It's a tough call, but...

As I noted earlier, I didn't watch the speech and I haven't read the transcipt so I'm working from a cursory reading of reactions, but I think this may be winner for "Biggest Load of Hypocritical Nonsense" of the night:

Bush said lawmakers and others need to confront issues "in a spirit of good will and respect for one another."

"There is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy," Bush said.

There's a notion that when we criticize the actions of others, we're really just projecting our own shortcomings on someone else.

And so there is your proof.

Ok, just a couple more...

The post mortem, so to speak, offers up these gems:

1) Me thinks he speaks the truth (my emphasis):

ISOLATIONISM? [Cliff May]Did anyone else find Bush’s denunciations of “isolationism” a bit puzzling? Was he talking about Buchananism? Or is this term now to be applied to those who favor “exit strategies”?Or has Karl Rove spotted something rising in the polls?Posted at 10:19 PM

2) "I'd really like to work together, as long as you do everything my way" alert:

NICE JOB [Kate O'Beirne]Can't say that it will be memorable, but I thought the speech's optimistic tone was welcome and the President owned it. He was comfortable and confident - and conciliatory. Can't remember any other SOTU that opened with a chiding to the legislative branch about the need to work together, but he made clear that he is looking for allies from across the aisle who are willing to do the right thing.Posted at 10:16 PM

I'll do it so you don't have to

I'm watching the SOTU comments come along over at NRO's The Corner and I have a few highlights for you and some thoughts:

1) MISSED MOMENT [Michael Graham]When Democrats began celebrating wildly the fact that they have done nothing to rescue Social Security, they handed Bush an opportunity to step away from the text and point out the partisan cynicism of celebrating failure. My comment would have been "Remember that applause 13 years from now when Social Security goes broke."

That's a beautiful thought, but I would think folks on the right would have internalized the message about being careful what you wish for. Bush? Off script? Even I cringe at the thought and I enjoy it when he actually speaks his own thoughts.

2) HILLARY WATCH [Monica Crowley]Could the Junior Senator from New York be any more robotic in her applause??!!Posted at 10:01 PM

I don't know who Monica Crowely is, but apparently this is her first State of the Union Address. The opposition party, particularly the ones running for president, don't generally cheer wildly Monica.

2) Who is Monica Crowley and why is she gushing like a schoolgirl at a Britney Spears concert?

AND IRAN [Monica Crowley]I am cheering as the president speaks about Iran

BRAVO [Monica Crowley]I am heartened to hear the president repeat the basis for his entire foreign policy:

This doesn't even begin to address the things she says, but I'll summarize: She's happy that we're threatening military action in Iran (a war to be fought by who??? Perhaps the staff over at The Corner? Jonah?) and she's heartened that when you create democracies they don't fight each other. You mean like that democracy in the Palestinian terrotories? Or the one we've...what, created? in Iraq?

I generally disagree with everything they say over there, but at least there's some attempt at, hell, I don't know, acting adult and thinking a little bit. What's her deal?

3) Stupid to write this:

STUPID TO SIT [Kate O'Beirne]The Democrats sat back for applause line about not sitting back until we get attacked again. I thought they favored aggressive intelligence gathering and are merely questioning the legal authority.Posted at 09:46 PM

4) Oops, who let this guy in:

SPENDING [Brian Riedl (Heritage)]"Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending - and last year you passed bills that cut this spending" This is a meaningless phrase. All he is saying is that annual discretionary budget authority (not actual outlays) excluding: A) defense, B) homeland security, and C) any and all supplemental bills from defense to Katrina to agriculture to veterans, have grown by a little less than the 15% growth rate that occurred in the year 2000. Not a remarkable accomplishment

Ok, that's all I can handle for now.

Follow the bouncing spin

For those of you paying attention, Daily Kos has a disection of after SOTU polls, bounces and reality that should temper the cheerleading of the talking heads as W finishes up his nonsense.

Josh Marshall was asking earlier if there were die hard political junkies who just could not bear to watch the speech (he counts himself among that crowd). Me, too. Someone let me know when it's over.

In related news, pot calls kettle black

Bush to Say 'America Is Addicted to Oil' in Talk

In this pre-SOTU flack, the White House has released a partial transcript wherein George Bush takes on the roll of James Frey and lies about how he's seen the light on addiction.

It's truly remarkable that the reporters don't write in the snickering as they report this nonsense.

Later in the piece, they reveal that W has been listening to little old me with regard to math teachers.

... calling for training 70,000 math and science teachers to improve the nation's competitiveness.

That ought to be enough to scare me straight

Perhaps a whole family retirement in in order

Andrea Mitchell lays out her foreign policy expertise in preparation for tonight's State of the Union address in her pseudo-blog on MSNBC. I have to say she's a brilliant analyst...I mean, shill.

Here's her take on the state of world affairs. First the bad news:

In the Palestinian territories, the stunning Hamas victory is a disaster for the U.S. peace plan -- a legislative majority dedicated to the destruction of Israel. And four years after calling Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush is still battling insurgents in Iraq. A radical leader is defying the world and continuing nuclear research in Iran. And America and its allies are no closer to a solution in North Korea.

Ok, so things don't look so rosy. But, there is the silver lining that overcomes the complete disaster that represents current US Foreign Policy:

Still, the President can point to some progress: in the last year, a new secretary of state has repaired damaged relations with Europe and helped pressure Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.

So, massive peril at every turn in the main thrust of the Bush plan over the last four years, but the new secretary of state has started to repair some of the damage she and her bosses did as National Security Advisor. You can just feel the democracy on the march, can't you.

Couldn't she just retire with Greenspan - sort of a media/political/economic twofer?

Is anyone watching?

Here's something I've been wondering about, and a quick glance over to TPM increases my curiousity:

How many progressive/liberal/whatever you want to call it people will actually watch the state of the union address tonight? If not, why not?

I won't be watching, but that's a personal thing. I really can't watch Bush speak. And he never says anything new except when he wanders off script, so why waste the time and frustration?

So all the talk of re-energizing his presidency and poll bounces and the rest: is that just the DC media drumming up their own importance? Is it just Bush firing up the die hard base?

Just wondering.

State of Dejection

I hate to keep going back to the same sources, but Anna Quindlen has done it again. Her analysis of the true state of the union is just about perfect. Nothing big seems right in America: war, economics, health care, unity, hope. It's hard to get excited about a Medicare drug benefit that seems to be a political boondoggle or the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice who received the fewest minority party votes in history.

It's easy to write off this point of view, as the commentariat of the right often does, as just America bashing liberalism. That's a ridiculous argument, of course, as the true America bashers hiding in the caves of Afghanistan, the palaces of Saudi Arabia and the slums of Pakistan must rejoice at every reading of the news from the hated West.

It's those who love America, or the idea it represents, who mourn the erosion of civil liberties, the increasing divide - economic, racial, religious - between our people, the "with us or against us" attitude of the leadership that labels dissent as sympathy with the devil.

Playing on that tired Reagan theme of "Morning in America", Quindlen sums it up this way:

It's not morning. It's not even afternoon. There's not much union in the state, just one fissure after another. Of course, that won't play, so instead it's more of the same: new programs that feel old, old programs that feel over and the ubiquitous assertion that we will prevail. Just for a moment forget the combat deaths, the killer hurricanes, the illegal wiretapping, the internecine warfare, the political indictments, the overdue bills, the clueless leaders, and repeat after me: Confident. Strong. Stronger than ever. Do you feel it? Do you feel it? Nope, me neither.

You really should read the whole piece. She uses her deft touch with the language to piece together a summary of our affairs that is illuminating and informative but has that melacholy feel that suits the situation.

It reminds me of a piece Hunter Thompson wrote for the New Year's Day edition of The New York Times Magazine, I think in 1974. The piece has that same feel, as Thompson ruminates on the end of Richard Nixon, the focus of his energy for so long, but can't seem to celebrate it.

Like Thompson and Nixon, George W. Bush has consumed the energy of the left - including much of mine - for the last five years. You would think we would rejoice at watching everything he touches turn into a spectactular flameout. But the rejoicing is short lived, at least for me, as I look around the country and the world and see the wreckage and devastation he has wrought.

Yeah, I don't feel it at all.

