Big Government Conservatives Strike Again
They're anti federalists, no two ways about it. Using the fed to take decisions out of the hands of communities isn't supposed to be a conservative ideal. It is now.
June 29, 2005
What the Headlines Oughta Say
I didn't watch Bush's speech, but from what I'm seeing in the papers and on blogs, it looks as though there are some exciting new developments in the second Bush administration. Here are some suggested headlines and subheads for the stragglers in the media:
Bush calls for smaller government, environmental protection
Fires speechwriters and promotes the recycling of presidential addresses
Bush Unveils Time Machine
Step backwards represents forward movement in scientific achievement
Got any others?
Canada Soon to Legalize Gay Marriage Nationally
Canada's internal discussions on gay marriage point the way for the debate in America, so I'll quote from Canadian politicans speaking on the topic, as covered in the Washington Post:
"Rights are rights. None of us can or should pick and choose whose rights we will defend and whose rights we will ignore," Justice Minister Irwin Cotler argued on the floor Tuesday. "The government must represent the rights of all Canadians equally."This appears to be where the debate in the United States is headed. Many, many people are now cognizant of the fact that marriage is not only a union of two people, but a union of two institutions in America: the church and the state. The latter makes a lot of people uncomfortable.He stressed, however, that the change would apply only to the right of gays to be married and divorced under civil law. Ministers cannot be forced to perform the marriages if they object.
"In no church, no synagogue, no mosque, no temple, no religious house will those who disagree with same-sex unions be compelled to perform them. Period," Prime Minister Paul Martin said in a major address giving government support to the bill in February. "This legislation is about civil marriage, not religious marriage."
As Americans, gay and straight, seek a resolution to the dilemma of tax policies that unfairly punish gay couples and those who share employer-sponsored health insurance benefits (yes, for us it is taxable income when we list our "unmarried partners" as recipients of workplace health insurance coverage), look for a gigantic new cleavage to open between what everyone agrees is a church's preregotive and what a growing number of Americans agree is the state's duty. Marriage is likely to become a strictly religious institution, while the state will one day sanction only civil unions for all couples.
June 26, 2005
Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music
I had the distinct pleasure of finally seeing hope for agoldensummer today. I've been hearing them talked up for maybe two years now, and they are not only as good as everyone says, they are far better and stranger than I could have imagined. They're on the road a lot. Go see them.
More about the great performances I saw at Atlanta Pride in coming days.
Kelo et al v. City of New London: A Victory for Federalism; a Victory for Democracy
Last week, the Supreme Court handed a solid victory to federalism, communities, and voters. Surprisingly, the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative.
In Kelo et al vs. City of New London, the court ruled that it would not stand between citizens and their city councils.
Citing the need "of affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power," Justice Stevens upheld the right of communities to determine how best to utilize the 5th Amendment power known as eminent domain.
Americans across the political spectrum hit the roof. Michelle Malkin called the ruling a "devastating blow against homeowners and private property rights." Virtual Memories said, "Nice job by the Supreme Court, deciding that property seizure for private development is Constitutional. I guess I've changed over the years, because I never thought I'd say, 'I really agree with Rehnquist, Scalia and Clarence Thomas on this one.'"
The minority's dissent, written by Justice O'Connor, is an eloquent defense of private property rights, opening by arguing, "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded—i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public—in the process."
One of the interesting things about the response to Kelo is that the Court didn't interpret anything differently than it had in the past, nor did it create what many blogs and individuals seem to be asserting: a previously non-existent right of property seizure.
What the court said is that it will continue to defer to the most local units of elected government in matters relating to eminent domain. In other words, my fellow Americans, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that we are responsible for the laws governing property seizure in our states, and if we don't like those rules, we have to change them. This should be music to the ears of conservatives, but instead it has been jeered from the right as a liberal ruling.
Property ownership is radically unlike other issues that Americans and the courts debate today. Gay marriage and affirmative action, for instance, are issues that are deeply important to a small minority of Americans on either side of a deep divide. Private property, though, is a concept that applies universally, and all Americans, even children, understand that when a person buys something, it belongs to him or her. (It takes adults to explain the vagaries of taxation, of course.)
Children also fundamentally understand the notion of democracy without too much difficulty. It's quite straightforward: people vote, and the person with the most votes gets to make laws. If the person makes bad laws, he or she won't get the most votes in the next election. Fundamentally, that's how a republican democracy is supposed to work. The fact that this very basic overview bears almost no relation to our actual democratic process is worth mentioning.
The ruling of the Court in Kelo is, at its heart, a direct repudiation of an electorate that believes that government can be allowed to operate without oversight.
America is a place where problems get solved, and it always has been. Political innovation was the key to the early success of the republic, and technological innovation has long propelled American economic power far beyond our shores. America is a place where individual liberty extended the do-it-yourself ethos to every sphere of society and life. "The American Dream" itself presents the template: America is a place where people are self-made and success chases after hard work and smart living.
