Winged Mammal Theme

David Cole has a really great editorial over at Salon this morning, discussing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's recent appearance before congress.

In the end, Gonzales's argument is circular: You need not reach the constitutional question of executive authority to violate the law, because the president acted consistently with the law. But you must find that the president acted consistently with the law because otherwise the law would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's powers. At the center of this circle is an astounding assertion of presidential power -- the power to choose the "means and methods of engaging the enemy" without being subject to any legal limits imposed by Congress, whether they be limits on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, torture, or spying on Americans.

What the NSA spying debate is ultimately about is this: Do we want to live in a country where the president, like the rest of us, is bound by law, or do we want to live in a country where the president, by invoking the magic words "commander in chief," can order that criminal laws be violated in secret? One thing is certain: The Bush administration will never want a hearing on that question.

You see the President is like Batman - he has to be outside the law in order to protect us. The terrorists, they don't play by the rules. So the President can't play by the rules either.

The terrorists aren't worried about the complexities of American Laws - neither can our President can't.

The terrorists don't care about civilian deaths or infringement of basic human rights - neither can our President.

The terrorists don't admire or care for western decadence and commitment to ideals like ideals of human decency - President Bush needs to feel the same way in order to defeat them.

In order to defeat the terrorists, our President needs to become a terrorist. That is the only path to victory.

Did You Know?

The original name for King Kong was King Kane. Ironically enough the original name for Citizen Kane was Citizen Kong.

I would pay good money to see a movie called Citizen Kong.

Republican Discontent

There is a good article over at Salon today on, as you might have guessed, Republican Discontent.

Instead of shoring up the conservative base, Bush's bland rhetoric and ticky-tacky domestic initiatives -- more switchgrass, less malaria -- only confirmed conservatives' ever-growing concern: Far from an heir to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the president has become just another free-spending, big-government politician.

The governor who wooed conservatives in 2000 became a president who increased federal education spending, signed a pork-laden 2002 farm bill, and passed the largest new entitlement since the days of Lyndon Johnson, the Medicare prescription drug bill. After becoming a champion of leave-us-alone libertarians, he went on to authorize a vast expansion of executive power with the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping of Americans. And after promising to appoint another Supreme Court justice like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, he nominated his own ideologically unknown lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the job.

Interesting, and certainly pleasant to contemplate as we go into the electoral season. Still, this might be a bit too rosy. I think I'll see if I can get Grumbly over here and ask her about this.

Presented without Comment

From Ann Coulter's Latest Article.

As my regular readers know, I've long been skeptical of the "Religion of Peace" moniker for Muslims -- for at least 3,000 reasons right off the top of my head.

. . . In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence.

Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.

. . . Making the rash assumption for purposes of discussion that Islam is a religion and not a car-burning cult, . . .

But Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals?

News Flash. I'm Messed up.

Just in case you were looking for further evidence that I am messed up, check out this line from my "humorous" script for "The FISA Beat."

James - Dammit Chief, I can't stay again. My wife is upset that I never see it.

Did you catch it? Let me highlight it for you.

James - Dammit Chief, I can't stay again. My wife is upset that I never see it.

Yeah I'm really 1720's kind of guy. Oh well, for those of you offended at this lapse in pronounery, I can assure you I am just as offended. And embarrassed.

Two points not related to each other

Once again at the funeral of a prominent liberal, Coretta Scott King, Republicans are upset that the comments made at that funeral reflected the political nature of her life. In her memorial service some comments critical of this administration were made. Ms. King also made comments critical of this administration. For example she said to Rueters, "When you use war as a way of settling disputes, you only cause more war. . . . In the long run, the only way to have peace is to use peaceful means."

Conservatives are acting like this is the end of the world, and I suspect many Americans will agree with them. Which shows just how childish we Americans are.

President George W. Bush and Coretta Scott King represent different legacies and different beliefs. No, that's too mild. They represent opposing legacies and ideologies.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

That's Matthew 6:24. And it's true. You cannot support both President Bush's and Coretta Scott King's vision of America. You have to choose which side you are on. Any adult looking at the situation would come to that conclusion.

But here in America, land of the childish, we are all supposed to pretend better.

Speaking of childish, Rich Lowry has determined who the real bad guys in this wiretapping case (well him and a bunch of other Republican Politicians and Conservative Pundits).

Democrats pooh-pooh any negative fallout from the NSA leak on grounds that terrorists already know that we are trying to surveil them. The furor over the program, however, reminds terrorists to be very careful. This is not nothing. Mafia cases are often built on the astonishing sloppiness that complacency lures mobsters into.

Um yeah, Lowry. That's pretty believable. I guess we should ignore the constitutional and legal ramifications of Bush's actions, because without constant reminders the terrorists will get sloppy. Hmmmm. That's giving me an idea for another TV show.

And I guess these items were kind of related.

New Television Series Pitch

Title - "The FISA Beat"
Creators - Bryant E. Gries, Space L. Lobster, Cheery M. Jetson
Pitch - It's 2007, and President Bush can't operate outside the system anymore. But he still wants to stop the terrorists and eavesdrop on them. So he institute an elite squad of clerks and cops, working together to prepare the paperwork necessary to permit him to collect necessary information.
Characters - The Chief, Gortack the Preparer, Belinda Mae, James John Geoffry.

Sample scene.

(The sun streams in from the windows indicating that the sun is setting. Gortack, Belinda, and James are getting their effects together. Suddenly the Chief bursts into the room.)

Chief - Hold everything! Agents in Walla Walla just intercepted a phone call from Osama bin Ladin's number two man. They need the paperwork over there within 72 hours! (looks around) Looks like we won't be going anywhere.

(Gortack and Belinda spring into action, going back to their desks. Belinda pulls down some complicated law books (note, use actual law books. I think audiences would catch on to the old encyclopedia Britannica scam). Gortack puts a raft of forms on his desk and starts working on them. James approaches the Chief, angrily)

James - Dammit Chief, I can't stay again. My wife is upset that I never see it.

Chief - Dammit, don't you think I know that? But you and your wife know that you serve a higher purpose.

James - Dammit, she wanted me to bring her home some shitake mushrooms so we could have spaghetti.

Chief - Dammit, you are just going to have to give her a call and tell her you can't make it. I need you here.

James - Dammit, I love spaghetti.

Chief - Dammit, you get back in your desk and get on the phone with Walla Walla - I want to know all the details before we finalize these forms. (walks over to Gortacks desk) How's it going, son.

Gortack - It's coming along - these forms are so complicated.

Chief - Well the forms are to protect us. So they need to be complicated.

Gortack - Why can't we just let the NSA spy on whoever they want? Be better than these forms.

Chief - (sitting on the desk) Sometimes I wish we could. But we are going to play by the rules. Without rules we are little better than the scum we are going after! You see them al Qaeda folks think that they should be able to tell everybody what to do and trample all over peoples rights. Here in America we don't cotton to that way of thinking. Rather we demand, even while defending ourselves, that we play within the rules so as to safeguard our freedoms.(turning to Belinda) I can see that you are hard at work, being one of the best attorneys in the nation who gave up her 6 figure salary job to serve your country, so I won't bother you.

(The Chief stands up and walks to the center of the room, looks around briefly smiles. Suddenly Gortacks pen breaks, ink spilling out all over the forms he is working out. He looks up stricken, as the camera zooms from him to the Chief. After a beat he speaks).

Chief - I guess we are going to have to get our hands dirty. (Main title sequence).

This goldmine idea for an ongoing series can be yours, Hollywood, for practically no money (by your standards).

The Argument

There are two arguments you can have over the wire taps.

Argument number one is, "Should the President be allowed to spy on terrorists in order to keep Americans safe?'

Argument number two is, "Should the President be required to act within the law, even when claiming to protect the American people?"

Obviously the first argument is the one that most conservatives prefer to engage in. They are much less interested in the implications of whether or not the President has the legal authority to do what he is doing (he doesn't). They don't want to have to grapple with this question - "The President could get all the warrants he needed through the system as it is set up. Why did he have to go around it?"

Well we get one answer from Linda Chavez's latest article.

Which of these two alternatives will make America safer? The United States government will intercept communications from al Qaeda operatives overseas and their agents or enablers in the United States in the fastest, most efficient way possible, even if it means not obtaining a warrant beforehand. Or, if the government wants to intercept phone calls or e-mails between al Qaeda operatives overseas and their agents or enablers on American soil, government lawyers will have to spend hours, days, perhaps even weeks compiling legal arguments and factual evidence of the kind and quality that would hold up in court should any of the parties ever later be charged with a crime in U.S. courts.

