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I am no longer posting to this blog. I have begun a new one on my own domain where I will be blogging about writing, politics, SF/F and looking for a job in a troubled economy.

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http://www.becausewehaveto.com/blog

My Objection to the Conservative Objection to My Imagined Obection to Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy

It’s amazing to me how many people seem to be arguing that this Bristol Palin pregnancy issue is somehow beyond-the-pale off limits in the presidential debate.

I disagree with that for two reasons, but before I get to them, let me say that in no way do I consider it at all immoral for this girl to be pregnant, unmarried and seventeen. Her body is her property and her choices are hers and hers alone. They are, I’ll say, her responsibility, and I do also want to make clear that I’m against teen pregnancy on other—non morality-based—grounds. I think that today, in this society, teenaged motherhood severely limits a woman’s educational and career opportunities. It’s not true that that’s something a teenaged mother can never overcome, of course, but certainly makes things more difficult. That said, though, let me reiterate that my objection has anything at all to do with morality.

My issue here is with the ‘off limits’ question. Of course it’s not off limits. And, as I said, I have two reasons for feeling that way.

First: Hypocrisy.

That may not actually be the right term, but let me explain what I mean. Social Conservatives: This is what you get. If you’re against teaching children about contraception, and if you’re against abortion, teenaged parenthood is the only result that you can rationally expect. Teenagers want to have sex. They will go to extraordinary lengths to make that happen. If they don’t have sex safely, they will get pregnant. If they can’t have abortions, they will have babies instead. That’s just fact. The fact that this little drama plays itself out in thousands, or more probably tens of thousands of homes across a year in this country hasn’t, it seems, been enough to convince the hard right that there’s no getting away from it means that when a high profile case pops up on the media horizon it is fair game.

It’s completely fair for us to point to Bristol Palin and say “That’s what you get” because her mother chose to put her in the spotlight when she decided to accept the nomination. It’s fair for us to point to any pregnant teen who was raised by extremely socially conservative parents for the same reason. There’s a valid public interest point to be made: Don’t tell us to teach abstinence and not contraception. It didn’t work for your kids. How can you expect it to work for everyone else’s? Don’t tell us on the one hand that we should protect our daughters from having to become mothers that early and on the other that we can’t allow them to terminate their pregnancies. You can’t have both.

This sort of thing always reminds me of Dick Cheney’s daughter. I don’t know her name or anything about her other than the fact that she’s gay, and I’ll say honestly that if there was a backlash against the media when that came out, I don’t remember it. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that we had the same conversation then. Can’t use Cheney’s daughter’s lesbianism. Don’t talk about it. Don’t critique it. Don’t critique him because of it. Etc...

Again, I say, I couldn’t care less who she wants to sleep with, but I do think it’s okay for us to talk about it because of what it says about him. I don’t know how he feels about his daughter, but I’m betting he loves her like any father loves his child. What I don’t get is how he can stand to be associated with a party that believes en masse that she’s going straight to hell. I don’t understand why he didn’t stand up and say “My daughter has the right to get married, just like you do.” I don’t understand why he didn’t shout down the lunatic right on gay-rights issues once a week from his extraordinarily powerful pulpit. Those questions, in my opinion, make her choices fair game in the public policy debate and the same thing is true for Sarah Palin’s daughter.

Second: Nonsense.

Even more disturbing than the fact that we’re being told over and over and over again that this girl and her problem are off the table in this debate, is the reason we’re being given. No fewer than five times today, I heard that the pregnancy is irrelevant because Sarah Palin can’t be held responsible for Bristol Palin’s actions.

Hello? Are we living on the same planet?

Holding a parent responsible for her child’s actions is pretty much our national pastime. It’s something we’ve done since the dawn of human civilization. And you know what? There’s a reason for that.

Before I go into it, though, let me first say that I don’t think that the mere fact that something is traditional in our culture makes it a good policy. For example, we also got a lot of mileage—in the Middle Ages anyway—out of holding a parent’s actions against a child. That I think is crazy and wrong and I’m appalled by people who argue that we should go back to it. Which some people do argue, precisely on this issue. More than once, I've heard the argument that the bastard stigma was good for this country because it protected young girls from getting into exactly the situation that Bristol Palin is in right now.

The argument goes like this: Mothers care about their children. They even care deeply about the hypothetical children they may someday have. We want mothers to be married before they have children. If we threaten to treat children born out of wedlock like crap, it will terrorize potential mothers into being more careful.

It’s a good argument, I think, at least in the sense that it’s logical. For a long time it worked pretty well for discouraging interracial coupling, too. But that doesn’t make it right to stigmatize a person for his entire life for a decision that was made before he took his first breath on this planet. That’s insane.

Criticizing a parent for a decision her child makes, however, is not. It may not be fair. It may survive careful scrutiny of the facts underlying the situation. But it isn’t, on its face, crazy. Parents are charged with the task of training their children to make good decisions. If a child makes a bad decision, the parent’s job of training becomes is a fair subject for inquiry. There’s just no way around that. If Bristol Palin had become an armed robber, or a mass murderer, or a Republica... scratch that... or a vicious racist, we would be well within our rights to ask “Didn’t your mother teach you better than that?”

Now, I’m not saying a parent can be held accountable for every bad decision a child makes. Far from it. That, too, would be insane. As I’ve said: Teenagers want to have sex. Short of locking them in a basement until they’re married, there’s no way to be a hundred percent effective at preventing them from doing it out of wedlock. If you think there is, see Palin Family. In the great Reason vs. Hormones fight, Hormones is gonna kick Reason's ass every time. A parent can do everything possible to train a child that it’s wrong to hurt people, steal, drink alcohol or sugar cokes and have sex and that child will still make mistakes. It’s unavoidable. So, no, I don’t think it’s terribly probable that Sarah Palin can be blamed for this unfortunate turn of events, if ‘blame’ and ‘unfortunate’ are even the right words to use.

I just think that it’s a fair line of inquiry.

If we discover, for example, that Sarah Palin did teach Bristol better than that, then the question becomes: Did she do a good enough job? And if the answer to that is yes, too, then allow me to point you to the first section of this entry: Hypocrisy. If, on the other hand, that we discover that she did her job conveying to Bristol just how against teen pregnancy and just how pro-abstinence a good, upstanding, right wing family should be, then why was she having pre-marital sex at seventeen? If Sarah Palin doesn’t think that teen pregnancy is bad or that abstinence is good, then why isn’t that message we’re hearing from the McCain camp? Either way, it’s relevant to Sarah Palin’s mothering skills, her character and ideology (or the failures thereof). And at least two of those are relevant to her qualifications to be the Vice President—all three if you consider ‘mothering’ to be ‘executive experience’.

Furthermore, assuming again that Sarah Palin is anywhere near the mainstream for her party, I’d like to offer a quick hypothetical. Does anybody have any doubts about what her answer would have been if you’d asked her six months ago whether or not Bristol would be a mother 'this time next year'? After laughing in your face, she’d have said, and I hypothetical-quote, “Of course not. We raised her better than that.” That’s what anybody would say until the horrible revelation is made. So, on the issue of whether or not a parent is responsible for her child’s actions: You can’t take credit for the things they do right and deflect blame for the mistakes they make at the same time. You either raised her, or you didn’t. You taught her your values, or you didn’t. You prepared her for the world, or you didn’t. Good or bad, a big portion of who your child turns out to be is on you.

And my final point, on that same issue: Bristol Palin is Sarah Palin’s minor child. She is responsible for her for actions. She’s legally responsible for her actions. If Bristol drives her car through your living room wall, it’s Sarah that you have to sue.

