When Barack Obama was running for president, he made no secret about his plan to "restore common-sense regulation"—read: increase regulation—by closing the regulatory loopholes he thought the Republicans had opened. Deregulation, he argued repeatedly, is the source of evil. Much like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Obama offered a sweeping, ambitious agenda: new financial regulations, new labor regulations, new energy regulations, and more.
Today Obama is the president-elect of the United States. With Democratic majorities in Congress, he will have tremendous power to push his "reforms." And unlike FDR before him, President Obama won't have to create a regulatory system from scratch in order to increase government control of people's lives. His groundwork was laid by George W. Bush.
Some people still seem to think Republicans take a hands-off approach to regulation, probably because the party is always quick to criticize the burdens regulations place on businesses. But Republican rhetoric doesn't always match Republican policy. In 2007, according to Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, roughly 50 regulatory agencies issued 3,595 final rules, ranging from boosting fuel economy standards for light trucks to continuing a ban on bringing torch lighters into airplane cabins. Five departments (Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency) accounted for 45 percent of the new regulations.
Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations' cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are "economically significant," meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That's a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.
Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The made-up dramas of the Wall Street Journal
by Laurence Lessig
The article is an indirect effort to gin up a drama about a drama about an alleged shift in Obama's policies about network neutrality. What's the evidence for the shift? That Google allegedly is negotiating for faster service on some network pipes. And that "prominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject."
Who are these "Internet scholars"? Me. And of course, because I have "softened" my views about network neutrality, and because I advised the Obama campaign about technology issues during the primary, it follows (and obviously so) that Obama too must be going soft on network neutrality.
I don't know what Google is doing, though if they are trying to negotiate exclusive deals for privileged access, that shows exactly why we need network neutrality regulation. (Though note, the article doesn't say the deal Google was striking was exclusive).
And I've not seen anything during the Obama campaign or from the transition to indicate it has shifted its view about network neutrality at all.
But I do know something about my own views, and what the Journal has done here is really extraordinary.
It is true, as the Journal reports, that I have stated that network providers should be free to charge different rates for different service -- "so long," the Journal quotes, "as the faster service at a higher price is available to anyone willing to pay it."
But the whole punch of the story comes from the suggestion that my position is something new. As the Journal states,
Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.And:
Stanford's Mr. Lessig, for one, has softened his opposition to variable service tiers.
Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a "shift" or "soften[ing]" of earlier views. That's because there isn't any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had -- whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_madeup_dramas_of_the_wall.html
The Torture Report
Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush's most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.
Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
The report shows how actions by these men "led directly" to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.
It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America's standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.
The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the "war on terror" — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/opinion/18thu1.html?_r=2&em
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Does Old Glory Have a Dark Side?
Research suggests that seeing the flag doesn't make Americans feel more patriotic. But it does make them feel more nationalistic and more superior to non-Americans.
Early in the presidential campaign that was, Barack Obama's initial reluctance to wear a flag pin caused some opponents to question his patriotism. After all, some conservatives argued, the flag is the quintessential symbol of American patriotism, and by not wearing it on his lapel, well, one could only assume ...But are the stars and stripes as much a symbol of patriotism as many make them out to be? Probably not, according to some new research on the effects of exposure to the American flag. Experiments conducted by Markus Kemmelmeier, a professor of social psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno, and colleagues show that gazing upon the red, white and blue actually does very little to stoke feelings of patriotism.
But it does make people more individualistic, more materialistic and — perhaps most troublingly — more nationalistic.
Researchers tend to define patriotism as love of one's country; nationalism, on the other hand, tends to measure feelings of superiority. "Nationalism takes into consideration that there are others and that your own country is not just only loveable but also different and better than others," Kemmelmeier explained.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/article/Does-Old-Glory-Have-a-Dark-Side
The Worst Ballot Challenge Of All
But now we're at the point where all those challenges are resolved -- in other words, he can't hide behind these tricks anymore. To be fair, Franken had his share of hopeless tries to toss Coleman votes, but it was nowhere near this bad.
This one might just be the worst of all. The Coleman campaign tried to get a vote for Franken thrown out because the voter had written on the ballot. What'd they write?
Thank you for counting my vote!
Is there anything more that needs to be said?
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/the_worst_ballot_challenge_of.php
No Limit Texas Dreidel
Jennie sez, "My husband and I have solved a problem plaguing Jews for hundreds of years: the boring, yet ubiquitous Dreidel Game. We've created a new game, fun for adults, that crosses dreidel with Texas Hold'em poker: No Limit Texas Dreidel."
No Limit Texas Dreidel on Amazon, No Limit Texas Dreidel homepage (Thanks, Jennie!)No Limit Texas Dreidel combines the traditional dreidel game with Texas Hold'em poker. The objective is for each player to create the best dreidel "hand" by combining dreidel spins. You will combine dreidel "spins" in your shaker, which only you will see, with other Community Spins, which will be seen by all players. Players bet in rounds using poker betting rules. The game is best played with chocolate gelt (coins), as is the traditional wager for the Dreidel Game. No Limit Texas Dreidel is an entertaining adult party game and is family fun for everyone ages 9 to 99.
