That's what Rich Proctor is suggesting. I think I can easily get behind most of them, but I absolutely disagree with the first one:
1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: "A balanced budget amendment to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses."
Thanks, Newtie. This is a proposal whose time has clearly come, with the wildly irresponsible Republican wastrels approving billions in new spending even as they destroy America's ability to raise money with insane "breaks for billionaires" tax cuts.
Sure, the Republicans are going to say, "Gosh, we can't have another tax cut, or we'll have to reduce services to children, old people, and the poor." Yeah, right. Might as well call it "The Kill Social Security at Last Act." Sure, Rich wants to include Social Security in the guarantees of this Contract, but since even the Constitution itself doesn't stop these people, I don't see why anything else would.
Besides, it's the job of Congress to decide when we need to run over budget - and sometimes we may really need to. I don't want to let them off the hook that easy.
Attorney General John Ashcroft believes the press needs to do a better job explaining the USA Patriot Act to the American people. [...] Americans have no need to worry that their freedoms are being eroded, or so Ashcroft believes. But an honest explanation of the Patriot Act and post-Sept. 11 law enforcement tells a different story.
Both current law under Patriot and the proposed Patriot III are explained simply enough that even Ashcroft can understand them.
Or, at least, Christ doesn't keep people from returning to prison. Mark Kleiman has an interesting post on how studies are spun. A study found that attendees of a special prison program for born-again Christian prisoners were a bit more likely to wind up back in prison than a control group which did not attend the program.
However, the folks who run the program have managed to spin this into saying that folks who take their program do much better than those who don't. Neat trick. Consult Mark's blog for the details.
Also consult it for some vigorous criticism. 21:58 BST
MoveOn Primary
I haven't said much about this, but just FYI, here are the results:
Okay, it's only a bit over 300,000 people, and it was conducted entirely online, but it tells you a lot about where the fire is burning - and it sure ain't under Lieberman. Nathan Newman observes that just about everyone was pretty enthusiastic about Kerry as a second choice, which is definitely good news for his chances. 21:06 BST
Blogorama
If you're not worried about the economy yet, let Nathan Newman explain to you about the 401(K) problem.
In the mail, Allen Brill responds to my post about David Neiwert's article about Fascism and Fundamentalism by referring me to a post at The Right Christians: Another component of this is the Reconstructionist wing of the Christian Right. These folks want to take us back to the world of the Late Bronze and early Iron Age with laws taken from the first five books of the Bible. They claim considerable influence in the GOP, especially Tom DeLay. See [link].
Cowboy Kahlil says: The viciousness of the current Republican extremism cannot be repulsed by squishy centrism that abandons the lower middle classes and those marginalized by race, gender, sexual preference, neglect of political commitment to fair educational opportunities, and exported corporatism promoting the cause of underpaid labor. Centrist positions are the end results of negotiation and compromise. If you begin at the center with the Republicans at the extreme Right, the end result will be much further right than can be healthy for all but the privileged few.
From Doug Hamlin: Under the Supreme Court ruling, awarding "extra" points to whites is okay while awarding "extra" points to minorities is illegal. So, the Michigan selection index, after Monday’s ruling, amounts to nothing more than affirmative action for whites. 13:00 BST
Sunday, 29 June 2003
Hate speech
"The attitude (among lawmakers) is castrate them, poke their eyes out, whatever you do, it's OK, because they're sex offenders," said Fred McCaw, president of Iowa's district attorney association, to the Los Angeles Times. "But this law protects nobody."
The law in question is a "safety zone" requirement that prevents any sex offender who has returned to society from living within 1,000 feet of a school or day-care center. In Iowa, that leaves them almost no place to live. 23:29 BST
Riley won the office by campaigning in the GOP’s autopilot mode: Cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes. But once he got into the governor’s mansion and took a look at the books, he realized he would instead have to raise taxes. His own party wouldn’t be of any help, but Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature after all.
Only now it looks as if they’re not going to help him either, and all because he can’t bear the thought of blacks voting. No Republican can forget (and no Democrat should) that Gore would be president today if Jeb Bush hadn’t illegally purged thousands of blacks from the voting rolls.
And so:
On Tuesday, Mr. Riley vetoed the prize legislation of the Legislature's Black Caucus, a long-sought bill that would have eased the restitution of voting rights to felons who have served their sentences. Now, black lawmakers are threatening to abandon Mr. Riley's tax plan in retaliation.
The governor argued that keeping felons from the polls after they had completed their punishment was racially neutral because "Over the last four years, those convicted of felonies in Alabama were almost statistically evenly divided by race. Fifty-four percent were African-American, and 45 percent were white."
That's a knee-slapper. Who thinks 54% of Alabamans are black? Who thinks cops are as likely to trawl white neighborhoods looking for drugs? Yeah, that's racially neutral. 20:48 BST
The one-party state
K Street is where the lobbyists hang out. Lobbyists for corporations and business groups used to be from all over the chart, but the Republicans are sewing them up. Here's Nicholas Confessore, in The Washington Monthly:
When presidents pick someone to fill a job in the government, it's typically a very public affair. The White House circulates press releases and background materials. Congress holds a hearing, where some members will pepper the nominee with questions and others will shower him or her with praise. If the person in question is controversial or up for an important position, they'll rate a profile or two in the papers. But there's one confirmation hearing you won't hear much about. It's convened every Tuesday morning by Rick Santorum, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, in the privacy of a Capitol Hill conference room, for a handpicked group of two dozen or so Republican lobbyists. Occasionally, one or two other senators or a representative from the White House will attend. Democrats are not invited, and neither is the press.
The chief purpose of these gatherings is to discuss jobs--specifically, the top one or two positions at the biggest and most important industry trade associations and corporate offices centered around Washington's K Street, a canyon of nondescript office buildings a few blocks north of the White House that is to influence-peddling what Wall Street is to finance. In the past, those people were about as likely to be Democrats as Republicans, a practice that ensured K Street firms would have clout no matter which party was in power. But beginning with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and accelerating in 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the GOP has made a determined effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street. And Santorum's Tuesday meetings are a crucial part of that effort. Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum's responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican--a senator's chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated. After Santorum settles on a candidate, the lobbyists present make sure it is known whom the Republican leadership favors. "The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street. Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing," says Rod Chandler, a retired congressman and lobbyist who has participated in the Santorum meetings. "It's been a very successful effort." [...] Indeed, it's striking how openly and unapologetically Bush and his party have allied themselves with corporations and the wealthy. The rhetoric of compassion aside, no one who pays attention to what goes on in Washington could have much doubt as to where the Bush administration's priorities lie. If the economy doesn't improve or unemployment continues to get worse, the GOP may find it's not such an advantage to be seen catering so enthusiastically to monied interests. But most Republicans seem confident that the strength they gain by harnessing K Street will be enough to muscle through the next election--so confident, in fact, that Bush, breaking with conventional electoral wisdom, has eschewed tacking to the political center late in his term. And if the GOP can prevail at the polls in the short term, its nascent political machine could usher in a new era of one-party government in Washington. As Republicans control more and more K Street jobs, they will reap more and more K Street money, which will help them win larger and larger majorities on the Hill. The larger the Republican majority, the less reason K Street has to hire Democratic lobbyists or contribute to the campaigns of Democratic politicians, slowly starving them of the means by which to challenge GOP rule. Already during this cycle, the Republicans' campaign committees have raised about twice as much as their Democratic counterparts. So far, the gamble appears to be paying off.
It wouldn't be the first time. A little over a century ago, William McKinley--Karl Rove's favorite president--positioned the Republican Party as a bulwark of the industrial revolution against the growing backlash from agrarian populists, led by Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The new business titans flocked to McKinley's side, providing him with an extraordinary financial advantage over Bryan. McKinley's victory in 1896 ushered in a long period of government largely by and for industry (interrupted briefly, and impermanently, by the Progressive Era). But with vast power came, inevitably, arrogance and insularity. By the 1920s, Republican rule had degenerated into corruption and open larceny--and a government that, in the face of rapidly growing inequality and fantastic concentration of wealth and opportunity among the fortunate few, resisted public pressure for reform. It took a few more years, and the Great Depression, for the other shoe to drop. But in 1932 came the landslide election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the founding of the very structure of governance today's Republicans hope to dismantle. Who knows? History may yet repeat itself.
I'm not the only one who finds this scary. Read Paul Krugman, for example:
In principle, Mexico's 1917 Constitution established a democratic political system. In practice, until very recently Mexico was a one-party state. While the ruling party employed intimidation and electoral fraud when necessary, mainly it kept control through patronage, cronyism and corruption. All powerful interest groups, including the media, were effectively part of the party's political machine.
Such systems aren't unknown here — think of Richard J. Daley's Chicago. But can it happen to the United States as a whole? A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now.
In "Welcome to the Machine," Nicholas Confessore draws together stories usually reported in isolation — from the drive to privatize Medicare, to the pro-tax-cut fliers General Motors and Verizon recently included with the dividend checks mailed to shareholders, to the pro-war rallies organized by Clear Channel radio stations. As he points out, these are symptoms of the emergence of an unprecedented national political machine, one that is well on track to establishing one-party rule in America.
