Twisted principles

Glenn Beck is seriously twisted, as Donna noted the other day.

Steve Benen and Blue Texan have good rundowns on the recent Beckian wierdness.
But I think what disturbs me the most is how this lunatic is becoming increasingly popular with the local rightwingers.
Nick at Conservative Dialysis linked approvingly to Beck’s paranoid reworking of the National Anthem and Andres Bocagnera of San Antonio Conservative has been taken in by Beck’s latest hyped up charade.

These “Nine Principles and 12 Values” (or the “Nine Prophecies of the 12 Sarcofagi” as Dennis Miller recently mocked on Fox) are worth a look to see just how badly this guy’s screws have come loose.

The Nine Principles
1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

The first “principle” - America is good - seems like it should be followed by several exclamations of What!! What!!! as in today’s urban lingo when a hipster throws out a provacative statement and then openly entreats anyone to challenge him on it. Beck is just asking for anyone to question him so that he can denounce them as “unAmerican” or what have you.
But now compare Principle 1 with Principle 8. First you are saying that “America” is always good no matter what, but then you are declaring that you can still be critical of “authorities” without being called “unAmerican.” Just what do these people think “America” is anyway? Clearly to them it is some abstract concept which they can place up on a podium and pretend to “love” while at the same time they can vent their hatred and disgust at the American government and American authority figures. Because after you get past the first two principles, the rest is pretty much just a long-winded anti-government screed.
Or how about principles 4 and 5? Does anyone see any problems here? First they declare that “My spouse and I” are the ultimate authority, not the government. But then they declare that “If you break the law you pay the penalty”. But who makes the laws? The government, of course. So how can rational people not see a contrast between these “principles”?
“Justice is blind and no one is above it” is a nice saying. But it ignores the fact that laws are not always just and forcing someone to “pay the penalty” doesn’t always result in “justice.” But I guess I’m getting too complicated for the simple-minded folks who would buy into this stuff.
These “principles” can best be summed up as defensive, angry outbursts motivated by selfishness, greed and a deep distrust and dislike for one’s fellow Americans.

My Vacation

Just spent the last four days in Dubuque, Iowa....


It was beautiful, but it was also cold. It was 17 degrees when we got there.

We stayed at the Grand Harbor Resort Hotel....


Our room had a great view of the Mississippi River. I had never seen a river freeze before.


We took the kids to the indoor water park at the hotel....


It was warmer than I expected and great for our kids because most of the water was shallow.

We went to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium....


Kept the kids entertained for most of one day and I learned a lot about the Mississippi River.

They call Dubuque the Land Where Eagles Soar...


They're not kidding. We saw several flying around our hotel while we were their.

TPA Roundup 3-16

It's the first of another week, so that must mean it's time to take a look at some of the best posts from last week by members of the Texas Progressive Alliance. Here are the submissions:

Vince of Capitol Annex took a new look at the latest creationist attack on science in Texas classrooms in Bill Would Make "Strengths and Weaknesses" Teaching Of Evolution State Law.

Bay Area Houston says State Representative Wayne Christian has filed a bill that would scare Texas citizens from filing ethics complaints against elected officials.

Off the Kuff takes a look at who would be affected by the voter ID legislation that is being pushed in the Lege by Republicans.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the turmoil facing some inside Texas GOP regarding Gov. Perry's decision to turn down$555 million dollars of unemployment insurance from the stimulus money, UI debate must be maddening for the GOP supporters of Hutchison.

Neil at Texas Liberal reads Malcolm X in a cemetery and says that Rick Perry has found his schoolhouse door to stand in and block.

The Texas Cloverleaf expands upon Capitol Annex's look at Garnet Coleman's proposed repeal of the anti-gay marriage amendment in Texas.

BossKitty at TruthHugger truly believes there is profit for everyone when wasteful and costly opposition to Medical Marijuana is brought in to the economy instead of keeping it out. The War on "Illegal Activities" should focus on smuggling Heroin and Human Trafficking. Can Marijuana Rescue The Economy In 2010 Like Booze Did In 1933

At Texas Kaos, Lightseeker highlights the Texas Shakedown for those who make the mistake of driving in Tenaha, Texas while not white.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme notes thuggery isn't the first choice for governing Democrats addressing drug cartel violence. Analysis and coordinated effort is.

Governor "Good Hair, Bad Policy" Perry starts his primary campaign against Hutchinson by piling on the unemployed. Libby Shaw over at TexasKaos has the details and the outrage.Pendejos Perry Says YES to Roads, NO to the Jobless

Mayor McSleaze of McBlogger returns from his holiday to post his thoughts on developments in the Wall Street infotainment industry.

nytexan at BlueBloggin is disgusted, but not surprised, by the new Republican strategy; >GOP: Divide and Conquer The Democrats, Then Do Nothing For The Country. As tent cities pop up in Sacramento, unemployment is at 10% in may states and the Wall Street continues a downward slide; the GOP response, to the past 8 year Bush disaster, is to lower approval numbers for Pelosi and House Democrats.

WhosPlayin is focused on local races for Mayor and City Council in Lewisville. This week he interviewed Shelley Kaehr and David Thornhill, who are running for Place 2.

There was harmonic convergence in the left and right Texblogosphere last week. See PDiddie's Brains and Eggs for what happened.

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men takes down the right-wing handwringing and disingenuous criticism over Obama's stem cell decision.

Gone Fishin'

I will be on vacation the rest of the week and most likely will have no access to a computer.

Golden Era of Capitalism

This graph from John Cole shows very clearly how insane the conservatives are who claim that Obama's meager tax increase on the very wealthy is going to drive us to socialism.
The period between WWII and about 1973 was known as the Golden Era of Capitalism. At no time during that period was the top tax rate lower than 70 percent. And yet, the economy grew like gangbusters and we became the most powerful nation on the planet. Amazing, isn't it.

Who snubbed who?

The British press is whining about a percieved snub of Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his first visit to the White House since Barack Obama was inaugurated.
They are making a particular fuss about the gifts that were exchanged between the two leaders:

After Brown presented Obama with a pen holder crafted from the timbers of the 19th century British warship HMS President (whose sister ship, HMS Resolute, provided the wood for the Oval Office's desk), Obama offered up ... 25 DVDs of American movie classics.

Twenty-five DVDs specially selected by the American Film Institute, no doubt in the latest high-definition Blue Ray format with all the extra features and commentaries one would expect from such a collection.... That sounds like a terrific gift to me!
Here are the selected films:

Citizen Kane
The Godfather
Casablanca
Raging Bull
Singin' In the Rain
Gone With the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
Schindler's List
Vertigo
Wizard of Oz
City Lights
The Searchers
Star Wars
Psycho
2001: A Space Odyssey
Sunset Boulevard
The Graduate
The General
On the Waterfront
It's A Wonderful Life
Chinatown
Some Like It Hot
The Grapes of Wrath
ET: The Extra Terrestrial
To Kill a Mockingbird

Wow! I would love to have a collection like that. And the Brits are turning their noses up to it?
Sure, the pen holder is a nice gift because of the historic nature of the wood it was carved out of, but there is no question which gift I would choose if I had a choice.
Obama has already expressed his delight and appreciation for the pen holder. And all the Brits have done is whine about the specially prepared movie collection. So who is insulting who here?

Also, the British press has also made a fuss because Obama replaced a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office with one of President Lincoln. Mind telling me which American president has their bust on prominent display at 10 Downing Street?

Deja vu again

No time for blogging today, so here is a great post by Steve Benen at Political Animal:

IT'S LIKE DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN.... I'd mentioned earlier that Ronald Reagan raised taxes, repeatedly, as part of his economic agenda. Bruce Bartlett recently took a closer look at those policies, and what the president's conservative allies were saying about the increases at the time.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, Ronald Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in American history as part of a budget deal to get the federal deficit under control. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982 was signed into law on Sept. 3, and most of its provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 1983.

