Veni, Vici, V.E. Day

Admittedly, this is The Guardian, which is an avowed leftist newspaper in the UK, but still, this gets a bit embarassing to read:

But, mainly, he simply appeared, and sprinkled that stardust. Gordon Brown could be seen beaming. In the dark. The dark of the hall of 10 Downing Street. Obama wasn't allowed, through protocol, to grasp Mr B's hand outside for the cameras, as he is only a presidential candidate, and it wasn't done for John McCain's visit. But there was an Obama arm swiftly around Gordon's shoulders, and a (rather fluid) returning lower-back pat, before the door shut. Asked, a little later, about Brown's prospects, he said thoughtfully: 'You're always more popular before you're in charge. Once you're responsible, you're going to make some people unhappy.'

Gordon and Barack walked together - a few minutes out at the back of Downing Street around St James's Park. Apparently they talked about economies, global warming, terrorism, Middle East stuff. Obama had been up at about four in the morning to do the same thing at breakfast with a tired-looking Tony Blair. Apparently Obama sleeps for four hours every night.

In the garden there was something going on. Psychologists have a word for it - mirroring? Transference? Both had dark suits, done up with one button in the middle, and white shirts, and silky reddish ties, their left hands in their pockets, and their right hands gesturing, constantly. Back in the garden, Gordon waved his right hand to show him various trees. Nobody quite knows why. Nor what he was saying. The crueller watchers had it down pat. 'That tree's going to vote for me ... that one's dithering.' That was possibly a little too cynical, because our Prime Minister did indeed seem to be genuinely, sunnily, smiling. Twenty minutes later, Obama met David Cameron in the grounds of the Commons, and Cameron did the same. Waved his arms and showed him shrubs. Don't they have trees in Illinois?

Seriously, gag me.

I get this was an opinion column, not a hard news piece, but the fulsome love-in that was Obama's trip to Europe was getting a bit "over the top" coverage from the foreign media, as compared to other Presidential and senator visits since, well, Bill Clinton's last world tour.

It's clear that Europe has held it's collective breath at the monument to stupidity that is the American electoral process that saw the current Resident elected not once, but twice. I imagine they believed, "How dumb does half that country have to be to not see what this man is all about?", shook their heads and proceeded to drive down the value of the dollar so they could come over and investigate for themselves.

The candidacy of Barack Obama (and the same would have been more true of a Clinton candidacy) is much like the first ray of sunshine on a rainy March day. It holds out hope for renewal, nevermind that we have no clue precisely what form that renewal will take.

The sweet effluent of praise that has been heaped on Obama is pretty understandable given that. It's not about Obama per se (again, Hillary would have been welcomed at least as heartily and probably even more so), but about America coming back to the arms of the family of the world.

That he's a Democrat is not material. That he's black, or she a woman, is not material. That he's truly the NotBush in this election, that's what matters.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's young, intelligent and can speak a sentence without stumbling across a word he's not said before, like "the". That just magnifies the glaring incapacity of George W Bush to attain that level of affection after eight years of not only neglecting European society, but practically snubbing his nose at it.

The charge the Republicans will raise in the general election this Fall, that Obama is an elitist, that he's too polished, not the guy you'd want to have a beer with, is going to be made more effective by this messianic (sorry, it's an easier concept to grasp. I'm not trying to pick up a right wing talking point) pilgrimage.

Indeed, recent history has shown that the "Bubba" candidate will win, usually hands down, since JFK was assassinated. And I include Richard Nixon on that list, because frankly, you could outBubba George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy with a toothpick.

That Democrats, noting this, still chose between the two most unlikely Bubba candidates (and one could make the argument that Hillary kept it as close as she did for as long as she did by outBubbaing Obama) is a step in the right direction, and perhaps signals a change in the attitude of this nation, that intellect and rationality is ready to retake the mantle of governance, that reactionary policies and knee-jerk actions are no longer anything but the simple tantrums of spoiled rich kids pretending to be "real".

And maybe it is this, above all else, that Europe has sensed in the Obama candidacy.

The Audacity Of Dopes

As a Hillary partisan, I was surely subjected to my fair share of hubristic shpiel by Obombers. Sometimes it got very personal, but I've got a thick skin.

And I don't write a column that's read by thousands of people or even millions of people a week. I'm lucky if I hit four figures in seven days.

But the New Republic sees some troubling signs on the Obama campaign bus:

Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama's press office. The campaign was irked by the Times' latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee's accompanying front-page piece titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race," which was running in the morning's paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.

But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and Politico's Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. "I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, 'What the hell is this?' " Nagourney recently recalled. "I really flipped out."


Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. "I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others," Nagourney tells me. "I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I'm a political opponent."

I'm guessing there was some operative in Obama's campaign who got a little overenthusiastic.

Except...

Obama's press liaison, Robert Gibbs, has built a particularly large reservoir of ill will. David Mendell, who covered Obama's Senate campaign for the Chicago Tribune and authored the 2007 Obama book From Promise to Power, wrote about Gibbs as "the anti-Obama" and described him as "Obama's hired gun, skillfully trained to shoot at reporters whose coverage was deemed unfair. Mendell tells me, "if [Gibbs] feels you're necessary to achieve a campaign goal, he will give you access and allow you in. But, if he feels you're not going to be of help, he can just ignore you." Mendell has his own specific gripe: Apparently, the Obama team was less than pleased with his biography, on which they cooperated, and Gibbs has since refused to help with the second edition.


One reporter sniffs that Gibbs, a native Alabaman and veteran of John Kerry's 2004 campaign, is the "communications director who doesn't communicate." "If you're getting an interview, and they say ten minutes, it's ten minutes," adds Time's Karen Tumulty, who scored an interview with Obama in June. "Robert Gibbs will cut it off."

Now, as the article points out, this could just be the stress and strain of a long campaign with reporters jockeying for stories. What concerned me was this bit:

Still, the campaign hasn't helped itself, approaching reporters with a sense of entitlement. "They're an arrogant operation. Young and arrogant," one reporter covering the campaign says. "They don't believe in transparency with their own campaign," another says.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, yes, young and arrogant. Almost hubristic.

That's a trope I'm very familiar with from the Obombers, as is anyone who has spoken even faint praise of Hillary Clinton before June.

The problem is, if you piss off someone who buys ink by the barrell (I think that one was Harry Truman's), you tend to pay for it large time in the end. The press had given much of Obama's life story a miss during the primary, since it was clear a) it would ruin a good story to find out Obama was not who he claimed he was, and b) Hillary was going to be the whipping boy girl of the primaries.

During the early part of the primaries, Obama gave good press: good access, full interviews, lots of face time in the press plane/bus/room.

Later, he contracted that.

Now, he practically doles out press time as if it was precious gold. Or oil.

That's not a real bright strategy this early in the campaign.

Friday Music Blogging

Death Cab For Cutie - I will Possess Your Heart

I'm not sure which is the creepier stalker song, this one or this one:

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) The Big Shitpile just got ranker.

2) The answer seems pretty simple: he knows John McCain is well-liked and well-respected across the pond (despite what we liberals might think about him), and while Europeans don't vote, they do speak up. Too, as much as we know little about him, the Europeans know even less, and what they know is filtered through our MSM. Would you want to be defined by FOX and CNN?

3) Our atmosphere is exploding. Don't laugh once you read the article. There's the potential for yet another renewable energy source here.

4) Did you ever really wonder why Tony Blair quit? We need something like this here. We could have been rid of Bush two years earlier!

