Death of a terrorist

The death of terrorist leader Zarqawi in Iraq is certainly good news. Folks on the right and left can take solace in his passing:

From Daily KOS:

CHEERS to finding a really evil needle in a really big haystack.  U.S. forces rocked terrorist Abu Musab "Dick" al-Zarqawi's world last night when they tossed a thousand pounds of explosive whupass down his gullet.  They found his body in the bedroom.  And the kitchen.  And the den.  And the garage.  And the neighbor's apartment.  And I think I found an eyebrow in my Cocoa Puffs this morning.  My only regret: he didn't know what hit him.

But I find it worrisome that according to U.S. Major Gen. Bill Caldwell,

...the tips leading to the safe house had come from within Zarqawi's network.

This would seem to indicate that Zarqawi’s betrayal was a calculated move by al-Qaeda and rather than viewing his death as a defeat, they see it as us doing them a favor. It is possible that Zarqawi had become too much of a loose cannon and had outlived his usefulness for al-Qaeda. The story notes that in recent days Zarqawi’s group had begun to shift from attacks on military forces to the targeting of civilians, most of them Shiites.

In an audio statement last week Zarqawi called for the killing of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most revered Shiite cleric.

Hmmmmm. One week he threatens the top cleric, the Grand Ayatollah, and the next week he gets a 500 pound bomb dropped on his head courtesy of the U.S. military. Coincidence? Probably not.

So now I have one more question. Who gets the $25 million bounty that we had placed on Zarqawi’s head? Will we reneg on giving out the prize because the tipster is probably tied to al-Qaeda?

Calm before the storm

I won’t deny that the GOP victory in the California special election was a big disappointment. But I thought the headline in the Washington Post story was a bit humorous:

Victory in California Calms GOP

Fearing humiliation in a race that drew national attention, the National Republican Congressional Committee pumped about $5 million into the race to replace imprisoned former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The results settled Republican nerves, which have been set on edge by months of nearly relentless bad omens, including corruption scandals and dismal poll ratings for President Bush and the GOP leadership in Congress.

So they pump $5 million into a single congressional election - more than twice what the Democrats spent - in what had been a solidly Republican district and squeak out a victory with less than 50 percent of the vote. If this is enough to settle Republican nerves then good for them. The last thing I want is agitated Republicans revving up their base as we go into the November general election. I would much prefer that they remain complacent in their assurance that their redistricting shenanigans and big business-financed monetary advantage will once again carry the day and keep them in control of Congress.

But it does mean that Democrats are going to have to work that much harder and Independents are going to have to make a choice and answer a simple question, “Have you had enough, yet?” If not, then go ahead and vote to keep the Republicans in charge for the next two years. But eventually I have faith that people will get their fill of corruption, scandal, war, debt and a stagnant economy and we will finally see an electoral tidal wave that will change the face of Washington. And I’m still betting that such a storm is brewing and could strike this fall.

Top Liberal Rock Songs

Here is my first crack at a list of the top liberal rock songs. My criteria for the list was that each song had to be relatively well known and the liberal content needed to be fairly obvious. No obscure songs that were used as album filler and got no airplay. And no songs where the message is vague and muddled.

Most rock songs are apolitical and deal with universal concepts such as love and heartbreak. It’s hard to write a really good song with a strong political message that doesn’t come off sounding forced and/or preachy. The following songs, in my opinion, succeeded in getting across a mostly liberal political viewpoint while still being good, solid rock songs.

1. “All You Need is Love,” by the Beatles
2. “Give Peace a Chance,” by the Beatles

Just the titles of these two John Lennon songs tell you everything you need to know. Simple but powerful message, irresistably catchy songs.

3. “Imagine,” by John Lennon
Derided by many on the right because of its anti-religious sentiments, I think it is one of the most beautiful odes to an idealistic future that has ever been put to music.

4. “Blowin’ In the Wind,” by Bob Dylan
5. “The Times They Are A Changin’,” by Bob Dylan

I’m sure there are many other Dylan songs that could be included, but these two are probably the best known.

6. “Man in Black,” by Johnny Cash

Since the National Review decided to include one country song, I decided to pick on as well.

7. “Ohio,” by Crosby Stills, Nash & Young

Protest songs don’t get much better than this. A hard-rocking number that slams home its point with full force and doesn’t sound outdated 30 years after the tragic incident that inspired it.

