Politics, I Suppose
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Spark's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, November 4th, 2006 | | 1:22 am |
Democracy in Tatters; Rove Causes Cancer
Although Friedman is not my favorite Op-Ed writer, today he made an analogy I thought would bear repeating: "Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country." He also wrote that if the Republicans win this election, "It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account." (From "Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence" by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NYTimes) | | Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 | | 6:18 pm |
"Changing the Lexicon" (silly me, not changing... "Reality")
"They honestly need a baseball bat against the head," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who helped Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) take over Congress in the 1990s. "Because if they don't change the lexicon immediately, as bad as this election is going to be, they're going to lose the presidency in 2008. I've given up on 2006. They've already made so many mistakes, there's no way they can fix it in two weeks. But I'm worried now they're going to lose all the marbles." -- GOP leans on proven strategy, White House courts its conservative base, by Peter Baker, The Washington Post, Oct 25, 2006 ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15392993/) In the past few days, only two weeks before the election, the Bush Administration has been backing away from the phrase "Cut and Run." Now Mr. Luntz is talking about "changing the lexicon." I know that the language and framing of the issues affect how the electorate perceives the political landscape, but I cannot believe that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will change their vote in less than two week time based not on some underlying change in the issues-based reality but rather merely on a clever "changing of the lexicon." | | 12:10 pm |
Back After Hiatus...
I had my computer stolen shortly after the last entry and have not blogged since them. I just tracked down the old info that used to automaticly populate, so now I am up and running again. Or walking. Sitting in a chair, actually, supping on a delightful tomato soup, if you must know. | | Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 | | 2:08 am |
I Couldn't Have Put It Better Myself
Review of 'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips Review by ALAN BRINKLEY, March 19, 2006 ... "No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.")" | | 2:04 am |
Nearly Two Thirds of Defeceit Due to TAX CUTS
"Deficit Demagogues" Published: March 21, 2006 -- Editorial in the NYTimes "...If leading Republicans were serious about the deficit, here's what they'd be saying: Let the tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2008 and 2010 unless the budget improves significantly before then. Republicans want voters to believe that the deficit is the result of spending increases alone — not tax cuts. That's false. The swing from a $236 billion budget surplus in 2000 to a $371 billion deficit today is a huge deterioration in the nation's fiscal balance, equal to 5.3 percent of the economy. Of that, fully 62 percent is due to lower tax revenues..." | | Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 | | 9:06 am |
Misleading the public about Abramoff makes us feel even more helpless
The end of this article sums up the way I feel about the Abramoff scandal. Again, thanks to Krugman.
A False Balance - Paul Krugman
...There have been both bipartisan and purely Democratic scandals in the past. Based on everything we know so far, however, the Abramoff affair is a purely Republican scandal. Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn't. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory. More important, this kind of misreporting makes the public feel helpless. Voters who are told, falsely, that both parties were drawn into Mr. Abramoff's web are likely to become passive and shrug their shoulders instead of demanding reform. So the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It's not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/opinion/30krugman.html?8hpib
| | Monday, January 9th, 2006 | | 7:15 pm |
Irksome Petty Tyranny
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets. ( Google Quote of the Day) - Edward Abbey
| | Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 | | 3:08 am |
Bush Lies about Wiretapping and, mmm, Constitution
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." George W Bush April 20, 2004 Here is his full statement from that day: http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2004/Apr/21-381579.html | | Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 | | 10:39 pm |
Abramoff Turncoat a "Unique Resource"
Lobbyist Is Said to Discuss Plea and Testimony Published: December 21, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say. Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource." Prominent party officials, including the former House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, are under scrutiny involving trips and other gifts from Mr. Abramoff and his clients. The case has shaken the Republican establishment, with the threat of testimony from Mr. Abramoff, once a ubiquitous and well-connected Republican star, sowing anxiety throughout the party ranks. | | Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 | | 9:33 am |
Career Civil Servants Again Overruled by Bushies -- and on TX Redistricting, no less
From a NYTimes article this week about how The Supreme Court will hear several challenged to DeLay's redistricting scheme: "Earlier this month, the Justice Department acknowledged the accuracy of a report in The Washington Post that in 2003, top political officials had overruled a determination by career lawyers in the department's voting rights section the the Texas plan did not meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act and should not be allowed to take effect." | | Saturday, November 12th, 2005 | | 3:19 pm |
Is that what I have been doing wrong...
Feedback please Take the microphone and place it very close to your speaker and turn both on at the same time. Increase the volume until a high pitched squeal begins to shatter glasses in the apartment of the neighbor you never liked very much anyway. This is not the kind of feedback I am looking for, but it was fun for me to make you do that just now.
-- from the kinkless.com site, a freeware mac organizer program made by one guy in Hong Kong.
| | 2:04 pm |
Exploding Whale Expert
Paul Linnman was a young TV news reporter when he covered a dead whale being blown to bits -- not small enough bits -- with a half ton of dynamite. A whale-blubber shower ensued. A few years ago, when a whale exploded of it's own accord, the BBC interviewed him as an Exploding Whale Expert. | | Thursday, November 10th, 2005 | | 8:10 pm |
We are too busy, the media are too cowed
Paul Krugman in response to a reader's comment on his Oct. 31, 2005 article "Grading the Bush White House:" "I generally don't like blaming the people. Let's bear in mind that most people aren't and can't be careful news analysts: there are jobs to be done and children to be raised. Mostly they get their political information on the fly — from page 1 stories above the fold, or quick summaries on the news. That's why the media have a special responsibility not to let people in power control the imagery. If mythology dominates the TV news, a page 19 story that, to a very careful reader, questions the spin is pretty much useless."
