYT points out today, that is more than twice what the highest paid network news anchor makes and it is $13 million more than Jay Leno, the highest rated TV entertainer, makes.

In other news, I see that some liberal activists who are agitated over the FISA issue are now threatening to withhold their financial support for Barack Obama until he “lives up to his promise to deliver "change we can believe in. "”
This is the kind of thing that really upsets me. People who should know better allow themselves to get all worked up over some issue and then use it to tear down the candidate who best supports their overall interests.
I’m sorry, but as bad as warrantless wiretapping may be, it is not important enough to justify risking four more years of Republican misrule in Washington. Or a chance for John McCain to pick the next two or more Supreme Court justices.
It is fine if you want to lobby your candidate over an issue such as this, but when you start talking about withholding money or withholding votes, you have crossed a line into “shoot yourself in the foot” territory.

Cornyn’s sockpuppet exposed

Congratulations to Matt Glazer for some online sleuthing that exposed a top Cornyn staffer’s sockpuppet machinations.
David Beckwith, a longtime GOP political operative whose roots go back to his work for former Vice President Dan Quayle, was using the pseudonymn “Buck Smith” to leave comments over at Burnt Orange Report.
The TV news in Austin even picked up the story:



Matt used to be in San Antonio and I met him a few years ago at the 2005 Alamo City Blogger BBQ.

We make Mormons look Liberal

It is depressing to see that according to this graph Texas is even more socially and economically conservative than Utah.

Big, Really Bad, John

John Cornyn’s promotional video for the Texas Republican State Convention was so horrifically bad that it is beyond parody. However, I still like Rick Noriega’s response above because it acts as a corrective to the most egregious lies in the piece.

In the meantime, I’m happy to note that Cornyn has lost the endorsement of the Texas Medical Association over his vote against a badly needed bill that would have kept doctors from losing Medicare payments. My only question is why the TMA ever endorsed Cornyn in the first place?

AT&T spurns San Antonio

The news Friday that AT&T is moving its corporate headquarters to Dallas is a huge blow to San Antonio’s self esteem. AT&T was San Antonio’s crown jewel upon which all of our corporate expansion and promotional efforts were built.
This is a black eye that will haunt our community for years to come. We have been used, spurned and cast-off. It will take a long time for us to get our confidence back up again.
The spin right now that it is only 700 jobs that will be leaving while 5,300 are staying is ridiculous. First off, only a fool would still believe a damn thing that AT&T has to say anymore. There is no guarantee that those 5,300 jobs will stay here permanently. The queen bee is leaving the hive and you can expect that the worker drones will be migrating to follow very shortly.
AT&T’s new CEO Randall Stephenson has made it clear that he does not think San Antonio is good enough for the suits that run his company. All the high-paying corporate executives are moving to the bourgeoisie city of Dallas leaving just some worker drones behind in the proletariat city of San Antonio. That is the message we got on Friday.
This may just be wishful thinking, but I think this may turn out to be a bad move for AT&T in the long-run. Their carefully crafted image as a “good ol’ boy” company from West Texas (with the voice of San Antonio-native Tommy Lee Jones in all their ads) has just been shot full of holes. Now they are just another vagabond corporation with no roots looking for the biggest tax abatements from the city most willing to kiss their rearends.
Good riddance and here is hoping that the Alamo City can recover quickly.
To paraphrase Davy Crockett:
"AT&T can go to hell, I'm going to Texas"

Bang, Bang, Shoot, Shoot

I’m actually kind of relieved that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did on the D.C. gun ban.
If the decision had gone the other way, it would surely have thrown every rightwing gun nut into a state of hysteria and would probably have devolved into a huge, ugly issue during the fall campaign.
Instead, guns will probably become a non-issue in the campaign now that the court has basically affirmed what most people already accepted - that the 2nd Amendment gives people the right to own a gun.
That has never been an issue with me. Instead, it has been about how far out of whack some extremists try to push that “right” to the point where we have people walking the streets with sub-machine guns and cop-killer bullets.
I don’t know anything about the D.C. crime situation, but I doubt that the gun ban was very effective in reducing crime and I don’t think that the court’s decision today will make much of a difference in that respect one way or another. Rather, it will take some of the pressure off of gun control advocates who never wanted a complete ban in the first place, and it takes some of the steam out of the extremist faction of the NRA which has used the specter of the government taking people’s guns away to fool them into voting against their social and economic interests.

