Famous Last Words

Calling My Shots: 2011 NFL Predictions

2011-09-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

I have decided to actually record my NFL predictions this year to demonstrate my soothsaying powers (or documents how wrong I am). Is there a bit of a Homer-feel to these predictions. Sure. But for the first time in 10 seasons, I'm really excited for the home team:

AFC:
East - New England
North - Pittsburgh
South - Houston
West - San Diego
Wild Cards - Baltimore, Indianapolis

NFC:
East - Dallas
North - Green Bay
South - Atlanta
West - Arizona
Wild Cards - New Orleans, St. Louis

Super Bowl: Atlanta defeats HOUSTON...

Yep, I'm picking my Texans to the Super Bowl. Call me a homer, call me delusional, call me Al... whatever. I really like this Houston team. Explosive offensive, and a defensive that will improve by attacking under Wade Phillips.

Other interesting items -

1. I think Atlanta may be the best team in the NFL, the Falcons or the Patriots.

2. I have Kolb in the playoffs and Vick out.

3. I think Dallas may be quite good. And I don't trust Mike Vick to stay healthy.

4. The Rams keep improving. I don't have a real good feeling on this, but the schedule is inviting and frankly I needed a 5th new team (see below).

5. For many years now, 5 teams that made the playoffs the previous season do not return to the playoffs. Often it is a Super Bowl team. I've tried to hold true to that (although I do have both GB and Pitt returning to the playoffs).

Playoff teams from last year that I do not have returning:
New York Jets - I question their QB, WRs, and think the running game will fall off.
Kansas City - Much more difficult schedule and San Diego will win more.
Chicago - I think they played over their heads last year and are worse this year.
Seattle - They are worse than the 7-9 they snuck in with last year.
Philadelphia - As I mentioned, I've never trusted Mike Vick to stay healthy and V. Young is not an NFL QB, even as a backup.

Texans to the Super Bowl...clearly I'm just crazy.

To Believe or to Live?

2011-08-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming more and more convinced that within the churches of Christ, it's more important to "believe" the right things than to "do" the right things. Living Christ is far less important that believing the right things.

Does it really matter what you believe if you don't live as Christ? Does it really matter if you get every doctrine right if you don't feed hungry people? Is it more important to believe right on baptism if you don't meet people's physical and spiritual needs?

Is it even possible to live as Christ in a church fellowship where the most important thing is believing the right things? I don't know anymore.

Launch Site or Final Destination?

2011-06-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

Anyone else reading Grantland.com since its launch yesterday?

My thoughts thus far:

> Klosterman = +. His pieces have been fascinating (which I was expecting) and, frankly, touching (which I was not).

> The reality fantasy draft post (about a fantasy draft of reality tv characters wherein points are earned by various horrific, yet totally expected, behavior) included the following line: "We encourage you to start your own leagues, suggest changes to our system, or just read these posts and mumble to yourself, 'I thought this site had Malcolm Gladwell?'" That may be the funniest thing I have ready in months. I literally laughed out loud uncontrollably - probably because as I was reading that trainwreck of a post, that is exactly what I was thinking.

> The writing has been absorbing. These are genuinely creative, talented, and (I just can't think of a better adjective) great writers. You can just lose yourself in the worlds they are creating -- mid-80's North Dakota junior college basketball...Wembley stadium...Wrigley...a freaking video game review when I don't play video games... When reading this stuff, I have become somewhat lost in the worlds created by these writers, and it's almost a shock to come to the end of the piece and leave those worlds. The essays (thus far) are deeply compelling, even when they are about the most trivial of subjects.

> As gripping the writing has been...the site is just "meh" at best. At best. I actually like the attempt to keep it simple, but it's just not easy. Once a column has fallen off the mainpage, where does it go? Go to columnists and you only get Simmons and Klosterman. You have to search for prior columns - there does not appear (yet) to be an archive or an ability to click on an author and find their work. I think this needs to be cleaned up relatively quickly.

> But, mainly, it has Simmons writing regularly again. I've got this sneaky suspicion that he may wind up as the President of ESPN one day soon, (FN1) and he's had so many irons in the fire recently that the writing has just fallen way off. What - a column every two weeks or so? That makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense. He's so good (in my opinion) that he's been pulled in a million directions and it just takes time and focus to sit down and draft 5,000 words that won't ruin the reputation he has developed. But Grantland may be getting him back to his writing roots, at least that's what I'm hoping. Granted, three pieces in two days is because of the "launch." But, if this site has him focused on a column a week, it's well worth it. And writing is what he does best.

The question becomes is this Simmons' launch site? Does the "Editor-in-Chief" want to move onto to further executive positions? Or is this right where he wants to be, and where he'll be content to stay. No idea, but it will certainly be interesting to watch... or rather read.

FN1 - There was a long feature on Simmons and the launch of Grantland in the NY Times Magazine on May 30. In the midst of it there was a throwaway moment in which Simmons was at a LA Lakers game with the author/interviewer and they see Stephen A. Smith (who does not notice them) walking by. Upon seeing Stephen A. go by, Simmons tells the interviewer, "We need to do a better job of protecting out talent. ... He's a guy who should be writing more. We let him become too big a yakker." Look, Simmons has the most widely read sports column on the internet, he is (in large part) the creator of the exceptionally high-quality '30 for 30' series of documentaries (maybe the most critically acclaimed thing ESPN has ever done); and now he's the Editor-in-Chief of Grantland.com, an ESPN spinoff. Call me crazy, but I think he could be running ESPN someday soon.

Symphony in Space...

2011-04-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I had one of the truly special experiences of my life... Our family has a package of tickets to the Houston Symphony's season of family performances (3 or 4 shows). Last weekend (2-Apr) was the last show of the 2010-2011 season, entitled "Symphony in Space." It was really great. But one part of the show stood out... At about the mid-point, the conductor (dressed as an alien...yes, conductors in Houston do that for the kids) called out an actual astronaut, the distinguished Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield on Twitter) who will command the final shuttle mission next year and spend six months on the International Space Station as well.

In addition to "just" being an astronaut commander (what am I doing with my life) he sings and plays guitar. His brother, just by chance (WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE???), composed a song about him going up in his first mission called "Big Smoke." [FN] Cmdr. Hadield played guitar and sang the song during the Symphony's performance, along with a chorus of children from a local school. [Yes, in addition to being a Space Shuttle commander, he was an accomplished guitarist and singer.]

After the performance, Cmdr. Hadfield took questions from the audience. At first, my son Noah was throwing his hand in the air to ask a question. I immediately told him to put his hand down. I asked him if he had an actual question to ask. He did not [of course]. After about a fifteen count he told me he did have a question. He explained it to me and I told him that was a good question, and he put his hand up, way up, again.

Belive it or not (we had pretty good seats) the conductor called on "the boy in the striped shirt," -- Noah!!!

"What does if feel like to float in space?"

Noah asked that question loud and strong -- in front of about 4,000 people filling Jones Hall.

Cmdr. Hadfield ( @Cmdr_Hadfield ) proceeded to answer Noah, in detail, for several minutes. He called a little girl out of the chorus who had pig tails and demonstrated how your hair floats in space; talked about how your blood doesn't flow down to your feet without gravity so you have to do certain exercises in space; and how you eat without gravity in space.

I was floored. This was my son asking a real life astronaut -- commander -- what it was like to float without gravity in space. And the commander answered the question in such detail and with such deliberateness, yet, spoken from the actual experience.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? What a wonderful moment in my life --- and Noah's life. What a special time. I would never have guessed/expected that this would be my life. Providence!

[FN] Big Smoke refers to the smoke that emits from the launch of a Space Shuttle.

Biden for VP

2008-08-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

As the world now knows, Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his VP running mate. Biden is a fine choice. A safe choice. But I didnt' think he was the best choice.

I sent the following email (I've edited out references to other VP contenders) to a friend yesterday before the Biden choice was confirmed:

Just wanted to get this thought out there before it becomes moot tomorrow. Obama is announcing his vp pick tomorrow. In my opinion, there is one guy who is the obvious choice, and would be an absolute grand-slam...but he's apparently not even on the radar screen.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

What does Richardson give Obama?

1. He's a connected, inside-the-beltway, exceptionally experienced - and an "outsider."

If Obama chooses Biden - who is fine - he's getting an almost 40-year veteran of the Senate. There goes the "change" theme. ... Richardson spent eight years in Washington in the Clinton Admin, and was in leadership of the Democratic party prior to becoming Governor. He has the connections, understands the inside game, has a national name, can raise money --- and as Governor of New Mexico, has a legit claim to being an outsider that can reinforce a change message. Perfect.

2. He brings boatloads of experience and the "resume."

What's Obama's biggest alleged weakness? His resume. He doesn't have the "experience" necessary. (Off topic - Yeah, right. Go look at Bush the Lesser's "experience" prior to running on his daddy's name. Go look at Reagan's "experience." Or JFK.) Badda-bing. Problem solved. Richardson - even though he is governor of New Mexico - may have the most foreign policy experience of any "name" democrat right now outside of Biden. He negotiated with North Korea, Iraq/Sadaam Hussein. World leaders know and respect him. He was clear in opposition to Iraq. He served as Energy secretary in the Clinton admin. What are the four biggest issues of this campaign (probably): 1. Economy; 2. National Security; 3. Health Care; 4. Energy. Obama is lights out on 1/3, Richardson is lights out on 2/4. It is a perfect complementary fit...AND he doesn't serve as a glaring signpost to Obama's alleged weakness. You select Biden - who has little directly going for him other than foreign policy expertise - and what that primarily does is show voters that Obama is sensitive to foreign policy as a weakness. ... Richardson reinforces that area, but is much more well rounded (pun intended) so that he doesn't accentuate it as a weakness of Obama's. Perfect.

3. He is geographically targeted to states that are close and Obama needs.

Biden is from Delaware. Yawn. It always votes democrat. It's close to Virginia, but he's not going to move Virginia. .... What does Gov. Richardson bring? He pushes New Mexico in safely Dem territory. He *likely* solidifies Colorado as Blue, and may just put Nevada out of reach. He will also genuinely puts places like Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, etc. in better position - why? He's a gun-toting, pro-gun, anti-gun control Democrat. Don't find many of those. He is really liked and respected in the west because he's willing to take on the national party on guns. That will help in those other generally red states too. Perfect.

4. He isn't a white guy.

.... Biden [is]. He solidifies a hispanic base that - at least the media reports - is having some trouble coming around to Obama, and sees McCain as the moderate he was before the lust for the Presidency got to him. If he was to really push up the hispanic vote, he could make Florida a lot closer than it is now and, again, really help in Colorado and Nevada. Perfect.

5. He brings the Clinton supporters around.

Biden... - none of them are an overt olive branch to those Clinton supporters that are still (irrationally) irritated that Obama won the nomination. Richardson is. He has a long history with the Clinton family, and in the Clinton Admin. He is still close to him, her, and a lot of the key players from that era. He could be seen as the olive branch without actually nominating Hillary (which just can't be done). Perfect. (By the way - my gut feeling is that this is also the very reason he was never considered - he too much a Clinton choice, and Obama's people wanted a clean break.)

In every way conceivable, Richardson would be a perfect compliment to Obama on the democratic ticket. And he, apparently, wasn't even considered.

It just doesn't make complete sense to me that Gov. Richardson wasn't considered. That said, Joe Biden is a very solid choice. My concern, of course, is that Biden acts as a bright red flag pointing out Obama's "weakness," rather than reinforcing his general message. We'll see.

Biden was probably my third choice in the Democratic primaries behind Obama/Hillary (tie for first) and Richardson (which explains why I would have preferred him as VP).

It's a solid ticket. Still underdogs, but solid. 70+ days to go...

Profoundly distorted...

2008-03-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me what I thought about the "Obama issue." The answer: I don't think of it much or much of it.

The fact is, I don't have much of an opinion on the whole Obama-flap. I think this is/has been little more than a media-created non-story. The Clinton's have convinced much of the press that they have been to easy on Obama, so they are searching for something to smear him with.

I didn't get to see the entire 'A More Perfect Union' speech, although I read the transcript. The speech itself was courageous and genuinely exceptional. Just an all-time great American Speech. He said exactly what is truth - we all know folks who are good, nice, "non-overtly-racist" people...who when pressed, when frustrated, or just because they are from another generation drop some really horrific phrases or stereotypes on occasion. Then, of course, it's uncomfortable and awkward...but you don't necessarily throw that person under a bus because they are not perfect.

Kind of like he mentioned, I know "older" people whom still sometimes refer to "black-town" or "the blacks" or something ridiculous like that. That does't mean that I completely abandon a relationship with such people. I just think they are unenlightened and insensitive. Recently, I met a guy in the airport while I was waiting on a plane. We talked about work, kids, even church stuff. He seemed a really nice, family guy. Then later, the conversation turned to politics and in discussing Clinton/Obama he said something about how he didn't want to see either one of those "types" of people - a woman or a minority - become President. ... Okay, awkward. But that doesn't mean that I unloaded on the guy right there or self-righteously refused to talk to him anymore. I just think he's wrong and comes from a profoundly distorted perspective.

My family goes to what would generally be considered a very conservative church and a lot of the things that people in my church believe - both religiously, and socially/politically - I don't support, or believe in, or adhere to. Even some things that have been said from the pulpit, I squirm at and feel completely uncomfortable with. But we still go to church there because on the whole the "core" beliefs are shared. Our family has found a place there. My son has friends, we have friends, we are involved with the youth group, etc. We believe that it is the church family for our family. Just because something gets said, or just because a leader in the church has an 'opinion' that I disagree with doesn't mean that I'm going to disassociate myself from my church. I may well think they are wrong and/or nuts and/or misinformed, but I'm going to keep showing up and, yes, making my contribution each Sunday.

He also addressed the flip side of that issue:

Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. . . . So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college . . . when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

[These resentments have] helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

He was brave enough to acknowledge the resentments and "profoundly distorted views" on both sides, while urging America to transcend. It was a great speech.

That doesn't, however, mean this should have been a front-page story in the first place. Oh, No!!! Someone Obama knows said some atrocious things some years ago!!!! That has never happened to a politician, or anyone else, ever!!! [Yawn]

The "epic downdraft" to come...

2008-03-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

In TX-7, right-wing Rep. John Culberson (R) has acknowledged what could be "an epic downdraft that defeats every Republican in Harris County unless we work hard to correct these problems."

True, that is primarily just a standard political line to scare the base into giving money to the campaign...but maybe this year it proves to be true.

For the first time since first being elected in 2000 Culberson faces both a competent and well-funded opponent.

Michael Skelly is a great candidate who has substantive plans on the issues that affect our district (energy, health care, education, transportation, etc.), perspective and judgment to be a leader on national issues (Iraq, economy, national security, etc.), and has the vision to step to the fore in the House and be a leader.

John Culberson is a party-special-interest-loyalist and one of the biggest Bush-supporters in Congress. He has no vision to be a leader on issues important to our district. On his own website, Culberson states that he has no energy policy (a critical issue in Houston and the 7th District) but rather that the 2005 energy bill solved all the problems there were. Of course, that was before $100 oil/$4.00 gas, etc. Culberson just doesn't get it. Culberson has no transporatation plan other than cars, cars, and more cars. He has radically opposed investment in Houston's public transportation infrastructure to reduce congestion, improve commute times, and reduce environmental impact. In fact, Culberson's website says TODAY that his plan for transportation in the 7th Dist. is "working with Majority Leader DeLay and other members of the Texas delegation." Culberson just doesn't get it.

Other than these homages to the past-days of Republican history, Culberson has no vision for an energy plan for America. Michael Skelly does -

Michael Skelly built a leading wind energy company right here in Houston. In order to build that company, he had to understand the entire energy equation. The energy business fuels the world economy, and energy is at the heart of many of the pressing issues of our day—national security, global warming, the economy, and the strength of our currency. Michael Skelly understands how important it is to think strategically about energy. It’s what has made his wind energy company successful. Right now, the country’s energy sources come disproportionately from areas of political instability, and it’s urgent that we replace our dependence on foreign oil with sustainable energy from a broader variety of sources. As a country, we need an energy strategy that balances the long term with immediate problems, and we need to change our energy policy sooner rather than later so that business people can make the right investment decisions. For all those tough choices, Washington will need our city. Houston is the energy capital of the world, and it’s vital that our representative in Washington understand energy so the rest of the country can benefit from our expertise.

Other than somehow still relying upon scandal-ridden Tom Delay, Culberson has no vision for a transportation plan for Houston and the 7th Dist. Michael Skelly does -

In the energy business, Michael Skelly oversaw infrastructure investments worth several billion dollars. He knows what it takes to carry out complex projects, and he will use that experience to improve Houston’s transit system. Most Houstonians spend endless hours in traffic every day because they have no other choice. Michael Skelly is committed to working with Mayor White and other elected officials to reduce traffic and gridlock. Houston needs a complete transit system—not just roads and highways, but also buses, urban rail, and commuter rail—options that will cut air pollution and decrease commutes so that people can spend more time with their families. Michael Skelly will make sure Houstonians can choose whether to drive, ride the bus, or take the train.

Culberson does not even have any reference on his website to policies for health care, the economy, or national security. The 7th District deserves better.

The 7th District is a diverse and robust part of Houston ranging from Jersey Village in the Northwest, through the Memorial area, Bellaire, West University, and into the Montrose area of mid/near-town. It is a district that should have a leader with clear policies that will make an impact on the important issues facing it, and have the perspective and judgment to take leadership on natonal issues. What we do not need is a party-man, Bush-buddy, career politician.

Best of all, Michael Skelly is not just a good alternative to Culberson, he is a proven leader with a record of entrepreneurship, job creation, getting things done and solving problems. Skelly looks like just what the 7th District needs.

Related posts:

Michael Skelly for 7th Cong. Dist. of Texas...

The right of the people to be secure...

2008-03-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

...in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by an Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be searched.

So says the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified in 1791.

For about 210 years of our nation's history, the 4th Amendment meant pretty much what it said: the people are protected from unreasonable government prying into their personal effects without a court-ordered warrant authorizing a search.

For the last five or six years, however, the 4th Amendment has been undercut, trampled on, or simply ignored - and today it seems as if these once hallowed words have little to no meaning.

Two stories this week bring the current government's abandonment of the 4th amendment to the fore.

First, the dazzling downfall of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Although I don't think it need be said, let me say it anyway: Spitzer's conduct was unjustifiable, it was unquestionably wrong, and it was inexcusable. I do NOT defend him. He broke the public trust and clearly broke the law. His resignation was inevitable and justified.

I am not, however, writing about Spitzer's conduct. Instead, a part of the story that has been lost in the salaciousness is how our government "stumbled" upon the scandal.

According to two sources ... Spitzer hit the federal radar when a bank reported to the Internal Revenue Service that a significant amount of money had been suspiciously transferred from one account to another.

The IRS, upon investigating the matter late last year, found that the accounts were connected to Spitzer, the sources said. The IRS contacted the FBI, which joined the case to investigate the possibility of government corruption.

New "counter-terrorism" banking laws require banks to report certain account activity to the government - specifically the IRS:

Federal law requires a banking institution to file a Suspicious Activity Report when the institution suspects a transaction is linked to a federal crime.

More specifically, the banks are required to report to the IRS any transactions totaling $5,000 or more if the transactions "involve potential money laundering or a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act." The act requires businesses to keep documents that are useful for identifying and investigating money laundering.

Ummm...does anyone else but me recognize something incredibly important missing in those sentences? How about a warrant? These laws REQUIRE financial institutions to report activity that no one has probable cause to get a search warrant to look at. Yet, no one seems to be remotely concerned.

Sources said Spitzer allegedly was moving money between several of his own accounts, and investigators think he may have been shuffling money to hide his behavior from his wife.

US law requires banks to report an individual moving money between several of his own accounts, without a warrant, and somehow that is supposed to not be a violation of the 4th amendment. This is appalling. What about this: a private citizen moves money around between several of her/his own accounts because she/he was hiding from their spouse the fact that they were surreptitiously participating in - - - a fantasy baseball league that they didn't want to tell their spouse about.* The bank would be forced to give that information to the government. No probable cause, no laws broken, no description of place person or thing to be searched - nothing. How can anyone argue that that is reasonable, or that our government is respecting our right to be secure in our person, houses, papers, and effects?**

Secondly, President Bush continues to expressly mislead the American people about the new FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) legislation:

[President] Bush appeared on the White House's South Lawn yesterday to demand House passage of the Senate legislation, warning lawmakers that "voting for this bill would make our country less safe. . . . The American people understand the stakes in this struggle. They want their children to be safe from terror."

Balderdash. Ridiculousness. Rubbish.

The conflict about passage of this bill centers primarily on granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that turned over private user information to the government without warrant. This is not the primary focus of my post, but it simply underlines the point I am trying to make. Some of these companies looked at the government request and said - "that's nice, if you can get us a warrant, we'll get you the information." Others simply turned over the data without a warrant. Those companies now face lawsuits seeking to enjoin further activity without warrant. It seems only common sense to allow these companies to make their arguments and let a Court decide if they - or the government - broke the law in turning over such information without a warrant.

Just as important, if not more so, is the fact that in fighting on this new FISA legislation, what the Bush Administration is attempting to do is be able to look at my (and your) private information without our authorization, and without a warrant. Could there be a more clear violation of our 4th amendment rights? It is patently unreasonable to garner the private data of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens without probable cause. In addition, the FISA courts are - as they absolutely should be - essentially rubber-stamp courts. If the government as any information that remotely indicates probable cause, the FISA courts will authorize warrant. That is the way it should be. I am not arguing that the FISA judges should not grant warrants...my argument is that our government should not be allowed to randomly search our private effects without probable cause.

I am outraged that this government is so cavalierly throwing the basic rights of the people out the window - and all the while arguing that we are in mortal danger if we don't allow it. The Bush government says "If we can't monitor your bank records, the terrorists will get you...if we can't monitor your communications, the terrorists will attack."

Well, I for one reject that unconstitutional fear-mongering, and more and more law-abiding American citizens have to start recognizing when our rights are being stripped away.

If our Constitution and the 4th amendment mean anything anymore, then these types of unreasonable government searches without probable cause have to be eliminated.

* - due credit for this example goes to the movie "Knocked Up." I didn't particularly care for this movie as a whole (although it seems to be quite popular), but the side story about the marriage of the sister-in-law of the main character was really, really good. To me, the unquestionably funniest (and frankly, truest) part of the movie was when the sister-in-law became convinced that her husband was cheating. She follows him out one night when he said he would be working. Instead, she follows him to another person's home. She bursts into the house searching for him and whomever he was cheating with and what does she find --- he's at a fantasy baseball draft!!! Essentially, he plays fantasy baseball but he knew that his wife would think that so juvenile and would be unhappy with him spending time away from her and the kids for a fantasy draft, so instead he told her he was working. Classic.

** - I recognize that a statutory exception might be possible for public officials in order to fend off corruption/bribes/etc. Such a statutory exception would indeed be reasonable as a limited and specifically identified target of the searches with some probable cause about the use of funds by a public official. As far as I am aware, no such statutory exception exists.

The Wall Street Journal seems to get it...

2008-02-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

...although the rest of the Right has not come around yet. This opinion column from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal says exactly what I've been thinking for the last two weeks - Obama and the Power of Words

Here are a few excerpts, but read the whole thing:

"For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!"
So Ronald Reagan proclaimed on July 17, 1980, as he accepted his party's nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Detroit, Mich.
Earlier that day, the New York Times ran a long profile of Reagan on its front page. The author, Howell Raines, lamented that the news media had been unsuccessful in getting Reagan to speak in anything other than "sweeping generalities about economic and military policy." Mr. Raines further noted: "political critics who characterize him as banal and shallow, a mouther of right-wing platitudes, delight in recalling that he co-starred with a chimpanzee in 'Bedtime for Bonzo.'"
Throughout his campaign, Reagan fought off charges that his candidacy was built more on optimism than policies. The charges came from reporters and opponents.
...
Are Republicans making the same mistake with Barack Obama?
For months now, Hillary Clinton has suggested that Mr. Obama is all rhetoric, no substance. This claim, or some version of it, has been at the center of her campaign since November. One day after losing to him in Wisconsin and Hawaii -- her ninth and tenth consecutive defeats -- she rather incredibly went back to it again. "It's time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions," she said -- a formulation that could be mistaken for a sound bite.
As she complained about his lack of substance, tens of thousands of people lined up in city after city, sometimes in subfreezing temperatures, for a chance to get a shot of some Mr. Obama hopemongering. Plainly, her critique is not working.
And yet, Republicans are picking it up. In just the past week, conservative commentators have accused Mr. Obama of speaking in "Sesame Street platitudes," of giving speeches that are "almost content free," of "saying nothing." He has been likened to Chance the Gardener, the clueless mope in Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There," whose banal utterances are taken as brilliant by a gullible political class. Others complain that his campaign is "messianic," too self-aggrandizing and too self-referential.

The past week or two, right-wing radio has been asking Obama supporters to call in - then proceed to "marginalize" them by saying that there is no "substance" only rhetoric.

They are essentially acting like Hillary-lite. That is exactly how Sen. Clinton has tried to oppose Obama for the past three months now.

We see how well that has worked.

Inspiration is substance. Hope is substance. The fact that people want to be involved in their communties in a grassroots manner is substance. The thought of having political discourse that is above "how can I defeat my opponent" and instead says "how can I make my community better" is substance. That is the meat that makes people take action.

Clinton/Conservatives try to attack Obama as having failed to provide more and more detailed programs. Oh, he has programs, and he had details. But what I want in a President - and what I think America wants in a President - is not a manager to dig down and do the grunt-work. I want a leader with a vision of where America needs to go. A vision of a greater America. And, maybe most importantly, a vision of how Americans - all of us - can be a part of taking us there.

Or to put it in his words:

"We're not looking for a chief operating officer when we select a president," he said during a question and answer session at Google headquarters back in December.

"What we're looking for is somebody who will chart a course and say: Here is where America needs to go -- here is how to solve our energy crisis, here's how we need to revamp our education system -- and then gather the talent together and then mobilize that talent to achieve that goal. And to inspire a sense of hope and possibility."

That is substance.

Michael Skelly for 7th Cong. Dist. of Texas...

2008-01-25T18:22:00.000-08:00

Those of us who live in the 7th Congressional District of Texas were hoping for a good candidate to vote for in 2008 - it looks like we've found one:

Michael Skelly for Congress

Skelly is is a successful energy entrepreneur - focusing on green energy - with a track record in building businesses. Skelly serves on Houston Mayor Bill White's Green Building Advisory Committee, is a longtime member of the board of the American Wind Energy Association, and has served on the boards of several other nonprofits and companies.

Mr. Skelly seems an exceptional candidate. The 7th Congressional District - and the entire Houston area - suffers from the staid, Bush-buddy, career politician John Culberson. Culberson simply does not meet the needs, nor the demands of such a vibrant, growing district.

What does the 7th District need? We need real answers to real transportation challenges. We are growing, growing, growing - and we need new solutions, not the same old re-tread stop-gaps favored by Culberson and his cronies and contributers. Skelly can provide new perspective, highlighted by a career in green energy and green city planning, that can truly lead on these local issues in the national Congress.

We need actual oversight over the outrageous handling of the war in Iraq and the mind-numbing spending in Congress. I don't care if the majority party is Democratic or Republican - we need someone who will bring a prudent approach to management, spending, and accountability. Culberson is merely a rubber-stamp for Bush mismanagement and wasteful spending. Skelly will provide an business-builders accountability and oversight - understanding how to lead on spending and efficiency.

We need genuine leadership on important energy issues facing our entire nation - and hit home right here in the 7th District with high gas prices, utility prices, and so many energy workers/businesses/executives. Culberson has never led on energy, in fact, he has been a stumbling block to creating a 21st Century energy policy. Skelly will be a leader on energy - maybe THE leader on energy in Congress. He knows how green energy works, he has made it work, and he can make it work for the entire nation. He can lead on creation of a national energy policy that moves our nation forward, make us a world-wide leader, and will create thousands and thousands of new jobs, even as so many of our traditional manufacturing jobs fade into the past.

