February, 2007 archive
The Federal Budget 2
Robert Reich has an interesting take on it, and concludes that “balancing the budget” is a meaningless chimera, because
(snip)
We should worry instead about putting aside enough to deal with past obligations, devoting no more than we can now afford to current needs, and making adequate future investments – even if we have to borrow in order to make them.
Worth a thought.
Flippity Floppity Flip Flop 0
Yesterday, I mentioned Dick Polman’s column about John McCain’s fluid positions.
Well, he’s reversed field again. Polman reports:
McCain preferred to stay on the campaign trail, which brings us to example number two: Seeking again to recalibrate his political convictions, and thus appeal to conservative primary voters, he said this yesterday in South Carolina: “I do not support Roe vs. Wade. It should be overturned.†An AP story dutifully reported the quote – without providing any of the context. Such as the fact that, in 1999, as he was mounting his first presidential bid, he said this: “Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade.” Why not? Because without Roe, he said, “thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations.” Therefore, he said, Roe was “necessary.”
It’s Happened Again 0
Another college party belittling another minority group:
Photographs from the private, off-campus party organized by Santa Clara University students in late January appeared on the Internet soon afterward, prompting an outcry on campus.
One image shows a partygoer with a balloon stuffed under her shirt, making her appear pregnant. In another, a woman wears pink rubber cleaning gloves and carries a feather duster.
Last weekend, Annette John-Hall had an excellent column on this sort of stuff for the local rag. She focused on black culture, but her comments can be extended to other areas also.
“I can’t really listen to hip-hop the same way anymore – the gender and politics in it are just so clear,” the Long Island, N.Y., native tells me. “I still listen to it, but if it ain’t saying nothing, it ain’t about nothing.”
Hurt says the blackface parties represent, at the very least, misguided admiration. But he offers that he’s probably being generous. His gut belief is that they’re a camouflage for racist ridicule.
“On the one hand, black people represent this fantasy to white people,” he says. “We are the epitome of what is cool and hip… . On the other hand, I think it’s deeply problematic that hip-hop culture represents such a reduced notion of black people. There is so much more to black culture, so much more nuance.”
I have a little different take. It is indeed true that some rappers may not represent the highest ideals of our society. Some politicians do not represent the highest ideals of our society. Nor do some athletes. Nor do some business persons (Ken Lay, John Rigas, and Dennis Kozlowski, just to mention a few–and none of them were rappers!). And so on.
The issue is not what is going on in the larger society.
The issue is that the persons who organize and participate it these parties are persons who have no qualms about organizing events designed to belittle members of another racial or ethnic group simply because of their racial or ethnic background.
All the sociology in the world does not give shelter to bigots. And this sort of stuff is the work of bigotry, however good-natured it may appear on the surface.
More to the point, this sort of stuff is just rude.
Flip. Flop. 0
Dick Polman looks at John “Straight Talk” McCain’s record:
Space does not permit a full recitation of his flip-flops, so here’s a modest sampling:
McCain used to dismiss Jerry Falwell as an “agent of intolerance,” but tomorrow he will trek to a Florida religious convention to woo the guy.
McCain, until recently, was pushing for a reform law that would require conservative groups to reveal their financial donors. But, after fielding protests from evangelical Christians and antiabortion activists, McCain decided last month to strip out the provision.
McCain in 2000 assailed Bush’s proposed tax cuts as a sop to the rich, and a year later, with Bush in office, he voted against those cuts, declaring that “the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans.” But a year ago, he switched sides and voted to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
McCain in 1999 said that, “even in the long term,” he would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade because “thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations.” But last November he said that he now favored repeal because “I don’t believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.”
McCain in 2000 was incensed when a pair of Texas businessmen, Sam and Charley Wyly, bankrolled some Bush-friendly TV ads that distorted McCain’s record. McCain declared at the time that their “dirty money” did not belong in national politics. But last year, McCain decided that their dirty money belonged in his campaign; he took $20,000 and allowed them to chair a McCain fund-raiser. (McCain later had to give back the money, because, it turns out, his new friends are reportedly under federal investigation.)
There’s more, but that’s about all I thought I could get away with under “fair use.” Follow the link the watch him flip.
Give Me a Break: Phony Addiction Dept. 2
Good grief!
James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.
It’s not that I don’t believe that addiction is a real thing. Heck, I smoke. I know addiction is real. But a significant element of addiction is the existance of physical withdrawal symptoms.
I fail to see how someone could suffer significant physical withdrawal symptoms from simply confining the surfing of adult websites to non-work hours.
