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.