Barack Obama must be naive and inexperienced indeed if he is seriously suggesting that maintaining proper tire pressure and keeping cars maintained can save as much oil as offshore drilling would create. I mean ...

Wait? What?

Oh, it turns out he was right. While Republicans are making fun of his plan for the sheer novelty of the suggestion, no one has refuted the merits of what he said. Yes, it's true: keeping your tires properly inflated can increase your gas mileage. This means that it can save you money on gas. And it can do so right now.

New offshore drilling, on the other hand, would have an economic impact ... by the year 2030. What about the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR)? Surely it can produce enough oil to bring down those gas prices! Well, maybe someday. Drilling in ANWR "would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today," says U.S. News & World Report.

Republicans would like to find more fuel-efficient ways for us to continue consuming (all goods) at our present rate. Democrats would like to find alternatives to consumption. The latter most necessary; our resources are not finite, and rather than try and come up with new fuel substitutes, we need to learn how not to use so much fuel in the first place. The American way of life trumpeted by Rush Limbaugh and others -- the way of life where every American drives a Hummer and has a three-acre lawn with a sprinkler system -- is quickly coming to an end. As it should, for that lifestyle was not sustainable in the long run. It is an historical abnormality unique to a particular time -- a time when the United States had limitless power and resources. Times have changed, and it's time for proponents of limitless consumption to recognize that.

Posted by Mark at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro still blames sexism for Hillary Clinton's loss.

Hard to believe, considering that Hillary won big time -- in fact, by the biggest margins of any of her states -- in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas, Appalachian states in which sexism and "traditional roles" for women are still very much the norm.

Also hard to believe because the most educated, and ostensibly least sexist (or any ist), section of America voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.

Of course, Ferraro is unable to cite any instances of Barack Obama being sexist toward Hillary Clinton. In Ferraro's mind, sexism is the only clear answer. Clinton's campaign couldn't possibly have failed because people want Obama to be president more than they want her to be president.

Posted by Mark at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Armchair historian George W. Bush last week, in an act of terrifying tactlessness, accused "some" in the United States of wanting to "appease" terrorists the same way that Neville Chamberlain appeased Adolf Hitler. His act is tactless, said Barack Obama, because he criticized Americans in front of a foreign delegation, and all because those "some" Americans disagreed with his foreign policy. But, nevertheless, it may have been valid because his speech was on foreign policy ...

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Whoops! Turns out he was giving a speech as part of the celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary. Happy birthday, Israel! Don't you just hate Democrats?

Chris Matthews of all people took the time to point out to a stupid guest why Bush's immediate distaste for "appeasement" doesn't make sense: the act that makes historians slap their palms to their foreheads is not that Chamberlain met with Hitler -- for, at the time, Hitler had not yet demonstrated his desire for world domination; the problems in Germany were external -- but rather that they gave him Czechoslovakia in return for the promise that he wouldn't go after any other countries. Hitler alleged that Germany had a legitimate claim to the Rhineland in Czechoslovakia. The other European leaders, still stinging from World War I, which is a more horrible war than you've been taught in history class, wanted to avoid another war at any cost.

Talking to leaders was, before 2001, how diplomacy got done. For Bush's analogy to make sense, his political enemies would have had to suggest that they let the other Arab states destroy Israel. To my knowledge, no Democrat has suggested this.

It could be that Bush, with his college-freshman mind, had heard the word "appeasement" in a class somewhere but didn't fully understand what it meant. Or, more sinisterly, he knows full well what it means, and knows that the Israelis know that, too. Perhaps he was sending a code to the Israeli delegation, saying, "If the United States elects a Democrat to the presidency, that person will stand idly by while Iran, Syria, and Lebanon destroy you."

Sadly, though, I don't think Bush is that smart. I think, as Chris Matthews has suggested, he's using the word "appeasement" as a buzz-word in the same way as every other pundit, including right-wing talk show host Kevin James. James was asked two dozen times by Matthews what Chamberlain did that was appeasing. For five minutes, James insisted that "we all know" what he did, and that "he was an appeaser." Finally, James admitted that he didn't actually know what Chamberlain did that was "appeasing."

And still, the election in 2008 will be almost a tie. How can James and others get away with this and have people believe them?

Posted by Mark at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

That's what Bill Maher said last week on Real Time with Bill Maher regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. His argument was that Barack Obama could have done the politically expedient thing and distanced himself from Rev. Wright last month. Instead, when video on YouTube emerged of Rev. Wright apparently denouncing the United States (which he didn't do -- more on that later), Obama delivered a cogent and nuanced speech about race that treated Americans as intelligent people instead of as empty vessels into which simple, polarized opinions are poured. Obama's race speech was, sadly, revered throughout the media. I say "sadly" because it's the kind of speech that would be the old hat in academia: a speech in which a subject is carefully analyzed, and the apparent discrepancies are explained, but no solid conclusion is reached. Race is a very complex subject, Obama said, and should not be dealt with using platitudes. Wright, said Obama, is his spiritual mentor; he could no more disown him than he could disown his white grandmother, who also made occasionally racist statements. This kind of speech is not politically expedient, because it does not distill the issue down to talking points and sound bites. For Obama to be lauded for delivering a real speech with actual ideas is a disturbing commentary on how far our country's discourse has fallen.

But I digress. Obama took a bullet for Rev. Wright and was congratulated for it. And we thought it was the end. But the ABC debate that preceded the Pennsylvania primary brought Rev. Wright back into the spotlight, and Wright felt it necessary to go on a press blitz over the weekend. He appeared on Bill Moyers' PBS show as a soft-spoken, intelligent man -- but Moyers never addressed Wright's more inflammatory statements, like his assertion that the U.S. government spread HIV to kill black people. In one of his other appearances over the weekend, he said that Obama's defense of him was due to the fact that he's "a politician."

It's this statement that Bill Maher found most offensive: here is Barack Obama, trying his hardest not to appear like just another politician. Here's Barack Obama, faced with an association with a man who could injure his chance at the presidency. And Barack Obama takes the high road -- risking his candidacy -- to defend Rev. Wright. And how does Rev. Wright repay him? By going on TV and saying that Obama is just another politician, spitting in the face of everything Obama has been doing for the past year. And it is for this reason, I think, that Obama made a clean break with Rev. Wright.

Now, there are some points that Rev. Wright has made that are very good points: his "God damn America" statement is not a unilateral statement of hatred for the United States. God is damning America, according to Rev. Wright, because America fails to care for its impoverished and marginalized people, and because America involves itself in unjust wars that cost billions of dollars while people in this country live in poverty and without health care, among other things. Many commentators have passed judgment on the form of the opinion, but no one has talked about the opinion itself: is it valid or not? And the answer is yes, Rev. Wright's opinion is valid. His comment about HIV comes from his statement that, after the Tuskeegee experiments, he will believe anything. This, however, does not excuse statements that are factually incorrect as well as inflammatory. Like any human being, Rev. Wright makes good statements, but he also makes bad ones.

His statements about U.S. foreign policy are actually not the most offensive statements he has made. What's offensive is that Obama took a bullet for him, and Wright repaid him by throwing him under a bus.

Posted by Mark at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's official, America. You're a glutton for punishment.

