An Ignoble Letter to "Noble Americans"

You received a letter yesterday.

Well, not in your mailbox exactly. This six-page, open letter was addressed to "noble Americans" from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranian officials released the text of the letter on Wednesday.

On the one hand, Ahmadinejad's letter showers Americans with a few compliments. We are "God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking." On the other hand, we are dupes who have provided "blind support" for U.S. government policies favoring the "Zionists" (a.k.a., Israel) over the Palestinians.

Other highlights of the letter:

* God deliberately "placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart ..."

* Although he presides over a country with no Miranda rights, Ahmadinejad sounds like a board member of the ACLU as he informs Americans that "civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed."

* The letter included a garden variety of anti-Semitism -- the Zionists control "a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors" in America. (Is that why TV is much more worth watching in the U.S. than in a country like Iran?)

What the Sadr Pullout Really Means

Yesterday morning, Iraqi cabinet members allied with militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr withdrew their support from the provisional government. This move was designed to protest the decision of the Iraqi prime minister to meet with President Bush.

What does it mean? The Washington Post's David Ignatius offers his take:

... in truth, Sadr was never really in this supposed "government of national unity" in the first place -- except to grab off the spoils of power.

... Sadr's move will surely take Iraq deeper into its civil war. Indeed, one of the markers that senior U.S. commanders have been using to argue that we weren't yet quite all the way to civil war was that sectarian leaders such as Sadr had not bolted from the government.

So now, if he's really gone, we need to stop the semantic games. This is a a civil war.

By leaving the government, Sadr forces his Shia Muslim followers -- and Prime Minister Maliki himself -- to answer the gut question: "Which side are you on?" The United States has been pressing Maliki and other Iraqis for clarity on this issue. Will they stand up for Iraq? Will they disband sectarian militias? Will they work with U.S. troops to end the violence?

Here is a loud, blunt answer from a man who unfortunately probably has the greatest "street credibility" in Iraq -- "No!"

Sadr has been the biggest winner in the power vacuum of Iraq. A senior U.S. intelligence analyst told me this week that Sadr's forces are eight times larger than they were in August, 2004. If provincial elections were held today, the intelligence official said, Sadr's party would win in every Shiite province of Iraq but one.

Frist Says "No" to a Presidential Run

That's the word from Republican sources. Frist is supposed to make a formal statement later today. More details from CNN.

Religious Tests

Keith Ellison (D-MN) is the first Muslim elected to public office, therefore instead of taking the oath to office with his hand on the Christian Bible, he wants to use the Koran.

Oh, the horror!

Via Carpetbagger, Dennis Prager proves, once again, that he is a total and complete stranger to reason.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.
...
We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath. [Whaaaaaaaa? Did I miss a vote on this?]

Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” the Nazis’ bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison’s right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?
...
When all elected officials take their oaths of office with their hands on the very same book, they all affirm that some unifying value system underlies American civilization.

Carpetbagger, as always, deftly picks apart the sheer idiocy of Prager’s arguments and total lack of facts-- like the fact that not everyone swears on the Christian Bible or any religious text at all.

I think it's very telling that the example Prager uses about a self-identified Nazi taking the oath of office on Mein Kampf is that he seems more upset about the superficial, symbolic issue than the fact that people elected a Nazi. (I love Prager's equation of the Koran and Mein Kampf, he's such a subtle guy.)

Beyond how utterly stupid this nonexistent controversy is, or how much it smacks in the face of “no religious tests for public office,” what it clearly does have to do with is conformity via meaningless religious exercise. It's not as bad as it used to be in the US, but we still have weird pangs of it here and there.

This issue touches upon something that has truly irked and perplexed me for much of my life. If Prager actually thought about what he wants to happen— that Ellison take an oath on a Christian Bible, preferably a sizable stack— what does he think it will mean? I can’t help but wonder, to Prager and others like him, is going through the motions more important than doing something that has actual meaning? If an atheist or a Jew or a Buddhist swears on the King James, is that really preferable to having them swear on something that actually means something to them? (Granted there is the issue of swearing on religious texts at all.) Most quixotic of all is that Prager himself is not even a Christian, he is a Jew, probably the only Jew who doesn't have any issues with America as a Christian theocracy.

Maybe because I wasn’t raised in a religious household, was never forced to do anything religious that I didn’t want to do, I see this issue in a very different light. Considering that most people are raised doing such things without given a choice, so it might not stand out as problematic in the way that it does to me. But it's one thing for a person's family to want them perform religious acts or abide by religious traditions, it's another thing entirely for a secular government to demand or expect it of its elected officials. Not to mention that if we force our elected representatives to swear on a specific religious text what is to stop them from turning around and demanding that the rest of us do so as well?

It's just not right.

This Post Has No Sponsor

Just when you think you've seen it all.

Go the New York Times' website, find a news article, and try to print it. There's a good chance you'll see that your "printer-friendly format" page is sponsored by someone. (This morning, the movie "History Boys" sponsored my printer-friendly page.)

So long as they offer me the news online for free, it's hard to complain when the newspaper finds a new gimmick for raising advertising dollars.

PA Becomes a Deeper Shade of Blue

All it took was 23 votes to turn the Pennsylvania state house blue.

Dems take control of Pennsylvania state House

The long-awaited results of a Chester County state House race, decided yesterday by 23 votes, swung control of the chamber to the Democrats for the first time in more than a decade.

The results dramatically alter Harrisburg's political landscape after four years in which Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, has been forced to bargain with two chambers controlled by the opposite party.
...
If the results of the 156th House District race withstand any potential Republican court challenges, Democrats will have a 102-101 advantage in the new session of the Legislature. It will be the first time since 1994 that Democrats will be in charge of the House.

It's the slimmest of margins and it's not quite locked down yet, but if it sticks it will make Rendell's job a whole lot easier.

Yglesias and the Princeton Project

I don't know what to make of this post at Matthew Yglesias' blog. He seems to think the Russians and Chinese should justifiably be offended by the Princeton Project. A key aspect of the Project was described by the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl in this recent column:

One of the most intriguing Princeton ideas is the creation of a treaty-based "Concert of Democracies" that, like the European Union or NATO, would admit members only if they met strict requirements.

The new institution would allow the democracies to work together as a concerted force within such institutions as the United Nations -- as mostly undemocratic groups such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference already do -- and could eventually replace the United Nations as a forum for legitimizing international security actions if the United Nations itself proved resistant to reform.

If Russia or China feel spurned, so be it.

Creating this group would not mean that the U.S. would cease its diplomatic relations or outreach to the Chinese or Russians. But this group could possibly help the U.S. mobilize broad-based support in the international community and apply greater pressure on Russia and China not to use their Security Council veto power to block reasonable multilateral action with regard to Darfur, Iran or other areas of the world.

Why the indignation, Mr. Yglesias?

Has Reuters Fired Its Copy Editors?

This morning at 8:01 a.m. EST, Reuters News Service released this story about Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister:

Yegor Gaidar, architect of Russia's market reforms, was being treated in a Moscow hospital on Wednesday after coming close to death with a mystery ailment during a visit to Ireland, friends and family said.

Former acting prime minister Gaidar, 50, who unleashed economic shock therapy before the dust had settled on the ruins of the Soviet Union, fell unconscious with unexplained symptoms on November 24 during a visit to Dublin to present his new book, "Death of the Empire."

It's a pretty conventional news story until the 8th paragraph, which reads as follows:

A tubby economist who became reform commissar and acting prime minister for former president Boris Yeltsin, Gaidar provoked awe and antipathy for freeing prices in 1992 and for launching the first wave of privatizations after the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to the dictionary, the word tubby means "pudgy" or "fat."

So why does Reuters consider it newsworthy to inform us that Gaidar is overweight? Why the hell is this relevant to the story? Where are Reuters' copy editors?

Sudanese Leader's Low-Ball Estimate

From the Coalition for Darfur blog comes evidence that Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir doesn't know how to count:

... Aid agencies say 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since the conflict flared in 2003.

