History repeats itself: we have a member of the Bush family in the Whitehouse, a recent victory in Iraq, and an economy in the doldrums. If we want regime change at home, we need to take a page from Clinton's playbook and make the 2004 a referendum on the average American's wallet.
None of the democratic candidates have seized on this. Quick - what's Kerry's economic plan? Lieberman's? I don't know either. More generally, what is the 21st century democratic vision for economic policy? We can do better. After all, we are the party of John Doerr, Barry Diller, Bob Rubin, Ted Turner, Warren Buffett and Jon Corzine...folks who know a thing or two about wealth creation.
The Republicans have an easy, one-size-fits-all answer to any fiscal debate: tax cuts. Problem is, this philosophy is empty as an Fox news soundbite. Any supply-sider worth his Laffer curve will admit that continued tax cuts will drive revenue to zero, yet republican bills never include provisions to raise taxes once the economy is properly stimulated. Moreover, tax cuts do not create wealth. They can stimulate the economy in the short run, but they don't generate top-line growth for businesses or consumers.
This focus on the bottom line is shortsighted, since the U.S. doesn't compete as the low cost provider. Instead, our competitive advantage is derived from productivity, creativity and innovation. Paradoxically, our most vibrant economic regions (NYC, SF, LA, Boston) all have the highest taxes and cost of doing business.
While the republicans cling to their simplistic supply-side voodoo, the Democratic economic agenda should focus on generating sustainable top-line growth through smart regulation and increased investment in basic research. This builds on Keynes idea of the government's active role in the economy, but adapts it to a 21st-century vision. The government should stimulate long-term growth by funding projects that are uneconomic for corporations that have to make their quarterly numbers. After all, the technologies that power today's economy: TCP/IP, recombinant DNA, and Web browsers were all paid for with government research money.
Here are a couple ideas to get started with:
Energy Independence: If we can spend ~$100B to invade Iraq, we can invest the same amount over 10 years to make alternative energy sources cost-effective. This is a matter of national security as well as economic growth and environmental responsibility.
Open Spectrum: Today, much of the promise of the internet remains unfufilled since we have not been able to deploy broadband connections to every home and business. As we have seen at Dartmouth, advances in wireless technology are the best way to accomplish this, since the cable/telco monopolies are unwilling to make the investment to bring broadband to the consumer. Unfortunately, our current regulation of the airwaves is based on crude 1920's radio technology. We need to open up a "commons" in which new technologies such as software-defined radio can flourish.
Increased Biomedical Research. The genome project is an amazing accomplishment, but it is only the first step in the Biotech century. Double or triple the NIH budget.
Bio-ethics Issues: the theocrats in the republican party threaten to restrict our competitive advantage by outlawing important scientific research (ie Stem Cells). We need to tune our regulatory environment to ensure that the US remains the leader in cutting-edge biomedical research. Likewise, we need to ensure that advances in biotechnology help agriculture as well. GMO crops should be safe, cheap and plentiful.
Making a real commitment to improving our schools. An educated workforce is a productive workforce.
Posted by sam,
9:29 PM
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More on the Dividend Tax Cut Scam
Unlike the wealthy, who own large blocks of the companies they run (ie Sandy Weill), or have lots of disposable income to play the market (your Beverly Hills plastic surgeon), most middle class americans participate in the stock market through 401(k) plans or IRA accounts.
These retirement accounts are already tax free, so middle-class investors won't get any benefit from the cut.
Posted by sam,
8:44 PM
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Scary This is what we're up against. The question, then, is what we do when the conservative movement is growing, and the progressives, especially in terms of National politics, are impotent at best, laughable on most accounts.
Sure, we can make a scene in New York or even at most colleges, but what happens in five years when the selfish and frustrated ideas of the Right are accepted by a strong majority of the country? Or am I just being dire?
Posted by Jared,
1:47 AM
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Friday, May 23, 2003 Cruel and Unusual Punishment I love you, you love me, now tell me where you're hiding those weapons of mass destruction or I'll play Twisted Sister.
Posted by Richie Jay,
4:05 PM
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More on Games as Art
Sorry to make another new post out of this. I want to respond to Tim and I'm having trouble with the comment function.
Sometime in the twentieth century somebody decided to divide culture between art ("high art") such as the visual arts, classical music, poetry, Literary (capital-L) fiction, drama/art film; and entertainment or "low" art like comic books, romance novels, popular music, television, action flicks, and so forth. This has led to the horrible situation where a work of art can be intellectually worthwhile, or fun, but not both. This is the true fall of Western culture. Review-style Conservatives get huffy that we're not reading enough Greek and Latin classics and establishment liberals whine for public funding of shallow and worthless anti-art, while neither so much enjoys the art they are trying to force on others as the feeling of intellectual superiority derived by dropping references to the latest MoMA exhibit or the final and most tedious cantos of the Paradiso.