During debate on TEFRA, many conservatives predicted economic disaster. They argued that raising taxes in the midst of a severe recession was exactly the wrong thing to do. "Every school child knows you don't raise taxes in a recession unless you want to make it worse," The Wall Street Journal's editorial page warned. Said Rep. Newt Gingrich, "I think it will make the economy sicker." The Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. said it had "no doubt that it will curb the economic recovery everyone wants."

Looking at the data, however, it is very hard to see any evidence that TEFRA had a negative effect on growth. Indeed, one could easily make a case that its enactment stimulated growth.

It's a reminder of just how wrong the exact same cast of characters has been for quite a long while. When Reagan raised taxes, Gingrich, the WSJ editorial page, and conservative activists thought it would produce awful results. It didn't. When Clinton raised taxes, the same motley crew raised the same dire warnings about recessions and unemployment. They were wrong again. When Bush cut taxes, these same observers predicted robust economic growth and balanced budgets for years to come. That ... how do I put this gently ... didn't quite work out.

And now, here we are again, with Obama presenting an ambitious economic plan, some of which includes targeted tax increases. And wouldn't you know it, Gingrich, the WSJ editorial page, conservative activists everywhere, and a handful of useless Democrats are complaining about the dire consequences of modest tax increases.

One would like to think that being wrong, over and over again, about the exact same issue, might lead some of these characters to back off. Likewise, one might also like to think that major news outlets, recognizing how wrong these folks have been for the last few decades, might stop taking their prognostications seriously. Alas, this is not the case.

Bartlett concluded, "[W]hen Republicans claim that higher taxes will destroy the economy, they should be reminded that they made the same argument in 1982 and 1993 and that the actual economic results were the opposite of what they predicted. And when they denounce Obama's health plan for expanding the size of government, they should be asked how they voted on the Medicare bill in 2003."

On Faith

Mark raised an interesting topic in the comments section with his objection to Christian author and Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan...

I saw you own a book by John Dominic Crossan. No wonder your personal expressions of Christianity are so incoherent and delusional! Do you, as does Crossan, believe that Jesus was not bodily resurrected, but that his dead body was scattered by foraging wolves?

To which I caddishly responded:

I do find Crossan’s works interesting and worth reading. Is your faith so weak that it requires proof of a physical resurrection to maintain?

Only to have Mark shoot back...

You have it backward. The weak in faith is Crossan, who, because he can find no physical “proof” of the resurrection, resorts to baseless speculation about wild dogs dragging the body away.

So I think this exchange raises an interesting question about faith and Christianity. What does it mean to have “faith” in Christianity? Must one accept without question all of the Biblical stories of miracles and resurrections to be a faithful Christian? Or is it more important that one embraces the actual teachings of Christ and apply them to ones own life.
I have said before that I know several professed atheists who are better “Christians” in my opinion than many Christians I know. Why is it that most churches and most religious leaders seem to emphasize the miracles more than the teachings of Christ? Is it so hard to believe that God might have sent his son down to Earth to live as a real human? Why is it so important that he had to be some kind of super being who could walk on water, turn water into wine, cast out demons and raise the dead?
If Jesus were to come back today, how many people would insist that he perform a miracle before they would follow him?
I’m not saying that Jesus did not do these things. If he did, then that is great. I don’t have a problem with it. What I am saying is that my faith does not hinge on this belief. If someone could, for example, prove beyond a doubt that Jesus didn’t walk on water and that it was really just a Biblical metaphor, my faith in Jesus would not be shattered. But for many other professed Christians I can’t say that would be the case. That is why I say that they are weak in their faith.
Is it not enough that Jesus taught us how to love one another, how to live in peace and to care for those less fortunate than ourselves? Is that not enough to base our faith on? Would enough people not worship Jesus unless they also thought of him as some kind of avenging superbeing ready to swoop down and defend the righteous and punish the wicked?
Jesus was a teacher first and foremost. The church was set up to pass on that teaching. But along the way I think the teachings of Christ have been overshadowed and supplanted by all of this dogma about miracles. I think it is fine for one to say that Jesus died for our sins. But I think it is more important to learn what it was Jesus was here on Earth to teach us about and to apply that teaching to our everyday lives.

That's DemocratIC Party to you, moron!

More of this, please!
Rep. Kaptur scolds GOP: ‘Democrat Party’ doesn’t exist.



It's about time! I've complained about this for a long, long time. This rude behavior on the part of Republicans dates back at least to the Newt Gingrich era and the media, rather than correcting their intentional mistake, has more often than not repeated it in newscasts.

Inalienable right to redundancy and misattribution

Idiot Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of today’s Republican Party, gave a speech at the CPAC conference in which he butchered Thomas Jefferson’s famous Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness phrase and misattributed it to the preamble of the Constitution rather than to the Declaration of Independence.
Here is what Limbaugh said:

We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson didn’t include “freedom” in the list because it is considered synonymous to “liberty.”
This is the kind of stupid mistake that Limbaugh would endlessly mock on his radio show if it was made by a liberal politician.

TPA Roundup 3-1

It's the first of another week, and that means it's time to look at some of the best posts by TPA members in the last week. Here are this week's submissions:

McBlogger takes a look at possibilities for 2010.

Bay Area Houston is following a bill to abolish the Texas Residential Construction Commission.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is sad to see that some things have not changed in the minds of the loosers - CPAC Fans Fuse of Hatred - Seeks Civil War

jobsanger discussed a couple of Supreme Court cases. The first case discussed in A Good Supreme Court Decision denied anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse the right to own a gun, and the second case discussed in The Right To Know The Penalties, which will be heard this Fall, will settle the matter of whether an immigrant defendant has a right to be informed of all penalties that could be imposed in his case -- including deportation.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the push for expanded gambling in the Lege this session.

Can you read this resolution, posted on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS and find any good reason why Big Oil should get to keep the hydraulic fracturing exemption from our Safe Drinking Water Act? Yeah, TXsharon didn't find one either.

nytexan at >BlueBloggin comments on the >Hypocritical GOP Fiscally Responsible and with no surprise, the world of the GOP is definitely a parallax view.

The Texas Cloverleaf reviews the TX Stonewall biennial conference in Austin, and notes who was or wasn't there, among elected officials and hopefuls.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the economic changes that are starting to show up locally in The state of the economy in Williamson County.

Neil at Texas Liberal states his intent to make videos for the blog in Big Texas Liberal Blogging Announcement and Innovation. Also, Neil discusses if Ice Age beasts in Massive Fossil Find-Should Ice Age Creatures Be Brought Back From The Dead?

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is hopeful that the adults will address the drug cartel violence and figure out how to end the war - the drug war that is.

Rhetoric & Rhythm laments the fact that George W. Bush has become a scapegoat for the conservative movement. Bush did everything they wanted. It's not HIS fault that their ideas don't work.

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men, on the mixed bag that is the Obama administration's decision to try captured terrorist suspect al-Marri in the criminal justice system and what this might mean for the future of the "war on terror."

Do you know the real reason John Sharp and Bill White aren't running for governor? Because they're afraid they will get whipped by a girl, just like Rick Perry. So says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Over at Texas Kaos the 2.7 trillion that Duyba forgot to mention as part of his deficit. As Libby tells it the bubble dwellers who should have been on top of this little detail weren't. "...The bubble dwellers don't know what is going on outside of their self-fixated bubble. Now I understand why President Obama leaves that nutty and toxic place when he wants to speak to real people..."

WhosPlayin has video and commentary on Lewisville's first Barnett Shale gas well.