Federalism for Beginners

I got into a big argument tonight with my parents about Federalism of all things and I was so surprised by some of the things I heard, I thought it was best to do a little more thinking about the subject. All this started because I made a pretty silly and sophomoric joke about President Bush, but it morphed pretty quickly (though I’m not sure exactly how at this point) into a debate about how we make decision in this country and, specifically, how we choose a president.

Oh, wait, I remember. First we started talking about ‘one man one vote’ in general, as in, how that concept applies to, or fails to apply to state law versus federal law. I said something that I’ve said many times, but (apparently) not to my parents before, and it turned into the topic of conversation. What I said was this: I’ve never been much for state rights. I think the only reason to have states at this point is because they serve as very useful testing grounds for federal legislation.

At that point my father hypothesized that if we went by ‘one man one vote’ and made everything important federal (a system I’d love to see) we’d be pretty much ruled entirely by New York and California. I’m not sure that that’s exactly true, but I do think it’s an interesting admission and a rather telling one. More on that later. From there we went to the most antiquated and useless system we still have left in this country.

So. The Electoral College: discuss.

I was genuinely of the impression that this institution was pretty much out of defenders who didn’t live in Rhode Island, Alaska or in one of those states in the middle, like Kansas, but as it turns out, I was wrong.

Also, as it turns out, it’s not clear that everybody in the country really understands the electoral college, so let’s start with a short civics lesson. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the what-it-is of the thing:

The United States Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 presidential electors who meet every four years to cast the official votes for President and Vice President of the United States.[citation omitted] The Constitution gives each state legislature the plenary power to choose the electors who shall represent its state in the Electoral College. Through this constitutional authority, each state legislature also has the power to determine how exactly the electors are to be chosen (including the legislature choosing the electors). Presently, every state legislature chooses to allow its electors to be popularly chosen (by a state-wide ballot for slates of electors, who have informally pledged themselves to support a particular presidential candidate and a particular vice presidential candidate) on the day set forth by federal law for that purpose (i.e. Election Day). … The Constitution does not require the electors to vote as pledged, but 26 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require their electors to vote as pledged.[citation omitted]

The person chosen by majority of that vote is, of course, the next president. Most people know that part, or they know something like it, but what they may not know is that the electoral votes are not handed out proportionally according to state population. What’s something of a surprise for a lot of people is the fact that the electoral college system tends to favor, and in fact is designed to favor, smaller, less populous states.

How can that be, one might ask, looking at the layout. Here’s the layout, for those of you who want to look at it.

"How can that be?" one might ask, reasoning that one is pretty sure that states like California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) and Pennsylvania (21) are the most populous states in the Union. Also states like Alaska, Rhode Island, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota (all 3s) are the leas populous. It seems like the more people you have the more electoral votes you get. But that’s not exactly true.

The number of electoral votes a state gets is equal to the total number of representatives that state has in both houses of congress. In other words, you get one for every representative you have in the house, and then two more (one for each senator). That’s why no state only has one electoral vote. The lowest number is three. So why, one might ask, would I say that a system that clearly gives more votes to states with higher populations favor states with lower populations? It’s because of those extra two votes. They just mean more to the smaller states.

Let’s look at the populations themselves. All these numbers are from Wikipedia and I assume they’re more or less accurate. Absolute accuracy isn’t important here. The gist is enough to make the point.

The Little Ones

• Wyoming: 493,782
• Vermont: 608,827
• Alaska: 626,932
• North Dakota: 642,200
• South Dakota: 781,919
• Montana: 997,195
• Rhode Island: 1,048,319

The Big Ones

• Pennsylvania: 12,281,054
• Florida: 15,982,378
• New York: 18,976,457
• Texas: 20,851,820
• California: 36,457,549

Now let’s have some fun with those numbers. The most jarring thing to look at is a simple comparison between Wyoming and California. In Wyoming 493,782 people pick three electors. That’s one elector for every 164,594 people. In California, each elector represents 662,864 people. That means that a Wyoming…an’s vote is worth 4.02 times what a Californian’s is worth. We’re not talking about subtle differences here. Everybody in Wyoming gets 4 VOTES for every Californian’s one.

Let’s look at it a different way. Take all the little guys and add them together. You get state with 21 electoral votes and a population of 5,199,174. Can you think of any other states that have a total of 21 electoral votes? How about Pennsylvania. The population of Pennsylvania is 12,281,054. That means, taken together, everyone in those states has 2.36 (think two and a third) times as much power in picking the president as everyone in Pennsylvania.

One more way of looking at this. Those states together have about 5.2 million people. Wisconsin has a few more people, abut 5.55 million. They get 21 electoral votes spread between them. Wisconsin gets 10. Roughly the same number of people. Half as many votes, just because they’re all in one state in Wisconsin.

How’s that for arbitrary lines and affiliations making big differences?

It’s interesting, too, to see how these differences boil down into real effects on who we see pulling up on Moving Day at the White House. Conversely, improbably, counterintuitively, the smaller the number on the electoral map, the bigger the influence that state has in the general election. If you can get a bunch of those little states and stick them together, you can win (easily) even if you lose the popular vote (in a landslide). That doesn’t usually happen. But it does sometimes happen. See 2000: Al Gore carries the popular vote with 50,999,897 votes to President Bush’s 50,456,002 and we still call him President Bush. Admittedly, this wasn’t a landslide example, but more than half a million more people voted for Gore than Bush and we got Bush anyway.

It’s late and I’m tired, so I’m going to have to come back to this on Sunday, when I have more time. Rest assured I have a bigger point to make here than, “Waaaaaah! That jerk stole my country!”

Iron Man: Rockin' Good Time

Iron Man kicks some serious booty. Big surprise, right? Billed as the newest in a string of seriously awesome comic book flicks, this action packed, visually stunning ride delivers everything it promises and more, beating Spider-Man II out to tie with Batman Begins as the best super hero movie ever.

There's only one thing I'd have changed: The end. (Spoiler Alert)

I'd have had the ice thing work. After flying up into the ionosphere, or whatever, with Obadiah and thumping him on his headpiece, I'd have called it a day. If they needed to blow up a building to make it an action flick, they should have done it before hand. If they needed to give the chick something heroic to do, same deal. Do that first. The ice thing was the big finisher and it should have topped there.

Why, you ask? Simple. It just fit the character better.

Now, I'll admit, I don't know Tony Stark from Adam, or at least I didn't before I saw this. I never read any Iron Man books and I never saw any of the animated movies that came before this one (though I'm seriously considering going and picking up a few of both of those now), but from what I can tell, Tony Stark is Marvel's answer to Bruce Wayne. He's rich, brilliant, flawed, and above all, human. Definitely of the Batman school of super heroes, rather than the Superman school, right?

So why not let that be what gets the job done? Sure, have the slug fest and the explosions and the skin of your teeth suspense stuff at the end. I'm all for it. But what saves the day should be what makes Tony Stark who he is: His intellect. And they almost did it. They set up this whole thing with the ice early in the movie so that it would pay off at the end and Stark sets up this complicated scheme to get Stane to follow him up there specifically because he knows what's going to happen and Stane doesn't, right? The suit was his idea. He built the first one. He improved on it. He almost killed himself testing it and he fixed the little flaws that cropped up. Stane's weakness (even in the more advanced suit) was that he hadn't done that stuff. He had the brawn, but not the brains. Why not make that count for something?