It's funny how conservatives rave about the wonderful '50s and forget that one of the good things about the '50s was that we could look back at this type of government and say, "Thank god we've stopped doing that! 16:59 BST
Hmmm....
Donna Brazile has an article in the WSJ called "What Would Scoop Do? that advises Democrats on how to address the national security issue. What interested me about it was the by-line info:
Ms. Brazile, who served as the campaign manager for Gore 2000, is a political strategist and a member of the board of advisers of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank on terrorism. Mr. Bergreen served in the State Department during the Clinton administration and is the founder of Democrats for National Security.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, eh? Man, I knew there was a reason I didn't like that woman. 15:42 BST
The Daily Howler is interested in the way Bush's lying is being spun for us by the press:
Read Rosenbaum's article—and study his steps. As we'll see in the next few days, others are taking the same slick approach to this serious question.
Step 1: Set up the straw man. Instantly, Rosenbaum fashions a straw man. Here is his opening paragraph:
ROSENBAUM (pgh 1): The hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq has been fruitless. The tax cut turns out to give no break whatsoever to millions of low-income taxpayers. In the view of some Democrats, President Bush has been lying about these and other matters, the way Lyndon B. Johnson lied about Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon about Watergate and Bill Clinton about his sex life.
As Somerby points out, not a lot of actual Democrats have been coming out and using The L Word. Rosenbaum then goes on to say that Bush only "exaggerated" rather than lied; this is the morality game, of course. As I believe I've mentioned before, this confuses the question of whether we can rely on Bush to give us adequate information with whether we can judge his immortal soul. The real issue here is that, for whatever reason, Bush delivers untruths to the public that have the real effect of deceiving the governed into appearing to consent to what we do not, in fact, consent to. Whether he is a deliberate liar or simply incompetent does not invalidate the observation that he cannot be trusted.
Of course, we have the "everybody does it" ploy:
ROSENBAUM (7): Mr. Bush is not alone in selective emphasis. Robert Dallek, the presidential historian, recalled that in the 1940 election campaign, President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted he would not take America into war unless this country was attacked by a foreign power. Toward the end of the campaign, when his Republican opponent, Wendell L. Willkie, seemed to be gaining, Roosevelt simply dropped the "unless" line.
(8) When presidents are trying to make fundamental changes in national policy as Mr. Bush is, said Donald F. Kettl, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, "they've got to find a way that's powerful and persuasive and politically attractive and tap into what the public can grab."
Two interesting games: One is to compare ordinary political hedging with an outright lie on policy. Roosevelt said he wouldn't make war unless we were attacked, then he stopped phrasing it that way. This doesn't actually constitute an undertaking not to defend the United States if we were under attack, a campaign promise that would not have gone over big with the public. Roosevelt did not, in any case, initiate a war, but simply responded to the fact that war had been declared on the US.
Rosenbaum, like other Bush defenders, is also playing the "it's necessary to lie to change policy" game. This might be true if there were a larger truth that the public simply refused to believe, or to which the public would react in thoroughly counterproductive ways, but there's no evidence that this is the case. Americans want to be reasonably safe from terrorism or from outright war against us, but all the evidence says that what Bush really did was put us in greater danger than we were in before and, worse, alienate the nations that might otherwise come to our defense if such a need arose. Bush did not lie in order to protect and defend our nation and its laws as he swore to do on 20 January 2001; rather, he lied because what he planned to do was violate that oath and do something that was indefensible. He has been stomping all over the Constitution and betraying America's faith for his own ends and without regard to the reasonable desires of the citizens of our country.
In his first paragraph, Rosenbaum attempted to equalize all hedging or untruths by presidents with Bush's outrageous refusal to be honest about his policies.
But let's be perfectly clear, here: Bush has been lying in ways we have never seen before, and in some cases they must be deliberate, outright lies that he knew perfectly well could not be true. For all the claims that the untruths he utters are always someone else's fault, can anyone really believe that he is so stupid that he did not know, in the first presidential debate with Al Gore, that his claim to have been outspent by Gore in the campaign was diametrically opposed to the truth? Bush's entire campaign for the first year was based wholly on the fact that he had broken all records in fund-raising. Everyone knew those funds were coming from major corporate donors and not from "the little people". Yet Bush used the lie that Gore had received twice as much funding as he had in order to deceive the public into believing that it was Gore, and not he, who was most beholden to corporate interests.
This is very different from your standard campaign dissembling. A candidate may talk about presenting legislation that they know the public wants but that they also know (and don't say) that Congress will never pass. They may actually present such legislation. They may even fight for it. But they don't really expect it to happen, and that's something they aren't going to admit. In the end, when it fails, they can blame the other guys; the point is that they try, that they keep it in the public mind, and that no one is allowed to forget that it's an issue. If they win the election based on such "promises", at least people should be aware that it is a position the public supports, even if the other party does not. (That's the theory, of course. According to that theory, the Republicans should still be wearing the albatross after having deliberately killed the health care program Clinton had promised and that the public had endorsed.)
As for "everybody" doing it, this was legitimately a defense Democrats made of Clinton over his slutty behavior. It was legitimate because, as far as we know, most presidents have been adulterers, including during their time in office, and no president has ever been officially investigated for it. It has never been treated as worthy of that kind of attention, and generally has been off-limits. While the press may sometimes have directed questions to the White House about presidential affairs, evasions and even outright lies from the executive have been acceptable - unless it was Clinton. But both of Clinton's predecessors in office were known adulterers, and so was his opponent in the 1996 campaign. Both Reagan and Dole had ended up leaving their wives for their lovers. Bush had lied to the press when asked about his affair. None of this was ever regarded as a big enough deal to turn into a federal case, and with good reason: The simple fact is that if having sex and lying about it is the worst thing we have to worry about in a president, we're not in terribly bad shape. The problem is that the only president this was possibly true of was Clinton; in the cases of Bush and Bush, we're talking about lies that cost lives and have devastating consequences for America.
Clinton and Gore, constantly accused of being liars, were actually minimalists when it came to campaign exaggerations. Of course, most human beings are reticent to shine a spotlight on their own errors and weaknesses, and these two men were not exceptions to that rule, but we're not talking about that. When Bush doesn't want to talk much about his history as a law-breaking inebriate, that's understandable; when Bush tries to pretend he is invading a country to protect us when in fact that country poses no threat to us, and pretends he supports the public school system, a patients' bill of rights, and low taxes for ordinary working people, that's something else. He's lying about who he is and what he stands for, and the first lie was when he claimed to stand for honor and dignity in the White House. His version of "honor and dignity" has meant that if America is as good as its word, it's no good.
So let's see. Bush didn't lie, like Dems have said. No, he just exaggerated. And other presidents have done the same thing—indeed, a president has to! Finally, Rosenbaum applies the coup de grace, right at the end of his article:
ROSENBAUM (pgh 21): The question on Iraq…is whether Mr. Bush stepped across the line dividing acceptable politicking from manipulation. Some critics hold that Mr. Bush twisted intelligence to conform with his policy goals. This can probably be answered conclusively only by historians when all the evidence and consequences are known.
Did Bush "twist intelligence?" We won't know for years. Translation? Don't even ask.
Nixon's and Bush's lies are significant. We need to know what Bush's White House has been up to, just as we needed to know what Nixon and his plumbers were up to. Clinton's unwillingness to admit to his dalliance with Monica Lewinksy was not significant. It is reprehensible to pretend these are equivalent. 15:37 BST
Stuff to read
The Smirking Chimp has posted Gene Lyons' latest, Back to Basics, in which Gene discusses the recent revelation by Wesley Clark that the White House tried to press him into helping them fabricate connections between Iraq and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 ("starting immediately after 9/11"), and wonders why it isn't big news.
Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post points out that there is a big downside to bipartisanship, which can result in ugly concoctions like the prescription drug plan currently making its way through the Hill.
Epicycle has an entertaining exploration of the unfriendly relationship between Budweiser (the original) and Budweiser (the Johnny-come-lately). 02:18 BST
President Bush is probably not even aware of it, but his fundraising junkets and vacations are disrupting the lives of thousands of Americans -- including general aviation pilots such as myself -- and costing many small businesses big bucks.
Until recently, the standard radius of a "presidential movement" temporary flight restriction (TFR) was 10 nautical miles. The Secret Service and the Defense Department have increased it to 30 nautical miles. Thus the number of square miles covered by each TFR has increased from 314 to 2,827.
When the president went to Maine for Father's Day weekend [news story, June 14], the TFR affected at least 450 aircraft based at more than a dozen airports that collectively have more than 200,000 operations a year. Affected airports included Pease International, just north of Boston, and Bangor International. The TFR basically cut off the coastal corridor to general aviation traffic.
More than 20 airports are within the TFR for the president's ranch in Texas. Many of these are private strips owned by neighbors of Mr. Bush who use light aircraft to manage their livestock. If a 30-nautical-mile TFR becomes common around Camp David, it will essentially shut down Frederick Municipal Airport, the second busiest in Maryland.
