Best Pictures seen and unseen

Thinking about the Oscar nominations last night, I decided to list out all the Best Picture nominees that I have ever seen. It's a long list, but still woefully short for someone who considers himself to be a movie buff. For instance, I've seen none of the movies from 1920s and only a handful from the 1930s. And, of course, I haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominees for the past two years and only one each from 2005 and 2006.
So following the first list, I put together another list of the Best Picture nominees that I would like to see. I don't know enough about a lot of the early films to know whether I would like them or not. One thing is for sure, though, I need to spend more time watching TCM.
(an * means I saw all the nominees that year)

1934
The Thin Man
1935
Captain Blood
1936
The Story of Louis Pasteur
1938
The Adventures of Robin Hood
1939
Gone With the Wind
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Stagecoach
The Wizard of Oz
1940
The Grapes of Wrath
The Philadelphia Story
1941
Citizen Kane
The Maltese Falcon
1942
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Pride of the Yankees
1943
Casablanca
The Ox-Bow Incident
1944
Going My Way
Double Indemnity
1945
The Bells of St. Mary’s
1946
It’s a Wonderful Life
1947
The Bishop’s Wife
Miracle on 34th Street
1948
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1951
An American in Paris
1952
High Noon
The Quiet Man
1953
From Here to Eternity
Roman Holiday
Shane
1954
On the Waterfront
1955
Mister Roberts
1956
Friendly Persuasion
Giant
The King and I
The Ten Commandments
1957
The Bridge on the River Kwai
1958
Gigi
1959
Ben Hur
1960
The Apartment
The Alamo
1961
West Side Story
The Guns of Navarone
1962
Lawrence of Arabia
The Longest Day
The Music Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
1964
My Fair Lady
Dr. Strangelove
Mary Poppins
1965
The Sound of Music
1966
The Sand Pebbles
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1967
Bonnie and Clyde
The Graduate
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
1968
Funny Girl
1969
Midnight Cowboy
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1970
Patton
MASH
1971
The French Connection
A Clockwork Orange
1972
The Godfather
Cabaret
Deliverance
1973
The Sting
American Graffiti
Cries and Whispers
1974
The Godfather Part II
Chinatown
The Towering Inferno
1975
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
1976
Rocky
All the President’s Men
Taxi Driver
1977
Annie Hall
Star Wars
1978
The Deer Hunter
Heaven Can Wait
1979
Apocalypse Now
Breaking Away
1981
Chariots of Fire
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982
Gandhi
E.T.
Tootsie
The Verdict
1983
The Right Stuff
1984
Amadeus
1985
Witness
1986
Platoon
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
A Room With a View
1987
The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction
Moonstruck
1988*
Rain Man
The Accidental Tourist
Dangerous Liaisons
Mississippi Burning
Working Girl
1989*
Driving Miss Daisy
Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poet’s Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot
1990*
Dances With Wolves
Awakenings
Ghost
The Godfather Part III
Goodfellas
1991
The Silence of the Lambs
Beauty and the Beast
Bugsy
JFK
1992*
Unforgiven
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howard’s End
Scent of a Woman
1993
Schindler’s List
The Fugitive
The Piano
The Remains of the Day
1994*
Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption
1995
Braveheart
Apollo 13
Babe
Sense and Sensibility
1996
The English Patient
Fargo
Jerry Maguire
Shine
1997*
Titanic
As Good as it Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential
1998
Shakespeare in Love
Saving Private Ryan
The Thin Red Line
1999
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense
2000
Gladiator
Chocolat
Erin Brockovich
2001
A Beautiful Mind
Gosford Park
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Moulin Rouge!
2002
Chicago
Gangs of New York
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist
2003
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander
Seabiscuit
2004
Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Ray
2005
Good Night and Good Luck
2006
The Queen

And now for the list of best picture nominees I would like to see:

Grand Hotel
42nd Street
It Happened One Night
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
You Can’t Take it with You
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Wuthering Heights
The Great Dictator
How Green Was My Valley
Sergeant York
Suspicion
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Gaslight
Anchors Aweigh
The Best Years of Our Lives
Twelve O’Clock High
All About Eve
King Solomon’s Mines
Sunset Boulevard
Quo Vadis
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Greatest Show on Earth
Ivanhoe
The Robe
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Three Coins in a Fountain
Around the World in Eighty Days
12 Angry Men
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Defiant Ones
Anatomy of a Murder
Elmer Gantry
The Hustler
Judgment at Nuremberg
Tom Jones
How the West was Won
Zorba the Greek
Doctor Zhivago
A Man for All Seasons
Doctor Doolittle
The Lion in Winter
Hello, Dolly!
Airport
Five Easy Pieces
Fiddler on the Roof
The Exorcist
The Conversation
Lenny
Barry Lyndon
Nashville
Network
The Goodbye Girl
Midnight Express
All That Jazz
Norma Rae
Coal Miner’s Daughter
Raging Bull
Reds
Missing
In the Name of the Father
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Mystic River
Capote
Munich
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
No Country For Old Men
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

Oscar nominations 2009

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood this morning, but theOscar nominations that just came out
really suck this year.
Here are the Best Picture nominees:
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

I want to see “Frost/Nixon,” but as for the rest I am really indifferent. I was hoping that “Gran Torino” would get a Best Picture nomination, but no such luck.
I’m sure the ones that made it are all good films, but I just can’t get excited about them. I’m having a hard time seeing the appeal of a movie about a guy who is born old and gets younger as he ages. It sounds depressing. And I’m sure “Milk” is a well-done bio-pick, but I am more interested in seeing Oliver Stone’s “W” instead.
Why can’t they make room for at least one of the hugely popular and extremely well done films this year such as “Dark Knight” or “Iron Man” or “WALL-E.” They used to do that. Remember when “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was nominated for Best Picture? Or “Star Wars”? They didn’t win, but at least they got some well deserved recognition. But these days the Academy is extremely snooty and refuses to acknowledge any film that brings in more than $100 million at the box office. I think they are shooting themselves in the foot.
I’m glad that they gave a posthumous nomination to Heath Ledger for “Dark Knight,” but they will probably end up giving the Oscar to Robert Downey Jr. for his goofy role in “Tropic Thunder”. Downey is a great actor and is overdue for an Oscar, but he should have been nominated this year for “Iron Man”.
And I’m disappointed that Clint Eastwood didn’t get recognized for his acting in “Gran Torino”. Instead, they gave that slot of Richard Jenkins in the Not-Appearing-At-Your-Theater Indy-flick “The Visitor”.

Shared sacrifice? Not us!

It would go a long way to help lift the economy if some of these companies out there would just suck it up and keep more of their workers employed.
But corporate America doesn’t give a flying flip about shared sacrifice. All that stuff that President Obama was talking about in his Inauguarl Address? That’s for suckers. If their bottom line starts to dip even slightly, these companies are ready to start passing out pink slips. Let the government take care of the workers, they say, we have to watch out for our stockholders!
And so the vicious circle continues. The economy goes down. Businesses respond by cutting spending and laying off employees. And the economy goes down further.
This is why pure, unfettered capitalism is just as big of a failure as communism or socialism. None of these systems work by themselves. Capitalism is by far the best economic plan, but it needs a heavy dose of socialism and government intervention to keep from going off course and taking the country over a cliff. Unfortunately for us, Bush didn’t get around to handing the keys to the Obama administration until we had already driven off that cliff and crashed in the valley below. So it will be a long haul to pick up the pieces and get ourselves back on the road again.
In the meantime, companies that think they can weather the storm by passing out pink slips and putting their hands out for big, fat government bailout checks are going to have another thing coming.