8. “For What It’s Worth,” by Buffalo Springfield

A lot of the hippie protest songs from the ‘60s sound naive and outdated today, but this one has stood the test of time and is still relevant today.

9. “Get Up Stand Up,” by Bob Marley

A rousing rocker that spun in my head the whole time that my son was learning to walk.

10. “What’s Goin’ On,” by Marvin Gaye

I never paid much attention to this song until Cuba Gooding Jr. sang it in the film “Jerry Maguire.” It has grown on me ever since.

11. “Living For the City,” by Stevie Wonder

I love this song. Very powerful and moving.

12. “War” by Edwin Starr

One of my favorite political cartoons from the start of the Iraq war shows a picture of the White House and someone inside is singing “War! Huh! Good God, y’all! What is it good for?” And then someone from the other side of the room (probably Karl Rove) says “Put a sock in it, Colin.”

13. “Pride (In the Name of Love),” by U2

It seems like such an obvious thing now, juxtaposing Christ’s crucifixtion and Martin Luther King’s assassination, but when I first heard the song it seemed profound.

14. “Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

A populist shot across the bow of the U.S. military establishment that relies on the American underclass to supply its cannon fodder for the wars started by the privileged sons of the wealthy. It speaks very loudly to this day.

15. “Born in the USA,” by Bruce Springsteen

Ronald Reagan tried to co-opt it for his re-election campaign, but he obviously wasn’t listening very closely to the lyrics.

16. “Pink Houses,” by John Mellencamp

Populist, patriotic and progressive all wrapped into one catchy tune.

17. “The Way It Is,” by Bruce Hornsby

The man in the silk suit telling the old beggar lady to “get a job” is an image that has stuck with me from the first time I heard this song.

18. “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” by Tears for Fears

They threw everything into this song including the kitchen sink, but somehow it still works.

19. “Tom Sawyer,” by Rush

“His mind is not for rent, to any God or government.”

20. “American Idiot,” by Green Day

The most recent addition, but notable in that it came out in 2004 before the election when the Bushies were still riding high.

21. ”Allentown,” by Billy Joel

A personal favorite and similar in structure to “Born in the USA.”

22. ”Ebony & Ivory,” by Paul McCartney

Yes, it’s sappy and syrupy, but its liberal message is unmistakable and everyone knows the song by heart whether they like to admit it or not.

23. “Land of Confusion,” by Genesis

I can’t listen to this song without seeking the MTV video with the puppets of Reagan and Gorbachav.

24. ”We Are the World,” by Michael Jackson

Back when Michael Jackson still had the Midas touch, this was a monster hit in the late ‘80s that helped to raise lots of money for African famine victims.

25. ”Sun City,” by Little Steven

Written around the same time as “We Are the World,” this was an even better protest song that became the anthem for the anti-apartheid movement.

26. “In The Ghetto,” by Mac Davis

Covered most notably by Elvis, this song by Lubbock, Texas native Mac Davis paints a haunting picture of life in the urban jungle.

27. “Big Yellow Taxi,” by Joni Mitchell

As suggested by Ann, this song takes on the developers who keep paving paradise to put up another parking lot.

I’m sure there are more and I will be adding them as I think of them...

First Update:

28."Fly Like an Eagle," by Steve Miller Band

Feed the babies, shoe the children, house the people! Yes, there IS a solution. It's called government get off its ass and start providing for the general welfare rather than wasting hundreds of billions on never-ending wars around the globe.

Second Update:

29. “Saturday Night Special” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

The NRO list claims these southern rockers as right-wing partisans because they wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” in reponse to Neil Young’s angry swipe at the south in “Southern Man.” But I have little doubt that these long-haired southern rockers would have been chased out of any GOP convention by wild-eyed, screeching gun nuts for penning these lyrics:

Hand guns are made for killin
Aint no good for nothin else
And if you like your whiskey
You might even shoot yourself
So why dont we dump em people
To the bottom of the sea
Before some fool come around here
Wanna shoot either you or me

30. ”The Wall,” by Pink Floyd

It’s hard to pick out just one song from this magnum opus, so I am including the entire album here.

Conservative rock songs

As someone who loves music and making silly lists, I can hardly resist commenting on The National Review’s recently published list of the Top 50 Coservative Rock Songs.

Just looking at the Top 10, however, it is obvious that they ran out of steam after No. 7.