Neither the Secret Service nor the Defense Department has given any justification for this change. Maybe if the president sees this letter, he'll remember that he works for the citizens whose lives he is disrupting and he will order a reinstatement of the 10-nautical-mile TFR. [David Reinhart]
Well, I'm confident that will all work out for the best. Liberals may complain that giving so much power with no transparency to people with a track record for distorting the truth for political ends may be both unwise and unAmerican, but if we'd listened to those crybabies Osama would still be on the loose and Saddam would still have his nuclear weapons. Now, in honor of Brad DeLong, I am going to bang my head against the wall.
UPDATE: After studying the sturdy state college construction of the cinderblock walls here, I have resolved instead to ponder the eternal mystery: "why we are ruled by these idiots?"
My apologies for the glitch with the June archive yesterday. Don't know what happened, there, but it was fixed when I retransmitted the page.
TomPaine.com is doing The L Word: IN BUSH WE TRUST? by John Moyers (This administration is built on lies, and the granddaddy of them all is Mr. Bush's promise to restore "honor and integrity" to the Oval Office); ALL THE PRESIDENT'S LIES by Drake Bennett and Heidi Pauken (Bush's rhetoric bears no resemblance to his policies. How does he get away with it?); and THE RECKONING by William Rivers Pitt (The Bush administration owes an explanation to the American people and to the world for the carnage it caused with its lies and exaggerations.).
Via Buzzflash, A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today, says The New York Times. Also, remember those Predator drones Bush pulled out of the sky prior to 9/11?
It is in the compelling national interest to examine what we were told about the threat from Iraq. It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was faulty. It is in the compelling national interest to know if the intelligence was distorted. From another good speech by Senator Robert Byrd.
Justice Thomas's dissent in the 5-4 decision preserving affirmative action in university admissions has persuaded me that affirmative action is not the way to go.
The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received.
It's poignant, really. It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race.
Y'know, this is probably true. And to her final sentence, I can only say, "Amen." 19:41 BST
Sobered up
Science fiction is full of stories in which Our Hero, by some accident or other, fails to get his state-mandated dose of mind-altering drugs and therefore his IQ rises to the point where he can see what is actually going on, including the fact that he is drugged up in the first place. The few journalists who have these moments of clarity are still unlikely to take that last step, although we do get the occasional epiphany. In most cases, though, they get dosed-up again and seem to forget that insight; the David Brocks are rare.
In any case, it looks like someone forgot to give Richard Cohen his dose before he wrote yesterday's column, because it seems to have worn off again:
Sidney Blumenthal titles his account of his White House days "The Clinton Wars," but it could just as easily be called "The Blumenthal Wars." Reviewers have called him a Clinton "courtier," "Sid Vicious," a "lady-in-waiting" and, by the strongest of implications, a liar. Yet to actually read the book brings another term to mind: "mad." This is what Washington was during the Clinton years.
I do not mean all of Washington. After all, many Democrats fought valiantly for Bill Clinton -- or, if not for him, then against Ken Starr, the moralistic prig of a special prosecutor. Ditto some members of the press, who realized that no matter what Clinton did, what was being done to him -- and the presidency -- was far, far worse.
But you would get little of that from most of the reviews. Barely mentioned are the censorious comments of Samuel Dash, Starr's ethics counselor, who, in the book, characterizes the special prosecutor as a morally obsessed inquisitor. "He lacked a lot of judgment," Dash told Blumenthal. "Starr didn't see the difference between a sin and a crime. His judgments were distorted." Dash says that Starr could have ended his investigation much earlier than he did. He had, really, nothing.
The same has to be said about Filegate, Travelgate and all the other scandals, including the overriding influence China supposedly exercised over the Democratic Party. In each and every case, there was a nugget, an infraction, something suspicious. But now, all these years later, it is hard to recall just what these scandals were about. That's hardly the case, say, with Watergate. To this day I can tell you it was about abuse of power by the Nixon White House -- and White House aides went to jail. None of Clinton's White House aides was even indicted.
It certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Starr was preceded by Robert Fiske, who was removed from office by Republican judges on account of a disabling conflict of interest -- experience as a prosecutor, fair-mindedness and estimable professionalism. Starr, in turn, was succeeded by a third prosecutor, Robert Ray, another pro. The FBI was in the hands of Louis Freeh, who loathed Clinton. Various congressional committees were run by the likes of Al D'Amato, who -- in the manner of naming a nunnery after Hugh Hefner -- just got his name put on a Long Island courthouse. As for the news media, they went after both Bill and Hillary Clinton full time. The result? Zip.
Most of the country did not need Sid Blumenthal to tell them this, of course; a considerable number of us were simply astonished every time we picked up the papers, not to mention horrified. The press corps was obviously nuts, and by behaving this way, they empowered a historic abuse of power by Congress, the judiciary, and Ken Starr himself.
Cohen does have these occasional moments of clarity, as he did when he acknowledged his failure to filter Colin Powell's "convincing" presentation of phony WMD evidence against Iraq through the lens of some healthy journalistic skepticism. But here he fails to mention that he, too, was drinking from the same heavily-dosed waters as the rest of Washington's blitherati. (That would explain why he can no longer remember what "Filegate" and "Travelgate" were about. I certainly remember, because they were scandals - press corps scandals, that is.) And, chances are, he'll be back on his meds by tomorrow. But we can always hope. 13:36 BST
When US Rep. Mark Foley said Democratic Party operatives spread stories that he was gay to destroy his US Senate bid, I didn't buy it. One: Foley is not a contender the Dems particularly fear. He's not much known outside of South Florida; the Republican base won't turn out for him; and there's this issue of sexuality which just won't go away. Two: the first stories that appeared about this tended to quote conservative activists. Well now a Republican aide concedes she had helped circulate the rumors.
In colonial Philadelphia, firefighters were employed by private insurance companies which, of course, had financial incentives to minimize damage to their clients' properties. Plaques with the insurance company's insignia were placed on buildings, so that the fire fighters would know whether or not it was their "business" to put out the fires on the premises. (These plaques are often found today in antique shops). If the "wrong" plaque was on the building, well, that was just tough luck. Of course, with their attention confined to a single building, fire fighters were ill-disposed to prevent a spreading of the fire to adjacent "non-client" structures.
Occasionally, when the building's insurance affiliation was in some doubt, competing fire companies would fight each other for the privilege of putting out the fire, resulting in more water aimed at fire fighters than at burning buildings.
Eventually, the absurdity and outright danger of this system led one prominent Philadelphia citizen to come up with the idea of a publicly funded and administered fire department.
His name was Benjamin Franklin: America's first anti-free-enterprise commie pinko nut-case.
Franklin's subversive left-wing ideas were extended to include libraries, post offices, and public schools, and, if we are to believe some of today's self-described "conservatives," [Note 1] it's been downhill ever since.
And that's what the Republicans want to "fix". 12:54 BST
Communications
More from Danny Goldberg's book, where he tells us: How the Left Can Get Its Groove Back. Well, actually, he really tells us how the Democrats have been losing it, but that's the title of the piece, anyway.
This is weird: The headline at Peter Werbe's website says he was fired from I.E.America immediately after his show Friday, with no warning. 12:30 BST
For example, some commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush should be let off the hook as long as there is some interpretation of his prewar statements that is technically true. Really? We're not talking about a business dispute that hinges on the fine print of the contract; we're talking about the most solemn decision a nation can make. If Mr. Bush's speeches gave the nation a misleading impression about the case for war, close textual analysis showing that he didn't literally say what he seemed to be saying is no excuse. On the contrary, it suggests that he knew that his case couldn't stand close scrutiny.
In other words, he deliberately weaseled, he was "economical with the truth", he dissembled. Or, in the Republican phraseology, he was "Clintonian". After all, the man used "evidence" that was seriously dated - a good ten or twelve years old - to make a case for a war now. So I guess it depends what the meaning of "is" is. 12:10 BST
Tuesday, 24 June 2003
Watching the censors
Mark Evanier says that this Doonsbury strip was censored by The Westchester/Rockland NY Journal News, who deleted Bill Bennett's name from it. And he also reports that a prominent French anti-porn campaigner "has been accused of attending sadomasochistic orgies and conniving in the murder of a transvestite prostitute who threatened to expose him and other pillars of the establishment in the city of Toulouse." I tell ya, those anti-porn types just can't be trusted. 22:56 BST
Marvel editor- in- chief Joe Quesada said: "Princess Diana is a mutant. Like every good superhero, she's coming back from the dead. She's going to join one of the X-Men teams.