Jim Henley was a good candidate in 2006. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Henley and found him to be a good candidate. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Henley decides to run again this year, after putting up a strong fight - for being such an underdog. If so, I would hope that the primary victor would be made that much stronger going to battle against the entrenched, well-funded, and national-party protected Culberson.

But for now, Michael Skelly is not just a good alternative to Culberson, he is a leader with a record of entrepreneurship, job creation, getting things done and solving problems.

Skelly looks like just what the 7th District needs.

Here is some media:
Houston Business Journal - Energy entrepreneur leaves business to pursue politics

Houston Chronicle - Energy exec Skelly vies to unseat Culberson

And some blog opinion:
Off the Kuff - "Skelly will make for an interesting candidate in this district. He's a businessman with a background in energy, and should be able to run as a technocrat, which I think will be appealing to the mostly well-educated constituency in CD07. Being well-funded won't hurt, either..."

Wow...

2008-01-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

...That's it. Wow. Clinton's win tonight is the biggest political story of my lifetime.

Wow.

Grace and legacy...

2008-01-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

If today's New Hampshire primary is as bad for Sen. Hillary Clinton as it looks like it could be - say a double digit loss to Sen. Obama - the next weeks/months will be highly instructive as to the genuine nature of the Clinton's.

I am not embarrassed to admit that I am one of the three people left (it sometimes seems) that believes the Clinton's are genuine. That they strive and live for public service. And they are more interested in the future of America than in amassing power. Maybe I am naive, maybe I am simple. But, in some ways, I have to believe that they are sincere.

I grew up in small towns in Arkansas. I came from no connections and no family name. My parents were teachers and I grew up middle-class/lower middle-class. The story of Bill Clinton is the great America dream. A boy with no name, no connections, no money, from no where of import - works hard, studies hard, and makes it. I have always seen a tiny bit of myself in that story. In the summer of 1991, I attended Boy State in Arkansas - and that weekend, while Gov. Bill Clinton was campaigning in New Hampshire and other places in anticipation for the 1992 election, I must have seen the Boy State picture of the young-Bill Clinton shaking the hand of President John Kennedy 50 times. I also grew up watching Hillary Clinton work on important causes long before there were any cameras or press people following her around. She didn't do it to seek power or fame, she worked because children and other folks needed help.

I always felt a connection to that story. I never had much, but (at least, I would say so myself) I worked hard, had a great first-career, began a wonderful family, went back to law school and had some success, and am basically living my life's dreams right now. In my own way, I made it. Just like the Clinton's made it. And yes, there are flaws and failings. For all of the mythology and inspiration of the story of Bill Clinton - which I am in awe of, there is also the character flaws and poor personal judgment - which I also know is true. And yet...

I have never bought in to the right-wing created charicature of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Manipulative, cold, calculating, out for nothing save more power. It's such an easy story, and the media has beaten us over the head with it for so many years now that - because perception is reality - it is accepted as true. But I've never bought it. They are vilified because they win. They are vilified because they exposed the falsity of conservative politics - that you don't have to use fear to win, that you can balance budgets while increasing social responsibility, that you can balance free markets and reasonable regulation - the list goes on and on. They were successful, so the right-wing had to paint them as monsters in order to offset the success. They are power hungry. They are manipulative. They mercilessly pounce on anyone who dares oppose them - and leave a trail of broken careers, hopes and dreams in their wake. But that is not what I see.

What I see are a supremely politically gifted, exceptionally intelligent, and improbably resilient couple. I see two people who - instead of pursuing lucrative careers in the private sector with those prestigious degrees they gained - choose to devote their lives to public service. State government service, children's defense, federal government service - the list goes on. They have lived lives of public service. I can't imagine that this was the easiest way of getting ahead - because my supposition is not that their primary motivation was to get ahead - rather to serve America.

But maybe I'm just naive.

I think that we'll find out for sure over the next month or so.

If indeed Obama wins NH today by double digits, I think he is without doubt in the driver's seat to be the Democratic nominee this year. How will the Clinton campaign respond? Although this may be an over-simplification, there are basically two options:

1. She can close this campaign with grace, work to unify the party, and both Hillary and Bill can take comfort and encouragement in the fact that Obama really is the continuation of the Clinton legacy. He is the new generation taking the torch from the last - as JFK spoke of so many years ago. Although for me, it seems too soon for such a generational shift in leadership, I was astounded to hear Jonathan Alter last night on the Charlie Rose Show mention that it has been 16 years since Clinton won in 1992, and it was 15 years between the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 and the election of John Kennedy in 1960.

Obama is, in many ways, the political descendant of the Clinton's. Unity, hope, fresh perspective. An understanding that ideological division is not what makes America great, but rather pragmatic ideas that work. That's what the Clinton's were in the 90s - a shift away from cold, trickle-down theory toward tangible, pragmatic action. Bill Clinton won because he was able to "re-find" those "Reagan Democrats," he appealed to Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans. That is Obama today. His new vision for America embraces progressives but reaches out to and welcomes those independents and Republicans who really are looking for a third-way. He is now the torch-bearer.

But that has to be very hard for Sen. Clinton (and the former President) to accept - because I'm sure they still believe they have so much service yet to give to America. But, if Obama does win big today, it likely means the Clinton era is ending, and a new generation begins. If Hillary accepts this gracefully, and pours herself into completing a positive campaign, unifying the party, I think it will do wonders to cement the legacy of public service that defines Bill and Hillary Clinton. Yes, she needs to continue in the campaign - if Obama stumbles, she needs to be the alternative (not John Edwards). But she needs to continue with grace, dignity, and with party-unity being the higher calling. She can go back to her work in the Senate with her legacy intact, if not strengthened.

Or...

2. She can prove the right-wing critics right. She can go desperately negative. She can fight and scratch and claw her way back into contention on Feb. 5. This might actually "work" in the sense of winning her the nomination. She might be able to sling enough mud to pull him back to the field and make him beatable. But it will lose the general election - so many Americans are energized and uplifted by Obama, that they would react strongly negatively to her. And, maybe more importantly, it will crystallize the legacy of Bill and Hillary as exactly what they are characterized as - power-hungry, manipulative, and with their own personal glory above that of their party and country.

Maybe none of this will apply. Maybe she'll surprise tonight and lose by 5 or so...be legitimately right back in it, and run her campaign on to victory. But if she is well-beaten tonight - I think we will really learn a lot about the true nature of the Clinton's.

Maybe I'm naive.

I really, really hope not.

UPDATE: Here is Alter's piece in Newsweek that he referenced last night on Charlie Rose: How Tomorrow Became Yesterday.

The 16 years since the Clintons grabbed control of the Democratic Party is the same amount of time that elapsed between the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945 and John F. Kennedy's Inauguration in 1961. It's a longer period than many of us would care to admit. Kennedy operated "in the shadow of FDR," as the historian William E. Leuchtenberg put it, and he updated the New Deal to the New Frontier. But Kennedy's main argument was that "the torch has been passed to a new generation." So it is today, with the aging baby-boom generation—symbolized by the Clintons—under pressure to move aside.

Coincidence...

2008-01-08T08:54:00.000-08:00

...I think not. Yesterday afternoon driving home from work I was listening to right-wing radio. In, literally, less than 15 minutes on two different shows, I heard three right-wing commentators use the word "narcissism" to describe Hillary Clinton's emotional moment yesterday. Three in less than 15 minutes. The first two came from the guest host of the Hugh Hewett show and his guest, Bill Kristol at around 6:10-12. The host said that he thought it was just an example of Clinton narcissism, and Kristol popped up and said great minds must think alike because he was on FoxNews earlier and had made the comment there that he felt this was simply the narcissism of Hillary Clinton. Then, at 6:17-20 Michael Savage made almost the same comment, chalking the moment up to "Clinton narcissism."

The right wing is nothing if not disciplined and on-message.

Let's HOPE this is a Beginning of something big...

2008-01-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

It is an exceptionally good night to be a Democrat. I have no idea if these types of voter turnout numbers can be maintained, but if so, it's the beginning of something big. And something great for America.

Congratulations to Sen. Obama. As long as I'm at it, congratulations to Sen. Edwards, Sen. Clinton, Gov. Richardson, Sen. Biden, and Sen. Dodd. The absolute '27 Yankees of political lineups.

Also, congratulations to Gov. Huckabee - I've never really hid my respect for him. I think he is genuine. I respect that - it doesn't mean I agree with everything he does, but the way he demonstrated that genuineness without organization and money can still overcome calculation and millions has my respect.

On to NH, and (hopefully) to more and more people coming on board the progressive bandwagon. There is still a long way to go, and now it will be much more interesting with Obama and Hillary going head to head.

It is an exceptionally good night to be a Democrat.

2007 in the News...

2007-12-31T10:54:00.000-08:00

Just for kicks, I've been thinking the past few days about what I thought have been some of the biggest news stories of 2007. Here is a list that I thought of - by no means in order of importance or chronology. Just some headline grabbers:

1. The Surge/Petreas Report/Iraq

Although this has fallen from the headlines of late, I think this was probably the biggest story of the year to me. The President's decision to increase troop levels in order to provide stability to generate a political settlement; the unquestioned success of the military in acheving that increased stability/decreased violence; Gen. Petraus and Ambassador Crocker testifying solely to the security side of the equasion; and finally, the Bush Administration, politicians, and the mainstream media completely ignoring the fact that, again, our military's steller success is being squandered by politicians who are unable to find settlement.

2. The '08 Presidential Nomination Campaigns

It's been a fun race with a surprising number of contenders for the nomination in both party's keeping the race wide open.

3. Iran

Both the increasing leverage and threat Iran poses as a legitimate regional hedgmon, and the intelligence community's surprising uprising against the Bush Administrations drum-beat to war on a third front.

4. Upheaval in Pakistan/Bhutto Assination

Pakisatan was already devolving, led by a military dictator ditinguishable from Sadaam Hussein only in degrees. The assination of Bhutto was tragic to a new middle class seeking legitimate democracy. The Bush Administration once again demonstrates its utter incompetence and lack of wisdom by un-hedged support of an anti-democratic dictator.

5. Resurgance of the Taliban in Afghanistan

Fueled by drug profits that the Bush Administration (in an all too familiar refrain) does not have the competence or intelligence to curtail, the Taliban and Al Queada is finding renewed strength in Afghanistan, where the US troops are stretched thin by the Surge in Iraq.

6. Mortgage madness/Sub-prime lending mess

I'm not convinced this will end up being as bad for the average American as the "If it Bleeds it Leads" media's bold-typed headlines would indicate, but there is no question that financial mismanagement and over-reaching has taken its toll on some of Wall Streets biggest firms.

7. The VT Shootings

Just a tragedy that defies explanation.

8. Oil Prices

With all the volitility in the world, this should not come as a surpise, but it flat out does come with upside. The higher oil prices reach, the more cost-efficient research into alternative fuels and alternative transportation becomes.

9. The Final Chapter of Harry Potter

It was somewhat sad, to me, to read the conclusion of this wonderful series. I've enjoyed every moment of it, and will probably continue to do so long into the future through re-readings.

10. Baseball's Steroid Scandal/Bonds' homerun record

Just ugly. The Mitchell report was damning, but it feels more like the closing chapter on a nasty era than the beginning of anything. And Bonds got his HR record, but received as little media attention (for the record) as could possibly be imagined.

11. AG/AG - The Improbable rise, and Cataclysmic Fall of Alberto Gonzalez

Just a mess of an Attorney General, Bush's fiercest Yes-Man could not withstand the cascading pressure of scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal.

12. Houston Dynamo Repeat as MLS Champions

Okay, this is much more local, and just a personal favorite, but to me, the improbale journey of this team from mediocre, at best, to repeast MLS Champs was really amazing. I've never supported a champion in any sport - and now I get two back-to-back. It's great, and it's all the better to support an organization that builds its team as a team, and players who really do define hard-working, team-first attitude. Good on you Dynamo - let's get another next year!

Out with the Old, In with the New...

2007-12-31T10:39:00.000-08:00

The final hours of 2007 are ticking by, and what a whirl-wind of a year it has been.

On a personal level, this has been one of the greatest years our family has ever experienced. We started the year by finding out we would soon be adding a second child to our family. We travelled to Florida in February to attend the wedding of a close friend. We spent spring-break in Idaho skiing with Shana's parents. The spring found me graduating from law-school and us buying a new home, complete with indoor washer/dryer and a big yard for the kids to play in (and dad to grill out).

The summer was a contrast of toil and fun - I spent much of the summer studying for and taking the Bar Exam, but in August we took our first-ever real vacation as a family - spending four days in San Antonio and Sea World - and later that month, the "big-kids" spending a glorious long-weekend on an island off the coast of Belize.

Not long after, Noah started his new school for Pre-K and I started work for my new law firm. The fall saw the leaving of my brother and his family - moving from Houston to New Jersey, but it also brought a new member to our family, Kennedy Kate, and the combination of fun and work that a newborn involves. I found out in November that I had passed the Bar Exam, and was finally sworn in to the State Bar of Texas. We traveled to visit my parents for a combination Thanksgiving/Christmas. Shana went back to work in December, and her family came into town to spend Christmas here.

It's been a wild year, but a great one. So many blessings in such a short time. It seems like the year literally flew by - and I know they won't be getting any longer as the kids grow (ever faster) and careers demand ever more time. Still - this is a glorious time for our family, and I hope we are appreciating it, and I hope we hold on to it for as long as possible.

Happy New Year.

Giving Credit Where Due...

2007-11-28T09:16:00.000-08:00

My last essay, and let's be honest, a great many of my posts to this blog, was an attempt to call out an example of what I consider to be one of the basic flaws of conservatism.

Yet, I have always hoped that my positions on issues are not mere partisan hack-ary. There are reasonable and intelligent conservative people and ideas that I respect, admire, and agree with. I have conservative friends that I enjoy talking issues with because they are thoughtful, they recognize nuance, and they are as willing to consider ideas that don't come from their "side" as I feel I am.

So, after railing against the Logic (or lack thereof) of the Conservative in my last post, here I am to promote the reasoned commentary, and yes - logic - of a conservative, David Brooks. In his NY Times op-ed column yesterday, Follow the Fundamentals, Brooks made some excellent points that I agree with - yet are conservative in nature. Exerpts follow:

Once upon a time, the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are rising out of poverty would have been a source of pride and optimism. But if you listen to the presidential candidates, improvements in the developing world are menacing. Their speeches constitute a symphony of woe about lead-painted toys, manipulated currencies and stolen jobs.
...
In the first place, despite the ups and downs of the business cycle, the United States still possesses the most potent economy on earth.
...
Second, America’s fundamental economic strength is rooted in the most stable of assets — its values. The U.S. is still an astonishing assimilation machine. It has successfully absorbed more than 20 million legal immigrants over the past quarter-century, an extraordinary influx of human capital. Americans are remarkably fertile. Birthrates are relatively high, meaning that in 2050, the average American will be under 40, while the average European, Chinese and Japanese will be more than a decade older.

The American economy benefits from low levels of corruption. American culture still transmits some ineffable spirit of adventure.
...
Third, not every economic dislocation has been caused by trade and the Chinese. Between 1991 and 2007, the U.S. trade deficit exploded to $818 billion from $31 billion. Yet as Robert Samuelson has pointed out, during that time the U.S. created 28 million jobs and the unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent from 6.8 percent.

That’s because, as Robert Lawrence of Harvard and Martin Baily of McKinsey have calculated, 90 percent of manufacturing job losses are due to domestic forces. As companies become more technologically advanced, they shed workers (the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs between 1994 and 2004).

Absolutely. Whether it is on the right or left, Demoratic or Republican presidential hopefuls - there is an irrational fear being preached of America's ability to compete in a world market. We can compete anywhere, anytime, in any arena - and politicians and commentators shouldn't grasp for the low-hanging fruit in order to scare people into votes. We don't need to be reactionary - we need to be leading.

Are there perils and downsides to globalization? Absolutely. But nothing that America cannot deal with - especially if we deal with it in a prudent, progressive way. But to bury our head in the sand and scream "It's Mexico's fault" or "It's China's fault" is no answer. As Brooks closes:

I’m writing this column from Beijing. I can look out the window and see the explosive growth. But as the Chinese will be the first to tell you, their dazzling prosperity is built on fragile foundations. In the United States, the situation is the reverse. We have obvious problems. But the foundations of American prosperity are strong. The U.S. still has much more to gain than to lose from openness, trade and globalization.

The Logic of the Conservative...

2007-11-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Redstate.com is a highly influential and widely read blog of the Movement Conservative wing of the conservative movement. Redstate is an excellent place to go read what it is that conservative extremists really think or feel.

Anyway, I read Redstate on occasion to learn what it is conservative extremists are focused on. A significant portion of the time, it's pretty much just about how Hillary is the most terrifying woman in the world, and on a completely different topic how Hillary is the biggest threat to the future of the United States.

Hey, at least they believe in variety.

Occasionally, they write about things other than an irrational fear of Hillary Clinton, and that is often when you can really get to see what it is that the extreme right-wing is thinking. See the logic that they use. And here is an excellent example of how fundamentally flawed conservative thought is today:

Exxon-Mobil's Net Income Declines

This is a post that decries the unfair negative impression the American people have had of the oil industry over the past several years. It is a defense of Big Oil, who are just struggling to get by - at least by the sound of this article. Look at some examples:

It's earnings season in the oil patch. While you might think this is news you could easily get in a lot of different places, there's a reason to call it out here, in a political forum.

That's because Exxon-Mobil's earnings sucked in the third quarter, and oil companies only make mainstream news when they do well.
...
Prices of refined products like gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel did not increase as much as crude oil prices. That puts a hurt on the other half of Exxon's business, which is refining and marketing. As a result, Exxon's net income in the third quarter was more than $1 billion less than it was in the third quarter of 2005.
...
And of course there are huge political implications to all of this. Remember a year ago, when Exxon (and others) were making record net income? What did the sainted tribune of the American people, Hillary Clinton, have to say about that? That's right, she felt that the government should help itself to some of Exxon's obscene profits, which they obviously stole from the pockets of you and me. I don't even want to remember all the boneheaded diaries we had to wade through here at RedState from people who believe that downstream operators in the US form a cartel that can set prices as they see fit.

So now that things aren't looking so obscenely good for Exxon, what is Dame Hillary going to be saying about it? My prediction is nothing.

(See, they can't stop talking about Hillary, even when they are not talking about Hillary.)

Anyway, doesn't that sound awful? Exxon is really struggling. We should really feel sorry for them, right?

Only by applying the logic of the extremist conservative. Why? Look:

Net income fell to $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, from $10.5 billion, or $1.77, a year earlier, Irving, Texas-based Exxon said in a statement. Revenue rose 2.8 percent to $102.3 billion, an all-time high.

No. You are not reading that wrong. Net income for XOM in the third quarter was 9.41 BILLION DOLLARS. Yes, that was lower than last year - but it is still 9.41 BILLION DOLLARS.

To the right-wing nutjob apparently: $9.41 billion = things not looking good financially.

Preposterous.

I simply believe that conservatism is fundamentally flawed. And this is an example of that. The (lack of) logic that must be engaged to equate $9.41 billion to poor earnings is simply foreign to us average, normal - dare I say THINKING - Americans.

Now, to be clear, I am a believer in the free market. Exxon-Mobil was able to make obscene profits in the third quarter - if that's what the market says, then more power to them. What I do NOT understand, is why our federal government continues to give Big Oil subsidies, when a down quarter for them is only $9.41 billion.

Why don't we use some of that subsidy money to increase medical research, increase education funding, or hey, why don't we do something crazy like fund SCHIP???

Nope, the conservative says. We can't afford to provide healthcare to 10 million children in our nation, because XOM had such a bad quarter, only $9.41 billion after all, they need those subsidies, and probably more.

That's the logic of the conservative.

A Great Idea...

2007-10-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm struggling with whether or not I should use the word "visionary" when discussing this new proposal.

Can something really be visionary if it is merely taking an idea from one place and extending it to a wider audience? On the other hand, if no one has suggested it or thought of implementing it, isn't that the very meaning of being visionary...seeing something that others don't yet - but soon will. Creative foresight to imagine something that isn't --- becoming?

Whatever you want to call it - this is a great idea: Clinton's 401K Proposal

[Hillary] Clinton laid out a proposal to provide a universal 401(k) plan for everyone, at a speech Tuesday in Webster City, Iowa.

She said the savings rate today is lower than it was in 1929, more than 75 million workers do not have employer-sponsored pensions to save for retirement and many people who do have retirement plans are not saving enough.

Under her "American Retirement Accounts" plan, everyone would have access to a portable 401(k) and the government would offer matching tax cuts of up to $500 to $1,000 to help middle class and working families save. The campaign estimates it would cost $20 billion to $25 billion a year to provide the matching tax cuts and said she would pay for it by freezing the estate tax at 2009 levels. "These accounts will take the best of the 401(k) plans and make them available to every working family," Clinton [said]. ...

Clinton said that like her health care plan, no one would be forced to set up these accounts and that people who like their current retirement accounts could keep them. She said the current government was subsidizing those who need it least, using about half of the nearly $200 billion spent yearly to encourage retirement savings to help the top 10% of earners and spending only 10% of that money to help the bottom 60% of earners.

Her plan would provide a matching refundable tax credit for 100% of the first $1,000 in savings for every married couple making up to $60,000 and would provide a 50% match on the first $1,000 of savings for couples making between $60,000 and $100,000 a year. The accounts would allow individuals to contribute up to $5,000 per year on a tax-deferred basis.

The credits would be available to all Americans in existing 401(k) type accounts as well as people who choose the accounts she proposes.

The plan would give new tax credits to small businesses to encourage them to provide retirement plans for employees. It focuses on creating competition among private firms that would drive more of them to provide marketable, secure plans, but that there would be an option of opening an American Retirement Account through "a publicly managed clearinghouse similar to the Thrift Savings Plan which Members of Congress can currently utilize". Those plans would be held and managed by private firms. ...

The accounts would allow penalty-free withdrawals for major investments like buying a home and paying for higher education or to help manage periods of unemployment.

Now there is a solid, enterprising, free market proposal that helps people, details how it will be paid for, and makes sense for millions of Americans.

I know that there is a large portion of the public that feels bitterness and distaste for Hillary...but it is not because of where she stands on the issues, or what she proposes, or how she intends to accomplish her goals for America. Instead, it is because of a charicature of her that has taken hold.

This is a brilliant idea. One that will likely soon be championed by politicians on both sides of the aisle. One that, hopefully, will soon be carried into fruition.

Hillary continues to propose rational, thoughtful, and achievable ideas about how we can improve our America. The more she does this, the less polarizing she becomes, and the less people accept the charicature. That's a pretty good idea too.

You don't introduce a new product in August...

2007-10-09T07:09:00.000-07:00

What an absolute disaster the Bush administration is. After the big "report" on all the improvement that is going on in Iraq we were sold a month ago, and how this is buying time for reconcilliation - now we get this: Top Iraqis pull back from key U.S. goal

For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in this broad goal.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

"I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

This is what Bush and the Republicans have sent more of our soldiers over to Iraq in the "surge" for - the "struggle about power." One in which the US is caught in the cross-fire.

The so-called "surge" - which really did nothing except push US troop levels in Iraq back to 2005 numbers - is not and will not be a failure because our military has been in any way ineffective. On the contrary, the military side of operation is generally successful - as is almost any US military operation, because we have the absolute best military in the world. Rather, this POLICY has been an unmitigated disaster because Bush and his advisors are fundamentally wrong on Iraq. We won the war - and we should have come home. Instead, he is attempting to advance American Empire around the world - and that foreign policy choice is a disasterous failure.

Iraq is a calamity. It has been an exercise in historically poor judgment. And it is telling that we are not learning from our failures. Look at this quote from the article:

"I, as deputy prime minister responsible for the portfolio of security and services, until now, have never been consulted on any security operation taking place in Iraq," said Salam Z. al-Zobaee, Iraq's second-highest Sunni official. "The Sunnis, even if they've been participating in the government, are still marginalized in decision-making." ...

Th[e] imperfect balance of power, deemed the "national unity government," entrenches these sectarian divisions and prioritizes a politician's ethnic or sect background above experience or ability, Iraqi officials say. The system makes selecting Iraqi ambassadors or cabinet ministers an exercise in horse-trading subject to bitter disputes.

For some reason, our President is asking the US military to arbitrate this conflict. It is not in the interest of our nation as we have existed for over 200 years. It is only in the interest of American Empire. Without political reconcilliation, the President's "surge" will be just as much a folly as the President's occupation of Iraq. This Administration simply does not learn from its mistakes - to all of our detriment.

Op-eds...

2007-10-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

There have been some good opinion colums the past couple of days from the NYTimes that I thought were notable:

8-Oct: Same Old Party

There have been a number of articles recently that portray President Bush as someone who strayed from the path of true conservatism. Republicans, these articles say, need to return to their roots.
Well, I don’t know what true conservatism is, but while doing research for my forthcoming book I spent a lot of time studying the history of the American political movement that calls itself conservatism — and Mr. Bush hasn’t strayed from the path at all. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.
...
Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: “Well, how did we get here?” They may tell themselves: “This is not my beautiful Right.” They may ask themselves: “My God, what have we done?”
But their movement is the same as it ever was. And Mr. Bush is movement conservatism’s true, loyal heir.

7-Oct: Why Democracy?

[D]emocracy is the only form of government that, at least theoretically, contemplates its own demise with equanimity. Democratic elections do not guarantee that the victors will be democratically inclined, and it is always possible that those who gain control of the legislative process will pass laws that erode or even repeal the rights – of property, free expression and free movement – that distinguish democracies from theocracies and monarchies. (Some would say that this is exactly what has been happening in the past six years.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fragility of a form of government that can alter itself beyond the point of recognition when he said that if his fellow citizens want to go to hell in a handbasket, it was his job to help them, even if he deplored the consequences. Democracy, then, can be said to be its own biggest threat.

Terrorism presents a parallel threat from the outside. The danger is not so much that terrorists will defeat democracies by force as it is that, in resisting terrorists, democracies will forgo the procedural safeguards (against warrantless detention, censorship and secret surveillance) that make a democracy what it is. (Again, some would say that is already happening today.) If terrorists can maneuver democracies into employing tactics indistinguishable from theirs, it could be argued that they have won no matter what the outcome on the battlefield.

7-Oct: Charge It to My Kids

Every so often a quote comes out of the Bush administration that leaves you asking: Am I crazy or are they? I had one of those moments last week when Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, was asked about a proposal by some Congressional Democrats to levy a surtax to pay for the Iraq war, and she responded, “We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.”

Yes, those silly Democrats. They’ll raise taxes for anything, even — get this — to pay for a war!
...
Previous American generations connected with our troops by making sacrifices at home — we’ve never passed on the entire cost of a war to the next generation, said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who has written a history — “The Price of Liberty” — about how America has paid for its wars since 1776.

“In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mr. Hormats, “Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.”

In his celebrated Farewell Address, Mr. Hormats noted, George Washington warned against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear.”

MLS has a serious problem...

2007-09-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

We were able to attend the Dynamo vs. Real Salt Lake match last night - the first Dynamo match myself or my family have been able to make in over a month. It turned out to be a very exciting match - four Dynamo goals with a hattrick by Nate Jaqua, and a late comeback by Salt Lake to see a final score of 4-3. It's not everyday you see a seven goal soccer match.

I realize that I am quite biased, but when the Dynamo are playing their best, they seem almost a cut above MLS. They have times of really beautiful soccer where they just slice the opposing team apart with quick, creative passing and smart runs. It really is fun to watch as a fan. Last night, for about an hour, they played like that. Given - RSL is the worst team in MLS, and have been for their 3 years in the league. But the Dynamo have shown that class in other games, against much better teams - a 4-0 victory over Chivas USA on a Thursday night springs to mind. Last night, I think the fourth goal (Jaqua's third) was evidence of the Dynamo at their best. Ricardo Clark took possession in midfield and played a quick, aggressive ball up to Dwayne DeRosario just to the outside and left of center of the penalty area. DeRosario turned nicely on it, and looked as if he might move to the center - but instead very quickly played the ball forward to the left, where Corey Ashe came running on it and played an early cross perfectly - it was a thing of beauty - to Jaqua storming in to the area. Jaqua very simply placed the ball in the back of the net for the goal. It was very fast, it was quick, one touch passing (there were a total of five touches from Clark to the goal - Clark's pass, DeRo's turn, his pass, Ashe's cross, the finish), it made RSL really look like amateurs - AND, it looked so simple. That's Houston at their best. If they can get healthy and harness that beautiful game for 90 minutes a night, they have a serious shot at defending the MLS Cup this year.