New York’s Senate screw-up

I am deeply disappointed that Caroline Kennedy has been forced to withdraw from consideration for the New York Senate seat. I think this will prove to have been a boneheaded move on the part of Gov. David Paterson. I don’t understand why he has waited this long to make an appointment, but it was clear that he was just letting Kennedy hang out there and twist in the wind. She was being battered everyday by bad press and bad opinion polls and if Paterson had just made his pick weeks ago it would have gone much more smoothly.
Now, as a result of his dilly-dallying, it does not matter who Paterson picks - New York will lose power in the Senate. Hillary Clinton was a high-profile Senator who commanded respect and wielded power despite having little seniority. Caroline Kennedy would have gone a long way to fill those shoes with her history and celebrity. She would have wielded at least as much power as Clinton from day one. Now, New York will end up with a Senator who will have greatly diminished power reflecting their lack of seniority. Even if it turns out to be Andrew Cuomo, he won’t garner half the attention that a Senator Kennedy would have mustered.
That’s too bad.
Perhaps Caroline will now wait for the Senate seat to open up in Massachussetts when her Uncle Ted decides to step down.

Farewell tribute

Tom Tomorrow gives us an appropriate farewell tribute for the Bushies.

Obama's Inaugural Address

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Made For You and Me

This ain’t Dick Cheney’s America anymore. So good to see Pete Seeger still in good health and singing as an invited guest at a presidential inaugural with Bruce Springsteen. During the past eight years, the only place you were likely to see Pete Seeger would have been at a protest rally.

He’s STILL here!?!?

Can you believe that George W. Bush is STILL President!!!
Fortunately, the nightmare is finally going to end tomorrow. But don’t expect Bush to vacate the White House before exercising his final presidential perogative - Pardons. Who is going to get them? Scooter Libby? Sen. Ted Stevens? Alberto Gonzales? Michael Milken?
Frankly, I’m rooting for a pardon for Roger Clemens. I think Bush’s final act should be baseball related. If he is lucky, people will eventually forget that he was ever president and just remember him as a former owner of the Texas Rangers. Those were the good old days!

Where Bush went wrong, Part I

As I was saying earlier, I never wished ill for President Bush.
He should never have been president in the first place. He lost the 2000 election by more than half a million votes, but still took the oath of office thanks to some miscast votes in Florida (Elderly Jews for Buchanan!), the antiquated and anti-democratic Electoral College system, and a special assist from five partisan Repubicans on the Supreme Court.
At the time, I actually felt a little sorry for Bush having to take office with the stigma of being the popular-vote loser. I assumed that as a result he would try and govern in a mostly bi-partisan manner befitting the almost dead-even split among the American electorate.
But instead Bush chose to take the path of extreme partisanship and steered his presidency with an ideological compass.
As governor of Texas, Bush had been adequately successful. It’s not hard to do, since most of the power lies with the Lt. Gov. anyway and the governor is mostly a figurehead. Bush was in his element as governor and he struck up a good working relationship with conservative Democrats like House Speaker Pete Laney and Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock.
If he had continued down that path upon moving to Washington, Bush’s legacy might be quite different today. But once he got to the White House, Bush decided he didn’t need bipartisanship. Afterall, Democrats were in the minority in the House and Senate and Republicans were the trancendent power in Washington (even if they had lost the popular vote) and they weren’t about to moderate their goals after having waited this long to finally be in control of the whole shooting match.
So Bush left Bob Bullock in Texas and instead took Karl Rove to Washington. And from that point on, Rove’s harsh, bareknuckle partisanship set the tone for the Bush White House.
Had Bush been more willing to compromise and put aside ideological differences, he might have avoided or at least tempered some of the bigger mistakes during his administration. But by stubbornly sticking to his guns on everything from tax cuts to neo-con foreign policy fantasies, he ended up running the ship of state aground and we are still trying to assess and fix the damage today.
If, for example, after his first round of tax cuts wound up wiping out most of the Clinton-era surpluses without any tangible boost to the economy, Bush had reconsidered his position and perhaps tried a somewhat different course, then perhaps his economic legacy would not be on par with that of Herbert Hoover.
Or, if he had been a little less ideologically driven on health care and education, he might have kept Sen. Jim Jeffords in the Republican fold and avoided losing the Senate to the Democrats midway through his first term.
I don’t know that I believe 9/11 could have been avoided even if Bush had been meeting regularly with Richard Clarke and his anti-terrorist security team and even if he had taken that FBI memo seriously, so I’m apt to give him a pass as far as that goes. And his initial decision to go after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is one that I and most other Americans supported.
Where things started to go seriously wrong was the buildup to the Iraq invasion based on bogus, manufactured evidence and guided by a neo-con fantasy that had been waiting for just this kind of opportunity to assert itself on the world stage.
Once again, Bush closed himself off to foreign policy realists like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft and instead took all of his council from radical rightwing neocons like Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. It was a pattern that would continue to repeat itself throughout Bush’s presidency.

Two positive achievements

Jonathan Gurwitz today does his best to try an prop up the George W. Bush “legacy” and gives us two, yes TWO, credible examples of positive things that Bush achieved during his eight years in office.

PEPFAR: Tthe President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest commitment by any nation to fight a single disease in history. Begun by Bush in 2003, it represents a five-year, $15 billion commitment to stop the global spread of AIDS, especially in 15 focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

The Naivasha Agreement: Bush's personal commitment to negotiate a peace agreement that helped bring an end to the second Sudanese civil war, one of the bloodiest conflicts of modern history that caused the deaths of as many as 2 million civilians over two decades.

Two positive achievements in eight years. To that I suppose I could respond with the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But then I would surely be accused of being “afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome” and thus “simply incapable of acknowledging that a president who (I) believed was so God-awful wrong could possibly do anything right.”

But I never wished ill for President Bush. It is true that I am a partisan Democrat and that I did not vote for him. But I am also a Texan and I had the distinct privilege of getting to interview the man on half a dozen occasions when he was governor. For the last couple of interviews he even remembered my name. I thought that was pretty neat! So while I did not support him politically, I certainly did not want to see him end up as the most despised president of last century.
As governor, Bush had done an adequate job and had run his administration in a mostly bi-partisan nature under the tutelage of Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. But when he went to D.C., he did not take Bob Bullock with him. He took Karl Rove. And that is where Bush’s downfall ultimately began.
More on that in a bit.