This is a smokescreen of course, but it is also an answer. I think Democrats have been pretty good about explaining that you can get a warrant up to 72 hours after the wiretapping, and that these requests for wiretaps are seldom refused, so the substance of this argument would appear to be, it's just a lot of extra paper work.

Well that's to bad. But, as I saw on a bumper sticker once, freedom isn't free.

The Cartoon Controversy

This is the big story going on these days - what to do about those damned cartoons.

Short version - some anti muslim cartoons were published in Denmark. Muslims got very upset (to the point of rioting). Danish cartoonists are scared. Europe is wringing its hands. American Media is not showing the cartoons (although they are, of course, readily available on the internet.

This is a story made for Conservative Commentators. Poor Danish cartoonists being harassed by intolerent and hateful Muslims.

The riots and demonstrations across the Middle East and Western Europe (though not yet playing here) over some cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad have set off a parallel intellectual riot in the West over the nature of free speech and free expression. Many pundits and editorialists have worked feverishly to keep this a debate about the propriety of running cartoons. Some news outlets are updating their procedures so as not to offend "religious" sensibilities in the future.

The quotation marks around the word "religious" should say it all. We're not talking about "religion." We're talking about a specific religion - Islam.
- Jonah Goldberg, "Controversy is about culture clash, not cartoons"

The cartoon implosion now rocking the Muslim world - featuring embassy burnings, threats of 9-11 sequels and the Arab street equivalent of the Terrible Twos - is based on equal parts fake photographs and a default riot mode looking for an excuse. Extreme propaganda on one side and a lack of fortitude on the other have brought us near the brink of extinction through a global act of accidental self-mockery.
- Kathleen Parker, "The end of civilization was a joke"

Those who argue for republication of the Danish cartoons are not "instigating" a clash of civilization. Nor are they pouring gasoline on a fire. Rather, they are defending against the already declared and engaged radical Islamist clash against the Christian, Secular, Jewish, Hindu, Chinese world by expressing solidarity with the firemen.

In this case, the firemen, perhaps surprisingly to some, is the European press. French socialist newspapers, The BBC, and other major secular European media stand shoulder to shoulder with a right-wing Danish newspaper against what they correctly see is an unyielding demand by radical Islam that Europe begin to start living under Sharia law.
- Tony Blankley, "Cartoons, but not the funnies"

I have to admit not having a strong opinion one way or the other on this issue. The cartoons are mostly banal and not very funny, I can't see defending them as some great artistic statement. And of course it's hilarious for the newspaper who requested these cartoons to pretend they didn't know this might happen.

On the other hand, my own religion has been mocked before. In cartoons and in articles. And reading those articles and cartoons did sometimes upset me. But I didn't riot. I didn't demand that my personal feelings be taken into account by my entire society.

On the other hand, I am pretty well off. Perhaps things would look different to me if I was broke. Or, more to the point, if I lived in a society that I felt prevented me from ever making something of myself. Perhaps the riots are just a symptom of larger social problems in Europe.

So like I say, not sure what to say about this issue.

Conservatives History with Race

Slavery was introduced to the nation before it's founding and continued up till the civil war. Before the civil war, Southern Conservatives (most of who where Democrat) wrote and argued in favor of their "peculiar institution," while Northern Conservatives argued against any radical changes. When Lincoln became President, Southern Conservatives attacked Fort Sumter and plunged America into a civil war.

After the war Republican Liberals tried to reform the south, but Southern Conservatives waged a war of terror against Northern Liberals and Southern blacks. This war of terror included lynchings and murders and was successful. Southern Conservatives managed to stave off civil rights for another century.

When Liberals began mobolizing in favor of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, Conservatives decried them as communists and revolutionaries, and fought against civil rights with violent tactics. After African American Civil Rights were finally enforced by the liberal Supreme Court, Liberals (both Democrats and Republicans) in congress, and the liberal and Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, southern Conservatives left the Democratic Party in droves, finding a new home in the Conservative Republican Party (and, naturally, they pushed it even further to the right).

To sum up, if you are looking for the political philosophy that condones and supports racism in America, you should probably consider modern conservatism.

This article brought to you thanks to Bruce Bartlett's latest article "The Democrat's Own History with Race" which is accurate but quite misleading.

I do not give permission

I hereby do not express consent to the NSA eavesdropping on any telephonic, Internet or other electronic forms of communications I may have -- whether I initiate or am on the receiving end of the communication -- with any person or persons the government has reasonable basis to conclude is a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda.

This may seem like a shocking step to you, but I have no contact with al Qaeda, so the situation does not arise. David Limbaugh's similar declaration at the beginning of his latest article, in which he gives permission to the NSA to spy on him if he is talking with al Qaeda, is similarly pointless.

Unfortunately as a a private citizens I may not be the best person to make the call of whether or not I should be eavesdropped upon. For one thing, if I were in contact with al-Qaeda, you wouldn't expect me to admit it.

So who decides? Well in the 1960s and 1970s the power to wiretap was used for political purposes. Nixon used it to spy on political enemies, and J. Edger Hoover used it to spy on people he just didn't like. So they set up a board for judges to approve wiretaps. Sensible, right? We are going to need to wiretap criminals and spies and terrorists, no doubt about that. So we need a system that lets us do that, while also being assured that such wiretaps aren't being misused. So they set up the FISA court.

But that's not good enough for President Bush, who sought the right to wiretap people whenever he wanted. He asked congress for this power repeatedly, and was rebuffed. So the President, just like Jack Bauer of Fox's "24", went outside the rules to protect America.

Of course, reasonably people might ask why, if protecting the USA was the goal, he didn't just seek the appropriate warrants.

Surprised by Grace

Erik Lokkesmoe takes on the subject of why Conservatives have a hard time breaking into the entertainment industry (which seems to be a hot subject these days). He hits a lot of high notes, but misses some and makes some confusing points as well.

His second "mistake," for example, hides a key problem with a certain type of conservative trying to break into movies or music or whatnot.

Mistake #2: We don't quite understand common grace – the idea that the good, the true, and the beautiful can be found in the most “unlikely” of places (Broadway) and people (liberal artists). Without a strong belief in common grace, we will either get angry at the culture or withdraw from it entirely.

First of all, is it really all that unlikely to find something beautiful on Broadway. I saw Lion King there and it was very enjoyable.

Common grace is all well and good, but the implication is that conservatives are just better than most of the people they work with. I don't know how you engage successfully in a collaborative art with people you despise, even if you believe in random flashes of inspiration.

Much of it is exhortations that Conservatives not set out to make specifically Conservative art. Rather they should just try their hardest to make art, and hope that their art reflects their values.

He also seems to deplore conservatives natural antipathy towards art and artists. He opposes boycotts (hooray!) and favors voting with your wallet for work that you like. On the other hand, he doesn't address the connection between hatred of art and hatred of anything effeminate. Art is effeminate by it's very nature (in some peoples eyes). A man choosing to be an actor or a set designer or a dance and so on and so forth is probably not really a man. He alludes to this when he says that parents should encouraged talented children (rather than reenacting "Dead Poets Society" for example), but he misses his mark when he focuses on the money making possibilities of careers, rather than the "fruitiness" quotient.

Of course it's possible that he's liberated enough that it didn't occur to him. I wouldn't think the same would apply to his audience.

The innocent have nothing to fear

Or, to put it another way, "If you'?re not a terrorist, don't worry." Comforting isn't it?

According to Armstrong Williams, the only people who have anything to fear from President Bush's new wireless spying program are terrorists. A few points Williams neglects to mention.

1. The authority to wiretap terrorists already exists under the FISA program. President Bush could have obtained the authority to accomplish those wiretaps within the system if he so chose. He chose not to.

2. The President does not have the authority to circumvent the law simply because he chooses too. The fact that the President's surrogates have repeated requested the authority to do these wiretaps (and been rebuffed) shows that.

3. There is no way of knowing whether or not the President is targeting only those with terrorist ties. That's the whole problem isn't it?

4. Armstrong Williams is a bought and paid forpropagandist.

I can kind of understand why Williams would leave out that last one, come to think of it.

To Defeat Republicans Simply Become Republicans

Many on the right are convinced that in order to succeed, Democrats need to become Republicans. This is typified by the repeated exhortations to take Lieberman seriously. Poor sap.

