Forward! Into the past!

It's been a week since the Republicans won the election and they've only moved the country one hour back. They're going to have to work a lot harder than that to get us back to 1901 before the next election. At least Sarah Palin is doing her part. In her new ad, the sun moves backwards across New York.

My after election predictions

America is screwed.

Oh alright, I'll go into a little detail. My prediction for the election is that Democrats will salvage a thin majority in the Senate and Republicans will gain a small majority in House. It means that, politically, the next two years are going to be vicious and destructive. The economy is a mess, global warming is not going to wait, American prestige and relevance (outside military firepower) are declining rapidly, are millions are loosing their futures. The next congress will not only pass up opportunities to turn things around, it will actively work to make things worse. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to look at the next couple of weeks--from the election to the when the new congress gets to work.

When the Tuesday votes are counted, the division of power in the two houses of congress will appear to be clear, but there will still be surprises. Naturally, some races will take a while to be decided and a few will go on till all the lawsuits are done *cough* Alaska *cough*. No matter how many seats they win, Republicans will be crying fraud because they didn't get more. Making baseless claims about Democratic voter fraud has become too important a part of their fundraising machine for them to give in to reality. Beyond that, I expect there to be much more maneuvering and intrigue than usual.

First, the House. If the Democrats pull off a miracle and somehow still have a majority, the republicans will try to fix that by getting Blue Dogs to change parties. Ironically, there will be fewer Blue Dogs for them to court. Something like one third of the Blue Dogs will have been replaced by Republicans. That's fairly unlikely. What's more likely is the ensuing chaos within the Republican caucus. The Republican establishment is going to try to impose party discipline on the newly elected Tea Party congresspersons. This class of radicals is not going to be as easy to digest as some from earlier years. They not only are nuts, but there are aspiring king-makers in the caucus who will try to harness them for their own purposes. Boehner might be challenged for the leadership. Bachmann has already named herself leader of the tea party caucus. DeMint wants to form his own power bloc in both houses. I'm sure some of those who are planning to run for president are weighing the pros and cons of becoming the tea party candidate. That last is an important point, the tea party is not going to go away. They've had a taste of blood and the demagogues who've whipped them up aren't going to suddenly back off.

In the Senate, Joe Lieberman is probably going to start caucusing with the Republicans or officially become one. My logic is this based on the assumption that Lieberman will run for another term in 2012. If he does, he can't count on the big Republican crossover vote that he got in 2006 and he can't count on any Democrats voting for him instead of the party's nominee. His only chance is to claim the nomination of one of the parties. There's enough bad blood among the Democrats over his 2006 behavior that he's unlikely to win their nomination if there is any credible alternative. But if he's able to run in the Republican primary as the incumbent, he has a shot at cinching the nomination. The wild cards are the party establishments. If the Democratic establishment decides to support him and intimidates credible challengers into staying out of the race, he could get the nomination. But that would lead to massive staying home in November. On the other side, he could face a tea party insurrection if he goes for the Republican nomination. He'll do his Hamlet routine of publicly agonizing over the decision, telling us over and over again how principled he is, and forcing both parties to court him. And there's no guarantee that he'll get the nomination of the party that bids the most for him, but I think he'll decide that his best chances lie with the Republicans and his BFFs McCain and Graham. Then again, he might decide to quit the Senate and take a high paying slot as the other token "liberal" at Fox.

I could say more, but I'm too depressed.

The rich will get their tax cut

If a cable news camera crew were to show up at my door and ask me to go on the record with my prediction regarding the fate of cuts, this is what I would say. The rich are going to get what they want. The Bush tax cuts will be extended. Maybe there will be a little tinkering for PR purposes, but the essence of it will be unchanged. The only real uncertainty I see at this point is whether the tax cuts will be made permanent or merely extended for another decade. The extension will then balloon the deficit giving Republicans and Blue Dogs the cover they need to seriously start dismantling the social safety net.

