Mark McGwire vs. Pete Rose

Does Mark McGwire deserve a spot in the hallowed halls of the Baseball Hall of Fame? A few years ago the answer was positively yes. But now with the stain of steroids tainting so many ballplayers from what will now be known as the “juiced era,” it appears that McGwire could be left out.
A recent survey of baseball writers who cast Hall of Fame ballots revealed that McGwire would indeed miss the mark if the vote were to be held today.

Mark McGwire could miss out on making the Hall of Fame because of baseball's swirling steroids scandal, heightened by his refusal to answer specific questions before Congress, an Associated Press survey showed Thursday.

I think this is unfair and I hope that in two years when McGwire becomes eligible for induction this will all have mostly blown over. McGwire should not be penalized after-the-fact for doing something that was not illegal at the time. The fact that steroids were not made illegal before 2002 is a failure on the part of the baseball owners and management and should not be used now to punish players who may have used steroids prior to that time.
So barring Mark McGwire from the Hall of Fame for using steroids prior to 2002 would be like barring a pitcher who threw spitballs prior to 1920 when that practice was banned. And we know that a lot of pitchers who threw spitballs after 1920 are also in the Hall today.

McGwire’s Hall of Fame predicament is nearly the opposite of Pete Rose’s. I strongly believe that Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and I’ve written about it here and here.
What Pete Rose did was illegal (gambling), but it did not effect his playing career. What McGwire did (allegedly) was not illegal, but it most certainly would have impacted his playing career.

Some people will now say with some legitimacy that this scandal should diminish McGwire’s accomplishment in breaking Roger Maris’ single-season homerun record. But baseball is an inexact science and there have been many changes over the years that make direct comparisons between generations of ballplayers difficult at best. Look at all the medical technology and advancements in personal fitness and training that ballplayers today take advantage of that was not available before. Today’s batters can watch videos of opposing pitchers and study them in depth before having to face them on the field. Then there is all the advancement in equipment over the years - better bats, balls, gloves; nicer stadiums with better lighting; better travel accomodations and, of course, lots better pay. Who is to say which of these, if any, has given today’s players an advantage over their historical counterparts?

I think it is inevitable that baseball records will continue to fall whether the players are juiced or not. We should judge the players based on their talent on the field according to the rules of the game at the time they were playing. They should not be penalized for moral lapses off the field (Rose) or for failing to answer questions before Congress years after they have retired (McGwire).

Grief and power

"[Gov. Jeb Bush] has put Terri through a week of hell and our family through a week of hell by not acting," said Bob Schindler, father of Terri Schiavo.

After everything that Jeb Bush has done it seems quite remarkable to hear him now being attacked by Terri Schiavo's parents as this tragic tale finally winds to an end. But I can understand the Schindlers in some ways. Everybody knows that they have been through a terrible ordeal and have not come to grips with the idea of losing their daughter even after 15 years in a vegatative state. But they have also been on quite a heady power trip these past few weeks with round-the-clock media attention and just about every politician and courtroom in the country ready to jump every time they call. The average person is unlikely to ever get a legal case before the Supreme Court and those that do must usually wait months if not years for any action. But the Schindlers can file a legal action and have the highest court in the land give it immediate attention every time.
So it is no wonder that they would feel like they can be justified in berating the governor of Florida for not jumping through the latest hoop in this circus that is being orchestrated by the religious right fundamentalists. Fortunately, Jeb Bush must still value his political future because he is unlikely to heed the religious fundamentalists and call out the National Guard to forcibly take control of Terri Schiavo in contravention to every court in the land.

In my previous post, I defended Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, as having been unfairly maligned during this whole ordeal. I think the record is clear that he did everthing that was reasonably possible and then some to try and rehabilitate Terri to some semblance of conciousness. Nevertheless, I think he is wrong now and should have conceded to let Terri's parents take over guardianship at this point. I understand that Michael thinks he is doing what Terri would have wanted by ending the artificial life support that is keeping her alive at this point. But I would point out that it no longer matters to Terri. I don't believe she has any awareness in a physical sense of what is going on and therefore it does not matter to her whether the feeding tube stays in or out. But it does matter to her parents, and since they refuse to accept that she is gone they are the only ones who are suffering by having the feeding tube removed. Terri was never going to be able to fulfill her dreams of being a wife and mother, but what is left of her was serving at least one good purpose by giving her parents a focal point to their lives. That is why it was wrong for Michael to end life support - not because it is hurting Terri - but because it is hurting the Schindlers.

Who pays for care?

Interesting article in the WSJ today (page A4) about who is paying for all the medical treatment and care that Terri Schiavo has been receiving. Earlier I had mistakenly assumed that all of her care was being handled privately by the family. But according to this article the hospice where Terri currently resides has footed the bill for the past two years on a pro bono basis while Medicaid has picked up the tab for her prescription medications.
But that could change if this goes on much longer...

If the Schindlers prevail in the court appeal and Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube is replaced, she could stay alive for many years. The hospice, when deciding to pay most of Mrs. Schiavo’s bills, “thought it was going to be short term,” said Deborah Bushnell, an attorney who represents Michael Schiavo. If Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube is hooked up again, donated care is unlikely, she added. “She’s going to be on the government dole.”

I don’t have a problem with Mrs. Schiavo going on the government dole, but I question the sincerity of some of these Republican politicians who are demanding that her medical treatment continue indefinitely while at the same time voting to slash $18 billion from Medicaid. That’s the Republican “Culture of Life” for you - lots of lip service about the sactity of life up until the point where it starts to affect their wallets.

Maligning Michael Schiavo

While driving home the other day I had the opportunity to listen to the newest San Antonio talk radio station KAHL AM1310 which was airing Carl Wiglesworth’s show.
I became intrigued as I listened to Wiglesworth read from a 40-page report on the Terri Schiavo case prepared for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by Dr. Jay Wolfson, a professor of public health and law at the University of South Florida, who was appointed by the Florida courts in 2003 to be Terri Schiavo's guardian ad litem. Here is the 40-page report which provides exhaustive details of the history and background of this case.

What struck me is how much of the crap that is being spewed on other talk radio stations, cable TV news programs and across the blogosphere is flatly contradicted by the facts in this case. For instance, I’ve heard countless times that Michael Schiavo refused to provide any rehab care for Terri when in fact he spent the first four or five years after her collapse providing her with the best possible treatment. Even if you disagree with Michael Schiavo’s decision to have Terri’s feeding tube removed over the objections of her parents, you can’t read this report and not come to the conclusion that he is being unfairly maligned and defamed in this matter.

Today we have people making outrageous allegations against Mr. Schiavo that ignore reams of medical documents in the case. They claim that Terri’s collapse was not the result of a potassium deficiency brought on by her extreme and rapid weight loss and her eating disorder, but instead was due to Mr. Schiavo’s attempt to murder her by strangulation.
Then we have the media giving wide airing of the charges brought by former nurse Carla Iyer that have already been dismissed by the courts as being “incredible.” Here is what the judge had to say about Ms. Iyer’s affidavit which is being used to tar and feather Mr. Schiavo:

“Ms. Iyer details what amounts to a 15-month cover-up which would include the staff of Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center, the Guardian of Person, the Guardian ad Litem, the medical professionals, the police, and, believe it or not, Mr. and Mrs. Schindler.”

So in addition to this vast conspiracy, we are also supposed to believe Ms. Iyer when she insists that she alone has witnessed Terri being responsive, interactive, and talking (and probably jumping out of bed and doing a song and dance number as well.)

Iceland springs chess champ

You would think our State Department would have better things to do than persecute a former chess icon for a 13-year-old sanctions violation.

Chess legend Bobby Fisher has finally been freed from a detention cell in Japan where he was being held since last July at the request of the Bush administration.

Fischer, who has been held in detention since his arrest, claims his U.S. passport was revoked illegally and sued to block a deportation order to the United States, where he is wanted for violating sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia by playing an exhibition match against Russian Boris Spassky in 1992...
In Washington on Tuesday, the State Department said it had officially asked Japan to hand over Fischer because of the charges against him.
"That's what we've asked for," said Adam Ereli, deputy spokesman for the State Department. "Mr. Fischer is a fugitive from justice. There is a federal warrant for his arrest."

Good grief! They can't capture Osama bin Laden but by golly they rounded up that dangerous fugitive Bobby Fisher! Woohoo!
Now that Iceland has foiled Bush's attempt to bring Fisher to justice what will he do next? Launch a military invasion?

