So I noticed that when Darren posts comments on Harvey's blog, his picture comes up. I decided that I wanted to have a stupid picture come up when I posted comments over there, so I guess y'all'll just have to deal with it until it rolls off the page.
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So much for my hopes of seeing the President. Here's the article explaining why.
Bush is coming to Westfield, NJ, on Friday, two towns over from mine, and I have Friday off. He's coming to talk about his Social Security plan. Now I didn't plan on causing trouble, of course, because I didn't feel like getting arrested, and also because the man's technically my boss. I figured that those two things combined would be enough to keep me from doing anything. But I did figure it would be quite valuable to go and see what the whole thing was about, see what he had to say (not in a "maybe he's got a point" way, just more in a "hearing the rhetoric" way).
But alas, "town hall meeting" doesn't really mean "town hall meeting," at least not when you've got this joker in town. The invites are mostly being given out to special supporters directly by the White House, and the scant few given to the district to distribute are being given to supporters, says Representative Ferguson, because they'd be the ones interested in hearing Bush's plan. They only want "constructive criticism."
Not actual criticism.
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So I figured I'd just riff a little bit on my thoughts on the Social Security debate of late.
I very much dislike the dishonesty of the debate from the Bush side. From what I've heard running in the background of the debate, many from the right dislike the very idea of Social Security. They view it as socialist. They view it as entitlements. They view it as welfare for the elderly. They don't want the system operating in any country that they're a part of, because they ideologically oppose what they see as its underpinnings.
Here's the problem: It's overwhelmingly popular among the general population of the country. People don't want to see Social Security phased out. They don't want to see people left to fend for themselves in retirement. They like the idea of the retirement floor being something that can help them more easily keep their head above water. So what's the solution?
Well, the solution is to propose a plan which will end up crippling Social Security past the point where it can be fixed, so that it can only be phased out, all under the guise of "strengthening and saving Social Security." These private accounts play into peoples' thinking that the government is a bunch of bureaucratic ninnies, and that any average Joe can do things far better than the government ever could. That's it. That's the whole reasoning behind those 30-some percent of people who support the plan. They're hoping to make themselves millionaires in retirement off of all this fabulous investment opportunity (which everybody can do, obviously, hope you enjoy the sarcasm).
But Bush's plan does nothing to address the problem that he is claiming needs to be fixed, and is therefore the reason that the whole system needs an overhaul. He says: X needs to be changed because of problem Y. I propose we replace X with Z, which still has problem Y, only bigger.
How do people accept that logic?
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I have a disturbing story to tell. Well, it's disturbing to me, at least.
I went out to a restaurant for lunch today called the Black River Barn. I ordered the Chicken Parmigiana Hero, and it came out and I started eating. I thought it tasted a little bit weird, but I was hungry and didn't really mind, even though I'd had better chicken parm before. Well, I got to the end of it, and I noticed that the consistency on the last piece of chicken was a little strange. Then I noticed a little bone in my mouth. Then I smelled it, and it smelled like fish. I got the waiter, and he took it back. Lo and behold, what I had gotten was a breaded piece of grilled tilapia fish, and I just didn't know it.
Now I guess it was just so smothered in sauce that I didn't notice, but it disturbs me a little bit that I didn't understand why it tasted weird until the end. I didn't even see the consistency of it until the end because the sauce was dripping over it. But I don't like fish very much, and I never would have ordered that in the first place. It disturbs me a bit that I ate the whole thing without realizing it.
Oh well.
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President Bush's Agenda: Strengthening and saving Social Security.
In the same vein, I'd like to announce that my own personal agenda includes lobbying for Bush to be able to run for a third term in 2008.
In case you didn't pick it up, I was just juxtaposing one fallacious claim with another.
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CNN's got a story about how scientists feel like they're being marginalized by the Bush Administration. Read it here.
I just don't get how politics overrides science in such fundamental ways with these nutjobs. What gives Bush and other Republican lawmakers the right to think that they know more about global warming, for example, than the scientific community, who overwhelmingly disagrees with them? What gives the Administration and their congressional cronies the right to ignore the science that they don't like?
What gives here?
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OK, so I'll write a little bit about Social Security again. It's been a while, and I've been feeling like people might think I forgot about it. Truth is that I've been reading a lot, but haven't really had that much to say on the subject.
But then I found this article on CNN talking about the GOP's strategy with dealing with the Social Security problem. They're ramping up the rhetoric, claiming a partial victory, a foothold if you will, in the reclassification of the Social Security battle. They say that their elections prove that Social Security is no longer the "third rail" of American politics. Since GOP congressmen have been elected despite advocating "personal accounts," they want to claim that this is a victory for them, and proof positive that the American people are starting to "get it," as they say.
But then down at the bottom they tear a sheet out of their strategy guide and read it verbatim, clear as anything, for everyone who's listening and paying attention to hear (though most won't, probably).
Coleman said he was attacked during his 2002 campaign for favoring privatization. "I countered it by being very clear that I supported personal accounts and opposed privatization," he said.
It is a distinction Sununu sought to make in 2002, and one Republicans have been told they will have to make successfully in 2006 if they are to be successful.
"We win if the issue is defined as personal accounts. We lose if it is defined as privatization," pollster David Winston wrote recently in a presentation for Senate Republicans.
So just what is "privatization"? Is it the word that they so vehemently oppose? Is it anything that anybody's actually proposed? How can they say that they're against it if they don't even say what it is?
And how can they say that they're against it if it's the word they themselves were using not too long ago?
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This article has our very own Fearless Leader claiming that Syria is "out of step" with the rest of the Middle East, and demanding the Syria remove its troops from Lebanon immediately.
First of all, I follow the news, I think, and I don't know too much about this. Where the hell is the media (subject of another, long, disappointed post not too far in the future)?
Second, who knew that the Middle East was all "in step" in the first place? Boy, I know that Iraq and Kuwait have been doing a great job of cooperating, right? And Saudi Arabia and Iran are right on the same page in their dealings with the United States, right? And Israel is just like all the rest of them, right?
Please. Please, for the love of God, explain to me how this man is in charge of our foreign policy.
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I found a story on MSNBC about torture, and why it's just not got legs anymore. Let me explain what I mean.
Gonzalez and Chertoff, the Attorney General and Homeland Security nominees, were approved without problem amid allegations of torture, or sanctioning of torture, or knowledge about torture happening.
John Kerry was sharply criticized during his campaign for accusing soldiers 34 years ago of committing atrocities such as torture.
So why is torture all of a sudden not bad anymore? If you can be politically vilified for getting upset about witnessing torture, what does that say about us? If stanch opposition to abortion is more important to Democrats to filibuster than approval of torture, then what does that say about us?
Torture is one of the basest, cruelest, most pointless acts that we can commit, and we condemn it in our enemies. It seems, though, that the same standards do not apply to us. We laud corporate whistle-blowers, or people who point out the failings and corruptions of government, but when somebody has the gall to go out and say that soldiers raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, etc., well, that's the line, isn't it?
We can seemingly admit that our business can become corrupt. We can admit that our government can become corrupt. We can admit that our enemies are bad for raping people, and for mutilating people. We can admit that private citizens are bad for committing acts of torture, such as the couple recently arrested in Utah. Why does this same accountability not extend to members of the military?
I appreciate the sacrifice made by the members of the military, on a very real level. I appreciate the stresses faced by them, and I appreciate that they do this for the good of the rest of us. I really do appreciate that. But appreciation and worship should be kept seperate. People should be judged by what they do, not who they are. Most soldiers are good guys, I think, and they do good things. But reprehensible actions should not be canceled out by being a soldier.
If we're going to be holding the rest of the world accountable and giving ourselves a pass at the same time, then who's going to hold us accountable?
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So I'm gonna try my hand at one of these non-political posts. Strange, huh?
I spent last week, from Monday through Friday, down in Columbus, Georgia, which is right next to Fort Benning. Fort Benning is the home of the Infantry, basically, and it's enormous. 200,000 acres, so I learned. That's about 25 times the size of Picatinny, where I work, and Picatinny's huge.
So we got down there on Monday evening, and we were given a list of places that we weren't allowed to go. Places like the Traffic Light Lounge and the Boom Boom Room. Places that we wouldn't have wanted to go anyway, I'm guessing. I mean, the Boom Boom Room has got a fun name, but.....c'mon.