Here you had Barack Obama, a candidate who promised change, a candidate who wasn't another hackneyed politician. He was an activist and a constitutional law professor. He was eloquent and he had solutions. He held the promise that Democrats had been waiting for: someone who wouldn't cower when faced with the Republicans, but wouldn't become one of them, either. He was someone who would hold his ground and stand up for what he believed in.

And you destroyed him, America. You turned him into the politician you wanted to see: you wanted to see the same hackeneyed baloney. You wanted personal attacks, pandering, and feuding. You wanted George Stephanopoulos and Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity to officiate a professional wrestling match. You didn't care about issues: I mean, clearly you don't care about issues. President Bush, after all, has a 69% disapproval rating, and still -- still! -- this election is up in the air. The easy decision, the one that could be made by any student from a middling kindergarten class, would be to vote for someone who is different from the person you hate! In your self-loathing, America, you knew that smoking was bad for you, but you kept on doing it, anyway.

Barack Obama had to go on television this week to denounce the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Why did he have to do this? Is it because the American people are so stupid that they would think that, because Obama went to Wright's church, it follows that Obama himself believes that the government spread HIV in black communities? Of course not: Obama went on television to put an end to the Rev. Wright saga. Something is wrong with this country when the first 45 minutes of a debate are taken up with such issues as flag lapel pins and a crazy pastor.* 45 minutes spent on why he doesn't wear a flag lapel pin? What do you mean by "bitter"? And my favorite, from George Stephanoupolos, "Does Rev. Wright love America as much as you do?" If they really wanted to stir up some controversy, they should have asked him if he liked deep-dish or New York style.

This election promised, more than the others in my memory, to deliver real issues. The country is in the midst of an economic crisis. We're mired in an unpopular war abroad. The president doesn't seem to care about the average person. This is prime time for a politician to talk about what he or she plans to do to save the country. And for the first few months of the campaign, we did talk about that. But as the primaries wore on and it was clear that there would be no definite winner, the so-called mainstream media became bored. Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to fill, and the candidates weren't saying anything new or different. What's a twenty-four hour network to do?

Make up controversy, of course!

It's no coincidence that the Rev. Wright "controversy" landed squarely in the middle of the lull between the Ohio primary and the Pennsylvania primary. Undoubtedly the news media were scouring every source they could find in order to shake the grass. Issues are great, but they don't glue people to news "analysis" enough to justify the ad prices. By finding some great YouTube footage of Rev. Wright supposedly denouncing America, there was more than enough analysis to fill twenty-four hours of television: the initial video! The history of Rev. Wright! What should Obama do! What is Hillary's response! Repeat ad nauseum.

Obama looked like the candidate for change. But now he looks just like any other candidate. Gone is the Obama of a year ago who fired up young Americans and made them believe in their leaders again. America couldn't tolerate a candidate who didn't give it bread and circuses. So they pulled Obama down into the muck with them, ensuring that they would have entertainment for the next week, even if it means granting the Bush administration a four-year extension.

Posted by Mark at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... if you count Michigan and Florida. Hillary claimed yesterday that she was 100,000 votes ahead in the popular vote for the Democratic nomination. Her statement was artfully crafted so as to be technically true but nevertheless misleading: "I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anyone else," she said. The key clause here is "people who have voted." While people in Michigan and Florida voted, their votes did not count. How odd that Hillary, who once upon a time agreed that she would not campaign in those states and that those states' votes wouldn't count, is now the champion of enfranchising those voters.

This is an excellent example of what to expect from President Hillary Clinton: misleading phrases that are technically true but pragmatically misleading, and support for positions that are politically popular, not right. President Bush is currently the master of the technically-true-but-misleading phrase; with Hillary, we would get at least four more years of that.

While Hillary continues to count Michigan and Florida voters, no one else does. There will be no re-vote in those states, which chose -- against DNC rules -- to hold their primaries before Feb. 5. As a result, their delegates will not be seated.

Here's the problem: Hillary is, in reality, 500,000 votes behind Obama. With her 10-point victory in Pennsylvania, she officially cannot win the nomination with pledged delegates alone. Prior to Pennsylvania, she would have had to win every remaining contest by at least 20 points. She has taken out insurance in the form of trying to coerce superdelegates, but a win financed by superdelegates in spite of Obama's popular victory would make her candidacy appear illegitimate and artificial. Add these two facts -- the fact that she cannot win through pledged delegates and the fact that she must appear to have popular support -- and the sum is that she desperately needs to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated. That gives her more popular votes, which equals more legitimacy, and if she succeeds in wooing enough superdelegates to her side to win the nomination, she can point to her popular vote numbers as proof that she won through "the will of the people" and not back-room deals with party insiders.

But what would the rest of the country think? Hillary is essentially asking to change the rules now that she dislikes the outcome. Obama didn't campaign in Florida, and he -- along with every other Democratic candidate except Hillary -- wasn't on the ticket in Michigan, since everyone agreed that Florida and Michigan wouldn't count. Hillary was okay with this deal in January because she -- like most of us -- thought the election would be decided in Iowa and New Hampshire like it is in every election. Once she realized that Obama had more popularity than anyone had thought, she panicked and reneged on her agreement under the assumption that votes need to be counted, people need to be recognized, etc. etc. Never mind that there is no right to vote in a party primary. While party primaries are administered by the FEC and local boards of election, they do not hold the same status as official elections. Parties, for example, may limit participation in their primaries to party members only. The notion that voters have a "right" to vote in a primary is a mistaken notion; voters in primaries are subject to the stipulations of the parties involved, unlike a general election.

Seating the delegates outright is out of the question; a contest where Hillary was the only candidate would be plainly unfair, as would a contest in which no other candidates campaigned in the state because they thought (correctly) that that state wouldn't count. All she can do now is mount a P.R. campaign designed to make her appear -- both to voters and superdelegates -- more electable than she really is. The fact is that, in order to win the presidency, the Democratic candidate has to be able to sway not just died-in-the-wool Democrats, but also swing voters and new voters. In Pennsylvania, Obama captured six of ten new voters: he also holds sway among swing voters. Republicans definitely don't like Hillary Clinton, and her candidacy wouldn't make them abandon John McCain. Obama, however, might do just that.

The next contests are May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina. Polls in Indiana are up in the air, ranging from neck-and-neck to a huge Hillary win. North Carolina is definitively Obama country, with the spread ranging from 9 points in his favor to 25 points in his favor. He will soundly defeat Hillary in North Carolina; only Indiana remains a swing state.

If Hillary loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate count, but manages to use the Clinton "victory at any cost" machine to drive right over Obama and secure the nomination, the Democratic party will be in shambles and their victory in November -- which is crucial for the survival of this country -- will be in serious doubt. A McCain victory assures continued involvement in Iraq, continued military spending, no foreseeable health care reform, continued tax breaks for the Americans who need tax breaks the least, and God knows what kind of foreign policy. A McCain victory in November would give added credence to the Republicans, as though "they're back!" Republican inertia would in turn lead to more Republican wins, bringing us right back to where we were in 2002.

Posted by Mark at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Barack Obama has received a good deal of flack for comments he made last week in San Francisco. Speaking of middle-class workers in Pennsylvania, he said, "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Sen. Hillary Clinton immediately went for the throat, criticizing his comments as "elitist." (In today's CNN Compassion Forum, Clinton added "out of touch" to her characterization of his comments. Please keep in mind that Hillary is a graduate of both Brown University and Yale Law School, hardly bastions of the "common man.")

