Tom Daschle's Ghost

DC's Next Big Emergency-Response Challenge: Aliens

2008-12-13T14:53:00.007-05:00

So I'm detouring again from the original thrust of this blog (politics, the occasional dabble into homeland security) and pontificating on something that came to mind last night. I actually plunked down $10 last night to see The Day The Earth Stood Still, which included one of the most hilariously unintentional scenes of racism I've ever had the fortune to watch. (Keanu Reeves, as alien-in-human-form, speaks stilted and uneven Chinese with other-alien-in-human-form James Hong, which sounds like Keanu imitating someone else's offensive parroting of Chinese speech.)

But TDTESS's lengthy scenes involving the military, secretive federal agencies, and local law enforcement responses to an alien landing seemed wildly inaccurate. Then I realized- how could someone define an accurate response to something so goofily improbable as an alien landing? So I have decided to try. Because that's what we need in times like this. Realistic assessments of the alien threat.

Before we get started, let's postulate a couple of things:
1) There are, in fact, no secret governmental or military agencies charged with handling extraterrestrial contacts, incidents or invasions.
2) There are, in fact, no plans, policies or procedures at the state, federal, local, municipal or military levels of government which specify how to respond to an alien landing.
3) The public arrival of an alien spacecraft would, for the sake of this discussion, not commence with immediate and overt hostilities on the part of either the aliens or humans.
4) The aliens would land in a location proximate to political leaders, military power, and population centers. For the sake of this discussion, it will be the site of the original TDTESS landing, the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The Arrival

All right. So how does this begin? Well, initially the spacecraft would be tracked by one of the multiple American or international institutions that participates in the "Spaceguard" program, sharing information and data on potentially dangerous asteroids approaching the earth. Once those folks communicated that information to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, we'd probably try to come up with some way to destroy it under the assumption that it was a piece of space junk. But, again for the sake of argument, let's say it began to slow down, change course, and exhibit obvious signs of intelligent guidance. I would suspect that, despite Hollywood's assumption, the instinctive response would not be for us to attempt to nuke it before it landed.

Of course, once it entered our atmosphere and began heading for the Baltimore-Washington area, our extraterrestrial visitor(s) would enter the Washington, DC Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ.) This is where things would begin to get tricky. It's doubtful that they filed a flight plan with the FAA, so this ADIZ incursion would trigger something called an ASA Mission- Air Sovereignty Alert. Air National Guard fighter jets (whose mission, since 9/11, has been air defense for major cities) would intercept the visitors as they arrived.

Regardless of what conveyance the aliens chose for this trip, our ANG pilots would probably be quick to realize that this was not the usual ADIZ violation (such as the May 2005 incident which forced the evacuation of the U.S. Capitol.) There have been over 3,000 of these incidents since 2001, but the rules of engagement for interstellar warfare are obviously a bit blurrier than those for forcing down a Cessna pilot who's gone wildly off-course. My suspicion is that unless the UFO made threatening moves or deployed some kind of weapon, they would escort and monitor the ship but stop short of attacking it.

The Response

So now the spacecraft lands on the National Mall, which is by far the best impromptu landing area in the National Capital Region. Concerned and confused citizens(who would inevitably swamp the DC 911 center with calls) would probably refer to it as an aircraft down. This would trigger an automatic specialty rescue assignment to the DC Fire & EMS Department, dispatching hazmat, heavy rescue , and mass casualty units to the scene, as well as a number of regular fire apparatus and ambulances.

But once it became obvious that nobody had been hurt, and that it was in fact a landing rather than an actual crash, DC Fire & EMS would have to hand over command to the primary law enforcement agency for the National Mall, the U.S. Park Police. They have fairly significant resources (including three medevac-capable helicopters, dubbed Eagles 1, 2 and 3, as well as a SWAT team and motor unit) so they would probably take over command. They'd have support from other agencies like the Secret Service Uniformed Division (who guard the White House) and DC's Metropolitan Police. In addition, since this would happen directly in front of the U.S. Capitol building, the Capitol Police would almost certainly respond.

Notably absent would be the military, with the exception of our Air Guard fighters. It's a staple, in the aliens-arrive genre, that heavily armed Guardsmen or paratroopers or Green Berets are awaiting the visitors on the ground, cocked, locked and ready to rock. But mobilizing the National Guard takes time, and it's a process that has to be worked out between state and federal governments. Unless they've been activated by the Department of Defense, the Guard is a state asset. Active-duty military troops, even in the Military District of Washington, might not be there immediately. The Marine Barracks near Capitol Hill would probably be the closest, but it's anybody's guess how long it would take to notify them and for them to subsequently suit up and respond in their full "battle rattle."

But there is one military unit which would, almost certainly, respond quickly and at their full capacity- the District of Columbia National Guard's 33rd Civil Support Team. CST teams are specially trained military hazmat squads, based in every state and tasked with the specific mission of assisting civilian government during a Weapons of Mass Destruction attack. They're on call 24/7, airmobile, and come with advanced radiation and hazardous materials assessment gear. Many have mobile command units as well. Any on-scene commander, concerned for personnel and public safety at the scene of an alien landing, would be well advised to call for a CST. Let's assume that this one did.

Another federal unit from the Department of Homeland Security would be quick to respond. The U.S. Coast Guard's Station Washington would probably dispatch air support to the Mall, adding to an already crowded sky but providing additional scene security. Their units would already be patrolling the Potomac River and helping to lock down the area. No sense in drunken boaters adding to the confusion.

And it wouldn't just be cops, firemen, Coasties and soldiers. Let's not forget that the arrival of alien visitors would create even more problems for DC's notorious traffic. The District D.O.T. and the National Park Service would have to divert traffic away from the National Mall, creating major detours around the center of the federal city. And the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, better known as Metro, would be forced to shut down its Smithsonian station to prevent commuters from inadvertently wandering into an interstellar incident.

The Mission

So with DC Fire, the 33rd CST, USCG, Park Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service, DDOT and MPD on scene, as well as onlookers and the inevitable media presence, the question would quickly become "who's in charge?" Federal, state and local responders are required to use the National Incident Management System, or NIMS, which emphasizes a concept called Unified Command. Instead of arguing over which agency is running the show at a big disaster, NIMS encourages the creation of Unified Command, where the major responders establish joint command and set incident objectives as a team. This is rarely as easy as it sounds, but at least they'd have DC Fire's mobile command unit as a safe location for the agency leaders to run the show.

The first priority would be establishing a perimeter around the scene. It wouldn't be easy, but it's been done before (and, during the upcoming Obama inauguration, they'll have to do it again.) The outer perimeter could be established fairly quickly, since there would be no shortage of police units to throw up checkpoints. The next step would be to establish communications. The federal government has authorized billions of grant dollars to ensure that cops, firefighters and other responders can talk on each other's radio systems, but it's not a done deal yet, and there are still problems.

Of course, once they'd established command, secured the scene, and set up communications, local, state and federal coordination centers would have to activate. Emergency Operations Centers, as they're called, serve as a place where different agency representatives can go to share resources and information as well as plan a wider response. While it would be nice to have Mayor Adrian Fenty and DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency Director Darrell Darnell monitor the situation from the DC EOC, though, they'd probably show up to the scene.

So now we have elected leaders arriving at the scene. Fenty might be the first, and (since our UFO's inevitable Air Sovereignty Alert would certainly lead to the evacuation of the Capitol) members of the House and Senate (who hadn't already been evacuated to Mount Weather) would almost certainly wander on over. And good luck denying them access. Then the executive branch would show up- the quickest to arrive would probably be FBI special agents, the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, and their entourages. My opinion is that the most important federal Secretary on scene would be the one charged with international diplomacy, and whose Foggy Bottom offices were a stone's throw a way- the Secretary of State. (Who would bring, as this blog has mentioned in the past, Diplomatic Security special agents.)

It would be very dependent on a President's personality, regarding whether or not he/she would choose to meet the aliens. Our current administration has shown a propensity to head for the hills (specifically, of Bluemont, Virginia and Waynesboro, PA) at the earliest hint of trouble. Not that I fault them- continuity of government is extremely important in matters of national security. I somehow think that our President-elect (while quickly sending Joe Biden to Site R) would choose to stay in the White House, most likely monitoring it from the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. He'd have the option of meeting E.T. if he wanted to, and of staying in a place of relative shelter not too far from the scene.

While all of this was going on, the 33rd CST (along with DC Fire) would probably suit up and enter the inner perimeter of the landing site. Most movies imply a lot of steam, smoke and dramatic concealment of the craft and its occupants, but I would imagine that any transgalactic civilization would be able to land their craft without making it look like a dry-ice trick on Halloween. At this point, our hazmat teams would start running the risk of encountering the alien flight crew. But if the aliens were still doing their landing checks inside the ship, the CST would probably detect slightly-elevated radiation levels from interstellar travel.

The Media

DC would be a luckier landing site for the responders than many other places. If they touched down in New York or Los Angeles, emergency response units would be plagued by buzzing and hovering news helicopters. They'd have to establish a temporary flight restriction, which can take time, but DC-area TV stations don't even use helicopters (they'd never get clearance to fly in the first place.) But the Mall has long, open lines of sight, and it wouldn't be long before the print and broadcast media would be howling for some kind of information about what had just landed on the Mall.

This is another situation in which the Unified Command would be smart to break out their NIMS training and set up a Joint Information Center somewhere outside of the hot zone. By sending spokespersons from different agencies to staff the center, they could coordinate their messages before opening their mouths. For example- the Washington Post asks, is it an alien ship? The Coasties could say no, the military could say yes, and DC Fire could say maybe. With a JIC, responders can can get their stories straight without contradicting each other a la Hurricane Katrina.

Regular briefings, reasonable access to the scene and honest information would go a long way towards making news media coverage of the response run smoothly. As smoothly as possible. Let's not forget, we're dealing with aliens landing on the freaking Mall here.

Making Contact

So now that the scene has been secured, the Civil Support Team has assessed the situation, the media is being managed, and the President is monitoring the situation, who would be sent to make the first contact? Who would be our emissary to the interstellar visitors? What kind of a message would we send? For God's sake, we're talking about aliens landing on the Mall. I have no freakin' idea.

But it does make planning for the January 20th inauguration seem a lot easier, doesn't it?

Please feel free to leave comments and let me know (if you've got experience in public safety, emergency management or the military) if I've missed anything, or if you think it would be managed differently.

Four Years

2008-11-03T20:09:00.002-05:00

It's four years (give or take a couple of hours) since I started this blog out of frustration at the way the world looked after Bush's re-election in 2004. I've posted inconsistently at best, and not always on the topic of politics (see: iPhone, Customs & Border Protection officers, etc.) But I've been focused, on the whole, on looking ahead at how this country gets past the fact that it elected (and re-elected) George W. Bush to be President of the United States.

And from the way things look tomorrow (note that I say this crossing my fingers whilst knocking on wood) our country has turned in the direction that we could only dream about four years ago. To paraphrase Aaron Sorkin's commentary in the New York Times, we've got a black guy with a funny name running a strong campaign against a genuine war hero and a pretty evangelical white woman. Doesn't that tell us something about how far we've come?

(By no means am I taking this for granted, since the ghosts of the Bush mistakes are everywhere. No, seriously- I saw Donald Rumsfeld walking down Connecticut Avenue today and it really freaked me out.)

But we can't forget how we got here. The last eight years have been, without question, some of the hardest this country has ever seen. We've had our foreign policy mismanaged to epic proportions, witnessed the rise of a news organization that promotes the alternate conservative interpretation of reality over, um, the TRUTH, and seen federal funding for lifesaving science and technology efforts slashed for idiotic ideological reasons. Oh, don't forget that we've had our economy flushed into the toilet through the worst of both worlds; massive growth in government programs combined with tax cuts and deficit spending.

That's what drives me insane about this administration. (One of the things.) At least Democrats have the courage of their convictions; at the end of the day, they may tax and spend, but at least they recognize that you have to HAVE money to spend it. Is cutting taxes to artificially low levels and borrowing against the dollar (supported by China and Saudi Arabia, who really have our best interests at heart) somehow more honorable? Be honest about where the money comes from, at a minimum.

Here's the thing. Bush polarized this country to an unparalleled degree, and Democrats could have selected a dyed-in-the-wool standard-bearer to ride the usual anti-administration wave that crests after a two-term President leaves office. (That would be Hillary, those of you who still have the guts to call yourselves PUMAs.) But Democrats, as well as unprecedented new voters and independents, selected Barack Obama, a visionary with an inclusive and inspiring plan to move the country past the wounds of the Bush years.

And that guy has been running campaign circles around John McCain. So, no pun intended regarding Obama's catch word, I have hope. Not just for how tomorrow will go (at least I know I'll have a few drinks onboard; I'll be in a bar within view of the U.S. Capitol watching the returns) but for how liberals have managed to appeal to the great undecided middle, and how unlike 2004, people are beginning to vote their hopes and not their fears.

Watch the attack ads aimed at Obama in the last few hours, if you're in range of (or living in) a swing state. The Republican Party wants the world to be afraid of Obama, either because he's proven himself to be too liberal or because he hasn't proven himself enough. (They don't seem to mind the inherent contradiction.) The point is not that their guy is a good candidate; it's that our guy is somehow, amorphously, intangibly bad.

The point is, Obama is not out for the kind of revenge upon the Republican party or the federal government that even a guy like me would want. And I'm going to vote for him because of his judgment- because he won't do what I would do, set out to systematically reverse everything Bush did. He's looking forward, and that's the right attitude.

If you'll excuse me, the SNL Presidential Bash is on, and I'm planning on laughing tonight, voting tomorrow, and smiling on Wednesday.

Also, if McCain wins, I will resurface in a week or two with a red-state-sized hangover.

CIA Research Budget Expands; Now Checking Google AND Amazon

2008-09-17T20:38:00.002-04:00

America's top spies have divined the following shocking revelations after taking advantage of the very latest in tea-leaf and tarot card technology. Among their research-intensive findings, the most brilliant minds of our vaunted intelligence community have determined:

-The world will get warmer.
-The population will grow and age.
-New forms of energy will be important.
-American power and prestige will shrink.

Let's just set aside the fact that these things have already happened. I mean seriously, guys, you're not even trying any more. Are we honestly just paying American intelligence agencies to sit around and read the next Tom Friedman book?

The CIA's next groundbreaking work products: "Non-English Speakers Remain Difficult to Understand," "Japanese Cars Represent Ongoing Threat to GM," and the page-turner I can't wait for, "Mideast Political Future Appears Sandy."

Charles Rangel, You Deserve It

2008-09-16T14:49:00.001-04:00

I can't say that, as a liberal, I feel any sympathy for Charles Rangel whatsoever. Between using taxpayer dollars to build himself a monument at City College of New York, using rent-controlled apartments as offices, and apparently evading his taxes here and there, he'd be your average slimy politician.

But the man went one step worse than that. He, alongside Louis Farrakhan, helped the men who murdered New York City Patrolmen Phillip Cardillo to evade justice. As I mentioned in a previous post, in April of 1972, Cardillo and his partner were called to a mosque in Harlem for a report of an officer down. It was a fake call that drew them into an ambush. Cardillo was shot and died a week later in the hospital, but when a crowd of local citizens saw the commotion, they were angry only that the police had entered a mosque.

Rangel, aided by Louis Farrakhan, denied the police officers the ability to investigate the crime scene using the threat of a riot. They assured the cops that the perpetrators would turn themselves in at the local precinct, and because of Rangel's influence, the New York City police had no choice but to accept this travesty and leave the scene. In addition, Rangel helped twist the deputy police commissioner's arm into apologizing for the incident in the first place. Neither the mayor nor the police commissioner attended Officer Cardillo's funeral, but Cardillo's widow and his three children certainly did.

Representative Charles Rangel helped a cop killer to go free, and we're surprised that the guy might cheat on his taxes? He's a disgrace to the Democratic Party. The sooner someone has the courage to drag this pond scum into the light of day, the better.

YouTube Fights Back

2008-09-14T00:31:00.004-04:00

Just out of curiosity, why did this little blow to international terrorism take so damn long? I'm all for keeping this little series of tubes open and free from unreasonable restriction, but the idea that YouTube has been removing videos for copyright violations but not violent, hateful and potentially murderous messages...along with education viewers on how to act on those messages? Why did it take Joe freaking Lieberman to get people's attention?

It's very similar to child pornography; everybody recognizes, internationally, that that material both stems from unacceptable, repugnant activities, and that it also helps perpetuate them. In one case it's child molestation, and in another, it's hate speech and try-this-at-home walkthroughs on bomb-building. The scope of damage is obviously different, but they both clearly represent a public menace.

That's what allows me to advocate a restriction on free speech, especially over the Internet, which is something I'm not ordinarily prone to doing.

There's a good argument to be made that keeping such videos out in the open permits intelligence agencies to track who's viewing them. But that tends to get into privacy issues, and is within spitting distance of the PATRIOT Act. Furthermore, if you take that initial easy access to the material away, that starts to narrow down the number of people who are willing to put in the effort to find the stuff. The truly dedicated ones were going to find it anyway, and if they didn't find the extremist material, they were going to make their own. But this helps with the low-hanging fruit...the bored or disaffected who might have come across the stuff casually.

And the "whack-a-mole" point is valid. If you shut them down off YouTube, they'll go somewhere else. But that goes back to the child-porn example. If it becomes progressively more difficult to find using mainstream websites, all but the most dedicated searchers will give up and do something (hopefully) more lawful with their time. It's the same theory that leads China to use basic obstructive techniques on their "Great Firewall." Any decent hacker can get around the Chinese net controls, but they're not doing it for hackers. They're doing it to help corral the general population.

Not that I'm advocating corralling anybody. But big enterprises like YouTube have an obligation to parse the most offensive and dangerous material out there, and I remain surprised that they didn't have any restrictions on it until now. You couldn't stand on a streetcorner and pass out how-to flyers on bomb-building. Someone would call the police and you would be out of luck.

This will obviously not stop people who want to hear violent hate speeches, see attacks on American troops, or learn how to build a bomb. But it does force them to take additional steps and expend additional effort. This additional time and effort is the cornerstone of the three D's- Deter, Delay, Disrupt. Making it tougher- even if only a little- to find the videos that they want will help deter the half-hearted, delay the committed, and provide a little more time to help disrupt their activities.

Pick Your Reality

2008-09-13T17:07:00.003-04:00

Reality #1: Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security and its dedicated personnel, contractors and partners have made significant advances in securing our homeland. They have been responsive to Congressional inquiry, accepting of criticism, willing to reform after debacles like Katrina, and fastidious in their stewardship of American tax dollars. For confirmation of this version of reality, see here.

Reality #2: The Department of Homeland Security is a pigheaded, bloated bureaucracy that is barely competent enough to tread the party line under the toxic leadership of Still-President George W. Bush. They ignore Congressional requirements, cozy up to private contractors, engage in vicious turf battles and generally leave America less safe. For confirmation of THIS version of reality, see here.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Why My iPhone Rules

2008-09-07T19:30:00.002-04:00

This is my first post in a while and it's wildly off-topic. Why, in a time of more exciting political developments- nay, the most exciting political developments in four years- would I choose to write about my consumer electronics purchases? One purchase, specifically? Because, to be perfectly honest, that purchase is worth the time.

The iPhone (and its latest incarnation, the 3G) already has enough of an aura or a stigma, depending on your point of view. People who have them tend to be characterized as early-adopter, techno-hipster types who see Steve Jobs' and Sergei Brin's creations as divine masterpieces on par with the Himalayas or the platypus. The iPhone's detractors tend to fall into the Blackberry-using, suit-and-tie drone category, or the disenchanted lot who had some lousy experience with an iPhone and threw up their hands. This crowd tends to have three major gripes- the reception/3G network service sucks, it's disgustingly expensive on a monthly basis, and the battery life is infinitesimal.

I can safely say that both sides are right.

The iPhone 3G is an amazing toy, with blatantly obvious flaws, but those flaws- in a weird, perverse way- actually make it even more worthwhile. I'll explain, but first I have to remind you of the iPhone's primary capabilities. (I'm not going to mention everything it does, because that would be goofy. But it's worth pointing out the things that it does do, that one actually uses.)

1.) Phone. Duh. 'Nuff said.
2.) iPod. Also duh. Video capabilities, 8GB or 16GB of storage depending on model, and its trademark white earbuds double as a headset for the phone. Lets you buy music on the go.
3.) Camera. Not the world's greatest camera, but when I forget my real camera and HAVE to snap a picture, it can do the job 95% of the time.
4.) Mobile email platform. It syncs up well with GMail, which is all I care about, as well as a number of other clients. Not as straightforward of an interface as a Blackberry, but it still works just fine.
5.) Internet browser. Between the Safari application and all of the other web-based programs you can get specifically for the iPhone (Twitter, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and Facebook, to name a tiny few) it's got good mobile Internet for most of the stuff you waste time on at the office.
6.) GPS/locator service. You need directions somewhere, this thing's got you covered.

Obviously, it does more than what I mentioned there, but the point is, that's what you use it for on a regular basis.

Keeping that in mind, let's address the battery problem. It is not unreasonable to imagine a modern person carrying different devices for just about all of those different functions. A Blackberry for their work e-mail, an iPod for music, a PSP for video, a TomTom for GPS, a personal cell phone, and a laptop computer. Six devices, about 25 pounds worth of electronics, and God knows how many jigawatts of power. (Yes, I'm deliberately using a Marty McFly unit of electrical measurement.) Now you've got one that weighs less than a pound that can do a B+ job at all of those functions. Wouldn't you rather be recharging its battery on a daily basis than toting around a big ol' collection of the other devices I mentioned?

Moving to the next problem, the crotchety network access (including 3G, which saps the Chihuahua-esque battery even further). First, turn off the 3G unless you really, really need it. The difference in speed is not as significant as you'd think. And to be honest, I think the patchy network and cell coverage is a blessing in disguise- in fact, almost an Apple safety feature. If you had good, fast coverage on this thing's network 24-7, you would be so utterly glued to its screen that you wouldn't pay attention to oncoming traffic, walls, or overweight tourists. Cursing the AT&T network forces you to look away from the screen occasionally.

And on the last note, there is no way to excuse the fact that the iPhone is expensive on a monthly basis. It just is. But once you get one, you'll realize that its capabilities can fundamentally change how you interact with the world around you; it really does make you into a more wired person. My best example: I was recently in a new city, looking for a particular monument that a friend had told me to check out. Without ever needing to call someone or use a traditional computer, I:

-Got directions from my current location to the monument
-Checked up on its history on Wikipedia
-Took a picture of myself in front of it
-Mailed it to my friend
-Wandered through the rest of the park listening to music
-Checked out restaurant reviews for places in the area to get dinner.

That's a level of plugged-in I had never imagined. And this guy, who recently gave up his crappy, 2005-era flip phone, thinks it's worth it.

Tonight's Debate

2008-02-26T22:18:00.002-05:00

First of all, I think it's funny how the cable news networks hosting presidential debates market them in the same way the broadcast networks hype American Idol or Lost. When CNN hosted the last one, their website's front page was entirely devoted to slavering coverage of every moment of back-and-forth. You can't even find a peep regarding tonight's MSNBC debate on it now. Same deal with MSNBC; this 'rhetorical slugfest' (their words) covers a main page that didn't deem the CNN debate worthy of a few lines a while back.

I'm not linking to them on GP.

Clinton's histrionics about healthcare (16 full minutes) ended with a big ol' group hug by the end of the night, and Obama's calm and reasoned response was borne out as the right response by Clinton's gradual toning-down of her rhetoric. And her shrieking about being asked the first question complemented her poorly-placed sarcasm about the Obama SNL skit, asking him if he'd like another pillow.

At this point, Clinton has to be coming around to the unpleasant reality that nobody really wants to go back and fight the old battles of the 90s. He's not going to polarize the electorate the way Clinton will. The country has suffered enormously under the Bush administration in every conceivable way, and Obama is the only one,, in my opinion, who has the ability to heal the country while moving it forward in the right direction.

But they're both right when you look at their Cuddly Comments at the end of the debate. Both of them would be light-years better than McCain and their differences are minor at best, and both Clinton and Obama will put America back on track.

This is bound to get consumed by the spin cycle and analyzed until it's been bled white. Personally, I'm just looking forward to next Tuesday.

Consider My Gut Wrenched

2008-02-03T23:42:00.001-05:00

There is one point of hope that came out of tonight. A friend asked me, "Would you be willing to sacrifice a Patriots win tomorrow for Obama sweeping Super Tuesday and marching on to the White House?"

The sad thing is that I had to think long and hard about my answer. But it was yes- I'd be willing to let my dreams of a Patriots 19-0 season die if it meant our ship of state would be captained by Obama.

And now the Pats have lost, so clearly, Obama is on the march to the White House.

If you'll excuse me, I've got some more throwing up to do.

Horse Race

2008-01-09T19:29:00.000-05:00

I don't agree with the common sentiment that seems to be echoing around, that the networks had been hoping for Obama to run away with the New Hampshire primary and lock in the Democratic nomination before it even started getting warm in New England. I think the networks are in much better shape right now. There are a dozen different storylines to track for them, and a weekly horse race all the way through mid-February. This is cable-news gold.

I don't think anyone really expected Barack Obama to take New Hampshire by storm as was widely predicted. Unlike Iowa, the Democrats and Republicans are fighting for the same pool of independent voters, and a sudden shift to a candidate in one party can have a pretty irritating ripple effect on candidates in the other.

Another note: Lou Dobbs excoriating "the arrogance of the pundits" makes my head spin. If Lou Dobbs is sick and tired of hearing from pundits, he should probably start by shutting up. Actually, the sound of his voice is turning my stomach, too. Everybody wins.

I also don't think that Hillary Clinton's little display of emotion the day before the primary had much of an impact. Yes, women figured prominently in her success, but I think it's damn near an insult to assume that a couple of tears are going to sway adult Americans to vote one way or the other. If it's actually true, then I am truly saddened.

Finally, I retain my distaste for Iowa and New Hampshire having such an disproportionate role in selecting a president. Think about it. Less than four million people in a country of 300 million have a massively larger say in selecting that nation's leader than the other 296. I understand the goal of having early primaries in small states (less cost to reach voters, gives more people a chance to meet the candidates proportionally) but I regard that as a convenience.

