Kathy I'm Lost

Where is America? You know, the real America. Land of Apple Pie. Baseball. The Hamburger. Big Cars. Big Hair. And so on. Well, if you are looking for America, Michael Kinsley (who's been writing some bang up columns lately) has some advice on where not to look for America.

"Wherever a Democratic candidate happens to be from, that place turns out to be isolated and unrepresentative and not part of the real America. They are having a good time at the moment dissing Vermont, home of former Gov. Howard Dean. It's way up there in the Northeast somewhere. (Yeah, not too far south of the Bush family hangout in Maine.) It doesn't have any black people. Its best-known product is some hippie ice cream. Worst of all, it's (gasp!) "bucolic."

Odd, but I don't recall these points being made by any politician, Republican or Democrat, about New Hampshire, which is adjacent to Vermont. In the next few months, as always in election years, we will be hearing repeatedly about what a wonderful place New Hampshire is. Second only to Iowa. But, Vermont—now, that's a different story."

So there you have it.

I dont know about anybody else, but I'm not a big fan of the idea of a "real" America. For one thing it rarely contains me. I mean is there room in the "real" America for a guy who really likes The Chemical Brothers or Underworld or The Baldwin Brothers (the band, not the brothers)? Is there room in the "real" America for New York? Los Angeles? Is there room in the "real" America for the millions that have joined the Democratic Party?

Depends on who you ask, I guess, but I personally think so.

Your Weekly Rush

Well,Rush is back.

Apparently he's never really talked about addicts on his program. "But this business about me being hard on addicts, may I be honest with you? I was a drug addict - well, I still am - was a drug addict from about 1996, 1995, whenever, to just five weeks ago. The truth of the matter is I avoided the subject of drugs on this program for the precise reason that I was keeping a secret." I wonder if anybody's followed up on this?

Also he thinks us liberals hate citrus fruits, because there were boycott calls against orange juice when he was a spokesman for Florida Orange juice, and because the Senate Democrats described the new Medicare bill as a Lemon. "Yet, the Democrats are out there not only running down Republicans and running down Medicare, they're now running down fruit! These people have lost all touch with reality, ladies and gentlemen. It's important that you know this."

I like Tangerines myself. But it's good to have Rush back.

Same Sex Marriage

As I'm sure you all heard, the Mass. Courts ruled this week that the Mass. constitution does not prohibit same sex marriages from being recognized. This is problemattic because traditionally if you are married in one state, you are married in all 50 states. So a person from, say, Texas could go to Mass. and get married and come back and demand all the benifits of marriage from the state of Texas.

This is being seen as a boon for President Bush, as it will be an issue during next years campaign. Both sides will presumably try to uphold traditional values while respecting the rights of homosexuals. As Jonah Goldberg puts it, in his latest article, "It's a funny stalemate. The Republicans can't afford to be seen as too "anti-gay," lest the Democrats demagogue them with tolerant suburban voters, and Democrats can't afford to be seen as too "pro-gay" lest the GOP demagogue them in Southern and rural states."

He also comments on the idea of civil unions, making some sense in my mind. "One of the reasons I favor civil unions is that I believe they would forestall gay marriage while at the same time doing right by gays and society on a host of public policy issues.

Though a great many conservatives disagree, civil unions strike me as the right balance between principle and tolerance. Marriage has a specific meaning: a union of a man and a woman. But the state shouldn't bar gays or anyone else from naming heirs or sharing property as they see fit."

We'll see what happens.

Hey, aren't we in Iraq?

I know I've been sort of focused elsewhere. But we are still in Iraq, and Thomas Friedman has some ideas about the Bush's recent decision to step up the time table to getting the new Iraqi government going.

"Tom Malinowski, from Human Rights Watch, perfectly described Mr. Bush's core problem: When you look at the muted reaction to the president's important speech on the need for democracy in the Arab world, you see that "President Bush has moral clarity, but no moral authority." He has a vision — without influence among the partners needed to get it moving. His is a beautifully carved table — with only one leg.