And in remarks that sparked furious criticism by opposition parties, Bashir said the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the number of dead had been grossly overstated.

"Counting all those killed in battles between the armed forces, the rebels and the tribes, the number does not reach 9,000," Bashir said in a news conference on Monday broadcast live to nine countries.

The Impact of Religious Conservative Voters

Many news sources have reported that Democrats cut the GOP's advantage among weekly churchgoers to 12 percentage points in the 2006 election, down from 18 points in 2004.

But there's more to the story. Although Focus on the Family's James Dobson claimed that evaneglical voters "simply stayed at home" this election, the fact is that white evangelical Protestants turned out to vote just as heavily as they did in 2004.

This data offers an important lesson in electoral politics: getting conservative evangelicals to the polls in strong numbers isn't always enough.

Two examples.

First, evangelical conservatives don't vote solely on the GOP's so-called values issues, especially when issues like congressional corruption and the Iraq war are front and center. It's clear that a significant number of evangelical conservatives were as disgusted as I was with the failure of Republican leaders in Congress to question or challenge the administration's policies in Iraq.

Second, in most cases, there are enough moderate voters to lessen the impact of evangelical conservatives at the polls.

Consider the states of South Dakota and Kansas. In presidential terms, South Dakota and Kansas are among the reddest states of all -- neither has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Yet South Dakota voters rejected the nation's strongest abortion ban, and voters in Kansas defeated an incumbent GOP attorney general who had conducted high-profile investigations of abortion clinics.

On some issues, the sheer passage of time seems to take some of the wind out of the sails of conservative evangelicals. Although seven more states passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, the margins were generally tighter than in the 11 states that had adopted similar bans two years ago. And one of those states, Arizona, rejected such a ban.

Not a great result for gay people and their allies, but not so bad considering that Gary Bauer and other religious conservatives were pointing to the New Jersey same-sex marriage ruling as sure to fire up their supporters and maximize turnout.

Introducing the Googlebombers

If you know who the googlebombers are and what they did to try to have an impact in the November election, then you're ahead of me. I only learned about them from this article posted yesterday on Slate.com by Bonnie Goldstein.

Today's Public Humility Award Goes to ....

... Jean Jensen, who is secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections. Yesterday, the Board officially certified Democrat James Webb as the winner of one of the closest U.S. Senate races in the country. Webb defeated Sen. George Allen by a margin of 9,329 votes.

Based on the final tally, 52.66 percent of the state's eligible voters cast ballots. That was much higher than in 2002, when 44 percent of Virginia's voters cast ballots for a Senate candidate, but it was far below the 65 percent turnout that had been predicted by Jean Jensen, the Board's secretary.

Given how public officials routinely offer excuses or spin to cover their asses, I have to take my hat off to Jensen for the comments she made to a Washington Post reporter:

"[Turnout] was less than what I thought. But I make lousy turnout predictions."

Dems May Gain Another Seat in House

Election 2006 is not quite over. A runoff election will soon be held in Texas' 23rd Congressional District, and the race could provide yet another Democratic pickup.

Details from Jesselee at The Stakeholder.

Far Higher Than LBJ? No Way

I agree with the Carpetbagger. After reading through The Atlantic magazine's ranking of the top 100 influential figures in U.S. history, the Carpetbagger wonders why Dwight Eisenhower was ranked no. 28:

On a list of military generals, sure, but [the most] influential Americans of all time? Nearly 20 places higher than Lyndon Johnson, whose influence — on civil rights, Great Society, Vietnam — still reverberates today?

Except for Social Security, nearly every strand of the economic "safety net" that Americans enjoy today was adopted largely at the urging of LBJ — Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and food stamps, for example.

An Easy Explanation for Richards' Rant

Much too easy.

Leave it to a Townhall.com columnist to try to use Michael Richards' racist outburst as the basis for a canned, scatter-brained argument about "race consciousness."

According to Star Parker, Richards' offensive remarks can be traced to the fact that many businesses and government agencies keep track "of how many blacks it has on board. Every major corporation has a diversity officer to make sure the colors of the beans are in order.

"... We have institutionalized race consciousness to the very core of our society, so it should be evident why it persists."

So there you have it. If corporations such as GE and Daimer-Chrysler didn't care how many minorities were on their boards of directors, Richards probably wouldn't have been so conscious of race, lost it on stage and behaved like such a dick.

Thanks for clarifying, Ms. Parker. It all makes sense to me now.

Demagogue's Helpful Tip of the Day

If you happen to be on trial for robbery, it's generally a good idea not to show up at the courtroom with this item in your pocket.

Churches' Situational Ethics

Jim Wallis' bestselling book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, has received a lot of attention over the past year.

Many Democrats have hailed its message, and many of these Dems (Wallis too) often remind us that religious leaders played a critical role in the major social movements of the 1900's, including civil rights.

True. Black religious leaders spearheaded the civil rights effort of the 1950s and '60s. But it's not so true if you're referring to religious leaders of all racial and ethnic groups. (Remember, Martin Luther King, Jr., called 11 o'clock on Sunday morning the "most segregated hour" of the week.)

Although there were some white religious leaders who had the courage to challenge racial discrimination, it's safe to say that there were more white clerics in America who were content to sit on the sidelines, conceal their own bigotry and not address the issue.

An example of this comes from Wallis himself, who was interviewed for this article in yesterday's Washington Post magazine. Wallis describes this experience in the 1960s:

"I was living in Detroit, [in] a completely white world. I was listening to my city for the first time. I was reading newspapers now. I was paying attention to the news.

"... How come we never had a black person in our church? I heard there were black churches, and who was this minister in the South named King? And I couldn't get answers to the questions."

After Wallis spent months trying to get his church to discuss segregation in Christian terms, the elders agreed to hold a discussion on racism. Wallis was selected to represent the black perspective.

"The first question was, 'Well, Jamie [his boyhood nickname], would you want Barbie to marry one?' That was my younger sister. That was the level of response."

Finally, he recalls, a church elder told him, "Christianity has nothing to do with racism. That's political, and our faith is personal."

Many of the same white churches whose leaders felt their faith was too "personal" to take a public stand against racial segregation have no problem taking public stands against same-sex marriage, abortion, and a host of other issues that are at least as "political" as segregation.

One Weapon, Many Wars

Gen. George Patton called it "the greatest battle implement ever devised." In this article from Sunday's Washington Post, author Larry Kahaner tells you everything you could possibly want to know about the AK-47, a weapon "so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost of a live chicken" — a weapon responsible for roughly a quarter-million deaths every year.

The Purse Snatching in Buenos Aires

According to Reuters:

Reports that an agile Argentine thief snatched the purse of one of the twin daughters of President Bush while U.S. Secret Service agents were nearby had [Buenos Aires] media in a buzz Wednesday.

"Bush's bodyguards couldn't handle San Telmo purse-snatcher," read a headline on the Web site of official news agency Telam.

Telam said a government source, who asked not to be named, confirmed reports regarding the robbery. Different local reports said the incident happened on Sunday or Monday.

A law enforcement source briefed on the incident told CNN that Barbara Bush's purse was stolen while she was in Argentina with her twin sister, Jenna. But the source said that "at no point were the protectees out of visual contact and at no point was there any risk of harm."

Talk about a bullshit, damage-control statement.

Someone hanging out on a Buenos Aires street can run right up to the president's daughter and get close enough to steal her purse, and this "source" wants to portray that as no big deal.

The only reason there wasn't "any risk of harm" is because the assailant didn't happen to have a weapon or otherwise seek to physically harm her. Let's get real. Had the assailant wished to punch or stab Barbara Bush, he could have done so.

Bashert

Add another country to the list-- same-sex couples can now legally marry in Israel.

Reactions by fundie, anti-gay Jews are, predictably, something along the lines of our American Christian fundies.

"We don't have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here," said Moshe Gafni, an ultra-Orthodox lawmaker, referring to two cities the Bible said was destroyed because their citizens were so sinful.

