Hypocrisy thy name is the Religious Right

If there was ever any doubt that the Radical Religious Right organizations were simply fronts for the Rovian Republican machine rather than the keepers of "moral values" that doubt has been eliminated by their silence on the Jeff Gannon affair.
Why have the 'traditional family values' folks erected a wall of silence around the Gannon scandal?

They were livid over SpongeBob Square Pants' participation in a video advocating tolerance, and fuming about Buster the Bunny's visit to a lesbian household. So where's the outrage from the Christian right over the Jeff Gannon Affair? Despite a chunk of time having passed since the Gannon Affair was first uncovered, Christian right organizations are still cloaked in silence. As of February 24, there wasn't any news about the Gannon Affair available on the Web sites of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, or the Traditional Values Coalition. As best as I could determine, no special alerts about the Gannon Affair have been issued; and no campaigns have been launched to get to the bottom of the matter.

Bill Berkowitz called Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, The Traditional Values Coalition, The Free Congress Foundation, Town Hall, American Family Association, Charisma News Service and the Christian Response Network. He received no comment or did not get a call back from any of them. A wall of silence.

Unable to speak with representatives from Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition, I turned to Joe Conn of American United for Separation of Church and State and John Aravosis, the creator of Americablog.

In a telephone interview, Conn said he wasn't surprised that there hasn't been any response from Christian right organizations because "The religious right is pretty much a team player when it comes to the Bush Administration. Unless it's an issue like same-sex marriage -- a core issue of their agenda -- they will give the president a pass."

"Clearly this is an example of the religious right's hypocrisy," Conn point out. "If it was Bill Clinton they would be in total uproar."

Via e-mail, I asked Aravosis why he thought the Christian right was being silent about the Gannon Affair.

"Because they're hypocrites," he wrote in an e-mail. "They know this scandal is hurting Bush and they put politics ahead of their God. That's how petty and un-Christian they are."

"Morale Values" NO, political hackery YES; that's the real Religious Right.

Will it stick this time? To Delay that is.

Via Preemptive Karma

The Raw Story reports that the National Journal will have an article today reporting that Tom (the bugman) Delay has once again been caught with his hand in the forbidden cookie jar.

National Journal has obtained a copy of an expense voucher that Abramoff filed the law firm where he was then a leading lobbyist, Stone reports.

"Among the big-ticket expenses that Abramoff listed for reimbursement was a bill for the DeLays at the Four Seasons Hotel in London in the amount of $4,285.35," Stone writes. "The voucher shows that the total reimbursement for expenses was $13,318.50. For some reason, it shows that both Abramoff and Buckham were owed that amount.

"The voucher shows that Abramoff was accompanied by DeLay and his wife; Hirschmann and her husband; and Ed Buckham, DeLay’s former chief of staff who had also become a lobbyist," Stone continues.

"Abramoff's voucher lists the purpose of the trip as "client relations" and names "MS Choctaw" as the client account to which the expenses were allocated," Stone notes. "At the time, Abramoff and Preston Gates were representing the Mississippi Choctaws, a tribe that runs casinos. "

Stone notes that Abramoff and his wife personally have personally contributed $40,000 to DeLay's campaigns and his political action committee in the last eight years, citing the Center for Responsive Politics.

House rules stipulate that members or members' employees cannot accept payment from a registered lobbyist to cover travel costs.

Will it stick? There are rumblings that many Republicans have had about enough of Delay's nonsense and are beginning to look at him as a liability. He who lives by hubris eventually dies by hubris. Is the "bugman's" time up?

Some thoughts on war, protest and losing your cool

I have a great deal of respect for Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice but I did take him to task this morning. I perhaps became upset with Joe because I do respect him after he directed me to and seemingly endorsed an inflammatory post by one Smash at The Indepundit.
I have opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning and know many really good people who did as well. We all do all we can to support the troops. Mr Smash inferred that we were all guilty of sedition which sent me over the edge, and yes I lost my cool. I am not a pacifist and in fact supported the invasion of Afghanistan.
One of my complaints with the mis-adventure in Iraq was it took needed resources away from Afghanistan and allowed it to become a failed narco-state. And that is what it is in spite of a "feel good" election. Most of the country remains under the control of narco-warlords, the Taliban and yes, al-Queda.
The reasons given for the invasion of Iraq have been many and most have evaporated as the truth became known. I remain convinced that the real reason was economic imperialism. America's finest should not be maimed and die for Exxon-Mobile, Halliburton etc. So Joe, I still respect you and will continue to read you but I still think you were wrong when you endorsed Smash's post. I expect some nonsense from the likes of Smash but I must admit I was disappointed in you.

Conflicted at Heart

10 Voters on Panel Backing Pain Pills Had Industry Ties (free registration required bien sur)

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs' makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

Well, hell. I was really excited about the results of that vote. I don't take any of these medications, but I know plenty of folks who do, some of whom have been taking them for years, and I know what a great job they do on arthritic pain.