One of my liberal heros

One of my favorite Hollywood liberals is Paul Newman, who doesn’t even live in Hollywood.
Married to the same woman (Joanne Woodward) for 47 years and founder of a non-profit corporation that raises millions for charity, Newman is the opposite of nearly every Hollywood stereotype and caricature that the right likes to harp about.
Now 80, Newman recently said he is thinking about retiring.
I certainly hope not. Especially since he adds that there is still a chance that he and Robert Redford could reunite on a future film project.
When I was working in Connecticut in the early ‘90s I had several opportunities to write about charitable donations by Newman’s Own which is also based there. One was to the National Theatre of the Deaf which is a troup of deaf actors who travel around performing wordless plays and skits for deaf children.
I’ve tried to make a point of purchasing Newman’s Own products ever since.

Hypocricy over Terri Schiavo

I said earlier that I think Terri Schiavo’s parents should have some legal standing in deciding her fate and I stand by that opinion. However, I also believe that the mountains of legal and medical documentation that has been exhausted on Schiavo’s case make it clear that she no longer has the brain capacity to recover to any state that we would recognize as being conscious.
As this article makes clear, the longest time that anyone had ever been in a vegatative state and then came out of it was 20 months (and even then they were left paralyzed and unable to speak). Schiavo has been in a vegatative state for 15 years. People have recovered from comas after longer periods of time, but a coma is not the same as a vegatative state.
Terri Schiavo currently has the mental capacity of a house plant. The only people who claim that she can ever recover at this point are quacks. Still, I think that the courts should allow Terri’s parents to continue to care for her as long as they so choose. I understand Michael Schiavo’s belief that his wife would not have wanted to go on in this state. But at this point I don’t think Terri cares one way or the other.

What is most disgusting in this situation is the way the Republicans have turned it into a media circus in an effort to pander to the religious fundamentalists. Kevin Drum notes that President Bush finally found an issue serious enough for him to interrupt one of his Crawford ranch vacations.
And where is the outrage from these same conservatives over the law that George Bush signed while he was governor of Texas that allows hospitals to pull the plug on terminally ill patients over the objections of their families all just to save money?
This is truly a disgusting display of hypocricy. Republicans are willing to go to extremes to save one patient in a permanent vegatative state, and yet they allow other people to die and/or go without medical care to preserve their precious tax cuts for the rich.

Time for another history lesson

In the comments to a previous post, my conservative friend Alamo City Commando asks “why the left has this fanatical love for mass murderers like Saddam Hussein...”

Ouch! That’s quite a charge to level at those pathetic liberals. No wonder they are so despised today!
But wait! Let’s look at this another way. If it is fair to say that liberals “love” Saddam because they opposed the Iraq war, then it must also be fair to say that President Bush “loves” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il because he does not currently favor launching a military invasion to oust his corrupt government and free the people of North Korea.
And Kim Jong Il actually has WMDs!!! Why does Bush have this fanatical love for Kim Jong Il??? Why does George Bush hate America??? Please help me understand how this can be, Commando.

Commando goes on to state that Saddam “would still be in power if it were up to (the liberals).”

Oh, my! Looks like it’s time for another history lesson.

Which U.S. president had a secret policy to give financial support to Saddam Hussein that helped build up his military might?
For the answer click here.

Which U.S. president signed a top secret national security directive ordering closer ties with Saddam Hussein’s government long after he had committed the mass murders of the Kurds in his own country?
Click here for the answer.

That’s right. The Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, over the objections of congressional Democrats, helped to build Saddam’s military and supplied him with most of the chemical weapons that he used in his attacks on the Iranians and the Kurds. Why were we so certain that Saddam had WMDs? Because we gave them to him! We just failed to realize or accept that he had gotten rid of them over the years.

Here is an excellent chronology detailing U.S. involvement in supporting Saddam’s regime.

Here are some key excerpts:

February, 1982. Despite objections from congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries.

1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments.

November, 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran.

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act.
(Oops! So much for whatever was necessary and legal)

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians.
(Our first verification that Saddam is a mass murderer who uses WMDs in direct violation of global treaties. And what is our response?)

December 20, 1983. Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support.
(We send Donald Rumsfeld over there to shake Hussein’s hand! )

It only gets worse from there - like the part about the U.S. and Great Britain blocking all U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq for its use of chemical weapons or the U.S. Department of Commerce authorizing weapons-grade shipments of anthrax and botulinum to Iraq after Saddam had used chemical weapons against the Kurds “killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages.”

There is lots more history of U.S. support for Iraq here and here.

But the point here is to emphasize how outrageous and hypocritical it is for conservatives to now be blaming liberals for Saddam Hussein and his regime. So Saddam might still be in power today if liberals had there way. So what? The time to get rid of Saddam was 20 years ago. By 2003, the threat posed by Hussein had diminished significantly according to the Duelfer report. While Saddam was a threat we were on his side, supporting him with arms and funding. After he had lost most of that capacity due to U.N. sanctions and had been reduced to a delusional old man writing bad novels, we decide to launch a costly military invasion.
And now we are supposed to believe that it was all done for humanitarian reasons because this administration loves freedom. Bull!

How do you define "Quagmire"?

My conservative friend Alamo City Commando observes in the comments to the previous post that "liberals in this country think Iraq is a quagmire while the Iraqis are happy to be free."
To that I would respond what difference does it make what some Iraqi's think? (And I do mean some since it is obvious there are still quite a few who are not happy that we are over there.)
There were quite a few Vietnamese who were happy when we were controlling Saigon and very unhappy after we left. But that did not make the Vietnam War any less of a quagmire.

How do we define quagmire anyway?
It would be interesting to know what definition conservatives would have used prior to the war.

Back then, the Bush administration was arguing that the conflict would be settled in a matter of months if not weeks.
Now, we are past the two-year anniversary with still no end in sight.

Back then, the Bush administration was reassuring us that U.S. casualties would be few - possibly along the lines of the first Gulf War, if that many.
Now, we have passed the 1,500 mark for U.S. military fatalities and 11,000 wounded, and still with no end in sight.

Back then, the Bush administration was telling us the cost of the war would be negligible and would be recouped with Iraqi oil revenues. Larry Lindsey, the president's top economic advisor, was forced to step down for suggesting that the cost could rise to as much as $100 billion.
Now, the cost to U.S. taxpayers has exceeded $300 billion with no end in sight.

So I'll ask again. How do we define quagmire?
Let's recap: We've been there for two years, spent $300 billion and lost 1,500 U.S. troops and the Iraqi government is still so weak that it would collapse like a house of cards if we were to even suggest pulling out in the next six months.
If it had been suggested prior to the start of the war that this would have been the cost and the end result - is there any question that the vast majority of U.S. citizens would have joined the rest of the world in condemning this unprecedented pre-emptive invasion to search for non-existent WMDs?

A nice break from bad news

I've been off on vacation this week which might explain the lapse in posting. It's a good thing too. It's been a really awful week as far as news events to blog about. I would have had nothing good to say all week.

First Bush appoints fanatical U.N. basher John Bolton to be our new envoy to that very same body. If Bush really wants to pull the U.S. out of the U.N. like so many of his far-right supporters then he should just go ahead and do so and drop this charade. If Bush had even a quarter of the diplomatic skills of his father he would know that you lure more flies with honey than with vinegar. If he really wants to influence and change the direction of the U.N. it would have been smart to put someone in there who could gain the trust of the other delegates rather than someone who is going to insult them and further isolate us from everyone else.
Appointing Bolton to the U.N. post is like appointing a pacifist to be Secretary of Defense. When Republicans don't like a particular government entity, rather than just shuting it down they appoint people who are diametrically opposed to everything it is supposed to be doing - like Reagan appointing James Watt to be Secretary of Interior (the guy who saw no need in preserving our national parks and wilderness because Jesus' Second Coming was just around the corner and the world was about to end anyway).

Second, was Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. Wolfowitz is one of the neo-con architects of the $300-plus billion Iraqi Quagmire. I guess this is his payback since everyone else has already gotten a promotion or a medal.

Then there was the Senate vote to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. They finally got this atrocity passed by cheating and attaching it to a spending bill which can't be filibustered. P.M. Bryant has more on this issue here.

Meanwhile, back at home our state legislators in Austin are continuing to push our inadequate state financing system further over the cliff - making it even more regressive and unstable.

Liberal talk radio comes to San Antonio

Gee, thanks, Clear Channel!!

The mighty media megolith that is Clean Channel Communications has seen fit to bless San Antonio with a progressive talk radio station.

