Giulani-Soprano
Romney-Haggard
McCain-Dracula
Huckabee-Fife (Barney)
Tancredo-Marilyn Manson
Democrats
Clinton-Clinton (who do you think will actually be VP, anyway?)
Obama-Erkel
Edwards-Vigoda (Beauty and the Beast)
Kucinich-Chomsky
Gravel-Stockdale ("He could still suprise ya!")
Richardson-Smits
Biden-Your High School Principal
Did I miss anyone? Oh well.
Happy Holidays.
And please, God, let us stop hearing about Iowa. I mean, it's Iowa!
"Everywhere today," Lippmann wrote in Liberty and the News, "men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise."
Lippmann had witnessed firsthand how the "manufacture of consent" had deranged democracy. But he did not hold those in government solely responsible. He also described how the press corps was carried away on the wave of patriotism and became self-censors, enforcers, and sheer propagandists. Their careerism, cynicism, and error made them destroyers of "liberty of opinion" and agents of intolerance, who subverted the American constitutional system of self-government. Even the great newspaper owners, he wrote, "believe that edification is more important than veracity. They believe it profoundly, violently, relentlessly. They preen themselves upon it. To patriotism, as they define it from day to day, all other considerations must yield. That is their pride. And yet what is this but one more among myriad examples of the doctrine that the end justifies the means? A more insidiously misleading rule of conduct was, I believe, never devised among men."
Kristol has indeed been so consistently wrong that one can safely discount his current euphoria on the principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day....But on the other hand, it turns out that anyone who wanted to understand Washington and Iraq during the last four years should have been reading Kristol. In detailing the arguments raging in Washington-arguments in which he has emerged as one of the victors-he was way ahead of me, and of just about anyone else that I can remember. The man may be an ideologue who has been repeatedly wrong, but he's well-connected and very much in tune with President Bush, and during the last four years he has triumphed over his enemies in the bureaucracy and the older generation-leaving the American people, of course, stuck with the bill.
New book: The Conscience of a Liberal... the most meta-level of all political economy arguments is the one that says that transient shifts in political direction don't really make that much of a difference to fundamental long-range changes in things like inequality. To this school, the rise and fall of inequality in the United States is like plate tectonics -- you can observe it, and try to understand it, but you can't actually do much about it.
To which Krugman convincingly says: Hogwash. The gross inequality of the Gilded Age that led up to the Great Depression morphed into a stunningly middle-class economy because of concrete initiatives forced through via Roosevelt's New Deal. The growing inequality of the past 30 years is directly attributable to policies enacted by the conservatives who first broke through with Ronald Reagan and reached their apogee with George W. Bush.Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be created through political action.
The corollary is that they can also be destroyed.
Beyond the blunt, crude fact that America is getting less white, there's a more uplifting reason to believe that the political exploitation of race may be losing its force: As a nation we've become much less racist. The most dramatic evidence of diminishing racism is the way people respond to questions about a subject that once struck terror into white hearts: miscegenation. In 1978, as the ascent of movement conservatism to power was just beginning, only 36 percent of Americans polled by Gallup approved of marriages between whites and blacks, while 54 percent disapproved. As late as 1991 only a plurality of 48 percent approved. By 2002, however, 65 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriages; by June 2007, that was up to 77 percent.
Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America's recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he "never laid hands on anyone" in his many interrogations, adding, "I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It's up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war's last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country's good name.
I have no idea what he will do, but I think it's clear he should run.
There are several reasons.
First, there is no more powerful position to advance nearly any political agenda than the White House. As a public figure, Gore may grab the media's attention or they may tire of him. As president, he has the spotlight every day. Will people stop saying that "he can do more as a public figure"? That is pure B.S.
Second, many of the obstacles in the environmental movement have come from America's inability or unwillingness to sign on to international treaties, push for more regulation of CAFE standards, clean air, water, mercury, forest, mining, and other industries. For God's sake, the country has been in the hands of lobbyists for six years. Could there be a more important moment to get Gore in the White House and Robert Kennedy Jr. in the Cabinet? Seriously.
Third, it's not too late. He has enormous name recognition, big money connections, and now a slew of awards that guarantee that his intellect is listened to.