Let me talk this out, see how I feel. It's true that a panel of drug advisers with no ties to any of the companies that make any of the drugs is almost impossible to find. It's also true that the restoration of these drugs to the market will mean huge profits for these companies. Thing is, I had already decided myself from the information published that yes, there's a risk there, but it's the sort of risk that can be factored in my your doctor. They can look at you, and your history, and decide if these drugs are too dangerous for you. If your doctor decides that they're not, and that they can significantly improve your quality of life, then I' say go for it.

You know, I'm always glad when I can talk something out in my head like this. Seeing it now, I understand that I think that these drugs should indeed be available to the public. If the vote turned out that way purely because of the greed factor, well, then, I guess I think that the greed factor happened to fortuitously be on the right side of the fence today, and everyone can be happy.

Disappointed in Joe Gandelman

Jazz and I both have a great deal of respect for Joe Gandelman over at The Moderate Voice, but he has done what we expect Faux News to do, emphasized the very worst of the antiwar movement while giving no mention to the vast majority who are protesting this awful illegal war. He did this by sending his readers over to what sounds like the Iraq version of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth", The Indepundit. The Indepundit went to an anti war rally in San Diego and allegedly heard the following:

I want to talk today about how we're actually going to stop the occupation. I don't have a plan, but I think there's some key strategies that we need to adopt, that are gonna make this more successful.
And the first thing is that we need to support the resistance of Iraqis in Iraq. These are people who are risking their lives to get the United States out of their country. And we have to see them as our allies. We have to see them as our main allies.

Similarly, we have to support resistance in the US military. Soldiers, and you know, anyone - families who are actually opposing the war, we need to be on their side.

If you recall, there's one time in the last 30 years when the US military machine was brought down, during Vietnam, and it was brought down because there was a fierce resistance in Vietnam, and because the soldiers were refusing to fight...

Now I don't doubt that he heard this but the majority who oppose the war in Irag would find this offensive. The entire anti war movement has been made to look like a bunch of US troop hating wingnuts. I was in the military during the height of the Vietnam War, 1968-1972. I heard stories about troops being cursed and spit on; that was the picture that was painted of war protestors during that illegal war. I don't doubt that it happened but I never saw it. The protestors I saw were caring people who opposed an unwinable war. We have the right wing blogs and Faux news to paint inaccurate pictures of war protestors. We don't need a "Moderate Voice" doing it.
Edit
Follow up above.

Democracy is Messy

"The best worst laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy."
Robert Burns

Juan Cole has a commentary in The LA Times today, The Downside of Democracy, where he discusses that freedom and democracy in Iraq are not producing what the neocons had in mind. Anyone who had even one foot in the world of reality could have predicted that the "freedom" the Iraqis want does not resemble the "freedom" Bush and the neocons had in mind. They are learning that Rumsfeld was right about at least one thing, "Democracy in Messy".

With the emergence of Shiite physician Ibrahim Jafari as the leading candidate for Iraqi prime minister earlier this week, the contradictions of Bush administration policy in the Middle East have become even clearer than they were before.

President Bush says he is committed to democratizing the region, yet he also wants governments to emerge that are friendly to the U.S., benevolent to their own people, secular, capitalist and willing to stand up and fight against anti-American radicals.

But what if democratic elections do not produce such governments? What if the newly elected regimes are friendly to states and groups that Washington considers enemies? What if the spread of democracy through the region empowers elements that don't share American values and goals?

Well it looks like we are about to find out.

The recent election in Iraq is a case in point. The two major parties in the victorious Shiite alliance are Jafari's party, the Dawa, founded in the late 1950s to work for an Islamic republic, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the goal of which can be guessed from its name. To be fair, both have backed away from their more radical stances of earlier decades. But both parties - and Jafari himself - were sheltered in Tehran in the 1980s by Washington's archenemy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and both acknowledge that they want to move Iraq toward Islamic law and values.

The neocons showed that they were totally divorced from reality when they thought that a freely elected government in the middle east would produce a pro western, pro Israel government. So how will the Bush administration react to what can only be described as setbacks?

Are such outcomes acceptable to the Bush administration? If not, how will it respond? Given the war on terror, it is unlikely to simply take these electoral setbacks lying down.

But if Washington falls back on its traditional responses - covert operations, attempts to interfere in parliamentary votes with threats or bribes, or dependence on strong men like Musharraf - the people of the Middle East might well explode, because the only thing worse than living under a dictatorship is being promised a democracy and then not really getting it.

From Middle Earth Journal

Charles and Camilla

I know we don't go for gossip much here, but I am a die-hard Anglophile who does like to keep track of the doings of the Royals a bit.

I have never been fond of Camilla, nor of Charles for carrying on with a married woman for years. Now that they're both divorced, I won't begrudge them their happiness of getting married, but I am glad they are trying to do it quietly, and doing it in such a way that Camilla will never be Queen.

I have been in favor of their morganatic marriage for some time, even though England does not usually recognize such. It's obvious that they will not be having any children, and we already have the Heir and the Spare, so no need to fuss over bestowing titles and duties on her- She should do what she can to support her beloved and not fuss over the stress of the rest.