Tuesday we ate lunch in Alabama, which was pretty cool. The place was amazing. Run-down and dumpy, it looked as though it'd been abandoned for at least ten years. But the BBQ was amazing. Ribs, coleslaw, BBQ sandwiches, baked beans and sweet tea. Good stuff all around. That afternoon we went to the National Infantry Museum, located right there at Fort Benning, which had all sorts of displays dating from colonial days right up through the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pretty cool stuff.
Wednesday we were issued our uniforms and equipment very very early in the morning, and we drove the 40 minutes out to the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Ware Range. We got to watch soldiers calibrating their weapons, eat MREs, and then follow a squad through the woods on a dry run of their training mission. All this while it was raining out! Awesome!
Thursday I woke up sick as a dog, but that didn't really bother me too much. It sucked, but it wasn't all that bad. We went back out to Ware Range and got to witness a live fire demonstration of the same training exercise we watched the day before. We made sure to keep our helmets on that day, I'll tell you that much. After that, we got a chance to talk with the VC (vehicle commander) of one of the Striker Armed Personnel Carriers that they were using. He even let us take a ride, which was awesome! I'll see if I can figure out later how to put some pictures up here.
We came home on Friday, and I spent the weekend miserable with sickness. But anyway, I'll write more later.
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Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I haven't been able to think of much to post. I might have to change the direction of this thang, maybe to random musings as they come to me (most likely with political bents) since the Social Security thing seems to have dried up, at least in terms of new stuff that I'd have to say about it, and the election's over.
Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see from me, or some ideas that you have for what I could blog about.
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So, do y'all remember the flap a few months ago about when Rumsfeld was cornered by some soldiers in Kuwait about the uparmored Humvees not being available enough? Remember how that all came out in the end? The question was discredited because a reporter helped the soldiers prepare it and get it asked, and later it was released that something like 95% of the Humvees in the field were uparmored.
Well, I was talking with some soldiers who were Iraq combat veterans this past week, and one sergeant particularly complained that the uparmored Humvees were "pieces of shit." He said that they were too slow and not maneuverable enough, and only gave the "appearance" of being safer while actually not being safer at all.
Awesome.
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...and Bill O'Reilly's least favorite rapper.
That's the best way to describe the Heritage Foundation's Social Security Calculator.
Ludicrous (or Ludacris, if you like).
Play around with it a little bit. You can change around your retirement age, life expectancy (?!?), zip code, earnings, investments, etc. Turns out everybody can become millionaires in their old age if they were just allowed to invest that money in Blue Chip high risk stocks! I guess high risk doesn't actually mean high risk, right?
Ridiculous. Er, ludicrous, that is.
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According to this article*, the Bush Administration is looking to increase benefits to the surviving families of US troops killed in action to $250K from something just above $12K. I think that there's not much dissent in the country about the government somehow compensating the families of soldiers who give their lives for their country.
Now let's make sure that we don't have to pay much anyway by bringing our troops home.
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*Thanks to loyal reader Nick Harvey
I wrote this e-mail today to a friend of mine who asked me about Social Security. She complimented me on the writing of it, and looking back, I thought it was pretty cogent for coming off the top of my head. So here it is (and tomorrow or something, I'll put up some stuff about the numbers I found on the SSA website about average wages and average benefits).
The way that the Social Security system works now is something like this: We pay 6.2% of our income into the Social Security system (and our employer kicks in the same amount, so 12.4% of our income goes into Social Security). That money goes to pay the current retirees who are collecting, and the leftovers go into the Social Security Trust Fund. Currently, that Trust Fund is valued at over $1.5 trillion, and it makes over $80 billion in interest every year.
But the Trust Fund is not filled with money. It's filled with United States Treasury Bills, or T-Bills, as they're affectionately known. They're considered the soundest investment in the world, and they've basically been the government's way of borrowing the money out of the Trust Fund to use on other programs. Opponents of the Social Security program will claim that because of this the Trust Fund is filled with worthless IOUs. If that's the case, then no T-Bills will retain their value, which would be disastrous to the economy (most of our national debt is held by Japan and China in the form of T-Bills).
In 1983, the Social Security system faced a real impending crisis. Not only had they been drawing off of the trust fund for some time, because payroll taxes were insufficient to cover benefits, it was two months from going completely bankrupt. This had happened for a number of reasons, the most prominent being what was called "stagflation" (high inflation, stagnant wages). As a result, Reagan brought a proposal before Congress that hiked the payroll tax up to a level that would be enough to build up the Trust Fund enough to provide a cushion for when the huge Baby Boomer generation retires (which is coming up before too long).
Also as a direct result of the crisis in 1983, the SSA (Social Security Administration) began making much more conservative and pessimistic projections. See, the SSA is required by law to put out a report every year (end of March, I think) that projects the state of Social Security for the next 75 years. They put out three projections: a pessimistic, middle-of-the-road, and optimistic projection. The middle-of-the-road projection is the one that everyone's been talking about, but the middle-of-the-road projections have been, for the last 10 or 15 years, too pessimistic in retrospect. They project a rate of growth of the economy that's typically been pretty far below the actual rate of growth.
Now you're exactly on the same wavelength as me about the civil/social responsibility aspect of Social Security. I read somewhere that they say about 48% of seniors who don't live in poverty would be living in poverty without Social Security. There are a hell of a lot of jobs that don't provide retirement investment options, or 401ks, and there are a hell of a lot of jobs that don't pay enough to allow people to save any substantial amount for their retirement anyway. It seems to me, anyway, that giving these people back their money that they pay in payroll taxes to Social Security wouldn't necessarily result in better retirements for them (particularly because of the employer kick-in).
But part of what opponents of the system don't like is its progressivity. What I mean by that is that if you were able to put less into the system, you get a bigger percentage back of what you gave. The theory behind such a thing is that the people who were able to put less into the system are the people who need a little more protection from poverty. Security from poverty, if you will. Mind you, people who put more in still get more out, but the percentages are skewed toward those who need it more.Social Security was never intended to be a main source of retirement income. It was planned to be a sort of social insurance against poverty in old age. You could look at it as welfare, I guess, but that would forget that the people receiving it are people who paid into the system to begin with. Welfare recipients are people just benefiting straight off of the government. But the other thing is that people who don't need it still do take it. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but that's how it is (making it even less of a "welfare" system).
As it stands right now, like I said, the payroll tax contribution is 12.4%, the retirement age is 65 and 8 (I believe) months, and the payroll tax cap is $90,000 or so. That means that any money you make above $90K is not subject to Social Securiity payroll taxes.
The thing about the supposed "crisis" being talked about right now is that it's just not true. Like I said, in 1983, the Trust Fund was 2 months from bankruptcy. Complete and total bankruptcy. Right now, in 2005, by the middle-of-the-road projections (which are historically unable to predict immigration growth, inflation rates specifically, etc. at any great length into the future), we're 37 years from the Trust Fund going bankrupt. Doesn't seem like a crisis to me.
The other thing is that these projections presume stagnation of the system as it stands. Like, they presume that the payroll tax level stays the same, the payroll tax cap only goes up with mean wage growth (which it always does), and that the retirement age slowly creeps up to 67 in a few years, as it's been scheduled to do. But in the 70 years that Social Security has existed, it's been a very very dynamic system. The amount of payroll tax has increased, the retirement age has increased, the benefits have been cut, etc. There have been many little maintenances along the way, and it seems silly to me to assume that it would stay exactly the same for the next 75 years.
Some proposed fixes include raising the retirement age, cutting benefits in some not-too-substantial way, raising the payroll tax cap, raising the payroll tax by a couple of tenths of a percent, etc.
Paul Craig Roberts does it again. I don't know if y'all read the links I put up here, but do yourself a favor and take five or ten minutes and read this one. Keep in mind, while you do, that it comes from NewsMax, a heavily conservative website. I don't know what they're thinking, keeping on putting this guy up there, but more power to 'em as long as they do.
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Looks like Bush is using himself as a primary source now. Great.
"The fundamental question is: Can we advance that history?" the president asked rhetorically. "And that's what my inauguration speech said. It said yes we can."
Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Kerry-bashing Unfit for Command, plans to run for Senate against, you guessed it, Kerry himself.
