American values

It’s that time of year: a Tuesday near the end of January. It’s just past another anniversary of the president’s inauguration, and time for the annual tradition, the State of the Union address.

In this case, it’s President Obama’s third anniversary, and tonight he’ll give his third SotU speech. According to the Washington Post, this year’s talk will stress a return to American values.

All right, here it is: I’m sick to death of hearing about values. Values has turned into a codeword for reactionary politics, repression, and censorship. I don’t want to hear a speech about those kinds of values, especially from a president who has done little to fix the overstepping excesses of his predecessor, and, to the contrary, seems to embrace many of them.

American values used to be about freedom and opportunity, not control and rigidity. America was a country that didn’t abuse and arrest people for assembling peacefully. It didn’t arrest people for documenting how the police were handling situations. It didn’t keep political prisoners, detaining people indefinitely with no chance of formal accusation, trial, and defense. It didn’t limit the rights of people because of who they are, it didn’t restrict their access to medicines and medical procedures, it didn’t try to teach children mythology in science class, and it did not march a conservative Christian agenda down the streets everywhere.

You want to return to American values? Demilitarize the police, and get them back to engaging with the communities they serve and protect. Don’t send people off to secret prisons, close Guantánamo, and give everyone there a proper, open trial. Stop using terrorist the way dictatorships have used denunciation, as a way to whisk troublesome people away. When people get angry and want to protest, encourage them and give them a venue, don’t beat them down and throw tear gas at them as they sit non-aggressively. Allow yourself to be held accountable for your actions, and don’t threaten people who want to record what you’re doing. Don’t get involved in people’s private lives and personal decisions. And keep religion out of the government and public education. You can start that by not saying God bless in your speeches. Try it tonight.

Remember that American values came from our flight from having to live under someone else’s values. We can’t just replace the king’s values with those of your family, your church, or any other relatively small subset of Americans. Our values were set up to protect our rights and our freedom — everyone’s — and that is what we need to return to.

Oh, and fix the economy, yeah? Don’t just talk about it.

Rick Perry: stupid is as stupid does

In case you haven’t been following the current Intervents over the past few days, let me call your attention to a Rick Perry campaign ad that was posted to YouTube on Tuesday. It’s called Strong, and it features a confident and concerned Rick Perry, bringing a very important point to his voters. Copying the copy from Governor Perry’s YouTube page:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.

As I look at it now, it has 2,711,916 views, 10,401 likes, and 428,954 dislikes (as you might expect, comments are disabled). The numbers are increasing all the time, of course, but the dislikes are doing so very rapidly, making it, as one blogger notes, the most hated video on YouTube. It has well surpassed that horrid Friday, Friday thing, which only has 256,752 dislikes, and has taken almost three months to accumulate them, not just three days.

There are also, of course, many parodies popping up (I’ll let you have the fun of searching for them), most beginning, I’m not ashamed to admit than I’m an atheist, but some getting rather sillier (I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a dinosaur.?). And many are pointing out that the Gov’s jacket bears a close resemblance to the one Heath Ledger wore in Brokeback Mountain, adding ironic silliness to the mix.

(The dislikes are up to 430,321 now....)

The parodies and the silliness are great fun, but let’s not forget that this is meant to be a serious campaign video by a serious candidate for President of the United States. Mr Perry is waning in the polls; still, he’s not a long shot or a dark horse. He was the front-runner for a while. (Have I worn out the horse-racing metaphors yet?)

Where on Earth does he come up with the idea that there’s some sort of war on religion going on, when the religious asshats have been strangling the rest of us for years? One would have to be completely in a land of fantasy to think that atheists are running things. The notion that our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school is just ridiculous on its face, and any quick look around us will easily expose that as the lie it is.

What’s more, few of us would even want to stop kids from doing those things on their own. What we want is not to have public schools and other public, tax-funded institutions promote religion and prayer. No one’s closing down private schools and churches, and no one’s telling kids they can’t say a personal prayer or wish Merry Christmas to their friends.

And the idea that President Obama, a professed church-going Christian, is leading such a war is simply beyond stupid.

432,542.

I want to move to a country where you have to take an intelligence test to get in, even on a tourist visa.

Don’t make promises...

It’s that time again: U.S. presidential elections are in a bit more than a year, so, of course, furious campaigning has started. The religious-fanatic morons are telling us how God is guiding them, but they’re just insane. Rick Perry, after officially praying for rain, is promising to end abortion while his state burns from the endless drought.

On the more sane side, yesterday I heard Mitt Romney on the radio, promising to eliminate taxes on investments for the middle class.

Of course, it was the same in the lead-in to the 2008 election, as it’s the same every time. Then, all the candidates, including the current president, promised to do this or that with tax reform, to create their version of health-care coverage, and so on.

Here’s the thing: they are all making promises they can’t keep. None of this is up to them.

Congress controls the budget. Congress levies taxes, and is responsible for any changes to the tax system. It took legislation to enact the health-care bill, which looked little like what Mr Obama (or anyone else) had promised solemnly and fervently.

That’s how our system of checks and balances, our tripartite government, works. The president can do certain things with executive orders. He can make appointments according to his own plans. He can call on executive agencies to do rule-making magic in support of his policies. He can limit Congress with vetos. But it’s the legislative branch that controls much of what the executive candidates like to promise. And even for the other things, the legislature can make laws that negate or forbid executive orders, can refuse to confirm appointees, and can override vetos. And it’s they who give the executive agencies their rulemaking authority in the first place, and they can change its scope or take it away. All overseen by the judiciary, of course, which will rule on disputes and can be predictable or full of surprises.

George Pataki was elected governor of New York in 1994, largely on his promise to restore the death penalty in the state. When he took office in January, he did just that... and the state’s highest court promptly declared the current death-penalty law to be unconstitutional. The State Assembly refused to address it with new legislation, and Mr Pataki’s campaign promise amounted to nothing.

To the extent that we believe campaign promises at all, we need to take them with large grains of salt, and consider whether the things the candidates are promising would actually be within their purview when they take office. If not, they can try to influence things, but the legislative and judicial branches are not often easy to steer.

It seems the songs we’re singing
Are all about tomorrow,
Tunes of promises you can’t keep.
Every moment bringing
The love I can only borrow,
You’re telling me lies in your sleep.