Thanks to Ranten N. Raven and Alamo City Commando for the heads up on this.

KRPT will sign on the air Thursday morning at 8AM on 92.5FM. It will feature shows by Jerry Springer, the former TV shock-talk host turned progressive politico, and Ed Schultz, a former football star and sportscaster based in Fargo, N.D. with a progressive/populist appeal.
I'd still like to be able to hear Air America with Al Franken, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. So at least now when I challenge my conservative friends to come up with even one liberal advocacy show on TV or radio they will have something to point to.

TV theme show countdown update

Time for an update on the countdown of greatest TV theme music over at retroCRUSH: The World's Finest Pop Culture Site.

Since my last post on this topic they have added 23 shows to the list.

The new additions include:
Star Trek The Next Generation
The Partidge Family
Miami Vice
The Rockford Files
Get Smart
The Flintstones
Beverly Hillbillies
Bonanza
Andy Griffith Show
Spider Man
Six Feet Under
The Munsters
The Young and the Restless
Twilight Zone
The Monkees
Good Times
Hawaii Five-0
Doctor Who
ABC’s Wide World of Sports
All In the Family
Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids
Spongebob Squarepants
Twin Peaks

That means they are down to the final six selections.

Here are the guesses I made a few weeks ago as to the shows that would fill out the remaining slots with correct answers (so far) in bold:

Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Friends, Danger Mouse, Scooby Doo, Gilligan’s Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, ER, Spider Man, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five-0, Batman, Bonanza, Baretta, Mission: Impossible, All In the Family, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, The Brady Bunch, The Flintstones, The Monkees...

And here are the guesses that were made in comments:

Commando - Transformers and Monk

Joe Johnson - I Love Lucy, The Greatest American Hero and Starsky & Hutch

Me - ABC's Wide World of Sports.

TxBubba - Dallas and Fat Albert and Cosby Kids, Carol Burnett. My Three Sons. American Bandstand. The Jeffersons. Paladin. Davy Crockett. Doris Day Show.
Wonder Woman, Charlie's Angels, Space Ghost, Spongebob Squarepants, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Waltons, Love, American Style, McNeil/Lehrer Newshour

With only six slots left I would have to say Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island and Scoobee Doo are definitely going to fill half of them. As for the other three I would guess that Brady Bunch and Friends are still in the running and maybe Mission:Impossible.
I don’t think it looks good for Danger Mouse, ER, Batman, Baretta or Gomer Pyle

Stay tuned...

Update

The suspense is over. The final six (seven) shows in the countdown have been revealed
and I can say I predicted all but two of them. They kind of cheated by creating a two-way tie for second place.

6. Star Trek
5. Mission Impossible
4. The Jeffersons
3. Batman
2. Gilligan's Island/The Brady Bunch
1. Sanford and Son

I have to say I had overlooked The Jeffersons and completely forgot about Sanford and Son (though I would never have considered it a Top 10 much less for No. 1).
I'm shocked that Scoobee Doo did not make the list and I think the exclusion of Friends was also a surprise.

Right-wing radio monopoly

While some folks are concerned about alleged liberal bias in our local newspaper. I rarely hear about the overwhelmingly one-sidedness of San Antonio’s talk radio stations. We currently have four stations on the AM dial that are devoted almost strictly to the talk radio format including one religious talk station - 1200 WOAI, owned by Clear Channel Communications which is headquartered here in San Antonio; 930 KLUP; 550 KTSA; and 630 KSLR.

The programming lineups on these stations are downright scary. There is not a liberal voice to be found anywhere as best I can tell. I suppose there could be someone on KTSA with a slightly moderate view now and again because they have a lot of local people on the air who I have not listened to. However, all of the major syndicated shows and primetime slots are all right-wing all the time.

Here is the lineup so you can see for yourself:

WOAI:
The Glenn Beck Program
RushLimbaugh
The Schnitt Show
Jeff Bolton
Sean Hannity

KLUP:
Bill Bennett
Laura Ingraham
Dennis Prager
Michael Medved
MichaelSavage
HughHewitt
Mike Gallagher

KTSA:
Bill O’Reilly
Michael Reagan

KSLR:
James Dobson's Focus on the Family
Chuck Colson’s BreakPoint
Take A Stand with Adam McManus - Talk Radio with Guts!


There was a lot of fuss a while back about the launch of the liberal radio station Air America featuring Al Franken, but you can’t listen to it here.

I was curious whether there were any right-wing yakkers that aren’t on the air in San Antonio. It turns out there are still quite a few that the local stations can fall back on to keep their 24-7 right-wing propaganda mill running indefinitely. In the docks we have G. Gordon Liddy, Ollie North, Cal Thomas, Beverly LaHaye, Laura Schlessinger, Bob Grant, Bob Barr, Ken Hamblin, Larry Elder, Neal Boortz, and many, many more.

He’s Baaaaack!

My conservative sparring partner Mark Harden is back from his self-imposed exile from the blogosphere. Mark stopped updating his blog InSane Antonio about a year ago, but now he has teamed up with Alamo City Commando over at S.A. Express-News Watch where he will no doubt be giving the local newspaper a hard time on a regular basis.
As if the poor liberal media didn’t have enough troubles already. Is this even a fair fight?

The limits of volunteerism

It is a common right-wing misconception that we could replace government run social service programs with private faith-based charities. I don’t believe this is realistic or practical.
But rather than trying to point out the obvious - that being the massive scale of the government’s resources and the vast need for them compared to the inadequate resources and infrastructure of private charities - not to mention their unwillingness to take on such a heavy burden.
Instead, I would like to relay an anecdote from my days as a reporter working for the Kerrville Daily Times in the early to mid-’90s. I was covering the Kerr County Commissioners Court back then when an issue arose involving the lack of funding for some of the area’s volunteer fire departments (VFDs).
Now Kerr County has got to be one of the most conservative places on Earth. There were no elected Democrats in any office and the county boasted the highest percentage of Republican voters in the state. And yet here was a group of people coming before the staunchly conservative commissioners court and demanding that they be allowed to set up a new taxing district.
It seems that the surrounding countryside was booming with new housing developments targeting wealthy retirees moving in from Houston and elsewhere. And the local VFDs just weren’t able to keep up with the pace. They needed new equipment. They needed more people. And most of all they needed to replace their old fire engine - a substantial investment.
Every year this particular VFD would hold fundraising drives and do whatever they could to raise the money they needed to do their work. They would go door to door collecting donations and every year it would be the same small group of people who would pony up the bulk of the funding. Now these very same generous people were standing before the commissioners saying they were tired of footing the bill for everyone else. They wanted to establish a taxing district that would require everyone to pay their fair share.
Needless to say, they got their wish. The commissioners conceded that the VFD formula was no longer sufficient, so they cast aside the Republican mantra of “No New Taxes” and set up a new taxing district. I’ll bet that tax is still being collected to this day.

Defining liberalism down

In the previous post’s comments thread my conservative friend Alamo Commando jokingly referred to himself as a superhero fighting crime and liberalism. I understand the joke, of course, but I also know that in some respects he is being serious because Commando, like many other good Americans, works with a definition of liberalism that is radically different from my own.

Ever since Ronald Reagan mocked Democrats for embracing the unspeakable L-word, people have steered clear of the term like it was radioactive. Today when right-wing provocateur Sean Hannity puts out a book with the title “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism,” most people don’t bat an eye.
Even self-described liberals just shrug it off now because we are used to being insulted on a daily basis. Everywhere you look today - newspapers, TV shows, bookstores, radio - you are constantly barraged with derogatory references to liberals or liberalism.

Liberals today are accused of everything from racism to treason. In the perverse Orwellian logic of some conservative leaders today, anything the government does to help people today is bad. Social welfare programs make people dependent and take away their incentive to improve themselves, the argument goes. Programs aimed at minorities are both condescending and racist because they assume these people need extra help. Meanwhile, these same liberal programs that are hurting the poor are also the cause of our huge budget deficits and are the reason why our taxes are high and our economy is underperforming.
People who question the war in Iraq are providing aide and comfort to our enemies and hurting the morale of our troops. Worse than that, they actually want despots like Saddam Hussein to win just so they can advance their nefarious political schemes.
Some people equate liberalism with immorality - especially the sexual kind. Those Hollywood liberals are responsible for the filth that is polluting the minds of our children and their overly-tolerant anything-goes attitude is lowering the standards that have made this a God-fearing country until now.