See if you can't read that NewsMax article without having a good chuckle.
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Guess what? The Protection of Marriage Amendment has been brought back to the table in the Senate! Thank God such issues which have a chance of passing are getting shoved once more to the forefront of our national discourse! And guess who's overjoyed about it?
I'll give you a hint: He has a problem with absorbency.
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...its criticism of the President's agenda in this editorial. Once again, like before, this is a conservative's editorial, but he sharply criticizes Bush's focus on Social Security as an immediate crisis while ignoring things like illegal immigration and the skyrocketing cost of health care.
Dissension in the ranks? Doesn't bode well for things to come for Mr. Bush, let's hope.
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I've decided to start looking through the rest of the news, because my focus has been too tight on Social Security lately. I'm still going to keep tabs on it, and I'm still going to post on it, but as of right now, there's nothing new to say, and I feel like I've been letting down my faithful reader(s) with my lack of posts. So here's something new.
Bush publicly spoke by phone with a large group of abortion protesters, telling them that he shared their vision of protecting the vulnerable, and that he wanted to promote a "culture of life."
Of all the empty, meaningless pieces of rhetoric that the Bush Administration puts out, this one might be the one that pisses me off the most. He promotes a culture of life. So the Democrats must be promoting the opposite, right? A culture of death, right? It's so much passive-agressive political posturing nonsense, and it just makes me sad to see it perpetuated.
Interestingly enough, the article gives this excerpt:
"You know, we come from many, different backgrounds, but what unites us is our understanding that the essence of civilization is this: The strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said. He has said he supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, but has not actively pushed for it.
I just ran across this article on MSNBC, and I thought it was interesting. In it, they ask what the Democrats are prepared to offer as an alternative to Bush's plan. I know what it should be: Social Security.
Bush's plan is certainly not Social Security, much as he claims to want to "reform" the existing system. I know this even though Bush hasn't put out a plan. He wants to privatize, and that will end up destroying the system and driving the country into debt in short order.
So what are the Democrats dragging their feet on? Like Josh Marshall always says, we know the gist of Bush's plan, and that we don't support it. Why wait for him to put out the knuckleheaded specifics before outright opposing it? Better yet, why not beat him to the punch with a rock-solid proposal that shores up Social Security, in just that way that it's been periodically shored up since its inception?
Talk about personal accounts on top of Social Security, talk about investment and responsibility, etc. But for God's sake, talk. The Democrats who care about this issue can't afford to let Bush drag his feet and make the first move. By then, the public consciousness will be saturated with this talk of "crisis," and any Democratic plan will be too little too late.
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.....that NewsMax must have missed this editorial when deciding what to put on their opinion pages. It sharply (and rightly) criticizes the Bush Administration for its handling of the war in Iraq, and more importantly, for its handling of its own members who had the gall to criticize the Administration. It calls the Administration a pack of liars and sycophants (citing Condi's sycophantishness as her prime qualification for being Bush's Secretary of State), and talks about what he sees as US plans to go into Iran next.
Turns out that this is this columnist's standard MO. In this editorial from the day before, he criticizes the neocon belief in American hegemony and domination as disastrous and unattainable, even in such a small corner of the world as Iraq.
This guy certainly would not be featured on NewsMax if he wasn't a conservative, so I can't help but think that he's a "paleoconservative," as they're titled in The Right Nation, by John Mickelthwait and Adrian Woolridge. They put Pat Buchanan in this category, and his sharp criticism of the Iraq war identifies him and his ilk, in my mind, with the fella who wrote these two editorials (Paul Craig Roberts).
But for the record, like I said, I'm pretty much astounded to see editorials so sharply blasting Bush on such a Teen Beat Bush Edition website as NewsMax.
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One thing that's important is to realize that Social Security is an insurance program. Though the bulk of its payments go to retirees, there also a good chunk that go to the disabled, the widowed, etc. It's your money, invested in US bonds, ostensibly the most secure investments in the world.
I'm not the first person to say this, but.....if, like some Conservatives claim, the US just plans to default on the bonds in which the Trust Fund has invested, then what does that mean for the rest of the countries that own portions of the US debt?
Excuse the crudity, but imagine China holding our collective nuts in a trillion dollar vise grip.
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OK, so I think that your comments may all have been erased, but that's because I installed a new comment thing. It'll pop up a little comment window, instead of reproducing the whole thing, and it'll let people who aren't members of Blogger leave names, e-mails, and homepages.
Go to it, and I'll be back later with some more actual posts.
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I've been having various debates on the Social Security issue, mostly online, and it's very interesting to me how fundamentally different my views on the issue are from a conservative's views on the issue.
First, there's the difference in argument. As is becoming increasingly clear, conservatives are opposed to the idea of Social Security, mathematics and facts be damned. If the only way to get support up for "reform" is to make stuff up, then so be it. They will not be deterred. But their objection is that they shouldn't be made to give up any of their money to give to somebody else (and I'm sure the progressivity* of benefits gets them all furious, too). So pointing out that Bush's crisis is so much smoke and mirrors becomes a moot point when what they really want to argue is that Social Security is a philosophical quagmire. I think that there could be a legitimate debate to be had there, but that's not how the president's couching it.
And I know that they'll hate me for it, but I can't help but feel that there's this fundamental selfish, "greed is good" mentality going on with the conservatives, too. They believe that the free market solves anything, and I guess those who get caught in the crossfire and lose everything are just those proverbial eggs that get cracked for the making of the omelette. They get pretty enraged when the compassion issue gets brought up (i.e., keeping Social Security is more compassionate to the people who can't otherwise afford much retirement savings). They claim that it's more compassionate to not rob people of their money to pay other people with.
Please.
Social Security keeps a great many seniors out of poverty. To completely abolish Social Security (which is what they really want to do, and which Bush's plan really will accomplish in the long-run by weakening it so much) will be to subject everyone to the whims of the market. Conservatives, again, don't want to talk about administrative costs of running these market purchases, or brokerage fees, or the fact that not every US citizen is going to become a stock market expert overnight. Instead they'd like to stick their fingers in their ears, pretend that 100 million people are going to be able to invest in the highest-yield stocks in the market all at once without somehow changing its dynamic, and live forever in their glorious "ownership society."
Again, please.
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*For those who don't know, Social Security benefits are scaled so that people who contribute more get more monetarily, but people who didn't have enough money to contribute more get a greater percentage of their former wages.
Just to let y'all know, in case you didn't notice, I put up a new picture link in my sidebar over there. It's a link to a site called There Is No Crisis, and it's filled with all sorts of information about Social Security and why this "crisis" being trumpeted by the Bush White House is so much smoke and mirrors, just like the crisis in the leadup to Iraq. There's also a list of affiliated bloggers, of which I think I'll soon be a part. I haven't gotten to check them all out, but I know that at least Talking Points Memo is some really top-notch stuff.
I'll get back to you after I've done some more reading.
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I just recently learned that I'm censored in China. Apparently my thoughts and musings blew their mind. I'm too much for them to handle.
NOTE: You might want to bring to my attention the fact that all blogger sites are censored in China. Don't. It'll kill my buzz.
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I didn't find it, but this article is a very good one. So's this one.
This is all about Social Security, by the way.
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Ted Kennedy, saying basically what I said two days ago about the Democrats needing to stay united, and not try to move to the right or create a "big tent" philosophy.
According to this article, the Bush Administration is breaking with precedent and forcing the city of Washington D.C. to use $11.9 million of its homeland security budget (money it was given because it's at high risk of attack) to pay for costs attendant to the forthcoming inauguration.
This defies comment.
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Consumer Reports recently did a study of different condom brands, checking for which were the best. At the same time, they did a study of other birth control methods, including abortion (both chemical and surgical). As you may be able to guess, one of my favorite websites, WorldNetDaily, took issue with this, claiming that Consumer Reports was advocating abortion. Wait, that's not quite right. The American Life League says that Consumer Reports is advocating killing.
There is a lively, ugly debate to be had on abortion in America, most of it centering around when life begins. But Consumer Reports gives information on options available. As this is one of the options, I fail to see exactly what the problem is.