He needs a little chin music

Can someone please tell me why Chris Matthews still has a job? I've never much cared for him and his hardball persona. His routine of talking over people, not letting them finish their statements, and general rudeness is the ultimate expression of an overblown ego. Invite a guest, ask them a question, and then shout them down as they try to answer. Beyond feeding his own desire for notoriety, what, exactly, is the purpose of his show?

But his normal jibberish pales in comparison to the string of hate speech, beltway confessionals and, well, right wing fellatio that he's been up to of late. If you haven't been keeping up, here's the things I have read about:

• His profoundly homophobic exchange with Don Imus regarding Brokeback Mountain
• Some type of racist tripe regarding the Latino population
• His embarrassing confession to an obviously bored/uncomfortable George Bush regarding excessive drinking and possibly womanizing
• An interview with Tom Delay where he actually asked (courtesy of TPM Daily Muck):

"Okay I've got to ask you a cosmic question, you're Tom Delay. You're not in this business for the money. You live modestly. You commute back and forth from Washington to Houston, Texas. Why? What drives you every day?"

Hardball, indeed.

Don't the people at NBC watch their own shows? I don't know what the ratings are, but even if they were through the roof, someone should have a little decency and replace him with someone with a shred of humanity and humility. I'm thinking maybe Jonah Goldberg.

10 more seconds and my head would have exploded

In my quest to stay informed and find things to write about, I periodically peek in over at foxnews.com to see what the prevailing thinking is in the non-reality based community. I rarely watch any TV, and the little bit of time I spend is devoted to The Daily Show, so I don't see what they put on over there.

In my visit to the site tonight, I found two things of interest.

First, in case someone hasn't said it in the last eight seconds or so, Bill O'Reilly is a sanctimonious pig. He actually spent his "Talking Points" segment castigating NBC News (as if NBC News is a person) for taking cheap shots at Fox. Now, I would agree that NBC should be ashamed of taking cheap shots at Fox. That's the intellectual equivalent of snubbing "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire". NBC should at least find something a little more challenging than Fox News to target their disdain.

Really. Fox News? That's embarrassing.

But I digress. O'Reilly? Complaining about cheap shots? The master of "Shut up"? Does he not watch his own show? Is he so isolated from reality that he doesn't know what he is? Or perhaps it's just being born without shame in the suburban Westchester, NY ghetto.

I can't take much more of that.

Secondly, I guess this may be true of all online polls, but the current one up on Fox asks whether Kenny boy Lay and Jeff Skilling will get a fair trial. The choices are: Yes, No, or Don't Know. So far, the poll is 64% yes, 27% no, and 9% don't know. Who the hell spends the effort to vote in a poll to say they don't know? I don't get it, not even a little. Maybe I'm just not up to the Fox News standard.

I'm not sure I can continue visiting the site. It's too disorienting. Imagine living like that.

Bush Budget Calls for Renewal of Tax Cuts

In a related story, sun rises in east and sets in west.

Yes, it's time for the annual walk through the State of the Union address. Perhaps due to a lack of funding from Abramoff controlled Indian casinos, the White House apparently eliminated the speech writers for this year and simply pulled the same old routines from previous addresses.

Let's see what we've got:

• Extend the tax cuts/cut the deficit in half
• Social Security Privatization er, uh, um, Personlizationism Accounts you can kinda keep thingy
• Medical Savings Accounts (You have too much insurance, dummy)
• Cutting spending on social programs

Meanwhile, as they push for extending tax cuts, here's a series of headlines that relate to the tax cut renewal story:

News Stories
McCain, Coburn to Challenge Pet Projects AP via Yahoo! News, Jan 27
Poll: Public Worried About Federal Deficit AP via Yahoo! News, Jan 27
Mayors Told Federal Grants May Be Targeted AP via Yahoo! News, Jan 26
CBO Projects $337 Billion Deficit in 2006 AP via Yahoo! News, Jan 26
Feature Articles
Hey, Big Spender... at TIME Magazine, Jan 22
A Budget With Bold on Hold at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Jan 22
Opinion & Editorials
The Pain That Is Yet to Come at The New York Times (reg. req'd), Jan 30
War's stunning price tag

They truly are masters of up is downism. Maybe this year someone will pay attention.

2x - t + reactionary fools = More failure

And then you have the conservative response to the algebra issue in LA (my emphasis):

Below is a sample question from the LA school standards, followed by a brief layout used to solve the problem.

A 120-foot-long rope is cut into 3 pieces. The first piece of rope is twice as long as the second piece of rope. The third piece of rope is three times as long as the second piece of rope.

What is the length of the longest piece of rope?
A) 20 feet
B) 40 feet
C) 60 feet
D) 80 feet

Show your work:
3t + 2t + t = 120
6t = 120t = 20
Largest piece: 60

If you cannot figure out with relative ease that the answer is C, please stop reading and proceed to the nearest Sylvan learning center and refrain from reproducing.

And although this blog post had a similar headline to mine, they reached a slightly different conclusion: none. No ideas, excluding the above. Keep up the good work and deep thoughts, guys.

Yes, he's destroying the planet, but what a nice guy

Read Altercation today (actually, read it everyday). It's chock full of useful information. Besides an evisceration of the "we need more science" end run around global warming, I found this little New York Times correction just fascinating:

A front-page article yesterday describing the results of the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll referred imprecisely to Americans' favorable opinions of President Bush. The 42 percent of respondents who said they viewed him favorably were referring specifically to how he handles his job. On another question — about how he is liked overall — the result was 37 percent favorable.”

So, Alterman asks and I echo, why do we constantly hear all about how everyone in the country (perhaps excluding James Frey) wants to sit down and have a beer with this guy. "Yes, I hate everything he stands for and that he's destroying our country, but I bet he tells a helluva joke. Let's drink."

And even that awful stereotype doesn't fly. People don't like W. He has no political capital. He has no capital at all. Just fear and obfuscation.

When will the liberal media get it?

4x - (2y X .65) = Failure

This story in today's LA Times describes the debacle that has resulted from the demand that all high school students pass Algebra to graduate.

It's a long story that sort of swings back and forth between seemingly ridiculous ideas (you can fail the same class up to six times, but it appears that you just get shuffled back in after each failure without any thought of addressing your problems) to uninterested, unmotivated students (Only seven of 39 students brought their textbooks. Several had no paper or pencils. One sat for the entire period with his backpack on his shoulders, tapping his desk with a finger.)

But what the story really points out is that, although raising the educational bar is a great idea on paper and in campaigns, unless you're prepared to do the real work of preparing students for the increased demands, you are simply creating a larger group of perceived failures. Given that about half of all Los Angeles ninth graders failed Algebra last year, it seems to prove that point.

The story is a small version of No Child Left Behind. Set standards that increase academic demands (ostensibly a good thing), and then fail to provide the resources (monetary and otherwise) necessary to equip the students to meet them. The result: little or no improvement in actual academic performance, but higher casualties of "failure syndrome".

Naturally, go to the root of the problem and find a politician:

"We have a problem with a high dropout rate. You don't address it by making it easier to get through and have the meaning of the diploma diluted," said state Sen. Chuck Poochigian (R-Fresno), who wrote the algebra graduation law. "It should be a call to action … not to lower standards but to find ways to inspire. Our future depends on it."

Which is all well and good. I'm all for better education and inspiration. But, Chuck, here's the reality (sorry for so long an excerpt but you need it all to get the full impact):

Whether requiring all students to pass algebra is a good idea or not, two things are clear: Schools have not been equipped to teach it, and students have not been equipped to learn it.Secondary schools have had to rapidly expand algebra classes despite a shortage of credentialed math teachers.

The Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning in Santa Cruz found that more than 40% of eighth-grade algebra teachers in California lack a math credential or are teaching outside their field of expertise; more than 20% of high school math teachers are similarly unprepared.

Recruitment programs and summer math institutes for teachers have been scaled back or eliminated because of budget cuts."It's a real collision of circumstance, and students are now having … to bear the brunt of public policy gone awry," said Margaret Gaston, executive director of the Santa Cruz research center.

High school math instructors, meanwhile, face crowded classes of 40 or more students — some of whom do not know their multiplication tables or how to add fractions or convert percentages into decimals.