Why did none of the petitioners in Kelo run for office, or recruit others to do so? Kelo was initially filed in October 2000, and an injunction protected the majority of the petitioners' properties until the SCOTUS ruling. That left a long period of time to recruit city council candidates for the 2002 and 2004 elections who would pledge to revamp the development project and protect private property.
America is not a place where those who own homes are out of the mainstream. It's not as if the salient issues of the case are foreign to New Londoners or anyone else in America. The state is taking a few citizens' homes and land to give them to private developers who will build a private mixed-use community of office/residential space. This isn't rocket science; this is the foundation of populist politics in a republican democracy.
Have we really reached a point where Americans won't respond to threats to their homes? I don't believe so, and while not every candidate who ran for any of New London's seven at-large council seats, (New London appears uniquely suited for this sort of populist rebellion) they wouldn't have to. A bloc of three votes would be a big problem, and even two defeats in 2002 would have made the case clearly that the rest were looking at numbered days in office.
Local elections always have the lowest turnout, making grassroots organizing that much more powerful. New London had less than 30,000 people represented by 7 councilors when Kelo was begun. That's about 4,200 citizens per representative. That's a manageable figure for a grassroots uprising with a platform drawn from the issues in Kelo: private property rights, job creation, and smart growth.
But maybe that's not who we are as a country anymore. Maybe the philosophical offspring of the men and women who waged war against the greatest power on Earth at the time in order to be free are reduced to a people that employs attorneys to take their stands for them.
The Men in Black just said that they won't protect that people. How could they? And why should they?
June 24, 2005
June 23, 2005
Republicans Offer Plan To Tie Their Own Hands
House Republicans today coughed up a hairball of a Social Security proposal, creating government managed "private" accounts out of the social security surplus. Social Security is forecast to stop running surpluses around 2016.
Check this out:
Still, Republicans hope the new proposal will shift the debate away from future benefit cuts, as Bush envisions, to ending what they call the "raid" on the current Social Security surplus. But the plan, unlike Bush's, would do nothing to remedy the New Deal-era program's long-term fiscal problems.Hmm... a "raid" on Social Security, you say? Congress would do that, right? Congress has the power of the purse, so Congress would be raiding Social Security. And who runs Congress again? Which party would that be?
The farce continues...
June 22, 2005
Will Afghanistan be the next Colombia?
The Washington Post today provides a quick check-in on the other war, the war against Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist Taliban regime.
Continuing with low-intensity guerrilla attacks against Afghan government and US security forces, the Taliban are a defeated but unsurrendered force. And like the rebel factions that have conducted a four decade long civil war in Colombia, they thrive in remote locales where the drug trade has created a deeply disfigured legal and social economy.
According to New Hampshire's Concord Monitor:
Three and a half years after the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, the United Nations and the U.S. government warn that the country is in danger of becoming a narco-state controlled by traffickers. The State Department recently called the Afghan drug trade "an enormous threat to world stability." The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's opium.This Reuters chart provides a basic overview of opium output from Afghanistan, Burma, Laos, and the rest of the world in thousands of tons, and by regime; Kreigsherren (warlord), Taliban, Ubergangsregierung (transitional government):
The drop off in 2001 is the result of a 2000 Taliban clampdown on opium production. 2005 is expected to be a weak year in part because of eradication efforts, but more significantly because 2004 was such a strong production year that global prices fell. The US is likely to claim victory if output falls in 2005 (you'll notice that the chart is in German. This is because there appears to be a lack of English-language reporting after 2002), but 2006 is the real benchmark year by which to gauge the Karzai government's success at eradication.
Colombia's various governments have tried for years to reach a lasting peace in the nasty hydraheaded conflict that has at times left as much as 40% of the country under rebel control. Colombia's Congress finally passed an amnesty deal this week that will allow for private paramilitary militias, brutal gangs that have long been tolerated by the Colombian government, to disarm. Putting a maximum prison sentence at 8 years for disarming militia members (10 if they lie to investigators during the demobilization process), the law is widely viewed as exempting drug traffickers and narcoterrorists from extradition to the United States.
But don't feel too badly for the militia leaders. In anticipation of their new lives as peaceful citizens, they've been unloading tons of stored cocaine, and there are signs that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations like Hezbollah have made inroads with drug producers in the region to pick up new trafficking routes. Since the rebel FARC and other regional guerrilla armies aren't in on any peace deals yet, Islamic fundamentalists are moving in on a massive new revenue stream.
How can Afghanistan avoid the bloody fate of Colombia? Does anyone still believe that eradication does anything more than keep the producers on their feet?
This is the great wrench in the gears of Afghan reconstruction, and it's not at all unlike the deformed public policy of oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia. Vast sums of money can be made in the drug trade, and those who profit from it make sure to stifle competing interests that would impact their reserviour land and labor. It's likely only a matter of time before the Taliban militias evolve into 'defenders of the farmers' against Karzai's eradication policies, as FARC has tried to do in Colombia.
A populist agrarian Taliban standing up for rural people against the values of Afghanistan's cities is a potentially potent force in a weak and volatile nation. I don't see how it's possible to win both the drug war in Afghanistan and the war we continue to wage for Afghan democracy. From one of them, we have to cut and run. I suggest letting the poppy growers of Afghanistan live in peace and letting the addicts of Europe, Asia, and North America do as they will anyway.