Bush the Scapegoat

Isn't it odd that the most "conservative" president this nation has seen in a generation has now been cast out by the movement conservatives?
George W. Bush followed the conservative prescriptions to a T. He didn't even raise taxes after starting a war! Even St. Ronnie raised taxes!
All of W.'s Supreme Court picks were true-blue conservative ideologues - (Roberts, Alito). No wishy washy moderates like his predecessors appointed - (Reagan picked O'Connor and Kennedy; Bush Sr. picked Souter).
Bush didn't budge on Global Warming even in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. He was a dream come true for the Neo-Con crowd, allowing them to play out all their Middle East fantasies to their hearts' content.
So why are "conservatives" so down on Bush now?
The simple reason is that they had to throw Bush overboard to avoid having to face the truth. The unfortunate truth for conservative ideologues is that many of the core ideas at the foundation of their belief system simply don't work - like Supply Side economics and No New Taxes as the prescription for all that ails the economy.
Reagan was lucky because he had a Democratic Congress. So when his tax cuts produced record deficits rather than surpluses, the conservative ideologues could blame the Democrats in Congress rather than Reagan. Nevermind that every budget Congress passed at the time was smaller than the budgets proposed by the Reagan administration. Congress was in charge of spending so it was their fault. End of story.
But Bush wasn't so lucky. When his tax cuts also produced record deficits rather than surpluses, he didn't have a Democratic Congress to blame it on. So the blame came squarely down on him. It was his fault, you see, because he didn't veto the spending bills or what have you. Because surely the underlying conservative philosophy couldn't be at fault.
So Bush is the scapegoat or the fall guy who had to be sacrificed to cover up for the failures of the conservative movement's core philosophy.
That way the right-wing ideologues can in good conscience continue to insist that we go back and do the same things that got us into this mess to begin with and as soon as enough time passes they will claw their way back into power and the cycle will start over again.
The only hope for the country is that Obama and the Democrats can get most of the mess cleaned up before that happens so that our country will be strong enough to survive yet another stent of fiscal irresponsibility and economic turmoil.

Conservatives just don't get it

The title of this post was inspired by my friend Nick who was working on a similar post (it appears to be messed up right now but keep checking back and maybe it will get fixed.)
I'm not sure what I expect from conservatives. Contrition? Mea culpas? Regret? A total rejection of their failed arguments and a total embracement of mine?
I suppose all of that is a bit unrealistic in today's world. Stubborn defiance should not be surprising. But still, what MUST they be thinking??
After witnessing the total collapse and utter failure of the Bush presidency, which was the most conservative administration in recent history, and seeing how the tax cuts utterly failed to lift the economy or generate revenues to balance the budget as promised. Instead, we went deeper into debt than ever before with absolutely nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, our nations infrastructure has been badly neglected and the health care crisis has been allowed to spiral out of control.
What will conservatives do if, in the next two years, the economy starts to turn around and the health care reform initiatives start to achieve some positive results? Will they finally concede then? Or will they just continue to demand more tax cuts and denounce every government spending initiative as "socialism"?
I know how I would place my bet.

The Robin Hood Budget

Obama’s first budget is already being labeled a Robin Hood Budget because it will raise taxes on the well-to-do and reduce taxes for the less fortunate.

Obama’s budget would dramatically increase taxes on the wealthy, while cutting payments and subsidies to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness and defense contractors -- and mandating a system to charge polluters for their carbon emissions.
It would, in short, reverse the redistribution of wealth that took place during the Bush era. This time, the rich will be subsidizing the poor, not the other way around.

I think this is a healthy change for our country, but I do recognize that it is going to be rough on all those poor rich people. So I want to make a standing offer right now for any rich people who are unhappy about the prospect of paying higher taxes. I will take their heavy, oppressive tax burden onto myself (and their heavy income as well, of course) and give them my comparatively light and miniscule tax burden (and my teeny-tiny salary to boot). I’m sure there are other brave people out there like myself who would be willing to offer the same deal to any struggling rich people. So fear not! We are here for you.
Any takers should feel free to leave a comment on my blog.

Obama's Address to Congress

The thing I liked best about the whole speech was not having Dick Cheney up there sitting behind the president.

Bow Wow!

President Obama’s administration is almost complete!
Yesterday Obama nominated former Washington Gov. Gary Locke for Secretary of Commerce; his Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis was approved and sworn in after Republicans finally ended their filibuster; and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius seems to be the odds-on choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So that just leaves one key opening - The First Pet!
And now that decision seems to have been made as well - Michelle Obama: Dog coming soon!

Here is what the new First Dog might look like.

GOP philosophy, or lack thereof

Driving in to work this morning I subjected myself to one of the local talk radio stations (KTSA) to see what they were saying about Obama’s first address to Congress last night. After a few minutes of listening to Trey Ware go on and on about how he doesn’t believe in getting help from the government and all he wants is for government to “get out of the way” and that if we would just cut taxes on business that we would see this huge economic growth, blah, blah, blah.... I was ready to pull my hair out.
Has he been asleep for the past eight years? What does he think Bush was doing all that time?
Of course, Ware sounded no different than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal did in his embarrassingly bad response to Obama’s speech the night before in which he complained about government spending on volcano monitoring, like that is somehow a bad thing. Does this mean that Jindal is too young to remember Mount St. Helens?

And so I thought Paul Krugman’s response was very much on target.

What is the appropriate role of government?

Traditionally, the division between conservatives and liberals has been over the role and size of the welfare state: liberals think that the government should play a large role in sanding off the market economy’s rough edges, conservatives believe that time and chance happen to us all, and that’s that.

But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Taxation and Representation

The District of Columbia took a big step this morning toward finally securing real representation in Congress. A compromise bill that would give D.C. and Utah each one new representative cleared the Senate by 62-34, enough to overcome a Republican filibuster that stymied the legislation the last time it was considered.
This is such an obvious discrepancy that it is an embarrassment that it has taken this long to finally be resolved. There is no legitimate argument that Republicans make against this legislation other than blatant partisanship. If D.C. had 600,000 wealthy white people, rather than 600,000 mostly poor black people, they would have had full representation a long, long time ago. No other country in the world denies the residents of its capital city representation in their government. The fact that we do is a disgrace.
Next step is to give D.C. two U.S. Senators.

A flicker of hope for my TeeVee?

ER is winding down after its long, long run.
Boston Legal is already gone.
And the creators of Lost have already promised to pull the plug on their franchise within the next couple of seasons.
So, for a time there it was looking like I would have nothing to watch on TV anymore. But now that might be changing.
I’ve already gotten sucked up into the excellent new series Life on Mars on ABC.
And now Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, has a new series out on Fox called Dollhouse which I intend to watch.
And next month, there is a new series coming out called Castle featuring Nathan Fillion, late of Firefly, that looks like it could be worth watching.
So maybe there is hope.
Or then again, all these shows could wind up canceled by this time next year and I will once again be left with nothing to watch on TV.

Mickey and Judy

Oscar Review - Thumbs Down!

