A Spork in the Drawer

Pendulums

(This began as a response to a comment left below but decided to make it a post. Like it or lump it.)

Moving to the Center.

This is one of my many - oh so many - pet peeves: The current concept of a political left-center-right. Now, I understand all about ideological swings amongst the population but today's Democrats - "left-wing", we're told - would have fit quite comfortably into the Republican party of just thirty years ago. Remember the likes of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits? And an FDR-style New Deal Democrat today is considered so far to the fringe as to be not worth talking about.

And it always amuses me when we hear about some European country or other "moving to the right". Popular conservative parties in Europe are almost always to the left of our Democrats.

As I said, I understand political swings but couldn't we at least try to have a little historical perspective? I mean, I'm not talking about the Bronze Age here but conditions well within the memories of our commentariat.

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Heresy

The WaPo's Colbert King crosses the line:

My offense? I contend, contrary to accepted Washington doctrine, that should Barack Obama be elected president, he ought not to allow his administration to fall into the clutches of Washington insiders.

(The distant sound you hear is that of long knives being sharpened.)

Indeed. That sound you just heard was David "The Dean" Broder having an aneurysm at the very thought.

But here's my problem with putting that crowd in charge. They live by the old rules of Washington politics and, simply stated, they are in it for themselves.

[...]

Retaining their lofty standing among Washington's political, social and artistic intelligentsia ranks über alles.

Thus, when the new president hits a rough patch -- and they all do -- Washington insiders are usually the first to duck and cover, and undergo a conversion from out-front cheerleader to inside backbiter.

True enough. But there's one little problem with King's advice: If those DC insiders feel excluded they'll do everything they can to cripple the Obama administration from the beginning. Hell, the aforementioned Broder will write a whole column about how the Obamas "came in here and...trashed the place."

At any rate, for all the talk of "change" Obama is a conventional centrist who will likely rely heavily on those Movers and Shakers to enact his agenda of half-measures.

There are no more Roosevelts (either one).

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Wall Of Separation

EJ Dionne illustrates why religion and politics don't mix:

Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied Communion.

His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.

[...]

The Kmiec incident poses the question in an extreme form: He is not a public official but a voter expressing a preference. Moreover, Kmiec -- a law professor at Pepperdine University and once dean of Catholic University's law school -- is a long-standing critic of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.

In 1960 John F. Kennedy put to rest the idea that a Roman Catholic president would take his orders from the Vatican. But if this sort of nonsense starts to spread American Catholics are going to have to choose to defy the Church or leave public service.

It's that simple and, for some, that difficult.

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On Politics

From the New Yorker:

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Asinine Quote Of The Day

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Closet):

The truth is that political reconciliation in Iraq is going better there than it is here at home because of better security.

How does one even address that?

Video at link.

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Our Elections

A Swedish perspective:

So, believe me, US politics don't have a Left. Looking at the presidential candidates, I am frankly appalled. None of them would be a viable politician in Sweden. They all support the death penalty (linked article in Swedish-ed.), none advocates strict gun control and all make frequent mention of their religious beliefs in public. These are extremist stances. Not even the tiny Christian Democrat party mentions God publicly in Sweden, for fear of alienating the pragmatic rationalist majority.

From a European perspective, US politics are an ongoing battle between the extreme Right and the middle Right. The Republican presidential candidates are really, really scary people in my view. So all of us in the world at large who live under the shadow of US political hegemony are holding our breaths, hoping that Clinton or Obama will make it into office. They're pretty bad, but the alternative would be unspeakably dreadful.

I'm not about to disagree.

[Via PZ.]

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Blue Clue

Via Open Left, no more Red States:

(Click to enlarge. External link.)


Congratulations, Utah!

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Not So Subtle

By way of BooMan comes this anecdote about Katie Couric (who I dislike - but that's another issue) and the none too subtle ways that influence how news is reported:

She had firsthand experience with what she considered the chilling effect on the media. Two months before the 2004 election, when she was still at NBC's "Today" show, Couric had asked Condoleezza Rice whether she agreed with Vice President Cheney's declaration that the country would be at greater risk for terrorist attacks if John Kerry won the White House. Rice sidestepped the question, saying that any president had to fight aggressively against terrorism.