And I’m pretty sick and tired, as my mother would have said, of every habitual bad behavior being labelled as an “addiction.”
During the time my marriage was crashing on the rocks, I spent some time in online support groups for persons having the sort of marital difficulties I was having (and, surprisingly enough, I got good support and made some good friends). There was a regular parade of spouses, usually wives, saying that their others suffered from “sexual addiction.”
Horse-hockey. There may be some kind of disorder there (probably narcissitic personality disorder), but let’s not blame it on sex or on addiction.
There’s a big difference between “I can’t stop” and “I don’t want to stop.”
But it’s a growth market for therapists, so no doubt we shall see more “addictions” on the list.
Habeas 0
I’m not big on online petitions.
But this one is definitely for a good cause.
With a tip to Andrew Sullivan.
Conelrad 0
Pennsylvania just interrupted my radio show to announce that they have finally opened their interstate highways.
(If you don’t know what Conelrad was, there’s always Google.)
Malls in the Sky 0
This is a hoot!
MIG 2
No, not the fighter plane.
I’ve spent the last week learning about MIG welding. One of the welders even offerred me the opportunity to weld something. I declined, because, if I had messed up, he would have been the one on the line.
But it was a nice gesture.
That’s the great thing about my line of work.
The variety.
Drumbeats 0
(Yeah, I know. The headline is probably getting boring. Then, again, so are the lies.)
But the marching music is getting scary.
Drumbeats 0
Dan Froomkin analyses the lies. It’s worth reading, so you can follow the links he provides to support his analysis:
But that’s baloney.
Consider a few facts:
1) The briefing was being carefully monitored by the White House — which had postponed it twice previously. National security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on February 2: “The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated. And we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts.”
After that, it’s quite obvious that neither the briefing — nor its suspiciously secretive, entirely anonymous format — would have gone forward without explicit White House approval.
2) And far from being a creature of this briefing, the allegation that Tehran is supplying the explosives was actually first made days earlier, by a slew of administration officials who spoke in what had all the appearances of a coordinated leak to New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon.
Gordon’s story, which came out the day before the briefing, credulously quoted “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details. . . .
“An American intelligence assessment described to The New York Times said that ‘as part of its strategy in Iraq, Iran is implementing a deliberate, calibrated policy — approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei and carried out by the Quds Force — to provide explosives support and training to select Iraqi Shia militant groups to conduct attacks against coalition targets.'”
That assessment doesn’t sound like the work of one rogue briefer, does it?
3) Until Bush officially backed off the specific charge of involvement by Tehran, what the briefer said was being espoused as the White House position by press secretary Tony Snow.
“Let me put it this way,” Snow said on Monday. “There’s not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when it comes to something like that. So what you would have to do, if you’re trying to do the — to counter that position, you would have to assume that people were able of putting together sophisticated weaponry, moving it across a border into a theater of war and doing so unbeknownst and unbidden.”
4) Furthermore, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr was apparently being told by her sources as recently as Wednesday that the briefer actually understated things.
“[T]he US certainly does have intelligence tying these Iranian weapons shipments to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei,” Starr said. “It’s not something that the Bush White House wants to talk about in public too much because they really do not want to ratchet up tensions with Iran, the facts aside.”
5) Bush’s big backtrack, of course, wasn’t really a backtrack. His basic argument: What’s the difference? (See yesterday’s column.)
So at a point where the Bush administration needs to be taking extraordinary steps to reestablish its credibility when citing intelligence against a potential enemy, the rollout of this specious claim simply adds to the belief that they can’t be trusted.
The lies get tiring after a while, do they not?
Benchmarks 0
NPR investigates three benchmarks suggested by the Current Federal Administrator last June. From the website:
I’ll save you the trouble of listening to the story: Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Failure.
Get Opera 3
The vulnerability resides in the functionality that allows the browsers to upload files to a remote server. It requires a victim to visit a booby-trapped website and enter text with certain characters in a comment interface or other input field.
Trouble in Steak World 0
Pat Oliveri invented the cheese steak during the Depression.
Now his heirs battle over his name:
At stake: a name and trademark, foundation of a multimillion-dollar empire built on steak sandwiches, cheesesteaks and cheese fries – all Olivieri innovations.
The Axis of Evil 0
Fanatical Apathy analyses their fate:
Iran: Still evil, building nuclear bomb.
North Korea: Still evil, building nuclear bomb.
Iraq: Possibly more evil than before, never had nuclear bomb, but is metaphorical “time bomb†that goes off every hour on the hour, thanks to new regime’s unwillingness to “step up†to unevilness.