Earlier we looked at Fascism and fundamentalism by David Neiwert with some alarm. David has been warning us that, while fascism has not exactly arrived, the pieces are starting to line up. But after posting that piece, he ran into something that made him wonder if he'd been too hesitant to see how far it's all gone:
A couple of months ago, Harper's ran a story by Jeffrey Sharlett, a religion writer, on a secretive Washington, D.C., group that calls itself 'The Family':
It was chilling, particularly considering the way these supposed Christians let slip their underlying, and apparently undying, admiration for Adolph Hitler:
"Yes," Doug said, "it's good to have friends. Do you know what a difference a friend can make? A friend you can agree with?" He smiled. "Two or three agree, and they pray? They can do anything. Agree. Agreement. What's that mean?" Doug looked at me. "You're a writer. What does that mean?"
I remembered Paul's letter to the Philippians, which we had begun to memorize. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded.
"Unity," I said. "Agreement means unity."
Doug didn't smile. "Yes," he said. "Total unity. Two, or three, become one. Do you know," he asked, "that there's another word for that?"
No one spoke.
"It's called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?"
We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: "Hitler."
"Yes," Doug said. "Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree." He took another bite from his plate, planted his fork on its tines. "Well, guys," he said, "I gotta go."
The story details the Family's incredible wealth of genuine power connections, as well as its thoroughgoing fundamentalism, coupled with its steely intentions to run the world. It's fascinating and disturbing.
It sure is, and David was even more disturbed after reading another article that spelled it out some more:
I read this last night after posting "Fascism and fundamentalism" and thought I was being slapped upside the head. I'm aware that I suggested that fascimentalism was largely only latent in the landscape. The existence of this group, however, makes me wonder if it isn't fully active now. Certainly I can't think of a group that better fits the description:
"A political movement that claims to represent a Phoenix-like resurrection of a true national spiritual identity, focused on building a theocratic state that receives its imprimatur from God, ultimately adopting a rule based on scriptural inerrancy, and intent on dominating and imposing its will upon the rest of the world."
From reports of what's been going on at the Department of Justice these days, I can't help wondering just how far that wealth of power connections David talks about really goes. Certainly John Ashcroft's crackpot theories and behavior seem to fit very neatly into this mold. Why, if one were prepared to give any credence to the incoherent acid-dream that makes up the grand finale of the New Testament, one might just get the impression that The Beast is already on the prowl.... 15:35 BST
Via Oliver Willis, an article on another stupid Supreme Court decision, upholding a requirement to use online filters. Vote against them in the poll on the same page. (Read this if you don't already know why.)
TBogg catches Glenn Reynolds making another objectively pro-dishonesty statement, this time about George Galloway. 11:01 BST
In our lifetime, has there ever been a more duplicitous, puffed up, putrid, scummy, oily, mendacious, sluggish, thuggish, lying, thieving, conniving, political SOB than Dick Morris?
I gotta admit, this guy is not on my greeting card list. Meanwhile, Treasy has a few choice words for the Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action. (Also see Talk Left, How Appealing, and Scotusblog.)
"The clear lesson is that the government, in its understandable and laudable resolve to protect our security, cannot be relied on to protect our basic rights and liberties." Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, responding to the Justice Department inspector general's report on the post-9-11 mass imprisonment of immigrants with roots in this country
"We did not violate the law." Attorney General John Ashcroft, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on June 5.
The column addresses the Inspector General's report on the treatment of detainees and the mounting evidence that Ashcroft is unfit for the office he holds. Congress may be beginning to take note.
Actually, we had a mountain of evidence that Ashcroft was unfit to hold any office back when he was still in the Senate. We're past "mounting" and on to "overwhelming" evidence. 00:48 BST
Friday, the newspapers and television reported the following matter with no anger or effort to do anything other than serve as stenographers for the government:
On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen they say is Iyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no postcards or letters.
He was a United States citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world. [...] In mid-April, again in deep secrecy, the government says Faris was allowed to plead guilty to plotting to pull down or blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He was in a sealed Virginia federal courtroom. If he had a lawyer, that was some lawyer.
After that, he was sentenced. We don't know what the sentence was because it is sealed.
I don't know what Faris looks like or sounds like or what he thinks and what he was doing. He could be the worst. I don't know. Prove he wanted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and let him paste a picture of Osama bin Laden on the cell wall for inspiration over the next half a century. But first bring him into open court and try him. Pretend you live in America. Even pick a jury. I don't know. What a thing it would be if he comes up not guilty.
What we do know is that this is your country now.
Once before this, in 1942, we detained Japanese-Americans in secrecy. The nation swore never to do it again. We haven't. This case is out of the old Soviet Union. He was neither booked with television watching nor arraigned in front of a judge. Anybody concealed by government agents and guards for more than three months could have marks on him somewhere. And our newspeople write like the worst of the old Pravda. I read in papers from everywhere yesterday morning, "After Mr. Faris was secretly arrested three months ago... " and "court papers this week said that Mr. Faris secretly pleaded guilty to charges of terrorism last month." They say. They were simply typed out, as if to report the guy getting a parking ticket. Now, the FBI doesn't even tell you the right name of a kidnapped man and makes the news reporters love it.
The Republicans claim to be better at running the country fiscally. They claim Democrats are budget-busters while they are "fiscally responsible". They claim to keep inflation and unemployment down, and to be the party of small government. Dwight Meredith checked the numbers and posted his findings at P.L.A. in a series of posts. But man, you know what a drag it is digging up a whole series of posts on Blogspot. So I decided to put them together on a single page at The Sideshow Annex. Go read Just For the Record right now, and then fax it to every Democrat you can think of.
01:24 BST
Bits
Quoted by Jerome Doolittle: "Sixty of the 62 international terrorists, according to a March story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, turned out to be Middle Eastern students who had cheated on a test; specifically, they had paid others to take an English proficiency exam required for college or graduate school."
You never know what's going to show up in your referrer logs. Is this the result of someone still using Netscape?
3) THE BUSHIES ARE DOING WHATEVER IT TAKES TO COVER UP THEIR COMPLICITY IN THE 9-11 TRAGEDY - The Democrats know it. The families of the 9-11 victims know it. Hell, even the Republicans know it, and the Bushies MUST know it, because they're doing it right under our noses. I mean, c'mon, 70 plus million to investigate Clinton's dick, and a measly FOUR million to investigate the most heinous act of terrorism in American history? The Bushies classify every relevant document, and censor every report, and stymie every lead.
But you can't say that on television. On television, what gets said and repeated is, "The Bush Administration is pressing for a thorough investigation that doesn't compromise national security." They're not pissing on your head. No, that warm yellow stuff is rain. Really.
4) THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS MAKING US MORE, NOT LESS VULNERABLE TO ATTACK FROM TERRORISTS - The Bush Administration certainly has its priorities in order. Two million dollars for a Super Bowl ad telling pot smokers they're aiding terrorists? Yeah, that's a great use of tax dollars. Funding "first responders" and making sure they have the communications gear to handle a terror emergency? Naaaaaah, cut that line item. Spend two billion to secure our ports so terrorists can't smuggle in a suitcase nuke? Slash that bit of pork barrel nonsense. Provide funding for airlines for equipment to detect and divert a shoulder-fired infrared-homing missile, of the type favored by terrorists? What a waste of money! ("CONDI - Gin up a memo saying, 'We had no idea that could possibly happen' in case it happens. That'll cover us good. Dubya. P.s. destroy this memo")
Of course, you can't say this on television. What you can say, "The Bush Administration is taking all sensible, reasonable precautions against future terror attacks." Fox News - We Deceive, You Believe.
And why can't you say it? Why, because it's Politically Incorrect, of course. As you already knew if you clicked on that link to Palast's The screwing of Cynthia McKinney, now also re-posted at The Smirking Chimp:
I suppose it's my fault, McKinney's electronic lynching. Unlike other politicians, McKinney, who's earning her doctorate at Princeton's Fletcher School of Diplomacy, enjoys doing her own research, not relying on staff memos. She's long been a reader of my reports from Britain, including transcripts of BBC Television investigations. On November 6, 2001, BBC Newsnight ran this report with a follow-up story in the Guardian the next day:
Probes Before 11 September
Officials Told to 'Back Off' on Saudis Before September 11.
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11. US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.
FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, with which they were linked.
And so on. There was not one word in there that Bush knew about the September 11 attacks in advance. It was about a horrific intelligence failure. This was the result, FBI and CIA/DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) insiders told us at BBC, of a block placed on investigations of Saudi Arabian financing of terror. We even showed on-screen a copy of a top-secret document passed to us by disgruntled FBI agents, directing that the agency would not investigate a "suspected terrorist organization" headed in the US by a member of the bin Laden family. The FBI knew about these guys before September 11 (with their office down the street from the hijackers' address).
The CIA also knew about a meeting in Paris, prior to September 11, involving a Saudi prince, arms dealers, and al Qaeda. Although the information was in hand, the investigation was stymied by Bush's intelligence chiefs. This is what McKinney wanted investigated.
Why were the Saudis, the bin Ladens (except Osama), and this organization (the World Assembly of Muslim Youth) off the investigation list prior to September 11, despite evidence that they were reasonable targets for inquiry? The BBC thought it worth asking; the Guardian thought it worth asking – and so did Congresswoman McKinney. Why no pre-September 11 investigations of these characters?
