Your Weekly Rush: Hitting it Out of the Park

Provided you are playing on one of those little table top parks.

Albert Gonzeles was asked a lot of tough questions about torture, about the torture that went on in Abu Ghraib and the torture that went on. But those pointy headed elitist liberals who were asking the questions got asked one of their own. The old Ticking Time Bomb scenario. Turns out the questioners had a hard time answering that question.

I heard more elitist professorial gibberish than I have heard in 30 minutes in my life at one time. In fact, there was one slip-up. Admiral Hutson said, "Well, if you have to, but it shouldn't become who you are and it shouldn't set a precedent," and I said, "Well, your whole argument is out the window, then, admiral, because if you're going to authorize torture in the ticking bomb scenario, you're authorizing torture."

You are saying that there is a circumstance in which it is justified. That is, to save hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Of course what Rush leaves out is that this question is pretty irrelevant. Torture wasn't be used for this reason. As you yourself pointed out, it was being used to blow off some steam.

Secondly, dimwit, saying that Torture is ok to save lives in this manufactured scenario is not the same as saying that Torture is ok in all cases. Because the next question is how far down that slippery slope you want to go. And America, apparently, doesn't want to go very far.

Something New

I forgot that in my weekly Around the Horn feature I am going to try to spotlight smaller or newer blogs (as defined by The Truth Laid Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem. This week I am spotlighting Living to the Left, who writes about the end of Crossfire and the firing of bow-tie wearing Tucker Carlson. So please go check this dude out!

Also for those who like new things, you might check out The Next Blog Blog. They click that next blog button up at the top and find stuff they like and post on it. Kind of a cool concept.

Around the Horn Special Friday Edition

First some housekeeping. Edwardpig is off haitus, thank goodness, so we are glad to have him back. And a member of the liberal coalition from a while ago has a new blog called First Draft that I linked to last week, and have now added to the Blog Roll. Looks like quite a good blog, so go check it out.

And on to this weeks offering. My guess is that many will have something to do with Social Security.

Archy covers the "model" for our Social Security plans, which is Chili. Is Chili a chilling vision of the future if we go forward with this plan? Only time will tell.

Bloggg considers the human cost of privitizing Social Security, and also has some reactions to a New York Times Story on Autism (it doesn't seem like said New York Times story was very good).

Corrente has a bit on Barbara Boxer and challenging the 2004 Ohio Returns.

Echidne of the Snakes has the news that America is not the land of the Economically Free, but that land is in fact Singapore. Maybe.

Musing's Musings has some thoughts on how we allow time to control our lives. It reminds me of that Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime." "Time isn't holding us / Time isn't after us."

Left is Right has a piece on the other big story of the week, namely, the confirmation process of Alberto Gonzeles, who wrote a memo once supporting the use of Torture.

Pen Elayne on the Web has a piece on the shifting terrain in the Capitol, and how victories may not turn out to be as impressive as initially thought.

rubber hose has a bit on discussing politics online, insanity and how all roads lead to Michael Moore.

Well not t0o much on Social Security, after all. In other news, The Fulcrum, Respectful of Otters and Kick the Leftist are really great blogs that have slowed down a little for the Holidays (I assume). Hope they come back soon.

Presumably You've Heard About This

An Internal White House E-Mail discussing Social Security has made it's way into the Press. Among other things, Karl Rove's deputy, Peter H. Wehner, states, "For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win -- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country." Joshua Micha Marshall, who's work on this issue has been excellent, sums up what it means.

So now you can see from memos emerging from the White House itself that this isn't about 'saving' Social Security. If it were, what would that sentence mean -- ("For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win")? The first time in six decades they can save it?

Clearly, this isn't about 'saving' Social Security. It is a battle to end Social Security and replace with something that Wehner clearly understands is very different, indeed the antithesis of Social Security.

This entire debate is about ideology -- between people who believe in the benefits Social Security has brought America in the last three-quarters of a century and those who think it was a bad idea from the start. There is an honest debate to have on this point, a values debate. Only, the White House understands that the belief that Social Security was always a bad program isn't widely shared by Americans. So they have to wrap their effort in a package of lies, harnessing Americans' desire to save Social Security in their own effort to destroy it.

He's dead on.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

President Bush welcomed new Members of Congress today. Among his comments he said the following. "I particularly want to say a thanks to your spouse for having supported your run for the Congress or the Senate. Laura and I know how hard it is on a family to be in the political arena. It's the ultimate sacrifice, really: sacrifice your privacy; it's a sacrifice of time with your kids. But you're going to find it's worthwhile -- serving this great country is an unbelievable honor, and both the elected official and the spouse are serving our great country."

