Happy New Year

to you all.

The New State Department

For those interested in the future of the State Department, you might check out Sidney Blumenthal's review of the situation at Salon. He sees it, in part, as a rejection of the foreign policy of Bush the elder. I suspect there's also an element of basic distrust of the State Department on behalf of the Neo Conservatives. The State Department exists to find diplomatic solutions to problems, but diplomatic solutions to problems are not necessarily what this administration wants.

Around the Horn

Missed last week, cause I had a half day at work on Thursday and Christmas eve I was busy thinking about eating Goose and then actually eating Goose. This week I'm getting the jump on it, and then next week we will go back to doing it on Friday.

Anyway to start us off here's Words on a Page with some very well thought out thoughts on being a Liberal Christian at Christmas.

Edwardpig also has a reaction to those people who claim that Liberals want to Destroy Christmas.

Natalie Davis at All Facts and Opinion has a reaction to an article by Michael Moore from a couple weeks ago.

First Draft, which is a new member of the Liberal Coalition I believe, has some thoughts on the Abortion Debate.

Happy Furry Puppy Story Time has a thinkpiece on classic video games. I'm embarrased to say I got none of the answers, although I played like 8 of them. Oh well.

Ricks Cafe Americaine has some piercing questions about the Tsunami and American Priorities.

T-Rex's Guide to Life has a story on a debate in the Left Wing Blogging Community, as well as a feature in which he spotlights new or tiny leftwing blogs that could use a little boost.

In that spirit, you might check out this article from the Washington Underground. I don't have a read on the authors politics entirely, but it certainly raises some interesting questions about how Neo-Conservatives look at America.

Top Five Albums 2004

Here are my top five albums for 2004. I admit I'm doing this a little early, as who knows what great albums might come out in the remining two and a half days of the year.

Number 5. Morrissey, You are the Quarry. This gets the nostalgia vote, but it's also quite a good album. Some of the songs are a little slow, but "Irish Blood, English Heart" and "First of the Gang to Die" are as solid as anything Morrissey has done.

Number 4. Thievery Corporation, The Outronationalist Sound and Armend Van Helden, New York City: A Mix Oddyssey. These two albums rekindled my passion for the mix cd by doing exactly what a solid mix cd is supposed to do. Both CDs introduced me to new tracks and both CDs created a solid defined sound.

Number 3. David Holmes, Oceans Twelve. OK, technically there are a half dozen songs or so on here not by David Holmes, and they are all good too. But this is a David Holmes joint, and it rocks with his ultra cool vibe (Particularly on the awkardly named "7/29/04 the day of"). Better in many ways than the movie itself, which although enjoyable, was kind of a cheat.

Number 2. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. A bit of a silly title, but still a solid performer, with a lot of energy, a lot of fire and a lot of love. Particular standouts include "Vertigo" and "Crumbs from your Table" which the band apparently wrote while drunk.

Number 1. Fatboy Slim, Palookaville. At some point we all need to grow up and realize that Fatboy Slim, despite a silly name and a party vibe is making some of the best music around right now. "Don't Let the Man Get you Down," "Put it Back Together," and "The Journey" are solid enjoyable smart tracks.

Honorable mentions include Bebel Gilberto's eponymously named second album, Bjork's Medulla, The Prodigy's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, The Cure's eponymously named 13th(?) album, Zero 7's When it Falls, and West Indian Girl's eponymously named debut album. Also rereleased this year was The Name of this Band is Talking Heads, by Talking Heads, which captured the original live double album and expanded it by at least 10 cuts, very well worth checking out.

The Forefront of Conservative Thinking

Walter E. Williams, previous guest host for Rush Limbaugh, writes today, in his timely manner, about the assault on Christmas. So those of you who presumed that the Conservative assault on Liberals for assaulting Christmas would end with the actual holiday were wrong it turns out. As was I, as I also made that presumption.

But in his quest for super timeliness he also refers to the big thanksgiving story of the teacher in California who can't use the Declaration in his class because of the references to God. As you know, we've discussed this story a little bit, and the long and short of it is that the version Williams tells omits a lot of details.

At any rate, apparently Leftist attacks on religion will continue and intensify.

If leftists say they have no such intention to go after television, radio and other public expressions of Christianity, what they really mean is that they haven't softened us up enough yet. I'm not quite sure of just how we should respond to the ongoing attack on Christianity and American values, but we'd better do something quickly.

As is traditional in these "liberal menace" articles (like the "muslim menace" articles) solutions are not really part of the program. Perhaps because the "solution" would be a bit impolite to say out loud.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.

There is an interesting article at the New York Times today on the Bush Administrations Second Term Cabinet, focusing on Treasury Secretary John Snow. It deals mainly with the President's placing loyalty over other considerations in promoting people.

Whatever the roots of Mr. Bush's overriding devotion to loyalty, it partly stems from his disdain for the concerns of old-style meritocrats, the kind of people who wince when the president places his confidence in someone like Mr. Kerik. Mr. Bush has never been comfortable in America's so-called meritocracy. Undistinguished in college, business school and in the private sector, he spent nearly 30 years sitting in seminar rooms and corporate suites while experts and high achievers held forth.

Now it appears that he's having his revenge - speaking loudly in his wave of second-term cabinet nominations for a kind of anti-meritocracy: the idea that anyone, properly encouraged and supported, can do a thoroughly adequate job, even better than adequate, in almost any endeavor.

It's an empowering, populist idea - especially for those who, for whatever reason, have felt wrongly excluded or disrespected - that is embodied in the story of Mr. Bush himself: a man with virtually no experience in foreign affairs or national domestic policy who has been a uniquely forceful innovator in both realms.

