Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World: [F]or the last 40 years, rhetoric notwithstanding, Republican presidents have pursued policies… farther removed from the ideal of good… economics than have Democratic presidents. This is especially true… [of] the textbook version…. But… it applies even to the “conservative economics” version that puts priority simply on small government. The criteria underlying this generalization about Republican presidents are:
Growth in the size of the government, as measured by employment and spending.
Lack of fiscal discipline, as measured by budget deficits.
Lack of commitment to price stability, as measured by pressure on the Fed for easier monetary policy when politically advantageous.
Departures from free trade.
Use of government powers to protect and subsidize favored special interests (such as agriculture and the oil and gas sector, among others)….
Republican presidents have since 1971 indulged in these five departures from “conservatism” to a greater extent than Democratic presidents. The name I would give to this set of departures… is neither “liberal” nor “conservative” but, rather, “illiberal”…
To which DeLong Adds:
Real conservatives take note: you will never have a party until you kill the Republican Party, and replace it with something new. You should start now, for all of our sakes.
Were there ever any "real" conservatives? Well…I guess Goldwater was one. But here’s the problem: Real or not, this is what conservative ideology gets you. Small government means no regulation of big corporations, of big money. When big corporations, and big money become more powerful then government, they will simply turn government to their own ends and that leads right back to "big government", just not big government in the people’s interest. So you end up with all the points Frankels makes above, even if you started from a sincere belief in "small government" ideology. When money becomes more powerful then the law, money inevitably becomes the law.
So. No fiscal discipline because big business doesn’t want discipline, it wants its profits and it wants them now. Fed monetary policy becomes whatever big business wants it to be at whatever moment in time it wants it to be that. Free trade is out because if big business hates anything more then regulation it’s competition. And…special interests? When you have government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, the common folk are the special interest group. And when big business takes over the nation’s news media, it gets kinda hard to find out just how deeply the corruption has taken root. All you see, is the spectacular meltdowns. Iraq. Katrina. The Dot-Com bust. The Housing bust. How big was that deficit again?
That’s what small government ideology gets you. When money becomes more powerful then the law, money becomes the law. Anyone who seriously thought (as I did once) that the way to keep government honest and the economy strong was to cut government down to the bone should be, after decades of republican dismantling of the New Deal, if they are honest, thoroughly disabused of that notion. A government that is smaller then money will never resist the corrupting power of big money. That is what we are seeing now. The moment, the instant the regulatory boundaries were taken away, corruption began running wild. Money does not self regulate.
Some of the people pushing the small government ideology didn’t reckon on that. But probably, most of them did. They talked up free markets, but they weren’t interested in freedom. They wanted the money. It’s easier to get when the law can be bought off. You keep a market free the same way you keep the streets safe to walk at night. It takes a rule of law, backed by impartial justice. There is no safety, let alone freedom, where the police work for the crooks, upholding laws that were written by crooks, for crooks.
And one more thing: morals. The people crafting the laws we all live by need to be people who understand that stealing is wrong. That lying is wrong. That cheating is wrong. Wrong because sooner or later the bills come due, and while Jesus may forgive you, reality is a hard assed motherfucker.
In China now, they’re undergoing an upheaval in the baby formula market. Children are dying after being fed baby formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t carelessness. It wasn’t neglect. It was greed. Melamine, a chemical used in plastics, contains a concentration of proteins which make it useful for hiding the fact that the milk in baby formula has been diluted. Profits are always higher, when there is less product in the product.
This from Glenn Greenwald, who is on fire here. Maybe you are aware, if not utterly disgusted, at how abjectly the democrats capitulated on telcom immunity for illegally spying on American citizens. Maybe you’re aware of how the immunity bill not only gave the telcoms immunity for illegally spying on us, but made it even easier for Bush to keep spying on us without having to bother with all that getting a warrent and other forth amendment do-wah. Maybe you’re wondering how democrats can be such absolute wusses when it comes to fighting Bush’s abuses of power. Maybe your wondering why democrats don’t really seem to care much about protecting and preserving our precious democracy. Maybe this will enlighten you…
Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station — next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night — AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program. Matt Stoller has one of the listings for the party here.
Armed with full-scale Convention press credentials issued by the DNC, I went — along with Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher, John Amato, Stoller and others — in order to cover the event, interview the attendees, and videotape the festivities. There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter — notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation’s largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.
Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party’s purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they’re part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of — or at least eager to conceal — their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.
It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions — those who dictate the nation’s laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of — let alone involvement in — what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation — AT&T — that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears — virtually attached to it — all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.
Sometimes I wonder if things really are getting more corrupt these days, or if we’re just seeing more of the corruption because of the grassroots media that has emerged during the Bush years. In any case, the above isn’t to my mind so much an argument against voting for democrats too, as for paying more attention to local elections, because congress is an aggregate of many local elections. I strongly doubt that the voters in the districts represented by the Blue Dogs approve of having their phones tapped, let alone giving the tappers a free pass in exchange for millions of dollars to run a convention.