But this obviously is not how I view myself. I see liberalism as a good and positive force in our society. My liberal views are strongly based on my religious faith. To me, Jesus Christ was the ultimate bleeding heart liberal. The example he set and the teachings he put forward set a standard much higher than I have been willing to follow. I’ve never visited anyone in prison. I have yet to give away all my possessions to the poor. I have a difficult time forgiving all my enemies and turning the other cheek every time I feel slighted or injured. But I do try to live a Christian life and I don’t see why I shouldn’t support furthering some of those Christian values through our government. If helping poor people is truly a bad thing, as conservatives today insist it is, then start by blaming Jesus.

Anyway, here are a few definitions of a liberal that I found on the web:


Liberal. [n]  a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties. -- HyperDictionary.com

A person who believes it is the duty of government to ameliorate social conditions and create a more equitable society. Liberals favor generous spending on the welfare state; they exhibit a concern for minorities, the poor, and the disadvantaged and often see these conditions as a product of social injustices rather than individual failings. Liberals also tend to be concerned about environmental issues, the defense of civil liberties, and do not favor excessive military spending. -- iAmericanSpirit Political Dictionary

Liberals tend to favor greater federal power to remedy social inequities, and to support freedom of personal choice and behavior. Liberals are described as being left of center on the political spectrum. Of the two major political parties, the Democratic Party is generally regarded as being more liberal. -- Election Glossary, Public Broadcasting System (PBS)

[Liberals] generally believe in some form of income redistribution, a social safety net, universal health care, progressive values, and a multilateral foreign policy. -- Harvard University Institute of Politics Glossary of Political Terms

In today's world, the liberals are the idealists, the people who still believe, in spite of everything that has happened, that they can make the world a better place for everybody. They believe that government is inherently good, that it can make the human condition better. They believe that we have some obligation to our fellow human beings. They believe in personal freedom, in freedom of speech and religion. They believe in the common good, the things people cannot do alone. -- Henrietta Hay, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. -- Sen. John F. Kennedy, Sept. 14, 1960

Movie Update

Since my last check of movies I’ve seen and want to see I can move a grand total of four films off of my To See list:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I, Robot
Collateral
De-Lovely

Harry Potter was good. Collateral was riveting. I,Robot was OK and De-Lovely was delightful.

I have purchased or acquired four more films off the list, but haven’t yet watched them:

Bourne Supremacy
Van Helsing
The Alamo
Shark Tale

Those four go on top of my stack of 2003 films that I have purchased or acquired but have yet to watch:

Big Fish
Open Range
The Missing
In America
Winged Migration
The Fog of War
Cheaper By the Dozen

To my list of movies I still want to see I would add

Hotel Rwanda
House of Flying Daggers
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Vanity Fair

The Academy Awards were kind of ho-hum this year without a Lord of the Rings picture in the mix. I thought Aviator was going to sweep most of the awards and was really surprised when Martin Scorcece didn’t win the Best Director trophy. I was happy for Clint Eastwood, but can’t help but think something is amiss when Eastwood now has two wins under his belt while Scorcece is 0 for 5.
I want to see all of the Academy Award nominated films with the exception of Sideways which I have no interest in.

A philosophical look at abortion

In light of the Supreme Court’s narrow decision to ban executions for juveniles, some of my conservative readers have raised some good points about how the decision doesn’t square with the court’s past rulings on consent laws for juveniles seeking abortions.
If a juvenile is deemed too immature to understand the full implications of committing a capital murder (one that triggers a death sentence in some states), then how can they be deemed mature enough to have an abortion without their parents’ consent.
Perhaps on a philosophical level this is an inconsistency, but as a practical matter they don’t compare. There is no practical reason for putting a juvenile to death. It serves no purpose (other than vengeance) and no harm comes from substituting another form of punishment (i.e. incarceration). I have never said that a juvenile who commits a capital crime should escape punishment because of their immaturity.
But requiring parental consent for an abortion does have practical consequences in that some young girls will seek to end their pregnancies anyway - through illegal means - and may suffer serious injury or death as a result.

The sad fact about abortion is that it will persist no matter what our laws say. Back before Roe vs. Wade, hundreds of thousands of abortions were performed each year, and perhaps many more, under circumstances that were not safe. As a result, hundreds of women died and many more suffered serious health complications.
So what is the answer? Is this loss of life just the price we have to pay to save countless numbers of unborn children? I’m sure that is the stance taken by many well-meaning pro-lifers, but I just can’t accept that.
Does that mean that I place a higher value on the lives of the born as opposed to the lives of the unborn. Yes, it does. I would prefer that no lives were lost. I would prefer a world in which there were no unwanted pregnancies and no desperate young girls seeking the means to terminate them.

I’ve thought long and hard about how this all fits into my personal theology/philosophy. The Bible doesn’t really address abortion in any meaningful sense. I know some people pull passages out and claim this or that interpretation to back up their stance, but it is certainly not like Jesus went around preaching about abortion, gays and guns all the time, even though the religious right would have you believe that.
At the core of my philosophy is the belief that God put us here for some purpose, whatever that may be. (I think it has something to do with Love Thy Neighbor, but that’s a different topic.) So it makes no sense to me that God would allow someone to be created and then never have the opportunity to even be born so that they can fulfill that purpose.
We know when physical life begins - at conception - but is that when spiritual life begins too? Is the soul created at that instance? Is the soul present prior to conception and then somehow joined with the body at that point? I’ve always assumed that the soul must work through the body in order to interact in the physical world - thus a mentally retarded person doesn’t have a retarded soul, but a normal soul forced to work through a body with physical impediments. But what is the soul going to do with a body such as a developing fetus that doesn’t have a brain yet? Perhaps the soul needs to develop along with the body.
So what happens when that development is halted prematurely - either through abortion or miscarriage? What does a just God do with a soul that did not have a chance to fulfill its purpose? I know a lot of people like to believe that these baby souls go up to a special place in heaven to be with God and perhaps become angels or some such thing. That’s fine if they want to believe that, but the thing that makes the most sense to me can be summed up in two words - soul recycling.
I don’t mean to make light of this issue. But it would seem to me that God would give souls in that situation another chance to be born in a different body so that they too can fulfill their purpose.

This doesn’t mean that I think abortion should be no big deal. I still think it is a terrible and sad thing anytime a pregnancy is ended willingly. But neither do I see it in terms of a holocaust or a genocide as characterized by many of the more extreme folks on the far-right.
Perhaps all of the above is a lot of mumbo-jumbo meant to make me feel better about my pro-choice position. But as I have already stated, it is what makes sense to me and that is the only measure I have for coming to an understanding on this issue.

Executing juveniles is wrong

First it was the mentally retarded. Now it’s juveniles 18 and under. Those “liberals” on the Supreme Court are just taking all the fun out of state-sponsored executions.

I’ve argued before that the death penalty is a barbaric relic of our past. I don’t expect most people to agree with me in these cold, hard-hearted radical/conservative times, but you might think something as basic as not executing children would be something we could all agree on.
But apparently not:

“The four most liberal justices had already gone on record in 2002, calling it "shameful" to execute juvenile killers. Those four, joined by Anthony Kennedy, also agreed with Tuesday's decision: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as expected, voted to uphold the executions. They were joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.”

The fact that only a slim majority of the Supreme Court can agree that executing juveniles is wrong is what is shameful. I’m really disappointed in Sandra Day O’Connor. But it is par for the course for the three neanderthal conservatives - Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist.

Notice how they refer to the four justices as “liberal” when at best they should be described as moderate or middle-of-the-road. They are only “liberal” in the sense that they are to the left of the extreme radical views promoted by the neanderthal trio.

“In his dissent, Scalia decried the decision, arguing that there has been no clear trend of declining juvenile executions to justify a growing consensus against the practice.
"The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,' he wrote in a 24-page dissent.
"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," Scalia wrote.

So we have to wait until we have achieved a “growing consensus against the practice” before we can stop executing children. I wonder how many other heinous practices from out past would still be in effect today if the courts were filled with people like Scalia?
It’s chilling to think of the “moral standards” that Scalia must favor.

Breaking News: Constitution still in effect

A U.S. District Judge in South Carolina has just reaffirmed my faith in our judicial system and, in the process, slammed the Bush administration for their radical notion that they can detain people indefinitely without ever charging them with a crime.

Rejecting a series of arguments put forward by the government, District Court Judge Henry F. Floyd said the indefinite detention of Jose Padilla -- who the administration has said is a terrorist supporter of al Qaeda -- is illegal and that Padilla must be released from a naval brig in Charleston, S.C., within 45 days or charged with a crime.