1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who.
2. “Taxman,” by The Beatles.
3. “Sympathy for the Devil,” by The Rolling Stones.
4. “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
5. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” by The Beach Boys.
6. “Gloria,” by U2.
7. “Revolution,” by The Beatles.
8. “Bodies,” by The Sex Pistols.
9. “Don’t Tread on Me,” by Metallica.
10. “20th Century Man,” by The Kinks.

Who ever heard of “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols? Not to mention how silly it is to include anything by the Sex Pistols on a list supposedly touting the top “conservative” rock songs in the first place. Also, “Don’t Tread on Me” by Metallica and “20th Century Man” by the Kinks are not exactly rock-n-roll standards that everyone is familiar with.
The rest of the list is apparently a mish-mash of songs with a few standards, a lot of album filler and several that are total mysteries (”Government Cheese” by the Rainmakers?).

11. “The Trees,” by Rush.
12. “Neighborhood Bully,” by Bob Dylan.
13. “My City Was Gone,” by The Pretenders.
14. “Right Here, Right Now,” by Jesus Jones.
15. “I Fought the Law,” by The Crickets.
16. “Get Over It,” by The Eagles.
17. “Stay Together for the Kids,” by Blink 182.
18. “Cult of Personality,” by Living Colour.
19. “Kicks,” by Paul Revere and the Raiders.
20. “Rock the Casbah,” by The Clash.
21. “Heroes,” by David Bowie.
22. “Red Barchetta,” by Rush.
23. “Brick,” by Ben Folds Five.
24. “Der Kommissar,” by After the Fire.
25. “The Battle of Evermore,” by Led Zeppelin.
26. “Capitalism,” by Oingo Boingo.
27. “Obvious Song,” by Joe Jackson.
28. “Janie’s Got a Gun,” by Aerosmith.
29. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Iron Maiden.
30. “You Can’t Be Too Strong,” by Graham Parker.
31. “Small Town,” by John Mellencamp.
32. “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” by The Georgia Satellites.
33. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by The Rolling Stones.
34. “Godzilla,” by Blue öyster Cult.
35. “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
36. “Government Cheese,” by The Rainmakers.
37. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” by The Band.
38. “I Can’t Drive 55,” by Sammy Hagar.
39. “Property Line,” by The Marshall Tucker Band.
40. “Wake Up Little Susie,” by The Everly Brothers.
41. “The Icicle Melts,” by The Cranberries.
42. “Everybody’s a Victim,” by The Proclaimers.
43. “Wonderful,” by Everclear.
44. “Two Sisters,” by The Kinks.
45. “Taxman, Mr. Thief,” by Cheap Trick.
46. “Wind of Change,” by The Scorpions.
47. “One,” by Creed.
48. “Why Don’t You Get a Job,” by The Offspring.
49. “Abortion,” by Kid Rock.
50. “Stand By Your Man,” by Tammy Wynette.

The list has already been shredded, ripped apart and lampooned by people more eloquent than me. They have made the obvious observations about how much of a stretch it is to claim many of these songs for the conservative cause, based both on the actual lyrics of the individual songs in the context of the times they were written (i.e. The “new boss” in the No. 1 ranked Who song “Won’t Be Fooled Again” refers to President Richard Nixon) and the politics of the artists who wrote and performed them (John Lennon, Mick Jagger, U2, etc.) And what a slap to right-wing rocker Ted Nugent that he gets no mention on the list.

But I do want to object to the notion that themes such as suspicion of the government, opposition to Soviet-style communism, objections to excessively high taxes and promotion of marital fidelity are somehow strictly “conservative” values, as if the opposites are supposed to be “liberal” values. If that were the case, then I guess we could say that “love” and “peace” are liberal values, leaving conservatives to value “hatred” and “war.” That’s hardly fair.

Finally, the cheap shot at Hillary Clinton at the end of the list is wholly undeserved. First off, Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” is clearly a country song, not rock, and if you are going to delve into country music then there are a whole host of songs that should be on the list starting with Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” But secondly, it should be clear to anyone that no politician today is more represetative of the “Stand By Your Man” sentiment in Wynette’s classic tune than Hillary Clinton, who has managed to keep her marriage together despite Bill’s widely publicized issues with fidelity. Why don’t we contrast that with the marital values of the potential field of Republican presidential candidates for 2008 - how many divorces can we count between Rudolph Guiliani, John McCain, and Newt Gingrich?
Clearly, “conservatives” do not hold any kind of monopoly on marital fidelity today.

But to play along, I will shortly be posting my list of the top “liberal” rock songs of all time. Stay tuned.

