Specter II

I watched a little TV news last night.

I am convinced that Joe Biden practices his "Establishment Look" for at least two minutes each morning. Right after his forhead loosens up.

I notice that none other than former LAPD Detective and noted racist Mark Fuhrman is now a FOX news analyst. I am not really sure how he got the job. Maybe FOX just figured "Well OJ was black and Fuhrman called him a n---r. President Obama is black maybe Fuhrman will call him a n---- too."

With Arlen Specter's departure, the GOP got a lot smaller. Its now Michael Steele and the guys you meet at gun shows. At least it keeps the catering bills down and someone always has a pocketknife.

On a more serious note, I think we all have to be concerned that one of our major parties is now headed not by politicians, but by media personalities like Rush, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. They, of course, are accountable to no one and have no obligation to actually govern the country. In a way its ironic. The GOP was always prattling on about Hollywood liberals. Now their entire party is run on one end of the AM dial.

Spectatin' on Specter

I know Democrats are happy that Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter has decided to become a Democrat. This brings the talisman of 60 votes so much closer. At the same time though, exactly how much help is Specter going to be? His politics seems to be informed just as much by soul sucking egomania as principle and he voted down the line with many of former President's Bush's key proposals. Not sure we need any more of those Democrats.

I only wish I could hear the FOX news pundits....

WOW...

File this one under "Wow..." A recent study by Ohio Sate University found that most self identified conservatives watching the Colbert Report did not realize the show was satire. In other words, they thought Colbert really held the conservative views he espouses on the show.

I suppose it is bad when you don't realize something is a spoof. It is worse when you do not realize they are spoofing you....

Nice Little Nugget

Here is a nice little nugget next time someone decries the evils of Obama's tax plans:

From 1979 to 2006, after-tax incomes rose by $863,000 -- more than 250 percent -- for the top 1 percent of households, compared with $9,200 -- or 21 percent -- for middle-income households, according to a recent analysis of IRS data by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Quote of the Day (Or Great Moments in Hypocrisy)

"Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere... I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture."

-- George W. Bush, June 2003

Torture Memos Day 4

Bob Cesca raises a good point in his blog this morning. From the Torture Defenders Camp we have two arguments put forth: 1) this is not torture, its just some mild fraternity boy abuse; and 2) these methods were very effective because they gave us some valuable (although unidentified) intelligence.

Both of these things cannot be true. Our interrogation methods cannot be meek, mild and civilized yet so terrifying that they elicit all sorts of information. They are one or the other, but not both.

When you have a party putting out to contradictory arguments in their own defense, many times neither is true. In this case, I suspect our "enhanced interrogation methods" are actually neither humane nor effective.

A second irony is also glaringly apparent. The very same people who are arguing against investigation of our policies, let alone prosecution, seemingly do not think twice about investigating, prosecuting and incarcerating all sorts of people for crimes much less heinous. I guess if you screw up big enough, and you have some sort of title appended to your name you get a pass.

Torture Memos Day 3

We are hearing a lot from a select group of Americans, such as Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Bill Kristol and Peggy Noonan, who are very upset that the US has decided to acknowldge the fact that it tortured prisoners and not very upset that we tortured prisoners.

Speaking for this morally dubious point, Peggy Noonan suggested that sometimes it is better to just "keep walking, " and "leave things mysterious."

What a most amazing statement. Ironically, I am sure Ms. Noonan belongs to some church and considers herself a morally serious person. Just a morally serious people who will "keep walking" right by torture.

He Man Torture Lovers Club

Last week, the White House released a new set of memo's from the Bush Administration detailing the approval and use of torture around the world. While the memos themselves are evidence of an Adminstration morally askew, they have one amusing spinoff: the birth of the Pain Impervious Right Wing Pundit.

From Detroit's own Paul W. Smith to Rush, the red/white/ black and blue crowd have been extolling their virility and claiming that none of the practices enumerated in the memos constitute torture. Forced nudity, sleep deprivation and waterboarding are just so much hijinks to this macho crowd. They actually want us to believe that any one of these methods applied for a short time would not leave each of them crying in a puddle of their own excrement bleating out the passwords to their internet porn accounts and the balance of their wife's trust fund.

While the simple moral repugnance of defending torture is one thing, the more practical riduculousness of this message is even more disheartening. I mean, can anyone really take this seriously? Here we are, our (supposedly god fearing) nation doing those things we usually associate with third world military juntas or the old Kremlin, and the best some of our brightest lights can come up with is "oh thats not so bad..."

UPDATE

Christopher Buckley writes in the Daily Beast that we should just "get over" our torturing past and not be "too sanctimonious," because:

we indulged in these techniques after watching nearly 3000 innocent Americans endure god-awful deaths at the hands of religious fanatics who would happily have detonated a nuclear bomb if they had gotten their mitts on one.

What Mr. Buckley fails to mention is that -- at best -- a handful of the folks we tortured had anything to do with the events of 9/11. But that is a simple fact when you are running hard to avoid moral accountability. Also, it strikes me that the mark of a civilized nation is that it does not simply react to whatever barbarism is perpetrated against it with more barbarism. You see, because all you have done then is raise the barbarism index. Did they mention that a prep school... or at church....

Suzy Welch

Celebrity journalist Tina Brown recently interviewed Suzy Welch. Suzy is the second wife of uber ego and ex GE CEO Jack Welch. She is also the former editor of the Harvard Business Review. She famoulsy met the then married Jack during an interview session.