Hall of Fame 2009

The Hall of Fame balloting went by so fast I nearly missed it.
Rickey Henderson, the All-Time stolen bases leader, made it in on the first try as expected.
But the big news is that former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice made it in on his 15th and final try before being relegated to the old-timers ballot.
I’m thrilled for Rice and I’m sorry for Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven and Tim Raines, all of whom missed the mark yet again.
One sports writer thinks Dawson and Blyleven have a good shot of making it in over the next three years as there are not a lot of sure-thing players coming up for induction during that period. Blyleven, in particular, is the odd man out of the Hall right now being the 5th all-time strike out leader, whereas all the other All-Time strike out leaders from No. 1 to No. 16 are already enshrined. Blyleven just had the misfortune of playing most of his career for a bunch of losing teams which kept him just short of the magic 300 win mark.
Oh, but I can’t fail to mention that the Baseball Hall of Fame will continue to be a joke as long as All Time Hits Leader Pete Rose is left out for “crimes” he committed that had no impact on his playing career.

Let Obama have his Blackberry!

The NYT reports the other day that the Secret Service and White House lawyers are trying to strip President-elect Obama of his Blackberry before the inauguration citing a litany of security and legal reasons.
This is wrong.
I’m not impressed with any of the reasons given for taking Obama’s Blackberry away. The idea that hackers could get into his Blackberry and access top secret information is silly. He is not going to be issuing executive orders or reviewing top secret documents with his Blackberry. The notion that a terrorist could somehow track Obama’s location through his Blackberry is also paranoid and impractical. What you are going to end up with is a situation where Obama is constantly surrounded by top aides and advisors where he is the only one in the room who does not have a Blackberry.
And legal fears that Obama’s every text message could wind up being subpoenaed by litigious critics is just something that needs to be dealt with legislatively if it has not been already.
The President needs his personal space to think and breathe and reflect and to essentially be who he is. We don’t want to take the person we just elected and then substantially change him by cutting him off from his support network. We’ve already seen that it is not good to have a president who is locked in a bubble all the time.

Still waiting

I find it rather odd that the new Congress has been sworn in and yet we still have to wait another full week before the new president takes the oath of office.
I assume that the new bills that Congress is passing right now will wait until Obama is president before going to the Oval Office for a signature. But just the idea that Bush could still veto legislation passed by the new Congress strikes me as really bizarre.

Another one bites the dust

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio will leave the Senate when his term expires in 2010 joining fellow Republican lawmakers Mel Martinez of Florida, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kit Bond of Missouri in another mass exodus. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is almost certain to make that five or more when she is expected to announce her departure to run for governor of Texas.
So unless Obama royally screws things up over the next two years, this all bodes very well for Democratic prospects of achieving a full-blown filibuster-proof majority in two years.
I think especially if Republicans come across as obstructing Obama’s efforts to bolster the economy, they are going to have no better luck in 2010 than they did in 2006 or 2008. The tarnish on the Republican brand from Bush/Cheney may take a generation or more to finally wear off. If they are lucky.

Making nice

Good to see the Democratic leadership making nice with Roland Burris. Hopefully, he will be seated in the Senate as soon as tomorrow and all of this nastiness will be behind us.
Blagojevich may have a few screws loose, but he is still a very smart and wily politicians and he clearly outmanuevered his critics by using his still legitimate authority to appoint someone who is wholly untainted by the pay-for-play scandal to the Senate seat. As I said earlier, all the Democratic leaders had left that they could do was bluster. Now that it is over with, it’s time to move on and focus on more important things like starting to clean up the enormous mess that Bush and the Republicans have left for the incoming Obama administration.

I’m also happy to see Sen. Feinstein has backed off of her criticism of Leon Panetta and is now supporting him for CIA chief. I think it was an inspired choice by Obama and will go a long way toward resurrecting the intelligence agency’s tarnished image.

Too bad that Norm Coleman couldn’t be a good sport and bow gracefully out of the Minnesota Senate race. Now we have to wait til his frivolous lawsuits are dealt with before seating Al Franken. The end result will be that Franken will lose seniority because he was forced to wait several days to be sworn in compared to the other incoming senators for 2009. A nice, final “SCREW YOU” from Coleman to the people of Minnesota.

Bush Legacy Project

If President Bush is looking for his legacy, NBC News has put together some helpful stats comparing how things were when Bush took office in 2001 with how they are today.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001)
Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008)

As of November!!! Just wait until they figure in the numbers for December and January!!!!

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
Then: 10,587 (close of Friday, Jan. 19, 2001)
Now: 9,015 (close of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009)

Now there’s a legacy for you. Eight years of gains in the stock market completely wiped out. Heck of a job, Mr. President!

BUSH FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 50% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 31% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

31 percent favorable?? That seems a little high.

CHENEY FAVORABILITY RATING
Then: 49% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

Hard to believe his favorables were ever that high.

CONGRESS APPROVAL RATING
Then: 48% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

These numbers should start to go up now that the Republicans are out of power.

SATISFIED WITH THE NATION'S DIRECTION
Then: 45% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll)
Now: 26% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll)

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE (1985=100)
Then: 115.7 (Conference Board, January 2001)
Now: 38.0, which is an all-time low (Conference Board, December 2008)

FAMILIES LIVING IN POVERTY
Then: 6.4 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 7.6 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent numbers available)

And these numbers are before the big financial meltdown.

AMERICANS WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE
Then: 39.8 million (Census numbers for 2000)
Now: 45.7 million (Census numbers for 2007 -- most recent available)

Same here.

U.S. BUDGET
Then: +236.2 billion (2000, Congressional Budget Office)
Now: -$1.2 trillion (projected figure for 2009, Congressional Budget Office)

And finally, Bush’s most long-lasting legacy. Debt up to our eyeballs for as long as we can see...

X-Files: I Want To Believe

I wanted to believe that the new X-Files film would be a good movie. I was disappointed.
I don’t regret having watched it. It wasn’t THAT bad. It’s just that it was more like watching an extra-long TV episode, and one that I wouldn’t have turned into a feature-length film anyway.
I kept hoping that Fox Mulder would do something heroic during the film, but he was played more like a bumbler who somehow managed to solve big cases Clouseau-style in spite of himself. In the very end of the film he nearly gets himself killed, only to be saved in the most cliched manner.
Oh, well.
X-Files had a good run on television. And then I watched Millenium until they abruptly canceled it after just a couple of seasons. And then I started to watch Harsh Realm, but they canceled that one before it could even get off the ground. After that, X-Files creator Chris Carter said “Screw it.” and left television altogether. Sigh.

Political observations for 1-5-09

A lot happened over the weekend.
First, I’m very disappointed that Bill Richardson had to withdraw from being considered for Commerce Secretary. The news that there is an investigation about pay-to-play allegations concerning a state contract seems oddly timed.
It would certainly be unethical if a company had been awarded a big contract BECAUSE they gave money to the governor’s political action committee. But, at the same time, can we really expect that people who donate to PACs are automatically suspect and should be excluded from getting state contracts?
I just hope that once the state investigation is finished that Obama will find some room in his administration for Richardson.

Second, I was disturbed by the report that Harry Reid had allegedly lobbied Gov. Blagojevich over the Senate appointment prior to his arrest. The AP reported that Reid had called Blago to express his disapproval of appointing Chicago Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Danny Davis, and state Senate President Emil Jones Jr. All three are African-Americans.
Reid is now denying the report and saying he did not tell Blago who NOT to appoint. Nevertheless, it now looks even worse to have Reid threatening to physically block Roland Burris from the Senate chamber this week. Since I don’t think he has any legal ground to stand on anyway, I hope that Reid will back off of the Burris confrontation and cut a deal this week.