And what was the reason for the block? According to the experts we broadcast on British television, it was the Bush Administration's fanatic desire to protect their relations with Saudi Arabia – a deadly policy prejudice which, according to the respected Center for Public Integrity of Washington, DC, seems influenced by the Bush family ties, and Republican donors' ties, to Saudi royalty. McKinney, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, thought the BBC/Guardian/Observer investigation worth a follow-up Congressional review.
According to NPR, her "loony" statement was made on the radio news show Counterspin. (Not incidentally, Counterspin is produced by an NPR competitor, the nonprofit Pacifica Radio Network.) I have the transcript; it's on the web. Her charge that Bush knew about the September 11 attacks in advance and deliberately covered it up can't be found.
What can be read is her call for a follow-up on the revelations from the BBC and USA Today on the information about a growing terror threat ignored by Bush . . . and whether the policy response – war, war, war – was protecting America or simply enriching Bush's big arms industry donors and business partners. Fair questions. But asking them is dangerous . . . to one's political career.
See, that was Politically Incorrect. And, to pick up something I mentioned earlier, so was this:
The New York Times wrote about McKinney that Atlanta's "prominent Black leaders – including Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP and former Mayor Maynard Jackson – who had supported Ms. McKinney in the past – distanced themselves from her this time."
Really? Atlanta has four internationally recognized black leaders. Martin Luther King III did not abandon McKinney. I checked with him. Nor did Julian Bond (the Times ran a rare retraction on their website at Bond's request). But that left Atlanta's two other notables: Vernon Jordan and Andrew Young. Here, the Times had it right; no question that these two black faces of the Atlanta Establishment let McKinney twist slowly in the wind – because, the Times implied, of her alleged looniness.
But maybe there was another reason Young and Jordan let McKinney swing. Remember Barrick? George Bush's former gold-mining company, the target of McKinney's investigations? Did I mention to you that Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick's payroll? Well, I just did.
Did the Times mention it? I guess that wasn't fit to print.
Meanwhile, back at 9/11:
The BBC report which got McKinney in hot water mentioned the Bush Administration's reluctance to investigate associates of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which the FBI secret document termed "a suspected terrorist organization." They may be. They may not be. McKinney's question was only, Why no investigation?
Just after McKinney's defeat, the courier of Osama bin Laden's latest alleged taped threat against the United States was busted in Africa: He was on the staff of WAMY. Shortly thereafter, Prince Abdullah, the Saudi dictator, invited WAMY leaders to his palace and told them, "There is no extremism in the defending of the faith."
So if you listen to U.S. radio and read U.S. papers, you are told this: Abdullah's protector and godfather, George W. Bush, is sane and patriotic, and McKinney, who wants to investigate these guys, is a loony and a traitor. Got it?
Just how "loony" is McKinney? Hell, I don't know, but compared to an establishment that doesn't consider the background to 9/11 worth investigating, she's not the one who sounds like a loony.
Back in the '70s, when we used the term "Politically Incorrect", we were joking. (I mean, c'mon, we were talking about shaving our legs.) But now, it's all too serious. 15:46 BST
Quick, who wrote this?
An antidote for grand imperial ambitions is a taste of imperial success. Swift victory in Iraq may have whetted the appetite of some Americans for further military exercises in regime change, but more than seven weeks after the president said, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," combat operations, minor but lethal, continue.
And overshadowing the military achievement is the failure -- so far -- to find, or explain the absence of, weapons of mass destruction that were the necessary and sufficient justification for preemptive war. The doctrine of preemption -- the core of the president's foreign policy -- is in jeopardy.
To govern is to choose, almost always on the basis of very imperfect information. But preemption presupposes the ability to know things -- to know about threats with a degree of certainty not requisite for decisions less momentous than those for waging war. [...] For the president, the missing weapons are not a political problem. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, says Americans are happily focused on Iraqis liberated rather than WMD not found, so we "feel good about ourselves."
But unless America's foreign policy is New Age therapy to make the public feel mellow, feeling good about the consequences of an action does not obviate the need to assess the original rationale for the action.
Until WMD are found, or their absence accounted for, there is urgent explaining to be done.
Okay, I omitted some paragraphs where he hedges and offers Bush an out, but still, this is pretty heavy criticism, coming as it does from George F. Will. 13:52 BST
"A crook-coddling pinko"
That's William Saletan's paraphrase of a characterization of George W. Bush in a recent speech by John Edwards in which the presidential hopeful attacked Bush's economic policies - and, friends, Edwards is right on the money. So to speak. Saletan refers to the speech as "audacious", and I guess if you consider how few are coming and saying it, he's right. It's a simple statement of the obvious, and about bloody time:
More than anything else, what's holding our economy down is the callous view of a few at the top in Washington and in the corporate world that the values that got us here can now be left behind.
American's small businesses create jobs better than any government program. Our markets allocate capital more efficiently than any bureaucrat.
Yet our free enterprise system also depends on values: innovation, integrity, hard work, and great rewards for honest success. When those values disappear, our country suffers. The flood of corporate scandal in these past few years has not only torn at the roots of public confidence, but washed away the financial security of millions of Americans through layoffs, bankruptcies and destroyed pensions.
Our economy, our people, and our nation have been undermined by the crony capitalists who believe that success is all about working the angles, working the phones, and rigging the game, instead of hard work, innovation and frugality.
And these manipulators find comfort in an Administration which, through its own example, seems to embrace that ethic. [...] America can withstand a plunge in corporate valuations, but we cannot abide a plunge in corporate values. We can overcome the worst job market for people seeking work since the Depression, but not an economic theory that says work doesn't matter. [...] The President and I agree on one thing: this campaign should be a debate about values. We need to have that debate, because the values of this president and this administration are not the values of mainstream America, the values all of us grew up with – opportunity, responsibility, hard work.
There's a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.
For a man who made responsibility the theme of his campaign, this president sure doesn't seem to value it much in office. We've lost 3.1 million private sector jobs. Over $3 trillion in stock market value lost. A $5.6 trillion budget surplus gone, and nearly $5 trillion of red ink in its place. Bill Clinton spent 8 years turning around 12 years of his predecessors' deficits. George Bush erased it in two years, and this year will break the all-time record.
Yet even with all those zeroes, the true cost of the administration's approach isn't what they've done with our money, it's what they want to do to our way of life. Their economic vision has one goal: to get rid of taxes on unearned income and shift the tax burden onto people who work. This crowd wants a world where the only people who have to pay taxes are the ones who do the work.
Make no mistake: this is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners' circle.
This is a question of values, not taxes. We should cut taxes, but we shouldn't cut and run from our values when we do. John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan argued for tax cuts as an incentive for people to work harder: Americans work hard, and the government shouldn't punish them when they do.
This crowd is making a radically different argument. They don't believe work matters most. They don't believe in helping working people build wealth. They genuinely believe that the wealth of the wealthy matters most. They are determined to cut taxes on that wealth, year after year, and heap more and more of the burden on people who work.
How do we know this? Because they don't even try to hide it. The Bush budget proposed tax-free tax shelters for millionaires that are bigger than most Americans' paychecks for an entire year. And just last week, Bush's tax guru, Grover Norquist, said their goal is to abolish the capital gains tax, abolish the dividend tax, and let the wealthiest shelter as much as they want tax-free.
Look at the choices they make: They have driven up the share of the tax burden for most working people, and driven down the burden on the richest few. They got rid of even the smallest tax on even the largest inheritances on earth. This past month, in a $350 billion bonanza of tax cuts on wealth, they couldn't find $3.5 billion to give the child tax credit to poor people who work. Listen to this: They refused to cut taxes for the children of 250,000 American soldiers who are risking their lives for us in Iraq, so they could cut dividend and capital gains taxes for millionaires who were selling stocks short until the war was over. [...] It is wrong to reward those who don't have to work at the expense of those who do. If we want America to be a growing, thriving democracy, with the greatest work ethic and the strongest middle class on earth, we must choose a different path.
That's right. These people have said outright that people who work for a living are not worth much to the country, that only the rich people who run things provide anything of value - so the rest of us should have to pay taxes, and they shouldn't. What they can't get from us at the retail level they want to funnel back to themselves through the government, by taxing us and spending the money on programs that provide them with billions of dollars in lump sums.
By cutting the taxes on their own unearned income, they are not "cutting taxes", they are shifting the tax burden so that working people carry a heavier load.
A country where the sweat and toil of mill workers can give a boy the chance to one day run for President is a far different place than a country that says how you're born, not how hard your work, is all that matters. I owe everything I am to the America I grew up in. I hope you'll join with me and fight with all we've got to save it.
Not a bad description of liberal capitalism, and certainly mainstream. 12:40 BST
Back when everyone was talking about the Columbine killings, I observed that the young men who murdered their classmates saw this event, and how they would be remembered for it, as their only future - that they saw no living future for themselves; this kind of thinking leads to appallingly destructive actions.
The Christian right in America similarly sees no earthly future, and this means they have no stake in it, and no committment to it. Thus, as we saw with James Watt, gutting our resources is not "a problem" - vandalizing them for the sake of fighting Armageddon is the real goal.