I found this website detailing the links between abortion and breast cancer. That's from a pro-life website alleging media conspiracy in covering up the links between abortion and breast cancer. This one's from BreastCancer.org. It says that there's no link between abortion and breast cancer, and that's the same opinion as that of the National Cancer Institute's official study."There were no details of the risks of abortion like breast cancer or
mental anguish, no pro-life alternatives like adoption, nothing," reader Marc
Smulowitz commented to WND. "Just a soulless 'consumer report' as if they were
recommending the acquisition of the latest blender."
Bush's new approval ratings came out, and while his overall approval rating went to 52% (an eight-point spread over those who disapprove of his job), the story is quite different on individual issues. 50% approved of his handling of the economy, and that's his highest marks on the economy in a year. 75% approved of his handling of the tsunami, and this is where the title of this post comes from. I'm not saying I think that Bush handled the tsunami poorly, but might this skew the results a little bit? I mean, was there really any kind of real choice made by Bush with regards to handling the tsunami?
There's a 14-point spread (56% to 42%) on disapproval of the war in Iraq. And surprisingly enough, to me, there's an 11-point spread (52% to 41%) on disapproval of Bush's Social Security plan. A full 55% of Americans feel that partial privatization is a bad idea.
But that doesn't mean that Bush's war of rhetoric has been lost; far from it. 18% of Americans describe Social Security as "in crisis," and 53% described it as having "major problems." Only 24% said that its problems were minor, and 3% said that it faces no problems.
Pretty funny that for a system that's been continuously changed and appended over its 70-year history (payroll tax caps, tax amounts, retirement ages), all of a sudden the assumption is that its supporters just want to keep it stagnant, exactly as it is now.
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Bill O'Reilly's at it again, evidently, this time resuming a three-year-old tussle with George Clooney (or G-Cloo, as he's known in the 'hood). O'Reilly charged three years ago that the celebrity telethon following 9/11 was riddled with fundraising errors, and that the Red Cross changed its whole fundraising system thanks to his watchful eye. Clooney was one of the main organizers of the event, so he received a lot of O'Reilly's ire.
Well, Clooney's organizing another telethon, this one for the people hurt by the tsunami, and O'Reilly's launching a pre-emptive strike, staking out his watchdogging role early. Clooney responded to O'Reilly with a pretty scathing letter where, among other things, he said that the original 9/11 telethon was organized by the United Way, not the Red Cross. "An easy mistake to make.....if you're 3," the letter says. He also charges O'Reilly to put his "considerable money" where his "considerable mouth" is and get involved in the telethon, since his early criticism seems already to have reduced contributions.
Isn't it all just a bit silly? I mean, O'Reilly's a jackass for doing this the way that he is, but he's a jackass for doing just about everything the way that he does it. To insinuate before the fact that there's a better than likely possibility (he didn't say that, but it's the obvious implication) that there were going to be accounting errors and that the aid wouldn't reach the victims is petty and small, and really only indicative of the fact that O'Reilly has it out for "lefties" like Clooney.
And G-Cloo sits on the board of the United Way. I don't object to his writing a letter to O'Reilly, and I think it's entirely merited in this circumstance; but I think maybe his sarcasm could have been a bit more veiled. Especially as a representative of a charitable organization.
I come down pretty firmly on Clooney's side here, with some reservations about his manner of response.
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Terry McAuliffe's term as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee is up, and the fight has begun to see who will replace him. Among the forerunners is former Congressman Tim Roemer, an anti-abortion Catholic. Ominous as some pro-choice Democrats might see this to be, Roemer has stated that he doesn't want to change the platform of the party; rather, he'd like to "expand the tent," so to speak, to make up for some of the losses of the Democrats in the recent elections.
I don't think it's a terrible idea, but I just feel like the idea of a "big tent" Democratic Party would probably ring false to the type of people that they'd be trying to reach with such a move. Namely, the social conservatives in "flyover country." I firmly believe that there should be a way to convince them that the fiscal interests of the lower- and middle-class workers are better served by the Democratic Party's economic platform, but I don't know if a symbolic move like having a pro-life Chairman is the way to do that. Already, during the 2004 campaign, Republicans were accusing Democrats of trying to be "too much like Republicans."
It sucks, but I think that the best course right now for the Democrats would be to present a united front and wait for the weakly bonded coalition of conservatives to self-destruct. It's already beginning to fray at the edges, with the ultra-cons saying Bush hasn't been conservative enough, and Schwarzenegger saying that the party should become more liberal, etc. Everyone's been promised something, and not all of those promises can be kept.
If the Democrats can weather the next little while without significant compromise, things should start looking up before too long.
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I've been obsessed with this Social Security issue lately, because it's a damned important issue. Bob Novak would like to claim that there's no transition costs, and that the long-term costs of doing nothing are much greater (based, of course, on an infinite horizon projection). Doing nothing, yes. But Social Security has ever been a dynamic system, with retirement ages increasing and percentages taken from income increasing, and with the caps on payroll taxes increasing. It's insane to think that now, for some reason, the system would be allowed to completely stagnate.
Novak also claims that the transition costs in the short term could be limited to $600 billion. I don't know where he gets this figure, and he conveniently neglects to really tell any of us (check, I dare you).
This morning before work, I was watching CNN, and there was a dude on there who was talking about costs of Social Security and Medicare (that's right, lumped together for some insane reason) as a percentage of income tax. His claim was that right now, at this moment, Social Security and Medicare account for a full seventh of all income taxes collected by the government, and that in the next twenty years, that number would go to somewhere between a fourth and a half.
Insanity by any measure, no? Well, unfortunately, not for those of us who don't bother to go out and find out what's really going on. Scare tactics work, plain and simple. Make stuff up, and people will believe you, because their laziness overrides their fear. This guy was allowed, on what conservatives call the "Communist News Network" for its blatant liberalism, to get off scot free saying that Social Security is currently running a deficit.
Here's a website I found that would undoubtedly be decried as the vilest of lies by the champions of privatization/reform (catch phrases for abolition), but which actually has some very interesting information that's not even being touched by the "liberal" media.
Be back later.
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Johan,
The reason that the US was pissed off at the UN was because a UN official called Western Nations "stingy" in their aid given to relief efforts for the tsunami. Ever since then, it's been pretty much a competition, at least here, to measure ourselves by how much money is given.
Hope that clears things up, dude!
Ik heb trek,
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Just read an interesting article in the Washington Post about the problems posed to the 109th Congress. It's no surprise that the most bitter battles of the coming year will likely be those of judicial nominations and of Social Security.
Bush has re-nominated a number of formerly filibustered judicial nominees, signaling that his pledge to reach across the aisle was a lie at best (in my mind, anyway). This has raised questions as to whether Democrats would have the stones to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee, and not just circuit and appeals courts nominees. We'll have to see, but I wouldn't be surprised, especially if the Supreme Court nominee(s) in question is/are stanch anti-abortionist(s).
In addition, Bush's new Social Security plan would come up, and surprise surprise, it involves cutting benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades! Proponents of the plan hope that the slack will be picked up by private investment accounts, but the AARP has launched a $5 million advertising campaign against Bush's plan. That's not a very strong endorsement, is it?
Last but not least, the GOP has reversed course on its controversial DeLay Rule, deciding (evidently) that it wasn't worth risking the appearance of complete moral bankruptcy just to allow a Texas representative to keep his leadership post in the House while being indicted for criminal charges. This is a strange move, since the DeLay Rule has been fought tooth and nail by the Democrats, and defended tooth and nail by the Republicans, ever since it was proposed.
So anyway, these'll be the big issues in the Congress, and at least the judicial one will hinge on what I think will become one of the central debates in our public discourse. I'm talking, of course, about religion. The freedom to practice religion, the separation of church and state, government involvement in religion, religion's involvement in government, etc. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to get abortion outlawed because it's an offense against God. There are a lot of people out there who are against gay marriage for the same reasons. These same people are up in arms about how hard it's been made to practice their religion because of the "myth" of church-state separation. They refer to America as a Christian nation.
Increasingly, on the other side, proponents of church-state separation, as they feel it is prescribed in the Constitution, are making their cases heard as well. Prayer in public schools is out, the pledge of allegiance has been called into question, and an Alabama Supreme Court justice has been tossed out on the street for failure to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments. Just as the worlds of entertainment and politics are merging, so too are the worlds of religion and politics. The coming debates are going to be at the very least tinged with hints of religion, and at most driven by religion.