[Author's note: This story uses media sources instead of government sources for one reason: the media sources provide a consistent picture that is at variance with DEA and White House statistics, when they are even available.]
June 21, 2005
Bush Whips Frist; Frist Contrite
Having expressed an opinion that he, Bill Frist, came to all by himself, President Bush called a meeting with the Senate Majority Leader. Afterwards, Frist reversed his earlier statement that negotiations with Democrats on the Bolton nomination had been exhausted and resumed his push for what appears to be a doomed floor fight.
Unprovoked invasions, torture of detainees, and castration of US Senators; it's just another day in BushWorld.
Sullivan Wearies of Right Wing Torture Cheerleaders
I really, really respect Andrew Sullivan's consistent defense of morality. I opposed the Iraq invasion not because I think it's good to have brutal dictators running nations but because I didn't trust our own commander in chief. Sullivan supported it. Why?
I don't know about Hugh Hewitt, Bill Kristol or NR, but I supported this war in large part because I wanted to end torture, abuse and cruelty in Iraq. I did not support it in order, two and a half years later, to be finding specious rhetorical justifications for torture, abuse and cruelty by Americans. I'm sick of hearing justifications that the enemy is worse. This is news? This is what now passes for analysis? They are far, far worse, among the most despicable and evil enemies we have ever faced. Our treatment of their prisoners is indeed Club Med compared to their fathomless barbarism. But since when is our moral compass set by them? The West is a civilization built on a very fragile web of law and humanity. We do not treat people in our custody as animals. We do not justify it. We do not change the subject. We do not accuse those highlighting it of aiding the enemy. We do not joke about it. We simply don't do it. This administration - by design, improvisation, desperation, arrogance, incompetence, and wilfull blindness - has enabled this to occur.
Oldie but a Goodie
Tangentially tied to the Downing Street Memos, from October of last year: Ghostwriter of Bush Autobiography says:
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”It's interesting how this came into play the week before the election last year (I don't think I was aware of it at the time) with that now-trademark boast of "political capital to spend" actually coming from Bush's mouth just days later.Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”
History's a fickle lady, and we're watching what an unpopular incumbent who would say and do anything to win an election gets as his just desserts.
Bush is in a Bind over Bolton
Three options left: Continue flailing over an incredibly damaged nominee, withdraw the nomination, or make a recess appointment that would send an unconfirmed nominee to represent the United States to the world body that should be critical to our success in Iraq.
Again, given the UN sex scandals and Bolton's alleged history as a swinger, I think he'd be a perfect fit. Any bets on Bush making him a recess appointment?
June 20, 2005
Are we already at war in Iran?
Scott Ritter says yes. He says the CIA is running Iraqi locals into Iran to blow things up and cause other trouble while the US military war games an invasion plan from Azerbaijan to the north.
I've got to tell you, I think that Bush will have significant problems selling another war-before-the-last-one-is-finished to the American public. We'll see.
Oops--oughta add that Kirkrrt sent me this story.
Kuwait's First Female Cabinet Member is Seated
Kuwait's first ever female cabinet member took her oath of office today amid what is described as a vigorous shouting match between angry conservatives and jubiliant liberals on the parliament floor.
Massouma al-Mubarak's appointment is a symbol of genuine progress being made in democratizing Kuwait, which until granting women the vote this year allowed only one in seven Kuwaiti residents to participate in electoral politics. Kuwait is home to a huge number of guest workers from other nations who also can't vote, but the progress that Kuwaiti women have made this year is remarkable.
As always, religious fundamentalists oppose their advance, but Kuwaiti society appears to have crossed an important threshold. Congratulations to all Kuwaitis.
June 19, 2005
UPC Goes Live
Hey all, I just wanted to spread the word that the new Unpaid Punditry Corps site has gone live, and invite you over to watch a conservative get hammered for dishonesty.
Join in. Really, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
June 18, 2005
Interesting Social Security Piece
The Times has an 8-page feature on older Americans in Grand Rapids, Michigan and their various approaches to retirement and experiences with Social Security. Unsurprisingly, those who did fabulously well through their working lives, and are not dependent on Social Security, are more open to the Bush proposal to drain funds from the guaranteed benefit system.
One thought that I was unable to shake as I read the piece was the luck factor that was prevalent in various outcomes. The best off of the retirees is a college drop out who worked for Kellogg his whole life. He began as a cookie baker, moved up to plant manager, and retired as a Vice President of the company with a $75,000 pension. He's the guy who retrofitted a Kellogg's factory to create the world's first Pop-Tart. He's the child of immigrants who lived the American dream.
I don't want to diminish the hard work aspect of his success, but really, the Kellogg's factory where he worked likely employed hundreds of people, but one or maybe a few managers. There are simply fewer CEO and EVP positions available than there are cashier and middle management posts (and fewer middle management posts than cashier).