Instead, we get to that crucial point and we see Stark exhausting all his power stores trying to pull of this elaborate trick and what does he get? Nothing. Was Stane's suit even damaged in the fall? How did he survive that? Did he figure out how to reboot his suit just like Stark did? And if so, doesn't that make him just as gifted as Stark? Shouldn't the hero have at least one advantage over the villain?

It just seems like they threw all of that away for the tired cliche of having the monster pop up one more time just when you thought he was dead. Come on, guys. We've all seen the Terminator, okay? We've even seen Johnny Mnemonic and other stuff (like the Buffy episode with Dracula) where they made fun of that because it's so overdone. We don't need to go down that road again. And even if we did, even if that's a crucial part of the modern monster movie, again I say, they should have just reversed the order of those two scenes. Do the building blowing up and have Stane come back from the dead after that instead. Then do the ice thing.

Just my two cents.

The game, she's over.

Obama pulls ahead of Clinton in superdelegates. Now there's no metric by which she's ahead except for her own wishful thinking.

Senator Barack Obama surged ahead of his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the count of superdelegates on Friday, the first time since the outset of the race that Mrs. Clinton has lost the lead in one of her few remaining trump cards.

Mr. Obama racked up seven endorsements in the last 24 hours from superdelegates, the Democratic Party insiders who are granted autonomy to support whomever they wish at the convention in August. One, a New Jersey congressman, switched his allegiance away from Mrs. Clinton, allowing the Illinois senator to pull ahead of his opponent, according to the latest New York Times count.

If she doesn't pull out of the race now, and by now I mean soon, then I think it's time to really start to question her motives.

God These People Are Unbelievable

The most recent dust-up on the campaign trail is this back and forth between Romney and Obama that I commented on last night. Now McCain’s weighing in and I’m starting to wonder if the cartoons about babies crying and shaking rattles shouldn’t feature him instead. Obama, yesterday on the Situation Room, said this:

This is offensive and I think it’s disappointing because John McCain always says I’m not going to run that politics and then to engage in that kind of smear I think is unfortunate particularly since my policy towards Hamas has been no different than his. I’ve said that they’re a terrorist organization. That we should not negotiate with them unless they recognize Israel and renounce violence. And unless they’re willing to abide by previous accords between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And so for him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination.

And, as you may remember, this is all in response to McCain’s saying that Obama was the candidate of choice for terrorist organization Hamas and that we should draw our own conclusions from that fact. Now McCain’s whining that using the phrase ‘losing his bearings’ was a cheap shot about his age.

Let’s get something out in the open here.

John: You’re old. You’re really frackin’ old, John.

If McCain got into this as the oldest presidential candidate in the history of America thinking that his age wasn’t going to be a legitimate issue, then he really is senile. But that’s not what Barack was saying, and McCain knows it. Obama was saying what a lot of us on the left (and I think more than a few in the middle) have been feeling for months now.

Remember when McCain was the Republican everybody liked? Remember when he was the maverick who didn’t just follow lockstep with the rest of them? Remember when he was the guy you could always count on to be the most reasonable of that bunch? Remember when he was the one who wasn’t going to be just like George Bush? What the hell happened to that guy? Since beginning this campaign McCain has moved way out to the right on everything from the war to economics to judicial appointments. I keep expecting him to respond to someone calling out “Hey, Senator McCain” by saying, “That name no longer has any meaning for me.” John McCain is dead and whoever this guy is betrayed and murdered him. That’s what Obama was talking about. He’s lost his bearings, his footing, his way, and himself.

But let’s get past that. Let’s pretend that McCain’s right and that this was a way of bringing his age up. What exactly is it that makes it a cheap shot? Is McCain trying to tell us that he’s not really frackin’ old? Are we not allowed to talk about it? Because, seriously folks, it’s not like this isn’t an issue. Age is the one immutable* characteristic that is actually relevant. McCain’s what, 71 now, right? He’ll be 72 before he takes office and that means that if he gets elected and reelected he’ll be 80 when he leaves office. He can’t tell us his mind’s going to be all there in eight years. He can’t tell us it’ll be all there in four years. He just can’t. He can’t know that. He’s really old. Old people start to deteriorate. They get Alzheimer’s. They get Parkinson’s. They get dementia. They get just generally more forgetful and less capable. It doesn’t happen to everybody. I’m sure he takes care of himself, and he’s probably starting off a little sharper than most people and he can afford to be blunted a bit by age, but folks, that doesn’t mean anything. My grandfather started out sharp as a tack and stayed that way till his early seventies and then went into a decline that made falling stars look lethargic. But that might not happen to McCain. I'm not saying it will or it won't because I don’t know. And neither does he. And neither does America.

The amazing thing here is, I’m also not saying don’t vote for the guy because he’s old.** I’m just saying that he shouldn’t be whining that it came up. And speaking of losing his bearings, remember when he wasn’t doing that? I don’t have any quotes for this but I distinctly remember a John McCain of just a few months ago who took on this issue straight on, talking about it, allaying fears, joking around. What happened that guy? The Darth McCain we’ve got now gives us this (through an aide):

We have all become familiar with Sen. Obama’s new brand of politics. First you demand civility and then you attack him. You distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy.

Uh… Hello? I hate to go all schoolyard on ya, but he started it!

McCain directly questions Obama’s integrity with a seriously cheap shot about Hamas and Obama makes a justified response saying he’s disappointed that the debate has gone down to that level when he expected more from McCain and it’s Obama’s fault? Did I miss something? Is this Bizarro world? Only in an alternate universe could anything Obama said in response to McCain’s comments be called an attack. When you’re responding to an attack, it’s called a defense, dude. Look it up. And let’s all flog Obama for wanting a civilized debate. Who does he think he is asking for that? And I’d like to see one example of where Obama has distorted anything about McCain’s record. And this is the part I like best. McCain sends out a surrogate to question Obama’s integrity and complain about Obama sending out surrogates to question McCain’s. There's some seriously funny symmetry in there someplace. Or there would be if these guys weren't deadly serious with this nonsense.

I just can’t believe these people.

* Okay, not actually immutable, but it only changes one way. It’s something he can’t do anything about.

** Don’t vote for him because he’s wrong on almost every issue.

Mitt Romney is a poo-poo head

Are we really gonna bring the debate down to this level this early? Can’t we act like grown-ups at least until the conventions?

Today Mitt Romney said that Barack hasn’t accomplished anything and that the presidency is not an internship. What’s next? Cartoons of Barack in diapers shaking a rattle?

Romney tells us that Barack hasn’t been a leader of enterprise and he hasn’t made a business work, or a city, or a state. I’m not a hundred percent sure on this, but I don’t think McCain’s ever been a mayor or a governor either. I also don’t know if he’s ever been CEO of his own business, but maybe he has. I guess the point is, doesn’t it seem like this criticism is just applicable to him as it is to Obama? McCain and Obama are both senators. McCain’s been a senator longer, sure, but he’s like a thousand years old--of course he has. Is Romney really trying to tell us that only former governors are equipped to handle the presidency? Because, I mean, I know the last few have been governors (or vice presidents, in Bush 41’s case) but it’s not like Obama would be the first senator to try for the office.

Let’s think about that. Who else was just a senator before getting elected president?

I’m actually surprised by how far back you have to go to find one. The last president who wasn’t a governor or a vice president before taking office was John F. Kennedy. Wow. I’d hate to follow in that guy’s footsteps. Who else had only served in one of the houses of Congress before running? Just a couple, actually. Notably among them, perhaps you’ll remember, Mitt, was Abraham Lincoln. He served two years in the House of Representatives. That's it.