So that's one idea of what the ultimate sacrifice might be. Having to give up some privacy while eating well, living well, and making laws.

Arlington National Cemetary gives another idea of what the ultimate sacrifice might be.



Obviously you can't read to much into this, but it think it does say something about President Bush that he is willing to use those words, Ultimate Sacrifice, to refer to people that, in the grand scheme of things, are pretty well off. Shows a certain insulation from the problems of the world, in my mind.

No Hidden Fees

All the Credit Card companies promise no hidden fees. It's a popular promise to make. Not necessarily, unfortunately, a popular promise to keep. Well President Bush is promising much money to Americans if they buy into his Social Security Phase Out Plan (also known as Partial Privitization), but it turns out there may be some hidden fees as well, as Molly Ivins points out in her latest article.

The Bushies are about to launch a $50 million to $100 million dollar propaganda campaign to convince us the Social Security system is in crisis. Actually, it's not. It's quite robust and has astonishingly low administrative costs, less than 1 percent.

According to President Bush's own Commission to "Strengthen Social Security," the administrative costs of keeping track of private accounts will be 10 to 30 times the cost of administering the current system.

I wonder who's going to pay all these administrative costs? Doesn't it seem like, one way or another, it's going to end up being you and me (but mostly you because I'm scheduled to return to my home planet sometime in 2006)?

America is the Bestest Nation in All The World

I know this because Bill O'Reilly said it, and Ann Coulter confirmed it. Some mean liberals and United Nations types have suggested we might not be the most generous civilization to have ever lived but they are just meanies.

Ann Coulter explained for example that our generosity is under-valued because those stupid old liberals don't count military aid. ". . . military aid doesn't count because "one country's security enhancement is another's destabilizing intervention" - you know, the way U.S. soldiers "destabilized" France in 1944." Ha. Take that liberal meanies. You remember when we rescued France and Germany in the 1940s. That should give us one billion extra generosity points forever! Europe Sucks! America Rules!

Also the formula they use to figure out how generous we are is super complicated and dishonest. Why can't they do something sensible like, say, figure out how much each country has, and then compare that to how much they give to the needy peoples of the world. That would tell use something. It would tell us we came in ninth out of 190 nations. That's in the top ten!

Besides even if it is complicated to tell which country is really the most generous, it doesn't matter, because the U.S. rules. "However "aid" is calculated, it is not that hard to calculate someone's affection for their country based on their propensity to tell slanderous lies about it." Ha, take that Al Franken and U.N. Representative (who's not from the United States but is still a jerk).

And we invented the light bulb, which should also give us a lot of extra points too. Think of all those poor people walking around in the dark without the light bulb, and then thank America, inventor of the light bulb! America is Number 1!

Social Security Madness Part Three

It's been a little while since I talked about Social Security (almost a full day) so let's get right to it. But before I do let me explain why this issue is important to me, and hence to this websitee. I have three reasons.

1. Social Security is genuinely a successful and popular program. While I wouldn't encourage anybody to depend strictly on Social Security for their retirement, for most retirees that social security check makes a huge difference in their lives.
2. Social Security is a genuinely successful and popular Democratic program. In this age, when Democrats are essentially on the run, standing up for one of our real successes should be a no-brainer.
3. I believe that if the American people really understand the issues surrounding Social Security "Reform," it can't help but hurt the Republicans political. This is not as petty as it sounds (although I admit, it's a little petty). The Republicans right now, and particularly the Bush Administration have a whole lot of bad ideas. If we can stop them here, it will make it harder for them to accomplish their other goals.

Those are my reasons, so like I said yesterday, expect to see more of this. Which brings us to today's article, by Rich Tucker, entitled "Social Security: All Trust and No Fund." Let's count the lies together.

The fact is, Social Security is "pay as you go." It always has been. That means it relies on today's taxpayers to pay today's benefits. Which works well as long as there are more taxpayers than beneficiaries. Indeed, for years we've been taking in more than we've been paying out. The extra money is supposed to go into that trust fund. It doesn't.

Instead, the Treasury spends the difference on roads, sex-education programs, parks and whatever else the federal government buys. The trust fund gets an I.O.U., which is stored in a fireproof safe to be made good some day with future tax money.