Third, Congratualtions to Senator-elect Al Franken from Minnesota. Franken is going to be tentatively certified later today as the winner of the Senate race after the recount gave him a slim-250 vote margin over Republican Norm Coleman. Now I just hope that the courts will throw out all of Coleman’s frivolous challenges just as fast as he can file them. Oh, and John Cornyn can stick his threatened filibuster up his you know what.

Fourth, I hope that Gov. Paterson in New York hurries up and appoints Caroline Kennedy as the Senator to replace Hillary Clinton. It’s a smart move politically for New York to have a celebrity Senator because their power and influence is greatly enhanced beyond their low ranking in the seniority system. Sen. Kennedy will have no problem gaining media attention, despite being the low-woman on the totem pole. And besides, rejecting her and picking someone else at this point would result in a huge uproar that we really don’t need right now. I don’t care about the whole legacy issue and how unfair it is that she is getting the appointment based on her family name. That is the way politics has always been in this country. And besides, political legacies can cut both ways too. Just ask Jeb Bush.

And Fifth, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter was unfairly criticized in my opinion for appointing a non-celebrity, non-legacy individual to replace Ken Salazar in the Senate. I don’t know much about Michael Bennet other than that he was superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, but I wish the first consideration when evaluating a nominee wasn’t whether or not he can raise lots of campaign money. Nor do I think that Ritter should have been confined to picking another Hispanic to replace Salazar.

Did you hear the one about FDR and the Great Depression?

Did you hear the latest nonsense from dimbulbs on the right? Yes, I know, it is hard to keep track. But specifically I mean the bit about how FDR’s New Deal programs and government spending actually prolonged The Great Depression?
It sounds contrary to everything that we learned in history. Well, that’s because it is. It’s complete bullshit.
David Sirota does us all the favor of quashing it in this piece for Salon.
Of course, that won’t matter for most rightwingers. Things like the truth, logic and rational argument are all easily discarded whenever it conflicts with their ideology. The “FDR prolonged the Depression” nonsense fits in well with their preconceived notions, so they naturally embrace it irregardless of how completely stupid it is.

Here is a good example of how this kind of silliness gets perpetuated in rightwing circles.
JimmyK takes an article by historian Alan Brinkley and carefully extracts a section that is critical of the New Deal to support the meme about prolonging the Great Depression. But left out is the all the stuff at the beginning of the article praising 90 percent of the New Deal programs....

Does the New Deal provide a useful model for fixing our own troubled economy? In many respects, yes. The frenzy of activity and innovation that marked Franklin Roosevelt's initial months in office--a welcome contrast to the seeming paralysis of the discredited Hoover regime--helped first and foremost to lessen the panic that had gripped the nation. And, during the prewar years of his presidency, Roosevelt's actions produced an unprecedented array of tangible achievements as well. He moved quickly and effectively to address a wave of bank failures that threatened to shut down the financial system. He created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which helped make the beleaguered stock market more transparent and thus more trustworthy. He responded to out-of-control unemployment by launching the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which created jobs for millions of the unemployed. He passed the Social Security Act, which over time provided support to the jobless, the indigent, and the elderly--and the Wagner Act, which eventually raised wages by giving unions the right to bargain collectively with employers. He signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created the minimum wage and the 40-hour workweek.

And even in his criticism, Brinkley notes that one of the biggest mistakes of the period - the Federal Reserve Boards insistence on keeping interest rates high - was not a product of New Deal policy.

And now we have the rest of the story...

Theme from ‘Shaft’ reinterpreted

This just proves that music is the universal language. The late-great Isaac Hayes’ masterpiece “Theme from ‘Shaft’” as reinterpreted by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.



Awesome.

Please don’t embarrass us

I sure hope the Senate Democrats rethink their plan to physically block Roland Burris from entering the Senate chamber next week. I don’t care how righteous they think they are, it will turn into a huge and embarrassing fiasco if the all-white Senate were to bar the door on the only black man.
Go ahead and launch the silly investigation and such - it will all be decided in the courts anyway, but spare us all the theatrics of having Burris escorted from the chamber by the Sergeant at Arms.

Blagojevich and bluster

I think the U.S. Senate will have no choice but to seat Roland Burris as the new Senator from Illinois.
As distasteful as it may seem, Rod Blagojevich is still the governor of Illinois - innocent until proven guilty - and now it looks like it may be another couple of months before we even know if an indictment will be handed down. In the meantime, the rules say that Blago gets to make the Senate appointment. There is nothing in the law that says the Illinois Secretary of State has to approve of the choice, so this business of him not certifying the paperwork seems kind of silly. If he won’t do his job, the governor will just find someone else who will.

And on what grounds could the leadership in the U.S. Senate block Burris from being seated in the chamber? He is in no way implicated in the scandal swirling around Blago. All things considered, he seems to be a pretty good choice. So I think the courts will ultimately rule in his favor.
Blago pulled a fast one and it looks like he will get away with it. He is still going to be impeached and possibly indicted and could end up serving prison time along with his immediate predecessor. But for now he has demonstrated that he can still play politics and the only thing his critics can do is bluster.

Pop culture prowess

The movies are one of the touchstones of our culture. We share a common culture in part by seeing the same movies (or watching the same TV shows, or listening to the same music) as everyone else.
Here is an interesting way to gauge your pop culture prowess: See how many of the top grossing films ($100M-plus domestic gross) that you have seen over the years. In other words, how many of the films that everyone else saw did you see too?
It is easy to do if you go to Box Office Mojo and browse through their yearly list of box office results.

Here is how I measure up:
2000 - 14 of 22
2001 - 14 of 20
2002 - 15 of 24
2003 - 15 of 29
2004 - 17 of 24
2005 - 13 of 19
2006 - 11 of 19
2007 - 8 of 28
2008 - 4 of 24 (so far)

I’ve also seen every one of the highest grossing films for each year (not counting 2008) going back to 1980 with the exception of “Three Men and a Baby” from 1987.

I will probably never have a perfect score for any particular year because there are always going to be some popular films that I have no interest in seeing. If it is a horror film or a gross-out comedy you can usually count me out.
But overall we tend to be exposed to popular movies even when we don’t see them. For instance, I know who Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger and Jason Voorhees are despite the fact that I have never seen any of the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th movies.

2008 Movies recap

This was a pretty good year for the movies overall thanks largely to the super heroric efforts of Batman, Iron Man and Indiana Jones.
The film industry seemed to be in a slump in 2005-06 when it failed to put out more than 20 films either year that cleared the $100 million mark in domestic box office grosses. There was a big jump in $100M grossing movies in 2007 with 28 and so far this year we are at 24 and counting. You can clearly see the slump here:

2001 - 20
2002 - 24
2003 - 29
2004 - 24
2005 - 19
2006 - 19
2007 - 28
2008 - 24 and counting

I’m not sure if the slump was due to the miserable Bush economy, anxiety over the Iraq war or what, but now, even with the economy fully down the drain, we seem to be going back to the cinema in droves trying to make it all go away for a few hours at a time.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve seen very few 2008 films so far. Here are the ones I’ve seen in order of preference. (* indicates a video/DVD I own).

