Disney wobblers

I found a weeble in my last box of cereal that looked like a little green worm with eyes. As it turned out it was supposed to be Squirt, the young sea turtle character in Disney’s Finding Nemo movie. Disney has created a set of 50 of these toys they call Wobblers that they are giving away in a promotion with Kelloggs.

I’m a sucker for lists and so I was facinated with how they came up with the 50 Disney characters to be represented in this collection celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the company’s theme parks.

Here is the complete list according to the back of my cereal box:

Classic characters
Mickey Mouse
Donald Duck
Goofy
Pluto
Minnie Mouse
Daisy Duck
Chip and Dale
Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Tinkerbell
Captain Hook
The Crockodile
Pinnochio
Pinnochio
Jiminy Cricket
Dumbo
Dumbo
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Snow White
Dopey
The Witch
Bambi
Bambi
Thumper
Alice in Wonderland
Alice
Mad Hatter
Cheshire Cat
Lady and the Tramp
Lady
Tramp
101 Dalmations
Lucky
Cruella de Vil
The Fox and the Hound
Copper
Todd
The Little Mermaid
Ariel
Ursula
Sebastian
Aladdin
Aladdin
Genie
Lago
The Lion King
Simba
Timon
Pumba
Toy Story
Woody
Buzz Lightyear
Little Green Man
A Bug’s Life
Flick
Heimlich
Monster’s Inc.
Sully
Mike
Finding Nemo
Nemo
Dory
Squirt
Flounder
Bruce

Are these supposed to be the 50 most popular characters? That seems like a lot, but there must be thousands of Disney animated characters and even with a list like this there are dozens of glaring omissions - like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. I’m assuming the collection was being put together before the release of The Incredibles movie which would explain their absence, but I’m still surprised that Lilo and Stitch were left out.
(Note: The Winnie the Pooh set is apparently offered seperately)

To get an idea of how many characters they had to leave out just look at this list of Disney animated movies that are not represented in the wobbler collection:

Cinderalla
Sleeping Beauty
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Rescuers
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver and Company
Beauty and the Beast
Pocahantas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
The Emperor’s New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range

And that’s not counting the partially animated movies like Song of the South, Pete’s Dragon, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mary Poppins.

But who knows? Maybe they will issue a second set before long and this time include the rest of the Dwarves.

Knocking down strawmen

A disappointing column this weekend by Jonathan Gurwitz.
It started off promisingly enough with his acknowledgment that there are “principled reasons to question and oppose the U.S.-led offensive in Iraq.”

He even seems to hint further down that his own unwavering position in support of the war could change when he says that the question of whether or not the war was worth it “... is not a liberal or conservative exercise. It is a judgment arrived at by evaluating factors that can and do change over time.”

But have those factors changed enough to affect his position? Or perhaps he will address some of those “principled reasons” for opposing the war and explain why he is still 100 percent behind the President.

Unfortunately, Gurwitz fails to address either of these issues in the rest of his column. Instead he decides to go after some easy targets - namely, some of the more extremist protesters camped out at Crawford. In this way, he manages to construct three straw men using slogans that he read off of some of the protesters’ signs and then proceeds to knock them over one by one. This also gives him an excuse to raise the specter of anti-semitism that has been exciting right-wingers recently in their efforts to smear Cindy Sheehan.

But it also allows him to skirt the more serious issues facing the United States as we try to figure some way out of this quagmire Bush has led us into. Like how are we going to afford the $1 trillion price tag that this war will present us with if it continues to drag on for two or three more years. And how are we going to fill the gaps in our military as recruiting efforts continue to lag behind?

The art of condemnation

I've been having a long and sometimes heated argument over at All Things Conservative about the right-wing effort to smear Cindy Sheehan as an anti-semite.
It has gotten to the point where I have been accused of being an anti-semite myself because I will not condemn Sheehan as an anti-semite.
The charges apparently stem from an e-mail that Sheehan supposedly wrote in which she says:

"...(my son) was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel."

There has been some question as to whether Sheehan actually wrote those words. She apparently is now claiming that her e-mail was altered and changed by somebody else who wanted to make her look bad. But assuming that she did write the above during a fit of anger, is it proof or evidence that she is racist against Jews as many on the right now allege?