"I assume that every sane person in the State of Israel, possibly the entire Jewish world, is shocked, because the significance is... the destruction of the family unit in the State of Israel," Gafni told Army Radio.

Yes, yes, allowing same-sex couples to marry is going to destroy families rather than establish new ones. Where have I heard that before?

Total Savage Idiocy

I generally don't post on anything Michael Savage says, as he makes Ann Coulter appear downright pleasant, however, this over at Daou Report caught my eye.

For starters, Savage is claiming that the Michael Richards’ racist rant proves that all liberals are secretly racists. As utterly absurd as that is, especially coming from someone like Savage, I found this amusing, “Under the surface, if you got [liberals] in a room alone, I guarantee you they'd say this same kind of hateful things about Catholics and about Jews and about straights and about soldiers."

According to that list Savage believes that the only people who qualify as liberal are, let me see, white, non-Catholic gays who hate the military? So there are no Jewish liberals? Or liberal soldiers? Or liberal Catholics? Or liberal black people? Or liberal straight people? If that is the case then how on earth are liberals such a big threat? Seriously, what is the point of creating such a tiny, tiny straw man?

In Iraq, So Much to Be Thankful For

And, no, you are not staring at cranberry sauce on a Baghdad sidewalk.

Georgia's Sex Offender Law

From today's Washington Post:

As convicted sex offenders go, they seem to pose little danger. One is 100 years old. Another can barely walk and is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease. Another is dying of heart disease in a nursing home.

Yet under a new Georgia law, thousands of registered sex offenders, even the old and feeble, could be pushed from their homes and hospices.

"He doesn't really know anything about it," said Ruby Anderson, 77, whose husband was convicted of having sex with a minor in 1997 and, at 81, no longer recognizes members of his family because of Alzheimer's disease. "The trouble is, I just don't know where we can go."

As states around the country have sought in recent years to control the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders, Georgia's law stands out as one of the toughest, a testament to the daunting public fears regarding children's safety.

... "My intent personally is to make it so onerous on those that are convicted of these offenses . . . they will want to move to another state," Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R), who sponsored the bill, told reporters.

Since the law's enactment in July, however, a federal judge, human rights advocates and even some of the sheriff's departments that are supposed to enforce the measure have suggested that the zeal for safety may have gone too far.

The residency law applies not only to sexual predators but to all people registered for sexual crimes, including men and women convicted of having underage consensual sex while in high school.

Even for those who support the Georgia law, I question whether it is much of a deterrent. Under the law, sex offenders are forbidden to live within 1,000 feet of a school, playground, church or school bus stop.

So what? I'm sure that someone who is intent on committing a sex offense will gladly walk or drive 1,001 feet to do it.

Racism = Impolite Speech?

Apparently Michael Richards's recent outburst where he said to hecklers:

"Fifty years ago we'd have you hanging upside-down with a fork in your ass," then continuing "You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherfucker! Throw his ass out, he's a nigger, he's a nigger! He's a nigger!"

is only getting so much attention because he lacked sufficient self-control, you know, just like the rest of us. Well, at least according to John Derbyshire.

Michael Richards committed a gross breach of those customary rules and restraints—a severe etiquette malfunction, just as much as it he'd started fondling a female audience member. The inner Kramer—the one kept in rein by all those internalized restraints that make civilized life tolerable—just broke out for a moment. To assert that this proves him to be different from you and me in some fundamental, essential way—he is a "racist" and I am not—is just an absurd kind of moral preening. Richards may be a bit shorter on self-control than you or me (and that's deplorable enough, in a highly-paid stage performer)... but that's a continuous variable, too, not a binary quality.

Speak for yourself, Derb. A "gross breach"?

There are so many things to say about this, but I will just say this-- maybe Derb has to suppress the urge to scream racial epithets at people when he gets angry but many of us don't. It's like he's taking the so-called liberal notion that all of us are prejudiced in some way or another and expanding it to include any and all forms of prejudice because there are no varying degrees, no distinctions to be made. I could understand Derb's point if Michael's comments were insensitive, or if they were an offensive joke or were taken out of context, but they weren't. I can't believe that Derb is trying to make this out to be some kind of universal, everyman problem when it really is limited to certain people with a particular mindset-- and that is a very racist one.

Derby can't seem to decide if what Richards said was racist-- I think most people with an ounce of sensitivity can give an unequivocal and emphatic YES. What Richards said wasn't even borderline or questionably racist, not only did he call someone a nigger in anger he also expressed resentment that we can't turn the clock back 50 years so that the "nigger" could be adequately lynched. That's not even mildly racist or ignorant, that's some serious old school racism.

One thing I am having a hard time suppressing is my urge to call Derb a stupid fucking asshole. As for what Richards said, I won't be able to watch Kramer in Seinfeld reruns the same way again.

Dammit

Robert Altman has died.

And to think the Academy waited until *this year* to give him a lifetime achievement Oscar.

In honor of a few of my favorite films of all time, Short Cuts and The Player, I say farewell to an enormous talent whose vision will be missed.

Our Biggest Accomplishment in Iraq

Might very well be getting Shias and Sunnis to agree on something-- they want the US and other foreign forces out.

Eight out of ten Shias in Baghdad (80%) say they want foreign forces to leave within a year (72% of Shias in the rest of the country), according to a poll conducted by World Public Opinion in September. None of the Shias polled in Baghdad want U.S.-led troops to be reduced only “as the security situation improves,” a sharp decline from January, when 57 percent of the Shias polled by WPO in the capital city preferred an open-ended U.S presence.

This brings Baghdad Shias in line with the rest of the country. Seven out of ten Iraqis overall—including both the Shia majority (74%) and the Sunni minority (91%)—say they want the United States to leave within a year.
...
All Shias polled in Baghdad (100%) believe that the U.S. military presence is “provoking more conflict than it is preventing.” Outside of Baghdad, this view is slightly less common: 74 percent of Shias in the rest of the country say the presence of U.S. troops provokes conflict while 25 percent say the troops are a stabilizing force.

Do we have a right to stay in a country in the name of helping them when our help isn't wanted? Is there any hope for "victory" when the public support for our mere presence is so low?

Bush says he doesn't listen to American polls, but can he really say the same for the public opinion of Iraqis?

I'm So Excited

I've been incommunicado for the last couple of months. I still don't really have time for blogging, but I can't contain myself any longer: I'm just so freakin' excited about the election.

I mean it's only one day away now. The latest polls have the CDA with a razor-thin lead over the PvdA, though either one of them would have to enter a coalition with at least two other parties to get a majority. The two together would probably have a majority, but Balkenende says the CDA won't form a coalition with the PvdA: "The PvdA is always against everything. The CDA is for everything."

What, you thought I was talking about another election?

Is This a Bad Time?

From Slate last week

The Rise and Fall of the "Bus Plunge" Story
What killed this former New York Times staple?
By Jack Shafer

From the New York Times today

School Bus Plunges Off Alabama Highway

Two high school students were killed and more than two dozen were seriously injured in Huntsville, Ala., when the school bus they were riding in went off an elevated highway and plunged 30 feet to a street below.

Saletan's Big Idea for the Dems

Slate.com's William Saletan says Democrats "need an idea" that can enable them to take the offensive in January and build on the gains they made among cultural conservative voters. And he proposes this idea:

If ever there were an issue on which Democrats looked amoral, this is it. Abortion as birth control. Culture of life. If it feels good, do it.

Republicans use this kind of language to make Democrats unpalatable even to voters who don't think abortion should be outlawed. Polls show that Democrats can win these voters back. And there's no better place to rebrand yourself than on the issue where you originally got branded.

The remedy is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn't about doing what feels good. It's about taking responsibility.

... Democratic politicians worry that if they target the abortion rate, they'll offend pro-choice groups. But pro-choice groups are already heading in this direction.

... Last month, Planned Parenthood's new president called for an increase in Medicaid coverage of contraception, pointing out that it "would result in the prevention of nearly 500,000 unintended pregnancies and 200,000 abortions annually."