WALL-E
*Kung Fu Panda
*Iron Man
Horton Hears A Who
*Speed Racer

There are still many 2008 films I want to see including:

*Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Dark Knight
*Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Gran Torino
Frost/Nixon
Quantum of Solace
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Hell Boy II: The Golden Army
Bolt
Burn After Reading
W.
Appaloosa
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Valkyrie
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Defiance
In Bruges
Wanted
Shine A Light
*Nim’s Island
Bedtime Stories
Australia
The Tale of Despereaux
Milk
The Spiderwick Chronicles
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything

Revisiting my list of films from 2007, I am now up to 16 films I have seen:

*Spider Man 3
*Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
*Ratatouille
No Reservations
*The Bee Movie
*Meet the Robinsons
*The Bourne Ultimatum
*National Treasure: Book of Secrets
*Enchanted
*Beowulf
*The Golden Compass
*Stardust
*The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
*Charlie Wilson’s War
The Simpsons Movie
*Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

And here are the 2007 films I still want to see:

I Am Legend
Sicko
Transformers
I’m Not There
300
The Great Debaters
*Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
No End in Sight
American Gangster
Sweeney Todd
There Will Be Blood
No Country For Old Men
Hairspray
Talk To Me
Bridge To Terabithia
Rescue Dawn
Walk Hard
Eastern Promises
*Michael Clayton
3:10 to Yuma
Juno
Live Free or Die Hard
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Incompetence Dodge

I have harped on this before, but I think it is worth repeating that it is a mistake to focus too much on George W. Bush’s incompetence as a president and not on the intellectual bankruptcy of the ideas that he championed.
I saw recently where the word “incompetent” is the most frequent one associated with President Bush. While that may be well deserved, it also serves to give Republicans an out as to why their political policies have failed during the past decade. They can say, “It wasn’t our ideas that failed, it was the man who tried to put them into action who was at fault. He was incompetent and screwed things up, thus our ideas were never given their due.”
So it serves Republicans’ interests right now to jump on the “Bush was incompetent” bandwagon so that they can come back in four years with a new standard bearer and the same old failed policies and take another shot at running our country into the ground.
We can’t afford to let them get away with that. So don’t fall for that dodge. Bush was a bad president, there is no doubt. But it was ultimately the failed policies he promoted that sank his presidency, not any personal foibles or missteps. If the taxcuts had actually boosted the economy, rather than creating huge new deficits, then people would not have cared so much about Bush’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina or his efforts to politicize the Justice Department. If toppling Saddam would have really resulted in a flowering of democracy across the Middle East, people would have dismissed reports of abuse at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo and yawned over reports of domestic spying.
The policies failed. Everything else was the icing on the cake.

Cycle of violence

Is it just me? Or does it seem like the Israeli government always picks Christmastime every year to start bombing the hell out of their neighbors?
I’m not going to try and defend Hamas, but the Israeli military action is, as usual, big-time overkill. I never could find out how many Israeli’s were killed by the missile attacks which purportedly sparked this latest offensive, but the death toll on the other side is now at 350 and climbing. That is typical of the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But no matter how lop-sided the death ratio is, (100-to-1?) it never solves anything but rather perpetuates the cycle of violence and death. Israel has maintained an economic death grip on the Palestinian territories for years now, not allowing any kind of normal commerce to take place and keeping the populace in a state of near squalor and starvation. At the same time, the government has allowed the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories to grow and expand almost unheeded. Then they act surprised when radical factions launch rockets on a sporadic basis.
Then over here, our government acts like the Israeli response is appropriate and necessary even as every other country on the planet is appropriately appalled. It makes me sick.
I don’t know if Obama can change things and I know if he even tries to moderate the U.S.’s current Israel-can-do-no-wrong approach to the Middle East he will be viciously attacked by the rightwing spin machine and its media lapdogs. But do something he must because it is clear that the current Israeli government is not going to pull itself out of this cycle of violence on its own.

Merry Christmas

Whose whining now?

President-elect Obama has been taking a lot of abuse recently — from liberals.
Why?
Because he chose someone they don’t like to give the invocation at his inauguration. That someone is evangelical preacher, and best-selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life”, Rick Warren. Warren, unsurprisingly, is anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and that, according to those on the left, should have precluded him from having any kind of role, no matter how ceremonial or symbolic, in an Obama inauguration.
What distinguishes Warren from your run-of-the-mill evangelical preacher, according to Wiki, is his outspoken challenge to evangelical leaders to devote less attention to divisive social issues and focus more on efforts to fight international poverty and disease, expand educational opportunity for the marginalized, and combat global warming.
It sounds to me like the guy has taken some major steps in the right direction. So why the big uproar over the invocation nod? Atrios gave Obama “wanker of the day” honors for the choice and even suggested that inaugural attendees should turn their backs on Warren during the invocation.
Please stop.
Folks on the left have spent the last two years mocking those on the right as “whiny ass titty babies” and now here we have the same people behaving like spoiled children who throw a hissy fit when they don’t get their way on every little thing.
Obama can choose whoever he wants to give the invocation at his inaugural party. Get over it! If he wants to reach out to those on the right and show some appreciation to someone who met him halfway on some key issues, then what is the big problem? It’s not like Obama has changed his position on these social issues. Far from it. But he is going to need some support to get these changes in place and it is not helpful to have those who should be his biggest supporters rolling around on the floor, kicking and screaming over a complete non-issue. Sheesh!

Obama's Cabinet

Obama is nearly completely done naming his cabinet.

TREASURY SECRETARY: Timothy Geithner, president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
SECRETARY OF STATE: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
ATTORNEY GENERAL: Eric Holder, former deputy attorney general.
DEFENSE SECRETARY: Robert Gates, holdover from Bush administration.
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Gov. Janet Napolitano, D-Ariz.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Retired Marine Gen. James Jones.
COMMERCE SECRETARY: Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.
NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary.
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET DIRECTOR: Peter Orszag, director of Congressional Budget Office.
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY: Retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki.
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY: Shaun Donovan, New York City housing commissioner.
ENERGY SECRETARY: Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
EPA ADMINISTRATOR: Lisa P. Jackson, former commissioner of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: Carol Browner, former EPA administrator.
WHITE HOUSE COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY CHAIR: Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles.
EDUCATION SECRETARY: Arne Duncan, Chicago schools superintendent.
INTERIOR SECRETARY: Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY: Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor.
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR
Denny Blair, retired admiral and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.
LABOR SECRETARY
Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif.
TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill.

U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE
Ron Kirk, former Dallas mayor.

POSTS TO BE DECIDED, WITH THE CONTENDERS:
CIA DIRECTOR
John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA during Clinton administration.
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations.
Steve Kappes, CIA's current No. 2.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., now heads House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
John McLaughlin, former interim CIA chief.