Another commenter at ATC insists that the above statement is "accusing Jews at the highest levels of American government of manipulating policy to get the United States to go to war to defend Israeli interests."
He then goes on to claim that anyone "who can't see that this is bald anti-Semitism, consistent with right-wing extremism, Nazism, Islamic extremism and every anti-Semitic theory going back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," is "beyond the pale of intelligent debate."

I don't agree with the statement above. I don't believe we went to war in Iraq to defend Israeli interests.
But it is true that we would go to war to protect Israel if they were ever seriously threatened. And it is also true that the security of Israel was one of the factors raised by the Bush administration prior to launching their invasion of Iraq. The long-range missiles that Saddam was said to have in violation of U.N. dictates were said to be a threat to Israel - they were certainly no threat to the U.S.

But even if we did go to war to protect Israel, does it mean that someone who opposes that war is necessarily racist towards Jews?
To frame this question differently, I posed the following analogy: Let's say the mother of a soldier killed during the First Gulf War is angry and says she did not want her son to die defending Kuwait. Does that mean she is racist towards Kuwaitis?
Of courst not.

I for one am not happy with a lot of things that Israel does right now, but it is not because it is a Jewish state. Rather it is because they are currently guided by the right-wing Likud Party which, in my opinion, is screwing up things over there just as badly as the Republicans are screwing things up around here. The fact that I am critical of the Republicans and their political agenda does not make me anti-American.

But defending Cindy Sheehan right now is not a popular thing to do at a lot of right-wing blogs. She has become a real pariah for the right and they are looking for anything they can grab to try and tear her down.
But the point about Sheehan is not what her views and prescriptions are for resolving Middle East conflicts. It is simply the fact that she is there taking a stand. She is not a politician or a spokesperson for the Democratic Party. She is not a polished speaker with an army of handlers watching over her constantly to make sure she never says anything that is politically incorrect. She is just an average citizen who had the courage to stand up in the glare of the national media and say that enough is enough.
In that sense, she is like Rosa Parks was for the Civil Rights movement. She is a symbol that people can rally around. It did not matter what Rosa Parks views on race relations were. Likewise, I could really care less about what Sheehan has to say on the political topics of the day. So attacking her for holding some wrongheaded ideas on certain subjects is just missing the point and shows a lack of understanding about the significance of her role in this ongoing debate.
Republicans are finally starting to lose this political battle back home and that is why there has been rumbling recently that they will have a major drawback of troops next year in time for the 2006 mid-term elections. They had better do something quick because Bush's poll numbers are in total freefall right now and while he may not be running again he is going to be an albatross around his party's neck at this rate.

Fox News fighting the Terrist threat

Found at Political Animal -
A very disturbing story in the LA Times today about a family in California that has been living in fear for the past two weeks after the idiots at Fox News broadcast their address in a report that falsely claimed it to be the home of a terrorist connected with the recent subway bombings in London.

In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London.
Hilal, whom Loftus identified by name during the broadcast, moved out of the house about three years ago.

This should give you an idea of the intelligence level of people that Fox News chooses to interview and have comment for their broadcasts.
Since that broadcast the Vorick’s have been afraid to go to work and leave their children at home....

A driver yelled a profanity at the family and called them terrorists as they barbecued on their patio Aug. 14. Some drivers have stopped and photographed the house, Randy Vorick said.
Last weekend, someone spray-painted "Terrist" on their home. Police, who have regularly patrolled their house since the day after the broadcast, now station a squad car across the street.

This should give you an idea of the intelligence level of the kind of people who get their news from Fox News.

Personally, I think Fox News should have to pay the overtime cost for the police officer who is now stationed across the street from the home to protect the Vorick family.

Punished for speaking the truth

President Bush has canned another member of his administration for daring to speak an unwelcome truth.

Lawrence A. Greenfeld, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 to head the Bureau of Justice Statistics, was demoted for resisting the administration’s attempt to downplay a study that highlights racial profiling during traffic stops.

Greenfeld was ordered to delete references to racial disparities in a news release prepared to announce a study on the treatment of different ethnic groups during police traffic stops.
The survey of 80,000 people, which was eventually issued in April without a news release, found that minority drivers were three times as likely to have their vehicles searched during traffic stops as white drivers.
Greenfeld fought the order and was eventually called to the White House and urged to resign six months before he was eligible for full pension benefits...

I’m trying to come up with a list of “Heroes of Conscience” from this administration - people who risked their jobs and their careers to stand up for the truth in the face of an administration that cares most about advancing its right-wing political agenda.