5) Wanna bet that Obama is shaking in his boots right now over this vote? The lessons of 2006 should not be ignored in the run up to the election of a "progressive candidate for change". The Congress, despite its new clothing, is still the same old whore it's always been.

6) You wanna know how bad this movie likely will be? When I started seeing the TV commercials for it, I thought it was the DVD release!

7) Oh dear! Didn't Obama win these states in the primaries? Well, except Michigan, the state he screwed out of delegates...

8) The Terminator or the Outsourcer-rator?

9) Children, clap your hands really hard and maybe there will be no torture!

10) What was HE thinking?

It Depends On What Your Definition Of "Is" Is....

Of all the idiotic things for the campaigns to suddenly get bogged down in, this has to rank right up there:

Senator John McCain was chiding Senator Barack Obama for “a false depiction of what actually happened” in Iraq in a television interview this week. But in giving his chronology of events in Iraq, Mr. McCain gave what critics said was his own false depiction.

OK, not so bad in its own right, but...

“I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened,” Mr. McCain told Katie Couric, noting that the Awakening movement began in Anbar Province when a Sunni sheik teamed up with Sean MacFarland, a colonel who commanded an Army brigade there.

[...] The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge.

Seriously, anyone who has paid attention to the Bush administration realizes that it is absurd to think that the surge started after he announced it.

Think about it: on September 12, 2001, the Bushies were already planning to hit Saddam Hussein. Even during the surge, we were warned that the limit of 20,000 additional troops would be breached and it turned out to be nearly 50% higher.

Who is going to believe that Bush had not already very quietly shifted troops deployments and rushed stop-loss orders to inflate the number of troops in what was admittedly already a tenuous and crucial province in the invasion aftermath?

Too, one has to look at the "off-sheet" military, the mercenaries, who were far easier to deploy with little to no announcement. Think of it as a transfer to a branch office.

So Obama's criticism here might be better off muted. It's a silly nitpick, and sounds somewhat desperate. This is a criticism that would be better levelled at Bush, if he makes an incredulous statement like McCain did.

The bigger issue, the one both Obama and McCain seem reluctant to discuss, is whether the surge worked. There's the meat of the debate, and naturally, the basic premise of the entire invasion rests on how effective our military strategies for restoring Iraq have been.

As a military strategy, it seems pretty clear it worked, at least the way a bug bomb works: throw enough materiel quickly at the pests, and you have a lot of dead and dying bugs.

But it's not preventative, and here I think is where the surge breaks down: the political will of the Iraqi people is not focused on defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq or the other insurgent groups, but in getting the real irritant (irritant, in this sense, meaning that which incites violence) out.

Meaning us. That Maliki's government is nearly unanimous in their praise of Obama's stated withdrawal plan-- I still don't trust him to put it into play. His big financial backers have too much at stake.-- is indicative that their focus lies elsewhere.

Getting to the bottom of that is the key to "winning" this invasion.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

I'm John McCain, and I approve this message:

Best. Response. Yet.

Senator McCain, Respctfully, STFU!

Well, now here's an intriguing little political performance art piece:

The Ad: (Narrator) Gas prices -- $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America. No to independence from foreign oil. Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?

(Chant) Obama! Obama!

(Narrator) One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets. Don't hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.

(transcription of John McCain ad, via the WaPo)

Now, John McCain himself has opposed off-shore drilling and some of his Republican gubernatorial friends oppose it, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It has only been recently that McCain has called for drilling offshore. He still supports a ban on drilling in ANWR.

You've all heard the reasons to debunk this trope: it will take no less than ten years for that oil offshore to reach American consumers, by then gas will be $15 a gallon anyway, and no one will be driving cars, and that means there will be windfall profits for oil...oh. Yea. That.

Hm. Offshore oil exploration, hell, ANY oil exploration, is a near-losing proposition when oil is cheap. You milk, errr, pump, the cash cow you have for all its worth when oil is around $20 a barrel, which means you have shortfalls when prices rise rapidly, as they have over the past ten years.

This is why, in 1998, you actually started to see advertisements on TV from ExxonMobil talking about how hard it is to find new oil, but they'll expend the money now to bring you more in the future. Their long-range forecasts had clearly shown that gas and heating oil prices would start a precipitous climb.

As early as 2001, I recall reading market analysts' reports that showed gasoline selling at $5 a barrel by 2009 (we're close), and $15 a gallon by 2015.

This was back when gas was $2 a gallon and that was consider inflationary. A barrel of oil in 2001 sold for $23 (in 2001 dollars). Now, it's $100 more expensive.

Forget that this is about oil companies continuing an unbroken string of profits that make Donald Trump green with envy. This is Big Oil's last hurrah in the US: "cheap" oil that will be a ready source when oil becomes almost as valuable as silver, ounce for ounce.

In other words, oil will be selling in "precious metal" commodities territory.

Naturally, none of this would help you today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year, or this lifetime. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous. By the time this oil is extracted and refined, most of us will be riding bicycles to work like the Chinese, who will have our oil anyway!

Not a bad thing, in my opinion, since I just bought this little honey yesterday... :-)

Why The Right Wing Needs An Enema

First, let me say this: I have no desire to see Mamma Mia!; I did not want to see it (despite having had an offer for opening night tix) on stage and likely will not see the movie unless I'm sick or something and it's on cable.

I had enough of ABBA music in the 70s, thank you. I wouldn't, for example, want to see a musical based on Phil Collins' music, either.

However, I think there is reviewing a movie on its merits and reviewing a movie self-referentially. To-wit, Pajamas Media

Firth keeps saying things like, “I’d quite like to freshen up” and “Might I be shown my room now?” and “There wouldn’t by any chance happen to be a trouser press down here?” No doubt you are correcting me in your mind: “Not gay. Just British.” I’ve forgotten so please remind me: what exactly is the difference?

There are times when Mamma Mia makes Hairspray seem like Magnum Force by comparison. I have no reason to suspect Meryl Streep is a gay man, but did RuPaul write her dialogue? Wielding a power drill, she is asked if she’s “getting any,” at which point she powers up the drill and says, “Down boy!” She also worries about “A crack in my courtyard,” but do we really want to hear about her crack?

Much of the talk is far worse. Did I really hear the words, “I won’t be muzzled by an ejaculation?” And, “Harry’s talked Tanya into water sports!” and “He’s all mouth and no trousers” and “Get the meat out of the heat”? Still, I could praise all of this and more if only the movie had provided me with a warning to avert my eyes before it provided a shuddery glimpse of Skarsgaard’s butt cheeks.

The Streep character and her battle-ax friends (Julie Walters, Christine Baranski) sing into vacuum cleaners and hair dryers in Dancing Queen, then strut around in pyramid formation. Everyone and everything is “fabulous” or “gorgeous” or “a little minx,” and at a, well, climactic moment a geyser busts out of the floor and bare-chested boys revel in it, in slow motion. Walters is definitely onto something when she says, “It’s very Greek.” Really, what kind of movie borrows its plot from the 80s miniseries Lace? All that is missing is a scene in which the bride asks, “Which one of you three bitches is my father?”

OK, class, now let's count up: I see two overt accusations of "teh gay", one RuPaul, cross-dressing reference, one reference to a Freudian image of a woman castrating a man (with a jackhammer, no less), and several presumably straight (pun intended) faced schoolboy jokes about double entendres and innuendoes (again, pun intended). Not to mention having to drag Dirty Harry (pun intended) Callahan's monster gun into it.