... Anyone who thinks such talk of right and wrong betrays reproductive freedom is illiterate. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. That's how the word planned ended up in Planned Parenthood.

With culturally conservative Democrats gaining seats in Congress and clout in their party, now's the time to move on this issue. It's Republicans who stand in the way.

Guess who just got appointed by President Bush to run federal family-planning programs? The medical director of a pregnancy counseling service that prohibits its employees from referring patients to birth control providers. When those women get pregnant again and show up for their abortions, I'm sure Bush and his man will deny responsibility. As usual.

Lego Joins the Outsourcing Bandwagon

From the N.Y. Times:

BILLUND, Denmark — This is the town that bricks built. Ever since Legos were invented here in the 1940s, many of the townspeople have worked making those toys, which are a particular hit at Christmas.

But now, it seems, Santa has decided to hire elves for his brick-making in Mexico and the Czech Republic, where they would be paid less than the ones in Denmark.

... the number of jobs at Lego in Billund will drop to 1,600, from the current 2,500. Five years ago, Lego employed 4,000 people, who held roughly half of all the jobs in Billund.

“The population has faced it, that it’s very vital that Lego change, or I’m afraid there would have been no Lego in five years,” said Preben Jensen, 59, an air traffic controller at the local airport who also serves as the town’s mayor. “Production in Western Europe is so expensive.”

Not Quite, Mr. President

Arriving in Indonesia to massive protests, President Bush offered this comment on the world's most populous majority-Muslim nation:

"I applaud a society where people are free to express their opinion."

Not quite, Mr. President.

Expressing one's opinion in Indonesia can be lethal. Just last month, the country's supreme court acquitted the only person who had been convicted in the 2004 murder of leading human rights activist Munir Said Thalib. Human Rights Watch called the acquittal "a huge blow for human rights protection," adding that the evidence against the defendant was "overwhelming."

This incident last November also shows that the current Indonesian government is far from comfortable when it comes to the expression of opinions with which it doesn't agree.

A Very Popular 1%

The Associated Press reports:

About 1 percent of Web sites indexed by Google and Microsoft are sexually explicit, according to a U.S. government-commissioned study.

Government lawyers introduced the study in court this month as the Justice Department seeks to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act ...

2008 Won't Be So Funny After All

Santorum swears he's NOT running.

Who is going to play the role of batshit-crazy-winger-longshot candidate now? Brownback?

Disney Says NIMBY

I'd hazard a guess that many of the people who work at Disney would qualify to live here.

A plan to put 1,500 condos and apartments within the shadows of Disneyland is drawing criticism from Walt Disney Co. officials, who argue such housing would be an eyesore located that close to the company's amusement parks.
...
"It's like owning a wonderful house in a wonderful neighborhood," said Ed Chuchla, Disneyland's vice president of corporate real estate. "You care about the house and what could impact it."

I find this pretty amusing coming from a GATED amusement park with a giant pink plastic castle and its own security force.

That's the Only Reason I Drink It

From today's New York Times:

... An ordinary laboratory mouse will run one kilometer on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have energy-charged muscles and a reduced heart rate, just as trained athletes do, according to an article published online in Cell by Johan Auwerx and colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France.

“Resveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training,” Dr. Auwerx (said) ...

Hospital Provides Free Taxi Service

From the L.A. Times:

The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed false-imprisonment and dependent-care-endangerment charges against hospital giant Kaiser Permanente on Wednesday, the first criminal prosecution of a medical center accused of "dumping" patients on skid row.

The charges stem from an incident earlier this year when a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital was videotaped as she left a taxi in gown and socks, and then wandered skid row streets.

... Kaiser is one of 10 area hospitals under investigation by city prosecutors for allegedly discharging patients to the 50-block area of downtown that is known for missions and homeless encampments.

If I Were a Criminal ....

.... this is probably what would happen to me:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – Wichita police say a botched kidnapping ended with one of the assailants shooting himself in the groin.

The (23-year-old) man had just stuck the gun back into his waistband when it fired, shooting him in the left testicle. He cringed, causing the gun to fire again and strike him in the left calf.

And It Wasn't Even Close

The Washington Post reports:

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) was elected House majority leader this morning, defeating Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's candidate, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).

Hoyer won the No. 2 leadership job easily -- 149 to 86.

Pelosi's recommendation carried very little clout with rank-and-file Dems.

I'm not sure that's bad news. There will probably be times when Democratic members will need to do what too many House Republicans were unwilling to do: ignore their leadership.

Rudy Giggliani

This insightful comment is from a discussion over at Dependable Renegade about Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III's odds of getting the GOP nominee in '08.

Always use his entire real name, each part of which uniquely alienates different parts of the GOP:

Rudolph (furrin-soundin)
William (4 names? who has 4 names?)
Louis (pronounced Leweeeese, like on that HBO series)
Giuliani (really mobbed up!)
III (only elite eastern pricks have numbers after their names)

Rudolph William Louis Giuliani III.

heh.

Heh indeed.

Serious Question

First I was just appalled at this:

On the November 14 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck interviewed Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), who became the first Muslim ever elected to Congress on November 7, and asked Ellison if he could "have five minutes here where we're just politically incorrect and I play the cards up on the table." After Ellison agreed, Beck said: "I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' " Beck added: "I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."

But then I had to ask myself, do people really think this way? That question, or anything remotely like it, never even crossed my mind. When I heard that a Muslim had been elected to Congress my first thought was "well, it's about time!" But maybe I'm in the minority in far more ways than I realize.

"Borat" Reviewers Take Themselves Too Seriously

In a recent review of the movie "Borat," Ryan Gilbey wrote in London's lefty New Statesman that the "Kazakh ace reporter uncovers uncomfortable truths about the US." Although I think Christopher Hitchens is all wet on the Iraq war, I did enjoy his response to Gilbey in this column:

Oh, come on.

Among the "cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan" is the discovery that Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse.

At a formal dinner in Birmingham, Ala., the guests discuss Borat while he's out of the room — filling a bag with ordure in order to bring it back to the table, as it happens — and agree what a nice young American he might make. And this is after he has called one guest a retard and grossly insulted the wife of another ....

The tony hostess even takes him and his bag of shit upstairs and demonstrates the uses not just of the water closet but also of the toilet paper.

The arrival of a mountainous black hooker does admittedly put an end to the evening, but if a swarthy stranger had pulled any of the foregoing at a liberal dinner party in England, I wouldn't give much for his chances.

I think Mr. Gilbey should stop writing movie reviews and go back to producing C-grade gin.

Plagiarism From the Pulpit

A front-page article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd) revealed a surprising source for the Rev. Brian Moon's inspiring sermons:

"People are drowning, drowning in their marriages, drowning in their careers, drowning in hurtful habits," Mr. Moon told his congregation at Church of the Seacoast, in Land o' Lakes, Fla. "They need someone to rescue them and bring them on the raft. They need people driven by God's addition."

Those words, it turns out, were first uttered three years ago by the Rev. Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. His Web site, creative-pastors.com, sells transcripts of this and other sermons for $10 each. Mr. Moon says he delivered about 75% of Mr. Young's sermon, "just because it was really good."

If this is what qualifies as a "really good" sermon, then I guess I'm not missing much on Sunday morning.

... [Mr. Moon] makes no apologies for using a recycled sermon. "Truth is truth, there's no sense reinventing the wheel," Mr. Moon says.

But some clergy disagree:

... "Every minister owes his congregation a fresh act of interpretation," says Thomas C. Long, a preaching professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University ... "To play easy with the truth, to be deceptive about where the ideas come from, is a lie."

Trent Lott Has a Whip

Oops, I meant he *is* a whip.

No, I don't know why. Maybe they're all still drinking to dull the pain of last week's defeat? Nothing left to lose?

The Problems With Murtha

In today's Washington Post, columnist Ruth Marcus makes a very good case for why the Democrats should not make Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania their new House Majority Leader.