More pertinent to our blog is this lovely bit of gossip that that has Bush refusing to allow Camilla to dine with him at the White House because she's divorced. If Bush really did forbid her because of her divorced status, he'd find the dining room thin of company most evenings at the White House. Frankly, I'd love to meet a member of the Royal Family- Camilla or no Camilla.

Things that keep me up at night

A frined mine sent me this link about a list of HIV patients being shared where it shouldn't.

There are rules in place that are supposed to be preventing that sort of thing, which is why the company went overboard trying to recall the company-wide email with the list. But who knows what those 10 people who did receive the information will do with it.

But what it is that should frighten you is the ease of which such information can be spread. Modern technology is a double-edged sword- it's good to have various medical teams sharing information about what you have been through- but it's scary to think of how that can be tapped into and shared.

Hillary Clinton--Political Hack?

Juan Cole reports that Hillary Clinton made some inappropriate comments while in Baghdad.

Stephen Farrell reports for the London Times that a minor tiff occurred last week between Senator Hillary Clinton and prime ministerial candidate Ibrahim Jaafari:

Last week Hillary Clinton, the New York senator, visiting Baghdad, said that there were ---grounds both for concern and for . . . vigilance--- about Dr al-Jaafari's Iranian connections. Clearly irritated, the candidate --- at present Iraq's Vice-President --- brushed aside the remark yesterday. "We are not at an American traffic light to be given a red or green signal. I am speaking on behalf of a collective decision. I will stop when the Iraqi people say to stop," he said. "Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American Administration and I don't know why she said this. She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation.

I take it that Hilary is laying out a Democratic Party strategy for the 2008 elections, which may well argue that Bush lost Iraq to Iran through his incompetence. The argument probably implies that Jaafari as a Muslim fundamentalist is not only close to Iran but will pursue policies and legislation that hurt women.

These points are not without some validity. But maybe Baghdad just after the elections wasn't the best time and place for her to criticize positive feelings toward Iran on the part of Shiite politicians (which, I have pointed out, is sort of like criticizing the Irish for feeling positively about the Vatican). Jaafari is an Iraqi patriot and he has a right to be offended at the idea that he might be a puppet for Tehran. Still, it does seem inevitable that some canny Democrat will figure out that the US public has severe doubts about the Iraq adventure, and find a way to parlay that into political advantage.

Jaafari for his part was ill-advised to lash out at Hilary. If he becomes prime minister, he will need a good working relationship with the US Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Although she is probably correct it was not the right time to say it. I have always seen Hillary as nothing but an opportunist political hack and this is just a further indication of that.

A rebuttal

You cannot blame me for the Christmas cat dishtowels- they were a gift from the parental units, and they seem to like giving holiday things. I just don't see a point in storing things to be used special for only part of the year.

As for the egg-timer thing, I find it useful. My mother taught me to hard boil eggs for 15-minutes. But is that 15 minutes after the water has started boiling? Or 15 minutes after you put the pan on the stove? And if I forget the timer, oh the disasters! I have had to put up with that ugly green ring around the boiled egg yolk which I dislike intesnsely, and the barely cooked through centers, which are just as off-putting. I've walked into the kitchen too many times and realized there's a boiling pot on the stove, and the conversation usually goes:
"Honey, how long have these eggs been boiling?"
"I don't know."
"Has it been long enough?"
"I'm not sure."
"OK, I'll leave them then, but don't forget them!"
This conversation sometimes happens when I am the one who started the pot of eggs on the stove.

The final straw for me was one time when I forgot the timer, and all of the water boiled out of the pot. Did you know eggshells can burn? That's why I bought the eggtimer.

And I use it.

Iraq to Bush, get lost!

The selection of Interim Vice President Ibraham Jafari as the Shiite candidate to be Iraq's next prime minister is an indication of Washington's Waning Influence in Iraq.

The haggling that culminated in the selection of Interim Vice President Ibraham Jafari as the Shiite candidate to be Iraq's next prime minister illustrates the limits of Washington's influence over the country's new government.

After weeks of behind the scenes negotiations, Jafari prevailed over two candidates who had more support in Washington: one-time darling of the Pentagon turned Shiite nationalist Ahmed Chalabi and finance minister Adel Abdel Mahdi.

The administration's first choice was Adel Abdel Mahdi. Mahdi has openly criticized the US media for painting an unflattering picture of the situation is Iraq and was in favor of giving US oil companies a piece of the action in Iraq.

The administration's second choice would have been Chalabi, probably they figure he could be bought.

The winner, Ibraham Jafari, cannot be a happy choice for the Bush administration.

Jafari is the leader of the Dawa Party, "a conservative religious Shiite group that is one of the country's largest political parties," reports Voice of America He gets good press in Iran where he spent 10 years in exile. The conservative Tehran Times recently ran a favorable Agence France Presse profile describing Jafari as a "Shiite modernist" who was "among the first to organize demonstrations opposing the presence of U.S.-led troops on Iraqi soil."