We need to break the republcan grip on power in Washington, so they can’t do any more damage then they’ve already done to the courts, to the economy, to civil liberties at home and America’s moral stature abroad. But we also need a grassroots effort to get more people elected who want to serve the people, not the corporations. Because the corporations don’t give a good goddamn about democracy, let alone about America. All they see is their bottom line. We need better democrats.
The Holmes County School District, which was the site of a court battle over the right of students to declare their support for their gay and lesbian peers, has begun court ordered sensitivity training classes for it’s teachers and staff.
Can you spot the difference between these two news stories on this topic?
First, the local TV News station…
Fla. principal accused of gay ‘witch hunt’
Employees of 1 rural Florida school district are starting the new school year by attending sensitivity classes.
A federal judge’s ruling prompted the classes at the Holmes County School District. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district when a principal banned students from wearing rainbow-colored clothing or other items that he said showed support for homosexuality.
Principal Davis enacted the ban, and suspended students who violated it, after one student told him she was taunted for being gay. Davis told the girl that it was wrong to be gay, order her to stay away from younger students and called her parents. The girl’s friends wore gay pride T-shirts and other clothing in support.
A federal judge ruled that Davis and the district violated the students’ free speech rights by banning the clothing.
Next…365Gay.Com…
Florida school at center of GSA battle begins sensitivity training
Teachers and staff in a Florida school district which was at the center of a long legal battle over gay/straight alliances are back in the classroom – this time as students in sensitivity classes.
The Holmes County School District set up the training sessions after losing a federal court battle in which the judge blasted the principal of Ponce de Leon High School principal David Davis for leading a “relentless crusade” against homosexuality.
U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak said in his ruling last month that principal David Davis “embarked on what can only be characterized as a witch hunt. The ruling also said that Davis led “morality assemblies” that ignored the First Amendment.
Davis has since been replaced as principal.
During the two-day trial in May, Davis testified that he believed clothing, buttons or stickers featuring rainbows would make students automatically picture gay people having sex.
He went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages, he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.
Heather Gillman, a 16-year-old junior at the high school, sued the district with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union after she was told she could not wear buttons, stickers or clothing that supported LGBT civil rights.
After she received the warning, the ACLU last November sent a letter to the school board’s attorney on behalf of Gillman, asking for clarification as to whether a variety of symbols and slogans, such as the rainbow flag or “I support my gay friends,” would be allowed at the school.
The school district replied that it would not allow any expressions of support for gay rights at all because such speech would “likely be disruptive.”
The district then said that such symbols and slogans were signs that students were part of a “secret/illegal organization.”
The problems began in September 2007 when a lesbian student tried to report to school officials that she was being harassed by other students because she is a lesbian. Instead of addressing the harassment, students say the school responded with intimidation, censorship, and suspensions.
Prior to the release of his written ruling, Smoak issued an order that forces the school to stop its censorship of students who want to express their support for gay people. The judge also warned the district not to retaliate against students over the lawsuit.
The AP went one better too…running a story all about how the locals support the principle that started all this, headlined, FL. Town Backs Principle In Gay Student Case. It mentions nothing about the morality assemblies, the fact that confederate flags were allowed to be worn but not t-shirts supporting the gay students, or that Davis said students wearing gay supportive messages would make people think of gay sex, or that the district declared gay supportive students to be part of an illegal secret organization. It did say however, that the townsfolk were sincerely baffled about the judge’s "scathing rebuke", and why the principle had done anything wrong.
The AP also says that "Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them." That would be as opposed to forcing dissenters to keep their mouths shut while they force their piss ignorant beliefs about homosexuality on gay people, their parents and their friends.
Lifted from Fred Clark’s blog, Slacktivist, which you should read more often…
"You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
-G.K. Chesterton – The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare.
It’s a hopeful sign to see more mainstream liberal pundits finally waking up to the fact that the moral argument is actually their friend. This from Slate, in an article on Reclaiming The Morality Of Abortion…
Liberals have never won anything by reframing moral questions as pragmatic ones; they end up looking shifty and evasive.
And…cowardly. Here’s why the moral argument matters…
The gay-rights movement best illuminates the need to emphasize the role of morality in politics. In 1986, the Supreme Court decided Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding the constitutionality of criminal penalties for gay sodomy. Choice, said the five-justice majority, although available for a wide range of decisions (including abortion), was not available for conduct we consider really, really icky. (They didn’t say that explicitly; they put the words in the mouth of the "Judeo-Christian" tradition and let the priests say it for them.) Just as Bowers was decided, however, the AIDS epidemic motivated and enabled gay people to tell the world why their behavior was moral. As gay men began to die, they and their loved ones began to write about their relationships, their shared homes, and their desire—going back to Homer—to bury those they loved. At the same time, lesbians, who had been fighting for their children after divorces and for the families they were creating with donor insemination—publicly told the story of their own moral commitments.