In the end, a primary voter in New York is valued less, courted less and generally pandered to far less than one in Iowa or New Hampshire. What makes the Iowa or NH voters more valuable? What makes their sacred position so valuable that it's worth punishing voters in Florida or Wyoming to protect it? Tradition and convenience do not outweigh the fundamental rights of voters in the other 48 states.

Okay, now I'm gonna watch me some Stewart and Colbert.

The Handshakes

2008-01-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

The only other thing I want to say about tonight's dual Democratic and Republican debates is about the "crossover episode" where the Republican and Democratic candidates were onstage together, shaking hands. What an interesting moment. They weren't just being cordial and perfunctory. They were having legitimate conversations with each other. Is it too much to hope that the winner will recruit from that group, within and without their own parties, to fill high-level positions?

(Yes, I've been stealing a friend's copy of "Team of Rivals." Is it that obvious?) Also, the president who will take the oath of office on January 20th, 2009 needs to appoint Mike Gravel as our first Secretary of Being Hilarious.

I'm going to give Hillary a compliment on one point. She had to defend herself against a poorly-phrased Charlie question about how she's not likable enough. (What a dumb and insulting thing to say, "Why don't people like you more?") She responded well, by saying "That hurts my feelings," and I think she's right to say so. I met the woman once, and she really was quite likable and friendly. I don't think she's a bad person and if it were between her and any of the Republicans, I'd vote for her. I just don't think she's the best Democrat available, that's all.

Did anybody notice that during that moment, Ron Paul wasn't doing too much gladhanding? I'm still holding out hope that he can play the spoiler in any close election, running as an independent, and pull a Nader on the Republican Party. That would be pretty exciting.

Change!

2008-01-05T21:36:00.000-05:00

The two candidates I like the least in this debate have been quite thoroughly tag-teamed by the four candidates I like the most. Apparently taking a cue from the Huckabee-McCain playbook, John Edwards and Barack Obama re-enacted the Iceman-Maverick dogfight from Top Gun and drove Hillary Clinton out of her sanguine, I'm-a-sure-thing demeanor. They forced her into a caricature of herself, damn near screeching about how she's been effecting change for the last 35 years. When this thing is over, Edwards is going shake hands with Obama and yell, "You can be my wingman any time!"

Let me just say that I don't agree with ABC's decision to exclude Kucinich and Gravel. It doesn't speak well, in a democracy where airtime is the lifeblood of a candidate, to exclude those considered "marginal." Their finish in one primary or their level of funding shouldn't determine whether or not the public is permitted to hear their message. Mainly, I am upset that I've been denied another gut-busting episode of the Mike Gravel Show.

And she deserved the attack, too. Accusing Obama of switching positions on Iraq (which was abundantly untrue) reeked of the hyper-simplistic, telegenic attack politics of the 2004 Bush campaign. Remember the "flip-flop" crap?

I just think that predicating the entire 2008 election on the amorphous term "change" might not be entirely advisable. Isn't that why we vote for political candidates? We want to change something about the status quo? Nobody ever won an election based on "stay the course" (or at least, on that alone- Reagan won on a lot of other points, and Bush 41 lost on it.)

Obama has gotten a little flustered in some cases too, but he looks like he chugged a Valium milkshake compared to Hillary. The only thing on which I disagree with him, is his knot choice for his necktie. It's just done wrong. He needs to be tying a full Windsor knot, not some mangled half-Windsor. Maybe that can be his next joint project with Edwards, who's sporting a perfect example of the Windsor.

Excellent hair and tie-knot aside, I'd like to point out that I'd take Edwards and Richardson ahead of Clinton. I don't think Richardson would be a bad choice, but for me, Edwards' anti-corporate agenda makes him a good choice. What bothers me is his trial-attorney past and some of the shenanigans he used during his ambulance-chasing days.

And Bill Richardson needs to stop pounding on the table. I don't think he realizes how obnoxious it is, and how loudly it's reverberating in his microphone. Maybe he can look over at Hillary and pound on the table with a shoe yelling about how he'll bury her.

Is Facebook still sponsoring this? My head is spinning. This just in: the New York Times and eBay will be hosting an online auction, where candidates will bid on five minutes of uninterrupted airtime. (Except for Mitt Romney, who will be forced to bid with Monopoly money.)

Facebook Sponsors Debates?

2008-01-05T20:51:00.000-05:00

I'm watching the WMUR/ABC/Facebook debate right now, and I'm more than a little surprised to learn that Facebook has taken an active role in politics. I mean, I understand the YouTube participation in the CNN debates. A candidate having a "YouTube moment" became a political catchphrase after the George Allen "macaca" scandal, but Facebook?

I don't know, it just sounds weird to me. Maybe college students are playing drinking games while watching the debates (I did it in my day) and then posting boozy pictures of it on Facebook. Who knows. I'm just waiting for the NBC/GMail debates, where candidates will GChat snarky messages about what everyone else is wearing to Brian Williams.

Speaking of snarky messages, Mike Huckabee and John McCain are clearly making good on their threats to gang up on Romney. Romney mentioned his positions and Huckabee jumped in to say, "Which ones?" to laughter. And when Romney characterized himself as the candidate of change, John McCain said that he agreed with that to more laughter, obviously pointing to Romney's inconsistent positions. Romney got defensive and hurt, and spent most of the night this way.

If you hadn't heard of these threats, the New York Times quoted Huckabee campaign manager Ed Rollins as declaring that he and the McCain campaign were "going to see if we can't take out Romney." This is exactly what needs to happen. Mitt Romney is electable, telegenic, financially loaded, and the worst possible candidate for the Democratic nominee to have to battle. If McCain (too old and too liberal on immigration) and Huckabee (way too Christian and populist) are the big winners in New Hampshire, the Republican base is gonna stay home.

And if you want to keep the fired-up Democratic base home, the best thing you can do is convince them that the old Clinton administration is coming back. Hillary did a great job of that after Iowa, with a tableau that included Wesley Clark (I think) and Madeleine Albright as well as ol' Bill himself. A lot of Clinton supporters (some of whom have posted responses on my site) have claimed that she's the only one who can take on the Republican attack machine. And they're right- only Hillary Clinton can stand up to the Republican attacks of George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. The problem is that it's 2008. We have bigger battles to fight than the ones of the late '90s.

Okay, the Democrats are talking now. I'm going back to the TV.

I Am So Happy

2008-01-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

I just can't express how excited and happy I am for the direction this country's taking tonight. Seeing Obama win, and make an eminently Presidential victory speech on TV, led to screeching and cheering at my house. And the selection of an eminently defeatable Mike Huckabee by Iowa voters led to my house's moderate Republican admitting that he would rather vote for tonight's blue option than the red.

This is the first night that I've felt legitimately hopeful about the direction of American politics in a really long time.

The Republican Debate

2007-12-01T16:20:00.000-05:00

This is ungodly sad.

At the exact time when political candidates need the wind taken out of their sails, the writer's strike has wiped late-night comedy off the map. It's just not there anymore. And for someone who loved Colbert and Stewart even at the cost of a decent night's sleep, who relied on those pundits for reassurance that I wasn't the only one who thought about that stuff...I don't know. It just feels lonely.

Not that I think they ought to come back without getting their demands met. I'm not going to delve too deeply into the WGA strike in this post, but what they're asking for is eminently reasonable. For example, if a network shows a rerun of a show they wrote on TV, they get a small cut of the ad revenue. But if they stream that same show online (supported by banner-ad revenue) the writers get nothing. Theoretically, networks could stream the entirety of their programming online and would, under the current contract, be obligated to pay the people who wrote it nothing. Yeah, that sounds fair.

But apparently Mike Huckabee has decided he's going to take over in the absence of comedy writers. Let's be clear. I'm not voting for a Republican, especially him. He's a pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay Southern Baptist minister, for God's sake. (No pun intended.) Short of being a paid spokesman for a conglomerate that sells oil, pharmaceuticals and cigarettes, he pretty much couldn't get any worse.

Except for the fact that Mike Huckabee is freakin' hilarious. If you didn't watch the YouTube Republican debate last night, you missed out on some pretty funny stuff. (A lot of people didn't watch the Republican debate for the same reason they won't watch their hometown teams play the New England Patriots; there's no sense in worrying about the roster when your squad's gonna get bulldozed anyway.)

Ummm, I keep comparing politics to the New England Patriots. I should probably dial that back a little.

Anyway, aside from the fact that Huckabee is nuts, he told some killer jokes last night. I'm sure they're all up on YouTube, so you're welcome to check them out. But the highlights were, in my opinion:

1) Jesus being too smart to run for public office
2) Hillary being a good candidate for the first rocket to Mars
3) Being willing to take his support from Log Cabin Republicans because in his position he needs "anybody and everybody I can get"
4) Mitt Romney's tryout for the Pro Bowl of being a dipshit.

I guess Huckabee can't really take credit for the last one, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The rest of the country is rapidly discovering what us Bay State residents (and expatriates) have known for the last ten years: Mitt Romney is a hypocritical neo-conservative goofball with just enough political acumen to leave everyone angry and divided without actually getting anything done.

Consider this: Mitt Romney was openly touting the benefits of sending people to Guantanamo last night and wouldn't condemn waterboarding, even to the face of John McCain, who got tortured for five years in a Vietnamese prison camp. His excuse was that he didn't want to discuss which methods we did or didn't use, as that'd help the enemy to prepare accordingly. A cop-out answer that was delivered poorly.

Giulani had some intentional humor that went over pretty well. Each candidate got to air one of their own videos, and Giuliani (apparently hitting back at the Biden comment that to make a Giuliani sentence, you just needed a noun, verb and 9/11) took credit for defeating King Kong and reducing the annual snowfall.

Even Ron Paul had a funny line. He said something to the effect of how he was "struggling to learn how to spend money" because he suddenly had a ton of it. I actually have a lot of respect for Dr. Paul, but kinda like the Yankees, the fans give the organization a bad name. Good Lord. All you need to do is mention Ron Paul somewhere on the interwebs, and if you dare call him a fringe candidate, your blog or MySpace page or Italian-recipe message board will get swamped in angry posts demanding that you "look at the data" and inevitably mentioning that he raised $4.2 million in one day.

They're right on one thing. He's not a fringe candidate anymore. But he's not going to win, either. The irritating thing about the Paul supporters is that they're using information that proves one thing (he's not a fringe candidate or a joke, he's got actual support) and trying to convince you that it actually proves something totally different (he's really gonna win.) They've been so busy trying to prove he's not fringe (successfully, in my opinion) that their data has far outpaced their new message (that he can win.)

Oh, man, I just said something not-quite-complimentary about Paul supporters. This blog is probably going to suffer a DDOS attack within about an hour. Look, guys, I respect your candidate and I don't think he's "fringe." He's got a clear and principled message. Just.....try to keep things in perspective, and easy on the Kool-Aid, okay?

Back to Huckabee: He didn't just crack me up at last night's debate. The guy has made repeated trips to the Colbert Report, and Colbert even made him promise that if Huckabee won, Colbert would be his VP. (Which was hilarious to think about last night, because Huckabee spent five minutes listing qualities he'd want in a VP and I kept thinking of how I would have no choice but to vote for them.)

But best of all has been Huckabee's Chuck Norris ad. I'll let you watch it and then spend a couple of minutes recovering from the laughter-induced seizure.

*pause*

Okay, you're probably back up off the floor now. I know it's not a good idea to vote for someone just because they're likable or funny. This isn't high school (although it does look like it occasionally, John Edwards.) And I know that having Mike Huckabee as President would basically be four years (no way he'd get re-elected) of President Ned Flanders.

If I suddenly woke up tomorrow and had Gregor Samsa'd into a flaming Republican, I'd wear out my PayPal account giving Huckabee money. As I don't see that happening anytime in this century, I'm going to stick with trying to decide between Edwards and Obama.

In closing, someone should remind the Cleveland Plain Dealer that it's not a good idea to eat the brownies at Dennis Kucinich's house, because they make you write articles like this.

Bill Belichick = Hillary Clinton

2007-11-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

I don't quite understand why everyone is so surprised that Hillary Clinton's staff were pre-staging friendly questioners in the audience at "town hall meetings." Has anybody ever watched footage of these events and thought, "Hmm, what a frank exchange of ideas that provides raw, unfiltered insight into the candidate and their vision for America!"

(Has anybody ever watched footage of these events, period? That's the better question. When they're not spiced with a YouTube moment or a particularly nasty comment about an opponent, they're a visual substitute for Ambien.)

My problem with the whole Hillary operation is that she's actually painting herself as an underdog. The woman is the 800-pound gorilla on both sides of the aisle, and she and Giuliani have been itching for a rematch ever since he dropped out of the 2000 Senate race after his cancer diagnosis. (Okay, maybe Rudy has. Hillary, I doubt.) She's got a double-digit lead over Obama and Edwards and commands the vast majority of the political resources that got her husband elected, plus more that she's marshaled on her own. The unofficial Hillary website hillaryis44.com raises an outcry about an "anti-Hillary mob."

The whole point is that Hillary is playing the underdog, and doing it as part of a calculated strategy. This woman is the Bill Belichick of the Democratic field; she's in it to win no matter what and, if challenged, will retaliate with overwhelming and borderline inappropriate force. When anyone criticizes her, her campaign lashes out brutally. It's the political equivalent of running up the score against the Redskins.

(Also, I should point out that I'm a huge Pats fan, but I'm not such a huge Hillary fan.)

Anyway, my point is that we shouldn't be surprised that Hillary would pull something like this. In the pantheon of dirty political tricks, it's not really that dirty. Kind of like using a video camera to steal signals during a Jets game. Everybody does it, it doesn't garner that much of an advantage, and in the end, the only thing remarkable about Hillary planting questions in the audience is that she got caught.

Finally, I will end this blog with a link to a truly amazing campaign sticker. You can buy t-shirts and stickers with that emblazoned on it at townienews.com, which also features the funniest New England sports fan to get overpaid by ESPN since Bill Simmons.

Happy 232nd Birthday

2007-11-10T13:27:00.000-05:00

If you know anyone who is actively serving in the Marines Corps (or who used to) you ought to wish them a happy birthday today. (I say "used to" because to the Marines, there are no ex-Marines, with the possible exception of Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Anyway, on November 10th, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Marines, and since the late 1800s, the Marines have recognized 11/10 as their collective birthday. New recruits are encouraged to adopt this date as "their" birthday, symbolizing their new identity as Marines.

The tradition doesn't end there. At Marines Corps birthday celebrations, they cut the cake with a friggin' sword. (How awesome is that?) The oldest Marine in attendance gets to sample the first piece of cake, followed by the youngest. This symbolizes the continuity of the Marine Corps tradition.

Anyway, if you know any young or old Marines, today would be a good day to wish them a happy 232nd birthday.

Mark Warner

2007-11-05T20:24:00.000-05:00

I think Mark Warner is a good guy. He's a good example of a business-friendly Democrat, a guy who used his millions made in the private sector to affect Virginia politics for the better. I think his heart's in the right place and his politics reflect where America needs to be going.

But the guy will never get a dollar of campaign contributions from me, nor will he get a supportive vote or even so much as a honked horn at a traffic circle. Why?

Because the guy was one of the early investors in Nextel, and those phones suck. Oh, my God, they suck. Four guys from my office once stood on the roof of a building that had Verizon and Nextel antennae on top of it. Their personal Verizon phones got full bars, while their Nextels had one bar or no service at all.

Who's to say he's not going to invest political capital, as a senator, in a program that will leave us saying, "Can you hear me now? Dammit!"

In (Grudging) Defense of Blackwater

2007-10-05T16:29:00.000-04:00

I am really conflicted about this whole mess with Blackwater. As a center-left Democrat, the idea of a private military corporation spawned with Republican seed money whose owner (and his family) chuck hundreds of thousands of dollars to the likes of Gary Bauer and Ralph Reed, is sickening. On the other hand, if you put Erik Prince's personal politics aside, what he's done is pretty damn impressive.

He took his family's money (his dad made billions in the lighted car mirror industry, I guess?) and set up a little security training company in a North Carolina swamp with his buddies from the SEALs. Post-9/11, the U.S. government needed a lot of people protected by experienced folks but didn't have the resources to do it in all war zones, all the time. So Blackwater got the $27 million contract to protect Paul Bremer. (Based on the job he did, I think Bremer deserved the protection of mall rent-a-cops, but that's just me.) And it went from there.

Anyway, I looked at the New York Times' coverage of the attack on the Polish ambassador to Iraq on Thursday, after all of this stuff was coming to a head. Democrats in Congress were declaring how Blackwater wasn't accountable, they were out of control, and they needed to be reigned in. And then I saw this NYT article.

Take a look at the first picture. The guys in the black helmets are Polish troopers. The dude with the bandaged face is clearly the ambassador. And the guys in the back are U.S. Army soldiers. So who's the helicopter pilot guy in the blue t-shirt? Was it Casual Thursday at the local firebase? No. That's a Blackwater pilot. The Polish ambassador's evacuation was set up, carried out and protected by Blackwater.

With Congress calling for fewer and fewer troops in Iraq, leading to an eventual pullout, the U.S. military very well might not have had the personnel available to get the Polish ambassador out in the first place. And when Congressional delegations come to Iraq, as Erik Prince politely pointed out in his written testimony, who protects them? It's not the U.S. military. It's Blackwater. Apparently Congress doesn't trust Mr. Prince to safeguard Iraqi innocent Iraqi lives, but they sure as hell trust him to safeguard their own.

More accountability is a good thing. Jesus, even Prince supports the bill that Congress passed tightening accountability on private contractors. But using Blackwater as an example of the Bush administration's mismanagement of Iraq and claiming that it's some kind of rogue mercenary army is crap. They've completed thousands of successful protective missions where they've never fired their weapons. One mismanaged incident where civilians were needlessly killed- while undeniably horrible- does not constitute proof of systemic private-sector mayhem.

And while the Department of State is the client who's been taking the heat, I know for a fact that they're not the only federal agency with whom Blackwater contracts. You better believe that those other agencies aren't just letting Blackwater run loose for the fun of it.

Look, Iraq was a bad idea. Staying there for any real period of time remains a bad idea. But since Bush has put us there, the U.S. government needs certain short- and medium-term capabilities that they can't get from the current system. The Diplomatic Security Service doesn't have anywhere near enough agents to meet the demand, but you can't just hire a bunch of them overnight- let alone fire them all once we finally get the hell out. Contractors, like it or not, meet a need.

Yeah, I know. I excoriated private contractors in the last post. I remember. But unlike the domestic need for experienced civil servants, or Customs & Border Protection officers, DSS probably won't need the volume of personnel that Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp provide in 2007, by 2012. Scalable provision of specialized services is where contractors, like it or not, tend to shine. And that, in part, is why it costs so much to send a Blackwater guy over to protect someone- they gotta feed, clothe, arm, transport and pay their own way over to the most dangerous place in the world, without any support from our military.

And that's what can't be argued. Blackwater, 99.9% of the time, does a really good friggin' job. You may not like Erik Prince, and you may not like his politics or what he does with his money. (I sure as hell don't.) Most thinking people now realize that the only way to salvage something worthwhile out of Iraq is diplomacy, and that's not going to happen if our diplomats aren't safe. So while Blackwater (and the other guys) should be held more accountable, it remains a question of supply and demand. These guys supply a needed service, and the current situation in Iraq creates a major demand.

Second-Class Law Enforcement?

2007-09-14T19:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm going to show you two pictures and ask you to answer a very important question: Which one of these two men are federal law enforcement officers?

1) This is a Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Officer. He carries a gun and handcuffs, wears a bulletproof vest, and drives a police cruiser with lights and sirens. He has full arrest powers, can seize evidence, and can execute search warrants. He received his training at the U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. He and his fellow CBP officers conduct inspections and provide security at 326 American border crossings, searching for smuggled drugs, weapons, contrabands and illegal immigrants.

2) This is Matt Hasselbeck. He's the quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. He received his training playing football for BC. He threw 222 passing yards against Tampa Bay in the season opener and occupies the second-string QB slot on my fantasy football team (since I'm not going to sit Donovan McNabb. What am I, crazy?)

So again, the question is- which one of these guys is a federal law enforcement officer?

You may be surprised to learn that the answer is, neither one. The CBP officer, even though he receives full law enforcement training, carries a firearm and has arrest powers (criteria which otherwise define 'police' under government personnel regulations) doesn't receive the classification, and therefore retirement benefits, as other federal law enforcement officers.

(Also, Matt Hasselbeck probably is not any sort of law enforcement official. To the best of my knowledge he’s a decent, but not outstanding, NFL quarterback. But I’m not certain- there was that Tommy Lee Jones movie where he was a cop and had to protect a bunch of cheerleaders, so you never really know.)

Now federal law enforcement officers aren't the same as federal special agents, like those employed by the FBI, DEA, or DSS. Agents have nationwide jurisdiction and investigate federal crimes (as well as other duties) while federal law enforcement officers provide police service for various federal assets and personnel. For example, the Federal Protective Service is responsible for providing police protection to almost 9,000 federal office buildings nationwide. Other organizations with special requirements, such as our friends at No Such Agency, maintain their own police forces for their facilities.

But all of these various federal police officers are treated under similar personnel classifications. These ensure that they get comparable retirement and pay benefits. (Although the benefits packages do vary sometimes- for example, only the Capitol Police have the on-the-job privilege of hauling Code Pink nut jobs off to the pokey.) These benefits are incredibly important if you want to retain the talent and experience within your own workforce, instead of hemorrhaging freshly-hired personnel to better jobs. Which is exactly what CBP is facing right now- its officers are leaving after a year or two on the job. Sometimes less than that.

The problem is that the Bush administration doesn't think CBP officers deserve the status of federal law enforcement officer. In their Statement of Administration Policy on June 12th, they strongly objected to a bill that would fixed this, claiming that the definition of “law enforcement officers” under the federal retirement system differed from the "commonly understood" one. The real difficulty here, to which they admit, is that giving CBP officers the retirement package (called "6c retirement') and benefits they deserve, will cost a lot of money. I should point out that t he U.S. Postal Police and Veterans' Administration Police are in the same boat as the CBP officers.

Again- these guys make arrests, execute search warrants, carry firearms and handcuffs, drive police cruisers and are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Honestly, what the hell else can you call them?

Granted, a few CBP officers actually like this setup. Since they’re not technically law enforcement officers, they can rack up “double-time” in a way that the other federal cops can’t. However, the majority is dissatisfied with the situation. They don’t like getting screwed on their benefits, but more importantly, they (rightly) feel marginalized and under-appreciated by the refusal to recognize them as law enforcement. It’s this kind of administrative behavior that has CBP officers voting with their feet, and it’s endemic throughout the Department of Homeland Security. A survey of federal employees ranked them rock-bottom for job satisfaction.

This all comes back to the basic Republican philosophy. (Yeah, I’m going to make this political. Tough.) Their core claim is that they put their trust in people, and not in government. Well, that's nice. But it fuels the kind of lunatic thinking that outsources unholy amounts of federal work to private contractors while slashing the civil service, eventually spending the same money for inferior work so they can cynically claim to have cut the federal bureaucracy. How does that put trust in their people?

Well, it's the same thing here. A major component of the Presidential plan for border and homeland security is to vastly expand the size of CBP. He wants to add agents and officers, as well as millions of dollars in equipment and fencing for the SBInet (Secure Border Initiative) program. This would be the much-vaunted 'virtual fence' out there in the desert incorporating security cameras, motion sensors, and gee-whiz gadgets like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, better known as Predator drones.

Bush has no problem advocating an avalanche of funding to expand and improve CBP's capabilities. But when it comes to the costs of maintaining them, and ensuring that they can retain experienced personnel, the Bush White House expects us to believe that they're poorer than churchmice.

You see, there's nothing sexy about federal retirement programs. No one can point to them as a massive homeland-security victory and they're not going to get anyone re-elected. But these men and women literally put their lives on the line to keep drugs, weapons, terrorists, contraband and human traffickers out of our country. Hiding behind a technicality and claiming that 6c retirement for these officers isn't a worthwhile use of taxpayer dollars....that's crap.

And I think developing an experienced and professional workforce to protect our nation's border crossings really is a homeland security victory, albeit a small one. That is, if anyone in the White House had the foresight to recognize it.

Betray-Us

2007-09-10T15:19:00.000-04:00

A few somewhat-related comments on the Petraeus/Crocker hearings of yesterday and the day before. I was fortunate enough to have both days off work, so I got to sit on the couch and geek out while watching almost the entirety of the hearings on C-SPAN. I'm not blessed with a Congressional press pass, like some folks I know, so C-SPAN is the next best thing.

-The room in which the hearing was held is the same one where the old House Committee on Un-American Activities (better known as the McCarthy hearings) used to hold court. I'm searching for a connection but not quite finding one.

-The MoveOn.org ad, using the term "General Betray Us," was so counterproductive I can't even think straight. It did the same thing that those crazies who screamed and shouted and protested from galleries did- associated thoughtful people on the left who have legitimate questions about the war, with the nutbags who write "Troops Home Now" in fake blood on their dresses. Ugh.

Although to be fair, the nutbags who get dragged out of the House chambers do make for some pretty good entertainment value. Maybe that's why C-SPAN hasn't adopted the same policy of pro sports leagues; if you illegally disrupt the proceedings, you're not going to get shown on TV. I think it should be the same way. There are legal and illegal ways to protest Congressional action, or the actions of those before Congress. If you engage in illegal activity during your protest, you shouldn't have the PR benefit of airtime. Period.

Also, this would be kinda self-serving because then progressives wouldn't have their legitimate dissent visually associated with those Code Pink wackos.

-While watching the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Tom Lantos (D-CA,) I decided to use Google Image Search to try and figure out to which one of the Star Wars cantina scene aliens he was most closely related. I'm currently thinking the T-headed dude.

-Joking aside, my overall concern with the way the hearings went (and this is abbreviated, trust me- the site crashed and I lost a much longer version of this post) was that everyone except for two New Yorkers (Gary Ackerman, a Dem, and John McHugh, a Republican) seemed to be asking the wrong questions. Everyone else wanted to know how soon the troops would come home, what strategy we would use, or how the war would be prosecuted. Our New Yorkers were asking the one question that really seemed to matter to me- is it worth it? Petraeus didn't have much of an answer.

-Perhaps the most telling moment of the rounds of hearings, for me, happened while I was listening on the radio. (So I have no idea who asked the question.) But someone asked Petraeus, "General, is this war making America safer?" And after some pro-caliber hemming and hawing, he said, essentially, that his mission was to ensure stability and democracy in Iraq and he couldn't honestly say yes or no.