In addition to Mr. Greenfeld above, I’ve included:

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill who lost his job for disagreeing with Bush about the ill effects of his tax cuts which failed to boost the economy and have left us with record budget deficits once again.

Former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey who was canned for having the audacity to suggest that the war in Iraq may cost as much as $100 billion - a figure we now know is at least three times and perhaps ten times too small.

Who have I left out?

Update

I just noticed that Bob Herbert's column in the NYTimes today is about this topic.

Radical cleric

As if it wasn’t already obvious, Pat Robertson has completely flipped his lid.

CNN.com - Robertson: U.S. should assassinate Venezuela's Chavez - Aug 23, 2005

More here.

I still remember when a lot of people in Texas were ready to elect this guy as our president. Of course, I can't say that we are that much better off with George W. Bush.

Cost of the Iraq War

$1.3 trillion is the estimated cost of the war in Iraq over the next five years according to Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary of Commerce who now teaches budgeting and public finance at Harvard University.

That’s counting the $258 billion that has been spent so far plus:
* $460 billion for military operations through 2010
* $315 billion for veterans health care benefits just for those soldiers participating in the Iraq war.
* $220 billion to finance the additional debt all this spending will produce
* $119 billion impact on the economy due to the increase in oil prices resulting from the instability in the Middle East caused by the Iraq war.

Oh, and then there is the little matter of the 2,000 U.S. military personnel killed and 14,500 wounded.

All of this just because President Bush is such a big-hearted person and wanted to spread “peace and freedom” to the Iraqi people.

High gas prices

It cost me nearly $50 to fill up my truck (Ford F-150) this morning on the way to work. I paid $2.43 a gallon at the cheapest place I know to find gas (Sam’s Club with my 5 cent per gallon discount).
This is beyond ridiculous. It is outrageous!

And as if things weren’t bad enough already, it looks like they are only going to get worse.

Oil prices rose more than $1 a barrel on Friday, bouncing back from a dip this week as markets reacted to a fire at a massive refining complex in Venezuela and developments in Ecuador, where protesters had forced a halt to production.

One analyst quoted in the story says she expects the price of oil - currently at $64 per barrel - to reach $70 a barrel very soon.

So why are gas prices so high? The experts say it’s because global demand is so high. But shouldn’t we have seen this coming a long time ago and taken steps to deal with it before now? What about the new energy bill?

Bush officials are whining that it is not their fault. They say that no one can turn around gas prices instantly, and that Bush fought for years to enact his new energy bill that will take years to produce results.

''This is a problem that took decades to develop; it's not going to be solved overnight,'' Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said.

But Fadel Gheit, an energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. in New York, says our current government policy is not focused on encouraging consumer behavior that reduces the nation's dependence on petroleum, especially imported oil. He notes that the energy bill signed into law by President Bush doesn't do enough to define the nation's energy strategy.

"The only effective strategy is based on encouraging conservation because that's the only thing you can control," said Gheit. "You need incentives to encourage conservation."

This is not new. Average gasoline prices are nearly 40 percent higher today than when Bush was sworn into his second term seven months ago and they are 75 percent higher than when he first took office in January 2001. And now all we have in response is an energy bill that gives huge tax breaks to oil companies that already are enjoying record profits.
But what do you expect when you elevate a pair of oil men to the White House. Bush and Cheney are popping champagne bottles as gas prices rise ever higher knowing that their bank accounts just keep getting fatter and fatter as a result.

But at least we are making sure that the good people of Iraq have cheap gas prices:

What do you mean high oil prices? Gasoline in Iraq costs 5 cents a gallon

Drivers in Iraq pay as little as 5 cents a gallon for gasoline, according to the International Monetary Fund's first assessment of the Iraqi economy in 25 years.
Thanks to generous government subsidies on petroleum products - which the IMF criticized as a threat to the country's fragile economy - Iraq has some of the cheapest gas in the world.

Iran can make matters worse

Interesting story on A4 of the Wall Street Journal today:
Iran Holds Big Bargaining Chips in Dispute
Tehran May Use High Oil Prices, Iraqi Turmoil as Leverage in Nuclear Talks With the West

“Iran’s role as both an oil producer at a time of record prices and as a player in the politics of neighboring Iraq have made it trickier for the Bush administration to get tough on Tehran in the nuclear showdown. The administration has threatened to seek United Nations sanctions against Iran in the fall if the country refuses to accept international oversight of its nuclear program.”