Art and entertainment should never have become divided. Oedipus Rex is a sleazy sex tabloid as much as great drama. The Brothers Karamazov is a scummy crime novel as well as a philosophical masterwork. Shakespeare has been turned into successful teen sex movies for a reason. On the other side of things, The Matrix was an intelligent analysis of Gnostic belief in addition to a shoot-em-up, Norman Rockwell had more to say, and said it more eloquently, than all post-Picasso visual artists combined, and Bill Watterson will be commemorated by future generations as an American genius in a way no written-page poet of the past thrity years will be.
Interactive media still haven't matured, and while Super Mario Bros., Myst and Grand Theft Auto 3 were all masterworks, pretty much everything else in the interactive media is not exciting except in a time-killing fun sort of way with no aspirations to be anything better. Video games are still, artistically, where rap was at the beginning of the '80s. Give them a few more years and a little more technological development, and something wonderful will appear.
Posted by Nic,
6:59 AM
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Texas gets it wrong Texas law makers just passed legislation called the Women's Right to Know Act. This law mandates that doctors tell a woman a pack of unsubstantiated lies before performing an abortion. the LA Times reports:
Texas approved one of the nation's most sweeping abortion counseling laws Wednesday, requiring doctors, among other things, to warn women that abortion might lead to breast cancer. That link, however, does not exist, according to the American Cancer Society and federal government researchers
In Texas at least, ideological rhetoric has legally surpassed science.
"They don't care what science says," said Claudia D. Stravato, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. "It's like talking to the Flat Earth Society."
If a key to a successful democracy is an educated, informed electorate, than this law is an aggressive failure. The state government is mandating the spread of confusion. The Texas State House has done its citizens an astounding disservice by bringing intimidation politics into the clinic and hospital.
The bill does other things as well:
The law also requires doctors or clinics to offer women written materials containing everything from a list of adoption agencies to a reminder that fathers are typically liable for paying child support. Women would be offered photographs approximating what their fetus looks like — color photographs, as specified by the law. Democrats' attempts to exempt victims of rape or incest from having to view the photos were defeated, which is "just cruel," said Peggy Romberg, executive director of the Women's Health and Family Planning Assn. of Texas. The bill requires abortions performed after 16 weeks of pregnancy to be conducted in ambulatory surgical centers or hospitals, where safety standards are higher, supporters say, but where costs associated with having an abortion quadruple, women's health advocates say.
Laws like this, also present in Minnesota and Mississippi, only serve to hurt women. They make a difficult situation even more difficult and chip away at a woman's right to choose, as protected under Roe v. Wade. After all, what is choice if by law that choice must be ill-informed? Between forcing doctors to give their patients 'information' that flies in the face of science and then forcing women to see 'approximations' of what their fetus may look like this law this law amounts to fact-free right-wing coersion and nothing more. This is alarming in any governmental capacity, but just sad when it impacts healthcare. NARAL has this to say about this type of thing:
abortion with the risk of developing breast cancer, the largest and most comprehensive study on the subject concluded that "induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer."
Anti-choice lawmakers must not be allowed to stand in the way of scientific progress. And women must be given the proven facts about abortion, not misinformation designed to frighten them and prevent them from exercising their right to choose.