My Lord that was awful!
Oh, there were some good moments, I guess, I thought Ben Stiller was hilarious making fun of Joaquin Phoenix and I appreciated the tribute to Jerry Lewis, but for the most part I hated the Academy Awards show last night.
It's not that I mind so much that Slumdog Millionaire won everything. I'm getting used to the fact that we can't give the top awards to actual American films anymore. No, now it almost always goes to a British film, or an Austrailian film or now an Indian film.
I guess I'm still just bitter that for the third year in a row, all of the popular films were completely shut out of the top categories again. The one exception this year - the one sop to the unwashed masses - was, of course, the posthumous Supportin Actor award for Heath Ledger. But after that, forget it.
None of the five nominated films cracked the Top 20 films at the Box Office this year, at least not before the awards show. I've not seen any of them and the one nominated film that I most want to see - Frost/Nixon - was completly shut out.
I guess what drove me over the edge last night - the final insult - was when they started handing out even the technical awards to these snooty, high-brow movies. The awards such as sound mixing and visual effects used to be the last place where popular films could still get some recognition from the Academy. But not this year!
I mean, they completely humiliated Will Smith. Did you see how they had this long video tribute to "action films" and then brought out Smith, whose action film Hancock was dissed by the Academy. And then Smith gives this speech where he talks about how much he loves action movies and then he presents to award for Best Visual Effects, which used to always go to popular action films - and the Academy gives it to Benjamin Button over Dark Knight and Iron Man. Ha Ha!! Screw You, Will Smith.
You could tell Smith was annoyed later when he was still out there giving technical awards to Slumdog and cracked that award show host Hugh Jackman must be back stage taking a nap.
But the worst was yet to come. When it came time to do the traditional salute to actors who passed away during the prior year - one of my favorite parts of the whole show - they freakin' screwed it up!!! The director decided it was more important to leave the camera on Queen Latifah while she sang some syrupy number and kept panning away from the screen showing the tributes for the dead movie people. I couldn't read half the names or descriptions of the people being honored because they kept panning the film back and forth giving me a headache and forcing me to strain my eyes to try and read the text. I was so furious! And I still am!!!
The only real surprise of the night was the Best Actor award for Sean Penn when everyone, including Penn, thought it would go to Mickey Rourke.
But other than that, it was pretty much predictable once you saw in the early categories that Slumdog was winning everything over Benjamin Button.
I'm really ticked at the Academy Awards right now. If they do this again next year and nominate a bunch of high-brow, little-seen artsy films and ignore all the movies that have, as Will Smith noted, "fans," then I am definitely not going to waste my time watching it again.
Personally, I hope the ratings for this show was in the dumps.

Death and Texas

Good article in the WaPo today.

Sharon Keller's radical jurisprudence

I was appalled back when I first learned that Criminal Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller refused to hear a last minute appeal for a death-row inmate.

Now that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct has commenced formal proceedings against her she could be forced off the bench soon.
What is most upsetting about the case is not that the inmate was put to death - he probably would have been executed anyway after the Supremes dealt with the issue of lethal injections being "cruel and unusual" - but it was the cavalier way that she let her rigid, hard-line ideology take precedence over normal jurisprudence.
I don't want someone on the court who will ignore conventions when they conflict with her extremist ideology. That is not being "conservative", it is being radical. Keller should be off the bench.

I have that effect....

Welcome to The (Yawn!) Arena....

The Express-News’ new Opinion Page Blog - The Arena has been a pretty dull place recently. They’ve had a grand total of seven posts since they launched the blog on Jan. 27 and there have only been two people who have left comments including myself. In fact, I’m the only person who has commented over there since Feb. 4. I guess I scared everyone else away.

The Burris predicament

I had no problem supporting Roland Burris being seated in the U.S. Senate a while back despite the fact that he was appointed by scandal-tarred Gov. Rod Blagojevich largely because I thought he was adequately qualified and because he appeared to be clean from all the pay-to-play allegations swirling around the governor then.
Now it appears that if Burris was clean it wasn’t for a lack of trying to get dirty. He has recently acknowledged that he tried to raise money for Blago while under consideration for the Senate appointment without any success. He surely hid this tidbit away from his fellow lawmakers knowing full well that it would have sunk his changes of getting the Senate nod. But now that the beans have been spilled there are lots of calls for his resignation. I cannot defend him at this point, although I still see him as a mostly sympathetic character. What concerns me are the calls to have him resign and then fill his seat with a special election - after state lawmakers pass a law allowing such an election to be held. I would only support such a plan if the governor can still appoint a temporary replacement. Otherwise, Illinois would be without full representation in the Senate for possibly months while the election campaign is underway.
No doubt, this prospect will delight Republicans. It is pretty clear right now that the only reason Norm Coleman is continuing his futile lawsuit in Minnesota is to keep Democrats from having another vote for as long as possible.
We just saw how crucial this is in light of the Republican strategy of filibustering everything that comes to a vote from here on out. Nevermind that Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the Senate, they will be stifled if Republicans can continue to tie up two or three Senate seats indefinitely. During the filibuster of Obama’s emergency stimulus package, we saw that there were just three Republican senators willing to crossover and support their country over their party.
Right now Democrats should have a 59-41 majority in the Senate, requiring just one Republican crossover vote to defeat a filibuster. But because Coleman has tied up Al Franken with his frivolous lawsuits, they only have 58 votes. If Ted Kennedy is sick and can’t make if for a vote, they are down to 57. Now if you take away Roland Burris for the duration of a special election campaign, they are down to 56 and suddenly three Republican crossover votes are no longer enough.
Democracy was never meant to be abused in this manner. At a minimum, we will need a temporary replacement if Burris is forced to resign and the Minnesota recount lawsuit should be wrapped up immediately or else allow Franken to be seated temporarily until it is done.
And finally, we desperately need to reform the filibuster that has been so misused and abused by the Republican minority.

Republican SEC negligence

The case of Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford looks like another example of the failure of Republican governance. This is the second massive case of financial fraud that the Republican-run Securities and Exchange Commission either missed or ignored.
Why was the SEC so feeble and toothless in its enforcement of security laws. It has been reported that there were numerous "red flags" about Stanford Financial Group, but each time the SEC responded with a small slap-on-the-wrist fine. Was it because of Stanford's political connections? The "pro-business" ideology of the Republican-controlled SEC? Or a combination of both?

Stanford is clearly a flight risk. There were already reports that he tried to get a one-way ticket to Antigua where his offshore business operations are based. So why, when they when the authorities finally tracked him down was he simply "served papers"?
As one blog commenter noted, they should have planted a marijuana cigarette on him so that he would at least be guaranteed to do some jail time. Because bilking countless people out of $8 billion apparently isn't a serious enough crime when you are wealthy and white.

On a related note, Phil Gramm's employer UBS has recently agreed to pay a substantial fine to the IRS for its complicity in shielding billions of dollars from U.S. clients from taxing authorities. UBS, the Swiss banking conglomerate, has also promised to hand over the names of several hundred of its U.S. customers who have used it to avoid paying taxes.
I anxiously await publication of that list. Two of my biggest pet peeves are wealthy tax cheats, and companies that set up in tax havens like Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.

The Party of Nope

This is the best John Branch cartoon I've seen in a looooong time.

They want to do WHAT with the bailout money???

General Motors and Chrysler now say they need another $14 billion in bailout money on top of $39 billion they already got from the Bush administration and in exchange they are promising to close five plants and layoff 47,000 workers.
Oh goody!
Excuse me, but as Robert Reich pointed out on NPR this morning, the whole point of the government-financed bailout and the stimulus package was to create and/or preserve jobs, not to bailout stockholders and corporate investors. I would hope that before the Obama administration hands over any more bailout money, that they go over some options to see what plan would be best for the workers involved. Otherwise, we will just end up spending billions more on top of this to pay for unemployment insurance, retraining and more stimulus for all the workers that the auto companies want to shed.

Back taxes

So now it turns out that Gov. Sarah Palin owes back taxes on per diem income she received over the past several years.
And so you know what that means..... Sarah Palin is a TAX CHEAT!!!!!!!
At least, she is based on recent Republican definitions of that term. So that should pretty much sink any future presidential prospects she thought she had.
That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing whether Palin ‘12 could do any better than Quayle ‘96. Ha!