Do you think I’m not aware of what you’re saying,
Or why you’re saying it?
Is it hard to keep me where you want me staying?
Don’t go on betraying it.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

— Tim Hardin, Don’t Make Promises (1966)

Republicans vs NPR

I sent the following message, last week, to my congressional representative, Nan Hayworth (R-NY 19):

The recent departure of executives from National Public Radio, and the events that triggered them, have fueled discussion in Congress about eliminating its federal funding. That would be a disastrous decision. Public radio and television provide and important service to the American public, with news, arts, and nature programming that is not connected to commercial interests. Their news agencies, in particular, benefit from their ability to remain impartial. Federal funding is entirely appropriate and necessary for these organizations, and Congress must not eliminate nor significantly reduce that funding. Ms Hayworth, please tell me your viewpoint on this matter, so that I may understand where you stand. And I urge you to stand on the side of the American public’s need for the high-quality news and arts programming that NPR and PBS provide.

I got no response. Or perhaps I did: today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to eliminate federal funding for NPR:

The House voted on Thursday to cut off funding for National Public Radio, with Democrats and Republicans fiercely divided over both the content of the bill and the manner in which it was brought to the floor.

Under the measure, sponsored by Representative Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, stations could not buy programming from NPR or any other source using the $22 million the stations receive from the Treasury for that purpose. Local NPR stations would be able to use federal funds for operating expenses, but not content.

The time has come for us to claw back this money, said Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee.

According to the voting, representative Hayworth voted against it. I’m not surprised, as she’s a newly seated Republican. But it’s very clear that she is not representing her district, which is very much in support of National Public Radio.

It matters little, really, because the measure will almost certainly not pass in the Senate, and so it will die. But what these idiot Republicans are doing is unfortunate, frightening, dangerous. And the partisanship that has settled in our legislatures since 2000 is the most dangerous part of all.

Redistricting

Following the results of the 2010 census, many states are preparing to reorganize their congressional districts, as they gain or lose U.S. representatives (see here and here). My state, New York, will lose two of its 29 seats. Nearby New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio will each lose one seat.

Meanwhile, states that have grown in population in the last ten years — Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and others — will gain seats. This all makes sense from the view of having representation based on population, and the chart of the most and least populated congressional districts in the second link above is an interesting one.

There are two things about this that are bothersome, though.

The first is how we go about the redistricting. It’s done state by state, of course, with each state deciding its own rules. Most states (New York included) have their legislatures do it, which makes it a very partisan process. Districts are defined in ways designed to maximize the number of seats controlled by one particular party, the one that holds the majority in the legislature at the time of the redistricting.

Creating oddly shaped districts for these manipulative purposes is called gerrymandering, and it’s a very anti-democratic process. New York hasn’t fared too badly in that regard as far as the U.S. congressional districts go. Our worst example — notorious, really — is the 28^th congressional district, which is likely to be absorbed by neighbouring districts in this redistricting pass anyway. By artificially grouping the (Democratic) northern Buffalo suburbs in with Rochester, using a thin connecting strip along Lake Ontario, it protects the more rural 26^th district for a Republican representative.

It makes much more sense to make the redistricting non-partisan. States should create redistricting committees that are separated from the political process and not answerable to the legislature, and empower them to deal with the necessary changes.

The second bothersome thing is the effect redistricting has on the presidential elections. Because the electoral votes each state gets is directly related to the number of the state’s senators and congressional representatives, New York will collectively lose two votes — in the 2012 election we’ll get 29 electors instead of 31.

You might say that that’s as it should be, since our population has gone down, and I’d partly agree. The problem is that the effect is indirect, and, in a sense, New Yorkers — especially Republican New Yorkers, but the same is true for Democratic Texans — are disenfranchised in the presidential elections. In 2008, I could say with essentially 100% confidence that New York would give 31 electors to the Democratic presidential candidate, no matter how I cast my vote. Whether I voted for Mr Obama, Mr McCain, Mr Nader, Mr Barr, Ms McKinney... or whether I wrote in Pat Paulsen... it didn’t matter in the slightest.

In the 2012 presidential election, Republicans in New York will be slightly better off, in that they will know that New York will give only 29 electors to the Democratic candidate, rather than 31. Yet it still won’t matter how they vote. Redistricting gives a moderate shuffle to the numbers ever three presidential elections, but it still does nothing to address the underling problem of the obsolete electoral college.

So it’s time to put in another plug for the National Popular Vote plan, a mechanism to get each voter’s vote to count equally. New York has signed onto it, along with Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia. There’s widespread support, but we need to push more state legislatures to adopt it.

Free speech and phone calls

Earlier this afternoon, I got a phone call on the house phone, and let it go to the answering machine (I use Google Voice and Skype while I’m working). The machine’s in another room, but I had no trouble hearing the message clearly, for as long as I was willing to listen before I went in to kill it.

The message was of someone SHOUTING, shouting about politics. Shouting about my congressguitarist, and why I shouldn’t vote for him.^[1] He did this, he didn’t do that, he eats babies raw, and whatnot.

Shouting, did I say shouting? And, of course, it was a recorded message, the better to save the shouter’s voice for the next round.

This was probably the most egregious violation of my privacy I’ve ever encountered in a phone call that’s protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We have a do not call list in the U.S., federally mandated and implemented by the Federal Communications Commission. When Congress set that up, it came with a great deal of controversy about free speech rights, and how it would interfere with free speech. And, so, there are a few (or several, depending upon how you reckon those terms) categories of calls that are exempt, and may be made to anyone, even if her number be on the list:

1. Calls from organizations with which you have established a business relationship.
2. Calls for which you have given prior written permission.
3. Calls which are not commercial or do not include unsolicited advertisements.
4. Calls by or on behalf of tax-exempt non-profit organizations.

The first two categories come with mechanisms to remove yourself from the organizations’ call lists, and to revoke any permission you’ve given. But those last two categories, put there with free speech in mind, cover religious and political organizations, and such organizations can call you whenever they like, with no requirement that they allow you to opt out.

And, of course, during these last weeks before our elections, as you might imagine, the calls come, as we say, fast and furious. This one was particularly furious.

The battle is long lost, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly set free-speech boundaries well beyond where even I would set them, but this one is a complete mystery to me. I don’t agree that spending money should be equated to speech. I don’t agree that corporations should be given free-speech rights comparable to those of individuals.

