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.