Notice how our being stuck in this Iraqi quagmire has weakened our position in dealing with a more serious threat. Here we have the Iranian mullahs openly saying they will revive their nuclear-enrichment program and the best we can do is threaten them with U.N. sanctions sometime in the fall.

”The nuclear standoff comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Bush administration. In Iraq, the administration is scrambling to help the country’s factions overcome differences and hammer out a constitution, taking a crucial step toward solidifying the country so U.S. troops might eventually withdraw.
Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, has huge sway over much of Iraq’s now-dominant Shiite population, and it could disrupt the constitutional process if it so chose. Western diplomats in Tehran say Iranian officials have been blunt in recent weeks on that point, threatening to cause problems in Iraq if the Bush administration tries to punish Iran with international sanctions.”

The story goes on to note that the most powerful man in Iraq today is the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose approval has been central to every political twist and turn. And Sistani is much closer to officials in his native Iran than he is with the U.S.

”When Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, visited Iraq recently he visited Mr. Sistani - an audience so far denied to top U.S. officials. ‘It didn’t exactly please us to see the Iranians getting face time with Sistani,’ said a senior American diplomat in Iraq.”

But that is not the only leverage that Iran has right now. You think oil prices are high now? Just wait until they start messing around with oil shipments in the Middle East.

”Officials in Tehran have suggested that they might move to crimp tanker flows through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, which would have far more serious consequences. Around 15 million barrels of oil a day, and a large percentage of the world’s gas supplies, flow through Hormuz.”

Quiz time

Who said the following:

"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"

Was it:

A) Howard Dean
B) John Kerry
C) Hillary Clinton
D) Tom DeLay
E) None of the above

For the answer click here.

San Antonio High Schools

If we stay put long enough, and I have no intention of moving anytime soon, our son may one day go to Sandra Day O’Connor High School. Knowing that we also have a high school here in town named after Ronald Reagan, that got me wondering about the names of other area high schools.
It seems that the local school officials have had a tendency to name schools after famous historical and political figures - particularly presidents and Supreme Court justices - with about a 4-1 preference for Republicans.

For instance we have six schools named after former presidents - three Republican:

Ronald Reagan
William Howard Taft
Theodore Roosevelt

and one Democrat:

John F. Kennedy

Plus two named for founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were both members of the Democratic-Republican Party which is not directly linked to either of the two modern day parties.

Then we have six schools named after former Supreme Court justices.
Of these, two were Federalists - the nation’s first poltical party:

John Jay
John Marshall

one was appointed by a Democrat:

Thomas C. Clark

and three were appointed by Republicans:

Oliver Wendell Holmes
Earl Warren
Sandra Day O’Connor

Then we have two schools named after famous military figures:

Douglas MacArthur, who nearly ran for president as a Republican,
and Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Finally we have one school named after the inventor Thomas A. Edison
and one named after Winston Churchill, who was the British Prime Minister during WWII (and the leader of Great Britain’s Conservative Party).

We also have one school named after G.W. Brackenridge, a leading citizen of San Antonio from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Plus a few other that I haven’t yet figured out what their names stand for - people or places? - including:

Judson
Harlandale
McCollum

I don’t know if we have any junior high or elementary schools named after famous people. Most, I believe, are named after local figures like former school superintendents and the like.

I’d be curious to know how they come up with these names when they are building new high schools.

Tips for visiting Disney World

The next time we go to Disney World we are going to save up enough money to stay in one of the Disney Resort hotels. The convenience of having ready access to the parks without having to rely on taxis or a once-a-day shuttle service would be well worth it.
This time we stayed at a hotel that was just two miles away from Disney because of the special deal we got that included our free airplane tickets. But the shuttle service offered by the hotel would leave every morning at 7:45 a.m. and would not return before 6 p.m. or 10 p.m. respectively. This was not ideal for a 2-year-old who needed to sleep late after a long-day at the theme park with no afternoon nap. Also, despite its close proximity to the park, the shuttle would make numerous stops at different hotels so the trip would take at least a half hour. So we only took the morning shuttle one time and relied on alternative (and thus expensive) transportation for the rest of the trip.
If you are going to wind up paying $40 a day for taxis two and from the park you might as well add that to the cost of your hotel and upgrade to a Disney resort where the shuttles are more frequent and go to all the parks.