Posted by Graham,
12:31 AM
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Thursday, May 22, 2003 Did O'Reilly Apologize Tonight? Atrios point to these excerpts from transcripts:
BILL O'REILLY: Here's, here's the bottom line on this for every American and everybody in the world, nobody knows for sure, all right? We don't know what he has. We think he has 8,500 liters of anthrax. But let's see. But there's a doubt on both sides. And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right? But I'm giving my government the benefit of the doubt. . . . BILL O'REILLY: . . if he has 8,500 liters of anthrax that he's not going to give up, even though the United Nations demanded that he do that, we are doing the right thing. If he doesn't have any weapons, then we are doing the wrong thing. (O'Reilly's interview on ABC's Good Morning America, March 18, 2003)
O'REILLY: Colonel, if weapons of mass destruction aren't found, your reputation, my reputation -- because I will have to apologize because I bought into it, I bought into it -- and out of a scale 1 to 10, 10 is the best, how certain are you that we're going to find these weapons of mass destruction? MAGINNIS:There's a 10 there, Bill. [A little later in the conversation]: O'REILLY:Real fast, Colonel, any prediction of when something is going to happen on your part? Real fast. MAGINNIS: In the next two weeks, we are going to have many hundreds of people in there. I would say within a month, we will have a lot of.. O'REILLY: All right, a month from today, we'll do this story again, and then we have it on tape. Gentlemen, thanks very much. Very interesting.(The O'Reilly Factor, April 22)
Posted by Timothy,
9:03 PM
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TNR smacks-down Lieberman on Vice City Primary Watch has a piece called 'Moral Combat' which gives Lieberman a 'D' for political courage for bashing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Best line: "the Nazis, I believe, didn't have GameBoys." Ezra "Manly Man" Klein links that TNR piece and blogs: "There seems to be nothing left to say save: 'Fatality'." Not quite (but it's a nice line by Ezra). TNR should have linked to an earlier TNR piece which bashes Grand Theft Auto! (but then that would have taken away from their own zealous attack against Lieberman's holy attitude)
"BMX XXX" has many partners in misogyny in the world of video-play. "Grand Theft Auto" has boys genuflecting, parents hand-wringing, and Justin apologizing profusely when he boots up after dinner to deliver virtual hookers to their mob-boss headquarters, occasionally bumping off a few streetwalkers along the way. The new "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball" closely emulates "BMX XXX" with its barely bikini-clad ball-spikers, even outdoing "BMX"'s customizing option with a control that allows you to set the "jiggle factor" of your player's breasts. (The game is rumored to be offering a topless edition next season.) Next year will see the release of what may be the archetype of all subjugation games when Hugh Hefner unveils his game based on life at the Playboy Mansion. But, to date, "BMX XXX" is the industry leader. In the conclusion to Only Words, MacKinnon imagines a day when "artifacts of these abuses will reside in a glass case next to the dinosaur skeletons in the Smithsonian." With "BMX XXX," sadly, that day seems quite a bit further off. And, when it comes, the glass case will have to fit not just video cameras and tapes but the discarded gaming platforms that delivered gender-training with a virtual dirt bike and a pornographic God complex.
P.S. Maybe I'll have to play this game before railing against it (or being converted to loving it despite its mysogeny-- or is it general misanthropy?) I'll be up at Dartmouth this weekend... so any gamers got Vice City?
Posted by Timothy,
8:36 PM
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Intelligence Report Since the 9/11/01 investigation has gone so well, the CIA has decided to examine its pre-war intelligence in Iraq. Since US and coalition forces have found it difficult to find WMDs in the wake of the fighting, a lot of people in DC are left with the question 'what gives?!" The NYTimes reports on it like this.
The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American. The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about — namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create free speech in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home. I don't know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.
All spring, a country band has gotten more press for speaking its minds (crazy, artists expressing themselves) than the Vice President's oil company has gotten for doing business with Libya and Iran, and now Iraq (man, all those 'no blood for oil' street protesters were obviously insane, and being so 'reductive' to boot!).
Posted by Graham,
6:20 PM
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Howard Dean on the environment On Bush's environmental policy:
What environmental policy? He has none. It's appalling. Essentially what he's done is try to undo most of the environmental policy in the last 50 years. Drilling in the national parks is essentially his solution to the energy dilemma. Gutting the Clean Air Act and daring to call it Clear Skies. Opening wilderness to more logging under the guise of Healthy Forests. He's even threatening our national monuments. The assaults are sweeping. He has the worst environmental record of any president since before Theodore Roosevelt. You can't rely on this president's word on any domestic agendas -- least of all environmental issues.
find the rest of the interview here, at Grist Magazine. It covers topics from farming and GMOs, to renewables, to SUVs, to CAFE standards, to reducing sprawl, and how he will bring the environment back to the front.
Posted by Graham,
3:31 PM
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"Many of the bodies have had parts ripped out but it is difficult to say whether this is cannibal-style atrocities or not, as there are a lot of dogs who have been eating the bodies." Said the United Nations spokesman in the Congo. Calls for increased peacekeeping presence have gone unheeded by the United States, although France and Britain are considering sending troops.
Posted by Nikhil,
2:25 PM
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Well, whoop de frikin' doo
See, America is such a big and diverse country, we can't just copy the failed ideas of "post-modern" countries. We must strike out and shape our own way. Stop comparing us to other countries. We Americans were the pioneers of the free government. There's no shame in commonsense! We will not hide our conservatism. It's time we stood up and shouted it! ...Bring it on! We are ready, willing and proud. We hold our heads up high, content with our glorious heritage, and we will emerge victorious.