Read the whole story, if you can take it. It really points up the folly of the current fad of public education overhaul. Legislators pass laws and make proud announcements and the teacher's union squawks and fights and, ultimately, the students lose.

Not this month, honey, I've got an election

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has one-upped former US Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich and put himself in the esteemed company of Oral Roberts and his tower death watch for money.

Kucinich, you might remember, was somehow running for president and looking for dates at the same time. Or maybe he was looking for dates by running for president. It's hard to say. I don't remember the exact vow, but Roberts decreed he would stay in a tower and let God take him if a certain monetary donation level wasn't met. This is much the way I plan to negotiate my next raise, by the way.

But Berlusconi has added a new twist to the pandering/Head of State romance angle: No sex until the April 9 election. Yes, according to a story in a newspaper owned by his brother, Berlusconi pledged to an evangelical audience that abstinence was king for the next two and 1/2 months.

Berlusconi is married, by the way, so I'm not sure of the point. My advice to the evangelical community: take a page from the Gipper and Trust but Verify.

Average citizens post record bills - worst in US History

Exxon Mobil posts record profit of $10.7 billion

That's the headline, and it hardly requires further explanation.

I believe in free enterprise and market based systems, provided there is appropriate oversight, regulation and enforcement.

But, still, doesn't anyone see the divergent track of homeowner's with utility bills exceeding house payments and record profits for oil companies? Doesn't this seem, at a minimum, perverse? Why did Congress just pass an energy bill that subsidizes the oil industry but cut back on home heating subsidies for low income families?

They don't even try to hide or disguise it anymore. ExxonMobil is dancing around Wall Street trumpeting the "largest quarterly profit of any company in US history" while, back in the real world, people are struggling to pay their utility bills, turning the heat down and cutting back on every other expense item and still falling behind.

This is what you get when you get a silver spoon President whose puppet master is a oil barron of the first degree.

No shame.

"Heckuva job" Watch

I suspect we'll see this story over and over in different areas of incompetence, indifference, inattention and on and on. The bottom line on this portion of the Katrina non-response by FEMA: there were other agencies begging to help and FEMA turned them down. The result was likely additional loss of life and most certainly additional suffering and destruction.

Watch for the spin around this in the next few days after the SOTU.

The Three Biggest Lies...or State of the Union Primer

Think Progress provides a nice, issue by issue primer on the big deception hitting TV screens tomorrow night. On energy (lies and misdirection), NSA wiretapping (lies and misdirection), tax cuts (lies and misdirection) and health care (lies and misdirection), the guide provides a detailed look at what Bush will say and what the facts are.

It's a quick read that will provide a nice counterbalance to the inevitable spin that will follow the festival of obfuscation, parsing, and outright, in your face fibbing.

And, for those of you counting, yes I know there are four items. It just doesn't make for a witty headline.

A Million Little Fools

For some reason, I felt compelled to read James Frey's now discredited memoir, "A Million Little Pieces". I bought it in the airport last Sunday and read the first third or so of the book on three flights that ultimately landed me in the Northwest Corner of New Mexico.

As is my way, I promptly left the book in my hotel room, completed my business and headed to Tucson and forgot about it. I saw no news for the next few days due to a hectic schedule and the fact that hotels in Agua Prieta, Mexico don't drop a copy of USA Today at your door. Back in Tucson on Thursday, I flipped on the TV to see what the weather would be for the day and BAM - you would have thought a pretty white girl from the suburbs was missing.

Oprah had done an about face and went after Frey for misleading her. She was devastated by his deception. It was the lead story and, it turns out, front page news for many reputable papers.

My own thinking is that something in the culture is wrong here. People make stuff up all the time. We're currently ensnared in a foolish, unwinnable war in Iraq because people made stuff up, but it doesn't seem to get the play that this misguided addict does. The reason, of course, is because he messed with Oprah instead of the entirety of the American public. No one died (or at least not the way he said they did, and maybe not at all), no 10,000+ wounded, the only loss of treasure the 15 bucks or so that we all paid to buy the damn book.

Oprah should get Bush and Cheney on that couch and blast away.

Which is far from the point I meant to make. Despite it's obvious falsehoods (and anyone who knows anything about addiction and recovery should have been able to spot them after about 50 pages, Doubleday and Oprah staff included), I like the book. I dented my own treasure again in the airport in Tucson on Friday and bought another copy and, after about 300 pages, I'm still invested and I still like it.

Maybe by the end I'll change my opinion, but the story is compelling writing regardless of it's fiction/non-fiction status. It's confessional nature is stark and jolting, and the underlying themes aren't diminished by the deceptions in the stories. And, the truth of the fictional nature of the stories and the denial and more recent, partial capitulation, tells the story of addiction and recovery as well as any. It's like an adjunct to the book.

And, although I know she's a cultural icon, a philanthropist of the highest magnitude, and a role model for African-Americans and all women, could someone please tell Oprah that it isn't all about her?

Just a little procedural snafu...

It never seems to end. Conferences and protocols and widespread publicity and asset sales and more lawsuits than Enron and the Ford Pinto combined, and still the Catholic Church doesn't get it. When I first saw this headline:

Cardinal: Process 'failed' in abuse case

I thought someone beyond the local parishoners had finally recognized the problem. Maybe the tide of abuse could be stemmed and the church could admit it's institutional failings and move on.

But, of course, I'm an idiot. After a convoluted, half- hearted mea culpa regarding a priest who was transferred and left to coach the boys basketball team after an abuse allegation, Cardinal Frances George of Chicago got to the heart of the matter. Get ready for it, feel it coming.

The problem, beyond a little procedural glitch in the church, is that the foolish victims chose to report the matter to law enforcement instead of the church. The key quote:

"Sometimes some of the victims groups say, `Don't go to the archdiocese,'" he said. "Well, here's a case where they didn't and it became very difficult for us to respond to anything. It became very difficult for us to help the victim. We haven't been able to so far."

Yes, you foolish victims. Don't go to the proper authorities to report your rape. Take it to the very people who allowed it to happen and let them decide if it merits a further looksy. Those civil authorities can only complicate matters.

If I had to guess, I suspect most rank and file priests are just what you would think them to be: ministers to their communities with all the right intentions and mostly the right actions. And, for some reason, I suspect that they would side with the victims and suggest an alternative action if they could. But the Catholic Church has never been one to encourage dissent, or, outside of the Jesuits, even slightly disparate thinking.

And the fact is that, in too many cases, the good works of the priests are overshadowed by just plain rotten management. Leave the hypocrisy aside - the church needs a management shakeup.

A King's Ransom

This story in the LA Times seems like the perfect backdrop to the start of the Enron trials of Kenny Boy Lay and Jeff Skilling. The basic premise is that as many companies eliminate traditional pension plans to cut costs, the folks occupying the executive suite get expanded defined benefit plans that will provide seven figure annual incomes for life.

Of course, the deals don't appear tied to performance, and the PR flaks are quick to offer the typical canard that the deals are necessary to attract and retain top talent. But the guys getting the deals seem to mostly be short term players who hop from executive suite to executive suite collecting huge salaries, options, perks and pensions. Frequently, they hop away from a particular post just ahead of the wholesale restructuring, the shipment of jobs and tax revenue overseas, or accounting fraud.

Beyond the obvious problem of rank hypocrisy, there seems to be no discussion of the need to retain top talent in places other than in the CEO slot. Leadership matters, no doubt, but many of the guys getting these perks couldn't lead a parade, let alone a multi-national in the age of globalization. And you can have the greatest leader in the world, but without an educated, motivated, appropriately compensated workforce, success is unlikely.

So lower level employees are motivated by fear. Fear of losing jobs and health benefits, fear of jobs moving overseas, fear of shrinking real income, fear that their children will never make it through college. And, for awhile, that works. But eventually, that fear will turn to anger as another announcement of layoffs or increased benefit costs is made simultaneously with the announcement of record executive compensation.

Then all bets are off.

Musical Interlude, Part Next

Anyone who's a Bob Dylan fan has a favorite album. Most critics seem to say Blonde on Blonde is the best, although my own favorite is Blood on the Tracks. It's interesting that, although Dylan is most widely recognized as a social and political commentator and critic, much of his best work is not political at all.