Finally, why not try now? He's young, still, and his fame can't get any greater. I could see Richardson as the running mate--a Hispanic with enormous international diplomacy credentials.
Do you have the stones, Al?
“If you know some key variables—like the major objective, the nature of the target, whether there’s going to be another strong state that will intervene on the side of the target and whether you’ll have an ally—you can get a sense of your probability of victory,” said Sullivan, whose study appears in the Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Sullivan said the most important factor influencing whether the more powerful nation will be successful is whether its strategic objective can be accomplished with brute force alone or requires the cooperation of the adversary.
Sullivan said several factors contribute to the relatively low probability of success in the current Iraq war. Most importantly, the objective requires the support of the population and can’t be accomplished by force alone. Factional infighting, the insurgency and possible insurgent support by countries such as Iran and Syria further undermine the chance of success.
“No one could have predicted exactly what would happen after we overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Sullivan said. “But what my model could say was that if the population was not supportive of whatever new regime we put in power and the American strategic objective shifted from regime removal to maintaining the authority of a new government, the likelihood of a successful outcome would drop from almost 70 percent to just under 26 percent.”
Just in case anyone was confused.
Now that the dust has settled on the Congressional vote on the supplemental appropriations bill and on the ruckus that anti-war opponents of the bill kicked up, it's time to assess the political implications.
First, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill played the issue like a Stradivarius. They forced a vote on a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, putting Republicans on record supporting the status quo and President Bush, but allowed a subsequent vote to "fund the troops." That gave their own Members from swing districts the opportunity to demonstrate their support for the military.
From a purely political point of view, Democrats had their cake and ate it too. Yes, the war is unpopular, and opposing it is a no-brainer. But the one thing Democrats need to avoid is looking like themselves during the 1970s and 1980s--weak and unwilling to support America's men and women in uniform...
So, in ignoring the demands of the party's left, Congressional leaders have kept their party right where they want it--against the war but also against terrorists and for the troops...
Why take a chance alienating swing voters when the party already made its point by sending the president a deadline bill that he vetoed?
What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?
I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there—ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists. [...]
We are taking too much counsel of our fears.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t a terrorist threat. There is a threat. And we should send in military forces when we have a target to deal with. We should also secure our airports, if that makes us safer. But let’s welcome every foreign student we can get our hands on. Let’s make sure that foreigners come to the Mayo Clinic here, and not the Mayo facility in Dubai or somewhere else. Let’s make sure people come to Disney World and not throw them up against the wall in Orlando simply because they have a Muslim name. Let’s also remember that this country was created by immigrants and thrives as a result of immigration, and we need a sound immigration policy.
Let’s show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That’s why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It’s so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we’re worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.
You can drive up the road from here and come to a spot where there is a megachurch over here, a little Episcopal church over there, a Catholic church around the corner that’s almost cathedral-size, and between them is a huge Hindu temple. There are no police needed to guard any of this. There are not many places in the world where you would see that. Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn’t do it to ourselves, and we shouldn’t use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.
You can surge all of the American troops you want, but they can’t stop this. Suppose I’m a battalion commander. My troops ask, "What do I do today, boss?" "Let’s go fight the Shia militias!" "What do I do tomorrow?" "Let’s go fight the Sunni insurgents!" "What do I do the day after tomorrow?" "Let’s go chase Al Qaeda!" "What do we do the day after that?" "We’re going to guard streets!" Our kids are fantastic. But this is not sustainable. Our surge can work only with an Iraqi political and military surge.
A crisis like the current credit crunch presents a political leader with a range of options. One can say that the banks, backstopped by the Federal Reserve, will sort things out--which with minor modifications remains the president's position. One can go further and note that the imbroglio in which markets now have us immersed results from a lack of regulation, and that reforms will prevent the problem from recurring--which was the position Barack Obama took in a Financial Times op-ed last week. Or a leader can go further still and urge us to ask whether the system that got us here truly reflects our values. Of all the Democratic presidential candidates, John Edwards is the one taking this approach, examining the gap between our core values and our actual practices.
According to a recent Time profile of Edwards, his advisor Joe Trippi tells reporters Edwards is running a "transformational" rather than a "transactional" campaign.