I would recommend that at least one time during your trip you go to the park early enough to see the opening ceremonies at Magic Kingdom at 9 a.m. While all the people are crowded around the front entrance waiting for the gates to open they have a troup of actors come out and do an opening song-and-dance number just before the train arrives carrying Mickey and all the other Disney characters.
Then once the park opens you have at least two hours where there is almost no waiting in lines for rides and shows until the crowd finally builds up by late morning.
Once the crowds build up you can still utilize the parks’ nifty FastPass feature to get on some rides. You go to the ride where there is a long line and you scan your park pass into a machine that spits out a ticket assigning you a time to come back - usually about an hour later - when you can then skip ahead of the line and be seated almost immediately.
All of the rides don’t have FastPass options and you are only allowed to have one FastPass ticket at a time, but it is still a nice way to avoid some of the long lines and give yourself more time to enjoy the rest of the park.
Of course, there are some times when standing in a line - provided that it is under shade - isn’t such a bad thing.

We found it convenient to carry a backpack with all of our son's diapers and wipes as well as his snacks and sippy cup. Other items I would recommend carrying include sun screen, a water bottle and an umbrella. There are lots of water fountains around the park where you can refill your bottle throughout the day and remember that it usually rains every afternoon around 4 p.m.
You may also want to carry a notepad and a pen, especially if you have small children, because the Disney characters are happy to sign autographs while having their pictures taken.
The other nice thing about staying at the Disney resorts is that if you buy things they can deliver them to your room rather than you having to lug them around the park for the rest of the day.

What I’m reading

I found a copy of What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America at Half-Price Bookstore the other day and have just started reading it.
It is a facinating, although somewhat depressing book, from my perspective. I could easily see how you could ask “What’s the Matter with Texas?” since the Lone Star State was also once a populist stronghold where progressive ideas held some sway.

Here is an excerpt:
Hard times, instead of snapping people back to reality, only seem to stoke the fires of the conservative backlash. Indeed, those segments of the working class that have been hardest hit by the big economic changes of recent years are the very ones that vote Republican in the greatest numbers. We seem to have but one way to express our anger, and that’s by raging along with Rush—against liberal bias in academia, liberal softness on terrorism, liberal permissiveness, and so on. Our reaction to hard times is thus to hand over ever more power to the people who make them hard. In fact, the election of 2002 provided a perverse incentive to the men who gave us the dot-com bubble and the Enron fiasco: Keep at it. The more you screw the public over, the more they will clamor to cut your taxes. The more you cheat and steal, the angrier they will become—at the liberal media that expose your cheating and stealing.

I’ll have more to say on this topic as I get further into the book.

Old School Democrat

You scored as Old School Democrat. Old school Democrats emphasize economic justice and opportunity. The Democratic ideal is best summarized by the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Old School Democrat 90% New Democrat 75% Green 55% Foreign Policy Hawk 40% Socially Conservative Republican 15% Libertarian 15% Pro Business Republican 15% What's Your Political Philosophy? created with QuizFarm.com

Why Cindy Sheehan matters

Cindy Sheehan has every right to be angry. She lost a son in a war that turns out to have been based on a lie - that Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed an imminent threat to our national security.
Whether President Bush knowingly propigated this lie, or was just duped by somebody else's lie does not matter - the results are the same.
Ever since Mrs. Sheehan decided to protest against the war outside Bush's vacation retreat in Crawford, Texas, she has been hailed by the left and vilified by the right.
The other day she gave an angry speech to a group called Veterans for Peace in which she at one point referred to President Bush as a "lying bastard" and later on used the word "bullshit".

For this she has been condemned by the right and called "a hate-filled, foul-mouthed toady of the anti-war movement".
This of course is coming from the same people who laughed when President Bush referred to a New York Times reporter as a "Major Leage a--hole" ("Big Time!" chimed in Vice President Dick Cheney). Or who thought it was no big deal when, on the floor of the Senate, Dick Cheney told a Democratic Senator to go and F@@@ himself.
It may not have been politically wise or correct to call President Bush a lying bastard, but Cindy Sheehan is not a politician. She is something much worse in the eyes of the Bush administration - she is a grieving mother who has not been consoled by all of the happy talk coming out of Washington about how we are advancing freedom and democracy with our military presence in Iraq.