Abramoff Gets to Check Out His New Digs

Today, the power lobbyist who once could call in favors from a host of key House members is moving to his new home:

Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist known for lavishing politicians with football tickets or whisking them away on exotic golf junkets, will start life Wednesday with a new identity: federal inmate No. 27593-112.

Abramoff is to report to federal prison to begin serving a nearly six-year prison sentence for a fraudulent deal to buy a fleet of casino ships in Florida. He also is awaiting sentencing for corrupting government officials and their staff members.

Maryland Tactics Enhance Blacks' "Distrust"

Remember last year when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman apologized for his party’s history of "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization"?

Remember this summer when President Bush spoke to the NAACP convention and said that "racism still lingers in America" and that he understood "that many African-Americans distrust my political party”?

Both of them wanted America — especially blacks — to believe that the Republican Party was ready to abandon the political tactics that insult or degrade black voters. But Election Day tactics in Maryland will give plenty of black voters new reasons to distrust the Republican Party.

Relatively few Americans know about the highly deceptive fliers that were distributed to Maryland voters in heavily black precincts by the campaigns of GOP candidates Robert Ehrlich and Michael Steele. Both men lost their bids for office.

As the Washington Post explained a few days ago:

... (details) suggest the fliers, and the people paid to distribute them, were not part of a hurry-up effort but a calculated strategy. Republican leaders have defended the Election Day episode as an accepted element of bare-knuckle politics.

It has been a full week since this outrageous incident, and neither Ehrlich nor Steele (who happens to be black) has fully addressed the degree to which he knew or approved of these deceptive fliers.

The GOP can continue to recruit black candidates and talk about being the "party of Lincoln," but isn't it telling that the best icon the Republicans can offer to defend their civil rights record (or lack thereof) is a president who has been dead for 141 years?

They Might as Well Ask the Earth to Stop Rotating

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wants gay people to know they are welcome in the church — welcome, that is, so long as they deny who they are and lead lonely, celibate, guilt-ridden lives.

According to ABC News:

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops adopted new guidelines for gay outreach Tuesday that are meant to be welcoming, while also telling gays to be celibate since the church considers their sexuality "disordered."

The headline on ABC News' home page last night summed up this story well:

Catholics to Gays: Stay in the Closet, Stay Celibate, Stay in the Church

Let's put this in context. Catholic bishops can't even count on majority support among American Catholics for the church's positions on birth control, abortion and stem cell research.

Do the bishops really think they will have better luck trying to persuade gay Catholics than they have had persuading heterosexual Catholics?

Treating Celebrities Like Experts

It's one thing for CNN talk-show host Larry King to ask Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt whether they think the internet is a "viable" political medium. It's another for him to pose this question (as he did on last night's show) to Roseanne Barr and act as though he expects a serious and thoughtful response.

What makes a standup comedian-actress an expert on this topic? Nothing, so far as I can see.

I don't dislike Roseanne Barr. I just don't get why she's treated like she has such insights on the power of political discourse on the internet.

Even South Africa...

is more rational and progressive about marriage and civil unions than we are-- they have legalized same-sex marriage and civil unions.

The South African parliament on Tuesday approved new legislation recognizing gay marriages — a first for a continent where homosexuality is largely taboo.

The National Assembly passed the Civil Union Bill, worked out after months of heated public discussion, by a majority of 230 to 41 votes despite criticism from both traditionalists and gay activists and warnings that it might be unconsitutional. There were three abstentions.

The bill provides for the "voluntary union of two persons, which is solemnized and registered by either a marriage or civil union." It does not specify whether they are heterosexual or homosexual partnerships.
...
"When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed culture and sex," Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told the National Assembly.

230 to 41?!!

Wow. Just wow.

A Story That Comes With a Disclaimer

If the events being described by Newsweek reporter Rod Nordland are so brutal that they require this opening paragraph:

Warning: do not read this story if you are easily disturbed by graphic information, or are under age, or are easily upset by accounts of gruesome sexual violence.

... then perhaps it's time for the United Nations and the members of the Security Council to roll up their sleeves and actually do something to try to end this persistent brutality against women.

Pardon my moment of self-delusional hope.

Abortion = Illegal Immigration?

The Associated Press reports on the rather strange conclusion reached by Missouri's House Special Committee on Immigration Reform:

A Republican-led legislative panel claims in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.

... statements about abortion, welfare policies and a recommendation to abolish income taxes in favor of sales taxes were inserted into the immigration report by the committee chairman, Rep. Ed Emery.

All six Democrats on the panel refused to sign the report. Some of them called the abortion assertion ridiculous and embarrassing.

“There's a lot of editorial comment there that I couldn't really stomach,” Rep. Trent Skaggs said Monday. “To be honest, I think it's a little delusional.”

All 10 Republican committee members signed the report, though one of them, Rep. Billy Pat Wright, said Monday he didn't recall it connecting abortion and illegal immigration.

Who knows if he even bothered to read it?

A Leadership That Is Universally Loathed

Yesterday, I ran across this newspaper column in which the House Republican leadership was described as:

1. "on the brink of committing an act of supreme irrationality"

2. having committed an "election debacle"

3. "chained to special corporate interests represented by K Street lobbyists," and

4. "For good reason, the GOP often is called 'the stupid party.' "

Are these the assessments of a columnist named Arianna Huffington? Paul Begala? Eleanor Clift? Bob Herbert?

None of the above. Believe it or not, this scathing assessment of the House GOP leadership is coming from this staunch conservative.

We Know How to Find 'Em

From a recent edition of Harper's Index:

Percentage change since 2004 in the number of Army recruits admitted despite records of “serious criminal misconduct”: +54%

What the GOP's Crystal Ball Said 3 Years Ago

More than a few Republicans have taken solace in the fact that their defeat in the U.S. House and Senate could have been worse. However, their attempts to use electoral history as a barometer don't quite work all that well.

Across the country, congressional districts have become increasingly gerrymandered — so much so that at least 100 of them had almost no chance of ever being put "in play" this year. Black-majority districts have also contributed to the trend toward making more and more House districts electorally "safe" for one party or the other.

These gerrymandering efforts got so out of hand that many political operatives assumed that the GOP would never lose control of both houses in the near future.

Thanks to Jesselee at The Stakeholder, I was reminded of an interesting prediction made by a GOP operative in Texas three years ago. Back then, the Wash Post reported:

The Texas Legislature neared final passage of a Republican-sponsored congressional redistricting plan last night amid bitter partisan battling that was further inflamed by an internal GOP analysis of the plan's likely impact on the state's congressional delegation.

... "This is the most aggressive map I have ever seen," Joby Fortson wrote in the analysis, which he e-mailed to congressional aides. "This has a real national impact that should assure that Republicans keep the House no matter the national mood."

Lugar's Free Pass

For Democrats, Indiana was one of the highlights of Election 2006. When the votes were counted last Tuesday night, three GOP congressmen were ousted by Democratic challengers in Indiana. And Democrats took control of Indiana's House of Representatives.

Yet the Dems were unable to even recruit a candidate to run against incumbent Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana. Why was that?

Over the past two years, Lugar's voting record has been rated as more conservative than that of Sen. Mike DeWine, who was defeated next door in Ohio.

Lugar would have been very tough to beat, but he would have been vulnerable to attack on Iraq and other issues.

Lugar chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which could have played a more aggressive oversight role of Iraq over the past few years. Lugar has been masterful at voicing vague concerns about Iraq and holding regular hearings about it. But most of the 15 "Dear Colleague" letters that Lugar has sent to his fellow senators over the past year are fairly empty.

In these letters, Lugar rarely shares his own ideas or reaches conclusions about Iraq. In one letter this past July, Lugar wrote:

Attached is the statement (Iraqi) Ambassador Khalilzad delivered before the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as a copy of the speech he made on Tuesday, July 11th ...