Well, You Asked
by Andrew Tobias
So where to put your money now?
YOU COULD WRITE A BOOK
The first thing to say is that everyone is different, and anyone who invests based on a TV interview here, a magazine article there – and then takes a different tack based on a blog entry from some guy who also offers eggplant recipes – is clearly not going about this the right way.
The right way is to have an overall plan, good money habits, and a life perspective that serves you well.
To cover all this adequately (or even inadequately, depending on your review) could take an entire book. Having said that, let's say some more . . . with a wide lens before we pan in.
BROAD THEMES
We've known for some time that residential real estate was a bubble, and have been wary of it even back when it was only modestly inflated – e.g., this column from October, 2002. It seems obvious now, yet many got burned.
If you watched (or read) Whitney Tilson's segment on this past Sunday's '60 Minutes,' you know there's a lot more pain ahead, as the Alt-A and Option ARM mortgage default wave sweeps in even as the subprime foreclosures gradually get absorbed.
We've known for some time that interest rates, or certainly short-term rates, would likely stay low. E.g., here, in March of 2007. This week the Fed took its short-term rate down to zero (how's that for low?) and explicitly stated its intent not just to keep short-term rates low for a long time, but long-term rates as well.
Normally, the Fed tools have limited effect on long-term rates, which are determined by supply and demand. Ah, but if the Fed itself becomes a massive buyer, that can drive the price of bonds up – and, thus, interest rates down.*
*Interest rates are the converse of bond prices, as light is the converse of dark: if it's getting lighter, it is also, and to precisely the same degree, getting less dark. If a bond that is slated to pay $50 a year for 30 years trades hands for $1,000, it yields its owner 5% a year. But if it later can fetch its owner no more than $800 when he goes to sell it, the new owner gets a current yield of 6.25% on his investment ($50 on $800 = 6.25%). In this example, interest rates have gone up. If the Fed were then to come in with massive purchases, competing with private investors to buy bonds and driving their prices up to the point that this same bond fetched $1,250, then whoever bought it – the Fed or your neighbor – would be getting $50 a year on $1,250, which is to say 4%. That is how the Fed would drive down long-term rates.
It may or may not work as hoped. "The market" might be so alarmed to see the Fed printing trillions of dollars to buy bonds and mortgages that it might begin to fear for the strength of the dollar . . . and to fear the inflation they might expect eventually to result from so much money-printing . . . and thus sell their long-term bonds almost as fast as – or (oops!) even faster than – the Fed is buying them.
We've known for a long time we face challenges. There's the challenge of better preparing our kids to compete in the global marketplace. There's the challenge of maintaining our aging infrastructure – and our aging population. There's the challenge of terrorism. The challenge of global climate change.
And have I ever mentioned that the National Debt – under $1 trillion when President Reagan was Inaugurated – will be "around $10 trillion" when President Bush finally leaves?
In fact, it will be even higher, as it turns out.
Which means nothing in absolute dollars (trillions? shmillions? who can keep track?) but quite a lot when expressed relative to the size of our economy: around 30% of GDP when Reagan took over, closing in on 80% by the time Bush leaves, and inevitably rocketing rapidly higher (as it must and should for a while, so long as we're borrowing to make smart investments in our future).
We've known for a long time of the risk of a vicious cycle. Here, for example, "with falling housing prices leading to less consumption leading to recession leading to job loss leading to more foreclosures and yet lower home prices leading to . . . " (It has a hopeful ending.)
We've known for a long time "it's the end of the world." Here is that thought reflected upon in April of 2000, as the dot-com bubble was bursting. And here, last May, as I was touring a $7 million apartment that a friend had just purchased as a third residence.
I can't help thinking that if we had skewed tax breaks exclusively to the middle class these past eight years – leaving the best-off to suffer as luxuriously as they did during the Clinton/Gore years (and closing the truly obscene hedge-fund-manager tax loophole) – our economy might not have gotten quite so far out of whack.
Perhaps most of all we've known for a long time that I sure don't know what's going to happen (long-time readers may remember Google Puts, FMD and Wa-moops, among others) – although, in my defense, I'd like to point out that neither does anyone else.
And so it makes sense – as always – not to take more risk than you can afford, and to diversify your assets, should you be so fortunate as to have some, over "four prongs." Kindly click here to be reminded what they are.
Last Known Gay Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out in New Interview
Rudolf Brazda, a 95-year-old German citizen and the last known gay survivor of the Holocaust, has definitively broken his silence on his experience at the Buchenwald camp. In a new interview in the French gay magazine Têtu, Brazda speaks in detail for the first time since he made provisional remarks at the June inauguration of a Berlin memorial to gay victims of the Nazis.