Curse of Caroline

From Political Wire:

“Curse of Caroline” Haunts Paterson, Gillibrand
A new Quinnipiac poll finds both Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and the man who appointed her, Gov. David Paterson (D) trail Democratic primary challengers in 2010.
Atorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) crushes Paterson, 55% to 23%, in a possible gubernatorial primary.
Manwhile, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) beats Gillibrand in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 34% to 24%, with 39% still undecided.
Explains pollster Maurice Carroll: “The Caroline Kennedy mix-up still haunts Gov. David Paterson... Three quarters of New Yorkers heard about the nasty news leaks. They think Kennedy was treated unfairly, but most don’t blame Paterson for the leaks.”

Good! I hope that Andrew Cuomo wipes the floor with that idiot Paterson. And if McCarthy can defeat Gillibrand then all the better. I see Gillibrand as a potential Joe Lieberman clone.

E-N Funnies now Less-Funny

Today is a sad day for newspaper comics lovers who read the San Antonio Express-News.
Today, the E-N editors kowtowed to a group of hard-right whiners by canning "My Cage", one of the best new comic strips added to the section in recent years, and replacing it with the vile and grotesque "Mallard Fillmore."
Now there are three political strips crammed onto the comics page - two right-wing strips - Mallard and "Prickly City" sandwiching in the liberal "Doonesbury" strip.
It is a shame not just because they brought back the grotesque Mallard, but because they couldn't find any other comic in the section to replace. With so many old, tired, humor-free comics - the original authors long dead and now being churned out by syndicate hands - it is pathetic that they would choose to replace a fresh, new strip with living authors.
It is just one more reason for readers to abandon the print edition of the paper and seek out the comics they like online.
Of course, I'm not like the whiners who forced Mallard onto the funny pages. I don't cancel my newspaper subscription whenever things don't go my way. Instead, I will hold my nose and follow Mallard everyday and document the lies, the misconceptions, the grotesque and insulting caricatures and the offensive, humorless, mean-spirited venom that flows out of the pen of Bruce Tinsley everyday. I'm sure it will be loads of fun.

Worse than Hoover

I think this group of historians was awfully generous to George W. Bush by ranking him at No. 36 among all U.S. presidents. That is two slots behind Herbert Hoover, but still six slots from dead last which is where he probably should be.

1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FD Roosevelt
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Truman
6. Kennedy
7. Jefferson
8. Eisenhower
9. Wilson
10. Reagan
11. LB Johnson
12. Polk
13. Jackson
14. Monroe
15. Clinton
16. McKinley
17. John Adams
18. George HW Bush
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Madison
21. Cleveland
22. Ford
23. Grant
24. Taft
25. Carter
26. Coolidge
27. Nixon
28. Garfield
29. Taylor
30. Harrison
31. Van Buren
32. Arthur
33. Hayes
34. Hoover
35. Tyler
36. George W. Bush
37. Fillmore
38. Harding
39. WH Harrison
40. Pierce
41. A. Johnson
42. Buchanan

Bipartisanship rejected

I think we just witnessed a Republican Senator's self-immolation. That was the most pathetic spectacle I think I have ever seen. What could have possessed Judd Gregg to pull a stunt like this? At least he acknowledges that his political career is now over and won't be seeking re-election in 2010. That is the one good thing to come out of this mess. And I'll bet that Bonnie Newman is pretty ticked off right now.

So, after campaigning for the job and going through the whole vetting process, Gregg now decides to blindside President Obama by announcing his "change of heart" just as Obama is making a public appearance at an event in Peoria, Ill. to promote the stimulus package. How insulting.

Well, good riddance. I didn't see any upside to appointing Gregg in the first place since he refused to support the stimulus package and even demanded and got a Republican replacement for his Senate seat from a Democratic governor.
At leat now, we are pretty much guaranteed to get a Democrat in the Commerce slot for the first time in eight years.

Oh, and while this little charade has been hogging the limelight, Leon Panetta has just been approved to be CIA Director. Remember when that was supposed to be a big problem for the Obama administration? Also, Hilda Solis' nomination for Labor Secretary looks like it will go through very shortly as well.

Troublemaking columnist returns

Uh Oh! The Express-News is running another column by that troublemaking liberal blogger.
Didn't they learn their lesson the last time?

Inauguration gigapan

This is an amazing photo from Barack Obama's inauguration. It allows you to zoom in and see close up to an incredible degree. Check it out.

Cage Match

When the Wingnuts say “Jump!”, the Express-News editors say “How High?”

This weekend Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter announced in his column that the local paper is backpedaling on its decision to dump the Mallard Fillmore comic strip because a lot of wingnut dittoheads called the paper to whine and complain. So they are going to take the nauseating and noxious strip and jam into into the comics section, which is already crowded with right-wing fodder like Prickly City and B.C., all so that we can have “balance”. By balance, of course, they mean keeping a 3-to-1 ratio of wingnut fodder to anything deemed “liberal.” Kind of like the 3-to-1 ratio of conservative columnists to liberal columnists that they maintain on the Op-Ed page.
But the worst part of the decision, is that to make room for Mallard they are going to dump “My Cage”, one of the new, up-and-coming strips that they added over the past year.
It is bad enough that they ignored “Rudy Park” after its one-month stint as a “guest comic”. It’s bad enough that they relegated “Curtis” to a Sunday-only slot and dropped the week-day comics. It is bad enough that they don’t have a Sunday slot for “Pearls Before Swine”, but now they are goin to dump “My Cage” which I have come to enjoy a great deal recently. There are not a lot of “must read” comics in the E-N for me - the kind that I will take the time to seek out and read even when I am in a hurry - such as LuAnn, Zits. Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur. But My Cage had slowly worked its way up into that pantheon for me.

One of the authors of My Cage was as surprised as I was and left the following comment on Richter’s column:

Wow. I have to say...I’m stunned. I write ‘My Cage’ and we get a lot of really positive feedback from the good readers of this paper. Despite all the other papers we’re in, I’d say 25% of our feedback is from this paper and 99% of that is overwhelmingly positive.
Huh.
In fact, when we held a contest for readers to appear in the strip last year our three winners all ended up being form THIS paper. One reader even baked a cake in the form of our lead chracter. Actually, you can read all about it here:
http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/comics/2008/05/expressnews-readers-to-appear-1.html
I’d really hate to lose touch with all the readers we’ve gotten to talk to. The feed back and suppost has been greatly appreciated.
Hopefully if you won’t reconsider the decision, we can at least have a chance to say good bye. Too bad. I really liked this paper. Huh. Very shocking.
-Ed Power
Writer of ‘My Cage’
mycagecomic@yahoo.com

I have tried repeatedly to leave a comment myself without success. I don’t know if there is a technical glitch or if my comments are being singled out for deletion. But I would encourage anyone else who is interested to go and leave the good folks at the E-N a comment about this situation.

Republicans embrace their Hooverite roots

It is extremely frustrating to think that after winning a huge election victory in November, Barack Obama could be denied the economic stimulus package that he and all the top economists agree is desperately needed to pull the nation’s economy out of its nosedive.
Democrats have a 58-seat majority in the Senate (59 with Al Franken) and could easily pass the stimulus package on an up-or-down vote. But because Republicans have chosen to filibuster the bill, it teeters on the brink of defeat due to the wavering of a small handful of “centrist” Republicans and a couple of Democrats.
The remarkable thing is that the vast majority of Republicans are committed to blocking the stimulus package even as everyday brings more bad news about the deteriorating economic situation.
Obama may be president right now, but until this legislation is passed the country is STILL operating on Bush’s rules and Bushes economic prescriptions. If Republicans want to blame Obama for the economic problems, they need to get out of the way and let his plan go into effect. Then, if it doesn’t work, they will have a case to make next time elections roll around. All they have to do is stop filibustering and allow an up-or-down vote. But instead, they are clinging to the same economic policy prescriptions that have been in place for eight years and that are responsible for bringing us to this point in the first place.