But I really don’t see how anyone’s free-speech rights should allow them access to my home. I can’t accept that your right to speak freely includes any right to invade my privacy in order to do it.

I’m sympathetic to the concern over setting up situations where an organization blocks calls without your understanding what they’re blocking. But this isn’t that. I am putting my own numbers on the do-not-call list, and it is my choice not to receive calls from political or religious organizations. I should have that right, and no one should be allowed to force his way, or his electrons, into my home.

---

^[1] Sorry, but I already have: as I noted the other day, I voted last week with an absentee ballot.

Withhold your vote for the right reasons

The right-wing Tea Party movement has been moving along, winning the occasional primary election and getting some of their loony-bin escapees nominated as Republican party candidates here and there. One of the most touted of those is Christine O’Donnell, who just won the right to represent the Republicans in Delaware, hoping to take the U.S. Senator seat that Joe Biden vacated when he became Vice President (Ted Kaufman is currently filling it). Chris Coons will be her Democratic opponent.

Now, Ms O’Donnell is a religious fanatic with some of the most backward ideas on the planet. The list of people and organizations endorsing her should tell you enough: Sarah Palin, the National Rifle Association, the Family Research Council (you know that when someone puts family in any political organization’s name, it’s means they’re anti-Gay, against reproductive rights, against choice in end-of-life issues, against stem-cell research... and for religious liberty, which basically means that they want to tell everyone exactly what they may and may not do, in the name of God).

And that all means that no thinking person should be voting for her. Alas, a large portion of the voting populace doesn’t think.

The left, though, has surfaced some video footage from some time ago, and is using it to laugh at Ms O’Donnell. You’ve heard about them, surely: There’s the clip from MTV in 1996, after she founded a silly organization called the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, in which she says that we should stop kids from masturbating and calls masturbation wrong, an improper, un-Godly use of our God-given sexuality. And there’s the clip from Bill Maher’s show in 1999, where she relates that, years earlier while in school, she dabbled into witchcraft and had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

Sure, we can laugh at these. They’re silly and pathetic. They’re also old; the giggly young woman on those videos is not the 41-year-old candidate who’s been on the podium campaigning. Let’s make sure we’re not rejecting her because she said stupid stuff in her youth. Let’s look at where she stands now.

And where she stands now is scary. Here, for instance, is something from the MTV video, when she was 27:

The reason that you don’t tell [kids] that masturbation is the answer to AIDS, and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because again, it is not dressing [sic] the issue. [...] You’re gonna be pleasing each other, and if he already knows what pleases him, and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?

The problem isn’t that she said that at 27, though I’d expect it more from a 17-year-old. The problem is that she stands by that now, that she still insists that the kind of purity she talked about 14 years ago is the only right way. If the answer to AIDS is to stop all sexual thoughts outside of marriage, then we’re in a lot more trouble than any of us thinks.

And here’s another one, from Bill Maher in 1998, where she says that evolution is a myth and asks Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans. At age 29 she should have had that sorted out, had she learned anything at all in science class. This, too, she stands by now, as do many of her evangelical fundamentalist fellows. (And this might be a good place to point out that her education isn’t very sharp: she almost graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University, known for its business school, not it’s science curriculum. What level of education is appropriate for a U.S. Senator could, of course, be an interesting debate on its own.)

As to the witchcraft thing, who cares? It was silly stuff a long time ago. And if we blasted candidates for being juvenile and superstitious, we’d reject ones who beg an imaginary benefactor in the sky to bless their election campaigns, wouldn’t we?

Imaginary Benefactor knows, there are enough reasons not to vote for Ms O’Donnell, nor for any of her Tea-Party-endorsed colleagues. Real reasons, involving what they stand for, and what they plan to do if they get the reins of power. Never mind the old videos; they’re good entertainment, but that’s all. Let’s spend our time pointing to all the reasons that really matter.

Failure to seek (and see) common ground

The people who oppose abortion and those who support the right to decide what to allow to grow in one’s body have few, if any, places to compromise. If I want to allow a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and you consider that to be the killing of a baby, we can’t meet in the middle. There’s no common ground there.

There is, though, common ground elsewhere, if we look for it. Essentially, no one favors abortion, in that no one thinks it’s a beautiful thing that people should do regularly. Both sides of the abortion issue want to reduce the number of abortions. One side wants to reduce the number to zero, but the other side also wants it reduced, not by legislating it away, but by reducing the need for it.

That’s where we should all be putting our efforts: on something on which we can agree, and on which we can work together.

If we work on ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, we’ll reduce the number of abortions. We’ll still have a fight about the ones that are left, but we’ll have accomplished something good, and everyone will be happier.

That’s the point at which my mind starts to boggle: I see the anti-abortion side not only failing to take action to help in that reduction, but actively impeding efforts toward it. Many want abstinence-only education, and refuse to teach young, sexually-active potential mothers and fathers how to prevent pregnancy. Many refuse to use contraception, and won’t allow its use in their families. Many work to block the availability of contraception to others.

Such is the case for a new morning after pill, ulipristal acetate, which can prevent pregnancies up to five days after intercourse, compared with three days for levonorgestrel (marketed as Plan B), and which is more effective than the alternative drug. The right-wing anti-sensibility groups are, predictably, rallying against approval of the new drug, called ella:

With ulipristal, women will be enticed to buy a poorly tested abortion drug, unaware of its medical risks, under the guise that it’s a morning-after pill, said Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, which led the battle against Plan B.

Plan B prevents a pregnancy by administering high doses of a hormone that mimics progesterone. It works primarily by inhibiting the ovaries from producing eggs. Critics argue it can also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which some consider equivalent to an abortion.

Women who were truly concerned for America would see the need to prevent unwanted pregnancies in their daughters, and would understand that abstinence-only education doesn’t do that. Instead, though, these people hold onto the ludicrous concept that two cells that happen to have united are now, though still microscopically small, a person, and must be given every protection available. They maintain that anything that interferes with the process of forming a viable human, once a penis has touched a vagina, is wrong.

And, of course, holders of those sorts of moral views don’t find it sufficient to hold the views themselves; they must impose them on everyone.

In doing so, they are actually increasing the number of abortions that will be performed. Yet they know they’re right, and they’ll fight to the ends of the Earth to force the rest of us to comply.

Their intransigence amazes me, but what also amazes me is how easily the rest of us can let them beat us down. If they want to work with us on common ground, that’s great, and I’ll welcome it. Otherwise, we need to be as vocal as they are; we need to stop allowing fanatics to tell us what to do.

