President Gore looks back

I missed seeing Al Gore on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. Fortunately, Crooks and Liars has the video here of President Gore reflecting on his first six years in office. Hilarious.

Playing politics with border security

President Bush’s plan to militarize our southern borders is a disgusting display of election-year pandering by the Worst President Ever.

President Bush will announce plans to deploy "up to 6,000" National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to support border patrol officers...

Nevermind that our National Guard troops have been stretched far beyond their limit by the neverending Quagmire in Iraq. Let’s just look at whether or not this is a good use of U.S. resources.

First, how much will it cost to mobilize 6,000 troops on the border? Where will they sleep? Where will they eat? How long will they have to be there?

Second, is this really a national security crisis that merits taking these part-time soldiers away from their families and their jobs for an unspecified period?

Third, why can’t our Border Patrol do the job their paid to do? Why not just hire some more border patrol agents and leave it at that?

Oooh! That’s a good question! Let’s look at that question for a minute. Here is the FY 2006 Budget for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
They got a 4.5 percent increase which they tout as one of the biggest of any government agency. Surely, you can’t criticize the Bush administration for that.

But wait! Maybe you can...

...in spite of what many feel is a generous budget increase, some security experts are disappointed over the continued lack of manpower at US borders and the lack of resolve to add the expected 10,000 new Border Patrol agents within the next five years....
The budget provides $36.9 million for 210 additional Border Patrol Agents, directly supporting the strategic goal to increase and extend control of the borders between the ports of entry. But critics complain that originally 2,000 border agents were supposed to be hired annually for five years and the 210 agents will not have much positive impact on border security.

So, the CBP requested funds for 2,000 more border patrol officers for 2006 and they got 1/10th of that, or enough for 210.
That doesn’t sound like the Bush administration thought this was all that serious of a crisis just a few months ago if they only funded 1/10th of the number of border patrol positions that had been requested.
But now, all of a sudden, Bush wants to mobilize the National Guard and send 6,000 troops down to the border? What has changed between then and now other than Bush’s plummeting approval rating?

Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, wasn’t too happy with the Bush administration’s proposed budget, although it didn’t get much play at the time.

The Bush administration sent a "hollow" budget to Capitol Hill that does not fulfill its funding commitment to add 1,500 law-enforcement officers to guard the borders against illegal aliens, key Senate appropriators said yesterday.
    "This is a situation of showing a proposal and then hiding the funds, and so we end up with a budget that we've got a $1.6 billion hole in," said Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.
    Facing off against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff during a budget hearing yesterday, Mr. Gregg said the funding priorities of the Bush administration treat border protection like "a stepchild of national defense."
    "I can't think of anything more significant to national defense than protecting our border and making sure that our homeland is secure, and yet the Department of Homeland Security is being starved for funds in crucial areas," Mr. Gregg said.
    "It's a hollow budget and I can't understand it because I've watched the press conferences where the administration has said it's committed to border security and domestic defense, and yet this budget isn't going to get there," Mr. Gregg said.

   This is inexcusable. If President Bush thinks we need 6,000 more bodies guarding our border then we need to provide the requisite funding to get qualified and trained people down there in the agency we already have tasked with doing that job. And they are doing it to the best of their understaffed ability.
In 2005 they apprehended 411,221 individuals attempting to cross the border illegally, up from 336,316 apprehended in 2004.
So they are doing their job, unfortunately the only support they get from this administration is lip service. At least until it serves the president’s political purposes to try and boost his anemic job approval ratings.

I feel safer now

Let me see if I have this straight.

We are going to take all the arms we had been selling to Venezuela and we are going to sell them to Libya.

OK, then.

Buyer’s remorse

I love this poll that shows people prefer Bill Clinton to George W. Bush by a wide margin. It gives me some hope that the electorate is finally recognizing how badly they screwed up during the past two election cycles.

Clinton was favored by greater than 2-to-1 on questions of handling the economy and solving the problems of ordinary Americans. He even bested Bush when it came to ethics and trust.

Who did a better job...

Handling the economy:
63 percent Clinton
26 percent Bush

Solving the problems of ordinary Americans:
62 percent Clinton
25 percent Bush

On foreign policy:
56 percent Clinton
32 percent Bush

On taxes:
51 percent Clinton
35 percent Bush

Handling natural disasters:
51 percent Clinton
30 percent Bush

Handling national security:
46 percent Clinton
42 percent Bush

Who was more honest:
46 percent Clinton
41 percent Bush

But Bush did win in one category:

Who did more to divide the country?
59 percent Bush
27 percent Clinton

I don’t think there is any question today that if the 2004 election were rerun knowing what we know now John Kerry would be president. In fact, if the 2000 election could be rerun, Al Gore would be president, as he should have been anyway.

More NSA snooping

Wow! Remember when Bush said that they were only tapping international phone calls and that all our domestic phone calls were safe? Well, he forgot to mention that the NSA was compiling data on all our domestic calls too.

In a hastily arranged appearance before reporters at the White House, Bush reacted to a USA Today report that says the National Security Agency has been secretly using records provided by the three largest American telephone companies to build a massive database of foreign and domestic phone calls. The program was launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the aim of analyzing calling patterns to detect terrorist activity, the paper reported. The effort involves collecting phone numbers but does not entail recording or eavesdropping on phone conversations, it said.
The NSA declined comment, saying only that it "operates within the law."
In his statement, Bush denied that the government listens to domestic phone calls without court approval and maintained that "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."
"We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said. "Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates."

Is that supposed to make me feel better? Bush says you don’t have anything to worry about unless you are a terrorist or maybe a terrorist sympathizer (i.e. anyone opposed to the Bush administration’s so called “War on Terror”).

I like the lead from this story from Forbes.com:

The allegations that the federal government has been secretly tracking the calls of millions of Americans, aided by three major telephone companies, will doubtless inflame privacy advocates and Democrats.

Got that? Privacy advocates and Democrats will be upset. Republicans are apparently OK with this. The phone companies turn over all your personal phone records to the feds and the Republicans don’t even bat an eye. Amazing!

Well, some Republicans are batting their eyes like Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who says he will call executives of AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon "to see if we can learn some of the underlying facts."
But it remains to be seen if he will follow through with anything other than a whitewash investigation.

Texas Blogs Left and Right

I was flattered the other day to find that my humble blog was included in a wrapup piece on Texas blogs entitled "A Guide To Texas Blogs Left and Right" that Vince Liebowitz of Capitol Annex put together for Dallas Blogs.
Liebowitz did yeoman's work pulling together his list which includes brief descriptions and background info on most of the sites. It is one of the best roundups I have seen and it is clear that Liebowitz is well versed on the Texas blogosphere. He highlights many excellent sites that I had been unfamiliar with.