. . . Again, those who claim Social Security is solvent rely on the trust fund, which supposedly has enough money to make up those deficits until 2032 or 2042 or whenever. But the trust fund is like my $50,000 I.O.U. It's a promise with no money attached. If we really intend to pay Social Security benefits in, say, 2025, we'll have to take lots of money out of general tax revenues to do so. That will mean higher taxes, less spending on other government programs, or both.

OK a little history (courtesy of an article by Paul Krugman). Do you know why the Social Security office takes a little more than it needs in taxes? It is because in the 1980s President Reagan pushed through an increase in Payroll Taxes in order to ensure the solvency of Social Security. Payroll taxes are regressive taxes, meaning they hit the working class and the middle class more than they hit the wealthy. So basically the government, under Ronald Reagan's leadership, told America's workers, "Hey we are taking a little more these days, but it's so in the long run we will have money to keep Social Security going."

And now Rich Tucker and others are saying "Hey you remember that little bit extra we took from you guys? Well we pissed it away, so now we're going to have to shut down Social Security anyway."

Only of course the real problem is that it isn't pissed away. Instead that money was invested in government bonds (which is what Tucker means when he says that the Government took money out of the Social Security Fund to pay for roads and what not). Yes, it's true, right now the Social Security office holds thousands of Government Bonds. So do a lot of people. Many retirement plans outside of Social Security also hold government bonds. So do individuals. I hold a few myself. But these bonds are different, apparently. Whereas most finance people will tell you that Government Bonds are a very low risk investment, these particular bonds are in fact a high risk investment, because the Government can just say, "Hey we aren't paying you back."

I'm not sure how the government does that without starting a massive world wide financial panic, by the way. As many have pointed out, the Social Security Crisis is really a General Revenue Fund Crisis. The US has a good credit record; we traditionally pay our debts. But, of course, the Bush Administration has been enormously fiscally irresponsible, which may affect our ability to pay off our debts. It sure would be nice if President Bush could convince us all that one section of the U.S. National Debt didn't have to be paid off. For President Bush I mean.

For the rest of us it might be nice of President Bush and Congress came up with some fiscal responsibility.

More Social Security Sanity and Fiscal Shenanigans

Paul Krugman, great columnist for the New York Times, is back and is taking on Social Security Reform as well. Today he takes on some of the scaremongering that President Bush and his confederates are engaging in.

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

Simple, concise and easy to understand. But not scary. That's the downside, it's easier for vast groupings of Americans to get in their minds that Social Security is doomed and there's nothing to be done but phase it out, because fear is an easy emotion to hold onto, even if it turns out that the object of fear isn't really all that scary.

By the way, for years Rush Limbaugh and others have been describing Liberals as fear-mongers for pointing out that some Conservatives Republicans would like to shut down Social Security. Of course the difference between that and this is that some Conservative Republicans actually would like to shut down Social Security.

In other news, we find that President Bush plans to cut the deficit in half by using a projection of the deficit rather than the deficit. The projection was for $521 billion and the actual deficit was for $413 billion. So if you squint your eyes just right, it looks like the deficit has already been cut nearly 20%.

This is kind of like my trip to the plastic surgeon. I went in, and he came out with a picture his receptionist had drawn of me (based on my description over the phone). I won't describe it but the word "Quasimodo" springs to mind. Anyway he looked at the picture, looked at me, and promptly charged me $650, on the basis that I had already improved 75% over the picture.

Anyway, Andrew Sullivan (a proponent of some kind of private accounts) made a good comment on these fiscal shenanigans, "All of this is as much a moral failure as an economic one, which is why I'm still befuddled by the anemic conservative outrage. Or is sex the only area in which Republicans care about morality?"

Neo-Confederate Madness

As discussed yesterday I'm going to go through some of these posts at Free Republic, but before I do, I'd like to point out that many posters at Free Republic posted rebuttals to these posts. I don't want to suggest that these view points are the beliefs of all people at Free Republic.

OK let's look at a few posts here and there.

Slavery was not the primary reason that the vast majority of people fought for the Confederacy. Very few people even owned slaves, perhaps 5% or less. . . . The issue is much as it is today with liberals; they continually try to spin every issue to make it something that it is not. BTW, if slavery was the issue, why did Lincoln wait two years to sign the Emancipation Proclamation (which did not free a single slave)?

This argument is pretty easily dealt with. It's true that most southerners didn't own slaves. It might well be that most Confederate Soldiers were motivated by a love for their homeland and not by a desire to preserve slavery. However if you take a poll of those southerners who sat in the capitals and the legislatures and who made the decisions to pull this nation into the civil war, they were slave holders. And they fought the civil war because they thought that Lincoln would free the slaves (despite his assurances that he wouldn't.