In a strongly worded 23-page ruling, Floyd said "to do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this Nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and our individual liberties."

I want to note that Judge Floyd is a Republican appointee, having been placed in his seat by none other than George W. Bush in 2003. This is not an example of liberal judicial activism, but an instance of true conservatism - the kind that this radical administration abandoned long ago.

Here is Judge Floyd throwing the "judicial activisim" taunt back at the administration where it belongs.

"Using a phrase often levied by conservatives to denigrate liberal judges, Floyd -- who was appointed by President Bush to the federal bench in 2003 -- accused the administration of engaging in "judicial activism" when it asserted in court pleadings that Bush has blanket authority under the Constitution to detain Americans on U.S. soil who are suspected of taking or planning actions against the country.

Floyd said the government presented no law supporting this contention and that just because Bush and his appointees say Padilla's detention was consistent with U.S. laws and the president's war powers, that did not make it so. "Moreover, such a statement is deeply troubling. If such a position were ever adopted by the courts, it would totally eviscerate the limits placed on Presidential authority to protect the citizenry's individual liberties."

I have to agree with Donna Newman, one of Padilla's attorneys, when she said the "court ruled that the president does not have the power to seize an American citizen on American soil and hold him indefinitely without a charge. That shouldn't be big news, but it is. . . ."

Condi for President?

I don’t get it. What’s up with this right-wing fascination with Condoleezza Rice to the point that they are touting her as a presidential candidate in 2008?

Other than the fact that she is willing to parrot whatever foreign policy position Bush wants, what is it that they think she will offer them? She has said she is pro-choice on abortion and most of her positions on other domestic issues are unknown if she even has any.
And yet the far-right is completely enamored with her and acts like she is the only Republican who can defeat what they are certain will be a Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2008.

I suppose it's a good thing that the Bush administration did not allow Rice to be put under oath during the 9/11 Commission hearings last year because it is now well documented
that she lied.

Imagine if a National Security Advisor for a Democratic administration had received a memo like this more than eight months before 9/11, and had done nothing about it. The right-wing would have gone nuts. They would have demanded that person’s head on a platter and most certainly would not consider them presidential material.

I’m not surprised that the right-wingers have a double standard for Rice. I just can’t figure this sudden infatuation and worshipful reverence for her. Just check out how the conservative sites constantly refer to her as “Dr. Rice” at every opportunity because she has a Ph.D. in political science. I mean, that’s great and all, but come on. Howard Dean actually is a Dr. with an actual degree in medicine, but you never hear these same folks referring to him as Dr. Dean.
Then there is the fact that she is 50-plus and has never been married. I can’t imagine that would go over too well with the “Family Values” crowd in the GOP if she were a Democrat.

I think this is all rather silly at this point. I don’t believe Rice will run for president in ’08 and neither will Hillary.

A Musical Odyssey, Part II

Note: This is Part 2 of my Musical Odyssey series in which I recollect how my musical tastes evolved over the years. For Part 1 go here.


The 1980s were a turning point for my musical interests. I started high school in late 1979 shortly after my family had moved to the small South Texas town of Premont. The Disco Era was rapidly coming to an end and the MTV phenomenon was just getting started as more homes were getting hooked up to cable. At the same time, the dominance of vinyl records was being challenged once again after successfully weathering the onslaught of the 8-track tape. The new cassette tapes opened up a whole new world of music by allowing me to record music that I would otherwise have been unable to purchase on my own. It also allowed me to record my favorite music compilations to listen to in the car.

As previously noted, I had purchased the Bee Gees album "Tragedy" which was in many ways the swan song of disco. A couple of other songs from that period that caught my fancy at the time included "Le Freak" by Chic, “Knock on Wood” by Amii Stewart, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart and “Heart of Glass” by Blondie.
The first record albums I bought (or recorded) in my early high school days included:

REO Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity
Rick Springfield - Working Class Dog
Queen - The Game
Joan Jett - I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll

Working Class Dog was a highly underrated album in my opinion. There were a lot of songs that I thought were even better than the breakout hit “Jessie’s Girl” including “Hole in My Heart,” “Carry Me Away” and “Everybody’s Girl.”
“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen was a big hit at school. And when Queen released “Another One Bites the Dust” it was a sensation almost on par with their earlier smash “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions.” But I also liked “Dragon Attack” which was never released off of the album.

Then there was The Chipmunks -Chipmunk Punk (note: I had the record, not the 8-track).
I don’t remember how I ended up with that album, but I listened to it alot. I’m still more familiar with the Chipmunks version of “My Sharona” than with the original by The Knack. It was also several years later before I realized that “Refugee” was a song by Tom Petty.

About this time I also began to expand my interests in country music after purchasing the Urban Cowboy soundtrack album, which was much better than the movie. Songs like “All Night Long” by Joe Walsh and “Nine Tonight” by Bob Seger really rocked, while “Lookin’ For Love” by Johnny Lee and “Could I Have This Dance” by Anne Murray were music hall staples. Then there was the classic “Devil Went Down to Georgia” by Charlie Daniels and my introduction to The Eagles with “Lyin’ Eyes.”

Here is the full lineup:
Jimmy Buffett - Hello Texas
Joe Walsh - All Night Long
Dan Fogelberg - Times like These
Bob Seger And The Siver Bullet Band - Nine Tonight
Mickey Gilley - Stand By Me
Johnny Lee - Cherokee Fiddle
Anne Murray - Could I Have This Dance
The Eagles - Lyin Eyes
Johnny Lee - Lookin For Love
Bonnie Raitt - Don't It Make Ya Wanna Dance
The Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down To Georgia
Mickey Gilley - Here Comes The Hurt Again
Gilley's 'Urban Cowboy' Band - Orange Blossom Special/ Hoedown
Kenny Rogers - Love The World Away
The Charlie Daniels Band - Falling In Love For the Night
Bonnie Raitt - Darlin
Boz Scaggs - Look What You've Done to Me
Linda Ronstadt/J.D Souther - Hearts Against the Wind

Other country albums that influenced my tastes from the early 80s:

Hank Williams Jr. - Family Tradition
Jerry Jeff Walker - Jerry Jeff
George Strait - Strait From the Heart
Oak Ridge Boys - Fancy Free
Ronnie Milsap - Greatest Hits
Eddie Rabbit - Horizon
Don Williams - Yellow Moon
Alabama - Mountain Music

Kenny Rogers was also big at the time with “Coward of the County” getting lots of radio play along with his older hit “The Gambler” and his syrupy ballad “Lady.” I also liked Eddie Rabbit’s - “I Love A Rainy Night” and “Drivin’ My Life Away” with the snappy beat and catchy lyrics like “Those windshield wipers slappin' out a tempo, Keepin' perfect rhythm with the song on the radio”.
“Elvira” was a huge hit for the Oak Ridge Boys. I remember singing that song over and over to pass the time while mowing lawns with a riding lawnmower -

“Giddy Up Oom Poppa Oom Poppa Mow Mow
Giddy Up Oom Poppa Oom Poppa Mow Mow
Heigh-ho Silver, away”

But I was only dabbling in country music before Alabama came out with “Mountain Music” and nearly made me a country devotee for life. Their upbeat, rock-n-roll style of country music was a revelation to me. I even went to see them in concert when they were in San Marcos and got all their autographs on a publicity photo. But what kept me going back to rock music was MTV. This was back when MTV actually played music videos and had a huge influence on the popularity of music. Initially, the bands that took advantage of this new format were obscure English bands with very different music than what we were used to here in the states. There was Squeeze and Human League and Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran and Adam Ant and Haircut 100 and Bow Wow Wow and Soft Cell and many more.
Unfortunately for most of those artists, my interest never went far enough to actually purchase one of their albums (with the exception of Duran Duran). Instead, I stuck pretty close to mainstream U.S. pop-rock groups.


Over the next couple of years (1980-82) I would pick up some albums that would become some of my all-time favorites:

The Police - Ghost in the Machine
Loverboy - Get Lucky
The Go Go’s - Beauty and the Beat
Foreigner - Four
J. Geils Band - Freeze Frame
Asia - Asia
Cheap Trick - One on One.
John Cougar - American Fool
Devo - New Traditionalists

My favorite music video back then was “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police. I tended to prefer videos that showed actual live performances, but for some reason I enjoyed watching Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland goofing around in the recording studio, jumping on furniture and lampooning their own lyrics. Their album Ghost in the Machine is still one of my all-time favorites. There are only a few artists who I’ve made an effort to collect all their recordings - The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, to name a few... But the Police was the first band that I made my own. The Police became my favorite rock band in the same way that the 1975-76 Cincinnatti Reds had become my favorite baseball team. When they came out with Synchronicity a few years later I eagerly snatched it up as well. But then I was devestated when I learned that they were breaking up shortly after that. With no more new Police albums, I started buying all their older albums until I had the whole collection. Then I continued to buy the new Sting solo music as it was released.