Having said all that - and watched a pretty exciting MLS match last night - MLS has a genuinely serious problem: The officiating in MLS is shamefully poor. No, I'm not just a fan railing about the bad calls his team gets. RSL got as many bad calls last night as the Dynamo, if not more. In fact, my concern isn't even due exclusively to Houston matches. I tend to watch quite a bit of soccer. Almost every MLS match I watch stands out because the officials are so poor - they are inconsistent, they do not keep tempers properly in check (which invariably leads to things getting chippy later), they consistently miss off-sides calls (both ways), and more than anything else - they just stand out. I've recently noticed that when watching English, or Italian, or Argentinean, or International soccer, I rarely if ever even notice the officiating crew. That is the way it is supposed to be. If they are doing their job professionally, they do not stand out, do not take away from the match.

MLS officials are rarely that way. The officials have simply not kept up to the professional standard of the league. The standard of play in MLS has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 12 years, the standard for the officiating has not. MLS leaders better take some steps to bring some professionalism to their officials, or this league will never achieve the respect it is pursuing.

Speaking of Republicans...

2007-09-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

I watched the Republican debate last night from New Hampshire - which conspicuously did not include Fred Thompson. Quick hit thoughts...

Winners -
Gov. Mike Huckabee - he is simply brilliant in these formats. While other candidates just seem to struggle in the large debate format (read: McCain, Tancredo), Huckabee shines. But - as I've been saying for some time - he is clearly running for VP, complimenting everyone of the "front-runners" and only taking on the other second tier candidates. Still, Huckabee is very, very good and has a real shot of becoming the "fourth" top-tier candidate replacing McCain.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani - he seems to be getting more comfortable with the whole debate thing each time out. I thought he was really effective last night - especially on the "family values" ambush question. (As an aside, I really thought the ambushes of Giuliani and Romney were poor.) He seems to be taking heat for his answer by some commentators today, but for me is was very effective - No, I'm not a saint, but I am a successful manager regardless of the trials of the personal side of life. Sounds like a leader to me.

Sen. John McCain - esasily the best debate performance I have seen by McCain. He almost seems to have his old "maverick" swagger back. But is it too little, too late? The conventional wisdom in both national and Republican circles seems to be that his campaign is dead. He has no traction with votes. He has no real "support." He simply has a block that feels it is his turn to run. That is not much to base a campaign on. Regardless, he flat showed up last night and showed signs of life. Now, he must use that performance as a spring-board to re-start his campaign.

Losers -
Gov. Mitt Romney - every indication is that Fred Thompson's entry into the race hurts Romney more than any other candidate. So, on the night that Thompson was so much the story, it was essential that Romney could shine, and keep the focus on him. To put it plainly, he failed. He rarely made an interesting or original point. He nevery stood out - although it appeared to me tha the was given considerably more time than the other candidates. He was robotic, over-scripted, and dull. A large opportunity lost.

Why Are They Still In It? -
Rep. Tom Tancredo - he is just so terrible in these formats. I have no idea what he is like as a campaigner generally, but he is terrible in the debates. He has utterly no organization to his thoughts. He is extremely poor at thinking on his feet. And he is disasterous at articulating his points. He serves no purpose in the debates, nor in the field of candidates more generally. Although, to be honest, it is sad that FoxNews gave more time to Ron Paul than it did to Tancredo. Although, Paul's libertarian-ism is more genuine than whatever it is Tancredo is supposed to represent.

Rep. Duncan Hunter - Yawn. Over and over. He is merely trying to secure a cabinet appointment, and isn't doing great at that. Yawn.

Overall -
On Charlie Rose the other night a reporter covering the 2008 Campaign made an interesting point. He mentioned that traditionally in his coverage of Presdiential elections Democratic voters tend to be pessimestic. On the other side, Republican voters have tended to be optimistic and looking forward to the election. To this reporter, this year that appears to be reversed. That sentiment summed up last night's debate to me. Other than Huckabee, the other candidates appear somehow off. They don't seem to inspire, rather they seem to beg for support. It's very odd. Among the "front-runnners" there does not appear to be anyone that draws strong support, rather the feeling is one of lesser-of-evils. That is how the debate felt to me - as if each of the candidates would rather appear less-of-a-loser than the other candidates, rather than the leader and winner. In addition, other than Giuliani, none of the men on stage seemed to give the impression of being a President. It's just an odd time for the Republican party, which is likely why so much stock is being placed in Fred Thompson.

Will this be a rallying point?...

2007-09-06T13:32:00.001-07:00

I think it is fair to say "finally" - Fred Thompson announced his canidacy for the Presidency today. See his website here and see the announcement here:

Will this finally be the rallying point for the Republican party. It is such a strange campaign on the Right this cycle, because there seem to be no candidates anyone is excited about. Everyone appears to be holding their nose and picking a candidate. Maybe Thompson will change that perception.

I thought this announcement video was terrific. He his the key issues - both national issues as well as Republican or traditional conservative issues. He - his very presence - carries a weight, gravity, and seriousness of a President. Something that the Republican field (outside Giuliani) is missing, and something the nation has missed for the past six years.

BUT, - there is always a but - so much of the Presidential campaign in the first two states of Iowa and New Hampshire is about organization. Being on the ground, signing up volunteers on the ground, getting out the vote, etc. Can Thompson do that? Does he have time? Are all the key experienced precinct leaders taken already? Those are critical questions.

I remember the last cycle so well. Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont had come out of nowhere running a grassroots national campaign and surprised the Democratic party base by taking big leads in the polls. But (again that but) the grassroots, netroots, national support did not translate into precinct by precinct organization in two tiny, fairly unrepresentative states - and his campaign was finished almost before it began.

The success or failure of Fred Thompson as a candidate will depend in large part - if not in entirety - upon his ability to organize support in these two tiny states. And that success or failure may call into greater question the wisdom of putting so much of our nation's decision on whom our Presidential candidates will be upon Iowa and New Hampshire - states that are not as urban as America, not as diverse as America, and simply not fully representative of us as a people. Yes, it may be traditional - but is it best?

It will be fascinating to watch the Thompson campaing get off the ground in the next couple of months - and to see how the Republican contenders react to it. One thing is certainly true, for the first time in months and months attention is back on the Republican side of the race instead of on the exciting Democratic candidates. Let's see if Thompson can keep the focus there over the long haul.

The Bush Legacy...

2007-09-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

“I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. But he added, “I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

From the new book Dead Certain by Robert Draper, as excerpted here in the New York Times.

I don't think any more need be added by me - it says enough on its own.

Watch an interview with the author on MSNBC's Harball with Chris Matthews.

New Format...

2007-08-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have "upgraded" the blog to a slightly different layout. I don't know if it is really an update or not, but I think there are some nice new features. If you have any opinion, criticism, or suggestion for the blog format, please comment and let me know.

Positives: This new layout allows for a whole LOT more links - and much easier managment of links. In addition, I really like the new feature where you can search the blog by topic Label (on the right under the links). I think that will be really useful. (Just FYI - I have gone back and added labels to a majority of my old posts, but there are still a few more to go.) Finally, I think this format provides a more useful Archive feature.

Negatives: There are a lot more links - maybe it's too many? Too bulky over on the right side of the blog? Also, I don't like the picture I have up at the top currently, and the way it does not stretch the entire width of the page. I'll have to work on that.

Anyway, I think overall, this new layout will be efficient and helpful. It's just hard getting used to new stuff - once you are so comfortable with the old. Anyway, comments about the format/layout of the blog are appreciated.

The Golden Age of America...

2007-08-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. -- Bill Clinton, First Inaugural Address

In the early 2000's, I used to make an argument to friends that history would one day look back on the last decade of the 20th century as the Golden Age of America. For almost a decade, America experienced a sort-of new Pax Americana - a time of peace and prosperity simply unrivaled in American history.

But that story is rarely if ever told today. Instead, over the past two years, crescendo-ing over the past six months, we are constantly bombarded by propaganda by the conservative right alleging that the Clinton Presidency accomplished nothing; was a do-nothing administration; did not do anything for America, etc. And people, apparently, are actually buying into this propaganda.

In my opinion, this is just a calculated attempt by the Right to cast dispersions on the Democratic Party in the run-up to Election 2008. More specifically, it is probably an attempt to de-legitimize the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by negating the accomplishments of Bill Clinton's administration. You see, Republicans...at least hard-core wingers...are running scared. They realize that America remembers what a good President was like, even thought we've had 6+ years of incompetence now. America is impressed by this slate of Democratic candidates who are willing to take our nation in a new direction. And more specifically, as America gets to know Hillary Clinton (not the right-wing caricature of her, but the actual candidate) they like her, they see her as a strong, intelligent, nuanced, and having the gravitas of a Commander-in-Chief. Heck, that is enough to give a conservative nightmares.

So they make stuff up. They try to convince regular folks, independents and traditional Republicans that the Clinton Presidency was a joke. That he accomplished nothing. Therefore, another Democrat - or Hillary herself - will accomplish nothing.

That simply could not be further from the truth.

Let me be honest - Bill Clinton was not one of America's "Great" President's. In my opinion, he will not go down in history as one of the top five, the "upper-echelon" if you will. And, it must be conceded that Clinton and his administration was unable to accomplish nearly as much in his second term as in his first - because of the most shameful, partisan witch-hunt in American political history. I don't excuse Clinton's affairs in office. It was wrong, and frankly pathetic. The lack of judgment regarding his personal life that he showed in office is enough, at least for me, to have knocked him out of the running for one of our Greatest Presidents, even if he had accomplished more than what he did. Having said that, his impeachment was nothing more than a political sham, and it took the focus away from the work of the American people.

But, the amazing thing is what was done in the 8 years of the Clinton Presidency. It is a truly amazing record, and one that has probably not been seen in the post-War era. To combat some of the revisionist propaganda about the lack of accomplishments of the Clinton era, below is a PARTIAL list of accomplishments and initiatives passed or put in motion during 1993-2000. Not everyone will agree politically that each of these items was a home-run. The point is the VAST amount accomplished during Clinton's two terms...especially when contrasted with the abysmal record of the past 6+ years.

Accomplishments of the Clinton Presidency
Domestic Legislation:
~ Family Medical Leave Act (1993) - unpaid leave to care for a newborn child or sick family member without losing jobs
~ Brady Bill (1993) - gun safety legislation
~ Creation of AmeriCorps (1993) - most significant public service program since the 1960s
~ Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit* (1993) - provided tax relief to millions of low-income working Americans
~ Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act* (1993) - raised taxes on the top 1.2%, lowered taxes for 90% of all small businesses and 15MM low-income Americans
~ Omnibus Crime Act (1994) - included supplemental funding to local governments for 100,000 new police officers
~ Paperwork Reduction Act* (1995) - streamlined federal government processes; reduced bureaucracy; saved tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money
~ Minimum Wage Increase* (1996) - was not increased again for 11 years
~ Defense of Marriage Act (1996) - allows state-determination of recognition of marriage
~ Welfare Reform (1996) - most significant welfare overhaul since the programs inception
~ Creation of the Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits* (1997) - makes two years of post-secondary education available to Americans at no cost
~ Creation of the Roth IRA* (1998) - tax savings for retirement

Economy (*Note: many of the economic and tax laws listed above play directly into this area):
The longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history - including:
~ Average economic growth of 4.0%
~ Creation of 25MM new jobs, 92% in the private sector (more than the previous 12 years combined)
~ Real Median Family Income increases (after falling each of the previous four-years, and having been stagnant since)
~ Unemployment reached its lowest level in 30 years (before Bush Admin changed the definition of unemployment to kick the long-term unemployed off the rolls)
~ Inflation at its lowest level since the Kennedy Presidency
~ Home ownership at 67%
~ 7MM fewer Americans in poverty than when Clinton entered office (lowest poverty rate in 20 years)
~ Largest increase in higher education funding since the GI Bill (expansion of federal loan and grant programs; Lifetime Learning Credit and Hope Credit which enable any American to achieve 2 years of post-high school education for free)
~ Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years
~ Largest budget surplus in US history (after inheriting the largest deficit in US history)
~ Lowest government spending as a share of the economy since 1966
~ Lowest tax burden as a percentage of family income in 35 years
~ Surplus used to pay down debt - $360BB worth of debt paid down (remember, at the end of Clinton's second term, the government was running a surplus and was projected to pay of the ENTIRE federal debt by 2009...four years later, the US had it's LARGEST budget deficit in history AND highest debt level in history)
~ Lowest federal debt since the 60s
~ Balanced budged for the first time since 1969

Trade:
~ NAFTA (1993) - established North American Free Trade Zone (Canada, US, Mexico)
~ Creation of the WTO (1995) - world-wide initiative, US was a leader in getting it done
~ Numerous other free trade agreements with Asia, South America, and others -
~ Normalized trade relations with China

Foreign Policy:
~ Agreed Framework with North Korea (1994) - kept N. Korea w/o nukes until Bush pulled out of the framework upon taking office
~ Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (1996) -
~ Containment of Iraq (1993-2000) - including numerous bombings to enforce the no-fly zone and prevent the re-emergence of weapons of mass destruction
~ Kosovo War (1999) - NATO run, US led
~ Mideast Peace Talks (1999) - attempt to end the 2d Intafada through diplomacy

Non-Legislative Initiatives:
~ One America Initiative - race relations initiative
~ Justice Department (FBI) investigated, found, and convicted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing terrorists

General Notes:
~ First Democrat to be re-elected to the Presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt
~ Highest end-of-Presidency approval rating since the end of WWII
~ Lowest crime rate in 26 years (overall crime rates went down each year during the Clinton era)
~ Lowest teen birth rate in 60 years
~ Lowest infant mortality rate in American history

That, my friends, is a record of accomplishment standing alone. It shines all the more brightly when placed in comparison to the last six years of the Bush Administration.

No, Bill Clinton was not one of greatest Presidents in American history. He's not in the top five. It's unlikely he cracks the top-10, although that is probably where the argument begins. The years of the Clinton era in many ways swept clean the mess and murk of the 70s and 80s, and left America stronger, safer, smarter, and more optimistic than it had been in a generation. As President, Bill Clinton accomplished as much or more domestically than any President in post-war America.

Yes, he had massive faults, poor judgment, and down-right wrong aspects of his personal life. And don't let this list convince you that I believe that everything on here was a great policy, or great decision. The point of this overview is not the wonderful things that Clinton did, but rather, the things that his Administration accomplished. Anyone can find these things using a simple Google search...but the concerted effort of the Right is to not allow people to think critically for themselves (or google for themselves) - they want to tell people what to think. Don't believe the hype about the "do-nothing" Clinton Presidency. It simply isn't true.

As President, Bill Clinton was massively successful, and massively accomplished.

The Clinton era was a new Pax-Americana, the Golden Age of our still-young nation.

Related Posts: Clinton Presidential Center

Thoughts...

2007-08-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

I felt the Democratic debate last night was one of the best debates I've ever seen. It was lively, on topic, and --- no really --- funny.

Keith Olbermann was a tremendous debate moderator. He asked very current questions, provided genuine respect and weight to the proceeding, but actually included some levity in the process. The "crowd" that the AFL-CIO provided all the rest needed to break many of the candidates out of their shell and provide an actual "debate."

Quick synopsis:

Winners -
Sen. Hillary Clinton - she was clearly a Commander-in-Chief among politicians. One slight mis-step (shouldn't say anything that's on the mind) - otherwise a commanding and imposing figure. She maybe the best politician in my lifetime.

Sen. Barak Obama - he did not dominate on his home turf, but he held his own. With expectations so high, that is an accomplishment. His mistake was taking on lesser candidates when Hillary should be his only focus.

Losers -
Former Sen. John Edwards - he should have been Labor's candidate...but he simply never made any inroads against the top candidates. His campaign for President is over. As for another office...

Gov. Bill Richardson - another forgetable debate performance. He is such a strong public servant, maybe I am simply expecting too much. But he is CLEARLY NOT the "anti-Hillary" candidate I was expecting. I got the clear impression he is "running" for VP.

Overall -
I am so impressed by these Democratic candidates for President. Frankly, if you take away Rudy Giuliani from the Republican side, I think that there are five or six Democratic candidates that clearly surpass the Republicans as far as resume, gravity, leadership, and genuine "Presidential-ness" goes. I can see Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, and Biden as President. Let's be honest, outside of Rudy, none of the Republican candidates look like a President - McCain...does he even know who he is anymore? Romney...he seems little more than a suit trained to be a politician. Anyone else?!?

This is the strongest Democratic party of my lifetime. I'm a Hillary supporter, and I think she has what it takes to win the nomination and be our next President - but beyond her, there are so many Democratic candiates that I can be happy supporting - it's an embarrassment of riches!!!
___

Please go look that this website and organization - Center for American Progress. I've had this site bookmarked for about three-plus years now - it's time you do to.
___

Take a look at this US Senate candidate: Rick Noriega.

Link

Link

Is there anything else you want from a public servant?

The Right Battlefields...

2007-07-22T12:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight is THE night...

2007-07-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Okay - all you Harry Potter fans...we're just hours away.

Well, you are. As for me - I haven't bought the books in hardback, so I'll either have to borrow from someone, or wait about a year...yeah, I think I'll be borrowing.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed with Scholastic and Ms. Rowling for issuing the final book in the Harry Potter series the weekend before the BAR EXAM! Hello - a little consideration for us future barristers out here Ms. Rowling...how can we be expected to pass the Bar with you putting the book out right before?!?

I, for one, will be self-disciplined and not read Deathly Hallows until after the exam. How in the world I will keep from having the ending spoiled for me, I have no idea. But since I spend about 12 hours a day cooped up in a library now, I think I can manage.

Since the day is upon us, I want to link to (re-posted below) the blog entry I wrote after finishing the Half-Blood Prince - Harry Potter spoiler alert... (from 1-Dec-2005).

As I said at that time - I have not and do not read Harry Potter rumor/speculation/fan websites. I know that there is massive questions surrounding whether Harry makes it out of the series alive - and I have my opinion on that too (which has changed as I have re-read Half-Blood Prince in the past few days). But I'm still more interested (and was a year and a half ago) in the fate of another character.

As is mentioned - potential spoiler alert both for happenings in Half-Blood Prince (if there is anyone left who hasn't read that) and for speculations on the finale.

Happy reading to all of you who will start just after midnight tonight --- Don't Spoil It For Me!!!!

______________________________________________________

SPOILER ALERT

This week I finished reading the latest in the Harry Potter series of books - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I was fortunate to be able to get this in over the Thanksgiving holiday - now that I'm in school I very rarely have much time for reading for pleasure. I borrowed Half-Blood Prince from a friend and was about 100 pages into it, a week or so ago, but I was totally lost. There were characters and story lines being referenced which I had absolutely no recognition of. So, then I decided that I needed to go back and read
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix again, because I literally did not remember a thing about that book. That is kind of a scary proposition - the fact that you have read a book before and could not remember a single event, character or plot twist only a year or two later. I console myself thinking about how the thousands of pages of legal cases I've read since then has simply pushed these stories from my mind...but I'm really just worried I'm getting old.

Well, if you've read Half-Blood Prince, you know there are some - shall we say - twists and turns, or surprises in store. Well, I want to talk about some of those surprises a little bit in this post...

So, WARNING - PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD.

If you have not read Half-Blood Prince, but intend on doing so, please stop reading this now - because I am going to write about somethings that happen that you will not want to know before you read. If you do not want to spoil the plot of Half-Blood Prince stop reading now.

Also, WARNING - FUTURE PLOT CONJECTURE AHEAD.

The purpose of this post is I have some ideas kicking around in my head about something that may happen in the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter books - and if I'm right, it may well not surprise you as much when you read that book. So, if you do not want to face the possibility of a surprise of Book 7 potentially being revealed here, stop reading now.

SPOILER ALERT

Okay, as I mentioned, after reading Half-Blood Prince, I got to thinking about the ending, and something came to me that might be an important part of the final book - and I want to record that here so that, in two years when the final book comes out, I can verify if I was correct or not. I do want to add here - I do not read Harry Potter websites - so if this is a very common theory of what is happening in the books, then I apologize for not citing those sources, but this comes simply from my thoughts about the books, not anything external I've read.

SPOILER ALERT

As you know if you have read Half-Blood Prince, Professor Dumbeldore (Hogwarts Headmaster, and mentor/protector of Harry Potter) dies toward the end of the book. That was a bit of a surprise - not completely, but to some extent. What was much more surprising to me was the source of his death - he was killed by the killing curse by none other than Hogwarts Professor Severus Snape. Snape is a former Death Eater, who had turned spy for the Order of the Pheonix (those whom fight the antagonist in the books - Lord Voldemort). But many in the Order - if not all other than Dumbledore - still did not trust Snape. They felt he was still too entwined in the Dark Arts, and was really still a follower of Voldemort. But Dumbledore steadfastly trusted Snape, and refused to listen to anyone's doubts of Snape's pure loyalty.

And yet it was Snape who administered the curse which killed Dumbledore.

What to make of this. Well, clearly, the idea from the book is that Harry and the other members of the Order were correct all along about Snape - that he was still evil, still following Voldemort, and that Dumbledore was wrong to trust him.

I do not think this is the case. I think Snape is still loyal to the Order, and that even now - having killed Dumbledore and on the run back to Voldemort - he will be acting as spy.

How can that be?

My conjecture is that Dumbledore had a reason to put his trust in Snape fully. What kind of a reason - an Unbreakable Vow. We learn in Half-Blood Prince about these Unbreakable Vows that bind the two oath takers together to the point that death will result if the Vow is broken. What if - and it is a big what if - Dumbledore had convinced Snape to take an Unbreakable Vow of loyalty to him, to the Order, and against Voldemort, but always as spy, never revealing his true loyalties - even if that meant he had to kill Dumbledore in front of other Death Eaters to remain with his access to Voldemort.

This is how I support such a conjecture:

1. Dumbledore never waivered in his support of Snape. In the books, has Dumbledore ever been proven wrong about such a massive point? No.

2. When Harry was chasing Snape and Malfoy from the Hogwarts grounds, Snape fought back only with defensive spells. If he was truly working for Voldemort, there is no reason not to kill Harry at that point - after all he had just killed Dumbledore.

3. My idea is that Dumbledore knew that in order to defeat Voldemort, Harry would need someone on the inside to do something, which will provide Harry the access to kill him. My gut feeling is that at this point, Dumbledore felt his life was less important than Snape's in defeating Voldemort - Snape has to be there in order to accomplish the Feat, the Something which will enable Harry to end the War. Harry doesn't know this. The Order doesn't know this. But Snape does, and he will accompolish the Feat just before he himself perishes - and is redeemed - in the final book.

Who knows. Maybe Snape is just evil. But I think that Dumbledore had a master plan, and he saw his sacrifice as simply a piece of that plan.

We shall see.
______________________________________________________

Watch in awe at the acting ability...

2007-07-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

This video is from the Hillary Clinton campaign website - HillaryClinton.com. I think they were clearly destined to be politicians and not actors...

Having said that - this really is a funny spoof of the Sopranos finale. Good stuff...

Beckham...

2007-07-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Today, David Beckham joins the LA Galaxy and MLS.

David Beckham is a soccer player - maybe you've heard of him? Yes, I think it's fair to say that most people have at least heard of him and - even if not familar with his resume - know that he's a footballer.

Is Beckham in MLS going to work out? Who knows. The day this was announced last spring - and the money was disclosed - I was skeptical, but hopeful. There are so many shades of the NY Cosmos (of the long-defunct NASL) signing Pele in the 70s - big name, loads of money, big crowds, media attention - but an absolute wreck of a business plan and the league blew up just years later.

Beckham will be getting somewhere between $30 and $50 million over five years from the Galaxy and MLS - and somewhere around $200 million in profit-participation and additional endorsement deals. Spending that kind of money on soccer in America is a MASSIVE risk.

But you have to take big risks to reap big rewards.

Addidas and the Galaxy announced yesterday that they have already sold over 250,000 Beckham jerseys. They have increased season ticket sales by 4,000 plus. MLS got their first paying TV contracts. A five year, 8-figure new jersery sponsorship.

This just might work out. And not ONLY due to the dollar and cents...

"It's not a big brand thing," Beckham insists. "It's about me being the ambassador for MLS. If I can make people more aware and make kids realize that you can go into higher levels and make a great living from playing soccer, that's what I'm going over there to do."

Everything this guy is saying about the game, the game in America, and growing the sport is right. Does he really believe it? Is he really here for an early retirement - or acting - or his wife's career? That is the question. But, if he's genuine...wow...

This could pay off because he puts soccer and MLS in the minds and on the lips of millions of Americans who never would have before. More kids play, more fans watch, more folks buy jerseys, more investors want to buy teams... all of that takes time - but those are the lasting impacts that could make this deal pay off beyond the financial concerns. Pay off by truly making soccer a "major league" sport in America.

The key difference between Pele and Beckham is this - Pele was brought here to grow soccer on the sports map in America. But there was no foundation, no infrastructure, so fertile soil if you will, to grow the sport...and so the attempt did not sick, the seed didn't grow.

Beckham doesn't have to establish soccer in America. Soccer IS established now - we've got a strong league, with financially savvy owners, expansion, stadium construction, good players, a strong national team, etc., etc., etc. Now soccer in the US has a foundation, an infrastructure - fertile soil. So now, the hope is that Beckham will really be the seed that grows US soccer into a whole new realm of popularity, credibility, and significance.

I was very skeptical of this deal - but the leaders of MLS (managment and the investors) have been such solid cultivators of the league - I think this is a big risk that just might pay unimaginable rewards.

Related links:
The Americanization of Beckham - Sports Illustrated (Grant Wahl)

The Beckham Circus Comes to Town - Time

MLSnet.com introduces David Beckham - MLS

Beckham's arrival changes the MLS landscape - ESPN

I'm confused. I thought right-wingers were FOR prayer...

2007-07-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

Talk about an ironic man-bites-dog story:

Hindu prayer in Senate disrupted

A Hindu clergyman made history Thursday by offering the Senate's morning prayer, but only after police officers removed three shouting protesters from the visitors' gallery.

Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., gave the brief prayer that opens each day's Senate session. As he stood at the chamber's podium in a bright orange and burgundy robe, two women and a man began shouting "this is an abomination" and other complaints from the gallery.

Police officers quickly arrested them and charged them disrupting Congress, a misdemeanor. The male protester told an AP reporter, "we are Christians and patriots" before police handcuffed them and led them away.

For several days, the Mississippi-based American Family Association has urged its members to object to the prayer because Zed would be "seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god."
...
Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the protest "shows the intolerance of many religious right activists. They say they want more religion in the public square, but it's clear they mean only their religion."

I am a Christian who believes in the clear separation of church and state. One of the reasons is this right here. If I would choose not to have my child exposed to Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or any other sorts of prayers in public school, or public events; why would I be so arrogant as to exect Hindus, Muslims, Jews, or anyone else to accept forced exposure to the prayers of my religion? The arrogance and hypocracy of screaming for public prayer, then screaming when it's not your prayer being offered.

A little more relationship with God, and a little less of using 'god' as an election tactic would serve right-wingers well.

Poor timing...

2007-07-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

Bush admits administration leaked CIA name

President Bush on Thursday acknowledged publicly for the first time that someone in his administration likely leaked the name of a CIA operative...

"I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person," Bush said. "I've often thought about what would have happened if that person had come forth and said, 'I did it.' Would we have had this endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? ..."

Now - this is a perfect example of a conservative "taking responsibility" for something: too little, far too late, and focus on the money rather than the truth...

Sigh...I wish this was Surprising...

2007-07-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

Former surgeon general says he was muzzled

The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. ..."

Systematic corruption. Nothing you wouldn't expect from this President.

Historically Pathetic...

2007-07-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush is a terrible President - one of the worst (if not the worst) in our nation's history. But his action today sinks this Presidency to an even lower level.