And then it gets worse: poor Kyle, apparently he's never been inside a locker room at a country club (or the airport restroom in Minneapolis), because the sight of an aging male ass has him practically quivering with delight anxiety! An orgasm of outrage fairly explodes out of Smith's keyboard (typing one-handed, probably)!

The denouement, the afterplay, if you will, speaks of sex toys and "fag-hagging" (really, Kyle, you can say it! No one likes you anyway...).

*WHEW*

I'm spent just having read my critique of his review!

Whatever Happened To Summer Vacation?

Wow. I mean, wow. When did you start reading about a political campaign in earnest before Labor Day?

Items in the news today:

Obama heads to Iraq - Well, you sort of knew this was coming. I mean, McCain is going to hammer Obama on his Iraq votes and his lack of experience, so why not inoculate yourself a bit?

Giuliani and McCain attend Yankees game - Speculation is rife that Rudy is on the short list. This ticket would be a dream come true for Obama. Imagine Rudy being forced to answer questions regarding racism in New York (Amadou Diallou, Patrick Dorismond and Abner Louima happened on his watch) in the context of running against a black candidate.

James Dobson to endorse McCain? - Certified wingnut & living room gibbon James Dobson, who once famously said "I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience," has apparently sold his conscience off.

In a related story, McCain and Obama agree to meet in megachurch forum - It's not so much a debate as sequential interviews with the minister, but it's close enough to the first debate you'll see between the two.

Netroots Nation (aka YearlyKos, aka Don't Bother Attending This Circlejerk) was shunned by Obama This Year - Again, a sign that Obama is abandoning his faux-liberal stance and his faux-liberal buddies at the Great Orange Satan. Hell, even Nancy Pelosi had the cojones to show up!

No more Electoral College? - Not quite, but there is a movement afoot by states to have their electoral college votes endorse the national popular vote winner. There's nothing unconstitutional about it, either, as the states clearly have the right to apportion their electoral votes as they see fit.

This last one might make for some intriguing possibilities come November 4...

Nobody Asked Me, But....

1) Al Gore. Who would have figured I would be ahead of HIS curve on greening? A few weeks back, I mentioned that America should commit to an Apollo-like project on renewable energy sources, and here's the Should-Be President picking up my idea and running with it!

2) In fairness, most of McCain's have to take Viagra before polling.

3) Now if he'd only speak out for the poor of Zimbabwe.

4) MEMO to Benedict XVI: we could start in the southern United States!

5) It is safe, I repeat, it is SAFE to eat tomatoes again!

6) Unless you believe the Bush administration is a bunch of political hacks who will do just enough to get by and no more.

7) Maybe if they'd have bothered catching the bastard, people would care more.

8) Compared to this, losing $2 billion in a quarter don't sound so bad!

9) Obama raised $52 million in June. That's the good news. The bad news is, by his own campaign's admission, he will need between $250 and $300 million to win the general election and that means he'll need to raise about $150 million in the six to eight weeks after Labor Day.

10) He's going to find it especially hard if he keeps dissing places like Florida.

11) Obama's probably going to have to spread himself thin this fall, or risk ending up having people introduced at rallies like "And now, here is the brother of the tailor of Barack Obama's advance strategy chief!"

12) How does a state, any state, live with itself when one-quarter to one-third of its residents are grossly overweight???? I'm sorry, that's utterly disgraceful!

13) Or udderly, for you wiseasses out there...

No Taxation Without Presentation

Let's talk about money for a moment.

A government is reliant on money. This generally comes in the form of taxes of some sort.

So taxes are a necessity, a necessary evil.

There's a fairly comprehensive, if anecdotal, body of evidence that suggests our current income tax system is not only ineffective, but possibly illegal.

As your NotPresident, I have a simple yet elegant solution, one that will lower taxes for most of us, yet re0jigger the tax liability so that it is more equitably distributed amongst the people who most benefit from our nation's freedoms.

After all, they have more freedoms than you or I. Look at how OJ Simpson got off!

Income is easy to tax and even easier to account for: you get a check, it gets deducted ahead of time, if you earn a salary. But that's not the problem. The problem comes from all those non-wage earnings: dividends, sales proceeds, and so on.

The disincentive of an income tax is to avoid spending money until after you've settled your debt to society. Withholdings make this bit easy, but the first time you get a lump sum from, say, the sale of a stock, you are clueless as to what to do regarding your taxes.

My tax system would avoid all this. Rather than focus on income, I would focus on wealth.

You are free to earn as much money as you can, legally, illegally, I don't care. What I DO care about is how much you keep out of the economy. And there's the difference.

Simply put, I would tax any investment that, in turn, did not create more income. No more tax shelters. No more idle rich sitting on their arses, collecting dividend checks. No more squirreling away money that you earned on the backs of the working and middle classes so that your kids can go to Choate and Harvard.

It's really very simple: the incentive in this tax system is to spend money, actual cash money, and the more you can afford, the more you should spend.

Naturally, there will be some baseline "minimum wealth" figure under which no one would be taxed. It's not fair, for example, to tax someone who owns a $100,000 home for four people, struggling by on an income of $30,000. I'd have to run the numbers a bit, but my suspicion is I would exempt anyone who owns less than $500,000 in assets.

Net of a home mortgage, to boot.

Eveerything else above that is fair game, and yes, I would tax your retirement savings. But notice something: every dollar you draw down after retirement is 100% tax free.

The tax rates would be graduated. It's not fair to ask someone who owns, say, $500,001 to pay the same rate of tax as someone who owns 500,000,001. If your hogging your wealth, you're going to get hit with a penalty, a big penalty.

Admittedly, this plan would need a lot of fleshing out (actually, it's already been fleshed out, but after Senator McCain stole my idea for a cash prize for alternative energy, I'm laying just enough cards on the table to show my hand without putting my chips in completely.

You want it, Barack? John? Come buy it off me!

I even promise to spend the check!

The Gamut with Amy and Naomi

SO MUCH here in this interview with Naomi Klein by Amy Goodman.
Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" is out
in paperback and, as usual, Amy's interviews are great because she asks
the questions and then stfu so you get the most out of the person being
interviewed. Great insight into government policies being pushed through,
"Obama's Chicago Boys", her recent trip to China and the boon to military
contractors going on there, suing the government for spying on
(real) journalists like her, oil prices, climate change, housing and more.
Well worth the time. You can read, listen or watch.

Our Chief Weapon Is Fear

Alike were they free from Fear that reigns with the tyrant, and envy the vice of republics. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline. Part i. 1.

What calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth. -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit, introduction

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt Speech, July 2, 1932.

It concerns me that this nation is a nation afraid.

Nevermind the terrorists. That's a legitimate concern, but not a fear, when you come right down to it. More people died on September 11 of heart attacks than in the terror attacks, but no one is raising the heart attack warning color to orange during barbecue season.

Nevermind the economy. That's a clear problem and that has its legitimate basis for fear; fear of losing your job, your house, your life savings.

No, I mean, when did Americans become afraid of each other and of our government? A clear motivation of a quasi-dictatorial government to divide people is to conquer them. It's clear the government has intended, at least since the seventies, to divide the American people up into parcels that can be easily labelled: red state, blue state, liberal, conservative.

In so doing, it becomes easy to paint "the other guy" as what's wrong with this country. We've swallowed this whole, to be fair, on both sides, altho it seems more prevalent among conservatives. FOX News and Rush Limbaugh lead a charge of fire-breathing blowhards whose only purpose in life appears to be stoking the flames of hatred towards their fellow man.

In Rush's case, it's pretty easy to see why: poor pathetic lonely little creature who's only hope for redemption is to tear the other people around him down, and stand on the rubble of his destruction.