Once it was determined that there were no WMDs in Iraq - the slender reed upon which Bush based his decision to invade - the rationale for our military intervention was cut down at the knees. They have since tried to shift the focus to promoting democracy and freedom - but quite frankly that is B.S., just as Sheehan said.
Given the choice, I think there would be very few people who would be willing to sacrifice their lives or the lives of their children and loved ones for that reason.
It may sound callous, but that is the truth. If our national security is not at stake, and we now know without a doubt that it was not, then folks are not going to line up to fight somebody else's battle. We all want the Iraqi people to live in peace and freedom, but we cannot step in and transform their society for them. We can give them aid and assistance. We can impose sanctions and support worldwide efforts to negotiate changes, but unless there is a genocide underway or some other extreme circumstance, we do not spend 100s of billions of dollars and lay down the lives of thousands of our soldiers.

Bush and Co. know this and they have been hoping that they can keep everyone distracted with the "War on Terror" so that we will not notice what has been going on. The war that they thought would last just a few weeks has now dragged on for two years and looks to have no clear end in sight. Now their worst fear is being realized in the form of Mrs. Sheehan and these other families who have lost loved ones and who are now demanding answers.
The answers won't be forthcoming because there are no good answers. The Bush team is currently trying to ratchet down expectations of what they hope to accomplish in Iraq and are busy making plans for a major troop withdrawal in time for the 2006 mid-term elections. Unfortunately for the Bush administration, Mrs. Sheehan is not going to go away any time soon and the rightwing efforts to vilify her are falling flat. Perhaps that is because she has already lived through the worst possible torture, so any name calling by Bush denizens today falls far short of having the desired stinging effect.

Mistaken identity

It looks like I was right to doubt the reports a while back that said the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the students involved in the 1979 hostage taking of U.S. embassy workers.

Here is the latest:
CIA finds Iranian president likely not hostage-taker

A CIA report has determined with "relative certainty" that new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not involved in the taking of U.S. hostages in 1979, two government officials told CNN.

I don’t know that this will make any real difference in U.S. - Iranian relations, however.

Lubbock, Texas is 2nd Most “Conservative” City

According to this study, my former home and birthplace of Lubbock, Texas is the second most conservative city in the U.S.
At first, I was intrigued by the study that purports to list the most conservative and most liberal cities in the country wondering what criteria they used to make these ideological determinations. Unfortunately, all they did was look at the 2004 voting records and assigned the “conservative” label to cities that voted heavily for Bush and the “liberal” label to those that voted for Kerry. (Yawn) So it really doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.
But just for fun, here is the list they came up with:

Top 10 Liberal Cities:
1) Detroit, Michigan
2) Gary, Indiana
3) Berkeley, California
4) Washington, D.C.
5) Oakland, California
6) Inglewood, California
7) Newark, New Jersey
8) Cambridge, Massachusetts
9) San Francisco, California
10) Flint, Michigan

Top 10 Conservative Cities:
1) Provo, Utah
2) Lubbock, Texas
3) Abilene, Texas
4) Hialeah, Florida
5) Plano, Texas
6) Colorado Springs, Colorado
7) Gilbert, Arizona
8) Bakersfield, California
9) Lafayette, Louisiana
10) Orange, California

Out of 237 cities in the survey, San Antonio ranks as the 64th most conservative and 175th most liberal. Austin, by contrast, ranks as the 145th most conservative and 93rd most liberal.
Of course, these rankings would have been very different had the Republicans been running a non-Texan at the top of their ticket, which just shows the weakness of the methodology used in this so-called study.

Still, I find it amusing that I have lived and worked in some of the most conservative places in the country and despite the fact that my demographic makeup would place me squarely in the middle of the conservative fold (white, middle-aged, male, married), I have maintained a decidely liberal outlook on life.

The authors of the study make a big point about the racial makeup distinguishing the cities in each group - with the liberal cities having large black populations and the conservative ones being mostly white. They go on to make a lot of observations about why this is - mostly things we have heard before. But the thing that has intrigued me lately is why this continues to matter and how long it can last.
It is a historical fact that the Civil Rights movement drove most conservative southerners out of the Democratic Party and into the welcoming arms of the Republicans. But surely this should start to settle out over time as the initial shock of desegregation wanes from one generation to the next. I would hope that my children are less inclined to have hangups over race than I do just as I have had less than my parents.
Indeed, I would think that most people would not consider race as a primary factor in their choice of a political party today. Still, we have this obvious political divide that simple surveys like this highlight.