Why do I think the give-away to the rich will be continued? The decision by Senate Democrats not to go forward with the smaller tax cut package is what makes it inevitable. I see it like this: If the Democrats stand up and pass the smaller package before the election, it will be almost impossible for the next Congress to pass a second tax cut just for the rich. The smaller tax cut gives everyone a cut, even the rich. All income up to a quarter million is covered by the cut. Having given the rich one tax cut, it will be an uphill battle for Republicans and Blue Dogs to argue that the rich deserve a second tax cut. However, if the Democrats cave--as they are doing--and pass nothing before the end of the term, then they face the reality of the tax cut bill being written in a congress with a larger Republican contingent, possibly even a Republican majority in the House. The next Congress simply will not pass a tax cut bill that does not include a give away to the rich.

I do see two possible ways this scenario could be avoided, but the odds of either happening are vanishingly small. One, is that the balance of power stays about the same in both houses. This then is followed by the Democrats suddenly getting orders of magnitude better at playing the PR game, announcing that the game will be the smalled cuts package or no cuts at all, and forcing the Republicans and Blue Dogs to blink first. The other way is that the Democrats push it through during the lame duck session, which would require them to overcome all of the procedural hurdles that the Republicans would throw at them. These are both so unlikely that I feel safe ignoring them.

To me, it's that simple. If the Democrats pass the smaller package before the end of the term, it will be almost impossible for the next Congress to pass a second package just for the rich. If they do not pass it now, it will be almost impossible not to give the rich their bigger cut. The Democrats have mismanaged this issue from the beginning. Now, through inaction, they appear to have decided to completely cave in to the Republicans/Blue Dog position. They do this despite knowing the disastrous long term consequences this decision will have. And they wonder why the base is having trouble ginning up any enthusiasm this fall.

Apres Ted le deluge

Former nude model and family values Republican Scott Brown just won Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate. Even if we count Joe Lieberman as a Democrat, and I don't see why we should, this cuts the Democratic majority down to a "mere" fifty nine seats. My first instinct is to say, turn the lights off and send the Senate home; nothing more is going to be accomplished. But that's a much too optimistic way of viewing it. As long as we have Democrats like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson in the Senate, the Republicans should be able to get a majority for anything they want.

Healthcare: random thoughts and questions

The Senate healthcare bill will probably squeak through sometime in the next seventy two hours. Count Clever Wife and I among the very disappointed. I'm inclined towards a position of hold your nose and vote for the damn thing and she inclines toward throw the game board in the air and start a violent revolution. I have a lot of questions to ask and a few observations to make.

Observation:

The supporters of the bill keep saying we should support the bill because it will give coverage to thirty one million people who are currently not covered by the for profit insurance industry. The pundits, politicians, and activists who chant this line speak from a perspective of a "we" who have secure coverage and who are doing a good deed for those people who need coverage. I have news for them, many of the "we" whom they are talking to are among the uninsured or insecurely insured. This is not an abstract question of doing a good deed for others; "we" need to know if the bill will improve our dire situation.

Question:

If thirty one million will gain coverage, who are the twenty million who will not gain coverage? Which group am I in? If I'm in the lucky thirty one million, when does it kick in and how does it work?

Observation:

Those same pundits, politicians, and activists keep telling us we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't know of anyone who is doing that. We gave up on the perfect at the beginning of this process when the Democrats decided to start the negotiations by making a big concession in keeping single payer off the table. A robust public option was the good. The weaker public options that the Senate eventually bargained away were only okay. At this point, those who have given up on the bill are letting the okay get in the way of the only marginally better than nothing.

More questions:

Clever wife and I have a wildly fluctuating income. This year it will be zero. Our COBRA coverage will end in a few months. We're in our fifties and we each have chronic conditions. Joe Lieberman made sure we can't move into Medicare, so what are our options?

The individual mandate means we will be forced to buy insurance from a for profit insurance like the one that is about to terminate our COBRA. When will we be forced to make that purchase. They tell us there will be subsidies to help pay for the over priced limited coverage that the for profit insurance offers. When will the subsidies kick in? We're not a typical four in their thirties. How much help will the subsidies give to people like us?