The Ambassador emphasized the “positive developments, which give the Iraqi government and friends of Iraq real hope.” But he also described “several challenges to Iraq’s new government [that] persist or have become more severe and will require adjustments and new efforts to resolve.”

... He listed five efforts that he and his Embassy team are pursuing to stem sectarian violence and bring about stability in Iraq.

I hope you find the Ambassador’s statements helpful as the Congress continues to consider policy options related to Iraq.

There are "positive developments" that offer "real hope." And there are "several challenges" that have "become more severe." Thanks for clarifying things, senator.

The Dems might not have beaten Lugar, but it would have been nice to have given the voters of Indiana another major-party candidate to choose from in last Tuesday's election.

No Immediate Impact

In an advisory referendum in Wisconsin last week, 56% of voters voiced support for reinstating the death penalty (for first-degree murder convictions that are supported by DNA evidence). But even the referendum's sponsor admits that the vote is highly unlikely to change things for the near future.

Mellencamp: An Annoying, Well-Paid GM Whore

I must have a twin I haven't met. In today's Washington Post, Desmond Bieler said everything I've been thinking about rocker-for-rent John Mellencamp and his annoying, GM-appropriated song. Bieler writes:

So, if this really is our country, can't we ban these [expletive, expletive, expletive, expletive, pause for breath, expletive] ads with the John Mellencamp song?

They don't make me want to buy a Chevy so much as buy a vowel. The vowel, O, to be precise, so I can belt out an extra-long "Boooooo!!"

Every time an NFL game goes to a commercial break .....

I had to endure this during the World Series as well.

.... which, of course, only happens when Peyton Manning goes to the no-huddle -- but that's another rant, that god-awful tune starts up again.

Hang out in a sports bar showing multiple games with the audio on, and it's like being in the world's most jingoistic echo chamber.

... The second worst thing about the (General Motors) ads is the rip-off job Mellencamp performs on his self-professed idol, Woody Guthrie. Guthrie's classic song (one he most assuredly never licensed for commercial use) went, "This land is your land, this land is my land, from California, to the New York Island . . . this land was made for you and me."

As Mellencamp's version has it, "From the East Coast, to the West Coast . . . this is our country." Clever tweak there.

Guthrie wrote on his guitar, "This Machine Kills Fascists." Apparently, Mellencamp's ax reads, "This Machine Sells Fully Loaded Half-Ton Silverados."

While we're on the topic, does GM really think that wrapping itself in a rah-rah, patriotic message is going to return the company to prosperity? Lest we forget, they tried this before.

If you're as old as me, you remember Chevy's ad campaign in the late 1970s — the jingle about how "we love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet." GM can't quite accept the fact that many people who deeply love America don't want to buy unattractive vehicles with clunky designs, gas-guzzling engines and poor maintenance records.

N.H. Turns As Blue as Its Flag

New Hampshire was meltdown central for the Republicans in last Tuesday's election.

The state's popular Democratic governor, John Lynch, cruised to re-election. Both of the state's GOP congressman were defeated, even though neither of them was high on the list of DCCC targets as of Labor Day.

Democrats also took control of both chambers of the state's Legislature. It's the first time in more than 130 years that both N.H. houses are in Democratic hands.

Is New Hampshire's Democratic sweep just a fluke shaped by anti-incumbent attitudes? No way. It's the latest sign that the last red state in New England is strongly trending blue. In 2004, N.H. was the only state that went from red to blue in the presidential election. As one of the state's newspapers reported:

Of the 239 Democrats elected to the House Tuesday, 102 were elected for the first time. Another 15 will be returning to the House, but did not serve during the 2005-06 session.

"Everybody is finding their way right now. It's almost like being in a dark room and trying to remember where the furniture is," said Paul McEachern, D-Portsmouth, a former representative and gubernatorial candidate who was elected again this week.

... "Anybody in the Legislature has found it's hard to identify someone by their political party because it has always been a coalition of people from both parties that gets things done regardless of what is getting done," he said. "I don't think the depth is there on the Democratic side to manage it to the exclusion of the Republicans."

McEachern suggested a number of moderate Republicans would love to have positions of responsibility their party's leadership would not give them. "They had no home," he said.

McEachern should give these moderate Republicans a home by offering them a leadership post if they agree to switch parties. Over the past few decades, this is what the GOP has done in the South and Sunbelt regions.

In the long run, it would have an additional payoff by drawing off moderates and making the New Hampshire GOP look even more extreme on the issues than it already does.

One State, But Two Very Different Regions

Last week, in this post, Zoe cited a Fred Barnes' election post-mortem in which the Fox News commentator looked ahead to the 2008 presidential election and wrote that "Virginia is now worrisome for Republicans." He's right.

The main reason is that the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington are growing faster than other areas of the state.

Northern Virginia and the rest of the state voted very differently in the election last Tuesday. I reviewed preliminary, uncertified vote totals in the U.S. Senate race from these 9 northern Virginia jurisdictions — Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, and the independent cities of Alexandria, Manassas, Manassas Park, Fairfax City and Falls Church.

This is what I found:

Northern Virginia: Democrat Jim Webb won by a margin of roughly 122,000 votes.

Rest of the State: Republican Sen. George Allen won by roughly 113,000 votes.

There was also a noticeable gap in how the two geographic groups voted on Amendment 1, the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. In these same northern Virginia jurisdictions, the amendment banning same-sex marriage lost, but the amendment won more than 60% of the vote downstate.

Tattoing Is Popular in Iraq Too

Albeit for a different reason:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Baghdad's morgues are full. With no space to store bodies, some victims of the sectarian slaughter are not being kept for relatives to claim, but photographed, numbered and quickly interred in government cemeteries.

Men fearful of an anonymous burial are tattooing their thighs with names and phone numbers.

In October, a particularly bloody month for Iraqi civilians, about 1,600 bodies were turned in at the Baghdad central morgue, said its director, Dr. Abdul-Razaq al-Obaidi.

Who Says Conservatives Aren't Funny?

Well, at least my buddy Dick Viguerie is. He just sent me this amusing email. (If you want a copy for yourself, just email me.)

Nancy Pelosi says thank-you to…

10. To Vice President Cheney, Bill Kristol, and their cell of “neo-conservatives,” for turning the Republicans into a Trotskyite party—just what Americans have always wanted.

9. To Rush Limbaugh, for his display of “compassionate conservatism” toward Michael J. Fox a week before the election.

8. To outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), for transforming a personal scandal involving Rep. Tom Foley into a GOP scandal.

7. To Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), for creating an engineering marvel worthy of the Roman Empire—their beloved Bridge to Nowhere.

6. To Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, for taking conservative issues off the agenda, except for his direct mail fundraising letters.

5. To former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), for paring every wasteful dollar out of the federal budget, thus creating a nasty image of the Republicans as the party of Uncle Scrooge.

4. To Karl Rove, for not reading Conservatives Betrayed, which would have awakened him to the dangers of making real conservatives unhappy. [Ha-ha, Dick, that's your book!]

3. To “Brownie” (former FEMA director Michael Brown), for doing such a heck of a job during Katrina, letting Americans see how prepared the Bush Administration was for a scheduled natural terrorist attack.

2. To Jack Abramoff, philanthropist, for his unlimited generosity toward his Republican friends.

And,

1. To President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for keeping their divorce a secret until the election was over.

Even if you don't think you know Dick, you do know Dick, he's otherwise known as the Big Daddy of Direct Mail and one of the Right's earliest communication strategists.

Double Sweet!

First there's this:

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, dealt what appeared to be a fatal blow Thursday to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it.
...
“For all intents and purposes, the debate has ended,” said Representative Byron Rushing, a Boston Democrat and the assistant majority leader. “What members are expecting is that the majority of constituents are going to say, ‘Thank you, we’re glad it’s over, we think it has been discussed enough.’ ”

Then there's this:

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, whose party lost both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, will step down from his post when his two-year term ends in January, GOP officials said Thursday.

They're far from equal events and I'm sure they'll put someone equally creepy in his place, however, Mehlman just bugs me.

Youth Voted!