Well. I’m sold. Let’s take Romney’s advice that would have cheated us out of Kennedy and Lincoln. Sounds like a solid plan.

He also defended John McCain’s ridiculous comments about Hamas saying that the US leader of that group has endorsed Obama and citing as the reason for that endorsement the fact that Obama has said that he’ll talk to Ahmadinejad in his first year. Wow. The sheer number of ways that that statement is stupid gives me goosebumps.

First and foremost, here we are again playing the old game of equating the candidate with some nutbag who’s endorsed him. I don’t know if it’s true about this US leader of Hamas (whoever the hell that even is) but let’s take it as true. Obama has no control over who endorses him. Or speaks out on his behalf. Or votes for him. If you want to start playing that game, let’s talk about the tens of thousands of Klansmen, skinheads, cultists, fanatics and bigots who consistently vote Republican. Let’s talk about the gun-toting nuts who say income tax is unconstitutional. Let’s talk about the guys who think the South’ll rise again and that the second amendment is necessary so that the people can defend themselves against the government. Let’s talk about all the hate-mongers and bigots and extremists and terrorists who’ve taken up the conservative banner since 1865. Let’s talk about Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. And, of course, let’s talk about George Bush. Cause if they support you, you must be just like them, right?

More interesting, though, than the fact that the Republicans are already pulling out these guilt-by-imaginary-association arguments, is the reason Romney said this Hamas guy is supporting Obama. He’s agreed to talk to Ahmadinejad. Great attack point, guys. Barack, alone in the field, is saying that it’s time to at least make an attempt at bringing our enemies back to the table so that we can at least attempt to solve some of our differences with diplomacy instead of obliteration and he’s the bad guy? I thought McCain was trying to spin us an I’m-different-from-George-Bush yarn. Has he already given up on that? Is he already embracing the speak-aggressively-and-smack-them-with-a-big-stick school of foreign policy? Tell us again why it’s not just four more years, John? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a little tired of shooting first and asking questions later or never and so, I think, is most of the rest of the world.

Honestly, I’m not as schooled on Iran as I’d like to be, so I’m going to boil this down to pretty simple terms to make sure I understand it. Iran wants to do stuff we don’t like. We’d like to stop them from doing that stuff. We can try to talk them out of it, offer them something, or blow them up. Is that pretty much it? What does that remind me of… Oh, yeah. Foreign Policy. We’re supposed to believe that Obama is weak, or soft on terrorists, or an Iran-sympathizer because he wants to engage in diplomacy with a potentially antagonistic country? We’re supposed to believe that the better plan is to rattle our saber, huff and puff and then annihilate a city in a shock-and-awe pre-emptive strike without first at least talking to them? Thanks, Mitt, but I think I like Obama’s take on this a little better. And if that’s really what this endorsement is about, you’re going to have a tough time convincing me it’s a bad thing.

Oh, and by the way, that doesn’t mean I’m a Hamas sympathizer. Or a terrorist sympathizer. It just means that I am, like the rest of the world is, a little tired of the constant violence in that part of the world and I’m willing to consider any option that might make a difference over there. We’ve tried shooting them, and you know what? That just seems to piss ‘em off. Maybe it’s time we tried talking.

The Only Fair Thing...

Okay. So the thing that actually got me posting again:

I was watching Lou Dobbs a little while ago and his stand-in was talking to a Hillary supporter and the obvious question got asked:

What the hell is she doing still in this race? (I'm paraphrasing here)

The surrogate gave the obvious, but obviously disingenuous response:

Hillary's path to victory is a three-prong attack. 1) There are still millions of people who haven't voted. Let's give those guys a chance to voice themselves, or give those guys a voice to chance themselves, or whatever. 2) Hillary's winning the constituency that the democrats will need in November. 3) Michigan and Florida, nanny nanny boo boo. (still paraphrasing)

Loyal readers... er... reader... er, hey dude who just happened by: This is ridiculous. Especially the last one, but I'll take these in order.

1) The Hillary camp has since the beginning (or at least since she started losing) been saying: Let's see what the guys who haven't voted have to say. This is just Clintonspeak for "Let's see if the Enquirer can find (or fabricate--we don't care) some evidence that Obama is actually from another planet and that he's here to conquer the earth, starting with America, and then to enslave and eat us all."

Folks: It ain't gonna happen. Remember when she was the candidate of inevitability? Funny how you didn't hear much from the Hillary camp about waiting till all the results are in back then. If she'd had her way, she'd have been given the nomination last August. But let's get real. Obama's our guy. Reverend Wright and all, we love the guy (or at least about 52 percent of us do) and he's gonna be the nominee. Short of his getting struck (God-forbid) by a bolt of lightning, that's the reality of the situation. And if he does get struck by a bolt of lightning, much like Don Corleone, I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. Er.. In this blog. I'm gonna blame some of the... Ah, screw it, you know what I mean.

I'm not saying "who cares about what the people in West Virginia think" although I don't much care what they think (since they're almost all Republicans for the love of God). I'm saying: this is the way primaries go, Hill. At the beginning, when no one's voted, you have to wait and see. In the middle when there's a front runner, you may have to wait a little longer. When the math gets impossible for the guy who's behind, the damned race is over. This race is over. If you don't believe me, ask George McGovern. Ask Dianne Feinstein. When even your oldest friends start jumping ship, it's over. And when it's over, it's time to throw in the towel, be the bigger guy and start bringing the party back together. I went to bed last night thinking that's what we were going to see this morning. Didn't everybody else? Didn't Hillary's speech in Indiana sound like a concession? Didn't everybody else think we were going to see her start setting the stage for the taking of that final bow?

Instead we get more of the same. A virtual promise that she's going to stay on the attack. That she's going to keep going after Obama with everything she's got. That she's going to get, if anything, nastier as she gets closer to the inevitable and she gets more and more desperate as a result. A promise, in short, that she's going to do what she can to destroy the party's nominee for the sake of a 0.0 percent chance of taking the nomination away from him.

And we wonder why we lose elections.

Republicans don't do stupid crap like that. You don't see Huckabee standing around waiting until McCain gets that magic num... Okay, bad example.

Buh-dum-pum-ching! I'm here all week!

But seriously folks, when Huckabee did it, McCain was so far ahead it didn't matter. And Huckabee (God love him) did with a little bit of class. He didn't go balls-out attack on McCain hoping to damage him so much he couldn't recover from it in the general election. You know who did that? George Bush. The only difference between what Hillary's doing to Obama right now and what Bush did to McCain in 2000 is that Bush still had a chance to win the nomination. Frankly, I don't want another George Bush in the White House. I don't want him if his name's John McCain and I don't want him if his name's Hillary Clinton.

We desperately need to beat McCain because we can't afford another four years of Bush's policies.

We desperately need to beat Clinton because we can't afford another four years of his politics. It's time to get past the politics of division and backstabbing. It's time to say no to a candidate who will do anything to get us to say yes to her.

So: Millions of votes left to be counted? What about Kentucky and West Virginia? What about them?! What about the millions of people who have voted? What about the 700+ thousand more who voted for Obama? The argument that we need to wait to the end and count every vote rings a little hollow from someone who's only hope of victory is that the superdelegates will overturn the will of the people and steal the nomination for her.

2) Yes, yes... Hillary's doing better than Barack at getting the rural, white blue collar vote. Hillary tells us Barack just can't get that constituency. You know who else has trouble getting that constituency? EVERY DEMOCRAT FOR THE LAST THREE DECADES, that's who. Every one, except Hillary Clinton, at least. And do you know why? Because she is, at least lately, running as a Republican. Raise your hand if you're under any illusions that she'll get those guys when her rival is McCain, rather than Obama. Raise your hand if you think she'll win the rural, white working class states like West Virginia and Kentucky in November. Raise your hand if you've been living under a rock since 1976.