Another observation:

Right now, we're all focused on blaming Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson for the constant erosion of the Senate bill. Let's not forget that it was Max Baucus who delayed the process for two months, allowing the Lieberman and the conservative Democrats time to sabotage the bill.

Question:

How miserable can we make their lives without forcing them to change parties?

Observation:

I think it's fairly clear that after the next election, Lieberman is going to openly declare himself a Republican for his 2012 run. If he runs as an independent, he will probably lose in a three way fight. If he runs as a Democrat, he will face a bloody primary challenge and little support from the Democratic establishment. That leaves running as a Republican. Any hope of improving the bill is dependent on getting rid of Lieberman.

Question:

Is there any reasonable chance that we can gain a seat in the Senate next year to give us a Lieberman proof majority?

Final observations:

It took thirty years to get from Social Security to Medicare. It took forty five years to get from Medicare to whatever this mess is going to be called. I probably not going to live to see the next major improvement in this country's healthcare system.

This disappointing business has completely destroyed the morale and enthusiasm of the people who elected Obama and the Democratic majority. Many of the people who became first time voters last year, because of that enthusiasm, are probably going to stay home next year.

Final questions:

Can Obama and the congressional Democrats regain our trust and support? Will they even try?

Can the bill be improved in committee and still make it through another vote in the Senate? Is it realistic to hope for improvements to come through later legislation or will those attempts be blocked by the same saboteurs that created the need for improving the bill in the first place?

What next?

PS: Rahm Emanuel can kiss my red, furry ass.

And the republic slowly circles the drain...

This morning, Washington, DC commuters were treated to the spectacle of a small plane towing a nearly 100-foot-long banner that read "OBAMA STOP DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY" in five-foot-tall letters. The message was paid for by the Danville Tea Party Patriots, the same group that wanted to burn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their local congressman, Tom Periello in effigy. The plane's flight plan was to take it over Interstate 66, which leads right into the heart of the city, and along the beltway which surrounds the city. This path would have taken the plane with in five to ten miles of such landmarks as the White House, the Pentagon, and the Capitol Building while Congress is in session. While I have no problem with the teabaggers exercising their right to free speech, however idiots I might find it, I have to ask "why on earth was a small plane of any sort allowed into that airspace?"


In other news, Republican Senator Mike Johanns is demanding a congressional investigation into something he admits never happened.

The neverending problem

Every year I go into my site template and try to fix the feed. Every year I do exactly what the Blogger instructions tell me to. Every year it fails.

I use the Google Reader as a test. When I enter the URL for archy, I'm told they can't find it. If I go to archy, click the Atom feed link, copy the URL from there and paste it into Google Reader, it works. I added archy to Feedburner (who had the same problem finding me) and that didn't help.

I'm assured that my traffic would increase ten-fold--perhaps more--if I could get the feed to work. Badtux alone would visit hourly and and bring his well dressed horde with him. Coturnix's Coturnici would hang on my every silly pronouncement. It would become worthwhile to clutter the place with advertising. The FCC would keep a close eye on me to make sure I published a disclaimer every time I washed my hands with a bar of Clever Wife's gentle, exquisitely scented, and very reasonably priced Howling Pig soaps. I would become an important mover and shaker courted by the powerful, the influential, and the would-be powerful/influential. But none of this will happen unless I get the damn feed to work!!!

Any suggestions?

Why do they hate us?

No peeking. Guess where I found this.

The baby boomers have done such a fantastic job with the global economy and have always thought about the broad population rather than enriching themselves. They're always so right when they blast those good-for-nothing youngsters in their 20s who only think of themselves. They're selfish little punks and we all know it. Can't they grow up and be more like the boomers who ushered in the Gordon Gekko era that has served us so well? The boomers have delivered so many greats including George Bush and Bill Clinton who never hesitated to think of others.