In FOX's case, too, the motives are easy to see: for every "BHO" reference on their network, another FCC rule falls by the wayside.

In this respect, assuming he's sincere about it, Barack Obama and I see eye to eye, but for different reasons. Obama wants to unite us to fix what he perceives is wrong with the country.

I want to unite us to fix the entire fucking system, from top to bottom.

It's no longer enough that we tinker and Twitter each other about this program or that program. It's clear that the system itself, like a leaky, moldy house, is creaking and in danger of collapse.

And like a leaky, moldy house, it's foundation is, however, strong. Mold can be cleaned up, creaks patched, or perhaps even the entire structure cna be torn down, but if we can keep the foundation from cracking open, we can rebuild as good as new.

The problem is, fear. I am not afraid, but I am only one man. I can take fears away from others, but even that's only a handful of people.

To enact and effect the changes necessary, as the lessons of the French and American Revolutions show, will take more. Much more.

We are a complacent people. It is said the reason the French government has to capitulate to its people is that it fears those people.

That's not a bad thing, in my eyes. A government SHOULD fear its people and not the other way around! Right now, the only thing this government fears is losing the next election, and right now, those elections are so tight that there's no point in fearing the people: the other half is easily mined for votes.

Which is why John McCain is able to shift and meld so easily between moderate-left and moderate-right voters, while clinging to a conservative base that has no other choice.

But let the government learn fear of its people, as it started to during the 1960s, and watch the power of the people rise from the ground and swell up indignantly against those crimes that politicians of both parties commit regularly.

People will have a voice once more in the governance of their day to day lives. People will suddenly care about what is going on around them, rather than trust the whims of men who are unduly influenced by powers your average man in the street cannot even begin to comprehend.

"We, the People," will suddenly mean something...

Vive La Révolution

On this date back in 1789, a nation of people, yearning to be free, stormed the symbol of their oppression, the Bastille.

These people were tired of being dictated to, not by a monarchy, but by an plutocracy that was headed by a monarch: told what to think, told what to eat, told what to do, told what to accept.

The people paid heavily taxes while the aristocracy and cronies thereof paid next to nothing towards the upkeep of the nation.

The nation had spent its way into bankruptcy on the backs of wars declared unilaterally by the ruling class, supporting "revolution" by people in countries that had nothing to do with their daily lives.

The people were ganged up on by the two largest economic forces of their day: the government, and the church.

The church imposed faith above science.

The people were hurt badly by climatic change that created famine, pestilence and widespread poverty.

The upper classes engaged in conspicuous consumption even as the people starved and worked harder than ever paying more in tithes and taxes than they had ever before.

The middle class resented the relative poverty in which even they lived as compared to their peers in other nations who *gasp* had national health care!

The people resented the oppression and limitation of even responsible opposing viewpoints, which were deemed anti-patriotic.

Toujours les memes choses, eh?

Minor Announcement

I'll be on a family vacation...yea, I got one of them...for the next ten days, returning the 12th.

I've pre-posted some stuff to keep you amused, infuriated, and hopefully informed. I do not know what the internet situation will be like, but I believe I will be able to keep posting fairly regularly.

Please have a happy and safe Fourth of July, and I will see you on my return.

The Truth

The mystery of life is understanding what truth is, and when it matters.

Think about it: what is truth? Truth can be defined as the presentation of things that are factual, but in the presentation, fact goes away.

Spin, in other words. If I take a photograph of a man sitting on a bench, factually, the man is sitting on the bench, but what is the truth of the picture?

After all, he could be Aqualung, spitting out pieces of his broken luck. He could be an undercover cop, waiting for a mugger. He could be a father or grandfather, watching his child. He could be contemplating suicide.

What is missing is context. Truth, you see, is context. If the photograph tells a story, then you can begin to understand the truth of the picture, but it goes even deeper than that.

Even telling a story with a photograph, we can see that we are getting the photographer's truth, and that's not necessarily the truth you need. You need your truth.

A photograph represents a split second in time from the photographer's perspective and incorporates his entire life's experience in that moment. He is revealing to you his truth, but not yours. You may agree with his truth, or accept it, but that is only half the story you need. You need your truth, which is what does HIS (or her) truth mean to you? How does his truth interact with yours?

To put it another way, how likely would you be to bring sunscreen if Fox News told you it would be sunny today?

Which brings me to blogging and politics. Truth is all around you: John McCain has his truth, so does Barack Obama. Both of their truths are intended to influence you to vote for them, and both of their truths, while true, in that moment are also lies!

We're seeing this in the outrage of the left over Obama's move to the middle. He presented a truth to us that said "I'm with you," and then turned his back on that truth.

But here's the thing: in his mind, both truths are his truth. The context, as with the photograph, is what matters.

The context here is that Obama wants to be President. What else did we expect from a man who rose four years ago from state legislator to Senator and now to Democratic candidate for President? He sat down, figured out a strategy to win the nomination and then the general election and is carrying it out perfectly.

We bought into his truth but the truth we bought into was not the truth he really had.

A Paradigm Is More Than Two Bits

When considering the state of the American political and governing system, it is probably a good idea to think about the flip side of the coin: the governed.

I've always believed that it is important to stress to Americans that there is no free lunch. For too long, politicians on both sides of the fence have strived hard to come up with painless solutions to thorny problems, not trusting the American people to be a rational, intelligent and reasonable community of people.

That's probably an accurate impulse. I can't really blame Republicans for offering tax cuts to ignore or Democrats for offering grandiose schemes to solve intractable problems. The sense I get is that Americans of all stripes would prefer someone else handle the problem.

We're spoiled, in other words. This sense of "it's somebody else's responsibility" plays out in so many facets of life, it's not even funny.

You get hit by a car. You sue the other driver. He hires a lawyer and sues you back to try to prove that, indeed, it was your fault for stepping in front of his car.

Voter turnout in elections has been abysmal, even in 2004 when people took up voting arms against a sea of trouble and likely again this year, despite Barack Obama's encouraging and energizing candidacy.

You see a woman in an emergency room collapse. She lays there for 24 hours and dies. No one does a thing. Why? Because someone else should have handled it.

You walk down a street and a piece of newspaper blows across and wraps around your ankle. You stand next to a garbage can, yet rather than reach down, pluck the paper and toss it in the bin, you shake your foot and off it flies to litter again. Serial litter, I like to call this.

We fight a war in a far-off land, and the only sacrifice we're asked to make is to load up on debt and shop some more. Arguably, given what has happened, this might turn into the ultimate sacrifice for many of us, but that's a different story.

We ask so much of our country. We give so little in return. Perhaps in addition to a Bill of Rights, we should look into establishing a Bill or Responsibilities.

A Google search turns up roughly 300,000 hits on that term. Some of these "bills" are simply outrageously idiotic: really, the best someone could come up with was "you have the responsibility to be a loyal citizen of the United States of America"?

Memo to the Roses: WE ARE! (I won't embarrass them with a link)

I did find a rather intriguing Bill, and I wanted to share it with you:

Freedom and responsibility are mutual and inseparable; we can ensure enjoyment of the one only by exercising the other. Freedom for all of us depends on responsibility by each of us.

To secure and expand our liberties, therefore, we accept these responsibilities as individual members of a free society:

1. To be fully responsible for our own actions and for the consequences of those actions. Freedom to choose carries with it the responsibility for our choices.

2. To respect the rights and beliefs of others. In a free society, diversity flourishes. Courtesy and consideration toward others are measures of a civilized society.