Having lived in very conservative communities such as Lubbock and Kerrville (even more conservative than Lubbock had it been included in the list) I truly believe it is not outside the realm of possibility for there to be a major political shift in the near future. If you look around Lubbock at some of the nearby communities you find places with names like Roosevelt and New Deal and you begin to realize that this area used to be a Democratic stronghold just a few generations back. And then you realize that things haven’t changed that much - the area is highly dependent on government programs like agricultural subsidies for cotton and federal emergency relief funds that helped rebuild much of the downtown area after a massive tornado tore through the city in the early 1970s.
As Republicans continue to demonstrate at both the federal and state level that they are incapable of governing in an efficient manner (ballooning federal deficits and a stagnant economy - two special sessions and still no clue as to how to adequately fund public education) their support among the highly practical people who live in these areas is going to erode and no amount of terror alerts is going to scare them back into the fold.

Roberts making social conservatives nervous

Other than a complementary copy of USA Today that I could pick up at the front desk of our hotel each morning, I was pretty much cut off from my normal avalanche of news consumption during my vacation. For the plane ride home I happened to pick up a copy of the Financial Times which I never read and was pleasantly surprised to find it chock full of interesting and well-written articles.
I found this piece on John Roberts’ Supreme Court nomination to be especially well done. It’s not really about John Roberts so much as it is about the gay rights controversy now before the Supreme Court.
The author of the piece, Patti Waldmeir, talks to two people representing either side of the debate - “Alan Chambers is a former gay evangelist who spends his life trying to persuade homosexuals to turn straight. Phyllis Hunt is a lesbian preacher who ministers to those who are gay and proud of it.” - to set up the article before delving into the political aftermath resulting from the Lawrence vs. Texas decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy that struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy laws in 2003.

I have previously outlined my theory on sexual orientation here. I believe that if more people could accept that sexual orientation is largely a matter of biology and not “choice” they would be more accepting of it. In the case of Chambers, it seems clear to me that he would fall into that sub-group of people on the edge between gay and straight, while Hunt likely falls into the middle of the gay/lesbian pool. The sad part of the story is that while Chambers is now married to a woman and has adopted two children, his efforts have helped to deny that same privilege to Mrs. Hunt whose efforts to adopt a child with her partner were stymied by laws preventing gays from adopting children.

To the dismay of many social conservatives, Anthony Kennedy has become a driving force in the move to grant equal rights and protections to gays. His majority opinion in the Lawrence vs. Texas case was sweeping and may have inadvertently fueled the push for gay marriages that followed shortly thereafter.
The Lawrence case to me would seem like a no-brainer. Regardless of your views on homosexuality, who would support giving the police and the government the power to barge into your bedroom and enforce someone else’s code as to how you and any other consenting adult should behave? Kennedy wasn’t being a liberal in his decision, he was being a libertarian.
But the irony of the case was that in striking such a resounding blow for gay rights, the Lawrence case unleashed a series of actions and reactions that very likely helped to put George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004. By rushing out to push for gay marriage in states like California, Massachusetts and Hawaii, the gay community prompted a backlash from social conservatives who placed anti-gay marriage referendums on the ballots designed to draw out their supporters and build up support for Bush and his radical Republican cohorts.

Now we have those same social conservatives suddenly concerned to find that their new knight in shining armor has done pro-bono work on behalf of gay rights groups in the past. Does this mean that Roberts will turn out to be more like Anthony Kennedy than Antonin Scalia? No one can be sure, but it has some on the far-right suddenly nervous. Kennedy is, after all, the one who wrote this infamous phrase in the Lawrence decision:

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life."

Scalia has ridiculed this idea calling it the “sweet-mystery-of-life passage” while Robert Bork complains that it is less an argument than a 1960s oration and an ode to radical personal autonomy.
I find it most disturbing that we have people on the Supreme Court who find personal autonomy to be a radical notion. Those on the right don’t want you to define your own concept of existence because they already have their own neatly constrained definition that they want to shoehorn everyone into. Is Roberts on their side, or not? We may not find out for some time, especially if the Bush administration succeeds in suppressing any more information about Roberts that might prove problematic for his swift approval.

