Someone is Paying Attention

And that person is, of course, Paul Krugman.

What's going on? Actually, it's quite simple: Mr. Bush and his party talk only to their base - corporate interests and the religious right - and are oblivious to everyone else's concerns.

The administration's upbeat view of the economy is a case in point. Corporate interests are doing very well. As a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, over the last three years profits grew at an annual rate of 14.5 percent after inflation, the fastest growth since World War II.

The story is very different for the great majority of Americans, who live off their wages, not dividends or capital gains, and aren't doing well at all. Over the past three years, wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans aren't part of the base.

Yep. President Bush is kind of in his own world. What's that old Groucho Marx joke? "Your mind is wandering, and the longer it stays away the better."

Round the Horn - Only Time

blogAmy has a very cool close up photograph.

LeftyBrown's Corner has a bit on an online archive you might find interesting.

Collective Sigh has a story on the Dissappointment to my Parents Meme, that I don't fully understand, but find interesting anyway.

Dohiyi Mir has some coments on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and his ability to communicate with the people.

Gamers Nook has a quiz on what music has influenced you the most.

Rooks Rant has some well deserved rants on the concept of discouraged workers.

Sooner Thought reports on Former Vice President Gore's appearance before the Senate, on the issue of the judicial nominees.

The Fulcrum has some thoughts on supporting the troops in a way that would, like, actually support them.

Trish Wilson's Blog has a story on how "Men's Rights" groups are trying to shut down battered Women's shelters, or, to be more precise, the failure of one of their tactics.

MercuryX23's Fantabulous Blog has a bit on the First Commandment and what it has to do with hanging the 10 Commandments on everything.

Enjoy! Be back later with more stuff. Maybe.

Wisdom from the Comic Books

"Beware the fanatic! Too often his cure is deadlier by far than the evil he denounces!"

So said Stan Lee at the close of X-Men (first series) Issue 16.

As true than as it is today!

AOL Television is Full of Crap

They are having a program on America's Greatest American, and they have a list of 100 Nominees. So let's look at who's on the list and who is not on the list.

Laura Bush - Married to the current president, and clearly deserving of consideration for the Greatest American.

Louis Armstrong - Revolutionized American Music. Changed the way we listen to music, the way we sing, and was one of the most popular performers of all time. Not worthy of consideration. See also Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.

Rush Limbaugh - Right wing radio host, listened to by millions. Once told a black caller to"Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." Clearly worthy of consideration for the Greatest American.

Emily Dickenson - Reclusive poet. Only had two poets printed during her lifetime, but since then her poems have been read and beloved by millions. Not worthy of consideration.

Pat Tillman - Football hero who served in the military in Afghanistan and was killed. Clearly worthy of consideration for the Greatest American.

Ulysses S. Grant - Union General during the Civil War, in which he waged a successful campaign to preserve the Union. Not worthy of consideration.

Martha Stewart - Delightful TV personality dedicated to making all of our lives a little nicer and selling us stuff at the same time. Clearly worthy of consideration for the Greatest American.

Groucho Marx - Brilliantly funny comedian who, with his brothers, helped create the language of film comedy. Not worthy of consideration. See also Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and W.C. Fields.

Bob Dylan did not make the list, neither did Lenny Bruce. On the other hand there was room for four Bushs (Laura, George W., George H.W. and Barbara). I could go on, but I've made my point. Should be the Greatest Founding Father or Person who's been in the news in the last 3 years.

Security is Job 2!

Right after making sure the budget is a reasonable size, and we don't have to consider repealing the Bush Tax cuts. At least that's what I get from Joel Mowbray's latest article on border security.

DHS, in fact, has little control over the overall number of people who can be physically held pending removal or deportation hearings — because it has very few places to hold them: Only 19,400 beds for the entire country (down from 23,000 just last year).

Congress thought it had solved this problem. Last year’s intelligence bill called for 40,000 new beds — 8,000 per year from 2006 through 2010. Lawmakers also authorized adding 800 agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS agency with the sole authority for detaining illegals.

When President Bush put forward his budget this year, however, both items got the shaft. Bush’s spending blueprint calls for only 1,920 new beds and just 143 additional ICE agents — a fifth of what Congress dictated.

Well, there it is. I guess protecting his wealthy supporters wallets is more important than protecting America's borders.

Black Superheros

Not the most original title, but I have a headache. If you are interested in the intersection of Race and Comic books you might enjoy this article by W. Scott Poole. I think he makes some good points amid some real generalities. He focuses on the short lived ICON imprint over at DC, and the Black Panther.