By the time the Supreme Court faced the previously sinful gay litigants again in Lawrencev.Texas, 17 years later, the decision went the other way. It is impossible to read the two opinions and ignore the change in moral climate that produced the legal shift. And although recent polling fails to reveal a majority supporting gay marriage, the numbers have been steadily improving.
To fight for your own part in the American Dream, you must first fight for the American Dream. That, Liberty And Justice For All thing. Eight years of George Bush, and the collapse of America’s moral stature among the nations of the world, right as one of the world’s great tyrannies rousts itself from a short slumber to start eating its neighbors again, is the price we are paying now for ceding the moral ground to the human hating Right. There is a pragmatic human potential and productivity side to the fight for democracy and freedom. But it should never replace the moral struggle for liberty and justice, for the human status. The struggle for freedom has always been a profoundly moral struggle.
Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Heller. Yes. I know this bothers some of my friends but I completely agree with yesterday’s supreme court decision regarding D.C.’s gun ban. But this kind of rhetoric, from McCain’s campaign, really bothers me…
Today’s decision is a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom in the United States…
Blah…blah…blah… Here’s the part I mean…
Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right – sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.
But…see…this is what bothers me…this elevating of guns to the status of religious objects. They aren’t. If there is any fundamental right here at all it’s the right to self preservation, and even that isn’t sacred or else you’d have to condemn soldiers, policemen, firemen, and anyone and everyone who ever sacrificed their own lives for others. The sacred thing here, if anything, is life itself. And even that isn’t always a black and white thing.
I know…I know… McCain is just pushing buttons. But it’s this kind of thing that has dragged the conversation about morality in this country down into the gutter. It cheapens both the concept of the sacred, and the thing you are trying to superficially attach it to. Guns aren’t sacred objects. They’re useful tools and the government has no business banning them outright, not even for the simple reason that people have a right to defend themselves, but more specifically because while government may be our protector in many ways, it is not our nanny and we are not its children.
It’s entirely proper and reasonable for government to take a roll in keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of anyone likely to commit crimes of violence. It’s completely reasonable for government to regulate the kinds of firearms people can own, and how and when they can bear them in public. That’s different from taking the position that no individual citizen can own a gun period, because then you’re saying that the people have no right to self defense. That completely changes the relationship between citizens and their government, in just the same way that censorship and morality laws do. And let’s face it…outright gun bans aren’t public safety laws, they’re morality laws.
Which…let it be said…all the brave second amendment warriors out there in the NRA and other gun groups really don’t give a crap about, unless it involves their Sacred Guns. On the SLOG Blog the other day in a thread about Heller, a commenter pointedly pointed out that Bush has ripped up habeas corpus and the gun groups kept silent. He went on a wiretapping rampage and the gun groups kept silent. And don’t get me started on the fact that so many second amendment warriors are raving homophobic bigots who hated to see the sodomy laws overturned and who are probably campaigning right now to see same sex marriage banned everywhere. All their fine and noble rhetoric about freedom and liberty and patriotism is just so much bullshit.
When you get right down to it, the second amendment warriors have been responsible for more erosion of our civil liberties and more damage to our constitution then anything the Brady Campaign could ever have done. So to all the cheering second amendment warriors out there right now I would just like to say Shut Your Fucking Pie-Hole! Please. If Scalia had written instead that gun bans are a legitimate expression of the moral values of the voters in a community, just what the fuck would you have said to that? That majorities don’t have the right to impose their moral values on everyone else? Especially when their doing that puts other people’s families at risk? Please. Just…shut up.
This in my email box, from the Southern Poverty Law Center…
Last week, we asked you to take a stand against the growing number of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, anti-gay and other hate groups in our country — a staggering 48% increase since 2000.
Funny how that worked out, isn’t it? The Bush republicans take over the Federal Government, and a majority of the statehouses, and what do you know…hate groups just start springing up everywhere…
Here’s the rest of the email… Figured I’d pass it along in case any of you reading this wanted to join in…
Thousands of people of goodwill — just like you — responded by adding themselves to our map as a voice for tolerance.
It’s not too late for you to join all those who are standing strong against hate.
You’ve shown your commitment to ending injustice and racism. Now, I’m asking you to show your concern about this alarming increase in hate groups by taking a stand against hate.
We need people in every city, county and state to stand up and be counted and show that we are a nation that will not accept the hate, racism and intolerance infecting our communities, schools and political debate.
Please add yourself to our interactive map as a voice for tolerance — and find out which hate groups are active in your area.
I’m also asking that you send your friends this link and ask them to take a stand against hate.
And if they’re fortunate enough to be in an area with few hate groups, then tell them it’s important to take a stand now, before the seeds of hate take root in their communities.
Together we can make a difference.
Thank you for your commitment to ending injustice and racism.
The organization collecting signatures for a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in California says it is close to meeting the requirement.
Protect Marriage says it has collected 881,000 of the 1.1 million signatures needed. The deadline for turning in the petitions to county registrars is April 21.