The Big Payoff

Exxon-Mobil’s political investments these past 18 years paid off in spades today as the Republican-dominated Supreme Court slashed the oil behemoth’s punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill by $2 billion.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reduced a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against energy giant Exxon for its role in an infamous 1989 maritime oil spill off the coast of Alaska.
The high court concluded punitive damages should roughly match actual damages from the environmental disaster, which were about $507 million.

Since 1990, Exxon has made nearly $10 million in political contributions with about 86 percent of that going to Republicans.
That means a $10 million investment just got a $2 billion payoff today. That’s a pretty good ROI (return on investment). And that is not counting any of the other benefits that Exxon-Mobil has soaked up these past dozen years of Republican rule with their tax breaks and stratospheric gas prices.

Here is a reminder of what the Exxon Valdez oil spill wrought:

Thousands of animals died immediately; the best estimates include 250,000 to as many as 500,000 seabirds, at least 1,000 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, as well as the destruction of billions of salmon and herring eggs.

The Terror Advantage

Charlie Black, a prominent McCain campaign advisor, recently acknowledged that a terrorist attack on the United States would benefit Republican efforts to hold onto the White House this fall.

An adviser to Sen. John McCain apologized Monday for saying a terrorist attack on the United States would be "a big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate....

In a Fortune interview, posted on the magazine's Web site Monday, Black said the Arizona senator demonstrated his fluency in foreign policy and security matters following the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December.
Bhutto's killing was an "unfortunate event," he said, but McCain's "knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be commander-in-chief. And it helped us."
Asked if McCain would stand to benefit from a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Black answered, "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him."

One has to wonder then, in light of this, as to the real reason why the Bush administration has failed so miserably at capturing Osama bin Laden. If, as Charlie Black says, it would boost Republicans’ electoral prospects to have another terrorist attack, or even the threat of a terrorist attack, then it would seem to be awfully convenient to still have the No. 1 international terrorist on the loose as the election is underway.

It has been noted that “fighting terrorism” is the only remaining issue where polls show that Republicans still have an advantage over their Democratic adversaries. Do you think that might have raised some concerns high up in the administration that if bin Laden were to be captured and/or killed that it would become that more difficult to make “terrorism” a top concern for voters?

I’m reminded of these lyrics from Weird Al Yankovic’s Star Wars parody song “Yoda”:

I know Darth Vader’s really got you annoyed
But remember, if you kill him, then you’ll be unemployed

Personally, I like to believe that the Bush administration isn’t really that twisted. It is much nicer to just continue believing that their failure to capture or kill bin Laden is due to their gross incompetence.

George Carlin

Along with Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, you can blame George Carlin for the evolution of my sense of humor. Even though I’ve never been a big fan of foul language, you couldn’t help but crack up when Carlin went through his expanded list of “the words you can’t say on TV” in one of his HBO comedy specials back in 1983-84.
Those early 80s HBO specials are what I remember most about Carlin. I was too young to have appreciated his breakout in the early 70s, so I caught him during one of first revivals when I was in high school and college.
I still have a cassette tape recording I made of one of his HBO specials using a handheld tape recorder held up to my TV. Funny stuff. He will be missed.
Update
Ann has a video from one of his most politically charged routines. Wingnuts beware!

Term Limits are Teh Stupid

San Antonio has the most insane term limits restrictions of any municipality in the nation, to the best of my knowledge. Two two-year terms and you’re out. That means the entire city council is automatically rotated out every four years whether they are doing a good job or not.
Thus we are always stuck with an inexperienced city council with no collective memory of things that have gone on before. Therefore, council members have to rely on the city staff for its experience and collective memory to get things done.
Why would we do this to ourselves? Do we like having a city government run by entrenched bureaucrats who do not have to answer to the voters? Because that is effectively what we have now. Whose bright idea was this?
Well, it was partly this reactionary group that got the ball rolling at the behest of this looney bird.