No, it's not a rant left in the comment thread by a troll. No, it's not the same old crap from a rightwing site like Michelle Malkin or World Nut Daily. It's not an obscure diarist in the back of community site. This is Chris in Paris, one of the main writers at Americablog, one of the biggest liberal news blogs.

What's odd about this outburst, besides its virulence, is the fact it's totally gratuitous. He uses it as the introduction to link to an editorial pointing out that the "class war" charge is only leveled when the working class want a fair shake but never when the rich are fleecing the whole country. He seems to imagine that the mass of the sixties and seventies generations will rise up to defend the privileges of the rich and demand the head of this poor reporter who dared to point out a double standard (one of many) of the pundit class.

This is not just a straw man argument, it's a particularly stupid straw man argument to assume that all baby boomers are the same. For crap's sake, there are more of us than there are in his adopted country of France, including its remaining colonial dependencies. Does my generation have its share of jerks and greed-heads? Of course we do. So does yours, Chris. And yet, I don't see anyone defining your generation by zit-heads ‪like Jonah Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Michelle Malkin, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Chris isn't the only liberal blogger, or not insanely right-wing, to express his disdain for the older generation by tilting at straw men. In 2005 Markos Moulitsas, the Kos of Daily Kos, was hoping the Democrat could mount a serious opposition to the Iraq war without "sound[ing] like hippy[sic]* retreads." A few months later he started a minor kerfluffle by sneering at "these touchy-feely hippy[sic] types that thinks[sic] war is inherently bad." However, when he was filming an ad to push his first book, he had no problem putting out a casting call for hippies. Mark Hoofnagle, one of two Hoofnagles at denialism.com, a site ironically devoted to fighting stupid ideas, never misses an opportunity to sneer at "crystal-clutching hippies" by declaring that "http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/07/the_independent_needs_its_envi.php" and "I don't like hippies either."

The first few times I heard members of the younger generation (a phrase I never thought I hear myself utter) use "hippie" as an insult, I was pretty baffled. There was much more to it than simply mocking the clothes and music of an older generation. Teenage clothing fashions always deserve a good mocking and pop music is very time specific. What puzzled me was the bile packed into the way people spat the word at people and ideas they loathed. I thought about it for a few years and came up with a few tentative conclusions.

Chris's angry sarcasm directed at the perceived hypocrisy and moral collapse of my generation is the best illustration of my thoughts. We had ideals and we failed to live up to them. Americans are completely unforgiving of failure (don't believe me? On the scale of insult, where does "loser" fall?). The pop psychology observation is that we are an ugly reminder that youthful energy and idealism fade and sometimes are replaced with more mundane practical concerns. They hate us because they fear that they will become us.

They're also ignorant of history. All three of them are too young to have actually seen a hippie in its natural habitat. They rant at straw men and stereotypes because they have no idea of the diversity of historical processes that have worked themselves out over the last thirty years. Members of the late sixties and early seventies counter culture were a small minority of the baby boom generations. Some of my generation were rich jerks from day one and never changed. Some were working poor who never had time for politics or cultural flamboyance. Most of us were middle class kids who watched the great cultural and political battles from afar and participated in some small way on our chosen side when the battle came close enough.

The counter culture came to a screeching halt in the winter of 1974-5. Nixon resigned, Patty Hearst was kidnapped, and the Viet Nam war ended and with it the cement that was holding the various movements vanished. A different clique moved into the limelight with disco and cocaine. Those of us who had rooted for the hippies loudly condemned the sell out of our generation. We lacked perspective because we were in the middle of it and we made the same mistake that Chris, Kos, and Mark make lacking perspective because they are too far away. I can't repeat it enough times: a generation is not a monolithic block. The disco divas were not the same people as the counter culture. Most of the movement liberals did not go away or become Gordon Gekkos, they simply became invisible when the counter culture broke apart and they had to pursue their causes in isolation.