"The way Nazis treated the 'pink triangles' is unspeakable," Brazda told Têtu, referring to the emblem gays were forced to wear to signify their homosexuality. "They had absolutely no mercy."
The "pink triangles" not only had to suffer the ill treatment of the Nazis but also had to endure the homophobia of other prisoners. In the documentary Paragraph 175, which takes its name from the German criminal code provision regarding homosexuality, Pierre Seel, the only Frenchman to have publicly testified about his imprisonment for being gay, explains that "the weakest people in the camps were the homosexuals; they were at the very bottom." Seel died in 2005.
Before Brazda first spoke in June, the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany (LSVD) did extensive research to authenticate and certify his testimony. He may not be the only survivor still alive, though, according to LVSD spokesman, Alexander Zinn. "No one ever invested the time and the money to try and find all those who survived," Zinn told Têtu. It's estimated that 75,000 gays were deported by the Nazis.
While other survivors of the camps were celebrated at the end of the war, gay survivors usually had to remain silent about their experiences because homosexuality was still illegal in many European countries (such as France, where it was not decriminalized until 1982). "Before, no one cared about this tragedy," Brazda told Têtu when asked why he didn't speak out earlier.
KNITTING FOR PSYCHOS
I think the title pretty much sums it up.
http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/knittingpsychos.htm
Sphere: Related ContentMatthews for Senate (?)
by Jamison Foser
Chris Matthews' interest in the Pennsylvania Senate seat currently held by Republican Arlen Specter raises the possibility of something that is all too rare among the nation's media elite: accountability.
It has long been clear that if we applied to journalists who cover politics the standards they purport to apply to politicians -- truthfulness, judgment, being in touch with regular Americans, and so on -- many of them would fare quite poorly.
Few journalists are as aggressive as Chris Matthews in purporting to speak for average voters -- or as quick to declare (liberal) politicians to be out of touch with those voters. And few have his track record of failing to live up to the standards he sets for politicians, particularly Democrats. But there is no real accountability in cable news -- no matter how often Matthews is wrong on the facts, or how frequently he offends the concepts of fairness and rational thought, there are rarely consequences.
True, Matthews did have to apologize after a particularly offensive string of commentary about Hillary Clinton earlier this year, though given his long track record of misogynistic comments, it is clear he got off easy even then -- particularly in comparison to his colleague David Shuster, who was suspended after an inappropriate comment of his own. Shuster likely paid the price not only for his own nasty remark about Clinton, but for his more famous colleague's long string of sexist commentary as well. As long as Matthews stops short of Imus-level offensiveness, MSNBC seems quite happy to continue broadcasting his false claims and inane commentary.
Should he run for the Senate, however, Matthews might finally have to answer for his dubious track record. And he'll have to do so outside of his comfortable cocoon of fellow Beltway journalists and political insiders who are too eager to get invited back to ever truly challenge him on his cable program. Indeed, he'll have to do so while facing the very "regular Americans" he has caricatured so grotesquely over the years.
True, Pennsylvania voters aren't much more likely than MSNBC executives to care about Matthews' long string of false claims on Hardball.
But they may well be less pleased than Matthews' bosses at General Electric with his at times effusive praise for President Bush -- and even less pleased with his insults of people who disagree with him. In 2005, for example, Matthews said of Bush: "I like him. Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left -- I mean -- like him personally." At the time the "real whack-jobs" who disliked Bush constituted a majority of the American public. The following year, Matthews called Bush "a wise man ... almost Atticus Finch."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200812190012?newsref=www.eschatonblog.com
Tortured Reasoning
Reckoning
President George W. Bush on his way to announce the transfer of 14 terrorism suspects from previously secret C.I.A. prisons abroad to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, September 6, 2006.
By Gerald Herbert/A.P. Photo.
George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture just doesn't work. Delving into two high-profile cases, the author exposes the tactical costs of prisoner abuse.
by David Rose
By the last days of March 2002, more than six months after 9/11, President George W. Bush's promise "to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act" was starting to sound a little hollow. True, Afghanistan had been invaded and the Taliban toppled from power. But Osama bin Laden had vanished from the caves of Tora Bora, and none of his key al-Qaeda lieutenants were in U.S. captivity. Intelligence about what the terrorists might be planning next was almost nonexistent. "The panic in the executive branch was palpable," recalls Mike Scheuer, the former C.I.A. official who set up and ran the agency's Alec Station, the unit devoted to tracking bin Laden.
Clockwise from top left: al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah; al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shortly after his capture, in 2003; terror suspect Jose Padilla; former British resident and current Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed.