While no one can pull together a completely comprehensive list of Texas political blogs, I would just point out a few sites that were overlooked in his list. Most prominently in my view is my friend Bill Crawford's excellent All Things Conservative based here in San Antonio which has become a popular hangout for conservatives looking for good news about the war in Iraq. Bill has even landed a regular gig at National Review Online writing a weekly column on that topic. While the site is decidedly conservative, Bill's open-minded tolerance of dissenting views makes it a good place for folks on the right and left to go and debate the issues of the day.
Also on the right-side of the spectrum is my friend Ranten Raven's The View From The Nest? also based here in the Alamo City.
And another Texas Lefty blog that got overlooked is Peter Bryant's excellent B and B with its focus on progressive politics, science and environmental issues.
Also missed was my friend Libertas who blogs at The Price of Liberty is Vigilance His eclectic libertarianism makes him hard to pigeonhole on either the right or left side of the political spectrum, but he is definitely a must read for people on both sides.

Privatization debacle

The Express-News has a lead story today about a state privatization deal gone sour.

Effective immediately, state workers again will be responsible for processing applications for assistance programs such as food stamps and Medicaid after myriad problems resulted with the private company hired to do the job.
Bermuda-based Accenture LLP won an $899 million, five-year contract early last year to take over the state's public assistance eligibility system.

Bermuda-based??? That should have been the first clue that something was seriously wrong with this deal. Companies base themselves in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes, so why would any government entity think that such a company would have the best interests of its citizens in mind?

The story does not give you a clear idea of who should be held responsible for this debacle, but it’s no secret that the Republicans who have taken charge of the state government have always insisted that privatization is the miracle cure for all that ails us. Unfortunately, we are now finding out what a bitter aftertaste that snake oil really has:

State eligibility offices are understaffed because of the departure of thousands of state workers who feared they would lose their jobs when Accenture took over.
Those understaffed state offices now will be required to deal with thousands of cases that are to be transferred out of Accenture's control.

Then there are the workers who were hired by the Bermuda-based company to staff their call centers who are now in limbo:

The system operated by Accenture includes four privately run call centers around the state that eventually will replace hundreds of local offices staffed by state workers. Already, the San Antonio call center, which is to serve a large swath of South Texas, has become the largest in the state, employing more than 500 workers.
It is not clear what other tasks the private workers will be performing because the jobs they were supposed to do will now be done by public employees.

I wonder how much money Texas taxpayers are going to be out as a result of this mess.

The Party of Fiscal Irresponsibility strikes again

Republicans desperate to regain an edge before the mid-term elections have finally settled on an answer: bribe voters with a $70 billion tax cut.

House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that would extend President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while sparing about 15 million middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum tax.

Nevermind that the federal debt is setting new records everyday, cutting taxes (and raising the debt limit) is the only thing this crowd knows how to do. With the Republicans, it’s cake and cookies at every meal, with a big helping of whipped cream on the side. Eat all you want! Don’t worry about tomorrow! That’s the Republican mantra these past five years.

That’s fine if you prefer a weak, emaciated government that is incapable of responding adequately to national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, but if you would prefer to have a government that is strong enough to protect its citizens then we are going to have to put the grown-ups back in charge of things come this November.

E-N discovers blogging - in Austin

I guess all us local San Antonio bloggers just aren't exciting enough for our local newspaper the Express-News. They had to go all the way to Austin today to profile some blogger I'd never heard of for a piece touting the rising popularity of blogging.
Stephanie Klein, who writes a blog called Greek Tragedy got the fawning attention of our local paper mainly because she had already been written up by the New York Times before moving recently to Austin from the Big Apple.
It's not that I'm jealous or anything (ahem), it's just that they might look around sometime and notice that they have some ,fairly prominent and up-and-coming bloggers right here in their own backyard.

Kissing up to China; dissing Taiwan

I'm curious what my conservative friends thought of the Bush administration's intentional snubbing of the Tiawanese president last week.

The United States decided to bar a stopover by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian on his way to Latin America to avoid angering China, whose backing for UN action against Iran is critical, analysts said.
In an apparent rebuff, Chen completely dropped plans to transit in the United States after Washington said he could only make a refueling stop in Alaska rather than New York or San Francisco as requested by him. Chen instead made transit stops in Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam en route to Paraguay and Costa Rica, two of only 25 nations that recognise Taiwan diplomatically.

We won't even let the Taiwanese president stay overnight in the U.S. for fear that it might annoy China and then they might not go along with our war-monging plans against Iran at the U.N.
Is this the same administration that claims that sacrificing thousands of U.S. lives and spending billions in tax dollars to promote democracy is a most worthy goal? And yet we turn our back on democratic Taiwan and shamelessly kowtow to the brutal totalitarians in China so we can advance a questionable foreign policy goal against Iran?
Are the pro-democracy conservatives upset by this? Or do they see it as a necessary sacrifice and compromise toward a larger goal? Which is it?

Movies, movies, movies

It looks like there are a lot of good movies coming out this summer.

Here are the ones currently in the theaters or due to come out soon that I think would be most entertaining:

Mission Impossible III Tom Cruise may be a loopy Scientologist, but he is still a good actor and I really enjoyed the first two films in this series.
The Da Vinci Code All controversy aside, I don’t see how you can go wrong with Ron Howard directing and Tom Hanks starring.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand I’m also a fan of this series and am looking forward to the next installment even if it does have a lame subtitle.
Cars Pixar + Disney = Blockbuster hit. Any questions?
Superman Returns In a brilliant casting move, the director found someone who looks just like Christopher Reeve. That’s all they will need to sell this movie.
James Bond movie In a brilliant casting move, the director found someone who doesn’t look anything like James Bond. That’s all they will need to sell this movie.
Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest Another can’t miss sequel, especially since they kept the original cast together.
United 93 One of the two great stories to come out of 9/11 was the heroic struggle of these airline passengers to divert their hijacked plane from its intended target.
World Trade Center The other great story is about the cop and port authority officer who survived the collapse of one of the towers. Helmed by Oliver Stone who needs a hit to redeem himself after the lackluster response to Alexander.

Of course I’m not likely to see any of these films until they come out on DVD. And I already have a long list of films out on DVD that I want to see:

King Kong
Chronicles of Narnia
Walk the Line
Harry Potter Goblet of Fire
Cinderella Man
Serenity
Fantastic Four
Good Night, Good Luck
Capote
History of Violence
Constant Gardener
Syriana
Munich
The Producers
Chicken Little
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit
Corpse Bride
Sahara

Louis Rukeyser

First John Kenneth Galbraith and now Louis Rukeyser is gone. It is a sad time for fans of popular economics.

