Thursday, June 23, 2005

The Anti-Americans   In the wake of Karl Rove's remarks that liberals are stupid and just want to love up those terrorists (I think that's a fair summary of his statement), and Scott McClellan saying that the White House stands by those repulsive remarks, I feel relieved of the responsibility to be restrained in my own remarks.  There are many actions by the Bush administration I found inexplicable, but now, they all seem clearly explicable.  The same motivation governs them all. Why would Karl Rove say such divisive and blatantly untrue things about liberals?  Why is he trying to tear America apart?  Karl Rove hates America. The President is advocating private accounts for Social Security, which would cost $2-4 trillion in unfunded mandates in the first decade, and double that in the second decade, destroying the Social Security system.  Why does the President want to destroy Social Security?  The President hates America. In the long term, our national debt is a greater threat to our economic health and national security than any other thing.  Why does the Bush administration sign off on an ever-greater amount of spending, which will lead to ruinous debt for future generations, and a depression when our foreign creditors, inevitably, stop loaning us money?  They do it because they hate America. The Clinton administration told President Bush the primary national security challenge he would face was from Al Qaeda.  Why did the Bush administration do nothing to protect us from that threat?  The Bush administration hates America. Why did Alberto Gonzales say that torture was legal?  The Bush administration hates the American Constitution. Why did the President nominate Appeals Court candidates with no regard for the law, or past precedent?  The President hates the American Constitution. Why did the Bush administration fail to plan for the occupation of Iraq?  The Bush administration hates American soldiers. Why do they refuse to spend the paltry sums it would take to supply body armor to our soldiers, and armor our military vehicles, shrugging off the soldiers needlessly killed and wounded?  The Bush administration hates American soldiers. There are many other failings of this Presidency, and this President.  There is only one way to explain all of those failings.  George W. Bush hates America.  9:59:35 PM    comment []

Sandra Day O'Connor Won't Retire Either   Supreme Court reporters are always desperate to report that a Supreme Court Justice is going to retire, because it's the one time everyone cares what they're writing about, and can actually understand what they're saying.  You've heard that the stock market has predicted something like twelve of the last four recessions?  Supreme Court reporters get retirements wrong so often they make the stock market look like the Oracle at Delphi.  A consensus seems to have emerged that Chief Justice Rehnquist is probably not going to retire, because he's looking more fit than he has in over a year, and, well, he lives for the Court. Rumors that Justice O'Connor is going to retire have replaced the speculation that the Chief is going to retire.  I doubt it.  She doesn't look unhealthy, and she relishes her role as the decisive vote on most contentious issues.  Also, I suspect she regards the sort of person the President would appoint to her seat with some degree of loathing.  And, on a purely practical level, she is moving into a new apartment in Washington.  If she were about to retire, and return to Arizona, I doubt she'd have just found a new place in the capital. I've said that if the Chief Justice retires now, I'll apologize.  Well, if Justice O'Connor retires, I'll eat my hat.  Actually, at present, I don't have a hat.  But if she retires, I'll buy a hat, and eat it.  (I've done it before.  For what it's worth, if you ever need to eat a hat, make sure it's a straw hat.  It will still be a long, unpleasant, and even somewhat painful process, but many other hats have components you don't find in nature.) 6:53:46 PM    comment []

A Steel Cage Match with Karl Rove   There is an old parable:  better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you stupid, than open it and erase all doubt.  I have been thinking about that saying ever since I heard Karl Rove's remarks on liberals after 9/11.  He does come off as a moron; but he can't possibly be as stupid as he sounds, and still walk erect.  He said that liberals "wanted to...offer therapy and understanding for our attackers".  Karl Rove is on the government dole, getting paid over $150 k a year to tell me I'm a bad American.  No, in fact, we wanted our attackers dead, just like everybody else, an issue that was complicated somewhat by the fact that our actual attackers were all dead.  The next best thing was to blow the Hell out of Afghanistan, the safe haven for the organizers of that attack. Karl Rove is free to check how many liberals opposed that war.  There may have been two or three.  But that isn't really what Rove wants people to take from his statement.  One thing he's trying to do is somehow link the war in Iraq to the 9/11 attack...but the two have nothing whatever to do with one another.  aned even that's not really the point.  What he really wants people to get from his statement is that liberals are wimps who do not love their country.  I love my country far more than Karl Rove can possibly understand.  The simplistic caricature of America he holds in his head is an insult to the true values and nature of the United States, of what we once stood for in the world, and could again.  And as to the other, well:  I challenge Karl Rove to a steel cage match.  The loser has to get his jaw wired shut, and offer to pay for therapy and understanding for the winner. I’ve got a hunch he won't take me up on it, the nancy boy. 3:45:19 PM    comment []