So we leave planning for our future in the hands of people who want to live like there's no tomorrow because they don't think there is one. 19:35 BST
Blog news
Dwight has some great stuff up at P.L.A., like the hilarious news that Ann Coulter has joined the pile-on over the "inaccuracies, lies and distortions" of Jayson Blair, and an evaluation of Dick Morris as "more pathetic than Keith Richards" for continuing to fabricate Clinton scandals, and just FYI, this:
Playing chess, bridge or a musical instrument significantly lowers the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, according to the most comprehensive study to examine the benefits of challenging intellectual activity among the elderly.
No real surprise, but it should make a few people feel better. And maybe make it easier to find a fourth for bridge.
Quick, somebody get Radiohead a copy (four copies?) of What Liberal Media? Here's Thom Yorke in Spin: "I absolutely feel crazy at times. Anybody who turns on the TV and actually thinks about what they're watching has to believe they're going insane or that they're missing something everyone else is seeing. When I watch the Fox News channel, I can't believe how much nerve those people have and how they assume that people are just going to swallow that s**t."
Also, if you're one of those evil people who thinks, "The U.S. is being run by religious manic bigots that stole the election," you're in good company.
In Salon, Eric Boehlert talks to survivors of those who died in the 9/11 attacks, now frustrated by the fact that no one is asking the necessary questions.
Roger Ailes (the other one) reports that Jeffrey Archer's wife has hinted her husband may go save Iraq when he gets out of jail.
MadKane has written The Democrats' Anthem for the 2004 election, to the tune of "Blowin' in the Wind".
Skimble reacts to the return of Chuck Colson (R-jailbird) to the White House to join his fellow Watergate criminals and their successors. ("This is Bush's America, the Peter Principle writ large: not so much an avoidance as a hatred of competence — a culture and a national economy of meritopathy, nominally led by the AWOL business-failure son of a one-term president.")
The sunlight's streaming through the windows; Happy Solstice. Sure beats the grey, chilly, rainy weather we had 18 years ago when we got married. Bet no one expected it to last this long.
People were queuing up at the bookshops waiting for the latest Harry Potter novel to go on sale at midnight, but we didn't. Anyway, if you went to Tesco's this morning, you could just pop it in your basket with your groceries, which is why there was a copy sitting on my desk when I woke up today.
And if you happen to be in England and have never seen the movie that's sometimes referred to as "Lust in the Dust", Channel 3 is showing Duel in the Sun this afternoon at 1:10. 11:55 BST
Friday, 20 June 2003
"Sounds like influence peddling to me."
That's the word from Lisa English on the cozy relationship between Louisianna Congressman Billy Tauzin and the Big Media Lobby. A major problem, as Lisa reminds us:
Now, you might say that these things are done all the time, and you might then just be inclined to dismiss this information as more of that Same Old, Same Old, but I encourage you to stick with me.
The American media is not just any industry. Our media shapes public opinion. They wield greater power than any other business, and many believe the media lobby in Washington is the most powerful and influential in the land. How powerful? Well, they were strong enough to defeat a universally popular Clinton proposal that broadcasters provide free airtime for all candidates. Broadcast airtime is the single most expensive ticket item in a candidate's budget. Without money, there's no airtime. Without airtime, a new face - yours, mine or his - on the political horizon has virtually no chance of defeating an incumbent. Once you're "in," you're "in" unless someone can come up with enough money to outshine you on TV, radio and print. Without free airtime, politicians become beholden to special interests as they beg for more and more money in order to pay the broadcaster's bill. It's pretty incestuous stuff. As Lewis notes...
The dirty little secret is that from 1996 through 1998, the NAB [National Association of Broadcasters] and five media outlets -- ABC, CBS, A.H. Belo, Meredith Corp., and Cox Enterprises -- cumulatively spent nearly $11 million to defeat a dozen campaign finance bills mandating free air time for political candidates.
In a nut: they were mighty successful. This industry, that publicizes itself as replete with integrity and stands bias-free is anything but. The spookiest part, is that our lawmakers are petrified to do anything about it. You'd be scared too, if raising your voice in favor of Free Airtime meant an opponent got as much spotlight as you. You'd be scared too, if fighting Big Media's assault on democracy meant that the camera steered clear of your face in political retribution. Is that a valid fear? Were I a politician, I'd venture to say, "yes."
Rep. Tauzin leads one of the most powerful committees in Congress and it's looking as if he's not going to permit a bill that rescinds the FCC's Giveaway to Big Media to reach the floor of the House.
Why should he?
Of course, the straight answer is that he should because the airwaves belong to the people, and because an informed public is necessary to give government the legitimacy of coming from the consent of the governed. But that's the last thing Tauzin and his cronies want. Read the whole story and follow Lisa's advice on taking action now. Don't let this issue die.
Many people have been linking to the excerpt from Danny Goldberg's How the Left Lost Teen Spirit in Salon, and for good reason. There are several fine things about this piece, not the least of which is a clear expression of mainstream liberalism:
Even though majorities of the American public regularly tell pollsters they want national health insurance, tighter gun control, better pay for schoolteachers, energy independence, and stronger environmental regulation, advocates for these causes seem unable to translate this public support into political results. Not only has the Democratic party grown considerably weaker over the past few decades, but mainstream Democrats have moved steadily away from progressive causes. The 2002 election was merely the latest example of Democrats walking away from millions of their supporters and potential supporters, supposedly for politically pragmatic reasons, but with toxic political results. [...] What exactly is "my" side? In previous eras there were more clear-cut definitions of what "left" and "right" were. Today there are dozens of variations. On economic issues I'm a typical liberal. Having run my own businesses and having worked for big corporations, I have a basic belief in capitalism, but I think that government, representing the collective will of the citizens, has a special obligation to balance out the excesses of the marketplace. I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes to have national health care, better paid schoolteachers, smaller class sizes in public schools, and more jobs programs to help get people out of poverty and help average-income people deal with their lives more easily.
It seems to me that many Western European countries have been better at supporting people on the low end of the economic spectrum than Americans have, and the extent of poverty in America seems immoral to me given our country's wealth. Although I've never been a member of a labor union, I believe they should be stronger. Corporations have so much power that it seems healthier to me for there to be a strong counterweight on behalf of workers. I also think our country should be more generous with foreign aid given the immense poverty around the world.
Conservative rhetoric that implies that private charities can replace government doesn't ring true to me. I know that governments tend to be inefficient, but there are some things that only government can do, such as build highways, protect the environment, provide police protection, etc. The environment is an area where it's particularly important for government to enforce the public interest when it clashes with the economic interest of businesses.
And by the way, there's plenty of corruption and inefficiency in the business world as well. I'm fascinated by the antiglobalization movement and I suspect that important moral leadership will emerge from there, but I'm not particularly sophisticated about many of the underlying issues.
See how easy it is? That's probably more of a forthright expression of liberal values than most of the current crop of presidential contenders have expressed in the last few years, and the remarkable thing about it is that it's not the main thrust of the article - that is, he's said all that (and more) virtually as an aside to his real focus, which is addressing the weaknesses in the Democratic leadership's current way of expressing itself to the public. One obvious problem:
Not surprisingly, cultural conservatives frequently bemoan the state of the popular entertainment culture. It was ever thus.
Most of my own battles, however, have been with liberals and Democrats, many of whom I've supported in political campaigns. Starting in the mid-1980s, Democratic politicians and left-wing intellectuals began agreeing with cultural conservatives about the supposedly negative effects of popular culture.
The Democratic party's commitment to culture bashing was exacerbated during the Clinton era and reached a new pinnacle with the national ascendance of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. But it's not only so-called New Democrats who have embraced attacks on pop culture. So have important voices on the political and academic left, including, at times, Ralph Nader and Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Most liberal snobs are from my own generation, the so-called baby boomers. Cultural conservatives want their children to grow up like they did; liberal snobs are afraid theirs will. Conservatives attack pop culture going back to the turn of the last century. Liberals will extol the virtues of pop culture well into the Sixties and conveniently claim that "something changed" shortly after they themselves came of age.
Liberal snobs tend to focus on violence and bigotry, cultural conservatives on sex. There are virtually no Democratic voices sticking up for youth culture. Although conservative Christians are a vital part of the national Republican coalition, many Republicans are actually more open-minded on the issue of free speech and pop culture than many Democrats, and I'm not just talking about libertarian conservatives such as P. J. O'Rourke and Ann Coulter. President George W. Bush was seen on magazine covers with U2 lead singer Bono following a meeting about debt relief in the third world, and Bush cracked jokes while welcoming rock/reality-TV star Ozzy Osbourne to a White House dinner. There are no policy implications to any of this, but politically it sends a message that Bush is a "regular guy," whereas Democrats, whose actual agenda is far more relevant to young people, come across as uptight, preachy elitists. [...] When I interviewed Gary Hart for this book he speculated that American politics was less progressive now because more of the public was "less compassionate" than they had been in the 1960s. If this were so, Republicans would have increased their share of eligible voters. Instead, the big increase has been among nonvoters, and more recently, Nader voters.