That's not to say that his exceptional body of socio-political commentary isn't an enormous part of his legacy. I'm just thinking of the great songs of the top of my head: The Times They are A Changing, With God on our Side, Masters of War, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, Hollis Brown, Only a Pawn in Their Game. Just a few of the masterpieces, and there are many more.

But my favorite Dylan music always seems to deal with matters of the heart. That's the theme of Blood on the Tracks, and...jeez, I just looked at the song list from Blonde on Blonde and I guess I see why the critics like it so much. But, again, it centers on matters of the heart. Much of his later work (Empire Burlesque, Infidels) shared that theme as well.

So, to the point. One album that seems to be overlooked by the Dylanology crowd is Desire. Although the opening song, Hurricane, is a viscious commentary on the false imprisonment of boxer Rubin Carter and got some popular notice, the rest of the album is incredibly haunting, confessional stuff that is a bit of a departure.

Anyway, it's full of songs that are so lyrically stark they can be hard to listen to in large doses. My own favorite, Oh, Sister, is almost plaintive. But the melodies and beautiful and the violin is the perfect compliment to the laments.

Give it a try.

By the way, while I was writing this I downloaded the remastered version of Desire from itunes. It sounds absolutely fantastic.

Control the message, control the debate

Michael Kinsley has a column in today's Washington Post that echoes a theme I've been circling around here for a few weeks and pulls it together in a cohesive (and more eloquent) form.

His basic premise, like mine, is that the Democratic Party isn't devoid of ideas - they just lack the creative leadership to play the game to win, and to properly frame the arguement. His main example - the ginned up outrage over Hillary Clinton's plantation remark - is the perfect demonstration. Prominent leaders on the right (Newt Gingrich, Paul Gigot, WSJ Editorial Page, Dick Cheney) have all used the phrase without outcry. Hell, Cheney actually went to a plantation.

But somehow the conventional wisdom has become that Hillary was pandering and playing to racist stereotypes. And, the fact that she was absolutely right in labeling the House of Representatives a plantation gets no ink or examination.

Despite massive Republican scandals, declining real wages, increasing poverty, more uninsured, a byzantine, dangerous foreign policy and on and on, the big discussion is Hillary and pandering. Bush will try to further shift the debate on Tuesday night in the State of the Union address, moving attention away from his string of failures and corruption towards his usual, "Vote Republican or the terrorists will get you" schtick.

Will the Democrats let him get away with it again?

When it seems too good to be true...

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall says Bush will make health care his signature issue starting with the State of the Union address next week. Given his track record with signature issues (think Iraq, global war on terra, social security privatization, er, ahem, personal accountization) it will either be a failure out of the box or we'll all be sick and near death in about 18 months. Here's hoping for the former.

But what's fascinating about this is what Josh says will be the right wing rallying cry: We have too much health insurance. Yes, that means you. I find it hard to believe, but read the post.

He also offers some great advice on what Democrats should do to counter this rather astonsishing arguement, and I think he's right. And I like to see him being direct about it - the best line in the post:

Health care policy is an immensely complicated issue. And that complexity can sometimes be a cover for politicians pushing policies that would screw most families.

Remember that in the context of the completely bogus Medicare Part D (the drug company giving away, senior screwing, taxpayer dousing, arm twisted, out and out lied about "Prescription Drug Benefit" that passed in the middle of the night) and what Republicans will do if they think it will get them more seats. They've already done it once on health care, and in rather grand fashion. Let's not let them do it again.

George Will bumps head, makes sense

I've often said, usually when making dire predictions about the ramifications of Bush adminstration actions, that this (insert the topic here) is one instance where I hope I'm wrong. To date, I've been proven remarkably prescient, and in truth I never really hope I'm wrong, but it can help make an argument more persuasive.

But that doesn't mean I'm never wrong, and after taking a rather smug stab at George Will in an earlier post, I find him making sense, and self limiting his normal syllabic frenzy in this piece about the Oregon Right to Die decision a few weeks ago. I'm sure his next column will irritate me in some fashion, once I've spent the requisite hour or so looking up words and trying to figure out just what noun he was modifying with the string of verbs and...but I think he's onto something here.

Although rather succint and direct by Will standards, he still ties up a lot of ink and real estate to basically wonder what about the decision makes conservatives mad. Further, he wonders what exactly was conservative about John Ashcroft's jihad against Oregon and the Bush administration's single minded focus on this issue.

Of course, we all know the answer. You can shout "strict constructionist" from every mountaintop in Oregon until the strict constructionist view somehow conflicts with your own religious, social or political agenda. And you can campaign long and hard about "activist judges" until your own guys aren't quite activist enough.

Then the rest of us, watching from the cheap seats, can sigh and say, "I told you I wasn't wrong about that."

Pharmacological Acorns

I live in a blue state that trends more blue each election cycle. Along with about 60+ % of our population, however, I'm unimpressed with our Democratic Governor, "Hot" Rod Blagoevich. In order to further prove out the "blind pig finding the acorn" theory, however, Blagoevich backed and signed legislation that forces pharmicists in Illinois to dispense medication (specifically the "morning after" pill) regardless of religious objections.

Someone (atrios, I think) wrote about these "conscienctious objectors" a few months ago and wondered about the next wave of refusals if the anti-birth control group got their way. It was a hilarious tongue in cheek about Christian pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for Jews because, "You killed Jesus", and lots of others.

Anyway, the objecting pharmacists have sued Walgreens right in my hometown so I guess we'll get the court's view on the topic.

Humuhumunukunukuapuaa

Just because I can, if you're wondering. The Humuhumunukunukuapuaa has been...what, replaced? overtaken? smacked down? as the state fish of Hawaii according to this story.

In truth, I didn't even bother to read the rest of it. I just like the look of that word at the top of the post.

Yes, just because I can.

...and, with an opposing viewpoint...

Kevin Drum disagrees with me about Charles Pierce's review of the Carville/Begala book, "Take It Back...". And although I agree with Kevin about the policy vacuum that has sucked the life out of the Democratic Party of late (and have said so numerous times here), I think he completely misses the point of Pierce's comments.

Carville and Begala, by their coziness to, and participation in, the "inside the beltway", "Tucker Carlson's a nice guy" secret squirrel society, have forfeited their position as policy guys. It doesn't matter what they say about policy because of everything else they say. If you want pure policy, get some guys whose biggest concern isn't staying on the Meet the Press "A" List and getting the big invite to the Bob Novak Dracula Ball.

There are plenty of those people out there, and although they may not have the media skills that Carville and Begala have developed in their little act, you can find those guys too. Team them up. Let James and Paul do the circuit, and let the real policy warriors do the work and carry the day.

Carville and Begala? I say put a fork in em'. They're done.

Give em' hell, Charlie

I love good writing. I occasionally link to some of it here, and with a few decades of dilligent practice, I might even crank out a sentence or two that would impress me. And I read lots of writing. I think Eric Alterman is good, Anna Quindlen is really good, Paul Krugman doesn't really have the magic touch with language but he can make a point with the best of them.

For those of you (and I mean both of you) who are waiting for some reference to right leaning writing, I'd toss out George Will but a big vocabulary and access to some steroid enhanced Roget's Thesaurus does not make for good writing. It makes for pompous blather.

Anyway, that's a rather long winded way of getting to the point: To my way of thinking, Charles Pierce is the funniest, wittiest, most on point writer published today. Period. Here's his review of the new Carville/Begala book, which he shreds in the most entertaining way. A few examples to convicne you to click on the link:

Glorioski, Don Imus. Populist media. I mean, there's triangulation and there's triangulation, and then there's Pythagoras on crystal meth.

and...

Begala righteously -- and rightfully -- goes up the wall citing, among other things, the fact that his eldest son is named John Paul, after the late pope. (Good thing for the kid, too, that he was born recently. In another era, he might be named Urban Gelasius Begala.)

There's much more that's too lengthy to excerpt here, but not only is it absolutely entertaining - as Pierce always is - it's absolutely on point. More on that later.

Read it.

The Great Filibuster Debate

To filibuster Alito or not is the question of the day. It's obviously drawing some serious attention on the left. My barometer for this is that one of my old friends, who sits firmly in the left wing of the left, emailed me this morning asking me to call my Senators to demand a filibuster.