I wouldn't be spending a lot of money on those "permanent" military bases or counting any of that oil money just yet. It would seem that Mr. Bush has pretty limited "political capitol" both here and in Iraq.

Thanks to Bill in DC

Well *That's* a Relief!

Bush Says Talk of U.S. Attack on Iran 'Ridiculous'

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union (news - web sites) leaders.
...

*Whew*! That's a load off my mind!

He noted that European countries were negotiating with Tehran to seek a peaceful end to its uranium enrichment activities but added: "Having said that, all options are on the table."

Oh. Never mind.

Whatever was I thinking, believing that GWB had actually made a statement that was in any way straightforward.

Ridiculous, indeed.

C'Mon, Get Psychotic ...

Wow. Evidently Osama bin Laden looked like a member of the Partridge Family when he was a kid.

Osama bin Laden's best weapon, George W. Bush

The neoconservatives’ goal is the same as Osama bin Laden’s – to spread instability in the Middle East. The neocons seek to foment instability in order to justify more US invasions in an insane quest to remake the Middle East in the American image. Bin Laden seeks instability in order to topple the secular rulers and recreate Islamic rule. Bin Laden does not want US troops out. He wants to suck America in deeper in order to create revolutionary insurgency throughout the Middle East.

We have discussed over at MEJ how Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has played Bush like a fiddle. Now Paul Craig Roberts explains how Osama bin Laden has been doing the same in his commentary Bush Outfoxed By Bin Laden.

President Bush’s invasion has turned Iraq into a recruiting and training ground for anti-US terrorists, according to CIA director Porter Goss in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 16. Goss’ report was supported by Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Jacoby told the committee that "our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment." The Iraq insurgency, Jacoby reported, has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" with daily attacks increasing 240%.

The situation, in other words, is out of control. 150,000 American troops are tied down by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. The recent Iraq election was won by Shi’ites allied with Iran. US casualties continue to mount, and our troops can seldom tell friend from foe.

Why isn’t Bush looking for a way out of the greatest strategic blunder in American history? Why, instead, is Bush and his government doing all they can to spread the conflict into Syria and Iran?

Why indeed, and Bush continues to pile mistake on mistake.

The Bush administration is moronic enough to oblige bin Laden. In a recent 24-hour period the Bush administration made the following mistakes:

The Bush administration blamed Syria for the recent assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, recalled the US ambassador to Syria, and demanded that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon. In public statements, administration officials have accused Iran of being close to producing nuclear weapons despite all evidence to the contrary. VP Cheney suggested that Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear installations, and President Bush said Israel had the right to preemptive attack and that the US would support Israel.

There is no evidence that Syria is responsible for the assassination. The International Atomic Energy Agency conducts regular inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities and reports that there are no weapons violations. France, Germany and Russia have reached the same conclusion. Yet, once again the US misrepresents the facts in order to deceive the American people and create a climate for expanding Bush’s war in the Middle East.

So it's not because they are stupid but because it's all part of the plan. Create instability in the Middle East to justify their actions, their imperialist ambitions. Very similar to Osama bin Laden's plan, only the ambitions are different.
So far the winner is Osama:

This policy plays directly into bin Laden’s hands. Osama has succeeded in tricking America into spending $300 billion in an unsuccessful act of revenge that has ruined America’s reputation while recruiting tens of thousands of recruits for bin Laden.

And the real threat to the United States isn't in the Middle East.

The neoconservatives are the greatest threat America has ever faced, and they control the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice President, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the police state apparatus known as "Homeland Security."

The neocons have enormous propaganda resources: the entirely of rightwing talk radio, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, Fox "News," National Review, the Washington Times, and numerous daily newspapers.

Neocons have succeeded in intimidating the TV networks, National Public Radio and CNN. The neocons cannot fully control the news, but they abuse the offices of trust that they occupy in order to spin the news to their purposes.

Any day now the neocons may orchestrate a scenario that will suck the US into a wider war that America has no possibility of winning. If the American people had the slightest sense of their danger, they would demand immediate US withdrawal from Iraq and accountability for the liars who orchestrated the ill-fated US invasion.

Well at least the Fundementalist Christians waiting for the Rapture may get what they want, none of the rest of us will.

Being all that you can be........

.......apparently doesn't include George W. Bush's crusades.
Army Having Difficulty Meeting Goals In Recruiting

The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers .

For the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in October with only 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000 active-duty recruits already in the pipeline. That amounts to less than half of last year's figure and falls well below the Army's goal of 25 percent.

Not me or my son dubya:

Yet Army officials see worrisome signs that young American men and women -- and their parents -- are growing wary of military service, largely because of the Iraq conflict.

Mean while the neo-cons in the Bush administration continue to rattle their sabers so it's not too surprising that, as Brilliant at Breakfast reports, the Selective Service is gearing up, as Iran increasingly looks like a target.