I'll post more later.
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Dr. James Dobson = Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell
Expect the fight over religion to be a big one over the coming years. Christians think it's hard to be one of them in America these days.
Please.
It's hard to be a little girl in China.
It was hard to be black in the South years ago.
It's hard to be a Serb in Croatia.
It's hard to be a Tutsi in Rwanda.
It's not hard to be a Christian in America.
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Just thought that I should say that the coverage of the tsunami has been getting quite better (while the death tolls get worse), and less ethnocentric. With the exception of the US's getting pissed off at the UN again, it seems that the country lines are starting to be blurred, and this is being viewed as a human disaster.
I'd urge everyone to donate some money, if they can. There's plenty of places to do it, including Amazon.com and Redcross.org.
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There's not anything I have to add to the incredible sadness of this enormous disaster, and the media has started to do a pretty good job of covering it (I was afraid that they wouldn't). This article from MSNBC.com talks about our memories when it comes to natural disasters, and I was reminded of the earthquake last year in the Iranian city of Bam that killed 30,000 people. That got precious little coverage. Some might say that it was because the earthquake was comparatively not that big, but I don't think so. I don't even know if people know that it happened, but it had an astronomical death toll, and it was a blip in the media.
This disaster has gotten better coverage, certainly, but I can't help but feel like the people here in America don't really feel much about it. We'd expect the world to cry for us, but we can't really spare anything but a half-hearted, "That's so sad," when talking about this disaster. True, it's not as huge a thing because it's not a terrorist attack or something, but still.....a little compassion wouldn't hurt, right?
Ethnocentricity rocks.
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Here's a little gem that I found a few days ago. President Bush is planning on renominating 12 judges whose appointments were formerly blocked by filibustering Democrats in the Senate.
Is it just me, or is the intent of this move blatant? Bush wants to do this to goad the Democrats into blocking them again so that he can label them as obstructionists and toss their reputations further down the gutter.
But by doing this knowingly, isn't it Bush who's the obstructionist?
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Hey, all! Merry Christmas!
I just thought both of you who read this would find it amusing that I, of all people, attended Christmas Eve church service (for the second year in a row!) last night with George W. Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card.
Ho ho ho!
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The liberals are not the only ones who have updated their terminology in recent years (i.e. handicapped = disabled, black = African-American). The conservatives have done it too! Here's a couple of examples, and feel free to comment and add your own. I'll put up more as I think of them:
George W.'s tax cuts = Trickle-down economics
Ownership society = The "Me" decade
The War on Terror = The Cold War
Those who haven't learned from history are doomed to repeat it, right?
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I had the nicest talk with a fellow on the plane from Newark to Dulles. His name was Bill, and he was a black gentleman in his sixties, from the Bay Area in California. Originally from New Jersey, he was visiting family.
He had just retired from 30+ years with Chevron and the Department of Energy (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) as first a Nuclear Chemist, and then an Organic Chemist. He and I had a good hippie liberal talk about the environment and about politics, and he told me that it was encouraging to him to meet a young fella who cared about things and wanted to help make a difference. Made me feel good to hear that, too.
Thanks, Bill.
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I hate the Confederate flag. I hate what it stands for, and I hate that people still insist on flying it as part of their heritage. I'm not saying I hate the South, because the South has a largely rich heritage. But the Confederate flag represents one of the ugliest chapters in that history. Regardless of the other causes, the Civil War is readily associated with slavery, and the South's fight to keep it. That some would still insist on proudly calling it the "Rebel Flag" inflames me even more.
So pardon me if I have little sympathy for this girl, who so innocently made a prom dress with a Confederate flag theme, and was turned out of her prom. Being proud of your heritage is one thing. Showcasing a symbol of the darkest chapter of that heritage says to me that you don't agree that what was going on then was wrong.
I wonder if German girls wear swastikas to their proms.
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I think they're running scared, if this columnist from NewsMax has his finger on the pulse. By "they" I mean the Republicans. Here's an excerpt:
The margin of victory in the Electoral College was rather close. And the popular-vote victory was less than three and a half million for the president in 2004. That is good enough for a mandate, but the GOP leadership had better understand that the defection of any one of the elements of this coalition would be fatal to the party.
That is why a missile defense system must be launched. That is why the Federal Marriage Amendment must be revived. That is why United States Appeals Court judges and Supreme Court justices must be confirmed. That is why spending must be controlled. That is why Republicans had better understand what is happening with the war in Iraq and how to depart after the elections. I could go on, but you get the picture.
I think that the thing this guy doesn't realize, though, is that some things like the Federal Marriage Amendment also stand a chance of being divisive within the Party, just as not backing the Federal Marriage Amendment would be divisive (although tipping in a different direction, admittedly).
Let's just sit & watch, k?
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Wal-Mart is being sued by a Texas woman whose schizophrenic daughter purchased a shotgun at a local Wal-Mart and used it to commit suicide. She used to frequent a different Wal-Mart, seven miles away, and at that store she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication, she had assaulted police officers, and she had been arrested for attacking a fellow customer.
But Texas (along with 36 other states) does not submit mental health records to the FBI database consulted by gun vendors in performing background checks. Prescription drug records are off-limits, too, after a 1996 federal law made them so. And as a consequence, this profoundly disturbed girl came up clean on her background check, purchased a shotgun, and took her own life with it.
Incidentally, there are seventeen states that would have sold her the gun even if they had turned up a history of mental illness, because they don't have laws against such sales. Those are: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Insanity, I say.
Literally.
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Just so y'all know, I put some new links over in the sidebar. Some are of more conservative websites, a couple news sites, a couple more blogs, and an all new section with liberal websites! Funny thing is that it's a lot harder to find liberal websites. Damn those conservatives and their organization!
Oh, and I also made it so that the links open in new windows automatically, so you can open them while you read without losing the page. If this causes trouble for any of the three people who read this, or if you don't like it, feel free to let me know.
Cheers,
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So Bush is starting to come under fire for his handling of the Social Security issue, and more and more it seems like this is a Republican/Democrat dividing line, rather than a good/bad line. Republican rhetoric is exaggerating the state of Social Security right now.
So, like I was saying last time, it seems like Bush has got an axe to grind with the fact that there's been a socialist system operating in his country for 69 years, and that it's been working. There's another 14 years before we start giving out more in benefits than we're taking in in taxes, and another 30 or so years beyond that before benefits would have to decrease (during those 30 years, the difference would be paid out of the Social Security trust, which is where the surpluses have been going all this time, and which currently stands at something like $1.5 trillion!). There are a couple of things that could fix this, not least of which would be a change to make more than just the first $87,900 of income taxable for Social Security. If that number was upped to $200,000, the system's viability would be extended like crazy.The retirement system faces a projected $3.7 trillion, 75-year shortfall. Bush wants to overhaul the program to let younger workers divert some of their Social Security payroll taxes to personal accounts. But that alone won't fix the problem and could require upfront costs of $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10
years.Bush regularly claims Social Security faces a shortfall of nearly $11 trillion, which, Orszag said, is a misleading figure because it makes the system appear to be in worse shape than it is.
So I happened on an interesting article from MSNBC on Social Security. It's seeming more and more to me like the move to abolish Social Security is more a political move away from the left and toward the right than it is about any real benefit to the citizenry, or about responsible accounting.
I've read a couple places now that the Social Security system has taken in more than it's paid out ($155 billion, by the measure of the article), but that surplus gets lumped in with the rest of the budget, which is operating under a deficit, and all of a sudden, when all's said and done, the figures come out and all we hear is "deficit, deficit, deficit." We don't hear from what parts of the budget the deficit is coming, it's just all lumped together.
Something to think about, anyway.
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Here's a story from NewsMax.com (one of my favorite websites out there, sarcasm certainly intended) about how Zell Miller's found a new home as a commentator at FOX News. Is anybody surprised? I mean, really, I don't know how people can keep claiming that FOX is fair and/or balanced. At this point, given Dick Morris and Zell Miller, it seems like a more apt slogan would be: "FOX News: Where cranky men who claim to have once been Democrats go to die."