Registrars are then required to take a random sample of signatures to verify. If that sampling shows at least 10 percent more valid signatures than required the petitions will be certified and the measure will be placed on the November ballot.
"The numbers are good, solid," Ron Prentice, a spokesperson for Protect Marriage told The Christian Examiner, a conservative Christian publication.
"We are well toward our goal. There are thousands more yet to be counted with a steady stream still coming in."
Among the major donors to Protect Marriage are a group of San Diego County businessmen. Developer Doug Manchester alone has contributed $125,000 prompting gays to urge a boycott of his properties. Manchester owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.
Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500, Carlsbad car dealer Robert Hoehn gave $25,000, and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, according to state records.
It would just break my heart if the land of my birth did that to me. I’ve noted before that the only reason I can travel freely around the United States is that I’m single. If I had a spouse, there are many states in this so-called union that we simply could not set foot in because if one of us had a sudden health problem, or there was an accident, it would become a nightmare for both of us. Even with a so-called durable power of attorney, we could be denied the right to simply be with each other in a hospital…even with a medical directives document…we could be denied the power to make medical decisions for each other should one of us become suddenly incapacitated. Some state constitutional amendments, like Virginia’s are so stringently and thoroughly crafted to ostracize same sex couples from the protections of the law, that they can even be read to deny same sex couples the right to hold a joint checking account.
There are simply not that many people in this country who hate us enough to want to do that to us. The problem, like it was for another hated minority group over in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s, is that the rest of the nation doesn’t care enough to tell them to stop it. So when these amendments are put up to a vote, they stay home and allow hate to have its way. These are the people who say later, "We heard the rumors, but we didn’t believe them…"
Once upon a time I planned to move back to California after mom passed away. Then I got the job I do now, and my little Baltimore rowhouse, and I stayed in Maryland. But even now I think sometimes that when my time to retire comes, if it ever does, I’d like to spend the last years of my life back there where I was born. It’s a lovely state. It would break my heart if the day ever came that I couldn’t even visit California again.
The Difference Between Mainstream American Journalism And European
Two news stories today about the commonplace schemer whose fantasies were used by the Bush administration to gin up support for president Nice Job Brownie’s splendid little war.
First, from the network that white washed the murder of Matthew Shepard, ABC News:
Curveball’s false tales became the centerpiece of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech before the United Nations in February 2003, even though he was considered an "unstable, immature and unreliable" source by some senior officials in the CIA. The CIA has since issued an official "burn notice" formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on his information.
Notice, they’re not even doing their own reporting there on the source of the claim that Saddam had those mobile biological weapons labs.
Now…from the people who actually did do some reporting…Der Spiegel:
Above all, however, the spymasters failed to do what is indispensable in the intelligence business: They did not sufficiently examine “Curveball’s” personal record. Perhaps they could have learned early on that, for a time, Rafed tried to make a go of manufacturing eye shadow. Later he stole 1.5 million dinar-worth of gear from the partially state-owned film and television company Babel TV, where he was responsible for equipment maintenance. A warrant for his arrest had been issued as a result — the real reason why he bolted from Iraq in 1998.
The BND would not even have had to go to Iraq to learn about Rafed’s real character — he remained true to form in Germany as well. Despite an explicit ban by BND authorities, Rafed worked for a time in a Chinese restaurant, and even behind the counter at a Burger King restaurant. He quickly attracted attention to himself. Several Iraqis described him to SPIEGEL as a "crackpot" and "con man."
Notice any difference? Go read both of those and see if the difference doesn’t just leap out at you and laugh in your face. The American News Network is tactfully refraining from holding its own government accountable for its behavior in that affair. If anything, ABC News is suggesting that was all the fault of those wily Germans. The German news magazine on the other hand, is almost blistering in holding its own government to account.
All through this goddamned war I’ve had to read European news sources to learn what’s going on over there. For an American with just a shred of appreciation that there is, in fact, a world beyond our shores, that’s not necessarily surprising. I’ve never once set foot outside of the continental United States, but many hours of my childhood were spent sitting raptly in front of a shortwave radio, listening to the BBC or Radio Netherlands and marveling at how much there was to know about the rest of the world that I simply didn’t get from the home grown broadcasts. That a more complete picture of foreign events would come from foreign news sources is unsurprising. What’s really pissing me off now is that I get a more complete picture of what my own government is up to from foreign news sources.
"I think what — what I’m saying is — and I had not gotten into the equal protection argument, Texas has the right to set moral standards and can set bright line moral standards for its people. And in the setting of those moral standards, I believe that they can say that certain kinds of activity can exist and certain kinds of activity cannot exist." -Charles A. Rosenthal.