I really liked the other albums as well, but for whatever reason I didn’t follow up and buy their later albums (With the exception of Cheap Trick which continued to be a favorite rock band through college). For some, the early 80s was there hey day. J. Geils Band didn’t release another album after their big splash with “Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold.” Loverboy never made it as big again after “Working For the Weekend.” Asia dwindled away after their big hits “Heat of the Moment” and “Only Time Will Tell.” The Go-Go’s never broke the Top 10 again after “We Got the Beat” and Foreigner had a few big hits after Four but none that achieved the status of “Juke Box Hero” and “Urgent”.
Of course, John Cougar went on to bigger and better things after he reclaimed his last name of Mellencamp and I would later pick him back up in college.

By my junior year in High School (1981-82) the world had become enamored with Michael Jackson whose album Thriller was dominating the air waves with “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and the super-long MTV video for “Thriller” complete with Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Meanwhile, I mostly listened to the albums listed above while picking up a few more like George Thorogood - Bad to the Bone, Billy Squire - Emotions in Motion, Men at Work - Business as Usual and Billy Joel - Nylon Curtain.
Some more interesting music came out during my senior year - chiefly the above mentioned Synchronicity by The Police - but also ZZ Top - Eliminator, David Bowie - Let’s Dance, Billy Joel - Innocent Man, and my first introduction to Bob Dylan - Infidels.

Songs on the radio (High School)
Rush - Tom Sawyer
Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science
Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Physical - Olivia Newton John
Ebony & Ivory - McCartney/Wonder
Abracadabra - Steve Miller Band
Eddie Grant - Electric Avenue

Alaska Republicans have second thoughts on Global Warming

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (2/22/05 page A4) noting that Alaska’s two Republican senators appear to be having a change of heart about their opposition to global warming legislation now that their home state is being impacted negatively.

“In Alaska, where severe storms, flooding and permafrost melting have caused widespread damage, the two Republican senators say they are willing to reconsider carbon-dioxide regulation after voting against it two years ago.”

Funny how conservative Republicans suddenly become more generous, forgiving and broadminded whenever an issue impacts them personally. No doubt Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski would have remained unmoved in their opposition to emmission curbs if it was some other state suffering the ill effects of global warming. But Alaska just happens to have longest coastline in the U.S. and the melting sea and glacier ice has resulted in severe erosion and flooding problems in 86 percent of the state’s native villages.

According to the article, Sen. Stevens is proposing to help the impacted villages with funds that would be generated by opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling - an issue the Congress is expected to take up in the coming weeks.
As if that were not ironic enough, the article goes on to note this additional irony - “If Congress approves drilling in the refuge... oil companies could find it hard to start exploration (because) the runways of the nearest airport... are often underwater now after fall storms.”

S.A. Fire Department - An appreciation

We took my son who is 18 months to a birthday party over the weekend and had a great time. Our across the street neighbors have twin boys who were just turning 1 and they threw a heck of a party. We were watching them prepare all morning, bringing in boxes of presents and balloons and such. Then a truck pulled up and unloaded two of those moonwalk bouncing castles and we thought Wow! all this for 1-year-olds. Well, they do have large extended familes with lots of children, so it made sense. But then my jaw dropped when two large San Antonio Fire Engines pulled up and parked in front of our house. I knew the parents had chosen fire fighters as the theme for their kids' room, but this was truly over the top. I wondered who had what kind of pull to make this happen.

As it turns out, it did not require any pull at all. The mother had simply stopped by the local fire station the day before and asked if they would mind dropping by for the party and they happily agreed. I think there were 8 or 9 firemen there all dressed up and they gave all the kids (about 15-20 of all ages) a tour of the trucks and a short lesson in fire safety basics.
It was a swell way to kick off the birthday party. My little boy had a great time climbing around on the fire engines - a tanker and a ladder truck - and we took lots of pictures.

It was a great bit of PR for the fire department plus an opportunity to promote fire safety. I'm sure the city encourages them to get out and do things like this. It probably beats sitting around the fire station all the time and they would have been able to respond to any emergency in the same amount of time since they were less than a mile away from the firehouse.

Mixed Up Music

My new computer at work came with iTunes and enough hard drive space to dump a ton of music onto it. I currently have about 8 gigabytes of music loaded up which is an insane amount I know. It would take over a week to listen to every song. What is neat about it though is that you can shuffle the entire library of music at any time and play it in random order. Here for example is the mix of music that came up at random when I hit the shuffle feature just now:

Slither - Velvet Revolver
Jazz Me Blues - Bix Beiderbecke
Looking For My Love in the Pouring Rain - Tish Hinojosa
Greenbacks - Ray Charles
Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zepplin
Rehumanize Yourself - The Police
Loves Me Like A Rock - Paul Simon
Apalachicola, Fla. - Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters
Jumpin’ Jack Flash - The Rolling Stones
You’re A Big Girl - Bob Dylan
Death Letter - Cassandra Wilson
Killer Queen - Queen
Walk On - Neil Young
There’s a Cabin in the Pines - Bing Crosby
Broken Arrow - Neil Young
Oh, Lady Be Good! - Lester Young
Big Rock Candy Mountain - Harry McClintock
Tears - John Waite

Ocean temperatures rising

Temperature's rising; Fever is high; Can't see no future; Can't see no sky

- Cold Turkey by John Lennon

"The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people."

- Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography

It’s too bad that we have irrational people running the country because this is some scary stuff.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well under way, according to Barnett, who presented his data at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.
"The real place to look is in the ocean,"

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals.

Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.
"As the Earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter," she said. "Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet."
A circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt is in danger of shutting down, she said.

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals.
And the disappearing ice shelves meant big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals were losing their homes.

Multiple Choice:
What will the right-wing response be to these latest scientific studies.

A. Ignore it.
B. Denounce it as biased.
C. Call for more studies.
D. All of the above

Brit Hume should resign

Resign Brit Hume
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Brit Hume, the chief anchor/propagandist for Faux News, recently committed a journalistic sin a hundred times worse than anything that Dan Rather ever did and should therefore resign.

Following is a summary of Hume's deliberate manipulation and misrepresentation of quotes by Franklin Roosevelt in an effort to create a false impression that the founder of our Social Security system would support our current president's efforts to dismantle his legacy.

Here's Brit Hume, the Fox News Channel's top news anchor, on February 3: 

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

Hume's claim is that FDR wanted to replace Social Security with private accounts. Hume is lying. Here's the FDR statement that Hume is misquoting:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

So, FDR was proposing three things: a temporary "old-age pension," for seniors who wouldn't have time to pay into the Social Security system; a compulsory-contribution annuity--meaning, Social Security as we know it today--which would become a "self-supporting system," and, third, voluntary individual accounts. Ultimately, the old-age pensions would be supplanted by the self-supporting annuity system (meaning, Social Security.)

Hume turns this completely on its head. He pulls two unrelated bits out of the FDR quote, and adds the wrods "government funding" between them. Because it's so carefully done, it's clear that it's deliberate. And it's a nasty form of dishonesty. Hume is manipulating Americans' trust of FDR in order to build support for dismantling FDR's legacy.

Although it won't be as explosive politically, this is worse than Dan Rather's memo scandal. First of all, it's deliberate. Secondly, it's untrue. Dan Rather was guilty of being insufficiently skeptical of forged, true documents. But Brit Hume, Fox News Channel's #1 anchor--not commentator, not editorialist, anchor--is deliberately perverting the words of a hero to destroy the hero's legacy. 

Brit Hume should resign.

More broken promises

President Bush has failed to deliver on yet another promise. I mentioned earlier how Bush made big promises to spend billions on AIDS prevention in Africa during his 2003 State of the Union speech and has so far failed to follow through with it.
This time the criticism comes from a former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who says the Bush administration “lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.”

“The White House reaped political benefits from the president's promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the last and the lost" in the United States,” David Kuo said recently. But then the administation did not follow up and help get the funding through Congress. Kuo notes that after promising to provide tax incentives for private charitable giving during his first year in office, the administration chose to drop that provision from his $1.6 trillion tax cut legislation "to make room for the estate-tax repeal that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy."