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The Democrats seem to be facing a long, hard road to 2006, and an even longer, harder road to 2008. These roads are made neither shorter nor easier by the unabating attempts by conservative Republican commentators and analysts to define the Democratic Party. It's getting so that you can't hear mention of the recently passed presidential election without hearing talk of the 2008 presidential election. And if a Republican is in the room, you can't hear talk of 2008 without hearing the words "Hilary Clinton" and "frontrunner" going along with it.
Conservative Republicans know that Hilary Clinton is basically unelectable, and they want to latch onto that immediately. They want to define the Democratic Party in the media as the party of a candidate who cannot win. It's a good strategy, truth be told.
So what do the Democrats have to do? First, they need to repudiate the Clinton banner being hung over their heads by the Republicans. I dug Clinton, but his name (and, consequently, his wife's name) have been so demonized that they're just not politically viable in the mainstream anymore. They can be "blue state" heroes, but that appeal almost certainly doesn't cross over to the red states.
Second, they need to (with regard to 2008) get the fighting over who'll be the candidate done largely before the primaries, and largely behind closed doors. Having a number of popular candidates in the primaries gave the Republicans plenty of ammunition to say that the Democrats hadn't chosen "who they really wanted," referring of course to Howard Dean. If the fight had been conducted more privately, and earlier, then the candidate would have had a cleaner field from which to choose his running mate (instead of a field of candidates whom he had been made to fight to seecure the nomination), and he would have been able to start full-fledged campaigning much earlier, thus inserting himself into the public consciousness as the Democratic candidate, instead of one of the Democratic candidates.
Third, and perhaps most important (and underpinning the second point), there must be considerably more party unity than there has been in the past few years. I discussed, in my last post, the difficulties of the liberals in getting a forward-thinking agenda going, because that's "going where no man has gone before." As I said, a retreat into the past has the comfort of the familiar. But the Democrats' cause is further weakened by defections across party lines. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo said much the same thing with regards to Social Security recently, and it's true. If the Democrats can learn to rein in their varying constituencies in the same sort of way that the Republicans reined in social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and the religious right (some of whom hold blatantly contradictory beliefs), then they might just have a shot at this thing.
But then again, there's always 2012.
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Ok, I haven't written anything analytical in a while. It's been mostly posting news articles of interest every now and then with a snarky comment attached at the end. Proud as I am of my snarky comments, I've thought of something to write about.
This is a hell of a question with a hell of a lot of answers, depending on who you ask. The typical religious zealot conservative's answer varies between, "This country's going to hell in a handbasket and we need to reassert our Christian values and take it back," and "We are taking back our country, and the re-election of George W. Bush proves that."
When these arch-conservatives talk about the country going to hell, they're generally talking about the moral decrepitude of our culture, as evidenced by Howard Stern, the Janet Jackson incident, the Monday Night Football teaser, etc. These are people who, when they say they want to take the country back, they literally mean that they want to take the country back--to the 1950s. To days when they couldn't show toilets on television, let alone hints of naked flesh. To days when impolite speech was confined to saying "None of your business" instead of "None of your beeswax." To days when the role models of the generation were clean-cut, and scandals were swept under the rug instead of aired for all to see.
But the 1950s weren't all that they were cracked up to be. Watching TVLand doesn't give you an altogether accurate view of what was going on during that decade of the Korean Conflict (read: War), "separate but equal" facilities, McCarthyism and the Red threat (America's finest hour, according to Ann Coulter), increasing tensions with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and singing, dancing street gangs fighting for control of New York City (Ok, maybe you can get that last one from television).
The fact is, the 1950s were a time of greater moral stricture on the surface, but the undercurrents that lay beneath that veneer were the same as those that are there today. History and popular culture may whitewash it (no racist pun intended), but the 1950s were not what people think they were, in my opinion.
So that's the take of the radical conservatives, as I see it. They want the country to be a God-fearing Christian nation with the moral restraint it had fifty years ago. And there are some good reasons for them to feel that the country is moving in that direction. People are being decried as unpatriotic for questioning the motives of the Administration. There is a growing current wanting to teach "intelligent design" to the youngsters in our schools, alongside evolution. The ongoing FCC brouhaha is making it clear that censorship is tightening its grip on public expression in the country.
But what about the liberals? Do they share the same view? Of course not. They hold that this is not a "Christian nation." It may be populated predominantly by Christians (by birth, not necessarily by practice), but its population does not marry it to a specific religion, and that should be respected. Moreover, the liberals feel that they're the ones taking their country back, and that the grassroots campaigns of the 2004 Democratic primaries prove that.
It's hard to tell, though, where the liberals want to take the country, because it's not somewhere that we've been before. That comes partially to the difference in the actual definitions of the words "liberal" and "conservative." Liberal is forward thinking, while conservative is looking to the past, to conserve the past. Makes sense, I think. And it makes sense that the liberals don't have as clear a plan for the future, because their model for what it should be like hasn't yet happened.
And depending on whom you listen to, the liberals have good reason to think that the country is moving away from the moral stricture and conservative tendencies of the 1950s. For states to have considered gay marriage at all, even if only for most to have banned it, is a monumental step, I think. Minority lines are still there, but they're a bit more blurred, especially with two minority secretaries of state (the second one female) in a row. Regardless of the recent push for more "decency," the boundaries on acceptable expression in public forums have been expanded greatly in the last 50 years.
So what does this all amount to? I think it shows that neither side is winning the decisive victory that they both claim. I think that the divide in the country is much deeper than either side wants to admit (since they both want to claim that they lie in the majority), and that if it keeps up, we're going to move to a place vastly different from either the 1950s police state that liberals fear or the free-for-all hippie paradise that conservatives fear.
Snark snark.
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So evidently Ford will be discontinuing the Excursion. I don't know about y'all, but this makes me a little sad (please note the sarcasm). I mean, people need vehicles in which they can have dance parties in the back, and tractor trailers just aren't commercially available yet.
Watch out, Hummer. Those damn dirty hippies have their sights set on you next, I'm sure.
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I found this story on the FOXNews website today, and it sickened me. Apparently this picture, it sounds like one of those photomosaic deals, was taken down somewhere in NYC. It was of President Bush, and it was made up of a number of smaller pictures of chimpanzees.
I guess NYC isn't a "free speech zone," huh?
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Screw Fox News. A heavy metal guitarist, formerly of Pantera, was gunned down in a Columbus, OH night club last night, and today, early afternoon, Fox News was busy vilifying him for his bands' lyrics. The lyrics talked about killing, and so the implication that they're pretty clearly making is that he reaped what he sowed.
A man dies, and less than 24 hours the spin machine is busy vilifying him.
Awesome.
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I haven't heard quite enough about the case to make up my mind rationally, and my gut tells me that the guy did it, but.....
.....I find it interesting that the two opposing camps in thinking about the case are those who want to see him executed, and those who want to kill him themselves.
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Ok, people. A couple of posts ago I talked about Clear Channel as champions of censorship. But I guess that doesn't cover all facets of their company, like the billboard-raising part. Here's the link about some billboards in Florida with a picture of Dubya, next to the words "Our Leader," sponsored by Clear Channel Outdoor.
So looks like the combination of FoxNews and Clear Channel is indeed an ideological match made in hell.
As someone in the article says, "What's next, statues?"
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Here's an article from this week's Newsweek about the religious beliefs of Americans. Let me put up some of the highlights:
This astounds me, truth be told. I just really can't understand how most of these beliefs can be held. Personally, I believe that Jesus existed, sure. But I think that much of the Bible is allegorical. But how can so many more believe that the Bible is literally true than those who don't? How can so many more people believe Jesus will return than don't? How can more people think that creationism is more biologically valid than evolution?
Pah.
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I don't know quite how to feel about this article that I just found on MSNBC. In it, Michael Moore talks about why he and the Hollywood community didn't hurt John Kerry in the election. He postulates that Hollywood and the entertainment community helped Kerry, and that the Democrats need to embrace Hollywood as part of their mainstream constituency.
The problem that I see with this is that, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, there seem to be some common traits among Americans, and one of those is that they don't like being preached to. Whether it's by Bill O'Reilly or Susan Sarandon; Sean Hannity or Sean Penn, people just don't like it. I've met people who barely voted for Kerry because they were put off by Moore and such. I've met people who would have voted for Kerry who didn't because of Moore.