Whether we like to think so or not, luck is a factor in our condition at retirement. The Pop-Tart retiree could have been injured on the job at age 28 and spent his working years on and off of disability. Luck is one the big factors that prevented that outcome (I would add that workplace safety laws and other government interventions helped, too). And what if he had been on disability, hadn't ended up way ahead in his career, and his smart financial choices had boiled down $.58 a can beans or $.38 cent a can peas? Should we as a society abandon people like that in old age?
June 17, 2005
Welcome, Fans of My Siamese Self
It turns out that musicians are always seeking ever shadier circles to run in, but surely political bloggers represent a new low.
Thanks for the mention, Stacey.
Christian Science Monitor On DSM
The Christian Science Monitor provides an odd little piece of journalistic he said, she said. The usually excellent CSM seems not to have any idea how to handle the Downing Street Memo, instead covering how other media outlets have covered the story.
GPU: The Founders on Today's America
PSoTD (by way of Steve) asks: "How do you think the founding fathers would decide on the hot button issues of today?"
There are so many hot button issues, but of course I'll cut to the chase to discuss a bit about the gay thing.
There are those who point to George Washington as the original justifier of excluding gay men from service. In 1778, the Continental Army tried Lt. Frederick Gotthold Enslin for sodomy and making a false report. He was convicted, and Washington ordered him drummed out of the Army, never to return. Of Washington, the day's orders say, "His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes."
Pretty harsh, right? A soldier in Washington's army propositions another soldier and is sent back to Ohio in infamy. It would seem so, but for a real understanding of this case it's necessary to consider the nascent nation at the time.
Connecticut applied the death penalty to people convicted of sodomy, including homosexuals, until reformers in 1821 changed the penalty to mere life imprisonment. Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and the Carolinas all imposed the death penalty for sodomy during at least portions of the colonial period. There is no trend of more lenient legal status to those convicted of sodomy as time progressed towards the Revolution, just a snaggle of punitive laws that darted back and forth between death and sometimes lengthy imprisonment.
Pennsylvania is a case in point. A Quaker colony to begin with, it went back and forth on punishments for sodomy. Sometimes the death penalty was in force, other times less severe punishments were levied for homosexuals and sodomites. Rhode Island similarly had various approaches, which sometimes included the death penalty in the Colonial period. Virginia reaffirmed the death penalty for sodomy in a 1792 law that succeeded English Common Law.
Interestingly, Georgia is the only one of the original colonies that did not criminalize sodomy in the colonial period. Sodomy wasn't criminalized until 1817.
In light of the fact that twelve of the thirteen colonies for which Washington led an Army criminalized the type of conduct that Lt. Enslin was convicted of, and many at that time punished such conduct with the death penalty, I have a hard time seeing how anyone believes this case shows Washington's strict disapproval of homosexuals. By today's standards, if a General took a far more lenient approach to homosexuality than the states themselves did and then ran for president, he'd be tarred and feathered by right wing zealots.
So how would the Founders land on the hot button issues surrounding gay civil liberties in America?
I think that they believed their rhetoric. Yes, a number of the founders owned slaves, but by all accounts they also disapproved of the practice. They built a country, after all, that could not long sustain the practice of human bondage. My feeling is that the men who waged war for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed would frown on attempts to marginalize and restrict legal equality for gays and lesbians.
We have historical evidence that the Indispensible Man had no interest in pursuing excessive punishment against homosexuals, even when he had the chance to act out any revulsion he may have felt. I don't know of such compelling incidents for the rest, but Washington I think would be on the right side with gay rights.
It could also be noted that the architect of the modern training regime of the Continental Army, the Prussian Baron von Steuben was a gay man.
Iran's Elections
I wonder if it surprises most Americans that Iranians today are going to the polls to take part in their regularly scheduled Presidential election.
The Bush Administration has levelled a number of very fair criticisms against Iran's decidedly malformed democratic process, but it's also fair to say that Iran has been one of the most democratic countries in the middle east for some time.
In light of the good critique being issued by our own government, I hereby offer Simianbrain readers another opportunity to call me a traitor by examining one of the arguments in the face of our own democracy, such as it is.
Thousands of candidates (including all women candidates, by the way) were barred from running by a supreme council of clerics.
In the United States, our federal government currently includes 537 elected offices; 435 in the House of Representatives, 100 Senators, a President and a Vice-President (who are elected together).
Of those who hold these offices, there are exactly two members who are not part of the major political parties: Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the House and Jim Jeffords of Vermont in the Senate. Jeffords left the Republican party in 2001, and will be retiring in 2006. Sanders is likely to replace him in the Senate, but an indepedent is not especially likely to replace Sanders in the House.
Are you following along? How many thousands of candidates are excluded in the United States every election cycle because they are not part of the established party system?
Individuals can still run as independents, sure, but there are a variety of obstacles in election law (which varies by state) that state parties are in part designed to mitigate. There are petitions that have to be signed, fees (often running into the thousands of dollars) that have to be paid, and substantial costs related to actually campaigning once you're on the ballot.