But here's the pinnacle or nadir of that kind of thinking; Democrats need to applaud programs they oppose so as to look good to the American people. This theory was advanced by Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews in the run up to the State of the Union (Yes, here at Make Me a Commentator!!! we boldly comment on week-old stories), and recorded by Media Matters for America.

MATTHEWS: Will there be moments -- I want to get back to substance, but I love the visual because I think it is a television event now. It's a studio audience, basically. Will there be a moment where the Democrats sit on their hands dramatically and the Republicans stand up and roar?

CARLSON: There always is, absolutely. I think people are always surprised by -- and every year, not just this year -- but they are always surprised by how partisan it is. I don't even think most people at home know that the parties sit in different places. I mean, I think it is shocking to people who don't follow Congress that one side, you know, won't respond at all to the president, and the other side goes crazy.

MATTHEWS: Do they look bad when they don't?

CARLSON: I think they do. I mean, I'm not shocked by it; I've lived here a long time. But yeah, I don't think the public likes that.

MATTHEWS: Suppose the president says, "I'm gonna make my tax cuts permanent," and the Democrats sit on their hands. That's good for the Republicans, right?

CARLSON: Yeah, probably so.

So there you have it. The American people are morons and when they see Democrats not clapping the President their little minds tell them "Democrats bad. They should clap President Bush. Not clap. That bad!"

Did you Know?

Frog spelled backword is Grof.

The State of the Republicans - Delusional

Tony Snow wrote this week, responding to President Bush's state of the Union. He's frustrated, as I'm sure many Republicans are, at the lack of Conservative Domestic programs being proposed. He's also frustrated that many of the programs that President Bush is proposing don't seem all that conservative, things like government research into alternate energy sources. He's not keen on that.

For now, however, they'll [the American people] have to settle for dreams of filling their gas tanks with rotted corn stalks.

But more interestingly is a section near the end where he talks about why he's upset that President Bush is being so timid.

Make no mistake: Despite the shortcomings in the speech, George W. Bush is the only figure who counts in American politics. On the seminal issues of national security and global destiny, he positively dwarfs the political opposition.

That is interesting. For one thing we don't have a system that encourages one man rule. Quite the opposite.

For another, it's strange that Snow, given that he works for Fox News, hasn't heard of the Plame Scandal or Jack Abramoff or the Domestic Spying Program. All of which drain the president's power just a little bit. But frankly this encourages me. I want Conservatives swinging for the fences right now. It will just increases their frustration and disillusionment when their players are only able to achieve infield singles. If that.

Did You Know?

One of your friends has been replaced with an alien replicant. Probably the one you least expect. But you will never guess which one it is, so it really shouldn't affect your life in the slightest.

Right?

The Old Lies

Last year at this time I couldn't post for more than five minutes without bringing up Social Security. Good times.

In last year's State of the Union the President promised a new initiative to "save Social Security." As the American people became aware of what he planned, it was roundly rejected.

In Tuesday's State of the Union, the President referenced the failure of his plan to "save Social Security," and Democrats clapped. To Tony Blankely this was an enormous mistake.

As the party of reactionary inertia -- as the party that not only doesn't have any solutions to today's dangers and problems but denies that such problems exist -- the Democrats on the floor of the House Tuesday night demonstrated a flawless, intuitive sense of its new, disfunctional self.

The Democrats' wild applause on behalf of doing nothing was more than a merely tactical political blunder. It displayed a deeper truth about them.

. . . Social Security is the single most iconic Democratic Party issue of the past hundred years -- the Democrats created Social Security in 1935, and have won countless elections since then by beating up Republicans for allegedly not supporting it.

. . . Worse than that for the Democrats, it shows how severely degraded their political instincts have become. Tip O'Neil's Democratic Party of 20 years ago would never have cheered the failure of Social Security -- even to try to make a small political point. To be sure, they would demagogue the issue ruthlessly, but never be seen to be walking away from the sacred program.

Here's the parts Blankley leaves out. The democrats weren't cheering the end or the failure of Social Security. Rather they were cheering, because they had protected Social Security from President Bush's half-assed scheme for "saving it."

Here's another deception - Blankley gives the impression that Republicans support Social Security. Possibly some do, but Conservatives do not. Conservatives want to either turn Social Security into a program that is not Social Security or they want to do away with it altogether.

This includes the Bush White House. We all remember the memo that stated "for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win . . . " Six decades ago the debate was over whether or not a program like Social Security was a good idea or the path to socialism. The Bush White House is still fighting that fight, and, last year, they thought they could win it. That should be a pretty big clue about what their program would do to Social Security.

So all in all, I think it's pretty good news that the President failed in his plans to "save Social Security." Certainly news worthy of a little applause.

The Christian Ghetto

There's an article over at Townhall about the release of the new Left Behind movie which is being aimed at specifically Christian Audiences. Mark Joseph writes that this is a worrying trend, and compares it to the history of Christian Rock.

Many executives who populated the music industry in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s were all too willing to have devout artists leave their industry and make their statements of faith in the cultural gulag of Christian rock, where they would be sentenced to cultural obscurity. It was the pop culture equivalent of being shipped off to Siberia and being put to work breaking up rocks, a tactic effectively used to shut up freedom-loving Russian intellectuals in the former Soviet Union.

What resulted was two decades of nearly unbroken absence of serious religious faith from the mainstream of pop music.

This is kind of a warped version of the story. First of all, subjectivity aside, the artists who ended up in specifically Christian context usually were the ones who couldn't compete in a larger context. That's how they got there. If a Christian Artist could move units he or she would break through.

Secondly, I think it's just a little arrogant to consign all mainstream recording artists who commented on matters of faith as not "serious."

Frankly I'm pretty sure that if Left Behind could compete in this market, it would. Apparently it can't.

On a side note, if you haven't checked out Slactivist's review of Left Behind, there's no time like the present.

Would you Kick a Conservative's Dog?

Here are two ways of looking at our rivalry with the Conservatives of this Country.

1. We are all good people and patriotic people who want a strong and successful America. While we differ on how to get there, it's important to remember that that which unites us is stronger than that which divides us.

2. Conservatives are the enemy, the ideas they present are bad ideas. Bad for America and bad for the American people. In order to prevent their bad ideas from taking hold on the United States, we need to do whatever it takes. They are our enemies, and as such, they must be defeated.

When I first started this website I believed in the first supposition. Part of me still wants to believe it, but another part of me believes that it's crap.

The problem with the first supposition is that it only holds true as long as both sides believe it. The moment one side drops to supposition 2, they gain a huge advantage while the other side believes in supposition 1.

Republicans and Conservatives believe that Liberals are the enemy and they are clearly willing to do what it takes to crush us. Liberals and Pseudo-Liberals in particular continue to accept supposition one.

Which brings me to my question. If you believed kicking a Conservative's dog would provide some help in overturning conservative ideas, would you kick it? Please don't cop out by saying "Well I don't see how that would help." The thought experiment assumes that you do see a way in which it would help.

The Conservative Crack Down

This is the term Rush is using to describe the Conservatives reactions to having a bad year last year. The Conservative movement is getting more sure of itself and more confident. Exhibit number one today is the Alito confirmation.

Now it's time to bring on the next vacancy. We are on a roll, ladies and gentlemen -- and take down those words, Senator Kerry, for your next floor statement about me, because I want those words echoing throughout the land: Bring on the next vacancy; we are on a roll.

Bring on the next court vacancy isn't exactly the same as we need to slip rat poison in Judge Steven's creme brulee, but they are similar sentiments.

But let's get to some gloating about the Democratic failure to stop Alito.

Kerry rides in to save the day, and ends up... How many votes did the cloture vote get? Did they get 19 or 20 Democrat votes yesterday for cloture? Kerry barely got about half their caucus. He got about half the Democrat caucus to go with him, and it was known in advance this was going to happen. What an idiot Kerry must be. His Democrat leaders had already said while he was in the air on the way back to lead the filibuster, his Democrat leaders -- Dingy Harry and others -- had already conceded there was no hope. A filibuster would be pointless and yet there is Senator Kennedy, along with his protege, Senator Kerry, leading the way. It was the blind leading the blind; the tone deaf leading the deaf. Now, it was just incredible. This crackup that we are witnessing is historic, folks, and you are watching the midst of it, you are in the midst of it, and you are part of what's making it all happening. The Democratic Party and the American left have no clue how to deal with an informed opposition.

See this one victory shows that liberalism is a dead thing. But before you get all panicky, I urge you to consider the source. Good old Rush has been predicting the imminent demise of liberalism quite a while, and we are still here.