3. To give sympathy, understanding and help to others. As we hope others will help us when we are in need, we should help others when they are in need.

4. To do our best to meet our own and our families' needs. There is no personal freedom without economic freedom. By helping ourselves and those closest to us to become productive members of society, we contribute to the strength of the nation.

5. To respect and obey the laws. Laws are mutually accepted rules by which, together, we maintain a free society. Liberty itself is built on a foundation of law. That foundation provides an orderly process for changing laws. It also depends on our obeying laws once they have been freely adopted.

6. To respect the property of others, both private and public. No one has a right to what is not his or hers. The right to enjoy what is ours depends on our respecting the right of others to enjoy what is theirs.

7. To share with others our appreciation of the benefits and obligations of freedom. Freedom shared is freedom strengthened.

8. To participate constructively in the nation's political life. Democracy depends on an active citizenry. It depends equally on an informed citizenry.

9. To help freedom survive by assuming personal responsibility for its defense. Our nation cannot survive unless we defend it. Its security rests on the individual determination of each of us to help preserve it.

10. To respect the rights and to meet the responsibilities on which our liberty rests and our democracy depends. This is the essence of freedom. Maintaining it requires our common effort, all together and each individually.

Freedom is a balance of rights and responsibilities. If one only assumes the rights of freedom without taking responsibility to see those rights are secured and maintained, one loses the rights.

If one only secures the rights of freedom for oneself, without ensuring those rights for everyone, one loses freedoms.

If one abuses, distorts, or otherwise diminishes the rights of freedom, abrogating one's responsibilities for that freedom, then one loses one's freedom anyway. Karma's a bitch.

If only enjoys the freedom to enjoy one's property, one's life, one's liberty, one's pursuit of happiness while even one other person is unjustly deprived of his or hers, then one loses his freedom too.

We've seen that. We've seen that in this administration and in administrations throughout at least my lifetime. And one could make the argument, indeed, that because Americans have never had the responsibilities inherent in freedom, Americans were never truly free.

Oh, we could fake it, to be sure. When this land was wilderness and a man or woman could ride an entire day without seeing another person, you have the illusion of freedom.

Oddly enough, those same people took it upon themselves to ensure their own freedom by standing up for themselves when that freedom was threatened.

A community, you see, is a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the population. We are the most important unit in our own lives, but we are not the most important individual in anyone else's life. We can't be. As I like to say, I don't care what anyone else thinks because no one else is going to climb into my coffin with me when I die.

That statement, however, implies that I can live with myself well enough that even I get into my coffin when I die!

Vigilance, involvement, activism: community.

I would quibble with some of these statements from the Freedoms Foundation. I'm drawn to article 9 as one that could use some fleshing out and tuning up, because it allows for all sorts of bizarre interpretations ("Why, I own this Abrams tank because you never can tell when Osama and his minions will come strolling down Cherry Lane, bent on taking out the Gas-N-Gulp!")

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

Right there in the Preamble to the Constitution is our mandate: to create community. A nation. A secure foundation to build our hopes and dreams on. To prevent tyranny and injustice, in whatever form it may take. To raise our families. To be free, all of us, not only those of us with money who can buy a home in a gated community (an oxymoron, that..."gated community"), but you, me, your children, my children, her children, his children.

As we ponder how to fix the things that are broken in America, we might want to pause a moment and see if as we point fingers, we aren't pointing many more back at ourselves.

I Hate To Say I Told You So, But...

The contract between a government and its people is understood to be one where the government has to not exercise its power entirely.

Parental, in other words.

A government which fully exerts its power over its people is a tyranny, a totalitarian regime, fascism.

A people who do not exert their responsibilities can be viewed as child-like, refusing to accept their position as necessary to the functioning of the nation as a whole. This is the paradox of the one versus the many: how much difference can one man/woman/vote/dollar make?

The Dalai Lama and other Buddhists will tell you, quite a bit. See, it's not ultimately about the exertion of influence but about the exercise of freedoms. The pursuit, if you will, of happiness.

To digress for a moment, one reason I agreed to blog after katrina urged me time and again was the opportunity I saw to influence even just one person to think differently, to let one other person know he or she was not alone in what they perceived around themselves. To understand that we are connected.
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I see the struggle for the political will of this country coming down to three factions:

First, the right, with its individualistic, opportunistic, capitalistic thinking that by each of us pursuing our own self-interests, we can lift the nation as a whole, on average, higher. This work, believe it or not, but it's not enough, clearly. For the first hundred and fifty years, this nation operated in precisely this fashion and for one hundred and fifty years, we left people behind.

Second, the left with its notions that every problem is so intractable that it demands we gather in as many resources as possible to allow the government to dictate solutions to us. This works in some instances, particularly in emergency situations when consensii must be reached quickly. Indeed, we've seen the failure of underactive oversight of government in the Hurricane Katrina debacle.

Third is the middle, the vast majority of Americans, some 60-80% of us, who sit there and see the failures of both sides as well as the successes and wonder why there cannot be a better way that combines the two.

I wish there was an easy answer for them but there simply is not. The political tides of this nation ebb and flow on the backs of these people: the philosophy that can capture more of public opinion will be the philosophy that prevails at that particular moment in time. When the left can exert influence, like during the 60s, progressive philosophies are tried, and while their strengths are revealed, their weaknesses are immediately exposed as well.

Similarly, as in the 80s, when a right-wing philosophy is experimented with, whatever strengths it exhibits is coupled immediately with its weaknesses.

This opens the door to communication and marketing, of course. This is why we no longer talk about policies when comparing two candidates, but about the effectiveness of the "message" and the messenger. This is why politics is now covered like a horse race rather than a debate. The right had seized on this secret during the Reagan years and managed to massage it for decades. Indeed, if Bill Clinton hadn't won in 1992 by stealing this technique from Republicans, it is likely that President Gore would now be talked about for a third term. It's not so much that Reagan did anything remarkable during his two terms that had people talking about his image on Mt. Rushmore, but that he followed nearly twenty years of malfeasance, corruption and perceived incompetence. All you needed was a trained chimp at that point, and twenty five percent of the country would rejoice for the Second Coming.

Sort of like Dumbya, now.

We are on the cusp of a moment which cannot be denied. People have grown weary with right-wing bromides of privatization and laissez-faire economics and benefits for the rich. So long as these were not perceived as hurting the hundreds of millions in the middle, the middle was content. While it is conceivable that John McCain could steal away this election, it would be only a temporary delay. The age of progressivism seems to be upon us, yet again.The pendulum has swung once more and to the left.

The question is, what to do about this? The 2006 elections showed us an interesting mandate: while Americans are tired of the right-wing "lower taxes will solve everything" mantra, they clearly have become indoctrinated to the right wing message of "left=anti-America." This is one reason the Obama flag pin trope worked so strongly during the primary campaign, both as an influence on leftists who had to abandon Edwards and Kucinich ("See? He ain't buckling under to no flag pin wearing fascists!") and on rightists ("See? He ain't American!").

The 2006 elections saw the rise of the middle left: people like Jon Tester and Claire McCaskill, rookie senators who won in traditionally red states by running not as Democrats but as disaffected Republican-could-bes. Yet, they support many progressive ideals-- some are pro-choice, some are pro-healthcare, some are pro-safety (antigun, the right would call them).

This has created a gulf in the Democratic party, as the puffed-up chests of MoveOn.org and dKos over the sensible and calculated moves by Obama to move to the center in time for the general election are rolled out. Democrats.com, in fact, has asked its supporters to escrow their donations to Obama by banking them with truly progressive Congressional and Senate candidates, thus indirectly supporting him while not allowing him to take advantage of their support.