Wow.

DSS and Godzilla

2007-07-19T00:25:00.000-04:00

Two things that I'd like to point out, if briefly:

1) I received a number of comments, mostly positive, on the last piece, some of which I've published. Three sub-things I'd like to address to the folks who responded:

a) To the DSS agents who posted responses, thank you. I take it as a compliment that you took the time to read this, let alone respond. You do a difficult job exceptionally well and I (as well my other readers, I'm sure) thank you.
b) Thanks to everyone, DSS and others, who provided clarification on my facts regarding the agency. I may not always get it right the first time, and I appreciate your input.
b) The DSS folks will probably get a laugh out of the fact that my girlfriend had actually been campaigning to see "A Mighty Heart" (which I've since learned has an accurate portrayal of DSS.) I, however, managed to sell her on "Live Free or Die Hard" that day (which has an accurate portrayal of absolutely nothing.)

It seems that the Diplomatic Security Service, and my girlfriend, share a taste in movies that is superior to my own. I'm okay with that. On to the next item:

2) Japan recently had a natural disaster where an earthquake tipped over "hundreds" of barrels of nuclear waste, dumping 317 gallons of radioactive goo into the Sea of Japan. I will give you a few moments to consider the implications of this, and to reach the abundantly and painfully obvious conclusion.

WE ARE WATCHING THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF A GODZILLA MOVIE.

How has this not been all over the media? The Internet? This is how every Godzilla movie starts! Radioactive goo or Gamma rays or some shit gets into the Sea of Japan. The government covers it up (badly.) The local populace goes about their lives. Then Navy submarines start to disappear. Someone starts to put the pieces together, but by then it's too late; we already see a giant monster climbing radio towers and flipping tanks over with his fiery breath.

(These rules go out the window when Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno are involved, however.)

I work in the National Capital Region, and I can say from firsthand experience that most federal agencies, some state governments and even a few local jurisdictions have contingency plans for everything. Absolutely everything. There has got to be some team of experts, maybe within the Wildlife Service or something, that can be sent over to help the Japanese manage rampaging, 50-foot-high dino-monsters. And if no such team exists, then we need to start putting one together. Right the hell now.

I'm kind of kidding, but if I see something on CNN about missing submarines, then I am buying dinosaur insurance and heading for the hills. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Making a DSS Agent

2007-07-05T10:43:00.000-04:00

In the intelligence and law enforcement community, getting "made" means that you did something that identified your agency affiliation to the general public, or to the bad guys. Getting into a Suburban with Department of Homeland Security plates would "make" you, for example, as working or being associated with DHS.

Cut to Sunday evening of this week. My girlfriend and I are in line at a Chipotle in Washington, having just finished watching the new Die Hard movie. Which is totally sweet, by the way. As a side note, without spoiling the movie, there's a moment in it, in which FBI agents stress about their inability to reach a secret federal facility in Woodlawn, Maryland. They can't find helicopters and the roads are blocked, so it'll take them a while. Here's the funny thing: Having been there, I know for a fact that the FBI's Baltimore field office is IN (drumroll) Woodlawn, Maryland. All they'd have to do, would be to walk down the street.

Okay, so, back to DSS. Actually, I should say "Bureau of Diplomatic Security," but they used to be the Diplomatic Security Service, so, I'm allowed. The Discovery Times channel did a big special about them. They're like the Secret Service, except they protect the Secretary of State, key foreign dignitaries (like in NYC at the UN) and provide security services abroad to State Department personnel. They're in the weird position of being federal law enforcement agents who are often assigned overseas.

Essentially, Diplomatic Security/DSS is the Secret Service working in semi- and non-permissive environments. The President does not go to Gaza. But the Secretary of State sure does. So DSS has to train with military special-ops types as well as all kinds of shadowy intelligence agencies to get the right cooperation and information. They're like an indie Secret Service, except all the more badass.

So when I saw a few black Suburbans and Crown Vics with U.S. government and D.C. tags outside the Chipotle, and a few late-20s, early-30s guys in suits with bright green pins and clear earpieces, I figured they had to be some kind of federal protective agents. They couldn't be Secret Service (wrong kind of lapel pins.) But a minimal motorcade, guys in suits, and federal tags on black law-enforcement-style cars? Probably DSS.

So my girlfriend and I made a plan (okay, she made it, I got onboard with it.) We walked across as they waited outside for their protectee, I assumed, and I strode up to one of them. They instantly turned and the lead one fixed me with the kind of probing, penetrating and unnerving stare that you apparently get issued at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.

I tried not to wilt. "Okay, so my girlfriend and I have a bet going. She thinks you guys are Capitol Police, and I think you're Diplomatic Security." There was a pause just long enough to make me worry that they wouldn't tell me, but finally, the agent uncrossed his arms and pointed a finger at me.

"You're right," he said, not exactly wasting any words. I turned to my girlfriend, grinned, and slapped her five.

"Knew it!" I turned back to the agent and said, "Thanks," and she and I strode away without looking back.

Here's the thing. Very few people are familiar with DSS. Most of the ones who are, either worked for them or watched the Discovery Times special (which doesn't get many reruns.) I imagine- in fact, I am almost positive- that we made those DSS special agents say, "Uhh, that guy in the jeans and his girlfriend made us as DSS. Are we really obvious?"

And that's what I call fun.

What Would You Pay?

2007-06-18T14:46:00.001-04:00

So my girlfriend told me about an event that's being held in DC tonight called "Small Change for Big Change." Held at the swanky 1223 Club in DuPont Circle, it's a John Edwards fundraiser which would be unremarkable except for the price of admission. Which is kinda the story; getting in the door costs you a distinctly non-presidential $15. This the the Edwards campaign site that referenced the last one:

It looks a lot less McNeil-Lehrer News, and a lot more Happy, Hour, than most of the presidential fundraisers you see. Hillary Clinton has been doing them too, but in her case, it's only a couple hundred bucks in the door. She's got a little more star power and commands a little more cash, but in the end, if you're a starving college student who just has to meet her, well...you can most likely afford it. If you don't mind skipping a meal or three.

It's a new strategy fueled by the "netroots" movement, which can move a lot of money by getting a lot of people to contribute small amounts. MoveOn.org is the 800-pound gorilla of this whole thing, but it works well and it seems to work particularly well for Democrats. If you can't get the big money out of politics, you can at least organize the small money in a way that'll counterbalance.

But this got me thinking. You're essentially paying $15 to get a wave, a hello, and possibly a handshake from John Edwards, who might possibly be the next President of the United States. If you're lucky, you might get a minute or two of Face Time chatting with him. On the far other end of the spectrum, you have $12,000-a-plate "executive donor" dinners in Washington with Republicans and the President, where you can bend ol' George's ear on just about anything you like. (I'd suggest Iraq, but I doubt he would appreciate it.) And on the Democratic side of the aisle, you could pay about the same for a big dinner in Hollywood and chat up Nancy Pelosi. If you weren't too busy trying to get Kevin Spacey's autograph.

Here's my question. What would you pay for "face time" with any of the candidates? What's the asking price vs. the actual demand? I know that I'd pay more or less, based on how much they interested me. Obama would be at the top, around $120, followed by Edwards and Clinton at maybe $80, and then down until you hit Dodd, Biden or Bill Richardson (probably $20 or $30.)

Of course, here's where the fun starts. Once we descend into the depths of Dennis Kucinich or Mike "Crazy" Gravel, my personal offering price goes back up because of the entertainment value they add. (Just so you know, I would actually be willing to contribute to the Republicans, too. I don't think that my $100 would actually affect the outcome of the election, whereas the hilariousness would last a lifetime.)

With that in mind, I now offer my current index of dollars I'd be willing to pay, for the opportunity to ask certain questions of, or say certain things to the candidates. Hopefully without being arrested. And so, in no particular order:

Rudy Giuliani: $105 to talk for fifteen uninterrupted minutes on any topic of his choosing, without once referencing 9/11.

Mike Huckabee: $30 to talk for ten minutes about evolution, intelligent design, sex education and the form in which they should be taught in schools. And then I get to put it on YouTube.

Dennis Kucinich: $390 to pinch his cheek and say, "You're such a cute little pwesidential candidate! Yes you is! Yes you is!" (Hands down, this is the one I would jump at. No shame whatsoever. If I get a call from the Kucinich campaign on this, I will take off work tomorrow, hit the ATM on my way to the airport, and write about it the next business day. That is a solemn blogger's oath.)

John McCain: $58 to talk for ten minutes on the contributions of Asian immigrants to American society.

Hillary Clinton: $112 for a straight answer on the question, "At what point after your election to the Presidency will you allow Bill to bring his dates back to the White House?"

John Edwards: $194 for a singalong to any AC/DC or Guns 'N Roses tune. (Excluding November Rain.) The goal of this would be to let him retaliate for the "I Feel Pretty" video that went up on YouTube. The man deserves a shot, and not that weak "it's good for democracy" crap that went up as the video response. The link's here:

Fred Thompson: $44 for him to do the Law & Order "dum dum" sound effect, a cappella. An additional $44 if he hums the whole theme song.

Bill Richardson: $29 to explain to me how a guy with the whitest name of all time is "the Latino candidate." I just really want to know.

Mike Gravel: $299 for a one-hour Q&A where he addresses any burning issues of national import identified by yours truly. These would include: whether men's trousers should be hiked up to the rib or the nipple line, whether rock 'n roll is the Devil's music, and what he thinks should be done about his neighbor, Dennis the Menace.

A note to my readers. If you can find examples of the candidates doing any or all of these things on YouTube (especially Clinton's) I will be quite grateful. In addition, should you have any other proposals for what would be worth your contribution to a candidate's coffers, put them in the comments. I'd love to hear them.

And if you're from any of the campaigns, I'm not kidding. I can probably organize some more people to make contributions if you'll let us get away with this. Not that you will.

The Beast Needs Feeding

2007-06-05T11:37:00.001-04:00

Why the heck do we have political debates going on in June of a non-election year? Why did we have them in May? Is there some special election, some Constitutional amendment being considered, some issue that just can’t wait? Nope. It’s just another manifestation of the American Electoral Process, Sponsored By CNN.

A caveat. I am not a person who likes bashing the media. (Fox News doesn’t count. They barely count as propaganda pushers.) Usually, if you’re bashing the media, you’re upset about an uncomfortable (inconvenient?) truth that they’re covering. And while they demonstrate an astronomical degree of apathy when it comes to the nuances of homeland security, journalists, especially print media, tend to get it right sooner or later. It’s like driving a delivery truck through a tunnel with the headlights out. Might get a little banged up on the way, but the product will get there.

(Also, I am dating a journalist and any perceived media-bashing could have monstrously unintended consequence for yours truly.)

So with that said, we are having presidential debates a full 17 months before the general election (and seven months before the first primaries) because CNN needs to make money. As does MSNBC, and Fox News. Turning the vast field of primary candidates into a lengthy horse race (slash marathon) represents an endless treasure trove of stories to fill up airtime on the 24-hour news networks.

The news channels have both the ability, and the solemn mandate, to manufacture stories. They don’t have the luxury afforded print media, to spend hours, perhaps entire days, looking for stories that might actually be worth covering. No, the flickering blue light of television is always on, and can never be silent, and so if there are no major stories to cover, they have to create them.

Referring to 24-hour news networks (and the media in general) as “the Beast,” an instructor for a Public Information Officer class once told me, “The Beast is always hungry, and the Beast requires constant feeding.” The thing about the Beast is that it’s the only animal that has the ability to make its own meals. It’s just a question of with what ingredients it chooses to prepare them.

Take Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room.” The name is expertly borrowed from a room in the White House where the President and his senior staff go to manage national emergencies. It just oozes urgency. And so, instinctively, you assume that whatever is going on “in the Situation Room” must be emergent and of the highest importance. But the Situation Room is a regularly scheduled show that airs five days a week. They have to fill up that airtime with exciting, breaking-news “situations,” even when that day’s news might actually be pretty lame.

The obvious answer would be for them to drop the insistence on constantly covering “breaking news” and to actually go into a little more detail. Breaking news, by its nature, is sketchy and unreliable, but it’s also the biggest selling point. It’s exciting, and going into the history, background, and complexities of a news story simply doesn’t hold the average television viewer’s attention. The whole goal is to hold their attention through the commercials, and if you bore them beforehand, the game’s over. So you have to fill up 24 hours worth of news stories, but they have to be entertaining news stories. Nothing too boring or intellectual, or they’re going to switch to Oprah.

It sounds like I’m harshing on television itself, and I’m not. I think television is a great medium for hour-long chunks of news, like the old nightly news broadcasts or 60 Minutes or the like. But the more airtime you have to fill up with engaging, exciting, and most of all entertaining news stories, the lower your standards are going to be.

So what do you do, short of bringing zoo animals and Carrot Top into the Situation Room? (Which would be AWESOME.) You try to spin up controversy, you goad newsworthy persons into saying controversial things, or you just invent your own stories. Which is exactly how the presidential race kicked off so early, and which is why we’re having debates in May and June when it’s not even an election year. The news outlets grant their most precious incentive- airtime and coverage- to potential candidates, and hang off every word from ones who have already declared.

And believe it or not, the Iraq war has actually created something of a backlash against “bad news.” Five years ago, a car bombing that killed 20 people in the Middle East would have been major, major news. 17 U.S. servicemen murdered by Islamic terrorists (anyone remember the U.S.S. Cole?) isn’t a national tragedy anymore, it’s a rough week in Iraq and gets maybe a 30-second sound bite. “If it bleeds, it leads” and “There’s no news like bad news” are losing just a little bit of their luster, because people want to hear about something- anything- other than the war.

Astutely tapping into this desire for change, and using it to address the bottom line of their business, cable news networks can just talk about What’s Next. And the only venue in which you can run news stories about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, is the political venue. No race is bigger than the presidential race, and no candidates are more interesting than presidential candidates. The answer is to start hyping the race now, stir up controversy, stir up stories, and most of all, stir up ratings.

Hillary Clinton didn’t want to declare her presidential run until much later. Commendably, she wanted to focus on her duties as a United States Senator. She figured that public interest and private money could wait while she built up a little more authority on legislative issues. Nope. This had about as much chance as Barack Obama’s promise to stay out of the race until his first Senate term was up. Nobody wanted a Hillary Vs. Everyone Else story. There had to be a somewhat-equal competitor, a Happy Gilmore to her Shooter McGavin. And the pressure- through media coverage of rumors and innuendoes- landed on Obama.

So here we are. Nothing meaningful has happened in the primary races, even though the inordinate coverage devoted to fundraising results would have you think otherwise. And with nothing meaningful having happened, we have to endure debates to create something meaningful. But without any real developments, the size of those debates is limited only by the size of the damn stage. So we have to listen to goofballs like Mikes Gravel and Huckabee or Dennis “The Lost Keebler Elf” Kucinich as the camera grants them fictional equality with Clinton, Giuliani, Obama, and anyone else who actually has a chance next November.

On November 8th, 2006, a CNN correspondent said, “This is Day 1 of the 2008 Presidential campaign.” I thought it was an exaggeration. It wasn’t. So my complaints about why we’re having political debates in June of 2007 aren’t really killing the messenger. Well, not killing the messenger because of his message. More like killing the messenger because he’s showing up so damn early.

(Am I going to watch the Republican debate tonight anyway? With my journalist girlfriend? Bet your ass.)

The Experienced vs. The Outsiders

2007-05-28T23:34:00.000-04:00

It's supremely weird when you see middle-school politics being played out on a national stage. Basically, the big choice for voters of both parties- if you can forgive sweeping generalizations (and if you read this, you probably can) is between the experienced Washington insider and the outsider with big ideas. Hillary and Obama. McCain and Giuliani (and maybe Romney.)

I first saw this false choice in middle school. Every semester, we'd elect two Student Senators to the Student Senate, and we'd elect a School President from among the ninth-graders. (The school ran 4th-9th grade.) And staring in the spring of 4th grade, the same kids we elected in the fall would run again. Never mind the fact that this governing assembly couldn't govern and barely even assembled- the incumbents would run on their "experience," and while using slightly simpler language, would promise to build on their accomplishments and track record of success.

Of course, there would always be another team or two that would run as the "outsiders." They would always drop the phrase "fresh ideas" in their speeches, and just like you couldn't go ten minutes without hearing Al Gore say "lockbox" in 2000, you couldn't go ten minutes without hearing "suggestion box" used. Never mind the fact that the suggestion box only seemed to garner intelligent commentary on Jimmy Campbell's mom, or on a certain elected student official's body odor. The always-proposed, never-enacted suggestion box was a perennial symbol of democracy, giving a hallway full of screaming fourth-graders a voice with which to speak truth to power.

The whole thing was ridiculous, and clearly served as more of a civics lesson than any real form of representation. The Student Senate's legislative accomplishments usually involved something to the effect of an extra dance per year, or more candy in the vending machines. (This was long before the era of healthy food at school.) But as a civics lesson, it worked, and it illustrated a fundamental question that gets continually asked, even in the 2008 presidential horse race- do you go with the experience or with the fresh perspective?

On the whole, I think it's a false choice. Back in middle school, "experience" versus "new ideas" really didn't sway the decision. It was about which kids had more friends, which kids were better at sports, or (in a move that would make Boss Tweed proud) which kids were smart enough to bribe their classmates with candy from the vending machines. (Whether you're quietly funneling highway projects to your Congressional district or furtively distributing Twizzlers among the electorate, no good politician is ever above buying votes.)

The point is that the new ideas were never really that new, and the experience was never really that valuable. You were voting for intangibles, and they rarely had anything to do with how the candidate made it to that point in their political career. Rather, it was about trust- whether you could trust, without question, that the person was going to do the right thing. Granted, "the right thing" in middle school involved pizza parties and sugar, not delicate foreign policy.

Trusting your guy (or girl) over their opposition is, loath as we might be to admit it, just another derivative of whether or not we like them. Nobody likes to oversimplify it this much, but we vote for candidates based on a Bush-like gut rather than a Gore-like brain. And that may be why Gore lost, in 2000- a few key voting districts thought Gore made some logical sense, but they trusted Bush to make the right call when it mattered.

A moment of silence for those voters.

Anyway. No one is going to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she's spent two terms or so in the Senate, the same way nobody's going to vote for Rudy Giuliani just because his lack of national executive or legislative experience gives him a fresh perspective. You're going to vote for him because he's Rudy goddamn Giuliani and he pulled New York City together after 9/11, or you're going to vote for Hillary Clinton because you know she's got the guts to turn things around. Or Mitt Romney because he's a good, God-fearing man, or Barack Obama because it's about time we had a black man run this country.

The American public does not read political resumes, even if the news media and the Beltway population do. While it might be nice if the experience/outsider choice had some legitimacy, no one, on a fundamental level, really cares. While it may draw a thought or two, voters on either side of the aisle won't be hamstrung by how much experience, or lack thereof, their guy has. They're going to want who they want- and no burnished political resume is going to change that. (Eyes open, Chris Dodd.)

Although in my opinion, the suggestion box is vastly underrated.

Splitting The Middle

2007-05-28T01:38:00.001-04:00

Here's what I like about the current field of Republican presidential candidates. There is no clear leader. Yes, that is abundantly obvious. But it also worth pointing out that the two frontrunners are both going to do an excellent job of fracturing the Christian-right's vote.

Jerry Falwell is dead. I feel sorry for his family and for those who loved him. But I think it's an appropriate observation. Their ability to mobilize, to influence elections, is dying. The Christian right, at the moment, has almost no influence with Rudy Giuliani, nor he with them. He's pro-gay and pro-choice, and to be honest, he's doing okay in spite of it. Actually, he's running away with the field. What does this mean?

One of two things is happening, and maybe it's a combination of both. The soft-right "values voters" are willing to overlook Giuliani's stance on the Rove-driven wedge issues in favor of his national-hero status and the Republican hat he's wearing. The guy who exuded leadership on 9/11 is running as the Republican candidate for President and his appeal to once-prodigal moderates put him in good stance to win. Or, the Christian right hasn't been able to find anyone to oppose Giuliani and he's essentially running by the grace of Pat Robertson (shudder.)

I really think it's the first. Giuliani can bring lapsed Republicans back to the fold, and even if they stay home, he's got enough of an appeal to the center that he could conceivably win. This eliminates the need for the Christian conservative vote in a general election. They get sidelined. No one needs to kowtow to their agenda. Nobody will even have to acknowledge it.

I can't express how happy this would make me, and you'd think they would swing immediately to Mitt Romney. He talks family values, he talks pro-life and anti-gay-marriage, but he's got no credibility whatsoever. He governed my home state, for crying out loud. (And did a crappy job of it, I should point out.) He got himself elected by claiming, "I'm not one of them!" and detailing his not-like-them positions, chapter and verse. And now he has to go and un-say all that.

I wouldn't think that would be a huge problem (I'm sure the Christian right could come up with some shit involving the road to Damascus or something) but Romney's a Mormon. And Mormons are to American religion what Vegas is to American cities. Nobody really wants to go that far out, or if they do, they're not going to admit it. Mormons vote like Christian conservatives and they gave up that whole polygamy thing, too! Honest! All kidding aside, I should point out that to their credit, actually act the way the Christians want you to think that they act.

But nobody on the Christian right wants to vote for a Mormon. Just doesn't feel right. The rest of the candidates are a little too wacky or a little too...I don't know, boutique would be a good word. (Duncan Hunter, for example. One-stop shopping for immigration and the military, but anything else? Next question.)

Given the choice, though, I really don't think hard-right Christian leaders are going to sit this baby out. They can't afford to seem irrelevant, even if that's what they've become. Sooner or later they're going to throw their weight behind Romney, or maybe McCain if he gets it together. And they'll make loud declarations about how they're going to compromise to advance Jesus's political agenda, or some crap.

But in reality, they will be irrelevant. And when Romney or Giuliani get the nod for Republican presidential candidate, their key constituents are going to stay home, because in their minds, they won't be voting for "one of them." The volunteer-driven networks who mobilized whole neighborhoods in the Bush elections are going to look pretty anemic in the event of a Romney or a Giuliani campaign.

And that's the thing. There's an enthusiasm gap (not my term) that's widening, not just between Republicans and Democrats but among anybody who isn't supporting Obama or Edwards. People like Hillary, and Rudy, and even Mitt, but nobody is excited about them. Obama especially has managed to defy people who said he was a flash in the pan and has somehow managed to get critical donors to hedge their bets with him.

I should point out that the reason we're talking about the Presidential primaries, and have been doing so since November 8th, is because of 24-hour news networks. These guys need stories. Period. And speculating about who's going to run for President drums up a lot of interest. Developing your own horse race around the whole thing (and using goofy metrics like who's got the most money to measure voter support wa-a-a-ay in advance) is just a way to fill airtime and garner ratings.

None of the candidates really wanted to start this earlier. They'd rather be on message against the President and trying to push their legislative agendas, or for those who aren't in Congress, building up their credibility and name recognition in other ways. This just pushes them to raise more money, sooner, and faster than the other guy. No runner appreciates the judges moving the starting line further and further back, even if they're doing it to everyone.

But that's the way it is. The horse race is on, and name recognition and enthusiasm are being built by media interest and ridiculously gun-jumping polls from Gallup and Quinnipiac. So by January, everyone will have gone through three or four rises and subsequent falls from glory and the outcome's going to be the same as it would have otherwise been. Just a lot more expensive.

But at least it will help us to establish the frontrunners way in advance, and from the way the frontrunners look on the Republican side, the Democrats are in pretty good field position. A strong Democratic candidate can overpower a Republican, regardless of star power, who doesn't have the support of the Christian right. Or even if, say, Giuliani can pull it off, he's not going to be beholden to their agenda.

If I have the fortune to see the nauseating power of the Christian right in America die during my lifetime, I will be a happy man.

Former Senator Mike Gravel: Cah-Ray-Zee

2007-04-26T20:06:00.000-04:00

I'm one of the nerds who turned on the Democratic presidential debate and sat through 90% of it without taking any breaks. I just have a few basic observations.

1) Former Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) is crazier than a chipmunk in a meth lab and quite possibly more senile than certain mineral deposits. Hollering about how he's being ignored, treated like a "potted plant" while he's actually the "senior statesman," and flipping out at strange rhetorical straw men of his own creation. By the end of the debate I was actively rooting for MSNBC to cut back to Gravel to ask him about Sanjaya's elimination from American Idol or whether or not Rosie should be leaving The View. It's a remarkable skill for a politician to be able to dodge any question- Gravel possesses the unique ability to become enraged and personally insulted at any question. I am now actively supporting this man for the same reason I supported Sanjaya- entertainment.

2) Am I the only guy to have noticed Bill Richardson sweating? Like...a lot? If you start your debate off with the words, "Brian, I'm a Westerner," you should fare a little bit better under the hot klieg lights than the two frontrunners (who both come from Chicago.) CNN was predicting a breakout performance from a guy who ended up looking like he was getting polygraphed about the movies he ordered in his hotel room.

3) Chris Dodd cannot actually be a politician. No way in hell. He sounds, acts and looks like what Hollywood thinks a politician should look like. He came right out of central casting. Need proof? Check out his hair. Perfect, shiny, patrician-white hair. But he's got brown eyebrows! I rest my case. Pull back the mirror and you'll find Dustin Hoffman feeding him scripts.

4) Barack Obama...I guess the word "underwhelmed" would be the one for which I'm looking. I was really hoping to get blown away. No such luck, I guess. He still gets my vote. I guess.

5) Dennis Kucinich is like political Raisin Bran, except in reverse- delicious flakes of progressive common sense poisoned by two scoops of Commie. When he pulled out that copy of the Constitution from his pocket I fully expected it to be a Little Red Book. To the credit of a man who looks like a 5'3" Mickey Mouse, he's got an astonishingly hot wife who's a full head taller than him. And he knows how good he's got it, too- watch the replay. During the mingle-time at the end of the debate, Denny makes a grab for the gray area between his wife's lower back and...well, what lies below her lower back. (And to her credit, she politely brushes his hand away.)

6) Joe Biden gets the best one-liner of the night. When asked in a lengthy Brian Williams question if he had the ability to control his gaffes, mischaracterizations and flat-out mistakes (Winston's still rolling in his grave, guy) he responded, "Yes." Dead silence. Slight, smug Biden grin. Howls of laughter. Williams moves to the next question. Score.