But the real question is whether we are going to continue to listen to these knuckledragging morons, or are we going to at least take some minimal steps to correct the situation.
I think having four two-year term limits is ridiculous, counter-productive and undemocratic. But at least it is better than what we currently have.
The term limits rule has been disenfranchising San Antonio residents by making our elected council members weak and unresponsive to their constituents.
And as this study noted it has even depressed voter participation in city elections.

The implementation of city council term limits in San Antonio since 1991 is clearly associated with lower voter participation in municipal elections turnout. Lower voter participation rates are particularly evident in inner city council districts, while council districts 8, 9 and 10 voters participate in high numbers. In addition, over the period examined, voter registration rates have increased while Spanish surname rates have remained relatively consistent. Overall levels of political efficacy have increased but rates for Mexican Americans and African Americans remain low relative to Anglos. Finally, some members of council have resigned from office to pursue other private and public sector interests rather than complete terms.
The relative competitive nature of city council and mayoral elections in the 1980s called for a greater mobilization of voter effort ("get out the vote" campaigns) and, as a result, seem to have produced a higher turnout rate. With terms limits, municipal elections in the City of San Antonio have witnessed fewer intensive voter mobilization efforts and subsequently lower turnout. Less competitive elections are also associated with less interest, lower levels of participation and lack of political efficacy.

Lack of political efficacy. What does that mean? It means the power or capacity to produce a desired effect (i.e. effectiveness). So our city government is less effective as a result of term limits. I guess there are some who would think this is a good thing, but they would be wrong.
Can you imagine anyone advocating that a business be run in this fashion? Every four years the CEO and his entire executive team is kicked out and replaced with new people who have no experience. Sound like a good plan? Would you invest in that kind of company?

McCain the stealth candidate

John McCain slipped into San Antonio the other day for a private fundraiser at the San Antonio Country Club and raked in a reported $1.3 million.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are people out there who can drop $10,000 in a moment’s notice for something like this. But San Antonio is a big city (7th largest in the U.S.) and all you have to do is drive around some of the ritzy neighborhoods to get an idea about just how much wealth is out there.
So I’m not sure if $1.3 million was a good haul for McCair or if it was just chickenfeed. But one that is sure is that if you couldn’t afford to drop $10,000 in McCain’s hat, then you were probably unaware that he was even in San Antonio. There was no advance notice, no public appearances and the McCain campaign gave short shrift to the local media.
That was evident from the story that ran this morning. It was a fine story considering the reporter had no access to the candidate or any of the people attending the fundraiser. The only person quoted in the piece is John Larson, the Republican county commissioner who is running for Congress against Ciro Rodriguez. At least he respects the power of the local media.
Since the McCain folks wouldn’t acknowledge the local press, they got a crappy story, at least from their perspective it was crappy.
Since the reporter had 25 inches to fill and no one to talk to, she filled it with whatever she could find. That turned out to be a YouTube video blasting McCain for flipflopping on the windfall profits tax and an interview with Democratic State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte blasting McCain for associating with poor old Clayton Williams who is still getting grief over his stupid rape joke 18 years after it blew the tires off of his gubernatorial campaign.
She also took the time to note that McCain’s moronic anti-earmarks stance would leave the San Antonio River Improvements Project high and dry.
I’m sure the McCain people probably weren’t happy with the story, but that’s what you get when you fail to take advantage of the local press. If they had given the reporter just a smidgen of access to the candidate, I’m sure she would have filled the story up with his quotes and the story might have had more prominent play to boot.
Maybe next time they’ll learn.

The Vanquished

As commenter IK noted in the previous thread, I have recently taken to commenting at BeldarBlog, a right-wing blog run by an attorney based in Dallas. Beldar has been a most gracious host so far. At least, he hasn’t banned me from the site yet.
It is kind of sad that I am forced to go to a Dallas-based blog to find someone to debate the issues with, but alas it seems that I have vanquished most all of the conservative blogs here in San Antonio. (With the exception of But, that’s just my opinion. Hang in there, JimmyK!)
There once was a thriving rightwing blogger community here in the Alamo City. We had Insane Antonio, now abandoned. Another site called Raving Heretic, also abandoned. There was the Ranting Raven’s A View From the Nest, now in retirement. There was Ben’s World, by a St. Mary’s University law student who I presume has now graduated. There was Tex the Pontificator, also retired. And, of course, there was Bill Crawford (aka Alamo City Commando) and his All Things Conservative site, the big daddy of them all. The Commando is now AWOL and no one will acknowledge what happened to him. I like to think that he finally got the courage of his convictions and volunteered for military service in Iraq.
Finally, there is Conservative Dialysis by my friend Nick, but his last post more than a week ago may have been his coda. A comment I left there a week ago has yet to be approved.