Sunday Evening Reading

I often run across a link that I want to write extensively about &mdash it ticks me off to that extent, or I just feel particularly moved about. Those comprise the bulk of my entries here on Running Scared — single-topic entries.

I read a lot of stuff, however -- my news aggregator has about 187 'feeds' in it that I usually try to get through every day or every other day. As I find something I might want to write about, I usually tag it with a certain tag, "to:rs", that lets me go back and see the pool I want to draw from.

Those sometimes fill up with a few links I don't feel particularly verbose about, but would nevertheless like to share. Those become the 'linkapalooza'-style entries that you see from me once in a blue moon.

So, here we go.

Bush's new budget would bankrupt Amtrak.

AmeriBlog seems to have rather convincing evidence that Jeff Gannon, the Neocons' Favorite Fake Reporter™, was evidently an escort as well.

Calculate how much you stand to lose under the White House's new Social Security plan.

I wonder if Russia will now be on the Axis of Evil after Putin's recent announcement that "[t]he latest steps taken by Iran have convinced [them] that Iran does not intend to produce nuclear arms." I could very easily see the neocons adopting an attitude of "the friend of my enemy is my enemy."

A recent quote by Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove (ehhh, my keyboard feels unclean after typing that): "The next time one of your smarty-pants liberal friends says to you, `Well, he didn't have a mandate,' you tell him of this delicious fact: This president got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate for president since 1964."

(To which I'd reply to Rove: "The next time one of your smarty-pants conservative friends says to you, 'Well, he got a higher percentage of the vote,' you tell him of this delicious fact: This president had more people voting against him than any Republican ever.")

The list of issues to be decided by the Supreme Court in the second half of this year's term.

And, lest we think Bush has accomplished absolutely no good in his Presidency, he did get George Michael to quit show business.

No doubt the most tasteless advertisement for a video game that I've ever seen. It's sh-t like this that gives the neocons fodder for censorship.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg in a recent column mercilessly skewers Alan Keyes (who is considering again running for public office) with his own hypocrisy, "Keyes [...] believes that gays come into the world by being recruited by predatory perverts, or through the weakness of, in his words, 'selfish hedonists' or spring fully formed out a of a morally corrupt culture. [...] Why is your daughter a lesbian, Mr. Keyes? What did you do wrong raising her? Or perhaps -- just perhaps -- was she made that way by our Creator? Choose."

Molly Ivins points out that Bush's budget is incredibly anti-children: "Good Lord, what a nasty document. The cuts are in health care, childcare, Head Start, nutrition programs, food stamps and foster care."

On Ask MetaFilter, someone whose "political persuasion is to the left of Dennis Kucinich" asks, seriously and snark-free, what good things Bush has accomplished during his Presidency so far. It actually made for some interesting food for thought. Oddly enough, I now find myself agreeing that he's done some good things cited in the threads. Don't worry, though — I've not suddenly joined the Dark Side. :)

A hilarious excerpt from an O'Reilly show. (Don't miss how he offers, at the end, to give her the last word — and then promptly doesn't.) The guy is swiftly becoming inadvertent self-parody.

Finally, Libertarian Girl, shortly after its introduction, had the potential of swiftly becoming an A-list blog — until it was found out that the blogger wasn't a pretty perky twentysomething blonde girl. Nevertheless, it became quite popular in the interim.

Which leads me to introduce our new guest blogger, Bambi ...

EDIT: And I'd be shockingly remiss if I didn't point you towards this rather startling observation made by Shakespeare's Sister ...

Nowhere land

One thing that has puzzled me over the last few years is the growth of Christian fundamentalism in the US. Not so much among the poor and undereducated, the promise of a happy life after has always been a refuge for those who suffer here on earth, but among the well educated and affluent. Here in the Portland area where suburbs are fed by well educated tech workers we have seen fundamentalist churches grow into huge campuses with the parking lots overflowing every Sunday morning. Engineers with PhD's pack their families into the huge SUV and take them to hellfire and brimstone lectures every week. Something must be missing from their lives to draw them to 16th century mythology. A friend of mine in England sent me a link to this piece in the London Observer, Nowhere land, about the Phoenix Arizona area.

As US towns sprawl into the countryside, creating anonymous zones dominated by soulless malls...

"Anonymous zones dominated by soulless malls"; that sure sounds like most of the suburban sprawl to me. The suburbs have no soul, no sense of community. You have no neighbors, only people who live next door who you rarely see. Man is by nature a social animal and what is missing in the suburbs is a sense of belonging to a community.

What hits one first about exurbia is its ugliness. Laid out by competing developers, disparate 'cookie-cutter' housing developments (often christened with faux Wild West prefixes such as Vale, Ranch or Stable) wander into the distance, devoid of any master-plan. Self-contained behind electronic gates, each house seamlessly resembles the others in a conveyor belt of McMansions. Behind the walls, uniformity is enforced by a strict system of covenants, conditions and restrictions that outlaw individual alterations to homes and gardens.