I know, those on the right will say I'm trying to compare us to Iran. Get over yourselves. While we're taking this opportunity to critique other nations' democracies, let's spend some time looking at our own. Have the two parties conspired to create intentionally cumbersome ballot access requirements for potential candidates? Have they sealed up the process so that only their own picks have a decent shot at winning? Have they gerrymandered congressional districts to ensure that competitive races can't happen? Yes to all of the above. Are we Iran? No, but could we, as voters, demand better from our leaders and for our democracy? Yes we could, and we should.
June 16, 2005
Under the Microscope
"An occasional rare neuron was located." From the autopsy report of Theresa Schiavo (pdf).
Within the cerebellum, "there were no recognizeable Purkinje cells found."
"The dorsal motor nucleus was relatively preserved, as was the hypoglossal nucleus. The reticular activating system was also relatively preserved. The locus ceruleus and median raphe nucleus were relatively preserved. The cardiorespiratory centers in the medulla oblongata were relatively preserved."
"Brain weight is an important index of its pathological state. Brain weight is correlated with height, weight, age, and sex. The decedent's brain was grossly abnormal and weighed only 615 grams (1.35 lbs.). That weight is less than half of the expected tabular weight for a decedent of her adult age of 41 years 3 months and 28 days. By way of comparison, the brain of Karen Ann Quinlan weighed 835 grams at the time of her death, after 10 years in a similar persistent vegetative state."
"Much discussion took place in the media concerning why the decedent had not undergone an MRI scan of her brain, rather than only a brain CT scan while alive. Last month, the Director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an advisory to healthcare providers that serious injury or death can occur when patients with implanted neurological stimulators--such as the decedent's implanted thalamic stimulator--undergo MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) procedures."
The report notes that neuropathology cannot confirm a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimal consciousness, but reading the report leaves me with the strong sense that the majority of Theresa Schiavo's existence at the time of her death was based in her brain stem.
Her parents, by the way, are said to be considering some kind of legal action based on the release of the report. Tragedy builds upon tragedy, and they seem unwilling to ever let it leave them.
Things you don't want to think about...
12% of US mortgages will go to variable rates in 2007 alone. I guess I'll hold off on buying. Oughta be a lot of good deals floating when those payments increase by 50%.
The philosophy of the stop sign
George Bush, whining about his thus-far failed second term:
President Bush has responded by dispensing his cautious calls for bipartisanship in favor of far tougher rhetoric that blames the Democrats for the stalemate [on social security privatization]. "On issue after issue, they stand for nothing except obstruction," Bush said at a GOP fundraiser Tuesday night. "And this is not leadership. It is the philosophy of the stop sign, the agenda of the roadblock."This would be, by the way, the fundraiser where Bush hobnobbed with porn star Mary Carey.
Let's inject some reality into Bushworld, shall we? Mr. President, your party controls both houses of congress and you are unable to get legislation through? The problem is with your proposal and your strategy, not with Democrats.
Here's where Bush finds his congressional allies:
"They're frustrated, they're disappointed, and they're getting the feedback from up here that, on the one hand, we can't get Democrats' support unless we exclude personal accounts, but on the other hand, if we exclude personal accounts, we can't get Republican support," said the senior GOP aide in the Senate.Let's face a couple of difficult facts here. Bush is proposing legislation that is palatable to neither party. If he can't find some mainstream positions soon, he'll be quacking too loudly for any of the presidential wanna-be's in the Senate to care about policy offerings.
And from the "This is why they call it the third rail" files:
White House aides have been locked in a debate over whether it would be a victory if Bush settled for a Social Security deal without private accounts. Some White House domestic policy officials have suggested that the savings that would flow from reducing future Social Security costs would go a long way toward fixing the government's long-term financial problems.Lindsey Graham knows that if private accounts don't happen under Bush, they won't happen at all:But Rove, among others, has told Republicans that it would be unwise, both from a political and policy standpoint, to reduce benefits without offering people the potential of better returns through personal accounts, aides said. "It gets no easier without private accounts," a senior White House official said.
A growing number of key Republicans are pessimistic. Graham said he has come to the conclusion that Democrats will not pay a political price, at least anytime soon, for killing the Bush plan without offering their own. "The idea of not having an alternative to the Bush proposal is politically acceptable, at least for the moment," he said. "So I don't see any momentum for Democrats to come forward with a proposal."This goes back to the issue of government run private accounts being an unpopular idea to most Americans.Graham's effort to find a bipartisan compromise with Democrats and GOP moderates has faltered, he said. As for private accounts, he said: "I hope it comes before [Bush] leaves office, but who knows?"
Meanwhile, Utah's Robert Bennett is trying to lose his next electoral battle:
Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a strong advocate of personal accounts, has grown so concerned he has decided to introduce, as early as next week, a bill that will not include the accounts but would reduce the scheduled benefits for all but the bottom 30 percent in terms of income. He will also offer one with the accounts, but he is focusing on winning over Democrats on a solvency-only plan. "My sense is, let's get solvency going and make the argument for personal accounts on its own merit," he said.This concept that we can get rid of possible future benefit cuts by imposing actual benefit cuts right away is less than palatable to most Americans. The place to start is with discussions about raising the income cap on Americans who earn more than $90,000 a year, not with discussions about cutting benefits across the board for 70% of Americans.