7) John Edwards remains pretty, but...I'm just not sure I'm onboard with much else. He's just really charming and friendly. That's about it, it seems. And you lose the ability to pull out the "two Americas" speech after you consult for a hedge fund. Tsk tsk.

8) Hillary did all right. If two things happened, I would support her. A) She became electable against a moderate Republican. She's not. B) I got over my smouldering distaste for her which has been bred since she became such a consummate compromise artist in the Senate. It would be mature of me, and she's been doing the most good she can for the most people. But I have so little confidence left in people who have spent time in Washington, especially since I've begun to work in government. The longer you spend legislating, the further you remove yourself from reality, and the more you rely upon testimony and media reports to consolidate your position on the issues. She's the only candidate I've met in person, and I think she might be the most....professional of the bunch. But I don't think people should fault me for wanting someone in the White House who doesn't know where all the lightswitches are already.

Anyway. Tonight's take-home message: Please give money to Senator Mike Gravel's campaign, in as significant quantities as you can afford. It is the absolute best use of your entertainment dollar I can imagine.

Hold On A Minute

2007-01-02T18:39:00.000-05:00

We ask police officers to do a lot in this country. They're required to do everything from writing parking tickets to charging into a criminal's gunfire to rescue a hostage. We always want them around, and if we need them, they never arrive fast enough. But if we see their cruisers in the neighborhood too often, it feels like a "police state" and we get offended.

Before we let someone become a cop, we perform lengthy background checks and, in some states, lie-detector exams. We put them through months, often years of training, on everything from shooting a pistol to diversity awareness. We hold them to vastly higher standards of personal and professional conduct, and we depend on them in our darkest hours. And if we get into a traffic accident that was someone else's fault, we can be expected to trumpet a cop's credibility to the heavens if they happened to witness it.

And yet, as soon as a mistake is made, and an unarmed person is killed by police officers, everything goes out the window. The cops must be brainless, musclebound bozos with no respect for the law or human morality. The term "police brutality" is instantly deployed, and suddenly, the cops are a metaphor for all of the larger ills of society. We can't have them fired or imprisoned fast enough, and this is all before it even goes to trial.

In one sentence, it infuriates me that we hold our police officers to lofty standards of credibility and suddenly abandon it as soon as there are any questions about that officer's conduct.

Are there bad cops? Hell yes. Should they get crucified in the press and should they suffer criminal penalties? Again, hell yes. See the files of Abner Louima or Rodney King. Cops like that deserve whatever they get, for betraying the public's trust.

But when something like what happened in New York or New Orleans occurs- where the facts are hazy and the situation is clearly volatile- why do we automatically assume the cops are at fault? Simply because the victims weren't armed? Cops are trained and retrained throughout their career to recognize the signs of someone who's about to pull a gun or otherwise attack them. Mistakes get made, yes- but when a cop makes a horrible mistake, he's reacting to something else that's happening. Reckless negligence or obvious intent to murder someone are pretty easy to detect.

How easy, you might say? In 1972, Patrolmen Phillip Cardillo and Vito Navarra, two New York City police officers, received an "officer down" call at 102 W. 116th in Harlem. Nobody ever drives slowly to a 10-13. They arrived and saw that it was a Nation of Islam mosque from which numerous fake 10-13 calls had been made by the Black Liberation Army, a radical group formed during the civil rights era. Still, they went inside and heard sounds of a scuffle.

It was an ambush. Dozens of men assaulted both officers, cutting off the door and blocking any hope of escape. Navarra and other responding officers were beaten savagely as hundreds of people stormed the block. Police cars were flipped. A reporter was covered in lighter fluid and set on fire. And Officer Phillip Cardillo was shot with his own gun in the mosque to which he'd been lured. It took him a week to die. The police commissioner later apologized to the Nation of Islam for the intrusion into their building. The NYPD was never "granted" access to the crime scene because the commissioner (in a flagrant untruth) said it had been illegal for the officers to enter a house of worship. No one was ever convicted of Cardillo's death.

You see, that is what I would call an obvious intent to murder somebody. And yet, when a city is coming unglued in the aftermath of a natural disaster, we assume that seven decorated police officers were thirsting for blood when they shot that poor man in New Orleans.

Jesus Christ. When things haven't been fully investigated and the truth is still murky, police officers deserve something approximating the presumption of innocence that we supposedly provide everyone else.

Messing With Texas

2006-12-28T14:31:00.000-05:00

I'm split on whether or not it's okay for the University of Texas to have all those statues of Confederate leaders on campus. I think that people who bitch about a big statue of Robert E. Lee should calm down and be quiet. On the other hand, I think a statue of Jefferson Davis might be a little much. So why the difference?

I think it's because people aren't nostalgic for the values of the Confederacy, nor do they want to go back to that time period. Rather, their ancestors fought and died in large numbers to protect something, a culture, a society, in which they deeply believed. Robert E. Lee seems to commemorate that history and that sacrifice, whereas Jefferson Davis seems to more concretely represent the outdated values.

Let it not be said that I'm all right with Confederate ideals or the glorification thereof. (I spent four hours yesterday watching Gone With The Wind, though.) I just don't think you should go to the campus of the University of Texas and be shocked or offended by statues of Davis or Lee. Like...you were expecting...?

In closing. Jefferson Davis? Wellll.... General Lee? Definitely.

Holy Crap.

2006-11-08T18:32:00.000-05:00

It's been two years already?

Politically speaking, it's felt like a lot longer. Iraq got worse. Partisanship got worse. Bush's strategy, to pander to his base and stay the course in Iraq brought him to the inevitable, unalterable destination- defeat.

I don't have real words to describe this, but I about broke into hysterical tears of happiness when I heard that Rumsfeld was stepping down in the face of the inevitable Democratic onslaught. And then I heard "It's over, the Democrats won" out of the President's mouth. (More on that below.)

I'm not even ecstatic, I'm just satisfied. Do we remember how crushed we all were, two years ago? The talk of moving to Canada, of disgust with our fellow countrymen, of futile, unbridled rage. I wonder how the Republicans feel?

Probably a lot like we did. Although they're doing a fairly decent job of eating crow. They had a hell of a lot more warning than we did in '04, since the weight of the electorate was clearly leaning in this direction for a matter of weeks. Their fears were confirmed last night, so I don't think it came as any huge surprise. They lost a few heartbreakers, and their hopes of holding the Senate to a 50-50 tie are flickering and fading under the specter of an Allen recount. I've never been politically active in the era of a Democratic Congress. This should be interesting.

The Weekly Standard is chock-full of election night tales of woe, if you want to exercise your constitutional right to schadenfreude. Watching Fox News today (ironically) I saw George Bush say the words, "It's over. The Democrats won," and couldn't stop grinning. I should point out that this happened in a room full of arch-conservative military police officers. Also, their boss had just resigned. I left, rather quickly.

But even they could probably understand my giddy confusion. This President has built a political legacy on the solid bedrock of denying the blatantly obvious. I saw a new man on television today, who said he'd work with us because we controlled the House of Representatives. To be honest, I almost thought he would declare martial law before allowing a Democratic majority to take over the House (and, pray God, the Senate.) But he didn't. He conceded defeat, he was relatively mature about it, and he stood up in front of a TV camera to acknowledge reality. He acknowledged what has been abundantly obvious for over a year- people think he and his buddies suck.

I actually walked by his house last night, through Lafayette Park, in the cool Washington rain. The flag was still flying above the White House as Bush awaited the election returns, and the camera crews had decided there were more ratings to be found in the Democratic parties than the Republican wakes. Inside, the most powerful man in the world was watching as Rove's tinted political windows, shielding him from the enormity of his mistakes, were torn away on CNN. I almost felt bad for the man.

HAH! Just kidding.

One point in the Republican column. They're not talking about moving to...damn, I can't even think of a country more conservative than this one. Saudia Arabia? The Vatican? Russia? Anyway, they're not talking about leaving the country, staging a coup (probably more up their alley) or advocating any other kind of departure from civil society.

It's an exciting time to be an American. It'd be more exciting if a Democratic Congress was starting out with the opportunity to build something, instead of the task of digging ourselves out of someone else's hole.

North Korea and the Deficit

2006-07-10T18:44:00.000-04:00

North Korea, for all the trouble it's causing, is making life very easy for comedians. The favorite joke is that while Iraq (no weapons, minimal threat) got a full-scale invasion, Iran (moderate threat, developing weapons) is just getting a lot of diplomacy thrown at it, and the North Koreans (in possession of nuclear weapons, testing delivery systems, major threat) require a concerted effort, on our part, to even assemble a strongly-worded protest when they cook off a couple of bottle rockets over Japan.

(Full disclosure, I just got XM Satellite Radio for my car, and I've been listening to the comedy channels, on average, around two hours a day. They're pretty helpful when you're driving for extended periods of time.)

So we all get a good laugh. The Bush administration is so silly! They attack the wrong countries! Another favorite joke is about how Kim Jong-Il, like Rodney Dangerfield, doesn't get no respect. He builds nukes, threatens World War III, shoots off missiles and kidnaps random Japanese citizens. And we're committed to negotiating with him. Poor guy can't get any attention.

The fact is that Kim Jong-Il knows that he has a lot more leverage than Saddam ever had. He's got nuclear weapons (although, by all accounts, they're still a little too big and clunky to be effectively delivered by rockets or aircraft) as well as an enormous military. These guys have the ability to rain 100,000 artillery shells an hour on Seoul, as well as a million-man army, a vast network of underground bases, and command-and-control systems designed to defeat the U.S. military's electronic surveillance capabilities.

Let's review. Enormous, scary military. Nuclear capability. Budding intercontinental rocketry program. Tough to surveil due to underground sites. These guys are bad news. And KCNA, North Korea's propaganda Wal-Mart, likes to threaten nuclear holocaust, total battle, and World War III. Why have we not wiped these guys off the map? And why are we getting wiped off the map in Iraq?

The answer is that North Korea can materially damage our vital national interests. It is in no one's interest to see the Korean Peninsula go up in nuclear smoke. (Where would we get our Hyundais?) South Korea is a vital trading partner, not to mention Japan. And our relations with China, no matter how a war turned out, would inevitably suffer, which may not be that bad diplomatically but would have ugly consequences for the American economy. So while North Korea would undoubtedly lose a war (if they went nuclear, we would retaliate) and their country would fall apart at its starving seams, the consequences would be entirely too terrible to contemplate for our country.

North Korea keeps demanding one basic thing- security for their regime. Kim Jong-Il is a paranoid psychotic who actually abducted Japanese actors, via his special forces troopers, to force them to act in (awful) movies he makes himself. He demands non-aggression pacts, which the U.S. can't honor because it would bind our hands if he started pulling anything more ridiculous inside his little nuclear treehouse. North Korea's primary demand is, let us stay in power.

The thing is, he's not crazy and their country isn't crazy. But they really want us to believe that it is. It's good political thinking, actually. If your opponent thinks that you're totally insane, he's just going to go attack you, since he has no chance. If he thinks you're totally rational, he might still attack you, or otherwise exploit you, because he can take advantage of your weaknesses. In the mindset of deterrence posture, being just a little crazy keeps you unpredictable, and therefore, difficult to take advantage of.

The North Koreans don't want to be boxed in by our demands anymore (and our primary demand is, don't go to war.) You'd think this would be simple. They don't go to war against South Korea (or anybody else,) we're happy to let them stay in power. But the X-factor is Kim Jong-Il's itching, burning case of paranoia and megalomania. He wants to be a member of the nuclear club, to have a button to put his finger on. And he wants to be able to make threats, even though his country is starving and he has to rely on counterfeiting and drug dealing to fund his military machine. So we can't rule out kicking his ass.

But they guy is gonna die anyway. Whether a smart bomb does it, or coronary artery disease from the expensive imported foods that he eats, Kim Jong-Il can't escape death. And he's too paranoid to appoint an heir apparent, since that person would become an immediate threat in his mind (and maybe in reality.) Kim holds enormous power, and would create an even-more-enormous power vacuum after his death, which the rest of the world sincerely hopes a better alternative would fill.

The North Koreans have nukes. No amount of intervention is going to change that. If we give them a reason to use them, they just might do it, too. But the only way they're going to do that is if Kim Jong-Il says so. So we have to play nice until the guy croaks, because going to war against a nuclear and conventional power like North Korea would be (even with our enormous military) incredibly costly. This policy of hands-off, wait-and-see, actually does make sense.

Unless.

North Korea needs money. We've been over this. They need it bad, and they're willing to do things like counterfeit and run drugs to get it. They've even got their hands in kidnapping and extortion. It's the world's first gangster nation. They'll sell anything to get their hands on cash, and that could easily include the nuclear weapons they've claimed to have built. They could become a nuclear K-Mart (a favorite grim joke of international relations types.) And that would be unacceptable. But are they doing this? Do they have buyers? Do they even have anything worth buying?

So we find ourselves coming back to one of my favorite complaints. We're sinking enormous- ENORMOUS- amounts of money into tax cuts for the super-wealthy and the war in Iraq. If we were to, say, remove the now-nearly-permanent tax cut and drastically scale back operations in Iraq (where it's becoming abundantly obvious that our presence perpetuates, rather than suppresses, the insurgency) we would have a lot of cash available to do three things that really need to get done.

1) Pay down the deficit. Oh, God, I don't even need to go into detail here. The Bush economic side effects are like Reaganomics but even more retarded. We're spending money we don't have and treating our international credit rating like a puppy treats a hardwood floor. If you support this administration because you've been living under a rock for the last six years, consider this: the war in Iraq is being paid for with money borrowed from shining beacons of international morality like, I don't know, China. Yep. That M-16 that's firing at Iraq insurgents got bought with yuan, boy.

2) Secure the homeland. It's not happening for a lot of different reasons. Some of them include the behavior of the recipients of federal homeland security grants- police and fire departments tend to spend the money on pretty toys like command vehicles and SWAT teams, rather than on the training and specialized equipment they'd need to deal with WMD attacks. But security for our seaports, our rail and public transit systems, and our borders (don't get me started) has been woefully underfunded. Airports still aren't properly secured, even given America's propensity for defending ourselves against the attacks that have already happened. The next one will arrive through a venue that a $2.1 million mobile command center that gets 247 movie channels cannot block.

3) Return our intelligence agencies to worldwide prominence. The CIA's analytical capabilities have been gutted by a power grab from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. One of the NSA's hands is trying to fend off Congress while the other is trying to sort through billions- literally billions- of electronic intercepts across the globe, and then (through some act of God) make sense of them. The DNI is trying to create their own in-house intel agency instead of forcing everyone else to work together. And the FBI's attempts at collecting domestic intelligence still get drawn into the stovepipe of their own bureaucracy instead of being properly shared with CIA or NSA. The war on terror will be won only when we can have people on the ground, infiltrating terrorist groups and collecting HUMINT. Fancy satellites and UCAVs (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles) aren't going to do the job, especially in places like hermetically-sealed North Korea. We're not going to get our way in the Korean Peninsula by force of arms alone. We'll need the old CIA, the kind of guys who (while I'm not encouraging this behavior wholesale) started revolutions and infiltrated governments.

Enormous operations like Iraq waste money and lives while creating abundant reasons for new terrorists to join the cause. A low-intensity shadow war would give us the opportunity to suppress the Hydra-headed, decentralized al Qaeda that military expeditions will only strengthen. And it'd be exponentially cheaper. Can you imagine the things the CIA could do with 10% of the money we're spending on Iraq? We could have a Guantanamo Bay in every strip mall!

Okay, maybe not such a good idea to go that far. But I think the point is made. Iraq and tax cuts are sapping money away from an actual defense of the homeland, and if places like North Korea decide to start selling nukes to terrorists, we have no way of detecting, deterring, or defending against utter mayhew. The current administration has chosen a path of unnecessary strength and unaffordable weakness.

Status Update

2006-06-08T18:30:00.000-04:00

Tom Daschle's Ghost is on a fact-finding road trip throughout Red-State America. He will return in the last week of June.
-Mgmt.

Political Expediency

2006-06-03T13:41:00.000-04:00

I was really hoping that the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans weren't actually going to go through with the anti-gay-marriage push that every news outlet has been predicting. I don't know why I was hoping that, since it makes a lot of sense for them and the politics of energizing the base, though roundly battered in the press, are still enshrined in Republican strategic doctrine.

Shockingly enough, my hopes were not fulfilled. Starting Monday, the administration is launching a push for an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution, and Bush hopes to spark a national debate on the subject. (He used his weekly radio address to discuss his plans.) It's blatant, it's ridiculously partisan, and to claim that it isn't motivated by the basest- no pun intended- political intentions is totally disingenous, especially since it's destined to fail.

It also tells us that Karl Rove is still running the show from behind the scenes.

An anonymous Republican said that Karl Rove was not particularly excited about where he had been sent during the White House "shake-up" of a few months ago. But I mentioned then, in a post on the subject, that Rove wasn't going too far away. He'd just become too much of a liability to parade around in front of the cameras all the time, and would be hanging around behind the scenes to pull strings.

This bears the hallmark of classic Rove. We're losing thousands of American lives and billions of your tax dollars in Iraq. There is a crisis of ethics in Congress right now. The administration's neglect allowed an American city to drown. And now, Bush wants to focus the national debate on a subject designed to promote intolerance and division just to mitigate the damage during an election year.

True conservatives- the kind who have all but disappeared these days- would be outraged at the concept of Big Government trying to step in and tell women what not to do with their bodies and decide which couples can get married. And a few of them are. The Cato Institute, for example, is a conservative think tank that's come out against this amendment because it runs entirely contrary to American values (and their own values of limited government.)

I would like to think that the elements within the American right who still believe in limited government would unite with those of us on the left who believe that gay people deserve to be treated like, well...people. However, I hope this whole thing just quietly dies. Dick Cheney used to be great at this- since he has a lesbian daughter, Congressman Cheney was always able to quietly kill anti-gay legislation without making the headlines. Despite his enormous power, that ain't gonna fly now.

The best thing would be for this amendment to avoid the kind of lengthy "national debate" that Bush wants. It's obviously going to fail, because lawmakers in Congress are not insane. But giving religious conservatives prime-time opportunities to whip up the fervor of their voters is going to do bad things in the fall for Democrats.

Therefore, to paraphrase the President's thoughts on confirming justices, I urge a swift, up-or-down vote upon this important national issue. That way, we can defeat it and get to work on the real problems affecting America. Like that war, that just doesn't seem to play nice and go away.

Walking the Border

2006-05-15T21:35:00.000-04:00

This border security plan that Bush laid out tonight is stomach-turningly cynical. It's a blatant ploy to pander to two constituencies within the Republican Party which ordinarily agree but are facing each other down over this.

If you're a big-money, heavily-contributing Republican businessman, illegal immigrants are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OcZiel6D18. You don't have to provide them benefits. You don't have to pay them minimum wage. In fact, you barely have to do anything except give them the opportunity to work and conceal their undocumented status, and you have an excellent source of cheap labor that is not going to be unionizing any time soon.

On the other hand, if you're a social conservative, then illegal immigrants are a hot-button issue. Illegal immigrants represent massive, widespread flouting of immigration law, allowing literally millions of people make a mockery of our national sovereignty. And they also represent a nearly-criminal security failure where anyone who can smuggle a family of illegals or a bale of marijuana into the country can also smuggle, say, an al-Qaeda cell or a nuclear weapon.

I happen to be on the conservative side here, which is an uncommon, if not unheard of, occurrence. Not because I have anything against illegal immigrants- they work a hell of a lot harder than some Americans and are willing to risk death to do it- but because the situations which allows them entry into the country is, as I mentioned, incredibly detrimental to our border and homeland security efforts. Now obviously, I'm fine with a guest worker program. I think it's a good idea, although I dislike the fact that up to 50% of their earnings will probably be sent out of our economy as remittances. Also, I don't oppose the idea of allowing "earned citizenship" if people have been here for a long time and want to become legitimate. But I'd rather expend the scant federal dollars locking down the borders than funding additional bureaucracy.

The Minutemen, those crazy loons who sit out on the Arizona border (and, hilariously enough, the Vermont border, too, if you watch The Daily Show) gave Bush a May 25th deadline to either secure the border or they'd start building their own freakin' wall, on private land, of course. So to avoid an embarrassing confrontation with them, and with his conservative allies, Bush is trying to split the difference- placating business while placating hard-core conservatives who want the Mexicans out and the border closed.

Here's the problem. You can't logically close the border, while still allowing a guest worker program and a path to "earned citizenship." Why not, you ask? Because it does not make any sense whatsoever to tell people, "Yeah, if you made it here already, you're cool, but dammit, don't try to cross the Rio Grande tomorrow, because now we're serious about border security!"

Earned citizenship is going to be an incentive for people to run across the border and avoid enrolling in the guest worker program, because that program would end up just shipping them back to their home country in a few years. Why do that, when you can claim you've been here longer than you have (who's got the records to prove otherwise?) and "earn" your citizenship?

Basically, I would have been happy (okay, maybe not, probably still a little grumpy) if Bush had decided to pick border security or a soft-border guest worker and earned-citizenship program. But now he's sending the same message to two different constituencies- I want to keep everybody happy by not doing enough on either end.

Goss Incompetence

2006-05-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Bush Administration brought Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, into the CIA to “clean up” the ideologically suspect agency. The CIA’s staff, in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, had the audacity to tell some people that the Bush administration was picking and choosing their intelligence and squashing dissent on the Sacred Goal.

The guy publicly got up and said he was surprised at how much work it took to be the Director of the CIA. Oh, man, for one well-placed punch in the mouth. Are you kidding? Even if you think it, you don’t SAY it! The administration called him a “transition” figure and nobody expected him to be around for too long, but he let relations with foreign intelligence agencies atrophy because he didn’t like traveling and didn’t feel like entertaining their staff when they visited.

The guy was a stooge. When former CIA leaders tried to give him advice, he refused to meet with them. Staffers who sent in assessments on the Iraq situation that didn’t match the Defense Department’s were asked about party affiliations. This is coming pretty close to enforcing Soviet-style ideological unity.

In keeping with the Soviet comparison, Russian military units would have a commanding officer, and then a second-in-command, the “political officer,” whose job was to maintain loyalty to Moscow and to the communist ideal. Basically, Goss was a political officer who got put in charge of the whole show. He sucked and it’s probably good that he’s gone.

What worries me is his replacement, who will probably be General Michael Hayden. He’s clearly competent, smart, and has had a lot of intelligence experience. The problem is the kind of intelligence experience he’s had. He worked at the NSA for a long time, and is an avowed expert on technical intelligence- the kind that lets us read Ahmadinejad’s license plate or see how many people are working in a nuclear weapons facility at midnight.

The problem is that we already do such things very well. We have the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency, and the vast (and totally secret) resources of No Such Agency...erm, the NSA. What those advanced satellites and eavesdropping technologies cannot do, however, is give us the kind of intelligence that we need to penetrate terrorist networks, locate radical leaders, or prevent an attack.

There are two basic types of intelligence. One is called TECHINT, and the other is called HUMINT, out of the intelligence community’s love for acronyms. TECHINT, or technical intelligence is what we’re so good at. Listening to people’s phone calls. Mapping terrain changes that could indicate buried hideouts. Spotting some terrorist in his car in the Yemen desert and blowing him up with a Predator drone (which, let’s be fair, was awesome.)

HUMINT, surprisingly enough, is human intelligence. This is occasionally the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it’s more about cultivating relationships. You need officers on the ground in a lot of different places to make connections with locals, develop leads, and generally get your ear to the ground. And if you’re capable of pulling that off, you might even be able to develop a source within a terrorist organization, and all the technical intelligence in the world can’t provide that kind of data.

The CIA used to do an amazing job with this, especially against the Russians. But since the inception of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA has seen its analysts transferred to DNI, its funding cut, and its direct line to the President (the CIA directors of old would always deliver the Presidential intelligence briefing) eliminated. Staffers report a morale problem, and the Washington Post quoted one as saying the CIA was “hemorrhaging officers.”

Enter General Hayden, a guy whose Trailblazer modernization program at the NSA was a dismal failure and whose career specialty has been technical intelligence. Do we really think that he’ll go around improving our ability to collect human intelligence? If the CIA was adrift beforehand, I could see this guy providing a steady hand to guide it in exactly the wrong direction.

Plug-In Hybrids

2006-04-28T16:18:00.000-04:00

So the energy industry is celebrating windfall profits for this quarter, especially ExxonMobil, whose executive board is now considering the purchase of Australia for "company outings." Inside sources report that the island-continent will be turned into "the world's largest 18-hole golf course" for the private use of oil company executives.

I made that up, except for the first part about the profits. But here's what drives me bonkers. Bush has been refusing to tax their insanely high profits, instead emphasizing they should "reinvest" the money into new energy technologies (instead of- and this is just a guess- $400 million retirement packages for their executives. Looking at you, Lee Raymond.)

But the technologies he mentions include such random panaceas as "plug-in hybrids." Now we know how hybrids work- rechargeable battery charged by brake friction, along with gas-powered motor. Works pretty well, I'm actually hoping to get one soon. Plug-in hybrids save more gas because they run off home electricity.

You have now picked up on the obvious problem. We're saving gas in our cars by taxing the energy grid, which is powered by- what- magical freaking elves? Plugging our cars into the wall is just going to create more demand for oil and gas for the power plants!

By the way, the proponents of these cars claim that people will put solar panels on their roofs, and not just charge them off normal electricity. Trust me, I'll be holding my breath for widespread purchases of solar panels.

Big Mistake, Big Opportunity

2006-04-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

If you look a little closer at the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, you'll see something very interesting. The military forces of both countries are within spitting distance of each other, since Iran shares a massive border with Iraq, where our troops are currently soaking up the sun and the shrapnel. In fact, the U.S., Iran, and Iraq all share the same security problem, namely, the swirling vortex of crap that is the budding Iraqi civil war.

So a little lower down the bill from the nuclear posturing was a proposal for the U.S. and Iran to hold bilateral talks on the best way to stabilize the Iraq situation. Somewhat disingenuously, Iran's President Ahmadinejad (see? I got the name right) said today that there was "no need" because the Iraqi compromise candidate for Prime Minister, Jawad al-Maliki, was forming what Ahmadinejad called "a permanent government of Iraq."