Rush also applauds a Daily Kos writer for excoriating those Democrats who voted for cloture.

You go to the site, and they tell you, read this. This guy is good. This guy's got it. Read this. Live it; love it; learn it. Here's what this Democrat wrote at Daily Kos:

"What I want is a complete list of every scum-sucking, [bleep]ing Democrat, [bleep]ing senator who voted for cloture. That's what I want. I don't know what to do with that list, not yet, but I know for [blank]damn sure I won't be voting for any of them, let alone sending them any [blank] damn money!

By the way, isn't Maryscott O'Conner a wierd name for a "guy"?

Those bleeps are almost certainly added in by Rush Limbaugh. Praising this attack on "moderate" liberals quite a long way from thanking those who did the right thing (in conservative's mind) by voting for cloture. Kick them while they're up. Kick them while they're down. Simple enough. After all a liberal who does a nice thing is still a liberal.

Let's see how this pattern is followed as conservatives write about their triumph over the next couple of days.

Opening Salvo

Most Conservative Columnists haven't responded to the Alito Confirmation yet. Most of them will take the opportunity with their regularly scheduled column to do that (some may have responded to it at their blogs, but I'm not interested in searching through Republican Blogs just now).

There is one article up at Townhall, by Curt A. Levey, which focuses on how the Democratic Party has apparently misjudged the American people.

Faced with the opportunity to prove their independence from ultra-liberal interest groups, Senate Democrats struck out Tuesday when they voted almost unanimously against the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Come November, Democrats will bear the cost at the polls.

This is a nice way to spin it. Total crap, of course, but effective enough.

Alito was an extremist nominee, but our party failed to make that case effectively, getting sidetracked into dead ends like his belonging to an alumni group several decades ago. Alito believes in the power of the executive (and particularly this executive) to do whatever the hell it wants to do. Alito will support Executive Torture and Executive Wiretapping. Presumably he's also cool with Executive Outing of CIA Agents.

But we failed to make that case, and by we I mean Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary,, in particular. So Levey might be right, there might be a price to pay come November.

Of course, I don't know how that will overcome Republican Ethics Scandals, or the President's illegal wiretaps, or ongoing trouble in Iraq, all of which could move voters as well.

I've seen the future and, boy, it's rough

One of the things about reading so much conservative commentary (as I do), is that you get a feel for what's coming. Not always, but sometimes.

This week some 19 Democrats voted with the Republicans in favor of cloture. Here's atypical response from Conservative columnist and bloggist Michelle Malkin.

And thanks to the principled Democrats who know you and your record best for standing up in your defense.

So that's nice for a change.

Of course the moment those Democrats disagree with Malkin, one presumes they will be back to being unprincipled or batshit crazy.

The more typical response I will hear all weak will be to happily piss on Kennedy and Kerry and Democrats in general for failing to stop Alito. I expect I will get to catalogue many examples of that. And I will.

But like the song says, "I would rather drink 6 razor blades, razor blades from a paper cup."

The Bush Economy

As we go into the State of the Union, in which Bush is sure to tout his economic success, let us consider some recent economic trends.

The savings rate for last year ended up a negative number. Which indicates that Americans are spending all the money they are getting and dipping into money saved previous years.

Since we know, according to Bush Supporters, that this economy is on fire, there can only be one answer. Americans are stupid and spending money like fish because they don't realize they should be saving money.

But wait, why did they save money in previous years (in fact, every year since the great depression, the last time (1932 and 1933) when the savings rate dipped into a negative number), and not this year? Hmmmmm perhaps America is in the grip of some kind of stupification ray that is making us all spend money hand over fish. Er, fist. Given that we know, according to Bush and his supporters, that the economy is doing great, this can be the only logical answer.

Come to think of it, I had a really hard time finding my glasses this morning.

Also, apparently wages are up the smallest amount in 9 years. That's probably just a clerical error. Since we know the economy is going great, I'm sure that America's business owners and managers are just having a hard time filling out all the paperwork to process all the raises they intend to give. Probably another effect of the stupification ray.

So remember, the economy is going great. Who are you going to believe, President Bush or your lyin' eyes.

Childlike Fantasy Realms

Hamas, as we all know, did very well in the recent Palestinian elections. This proves the need for genocide. Palestinians do not want peace with Israel, they want to eliminate Israel. So the only sensible solution is to eliminate Palestinians. Also liberals who believe that Palestinians and Israelis can peaceably coexist (in the same region, if not the same towns) are living in childlike fantasy realms.

Genocide. That is what Cal Thomas and Dennis Prager are calling for.

But that's not their main point of course. The main point is that liberals live in childlike fantasy worlds (Prager) or in extreme denial (Thomas).

Palestinians do not have their own nation. They do not have an army (they do have some sort of security force). They do not have control of their destinies. They are kept in racial enclaves. What more can Israel and the rest of us take from them?

Their lives. We can start killing them until they stop fighting back. Perhaps in childlike fantasy worlds where revenge and violence and cruelty leads to a happy ending, after we slaughter a bunch of them for electing terrorists, they will get the message and become nice little lap dogs. But I doubt it.

Once we return to violence as the solution to this problem, the inevitable ending is genocide.

Is it childish to believe there can be peace someday between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Maybe. But it's a damn site better than the alternative.

Alito is more or less in

For those of you in need of some rallying after the Alito Confirmation (sure to occur tomorrow), you might check out this post at firedoglake.

Did you Know?

A bad man walks very fast.

A bad man is afraid the devil (Ol' Scratch) is coming to get him, and so is a-scared to stay in one spot for very long. A good man knows he doesn't have anything to fear from the devil, so walks a bit more leisurely-like.

For those curious, I walk very very fast.

It's a problem that effects us all (but mostly liberals)

Suzanne Fields, conservative commentator, picks an unusual cultural touchstone for her latest article; The Colbert Report and "truthiness."

She does get the essential concept of "truthiness," that is truths that are from the heart not supported by facts or logic. And then she uses it to discuss Columbus day.

Columbus Day celebrations, for example, once were occasions for celebrating the achievements of Christopher Columbus, but it has become the venue to indoctrinate impressionable students, telling them how much better the world would have been if Chris had not sailed that Ocean Blue. "Since the 1970s, the dominant voices within academic history have worked to generate a widespread cynicism about the nature of Western democracies, with the aim of questioning their moral and political legitimacy," says Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian who wrote "The Killing of History."

. . . Such ideological history can be the result of sloppy research and a dependence on questionable secondary sources, but more to the point, it derives from politically correct manipulation that replaces the disinterested search for truth with emotional appeals to denigrate and deconstruct the legacy of Western culture.

Of course the problem with this is that I know that the version of Columbus's story I was taught in elementary school was chock full of "truthiness," as well. And whatever the ideological motivations regarding anti-Columbus historians, they are no more offensive than your own ideological motivations in criticizing such work. Probably less so. Writing an anti-Columbus book doesn't imply that you can't write your pro-Columbus book in response. Writing off one side of the debate as motivated by "truthiness" is on more shaky ground, in my opinion.

John Leo Discovers Liberals Upset with the Media

This is a shocker. According to John Leo's latest article, Liberals don't recognize that the media is 100% on their side. In fairness Leo does better with this subject than most of this colleagues would (I shudder to think what Brent Bozell would do). John Leo, unlike most of his colleagues on the Conservative side, recognizes that Liberals do have a few legitimate gripes.

Liberal columnist Joe Conason thinks it’s unfair that photos of Bill Clinton’s coffee meetings were forced into the open, whereas photos of Bush with Abramoff are unreleased so far, while the media yawn. Some complain that the press took arguments for Clinton’s impeachment seriously but not arguments for Bush’s impeachment today.

So, fair enough.

I think the problem isn't liberal media commentary or conservative media commentary, but rather dumb media commentary. Dumb media commentary insists on a uniformity among thousands of reporters and editors and journalists that doesn't seem to exist. All reporters are working for the other side. There is no difference between the RNC and a reporter for CNN (unless of course the reporter says something that supports a liberal point of view (in this example)).

The purpose of dumb media mommentary isn't to improve the media. It's to give the dumb media critic (and his audience) an out when presented with information that contradicts his or her world view. Rather than considering the accuracy of this new information, and seeing how it fits within your current beliefs, the dumb media critic simply says "Damn Conservative Media Bias" and ignores this new information. It does make life easier I suppose.

I do want to point out that there is plenty of smart media criticism, particularly from the left (in contrast, premiere conservative media critic Brent Bozell and his organization are clearly in the dumb media critic camp).