I hadn’t known the details of how Rosenthal’s incriminating emails were discovered…only that they’d seen the light of day via some sort of legal proceedings against him. Apparently it began with a Houston drug raid. Some neighbors took photos of the raid and were later harassed and arrested by the police for it. At trial they were exonerated, and they sued. During discovery proceedings, they subpoenaed Rosenthal’s emails and that’s when the whole shit pile that is Rosenthal’s inner nature came tumbling out…the racist jokes, the pornography, the love notes to his secretary… But wait…it gets Even Better…
But the thing that took Rosenthal down was not his adulterous affair. Nor was it his racism.
Rosenthal scorned the judge’s orders and did not turn over all of his email. Instead, he deleted over 2,500 email just days after being ordered to remit it. This got him in a heap of trouble.
A grand jury indicted a Texas Supreme Court justice Thursday [January 17, 2008] on arson-related charges. But on Friday the district attorney’s office that brought the case to the grand jury in the first place dropped the charges, angering members of the panel and drawing allegations of political backscratching.
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, who is himself embroiled in a scandal involving inappropriate e-mails found on his office computer, said there was insufficient evidence to support the charges against Justice David Medina, a fellow Republican.
Rosenthal by all appearances, was trying hard to scuttle the case developing against Texas Supreme Court justice David Medina, a fellow republican (surprise, surprise) for torching his own house due to financial troubles. Here’s how the Dallas Morning News reported it…
AUSTIN – A Harris County grand jury indicted Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina and his wife Thursday in connection with a June fire at their home in Spring, north of Houston.
But within hours of the indictments – Francisca Medina on an arson accusation, Mr. Medina on an evidence-tampering charge – Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said his office didn’t think there was enough proof to charge either of them with a crime.
"We don’t feel like there’s sufficient evidence to proceed," Mr. Rosenthal said. "We will be asking the court to dismiss those [indictments] so we can proceed with further investigations."
The district attorney’s decision not to prosecute was the only good news of the day for Mr. Medina, a 49-year-old former district judge who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry in 2004, and for his wife, defense attorney Terry Yates said.
They’ve "done nothing wrong," Mr. Yates said, "and will continue to fight this thing vigorously."
But legal experts say Mr. Rosenthal’s announcement – and in particular, its timing – are unusual.
…
Harris County fire officials believe the June blaze, which destroyed the Medina home and a neighbor’s house and did nearly $1 million in damage, was intentionally set. Their initial investigation focused on six people close to the justice, and was fueled by a trail of financial troubles for Mr. Medina’s family.
In 2004, the Medinas failed to pay nearly $10,000 in county and school district taxes, resulting in a lien on their home. A year later, a mortgage company attempted to seize the couple’s home, claiming they had not made a payment in four months. The suit was resolved out of court.
The Medinas’ home insurance policy had lapsed because of unpaid premiums.
Mr. Medina, a former general counsel to Mr. Perry who makes $150,000 a year as a state Supreme Court justice, has called the financial problems "miscommunications with the bank."
The June fire wasn’t the Medinas’ first. A decade ago, the family’s garage went up in flames.
When Mr. Medina was called before a grand jury last fall, he told reporters he was sure he wasn’t suspected in the fire. He said he had some ideas about who might have started it, and said Mr. Rosenthal had assured him he was only a witness.
On Thursday, Mr. Rosenthal acknowledged that’s what he told Mr. Medina – "at the time."
"Whether anything else came up that would make him a target, I don’t know I can say that," Mr. Rosenthal said.
In an interview with the Quorum Report, Jeffrey Dorrell, the assistant foreman of the grand jury, accused Mr. Rosenthal of playing politics to protect Mr. Medina.
"Rosenthal resisted these indictments with a vigor I have never seen or heard before," Mr. Dorrell told the online newsletter. "The [district attorney’s] office called my office last week and said we should not meet, the case was not viable and we should not indict. Obviously, that came from the top."
Now…consider this: Rosenthal was the second state attorney to argue in defense of the sodomy laws before the U.S. Supreme Court since the Stonewall Riots announced the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. The other guy? Michael Bowers. And Bowers, you may recall, later endured his own episodes of political scandal and cheating on his wife.
It may seem odd…surreal even…that these self appointed moral authorities on the right would keep turning out, time and time again, to have the inner moral character of a gang of crooks. But that’s only if you look no further then the surface fealty to the moral code they claim to embrace. Look deeper. Look at the moral code itself. Where does it come from?
The Bible? No. They pick and choose from the bible like customers in a cafeteria, sliding their trays down the rails…now and then finding a tasty treat to their liking, ignoring the rest. These people, for all their bellyaching about their deeply held religious values, have religious values that are skin deep and no more.
The flag? No. For all their super duper true red white and blue American super patriotism, these people have utterly no commitment at all to the basic values of liberty and justice for all. None. If anything, they find it anathema. Their vision of the American Dream, is one that enriches their own lives, only and to the degree that it kicks into the gutter everyone they personally despise. The American Dream is money in their pocket, so long as it came out of yours. Freedom isn’t a rising tide that lifts all boats, but a ladder with them at the top and the rest of us down at the bottom, holding them up. The American Way, is their way.