It was a mass mailing, so to speak, so I'll forgive him for not recognizing that both of my Senators, Durbin and Obama, have already signed onto the filibuster bandwagon. My own feelings on the topic are mixed.

I think my biggest problem is John Kerry. He jumped into the fray from his perch in Davos at the World Economic Summit in the eleventh hour to demand the filibuster. It was so clearly a crass political move that it diminished the concept of the filibuster entirely. Like Bush flying back to Washington D.C. from Crawford for Terry Schiavo, there was no principle in the move.

If Russ Feingold (who is a believer in Presidential choice on these matters regardless of party and is voting no for the first time) had started the rally to this I would accept it as a matter of principle and do my part for the cause. I don't want Alito confirmed anymore than my friend from the left coast, but this filibuster is likely doomed from the start, and from a political perspective it's a big loser.

The far left will support it (and in theory I do as well), but everyone to the right of them will see Kerry's move for what it is: pandering to the base for 2008. It will further the notion (somewhat deserved and slightly overblown) of Democrats as the party with no principles and no ideas.

Just what we need.

On babies and bathwater

I'm not sure I have an answer to this, but the root problem is something that continues to mangle public debate and public policy in this country.

The basic story is that every time a case of horrific child abuse is reported in the news (usually involving the death of the child), there is a massive increase in reports of child abuse which result in a rise in the number of kids removed from their families and placed in foster care. In the article they refer to it as "foster-care panic."

Let me say for the record that children should be removed from abusive situations and, given the potential for long term damage to the most vulnerable among us, everyone should err on the side of caution in suspected cases.

But there has to be some method to avoid this panic syndrome. The trauma the children experience has got to be devastating. Imagine living in a peaceful, loving home and the neighbor (or maybe someone with an agenda or a vendetta) dials up the abuse hotline during one of these panics because they mis-interpreted something they heard or saw. Or maybe they are angry or crazy. Out come the authorities to yank the frightened kids away from the bewildered parents.

The kids end up in foster care (and although I'm sure most foster parents have all the best intentions, the system does not have a great track record) and, after a long process with family courts and social workers and massive disruption of their lives, hopefully end up back with their families.

But the story points up a larger issue. It seems like our public debate - and therefore our public policy - is completely hijacked by the abuse of anectdotal evidence. One widely publicized case of child abuse and we get foster care panic. We repeal the estate tax because one family lost a farm (actually, I don't think the Bush administration ever found such a family, although not for a lack of looking) and it gets pushed by the advocates of whatever the policy is and exploited by the media.

Some of the most egregious abusers of this concept are the talking heads, the very people who have the staff and resources to know better. Bill O'Reilly comes to mind (and with it a wave of nausea) with his "War on Christmas" jibberish. One school makes a bad decision regarding lyrics in Christmas songs and suddenly it's a "secular progressive" attack on all that is good and decent in America.

The whole "frivolous lawsuits" driving doctors away thing is another huge example. The statistics just don't support the claim. Not now, not ever. But ask a thousand people why health care costs so much and you'll hear about lawsuits en masse.

We are all culpable in this. The lazy, money driven media is spoon fed this slop by someone with an agenda to push, and we lap it up and pass it along and make it real instead of spending the time to find out the real facts.

Which brings us back to the first issue - what to do with the "foster care panic" after a widely publicized case of child abuse? How about funding the agencies charged with child welfare appropriately so they can hire qualified, trained staff and investigators to, well...spend the time to find out the real facts? So maybe there is a solution to that problem.

As for the rest of it...

Think Tank???

I'll leave the jokes to you:

On a personal note, Bush said that after he leaves office, he may be interested in setting up a think tank where young scholars could write and think about freedom and liberty.

Have a ball.

Desperate and Dangerous

As I guess everyone knows, Hamas has been declared the winner in the Palestinian Parlimentary elections. My own thinking was that this was a statement of desperation given the circumstances that most Palestinians have lived with for their entire lives. Refugees in their own land with little hope for peace, no hope for prosperity...no hope, period.

And although Arafat was a hero to many, his quasi-government was corrupt and closely tied to terror and really didn't offer much in the hope department either. I thought Abbas (the man of two names - why is that?) was a move in the right direction on that front. I was surprised to read this:

The election outcome amounted to a bitter rebuke to the secular ruling Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which many Palestinians sought to punish for government corruption, chaos in the streets and unrealized hopes for an end to the Israeli occupation.

It seems unlikely that Hamas will help the region on any front, given their militant stance towards Israel, their open embrace of terrorism, and the fact that both the US and Israel refuse to recognize them.

Any hope for an easy transition after the debilitating stroke suffered by Ariel Sharon seems completely dashed. The situation appears desperate and dangerous.

Absent

I've been on the road the entire week with no time for writing and barely time for thinking. I have much catching up to do but it appears there's plenty to discuss. Once I get a little rest, I think I'll have a few things to say.

Stay tuned...

Josh Marshall chimes in on the "liberal media" myth, specifically with regard to Deborah Howell, the Washington Post Ombudsman who bungled, in spectacular fashion, the issue regarding Jack Abramoff and contributions to Democrats.

For those of you not keeping up, Abramoff gave zero, zilch, nada to Democrats. His client organizations did, but the ratio was about 70/30 Rebuplican/Democrat. I keep remembering that line from "A Few Good Men" where Kevin Bacon tells the awful tale of the two marines assaulting the third marine, and he ends with, "These are the facts, and they are undisputed."

Anyway, Josh certainly has a better look than me, but he draws a similar conclusion with regard to why political reporting (and social issue reporting as well) is such a mess. Reporters (and editors and publishers who need to sell advertising) are scared to death of the right wing noise machine that attacks for bias regardless of the facts. They are loud, they lack shame, they are tireless, and, relatively speaking, there are a lot of them.

It's how we end up with (my construction here, but it demonstrates the point) stories that read like:

Senators of both parties charged in Criminal Behavior

(IP) Republican Senator Kit Santorurm (R, PA MO) was charged today with 27counts of murder in a shooting rampage that left 27 protesters, representing animal welfare and gay rights groups, dead and 35 more wounded. Several Democratic Senators, including Minority Leader Harry Durbin (D, NV IL) have also been implicated in criminal activity.


What they don't report, of course, is that Harry Durbin shoplifted a pack of gum in college 34 years ago, or it's buried so far down in the story that nobody gets it. You get a clear case of Republican criminality (or ethical lapses or just bad behavior) and they comb the archives looking for a"but the Democrats do it to" angle.

Beyond being bad reporting, it's practically criminal.

Of Pigs and Lipstick

Kevin Drum is catching on. Sometimes you can have the best ideas, the best plan, the best everything but if you can't get the idea across effectively - for whatever reason, you'll end up with a wonderful plan and nothing else. He writes:

My first instinct was to make fun of this, but I guess I'll resist. If "family values" and "good for business" are the code phrases that will convince conservatives to get serious about clean air, then count me in. Once they're used to it, maybe we can start talking about global warming too. That's not so good for kids or businesses either.

Indeed. In fact, I can't think of a single Republican idea that's good for kids, and most of them are only good short term for business. And for that to be true, you have to define business as the people holding all the wealth in business today. From upper middle management down to the factory floor (if we actually had factories to speak of anymore), Republican ideas stink for business.

But they have the language and they have the megaphone. In terms of voting for your own interest, the Democratic Party should score in the high 70's or above, even with the anemic plans they've laid out as a minority party. Get some bolder ideas, find the right language to get it across (and to contrast with the Republican top down trickle game), and then be loud, proud and unashamed.

Win elections. Govern. Peace. Prosperity.

Not to be outdone by Cheney,

Bush Says U.S. economy is strong

in his radio address today while the LA Times reports the reality:

Stocks Dive on Fears of a Faltering Economy

It seems as though they don't even try to spin anymore. Stand in the pouring rain and tell everyone how sunny it is. Surely the masses wouldn't question dear leader.

If it wasn't, oh, I don't know, millions of lives affected, it would be comical.

Therefore, Iran must be fully supporting Al Qaeda

Cheney does not believe in close ties between Iran, Al-Qaeda

So says this story, after Dick Cheney finally realized there was a difference between Sunni and Shia. Good to get that concept firmly in your grasp three years after starting a war.

