Contractual obligation post.
As an anti-American, objectively pro-Saddam liberal traitor, I ought to be dancing in the aisles or something over the Plame Game, or Traitorgate, or L’Affaire Wilson, or business-as-fucking-usual, see-I-told-you-this-administration-was-a-pack-of-venal-weasels, or Jesus-H.-Christ-in-a-jumped-up-sidecar, I’m-sick-of-this-game-and-it’s-starting-to-scare-me, can-we-put-the-pieces-away-and-play-something-else? —But I’m tired. And overworked. And suffering from a head cold. And anyway, you’ve doubtless read the incredible coverage Joshua Micah Marshall and Kevin Drum have offered up on the matter.
If not—if you’re still catching up with the latest feeding frenzy—let me suggest a couple of can’t-miss scenic overlooks:
Juan Cole tells you pretty much what the fuck happened.
Brad DeLong tells you why it’s such a fucking big deal.
Doing my bit to hike those productivity numbers.
Sixty-hour work weeks suck, which is about all I’ll say at the moment regarding my recent quietude. —Ah, well. At least we’re getting overtime.
Simple questions, simply answered.
That’s all it would take to lay to rest this foofooraw of how the federal government is or maybe isn’t spying on our public libraries, or might could start spying if we all don’t sit down and shut up about it. —Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act allows the government broad powers to request the reading lists of individuals from the libraries they frequent, over and above powers already in place, and makes it illegal to inform anyone that such a request has been made; US Attorney General John Ashcroft, under fire, pitched a hissy fit and then insisted via a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller that no libraries, bookstores, or other businesses had yet been requested to turn over any such lists; libraries have asserted that they have been requested to turn over such lists, though what with the gag order and the other laws on the books it’s terribly unclear whether this was under the ægis of the USA PATRIOT Act (thereby rendering Ashcroft a bald-faced liar) or not.
So: here’s the questions to ask your elected representatives to ask the Bush administration:
If these new powers are needed to fight terrorism, why aren’t they being used?
If these new powers aren’t needed to fight terrorism, why do you have them? And why did you misrepresent your reasons for seeking them?
If these powers have been used, why are you lying to us now?
That’s all we need to know, really. —Further reading: links via the invaluable librarian.net (home of the ever-popular signs that have contributed to Ashcroft’s froth); Lis Riba is on the case, like, hardcore, with another possible misstatement from our beloved attorney general; and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is among the many people lining up to kick Jonah Goldberg’s sorry, ignorant ass.
Sputtering, frothing rage.
Which is about all I can muster at the moment:
KIDNAPPED AT FEDERAL PLAZA
Immigrant Families Expecting Greencards & Citizenship Get Deported Instead
WHAT:
Immigrant families are facing a deportation crisis. In the last month immigrant advocates have received emergency calls from New Yorkers whose loved ones—on the road to obtaining a greencard or citizenship—were deported from Federal Plaza after responding to government appointment letters. Others who are not being deported immediately are being shipped away as far as Louisiana without seeing a judge. Devastated and enraged, the relatives left behind will return to the site to speak out against the rapid-fire detentions and deportations that have broken apart their homes.
WHO:
MARIANA TAPIA, cousin of 19-year-old Juan Jimenez, who was deported to the Dominican Republic 16 hours after reporting to Federal Plaza for citizenship.
GEORGIANA FACEY, U.S. citizen whose husband was deported to Jamaica. She is left to raise 4 children alone in Brooklyn.
Many others…..
Watch TalkLeft for the changes. Read up on how our utterly disgraceful immigration system has acquitted itself in the past. Start making phone calls. Start writing letters. Start sharpening your votes.
In April, in response to the unprecedented cultural destruction that attended our invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld had this to say:
The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, “My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?”
Let this become their mantra—or a variation of it. Tomorrow, when the phone calls come in. Next week, as the email piles up. Next year, when the votes are counted, and this entire benighted administration, this foul and unspeakable blot on our liberal, inclusive, democratic history has been kicked to the curb. I want them—all of them, from Rumsfeld to Rove, from Rice to Powell, from Bush himself to Ashcroft, at whose feet this latest particular outrage can be laid, I want them all sitting back, dumbfounded, their heads in their hands, staring at the mailbags and ballots, muttering to themselves.
My goodness. Were there that many decent people? Is it possible there were that many decent, humane people in the whole country?
A riot of manliness.
Kevin’s spouse Jenn (no web presence) has this thing she hollers whenever some asshole in a sports car or SUV pulls a lame-ass highway stunt to squeeze his vehicle just ahead of hers or cuts a corner too impatiently or runs a red light or just in general drives like a get-out-of-my-way-you-insignificant-speck megalomaniac: “Sorry about your dick!” she cries. Try it sometime: it’s surprisingly cathartic—and with a sufficiently advanced and fluid concept of gender, works just as well on female get-out-of-my-way-you-insignificant-speck megalomaniacs. (Badda-bing, to coin a phrase.)