Bush spares Libby from 2 1/2-year prison term

Not only did the President lie to the American people about firing anyone associated with the leaking of the name of a CIA agent, it appears to me that he has now made himself complicit in that crime, by commuting the prison sentence of the high-level White House official convicted as a part of those events, which were intended to strong-arm and discredit a vocal opponent of the Administration.

The behavior of this President is dispicable and will be a part of his legacy. This is a sad day in our nation's history, when a President wants again puts power and control above the good of our nation - probably more so than our nation has ever seen (yes, including Nixon and Watergate). When you add into Bush's tragic legacy the fact that his administration condoned and advocated torture, condoned and advocated the holding of prisoners without charges, and the fact that he is now asserting executive privilege in regard to White House involvement in the political firings of US Attorney's - this is the most corrupt Presidential Administration since Warren Harding - if it has not already eclipsed Harding's pervasive levels of corruption.

The disasterous entagling intervention, invasion, and occupation in Iraq is tragic. The utter lack of planning for the occupation, and no clue as to how to extract our military will be pointed to by future generations as a lesson in how not to use and abuse our military. The monied interests dictating legislation (energy policy, medicare drup policy, bankruptcy reform, etc.) to a compliant White House has surpassed all that our government has ever experienced. And corruption spread so wide, and so deep it simply DEFINES this President has his Administration.

This - all this mire and muck - will be the legacy of George W. Bush.

Out of Touch...

2007-05-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

It seems to me as if life seems to come at you in waves. There are long periods of relative steadiness - then, WHAM - sudden chaos.

That's what I'm experiencing right now. Just when I felt we had been in a bit of calmness and steadiness in our lives - EVERYTHING CHANGES.

Deciding to send our son to a brand new school...

Expecting a new child...

Law School finals...

Doctorate Graduation...

Studying for the Bar Exam...

Purchase of a new home...

ALL AT ONCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a very hectic time, but this is life. This is the way it seems to go. It is not "easy," but it is always more than you expect.

Our family's life is changing quickly - and we are excited about our future.

There are, however, a lot of things going on that I would love to be writing about - the politicization of the Justice Department; the attempt at Immigration Reform; the Texas 10% graduates policy; the press-privilege in Texas issue; etc. Hopefully, I'll be back at it soon - but right now, it's just too much.

The Texas Bar Exam is in late July - as much as I love Oil & Gas and Trusts & Wills, I regret that I will likely be spending more time on those topics than on things I'd like to write about. But, this is life, and there is nothing I would trade for it.

Recently, I have taken to a little ritual with my son Noah each morning. Before we go to school, I stop him in our morning preparations and first I ask him to shut his eyes and think about one thing, and secondly, ask him a question.

First, I ask him to shut his eyes and think about him being a good boy, and how proud his teachers will be of him if he listens to them and if he learns and listens to them through the day; and how he his friends will be so happy if he is nice to them, and treats them well, and puts their interests ahead of his. I also tell him how proud I and his mom will be of him if he is on his best behavior all day, and he listens to his teachers, learns as much as he can, and is the best friend that he can be to his friends during the school day.

Secondly, I ask him to tell me three things that he is thankful for that day. That is such a beautiful and wonderful question. It differs every day -sometimes it's his toy cars, sometimes his piano (a keyboard he got from his grandparents for Christmas), and sometimes it is his mommy. But the most mornings, just like this morning, it was the following:

1. I'm thankful for Jesus saving our sins and love.

2. I'm thankful for God loving us.

3. I'm thankful for Jesus rising.

Let me be honest, I have no idea how much Noah really "knows" or "believes" these things. But what I do know is that he regularly gives me these answers - in this order - when I ask him this in the morning.

Sometimes, life seems so fast and furious that we're rarely doing more than treading water. But then for moments - even if it's brief and relatively rare moments - it seems like maybe we are making progress amidst all the chaos. As much as I care about the myriad of issues and challenges that face us all these days... really all we can do is make a difference a little at a time.

I've always believed that changes are brought about from the bottom up. Family, Church, Community, City, State, Nation. That is how I have felt differences were made. In the midst of a blinding amount of upheaval and change in life, it is centering to hear your child say that Jesus is one of the things he is thankful for.

I can't seem to find the time to write everyday about all the things I think and feel about. But - I HOPE - I am imparting everyday the things that are true and important --- to my little boy and to everyone I come in contact with. That may not change the world, but it may change people.

That is enough for me.

Kids Today...

2007-05-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

What an article from the NY Times today: Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard

This makes me both scared, and hopeful to be a parent these days. Scared because of all the pressure to compete and exel kids are under; hopeful because I'm convinced that good kids will ultimately excel - and hopefully keep a little bit of innocence and wonder as well. Read the whole article, but here is a bit:

ON a Sunday morning a few months back, I interviewed my final Harvard applicant of the year. After saying goodbye to the girl and watching her and her mother drive off, I headed to the beach at the end of our street for a run.

It was a spectacular winter day, bright, sunny and cold; the tide was out, the waves were high, and I had the beach to myself. As I ran, I thought the same thing I do after all these interviews:
Another amazing kid who won’t get into Harvard.

...

Actually, meeting the soon-to-be rejected makes me hopeful about young people. They are far more accomplished than I was at their age and without a doubt will do superbly wherever they go.

Knowing me and seeing them is like witnessing some major evolutionary change take place in just 35 years, from the Neanderthal Harvard applicant of 1970 to today’s fully evolved Homo sapiens applicant.

There was the girl who, during summer vacation, left her house before 7 each morning to make a two-hour train ride to a major university, where she worked all day doing cutting-edge research for NASA on weightlessness in mice.

When I was in high school, my 10th-grade science project was on plant tropism — a shoebox with soil and bean sprouts bending toward the light.

These kids who don’t get into Harvard spend summers on schooners in Chesapeake Bay studying marine biology, building homes for the poor in Central America, touring Europe with all-star orchestras.

Summers, I dug trenches for my local sewer department during the day, and sold hot dogs at Fenway Park at night.

...

I see these kids — and watch my own applying to college — and as evolved as they are, I wouldn’t change places with them for anything. They’re under such pressure.

...

But I’ve stopped feeling bad about the looming rejection. When my four were little, I used to hope a couple might go to Harvard. I pushed them, but by the end of middle school it was clear my twins, at least, were not made that way. They rebelled, and I had to learn to see who they were.

I came to understand that my own focus on Harvard was a matter of not sophistication but narrowness. I grew up in an unworldly blue-collar environment. Getting perfect grades and attending an elite college was one of the few ways up I could see.

My four have been raised in an upper-middle-class world. They look around and see lots of avenues to success. ...

That day, running on the beach, I was lost in my thoughts when a voice startled me. “Pops, hey, Pops!” It was Sammy, one of my twins, who’s probably heading for a good state school. He was in his wetsuit, surfing alone in the 30-degree weather, the only other person on the beach. “What a day!” he yelled, and his joy filled my heart.

Republican Presidential Debate...

2007-05-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

I recorded and re-watched the Republican Presidential Debate tonight from the Reagan library in California.

I was taking notes - but it got late, so let me just give a few general impressions broken into categories -

Positive -
Brownback - Wow - I would never have expected it, but I thought he came off really, really well. Much better than I expected. I thought he seemed composed, rational, and direct. Easily the best of the second tier.

Romney - Incredibly smooth and positive; almost too smooth in that it almost seems contrived, but he was impressive.

Giuliani - This was an incredibly difficult situation for him because he is the most moderate of the Republicans, yet he stood his ground, and was strong - and yet got his points across clearly. He managed a difficult situation well as the front-runner.

Negative -
McCain - Shockingly bad; he warmed up a little bit as things went along, but frankly, he didn't look remotely like a President, and I think he won't make it to the primaries.

Tancredo - Simply looked out of his league; he was so choppy and utterly unable to get his point across; I thought his campaign was about taking extreme conservative stands, but I simply have no idea what he was trying to do tonight

Who? - I'm going to divide this into two sections - First, those who gave it a valient effort, and then those who were just invisible...

Gilmore - when he was actually asked a question, I thought he did fairly well, even though I've never even heard of him before; he always seemed poised, strong, and have ideas...but he was rarely given much of a chance

Huckabee - He was what he always is - full of character and leadership - yet he simply was not given a chance to really expand on anything - it was always in brief questions that were not in his wheelhouse

Hunter - simply did not stand out, he looked like a Congressperson, not much more

Paul - diligently advocated the Libertarian position - which was different, but that was the only thing that made him stand out

Thompson - disappointing; he was just barely there, there was simply nothing whatsoever impressive about him

Overall -
Romney
Brownback
Giuliani
Huckabee
Gilmore
Hunter
McCain
Paul
Thompson
Tancredo

Who looked Presidential?
Romney
Brownback
Guliani

Who benefits?
Romney - won the debate, solidifies position, will take supporters from those who didn't do great
Brownback - stood about among the 2d tier
Guliani - as long has he can do this - fight against the right-wing effectively - he will be nominee

Who stumbled?
McCain - Ugh...he won't make it to the primaries
Thompson/Huckabee (because he made no splash) --- these two guys I thought could be dark horses, and they didn't stand out - it's over for them

Similar to the Democratic debate of last week - this just goes too fast to give any of these guys a chance to really come off well...so the key is not to come off poorly. Romney and Guliani accomplished that - McCain simply did not.

Standing for Nothing...

2007-05-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here studying for finals (my LAST finals - HOORAY!!!!)... anway, I'm listening to some old Caedmon's Call as I try to get my mind around Bankruptcy law, and as I was listening - I was really touched by the following lyrics from their song Standing Up for Nothing, off their 1997 (10 years ago - I am so old) self titled album:

I've never seen my congressman
But I can't deny that he exists
'Cause I've seen his legislation pass
I've seen his name on the ballot list
Same I can't deny this fallen world
Though not my home it's where I live
How can I preserve and light the way
For a world that I can't admit I'm in

'Cause I know who you say you are
But these crows can't be made to stop
So I'll sit denying by this fire
I ain't standing up for nothing

Lack of interest leads to
Lack of knowledge leads to
Lack of perspective leads to
Lack of communication leads to
Lack of understanding leads to
Lack of concern leads to
This complacency denotes
This approval denies
The truth

On Monday night, my wife and I were having a conversation with some friends in which we were discussing the idea of ideas - or maybe to put it better, the way that some Christians seem to be overly defensive or downright militant against discussion of ideas or thinking that is different than ours. My friend said something terribly insighful - we have no reason to fear others' thoughts or opinions, as long as we are firmly rooted in the things we believe. As a Christian, I do not have to be defensive about - or withdraw from discussion or debate with - people who disagree with me. In fact, in pulling away and refusing to address people and ideas that are contrary to our own - we end up standing up for nothing. That's not to say that we will necessarily agree with others all the time - in fact, I think the faith that I hold means that very often my thinking may be very different than non-Christians. Yet, that doesn't mean that I will avoid those discussions, conversations and disagreements.

It is my job as a Christian to acknowlege this world - and in so doing, light the way for others. It's not mine to dig my head in the sand and deny, deny, deny.

Lack of interest, knowledge, communication, and understanding denies the truth.

First Democratic Debate...

2007-04-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

I am currently watching the first Democratic Presidential debate from South Carolina. I'm going to post some of my thoughts as the debate goes on - although this will post when the debate is over...remember, these are quick hit thoughts, and written on the fly... (+ indicates that I noted it was a really top notch answer):

Round 1 - Iraq
Clinton - Steady; Looks authoritative; didn't answer the question (was Reid right in saying the war was lost); conceded to Obama on a rebutal - GREAT move, made her look deferential yet forceful

Edwards - Smooth; good answer on Iraq (foreign policy can be his weak spot)

Biden - very off the cuff; spontaneous

Obama - Slow start, but recovered well - good, but expected, position on Iraq

Kucinich - same old, same old on anti-war; he just doesn't seem Presidential

+ Richardson - Wow, made stronger impression on Iraq that I expected; no funding; leave by 31-Dec-07; specific three point plan on what to do when the soldiers came home on 31-Dec; only specific plan answers

Dodd - unremarkable

Gravel - "this fraudulent war was lost from the beginning;" old codger; law to make it a felony to stay in Iraq

Note: Clinton given two rebuttals - no one else

R2 - Perceptions in the Public
Obama - Corruption in Campaign - Smooth, in a tricky spot

Edwards - Haircut/Wealth - nice job of twisting this into running to give the same chances to all Americans as those he has had; Hedge Funds - markets are instrumental in getting rid of poverty

Clinton - Hedge Funds - we have an enterprising economy; basic answer

Richardson - AG AG, didn't call for resignation because he's hispanic - Took this right back to AG's failings

Dodd - Washinton insider - Proud of his pubic service; we've had 6 years of a President going through on-the-job-training, maybe we could use an insider

Kucinich - Anti-war candidate - Choppy answer; pushing his anti-war position genuinely

Biden - Gaffe-machine - Yes (first laugh-line)

Gravel - Doesn't matter if he gets elected - Scared of the rest of these guys; no nukes

+ Clinton - Unfavorable Republican view - ask them; Health Care, still have the scars from that battle; Republicans are worried, and that is why they are so vitriolic; promotes universal health care, energy independence, climate-change initiatives, corruption of Bush years, internatinoal alliances, not alienations; Serious - good answer

Notes: Clinton given two questions; Gravel is an utter embarrassment

R3 - Domestic Issues
Edwards - Abortion - This decision (the recent late-term abortion SCOTUS decision) shows just how important the Presidency and appointments to SCOTUS are; difficult decision that must be respected

Obama - Abortion (most of America agreed with decision) - would not agree; he would trust women to make the decision; then - really nicely - turned to prevention and other issues that would reduce abortions without bans

Biden - Litmus test on R v. W - no specific test, but nominees must share my values and understand there is a right to privacy; bad decision with dishonest reasoning; the late-term procedure itself is bad, but the decision was bad

Kucinich - Litmus test - yes, but the focus should be on other things: living wage, preventive care is support for life; listen to those opposed to abortion in order to be a healer on the issue; respect and protect women but listen to opposing views

Dodd - Regret voting for Roberts - No; disppointed but no - he didn't do what he said he'd do (respect precedent)

Richardson - Model SC Justice - Byron White (moderator says "alive") - Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Dodd - Model SC Justice - since Brennan is excluded (by moderator); Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Edwards - Model SC Justice - Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Stephen Breyer

Clinton - did govt fail at VT - YES; while respecting gun owners rights, improve gun regulation especially to mentally ill

Richardson - NRA favorite - Protection of gun rights is important in the west; moved to mental health and enforcing background checks

Show of Hands - who has had a gun in the house as an adult: Gravel; Biden; Dodd; Richardson; Kucinich(?!?)

Biden - what could federal govt have done for VT - (I owned a shotgun, not just a handgun); Assault weapons ban should not have been allowed to lapse; close the gun sho loophole; focus on mental illness

Notes: No one really hit a homerun; Obama's not standing out

R4 - Health Care (HC)
Edwards - What taxes will be raised to pay for your HC plan - Repeal the Bush tax cuts on anyone over 200k; I have a specific, different HC plan

Obama - How to pay for plan - (doesn't answer, just discusses plan); Pool to buy into like Congress; must control costs; preventive care; technology; catrostophic coverage

+ Clinton - Pay for plan - (doesn't answer) - Experience of fighting for a plan; Control and decrease costs for all, including those with insurance currently; save monies in the current system before we transform to a new system

Richardson - No taxes? - No - don't want to raise taxes to pay; as Governor deal with this issue every day: 1. Cut existing beuracracy; 2. Share savings throughout system; 3. Prevention; 4. clean up inefficiencies (insitute HC Info System); 5. reinstate Dr./Patient relationships

Biden - NAACP ban on SC due to flag - more important to show of the capabilities of the people of the host historic black college, than to avoid the state

Obama - Conf. flag - Confederate flag belongs in a museum; but there are bigger issues on the table to discuss tonight - black infant mortality rates/poverty; deferred to "Hillary"

Notes: Obama finally warming up; Clinton carries the air of a President; Richardson focusing on specifics all night

Rd5 - Serious Mistake in the Past 4 Years
Gravel - Wouldn't have held the youth of the other candidates againist them

Kucinich - Years ago, fired the Cleveland Police Chief live on local news

+ Clinton - not enough time to list all mistakes; HC message; believing the President was going to go to the UN and listen to inspectors

+ Obama - when first arrived in Senate; left after debate on a law re: Schaivo - should have stayed and had a full debate/vote

Biden - overestimating the competence and underestimating the arrogance of Bush administration

Edwards - Voting for the war; lesson = listen to own judgment

Dodd - Voting for war

Richardson - too impatient, has tried to force changes, including a minimum wage in NM when should have used diplomacy

Rd6 - Miscellaneous
+ Clinton - Amnesty for immigrants - Comprehensive immigration reform including additional enforcement, helping states pay for costs of illegals, get 12MM immigrants out of the shadows so we know who is here, give current residents a chance to pay a fine, pay their taxes, learn English and get in back of the line to become citizens

Biden - Tech degrees/brain drain - Change the way we educate our children; smaller class sizes and better pay for teacher to get better teachers

Dodd - Welfare drug tests - No; over-tested all over; addition is an illness; show respect and compassion

+ Edwards - Oil Comp. windfalls - much is due to demand, we need to focus on transforming that - climate change initiative, cap carbon emmissions, clean energy resources; let's ask America to be patriotic about something other than war

Kucinich - HC premiums - due to For Profit Insurance companies; non-profit HC

Richardson - 1st thing accomplished in office - 1. Get out of Iraq; 2. Energy independence plan like Apollo program; 3. Climate change initiative

Notes: Clinton cruising

Rd 7 - Non-Iraq Foreign Policy
Obama - 3 biggest allies - 1. EU/NATO; 2. Japan; 3. Emerging China; distraction of Iraq ---follow up question - what about Israel - covers on Palestinian quote; strong ally

+ Biden - 3 biggest threats - 1. N. Korea; 2. Iran; 3. Russian/Putin; we need a change in policy - jettison preemption & regime change - we don't need regime change, but conduct change

Gravel - 3 threats - No important enemies; treat the world as equals; not afraid of any nations; military industrial complex

Edwards - Russia, friend or for - they have moved from democracy to autocracy; how does America change the dynamics of the world? Set America as a force of good in the world; lead on education of children of the world; clean water; economic independence

Richardson - 4 time nominee for Nobel Peace Prize, what about Russia - Assess strategy interests: 1. contain the nukes; 2. Humane treatment in Chechnya; 3. develope Russia as a stable source of energy for US; 4. Promote democracy; stubborn is not a foreign policy; fight terrorism and nuclear proliferation

+ Clinton - Giuliani/Dem perception - Disconnect between rhetoric and reality; current administration hypes fear without delivering on promises; our foreign policy under Bush is less stable; this is a Myth they can put to rest

Dodd - Dem perception - Myth; not building international support; problem of stateless terrorism

Hands - Who does NOT believe there is a Global War on Terror - Kucinich/Gravel

Kucinich - move away from Bush's aggressive war; the world is waiting for US leadership

Obama - Terrorist attack 2 cities, what do you do? - 1. Effective emergency response (re: Katrina); 2. Intelligence - cannot allow the world community to be doubtful of our intelligence; 3. Talk to the international community

+ Edwards - Same question - 1. Act swiftly and strongly to hold the culprits responsible; 2. Assess what happened, address DHS; need to use more tools than bombs - work to get the next generation of potential-terrorists on our side

Clinton - Same question - Immediate retaliation - but do not look for other fights which are not ours

Hands - Who would support impeachment of VP Cheney? Kucinich alone

Kucinich - Constitution - Cheney must be held accountable for Iraq and ginning up a war agaisnt Iran; notes that he is the only candidate willing to impeach

Notes: Clinton stumbles for the first time; in both answers here, she is clearly thinking while speaking and not as commanding as previously; Obama's first answer here was poor

Rd 8 Miscellaneous
Dodd - Civil Union vs. Gay Marriage - Supports civil unions; consider what he would want for his own daughters - same rights; yet marriage is distinct due to the tradition

Biden - Hard choices on climate-change - Manhattan project for climate change; "Barak and I" proposal; Car emissions/ethanol/lithium battery technology/cap emmissions now, today; hard choices

Richardson - Cuba - goes back to question about an attack - retaliate mightily, then build coalition; on Cuba, beginning planning for a post-Castro cuba; bring in Cuban-Americans to develop a plan; change policy on family visits; re-evaluate the embargo

Gravel - Nuclear energy - maturation process; back to the war - there has been a mischaracterisation of terrorism - a war won't work; change in foreign policy

+ Obama - what have you done personally for environment - on Earth Day organized volunteers to plant trees (moderator - no, personally, like light bulbs); making an effort to use efficient light bulbs and teach his children of conservation; back to terrorism - terror networks must be hunted and demolished; build alliances (great answer - I didn't get too many notes because I was caught listening - his best of the night)

[Bit of back-and-forth between Kucinich/Obama/Gravel/Obama] - Obama looks Presidential others...not

Edwards - who is your moral leader - thoughtful; cannot identify one person; the Lord who I pray to for forgiveness and counsel; wife - who is my conscience; father - every person is of value

Clinton - Is Wal-Mart good or bad - mixed blessing; it allowed rural America to stretch its dollar; but now it is raising serious questions about corporate accountability - providing HC, discrimination in the work place, work place safety; Bush and Corporate America no longer even see Middle Class America

Biden - Is there a winner on the statge - YES, a bunch of winners; if anyone on the Republican side is wishing for Hillary, they are making a mistake; back to security - for security, specifically in Afghanistan, Darfur, Balkans, have to use force; all the "happy talk" (from Kucinich and Gravel) is unrealisic

Notes: Finally - Obama hits a home-run (about time) he got better and better as things went along; Clinton closed strong; Edwards limped to the finish

Overall Immediate Impressions:

Clinton did great - she was Presidential, composed, and articulate; she stumbled a bit toward the end, but was consistently the strongest candiate on the stage...but she also got the most opportunities

Edwards did well until the very end; he is substantive and charismatic

Richardson really proved himself to me this evening - specifics, strong, bold; the biggest winner of the 2d tier

Obama really warmed up as the debate moved along; started slowly but grew commanding by the end

Biden is just really off the cuff and unrehearsed; probably the funniest, and you can see depth, but it doesn't completely come through

Dodd was essentially invisible

Kucinich towed his standard line, and actually almost looked relatively mainstream due to the man on his political and physical left...

Gravel was a joke, simply did not belong

90 minutes simply isn't enough time for 8 candidates.

No Sen. Reid, We Won...

2007-04-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

...but our soldiers should be coming home.

I don't think I have to specifically say it - but I entirely disagree with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Ried when he said the other day that the war in Iraq "is lost."* I think that I have been unequivocally clear on this blog in stating that I think that we have already won this war. (Four Years...; Motivations...)

Sen. Reid was simply wrong in making such a statement, and David Broder has an appropriately frank column today saying so - Democrats have their own embarrassment in Reid:

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: "As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance."

If you answered Harry Reid, give yourself an A. and join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to come to an end.

President Bush's highly developed tolerance for egregious incompetence in his administration may have met its supreme test in Attorney General Gonzales, who at various times has taken complete responsibility for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and also professed complete ignorance of the reasons for their dismissal. This demonstration of serial obfuscation so impressed the president that he rushed out to declare that Gonzales had "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job."

... Given the way the Constitution divides the war-making power between the president as commander in chief and Congress as the sole source of funds to support the armed services, it is essential that at some point Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be able to negotiate with the White House to determine the course America will follow from now until a new president takes office.

To say that Reid has sent conflicting signals of his readiness for such discussions is an understatement. It has been impossible for his own members, let alone the White House, to sort out what ground Reid is prepared to defend — for more than 24 hours at a time.

Instead of reinforcing the important proposition — defined by the Iraq Study Group — that a military strategy for Iraq is necessary but not sufficient to solve the myriad political problems of that country, Reid has mistakenly argued that the military effort is lost but a diplomatic-political strategy can still succeed.

The Democrats deserve better and the country needs more than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

Well said. But saying that does NOT mean that the President should not be putting plans in place to bring our soldiers home. I'm not convinced the current bill that the Senate passed today (and the President promises to veto) is the best way to go about this. (As an aside, this ridiculous political pandering of the right-wing accusing the Democrats of delaying bullets and supplies to our troops, or putting our soldiers in danger by delaying this funding is beyond the pale. Such funding does no such thing - and additionally, the REPUBLICAN congress took almost TWICE as long to approve a similar supplemental spending bill last year. Such vitriolic ravings are merely straw-men being created by the Right.) My general thoughts are that we need to vote to fund the troops, and vote or simply pressure the President to change his failed policies separately. That negotiation process was commented on by a Houston Chronicle editorial today - War Powers:

Constitutional scholars teach that the Founders intended Congress and the president to tussle over the power to wage war. The president is commander in chief of the armed forces, yet Congress has the authority to declare war and the absolute power of the purse.

... Ronald Cass, dean emeritus of the Boston University Law School, usefully spoke on this subject Tuesday at a gathering of the Houston lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society. He noted Congress could cut off war-fighting funds on a date certain, but was unlikely to use this blunt club.

As for Congress' power to order redeployment of U.S. forces, Cass said that authority rested with the commander in chief. He compared the tactics of Democratic leaders to a young Catholic woman who confesses that she frequently looks at herself in the mirror and thinks herself pretty.

"Is this a sin, Father?" she asks.

"No," the priest replies. "It is only a mistake."

Is Congress wrong to try to hasten the end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq? No. Congress naturally wishes to affect the course of the war for the better, in this case cutting U.S. losses. Only its tactic of directing the disposition of U.S. forces is mistaken.

... Cass predicted Congress and the president eventually would negotiate the terms and amounts of continued appropriations for fighting the war. Given the Constitution's division of military powers and the troops' need for training, pay and equipment, a settlement is not only desirable, but essential.

Exactly. It's not wrong to try to end our involvement in Iraq - but this tactic does not seem be wise. We can all only hope that Congress finds the right way to negotiate with this administration - with the support of the American people as heavy pressure - to get our soldiers out of Iraq and back home. And they should come home as conquering heroes - because we've already won this war.

Because I believe that we have already won in Iraq, and it's time to bring our military home, I was opposed to Bush's Surge, and wrote so early this year. But once Bush decided to send more troops, I certainly was hoping that the Surge would work - so we could then bring our soldiers home. Initial reports from the administration seemed to be very positive about the impact of the Surge...which was encouraging. But recently, there has been a "counter-surge" in violent attacks in Iraq - and Tuesday, the administration made a disappointing disclosure - U.S. excludes bombs in touting drop in Iraq violence:

U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population — one of the surge's main goals.

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

...U.S. officials have said that they don't expect the security plan to stop bombings.

"I don't think you're ever going to get rid of all the car bombs," Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said this week. "Iraq is going to have to learn as did, say, Northern Ireland, to live with some degree of sensational attacks."

Some think that approach could backfire, with Iraqis eventually blaming the U.S. for failing to stop bombings.

"To win, the insurgents just have to prove they are not losing," said Denselow, of London's Chatham House.

If we've already won, we don't need a surge. So what is its point? Is Bush attempting to clutch the threads of a legacy he see's slipping away? The lives of our soldiers are too important to spend them securing a legacy.

We have won this war - let's bring our soldiers home.

* - I do feel the need to note that in the same Broder piece linked above, the colunmnist points out that Sen. Chuck Schumer attempted to explain Reid's 'this war is lost' statement like this:

"What Harry Reid is saying is this war is lost — in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. ... The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this — we Democrats believe it. ... So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."

With the limited point that Schumer is making, I probably wouldn't disagree (although I'd want to see the context). But, in my opinion, that narrow point is more likely a valiant attempt to justify what Sen. Reid said, and it less likely what Sen. Reid actually meant.

AG AG...

2007-04-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

My wife and I had a discussion this morning about one of the more recent scandals involving the Bush administration - the involvement, and involvement in the cover-up, of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (AG AG) in the firing of 8 US Attorneys.

We were discussing two primary issues:
1. The misrepresentations by the Mainstream Media that "Clinton did the same thing"
2. Was there a crime involved

I thought I would touch on my thoughts about this here.