Democrats, for once, have the right idea:
Democrats are unapologetic. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said voters increasingly see Bush as the impediment to a compromise because the president has stubbornly stuck by a partial privatization proposal that has never gained broad public support. Besides, Emanuel added, after five years of pushing legislation through Congress with virtually no consultation with Democrats, White House officials can hardly complain that the Democrats are not there now.The philosophy of the stop sign? Get real, Mr. President."They never wanted our votes on a prescription-drug bill. They didn't want our votes on taxes, and now they want it on Social Security?" he said. "Go ahead. Have your party-line vote. We'll see how it turns out."
June 15, 2005
Note to the Google Gods
'mo = homosexual
'mo = queer
'mo = gay
I just Googled 'mo and it doesn't come up in that usage. 'Mo' is definitely the new 'queer', and the way new 'gay'. And it's so much more fun to say.
Not a 'mo but want to be one? These good people can help.
Are the Kurds Fomenting Civil War?
They could be. The Kurds are the most likely of the three groups to be baldly playing the Iraqi government game until such a time as they are able to declare independence. Sounds like they don't feel like that's too far down the road.
You've got Kurdish political parties picking up the salaries of probably-corrupt policemen that the central government has fired, families missing in tangles of Kurdish detention centers, American civil authorities crying foul and American military officials essentially asking, "What are we supposed to do when even the good guys are bad guys?"
Schiavo Autopsy Results Released
From the article: "The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain. ... This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
There was no evidence of abuse, but interestingly, the coroner also found no evidence that she suffered a heart attack, which was the reason given for the oxygen deprivation that led to massive brain damage.
I'm trying to find the actual coroner's report, instead of articles about it. I'll update if I track it down.
Update: Well, Atrios points (by way of another link) to this story which notes that the coroner found the vision centers of Schiavo's brain atrophied beyond use. She was blind, which casts additional doubt on Bill Frist's diagnostic abilities as the Physician Who Stated After Watching A Videotape, "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli." It was, in fact, Bill Frist himself who was responding to visual stimuli.
Life Asserts Itself
Sorry for the light blogging, but after months of dust settling from our last reorganization at work, things are falling back into pretty steady routine. It may be that the days of five entries are gone for good, but they're certainly gone for a while.
Usually when I write one of these entries, I get to work to find not much to do and end up writing five posts anyway. It could certainly happen today, but in a less immediate way, it's still true. Life has asserted itself, and Simianbrain may get a little bare from time to time as a result.
June 13, 2005
Christian Scientist Pharmacist Sues for Religious Discrimination
That's it, I'm converting. And becoming a pharmacist. I've so gotta get on this gravy train. And yeah, another instance of "why didn't I write that???"
The Reverberations of an Online Pie Fight
Perhaps you've heard of the great Kos Pie Fight of 2005.
If not, a minute of background: An ad went up at Daily Kos that showed two women in bikinis engaging in a pie fight. Apparently, there were some Kossacks and other blogosphere denizens who had the temerity to note that this offended them. These particular people are that sort of weak-minded, weak-willed individual we like to call "women", as reasonable people (i.e. "men") are sure to have pieced together by this point.
Well, whatever. John Cole steps up the reasonable discussion with this tirade against those crazies without penises:
Meanwhile, you and the Vagina Monologues cult can continue to insult everytone who tells you how foolish you are being, telling us we 'just don't get it' and that we are 'clearly afraid of women' or whatever ad hominem you can come up with. This fiction that any man who is against your mindset is misogynistic is quite, shall we say, titillating. I guess that is how movement's sustain themselves, by creating cartoonish caricatures of the 'enemy.' Like, say, the cartoonish characterization of feminists groups as young, affluent, liberal andmembers of the women's studies set who hysterically (damn- a word with sexist origins!) over-react to the smallest slight, real or perceived. Truth to power, or something.I honesty don't know what to say in response to that, finding it truly breathtaking in scope. This is probably because I'm one of the weak-willed, feeble-minded "women" of whom John holds so much respect.
To be fair, John has directed his venom at one particular set of women: those who express an opinion that encompasses their own identities as women. This is a recurring fatal flaw of those who lack a Y chromosome. We're fine, right up to the point where we start talking about anything that the boys don't think is important. At that point, it is eminently reasonable to declare us "the crowd who dares not shave their legs" (full disclosure: I actually don't, but then, John Cole probably doesn't either. And?) in order to go on and suggest that it's women... well, women with opinions, who are fracturing the unity of the Democratic coalition.
Did I already use the word "breathtaking"?
June 12, 2005
Wow, I love Saturday Nights
And then there's this: "Frist's finances questioned; Experts see violation of campaign rules". I will never again say that the AJC never gave me anything.
Hat tip to Oliver Willis.
Downing Street Memo Scandal Grows
Hello America. There is a gun barrel pointed at your face. Smoke is pouring from it. Do you know what that looks like? It looks like this:
MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.And finally, I tracked down the lying Bushism that has infuriated me for two years. Responding to a reporter at a March 6, 2003, press conference, Bush said:The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.