Each house comes complete with garage-room for SUV and 'compact', while six-lane highways link the 'resorts' and 'communities' to the ubiquitous golf course and nearby freeway. Walking is confined to planned-out parks (to which one drives), while public transport is usually voted down by residents as either wastefully expensive or surreptitiously socialist.

This sterile lack of community is just as if not more painful than the suffering that results from physical poverty. The big house and all the technological comforts cannot give you a sense of belonging. While the poor may look to religion for an afterlife free from physical hunger the affluent suburbanite may be looking for an afterlife where they belong to a community.

It's all the old folks fault

David Brooks is well David Brooks once again today. Social Security and Medicare problems are all the fault of those greedy and well organized "old folks".

We may as well be blunt about the driving force behind all this. The living and well organized are taking money from the weak and the unborn. Over the past decades we have seen a gigantic transfer of wealth from struggling young families and the next generation to members of the AARP.

This is enough to make my blood boil but at least it's easy to shoot full of holes. When it comes to Social Security I have had FICIA taken out of my paycheck for over 40 years. Until the last few years it was taken out of all my wages. Since 1983 they have been taking additional money out and investing those in treasury bonds to pay for my benefits. I'm sorry ass hole, I'm not taking money from anyone. George W. Bush likes to say "it's your money", guess what that's my money. And as for "taking money from the weak and the unborn"; our corporate controlled medical system in the US is doing a lot better job of that than I ever could. The working stiffs in this country see there premiums rise or their insurance disappear altogether as costs and corporate profits rise. It's the large corporations that are "taking money from the weak and the unborn", not those of us who have worked all of our lives and paid into the system. The major problem with the Medicare drug benefit he rails about is that it amounts to a veritable cornucopia of profits for the drug industry. Sorry David, once again you have shown yourself to be a not too bright partisan hack. Well at least Mr Brooks you never disappoint me.

Alan Greenspan, just another partisan hack?

Paul Krugman takes on Alan Greenspan today calling Greenspan a Bush shill and another partisan hack. His double speak to congress on Social Security was a case of him trying to have his cake and eat it too. He said that Bush's privitazation plan was a good idea but not really. Alan Greenspan did a fairly good job when all he really had to do was tweak the interest rates to keep inflation under control. He preached that deficits were bad until Clinton managed a surplus which was bad. He warned of an economic bubble but did nothing to stop it's inflation and he had a number of tools he could have used to do so. He apparently didn't want to anger the booming investment community. As a disciple on Ayn Rand he has always despised everything about the New Deal, especially Social Security. George W. Bush put Mr Greenspan in a very bad position, he came up with a plan that would eventually destroy Social Security but is so ill conceived that the economist had to say take it slow while the Bush shill wanted to say full speed ahead. Ok, enough of my rantings, here is what Krugman had to say.

Four years ago, the Fed chairman lent crucial political support to the Bush tax cuts. He didn't specifically endorse the administration's plan, and if you read his testimony carefully, it contained caveats and cautions. But that didn't matter; the headlines trumpeted Mr. Greenspan's support, and legislation whose prospects had previously seemed dubious sailed through Congress.

On Wednesday Mr. Greenspan endorsed Social Security privatization. But there's a difference between 2001 and 2005. In 2001, Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This time, he offered no justification at all.

In 2001, some readers may recall, Mr. Greenspan argued that we needed to cut taxes to prevent the federal government from running excessively large surpluses. Even at the time it seemed obvious from his tortured logic that he was looking for some excuse, any excuse, to help out a Republican administration. His lack of sincerity was confirmed when projected surpluses turned into large deficits, and he nonetheless supported even more tax cuts.

This week, Mr. Greenspan offered no excuse for supporting privatization. In fact, he agreed with two of the main critiques of the administration's plan: that it would do nothing to improve the Social Security system's finances, and that it would lead to a dangerous increase in debt. Yet he still came out in favor of the idea.

So as we can see Greenspan is a man torn between being an economist and being an Ayn Rand Uber Libertarian and Bush shill. Yet while not fully endorsing the Bush plan on Social Security he was still able to play the shill.

Yet the chairman managed to avoid admitting the obvious - that borrowing on the scale the Bush plan requires would substantially increase the risk of a financial crisis. And the headlines didn't emphasize his concession that crucial critiques of the Bush plan are right. As he surely intended, the headlines emphasized his support for privatization.

And Krugman makes one final disturbing observation.

One last point: a disturbing thing about Wednesday's hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging Mr. Greenspan's testimony, they tried to spin it in their favor.

But Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to such deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.

I think Krugman is not quite on target here. Greenspan is not just another partisan hack, he is a modern day true believer in feudalism, a true Social Darwinist.

People's Life-Altering Experiences

I have recently begun checking out MetaFilter to see what all the fuss is about. In the process, I came across, honestly, one of the most amazing reads I've had in my life. If you ever follow one of my links, follow this one. Wow. It's a long read, but it's worth every word.

Not My Cup of Tea

But that doesn't matter!