If Hart were correct, George W. Bush would not have described himself with the poll-tested phrase "compassionate conservative." The moral lessons of the 1930s and 1960s have been ingrained in the majority of the public. There is a consensus against racism and for fairness. The debate that conservatives have cleverly constructed is not about compassionate goals but about whether or not progressive programs actually work. The failure of progressives has been their inability to explain to average Americans why their particular solutions are better or even how their ideas are different. On the weekend before the 2002 election, the New York Times published the results of a poll of Americans in which they asked people about their sense of the vision of each major political party. Forty-two percent felt that the Republicans "had a clear plan for the country," if they gained control of Congress. Only 31 percent felt that the Democrats did. [...] A big part of the problem for Democrats is that they keep narrowing the spectrum of political debate, fearful of alienating anyone. In 2000, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg urged Democrats to run a campaign stressing moral and religious values, because he said that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had "again associated Democrats with Sixties-style irresponsibility." This argument ignored poll after poll showing that most Americans were not as offended as Washington pols and pundits by Clinton's sexual misconduct. This sort of advice helped persuade Al Gore to choose culturally conservative moralist Joe Lieberman as his running mate, and to run a shambles of a campaign that reduced the Democratic margin of young voters (ages eighteen to twenty-four) from 19 percent in 1996 to zero in 2000. It was as if the Democrats had written off the young vote, so important to them in the past. Because of the shibboleth that "young people don't vote," younger voters are rarely included in the focus groups that drive campaigns. This has created a vicious cycle of self-destructive thinking by the Democrats: Young people don't vote, so don't bother with issues and techniques that might attract young votes. [...] Another vicious cycle was created. Bush gains popularity as a figurehead after a national tragedy. Democrats don't criticize him for fourteen months. Bush, uncriticized and unchallenged, remains popular. Bush uses that popularity to defeat Democrats. It's not just the loss of younger voters that should concern Democrats, it's the loss of youthful energy and innovationthe loss of teen spirit, embodied in a popular culture that almost inevitably is created by the young and then spreads into the rest of the population. It wasn't just voters from ages 18 to 24 who were turned off by the sanctimonious yet wishy-washy Gore-Lieberman campaign. Millions of Americans who believe in free speech and who want universal health care and gun control and higher public teacher salaries and tougher environmental regulations were not convinced that the Democrats agreed with them, because the party's message was so cautious and muted and clumsily presented.
Given the intricacies of public policy, it seems trivial to some of my political friends that I spend so much time and energy worrying about "packaging" instead of "substance." But in a democracy, politics without communication is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest without a witness. The unseen and unheard message might as well not exist.
And there we have the bottom line: the Democratic leadership is simply not communicating because it is afraid to seem...liberal. It's as if from the moment Republican spinners started using the word "liberal" as a pejorative, the entire Dem leadership fell into a mass hallucination in which the country had suddenly rejected everything that most people obviously believe in. And the weird thing is, they know the public believes in those things; somehow, they think, they have to allow Social Security, public schools and Medicare to be dismantled but they can't allow anyone to know they are doing it. But they think the country is "more conservative" so that's actually what people will vote for. What kind of thinking is going on there?
Most of us recognize that Lieberman is dead but just doesn't know it yet, but why does the DLC join him in this fantasy that he is a viable candidate? Well, because they believe the lies they hear from the inside-the-Beltway hallucination zone which is led by wealthy conservatives; indeed, many of them are wealthy conservatives. The only vaguely oppositional views they are likely to hear come from the "balance" of the Republican leadership itself, which is actually very far to the right. And they've invented for themselves an idea that it is now "hip" to be turned-off by "old-fashioned" ideas like, well, progressivism, and that it's somehow cool to be some sort of modern idea of a conservative. (I mean, really, "Hipublicans"? Shouldn't the very coinage of such a word make the country ring with derision?)
A while back I wrote to my Senators and told them how alienating it was to have the party represented by the likes of Lieberman and Fritz Hollings who were ranting against pop culture content while at the same time attacking the means by which young people communicate with each other. I don't imagine they took any notice, of course, but at least one of them eventually sent me a thank you note. (Though I can remember the days when all letters to my reps were acknowledged within a few weeks. I guess e-mail killed the feasibility of that kind of thing.)
Hey, here's an idea: Why not fax Danny's article to all your Dem reps, your local Democratic party headquarters, and the Democratic leadership? Maybe if enough people do it, it'll help break the spell. 12:52 BST
Blocking the confirmation of a number of judicial nominees has become the painless way for Democrats to act out the role of an opposition party, to paint the President as an extremist without having to take any hard positions on their own. The pending nomination of former Ken Starr protoge/hatchetman Brett Kavanaugh is a sign that the Bush Administration is no longer serious about significantly altering the ideological position of the federal courts: by picking a nominee who has no chance of confirmation, and who can be filibustered even easier than Charles Pickering or Miguel Estrada, he sends a message to his base that he's on their side, without having to concern himself with the possibility that his nominee will embarass him with a controversial ruling from the bench before the next election.
For Democrats, this will be like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. Besides writing the Starr Report, Kavanaugh was one of the more obsessive investigators hunting leads on the death of Vincent Foster, at one point arguing before the Supreme Court that the attorney-client privilege expires upon the death of a client. This nomination allows Senate Democrats the chance to conjure up the spectre of Kenneth Starr, a prospect that already has the party base salivating. Bush, on the other hand, appeases his base, then gets the political benefit of nominating a less reactionary candidate when a Supreme Court vacancy opens up. Both sides win by this doomed nomination; the only loser is the hapless Mr. Kavanaugh.
This assumes, of course, that the Bushistas don't just find some way to ignore Senate rules or by-pass them. Why should they care? No one's going to be verifying the ballots.... 11:58 BST
Who's serious about national security?
At the pub I realized no one else had noticed the Rand Beers story, so for those of you who fit in that category, here it is:
Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox.
"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.
Beers's resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss. All of which points to a question: What does this intelligence insider know?
"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."
Seems to me that this is about where the Bush administration is on foreign policy and counterterrorism: Either you're really working on Bush's re-election campaign or else you're serious about getting things done and you're leaving to work for someone else.
I know I linked it earlier on, but the more I think about it, the more I want everyone to read David Neiwert's piece on Fascism and fundamentalism at Orcinus, so here's a teaser to try to encourage you non-clickers:
Over the past two decades, the most important meeting ground for the broad range of rightist beliefs has been in the field of fundamentalist Christianity. Extremists frequently organize around an arcane brand of fundamentalism like Identity; mainstream conservatism has become increasingly identified with mainstream fundamentalism; and even ostensibly secular conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush pay great obeisance both to its belief system and its political agenda.
When brought together, the coalescence has consequences: mainstream conservatives commingling with theocratic ideologues and extremists. The former has real-world power; the latter have agendas. To the extent that connections are made, the more likely those agendas are to actually be enacted. It becomes especially problematic as extremist elements exert an increasing influence on the broader fundamentalist sector.
The danger arises when someone like George W. Bush makes overt political appeals to the fundamentalist views of his followers -- particularly in portraying himself as receiving divine guidance. This gives him not only a kind of immunity from fault, giving his every step the Lord's imprimatur, but places him in a charismatic position of dual political and religious leadership. It has the effect of leading individual followers to identify their religious beliefs with Bush's political agenda. It also draws the entire fundamentalist bloc behind him politically. The more we hear talk about Bush leading a national political and religious rebirth, the more we approach the conditions needed for a genuine fascism to arise.
There's a lot of interesting discussion here about the history of far-right groups that were openly admiring of Hitler and also had a distinct "Christian" image of themselves, and then:
Through most of the intervening years, these extremists were relegated entirely to the fringe. It was easy to distinguish between mainstream conservatives and the participants in the Identity and Posse movements, and only at the edges of both sectors (see, for example, the colorful career of former Rep. George Hansen, R-Idaho) was there much exchange of ideas and agendas. Likewise, there was a tremendous gulf between mainstream Christianity, even the fundamentalist variety, and the Christian fascists.
That began to change in the 1990s, thanks to the confluence of two forces: the emergence of the Patriot movement and the growing revolutionary fervor of conservatives in their drive to dominate the halls of power. The proto-fascist Patriots represented the efforts of Christian fascism to mainstream itself, and their relative success, though fleeting, gave a surprising indication of the presence of a totalist mindset in America, particularly among conservative fundamentalists. Conservatives, looking to broaden their appeal and undercut mainstream liberalism, began adopting more ideas and memes that had their origins in the Patriot movement, thereby blurring the barriers that had once clearly delineated the mainstream and extremist right.
This is important stuff, go read it all. 17:25 BST
Ever wonder what kind of information Bush based his denials of death penalty appeals on? Alan Berlow got the details.
Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.
A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.