Unfair use

Yet another politician has used a pop song in an ad without permission, and is being sued for it:

The singer and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne has sued Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, saying he used the Talking Heads’ song “Road to Nowhere” in a Senate campaign ad without permission.

The song was used in an online video posted in January that attacked Marco Rubio, a fellow Republican who is one of Mr. Crist’s opponents for the seat vacated by Senator Mel Martinez. The governor is now running as an independent.

Haven’t these people figured this out by now? This isn’t the first time, nor the second nor third, that this has happened. It’s not the sort of thing that’s covered by “fair use” principles.

Do they, perhaps, think that they can get away with it because they’re politicians? Politicians seem to think they can get away with nearly anything, so maybe that’s it.

The limits of representation

There’ve been a couple of setbacks to marriage equality in the northeast U.S. recently. Thursday’s planned vote in the New Jersey state Senate was postponed, and the New York state Senate’s vote a week earlier shot down our state’s proposal by a vote of 38 to 24. The New York state Senate comprises 32 democrats and 30 republicans; all republicans and eight democrats voted against the bill. This is the third time the state Assembly has sent such a bill to the Senate.

One of the eight democrats who helped vote it down is Joe Addabbo, a first-term senator who represents a conservative district in Queens. Much of Senator Addabbo’s district identifies as Catholic, a group that tends to disfavour the idea of same-sex marriage. Even so, GLBT groups campaigned hard for Senator Addabbo, hoping for an ally on gay rights issues, and his vote is widely viewed as a betrayal.

Local talk-show host Brian Lehrer had Senator Addabbo on his radio program two days later, giving the senator a chance to explain his vote. Here’s how he began, at about a minute and a half into the audio:

[...] but at no point did I ever say “yes”. I always promised all, both advocates of the bill, proponents, as well as opponents of the bill that I would keep an open mind. And up to the vote, nobody in the media, and very, very few of my elected-official colleagues, and very few of my constituents, if any, knew of my position.

The reason being, it was my intention to keep an open mind, and by doing so, I felt that I would get a clear indication of where my district stands on this issue. If I was to say that I was against the bill early on, then the only people I would hear from were those who were for it. Conversely, if I said I was for the bill, then the only people I would hear from were those who were... be against it.

Because, I didn’t indicate either way, I feel that of the over 400 emails, faxes, phone calls, conversations that I had with constituents, the 74% who said that they would not want their state senator to vote for this bill was a clear indication where my district was on this issue. And when I took my oath in January to become a state senator, it was to represent the people of the 15th senatorial district, and certainly when you have a clear consensus of the people of the district on a certain issue, that’s the way I think an elected official has to go.

Now, in a post in November I noted that senators, members of the state assembly, and the like “represent their wards, districts, and states in legislative bodies, and it’s they who are expected to fairly represent the needs of their constituents,” so I get what Senator Addabbo is saying, here. So, is he being straight (um...) with us, or is he being disingenuous? Are there limits to representation? Is there a point where the representative’s own moral and ethical sense should kick in and override what he thinks his constituents want? Or is he obliged always to vote as the collective mind of his public?

Brian Lehrer tries to tease that out with a question, but the senator goes nowhere with it:

Lehrer: But if 74% of your callers said to deport all the Hispanics in your district, would you vote for that?

Addabbo: I think it’s a different issue, it’s apples and oranges. Each issue is very different, and certainly, as an elected official, I am the voice of the people of my district, in Albany. And certainly, we take issue by issue.

Lehrer: This is the basis on which to base a vote on civil rights?

Addabbo: You know what?: This is an issue that people have a strong opinion on, and with marriage equality it’s like the spokes of a wheel, there are conversations that you can have on this issue on many levels. Whether it be on the civil rights issue, on the religious issue, on the morality issue. It’s different issues, and it’s different for everyone. And I understand the magnitude of the issue and I understand what it meant to a lot of people... many of those people who had supported me. But, like I said, it makes me be put in a very serious situation, when I have to represent a district, and be their voice in Albany.

But it’s not “apples and oranges”; this is a serious point. How far would the senator take his — admittedly laudable — calling to fairly and rigorously represent his district, even by going against his own views to do so? The senator (probably wisely) refuses to say.

But what’s alarming, here, is that he’s now brought religion into the political arena, as he talks about the spokes of a wheel. One spoke is civil rights, another is religion, another (is it really another, or mostly an aspect of the second?) is morality. As I look at it from the point of view of how our government should be run, I don’t see the religious aspect as being relevant.

We can bring it partially into relevance, though, by saying that he isn’t making his decision based on religion, but based on the opinions of his constituency, and it’s their opinions that are rooted in religion. Can we really question people’s motivations for their stands, and only give credence to those that don’t emanate from piety? Is that reasonable, or even possible?

But when Mr Lehrer pushes one more time for some clue about where the limits to strict representation lie, Senator Addabbo’s answer, still not committing to anything, but telling in its lack of commitment, brings his whole point crashing down:

Lehrer: Do you consider this a civil rights issue?

Addabbo: I can see that argument. I can see the religious argument. I can see the morality argument. Again, I can see the argument on many levels. This issue has that many levels to it.

Lehrer: Do you believe personally that gay marriage should be legal?

Addabbo: You know what?: I’ve always kept my feelings personal, because I am but one opinion. And it’s really an issue that I don’t have strong convictions on either way. That’s why I did keep an open mind, I felt I was most neutral up until the end.

It was that statement that first had me understand that what he’s really doing is hiding behind his constituents on what is, city-wide, an unpopular vote. And the longer he talked, the more clear that became. By doing that, he hopes to have it both ways: he voted his mind, and he can say, “But don’t blame me; I was only doing my constituents’ bidding. Isn’t that what I was elected to do?”

Even as a public representative, one has also been elected to lead. Sometimes one has to take a stand — for civil rights, for public health and safety, for the good of the environment, for the well being of society as a whole — that’s not in line with what the residents of one’s own district want. In any case, whether it is or it isn’t, one should own the decision, and not pass it off with, “It’s them! They made me do it!”

Credit cards and guns in national parks

On Tuesday of last week (19 May), the U.S. Senate passed a bill tightening the rules by which credit card companies can raise interest rates. The bill passed by a vote of 90 to 5, quite substantial. There are many other provisions in it related to credit cards, designed to protect consumers from nasty practices by the lenders.