Of course, Kuo is not the first former Bush official coming out of the faith-based office to question the administration’s committment to its stated goals.

“In August 2001, John J. DiIulio Jr., then-director of the faith-based office, became the first top Bush adviser to quit, after seven months on the job. In an interview with Esquire magazine a year later, DiIulio said the Bush White House was obsessed with the politics of the faith-based initiative but dismissive of the policy itself.”

As I said earlier, this is just another instance of Bush’s political dishonesty - saying one thing before an election to boost his political support and then dropping it afterwards.

Although I did not support Bush for president, there once was a time when I thought he might actually accomplish some good things in office. His promises to be the “education president,” and some parts of his “compassionate conservative” agenda gave me hope that things would not be all bad under a Bush administration. Sadly, I was wrong. In nearly every case where Bush has made some promise or proposal on an issue that I found even slightly beneficial to society and the greater good - it has turned out to be as empty and meaningless as his pledge to send a manned mission to Mars.

Why the Jeff Gannon scandal matters

A lot of people have apparently missed the significance of this Jeff Gannon scandal. I keep reading comments at various rightwing blogs about how the resignation of Eason Jordan is so much more significant because he was a senior executive at CNN while Gannon was a nobody working for an unknown web-based publication.
But the point is not who Gannon is or what he did, it’s about the White House trying to manipulate its press briefings by planting partisan shills amongst the reporters to lob administration-friendly questions.

Let’s step back and look at the inevitable result of this kind of policy if it is allowed to fester. Why even bother to have press conferences? If the White House can plant phony reporters who will be called on to ask pre-packaged questions then we might as well not even bother.

Imagine if Bill Clinton had done something like this when he was president. Just as an example, let’s say that the Sierra Club, NOW, ACLU, People for the American Way, NARAL, and so forth all set up front faux “news organizations” and then the White House credentialed each of their “senior correspondents” and made sure they got seated at the front of each news conference where they would be called on to ask questions that allowed the president to push his agenda without ever being challenged on anything.

That is why this is a scandal and why it needs further investigation.

The era of big government being over is over

The New York Times had an interesting piece in its Week in Review section this Sunday titled Cut Short: The Revolution That Wasn't

It is about the Republican Revolution that Newt Gingrich led 10 years ago and the article asks the obvious question - What happened? Here are some key snippets from the article:

Last week President Bush unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the largest in the nation's history.

Overall federal spending has increased twice as fast under Mr. Bush as under Mr. Clinton. At the same time, the federal deficit is projected to hit a record high of $427 billion this year.

The White House estimated last week that the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, originally projected at $400 billion from 2004 to 2013, would, in fact, be $724 billion from 2006 to 2015. Republicans called for scaling back the benefit, but on Friday, Mr. Bush said no and vowed to veto any changes to the Medicare bill.

"The era of big government being over is over," declared Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic research organization.
“Yesterday's revolutionaries are today's pragmatic politicians," he said. "It's a classic tale of any revolution. They start out as revolutionaries wanting to storm the Bastille and the end up as 'All the King's Men.' "

The one thing I disagree with here is his characterization of the current crop of Congressional leaders as “pragmatic politicians.” That may be true for a few of them, but most would be more accurately described as incompetent goofs and reactionary radicals.

Of course, Mr. Bush has also proposed lots of spending cuts in his 2006 budget, but these would have little impact on the deficit even if they are all adopted which is not likely. The The New York Times Editorial Board puts it this way:

Mr. Bush has been talking the deficit reduction talk, but there's no sign that he is willing to walk the walk. In his 2006 budget, he pledges to slash spending, but largely in areas that would have only a small impact on the deficit and where cuts would be politically difficult, not to mention cruel, such as food stamps, veterans' medical care, child care and low-income housing.

I’ve heard Bush partisans defend these cuts by saying the programs are redundant and weren’t accomplishing what they were supposed to be doing. But this begs just one question - Why did Bush wait until now to request that they be cut? He’s been president for the past four years and didn’t request they be cut in his past four budgets. What changed? Were they not redundant and wasteful last year but they are this year?

Finally, Bush’s dedication to cutting the deficits would be more plausible if he wasn’t taking other steps at the same time that will more than overwhelm any savings produced by his proposed spending cuts. Here is the NYTimes again:

Meanwhile (Bush) is pounding the table for more deficit-bloating measures - making his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a 10-year cost of as much as $2.1 trillion; putting into effect two high-income tax breaks that were enacted in 2001 but have been on hold, at a 10-year cost of $115 billion; and introducing new tax incentives to allow high earners to shift even more cash into tax shelters, at a cost that would ultimately work out to more than $30 billion a year when investors cashed in their accounts tax-free.

And don’t forget the trillions of dollars that Bush wants to borrow over the next several years on behalf of his Social Security privatization scheme as well as the expanding cost of his foreign policy misadventure in the Middle East where we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make it possible for hardline Islamic clerics affiliated with Iran to take control in Iraq.

Fake names and press passes

On Jan. 26 I just happened to be watching President Bush’s press conference on television when I got to hear some guy in the White House press corps ask this gem of a question:

“Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking about soup lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

I don’t remember what Bush’s response was. I was too stunned that someone in the press corps would ask such a blatantly loaded question. This was not even a question. It was a partisan attack on Democrats masquerading as a question. Who the heck was this guy?

As it turns out, the “reporter” who lobbed President Bush the big mushy softball was some guy using the pseudonym ‘Jeff Gannon’ and working for some right-wing web site that tries to pass itself off as a news organization. This wasn’t “Jeff Gannon’s” first press conference either. He had become a regular attendee at White House press briefings where Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was always sure to call on him for a question passing over dozens of other real journalists working for legitimate news organizations.

So now the big question - How did this guy get a press pass that allowed him to get that close to the president using a fake name? I find that to be rather disturbing and scary. Was the White House complicit in helping plant this guy at press conferences so that he could lob friendly questions? Does this all tie in to the administrations apparent scheme of paying journalists to write positive things about them?

I can assure you that if something like this had taken place during Clinton’s presidency there would have been yet another special prosecutor on the prowl.

Big Brother is watching

I don’t normally pay much attention to local TV news, but the other night I saw a report on KSAT, the local ABC affiliate, that I found to be very disturbing. It was part of the station’s Defenders Investigations in which they respond to viewer tips and look into various city shenanigans. But the segment the other night was something straight out of George Orwell’s “1984” with the local TV station happily playing the role of Big Brother.

It seems that the stationed was tipped off that a band director at a local school had been taking off time during the middle of the day to run errands or whatever and was missing classes as a result. I assume there was probably an assistant band director leading the classes during these times, but they failed to address that point. Instead the station decided to use video surveillance techniques to follow the band director around and see where he was going. They then confronted him on camera at his home to throw their accusations in his face. Only then did they go back to the school administrators for comment and reaction. At the end of the report they triumphantly announced that the band director had been placed on administrative leave.

This really disgusted me not because I think a teacher should be allowed to skip out of classes whenever they feel like it, but because this was clearly a personnel matter for the school administration that should have been handled behind closed doors. There was no reason why it needed to be splashed all over my television screen just to add humiliation to whatever other punishment the school might mete out. The fact that the TV station tried to play this up into some kind of scandal was pathetic and was an abuse of thier power.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

In case you were wondering, this is the guy who is winning the election in Iraq.

Is it just me, or does he bear a striking resemblance to another Ayatollah we once knew?

The New York Times is reporting today
that the Shiite clerics are anxious to write the country's new constitution so that they can enshrine Shariah, or Koranic law, as the foundation of the new government.

What will that mean?

"The clerics generally agree that the constitution must ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a basic understanding of Shariah as laid out in the Koran. Women should not be treated as the equals of men in matters of marriage, divorce and family inheritance, they say. Nor should men be prevented from having multiple wives, they add."

Lovely. And how exactly is this different from the Taliban? It seems that in some parts of Iraq, this kind of fundamentalism is already taking hold.

"In Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, where one of Ayatollah Sistani's closest aides has enormous influence, Shiite religious parties have been transforming the city into an Islamic fief since the toppling of Mr. Hussein. Militias have driven alcohol sellers off the streets. Women are harassed if they walk the streets in anything less than head-to-head black. Conservative judges are invoking Shariah in some courts."

Bush has been going on and on about how we have given the Iraqi people their freedom. But democracy doesn't necessarily guarantee freedom for everyone.

Wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out that we spent $300-plus billion to help establish another Islamic fundamentalist state in the Middle East?

Quick! Time for a pop quiz! Why did the United States under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush support Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran?