But are his comments wrong? Clinton has suggested that Obama is being "patronizing" in his suggestion that religion is something that people turn to when times are tough. But she has not answered Obama's argument: namely, that middle-class Americans in economically depressed parts of the country have lost faith in the ability of government to help them, choosing instead to turn somewhere else for help, or to blame others (in this case, immigrants) for the problems that government has caused.

Paul Levinson suggests that this is a non-issue, since working families know how hard their lives are, and for Hillary to suggest that everything is rosy is just as disingenuous as George W. Bush suggesting that the economy is doing just fine. What do Americans want: a politician who insists everything is fine as the country burns around her, or a politican who tells it like it is? John McCain didn't receive the same amount of criticism when he appeared in Detroit earlier in the year and told an audience there that "there are some jobs that won't be coming back." Mitt Romney, on the other hand, went to Detroit and said that they could get jobs back, and he could help.

That's a lie.

Aside from forcing American auto manufacturers from employing Americans in the United States, there's nothing the president can do. Furthermore, the "free trade" types that populate the Republican party would have none of it.

Every time Obama disseminates a harsh truth, Hillary calls him on it, as though the job of the president is to be the nation's cheerleader. What's the point in that? And, if Hillary really wants to make a change, why would she choose to adhere to a George W. Bush tactic; namely, putting an irrationally and incorrectly optimistic spin on a situation that isn't very good?

Posted by Mark at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Elizabeth Drew, writing in The New York Review of Books, characterizes Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy as "molehill politics":

In this fight, the Clinton camp is the more aggressive of the two, and it's adept at what might be called molehill politics: making a very big deal in the press about something that's a very small deal—such as a single word in a mailing or a slip-up by an aide. Clinton's strategists pounce on whatever opportunity presents itself to attack Obama, and try to knock him off his own message, and his stride.

According to Drew, Hillary can't make positive steps forward; all she can do is try to bring Obama down. It's come down to the superdelegates, since Hillary would have to win by at least 20% in every remaining primary contest if she wanted to beat Obama in pledged delegates. Ever since the Texas and Ohio primaries -- which, instead of definitively ending the contest, assured only that it would continue -- Hillary has abandoned the state primaries and instead focused on superdelegates. This, says Drew, is Clinton's goal: "to convince the as-yet-uncommitted superdelegates which candidate would be stronger in the general election -- regardless of who has won the most pledged delegates." The 3 AM ad, the mortgage crisis ad: these are designed to convince superdelegates that Obama is not as electable as Clinton.

In the meantime, according to Daily Kos, the Republican National Committee is trying to get Hillary Clinton seated as the Democratic nominee because they believe she will be easier to defeat.

And all the while, John McCain is portrayed as a "maverick" in the so-called mainstream media even as he adjusts his positions to match those of the Republican mainstream. McCain, who has never been particularly religious, switched to evangelical Protestantism in order to appease that wing of the Republican party. McCain's foreign policy has also taken a turn toward neoconservatism, ensuring that this once-maverick politician joins the Republican mainstream and delivers us four more years of what we've seen since 2001.

Posted by Mark at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Richard D. Erlich

"Freedom isn't free" is a true statement that became a cliché, so we no longer think about what it means, nor its implications.

We need to think about it.

John F. Kennedy said that we Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden [...] to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Within a few years, a bitter observation had it that the world would be better off if Lyndon Johnson was a more consistent Machiavellian and hadn't applied such Kennedy-esque idealism to Vietnam. Ideals can be pushed too far when the cost is human lives.

Usually, though, people go too far in the other direction, arguing that "If it saves just one life, it" -- all sorts of "it's" -- is justified. Safety can be idealized and presented as an infinite good, and that, too, is a problem.

I have heard people say, "Nothing is more important than protecting our troops?" If nothing is more important than protecting our troops, we should keep them out of war zones. If they're in combat on a justified mission, accomplishing the mission is more important than their safety.

Similarly, George W. Bush has said that his main duty as President was protecting the American people. Actually, what a president swears most specifically to do is "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The president's job includes protecting Americans, but his primary job is protecting America, which can be something different. To protect America, the president may have to send to their deaths American troops.

Civilians, too, need to take risks, and the cost of freedom includes civilian deaths.

Freedom can be dangerous. I'm a life-member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I'll tell you that most Americans, most of the time -- even most members of most minority groups -- would be safer in a police state.

Part of the cost of freedom is the blood of Americans who would not have died or been wounded or maimed if we lived in a police state.

Racism complicates things, but most of us would be safer -- at least initially -- in an America without the Bill of Rights: disarmed (no Amendment 2) with constant surveillance (Amendment 4), and no troublemakers free to openly spread dangerous doctrines (Amendment 1). Most of us would be safer in a country without trials and legal technicalities, where the authorities could just throw known or suspected evil-doers into jail indefinitely and torture them for information -- or just to break them -- or, for "the worst of the worst" of the evil, send out death squads to kill them (Amendments 5-8).

Freedom isn't free, and neither is safety, and a fair number of American civilians seem willing to pay high prices in military blood for freedom, and the blood of foreign civilians, but not take too many risks for themselves or their kids. Many of us will trade a whole bunch of freedom for at least a sense of safety.

And to get done other handy things.

If you don't believe this, check out a sampling of American schools and then ask about bringing some medical marijuana with you on a commercial air flight. Kids don't have the same rights as adults, but to preserve their safety we've made a lot of schools very like prisons -- complete with "lockdowns" -- and have quietly dropped critical thinking and Civics as part of the "basics" kids should know. These practices have contributed to a generation or two with little sense of a right to privacy, and little knowledge of or dedication to most of the US Bill of Rights.

Oh -- and if you openly bring marijuana of any sort onto a commercial air flight, you'll be arrested: extraordinary laws to protect us against terrorists are used against the most ordinary sorts of crimes.

We need to take seriously "Freedom isn't free," and liberals, conservatives, and civil libertarians need to talk openly and honestly about the price they are willing to pay, and ask others to pay, for freedom. We need to discuss how much courage we can demand from ordinary people.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, "The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men -- the right to be let alone." If we are to maintain that right, we Americans need to carefully balance the claims of liberty and security -- and take more risks. As Steven Stills said, we must "Find the cost of freedom," and be willing to pay.

Richard D. Erlich is currently the main content provider for the Clockworks 2 wiki, which people interested in science fiction should visit and help build since, even including the hard-copy, hard-cover Clockworks [1] (Greenwood Press), is a radically incomplete List of Works Useful for the Study of the Human/Machine Interface in SF.

Posted by Mark at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, President Bush held a press conference that dealt with many issues. One of the questions asked was about the Protect America Act. Bush once again said that it was necessary for our security, including the part about retroactive immunity for telecom companies. But he introduced a fun new argument into play that only Dick Cheney had used up to that point:

It was legal. And now, all of a sudden, plaintiffs attorneys, class-action plaintiffs attorneys, you know -- I don't want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train -- are trying to sue these companies. First, it's unfair. It is patently unfair. And secondly, these lawsuits create doubts amongst those who will -- whose help we need.

Financial gravy train? Who does Bush think is filing these lawsuits? I know that, in his mind, the only law firms that exist are giant, corporate law firms that sue to prevent dishing out workers compensation claims, but let's be reasonable! Giant, profit-making law firms are not engaging in these lawsuits. Non-profit organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are filing these lawsuits. They're not making any money! If they thought there were money to be made, giant, profit-making law firms would be leading the charge of class-action lawsuits against these telecom companies.