Couric interrupted and asked the question again. Would a Kerry victory put America at greater risk? Rice ducked again, saying that the issue should not be personalized.

Soon afterward, Couric got an e-mail from Robert Wright, the NBC president. He was forwarding a note from an Atlanta woman who complained that Couric had been too confrontational with Rice.

It goes on to say that when Couric would run into Jack Welch - then head of GE, owner of NBC - he would comment that they didn't see eye-to-eye politically.

It's difficult to excerpt this one without running into the wrath of the Gods of Copyright so I encourage you to click the link and read the whole thing (it's only 7 paragraphs).

But the point here, really, is that we are bombarded with stories and studies purporting to show that news reporters are a bunch of left-wing zealots. Nobody seems to ask the same questions about the editors and, more importantly, the publishers and owners of news organizations.

Couric's current employer, CBS, is headed by Sumner Redstone (who also founded and heads Viacom). In 2004, Redstone, who describes himself as a "liberal Democrat," endorsed Bush for president saying:

"I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom.

"I don't want to denigrate Kerry," he went on, "but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."

Even "family businesses" like the New York Times and the Washington Post have a great many irons in the proverbial fire, many of them requiring approval by various federal agencies so it behooves them to not get on the wrong side of the government. That, combined with the ingrained conservatism of most businessmen/women surely exerts a downward pressure. The producers and editors and reporters are well aware just who signs their paychecks.

Would that less attention be paid to who reporters vote for and more to who publishers and owners vote for and contribute to.

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Proven By Science!

Liberals and conservatives are different:

In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

[...]

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Liberals show higher brain activity. Who would've guessed?

(And, no, I'm not qualified to assess the validity of this study; I pass it along mostly for fun and to restate the obvious.)

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Lovely

Providing cover:

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Monday that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party's efforts to press for a timetable to end the war.

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Clyburn noted that Petraeus carries significant weight among the 47 members of the Blue Dog caucus in the House, a group of moderate to conservative Democrats. Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal.

"I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us," Clyburn said. "We, by and large, would be wise to wait on the report."

We might as well get used to the fact that unless Dennis Kucinich is elected (not an endorsement) we're going to be in Iraq forever. None of the leading Democratic candidates will remove the troops in any significant way and I need not even mention the All War All the Time party.

Yes, we might as well just get used to it. There are no more Profiles in Courage.

BooMan has another look.

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Christ, It Never Ends

How long are people going to put up with shit like this?

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

[...]

Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was "called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, 'You don't get it.' " He said a senior official told him that "this will be a political document, or it will not be released."

[...]

Steiger, 37, is a godson of former president George H.W. Bush and the son of a moderate Republican who represented Wisconsin in the House and hired a young Dick Cheney as an intern. The elder Bush appointed Steiger's mother to the Federal Trade Commission in 1989. A biographical sketch of her on the American Bar Association's Web site states that Steiger's parents, now deceased, were "lifelong friends" of many members of the same congressional class, including the Rumsfelds and the Bushes.

I've never been an isolationist but I'm starting think that our country is so broken that it may be time for us to withdraw from the world as much as possible and concentrate on fixing ourselves.

I shudder to think how long it's going to take to repair the damage wrought by the current administration. Indeed, I'm not entirely sure it can be fixed. Not a cheery thought but there you are.

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Editorial Cartoons!

It's Saturday so Bob Geiger has 'em.

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Dysfunctional

Carl Hiaasen on our increasingly silly presidential primary system:

To make a bigger political splash, Florida is moving its presidential primary back to Jan. 29.

The new date is too early to please some Democratic and Republican strategists, but not early enough to satisfy many Floridians. It isn't because of state pride that we want to be the first to host the presidential contenders; it's because of dread. We want to get this exhausting spectacle over with as soon as possible.

January is too far off. By then, our new voting machines could already be installed, and ready to malfunction.

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Let's hold our primary this June -- and not tell anybody until the last minute.

It's not so crazy. If the election remains set for Jan. 29, think of how many times between now and then we'll be accosted by Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Giuliani, Romney, McCain and the rest.

Think of all the motorcades, all the forgettable speeches, all the silly photo ops -- not to mention the soul-sucking, brain-shriveling barrage of political commercials television and radio. Who needs that?