I think he might have had some interesting things to say about the current Marvel series "Supreme Power" which contains two black characters (a "Flash" and a "Batman" (the series is loosely based on DC Comics Justice League, it also has a "Superman," "Wonderwoman," "Green Lantern," and "Aquaman.").

Everybody should Listen to Ben Shapiro, Boy Prognosticator

Yep, in his latest article, Ben has some solid advice for the Republican Party.

President Bush vowed after his three million vote electoral victory margin to spend his political capital. Yet his political capital drains slowly away, day by day -- his latest approval ratings are below 50 percent. Bush's political capital is not draining away because he's pushing unpopular measures; it's draining away because he isn't doing anything . Approval ratings for the Senate reflect similar disenchantment with inaction. The American people elected President Bush, a Republican Senate and a Republican House in order to see a certain agenda pursued.

Yep. Polls show that the Majority of the American people remain leary of President Bush's plans for Social Security. Simple math shows that getting a Social Security Bill through the Congress will be very difficult if not impossible at this point. Other polls show Americans unsure about exercising the Nuclear option on judicial filibusters (for a rundown on recent polls, check out this post at Salon's War Room).

Actually now that I think about it, I'm a bit torn on what the Republicans should do. Certainly following Ben's strategy of charging ahead blindly would probably bloody President Bush and congressional Republicans, but they might do considerable damage to the Government at the same time. So it's kind of a wash.

Linda Chavez - Not So Good at Math but Good at Other Things

Let's get the Math out of the way first. Ms. Chavez starts the second paragraph of this weeks article with this line. "In unprecedented fashion, the Democrats have been able to hold up one-third of the president's nominees for Appeals Court vacancies." President Bush has nominated 57 judges. Five were held in the Republican dominated committee. Another 10 were filibustered, and 42 were nominated. So the Democrats blocked 10 out of 52, which is 19.2%. If you add in those five held up in the Republican Dominated Judicial Committee you get 26.3% held up, still well under 33.3%.

I don't blame Ms. Chavez though, she's got to find a way to make these few rejected judges sound ominous, so fudging the numbers a little is to be expected.

Anyway, Ms. Chavez has a pretty sharp idea; she suggests rather than eliminating the Filibuster (which is what the Crybaby option would, in effect, accomplish), they instead force the Democrats to actually filibuster. She thinks this will not turn the American people against the nominees, but will make Democrats look like punks. I'm not sure about that; enough people have seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to know that filibusters are a tactic of the good guys.

That said, she has this wise observation on changing the rules.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Republicans would make a mistake getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans won't be in the majority forever, and they may rue the day when they deprived themselves of the ability to block a candidate to some future Supreme Court. Worse, they may end up making themselves look like the heavies instead of forcing the Democrats to take center stage as the real fanatics. Let the filibuster stay -- and force the Democrats to actually use it.

We'll have to see what happens, but the Republicans do seem pretty determined not to compromise.

The Constitutional Option

Molly Ivins has a very good, compact, and entertaining rundown of the current show down about the filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees. If you read only one article this year, there's something terribly wrong with you. But I still maintain that this would be a good article to read. I tried to excerpt it, but wanted to cut out too much, so instead I'm just encouraging you to go read it.

Oh, and I ripped a joke off of They Might Be Giants above.

Compromise

Compare and Contrast the following statements. The first is from Joshua Micah Marshall, over at Talking Points Memo.

First, this isn't just about these seven judges. It's about three and a half more years of judges President Bush still has yet to appoint. And even more, it's about one or more crucial Supreme Court nominations he'll get to make. The American judiciary will look very different in 2009 with the filibuster than without it. And letting through a couple judges now to secure that difference isn't necessarily such a bad deal.

The second is from Salon's War Room, written by Tim Grieve.

Every now and then, it begins to seem like a reasonable idea. What's the worst thing that would happen if a few really extremist judges get on the federal appellate bench? They'd sit on three-judge panels, where their votes would be diluted by predominately Republican but somewhat more moderate colleagues. And it's not like we're talking about a Supreme Court justice here, at least not yet. Is it really worth the senatorial version of World War III to stop these nominations?

Maybe that kind of thinking leads Democrats like Joe Biden and Harry Reid to be floating various compromise deals. Or maybe they're just worried that Bill Frist really does have the votes to go nuclear. Either way, a compromise on Bush's judges doesn't seem like the worst idea in the world -- at least until a nominee like Janice Rogers Brown starts to speak.