Add them all up and you have 24 major appointments of which half have gone to non-white males.
That’s pretty remarkable.
The one demographic group that looked as if it would be left out was the South, but that seems to have been rectified with the last minute nomination of Texan Ron Kirk as U.S. Trade Representative.

Franken may win afterall

I should know never to get my hopes up too much, but there has been a lot of buzz recently that Al Franken might actually pull out a victory in this Minnesota recount. The fact that the election board came down with two crucial rulings the other day that favored Franken may have made all the difference. Now, fresh analysis of the disputed ballots by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Associated Press show Franken should pull ahead in the vote count.
The frustrating thing so far is that all the official tallies have shown Coleman with a 200-vote lead. But now it may finally be revealed that the only reason he has had that lead to date is because he made so many frivoulous challenges to ballots in an effort to keep Franken’s numbers down. That slimy strategy has allowed Coleman to go around for the past few weeks boasting that he is the consensus frontrunner.
But that may all end soon.

Finishing what they started...

In the Express-New's Random Notes section this Sunday, they hi-lite a quote from Peggy Noonan in the WSJ stating that "the final argument for Mr. Bush" will be the fact that "since 9-11, there were no further attacks on American soil..."
Now this statement completely ignores the post-9/11 anthrax attacks that were never resolved. But that aside, it is maddening that anyone would try to pretend that because of something Bush did, al-Qaeda was deterred from making another attack.
This makes no sense when you consider that Bin Laden is still loose and al-Qaeda is as strong now as it ever was. Why wouldn't they have attacked again? Could it be that they simply didn't need to.
One of the goals of the 9/11 attack, besides killing people and striking fear in everyone else, was to damage the U.S. financially by striking at the heart of our economic and financial infrastucture.
Fortunately, they failed.
Unfortunately, Bush and the Republican economic polices may have succeeded where they fell short. Our nation is caught in an economic death spiral that was a direct result of the Republican economic policies that have damaged the very fabric of America both here and abroad.
Al-Qaeda doesn't need to drop any more bombs, Wall Street has blown itself up quite nicely without their help. We desperatly need to change course, but it may already be too late for many companies.

Neo-Hooverites strike again

Why do Republicans hate America? And why do they hate American workers - blue collar workers in particular?
Last night, lame duck Republicans in the Senate filibustered the $14 billion auto bailout package, presumably because the autoworkers union refused to slash salaries for its members next year.
Funny. I don’t recall Republicans filibustering the much larger bailout packages for the financial industry. I don’t recall them demanding big cuts in salary and compensation for Wall Street bankers and stockbrokers.
Out of an ideological hatred for unionized workers, a handful of southern Republican senators - with the full complicity of the majority of Republicans in the Senate - are trying to use the auto bailout as a stick to bludgeon to death the unions. They want to eliminate every advantage workers have from being organized by forcing them to be paid the same as non-union workers. And irregardless of cost-of-living variances between the north and south as well, I presume.
Because of their obstinate, stubborn right-wing hatred for unions, these Republicans may have pushed us into a much deeper recession than we are already in. The only way to pull ourselves out of this economic death spiral, that was created by Republican economic policies to begin with, is to get people employed and spending money again. And you can’t do that when you are forcing job cuts and salary reductions by fiat from Washington.
There is clearly no reason for any working American to ever vote Republican again, certainly not as long as they continue to embrace the economic policies of Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush.

Golden Globe 2008

The Golden Globe nominations are out and needless to say I am very much underwhelmed.

Drama:
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "The Reader," "Revolutionary Road" and "Slumdog Millionaire."

Comedy or musical:
"Burn After Reading," "Happy-Go-Lucky," "In Bruges," "Mamma Mia!" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona."

The only one I am even vaguely interested in seeing at this point is “Frost/Nixon” and that is mostly because it is directed by Ron Howard, one of my favorite directors.

As per usual, the biggest movies of the year were shut out. Dark Knight, which raked in an astonishing half a billion dollars got one supporting actor nomination for the late Heath Ledger. None of the other Top 10 grossing films of the year got any recognition whatsoever. That is unless you count the segregated category for animated films that includes WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda.
It is interesting to note that four of the Top 10 grossing films of 2008 are animated films - WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2 and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who. At this rate, I’m not sure how much longer Hollywood can continue dissing animated films.
The other interesting thing to note is that five of the Top 10 grossing films were “super hero” movies: Dark Knight (Batman); Indiana Jones; Iron Man; Hancock; and Quantum of Solace (James Bond).
The only non-animated, non-super hero film to break into the Top 10 (literally in the No. 10 slot) was the “chick flick” Sex and the City, which just edged out the year’s other big chick flick, Mama Mia.
Now Mama Mia DID make the Golden Globe cut, but only because they have a special category for comedies and musicals. They don’t have such a category over at the Academy Awards, so you can forget about Mama Mia come Oscar time.

My movie watching in 2008 has been pretty pathetic, so I’m not one to judge the worth of most movies (although that has never stopped me before ;)

Here are the handful of films that came out in 2008 that I have actually seen so far:

Iron Man
WALL-E
Kung Fu Panda
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!
Speed Racer

I would definitely put WALL-E up for Best Picture ahead of those other nominees.

The Untouchables

The Blagojevich corruption scandal is so completely over-the-top as to be almost comical. I can’t help but wonder if Blago didn’t do this on purpose. Maybe he knew he was about to get nailed for some other activities and decided to go out with a bang.
The only other explanation is that he is completely nuts.
I mean, the guy is a lawyer, a former prosecutor, who knew very well that he was already under investigation by the Feds. He should have known that his phones were already tapped. Did he think that he was too big, too powerful, too important to get nailed? How so? His immediate predecessor as governor is currently sitting in jail!
There is no rational explanation for what Blago did. But one thing it does do is present a very clear contrast with the Obama transition team.
Despite Republicans’ pathetic attempts to smear Obama with this mess, the president-elect is coming out of this smelling like a rose.
Blago clearly wanted to involve the president-elect in his pay-to-play scheme, but Obama wasn’t cooperating. Blago was upset that the only thing the Obama team was offering him in return for choosing their favored Senate candidate was “their appreciation.” So he told them to go Cheney themselves. Which is probably why Valerie Jarrett’s name was rather abruptly withdrawn from consideration some weeks ago.
So Obama and his team could not be touched. And now it looks as if Obama’s recent push for ethics reform in Illinois may have been the key to Blago’s downfall.

Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say...
Mr. Obama used leverage that he had seldom employed — publicly, anyway — and strongly urged Mr. Jones to bypass Mr. Blagojevich and approve the ethics bill, banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois...Mr. Obama’s intervention deepened a rift between him and Mr. Blagojevich that had been growing for some time.

There will no doubt be many more people who will try to tempt Obama to do things that would not look good in the light of day. But I think this is just one of many examples we will see that he will be scrupulous in avoiding them. Having been burned once over the comparatively innocuous Rezco land swap, I don’t think Obama is going to allow himself to make that kind of mistake again.