Fortunately, the liberal blogging community in San Antonio is thriving. In addition to my humble abode which has been around for more than five years now, we still have the The Agonist, the longest running blog in San Antonio, which is run by Sean Paul Kelly. There is also B and B by Pete Bryant. Pete represents San Antonio on the board of the Texas Progressive Bloggers Alliance.
And now we have two ATC outcasts who have launched their own blogs: Beginning To Wonder by AnnPW and
Happiness, Anyway by Donna, as well as Maximum Volume by Voice of Reason.
Then we have Dig Deeper Texas; Pulp Friction; Ablogistan; Harman on Earth and probably some more that I’m missing.

Best Rock Bands

It is funny the things you come across with Google. Today I typed in “Rock Bands” and came up with MSNBC’s list of the10 best rock bands ever from 2004. OK, I’m a sucker for lists so I had to check it out:
It started out fine enough...

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones

No arguments there. Those would be my first two picks too.

U2

OK, not my No. 3 choice but definitely in my top 10

The Grateful Dead

Um, No. While I can appreciate them, I’m not a Deadhead and they would not be on my top 10 list.

Velvet Underground

Whoa!! Hold on! Now we are way off course. No way! Who can name even one song by the Velvet Underground? I’ve even tried to listen to some of their albums. Absolutely not.

Led Zepplin

All right, now we’re back on track again. Good choice.

The Ramones

Screech!! Blam!!! Back in the ditch again! I hate punk music. Yuck!
This list just won’t do. I have to make my own.

The rest of their list includes
Pink Floyd
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Sly and the Family Stone

Good bands but not good enough to make my Top 10 (except maybe Pink Floyd).

So here goes my list of the definitive Best Rock Bands:

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
The Beach Boys
The Doors
Led Zepplin
Pink Floyd
U2
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band
The Police

And my list of runner-ups (or the second top 10)

Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Band
Van Halen
REM
The Eagles
Aerosmith
Santana
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Heart
Rush


Of course this leaves out a lot of “solo” artists who no doubt have very capable and talented backing bands. A top 10 list there would include:

Elvis Presley
Chuck Berry
Buddy Holly
Bob Dylan
David Bowie
Elton John
Billy Joel
Rod Stewart
Jimi Hendrix
Prince

UPDATE

OK, I’ve reworked my Best Rock Bands list into per decade categories. (Yes, I know I have 11 in the 80s category. So sue me.)

50s
Buddy Holly and The Crickets
Bill Haley and The Comets
The Coasters
The Drifters
The Platters
The Clovers
Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
The Moonglows
The Flamingos

60s
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
The Doors
Pink Floyd
The Beach Boys
Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Band
Buffalo Springfield
The Faces

70s
Led Zepplin
Queen
Boston
Aerosmith
The Eagles
Heart
Santana
The Bee Gees
Deep Purple
ELO

80s
U2
The Police
Van Halen
Rush
Prince and The Revolution
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The Cars
Cheap Trick
J. Geils Band
ZZ Top

90s
Guns N Roses
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Smashing Pumpkins
The Black Crowes
REM
Stone Temple Pilots
Pearl Jam
Rage Against the Machine
The Offspring
Green Day

2000s
The White Stripes
Los Lonely Boys
JET
Maroon Five
The Foo Fighters
Limp Bizkit
Velvet Revolver