Jay Nordlinger, Managing Editor and Impromptuiste for the Corner-hosting National Review, undertook on the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page to explain the gender gap in American politics. (Thanks, Roy!) Really, honestly, this thing must be seen to be believed. Calling Rumsfeld a “riot of manliness” (sincerely!) is but the tip of the rhetorical iceberg. Thrill to his implacable defense of Cheney’s chickenhawkery! Shiver at Giuliani’s (exceptionally) manly flirtation with drag! Delight in untangling the coded insults! But please, don’t drink coffee while reading this. I can’t be held responsible for your keyboards, but I’d hate to see something happen to them.
Oh, and, Jay? Mr. Nordlinger?
Sorry about your dick.
Thank you, Professor Krugman.
Required reading. It’s that simple.
Cakewalkmongering.
Via DefenseTech, a great coffee-break blog, this chunk of perspective on the Cakewalk in Iraq:
With $166 billion spent or requested, Bush’s war spending in 2003 and 2004 already exceeds the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War combined, according to a study by Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus. The Iraq war approaches the $191 billion inflation-adjusted cost of World War I.
Or perhaps this number will resonate a little more?
To put it in perspective, Bush hopes to spend more in Iraq and Afghanistan than all 50 states say they need—$78 billion—to finance the budget shortfalls they anticipate for 2004.
He thinks he’s won.
This is what Grover Norquist, an American for Tax Reform, had to say about Governor Riley’s attempt to shift the tax burden from folks making $4,600 a year to out-of-state timber companies:
No one’s life is a complete waste. Some of us serve as bad examples. And Governor Riley is going to serve as a bad example. Years from now, little baby Republican governors will be told scary stories late at night, around the campfire, about the sad fate of governors like Riley who steal a billion dollars from their people.
The referendum was voted down by droves of lower-income voters who stood to gain from it. And Norquist is thrilled:
This is a shot across the bow for next year’s decision-making. Every Republican governor who thinks of raising taxes next year will walk past Traitor’s Gate and see Bob Riley’s head on a pike. The voters of Alabama have saved taxpayers from California to Maine billions of dollars.
He thinks he’s won. Let him. He thinks we’re on our way back to the grand old days of William McKinley. We may very well be. We may have forgotten how bad they were, and hard the world can be without the safety nets we fought so hard to put in place so many years ago. Well, we’re going to start remembering, make no mistake: that’s the only “waste” to cut out of state budgets from California to Maine; from Oregon to Alabama.
But we fought our way up and out of those dark days once already, and if we never managed to make it to that shining city on the hill where no one gets left behind, not even the least of us, still. We came up with a pretty good nation, for the most part. We can do it again.
And this time, it won’t be so easy to forget. No one’s life is a complete waste, after all; some of us serve as bad examples. We will tell our children about Grover Norquist, and his disdain for public service, his loathing of the commonweal, his grotesque and brutal selfishness. We will tell them about how he laughed at the idea of seizing the government that makes so much of this pretty good nation possible for us and drowning it in the bathtub. And they will be better people for it, and we will have a better world. We’ll get a little closer to the shining city, and we won’t be so quick to turn our backs on ourselves again.
Gosh, Mr. Norquist. Thanks.
Sweet Home Alabama.
Today’s the referendum on Governor Riley’s ambitious plan to restructure Alabama’s state tax plan. Here’s how the New York Times summed up the situation a few months ago:
Alabama’s tax system has long been brutally weighted against the least fortunate. The state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600, when even Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabama also relies heavily on its sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula. The upshot is wildly regressive: Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent.
A main reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using “current use” rules, which significantly lowball its worth. Individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, a boon for those in the top brackets.
Governor Riley’s plan, which would bring in $1.2 billion in desperately needed revenue, takes aim at these inequalities. It would raise the income threshold at which families of four start paying taxes to more than $17,000. It would scrap the federal income tax deduction and increase exemptions for dependent children. And it would sharply roll back the current-use exemption, a change that could cost companies like Weyerhaeuser and Boise Cascade, which own hundreds of thousands of acres, millions in taxes. Governor Riley says that money is too tight to lift the sales tax on groceries this time, but that he intends to work for that later.