"Well spank me with a haddock and call me Maureen. Who could possibly have predicted this? It turns out that "Halliburton's contract to restart Iraq's oil production has doubled in cost over the past month, and the no-bid work may last longer than expected," according to the AP. Oh, and while the Army originally said that a new contract would be awarded through competitive bidding by August (since Halliburton got the gig without having to compete) they've suddenly changed their minds. You know, I'm stunned. I would never in a million years have guessed that Dick Cheney's former company would somehow manage to get a non-competitive, open-ended, no-ceiling contract to rebuild the country that their ex-CEO just destroyed. I mean, how could an administration of such honor, ethics and integrity possibly allow this to happen?"
Please say those words aloud. "Secret detentions." Now use them in a sentence:
The US government engages in the practice of secret detentions.
The US government has broadly asserted its right to engage in the practice of secret detentions.
A federal appeals court has affirmed that the US government may engage in secret detentions.
Here's a more complex sentence, for the bonus section: There is nothing in the logic of Judge David Sentelle's affirming opinion that the United States government may engage in secret detentions that would limit the practice to illegal aliens, naturalized aliens or foreign visitors to our shores. And another: With its decision allowing the US government to engage in the practice of secret detentions, a federal appeals court has left citizen and non-citizen alike at the mercy of federal discretion.
Secret arrests obviously require arrestees. There is a term for these people, ready for use:
The Disappeared. Desaparecidos in the original, though we will likely want to learn the arabic term. (Another sentence while we're practicing: The Mothers of the Plaza probably never dreamed that their group would one day be the model for American families coping with the US government's secret detentions of their loved ones. Keep this one handy.)
Please go read the rest. I think the 3rd Amendment is the only one we've got left. Maybe. 23:34 BST
Here's a story I doubt you'll see in the American press, US Turns to Taliban.
KARACHI - Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.
Go read. A somewhat different view of what is happening than you'll see from FOX News.
The Bush administration in talks with the Taliban. Try telling an average American about this and they'll think you're crazy -- sort of like a few years back when it was discovered that Reagan was giving missiles to Iran. Of course, the difference is that was investigated and this will never be.
For all the real difference that will make.... 15:18 BST
Untelevised has typed up some illuminating quotes from The Clinton Wars, well worth your time to read.
Bernard Williams is somewhat revered in our circles for being responsible for the report on pornography that recommended making it legally available to adults (ignored, alas, by the PM). He has died at the age of 73.
Tarek has a great post up about the Supreme Court over at The Liquid List.
Everyone is all atwitter over Babblin' Jed Babbin's column over at NRO where he says that Osama Bin Laden will attempt to "interfere with Mr. Bush's reelection", even though George Bush is the best thing that ever happened to Osama. Rile up the Middle East against the US? George did it. Pull the troops out of Saudi Arabia? George is doing it. Decrease freedom in America? George is on it. Recruit more followers to al Qaeda? George is the poster boy.
If I'm ever arrested for a particularly heinous crime, say, siccing a pack of rabid ice weasels on Ann Coulter, and I'm arrested outside her apartment at the Spinster Arms with a handful of muzzles and a pocket full of Purina Weasel Chow...I want Nicholas Kristof to be on my jury. He has all the evidence he needs to prove that the President lied to the country...and then he lets him off the hook.
Boy, that moral clarity thing sure is catching on. 14:24 BST
Legalizing corporate vandalism
Yep, the Republicans are protecting your rights again:
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.
During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in copyright debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."
Of course, somehow they will try to make this sound like it's all the Democrats' doing, as usual. 02:29 BST
Tuesday, 17 June 2003
I've finally decided to add Julian Sanchez to the tiny category at right of Loyal Opposition - that is, convincingly honest libertarians of a genuinely liberal disposition. The tipping point was this article, in which Julian defends free-markets but points out that:
Well, true enough. But what, again, is "the market?" People talking, sharing information, comparing alternatives. So criticism of some private firm’s behavior isn’t somehow a symptom of hostility to the market. It is the market.
There’s an additional point to be made, though, that is more directly political. Good political structures don’t sustain themselves in a vacuum; this is something conservatives understand well enough, even if their particular notions of what that implies are misguided. Certainly, if the state’s not going to regulate people’s behavior, then to some extent private parties must, by means of owners and organizations placing conditions on their association. But I don’t know that we can ultimately say that legal control is to be avoided but any sort of private control is fine and expect that the private and public spheres won’t affect each other.
Attitudes spill over. A culture in which people become accustomed to employers dictating the minutiae of their lives off the job is unlikely to nurture the kind of love of autonomy that’s conducive to the maintenance of a free political system. A community in which bigotry in employment practices becomes, not an aberration that a few cranks are permitted to engage in, but the unremarkable norm, won’t be apt to see all that much wrong when racial distinctions creep into law. In short, caring about human autonomy means your concern shouldn’t stop at the boundary between public and private. When liberal attitudes die on the private side of that line, the line itself doesn’t have much chance of holding.
Now, personally, I think regulation is potentially a good and frequently necessary thing, but if the environment is one in which the kinds of regulations that are being introduced actually hurt, rather than help, the individual, I can go into as passionate an anti-regulation rage as anyone left or right. But here is a point libertarians and liberals can certainly agree on: If the social and business environment contains no criticism of socially noxious activity by businesses, those socially noxious activities will increasingly become more common, more accepted, and ultimately they may even be enforced by law. So whether or not you think the force of law should be used to, for example, eliminate racist practices, you are under no obligation to refrain from criticizing a company whose practices are racist. You still have to talk up the kind of society you want to have. 23:34 BST
Here and there
I believe Atrios once told me that he had lived in London for a while, so he's not just experiencing the rosy glow of a first-time visitor to Europe when he says:
I'm no Europhile - it's fair to say I choose to live in the US for a variety of reasons over and above the simple fact that it is where I grew up. But, it's hard for me to understand how anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in one of the better European cities to not come away with a sense that they're doing something right and we're doing something wrong. The reverse is true on other issues, of course, but the point is that to some degree it's simply a matter of preference. In many ways, it's hard to beat the urban Yurpean lifestyle.
For all our yammering on about "freedom," it's difficult to argue that day to day personal freedom is somehow more pronounced in the U.S.
Yes, it's all true: On a day-to-day basis, you find no more interference with your personal freedom here than you do in the US. There are things you can get there that you can't get here, and there are things you can get here that you can't get there. There are trade-offs one way or the other: I miss saltines, but I love Rich Tea biscuits and Boasters; the Italian restaurants don't serve manicotti, but the puttanesca is great and there's always some nice crespolina. And so on. As to the evil NHS, I chose my own doctor and no one ever hands me a bill. As usual, most of the worst problems with living here have nothing to do with the government and a lot to do with businesses being able to get away with too much (not too little) - like that extra 50% mark-up on goods. Problems that do come from government are more likely to come from local government than from the state, and reflect whatever the current passion is - just like where you live.
Personally, though, I'd say I have considerably more freedom to dress the way I want, say the things I want, and do the things I want. In many respects, I even have more free speech than I did back home.
None of this means I don't still miss America or that I don't passionately love my country, of course. Truth is, I get homesick just about every day. But lately I have the impression that a lot of people who still live in America feel much the same way.... 15:06 BST
Former Dennis Miller fans perturbed by his recent swing to the right are advised to look at this. Now. I mean it.
"This" being Rick Chandler's dialogue between Dennis Miller of 1988 and Dennis Miller of 2003. I rather liked this bit:
DENNIS MILLER (1988): We were all scared when those planes swan-dived into the towers, OK? But what separates real Americans from the faux variety is that real Americans don't turn in their spines to the hatcheck lady in times of stress. People in this country today hear the word terrorist and immediately snap into action -- which means locking themselves in the loo, defecating on the Constitution and using the Bill of Rights to wipe their ass. We're made of better stuff than that, and all the shrieking Rush Limbaughs in the world are not worth one brave man who will stand up and say, "hey, the emperor is starkers, and besides that, he wants all of Yemen's oil." I wasn't around, but I'm pretty sure the guys at Valley Forge weren't eating sautéed rat three times a day so that a future president could attempt a three-point landing on an aircraft carrier moored three miles off the coast of Catalina Island. We have to respond to terrorism, but the problem is that we're running around like the lynch mob in The Ox-Bow Incident, and when Hank Fonda stands up and says we got the wrong guy, Jane Darwell whacks him on the head with a gun butt and the next thing you know you wake up behind barbed wire at Guantanamo. All I'm saying is that it's time to scrap the Merle Haggard diplomacy, OK? Oh, and the reason we haven't found any weapons of mass destruction is that they're all in a warehouse in Topeka waiting for the next right-wing militia asshat to work his hatred of the federal government to a sufficient boiling point due to the fact that the local TV station has once again cancelled Dukes of Hazzard. While we're running around the world like Barney Fife at a jaywalkers convention, it's good to know that our schools are shit, our economy is floundering, and they'll have universal health care in Kabul before we have it here. The only good thing to come out of this is that Ari Fleischer took the honorable way out before Bush made him put on the jaunty Iraqi Minister of Information beret and tell us the moon is made of Sonoma Dry Jack. Ah fuck it, where's my propeller beanie