Anyway, we can be certain that Osama is lounging about some palace in Tehran and training camps are rampant throughout Iran. If Dick says it ain't so, it's so.

A Wall I Must Climb

For the moment, it seems the best source of music for me is CD's my sister gave me for Christmas over the years that I never listened to until the last few months. In the player at this moment (and with not bad sound on this Dell machine with an add on single speaker) is a collection from WXRT radio in Chicago from around 1993.

It's a collection of live performances from their sponsored shows and it's got some gems. There's everything from Midnight Oil and John Lee Hooker to The Replacments and Melissa Etheridge. Some of it I've heard before, but there are a couple songs on there that have just stayed with me. The first is A Wall I Must Climb by Michael McDermott. Based on some quick internet sleuthing, he's primarily a Chicago guy and this was his big song10 or 15 years ago. The next Springsteen, they said.

Of course, no one's the next Springsteen. And Springsteen wasn't the next Dylan and Dylan wasn't the next Woody Guthrie (not that anyone but Dylan ever said that or even thought it).

But if you're in the mood for a little soul searching it's a nice accompaniment to the quest. In the end, it turns out that we're all our own wall to climb.

The other song that I just love is Digruntled Postal Worker by Peter Himmelman. I have no idea whether it's true, but either way it's an interesting look at that whole phenomena. Plus it's hard to resist the catchy chorus.

Happy climbing.

Brownie says, "Oops. Sorry about that little water mess"

We all remember the quote of the year - well, it's hard to pick with Bush in charge -, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie," said President Bush to FEMA director Michael Brown. Meanwhile, the worst natural disaster in US history became the worst managed disaster in US history and "Brownie" was relieved of his command and let go (with a several month consulting contract). Oh, and lots of people died and suffered needlessly.

Today, after lying to Congress that it was everyone else's fault (and the release of some of the most pompous, arrogant, disconnected emails I've ever seen) Brown admitted that he might have had a role in screwing things up beyond repair. He reminds me of the little kid who denies he got in the cookie jar when he's standing there with his hand in the cookie jar.

But I guess that's what you get when you hire a guy to run the disaster agency after he was let go by the Arabian Horseowner's Association.

Competence and accountability in government, W style.

The Liberal Media

I know everyone in the blog world and otherwise has had their say on this matter, and I'm sure their thoughts and comments are more reasoned and eloquent than mine, but I'm tired of the whole thing and I need to speak to it.

If you want to see the others, Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?" is a great source. Atrios frequently points out the fallacy of what he refers to as the "Librul Media". And Bartcop offers The Myth of the Liberal Media.

My point is not so much that I'm tired of hearing people on the right complaining about the liberal media (although I'm absolutely exhauted by it) and that it has become an accepted concept in the mainstream and even on the left. Wait a minute - that probably should be my point because it's just pure jibberish. But one thing at a time.

What really bothers me is that there isn't the completely opposite dynamic at play. The media (mainstream or otherwise) is profoundly conservative. Look at the coverage of any major issue and you'll find that the routine, newspaper/nightly news coverage is at least absent any aggressive looks at conserative excess/corruption/general sleaziness. They are either so scared of being called by Brent Bozell for liberal bias or so tamed by their corporate masters that they dare not actually speak the news.

And if you go a level deeper into the commentariat or punditocracy, the ratio is something like 8 to 1 conservative to moderate. They rarely let a true liberal in the door. CNN, MSNBC, no point bringing up Fox, talk radio, syndicated columnists, Meet the Press, This Week. If you want a liberal, they trot out Doris Kearns Goodwin (not that I dislike her particularly, but she's not exactly a street fighter) or well...I guess E.J. Dionne gets a gig now and then. So you get overwhelming number preference to the right, combined with matching fire eating monsters against conciliatory academics and no wonder everything tilts right.

Where's the outrage? Where's the constant drumbeat about the conservative media? Where is the widely publicized Annenberg Study that documents the far right bias? Where is the left convincing the middle?

I hope the answer is that it's coming. Too slow for me, but websites like Daily Kos and Atrios and Altercation and the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America (you gotta love David Brock) and, of course, Air America Radio, are starting to make a difference. The problem is that we're so far behind, by the time we get what Kos calls the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy up and running, we'll be living in a dictatorship and the free press will be what Dick Cheney damn well wants it to be.

What's the answer to that? Easy. Pay attention. Watch the crap and write letters. Read the sites listed above and know your arguments. Then tell everyone you know, even the right wing wackos. Hit them with facts and statistics from MMA or Alterman's book. Know the common lies and logical fallacies that appear every day on the right. Start you own blog and get 50 people you know to read it.

Do something. Now.

First a chicken in every pot, now a laptop...

Illinois' Lt. Governor wants to provide laptops for every 7th grade student in the state, according to this story in the Chicago Tribune. Based on some improvements in student acheivement and goals at a school with a laptop agreement with Apple, Pat Quinn thinks students statewide should have them.

Apparently, the only hangup is the funding mechanism. Quinn wants to use a portion of the retail sales tax that is rebated to the retailers. I can't really speak to the details of Illinois tax law, but the laptop thing is a great idea. It helps level the economic playing field and provide kids one of the key tools in today's economy at an age where they can get the most benefit out of it.

It depends on the person

This story from the AP Science Writer indicates men get a kick out of watching someone who has broken the rules get a little electric zap, where as women empathize.

From the male perspective, I might enjoy watching a few particular indivduals get a zap - I'd probably go for a big zap right about now, but I'll take what I can get - but in general? Actually, I think that's right. I'm mostly full of empathy for people and animals who don't have much of a say in their circumstances, but if you brought it on yourself with your own actions - especially if it was to detriment of someone else, I say bring on the voltage.

Random Thoughts on a Busy Day

Random thoughts after scanning the news, in no particular order:

1. Great line by Harry Reid. "“The idea of Republicans reforming themselves is like asking John Gotti to clean up organized crime. "
2. Everytime I read something or hear of his work, I like Al Gore even more. I wonder if the Bush vs. Gore decision in 2000 was one of those mind expanding moments for him, because I suspect he would be quite different in the presidency. Still, he's among my favorite speakers today. He throws his bombs so eloquently and with that subtle authority of someone who's been there.
3. I think Scott McClellan's lying and distortion knows no bounds.

Here's the key point:

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engagedin warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI' search of the home of CIA' turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time that of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

4. I think the whole Medicare Part D Prescription Drug debacle could be the sleeper issue in the mid-term elections. Even if the Republicans obfuscate the Abramoff issue with "they did it, too" claims and some how overcome the Iraq thing, the Medicare thing is one of the worst pieces of legislation to come down the pike since...I can't really remember much worst, and the problems are tangible. Scared, confused seniors not getting their presciptions or going broke paying deductibles to equally confused pharmacists.

5. Does anyone care about a Carolina - who the hell are they playing? - NFC Championship game?

More to come.

Science 2, ID Nuts 0

Another "Intelligent Design" class bites the dust, this one in El Tejon, California. I wrote about this about a week ago but I really didn't expect this outcome.

Cautious optimism, I'd say.

First, the good news...

The Supreme Court today upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law in a 6-3 decision that nicely smacked down former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Turns out Ashcroft should have spent his time fighting terrorism instead of chasing after terminally ill Oregonians and aids and cancer patients who sought a little relief through medical marijuana. Just another day in the Bush Justice Department.

So, the good news here is that the right to die with dignity appears to be here for the duration. In a compassionate society, why anyone would want to prolong horrific suffering is beyond me.

The bad news, particularly in the long term, is that the new Chief Justice, John Roberts, dissented along with Moe and Curly (Scalia and Thomas), which seems a pretty good indication of his judicial philosophy. Add Sam Alito to that mix and all of a sudden you're looking at a long thirty plus years for women, minorities, individuals overrun by corporations or the state and on and on.

There was some speculation on the internets about the fact that Alito was going to be given a pass because Roberts would assume the moderate role of O'Connor and the balance would remain as it was.

So much for that theory.

Them's Fighting Words

Kos takes on Andrew Sullivan (directly) and the rest of the Right Wing Conspiracy:

I understand that it was easier for right-wing hacks to ply their trash when liberals unilaterally disarmed and took it with nary a peep. I understand they pine for those days when the best we could offer in rebuttal was Alan Colmes.