The bill, as passed by the Senate, also includes (according to the NPR report) an amendment allowing people to carry concealed guns in U.S. national parks.

This is related to the item I wrote some time ago, about a law against computer piracy that included an amendment designating the oak as the national tree. It’s a miserable way to make legislation. Take a bill that no one can be seen to be voting against — in this case, a law protecting consumers against evil lenders — and stick on some pet project, often something that would get little support otherwise, but not so bad that it’s worth being “the guy who voted against the consumer” to avoid.

And, of course, the public will mostly hear about the credit card stuff, and won’t really understand that someone made a deal and rammed a law through that allows people to pack weapons into national parks.

But it doesn’t matter whether it’s a concealed-carry law or the designation of the oak as the national tree. This is a miserable way to make legislation, and it has to stop.

To be sure, we’d have to be careful in how we stop it; we certainly can’t hog-tie the legislative process by forbidding amendments to proposed legislation, and it makes sense to have multiple related things in the same bill. But the key word there is “related”. The way to stop it is to forbid (or place strict restrictions on) the inclusion of unrelated items in the same bill. Computer piracy and oak trees are clearly unrelated. As are credit-card interest rates and the carrying of guns in national parks.

Unfortunately, it probably would be hard to specify exactly how closely connected two items have to be, and drawing the line clearly would be a challenge.

Unfortunately, too, this is an all-too-common way for legislators to make deals with each other. “I’ll vote for your bill if you put my little project onto it,” is a typical way for the wrangling to go, as one legislator needs a few more votes, and another needs a home for a small thing that would never get passed on its own.

When the pet project is of no great consequence, the practice is merely silly, perhaps a minor annoyance at worst. But when it involves something as important as whether or not visitors to our national parks are allowed to carry concealed arms, the consequences are great, and decision on such an item can’t be hidden within the vote on a larger bill.

Good riddance to a bad column

When William Kristol was given a regular column on the New York Times’s op-ed pages, there was a lot of criticism of the decision from us readers. A conservative columnist on a liberal op-ed page? What were they thinking?

But, really, having a conservative column to read isn’t a bad thing. One needs an opposing viewpoint to consider. One needs thoughtful opinions from the other side. I read George Will, sometimes, for example, and I used to enjoy a good William F. Buckley column when he was alive, whether or not I agreed with what he had to say.

No, the galling part was the choice of Mr Kristol, a “Fox News” type of conservative. William Kristol isn’t Michelle Malkin, say, nor Ann Coulter, either of whom would have taken them beyond the brink. But neither is he the sort of columnist I’d expect to find with a contrasting point of view that I’d want to read.

And so I was not surprised when he wasn’t. His columns haven’t been insightful nor entertaining. He hasn’t had anything to say that was worth the print space or the Internet bandwidth to carry it. The experiment was every bit as silly as I thought it’d be.

I am, therefore, happy to see that it’s coming to an end. William Kristol has written his last regular column for the New York Times.

And that last column is as useless as the ones that came before it. He praises Ronald Reagan for putting conservatism back in front of the country. He hopes that Barack Obama will bring in a conservative liberalism that he — Mr Kristol — can live with. Blather, blather, blather.

The Times won’t say what they’ll do about replacing his pen with another conservative one. They’ll only say that they have “some interesting plans.”

That they may. In any case, I won’t miss William Kristol’s column at all.

The veeps have at it

In the spirit of my post the other day, as I talk about last night’s debate I want to keep it to the substance. I’m finding it hard, though, because I find her accent, her manner, her expressions (“doggone it” and “you betcha”, for example), her mispronunciations (“eye-raq”, “eye-ran”, “noo-kya-lar”[1]), and her whiny voice to be so annoying that it’s hard to sit and listen, to pay attention, and not to run, screaming, from the room.

I actually think she did pretty well. She was certainly far better prepared than she had been for either Charles Gibson or Katie Couric, the latter having been a total disaster.

That said, she spent her time spewing talking points and making every fifth word either “John McCain” or “maverick”. I didn’t get any new information from her, and she repeated a bunch of the usual lies. For example, she gave the standard claim that Barack Obama voted against funding the troops, a shameful thing that John McCain would never do. Senator Biden corrected that, pointing out that John McCain also voted against that bill, and that it was because of the other stuff tacked onto the bill (in McCain’s case, the withdrawal timeline). For example, she said that John McCain’s health care plan is “budget neutral” because it’s gives a $5000 tax credit to people to use for buying medical insurance. Say what? How does taking $5000 per person of tax money away not affect the budget. Senator Biden cleared that up.

She often didn’t answer the questions given to her, but instead addressed the points that she’d planned to make. Unfortunately, Ms Ifill didn’t hold Ms Palin to the questions. In fact, there was one point where Ms Palin explicitly said that she was not going to answer the question, but had her own stuff to say. And she was allowed to.

One key question that she ducked was whether she would put no restrictions on the rights of same-sex couples. The two agreed that they would not support “marriage” here (sigh), but while Senator Biden clearly said that he would have homosexual couples treated exactly the same as heterosexual ones in law and civil rights, Governor Palin only said that she’s “tolerant” of homosexual couples, and gave a couple of examples of things they should be allowed to do (enter into contracts as couples, have hospital “family” visitation rights). When Mr Biden said it seemed they agreed, and Ms Ifill pressed her to confirm that, she did not, but instead repeated her more limited stand. I bet many people didn’t notice the dodge.

It seemed to me that Senator Biden answered the questions more rigorously, and I didn’t find myself throwing any, “But he didn’t answer the question!” bricks at the TV. He corrected Ms Palin when he could, though the format didn’t always allow that.

Of course, he, too, came with talking points, which he fit in as he could. And he, too, mentioned the top of his ticket quite often, though more so at the beginning than later.

I did like the part where Mr Biden had about had it with the “maverick” thing, and spent a couple of minutes pointing out how un-maverick-like Senator McCain has been.

While he addressed the moderator’s questions more directly, and was less obviously parroting talking points, I have to say that I didn’t get any useful information from him either. It’s all the same stuff we’ve been hearing over and over again. The only purpose of this “debate” was to see if Sarah Palin could avoid falling on her face, and she succeeded in not doing so. Apart from that, it was 90 minutes of nothing.