Because he was a secular leader whom we considered to be more amenable to our interests.

Now that we've tossed Hussein out finally, it looks like we may be helping to establish another Khomeini-like government. And remember that this is the guy that Bush is counting on to serve as a beacon of freedom that will spread across the rest of the Middle East.

Star Trek Enterprise canceled

The Star Trek franchise has had a really rought time lately.

UPN has just announced that it is canceling 'Enterprise' , the Star Trek prequel series at the end of this season. That means Enterprise will be the second shortest run series of the entire franchise at just four seasons - second only to the original Star Trek series which lasted just three seasons.

Needless to say I am not happy about this decision and will obviously have no more reason to ever watch UPN. I’ll be contacting my cable provider later this year to petition them to drop UPN in favor of the Watching Paint Dry channel.

The last Star Trek movie - Nemesis - did so poorly at the Box Office {43 million} that it probably killed the chances of there being any more Next Generation movies and may have also snuffed any hopes of movies based on the Deep Space or Voyager series as well.

That’s a shame because there isn’t much left to watch on TV these days. I’m down to ER, Lost and Judging Amy as the only shows I still follow on a regular basis.

I imagine the Star Trek series was a big target for cancellation due to its high production costs in an era dominated by low-production reality shows. Also, the country’s rightward shift may had an impact as Star Trek has always had a decidely liberal utopian outlook on the future. How many people who think the United Nations should be shut down would watch a TV series about the formation of the United Federation of Planets?

Favorite TV theme music

What are your favorite TV show theme songs? Which themes immediately come to mind. Don’t just pick out your favorite shows. There have been TV shows that I liked where I can’t recall the theme, and then shows I didn’t like where I can’t get the theme out of my head. If a theme song sticks with you it must have some positive traits.

retroCRUSH: The World's Finest Pop Culture Site has been counting down the Top 100 TV show theme songs of all time. They have posted 100-30 so far with 29 slots left. They are slowly adding to their list at about one or two a week and now I’m curious about which shows are left to fill out the top of their list.

Here is what they have listed so far:

100. Petticoat Junction
99. CBS Special Theme
98. Welcome Back Kotter
97. The Odd Couple
96. Danger Man/Secret Agent
95. Night Court
94. The Six Million Dollar Man
93. Star Blazers
92. Casper the Friendly Ghost
91. Family Feud
90. Underdog
89. Battlestar Galactica
88. The Lone Ranger
87. Hong Kong Phooey
86. Seinfeld
85. The Green Hornet
84. Laverne & Shirley
83. The Price is Right
82. The Sopranos
81. Square Pegs
80. Mr. Belvedere
79. Dark Shadows
78. Dragnet
77. Three’s Company
76. Mister Ed
75. Taxi
74. Sledge Hammer
73. The Rookies
72. Sesame Street
71. Hill Street Blues
70. The Mickey Mouse Club
69. Rawhide
68. The Ren & Stimpy Show
67. The Dick Van Dyke Show
66. Diff’rent Strokes
65. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
64. WKRP in Cincinnati
63. South Park
62. The Simpsons
61. Leave It To Beaver
60. The Love Boat
59. CHIPS
58. I Dream of Jeannie
57. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
56. The Streets of San Francisco
55. George of the Jungle
54. Lost In Space
53. Kung Fu
52. Happy Days
51. Ultraman
50. The Cosby Show
49. The A-Team
48. The Muppet Show
47. The Match Game
46. Knight Rider
45. Green Acres
44. Alfred Hitchcock Presents
43. The Dukes of Hazzard
42. Cheers
41. SWAT
40. Speed Racer
39. Pee Wee’s Playhouse
38. Peter Gunn
37. The Addams Family
36. MASH
35. Chico and the Man
34. The Benny Hill Show
33. The Banana Splits
32. Barney Miller
31. The X-Files
30. What’s Happening!

A pretty compelling list so far. I don’t agree with all of the picks. Some are obvious, others are surpirses. I was happy to see some of my favorites on there like Speed Racer and The Banana Splits.

Here is my best guess as to some of the show themes that will fill out the top 30:

Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Friends, Danger Mouse, Scooby Doo, Gilligan’s Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, ER, Spider Man, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five-0, Batman, Bonanza, Baretta, Mission: Impossible, All In the Family, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, The Brady Bunch, The Flintstones, The Monkees...

What am I missing?

Making lemonade out of a bucket of lemons

I am very happy that Iraq was able to hold elections and I hope that this will lead to the formation of a stable government that can restore peace and freedom (and electricity and water and food and medicine) and all those other good things for the Iraqi people.
But does this mean now that it was all worth it? No, it does not.
Even if we were to pull all of our troops out of Iraq tomorrow, which we are not, it would still mean that this little adventure cost the lives of nearly 1,500 U.S. troops and cost taxpayers more than $300 billion. If our nation’s security had been at stake, then there would have been no question of its worth and no price would have been too much. But that was never the case as I have said from the beginning. Even before the start of the war, most of the world agreed that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent or dire threat even to his own neighbors. Only in the fevered mind of George W. Bush and Condi “mushroom cloud” Rice did Hussein rise above the level of a regional thug.
Now that we know without a doubt that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, no nuclear program, no ties to al-Quaeda and no connection to 9/11, the Bush administration has been left defending the pre-emptive military invasion on strictly humanitarian grounds. We have freed the Iraqi people from a horrible dictator and a murderous regime, they say. Sure, that’s wonderful and all, but at this point we are just making lemonade out of a bucket full of lemons.
What makes the Iraqi people so special anyway? Why are we sacrificing the lives of hundreds of our soldiers and putting our nation into debt for the foreseeable future just for their sake? What about the people of North Korea, or Iran, or Syria, or Yemen, or Libya or the dozens of other nations burdened with totalitarian regimes? Are we willing to turn around now and expend the military resources and tax dollars necessary to free them as well? At least if we had put our resources into freeing the people of North Korea we would have had the added bonus of actually eliminating a real nuclear threat, but apparently the North Korean people’s freedom isn’t deemed as important for some reason as the Iraqi people’s freedom.
Bush claims that Iraq will serve as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East and help transform the entire region. Kind of like the “domino effect” that never came about when we pulled out of Vietnam. But if spreading democracy were really so simple why didn’t we just approach our friends the Saudis and get them to adopt a democratic form of government? Couldn’t they have served as the example for the Middle East and wouldn’t that have been a lot less costly? But we are not even pressing them to change their form of government. Why not?
It is clear that the American people would never have signed off on this deal if they had known the truth from the beginning. Our military has done an incredible job under very trying circumstances over in Iraq, but they should never have been put in that situation in the first place. Our military's role is to protect the United States and its interests, not to serve as a giant aid organization to promote the president's geopolitical vision. Putting Saddam Hussein behind bars was not worth the lives of 1,500 U.S. servicemen and $300 billion. I only hope that those costs don’t escalate further before we can finally bring the rest of our troops home.

Why Rhetoric & Rhythm?

I originally wanted to name this site Rhetoric Inc. but someone else had beat me to it when I was first setting up this blog. As you can see here the person who snagged the simple rhetoric.blogspot domain just put up one post and then abandoned it. I’m sure that was the fate of many of the good names for blogs.
So I settled on & Rhythm because of my love of music and because I thought it was neat pairing two words that both begin with Rh since there are only about a dozen such words to begin with.
But why rhetoric? And what is rhetoric anyway?
I was a speech communications major in college before switching to journalism and one of my favorite classes was Rhetoric. It was there that I learned about the art of speaking and writing that would dominate the rest of my professional career. I already knew how to do both fairly well by that point, but I did not have a full appreciation for its long history and importance in the making of Western civilization.

In recent years the term rhetoric has gotten a raw deal. It is most frequently used as a derogatory term that means the opposite of reality. It is almost cliché for someone to dismiss a politician today as someone who spouts rhetoric, not reality.
But rhetoric, according to Aristotle is how we come to understand reality.
A simple definition of rhetoric is “the art of using words skillfully in speaking or writing.”
Aristotle referred to rhetoric as the counterpart to dialectic, which is the art of logical discussion. Aristotle believed that dialectic was the best way to find the truth – by having a back and forth discussion in a logical manner where one person throws out an idea and another person adds to it or trys to counter it or knock it down.
In some ways, blogging is a kind of rhetoric and the discussions that occur in the comments section are the dialectic. I don’t know if we ever arrive at the truth this way, but I think we come closer than if we had stayed cooped up in our own thoughts without every exposing them for someone else to challenge or learn from.