The same people who use hippie an insult often sneer that "no one ever ended a war by singing folk songs." Do they really think that the only thing the anti-war movement did was strum guitars and sing? They exposed the lies of the official government body counts and casualty reports. They encouraged non-cooperation with the draft and helped draft resisters get out of the country. They brought tens of thousands of people into the political process who might have lived their lives in apathy. Pop music played a part. One generation's protest songs might seem lame to the next (I never could get very fired up over the Internationale), but music is the language of a generation. Those protest songs made the war uncool.

Chris says we elected Bush, but fails to mention that we elected Obama too. My generation has plenty of failures to answer for. But we have our share of successes to point to. We created the environmental movement. We created feminism. We took the torch of liberalism from Women’s' Suffrage and the New Deal and we kept it burning to turn over to your generation. If you can do a better job than we did, go to it. I'm rooting for you.

I'm probably wasting way too much energy on this, but Chris' scorn and vulgar stereotyping pissed me off royally. I didn't become rich stockbroker and I have never voted for a Republican. Maybe the reason I didn't sell out is that no one offered to buy me, but the fact remains that, for thirty years, I've tried to maintain some integrity. I have been one of the working intellectual poor most of my adult life. I was downwardly mobile compared to my parents, as were millions of us baby boomers. After decades of crappy minimum wage jobs, noisy apartments, and riding the bus, Clever Wife and I finally had a few good years and were able to get back a little chunk of middle class life. Now might lose it. We're both unemployed. Our COBRAed insurance costs almost a thousand dollars a month and probably won't cover the seven prescriptions we need through the year. We're finally old enough to understand what age discrimination means, at this age it's a more threatening than being dismissed as dumb kids, like we were at the other end of our working lives.

When I get up in the morning and hear Chris, who lives in a country with great health care and humane pensions; Kos, who has managed to parlay a passion for politics into national recognition and a career that provides a comfortable life for his family; or Mark, a doctor and well read writer, tell me that everyone like me sucks it makes my pressure valve pop. I don't begrudge anyone their success if they earned it, but I despise anyone who, in their success, loses their compassion a uses their lofty perch to exalt ignorance and spit down on others. I don't need their insults. No one does.

* Just for the record, hippy is an adjective meaning well endowed in the hip region. Hippie is a noun, first coined by beatniks to describe suburban hipster wannabes. It is a diminutive of hip, which, as those out in squaresville might not know, is a synonym for cool. Dig? In the sixties, the term was proudly adopted by a counter culture that included both dropped-out flower children and serious political radicals. To sum up, a hippie can be hippy, but not all of the hippy are hippies.

Disappointed

Obama has chosen Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguartion. This is the same megachurch pastor who says he hopes he can convince Obama to abolish legal and safe abortion. The same Rick Warren who made ads in favor of California's Proposition 8 which re-outlawed gay marriage. The same Rick Warren who told lies to support Prop 8 (legal gay marriage would lead to pastors who "he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships" to be prosecuted for hate speech). The same Rick Warren who uses the "some of my best friends" argument to claim he isn't homophobic.

This is not a first for Obama. My initial reservations about Obama's candidacy was based on his forays into being a moral scold for Democrats and claiming we needed to cosy up to extremist evangelical conservatives. This kind of knee-jerk Lierbermanism is bad for the Democratic Party, bad for America, and deeply disappointing to me. But then, he isn't trying to make me happy. Too many of his people have bought into another key tenet of Lierbermanism: that it's always a big win and a sign of bipartisanship to kick liberals in the teeth. I still have hope that he'll be a great president on other issues, but I expect to remain disappointed whenever religion comes into it (such as church/state separation and culture wars).

Update: On a happier note, he's invited Aretha Franklin to sing at the inaugural.

More

I had just finished the previous post when Clever Wife called to say her whole office had been laid off. They're offshoring the work to China. I'm so happy for China.

Russia threatens to attack Poland

It looks like Putin's gang has taken the Bush Doctrine of preventative, unilateral military action to heart.