Burns's transformational leader recognizes "that, whatever the separate interests persons might hold, they are presently or potentially united in the pursuit of 'higher' goals." This is the point of Edwards's "One America" trope. By drawing a distinction between "resigning ourselves to Two Americas or fighting for the One America we all believe in," he's drawing as explicit a distinction between transactional leadership and transformational leadership as a candidate can, saying we can accept what we have and fix it at the margins, or try for what we really want.
not selling a product to the public, but letting the public see plainly what it really wants. Edwards has organized his whole campaign around this principle. Betting that the current crisis--not just the credit debacle, but the mess in which the country finds itself at home and abroad, the unending legacy of Katrina and Iraq--amounts to a true opportunity for transformational leadership, he's trying to shift the debate away from procedure and toward ultimate goals. And it's a good bet to take. As in the civil rights era, we've reached a point where it will take more than a technical fix to right the system. Like Johnson, though, he's still going to need calculation, patience, and the cooperation of events if he wants Americans to agree.
The reality is that the Republicans told the American public a pack of lies to start an aggressive and illegal war of choice. Then they botched the job in every way imaginable, making sure that what was already likely to be a disaster would certainly become one. Now they are deliberately prolonging their folly, jacking up the costs in blood and treasure, all in a desperate effort to avoid paying the political price for admitting their failure. A moment’s reflection makes it perfectly clear why. The Republican Party can survive losing the war in Iraq. They cannot survive getting blamed for it.
I posed this question to a few political operative friends of mine, at least two of whom are Republicans, at lunch. “If the idea that the Republicans cannot be trusted with matters of National Security hardens into conventional wisdom, how exactly does the Republican Party ever win another national election?” There was no dissent. If the Republicans lose their edge on national security, the federal government is going to look like it did during the Roosevelt era for a decade, maybe two.
Karl Rove Republicans know this. They realize they cannot lose the war in Iraq and remain politically viable. They also realize that we are long past the time that anything that looks like a “victory” is going to be salvaged from the sands of Mesopotamia. So the battle is now over who is going to take the blame for the inevitable loss. And, as usual, the Republicans are playing three dimensional chess with lasers while the Democrats are pushing wooden checker pieces around the wrong board.
If the Democratic leadership could look further than five minutes ahead, they wouldn’t argue that the war is already lost (even though it is). They wouldn’t argue that that the military isn’t making any real progress in Iraq (even though they aren’t). Nor would they argue that Bush and the Republicans are only prolonging the war so they can pass it on to Bush’s successor (even though they are).
Instead, Democrats should repeat into the camera at every single opportunity that the Bush administration’s sole strategic objective in continuing the war in Iraq is to avoid being blamed for losing it. By putting it this way, even the American public will understand what is going on. And when the time comes to pay the political price for this awful mess, the Republicans won’t be able to pass the bill on to someone else.
For Texas Monthly and GQ, I've profiled pedophiles, stalkers, serial rapists, prison gang members, and corrupt politicians. I didn't find it difficult to suspend judgment about President Bush and take him on his own terms."
One final upper-class trait completes the picture: the "do as you please, devil may care" mentality, expressing total indifference to the idea of personal responsibility. The next president, regardless of party, could do something about that deficiency by announcing on Jan. 20, 2009, that Bush has been appointed as the "war czar" for Iraq and Afghanistan.
These brutal conflicts are "Bush's Tar Baby," and he should not be allowed simply to wash his hands of them and just head for the Crawford ranch — in the manner of Tom and Daisy at the end of "The Great Gatsby": "They smashed things up and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness ... and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Otherwise, a simple epigrammatic phrase, so far unknown to Google, may sum up the verdict of history: "overborn and underbred."
Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?
His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.
Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifry to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.
EPISODE 1: 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM
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Int. CTU - day
JACK BAUER talks to JANIS GOLD.
JANIS GOLD
Our source tells us that the terrorists' plan is blow up Broward Dam. This would create mass flooding, cut power to the entire state, and destroy the habitat of the tidewater goby.
JACK BAUER
Dammit! Without that goby, what will our local heron population eat?
JANIS GOLD
Try not to think about that.
JACK BAUER
I can't help it! Every link in the food chain matters!
Jack punches his hand through a wall.