But let's talk about constituencies that people can't get. Obama has some trouble getting people who are, for all intents and purposes, Republicans in sheep's clothing. Who does Hillary have trouble getting? Black voters (25% of the Democratic party and an absolute must-have for any serious Democratic candidate) are now turning out for her in whopping single digits. Who else isn't she getting? College-educated white voters. Liberal voters. Raise your hand if you think a Democrat can win without them.

But, to be fair, raise your hand if you think those groups are going to go McCain in 2008. Of course they're not. They're democrats. And the same goes for most of the people voting for Hillary. Let's give those guys a little credit, shall we? Sure, some of them might vote McCain. Some of them might not vote at all. But this year, with the economy we've got, and the war (sorry, wars) we've got, and the unbelievable 28% percent approval rating of the sitting president... Come on. Most of those people are going to vote and they're going to vote for Obama.

And if they don't, who cares? Yeah, I said it. Who. Cares. Do we really think that a candidate who's gotten more votes in a Democratic primary than any Democratic candidate in the history of the Democratic party isn't going to pick up a few people here and there who aren't in the Democratic base? Let's get serious. My mother (a conservative's conservative) has told me that he's got the most character of all three candidates (her own included). She may not vote for him, but she's never gonna vote for a democrat. If even people who are diametrically opposed to him on virtually every issue have that much respect for him, do we really think he can't win a few likely Republicans who are looking for a little change this year?

Hillary wants us to ask ourselves if he can win, when the real question is: Is it even possible that he'll lose? Again I say: Bolt of lightning. That's the only thing keeping him out of the White House this year.

And, case in point, let me direct your attention to the last debate.
Moderator: Can he win? (still paraphrasing)
Sen. Clinton: Yes. Yes. Yes. (this one's an actual quote)

Hill: We're not buying it anymore.

3) This is my favorite one. Remember back in January when everybody said Michigan and Florida couldn't count? Remember when Hillary was one of those people?

When asked how Hillary gets to the Convention, this surrogate of hers said we have to count Michigan and Florida. That of course prompted the only sane response in anybody's head: Florida's bad enough, since nobody campaigned there, but surely you can't mean we should count Michigan where she was the only person on the ballot? People, staunch democrats, voted in the Republican primaries in those states because their votes wouldn't count in the Democrat primaries and, oh yeah, SHE WAS THE ONLY PERSON ON THE BALLOT IN MICHIGAN. That's not an election.

The response: (still paraphrasing, but this is pretty close to what was said) They are elections. Votes were cast. Those votes were certified by the secretary of state (or whatever) in Michigan. We have to count those votes as is. It's the only fair thing to do.

Okay. Dramatic pause to let that soak in.

Whistling...

Twiddling thumbs...

ARE YOU FRACKIN’ KIDDING ME?!

That's the least fair thing to do. She ran against NOBODY and only won by ten points and you want to give her that whole state? You want to tell us that that's fair? She barely made double digits against the proverbial yellow dog and you want us to call that a win for her? You seriously think you have any chance of convincing us that it’s fair to seat those delegates when Obama wasn’t even on the Ballot? When he wasn’t on the ballot because he followed the rules? You’ve got to be kidding.

But you’re not, are you? You’re totally serious. And that’s what’s scary. I can’t tell if she thinks we’re just morons, who won’t notice the guy behind the curtain, or if she honestly thinks we’re as corrupt as this idea is. She tells us its about not disenfranchising people she was pleased as punch to disenfranchise right up until she realized she needed them to win. She tells us it’s about doing the right thing. It’s funny how doing the right thing only seems to matter to her when it’s advantage Hillary. Here’s a little comparison of two Hillary camp positions to illustrate that point:

Superdelegates v. Michigan

We’ve talked about Michigan already, so I’ll just touch it real quick. Hillary wants to count the votes despite the fact that the rules say she can’t. We’ve got to count those votes, and screw the rules, Hillary says.

Hillary 1; Rules 0.

What about the superdelegates discussion. Where does she stand on the rules there? She tells us that the superdelegates have the power to go whichever way they want to go and that the rules give them that power and that Barack wants to change the rules mid stream. So…

Rules 1; Hillary 2…? Hrmm… How do we tally this?

She’s a master at defining the debate. I’ll give her that. But it’s just sleight of hand. On the one hand she says, we can’t follow the rules because it hurts people. And on the other hand she says, and speaking of not following the rules, that great “I’m gonna follow the rules” guy Obama says he wants to change the rules about superdelegates and make it so they can only vote for who the pledged delegates voted for.

It’s compelling. A little sophomoric, but there’s a certain ring to that argument.

Except that it’s total BS.

The only thing that matters to Hillary is Hillary. Let’s look a little closer at the positions each of them have taken on these issues.

Hillary says that Barack should agree to break the rules about Michigan and Florida. Barack has said, over and over again, that he’s willing to do just that, as long as it can be done fairly. Hillary won’t even agree to that. The fair thing, she contends, is for results that can’t mean anything to count exactly as they are. Barack says: I didn’t campaign there. A lot of Democrats didn’t vote there. I wasn’t even on the ballot there. It’s not fair to count them as they are. Notice what he hasn’t said: He’s never said we can’t seat them. He’s never said they shouldn’t count at all. He’s only said that some sort of compromise will have to be made so that these extremely unfair contests aren’t counted as they are. Which is exactly what Hillary was saying in January. So is counting them a point for the rules? Is it a point for fairness? No. It’s just a point for Hillary.

So, on to the superdelegates. She tells us that Barack has said that we should change the rules to make it so that they can only vote for the people the pledged delegates have voted for. She’s taking the high road. Rules are rules, right? Yeah they are, when they help her. First off, Barack’s never said anything like that. He’s said that he thinks the Superdelegates will come over to him (and they are) and he’s said that he thinks he’s the front-runner based on contests won, popular vote and pledged delegates (and he is) but he’s never said anything about changing the rules defining how Superdelegates vote. The people who support him, who are saying how they think Superdelegates should vote, are just stating the obvious: He’s the winner. The people have spoken. They picked him. It’d sure look funny if the superdelegates took it away from him. And it would. What’s wrong with that? How did this become an attacking point for her?

Answer: It just did. She saw an opportunity to score points by painting him as something he's not in an effort to bolster her unreasonable argument about Michigan and Florida and she took it.

This is what Hillary has become. She went from being one of the greatest progressive voices of our time, to the joke who would do or say anything—ANYTHING—to win. I mean, don't even get me started on the gas tax thing. When 200 economists who don't have a horse in this race say you're idea's crap, maybe it's time to drop it and stop pandering. When you hit it over and over again for two weeks before the primary and you lose like you did in North Carolina and you almost lose in Indiana, maybe it's time to stop pandering. Is Hillary gonna stop? Hell no. The gas tax came up in her concessio... I mean victory speech last night. And it came up again today. Nobody thinks she thinks it'll work. Nobody thinks she thinks it'll actually bring gas prices down. Nobody think she thinks it has any chance of passing. But hell, if it gets her a couple votes, maybe no one will notice it's all smoke and mirrors, right?

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of her treating me like I don't have a brain. I'm tired of her telling me black is white and the sky's green. I can see the sky just fine on my own and I know the difference between the truth and just a bunch of crap you say to get elected. And Hillary, I expected more from you.