Look at the values these people hold, not the ones they profess. Really look at them. All their moral values, all their deeply held religious beliefs, all their breathless reverence for America, amount to one thing only: themselves. They are worshiping a mirror, and calling it Jesus. They are saluting a flag with their face on it, and stripes made of line items in their personal prosperity check list, and calling it America. And that is how the man, the lawyer, could stand before the U.S. Supreme Court and argue that the only justification the sodomy laws needed was that they reflected the moral values of the people. Whether or not they embodied or conflicted with the values this nation was founded upon were irrelevant. If the people believe it is moral to imprison homosexuals said Rosenthal, then that makes it right. It was a statement of his innermost moral character: if he believes it is moral, then it is moral. Or more specifically, if he does it, it must be moral because he did it.
And that is why the man, the lawyer, who stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and said that Texas could draw a bright line of morality for its citizens, could cheat on his wife, use his office to protect a fellow republican from criminal prosecution, and destroy incriminating evidence against himself. Never doubt that in each and every step of the way down that path, in each and every moment of the walking of it, Rosenthal knew beyond any doubt or misgiving, that he was acting morally. It isn’t that he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think it was immoral by his standards. He was the standard. His life, his needs, his desires, his behavior. Because he did it, it Was moral.
That’s how these people think. It’s how they measure right from wrong. Jesus is the image in the mirror that nods approvingly back at them. The American way is the shape of their daily lives. Family values, is whatever goes on under their own roofs. Morality, is the stamp of approval they give to their own behavior from one moment to the next. That his how both Rosenthal and Bowers could condemn gay rights as a threat to marriage and family life, and cheat on their wives and still tell the world that they were moral men. Yes, they really believed it.
…plans to “decide in about a month” on another third-party run at the White House. In addition to having done enough damage to our country already, Ralph is 74 years old—three years older than ancient ol’ John McCain—and really ought to be thinking about retirement.
C’mon, Ralph. Don’t you want to enjoy your golden years? Kick back—you’ve earned it. Don’t you wanna travel a bit, see the country…
Tell you what, Ralph, if you don’t run for president I’ll head up a fundraising drive to purchase you a nice car—perhaps a bitchin’ vintage ‘62 Corvair—for you to tour the country in. Whatdaya say, Ralph?
Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.
The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.
Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.
Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.
The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.
Can’t you just see how Microsoft is going to market this? Oh…we’re just trying to Help make your office experience more enjoyable…
The saving grace of it is that any technology capable of producing tiny devices to monitor your every breath with is also capable of producing tiny devices to fuck with the monitoring devices. But still…this is beyond sad. It’s disgusting. Next time Bill, or anyone in the Microsoft boardroom is testifying before congress about something, someone should ask them if they plan to sell this technology to totalitarian states. Because of course, if a U.S. company doesn’t sell police state technology to police states, someone else will and that’s money out of our pockets isn’t it?
I sure hope nobody asks me to work on the software for crap like this. I’ll work on it alright…
Just so this is clear, if isn’t already, whoever the democratic candidate is this November, I’m almost certainly voting for them. I’ve basically been a yellow dog democrat ever since Connie Morella, an ersatz moderate republican from Montgomery County Maryland voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. That was when I learned that there is no such thing as a moderate republican. So whoever wins the democratic nomination…unless they do something really crazy and nominate Lyndon LaRouche or Mike Huckabee…I’ll be voting for them. I can’t say there’s a lot of them I like…and yes, yes, they’re mostly pretty lame on gay rights issues, and in particular on same sex marriage…but I have been convinced, ever since Connie Morella whined for the newspapers that same sex marriage was "too much" and "like the world turning upside down", that the only way gay people will ever achieve equality in America, is when the republicans are too weak to oppose it effectively.
What I’ve learned since George Bush was installed in the white house by a republican supreme court, is that it isn’t only homosexuals the republican party hates. They hate our democracy at least as much if not more then they hate gay people. The tut, tutting of the republican cocktail party set as to how they’re really all a very socially tolerant bunch they only want their tax breaks and deregulation is a pathetic charade next to the passionate vitriol of the grassroots, who are screaming for theocracy. Witness the horror of the republican establishment over Mike Huckabee.
Wealthy Republicans have a new political nightmare that may be scarier than Hillary Clinton: Mike Huckabee.
The former Arkansas governor has surged in Republican presidential-preference polls, winning the support of Christian fundamentalists while peppering his campaign rhetoric with jabs at the financial industry. He calls himself the candidate who isn’t a “wholly owned subsidiary” of investment banks, decries large executive-pay packages and says the party needs to shift its focus from Wall Street to Main Street.
In doing so, he threatens the uneasy if effective coalition Republicans have counted on for three decades: abortion opponents and other social-issue activists supplying foot soldiers, proponents of tax cuts and business-friendly regulatory policies putting up the money and getting the biggest economic benefits.
"Huckabee puts this long-simmering feud between the social-conservative wing and the country-club and business crowd into starker contrast," said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington.