As for Lincoln, he made it clear why he fought the civil war, to preserve the Union. That's what he said and that's, presumably, what he meant. So let's list this out.

Union Soldiers fought because of love of the Union (well more complicated than this, but for the purposes of this discussion).

Confederate Soldiers fought because of love of their state / the Confederacy (see above).

Union Leaders (i.e. President Lincoln) fought to preserve the Union.

Confederate Leaders fought to preserve Slavery.

So which of those things is not like the other?

Another post from Free Republic.

Linkum was the first Clinton, as he was on all sides of every issue. When it became expedient to be an abolitionist, he became one.

However the cause of the war was simply over two issues, one tax revenue, as Linkum said in response to why doesn't he just allow the South to go its own way, he said, "from where then will we get our revenue"? There had been about a 30 year period of wealth redistribution from the South to the North. The other issue was pure cultural, where we still find the war raging, the socialist anti god elitists of the New England States could not tolerate the God fearing South. Marx and Engels works being published circa 1848 became the rage of the elites. It was simply a collision of cultures here. Slavery was just an issue to bash the South with, as New Englanders were more racist that the South, per DeToqueville's writings.

I don't know why this author calls Lincoln "Linkum," but one has to assume it's not a mark of respect.

I don't have a source on that where will get the revenue quote, but it seems almost certainly taken out of context, if not made out of whole cloth. But it is nice to see that, in this authors mind at least, the goals of the Confederacy and the goals of the Republican Party are more or less one and the same--Lower Taxes and preserving the God Fearing South (against the Marxist New Englanders (which, by the way, ignores the deeply religious underpinnings of the abolitionist movement)).

Here's a brief one.

shame how so many folks under middle aged think slavery is the worst thing ever foisted on mankind...for some it's turned out to be a blessing.

This is repeated several times--the justification for slavery is that after having been abducted from their homes, enslaved and forced to work for free for centuries, freed through a bloody war foisted on America by the southern slave holders, forced to endure decades more of second class citizenship, and still facing widespread bigotry, the blacks may be better off than, say, citizens of Rwanda. So that makes it all ok.

This is another long post and I haven't even gotten to such nice myths as "The south would have given up it's slaves eventually," and "The North had slaves too and picked on the Indians (unlike the south, apparently) so they are hypocrites" and "Lincoln was a tyrant." It's all an effort to get us to ignore the elephant in the room, namely, Slavery.

Neo-Confederates on Parade

I will probably return to this tomorrow--but for those interested in knowing some of the arguments of the Neo-Confederates on Civil War history, you can read them here at Free Republic.`

Social Security Sanity

Gail Collins at the New York Times writes a great editorial today on the Social Security Crisis, such as it is.

Contrary to Mr. Bush's frequent assertion that Social Security is constantly imperiled by political meddling, it has in fact been preserved and improved by political intervention throughout its 70-year history, most significantly in 1983. The system could - and should - be strengthened again by a modest package of benefit cuts and tax increases phased in over decades.

Instead, the administration wants workers to divert some of the payroll taxes that currently pay for Social Security into private investment accounts, in exchange for a much-reduced government benefit. To replace the taxes it would otherwise have collected - money it needs to pay benefits to current and near retirees - the government would borrow an estimated $2 trillion over the next 10 years or so and even more thereafter.

In effect, the administration's plan would get rid of the financial burden of Social Security by getting rid of Social Security. The plan shifts the financial risk of growing old onto each individual and off of the government - where it is dispersed among a very large population, as with any sensible insurance policy. In a privatized system, you may do fine, but your fellow retirees may not, or vice versa.

It will be interesting to see how this debate shapes up. I think the Democrats can do very well, if they play their cards right. If the American People really understand the point to President Bush's thee card monty, they will assuredly reject it. But if he can keep up the fear and the promise of enormous wealth down the road, they might never pick up on the real score.

In other words, you can expect me to continue focusing on this issue.

Greg the Bunny, the X-Men, and Racism

This last weekend I purchased the DVD collection of Greg the Bunny a show that was on Fox for about two months starring Eugene Levy and Seth Green. I enjoyed it the first time around, and I'm enjoying it the second time around. But there are some niggling questions.