Protofascist (and '05) Jesse Roisin in today's Dartmouth. Laugh, cry, and hope it's parody (post-modern countries??). But go read it. Now.
WITH ONE EXCEPTION, the health plans released by the Democratic presidential contenders are a set of little plans. They leave the current system largely intact and use subsidies and tax credits to reduce the number of uninsured -- as if the whole system were not broken. ... Congressman Dick Gephardt, by contrast, had the nerve to throw a long pass. The problem is that he hurled it in the wrong direction...
..his plan mainly gives tax breaks to corporations that provide health coverage for their workers. This sounds good, until you remember that most large corporations already provide some kind of health coverage. For them, the money will be mainly windfall. ...
The best solution here is national health insurance. We already have it for one segment of the population, through Medicare. The program is easy to understand, and even fits on a bumper sticker: ''Medicare for all.''
So who is the candidate whose plan is called exactly that--"Medicare for All"? That's right. It's Dennis Kucinich.
I see a new horizon for health care for all Americans with a universal, single payer system. Today such coverage is available to Americans over the age of 65. We need a new Medicare, Part E (for Everyone) which will relieve the suffering and uncertainty of 44 million Americans who currently have no health coverage and the economic pain of those who are paying exorbitant rates for their health insurance.
Why not mention the candidate who favors the exact same thing you do?
Posted by Clint,
9:07 AM
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No Skirts Above the Knees, Please, and Jazz is the Devil's Music
For crying out loud. And you people have the gall to call yourselves liberals. If you had been born thirty years earlier, you'd be the same stuffy people worrying that the Beatles and Dylan were glamorizing drugs and sex through a few oblique references -- and let's not even talk about those artistically bankrupt shock jocks the Velvet Underground.
Grand Theft Auto is a work of art. It should not be available for children, no. However, it is no more damaging to our social consciousness than other, more respected art forms. As Mr. Butts pointed out, the joy of the game is the rich and complicated gameplay, which is structured in an entirely new way -- the prostitute-killing is a function of the game's depth.
Eminem writes an edgy rap song dramatizing his wife's imaginary murder, and people get upset -- and then we teach Othello and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" in high school English classes, and nobody sees anything wrong with it. Is the interactive killing a virtual prostitute more worrisome than the interactive Dutch blender exhibit that killed actual goldfish? Why is one an artistically valid inquiry into the nature of moral conscience, while the other is a base and corrupting influence? This is nothing more than aesthetic snobbery from hoity-toity Ivy Leaguers.
If you would like to promote women's rights and eliminate prostitution, go take Econ 1 and then get out in the real world and start fixing things. Take Lynne Cheney, Tipper Gore and Joe "I'd be a Republican If That Wouldn't Piss Off My Fellow Connecticut Jews" Lieberman with you.
Posted by Nic,
6:44 AM
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RE: Grand Theft Auto I agree with large portions of Lieberman’s crusade against media violence, but I’m quite ambivalent on Grand Theft Auto in particular.
And I’m really REALLY scared when people use “one of the best video games ever made” as an excuse for excessive violence. Analogously, this means that it’s okay for Vikings to kill, pillage, and burn - as long as they’re good at it.
Let me explain exactly how Grand Theft Auto works, for our uninitiated readers: Grand Theft Auto is essentially a rehash of an old, old game called “Dungeons and Dragons.” Remember the game that those known as “nerds” played in their dark corners? Yeah, that’s the one. (I sort of detest “hardcore gamerz.” Can you tell?)
Dungeons and Dragons, as it’s evolved into a modern cult video game, is based on the concept of absolute freedom to interact with a given world. You are placed in the role of a knight / elf / whatever, and the king / princess / whatever encourages you to do any good deed you can find. And when I say "encourage," I mean slight monetary incentive. But you’re still perfectly free to slaughter all the villagers for sport, then steal the clothing and cash off their bloody corpses.
Grand Theft Auto is the same basic cpncept. The only difference is that you are placed in the role of a mafia hitman. You’re encouraged by various mob bosses to kill anyone that insults the family. But you’re perfectly free to grab an ambulance and save car accident victims for standard ambulance-driver wages.
The point is that as long as the player is given total freedom, there will always be an opportunity to brutalize women. So you have two options to avoid this problem: #1) Remove all women from the game, which is pretty darned sexist itself, or #2) Remove freedom from the game. This is exactly what John Ashcroft is trying to do, only in the real world, because real people can’t be trusted with freedom. This presents an entirely new philosophical problem.
Though I’m more concerned with the idea that Dungeons and Dragons slants towards justice and becomes cult, while Grand Theft Auto slants towards injustice and becomes mainstream. In the words of Jared, SYMPTOMS.