Things don’t look good. Despite the desperately needed restructuring of the inhumane tax burden on the poor, and despite the dire straits of Alabama’s public school system, and despite the heroic efforts of conservative Christians compelled to do what Jesus would do, the plan is being sold as nothing more than a tax increase—and that just won’t do in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. And lower-income voters, black and white, reeling and punch-drunk from decades of broken promises and fire-sale government, just don’t trust the state when it genuinely tries to hold out a helping hand: polls show 38% of Alabamians making $80,000 or more favor the restruction, but only 21% of those making less than $20,000 a year. (Remember: in Alabama, you pay income tax on an annual income as low as $4,600.) —Alabama’s new polling regulations will doubtless add to the anxiety and consternation.
The Right Christians will be covering the vote all day today. (A Minority of One, sadly, closed its doors.) In the meanwhile, read this American Prospect piece (thanks, Making Light); management humbly offers up these previous posts, with some links that are worth your while.
Where the hammer meets the nail.
Atrios is a minor god. I mean, you knew that, right? But when he kicks out the jams with one of his all-too-rare longer pieces, the jams stay bloody well kicked. Read his definitive statement on identity politics, then wake the neighbors and tell the kids.
Under pressure.
Got an email alert this morning letting me know that over 100,000 people had sent faxes to their congressional delegations in the past 48 hours, demanding a vote in favor of the Harkin amendment—the one that will block the Bush administration’s attempt to destroy overtime compensation for millions of workers.
So much for the 40-hour week; so much for the weekend. Onward, jobless recovery!
Anyway. I sent mine. Have you sent yours?
Moral equivalency.
I’ve never really linked to Instapundit. Never really read him much, despite his outsized impact in the Islets of Bloggerhans; you’ll encounter his spoor pretty much wherever you roam—though, admittedly, not so much on the sinistral side of the archipelago, these days. It’s become something of a trope, in fact, almost a cherished tradition: the blog entry from someone on the center-left that begins, “I used to link to Instapundit, but with increasing trepidation as he’s gotten more and more strident and reactionary. But today he crossed a line…”
Which is not to say Professor Reynolds hasn’t crossed something I’d consider a line many, many times before. Merely that I decided to open with this rhetorical trick, because the particular line crossed here is a doozy:
Reynolds approvingly cites an equivalency between Cruz Bustamante’s membership in a rambunctious Chicano advocacy group in college in the 1960s with everything Trent Lott ever did to support segregation, white supremacy, Strom Thurmond, and the pro-secessionist South.
As usual, when it comes to race and the Wurlitzer’s attempts to twist and distort the facts, David Neiwert has the detailed, point-by-point rebuttal. I also highly recommend this blistering smackdown from Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber. —These two posts are required reading on the subject; any attempt to continue the ridiculous meme of “MEChA is a racist organization that Bustamante must repudiate” that does not specifically reference them and address their points is intellectually dishonest, and not worth the pixels it’s printed on.
The kicker, from Barlow’s can of whupass: there’s the Voz de Aztlán, a genuinely racist organization whose stances all-too-conveniently get mixed up with MEChA’s; they are, in fact, the very thing principled conservatives who haven’t bothered to do their homework—or who think cough syrup is an acceptable excuse for slander—think they’re condemning with this nonsense. They are anti-Semitic; they are homophobic. And they are supporting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California recall.
No on the recall. Yes on Bustamante. And Instapundit Reynolds is hereby consigned to the killfile of history.
President Firebug?
Here’s how this four-day-old article begins:
An emerging whodunit in Central Oregon hovers amid the smoke draping the east side of the Cascade Range.
Can it be pure coincidence, locals are asking, that two wildfires sprang up in view of the spot where President Bush planned to promote his plan to thin forests for wildfire prevention?
Here’s how it ends (after noting that lightning’s been ruled out):
The coincidences multiply considering the two fires erupted about 10 miles apart at almost the same time, although winds that whipped through the region might explain that. The Booth fire started near Round Lake, a camping spot next to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, while the Bear Butte fire began in the wilderness, away from roads.
The Central Oregon Arson Task Force will investigate the blazes, but flames have kept officers from beginning their inquiry.
Lightning starts about 15 percent of wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
People start the rest.
What do you think? (Via Fred at the Oregon Blog.)
Ubu Roy.
In accordance with a couple of the various versions of the Second Commandment, a graven image, before which a small but ferocious number of Confederate-flag–waving Southerners (apparently quite telegenic) had bowed down themselves to, and served (with various proclamations and lamentations, that they might be seen of men; they have their reward), has been removed.
(Do I mock? Very well, then, I mock. A group of hotheads and disgruntled malcontents so eager to trample the Fourteenth Amendment that they willingly cast themselves as cartoon extras in the stage-managed aggrandizement of a third-rate political hack’s bid to become governor of a bargain-basement state too punch-drunk to drag its tax code into the 20th century—that’s eminently mock-worthy. That the media would poke and stoke the “story” for the sake of a few ratings points in the dog days of August is deplorable. That anyone takes Judge Roy Moore seriously—or thinks anyone else might, outside the Kleig-lit pucker of rabble and rouser—is self-evidently ludicrous. —If not, well: you’re free to consult the Google oracle for a sense of the actual role the Ten Commandments play in this great multicultural, secular nation of ours.