Madness, but they have every right to be infuriated. Obama set himself up as a candidate of the left, and did nothing during the primary campaign to dissuade the Obombers from believing he was anything but in sync with them.

Well, see, that's not entirely true. He did flip-flop on the NAFTA and on a few other issues, taking first a strongly progressive view and then whittling it back and effectively kneecapping his original position.

In point of fact, it is the Obombers who have to suck it up and understand they got bamboozled. Anyone with a lick of sense, yours truly among them, realized this would happen.

Friends have asked me if I had painted myself into a corner with my strong support for Hillary and my strong denunciations of Obama. Possibly, but you'll notice something: I'm not the one who's disliking Obama more and more each day now!

No Body Haf Afk'd Me, Verily....

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the nunited States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

While The US Burns

As California begins the wildfire season both early and in earnest, the question has to be asked, why so many so big?

National Geographic Magazine's latest issue attempts to answer this question:

In 2006, wildfires burned 15,000 square miles across the country, a record nearly matched last year. Two-thirds of the burned acreage was in the West. One obvious cause is a decade of drought and warmer temperatures. Mountain snow melts earlier, and winter storms arrive later, extending the fire season in some regions by several weeks. Vast tracts of drought-weakened forest have succumbed to insects and disease, turning trees to tinder. In response, we have bolstered our fighter ranks, padded them with private contractors, provided them more hoses and axes and trucks. Annual federal spending on firefighting has leaped from $1 billion when the recent drought began in 1998 to more than $3 billion last year, with even greater costs forecast for the future. But the drought is only one part of the burn equation.

"The more money we spend, the worse it gets," one fire scientist told me last summer. "If that's not a condemnation of our fire policies, I don't know what is."

Indeed.

One answer is, of course, the short-sighted fire management policies of the past, which demanded that each fire be put out as it occurs and that the best way to do this was to throw monoey and manpower at it.

In some areas, government policies work best on large problems. In others clearly not so well, and this is one of those times when panicked policies designed to serve the desires of developers and settlers, people with an economic interest in natural resources, were foolish and flawed.

Another answer is, naturally, global warming, yet another instance of Bad Big Government in the form of protectionist policies for economic development. A balanced approach to shepherding and managing our natural resources.

It costs roughly $200,000 a day to fight even a small fire, so that adds up to millions even assuming a quick battle of less than a week. Multiply that by 1,400 fires, and you're talking about hundredss of millions a week, even billions and that's starting to rival the Iraq war for inefficiencies.

Now add to this the cost of protecting other "investments" made with private funds, and you begin to grasp the costs of greed, and for what?

So someone else can have a nice view out their window in the morning?

A new beginning must be undertaken to straighten out the priorities of this nation, one that doesn't exclusively accept that "money=good."

A Tale Of Too Shitty

Compare and contrast:

This:

Drug Use Increasingly Common in All Countries

TUESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- The United States has one of the highest lifetime rates of tobacco and alcohol use and the highest percentage of people who reported using marijuana or cocaine at least once in their lives, a new survey shows.

Researchers from the World Health Organization analyzed alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug use in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.

Among the major findings:

The use of all types of drugs in the survey is becoming increasingly common in all the countries. Males were more likely than females to have used all drug types in all countries and all age groups.Younger adults were more likely than older adults to have used these substances.People with higher incomes were more likely to have used legal and illegal drugs.Alcohol has been used by most survey respondents in the Americas, Europe, Japan and New Zealand, compared to smaller percentages of respondents in the Middle East, Africa and China.Alcohol use by age 15 was far more common among Europeans than among those in the Middle East or Africa.Lifetime tobacco use was most common in the United States (74 percent), Lebanon (67 percent), Mexico and the Ukraine (60 percent and 61 percent) and the Netherlands (58 percent).

With this:

Survey Finds U.S. Leads World in Substance Abuse

The U.S. leads the world in marijuana and cocaine experimentation, as well as in lifetime tobacco use, according to a survey released this week by the World Health Organization.

For the survey, which was partially funded by a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia looked at drug, alcohol and tobacco use in 17 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania. More than 54,000 people participated in the survey.

"The United States, which has been driving much of the world's drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies, as well as (in many U.S. states), a higher minimum legal alcohol drinking age than many comparable developed countries," the authors wrote in the study, which was published in the July 1 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.

"The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults," they added.

Does it seem odd to you that the more reasonable, and more honest, headline is over the more sensationalized story, while the zanier headline is over the more upfront fact laden piece?

Here's the kicker: the first story was taken from the Washington Post, the second from....drumroll, please...FoxNews.com!

There's something wrong with this picture, as well as right, when FOX has the better story (wrong), and the Washington Post has the more accurate headline (right).

The implications of this study are fairly clear and it is ironic that this study is released the same day John McCain visits Colombia for photo ops with the drug interdiction forces: tougher drug laws do not discourage drug use.

The percentages are staggering: in the US, over 40% of respondents said they had used marijuana at least once in their lifetimes. In the Netherlands, which has far more liberal drug policies 9so you would think they'd be nothing but pot heads), less than 20% of respondents reported using pot even once.

Too, arguments against smoking laws can be made here as well: the US leads the world in tobacco use (76% of respondents had tried some form of tobacco at one point or other. The next highest percentage was Lebanon, with 67%), despite some of the toughest anti-smoking laws on the books, particularly when it comes to advertising.

The trouble with both of these conclusions, of course, is that it would be hard to discern the effects of a recent smoking ban in, say, New York City with someone who is, say, 50. I smoked, but do not anymore. If I had been born 30 years later, I likely would not have smoked.

Similarly with marijuana, drug criminality was made harsher during my lifetime. It's possible that people born after the Rockefeller laws, and certainly after "three strikes" were passed, might see a far lower percentage of drug use.

Personally, the libertarian in me would like to see all drug laws rethought and the liberation of about 1.5 million people currently serving jail sentences for smoking a joint.

Obama Finds Religion

Interesting little wrinkle being reported today:

CHICAGO (AP) — Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday in Zanesville, Ohio, at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.

"The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "We need all hands on deck."

Now, this is one aspect of Bush's administration I could give even tepid support to. The idea that a Christian or other faith-based organization could more effectively distribute assistance to the poor, the hungry or those in crisis makes sense.

After all, isn't this what religion is supposed to be about, recognizing the troubles of your fellow man here on earth and maybe earning a couple of brownie points in your Creator's eye?

Plus, and this is a biggie, most religions have a few hundred if not thousand years headstart on governments when it comes to figuring out who truly needs assistance as opposed to those who just need a kick in the pants, plus they have the wherewithal (and lack of political opposition) to be more patient than a bureaucracy that demands results, however slow in coming.

But...

This bit worries me:

But Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

That last codicil, allowing hiring and firing only in non-assistance related positions, makes a bit more sense out of a potentially unconstitutional situation, but it doesn't make things completely hunky-dory.

What this would open the door for is challenges across the board in any industry or company who deals with the federal or state government to "liberate" themselves from federal hiring (and firing) guidelines based on religion.

You know the challenges would come quickly from the right-wing economic royalists who would sense an opportunity to dump first EEOC regulations, and then follow quickly with other "color/gender/sexual orientation/physical ability blind" regulations and, frankly, laws.

This is one aspect I wish Obama would revisit, and quickly, before he makes a mishegass of what could be a very good and fair way of encouraging community and citizenship.