I will add that both candidates were respectful to each other.

I’ll also add that I continue to be amazed that the media are allowing Sarah Palin to keep saying that the McCain/Palin ticket represents a change from “Washington insiders”, when John McCain has been in Congress for almost 26 years and is in no sense an “outsider”. They really need to start calling bullshit on that line, and stop letting the campaign get away with it.
 

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[1] On “noo-kya-lar”, I’d really like to hear from a speech therapist, because I figure there has to be something truly hard about that for some people. It’s not just the Bad Guys who say it that way; in addition to Bush and Palin, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale also said “noo-kya-lar”, and Carter even has a physics degree and studied nuclear power. I have to think that if it were easy to fix this pronunciation, at least one of those people would have.

Going to the candidates’ debate

I watched Friday night’s “debate”. I hadn’t planned to, but I did. What I saw was actually better than I’d expected: a set of core questions that each candidate had two minutes of uninterrupted time to address — and they generally did address the questions at hand, despite not having known in advance what they would be (though none were real surprises), and time with each question to discuss and rebut. It was almost like a proper debate, certainly more so than others in recent years.

I was very surprised by Senator McCain’s manner. Senator Obama came across as confident, secure, and presidential, while Senator McCain just appeared to be lame, not at all in control and not specific enough in his answers. I was puzzled.

Then I read James Hanley’s analysis of what purpose the debates serve (written Friday morning, but I hadn’t had time to read it and it sat in a browser tab until Saturday), and he hits the problem exactly with this:

That stuff just doesn’t give you any idea who would be a more capable president, so it doesn’t help anyone make an informed decision.

And of course the mass media almost solely focuses on who “won” and who “lost” the debates, treating them as wholly self-contests, with little regard for what they really reveal—if anything—about a candidate’s presidential qualifications. And winning is a wholly relative term, based on how the candidates are expected to perform. You don’t have to do well to win, you just have to do better than expected, which means that if you’re expected to be a clueless dolt, you can win just by not misprouncing “nucular” too badly. That’s why we get the candidates’ campaigns doing their best to create very low expectations.

Well, yes, of course. That’s it. High school debate teams “win” or “lose” their debates on how they’ve put together and conducted their arguments, and they are assigned different sides of an issue to debate. In those debates, the participants score points, and we tally them... but that’s not what these debates are supposed to be about.

These are supposed to be telling us where the candidates stand on the issues of the day, and giving them a chance to challenge each other’s stand right there in front of us. And, in fact, this debate did much more of that than most others have done.

And yet as soon as it was over, I started seeing things pop up in the news media and in the blogs... telling us who “won” on each question, and overall. But it’s not a question of winning and losing; it’s a question of giving you and me the information we need in order to choose between them in the election. Senator Obama might have appeared more in control of the question about the economy, but if you don’t agree with his plan, that’s what matters. Senator McCain may have succeeded in beating Senator Obama up for being willing to “sit across the table” from Iranian President Ahmadinejad, saying that doing so “legitimizes” everything the latter has said... but if you think that’s a ridiculous bucket of hog-spittle, has he “won” that question?

If we really want informed voters, both the voters and the news media have to stop trying to bring everything down to a check mark in one column or another. It’s not black and white, it’s not sound bites, it’s not a zero-sum game.[1] It’s a complex set of issues, and we have to think about them. And the media have to help get us the information we really need to think about.

Laugh about it, shout about it,
When you’ve got to choose;
Every way you look at it, you lose.

— Paul Simon, “Mrs Robinson”

 

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[1] Well, the election is a zero-sum game, of course. But the issues, and the candidates’ and voters’ views on them aren’t.

I told you so...

It wasn’t rocket science, and I wasn’t the only one that said it, but back in March, I said this:

What’s worse, though, is that she’s actually telling us that if Senator Obama winds up with the Democratic nomination, we’d be better off voting for Senator McCain. Sure, look at what she’s said: Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience behind him, and all Senator Obama has to offer us is one lousy anti-war speech. We’d have to be crazy to go for that over more than 70 years of experience!

Is that really the message she wants to leave us with, should she happen to lose her bid for the nomination?

And, well, yes, now Senator Clinton appears — not by her choice, to be sure — in a campaign ad for John McCain. The ad shows clips of Ms Clinton criticizing Senator Obama. The “lifetime of experience” comment that I noted in March is not in that ad, but it’s being re-aired along side it in news items about the ad campaign.

Senator Clinton’s office, of course, ignores the problem and says that the senator supports Mr Obama, as though she’s done so all along:

Hillary Clinton’s support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn’t. It’s interesting how those remarks didn’t make it into his ad.

Yes, well. It seemed pretty clear that the attacks in the primary season were not going to serve the party well now. And they aren’t.

And I did tell you so.

No liberal option

Damn.

There’s just no real liberal option. Starting on 20 January 2009, our country will be run by one right-leaning president or another. It’s just a question of how far to the right he’ll lean.

I can’t possible choose Senator McCain, for many obvious reasons. That leaves me to choose Senator Obama (or to toss my vote in the bin by voting for some minor-party candidate who has no chance of winning, just to make a statement).

That means I have to vote for someone who opposes same-sex marriage.

But his campaign said that Mr. Obama’s opposition to the initiative, which will appear on the state’s November ballot, did not signal a change in position. He remains opposed to same-sex marriage, but supports civil unions and domestic partnerships.

That means I have to vote for someone who still wants restrictions on abortion, contravening the choice of the mother, and threatening her health.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says “mental distress” should not qualify as a justification for late-term abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights.

In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

That means I have to vote for someone who thinks that religion belongs in our government and the programs it supports.

Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that if elected president he would expand the delivery of social services through churches and other religious organizations, vowing to achieve a goal he said President Bush had fallen short on during his two terms.

(and here)

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

That means I have to vote for someone who now supports making it easier for the government to spy on Americans, and giving immunity to companies that agreed to an illegal request for private information.

Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.

Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision.

That means I have to vote for someone who agrees with the conservatives on the Supreme Court — the four Bush-41 and Bush-43 appointees — that the death penalty is OK in cases of child rape, going against the decision of the majority of the court, including the liberals and centrists.

Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said, “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, that the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution.” He added that the Supreme Court should have set conditions for imposing the death penalty for the crime, “but it basically had a blanket prohibition, and I disagree with the decision.”