Justice Dept. Fights Ruling on Obscenity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - In a case representing a major test of the Bush administration's campaign against pornography, the Justice Department said Wednesday that it would appeal a recent decision by a federal judge that declared federal obscenity laws unconstitutional.

Seems that there was a criminal case against a California video distributor for violating federal obscenity laws. It's a company that does, indeed provide what some would label as "hard core". Personally, I'd label it, "offensive".
The examples given in the article are "scenes of simulated gang rapes and other attacks on women". I don't want to watch that. I certainly don't know if any of my friends want to watch that.

Louis Sirkin, a Cincinnati lawyer representing the pornography distributor, said he believed the judge's opinion would be upheld.

"You can't legislate morality," Mr. Sirkin said. "You have to let people make their own personal decisions, and that's the important principle at stake in this case."...

...Judge Lancaster interpreted that ruling to mean that "public morality is not a legitimate state interest sufficient to justify infringing on adult, private, consensual, sexual conduct even if that conduct is deemed offensive to the general public's sense of morality."

That's it, right there. No, I don't want to buy this stuff, but this is a free country, and sometimes freedom means that people are allowed to do things that others find repulsive. Buying filthy videos doesn't hurt anyone. If the people participating in them are all there willingly, and the filmmakers aren't misrepresenting themselves, then they should be allowed to conduct business. There's just a fundamental difference between disgusting and illegal, and we, as Americans, have to respect that. It's part of what makes us a great country, right?

I find myself defending the most outrageous, unusual cases I can find, all for the purpose of making sure that the small, everyday freedoms remain safe far, far inside the container.

Do you know where your towel is?

Amazon.com has a trailer of the new movie version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While I fully expect it to be yet another variant of the story, this one seems to have the special effects well worth the effort, and I look forward to wasting my $5.

Not a Fan Letter

Dave Shuster is a fan of Condoleeza Rice. Still though, he has a few unhappy words to say about her dealings with the French public.

Apparently, she gave a speech at a school where she took questions. Spontaneous questions? No, no! Vetted, pre-approved questions, of course!

The controls clamped down on the Secretary of State's "interaction" with French students are even more embarrassing when you consider what Dr. Rice said in her speech. "History is made by men and women of conviction, of commitment and of courage, who will not let their dreams be denied." But there was Dr. Rice, denying a free exchange between the Bush administration and a bunch of French college students. What exactly is the administration afraid of? Men and women of conviction? That the French students will ask annoying questions? So what?

So, what, indeed.

And, of course, this shining example of liberty and freedom preceded her fabulous job talking about the current issues between Syria and Lebanon, and why we recalled our ambassador before a HUGE funeral of State.

I'm not a fan of Condoleeza Rice. I think she's a smart, talented woman who's wasting it all in order to be able to play the game.

Buttons Have Been Declared Enemies of the State

Jeremy Caplan writes in this week's Time Notebook column about the army's new uniforms

The new duds substitute Velcro and zippers for buttons, which used to snag on gear.

Okay, wait a minute. Let's think this out.

You're a soldier. You're trying to creep up on a sniper who's shooting people. As you approach him, you realize that you need to reload your gun, and your bullets are in your pocket. You cautiously reach towards your ammo pocket, and start to pull it open ...

RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!

Unless they've invented silent Velcro, this doesn't exactly seem like a wise design choice to me.

(On another, entirely nonpolitical note, learned something a bit sad about Keanu Reeves yesterday, of all people.)

Those Who Do Not Learn From History ...

I was reading perhaps the umpteenth article or column on Dean ascending to the position of DNC chairman, and I realized that there was a very interesting analogy.

Those who opposed Dean and his philosophy mounted what most people have called an "Anybody But Dean" campaign, in which various contenders stood up. However, most of them were extremely unpalatable, and their own personal platforms were either quite unclear or were anathema to the Democratic party. None were as brash and outspoken about the beliefs of the Democratic Party as Dean.

The results, I think, could be directly compared to the results of the national election.

Kerry's campaign (as well as those various groups assisting Kerry, such as MoveOn.Org, etc.) was rather consistently predicated on an "Anybody But Bush" campaign. I remember that even during the debate, when asked about a particular stance, Kerry suggested viewers look at his campaign website for his full plan, rather than having developed plainspoken concepts (again, the need for Democrats to master framing reared its head) to express his plan.

To summarize ...

Bush won the election, I feel, because he was able to express^* the values^** of the Republican Party^*** in a way that spoke to the basic heart of Americans, while his opponent ran a campaign based not on his own values but on "Anybody But Bush."

Dean won the chairmanship, I feel, because he was able to express the values of the Democratic Party in a way that spoke to the basic heart of liberals, while his opponents ran campaigns based not on their own values but on "Anybody But Dean."

* — With the help of a mysterious bulge, of course.
** — Not that those values are actually honored in practice, mind you.
*** — Republican Party (Neocon Mutation).

New Mars Rocks

Thirteen months and still going. The Mars rover Spirit is still making new discoveries months after it was supposed to dead.