Of course the problem is that the President is going to need a strong and forceful person to push through his plans on Social Security. Mr. Snow might not be the guy, but how many are going to want to take up the project given the strings that come with it?

More on the Nuclear Option

Arianna Huffington also has an opinion on the nuclear option as well.

Over the course of his first term, 204 of Bush's judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This is the highest number of lower-court confirmations any president has had in his first term since 1980 -- including President Reagan. But, apparently, the highest is not enough. This president wants total approval of his every wish.

One small problem: That's not the way the Founding Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and the value of checks and balances to ward off the overreaching for power by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with overreaching.

Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and his Congressional accomplices. An underhanded scheme to kneecap the Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are left with to defend against Bush's "ten-gallon-hat" juggernaut.

The problem is that with how we perceive these judges. I see them as conservative extremists; conservatives see them as reasonable and moderate judges. One has to assume that those that President Bush will nominate for Supreme Court Justices will face similar perceptions.

Going Nuclear In Style

As you know there is a big debate in congress right now about the use of the filibuster. Senate Democrats have been using the filibuster to block a very small number of President Bush's nominees to the courts; Senate Republicans are considering changing the rules to make it easier to bring an end to these filibusters and force a straight up and down vote. Senate Democrats don't like this policy, as it means that President Bush can nominate whoever he wants. Some Senate Republicans are uncomfortable with it as well, and everybody seems to think that this is a huge step for the Senate Majority Leader to take.

David Limbaugh, on the other hand, believes that it is no big deal.

He rests his argument on two premises. One is that the Senate has the right to change its own rules. There's nothing Constitutional about filibusters, they are simply permitted by the rules of the Senate. So why not change those rules.

The second is that filibustering President Bush's nominees is a little outside the purview of the Congress. Filibustering a tax bill would be fine, as tax bills are the purview of Congress. This argument doesn't fly for me; the Senate has the duty to approve Judicial Nominees. I don't see a difference between passing tax bills and reviewing Judicial Nominees. Certainly nobody would argue that the President shouldn't have the right to veto tax bills because such tax bills are the purview of congress.

Anyway my guess is that this nuclear option will be utilized. With as many as three seats opening on the Supreme Court, President Bush and Congressional Republicans can't take the chance of having their candidates vetoed by Senate Democrats.

A Story of Interest

Those of you who like modern art may find this website interesting.

Those of you who like classic video games may find this website interesting.

Those of you who fit into neither category, just be patient. The waiter will be around in a bit to take your order.

A War for Intelligence

Bob Herbert, of the New York Times, has a fascinating story on how Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense is considering picking up some new jobs. As you know, in the run up to the Iraq war, the Department Defense created its own intelligence gathering group because they were dissatisfied with the information coming out of the CIA. Well that strategy worked so well, that they are going to continue it, and combine it with a new program of sending our soldiers out to fight for information. As Herbert puts it, "That is utter madness. The geniuses in Washington have already launched one bogus war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and provoked levels of suffering that are impossible to quantify. We don't need to be contemplating new forms of warfare waged for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence."

The guy in charge of this new initiative is Lt. Gen. William Boykin who I always remember fondly. He popped onto my radar screen during my trip to New York last year (2003). So you know it will be good.

Watching the Detectives

Has anybody noticed that the Ads for the new Elektra movie (starring Jennifer Garner) reference X-Men 2. I mean wasn't the character of Elektra (played by Jennifer Garner) in another movie? Or was that just a fever dream I had.

I mean I do have a lot of funny dreams, but I could have sworn . . .

The Rise and Fall

Townhall has an article today by Michael Barone on the rise and fall of Liberalism. As he puts it, Liberalism has faltered because of our own success.

To a considerable extent, 20th century liberals achieved many of their goals. Racial segregation was abolished. An economic safety net was constructed. Government issued regulations were set up to protect the environment. Few Americans want to undo these changes. But they may want others.

Barone makes the comforting point that Liberalism is now, apparently, a conservative philosophy. We aren't about changing the world, but about preserving the programs that already exist.

What Mr. Barone leaves out of his discussion is that those programs, even the ones he notes in that short list, are genuinely under attack. I'll allow as Conservatives generally don't want to reverse civil rights gains, but they certainly wouldn't mind eliminating the economic safety net and they certainly wouldn't mind weakening or eliminating government environmental oversight (and to a certain extent they have).

The problem is marketing; the Democratic party has allowed itself to be labeled as the old guys, while the Conservatives are the young Turks who want to make some serious and important changes to our system. This is a bit ludicrous as the changes they want to make, the step forward into the future, are in fact to eliminate or minimize these programs. Or in other words to take us to a governmental set up similar to the one we had at the turn of the last century. But, presumably, with more neon and holograms.

You see Republicans don't like most Government Programs (law enforcement and the military being notable exceptions (although liking the military and thinking they should have armor all over their humvees are two separate issues)). They don't like Social Security. They don't like the EPA. They don't like Worker's Comp. They don't like the Superfund. They aren't big fans of the FDA. So they aren't about creating more effective, better environmental protections (for example); they would rather eliminate those protections (or, if you will, allow the market to determine how much protection the environment needs (which amounts to exactly the same thing)).

Dark on Light

OK. Here's the deal. Once again I am changing the format. But this time I am going back to having my blog be dark text on light background. That means some of the color choices for setting quotations off in posts from last week will no longer look, well, legible on the new background. If you wish to read a post from last week, and I invite you to do so, click on one of the recent posts along the right there.

Just to confuse things I went ahead and recolored yesterdays post, because it was the first one, and it looked goofy. But all the other ones you are on your own with.

Also a new quote! And a new quotes page.