There's a much better way, if only those chowderheads in the Legislature would go for it:

Print the ballots now and list every single candidate, no matter how flaky or self-deluded they might be. Gov. Charlie Crist secretly picks a Thursday for the primary, but he reveals the exact date to no one until three days in advance, when the ballots are shipped.

[...]

Imagine if they were all gone from Florida by Father's Day, and we wouldn't have to think about the presidential race again until after the 2008 conventions. Imagine the peace and quiet in the meantime.

Red or blue, the other states would turn green with envy.

Sounds like a plan.

(As a side note, maybe I'm being foolish but I'm trying to hold off on writing about the 2008 elections until after the traditional start of the campaign season, Labor Day. It's too damn early to be dealing with this nonsense.)

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A Loopy Idea

An idea has been floating around for awhile now that would give the District of Columbia a vote in the House in exchange for Utah getting another Congressional district. The first part is simple enough: DC has 515,000 residents who have the obligations of citizenship but no representation in Congress (save for one non-voting "observer"). The second part is a wee bit dicier. Utah came up too short in the last census for another representative but they claim that Mormon missionaries abroad should have been counted thus giving the population enough of a boost to cross the Congressional threshold (the courts dismissed this idea).

So, an exchange:

By balancing the district with reliably Republican Utah, Davis won bipartisan approval in May by the Government Reform Committee for his bill, which would raise the total number of House members to 437.

In the House Judiciary Committee, legal experts questioned the legitimacy of giving Utah an at-large seat, which was the plan at the time because Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. balked at enacting a redistricting plan to carve out a fourth district.

But after Democrats swept to power in the midterm election, some officials in Utah worried about their cause in the new Congress. So the governor called the Legislature into special session, beginning next week, to approve a four-district map.

"I'm confident we can do that," said state Sen. Curt Bramble (R-Provo), incoming majority leader in the Utah State Senate. "Whether or not Congress will act, that's out of our control."

The folks at DC Vote are banking on it. They have an ad campaign to move public opinion — after their polls found that 78% of Americans thought D.C. residents already had congressmen and senators. And they are lobbying the Senate, where they say their best weapon is Jack Kemp, the former congressman and vice presidential candidate who has been privately buttonholing his former colleagues.

It should go without saying the Constitutionality of this is suspect:

But Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, believes the D.C. portion of the bill is "flagrantly unconstitutional" because the Constitution gives representation to "the people of the several states."

It would take a constitutional amendment to give the district unquestioned congressional and Senate representation, he said. Addressing it legislatively means another Congress could always revoke the voting privilege later.

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The larger issue for Democrats in Congress is whether they want to risk a constitutional challenge to the D.C. representative while Utah's new representative keeps voting. "The irony here," said Turley, "is that Utah could get an extra seat in Congress only to have the district seat struck down as unconstitutional."

Even if we put that aside the fact will remain that DC wouldn't have proper representation - no Senators. And Utah would have one too many Congresscritters.

I think it's a no-brainer that DC needs to be properly represented in Congress. But it needs to be done the right way: Either with statehood or by being folded into Virginia or Maryland. (Granted, those states might object.)

While this plan may have good intentions this simply isn't the way to give Washingtonians their rights as citizens.

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The Blogosphere Is Shrill

Across the pond:

Tony Blair's outgoing policy chief has said he fears the internet could be fuelling a "crisis" in the relationship between politicians and voters.

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The internet, he told the conference, was part of that "crisis".

"The internet has immense potential but we face a real problem if the main way in which that potential expresses itself is through allowing citizens to participate in a shrill discourse of demands.

"If you look at the way in which citizens are using technology and the way that is growing up, there are worrying signs that that is the case.

"What is the big breakthrough, in terms of politics, on the web in the last few years? It's basically blogs which are, generally speaking, hostile and, generally speaking, basically see their job as every day exposing how venal, stupid, mendacious politicians are.

"The internet is being used as a tool of mobilisation, which is fantastic, but it only adds to the growing, incommensurate nature of the demands being made on government."

He challenged the online community to provide more opportunities for "people to try to understand the real trade-offs that politicians face and the real dilemmas that citizens face".

Translation: Bloggers should keep their mouths shut.

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