Habeas Corpus is not a right, it’s a responsibility

The Supreme Court, by a slim margin, has once again confirmed the responsibility of the U.S. government to assure that all people under our control are treated humanely and responsibly. Part of that responsibility is to assure to the best of our ability that those who are in our custody are there for a legitimate reason.
That is what the writ of habeas corpus is all about. It is not a “right” bestowed on American citizens at birth. It is a responsibility that we have assumed as a nation. It does not benefit our society to incarcerate people without good reason. It is morally and ethically wrong and it places an undue financial burden on taxpayers. So why shouldn’t we do everything within reason to assure that we are not incarcerating innocent people? The purpose of Habeas Corpus is to keep innocent people from being detained, not to let guilty people go free.
A lot of the outrage on the right centers around the perception that we are granting “terrorists” a special privilege that is usually reserved just for American citizens. But the right to not be incarcerated when you are innocent should not be just for American citizens, it should be for everyone. And thus it is our responsiblity to make sure that is so with the people under our authority.

Immigration idiocy

Our U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is about to deport a kid who has been in this country since he was a toddler and who just graduated from high school as valedictorian.

The family arrived in the United States in 1995 on six-month tourist visas, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Settling in Fresno, Arthur's father, Ruben Mkoian (he and his son spell their last names slightly differently), worked as a truck driver. The teen's mother worked in a jewelry store, and the family set about living their lives, which soon included a younger brother for Arthur.
Mkoian believes that if they were to return to Armenia, his family would be subject to reprisals because of his attempts to expose corruption at the government agency where he worked.
After the family's visas expired, they applied for U.S. residency. That application was denied, Kice said.
Immigration wheels turns extremely slowly. An immigration judge finally ruled in 2002 that the family had no legal right to remain in America.
The family tried again by applying to the Board of Immigration Appeals; that was rejected, also. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year denied their petition for a hearing.
"I would remind people that this family had ample access to due process," Kice said. "The case has been in litigation for more than 10 years. Immigration experts on every level determined that they had no legal basis to be in the United States."

This is nuts. Why even have these courts and judges if they take this long to make decisions like this? If they had nabbed them within a year or two of their arrival that would have been one thing. But 13 years later we are going to uproot them and send them packing after they have caused no problems and, in fact, are contributing positively to our society?

Fortunately, a bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein could resolve things by granting the family citizenship.
This is the common sense thing to do in this case, but unfortunately common sense is something that is sorely lacking in many parts of our country.
I first learned of this case this morning by reading this dreadful column by Ruben Navarette who essentially applauds the decision to deport the kid and his family. Why? The law is the law, he states flatly. But the real reason is darker than that as he goes on to admit. It turns out that Navarette can recall a case a few years ago where a Hispanic kid may have been deported under similar circumstances, so now he thinks this kid is getting special treatment because he is not Hispanic (he is an Armenian.)
In other words, Navarette is being a racist jerk. The San Antonio Express-News should quit giving this jerk a forum and drop his syndicated column.

Wall Street Journal slanders John Lennon

The headline on the column catches your attention right away.
The Case Against John Lennon
And then there is the pull quote that highlights the column:

Nothing to live or die for — what a nightmare.

It makes you immediately start singing John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in your head. “Nothing to live or die for... hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmmm.”
My gosh, you think, how awful! John Lennon said there is nothing to live for?!? That is so wrong!

Well, yes, it IS wrong, because it is a misquote. Intentional or not, I’m not sure, but the actual lyrics from the song say “...nothing to KILL or die for....” Not nothing to live for.

So what is going on here? Why is the WSJ promoting a column with such a provacative title and using a misquote to mislead readers into a negative reaction against John Lennon?
The column itself is a mess. It is poorly written, jumbled and fails to adequately explain how John Lennon or his song “Imagine” has anything to do with what the column appears to be about.
Here is the pertinent section that mentions Lennon:

Mr. Sharansky has a new book, titled "Defending Identity." It would be equally accurate to call it "The Case Against John Lennon."
Or, more specifically, the case against "Imagine," Lennon's anthem to a world with "no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." For Mr. Sharansky, a nine-year resident of the Perm 35 prison camp, that's a vision that smacks too much of the professed beliefs of the ex-Beatle's near namesake, Vladimir Ilyich.