Posted by Mark at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, Sen. Hillary Clinton lambasted Sen. Barack Obama for insinuating, through campaign mailers, that Hillary's healthcare plan will be mandatory and will punish people who don't join. "Sen. Obama knows it is not true that my plan forces people to buy insurance even if they can't afford it," she said today.

So, are these allegations true or false? Hillary appeared on This Week on Feb. 3. Even then, the Obama campaign was telling people that Hillary's healthcare plan would force people to purchase insurance. Host George Stephanopolous asked Hillary to answer these charges:

Stephanopolous: "They're claiming this issue of the penalty, and a lot of healthcare experts, many who side-- who worked with you in 1994, say that without these enforcement mechanisms, you simply can't get to universal coverage, you can't claim to have universal coverage, so there's no difference between your plan and Senator Obama's, and, and, and, I mean, you talk about automatic enrollment. Will you garnish wages of people who, uh, don't comply, don't buy the insurance?"

Hillary: "George, we will have an enforcement mechanism. Whether it's that or it's some other, uh, mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollment--"

In what way do the words "whether it's that [meaning garnishing wages] or some other mechanism" not translate into forcing people to buy insurance? And incidentally, this controversy has been around since the beginning of February. Only now is Hillary drawing new attention to it as she tries -- desperately, I might add -- to win Ohio and Texas on Mar. 4.

Posted by Mark at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an essay for The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Goodbye to All That," Andrew Sullivan presents a novel reason why Obama is fundamentally different from any candidate we've seen in our generation:

Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future.

[...]

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Vietnam and the culture wars of the 1960s, says Sullivan, have informed political discourse ever since then, and only Obama is young enough not to have politically matured during that time. He has not been affected by the "triumphant post-Reagan conservatism" that has kept Democrats on the defensive since the 1980s. Even today, it seems, Democrats have to justify to the country why their ideas are not ludicrous, while Republican ideas are accepted as normal. Going to war in Iraq? Sounds great. Suggesting we don't go to war in Iraq? Whoa, there, buddy! You'd better have a good reason for us not to go to war. The beauty of the Iraq War is that President Bush didn't have to do very much actual convincing. The narrative of our nation's politics said that the Republicans knew how to protect the nation, so Bush knew best.

Which brings us to why Obama would make a great president: "He is among the first Democrats in a generation not to be afraid or ashamed of what they actually believe, which also gives them more freedom to move pragmatically to the right, if necessary." Nowhere was the polarization of something as basic as an opinion demonstrated than in 2004. On the one hand, we have George W. Bush, a man who believes so much in his own opinion -- and others' faith in his opinion -- that he has not once changed his mind about anything. He has made no mistakes, and he has no regrets. Undoubtedly, if someone asked if he would do anything about his preidency differently, he wouldsn't have an answer. Even when he is wrong, he refuses to back down, as though his own stubbornness is prima facie evidence of how correct he is -- because, seriously, how could someone who is wrong be so unwilling to admit he's wrong? He dares people to call him on his hubris, and largely, his supporters never do, assuming that he's either completely correct or a totally tactless moron.

John Kerry was on the other end of the spectrum, constantly changing his mind when he realized it would be politically expedient to do so. He famously said of a defense spending bill, "I voted for it before I voted against it." This only gave his opponents more ammunition in their gunfight to demonstrate to voters that he didn't have any firm positions. A successful "Google bomb" shot John Kerry's campaign website to number one as the search result for "waffles."

The fear of Republicans is driving this congress. It's the reason why Democrats have consistently refused to stand up to President Bush when he is urging for the passage of stupid laws, like a provision for warrantless wiretapping. It's the reason why they haven't done the investigations they should be doing. Democrats take Bush's comments about them to heart and are terrified that, after twelve years of being browbeaten by Republicans, the hard-earned gains of 2006 will disappear when voters believe it when the president says that Congress is spending too much money and wasting time with investigations and attempts to end the war in Iraq.

Obama knows that the president is bluffing. He knows that Democrats don't pay any attention to what he says, and the president's conservative audience already doesn't like the Democrats, so there's no reason to pander. Obama isn't afraid of Bush and he isn't afraid of Republicans. It takes a certain amount of idealism to think that you're doing what's right. Bush has that idealism, but he's carried it too far, to the point where he's doing what only he thinks is right and doesn't come to a consensus with anyone. When the Senate intimated that it might not confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, Bush was fine with that. We just won't have an Attorney General, then, he told the Senate. In no uncertain terms, he told them that they would be confirming Michael Mukasey, and if they didn't like it, then he would publicly blame them for the lack of an Attorney General. He would not be nominating anyone else.

Obama, though, is not unilateral. But he's not a chicken. And, says Sullivan, he brings with him more than pragmatism:

If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do.

Posted by Mark at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason, CNN keeps giving superdelegates to candidates. "Superdelegates" are delegates that are not pledged to a specific candidate. For example, Arizona has 67 delegates and 11 superdelegates. This means that, after the Feb. 5 primary, 67 delegates will be obligated to vote for a particular candidate, and 11 will be free to make up their minds how they want. Liken them to "at-large" delegates. But their allegiances are far from certain.

CNN makes guesses about who gets superdelegates, adds them to the pledged delegate totals, and then puts the sum on their Election Center front page. It's 725 for Hillary to 636 for Obama, which sounds like quite a disparity, until you remove the superdelegates. In terms of pledged delegates, Hillary has 532, while Obama has 530. The race is much closer than it initially appears.

Posted by Mark at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bloomberg News reports that Hillary Clinton "took in $823,087 from registered lobbyists and members of their firms in 2007." And Barack Obama? None. Obama "doesn't take money from registered lobbyists." How can Hillary Clinton talk about change while she takes money from the very people for whom change is bad?

Posted by Mark at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With 22 states poised to have primaries on Tuesday, the battle for the Democratic nomination could be decided in a few days. Barack Obama is the best choice for the Democratic nomination, hands down.

A year ago, I was hesitant to consider Barack Obama due to his lack of experience. He has been a U.S. senator for only three years; what could he possibly have to offer? It seems, though, that Obama's perceived lack of experience is not as important as what he could bring to the table. Obama likes to say that he offers "hope," and this is true: Obama doesn't behave the same way that Hillary does. His outlook on the way government ought to work is different from Hillary's, and it's different from the way that politics has been conducted as far back as I can remember.

Consider the personalities: who is leveling personal attacks? When Barack Obama said that he thought Ronald Reagan took advantage of a time when the country wanted to hear his new ideas, Hillary took the comment and spun it wildly out of control, claiming that Obama revered Ronald Reagan and thought that he had better ideas than the Democrats. When Hillary Clinton said that Martin Luther King, Jr., couldn't have accomplished his dream of civil rights reform without Lyndon Johnson in the White House, everyone in the media pounced on her, assailing her for daring to suggest that King had any flaws. The media turned that comment -- which is, actually, probably true -- and spun it into an issue of "race." But guess who didn't jump on that bandwagon? Barack Obama, the very person who would have benefitted most from such spin.