First, Clinton did NOT do the same thing. Comparing the Clinton and Bush involvement with the US Attorneys is comparing apples and oranges.

Bill Clinton, upon entering office in 1992, fired 93 US Attorneys to replace them with his own appointments. As did Ronald Reagan in 1980. I don't think anyone attempts to argue that the President does not have the authority to fire and replace US Attorneys. That is not what Bush - through AG AG - did.

As it happens, midterm firings of US Attorneys are fairly rare - Midterm U.S. Attorney Firings Rare. As the Guardian article states:

Before the Bush administration, the Congressional Research Service found just five instances over 25 years in which U.S. attorneys were fired or resigned in the middle of a presidential term and before their four-year tenures were up following reports of questionable conduct.

A Reagan-era prosecutor was fired and later convicted in federal court in connection with charges that he leaked confidential information. A Clinton appointee resigned over allegations he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club following a loss in a big drug case. Another Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney resigned after being videotaped assaulting a TV reporter who was questioning him about recent decisions by his office.

There have been no allegations of such misconduct by any of the eight prosecutors forced out by Bush. Democrats charge that they were fired for political reasons.

There is evidence that Bush's team was considering disloyalty to the president as a criterion for replacements. As he planned the ousters, Gonzales' aide noted that the vast majority of federal prosecutors were ``loyal Bushies.''

What Clinton and Reagan did is simply not of in the same category as what Bush did - which leads me to the second point - firing these attorneys was likely not a crime.

I don't know that anyone I have read has suggested that the actual firings were a crime. Rather, it is simply an(other) example of the perfidious, incompetent, and quasi-ethical nature of this Presidential administration. It's not a simple matter of firing the attorneys - it's firing them for political purposes, then lying about that and attempting a cover up. As a Letter to the Editor (by Rick Schell) in the Houston Chronicle put it today:

IF anyone doubts that the Bush administration has turned the Justice Department into a branch of the Republican National Committee, all one needs to focus on are his comments about Alberto Gonzales' hearings.

After responding to more than 70 questions with some variation on the words, "I don't recall," he demonstrated he is either a gross incompetent, a party hack or a liar. The president (although he didn't see any of the proceedings) has proclaimed that Gonzales' testimony has "increased my confidence in his ability to do the job." Obviously, the president was not referring to administering justice, but his purging of U.S. attorneys who were not "loyal Bushies." At that, he was an expert.

So, no, the actual firings were likely not illegal. But the injection of petty politics into the Justice Department was ugly and tainted.

Yet, despite the ickiness of the firings, and the apparent cover-up in the aftermath, and AG AG's utterly embarrassing performance in front of the Senate Judiciary committee last week - Bush continues to back incompetence. I think everything else that needs to be said about this issue can be summed up by the Republicans themselves. Robert Novack (right-wing icon) excoriated the Bush administration's inconceivable backing of Gonzales in a blistering editorial today - So it's Bush behind the barricades with Al Gonzales:

Bush going out of his way to praise his beleaguered friend from Texas only confirmed signals sent this week. The president's improbable praise for Gonzales' pathetic performance as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week was no mere gesture. The authoritative word from the White House was that Bush was adamant about retaining Gonzales as attorney general despite Republican demands that the president cut his losses with a new face at Justice.

... Bush, never entranced by life in Washington, detests dealing with a Democratic Congress. Reflecting annoyance and fatigue, he is unwilling to withstand incessant attacks from the likes of Reid and is ready to fight it out for the more than a year and a half remaining in his term. Retaining Gonzales means Bush has slipped behind the barricades.

All the Republicans in Congress who I have contacted view this posture by Bush to be pure folly. For the long term, they predict their president's intent to wage constant warfare against the majority Democrats will cast a pall on Republican chances of retaining the presidency in 2008. For the shorter term, they foresee nothing but trouble from Gonzales continuing in power. "I cannot imagine," said a House GOP leader, who would not be quoted by name, "how Bush thinks Gonzales can function effectively with no Republican support."

... While the current cliche is that Bush never should have named Gonzales as attorney general in the first place, the consensus in the administration was that he also was at sea in his first post as White House counsel.

Colin Powell, Bush's first-term secretary of state, was so appalled by Gonzales that he shunted contact with him off to Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, who in turn handed him down to lower levels along the State Department chain of command.

Such derision of Gonzales is viewed by Bush as the arrogance of Washington, and he seems determined not to appease that mindset. ...

Never would I have thought I would say this, but...I encourage you to go read the entire Novak column.

Ugh - that feels dirty; I'm going to go take a shower...

Best Show on TV...

2007-04-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Philadelphia Inquirer carried a good feature on John Stewart and the Daily Show today - What's a funnyman to say of grim news?

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both programmed on our DVR machine at home. I think that these are two of the best shows currently on TV because they are both somehow able to simultaneously be irreverent & hysterically funny and also thought provoking & provide actual information.

The Inquirer piece notes how Stewart and the show had to deal with the horrible events at Virginia Tech last week:

So what's a fake anchorman to do? Find something else to be funny about.

"I will do what I always do when faced with something that is that powerfully damaging to the emotional core," Stewart said at the top of Monday's show. "I will begin to repress it, and swallow it . . . so let's move on, as if the world was OK."

"The main thing is to overcome your own sense of gloom," Stewart said the next day from his Manhattan office. The New Jersey native brings his stand-up comedy act to the Tower Theater in Upper Darby for two shows Friday.

"Our saving grace is that we're not the news, so we have no obligation to be the news. Our job is comedy, though the foundation of a lot of what we do is not particularly lighthearted. And it's not that horrible situations cannot make for something satirical or absurd. It's just that in the middle of the immediacy of something like this, you're fighting your own nausea."

I'm anticipating that the Daily Show coverage of the 2008 Election will be appropriately over-the-top given the over-the-top personalities involved in the election...but, that will also mean that Stewart's regular spot-light upon the incompetence of the Bush administration will be coming to an end.

Though the sitting president is Stewart's most frequent comic target, the satirist says he won't miss Bush when he leaves office. "People used to say, 'When Clinton goes, what are you going to do without him?' I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever's going on.

"And besides that, I look forward to deconstructing someone else's game. At a certain point there's no more surprises. You know [the Bush administration is] going to come out and say the opposite of what most people believe reality to be as adamantly as they possibly can. . . . And I'm pretty much done with that. I'm ready to move on to another form of deception."

Well, I guess I won't have to miss it after all...

There's just too much evil...

2007-04-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 18-Apr-07.

Don't Underrate Houston...

2007-04-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

MSNBC.com has an interesting article up about the most underrated cities in America - Top 10 underrated U.S. cities; Sure, N.Y., Chicago, S.F. are nice, but don't forget these overlooked locales

The list includes a few that I would have expected (Pittsburgh, Portland) - and also includes my hometown. Here is the write up for #3 must underrated city - Houston, Texas:

Houston is proof that everything is indeed bigger in Texas. While better known for its big business and energy interests, this sprawling city also hosts top-notch orchestra, opera, and ballet companies, a dynamic theater scene, great museums, and the world-renowned NASA Space Center. Shopping reigns supreme here — you'll find a huge concentration of shops and above-par outlet malls — and its cosmopolitan restaurant scene expands upon the state's traditional Tex-Mex offerings. Bold and impressive architecture helps define the cityscape, too — including the mammoth Astrodome — making this fourth-largest U.S. city a true star in the Lone Star State.

Very nice.

And I'd just like to add that Dallas didn't make the list...

MLS Predictions...

2007-04-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

This weekend another year of MLS kicks off. The following is how I think the season standings will finish up. One new feature to note for 2007 is that only the top two teams in each conference are guaranteed to make the playoffs. The next four spots will be filled by the next four teams with most points, regardless of conference. Playoff qualifiers denoted by '*'.

Eastern Conference:
1. DC United*
I think this team will be the class of MLS in 2007 - and so do most observers. The 2006 Supporters’ Shield winners return without Alecko Eskandarian and Freddy Adu - but have added intriguing talent in the form of Fred, Yinka Casal, and Emilio. As long as the defense holds up, this team should play attractive soccer, and really run rough-shod over the league.

2. Chicago Fire*
There is an argument that the Fire have never reached their potential under coach Dave Sarachan, but I think this year they could be better than most people think. The addition of Cuauhtemoc Blanco in mid-season will be a massive draw to MLS - and will bring a creativity that MLS has rarely seen. But Chicago will succeed or fail this season based on their ability to play cohesively as a team. This team reminds me a little bit of last seasons Dynamo - not a whole lot of flash, but the job gets done.

3. Red Bull New York*
Maybe I overestimate the combined impact of Bruce Arena, Claudio Reyna, and Jozy Altidore - but I think that the Red Bulls could be a major surprise this season. I think they are going to have outstanding wide play from their outside backs and wingers (Dunivant, Wynne, van den Bergh, Schopp) - the questions are down the center. First, can Reyna stay healthy on that nasty turf of the Meadowlands? Second, is the central defense good enough? Finally, have they found a goal-scorer in Altiore? If the answers to those questions are even marginally positive, this team will be a nice surprise.

4. Columbus Crew
Due to a new rule in MLS, the top two teams in each league go to the playoffs, then the next four teams with highest point totals overall make take the remaining spots - so each league is no longer guaranteed four teams in the playoffs. That's too bad for Sigi Schmid and an improving Crew side. I think they will be better, but not sneak into the playoffs due to a considerably stronger Western Conference. Schmid is still in the midst of a rebuilding project - but I think he is on track and this team will be competitive - but lose or draw a lot of tough matches. Their going to have to find more goals than I think they will in order to secure that playoff spot.

5. New England Revolution
Consensus seems to be that this Revolution team will continue the teams recent successes - but I just don't see that happening. It seems to me this is a team in disarray - losing players, unhappy players, players trying to find roles, injury issues...the list goes on. Steve Nicol has been one of the most consistently successful coach's in MLS - but if he is able to keep this team - this year - toward the top of the MLS East, he may well have done the best job of his career. Twellman will get his goals, but unless Noonan and Ralston can stay healthy, Joseph can stay happy, this team will be a major disappointment.

6. Kansas City Wizards
There are very few certain things about the enigma that is Eddie Johnson, but one thing that appears clear is that to this point in his (still young) career, he has not reacted well to pressure. Well, the pressure is on this year. For this team to be successful, Johnson will have to be consistently putting the balls in the back of the net. This team is likely to be well organized at the back - with tons of experience in new keeper Kevin Hartman, backline of Conrad, Garcia, Burciaga Jr., and Jewsbury, and DM Zavagnin. But, creativity and width will be seriously lacking.

7. Toronto FC
On paper - this expansion team looks pretty good up front, and in the midfield. Strikers Buddle and Eskandarian have scored goals in MLS for years, and Casey is a fringe US international. Carl Robinson has lots of international, Premiership, and Championship experience, while Mulrooney, O'Brien, Cancela, and Nagamura have lots of MLS experience. But that experienced talent is thin - and the back line has zero MLS experience, and the keeper has only been a back-up. This team is going to allow tons of goals - and may have trouble finding the net if there are any injuries. 2007 is going to be a long, hard slog for the 14,000 season ticket holders in Toronto.

Western Conference
1. LA Galaxy*
Yes, they will add Beckham in July...but the Galaxy improved last year after Frank Yallop took the head coaching job. This team is young and improving, they have one of the best coaches in MLS (Yallop), one of the best players in MLS (Donovon), probably the best keeper in MLS (Cannon) - this team is primed to be better even before Beckham is added to the mix. The question may well be how the rest of the team reacts to the media and attention he will attract.

2. CD Chivas USA*
Chivas improved dramatically under Bob Bradley last year. Bradley is now gone on the the USMNT, but Preki was an able assistant - and I think the type of coash with a connection to the MLS game and the players that can really get the most out of these guys. Guzan is a real up-and-comer in goal, and the additions of Guevara and Mendoza will help replace Juan Pablo Garcia. I think that Maykel Galindo will prove to be an effective striking partner with Ante Razov, and this team will be even better in its third year in the league.

3. FC Dallas*
New coach Steve Morrow has blown the roster apart after two consecutive first round playoff losses - ditching some of the older, higher dollar veterans, and hanging his hat on the talented youth on this team. It may be a rocky-ride this year - but that will turn out to be a wise strategy. This team will surely score goals with the combination of attackers Ruiz, Cooper, and Nunez. The midfield looks like it will be creative and tough, especially with the additions of Toja and Oduro. The question will be can the young defense learn the ropes quickly enough - especially with Sala suspended at the beginning of the season.

4. Houston Dynamo*
The defending champions have a lot of folks on the bandwagon - and I obviously hope they are all right. But I just don't think this team will be as good this year. This team added no experienced talent to the team - yet the schedule will be very heavy - including international matches that will require several members of the team to be gone during the summer. The starting 11 is great...but the depth just doesn't appear to be there. Either Kinnear is truly sold on the young players he has on the roster already - or team management just isn't willing to spend the money to stay among the MLS elite. If the latter is true - fans in Houston are in for a long season.

5. Colorado Rapids*
I have always though Fernando Clavijo was an effective MLS coach - he just always seemed to be in tough situations. This may be his season to prove he can coach in this league. The talent on this team has improved - and with Terry Cooke providing all-star calibre service from the wing, Nico Hernandez, Roberto Brown and Jovan Kirovski should score plenty of goals. The defense is more seasoned, and Pablo Mastroeni is among the most talented players in MLS. The trade of Joe Cannon still has me concerned about this team - and at the end of the season, much of the success or failure of this side will be determined by Senegalese keeper Bouna Coundoul.

6. Real Salt Lake
This team really needs to make a run at the playoffs this year. John Ellinger should be under severe pressure to get the job done in Salt Lake this year - before interest in this new franchise begins to wane. The big addition is Freddy Adu - who should finally be given the freedom to attack he always lacked in D.C. The problem is that is the only major change from a team that finished dead last in the West last year. RSL has enticing young talent - Ballouchy, Seitz, and Adu - but I just don't see how this team has improved itself dramatically. Fans of MLS will be hoping that Adu, and this franchise, finally make "The Leap."

Good Timing...

2007-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Last September, I posted Environmental law and timing..., in which I discussed a Supreme Court case involving the regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The Plaintiffs - including a number of environmental groups, 18 states, and two of the biggest power generators in the United States (Entergy and Calpine) - argue that the EPA should be regulating greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. (Entergy and Calpine are arguing FOR regulation for both environmental (secondary) and market certainty (primary) reasons. They're in the process of building the next generation of power plants, and are seeking to have certainty in the regulatory environment.) The Bush administration EPA disagrees, and argues that lawmakers did not intend the Clean Air Act to include regulation of greenhouse gasses.

The question of my original post was whether the merits of the case would be more impacted by timing, rather than the actual plain language of the Clean Air Act:

My question about this case is relatively simple - is the future of the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases contingent upon the timing of this lawsuit? What I mean by that is it appears to me that the current configuration of the Supreme Court is not going to be very friendly to the Plaintiffs here. The Court (driven by Justice Scalia) has tended to limit the EPA's regulation of areas (specifically waterways) that the EPA WANTED to regulate - why would they be open to forcing to the EPA to regulate in an area it (at least this current political configuration of the EPA) doesn't want to?

As it turns out, as is all to common, I was wrong.

Warming ruling squeezes Bush from both sides

Justices Say E.P.A. Has Power to Act on Harmful Gases

The Supreme Court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to explain why it has refused to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from cars, putting the Bush administration under pressure from an unusual coalition of environmental groups and leaders of the auto industry to move quickly on global warming.

In a 5-to-4 decision, the court rejected the administration’s argument that it had no legal authority to limit carbon dioxide released from new cars. In a ruling described as a landmark victory for environmental activists, it decided that the EPA does have such authority and that it must give better reasons for not using it than the “laundry list” of “impermissible considerations” it has offered until now.

The court ruled that the plain language of the Clean Air Act allows the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant greenhouse gas.

In essence, the court handed the administration power it insisted it did not have and did not want. And the administration came under immediate pressure to use that power from an unlikely source as the nation’s biggest automakers joined the chorus of environmental groups and climate scientists calling for the EPA to get moving on greenhouse gases.

For the automakers [represented by an industry trade group representing General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and five others], the ruling means a shift in tactics. With the Bush administration having lost the argument that it could not regulate carbon dioxide emissions, automakers now hope that the EPA will enact an industrywide standard before the states enact a patchwork of differing regulations or before the Democratic-controlled Congress can revise the Clean Air Act to include even stronger restrictions.
...
The Bush administration had argued all along that Congress never gave it the power to decide whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant as defined in the federal Clean Air Act, but in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court said it did have such authority.

More important, Stevens sided in unusually strong language with scientists who say that U.S. car emissions do contribute to greenhouse gases, leading to global warming. In doing so, he rebutted the contention of some energy industry officials and Republicans in the administration and Congress that there is no proof of global warming.

Interesting - the timing was much better than I thought...

Prior post: Environmental law and timing...

Responsible options...

2007-03-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Good editorial from the Orlando Sentinel, as published in the Chronicle today:

When former Vice President Al Gore made his dramatic return to Capitol Hill last week to speak out about global warming, some in Congress scorned his call for action. They were exemplified by Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who read a newspaper during some of Gore's testimony.

If members still aren't convinced of the need to act by Gore or by last month's slam-dunk report on global warming from a panel of international climate scientists, here's some other questions for them to ponder:

Would they like cleaner air? Or, if public health and the environment aren't among their priorities, what about national security? Would they like to curb America's oil addiction and reduce the flow of U.S. dollars bankrolling terrorist groups and hostile regimes?

Each of these national imperatives also would be advanced by some of the proposals that Gore made during his testimony. That's a compelling argument for members who don't share the former vice president's alarm about global warming to give his action plan a long look.

Gore, for example, called for a moratorium on coal-fired power plants unless they are designed to capture emissions of carbon dioxide, the main culprit behind global warming. But the best design so far for that purpose also reduces emissions that cause smog and acid rain, taint waterways and contribute to asthma attacks, heart disease and birth defects.

Gore also called for raising fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. This was a no-brainer long before most people had heard anything about global warming.

The United States imports about 60 percent of its oil supply, and cars and light trucks burn nearly half of it.

Raising the standard for both cars and trucks to just 33 mpg over the next decade would save more than 2 million barrels of oil a day by 2025, according to sponsors of a plan in Congress. That savings could reduce U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers such as Saudi Arabia, where some of the petro profits end up promoting terrorism, and Venezuela, whose president has been using oil money to forge an anti-American alliance.

If Gore and the panel of scientists behind last month's report are to be believed, global warming is reason enough to demand action from Congress. But the potential benefits for environmental protection, public health and national security make the case even stronger.

Looking away is not a responsible option.

Only those with a financial interest in polluting industries, and those unwilling to recognize appropriate stewardship - no matter what political party promotes it - are still unwilling to appropriately address the issue.

Related post: Right Wing Radio is Over...

Four Years...

2007-03-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

[Sigh...]

Four years of this incompetent Iraq mess Bush created...and all we get is "patience." Patience? With the way things currently stand in Iraq? That doesn't seem reasonable:

Jobs gone and schools closed. Marriages delayed and children mourned. Markets bombed and clean water in short supply. Speaking freely now a dangerous act.

And hope lost.

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Iraqis describe daily lives that have been torn apart by spiraling violence and a faltering economy.

We WON THIS WAR already - bring our soldiers home now.

From CNN.com:
There have been 3,220 American soldier deaths (3,478 coalition deaths) in the war in Iraq as of March 19, 2007. At least 24,042 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.

Heavy lifting...

2007-03-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the fact that there are times when America doesn't seem willing to do the heavy lifting when it comes to national security concerns. Specifically, last night I was thinking about the fact that we seem unable to accept what may end up being either higher prices, or higher taxes, in order to support certain industries (example: steel) in order to secure our defense and security.

What do I mean? While I'm a true believer in a market-based economy, I think that in order to secure a common defense, we need to have a strong steel industry in America. What happens if the entire US steel industry closes shop because steel is able to be acquired in a more efficient and less costly manner overseas? But then what happens when we're at war and need to build aircraft carriers, tanks, and armored jeeps? Or bring it closer to home - our troops have suffered in Iraq due to lack of body armor and lack of armor on troop carrier and humvee-type vehicles. One of the justifications for these failures is the lack of supply. So, why haven't we REQUIRED it? Why hasn't this government been willing to force our industry to make sacrifices in order to provide such equipment to our troops? Or us, as citizens, why didn't they ask us to pay $5 or $10 each to be used to support some company to get this equipment to our troops?

Well, with that on my mind, I read Thomas L. Friedman's column today (I read it in the print edition of the Houston Chronicle, but it is published originally in the New York Times - paid subscription required to read online). His column reflects much of my recent thinking - although in a bit of a different perspective. The title of the piece is "Who's supporting the out of sight, out of mind troops?"

Leadership is about enabling and inspiring people to contribute in time of war so the enemy has to fight all of us -- not insulating the public so the enemy has to fight only a few of us.

If you want to compare President Bush in this regard with Presidents Roosevelt or Wilson, pick up a copy of Robert Hormats's soon-to-be-published book: ''The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars.''

''In every major war that we have fought, with the exception of Vietnam, there was an effort prior to the war or just after the inception to re-evaluate tax and spending policies and to shift resources from less vital national pursuits to the strategic objective of fighting and winning the war,'' said Mr. Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International).

He quotes Roosevelt's 1942 State of the Union address, when F.D.R. looked Americans in the eye and said: ''War costs money. That means taxes and bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other nonessentials. In a word, it means an 'all-out' war by individual effort and family effort in a united country.''

Ever heard Mr. Bush talk that way?

Something that is not said directly in that column, but lurks in the background, is that leadership often means calling for people to work collectively toward solving problems - not merely championing individual success. Roosevelt never minced words with the American people. He never told us that we could contribute to the war effort by going shopping, or on vacation. He told us it would be expensive, hard, long - and that we were all responsible for working together to make is successful. That would seem natural at a time of war, but all you have to do is look at the current Presidential Administration to realize that it is not.

It takes leadership to call for collective action - and call for the heavy lifting to be done by all of us. But can't we do that? I think that American's are more than willing to do it. I think that if we were asked to, we would be willing to pay more for products that use US steel. I think that, as Friedman suggests, if we were asked, we'd be willing to pay a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents and invest the money to diminish our dependence on oil. I think that - if we'd only been asked - we would have done whatever it took to get our soldiers body and vehicle armor.

I believe America is ready and willing to do the heavy lifting - if only we had leaders that would ask.

Apoplectic...

2007-03-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

We have a bit of a saying in our house. It has become so routine that when every I ask the question, my son gets quiet, usually slumps his shoulders, and gives me the standard answer. Whenever my boy is pouting or crying in an attempt to get his way, his mom or I look right at him, and ask him -

Question - What do you get in this family when you whine and cry and complain?

Answer - Nothing.

Nothing. In our family, whining, crying, and complaining gets you nothing. If Noah wants something that at any other time I would gladly do for him, or get him, or provide him - if he goes about trying to get it with pouting or whining - the answer is an automatic no. Very simply, crying gets you nothing in our family.

I think that conservatives and republicans need to learn that lesson today. I don't care how much they whine and cry and complain about the Libby verdict, and why it was unfair, and how they want the American people to believe that it really says nothing about Bush, or Cheney or Iraq - they are not going to get their way.

This verdict says a lot about this Administration. It says a lot about how Dick Cheney runs (ran) the White House. It says a lot about how scared the Administration was about their fabrications and cherry-picking of the evidence about Iraq becoming public. And, today, it says a LOT about conservatives and republicans who like to talk tough about the moral majority, and family values - but ignore it when their own are those committing such violations.

Listen to the wingers going absolutely apoplectic about this verdict, and defending the actions of this administration would be comical if not sad. Limbaugh almost had a stroke today when two callers in a row suggested that although they don't think the Administration did anything wrong - conservatives should not defend lying to a grand jury or law enforcement at any time - that this was just like Clinton, and they should have the intellectual honesty to call out Libby the same as they had Clinton. Limbaugh absolutely lost it on both callers - saying instead that regardless of the lies, the issue is the liberal media, or the Democrats, or the Clintons. No responsibility.

I think that the effects of this conviction will be lasting. I think Bill Clinton was a good President. But - regardless of that view of his Presidency - he made horrendously poor decisions, he lied when he shouldn't have, and his legacy will be forever tainted because of it. The story is similar here with Bush. Regardless of the ultimate outcome in Iraq, Bush's legacy will be forever tainted by how his Administration managed the public relations campaign in the run up to war, and how they covered up their actions afterward.

Although there were only four charges Libby was convicted of, this trial was indeed much bigger, and its impact will last much longer than the time Libby spends in jail.

For Cheney, Political Toll May Follow Libby Verdict
Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case
Libby's Lies

Hillary's Conversation...

2007-03-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

There is an interesting feature on the Hillary Clinton candidacy in today's NY Times:

Clinton Shapes Her Image for ’08 Race

The focus of the article is how Clinton has positioned herself deftly for the '08 White House run - invoking the open, give-and-take, listen-first approach of a conversation, backed up by the firm strength of leadership. (Which plays in sharp-contrast to the blustery rhetoric of "the Decider" George Bush.)

“I’m Hillary Clinton, and I’m running for president,” she says at campaign appearances. Lamenting that her public image has been distorted by caricature, she often says, “I may be the most famous person you don’t really know.” In the cliché of contemporary politics, Mrs. Clinton is “reintroducing herself to the American people.”

She is, in this latest unveiling, the Nurturing Warrior. She displays a cozy acquaintance (“Let’s chat”) and leaderly confidence (“I’m in it to win it”). She is a tea-sipping girlfriend who vows to “deck” anyone who attacks her; a giggly mom who invokes old Girl Scout songs and refuses to apologize for voting for the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. Her aim, of course, is to show that she is tough enough to lead Americans in wartime but tender enough to understand their burdens.

It appears that Hillary's national re-introduction works well for those who actually attend the events, although it is difficult to tell if her national image is recovering.

“She connected with me much better than I expected she would,” said Rachel Stuart, in Berlin. “She was right there. There was a real sense of her as a great listener.”

Mrs. Clinton clearly likes that portrayal. In face-to-face campaign settings, she brings her head close in, appearing engaged. After the Berlin conversation, Mrs. Clinton stopped in for one of those “spontaneous” campaign drop-bys at a local cafe (thoroughly scoped out by advance-people and Secret Service agents). She sat at a corner table and chatted with a group of local reporters.
...
“Conversation” audiences are predominantly female. At her events, Mrs. Clinton is more likely to call on women than men. She gets physically closer to women who approach her. She compliments their clothes and asks about their children.

She is proper and polite, diligent about thanking everybody, including “the janitor who got up at 5 a.m. to open the facility,” at Berlin Town Hall, “Tea Birds for the delicious food,” and “everyone in Berlin for making me feel so welcome.”

In Keene, N.H., in February, Mrs. Clinton said she was so thankful to all of the people “who gave me confidence,” not something that male politicians typically say. Nor do they worry aloud about gaining weight.

“I really don’t understand why people hate her so much except that they don’t like strong women,” said the Rev. Eleanor McLaughlin, the rector at St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church in Berlin. “I get a lot of that myself.”

But she is also very conscious that she cannot appear to be soft or to be lacking the gravitas of a leader.

She cannot appear mushy. She drops in periodic tough-talk, glibly mentions the time “my husband bombed Iraq,” or says she is willing to “shoot down” violators of a Darfur no-fly-zone. When asked in Des Moines how her campaign would differ from that of Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat and presidential nominee in 2004, she vows, “You can count on me to stand up and hold our ground and fight back.”

Everywhere she goes, Mrs. Clinton is invited to apologize for her Iraq vote in 2002, but no dice. “There are no do-overs in life,” she says. Tough self-love, in other words, implicitly chiding her girlie-men opponents for running around, saying they had made a mistake.

“I’m in the arena,” she said in Concord, quoting Theodore Roosevelt, one of the enduring political alpha-males in American politics. She says so in the high, insistent pitch of a fed-up mom.

Her constant “I’m in to win” affirmations convey a calibrated confidence. She prefers the “when I’m president” construction to the humbler “If you elect me president” qualifier.