Cleaning house

The Democratic Party should smell a lot cleaner next week after the stench of Rod Blagojevich and William Jefferson starts to dissipate.
Everyone knew that Blagojevich was in trouble, but few people expected him to go out with such a splash. It’s almost as if he did it on purpose, knowing full well his phones were being tapped by federal prosecutors. I mean, could anybody really be that stupid? Don’t answer that!
What is it with Illinois governors anyway? Blagojevich, a Democrat, could soon be sharing a prison cell with the former governor, Republican George Ryan. I think that is unprecedented. Now I assume that it will be left to the Democratic Lt. Gov. to choose Obama’s replacement in the Senate.

And at long last, the happy news that William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson is finally going to be an ex-congressman. It’s just too bad that the Democrats didn’t oust him themselves, leaving it up to the Republicans instead. But the candidate they got to knock off Jefferson - Joseph Cao, who will be the first Vietnamese-American in Congress - hardly fits the bill as your typical Republican, especially coming out of Louisiana. A former Jesuit priest, Cao’s primary goal, according to the NYT, will be addressing global poverty and taking care of refugees. I wonder how well that will fit in with his Republican colleagues’ goals of tax cuts for the rich?
If Democrats play it right, they might be able to persuade Cao to switch parties before long.

Gov. Perry’s Neo-Hooverism

Gov. Rick Perry recently co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford arguing against federal bailout and stimulus efforts to revive the flagging economy.
This has been correctly identified by certain Blogger types
as a governing philosophy known as Neo-Hooverism, as in Herbert Hoover, whose failed economic policies led to the Great Depression and whose austere response to the crisis only made it worse.
I find it disturbing that Republicans like Perry and Sanford are suddenly so concerned about the prospect of deficit spending after saying nary a word about the $5 trillion in debt run up by the current Republican administration. They say:

Washington doesn't have money in hand for any of these proposals. Every penny would be borrowed.

And yet, Washington didn’t have money in hand for the War in Iraq either and that didn’t seem to bother them any. Why is it OK to spend hundreds of billions to fix up Iraq’s economy, but it’s not OK to invest a similar amount on our own economy?
Cutting back on government spending right now would be a disaster on top of a disaster. Private industry just dumped 534,000 jobs and is leaving it up to the federal government to pick up the slack in the form of unemployment benefits, welfare and medicare. Without all this federal spending, people would be out on the streets, going hungry, losing homes, causing civil unrest and turmoil. This do nothing approach that Perry and Sanford are advocating is such a horribly bad idea that even the Bush administration, the worst presidential administration in the history of our nation, rejected it outright.

Does Perry really believe what he is saying? Or is he appealing to the baser instincts of the electorate in preparation for a big fight next year with Kay Bailey Hutchison, who he has already slammed as “Kay Bailout Hutchison”.

Obama’s birth certificate

Thanks to Justice Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court will spend part of today considering a lawsuit questioning President-elect Barack Obama’s citizenship.
It is just one of a dozen or more lawsuits by far-rightwing lunatics trying to overturn the election based on totally bogus and nonsensical claims that Obama is engaged in some kind of grand conspiracy to cover up the details of his birth.
The fact that Clarence Thomas would give one of these suits the sheen of credibility by forwarding it to his Supreme Court colleagues is a real insult, especially coming from the only black justice on the court. But it is nothing less than what I expect from Thomas.
I always thought it was odd that the wingnuts were tryng to make an issue out of Obama’s birth records when it was their nominee, John McCain, who was clearly not born in the United States. Technically, McCain was still OK because he was born on a military base in Panama, but for crying out loud talk about people throwing stones in glass houses.
Obama tried to defuse the bogus controversy early on by posting a copy of his birth certificate on his campaign website, but that only sent the unhinged, reality-impaired idiots to go off barking about “kerning” and other supposed “evidence” of forgeries.
As Steve Benen notes, to believe that Obama was not born in Hawaii, one must not only accept that he forged his Hawaiian birth certificate with the full complicity of the Hawaiian authorities, but also that his family had to have the foresight 47 years ago to post a bogus birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper. You see, they KNEW back then that he would be president someday so they started plotting way back then to cover up his foreign birth, blah, blah, blah....
And this is just the kind of blather you get from some rightwingers today. My op-ed piece at the E-N, now up to 124 comments drew out a whole nest of these people to rant and rave about Obama’s supposed birth certificate conspiracy (along with repeated racist references to Obama as a “mutt” meaning of mixed race).
I would just add that my conservative friend JimmyK, to his credit, has been knocking this particular loony theory down at his blog for sometime now.

Ray Conniff Singers - Ring Christmas Bells

It’s time to get in the Christmas spirit...



This is one of my absolute favorite Christmas recordings.

That's bitchin'

In a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing, in the Express-News last Sunday we had this column by Bob Richter talking about the complaints the paper had received over allowing the word 'bitchin' to be used in a story quoting former Dallas Cowboy's star Bob Lilly. We are told how the editors fretted before allowing the word to go through, even though in this context it is just a synonym for complaining.
But then one page in front of Richter's column, we find the Random Notes section edited by Mr. Gurwitz using a quote from a New York author referring to Hillary Clinton as a 'bitch'. Oops!
Interestingly enough, they don't have that Random Notes column online. I wonder why?

Immigration Losers

Here is a rarity. A Wall Street Journal editorial that I agree with. But I’ll bet a lot of “GOP hardliner” losers around here won’t much like it....


More Immigration Losers
GOP hardliners need to face reality.

Virginia Republican Congressman Virgil Goode's narrow loss to Democrat Tom Perriello became official last week, and it caps another bad showing for immigration restrictionists. For the second straight election, incumbent Republicans who attempted to turn illegal immigration into a wedge issue fared poorly.

Anti-immigration hardliners Randy Graf, John Hostettler and J.D. Hayworth were among the Republicans who lost in 2006. Joining them this year were GOP Representatives Thelma Drake (Virginia), Tom Feeney (Florida), Ric Keller (Florida) and Robin Hayes (North Carolina) -- all Members of a House anti-immigration caucus that focuses on demonizing the undocumented.

According to a review of election results by America's Voice, an advocacy group, Republican restrictionists had especially weak showings in "battleground" races. "Nineteen of 21 winners advocated immigration policies beyond enforcement-only," says the report. "This includes 5 of 5 Senate races and 14 of 16 House races listed in the 'toss-up,' 'leans Republican,' or 'leans Democratic' categories of the Cook Political Report."

Mr. Goode, a 12-year incumbent, had made a name for himself in Congress as a seal-the-border advocate. Among other things, he has called for mass deportations and amending the Constitution to deny U.S. citizenship to children of illegal aliens.

Immigration wasn't a dominant issue this fall, and other factors contributed more to the GOP defeat. But the political reality is that Republicans who thought that channeling Lou Dobbs would save their seats will soon be ex-Members. Meanwhile, exit polls showed that the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell to 31% this year from more than 40% in 2004. The demographic reality is that the GOP can't win national elections while losing such a large share of the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the country.