Early in the morning of March 28, in the moonlit police-barracks yard in Faisalabad, Pakistan, hopes were high that this worrisome intelligence deficit was about to be corrected. Some 300 armed personnel waited in silence: 10 three-man teams of Americans, drawn equally from the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., together with much greater numbers from Pakistan's police force and Inter-services Intelligence (ISI). In order to maximize their chances of surprise, they planned to hit 10 addresses simultaneously. One of them, they believed, was a safe house containing a man whose name had been familiar to U.S. analysts for years: Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Hussein, a 30-year-old Saudi Arabian better known as Abu Zubaydah. "I'd followed him for a decade," Scheuer says. "If there was one guy you could call a 'hub,' he was it."
The plan called for the police to go in first, followed by the Americans and ISI men, whose job would be to gather laptops, documents, and other physical evidence. A few moments before three a.m., the crackle of gunfire erupted. Abu Zubaydah had been shot and wounded, but was alive and in custody. As those who had planned it had hoped, his capture was to prove an epochal event—but in ways they had not envisaged.
Four months after Abu Zubaydah's capture, two lawyers from the Department of Justice, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, delivered their notorious memo on torture, which stated that coercive treatment that fell short of causing suffering equivalent to the pain of organ failure or death was not legally torture, an analysis that—as far as the U.S. government was concerned—sanctioned the abusive treatment of detainees at the C.I.A.'s secret prisons and at Guantánamo Bay. But, as Jane Mayer writes in her recent book, The Dark Side (Doubleday), Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to coercive interrogation techniques well before that, becoming the first U.S. prisoner in the Global War on Terror to undergo waterboarding.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=1
Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation
WASHINGTON /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."
A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Critical Mass Cop Indicted
Chalk this one up to the power of YouTube.
If not for the video, the guy on the bicycle would probably still be facing charges.
Yet another reason it should always be permissible to videotape the police.
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/16/critical-mass-cop-indicted/
Christmas Carols for Disturbed Friends &/or Family
1. Schizophrenia -- Do I Hear What I Hear?
2. Multiple Personality Disorder - We Three Kings Disoriented Are
3. Dementia - I Think I'll Be Home For Christmas
4. Narcissistic - Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
5. Manic - Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and....
6. Paranoid - Santa Claus is Coming To Town To Get Me
7. Borderline Personality Disorder - Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire
8. Personality Disorder - You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, and I Don't Know Why
9. Attention Deficit Disorder - Silent Night, Holy oooh look at the Froggy - can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?
10. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...
George Bush and his Looney-Tunes Legacy Tour
For weeks, George W. Bush has been slithering down memory lane, and God knows we all very much appreciate the keen insights he has had to offer. And were they all to be stuffed into an oversized memoir, which of course they soon will be, I'd suggest Bambi's Mein Kampf as a spanking-good title.
I realize the grammatical difficulties with such a name -- in effect, "My My Struggle" -- but what the hell. George never fretted about language or fussed about details, so why start now.
Nor has he ever been particularly fastidious about truth and historical accuracy. As presidential memoirs and legacy tours go, that's certainly nothing new under the sun. But, true to form, George has been taking epic liberty with these concepts as he slithers new ground.
The result: something weakly, daintily akin to that masterpiece of deception, that rambling tome of poor writing and ideological raving, that nearly century-old non-page-turner of unappreciated genius and self-aggrandizement.
George has been doing a lot of these legacy-tour gigs lately, but the one that especially caught my eye was his little sit-down at the American Enterprise Institute -- soon to be renamed, it is viciously rumored (by moi), the American Enterprise Museum, courtesy its speaker this week.
It caught my eye because of the NY Times' headline: "'Headed Out of Town,' Bush Turns Reflective." I had hoped that signaled at least some creaking opening of critical introspection on Bush's part -- I never give up hope -- since that, after all, is what the adjective "reflective" customarily indicates. But said hope was dashed.
In fact, it was instantly dashed in the laughable lede: "President Bush shared some bittersweet reflections on Thursday as he looked back fondly on his White House days but regretted his inability to win passage of immigration legislation and to change the tone of debate in the capital."
It goes without saying that the president is the only one looking back "fondly on his White House days," so of course I won't say it.
Shoe protest socks it to U.S. president
About 40 protesters braved the cold to throw shoes at an image of U.S. President George W. Bush.
About 40 people turned out to a similar protest in Toronto.
"Today is an act of humour in a sense but it's also a profound situation and context," said journalist and activist Stephan Christoff.
"We're talking about a situation where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in Iraq. It is George Bush who holds a direct responsibility for the devastating, horrific situation of occupation and imperialism in Iraq."
Demonstrators pelted the presidential photograph with boots, shoes and slippers and denounced the U.S. war in Iraq and the NATO-led war in Afghanistan before marching to a downtown Canadian Forces recruiting station.
http://www.ottawasun.com/News/National/2008/12/21/7817241-sun.html
Rick Warren Can Either Come Out of His Closet, or Go Take a Hike
by Susie Bright
Well, Obama invited him. He invited this Billy Graham-pretender pastor to give the invocation at the big ball.