Huckabee was asked on TV after running his Christmas ad, with it’s glowing cross resting on his shoulder as though he was annointed by Jesus Christ himself…
…if he was running to be president of all America, or president of Christian America. Of course he made noises about being president of all the people…even the aberrant homosexuals. But there’s no doubt about him. He is a republican to the bone. But what you have to understand is that so are his horrified cocktail party circuit critics.
I’ll put this in language even your tiny little Iowa brains can understand: What the f*** is wrong with you people?
The news coming out of Des Moines (literally, French for “tell me about the rabbits, George”) tonight is distressing in the extreme. 32 years ago, your Democratic brethren took one look at Jimmy Carter — the worst 20th Century President bar Nixon, and the worst ex-President ever — and declared, “That’s our man!”
Three decades later, and along comes Mike Huckabee. Same moral pretentiousness, same gullibility on foreign affairs, only-slightly-less toothy idiot’s grin. Then you so-called Republicans took a look at Carter’s clone and said, “That’s our man, too!”
And by a pretty wide margin. […]
Mike Huckabee? Really? We’ve seen this game before, and its name is… every other single stupid, un-winnable candidate you’ve ever picked — which is most of them.
So I repeat the question: What is wrong with you people?
All my love, you corn-sucking idiots,
VodkaPundit
He’s since taken that post down. Never let the vodka do your talking for you, eh? But as Brad at Sadly No says, Feel The Love…
Yes. Feel it. There’s the face of the republican party both these men share, right there. There is it’s "base" It isn’t fundamentalism. It’s Hate. Sometimes, that snarling pack of wolves turns on each other for a while, but never, Never mistake that as the party tearing itself apart. That’s how it gets stronger. Ever since Goldwater, excepting Ford and, maybe, Dole, the one who wins the republican nomination, is the one with the most ruthless machine. These pack fights the republicans go through during the primaries, are merely the warm up to the general election, when the one still left standing, the most vicious one, turns from the internal battle, and looks out at America.
To the degree that the defining characteristics of fundamentalism aren’t so much its piety as its loathings, its resentments, and its sullen sense of entitlement, Huckabee is certainly playing to the fundamentalists. To the degree that fundamentalist theocracies are nothing more at heart then degenerate oligarchies that claim God’s authority more brazenly and less sincerely then any king that ever lived, then yes, what they want is theocracy. But don’t mistake Huckabee’s support as being a religious movement, any more then the CEOs pouring millions into republican coffers in exchange for billions in tax dollars is a religious movement. These two sides of the republican party coalition are more in tune with each other then people think. They both hate American democracy. They both think the American dream of liberty and justice for all is an obscene joke. They both want to rape America to lifelessness: the one out of hate toward the hoi polli; the other out of hate for humanity.
Hate is their motive, and hate is their practice. For decades now, ever since Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and southern democrats began fleeing to the republican party, that party has been doggedly remaking itself from a co-governing institution into a movement that seeks nothing more then power, at any cost, by any means necessary, and to hell with the consequences for America. As Garrison Keillor pointedly observed after the 2000 election debacle, they are republicans first, and Americans second. Actually, I don’t think they regard themselves as Americans in the sense Keillor means that word, as a national identity we all share. Modern movement conservative republicans believe that America belongs exclusively to them…the rest of us just work here. Liberals… Democrats… Progressives… Gays… Uppity women… Uppity Negros… Trade Unionists… Urbanites… Intellectuals… Christians in deed as well as word… The working stiff holding down two jobs to pay the rent… The successful entrepreneur who wants everyone to have their own piece of the American Dream too… As far as the republicans are concerned, we are all illegal aliens.
For those of us who’ve been seeing that clearly since 2000, it makes the beltway pundocracy’s swooning over the virtues of "bipartisanship" particularly galling. Bipartisanship in the Bush era, is giving the republicans what they want. Here Glenn Sargent explains:
By now, you’ve probably heard that Michael Bloomberg and a bunch of retired politicians are going to hold a summit at the University of Oklahoma this week to talk about how desperately the nation needs a nonpartisan and independent leader like, you know, him to come in and lead the nation out of partisan gridlock.
This story, fittingly, was first leaked to The Washington Post‘s David Broder, a St. Paul-like figure who has long preached the virtues of the Beltway Gospel of Bipartisanship high and low across the land. Predictably, this planned gathering is already garnering the sort of awed and respectful coverage that greeted the formation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group nearly two years ago.
So here’s the question: When these bearded elders descend on Oklahoma later this week, will anyone ask them what policies they stand for, beyond "breaking partisan gridlock"? Will anyone ask them where they stand on the issues? Will anyone ask why we’re supposed to believe that their actual stances have any chance of creating "bipartisan unity" at all?
These questions are kind of relevant. Partisan gridlock happens because people — and by extension, political parties — disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That’s where "partisan gridlock" comes from — underlying disagreement on issues — and in our current case, the fault for our "partisan gridlock" isn’t equally distributed between the two parties. Rather, it’s almost exclusively the fault of the Republicans.