WARSAW, Poland — The United States and Poland signed a deal Wednesday to place a U.S. missile defense base just 115 miles from Russia -- a move followed swiftly by a new warning from Moscow of a possible military response.

Negotiators sealed the deal last week against a backdrop of Russian military action in Georgia, a former Soviet republic turned U.S. ally, that has worried former Soviet satellites across eastern Europe. It prompted Moscow's sharpest rhetoric yet over the system, which it contends is aimed at Russia despite Washington's insistence the site is purely defensive.

After Wednesday's signing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed any suggestion the 10 missile defense interceptors -- which Washington says are intended to defend Europe and the U.S. from the possible threat of long-distance missiles from Iran -- represent a threat to Russia.

[...]

Such comments "border on the bizarre, frankly," Rice told reporters in Warsaw. "The Russians are losing their credibility," she said, adding that Moscow would pay a price for its actions in Georgia, though she did not specify how.

[...]

Hours after the signing, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned that Moscow's response would go beyond diplomacy. The system to be based in Poland lacks "any target other than Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles," it said in a statement, contending the U.S. system "will be broadened and modernized."

"In this case Russia will be forced to react, and not only through diplomatic" channels, it said without elaborating.

In one of my first blog posts, written as the invasion of Iraq was beginning, I mourned what I believed was the end of a century of painfully achieved international law and a return to gunboat diplomacy. So far, things are turning out just as I feared they would.

McCain was never tortured

Andrew Sullivan makes the point that, according to the definitions used by the Bush administration, nothing the Vietnamese did to McCain counts as torture. The North Vietnamese merely used what the Bush administration calls "enhanced interrogation" and defends as perfectly acceptable in defending the national interest. Since McCain eventually approved the use of such techniques when he voted for the Military Commissions Act, apparently he no longer believes he was tortured either. It's an interesting argument. I would love to hear McCain himself explain the seeming contradiction. I guess the only real victim of torture here is logic.

The unfunny Mr. Beck

Glenn Beck thinks that this is funny, because some of those newly homeless might be America-hating liberals.

More than a half million people had been ordered from San Diego County homes Tuesday as wildfires rage from the Mexican border to north of Los Angeles.

Across Southern California, more than 1,300 homes had been reduced to ashes, officials said Tuesday.

About 1,000 homes have been destroyed in San Diego County alone.

A second civilian has died in the wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday afternoon. It provided no details.

Fears grew north of Los Angeles that the winds may fan three wildfires into one monster blaze, with too little resources available to fight it.

Those fires threaten more than 56,000 homes.

In San Diego County, at least 513,000 residents had been ordered to find refuge in shelters, schools and stadiums as fires pushed into new areas Tuesday.

Beck's supporters on the far right are playing the martyrdom card ("Waaaah! The bad liberals are trying to suppress our free speech."), but this kind of ugliness isn't a partisan issue. Even card carrying moderates and right of center folks are appalled at Beck this time.

I don't really care whether Beck issues a half hearted apology or whether this or that Republican politician distances his- or herself from Becks comments. That kind of theater is all part of the same game and means nothing. I want the people of America to notice what a jerk Beck is and treat him with the contempt he deserves. I don't want him off the air because a threatened boycott of his sponsors led CNN to fire him. I want him off the air because no one will listen to his hate-filled crap any longer.

Another Bush war?

For months, Seymour Hersh has been reporting on the efforts of the administration to start a war with Iran (most recently here). I wish I could ignore this, but Hersh has a painful record of being right. Lately, with the stealth attempt by Sens. Lieberman and Kyl to slip a declaration of war into a budget bill as an amendment, we have to take this possibility more seriously.

We might hope that the Democrats in Congress might stop such a thing from happening, but that isn't the case. Bush can make the decision to commit troops to war unilaterally. Then he can hold those troops hostage and blackmail congress into supporting his war, just as he has done so far in Iraq. The only power congress has against a commitment of troops is to withhold funds for their mission. But as Bush has shown in Iraq, that is politically impossible once the troops have been placed in harm's way. As soon as bullets begin to fly, all a President has to do is accuse Congress of not giving the troops the tools they need to defend themselves. The accusation of not supporting the troops is stacked in favor of the the President.