Okay, I'll wait until you all stop laughing. Ahmadinejad (while crazy) is certainly not stupid, and obviously he realizes that a new government is not going to be able to turn on the lights, get the sewers working, and stop the festival of destruction that insurgents are constantly celebrating on the streets of Iraq. And since they can't do that, the security concerns that the U.S. and Iran share, are not going to go away. What this boils down to is, Ahmadinejad is just being a jerk. Go figure.

But in his statement on the need (or lack thereof) for bilateral talks on security in Iraq, Ahmadinejad said something very interesting on the possibility of sanctions against his country. Keep in mind, the Bush administration is publicly pushing diplomacy while busily preparing for all-out war. He said, "I think it is very unlikely for them to be so stupid to do that [impose sanctions,]" and continued, "I think even the two or three countries who oppose us are wise enough not to resort to such a big mistake."

In the words of Jon Stewart, "Whaaaa?" Ahmadinejad has claimed that his country has the right to enrich as much uranium as it wants (highly enriched uranium, by the way, is one of two excellent ways to make a nuclear weapon.) He's been testing nuclear-capable missiles equipped with countermeasures that could dodge Israeli air defenses. He's announced the production of a nuclear-capable torpedo that could take out one of our carrier battle groups. And he's saying that sanctions are intolerable?

Let's get this straight. Sanctions do not hurt us. Hell, we've had sanctions in place against Tehran since their fundamentalist college students decided to hold an Iranian frat party and invaded the American embassy. If we could convince other countries (not Russia, since they've got lucrative energy contracts with Iran) such as France, China, India, and Pakistan to impose sanctions, we might actually be able to shut down this lunatic's nuclear program.

What we're claiming is that Ahmadinejad doesn't have the right to a nuclear weapon. He's saying that he's not building one, and we're trying to take away his right to peaceful nuclear technology and that his country has the right to produce their own nuclear fuel. (Why a country that sits on a vast wealth of oil and gas reserves needs nuclear fuel so badly, I'll never know.) Of course, if we do attack him, he threatens all kinds of outlandish doom for America, most of which has a decidedly radioactive theme.

The real problem is that enriching nuclear fuel is the height of dual-use technology. Dual-use technologies are capable of being used either for peaceful or warlike purposes, like pesticide components that can kill bugs or (with a little tweaking) people, or fermenters that can brew beer or anthrax. Uranium, enriched to 3%, is effective nuclear fuel, and with a little extra time in a centrifuge, can be enriched to 90%, which is an effective core for a nuclear weapon.

Iran has no need for actual nuclear fuel. Its energy needs are more than met by its oil and gas reserves, and if it really wanted nuclear fuel it could buy it (at a substantial U.N. discount) from any other nuclear power in the world. What they clearly want is a bomb. The problem is, they want to build a bomb because they fear for their security- specifically, they fear an American invasion. Of course, we only really want to invade them if they try to build a bomb. Is this sounding circular?

The point is that every time we start beating our chests and saying Iranian nukes are "unacceptable" and practice dive-bombing missions in the Persian Gulf, we give them more of an incentive to build a bomb. And every time they get closer to a bomb, we get more nervous and ramp up our military posturing. In a poorly-covered press conference today, Ahmadinejad showed us that there are consequences Iran fears that don't involve invasion.

I'd like to see a carrot-and-stick approach being adopted (similar to what was previously attempted) but the old military stick replaced with a stick of unacceptably harsh sanctions. We address their security concerns- meet with them on low levels, quietly outline how badly we want to get out of Iraq, and maybe (God forbid) eat a little humble pie on our regional ambitions. One thing that is near-unacceptable to Rumsfeld, but would go a long way towards defusing the Iran situation, would be a quiet pledge to abstain from establishing permanent military bases in Iraq.

You're not going to see Iran giving up its nuclear program under any circumstances. But what we could work for (if President Bush weren't messianicly obsessed with the invasion of Iran and didn't see it as his "true legacy") would be a steady defusing of the nuclear tensions in the area and a return on the Iranian side to actually-peaceful nuclear power. This is not going to happen by addressing their energy concerns, it's going to happen by making concessions and working towards fixing their security concerns. Could America lose some military influence in the area? Definitely. But is avoiding that loss worth another war we can't afford, a war that would ignite global Islamic tensions and unleash a tidal wave of new terrorists? Definitely not.

Ha!

2006-04-19T10:34:00.000-04:00

Did I call it or did I call it? McClellan's toast. Also, don't expect to see Karl Rove going anywhere. He's working more on "campaign issues" now? Everything in Washington is a campaign issue. He might not stay as visible but Uncle Karl is still going to be looking over George's shoulder.

"I'm the Decider"

2006-04-18T21:56:00.000-04:00

This has had me chuckling all freakin' day long. Bush declared, "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best" when it comes to White House personnel issues. Apparently, the national news and wire services are getting a laugh out of it too, because when he spouts a Bushism on the subject of the week's news cycle, it's just too good to pass up.

On a slightly more important note, Bush has been noticeably absent from the role of "decider" with the recent shakeups in the White House staff. The new Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, recently told anyone who was going to leave the staff to do it now, so it didn't appear that they were being forced out later on. The Chief of Staff is the real center of power behind any President (or most- in this case, I think Dick Cheney's the real driving force.)

It occurs to me that the President is perfectly content to have the support personnel in the White House get shuffled around, since the guy really doesn't listen to anyone except his chief advisers anyway, and they aren't going anywhere. There has been great demand for a shakeup at the White House (primarily espoused, actually, by Republican strategists who want to see the President do a better job.) But in all likelihood, any personnel shakeups are just going to be window dressing. I think the worst we could expect would be the departure of Scott McClellan, who is almost universally despised by the White House press corps.

But since the big shots are going to keep running the show, "shakeups" are going to happen on a less-visible level. If I were a mid-level White House functionary, I would not be putting a down payment on anything bigger than a Happy Meal right about now.

The Donald

2006-04-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

Has it occurred to anyone what a phenomenally bad job Donald Rumsfeld has to be doing, for his commanders to complain about him?

This was actually brought up in Hersh's New Yorker article that I mentioned a few days ago, buried in one paragraph maybe halfway through. The civilian leadership at the Pentagon, or OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) is pushing very hard to keep tactical nuclear weapons on the table as an option against Iran. And the military leadership in the Pentagon is institutionally opposed to this. As much as some of us on the left think that the military always wants to light off its biggest firecrackers given the chance, those with their fingers on the button (actually a series of keys) are very cautious about even talking about nuclear usage.

This is a connection that I hadn't seen until tonight, when it hit me. The Pentagon leadership is clearly unhappy with Donald Rumsfeld, who is pushing nuclear first use (a highly aggressive doctrine in the world of strategic policy) against Iran in "contingency plans." The Joint Chiefs have actually discussed a public dissent against the OSD (all deniable, of course.)

And now a chorus of Pentagon officials (all recently departed) speak out about how Donald Rumsfeld is doing a bad job? Maybe these two things aren't a coincidence. The war planning against Iran is clearly kicking into high gear, and there are serious concerns in the military about its course (and the ways it might be fought.) Maybe these anti-Rumsfeld voices might have been pushed by current Pentagon brass to try to weaken him, interfering with Rumsfeld's ability to plan a nuclear attack.

It definitely got me thinking.

Nuclear Issues

2006-04-12T20:18:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot of talk about Seymour Hersh’s article in this week’s New Yorker, which interviews a bunch of anonymous sources within the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and political circles throughout Washington on the subject of Iran. There are a couple major points. The administration refuses to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, regardless of what it has to do to stop them. The administration believes that a bombing campaign will endear us to the hearts and minds of Iranians and that 1.2 billion Muslims around the world will not be pissed about this. And (over the violent objections of the Pentagon) they are willing to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s nuclear-production facilities.

This. Is. Bad. Contained within the article is one source’s report that Bush wants to do what no Republican or Democratic president would have the courage to do in the future- effect full regime change in Iran. He supposedly wants this to be his legacy.

Before I go too far here, I should point out that it's a little shaky to base an enormous article full of groundbreaking foreign policy conclusions on a body of sources, of whom 75% insist on anonymity. I was always taught that with every anonymous source, the credibility of your articles goes down a little more. True, these folks probably need to protect their jobs, but if no one is willing to go on the record with their concerns, apparently, no one is too worked up yet.

Obviously the Bush administration came out with guns blazing (in a figurative sense) insisting diplomacy was their chosen track and the crisis could be resolved peacefully. It all rang a bit hollow in the context of Hersh’s article, and it didn’t help that the president of Iran (whose name is totally impossible to pronounce and I feel hypocritical trying to type) had made an enormous speech earlier in the week claiming that his country had “joined the nuclear club,” which I mentioned yesterday.

(If you want a really funny bit of trivia, go back to CNN.com or the AP or wherever and look up some pictures of the Iranian president delivering his “nuclear club” speech. In what I find incredibly hilarious, he’s giving the “we’re a nuclear nation now” speech in front of a mural full of white doves and peace signs. Unbelievable.)

On an immediate level, I get nervous because of the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Whether or not U.S. Navy aircraft have actually been practicing nuclear dive-bombing in the Gulf, there’s something called “the nuclear taboo” in international politics. There’s an unspoken agreement that, since Nagasaki, nuclear weapons should never actually be used. They can be threatened, of course- but they should remain essentially a defensive technology, making the cost of invasion or attack on a nuclear state unacceptable high.

If we break the nuclear taboo, we shatter one of the fundamental tenets of world peace for the last 60 years and permanently undermine the international non-proliferation effort. It would be a case of “do as I say, not as I do” that ended in a mushroom cloud, and America would cement its place on the world stage as an untrustworthy evil empire.

But here’s what spooks me even more than the use of nuclear weapons, on a broader level. There seem to be credible portions of Hersh’s article pointing to a Bush-administration assumption that the Iranians are going to rise up and welcome us as liberators. Never mind that the Shiite majority in Iraq is going to start a civil war (okay, more of a civil war) if we go after Iran. The Bush administration has learned absolutely nothing from their experience in Iraq. Muslim fundamentalists are going to fight us until the entire country is a graveyard and they’ll be thrilled to do it, too.

Most Democrats agree that, even though we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq, we’re going to have to clean up the mess that this administration made. And that’s smart. But I can see a major fight brewing, especially if Congress’s Republican majority gets shaved thinner or even eliminated this fall, when the Bush rhetoric starts to escalate towards action. We cannot afford to go to war with Iran. The rest of the world will go from distrusting us to actively balancing their forces against our military. The international leadership we have accumulated since World War II will crumble before our eyes, and the economy, school systems, and homeland security (which we’ll desperately need) will be under-funded to a laughable extent.

The only chance we have of preventing this from happening (and, at this rate, it will probably happen) is a Congress, either Democratic or moderately Republican, which is willing to stand up to the President and tell him and his advisors that the country is not going to support this. Iran having a nuclear weapon would be extremely, extremely bad. That is true. However, going to war with them to prevent that from happening would destroy the tattered remnants of our credibility in the wider world and strain our relationships with key allies like Britain and western Europe to the breaking point.

Positive Omens

2006-04-11T22:32:00.000-04:00

The immigration debate right now has me very happy for one particular reason. The reason George Bush won the White House in 2004 was The Base. I’ve written about this before- it’s the evangelical roots of the Base, its ability to shut out economic problems and foreign policy disasters in favor of unity over comparatively pointless social lightning rods, along with its friendly laissez-faire business philosophy, that fuels the Republican Party.

So immigration reform is the perfect issue to rip the right’s little Coalition of the Willing apart. You’ve got big business and Republican moderates on one side, who want illegal immigrants in the country because they’re good for the economy. On the other side, you’ve got hard-right conservatives who want to make it a deportable felony to be an illegal immigrant and want to build an Israeli-style border fence through the desert.

Here’s a rare glimpse of me-as-hard-liner. I actually support the hard-right conservatives on this one. If people come into this country illegally, we really ought to make it illegal. When you fly in, we don’t just say, “We’d really prefer you come through immigration,” but let people walk through to the taxi stand anyway. We don’t put up a sign that says “Welcome to America” on the highway from Mexico and just wave people through. But if you’re an illegal and you’ve been here for more than a few years, we ought to give you a chance to become a citizen. I think that people who sneak through illegally shouldn’t run around with the claim that “we’re Americans, too.” Uh, no. Not yet. And it’s not racism or bias to expect that people who illegally entered the country to maybe make some amends for doing that.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think. The fact is, the Republican Base is split cleanly in two on this one. Republicans are walking a ridiculous tightrope to ensure they don’t upset too many of their core voters, but they don’t know how many of their core voters are on one side of the debate or the other! They know that all of them are anti-abortion, most are anti-gay marriage, and most are pro-gun, but immigration?

The real problem, to be honest, is that Republican money says illegals are good, and Republican voters say illegals are bad, and that’s not a winning combination.

Here’s the other interesting thing. Iran announced today that they were “joining the nuclear club,” purportedly by enriching uranium. But they chose their words carefully. The Nuclear Club means, in everybody’s mind, the club of countries with nuclear weapons. They’re going to have a bomb soon, and they’ve got weapons with the advanced delivery systems to have an offensive capability. This represents (alongside North Korea) one of the most fundamental failures of the Bush foreign policy. They got nukes while we screwed around in a country that wasn’t even trying to get them in the first place. Good job, George.

The point is, the Republican Party is getting pulled in too many directions. 63% of Americans want a Democratic Congress this fall, and if things keep going in the direction the Bush administration is busily pushing them, we’re going to get one.

The Politics of Life or Death

2006-03-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

Democrat John Giannetti represents a number of Washington suburbs in the Maryland General Assembly. He’s a freshman state senator, and while he’s a Democrat, he has a thoroughly crappy record on gun control. He voted against a number of common-sense gun control measures, including a firearm accountability system and the assault weapons ban. Basically, the guy likes his weapons a little too much to be a good Dem.

What’s weird is that Giannetti represents, at least in part, Prince George’s County. For those of you who don’t listen to rap music or know the Mid-Atlantic very well, Prince George’s (better known as “PGC”) is one of the most violent municipalities in America, with a murder rate that’s starting to play in the same league as Baltimore. Last year, PGC (with a population of 850,000) went up to 173 murders, while Baltimore fell to 269 with 650,000 residents. PG is rapidly rivaling “The City That Bleeds” as one of the most dangerous places in America.

(If you’re interested in learning more about how dangerous these “suburbs” can actually be, Gory Prince George’s does a pretty good job of tracking violence in the county, in the same manner that Baltimore’s City Paper tracks them with “Murder Ink.”)

Here’s the point. PG Police Chief Melvin High repeatedly stressed the need to take guns off the street, even instituting the uncreatively-named “Take Away Guns,” or TAG program. Yet Giannetti seems to do an outstanding job of undercutting the safety of his own constituents by denying police officers the common-sense gun control laws that they desperately need.

So the Brady Campaign has targeted (forgive the expression) Giannetti in this primary, hoping to replace him with, in their words, “someone who will make sensible gun laws a priority.” It’s set to be an ugly race between him and Jim Rosapepe, a member of the University of Maryland Board of Regents who’s practically salivating at the chance to attack Giannetti’s gun control record.

So last Wednesday night, Rosapepe was at dinner in Annapolis when he started choking. A friend tried the Heimlich maneuver to remove the airway obstruction, but it didn’t work. Suddenly, someone waiting at the take-out counter ran over and performed it correctly. The food came loose and Rosapepe’s life was saved.

As you probably guessed, the guy at the take-out counter was none other than Giannetti. He didn’t recognize his opponent until afterwards. Maryland’s Senate President expressed his hope that the incident would lead to a much more “uplifting” campaign.

I just find it funny that Democrats who hate each other will jump in to save each other’s lives, while Republicans will shoot their campaign donors in the face.

Globalization and Other Minor Issues

2006-02-28T23:37:00.000-05:00

So, I’ve decided to pick back up on this thing. Here goes nothing.

I just got back from a lecture by the NYT’s Tom Friedman in Baltimore. He’s still in the process of promoting his book The World Is Flat, which approaches the subject of globalization with wide-eyed, almost childish optimism through the lens of information technology. He’s a smart guy and by the end, I was pretty well on board with his basic thesis- that IT technologies developed in the last 15 years are going to reshape the world on the scale of electricity.

My personal gripe was that he never really addressed the problem of access, since information technology is still, fundamentally, a first-world luxury. Though terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan might use Outlook Express, very few of Africa’s 850 million people even have access to the Internet in the first place. And given the deplorable condition of education and human rights in the third world, a high-speed Internet connection doesn’t level the playing field for an illiterate subsistence farmer.

Regardless of the hole (or hole) in Friedman’s arguments, his talk got me thinking about what seems like a gaping double standard in American trade policy. The Bush administration is a loud proponent of globalization, and if you listen to Scott McClellan, you’d believe that we’re on the march across the planet to spread social and economic freedom. The people of Iraq might not believe it, but at least Bush does.

For all of its crappy implementation, globalization a la Bush is an admirable goal. I can’t deny that a world with fewer trade barriers and increased global communication would be more productive and (since it would be so interdependent) probably a little more peaceful. But the problem is, America in general (and Bush in particular) don’t quite get that it’s a two-way street.

America is great at doing things, but in the last 30 years, we’ve lost the competitive edge in making things. And we tend to be pretty crappy when it comes to admitting that other people do a better job. From Canadian lumber to Korean steel, the United States has been trying to prevent inexpensive foreign goods of comparable quality from making it into our markets, using a battery of legal (and illegal) measures.

Let’s start with the Korean steel. Up until the winter of 2003, the United States was putting heavy tariffs on foreign steel (especially East Asian products coming out of South Korea, Japan and China.) The American steel firms couldn’t effectively compete without the U.S. government’s help, and they had plenty of friends in that government. Eventually, however, this proved counterproductive- the WTO came pretty close to slapping sanctions on American exports and the Bush administration buckled and removed the tariffs. We didn’t even pretend they were legal.

On the other hand, with Canadian timber, we have a semi-legal method of recourse to supposed predatory trade practices known as “anti-dumping legislation.” Foreign goods sold significantly below the current market value of domestic goods can (under WTO rules) be subjected to tariffs. In theory, this prevents countries like China or India from flooding other markets with dirt-cheap goods and driving domestic manufacturers out of business. In practice, however, it’s usually used as a tool by the United States to keep foreign competitors from getting too competitive, as in the case of the Canadian lumber industry.

We’ve invoked anti-dumping protections against Canadian wood products because (according to Congress) their government owns 95% of the Canadian timberland and leases it to local mills for about half of market value. Granted, it sounds pretty bad. Our logging industry, it’s true, can’t really compete with subsidized Canadian timber. Isn’t Canada violating the founding principles of free trade? What about NAFTA?

Well, not really, if you consider the fact that every taxpayer spends around $500 a year to subsidize America’s farmers. American farm subsidies are bad for our economy, and bad for everyone else. The vast majority of the money goes to support large corporate farms that reap- quite literally- billions of dollars in tax breaks every year (think of what that money could be doing if we invested it in education, or maybe small-business loans.)

So, not only is tax time pretty much stress-free, but every American farmer gets a guaranteed minimum price at which to sell their crops. So when we’re done selling all this cheap produce at home, it gets shipped off to the rest of the world and- you guessed it- dumped on domestic markets, bankrupting local farmers.

It’s true that Canada is being pretty unfair with the softwood lumber issue, but the damage they’d be doing to our logging communities is positively laughable compared to the damage we’re doing to local farmers around the world, and all to subsidize a nearly-extinct conception of the “family farm” that has been replaced by massive corporate entities.

All of this makes me a little bit surprised to see George Bush stepping into the fray on (at least what I perceive to be) the right side of the globalization debate, in regards to this ridiculous controversy about port ownership. I guess, after six years of unmitigated disasters, he had to get one right. Monkeys on a typewriter, maybe.

In terms of security, it really, truly, does not matter who owns the company, who owns the company, who owns the companies, who own American ports. American port security was crappy before 9/11. It remains crappy after 9/11. And regardless of whether a company based in the United Arab Emirates buys the British firm that’s been controlling the ports of Miami, Baltimore, Newark, Philadelphia, New Orleans and New York.

The main, articulated fear is that a company based in the same country as two of the 9/11 hijackers would somehow be tainted by Islamic extremism. This could, in theory, compromise port security and allow terrorists and weapons into the country. This is crap. More specifically, this is pure, unadulterated xenophobia, allowing Congressional politicians to grandstand during an election year about a homeland security issue that is really quite pointless. Okay, some of the hijackers came from Dubai. Well, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Timothy McVeigh came from Britain and New York State. How about we start preventing British people and New Yorkers from owning transportation assets?

I live in one of those cities. I am not worried about who owns the port. The Bush administration is spending billions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq that could have been spent (among a zillion other things) on equipping those ports with more ICE inspectors, radiological detection devices, and X-ray systems. The likelihood of a nuclear bomb making into my city by sea, is not going to change based upon the nationality of who owns the port. What interest does any company, be it based in Dubai, Manhattan, or Outer Mongolia, have in allowing terrorists to blow up its assets?

If we really intend to promote freedom and free trade throughout the world, we’re going to have to suck it up and play by the rules that we want everyone else to play by. America is historically bad at this. Take national security. We don’t want to allow anyone else to have nuclear weapons, but we’re perfectly comfortable not only retaining them, but threatening to use them. We don’t want to allow cheap foreign products into our markets but we have no problem flooding others with our exports.

As David Brooks of the NYT mentioned, the people who own the ports in Dubai are some of the few Arab folks who still like us, and now we’re pissing them off. If we’re going to get behind globalization and the free flow of economy activity, we have to play by the rules, and that means we’re not always going to come out on top.

Rainy Days

2005-10-25T14:04:00.000-04:00

The last few months have been phenomenally bad for the Republican Party, and also for the entire country. Spurred by the Katrina and Rita disasters, Bush's approval rating has gone through the basement. His Supreme Court nominee is hitting a wall of resistance from the left and the right, and it looks like she won't be confirmed. The special prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame leak is about to return inditements. And this bad news has somehow managed to relegate the other bad news about Iraq (it's not getting any better) to the back seat. In a day or two, we're going to pass the 2,000 dead mark.

A lot of people on the left side of the aisle are taking this as cause for celebration. Specifically, the country seems to be making the connection that it failed to make in 2004- that the president's reactions to everyday events are causing the problems we're seeing. Maybe the war in Iraq wasn't such a hot idea, everyday people are saying. Why are we still there again? How did this Katrina thing happen? What the heck is going on with the CIA and that investigation?

The Bush Administration and the Republican Party have suffered a steady diet of bloody noses in the last few months, and I would ordinarily be happy, especially with the 2006 elections coming onto the radar screen. The Democrats will probably do well in that election, and that is very, very important.

I'm not thrilled, however, that it took this constant barrage of bad things to force America to hold their president accountable. It's obvious to me that if it weren't for Bush's reactions (no, I don't blame him for 9/11 or the hurricane) to the bad events in the last five years, they wouldn't have been so bad. But it took a lot of really horrible things for the country to figure that out, and I had been hoping that America would be able to do that without such a high cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Bush's approval rating is tanking and Red America is looking a little less red, but unlike MoveOn and Howard Dean, I don't have the heart to capitalize on it. Despite what the right might tell you, it's not worth your country getting beat to shit to be proven right.

Dual Perspectives

2005-08-08T15:19:00.000-04:00

I occasionally read Very Small Doses, which is a couple turns to my right and puts a lot more Jesus on my plate than I ordinarily prefer to stomach. However, it's well-written and intelligent, and its author recently brought up a point that I wanted to expand upon. He pointed out that political debate in America has polarized to such a degree that most people subscribe to one of two specific ideology (liberal or conservative) and each paints the other side as totally out of touch with reality.

I mentioned this in the "Two Truths" post, way back in the day. However, I feel like this is somewhat different. It's ceased to be a method of political discourse these days, and people actually buy into it with the zeal of religious fanatics (which, of course, a bunch of them are.) I basically get the same thing from my MoveOn.org e-mails and George Esseff's "What I Am" ad in the Washington Post. The orthodoxy of each side automatically portrays the other guy as misguided and uninformed- and that's using polite terminology.

The best example I've seen of this has been that poor woman protesting outside of Bush's ranch in Texas. As he continues his streak of being the hardest-vacationing president in history, Cindy Sheehan- whose son died in Iraq- arrived with an enormous media entourage to demand an audience with him and ask why her son died. In a move that shocked me, the Bush administration actually sent National Security Adviser Steven Hadley and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin out to meet with her. (In a move that did not shock me, Bush stayed inside.)

Essentially, this woman demanded to know why her son had died, and wanted all the troops brought home so that the killing would stop. I mean, this woman has pretty much made up her mind about what we're doing in Iraq (it's not worth it) and what we course we should take (get the hell out of Dodge.)

Of course, Steve Hadley and Joe Hagin had made up their minds as well. According to Sheehan, they were "very respectful" but gave her the "party line" about Iraq. For those of you keeping score, the party line is that we are keeping America safe by building an Iraqi democracy (which I don't totally disagree with,) we have to defeat the terrorists (yes, and it would help if we admitted that they wouldn't be there if we weren't) and that Saddam had to go because he was a threat to the free world (which is crap.)

Let's try to break this down. I think Sheehan does a pretty good job of representing the liberal side of the issue, and Hagin & Hadley do a good job of representing the conservative. Forgive me if I add a little more geopolitical detail to this, but here's how the whole thing looks to me.

Liberal: A lot of American troops are getting killed in a war that should never have happened in the first place- we went after WMD that didn't exist and we basically did it alone, because the rest of the world (rightly) told us we were crazy. Keeping our guys there is an attempt to establish an American stronghold in the Middle East, with strategic airbases and access to oil. Our interests would be best served by withdrawing from Iraq, which would free up resources to secure our homeland from terrorists and stop the loss of American troops.

Conservative: American troops are defending freedom in Iraq. WMDs didn't matter. Saddam was a threat to the free world and we've liberated a country. Those who criticize the war are undermining our national unity, and dishonoring the memory of the men and women who have died to advance the cause of freedom. Leaving Iraq before the job is done would send a message to terrorists that, given enough bloodshed, the United States can be intimidated.

I had a hard time even writing that conservative bit, because I simply don't understand the logic of it. For example, a lot of conservatives tell me that while I disagree with the war, the soldiers are fighting to preserve my right to say it. That's garbage. They're fighting because Bush sent them there on false pretenses. Even if Saddam had chemical- no, biological- no, NUCLEAR weapons, and he had lobbed one of them into downtown Manhattan, he wouldn't be threatening my right to say exactly what I felt about it. If the troops were actually defending my right to free speech, I'd grab a helmet and an M-16 and join them.