Stupid Letters to the Editor

Sometimes I really hate the Letters section in the local paper. They allow people to publish things that are incredibly stupid, blatantly false and often malicious.
Today, for instance, we have this gem from frequent wingnut letter writer Bud Martinez:

"Let's face it, the economy thrives because of private entrepreneurs, not government intervention. The government can create favorable conditions like favorable taxes for business, but government doesn't "create" jobs."

Nevermind that we have been taking the "favorable tax breaks for business" option almost exclusively for the past eight years and look where it has gotten us. Let's just look at the last staement: The government doesn't create jobs. Got that?
OK, now go talk to any member of the U.S. Military, any company working off of government contracts, anyone working in the schools, the post offices, the court houses, the police stations the fire departments, the road crews, the hospitals caring for Medicare and Medicaid patients, all over this country and repeat that "government doesn't create jobs."

Why does the paper even publish letters like this? Maybe they need to print a warning at the top of the Letters section that says "Beware. Letters may contain statements that are stupid, idiotic, false and have no correlation to the truth and or reality."

Confirmation delays

Republicans have been throwing a huge hissy fit in Washington because Barack Obama actually appointed someone to be Secretary of Labor - Hilda Solis - who is (gasp!) PRO-LABOR! The nerve!!!
And now they have found some new ammunition to throw at her. It turns out that her husband had an outstanding tax lien of $6,000 on his business. A-ha! Failure to pay taxes derailed Tom Dashle’s nomination. So now they can do the same thing to Solis. Except, of course, that it is her husband’s business and not hers. But, whatever!
And next, Leon Panetta’s bid to be CIA Director will be held up after it is discovered that one of his second cousins twice-removed has an outstanding fine for an overdue library book.

AP challenging Fair Use standard

I agree with Kos that this case is ridiculous.

On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year’s presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.
Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.
The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.
“The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,” the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.
“AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey’s attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.”
“We believe fair use protects Shepard’s right to do what he did here,” says Fairey’s attorney, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP.”

I don’t want to see the AP go under like Kos does, but I think they don’t have and grounds to make a claim in this case.

Republicans take cues from Taliban

Making the rounds this morning is this interesting quote
by U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas which compares the Republican Party to the Taliban.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes.
“And these Taliban -- I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

This is especially ironic as Steve Benen notes because comparisons between the GOP and the Taliban have been made pretty consistently recently by frustrated Democrats, but now coming from the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee it has gained new credibility.

Stimulus Response

Andres Bocanegra at The San Antonio Conservative has a post up listing so-called wasteful spending in the Stimulus Bill that has been identified by Republicans. He adds his comments to each one in italics and I thought I would then add my responses in bold.

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient. why restart a program we know is inefficient?
We know no such thing. We only know that the Republican administration, which was ideologically opposed to the program, pulled the plug. Democrats, who are now in charge at the Department of Energy, want to restore funding. But does it belong in the stimulus bill?
Well, $2 billion in government spending will create a log of jobs and business opportunities around the coal plant in Illinois.
One of the main reasons that we in San Antonio are not suffering as much as the rest of the country is the $2 billion in government spending associated with the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) out at Fort Sam Houston. That money, spread out over several years, is creating thousands of jobs and is providing a nice cushion for San Antonio during the economic downturn.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film. so the support from Hollywood helped out for them … I suppose
Tax breaks provide the least “bang for the buck” compared to direct government spending, and yet the stimulus bill is filled with tax cuts because they are also the quickest way to get money back into the economy. Lots and lots of tax breaks in the stimulus bill, many at the insistence of Republicans who are now opposed to the package at all cost. The Republicans have singled out “Hollywood” here because it is a favorite boogeyman of the far right. But the movie industry is a huge economic generator. Aside from the jobs it creates directly through the production and distribution of movies, think about the other industries that depend on Hollywood. If they stopped making movies and TV shows who would want to go out and buy all those flat-screen TVs and surround-sound systems?

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
Money well spent in my opinion. The initial coupon program proved to be very popular and ran out already. That means the money is being turned over very quickly and making its way back into the ecomomy which is exactly what the stimulus is trying to do.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship). this might be ok but this is just for the design … whats wrong with the icebreakers we have at this point?
Some company is going to get the contract to design that ship. Another will get the contract to build it. That means jobs, jobs and more jobs.

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. yeah this is a NO …
Constructing buildings is very clearly stimulus. It is infrastructure. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters. seriously hit up a WalMart for furniture … but again NO
Wal-Mart does not make furniture. They are a re-seller. Why go through them just so they can take a cut? Some company out there that makes the furniture will get the contract and that means more jobs, etc.

•$600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees. how does this create jobs or help US automakers
How does it NOT help the auto industry? The government is going to BUY vehicles from the auto companies. This is the most clear example of stimulus for a distressed company that I’ve seen. Whoever put this list together doesn’t have a clue.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s. this doesnt stimulate the economy
I agree that this one is questionable. They would have to hire people to go out and provide the screening services and so that is clearly a boon for some medical supply and service companies. But it probably doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system. again how does this stimulate the economy?

By employing people who would build and maintain the waste disposal and sewer systems (i.e. infrastructure).

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities. see above comment
The Smithsonian museum has been badly neglected during the Republican reign in Washington. There are cracked ceilings, water leaks and major structural problems that have forced the closure of some sections of the museum and has even resulted in damage to some of our nation’s most prized treasures. It is a disgrace. I don’t care if you want to call it stimulus or not. I say it is infrastructure that needs to be better cared for.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion. create more efficient census techniques
Fine. What are your ideas? The Census is a huge job that gets bigger and more complex every 10 years as the population continues to grow and diversify. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the stimulus bill, but it is money the government will need to spend anyway.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.” no stimulation here …
When you convince people to stop smoking it saves millions down the road in health care costs. It is a worthy program assuming that it is effective, but probably shouldn’t be in the stimulus bill.

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
That means jobs for the companies that make and sell computers, jobs for the companies that install and maintain computers and jobs for the companies that build out the spaces where the computer centers will go. Plus it is a boon to education and can help people retrain to get better jobs and so on and so on...

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI. no … this belongs in an budget appropriations bill not a stimulus package
I agree. Don’t know how that got in there. But in a $900 billion stimulus bill, we are essentially arguing about change found under the sofa cushions.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction. no stimulation here
See comment on smoking cessasion above.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Any questions?

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.
The key words here are “job programs.” Got that?

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property. how does this create jobs … oh yeah it doesn’t
By employing the people who do construction renovation work

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland. I guess these are considered construction jobs?
Yes.

The list goes on and it gets a bit repetitive, but I think you get the idea. But as Steve Benen has noted, all the items that Republicans objected to come to just 2 percent of the overall stimulus bill.
So why are we holding up a bill that we are 98 percent in agreement on to squabble over 2 percent?

Welcome to the Neighborhood

A couple of new, local, political/opinion blogs have come online recently.
First, the Express-News Op-Ed page has a new blog called The Arena where the editorial board members such as Jonathan Gurwitz will post brief commentaries.
You have to register on the site in order to leave comments, which is a pain. And it also looks like they have it set so that comments have to be “approved” before they will appear, which is an even bigger pain. But hopefully they will get all the kinks worked out soon and it will become a fun site for debating the issues of the day.

Second, we have a new conservative blogger on the local scene looking to fill the void left by our AWOL friend Bill Crawford.
Andres Bocanegra is a political science student at the University of Texas at San Antonio who is deeply involved in the College Republicans and his blog is appropriately titled The San Antonio Conservative.