The decision to go to war with Iran would be made with the assurances by the administration to congressional Republicans that a new war would rally the country and assure them victory in 2008, which it might. Voters are easily manipulated in the short term. A large enough number congressional Republicans are short-sighted enough that they would go along with the administration and kill any timid opposition the Democrats might manage.

A third war, against a country more populous than Iraq and Afghanistan combined and far better armed, would destroy our army, unify the Middle East against us, isolate us in world affairs, collapse our economy, and end our democracy. The Republican Party would be the first to pay the price; the Democrats would not survive much longer. I firmly believe this. There is no guarantee that our form of government will survive forever. As Eastern Europe showed, when change comes, it comes quickly. The name and territory of the United States would probably survive such a catastrophe, but out real values and system of government would not. If Enlightenment democracy in the US were to die, it would also die in many other parts of the world. This war could be enough to start that domino theory.

The Democrats alone cannot stop Bush from starting another war, even if they had the will. However, if Republican leaders in congress (especially the Senate) made it clear that they would join the Democrats in resisting Bush even to the point of impeachment during a presidential campaign, the war plans would be off the table and burned. Basically, Orin Hatch and Arlen Spector have the power to prevent this war.

Should we count on the patriotism of Hatch and Spector to save us, or should we start sending pictures of puppies to Bush hoping to distract him till his term is over? My money is on the puppies.


The last line of defense for Western Civilization.

This is just wrong

It's not just Iraq war vets that the administration screws over. They also screw over vets who are the fathers and grandfathers of today's vets.

Korean War veteran Nyles Reed, 75, opened an envelope last week to learn a Purple Heart had been approved for injuries he sustained as a Marine on June 22, 1952.

But there was no medal. Just a certificate and a form stating that the medal was "out of stock."

"I can imagine, of course, with what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's a big shortage," Reed said. "At least, I would imagine so."

The form letter from the Navy Personnel Command told Reed he could wait 90 days and resubmit an application, or buy his own medal.

The good news is that with the way the administration is treating wounded Iraq vets, there should be no shortage of them out on the streets, willing to sell their Purple Hearts.

After waiting 55 years, however, Reed decided to pay $42 for his own Purple Heart and accompanying ribbon — plus state sales taxes — at a military surplus store.

They have no shame.

They have some explaining to do

The following Democratic Senators voted to give the Bush administration more power to ignore due process and act without any sort of meaningful oversight.

• Blanche Lincoln, AR
  
• Mark Prior, AR
  
• Dianne Feinstein, CA
  
• Ken Salazar, CO
  
• Tom Carper, DE
  
• Bill Nelson, FL
  
• Daniel Inouye, HI
  
• Evan Bayh, IN
  
• Mary Landrieu, LA
  
• Barbara Mikulski, MD
  
• Claire McCaskill, MO
  
• Amy Klobuchar, MN
  
• Kent Conrad, ND
  
• Ben Nelson, NE
  
• Bob Casey, Jr, PA
  
• Jim Webb, VA

Every one of them is a disgrace to their party and to the country. They need to explain why we shouldn't immediately start recruiting primary challengers to boot them out of office.

Needless to say, former Democrat Joe Lieberman and all of the Senate Republicans voted against the constitution.

Jesus wept

Just when we think the vileness that people will commit in the name of God can't get any worse, we get this:

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

On July 29, 1994 Paul Hill, who sought to set a good example for Christian theocratic revolutionaries, assassinated abortion provider Dr. John Britton and James Barrett one of his escorts, and seriously wounding another, June Barrett, outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.

It should be noted that George L. Wilson, the proprietor of Children Needs Heroes, recognizes two other heroes he believes America's children should learn about: Shelly Shannon, who was convicted of the attempted assassination of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, among other serious crimes, including a series of arsons; and of course, James Kopp, who was convicted in the sniper assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, New York. Kopp is also the chief suspect in several other shootings.