Most of their policies are pretty much the same. Healthcare reform, for example. Both Hillary and Obama want to allow people to buy into the same kinds of federal health plans that Congress uses. Both of them would allow people to keep their private insurance, if they wanted. Both of them want to cover children (although Obama says explicitly that he wants mandatory healthcare coverage for children) and both of them want to allow the use of generics where possible, with Obama adding that he would allow the purchase of drugs from other developed countries. Neither candidate is out to create a Canadian or British-style single-payer system. That's a shame, but it's also realistic. Moving to a federal healthcare system for people who can't afford private health insurance is the first step toward creating a single-payer system. Both Hillary and Obama would strengthen oversight over the healthcare industry and modernize the systems they use, so as to keep costs down. (Paul Krugman, the columnist Republicans love to hate, estimates that 25% of the money we spend on healthcare is eaten up by administrative costs; that is, pushing paper from one place to another.)

Even though she is more in favor among Latino voters, Hillary's website doesn't go into specifics about her immigration policies. Obama is unsurprisingly centrist about immigration, not using the "a"-word, but not allowing for an exploitative guest worker program. Under an Obama immigration policy, illegal immigrants would pay a fine and then go to "the back of the line" to get their citizenship, a process that can take up to fifteen years on a good day (which includes a few years to get an immigrant visa, a few more years to become a permanent resident, and then several years after that to become a citizen). Our immigration and naturalization system is tremendously bureaucratic and broken. Obama won't fix that to my satisfaction. Neither will Hillary.

What are we left with? The Iraq War. As a state senator from Illinois, Obama was opposed to the Iraq War. Hillary voted to use force in Iraq. During last week's debate, she attempted to spin her support for the war as though she had no idea the president would actually use force. She voted, she said, for the president to enforce U.N. Resolution 1441, something she thought he would do through diplomacy.

Are we really supposed to believe this? A president beats the drums of war for months before invading, and Hillary is naive enough to think that he won't go to war? She never admitted that she was naive, or that she was duped, or even that she was wrong. That sends her on the path to the Dark Side toward a policy of never admitting you're wrong, kind of like a certain president I know.

Hillary has also never said definitively if she would remove troops from Iraq. She has said that she might do it, but there are no guarantees. Obama is explicitly promising a withdrawal from Iraq. This is something that I find necessary in a candidate. The Iraq War was a sham and a mistake from the very beginning, and to continue it is to continue legitimizing that lie. The war has to end as soon as possible, and only Obama has promised to do it.

The impression that I get out of Obama is that he will actually act as a voice for change. Not since 1994 have the Democrats had a candidate so charismatic and so promising. The Al Gore of 2000 was not the Al Gore that spoke passionately about global warming; the Al Gore of 2000 was boring and didn't seem nearly as amiable as George W. Bush. In 2004, the Democrats trotted out John Kerry, a candidate who gained the support of people who didn't want to vote for George W. Bush. Kerry was, if at all possible, less enigmatic than Gore and conceded defeat despite obvious voting irregularities in Ohio. Hillary has too many political and corporate connections to be a real voice of change. She -- and her husband -- have the same penchant for secrecy that George W. Bush has now. We will never know how the Clinton healthcare plan was formed, since the records are still secret. A Hillary presidency may attempt to stonewall government transparency, but I believe that an Obama presidency never will. He has never been anything but honest with the American people.

Hearing Obama speak cogently and honestly about the issues at hand actually does give me a sense of hope, as though the evil of the last eight years can be undone, our government can be made to function once again, corruption can be placed under control, and our cynical war for money in the Middle East can end. No wonder the Obama logo looks like a rising sun.

Posted by Mark at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Imagine that you're a political campaign with at least three times the notoriety of Ron Paul but one-sixth the number of party delegates. Imagine that you've been running on a platform of national security, but not much else, and not even a good platform of national security, at that.

Your name is Rudy Giuliani, and things aren't going well for you. After contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, and Wyoming, you've picked up only one delegate. Ron Paul, crazy Texas libertarian and Internet darling, has six delegates. How could this happen? You were supposed to be the Republican golden boy. You were "America's Mayor." You were Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2001. Where did you go wrong?

For one, in several debates, Giuliani demonstrated that he knows next to nothing about formulating policy. In the very first Republican debate last year, Paul schooled Giuliani on "blowback" and why our Middle East policies may have created an environment for people like Osama Bin Laden to gain supporters. Giuliani would have none of it, insisting that Paul was blaming the United States for the September 11 attacks. At the end of the day, though, Giuliani's protestations about the evil terrorists revealed only that he has the same lack of understanding about the world that George W. Bush does.

And speaking of September 11, Giuliani speaks of September 11 a lot. His invocation of September 11 has entered the realm of the farcical, and prompted former presidential candidate Joe Biden to remark of Giuliani, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11." He has no clear policy positions, and his only credentials -- getting New York out of September 11 -- are based on doing exactly what anyone else in his place would have done. Doing the obvious does not make Giuliani an expert on national security. And continuing to invoke September 11, even in situations where it doesn't seem appropriate or necessary, only serves to strengthen the notion that he stands on the pedestal of September 11 because he has no other credentials.

Giuliani also managed to alienate the religious core of the Republican party with his stances on abortion and gay marriage. He used to be just peachy with abortion and gay marriage, but Giuliani has definitively come out against them now that it's politically expedient to do so. Christian conservatives wouldn't have anything to do with a candidate who isn't explicitly in line with their beliefs. While Giuliani may have changed his mind, it won't help him secure the nomination.

And most dastardly, Giuliani bypassed South Carolina altogether. Conventional wisdom tells us that no Republican has secured the party nomination without carrying South Carolina. Giuliani, rather than get into that brawl, opted instead to put all of his eggs into Florida, where he's been campaigning heavily. It is surely this misguided notion that will end Giuliani's chances at getting the nomination. Florida's delegates have been cut in half by the Republican National Committee as punishment for having their primary earlier than the RNC allowed. Florida has 57 delegates to pass out among the Republican candidates, and even if Giuliani wins most of them, it's not enough to surpass Mitt Romney, the current Republican leader. Perhaps Giuliani hopes that a win in Florida will give him a morale boost -- both for himself, his supporters, and the media -- but he should realize that he's dropped off the national radar. His decision to focus on Florida to the exclusion of all else has meant that he has pulled the plug on his own campaign, and even if he does win Florida, that can't help him win the nomination. He's lost too much already.

Posted by Mark at 6:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

First, a lesson in how statistics work. This is addressed chiefly to CNN.

You see, if a candidate is two points ahead of another candidate, but the margin of error for that poll is more than two points, then there is no definitive statement that can be made about that poll. Yet, time and again, news outlets report that one candidate is inching out another by mere millimeters even though the margin between the candidates is well within the margin of error for the poll. Example: if a poll says that 34% of people support Hillary, but 32% support Barack Obama, and the margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points, then who wins the poll? The CNN answer -- and subsequent headline -- is, "Hillary ekes out two-point lead over Obama." The real answer is that the actual poll results could conceivably be that Obama has 35% and Hillary has 31%!

Okay. On to the show.

Here we are, ten years into a twenty-year long political campaign, and what do we have to show for it? Examine the situation: President Bush is a lame duck president facing off against a Congress controlled by the opposing party. A minority of the country supports him, and he has led the country into an expensive war that will be in its fifth year this March. This president has decimated civil liberties, destroyed science, and alienated every moderate person in the world with his cavalier, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later "Don't mess with [the popular caricature of] Texas" style of governance. You'd think that all a candidate would have to do is be breathing in order to gain support. Terri Schiavo for president!