But they created the environment we now play in. They wanted a "culture war", an ideological fight, a partisan rumble in which only one side brought guns to the game. Those days are over.

Read the rest, but it's an argument I largely agree with and have been making myself for a long time. It's unfortunate (in life as in politics) when you have to really start getting after people to make any progress, but I don't think anyone on the left (or in my house) asked to be here. It's what the right created and now they don't like it when we fight back.

Be nice to W and he'll smile as he jams it down your throat and laughs all the way to the White House. If Andrew Sullivan somehow thinks an aggressive opposition party plays to Bush and his merry gang of thugs, he should take a look at the polling for the last few months. Further, if he thinks the absence of Daily Kos and the like would somehow temper Bush's right wing bombastics, he's just in fantasyland.

When Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" came out and I realized there was someone as disgusted as me (and who actually had a platform to speak out about it), I was so excited I sent copies to all kinds of people. One of my friends - a smart, informed, dedicated liberal - wrote me to say that Michael Moore-like tactics don't help anything. He particularly didn't like his Oscar speech. I started to agree with him (as was my way so long ago), but as I thought about it I got angry. My answer became, as I recall, "Fuck subtlety. It hasn't gotten us anything but minority status and George W. Bush as President."

There's a place for subtlety, but you have to be dealing with intelligent, evolved, nuanced people for it to have any effect. For this gang, you need a sledgehammer.

I must be a genius...

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

That's from Jonathon Swift, the Irish author from...a long time ago. It's also opens and provides the title for one of my favorite books, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I won't bore you with the story, but it's a wonderful book that I've probably read ten times over the last 25 years. It's always funny after a couple year respite.

As a follow on to the previous post, I feel a bit like Ignatius J. Reilly, the rotund, flatulent, medieval protaganist of the story (excluding the rotund, flatulent and medieval parts), who just can't help himself and winds up in the most peculiar situations and wondering why Fortuna has spun her wheel, and him with it, downward.

Anyway, while looking for the exact language of the quote, I came across another piece of wisdom from Mr. Swift that perfectly sums up my feelings for today:

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."

It's Been a Slow Posting...

Obviously, there has been very little output from these quarters today. Slow Turning...slow posting. There's a theme there somewhere.

Today has been one of those slow turning days. It started out bad and went straight downhill from there. The details don't really matter much (except to those who are neck deep in them and those who happened across someone embroiled in the thing today), but hopefully I've learned something from it.

Self control is hard stuff when it comes to all things emotional, but when exercised at the right times, it can make all the difference. Or, in my case, not so much. But next time...

In the end, it's the spillover that ends up smacking people. A disagreement spins out of control and the peripheral (read: innocent) bystanders or good samaritans get hammered. And, in the end, nobody who has even a tenuous grip on reality feels anything but...spent and sorry.

So, that's today. Back to the regularly scheduled programming from here on out.

"...I never did get what I wanted
But now I get what I need

It's been a Slow Turning..."

Everyone hates lawyers, but...

A couple claiming to have a bomb held a lawyer hostage in his Georgia office Monday while negotiators tried to persuade them to surrender, authorities said.

These folks decided the court system was for the weak, I guess.

"The individuals have indicated that they are very upset with some legal issues from the recent past and want to get those issues resolved," Wood said in a written statement Monday afternoon.

I guess I understand it (not that I'm condoning violence). Who do you see when you get bad lawyering? A lawyer? A judge/lawyer? Who do you sue?

Can't we have both?

Kevin Drum, after a lengthy disection and refutation of the Impeach Bush argument, asks:

Anyway, consider this an open thread for random vituperation. What's your preference: ringing calls for impeachment or an actual electoral strategy?

My answer is twofold:

First, although I would love to see Bush impeached, it likely wouldn't succeed and what would it accomplish? I think he deserves it on general grounds, but so what? Now we get Dick Cheney or Denny Hastert. No thanks. Impeaching Bush would feel good - paybacks and all that - but not mean anything from a policy/electoral standpoint. And the press provided hangover would be a monster.

And the policy is what matters.

Democrats actually have plenty of policy ideas that should guarantee them majorities in both houses and invitations to the White House Christmas dinner until they can't take it anymore and destruct in a fiery ball of corruption and chaos (see: Republican Revolution, 1994-2006). Think about the things the Democratic party stands for:

1) Economic Security for everyone
2) Access to education and opportunity for everyone
3) Healthcare as a right, not a privelege
4) Reasonable stewardship of the environment
5) Engagement in the world with a muscular but balanced approach
6) Support for and participation in organizations that strengthen security
7) Trade policy that opens markets and pushes our competitors up instead of racing us to the bottom
8) Economic and social justice as a matter of policy and law
9) Fighting terrorists by lifting oppressed people up, where possible, and killing terrorists, where necessary
10) Protection of the individual first and the corporation second

These things work best in packages of 10 somehow, but you could do lots of others, small and large. I know some of the worst sales people in the universe, and they could sell those ideas.

The problem is that the Democratic party won't just stand up and say it. The party leaders and, even the rank and file, are deathly afraid of the attack of the right wing conspiracy and so, even when they summon the courage to meekly mention these things, they back down at the slightest provocation.

That's one of the reasons I like Howard Dean so much. He will say it, even if he sometimes speaks a wee bit too extemperaneously. So what?

I understand the fear. Not too long ago, before I had my political sea legs, I was hesitant to speak out or call people on ideas based on lies or misinformation. I didn't want people to think I was a liberal for fear of...who knows. But I am a liberal, and proud of it. And so what if you get shot down now and then? Get tough. And, I'm not a politician making my living in that world. These guys are elected and paid to represent our ideas.

Pick ten. It doesn't have to be mine, although just a few of those would be enough. Speak them. Write them. Make them a mantra. Ask Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer why they don't believe in them. Make the Republicans say health care is a privelege. And when Rush and Sean and the rest start calling you a socialist or whatever else they want to call you, laugh at them and ask them why they hate America.

Get to it. Now

Next Up: Sweden's "Was there really a bomb in Japan" Conference

Maybe there is some appetite for this sort of thing in a culture where the government decides what you can see or hear, but what's the point?

Besides confirming for the last yahoo in the west who thought they might be people we could work with that they're not, who exactly do you have a "Holocaust" conference in Iran for?

Pittsburgh Wins? Who would have thunk it?

I really don't care much, but I hated to see Indianapolis lose today. I think Peyton Manning is the smartest guy in the game and he doesn't have that monster ego that makes many professional athletes unbearable. And, after the tragedy that Tony Dungy endured, it would have been nice to see one of the class acts of the game win.

On Sam Alito, Hunter Thompson and Personal Growth

I named this blog after a John Hiatt song, Slow Turning. It's a simple song about figuring yourself out and how you get there. For most of us, slow is the key phrase. Some people come to it quickly and some never get it, but for the rest, it's a process of forward and back - learning and failing and holding onto the relevant pieces until you come to that ultimate conclusion about who you are, why you're here and what you're supposed to do.

I've been through a lot of this turning (in my case churning is probably a more literal description) over the last couple years. One step forward, two steps back, with the occasional epiphany thrown in to keep in interesting. But there have been specific catalysts that drove the process and allowed me to distill a collection of life lessons into a cohesive idea of who I am.

Sometimes it's a change in jobs or family circumstances that drives it. Hunter Thompson wrote, I believe in "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail1972", about a New York Times writer (Dave Weicker or something like that) or maybe a Washington Bureau Chief who seemed to tilt the coverage towards Nixon and the right pretty consistently. Maybe because of personal beliefs; maybe due to pressure from management; maybe because, as the official representative of the paper in D.C., he thought he needed to show bias to maintain his access. Maybe he was just a prick.

Anyway, at some point in the Nixon administration, Times management jerked him out of the bureau chief job and made him a columnist. Thompson described a remarkable change in outlook, temperment and attitude as he was freed from hard news coverage and granted that high end real estate on the Op-Ed page. His writing shifted from right to left and his outrage at the criminality of the Nixon gang grew measurably.

Or that's the way I remember the story. I can't find the book to look it up, but it's pretty close. And, sometimes that's what it takes to get it figured out. The release of some pressure you may not even be aware of and, boom, you suddenly see things with remarkable clarity. As I said, I can attest to much of this personally.