This is a guy who believes that every abortion is a holocaust, who thinks the Iranian PM should be assassinated by early this afternoon, who campaigned like Atilla the HUN for Proposition 8, and yet whines that he "has eaten dinner with gay people, so don't call me phobic."
Oh yeah, and he will fight stem cell research with his last dying breath. Don't I wish.
My beloved Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly writes:
After having had a chance to sleep on it, does Barack Obama's decision to invite Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his presidential inauguration look any better? Actually, no. I'm probably even more annoyed about it now than I was yesterday.
That said, I've been curious to see what others have come up with as a defense. I suppose, to borrow Rachel Maddow's phrase, I want someone to "talk me down."
1. The only reason this "invitation" flies at all is because anti-gay and sexually divisive bigotry is still considered palatable, while racial and ethnic bigotry is not.
No one can imagine a pastor being invited to speak at any Presidential event who'd made a career of racist invective— and then compounded it by whining, "I'm not phobic; I love all the little colored people!"
2. Warren has ALL the earmarks in his behavior that we saw with Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Bob Allen, David Vitter, Jimmy Swaggart, et al. Look at his history... where have you heard ALL this before?
If this dude isn't found in a bathroom with a wide stance and a hooker in the next year, someone's not doing their job. Paging Jeff Gannon!
Three Questions About Rick Warren's Role in the Inauguration
If we must have an officiating priest, surely we can do better than this vulgar huckster.
In the same way, if someone publicly charges that "Mormonism is a cult," it is impossible to say that the claim by itself is mistaken or untrue. However, if the speaker says that heaven is a real place but that you will not get there if you are Jewish, or that Mormonism is a cult and a false religion but that other churches and faiths are the genuine article, then you know that the bigot has spoken. That's all in a day's work for the wonderful world of the American evangelical community, and one wishes them all the best of luck in their energetic fundraising and their happy-clappy Sunday "Churchianity" mega-feel-good fiestas. However, do we want these weirdos and creeps officiating in any capacity at the inauguration of the next president of the United States?
It is a fact that Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., was present at a meeting of the Aspen Institute not long ago and was asked by Lynda Resnick—she of the pomegranate-juice dynasty—if a Jew like herself could expect to be admitted to paradise. Warren publicly told her no. What choice did he have? His own theology says that only those who accept Jesus can hope to be saved. I have just missed the chance to debate on CBS with one of Warren's leading allies and defenders, the Dallas preacherman who calls himself Dr. Robert Jeffress. In the opinion of this learned fellow, even though Mitt Romney "talks about Jesus as his lord and savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity."
God Bless Rachel Maddow
Posted by Dan Savage
Props to Maddow for hammering away at this—and for suggesting that Obama could drop Warren. But... oh... my... gawd. The look on Anne Curry's face when Rick Warren says he's inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman he sees. Curry, a beautiful woman, is very clearly tormented by some unwelcome mental images at that moment. Priceless. And I love how Warren equates a heterosexual man resisting the urge to jump every beautiful woman he sees with a homosexual man's responsibility to refrain from all intimate contact for life. I don't know how that qualifies as "delayed gratification"—not unless gay celibates are rewarded with 70 virgins when they go to paradise.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2008/12/20/god_bless_rachel_maddow
Rick Warren told Jewish woman she was going to hell
When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding--and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps.
With all due respect, that's bull that this is the only way the question could be answered. I'm a Christian, and I don't think Jews are going to hell. Rick Warren is a far-right bigot, thats why he answered the question so bluntly and so rudely. His religious right brethren also think Catholics worship Satan. That is not the only way you can answer questions like this. Can anyone get us the video or audio?
Court Rules Patriot Act's "National Security Letter" Gag Provisions Unconstitutional
ACLU Hails Victory In Challenge To Government's Power To Silence NSL Recipients
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging the FBI's authority to use NSLs to demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet Service Providers and then forbid them from discussing the requests. Siding with the ACLU, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the statute's gag provisions violate the First Amendment.
"We are gratified that the appeals court found that the FBI cannot silence people with complete disregard for the First Amendment simply by saying the words 'national security,'" said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "This is a major victory for the rule of law. The court recognized the need for judicial oversight of the government's dangerous gag power and rejected the Bush administration's position that the courts should just rubber-stamp these gag orders. By upholding the critical check of judicial review, the FBI can no longer use this incredible power to hide abuse of its intrusive Patriot Act surveillance powers and silence critics."
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/38113prs20081215.html?s_src=RSS
NO TIME FOR WAR
by Joe Shea
Ever since I lived and worked in India for about six months in 1972, when I had the chance to meet heads of state throughout the region and many of the diplomats posted there, I have had a strong interest in its affairs. That interest was particularly well-served by two of the distinguished American Reporter Correspondents who covered the South Asia region for us.