. . . In the modern America of the secular humanist, Brown said, people are still free to be "spiritual" or to "meditate," but only if they "don't have a book that says something about right and wrong."

At a time when the religious right controls the political party that controls every branch of the federal government -- at a time when the opposition party is racing to wrap its own policies in religious rhetoric -- it's hard to see how anyone could think that the right to be religious is somehow under attack in America. But Brown, like other cultural warriors on the right, clearly sees the advantage in playing the persecution card. Recall the election-year fliers warning that John Kerry planned to outlaw the Bible. It wasn't true -- it isn't true -- but somebody must think this sort of thing plays well with the voting public.

Truthfully I tend to lean towards Mr. Marshall's argument. That said, it's worth considering both.

I Give Bill Murchinson a C-

Look at these sloppy opening paragraphs (for his latest article).

The campaign for Senate confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees got serious Sunday. God took a hand.

What kind of hand we can't tell, of course, given the Lord's engaging propensity to move in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Still, the Family Research Council's "Justice Sunday" telecast-cum-rally, featuring Senate majority leader Bill Frist and broadcast potentially to millions of church-goers, was by any reckoning an event.

OK, Mr. Murchinson perhaps you'd like to expand on your theory that God has taken a direct interest in a potential Democratic filibuster? Besides the non-evidence that some people, who claim to act in his name, held a special Sunday rally, that is. People do things in God's name all the time. So what proof do you have that God is showing his hand on the Republican Side of this issue? Apparently none whatsoever, so let's move on.

Next he presents his thesis which is that Justice Sunday is really about Brown Vs. The Board of Education.

Why Brown v. Board of Education, which proclaimed the constitutional duty to abolish public school segregation? Because Brown marked the first big occasion when Americans ceded power to the federal courts to patrol their nation's moral perimeter, a job previously reserved for the states.

Ah. Interesting. One could certainly argue that Plessy vs. Fergeson did the same thing, considerably earlier. I mean if it is patrolling the nation's moral perimeter to declare that it's wrong to segregate, wouldn't finding the opposite be more or less on the same frontier?

It's also an interesting contrast. Liberals used the courts to ensure civil rights for all Americans; and now, in recompense, Conservatives should be able to use the courts to enforce their "morality." Said morality seems to include ending legal abortion, dealing with homosexuality, and, of course, making sure corporate power remains supreme.

Murchinson does make one good, if obviously, point.

The present conflagration over lower federal court appointees is the warm-up, so to speak, for the war that will start the instant President Bush seeks to fill the first Supreme Court vacancy in a decade.

One might imagine this battle could be forestalled by Bush putting up a genuine moderate, but I doubt he will. Instead I think the right wants this battle. President Bush, in particular, needs this battle to convince the Christian Right that he and the Republican Party really are on their side. Otherwise they might notice that corporate America got their wishlist completed as quickly as possible, and President Bush only talks about the Marriage Constitutional Amendment at election time.

Justice Sunday

As many of you know, yesterday was Justice Sunday, designed to build support for what Republicans have dubbed the Nuclear option and then the Constitutional option, and what Josh Marshall is calling the Crybaby Option.

Well conservative columnist John Leo has some questions about Justice Sunday.

The premise is that Senate Democrats, by threatening to filibuster several of President Bush's judicial choices, have attacked religious believers.

"Stop the filibuster against people of faith" is the slogan. The nominees "are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a sponsor of Justice Sunday. Pardon me, but this is clearly untrue. The Democrats would be delighted to approve fervently religious nominees, so long as they endorse Roe v. Wade and the party's general strategy of using the courts as an end run around the legislative process. The obvious is true: The filibuster threat is about abortion politics and left-right polarization, not religion.

Obviously I agree that this issue has little if anything to do with picking on people of faith.

On the other hand I think it's a little sad that it is all about partisanship and abortion. Obviously the judges that President Bush is putting up, people like Priscilla Owens or Janice Rogers Brown are not only going to face all Abortion issues as judges. Far more often, they will face issues involving corporations behaving irresponsibly. And, history has shown, these are the sorts of judges who will always find on behalf of the Corporations, and always find against the rights of working class and middle class Americans.

Added A New Section of Links

The Pop Culture Links. Over there at the right. And at the top? The Practical Press! Enjoy!

New Format, New Quote!

And a new Quotes Page too.

Went to finally add the Practical Press to my Blogroll and realized the section I wanted to add it too no longer exists - so going to come back and work on it this afternoon, maybe creating a new section. Anyway the Practical Press is really good. Go check it out.