Read this

Check out this essay in today’s Express-News.
They really should publish more pieces by this guy!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Such light posting lately, is everyone on vacation or what?!?
I'm actually on vacation this week, but I do have one comment I have to get off my chest.
All this complaining about Obama not giving us "change" because he is putting a lot of former Clinton people in his cabinet is ridiculous. First, Clinton's is the only Democratic presidential administration in the last 30 years or so. If you want people with some experience, that is where you necessarily have to go. Second, the Clinton years were pretty darn good as I recall. The worst thing about the Clinton years - Monica Lewinsky - was entirely Bill Clinton's fault and had nothing to do with the people in his administration. So what's to complain about?
Finally, of course this is change!! Bush has been president for the past eight years, not Clinton, with Republican ideologues filling most administrative positions. The only way it wouldn't have been change is if Obama picked a bunch of right-wing Republicans to fill his cabinet.
Which of course brings us to the latest news that Obama is planning to keep Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense for at least the first year. But Gates - former president of Texas A&M - IS a change already. He is a 100 percent better choice than Donald Rumsfeld and a non-ideologue who has already shown a willingness to work across party lines to the good of the country. Tapping Gates was one of the few good decisions that Bush ever made and I don't have a problem keeping him on for a bit longer while we try to wrap up this quagmire in Iraq.

The Stupid Party

The Economist doesn’t pull its punches.

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals”. McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans”, with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride”. Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying “whack job”. One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).

But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough—Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

The Prodigal Senator returns

Yes, it is infuriating that Democrats are allowing backstabbing, turncoat, Benedict Arnold Joe Lieberman to not only stay in the Democratic caucus, but keep his prized chairmanship of the vitally important Homeland Security Committee. I mean, what were they thinking!?!

But at the same time, let’s look at it from another direction. For all practical purposes, Lieberman has been a Republican for the past two years or so. Now he wants to be a Democrat again. Is that such a bad thing?
What would the reaction be if, after the election, a Republican Senator like Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins came up and said they wanted to switch parties and become a Democrat? Wouldn’t Democrats welcome them with open arms? Maybe even give them a committee chairmanship to possibly entice others with similar ambitions?
Remember Richard Shelby? The one-time Democrat who switched parties and is today one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate? That worked out pretty well for the GOP. And what about James Jeffords? Remember when the party gave him the cold-sholder and essentially forced him out for not toeing the line? That didn’t work out so well for them.
Now, a lot will depend on how Lieberman conducts himself here on out. But in the long-run this may not have been such a bad deal after all.

Dan Rather lawsuit getting results

Damned liberal media!
Rather’s Lawsuit Shows Role of G.O.P. in Inquiry at CBS

When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a “60 Minutes” segment about President Bush’s National Guard service — the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as “old news.”
So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money.
Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including the power of subpoena and the threat of punishment against witnesses who lie under oath — he has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network.
Among the materials that money has shaken free for Mr. Rather are internal CBS memorandums turned over to his lawyers, showing that network executives used Republican operatives to vet the names of potential members of a panel that had been billed as independent and charged with investigating the “60 Minutes” segment.

National Review, RIP

At National Review, a Threat to Its Reputation for Erudition - NYTimes.com

In a span of 252 days, the National Review lost two Buckleys — one to death, another to resignation — and an election.
Now, thanks to the coarsening effect of the Internet on political discourse, the magazine may have lost something else: its reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, the late William F. Buckley Jr.

And here is another testament to the demise of NRO.

Of course, it could always bounce back, but with the way things are going (i.e. Palin 2012) that doesn’t seem likely in the near future.

On Intrinsic Evil

The buzz word that my friend Mark likes to throw around now is “intrinsic” as in “intrinsic evil”. In a previous thread where we were discussing his contention that voting for Obama was morally wrong because of his pro-choice stance on abortion, I asked why it was not also morally wrong to vote for a Republican who supports capital punishment.
Mark responded by saying that abortion is an “intrinsic evil” and thus a worse sin than capital punishment. But what does that mean? I decided to look it up and came across this wonderful article titled Intrinsic Evil and Political Responsibility in America | The National Catholic Weekly by M. Cathleen Kaveny, the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. I highly recommend reading this article in its entirety, but here are some excerpts which help clarify this issue:

The term “intrinsic evil” does not have its roots in the expansive imagery of the church’s prophetic witness, but rather in the tightly focused analysis of its moral casuistry. It is not a rhetorical flourish, but rather a technical term of Catholic moral theology....

In a nutshell, the fact that an act is called an intrinsic evil tells us two and only two things.
First, it tells us why an action is wrong—because of the “object” of the acting agent’s will. To identify the object of an action, one has to put oneself in the shoes of the one acting, and to describe the action from her perspective. The object is the immediate goal for which that person is acting; it is “the proximate end of a deliberate decision” (VS, No. 78).

Second, the fact that an act is intrinsically evil tells us that it is always wrong to perform that type of act, no matter what the other circumstances are. A good motive cannot make an act with a bad object morally permissible. In other words, we may never do evil so that good may come of it. To echo an example used by both Pope John Paul II and St. Thomas, a modern-day Robin Hood should not hold up a convenience store at gunpoint in order to give the money to a nearby homeless center. Robin Hood’s good motive (altruistic giving) does not wash away the bad object or immediate purpose of his action (robbery).

But to say that an act is intrinsically evil does not by itself say anything about the comparative gravity of the act. Some acts that are not intrinsically evil (driving while intoxicated) can on occasion be worse both objectively and subjectively than acts that are intrinsically evil (telling a jocose lie). Some homicides that are not intrinsically evil are worse than intrinsically evil homicides. Furthermore, the fact that an act is intrinsically evil does not by itself tell third parties anything at all about their duty to prevent that act from occurring.

Kaveny notes that the church defines many acts besides abortion as intrinsic evils including euthanasia, homosexual acts, using birth control and even intentional lying. She then knocks down the notion that intrinsic evil automatically means that something is gravely evil and gives several examples of non-intrinsic evils that are much worse than intrinsic ones.
She then goes on to show the folly of trying to base one’s political judgments on the concept of intrinsic evil.

...how much help does the category of “intrinsic evil” offer us in deciding whom to vote for in an important national election? In my view, not much help at all.
A defender of the category’s usefulness might say that the fact that a candidate does not disapprove of an intrinsic evil reveals an unworthy character. That may be the case. But so does callousness toward the foreseen (but unintended) consequences of an unjust war, particularly toward the children who are orphaned, maimed or killed. So does indifference toward starving children in this country and in the world as a whole, many of whom are done an injustice not by individual Americans, but by American policy as a whole. In this fallen world, moral character alone is not enough. Political competence and other practical skills are also required. The person with the best moral character may not be the best president.

Now, Kaveny is not “pro-choice” and makes that clear in her essay. But she is clearly not swayed by the people who, as she says, rely on “misuse of church teachings in the political realm.”

For many pro-life Catholics, the issue of voting and abortion comes down to this: what does one do if one thinks that the candidate more likely to reduce the actual incidence of abortion is also the one more committed to keeping it legal? The language of intrinsic evil does not help us here. Only the virtue of practical wisdom, enlightened by charity, can take us further.

TPA Roundup 11-17

It's Monday, and that means it is time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly blog round-up.

Ruth Jones McClendon gets the Speaker's race dangerously wrong says CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the race for Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and provides answers to two important questions: is a secret ballot legal and will a secret ballot doom Tom Craddick?