But it's not so. No candidate has emerged that is truly the winner. The Democrats have three plausible contenders: Obama, Clinton, and John Edwards. Any one of these people has a shot at the nomination. Seriously. But they poll very close to each other. It's almost as though they're -- dare I say it -- indistinguishable from one another.

The Republicans are faring worse. There has been no Republican savior, no heir to the Reagan mantle. Fred Thompson was touted as the true scion, but after his three months on the road, he's closer to winning the Grampa Munster Lookalike Contest than the presidency. Rudy Giuliani has enthralled his supporters but scared the bejeezus out of the rest of us. John McCain is that Little Engine That Wants To, but his staunch support of the Iraq war and even torture (!) in some cases makes us suspicious. And at the end of the day, no matter how hard Bush beats him, he comes back, insisting, "It was my fault. Bush really is a good person. It's just that sometimes he wants to win so much that he spreads rumors about me in South Carolina." Mike Huckabee is just as frightening as Giuliani, but he hates gays more. Mitt Romney is an android.

Sadly, in the Republican camp, no one is coming out on top. Again, Terri Schiavo should be able to do it. Sure, Mike Huckabee won Iowa in a surprise victory, but McCain won New Hampshire. At the end of the day, there is no one candidate who appeals to all people. Where is the Super Candidate? The Republicans have spent eight years in the White House because they're good at keeping the team together: stay on message, or Karl Rove will eat your skull.

Instead of a spicy burrito of a campaign with many different, exotic ingredients, this election -- like most others -- has turned instead into a gray, indiscernible goulash that doesn't taste much like anything but smells a lot like money. It's appalling that we're in the state that we're in right now: the White House is ripe for the picking, but no one can figure out how to build a ladder to pick it.

Posted by Mark at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not that I don't like Ron Paul. I think he's a good senator, but it remains to be seen whether or not he will make a good president. As I have written before, Paul is definitely a libertarian, and while he may own Rudolph Giuliani in presidential debates, that doesn't mean that he would make a good president.

Ron Paul was debating the other day with SEDHE Villain of the Forever candidate Glenn Beck about abolishing the income tax. It's funny to watch Beck say that he agrees with Paul, and then proceed to disagree with him. Beck, of course, is a Christian conservative who believes that the government should be fiscally conservative and dictate morality. Paul is a fiscal conservative who also believes that the government shouldn't dictate morality. Beck, it seems, doesn't understand how someone can be in favor of small government and a government that doesn't care whether or not you are gay (even though Ron Paul does care if you're gay; see above link). But that's a writing for another day.

The problem with Ron Paul is that, while he wants to eliminate the income tax, he really has no plan for replacing it with anything. Paul's answer to this is just to make the government smaller. But there are a lot of government programs that are good -- like Medicare and Medicaid -- that would suffer from Ron Paul's idea of a bare-bones government.

Paul's website mentions nothing about his desire to destroy the IRS and the Federal Reserve. There are vagueries about returning to the Constitution (whatever that is supposed to mean in this case -- unless the sixteenth amendment isn't part of the Constitution?) and lowering taxes, but nothing to indicate the nature of his position. How many Ron Paul supporters know what he really thinks? You certainly wouldn't gather that from his web site. The Internet loves Ron Paul for saying what he thinks, but even on the Internet, he doesn't say what he really thinks. He reserves that for television.

Posted by Mark at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sure, the Bush administration has taken us thirty years backward in terms of surveillance, privacy, environmentalism, and science. It fights hard against enforcing the nation’s environmental laws, even going to the Supreme Court to argue that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and shouldn’t be regulated by the EPA. It supports wrong-headed scientific opinions -- like the president’s stem cell policy and his endorsement of abstience-only education -- that are based not on science, but on the religious beliefs of a few people in positions of power. Is there anything else the Bush Time Machine can do? Turns out there is. The magic word is “secrecy.”

Let’s go back to a time when the earth and Dick Clark were young. The year was 1972 and agents of the president were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. The break-in to the hotel was the first in a series of revelations collectively called the “Watergate scandal” that exposed the government’s role in illegal activities that ranged from surveillance to information leaks. Over the course of two years, America learned that not only was the government engaging in illegal activities against its own citizens, but it was actively covering up those activities through a combination of legal maneuvering, plausible deniability, and -- when all else failed -- the paper shredder.

The Watergate scandal resulted in a number of changes to the way government operates. The Office of Special Counsel was created to serve as an independent investigatory arm. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) prohibited the executive from spying on Americans without a warrant. The Presidential Records Act placed the National Archives in charge of the paper being shuffled around the White House: it would decide what would be classified or declassified, shredded or preserved for posterity. United States v. Nixon declared that executive privilege could not be asserted in criminal investigations. The Nixon administration tested the limits of government accountability and oversight, and perhaps thanks to Nixon, we have laws on the books preventing those same abuses from happening again.

Until now. Wiretapping, leaking, and cover-ups have become fashionable again with the Bush administration. And it has little to do with the War on Terr’ and a great deal to do with the mindset of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, who see transparency as a threat to their power. Let’s not forget that Bush fought vehemently against a committee to investigate the events of September 11, 2001. As the administration engages in surveillance for surveillance’s sake, so too does it engage in opacity for opacity’s sake.

The Bush/Cheney penchant for hiding information from the public they serve is not about national security. Recall that, in 2001, Cheney met with several unknown persons in order to churn out the the president’s energy policy. The energy policy was fossil fuel-centric, leading groups like the Sierra Club to sue the administration. They smelled the influence of energy company executives and wanted to know for sure with whom the vice president had met. The administration asserted executive privilege, and the Supreme Court agreed.

Fast forward to 2007, when the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Harriet Miers and Karl Rove to find out how much they knew about the firing of US attorneys. The administration sent a friendly letter stating that it would be asserting executive privilege. The Judiciary Committee held both Miers and Rove in contempt, but that would prove to be pointless. It is the US attorney for the District of Columbia who files contempt charges, and the Justice Department -- then under the control of President Bush via Alberto Gonzales -- ordered the DC attorney not to file contempt charges. Problem solved! This is one of the reasons why Gonzales resigned: the public soon began to understand that he did whatever the president did, without question, regardless of its legality. By virtue of his being president, Bush could never break the law.

In that case, what was at issue was not national security information. It was the potential embarrassment of having the nation learn that what we suspected all along was true: the US attorney firings were politically motivated. The administration tends to cover up things that could be potentially embarrassing, as it attempted to do when the Jack Abramoff scandals hit the streets in 2006. Bush insisted that Abramoff may have visited the White House a few times, but refused to relinquish the White House visitor logs to prove it. The logs were normally kept by the Secret Service, but Bush ordered them sent to the White House and then destroyed. It soon became policy to destroy White House visitors logs rather than keep them. It is plain that there is no national security interest here, nor any executive privilege claim. The White House simply didn’t want anyone to know who came calling and then use that information against the executive branch. All that changed yesterday, when a federal court judge ruled that, despite what Bush may have ordered, the White House visitor logs are Secret Service records, and as a result, the National Archives has control over them.