In the space of less than a year she’s made the journey from being, not only someone I thought I could trust to run the country, but someone I thought I could trust, to being this: a political hack with absolutely no moral compass of any kind. She’s lost her way, and what’s more, she’s lost my respect. And that, I can assure you, was a difficult thing for her to do.

All this crap just breaks my heart. It breaks it. Anybody who's interested can look down at my postings from last year and see that I started out as a Clinton-lover. I used to love Bill (like a brother!) and Hillary too. Even back in January of 07 before either candidate had declared (but not before we knew they would) I had to sit down and really think before I could really come up with a solid reason why I liked Obama better. Well, as Eric Carmen said: Those days are gone.

She’s not the right choice. Not for the Democratic party. Not for America.

I’m done with her.

Nobody Panic! I'm here.

I started this blog more than a year ago when I was bored at work and feeling inspired by the prospects of a change in the political climate after the midterms. I quit working on it when my job got more interesting and I had less time just sitting around in my office for web surfing and blogging. Now that things are really heating up again this election year, I find more and more that I have a lot I want to talk about and no one (who isn't diametrically opposed to my own views) to talk to. So I'm back to shout my insane ramblings into the void again and pretend someone's hearing them.

Can't Resist

Two more quotes from a couple of morons.

Among residents, Denise Savoy, a nonsmoker whose father smoked five packs a day and died of emphysema at age 78, opposes the ban, unconvinced of the health risks.

“Doctors are trying to say all these kids have asthma, ear infections,” Ms. Savoy said. “You know what — I had one ear infection in my life. My kids spent a lot of time around my dad, and my oldest two children had lots of ear infections and tubes in their ears, but my youngest two had none of it. My father was fine until about the last year and half of his life.”

She also worries that smokers might have withdrawal symptoms while driving and cause accidents.

...

“I’ll just do my business elsewhere,” said Steward Atwood of Machias, who quit smoking 10 years ago and regularly shops in Bangor. “It’s a right being taken away from people.”

Again I'm fascinated to see that people think they have a right to do this, but the other one is even better. I just love these guys who say "It didn't affect mmmm... that guy, so it must be crap that it's bad for you." Or "My father smoked 5 packs a day and died at 78 FROM SMOKING and I'm not convinced of the risks." Imagine how long this guy (who was apparently extremely healthy except for the emphysema that killed him) would have lived if he hadn't smoked.

New Frontier of Smoking Bans

Bangor, Maine (along with a few other cities that have followed its lead) has banned smoking in cars while children are present.

[The ordinance] has delighted some and angered others and prompted complaints about invasion of privacy and even threats to boycott the city, Maine’s second-largest. The ordinance, which takes effect on Jan. 19, allows the police to stop cars if an adult is smoking while a child under 18 is a passenger. The smoker can be fined $50.

“I’ve heard people say it’s the smoke police or the Gestapo,” said Mayor Richard D. Greene, a pack-a-day smoker[.]

Love the reactions here. "Gestapo." "Smoking police." "Invasion of privacy." The country is moving toward a total ban, and sure, it's going to take a while to get there, but it's going to be fun to watch these guys complain when we ban smoking in their houses.

This one is my favorite:

Gary Nolan, a spokesman for the pro-smoker’s group, The Smoker’s Club, said such bans and court decisions were based on “junk science.”

“At some point these busybodies have to stop,” Mr. Nolan said. “If we can give our rights up to personal property, the nose of the camel is in the tent and there’s no telling how far we can go. I’m telling you the high-fat craze is next.”

Newsflash, folks: You do not have a right to smoke.

You want a right to smoke, write your congressman. See if you can get a constitutional amendment passed. Hell, see if you can get one suggested. I dare you.

A few of the other skirmashes in the war effort:

At least seven states, including several with large numbers of smokers like Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, prohibit or sharply restrict smoking around foster children in homes, cars or both. Some require homes or cars to be smoke-free for 12 hours before a foster child enters.

Judges determining parental custody and visitation have, in more than a dozen states, ordered a parent not to smoke around a child. An Ohio court last year gave custody of a 6-year-old boy to his father solely because the boy’s mother and her fiancé smoked.

Tenants in apartments have won several recent efforts to get smoke-free buildings or areas, or curtail secondhand smoke from neighboring apartments. In August, after requests from residents in Michigan, First Centrum Communities, which has housing complexes for the elderly in six states, made all its buildings smoke-free. A recent ruling in a New York case said landlords who allow tenants to be exposed to secondhand smoke could be violating obligations to make apartments habitable.

One more quote, from an article I'm clearly enjoying:

Another council member, Susan Hawes, a nonsmoker who is a medical assistant, opposed it. “We have so many people telling us what we can and cannot do in our own lives,” Ms. Hawes said. “Are we going to come back and say, ‘If you don’t get your child out there once a week to exercise ...’ ”

I think it's fascinating that all of the nay-sayers are focusing on possible government meddling with obesity as the next step in their fantasized parade of horribles. The government is attacking one of the ways we're dooming our children to lead shorter, unhealthy lives, they may go after the next major lifestyle killer next. Is that the argument? Are we really saying: "My God! What will we do if our government keeps trying to protect us? And our children?! Next they'll tell us we can't beat them! Or murder them in their sleep! Where have our freedoms gone?!"

It sure would be horrible if the government took a hand in trying to curb our propensity to let smoking parents teach their children to grow up and become smokers, who will teach their children... etc. And it'd be awful if we took an active interest in stemming the horrifying tide of obesity in this country. We've got to nip this thing in the bud!

Oh, and just for the record, there are laws that mandate that kids get a certain amount of exercise a week. They're called truancy laws. You must send your kids to school. Every school has a PE requirement. The government's already involved in this. And smoking is prohibited at school as well.

Priorities

Fabulous article at the Times about what we could have done with the money we've spent on our failed efforts in Iraq. It really highlights the differences in the priorties of Republicans and Democrats:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

...

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

With Republicans making the decisions, we don't get any benefit for our dollars. We just get an unpopular war, 3000 dead Americans, 35000 dead Iraqis, and a deficit problem that rivals and beats the worst trouble Reagan got us into in the cold war. Speaking of which: I'll take tax-and-spend any day over over spend-but-don't-tax-and-let's-see-where-that-gets-us.

Leading the Pack on Ethics Reform

Senator Obama (along with Sen. Russel Feingold who deserves equal praise, but who does not appear to be in the '08 field), unsatisfied with the steps the Senate was prepared to make in its ethics overhaul bill helped to strengthen that bill by adding amendments that gave it some teeth.

The party leaders began by teaming up to introduce a much weaker bipartisan bill, and lawmakers in both parties acknowledged behind-the-scenes resistance to strengthening it. But many found amendments to strengthen the bill — a number of them offered by Senators Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Barack Obama of Illinois, both Democrats — politically difficult to oppose.

He's one of the leaders in the fight to clean up Congress.

Bad Plan, Generals Say

It's not just anti-war liberals who don't like Bush's plans to escalate the conflict. "Too little too late," say his own generals, calling the plan "a fool's errand."

The American effort in Iraq has gone badly because the United States did not understand the consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein, said Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. He said the principal beneficiary of the war was Iran and Al Qaeda, not the United States.

“There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests,” he said.

Cure for Cancer: Prevention/Detection

The cancer rate is dropping. Er... That's misleading. The rate has been dropping for some time. By which, I mean, the percentage of the population that dies due to cancer is going down, but because of the general population increase, the actual numbers have continued to rise. Well, not anymore. 2006 was the second year in a row that the actual numbers have gone down. Fewer people died of cancer in 2006 than did in 2005 and fewer in 2005 than 2004. That's saying something.