Greg the Bunny is an alternate universe, one in which puppets exist as individuals, as part of society. The first episode starts with this little monologue about how there are millions of puppets living in America but they can't get jobs or date human daughters and so on. So right off the puppets are set up as a minority group, underlined when Greg looks hopefully at a help wanted sign only for the owner of the store to put up a "Humans only" sign. Greg gets a job on a syrupy kids show directed by Eugene Levy. His roommate is Seth Green. Sarah Silverman plays a network exec. Most of what the show is about is the unpleasant world of creating a children's television show. But there are a couple of episodes that deal directly with Greg's "puppish" culture.

One, "Greg gets Puppish" concerns a Jesse Jackson / Al Sharpton like figure called Hurbada Hymina who gives Greg a "Puppish" name (Bizzleburb, which he can't remember), and encourages him to promote his Puppish culture. This is clearly a riff on African Americans adopting their African roots, but it's not very convincing. The idea that a Puppet could seek out his puppish roots is presented as ridiculous, and the episode ends with Greg completely abandoning his puppishness.

"Sock like Me" is even more confusing. Greg is in the urinal with Jimmy and notices that everybody has been insulted in Urinal Grafitti except himself. Jimmy explains that that's because everybody thinks that Greg can't take a joke. So Greg, after Jimmy Leaves, sets out to prove him wrong by writing "Greg is a dirty filthy sock who should die." Of course part of the joke is that Greg seems to genuinely think that is funny. But what makes this episode really disturbing is that Sock is presented as the puppet equivalent of "N*****."

Now imagine to yourself a moment, any black character, no matter how innocent, writing in a urinal, about himself, "[the name] is a dirty filthy N***** who deserves to die." Disturbing isn't it? That said the episode pretty much pulls it off by shifting the focus to another cast member (who's mother ran off with a puppet).

By recontextualizing cultural concerns and bigotry, the show makes them harmless and even laughable. We have to pay lip service towards respecting African Culture, but we can go ahead and laugh at Puppish culture. How big a stretch is it from that to laughing at African Culture? The racial incident in "Sock Like Me" is created by a puppet; isn't it easier on us to imagine such racial incidents in the real world are created by blacks and other minorities?

This recontextualization of Racism goes on a lot, and with good reason. It let's us say things about racism that are hard to say when you are talking about actual blacks (at this point I'd like to point out that the idea that there is an oppressive culture of Political Correctness that prevents us from talking about race honestly is BS, at least in this context (although I think it's BS in general too). The fact is that some arguments should be held up to moral disapproval. If someone wants to argue that African culture is ridiculous and stupid, they are free too. But that argument should be despised.).

Another ongoing example of this recontextualization of racism is found in X-men Comics and Movies. Now to be fair, I'm pretty sure that neither Stan Lee (creator of the X-Men) or Chris Claremont (their most famous writer) has anything negative to say about Blacks or other minority groups. Rather their point (in so far as they had one beyond telling stories) was to point out the harm that racism can do to individuals.

But the argument is sort of neutered by the fact that the Mutants really do pose a threat. Black people can't blow up stuff with their minds; some mutants can. And Mutant Terrorists have been running around the Marvel Universe since the 1960s. It would help if more Mutants had useless powers, but, this being a comic book, most of them seem to have amazingly destructive powers. It would be easy enough to do a comic book from the point of view of an anti-mutant team, dedicated to preventing mutants from hurting humans by any means necessary. And how might that play into our fears of black communities, or even better, Muslim communities. Now I'm sure these implications are far from most of the X-man writers minds. Nevertheless they do exist.

Anyway despite the racial questions posed by Greg the Bunny, it is still quite a funny show, particularly when it focuses on the back stage personalities. So I still recommend it.

Social Security Madness

You ought to be reading Joshua Michah Marshall's Talking Points Memo if you are interested in Social Security Reform at all. Besides keeping track of those Democrats that will potentially flip and support President Bush's snake oil, he also lays out all the arguments about what this debate is really about. Today he commented on how the Social Security problem ties into the national debt and stated, "The guy who's the biggest threat to Social Security says he wants to 'save' it by abolishing the program and replacing it with private accounts."

He also stated, in a post on the argument that Democrats don't trust the people, "The truth is that it's the president, more than anyone else, who doesn't trust people to decide what to do with their own money and their own futures. If he did, he wouldn't be lying to them so much about Social Security. He'd be arguing for his phase-out plan on the merits." And there it is. The people who want to destroy Social Security can hardly openly say they'd like to destroy Social Security so they are playing these games to convince us they don't want to destroy it.

They really do want to destroy Social Security.

New Format and a New Quote For You

Hope you enjoy--doing this a bit on the fly. Also a new Quotes Page.