Louis Rukeyser, a best-selling author, columnist, lecturer and television host who delivered pun-filled, common-sense commentary on complicated business and economic news, died Tuesday. He was 73.
As host of "Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser" on public TV from 1970 until 2002, Rukeyser took a wry approach to the ups and downs in the marketplace and urged guests to avoid jargon. He brought finance and economics to ordinary viewers and investors, and was rewarded with the largest audience in the history of financial journalism.

My wife grew up listening to Rukeyser every evening as Wall Street Week was her father’s favorite TV show. I came to appreciate the man later in life and was outraged when he was summarily dumped by PBS back in 2002.

In response, I wrote this column for the San Antonio Business Journal.

Ban those laptops

The AP reports that more professors are banning laptops in classrooms. I say more power to them!

As the professor lectured on the law, the student wore a poker face. But that was probably because, under the guise of taking notes on his laptop, the student actually was playing poker - online, using the school's wireless Internet connection.

Well, at least the student showed up for class. That’s more than you can say about most of the students taking my wife’s chemistry classes at UT San Antonio. I think there are something like 200 students enrolled in one class and on any given day about one-third will bother to show up.

It really amazes me what students today think they can get away with. I wasn’t the ideal student when I was in college by any means, but I would at least show up to class 90 percent of the time. I would try and limit myself to no more than one absence per class per semester for any reason.
But these students today only show up to take the exam and then they have the gall to complain when they make a failing grade. They don’t attend lectures, they don’t do their homework and then they expect the professor to curve the grades or give them enough extra credit to slip by. It is really pathetic.

Colbert’s devastating satire

Stephen Colbert’s performance at the Washington Correspondents dinner is already legendary. It was delicious satire as has rarely been pulled off for a captive audience at that level of society in Washington.

It was a performance so masterful and struck home so forcefully that it left the Washington elite politicos and media dumbfounded. Some responded indignantly, whining that Colbert had “gone over the line.” Others tried desperately to ignore it the next day like New York Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller who didn’t even mention Colbert in her story the next day. Absolutely pathetic. That’s like going to a Bruce Springsteen concert and writing your review about the opening act.

If the Washington elite media was anxious to downplay Colbert’s performance, it’s not hard to understand why.
Here is Colbert, in character as the right-wing talkshow host he parodies on his Comedy Central show:

I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story:  the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason:  they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Ouch!! No wonder Busmiller wanted to ignore Colbert’s tour-de-force performance. It was aimed right at her.

Fortunately, Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post has the best round-up of the story to somewhat make up for the deafening silence and blackout it has recieved elsewhere.

President Bush on Saturday night had the audience at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in stitches. With doppelganger comedian Steve Bridges alongside -- playing his inner self -- Bush poked gentle fun of his own mangling of the English language, his belligerence and his feelings about the media.
Then Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert ripped those stitches out.
Colbert was merciless, reserving his most potent zingers for the people in spitting distance: The president who took the nation to war on false pretenses and the press corps that let him do it.

The boozy bonhomie of the annual event is intended to serve as a balm for the often tense relationship between the White House and the reporters who cover it.
Bush largely delivered on his side of the bargain. Colbert delivered something else entirely.

Colbert stayed in character as the bombastic, over-the-top, right-wing cable TV host he plays on the Colbert Report.
"Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us; we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias. . . .
"The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man's beliefs never will...

You can watch the latter half of Colbert’s performance here (Including the video-taped routine with Helen Thomas).
And you can read the entire transcript here.

I think Billmon sums it all up best here.

Colbert's routine was designed to draw blood -- as good political satire should. Colbert used satire the way it's used in more openly authoritarian societies: as a political weapon, a device for raising issues that can't be addressed directly. He dragged out all the unmentionables -- the Iraq lies, the secret prisons, the illegal spying, the neutered stupidity of the lapdog press -- and made it pretty clear that he wasn't really laughing at them, much less with them. It may have been comedy, but it also sounded like a bill of indictment, and everybody understood the charges.

The fine art of Bush-bashing

President Bush’s approval rating has been under 50 percent for more than a year now and is currently at an all-time low, so it is not surprising that there is a lot of Bush-bashing going on. But a lot of these critics are Johnny-come-latelys who are just jumping on the bandwagon now that it is deemed OK by the CW to show your disapproval of the president’s policies (although even now you still risk being labeled a traitor for doing so).

But if you want to see real quality Bush-bashing of the highest level, you have to turn to the masters of the craft who have been honing their talents from the start. Start with Frank Rich who sliced and diced Bush in this Sunday’s NYTimes with his usual razor-sharp eloquence.

LIKE the hand that suddenly pops out of the grave at the end of "Carrie," the past keeps coming back to haunt the Bush White House. Last week was no exception. No sooner did the Great Decider introduce the Fox News showman anointed to repackage the same old bad decisions than the spotlight shifted back to Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury room, where Karl Rove testified for a fifth time. Nightfall brought the release of an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll with its record-low numbers for a lame-duck president with a thousand days to go and no way out.

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly as Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox News performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propaganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole and nothing but, can set it free.

All too fittingly, Tony Snow's appointment was announced just before May Day, a red-letter day twice over in the history of the Iraq war. It was on May 1 three years ago that Mr. Bush did his victory jig on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. It was May 1 last year that The Sunday Times of London published the so-called Downing Street memo. These events bracket all that has gone wrong and will keep going wrong for this president until he comes clean.

To mark the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion last month, the White House hyped something called Operation Swarmer, "the largest air assault" since the start of the war, complete with Pentagon-produced video suitable for the evening news. (What the operation actually accomplished as either warfare or P.R. remains a mystery.) It will take nothing less than a replay of D-Day with the original cast to put a happy gloss on tomorrow's anniversary. Looking back at "Mission Accomplished" now is like playing that childhood game of "What's wrong with this picture?" It wasn't just the banner or the "Top Gun" joyride or the declaration of the end of "major combat operations" that was bogus. Everything was fake except the troops.

"We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools," Mr. Bush said on that glorious day. Three years later we know, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers, that our corrupt, Enron-like Iraq reconstruction effort has yielded at most 20 of those 142 promised hospitals. But we did build a palace for ourselves. The only building project on time and on budget, USA Today reported, is a $592 million embassy complex in the Green Zone on acreage the size of 80 football fields. Symbolically enough, it will have its own water-treatment plant and power generator to provide the basic services that we still have not restored to pre-invasion levels for the poor unwashed Iraqis beyond the American bunker.

John Kenneth Galbraith

One of my heros has passed on. Liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith died at the ripe old age of 97. I had been hoping he would make it to 100.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97.
Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said.
During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India.

I just recently noted that Galbraith headed a list of prominent 90 year olds. He was also on my list of the 100 people who have most influenced me during my life.