“I want to have universal health care by the end of my second term” she announced at an education event in Nevada in February.

It is no easy task for Hillary to make herself known to Americans after they have spent 15 years seeing her vilified, or caricatured in the media. In an individual case-by-case basis, it seems clear that when people get to know Hillary the candidate, they like what they see. The vast majority of folks out there still see the broad-stroke pictures painted of her by her opponents. Only time will tell if her conversation is joined by enough people to make her Presidential bid successful.

Art Mystery...

2007-03-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

I have always had fascination with the stories of thefts of famous artwork. Back in 2004 several Albert Munch paintings were stolen and I followed the stories until the paintings were recovered. Recently a couple of stories have garnered my attention:

Picasso paintings stolen from his granddaughter's house
This story is fascinating. Two paintings (and potentially more work) were stolen from the home of Picasso's granddaughter - while there were people in the home.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said they were worth nearly $66 million, and that there were signs of breaking and entering in the house.

Following the story of the theft of the Picasso paintings, the Chronicle carried this today:

To catch a thief: Register helps track down stolen art

This is a story about the Art Loss Register, a group that works to list stolen artworks in a database. That database is used by legitimate art-dealing enterprises or individuals to check to see if the ownership of the work they are considering dealing in is clouded. The article begins with a great story:

The request was simple enough: Lloyd's underwriters had been approached to insure the movement of seven paintings, including one by Cézanne, from Russia to London for valuation and sale.

So Lloyd's contacted the Art Loss Register, a small private company in London whose computer archive lists 180,000 items ranging from sculpture and silver to textiles, books, stamps and vehicles — and many of the great artworks stolen or missing around the world.

What the insurance company discovered in 1999 was that the works, including Cézanne's Fruit and Jug, had been stolen in 1978 from the home of American collector Michael Bakwin in Massachusetts.

Thus began a long investigation, including Art Loss Register researchers and negotiators, that resulted in the FBI announcing last month the arrest of a lawyer. He allegedly had obtained the art from the thief, who had been murdered by another criminal after the robbery.

In the end, Bakwin got his paintings back and sold the Cézanne for $35 million.

There have been so many puzzling and mysterious stories surrounging the theft of artwork throughout history. And it is amazing to me that such activity can still go on in such an information-based age; and that there is still a market out there for these stolen goods.

Right Wing Radio is Over...

2007-03-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

I remember sometime about six or seven years ago - late 1999 or early 2000 I was sitting on my couch with my roommates watching some schlocky awards show and one of the popular boy-bands was performing. It was just awful - over-the-top, ridiculous, and nauseating. I turned to my buddies and told them I thought that (thankfully) the boy-band era was over - that performance had killed it. It may not end that week, or even that year, but its days were numbered.Maybe that situation was too easy to feel that I've got any sort of prognosticating power - but I'm here to make another prediction:

Right-wing Talk Radio is Over.

That may be a more bold prediction that the boy-band claim. Right wing radio is at its height. According to AC Nielson ratings, the five highest rated talk radio programs in the United States are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Neal Boortz, and Glen Beck - all right-wing talkers. In addition, Hannity and Beck have TV shows, and Limbaugh used to be on TV as well. These shows attract millions of listeners each day. Their influence is widespread in Republican and conservative circles. I sometimes listen to the Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage radio shows (and these are the main Wing-nuts that I am addressing) in the car, and they attract sycophantic listeners and callers ...but I think that we are very near a time when their influence will dramatically lessen. Why? I have three reasons...

1. Environment/Climate Change -
Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage are all VEHEMENTLY opposed to the thought that pollution in the atmosphere is negative. These guys have taken to calling any discussion about pollution, climate change or conservation as "the new liberal religion of environmentalism." I don't even know that that means - "liberal religion?" They shout from their radio-station thrones about all the scientific uncertainty that exists about climate change and pollution. They speak of the insidious conspiracy that caring for the environment is really communism in disguise. They almost burst blood vessels in raging about how they will never drive a hybrid and never use compact fluorescent bulbs...

Okay, okay - settle down boys. The fact is, they are on the wrong side of this issue - and it is no longer a political issue - its simply a responsibility issue, a stewardship issue. As the evidence of their wrongness grows, they are more desperate to oppose any discussion of responsible environmental actions and policy.

Regardless of what anyone "thinks" about human impact upon climate change - how can any possibly argue that polluting air, water, and earth is healthy? It is not healthy for us, for animal-life, plant-life, or large-scale eco-systems. So clearly, efficiency, conservation, and finding cleaner fuels are imperative. There is no conspiracy, no new religion. In fact - it's old time religion - stewardship.

As Americans (and the world's population in general) become ever more aware of the seriousness of these issues, and as Americans become ever better stewards of the earth that we are given, these right-wing radio types are further-and-further distanced from the mainstream in their 1800s-era environmental thinking. These guys growing irrational bitterness about environmental responsibility is alienating them from even their core audiences...

2. War in Iraq -
Obviously, huh? This issue is almost not worth discussing, because it is so obvious. Limbaugh and Hannity should be absolutely ashamed the way they still support and schill for the Bush Administration on Iraq. These guys actually still talk about links between Al Qaeda and Iraq (links that were shown to be Bush-admin fabrications years ago), and weapons of mass destruction (which they insist were there and hidden/are there and hidden/or have simply been covered up). They cheer leaded during the run-up to war, and now that the predictable has resulted - they blame everyone else. (Admittedly, Savage has been highly critical of Bush and his handling of the war. But his criticism is being Bush has not been harsh enough - Savage argues for massive bombings of civilian areas and/or a nuclear strike to clean out the insurgents. So, it's a "different" form of criticism - to say it lightly.)

This is another example of an issue that these guys have been proven totally wrong - but are steadfast in supporting those proven-wrong policies - and bitterly fabricating about and attacking those who disagree with them on these issues. These guys are self-confessed "water-carriers" - they support the Party and the policies regardless of wisdom. They are out-of-touch and irresponsible in their discussions of the occupation of Iraq. Their growing irrational stances regarding American involvement in Iraq is alienating them from even their core audiences...

3. They eat their own -
Most of all, the further and further these guys distance themselves from average Americans, and even from their core audiences, the more it has led them to eating their own. They attack anyone and everyone who thinks critically. Obviously, it is no surprise that these types wildly attack progressives and Democrats (including vicious personal and/or fabricated attacks). (An example, two years ago John Murtha used to be viewed by the right as a hawk on the war, and one of the few Democrats that could be trusted on military or foreign affairs issues...but he changes his stance on Iraq, and he is one of the chief targets of their attacks.) But, it's gone far beyond that now. They attempt to destroy even those in their own party who dare to think for themselves or not follow the party line. Chuck Hagel, long-time respected Republican, is mercilessly ridiculed and skewered on these shows. Jim Baker, Republican stalwart and long-time Bush family advisor was pilloried for his involvement in the Iraq Study Group. McCain and Giuliani are regularly roasted for their lack of "true" conservative credentials.

And more recently, and more importantly in my thinking, they brutally attack conservative callers who DARE to mention that they think that corporate welfare handouts to oil companies making billions of dollars a year are unnecessary; or mention that they have switched to compact fluorescent bulbs and are saving money; or mention that they are skeptical about the Bush administrations declarations about Iran, when so much of the Iraq intelligence proved cherry-picked or fabricated. These guys just trash their callers when topics like this are broached. These days listeners to these shows often begin by talking about how long they've listened and what an old-school Reagan-conservative they are - trying to deflect from the attack they know is coming. Any possible critical thought that is mentioned is simply crushed, or hung up on, or ridiculed. And this is what they do to their own listeners. These guys growing irrational bitterness is alienating them from even their core audiences...

Why would they eat their own? They are scared. They see the writing on the wall. They see how wrong they are on some of this, how they have backed the wrong horse on a lot of this, and how they are now looking up - and realizing they've dug a hole so deep that they just can't get out. They are scared - so they are more bitter, more caustic, and more vicious than ever. To their downfall.

It may not happen tomorrow or even this year...but these guys' days are numbered. Just like the boy bands...

Protection of whom...

2007-02-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

An interesting article in the New York Times this morning:
S.E.C. Seeks to Curtail Investor Suits

The article details how the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is moving toward protection of large public firms instead of traditional protection of investors:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun to take steps on two fronts to protect corporations, executives and accounting firms from investor lawsuits that accuse them of fraud.

Last Friday, the commission filed a little-noticed brief in the Supreme Court urging the adoption of a legal standard that would make it harder for shareholders to prevail in fraud lawsuits against publicly traded companies and their executives.

At the same time, the agency’s chief accountant told a conference that it was considering ways to protect accounting firms from large damage awards in cases brought by investors and companies.

Critics said that the moves signaled a major retrenchment from the post-Enron changes and showed that a lobbying push by big companies, Wall Street firms and the accounting industry was gaining traction as they seek to roll back what they see as onerous regulation and excessive investor litigation.

This is a different, and interesting tactic that the SEC is using, reversing much of its history. The statutory purpose of the Securities Acts (the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934) is to protect investors by promoting full disclosure of information thought necessary to informed investment decisions.

Protect Investors; Promote Full Disclosure; Informed Investment Decisions.

Yet, this is a very difficult issue, with very fine lines to maneuver. It is vital to protect investors for many reasons: ensure demand for capital investment into our markets; provide for a level playing field among investors so that investors who feel they are at a disadvantage do not take their capital elsewhere; and to provide remedy to the "average" investor who may be more easily taken advantage of by the "professional" investor who may be more informed. But all of those really boil down to ensuring that capital wants to flow into our markets because investors have complete confidence in those markets.

On the other hand, we also have to provide both ease of access into our markets, and also demand for businesses to generate capital from our markets. This requires that we keep barriers to entry low enough to ensure access and demand.

Those are somewhat conflicting interests that must be managed to effectively regulate a market. It is very easy to slip too far to either extreme too quickly. Clearly, in the late 1990s, early 2000s - in the midst of the Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco scandals - the companies had gotten out of control, and oversight (primarily from the auditors, not necessarily the SEC) was lacking. Yet the response - Sarbanes-Oxley - is (in one man's opinion) an absolute disaster of a regulation. It is horrendously expensive to public companies, yet in real terms it simply does not increase controls - at least not in proportion to the cost incurred.

How do you balance these interests? In my opinion, the auditing firms bear much of the blame for some of the recent scandals and financial disasters...yet, there should be real concerns among the investing comunity that there are only 4 major public accounting firms left. That simply does not appear to provide adequate competition, and would seem to lead to more conflict of interest, more incentive to hedge, more dependence upon these public companies for their revenues and growth (and therefore less incentive to questions their financial decisions).

Although investors might immediately read an article like that above and jump to the conclusion that the Bush Administration is using the SEC as a tool to benefit large corporations - and that those companies and accounting firms have deep pockets to lobby for these changes that add to their bottom line. But to those who look with a more critical eye, maybe providing protection to accounting firms (in an attempt to prevent consolidation), and lessening the burdens on public corporations (in an attempt to bring more companies in to the market to raise capital - thereby giving investors more choices) is a long-run help to investors.

Clearly, the pendulum could swing too far, but these issues are much more complicated than "the SEC is selling investors out!" Our Securities laws have worked reasonably well for 70+ years now, and our markets are some of the most transparent, and trusted in the world. Even if these policies arguably go to far to protection of large firms at the expense of investors, this is unlikely to be the end of our consistently effective securities regulation traditions.

US 2 - 0 MEX - The Domination Continues...

2007-02-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

A few quick comments on last night's US National Soccer Team's 2-0 victory over Mexico. This performance continued the recent domination of Mexico by the US - and I think last night's victory was one of the more important over the past seven years, even though it was "merely" a friendly.

When I saw the lineups for the match, I immediately thought the US was toast. Mexico brought their "A" team - even incluing 5 players in their 30s have have little hope of making a difference for the El Tri in the 2010 World Cup. Generally, these first-year-of-the-cycle friendlies are for testing new, young players to see if they can cut it at the international level. Not for Mexico - they wanted to embarrass the US. The US, on the other hand, went with a bunch of youngsters, and only a few of the veterans to the international game - including Landon Donovon, Pablo Mastroeni, and Carlos Bocanegra.

I'm delighted (and proud) to say the US proved me completely wrong. Thoughts:

~ Jonathan Bornstein looked great at left back. He started a bit slowly, but in the second half, he was just running right by the guys on the Mexican right flank. He provided solid defense after the first 10 or 15, and was a nice little offensive force later in the game. He could be a real find.

~ The defense was shaky at times on the flanks - but was (in my opinion) great after that first US goal, when Mexico POURED players forward (including 4 or 5 pure strikers) for about twenty to twenty-five minutes from 55-75 or 80. Over and over, Conrad and Bocanegra repulsed attacks, and when their was a break down, due to too many Mexican players in the box, Tim Howard was rock solid in goal. The defense certainly withstood an amazing amount of pressure and came through with the shutout. Jimmy Conrad was a deserving Man of the Match.

~ I was a bit disappointed with hometown Houston Dynamo Ricardo Clark in the first half - but in the second, I thought he was really composed, and smooth on the ball. He reminded me so much in the second half of American-great Claudio Reyna - so smooth, simple passes, never too flustered. Clark made mistakes, but I thought, in the face of a wildly attacking Mexican side, he was cool, calm, and collected.

~ Clint Dempsey really has the self-confidence (or arrogance, depending on your perspective) to become one of the real key-factors in this team over the next eight years. I'm hoping that his fitness issues are simply a factor of the off-season - but the last couple of times I've seen him play, he seemed winded early.

On the not so bright spots:
~ Chris Rolfe looked lost and completely unready for intenational football.

~ Eddie Johnson is really disappointing me. It just doesn't appear that he's willing to work hard. He appears to have the talent of an all-time great, and the work ethic of a rec-league player. Maybe that was simply in contrast to my final point:

Landon Donovan looked really, really good in the second half. I have not historically been a big Donovan fan. Last night, for the first time I can remember since around 2002, he really decided to put his stamp on the match, and I thought he did so. He worked so hard, both up top, working back into the midfield to get touches and provide a link, and - maybe most impressive to me - in tracking back into defense during that twenty-minute Mexican onslaught. He worked so hard - and absolutely deserved his late goal...and I was so excited to see him actually make an aggressive move to the goal and provide a nice simple finish. These are all things that I have historically been most critical of Donovan: poor finishing; not being aggressive; not working to get his touches. He really impressed me last night - on a significant stage. No, it wasn't the World Cup - but it was a full-strength Mexico, our biggest rival, and closest competitor in CONCACAF.

Of course, it doesn't look like their really that close anymore!

What's Good for Who?!? is Good for America?...

2007-02-08T11:08:00.000-08:00

About a year an a half ago, I posted about General Motors, and health care costs here: GM pushing Union on healthcare cuts...

In that post, I commented that cutting union health care benefits is not a valid long term strategy, and quoted Prof. Katherine Stone (UCLA Law):

Efforts to shift costs onto employees or cut back on health benefit coverage has meet with intense opposition. The alternative is to shift the cost to the government. General Motors' competitors in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom all have national health systems to pay for their workers' health care needs. Fair trade requires a fair playing field, and so we need to level our field upward if we want to compete. The lesson of the General Motors' impending doom is that national health insurance is not some socialist pipedream but good policy for American business. After all, as General Motors Chairman Charlie Wilson told the U.S. Senate in 1955, "What is good for General Motors is good for America."

But, after all, it is a new age. Maybe the up-to-date version of the classic quote above would be: "What is good for Wal-Mart is good for America."

Well, either way you say it, both point in the same, new direction:

Healthcare Reform Calls Get Louder

An unusual new coalition of big employers, labor unions and politicians united Wednesday to push for "quality, affordable" healthcare for all Americans by 2012.
The proposal adds to growing pressure on Congress, President Bush and statehouses across America where governors including California's Arnold Schwarzenegger are calling for a major overhaul of health insurance coverage.
The idea united some bitter adversaries Wednesday and indicates that there is business support for change.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest private employer, joined with one of its biggest critics, the Service Employees International Union.
AT&T Inc. signed on along with its major union. Silicon Valley is represented by chip maker Intel Corp. So are both major political parties.
"The fact they even got to the same table to talk about this in the first place is pretty amazing," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a national nonprofit organization that represents large concerns such as Exxon Mobil Corp., IBM Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co.
The proposal was short of specifics but had four broad themes: universal health coverage by 2012, better preventive care and disease management; more efficient healthcare delivery, and cost-sharing by workers, employers and governments.
The initiative, dubbed Better Health Care Together, also guarantees that healthcare will take on an even larger role in the 2008 presidential campaign.

How about that - acknowledgement that universal health care would be a competitive advantage to our American businesses. This merely confirms what many of us have thought for years and years - that a healthy (physically, emotionally, and financially) America is a better America.

Maybe this time the folks in Washington will actually listen - since the voices of big business are joining the voices of the average citizens in calling for health care reform.

Motivations...

2007-02-02T10:42:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts that I have been having lately...

Bush's escalation plan for Iraq is very instructive as to the true motivations of Bush and the neocons who ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Let me explain what I mean...

Let's think back to the justifications for the invasion four and five years ago. Obviously, there were a series of differnt justifications offered by the Bush Administration, but they essentially came down to these four:

~Link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11
~Weapons of Mass Destruction
~Sadaam Hussein was a really bad dictator
~Bring democracy to Iraq

Each of these justification broke down and forced Bush to scramble to the next one, but these were the basic ideas of why we had to invade.

Now, I have always opposed the invasion. Having said that - look at what happened after we did invade:

~We swept to a quick and decisive military victory over Iraq
~We toppled the government of Sadaam Hussein
~We confirmed there were no WMDs
~We killed, arrested, and/or convicted the leadership of Hussein's government
~We oversaw democratic peaceful elections in Iraq

In short - we won. Look at the (admittedly trumped up) justifications for the invasion that the neocons listed above. Are there ANY of those reasons/goals/justifications that were not met? Clearly not. We won.

But we're still there - now in the midst of a civil war that was easily foreseen, but completely unplanned for. Not only are we still there, but Bush and his neocons are actually escalating our presence there. Why?

Because the justifications that Bush and his administration spouted were never the reasons why we invaded Iraq. If ANY of those were genuine, we would be out by now. No - those were never the motivations for the invasion. So, what is the real motivation?

Well, to answer that, let's look at why we still have our military there, and why we are escalating our involvement in a tribal civil war...

The only answer is empire.

The neocons wanted Iraq as a foothold - as an extenstion of American Empire into the middle east. They wanted a puppet government to use. They wanted expansive military bases to use. They wanted access to Iraqi oil assets. They wanted to use these "assets" in any future instability/conflict in the middle east. In short - they wanted Empire. That is why we are still in Iraq. That is why we are esclating our involvement.

There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There were no WMDs. Sadaam is gone. Democracy - at least a primative form of it - has been established. And yet we are still building military bases, we're still sending more troops over.

Bush and the neocons who have supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq have never been truthful about their real designs for Iraq - and they are not being truthful now.

SOTU...

2007-01-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

I was unable to post yesterday about the State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening. I was able to watch the speech, along with the Democratic response, and have a few observations.

(Disclaimer: when I say "watch the speech" that means watching while making my son dinner, convincing him that "no, we're not going to watch Higglytown Heros tonight," and trying to explain what a "President" is.)

Let's start with Bush's SOTU speech. Credit where credit is due: I felt his acknowledgement of Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, was genuine and appropriate. Kudos to Bush for having the class to make such an appropriate gesture. On the other hand, I was really surprised with how long he went. I remember back in the 90's, Clinton would give these massive, long-winded SOTU speeches - but that was when there was a laundry list of initiatives that were helping to improve our nation, and Clinton would work through all those positives. But, that's not the case with Bush... he had very little positive to talk about. So I was expecting a relatively short speech, centered on domestic issues, and get him out of there. That wasn't the case. Also, on more general observations, it has now been six years of soaring rhetoric - with little actual results, save a botched occupation of Iraq - yet this Administration still insists on such speeches. At what point has the American people had enough of broad words, and narrow actions? That point probably came last fall - but Bush and his speech writers haven't figured it out yet.

In addition to the length, there are four other more specific observations I had about Bush's speech:

1. Aesthetics - Bush seems old, depressed, and beaten down - I had this same observation about his "big" Iraq speech a couple of weeks ago. He looks like the weight of what he has done to the country is finally starting to sink into him. I have yet to get a feeling about whether this is good or bad overall. But he no longer exudes optimism, confidence, the image of "the Decider," which he so inaptly nick-named himself. It is a striking difference from the "bring 'em on" Bush.

2. Insurance - For the six years of the Bush Presidency, health care has remained a daunting yet fundamental political issue. Nothing has been done. Tuesday, Bush proposed an interesting, yet complicated, plan to expand healthcare coverage. The plan - in very basic form - is this: company provided insurance tax benefits become taxable, but people with insurance are given a "standard" tax deduction on their first $15,000 of income ($7,500 for individuals).

First, I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents. Families with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income. Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on $7,500 of their income. With this reform, more than 100 million men, women, and children who are now covered by employer-provided insurance will benefit from lower tax bills. At the same time, this reform will level the playing field for those who do not get health insurance through their job. For Americans who now purchase health insurance on their own, my proposal would mean a substantial tax savings — $4,500 for a family of four making $60,000 a year. And for the millions of other Americans who have no health insurance at all, this deduction would help put a basic private health insurance plan within their reach. Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making healthcare affordable for more Americans.

The plan is still somewhat sketchy to me - and Bush did not mention the increase in taxable wages in the speech - but it sounds like a start. The big, immediate problem with such a plan, is that it actually increases taxes on families that currently have better health care plans, and would seem to encourage people to choose the cheapest possible insurance plans. I want to read/hear more about Bush's Insurance plan, but on it's face, it doesn't not seem to fully address the two most fundamental challenges of our current health care situation: get every child under 18 health insurance, and provide every employed adult with access to affordable health care. To many, any serious health care initiative must address these two issues.

3. Energy - For the sixth straight SOTU address, Bush discussed our nations energy problems, our reliance on imported oil, and our needs for comprehensive changes in energy policy. And for six years, Bush and the Republicans have done nothing save give tax breaks to Big Oil. Once again, Bush spoke in nicely written words - but no policy to back them up.

Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean. For too long, our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. ... It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply, and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power by even greater use of clean coal technology ... solar and wind energy ... and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol — using everything from wood chips, to grasses to agricultural wastes. ... Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal .... reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years — thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East. ... America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment — and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

Almost the entire energy portion of the speech sounded great - but the past six years of inaction beg significant questions about whether this Administration is serious.

4. Economy/Spending/Earmarks - What I want to say about this is simple: Bush and the Republican Congress have spend the past six years destroying our budget, ballooning deficits, and cramming earmarks into bills. They have transformed a health surplus into an unfathomable deficit in record time. Now, Bush and the Republicans are basically saying to the Democrats: hee, hee, hee - see if you can clean up our mess, and when you can't - we'll blame you!!!

A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy, and that is what we have. We are now in the 41st month of uninterrupted job growth — in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs ... so far. Unemployment is low, inflation is low and wages are rising. ... First, we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes. What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C. ... In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. ... Next, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour — when not even C-SPAN is watching. In 2005 alone, the number of earmarks grew to over 13,000 and totaled nearly $18 billion. Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate; they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You did not vote them into law. I did not sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice. So let us work together to reform the budget process ... expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress … and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session.

Couple of points - Bush says he has created 7.2MM jobs. But that is not a net number, that is a recovery number. In the six years of the Bush administration, a total of just over 3MM jobs have been created -about 4MM were lost in his first four years and have been recovered. By contrast, in his sixth year as President, Clinton had created over 18MM new jobs. 3MM is nothing to crow about.

Secondly - there is no responsibility. By now, I shouldn't expect it...but there is no acknowledgement that Bush himself, and the budget-busting Republican congress caused the current spending problems. Now, they are laying that responsibility on someone else to fix. (Sounds like Iraq...speaking of...)

5. Foreign policy - I thought one of the most interesting/startling thing about his speech (which I've seen little coverage of) is his continuing threats toward Iran and Syria. (" ") I thought they were as pronounced, if not more, than his Iraq speech two weeks ago. It is baffling why he keeps rattling sabers at these countries while we are bogged down in Iraq. The Bush Doctrine of foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster - yet the neo-cons in the administration refuse to change course. I think that the "surge" is clearly a terrible policy - but it is simply a symptom of the more broad neo-con, Bush Doctrine foreign policy - imperial, interventionist, and aggressive. No diplomacy. Speak brashly, and carry a light, lean stick. It has proven not to work, yet they keep insisting on it.

Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists, possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology. ... The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans ... kill democracy in the Middle East ... and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale. ... It is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. ... And Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon's legitimately elected government. In Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters tried to regain power by regrouping and engaging Afghan and NATO forces. In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia — and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads. The result was a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day. This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in.

Bush's equating Al Qaeda with these other groups, and Iran and Syria, seems uncalculated - what part of the Muslim world is he not offending with such language? Who wouldn't read this as a confirmation of a modern Crusade? It is more well-crafted, yet un-reasoned, rhetoric. Just like most of the rest of the speech.

Bush's speech of a whole lot of nothing was dramatically by the Democratic Response delivered by Senator Jim Webb.

I think that the two things in Webb's speech that stood out to me were:

1. Results - The array of accomplishments already achieved by the new Democratic Congress (standing in start contrast to the inaction/bungling of the past six years):

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy - that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.
And under the leadership of the new Democratic Congress, we are on our way to doing so. The House just passed a minimum wage increase, the first in ten years, and the Senate will soon follow. We've introduced a broad legislative package designed to regain the trust of the American people. We've established a tone of cooperation and consensus that extends beyond party lines. We're working to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.

It looks as if things are actually getting done/going to get done. Exciting. Unfortunately, yesterday Republicans in the Senate filibustered the minimum wage law. Business as usual for them.

2. Leadership - Webb provided the image of the New Direction provided by the Democratic party - leadership in action.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed. ...
The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve. ...
I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.
Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions.
He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves "as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other." And he did something about it. As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.
These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

If he does, we will join him - if he does not, we will be showing him the way. That is leadership.

The speeches on Tuesday were a reminder of basic American politics - the Republicans are good at winning elections, and disasters at governing. For the first time in years and years, the Democratic party are presenting a viable and formidable alternative.

It's about time.

Go Hillary!...

2007-01-22T15:50:00.000-08:00

It is far too early to either prognosticate or start picking sides in the 2008 Presidential election. Having said that, as candidates begin to emerge, and the buzz begins to build, it is hard (at least for political junkies) not to already start thinking and forming opinions about the race.

Last week, there were two massive announcements related to '08.

On Monday, Barak Obama announced that he is forming a Presidential Exploratory Committee. On Saturday, Hillary Clinton formally announced that she intends to run for the Presidency. Democrats have to be both excited, and a bit apprehensive. Both of these individuals are tremendous candidates for President - they have impeccable resumes, dedication to America, and public service, and real ideas and vision for America. That's more than we've had in a long time. Both, however, also carry significant "electibility" issues with them that generate real causes for concern. For Obama, there is the charge of lack of qualification (although if you compare his resume to W. Bush, Reagan and other past Presidents, he clearly has sufficient credentials), and also the question of whether America will cast Presidential ballots for a minority. Hillary faces the irrational fear and hatred of the extreme right, and similar questions about whether America will vote for a woman. These electibility concerns are valid - especially in light of likely Republican Presidential campaigns by Rudy Giuliani and John McCain.

Regardless, with such impressive Democratic candidates, they cannot help but raise the level of the campaign and encourage progressives everywhere.

My wife and I love both Hillary and Barak Obama. Although it may be too early to be taking sides, it appears as if she is leaning toward supporting Obama, while I'm leaning toward supporting Hillary. But it's still a long time until November 2008. But until then - Go Hillary!!!

World Aids Day...

2006-12-01T09:01:00.000-08:00

Don't forget...

************************************************************************

Today is World Aids Day. The idea of the world-wide day of awareness is to encourage the international community to step up to the plate and fight the disease.

The theme of this World Aids Day is accountability. There will be international observances calling for nations of the world, and international organizations to keep their committmens in fighting AIDS.