Yet another angle to examine Tuesday's election.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006, was a day of victory for youth engagement in American democracy. In a year of increased overall turnout, it was young people who really took the lead. According to The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), an estimated 10 million young Americans (ages 29 and under) came out to vote yesterday—the largest number ever and an increase of two million since the midterm election in 2002. Estimated youth turnout jumped from 20 percent in 2002 to 24 percent in 2006. Youth turnout was the highest in at least twenty years, and, when all the provisional or absentee ballots are counted, it may be the highest of all time.

Blue Seeps into Red

From Fred Barnes' election post mortem at the Weekly Standard, some solid, non-chicken little observations.

What should worry Republicans most, however, is erosion of its strength in the West and in two states in particular: Colorado and Arizona. Fours years ago, Colorado was solidly Republican. Since then, Democrats have won a Senate seat, two House seats, the governorship, and both houses of the state legislature. At the state level, that's realignment.
...
Colorado and Arizona may not be there for Republicans in the 2008 presidential race...Virginia is now worrisome for Republicans...in Arizona, where two of the noisiest border hawks, Representatives J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost House seats. Graf lost in a seat along the Mexican border, where illegal immigrants flock.

Revelations

In Statehouses, Too, Democrats Post Sizable Gains

Democratic gains in Congress and governorships were matched on Tuesday by a surge involving state legislatures, where more than 275 seats and nine chambers switched from Republican to Democratic hands. [bold mine]

The victories, combined with the six new Democratic governors, have given the Democrats one-party government in 15 states, including New Hampshire for the first time since 1874, and Colorado for the first time since 1960.

No party has totally controlled as many as 15 states since the Republicans achieved that level after the 1994 election.

What is equally remarkable, said Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, is that the gains occurred across the country, even in the South, where Democrats had lost ground in every statehouse election since 1982.

The past 6 years so many of us have caught ourselves, flabberghasted, saying something along the lines of, “you couldn’t even write this stuff, it would be too far fetched.” I think it's just barely sinking in that the era of outrageous and unchecked GOP lies, corruption and cronyism are coming to a dramatic halt, sort of like an elephant walking in front of a moving car. At this point the car isn't totalled, but both of its axles are broken and it has no tires. Such an awful, painful noise, whene it creeps on by you can't help but think "man, I wish someone would put that thing out of its misery."

Politics of Race

Didn't play the way the GOP hoped.

Republicans had hoped the midterm election would brand 2006 as the year of the black Republican.

That did not happen.

With high-profile losses in Maryland's Senate race and in contests for governor in Ohio and Pennsylvania, prospects for Republican gains among black voters turned up short this year and gave scant hope for 2008.

Republican Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor, lost to Democrat Rep. Ben Cardin by almost 10 percent.

Ken Blackwell, a conservative darling who would have been Ohio's first black governor, lost by nearly 24 percent.

And Lynn Swann failed by 21 percent to secure the Pennsylvania governor's office.
...
Ron Walters, a former campaign official with Rev. Jesse Jackson and now a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, said Republicans have to identify candidates based on issues, not skin color.

"They have to have positions that are in line with the black community," he said. "If they can't attract the black vote, it won't pay off."

Exit polls showed 88 percent of blacks supported Democrats, about the same level of support as in the last few elections.

Yes, it's applaudable progress to have diversity represented in the GOP, but their base assumption seems to be a certain lack of sophistication within the African-American community, that black people will vote for black candidates just because they're black. They still don't get it. It's not that hard to see that if you run ads like the infamous one against Ford in Tennessee that it undermines any progress you might be making in changing your image.

51-49

I can't believe it happened so quickly, I thought that with everything at stake Allen would at least hold out until the weekend, if not longer.

Ironically, it's possible that the not-too-distant memory of the Florida in 2000 that might have given Allen second thoughts about a recount and/or legal battle.

Sweet, sweet victory, I had nearly forgotten what you tasted like.

America's Awakening

Nearly the whole world is celebrating that we finally woke up.

The seismic shift that midterm elections brought to Washington's political landscape was welcomed by many Wednesday in a world sharply opposed to the war in Iraq and outraged over the harsh methods the Bush administration has employed in fighting terrorism.

From Paris to Pakistan, politicians, analysts and ordinary citizens said they hoped the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives would force President Bush to adopt a more conciliatory approach to the globe's laundry list of crises, and teach a president many see as a "cowboy" a lesson in humility.
...
Regardless of the effect on world events, global giddiness that Bush was finally handed a political black-eye was almost palpable throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 Socialist members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as "the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world" and gloated that they left the Bush administration "seriously weakened."

After 6 Years of GOP Domination

If I had to sum up the 2006 election it would go something like this--

Backlash is a bitch and Payback is an angry, scorned mistress.

Preemptive Strike

Rumsfeld just resigned.

Waiting Game

We might not know the result of Virginia's senate race until after Thanksgiving.

While a recount seems likely, though, if it comes it will not come quickly.

According to a statement issued this month by the state’s Board of Elections, no request for a recount may be filed until the vote is certified, which is scheduled to happen this year on Nov. 27th.

Permanent Republican Majority?

Fin.

Not only that, but the World's Biggest Asshole© is simply just Tom DeLay now, and his seat is now occupied by Democrat Nick Lampson.

What is the big picture?

Majority of governorships are now Dem.
Majority of state legislatures are controlled by Dems.
Not a single Dem incumbent lost their seat yesterday.

Good morning Madame Speaker.

The cherry on top-- if the Dems pick up senate seats in VA and Montana then the only power the GOP will have left is a president that quacks.

Regardless of what happens in the Senate, this means daydreaming about fleeing to Canada is over. We can stay here, thank you very much, America no longers feels like the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Well, at least for the time being.

Oh well...

Same-sex marriage bans projected to pass in most states, Wisconsin, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia. Bummer.

Although at least South Dakota rejected the ballot measure that would ban all abortions.

Update: Oh, wait a sec, a little good news-- Arizona rejected their marriage amendment! Wahoo!

RIP, thus far...

Hostettler
Santorum
Chafee
Steele
Northup
Istook
DeWine
Harris

Unfortunately Musgrave didn't make the list, she squeaked by with a 3% victory.

"But I sold you my soul...

and I even touted working with Hillary in my ads."

Nails It

That is exactly what Gary Kamiya does right here.

Elections hold a mirror up to a society. And the reflection we've been looking at for the past six years is a scary, Elephant Man-like visage.

So for a lot of us, there's more at stake in Tuesday's elections than simply whether the Democrats will take control of the House or the Senate. It's a question of national identity, of finding out who we are -- and if we're a "we" at all. For six years, we've been waiting for the America we thought we knew to come back. And now, as we wait for the spinning windows in the great democratic slot machine to stop, we're torn between hope that it'll display the country we thought we knew, and fear that it'll show something else.
...
This isn't just about controlling Congress, or eventually winning back the White House. The stakes are much higher. It's about what kind of country we want to be. A country of laws, not men. A country that doesn't spy on its citizens, or create secret prisons, or torture people. A country whose media has the guts to stand up to a mendacious administration even in times of war hysteria. A country that will not allow powerful wrongdoers to hide behind a cloak of secrecy. A country that cares about its poor and its minorities. A country that wants to be a good neighbor to the world, not dominate it. A country that has a soul, not just a flag.

The Next Ex-Gay Posterchild?

Reading this made me feel sorry for the guy.

During Sunday services at New Life, it was announced that Dobson, with a team of two pastors, would be overseeing Haggard's "therapeutic restoration."

Reparative therapy with Dr. Dobson himself? Why does this conjure up images of Dobson, face reddened from rage, screaming in Haggard's face "You're nothing but a dirty, dirty faggot! I want you to bend over on that desk! Everyone else, get in line with your paddles ready!"

(shutter)

Gerry’s Gift

The New Republic explains why broad public sentiment can’t be reflected in election outcomes—everyone all together now—gerrymandering.