The one time I got to see John Kenneth Galbraith in person was when I still considered myself to be a Republican. I was at Texas A&M and attended a special program that featured William F. Buckley Jr., the prominent conservative I knew from his PBS show "Firing Line". I attended the event wanting to see Buckley and had no idea who the fellow was he would be debating. As it turned out, his debate partner was Galbraith and they were arguing over the merits of having a strong federal government, with Galbraith naturally taking the pro-government side.
While I didn't immediately change my views after that event, I did walk away with a favorable impression of Galbraith and over time I gained more and more respect for him as my opinion of Buckley declined.
Galbraith was a prolific author and today I own about a dozen of his books. But then, that was about the only way to get his viewpoint. While Buckley had his own TV show, his own magazine and a nationally syndicated column, Galbraith's only outlet was through his books which I would pick up at Half-Price Bookstore every chance I got.
It's a shame that more people end up being exposed to that blowhard Buckley than they are to Galbraith. I think it explains in part why the electorate is so foolish as to put incompentent people like George W. Bush in the White House.

Looking for someone to blame

I’ve said before that Republicans would probably be happier once they are back in the minority. They need Democrats to be in power so that they will have someone to blame for all the countries problems.
Somehow blaming everything on outspoken Hollywood liberals like Michael Moore or Jane Fonda who have zero influence in Washington just doesn’t quite cut it. So now we have a concerted effort to shine the light of culpability on Mary McCarthy, a veteran CIA analyst who was just 10 days away from retirement when she was “fired” for undisclosed contacts with the media and for allegedly leaking classified materials — a charge that she denies.
Rightwingers have been making a big deal out of the fact that McCarthy gave $2,000 to the Kerry campaign during the last election cycle and they have insinuated darkly that she sought to use her insider status at the Agency to damage the White House and hurt Bush’s chances at re-election. But the CIA has said she was not believed to be the person who exposed the CIA’s rendition program and its secret prisons in Eastern Europe, and they are apparently not taking the case all that seriously. They are not charging her with any kind of crime, nor are they launching a specific investigation targeting her. They are not even trying to penalize her by taking away her pension, thus the firing 10 days before her retirment has practically no ill effect on her whatsoever other than causing some embarrassment and spreading her name all over the news.
Meanwhile, these same rightwingers while pointing out McCarthy’s political ties have conveniently ignored the fact that the person who chose to fire her is Bush’s hand-picked choice for CIA director Porter Goss, a right-wing Republican and former congressman from Florida.
The Washington Post the other day had an editorial criticizing Goss for his selectivity in going after McCarthy while doing nothing on many other more pressing matters.

“He has taken no disciplinary action against CIA personnel identified by his inspector general as having played a part in the failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He has taken no action against CIA interrogators known to have participated in the torture and killing of foreign detainees, or against those who knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions in Iraq.”

So the Mary McCarthy firing seems little more than a PR ploy by Mr. Goss. But conservatives like my friend Bill Crawford are almost desperate to make it into something much more convoluted than that.

Haloscan update

My Haloscan problems persist, but at least it looks like someone has finally identified the problem. Now I am just wating to find out if there is a solution.
Last week after I paid to upgrade my Haloscan account my comment links beneath each post began randomly disappearing throughout the day. I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out how to correct it to no avail. I was on the verge of dumping Haloscan and going with Blogger comments when I finally received this response from the administrator at Haloscan in their Help Forum:

One of the 3 servers that handles the comment loads seems to not be working correctly for just your account for some reason. I'll look into this and get back to you.

Just on my account? Aren’t I lucky!
At least I know now that it is nothing that I did. Hopefully they will figure out how to correct it and I will just be patient for a few more days.

White fluffy stuff

I can’t believe they are hiring a guy named Snow to be the president’s new press secretary.

Definition of Snow:
Slang To overwhelm with insincere talk, especially with flattery.

I think it says everything you need to know about Fox News that President Bush taps one of their news anchors to be his spokesman. Fox is the closest thing we have to a state-run media in this country.

32 percent

Bush just keeps falling and falling.

Bush's approval ratings slide to new low

President Bush's approval ratings have sunk to a personal low, with only a third of Americans saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, a national poll released Monday said.
In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's performance, 60 percent said they disapprove...

That’s pretty bad. And there is not much that Bush can do to turn things around as historian Sean Wilentz notes in his recent piece for Rolling Stone.

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Bush’s problem is that he was elevated way above his level of competence when the Supreme Court annointed him president in 2000. He was already a miserable failure as a businessman at that point, running several companies into the ground before being saved each time by wealthy Bush-family friends. But he had done OK as governor of Texas, a state with a weak governor system that invests most of the governing power with the lt. governor. And before that he was at his best as the figure-head owner (2 percent) of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
But Washington, D.C., has proved to be his undoing. I think he went to Washington with the best of intentions, truly believing his own speechwriters who told him he was a “uniter and not a divider.” But what he found was a political environment that was already bitterly divided over the Clinton impeachment fiasco and he decided to try to get along by following his gut instincts, which were never that good to begin with.

The best that Bush can hope for now is that the electoral system is already so skewed in favor of incumbents and the wealthy that it will prevent the kind of political sea change that shoved Democrats into the minority two-years into the Clinton presidency. Only by holding on to a slim Republican majority will Bush manage to keep the lid on the numerous festering scandals that have plagued his incompetent administration.

Star Trek on the rebound

I was glad to see this bit of news the other day. It looks like the Star Trek franchise will be back in 2008 with a new feature film helmed by the guy who is doing the latest Mission Impossible movie. It will reportedly feature an all new cast as it looks at the early days of Star Trek (but not as early as the now defunct “Enterprise” series) when the young James T. Kirk and Spock first meet.
I wonder if they will give William Shatner a cameo?

Haloscan problems

I've been having some problems with my comment links disappearing ever since I paid to upgrade my Haloscan service. The links seem to randomly disappear throughout the day and I haven't any clue as to what is going on. This has not been a problem at my other non-upgraded blog. The folks at Haloscan have been less than helpful throughout all of this: Not responding to my e-mails, ignoring my posts in their technical service forum, and then finally giving me a weak "it's not our fault" response on Friday.

So anyway, I'm seriously considering switching to a different comment service although I hate to lose access to all my old comment, but I may not have any other choice.

The Decider

"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best." — President Bush

When I first heard that quote from Bush it brought to mind an image of the dog Napoleon from Disney's The Aristocats.

"Wait a minute. I'm the leader! I'm the one that says when we go. OK, let's go. Charge!"

Of course, in my head I change "leader" to "decider" and change "we go" to "Rumsfeld goes" and so forth.

A weak effort at parody, I know. That's what comes with living with a 2-year-old who watches almost nothing but Disney movies, I guess.

But other folks out there have done a far better job of lampooning this newest Bushism. Frequent commenter Ann pointed me to this reworking of a popular Dr. Suess tale.