Posted by Nick,
2:44 AM
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Re: Saving Private Lynch: Take 2, by Robert Scheer
I'm not sure how many of you were caught up in the notoriety of the Iraqi Information minister, who "tripled guaranteed" there were no infidels in Baghdad, and that the Iraqis had the Americans "surrounded in their tanks". The list goes on and on.
But when you look at the things our media was publishing about the death defying rescue of private Lynch, you begin to realize just how level the playing field of propaganda really is. According to Robert Scheer of the LA Times, what was reported as Americans fighting their way into a hospital against hostile Iraqi gunfire, has actually turned out to more of a scenario where doctors were trying to return her to us peacefully in an ambulance, but were unaccountably beaten back by US gun fire. What next? (...For some reason, you need to open the above link in a new window for it to allow you to read it without paying)
Posted by Justin Sarma,
1:42 AM
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Rummy vs. Charismatic Megafauna Apparently baby seals and spotted owls are a threat to national security. No need to worry, though, since Republican-supported bills now exempt the military from the Endangered Species Act. Oh yeah, and they bring back the A-bomb, too. Y'know, just for fun.
Posted by Richie Jay,
12:57 AM
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Wednesday, May 21, 2003 Grand Theft Auto You know, despite my love of video games as a kid, I got to say that Lieberman is making sense here:
In his address Tuesday, the senator condemned a video game called "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" in which the object is to hunt down people who stole the player's cocaine. The player is awarded points for having sex with a prostitute before killing her. "As I watched it, I feared for my daughters," Lieberman said as several women in the crowded nodded their heads in agreement. "And I fear for yours."
Many people think the feminist argument that pornography causes violence is dubious at best. But as video games and virtual reality get more advanced, will we have popular video games that involve rape? And with more 'life-like' interactions, won't the feminist argument about cultural images become stronger as men can not only see rape on tape, but be the simulated rapist and multilator of women?
I've never played Grand Theft Auto, but those who have say it's 'just a game' (and I think they said you don't get points for having sex with the prostitute... you have to pay her... and if you kill her you get your money back). Perhaps the better (and lesser) informed could weigh in.
Posted by Timothy,
7:38 PM
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Scoop Jackson Rises Again
Throughout much of the last century, Democrats were the party of strong defense and muscular internationalism, while Republicans were often the party of isolationism...From Franklin Roosevelt's insistence on the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in World War II, through Harry Truman's refusal to acquiesce to the North Korean invasion of the South or the Soviet attempt to starve the Western powers out of Berlin, to John F. Kennedy's steely-eyed showdown with Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the pro-defense legislation of Sen. Scoop Jackson...the Democratic Party met the great challenges posed by the enemies of the Free World....
By the early 1970s, the "peace wing" of the party had taken over. Ever since, Republicans haven't had to work terribly hard to win electoral success by portraying a string of Democrats from George McGovern to Michael Dukakis as weak on defense and hostile to the military.
Posted by sam,
6:57 PM
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Buffett and Soros Bash Bush Tax Cuts
Buffett in the WaPo:
"If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales towards the rich... Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive 310 million dollars in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax and see my tax rate plunge to three percent...And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly," he said.
Soros on CNBC:
"This move is not designed to have much effect now. It is meant to have an effect over an extended period and is basically using the recession to redistribute income to the wealthy... I think that is really not a very effective way of using a deficit. I think we do need right now both a stimulative monetary policy and a temporary deficit, not a permanent one."
This stuff makes me long for the days of Rubinomics... it'd be nice if we actually had people who have made money driving fiscal policy, rather than the wishful ivory tower thinking of the laffer/friedman voodoo economics crowd.
The big vessels in two of the units could be used to produce an estimated 500 liters of liquid anthrax and 50 liters of botulinum toxin per batch within two to three days - millions of lethal doses.
"There is no doubt in my mind," said William C. Patrick III, a senior official in the United States biological warfare program decades ago. "This is a very simple production facility for an easy-to-grow organism like anthrax."
Posted by sam,
6:37 PM
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The Globe gets it wrong. Check out these varying accounts of Kucinich's reception at the EMILY's list dinner last night.
Kucinich attacked Bush for going to war in Iraq and for failing to focus on the threats to economic security at home. "I know where weapons of mass destruction are," he said to rising applause and eventually a standing ovation. "Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. ... And when the government lies to the American people, that is a weapon of mass destruction."