This is basically turning into Vietnam, with one horrible twist. Middle- and upper-class kids aren't getting drafted, so there is no widespread protest, no swarm of outrage on college campuses. If 3,000 working-class kids die in Iraq, there aren't going to be mass protests to bring them home, because no one with a good job or educational opportunities is left with the military as their only option. The lives of the soldiers in Iraq are no more expendable than the lives of the Bush twins, who Cindy Sheehan recommended be sent to Iraq.

This has been a little disjointed. However, if you have any other point-counterpoints on liberal/conservative issues that simply talk past each other, please e-mail me and let me hear them. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.

Media Habits, or, Tom Daschle's Ghost in Space

2005-07-28T21:18:00.000-04:00

All right, this might be a little lame, but I'll admit it. I signed up for BloginSpace, which allows you to broadcast your blog into space. Using RSS feeds (I don't know what they are either) they send the data from your site into deep space using a satellite dish. Or something. These guys could be totally making it up. However, it's entertaining. You can also send individual messages out into the Final Frontier, though they give you a solemn warning you not to send anything that could start an intergalactic war.

As you can probably tell, I occasionally get bored at my summer job, and find interesting ways of wasting time. In that vein, somebody recently asked me where I get my ideas for what to write about, and I figured that might make a decent (albeit short) post.

CNN.com. Oh, man, this website is my heroin. Without exaggeration, I can check this website 50 times in an hour. They're pretty fast with breaking news, if you can ignore the fact that the articles are written for fourth-graders. Also, CNN is excellent when it comes to sniffing out amusing, time-wasting "news" stories, such as the diplomatic spat between Denmark and Canada over a tiny island in the Arctic Circle. Other than that, CNN's website doesn't have much analysis, and has no qualms about posting unverified hearsay in the name of breaking the story first.

(I guess I did that, with the Secret Service arriving at Hopkins Hospital thing, last year. Guilty as charged.)

NYTimes.com. Not much needs to be said here. They know what they're doing. And the opinion pages have some of the most insightful analysis that's ever been thoroughly ignored by an administration. Except Maureen Dowd. I think many liberals would agree that Maureen Dowd is the crazy relative we'd rather not talk about. But I resist comparisons between her and Ann Coulter. Maureen Dowd is batty; Ann Coulter is criminally insane.

TheHill.com. I mentioned this newspaper in a previous post. It primarily circulates among people who either work on, or write about, Capitol Hill. Almost every story they publish could make a good report over the AP wire. But they assume you know the ins and outs of Congressional procedures, which involves a fairly steep learning curve every now and then. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd rather read Roll Call, but only The Hill gives you access to their articles for free. Also, they have some pretty awesome restaurant reviews.

WashingtonPost.com. Another fairly obvious one, that falls somewhere between The Hill and the New York Times. They occasionally fall prey to their inner policy wonk, but that doesn't bother me. Plus they do some of the best investigative reporting in the world, and they're good about getting policymakers to write editorials, even better (in some cases) than the New York Times. My yardstick for whether a paper is worth reading, is whether it's worth giving them my e-mail address. The Post and the Times both pass that test.

DailyKos.com These guys are even more left than I am, and occasionally I don't agree with them. (For example, I'm against the idea of a timetable for the Iraq pullout. I think that's a death sentence for the new Iraqi authorities.) However, if you're looking to take the overall pulse of young, progressive America, it wouldn't hurt to start there.

Virtual Pus. Kind of a goofy URL, but more power to them. It's a mix of the everyday blog and standard progressive musings, but the way the two are blended makes it good. Plus, the bloggers are Family Guy fans, so you know they're all right.

HomestarRunner.com This has absolutely nothing to do with politics, democracy, or social change. It has everything to do with being hilarious. If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have seen it, you know why.

As you can tell, my main sources of news come from the Internet. I only watch one TV show regularly, which I assume most of you watch as well. That's The Daily Show, which is amazing. It's the answer to conservative talk radio. Not only can liberals be smart and persuasive, we can also be funny. I challenge you to find a conservative TV show that is consistently hilarious. (And no, Hannity & Colmes does not count. I mean intentionally funny.)

So that's where I get most of my information. And Google. Oh, Google. Not only do you provide me with every piece of useless information I could possibly want, you have also provided me with the data I needed to write many useless term papers.

Why Kenyon?

2005-07-28T19:32:00.000-04:00

So, Kenyon College in Gambier, OH marks the beginning of my Facebook PR campaign. It's not much of a campaign, since I don't have a lot of resources available for it cough poor college student cough. But Kenyon is close to my heart for a few reasons. First, I almost went there- spent an overnight there and loved it, but decided to stay on the East Coast for college. Also, a good friend of mine goes there, and she sometimes asks me why I didn't go. (I rarely have a good answer for her.) And a lot of my family's from Ohio.

But another, different reason for starting this off with a Facebook announcement at Kenyon, was because of a Facebook group I saw there. "I Waited 5+ Hours To Vote Against That Redneck Jackass and All I Got Was This Lousy Facebook Group." I'll be honest, that's pretty awesome. A lot of us went through this election voting in solid blue (or, to be fair, solid red) states, and just felt helpless the whole time. The liberal population at Kenyon registered to help swing Ohio blue, and waited up to 11 hours to vote. Even though it was ultimately unsuccessful, they did a hell of a lot more for Kerry on Election Day than I did.

Anyway, that's why I bought an ad on the Kenyon Facebook. If this is your first visit, let me know what you think.

This Could Backfire

2005-07-20T22:12:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I don't really mind this Roberts guy. (This is going to be a quick post.) NARAL instantly came out against him, because he'd argued a case against Roe v. Wade, but they ignored another quotation (11 years more recent than the first) saying that nothing in his personal beliefs would cause him to overturn Roe. I mean, that sounds pretty solid to me.

And he's smart. I respect smart conservatives the way I respect Yankee fans who know their baseball. Don't get me wrong, I hate you and everything you stand for. But as an enemy, I can respect you. And Roberts deserves some respect. Harvard College, Harvard Law (editing the law review) and clerking for a Supreme Court justice. This guy knows what he's doing.

Most advocacy groups on the left like MoveOn have prepared for this fight for so long that it would almost be seen as a disservice to do anything but fight, which gives me a little pause. They know it's not such a big deal, but to appear (pardon the phrase) "true blue," they're going to try to battle a Supreme Court nominee who is probably the least of all possible evils.

I think we ought to give Bush his nominee and be dignified about it, just like he asked. Grill him a little on his political leanings and do some digging into his background, sure. But his record was as white as snow in 2003 when he was appointed to the federal bench. This guy is Mr. Clean. Don't make a fight out of something that doesn't require a fight.

Here's what the Bush White House didn't expect. If the Senate Democrats gracefully confirm his nomination with a minimum of mud-slinging, what does the media attention shift right back to?

Oh, that's right.

Senors Rove and Libby.

Exactly where it should be.

Holding My Breath

2005-07-19T20:05:00.000-04:00

It's 8:05pm EST and I'm pacing around my apartment, alone and more than a little bit worried about what Bush is going to say on TV in 55 minutes. It doesn't seem like an impending disaster; so far, the two names that have both been floated, Edith Clement and John Roberts, haven't left enough of a political footprint that anyone is setting off alarm bells on either side of aisle.

I haven't usually advocated "wait-and-see" policies on this blog, which is probably a little irresponsible on my part, but I've never claimed to publish more than opinion on here. But it looks like we don't have much choice on this one. DailyKos mentioned that some of the nominees were essentially a blank slate, and it's tough to figure out which way they're going to swing.

Personally, I think Roberts would be worse news. From what I've read, his stand on abortion has been predictably negative, although Bush would be crazy to appoint someone who wasn't a commited pro-lifer.

This couldn't come at a better time, of course. The news cycle is squarely focused around Rove, and if Bush announces his nominee early, the heat comes off the White House and onto the Democratic opposition to his nominee. Doesn't matter if he nominates Hilary Clinton, Alberto Gonzalez or the man in the moon. Suddenly, the Rove issue takes a backseat to the Confirmation Hearings.

Slick move. Now let's just see who he picks.

The Rick Santorum Post

2005-07-14T19:57:00.000-04:00

I’m originally from Boston. It says so on the little profile to the right, and I’ve mentioned it a few times. I’m proud of that. I love the Red Sox, I love the culture, and I want to live there when I have a family. A friend of mine from school, also from Boston, just sent me an IM, saying I should write something about Rick Santorum and the comments he made about Boston. I hadn’t heard anything, so I checked Boston.com.

I did not believe what I was reading.

In comments he posted on a Catholic website- no, dammit, I’m not even going to paraphrase this shit. I’ll let him speak for himself. He was talking about innocent kids being sexually molested by priests.

“It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

That’s right, you actually just read that.

According to this man, priests in Boston molested, abused and traumatized innocent little boys because they were living in a city of liberals. The people of the state of Pennsylvania elected this man a United States Senator. The same guy, entrusted with the responsibility of confirming Supreme Court justices, who also compared homosexuality to “man on dog” sex.

He wrote this crap in 2002, to be fair, and bloggers only dug it up a few weeks ago. But it is, appropriately, causing a firestorm. The mayor of Boston openly groaned when a Globe columnist asked him about it, and even the Republican governor of Massachusetts (whose coreligionists, about 150 years ago, were calling polygamy a “new and everlasting covenant,”) said Santorum had proven he knew nothing about the culture in New England.

I’ve had an extremely difficult time writing this because I’m so angry, and I don’t do my best work when I want to wring someone’s neck. A friend works in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, and has emphasized to me the importance of defeating Rick Santorum. I knew he was vulnerable to Bob Casey, and that he represents a gathering storm of religious extremism in the Senate. But until today, I didn’t know just how truly insane Santorum- and his constituents- could be.

There is good news and bad news about this situation, and there is a whole pile of bad news compared to a puddle of good. The truly bad news is that Rick Santorum is not the only person who believes this. He did not proclaim this ignorant and evil garbage because he thought it would sound good against the walls of his private office, nor did he think he would be breaking new ground by claiming that liberalism bred pedophilia. No. Rick Santorum, and his conservative constituents from every religious stripe, believe that unwed priests raping little children are in the same moral category as monogamous gay couples who love each other.

If you want more evidence of conservative opinion leaders espousing learned and intelligent opinions on sexual deviance, look no further than radio commentator Michael Savage, host of “The Savage Nation.” Five days after the December 16th, 2004 tsunami, he got on the radio with some words to guide us through a global time of tragedy.

"If you are a God-believing, God-fearing person, I am sure at some point you ask yourself, wait a minute: the epicenter of [the tsunami] was adjacent to the sex-trade island of Phuket, Thailand... We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this, as far as I'm concerned."

You heard about it here. (Thank MediaMatters.org on that one, by the way. This was the same guy who said women’s hormones were “out of control” and they shouldn’t have the right to vote.) The reason the tsunami struck Thailand and Indonesia was because of the sex trade. Oh, I’m not defending the sex trade here. I’m just saying that if you believe the tsunami swamped Phuket because of little boys having sex with American tourists, it’s safe to say that you’d believe priests could be coerced into having sex with little boys because their neighbors voted Kerry.

That is the bad news. A lot of people have the same view of liberals as Rick Santorum, or worse. The good news is that this jackass has managed to polarize a lot of people. Rational religious voters have been forced into doing a double-take at the guy they elected, and his reactionary rhetoric has given the Pennsylvania Democratic establishment an exceptionally good cause to rally around. I’ve always thought that Democrats should be running for something, and not against someone, but Rick Santorum is a great reason to bend that rule.

And it would have been one thing if he’d taken a swipe at liberals in, say, Alabama. There would be about 10 people there who were getting real worked up. But when you go after one of the strongest bases of liberal power, and the school-year home of thousands upon thousands of college students just itching to volunteer for your opponent’s campaign, you have, pardon the term, drawn a bullseye upon your ass. I’d love to see the federal funding report for Bob Casey’s campaign PAC next week. There are going to be a lot of new zeroes there, most with a return address of Boston, MA.

A note to the approximately 1.2 conservatives who read this blog. The biggest complaint of the American right, the motivation behind much of the vitriol coming from Fox News, talk radio and the White House, is that liberals are sanctimonious and convinced of their own intellectual superiority. A common right-wing tactic has been to combat this by claiming a moral superiority, through either religion or patriotism. If you think that you can get away with claiming moral superiority and then attacking liberalism as promoting pedophilia, you are going to learn your lesson at the rapidly-approaching moment when the Congressional aisles turn a refreshing shade of blue.

My recommendation to the Republicans, which I hope (for our sake) they do not follow, is that they cut Rick Santorum off and leave him to the political wolves in November 2006. He’s already trailing 50-39% in early Pennsylvania polls. However, if they don’t, I look forward, along with the rest of blue America, to choking this guy with his own well-chosen words.

I hope we get the privilege of using Rick Santorum as a brick to tie to the Republican Party's submerging feet. And when he’s unemployed next fall, I hope he takes a vacation to Bay State, so we can show him a real Boston welcome.

The Endgame of Plamegate

2005-07-12T17:00:00.000-04:00

I’m not jumping to any conclusions, but it’s Karl freaking Rove.

Karl Rove has become synonymous with the most amoral and ruthless political agenda since Joe McCarthy. Part of the reason that we all hate him is because he’s effective; Rove is remarkably good at stirring up “the base,” the hardcore, red-state, evangelical conservatives that put the gas in the neocon tank. Karl Rove’s strategy is appealing to “the base,” and assuming that the rest will take care of itself. So far, it’s worked- until the war in Iraq really started to go south, the Republican Party didn’t have to worry about being a “big tent” party in the first place. “The base” was enough.

(Today’s Arabic lesson: the word for “the base” in Arabic is…anybody? Oh yes, that’s right. It’s “al-Qaeda.”)

Even Rupert Murdoch, the poorly-regulated loudspeaker of the neocon movement, indirectly acknowledged Rove’s universally-poor reception among Americans in the animated show American Dad. The protagonist, a family man/CIA agent, hires Karl Rove to help him win his campaign for church deacon. Great moment: Karl Rove, face concealed beneath a red-and-black cloak, speaking in sepulchral tones, and accompanied by Satanic sound effects, is unable to pass through the doors of a church. Everybody knows the guy is evil.

Real-life Karl Rove story, which some people know and most don’t. The guy broke into Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon’s offices, stole a whole bunch of letterhead, and printed up an ad for a nonexistent campaign rally, which was to provide “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing.” He called it a “political prank” and laughs it off, which I would be okay with, if he didn’t falsely accuse his opponents of doing the same thing about 15 years later. (Just before a major debate, Rove went to the press with a claim that Democrats had bugged his consulting firm’s office. Turns out he did it himself.)

However, he did manage to pull off a number of impressive successes. His trademark is attacking an opponent on their strongest issue. In fact, a few of his business associates consulted for a couple of guys you may have heard of- Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The perception of irony is clearly not present in Rove’s skill set, but winning elections is. He recently decided to attack MoveOn.org by claiming that liberals wanted to offer “therapy” to the 9/11 hijackers, while the conservatives were “prepar[ing] for war.” The group Families of September 11th asked him to please shut his mouth or apologize, and he promptly did neither.

I’m not saying Karl Rove doesn’t have a good reason for being a psychopath. During his parent’s divorce, he found out that his dad actually wasn’t his dad. Then his mom killed herself. I hate him, but I think I can guess why he snapped.

The fact is, Karl Rove has gotten so good at being evil that I assumed the goon who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity would be an underling whose orders from above were carefully obscured. Up until now, I had assumed that the guilty part was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I.L. “Scooter” Libby. Presumably he was acting out of shame and rage that the world was going to either forget him, or remember him as “Scooter.” Also, he sounded a little like G. Gordon Liddy.

But as of Tuesday, July 12, this thing has been blown wide open and there isn’t even much of a media frenzy. The White House is clamming up, understandably, and Scott McClellan is backpedaling faster than a Lance Armstrong tape on rewind from his earlier comment that whoever leaked the information would be fired, and that it categorically was not Karl Rove.

Except there’s an e-mail in which Karl Rove told Matt Cooper that Joe Wilson’s trip to Iraq was authorized by his wife, who worked at the CIA on WMD issues.

(Rove’s lawyer is only contesting that Rove did not reveal Plame’s name, and that he did not identify her as an undercover agent. It’d be like telling a gang of drug dealers that the new recruit “worked for the FBI” but without saying whether he was an undercover agent or not. What the hell else would they be doing, mopping the floors?)

Matt Cooper is not brain-damaged. He would be able to figure out that Valerie Plame was Joe Wilson’s wife about as easily as you or I could. And he would also be able to figure out that since nobody knew Plame worked at the CIA, it was probably some kind of, um, you know, well, secret.

Karl Rove told Matt Cooper that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA on WMD. Nobody is contesting that. Karl Rove is the leak, and as Bush stated nearly two years ago, he needs to be fired. He also needs to go to jail.

Anybody on the left or the right who wants to argue that is welcome to try.

Something Worth Sharing

2005-06-30T16:21:00.000-04:00

Apparently this little gem has been going around various progressive listservs. I myself spotted it on Virtual Pus and was fascinated. My summer job involves market research and polling, and I've always appreciated when numbers can paint an accurate picture of American society. Granted, statistics are malleable, but some of them can't be argued with.

I was most taken aback by the divorce number. That's one of the most important weapons in the conservative arsenal; the claim that red-state, moral-values voters are Pro-Family, dammit. Which is patently ridiculous, because they get divorced a hell of a lot more often than us effete, blue-state moral relativists. I understand that going after the Bible Belt divorce rate is a low blow, but if they're going to bash gays using The Family as a hammer, they deserve it.

The piece's author is anonymous, but I wish I could get his or her e-mail address to talk about where they got their facts. Not just for purposes of verification, but because it sounds like a gold mine of information that I'd like to dig into.

I made a few slight revisions (deleted a paragraph about Iraq that I didn't agree with) and added a few tidbits of information that I thought my particular audience would enjoy. Otherwise, it's pretty much verbatim as I found it.

Enough talk. I'll let you read it.

"Dear Red States,
We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the Northeast.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, the Southwest and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, and the University of Georgia.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent think Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in Nueva California."

Supporting The Troops

2005-06-27T13:14:00.000-04:00

I was taking a summer EMT course last year when I overheard an exchange between two of the students in the course. One was about as liberal as you could get. She was a tattooed art school graduate with profane, anti-Bush stickers plastered across her fuel-efficient car- she was almost cartoonish. The other one was an enlisted guy in the Air Force who'd overheard her talking about how she was against the war in Iraq.

He ambled over. "So you're one of the ones who spits on our guys when they get home from Iraq, huh?" he asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He was legitimately curious.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I don't have any problem with military personnel. I just don't support Bush or the war."

He nodded. "So you support the troops, though?"

"Yeah," she responded, "of course I do."

What does this mean? "Support the troops." The most common expression of this sentiment is to put one of those yellow ribbons on the back of your car, which don't exactly seem designed for longevity (they're all magnetic.) Even people who are against the war, support the troops. Huh?

In 2005, we take our all-volunteer military for granted. A lot of us don't see the military as a particularly attractive option, especially the more privileged among us. And everyone in the military has their own reason for joining; some needed college money, others wanted to see the world, some wanted better opportunities, and others just wanted to serve their country.

The fact is that, regardless of why they're doing it, military personnel are serving the country's best interests, even if they're doing something that a lot of us- including me- don't support. Having an established corps of professional, well-trained warriors is not something that a lot of other countries can pull off- most major European nations still have a draft between high school and college. We have enough courageous people who, for many different reasons, are willing to serve without being required to.

And they get ordered into some things- like Iraq- that many of us don't believe in. But nobody is disputing that the job they're doing is honorable, and they deserve to be supported by the people they serve. So it seems like a lot of anti-war folks say they "support the troops," but really just mean that they don't bear them any ill will.

I think it's fair to say that most military personnel would choose to be deployed to Iraq about as quickly as most liberals would choose to send them there. It's a miserable place, and 1,700 of them have gotten killed there, and counting. Not to mention all the servicemembers who lost limbs or eyesight or hearing in combat. We claim to support them, but many of us just don't pay them much attention.

And the body of evidence, from recent polls, shows that blue America believes in what the military is doing there now. There aren’t many liberals who would agree with the decision to go to war in the first place, but the majority would agree that since we did, we’re obligated to clean up the mess in Iraq before we head home. We broke it, so to say, and we bought it. Even if there is widespread dissatisfaction with how things are going, it’s safe to say that Americans believe in bringing peace to Iraq after we brought war.

So we all support the troops and the mission of rebuilding Iraq, but the liberal establishment hasn’t exactly been printing up “Hug A Soldier” bumper stickers. I’m not saying that MoveOn.org ought to start selling camo. I do think that, since blue America supports the troops, too, we ought to do something about it. If I had my way, the College Democrats would start sending care packages overseas.

That might be tough, so I decided to start doing it myself. There are a lot of Americans getting shot at, in the middle of a godforsaken desert, who are in need of stuff like air freshener and a couple DVDs. I don’t make a lot of specific appeals, but please check out www.anysoldier.com, browse through the profiles of the personnel deployed overseas, and do what you can. If you support the troops, do something about it.

Okay, I'm Back Now

2005-06-22T18:56:00.000-04:00

So it's been four months since I updated this beast, and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert was the hot item back then. There are a number of things I want to get to (filibusters, Bolton, creationism, McCain vs. Hillary, 2008 in general, and the looming war about judicial nominations) but I'm gonna start out one at a time.

I think Blue America handed Bush his first major defeat in Social Security, and I'm pretty psyched. If you read in depth about his Social Security tactics, it was essentially an issue of accounting. I'm a writing student. I don't do much accounting in my line of work. But the Bush Social Security plan was based upon the assumption that the Social Security trust fund was going to
run out. Answer being, that depended on the economy. Okay, fine. Looks like
we need to do some long-term planning. Agreed.

Here's what started to get me mad- although you'd think, after five years of this pigheaded ignorance in the White House, I'd be used to it. The Bush team claimed that anybody who opposed their team was "against Social Security reform." Are you kidding? Everyone in Washington has a plan for Social Security reform, and it's my personal belief that everyone's is a little bit different. But claiming that your plan is the ONLY plan? Even Teddy Kennedy doesn't pull this kind of crap.

I was reading The Hill, which I highly recommend to anybody who gets their regular news from CNN.com (like me.) If you want a lot of intelligent commentary on the most up-to-date political scuffles- and some good early warning before they arrive- the Hill has it. Granted, Roll Call (the other daily Capitol Hill newspaper) is significantly better written and researched, but they're kind of expensive to sign up for. When I win the lottery, or rob a bank, I'm going to shell out the $309 a year to get Roll Call delivered to my apartment. After I pony up the extra $40 to renew my Foreign Affairs subscription.

Side note about Foreign Affairs: They raised the price from $24 a year to $44. I paid $18 because I sent them a photocopy of my student ID and paid the student rate- and because it was cheaper than the Economist. It bugs me that FA expects me to pay an extra $26 a year now, but they must assume that their target market can afford to pay it. Most of the ever-multiplying ads are directed at CEOs, and not political-science-nerdy college kids. They even eliminated the student discount. Maybe I can get a CEO to pay for my subscription.

ANYWAY. Back to the Hill. I was reading a commentary by Lynne Sweet, who discussed a recent interview with former Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois. Rosty, as she refers to him, claimed that Bush could probably strike fear into the hearts of Democrats by taking his plan off the table and saying, "Fine. You come up with a plan of your own." Theoretically, all of us blue-state types would be running around like chickens with our heads cut off since we'd been focusing primarily on dismantling Bush's ideas. (Rostenkowski, I might add, was a Democrat.) The fact is, Rostenkowski (and Scott McClellan, who I hate even more than Ari Fleischer) has forgotten about the over-$90k rule. All earnings are taxed at 12.4% to fund Social Security until you pass $90,000. Then they're not taxed at all. Removing this cap would essentially eliminate the funding shortfall.

This seems like a pretty logical option to me, but I strongly doubt anybody on the red side of the aisle would get behind it. It brings me back to one of those things that drives me crazy about Republicans (and here I'm not saying conservatives, I'm saying Republicans.) They manage to convince the rural poor that there is more value in voting "guns, God and gays" than in doing anything that would economically benefit them. I have no doubt that people like Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts would be hollering all the way back to Kansas, distorting the plan and saving a lot of money for the wealthiest folks in America at the expense of their rural, poor constituents.

(Does anybody else ever get Pat Robertson the evangelist and Pat Roberts the Kansas senator mixed up? I think they're one and the same, and it's a Republican plot.)

Regardless of how obvious the solution to Social Security seems to be, and how disgusting it seems to the Republican Party, it seems to be a moot point. A comfortable majority of the country thinks it belongs in the trash can, and even though Bush is out there campaigning for it, he's getting hammered. He's even taking a one-two hit from Social Security and the Iraq war, where the rest of the country is finally starting to wake up. Like I said on my day-after-Election-Day piece, look to 2006. If we build a strong Democratic identity, and include some decent contenders for 2008, we may not be able to derail the Republican freight train, but we can sure as hell slow it down.

An important aspect of this is exploiting the "six-year itch" and making Bush look vulnerable. If his leadership comes under major fire- which he's thus far been able to avoid by simply ignoring the question- and he can't ignore the criticism any more, he falters and collapses. Guaranteed. The reason George W. Bush has succeeded so far is because, when he's confronted with intelligent people who disagree with him, he claims that they're out of touch with reality and instead of offering alternatives, they're creating roadblocks. When a majority of this country starts to move in a different direction than George Bush, he's going to become accountable-and then we're going to eat him alive.

Jeff Gannon. Journalist. Hero.

2005-02-21T14:28:00.000-05:00

I’m not going to gloat about Jeff Gannon, I swear.

Nope. Not gonna do it.

Oh, hell, how can I resist?

Granted, tearing into Jeff Gannon and Talon News/GOPUSA.com is like driving my 1992 Ford Taurus over a lump of right-wing roadkill that’s already been hit by every 18-wheeler on the road. But honestly, the whole thing was an incident, the sort of which the Daily Show’s writers couldn’t have dreamed. Leaving out this guy’s sordid personal life, Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. James Guckert) was a “reporter” who wasn’t even cleared as a member of the White House press corps, yet managed to make it into the most heavily-guarded building in Washington on a near-daily basis. This raises the first important question- who was letting this guy in the door?