Also, via Atrios, comes this wickedly funny version of the Beatles' "I Am The Walrus".

Interestingly, "decider" is actually a legitimate word according to my dictionary, but it is certainly obscure.

Adjusting to reality

“I changed my mind as part of a necessary adjustment to reality,” — Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama, the famous neocon intellectual, did a brave thing recently: He changed his mind about the Iraq war.
In an Op-ed piece that ran in a number of papers over the weekend, Fukuyama makes some excellent points that are sure to rankle folks on both the right and left ends of the political spectrum.
First he says that “no one should be required to apologize for having supported intervention in Iraq before the war.”
I don’t necessarily agree with that, but fine, whatever.
But then he goes on to make this salient point:

The debate over the war shouldn't have been whether it was morally right to topple Hussein (which it clearly was), but whether it was prudent to do so given the possible costs and potential consequences of intervention and whether it was legitimate for the U.S. to invade in the unilateral way that it did.

I’ve made that same point here many times. Just because I opposed launching a pre-emptive strike and a massive land invasion of Iraq does not mean that I supported keeping Hussein in power anymore than Bush’s decision not to invade North Korea three years ago means he supports keeping Kim Jong Il in power.

Fukuyama makes a lot of other good points and I would urge everyone to go and read the whole article, but the part that struck me the most was right at the end where he bemoans the intransigence of most political opinion today:

Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality — even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.

This is sad but true in many respects. I know I have been guilty in the past of cheering on my “team” when I have not adequately studied and researched the issues being debated. Sometimes we all need to adjust our opinions to better align ourselves with reality.

Falling Georgie

Here is an entertaining timewaster for all those Bush bashers out there.
Just refresh the page to watch him fall again and again and again...

Happy Easter

I hope everyone had a nice Easter weekend. We went to Houston and had my little girl christened at the same church where her brother was christened two years ago and where my wife and I were married 16 years ago. By the same minister, no less.
My sister and her family were unable to make it, unfortunately, but they sent a whole bunch of Easter goodies and christening gifts in the mail. My mom did make it so the kids had the full attention of both sets of grandparents.
My in-laws then treated everyone to a brunch at a nearby cafe and afterwards we went back to their house for an easter egg hunt. My little boy is 2.5 and his cousins are 3 and 1.5 respectively, so it’s a great age to watch them running around in the backyard excitedly looking for plastic eggs in the grass.
We always end up with tons of food whenever the family gets together like that and we came home with a cooler full of leftovers. Another big treat was the delicious Easter cookies that my sister-in-law made. Now if I can just convince her to make those cookies on other occasions as well.

Rumsfeld is doomed

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just got the kiss of death from President Bush.

President Bush said Friday that embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has his "full support and deepest appreciation."

We all know what that means... In a few days, Rummy will be explaining that he needs to spend more time with his family, etc. etc.

Old comments are back

I finally ponied up some moolah to upgrade my Haloscan account so now all the old comments are back. Hurray!
Up until now, Haloscan had been dumping comments into a black hole after three months. The only annoying thing is that the comment number under each archived blog post still shows zero. So you don’t know if or how many comments are on any post and just have to click to find out. I’m not sure if this can be fixed, but I will check on it.

Kinky polls

The San Antonio Business Journal has an online poll up showing Kinky Friedman winning the governor’s race in a landslide with 53 percent of the vote compared to 24 percent for Rick Perry, 14 percent for Carole Keeton Strayhorn and an anemic 5 percent for Democrat Chris Bell.

The poll is no doubt a bit skewed today by the fact that Kinky is touting the results on his web site. But he was still winning with a healthy 40 percent of the vote before legions of Kinksters began flooding the site and driving up his numbers. Kinky also won a similar poll conducted last month by the Austin Business Journal.

While polls in general and certainly online polls are not the most accurate barometers for what will actually happen in November, it still raises the possibility that Kinky could be a big factor in the election. I think there is a good chance that Perry will not be able to reach 50 percent of the vote in November and will be forced into a run-off and it looks increasingly likely that his runoff opponent could be Kinky Friedman.

What will this mean for Texas? I’m not sure. It’s not great news for Democrats if their candidate comes in third or fourth in the election. But I’ve never held out very high hopes for Chris Bell. While I will vote for him in the general election, I just don’t think a one-term congressman has the stature or the name recognition necessary to pull off a victory in a statewide race like this. I hope I’m wrong. But that’s why I was hoping that John Sharp would have jumped into the race and that’s why I voted for Bob Gammage in the primary.
And while I’m not a “Kinkster,” I have to say that if the race came down to a Perry vs. Friedman runoff I would find myself asking “Why the hell not?”

UPDATE & CORRECTION

In comments, someone much wiser than myself points out there are no runoffs in general elections. D'oh! That shoots my theory out of the water. I don't see anyway now that Kinky can win the governership. It looks like we'll be stuck with Rick Perry for another four years. Damn.
Wait! Maybe if Chris Bell drops out and the Democrats cross-endorse Kinky and, and... Oh! Nevermind.

Local blogger additions

We have a prominent new addition to the local blogging community. District 10 City Councilman Chip Haass has launched a blog called Conversations With Chip at his regular web site.
In a news release, Haass said he plans to use the blog to take a stand on various public issues and to provide “yet another tool to listen to families and business owners” in his district.
So far he has three posts up covering a proposed bond referendum, the Animal Care Services Department and the city’s effort to land a professional sports franchise. The site does have comments, so head on over and give it a looksee.

Another new blogger since the last time I did my San Antonio blogging update is my friend Mack Harrison who runs Valley In Exile. Mack and I used to work together at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal many moons ago. He was until just recently the opinion page editor for the McAllen Monitor, but he is currently attending law school at St. Mary’s University here in the Alamo City. Mack’s blog is very much focused on happenings in the Rio Grande Valley so if you want to keep up with what’s going on to our south be sure and check it out.

Bush's Heartland values

Here at what may be the low point of the Bush presidency, it seems an odd time to begin touting a project to restore the old Bush family home in Midland.

There is no denying that people in West Texas are diehard Bush backers. I’m sure a lot of the 38 percent of the U.S. population that still thinks W. is doing a bang-up job in Washington resides thereabouts. But it seems they are in a bit of a quandry about how to promote the Bush family house:

Promoters of the house as a historic landmark acknowledge that defining its particular story line has not been easy. Although the house itself suggests modest beginnings, the young couple that occupied it belonged to one of the most powerful families in contemporary American history, combining the wealth and power of Wall Street with a record of high public office.

George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush, had been a U.S. senator from Connecticut, for instance, and the family tree included an original partner of financier J.P. Morgan. In some ways, the family compound on the ocean at Kennebunkport, Maine, may be a more authentic symbol of who the Bushes are.