Clearly, the AIDS pandemic is at its devastating worst in the poorest areas of the world. The expense of getting AIDS treatment drugs, combined with lack of proper medical facilities, labratory testing facilities, and proper basics such as nourishment and hygiene make fighting AIDS in developing portions of the world extremely difficult. But it is clearly not a lost cause.

A study to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine today reveals that a holistic approach - even in the poorest areas - can be successful. The study shows that low-cost treatment programs can dramatically increase survival rates in poor countries.

Typically only 30 percent of AIDS patients survive for one year in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where the HIV infection rate is about 3 percent among adults.

But integrating drug care -- usually generic drugs -- with nutritional support, tuberculosis treatment, counseling and other public health programs brought the survival rate up to 87 percent for adults and 98 percent for children, said Fitzgerald of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

That is a rather staggering improvement - especially for the children. And - it's economically efficient:

Fitzgerald and his colleagues said the annual cost of giving a three-drug combination to fight the AIDS virus was about $500 for generic medicines and $750 for brand-name drugs. "We estimated the overall cost per patient per
year (including medicine) as about $1,600," they said.

If you are able to spend a paltry $1,600 and re-gain a functioning memeber of the community, who is able to go back to work...or if a child, is able to grow up and contribute to the community - that is a bargain.

But of course, the poorest regions of Africa, central America, and Asia are not the only places where there is suffering from this disease. Even here, in one of the wealthiest nations of the world, people struggle with AIDS - and at all levels, the poor, middle class, and even the wealthy. AIDS is no respecter of income. And even though many here in America are able to take advantage of drugs and treatment which enables them to live strong, vibrant lives - there still is no cure...which I was reminded of all to closely this year. Much has been done, but there is so much left to do.

A few more links:
UNAIDS
US Dept. of State
Kaiser Family Foundation

Stop AIDS. Keep the promise.
************************************************************************

From December 1, 2005.

Shameful...

2006-11-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

I occassionally listen to my share of right-wing wacko radio...don't ask.

Anyway, I am consistently shocked by the amount of lies, misrepresentation, intellectual dishonesty, hypocricy, and hateful speech to be found on the shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage.

(Okay, to be honest, I'm not really shocked - these are typical Republican tactics. What is a better way to say it - I'm disheartened that it is so brazen and people actually accept this tripe.)

There is too much of it to chronicle - but I'm especially apalled today by Sean Hannity. Back in the spring, he spent show after show after show defending the alleged rapists in the Durham, NC lacrosse team incident. What possible reason to defend such behavior? Astonishing.

Today on his show he proceeded to defend the Michael Richards racial slur incident - and push blame upon the minorities in the audience, one of whom was a guest on his show. Why defend such action? Astounding.

And then - in his next segment - he proceeds to defend the alleged murderers who fired over 50 rounds in killing an unarmed young groom at his bachelor party. Again, what possible use is there in defending such horrific behavior? Bewildering.

This is reprehensible - and anyone who listens to these shows should be offended. Even if you are a conservtive, or even a Republican - if you condone such reprehensible behvior you should rationally and critically think about why. Hannity certainly won't - he traded rational and critical thought for ratings years ago.

Bobby...

2006-11-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

He never had the chance to fulfill his own possibilities, which is why his memory haunts so many of us now. -- Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., from the foward of his biography of Robert F. Kennedy, "Robert Kennedy and His Times."

If anyone who is reading this blog plans to go see a movie over this holiday season, I would highly encourage you to go see Bobby.

Bobby depicts life in the Ambassador Hotel on the day that Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated there. The movie itself does not primarily follow the story of Bobby Kennedy that day, rather it focuses upon a series of fictional characters who were in the hotel that day. In so doing, it depicts the time and the feeling of the last moments of the 1968 Kennedy Campaign, and the first moments of America afterwards.

This is a time of America that I know less about than most others. And I don't know that I've ever spent time thinking about how significant a moment the assassination of Bobby Kennedy was in American history. Of course, I'd always lumped his death into the trifecta of 60's assassinations, along with his brother John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But I have always felt those others were more "important." This movie made me re-think that.

To be fair, this movie is not a work of history - but fiction. The characters the film follows through the day are creations used to tell a broader story. But that story is significant, and this movie is a useful tool to tell it. The movie is unashamedly emotional - even before the assassination scene. It is unapologetically "pro-Kennedy" - when Kennedy is seen in the film it is in old news footage and his spoken word through various speeches. When the film is not using 60's footage, often the characters speak of "Bobby" in reverent and idealistic tones. These aspects are used to capture a feeling of a moment in time, a moment in American history that I was captivated by.

When Bobby Kennedy died, so did American optimism. I had never comprehended that before. It was a moment of utter change in the history of our nation - never since have we as a nation had a sense that something was coming that was better, that was more, that was deeper. That we are on the verge of the next American evolution. America doesn't feel these things anymore. Historian Michael Beschloss has said that you can almost date the death of liberalism in this country to the events of mid-1968. I think you can date the end of American optimism to the same date.

We used to feel such optimism.

America had Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Marshall that gave us a united, free, representative government. Such as the world had never seen before.

America had Lincoln, who decided to keep his still-new nation united, and to free men and women held in the bondage of slavery.

America had Teddy Roosevelt who busted trusts and represented a new progressivism.

America had Franklin Roosevelt who told us all we had to fear was fear itself, led us through the most difficult economic trial our nation has faced, and through one of the most difficult international conflict the world has faced.

Then America had John Kennedy - for a very short time - who was showing us to ask not what our country can do for us, but rather what we can do for our country. But he was taken. We had Martin Luther King, Jr. - also for a very short time - who showed that character, integrity, and non-violence can lead to fundamental social change. Then he was taken.

And we could have had Bobby Kennedy, who was intently focused upon our inequities - racial inequities, financial inequities, etc. And, finally, Bobby was taken too.

That ended it. American optimism. It hasn't been the same since them. Since then we've had the power-hunger of Nixon, the trickle-down excess of Reagan, and the neoconservatism of the second Bush.

Within 30 minutes of this film's opening, I realized that was the story - the death of American optimism that accompanied the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Such a thought had never occurred to me before, but it certainly struck me while watching this film.

That's why - even though the film overtly pulls emotional strings, and is no work of history - Bobby is absolutely worth seeing. Because it gives a glipse of how important a day that was in American history - through the impressions delivered by these characters.

My wife and I watched this film in Memphis, TN. After being so touched by the film, we drove by the Lorraine Hotel - the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It just seemed to make sense. These senseless deaths - more than senseless, history-changing - took so much from what America could have been. At least it seems that way. It is a foolish conceit to ask "what might have been" questions about history. Whatever I perceive as "might have been" wasn't - and isn't. The question we should ask is not "what might have been." The questions each of us should ask is - Are we continuing the legacy? Are we standing for the same things these men stood for? Are we resisting inequity - promoting equality. Resisting violence - promoting peace? Are these the things we stand for?

We have to be willing to commit to create the things we wish had been. We - collectively - have to return optimism to America again. Sure, it takes great leaders to do that - but it also takes everyday people refusing to accept leaders who don't.

America is still full of possibilities. It's our responsibility to fulfill them.

Class Warfare...

2006-11-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

Really good article by Ben Stein - the conservative lawyer, writer, actor, and economist - in yesterday's New York Times - In Class Warefare, Guess Which Class Is Winning

Stein recounts a recent discussion with Warren Buffett, which turned to the inequity of current US tax policy:

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. ...

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Fascinating. Coming from a multi-multi-billionaire, and a conservative economist - an admission that our tax policy is indeed a class warfare...with those at the top giving themselves all the breaks they want. After noting how questionable it is that "the country is enjoying what economists call full employment while we are still running a ... deficit of ... $434 billion for fiscal 2006," Stein goes on to analyze five arguments generally promulgated by right-wing Republicans (many of whom call themselves conservative) on why we should not be raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthiest people:

1. Class Warfare - "I think Mr. Buffett answered that one."

2. Raising taxes actually lowers revenue, while cutting taxes stimulates federal revenue -

In fact, the federal government collected roughly $1.004 trillion in income taxes from individuals in fiscal 2000, the last full year of President Bill Clinton’s merry rule. It fell to a low of $794 billion in 2003 after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts (but not, you understand, because of them, his supporters like to say). Only by the end of fiscal 2006 did income tax revenue surpass the $1 trillion level again.

By this time, we Republicans had added a mere $2.7 trillion to the national debt. So much for tax cuts adding to revenue. To be fair, corporate profits taxes have increased greatly, as corporate profits have increased stupendously. This may be because of the cut in corporate tax rates. Anything is possible.

3. Don't raise taxes, cut spending -

The sad fact is that spending rises every year, no matter what people want or say they want. ... But spending has risen every year since 1940 except for a few years after World War II and a brief period after the Korean War.

The imperatives for spending are built into the system, and now, with entitlements expanding rapidly, increased spending is locked in. Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt — all are growing like mad, and how they will ever be stopped or slowed is beyond imagining. Gross interest on Treasury debt is approaching $350 billion a year. ...

4. Deficits don't matter -

One would think that big deficits would be highly inflationary, according to Keynesian economics. But we have modest inflation (except in New York City, where a martini at a good bar is now $22). On the other hand, we have all that interest to pay, soon roughly $7 billion a week, a lot of it to overseas owners of our debt. This, to me, seems to matter.

Besides, if it doesn’t matter, why bother to even discuss balancing the budget? Why have taxes at all? Why not just print money the way Weimar Germany did? Why not abolish taxes and add trillions to the deficit each year? ... If deficits don’t matter, why not spend as much as we want, on anything we want?

5. Conservatives cannot argue for higher taxes -

It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren. I thought it was the conservative view that there should be some balance between income and outflow. When did this change?

Oh, now, now, now I recall. It changed when we figured that we could cut taxes and generate so much revenue that we would balance the budget. But isn’t that what doctors call magical thinking? Haven’t the facts proved that this theory, though charming and beguiling, was wrong?

Exactly Mr. Stein. If you consider yourself a "fiscal conservative" - which, by the way, I do - you should be shocked and embarressed at the status of the federal budget deficit, and the failure of our tax policy to ask those who are most able to contribute to our fiscal health to do so. Spending should obviously be strictly controlled, but the best way to begin increasing revenues, decreasing the deficit, decreasing governmetntal debt service, and do all that while affecting the fewest amount of people - is to get rid of the irresponsible Bush-gifted tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and corporations by rolling back the marginal tax rates on the hightest income brackets, rolling back the tax breaks on dividends, rolling back the tax breaks on estate wealth transfers, and finally rollnig back the tax breaks (and additionanl incentives) to big businesses who are making billions quarterly.

Tax policy that would make sense, work toward balancing the budget (which Clinton did consistently), and stop shifting the burden to our children and grandchildren. Why would anyone oppose this? Anyone whose core constituency are the wealthy that are benefiting from these irresponsible gifts.

The King of the free market...

2006-11-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

Milton Friedman, Free Markets Theorist, Dies at 94

Milton Friedman, the grandmaster of free-market economic theory in the postwar era and a prime force in the movement of nations toward less government and greater reliance on individual responsibility, died today in San Francisco, where he lived. He was 94. ...

Conservative and liberal colleagues alike viewed Mr. Friedman, a Nobel prize laureate, as one of the 20th century’s leading economic scholars, on a par with giants like John Maynard Keynes and Paul Samuelson.

Flying the flag of economic conservatism, Mr. Friedman led the postwar challenge to the hallowed theories of Lord Keynes, the British economist who maintained that governments had a duty to help capitalistic economies through periods of recession and to prevent boom times from exploding into high inflation.

In Professor Friedman’s view, government had the opposite obligation: to keep its hands off the economy, to let the free market do its work. He was a spiritual heir to Adam Smith, the 18th-century founder of the science of economics and proponent of laissez-faire: that government governs best which governs least.

The only economic lever that Mr. Friedman would allow government to use was the one that controlled the supply of money — a monetarist view that had gone out of favor when he embraced it in the 1950s. He went on to record a signal achievement, predicting the unprecedented combination of rising unemployment and rising inflation that came to be called stagflation. His work earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1976.

Prof. Friedman was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. Altough he is now gone, his legacy will surely last for generations to come - just as the names Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes are still rembered.

That makes two giants of economic thought lost this year. I posted earlier this year about the loss of John Kenneth Galbraith - another great thinker.

Prior related post:
Sad News...

Good signs...

2006-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

A Democrat has not held statewide office in Texas in over a decade. The days of Ann Richards and the Texas Democrats are distant memories.

But, you know, everything old will be new again...

It looks like there are signs of life for the Texas Democratic party. Small signs, to be sure, but indicatations that the party is gaining strength nonetheless.

The Houston Chronicle has two interesting articles today about the Democratic signs of life: Warning for GOP in Harris County and Democrats Turn Dallas County a Shade of Blue.

From the first -

Harris County Democratic and Republican officials have looked at Tuesday's local election results and they agree: The GOP-dominated county government could be recaptured by Democrats as soon as 2008. ...

In an election when many ethnic minority voters didn't vote, Republican judicial candidates on the bottom half of the Harris County ballot won by an average of fewer than four percentage points — 52 percent to 48 percent.

The average margin four years ago was more than nine points.

If minority voters had been energized, as they might be in the 2008 presidential year, it could have been a Democratic sweep, some analysts said.

They point to Dallas County, long a GOP stronghold, where Democrats claimed every countywide seat elected Tuesday. ...

But the demographic trends are long-term: The Hispanic population is booming and the Anglo population is not.

"The Republican Party is not attracting minority voters the way it should. I've been saying this for 10 years," [Republican County Commissioner Steve] Radack said. ...

Rice University political science professor Bob Stein said an immediate effect of Tuesday's local and national results could be interest from talented Democrats who realize they have a legitimate chance to be elected next time around. ...

But the demographic and political trends seem clear.

"Doomsday is coming," said UH political science professor Richard Murray.

This is a good sign for Democrats in Texas and Harris County...but it should be tempered with the caveats suggested in the article - this year in Texas was unique because of the 5-way Gubernatorial race and the national winds of Iraq and Republican corruption impacting so many voters.

Now the Dallas County story -

The home of glitzy restaurants, million-dollar condos and six-figure Neiman Marcus holiday baubles has a new distinction that has nothing to do with its oversupply of Hummers and BMWs.

Dallas County still calls its historic courthouse Old Red, but on Tuesday it went "blue."

A national wave of Democratic voting and changing demographics swept Republicans out of power in the county as the GOP surrendered 42 judgeships, the district's attorney office and the county judge's seat.

"Dallas has become a very competitive two-party county and very sensitive to changes in the national political mood," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "The difference in this election was that more Democrats came out and more voted a straight party ticket."

Wilson said demographic changes gradually have been turning the county of 2.3 million residents more Democratic. Hispanics, who locally have traditionally voted Democratic by a two-to-one margin, have continued to move into the city and aging inner-ring suburbs such as Irving, Grand Prairie and Garland.

Meanwhile, white middle-class residents who tend to vote Republican have continued to move to Collin County suburbs such as Plano and McKinney, while middle-class blacks, who lean Democratic, have moved to suburbs such as Lancaster in southern Dallas County.

Finally, he said, urban revitalization in the city center has brought young singles who also tend to vote Democratic.

Cal Jillson, another SMU political scientist, said he and others expected Democrats to slowly gain offices this year, in 2008 and 2010 because of those trends. "Instead, the national trend brought them in all at once," he said. ...

It will take at least one or two more cycles of Democrats holding gains before the county could be called safely Democratic, Wilson said.

More good news. One key thing that both articles address - the long-term story is already written. Demographic changes in Texas are happening - and happening so fast - that over time this state will be turning back to the Democratic party.

Kind of explains the Right's irrational xenophobia.

It is a long-term process, but the Democratic Party is growing at the grassroots level. And - if it's not getting old yet - I want to give another tip-of-the-hat to Howard Dean. This is what the 50-state plan is all about - grow the grassroots party in every state, regardless of how red that state may be. Overtime, those investments are going to pay massive dividends.

Today, Dallas County, tomorrow, Harris, the next - Austin. Texas Democrats are coming back.

The depth of the morass...

2006-11-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

I was almost dumbstruck reading this article: Iraqis cheer Rumsfeld departure, look for changes in U.S. approach from this morning's Houston Chronicle.

This demonstrates just how tragically incompetent and disconnected from the reality of Iraq that the Bush administration is/has been.

Iraqis today cheered the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, blaming him for policy failures and scandals they say helped spawn the daily sectarian carnage wracking their nation.

"Rumsfeld's resignation shows the scale of the mess the U.S. has made in Iraq," said Ibrahim Ali, 44, who works at the Oil Ministry. "The efforts by American politicians to hide their failure are no longer working." ...

"I think that there will a shift in the U.S. policy in Iraq after his resignation," said Osama Ahmed, 50, a civil servant. ...

Whatever suggestions are put forward, however, Iraqis said Rumsfeld's departure was a positive move.

"Rumsfeld's resignation is a good step because he failed to keep security in Iraq," said Saad Jawad, 45, a former army officer who also works at the Oil Ministry.

Many Iraqis blamed Rumsfeld for spurring the emergence of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias by disbanding the former Iraqi army following the April 2003 toppling of the former government of Saddam Hussein.

Although that order was actually issued by former top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, such sentiments show how widely Rumsfeld is identified with failed policies in Iraq.
"I am happy with Rumsfeld's resignation because he played a major role in disbanding the former Iraqi army. He participated in building the new army on a sectarian basis," said Louai Abdel-Hussein, 48, a Shiite who owns a small grocery in Baghdad.

Ahmed, the civil servant, said Rumsfeld should also be held responsible for crimes by American forces in Iraq, particularly the abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison that became known in 2004. "Rumsfeld's resignation is not enough," Ahmed said. "He should be put under investigation for his responsibility in the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib and the killings and rapes carried out by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi citizens, he said.

These are the opinions of the people we "liberated." I do not mean to suggest that the opinions of non-Americans need to drive our appointment of government officials. What I am suggesting is that if this is reflective of the opinions of the peoples whose nation we are occupying - it is evidence of the complete state of denial that Bush and his administration are mired in.

The real question, the difficult question, going forwad will be is George Bush ready to accept reality, admit tragic and monumental mistakes, and actually try to fix the mess he made in Iraq?

My guess is no. I think that starting yesterday, Bush has written Iraq off, and will proceed to concentrate on d0mestic issues for the next two years, in hopes of leaving office with some modicum of positive feeling from the populice. I don't think he's got it in him to take responsibility, admit mistakes, and do the hard work of making corrections.

That will be left for the next administration.

Ding, Dong - the Witch is Dead...

2006-11-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

And I didn't think today could get much better.

CNN.com is reporting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "stepping down." (No full story yet.)

Today truly does begin the New Direction for America!

A New Direction...

2006-11-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a good night.

Much better night than I expected.

Hopefully, this will indeed be a new direction for America. Maybe we can put behind us the past six disastrous years of the Bush administration.

Montana and Missouri are still out there...but both of them look reasonably good for the Democrats. If so - that's both the House and Senate. Unbelievable.

I don't know if I'll be the first to say it - but Kudos and Congratulations to Howard Dean and the 50 state plan. Governor Dean deserves much if not all of the credit for this landslide Democratic victory. Brilliant strategy, brilliantly executed.

It's been a good night. Now, let's all hope that this indeed portends a New Direction for America.

Wrong...

2006-11-07T21:27:00.000-08:00

Nope...the numbers do not seem to be working out for one of my favorite candidates - Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee.

88% is in...and all of Memphis - and he's still almost 60,000 votes down. More than half of Nashville is still out, but I now don't think the numbers are going to work out. I think it will still close - but not enough.

(FYI - I though he would win Shelby by 100,000 plus votes. It turned out to be 76,000. I'll still bet money that he'll lose by right around that 24,000 difference.)

Lampson...

2006-11-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Nick Lampson will win TX-22.

Whew...

Webb...

2006-11-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

Another impulsive call...

Webb is going to win Virginia. He's been down all night - but with 95% reporting he's only down by 12,000 votes...and Richmond is only 70% in.

These Democrats are going to win in two Republican seats becasue the cities are reporting late...

I think...

Ford...

2006-11-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

Total gut-call here...

Right now, 9:55, Corker leads by 5% with 74% reporting...

I'm calling Ford the winner.

The most votes outstanding (I've been looking at the individual county analysis in Tennessee) are in Shelby Country and Davidson County - Memphis and Nashville.

This is going to be a last-minute comeback, and Ford will win...

I think.

Last minute predictions...

2006-11-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

Okay. We're here. Mid-terms 2006. I'm going to make some last minute (relatively-uninformed) predictions and see how it all turns out tomorrow.

Senate:

Overall - Democratic Gain of 3

Important Races -
Rhode Island - Whitehouse picks up one for the Dems
Connecticut - Lieberman holds as an Independent Democrat
New Jersey - Menendez holds on to the seat for the Dems
Maryland - Too close to call - I'm giving this to the Rep Steele for the terrific campaign he has run...Republican gain
Virginia - I think the power of the incumbent will trump in this toss up race - Allen holds the seat for the Reps
Pennsylvania - Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead! Casey picks up one for the Dems
Ohio - Good campaign by Sherrod Brown in a terrible year for Ohio Reps - pick up for the Dems
Tennessee - Harold Ford Jr. ran what may have been the best campaign in Senate history, making an improbably competitive run in a Republican stronghold...but the nasty, dirty Republican machine politics turned this race at the death - Corker holds for the Reps
Missouri - Oh, so close. I'm going to guess and say Reps hold...but could go either way
Montana - Tester is the perfect man for Montana, and will pick one up for the Dems
Arizona - This race has come from no where to get tight at the end, but Kyl will hold for the Reps without much problem

House:

Overall - Democratic Gain of 12

I don't even pretend to follow too many individual House races, but I did some quick-and-dirty reading about some interesting and competitive races, and I think that the Democrats are going to be able to make some strong gains - though not nearly what the media is hyping. I think the interesting places to watch will be the races in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wyoming - and of course TX-22.

Pre-Game analysis:
I think there are two stories to come out of this election - the corporate-media story, and the real story.

First - I think that the big corporate media story on Wednesday will be the big "victory" of the Republicans, because they've managed to hold both Houses of Congress. Why? Because the Republicans have managed expectations so well this year - while the Democrats have gotten caught up in the hype.

The right-wing vote is not as disinterested and unmotivated as the Republicans have led the media to believe...in fact, they will turn out in large numbers, just as they always do. And that will tip the scale in the 70 or so competitive races. The Right has effectively been sending out negative signals so that even such a disastrous loss as what I am predicting can be spun as a victory. Very smart.

Second - in my opinion the real (but unreported) story will be the HUGE SUCCESS of Howard Dean's 50-state plan. When is the last time over 70 seats in the house, and 10+ races in the Senate were competitive? In the end, most of those races will end up staying Republican...but it is a miracle that they are competitive - especially in Republican strongholds like Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Montana, Missouri, Idaho, etc. And this is the first election of the 50-state plan. Even without taking either the House or Senate, the Democrats should be overwhelmingly excited about the first-cycle success of this plan. With perseverance, this is going to turn the map blue. Kudos to Howard Dean - and the tremendous slate of candidates that the Democratic party attracted in 2006.

Let's see what happens...

Prior related posts:
Midterm predictions for the Midterms...

One final plug...

2006-11-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

I had two good opportunities last night.

First (and admittedly foremost) I was able to take my son to the Houston Dynamo's Western Conference Championship game, which the Dynamo won to make it to the MLS Cup Final in Dallas next weekend.

That was a great time.

But I had another great opportunity. I got to shake the hand of Jim Henley, who was doing some last minute campaigning outside the entry gate to Robertson Stadium before the game.

Jim Henley is running an uphill battle to unseat the incumbent in TX-7. In fact, it's probably a lost-cause sort of a battle. But Mr. Henley is a candiate worthy of support. From his website:

James B. Henley has dedicated his life to teaching since 1987. He has taught History and Debate at Sidney Lanier Middle School where he has won the praise and devotion of a generation of Houston students.

The Lanier debate teams have won three consecutive National Middle School Debate Championships. In fact, Mr. Henley’s teams are undefeated in debate competition since 2002. [See the news links in Lanier Debate section.] For the past eighteen years, Mr. Henley has directed an annual tour of Washington D.C. leading several thousand parent and students from his school community to meet national leaders from both parties.

Jim was born in 1947, the son of James B. Henley Sr., a World War II veteran and Laura H. Henley, a native of Belgium. They met and married after the war and raised seven children in Camden, Arkansas.

Jim graduated from University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas. He served as pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Clarksville from 1967 to 1976 and graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

In addition, this is what the Houston Chronicle said in endorsing Mr. Henley in the Democratic primary:

IN the predominantly Westside Houston 7th congressional district, the Chronicle endorses Houston public schoolteacher Jim Henley, a debate instructor at Lanier Middle School, who is seeking to unseat entrenched incumbent John Culberson.

Seeking to capitalize on voter unease over ethics scandals in Washington, Henley is running a grassroots campaign using a cadre of former students and their parents as volunteers. He has vowed to take no political action committee contributions and is counting on small, individual donors to fuel his effort. He opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and is calling for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by next December.

Henley favors banning automatic assault weapons, but believes hunters should have their rifles.

...He has established a reputation of high character and academic leadership during his 18-year teaching career. He opposes extension of portions of the Patriot Act that he feels erode citizens' constitutional rights and decries the warrantless NSA surveillance approved by the Bush administration.

Jim is a good candiate, in a tough district to try to unseat an incumbent. But I will always be proud to support good candidates like Mr. Henley - regardless of the result.

Jim Henley, Teacher for Congress!!

"A shabby piece of work"...

2006-11-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

That's how the White House referred to our military.

Okay - not exactly - I was just trying out an experiment in Republican-style rhetoric.

But, that actually is a quote from the White House - "a shabby piece of work" - in referring to an editorial in the Military Times publications (the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Corps Times) urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The editorial cited a loss of support from military leaders over the Iraq war.

Of course, coming from the an organization providing news to the military, the Bush Administration took this legitimate criticism to heart and decided to review it's current leadership, and attempt to forge a coherent Iraq policy going foward.

HA!!! Just kidding. This is the Bush Administration after all. They just ignore it - the White House press secretary Tony Snow dismissed the editorial as a "shabby piece of work."

I think the American people are realizing what is indeed a shabby piece of work:

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

...

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.

And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this time.

...

Go read the rest of that great editorial by Thomas Friedman.

Textbook...

2006-11-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

If there ever was a textbook example of what is wrong with conservatism in general, and the Republican party in America specifically, we saw it in Houston this week.

Houston mayor cancels free flu shots at polling places

The mayor of Houston, Bill White, and a private foundation came up with a great idea to distribute flu shots to those in need going into this winter season - one that had been used in several other cities around the country. Provide flu vaccinations to the poor and elderly at early voting locations around the city. If and when people come in for voting, at the same time they can get their flu shots.

This was a creative mix of public and private organizations working together for the betterment of the public health of our community.

Until Republicans got involved:

Mayor Bill White today ordered a halt to a privately funded drive to offer flu vaccinations at early voting sites in Hispanic and black neighborhoods, amid conservative criticism that the effort would boost Democratic votes.

Since Monday, the city had been offering the free vaccinations at four polling places around Houston under a national grant program, used in more than 20 other cities.

White defended the program at a news conference today, saying public health was the city's only motive in launching the initiative. Still, he said he decided this morning to abandon the plan after today to avoid perception that it could be viewed as an effort to draw certain voters to the polls. ...
"There was no political motive whatsoever to do it," he said. "I don't want to have to spend more money in defending a baseless lawsuit than we're giving away in vaccine — or allow anybody to question the integrity of the political process."

Critics of the program have been discussing the issue on conservative Web blogs and talk radio.
...
``I think the program was completely motivated by a plan to turn out Democratic voters,'' said [county Republican Chairman Jared] Woodfill, citing White's service as party chair and as a deputy energy secretary under former President Clinton.

He said the vote-vaccination plan violated a portion of the Texas Election Code that prohibits offering anything of value in exchange for votes.