What the hell? Does he think he’s being clever or something? Lennon sounds like Lenin. Get it? So obviously they must be related or they must think alike or something right?
Nevermind that “Lenin” was actually an alias for Vladimir Illich Ulyanov, while the surname Lennon dates back hundreds of years to old Ireland.
No, they sound alike so there must be a connection. Right? Kind of like how Obama sounds like Osama so they must be related too. Yeah. That’s the level of reasoning that the column sinks to.
Absolutely pathetic.
And of course he never goes back and explains how V.I. Lenin’s brutal and dictatorial ways have any similarity or correlation to Lennon’s ode to world peace.
But fortunately for the cretins who run the WSJ editorial pages, John Lennon is dead and can’t defend his classic work against their asinine columnist’s offhanded smear.

McCain family values

Ever wonder why we don’t hear more about this lady?

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.
But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.
And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.
She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.
But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.
When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons
had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.
Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.
Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.
For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

I think it is interesting that the key decision that launched McCain’s political career many years ago was to dump his first wife in favor of a wealthy, beautiful heiress whose money financed his first bid for Congress (as well as some significant support from Charles Keating.)

I did not (say that)

Is this a gotcha moment?

Is he lying? Is he senile? Or is it all just a big misunderstanding?
Imagine if Barack Obama got caught denying that he said something in a speech he had given just a week before?
Would it be ignored? Or would it blow up into a huge scandal?
Does it really matter whether he said it or not? Before the age of Youtube would anybody have noticed or cared anyway?

Bush's oil boom/job bust

Better go gas up your car now while you can still find that cheap $4 a gallon gasoline.

Oil surges $11 to record $138
And they are projecting it will go up to $150 a barrel.
And here are the other headline stories right now:

Wall Street shakes as Dow sinks 400 points
Jobless rate spikes
Corporate America is getting nervous

Heck of a job, President Bush!

I think the question now is not whether or not Barack Obama will be elected in November, but whether or not the country can survive until then.

Cabinet speculation Part II

Revisiting a topic I brought up in March, more names are starting to pop up for possible cabinet posts in a Barack Obama administration. From serious looks at Obama insiders and advisors to speculation on popular political figures, there are lots of interesting choices.
I think Hillary Clinton is not likely to get the VP slot, but she could have her pick of cabinet posts (almost). The question is whether she would consider a stint as Secretary of HHS (where she wouldn’t even be the first woman to hold the post) to be worth her time. Or would she prefer to remain in the Senate and possibly hold out for a Supreme Court nomination as part of a deal to win her full support and backing for the Obama campaign.
Here are the cabinet posts with some names that have been tossed around for various posts:

President Barack Obama
Vice President Jim Webb/Bill Richardson/Hillary Clinton/Kathleen Sibelius
Secretary of State Joe Biden/Chris Dodd/ Bill Richardson
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel/Richard Lugar/Sam Nunn
Attorney General John Edwards/Eric Holder
Secretary of Education George Miller/Mazie Hirono
Secretary of Health and Human Services Hillary Clinton/Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Energy Janet Napolitano/Brian Schweitzer
Secretary of Homeland Security Richard Clarke/Richard Lugar
Secretary of Interior Arnold Schwarzennegger/Brian Schweitzer
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Max Cleland
Secretary of Commerce Michael Bloomberg/Harold Ford Jr./Olympia Snowe
Secretary of Treasury Chris Dodd/Larry Summers/Laura Tyson
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Harkin/Tom Vilsack
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Bill Bradley/Henry Cisneros
Secretary of Labor John Edwards/Ed Rendell/David Bonior
Secretary of Transportation Jesse Jackson Jr./Xavier Becerra/James Oberstar
Secretary of Environment Al Gore/Lincoln Chafee (New cabinet level position)

Chief of Staff Tom Daschle/David Plouffe
Office of Management and Budget Rosa DeLauro
U.S. Trade RepresentativeAustan Goolsbee
Office of National Drug Control Policy Kurt Schmoke
United Nations Ambassador Al Gore/Bill Richardson/Bill Clinton
National Security Advisor Susan Rice/Anthony Lake/Anthony Zinni
CIA Director Wesley Clarke

Who am I leaving out?