"We've understood throughout the project that we cannot portray them as coming from a lifting-yourselves-by-the-bootstraps background with no resources," said Bill Scott, a Midland real estate broker and one of the organizers of the Bush home project. "We do not want to portray them as coming from humble backgrounds."

Instead, in addition to honoring the family that — perhaps more than even oil and high school football — put Midland on the map, developers suggest that this is where the Bush family may have learned Heartland values.

Of course, those Heartland values. That’s why the Bush clan moved out to dusty West Texas, not so much to make their fortune, which they already had, but to ground themselves in the American Heartland values that would give them the political spit-shine that they needed to make themselves more politically viable and to distance themselves from their real New England patrician roots.

There is no doubt that it worked. Much of George W.’s political success can be attributed to his image as a West Texas good ol’ boy. Nevermind that he went to private schools in Andover and then on to Yale and Harvard, when people think of Bush they think of him in boots and jeans and wearing a cowboy hat.

The Bush’s have ridden that wave a long way and today you will find no place where Bush loyalty runs stronger than in solid Red-State West Texas.


So then, how does Bush repay these fine people for giving his political career the gloss of midwestern authenticity that it required? Why, by giving them the back of his hand, of course. I still can’t get over the fact that Bush would put his presidential library anywhere but in West Texas. What an ingrate! Texas Tech University in Lubbock had by far the best bid of any place seeking to host the library. It would have been the ideal place for the Bush library, in the town where Bush Sr. would often turn for poll results favorable to his presidency and where Bush Jr. launched his political career with a run for Congress.
But now after all the excitement and anticipation they are left heartbroken and disappointed.

Immigration question

Via Eschaton, I see that The Rude Pundit has an intresting question about the path to U.S. citizenship taken by Bush’s Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.
It appears that Gutierrez and his family were illegal immigrants when they came to the U.S. in the early 1960s and then benefited from an amnesty program in 1966 that granted them citizenship.
I would think something like that would be of particular interest in light of the recent debate over immigration reform.

Defending Democrats

As a rule, I don't feel compelled to jump up and defend every statement made by every Democrat or outspoken liberal on the planet.

Whether the verbal perpetrator is Al Sharpton or Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan, I'm more likely to shrug and say 'so what' when someone complains about something they said that has stirred up criticism from the right. It's not like these people are in any kind of elected or elevated position within the Democratic Party.

Even when it is an elected Democrat, like Rep. Cynthia McKinney, I would still point out that she has little to no influence within the party.

Now if the offending bit of verbage sprang from the mouth of Howard Dean, John Kerry, Al Gore, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, then there is more of a necessity to offer a defense, or at least a clarification that one does not always agree with everything the party bosses have to say.

But on the whole, those of us among the 62 percent of Americans who think Bush is doing a lousy job as president don't always agree on the fine points and the details.

Kerry's little 10-point plan

John Kerry has been on the attack recently starting with this op-ed piece in the NY Times and now today a report of sharply criticizing the Bush administration at a political conference in New York.

"The Bush administration is wondering when Iraq will have a functioning government. I want to know when we're going to have a functioning government," Mr. Kerry said.

The Times article says at one point Kerry offered a "little 10-point plan" for Democrats in response to criticisms that they don't have an agenda for the nation. I thought the list, while obviously needing more details on most points, does a good job of summarizing the key differences and areas of dispute between Democrats and Republicans today.
Here is the plan:

1. Tell the truth.
2. Fire the incompetents.
3. Find Osama bin Laden and secure our ports and our homeland.
4. Bring our troops home from Iraq.
5. Obey the law and protect our civil rights.
6. Support health care
7. Support education
8. Support lobbying reform
9. Support alternatives to oil
10. Reduce the deficit.

A fickle fan

I should have learned long ago to base my sports allegiances on the teams and the cities rather than on the individual players. That way I wouldn’t get soured on a sport each year when I learn that half the players I liked are no longer on my favorite team. Some people are diehard fans of a team every year regardless of who is on the team - Cubs fans and Red Sox fans tend to be like that. But I would always get too attached to individual players such that when they left, so did my loyalty for the team.

I suppose I’ve always rooted for the Texas teams because it was my home state, but calling them my favorites would be a stretch. Growing up on military bases and moving around the country in the 1970s made it hard to form an attachment with struggling teams like the Houston Astros, the Texas Rangers and the Houston Oilers. For one thing, I rarely got to see them play since we lived so far away, and secondly they had no standout players back then and never were in contention for a pennant or a Super Bowl.
The Dallas Cowboys were the exception. Roger Staubach was my hero and the fact that he played for a Texas team made it easy to call them my favorites.
But baseball was another story. My favorite team from my youth was the Cincinnatti Reds because I loved Johnny Bench and Pete Rose. At the time, my father was stationed at Grissom AFB in Indiana and I could often see games featuring the Reds on TV. But I never had any connection to Cincinnatti, so when the Big Red Machine was dismantled in the latter part of the ‘70s I lost interest in the team.

I didn’t really have a “favorite” team again until 1998 when Chuck Knoblauch was traded to the New York Yankees. I had a personal connection with Knoblauch in that we both attended Texas A&M at the same time where I got to see him play and he had been one of my wife’s high school classmates at Bellaire High School in Houston. During Knoblauch’s first year in the majors in 1991 he helped the Minnesota Twins win the World Series and was voted Rookie of the Year. When he went to the Yankees, something seemed to click with the team and they went on to win three World Series championships in a row in dominating fashion.
So for a while I was a big time Yankees fan. Even after Knoblauch had his throwing problems (and ended up being benched and then traded to Kansas City where he ended his career in obsurity,) I continued to root for the Yankees because I had become attached to the other players on the team - Paul O’Neil, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Orlando Hernandez, and so on.

But once again I am torn. The Yankees are still a good team with a lot of great players (but not the chemistry they had in ‘98-’00), but the only people left from the time I was a big fan are Jeter, Posada and Bernie Williams (on the verge of retirement). Even the coaching staff has changed with the exception of Joe Torre.
So do I continue rooting for the Yankees, or find someone else? (I had considered becoming a Texas Rangers fan a while back, but then they turned around the next year and traded Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, etc. and I said the heck with it.)
Last year I decided to root for the Astros in earnest. I thought it was pretty neat when they picked up Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens from the Yankees so I decided to follow them for a while. Until San Antonio gets a team, the Astros are the closest thing to a home team for me now so I will keep rooting for them. But they haven’t risen to the level where they would replace the Big Red Machine or the ‘98-’00 Yankees in my estimation.

A&M gets Hammered

I knew there was a reason why I never liked Tom DeLay from the first time I heard of him.

Wikipedia has this interesting tidbit from DeLay’s past:

“...he had previously been expelled from Baylor University for drinking and vandalism (he was caught painting a building at Texas A&M green and gold, Baylor's colors).”