Swift Boat Liars Lessons

The New York Times had a story a few days ago revisiting the Swift Boat Liars smear campaign that is partially credited with defeating Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign and extending the term of the Worst. President. Ever.

I’m glad to see that Kerry is finally devoting his attention to exposing all the lies stirred up by this GOP character assassination squad, but I’m also disappointed that he did not take it more seriously during the campaign when it might have made a difference.
I had a lot to say about the Swift Boat Liars during the campaign here, here and here.

It still burns me up every time I have to think about it. Without a doubt it was one of the most disgusting, dishonest, despicable displays of political chicanery in recent times. The lesson we should take from this story is that because it worked it will undoubtedly happen again and again. These GOP spin artists now know that they can get away with saying anything, however demonstratably untrue, and the national media will dutifully report it to achieve “balance” in their horserace-style coverage of election campaigns.
The only way to combat it is to be relentless in defending yourself against these types of scurillous accusations. No more of this high-minded, “I’m not going to respond because it would give the charges credibility” nonsense. The candidate or a surrogate speaking for the candidate has to take the smear artists on full-force and respond in kind to each and every attack. It is the only way to survive in today’s media-saturated culture.

Worst. President. Ever.

A new poll that is just out confirms that Bush is The Worst President Ever. And, of course, I always believe every poll that comes out (as long as it confirms what I already think).

Henry Cuellar is no Lloyd Bentsen

What an awful, awful column by Jonathan Gurwitz today.
Why a hard-core right-wing partisan like Gurwitz constantly feels the need to advise Democrats on how to run their party is beyond me, but at the very least you would think he could make a coherent argument. But here we have Gurwitz claiming that:

Independent-minded politicians willing to do right by their constituents are an increasingly rare breed in both parties. But among Democrats, they are positively an endangered species.

But who is Gurwitz’ example of this? Why Henry Cuellar who Gurwitz admits coasted to an easy primary victory recently and faces no serious opposition in November. Some endangered species.
Is there another example? Oh, yes, there is Sen. Joseph Lieberman whose ultra-hawkish support of the debacle in Iraq has drawn him a primary opponent in the liberal bastion of Connecticut. Lieberman has been a more outspoken proponent of the war in Iraq than most of the Republicans representing his home state, so it should be no surprise that he might face a primary challenge this time. But there is no guarantee that he will lose. In fact, chances are that he will coast to victory just as easily as Cuellar did.

So then, how can Gurwitz support his contention that Lloyd Bentsen could not win a Democratic primary campaign in Texas today? He can’t. Bentsen would win easily if he were running today. His kind of traditional conservatism - fiscal discipline, responsible management of our military resources - is still very popular among mainstream voters today in contrast to the reckless and radical misuse of both our domestic and military resources by the current administration.
But Bentsen was no Henry Cuellar. It was not Cuellar’s support of free trade agreements or his opposition to the estate tax that riled so many Democrats during the last campaign. It was his decision to sit on the Republican side of the aisle during the State of the Union Address and his playing kissy-face with the president afterwards. Bentsen would never have done such a thing.

As for Lieberman drawing a primary opponent, let me ask Gurwitz to consider this scenario. What if our own Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison were to suddenly announce her strong support for abortion rights and then began voting like Olympia Snowe of Maine. And what if she also suddenly became a very outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. Would she be likely to draw an opponent in the next Republican primary? You bet she would!
The other big fallacy of Gurwitz’ column is the blind eye he casts on his own party’s ideological intolerance. You think Democrats are purging their party of conservatives? What about the dodo birds of modern politics - the liberal Republicans? That is almost an oxymoron these days. Remember what happened to James Jeffords? I think the GOP needs to worry about the log in its own eye before trying to pick the sliver out of the Democratic Party’s eye.