"Why?" you ask?

Experts are attributing the success to declines in smoking and to earlier detection and more effective treatment of tumors. Those have caused a fall in the death rates for breast, prostate and colorectal cancer — three of the most common cancers. [emphasis mine]

Take that Phil and R.J.

Now if we can just get a law passed putting those guys out of business.

Scooter Libby on Trial

Jury selection in the I. Lewis Libby trial began today. He's the guy who's being accused of lying to investigators who were looking into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Now he's trying to pick a jury in a town where the democrats outnumber the republicans 9:1 (and most of the Republican tenth works in the White House or on the Hill and is probably disqualified because they know the defendant personally).

Among the voir dire highlights... A venire member was had this to say of the Administration's prewar intelligence:

''I think they were, I guess, as honest as they could be,''

Can't blame the White House for the fact that they had to lie to us. That's on us. They were trying so hard but, you know, there are just some things we can't handle and shouldn't know. Like the fact that the whole reason for the war was a sham. Can you imagine what the American public would have done with that kind of information? They might have decided not to support it, for God's sake!

Whew!

Dodged a bullet there.

Run Obama Run

Barack Obama is running for president!

That is, today he announced that he plans to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in February. He has opened an exploratory committe, which gives him the ability to begin to raise money, captialize on the stunning wave of public support he's been receiving of late and test the waters before making it official in February.

His stated goal in the campaign: To change politics.

Give'm hell, Mr. Senator.

New Orleans v. Crime

In the wake of Katrina and delays in rebuilding the city, the citizens of New Orleans march against crime and make their voices heard about a laundry list of complaints regarding the ongoing failurs of elected officials (local and otherwise) in the past year and a half. There's an interesting article about it here, and here you can find the first hand account of one of the participants.

Alligator Tears? Tears of Regret?

The President gets misty at the Medal of Honor ceremony.

Early in the day, in an emotional ceremony at the White House, Mr. Bush awarded he Medal of Honor to the family of Cpl. Jason Dunham, a marine from Scio, N.Y., who was killed in Iraq in 2004 when he threw himself on a grenade to save the rest of his unit. The president began crying during the ceremony. It was the second Medal of Honor proceeding to come out of the Iraq war.

I don't know why this seems slightly disingenuous to me. I'm usually not the type to speculate about whether even someone like the President is morally bankrupt enough to fake an emotional show at something as important as a posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony, but seriously, it's not like this death couldn't have been avoided. I think it's more likely that Bush's mind was on all of the young men that have died as a result of his obviously failed policies.

The Escalation Debate in a Different Light

The Times paints a rather different picture of the discussion leading up to the decision to escalate the war in Iraq, and though it's different and slightly more encouaraging than the account given at the Salon, it's still not what I would call a rational decision.

The administration, the article says, had several choices that eventually boiled down to A) Pull out (which is what everyone wanted and it was what we expected) and B) Pushing harder with more troops (which wasn't very likely and we didn't expect it). The President, overriding the concerns of the Joint Chiefs and his own generals, the American people, the Congress and the Iraqi government, picked B. "Why would he do such a thing?" you may ask...

Over the past two months those diametrically opposed options — adding American troops, or pulling back to let the Iraqi factions fight it out — marked the boundaries of a vigorous debate inside the Bush administration. At one point, as Mr. Bush, Mr. Hadley, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the newly appointed secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, weighed their options, the president asked his deputies, in effect: “Why can’t we just pull out of Baghdad and let the factions fight it out themselves?”

...

One senior official involved in the discussions said that Mr. Bush’s instinct toward the start of the review process — and that of others — was to consider a withdrawal from Baghdad, allow Iraqi-vs.-Iraqi fighting to settle itself, and dedicate United States forces to focus on pursuing Qaeda fighters. “As you peel that back and look at it, it just doesn’t war-game out for you,” said the official. “You’re supposed to go flying through Baghdad looking for Al Qaeda, and when you see ethnic cleansing going on look the other way?”

In the end, the official said, Mr. Hadley’s teams concluded that an American withdrawal from Baghdad would “crater the government.”

It doesn't war-game out for you. Why aren't we doing what the American people demand? It doesn't war-game out for you. Ah. That's clearer, then.

Why are we inflicting more troops on an Iraqi government that doesn't want them? Pulling out would crater the government... that wants us gone.

Why aren't we following the recommendations of our generals on the ground in Iraq? Because the National Security Adviser thinks he knows better.

Okay. Well, at least we know the reasons now.

Genesis of the Escalation

Sidney Blumenthal at Salon.com offers a chilling narrative about how the "surge" escalation came to pass.

Some highlights.

The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report. "Although the president was publicly polite," the Washington Post reported, "few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new 'way forward' in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme. As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton."

Donald Rumsfeld had been sacrificed as the secretary of defense, but his replacement, Robert Gates, a former director of the CIA and member of the ISG, turned from skeptic into team player. The Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command; and Gen. George Casey, commander in Iraq, all opposed the "surge" as no answer. Cheney and the neocons saw their opposition as the opening for purging and blaming them. The Joint Chiefs were ignored and sidelined,
Abizaid was forced into retirement and Casey was removed (sent into internal exile as Army chief of staff). Their dissent, leaked to the Washington Post for appearance in the paper on the day of Bush's "surge" speech, was an extraordinary gesture by the senior military leaders to distance themselves from impending failure.

Also intriguing is the discussion about the differences between the Clinton Administration's approach to Bosnia and the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq, outlined in last night's speech.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, full sovereignty was not granted through an election -- to this day -- which would have turned over the country to one of the three contending religio-ethnic groups and fomented opposition insurgencies. Instead, the U.S. led in organizing a broad range of international partners and institutions in creating a structure of stability that is a basis for gradual democratic development. By contrast, the election Bush promoted in Iraq was political grandstanding in the name of "democracy" that incited the exclusion of Sunnis and aggravated civil warfare. Almost everything in place in Bosnia and Kosovo is absent in Iraq. The former is an example of U.S. leadership, the latter a case study in amateurish blundering. Moreover, Bush has turned "democracy" into a synonym for failure.

More on the Speech

The Caucus has a pretty good sum-up of the different reactions to the speech from the left and the right.

The part I think is the most interesting is a quote from a conservative site, Powerline Blog:

“The administration,” the site continued, “has bought itself a window of time, at least until the 2008 campaign heats up, to try to achieve discernible signs of progress. While the new strategies sound to me like good ideas — one wonders why some of them weren’t implemented some time ago — the more important factor, I think, is sheer persistence. The President will persist; let’s all hope and pray that he succeeds.”

What exactly does that mean, that the administration has bought itself a window of time? There's two years between the mid-terms and the next presidential election, so we don't have to care that we lost? I mean, that's it, isn't it? Public opinion is overwhelmingly against us, but let's see Congress stop us. We don't have to about-face now. We can make things worse as long as there's a chance that we could turn this around before we'll be held politically accountable. As long as we hold the White House, losses in Congress don't matter, public opinion doesn't matter... Nothing matters but the fact that we still hold a position of power and we're willing to use it to our own ends.

MyDD was right. This is tyranny. That post, by the way, is worth a read.

Bush's Speech

The President steps up our presence in Iraq, despite everybody's better judgment. Bob Shrum at Hardblogger has some comments on the speech, some of which are amusing and most of which can't be taken seriously. Nevertheless, he does a good job of pointing out just what is so frightening about this new plan. Witn no light in sight, we plunge further into the tunnel. At least this time Bush is telling us up front that we're going to lose more American lives. Probably thousands more. If we're lucky we'll realize it before we get to the 57k number.