Why We Probably Won't Fight

Salon has a story by Walter Shapiro on the Filibuster Fiasco. I'm not sure I agree entirely with his analysis, but he does raise some good questions.

An intriguing question, if one entirely theoretical at this point, is what might have happened if Senate liberals had decided at the outset that they would use the filibuster to prevent the Alito-for-O'Connor seat swap. For Alito was the be-all-and-end-all Supreme Court nominee -- the moment to put aside wait-until-next-year caution. The odds on such a filibuster still would have been long, but at least there would have been a glimmer of coherence to a get-40-votes opposition strategy. Yes, Republican senators might have succeeded in employing the "nuclear option" (outlawing by a majority vote all filibusters against judicial nominees), but if a Democrat were elected president in 2008, that would have turned out to be a short-sighted GOP ploy. Instead, Alito opponents are now left with plenty of nothing. Even if there are future vacancies during the Bush era, Democrats are sufficiently demoralized that they would probably join in approving John Ashcroft to the Supreme Court on a voice vote.

That is the key problem with the filibuster situation - Democrats never actually came up with a strategy for opposing Alito. More to the point, they never came up with a compelling reason to oppose Alito. Some seemed to think it was abortion, others that he lied on application or belonged to a racist organization in college (one or the others). For some it was that he supported executive power to the Nth Degree (in my opinion, this was the best reason to oppose him). But without a unified reason to oppose him, we were left with "Democrats don't like him because he is a Republican."

Which isn't enough.

Humor

You know what would be great? If someone slipped rat poison to Karl Rove.

Oh for any of you who might get offended, that was just a funny joke.

Did You Know?

Rodents take their name from the Isle of Rhodes, known for it's ferret like inhabitants.

On Second Thought

Just want to say that the post directly below was inspired by Rush Limbaugh making basically the same argument. He also said that if we really believed what we claim to believe, we would kidnap Alito. I'm not sure about that.

I also don't know if we can win. It seems like the most likely scenario if we filibuster is that Frist triggers the nuclear option (or constitutional option if you are a conservative hypocrite), and Alito gets in anyway. And the filibuster is gone. That's a valid concern.

But not fighting for what we believe in isn't going so well, in my opinion.

Why I Support Filibustering Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court

Because if we don't, it means the he and his brand of extremism are normal. All the stuff that Liberals have said about him was just a bluff. Just normal partisanship. If he really is as bad as we say he is, than we will filibuster. If we don't filibuster, it means we never really gave a damn.

And I'm tired of belonging to a party that doesn't give a damn.

No Threat Vs. A Real Threat Vs. An Immediate Threat

There's little question that Iran getting the bomb would be a threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East and the worlds oil supply.

There's also no question that some conservative voices would like to send our troops in to fix Iran (presumably the same way we've fixed Iraq).

This desire persists, despite a pair of reports that suggest our military cannot even maintain our presence in Iraq for much longer.

Jeff Jacoby writes a sneering article today at Townhall in support of a military solution to Iran. His sneers are reserved for those who hope that Iran can be contained peacefully, particularly wussy Europeons.

To be sure, not every British politician has been so weak-kneed. Tory MP Michael Ancram has called for Iran to be -- brace yourself -- expelled from the World Cup tournament in June. Barring the planet's foremost sponsor of terrorism from soccer matches -- now *there's* Churchillian grit. Ancram says it will send "a very, very clear signal to Iran that the international community will not accept what they are doing." Sure it will. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's rabid president, must break into a sweat thinking about it.

Later on he does indicate that a peaceful resolution is preferable (although you get the feeling his heart isn't in it), but that such a peaceful resolution is only likely if the United States is ready and prepared to invade Iran.

It's somewhat like Iraq, when President Bush threatened Iraq with invasion if they didn't let inspectors back in. Iraq let inspectors back in so naturally we invaded. I wonder if Iran learned anything about the trustworthiness of the US from that experience.

There's also an interview at Salon with Joseph Cirincione, director of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Center. It's a thoughtful interview and well worth reading for an assessment of where Iran is in their development of the bomb.

There's a real threat of Iran developing nuclear weapons, but it's not an immediate threat. All this talk of a "point of no return" or Iran being in a position within months to have a nuclear weapon is nonsense. There is a broad expert consensus, including the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran is five to 10 years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs. Even that estimate assumes that Iran goes full speed ahead and does not encounter any of the technical problems that plague such programs.

In my opinion we have more to fear, at this moment, from conservative pundits and the Bush administration pushing us into another unnecessary war than we have to fear from Iran.

Did You Know?

In the original King Kong, film goers were astounded at the impressive visual effects (for that time), including the way Kong's fur would seem to move in the wind. That effect was actually caused by the animators fingers brushing the fur as they moved the puppet.

Dissent

There's a good article over at Commondreams on the value of dissent in a time of war, and how the President sees that dissent.

Bush has lashed out at Americans "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people." True, the president said, some "honest critics" have condemned his decisions about Iraqi reconstruction, U.S. troop deployments and so on. But Bush drew a bright line between "responsible" opponents and the "irresponsible" kind, who raise doubts about the entire purpose of the war and thereby bring "comfort to our adversaries."

In other words, it's OK to criticize the White House for bungling the war after it started. But if you question how the war started, then you're obviously helping the Bad Guys. And you're hurting the United States.

The president has it exactly backward. By asking tough questions about the buildup to the war, Americans are acting in the very best traditions of their history. And it's the president himself -- not his opponents -- who is ignoring this same history.

This is pretty much entirely correct. We have a right and a duty to speak out about our Government.

Intelligent Decisions and the Wal-Mart Effect

Kathleen Parker, over at Townhall, writes an unusual column for a conservative; one that is not completely laudatory towards Wal-Mart. Not to worry, she's no threat to Wal-Mart; she just allows questions to be asked about their long term effect on the world economy.

Take salmon. Wal-Mart, which buys all its salmon from Chile, sells more than anyone else in the country and undersells all other retailers by at least $2 per pound. That's a lot of market power, which prompts Fishman to ask: "Does it matter that salmon for $4.84 a pound leaves a layer of toxic sludge on the ocean bottoms of the Pacific fjords of southern Chile?"

Salmon in Chile are raised in packed underwater pens - as many as 1 million per farm - and fed prophylactic antibiotics to prevent disease. Here's a fact you'd rather not know: A million salmon produce the same amount of waste as 65,000 people. Combine that waste with unconsumed food and antibiotic residue, and you've got a toxic seabed.

Does it matter?

Only if consumers say it does, says Fishman.

Now it may seem like I'm damning with faint praise, but this really is a step up from "Everybody who doesn't like Wal-Mart is a pinko communist.

But not enough of a step. What Parker leaves out in her rosy thoughts on customer determinism is that customers are regularly deceived or given only half the story. How many Wal-Mart customers are aware of the ecological damage their cheap salmon is causing? Presumably very few.

And, of course, American customers are pretty good at overlooking or ignoring the moral implications of their spending power. Unlike Chilean Salmons, we all know that third world textile operations don't tend to be run along humane grounds (all protestations aside). Doesn't stop us from buying them. And I don't think the equation would change all that much if the abused employees were United States citizens.

Or, to put it another way, I don't think we can safely rely on Wal-Mart customers to save the world.

Screw All Y'all

Not you, my readers. Just Joel Stein and Steve Muscatello.

This morning read an article by Steve Muscatello which started out by comparing good, peaceful Pro-Life demonstrators with evil, violent Pro-Choice demonstrators, and ended by suggesting that criticism of the war (specifically Joel Stein's criticism of the war) was giving comfort to the enemy. You know how much that argument moves me.

Leave aside for a moment the merits of the Iraq War (something Stein says is impossible) and consider the fact that an American, a guy you went to high school with or who sits one cubicle from you at work, is right now patrolling an Iraqi street with a gun and enough fear to fill up every mansion in Beverly Hills.

While Stein writes pretty sentences, the soldier detonates an IED. While Stein dines at a steakhouse, the soldier eats an MRE. But really, Stein writes, we can't continue "blindly lending support to our soldiers."

Okay, fine. But can we continue pretending that such rhetoric doesn't embolden our enemies (see bin Laden, Osama), weaken troop morale, and desecrate the already fragile psyche of military families?

That struck me as the worst kind of pandering nonsense.

First of all, why doesn't the logic of "You have things pretty good; soldiers have them pretty bad, so you should shut up" apply elsewhere. I mean if it's good in this situation, why can't we say "Poor people in America have it rough, conservative columnists have it nice, so why don't they shut up?"