Ode to Hillary

I was ready to support you as president if you had won the nomination. I would have followed you to the ends of the earth and fought with you in the trenches against the forces of the status quo to advance health care and economic opportunity to all Americans.
But you lost.
So get the hell outta my face.
Loser.

Means vs. Ends

From the first chapter of Eric Alterman's new book:

One reason liberals today find themselves vulnerable to vituperation from so many quarters simultaneously is the difficulty they face in explaining, even in the most rudimentary terms, their basic philosophical beliefs. While contemporary conservatives may actually ignore their own principles in practice, they can at least explain them.

It is a good point. Liberals do have a hard time defining their belief system in comparison to conservatives. Ann takes a good stab at it here with her list of things that she wants.
I think part of the difficulty is that liberals have a much more complex and nuanced system than the simplistic and naive belief system of many conservatives. But Alterman hits on what I think is the key difference a little later in the book when he notes that liberals, unlike conservatives, are mostly concerned with outcomes, not the means. Conservatives, on the other hand, are all about the means. For rightwing ideologues, the means are all important. Anti-government, anti-tax, pro-big business, privatization, etc. It is that way or nothing and it doesn't matter whether it works better or not.
For liberals, however, we aren't so hung up on the means. We want results. We want a fair, equitable and just society where people have access to healthcare and education and a clean environment and so on. If we can achieve that through small government, low taxes and privatization then that's great! The problem is, as we've seen for the past eight years, it just doesn't work that way. You need government to do a lot of these jobs because it just isn't practical for private, profit-oriented businesses to do them. So you end up with liberals supporting big government programs not because they love big government, but because it is the only means to achieve the things we want and need in America.
Meanwhile, conservative stubbornly stick to their means because it is the core of their ideology and if it does not produce the desired results then they just make excuses about how we did not stick to the ideology fervently enough.

An analagous explanation for the failure of the surge

Some of my conservative friends are appalled when people say that the “surge” in Iraq failed. They think that it is self evident that the surge was a glowing success because of the sharp reduction in violence in Iraq and they get upset with anyone who suggests it was anything less than a miraculous success.
So let me try and explain why the surge was a failure using an analogy.

Imagine that you are driving a car on some backroad somewhere and suddenly you get a flat tire. Let’s say that the car represents Iraq and the flat tire represents the broken government there.
Now let’s say that you don’t have a jack to lift the car up, but fortunately a big, strong kid comes along and offers to pick the car up for you. You are amazed when he walks over and lifts the car in the air. You say “what an amazing thing this person has done by lifting the car in the air” and you rush off to find other people to see this amazing feat. Folks come from miles around to applaud and cheer as the boy lifts the car again and again. Finally, he tires and puts it down and goes on his way. Meanwhile, the tire is still flat.

In case you missed it, the big youth represents the U.S. Army at the peak of the surge. Our Army did a wonderful thing by lifting the car or quelling the violence in Iraq, but while we were doing it, nobody bothered to fix the tire, or the broken government that needs to get its act together and take over so that our troops can come home. So that is why the “surge” failed. Because nothing was accomplished while we were flexing our military muscles and now we are tired and can’t continue to surge anymore.

Can't win 'em all

The Spurs have nothing to be ashamed about. They had a terrific season and just fell short of going to the Finals for the second year in a row.
Most teams did not make it this far. But they couldn't make it over this last hump.
It still hurts to see them lose, but you can't win all the time or else winning would not be special when it does happen.
I'm not going to whine because Manu didn't score 30-plus points in every game. He had a great season. Tim Duncan is still playing solid basketball even if he is not the high scorer he used to be. And Tony Parker still has a long career ahead of him.
It will be interesting to see how many of the other players will be back next year.
Horry will retire. Finley, Barry and Bowen may be sent packing. Same with Oberto and Thomas. Udoka is probably the only one outside of the Big Three guaranteed to come back. We shall see.
I'm not sure that breaking up the team is the best option, but they will have to do something to stay competitive in the Western Conference.

Goodnight Bush

Over at Political Wire I see there is a wicked parody just out that skewers President Bush using the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon as its inspiration.
I can hardly wait to get a copy. The original book by Margaret Rose Brown has been a favorite at my house for the past five years.