Me: This rings true to me. All the information is out there, but it takes time to stay on top of current affairs. Too many people get their news and make the decisions about how they will vote based on appallingly cursory information. This might not have such disastrous consequences if only the news media would display a modicum of professional responsibility.
In other words, if the media had a backbone and reported what was really going on, it would not matter so much that people are mostly too busy to be informed voters.
| | Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 | | 9:40 am |
In what sort of mind does this make sense?
"[Senator] Inhofe said the vast majority of the nation's evangelical groups would oppose global warming legislation as inconsistent with a conservative agenda that also includes opposition to abortion rights and gay rights. He said the National Evangelical Association had been "led down a liberal path" by environmentalists and others who have convinced the group that issues like poverty and the environment are worth their efforts." -- from an article in the NYTimes today By the way, Evangelicals who are pro-environment are calling the issue "Creation Care." | | Monday, October 31st, 2005 | | 7:18 am |
An Insidious Way of Governing
"The art of Bush-speak is to achieve the effect of a lie without actually getting caught in a lie. That's what administration officials did when they deliberately fostered the impression that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and thus was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. This is an insidious way of governing, and the opposite of what the United States should be about." -- Bob Herbert OpEd today | | 7:06 am |
Bush's "Essential Fraudulence" -- by Krugman
What do I mean by essential fraudulence? Basically, I mean the way an administration with an almost unbroken record of policy failure has nonetheless achieved political dominance through a carefully cultivated set of myths. ... The point is that this administration's political triumphs have never been based on its real-world achievements, which are few and far between. The administration has, instead, built its power on myths: the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Take away those myths, and the administration has nothing left. | | Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 | | 9:49 am |
Oh, Kay Bailey, how you let us all down.
To the Editor: In "Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges" (front page, Oct. 24), you quote Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, saying she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime." Senator Hutchison, in denigrating perjury charges, has reached the heights of hypocrisy in defense of her White House friends. In 1999, based on perjury charges related to a much less significant matter, this same senator voted to remove the president of the United States from office. Greg Litt
New York, Oct. 24, 2005 | | Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 | | 9:20 am |
Dems are again beaten at the framing / language game.
"This relentless forward march of conservatives onto the federal bench has succeeded because Democrats, and the few Republican moderates left in the Senate, have been unable to craft cogent and comprehensible arguments to rebut the right's mantra that a judge's sole responsibility is to apply the law as written and not legislate from the bench. Bush draped this mantra around Harriet Miers' shoulders at her nomination ceremony, just as he did earlier for Chief Justice Roberts. The mantra, however false, has served Bush well. The
Democrats and their allies outside the Congress remain transfixed by the Republican's constant din about "activist judges."
"The Democrat opposition fails to understand that the neoconservative argument cobbles together and conflates three legal premises that history and current practice rebut. First, following George W.'s one-note legal philosophy, Senators Frist, Hatch, et. al. claim federal judges should apply the law as written and not locate rights in the Constitution or create new law according to their subjective predilections. Second, the neocons maintain that judges must discern the original intent of the Founding Fathers when they examine constitutional claims. Third, they state that federal judges must defer to the will of the majority as reflected in laws enacted by Congress or policies pushed by the executive branch of government. All three criteria are ahistorical and illogical, but the Democrats, with few exceptions, have been too obtuse or too timid to expose and confront this fraudulent view of judging." from Judging Harriet Miers By Stephen J. Fortunato Jr.,an associate justice on the Rhode Island Superior Court In These Times on Wednesday 05 October 2005 | | Thursday, October 20th, 2005 | | 10:31 am |
A Satire. Bush to Iraqi's: Do as I say, not as I inevitably do
October 19, 2005 Leading by (Bad) Example WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Iraq News Agency) - A delegation of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were "bewildered" by some of the behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy. The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of "her religion." She is described as a devout evangelical Christian. Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to separate "mosque from state" in the new Iraq, he was also floored to read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson that Miers deserved support because she was "a very, very strong Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to people in the households of faith around the country." "Now let me get this straight," Judge Mithaqi said. "You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an evangelical Christian. "How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis: 'Don't pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.' Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to die for? I don't think so. We can't have our people exposed to such talk." A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of P.O.W.'s. "I survived eight years of torture under Saddam," Unfi said. "Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk." Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq's new newspapers, said he wanted to go home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush. "I had nightmares watching this," Sahafi said. "It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: 'Thank you very much for everything. I like you.' It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops." Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal propaganda - an attempt by the government to buy good press. "Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab world," Sahafi said. "It makes me sick to see even a drop of that in America." By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America's image among Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President Bush. She said, "The more they know about us, the more they will like us." (Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren't so true.) | | Saturday, October 15th, 2005 | | 9:34 pm |
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