Secondly, any language opposing the War on Terror or the Bush Administration emboldens the enemy (by Conservative's warped logic). Unfortunately, expressing disagreement with the government is as American as apple pie. If you don't like it, go to some country that doesn't allow criticism of the government.

But then I thought I should check out the column (by Joel Stein) that inspired these words and I got angry all over again.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

There's some things I agree with in here. Certainly I do think the most likely upshot of the Bush years is that we will blame President Bush for our failures as a nation.

On the other hand, the phrasing is entirely too casual; Mr. Stein doesn't seem to give a damn. It's one thing to say our Soldiers made a mistake when they signed up to fight; it's another to make jokes about it. If you believe, as Stein apparently does, that American soldiers let their love of their nation blind them to what they would be actually doing, that's a tragedy. They are losing their lives and Iraqis are losing their lives because they made the wrong call. I don't see how it's a matter of flippancy.

I suspect that the class suggestions in Muscatello's article might be correct. Stein has an idea about what sort of people join the military, so he's fine pissing (rhetorically) on them.

But I think his subject is too important for him to comfortably get away with taking a piss.

In reading Stein's piece, I am again reminded of a favorite quote by H. L. Mencken.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Stein's article is flippant almost to the point of cruelty; Muscatello would deride any criticism of our "mission in Iraq." Ultimately, the ideas Muscatello expresses are the bigger threat to America.

Did you Know?

The road less traveled leads directly to Madison, Wisconsin.

Tough Minded Conservatives

Tough minded conservative college students can't deal with being presented with views that do not line up with their own. Fortunately, Andrew Jones, an alumnus of UCLA, is there to help them, by encouraging them to tape their professors lectures and provide them to him, so that he can "expose their professors as liberal partisans who do not tolerate dissent in their classrooms."

Tough minded conservative film goers constantly complain about how movies are biased liberally, and have set up numerous organizations to protest this trend. But, as Zompist points out, you can easily make a case that Hollywood's product is Conservatively biased.

I'm starting to question how tough minded conservatives really are. Maybe Tom Tomorrow is on to something.

Fighting Fire with Fire

There's a post over at THE NEWS BLOG about how we Democrats should conduct ourselves in our national discourse. Basically we should stop being pansies and go for the throat. Carpe Jugulum!

As with everything else I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's clear that this is what the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and Karl Roves of the world are doing. And it's equally clear that it has been successful for them. Yeah 2005 wasn't their best year, but they are closer to getting their warped vision of America than ever before. Nothing succeeds like success.

On the other hand, isn't a certain part of Democratic Identity tied up in being in favor of fair play and civility? Certainly I was attracted to liberalism in part as a reaction to the mean spirited discourse produced by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

So I'm torn. That said, I certainly think we can get harder than we are currently without dropping to Coulter-Like levels of mean spiritedness. And that would probably be good for us.

Deceptions Large and Small

Here's the opening paragraph of Michael Barone's latest article.

It is not a pretty season in our politics. Both our major parties seem to be busy disqualifying themselves. The Republicans are desperately trying to avoid getting caught up in the scandal of the disgraced and disgustingly greedy lobbyist Jack Abramoff (his clients contributed to Democrats as well as Republicans, they are quick to assert). The Democrats are fortifying their reputation for being unwilling to defend their country from its violent enemies, by attacking George W. Bush for ordering National Security Agency electronic surveillance of calls from al-Qaida suspects and by filibustering reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

Did you get that? The Republican's problems are the Democrat's problems as well; the Democrats problems are that they are filthy traitors.

But wait, do Mr. Barone's comments line up with reality? Let's see.

First of all did Abramoff give money to both Democrats and Republicans? Nyet! But even Mr. Barone seems compelled to note that it was Abramoff's clients who donated to Democrats. It should be noted that the Indian Tribes Abramoff handled are the only ones who gave more money to Republicans than to Democrats. Of larger interest are the illegal campaign contributions; how many of those went to Democrats compared to Republicans? I suspect we'll find out.

Barone clearly is in favor of lobbying and campaign contributions, even when such activities fall outside the law.

The Republicans may be facing lobbying scandals -- but lobbying is protected by the First Amendment (the Constitution gives us the right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances"), and a government that channels vast sums of money will always be so petitioned.

Yes that's right, Mr. Barone, as long as there is money in Washington, there will be lobbyists. That's why we regulate them, to prevent, as much as possible, corruption of our political process by those with the means to corrupt it. It's not the lobbying that Mr. Abromoff is in trouble for. It's the illegal and corrupting funds and perks that Mr. Abramoff provided.

Secondly, the problem isn't George W. Bush ordering "electronic surveillance of calls from al-Qaida suspects." The problem is him doing it without oversight. The mechanisms exist for Bush to do what he claims to have wanted to do. He chose to act outside those mechanisms. Why? The paranoid among us might suggest that he was monitoring calls that couldn't pass muster with a judge. Like say, a call from Senator Kerry to his campaign manager. It's hard to imagine a judge authorizing that call, right? So that would be a good reason to jump outside the official mechanism. I'm not saying that's what was done, because there is no way of knowing. I'm saying we don't know.

The rest of Barone's article is interesting; mostly it's about Joseph Schumpters theory of Democracy, which was that it was a good way for the powerful to keep control over the masses. Barone prefers a more uplifting description of Democracy, but doesn't disagree with it.

Soft Bigotry

One popular phrase among conservatives who write on race is "soft bigotry," by which they generally mean that because of Affirmative Action we don't expect anything from black people, so they never get the opportunity to really prove what they are capable of. This is different from the good old days when one or two blacks might get access to white institutions and suffer disdain for their efforts.

Soft Bigotry might apply in other directions however. Making partisan jokes for example. Kenneth Quinnel has observed how unfunny many conservative jokesters or comic strip guys are. They don't have to be. You have a natural desire to laugh along with someone who is telling jokes that you largely agree with. Or to put it another way, Republicans have a million jokes all built around the central premise that "Democrats are dumb." And Democrats have their million jokes built around the premise that "Republicans are dumb."

And those jokes will generally get a laugh, when told to the right audience.

By the same token, if there is one elephant we all want to spear, it's "political correctness." Jokes that take aim at this mythological oppression are automatically applauded, regardless of whether the joke is funny or not. It's like a comedic get out of jail free card.

But I don't think comedians should ever be let out of jail; it dulls their blade and makes them less funny.

Anyway these half formed thoughts were inspired by an article by Terry Sawyer on Sarah Silverman and her brand of comedy. I know Ms. Silverman mostly as an actress, where she can be quite fun in a flinty kind of way (she was quite good on Greg the Bunny for example). Her stand up though seems problematic, however.

Silverman's champions should acknowledge that the surface-level of her performance dovetails nicely with the right-wing brand of performative bigotry whose message is more along the lines of: "We all know that black people are lazy and feminists are ugly lezzies, so I'm going to be the only person brave enough to say it." Irony can easily get deployed as a responsibility dodging device. Ann Coulter buttresses comments such as "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors," with claims that liberals have no sense of humor about the threat of being mass murdered, even though part of her larger intellectual project has been to pathologize liberalism and make its claims synonymous with "Anti-Americanism". In this instance, irony is used to keep the argument about the ability of the attacked to "take a joke", even while the pernicious core of the argument seeps into popular discourse in a slightly less extreme form. Both the impolitic and the "politically incorrect" are themselves market norms; so common that everyone from Dennis Miller to Coulter can envision themselves heavyweight shadow boxers with the ghost of political correctness. Sarah Silverman is not Ann Coulter by any unsavory stretch of the imagination, but both of them spill outrageous sentiments into discourse only to cower back into suspicious explanatory coves of irony, sarcasm, or theoretical hide-and-seek.

Anyway the article is worth reading, as it provides food for thought, even if you end up disagreeing with Sawyer's conclusions.

Did you Know?

Fire hyrdrants serve no practical purpose whatsoever, and never have. They were invented by a set designer in 1948 as an excuse to add color to outdoor street scenes, and proved such a good design that many if not most cities had them installed "so as to look more like the movies."

Consistancy Hobgoblins

Echidne of the Snakes has a great post on the various contradictions or paradoxes in how Conservatoids portray liberals. You know the one about how Liberals are unemployed bums and wealthy elitist snobs at the same time?

A certain common type of conservatives will say anything to make Liberals look bad, even if it contradicts something he has said previously. The point isn't to make an argument; the point is to hurt the enemy. If calling them pointy-headed intellectuals one minute and dumb as a sack of hammers the next is effective, than that is what you do.