I've got no problem with Moore. I've read two of his books, seen two of his movies, and I agree with a lot of the stuff that he says (because I'm a dirty hippie liberal, I guess), but even I got pretty pissed off when I was watching his acceptance speech at the Oscars a couple of years ago. I've got other hardcore liberal friends who feel the same way. There wouldn't have been a chance that they'd've been pushed to vote for Bush by Moore, but they can't bring themselves to get behind him entirely, mostly because of the way in which he chooses to make his opinions known.
Like I said, Americans are stubborn, and they don't like the feeling that other people are telling them that they're better than them, which is what the Hollywood movement seems to be, generally. Bill O'Reilly's successful because he talks like a normal guy, and he's built his image on being a normal guy. Hell, that's why our damn president is successful.
Thoughts?
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Got an article here about how ClearChannel Communications, champions of censorship on the radio, will be getting all of their news from now on from FoxNews Radio, champions of all things terrible and wrong. Sound wonderful to anyone else?
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Hey! I just found another article here about abstinence-only education in schools, and how the programs are flawed. These are programs into which our federal government is going to pump $170 million this year alone.
With all their education, the federal government evidently can't see what I learned in high school: kids are going to have sex, whether we tell them not to or not. It's just a fact of life. Even the "good" kids have sex in high school. They just worry a little bit more (not much more) about getting caught. Abstinence-only education ignores the problem and just prays (emphasis on the prays) that it'll go away. Smacks of "just say no" to me, and it's not going to work.
Your tax dollars at work.
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OK, I read the whole article (you can find it here), and I know that there were some drawbacks to the amendment proposed, but how can this crap still be going on? How could the only amendment proposed to change the blatantly racist parts of the Alabama constitution have drawbacks to it?
The voters voted narrowly to uphold the (unenforced) parts of the Alabama state constitution which prescribe segregation and poll taxes (designed to keep blacks from voting), and it was partly on a legitimate issue concerning school expenses (the amendment proposed would have caused a big hike in prices of education). My question is this: what the hell are the lawmakers of Alabama doing that they have time to propose an amendment to change this issue, but not to fix issues stemming from its being repealed?
Makes me a little sick to my stomach, truth be told.
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So I was just in a little conversation on a message board recently about the nature of patriotism, and it got me thinking. Bear with me here for a little bit.
There's a lot of people who feel very strongly that patriotism should be taught. They feel that "American" virtues (whatever that means) should be instilled in their children just like knowledge of spelling, grammar, and mathematics. They should know the Pledge of Allegiance by heart (even though most people, I believe, don't really know what it says or means, just like the Lord's Prayer; it's just said by rote now), they should automatically stand and remove their hat the the first hint of the Star Spangled Banner, and they should start chants of "USA! USA!" whenever they feel like it (Ok, that last one may be stretching it, but not too much). But is this really patriotism?
Is someone who's told to be proud of their country really proud of their country? Or are they just doing what they were told when they were young and not questioning it? The same argument, I feel, could be made for religion, though I won't go into that now. How can you claim patriotism as a part of yourself, as one of your virtues, unless you've come to it on your own terms?
And the incorporation of all these symbols in expressing patriotism is just silly, in my opinion. Just because your lapel has an American flag doesn't mean that you're more American than I am. Just because both doors AND the antenna of your SUV have American flags on them (along with the "These Colors Don't Run" bumper sticker, most likely) doesn't make you more American, more patriotic than me. I know more than just the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner (how many people do you figure know that there's more than one?). I know all the words to "God Bless America" (Hint: the song doesn't start with "God bless America..."). I know all the verses to "America the Beautiful," "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." They even choke me up, on occasion, if I'm thinking of the right thing. I've sang a solo in an Irving Berlin medley at the Convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I have a t-shirt with no sleeves that has a flag on it and says "United We Stand." Am I more patriotic than most other people I know?
Ann Coulter would say yes.
I say no.
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Hey, all. Sorry for not posting for a little while. I'm afraid it'll be a little while longer, probably, but I just wanted to say that the reason I didn't post was because I was gone for Lafayette/Lehigh (which we won, I hear!). If anyone has any stories from the weekend involving me, please let me know. Thanks a lot!
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ABC may be receiving a fine from the FCC for a recent opening to an episode of Monday Night Football which featured Nicollette Sheridan's naked back. Notice I did not say backside, in which case there may be a legitimate complaint. No, it was her back. And unless she's one of those rare people who have breasts in the front and the back, I don't see what the big fuss is. The story's here.
And the evangelicals, once again, say they're not trying to take over the country. They show all the violence they want, nearly to the point of showing a Marine executing an Iraqi laying defenseless on the ground in Fallujah, but one naked back and everyone's all aflutter.
In my mind, the Janet Jackson incident makes this one look like nothing. Wait, no, that's not right. It's nothing regardless of the context which you place it in. This is getting pathetic.
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CNN's got a story here which says basically that a number of Canadians, including immigration lawyers and some Canadian businesses are actively trying to encourage Americans dissatisfied with the election to come live in Canada.
WHY MOVE TO CANADA?
Reasons to move to Canada, as cited by www.canadianalternative.com:
1. Canada has universal public health care.
2. Canada has no troops in Iraq.
3. Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol environmental treaty.
4. More than half of Canada's provinces allow same-sex marriage.
5. The Canadian Senate recommends legalizing marijuana.
6. Canada has no law restricting abortion.
7. Canada has strict gun laws and relatively little violence.
8. The United Nations has ranked Canada the best country to live in for eight consecutive years.
9. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976.
10. Canada has not run a federal deficit since 1996-97.
Looks to me like they're not going for the Red Staters, huh?
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So it begins. Here's a story from FOXNews about Colin Powell's resignation. This is a little scary, to me. Powell is a good guy, by my estimation, and he helped to at least give the appearance of balancing out the Bush cabinet. Now with this "mandate," who's to say who's going to come in to fill the void? I mean, there's talks that Condi Rice might pick up as Secretary of State, but then who would step in as National Security Adviser? Seems to me that it'd probably be somebody pretty damn far from the center of the political spectrum.
Evidently, as CNN just told me (the TV version.....sorry no link), Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham is resigning as well. My guess is that that Cabinet post will be split up among the members of the board of directors of Halliburton. They have a "mandate," they don't have to be secretive about it anymore.
Anyway, that's about it for now. More later.
Fargus...
EDIT: Word is that Rod Paige (Secretary of Education) is expected to confirm his resignation today as well, along with one more who's as-yet-unknown.
I found this article which describes pretty well the history of the filibuster in the US Senate. It used to be a two-thirds majority of the entire Senate (67 Senators at any time) were needed to break a filibuster, and then it was reduced to two thirds of Senators present, and it's now been reduced to three-fifths of Senators present (the Democrats has damn well better make sure none of them call in sick those days). And I apologize for the previous post, as well. Where I said "Congress," it should read just "Senate."
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Maybe you know, maybe you don't, about the policy of the government concerning the appointment of Supreme Court Justices in the event of a vacant seat. The President presents his picks to the Congress. Congress then debates and has the power to confirm or deny the appointment. In the Senate, though, a Senator can filibuster a motion to stop it from going through. This process just entails them getting up there and saying whatever they want, to fill time, so that the session will come closer to expiring before the filibuster is broken. It takes only 40 of 100 votes to hold up a filibuster, and the Democrats have done it to 10 of Bush's federal court nominees in the past.
Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, has come out and said that this has to stop. Here's the article. He's said, "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end." It's not surprising to hear the guy coming out in support of his President's appointments. What is a little surprising, and what makes me a little uneasy, is the "One way or another" line. It's like an at-all-costs, end-justifies-the-means type of thing. He's hinted that he's in favor of an actual change in the rules of the Senate that would prevent such filibustering in the future.
Now I'm no great fan of filibustering (besides that in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...ever see that flick? Jimmy Stewart is the man!), but I think that it's dangerous for the Republicans to try to push their "mandate" so far that they feel they have the right to change the rules in such a way to quash opposition to their own views. Pah. Pah, I say. These are important issues, and there's a reason why a minority is allowed to have the power to delay them. Like I said, I'd be pissed if I got filibustered, but I can understand why the rule is there (and by the way, the fact that the filibuster rule is in place is evidence that 40% of a vote is a valuable enough portion of the population to merit some respect.....how much of the vote did Kerry get again? Mandate, what?). Anyway, that's my take.