Posted by Clint,
5:48 PM
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Tax cuts frauds "'Numbers don't mean anything,' Mr. DeLay said. 'In the tax code and dealing with a jobs-and-growth package, you can be very creative and still have a major impact.'"
Posted by Timothy,
5:48 PM
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Vote for The Note! Vote for The Note to win a webby award. Some astroturf campaign is propelling a campaign for some crappy site.
Posted by Timothy,
5:46 PM
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AP: 'Officials reportedly told to destroy records in Texas lawmakers search' Read Mark Kleiman's post on the latest Republican outrage. Remember all those Republican complaints about how substituting Lautenberg for Toricelli in the New Jersey Senate race would undermine democracy? To take that too seriously, you'd have to think that it was likely that this would start a pattern, where candidates would bail out each time they were behind in the polls. Whatever your view on the likliness of that, it should be clear that redistricting every two years is a greater threat to democracy. Aside from voting rights lawsuits, a state hasn't redistricted more than once per census since the 1950's and it's been uncommon in the last century. Think the Republicans will get up all worked up about this? Or that Texas officials have apparently destroyed the records about whether the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY was looking for the lawmakers? Nah... Freaking hypocrites. Especially their toadies on dartlog. Bob Dole once said, "Where's the outrage?" Democrats have a lot more to be outraged over now than Republicans ever did in the past decade.
UPDATE: To back up an assertion made in comments, California GOP legislatorstried to deny a quorom in the mid-ninties:
When desperate Texas Democrats fled their statehouse last week to avoid a political showdown, they simply followed a Republican playbook that had been written nine years before in California. Then, Republicans hid in Sacramento's Hyatt Regency Hotel to block that wily despot Willie Brown from clinging to the speakership for a 15th year in the teeth of a new, razor-thin Republican majority. They failed, outfoxed by Brown.
That commenter obviously hasn't been reading Josh Marshall who has been all over this.
Posted by Timothy,
5:28 PM
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Scientists live in Antartica... ...and contrary to what Emmett thinks, a bunch off em' were against the war, as these folks so proudly show.
Posted by Clint,
5:01 PM
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Chris Hedges raises a ruckus! His commencement speech at Rockford College caused quite a stir. It started with "I want to speak to you today about war and empire," and concluded with "and this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war."
Posted by Graham,
3:16 PM
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Gun Control comes to Iraq
It didn't take a million mom march or massive campaign donations for common sense gun control to arrive in Iraq, courtesy of the Pentagon. The allied commanders in Iraq announced that Iraqis will soon be required to give up their automatic weapons and heavy assault weapons.
"The aim of the proclamation is to help stabilize Iraq by confiscating the huge supply of AK-47's, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons that are used by criminal gangs, paramilitary groups and remnants of the Saddam Hussein government. Iraqis who refuse to comply with the edict will be subject to arrest. Only Iraqis authorized to use military-type weapons because of their police or military duties will be exempt."
Military leaders hope the new weapons rules will help, "reduce attacks against allied forces, reduce crime and stop violent fights among rival Iraqi groups."
Even though the U.S. military considers these weapons a serious threat, there are those who are perfectly content to make these weapons available to everyone in this country. (I especially like Lowery's outright lie about how crime hasn't gone down at all since the 1994 ban).
Posted by Dan,
11:53 AM
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I am an oracle I have been predicting and recommending this move for her since a month or so after she took office when the Bushies first started rolling her.
Now maybe she can be forgiven the sin of her hypocrisy and make some amends.
Posted by Jonathan,
11:32 AM
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Keeping up the fight The mobilization of the Peace Movement in response to the build up to the invasion of Iraq was unprecedented. Surely, its effects will not be fully appreciated for a few years to come. Rebecca Solnit takes the long view in this article from commondreams.org. Scroll down about half way for what she considers the successes of the Peace Movement. Here's a bit to get you started:
A lot of activists expect that for every action there is an equal and opposite and punctual reaction, and regard the lack of one as failure. After all, activism is often a reaction: Bush decides to invade Iraq, we create a global peace movement in which 10 to 30 million people march on seven continents on the same weekend. But history is shaped by the groundswells and common dreams that single acts and moments only represent. It's a landscape more complicated than commensurate cause and effect. Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences.
WASHINGTON, May 14: Hoping to counter their image as the party of straight, white Americans, the Republican party is reaching out to blacks, Latinos, gays and other minorities in the hunt for votes.
Even Santorum's getting in on it: "Last week, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum joined other party leaders for a ceremony at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, the boyhood home of a former slave who became a noted author and newspaper publisher."