So a warm welcome to our new neighbors. I look forward to open, honest and invigorating debates.

E-N Op-Ed RIP (not quite)

I was about ready to write the obituary for the Express-News Opinion page. On Monday, they slashed the section down to one-page and then on Tuesday it was cut down again.
But then I finally found Bob Richter’s column explaining the change where he notes the cutback is only for two-days a week rather than six, as I had assumed. So we will still have some room in the Op-Ed section to run some columns and commentaries. I assume that means Jonathan Gurwitz will still have his Wednesday slot.
But Doonesbury has been shipped off to the comics pages next to Prickly City and - the best news of all - Mallard Fillmore has been canned. HAHAHA!!! WooHoo!!! YippEEEEEEE!!!
Ahem. Excuse the spontaneous celebration, but no comic was ever more deserving of getting pink-slipped than the obnoxious, horribly-drawn, frequently ass-backwards wrong, humorless garbage churned out everyday by Bruce Tinsley. Good riddance!
So anyway, I hope that one day they will add those pages back to the Opinion section, because I think it is a mistake to cut back on that section. And I hope they don’t chop any more pages out before Obama’s stimulus plan finally gets past all the Republican sniping, whining, pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth.

Power of the Pen

In a remarkable nod to the news media, Tom Daschletold NBC News today that he decided to drop his bid for HHS Secretary after reading this mornings editorial in the New York Times.
It was a good editorial, I have to admit. I hate to see Daschle go and I wish this could all have been washed away, but the reality in today’s political culture is that it would never have gone away and would have hung around like a cloud over the Obama administration from here on out.

Academy to movie fans: Drop Dead

In the “I told them so” category comes this story in the NYTimes the other day about Academy Awards officials fretting that nobody will watch their big show later this month.

The nominations of a still relatively little-seen crop of best-picture contenders — “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” which together have accumulated less than half the box office of “The Dark Knight,” which was snubbed — are making it harder for producers of the Oscar ceremony to deliver on an earlier promise: to create a big night for the movies, even if some of the movies are not so big. Operatives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are quietly scrambling to assemble an event that would make some extraordinary bows in the direction of the crowd while trying to do right by the honorees.

Oh, that’s nice. They will make some “bows to the crowd” after thumbing their noses at them for the fourth year in a row.
This isn’t a new phenomena, as I noted earlier, and it has already been having an impact on the Oscar ratings.

After the American audience for last year’s Oscar show hit an all-time low of about 32 million viewers, ABC cut its rate for a 30-second ad on this year’s broadcast to $1.4 million from $1.7 million, according to Advertising Age.

So how are the Academy bigwigs planning to draw in viewers after snubbing the top 20 box office winners?
By hyping up the one and only caveat they made to popular taste - the supporting actor nod for that dead guy in the Batman film.
I hope that makes all you lowly, movie-watching rabble happy because it’s the only scrap you are likely to get off of the Academy’s elitist, super-exclusive table this year.
Check it out:

The message, on posters and Web sites and in televised ads, aims to tell people that this year’s show has something even for viewers who may not care much for the nominees.
Anyway, Ms. Weiss said in a recent telephone interview, the more pop-minded fans should find a glimmer of comfort in the supporting actor nominations that went to Heath Ledger, as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” and Robert Downey Jr., for his blackface turn in “Tropic Thunder.”
“The Oscars,” she said, “is a show for them too.”

It’s a show for THEM too, she says. Can’t you just FEEL the love?

Supremely out of balance

The New York Times had a good article yesterday illustrating just how far to the right the Supreme Court is skewed today. A recent study shows that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are currently on the Court - No. 1 Clarence Thomas, No. 3 Antonin Scalia, No. 4. John Roberts Jr. and No. 5 Samuel Alito. Anthony Kennedy comes in at No. 10.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the top liberals on the Supreme Court since 1937, we currently have just one in the Top 10 - Ruth Bader Ginsburg at No. 9.
And when you consider that the people most likely to step down from the Supreme Court in the next few years - John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ginsberg - are all from the liberal wing, that means Obama won’t have much of a chance to correct that conservative imbalance unless he appoints someone who is very, very liberal.
And so that is just what Obama needs to do when the time comes. Appoint a liberal lion in the mold of Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan. Someone who will be as far to the left as Clarence Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito are to the right.
Don’t worry whether the person is “too liberal”. They need to be “too liberal” just to begin to bring back some semblance of balance to the Court.

Odds and Ends

I only watched the last five minutes of the Super Bowl, but that was apparently all I needed to watch. The lead changed twice in the final minutes and had a very exciting finish. I didn’t really care who won, but watching it at the very end I was suddenly torn as both teams struggled for the advantage. From a political perspective, I suppose I’m glad that the Steelers won since they are from a Blue state and Obama was rooting for them, while the Cardinals are not only from a Red state, but John McCain’s home state to boot.

I recorded the halftime show so that I could go back and watch it later and I thought Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were terrific. It was great to see that he was clearly NOT lip-synching and even changed the lyrics to some songs to suit the occasion.

I was disappointed this morning to see that Rudy Park is no longer on the comics page of the Express-News. And I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow, but it looks like their whole, lame “guest comic” thing will turn out to be for not as Rudy Park was replaced on the page by Doonesbury, which had been bumped from the suddenly shortened Op-Ed section.

I guess I’ll have to wait and see if this one-page editorial thing was just for today or if it is a permanent cost-cutting measure. Is it just for Mondays? Or will it be like this all week except for Sundays? That is a real shame. My two favorite sections of the paper are the comics and the Op-ed sections and those are the sections that always get hit hardest during downturns in the economy because they generally don’t allow room for advertising, which is the newspapers’ life blood.

The one bright spot is that while Doonesbury wound up on the comics page, the loathsome Mallard Fillmore was apparently dropped altogether. Ha!!!

I hope that Tom Daschle can weather this confirmation process and still become Secretary of Health and Human Services, but damn! He should have known better on that tax thing.

I was excited when I heard that Obama was tapping Republican Judd Gregg for Secretary of Commerce, but now that it appears the New Hampshire Democratic governor is just going to appoint another Republican as his replacement in the Senate I’m thinking “Why even bother?” What is wrong with these governors and their awful Senate picks anyway? Sheesh!

The Return of Nigel Tufnel

Well, not really. But Jonathan Gurwitz brings the fictional headbanger back from obscurity in his latest column.
His contention is that Obama’s stimulus plan is like trying to turn the volume up to 11 the way the fictional Nigel did on his amplifiers in the mockumentary “Spinal Tap”. The only problem with this analogy is that we are not talking about spending stimulus dollars that don’t exist. The money will be there, borrowed no doubt, but there none-the-less.
Perhaps if the Federal Reserve was threatening to lower the interest rates to -1, then the Spinal Tap analogy would be applicable. But as it is, I think the more apt analogy would be that of firefighters spraying water on a raging fire. The stimulus package is the equivalent of spraying a whole bunch more water in order to get the fire under control.
Republicans are essentially arguing that it is more important right now to conserve our water than it is to put out the fire.

But the reference to Nigel Tufnel naturally brings back memories of that disagreeable chap who used that pseudonym on Bill Crawford’s now defunct blog. “Nigel” seemed to be most intent on disparaging me personally and arguing in particular about the covert status of Valerie Plame and the question as to whether or not Karl Rove broke the law.
Since “Nigel” would never comment on my blog and because Bill ultimately deleted his entire blog before vanishing into the ether, there is now no record of our lengthy and protracted debate on this subject. However, I did make reference to it in several posts on my blog here, here and here.