The Bush team's decision to change course in Iraq, and to transfer authority by July 1 to an interim government indirectly elected by community leaders from each of Iraq's 18 governates, is a good new start for generating legitimacy for the U.S. presence in Iraq. I do not know if this plan will work, but those who dismiss it as a cut-and-run strategy have it wrong. This plan is actually the only way America can stay. Only a legitimate Iraqi authority can give cover for a long-term U.S. presence and do what it takes to finish the war."

Friedman might be right, but will the Bush administration stick it out when it becomes politically tough for them? Too soon to tale, but the history is not good.

GOP and Prescription Drugs

Robert Novak is worried about the negative downside to enacting the Prescription Drugs plan.

Odds are that Medicare legislation, after nearly four months in a Senate-House conference following passage by both houses, will not sink. It is intended to inoculate Bush's re-election campaign from charges he has no compassion for senior citizens. Whether it actually achieves that end, the strategy worries many Republicans.

The inoculation's side effects could depress the Republican political base in next year's election with disastrous consequences for the president. Apart from any political downside, the first fully Republican government -- presidency, Senate and House -- in 38 years is building a major addition to the welfare state. The prescription drug subsidy will be the first major new federal entitlement since Medicare in 1965.

Yep, it is a real downer that President Bush is going to keep a campaign promise. But then again, maybe it will be like the No Child Left Behind initiative, which President Bush passed and then failed to pay for, letting it die on the vine.

Oh, and "Negative Downside"? Totally redundent phrase. But I used it anyway.

Truth in Advertising?

Was on the road today. Saw a cab while I was waiting at the airport. "Accurate Taxi Co." Yep.

It's a funny old world.

Ben Shapiro Makes a Good Point

I'm on the road today, so this is a brief and solitary post, but I'll post more this evening.

While I'm on the road you might check out Ben Shapiros latest, in which he details how the Republicans have screwed up this judge issue so badly.

Of course you might wonder if the Republicans really want to win this battle. They might shore up more support if they fail. But I leave that as exercise for the reader.

Jon Alvarez

Jon Alvarez, patron saint of Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti American Hollywood, wrote an article for renewamerica today on a forthcoming boycott of Michael Moore's Farenheit911. Here's a quote.

". . . a campaign to inform the American public of the true nature of this film has begun. Michael Moore, the film's controversial director, is using the victims of 9/11 for what will surely amount to a political assassination piece. This should bring about a public outcry so loud, a backlash so severe; no theatre chain should be willing to carry it. That will be the ultimate goal of this campaign. If a sense of decency and respect for the subject matter cannot convince them, then a boycott of their establishment might convince them otherwise.

Some critics might attempt to label this campaign as some form of censorship. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Now just in case you missed the main points I'll reiterate them.

1). Michael Moores Film is bad.

2). The goal of Jon Alveraz is that this film not be shown in any theater anywhere in the United States.

3). This is, in Alveraz's mind, not censorship.

Hmmmmmm. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth than to say that this proposed boycott constitutes censorship. Maybe I'd better go look up what Censorship means again.

Well according to the American Heritage Dictionary its "The act, process, or practice of censoring. And a Censor is "A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable." Ah. The key word is authorized. Who would provide such authorization? Well, I'm guess Mr. Alveraz would say that since he isn't authorized by the government to do this, that gets him off the hook.

But I'm still not sure if calling Mr. Alveraz a freelance censor is really the furthest thing from the truth. He does want to suppress Farenheit911, keeping his fellow Americans from seeing it.

More on the judiciary

David Limbaugh wrote another article on the four judges that Democrats have blocked the nomination of. You know even if you are part of the religious right, why are you settling for four judges? I mean, wouldn't it be better if you got slightly less ideological extreme judges on the bench so that your Senators could get to, I don't know, faith based initiatives?