A Decent Shot?

Certainly, if any candidate can pull this off, it's Barack Obama:

Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama, said he saw “tremendous potential” in several Southern states.

“If you go in and look at the number of unregistered voters in demographic groups that are important to Barack’s candidacy — younger voters, African-American voters — the potential is just incredible,” Mr. Hildebrand said.

And yet since the South began to shift away from the Democrats in the 1960s, it has become one of the biggest and reddest of the Republican strongholds. In the last two presidential elections, the Democrats failed to carry any of the Southern states. Although recent Democratic nominees have typically gotten about 9 out of 10 of the votes of Southern blacks, they still need a substantial chunk of the white vote to prevail. Political scientists put that figure at close to 40 percent, though it depends on the state, and the Democrats have rarely gotten it.

The key here, of course, is turnout, something the GOP in states like Florida, Mississippi and Alabama have long suppressed through various mechanisms, including misleading or even lying about election day, intimidation and harassment of black voters, and the denial of basic civil rights to people who have paid their debt to society.

Certainly, Obama's formula could work.

The only times since 1972 that the Democrats have carried more than a third of the Southern white vote, according to exit polls, were when Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, both Southerners, were atop the ticket. In 1996, for example, Mr. Clinton got the votes of 36 percent of Southern whites and 87 percent of Southern blacks, and carried 5 of the 13 Southern states.

Mr. Obama’s Southern strategy relies on significantly increasing black registration and turnout, as he did in the primary season. Mr. Hildebrand said that by some estimates there are 600,000 unregistered black voters in Georgia alone. The higher the black share of the vote, the lower the requirement for garnering white votes. But the Obama camp argues that it can increase its share of the white vote as well by focusing on younger, more progressive whites.

It could work. It's possible.

But it's risky, to be sure. So many factors could play into this strategy that it's impossible to be certain that it's a winning one, and that's not making any judgements on the strategy per se. Factors like the ones mentioned above, which we can now anticipate will see a skyrocketing number of voter purges in Southern states and challenges to voter's authenticity at the polls as Republicans attempt to bully voters away from the polls.

And then the strategy itself has some weaknesses: young voters are traditionally the least committed voters to the electoral process, so the "young white professional" vote that Obama is counting on could dissolve away with any October surprises. That would mean Obama would still have to pick up something on the order of 30% of the aggregate working class white voter, an order of magnitude he was barely able to accomplish when it was just Democratic white working class voters.

There is one last possibility: that this strategy has been planted by Obama as a challenge to McCain to defend turf he's already "won". Wars, which in this instance includes political campaigns, are not won by who has the most in his arsenal, but by whom can most effectively manage his resources to victory.

After all, Hillary Clinton had a commanding amount of money going into primary season and look where it got her!

One Must Simply Marvel

In this day and age of drug-enhanced athletes and money-grubbing hit-and-run phenoms, it's not only refreshing, but breath-taking, to hear of an athlete who is trying to push the envelope for the right reasons: to prove she can do it:

NEAR THE WARM-UP POOL AT THE Missouri Grand Prix swim meet, in Columbia, a crop of Olympic hopefuls lolled around in practice suits and towels on a Saturday morning in February. Fully clothed among them stood some relics of Olympics past: Scott Goldblatt, who won a gold medal in the 2004 Games, wore an aqua sport coat and a striped tie and was doing on-air commentary for Swimnetwork.com; Mel Stewart, who won two golds and a bronze in 1992, wore the same goofy get-up, working as Goldblatt’s sidekick. Meanwhile, Dara Torres, who won the first of her nine Olympic medals in 1984, a year before Michael Phelps was born, stripped off her baggy T-shirt and sweat pants, revealing a breathtaking body in a magenta Speedo. She pulled on a cap marked with her initials and prepared to swim. Torres is now 41 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, Tessa Grace. She broke her first of three world records in 1982, at 14, and she has retired from swimming and come back three times, her latest effort built on an obsessive attention to her aging body.

This is that "aging body":

Impressive, no?

As a former competitive swimmer (I was in contention for the 1980 Olympic team), I can admire the dedication it takes to achieve a certain level, and the energy one has to expend. That's just in your twenties. That doesn't take into account the ravages of age and time:

Last November in Germany, Torres clocked 23.82 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle short course, breaking the American record and making her one of only five women to swim the event in less than 24 seconds. The day after she got home to South Florida, she had a bone spur shaved out of her shoulder. In early January, she had another operation, to deal with a torn meniscus in her knee. Now just five weeks after the latest procedure, Torres looked great. She flashed her wide-open smile at Stewart and dove in the pool. Stewart retreated to Goldblatt and shrugged. “Hey, we’d all be in there if we could be winning,” he said.

Hell, I still can barely lift my left arm above my shoulder from all the training!

Should Torres prevail at the Olympic Trials this week, she will attend her fifth Olympic games and will be the oldest female swimmer ever, as well as the older American Olympic swimmer, a title previously held by Rowdy Gaines who swam in 1996 at the age of 35.

Lest you think that her life has been all strawberries and cream, go read the article and get a glimpse of what someone has to give up to be that dedicated to competition.

Marvelous. Simply marvelous.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

So you thought I was kidding about my NotPresidential run, huh?

Watch 'em and weep!

(h/t MissCellania)

Friday Music Blogging

The Leningrad Cowboys featuring the (former Soviet) Red Army Choir, with their rendition of Lynyrd Skynrd's Sweet Home, Alabama.

Too cool for school.

Nobody Asked Me, But....

1) The dysfunctional family that is the Democratic party remains.

2) As a Clintonite, I do find myself struggling to get behind an Obama candidacy. I've thought a lot about this, and really don't understand why, apart from the fact that Hillary was simply the better candidate, simply more deserving, and simply would make the better President. I would imagine there's an element of sour grapes involved, to be sure, but that's not one of those concepts that is hitting me and making me say "that's the reason!" There's more, part of it being that Obama is such an unknown quantity and part of it that Obama didn't win the nomination so much as Hillary had it kept from her by forces who genuinely, for whatever reason, hate her.

3) That said, I do support Obama should he be endorsed at the convention as the candidate and will work for his victory.

4) To be sure, our electoral process has no problems when compared with Zimbabwe. This is a situation that cries out for Barack Obama's leadership on, since neither Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, will stand in Mugabe's way, despite his tyrannically terrorist tactics. You see, Mandela, Mbeki, and Mugabe were running buddies during the apartheid era as part of the African National Congress.

5) Does anyone trust this story on its face? I sure don't.

6) Admittedly, as a citizen of the most high-pressure city in the country, this story saddens me. I don't have a problem with guns, per se. I have a problem with humans owning guns that require less instruction than getting behind the wheel of a car.

7) $140 a barrel and climbing. It could be $150 a barrel by the Fourth of July, and over $175 by the end of the summer.

8) Do the math here: if a $300 check lifts after-tax income by 5%, what does that say about wage growth in this nation?

9) Keep in mind, too, that inflation ate up roughly half of the economic bump we were supposed to get from those rebates.

10) Apparently, Ben Affleck's movie career really has tanked. Kudos to him for bravery, but points off for imitating George Clooney.

Gee, Here's A Surprise!

Political patronage in the Justice Department? Whoda thunk?:

WASHINGTON - Scores of highly credentialed young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for coveted positions at the Justice Department because of an illegal screening process that took political and ideological views and affiliations into account rather than merit, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.

In 2006, some applicants for sought-after jobs in the department's honors program and summer intern program were rejected because they were members of the American Constitution Society or Planned Parenthood or because they expressed concern about gender discrimination in the military, the report found.