Disney adventures

We made it back from a week-long trip to Disney World on Saturday, a day later than we expected. Our flight had been scheduled to leave at 9 p.m. but was delayed more than two hours due to bad weather. So I was more than happy to volunteer to be bumped from the flight when they announced that they were overbooked. We got a free night at an AmeriSuites, some food vouchers for breakfast and lunch, a 10:30 a.m. flight the next morning and travel vouchers for another flight we can use anytime during the next year.
When we flew into Orlando on Aug. 1 we were immediately met by a thunderstorm that had blown in off of the coast. We asked our shuttle driver if it was supposed to rain a lot and he said it rains everyday there around 4 p.m. Sure enough, almost like clockwork, we got rain storms every afternoon. Fortunately, they would not last too long and did not spoil our vacation.

There is far more to do in Orlando than can be covered in a week. We spent a day and a half at Magic Kingdom, a day and a half at Epcot and one day at Animal Kingdom. We will have to visit Disney’s fourth theme park - MGM-Disney - on our next trip.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much there was to do even when you are avoiding all of the bumpy, roller-coaster rides. With my son not yet 2 and my wife 5-months pregnant, we were limited on what rides we could go on. No Space Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain Railroad rides for us. Instead, we did the traditional rides like Flying Dumbo, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cup ride and a lot of the laid back, slow-moving coaster or boat rides that take you on a tour of Winnie the Pooh’s 100 Acre Woods or Peter Pan’s NeverLand.

Disney World is enormous. They say there are enough Disney employees to populate a moderate-sized city and surely enough animatronic characters to populate a small town. I’ve always loved history so I made a special point of going to see the American Presidents show at Magic Kingdom where they have animatronic characters on stage representing every president from George W. to George W. While I enjoyed the performance, it managed to put my son to sleep which was actually a good thing. It was the only time we managed to get him down for an afternoon nap during the entire vacation.
Even better was a history show at Epcot featuring an animatronic Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. They did a big overview of American history that managed to showcase or mention every historical figure with the odd exception of Abe Lincoln. (Abe was featured prominently in the President’s show at Magic Kingdom.)
Even more impressive to me than the animatronics, however, were the 3-D movies. The Mickey’s Philharmagic show (featuring Donald Duck) was terrific with the best 3-D effects I have ever seen (supplemented with spritzing water and smellovision built into the stadium seating). However, it was a little too intense for my son who quickly shed his 3-D glasses and buried his head in mommy’s shoulder the first time a character popped out of the screen. We realized only later that it was the first time he had ever been in a movie theater and seen anything bigger than a widescreen TV.

Bonilla wants a new address for the White House

I was both embarrassed and flustered to read last week that my Congressman - Henry Bonilla - has introduced legislation in the House to change the name of 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C. to Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
There really is no excuse for something like this. Bonilla is not stupid so I don’t know whether he is doing this just to try and further ingratiate himself with his party’s core of right-wingers who worship Reagan like some kind of demi-God or whether he is just demonstrating that he can be a first-class jerk.

First, there is no dearth of honors that have already been heaped on our 40th president who has the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in D.C. dedicated to him. But that is not enough for the cultish Reagan worshipers out there who won’t stop until they get Reagan’s mug chiseled onto Mount Rushmore next to Washington and Lincoln. There is already an organized effort by radical conservatives to have something named after Reagan in every county in the United States. So far they have succeeded in naming more than 63 streets, buildings, schools, etc. after him.
But 16th Street in D.C. is going too far. The significance of 16th Street is that it has given the White House its historic address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Second, the District of Columbia is one of the most heavily Democratic areas in the nation and having some Republican congressman from Texas waltz in and rename one of their major thoroughfares after a Republican icon is little more than a slap in the face.

Fortunately, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee which has jurisdiction over Bonilla's legislation, recognizes this and has called Bonilla’s bill "ridiculous" and said he would put it in the "appropriate file."
"If Congressman Bonilla wants to name anything else, he has to look at his own district in San Antonio," Davis said.
I certainly hope not. If Bonilla really wants to honor the memory of Ronald Reagan then perhaps he should join with his widow Nancy Reagan in supporting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to help patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases. But since he refuses to do that then maybe he should just shut up and quit embarrassing his constituents back home.

I see via The Jeffersonian that some angry D.C. residents want to retaliate by renaming The Riverwalk for former D.C. mayor Marion Berry. Cinncinnatus has an even better idea of renaming some streets in the city’s heaviest Republican areas after former President Bill Clinton. But the one name I would like to see changed is the one that hangs on the offices for the 23rd Congressional District from Texas.