(Seriously. The whole God damned thing is a barrel-bottom Hollywood rip of Alfred Jarry.)
Early morning doubletake.
Ha ha. Read this, from Atrios’s coments section, citing a New York Times Letter from Europe:
This summer’s biggest scandal—the invasion and occupation of Iraq—has spawned endless speculation about who really wields power under President George W. Bush.
Everybody has a theory, but no one outside the White House really knows, and no one inside will say.
In the old days, observers of the White House—the press, they were called then—were granted access to various officials and important documents, with frequent news conferences from the President. Independent investigations led by Congress added to the scrutiny.
With all the setbacks the United States has suffered since 2000—disputed elections, stock market declines, a timid, Republican-friendly press and the curtailment of personal liberties—the exercise has changed. Whitehousology is here…
Then follow the link at the bottom to read more. (Courtesy of the Cunctator. —Which means now for some reason I’m reminded of the time that Art Buchwald took a chauffer-driven Cadillac into the then-Soviet Union to show them all what a capitalist looked like and proceeded to get drunk in [among other places] a Moscow dive where he bellowed, “My KGB guy can lick anybody else’s KGB guy in the house!”)
No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
That’s from the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy: 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 4. Nice to know that First Command, purveyor of life insurance to our men and women in uniform since 1958, and now (thanks to deregulation) a full-service bank that understands the challenges of the military lifestyle, has taken Scripture to heart. Check out the terms of a basic checking account where a private could stash her paycheck:
First Checking Account
- A basic transaction account with no minimum balance requirement.
- Non-interest bearing.
- Avoid the service charge by having their full pay direct deposited into their First Account.
- May write an unlimited number of checks; however, only the first 10 per statement cycle are free. Subsequent checks are $0.50 each.
- First 3 ATM withdrawals per statement cycle incur no charge from First Command Bank; subsequent withdrawals are $1.50 each. (May be subject to additional charge by ATM owner.)
- ATM Rebates limited to 3 transactions. See ATM card details for more information.
- Overdraft protection of $250 is automatically assigned.
- Opening deposit—$25.00
- Monthly service charge—$3.00 any month full pay is not direct deposited.
That’d be all of her paycheck, mind. Directly deposited. But hey: that’s pretty much standard issue for a cheap-ass, ground-level, screw the plebes who aren’t paying attention checking account; college students get to sign up for them every day. Nah, skimble has the goods on First Command’s real money-maker:
If you know anything about mutual funds, you may be familiar with the load, or sales charge, that you must pay for investing in the fund. Two to eight-and-a-half percent is a range of fairly common initial “front-end” loads. But military personnel are being slapped with loads of fifty percent on their savings for retirement…
Well, hey. It’s a variation on cheap-labor conservativism: if you find you can’t cut the rate you pay for labor when all is said and done, you can at least let a crony skim some of the fat. Right?
Credit where credit is due: when a veteran gets soaked by one of those publish-your-own-book deals, First Command will let him place a a Bedside Reading notice. To help move some units.
Live from Little Beirut.
Aaron, the Demented Lawyer, fights the good fight. Here’s his play-by-play of the President’s recent visit to Little Beirut: who got arrested, and how, and why. (Upshot? Precious few. Downside? Still brutal, still needless, still overly confrontational. Keep those feet on the sidewalk, citizen!) Emma Goldman has more, plus photos, and a link to the blog maintained by Shut Up O’Reilly’s old stomping grounds; she also tells you why it’s so cheesy to breeze into town for a $25K-a-plate fundraiser and stiff the 8% unemployed city with a $200,000 bill. (Do note the Democrat has paid up; the Republican has yet to return the city’s calls.) —The nut graf of it all, as it were:
I guess I don’t really know what to make of all this, except to say that—again—two thirds of the media told a story that didn’t happen to sell fear and anger for profit. This is a city in which something like 75% of the population voted for Gore (that stat comes from memory from The Emerging Democratic Majority). The folks at the protest were exercising their right to tell their president—their president—what they thought of his policies. They were overwhelmingly telling him his priorities were wrong and that he’d better serve the people better. But what do the local media show? The chilling tale of radicals barely kept in check while defiling the good name of the republic. Too bad we can’t vote them out of office.
If you wanted to put some money where it would do some good, you might think nationally, and consider MoveOn.org’s million dollars for democracy; you might think locally. Or you might decide to moon the people’s White House. Act accordingly.