AP says 70% Oppose Escalation

New poll numbers.

Seventy percent against sending more troops to Iraq (and that's just Americans, see below for how the Iraqi leadership feels about it). Thirty-five percent confident the war was a good idea to begin with.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., warned Thursday that any solution to the Iraq problem must have public support. Harking back to Vietnam, he said: "No foreign policy can be sustained in this country without the informed consent of the American people. They've got to sign on."

Smoke-Filled Rooms in the Past

If you wanna give yourself lung cancer, take it outside. The House of Representatives bans smoking inside. Now if we can just get them to ban it outside too.

This Just In: Paying Your Employees Is Good!

Who'd'a thought that paying your employees would be good for business?

Nearly a decade ago, when voters in Washington approved a measure that would give the state’s lowest-paid workers a raise nearly every year, many business leaders predicted that small towns on this side of the state line would suffer.

But instead of shriveling up, small-business owners in Washington say they have prospered far beyond their expectations. In fact, as a significant increase in the national minimum wage heads toward law, businesses here at the dividing line between two economies — a real-life laboratory for the debate — have found that raising prices to compensate for higher wages does not necessarily lead to losses in jobs and profits.

Idaho teenagers cross the state line to work in fast-food restaurants in Washington, where the minimum wage is 54 percent higher. That has forced businesses in Idaho to raise their wages to compete.

With Washington stealing their workforce, Idaho business are entering a new kind of competition. Instead of competing for customers by lowering prices, goods quality and services, they're competing for employees by raising wages.

Hmmm... I wonder if all the Idaho kids that are working in Washington also spend some of their money there?

And this is great:

Mr. Fazzari employs 42 people at his pizza parlor. New workers make the Washington minimum, $7.93 an hour, but veteran employees make more. To compensate for the required annual increase in the minimum wage, Mr. Fazzari said he raises prices slightly. But he said most customers barely notice.

He sells more pizza, he said, because he has a better product, and because his customers are loyal.

Emphasis mine.

I bet his employees are more loyal than the average as well.

What ever happened to the days when people were loyal to their employers because they were afraid that if they weren't they wouldn't be able to find as good a job as they had somewhere else? What ever happened to the days when you could work in the same place all your life and count on your boss to take your needs, your family, your kids into consideration when making decisions about whether or not to cut expenses in the form of cutting jobs?

And by the way...

“Are you kidding? There are so many jobs nearby that pay way more than minimum wage,” said Jennifer Stadtfeldt, who is 17 and lives in Coeur d’Alene, which is just a few minutes from Washington. She pointed out that Taco Bell, McDonald’s and other fast-food outlets in her town were posting signs trying to entice entry-level workers with a starting pay of $7 an hour.

...if McDonald's is doing it, you know it's profitable.

This, though, is my favorite part.

But other business groups argue that an increase would hurt consumers and workers at the low end.

If you raise the minimum wage, you'll hurt poor poeple because prices will have to go up to compensate.

Hmmm... Raise the minimum wage so that people at the lowest end of the spectrum are making more money and... people at the lowest end of the spectrum will be harmed. Does that seem... odd? If it resulted in lost jobs, that would play, but the rest of the article says that's unlikely. If the argument is just that they'll have to pay more for goods, well, won't they have more money to pay with? At worst it'd be a wash. Raise the prices for goods to offset the costs of higher wages and you could say that people are just paying back what they're getting over the long haul, except for the fact that this isn't a closed economy that only caters to people who make minimum wage. Other people with higher wages can be counted on to take up some of the slack of the higher prices, which, again, means that the lowest end is benefited by the increase. Not harmed.

White House Alone on Surge, Literally

I find this to be simply amazing.

Congress doesn't want an escalation.

The American people don't want an escalation.

Iraq, for the love of God, doesn't want an escalation.

The only people who are in favor of this are the ones who actually work in the White House, and, for the President, that appears to be enough. Just another example of his "I'm doing what I wanna do no matter what the country wants" attitude.

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“The government believes there is no need for extra troops from the American side,” Haidar al-Abadi, a Parliament member and close associate of Mr. Maliki, said Wednesday. “The existing troops can do the job.”

It is an opinion that is broadly held among a Shiite political elite that is increasingly impatient, after nearly two years heading the government here, to exercise power without the constraining supervision of the United States. As a long-oppressed majority, the Shiites have a deep-seated fear that the power they won at the polls, after centuries of subjugation by the Sunni minority, will be progressively whittled away as the Americans seek deals with the Sunnis that will help bring American troops home.
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They don't want us there at all. And honestly, who are we fighting and what are we fighting for? The Shiite majority wants to take control of the country without our help or intervention (and probably to take a little revenge on the Sunnis) and the Sunnis are blowing up car bombs in the streets. Who are we trying to protect? The Shiites that can protect themselves now that they're in power? The Sunnis who are trying to kill us?

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Shiite suspicions of the American troop increase reflect a tectonic shift in the political realities here. Shiites, the principal victims of Saddam Hussein’s repression, had joined with Iraqi Kurds in hailing the American-led invasion in 2003, seeing it as opening their way to power. But once they consolidated their control through two elections in 2005, they began distancing themselves from the Americans, seeing their liberators increasingly as an impediment to the full control they craved.

By contrast, moderate Sunnis, who were deeply alienated by the American occupation at an earlier stage of the war, are now looking to Americans for protection, as Shiite militias have moved into Sunni neighborhoods in a deadly cycle of revenge. On Wednesday, moderate Sunni politicians hailed the idea of more American troops.
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Seriously. What's the plan here?

John McCain's Foot

Shooting it... sticking it in his mouth... Whatever.

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RUSSERT: Go back, Senator, to 2002. The administration saying we would be greeted as liberators. John McCain saying you thought success would be fairly easy.

MCCAIN: It was.

RUSSERT: In all honesty…

MCCAIN: It was easy, it was easy. I said the military operation would be easy. It was easy. We were greeting as liberators. Look at the films of when we rolled into Baghdad.
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The Iraqi people sure do have a funny way of greeting their liberators.

Fantastic

http://littledemocrats.net/

Vietnam II, the Search for an Exit Strategy

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

...the American people tried to get their leaders to get out of Vietnam because it wasn't our fight and because it wasn't worth losing tens of thousands of American lives over. The hawkish response was always the same. If we leave it'll be a defeat. It'll embolden the communists. It'll be the first domino on a track that will lead to the obliteration of Western ideals, democracy, apple pie and mass consumerism. How did we get back here again?

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White House officials are keen to portray the new policy as a compromise between two extremes. On one side are the John McCains of the world, demanding big numbers of new troops for extended periods in Iraq. On the other side are the antidependency Democrats, demanding a phased withdrawal, or a timetable for withdrawal, to shock the Iraqis into action. (The White House dismisses the third option of rapid withdrawal as simply a form of defeat.)

...

The White House says the president will explain the consequences of defeat and withdrawal: bolder terrorists, civil war, conflict throughout the region.
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This just in: The United States is not good at occupying foreign countries.

The same column includes a breakdown of some recent Gallup numbers, including:

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Recent polls show it’s a tough sell. The latest Gallup poll for USA Today shows that 36 percent approve of the idea of “a temporary but significant” troop increase; 61 percent oppose the idea. The White House believes those kinds of numbers will decline once the president makes his case and rallies a Republican base that has drifted away from him in recent months on the issue of Iraq.
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That's two to one agin'it George. Try to keep up.