(Image: NASA/JPL/Cornell)

The Mars rover Spirit has found the most interesting and significant exposure of bedrock so far in its 13 months of Red Planet exploration. The outcrop - dubbed Peace - is in the Columbia Hills which rise above the ancient lakebed of Gusev Crater.

The exciting feature of Peace for scientists is that it contains higher levels of sulphur than anything yet examined by Spirit. Other rocks encountered to date had sulphur minerals forming a surface crust, but little in the interior.

In contrast, Peace contains high levels of sulphur deep inside, says Ralf Gellert of the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany. Because it is highly correlated with magnesium in the rock, it suggests the presence of magnesium sulphate, he says.

"This is probably the most interesting and important rock Spirit has examined," says chief rover scientists, Steven Squyres at Cornell University, New York, US. "It gives us even more compelling evidence for water playing a major role in altering the rocks here."

More evidence of water on Mars in the past.

The science team concluded that the rock seems to consist of sand-sized grains of typical Martian volcanic rock - olivine, pyroxene and magnetite - cemented together in a matrix of magnesium-sulphate salt.

That suggests two possible formation mechanisms, says Squyres, with both mechanisms involving the action of water.

The first is that liquid water, laden with dissolved magnesium sulphate, percolated through the rock and then evaporated away leaving the salt behind. The second is that the rock was weathered over a long period by dilute sulphuric acid in the air, reacting with magnesium-rich minerals already in the rock. The team hopes to pin down which way the layered bedrock formed by studying more areas in the coming weeks.

The Spirit's partner, Opportunity....

...has also shattered all previous Mars travel records, covering 157 metres (514 feet) in one day - 30 January 2005. This speed is far faster that the average rate of about 6.4 metres (21.1 feet) per day that it achieved during its first year of operation.

Tax dollars well spent.

Speaking of classy (jokes) ...

A cardiologist died and was given an elaborate funeral. A huge seven-foot-wide heart, covered in flowers, stood behind the casket during the service. Following the eulogy, the heart opened and the casket rolled inside. The heart then closed, sealing the doctor in the beautiful heart forever.

At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter. When all eyes stared at him, he said, with a wry grin, "I'm so sorry, but I was just thinking of my own funeral ... I'm a gynecologist."

That's when the proctologist fainted.

Inaugurations Classy and Corrupt

Yeah, I know, it's not exactly the meme of the moment anymore. But I was brought back to it today by:

"Instead of being the host of an expensive Inaugration celebration while members of the U.S. military are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush could have unified the country by putting the $40 million that the festivities cost into a trust fund. That money could have been paid to the families of our military dead and to the injured and battle-worn survivors of conflicts." — David M. Pepper, Malibu, CA

The above letter appeared in this week's TIME, and when I read it, it just floored me: why didn't Bush do that? It would have been an amazing bit of PR for him. Hell, I hate the guy, and even I would have begrudgingly given him major props for the gesture. I suppose the only reason my cynical (and still semi-bleary) head can come up with is that it would have appeared to have been a concession to the charges, and thus a weakness. He would have only gotten the credit if he had come up with the idea first, instead of having it be a reaction to the charges of overextravagance. Still, a man that would let his ego and reputation get in the way of making substantial assistance ... Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) noted at the time that $40 million could have bought 690 Humvees and a $290 bonus for each soldier serving in Iraq.

I have to respect FDR. In the middle of World War II, his inauguration "ball" was a short speech at the White House followed by a buffet luncheon featuring chicken salad and pound cake - and that was it. Class. The American public should expect no less of this moron. Unfortunately, they'll no doubt continue to let him get away with everything he wants, showing them to be braindead morons themselves. I hate to have such a low opinion of the American populace — it's not exactly useful, let alone nice — but why do they let him get away with so much sh—t?!

Maybe I'm Actually Paranoid

OK, maybe I'm a bit of a moonbat on this one, but...

Yesterday, I was watching the news, and I saw yet another story about Valentine's Day being outlawed in Saudi Arabia. Suddenly it occurred to me - this is anti-Saudi propaganda. Oh, god, are we going to war with them, too?

I'm hoping I'm just paranoid.

The Bush Administration is truly evil

This should be beyond belief but it's not. Steve Soto at The Left Coaster reports of this disturbing report in The Asia times, US fights back against 'rule by clerics'. Steve does a great job of discussing the story so I'm not going to do a lot of copy and paste here, just head over to the Steve's post. What it's all about is the Bush administration is arming Baathists in the Shia areas in the South to fight the Shiite majority.

In other words, for the sake of maintaining control of the oil, the United States is prepared to foment civil war between the emerging Shia powers, who assume that with the election they will finally see the benefits of "liberation", and the same Baathists who ran with Hussein all these years.
[.......]
So, what the PNAC cabal thought they could control politically by installing their guy as PM, only to see him lose out to the Shiite factions, they now will try to control through armed militias, with direct ties to the United States.

Obviously, the Bush Administration’s definition of liberation is different than the Iraqis’ definition of liberation.

I don't know what more to say.