Sometimes I find myself thinking we liberals need to adopt the same approach. That if calling President Bush a power mad fascist one moment and a drolling idiot the next would work, than that is what we should do. Such tactics have obviously proven effective for Republicans; presumably they would work as well for us.

Or would they?

Knives Out

Senator Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska has already announced that he will vote for the Confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In this, Alito joins such luminaries as Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman as Democrats who support President Bush. Why is he doing this? Well conservative columnist Steve Muscatello has an answer.

As a red state Democrat running for reelection in 2006, Nelson has little choice other than to hitch his cart (at least in part) to Bush, who carried Nebraska by some 30 points in 2004. Likewise, Nelson must approach every Sena

So in order to hold onto his job, Nelson has to play nice with President Bush and the Republicans. I don't think very much of that choice; and I think even less of it after considering the rest of Mr. Muscatello's column (who's long name makes it likely I will give him a nickname (Muscy?)), which is a gameplan for getting Nelson out of office at the first opportunity. Gratitude to Sen. Nelson for voting the "right" way doesn't extend very far, I guess.

So Sen. Nelson finds himself in the interesting position of alienating his own party while allying himself with people who will cut him out of office at the first opportunity. I'd feel sorry for Sen. Nelson except, you know, I don't.

Did you Know?

In the year 2007, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company will unveil it's newest taste creation, Pepsi Flavored Coke. Shortly thereafter, the Pepsi Corporation, in an effort to compete, will unveil it's new product, Pepsi Flavored Pepsi.

No Low To Which They Will Not Stoop

For those of you wondering if there as any other Democratic veteran who was as big a liar as Senator Kerry, well, here's your chance to trash another American hero for partisan gain.

E.J. Dionne Jr. has the details.

Half a Story

And if you had five seconds to spare, I'd tell you the story of Iran.

Or at least the other half of a story Joan Goldberg tells. It's the one about how we have to deal with Iran before they get the bomb (I'm sure you've all heard this one before). Goldberg talks about three potential scenarios that might play out in Iran.

Conventional wisdom holds that there are really only two options for dealing with Iran: military strikes (by us or Israel) or the usual bundle of conferences, ineffective sanctions and windy UN speeches that lead to nothing. Oh, and Iran could be barred from the World Cup soccer tournament. By all means, let's pin our hopes on that.

But there is a third option that, alas, has become less and less likely in recent years: regime change from within. Pro-democracy - or at least anti-mullah - sentiment has been building in Iran for over a decade. In recent years there have been huge protests against the regime. Soccer stadiums full of Iranians have chanted "USA! USA!" In 2004, polls of various sorts indicated that anti-regime attitudes were held by up to nine out of 10 Iranians.

Iranians are a proud, nationalistic people and would probably rally around their government - or any government - were it threatened from without. That's one reason Ahmadinejad has been rattling his sabers so much lately: It's an attempt to bolster his unpopular regime.

Here's the part of the story that Goldberg leaves out. The United States invaded Iraq, and they know that we are likely to invade Iran as well. So all this talk about how the Democratic movement might be thwarted by nationalist fervor, well that's sort of already happening. And it's sort of our fault.

I guess I can see why Goldberg would leave that part out, come to think of it.

Did you Know?

On a hour-long police mystery based program anybody arrested in the last 10 minutes is likely to be the guilty party. Anybody arrested in the first 10 minutes is also likely to be the guilty party. Anybody arrested in the middle 40 minutes is likely to be innocent.

The Wiretapping Controversy Explained

For those of you who have questions about the current wiretapping controversy, Blue Works Best has provided a handy FAQ. Lots of good information there.

A Much Linked to Speech

You will see this all over the internet today; Al Gore gave a brilliant speech yesterday about the Bush Administration's enormous expansion of their power.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: He concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically -- and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother.

The speech is quite good, and ties together a lot of the disparate threads that, combined, give the Executive too much power.

President Bush says that the United States does not torture, and then signs a "signing statement" saying he will if he wants to.

President Bush assures us that his wire taps are strictly to catch terrorists, but refuses any oversight of his program that would give us assurances that this statement is true.

The new executive theory is that we should trust President Bush, and therefore oversight and checks and balances are no longer necessary.

I am curious to know what our founders would think about this arguement.

Did you know?

The average intelligence quotient, or I.Q., of a character in a horror movie or television show is 79. If you strip out Dana Scully, the average I.Q. drops to 58.

The Signing Statement Scam

Every so often you run into a Republican who is in favor of smaller government (as opposed to a Republican who likes slamming into Democrats in a framework of pretending to care about smaller government). Those Republicans who really do favor smaller government are frustrated that with a Republican President, Republican Congress and Republican Judiciary, they still don't have the desire to actually cut government spending and power.

Rather they seem to be interested in increasing it, which brings us to today's article. Paul Jacob's latest article covers President Bush's recent and notorious signing statement, attached to the torture ban.

Take a current news story, much blogged. The president recently signed the torture ban. But he did so with his fingers crossed. That is, he added a "signing statement" to the bill, explaining how he interpreted the new law: Quite broadly, in the context of his own expansive theory of presidential power.

Like other such statements, this wasn't a Post-It note scribble, but a cleverly written legal document designed to influence enforcement as well as future legal interpretation.

Anyway the article is interesting, and worth reading. Jacob isn't any liberal - he would favor several un-democratic methods to limit the power of government.

Inspiring Words

Just read Molly Ivins' latest article. Most of it is an entertaining look at Texas Education Politics, but the last two paragraphs are particularly inspiring.

On the general subject of political corruption, do not fall into the fatal error of cynicism. You do your country a great disservice by saying things like: "Eh, they're all crooks. Nothing anyone can do about it. Money will always find a way."

The answer is perpetual reform. Fix it, and if corruption comes back again, you just whack back at it again. The system as it is encourages corruption and must be changed. Public campaign financing is the best answer in the long-term -- all this "lobby reform" talk is hopelessly inadequate. Hang in, and raise hell -- this is a heaven-sent opportunity to clean it up. Don't blow the chance with cheap cynicism.

Yep. I get frustrating reading arguments that the Republicans have everything under control, and we can't really do anything about them. The truth is they are dramatically over extended, and they show no sign of changing course.

Optimism, Delusion, Abhorrence

I'm in kind of a good mood this morning (despite having a really disturbing dream), largely because I acquired LCD Soundsystems eponymously named first album. It's very good. So I thought I would risk reading the latest Ann Coulter column.

It doesn't matter. Liberals are being routed. They can change the lineup, the manager, the coach, but the losing streak never ends. By and large, Republicans aren't even bothering to send in their A team anymore. Alito can start wearing his iPod to the hearings. By the end of the hearings, he'll be addressing the senators as "dude."

Actually this is kind of heartening. It's nice to know that after a year of republican failures and snafus, Ann can't see anything but blue skies ahead. Her blind hatred of Democrats (key word, blind) makes her unable to see the vastly improved position of the party.

I will say that Ann does have one point; the Democrats may be focusing too much on Abortion in the debates. I understand that is an important issue, but it's also an old issue. Everybody knows what they think about abortion and everybody knows what we think about a woman's right to choose. This argument isn't going to move anybody. I would rather see the Democrats focus on his beliefs about the power of the executive branch to, say, perform warrentless wiretaps on whoever they want. Because that's something new, and an area where we have a better chance of convincing people.

A Catalogue of Commentators - Issue 6. Mike S. Adams

Howdey Cowpokes and Cowpokettes. This is Durango, the man that's half singin' cowboy and half squintin' cowboy.

This week I have been asked to talk to you about a dude named Mike S. Adams. Adams is a Professor of Sociology and Crime at UNC Wilmington. Apparently being a college professor and a Republican is a real challange in these days. Maybe that's because Republicans in the future are slimy low down dogs. Why Republicans in our day were so fighting mad that the moment they elected their first President, we immediately had a gosh-darn civil war! These days, a little criticism from a fellow proffesser and Adams is off to right a column about how tough it is for him.

He's such a spineless yellowbelly he wrote a letterto his human resources director with the following complaint.

I, too, am now suffering from erectile dysfunction, or ED.

Worse than the discovery that I am now suffering from ED was the subsequent realization that I have been suffering from it for several years. Ever the empiricist, I decided to record the approximate dates of my previous, shall we say, difficulties in an effort to find the root causes of my medical condition. A brief summary follows:

In 2001, I was jogging on campus when I passed a group of feminists marching in the annual "Take back the night" event. After they marched by me shaking their fists and screaming, I first experienced ED. They certainly took back that night!