The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.
The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.
“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.
The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.
The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.
My faith sustains me because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. If we were to commit our troops -- if we were to commit our troops -- I would pray for their safety, and I would pray for the safety of innocent Iraqi lives, as well.He'll burn for that one. Oh will he burn.One thing that's really great about our country, April, is there are thousands of people who pray for me that I'll never see and be able to thank. But it's a humbling experience to think that people I will never have met have lifted me and my family up in prayer. And for that I'm grateful. That's -- it's been -- it's been a comforting feeling to know that is true. I pray for peace, April. I pray for peace.
Note to the Secret Service: That was a reference to the fires of hell, which is where I believe people who cynically use faith to advance political agendas go. That was not a threat, merely speculation about what a just God does to those who abuse faith and mislead free people. end note
And in yet more good news, Shakes mentions that the Big Brass Alliance is up to 427 members.
June 10, 2005
Amnesty Wins. Well, okay, it's complicated...
Amnesty International has long engaged in the grunt work of shining bright lights on human rights violators. A week after the Bush administration went ape shit over Amnesty's 2005 Annual Report, the Administration appears to be seriously considering closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, which Amnesty called "the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detenion in violation of international law."
Victory, right? Not so fast. This Administration is the walking embodiment of the concept of "bad faith". Amnesty shined a bright light, and the Administration is almost certainly looking for new dark corners to stick people in.
Rumsfeld says that prisoners will be repatriated to their home countries if the prison is closed. I would add that they are likely to be tortured in their home countries. Look for this fun talking point from the right: "We only tortured some of them, and very few were actually murdered."
Also, there is no reason to think that the secret detention facilities that our government operates across the globe will be closed. Independent bodies like the International Committee of the Red Cross are denied access to these facilities, so there is no verifiable way to know what condition prisoners are held in within them. All we have is the word of George Bush's government.
Go give Amnesty or the ICRC a few bucks so that someone will be watching.
This Week's UPC Gravitational Pull Up
PSoTD's Gravitational Pull Up for the week asks:
In your opinion, what segment of society or culture or the economy is in greatest need to be reached by political blogs at this time?I think if there is one group that most needs to be immersed in and conversant in blog culture today, it's young and aspiring journalists, the future editors of America's media.
My working theory about the media is that the ongoing fusion of entertainment and news has produced a morass indistinguishable from the Roman 'bread and circus' concept. No, I'm not the first to make this comparison, but with the boom in so called 'reality television', and the media's unwillingness to impose any standard of truth on the talking heads and pundits who inhabit its dominion, the idea becomes more relevant all the time.
Reality TV is increasingly balanced by unreality news programming where he who spins the fastest wins.
Enter blogs and the changing landscape of print news, where old dailies are increasingly irrelevant but brash independent weeklies with clearly partisan voices are growing at a healthy pace. The last generation of journalists came of age with the idea that they were meant to be objective, to tell two sides of a story. These standards go back to a time when perhaps those employed by the government were genuinely more honest than leaders and their lackeys today. Maybe there were just fewer power players fighting for beltway turf then.
The concept of objectivity in news is over, but the old guard doesn't really have it in them to learn any new tricks. Not to learn them well, anyway. But the next generation of journalists will have a better feel for what their contemporaries want: reporters with a partisan edge who are willing to argue with liars on television and call liars' bluffs in print. This kind of combative, agenda-driven coverage is the reason why the biggest political blogs are not middle-of-the-road outfits, and the lack of it it explains why the "MSM" (excluding Fox News, which has seen massive ratings growth as a result of adopting many of these postures) is increasingly irrelevant in the minds of so many Americans.
June 9, 2005
Amnesty to Testify Before Congress Tomorrow
According to Shakespeare's Sister, John Conyers and House Judiciary Committee Democrats have invoked a little-used House rule and will hold hearings tomorrow featuring Chip Pitts, Chair of the Board, Amnesty International USA; Dr. James J. Zogby, President, Arab American Institute; Deborah Pearlstein, Director, U.S. Law and Security Program, Human Rights First; Carlina Tapia-Ruano, American Immigration Lawyers Association.
It will be the first time a representative from Amnesty has testified before Congress since the release of its 2005 Annual Report, where Amnesty noted
Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.Set your TiVo: 8:30AM. C-SPAN's a likely candidate, and if you miss it, it'll probably be online at the network's website.Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to "re-define" torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding "ghost detainees" (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.
The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and "counter-terrorism".
US: Arms Dealer to Oppressive Regimes
Cernig has a great post at the UPC about the World Policy Institute's report on U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers Since September 11.
And no, you probably won't be surprised to learn that we've been selling weapons to oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia (you know, where they arrest people on suspicion of preaching Christianity) and Uzbekistan (you know, where they boil dissidents alive--pictures here, if you're not sure what that does to the human body).
Administration apologists are welcome to call the World Policy Institute anti-American in the comments section. And let me commend your moral courage in advance. Clearly the problem is not that we gave that beacon of hope, United Arab Emirates, $110 million in weapons in 2003, clearly the problem is that freedom hating groups like the WPI make that information known to the public.