Suzy has a new life strategy -- conatained in a book -- that she is pushing. It really saved her from the dumps. Its called 10 -10-10. It seems to be code for "Break up the marriage of a ridiculously wealthy older man, marry him, move into one of his many homes, delegate your daily tasks to staff, live off his immense wealth and your life will get easier..."

I suppose now we call it self -hlep. Used to be called gold digging.

Its Over

In one of the posts below, I suggested that the guns of America's culture wars are starting to dim. Today another sign that they are almost out of ammo. Steve Schmidt, architect of John McCain's presidential run and all around GOP Guy is urging his fellow conservatives to support gay marriage. When someone from the mainstream right takes that position its a sure sign that a movement has hit the shallow ponds of the American center and its opponents are becoming marginalized. In short, here we have a tipping point. Here is Schmidt on the issue:

It cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un American or threatens the rights of others ... On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence — liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I'll Just Say It

I luv Armando Gallaraga.

Nice....

A nice anecdote from Robert Reich:

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington's biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm's foreign partners who don't pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. "You're supporting our troops," I said, referring to his pin. "Yup," he replied, entirely missing my point.

Teabagging

According to the news, conservative activists teabagged all day today in various places around the US. They were protesting high taxes, government takeovers of industry, and modernity generally. (I know, it is difficult to imagine that the folks running communications on this did not realize what fun people would have with such an obvious sexual idiom. But they didn't and -- perdictably -- fun was had.)

I really don't get the tax stuff. The US has the lowest marginal tax rates of any country in the world. US citizens are now taxed less than they ever have been in the history of the United States. If President Obama has his way, only the wealthiest Americans will have their taxes raised by about 1.4%. While our marginal corporate rate is h 37%, the effective corporate rate is about 12% -- incredibly low. And each year the financial press proudly gives us the names of all the Fortune 500 companies who successfully avoided all taxes.

As to "big government," our government is involved in a lot less than our peer countries. We regulate less. We do not provide healthcare. We provide only a second rate education system. Besides the Department of Defense, I am not sure what is so "big" about or government. Moreover, in the last few months our government has been doling out money in an effort to prop up private enterprises, in effect allowing them to socialize their losses and privatize their gains. This hardly seems to be the work of some socialist in waiting.

As to modernity, I like to think our culture wars are starting to simmer down and that the sundry anti abortionists, anti stem cell research -ists, anti civil rights-ists are properly finding their place on the very margins of society, where they can talk to themsleves, hate the rest of us, and if the Department of Homeland Security is right, stock up on ammo.

Its odd. Through the 70s and 80s, left wing activists were typically characterized as pampered whiners who wanted to blame the government for their problems and create a culture of victims. Boy has that ship sailed...

Spot On, Mate

Former British PM, and recently converted Catholic Tony Blair had this to say about the Pope's anti homosexual stance:

We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith....What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed, the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d’être was to change the way that people thought traditionally.

Beyond the whole gay business, Blair points out another problem with religion. To too many so called believers, their faith is their faith, and the idea of "rethinking," or even thinking, just doesn't come up. Slowly, religion gets cozy with whatever the prevailing "traditional" attitudes are, and it becomes part of the problem and not part of the solution.

How else would one explain American Catholic's preference for Republicans, anti abortion, anti gay, and anti stem cell rhetoric over the far more pressing moral concerns of poverty and violence? (One cannot help but recall the odd spectacle of "pro life" parades taking place while our military was decimating actual human beings on the most specious of pretexts.)Some may say "keen spiritual commitment." Others may say "marked intellectual laziness." Isn't religious faith supposed to help steer you clear of making the same assumptions, mistakes and miscues as everyone else? Isn't it supposed to make you somehow different? More compassionate, more humble, more intellectually rigorous. Instead religious people have transformed a tool for radical change into a tool for mass conformity.

Good News/Bad News

Bad News: The Tigers are 0-2 with pitching as the main culprit. Good News: Brandon Inge has his two homers in two games.

Meghan McCain

As some may have noticed, Meghan McCain (daughter of Sen. McCain) is trying her hand at conservative punditry. Before you say dilettante I am sure that her missives and epistles would receive just as much attention if she were just an average Republican from Spokane Washington. Actually, I have read her stuff. Its like she is ten.

Today she criticizes the Democrats for getting "stuck on being antiwar," and sacrificing party unity. memo to Meghan -- there are actually some people in the world who view war as the ultimate failure of our humanity, not just a political football. They are actually willing to make some sacrifices to avoid taking human life. Get outside the GOP and you might meet these people. They are the ones you usually call "leftists."

I Was Wondering

This week Congress is debating the Kennedy Serve America Act which would fund an additional 175,000 public service internships across the country. For myself, I like the idea of mandatory public service because we may actually succeed in creating a generation of Americans who are not wholly self absorbed and parochial in their outlook and who may actually gain some knowledge about how America works.

I was wondering how the GOP would oppose this idea. Michelle Bachmann (R MN) answered my question by reporting that the Kennedy Act was nothing more than an attempt to push our youth into "re education camps" and put them to work in "politically correct" jobs. (You can check out the live audio on HuffingtonPost.com).

Well, I knew there was an argument there somewhere...