It has been their work of Amar Singh and Ahmar Mustikhan, in fact, that has informed those who read this publication that the events of the past week in Mumbai, the former Bombay, were not unique, and not even that rare in India.
As Correspondent Aman Singh reported here on several occasions, many deaths resulted from terrorist attacks mounted with the same AK-47s and grenades that armed the cold-blooded terrorists who attacked nine sites in Mumbai last Wednesday night and kept their grip on the nation's commercial heart for an ensuing 60 hours of horror.
Take this example of her work from 2002:
NEW DELHI, Sept. 24, 2002 -- Terrorists struck the main Hindu temple in Gujarat's western capital city of Gandhinagar in the late hours of evening today as hundreds of devotees said their prayers, blasting their way into the the pink sandstone Akshardham Temple in a white Indian-made Ambassador sedan while hurling grenades and firing indiscriminately at helpless people who had been praying there.When the seven-hour siege ended, 29 of the estimated 600 worshiper were dead and another 70 were injured, officials say. The terrorist strike came on a day when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christina Rocca was in New Delhi on an official visit and as the second phase of voting took place peacefully in violence-plagued Kashmir.
Political and religious leaders came together in condemnation of the attack and appealed for peace in a state ravaged by riots earlier this year. Security forces eventually killed the two terrorists, who held about 25 worshippers trapped in the temple with them.
Many incidents, some larger and some smaller, almost all associated with Kashmiri separatism and the shadowy organizations fostered by al-Qaeda, have splashed their bloody jihad across the front pages of India's vibrant free press. And just as luridly, some Indian militants - especially those who lead Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital - have blamed Pakistan's hapless, inchoate government for their crimes. But India has many home-grown terrorists, and if not home-grown, many who have become folded into pan-regional umbrella organizations that bolster their ability to commit heartless acts of terror.
Here is another example, also provided by Aman Singh's splendid reporting:
NEW DELHI, Nov. 24, 2002 (7:55 am EST) -- Repeating a recent assault, militants attacked the famous Raghunath shrine in Jammu a second time Sunday and left 11 dead and many wounded in their wake.Striking at 6:30PM (IST), a two-man squad believed to belong to the militant Islamic Fedayeen movement began throwing grenades at the temple from behind bushes nearby and then entered the crowded complex, taking advantage of the crowds of innocent worshippers there to conceal themselves even as they attacked. They were locked in a gun battle with police for hours, and the drama only ended late Monday morning when police shot dead the last of the pair in a house near the temple where he had been hiding.
Among the dead were two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers.
The terrorists and the army exchanged gunfire from 7:00PM Sunday far into the night, suggesting the militants came prepared with ample ammunition. They usually answered police and army fire with quick blasts of their own.
This was the second attack on the Raqghunath temple this year; militants also struck the temple in March. It was the third attack on a religious shrine this year.
Terrorists attacked the Akshardham temple in Gujarat only two months ago, leaving 75 dead and many more injured. Riots have followed those attacks, in which many Muslims were killed and injured, and many more left homeless.
We mean no offense when we say you don't need to reach six years into the past to find such incidents, or to find a note of posturing in India's current imprecations against the government of Pakistan, charging complicity in these crimes. What is needed now more than outrage is the inspiring example of the soul of India's great War of Independence, Mahatma Ghandi. While non-violence is not an option here, a unified search for peace between two great nations certainly is, and that can lead to peace he yearned for.
http://www.american-reporter.com/
Sphere: Related ContentFriday, December 19, 2008
Suggestions For New Cabinet-Level Agencies
by Andrei Codrescu
A Department of Common Sense: The job of this institution would be to help American workers identify with their socioeconomic status and regain awareness of their true interests, instead of thinking of themselves as "middle class." This might take the extreme form of waking them up from the hypnotic state they were put in by Ronald Reagan who convinced them that they were keepers of morality not swindled suckers. I nominate Thomas Paine for secretary of this department, even if we have to wake him up from the dead. (A most unconvincing state, by the way).
A Department for the Defense of the English Language from Bankers: Unlike the French Academy, which forbids the use of anglicisms, this institution would safeguard words vulnerable to being turned into means of defrauding. For instance, the word "to derive," which became the adjective "derivative" over the course of centuries, only to be recently transformed into the noun "derivative," which became, very rapidly, the proctological instrument most Americans now call "painful." The Department for the Defense of English could ensure that bankers stick to numbers, while leaving the language to poets and immigrants.
A Department of Accuracy: This body would measure the true worth of things, such as the dollar. The job of the Accuracy Department would also be to figure out where the missing $99 went, and who and what inflated it. This department would undertake a systematic study of all the things we commonly agree are worth a lot less than they were when we commonly agreed on them.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98467639
Sphere: Related ContentBush's Regulatory Kiss-Off
Obama's assertions to the contrary, the 43rd president was the biggest regulator since Nixon.
The Questions We Never Answered in 2008
Digging through the bottom of the Explainer mailbag.