Joe Biden for Sect. of State

Sen. Joe Biden had an Op-Ed in the WSJ on Friday responding to another Op-Ed a couple days earlier by turncoat Sen. Joe Lieberman.
The essay spells out some refreshingly common sense facts about U.S. foreign policy that have been ignored by the Bush administration.
He starts off talking about how Bush's foreign policy has been a failure because of its obsessive focus on the so-called "war on terrorism."

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

Indeed, Republicans are practically frozen by fear over the prospect of "terrorism" such that they can't fathom any other concerns in the world.
And what's more, partisan bloggers such as Beldar fully believe that the only measure of success for Bush's foreign policy or for his entire presidency is whether or not we have another 9/11 terror attack.

But back to the real world and Sen. Biden's excellent essay...

The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

That's putting it awfully nicely. How about profound ignorance? Or profound stupidity?

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

But they aren't interested in "winning". The neverending war is great for them! Have you checked the price of oil lately?
But it is not so great for the rest of us. Now let's listen as Sen. Biden addresses Bush's "legacy."

On George Bush's watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

Beyond Iran, al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 – are stronger now than at any time since 9/11. Radical recruitment is on the rise. Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Some 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight.

Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.

It's not just that the Republican policies aren't accomplishing what they said they would. It is that they are making things infinitely worse the longer they go on.

It is a great article and I would encourage everyone to read the whole thing. I certainly hope that President Obama will consider tapping Joe Biden to be our next Secretary of State.

Overlooking the obvious

Jonathan Gurwitz has a good column today titled Republicans are in trouble and they don't know why.
But it seems that Gurwitz doesn’t know why either, or at least he can’t bring himself to admit it.
He makes several good points which are surprising coming from a right-wing pundit such as that the lengthy Democratic primary and the nasty catfight between Obama and Hillary is not going to save Republicans from the electoral drubbing that they’ve got coming this fall.

The Democrats' long, competitive primary race has allowed them to receive more media attention, raise more money, register more voters and create greater grassroots organization in more states than Republicans could dream.
A few months of intra-party squabbling isn't going to do serious damage to a major political party.

Gurwitz outlines the special election losses I mentioned in my previous post as symptoms of a political party that is self-destructing. He then goes on to make another good point that I’ve made in the past, which is that it is not ALL George W. Bush’s fault.

Though Bush's unpopularity certainly doesn't help, he isn't on the ballot. And the American people have no problem distinguishing between party affiliation in Congress and party affiliation in the White House — which is one reason polls show John McCain still has a decent chance of winning the presidential race.

I would say a “slim” chance of winning as opposed to a “decent” chance of winning, but the point is taken.
But here Gurwitz starts to go awry in his analysis and suddenly develops an accute case of tunnel vision that somehow prevents him from seeing the elephant in the room.
How can anyone write an entire column about the GOP’s election woes without once mentioning the Iraq war? But Gurwitz seems to think that voters are mostly upset about scandals and profligate spending and that it is the Republican Party’s failure to “oppose the spendthrift ways and pork barrel spending (of) the new Democratic majority” that has put them in trouble with the electorate.

Republicans continue to figure disproportionately in Capitol Hill ethics imbroglios, share in the spoils of earmarks and wasteful appropriations and fail to distinguish themselves from Democrats and from the disreputable record that cost them control of Congress.

What Gurwitz can’t bring himself to admit is that the real reason that Republicans are in the doghouse now is because we have tried their ideas these past eight years and found that they DON’T WORK.
Republican tax cuts were supposed to energize the economy, produce a windfall of tax revenues, balance the budget and lead to even more tax cuts. Instead, we got a stagnant economy, spiraling deficits, $4 a gallon gasoline, and we are on the brink of a recession.
On the foreign policy front, the war in Iraq was supposed to last no more than six months, cost less than half a billion dollars (which we were supposed to recoup in oil revenues) and result in a flowering of democracy across the Middle East. I don’t even need to recount the horrors of the last five years to demonstrate that it was all bullshit.
That is why the Republicans are going to get their butts kicked in the next election, Jonathan. Not because people are upset about earmarks or scandals. It’s the war and the economy. And Republicans don’t have a clue about how to fix either one.