Da Vinci Code

I got to see The Da Vinci Code over the weekend and really enjoyed it. The movie it most reminds me of is National Treasure, the Disney film starring Nicolas Cage that came out a couple of years ago. It too involved efforts to unlock a puzzle created by an ancient secret society that sends our heros on an elaborate scavenger hunt in the search of a grand prize.
I thought the movie was well done, the acting was superb and the story was both interesting and entertaining.
What I did not understand was why the movie or the book should have sparked such a strong protest from the religious right. I went into the movie, based on all the hype, thinking it was going to try and debunk Christ’s divinity. But it does nothing of the sort. Instead, it is all based on a mythical theory that Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene before his crucifixtion and created a blood line that would have been seen as a threat to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. But whether or not Christ would have fathered a child, it would not preclude nor does it make any claim as to his own divine lineage.
Interestingly enough, the only person who actually questions Christ’s divinity in the film is the guy who turns out to be the “bad guy” in the end. Everyone else, inlcluding the Tom Hanks character, defends the Biblical story as we know it today.
I also thought it was interesting that, despite all of the killing, there really were no “bad guys” in the movie. Everyone was acting on what they believed to be a higher purpose or a greater good, including the Catholic archbishop, the French cop and the “teacher” who set everything in motion to begin with. Even the albino assassin. In fact, you could argue that he was probably the most devout person in the whole movie.

Won’t you be my neighbor

I found this link at Huffington Post. It’s Mr. Rogers addressing the U.S. Senate in 1969 when they were debating whether or not to expend $20 million toward the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It was a remarkable display of wholesome sincerity that seemed oddly out of place in that setting, but it may have tipped the scales in favor of public broadcasting.
Thank God the Republicans weren’t in charge back then. I imagine they would have kicked Mr. Rogers out on his rear and we would never have had widespread availability of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, Sesame Street or the myriad other educational children’s programming that became the foundation for multiple generations of children from that point onward.

Ken Lay is guilty, guilty, guilty!!!

President Bush's top money man was found guilty on all charges today and will likely spend the rest of his life in jail.

Spurs postmortem

Heartwrenching. Absolutely heartwrenching.
I don't know how else to describe watching the Spurs come back from a 20-point deficit to tie the game with under a minute to go and then see Manu Ginobili sink a 3-pointer. It was exhilerating!
And then my wife warned that the Mavericks still had time to sink a 3-pointer of their own. Or get two-points and a foul, I added. Which of course is just what happened with Dirk Norwitzki, Mr. Automatic with the free throws, getting the easy layup and the foul call. But the Spurs still had a chance with Manu driving to the basket and Tim Duncan getting a chance for the tip in.
But at that point, the Spurs had run out of magic. And for the second time during the series we watched as the Mavericks took charge and dominated the overtime period.

So the Spurs' season is over. What's next? I'm the last one anybody should come to for answers here, but here's what I think anyway.
I think we will see a mass exodus of players as the Spurs try to revamp their team around their core players - Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. I think they will hang on to Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen and Brent Barry, but all of them are better suited at this point to play the sixth-man role off the bench. The Spurs badly need another tall guy to match up with Duncan. Rasho Nesterovic and Nazr Mohammed are obviously not filling the bill, so I think they will be gone. I expect Robert Horry will retire. And I doubt that Nick Van Excel will be back.
What the Spurs need is someone who can come in and match up with an aging Duncan the way Duncan did with an aging David Robinson. I don't know if that means trading, free agents or draft picks, but they have to do something to fill that hole if they want to make it back to the finals next season.

Dissing the Dixie Chicks

Here's another reason why I don't listen to country radio.

The Chicks aren't the only ones who get no love from these clowns. Country radio programmers would rather play rehashed 60's rock songs by established "country stars" than play original music by extremely talented but struggling artists.
If you want to hear really good "country" music, then turn off your radio and go to the Kerrville Folk Festival some time.

Our national language

Oh, great! So now we have a “national language.” Something called “English,” whatever that is. The bill really didn’t define what “English” is so I’m not sure how they expect to enforce it.
What is “English” anyway? Is it the words I find in my Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language: Second College Edition (pulished in 1972)? Flipping through my dictionary I can find definitions for sombrero, adios, amigo, buenos dias, and pinata (which even uses a letter that is not in the English alphabet!)
Caramba! (Found that word in there, too.)
Heck, I even came across a bunch of German words and French words and Italian words. What a mess! Why someone could slip in every word of Spanish into our dictionary and then where would we be?!?

So I propose that we go back to the English language as it was when our Founding Fathers were writing the Constitution. Nevermind that they saw no need to enshrine the King’s English as the national language at the time. It is clearly a vitally pressing matter today or surely our Republican-controlled Congress would not be wasting time debating it. Right?

But then that may not be far enough back to ensure linguistic purity. Just to be safe, let’s go all the way back to our language’s beginnings, before it was polluted with all these other foreign dialects.

Here is a good example. The Lord’s Prayer presented in the standardised West Saxon literary dialect:

Fæder ure pu pe eart on heofonum,
Si pin nama gehalgod.
To becume pin rice,
gewurpe din willa, on eordan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfad urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd pu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soplice.