Gannon (I’ll use his pseudonym because I can’t type “Guckert” without giggling like a schoolgirl) was getting into the White House on what’s known as a “daily pass.” This is for visiting reporters, the type for whom a trip to the White House might be a once-in-a-career deal, or high school students who won a 500-word essay contest.

Real reporters have to go through a vetting process, including an FBI background check, to get into the White House. Even the Senate Press Gallery denied him a pass, citing questions over his press credentials (his host website was GOPUSA.com, for God’s sake- a right-wing rag sponsored by a Texas Republican named Bobby Eberle.)

However, Jeff Gannon was coming into the White House, since February of 2003, on a near-daily basis, billing himself as the “White House Correspondent for Talon News.” And I know the Secret Service doesn’t just hand those press passes out like lollipops. While I don’t trust the administration very much, I do trust the White House security apparatus- and their ability to find out things like whether you used to be a paid male escort for hotmilitarystuds.com. If somebody like that just keeps wandering in on a “daily pass,” you better believe that the Secret Service will notice.

To me, it’s obvious that the White House knew who this guy was, because the alternative is too unpleasant for the likes of Scott McClellan to contemplate. (“Really? He was a reporter for a site sponsored by GOPUSA.com? Well, WE didn’t know that. We thought he’d just gotten lost off the White House tour.”) When the Press Gallery at the Republican-controlled Senate tells you that your employer isn’t a real news agency, the White House should say the same thing- unless they know who you are, and want you to be there.

I’m not suggesting that the White House wanted the former star of a gay-prostitution website asking President Bush softball questions about whether the Senate Democratic leadership was “divorced from reality.” (I think that “divorced from reality” is an accurate term to describe the White House Press Office at this point.) But what I am suggesting, is that President Bush- influential Texas Republican- got a phone call, a while back, from another Texas Republican, Bobby Eberle who was running GOPUSA.com. Bobby asked George for a favor- give his “news service” its own White House correspondent. George (or, more accurately, George’s press office) found a way to do this that wouldn’t require the unpleasant publicity of digging up the reporter’s association with the aptly-named GOPUSA.com. Enter Jeff Gannon.

(Brief aside. Can you imagine what would have happened if, in the Clinton or a hypothetical Gore White House, a reporter- gay hooker or not- was found to be representing DEMSUSA.com or some such? FOX News would be so happy, they’d probably sacrifice forty goats to the Dark Lord, Rupert Murdoch.)

While the hypocrisy of a gay prostitute, working as a conservative “reporter” in the heart of the White House, is hilarious, it raises questions which are decidedly un-funny. Armstrong Williams, a conservative black columnist, was exposed earlier this year for receiving $240,000 to promote Bush’s education plan. It blows my mind. They were paying him off to publish rave reviews of administration policy in news outlets which were ostensibly independent. He even interviewed Education Secretary Rod Paige and encouraged other black journalists to promote No Child Left Behind.

I’m going to repeat this. The Bush Administration spent $240,000 of taxpayer money to bribe a journalist into promoting their policies. You better believe that “this column sponsored by the White House Press Office” didn’t appear on Armstrong William’s byline.

Of course, Armstrong Williams and his unfortunate sources of supplemental income weren’t the first Bush administration attempt to pollute the independent media with propaganda. (I’m not shying away from the P-word, because, honestly, that’s what it was.) They developed “video news releases,” meant to sound like the print kind- sheets of paper attributed to the White House, written like a news article and outlining a new policy or making some kind of statement. However, “video news releases” were filmed to look like real TV journalism- and didn’t make any mention of the agency that produced them. The General Accounting Office, one of the few Congressional watchdog agencies that retains teeth in this day and age, called the Bush White House out on it. It was illegal, and the GAO made them stop.

The fact is that unbiased research and reporting makes conservatives and their policies look really, really bad. Listen to the incessant complaints about the “liberal media” and conservative complaints about how colleges and universities are overwhelmingly left-wing. Think about it. Media outlets and universities are paid to sit around and carefully analyze the facts of historical and current events. They have codes of ethics (which do not condone getting paid off by the government to promote their agenda.) That’s all they do- learn from history and research what’s currently going on. And for some STRANGE reason, most of these organizations seem to have a liberal slant. Huh. That’s funny. I wonder why.

I don’t mean to extol the virtues of the modern media. They make mistakes and they screw up (look at poor Dan Rather.) But over the past decade, Republicans and conservatives in general have realized that their policies don’t hold up under the scrutiny of the professional media. This is not because the media is liberal. This is because an accurate look at the truth is liberal, and when the media reports the truth- about Iraq, Social Security, gay rights, evolution or health care- Republicans look bad. Via FOX News, “video news releases,” the bribing of Armstrong Williams or the illegitimate clearances of “Jeff Gannon,” it’s become very clear that a lot of conservatives in this country are afraid of the truth, so the answer is to broadcast lies.

I’m still making Jeff Gannon jokes, and so are my friends- my girlfriend told me today that she was sad about the whole affair, “because Jeff Gannon and Talon News were my source for unbiased and no-spin reporting.” But the whole affair lays bare a frightening conservative mentality- that if smart people are reporting something that’s not friendly to the way you look at the world, you should report the opposite, regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. And if you do that, your supporters will believe that your “news,” however morally and factually questionable it might be, is a legitimate alternative to what the real media is saying. In America, in 2005, the truth is bad news for Republicans, and Jeff Gannon was one of their ways to make it go away.

(Post script: For more on this, you should read Al Franken’s slightly-dated “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” However, a current, better-detailed, and significantly less humorous look at this situation can be found at Media Matters for America, online at MediaMatters.org. I had to stop reading after a while, because it was too upsetting- and more importantly, too true.)

Retroactive Justification

2005-02-07T22:29:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, the search for weapons of mass destruction was called off and nobody cared. It wasn’t really a story. The Presidential inauguration was coming up, the Iraqi elections were in various stages of disarray, and Iraq itself was getting merrily car-bombed back to the Stone Age. There were much more important things going on in the world than the Bush administration’s oh-so-quiet admission that the original pretense for going to war in Iraq had failed.

I noticed, and so did the Daily Show, which has transitioned from an entertaining and goofy way to spend a half-hour, to my sole source of political gallows humor. Of course, Jon Stewart was able to spin this into something funny, but I can’t. We went to war for one reason and, instead of admitting we were wrong, the administration and the America right simply created a new reason for the same war.

I grant that it must be unspeakably difficult to walk in front of America and say, “I screwed up. We went to war to find nonexistent weapons and thousands of American soldiers died. Oops. Sorry. Won’t happen again.” But while the war in Iraq is a tough issue for conservatives, the war on terror isn’t. Solution? Make them one and the same. Iraq, prior to our arrival, was a terrorist backwater- when you start killing clerics and instituting a secular regime, al Qaeda won’t exactly be banging down the door to lend you a hand.

Of course, AFTER we arrived, we created a cause celebré for the Islamic radicalist movement. Regardless of who had been running the show before us, al Qaeda affiliates had a new battleground on which to kill Americans- conveniently across the street from their spiritual base of Saudi Arabia. So yeah, Iraq is now a front in the war on terror- one which we, by wrongfully invading a country, created. Oops.

What upsets me most about neoconservative foreign policy, is its inherent fear of showing weakness. If you break down the neocon ideology, they are fully convinced that we need to be such a strong, unstoppable force that no terrorist group will dare to challenge us- and that we should use that force to influence the spread of “freedom and democracy throughout the world.” There’s a little truth to that- very few democracies have bred terrorist cells- but to paraphrase an Iraqi man in Fallujah this week, people don’t usually appreciate a democracy that arrives on the back of a tank.

Today’s American foreign policy is being dictated by the same mentality that convinced the middle-school bully to beat up the smaller kids. Theoretically, fear should inspire respect, and to the people who are instilling fear, it looks like it’s working. But a foreign policy that instills respect is infinitely more complex and subtle, and requires an approach to the Iraq problem that the Bush administration is unwilling to adopt and totally incapable of implementing.

It requires us to support the Iraqi government by working better with its neighbors- including Iran- to protect the viability of the fledgling democracy. It requires a broad-based foreign policy with a conciliatory message to bring in more support from European and Asian countries who want little to do with Iraq. But most importantly, it requires Americans to leave. Soon.

Paradoxically, American forces are the only thing that is keeping the Iraqi resistance viable. There are two primary types of Iraqi insurgents- Shiite religious zealots in the southern regions, and Sunni fighters in the Baghdad area, who draw their support from regime loyalists and foreign, al-Qaeda-linked fighters. Currently, they have a common enemy- the American imperialists. The American Humvee and helicopter are targets that any militant can shoot at, without angering the local population. However, when insurgents kill Iraqi police, National Guardsmen and civilians, Iraqis tend to blame the Americans for the death, saying Iraqis would not kill their own countrymen.

I’m not advocating leaving tomorrow, and I’m not advocating a departure simply because Americans are dying. We made this mess and we need to clean it up. But there is going to be a civil war in Iraq when we leave, no matter how strong the government is. The Sunni minority is better-armed and battle-hardened, and the Shiites have suffered for a long time under Sunni repression and are looking for revenge. This battle will happen, no matter what. When the Americans leave, and these sides can’t make common cause anymore, they’re going to war.

Islamic militants are fond of telling the civilian population that the Americans came to conquer Iraq and take its oil. That may have been the Bush administration’s idea- cheap oil from Iraq and convenient military bases in the Middle East. But even Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld can tell that American troops need to leave Iraq. So they need to start now, by publicly announcing the beginning of the American departure from Iraq. They don’t need to pull out more than a hundred troops or so, and they can take longer to withdraw the main body of the force. They just need to make it clear that we plan to leave, and leave for good.

But once the Americans start to leave, the fight between Sunni militants and Shiites will begin. That’s when the first major challenge to the truly independent Iraqi government will unfold. No matter how much progress American troops make against the Hydra-like insurgency, the Iraqi government will lack legitimacy until they can protect their people without foreign- especially Western- help.

The fact is that we went to war to find weapons of mass destruction, and we found ourselves in a country without them. So the Bush White House invented a new reason- bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. He claimed that’s why we went to war originally, which was false. But he was telling the truth when he said that American troops are fighting for a free and secure Iraq. I just wish he would add the obvious reason WHY American kids are dying to protect Iraqi freedoms.

The American military, at this point, is fighting a war to go home, and that's about it.

Senator Joe Biden Throws Thunderbolts

2005-01-27T13:56:00.000-05:00

There are days when politics feels a lot like sports. You can celebrate the victories for weeks, and rue the defeats for years. And regardless of how many teams there are in the league, there are never really more than two- your guys and the other guys. (Of course, if politics were like 2004-2005 sports, the Boston team would always be winning, and therefore Kerry would be in the White House. Oh well.)

Obviously, politics is a lot more complex, because you don’t root for your entire team. There are plenty of different voices in the Democratic Party, and on the left as a whole. Some of the people in the Party barely even qualify as liberal in the first place- Zell Miller being the obvious example. But there’s actually an unpleasant crew of Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They take their name from the old Southern “Yellow Dog Democrats” (i.e. their constituents would vote for a yellow dog, before they voted against the Democrats.) The Blue Dogs are socially conservative Democrats who are mainly from Southern states, and they love to vote against the party line just about every time an important vote comes to the floor.

Anyway, everybody’s got a team- Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever- and within those teams, political nerds like me have a few players that they really like. Not just your own elected representatives, since they occasionally suck, but the ones you agree with, almost every time they say anything. These guys might not have the most promising future, or might not make the evening news every night, but we like them- cringe at their scandals and applaud whenever they score political points.

Tom Daschle was one of my favorites. He represented the Democratic Party when it was truly a big tent. He was able to appeal to the progressive instincts of a socially conservative state, anchor the party in the American heartland, and avoid looking wishy-washy. And he was a damn good politician, too. He used his decades of Washington experience to work the system and effect change for the people who put him in office.

Of course, Tom Daschle isn’t playing anymore. So, if Capitol Hill was a fantasy football draft, I’d have a couple other picks for my team. North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy is one of them. A former insurance commissioner, Pomeroy- who I actually got to know during my time on Capitol Hill a few years ago- represents a rural, socially-conservative state whose people still recognize the need for a progressive approach to education and the economy.

Wesley Clark is another one. If it hadn’t been for the fickle nature of the New Hampshire primaries, Wes Clark could be President today. Should be President. Wesley Clark had a progressive agenda with a smart Iraq policy and the guy spent his entire career in the military. Democratic strategists have dreams about a guy like him, and because he couldn’t rile up the Granite State, his candidacy faltered. Christ. Wesley Clark would have embarrassed George W. Bush on the campaign trail and the Values Voters would have been split right down the middle. I’m keeping my eye on him because I can see him as a senator or, God willing, a Presidential candidate in 2008.

But if anyone would be the all-star on my fantasy political team, it would be Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, who proves that the size of the state you represent is not proportional to your influence in Washington. (Can you name a Texas Senator? I can’t. Okay, fine, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but she’s evil.) Joe Biden is a center-left Democrat from Delaware who’s been around for a good long time. There are four Senate committees that actually get things done: Appropriations, Foreign Relations, Judiciary, and Select Intelligence. He’s on the Judiciary and the ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations- in the Democratic Senate, he was the Chairman. It would be safe to say that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to foreign policy.

This is good, because he’s a staunch opponent of the Iraq war for the same reasons I am. We went in there to find weapons of mass destruction and therefore make the world a safer place. Now the administration claims it’s about “spreading freedom and democracy.” If Bush had said we were going into Iraq just to spread freedom and democracy, Colin Powell would have thrown Donald Rumsfeld off the roof of the White House. So Biden- and I- are pretty upset about the way the war is going, because something like 1,300 Americans have gotten killed in a war that was launched to find imaginary weapons.

The difference between Joe Biden and me, is that he has the ability to do something other than whining about it on his web page. Specifically, he can put people like Condoleeza Rice in the hottest of hot seats. And this brings us to the #1 reason why Joe Biden is my hero- when it comes to the important issues, he doesn’t talk like a politician. He says the things we all wish we could say to the guys who are screwing things up. (The following quotations came from CNN.com.)

Last week, during the Rice confirmation hearings, Biden decided to- in political terminology- beat the snot out of soon-to-be-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. I read the transcript later and it was like reading the play-by-play of this year’s Red Sox Game 7 against the Yankees. It just made me ecstatic.

Biden set the tone pretty quick. “It seems to me, Dr. Rice, that you have danced around [the issue of Iraq] and…stuck to the party line, which seems pretty consistent. You’re always right. You never made any mistakes. You’re never wrong.”

He kept going, saying he hoped that Rice would have the courage to say, “Hey, boss, it’s not going that well. Hey, boss, read a little history.” (You would think that such statements wouldn’t require that much courage, but when it comes to the Bush administration, it does, and I understand why. If for a moment they admit they’ve done anything wrong, their whole demented foreign policy unravels.)

“God love you, please do us a favor,” Biden told her. “Start to tell us the whole deal.” (At this point, I was practically cheering.) “And for God’s sake, don’t listen to Rumsfeld, he doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about.”

So what’s the conclusion here? (Other than Joe Biden being the thunderbolt-flinging God of Kicking Ass?) The point is that, while Republicans may have control of Congress and the White House, there are plenty of Democrats out there who are not about to roll over and let the newly-re-elected (shudder) Bush team just do what they want. The important thing is that we maintain that fighting spirit.

Obviously, we don’t have the luxury of setting our own agenda- it’d be impossible to count how many Democratic bills get killed before they even see the floor of the House or Senate. And we can’t fight every Republican initiative- some are worth actually supporting, and many aren’t worth the effort it will take to fight them- because if we do, we’ll come out looking like obstructionists who are still sore after 2004.

The important thing is that we fight for the stuff that needs to be fought for. Stem cells. Health care. Fixing the steaming pile of ineffectiveness that is No Child Left Behind. And for God’s sake, opposing any new Rumsfeld-powered adventures in the Middle East. I know Joe Biden will be leading the charge when that fight comes. And if we stick to our guns, then come November 2006, we can really win one. Kicking the neoconservatives out of Congress so we can finally rein in the excesses and ignorance of the Bush administration.

(Post script: For those of you who aren't from the great state of Delaware and want more information, Joe Biden's office runs a great website, and it's worth checking out.)

Hillbilly Political Armor

2004-12-10T17:15:00.000-05:00

First, an update on the Secret Service thing. Over the last two days, there has been zero indication that the President has made any stops at Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, after Dick Cheney's December 7th trip to Afghanistan for Karzai's inauguration, the last place he was seen was a hangar at Shannon Airport in Ireland, early in the morning on the 8th. There hasn't been any word on his location since. Then again, Dick Cheney moves in mysterious ways. I'm going to guess it was either Cheney- in secret- or a massive exercise. The exercise would be less interesting, but it would explain that strange afternoon event. Also, www.isdickcheneydeadyet.com has posted no updates on his condition, so I'm inclined to believe the Vice President is okay.

(Also: My favorite quote of the week. Paul Wolfowitz on TV, stating, "No one could have foreseen that it would take more troops to stabilize the country than to overpower it militarily." Well, I guess if you deliberately ignore it, nobody can see it coming, Paul.)

Anyway. This recent ruckus about how National Guardsmen and Marines are running around Iraq without any armor on their Humvees is really good for the country to hear, but I'm fairly nervous about the backlash that's going to occur, since a reporter helped script the questions for the soldier who put Rumsfeld on the spot yesterday. Without doubt, the conservative press is going to try to spin this one into a cautionary tail of the liberal media, exploiting the honorable servicemen in Iraq and causing our enemies to perceive us as weak and incompetent in battle.

Okay, granted, I don't really like the fact that Ed Pitts from the Chattanooga Times Free Press had to manipulate two soldiers into asking Rumsfeld the kind of tough questions that are now getting all this coverage. It makes the story a lot less heartwarming, that the courageous Guardsman, a specialist named Jerry Wilson from Nashville, had actually been coached on what he was going to say.

On the other hand, I feel pretty bad for Pitts. He'd been embedded with a regimental combat team for a while now, and was regularly exposed to the same dangers as the National Guard soldiers he worked with- especially since the Humvees he was riding in weren't armored. He saw firsthand how the Tennessee Guardsmen had to scrounge for whatever extra armor they could find in scrap heaps.

Of course, Donald Rumsfeld and the administration hadn't been making his life as a reporter any easier. Throughout the war on Iraq, the communications wing of the Bush administration has made it supremely difficult for journalists to gain access to major figures and ask real questions. The gentlemen's agreement between the general press, and the administration, used to go something like this; if the press were allowed occasional, unscripted access to major policymakers, then the press would grant decent coverage to the administration's more scripted events.

At this point, those scripted events are all the press can get. This President has held, by far, the fewest solo press conferences in his first four years of any recent chief executive. Granted, if I were Scott McClellan, I'd want to keep that linguistic goofball 100 yards from a microphone. If your boss is the kind of guy who calls suicide bombers "suiciders," then it makes sense to play the game safely. Keep him from speaking off the cuff and make sure he sticks to his core message.

I understand what McClellan's doing, I just hate that it's working. Bush and his cabinet end up preaching the same ridiculous platitudes every day- "We're resolute, we're strong, this is crucial to the war on terror, we have to make sacrifices," and especially my new favorite, "You go to war with the Army you have." To add to this, the only media opportunities become staged events, like campaign stump speeches but worse. The President's unavailable for questions, every time- supposedly because of his busy schedule, but not so busy that he can't spend more time on vacation than any other sitting President.

When your foreign policy- and domestic policy, I might add- is really tanking, it's a good idea to get out there and be honest with people. I've always wondered what would happen if the President walked out in front of the White House Press Corps tomorrow and gave us a "you break it, you buy it," speech. (Yeah, we really dropped the ball on Iraq, but we gotta fix what we did wrong so we can go home.) It wouldn't represent a change of policy whatsoever- Bush and the hawks would just admit they were wrong, try to fix their mistakes, and once we got out of there, the only casualty would be their pride. And our European allies might suddenly be more willing to help out, to say nothing of the UN.

I'll stop with the what-ifs, because asking an administration like this to admit they screwed up is borderline delusional. (Remember what happened when that poor woman asked Candidate Bush what his regrets were over his first term?) Granted, some might see the administration as completely delusional. I actually think they see the situation just like we do- ("Holy s--t, this is really bad-") but every appearance on TV is one more chance to save face and convince Americans that, nah, it's not really that bad.

But thanks to Ed Pitts and Jerry Wilson- a soldier from Tennessee and a previously-unknown reporter from a fairly conservative newspaper- the most hawkish hawk of them all, Donald Rumsfeld, finally had to face some real questions about why the war in Iraq is going so damn badly. And hopefully, there are going to be some American lives saved over in that hellhole, because so many people are paying attention to the problem now.

If the right wants to complain about how Rumsfeld was embarrassed by a newspaper reporter, fine. Let them. Because they're hiding from the real issue. The embarrassing moment didn't come when Rumsfeld was put on the spot by a soldier who'd been coached by a reporter.

It came when, after hearing Wilson's pointed question, 2,300 soldiers all started cheering.

And I'm pretty sure nobody was coaching them.

Breaking News (Wednesday, 12/8)

2004-12-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

The glory of the Internet is that I can put up news that even the wire agencies haven't gotten ahold of yet.

About an hour ago (1:30 pm Eastern) I got a phone call from a friend who works at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. A motorcade of around 25 vehicles, all black SUVs surrounded by Baltimore police cars, had blocked off the entrance to most of the hospital. A SWAT team, with "SECRET SERVICE" on their vests, was moving around on foot. And an all-black ambulance, with Secret Service markings, had pulled into the Hopkins emergency department.

The only Secret Service ambulances (that I know of) are stationed at the Naval Observatory (the Vice Presidential residence) and the White House. However, this makes very little sense. Even though Hopkins is the best all-around hospital in the mid-Atlantic, any emergency procedures could be done at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, or the George Washington University Hospital, three blocks from the White House. Why come to Hopkins?

My semi-educated guess is that it's a routine procedure, like a minor surgery or a cardiac monitoring session, for either the President or the Vice President. They would bring the motorcade for a routine procedure, but would keep it a secret until it was complete and the President/VP was home safe. And since, after an hour of searching, I can't find any information on where either the President or VP are today, I'm going to presume that one of them is at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

I know that most people don't check this blog for late-breaking news, or even late-breaking speculation, but hey. I just got the information, so here you go.

The D.C. Nationals

2004-11-30T17:40:00.000-05:00

According to CNN, Paula Zahn has “Today’s Toughest Questions, Asked and Answered.” This, of course, got me wondering what I would ask Paula, and I think it would be something to the effect of, “Paula, do you know that your last name means ‘tooth’ in German?”

I’m going to follow up that random tidbit with another one. I was reading Sports Illustrated online, specifically Pete McEntegart’s Ten Spot, which mentioned the uniforms for the new D.C. Nationals baseball team. He joked that, like the country, they would be mostly red, with blue trim along all the edges. I chuckled to myself- and then, panicking, checked the old Expos website, to see what the jerseys actually looked like. Turns out they haven’t designed them.

(If there’s one thing I’m more obsessive about than politics, it’s baseball.)

Regardless of what the Nationals end up wearing, I don’t really like the fact that the mainstream media continues to promote this notion of “red vs. blue” states, especially since people I know have begun to identify themselves based on their state’s “color.” I’ll admit that I’m guilty of this myself- it’s comforting to know that your friends and neighbors probably didn’t vote for the bad guy.

But the red/blue state split only takes the Presidential race into account. The red states voted Bush, the blue states voted Kerry. But that ignores some important differences in Senatorial and Congressional races. New Hampshire, a Kerry state, still re-elected Republican Senator Judd Gregg. And Colorado, which went for Bush, still sent arch-conservative Pete Coors packing in favor of environmental attorney Ken Salazar. Now Pete can go back home and brew mediocre beer, make commercials about twins, and take a bath in a pile of his own money.

It’s not that splitting the party ticket is anything new. My home state of Massachusetts- widely reputed to be the most liberal locality this side of Toronto- has had Republican governors since the first Bush administration. It doesn’t prove anything- it just reminds us that November 2nd wasn’t a numbers competition between all-red and all-blue voters. It still boggles my mind that the whole thing was less than a month ago.

But over the course of the last 27 days, it seems like some of the divisions are starting to heal. The election threw everyone’s political opposition into caricatures of themselves; every red state was packed with gun-toting, bloodthirsty Christian evangelists out to turn the country into a conservative theocracy, and all we could do was hope they didn’t cross the border into our bastions of blue. We, of course, didn’t help our image by screaming about moving to Canada and being terrified of the “moral values” discussion- we came across like a bunch of effete Communist pansies.

Of course, it just seems like some of the divisions are healing, and that’s because we don’t have to hear about the red-vs.-blue state thing as much anymore. It’s divisive and it needs to stop, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet. Websites like www.sorryeverybody.com are continuing to promote the spirit of election-night defeatism that seeped into the brain of every committed liberal in the country.

I guess all I really have to say is that they’re not going to stay red- or, to be fair, stay blue- forever. Time’s beginning letting the ideological heat cool down, and I think that’s good. Because when you get people to calm down and start thinking, they start voting Democratic.

The Two Truths

2004-11-15T17:15:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I've been a little late in posting. but my typing fingers have been handicapped after a terrible accident involving a hot bowl of clam chowder.

My grandfather came of age in the Great Depression, and worked his way from basically nothing to the top of the corporate ladder. He was an extremely intelligent man, who was quick to promote and defend his beliefs. And they were pretty conservative- one of my earliest memories is a photograph in his kitchen, of him shaking hands with Ronald Reagan.

He died a few years ago, and I was reading his memoirs in September, in which he describes how his son (my uncle Bob) loved to debate him when it came to politics. I thought about how I'd never argue with my dad about policy, but then again, my dad is almost as liberal as I am. Also, my uncle likes adventurous activities, such as delivering babies, racing sports cars and jumping into icy lakes.

However much my uncle Bob likes to live on the edge, I don't think that was why he would butt heads with my grandfather. Some kids change their political affiliations just to get their parent's proverbial goat, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't my uncle. He was going to Princeton in the late 1960s, and that environment had to be pretty liberal.