To be sure, Senator McCain’s stand on all these issues is worse, much farther to the right, and to be sure, I agree with Senator Obama on other things. Still... what happened to Mr Liberal, Mr Change?

Damn.

John Hall responds about impeachment

When Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made his latest proposal of articles of impeachment against King George, I wrote my congressman, John Hall (D-NY). Representative Hall’s office responded fairly quickly (within a day or two), with a detailed reply. It’s canned, to be sure — a staffer surely scanned my message, said, “Ah, pro-impeachment,” and, with a couple of mouse clicks, sent me their standard pro-impeachment response.

Still, I’m pleased to have gotten a response, and I’m pleased that they have taken the trouble to have a detailed response ready to send. I might have gotten a content-free “Thank you for participating in the democratic process,” message, which I’ve received from members of congress in the past. (And, while I also sent a message to Nancy Pelosi’s Speaker-of-the-House mailbox, I’ve seen no reply from her office at all.)

Here is Representative Hall’s reply:

June 13, 2008

Dear Mr. Leiba,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your desire to see impeachment charges brought against Members of the Bush Administration. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important Constitutional issue.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has led our country in the wrong direction and it will take years for us to recover from the damage it has done to our country and to our reputation around the world. The list of its transgressions and mistakes is a long one. The Bush-Cheney Administration took us into a devastating war in Iraq based on misleading statements and false information, has undermined the criminal justice system, weakened Constitutional protections for U.S. citizens, and created staggering federal deficits with its misplaced priorities and reckless federal spending. It has condoned the use of torture and illegal wiretapping, and attacked the Constitutional separation of powers.

Congress has a responsibility to hold the Bush-Cheney Administration accountable and to investigate the Administration’s abuses of power and their root sources. We must thoroughly look into the process leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the way in which the American people and the Congress were misled.

To these ends, I have co-sponsored the following legislation since I came to the House of Representatives in January 2007:

—H. Res. 417 to express no confidence in former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

—H. Res. 530 to censure President Bush for his role in revealing the identity of a covert CIA employee and for commuting the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

—H. Res. 625 to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for misleading the American people about the basis for war in Iraq.

—H. Res. 626 to censure President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for ignoring federal statute, the Constitution, and undermining the separation of powers.

—H. Res. 689 to call on the President to urge full cooperation from former political appointees in ongoing Congressional investigations.

—H.R. 3045 to void any signing statements by the President.

—I strongly support Chairman Conyers’ effort to hold former Administration officials in contempt for refusing to testify in ongoing Congressional hearings.

I vehemently opposed the legislation, S. 1927, passed by both chambers of Congress in August to expand the government’s ability to listen in on foreign conversations, without approval of the special court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, the House has recently passed H.R. 3773 to fix the mistakes in S. 1927-including greater court oversight of wiretapping and improved protections for the rights of Americans.

I believe that I was elected in 2006 by voters who urgently want change in Washington, and an end to the disastrous Bush-Cheney policies. Clearly much remains to be done, however in the past year the House has passed important legislation that includes: A fiscal 2008 budget plan with new controls to ensure fiscal responsibility; homeland security measures proposed by the 9/11 Commission, such as broader screening of cargo bound for the United States, more support for cities at high risk of attack, and improved communications systems for emergency workers so they can better coordinate during an attack or natural disaster; meaningful ethics and lobbying reforms; a far-reaching energy package designed to wean America off its dependence on oil; improvements to child health insurance coverage for low-income families; the first minimum wage increase in a decade; a measure allowing broader stem cell research; and legislation to help students handle soaring college costs and to crack down on misconduct in the student loan industry. I will continue to work as long and hard as it takes to see all of these measures become law despite opposition from the White House.

I understand why many people believe that impeachment of Vice President Cheney or President Bush would be justified, but I do not believe that our country should be put through an impeachment proceeding at this time. Further, it is apparent that no article of impeachment would result in a conviction in the Senate. The process would be extremely disruptive to efforts to pass substantive legislation to block further abuses by the Bush-Cheney Administration and efforts to pass legislation to help solve problems for American families.

On Nov. 6, 2007, I voted with a majority of the House to send H. Res. 799-a resolution outlining articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney, to the Judiciary Committee to consider. Although I share many Americans’ deep frustration with the actions of the Bush Administration, taking this resolution directly to the House floor bypassed the Judiciary Committee and would have subverted procedures for introducing impeachment findings. I believe this would have created a dangerous precedent for future Congresses. In addition, the resolution itself cited actions which, while outrageous, do not meet the Constitutional standard for impeachment of “treason, high crimes or misdemeanors.”

A number of House Committees including Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform have launched continuing investigations and oversight hearings into the activities of the Bush-Cheney Administration and dramatically increased accountability, which was completely lacking in the previous Republican-led Congress. As these investigations proceed, Congress must take strong action to address illegal conduct.

Again, thank you for contacting me. If I can be of any further assistance in the future please do not hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,John HallMember of Congress

OK, he spends most of the letter telling what he’s done in the area of reining the administration in. The two key paragraphs, though, are the ones near the end — the one beginning with “I understand why many people believe that impeachment of Vice President Cheney or President Bush would be justified,” and the one after that.

In those paragraphs, Representative Hall makes these significant points:

1. We should not put the country through an impeachment proceeding.
2. It’ll never get through the Senate anyway.
3. It would get in the way of other things that we’re working on to stop the abuses of power.
4. Representative Kucinich didn’t follow the right process. That leaves us open to impeachment abuse in the future.
5. Some of the articles described things that were “outrageous”, but not outrageous enough.

Most of those are red herrings — it’s never a good time to put the country through it, but when it’s needed, it’s needed; even if it fails in the Senate, it will have made the statement that has to be made about accountability and acceptance of abuse of power; the proper process was blocked by the Democratic leadership, and it’s neither unprecedented nor improper for him to take it to the floor; even if not all of the articles are outrageous enough on their own, enough are, and the whole thing is in the aggregate.

But there’s one argument there, number 3, that I put in bold, that has a new spin to me — that is worth thinking about.

Yes, I’ve heard the argument before that impeachment would be a distraction from real work; that’s not what’s new. What’s new is the claim that Congress is doing stuff to address and redress the abuses of power — stuff that will actually succeed, more than any impeachment trial would — and that impeachment proceedings will derail those efforts.

I have to think about that, and look at what it is they’re doing. I’m not yet convinced. But Congressman Hall has given me something new to think about.