The Explainer has completed another year of valuable community service. Over the last 12 months, we've told you how to interrogate a small child and given instructions for turning a human skull into a sweet bong. Regular readers learned how to survive a 47-story fall and why you can't survive falling into a black hole. And we had the final word on whether terrorists really bump fists to say hello.
But, for all that, the column managed to address just a tiny fraction of the 8,500 messages that arrived in our mailbox. Today, as part of our Explainer holiday tradition, we present an assortment of inquiries culled from the voluminous backlog. Below are the reader questions that Slate felt ill-equipped or unwilling to answer in 2008.
Once again, we'd like you to let us know which of these unanswered questions is most deserving of an answer. The one that receives the most reader votes will be designated the Explainer Question of the Year for 2008 and will be addressed in an upcoming column.The Explainer's Unanswered Questions From 2008
• What is the most disloyal dog breed?
• Why does some music make you want to shake your butt?
• Could you please explain why it is that squirrels are capable of such amazing athletic feats? What is it about their brains and, to a lesser degree, their bodies that allows it? I watch them at my house and have seen some amazing things.
• Why do women like soup? Is it for perceived health benefits? Is it because it's a quasi-comfort food?
• Is it just me, or do all national anthems the world over, no matter how rich and exotic the culture, seem to sound like European marching-band music? Wouldn't one expect China's national anthem be more "plinky"? Shouldn't Iraq's national anthem sound a little more "Arab-y"?
• I am an 11-year-old boy and girls in my class harass me constantly and I want to file a restraining order against one of them. Is that possible?
• It is a common baseball prank to give someone a cream pie in the face during a TV interview. Where do these cream pies come from? Do baseball teams keep cream pies in the dugout?
• Why don't humans have a mating season?
News Flash! Marijuana Still Not Eradicated!!
Well, the federal government's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 is out, and — who'dda thunk it? — "Marijuana availability is high throughout the United States." This is despite record seizures of marijuana plants in 2007, as well as an all-time record number of marijuana arrests, over 872,000. Indoor cultivation — often in converted homes and other dubious locations — has increased "because of high profit margins and seemingly reduced risk of law enforcement detection."
Another Isolated Incident
But not a drug raid. A prostitution raid.
It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.
As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.
All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the "tight shorts" she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity…
So you'd think that after the police figured out they had the wrong house, they'd apologize, and possibly even compensate the girl and her family. According to the lawsuit, you'd be wrong:
After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.
Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/12/18/another-isolated-incident-26/
Sphere: Related ContentGoldman Sachs cuts taxes to one percent by moving profits offshore
by John Byrne
Bank takes $10 billion bailout, then cuts tax rate 33 percent
Say you got a ten billion dollar loan to shore up your finances, and you paid your employees $10.9 billion, and you raked in $2.3 billion for the year.
What would you say you owed in taxes? One percent?
That's what you'd pay if you were Goldman Sachs, Inc. The high-flying brokerage -- and former home of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson -- has announced it's paying just $14 million in taxes this year.
Last year, their tax bill was $6 billion, or 34.1 percent. That represents a year-over-year tax rate drop of 33.1 percent, and an actual percentage drop of 97 percent.
Goldman attributed its lower tax rate to "more tax credits as a percentage of earnings" and "changes in geographic earnings mix."
Tax accounting advisor Robert Willens told Bloomberg News the rate drop seems "a little extreme."
"I was definitely taken aback," Willens told the business wire. "Clearly they have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions."
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Goldman_Sachs_tax_rate_drops_to_1218.html
The War in Common
by William Rivers Pitt
I met a chef from Texas who was like an oak tree with tattoos, and made a mean barbecue sauce. He'd been in the 101st Airborne and was about to be deployed to Iraq, but destroyed his knee in a training exercise and wound up getting discharged. He knew the war was nonsense and thought the Bush guys all deserved to rot in jail, but he still wanted to go to Iraq, and wept whenever a soldier he knew died over there because he should have been there and maybe could have saved that person if his knee hadn't buckled.
I met a woman in Texas who sat down in a fire-ant-infested mud puddle because her son died in Iraq. Everything was "Mission Accomplished" and high approval ratings, but she didn't get it and wanted an explanation from the man who'd sent her son to die for a banner on a ship and a bump in the polls. So, she sat in a mud puddle outside his house and waited for an explanation, and by doing so, began the final and inexorable turning of popular opinion against the war. The mothers of dead soldiers all had a face after this one mother sat in that mud and waited for an explanation that never came.
I met a journalist, a fourth-generation American of Lebanese descent, whose horror and disgust at the mainstream media's insipid cheerleading coverage of the Iraq war in 2003 compelled him to travel to Iraq and do some reporting on his own. Through his unfiltered and most decidedly unembedded perspective, we learned of the Iraqi hospitals overflowing with feces and urine, of villages targeted by Coalition forces for reprisal attacks, about bodies rotting in the streets of devastated towns, about dogs feasting on those corpses as they bloated in the sun, about gas lines lasting two days and about what America's war really looked and smelled like when the media's self-serving airbrush treatment was not applied.