All this is the legacy of our least favorite Founding Father, Elbridge Gerry, and the formula for rigging congressional elections that bears his name. Not that it's all Gerry's fault. The redistricting plan he signed in 1812--and the hundreds that have followed--merely exploited a massive flaw in our electoral system. When you have congressional districts, those districts will have boundaries, and those boundaries will inevitably rebound to one party's favor. Unless we remake our system of government in the image of Germany or New Zealand, most American voters are going to be stuck with the annoying fact that their congressional vote doesn't much matter; their incumbent will win, no matter which lever they pull.
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Fortunately, if you can't count on the courts to rectify this shortcoming, then at least you can count on the good people of Iowa. They have empowered a nonpartisan Legislative Service Bureau to draw up three redistricting plans after each census, which they then present to the legislature. The law strictly forbids the Legislative Service Bureau from looking at previous election results or the addresses of incumbents. And the Hawkeye system works pretty well. In 2002, four out of the state's five congressional races were competitive. And, this year, Iowa has two tight races. But even this solution provides only a sliver of hope. Voters in Ohio and California have recently rejected ballot initiatives that would similarly empower independent commissions to redraw their state's congressional districts.

In other words, the problem of gerrymandering is now as much cultural as constitutional. The fact that our system of government has such a massive flaw at its center elicits almost no political passion. You'll only find complaints in the corners of goo-goo think tanks. And such passivity in the face of democratic decay is itself a depressing sign of disrepair.

The Major Issue in This Election ....

... is Iraq, by a long shot. If Democrats take the House, they will automatically secure greater leverage in the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq. So what will they propose to do?

In the Nov. 6 issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria has written one of the best, most reasoned articles about Iraq that I've read. He calls for a rapid draw-down in troops, but not a complete pullout anytime soon.

Among his observations and prescriptions:

Currently we have 144,000 troops deployed in Iraq at a cost of more than $90 billion a year. That is simply not sustainable in an open-ended way.

I would propose a force structure of 60,000 men at a cost of $30 billion to $35 billion annually — a commitment that could be maintained for several years, and that would give the Iraqis time to come together, in whatever loose form they can, as a nation.

True, as we draw down, violence will increase in many parts of the country. One can only hope that will concentrate the minds of leaders in Iraq. The Shia government will get its chance to try to fight the insurgency its way. The Sunni rebels can attempt to regain control of the country. And perhaps both sides will come more quickly to the conclusion that the only way forward is a political deal.

But until there is such a change of heart, the United States should stick to more limited goals.

The core national-security interests of the United States in Iraq are now threefold: first, to prevent Anbar province from being taken over by Qaeda-style jihadist groups that would use it as a base for global terrorism; second, to ensure that the Kurdish region retains its autonomy; third, to prevent or at least contain massive sectarian violence in Iraq, as both a humanitarian and a security issue.

Large-scale bloodletting could easily spill over Iraq's borders as traumatized and vengeful refugees flee to countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Historically, such population movements have caused trouble for decades to come.

These interests are achievable with fewer forces.

President Bush is fond of warning, "If we leave Iraq, they will follow us home." This makes no sense. Qaeda terrorists from Iraq could have made their way to America at any point in the last three years. In fact, Iraq's borders are more porous today than they have ever been. If a terrorist wanted to inflict harm on U.S. civilians, he could drive across Anbar into Syria, then hop a plane to New York or Washington, D.C.

Does the president really believe that because we're in Iraq, terrorists have forgotten that we're also in America?

Otherwise Known as the Democratic Party

Fox News has come up with a new name for the Democratic Party. Get the details courtesy of the Carpetbagger.

A Somewhat Inconsistent Message

Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) is locked in a close race with Democratic candidate Jon Tester. Among the messages Burns has used to court voters is this one from his campaign website:

With a seat on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Burns has been able to bring in over $2 billion in federal funds to the state since he took office. He has been a champion of a fiscally conservative government ...

In one breath, Burns brags about treating the federal budget as if it were his personal slush fund for pork-barrel projects. In the next breath, he identifies himself as "fiscally conservative."

Do the taxpayers of Montana see any disconnect here?

Hyperbolic Overdrive

In a NY Times story about how expectations have been so excessively primed that anything but an overwhelming Democratic victory may be treated as a embarassing failure, pollster Charlie Cook says that if the Dems don't get the House that “I think you’d see a Jim Jones situation — it would be a mass suicide."

Once again, when it comes to the contest over expectations the GOP is always ahead-- the Dems continue to suffer from the harsh judgement of high expectations.

"Protects"?

There's a reason why political interest groups develop talking points and catch phrases. Because, every once in a while, the mainstream media will adopt their terms -- terms that put a distinct slant on an issue.

I was disappointed to see an example of this in The Economist when I was thumbing through its Oct. 14 issue. Check out the first color-coded map in this issue, which indicates which states have same-sex marriage bans and which states will be voted on such bans this election year.

Then read the color codes below the map. The first color code reads as follows:

States where opposite-sex marriage is protected in the state constitution.

This is not a neutral message.

The notion that banning same-sex marriage somehow "protects" heterosexual marriages and makes them stronger is a classic assertion of social conservatives. A better explanation would have been:

States where same-sex marriage is prohibited by the state constitution.

Even if you neglect to mention the ban, a more neutral explanation would have been something like this:

States where the state constitution only permits opposite-sex marriage.

But using the words "is protected" borrows the lingo of the social conservatives and was an example of lazy journalism.

Charlie Cook Is a Total Wuss

And that's the most polite way I can say it.

What else can you say about a political-electoral analyst who waited until yesterday to change the DeWine and Santorum Senate races from "Toss Up" to "Lean Democratic"?

It's like waiting until the end of the first quarter to announce your line for an NFL football game.

It takes a lot of courage to give a slight edge to Bob Casey in the Pennsylvania Senate race when he has led Santorum in every single poll out of the last 80 that have been taken, including double-digit leads in 8 of the last 11 polls.

Let's hear it for the gutsy Charlie Cook.

Once Again, California OD's on Democracy

"The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid." — Art Spander

How many of California's voters will go to the polls today with a clear understanding of all 13 propositions that are on the November ballot? Probably not very many.

The propositions deal with a hodge-podge of issues -- cigarette taxes, housing bonds, regulation of private property, parental notification for abortion, and oil production taxes, to name a few. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

If you live in San Francisco and you show up at the polls, you will receive a ballot that asks you to vote yes or no on these 13 propositions as well as on 11 city propositions. That's a grand total of 24 issues that are left to the voters, who are usually struggling just to make sense of the candidates and what they actually stand for.

I'm not against the initiative and referendum process, but, as I've suggested before, there has to be a limit on the number of initiatives that can be placed on any one election ballot. Most of these initiatives are not easy to decipher. The more there are, the more of a pipe dream it is to expect that voters will be adequately informed to decide these issues.

It simply isn't realistic to expects millions of voters to have a reasonable understanding of this many ballot initiatives.

Poll Watching Is Like Dropping Acid 79 Times

Both will induce insanity.

I wrote this post earlier today about Charlie Cook's view that turnout would favor the Dems. Well, the Post today counters with this news:

A Pew Research Center poll showed a significant narrowing in the partisan advantage in House races that the Democrats have enjoyed for much of the year ....

The Pew poll showed that the Democratic advantage had dropped to 47 percent to Republicans' 43 percent among likely voters, down from 50 percent to 39 percent two weeks ago.

The poll found a drop in Democratic support among independents, but Pew Director Andrew Kohut said the most significant change over the past two weeks is that Republicans now outnumber Democrats among likely voters.

Not good news.

Separately, a USA Today/Gallup Poll showed Democrats leading Republicans by 51 percent to 44 percent among likely voters on the "generic vote" -- the question of which party voters intend to support in House races -- down from a 13-percentage-point advantage two weeks ago.

Even worse news.

But [USA Today] noted Republicans enjoyed a similar 7-point edge on the eve of their 1994 landslide victory.

Right now, I'm confident of absolutely nothing.