Other students or graduates who were brushed aside included a University of Alabama law graduate, ranked sixth in the class, who had written a paper on the detention of aliens under the USA Patriot Act, a Yale Law School graduate who was fluent in Arabic and a Georgetown law student who had worked for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign.

In another case, a Harvard Law student was passed over after criticizing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Believe it or not, this does not concern me overly. In an administration as overtly partisan and hostile to Democrats and moderates (they call them "liberals" to boot!) as the Bush administration, there are bigger fish to fry than whether a few summer interns were passed over for less qualified candidates because Daddy gave to the wrong party.

What we SHOULD be focusing on is that party ideology became so blatant as to create an atmosphere that forced even Republicans already working for the DoJ to deny their own sense of equity and equanimity and tow a biased and unfair politicized agenda.

It's one thing to seek out an agenda-driven department, Presidents do that all the time, even with "nonpartisan" panels, it is another thing entirely to treat a department of professionals like it was just another commando unit in a far greater army of oppression and injustice.

When your own partisans, in other words, think something is a bad idea, rather than dispose of them, it might make sense to keep even their timid and modest objections in mind when fomenting policies and executing same. Just a thought, altho this administration is long on tales of people forced out, Colin Powell and John O'Neill being the marquee names, for moderation in anything.

You get bad apples in all administration and the truth is, Alberto Gonzalez was an unabashed failure as Attorney General of the United States. This is just another example of his fraudulent oversight of the department.

But keep in mind, as Joe Conason points out, that Gonzalez used the tool made available to him by someone who ought to know better: Arlen Specter:

But that wholesome safeguard was breached in December 2005, when the Senate renewed the Patriot Act. At the behest of the Justice Department, an aide to Sen. Arlen Specter slipped a provision into the bill that permitted the White House to place its own appointees in vacant U.S. attorney positions permanently and without Senate confirmation. So silently was this sleight of hand performed that Specter himself now claims, many months later, to have been completely unaware of the amendment's passage. (Of course, it would be nice if the senators actually read the legislation before they voted, particularly when they claim to be the authors.)

The staffer who reportedly performed this bit of dirty work is Michael O'Neill, a law professor at George Mason University and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. As the Washington Times explained when O'Neill was appointed as the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief counsel, many observers believed that Specter had hired him to reassure conservatives of his loyalty to the Bush White House. Right-wing distrust had almost ousted the Pennsylvania moderate from the Judiciary chairmanship, and appointing O'Neill was apparently the price for keeping that post.

Evidently O'Neill rewarded Specter by sneaking through legislation to deprive him and his fellow senators of one of their most important powers, at the behest of an attorney general intent on aggrandizing executive power. The results of this backstage betrayal -- now playing out in a wave of politicized dismissals and hirings -- were perfectly predictable and utterly poisonous.

Specter, by dint of his politically moderate (in Republican perspective, dangerously liberal) positions, was forced to accept a situation whereby he had to genuflect to the more adamantine hearts of his oberfuhren.

Hm, Sounds Familiar, Right?

I'm guessing the McCain campaign is eavesdropping on my blog.

Compare and contrast:

“I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people,” Mr. McCain said, “by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

He said the winner should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs. “That’s one dollar, one dollar, for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency,” he said.

Now, this:

I would propose the following budgetary item be included in my first non-administration: a $1 billion dollar bounty payable to anyone, and I do mean anyone, who can demonstrate a truly renewable energy source-- solar, geothermal, wind, and so on-- that will create the same rate of BTUs as crude oil, in a form that is commercially viable.

This bounty would not be payable just once. It would be paid for each new energy resource that can be so demonstrated to the country's satisfaction. If you can develop a brand new way of harnessing wind on a commercially viable scale that is new and innovative, or takes a windmill one step farther, then you get your bounty. I figure there ought to be about ten of these that will have to be paid out.

As usual, Republicans are behind the curve in thinking, and ready to trim anything so they can preserve their precious tax cuts, but it seems pretty eerie to read your thoughts in the national press and not think "Hmmm, I wish the other guy would listen as closely."

Speaking of the "other guy", clearly the Obama campaign was caught flat-footed by this proposal:

The Obama campaign countered by noting that Mr. McCain had voted against improving fuel efficiency standards in the Senate. Jason Furman, the Obama campaign’s economic policy director, said in a conference call that Mr. McCain had been focused on “meaningful relief for oil companies that are struggling with record profits.”

Citing "fuel efficiency standards" is like offering lollipops when compared to someone who is buying you dinner, so to speak.

If McCain is going to be the guy who comes up with solid, practical and ingenious solutions to America's problems, solutions that at least look forward as opposed to being mired in the past, this is going to be a very long fall campaign...

Strategic Commands

Thank God for the New York Times' The Caucus blogs, which sum up about three articles I was going to cite today:

Though his fund-raising lagged somewhat in May according to the most recent financial disclosures, Senator Barack Obama is planning an extensive advertising effort for the general election, including television spots in states that are known to be Republican strongholds.

The Times’s Jim Rutenberg and Christopher Drew report today on the Obama team’s “multifaceted television campaign”:
Future commercials could run on big national showcases like the Olympics in August and smaller cable networks like MTV and Black Entertainment Television that appeal to specific demographic and interest groups.

He is also dispatching paid staff members to all states, an unusual move by the standards of modern presidential campaigns where the fight is often contained to contested territories.

The Associated Press reports on how Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors could fatten Mr. Obama’s campaign war chest while he helps pay off some of her campaign’s sizable debt.

I stated during the week my support of Obama's repudiation of his former position regarding campaign finance reform, which was clearly a pandering gesture while he was running in seventh place and desperate for attention. Among the reasons I mentioned was John Kerry's "Swiftboating" in the 2004 election by an "independent" 527 group.

Kerry was in between the primary season and the general election, which could not officially kick off until George W. Bush was officially renominated. The 527 ads were run in this period when, because the campaign had not officially kicked off, Kerry could not use the public funding he had agreed to abide by, and had run out of primary funds.

He was forced to rely on ad hoc fund raising efforts by groups like MoveOn.org to combat the ads. Well, guess what? Progressives, it seems, are notoriously bad about funding things like this.

Obama appears to be positioning himself to battle in all 50 states against McCain, forcing McCain to spend money and effort in traditionally Republican states like Kansas and Virginia. Menwhile, there's a very good possibility that McCain could upset Obama's bid for big-ticket states like California, Florida, Ohio, Texas and even New York and Pennsylvania. The ability of one or the other strategy to work will determine the outcome of the November election, despite early indications that Obama is winning walking away now (51%-39%, according to recent polls).

The key demographic is the group that Hillary Clinton re-energized during the primary season, the working class vote, the so-called Hillary Democrats (nee Reagan). If McCain can hold his base and attract anywhere north of 1/3 of Hillary Democrats and Obama runs into trouble with his base because of whatever moves to the middle he is forced to make to shore up his support with HillDems, McCain could steal the election (allusion intended).

On the flip side, McCain will have troubling shoring up his base if he, too, has to repudiate the policies of the past seven years too fervently, which is why he's changed positions on drilling in ANWR among other things. Lose the conservatives and McCain can phone in the votes he'll receive after that.

Even if Obama loses the race this time, he would likely shore up Democratic votes in states that are usually dominated by Republicans, and perhaps swipe a few more Congressional seats. In 2012, he would be positioned to run again against a President McCain.

Assuming he got past the fact that Hillary Clinton would probably have much more support should Obama fail.