Which brings us to Sam Alito. Given the support of Arlen Specter and the lack of fight from Diane Feinstein, he seems certain to be confirmed. And like some before him, the elevation to the highest judicial post in the land with almost no possibility of being removed, may be the mind expanding jolt he needs to start thinking clearly. Not in the liberal tradition - I have no such expectations - but perhaps in the centrist way of O'Connor.

But I doubt it. Some people just don't have the capacity for self discovery, or even self examination. I keep going back to that 1985 application to the Reagan Justice Department where Alito pratically begged them to see how conservative he was - I belonged to the women hater's club at Princeton, and all the rest - and I keep thinking he can't change because there's nothing there to begin with.

Some people you know aren't going anywhere. Clarence Thomas lacks the intellectual capacity to grow in any way, and Antonin Scalia is an angry white guy who, I'm fairly certain, lacks a soul. I was no fan of Rehnquist, and I thought the stripes on the robe showed a penchant for juvenile ego that shouldn't really show up in the Chief Justice, but he seemed, at least occasionally, to get it.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so. I have a sense about these things, especially after my own process, and I just see Alito joining up with his right wing homies and letting the rest of us have it.

He speaks the language of love

Most couples fight and forget. Sure, there are those people who save up transgressions for use at a later date, but how do you get around it when you write and record a hit song about killing your ex-wife? Then, a few years later, you reconcile and remarry. "No, honey, I really didn't mean it when I wrote and recorded that little ditty."

NOW BLEED BITCH BLEED....BLEED BITCH BLEED...BLEEEEEED!!!!

That's from Kim by Eminem. Kim, of course, is his ex-wife, whom he re-married today.

Ain't love grand?

Brilliant Satire

This is a must read post by Atrios. It's so good I don't even feel qualified to comment on it.

MLK Day Prelude

Here's an interesting piece on an AP-Ipsos poll about progress on racial issues as we approach the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday. There's quite a bit of information here, although none of it is particularly surprising.

The thing that caught my attention was the connection between the Civil Rights movement and Republican domination of the national political scene today. Although I'm certainly aware of the "Southern Strategy" adopted by Republicans, I never really thought of it directly as a backlash to the movement. It's certainly hard to argue with the idea.

For more inspiration, True Majority has collected audio clips and transcripts of MLK speeches

Congressman Speaks Truth - Will anyone listen?

Congressman John Murtha, the Vietnam Veteran alternately praised and courted, then slimed and villified, by the White House, says Bush will come up with a plan to remove most or all troops from Iraq by years end.

The reason?

Mid-term elections and the possibility of losing the Congress to the Democrats, of course. And, although it's really nice to hear someone other than me and the non-traditional media say it, will anyone pay attention?

Will the Russerts and Matthews and O'Brien twins and the rest ask how this could be when, from the start of this war, we've been told that a withdrawal, a hint of withdrawal, talk of a timetable for withdrawal, or even thinking quietly about it aids the enemy?

It's too bad we already know that answer.

Defining and fighting for Capitalism

I heard a brief discussion with John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Funds, on The Motley Fool radio show on NPR this afternoon. He's got a new book out called, "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" that sounds like an interesting read.

The little of the discussion I heard focused on the rather abrupt shift in the late 80's and 90's from rewarding "owners" to rewarding "managers". In other words, the focus moved from those who invest capital and take risk to those who manage things for those people or institutions. In my mind, although he didn't mention anyone during the little of the interview I heard, that means "Neutron" Jack Welch and Al "Chainsaw" Dunlop and Dennis Koszlowski and all the boys at Enron.

They essentially invested nothing but enriched themselves massively by manipulating the system they were brought in to manage.

As a manager of someone else's capital myself, I'm a firm believer in adequate rewards for competence and excellence in management. But things got a little out of hand, and I don't see any end in sight. Christopher Cox, the new head of the SEC is talking about greater transparency for management compensation, but I don't think that's anywhere near enough.

Anyway, I know absolutely nothing about John Bogle short of he created an incredible investment vehicle that seems to stay at the forefront of the mutual fund world. I'll disclose completely, unlike some Supreme Court nominees we know, that I don't own any Vanguard funds, but my kids do.

Getting tough on the welfare state (corporate welfare, that is)

From today's NY Times, NY Gov. George Pataki has decided to crack down on Medicaid fraud and I'm all for it. The state's medicaid bill is someting like 45 billion annually, the largest in the nation. And you can imagine with the large minority and immigrant population the enormous level of fraud going on.

Oh, wait, that's the right wing spin on entitlement programs. Obviously, Gov. Pataki didn't get the talking points from the White House yesterday.

The Medicaid fraud this measure addresses largely bypasses the Reagan welfare queen myth and goes after the real cheaters:

Mr. Pataki, accepting the recommendations of a prominent former prosecutor who concluded that the state was faltering in its efforts against fraud, said he would move to create the agency to tackle widespread theft from the program by doctors, pharmacies and other health care providers. (emphasis mine)

If I'm not mistaken, one of the largest ever settlements on a Medicare/Medicaid fraud case was for something like 1.3 billion dollars. The case was settled by none other than HCA, the company founded by the family of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Yes, the HCA he's being investigated for regarding some questionable stock transactions.

Small world.

Clink, clink (think ice into a highball glass)

I used to live in Missouri and I still work there and do lots of things in St. Louis. But I'm glad I don't have to tell people that Christopher "Kit" Bond represents me in the US Senate, or even on the Black Jack City Council.

Besides being a little light in the intellectual/cognitive ledger, Bond seems to think he can just make stuff up and say it and then it's true.

Short version:

1) The release of the wiretapping story has caused intelligence in Iraq to dry up;

2) If we don't stay in Iraq, it will fall back into the terrorist haven it was before we invaded.

On point one, even Bush and his guard dog Cheney haven't said that.

On point two, oh, hell, you know the story. No terrorists before, terrorists after.

Somehow he still gets elected.

Pam, the Colonel and Chicken Heads - Top That

There's almost too much in this story to know where to start:

NEW YORK (CNN) - Television star Pamela Anderson is leading a campaign to have the bust of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland Sanders removed from the Kentucky state capitol.

In a letter to Gov. Ernie Fletcher, the former Baywatch star says suppliers for the fast food chain, now called KFC, engage in cruel and unusual treatment of chickens, including tearing the heads off of live birds, spitting tobacco into their eyes and spray-painting their faces.

Anderson wrote the letter with the help of People for the Ethical Treatment of animals.

Let's start here. Assuming these things are actually happening (I'm thinking the supervisor in the chicken plant would stress production vs. this whole spitting thing), why in the world would you want Pam Anderson front and center on the issue? They admit right up front that she needed help writing the letter. Draw your own conclusions.

Secondly, isn't Harlan Sanders long dead? I'm pretty sure he's not abusing any chickens.

But, still -

A spokeswoman for KFC told CNN that the letter is "just another misguided publicity stunt by PETA in their attempt to create a vegan society."

A vegan society? They make it sound like some sort of cross between the Soviet block and Romulan death creatures on Star Trek.

For the record, I'm an animal lover (see Dog Blogging below) and I have my moments of doubt about eating critters. I'm all for humane treatment of all creatures and if the chicken people are really tearing the heads off live chickens, I don't like it. They should stop.

I guess the only upside for this is that it allows Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher to focus on something other than Republican corruption scandal number 1422, which has consumed his administration. For those of you not keeping track, he had to fire nine of his top staff and then immediately pardon them.

All that in a story no more than about 150 words. Now that's writing.

He's wrong about almost everything else, but...

Say what you want about Pat Buchanan - really, say anything. I know what you're thinking and it's almost certainly true, so go ahead and let rip. But I know he's right in his analysis of Joe Biden's performance at the Alito confirmation hearings, and I hope he's right in his conclusion:

After a full day of interrogation by Senate Judiciary, it’s a good bet Sam Alito will be confirmed -- but a better bet Joe Biden is never going to be president.

Lord Almighty, can no one shut this man down? Friends don’t let friends go on like this. Biden took thirty minutes to throw five pitches, averaging a six-minute wind-up, then saw Alito slap every one through the infield for a base hit. Send this boy to the showers and give his time to Schumer.

How long do we have to keep listening to Biden's self serving gibberish?