I met a tank driver who had served along the Berlin line during the cold war, who marched next to me at antiwar demonstrations carrying an upside-down American flag. Whenever some outraged patriot challenged him, this man would reel off his service number, his billet, his AO and his record, and then dare his challenger to say something about his love of country. "The flag like this means 'Distress, Send Help,'" he would always say. "This country needs help."
I met a kid from upstate New York who was slinging burgers with this perplexed look on his face because he didn't know what to do with himself, so he was slinging burgers until he figured out what to do. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to be a soldier and had bent his whole life towards that end. He ran the farthest, worked the hardest and even joined a competitive shooting league so his aim would be the best. He got himself into one of the best military schools in the country, and then Bush and Iraq and everything else happened and he knew it was wrong, and knew he could not devote his life and honor to all that, so he quit the military academy and abandoned his dream of military service, and was flipping burgers until he could figure out what else he could do.
Second Life
Drew Carey takes us on a guided tour of Second Life (SL), a virtual world with more than 500,000 residents.
But SL isn't your typical virtual world. Unlike other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are no defined roles or objectives in SL. Just like in real life, SL residents determine their own goals and decide for themselves how best to achieve them. Moreover, virtually everything in SL was created by the residents themselves using tools provided by Linden Lab, the company that launched SL in 2003.
SL is based on a simple set of institutional arrangements that would make F.A. Hayek proud. In essence, the people who own the property in SL make the rules. The result is a spontaneously ordered world in which residents are free to fly, teleport, build, trade and interact with others without interference from the state.
Recently, Linden Lab—the SL equivalent of a state—has begun acting more and more like a real life government by restricting activities such as gambling. But open source competitors based on the SL platform are currently in development. so better virtual worlds offering even more freedom are just around the corner.
But SL isn't your typical virtual world. Unlike other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are no defined roles or objectives in SL. Just like in real life, SL residents determine their own goals and decide for themselves how best to achieve them. Moreover, virtually everything in SL was created by the residents themselves using tools provided by Linden Lab, the company that launched SL in 2003.
SL is based on a simple set of institutional arrangements that would make F.A. Hayek proud. In essence, the people who own the property in SL make the rules. The result is a spontaneously ordered world in which residents are free to fly, teleport, build, trade and interact with others without interference from the state.
Recently, Linden Lab—the SL equivalent of a state—has begun acting more and more like a real life government by restricting activities such as gambling. But open source competitors based on the SL platform are currently in development. so better virtual worlds offering even more freedom are just around the corner.
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2008
by: Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
Now in their 17th year, the P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of the nation's stinkiest media performances. As the judges for these annual awards, we do our best to identify the most deserving recipients of this unwelcome plaudit.
And now, the P.U.-litzers Prizes for 2008:
HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE - MSNBC's Chris Matthews. This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac primary in February - when Chris Matthews spoke of "the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."
BEYOND PARODY PRIZE - Fox News. In August, a FoxNews.com teaser for the "O'Reilly Factor" program said: "Obama bombarded by personal attacks. Are they legit? Ann Coulter comments."
GUTTER BALL PUNDITRY AWARD - Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball." In program after program during the spring, Matthews repeatedly questioned whether Obama could connect with "regular" voters - "regular" meaning voters who are white or "who actually do know how to bowl." He once said of Obama: "This gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody. But the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder."
STRAIGHT SKINNY PRIZE - Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Chozick. In August, the Journal's Chozick went beyond the standard elitist charge to offer yet another reason that average voters might be wary of Obama. Below the headline "Too Fit to Be President?" she wrote of Obama: "Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them." Chozick asked: "In a nation in which 66 percent of the voting-age population is overweight and 32 percent is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" To support her argument, she quoted Hillary Clinton supporters. One said: "He needs to put some meat on his bones." Another, prodded by Chozick, wrote on a Yahoo bulletin board: "I won't vote for any beanpole guy."
The hunting of the president resumes
The right is trying to link Obama to Blagojevich and corruption -- and the mainstream media is playing along. The Clinton rules are back.
By Joe Conason
From the kooky obsession with his place of birth on WorldNetDaily to insinuations about his Chicago pedigree by the Associated Press, all of the attacks launched lately on Barack Obama give off the same familiar smell. Even a quick sniff is enough to bring back memories from a decade ago, when no perfidious accusation against Bill or Hillary Clinton was too crazy to deserve attention.
The madness that was eventually classified under the quasi-clinical rubric of "Whitewater" began, in no small degree, with the dubious idea that Arkansas, the Clintons' home state, was a peculiarly corrupt place -- and that any politician from Arkansas by definition was suspect (but only if he or she happened to be a Democrat).
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