For Obama, not just against McCain?

Over in Peace, Love, and Understanding, Lidija asks to be convinced why she should vote for Barack Obama, should he become the Democratic nominee. She wants reasons other than, “You have to vote for the Democrat, you have to vote against McCain.” She knows that. She wants something she can tell people, something that says why one should vote for Senator Obama, rather than just against someone else.

(And we’re not talking about Obama vs Clinton, here — the question makes the assumption that Obama becomes the nominee, and we have to turn around Clinton supporters who have taken in her message that Obama is wrong-bad-evil-awful-wrong.)

Sigh.

That you ask that shows that his campaign has gotten lost in the sound bites and slogans, and that’s a shame. I’m really getting tired of this primary election morass — it’s a destructive disaster. We have to fix the system.

The short answer is that when you look at where he stands on the various issues, you mostly agree with him on most of them, and you certainly agree with him way more than you do with McCain. And when you look at what he says that he plans to do (and get people to do), he’s mostly right on most of it.

For the longer answer, we go to his web site and look at the details.

And we find that his web site has been turned into a flashy pile of fluff, sitting on a foundation of crap. It, too, is lost in the bites and the slogans, hoping to catch people without making them think (or read) too much. Sigh, again.

He used to have a good web site, one that really told you, up front and readily, what he was about. You could see what he planned and where he stood, and you could see that you agree with him. Now he opens with that “Change!” silliness and offers to send text messages of hope to your mobile, and the whole site looks like something out of a bad movie.

Anyway, go here:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
and look at what he says about the issues. If you can stomach the glitter and the soft heaven-blue.

Good points: Iraq, technology, immigration, civil rights, environment, economy (mostly).

Bad point: He’s wrong about his plan for health care. But so’s Senator Clinton, I’m afraid, and so’s Senator McCain. The problem is that no one will push for the only thing that makes sense: a universal, single-payer system that covers everyone... full stop.

Stupid points: Faith and Family. Oh, please.

The trouble is that the web site makes it all motherhood. It’s now aimed more at saying that Barack Obama will solve all the world’s problems while he stands on one foot at the right hand of God, rather than giving a real assessment of what’s what.

It’s front-runner disease. When you’re an upstart, you’re real. When you’re ahead, you turn into a media machine.

Sigh, one more time.

Cowboy politics, not limited to Spurious George

From NPR’s Morning Edition today, reporting about the candidates’ appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows:

NPR: For Hillary Clinton, it was ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, who once worked for her husband. He asked her about her backing of a summertime suspension of an 18-cents-a-gallon federal gas tax, something Obama opposes:

GS: Can you name one economist, a credible economist, who supports this suspension?

HRC: Well, you know, George, I think we’ve been, for the last seven years, seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven’t worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans.

Allow me to substitute, for Mrs Clinton’s response, a real response to Mr Stephanopoulos’s question:

GS: Can you name one economist, a credible economist, who supports this suspension?

HRC: Well, you know, George... No, I can’t. So I’m going to attack the question instead.

Think about her answer for a moment, and see if it sounds somewhat familiar: Senator Clinton says that she knows better than experts in the field. She says that we should ignore those who know what they’re talking about, and accept her statement that this is the right thing to do. She can’t name one, single bit of credible support for what she says, so she dismisses the criticism as coming from the “elite” (for which we might substitute “scientists”), and trots out the trite “hard-working Americans” phrase that’s guaranteed to bring a few cheers from people who don’t think about it too much.

Have we heard that from someone else recently? Through much of the last seven years, say? I almost expected her to tell us that those who oppose her plan are on the side of the terrorists, and hate freedom.

No, I’m not saying that Mrs Clinton compares with King George. But her rhetoric is starting to sound scarily like his. Be careful, Senator.

One hard-working American in the audience on Sunday had it just right:

“Call me crazy,” the young woman said, “but I actually listen to economists because they know what they studied.”

Arianna Huffington talks to Leonard Lopate

Local radio talk-show host Leonard Lopate recently had Arianna Huffington on his show. I’ve just gotten to listen to the podcast of it. I find the Huffington Post to be a strange conglomeration, and don’t follow it much, but I was interested in and amused by her talk with Leonard Lopate.

My favourite quotes from the radio show:

[On the republican party.]
AH: Well, you know, what’s happening is that there is a huge, huge difference between the party of Ronald Reagan — and God knows, there’s plenty to criticize there — and the party of George Bush, that has been taken over by the lunatic fringe of the right. They are the people who don’t believe in evolution, and believe in torture.

[On the media’s playing along.]
AH: The so-called mainstream media have basically internalized a lot of the right-wing talking points, and we saw that at the ABC debate where George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, hardly members of the right, asked completely trivial, unnecessary questions about lapel pins and sixties radicals. We saw it when the New York Times...

LL: Wait, let’s stop for a second. Do you think they did that because they saw it as signs of integrity? They were going to ask the tough questions, even if they, perhaps, didn’t think that those were important issues?

AH: I don’t consider them tough questions. I consider them trivializing questions. And as a result, the tough questions were not asked. The tough questions are, “What are we going to do about Iraq?” and “How are we going to deal with the housing crisis?” These are the truly tough questions.

[On “equal time for lies”.]
AH: There aren’t two sides to global warming. There are multiple sides as to what to do about global warming. But for years, and still now, we are debating global warming as though it’s legitimate to have on the one hand, say, Al Gore talking about the dangers of global warming, and on the other hand Senator James Inhofe telling us that global warming is a fraud. And that’s what I call the Pontius Pilate media, you know, washing their hands off and saying “Work it out.”

LL: I actually had somebody explain that he should have two sides of the Holocaust denial story on, because where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And also because if somebody is arguing the other case, he should get an airing.

AH: That is unbelievable to me, honestly, I think that... We are not debating whether the Earth is flat. We are not debating whether it is legitimate to burn women as witches. You know, there is a time when certain decisions are made, and certain issues are settled.

[...]

There is no question that Iraq has been the most tragic foreign policy decision this country has ever made. It is a complete debacle. And yet the media continue to report it as a “mixed bag.” Which is true only in the sense that if you go to a doctor, and the doctor tells you that you have a brain tumour, but at the same time your acne has improved, then you go away considering the diagnosis a “mixed bag.” There is no sense in which Iraq is a mixed bag.