JACK BAUER (CONT'D)
Chloe, get me a schematic of the dam's facilities.
CHLOE O'BRIAN
I'm on it. Let me power up my computer.
Chloe mounts an exercise bike connected to a power generator into which her computer is plugged. She pedals furiously. Her computer slowly boots up.
JANIS GOLD
We don't have much time, Chloe! Pedal harder!
Chloe pedals harder.
JANIS GOLD (CONT'D)
(to Jack, proudly) Did you know that just ten minutes of pedaling powers her computer for an hour?
CHLOE O'BRIAN
Not to mention burns calories and improves my heart health.
Jack nods, impressed and a little inspired.
Int. Dam control room - day
A DAM WORKER, soaking wet, is being held down by two LACKEYS. TERRORIST #1 enters.
TERRORIST #1
Has the American told us how to disable the safety override?
LACKEY #1
He won't talk.
TERRORIST #1
Continue the waterboarding.
The lackeys move to shove the dam worker's head into a tub of water. He struggles.
DAM WORKER
Please, please! Wait!
TERRORIST #1
Yes?
DAM WORKER
Are you gonna just dump this water after you torture me?
TERRORIST #1
Of course not. We have an extensive grey water system. The water will be fed to the shrubbery back at the hideout.
DAM WORKER
Okay, great. Carry on.
The lackeys hold the dam worker's head underwater. He struggles violently. After a few seconds, he is pulled up.
DAM WORKER (CONT'D)
(gasping) Cuz we only have one Earth, you know?
The terrorists murmur their agreement. The lackeys hold the dam worker under again. He flashes the thumbs-up.
the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal — “you just go to an emergency room” — but the reality is that if you’re uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.
Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was “pleased” with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!
Bush did not create the partisan split in America; he inherited it, just as Al Gore would have if he had won the supreme court case in 2000. But while the split was broad (the difference was less than 5% in 13 states from New Mexico to New Hampshire), it was Bush who made it deep and rancorous.
For unlike Thatcher or Reagan he sought to achieve his ends not by exploiting division in order to forge a new, more rightwing consensus but rather to exploit new divisions in order to crush a growing consensus. The majority of the country was, for example, pro-choice and in favour of granting equal rights to gay couples in almost all areas. So the Bush administration chose to leverage gay marriage and late-term abortion - two issues that could act as a wedge - to rally his base. Crude in execution and majoritarian in impulse, it sought not to win over new converts but simply to mobilise dormant constituencies. His legacy will be rightwing policies - but not a more rightwing political culture.
There is even talk that Republicans might not invite Bush to their convention. "If they're smart, no," the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio told Newsweek. "Especially if things don't change in Iraq, we'll have the problem the Democrats had in 1968 with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. The question becomes: where do we hide the president?"
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include - without court approval - certain types of physical searches of American citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.
The Texas Freedom Network (TFN) on Tuesday revealed a side of “intelligent design” proponents rarely seen by the public at large. The group released a transcript and recording of an extraordinarily candid speech given in 2005 by recently named State Board of Education Chairman Ron McLeroy.
He went on, condemning other Christian board members for not following his lead.
“Modern science today,” McLeroy complained, “is totally based on naturalism,” thus “it is the naturalistic base that is [our] target.”
The remainder of McLeroy’s speech focused on strategy. He quoted fondly from Phillip Johnson’s “Wedge Document,” which has as its purpose to “defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies” and “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”
The second step, he said, is to point out that evolution wrongly depends on “naturalism;” that supernaturalism or divine influences are unfairly excluded from the conversation. Finally, forget the scientists and target people without a firm grasp on evolutionary theory.
McLeroy lamented the fact that he failed to convince fellow board members that “are good, strong Christians” to see it his way in 2003. Even though they were active in church, he said, they didn’t even care that evolution conflicted with their Christian worldview. He was sure he would have gotten a few more votes if he’d just mentioned evolution ignores God.
So, step one: lie about your motives; step two: change the definition of science; step three: target the most impressionable among you.
McLeroy’s perspective is incredibly dangerous. His effort to replace science with theology has implications not just for
TFN’s press release noted that the 2006 school board elections shifted the balance of power, giving McLeroy and his allies a slim majority. The board is slated to revise science standards this school year.