Earlier this year, the National Archives’ investigative office complained that the president and vice president were not complying with an executive order signed by President Clinton regarding declassification of executive documents. Bush and Cheney were deciding for themselves what documents would remain classified; in fact, the authority to declassify presidential documents rests with the National Archives. The fear here was that, perhaps, the National Archives would declassify documents that did not contain information damaging to national security, but did contain information damaging to Bush and Cheney. Cheney refused to allow the inspector to even enter his office. He then asserted that he did not have to be in compliance with the law because the vice president’s office was not part of the executive branch. Bush also jumped on the bandwagon and insisted that the Office of the President was exempt from the order. We all had a good laugh for about a week, and then Bush and Cheney relented after the House of Representatives threatened to cut the Office of the Vice President out of the executive branch’s budget, since he wasn’t a member of that branch. The scary part of that week was that Bush and Cheney weren’t joking -- they even entered the realm of irreality to prevent oversight, so much was their desire to prevent anyone from knowing what was going on.

And it will continue into the future. Bush has signed orders keeping his own records, and those of his father, sealed until far into the future. The Bush conceit of secrecy is obviously an attempt to save his own behind. Whenever a scandal arises, cover it up! And if someone causes a scandal, leak something! Valerie Plame learned that the administration plays hardball with its critics. At the same time, though, it keeps information close to its chest. The attitude is reminiscent of the Nixon administration, where G. Gordon Liddy occupied an office in the basement with the name “Plumber” on the door. It was Liddy’s job to plug leaks (hence the title “White House plumber”), but it was also his job to strategically make leaks. The worlds of Nixon and Bush collided on a Fox News show where Liddy had the audacity to insist that it was okay for the Bush administration to leak Valerie Plame’s CIA status. This from a man who has the moral high ground because he went to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. President Bush is a man deeply concerned about his legacy. With any luck, history will look back on him as the man who unearthed Richard Nixon and wore his skull around as a Halloween mask.

Posted by Mark at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's one: at Sunday's summit of OPEC leaders, Chavez -- president of oil-rich Venezuela -- suggested that "OPEC should set itself up as an active political agent," according to The Houston Chronicle. He means, of course, that OPEC should use oil as a bargaining tool. He means, of course, that OPEC should greatly increase the price of oil specifically to harm the United States, which Chavez has set up as the enemy that only he can vanquish.

Tilting at windmills much? As if Chavez didn't already have dictatorial tendencies (which have before been chronicled in this space), now we have him creating an enemy for his people to hate, with the promise that he will save them from that enemy. This is chapter four of the Dictator's Playbook, one used to good advantage by Mssrs. Hitler, Stalin, and honorable mention for the Party in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nothing unites people like a common foe.

Both Chavez and his new best friend, Iranian president and winner of the Definitely Not Crazy Wet T-Shirt Contest at the Hooter's in Persepolis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the rising price of oil on the weakening U.S. dollar. Oil is traded in U.S. dollars, and as the value of the dollar decreases, countries would have to increase the price of oil to compensate. This makes sense only if you discount the fact that the price of oil started increasing before the U.S. dollar went into decline, which was before this summer when the credit crunch caused the world's faith in the U.S. markets to decline. May I also add that, as both Chavez and Ahmadinejad are Princeton-trained economists, their statements are totally earnest and in no way an attempt to lash out at the United States.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may approve of lashing a woman 200 times for the crime of being raped (although, in Saudi Arabia's defense, the crime wasn't that she got raped, but that she talked about it publicly and tried to get her attackers prosecuted), but that doesn't mean he's a fool. "Those who want OPEC to take advantage of its position are forgetting that OPEC has always acted moderately and wisely," he said.

It's true that OPEC meets the technical definition of a cartel: a small group of firms in an oligopolistic market that meet to set prices so as to take advantage of the relative inelasticity of demand. But in the past, OPEC has used its cartel-power to make money, not political statements. And whenever OPEC has set its prices, Saudi Arabia -- whose number one customer is the United States -- has always caved in. If they give us cheap oil, we won't press for "regime change" in a country run by a theocratic dictator whose government supports terrorism. But trust us: Saddam Hussein was the most heinous threat facing our nation, much like the guy who ran that stop sign should be arrested before the guy who's driving over a hundred and weaving in and out of traffic.

Disappointingly, not many nations have joined Chavez and Ahmadinejad's new after-school club for countries that hate the United States. President Bush is only shooting himself in the face with a hunting rifle by making macho condemnations of Iran, fueling their sense of outrage and making the United States even less of a diplomatic power. (Note to GWB: You forgot the "speak softly" part.) For now, our enemies will remain our enemies in private, deciding -- unlike the Gruesome Twosome -- to publicly remain our friends. It would be bad for business for most other countries in the world (of course, it doesn't cost Chavez or Ahmadinejad anything; they don't trade with us, anyway!).

Posted by Mark at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bloggers, geeks, and other online types tend to be more libertarian than anything else. As a result, much of the Internet is fawning over Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) as much as Oprah is fawning over Barack Obama. I wonder, though, how much of the Internet knows how much crazy there still is in Rep. Paul. Sure, he p0wned Rudy Giuliani earlier this year at a Republican debate, but that doesn't mean that he will make a good president. Here's a sampling of the legislation authored by Ron Paul:

• H.J. Res. 23: A proposed constitutional amendment that would abolish income, estate, and gift taxes. The resolution also specifies that it also "[prohibits] the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens," but it's not clear from the amendment that it does that; the amendment would be open to wide interpretation.

  Crazytown Level: High. This is explicitly a repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which amended the Constitution to permit Congress to levy income taxes. But how will the government get money?

• H.J. Res. 46: A proposed constitutional amendment that would limit U.S. citizenship to children born with at least one parent who is a citizen. Currently, a child born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen, regardless of the citizenship of his or her parents.

  Crazytown level: Low. I heartily disagree with this amendment, but anti-immigration proponents have been after this for years, citing some EU countries as examples. (Again, contemporary legislation from other countries is acceptable as a prototype only when you agree with it; otherwise, you must limit yourself to vague, uncodified doctrines of "Western tradition." Justice Scalia, I'm looking at you!) As crazy legislation, this isn't so crazy, as natural citizenship is one way Those Mexcians get their feet in the door here.

• H.R. 300: A bill that would prohibit federal courts from ruling on issues of free exercise or establishment of religion; the right to privacy; or gay marriage.

  Crazytown level: High. While Congress is explicitly granted the power to regulate the federal courts' appellate jurisdiction, it hasn't exercised it. I suppose Rep. Paul's idea here is that the federal government should stay completely out of our lives, even in adjudication. The problem is that, to preserve the government's non-intrusion into our lives, we need the court to tell the government to stop it. Oh, and by the way, if a judge violates this law, it's an impeachable offense. Oh, and by the way, any past cases that deal with any of the above issues are no longer admissable as a precedent. That section goes way, way too far. Judges grab precedents from cases that don't, on first appearance, have anything to do with their current cases. Don't tell judges how to do their jobs (as the Republicans tried to do with Terri Schiavo).

• H.R. 1094: A bill that would state that life begins at conception, and thus, all laws permitting any abortion of any kind, for any reason, are void. Oh, and by the way, the federal courts may no longer rule on the legality of abortion, at all, for any reason.

  Crazytown level: High. For a guy who purports to be a libertarian, how can he write this stuff? I give this a "high" Crazytown level because it's so hypocritical.

• H.R. 1146: A bill that ends United States involvement in the United Nations.

  Crazytown level: High. We started the freaking United Nations. We're not going anywhere anytime soon, despite what John Bolton wants.

• H.R. 2756: A bill that repeals 31 USC 5103. Sounds pretty innocuous, right?