Illegal immigrants pay taxes

In the comments to my post on border security, Gary states that “10-12 million illegal immigrants (are) taking advantage of our government programs without paying in any taxes...”

This is a common misperception that I want to address. As a matter of fact, illegal immigrants do pay taxes - an estimated $16 billion a year. And that is just counting federal income taxes. It doesn’t take into account sales taxes that everyone pays, or property taxes, which if they pay rent (and most likely do) then a portion of that rent is used by the landlord to pay property taxes.

Still, the argument is made that the $16 billion they pay in doesn’t make up for the estimated $26 billion they take out in government benefits. However, there are several problems with the study that makes this argument.

The study acknowledged that, on average, the costs that illegal-immigrant households bear on the federal government are less than half that of other households, and that many of those costs relate to their U.S.-born children.

And critics of the study point out that it does things like charge the costs of small-business loans and civil litigation that are unrelated to illegal immigrants. But the biggest fallacy about the study is the implication that all these expenses would disappear if these illegal immigrants and their children were to suddenly disappear. It won’t. You can take a school district’s budget and divide by the total number of students and then claim that each student receives X amount of government benefits. But that doesn’t mean if one student leaves the district, they suddenly save X amount of money.

The study also fails to consider the return on investment when these children of illegal immigrants use their public education to get a good paying job and start paying taxes. And, as we have seen, some of these children of illegal immigrants grow up to become U.S. Congressmen, Attorney General and Secretary of Commerce.

This is not to say that we should not enforce our immigration laws or guard our borders against illegal entry. But we should maintain a realistic perspective about the true costs and benefits of the people who for good or bad are already here to stay.

A multibillion dollar fence

After failing to fund border protection needs in his regular budgets, President Bush is suddenly ready to rush out and spend billions playing catch-up. Aside from calling out the National Guard to make up for the 6,000 border patrol agents that Bush refused to fund during the past several years, he is also advocating building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. But did anyone imagine that this fence would cost billions? That’s right. That’s not a typo. Not millions, BILLIONS.
And who else can build billions dollar fences but giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Multibillion-dollar federal contract! I imangine if we just spent a few hundred million dollars building the fence it might allow a few illegal immigrants to slip through once in awhile. What a travesty that would be!! So naturally, we have to spend multibillions.

And you know of course, based on their track record in Iraq, what will happen next. After about six months when only 20 percent of the fence is completed, they will go back to the government and say that they ran out of money and need more.

The really ironic thing, of course, is that these giant military contractors will probably subcontract most of the work out to small companies along the border that will hire illegal immigrants to build the new fence.

Play ball!

The baseball season is in full swing and looks like it will be a fun season to watch. The Houston Astros got off to a solid start although they have slipped back a bit. But the St. Louis Cardinals look like they will be tough to beat again so we may have to settle for another Wild Card bid to the playoffs. The Texas Rangers have done surprisingly well so far this season too and are leading their division (AL West) despite having a worse record than the Astros who have fallen to third place in the NL Central.
The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are neck and neck in the AL East which is unsuprising. But more interesting to watch, I think, is the AL Central where the Detroit Tigers led by former Ranger All Star Ivan Rodriguez are giving the defending champion Chicago White Sox a good race.
Another good race will be in the NL West where every team is playing better than .500 ball and less than two games currently separates the top dog San Diego Padres from the bottom scraping San Francisco Giants. And over in the NL East the New York Mets are doing surprisingly well.

Spurs height dilemma

Before moving to San Antonio five years ago, I had never lived in a town with a professional sports franchise before. Needless to say, the San Antonio Spurs have been fun to watch as they have won three championships in six years. But this year it looks like they may come up short which is distressing a lot of hardcore Spurs fans that I know. One of my friends is ready to dump the whole team with the exception of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
I admit that it is frustrating when the three stars are all having a great game and you still lose but I don’t think I would let go of folks like Bruce Bowen, Brent Barry and Michael Finley so easily. But there probably is something to the complaint that going with a small lineup - everyone with the exception of Duncan is under 6-6 - is making it hard to get rebounds and block opponents out of the lane.
It would appear that Coach Popovich doesn’t have a lot of faith in the other tall guys on the team like Rasho Nesterovic (7-0) and Nazr Mohammed (6-10), so I’m not sure what else they can do. Do you suppose David Robinson could be persuaded to come out of retirement?

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.