All three are recognized as Heroes of the Faith by the Army of God, members of which are likely to be on hand for the festivities.

On September 3, 2003, Paul Hill was executed by the state of Florida for two counts of murder. Murder was not really the correct charge. Although Hill planned to stop Dr. Britton from performing abortions by killing him, Hill had much larger goal in mind. Like all anti-abortion assassins, Hill hoped to intimidate other abortion providers through an act of unpredictable violence. This is the very definition of terrorism.

By the same token, the "Paul Hill Days" stunt has a larger purpose than just to "honor" Hill or educate children about a "hero." The event also sends a message to abortion providers everywhere that there are still those who believe in terror lurking in the crowds and they could be next. The highlight of the "Paul Hill Days" stunt is a reenactment of the assassination. It is the exact parallel to sending a noose to a black civil rights leader or a bullet and picture of his child to an Iraqi Sunni living in a Shi'ite town. If this stunt is a success, think of some of the other celebrations we might be subjected to: Southern Nationalists holding John Wilkes Booth Days complete with reenactments of his most famous moment in a theater, Timothy McVeigh Days with a reenactment of the last moments of the Murrah daycare center, and, of course, Mohamed Atta Days with what horrors I'll leave you to imagine.

At times like this, I hope the fundamentalists are right about hell so people like this can spend eternity there. There are no words strong enough to express my disgust.

Update 1: In my original rush to post this, I misspelled Timothy McVeigh's name. That has been corrected.

Update 2: Steve Reynolds of The All Spin Zone asks the important question"

Which Republican Presidential Candidate Will Condemn “Paul Hill Days?” Someone should ask every one of those candidates. They’ve all come out against abortion, even Rudy Giuliani, though sometimes it is hard to understand his stance.

Um, okay

Mike Dunford's wife is serving Iraq right now. Earlier today he received this e-mail from the Family Readiness Group for his wife's unit. I'm glad to see that they have their priorities straight.

The Acting Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff, Army have emphasized that Army Families are a key component of our readiness. Army Families shoulder a great burden of sacrifice, supporting their Soldier and often enduring long periods of separation from their loved ones. Top notch care and support of Army Families demonstrate our sincere appreciation and gratitude for their many contributions, and allow our Soldiers to fully concentrate on the fight and focus on their duties. Effective immediately, the word "Families" will be capitalized in all Army correspondence. Please ensure wide dissemination of this change. Thanks for your continued efforts to do all you can to provide steadfast support to our Army Families.

I'm just doing my patriotic best to help with the wide dissemination. Then my head will explode.

Death in Virginia

I'm watching the story of the Virginia Tech story develop. When I went online about an hour ago, the CNN story mentioned one dead, seventeen injured, and a gunman in custody, while the breaking news bar at the top of the page said twenty dead. I assumed some editor had misread injured for killed and created the breaking news headline. CBS had the same mismatch of headline and story. By the time I got to ABC, they had updated the story and to read at least twenty dead including the gunman. Currently, ABC is saying twenty-five were killed and twenty-one wounded, with more dead expected. The count of wounded is different from the earlier count of injured, which included those hurt in the panic. All of the news reports appear to be based on the same AP feed, which itself is based on the campus information office and onsite reports from the student paper.

By the end of the day, the confused reports will be sorted out and we will find that around fifty people were killed or wounded and a couple dozen more will have been treated for lesser injuries during the panic. It's already being called the worst shooting incident in modern American history. All of the interested groups are already scrambling to take advantage of this tragedy. Blaming fingers will be pointed at pop music, lack of prayer in schools, video games, too much stress, teaching of evolution in schools, abortion's "culture of death," bad movies, and perhaps even overly easy access to guns. Gun groups will claim that this tragedy might have been averted if the teachers had been armed and willing to kill their students. The NRA will launch a major fundraising effort because "the liberals will use this as an excuse to take away our guns."

Nothing will really change.