Regardless of where your political views are formed, or how they're formed, the political lines in this country are becoming tougher and tougher to cross. Elections are won by appealing to the hard-line base voters, and no longer by aiming for the moderate swing voters. Texas Democrat Jim Hightower once said, "The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos." The problem is that he's right.

I hate the thought of compromising with a hard-line Republican. It makes me want to throw up on my keyboard. There is almost nothing I can agree with them on, short of the sky being blue. And even then, we'd disagree; I'd tell them that blue light is refracted through the atmosphere from solar radiation, and they'd say God made the sky blue. But at this point, the country's reached a point of such polarization that Canada has set up a website (www.canadianalternative.com) for liberals fleeing the nation. You can tell how much I love that idea.

While the talk of "moral values" has apparently made the Democrats scramble to court the religious, rural poor, I wouldn't be fooled. Both sides were taking aim at each other's constituencies throughout the race, and it worked a lot better for the Democrats than the Republicans. The Republicans worked pretty hard to sway Jewish voters, and on Election Day, there were 200,000 more gay Republican voters than Jewish ones. (Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but the Washington Post doesn't lie.) So much for that appealing-to-moderates idea.

This makes me really sad because it spells the end of meaningful political debate. The right and the left in America don't argue about ideas anymore. They can't even agree on what the issues are in the first place. This started with the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice." Neither side was against anything. They were supporting an amorphous concept that nobody could argue with.

This has continued all the way through the Presidential debates. Bush accused Kerry of voting against the troops, against $87 billion to give them body armor and special equipment and such. Technically, this is true; however, Kerry would simply avoid the attack, instead of refuting it by saying that he'd voted against an enormous, pork-laden Republican largesse that included no plans for long-term Iraqi stabilization.

The "voted for/voted against" tactic has become the main weapon in the America political arsenal. Every article of legislation allocates money or resources to some entities at the expense of others. Therefore, it's child's play to assign a positive or negative spin to this. I think Kerry voted against that bill because it was a massive waste and he supported a different, better bill. Republicans think he voted for it because Kerry hates America. So I can say, "Bush passed a bill that's bad for you and America." They can say, "Kerry voted against the troops because he hates America."

The fact is that Kerry voted against a bill. Assign whatever value you want to the bill. Maybe it took money away from a social program for veterans. Suddenly Kerry doesn't support our veterans! Or maybe it gave money to a scholarship program for fluffy bunnies. Kerry's the only pro-fluffy-bunny candidate! Bush doesn't support fluffy bunnies!

At the end of the day, it becomes politically expedient not to debate ideas, but to frame every issue into a leading question. The candidate will only make a statement that's politically unassailable; Bush was "resolute and determined," and who would argue with resolution or determination? Kerry "had a plan," and why wouldn't we want our President to have a plan? The only way to argue with a politician (or their supporters) is to claim their facts are wrong or the candidate is lying.

So the only way a candidate can take on an issue, is to frame it in a context where their actions can't be argued with. This creates two "truths." The basic facts of a situation can't be argued with, but the policymakers put their actions- and those of their candidates- in a "frame," or a spin-motivated context that fits so tightly that (if you listen only to them) it's impossible to separate the frame from the facts.

At this point, our prior political affiliations, whether we learn them from our parents or our friends or the general sentiment of our community, dictate which truth we choose. Learning about the other side's point of view, from the general American perspective, seems to be an exercise in futility. A Republican and a Democrat have about as much to learn from each other as a Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan. The other guy is just wrong, and that's that. (This isn't helped by the Christian right's involvement in politics. Not only is the other guy wrong, he's going to hell, too!)

The fact is that political affiliations are drawn along different lines by the people who get elected. It's a chicken-and-egg conundrum (which came first, the issues or the candidate?) because parties delineate their core issues based mainly upon what will get their candidates into office. (I think the Republicans lack a core political philosophy, but they'd say that about the Democrats, so we're back where we started.) If the political battle lines in this country were just re-drawn, people in New England and Texas might be able to agree on a lot more, but right now, the two halves of the country are ignoring each other on a fairly arbitrary basis.

Every major politician publicly proclaims their affinity for "straight talk," and "telling the truth to the American people." And, if the American people agree with them, they're doing the right thing. But just about 50% of the population disagrees, and therefore tunes the opposition out. The standard political M.O. today requires that your supporters completely ignore everything the other side is saying- or pay close attention to it, and destroy it.

I actually pay pretty close attention to the "other side." I read the National Review Online as well as the Weekly Standard, and sometimes even the Washington Times (if I'm not reading on a full stomach.) I try to understand what's motivating them, and I can see where some of them are coming from. But the guys who write for intellectual, conservative publications are probably not the same guys who are voting in Alabama and listing "moral values" as their top priority.

But I'm a liberal. Not a surprise. So my view on conservative opinions might be just as colored as their views on mine. That's the problem; the New York Times Op-Ed section isn't exactly flying off the shelves in Kansas, and nobody's making any money selling the Weekly Standard in Boston. People want to hear their political beliefs reinforced by leaders of public opinion, and aren't interested in listening to someone tell them they're wrong.

So I lament the national inability to debate ideas. I'd like to watch a debate in which the neoconservative vision of America goes up against the progressive vision, and they're discussed simply as political ideas; without frames, without spins, without pre-calculated answers. "I think this approach is best, and here's why," vs. "I think that approach is best, and here's why."

I try to understand the conservative viewpoint, and in doing so, I'm continually reminded of why I choose not to join them. But the new language in which political ideas are communicated seems to obscure the original intent. Politicians simply want to rally their pre-existing supporters. The elections seem pretty heavily based upon sentiment- and not even creating new feeling, but simply stirring up notions that the electorate had held beforehand.

I'd try to come up with a good conclusion here, but this vision of two halves of America alternately talking past, and ignoring, each other, has me too depressed. Yet even with this in mind, I know that the Democratic Party, in its depressed and haphazard way, is still trying to do what's right for the people of this country. And the Republican Party is trying, in a supremely organized fashion, to get the people of the country to do what's right for their politicians.

P.S. My November resolution is to post more often.

An Elephant Only Forgets Mistakes

2004-11-09T18:01:00.000-05:00

I opened the Washington Post this afternoon to find that Newt Gingrich had been forced to respond to my recent post, ridiculing his mid-90s reign as Speaker.

Okay, he wasn't actually responding to me.

But he did write an article which outlined a plan for building upon the recent Republican electoral windfall. He stated that a focus on health care, stronger relationships with minority voters, and an honest appraisal of the party's failures combined with efforts to improve in the future, would secure fifty years of Republican rule.

I had to take a break from the article because I was laughing so hard, since Newt Gingrich lecturing the Republicans on building a stable majority sounds a lot like Alex Rodriguez lecturing the 2004 Yankees on how to win a playoff series.

I gave it another look, because, after I'd finished laughing, I reminded myself that hindsight is 20/20. The guy who turned the Republican Party into a horrendous joke might have a pretty good idea of how not to repeat his mistakes.

Most of the article was crap- he seemed convinced that Republicans could come up with a health care system that worked for free, AND cure cancer while they were at it. This gave me a fantastic image of Majority Leader/Dr. Bill Frist working hard in a Capitol Hill laboratory, until Tom DeLay, accompanied by Karl Rove and the Rev. Fred Phelps, kicked in the door and broke all Frist's equipment, insisting that his medical research "conflicted with our moral values."

However, Newt actually did make a legitimate point, which was that if the Republican Party did a better job of acknowledging their failures, they would have won by an even wider margin. I think that, had George W. Bush gone out and said, "Yeah, Iraq's a mess. We didn't expect that. But we're gonna fix it. Same thing with that ," John Kerry would have packed up and been back in Boston before August.

Maybe it wouldn't have been that extreme, but the 2004 Presidential campaign was marked (in my mind) by each candidate refusing to acknowledge they'd ever done anything wrong. Any criticism was simply dismissed as a "partisan attack," and was either ignored or redirected back to the attacker. Nobody- especially Bush- would ever acknowledge that, maybe once, back in the day, they might have made a mistake. Bush was "steadfast, resolute, determined," but never thoughtful, and never had any regrets.

All people, especially those in highly-visible positions, want to seem strong and determined. But at this point in American politics, admitting you're wrong- or even admitting you were wrong and are trying to amend that- is perceived as opening the door to unlimited liability. One admitted mistake, it seems, sacrifices the credibility of the person and their entire party.

This is a problem for both parties, but especially the Republicans. Their failures are visible to anyone who can read. We went into Iraq with the stated goal of eliminating a WMD threat- and now, anyone who asks about the WMDs is asked why they wanted Saddam Hussein in power. I would dearly love to hear any Republican say, "Yeah, we f---ed up with the weapons thing. But at least that jerk is out of power. And I know it's a big mess right now, but we gotta do the right thing and clean up after ourselves before we bail out, you know?"

Wait. Hang on. I was wrong.

I don't ever want to hear a Republican say that.

Right now, admitting your political failures is an act of remarkable maturity, and since they kept both houses of Congress and the Presidency, the Republicans have absolutely no need for soul-searching. They have to be doing something right, and admitting they've been less than perfect (by compromising with those godless Bolsheviks on the other side of the aisle, for example) would probably open themselves up to a new hail of criticism- much of it coming from within their own party.

It's the Democrats who have to be doing the public soul-searching right now, and that means admitting your failures. This is doing two things simultaneously; opening up the party to new ideas and new tactics, and allowing the Republicans to feel even more secure, self-assured. No one is going to be asking them to examine their own failings. They don't have any. By 2006, we may have an opposition so deeply entrenched within the fortifications of its own arrogance, that no reasonable voter could possibly stomach voting for them.

(The problem here being that this country is choked with voters who are not only unreasonable, I highly doubt that they're even from this friggin' planet. Specifically, fundamentalist Christians. I'm going to reserve commentary on these guys for another article.)

I'm not in the business of throwing out false hope, and the reason I started writing this was mainly because I'd relied too much on it in the past, and I woke up in a very unpleasant, very unexpected world on November 3rd. But if the painful and overwhelming Republican victory convinces them of their own immortal majority (as we can only pray,) we can capitalize on this by talking about our values.

We can go out into the blue states and talk about real values, the kind of values that make you put health care, education and socially conscious tax breaks first. And go after the people who claim to protect family values by promoting hate. By aligning themselves with the evil, ultra-Christian right and putting anti-gay referendums on the ballot, the Republican Party will pay among moderate voters if we make them.

If we go out there without fear, to talk about our values- and move past the smokescreens of abortion and gay rights, to the commitments that motivate the Democratic social consciousness- we'll be in the right place. Many moderate and conservative voters will already be drifting left, away from the firm Republican refusal to acknowledge the obvious.

You might have noticed I'm shooting for 2006, not 2008. I don't believe that a ruling party needs to have their man in the White House. I think that, if we can mobilize the Democratic base in 2006, we can halt the neoconservative Bush agenda in its tracks, stop the hemhorraging of international faith in America, and begin to bring the country back into the 21st century. And an arrogant Republican majority might do a lot of the work for us.

So Newt's right- an honest assessment of the Republican Party, by Republicans, would make them significantly tougher to beat. (Even if they pretended to apologize for the disasters they've caused, it would be bad.) But that probably won't happen. They won. Why admit weakness? In the meantime, we need to exploit this by taking our values on the road, into Red America.

We can take back the halls of Congress, but more importantly, we can demonstrate that the Democratic Party is fighting for the future of this country- and renew our own faith in that future.

The Welcome-To-Canada Party

2004-11-06T16:36:00.000-05:00

I really like the apartment building I live in, not only because it's reasonably well-maintained and comfortable, but also because it provides me entertainment on the weekends. The damage done to the hallway areas is like a drive-through version of CSI- you can figure out which drunk broke what, just by walking by. My favorite discovery this morning was the broken lamp and the eviscerated chest of drawers, which some drunken genius had decided to perpetrate directly in the view of the security cameras.

One of the smaller clues about last night was one of the typical party flyers you find around every college campus, which I found on the floor of the elevator. Since I read everything (I mean everything- it drives my brother nuts) I picked it up, and found that the front cover of the flyer featured a now-famous cartoon of the political leanings of North America. (It's available here: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04485.html.) The title read, "Screw it, we're out!!!!" and below, with a time and address, the flyer advertised the "Welcome To Canada Party."

I regretted missing it, because the idea of a bunch of liberal Maryland college students dressed up in flannel, drinking Molsen Golden and saying "Eh" sounded like a lot of fun. On second thought, I doubt anyone would have gotten into costume except me. But regardless. I did wish I'd been able to witness the shindig itself. It probably would have been reminiscent of a tongue-in-cheek article I read, describing how Canadian immigration authorities had been flooded with 55 million telephone requests for citizenship, most of them sobbing incoherently.

I wanted to flee the country as much as the next guy when we found out that Ohio had gone red. Personally, I wanted to go to Ireland, because they'd recognize my EMT certification and the beer was better. The leaving-the-country jokes were a morning-after coping mechanism, a way of reassuring ourselves that it was only our country that was crazy. But it keeps going. The Canadian immigration page, I'm told, had its biggest day ever on Wednesday. I've heard of at least three people around here who are actually trying to transfer to college in Canada. It's becoming an assumption among the left that our country is now occupied territory.

This crap has got to stop.

The appeal of leaving Jesusland for Canada is that, in our minds, we know that the rest of the world doesn't conform to the anti-abortion, fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that's marching on Washington. And I understand that very few people actually want to leave the country. We know it, and any semi-intelligent conservative knows it, too. But even the casual references to leaving are killing the credibility of the left.

One of the Bush administration's favorite digs at the left is to claim that we don't really love our country; that the liberal ability to recognize and address the glaring problems in American society reveals some kind of deep-seated distaste for the country and its heritage. This is ridiculous- we know it, and they know it. We love America, and so do they. The fundamental difference is how we love America.

Al Franken once said that conservatives love their country like a six-year-old loves their favorite athlete or movie star; they idolize and blindly worship, throwing a temper tantrum whenever anyone points out that the object of their affection might not be completely perfect. Liberals love this country like husbands and wives love each other; the succesful ones aren't squeamish about identifying the other's strengths and weaknesses, and since they love each other, and want the relationship to last, they work through the good times and the bad.

Think of the message we're sending. Conservatives already love to assail the left on charges of disloyalty to America, and being soft on defense. And now we're acting like a bunch of spoiled children. We didn't get our way, so we're throwing a temper tantrum and talking about running away where the people will understand us, and love us for who we are. If I were Ed Gillespie, I would be doing the Conservative Happy Dance right now, because the left would be doing my job for me. If you talk about leaving the country, you're handing over one more victory to the elected representatives of Jesusland.

So even if you're kidding, for crying out loud, put a sock in it. It undermines the liberal commitment to make America stronger and smarter, regardless of the fight some of our fellow citizens put up. Think about it. The motivation behind the Republican platform is to scare people into voting for them. Scared of a mythical gay threat to straight families. Scared of abortion clinics, even though they'll never see one. Scared of terrorism, even though the sparsely-populated, rural Red States probably aren't too high on Osama's hit list. The Republican agenda is pushing the country back to the 1950s, but the only way it'll work is if we let it.

At this point, I'm just preaching, and so I'll step down from the soapbox for the moment. But 56 million of us voted against the fundamentalist, conservative agenda, and goddammit, it's our country, too.

The Ghost of Daschle and the Demons of Newt

2004-11-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

What were you worrying about ten years ago? Think back to what your problems were. For me, they had a lot to do with math. I was in Mr. Hughes' homeroom class, and though grades weren't a huge priority yet, it was pretty obvious that I was sucking it up when it came to basic algebra. Girls were barely even on the horizon (which was what happened when you went to an all-boy's middle school.) When you weren't even old enough to see an R-rated movie without your parents, the political realities of the world you lived in weren't very, well...real.

But ten years ago, something very bad was happening for Democrats across the country. The Democratic President was mired down in Watergate and Troopergate. The Republican minority had engineered a furious and resounding defeat of the Clinton health care plan. And the election of 1994 had been the worst defeat for the Democrats in 40 years. All this helped to propel a white-haired guy from Atlanta with a funny name to the forefront of American politics. The Gingrich Revolution was on, the Contract With America was rapidly being enforced, and things looked supremely bad.

(A side comment about that chart-topping masterpiece of conservative crap. The titles are amazing. The "National Security Restoration Act" actually helped piss off our allies, and the "Senior Citizen Fairness Act" did great things for forcing the elderly to work until age 70. Whoever came up these deceptive and disingenous nicknames is clearly still employed by the Republican Party, however. "No Child Left Behind," anyone?)

The situation is not the same as it is right now- it's clearly worse. We elected a Democratic President in 1992, and in 2004 we have a President who wasn't even democratically elected (at least the first time around.) But the wild-eyed Republican determination to mold the country in their image (even though this image in 2004 is far more terrifying than that of a decade ago) is the same. And that's a blessing in disguise.

Oklahoma elected a Senator who supports the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and decried "rampant lesbianism" in public schools. South Carolina's new Senator doesn't think that homosexuals or unmarried pregnant women should be allowed to teach. And President-re-elect Bush (who, among a myriad of other reasons I hate him, wants to cripple and eventually destroy stem-cell research) has stated as of today that he has accumulated "political capital," and "intends to use it."

Of course he does, and of course they do. Every political party that gallops into the majority and promotes a reactionary agenda, will implode. Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America had their day, culminating in the glory days of 1995, where a bunch of conservatives shut down the government just because they could. And because that Clinton dude pissed them off. Within a year, Newt Gingrich had become symbolic of the same stagnant political system he had galloped into Washington to supposedly defeat. 60% of Americans had a negative impression of the Speaker. The Republican cheese, hand-delivered to the American kitchen by Newt, had gone decidedly stinky.

The unpleasant and depressing victory of the Republican Party in 2004 no more represents a sea change in American values than it did in 1994, or, for that matter, 1982. Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill, a massive figure (in every sense) who I miss terribly in this age of revolving-door Congressional Democratic leadership, was disgusted with the tax plans and social security cuts proposed by the popular Republican President. And though he theoretically had a majority, conservative Democrats split the party vote and left O'Neill in the minority. But instead of wasting political capital, O'Neill, a crafty Irish politician of the old school, simply smiled at his lieutenants and said, "Give him rope." And he did- just enough rope to let Reagan craft the epic disaster we call Reaganomics.

Our government is currently controlled by the most reactionary, fundamentalist administration in history. And, by their own account, they are hell-bent on imposing their agenda on the rest of the country- just like ten years ago. We should realize that this administration is tearing down a path which was cleared by Gingrich, a path which leads them straight over the same cliff. We can acknowledge that we have been forced to retreat, but we must never consider surrender. We should not give them the opportunity to make us backpedal on the liberal principles which are going to move this country forward. In fact, we should give them only one thing.

Rope.

Coalition Governments and the Tent

2004-11-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

In the parliamentary system, the two-party system is a little different; there is a government, and an opposition. Since, in the European political tradition, there tend to be a lot more political parties running around, they all have candidates for representative office. Once they get elected, it's pretty obvious that hundreds of parliamentarians and dozens of political parties aren't going to get along. So they form a government- the parties with the most in common, will team up to create a majority, and the ones who don't join, form the opposition.

Though this sounds foreign, we used to do it in this country, and the Democrats used to be damn good at it. When we got the different voter groups- the middle-class suburbanites, the urban poor, the rural poor- and got them under one big umbrella, things got done. Remember the 1960s? JFK's Democratic party was still heavily supported by the Southern Democrats. (You may remember those guys from such memorable historical moments as, the Civil War, and, Reconstruction.) Though the Dixiecrats jumped ship, and local heroes such as George Wallace weren't known for their support of the civil rights movement or the Great Society, they didn't call it the Solid South for nothing. Up until the late 1960s, the South was one big Democratic stronghold.

How was that possible? Was every Southern Democrat related to our own Zell Miller of today? I don't think so. The tent was big enough for everybody. The fact was that, though the people of the 1960s South didn't always see eye-to-eye with their President on some emotional and relevant issues, they knew that the domestic, social policies of JFK and Johnson were the right thing for them, and for the rest of the country.

The Democrats are collapsing across the country in 2004, and it's for two reasons, both involving the allegorical "tent." The first is that the Republican tent is getting bigger and bigger. Constituencies that used to be solidly Democratic are vulnerable to one of the many Republican messages. We'll start with well-educated, white-collar, middle-class suburban voters. These have been a swing population for both parties in the last decade, but they're slipping further and further to the Republican column, because the Republican party has done an excellent job of redefining the debate. Democratic policies appeal to doing what's right; Republican policies appeal to doing what's right for you.

George Bush was able to gain access to this voter group- which, I'm relatively certain, would have completely ignored him otherwise- through the post-9/11, war-on-terror, world-is-safer-after-Saddam scare tactics. But once he got through to them, he was able to deliver a much more appealing message; it's okay to vote your pocketbook instead of your conscience. When you convince a large voter group that a vote for you is a vote for Number 1, the underprivileged in society are not going to be having a good day. Or a good four years, rather.

The second reason the Democrats are collapsing, is also a "tent" reason. The Republican tent isn't just getting bigger- they're building it differently. It's what gave Bush his win last night. Ever since the late 1970s, the Republican Party has been able to skillfully shift the debate in rural America- the South, the Midwest, the western Plains states. Instead of talking about relevant issues- tax cuts targeted at the working class, serious reform and funding for education, and health care- the Republican Party focuses instead on morals.

What do they mean by morals? Something like 81% of Bush voters listed it as their highest priority. They want their candidate to share their moral perspective- to believe in the things they believe in, and to occasionally act on those beliefs. "I don't believe in gay marriage or abortion, and I'm Christian. Hey, so's my President!" It sounds reassuring, but if you're a poor, rural voter, it's the most articulate lie you'll ever hear, because, once you vote on your "morals," you are unwittingly joining someone else's coalition government.

The Republican Party has managed to become the new coalition government in America; a massive assemblage of poor, rural Americans largely concerned with preserving their moral values, and a smaller, more powerful group of wealthy citizens concerned with preserving that wealth. And they have everything to gain from each other.

Since Republicans have successfully made desperately-needed social programs seem like liberal, big-government intrusions to rural voters, they don't need to spend much money to ensure their support. Supporting a gay marriage amendment, violently condemning abortion, or excoriating the feminist movement don't cost anything. Instead of doing the right thing for your constituents (like securing health care and education) you can just paint yourself as morally principled, and then pack your bags for Washington.

And, if you're a wealthy Republican who wants to make sure his friends remain wealthy Republicans, all you have to do is espouse reactionary moral positions, and keep taxpayer money going to special interests. If you cut social programs, there is more money to cut taxes, and keep Republican special interests flush with cash. Hell, you can even call this a smart economic move, because there will be plenty of economists at the Weekly Standard to provide sound bites that making the rich, richer, is good for America. Somehow, the failure of Reaganomics didn't kill these people. Don't ask me why.

So, to recap. Poor, rural voters want their politicians to "share their moral values," and since last I checked, speeches on moral values didn't cost money, Republican politicans are happy to oblige. As long as those politicians convince them that the help the government could provide with health care, education and job training is actually an intrusive liberal boondoggle, they won't have to spend very much money on those rural voters. This maintains wealthy-voter loyalty.

The problem is not that the rest of the country is insane, though it sure seems like it. The problem is that the Republican Party builds better coalitions in 2004, than the Democrats do. The tragedy is that in the last 25 years, the rich, overwhelmingly-white base of the Republican Party has managed to distract rural, poor voters with meaningless non-issues. (How many Alabama Christians are going to ever see an openly gay person, or have an abortion themselves?)

They've built themselves one hell of a coalition, all right. The inclusiveness of their “big tent” is dependent upon brainwashing the American heartland, and it looks like that tent isn't coming down for a while.

Last Night's Blow-By-Blow

2004-11-03T16:43:00.001-05:00

I never figured I'd start one of these things until I woke up this morning, in a country that had just re-elected George W. Bush, and had entirely too much I wanted to talk about.

I'm a dedicated Red Sox fan- it even comes through in the title of this site, which you may recognize if you waste your time reading a lot of baseball postings. And last night started out like a playoff game- a big, long playoff game, with 20 minutes between each inning and Wolf Blitzer talking to Larry King about God knows what. Neither of them had anything substantive to discuss, but somehow, they kept talking.

So, like a playoff game, it began in pleasant, celebratory fashion. I sat there with a bunch of my friends, eating pizza and agonizing every time Wolf Blitzer ran over to the CNN Projection Screen (you could hear the capital letters and bold face in his voice) and announced, in grandiose terms, that Kentucky had most certainly gone for Bush! And Vermont! This just in! Vermont's four people and 19 cows had definitely endorsed Kerry!

There was never a moment where I felt like things were going well; they just seemed to be a different shade of crappy. It wasn't that Florida and Ohio took until 4 a.m. to figure out who they were voting for; it was just that all the other states that were "in play" (more sports metaphors) seemed to be drifting into that sickeningly red column.

Jon Stewart was a momentary bright spot. The Daily Show has a remarkable capacity to cheer you up, or, in this case, make you grin halfheartedly as the tide of impending doom starts lapping around your toes. He was clearly as disgusted as the rest of us when the ugly numbers came in on gay-marriage referendums, and issued perhaps the most eloquent line of the night; "America is looking more and more like it did in a dream I had. A dream in which I wake up crying..."

After the Daily Show, however, life began to feel a lot more like it did during Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. People moved away from the TV, unable to bear witness to the blossoming horror. I didn't watch Die Hard 3 this time- and this time, there was no Game 4 to be played the next day, and no team of happy idiots to pull out the miraculous victory. This was it.

By 11:30, it was clear that Ohio was the only possible way John Kerry could win, and that hope was fading in slow, agonizing fashion. My girlfriend and I were alone with the TV, so we left her apartment to walk around the streets and try to understand how the country could actually re-elect George Bush. We meandered around a bit more, played video games and eventually fell asleep.

It felt like a different world when I left my apartment this morning. 95% of my friends have already commented to me that they're going to leave the country. Canada is the leader right now, with England right behind and Ireland pulling up a surprisingly close third.

The reason I'm starting this site is because I'm in the same boat as them- I want to leave any country that would re-elect George Bush- but on the other hand, it's still my country. And I think that if it could make a decision as horrendous as the one last night and surprise me by doing it, then I don't- and a lot of those on the left with me don't- fully comprehend the enormity of what the hell is going on in America right now.