I wonder which building he was defacing? It’s a wonder he didn’t get strung up by the students after he was caught.

Just to put this in perspective, DeLay got a deferrment from the draft so that he could attend Med school at Baylor where he drank, partied and ultimately got kicked out. While there, he decided to vandalize the school (A&M) that was training many of the military officers who would fight in the war he was avoiding.

Years later, DeLay was apparently still resentful of the school that caught him vandalizing its property as well as the school that kicked him out over that incident. Speaking to a group attending a conference at First Baptist Church in Pearland, DeLay advised them not to send their kids to Baylor or A&M. Why? Because in DeLay’s opinion they aren’t good Christian schools since they don’t teach creationism.

The Virginian

Speaking of rats and sinking ships...
All good liberals are doing the Snoopy dance today to celebrate another great victory for the forces of light and goodness.

Rep. Tom DeLay, the former House Republican leader so powerful he was nicknamed "The Hammer," said Tuesday he will resign from Congress and drop out of his re-election race to protect his congressional seat from a Democratic victory.

In a videotaped announcement, DeLay credits liberal Democrats with his decision to turn tail and scurry away.

"I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative personal campaign," DeLay said.

While I would love to take full credit for this, this is just another dodge by the master of political manipulation. If you watched the video, you may have noticed DeLay’s lips moving which is usually a good indication that he is lying.
The truth of the matter is that with his second close aide now being fitted for an orange jumpsuit, DeLay will be needing to focus all of his attention on keeping his butt out of jail.

Meanwhile, it looks like DeLay is not only vacating his Congressional seat, he is abandoning the great state of Texas and changing his permanent residency to Virginia. This is apparently a manuever to allow Republicans to pick a replacement for his spot on the Nov. general election ballot.

(DeLay) said he will change his legal residence to his condominium in Alexandria, Va., from his modest two-story home on a golf course here in the 22nd District of Texas. "I become ineligible to run for election if I'm not a resident of the state of Texas," he said, turning election law to his purposes for perhaps on last time. State Republican officials will then be able to name another Republican candidate to face Democrat Nick Lampson, a former House members who lost his seat in a redistricting engineered by DeLay.

It’s just as well. As the Dixie Chicks might say, I was always embarrassed that Tom DeLay was from Texas. Good riddance.

Doing what he does best

President Bush was out today doing something that I fully support. He was throwing out the first pitch of the new baseball season.
As a former part-owner of a Major League Baseball franchise, I think Bush is imminently suited to this task and therefore I’d like to suggest that he make throwing out first pitches the priority of his administration for the rest of his term. He should plan on throwing out the first pitch at every game throughout the entire season. This will keep him fairly busy, so he will need to pass on those other bothersome tasks of governing to someone else. Deadeye Dick Cheney is clearly not mentally or emotionally stable enough for such a task, so I say let Condi have a go at it. Lord knows she couldn’t do a worse job and it will also give her the practice she needs so she can be ready to run against Hillary in 2008.
This shift of priorities would also help improve Bush’s dismal poll ratings which might even hit the 50 percent mark again before he leaves office.
Take my advice, Mr. President! Let’s Play Ball!!!

Broken contracts

My conservative friend Bill Crawford now has a regular gig writing a weekly column for National Review Online that purports to show all the good things happening in Iraq that the “mainstream media” has allegedly failed to report on.
I think that is wonderful for Bill and I offer him my hearty congratulations.

But what I don’t understand is why Bill and all the other ardent war supporters aren’t pulling their hair out over stories like this one.

BAGHDAD -- A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

Is that the best we can do!?! Two years and $200 million and they can only complete 20 out of 142 health clinics as promised?
And apparently the Bush administration is fine with it. We are going to pay the contractor, Parsons Inc., the full amount and not hold them accountable for the unfinished work. Furthermore, we apparently have no plans to expend any more funds to have the work completed. Officials in Iraq are just hoping some foreign donors will step in and help fill the gaps.

I said a while back that Bush does not deserve the credit he has been given for rebuilding Iraq because it is clear that he never intended to commit the kind of financial resources necessary to do the job. Bush and Co. were half expecting the Iraq invasion to go something like the invasion of Grenada, a painless exercize meant only to boost Republican electoral prospects for the upcoming mid-term elections. What they got was an extended Vietnam-like quagmire that has engulfed all of our military resources and threatens to drag on for countless years to come.

Kevin Drum at Political Animal calls the war supporters’ bluff today, demanding to know specifically what they are willing to do to “win” this war.

So: what's the plan, hawks? "Whatever it takes" is just cheap talk. Are you suggesting higher taxes to fund a dramatic increase in military end strength? A draft? A ground invasion of Iran? A permanent military occupation of the entire Middle East?

Because that's probably what it would take. Right now, nearly a thousand Iraqis are dying every month, the per capita equivalent of about 100,000 deaths per year if this were taking place in the United States. And keep in mind that this is the result of a mere low level civil war, not the real thing. What happens when full scale civil war breaks out and the U.S. military is stuck in the middle?

What's the plan then?

No, Kevin, of course they would never raise taxes. Republicans don’t raise taxes, they just raise the debt limit.

Anti-immigration nonsense

I can't believe they said this.

'Let the prisoners pick the fruits'

I'm so glad these Republican yahoos are holding press conferences to spout their ignorance. The public really needs to see what kind of people we have running the House today.

UPDATE
Here is my conservative friend Mark Harden’s response from comments:

"Let the illegal aliens pick up the trash along the highways" instead of community service prisoners, then.

One thing about those protest marches. Wait, two things. First, they were about as "spontaneous" as an Imam-inspired crowd of Muslims storming out of the mosque after Friday prayers to scream "Death to the Jews!". Particularly high school students cutting class to be involved. How amazing they would do that! Second, some claim it's not possible to deport 11 million illegals - maybe we can start by rounding them up 400,000 at a time at these marches. Third, the comparison to civil rights marchers is logically flawed. Blacks marched in the 60s for civil rights that were due to them, which they were not receiving. These people are illegally here...they currently have no civil rights that are being unfairly denied them. So, you can say they are marching to convince legislators to provide them these rights, but they are not marching in the same sense as the civil rights marchers. [Preemptive response: maintain proper distinction between civil rights and human rights. Yes, we should be kind to these illegals...as we deport them.]

OK, so that was three things. So arrest me. Besides, laws aren't meant to be enforced if enough people ignore them.

First, they probably would pick up the trash along the highways if we would pay them a fair wage. Second, the idea of using prisoners to pick fruit would be an unprecedented use of forced labor to benefit a private enterprise - unprecedented at least since the time of slavery and indentured servitude. That is unless Dana Rohrabaher and his supporters are really communists and are calling for nationalization of our agricultural industry.