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Boy, ain't it good to know that Ashcroft isn't gonna let his Attorney General-ship fade softly into the night? Here's an article in which the man basically blasts all the judges who "second-guessed" the President's (and Administration's, implicitly) decisions concerning the prisoners of war in the "War on Terror." He calls them "activists," which evidently has become Republican-speak in the last few years for "people who don't agree with us." This, if I may take an aside for a second, brings us back to the whole issue of the conservatives' innate ability to redefine words (liberal, Democrat, freedom, "right," etc.) not just for themselves, but for society at large.
There shouldn't be a negative connotation to the word "activist," if you think about it. An activist should be thought of as someone who's passionate about a cause and runs with it. By Bush & Co.'s own definition, I guess we should now refer to the "activist" Catholic church, trying to push their abortion agenda.
Anyway, as I was saying, it's the right of the judicial branch of the government to operate autonomously. It's a separate but equal branch of the American government. One of three, in case Ashcroft has forgotten. During times of war, no branch becomes subordinate to any other branch. Never have, never will (I hope I hope I hope).
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I just read this on CNN.com about how the US is trying to push a global ban on stem-cell research and embryonic cloning. That's right, let that word sink in. Global. Made me a little scared, personally. And to think, people are saying that evangelical Christians aren't trying to take over the country. Well, I don't have much to say about this now. I think that, if you've heard me talk or read me writing (am I a pirate now?), my position on this would be self-explanatory.
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Ok, so now that I've had some time to process what happened on Tuesday, I guess I'm ready to give my cogent analysis of what's going to happen between now and 2008.
There's a hell of a lot of spots potentially opening up, and despite what was said in one of the debates, I doubt like crazy that Bush doesn't have a "litmus test" for his appointees. He says that he wants candidates who interpret the constitution, but what's coming out of the other side of his mouth when he says that is nearly audible, it's so clear. He wants candidates who interpret the constitution in ways that agree with his own views. Anybody else is an "activist." Say what you will, everybody's got to admit that Kerry was very honest in his admission that he would not appoint a judge who would outlaw abortion, which was in his mind a constitutional right.
With a clearer majority in both houses of Congress on the part of the Republicans, prepare to see a lot of bold legislation pushed through. Not only do they hold a clearer majority, but a lot of the Democratic senators and representatives are not by any stretch "liberal," and would be much more likely to cross party lines than would the conservative majority. There's already been a push for an amendment which would allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to be President of the United States. Well, the amendment would technically allow anybody who'd been a citizen for a certain number of years to run for President, but let's be honest--it's clearly designed for the Terminator. Prepare to see ANWR opened up for drilling, I'd think, as well. The Senate doesn't have a clear enough majority to block filibustering on judicial appointments, but they're getting there.
Already? Of course. Commentators started talking about the Presidential race in 2008 by the time it was the morning of November 3rd. I haven't the foggiest who the Democrats will run, but it had better not be Hillary Clinton. If she's the party's only hope, then we're in a lot bigger trouble than we ever thought. More likely to win would be a Southern or Midwestern governor, like Tom Vilsack of Iowa, or Brad Henry of Oklahoma, though I don't know if either of them (among others) have presidential aspirations. Vilsack was on the short list of consideration for Veep candidates in 2004, so his name's floating already.
As for the Republicans, I could see it possibly getting ugly. Giuliani and McCain are the two powerhouse names of the party, and they've been busy posturing themselves for it. I think that the current ultra-conservative administration would like a candidate who more clearly represents the logical progression from their own viewpoints (Giuliani and McCain are by far not toeing the party line on all issues), but I think they'd probably win out in the primaries due to their big name status and popularity. The ultra-cons would love to have somebody like Bill Owens of Colorado, for example, or maybe Jeb Bush (no matter what he says) to uphold not just the ideological dynasty, but the family dynasty (his son George Prescott Bush could be next, as well as being the first Hispanic President). If the non-US-citizen amendment were to pass, I'd think that Arnie'd probably win in a pretty big way, due to his big name and popularity, but the ultra-cons wouldn't like having someone in office who is, truly, a social liberal. I think that his name would distract even the Southerners and Midwesterners from that pesky issue, though.
I think that the outcome of the midterm elections will depend on whether the ultra-cons try for their overreach immediately, or in the last two years of their term. If they hold back for the first two years, they stand to gain substantially in the 2006 elections, I'd think, and then they could go for the glory between '06 and '08. If they can pretend toward bipartisanship for two years, they might even be able to get the 60 votes in the Senate needed to break a filibuster (if they don't just abolish that rule first). But I don't think they've got that patience, personally. The only question is whether the backlash reaction to the inevitable conservative overreach will come in 2006, 2008, or later, once we've realized that it's going to take a lot of work to pull America anywhere close to the center again.
Cheers,
Fargus...
So it's over. Months and years of campaigning, billions of dollars spent, and all for it to be over in less than a day. I'm not saying I'm not relieved that it is over, but there is a strange sense of emptiness in me, as though I'm not quite sure what will fill the void that this race has left in my thinking for the last few months; it also seemed a lot darker than I remember as I was out walking tonight.
There are lots of thoughts swirling through my head about this right now, but I'll try to sort it out to the few that I think are important.
Anyone else a little surprised to see Florida and Ohio (the "Florida" of 2000 and of 2004, respectively, so they were projecting) be not nearly so close as all the analysts throught? I figured that the networks were going to be a lot more careful this time than they were last time, especially with the potential swing states, but that didn't turn out to really mean a lot, did it? It just meant that they'd be careful with Ohio and Florida even when it was obvious to a five-year-old that they'd been taken by Bush.
To be honest, I felt a little bit betrayed on behalf of the entire part of the country which trusted that people cared enough to get out there and vote. I'll admit that early on in the night, when they were projecting that they thought 120 million people would vote, I was a bit quick to say that I wouldn't be surprised if even more got out there to vote. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a turnout of 130 million, but then again, I'm no political expert. It's been said that now, all of a sudden, it's not "cool" to be apathetic, but it appears to be only a little less cool than it was before. The youth didn't get out in the numbers that they should have (keep in mind, I'm saying this in regards to the youth at large, not just in their capacity as majority Kerry voters). I know people who didn't vote just because they didn't apply for their absentee ballots quite in time, and that's no excuse, in my mind. These are people who know about and care about the issues, and their apathy kept them from being counted again. I have no doubt that my few friends were not the only ones in such a position.
I feel like the polls leading up to the presidency didn't mean a thing, and like this election should indicate that more than anything to us. Zogby and Gallup were like our crack and heroin for months, but in the end they didn't mean anything. I thought that Kerry had a good chance because it was the way I felt in my mind, not just from watching the polls. I thought that for the same reason that I thought the turnout would blow me away. But no matter what's said, Bush won a clear majority of the electoral college, and a clear majority (not just a plurality) of the popular vote. As such, I don't think a fight would have been worth it (not to mention the fact that there were no states close enough to swing it for him). In 2000, it was close enough for both sides to be justified in the fight, especially since Gore had only a plurality, and not the clout of a majority.
So where does this leave me? I'm pretty happy that the thing's over without a lengthy legal battle, no matter what the outcome. I'm glad that a precedent hasn't been set for elections like 2000's becoming the norm. I'm a little bit scared to see what's going to happen in the next four years. If the last four years were what Dubya did when he didn't have a "mandate" and when he had to worry about re-election, I'm pretty apprehensive about the possibilities until 2008. There are judicial seats opening up which will be filled by Bush, and there's still a war going on (not to mention a certain Doctrine to apply). I would not be surprised to see many things over the next four years, including:
Especially with the new clear majority in the Congress, there'll be less impediments to getting any of these wedge issues passed. Conservatives are gaining the momentum to make a "change of mind" a pretty uncomfortable proposition for the forseeable future. Say, for instance, the tax cuts are made permanent, and then the country trends liberal in 20 years. It's going to be awfully hard to do anything about that, even if the politicians want to. Or even if the people want to. That's just an example, though. One of the scariest things, I think, is the clear conservative majority that'll be enjoyed in the Supreme Court. "Morals" and "values" are being championed, and as such, a lot of the personal freedoms that religious zealots have crusaded against are going to be in danger in the next four years.
Anyway, that's all I've got right now. I'll be back later. Leave some comments, dammit.
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