The Situation with Tucker Carlson   The tagline for The Situation says it is "a show that's so fast that it's changing the pace of news".  Gee, this is a welcome development.  Because I think you'll all agree that up until now political discussion has been way too considered. But I've been writing about his show for more than thirty seconds.  Time to move on. 12:11:59 PM    comment []

Flag Burning Amendment   A vote to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning--actually, technically, a flag desecration amendment--passed the House 286-130.  It needed two-thirds of the votes of the Representatives attending, which means it went through with a comfortable majority.  There do not appear to be the votes in the Senate to pass it, but even if there were...well, frankly, I have a hard time getting worked up over this one.  Yes, on the one hand, the idea of banning something which I think you'd have to regard as ordinarily qualifying as freedom of expression bothers me just a bit. On the other hand, I know our flag is a trifle busy, but I'm fond of it.  Here's the thing, though; if a flag becomes soiled or tattered, one is supposed to burn it.  That's actually the way someone is supposed to dispose of a tainted or damaged flag; I suspect this is the reason why certain intemperate Americans began burning the flag in the first place...they were arguing that, metaphorically, the flag had become soiled, and so it needed to be cleansed by fire. So what I wonder is, are soiled flags okay, under the proposed amendment?  Are we not supposed to burn flags that are damaged, anymore?  Are we supposed to keep it around until it's a tattered rag, good for little but cleaning the toilet or the floor?  This is somehow more respectful?  I'm just curious.  Also, it used to be against the law to put a flag on a t-shirt, or to, say, wear a little metal pin of the flag, because it was regarded as disrespectful to the flag.  Would everybody who has a t-shirt or a pin with the flag on it be subject to arrest?  Would putting a digital representation of the flag on a monitor in a sports stadium be a crime? These are my concerns. And if it's still okay to burn a flag that's been soiled, then, I don't think the law would really prevent any of the grand conflagration of burning flags that we see around the country all the time.  The protesters would simply burn soiled flags. 9:15:37 AM    comment []

Ohio Voter Blues   There is a new article at Salon.com about the new Democratic National Committee report on voter difficulties in Ohio in 2004.  Obviously, one has to suspected that as a Democratic party document, there is some exaggeration, but even if problems with the vote were dramatically smaller than the report suggests, the Ohio vote still has to be regarded as a disaster.  Indeed, Carlo LoParo, the spokesman for the enormously partisan Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, defends the election results by arguing "that many voters [emphasis mine]…voted without any difficulty last year".  That's right, the spokesman for the Secretary of State says the election was fine because many voters had no trouble voting.  Well, Hell, I'm convinced.  Some people were allowed to vote.  I think that's all we can ask for.  I mean, an election where all the voters were allowed to vote...is that fair to hope for?  I mean, maybe if Ohio was part of some sort of democracy... 81% of the blacks who went to the polls are not very confident their votes were counted.  Now, many of them had their votes counted.  Perhaps just as surprising, 23% of white voters are not very confident their votes counted.  Many of their votes were counted.  And the DNC report says that roughly a million voters in Ohio had trouble voting.  On the one hand, take away all that trouble, and the President probably would have won Ohio anyway.  On the other hand, the Republican in charge of his campaign in Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, also the guy in charge of making sure voting went smoothly, didn't know that.  Ohio elections can have a new slogan for a new day:  Ohio.  Your vote just might count.  There's an old blues song that goes, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.  Nobody knows the sorrow."  Who knew he was talking about voting in Ohio? 7:08:39 AM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 6/23/2005   "If Mark Twain were (alive) today, he'd be at Comedy Central."   -Bill Moyers   This on The Daily Show last night.  I ended my TV embargo before withdrawal pains actually killed me. 4:09:22 AM    comment []