You aren’t allowed to say this, but it’s true. If you don’t believe me, ask the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. They proposed a bunch of solutions to Iraq. The Democrats largely embraced these solutions. The Republicans, by contrast, didn’t. As a result, the ISG’s proposals didn’t happen — even though they had been authored by a distinguished bipartisan panel. The Republicans have been the near-exclusive cause of gridlock on multiple other issues, too — issues upon which there is already majority agreement on how to proceed. In reality, the best way to end partisan gridlock is to further weaken the Republican Party, which is tying government in knots and preventing it from carrying out the will of the majority on a host of fronts.
This is how the republicans have managed to govern even when they were out of power, with democrats shuffling along to their tune out of a sense of national unity and co-operation that has been hopelessly naive, if not utterly reckless for decades. While democrats have been searching for peace in our time, the republicans have been waging all out political war on our precious democracy.
And that makes questions of any democratic candidate’s "electability" moot. Glenn Greenwald lays it out Here:
There’s a prevailing sense that Obama is not as offensive to the right-wing GOP faction as other Democratic and liberal candidates in the past have been, or that he’s less "divisive" among them than Hillary. And that’s true: for now, while he tries to take down the individual who has long provoked the most intense hatred — literally — among the Right. But anyone who doesn’t think that that’s all going to change instantaneously if Obama is the nominee hasn’t been watching how this faction operates over the last 20 years. Hatred is their fuel. Just look at the bottomless personal animus they managed to generate over an anemic, mundane, inoffensive figure like John Kerry. At their Convention, they waved signs with band-aids mocking his purple hearts while cheering on two combat-avoiders.
There will be more than enough of that intense hatred to go around if Obama is the nominee. For now, most of the racial commentary about Obama’s candidacy on the Right is confined to the sort of cringe-inducing, painfully condescending self-congratulations of the type Bill Bennett spat out on CNN Thursday night:
Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, wins this for the Democrats.
I have been watching him. I watched him on "Meet the Press," I’ve watched him on [Anderson Cooper’s] show, watched him on all the CNN shows — he never brings race into it. He never plays the race card.
Talk about the black community — he has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough. And good for the people of Iowa.
But if Obama is really the nominee, and is the one standing in the way between the Right and ongoing control of the Government, the idea that there’s going to be civility and respect is pure delusion. Rush Limbaugh’s continuous race-based mockery of Obama and the types of "warnings" issued here by Goldberg and Reynolds of the social unrest "Obama supporters" will cause is but the tip of the rancid iceberg [just the other day, Reynolds promoted a post warning that an Obama win (like a Huckabee win) will mean "the jihadis will not have done too badly"]. From a Free Republic posting after Obama’s Iowa victory:
Is Hussein Obama the weakest Dem for the General election?
By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.
Hussein’s exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope. . . .
As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.
As Andrew White, who also posted that Free Republic piece, wrote: "If Obama continues and becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee (and his chances got a lot better last night) it is going to get ugly. Real ugly." It would be just as ugly with Clinton or Edwards as the nominee, but that’s the point. Scare tactics and fear-mongering are all the Right knows, and their whole electoral strategy since Richard Nixon has been grounded in culturally tribalistic and racial appeals. The kind of subtle bile pouring forth from Limbaugh, and from Goldberg and Reynolds last night, is just a tiny preview of what is to come.
The fact is that the democrats could nominate Jesus Christ and two weeks into the campaign the Washington Post’s editorial page would be asking why he isn’t being candid with the voters about his horns, cloven hoofs and tail.
Which makes it tempting to simply vote for the candidate who pisses them off the most. Hey…why not Hillery…they just Hate Hillery… But that’s letting your anger do your thinking for you, and what we need to do is let our anger Inform our thinking, but not substitute for it. Whether or not a particular candidate pisses our enemies off isn’t important. What’s important is that they fight back. Thats what we should be looking for in our candidate. What’s important is that they’ll take the fight to the republicans. What’s important, is that they’ll swing right back every time the republican slime machine attacks, and keep right on swinging, Hard and Fast and Furious, no matter how loudly the republican corporate news media accuses them of “partisanship”, “negativism” and “political warfare”. What’s important is that they grab the other side by the throat and kick it in the ass, and keep on kicking it in the ass all through the election, and from one end of their term in office to the other, until the opposition either stops swinging and starts acting like civilized human beings again, or it can’t swing anymore, whichever comes first.
To which the Andrew Sullivan’s and Glenn Reynolds will say that all we democrats and liberals are interested in is waging a political war, rather then finding solutions to American’s problems. And the only proper response to that is: Kiss My Ass. No decent person goes looking for a knife fight. But the fact is we Are in a knife fight with the republicans. The fact is that America Has been in a knife fight with the republicans for decades now. And you don’t bring a handshake to a knife fight.
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