But anyway, he says that the widely touted 168 to 4 figure thrown around is misleading, because it includes all the judges, and we should only include those judges for the federal appellate bench. "Plus, Democrats have said they intend to filibuster an additional six judges, making it 12 out of 41 Bush nominees to the federal appellate bench they will have blocked. So when Democrats say they've confirmed a great percentage of Bush nominees, they're talking about trial judges. It's appellate judges who have more impact on the course of the law -- and the Democrats' confirmation rate on these judges is abysmal. And their obstruction is retarding the administration of justice (the 6th Circuit Court alone is 25 percent vacant, according to Senator Mitch McConnell)." Ah. So counting 6 judges that President Bush hasn't nominated yet (and which we have no way of knowing whether or not they'll actually be filibustered), President bush has gotten a little less than 3/4 of all the judges he's nominated even using these cracked statistics.

So again it begs the question; President Bush got 3/4 of what he wants, even on the appellate bench. Why shouldn't he drop these extremist candidates and put up more qualified people (qualified in the sense that they can actually get through the approval process).

It's also fun to watch David Limbaugh pretend that politics has nothing to do with these nominees; one wonders if David Limbaugh even believes that himself.

Rush Limbaugh is Back

Caught the very end of his show today. He closed it with these words. "Memo to liberals. The party's over; I'm back."

I don't know about the rest of you but I plan to keep on partying.

My My Hey Hey

Rock and roll is here to stay.

But Diane West wishes it would go away. In her latest article, she writes, "I've always had a soft spot for the Cleveland mayor who, nearly 40 years ago, after a Beatles concert in his fair city ended in mayhem, banned all rock concerts from public venues. The reason? Rock music, he said, "did not contribute to the culture of the city and tended to incite riots." The words sound fantastic now, but once reflected a popular belief that rock music was a cultural and moral menace that would undermine ... well, our culture and our morals."

The main point of her article is the irony of people she considers anti-American and pro-communist making music that helped Eastern Europe prepare to reject communism (as suggested by Andras Simonyi of Hungary, who recently spoke at Clevelands Museum of Rock History). Of course she only considers the irony one way. That is to say, she considers the irony of John Lennon's music helping Ronald Reagan, but does not consider the Irony of Ronald Reagan being helped by John Lennon's music. Maybe what they were really looking for is not the puritanical christian capitalism that Diane West triumphs nor the soulless communism they had grown up under, but some middle path.

She also rags on Neil Young, commenting "Indeed, Simonyi titled his talk "Rocking for the Free World," a play on a 1989 Neil Young song, "Rocking in the Free World" -- a tune USA Today notes is "a savage attack on the policies of Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush ... (and) anything but a celebration of democracy." I guess it depends on what you mean by democracy. One (in this case one refers to me) suspects that Ms. Diane West's vision of freedom is very limited indeed.

In the interest of balance, and because I like them, here are the lyrics of Rocking in the Free World.

Rockin' in the Free World


There’s colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin’ their feet
People sleepin’ in their shoes
But there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead
There’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off dead
Don’t feel like satan, but I am to them
So I try to forget it, any way I can.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away, and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life, and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive.

Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
Keep on rockin’ in the free world,
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Well, what do you know?

This issue is wandering around the blogosphere. This guy wrote a scenario in which several liberal senators were killed by assassins so that republicans could nominate the replacements. It also included a bit where five supreme court justices were killed, and nominations had to be made.

What's interesting is how fanciful this scenario is and how cynical the outcome is. Does he really think that the republican Governors faced with massive and open political assassinations would just blindly nominate republicans to replace all the Democrats killed? Would president Bush really nominate hard core republican nominees to replace all the more liberal members of the bench?

I don't think so.

New Quote

New quote.

New quotes page.

Enjoy.

CIA - Traitors?

The treasonous CIA once again proves their disloyalty in the war in terror. They have reported that Saddam did not try to sell his WMDs to terrorists or give them away.

"ANTHONY CORDESMAN, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.

“No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists,” Cordesman wrote of Kay’s briefing. “Only possibility was Saddam’s Fedayeen [his son’s irregular terrorist force] and talk only.”

How long will President Bush have to put up with the slings and arrows of this outrageous organization. It's not like it's there job to evaluate threats; their job is to find evidence supporting actions the President has already decided to take. We need a more faith based intelligence agency--one that will blindly accept what the president says.

But I guess there could be a benefit to an independent CIA evaluating threats independent of non-experts and their political agendas.

Edited to add the link which I forgot the first time