NYT has more on Asexuals
I still can't decide if this is an interesting thing or not. Asexuality as a permanent human sexual orientation. Hm...
The Conyers Letter
As regular readers know, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan has written a letter signed by 89 other House Democrats asking President Bush for additional information about the Downing Street Memo, the so-called 'smoking gun' on Iraq.
MoveOn is hosting a drive to add 500,000 citizen signatures today. Please take a minute to support this effort.
Unless you like a president who decided a year prior that we would be invading Iraq no matter what and then cynically told the public that he's praying for peace days before the invasion.
Adventures in English Linguistics
I want to point out this entry from Kevin McCullough on Crosswalk.com not to argue about whether schools should accept great sums of money in rental fees to allow a church to meet on their premises on weekends (I have no problem with that), but merely to point out the exacting use of the English language employed by those who hate gays. Check this out:
"local homosexual behavior advocates"It's funny. While I guess I'm one of those advocates for homosexual behavior, I'm also an advocate for heterosexual behavior (doesn't mean I practice it). I'm an advocate for punctuality and eating regularly. I'm an advocate for driving well. I'm an advocate for manners. I'm an advocate for avoiding doublespeak when talking about people. I believe that Kevin McCullough is saying that the head of the teacher's union is gay, whatever it is he (or she) may be advocating. I'm an advocate for calling things what they are, and McCullough doesn't.
"the head of the local teacher's union - who practices homosexuality"
June 8, 2005
A Haiku on the Recent Supreme Court Decision
Conservatives say: "10th--Principle of Justice" Court says: "Commerce Clause"
Unsurprisingly, I'm with the Conservatives on this one, though I know from my travels in NoCal that lots and lots of that 'medical' marijuana is sold.
Bush--The Unpopular President
A growing majority of Americans disapproves of his job as president, and a shrinking minority of Americans agree with his policy proposals.
Couldn't have seen that one coming.
Amnesty Calls for Special Counsel to Investigate Detention Practices
One of the great things about living in a free society is having the right to demand that our government hold fast to our values as a people, even in difficult times. Amnesty International has begun a campaign for an independent commission and a Special Counsel to investigate the detention practices employed by the United States government around the world over the last three-plus years.
Pressing this issue, while pushing the Downing Street Memo (you can sign John Conyers' letter here) creates a two-front battle for the administration to extricate itself from--if it can. We know how good they are with exit strategies.
June 5, 2005
The Fight to End Human Rights Abuses
Please go here and sign Amnesty International's petition against the use of torture. Also be aware that June 26 is Amnesty USA's day of action against torture. You can sign up for more information here.
Dean, how about we blog local events to end torture on June 26th as part of the cross-blogosphere human rights group you want to get going? Any UPC folks up for finding out what's happening in your area and reporting on it?
Amnesty International's 2005 Report
If you're interested in reading the Amnesty report that has led to such a fuss from the sensitive men who run the United States, it's posted here. Some excerpts from the forward by Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International:
They [locals brutalized in Darfur, Sudan] may not have understood the niceties of "human rights", but they knew the meaning of "justice". They could not comprehend why the world was not moved to action by their plight.This is the report of people who saw progress across the world for years, and have watched the world step backwards in respect for human rights. This is the report of humanitarians moved to anger.It was yet another example of the lethal combination of indifference, erosion and impunity that marks the human rights landscape today. Human rights are not only a promise unfulfilled, they are a promise betrayed.
The indifference, apathy and impunity that allow violence against millions of women to persist is shocking. In countries around the world women suffer many forms of violence including genital mutilation, rape, beatings by partners, and killings in the name of honour. Thanks to the efforts of women's groups, there are now international treaties and mechanisms, laws and policies designed to protect women, but they fall still far short of what is required. In addition, there is a real danger of a backlash against women's human rights from conservative and fundamentalist elements.Does anyone really question that this happened? Are there really people out there who don't acknowledge that the War on Terror has led the United States to ignore problems with helpful dictators like Pervez Musharaff and Islam Karimov? Does anyone question that human rights are less of a priority now than they were in, say, 2000 when I was fortunate enough to spend some time with some of the people at the Atlanta regional office of Amnesty International?Women's human rights are not the only casualty of the assault on fundamental values that is shaking the human rights world. Nowhere has this been more damaging than in the efforts by the US administration to weaken the absolute ban on torture.
In 1973 AI published its first report on torture. It found that: "torture thrives on secrecy and impunity. Torture rears its head when the legal barriers against it are barred. Torture feeds on discrimination and fear. Torture gains ground when official condemnation of it is less than absolute." The pictures of detainees in US custody in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, show that what was true 30 years ago remains true today.
Despite the near-universal outrage generated by the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib, and the evidence suggesting that such practices are being applied to other prisoners held by the USA in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere, neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.
Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to "re-define" torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding "ghost detainees" (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the "rendering" or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.
The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and "counter-terrorism".
They were so positive then. I bet they're angry now.