Posted by Nikhil,
1:26 AM
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Tuesday, May 20, 2003 Has Golden Key been fixed? I just got a Golden Key Honor Society credit card offer. What I want to know is this. Have the scandals that rocked Golden Key larger organization been solved yet?
Golden Key's founder, James Lewis, was executive director of the society until he was removed from the position last year. There is some speculation about the reasons for his firing, ranging from the society's unapologetic pursuit of profit to allegations that Lewis engaged in improper relationships with students and interns...Officially, the society is open to the top 15 percent of junior and senior classes at any college that has a chapter...Data-entry errors on the part of some universities also permitted Golden Key to admit as many as the top 35 percent of the junior and senior classes? according to two senior organization officials. Golden Key knowingly ignored these errors in order to boost their membership, one of the officials told the Chronicle, "we were supposed to question campuses only if the lists were less than we expected."...This is unfortunate because people involved in honor societies have worked hard� for their achievements, Roselle said. Kali Boatright, Golden Key's assistant executive director, said that about 30 percent of students at colleges with a chapter are members of the society. She added that academic advisors at individual schools could opt to choose a cutoff GPA that is higher than what the 15 percent cut-off would be...There has also been criticism of the high salaries of Golden Key executives. According to the Internal Revenue Service and the Chronicle, Golden Key's chief executive earned $295,740, including benefits, in the most recent available tax year. This is nearly triple the salary of the chief executives of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies in the same tax year.
It seems like this may be a tad on the pessimistic side, but the fact that anyone intelligent would say this is pretty astounding to me, however hyperbolous it may be.
"Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, a professor at Cambridge University, one of the world's most brilliant cosmologists and a longtime arms control advocate, gives civilization as we know it only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century"
He cites global warming, biochemical weapons, and a myriad of other (some quite silly) things as possible causes for the world's demise.
Posted by scott anderson,
11:45 AM
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Ain't gonna happen
...[one] number worth watching: 8.8 million.
That number is the key to capturing what could be an invaluable asset in the race: the endorsement of the AFL-CIO. Under its rules, the AFL-CIO will only endorse a candidate if unions representing two-thirds of its roughly 13.2 million members agree. So to obtain the labor federation's blessing, one of the Democrats will have to win support from unions whose membership adds up to 8.8 million.
In a race with nine candidates (so far) there is no chance that any dem will tally the two thirds--it's nearly mathematically impossible.
From the LATimes (nasty registration required), via the Note.
Posted by Clint,
1:03 AM
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Monday, May 19, 2003 Hardball The New Yorker has a good piece about Fox News. Here's an excerpt from The Hotline:
[Roger] Ailes mentioned that he'd heard that "MSNBC had allegedly set up a small team to seek our more conservative, populist stories." He also noted that MSNBC had "failed" with Chris Matthews. Ailes: "If Chris Matthews worked for me, he'd be doing better. ... I wouldn't let him answer everybody's question for them. He asks the question. Then he answers it. Then he asks you what you thinks of his answer. Then he goes on to another question. At some point, he's got to let the guest answer. I'd say 'Chris, if you don't shut the f--- up I'm going to fire you."
More on Chris Matthews from The Hotline:
New York Times' Rutenberg reports on ex-Pres Clinton aide Sydney Blumenthal's new book "The Clinton Wars" containing an account of MSNBC's Chris Matthews lobbying the WH "to succeed" Dee Dee Myers. Matthews, according to Mr. Blumenthal, "then 'turned into a detractor of Clinton,' though he draws no direct connection to the supposed failed job hunt." The implication "bothers" Matthews because, "he has told people at NBC News and elsewhere, it is simply not true." Ex-Clinton CoS Leon Panetta said he did, indeed, speak with" Matthews "about the job, which came open in 1994." Panetta: "It was not by any means him calling me and lobbying for the job. ... I was calling him to check out his interest." Myers: "I find it a little bit unlikely .... If he was doing it, it's the first I've ever heard of it." Blumenthal "stands by his story" citing "numerous sources, several of my White House colleagues." More Blumenthal: "This was not a deep, dark secret." Matthews "would not comment publicly on the matter" (5/19).