  Crazytown level: Very high. Here's the text of 31 USC 5103: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts." Yes, folks, in this bill, Rep. Paul wants to eliminate Federal Reserve notes (e.g., dollar bills) from being used as legal tender. I wonder why the bill contains hardly any references to the fact that paper money and coinage would no longer be used in transactions. And what else does he want us to use? Gold? I'm starting to get the feeling that Rep. Paul would be happier living in Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia. As a corollary, Rep. Paul also wants to repeal the Federal Reserve Act and eliminate federal banks. I thought we settled this in 1913?

• H.R. 3216: A bill that would allow the president to grant letters of marque and reprisal so that private persons may go out and find members of al-Qaeda, and specifically, Osama bin Laden.

  Crazytown level: High. Also, this legislation is unconstitutional. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to "grant letters of marque and reprisal" (Art. I, § 8). Ignoring that for a second, this would give bounty hunters the authority to track down members of al-Qaeda or seize their property. A letter of marque is a warrant "authorizing the designated agent to search, seize, or destroy specified assets or personnel belonging to a party which has committed some offense under the laws of nations against the assets or citizens of the issuing nation." They were once granted to state-sponsored pirates, like Sir Francis Drake, to provide them with a legal basis for raiding enemy ships. Ignoring that, do we want Dog the Bounty Hunter going out into the wide world to alienate even more Frenchmen?

So, before you decide that Ron Paul is the greatest guy in the world because he understands the concept of "blowback" and isn't afraid to speak truth to Giuliani, keep in mind that he lives in Crazytown. He's the author of good legislation, as well (like this and this), but he would make a pretty awful president.

Posted by Mark at 4:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why pay for insurance if the insurance company isn't going to pay for the services that you signed up for them to pay for?

Kos, proprietor of Daily Kos, lives just up the road in Berkeley and has had a heck of a time trying to get his insurance provider, Blue Shield, to pay for an anesthesiology procedure. "Of course, we never asked them to process this at the 'preferred rate'," he says. "We ask [sic] them to pay for the service. That's why we're paying over $800/month in insurance premiums. To be insured." He concludes, "How could a government-run service be any worse than these unaccountable, unethical, disgusting creeps?"

Opponents of government-run healthcare claim that such a system would be inefficient, but in the United States, people with private insurance often have to deal with each physician individually if they're taken care of by a team of physicians (e.g., if a person had surgery, that person may have to deal with each doctor's billing individually). Furthermore, even though you're paying hundreds of dollars per month for that insurance, there's no guarantee that the insurance company will pay for your treatment. This goes back to what I said the other day: insurance companies are more than happy to pay for a prescription here or there, but when it comes to expensive procedures, they don't want to pay, and they insert language into your contract that gives them the right to waive payment for expensive procedures whenever they want. You may think that you're covered, but for any given procedure, there may be a loophole that exempts the healthcare provider from paying for it.

The price of healthcare (guess what? It's steep)

A study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2004 found that the price of healthcare is rising faster than employee wages:

“Since 2000, the cost of health insurance has risen 59 percent, while workers wages have increased only 12 percent. Since 2001, employee contributions increased 57 percent for single coverage and 49 percent for family coverage, while workers wages have increased only 12 percent. This is why fewer small employers are offering coverage, and why fewer workers are taking-up coverage,” said Jon Gabel, vice president for Health Systems Studies at the Health Research and Educational Trust.

Let's be completely clear: "employer-provided" does not always mean that the employer pays for your healthcare. What is more likely than not is that you pay a certain amount per month for your healthcare. At my job, $30 is deducted from each paycheck to pay for my healthcare plan, if I elect to enroll in a healthcare plan (which, of course, I emphatically do).

And for the people out there who insist that, if you don't have employer-provided healthcare, you should just purchase your own: let's crunch the numbers. Purchasing your own healthcare is very expensive; in fact, it could be considered a regressive tax (the tax rate increasing as income decreases), since people at the lowest incomes are less likely to have jobs that provide them with healthcare, forcing them to obtain private healthcare at a cost many times that of what employees with employer-provided healthcare pay. The Kaiser Foundation found that people who purchase their own insurance pay an average of $308 for single coverage; as I mentioned above, I pay $30 a month. Does it make much sense that the people who are least in a position to pay a lot for healthcare are the ones who are most often going to pay a lot for healthcare?

Or you could just go without healthcare. President Bush feels that we have a very robust healthcare system for those who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, or don't have their own insurance. "The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans," he said in Cleveland on July 10. "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Bush is technically correct in that federal law requires emergency rooms to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay; however, this near-sighted philosophy ignores the fact that (1) emergency room care is very expensive; and (2) the cost of treating the emergency patient could have been significantly reduced had the patient had access to preventative care, eliminating his need to use expensive emergency care.

But, to paraphrase Kanye West, George Bush doesn't care about poor people. He has demonstrated time and time again that it is more important to allow private industry to make money than it is to permit people to survive -- and by "survive," I mean "not die." This is also the situation in Iraq, where incompetent private contractors get no-bid contracts and then proceed to not do things they said they would.

Posted by Mark at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Part of the reason that we have a separation of powers in the Constitution is that the authors of the Constitution wanted to force compromise to happen. With no one branch of government, or even one person, singly in charge of every state process, making unilateral decisions would be difficult. Compromises that everyone could agree to had to happen for business to get done.

For six years, President Bush has been executive and legislator. As head of his party, which was also in control of Congress, he was able to dictate whatever he wanted. If a particular Republican voted in a way that he didn't like, Karl Rove's political machinery would work to make sure that person wasn't re-elected. Like the political bosses of turn-of-the-century New York, Bush kept a tight ship; everyone who didn't fall into lockstep with the Bush/Cheney philosophy was smeared, or ousted, or both.

Once the Democrats were in charge, Bush suddenly had to do something he had never done before: compromise. Except he never compromised. He always refused to budge, insisting that whenever Democrats held hearings, or demanded accountability for the war in Iraq, or oversight over warrantless wiretapping, they "lost sight of the fact that we're at war."

Hey, guess what! He said that yesterday! Apparently, during a time of war, Congress should acquiesce and do whatever the president wants. Failure to do so may result in another terrorist attack.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee hinted that it may not recommend that Judge Michael Mukasey, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, be sent to the full Senate. Some senators have expressed reservations that he refused to say whether or not "waterboarding" -- an interrogation technique banned by the Army but maybe (or maybe not) currently being used by the CIA -- counts as "torture." Mukasey said that he couldn't say whether or not it was torture. This article from The New York Times indicates that, if Mukasey did say waterboarding constituted torture, the administration (which, let's be honest because we're all adults here, is doing, otherwise their knickers wouldn't be in such a twist about it) could be liable domestically and internationally for war crimes.

But what I'm more concerned about is Judge Mukasey's apparent belief that the president may not necessarily be bound by the law, as long as the violation of that law is because he is defending the country. Read as Judge Mukasey takes a page from the Alberto Gonzales Doublespeak Playbook:

LEAHY: Can a president authorize illegal conduct? Can the president -- can a president put somebody above the law by authorizing illegal conduct?

MUKASEY: The only way for me to respond to that in the abstract is to say that if by illegal you mean contrary to a statute, but within the authority of the president to defend the country, the president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law.

Can the president put somebody above the law? No. The president doesn't stand above the law.

But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Co