This is simply beyond the pale. Rather than worry about the health of our community - and specifically our communities most vulnerable population - the Harris County Republican party is worried about their vice-grip on power. Shameful.

This program was a bright-light, an example of EXACTLY the way private and public entities should be working together:

Stephen Williams, director of the city's Health and Human Services Department, which has touted the program in recent days, said he hopes to get permission to use the vaccine in other locations.

The terms of the grant, he and White said, required a tie to polling places in medically underserved areas where populations are less likely to get a vaccination.

The city and Amerigroup Foundation got the 3,000 doses with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic group that devotes funding to health care.

The Amerigroup Foundation, according to its Web site, is the philanthropic arm of the Amerigroup Corp., a managed health-care company with a focus on providing services to low-income communities.

A textbook example of Republican party principles - power above people.

Eat all the seafood you can, while you can...

2006-11-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

This is a really disturbing article from MSNBC - Seafood could Collapse by 2050, Experts Warn:
Overfishing, pollution, warming are destroying stocks, study finds.

If you like seafood - like I do - or if you simply like fishing, the outdoors, and the environment in general, it is disquieting to think that the vast majority of wild ocean species could be virtually gone.

If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, by 2050 the populations of just about all seafood face collapse, defined as 90 percent depletion, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a study published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

There are serious consequenses to such an eradication of ocean species, beyond me not being able to eat some of my favorite foods. Including some scary economic and third-world nutrition impacts:

Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts’ environment program, pointed out that worldwide fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion people, many of whom are poor, fish is their main source of protein, he said.

As the population of the world - especially in developing nations - is exploding, and the thought of the loss of food-supply and jobs in those areas could produce massive instability in those regions.

On the positive side, it looks as if such impacts can be avoided with proper, and efficient, management:

The researchers called for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing by large trawling fleets and tighter controls on pollution.

In the 48 areas worldwide that have been protected to improve marine biodiversity, they found, “diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem’s productivity and stability.”

This is the sort of issue that should not be ignored by developing nations. We must look for leaders with the political will to tackle such dire - yet preventable - consequenses.

Vindication...

2006-11-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

DA drops case against ex-HISD employee

Harris County prosecutors acknowledged today that they don't have enough evidence to convict a former Houston ISD employee accused of falsely changing Sharpstown High School's student dropout records.

Assistant District Attorney Terese Buess asked state District Judge Brock Thomas to dismiss the felony charge of tampering with a government document against Kenneth Cuadra as lawyers on both sides prepared to pick a jury later this week.

After reviewing Houston Independent School District computer records, Buess said she concluded there was no way to prove that Cuadra was the person who changed the dropout numbers to make it seem that no students dropped out of Sharpstown High School in 2002.

Cuadra was a school computer technician and the only HISD employee charged
criminally in connection with a dropout scandal that uncovered similar
under-reporting of at least 3,000 dropouts from Sharpstown and other
campuses.

Hooray for Mr. Cuadra. He and his family have been through a lot over the past two years, and it is almost criminal that it took the Harris County DA's office this long to drop these completely false charges.

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) was roiled with controversy several years ago when a state audit revealed that the state's largest school district underreported nearly 3,000 dropouts.

Few people were disciplined for the outrageous scandal - and only one was charged with criminal offense. And that charge was merely an attempt at scapegoat.

"It rehashes a very unpleasant period," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "I think the DA's office is going to be highly embarrassed when the results come down."

"This is a case that should never be in trial," Fallon said. "Going after the computer tech is the most absurd piece of prosecution I've ever seen."

This was merely the case of the DA's office attempting to push a low-level school district employee into pleading guilty in order to make a public show of holding someone responsible - although not anyone actually associated with the fradulent reports.

There are reports that as of yesterday, the DA's office was pushing Mr. Cuadra to settle - when the CLEARLY KNEW that they did not have any evidence against him to take to trial. Shameful.

It is upsetting that no one responsible for these fraudulent HISD reports was held responsible - and it is upsetting that HISD and the DA's office would try to pin responsibility (and in the process damage the reputation) on someone they thought they could bully into the scapegoat role.

Not this time.

Surprise, surprise...

2006-10-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

Looks like I just might be right after all - Write-in tightens race in District 22.

The Republican write-in effort to hold former Rep. Tom DeLay's congressional seat, once viewed as a long shot, has created a tight race, according to a Houston Chronicle-11 News poll.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said they would vote for a write-in candidate, a statistical tie with the 36 percent support for Democrat Nick Lampson, according to the poll of more than 500 likely voters in the 22nd Congressional District.

Most who say they will write in a candidate plan on naming Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, the Houston city councilwoman backed by the Republican Party. Two lesser-known candidates also are running as write-ins.

This is what I wrote two weeks ago:

[I]n an admittedly isolated personal observance, it appears that in Houston, the Republicans are starting to pour on the money. Commericals on the airwaves can be heard for Sekula-Gibbs - but I haven't heard anything from Lampson. In addition, there are two big billboards heading down 59 South for Sekula-Gibbs...nothing from Lampson.

Maybe it's just me - but in one of the most heavily Republican districts in the US, I think that the Vote Twice/Write In campaign is gaining traction, and she has a chance to upset ... the underdog.

If a write-in wins in TX-22 it will be unprecedented, but not wholly unexpected.

Related prior post:
An upset, of what would have been an upset, in the making?...

Why they'll hold...

2006-10-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

Two interesting articles recently about the GOP's unequaled Get Out The Vote (GOTV) machine.

First, from today's Houston Chronicle - Republicans oil their successful turnout machine.

Despite the gloom, Republican campaign operatives sound confident. They have been fine-tuning their data-mining, micro-targeting and other methods that served them well in past elections. Some Democrats are beginning to sound worried.

Republicans, led by White House political guru Karl Rove, sought in 2002 to reverse a decades-long Democratic edge in voter turnout that was fueled in large part by well-organized labor unions.

The GOP developed a program that started three days before the election. It was aimed at identifying Republicans and likely Republican voters and getting them to the polls. The tactic was fine-tuned in 2004 and will be even more effective this year, Republicans said.

"We are putting forward the most unprecedented grass-roots effort in the history of midterm elections," said Danny Diaz, spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "We outraised the Democrats, we've made more voter contacts, and our (get-out-the-vote) operation is more robust — we are extremely confident we have built a foundation to maintain our majorities."

The Republican Party has raised $199.4 million since the 2004 elections, almost double the $108.4 million raised by the Democrats.

In 2004, the Republican Party used marketing-style data-mining — for example, calculating whether a certain voter in a particular district owned a snowmobile and was therefore a likely Republican voter, then targeting the prospect with a narrow political message.

This is precisely why I'm still skeptical that the Democrats will be able to win either the House or Senate. The margins in so many of the individual campaigns are razor thin - and it is the Republican's GOTV effort that will get them over the top.

On a similar note, the Washington Post had a great analysis of the most basic of Republican election year tactics - The GOP Leans on A Proven Strategy.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have given multiple interviews to conservative journalists, senior adviser Karl Rove has telephoned religious and social activists, and the White House has staged signing ceremonies for legislation cracking down on terrorism and illegal immigration. Two weeks before Election Day, Bush aides invited dozens of radio talk show hosts for a marathon broadcast from the White House yesterday to reach conservative listeners.

The message that Bush and others are sending to alienated supporters is that, no matter how upset they have been about various policies or political missteps over the past couple of years, life would be far worse under the Democrats. They name liberal lawmakers who would take charge of key committees and warn conservatives that taxes would go up and protection against terrorists would go down.

The White House courtship of the right paid enormous dividends in the past, but this year it is complicated by a far more skeptical audience than in 2002 and 2004. Conservatives who were key to those victories have grown frustrated with the Bush policies on federal spending, immigration, Iraq and foreign affairs, and uncertain of his commitment to issues such as preventing legalized same-sex marriage. The Mark Foley page scandal did not help reassure "values voters," as strategists call them, nor did the publication of a book by former White House official David Kuo saying that Bush aides dismissed Christian conservatives as "nuts."

Manipulate the Christian right...even though Bush, Cheney, and Rove have stated that they are simply "nuts" who sole purpose is to be manipulated.

The Republicans are failures at governing our nation - but they are experts at elections. They'll show it again this year.

Related prior post:
This sums it up...

Lampson for TX-22...

2006-10-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Big step for Nick Lampson in his attempt not only to win TX-22 this year, but to retain the seat going foward - VFW endorses Lampson in District 22 race.

Lampson was originally the big underdog, running against Tom Delay in a heavily Republican district. After Delay's corruption led to an indictment and his subsequent withdrawal from the race, Lampson became the favorite. It is widely expected, however, that Lampson will simply be a temporary seat-filler, until a Republican can run again in 2008.

Maybe not:

The national Veterans of Foreign Wars PAC has endorsed Democrat Nick Lampson in his race for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's seat, an endorsement that Lampson's campaign says helps debunk claims that he is a liberal.

Lampson's staff has been touting his VFW endorsement and the endorsement of the National Rifle Association to show that the former congressman is a moderate to conservative Democrat in line with voters in this conservative Republican district.

Of course, this is the only other option:

Republican write-in candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs doesn't detail her stand on the war, except to say that she supports the president's war on terror and opposes an early withdrawal.To be fair, Sekula-Gibbs entered the race very late, and is simply not qualified for seat.

Go Nick Lampson!!

The key...

2006-10-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

Will the Democrats be able to win the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections?

Back on 2-October I suggested that the Democrats would pick up 2 seats in the Senate. Since them, it seems as if Santorum really has lost his seat in Pennsylvania, which would bump the number to three...

But one of those two I was counting back on 2-Oct was Harold Ford Jr. pulling the HUGE upset in picking up a seat in Tennessee. Today, I feel much less confident that Ford will be able to pull that upset off ... but I have become more convinced that if he does win Tennessee, that is a much larger statement about the national scene, and the Democrats may be able to come up with the other three victories and take the Senate.

Let me explain...

First - why am I less confident that Ford is going to win Tennesse? Simple answer - typical Republican gutter-tactics - see the following two pieces: More on the Tennessee Mudslide; A Contentious Campaign in a Battleground State. Consider:

RUSSERT: Ken Mehlman, the Republican candidate in Tennessee has asked that you take that ad off the air, that it is over the top. Former Republican Senator William Cohen says it’s, quote, “overt racist appeal.”Will you take that ad down?

MEHLMAN: Tim, I don’t have the authority to take it down or put it up. It’s what called an independent expenditure.The way that process works under the campaign reform laws is I write a check to an independent individual. And that person’s responsible for spending money in certain states. Tennessee is one of them.

I’ll tell you this, though. After the comments by Mr. Corker and by former Senator Cohen, I looked at the ad. I don’t agree with that characterization of it. But it’s not an ad that I have authority over. I saw it for the first time the same time that they did.

RUSSERT: The whole idea of having a blond white woman winking at a black Congressman, the notion of interracial sex is not in your mind racist?

MEHLMAN: I think that that ad talks about a number of people on the street talking about things that Mr. Ford allegedly has either done or a proposal he has for the future. I think it’s a fair ad.

Disgusting. Or this:

[Republican candidate] Corker depicts himself as more "senatorial" than Ford but is running an almost entirely negative campaign at this point. He depicts Ford as a smooth-talking city slicker who has deeper roots in Washington, D.C. -- where Ford lived for part of his childhood -- compared with Corker, the self-described "real Tennessean" in the race.

The hardest blows have come from the national GOP. The National Republican Senatorial Committee ridicules Ford's expensive tastes on a "Fancy Ford" Web site, and the Republican National Committee is airing a controversial new ad that features a scantily clad blonde who says she met Ford at a Playboy party. "Harold, call me!" the woman chirps.

Ugh. When you have no ideas, you resort to slime. Unfortunately, these days slime is terribly effective, and such a dirty, nasty, negative campaign could very easily turn this campaign around in the final couple of weeks. It's a shame that a candidate with leadership, vision, and exuding confidence in Tennessee and America would be torpedoed by dirty-Republican tactics...but that's the way it goes.

But, Ford is a great candidate, and will keep fighting to the end of this thing - bringing lots of Tennesseans around:

John Layne is a 57-year-old white Republican with a long gray beard, no job and advancing emphysema. He arrived an hour early to hear Harold Ford Jr. speak in this struggling mountain town.

"Oh, sure, there's some prejudice," Layne said as he contemplated casting a ballot for a black man. "I wouldn't want my daughter marrying one." But he's more concerned about rising medical costs: When it comes to voting, "you gotta look at the person, not the color."

While visiting a diner in Oak Ridge, Corker stopped to shake hands with Linda Ramsey, who was having lunch with her husband, Dale, and daughter Kelcee. Ramsey responded with a big smile when Corker asked for her vote. But when he moved to the next table, she conceded she was leaning toward Ford.

Although she supported Corker in the primary, Ramsey explained, "all he wants to do is point fingers. Ford is stepping up above it."

If Ford can pull this off in Tennessee, then nationwide, Democrats have a real chance. To be able to fend off the dirty-Republican tactics would be indicative of a national wave of support for the New Direction of the Democrats, and a latent disgust of these typical Republican tactics.

Go Harold Ford Jr.!!

GM signs of life...

2006-10-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

Can losing over one hundred million dollars in three months ever be considered a good thing? Maybe, just maybe - if we're talking about a US auto manufacturer.

The Houston Chronicle reports this morning - GM posts $115 million loss for third quarter.

Sure, $115 million is a lot of money to lose - but in compared to a year ago...or the $5.8 billion loss that Ford just announced...it actually looks pretty good.

GM's July-September loss of 20 cents per share was far better than the same period last year when the nation's largest automaker lost $1.7 billion, or $2.94 per share.

The company said that excluding goodwill impairment at its finance arm and charges associated with the reorganization at Delphi Corp., its former parts division, it made a profit of 93 cents per share.

It looks as if operations actually turned a profit. This could be a good sign for an ailing giant.

Not such good news at Chysler, a former US auto major, and not component of DaimlerChrysler. Altough the parent company posted a profit, the Chrysler division lost a boatload - Chrysler Announces $1.5 Billion Loss.

Executives at DaimlerChrysler said today that they were working on a plan to return Chrysler to profitability after a loss of nearly $1.5 billion in the third quarter.

But they would not rule out the possibility that Chrysler could be spun off or sold, breaking up the eight-year alliance between the German and American auto companies.
...
Chrysler blamed its loss, signaled a few weeks ago, on slumping sales of a product line that depends heavily on sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and on the deeper discounts it has been obliged to offer consumers.

Last week, Chrysler said that it was striving to cut its manufacturing and marketing costs by $1,000 a car, under a plan called Project Refocus, the second extensive restructuring effort at the company in six years.
...
Until today, Mr. Zetsche [CEO of DaimlerChrysler] and other executives always insisted that Chrysler had a safe place in the DaimlerChrysler fold. But when the parent company’s chief financial officer, Bodo Uebber,was asked repeatedly today about Chrysler’s prospects during a conference call with analysts and journalists, he gave cryptic, noncommittal answers.

But over at Ford, it also looks as if asset divesture is in the works - Ford’s Dismal Results Renew Speculation on Asset Sales.

“Ford can do two things: borrow more money and sell assets” to buy time until their operations problems are fixed, John Casesa, a longtime auto industry analyst, told The New York Times.

Ford already has put a British maker of luxury cars, Aston Martin, up for sale. The chief financial officer, Don Leclair, said Ford is preparing a short list of bidders, but does not expect to close a sale before the end of the year. ...

Mr. Mulally confirmed that Ford is open to reviewing its other luxury brands — leaving the door open to a potential sale of Jaguar, Volvo or Land Rover. “I really think it’s going to hinge on how the businesses are doing and can we make profitable growth businesses out of them with the action we have taken and additional actions that might be required,” he said in a conference call.

But as it is noted above - this is only buying time, it's not a long term plan. New CEO Alan Mulallay noted after the poor results released on Monday that Ford would not start seeing the results from their turnaround plan until the end of 2007.

Indeed, the new chief executive at Ford, Alan R. Mulally, a former Boeing executive, said the automaker would require a full transformation in the way it thought about consumers and approached the American market.

The typical Detroit turnaround, based on plant closings and introducing a few hit vehicles but with little change in attitude, will not be enough to see Ford through, Mr. Mulally said ...

1984...

2006-10-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

How unintelligent does the Bush administration believe the American public is? The constant misunderestimation of us - the American people - is stunning.

Or maybe we really are as unintelligent as they think.

Bush and his cronies now believe they can simply pretend what they've said - over and over again - in the past never happened - and what they are saying now, is what they've always said. Does that remind you of anything? Say, George Orwell's 1984? In 1984, the totalitarian government would change their slogan, change who they were at war with, change who was a patriot and who was a villian - and simply deny and erase the evidence of their former statements - and the loyal public would buy it.

Bush’s new tack steers clear of ‘stay the course’
Phrase became liability for GOP in election year

After three solid years of the Bush administration holding firm on the line of "Stay the Course" - now they are trying to say that was never the policy. What?

President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as "stay the course." A complete distortion, they say. "That is not a stay-the-course policy," White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.

Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush.

"We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed," he said in Salt Lake City in August.

We will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course," he said in Milwaukee in July.

"I saw people wondering whether the United States would have the nerve to stay the course and help them succeed," he said after returning from Baghdad in June.

But the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course."

Look at this terrific link from Thing Progress: Bartlett: ‘It’s Never Been A Stay The Course Strategy’

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]
SNOW: The second thing you do is you stay the course. [7/10/06]
SNOW: But on the other hand, you also cannot be a President in a wartime and not realize that you’ve got to stay the course. [8/17/06]
BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]
BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]
BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]
SNOW: People are going to want more of it, and that’s why the President is etermined to stay the course. April. [8/16/06]
BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]
BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

Arrogance.

Also - take a look at this link from the same blog: REPORT: Bush Officials Were ‘Rooting’ For North Korea to Test Nuclear Weapon

Before North Korea announced it had detonated a nuclear device, some senior officials even said they were quietly rooting for a test, believing that would finally clarify the debate within the administration.

Until now, no U.S. official in any administration has ever advocated the testing of nuclear weapons by another country, even by allies such as the United Kingdom and France.

One of these officials may have been Rice herself, Kessler hints. Rice, he reports, “has come close to saying the test was a net plus for the United States.” Rice has been trying to counter the prevailing view that the test was a failure of the Bush administration’s policy.

This is Orwell in action...

Boondoggle...

2006-10-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

A cover story in yesterday's New York Times exposed serious problems in the recent wave to deregulate energy - In Deregulation, Plants Turn Into Blue Chips.

This has been the recent trend in energy production and distribution - deregulate the industry in the hope of stimulating competition and lowering consumer utility bills.

But this Times story points out that although massive investment firms may have been able to profit from deregulation - to the tune of billions and billions of dollars in just a few short years - consumers have not seen the wonderful benefits that were promised. In fact almost the opposite has happened - competition has not occurred, and consumers have paid the price for the profits the investment firms are reaping.

But even as some investors have profited handsomely by buying and sometimes quickly reselling power plants, electricity customers, who were supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of the new system, have not fared so well. Not only have their electricity rates not fallen, in many cases they are rising even faster than the prices of the fuels used to make the electricity.

Those increases stand in contrast to the significantly lower prices in other businesses in which competition was introduced, such as airlines and long-distance calling.

Some electricity customers are also being saddled with monthly surcharges to cover construction costs for plants that were sold at bargain prices and then resold at huge profits. Some of these surcharges will continue for years.

And, look what market is analyzed as an example of the worst affects of deregulation:

Take the case of the Texas power plants. After the Texas Legislature, urged by Enron and big industrial customers, voted to make electricity generation a competitive business, the utility serving the Houston area sold 60 power plants that generate most of the power for the area to four investment firms — the Texas Pacific Group, the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Hellman & Friedman — which soon resold the plants at the $5 billion profit.

But state regulators have ordered electricity customers to pay an average of $4.75 monthly for 14 years to finish paying for the construction of the power plants, plus interest.

And the utility that sold the plants, Centerpoint, is suing for even higher payments from customers. Houston-area consumers now pay among the highest electricity rates, nearly double the national average.

Supporters of deregulation said customers would benefit from healthy competition among a growing number of electricity producers. But such competition has not developed.

Yuck. Talk about a total lack of planning...or at least planning with consumers in mind.

Many of the power plants that were sold are still owned by the utilities’ parent companies; they were simply transferred from the regulated utilities to unregulated sister companies. Some regulators allowed utilities to favor the sister companies with long-term contracts even if they did not offer the best price for electricity.

In fact, independent electricity producers argue that their modern generating plants often sit idle while older, inefficient plants owned by politically powerful utilities and their unregulated sister companies whir around the clock under long-term contracts. For example, Calpine, an independent generating company, and some big industrial customers have complained that Entergy, the Louisiana utility holding company, is favoring its own plants when Calpine’s power would be cheaper. Congress has ordered studies of the issue.

Because utilities are still allowed to pass on the cost of the power they buy, they have little incentive to choose a cheaper supplier. Electricity customers therefore end up paying more than they would have to if electricity production were truly competitive.
...
“It’s a great deal, having ratepayers cover your managerial mistakes.”

This is what happens when you allow the energy companies to control energy policy within the states and federal government. There is no one left looking out for the consumers. Deregulation is good only for the utility companies, not for us consumers.

This is an excellent example of why there are some key industries that it makes complete sense for governments to highly regulate. I fully believe in the free-market, however, there are key industries that provide critical national services that our government has a responsiblity to oversee to protect consumers from this very type of activity.

(As an aside, deregultion played a major part in the power "shortages" in California some years ago, which played a part in exposing Enron as a manipulitive corporation, rather than the corporate beacon that they had generally been perceived of previous to the California episode.)

From Improbable to Possible...

2006-10-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Really nice profile about Texas Gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell in todays Houston Chronicle - Bell's Political Revival Harder than Imagined.

Chris Bell's political career was in the dumps by Christmas 2004.

Bell already had lost a bid for Houston mayor, and Republican redistricting had cost him his seat in Congress after his freshman term. But on the upside, Bell had become a hero among Democrats for filing a successful ethics complaint against then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land.

In the kitchen of his Houston home, Bell sat with Jeff Steen, his longtime friend and political adviser, trying to decide whether to run for governor, Steen recalls.

Bell knew it would be an uphill battle, requiring almost a miracle to win. But he believed it could be done by the right candidate in the right place at the right time, Steen said.

However, the road has been steeper than Bell could have imagined.

Democratic leaders and financial donors dodged his calls. The news media cast him as an underfunded also-ran.

It is almost utterly inconceivable that a Democrat could win the Governor's office in Texas - or almost any statewide office. But - if it was going to happen, this would be the year. There are five candidates in the race, and winner takes all - no run offs. The candidates are Republican incumbent Rick Perry. More conservative independent Carrol Keeton Strayhorn - who is running due to her distain for Perry, and belief that he is not conservative enough. Independent Kinky Friedman - who is an odd candidate who could pull disaffected liberal voters, but whose policy positions veer to the right. There is a Libertarian candidate - which will take conservative votes.

And then there is Democrat Chris Bell. Essentially, there are four conservatives and Bell. Clearly, the hope of the Bell campaign is for a very large Democratic turnout, Democrats vote for him instead of Friedman, and finally, that Strayhorn, Friedman and the Libertarian take many votes away from Perry.

Unlikely, but possible.

ABOUT CHRIS BELL
• Age: 46
• Family: Married to Alison Ayers. They were introduced by Allen and Elizabeth Blakemore, two of Houston's top Republican political consultants. The Bells have two sons: Atlee, 10, and Connally, 8.
• Education: Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the South Texas College of Law. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta at UT.
• Background: TV and radio reporter. Lawyer. Member of the Houston City Council, 1997-2002. Ran an unsuccessful race for Houston mayor, 2001. Served in the U.S. House, 2003-2005.
• From the stump speech : "If you give me the bully pulpit and a veto pen, I will lead a 'New Texas Revolution.' " "Carole Strayhorn and Rick Perry are two sleeves of the same empty suit"
• What you might not know about him: Bell has a dry, quick wit. But because it is situational and has a you-had-to-be-there quality, his humor rarely translates to the news media.

Ford takes a beating...

2006-10-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

Ford Reports Loss of $5.8 Billion in 3rd Quarter

Just a terribly ugly quarter for the US' second largest auto maker. New CEO Alan R. Mulally put it bluntly, saying, "Let me make it clear — these results are unacceptable." And the current turn-around plan doesn't look to pay any benefits soon:

“Without giving any specific guidance, the profits will be worse in the fourth quarter than in the third,” Mr. Leclair said, later clarifying that he was referring to operating income. Several minutes after he made that remark, Ford’s stock, which had been trading a few cents above last week’s close, fell sharply.

Early this afternoon, Ford’s shares were trading down 14 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $7.87 on the New York Stock Exchange.

In the third quarter, Ford’s continuing operations lost $1.2 billion, or 62 cents a share, roughly what analysts had expected.

The losses in Ford’s North American operations were $800 million more than a year earlier. The company’s Premier Automotive Group, which includes the European brands Jaguar and Land Rover, lost $593 million, five and a half times more than last year.
Those numbers, while dismal, did not surprise analysts, who expected the company’s performance to be far worse than a year earlier, when it lost $284 million.

Things are just ugly for US Auto. GM recently turned down the opportunity to work with Carlos Ghosn - who has effectively turned around both Renault and Nissan. Now, Ghosn may begin to eye Ford a little closer.

Ford had been seen as a potential partner for Nissan and Renault, which spent the summer exploring an alliance with General Motors. After those talks ended abruptly earlier this month, Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of both Nissan and Renault, said he was still interested in collaborating with a company in North America.

The plan(s)...

2006-10-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

It appears as if the Republicans have finally come up with a plan in Iraq...well competing plans...or secret plans...or hobbit plans.

Sadly, I'm not kidding:

GOP Sen. Conrad Burns [said] in Tuesday's debate that he believes President Bush has a plan to win the war in Iraq but is keeping it quiet.

“We're not going to tell you what our plan is,” Burns told Democrat Jon Tester. Matt McKenna, a Tester spokesman, likened Burns' comments to statements by President Nixon that led to rumors of a “secret plan” to end or win the war in Vietnam. “The comparison is two politicians who put their own ambitions above the safety and success of the troops,” McKenna said.

Burns' spokesman Jason Klindt said Burns is adamant that details of a plan to win should not be released. Klindt said he doesn't know if Burns knows any specifics of a plan, but added, “I think he knows the general strategy.”

From Burns' remark draws comparison to Nixon.

Are you kidding me. There might be a plan, but - voters of Montana - we're not telling you...and I think, I might know the general strategy of that plan, but Bush won't tell me - Senator, Republican, and member of the Defense appropiations subcommittee. That is the NUTTIEST thing I've ever heard.

Until I heard this:

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) offering a new way to understand the importance of the Iraq war:

"As the Hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq, and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

The Eye of Mordor, for those who don't follow the study of geopolitical dynamics, was used by the Dark Lord Sauron to search for the One Ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-Earth.

Next: What Harry Potter thinks of bilateral negotiations with North Korea.

From the Chicago Sun-Times.

Truly unbelieveable.

This sums it up...

2006-10-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Republican media consultant Craig Shirley said the party's national leadership appears to be trying to scare disaffected voters to the polls by arguing that Republicans aren't as bad as the Democrats. "It would be nice if the national party started talking about what we are for ... instead of simply trashing the left," Mr. Shirley said. "We used to be proud of our ideas about less government and more freedom."

Again, experts at winning elections, pathetic at governing.

From the Washington Times article Conservative voters likely to stay home.

Other telling excerpts:

Top Republicans -- including President Bush, his chief strategist Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman -- have been meeting with conservative activists, columnists and broadcasters, emphasizing the importance of this midterm election. That message has rippled out via newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and the Internet.

An e-mail sent this week by the conservative group GOPUSA.com carried the subject line, "Don't you dare not vote," and featured a column by veteran activist Doug Patton appealing to Republican voters' patriotism.

"As you contemplate how to express your frustration with Republican leaders who may have mishandled the power we have entrusted to them," Mr. Patton wrote, "consider how you would explain your apathy to the 1.2 million brave men who have given their lives in America's wars over the last 230 years."