SNL Hardball sketch
"SNL" opened this weekend with an episode of "Hardball." Guests were: WH CoS "Andrew Card," the Rev. "Al Sharpton" and Sen. "Rick Santorum" (R-PA): MSNBC's "Matthews": "Welcome back to 'Hardball,' I'm Chris Matthews. President Bush declares that those responsible this week's attack in Saudi Arabia will be hunted down and given a dose of American justice. Is it me or is this administration starting to sound like an episode of 'Walker, Texas Ranger?' I haven't seen a guy this cocky since Ruben from 'American Idol' at a waffle eating contest. As the election season heats up the question becomes, is Bush unstoppable? Or do the Democrats have a David for this Goliath? Joining us tonight White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card." "Card": "Thanks for having me Chris." "Matthews": "Whatever you said shut it. Also joining us a man that has more track suits than the wardrobe department of the 'Sopranos,' Democratic Presidential hopeful and political train wreck, Al Sharpton." "Sharpton": "I've got some good stuff for you today Chris." "Matthews": "Good, but just on principle I'm going to tell you to zip it. Mr. Card we'll start with you, do you see any Republican weaknesses heading into the 2004 campaign?" "Card": "Absolutely not. Just look at President Bush's recent accomplishments. He piloted that fighter jet all by himself and landed on the aircraft carrier. People love that. He single handily caught Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and made them wrestle each other in a cage match. Two years ago he came up with the idea for 'Joe Millionaire.' He's amazing. "Matthews": "And does it bother you that none of that is true?" "Card": "Look Chris, if it doesn't bother Karl Rove, it doesn't bother me." "Matthews": "Al Sharpton, what is your strategy for battling such a popular incumbent?" "Sharpton": "It's going to be easy, look who I'm running against. Edwards, Kerry, Gephardt -- nobody knows those dudes. "Matthews": "What about Bush, how you going to beat him?" "Sharpton": "What? Bush can run again? [looks off to the side] Come on Garry, come on, man. You got to let me know about these things." "Matthews": "Sharpton campaign, right about where we all thought it would be. Andrew Card, what would the Democrats have to do to have a chance?" "Card": "Well the Democrats biggest problem is that no one recognizes their candidates. They need someone that is universally adored. The only shot they have is to lower the voting age to six and nominate Sponge Bob Square Pants. ... Chris, not even Jesus Christ would run against George Bush, because as the Bible clearly states, Jesus was a Republican." "Matthews": "Nice, that's a good crazy boy. Our next guest is doing the best he can to help Democrats win. ... Please welcome the man who put the 'idiot' into 'He's an idiot,' Republican Senator Rick Santorum. ... Senator do you think your controversial remarks will hurt President Bush in 2004?" "Santorum": "Chris, I was taken out of context. When I said gay sex was as bad as man on dog sex, I meant man on male dog. Sex between a human male and a female dog I have no problem with." "Matthews": "Good lord this is better than I thought, keep going." "Santorum": "I have no problem with gay people. I like Liberace, I like George Michael, I even like that gay teletubby. I just don't like it when Liberace, George Michael, and the gay teletubby have sex with each other." "Matthews": "Don't stop Santorum, one more time." "Santorum": "Chris I'm not asking much. All I'm asking is for every American male get a tattoo on his fanny that reads: Exit Only" ("SNL", NBC, 5/17, transcript from National Journal's The Hotline)
Posted by Timothy,
8:11 PM
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Rising from (political) death? "Lots of people in history were severely criticized, starting with Jesus Christ himself -- and look what happened to him." -Former NH Senator Bob Smith (Concord Monitor, 5/18)
Posted by Timothy,
8:05 PM
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"Worst. Tax cut. Ever." Read Libertarian leaning Jacob Levy over on the Volokh Conspiracy:
Worst. Tax cut. Ever. There are excellent arguments for abolishing the double taxation of dividends, though it really ought to be done at the corporate level, not at the individual level. There are Keynesian arguments for countercyclical tax cuts-- implemented to speed growth up and then rescinded during the other half of the business cycle. These might take the form of tax cuts implemented for, say, three years and then repealed... This tax cut is not a short-term stimulus, still less a short-term stimulus to the stock market. The desirable effects that it is supposed to have would all be defeated by a three-year sunset clause; corporations aren't going to restructure their debt practices, their dividends vs. stock buyback practices, for such a short-term provision... Instead, Senators are voting for something that no one's theory or argument predicts will do anything useful.
Posted by Timothy,
7:39 PM
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The face of conservative media
Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard admits the truth about Fox News and the conservative media (via atrios):
JournalismJobs.com: Why have conservative media outlets like The Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel become more popular in the past few years?
Matt Labash: Because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually.
Posted by Timothy,
7:32 PM
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I'll miss the bastard Ari announced his retirement this morning during breifing. Apparently, he wants out before campaign season gets too hot. We probably only have until July to enjoy him.
If you want to know why he is so damn good at what he does, check out two years worth of questions pitched to him by Russell Mokhiber, or this New Republic piece. To quote:
But what Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It's a system of disinformation--blunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than spin. Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises--or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether.