Now as to the marchers, no, of course they were not spontaneous. These people don’t pay that close of attention (or any at all) to what is going on in Washington. They had to be riled up - in this case by Spanish-language radio stations. But once aroused, the crowds are responding angrily to what they perceive as an attack on their heritage and their worth as human beings. This business of carrying the Mexican flag, which has gotten many on the right riled up, is no different than those good ol’ boys down south running around waving the Rebel flag from the back of their pickup trucks. It’s a symbol of defiance and cultural pride mixed into one, not an attack on the U.S.

Finally, I think there is a valid comparison between these protests and the ones for Civil Rights for blacks. In each case, you have a large segment of our society that is or was used for cheap labor, that has subsequently been left disenfranchised. In one case, the cheap laborers were forcibly brought to this country, in the other case they came on their own. Either way, they are here to stay whether we like it or not.

Still alive and kicking

I had heard about this website before but just today decided to check it out.
It seems kind of morbid, but it is really quite facinating. Just check out the list of people still living who are 85 and above. You will be surprised to learn that some people on the list are still alive, and shocked to learn that other people are that old.

Here is a sample:

John Kenneth Galbraith (97) The New Deal economist and prolific author of popular books on economics. I own a large collection of his works and got to see him in person when I was in college when he was touring around the country doing one-on-one debates with William F. Buckley.
Michael DeBakey (97) The famous heart-transplant surgeon from Houston.
Dolores Hope (96) The widow of Bob Hope who died a few years ago at age 100.
Karl Malden (94) The actor who was Michael Douglas’ older partner on the hit ‘70s cop show Streets of San Francisco.
Studs Terkel (93) Another prolific author and interviewer whose many works have found a place in my library.
Milton Friedman (93) Nobel Prize winning economist and proponent of right-wing free-market theories. Is in a contest with Galbraith to see who can outlive the other.
Lady Bird Johnson (93) Beloved former first lady and widow of LBJ.
Former President Gerald Ford (92) He made news recently when he went to the hospital with a touch of pneumonia, but he apparently pulled through and is back out on the golf course.
Harry Morgan (90) The actor who portrayed Col. Potter on the M*A*S*H TV series.
Sargent Shriver (90) Democratic vice presidential candidate who married a Kennedy and became father-in-law to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Augusto Pinochet (90) Facist dictator of Chile.
Eli Wallach (90) Actor who played Tuco (the Ugly) in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The list of Octogenarians is equally interesting, but I am out of time for now.

Fun with photography

Sometimes it amazes me what people can do with the Internet.
Case in point:

Yesterday somebody noticed this picture on the web site of a Republican running for Congress in California. The guy claimed it was a picture of downtown Baghdad and went on to say that it demonstrates that media reports of chaos and turmoil there are overblown and just flat wrong.

But then some people on the web started looking more closely at the photo. They noticed a conspicuous absense of Arabic on any of the visible signs in the photo. They note that the girl in the picture is not wearing a head scarf and even more scandalously is wearing a strapless dress!
Soon there were allegations going around the web that the photo was not of Baghdad. But where is it and how could you ever prove it?

Well, amazingly, earlier today someone over at Daily Kos tracked down a photo of the same street scene from a slightly different angle making clear that the scene is not that of wartorn Baghdad, but a peaceful suburb in Istanbul, Turkey.

As Atrios was quick to note: it’s Istanbul Not Baghdadinople

Needless to say, the lying Republican (is that redundant?) was forced to pull the picture off of his web site.

Facing the music

I’ve picked up a lot of new music recently including the new albums by the Rolling Stones (A Bigger Bang), Paul McCartney (Chaos and Creation), and Bruce Springsteen (Devil in Dust). I also finally picked up the latest U2 album that won all of the Grammy Awards.
But even with all this new music, I find myself turning everyday to listen to a long-gone band from the early ‘70s that I discovered recently when perusing the record section at my local public library.

I found a four-disc compilation of The Faces, a short-lived British band that featured frontman Rod Stewart and lead guitarist Ron Wood, and I’ve been completely blown away. The music is fun, catchy and rocks harder than I expected when I first picked it up.
I already had a copy of Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells A Story” which was recorded about the same time with many of the same band members, so this collection is like finding a treasure trove of material in that same vein.

The Faces could be described as the second-best bluesy early 70s English rock act - after the Rolling Stones, of course. It’s given me renewed respect for Rod Stewart and especially for Ron Wood, who I had previously only known as the latter-day replacement with the Rolling Stones.

It’s a shame they didn’t stick together longer, but sometimes the creative spark only lasts a short time and then everyone has to go their separate ways to find new inspiration.

White House in turmoil

President Bush is shaking up his staff as expected and the first to go is Chief of Staff Andy Card.

Here, from the NYTimes, is a quick summary of recent developments in the Bush White House under Card’s watch:

...his stewardship of the Bush team had come under question in recent months after a series of mishaps, including the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, the slow public disclosure of Vice President Cheney’s shooting accident and the unexpected Republican revolt over a plan to turn management at a half dozen ports to an Arab-owned company.

And that doesn’t even mention the things that have really made Bush unpopular this year such as the neverending quagmire in Iraq or their bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

Bush has tapped budget director Josh Bolten to step in and take Card’s place. Think Progress notes that during his time as budget director, Bolten watched the federal deficit grow by $1.8 trillion.
“In the Bush administration, this is grounds for a promotion,” they conclude.

All Americans are created equal...

Are the rights outlined in our Constitution only for Americans? That is apparently what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believes.
Certainly, there are some rights and obligations that go along with citizenship, such as the right to vote and the obligation to pay taxes. But that is not what is at issue with the detainees at Guantanamo. Here we are talking about more basic rights, such as the right to a fair trial and adequate legal representation; the right not to be held indefinitely without charges; and so forth.
It would seem to me that when our forefathers were drafting the Constitution they had in mind certain inalieanable rights of mankind - all of whom were created equal, you might recall - and that these rights were not something Americans were just going to bestow upon themselves, but rather it was a philosphy of how one should view fellow men throughout the world.

This idea that the prisoners at Guantanamo have no rights because they are not Americans is to me a betrayal of the values that we as Americans take such pride in. For a comparable analogy, imagine a Christian who believes that the only people they have to show Christian love to are other Christians. Non-Christians they can treat like garbage and it is OK.

The way we have treated the prisoners at Guantanamo is a disgrace and a betrayal of our core American values. We are a less worthy nation in the eyes of the world today because of Gitmo and Abu Gharib.

I just hope the other members of our Supreme Court see things differently than Scalia.

Defending Jimmy Carter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is how Nordlinger begins his screed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another press conference

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

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

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

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

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

Old Forecasts Come Back to Haunt Bush

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

Bush vs. Reagan

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

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