Perhaps if Mr. Adams had gone to sing with the feminists, he would not have experienced ED, which sounds bad, even if I don't totally understand what he means by it. Still I am convinced there are no problems, not even erectile dysfunction, that can't be solved by singing.

Take this column where Mr. Adams wrotea letterto the Arab world.blockquote>I am sorry that every time the terrorists hide, it just happens to be inside a "Holy Site."

I am sorry that Muslim extremists have not yet apologized for the U.S.S. Cole, the embassy bombings, and for flying a plane into the World Trade Center, which collapsed in part on Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which is one of our Holy Sites.See that's just not very friendly. I think hanging around waitin for an apology doesn't accomplish very much. It is better to try to see the other person's point of view and maybe find stuff you both agree on. That's why singing is so great; two people singing together can't help but feel friendly one to the other.

Of course I've noticed Yellow Bellied Polecats definately like forcing apologies out of people.

Anyway Bryant has some thoughts about Mike S. Adams too.

I don't want to be as hard as Durango (well half as Durango) but I certainly think that Mike S. Adams comes off as whiny a good bit of the time. Some of his complaints seem valid (although even in those, it pays to do a little resarch) but many of them are pretty pathetic. Obviously Adams is focused on campus liberalism, and most of his articles are about that. He seems to recognize that that is his strong suit (his articles on other issues don't come off nearly as well). Basically he's trying to answer the question why so many educated people end up as Liberals, and why areas with a higher percentage of highly educated people tend to be Liberal. He doesn't like the obvious answer (being broadened and stretched by College makes Liberalism make more senses), so he, and others of his ilk (cf. Ben Shapiro) argue that campuses are designed to quash conservatives and brainwash kids into being liberals. I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm not sold.

We haven't done all that many articles on Mr. Adams but there is one that really got under Bryant's skin, in which Mr. Adams recommended a raft of anti-Communism books including Ann Coulter's Treason.

And that's it for another week. Remember if you have a problem, sing a happy song and then plug someone in the back. Works every time.

Peace is a Threat

Here is a link to the story I referenced yesterday, about a Baltimore Peace Group that has been spied upon by the NSA. Certainly this doesn't look good.

The NSA, established in 1952 by President Truman, is the largest and most secret of U.S. intelligence agencies. Headquartered between Baltimore and Washington, DC, the agency has two principal functions: to protect U.S. government communications and intercept foreign transmissions. However, the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations" without explicit written permission from the Attorney General.

The revelation that a Baltimore peace group was spied upon comes in the wake of a news reports that the agency has also been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and raises new questions about the legality of NSA activities. The agency did not immediately return a request for comment.

We'll have to see how this plays out (or, alternatively, how this is ignored by the "liberal" media).

All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace

In this case the CIA. Salon has a book review of James Risen's new book "State of War" (the review is by Farhad Manjoo). The book covers the functioning of the CIA over the last several years, and is largely a story of how a weak Tenet let himself be bushed around by the Neo Conservatives (like Donald Rumsfeld).

The most troubling part of the review comes near the end, covering our surveillance of Iran. This is a long citation, I admit, but the situation warrants it.

For all the shoddiness of the CIA's work on Iraq, Risen raises the specter that its work on Iran is even flimsier, and might lead, eventually, to even scarier ends than we've met in Iraq. In a final chapter that is as darkly portentous as it is frustratingly vague, Risen writes of a recent intelligence snafu that compromised all American intelligence operations in Iran. The spy business doesn't get any more comic than this: The snafu was the result of a careless e-mail mistake. In June 2004, a CIA officer accidentally sent information that could be used to identify every American spy in Iran to an agent who, unbeknown to the CIA, was working for the Iranian government. The mistake "left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the United States -- whether Tehran was about to go nuclear."

But wait, it gets better. It turns out, Risen says, that the U.S. has pretty good reason to be worried about Iran's nuclear goals, as we may have been a key source for the development of its weapons program. In an operation code-named Merlin that was launched under the Clinton administration and continued by Bush, the CIA cooked up a high-risk plan "to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear program by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path." To do this, the CIA obtained extremely sensitive Russian blueprints for a component known as a TBA-480 high-voltage block, which Risen writes is needed in a nuclear bomb to "create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core." The design, Risen adds, "was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers ... from the rogue countries like Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short."

The CIA's plan was to slightly tweak the blueprints in order to introduce a technical flaw that would be imperceptible to Iranian scientists, and then to have a Russian scientist drop off the documents at an Iranian diplomatic office in Vienna, Austria. Even in theory, the plan sounds pie in the sky; in reality, the whole thing fell apart. The Russian scientist whom the CIA chose, a defector who lived in the United States, immediately spotted the engineering flaw that the Americans had introduced into the designs, and before he dropped off the plans in Vienna, he added a little note that tipped off the Iranians to the problem.

Were it not in a book by a Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter, the notion that the United States may have so recklessly transferred nuclear secrets to the Iranians sounds almost insane, like the rantings of a conspiracy theorist. As it is, actually, Risen's story is hard to believe -- not because I don't want to believe him or because he's not careful, but because it raises so many questions that he doesn't, and possibly can't, answer.

Anyway you should go read the rest of the article. It is distressingly clear that the Neo-Conservatives have compromised our ability to defend ourselves.

Spying on Baltimore Peace Activists

The Raw Story is working on a piece that suggests that the NSA spied on a Baltimore Peace Group. Have to see how this pans out; but if this turns out to be accurate, it would be a huge blow to the defenders of President Bush's right to spy on anyone he damn well pleases.

David Limbaugh and Judge Alito

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans;1 the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces;2 the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;3 and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
Sun Tzu, the Art of War

David Limbaugh has been reading his Sun Tzu. You need to draw your enemy away from his strong points and force him to battle it out on ground favorable to you (or at least neutral). David Limbaugh recognizes that discussions of Executive privilege during the Alito confirmation will not prove the most stable of terrain. So he'd rather the discussion centered around Abortion. While that terrain isn't ideal, it has the advantage of familiarity (we can all debate Roe V. Wade in our sleep at this point).

Of course he is going to get in a few digs at liberals for not simply accepting President Bush's power.

Setting aside the left's disturbing tendency to sympathize with everything Al Qaeda these days, don't be fooled by all this noise about runaway presidential powers. They only object to executive largesse when they don't control the presidency, which, with any luck, will remain the case for years to come.

OK first of all, nobody in reality sympathizes with Al Qaeda on the left. Those are imaginary liberals in your head who sympathize with them, not real ones. You need to try and stay with us here in reality as much as possible.

Secondly, you have a point that Executive privilege is more of an issue when the other guy is in power; but that doesn't imply that we'd be happy if our guy was going this far out. Authorizing wiretaps with no oversight? Signing laws with statements that negate them? These are things that should get every American concerned; regardless of how they feel the current President will use those powers.

That's why we have two parties; it is another check and balance on power. But if you are sure you are going the right way, I guess you don't need or want brakes.

Erik Larsen and Comic Books

Yeah I'm more comic books and pop culture this week.

Anyway just finished reading Erik Larsen's column from last week, in his very inaccurately titled column, "One Fan's Opinion." I grant that Larsen is a fan of his comic books; but he doesn't seem a big fan of many others.

For those of you who don't know Larsen, he had quite a good run on Spider-Man and he is the creator of the Savage Dragon. Many of his columns can be read as a guy grumbling that his creation doesn't yet have the same catchet of Spider-Man or Wolverine. This was most clear in in an article in September, in which he called his fellow comic book creators pathetic (for writing Spider-Man and Wolverine), and in October when he attacked Peter David (for responding to the previous column at his website (to be fair, he didn't name Peter David, he simply said, "Sure, a couple guys went off on it in their blogs, but nobody had the stones to actually confront me about it either in person, by phone or by e-mail.

There's a word for people like that. It's on the tip of my tongue. Perhaps a look back at that column might give you a clue what word I mean."

Anyway, Larsen's big thesis is that most of the comic books people actually buy are crap. That's not to say he hasn't made some good point. Certainly there are some comic books that really suck or that seem to have no purpose. But I don't get the idea, reading Larsen's columns, that his solution is for those comic books to improve. Rather his solution is for those comic's to be abandoned in favor of, well, Savage Dragon and other works by authors willing to create their own characters.

But, of course, I could be wrong.