25 Most Influential Liberals

JimmyK links to a Forbes list of 25 Most Influential Liberals in the media. Here it is in reverse order:

Michael Pollan
Kurt Andersen
Kevin Drum
Ezra Klein
James Fallows
Gerald Seib
Andrew Sullivan
Glenn Greenwald
Hendrick Hertzberg
Matthew Yglesias
Maureen Dowd
Christopher Hitchens
Bill Moyers
Chris Matthews
Fareed Zakaria
Markos Moulitas Zuniga
David Shipley
Josh Marshall
Rachael Maddow
Oprah Winfrey
Jon Stewart
Thomas Friedman
Fred Hiatt
Arianna Huffington
Paul Krugman

It’s a pretty good list with just a few questionable inclusions and some glaring omissions.
First for the omissions.
Where the heck is Keith Olbermann? They have Chris Matthews, which is questionable, and Rachael Maddow, which is well deserved, but not Olbermann?
And what about Duncan Black - Mr. Atrios himself, probably the leading liberal blogger of all time.
And another up-and-coming liberal blogger I would probably include is Steve Benen, who took over Kevin Drum’s slot at Political Animal. He has been doing a bang-up job and is a must-read for me everyday.
They also left off several prominent liberal columnists including Frank Rich at the NY Times and E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post. Also, Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune.

Now, for the questionable inclusions.
What were they thinking putting Christopher Hitchens on this list?? He went over to the dark side back during the Clinton era and has been a reliable wingnut voice throughout the entire Iraq War quagmire. His grudging endorsement of Obama notwithstanding, there is no way he should be included in a Top 25 list of LIBERALS. Sheesh!
And speaking of Iraq War cheerleaders, how about Fred Hiatt, the neo-con editorial page editor at the Washington Post. Hiatt is one of the chief reasons the WaPo editorial pages are often more in line with the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page than they are with the New York Times. A leading liberal voice?? Hogwash!
There are a few others I could nitpick including Andrew Sullivan, Thomas Friedman and Chris Matthews. Also, there is the fact that I had never before heard of Michael Pollan and Kurt Andersen, which is not to disparage their liberal credentials but just to suggest that they might fall short of being in the Top 25.

Who else got left off who should be on the list?

Wackiest governor is NOT in Chicago

It’s not often that I tout Maureen Dowd columns, but her latest Which Governor Is Wackier? says just about everything that I’ve been thinking recently in regards to the fiasco of recent Senate appointments.
Rod Blagojevich may be a complete looney tune, but when it came to picking someone to fill Illinois’ Senate vacancy he did a far better job than New York Gov. David Paterson.
What an awful, wretched performance by Paterson.

So now we have an N.R.A. handmaiden in Bobby Kennedy’s old seat? Kirsten Gillibrand, a k a Tracy Flick, accepting the honor with her Republican pal Al D’Amato beside her on stage?....
Paterson could have acted a month ago, or even a week ago. There was no reason not to, certainly not his claim that he had to wait for Hillary, ad nauseam, to exit to State. Colorado’s governor named Michael Bennet senator two and a half weeks before Ken Salazar resigned his seat for the Interior Department.
Then the Democrats would have had another Kennedy in the Senate representing New York — Bobby’s niece and a smart, policy-oriented, civic-minded woman to whom the president feels deeply indebted in an era when every state has its hand out.
Instead they have Gillibrand, who voted against the Wall Street — as in New York — bailout bill. And who introduced a bill to balance the federal budget annually, which suggests she would oppose the $825 billion in deficit spending that President Obama proposes to rescue the country, not least New York.
Paterson’s five weeks of dithering let the jealous vindictiveness of the Clintons and friends — still fuming over Caroline’s endorsement of Obama and Teddy’s blocking Hillary from a leading health care role in the Senate — poison the air. With his usual sense of entitlement and aggrievement, Bill Clinton of Arkansas did not want Caroline Kennedy of New York to have the seat that Hillary Clinton of Illinois held.
Paterson wasn’t thinking of New York, only of how an upstate ally who was a woman would bolster his own chances for re-election. We can only hope that an avenging Andrew Cuomo takes him out in a primary.

Paterson comes out of this looking much more the fool than Blago. And New York will pay the price with much, much less power and influence in the Senate than they did have or than what they could have had.

Academy ignores popular films

Something is up with the Academy Awards. For most of this decade they have been giving short-shrift to popular (i.e. big box office grossing) films.
It didn’t use to be that way. Allow me to demonstrate.
This year’s list of Best Picture nominees marks the fifth year in a row where a Top 10 box office grossing film did not make the cut for the Academy’s top honor. That is an unprecedented streak dating back to at leat 1980 and probably further.
This year, the most popular best picture nominee at the Box Office so far is Benjamin Button which has just cracked the $100 million mark and ranks No. 22 for the year.
In 2007, the biggest box office draw was Juno at No. 15. In 2006, the top grossing nominee was The Departed, also at No. 15. In 2005, Brokeback Mountain had the highest box office gross at No. 22. And in 2004, The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby were No. 22 and No. 24, respectively.
The last time the general public and the Academy agreed on a film was 2003 when Lord of the Rings: Return of the King took the Best Picture Oscar and was the No. 1 draw at the box office. The next most popular best picture nominee that year was Seabiscuit at No. 17.
In 2002, LOTR: The Two Towers was No. 2 at the box office and Chicago was No. 10. In 2001, LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring was No. 2 and A Beautiful Mind was No. 11.
So, not counting the LOTR trilogy, there has only been one best picture nominee in the last eight years to crack the Top 10 at the Box Office.
But so what? It’s not like they used to always nominate Top 10 films for the Oscar, did they? Ummm. Well, yes, they did.
In 2000, Gladiator was No. 4 at the box office, while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was No. 12 and Erin Brockovich was No. 13.
In 1999, The Sixth Sense was No. 2, while The Green Mile was No. 12 and American Beauty was No. 13.
In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was No. 1 at the box office. Shakespeare in Love was No. 18.
In 1997, Titanic was No. 1; As Good As It Gets was No. 6 and Goodwill Hunting was No. 7.
In 1996, Jerry Maguire was No. 4.
In 1995, Apollo 13 was No. 3 and Braveheart was No. 18.
In 1994, Forrest Gump was No. 1 and Pulp Fiction was No. 10.
In 1993, The Fugitive was No. 3 and Schindler’s List was No. 9.
In 1992, A Few Good Men was No. 5 and Unforgiven was No. 11.
In 1991, Beauty and the Beast was No. 3 and Silence of the Lambs was No. 4.
In 1990, Ghost was No. 2 and Dances With Wolves was No. 3.

Need I go on? OK, I think I will...

In 1989, Driving Miss Daisy was No. 8 and Dead Poet’s Society was No. 10.
In 1988, Rain Man was No. 1 and Working Girl was No. 11.
In 1987, Fatal Attraction was No. 2 and Moonstruck was No. 5.
In 1986, Platoon was No. 3.
In 1985, The Color Purple was No. 4 and Witness was No. 8.
In 1984, Amadeus was No. 12. You have to go all the way back to 1984 to find the last time a Top 10 Box Office draw was not nominated for Best Picture.
In 1983, Terms of Endearment was No. 2 and The Big Chill was No. 13.
In 1982, E.T. was No. 1, Tootsie was No. 2, The Verdict was No. 11 and Gandhi was No. 12.
In 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark was No. 1, On Golden Pond was No. 2, Chariots of Fire was No. 7 and Reds was No. 13.
In 1980, Coal Miner’s Daughter was No. 7 and Ordinary People was No. 11.

OK, I’ll stop there.
So what the heck is going on? How come the Academy and the general public have grown so far apart in their tastes? More independent cinema? Too many movies to choose from? It is fine if they want to promote indy films, but can’t they reserve at least ONE slot every year for a movie that the general public likes? Is that really asking too much?